The History of Queer Hip-Hop in New York, 45 Years of the NASA Voyager Mission, Newark Black Film Festival, Full Bio, 'Marcel the Shell with Shoes On'

A new book explores experimental collaborations in hip hop cultural production in New York City from the 1970s through the early twenty-first century. St. John’s University associate professor Shanté Paradigm Smalls joins us to discuss their research and book Hip Hop Heresies: Queer Aesthetics in New York City.

This year, 45 years since the Voyager probes escaped Earth's gravity, carrying scientific equipment and some cultural artifacts of humankind, NASA engineers began to power down some of the spacecrafts' systems in order to extend the missions life, possibly for another 10 years. Among things made by human hands, these spacecraft are farther from home than anything else. Dr. Candice Hansen-Koharcheck, a longtime Voyager scientist, and chair of NASA's Outer Planets Assessment Group joins to celebrate the long life of this mission, and tell us what insights the probe could gather as it continues beyond the gravitational reach of our sun.

 According to the Newark Museum of Art, the Newark Black Film Festival is the oldest Black film festival in the country, since it was first organized in 1974. The festival allows young Black filmmakers, like a young Spike Lee once upon a time, to screen their work and speak with viewers about their creative process in panel discussions. The 2022 Newark Black Film Festival runs from July 12 to July 17 at the Newark Museum of Art, and will screen eight films. Darryl Walker, the director of community engagement for the Museum, joins us to preview the festival and speak about the filmmakers being featured this year.

For the latest installment of our ongoing Full Bio series, we speak with journalist Joshua Prager, author of the biography about the story of Roe v. Wade, called The Family Roe: An American Story. On day one, we discuss the early life of the woman who became Jane Roe in the Supreme Court case, Norma McCorvey. Prager speaks about how the culture of the rural American South in the early 20th century and McCorvey's family informed how she carried herself.

“Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” is a quirky, charming new film based on a series of YouTube shorts about a talking shell in search of his long-lost family. We speak to its director, Dean Fleischer Camp, and Jenny Slate, who is the voice of Marcel.