Society & Culture

Smith's new show is about her great-great-grandfather, a free Black man who reburied the Union dead at Gettysburg and prepared the ground for Lincoln's most famous speech.

Masculinism is a belief that feminism emasculates men, and men should be in control while women stay at home raising children. The Atlantic writer Helen Lewis says the movement is becoming mainstream.

Our guest today is actor and transgender activist Laverne Cox.

In Savings and Trust, historian Justene Hill Edwards tells the story of the Freedman's Bank, which was created for formerly enslaved people following the Civil War. Originally broadcast Nov. 7, 2024.

Ali Siddiq's new special is called "My Father."

Eddie Glaude Jr., author of "America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows The Nation's Anniversaries."

Last spring, when the news broke that the newly elected pope had Creole roots in New Orleans and that his own grandparents had quietly become a white family in Chicago, journalist SUSAN SAULNY recognized the story immediately. Her family had lived a version of it. Her grandfather, George was a Black bricklayer who raised his children in New Orleans. George’s brother, Edward, was Black too, but light enough to leave for Chicago in the early 1920s and start a new life as a white man.

Zayd Ayers Dohrn is the author of the new memoir "Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, And Young: A Fugitive Family In The Revolutionary Underground."

Legal scholar KIMBERLE WILLIAMS CRENSHAW. She coined the expressions: critical race theory and intersectionality. She wanted those expressions to help describe racial and gender discrimination in America. Her new memoir is called Backtalker: An American Memoir. (INTERVIEW BY TONYA MOSLEY) (THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES INTO THE SECOND HALF OF THE SHOW).

In The Secret War Against Hate, Steven J. Ross details the racist, anti-Semitic groups that sprang up in the latter half of the 20th century — and the spy network that worked to bring them to justice.

The Trump era has brought a resurgence of the "alpha male." New Yorker writer Charles Bethea reports on camps where men crawl through mud and sit in ice baths in an effort to reclaim masculinity.

Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative and the founder of the Legacy Sites. He wrote the introduction to a new companion book called "The Legacy Sites: A History Of Racial Injustice."

Americans are betting on sports, elections, award shows and even military actions. The Atlantic writer McKay Coppins bet $10k from his employer in his investigation of this gambling world.

As a culture critic, Lemieux has spent years pushing back against the stereotypes and stigma that follow single mothers. Her new book blends her own memoir with the stories of 21 other Black women.

My guest is the author Rhae Lynn Barnes. In the late 1800s, as professional minstrel shows were becoming obsolete, amateur blackface shows became one of the most popular forms of entertainment, and that's where Barnes' focus is. The new book "Darkology" uncovers the hidden history of blackface.

Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard, has had a long and interesting career, which only seems to get more interesting with age. Now in his 70s, he's just earned a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for his performance in the widely acclaimed film "Sentimental Value," from the Danish Norwegian director Joachim Trier.

novelist Tayari Jones. She wrote her first novel more than two decades ago, but it was her fourth, "An American Marriage," that put her into the national spotlight. When it came out in 2018, Oprah chose it for her book club, and Barack Obama put it on his reading list. It went on to win the Women's Prize for Fiction and has been published in more than a dozen countries, praised as a compassionate portrait of love and justice.

Dorothy Roberts is a professor of law and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and a 2024 MacArthur fellow. Her new memoir is called "The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir Of Love, Race, And Family."

In Fear and Fury, historian Heather Ann Thompson revisits Bernhard Goetz's shooting of four Black teens — and explains how the incident reshaped criminal justice, national policy and media coverage.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Quiara Alegria Hudes, writer of "In The Heights," "Water By The Spoonful" and the memoir "My Broken Language." She recently published her first novel, "The White Hot"