'Framing Britney Spears,' 'Detransition, Baby,' Full Bio: Frederick Douglass, 'A Shot in the Moonlight'

Sophie Gilbert, staff writer for The Atlantic, joins us for the next installment of our “Watch Party” series to discuss the new documentary, “Framing Britney Spears.” Her recent piece about the film is titled, “Why Were We So Cruel to Britney Spears?”

Samantha Stark, director and producer for the documentary television series, “The New York Times Presents,” which airs on FX and Hulu, joins us to discuss the making of “Framing Britney Spears.”

A new novel tells the story of a New York woman named Reese who is thrown into crisis when her girlfriend, Amy, decides to detransition, and then gets another woman pregnant. Author Torrey Peters joins us to discuss her acclaimed debut, Detransition, Baby.

We launch the February installment of our Full Bio series with historian David W. Blight who joins us to discuss his 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Blight used new information drawn from private collections to explore the work and life of Douglass. We start with a look at Douglass’s early life as an enslaved person, how he learned to read, and how he escaped to the North from Baltimore in 1838.

A new book tells the true story of a formerly enslaved man named George Dinning, who became the first Black man in the U.S. to win damages after a wrongful murder conviction by teaming up with a lawyer who had formerly fought for the Confederate Army. Pulitzer Prize finalist and journalist Ben Montgomery joins us to discuss his book, A Shot in the Moonlight: How a Freed Slave and a Confederate Soldier Fought for Justice in the Jim Crow South.