Terry Gross

Actor Michael K. Williams has played powerful intimidating characters in The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, and in the new show The Night of, but says he's not at all like them.

Eric Adams joined the police department intent on reforming it. "If I was not a voice for change it would bother me," he says. He was on the force for 22 years. Now he is Brooklyn's borough president.

Mat Johnson is a biracial novelist who has been thinking about what the craft of storytelling can offer us as we try to make sense of the era we're in of officer involved and officer-targeted killings.