Michelle Obama and her brother to launch a weekly podcast
"IMO with Michelle Obama & Craig Robinson" will address "everyday questions shaping our lives, relationships and the world around us," according to a press release. IMO is slang for "in my opinion."
Some of the guests slated to speak to the former first lady and Robinson, the executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, include the actors Issa Rae and Keke Palmer and psychologist Dr. Orna Guralnik.
Other guests include filmmakers Seth and Lauren Rogan; soccer star Abby Wambach; authors Jay Shetty, Glennon Doyle and Logan Ury; editor Elaine Welteroth; radio personality Angie Martinez; media mogul Tyler Perry; actor Tracee Ellis Ross; husband-and-wife athlete and actor Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union; and Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky.
The first two episodes — the first is an introductory one and the second features Rae — will premiere on March 12. New episodes will be released weekly and will be available on all audio platforms and YouTube.
"With everything going on in the world, we're all looking for answers and people to turn to," Obama said in a statement. "There is no single way to deal with the challenges we may be facing — whether it's family, faith, or our personal relationships — but taking the time to open up and talk about these issues can provide hope."
Obama has had two other podcasts — "The Michelle Obama Podcast" in 2020 and another in 2023, "The Light We Carry." Her husband, Barack Obama, offered a series of conversations about American life between him and Bruce Springsteen.
The new podcast is a production of Higher Ground, the media company founded in 2018 by the former president and first lady.
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Times
an hour ago
- Times
I watched YouTube for a week with my children. Here's what I learnt
At about 5pm every day, in the small window between after-school activities and dinner, my three and five-year-old daughters veg out in front of a screen. Sometimes they'll watch a cartoon on Netflix; occasionally they'll ask for CBeebies. The majority of the time, though, it's YouTube. The show they chose — or rather, that was algorithmically suggested — to watch one recent afternoon follows the adventures of a real-life brother and sister. They'd watched it before, as have many other children, since it's one of the most popular kids' channels on YouTube. While my daughters love the slapstick humour, to me it's like white noise, the background soundtrack to my multitasking. But the video they watched that day made me pay attention. In it the brother tricks his sister into thinking she has gained weight. Visibly upset, the little girl changes into a skimpy workout outfit to do star jumps, and later turns down a sandwich in favour of a plate of raw carrot sticks, before heading to her bedroom to weigh herself. I was horrified, both at what we were watching and at myself for letting my impressionable daughters access it. How was it, I wondered, that this type of content was being promoted on a platform marketed as family-friendly? And what else had they watched that had flown under my radar? According to Michelle Neumann, a professor of childhood education at the University of Sheffield who has carried out research on children's YouTube content, this is precisely the problem with a lot of what our kids are watching. 'On the surface many of these channels seem OK, so if a parent glances over their shoulder, they might think, that looks fun,' she says. 'But when you dig deeper, you realise there's a lot of problematic content.' So I set myself a challenge: for one week I would dig deeper, intently watching everything that my girls were looking at on YouTube to see what I would learn. I should preface my little experiment with a disclosure: my husband and I used to work for Google, which acquired YouTube in 2006. I joined in 2017, the year it emerged that bad actors were circumnavigating the platform's filters to run creepy, violent and explicit videos on YouTube Kids, the version of the app for under-12s. But the company's response to the scandal had been solid, I thought — introducing new guidelines for creators about what qualified as good children's content, beefing up its moderation and mass deleting inappropriate videos. • YouTube and the rise and rise of trash TV for kids In the years after the scandal, after we became parents, my husband and I found ourselves turning to the platform more and more for educational and entertainment purposes. The depth of content is simply unrivalled. For example, around the age of four, after reading a lift-the-flap history book in our local library, my eldest daughter developed a morbid fascination with the bubonic plague. Her endless curiosity quickly exhausted my limited grasp of 14th-century history, but I knew YouTube would have the answers. Sure enough, I found what seemed like an age-appropriate video that taught her everything she needed to know about the Black Death. She watched it repeatedly for months, until the next obsession took over (Egyptian mummies). This way of using YouTube is what Michael Robb, the head of research at Common Sense Media, the age-rating forum for parents, calls intentional — knowing what you're looking for and being deliberate about identifying it. The problem is, he says, it's just not reflective of how people actually use the platform. 'You could stay within a playlist that perhaps a parent has curated and have really good, high-quality content,' he tells me. 'But it's not how kids use YouTube, and it's not how it was designed.' When a carefully chosen video finishes, algorithmically powered suggestions on what to watch next can take kids down a rabbit hole of low-quality — even harmful — content. This became clear within about ten minutes of my week-long challenge. After watching a video where a monocle-wearing cartoon professor explained evolution (fuelled by another question that had left me stumped), what followed was a flurry of content that, had it appeared on terrestrial television, would have had the Ofcom complaints line ringing off the hook. In one video, which had more than a billion views, two young brothers showed off a homemade vending machine that spat out boxes of sugary cereal, fizzy drinks and chocolate bars. In another, a child played with what the video title described as 'girl' toys: a pretend sewing machine, a nail salon and a pink play kitchen (all things my girls love, I should add — but so, too, do lots of boys). • Apart from these (and other) examples of content that flouted UK broadcasting guidelines or featured dated stereotypes, most of what we watched might generously be called clickbait: content that promised to teach children to learn new words, say, but that ended up being a thinly disguised toy promotion. Many of the videos we watched had titles packed with educational-sounding buzzwords, but turned out to be garbage with no narrative arc, out-of-sync dubbing and, all too often, an undercurrent of consumerism. A spokesperson for YouTube told The Sunday Times: 'On YouTube Kids we provide parents with robust controls to decide what content to make available, whether approving specific content, choosing from age-appropriate categories, or the ability to block specific videos or channels.' They added that, after reviewing the links we shared, it had found no violations of its community guidelines. My experiment stacks up with what other (more rigorous) studies have found: the platform has a few gems, some quite shocking content and a hell of a lot of rubbish. 'We did some research a few years back and found that, while YouTube says it has a lot of educational, high-quality videos, really only a small percentage of the content could be classed that way,' Robb says. 'A lot of the videos that position themselves as being high quality or educational are very shallow.' By the end of the week I realised it was these types of videos that bothered me the most — content that Neumann described as 'wolves in sheep's clothing'. I feel well equipped to have conversations with my children about media content that very obviously challenges our family values. After watching the video that first triggered this article, I spoke to both my daughters about what we had just seen — how no food is inherently good or bad, about how we exercise to feel, not look, good. But knowing how to deal with the other, more innocuous-seeming content has left me as confused as when one of my kids asks me how birds evolved from dinosaurs. Colin Ward, a Bafta-winning former children's TV producer and member of the Children's Media Foundation, agrees that, like me, most parents are struggling to separate the wheat from the chaff. But he questions whether that type of pressure should be put on us in the first place. 'Parents can't be expected to police this — it's just not possible,' he says. Neither should we put our faith in the platforms to self-regulate, given their main concern is their bottom line. 'It's a very competitive market and they are focused on monetisation, so they're not going to change.' YouTube told The Sunday Times: 'We have strict advertising guidelines on YouTube Kids, and don't allow paid promotional content.' If we can't leave it to individuals or the free market to tackle, that leaves just one actor that might make a difference: governments. Ward knows that might not be popular with some people, but makes a point I think most parents will agree with. 'We all accept that there are some things that are important as a public service, whether it's the armed forces or parks, and that those things need taxes to support them and sometimes regulations,' he says. 'When it comes to our children having access to high-quality content and not just utter drivel, that too is surely a social good?' The present government has already indicated it will take action. Late last year the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, wrote to YouTube urging it to make high-quality programming more visible on its platform. She also suggested that, if this doesn't happen voluntarily, regulation might force its hand. YouTube told The Sunday Times that it 'continues to engage regularly with the culture secretary, as part of our ongoing efforts to support the UK's high quality children's content creators'. But while she and others work on that, what are parents to do? Ban our kids from accessing YouTube? Co-watch at all times? Neither seems realistic, at least not in my household. I have promised we will continue to apply a little more of that all-important intentionality. In other words, relying on our gut when deciding what might be an appropriate video for our kids, rather than ceding control to an algorithm.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
James May: ‘When I'm mistaken for Jeremy Clarkson, I have to go home and examine myself very deeply'
James May. But what would James Definitely Not? All sorts of things. Skydiving. Morris dancing. Living as a monk. Agricultural work. Being a high court judge. Anything that involves dressing up. I'm not too fussy about food. I can't think of anything I wouldn't eat, although I have a strange ambivalence about broccoli. I can't make my mind up about it and it infuriates people. People say: you're not doing it properly. I think: how do you know how I'm doing it? I've heard you can roast it with bits of bacon, garlic and olive oil. In which case, it's not only broccoli any more, is it? Why does the water flow anticlockwise down the plug hole in Australia but clockwise in the UK? Because of the rotation of the Earth. If you go to the equator – and I've done this – you can do an experiment with a bucket of water with a hole in the bottom. If you stand exactly on the equator and drop in a matchstick, it will stay stationary. If you walk north of the equator 100 paces, it starts going around one way. If you walk south, it starts going the other way. It's quite a boring experiment and you have to have absolutely nothing else left to do in your life. If you could have a sandwich named after you, what would you call it? I think sandwiches are crap. I'm making a series on YouTube called Sarnies of the 70s, where we dig up these terrible old fillings like Spam and Branston pickle. It's fascinating to remember what we ate when I was a child. But I describe sandwiches – and I'm afraid I also think this about pizza – as crisis food. Nobody ever says: I can't be bothered to cook tonight. Should we go out for a sandwich? No one wants a sandwich. You are reduced to having a sandwich. Both you and Clarkson own pubs. In the event of a zombie apocalypse, which pub would you rather be stuck at? Oh, mine. It's in Wiltshire. We're heavily armed down here. People queue up at Clarkson's. There's queueing protocol going on, which I don't like. We've had this argument many times. The whole point of the bar in a pub is that it's wide and shallow. It's not a hatch. Why would you queue at it? Good bar people know the order in which to serve. Alan Davies told us in this very column that he gets mistaken for you. Who do you get mistaken for, if not Alan Davies? I have been mistaken for Alan Davies. I've been told I look like King Théoden from Lord of the Rings. Robert Plant is very flattering. Billy Connolly is flattering. Unfortunately, quite a few times when I've been out walking or riding my bike around London, I've been mistaken for Jeremy Clarkson. I have to go home, examine myself very deeply and think: what have I done? The small print on your new tour, Explorers, warns of 'occasional scent, fog and other immersive theatrical elements'. What is your favourite occasional scent? Good question. I like all the obvious nature scents like flowers, freshly mown grass and rain falling on a hot pavement. I like the smell of bicycle shops because I like that smell of rubber and rubber solution. It's not a pervy or fetish thing. I like the smell of freshly pumped petrol, which smells exactly like what it isn't – which is delicious. If you get petrol in your mouth because you're siphoning it from the lawnmower, it tastes absolutely foul. But when it's coming out of the pump into your car, it's got almost a mango juice smell to it. What's been your most cringeworthy run-in with a celebrity? I haven't had any, really. I've never run up to Alan Davies and said: 'I love Top Gear. Can I have your autograph?' Would you rather die at the bottom of the ocean or deep out into space? I've wondered about dying in space. The Apollo 11 lunar module was too fragile to test on Earth, so what if it hadn't worked? They'd have been stuck on the moon for eternity. How do you end it? Do you just sit there and gradually suffocate? Or do you take off your space helmet, take a deep breath, open the door and effectively boil? Dying at the bottom of the ocean feels particularly dark and lonely. I'm going to go for space because the view in the last few seconds would be better. If you could change the size of any animal and keep it as a pet, what would you choose? A miniature elephant. I was going to say a tiger. But then you can just have a domestic cat, can't you? A miniature great white shark in a pond in your garden would be pretty cool. If you had miniature blue whales in an aquarium, they'd come up to the surface and blow off in miniature. I'd like that. Who is your biggest nemesis? Honestly, it's probably Jeremy Clarkson. James May's show Explorers – The Age of Discovery tours Australia and New Zealand from 29 July, and the UK from 20 September
Rhyl Journal
3 hours ago
- Rhyl Journal
Israeli air strikes kill 14 Palestinians in Gaza, including 10 seeking food
Two American aid workers with the Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation were also injured in southern Gaza after unknown assailants threw grenades at them at a food distribution site, the organisation said. The bloodshed comes as US-led ceasefire efforts aimed at halting a nearly 21-month war appear to be gaining momentum. Hamas gave a 'positive' response late on Friday to the latest US proposal for a 60-day truce, but said further talks are needed on implementation. Guarantees are being sought by Hamas that the initial truce would lead to a total end to the war and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. US President Donald Trump has been pushing for an agreement and is set to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House next week to discuss a deal. The Israeli air strikes struck tents in the Muwasi area on the southern end of Gaza's Mediterranean coast, killing seven people, including a Palestinian doctor and his three children, according to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Across #Gaza, attacks on tents and schools hosting displaced people and on people trying to access food continue to be reported, resulting in mass casualties. Between 7 October 2023 and 25 June 2025 in Gaza:🚨at least 57,012 Palestinians have reportedly been killed🚨134,592… — UNRWA (@UNRWA) July 5, 2025 Four others were killed in the town of Bani Suheila in southern Gaza, and three people were killed in three different strikes in Khan Younis. The Israeli army did not provide immediate comment on the strikes. Meanwhile, eight Palestinians were killed near a GHF aid distribution site in the southern city of Rafah, the hospital said. One Palestinian was also killed near another GHF point in Rafah. It was not clear how far away the Palestinians were from the sites. GHF denied the killings happened near their sites. Previously the organisation has said no-one has been shot at its sites, which are guarded by private contractors but can only be accessed by passing Israeli military positions hundreds of yards away. The army had no immediate comment, but has said it fires warning shots as a crowd-control measure and it only aims at people when its troops are threatened. One Palestinian was also killed waiting in crowds for aid trucks in eastern Khan Younis, officials at Nasser Hospital said. Fuel is a lifeline in #Gaza – it runs hospital generators, ambulances, bakeries, and water pumps. Without urgent shipments of fuel into Gaza, a complete shutdown of basic services with will bring even more suffering: a collective punishment. Fuel must be allowed in at scale… — UNRWA (@UNRWA) July 5, 2025 The United Nations and other international organisations bring in their own supplies of aid. It was unclear to which organisation the aid trucks the Palestinians were waiting for belonged to, but the incident did not appear to be connected to GHF operations. Crowds of Palestinians often wait for trucks and unload or loot their contents before they reach their destinations. These trucks must pass through areas under Israeli military control. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the incident. The war in Gaza was set off after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 250 others hostage. Israel responded with an offensive that has killed over 57,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry, displaced nearly all of Gaza's two million people and left many on the edge of famine.
