Joanne Hsu, director of the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers and research associate professor at the Institute for Social Research, specializes in the fields of household finance, consumer sentiment and the impact of economic expectations on the national economy.

Hsu joins the Michigan Minds podcast to discuss her findings on current consumer sentiment, offering insight into persistent high prices and how the labor market is shaping the way Americans manage their budgets today.

How do you see consumers responding to these additional budget constraints?

The number one factor on consumers' minds is the persistence of high prices and tariffs are a major factor in that. Inflation, however, has come down, so Inflation being the rate of change of prices as opposed to just the price level itself, so inflation has slowed down quite a bit since 2022.

But that doesn't mean prices have come down; prices have remained high and that's something that consumers continue to be very frustrated about. The thing is, we all want prices to come down, but historically speaking, it's really hard for prices to come down without something catastrophic happening in the economy, like a major recession. And a major recession will surely affect everyone in a very negative way.

I think sometimes it can be hard for people who watch the macroeconomy, including policymakers, to square the fact that inflation has come down, but people are still so unhappy about how prices are eroding away at their living standards.

Michigan Minds is produced by Greta Guest and hosted by Juan Ochoa. Jeremy Marble is the audio engineer and Hans Anderson provides social media animations. Listen to all episodes of the podcast.

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ANN ARBOR —News, advice and research about what we eat - and drink - and how it influences our health is inescapable.

What we hear less about is exactly what's taking place inside the body when nutrition is considered bad or toxic, say ultraprocessed foods like our favorite packaged cookies, chips or frozen pizza, or good and healthy, those whole, methyl-donor-rich leafy veggies, beefs and eggs.

If you want a deeper understanding, ask Dana Dolinoy. The answers are in epigenetics, her specialty.

As a nutritional and environmental scientist and professor at the School of Public Health, she studies the changes that take place in response to nutrients. Her work digs deep down to the genes and DNA, at the epigenome, where the controls that turn genes on and off are located.

Dolinoy is also director of the NIH-supported Michigan Life Stage Environmental Exposures and Disease Center and Michigan Medicine's Epigenomics Core, teams that advance research and understanding of the environmental causes of chronic diseases and conditions. She is also on the team that launched MI-CARES, the Michigan Cancer and Research on the Environment Study, which is recruiting 100,000 Michigan residents to find causes of and solutions to disease. More on the study.

As Dolinoy discusses in this episode of Michigan Minds, epigenetics, "is actually a relatively new science. The term was first coined in the 1950s as a way to talk about the intersections of our genes in the environment."

Michigan Minds is produced by Greta Guest and hosted by Michigan News staff. Jeremy Marble is the audio engineer and Hans Anderson provides social media animations. Listen to all episodes of the podcast.

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Shelie Miller, a professor in the University of Michigan's School for Environment and Sustainability and co-director of the Center for Sustainable Systems, spends a lot of her time in the weeds detailing the environmental impacts of our everyday choices.

But people wanting to live more sustainably can make the most meaningful gains by focusing on three big-picture categories, she says: food, transportation and energy usage. That's no different during the holiday season—except for that it's a time with a unique emphasis on feasts, travel and spending time with friends and family in cozy quarters.

Miller joins the Michigan Minds podcast to talk about taking on these big themes during the holidays without giving up our traditions or stressing over "green herrings" that aren't as sustainable as you might think.

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