Some of My Best Friends Are

Khalil and Ben go to the movies with the perfect partner: Jacqueline Stewart, the director and president of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. They talk about how movies shape our lives, and why representation matters… on the big screen and at awards shows (Oscars still so white).

To learn more about the museum, visit their website: https://www.academymuseum.org/en/ 

To see the full clip of Sacheen Littlefeather rejecting the...

Author and poet Clint Smith joins Ben and Khalil to talk about his new collection of poetry, “Above Ground.” They also discuss his previous book, “How the Word Is Passed,” a series of essays evaluating how America reckons with and memorializes slavery.

To learn more about Clint Smith and order his books, go to his website: https://www.clintsmithiii.com/

Further reading: 

Tyre Nichols Wanted to Capture t...

Jamal Simmons spent a year working as the communications director for Vice President Kamala Harris. In his first podcast interview since leaving the job, Jamal talks with Ben and Khalil about everything it takes to be vice president. What is the role of a VP? What challenges has Vice President Harris faced as the first woman of color to have the job? What should we make of criticisms of her from both the left and the right? What ar...

There are roughly 600,000 people experiencing homelessness -- “houselessness”-- in the United States. Ben and Khalil talk with Dr. Heidi Behforouz about how to address a problem that is immense but not intractable. She is the Medical Director of Housing For Health in Los Angeles County, which creates a safety net for people that includes housing, medical care, social services and also dignity.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy...

Eve L. Ewing is a renowned scholar, poet, teacher and cultural organizer. She also writes Marvel comic books, including Ironheart, which came to life on the big screen in the movie Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Eve joins Ben and Khalil to discuss the importance of increasing racial representation in the superhero universe, and the backlash against it. Plus, why creatives should write for kids and take them seriously.

See omnystudi...

What does it mean to be Brown Enough in America today? That's a question Dominican-Colombian-American actor, storyteller, and podcaster Christopher Rivas has been navigating his whole life. Listen to this special episode of Brown Enough as Chris discusses the question "What are you?" with journalist and cartoonist Malaka Gharib. Brown Enough is the stories between Black and white. Listen to these stories every Wednesday on Apple Po...

Here's a preview of Future Hindsight, another podcast we enjoy that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action for everyday citizens. This episode features Ian Haney López, the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Public Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He specializes in race and racism. His focus for the last decade has been on the use of racism in electoral politics, and how to respo...

As the HBO comedy South Side launches its third season, Chicago actor, director, playwright, and screenwriter J. Nicole Brooks joins Khalil and Ben to talk about why she is committed to working on TV shows set in her hometown, like South Side, The Chi, and Chicago Fire. They also discuss the Chicago-based TV show The Bear, what it means to represent a city authentically, and how it's possible to achieve the universal through the sp...

Was voter participation in the 2022 midterms a sign of more democracy or less? Khalil and Ben sit down with former United States Attorney General Eric Holder to answer this question. They talk about key moments from Eric’s childhood that inspired him to fight for voting rights, both while serving in the Obama administration and after. He also shares his thoughts on the fragility of democracy, and what’s currently at stake.

See omnys...

Danielle Sered is the founder and director of Common Justice, the first alternative-to-incarceration and victim-service program in the United States. She’s also the author of Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair. She speaks with Khalil and Ben about her work to re-envision justice as something that can address the trauma of victims and stop the cycle of punishment and crime.

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Sherman “Dilla” Thomas has become the face of Chicago history on TikTok, TV and in tours. So Khalil and Ben go on a mission to find out how Dilla became the city’s number one booster. We hear how Thomas was influenced by the stories told by his father, a Chicago police officer, and the influence of hometown Black politicians who were making history right in front of him. But mainly, he says, he’s driven by curiosity about how the c...

Khalil and Ben talk with Donald Yacovone about his book, Teaching White Supremacy. In the midst of new laws to ban books about race and the teaching of slavery, Yacovone digs through thousands of school textbooks and finds that most already emphasize whiteness as the core of our national identity. We’ll talk about how the history we’ve been teaching over the last 300 years isn’t necessarily the history we made, and how that has inf...

Actor, podcast host and author Christopher Rivas attributes his own racial awakening to the moment he learned the “real” James Bond was Dominican. Rivas tells the story of Porfirio Rubirosa to Khalil and Ben, and talks about his new book, Brown Enough. We’ll also ask what it means to be Brown — specifically Latinx — in a country where most conversations about race are Black and white.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informat...

Khalil and Ben revisit the city where their friendship began. They speak on stage at the 2022 Chicago Humanities Festival. Come for the tales of Ben’s first job delivering bagels around Chi-town and Khalil’s first discovery that he had a Chicago accent — stay for the real connection with a hometown audience, and a conversation about the hard work of studying and loving a city that can be tough to love at times.

See omnystudio.com/li...

Saladin Ambar is author of a new book, Stars and Shadows: The Politics of Interracial Friendship from Jefferson to Obama. He’s also a political science professor at Rutgers and host of The Eagleton Podcast: This Moment in Democracy. Ambar talks with Ben and Khalil about the complex stakes of interracial friendships throughout US history. Ambar’s ten case studies include the famous bond between Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe and...