Impeachment: Catharsis and Impunity
The Senate’s trial and acquittal of Donald Trump left many with mixed emotions. But did it move us any closer to a reckoning with the worst of America’s political culture? Pulitzer Prize-winning hist...
15 Feb 202149min
The ‘Beautiful Experiments’ Left Out of Black History
Cultural historian Saidiya Hartman introduces Kai to the young women whose radical lives were obscured by respectability politics, in the second installment of our Future of Black History series. The...
8 Feb 202149min
The Origin Story of Black History Month
We’ve got complicated relationships with this annual celebration -- from joy to frustration. So to launch our Future of Black History series, we ask how it began and what it can be. Producer Veralyn W...
1 Feb 202148min
New Hopes, Old Fears
Kai checks in with poet Jericho Brown, historian Kidada Williams, and listeners as we all try to transition out of the Trump presidency. Jericho Brown, recipient of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for poetry...
25 Jan 202149min
Life After Fascism: A Brief History
Historian Timothy Snyder offers lessons on what could happen if those who enabled the attack on our democracy don’t face consequences. President Biden was just inaugurated and many Americans are eage...
21 Jan 202115min
How Martin Luther King, Jr., Changed American Christianity
And what MLK’s uniquely Black theology can teach us about the relationship between faith and politics in 2021. Rev. Dr. Yolanda Pierce, dean of the Howard University School of Divinity and author of t...
18 Jan 202150min
The American Story, in a Single Day
January 6, 2021, offered a hyper-condensed version of our country’s entire political history--with all of its complexity, inspiration, and terror. In a special national radio broadcast of our show, we...
11 Jan 202150min
The (Un)Making of a ‘Model Minority’
An odd racial pecking order puts Indian Americans in a curious place -- outside of whiteness, but distinct from other people of color. How’d that come to be? And is it changing? We explore these quest...
4 Jan 202151min
