Kousha Navidar

Plus, follow the season of a girl’s varsity volleyball team, and find one Brooklyn school building’s effort to bridge its stark racial divide. From WNYC’s new miniseries, Keeping Score.

After publishing 34 books, Alice Walker talks through her latest release, a collection of personal journals spanning four decades.

An intergenerational meditation on Ntozake Shange’s iconic Broadway play, "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf."

His leaked opinion tells us more about a powerful minority’s view of the U.S. than it does about the Constitution or the history of abortion.

Michigan State Sen. Mallory McMorrow and The Nation Magazine’s John Nichols explain how the Democrats can fight – and win – the culture wars. 

Plus, a follow up to our episode on names and identities: One trans woman’s story of finding her name, and fighting to have it respected.

We never resolved the core political debates that emerged from the Civil War. And they remain the fundamental  debates of this year’s elections. 

Asian American New Yorkers explain how Covid-era violence changed their lives, and what’s at stake for everybody when we fear each other. Then, rediscovering community through food.

A slap at the Oscars tarnished Will Smith’s legacy. What about him did Hollywood treasure? Is this institution just a screen for projecting our own social anxieties and cultural debate?

Plus, a National Geographic explorer’s story of diving for sunken slave ships.

What’s in a name? A lot. A listener's voicemail inspired us to explore the sometimes complicated relationship between our names and our racial and ethnic identities.

The social fabric is torn. People nationwide are scared, some going so far as to arm themselves. What can we learn from our history as we react to this fear? 

Presidencies are rarely transformational, and neither Biden nor Trump have lived up to their supporters’ dreams. So what does it take to really change our politics?

Democracy won’t work if we can’t talk to each other. So how do we do have conversations across cultural and political divides?

The U.S. Census named “some other race” as the second-largest racial group in the U.S. Mona Chalabi talks us through the data, and the stakes, of that statistic.

Afrofuturism is an old idea that’s reaching new people. We travel from Seneca Village to Wakanda, from Sun Ra to Lil Nas X as we learn this cosmic vision of Black freedom.

The former Talking Heads frontman explores the challenges – and beauties – of human connection while breaking down his hit Broadway show, American Utopia. 

Biden vowed to finally put a Black woman to the Supreme Court. President and CEO of the National Women's Law Center Fatima Goss Graves, Court scholar Elie Mystal, and listeners react.

New science finds we’ve got less than a decade to avoid catastrophe. Activist and author Bill McKibben says the only solutions that can beat that deadline are collective.

Mona Charen discusses the true meaning of conservative and the radical shift in the GOP. Then, a listener mailbag begs us to explore how "normal people" became part of the Jan 6. attack.