Society & Culture

Yohance Lacour tells the story of Lenard Clark, a 13-year-old Black boy who was beaten into a coma after riding his bike into a predominantly white neighborhood — and the importance of the case today.

Writer Carvell Wallace. He's written a new memoir called "Another Word For Love," which is about growing up in the '80s, unhoused for a time, separated from his mother, in adulthood building a life of stability for himself and his children through writing.

Co-founder of the feminist punk rock riot grrrl movement, musician, writer, and artist Kathleen Hanna. Her new memoir is called "Rebel Girl," which is also the name of one of the best-known songs by her band Bikini Kill. Kathleen Hanna spoke about her life and work with FRESH AIR's Ann Marie Baldonado.

When it comes to Black Twitter, filmmaker Prentice Penny says "no one is above being joked on." His Hulu docuseries charts the voices and movements that made it a force in politics and culture.

Congress and President Biden say TikTok must shed its financial ties to China or face a ban in the U.S. But Washington Post tech reporter Drew Harwell says selling the company is complicated.

Ringgold, who died April 12, portrayed themes of Black life and culture through her quilts, paintings, dolls and books. Her work was exhibited in many major museums. Originally broadcast in 1991.

Author Nancy Nichols says that for men, cars signify adventure, power and strength. For women, they are about performing domestic duties; there was even a minivan prototype with a washer/dryer inside. Her book is Women Behind the Wheel: An Unexpected and Personal History of the Car.

Writer and actor Jenny Slate. Her new comedy special, "Seasoned Professional," is streaming on Amazon.

The Emmy-winning host of RuPaul's Drag Race describes himself as "an introvert masquerading as an extrovert." He reflects on the first 40 years of his life in the memoir The House of Hidden Meanings.

Giamatti is nominated for an Oscar for his role as a pompous boarding school teacher who's assigned to supervise a student who has nowhere to go over winter break. Originally broadcast Jan. 10, 2024.

Sante, who was assigned male at birth, says changing genders was a strange and electric idea that lived in the recesses of her mind for years. Then, in 2021, she was playing around with a gender-swapping feature on a face-altering app and she had a breakthrough.

Wright is nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of a novelist who's frustrated with the publishing industry's expectations of Black authors. His first starring role was in the 1996 film Basquiat.

Reid's new book, Medgar and Myrlie, tells the stories of the civil rights leader from Mississippi and his wife, who became a civil rights activist after Medgar's 1963 assassination.

Norris wanted to see how Americans view race, so she asked people to share their thoughts in six words. Eventually, the project grew, garnering some 500,000 million entries from 100+ countries.

Journalist Antonia Hylton has written a new book, "Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum". And in it, Hylton traces one of the last segregated asylums in the nation - Crownsville Hospital in Maryland, built in 1911 from the ground up by 12 Black men who would later become patients there, some spending their entire lives in the hospital.

Tracee Ellis Ross co-stars in the Oscar-nominated movie American Fiction. For eight seasons, she starred in the ABC comedy series Black-ish. We talk about her new projects, her superstar mother, Diana Ross, and forging her own path outside of her mother's success. We also talk about how she's come to embrace, at 51, never having children or being married.

Home schooling is now America's fastest growing form of education, but Washington Post reporter Peter Jamison notes, "It's remarkable how little oversight there is of home-schooled children."

In his new book, "Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture," New Yorker staff writer Kyle Chayka writes about how we are fed algorithmic recommendations that dictate what music we like, how we interpret the news, what movies we consume, even what foods we eat, clothes we wear, the language we use and the places we go.

Director Ava DuVernay's new film "Origin" is based on the bestselling book "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents" by Isabel Wilkerson. In the film, DuVernay makes Wilkerson, played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, the center of her own story as she explores how understanding the caste system can deepen our understanding of what Black people experience in America.

Washington Post reporter Julian Mark talks about the resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay, and the broader movement to dismantle DEI practices in academia and corporate America.