Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, everyone. I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us. This is our final episode of 2025, and it has been a, let's use the word, wild year. So we thought it would be nice to hear from you, our wonderful listeners, all about it.
We're going to dig into the mailbag a bit and hear from some of the guests who helped us make sense of the news this year. Our producer, Courtney Bergseeker, is here to help us out. Hey, Courtney. Hey, Kimberly. Should we get into it? Yeah, let's get into it. Before we hear some of our listeners' thoughts on the year, we heard from a lot of people about last week's series on the care economy.
Several folks shared their experience as a caregiver with us.
Chapter 2: What are listeners' thoughts on the economy in 2025?
So let's hear one of those messages that we got from Sherry in Washington. So I was a caregiver for my father who had dementia while working full-time and raising a family. And while I was caregiving, I was 100% in fight mode. And then when I lost my dad, the physical and mental toll that showed up was frankly profound.
And I found myself in a space where there was so much information intended to help you that it actually turned out to be no information. And I ended up feeling very alone. So I found a woman that had had a similar experience, and we decided to write a book about our journey from the perspective of people who actually did the work of caregiving.
It's called With Love, A Practical Guide to Caregiving for Aging Parents to the End of Life. Thank you so much to everybody who shared their caregiving stories with us throughout this series. I've definitely heard from a lot of folks in my own life as well as online about it. And I hope that if folks take anything away from that is that you're not alone in the experience. And even if you haven't.
had to deal with these issues yourself at this point, or in some cases had the privilege of being able to do this yourself, some version of this is going to end up affecting all of our lives.
So especially around the holidays, I hope people will take the opportunity to start having these conversations with loved ones about how they want to be cared for, how you want to be cared for, and how you as, you know, whatever family looks like to you are going to manage these important parts of your life. Yeah.
Thank you so much again to everybody who who sent us a message or a voicemail about this. We really appreciate it. OK, now we're going to get into what everyone had to say about 2025. Kimberly, I bet you can guess the number one word that came up in our mailbag this year. Anime. Nope. No, of course not. The tariff sort of palooza. With the tariff rush.
And the tariff situation that's going on right now. I wanted to put a little bit of a perhaps different spin on some of the tariff concerns. Of course, tariffs. I mean, that makes perfect sense, right, Courtney? Yes, it does make perfect sense. So that was Daniel in Seattle, Michelle in Arizona, Vinay in Arizona, and Tamara in Colorado.
2025 was the year of the tariff, and David in Pennsylvania agreed. Here's what he had to say about it. I'm also reminded of, in response to tariffs, you and Kai's comments about them back in the spring of this year. where you basically laid out four different competing reasons for tariffs and how they all cancel each other out effectively.
And I keep thinking that when I hear various and sundry like bringing industrial jobs back. No, wait, that's not working. It's just constant rotating through what they're accomplishing with them, but realizing it's not actually that much. Thank you for keeping us smart this year. Here's to the next year. The other wild thing to me about the tariff arc over the last year has been...
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Chapter 3: How did tariffs dominate the economic conversation in 2025?
Oh, congratulations, Jodi. Good for you. And I love that Jodi's celebrating her current connections. And especially this time of year, I think a lot of us are thinking a lot about that. It's so important to nurture your relationships with the people around you. And, you know, if you have time this holiday season, reach out to somebody you haven't talked to in a while. Just say hi.
Send them some love. You never know where people are, and that may be the thing that just makes their day. It's a good reminder. All right, Kimberly, any wins that you want to celebrate for the end of the year or maybe something you're looking forward to? Well, I'm super excited that my sister and her kids are coming down to D.C. to join me for the holidays.
And my Uncle David and some of my cousins, we're all going to get together. That's going to be fun. So I feel like my getting logistics together for that is going to be my holiday win in the new year because I'm a policy nerd. I'm actually looking forward to covering the midterm elections. I think it's going to be a really fascinating cycle.
And I think one thing I'd really like to celebrate is even though it has been a very challenging year for so many people from a human rights perspective, from a policy and politics perspective, for all sorts of reasons, I have been really heartened to see –
how many people have stepped up to care for folks in their communities and how many people have chosen to make it their business to make sure that we live in the kind of country they want to live in. And yeah, lots of people are choosing to tap out and not pay attention to the news and maybe even leave the country or do whatever they need to do to take care of themselves.
But I've seen so many people choosing to stand up for what they believe in and fight for the causes that they think are important. And that really kind of lifts my spirits. What about you? Well, that's a good one. I am looking forward to spending time with my family over the holidays. And I signed up for figure skating lessons in the What? That's amazing. So I'm going to try something new.
You have to talk to Elizabeth Troval. She's our resident figure skating expert at Marketplace. OK, I will. And I will update you on how things go. Yes. And when you come down to D.C., we will skate. We can go ice skating together. I have my own skates. I am not a figure skater, but I can skate without falling down. It sounds like a plan. All right. That is it for today.
Courtney, thank you so much. Thanks, Kimberly. And that is it for 2025. We're going to be back with new episodes on January the 6th. In the meantime, we're going to be in your feeds sharing some of our favorite episodes of the year and some great work from other Marketplace shows, plus a bonus episode about anime, of course, that you don't want to miss.
Keep sending us your comments and questions. We're at makemesmartatmarketplace.org or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-BE-SMART. Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Burke Seeker. Today's program was engineered by John Foche. Ben Talladay and Daniel Ramirez composed our theme music. Our interim supervisory senior producer is Stephanie Seek. Nancy Fargali is executive producer of Marketplace Shows.
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