Producer Bim Adewunmi travels to the site in Minneapolis where George Floyd was murdered by a police officer. It’s become a huge, make-shift memorial, big enough to absorb the grief of all-comers who wish to pay homage.
When Executive Editor Emanuele Berry’s friend pitched her a show about Black Lives Matter activists, she was not sure. He made it anyway and it’s really good. Today we are featuring some of Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr.’s reporting from the podcast Resistance. He’s captured a story about Black Lives Matter that has always been there but nobody ever tells. (4 minutes)You can hear Resistance from Gimlet, a Spotify company.
When Saidu’s friend Marcus-David Peters was killed by police, he wanted to figure out what to do with the weight of that loss. He began following three men who began protesting after the murder of George Floyd. They seemed to know what to do when faced with police violence. Saidu tells the story of their lives after they began protesting with the Warriors in the Garden.
Reporter Emmanuel Felton called up several Black Capitol Police officers in the days after the attack on the Capitol on January 6th to find out what it was like for them to face off with this mostly white mob. (13 minutes)You can find more of Emmanuel's reporting on race and inequality at BuzzFeed. The video of Eugene Goodman was filmed by Igor Bobic of HuffPost.
In just one year, everything in one ordinary public middle school changed. It went from an incoming class of thirty sixth graders—most of them Black, Latino, and Middle Eastern—to a class of 103 sixth graders.
Emanuele Berry and Ira Glass watch a Soviet film from 1936. A bizarre cameo of an African American baby in an all-white crowd makes Emanuele wonder about what it’s like to be Black in a country with so few Black people.
Producer Neil Drumming has steadfastly avoided one bar in his neighborhood because of the controversy that surrounds it—until recently, when he noticed that lots of people he didn’t expect to go there were becoming regulars.
Producer Neil Drumming talks with the rapper Breeze Brewin about a toy car they both loved playing with as kids: The General Lee from the hit TV show The Dukes of Hazzard. Breeze went on to record a song called “Generally” about The General Lee with his group the Juggaknots.
The man who organized the rally in Charlottesville is named Jason Kessler. He says he’s not to blame for the violence that happened there, including the death of a counter protester.
Host Ira Glass talks to Mariya Karimjee about a college application essay question. Essay B asksstudents to imagine a person they might meet in college—someone from a very differentbackground.
Back in the late 1960s, a wealthy tobacco heiress saw that integration was happening all around the country—except at prep schools in the South. So she set out to find the best black students in neighborhood public schools—in hopes of teaching the white prep-school students to be less bigoted. Mosi Secret tells the story of how the first two black students to integrate Virginia Episcopal School succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations.
Producer Neil Drumming looks into two videos he found on YouTube—one that takes place in Atlantic City, another in Brooklyn—that deal with the trouble kids face walking home from school.
Zora Bikangaga grew up in a mostly white California suburb, the son of Ugandan immigrants. But when he went to college, someone thought he himself was Ugandan.
Obesity in America affects a higher percentage of black people than white people. Roxane Gay talks about being black and being fat with host Ira Glass.
Host Ira Glass talks with Adam Mansbach about what happened when he went looking for an apartment and was mistaken for someone else. Adam is the author of the book Go The F*** To Sleep.
The story of an entire town that gets a status update. Producer Chana Joffe-Walt talked to Paul Kiel of Pro Publica, the man who gave the town its status update.