Filmmaker Michael Kirk joins us to discuss the decisions made since that day that have altered the course of American and world history, from the war in Afghanistan to the January 6th insurrection.
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A 1968 Report Could’ve Brought Us Closer to Racial Justice, But We Ignored It
Columbia University journalism professor Jelani Cobb has written a new introduction for the Kerner Commission Report, and he joins us to discuss why the document is a landmark of American history and remains salient today.
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Latino Identity Contains Multitudes
Héctor Tobar, a professor of journalism and Chicano/Latino studies at the University of California, Irvine, joins us to discuss his 9,000-mile road trip across America to understand Latino communities and their widely-varying beliefs.
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Segregation In Higher Ed Isn’t A Thing Of The Past
Adam Harris, a staff writer at The Atlantic, joins us to discuss why Black students have always been an afterthought in higher education, the legacy that has created and the road toward reckoning with this discrimination.
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Our 2,000-Year Obsession With Makeup
Author Rae Nudson joins host us to discuss the power of the powders and creams with which we adorn our skin, and how they’ve created the powerful beauty standards currently being challenged.
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How We Politicize The Past
Princeton University historian Matthew Karp joins us to discuss how both sides of the political spectrum have used history lessons for wildly divergent purposes, and what that means for the truth.
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Quarantines Aren’t Going Anywhere
Journalist Nicola Twilley joins us to talk about how and why quarantines have been used throughout history – and about how the technique has been updated to fight modern threats.
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How The U.S. Broke Central America
Aviva Chomsky, professor of history and the coordinator of Latin American Studies at Salem State University, joins us to talk about hundreds of years of colonization and displacement, and why stabilizing the region will take more than just economic aid.
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The Vice President Who Set The Stage For Civil War
Baylor University historian Robert Elder joins us to talk about Vice President John C. Calhoun, a man who argued that slavery was a “positive good” and set the stage for the South to secede from the Union.
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For Democracy To Work, We Have To Participate
James Fishkin is a political scientist and director of the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford, and he joins us to explain the process of deliberative democracy – and demonstrate successes it’s already produced around the world.
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An Illusionist Reveals His Secrets
Derek DelGaudio joins us to talk about his autobiography, a deep dive into how illusion and identity shaped his life.
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Rights Shouldn’t Be A Zero-Sum Game
Columbia Law professor Jamal Greene joins us to talk about why courts have an outsized role in determining what Americans fight for and against, a method he says is out of line with what the framers of the Constitution envisioned.
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