Society & Culture

"Really, the heart of the story is about misplaced loyalty and what we can do with memory and how fluid and malleable memory can be when we ... use it to fit the narrative that we've created in our mind," says novelist John Vercher.

Booster's film Fire Island, which he wrote and stars in, was inspired by the Jane Austen novel. The movie is a rom-com about a group of gay friends and explores racism and classism in their community.

T.J. Newman began writing the hijack thriller Falling while she was a flight attendant. She'd jot down ideas on paper napkins in the quiet moments on red-eye flights. Originally broadcast July 2021.

Law professor Mary Ziegler explains how the anti-abortion movement upended the GOP establishment and helped push the courts to the right. Her new book is Dollars for Life.

During the pandemic, when schools and day care facilities shut down abruptly, millions of parents — especially mothers — dropped out of the workforce to pick up the slack. Author Angela Garbes was one of them.

Giddens' Freedom Highway is an exploration of African American experiences, accompanied by an instrument with its own uniquely African American story: the banjo. Originally broadcast May 11, 2017.

Juneteenth celebrates the day slavery ended in Texas, June 19, 1865. Historian Annette Gordon-Reed studies the early American republic and the legacy of slavery. Originally broadcast May 25, 2021.

Author Linda Villarosa has been writing about the racial disparities in health outcomes for decades and recently covered the topic for the New York Times' 1619 Project. She says that while she used to think poverty was to blame for Black Americans' health problems, she's now convinced that bias in the health care system and the "weathering" affect of living in a racist society are taking a serious toll on African Americans.

In her new memoir, Rough Draft, Tur looks back on her childhood, and reflects on her difficult relationship with her father — Zoey Tur, who came out as a trans woman in 2013 — a person she describes in her memoir as talented and charismatic, but also volatile and, at times, abusive.

The SNL alum talks with friends and other comics about queer culture, relationships and racism on her HBO show. Jay's comedy special, 3 in the Morning, is about her relationship with her fiancée.

Liotta, who died May 26, started out playing a nice guy on a soap opera. Then came his tough-guy roles in Something Wild and Goodfellas. He was also in Field of Dreams. Originally broadcast in 2016.

David Sedaris writes in his new collection of essays, Happy-Go-Lucky, about his father Lou and their complicated relationship.

The Paramount+ series is the first time McGraw and Hill have appeared together on screen. Before they filmed, they attended "cowboy camp," to learn some basics. Originally broadcast April 19, 2022.

In her new memoir, This Body I Wore, she writes about coming of age and into adulthood in an earlier era, when she didn't have the language or knowledge to understand what it meant to be trans.

Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words" act ignited an obscenity case in the '70s. We listen back to two archival interviews with the late comedian, and David Bianculli reviews a new HBO documentary about him.

Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis in 2020. Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa reconstruct the course of his life in His Name is George Floyd.

Adlon's FX series, which just wrapped up its final season, centers on a single mom of three who's also trying to help her elderly mother and keep her acting career alive. Originally broadcast in 2019.

Florida officials recently rejected a slew of math textbooks, claiming they included "prohibited topics." NYT journalist Dana Goldstein theorizes the objections related to social-emotional learning. The goal of social-emotional learning is to provide kids with a set of skills that they can draw on when they face challenges later in life, Goldstein explains. But some conservatives see it as something that opens the door to larger discussions about race, gender and sexuality.

Klein was the head writer of Inside Amy Schumer and is one of the lead voices in the animated Netflix series Big Mouth. She has a new book of essays about motherhood called I'll Show Myself Out. Klein talks about how having a baby made her feel like a stranger in her own body and life. "There's just no way to comprehend how completely your old identity vanishes," Klein says.

The comic, actor and writer opens up about his name, his family tree and his sexual orientation in a new HBO special. "The more honest I am, the freer I am," Carmichael says.