(upbeat music) The power of mentorship, networking, and more through the Sisterly Love Collective.

A viral video becomes a self-affirming children's picture book.

Calculating the costs and taking out the guesswork to help parents when it comes to baby gear.

Plus, future doctors learn lessons on connecting with community.

Welcome to You Oughta Know.

Parenting can present a host of challenges, but there's always people thinking about ways to help.

We start with a program where future doctors teach students about science and medicine in a fun and approachable way.

We're so happy to be back with you.

We'll be learning about the nervous system today.

I learned how the nervous system works and how your reflexes help you not get severely hurt.

It's good because so I won't have to be scared of doctors like taking shots because I got to know the doctors.

I'm a second year medical student at Sydney Kimball Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University and I'm one of the co-presidents of the executive board of Future Doctors Teach.

At Future Doctors Teach it's all about what questions do you have about science and the natural world and everything around you that we can answer.

We oversaw the implementation of lessons for 130 medical students across eight different schools here in Philadelphia.

When we go into the classroom it's usually there's some sort of set lesson for the day.

So the brain is like the boss that gives the instructions to the rest of your body and the spinal cord is like the main highway for all those messages that come in and out.

It could be the water cycle, how plants grow, how does the heart work, what does the brain do in the body and all things like that.

What's inside the head that you've got to protect?

Your brain, right?

We try to do like a fun activity if we can, some sort of interactive you know session where the kids can really like visualize what's happening and really see the topic come to life.

Something that we ordered for all of our teaching teams are these foldascopes here.

It'd be a really cool way for students to be able to look under a microscope, look at bacteria or some other things and we're hoping our medical students can make these some really engaging lessons.

At the end of each lesson, we pass out sticky notes to all the kids, and the kids write down any question they have for us, whether it was something that we talked about that day, something that they saw over the weekend that they were super curious about, what do you want to know and why, and how can we help you learn that.

And we make sure that at the beginning of the next lesson, the next week when we come in, pick a few of those questions and we answer them.

We're getting these complex medical school level lectures on the body of the heart, the brain, and we're saying, okay, how can we take all the most important aspects of that and make it so that a third grader, a fourth grader, a fifth grader can understand it?

We're really helping these kids get a really positive experience with the healthcare system, not in a doctor's office.

We really want those teams to be dedicated to that classroom so they can, you know, know all the kids names, build those relationships.

And so the students can feel comfortable asking them all these crazy questions that they have.

It goes around your axon to make the message jump.

The Future Doctors Teach program is a really worthwhile program for the students at this school.

You saw that, right?

You saw that?

They're really excited about it.

The participation you can see, it's really heightened.

The kids are interacting with each other, with the doctors, and with the learning in a really meaningful way.

Action song, action song, action song.

You guys are getting it.

Bringing the science lessons to life with future doctors is exciting for the kids and for us as educators to see.

123.

Love that story.

Well, from third and fourth graders to babies now recognized as one of Time magazine's best inventions of 2025.

Baby gear group is rethinking the way parents get what they need for their little ones.

And a mom right here in Philadelphia started it all.

Baby gear group is essentially a baby gear rental library.

So we have items like strollers bassinets high chairs toys and you can get them when you need them and swap them out for other things when you're ready to move on.

Founder and CEO Bo Zhao created the thing all parents wished existed.

How does it work?

So someone can use baby gear group in two ways.

They can either become a member or they can also rent a la carte or even just to try before you buy.

The idea for baby gear group came from my own experience becoming a first-time mom.

I was reading about baby gear and it came to the point where I just found myself wishing I could try out the gear, see if it worked in my home, does it fit in my car, does my baby like it because sometimes the babies don't like it, they're opinionated.

And if it worked great I could keep using it and if not I could swap it out for a different model or a different iteration and then when I was done it would just magically disappear and I wouldn't have to spend more time and energy trying to sell it or even give it away.

And when I thought about that wish, you know, what I wished for, I was like, you know, it sounds like a lot like a library style, you know, relationship.

It was, well maybe I could make that thing.

So I did.

So my overall mission with Baby Gear Group is to help families gear up while prioritizing sustainability and community.

And that community piece is very important to Beau, which is why Baby Gear Group hosts lots of events like this new mom meetup to bring parents together.

I've used it for travel mainly and just for trying out some things whenever we get into a new stage.

Mom Hannah Newman first found out about Baby Gear Group when her son was six months old.

What I love is we often have more things than people expect.

So we might have something that people don't even know that they need.

I started off really as a mom-bassador.

So I would just go to events and meet other moms and explain why Baby Gear Group worked well for our family.

One of my main projects with Baby Gear Group has been our clothing swaps.

Really nice to give back to the community in that way.

In modern times, we are so much more isolated than we used to be.

People talk about the lack of village or not being close to family.

And so we need that friendship and that support from other people who are in our shoes.

In my vision for the future, what I would love is when a family is expecting, that their first instinct is to say, "Oh, let me go check out my local Baby Gear library," as opposed to jumping to creating a registry.

And so I just created what I wish had existed for me.

And it's been wonderful to see it connect with so many other families as well.

- And Baby Gear Group is growing with branches in 10 cities, including three in Pennsylvania.

Well, for Women's History Month, we look at an organization born out of the pandemic that's giving women in the food business a place to turn to for support.

Let's check out the Sisterly Love Collective.

When Sisterly Love first started in 2020, we were just on the phone and I didn't even know what Zoom was.

When we had those calls, I was like, oh, like all these cool women are part of it, right?

Like I want to be part of it too.

Then somebody had this revelation to have a market in rotating locations and that's kind of how Sisterly Love Markets formed and I believe you came along as a result of the market.

Yeah, so I wasn't from this world.

I came from success outside of the food and beverage industry.

However, when I came here, what I saw in you guys was possibility.

Possibility to do something different, to do something more.

And that when you come together, when you share, you get to grow, you get to learn, you get to be challenged to try a new opportunity.

(upbeat music) - We started as a passion project by accident in 2018 after gifting guests of our wedding jarred pickles.

I was introduced to Sisterly Love Farmers Markets.

It was a group of makers and certainly restaurants because many of them were closed at the time and started to produce packaged goods to sell to help retain and grow some revenue when restaurants weren't open and we were able to learn from some of the best businesses and chefs how to serve our customers how to give back it certainly shaped the way that we wanted to create a foundation for our business We are truly like for women by women, for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs.

There's no elitism here.

We've got a James Beard award winner.

Who can't use Zoom and Instagram.

And we all have to help each other.

When I connect with people in Sisterly Love, it's a reminder that I have permission to go for it.

I have permission to change and pivot.

I have permission to do new things.

What is perfect about Sisterly Love is there's a lot of experience and a lot of advice and it is freely given if you just ask.

The resources are there.

What I struggle with is I am not trained in the kitchen at all and I was working with caramel.

If you cook it too long, too hot, it's done.

So that was a challenge for me.

I have a friend who is a member and she told me about it and it was such a welcoming group.

I saw the benefit of being a member so I joined.

I was a young mom, I had a three-year-old and a baby.

It was really hard for me to take on a full business.

I just was doing things at a slower pace, at a pace that I could actually manage as a mom.

I met a lot of women who were either in the same track as me, were a few steps ahead of me, and I can just reach out and engage with them.

We want to create a community through mentorship, collaboration, education, sharing, but also making Philadelphia the best place for women to do business.

Oh yeah.

Having the opportunity to connect with people who have been successful in this industry is really meaningful to our business, which is almost fully women-led.

Already the food and beverage scene in Philadelphia is small and tight-knit, but this gives an even greater connection to people who are female and running their own business or who are employing female leadership teams to be able to forge those connections with people that know what they're going through.

The events that I've participated in recently have been part of the Cookbooks and Convos series where the collective brings in authors that are notable, new.

That was just another fun, creative event that again highlights the women that are doing wonderful things in the city, highlights the author, and then just brings a wonderful community of people together.

We've grown to more than 12,000 Instagram followers and people all over the country have reached out to the leadership team to see how they can replicate this model in their own city.

So five years, once we put our minds to it, I think we knew this was going to keep going.

When you look at Sisterly Love Collective, it doesn't look like one type of business, one type of woman, and that's what makes us so powerful.

Our diversity of ideas, of cultures, of stories, of foods, of perspectives.

We don't look like everybody else.

We don't sound like everybody else.

And we thankfully don't act like everybody else.

There's so many people who can be uplifted by what we do.

And I think Philadelphia is a role model for other cities and other women across the country.

10 years, here we come.

[LAUGHTER] [MUSIC PLAYING] When Delaware author Catherine Canavan is on the trail of a good story, she leaves no stone unturned.

Her first book, Lincoln's Final Hours, reveals secrets she learned during dozens of visits to the Ford Theater, where the 16th president was assassinated.

Her second tell all true crime Philadelphia required intense research and verification about some of the city of brotherly loves shocking crimes from colonial times to the 1950s.

But her latest book Killer in the House is personal.

It's a story that's haunted her for half a century.

Kathy, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me, Cheryl.

We just heard about your previous books, but your latest, Killer in the House, has a personal connection.

So tell me about your connection to this book.

This is a book I've been wanting to write for 47 years, Cheryl.

I was a young reporter for Suburban Daily when these horrific murders occurred in 1976.

And there were young survivors whose lives were totally upended.

There were police officers who worked so hard in order to solve this in 10 days.

And I always wondered what happened to them.

And going back to Fleetwood Avenue was like climbing aboard a time machine.

So this was 1976.

Police were able to solve who killed this entire family, essentially.

not have the technological advances that police have now at their fingertips.

How were they able to solve this crime?

A lot of it was just spending time and following every single tip, hundreds of them.

There's a cliche about police using shoe leather to solve cases.

They literally did.

One of the detectives overturned dozens of work boots at the local Sears store trying to find one that matched the one they had, a bloody footprint in the basement.

You said that they had been working around the clock, right?

They had a lot of red herrings and many of them were more than 100 interviews.

Wow.

When you were reporting on the story, what were the neighbors like?

Like describe what the feelings were like in that neighborhood.

The subtitle of the book is 10 Days of Terror in a Pennsylvania Suburb and it was real terror.

People were answering their doors with shotguns and dogs and in one case with an axe.

Wow.

People were so frightened that detectives had to bring uniformed patrolmen along with them to get residents to just open their doors.

And I have to assume that Trivos was probably a pretty quiet town up until this incident.

Yeah, Trivos was an area where everybody knew everybody.

And in fact, the kids would have giant sleepovers in an empty lot in the summertime.

It was so safe.

Yeah, that really puts paints a picture for us.

What kind of research went into writing the book and how long did you spend researching?

I spent several years researching before I spoke to anyone.

I went and tried to find records to see if there might be something that hadn't come to light in 1976.

And there was a lot.

And I went through school records, prison records, the killer's own confession, which was very detailed.

The IQ tests, newspaper databases, the original police notes from the first weekend.

And were people willing to speak to you about this and what their memories were?

They were all very willing to speak to me.

The police officers were wonderful putting me in touch with people.

What I realized was we all shared one very unusual experience 50 years ago that sort of it was a common thread among all of us, the neighbors, the police, the defense attorney.

Kathy, thank you so much for sharing your story with us.

Killer in the House is in stores now.

Well, keeping the spotlight on local authors, we turn now to the actress and poet whose viral video is now a children's book.

Oh my gosh, this is so beautiful.

Thank you Jalene Clark Owens.

Can't wait to read it.

Writing the original poem, I wanted to capture that beautiful feeling of being a black girl and having braids.

This work that I'm doing now is speaking to that little girl.

There was a point in my life where I was doing dance, and our recital was down at Lincoln Center, which was a big deal.

I remember showing up and our uniforms were green and gold.

When I look back now at that picture, I was beautiful.

But all the other girls had Shirley Temple curls.

I was a beautiful little black chocolate girl with a little afro in this golden green, and I didn't feel beautiful.

I wish I had more representation around me.

My hair journey begins with my mom.

I rocked my mom's cornrows with barrettes in my hair for a long time.

And then eventually I remember being able to get extensions in my hair.

We went to Brooklyn and we got the extensions and that was the beginning of A Black Girl and Her Braids.

A black girl in her braids, a black girl in her braids.

Can't tell her nothing, please don't touch it, you know she looks amazing.

That time going to Brooklyn to get my hair braided, it was an instant confidence booster.

I just remember this feeling like, I feel so nice, I feel beautiful, and I was able to shake my hair.

Our braids come from our African culture, our African history.

And I'm like, yeah, this is not just a style.

There is meaning, there is power in this style.

And I'm so proud to be able to wear my braids.

This spread means a lot to me because I feel like it encompasses the past, the present, and the future.

This page is showing our little girl looking at someone who is representative of an ancestor of the African culture and you see this elaborate hairstyle here.

This is not just a hairstyle.

There is history behind this hairstyle.

This hairstyle is embedded in our roots both metaphorically and literally and I love this.

I love it.

♪ A black girl in her breeds ♪ Seeing the original poem online and seeing how many black women were uploading videos dancing to my poem and feeling so free, shaking their braids and their beads and black girl joy surrounding them.

I said, yeah, this is what I need to capture in the book.

This feeling.

- The attitude.

- Right, that I already changed.

- I already changed it.

- My hope for little black girls when they read this book is that they know that they are beautiful, that their hair is unique and special.

If I could talk to my younger self, the one that was at the dance recital, feeling out of place, feeling not as beautiful because I had my little short afro, I would tell that little girl, this is how your hair naturally grows.

And there is nothing more beautiful than that.

- By the way, you may recognize Jaylene.

She placed Rosie on Albie's elevator, produced right here at WHYY Studios.

With the 250th anniversary of America approaching, the subject of preserving some of our nation's most precious artifacts is on the minds of many.

Understanding our cultural heritage helps us relate to each other in the present.

It's gratifying to know that we have had any small hand in helping an organization care for its collections.

It's wonderful when we work on beautiful works of art, but when you've actually restored somebody's family history, you just know you've really made a difference.

The Bicentennial, there was a moment of national recognition that there needed to be a more concerted effort to preserve our nation's history.

And so for nearly 50 years we've been serving museums, libraries, archives that didn't have their own conservation expertise in-house.

We also work with individual collectors, corporate collections.

We have about 10,000 square feet dedicated as a conservation lab.

Experts who are trained to treat archival documents, art on paper, rare books, old photographs, fine art.

And then we also provide what we call housing and framing, which is any kind of protective enclosure for either storage or exhibition.

We have a department that will do digitization.

And then we also have our preservation services team who consult with clients on their collections policies, their storage environment, emergency plans, whether in an institutional setting or in their home.

Currently we have the American Philosophical Society's Popple Map which we had on display during our open house.

We've done the conservation and we're doing the housing and framing for it as well.

We're actually moving through a collection of Andy Warhol's, doing the treatment and the housing and framing.

It's a very popular item with artists, with institutions, and with private clients.

So at any given time, we definitely have Andy Warhol's here.

We're working on a collection by Francis Schell, who we have his battle drawings from the Civil War.

We have the Black Book of Hours, which belongs to the Hispanic Society of America in New York City.

The staff here are what makes CCHA exceptional, and that's really what makes us unique.

Preservation services are our team who are working with the practitioners to teach them how to care for their collections, because if we have something that's conserved here and folks don't quite know the best way to care for the materials, then it's not going to survive.

It's not just museums and libraries and historic sites.

We also work with religious organizations, community centers.

Everyone has what could be considered collections, whether it's history of our family or our neighborhood, recognizing that that is really important to protect and save.

It's a really great feeling to know that important artifacts are being preserved for future generations.

I love that we can bring scientific knowledge and collaboration and problem solving to address some very complex challenges.

That's the benefit of having a brain trust at a place like a regional Thank you so much for joining us.

Have a good night.

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