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Loving Day is an annual, unofficial celebration held on June 12th to commemorate the anniversary of the 1967 Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, which legalized interracial marriage in the United States. It celebrates multiracial families and honors the landmark ruling that struck down all anti-miscegenation laws. Check out this website to learn more about it!

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Loving Day – Loving Day is the anniversary of a historic court decision for interracial marriage. Every year on June 12th, it’s a global day of visibility, education, and community.

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Podcast: Cult of Pedagogy - Bringing Joy Into Our Schools: A Conversation with Gholdy Muhammad

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Podcast: Cult of Pedagogy - Bringing Joy Into Our Schools: A Conversation with Gholdy Muhammad

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Highlights the importance of centering joy as a core element of meaningful, culturally responsive education. Muhammad emphasizes that when students’ identities, histories, and voices are affirmed, engagement and deeper learning naturally follow. She calls on educators to create spaces where rigor, belonging, and joy coexist so all students can thrive.

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Bringing Joy Into Our Schools: A Conversation with Gholdy Muhammad | Cult of Pedagogy

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Joy is not an extra. It’s what lets us stay present, care for ourselves, and give our best to students, even when fear is trying to take over.

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A Reading List for Arab American Heritage Month

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A Reading List for Arab American Heritage Month

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This reading list celebrates the varied cultures, achievements, and contributions of Arab American people.

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50 Easy Earth Day Activities for Kids: Fun Ideas for 2026

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50 Easy Earth Day Activities for Kids: Fun Ideas for 2026

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50 Easy Earth Day Activities for Kids: Fun Ideas for 2026 | Macaroni KID Lynchburg

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Earth Day is one of those celebrations that works especially well with kids. You do not need a big plan or a bunch of supplies. A simple walk, a recycled cra…

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Claudette Colvin was 15 years old when she refused to give up her bus seat on a segregated Montgomery bus. This happened 9 months before Rosa Parks. I think her story, in part because of her age at the time, will resonate with students.

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Claudette Colvin, who refused to move seats on a bus at start of civil rights movement, dies

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Civil rights pioneer Claudette Colvin has died. She was 86. Her 1955 arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery bus helped spark the modern civil rights movement.

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By starting with the idea that students already are resilient, teachers can nurture their ability to stick with things and not give up.

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By starting with the idea that students already are resilient, teachers can nurture their ability to stick with things and not give up.

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Woven Teaching exists to reduce obstacles for educators, in both traditional and non- traditional settings, to effectively teach about human rights and to support their learners in becoming part of an engaged, active global citizenry advocating for and protecting universal human rights.

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Woven Teaching is the human rights education practice of Woven Foundation. Through original programming and grantmaking, Woven Teaching advances the foundation’s focus on long-term change.

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Studies show qigong can strengthen your body and mind, and reduce cortisol levels. We explore this Chinese meditative movement practice that dates back over 4,000 years.

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Studies show qigong can strengthen your body and mind, and reduce cortisol levels. We explore this Chinese meditative movement practice that dates back over 4,000 years.

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The term “neurodiversity” recognizes that variations in brain development and function are natural and valuable aspects of human diversity. In educational settings, particularly in nursing professional development, acknowledging and accommodating neurodivergent learners is crucial to fostering equitable, inclusive, and psychologically safe learning environments. This aligns with Standard 7: Ethics within the NPD Scope & Standards (Harper & Maloney, 2022), which emphasizes…

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These Neurodivergent Students are Helping Each Other Build More Inclusive Schools [Article]

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These Neurodivergent Students are Helping Each Other Build More Inclusive Schools [Article]

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These neurodivergent students are helping each other build more inclusive schools

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A peer-to-peer movement of neurodivergent youth is hitting campuses this fall to build more inclusive spaces together.

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Real Talk with Kid Docs: Personal wellness [Podcast]

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Real Talk with Kid Docs: Personal wellness [Podcast]

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Co-hosted by Dr. Joseph Vukin, a December 2025 Hill Connect presenter

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Episode 28. Personal wellness: Why it is so important and how we can foster more of it

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Episodio de podcast · Real Talk with Kid Docs · 08/08/2024 · 40 min

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Dyslexia: Profiles of Success [Story Compilation]

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Dyslexia: Profiles of Success [Story Compilation]

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The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity has compiled success stories from individuals with dyslexia who have become leaders in their field. These inspiring stories that we encourage you to read for Dyslexia Awareness Month (October) are categorized by profession, including sections for artists, doctors, explorers, sports personalities, and more.

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Meet a remarkable group of dyslexic individuals who have become leaders in their fields. These out-of-the-box thinkers have not only overcome the challenges of dyslexia, but have excelled beyond their own and others' expectations. They are scientists, artists, political leaders, writers, lawyers, professional athletes, doctors, journalists and actors.

Each is a testament to the incredible power of the dyslexic mind to navigate around obstacles, come up with creative solutions and serve our society in meaningful ways. Whether you are dyslexic or care for someone who is, we hope you will enjoy and be inspired by their stories. (YCDC has compiled the stories of successful dyslexics in the book Dyslexia: Profiles of Success. For information on purchasing the book, click here.)

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Meet a remarkable group of dyslexic individuals who have become leaders in their fields. These out-of-the-box thinkers have not only overcome the challenges of dyslexia, but have excelled beyond their own and others' expectations. They are scientists, artists, political leaders, writers, lawyers, professional athletes, doctors, journalists and actors.

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Hispanic Heritage Month Favorites [Book List]

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Hispanic Heritage Month Favorites [Book List]

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September 15th - October 15th is Hispanic Heritage Month! To celebrate, here are recommended reads from Chapel Hill Public Library Youth & Family staff, featuring both fiction and a little bit of nonfiction, for all ages.

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Hispanic Heritage Month Favorites - a staff-created list from Chapel Hill Public Library

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September 15th - October 15th is Hispanic Heritage Month! To celebrate, here are recommended reads from CHPL Youth & Family staff, featuring both fiction and a little bit of nonfiction, for all ages!

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On Yom Kippur (October 1st - 2nd), there are many customs surrounding clothing. How should synagogue attendees dress and what kinds of shoes are allowed? What is the symbolic meaning of what they wear? Click the link above to learn more!

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What to Wear on Yom Kippur | My Jewish Learning

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On Yom Kippur, focusing on the spiritual above the physical is one of the core tenets of the day. That…

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National Museum of Asian Art – Moon Festival [Video and Discussion Questions]

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National Museum of Asian Art – Moon Festival [Video and Discussion Questions]

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The Moon Festival (a.k.a. Mid-Autumn Festival) takes place on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar (October 6th) when there is not only a full moon at night but also the largest and roundest full moon of the year. The Festival celebrates the reunion of family and friends who gather to view the large moon, recite poetry, and listen to music. Use the link above to watch an animated video about the origins of the festival.

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Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art

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Moon Festival - Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art

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The Moon Festival, also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival, takes place on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar when there is not only a full moon at night but also the largest and roundest full moon of the year. The Festival celebrates the reunion of family and friends who gather…

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From eggs to stocks: Chuseok gifts evolve in reflection of the time [Article]

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From eggs to stocks: Chuseok gifts evolve in reflection of the time [Article]

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Chuseok (추석), often called “Korean Thanksgiving,” is one of the most important family holidays in South Korea. It is a 3 day mid-autumn festival that starts annually on the full moon of the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunisolar calendar (October 6th) and is a time to honor ancestors, visit family, and share food. The holiday also includes a gift-giving element that might make it feel a little like Christmas. Read the article above to see how Chuseok gifts have evolved over time from basic necessities to luxury items.

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[Weekender] From eggs to stocks: Chuseok gifts evolve in reflection of the time

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Shin Jeong-eum, a 61-year-old Seoulite, remembers her childhood when her family was delighted with beef wrapped in a simple paper package and a carton of eggs h

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Crayola - Building a Sukkah [Coloring Page]

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Crayola - Building a Sukkah [Coloring Page]

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A sukkah is a temporary hut-like structure built during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot (October 6th – 13th), which is both an agricultural festival of thanksgiving and a commemoration of the forty-year period during which the people of Israel wandered in the desert after leaving slavery in Egypt, living in temporary shelters as they traveled. The sukkah serves as a reminder that “nothing in life is permanent, so the key is living life properly.” Click the Crayola link above to see what a sukkah looks like and color it in!

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A Short Meditation for World Mental Health Day [Video]

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A Short Meditation for World Mental Health Day [Video]

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World Mental Health Day is on October 10th and is an international day for global mental health education, awareness and advocacy against social stigma. Use the link above to try a short guided meditation session.

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A Short Meditation for World Mental Health Day from Headspace with Kessonga Giscombe

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Off the Wall with Keith and the Kids - Keith Haring [PBS Documentary] 

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Off the Wall with Keith and the Kids - Keith Haring [PBS Documentary] 

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Did you know that internationally renowned gay artist Keith Haring created the iconic image of a person stepping out of a closet for the very first National Coming Out Day (October 11)? Click to view a vintage PBS documentary about Keith when he painted a mural with Chicago schoolchildren in Grant Park back in 1989.

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From the WTTW Archive | Off the Wall with Keith and the Kids

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Keith Haring paints a mural with Chicago schoolchildren in Grant Park, a special from 1989

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Project 562: Changing The Way We See Native America [Picture Show & NPR Podcast]

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Project 562: Changing The Way We See Native America [Picture Show & NPR Podcast]

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Photographer Matika Wilbur, of Swinomish and Tulalip descent, set out on a mission in 2012: to illustrate Native Americans' diversity and complexity by photographing members of all the then-562 federally-recognized U.S. tribes. Look through her beautiful portraits and listen to her interview with NPR as a way to celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day (October 13th ) and/or Native American Heritage Month (November)

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Photographer Matika Wilbur was tired of seeing one-dimensional, insipid, degrading depictions of Native Americans in mainstream media and popular culture. So in 2012, Wilbur, who is of Swinomish and Tulalip descent, decided to create her own catalog of images.

She sold everything in her Seattle apartment and, with Kickstarter backing, headed out on the road, cameras in hand. Her goal: To illustrate Native Americans' diversity and complexity by photographing members of all of the then-562 federally-recognized U.S. tribes.

Ten years, 600,000 miles, and several vehicles later, Wilbur has published her work - portraits and interviews - in a stunning new book: Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America. Over hundreds of pages, we meet Native elders, rappers, professors, artists, activists, linguists, dancers, ranchers, comedians, and more.

"In a lot of ways, this work is narrative correction work," Wilbur said. "When I was talking to folks, I was aiming to understand, 'What are some of the true stories about your people that you want people to know?'"

In her interviews with the people she photographed, they shared stories about the lasting effects of colonization and relocation; about environmental destruction done to Native lands; and about the traumatic experience of those who had been taken from their homes as children and sent to Indian boarding schools to be "assimilated," forced to give up their language and Native identity.

But along with those painful conversations, Wilbur said, she also heard "the best parts: how we've healed from that, and what our people are doing to move forward, and to develop healthy and strong and thriving Indigenous nations."

Wilbur dedicates Project 562 to her daughter Alma Bee, now three years old, with these words:

May your children
hear and breathe
the words of
our Indigenous ancestors.
May we all be so lucky to
know an Indigenous future.

Photos reprinted with permission from Project 562: Changing The Way We See Native America by Matika Wilbur © 2023. Photographs by Matika Wilbur © 2023. Published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
The interview with Matika Wilbur was produced by Michael Levitt and edited by Justine Kenin.

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Photographer's decade-long, 600,000-mile journey shows Indigenous life in new book

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Photographer Matika Wilbur was tired of seeing one-dimensional, insipid, degrading depictions of Native Americans in mainstream media and popular culture. So in 2012, Wilbur, who is of Swinomish and Tulalip descent, decided to create her own catalog of images. She sold everything in her Seattle apartment and, with Kickstarter backing, headed out on the road, cameras in hand.

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National Museum of Asian Art – Diwali [Online Art Exhibit]

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National Museum of Asian Art – Diwali [Online Art Exhibit]

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https://asia.si.edu/whats-on/events/celebrations/diwali/

This year Diwali will be celebrated on October 20th . Read about the festival and learn more about Indian art, culture, and food using the link above. There are resources available for educators who may be interested in taking their students on free ‘Virtual Field Trips’ hosted by the National Museum of Asian Art.

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Trans Stories are Everyone’s Stories [Video and Discussion Questions] 

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Trans Stories are Everyone’s Stories [Video and Discussion Questions] 

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Transgender Awareness Week (November 13th – 19th) gives us the opportunity to uplift positive and insightful stories of trans and non-binary people across the country. Watch a heartwarming film and discover, in just 7 minutes, how you can help create a world where teenagers like Daniel have the freedom to be themselves.

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Daniel’s story is typical of any teenager with the same quiet milestones of youth that we all experience. He’s also one of more than two million people…

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Shatter Mental Health Stigma Through Art (Art and Creative Writing Collection)

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Shatter Mental Health Stigma Through Art (Art and Creative Writing Collection)

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May is Mental Health Awareness Month. The annual Texas Mental Health Creative Arts Contest shines a light on an often-overlooked topic and shows why mental health matters. People of all ages submit short stories, essays and poems for their Writing category, and original artwork and photography for their Visual Art category. Click the link above to explore submissions from past winners.

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Texas Mental Health Creative Arts Contest

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Winners | Texas Mental Health Creative Arts Contest

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Texans illustrate why mental health matters

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From Awareness To Acceptance: Changing How We Understand Autism (NPR Podcast)

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From Awareness To Acceptance: Changing How We Understand Autism (NPR Podcast)

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In April 2021, the Autism Society of America, in cooperation with other disability organizations, tried something different. Instead of branding the month, "Autism Awareness Month," the celebratory and informative period will be known as "Autism Acceptance Month."

The change represents a long-held belief by autism advocates, specifically within the neurodiversity movement: helping autistic people lead more fulfilling lives rather than treating the condition like an illness.

Autism has often been misunderstood by those outside the spectrum. How should we be thinking about autism?

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From Awareness To Acceptance: Changing How We Understand Autism : 1A

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The Autism Society of America decided to change the branding of the month of April from, "Autism Awareness Month" to "Autism Acceptance Month."The change represents a long-held belief by autistic advocates that in order to create a more inclusive future, society must help autistic people lead more fulfilling lives rather than treat the condition like an illness.

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In Seoul, South Korea, an art exhibition was held at the Seoul Art Center where 43 artists with developmental disabilities participated in the exhibition of over 100 different paintings. Among them were artists Hansol Kim and Shinhey Park. The video goes behind-the-scenes to follow them in their daily lives and see that they are ultimately no different from the rest of humanity, and that overcoming the inequalities they face will benefit all of society.

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Korean Artists Break Barriers One Brushstroke at a Time | 발달장애 아티스트

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6 Books by Mexican-American Authors Perfect for Celebrating Cinco de Mayo (List)

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6 Books by Mexican-American Authors Perfect for Celebrating Cinco de Mayo (List)

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Cinco de Mayo is upon us once again. This holiday commemorating the Mexican army’s victory over France during the Franco-Mexican War in 1862 is certainly celebrated in Mexico but is also quite an occasion here in the United States. We tend to use this day as an excuse to throw a party and enjoy Mexican food and drinks, but we should remember that it’s also an important part of Mexican-American culture. On this note, we’ve compiled a short list of some of the hottest works by Mexican-American authors out there, along with a few newcomers that we think deserve more attention.

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6 Books by Mexican-American Authors Perfect for Celebrating Cinco de Mayo | BookTrib.

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Cinco de Mayo is upon us once again. This holiday commemorating the Mexican army’s victory over France during the Franco-Mexican War in 1862 is certainly celebrated in Mexico but is also quite an occasion here in the United States. We tend to use this day as an excuse to throw a party and enjoy Mexican food

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National Deaf History Month is celebrated March 13th to April 15th. Learn more about deaf identity, community, and culture by watching something from this list!

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Watch this “Journeys on the Deaf Path” video to learn about the history of deafness on Martha’s Vineyard.

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Arab American Heritage Month Classroom Resources (List)

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Arab American Heritage Month Classroom Resources (List)

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April is Arab American Heritage Month! Use this resources list curated by NYC Public Schools to celebrate Arab Americans throughout the past and present, and recognize their invaluable contributions to our country. It also serves as a time to combat Anti- Arab bigotry and to challenge stereotypes and prejudices.

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Overview

April is Arab American Heritage Month! During this time, we celebrate Arab Americans throughout the past and present, and recognize their invaluable contributions to our country. It also serves as a time to combat Anti-Arab bigotry and to challenge stereotypes and prejudices.

Arab American Heritage Month began as a 2017 initiative that only involved a few states and cities, but recognition has been steadily spreading since then, and in April 2021, President Biden became the first U.S. president to issue a proclamation acknowledging Arab American Heritage Month.

While the celebration of Arab American Heritage Month is fairly new, the history which it commemorates dates back as far as 1527, when Estebanico Azemmouri, a native of present-day Morocco, and Antonio Bishallany, a native of present-day Lebanon, arrived to what would many years later become the United States, becoming the first members of the Arab American community that is estimated today to number approximately 3.7 million people.

Since those very early days, there have been several waves of Arab immigration into the United States. In the 1800s, the first group consisted mainly of Arab Christians fleeing religious persecution and economic insecurity in the Ottoman Empire, from the region that today makes up Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine. This period came to an end in the 1920s, largely due to immigration policies that placed strict quotas on the number of people who could come into the United States from many Asian and Arab countries located within a region called the "Asiatic Barred Zone." Later, as political instability in the region increased throughout the mid-20th century, another wave of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa began arriving in search of both humanitarian protection, as well as economic and educational opportunities and family reunification. The third period began with new immigration laws that repealed the restrictive quotas in 1965 and allowed hundreds of thousands of new immigrants to come into the United States. A fourth wave that began in the 1990s continues today, even after the rise of Anti-Arab sentiment that occurred in the United States following the September 11 attacks in 2001, as well as immigration policy changes in 2017 that made it more challenging for Arab immigrants to enter the United States.

Today's Arab American community is made up of individuals with roots in 22 countries located in the Middle East and North Africa: Algeria, Bahrain, the Comoros Islands, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. In addition to the many nationalities represented, Arab Americans are also diverse in faith - despite a common misconception, not all Arabs are Muslim, nor are all Muslims from the Middle East and North Africa, and over half of Arab Americans are estimated to be Christian - as well as race, sexual orientation, gender identity, and ability. Within their diverse community, Arab Americans are united by their primary language-Arabic-as well as by their shared history and culture.

New York City has a rich Arab American history in its own right: when the first major wave of Arab immigrants began fleeing the Ottoman Empire (what is now Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine) in the late 1800s, many of them arrived in New York. In fact, from the 1870s until the 1940s, the center of Arab life in the United States could be found in "Little Syria," a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan concentrated on Washington Street and Rector Street. By the year 1900, nearly 2,000 Syrians were living there, working in nearby textile factories and as merchants. It was also in Little Syria that some of the best-known Arab writers of the time, including Kahlil Gibran, formed the Pen Bond (also known as the Pen League) and sparked a literary movement in Arab literature. Unfortunately, the neighborhood of Little Syria had all but disappeared by the mid-20th century. Plans for construction of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel in the 1940s forced many residents to leave the area, often relocating to Brooklyn. Those that remained were not able to stay for long: the construction of the World Trade Center in the 1960s pushed the rest of the community out of their homes.

Even still, today, the New York City Metropolitan area has the second-highest population of Arab Americans in the United States. Statewide, the Arab population in New York is one of the fasting growing in the country, with the number of New Yorkers who claim Arab ancestry estimated to have more than doubled since the 1980 Census.

Throughout April, and all year long, we hope you will join us in appreciating the rich and diverse history of this large and growing community. This month is an excellent time to learn and teach more about Arab American history, and we encourage you to do so by checking out the resources below, which include exhibitions, lesson plans, recommended reading, and more, for use both in and out of the classroom.

Events and Exhibitions

The Arab American National Museum is located in Dearborn, Michigan, but you can access their virtual tours from home! There are resources related to their core galleries along with supplemental materials for educators. Galleries include Contributions from the Arab World, Coming to America, Living in America, and Making an Impact.

1001 Inventions partnered with Google Classroom to provide digital access to interactive stories about lesser-known pioneer men and women, primarily from the Arab world, to help spark young people's interest in science while promoting diversity and inclusion in their online exhibitions.

Visit St. George's Syrian Catholic Church, one of the few remaining buildings that made up "Little Syria." It was originally built in 1812, and by 1850 was used as a boarding house for Syrian immigrants arriving in New York City at the time. For more about what remains of Little Syria, check out "What's Left of New York's Little Syria: A Short but Rich Tour."

For more, Arab America shares upcoming events throughout the year that are happening near you.

Reading List

Throughout the month, and all year long, we encourage families, educators, and students to dive into a book about the history, culture, and experiences of the Arab diaspora. The suggestions below are just a few of our favorite titles, with works of fiction and non-fiction for every grade level that feature characters and perspectives that are often not reflected in other popular works. We hope you will enjoy reading and learning from these outstanding stories.

Early Readers (Grades 3K-2)

Elementary (Grades 3-5)

Middle School (Grades 6-8)

Upper Grades (Grades 9-12)

Many of these books are readily available through the citywide Digital Library on Sora, which provides free access to hundreds of digital e-books and audiobooks for our students. For even more recommendations, check out the "Cultural Connections" collection on Sora, which features many Arab stories, and will introduce students to titles with diverse characters and world religions set in the Transcontinental Region, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and beyond.

Video and Audio Resources

Resources for Educators

Check out the National Arab American Heritage Month Educators Guide from Arab America, which provides additional helpful context and resources for teachers.

The Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan has a wide range of educator resources, including a collection of lesson plans for all grade levels, and access to their digital collections.
The museum has also put together a helpful resource about the history of the Arab American community, including information about immigration, culture, and more.

To learn more about Arab scientists, inventors, and innovators throughout history, check out the 1001 Inventions Education Pack.

The Teach Mideast Arab American Heritage Month Resource Guide has materials that teach students about the past and present of the Arab American community, including sections on early immigration, music, culture, literature, and media, present-day advocacy, and more. For even more, check out the "Resources Guides" section of their website.

The Hidden Voices initiative, which began as a collaboration between the DOE and the Museum of the City of New York, helps NYC students learn about and honor the innumerable people, often "hidden" from the traditional historical record, who have shaped and continue to share our history and identity. The famous Arab American writer Kahlil Gibran is featured in Hidden Voices: Untold Stories of New York City History. Gibran lived in the Little Syria neighborhood of New York City while writing many of his most famous works.
For more information about Kahlil Gibran, The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee has a lesson plan all about his life and work.

For teachers looking for more information about how to support their Arab students, particularly during the month of Ramadan, which often overlaps with Arab American Heritage Month, check out the NYC DOE's Instructional Guide about Eid al-Fitr, available to teachers on WeTeach NYC.
Additional resources that may be helpful include an interview with an Arab American educator on the subject, as well as another resource guide for teachers from PBS called "Promoting and Understanding Islam" that provides further information.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has an educator guide to use in their gallery, the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia, in order to help students learn more about the history of Arab art and especially to dive deep on what is on display from their collections.

Check out the National Endowment for the Humanities Virtual Bookshelf for Arab American Heritage Month.

Learning for Justice has collected resources for Arab American Heritage Month which celebrate Arab identity, counter negative stereotypes, teach about Arab history and cultures, and ensure an inclusive environment that supports Arab American students this month and throughout the year.

The Anti-Defamation League has an Arab American Heritage Month Resource Guide for educators, families, and caregivers with K-12 curricular resources to use in classrooms, schools, and communities

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April is Arab American Heritage Month! This month, celebrate the contributions and achievements of Arab Americans throughout the past and present.

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Thailand's cooling rice dish to beat the heat (Recipe)

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Thailand's cooling rice dish to beat the heat (Recipe)

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By the time Songkran, Thailand's new year based on the Buddhist calendar, arrives in April, the temperatures in the Southeast Asian country are soaring. One way to cool off is in the country-wide water fights that take place during the annual celebrations (this year from 13-15 April), which include water guns, buckets and coloured powder smeared onto the face like war paint. Another way to celebrate and cool off is to eat Khao Chae. Click the link above to learn the recipe for Khao Chae!

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Thailand’s cooling rice dish to beat the heat

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The sweltering heat during Buddhist New Year calls for Thailand’s cooling khao chae, a fragrant and refreshing bowl of rice delicately scented with flowers.

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As President Trump rolls back government DEI programs, a closer look at their history (Podcast)

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As President Trump rolls back government DEI programs, a closer look at their history (Podcast)

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NPR's Pien Huang speaks with Timothy Welbeck, director of Temple University's Anti- Racism program, about DEI programs' roots in the civil rights movement.

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PIEN HUANG, HOST:

Just days into his second administration, President Donald Trump has signed several sweeping executive actions to end federal DEI programs - diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. Trump has called DEI illegal, immoral and discriminatory, but the history of these programs spans decades, rooted in attempts to address inequalities and bolster equal opportunities for employment. To learn more about the history of federal DEI policies, I spoke with Timothy Welbeck. He's director of Temple University's Center for Anti-Racism, and he started with the basics.

TIMOTHY WELBECK: DEI is an acronym. It stands for diversity, equity, inclusion, and if you add the A, it also stands for accessibility. And these are a set of policies that first began in part with the federal government to ensure that federal employment was making an effort to ensure that there was no discrimination against people on the basis of their race, their color, creed, national origin, things of that nature. President Kennedy issued an executive order in 1961. That's what many people signal as the beginning of the affirmative action era because he literally used the phrase affirmative action in that executive order. And then President Johnson issued a similar order in 1965. And both of which can be surmised to say that the federal government or federal contractors were not to discriminate against employees or potential employees based on their race, their national origin and other things that we now refer to as protected classes.

HUANG: Yeah, say a little bit more about that. Like, what is the philosophy behind DEI at the federal level?

WELBECK: At the federal level, it begins with, in part, tackling our history of racism and discrimination and ensuring that the federal government is no longer a proprietor of discrimination, particularly on the basis of race. And so these executive orders that launched much of this conversation in many ways were stemming from what we refer to as the Civil Rights era and the freedom era, which brought to the forefront of our nation's attention many of the grievances of segregation and how it impacted people's lives. And so as it relates to that, the federal government has taken at times, based on various administrations, efforts to try to undo some of the harm of this segregation, much of which in prior eras was propagated by the federal government.

HUANG: President Trump has called DEI programs illegal. He says they violate federal civil rights. But for a long time and for a lot of people, DEI programs are seen as the necessary and logical extension of civil rights laws. So how can both of these things be true?

WELBECK: Well, both of them aren't true. President Trump has mischaracterized DEI initiatives in part because he has antagonism towards them. And as he signaled during his presidential campaign, this is something - this was a priority of his, but these efforts are seeking to tether the spirit of the law with the letter of the law. So much of the equal protections that we see in clauses like the 14th Amendment or the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the ADA and other types of legislation were seeking to not only undo historic and systemic harm, but it was also seeking to ensure that, going forward, there would be no further types of discrimination in that vein.

HUANG: Trump has said that he wants to, quote, "forge a society that is colorblind and merit based," which, I think, you know, is sort of the spirit of it. And critics say that the idea that someone's success is, you know, based solely on their accomplishments is just an idea that does not work. But still, you know, baked into the American dream is the whole idea that you can accomplish anything if you study hard and work hard. What are your thoughts on sort of, like, you know, how these things kind of exist together?

WELBECK: The United States cannot say that it's fully been a meritocracy when we have 249 years of slavery, 90 years of racialized segregation and barred women from entering into the workforce in meaningful ways for much of our nation's history. That's not a meritocracy, denying people access and opportunities regardless of whether they're qualified. When we look at this conversation around merit, it's often thinly veiled attempts to try to undo various ways that have opened up opportunities for those who historically were denied them. And so whether it's this conversation here or talking about color blindness as a whole, a lot of it has its roots in trying to undo the progress that has been made with some of these initiatives.

HUANG: I mean, there has been this long history of DEI programs, and that has, you know, brought us to a place where there are lots of people of different colors and beliefs in positions of, you know, prominence and power. So why do we still need these programs?

WELBECK: First, we still need these programs because we haven't given them adequate time to work. We're only a generation and a half into these policies, and they have met opposition literally from their inception. So whether there is litigation, whether there is rhetoric emanating from opponents, there's been opposition from the beginning. So one, we haven't given them enough time to fully actualize their mission and their goals. Secondly, we've seen that when there is a regression in these protections, the need for the protection becomes more pronounced. If we continue to roll back some of these protections with DEI, we're going to see increases in discriminations because there will no longer be the types of protections that are in place to ensure equal access and opportunity.

HUANG: So I want to sort of take stock of where we are and where we're going. So, you know, throughout history, groups of Americans outside of the government have pushed leadership to acknowledge racism and sexism and biases against disabled people and the LGBT community and to really push leadership towards policies like DEI. This is something that has taken tremendous effort, and in many cases, it's not something that the government has done willingly. So where do things go from here if these measures are rolled back?

WELBECK: What I would continue to encourage people across the nation, particularly the private sector and those at the state and local level, is to hold diversity, equity and inclusion as a value and to remember that these are policies that are aimed at offering meaningful opportunities to all people. At times there may need to be creative ways to implement that, but I would encourage people not to shy away from that going forward. It's a necessary thing, and it's also something that we should celebrate. We should value the idea of multi perspectives when we are trying to solve problems. We should value the idea of including as many people as possible. And so, yes, there are shifts in the federal government that are happening right now, but I would encourage people to deepen their resolve and commitment to these values.

HUANG: That is Timothy Welbeck, director of Temple University's Center for Anti-Racism. Thank you so much for joining me today.

WELBECK: Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

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As President Trump rolls back government DEI programs, a closer look at their history

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NPR's Pien Huang speaks with Timothy Welbeck, director of Temple University's Anti-Racism program, about DEI programs' roots in the civil rights movement.

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DEI rollbacks: Impact of affirmative action ruling (Podcast)

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DEI rollbacks: Impact of affirmative action ruling (Podcast)

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Corporate diversity equity and inclusion initiatives, including those at Meta, McDonald’s, Walmart and Target, are being scaled back. This news piece examines the fallout from the Supreme Court’s 2023 affirmative action ruling.

Guests include legal expert Ciara Anderson, who discusses the potential workplace impact, while DEI consultant Selena Dunham shares strategies to sustain inclusion efforts, and MSU Denver’s Michael Benitez discusses how higher education is responding to these challenges.

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DEI rollbacks: Impact of affirmative action ruling | Colorado Public Radio

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Corporate diversity equity and inclusion initiatives are being scaled back.

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10 books about Muslim experiences to read this Ramadan (Book List)

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10 books about Muslim experiences to read this Ramadan (Book List)

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The richness and diversity of the Muslim experience is celebrated in these 10 must- read books, ideal to enjoy during the spiritual month of Ramadan.

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10 books about Muslim experiences to read this Ramadan

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As Muslims around the world prepare to mark the month of fasting, here are 10 books that offer entertainment and enlightenment to Muslims and non-Muslims.

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Famous & Inspirational Black Women in History (Article)

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Famous & Inspirational Black Women in History | PBS

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Be inspired by an exceptional group of women in this collection of films and stories. Each of the Black women featured here have made a special mark on their communities and the world. Explore Inspirational Women with PBS. Get to know these 11 women, their acclaimed works, and trailblazing lives.

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ArtLifting: Charlie French (Art Collection)

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Boulder, CO “Yes, I have Down syndrome but first I want you to see me: Charlie French. Then I want you to see my ART!” Abstract artist Charlie French (he/him/his) works in his art studio almost daily, his commitment to his craft evident when viewing his beautiful, calming paintings. Born in NY, Charlie has lived both i

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Research Guides: International Transgender Day of Visibility: Home

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This book was, I suppose, a good educational read: rather a beginner's Grapes of Wrath from a Mexican perspective. It covers very difficult issues of race, class difference, child labor and death with tact and a certain amount of gentleness.

But overall after I was finished I could not help but be faced with the difficult feeling that Esparanza, while being an incredibly strong young woman and a good role model in that sense, often overlooks the immorality and unfairness of her situation in order to continue living and doing what she has to do. I mean, that's a totally valid theme and it's in many ways honorable of her but given the horrible situation she's in, there are a lot of questions that arise. Esparanza is a 13-year old pulled out of school, subjected to backbreaking and agonizing child labor and essentially orphaned. This is a terrible situation for a child to be in, but the close of the book lauds Esparanza for the great, strong person that she has become for her hard work. Look! She knows how to cook now! Look! She knows how to work hard instead of being pampered! Look! She no longer has any selfish wants or needs!

If Esperanza were 18 or even 16 that sort of might fly, but the fact of the matter is that she is 13. She should not be in that situation and there is very little outrage towards the fact that she's in it. What makes it so especially questionable is the way that the strikers were portrayed. They were demonized--Marta, the main girl who attempts to lead the strikes and revolts (? I think that's her name) is looked at as Esperanza's opposite. Lazy, mean-spirited, angry, and violent. And later she is punished for her sins. All of the strikers are. For standing up and saying that children should not have to work, that humane housing and sanitations conditions should be met, that everyone should be paid a living wage. They are all arrested and deported, and afterwards Esparanza and her family are safe, saying, "We are loyal to the company, so the company takes care of us." Oh, is that so? Where is the company when the dust storms happen and the workers are trapped in the blistering wind? Where is the company when the children have blistered hands form peeling starchy potatoes? Where is the company when Esperanza's mother nearly dies because of horrible working conditions and Esperanza is forced to pay for her medical bills?

In fact, every time that there is a fight in the book and the battle between working and dealing with unfairness vs. fighting for a better world, working always wins out. I'm really not comfortable with the fact that the main themes of the book seem to be: "Life sucks--plug on and deal with it," rather than "Enact real, lasting social change so that life doesn't quite suck so bad for future generations." Esparanza in the end realizes that she essentially has no future and will never return to an education--it tops out at if she's lucky, she might be able to buy a very small house. And yet she has learned to be happy with that.

I'm sorry, but I'm not.

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Read 8,752 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Esperanza thought she'd always live with her family on their ranch in Mexico--she'd alwa...

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Over the next few years, people who were once her friends and neighbors turn on her and her family, forcing them to live in constant terror of arrest. And when Ji-li's father is finally imprisoned, she faces the most difficult dilemma of her life.

Written in an accessible and engaging style, this page-turning, honest, and deeply personal autobiography will appeal to readers of all ages.

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Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨ Campbell

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Many Americans, myself included, have an opinion about China, Communism, or most likely both. What most of us have neglected to do is explore how valid our opinions are. Ji-Li Jiang's memoir was written for children, and because she is a teacher her book is very accessible for most elementary school-age kids.

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In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty people stolen from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States.

The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning 1619 Project issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself.

This book that speaks directly to our current moment, contextualizing the systems of race and caste within which we operate today. It reveals long-glossed-over truths around our nation’s founding and construction—and the way that the legacy of slavery did not end with emancipation, but continues to shape contemporary American life.

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The 1619 Project: 9780593230572 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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Ask Code Switch: Is this a racist question?

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On Civil Discourse and a Project to Redesign Currency by Alma Hoffman. 

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On Civil Discourse and a Project to Redesign Our Currency – PRINT Magazine

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A Young People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

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A Young People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

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Zinn presents a critical perspective on U.S. history, focusing on the experiences of marginalized groups such as Native Americans, African slaves, women, and working-class individuals. It offers an alternative to traditional narratives by emphasizing the struggles for justice, equality, and civil rights, highlighting moments of resistance and activism. The book encourages young readers to question conventional history and consider the perspectives of those often left out of the historical record.

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Note: We were pleased to promote the special offer by Seven Stories Press for free copies of the e-book version of A Young People's History of the United States for two days in March. That offer has ended, however the e-book can be purchased for $11.97 from the publisher and may also be available from your public library.

In paperback with illustrations, this is the young adult edition of Howard Zinn's classic telling of American history. A Young People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn with Rebecca Stefoff brings to U.S. history the viewpoints of workers, people who are enslaved, immigrants, women, Native Americans, and others whose stories, and their impact, are rarely included in books for young people.

Beginning with a look at Christopher Columbus' arrival through the eyes of the Arawak Indians; then leading the reader through the struggles for workers' rights, women's rights, and civil rights during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and ending with the current protests against continued American imperialism, Zinn presents a radical way of understanding America's history. In so doing, he reminds readers that America's true greatness is shaped by our dissident voices, not our military generals. [Publisher's description.]

ISBN: 9781583228692 | Published by Seven Stories Press.

Book Preview

Teacher Quotes

High School Social Studies Teacher, St. Louis, Missouri

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A Young People's History of the United States - Zinn Education Project

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Note: We were pleased to promote the special offer by Seven Stories Press for free copies of the e-book version of A Young People's History of the United States for two days in March. That offer has ended, however the e-book can be purchased for $11.97 from the publisher and may also be available from your public library.

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Henry Lyle “Hank” Adams, an important figure in Indigenous law, was featured as the Google Doodle for May 16. Click to read more about the man a Library of Congress writer called the "most important Native American in the country."

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This doodle celebrates the 81st birthday of Hank Adams, a Native American rights activist known as a successful strategist, tactician, and negotiator. Starting in 1960, he helped resolve several important disputes between Native Americans and state and federal officials.

Adams was born on May 16, 1943 to an Assiniboine family on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana. His place of birth was Wolf Point, Montana, also known as Poverty Flats. His father, Lewis Adams, was a bronc and bull rider, and his mother, Jesse, was a rodeo rider and equestrian athlete who divorced when he was young.

His family moved to Washington state near the end of World War II. They settled in Tahola, Washington, part of the Quinault Indian Reservation on the Olympic Peninsula. Growing up, Adams regularly fished and worked as a fruit and vegetable picker on a nearby farm, where he developed a strong work ethic.

Adams attended the University of Washington for two years from 1961 to 1963. During his high school years, he attended the Quinault Reservation to combat the suicide epidemic.

Adams joined the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) in 1963. He worked with actor Marlon Brando from 1963 when he worked as a director of special projects until 1967, who later became involved in the Indian Rights Movement and supported demonstrators at several events.

In 1964 and 1965, Adams served as research secretary for the National Congress of American Indians. In April 1964, he refused to be drafted into the military unless the federal government respected traditional Indian treaty rights. In 1968, Adams became president of the American Indian Survival Association (SAIA).

In 1968 and 1972, Adams sought the Republican nomination for Congress from Washington's 3rd Congressional District. He lost the election but supported the Republican candidate.

In 1971, Adams wrote a 15-point proposal for national change aimed at establishing a "system of bilateral relations between Indian tribes and the federal government." This became the basis for his 20-point proposal, which he proposed by AIM and other organizations during the "Road to Broken Treaties" event held in Washington, D.C., in 1972. Submitted to federal officials.

Adams worked to enforce and protect Native Americans' fishing and hunting rights on their traditional lands without government restrictions. He promoted change through protests and legal challenges. The decision in United States v. Washington (1974), known as the Bolt decision, was upheld by the United States Supreme Court (1979) and reaffirmed the fishing rights of treaty states of native peoples in ceded territory. This led the tribes to jointly manage salmon and other seafood resources with the state of Washington and set aside a portion of the annual harvest for themselves.

Adams participated in the American Indian Movement, including occupying the Department of the Interior building in Washington, DC. This was the case in 1972 and the 71-day stalemate after the Wounded Knee incident in 1973. In both cases, Adams played a key role in negotiating peace solutions to volatile situations. He continued to advocate for tribal sovereignty and worked with tribes to restore the role of tribal elders. In 2006, he received the American Indian Visionary Award from Indian Country Today.

Adams was a member of the Frank's Landing Indian Community of the Nisqually Tribe. He passed away on December 21, 2020 in Olympia, Washington.

Happy Birthday, Hank Adams !!

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Who is Hank Adams? Google doodle honors the lifestyle of Native American rights activist - Feature Weekly

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This doodle celebrates the 81st birthday of Hank Adams, a Native American rights activist known as a successful strategist, tactician, and negotiator. Starting in 1960, he helped resolve several important disputes between Native Americans and state and federal officials. Adams was born on May 16, 1943 to an Assiniboine family on the Fort Peck Indian...

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To Take Shape and Meaning: Form and Design in Contemporary American Indian Art

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To Take Shape and Meaning: Form and Design in Contemporary American Indian Art

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book published by North Carolina Museum of Art

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Organized by guest curator Nancy Strickland Fields (Lumbee), director/curator of the Museum of the Southeast American Indian at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, the upcoming exhibition To Take Shape and Meaning: Form and Design in Contemporary American Indian Art features works by 75 Indigenous artists from over 50 tribes throughout the United States and Canada, including eight from North Carolina.

To Take Shape and Meaning brings together a wide range of Indigenous world views, ideas, experiences, traditions, cultures, and media and emphasizes the continuity and evolution of Native arts, both collective and individual expressions of Native America. The exhibition, composed exclusively of 3-D artworks, includes baskets made of blown glass, cars transformed into works of art, and cutting-edge fashion ensembles embellished with elaborate beadwork and feathers. This project supports the NCMA's ongoing goal of presenting expansive and inclusive art historical narratives in all aspects of the Museum and of bringing in contemporary artists whose works focus on themes that are particularly relevant to the concerns of the current moment.

"For thousands of years, Native artists have manipulated their materials into fantastic expressions of art. The contemporary artists featured in the show are among the most acclaimed in their genres and are credited with pushing their art forms in ways that retain meaning and continue to evolve culture." -Nancy Strickland Fields, Guest Curator

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Tickets Tickets are on sale now! Free for Members $20 Adults, $17 Seniors age 65 and older, $14 Youth ages 7-18, free for children 6 and under and college students Learn more about Membership https...

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I haven't seen it but getting a lot of acclaim.

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The Best 10 Earth Day Podcasts to Unlock Your Green Side (Podcasts List)

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The Best 10 Earth Day Podcasts to Unlock Your Green Side (Podcasts List)

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Podcasts pair very well with nature. Don’t you just love bringing your favorite podcast with you outside for a walk, to sit under a tree, or to hang out at the park?

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Discover the Best Podcasts | Discover Pods

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Not that every day shouldn't be earthday, but now that April is officially upon us, it's time we look at what podcasts have to offer up.

Podcasts pair very well with nature. Don't you just love bringing your favorite podcast with you outside for a walk, to sit under a tree, or to hang out at the park? One of my favorite activities when I'm in a rut, creatively, is going on a podcast walk. I stick my AirPods in and set out on an outdoor adventure with zero destination in mind.

I listen to whatever's in my queue. After just a few minutes of hearing from my favorite hosts and creators, ideas start flowing. On this Earth Day, let's connect the two.

Why we Celebrate Earth Day and the History of Earth Day

Ironically, we celebrate EarthDay because climate activists and Richard Nixon got on a bit of an environmental kick in the late 1960s. So, the history of EarthDay is a little weird. The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970 and by the end of that year, the Nixon administration had created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and passed the Clean Air Act.

Environmental degradation and the world's biodiversity have to be crashing pretty hard for the environmental movement to team up with Richard Nixon. Have environmental issues improved much since then?

Well, we are certainly using more renewable sources of energy and there is an official government organization devoted to problems like air pollution. So maybe future generations have a chance?

These podcasts ought to help us answer some of these pressing questions.

On to The Best EarthDay Podcasts For Your Normal Rotation

While you can find a podcast on pretty much any topic these days, including some fantastic science podcasts generally (let me know if you need any recommendations), in this blog post, I want to highlight podcasts that focus on climate change, the earth, sustainability, and similar topics. Earth Day is here! Let's celebrate with some audio.

If you like audio fiction mixed with hope, this show is for you. It imagines a world in which we've radically reduced carbon emissions and saved ourselves from a climate catastrophe. The year is 2050. Do you think it's possible? Listen to find out!

How does food fit into the climate and sustainability discussion? Climavores looks into food systems and human consumption habits via this weekly chat show with journalists Tamar Haspel and Mike Grunwald. Learn about how wheat, a vital crop to so many diets, also has some pretty rough climate problems such as causing soil degradation.

Amy Westervelt is an award-winning investigative journalist who looks into what she calls "true crimes about climate change." In her latest series, which dropped both on the Drilled and Damages podcast feeds, Westervelt looks into what happened when Guyanese government officials announced they'd struck oil 40 miles offshore. The show looks at what oil colonialism looks like in the 21st century, and why everyone should care.

Curious about green tech? Still TBD is a solutions-oriented podcast from brothers Matt and Sean Ferrell, who discuss electric vehicles, renewable energy, smart technology, and how all of these impact our lives. Recently, Matt and Sean discussed how the future is... worms? Matt's popular YouTube channel Undecided, which explores how sustainable and smart technologies impact our lives, has more than a million followers. Still TBD brings his smart and creative reporting and storytelling straight to your ears.

There's a lot of doom and gloom when it comes to the climate crisis. Americans like to bounce between optimism and pessimism on a pretty regular basis. It's something of a staple of the United States.

But what tools do we have to actually do something about it? On A Matter of Degrees, hosts Dr. Leah Stokes and Dr. Katharine Wilkinson discuss current events with a bend towards action, like reducing reliance on fossil fuels like natural gas.

Meet leaders in the climate justice movement, such as Marina Anderson, deputy director of the Sustainable Southeast Partnership, and learn how they are fighting the impacts of the climate crisis.

But where are the young people? You know, the people who are hopefully gonna live on this planet as it warms up... Right here! This show is a youth-centered podcast based in climate ground zero, AKA Miami, Florida. House on Fire brings you intersectional and intergenerational conversations with scientists, activists, artists, and more about how to become active in the climate crisis movement. If you're looking to get involved, this show will be right up your alley.

Need news about climate change? Need it fast? TILclimate, the award-winning show from MIT,will give it to you. Each episode focuses on one topic and tells you what you need to know about it as it relates to the climate crisis and what you can do about it.

How does the world of business factor into the climate crisis? Climate Rising from Harvard Business School brings business and policy leaders together to share insights about what business have done, are currently doing, and can do in the future to combat climate change. Where should companies be located? How should they make purchasing decisions? Where should their product roadmaps be focused on? Climate Rising explores these questions and more.

When we refer to "the great outdoors," what do we really mean? Hosts Faith E. Briggs and Addie Thompson are athletes, environmental advocates, and activities. On The Trail Ahead, they speak with folks from all walks of life about what the outdoors means to them. Part of that discussion is focused on environmental sustainability, but also on equal access to being and enjoying "the great outdoors."

Humans "use" the natural world in a number of ways. Outside/In explores how, mixing powerful storytelling and reporting to cover topics like hiking, sledding, driving, worms, and so much more. Each episode investigates a topic and shares reflections on how we depict nature. Curious about competitive sled dog racing and how it relates to the climate? Outside/In has got you covered.

Conclusion

This may be where we are ending today, but it isn't really the conclusion. Get out there and volunteer. Continue to recycle. Pick up a bit of extra litter in your day to day life. Start to compost. Swap out a plastic bottle for a metal flask. Learn something about the endangered species act.

There are a myriad of activities we can collectively do to save our oceans and the planet. Including listening to the relevant podcasts and vetting your resources. Don't let EarthDay be something we only think about during the spring equinox. It can be something we take part in each and every day.

Happy Earth Day 2023! I hope these podcasts help you celebrate this planet and also expose you to some stories, people, and opportunities you may not have been aware of previously. Happy listening.

Arielle Nissenblatt Contributor

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The Best 10 EarthDay Podcasts To Unlock Your Green Side - Discover the Best Podcasts | Discover Pods

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Every day should be EarthDay, but now that it's officially upon us, podcasts have a lot to offer their audiences looking to unlock their greener interests.

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Seizing Freedom: A podcast on Black liberation, progress & joy (Podcast)

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Seizing Freedom: A podcast on Black liberation, progress & joy (Podcast)

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Freedom gets built up over time—through a billion tiny, everyday acts. It’s there in the chance to enlist and fight for a cause. It’s there in the effort to reunite families torn apart by the cruelty of slave trading. It’s there in the right to learn to read or found a church or decide how you want to make a living. And it’s there in the insistence on the legal recognition of the right to do all these things.

That’s the freedom you’ll hear about on this podcast, and you’ll hear about it directly from the people who seized it. All of the stories on this show are drawn from archives of voices from American history that have been muted time and time again.

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Freedom gets built up over time-through a billion tiny, everyday acts. It's there in the chance to enlist and fight for a cause. It's there in the effort to reunite families torn apart by the cruelty of slave trading. It's there in the right to learn to read or found a church or decide how you want to make a living. And it's there in the insistence on the legal recognition of the right to do all these things.

That's the freedom you'll hear about on this podcast, and you'll hear about it directly from the people who seized it. All of the stories on this show are drawn from archives of voices from American history that have been muted time and time again.

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A podcast on Black liberation, progress & joy | Seizing Freedom

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Highlighting true stories of Black people's fight for liberation, progress & joy from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement & beyond. Seizing Freedom illustrates the myriad ways Black people have sought & defined their own freedom in spite of the monumental forces at work to keep them from it.

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Dare to Lead with Brene Brown: Ruchika Tulshyan on Inclusion on Purpose (Podcast)

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Dare to Lead with Brene Brown: Ruchika Tulshyan on Inclusion on Purpose (Podcast)

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If you come across Ruchika Tulshyan’s new book and find yourself dismissively thinking, “Another DEI book?” you do so at your own peril — and privilege. Inclusion on Purpose: An Intersectional Approach to Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work is a transformative book. In it, Ruchika, a journalist and inclusion strategist, centers the experience of women of color and provides a framework of intentional actions — on both the individual and the organizational level — to neutralize workplace bias and foster environments that are diverse, equitable, and inclusive. As Ruchika says in her book, inclusion is the most important leadership trait today — and one that can be learned through awareness, intention, and regular practice.

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Brené Brown: Hi, everyone I'm Brené Brown, and this is Dare to Lead. Oh man, I have such a beautiful conversation for you today, I am talking to a very singular, Ruchika Tulshyan, she is an award-winning inclusion strategist and speaker, she's the founder of Candour, which is an inclusion strategy practice and we're talking about her new book, which, Oh my God, I love, Inclusion on Purpose: An Intersectional Approach to Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work. You know why I love it? It's so actionable. It's so tactical. It's practical, and so often we talk about organizational behavior change or we talk about individual behavior change, but Ruchika does something that is so powerful, she talks about both, she talks about what can I do and then what systems can we build within the organization and how we will never have systems that can change our culture in terms of belonging and in representation and inclusion and equity, if we don't have people who've got power and privilege within organizations, making individual transformations and I loved this conversation. She's just one of my favorite people to talk to, so I'm glad you're here. It's an important conversation and I'm just... I'm grateful for it.

[music]

BB: All right. Before we jump into the conversation, let me tell you more about Ruchika. She again, is the author of Inclusion on Purpose: An Intersectional Approach to Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work. This is from MIT Press. She is the founder of Candour, which is an inclusion strategy practice, a former international business journalist, she is now a regular contributor to the New York Times and Harvard Business Review. She writes often on workplace equity and inclusion, Ruchika, you may remember, she's been on Dare to Lead because she co-wrote just an incredible paradigm shifting article called "Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome" for HBR with Jodi Ann Burey. The article was among the top read articles in HBR history. It's so amazing. We'll put a link to it on the episode page. I am very excited that she's here, she is raising a feminist son who is five, she's a Singaporean foodie who has lived in four different countries... Oh, we didn't talk about chicken and rice, I really wanted to talk to her about chicken and rice, which is like... If you've been to Singapore, the chicken and rice, whoa in those open market, oh my God, so good.

BB: Let's jump in and we'll learn something together, it's a powerful conversation.

[music]

BB: Ruchika, welcome to Dare to Lead.

Ruchika Tulshyan: Thank you so much for having me again, Brené, this is so exciting.

BB: You're just going to be one of our regulars, which I would love.

RT: That means so much to me.

BB: Okay. I want to start with, because we were talking about this before we started recording the podcast. Tell me about your name.

RT: Yeah, my name Ruchika Tulshyan. Ruchika means "interesting" in Sanskrit. So Ruchi is actually "your interest," if you have an interest in life, like a hobby. Which I have to say, I grew up hating my name and I desperately wished that my mom had chosen a different one and I experimented with different versions of it in college or university, as it's called in the UK, where I was, I went by Chika, because I thought that was something fun and a short, easy pronunciation, and then as we got ready for the book, there was a moment where I really thought, is there a shorter version or is there something else that I should go by... Maybe I should just go by Ruchika T maybe looking at the list of names on business non-fiction, there's very few names that are unfamiliar in the Anglo-Saxon context, and ultimately it felt a little bit like a brave decision because my hope is... I know I'm going to be one of the few. My good friend Deepa Purushothaman also had a business book come out on the same day, but we're still one of the very few. But hopefully, not for long.

BB: Hopefully not for long. If the world puts this book that you've just written, Inclusion on Purpose into practice, we'll start to see great representation and inclusivity on those book jackets.

RT: I hope so.

BB: I hope so too. You know it's really interesting, this is not why we're talking, but because you brought up the title list, it's so interesting to me having written a non-fiction business book that the reaction was women write business books for women, and men write business books for everyone. Have you struggled at all with the pigeonholing of "Oh women's leadership."

RT: I mean, not only that, but to write about intersectional feminism, to write about women of color, and essentially literally be told if you extrapolate that the way it's like women write for women, men write for everyone. It's also white people write for everyone, people of color only write for your community, so there's definitely been that. I almost knew that something like that would happen with my first book, I remember, I wrote about the diversity advantage about women in the workplace, women's leadership back when I was naive, and I thought if I write a playbook on how to have more gender balanced workplaces, everyone's going to do it. I'll do the research, I'll put the numbers out in front of everyone, the world economy could have 12 trillion dollars if we had more gender representation, and I remember meeting this very senior executive, banking executive, and he said, "Oh, wonderful. You wrote this book, I can't wait to give it to my wife. She's a stay-at-home mom." And that was what I was not prepared for. Where I am right now, I'm prepared. And what makes me happy, what makes me excited is that there are people now coming out of the woodwork really truly saying, "Thank you for writing this book, I don't know if it was intended for me or not, but I needed to read it." Either as a cis white man or a white woman.

RT: And that means a lot, but I will say my number one sort of every moment that has felt overwhelming over the past six plus weeks since the book came out has been when a woman of color has written to me and said, "Thank you, thank you for putting into words, what I am dealing with."

BB: Oh my God, and you do. And you just...

RT: Thank you.

BB: Yeah. It's so actionable, which is really rare in this field, sometimes it's so actionable, it's like you speak directly to the reader's heart, you engage the reader's mind, you tell great stories, and then you get to tactical actionable. What do I do different? An hour from now. And that's power. Okay, I want to get into the book. Before we get into the book, I want to know your story. Will you tell us your story?

RT: I will... Can I put a pin on what you just said because I really want to get this out?

BB: Yes.

RT: Last week for the first time, my agent is an amazing young woman of color, Maile Beal, and for the first time in two years, because it's a two-year anniversary since we shopped book proposal, she shared the rejections with me, I got 30 rejections for the book, and it was an act of generosity where she said, "I'm not going to share the rejections" or the passes as she was kind enough to call them, and she's like, "I'm not going to share them with you while we're going through the process, unless there's something very, very insightful that you can use to make your proposal better, let's just continue on," and then when finally the book did go into auction and I signed with my publisher, MIT Press, I asked her at that point, "should I have a look?" And she said, "Don't let anything derail you." But last week was the two-year anniversary since the book proposal had been shopped, so I said, "Can I have a look at it?" And what she shared with me overwhelmingly, was that A, that there isn't that much that's new here, some of it is too kind of practical and it isn't an inspiring and big picture enough.

RT: And of course, there were some that were like, "We already signed with another woman of color, so,"... [chuckle]

BB: "Oh, we've checked the woman of color box, but thank you. When it opens up again in a year. If you're the first in... " Oh my God. [laughter] I laugh to not cry because I know it's true, I know it's true.

RT: Yeah, so I have a campaign. I'm going to actually put some of those words out, I'm just going to share it with folks, obviously not identify anyone, because my style is not about shaming and naming, but I want folks to know, please continue writing your books and you are going to... You're going to get rejections, you're going to get people who don't understand you and don't understand your vision, and you have got to keep going.

BB: We're going to come back to your story, but I have to just jump on this and say, we get so many hundreds of books across our desk, and hundreds of books on inclusion, representation, diversity, and what's so funny is my team saying, "We know you love Ruchika, but this book ticks all the boxes that you have for what you want to talk about," and they said "It's written from lived experience, and it's tactical and practical. And you can be different tomorrow after you read it."

RT: Wow.

BB: And so it's the exact opposite of what was in the rejection letters.

RT: I may have to fall down, [chuckle] because that just means so much to me hearing it from you.

BB: And I'm not a publisher. I'm actually someone who spends 90% of my time in organizations.

RT: Yes.

BB: Give me a break. This book matters.

RT: Thank you. And can I say I felt that way? Well, I felt that way when I read your book, and actually I was traveling to promote my book, and the wonderful gentleman next to me was reading your last book. [chuckle] Atlas of the Heart. And he said, "Oh, this book is wonderful. And clear is kind." And he said, "Do you know any other books like this... Do you have any recommendations? This is what I ask people," and I felt a little bit cheeky, but I said, If you loved that, if you love anything [laughter] by Brené Brown, I have a book for you that I can give to you, so I pulled it out of my suitcase and I gave it to him. If he's listening, I hope you're well, thank you for asking about my story, and I think what I will say about my story and what I hope folks recognize when it comes to inclusion work is the lived experiences of so many people who do this work is so different and diverse, and therefore, that's why this work is complex and nuanced. So I grew up in Singapore, which is almost 80% Chinese, and I was a minority brown person, an Indian person, and I grew up in a very conservative Indian family.

RT: So I had never seen anyone who looked like me, a woman who looked like me working outside the home, so even today, until date, literally yesterday, there will be times where I'm doing something for the book, I'll be doing a video shoot first thing, I'll be like, "This is wild. I never, ever thought this was something that was even available for me," and then I'll have those moments of panic where I have a five-year-old son where I'll say, "Oh my goodness, whose going to make him fresh hot food today?" Because that's what I grew up with it, that's the paradigm I had. So that's definitely informed my work a lot growing up, truly not both from your own community, being told "There's no room for someone who looks like you and as a woman, your number one sort of goal in life is to get married and have several children, and that's what it is." And then to then come out into the world, and I really wanted to reel against that, so I did my undergrad in the UK, I came here for grad school, became a journalist because I've always really truly believed in the power of stories, and I know that sounds trite, but really to the point where I think story...

RT: We know that story moves us, right, the data, the facts can only take you so far. It's the stories that move us. It's the lived experience, and then also experiencing a lot of the things I talk about in the book, which is again, not egregious acts of being called a racial slur or fortunately, never having to deal with egregious sexual harassment or anything like that in the workplace, but it's those subtle, seemingly subtle acts, the having your name mispronounced, being invisible, being overlooked, being talked over, that's what I wanted to capture in this book, there are some amazing books, I know your good friend Tarana Burke, there are some amazing books about what those really horrific acts of exclusion bias, discrimination, racism, look like. And then, this is a spectrum, there's a lot of things along the way that we experience that we're just supposed to toughen up and deal with, which I know women, white women also have dealt with, and so my hope is, as folks read this book, they can feel a bit like, "Okay, well, this puts in towards the feelings that I had, and now I can bring this up to my manager or have a discussion about this, and hopefully a safe space."

RT: In the past, I was told that I'm never supposed to speak about these things, or they don't matter, it's no big deal, like I was told in the corporate world.

BB: Oh I'm sure. Or it's really not happening.

RT: Oh, the gaslighting.

BB: Yeah. "I don't understand how you see that that's just not true." Yeah. How long were you in Singapore? I want to understand a little bit. Okay, how long were you in Singapore? Were you there until university?

RT: Yes, and you will notice this about me, I do struggle to talk about myself, it's very, very hard, and when you... I'm talking to the world's number one shame and vulnerability researcher an expert in the world, and I will say there's a deep amount of shame and a deep amount of... If I can impress you with my mind, if I can impress you with all the research I throw at you, then hopefully you won't ask me any hard questions about who I really am.

BB: I mean, raise your hand right now if you're listening and you relate to that, Barrett is in the office in the podcast space, and she's like. Yeah. Yeah, so. I'm already impressed...

RT: Thank you.

BB: By your work, but I'm also really impressed with you, so I'm going to go back... So Singapore. Until university, what did you study in university?

RT: I studied politics and history, one of the things that I'm very fascinated by and would love to eventually come back to is colonialism and studying how colonial movements had such... It's so linked to the empire and I, specifically largely studied the British empire, but how much what we see in the world today is so much related to the legacy of whether it's slavery, whether it's colonialism, and we have this idea that we've moved past all of that, but actually, we're still living in it, so I studied politics and history, I think a big part of my life has been defined as being the other and the different everywhere I've gone, I mean in my own country, I was a minority in the UK, I certainly was a racial minority, and I've been one here in the United States as well, I had a short stint where I was a journalist in Mumbai for about three months where again, I wasn't the minority anymore, but obviously culturally I was because I'd never lived in India before that, and so that experience, how you become so aware... For good and bad, it's almost a survival mechanism, how should I show up in this room and make sure that I won't draw too much attention to me, sometimes.

RT: It's a survival life or death sort of situation, and others, it's also that you start to forget who you are, or you tell yourself these things are not important about you anymore, so even now, when I remember in job interviews when I was asked, "Tell me about yourself," I didn't know what to say. I still don't sometimes.

BB: Oh, you've got the right name for sure. I just have to say, yeah. [laughter]

RT: Thank you, mom.

BB: Yeah, if it wasn't that, we'd have to find the Sanskrit term for compelling, because that would be your name, maybe.

RT: Thank you.

BB: And I get wanting to have a name on a spine that doesn't make people shake their head right away before they even give you a chance. That's what the whole book is about, I think. But.

RT: Brené can I tell you, I walked into... And again, not to name and shame, but to really put into context what folks deal with. I walked into my book launch at a large venue and both my first and my last name were misspelled, my own book launch, I can't make this up. [chuckle] You're giving me the look. [laughter]

BB: Yeah, all I can say is I'm deeply sorry. That you deserved way better than that.

RT: We all do.

BB: We all do, yeah. Yeah, it's real. And it's real, and it's so real, I'll tell you, I don't know why I'm making this connection, but we'll unravel it together. If we get a proposal from an external potential partner, and my name is misspelled, which happens... What percentage, Barrett of the time do you think that happens 40%, 50%?

RT: You've got to be kidding me. You've got to be kidding.

BB: Yeah, maybe 30%, 40%. It goes directly into the trash can.

RT: Wow.

BB: We don't even review it beyond that page, because if that doesn't matter to you, then maybe that's what I really loved about the book, is that there is so much beyond what we see if we don't have the right lens, and your book gives us a lens, it's like the X-ray glasses, the Superman X-ray glasses, it gives us a way to see what's unseen and who's being served by it and who's being actually hurt by it. I make up and I'll ask you that that was hurtful to you, to walk in and see your name misspelled.

RT: It was so hurtful. Every book is obviously different, and you've written a number, but every book is very personal, and I know you wrote yours during the pandemic, I wrote mine during the pandemic. I wrote it with a three-year-old at home, and I didn't see anyone else. Anyway, a book process is a solitary project, but for a lot of the stories, I was basically talking to women of color on Zoom, and we'd have this hour, two hour, three-hour-long, very emotional, painful, difficult, processing session when I wrote the book, and now it's out in the world and it's visible, and of course, I have, anyway, gotten pretty comfortable with being seen less, and I prefer to be more invisible. In fact, if there was a way for this book to be out without me being the center... I'd be very happy.

BB: Me too.

RT: Very happy. I actually, I'm very curious how you navigate that. There are people... And I've met now a couple of people who say you clearly are someone... You do this because you are passionate, you love it, and I absolutely do. And I just don't know how I can make sense of it. I want everyone to have this message, I want people to read other people's stories in this book, and in my heart, I'm a journalist. And yet when I get asked to speak, I just don't know how to... What do you tell yourself, how do you navigate that having to be center of attention on the very important work that you do, but also learning to get comfortable with it?

BB: It's a terrible time to ask me because right now I'm getting ready to head out on a three-month sabbatical, the first in my career, because I've done it, and I think I've done it in a way that I'm proud of, and it's taken a toll on my life. And so, I would not be being truthful if I could tell you that I know exactly how to do it well while taking care of the things that matter the most to me, which are my kids, my family, my health, my joy. So, I don't know right now. I think we do a pretty good job of it. I have a great team, a lot of support, but the world is a hard place right now, people are not okay, and the force right now, the force with which projection finds itself on public people right now is at an all-time cruel high. And so it's very difficult, I think, for people like me and people like you and other people I know who can't get their work done unless they walk through the world with a lot of their receptors open, because we're trying to understand the heartbeat of the world, we're trying to keep our finger on the pulse, be open to what people are feeling and thinking and how they're being changed, and those very things that we have to keep open in order to do our work well, leave us very vulnerable to the projection that's happening in the world right now. And so I don't know exactly how to do it, but what I can tell you is, you're not alone in trying to find that answer.

RT: Thank you, Brené. And can I just say that I'm really proud of you for... You don't need me to be proud of you, but I'm so proud of you for taking that sabbatical, because I would say that is... There are various culture shocks that I had moving to the United States 10 years ago, probably the biggest one is the lack of joy and space and time off, and boundaries that I see here. I mean, in Singapore, one of the best things about living in Singapore and working in Singapore, by the way, long work hours, other things are tough, but every lunch time, you go out and eat with your colleagues. This is obviously pre-pandemic, but you know not to schedule meetings between 12:00 and 2:00, unless there's some discussion of what you're going to be eating. And over here, it's like, you have a meeting 11:45, then you have a meeting at 12:30, then you have a meeting at 12:45, 1:00, and it's the lack of having space for that creativity for us to do our best work, for us to show up in our relationships and to ourselves, with a level of kindness. It's no wonder we're operating from a deficit, it's no wonder we're sort of spreading that forward in the world, we're not being kind to each other, because we're not being kind to ourselves because we're constantly operating from zero.

BB: That's it. I mean, that's it. Yeah, I'll let you know I'll probably lose my mind the first couple of weeks, but I don't think so, I'm like, I don't think so this time. All right, I want to jump in because I have so many questions. So the title of the book is Inclusion on Purpose: An Intersectional Approach To Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work. One thing I want to do to set the table for the Dare to Lead listeners, we're just coming off of a podcast where we talked about some new research out in my T-Sloan Management Review, Don and Charlie Sull, and they're not the only researchers that have found a toxic corporate culture is the strongest predictor of industry-adjusted, meaning across industry, attrition. So the great resignation really driven by toxic culture. And then the thing that we just talked about on Dare to Lead was from an employee perspective, how do employees define toxicity in a culture? And I want to remind everyone going into this conversation with Ruchika, that number one, disrespectful. Number two, not 25, not seven, not 10. Number two, non-inclusive. Number three, unethical, which to me is related to non-inclusive, cut-throat. And number five, abusive.

BB: So you think to yourself, "Oh, another DEI book" at your own peril. And I might add, at the protection of your own privilege and your own comfort. But this is why I love this book; this is the right time for this book. We have just incontrovertible, empirical evidence that the lack of a feeling of belonging is driving people to leave their jobs. And what I can tell you as someone who's studied belonging for 20 years, that's because we're neuro-biologically hard-wired for belonging, and in the absence of love and belonging, there is always suffering, and I can tell you that it's very rare that our lack of a sense of belonging is driven especially in organizations and our work life by big, obvious affronts. The lack of a sense of belonging is death by a thousand paper cuts. And so I want to get into the book, because the first thing I noticed about this book was in the table of contents, which I think this is critical. You have divided the book up into individual behaviors that drive inclusion, and organizational behaviors that drive inclusion. Tell me about the decision to look at this from a micro and a macro perspective.

RT: It is absolutely impossible to reach and create any sort of sense of belonging if people with privilege and power don't take personal responsibility for it.

BB: Say it again. Say it again, say it again.

RT: It is impossible for anyone to create a true culture of belonging without people with privilege and power, taking personal responsibility and action for inclusion.

BB: Boom. Keep going.

RT: Thank you. And so, for me, the part that I think stood out as I've been doing... I've been fortunate to advise some really awesome organizations about inclusion in the workplace, and what I found time and time again is, when companies and leaders focused on, "Oh, we're just going to throw a lot of money at this problem because we have it. We'll do an audit, we'll run a big engagement survey," and then when you spoke to individuals who had privilege and power, we know close to 80% of corporate America, C-level certainly, but actually even when you get to Senior VP and above, is made up of white men. So indeed, I work with a lot of white men in the work that I do, and again and again, what I would hear is, it's an organizational effort. And we as an organization care about DEI. And then I'd say, "But what about you? What do you do?" And there was a little bit of like, "Well, the engagement survey." Well, and I have to say, "No, hang on. But what do you do? What are you doing to understand the issues? Are you reading? Are you listening? Are you asking questions? Are you getting out of the way?" My favorite chapter in the book is about credit and amplification and making room for people who've historically been silenced, and then getting the heck out of the way.

RT: That's what this is about. And so, the decision was very deliberate, because honestly, if you read the first part of the book and then please read the last part of the book, which is more really at a global, technological level, I kind of wanted to look out into the future, gaze off into the sunset. But if you skip the organizational part, but you walk away saying, "I really understand what I need to do personally," for me, that would be success. I hope you read the whole book, I hope you read the whole book, even if you're not a manager or leader. If you're a person out in the world today, I hope you understand how much the responsibility falls with you. And I try be honest about my own privilege. I want to be honest, I don't want to say, "I'm a woman of color, I've had these terrible experiences, all I want to do is tell you how you are terrible because you're white or you're a man, or you're someone with other modes of privilege, but I have none." And that's not what this book is about...

BB: Mm-hmm, it's not.

RT: This book is also doing the work personally too.

BB: Okay. Fact check me here. I'm going to say something, and you say, true or false.

RT: Okay.

BB: You in?

RT: Let's go. Let's go.

BB: Okay. Deep, wide, lasting meaningful change will require both individual behavioral change and organizational behavioral change. True or False?

RT: No, true and. True and.

BB: And?

RT: What I really don't want folks to do is feel like, "Oh well, someone at HR is going to take care of this.

BB: Yes!

RT: And I think that's what happens very often.

BB: For sure.

RT: And what people don't understand is, in every moment, in almost every interaction, you have an opportunity to choose kindness, you have an opportunity to invite other people, you have an opportunity to be human, you have an opportunity to be a better listener, to be more empathetic, and that is what drives organizational culture. And during this great resignation, we're recognizing that "I am not going to go back into the office, I'm not going to commute three hours for your free snacks and a beer keg in the room," or whatever it is. If I am leaving and risking myself, and risking my life, my health, and going out into an office environment right now, the only thing that's going to make me do that is belonging and feeling like I will be seen and heard and valued.

BB: And valued, yeah. I left this thinking to myself, best case scenario, individual behavioral change and organizational behavioral change. So, systemic change and individual change. However, if you had a critical mass, this is like the big question I have, a critical mass of leaders taking personal responsibility for personal change, I think you would see change.

RT: I've seen it. I've seen it.

BB: I've seen it too.

RT: I'm sure you have. I'm sure you can think of those leaders you've worked with, who literally said, "I'm going to work against the organizational resistance." I would say the biggest reason I wrote this book is because I would meet those people and I would say, that's the secret sauce, the secret sauce is you as a very well-respected, C-Suite, usually white male leader, you're putting everything on the line to talk about diversity, equity and inclusion when you didn't need to, where your privilege would have protected you.

BB: Tell me about the bridge framework. I love this. When we talk about personal behavioral change, I think this is so helpful.

RT: Yeah, the bridge framework is really derived a little bit from the idea of growth mindset, and I think one of the reasons why I wanted to have a framework that talked about an inclusion mindset is essentially this idea that a lot of us have certainly been pre-conditioned, whether it's the media, whether it's your upbringing, whether it's where you grew up, there are ideas that we all have had and we've been pre-conditioned with, and the biggest resistance to creating a more inclusive environment is the idea, "Well, this is just how I am." And I talk about this all the time. I grew up in a country where, to this day, homosexuality is criminalized. I didn't grow up knowing a single person who was openly gay, and I'm certainly poorer for it, I feel sad that that is my reality, and I'm so excited and proud that that's not going to be the reality for my son, we're based here in Seattle. Of course, frightening what's happening in other places in this country. And that meant that I had to grow and I had to change and I had to learn. And that is the reason why I created the bridge framework, because I think if we all come into the workplace with...

RT: "Well, we don't know how to interact with people who are different than us." We're not willing to learn, we're not willing to be uncomfortable, we're going to be keeping defensive. Or, the last part of the bridge framework is, expect change takes time, or we're just going to say that, "Oh, we participated in this one DEI forum and now everything's going to change." I really wanted to give language to what some of the hardest parts of this work is: It's defensiveness, it's growing from mistakes, it's knowing that you're going to make mistakes and being okay to be uncomfortable. Those sorts of things are really important. I want to say, and I've said it before, but I want to say it to your listeners. When I moved here as an immigrant 10 years ago, one of the things that really struck me in this big, powerful country I was lucky to have visited before I actually moved, but in this big, powerful country, as folks outside the United States sometimes have this view, I met a lot of people who literally didn't know what to do with me. They were like... I spent time in Atlanta as well. "Are you black? Are you white? Are you...

RT: You're clearly neither, so what are you and how come you speak English?" And all of these sorts of questions. And then in 2015, I read research which changed my mind, and I cited... All the time I cited in the book. 91% of the average American, white American social network is white. Three-quarters of white Americans don't have a single friend of color. And the first time that the average American interacts with someone meaningfully, meaningfully, with someone who's different than them, is in the workplace. So of course, so many of us, due to centuries, decades of social policy, segregated neighborhoods and schools and all sorts of other things... For me here in Seattle, it was a big shock when I realized that I would have to make very deliberate, intentional choices on where to live and raise my brown son, because there are so many neighborhoods which are literally all white. And so that really clicked for me when I read that research and when I compared it with all the experiences I'd had in all the years prior to reading that research, it made so much of sense. And so, when I created this framework, my hope was we can all say, maybe we don't have the tools.

RT: Maybe we weren't given the tools, maybe we weren't given the tools to, for example, ask people what their pronouns are, or we weren't given the tools to, if someone tells us about an experience that makes us uncomfortable, and we're the dominant group people, and our experience has always been centered, then maybe it makes us uncomfortable and we don't have the tools to deal with that discomfort. And what I hope folks can take from this book, especially from the bridge framework is, that is exactly, that is precisely what we all need, that is where you grow and you make change. You're uncomfortable, and it sucks, and it's hard, and we just cannot afford not to do this work.

BB: I love this. Let's go through it. So B, number one, so it's bridge. I love an acronym. Be uncomfortable, R, reflect on what you don't know. I, invite feedback. D, defensiveness doesn't help. G, grow from your mistakes, and E, expect that change takes time.

RT: Yeah.

BB: Be uncomfortable, reflect on what you don't know, invite feedback, defensiveness doesn't help, grow from your mistakes, expect that change takes time. I mean, this is basically it in an acronym. This is what in our parlance we would call daring leadership, lean into discomfort and vulnerability, and armor up. I love the way you frame this. I want to talk about something I flagged here underlined dog-eared, there's two things that I do not want to get away, I don't want this to end, I don't want this to end period, but I definitely don't want to end without talking about this. You're talking about using privilege to advance women of color. It's a huge issue.

RT: You know Brené, not only is it a huge issue, but my big concern is some feedback I've gotten about this book is... Well, you weren't talking about intersectionality as a whole, and I have to remind folks, the term intersectionality was coined in 1989 by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw to center black women and yes, I'm very glad that the use of it and the terminology and the importance of considering other marginalized identities is very important, but accessibility rights without centering women of color fall short. LGBTQ rights without centering of women of color falls short. In many cases, they're even harmful, if we do not center women of color who also have those other intersecting identities, it's controversial, by the way. I have received pushback on this, and in this I turn to these wonderful words that Reshma Saujani who wrote, Pay Up, her new book, and she said to me...

RT: Her book is on mothers, and she gets push back, why not caregivers, why do you use mothers, etcetera... That's a gender-biased term, etcetera, etcetera. And she said to me, "It's focus not exclusion." And that's exactly how I feel about my book, it's focus, I'm focusing women of color, and if people feel uncomfortable because they say, "Well, I'm not a woman of color, so this book isn't for me or I've been oppressed, too, and I'm not a woman of color, and this book isn't recognizing my oppression, again, we need to sit with that discomfort, you need to ask yourself why that makes you uncomfortable.

BB: Let me just go on record as saying, since we're going to invite controversy and just dig right in there, hey, white women, pick up a copy of the book because man, a history of betrayal between white women and women of color is so painful and such, again, a legacy of slavery, a legacy of colonialism, but this is a really important book for white women to read.

RT: Thank you.

BB: Yeah, I just want to say that right off the bat, because when we find ourselves in positions of power and privilege, and then we assume the power over structures that we fought to get there, that's just dirty. I'm sure there's an academic term for it, but it is just... You know what it is, it's a heartbreak, it's betrayal. And there's such a history of that between white women and women of color. Would you agree?

RT: Not only do I agree, but I also have to say, it doesn't have to be that way. It really doesn't, right, and we can do different... And there's... One of my favorite examples in the book, it's a reported story, so nobody knows if it's actually true or not, but it's the way Marilyn Monroe showed up to elevate and amplify Ella Fitzgerald, not by saying, "Ella, come join me on stage." This is when Ella Fitzgerald was relatively unknown, but Marilyn Monroe called up the club owner of a club, Mocambo, who they refused to have Ella Fitzgerald because reportedly, they didn't think she was glamorous enough, we don't know whether it's racism, whether it's something else, probably a combination of sort of that look that folks went for at that time, but essentially, Marilyn Monroe called up the owner and she said, "I will sit in the front row every day if you let Ella Fitzgerald play and sing, but I will not be on stage."

RT: We have to understand when we make this about, yes, there is opportunity to share your platform, but really what the new sort of focus needs to be, what inclusion really looks like is you use your platform to give another person a platform, and then you walk away, you let them shine. That's what this is about.

BB: Yeah, and I want to get very specific here in examples for people listening and saying, I just don't know about that, I can tell you that not only do I know about that individually, but organizationally, we have systems in place. I don't speak at events where there's disparity between what I make and women of color make. I won't go on a panel around a topic if a person that had the lived experience is better suited, if I get called to say, "Hey, come talk about this DEI belonging work." I'm like, "No, I can't do that. Here's a list of people I highly recommend." There are everyday actions that we can take that are not, "Hold my hand, I'll go with you," but, "I'll sit in the audience."

RT: I'll recommend your name and then I'll sit in the audience.

BB: Yeah, I'll recommend your name then I'll sit in the audience, and if you don't, I'm not coming, is a way, I think, to use your power. I think it's... And there's ways to take that kind of action from personal to systemic.

RT: Absolutely, and this is a longer conversation, and I know there are other points you wanted to make, but very quickly, I think our individualism and the capitalist structures that we unfortunately greedy capitalism that we operate in tell us there's only room for one, and there isn't.

BB: Scarcity.

RT: And that scarcity mindset is so exploitative and it actually creates so much of tension both between white women and women of color, and between different groups of women of color. One of the reasons, and I get asked this as well, "Why didn't you concentrate on Asian women? You're Indian, why not talk about South Asian or Brown or Indian women?" And I said because my dream is to build a coalition between women of color. As lofty as it is, it is to build a coalition. Yes, the challenges we face, the oppression we have faced is different, and it's what's kept apart, is what kept us apart, it's what creates mistrust and distrust and that sharp elbows mentality, and we are not going to topple these very entrenched, very harmful, very toxic systems without building coalition with each other.

BB: Yeah, and I think that sharp elbows are a tool of oppression, it's set up to work that way, right? It's set up to work that way.

RT: Absolutely.

BB: Yeah, scarcity. I love how you call it greedy capitalism. Just out of curiosity. I'm so curious because I always get stuck because I'm like, is overthrowing capitalism going to be my jam for this lifetime, or am I just going to work within the system that's here, because I probably don't know enough about economics to choose another one, but I could distinguish very well, between greedy capitalism and regular capitalism, but is all capitalism, do you think, greedy by definition?

RT: Look, I'm not an expert, but I will say from what I understand, the basis and the genesis of capital and folks listening from the London School of Economics, I know I have a degree from there, don't take away my degree for saying this, but the genesis of it really was to create enough that everyone got to eat, the idea was let's generate capital so that everyone has an opportunity to live a good life, and what we see right now is not that.

BB: What we see is an oligarchy.

RT: Yes, yes, we do.

BB: What we see is there's no enough.

[music]

BB: All right, two things we have to talk about because this was so helpful for me and really changed some of my behaviors, made me really aware... I love this whole idea of running inclusive meetings. Man, could this change things like... Just read this part, just get the book y'all, be brave, lean into your discomfort, read through the book, you'll get three or four actionable things that can make someone's life better.

RT: Life better.

BB: Yeah.

RT: Life better. I want to talk about life better. Yesterday, I was at a speaking thing where they asked me for photos of me at my last corporate job. Obviously, I just took vacation photos and sent it to them at that time, but gosh, it took me right back to those moments where I wasn't invited to social gatherings or I was overlooked, or I certainly dealt with harassment, and I just think folks had the opportunity to make my life better. Mine and others like me. That's what this work is about. I truly believe that everyone, that every life has an equal value and everyone has an opportunity, everyone should have an opportunity to thrive, if that's what you believe in your heart, in your mind, then there's the practice of being more inclusive in every moment can really change people's lives. That's what this is about. This is why I do this work. My dream is to own a winery, and when we solve exclusion and when we solve bias, hopefully in my lifetime, I'm going to be sitting in my winery sipping champagne.

BB: I want you to parallel path these goals.

RT: Thank you.

BB: Yeah.

RT: I'll try.

BB: I'll let the winery while you're overthrowing the patriarchy and white supremacy.

RT: I may not be coherent, but it is what it is.

BB: Yeah, that could help too, maybe. Here's what I love, can I read something to you from the book?

RT: Please.

BB: This is about inclusive meetings, so this is about interruption, which I see all the time, especially when I'm facilitating, I'm in a Fortune 50 company facilitating Dare to Lead, and I've seen this interrupting. This is what I love. "Interrupt the interrupters. Anyone, especially you, can interrupt people who interrupt women of color when they speak at a meeting. Some ways to do this politely are to say, "I'm sorry, I don't think she's finished," or, "You know what, I'd really like to hear her point of view first. Would you mind waiting your turn? Could you please not interrupt the current speaker?" So I'm looking at Barrett, because Barrett is usually with me, and she's on the other side of the laptop right now and... How often do we do that? "I'm sorry, I want to hear your contribution, but I don't want to hear your contribution until she's finished with her contribution."

BB: And just the feedback that we get from people in the corner of the room during the bio break, which is, "Nobody's ever really done that." I'm like, "Well, I already got my check."

[chuckle]

RT: That's the best thing.

BB: Yeah, but so this whole thing of not rescuing, not white savior, but saying, "I'd really like to hear what you have to add after she finishes."

RT: Yeah. And it changes cultures by the way, it has changed...

BB: A 100%.

RT: In some of the organizations I've worked with the first few times it's awkward, and again, depending on who you are reading this book, you may not be in the C-suite that if you say, "I'd really like to let her finish," folks will be like, "Yeah, of course you've got privilege and power in this room, of course you should. Of course, you have the right to interrupt someone interrupting someone else." So the first few times it is uncomfortable and then it becomes the norm. I've worked with teams where it's the norm now to say, "We don't interrupt other people here," it's literally like saying, there are a lot of cultures, and micro-cultures in organizations which are obviously very problematic and exclusionary, this is one that we could all do it. It would be amazing.

BB: And let's talk about for a second, I'm thinking about this quote from James Clear, which I have everywhere in my house, "We don't rise to our loftiest goals, we fall to our most broken systems."

RT: Yes.

BB: So one of the things that happens, I think when you take this work, I always think if you had a critical mass of people doing the work in your book, the systems would actually have no choice but to change, but then when the behaviors became part of the system, you've got a belonging train that A, everyone's on board; and B, you ain't going to stop. Then all of a sudden, the people not on that train, they've got to go.

RT: It's already happening. It's already happening when I teach my students at Seattle University. I'm taking a break right now, but every year, and I teach many seniors and many of the times it's, I'm not going to work at that organization, or we'll have a guest speaker come in. I remember when I was in journalism in grad school, and we'd have people from the New York Times and whatnot come in, and the questions we would ask were very different than when my students have a guest speaker, we've had guest speakers from the Seattle Times and all these big organizations. And folks, my students have no problems in asking, "What are your diversity numbers? Are there people of color there? What is the experience of people of color there?" And you can see sometimes guest speakers are going to be like, "Oh, well, our internship opens, whatever the day is," and then I'd had my students come to me and they're like, "Yeah, we're not applying."

BB: It's so true, I taught an MBA course last fall at UT Austin, and one of the students asked, "So what is it like there for the least powerful person in the room?"

RT: I love it.

BB: Dead silence.

RT: Love it.

BB: Yeah, yeah. Okay. This is last thing I want to ask you about. There's a lot of data in this. It's chapter six. I re-read it four times, I'm just going to read the chapter sub-heads because they're so good. "So money makes the world go round", then you talk about, "This is for every dollar that a white man makes," Asian women make 85 cents, white women make 77 cents, Black women make 61 cents, Native American women make 57 cents, and Latinx women make 54 cents. So then you encourage us to understand how racial disparities feed the pay gap. This is really great. Talk about money even if it's uncomfortable, these are whole sections in this chapter, you talk about how women of color are underpaid. And then... Oh, I love this, "Don't expect women of color to negotiate a way, pay inequality, that's not a micro job," but then here's this thing, you talk about why fixing the pay gap is mission critical. I'd never seen this before, and you know, Ruchika, I've read a lot of these books, disaggregate the data. I was like, "Whoa... "

RT: Yeah, I've come into organizations who are very proud of their pay audits and they're like, "Look, women make the same as men, and we have a female CEO," and then I'll say, "Have you run the data by race and gender?" And the answer usually is no. And when they do, women of color, the numbers, truly, it is horrifying and heartbreaking, and what I really try and tell folks is it's less... It is important, of course, and I've said this before as well, it's less... I care, of course, that you and I should get the same amount of money for doing the exact same job, and there's data that shows we don't. But then what I'm really interested in, what I think folks don't talk about enough is the opportunity gap between women of color and white women, and women of color and white men, and really also women of color and men of color, especially from, again, over-represented groups and I'm thinking technology Asian, Chinese and Indian men, for example.

RT: And that opportunity gap is a big issue, and what that means is who gets access to those top jobs where you can build wealth, where you can invest in the next generation... If you look at... I'm not a sports fan in general, but if you look at the wealth of most sports people, celebrities in the world, especially here in the United States, building wealth from the sports that they play is a very small part of their entire wealth. It's the...

BB: Oh, yeah. Sponsorships, endorsements...

RT: It's sponsorship, but it's also... Now, there's a great trend, and I'm loving Serena Williams sort of leading this, but there's also a trend in investing, in investing in companies and building sort of a new paradigm, and I just think so many of us in small ways and large ways, get denied those opportunities to get paid our full worth and have the opportunity to get to those lucrative positions, and that continues on systemic inequity and systemic generational lack of wealth.

BB: I love that you are not just talking about pay, because it's not just pay. It's access to generational life-changing opportunity.

RT: Which negotiation is not going to solve.

BB: No, that doesn't solve that.

RT: There's great research to show that we negotiate just as often as men. We have all the tools and tips for negotiating well in general. And a big part of it is that very painful line, which I still walk to this day, where I've had people say to me, "Your speaker fee shouldn't be that high. What do you bring to the table?" To this day. And then I have to do that dance of, "Do I accommodate? Do I change? But I notice you paid your white speaker this much." And it's a dance.

BB: I'll tell you this, my speaking fee is high, and I'll tell you how it got high. It got higher than what I was comfortable with, and I'll tell you the story of why.

RT: Please.

BB: I was at an event, and I was opening the event, and normally, when I'm at events now, I'm opening or closing. It's a great privilege. And I was opening this event, and I walked off stage and I ran into an agent, a speaking agent, and he said, "I knew my guys were not going to be able to open or close if you were here, so you got the pole position." And I said, "Yeah," and he said, "It's always tough to see you speak." And I said, "Why?" And he said, "Because you're opening or closing, and all my guys that are following you are making three or four times what you're making today." And I said, "What?" And he goes, "Yeah, I would lose my job for telling you this, but I know how much you made, and I'm just telling you that all the guys that follow you are making three to four times what you made today." And that was a bold, brave, inclusive move. For him...

RT: We need everyone to do that. We need everyone to... Whether you are hiring... I took this example out, but whether you're hiring a child care provider, which sadly, largely women of color, underpaid, exploitative industry, etc, etc... Whether you're doing that or whether you're hiring a speaker, or whether you're in charge of bringing in someone and you can help them... Even if you don't negotiate their salary directly with them, you can say, "I'm sure the recruiter said, the starting salary is blah, but I have the data that actually it's this, and please ask for this."

BB: That's right.

RT: That's all you need to do. This is it. It's hard and it's uncomfortable, and there are many reasons why the system was set up so that we were not supposed to talk about pay, right? I think there's a meme that people feel more comfortable talking about sex at work than money. We need to change that.

BB: We need to change that.

RT: So thank you for sharing that story.

BB: Yeah.

RT: Thank you for sharing that story, and it's very common, sadly.

BB: Just know, I got on the phone 30 seconds after that. I was like, "Whatever my speaking fee is, multiply it times three."

RT: Triple it. [chuckle]

BB: Yeah. And then the person who runs my speaking was like, "I told you that six months ago," and I was like, "Well, it just seems unreasonable to me, but I can't."

RT: Yes.

BB: "I can't do that. So that shit's over." I think you're amazing.

RT: Thank you, Brené.

BB: I think inclusion on purpose is as intentional as you are. Are you ready for the rapid fire?

RT: I am, and thank you for giving me so much of your time. It's very generous, and I know you're off on sabbatical soon, so thank you.

BB: It's really, really not only my pleasure, but I feel like a responsibility to get this great information to the world. It's too important.

RT: Thank you.

BB: All right, fill in the blank for me. Vulnerability is...

RT: Kind. Kindness.

BB: What's one piece of leadership advice that you've been given that's so remarkable, you need to share it with us, or so shitty, you need to warn us?

RT: Oh wow, this is a really hard one, actually. I think related to vulnerability, I'd say the shittiest piece of advice is, "Leaders don't share what they're really going through." They're not vulnerable. They put on this aura of, "Everything's perfect and I'm doing great." Or leaders never say, "I don't know." That's bullshit too.

BB: Oh boy, that's really bad... Okay, I can't wait to ask you this question. Okay. What is the hard lesson that the universe keeps putting in front of you because you have to keep learning it and re-learning it over and over?

RT: The last time I said it was boundaries, when you asked me this question. But I'll actually say... It's related, but the hardest lesson that I keep learning again and again and again is being very deliberate and clear about what I want. And I actually turn to your words, right? Clear is kind, and being conditioned... I know it's rapid-fire, so now I'm going...

BB: No, go, go, go, go.

RT: [chuckle] But being conditioned to make sure other people feel comfortable as one of the only in the workplaces I've been in or at home, coming from a pretty traditional culture, I've always thought about other people's needs. And I actually started realizing, and I... Very much in my marriage started realizing that I was being unkind when I wasn't being clear about what I wanted. So clear is kind, being deliberate, asking for what I want... I still make mistakes all the time on that front.

BB: Oh, I love it. I was wondering if it was going to be related to boundaries, and it's completely related to boundaries. Wow, I love it. What's one thing you're very excited about right now?

RT: Can I say I still continue to be excited for my book, and I'll say why?

BB: Yes.

RT: 90% of books published... I think this has done mostly in fiction, but 90% of books published by the large publishers are by white authors. I'm really excited about a slew of amazing new books coming out by authors of color, specifically women of color, and I'm really excited that hopefully the success, whatever that means, of Inclusion on Purpose tells other people, especially when they know that I had 30 rejections, that you need to keep on writing your story. That's what I'm excited about. I'm excited to fill my bookshelf, fill my nightstand with books written by people of color.

BB: Amen. I love it. Okay, what's one thing that you're grateful for right now?

RT: I'm really grateful as in some ways my star... I've become more visible. Let's say I've become more visible. I'm grateful that I remain grounded by having a five-year-old who has absolutely...

[laughter]

RT: He will come home today and I'm going to take him for a swimming lesson, and he doesn't care that Brené Brown interviewed me. All he cares about is, "Were there snacks? Did you pack my swimming stuff? Did you reach on time?" So I love... I'm grateful for that grounding because it is easy... I remember my husband, I talked about it. It's easy to fall into grandiosity as you become more visible, and you need people to remind you, "Hey, you could be doing great, but don't forget the snacks. You're a terrible mother because you forgot... " No. [chuckle]

BB: No, I'm just thinking back to this interview probably a year ago where someone said, "What is it like for your kids with your career?" And I said, "Well, my son texted me today," and they said, like, "Well, what did he say?" And I said... He said, "Where are my goggles?"

RT: [laughter] That is my visceral reaction.

BB: Yeah, well, what do you think he's going to say? "Wow, Mom," you know, like, "I don't know... "

RT: "You're a New York Times Best Selling Author"...

BB: Yeah. He's like, "Where are my goggles?" Yeah, and I said, "They're on the stairs. You've walked over them for the past three days, and can you unload the dishwasher before water polo practice and swim team practice or something?" And then the text back was, "Do I have to?" I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, that's life, and it's by far the most important part of my life.

RT: So glad. I'm so glad you said that, and I'm so glad you're modeling that, because for a lot of us, we were taught in capitalism, greedy capitalism taught us it's either/or. It shouldn't have to be that way.

BB: No, and for people listening... Can I just share a short story? I came from a conservative upbringing, too, in terms of women, and my mom stayed at home, and it was fraught for my parents around that, working. So, my whole life I've grappled with having a really demanding career, even as a professor, and having kids, and I've missed stuff, and I don't really usually bake things. I buy things. And sometimes I'll write a check before I work a booth or something, and when my daughter turned 16, she wrote me a letter that said, "I know you have a really hard time when you can't do everything that you want to do for my games or my school, but thank you so much for showing me what it looks like to have a career and try to make a difference in the world, because that's what I want. And I didn't know that you could do it." And so for all the people listening out there that are like, "What if I miss this? What if I don't get this? What if I... " They're watching something completely different. Do you know what I mean?

RT: I have tears in my eyes because the guilt isn't... Or the mom... And I feel that it's a trope and it's annoying and whatnot, but I have to say the worry and the fear I always have at this end of the spectrum, right? Five and six. So the worry I'll always have in trying to make others, and other women of color seen, I hope I don't make my son feel unseen. Right? I hope he never feels like that he's not my priority, so... Thank you. Thank you for being vulnerable.

BB: Yeah, I would venture to say for me, not seeing our kids is not the risk, but the gift that we don't talk about is the potential we have to be seen by our children as fighters, as hopers, as changers. That's the gift that I don't think we talk about enough, and it's big. It's really big. Yeah. And I was thinking about, looking at my sister right now who's in the room, we were walking out of that MBA class after the last day, super diverse class, just like the one you were talking about at your university, asking hard questions. And Barrett got kind of emotional, my sister did, she's a... I guess Gabby was 10 at the time, Barrett? Yeah. And I said, "What's up?" And she goes, "These are the folks that are going to be leading my daughter when she gets to work. That I feel good about." So it's bigger than us. People can see you have something behind you in your office or your home that says, "Lift Every Voice." Wow, what a gift for your son to watch you lifting voices.

RT: No, this is from Nilofer Merchant, someone who really sees me.

BB: Oh, I love her.

RT: Someone who really sees me. Thank you, Nilofer, for putting into words what I wanted to do in my life before I even had words for it.

BB: Love Nilofer. Okay. Let's get to this fun part. This is the mini mix tape. You're going to have to help me with some of these names. So we asked for five songs you can't live without. I'll start with the ones I can pronounce, then I'll ask for some help with the ones that I don't want to mess up. So "At Last" by Beyoncé. Oh God, geez, gives me goosebumps, "Mama" by the Spice Girls. You got your UK on there, sis. Like, come on.

RT: I did. Big time.

BB: "Fly" by Nicki Minaj and Rihanna. So good. "Storm" by Antonio Vivaldi and Vanessa-Mae. And then help me with "Jiya Jale."

RT: Yes. "Jiya Jale," by Lata Mangeshkar, who we recently lost, she's known as... Was known as India's nightingale. Sang well into her 80s. Beautiful, beautiful voice. Yeah, I love these songs. I turn to them very often when I need encouragement, reminder, solace, the strength to go on, all of those things. I put in "At Last," which is different from my last playlist with you, because I remember that feeling of watching her sing at Barack Obama's inauguration. And I wasn't living in the United States at that point yet, and I looked at that, and I just thought, "What are the ripple effects around the world? I come from a country where someone who looks like me... Where... " And this is controversial. But a non-Chinese Prime Minister, folks will say, will never happen in Singapore. And seeing that representation and hoping that worldwide, we can take note. It's not just... Because, yes, what happens in this country has a ripple effect on what happens around the world too.

BB: Good or bad, yes it does.

RT: Good or bad.

BB: So give me in one sentence about what this playlist says about you, the combination of this music.

RT: Championing every voice.

BB: Thank you for being with us on Dare to Lead, and thank you for this beautiful book. It's really important.

RT: Thank you so much, Brené. It means more than I'll ever be able to say.

[music]

BB: I'm taking away so much from this. Are you, Barrett?

B: Oh yeah, so good.

BB: Yeah. I feel some real affirmation about some things we're trying to do, but a deeper understanding of the why. Anything hit you particularly?

B: I think one of the things that she said that I just thought was really important was that she gives language to the hardest part of the inclusion work.

BB: Yes, yes. And she does. And you know we're fans of giving language to stuff. I mean, come on. Every podcast has an episode page on brenebrown.com, where you can find links to the books. You can find links to our guests. We'll link to the HBR articles that she's written, which are just take-your-breath-away great, and the one that she co-wrote. We'll link to that podcast too. We'll link to the podcast that we did with Jodi-Ann and Ruchika, because it was a huge podcast for us. People... Well, it's kind of mind-blowing, like, "Hey, stop telling us we have impostor syndrome when you set up a system that makes us feel on the outside." That's crazy-making. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad we're having these conversations. Again, I go back to Don and Charlie Sull, the toxic corporate culture driving why people are leaving work, and the lack of inclusion being in the top five attributes of a toxic culture.

BB: Again, we shrug our shoulders and walk away from this at our own peril. It's not good for our work, and most importantly, way, way on the list, way on top of that, is it's unkind to people. Everybody listening right now knows what it feels like to not belong, and to decide that you're not going to do better, be better, or learn more, unlearn, because it's too uncomfortable, when we have the opportunity to help people feel like they belong, it's just not brave leadership. So I'm glad you're here. Stay awkward, brave, and kind. This work is definitely going to require it. Heavy on the awkward. All right, thanks, y'all.

[music]

BB: The Dare to Lead podcast is a Spotify original from Parcast. It's hosted by me, Brené Brown, produced by Max Cutler, Kristen Acevedo, Carleigh Madden, and Tristan McNeil, and by Weird Lucy Productions. Sound design by Tristan McNeil and Andy Waits, and the music is by The Suffers.

[music]

© 2022 Brené Brown Education and Research Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

Brown, B. (Host). (2022, April 25). Brené with Ruchika Tulshyan on Inclusion on Purpose. [Audio podcast episode]. In Dare to Lead with Brené Brown. Parcast Network. https://brenebrown.com/podcast/inclusion-on-purpose/

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Brené with Ruchika Tulshyan on Inclusion on Purpose

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A must-listen conversation with Ruchika Tulshyan, whose new book, Inclusion on Purpose, centers the experience of women of color and provides a framework of intentional actions to neutralize workplace bias and foster environments that are diverse, equitable, and inclusive.

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Learning for Justice Curriculum Resources (Website)

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Learning for Justice Curriculum Resources (Website)

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From film kits and lesson plans to the building blocks of a customized Learning Plan— texts, student tasks and teaching strategies—our resources will help you bring relevance, rigor and social emotional learning into your classroom—all for FREE.

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From film kits and lesson plans to the building blocks of a customized Learning Plan-texts, student tasks and teaching strategies-our resources will help you bring relevance, rigor and social emotional learning into your classroom-all for FREE.

Not sure where to begin? Get to know our Social Justice Standards, anchor standards and age-appropriate learning outcomes divided into four domains-Identity, Diversity, Justice and Action. The Standards provide a common language and a road map for anti-bias education at every grade level.

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From film kits and lesson plans to the building blocks of a customized Learning Plan-texts, student tasks and teaching strategies-our resources will help you bring relevance, rigor and social emotional learning into your classroom-all for FREE.

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The Arab Americans is the untold story of almost 200 years of contributions, trials and tribulations of those who immigrated to the United States from the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf have made to the American fabric.

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The contributions made to the American fabric by Arab-American immigrants are illustrated.

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Museum of Jewish Heritage presents “Pioneers: Remembering the First Jews in America” (Video)

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Museum of Jewish Heritage presents “Pioneers: Remembering the First Jews in America” (Video)

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Jews emigrated to North America in the earliest days of the colonial era, long before American independence and before the great waves of immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries. These early Jewish settlers represented a wide diversity of backgrounds and experiences, and the rich communities they formed together in New York, Rhode Island, Georgia, and elsewhere became the foundation for close to 370 years of American Jewish life.

The Museum, American Friends of Beit Hatfutsot, and The Jewish Heritage Alliance presented this special Thanksgiving program exploring the lives and communities of the earliest American Jews.

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Pioneers: Remembering the First Jews in America

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63 Best Podcasts You Can Listen to in 2024 (Podcasts List)

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63 Best Podcasts You Can Listen to in 2024 (Podcasts List)

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As you can see by the amount of podcasts which qualify for a 'best podcasts' list, there's never been a better time for podcasts. Though the format has been around for a couple of decades now, it's only in the last few years that they really hit their stride. You might say that we're living through a golden age of podcasts, if you're the kind of person who needs all their culture categorised into neat eras.

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There has never been a better time for podcasts. Though the format has been around for a couple of decades now, it's only in the last few years that they really hit their stride. You might say that we're living through a golden age of podcasts, if you're the kind of person who needs all their culture categorised into neat eras.

But podcasts themselves seem to live in the wild. You need a David Attenborough to point the way through the undergrowth and stop you wasting time wandering down dead ends. So to that end, this is our pick of the best new podcasts that have arrived in 2020, as well as our highlight from long-running favourites. We've even herded them into neat little categories for you too. Need anything else? Want us to pop your Airpods in for you too? Oh, go on then. We're all friends here.
All-time classics
Black Lives Matter

1Extra Talks

This two-hour special edition of BBC 1Extra's current affairs and culture show hosted by Maurice (Shauny B) and Ashley (DJ Ace) is all about the events of the last week and the two hosts' reflections on being a black man in Britain and raising black sons, as well as featuring listeners' thoughts.

Today, Explained

Vox's excellent Explained digested news strand was a hit on YouTube and Netflix, and it drops new 20-minute podcast episodes every day. Lately, it's focused on George Floyd, police brutality and civil rights, and its episodes about police unions, the reality of black America's nightmare, and why Trump's attempts to blame unrest on Antifa is just plain wrong are essential listening.

About Race with Renni Eddo-Lodge

The author of Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race picked up where her book left off in this 2018 podcast, which follows the last 25 years of the fight for BAME rights, from the false hope of New Labour to now. Simon Woolley, founder of Operation Black Vote, Sisters Uncut and Riz Ahmed are among the key figures interviewed.

The Death of George Floyd: Will anything change?

The Guardian's Today in Focus is another daily news agenda-led podcast which takes a single issue as its focus, and this recent edition features an interview with former federal prosecutor and author of Chokehold: Policing Black Men Paul Butler about the injustice of the current system and how it has to be reformed.

How to Cure Viral Misinformation

If you've been deluged in incredibly dubious WhatsApp chain letters and shared Facebook posts - usually from over-credulous older relatives - you'll know that there's an awful lot of bad science, loud rumour and wild conspiracy theories around. The BBC's Seriously... podcast strand has dug into where one particular post came from, how and why people decide to spread information that isn't true, and how we can all help to stop it happening.

Coronavirus Global Update

This one from the BBC World Service is ideal if you want to keep on top of the major big-picture developments but can't bear being drawn into the rabbit-hole, terror-scrolling through Twitter for hours on end. Every day there's a four-minute episode on the global situation featuring reporting from affected areas and the latest on medical news.

The Coronavirus Podcast

Another BBC one - to be honest, this is exactly the time to hang out with the BBC as much as possible - this time more in-depth and focused on expert interviews, explainers on technical stuff like the idea of herd immunity, and your questions answered. Health secretary Matt Hancock and the government's chief scientific advisor Sir Patrick Vallance have been on already to talk things through.

Today in Focus

Given how quickly everything's moving at the moment, anything more than a 20-minute catch-up can feel out of date almost immediately. The Guardian's daily podcast is an essential primer on the broader implications of this crisis, and its recent episode on how Covid-19 took hold in Italy is thorough and avoids alarmism.

Slow Burn: David Duke

The story of KKK member and politician David Duke is never not relevant to America's conversation on race, but since the death of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the Black Lives Matter protests, the subject of Slow Burn's fourth series is almost hauntingly prescient. The idea is to retell historic episodes - Watergate, the Lewinsky affair, the deaths of Biggy and Tupac - without imposing hindsight on the narrative. You're guided through reaction to events as they happened at the time, turning up forgotten pivot points and, in the case of Duke, making clear that his positioning as a champion for resentful 'forgotten' whites foreshadowed the current political maelstrom.

History Becomes Her

Each time, host Rachel Thompson chats to a guest who's making change right now about the women who came before them and still serve as an inspiration. Campaigners like LGBTQ rights advocate Ruth Hunt, journalist Zing Tsjeng and Three Women author Lisa Taddeo are among those to make their picks, from pioneering scientists to pirate queens.

Talking Politics: History of Ideas

Self-improvement's a noble goal. "Weekend plans?" you think to yourself on a Friday night. "Probably do a quick 10k, feed my sourdough starter, then bosh through some Derrida before lunch. Nice." Never quite happens that way though, does it? Obviously reading's brilliant and everything, but this podcast is a far quicker way to expand your mental horizons. David Runciman, head of politics and international studies at Cambridge, plots the genesis of the ideas and movements that still define the way we live today, including Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Thomas Hobbes' conception of the modern state and Ghandi's endorsement of non-violent resistance and anti-colonialism.

The Walkers Switch

Do you remember when Walkers changed the colours of their packets of salt and vinegar and cheese and onion around? Blue for salt and vinegar and green for cheese and onion's good enough for Golden Wonder, McCoys, Kettle Chips and the rest of the crisp industry, but not Walkers, oh no. Why did it happen? And why do Walkers deny that it ever happened at all? This deadpan investigation goes all the way down the rabbit hole, and finding that it leads to a forgotten and possibly completely fictitious advert, Nelson Mandela, the Illuminati, and - of course - Gary Lineker.

13 Minutes to the Moon season 2

Last year's in-depth retelling of the Apollo 11 mission - Armstrong, Aldrin, one giant step, etc - was gripping and inspiring, and while you'd be hard-pressed to make a podcast not gripping or inspiring out of the moon landings, it was beautifully done. The second season moves on to the Apollo 13 mission, which blasted off less than a year later, and tells its story with the same mixture of original interviews and archive from key figures, including mission commander Jim Lovell. The drama of an exploding oxygen tank and the desperate race to get all three astronauts back to Earth alive, from 200,000 miles away, is obvious. But the real intrigue comes in the podcast's exploration of the all the other forgotten obstacles and calamities to overcome on the way.

We Need To Talk About The British Empire

We're not particularly good at remembering the less gilded parts of our recent national history and while you might have done a few lessons on slavery at high school, as a nation we're pretty blasé about Britain's tendency to stick its oar in where it's not wanted. Its legacy is very much still with us though: look, for example, at the still-unfolding Windrush deportation scandal. Consider this podcast a sharpener. Over the course of six episodes, journalist and author Afua Hirsch digs into the legacy of empire by talking to British cultural figures whose complicated relationship with colonialism and empire comes through in their art, from poet Benjamin Zephaniah to Dame Diana Rigg, and from Hong Kong to the West African delta.

The Escape Artist

Arthur Cravan isn't in the roll call of Great British Artists, but this podcast tells his life story over ten 15-minute episodes and makes the case for him as a man working more than a century ahead of his time. His surreal, Dada-influenced stunts and pranks anticipated the Situationists of the late Fiftiess and his experiments speak to our troubles with fake news and trolls. His whole life was a kind of living artwork and you can see his influence in Gilbert and George and Andy Warhol among others. He wasn't just an artist though: he dodged conscription in the First World War and became the amateur heavyweight boxing champion of France.

Beatles City

It's the 50th anniversary of the band's poisonous break-up, but this project from the Liverpool Echo digs back into the very early years of the Beatles. Everyone in Liverpool has a Beatles story in their family, whether it's nana seeing them at the Cavern on her lunch hour or your dad's mate's uncle's mate who swears blind he sold George Harrison a Ford Cortina in 1963. This project from the Liverpool Echo tries to record them all before they fall out of living memory - take Helen Anderson, for instance, a contemporary of John Lennon at Liverpool College of Art. She made clothes for Lennon from sketches he gave her, and sat in on his early rehearsals at the college with Paul and George.

Cautionary Tales

Why do we make bad decisions? Is it just a lack of good judgement? Or are our brains hardwired to let us down? Tim Harford's retellings of disasters caused by one catastrophically poor choice suggest it's the latter, but there are lessons about how we live our lives day to day to be learned from them. For instance, the really very, very bad idea of steering a supertanker toward a dangerous reef becomes a parable about not being blinded by the pursuit of a goal, and a story about the time a band of soldiers were gulled into completing a heist digs into how we instinctively trust authority figures. Alan Cumming and Russell Tovey are among the cast for reconstructions.

The Anthill

This is the podcast from The Conversation which, if you're unfamiliar, is where academics bring expertise, new research and big-picture thinking to issues that are in the news and could do with a bit of circumspect analysis from people outside the news cycle. Its latest series focuses on the future of healthcare in the UK, and how much more personalised things could get - you might find yourself being prescribed drugs based on your DNA, or have your diet carefully tweaked to serve your own personal microbiome. It's all cutting edge stuff.

Crossfire

However you feel about the Telegraph's cheerleading for Boris Johnson over the last year or so, it's still full of proper journalists who know what they're doing, and they've produced this explosive account of the saga over Russia's involvement in Donald Trump's election in 2016. Britain was at the centre of some key moments - even the name of the FBI's investigation had a British connection: 'Crossfire Hurricane', from the Rolling Stones song 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' - and this six-part series explores them using first-hand testimony.

Americast

We've had our share of political wrangling over here over the last 18 months or so, but in America things are only just gearing up for the elections in November. Don't worry if you're not certain how the primaries system works or what a caucus is: BBC heavyweights Emily Maitlis and John Sopel are here to make everything clear. It might seem like a long time until polling day, but even before we get to the question of whether Trump will win a second term or who will line up against him for the Democrats, there's the ongoing palaver over the Iowa caucus to sort out. And there's something oddly thrilling about hearing Maitlis say "shitshow".

The Bugle Presents: The Last Post

Andy Zaltzman's long-running satirical current affairs podcast has a new 10-minute spin-off which joins the growing number of shortform daily podcasts which started to pop up in the second half of 2019. This one's hosted by Alice Fraser, but Zaltzman turns up in the first episode to preview all the political shenanigans coming up this year in America, and in the second Nish Kumar drops in for an update on everything that's been going on over on our shores.

The Receipts

No subject is off-limits to Tolly, Milena and Audrey, from relationships to friendship break-ups, and situationships to the ups and downs of everyday life. They're brutally, unflinchingly honest, and episodes bounce between the three hosts' chatting, featured guests and listeners' pleas for advice.

Dane Baptiste Questions Everything

How should we appreciate the underappreciated? How do I catch a lucky break? Should I go vegetarian? Tupac or DMX for president? Stand-up Dane Baptiste digs into the really big questions with fellow comedians and notables including Emile Heskey, writer Dean Atta and Man Like Mobeen 's Guz Khan.

Locked Together

Audible's new series eavesdrops on comedy double-acts and writing partners to hear how they're coping with being apart during the lockdown. That means updates from famous mates including Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead and Spaced pals Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, Catastrophe 's Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney, Tez Ilyas and Sindhu Vee, Paul Whitehouse and Harry Enfield, Jimmy Carr and Katherine Ryan and the Kurupt FM boys. It's free too - you just need an Amazon or Audible account.

Reply All

This is a podcast about the internet in the broadest possible sense. If you're talking about the internet, you're talking about pretty much the entirety of existence, and this is a podcast about the entirety of existence as experienced through the internet. In its latest and, perhaps, greatest episode, hosts PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman help a listener to ID a song he remembers from his youth but can't quite put a name to. What is it? Why can he remember it so well? Why is there absolutely no evidence that it ever existed? Is it, as everyone asks him, by Barenaked Ladies? The lengths that Reply All goes to in working out the mystery are frankly ludicrous, but entirely worthwhile.

Gossipmongers Series 3

A podcast examining ludicrous small town rumours and urban legends feels like such an obvious idea, and yet here we are. Joe Wilkinson, David Earl and Poppy Hillstead read out readers' submissions and decide which they like most. Some are obviously nonsense, like the tale of the baby who was born into a welly, grew into the shape of a welly and sadly died when it was mistaken for an actual welly and killed by a vicar who shoved his foot down its throat. Others are sort of believable, like the man who started getting baptised at as many different churches as possible as a sort of hobby and ended up racking up more than 50 dunkings without actually being a Christian. The third series has just landed.

Drunk Women Solving Crime

A pretty simple set-up for this one: comedians and writers Hannah George, Catie Wilkins and Taylor Glenn try to sort out true crime cases, personal crime stories and listeners' unsolved mysteries while slowly getting more and more wrecked. Guests turn up to add their own cases to the mix too, including Joe Lycett, Rachel Parris, Katie Mulgrew and Katherine Ryan, who was catfished by an 'inflatophiliac' while working at Hooters.

Phoebe Reads A Mystery

You've probably set yourself some pretty optimistic goals for your reading now that you can't really go outside, but don't worry if the general vibe of impending doom is knocking your motivation. Audiobooks and podcasts count too. Phoebe Judge has an exceptionally soothing voice, and every day she's dropping a chapter of a mystery thriller on this podcast. She's just finished Agatha Christie's first published novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which introduced Hercule Poirot, and next up is The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Get Sleepy

Can't drop off? This meditative, deeply reassuring podcast will soothe you, even if you're in a deep rut of agitated nocturnal fretting. Think of these half-hour stories as fairytales for adults, with New Age soundscapes and mindfulness techniques thrown in, which gently draw you into drowsiness. It's like going to a spa, but it's free.

Murmurs

If you've never really been into radio drama, this might be the radio drama for you. The things that might normally wind you up - constant grunting and sighing, characters walking into rooms and describing where they are and why they're there - are conspicuously absent. Then again, so are a lot of the other norms of radio drama. It's been described as a kind of audio Black Mirror, but the first episode, in which a soldier becomes scattered across time and space and begins to change events, is a lot more floaty and cosmic than Charlie Brooker's plot-centric futureshock series. Not exactly The Archers, then.

Stadio

Berlin-based duo Musa Okwonga and Ryan Hunn talk about football, primarily the Bundesliga, and pretty much everything else besides. As with the best sporting podcasts, it's not just about the sport. Memory, storytelling and the minutia of the game are as important as working out what species of extraterrestrial Erling Haaland is.

Euro '96 Relived

As you might know, ITV is filling the new, cavernous and now constantly expanding gaps in the schedules by rerunning all of the games from Euro '96. ( We've picked the best ones here, by the way. You're welcome.) As you might not know, there's a companion podcast. It's a superior example too: interviewees include Tony Adams reflecting on what being Terry Venables' captain meant to him after his addiction to alcohol became very public knowledge, and a host of key players from across the continent are to come.

Forgotten Stories of Football

If you're into football, you probably already listen to the Guardian's all-conquering Football Weekly podcast, but its new companion pod is a different vibe entirely. Rather than anything current affairs-y, Forgotten Stories is basically nicely rendered readings of longform pieces about odd, surprising and underappreciated moments in football's past. The first is about the football tournament at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where the spectre of fascism loomed large but farce wasn't far away. The British team's pre-Games call-up letters, for instance, advised them: "As there is a month to go before we leave for Berlin, kindly take some exercise."

Match of the Day: Top 10

In the complete absence of any actual football, the timing of a new podcast drop from the the load-bearing pillar of Saturday evening telly couldn't be much more fortuitous. Rather than doing the same VAR-outrage-by-numbers spiel they have to wheel out every week, this pod sees Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer and Ian Wright bicker amiable over their picks for the best 10 Premier League players in various categories - so far we've had the 10 best captains and 10 best goalscorers, though given the all-time league scorer's around the table that seems a little bit of a conflict of interests - while eating pasta in Lineker's kitchen. It's oddly comforting right now.

Ornstein & Chapman

Depending on exactly how much Mark Chapman you feel you can take in any one week, what with him being omnipresent across BBC radio and TV whenever football - either association or American - is under discussion, this might feel like a step too far. But you'd be missing out on insight from The Athletic's supremely well-connected David Ornstein and exclusive interviews with players and insiders. Look at their recent episode with former Liverpool and Spurs director of football Damien Comolli, and his retelling of the sorry Luis Suarez-Patrice Evra racism debacle and the day Liverpool sold Fernando Torres and bought both Suarez and Andy Carroll.

The Greatest Game

Pretty simple, this one: Jamie Carragher sits down to chat about the best game of football each guest has seen live or played in. That's about it, aside from a fairly standard bit where they pick a five-a-side team of ex-teammates or favourite players. What's interesting is the admirably insane seesawing in the quality of the guests. On the one hand: Thierry Henry, Steph Houghton, Jordan Henderson, Craig Bellamy. On the other: Niall Horan, Line of Duty's Martin Compston, Paddy McGuinness. The latest guest is firmly in the first camp, though. Steven Gerrard talks his good buddy Carra through his own favourite game - and it's not Istanbul 2005.

Speedway

Back in the 1970s and 80s, speedway motorbike racing was big. In the UK, it was a fixture of Saturday afternoon TV at a time when live football was far rarer, and live racing filled Wembley Stadium. There used to be 11 clubs in London alone, but now they're all gone. So what happened? And could speedway ever recapture the place it once had in the nation's sporting heart?

The Official Manchester United Podcast

Urgh. United. Insufferable when they were successful, unbearable when the edifice started crumbling and their fans moaned about finishing fifth, and somehow still awful now they're a mid-table irrelevance with more official noodle partners than functional central midfielders. We'll say this for them though: decent podcast. This being the official podcast, they can rope in absolutely stellar guests, from Paul Scholes and King Eric Cantona to Dimitar Berbatov, whose tale of being kidnapped while playing for CSKA Sofia needs to be heard to be believed.

The Football Book Club

This homebrewed podcast from comedy writers James Bugg, Jack Bernhardt, Amy Lawson and James Boughen mines the bathos and strangeness of life stories by people who got to live the dream, and got half a dozen fairly workaday anecdotes out of it. Its first episode tackles journeyman striker Darren Huckerby's Hucks: Through Adversity to Great Heights, a tome which includes reminiscences of the young Hucks' condemned digs in Lincoln which nearly killed his teammate Matt Carbon - they thought he liked a kip by the heater, but it turned out he was being repeatedly poisoned with carbon monoxide - and the weird world of his friend Lee Croft, who was convinced that you could see monkeys in the treetops of Wigan "if you looked hard enough" and that he was once attacked by a wasp the size of a man's fist. If you miss The Reducer, this is one for you.

Nut Jobs

This is of a piece with another Audible Original, Marc Fenell's It Burns, which followed chilli-eating ultras who prove their manhood by eating gut-ulceratingly hot chillis. Nut Jobs, though, is about the disappearance of $10 million of nuts - almonds, pistachios, cashews, peanuts, pecans - in a heist that spirited away 20 trucks of nuts over six months. Where did they go? And why would anyone want to steal nuts? The answer touches on big agriculture, the wellness movement, health, wealth, and immigration in America.

El Impenetrable: Death in the Forest

This murder mystery is a particularly murky, weird, hallucinatory one. It's set in the deepest thickets of the Argentinian forests, where the country's biggest landowner was tortured to death with his sister-in-law. The authorities believe that the killer was trying to diddle him out of his land, but what's the real story behind the murderer that police called The Man With A Thousand Faces?

My Death Row Pen Pal

Rebekah Beere is 29, she's from Manchester, and she writes letters to a prisoner waiting to die. This three-part series follows Rebekah's epistolary friendship with convicted murderer Charles Thompson, who's been on Death Row for 22 years, 4,000 miles away from Manchester. The main thread is the morality of befriending a man convicted of killing another person: is Rebekah naïve? Can a murderer be redeemed? And will they ever meet each other face to face?

The Dating Game Killer

That might sound like incredibly lurid title, but it's just the bare facts. Rodney Alcala won a date on the American TV show The Dating Game in 1978, when he was in the middle of a murder spree that stretched from New York to Los Angeles. He managed to evade and confuse psychiatrists and police as he killed again and again. It's from the makers of Dr Death and Dirty John, so it's got good pedigree, but be warned: this is a properly grim one.

What Happened To Annie?

You might have first got into Sky News's award-winning podcast strand Storycast with its excellent retelling of a 1983 heist, The Hunt for the Brink's-Mat Gold, but its newest true crime podcast is rather darker. What Happened To Annie? tries to get to the bottom of the death of 30-year-old Annie Börjesson, who was found dead on Prestwick beach in Ayrshire, Scotland, in 2005. Was it suicide? Or was it something to do with the CIA? Annie's family go in search of the truth.

Fake Heiress

You've probably heard the story of Anna Delvey, the wealthy German heiress who ran up tens of thousands of dollars of debt at New York hotels and flew in a private jet, but was actually Russian-born Anna Sorokin, most recently an intern at a fashion magazine. You might even have read the Vanity Fair piece about it all, written by one of those taken in by Sorokin's charade. This BBC drama-doc takes a slightly different tack, mixing straight reporting with fictionalised scenes. The drama segments occasionally tip into radio drama hamminess but do summon up the surreality of Sorokin's invented life story and the factual segments adroitly pull together bits and pieces from the vast amount of reportage the story drew across the world. It's almost too perfect to learn that Sorokin means 'magpie' in Russian.

Pride & Joy

Parenting podcasts can blur into one long complaint about being very tired, but this one's a little different. It's about how queer people from across the LGBTQIA community approach raising children, from two trans men who both gave birth to their own kids to the ins and outs of finding a surrogate parent in an unregulated and murky not-quite-industry, and the myriad co-parenting networks that make a nonsense of the nuclear family.

Anthems: Pride

This Pride month, dig into the back catalogue of this collection of uplifting, rousing personal manifestos, stories and reminiscences from a vast range of voices. Drag queens and kings, directors, stand-ups, DJs, filmmakers and more LGBTQIA+ people reflect joyfully and tenderly on queerness in 10-minute episodes. Production company Broccoli Content's weekly news précis Your Broccoli Weekly is snappy too.

A Life Less Ordinary with Sophie Elwes

In 2011, Sophie Elwes became a wheelchair user at the age of 22 after breaking her back. Her new podcast features conversations with other people who've had to come to terms with and overcome huge events in their lives, including 16-time Paralympic medallist Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, mental health campaigner Ben West, who lost his brother to suicide in 2018, and actor Ashley Belal Chin, who found peace and happiness after converting to Islam in 2002.

The Dope Black Podcast

Pulling together podcasts under the Dope Black Dads, Dope Black Mums and Dope Sports Podcast banners, as well as extra contributions from the UK, America and across Africa, this is all about giving black parents the space to talk about what matters to them, from grief and how lockdown can shake your mental health to exactly why it's so hard to remember birthdays.

Stories That Stick

The team behind the Blacticulate podcast - a portmanteau of 'black', 'action' and 'articulate' - put together this one, on which BAME media makers and entrepreneurs talk about how they made their way in their industry, from DJ and radio producer Gemma Cairney to BBC and This American Life reporter Reya El-Salahi.

The Poet Laureate Has Gone To His Shed

Even before lockdown, Simon Armitage was squirrelling himself away from the world in his shed looking over the Yorkshire Pennines. He was making this podcast, and with the presence of Huddersfield's finest your standard one-to-one interview format becomes something a bit more offbeat and ruminative. There's eclectic line-up of guests - actor Maxine Peake, sculptor Anthony Gormley and fellow writer Jackie Kay have all featured so far - and a more literary, nature-focused vibe than most podcasts.

What We Coulda Been

Notables from all over the cultural map talk about the things that they nearly went into before they found the things they became known for. Host Chelcee Grimes chose songwriting over playing for Liverpool, which has panned out well so far, and guests including Lucy Bronze, Dua Lipa and Rio Ferdinand will be on to talk about their own Sliding Doors moments.

For Fast's Sake

A second series of the celebratory, revelatory, myth-busting Ramadan podcast is here, and hosts Yasser, Zayna and Shehzaad have returned to document the inherent weirdness of trying to observe the holiest month of the year while in lockdown. The easy friendship between the three of them is the heart of it, as are the regular diversions into subjects like trying to date right now and the time Zayna's grandma went viral. New episodes come on Mondays and Wednesdays.

Grounded with Louis Theroux

Despite having turned up on Adam Buxton's podcast quite a few times - seek out the one where Louis gets tanked up on energy drinks and pulls out his surprisingly good falsetto to sing Baccarat's 'Yes Sir, I Can Boogie' - he's not hosted his own until now. He's taking advantage of the lockdown to tap up interviewees he's been after for a while, including Jon Ronson, Sir Lenny Henry, Boy George and Miriam Margolyes.

Bitch Bitch Bitch

Between being the new face of the Great British Bake Off and taking his reworked Baked Potato song toward the top of the download charts, Matt Lucas is on a bit of a roll at the moment. He's just launched a new podcast too, in which he chats to people with interesting jobs and gets them to moan about the worst aspects of them. Cabin crew, sports commentators and West End actors are among the moaners.

The Boring Talks

Despite the name, this anthology series of little lectures is anything but tedious. Sure, on the face of it there's little to explore in, say, the old noises that video game cartridges used to make when they booted up, or pencils, or doormats, or the roof of the service station at Markham Moor on the A1. But these bite-size podcasts make eloquent cases for them, and encourage you to look at the everyday wonders that surround you.

Off Menu

James Acaster and Ed Gamble's loosely food-related interview podcast is back for a third series, the first visitor to their fantasy restaurant this time around being Buffy the Vampire Slayer's fusspot librarian Anthony Head. If you've not eaten with them before, the concept's very simple: each guests picks their favourite starter, main, side, dessert and drink, and talks about their life and career in an enjoyably roundabout way.

10 Things That Scare Me

File under: Short, sharp psychology

The short, sharp five-minute episodes of this podcast have a simple set-up: people name 10 of their deepest unspoken fears. That's it. Some - like Bridesmaids director Paul Feig, ex-Trump White House fixer Anthony 'The Mooch' Scaramucci and Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello - are famous; others aren't. But all of them feature something jarring (Morello's family had nooses in their garage when he was a kid), something that makes you laugh then nod in a that-makes-complete-sense sort of way (The Mooch is best mates with his divorce lawyer), or something obviously horrifying which you'd never considered before and will now carry with you everywhere (falling and hitting your teeth). Urgh.

The Birthday Game

File under: A quiz-shaped show which is in no way a proper quiz

Richard Osman, the tallest man in showbiz and master of coming up with formats, has come up with another very good format. Guests try to guess how old celebrities with birthdays on the week of release are, and listeners play along at home. That's pretty much it. It's daft, fun, and it's got the feel of one that could run and run, so get in at the ground floor.

Mind Over Muscle: Journey To The Finish Line

Ant Middleton, former special forces hard nut and main man of SAS: Who Dares Wins knows a lot about the extremities of physical endurance, but his new podcast travels into the minds of five normal people who are getting ready to run the London marathon. All of them have struggled with mental health problems, from police officer Luke who started having panic attacks on the way to work, to Victoria who worries that missing a training run could cause her to spiral back into anxiety and depression. Along with elite marathon runner Mara Yamauchi and sports psychologist Dr Josephine Perry, Middletonwill try to coach them into a healthier mindset and over the finishing line.

Sleeping with David Baddiel

Comedian, writer, one of three lions: David Baddiel's got a lot done for a man who suffered with insomnia for many years, and his new podcast with sleep guru Dr Guy Leschziner is intended to make sure even those who don't have it appreciate how important sleep is. It goes in deep on the science of sleep, why it matters, and how you can improve the quality of your sleep. Sleep evangelists can get a bit wearing, but given the range of health benefits you're probably missing out on, this might be a decent investment of your time.

Twenty Thousand Hertz

Given podcasting is an aural medium, you'd think more of them would be a bit more curious about the specifics of the sounds that they pipe into your brain. Twenty Thousand Hertz is all about the noises you hear everywhere, all the time, and how they're made. It has pulled apart sounds as diverse as that massive bum-wobbling note that THX showed off its cinema systems with, the golden record on the Voyager spacecraft, the multi-layered construction of the lightsabre's vvvvvwing and, most recently, farts.

Talking Sopranos

This is several cuts above your average watchalong podcast. Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirripa, who played Christopher Moltisanti and Bobby Baccalieri, chat about The Sopranos episode by episode, dropping behind the scenes tidbits and anecdotes all over the place and discovering fan theories they never knew about.

Home Cooking

This miniseries about cooking during lockdown is a team-up between two heavyweights of relatable, simple but detail-rich broadcasting: Samin Nosrat's book and Netflix series Salt Fat Acid Heat is an unbelievably useful crash-course in cooking that broke everything down to those four essential elements; Hrishikesh Hirway is the creator and host of the endlessly fascinating Song Exploder podcast.

Hot Girls

London-based hip hop DJ Lex on the Dex talks to other women in the rap world who work either in the booth or behind the scenes: bass DJ Tailor Jae, Resident Advisor's Shireen Ramezani and drill producer Hannah V have been on lately. Revealing interviews alternate with history lessons about the great women of hip hop and rap over the last 40 years, from Afrobeats queen Tiwa Savage and dancehall icon Spice to Missy Elliott and MIA.

Wind of Change

Everyone likes a good unsubstantiated conspiracy theory. How about the one that says metal band the Scorpions' huge 1990 hit 'Winds of Change' was actually written by the FBI to destroy the Soviet Union. Mission accomplished, lads. Patrick Radden Keefe, of the New Yorker, goes digging to find out exactly how true it is and where the rumour came from in the first place. Other episodes in the eight-part series will explore more stories of US government meddling in music, including whether a 1961 Nina Simone gig was actually a front for the CIA.

Shower Sessions with St Vincent

Annie Clark is pretty brilliant, let's be honest, and her new, slightly offbeat music podcast is exactly the sort of thing you'd hope she'd do with the medium. Unless you have Pitchfork's RSS feed wired straight into your brain stem you're unlikely to be across all the up-and-coming artists featured here, but Clark's shower-bound chats with the likes of Donna Missal, Liverpudlian musician Banners and the duo Loote are engaging, and each performs a set from their bathroom.

James Acaster's Perfect Sounds

Based loosely on his recent book Perfect, Sound, Whatever, in which Acaster argued that 2016 was the best year for new music ever, Perfect Sounds sees him introduce fellow comedians to the albums which convinced him this was an incontrovertible fact. First up is Romesh Ranganathan (who's got his own very good music podcast, Hip Hop Saved My Life) and Beyoncé's Lemonade.

Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast

Getting into poetry is an absolutely excellent thing to fill your lockdown hours with, but actually 'getting into poetry' is a lot more daunting than you'd think. Where do you start? Let Frank Skinner guide you. He's been a stand-up for the last 30 years, but before getting into comedy Skinner was an English teacher at a college near Dudley, and his passion comes through in his drily funny half-hour episodes. This one looks at Wendy Cope's 'Not Waving But Drowning' and William Carlos Williams' 'Dance Russe'.

United Zingdom

Zing Tsjeng has to make a decision: she can apply for a British passport, but after being born and raised in Singapore she's already got a Singaporean one - and she's not allowed to keep both. So which does she choose? It's not a decision you want to make lightly, so Zing's going on a road trip around the UK to work out what being British means right now, meeting, among others, a Lancastrian farmer, a Welsh language sex podcaster, and Brummie Drag Race star Sum Ting Wong.

This Game Changed My Life

Before he did Black Mirror and Screenwipe, former gaming journalist Charlie Brooker spent his time playing games and insulting readers in PC Zone, and he's wandered back into his old stomping ground to chat about the most pivotal games he's ever played with hosts Aoife Wilson and Julia Hardy. He goes right back to his days wandering around "absolutely monolithic" cabinets, and the other episodes in the series are great too - especially the one about Abdullah, who managed to escape the Syrian Civil War and made a game about it.

Lifers

You'll probably know stand-up Ed Gamble from his other extremely successful podcast, Set Menu, which he does with fellow comedian James Acaster. What you probably won't know about Gamble is that he's a massive metalhead, and that's what his new one for Spotify is all about: the dedication and obsessions of the genre's biggest fans, and what metal means to them.

Plot Twist

This one from Now TV is basically a promo tool for new shows it's carrying, but it's a superior promo tool with very good interviews. Its little gimmick is to get its interviewees to talk about the plot twists in their own careers, and the newest one features Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan talking about The Trip to Greece, how Coogan chivvied Brydon's career along after Brydon 'accidentally' bumped into him in the pub, and how Brydon used to pretend to be his own agent - a smoothie called Richard Knight - while trying to get things going in Wales.

Set Meals

If you're into food but always feel several steps behind wherever's cool on the whirling, never-ending menu that is London's restaurant scene, try this weekly update. Friends Sam Ashton and Taylor Fawcett dive into the good, bad and Taco Bell of the capital - start with their cycling tour of London's pasta restaurants and go from there.

Bong Joon Ho on The Curzon Film Podcast

Everyone's on a Bong tip at the minute. Parasite's riding a post-Oscars wave of love and breaking all sorts of records, and its director is everyone's favourite human being. This episode of the Curzon Film Podcast looks back at his career, but it's more than just your average primer. Tilda Swinton, who Bong directed in Snowpiercer, is on hand to interview him about his career, and critics Helen O'Hara and Tony Rayns add more context, as do academic Maria Konnikova and #BONGHIVE founder member Iana Murray.

This City

London is big and some of it smells a bit weird, but it's brilliant. So what makes it brilliant? The Docklands Light Railway. Then, in a close second, the people. Clara Amfo is here with a new podcast that puts you in touch with some of the city's most interesting ones. The premise is pretty simple: guests chat about the places around London that made them, while also chatting about their careers. First up is Mo the Comedian, the Camberwell-raised star of Channel 4's The Lateish Show With Mo Gilligan and his own Netflix special Momentum.

The Peregrine

Life is tough, but this might be the best way to add some grease to the grind: Sir David Attenborough reading JA Baker's classic piece of nature writing on the titular bird of prey. It takes the form of diary entries covering autumn to spring in Baker's native Essex, and despite being published 53 years ago, his prose has a direct, visceral punch which makes it feel timeless. Peregrines are both beautiful and terrifying - the hook-tooth at the end of their bill is used to dig in between the vertebrae of other birds so they can snap their spinal cords - and frankly so is the sensation of staring down the barrel of a new decade.

The Rewatchables

You could be forgiven for assuming that Quentin Tarantino spends all of his time watching obscure Japanese Westerns and ranting about how great Dennis Weaver was to anyone who'll listen. That's not the case, though. Tarantino is a cinematic omnivore, as the films he brings along to this film roundtable chat podcast prove. The first two of his three picks for films he can't seem to stop himself returning to are Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk and Tony Scott's runaway train thriller Unstoppable.

The Racist Sandwich

All the food we eat is political, whether because of the ways in which the produce is grown and shipped around the world, the complex weave of cultural and social influences which contribute to each individual dish, the way that chefs from around the world are treated differently in kitchens, or any number of other under-discussed issues. This podcast bills itself, in the style of a collab, as 'food x race x class x gender', and it's both playful and enlightening.

Switched On Pop

If you're of the (correct) opinion that pop is the greatest art form of the last century, this is an essential. It treats the songs, artists and trends most would think of as flotsam with high-minded enthusiasm, and its break-it-down-to-basics approach never patronises and always illuminates. Vox has form for all this with the excellent Explained Netflix series and YouTube channels, and the recent dive into what exactly makes 'Baby Shark' the juggernaut is typical, pulling together the history of the do-do-do in pop, what makes kids love certain songs and how to deal with hearing it for the millionth time.

What To Watch On Netflix

Having made it incredibly difficult to decide what to watch of an empty Thursday night, Netflix has taken the initiative in making the task slightly easier. This is a straightforward bit of promo puff for their own shows, yes, but it's a high-class one. It points out what's new and there's a bit of chat about the themes and issues recent releases have thrown up. Don't expect heavy-duty critique, but it'll have access to some very decent behind-the-scenes interviews with the key players.

Revisiting (AKA Berhamsted Revisited)

Having just escaped from the 2010s, it feels like they should be off-limits for wistful nostalgia-fests for at least another decade. This is more than just a Peter Kay-style ey-do-you-remember-Teletext-what-were-all-that-about potter down memory lane though. Built around the teenage diaries of hosts Laura and Laura, the cultural talismans of their adolescence and early adulthood are reviewed and, more interestingly, they chat to people involved in cultural phenomena which now make very little sense - Martin Daubney, former editor of Loaded magazine and 'King of the Lads', has been on in the past. The reassuring universality of their teen experiences is what makes this one work.

Boom/Bust: The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia

About two years ago, HQ was massive. The idea was simple: a massive pub quiz held on an app, 15 questions long, with a cash prize pot split between anyone who got all of them right. People went mad for it. Its presenters became stars. But then it all started to go wrong. This new podcast from The Ringer explores exactly how and why.

WeCrashed

Podcasts about the terrible decisions that led to disaster and scandal are a subgenre in there own right these days, and Wondery's new entry is a particularly timely one. WeWork looked like it might change how we all thought about our jobs, its leader Adam Neumann was hailed a genius, and it was valued at $47 billion ahead of going public. But last summer everything fell apart: it was absolutely savaged by experts over the unworkability of its business model, Neumann was ousted and reportedly fled America, and it became a cautionary tale for start-ups at large. This is the WeWork story from the start, the lofty ideas of how it was going to remould the world of work and eventually everything else besides, and how that hubris clashed with reality.

The Sun King

In a bit of a coup, this beautifully assembled and concise six-parter is fronted by David Dimbleby, and tells the full story of how Murdoch built his empire and changed the way that millions of people around the world find out the news. It digs up insight from the people who've worked with him to answer bigger questions too: what motivates him? Is he in it for the money or the power? How much influence does he actually wield? And underneath it all, who is Rupert Murdoch?

In Our Time

Impressively still-quiffed broadcasting stalwart Melvyn Bragg has been presenting In Our Time since it started in 1998, and while the series' strength has always been its esoteric magpie eye for a topic, there haven't been many more unexpected than this month's on how teeth came to exist. But, as ever, it's intensely fascinating. If you're unfamiliar, In Our Time sees Bragg throw questions to three academic experts in a given field, whittling away at any jargon or waffle to get to the fundamentals of what happened and why it matters. With its commute-friendly 45-minute run time and back catalogue of more than 800 shows on every subject across history, literature, music, science and technology from computing pioneer Ada Lovelace to the religion of Zoroastrianism, it's found renewed purpose in the podcast age.

The Dollop UK

Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth 'Gary' Reynolds' long-running American history podcast has grown a new Britain-centric branch. The basic dynamic is familiar - Dave reads a story about the life of a forgotten person or phenomenon from the past to Gareth, they riff, hilarity ensues - but this is very much a superior example of the two-dudes-talking format. It helps that the second episode is one of their best ever. It tells the story of Swansea City mascot Cyril the Swan and his role in the regeneration of the south Wales club, how he became a cult figure for his casual hooliganism, and his fall from grace and brushes with the law, as well as an FA hearing at which the man playing Cyril protested his innocence while wearing the swan costume.

Have You Heard George's Podcast?

Londoner George Mpanga, better known as George the Poet, might want to invest in a sturdier mantelpiece. His current set-up must be groaning under the weight of the gongs his podcast has earned him - four gold awards and two silvers at the last British Podcast Awards, plus Podcast of the Year - and the second series has kept the quality up. It's hard to describe exactly what it is, though. Short fiction? Philosophy? Poetry? Journalism? It's all of that and more. The last episode has just been released, so now's as good a time as any to catch up.

The Adam Buxton Podcast

Yes, it's one of the biggest podcasts around, but as Dr Buckles' podcast continues to waffle on as brilliantly as ever, now is as good a time as any to celebrate it. The mixture of daft whimsy, very good jingles, regular digressions about David Bowie and updates from Buxton's dog Rosie, The Hairy Bullet, makes for an amiable listen, but Buxton's an underrated interviewer who gets genuinely enlightening and unusual chat out of his guests. The centenary episode features Buxton's Louis Theroux and former comedy partner Joe Cornish, who've all known each other since school immediately revert to extremely entertaining mid-teen silliness, but after that dig back into the archives for more: Kathy Burke, Bob Mortimer, Greta Gerwig, Sir Michael Palin and Steve Coogan are among many highlights.

Bob Mortimer on Desert Island Discs

Bob's bounced back mightily since his heart troubles a few years ago, with his own successful podcast, show-stealing appearances on Would I Lie To You and last year's gently existential Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing. However, the endearing daftness of his comedy has tended to keep interviewers at arm's length since he and Vic Reeves first arrived in the early Nineties. However, Lauren Laverne gets Bob to open up about the overwhelming shyness which has affected him since childhood, the death of his dad when Bob was a young boy, and the increasing amount of time Bob's been spending just staring into space. While you're there, have a rummage through the Desert Island Disc archives, which go all the way back to 1951 and feature pretty much everyone who's been anyone since.

Quentin Tarantino's Feature Presentation

In this three-parter miniseries, Tarantino has a sit down with critic and podcaster Amy Nicholson to talk about the films that the young Quentin absorbed and later bled into his own work. We start with 'Young Quentin Goes To The Movies', in which he considers the surreal revenge thriller Point Blank and its influence on Reservoir Dogs, and move into teenage Tarantino's yearning to head back to the Los Angeles of his youth having moved out to Knoxville, Tennessee. The last episode will look at the late 70s and early 80s, when Tarantino was trying to push himself into the movie biz himself.

Slow Radio

Life moves pretty fast, as Illinois' most famous malingerer once said, but unless you're one of those psychopaths who listens to them one-and-a-half-times speed, podcasts are a way of slowing down. Radio 3's Slow Radio really leans into that: its patiently paced 15-minute segments are varied - sometimes it'll be an interview surrounded by a lush natural soundscape, as in this recent exploration of the eeriness of the English countryside, and sometimes an orchestral works woven around the sound of the dawn chorus in the Ein Bokek canyon in Israel - but it's all tied together with an unhurried sense of calm.

Replay

The BBC's vast archive of everything that's happened in the last 80 years or so is rife for rummaging through - see also Greg James' Rewinder podcast, which knits together tidbits from the past which have unexpected resonance again today - but so far its coverage of sporting moments from the past has been relatively under-excavated. Replay is exactly that: just the BBC's coverage of sporting events of the past, with no talking heads or over-explanation from the present. The stories we tell about sport tend to flatten out all the strange little moments and slow-building tension that makes sport so engrossing and rich, but hearing the stories as they were told when they happened puts all of that back in. Try the second half of England v Holland at Euro '96, then hit the interview with Sir Stanley Matthews, and go from there.

Tailenders

Radio 1's Greg James, cricket journalist and former Maccabees guitarist Felix White and England cricketing legend Jimmy Anderson sound like the original odd throuple, but it works. Greg's notionally in charge, Jimmy's a bit mardy and has a lot of insight into the highest levels of the game, and wide-eyed Felix brings his guitar along for a strum in the background. As the name suggests (a tailender is a player who's rubbish at batting and so goes last), it's not a for-the-heads hour of cricket nerdishness - it's always accessible and funny even if you've only a passing knowledge of the game, and while it's been running for long enough to have a litany of recurring jokes, now's the time to get caught up before the Twenty20 World Cup in the summer.

13 Minutes to the Moon

It's the 50th anniversary of the moon landings this July, and to celebrate the BBC has put together a mammoth retelling of the most profound and moving thing that humanity's ever achieved. It'd be pretty easy to knock together a passable cut-and-shut talking-heads-and-archive show about the Apollo programme, but this one goes way beyond. Ex-NASA man Kevin Fong presents new interviews with key players including Michael Collins, who piloted the command module while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin went down to the lunar surface (and he was actually second in command by the way, outranking Aldrin), Charlie Duke, who communicated with Armstrong and Aldrin from Mission Control, and other NASA staff like pioneering programmer Margaret Hamilton and engineer Poppy Northcutt, whose stories deserve to be heard. Plus! The theme music's an original piece from Hans Zimmer. Top-end stuff. A bit like First Man, 13 Minutes to the Moon makes an incredible but familiar story feel fresh, and full of jeopardy and the unknown. It's coming back for a second series soon too.

It Burns

Eating extremely hot things has an enduring appeal for a certain type of man. It's a challenge which has taken the place of your old world tests of masculinity - things which use the ability to endure pain as an arbiter of manhood - and repositioned them as something you can do in the pub with some mates over some wasabi peanuts. It Burns explores the scandal-hit world of competitive chilli-eating and the race to breed the world's hottest chilli, taking in accusations of doping and theft, and asks what drives so many people to warp nature in this way and to hurt themselves in the pursuit of glory.

The Beautiful Brain

Jeff Astle was - and remains - The King, an FA Cup winner and West Brom's legendary 137-goal striker known for his aerial ability. When he died in January 2002 at the age of 59, though, he'd spent his last years living with dementia-like symptoms. A coroner found that minor traumas to his brain had caused the degenerative brain condition chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), and recorded a verdict of death by industrial injury - the first time blame for the condition had been placed squarely on heading heavy leather footballs day after day. This four-parter follows Astle's story via raw, intensely moving interviews with his wife Laraine and daughter Dawn, before reporter, producer and host Hana Walker-Brown explores how CTE affects survivors of domestic violence and asks: what does the science tell us to do, and who's responsible for making it happen? It's a gripping and essential - if often overwhelmingly poignant and righteously enraging - listen, as much a call-to-arms as a piece of investigative journalism.

The Last Days Of August

Ronson's The Butterfly Effect, about the ripples which spread across the porn industry after Pornhub got in on the act and forced producers to find more inventive ways of making money, was one of the best podcasts of 2017, so another delve into that world is welcome.

This is a more sombre affair than the quirky, soulful Butterfly Effect, though: the August of the title is August Ames, a porn performer who killed herself in 2017 aged just 23. Her husband blamed a Twitter pile-on, but that's far from the whole story. The Last Days Of August explores the darker side of the porn industry with Ronson's usual tact and knack for a narrative left-turn.

Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend

Despite changing the face of late-night TV in America and running The Simpsons in its pomp, Conan's always been a bit of a niche figure in the UK. But he found a new lease of life via YouTube (for a primer, see him become a Civil War re-enactor), and now he's taking his chat to podcasting. Some giants of the last 20 years of American comedy are here, among them Will Ferrell, Kristen Bell, Parks and Rec's Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally, and the freewheeling format gives Conan a more space to get thoughtful as well as typically manic.
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Get Smarter, Sleep Better And Laugh More With The 98 Best Podcasts You Can Listen To In 2020

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There has never been a better time for podcasts. Though the format has been around for a couple of decades now, it's only in the last few years that they really hit their stride. You might say that we're living through a golden age of podcasts, if you're the kind of person who needs all their culture categorised into neat eras.

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Ever taken the Harvard Implicit Association Tests? (Online Test)

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Ever taken the Harvard Implicit Association Tests? (Online Test)

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The Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures attitudes and beliefs that people may be unwilling or unable to report. The IAT may be especially interesting if it shows that you have an implicit attitude that you did not know about.

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Preliminary Information

On the next page you'll be asked to select an Implicit Association Test (IAT) from a list of possible topics . We will also ask you (optionally) to report your attitudes or beliefs about these topics and provide some information about yourself.

We ask these questions because the IAT can be more valuable if you also describe your own self-understanding of the attitude or stereotype that the IAT measures. We would also like to compare differences between people and groups.

On the IAT, you may find it easier to pair certain attributes with one group of people compared to another. Your IAT results may depart from your personal beliefs.

Note: This site is designed for adults, aged 18 or older.

Data Privacy: Data exchanged with this site are protected by SSL encryption. Project Implicit uses the same secure hypertext transfer protocol (HTTPS) that banks use to securely transfer credit card information. This provides strong security for data transfer to and from our website. IP addresses are routinely recorded, but are completely confidential. For research purposes, data without directly identifying information is made publicly available. You can find more information on our Data Privacy page.

Important disclaimer: In reporting to you results of any IAT test that you take, we will mention possible interpretations that have a basis in research done (at the University of Washington, University of Virginia, Harvard University, and Yale University) with these tests. However, these Universities, as well as the individual researchers who have contributed to this site, make no claim for the validity of these suggested interpretations. If you are unprepared to encounter interpretations that you might find objectionable, please do not proceed further. You may prefer to examine general information about the IAT before deciding whether or not to proceed.

If you have questions about the study, please contact Project Implicit at questions@projectimplicit.net. To obtain more information about the study, ask questions about the research procedures, express concerns about your participation, or report illness, injury or other problems, please contact:

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I am aware of the possibility of encountering interpretations of my IAT test performance with which I may not agree. Knowing this, I wish to proceed I am aware of the possibility of encountering interpretations of my IAT test performance with which I may not agree. Knowing this, I wish to proceed using a touchscreen OR using a keyboard.

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On the next page you'll be asked to select an Implicit Association Test (IAT) from a list of possible topics . We will also ask you (optionally) to report your attitudes or beliefs about these topics and provide some information about yourself.

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7 Must-Read Books For Your 2024 DEI Book Club  (Book List)

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7 Must-Read Books For Your 2024 DEI Book Club  (Book List)

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Over the years, we’ve shared many lists of DEI-related books for those ready to deepen their understanding of equity and justice work, expand their knowledge about identity, privilege, and power, and develop practices that will create more equitable and inclusive workplaces. This year, we’re back with seven noteworthy books we encourage you to explore solo or with co-workers!

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Over the years, we've shared many lists of DEI-related books for those ready to deepen their understanding of equity and justice work, expand their knowledge about identity, privilege, and power, and develop practices that will create more equitable and inclusive workplaces. This year, we're back with seven noteworthy books we encourage you to explore solo or with co-workers!

A People's History of the United States: 1492- Present by Howard Zinn

This is the American history book we wish we'd read in high school. We're recommending this classic now because there's been a seachange in understanding what American history looks like, largely thanks to the explosion of social media. Critical thinking of our past requires more context, and Zinn offers just that. Zinn's book is a groundbreaking historical narrative that challenges traditional perspectives by focusing on the experiences of marginalized groups throughout American history. Zinn provides an alternative lens, shedding light on the struggles of indigenous peoples, enslaved Africans, women, and other disenfranchised communities, offering a comprehensive and critical analysis of the country's past.

Reconstructing DEI: A Practitioner's Workbook by Lily Zheng

Last year, we featured Lily Zheng's book, DEI Deconstructed, and now they've published an excellent workbook to help address the challenges and complexities of implementing effective DEI initiatives. The book provides tools, case studies, and actionable strategies to foster more inclusive workplaces. Bonus: Lily has been doing live, impactful mini-workshops on their LinkedIn page.

Breaking the Rainbow Ceiling by Layla McCay

McCay's book explores the experiences of LGBTQ+ professionals in the workplace. McCay delves into the challenges individuals face within the LGBTQ+ community and offers insights on how organizations can create more inclusive environments. The book combines personal narratives with research to advocate for diversity and equality in the workplace. If you're interested in learning more about the author or the book, here's a short read featuring Layla McCay's thoughts on the importance of this book.

Reimagine Inclusion: Debunking 13 Myths to Transform Your Workplace by Mita Mallick

This year, our CEOs enjoyed chatting with Mita Mallick on our podcast. Their conversation beautifully explains some of the ideas highlighted in this book. Mallick's book challenges common misconceptions about inclusion in the workplace. Mallick also critically examines 13 myths that hinder progress and offers practical solutions for creating truly inclusive workplaces. The book encourages readers to reevaluate their understanding of inclusion and take meaningful steps toward positive change.

White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better by Regina Jackson and Sara Rao

This book is a guide that addresses the role of white women in perpetuating racism. The authors explore how white women can confront their own biases and actively work towards dismantling systemic racism. The book combines self-reflection, research, and practical advice to empower white women to be allies in the fight against racial injustice.

An Other World: The Fight for Freedom, Joy and Belonging by Hanif Fazal

As a father of color and with experience working with low-income communities of color for nearly 30 years, Fazal explores the intersections of identity, social justice, and individual and collective well-being among Black and Brown people. Part social commentary, part memoir, and a call to action, Fazal draws on his personal and professional experiences to offer a vision of a world where freedom, joy, and belonging are central to collective liberation. The book encourages readers to reimagine a more just and inclusive world.

Workplace NeuroDiversity Rising by Lyric Rivera

In Workplace NeuroDiveristy Rising, Rivera discusses the importance of neurodiversity in the workplace. As someone who identifies as autistic, Rivera explores the unique strengths and challenges of neurodivergent people, advocating for more inclusive hiring practices and workplace environments. The book provides practical insights and strategies for organizations to embrace neurodiversity and create environments where all employees can thrive.

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7 Must-Read Books For Your 2024 DEI Book Club

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Over the years, we've shared many lists of DEI-related books for those ready to deepen their understanding of equity and justice work, expand their knowledge about identity, privilege, and power, and develop practices that will create more equitable and inclusive workplaces. This year, we're back with seven noteworthy books we encourage you to explore solo or with co-workers!

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Mix and match the filters on this site to explore more than 3,600 recommendations from NPR staff and trusted critics.

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Here are 380+ great reads from 2023 hand-picked just for you by NPR staff and trusted critics.

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Every April Autism Speaks celebrates World Autism Month, beginning with the United Nations-sanctioned World Autism Awareness Day on April 2. This year marks the 16th annual World Autism Awareness Day.

Throughout the month, we focus on sharing stories and providing opportunities to increase understanding and acceptance of people with autism, fostering worldwide support. This year, we are committed to standing together to make a world of difference for people on the spectrum.

Supporters can participate in World Autism Month in a variety of ways:

Pledge your support and uploading your photo to become part of our worldwide mosaic of unity and collaboration.

Make a meaningful, lasting impact for people with autism with your gift. It's one of the easiest and best ways to show your support. Donate today!

Join our 2.8 million social followers to help foster understanding and acceptance by sharing the diverse stories of people on the spectrum or telling your own. Submit your story for our social media pages.

Engage in the Autism Speaks Kindness Campaign to fundraise for the autism community while sharing purposeful acts of kindness that encourage acceptance, understanding and inclusion.

Learn all the ways you can fundraise on social media.

Show your support by wearing our official World Autism Month gear.

Light It Up Blue on April 2 in celebration of people with autism and those who love and support them. Join the thousands of landmarks, buildings, homes and communities around the world and come together on April 2, World Autism Awareness Day to shine a light on the autism community.

Whether you have autism, love someone who does or are looking to support a diverse, accepting and kind community - let's stand together and pledge our support to make a world of difference by helping all people with autism reach their full potential.

Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

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World Autism Awareness Day | Autism Speaks

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Join Autism Speaks on April 2 to Light It Up Blue for Autism Awareness Day. Help spread kindness and increase autism awareness during the month of April.

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Ramadan Information Sheet - Islamic Networks Group (ING)

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To learn more, check out our free public presentations on Ramadan and Muslim Americans and Their Faith. To view other important dates for Muslims, visit our Calendar of Important Islamic Dates Introduction Ramadan is considered one of the holiest months of the year for Muslims. In Ramadan, Muslims c…

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30 of Our Favorite Women's History Month Activities

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March is Women's History Month, coinciding with International Women's Day on March 8. It's a time to recognize the achievements of remarkable women from around the globe throughout history. This roundup of Women's History Month activities celebrates artists, scientists, leaders, and more women who made their mark.

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Duke Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation  (Website)

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Duke Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation  (Website)

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Check out the Duke Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (Duke TRHT Center)'s new website, and look through their Racial Healing & Relationship Building programs.

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IMAGINE and the life outcomes of all are optimized. a world without racism... human variation is valued, where empathy, justice, and unity prosper,

Duke TRHT Center Strategic Framework

The Duke TRHT Center's framing tapestry reflects a fusion of head-space learning and heart-space sharing and connecting. Woven from the threads of Narrative Change, Racial Healing & Relationship Building, and Structural Revolution, this integrative approach is key to unlocking and instilling practices of truth-seeking, wonder, and empathy, which in turn creates meaningful social connections from which collective and sustainable change can arise.

As we reckon with our shared historical and current narratives and create new ones, recognize and embrace our common, equal, and interconnected humanity, and remake institutional policies, the TRHT Center helps alter beliefs, attitudes, and actions, addressing both the consequences and roots of racism.

The purpose of an explicit focus on Narrative Change is to help uncover, produce, and share accurate and complete narratives about race and racism.

Racial Healing & Relationship Building

By cultivating relationships that celebrate our common humanity and embrace our diversity, we expand the capacity of individuals to work together towards transformation.

Bringing renewed and healing relationships into the institutions that shape our lives, we cultivate the possibility for true equity at the systemic level.

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Duke TRHT - Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation

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IMAGINE and the life outcomes of all are optimized. a world without racism... human variation is valued, where empathy, justice, and unity prosper, Duke TRHT Center Strategic Framework The Duke TRHT Center's framing tapestry reflects a fusion of head-space learning and heart-space sharing and connecting.

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Black History & Culture (Google Arts & Culture Collection)

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Black History & Culture (Google Arts & Culture Collection)

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Explore the history, arts, and culture of Black experience in the United States with this interactive Google Arts & Culture collection that has been carefully curated by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Souls Grown Deep Foundation, Cincinnati Art Museum, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and more. The collection contains gorgeous artwork, detailed biographies of activists and icons, Google Maps views that will let you virtually explore culturally significant locations, video clips of defining moments, and even a virtual reality version of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Memorial.

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Black History and Culture - Google Arts & Culture

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The past, present, and future of the Black experience in the United States

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These Lunar New Year dishes remind those who make them of their family and friends (Article & Recipe Collection)

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These Lunar New Year dishes remind those who make them of their family and friends (Article & Recipe Collection)

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Read through this collection of Lunar New Year stories and recipes from last year to learn how different Asian cultures, all united by a common theme of family and delicious food laden with symbolic meaning, bring this vibrant holiday to life.

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The confetti from Times Square is long gone, but new year celebrations are far from over. For those celebrating Lunar New Year, the party is just getting started.

Sunday marks the beginning of the new year following the lunisolar calendar and what, for many, will be the start of the year of the rabbit.

Lunar New Year is celebrated by more than a billion people, and while traditionally a big holiday in Asian countries, it is also celebrated in communities worldwide. During this time, people pay respect to their elders and enjoy time with their families. Red envelopes stuffed with money are also staples of the holiday - as is a large, bountiful table filled with delicious dishes that have specific meanings.

Ahead of the holiday, NPR's All Things Considered spoke with chefs around the U.S. about how they celebrate and what they're making to help inspire your own celebrations.
Maggie Zhu - Omnivore's Cookbook, New York, N.Y.
Maggie Zhu started her blog Omnivore's Cookbook nearly ten years ago. Since then she's shared traditional Chinese recipes that she has adapted for home cooks. Zhu compares her Chinese New Year celebrations to Thanksgiving in the U.S.

"No matter where you live, even when people are overseas or all over the place, it's always during this week of the holiday, they come back to home and they make a lot of good food to celebrate," she said. "This is a really special celebration for family using the form of food."

Noodles and dumplings are two of the most important dishes included on her family's table every year, Zhu said. Together with her grandparents, parents and cousins, she works to make hundreds of dumplings on New Year's Eve.

Instead of filling her dumplings with a meat mixture, Zhu opts for a mix of vegetables like cabbage, carrots and dried mushrooms as well as tofu. The recipe comes from her new cookbook, Chinese Homestyle, and offers diners a mix of textures without being overly seasoned.

Zhu said she knows dumplings can be an intimidating dish for people to take on, but her biggest tip is to keep it simple and have fun.

"I feel like one thing is that you just don't be too strict about how you fold them. Because I know there are actually many, many ways to fold dumplings," she said. "If this is your first time to make it, I'd say, you know, you don't have to be perfect. You can simply fold them like a half moon...like a pierogi. There's nothing wrong with that."
Maggie Zhu's recipe for vegetable dumplings Kevin Tien - executive chef of Moon Rabbit, Washington, D.C.
While many people are looking forward to the year of the rabbit, Chef Kevin Tien is looking forward to the year of the cat, as the Vietnamese zodiac calendar doesn't include a rabbit.

Tien is the executive chef of Moon Rabbit in Washington, D.C. He said that new year celebrations were very big in his house when he was growing up.

"My family is Buddhist so we do visit Temple around Lunar New Year, especially when we lived with my grandmother," he said. "What I remember is definitely there was a lot of making sure that we were paying respects to our ancestors or any older family members that have passed away, which means definitely getting a lot of fruit and a lot of different offerings to put on a little memorial thing that we had in our home."

Cooking was also a big part of Tien's celebrations and there was one dish his grandmother always made that he now makes today: thit kho tau, a caramelized braised pork belly dish.

"You start by making a caramel in a pot. As soon as you get those beautiful deep amber color caramel, I take it off the heat and then I'll add fresh chopped garlic, a little bit of ginger and chilies, and then you'll really get all the aromatics," he said.

The pork belly then gets added to the pot and coated in the caramel sauce before a can of coconut soda - Tien prefers the Coco Rico brand - is added to the pot and simmers for an hour and a half until the pork is tender.

While the pork is good, Tien said the soft-boiled eggs that go into the pot at the end to soak up the flavor of the pork are what he really loves and remembers when thinking about making the dish at his grandma's house.

"I would take the egg and I would eat that with a little bit of sauce," he said. "The egg was where it's at."

If you decide to make thit kho tau, Tien said the hardest part of the recipe is making the caramel, which is a process you can't rush.

"I recommend just going low and slow until the caramel forms because it goes from something that's this beautiful amber color to burnt sugar if you step away from the pot," he said. "It's a labor of love, and I recommend just sitting there and don't stir it too much. Let the caramel and the sugar form by itself."
Kevin Tien's recipe for thit kho tau Joanne Lee Molinaro - The Korean Vegan, Agoura Hills, Calif.
When Joanne Molinaro thinks about Lunar New Year, she can't do so without thinking about her maternal grandmother's tiny apartment where her family would gather every year and eat tteokguk.

"It's a rice cake soup, and she would make it for all of us," Molinaro said. "And, as is very traditional in a Korean home, she didn't have a table. She had one of those Korean-style tables, which is right on the floor, and she'd have these bamboo mats rolled out for all of us. And we'd show up dressed to the nines in our hanboks, which is traditional Korean dress costume."

Today, Molinaro is an attorney and the writer and content creator behind The Korean Vegan channels popular on TikTok and YouTube. And she still makes tteokguk for the holiday, though her version is vegan.

"I do a lot of radish in my broth, some white onions in my broth, some white potatoes in my broth to give it a great sense of flavor and also dynamic breadth in the broth, which is really important," she said.

The broth comes together after simmering for three hours or so. Molinaro said the combination doesn't just create an incredible flavor, it also keeps the broth a light color which, when combined with the white color of the tteok, the rice cakes, represents the purity of the new year.

"The reason for that, it's supposed to symbolize the purity of a clean slate. Your new year is starting. There's no blemishes in it yet, and that is a very comforting feeling, knowing that I have this whole year to start over. And that's what the white rice cakes are meant to symbolize," she said.
Joanne Lee Molinaro's recipe for tteokguk Abi Balingit - The Dusky Kitchen, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Abi Balingit is a Filipino baker based in Brooklyn, from where she shares her recipes on her blog The Dusky Kitchen. Her time is split into days working in the live music industry doing email marketing and nights baking in her home.

When it comes to Lunar New Year, Balingit said she's made a new tradition with her friends.

"Here in New York, I really have a nice chosen family of friends, and my really good friend ... she'll always do something for Lunar New Year. Usually, it's a dumpling party," Balingit said.

When thinking about what she might bring to this year's celebrations, Balingit chose pandan and anise puto - bite-sized steamed rice cakes - from her upcoming cookbook, Mayumu: Filipino American Desserts Remixed.

There are countless types of puto available, but for her recipe, Balingit chose to flavor her batter with pandan, both the leaves and the extract to add to the light green coloring of the dessert.

"Pandan is also very like, I guess [a] mainstay traditional Southeast Asian flavor. I grew up eating a lot of pandan desserts which I guess another word for it is screwpine leaves, but it is kind of like vanilla-y pistachio-y flavor."

She said she likes these steamed cakes for fiestas and parties because they don't require you to turn on the oven to get their signature light and fluffy texture.

"I just really love this because, with the anise on top of this small little rice cake, you get like a lot of refreshing notes of licorice and a palate cleanser before your next dish," she said. "I would eat it literally even in between certain bites of really savory food if you just want something to be like, really nice and lightly sweet."
Abi Balingit's recipe for pandan and anise puto Rosie Nguyen - Rose Ave Bakery, Washington, D.C.
Growing up, Rosie Nguyen remembers going out to eat with her family on Sundays and hitting up an Asian bakery afterward, where she would always pick out three sweet treats: a sesame ball, a pineapple bun and a milk tea.

"Those two pastries just were always at the end of my meal, and it always tasted right," Nguyen said.

Today, Nguyen is the founder and head chef behind Rose Ave Bakery, one of the D.C. region's top Asian bakeries. Every year, the bakery staff creates a special Lunar New Year menu.

"It's very important for us because, as Asian Americans, I celebrate this with my family, but I love to be a part of every else's celebration so that they can bring treats to their celebration with their friends and family," Nguyen said.

For her own gathering, she likes to go back to those treats of her childhood and make sesame balls for her family.

"That's why I'm bringing it to Lunar New Year these days because it just brings back memories, and it means so much to me," she said.

Vietnamese people usually opt to put a soft, nutty mung bean filling into their sesame balls, Nguyen said, but she prefers a red bean filling because she is "looking for a little bit more sweetness."

These crispy treats are simple: a sticky mixture of glutinous rice flour, water and sugar is wrapped around a filling of your choice and coated in sesame seeds before being fried to golden brown perfection. They might not be the most elaborate dessert, but they're enjoyed by one and all - and that's really what the holiday is about.

"Food in general brings family together. It brings people together," Nguyen said. "So for Lunar New Year, specifically, food is a way for family and friends to gather so that they can wish each other good luck, good fortune, prosperity and longevity."
Rosie Nguyen's recipe for sesame balls Edited by Mallory Yu.
Recipes

Vegetable dumplings by Maggie Zhu, makes 50 dumplings
Ingredients
1/4 cup (9 g) dried shiitake mushrooms (7 or 8 small mushrooms)

2 cups (480 ml) hot water, or as much as needed to cover mushrooms

2 tablespoons dried wood ear mushrooms (or 1/2 cup, or 75 g. minced bamboo shoots)

1 small bundle (11/2 ounces, or 45 g) dried rice vermicelli noodles

5 tablespoons peanut oil, divided

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon minced ginger

1 cup (110 g) finely chopped carrots (about 4 medium carrots)

2 cups (140 g) shredded cabbage 3 tablespoons soy sauce, divided 1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine 1 teaspoon curry powder

1/2 block (8 ounces, or 227 g) firm tofu, crumbled by hand

1 teaspoon maple syrup (or sugar) 1/2 cup (30 g) finely chopped scallions 50 frozen dumpling wrappers, thawed

Dumpling dipping sauce or Chinkiang vinegar, for serving
Directions
In separate medium bowls, cover the dried shiitake mushrooms and wood ear mushrooms with at least 1 cup (240 ml) of hot water each. Let the mushrooms soak for 20 minutes, or until tender throughout.

Strain and gently rinse the mushrooms with water. Squeeze out the excess water from the shitake mushrooms and rub off any debris. Remove and discard the tough stems of the shiitake mushrooms and mince the caps; this should yield about 1⁄4 cup (35 g) loosely packed minced shiitakes. Remove and discard the tough parts of the wood ear mushrooms and mince the mushrooms if they are big, or thinly slice them if small; this should yield about 1⁄2 cup (70 g) loosely packed minced wood ear mushrooms.

Cook the dried rice vermicelli according to the package instructions. Strain the cooked vermicelli and coarsely chop the noodles into 1⁄2-inch (1 cm) pieces.

In a large nonstick skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of the peanut oil over medium heat until hot. Add the garlic and ginger, stirring a few times to release the fragrance. Add the shiitake mushrooms, wood ear mushrooms, and carrots and cook and stir for 2 minutes. Add the cabbage, 1 tablespoon of the soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, and curry powder. Cook and stir for another 2 minutes, until the cabbage turns tender and all the liquid has evaporated. Transfer to a large plate to cool to room temperature.

Heat another 2 tablespoons of the peanut oil in the same pan. Add the tofu and cook for 1 minute, breaking it up into smaller chunks with a spatula. Add the vermicelli, the remaining 2 tablespoons soy sauce, and the maple syrup. Cook and stir until all the liquid has evaporated, 2 minutes or so. Transfer to a large mixing bowl and let cool to room temperature.

Once the tofu and cabbage mixtures have cooled, add the cabbage mixture to the bowl with the tofu, add the scallions, and stir to mix well.

Thit kho tau by Kevin Tien, serves 6
Ingredients
1.5 lbs skin off pork belly cut into 1 inch cubes

2 tablespoons fish sauce

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

6 large eggs

1 cup sugar

¼ cup water

2 shallots minced

3 red thai chiles sliced into thin rings

1 can Coco Rico soda

1 bunch scallions thinly sliced

Steamed white rice for serving
Directions
Toss the pork belly with the fish sauce and pepper and let it marinade in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour or up to overnight.

Bring a medium pot of water to boil and boil eggs for 6 minutes. While the eggs are boiling, prepare an ice bath. Remove the eggs after 6 minutes and cool in ice bath. Once the eggs have cooled, peel and set aside.

In a dutch oven or other heavy bottom large pot, combine the water and sugar and stir over medium-low heat until the sugar dissolves. Leave the mixture alone without stirring for 5-6 minutes to create a caramel, watching closely as the color changes from light golden to a rich amber color. Once this color is reached, immediately remove the pot from heat.

Add the shallots and thai chilis and leave to cook from the residual heat of the caramel until slightly softened and aromatic, about 2 minutes. Return the pot to medium heat, add the pork belly, and toss it in the caramel to evenly coat.

Stir in the soda, increase the heat to high, and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to maintain a simmer, partially cover, and summer for about 1.5 hours until the pork belly is very tender.

Remove the pot from heat and skim the fat from the top if needed. Place the soft boiled eggs into the sauce to stain them a caramel color and infuse them with the flavor of the pork.

Top with scallions and serve with steamed white rice.

Tteok-mandu guk (rice cake soup with dumplings) by Joanne Molinaro, serves 4
Ingredients
1 tablespoon extra- virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon sesame oil ¼ cup chopped white onion

1 clove garlic, minced 2 teaspoons salt, plus more for serving

1½ cups frozen or fresh garraetteok oval discs

1 Yukon Gold potato, cut into half- moons

3 cups vegetable broth (recipe follows)

4 or 5 Mandoo (recipe follows)

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

For garnish:

Strips of gyerranmari

Nori strips

2 scallions, chopped
Directions
In a large pot, heat the olive oil and sesame oil over medium high heat until hot, about 30 seconds. Add the white onion, garlic, and salt and cook until fragrant, about 2 minutes.

Add the rice cakes and the potatoes and stir to coat evenly with oil. Add the broth and deglaze the bottom of the pot. Bring it to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and simmer until the potatoes are nearly cooked, about 15 minutes.

Add the mandoo (dumplings) at the very end and cook for 1 more minute. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

To serve, garnish with the gyerranmari, nori strips, and scallions.
Vegetable broth, makes 6 cups Ingredients
2 tablespoons sesame oil

2 carrots, roughly chopped

1 stalk celery, roughly chopped

3 cloves garlic, unpeeled

2 white onions, unpeeled and roughly chopped

4 green onions, untrimmed and roughly chopped

1 russet potato, roughly chopped

½ cup roughly chopped daikon radish, unpeeled

2 large or 3 small dried shiitake mushrooms

2 large or up to 4 small dried porcini mushrooms

7 to 8 leaves light- colored cabbage

1 large sheet dashima (kelp)

1 tablespoon black peppercorns
Directions
In a large soup pot, heat the sesame oil over medium heat. Add the carrots, celery, garlic, onions, potato, daikon, dried mushrooms, cabbage leaves, and dashima to the pot and cook for 2 minutes.

Add 12 cups of water and the peppercorns and bring to a boil over medium- high heat. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes.

Remove the dashima and let the broth simmer until reduced in half, about 3 hours.

Discard the vegetables and pour the stock through a fine-mesh sieve or cheesecloth to strain out any bits and pieces.
Mandoo (dumplings) by Joanne Molinaro, makes 40 to 50 small dumplings Ingredients
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon sesame oil

1 potato, roughly chopped

2 carrots, roughly chopped

4 scallions, roughly chopped

10 cremini mushrooms, roughly chopped

1 cup Baechu Kimchi

2 to 3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds

2 ounces sweet potato vermicelli, cooked according to package directions

1 (16-ounce) block extra-firm tofu, pressed

1 tablespoon soup (light) soy sauce

1 (14-ounce) package dumpling wrappers
Directions
In a large skillet, heat the olive oil and sesame oil over medium-high heat. Add the potato, carrots, scallions, mushrooms, kimchi, garlic, salt, and pepper and cook until the vegetables are soft, about 5 minutes. Add the regular soy sauce to deglaze the pan and cook for 1 more minute.

Scrape all the cooked vegetables into a food processor. Add the sweet potato noodles and pulse 16 to 20 times, until the vegetables are at almost a paste like consistency. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl. Add the tofu and use a fork to mash up the tofu and mix it into the processed vegetables. Season with more salt as needed-this is your last opportunity to season the filling. Use the filling to stuff the dumplings right away or place it in the refrigerator until you are ready to wrap. (The process is easier if the filling has been in the refrigerator for about 1 hour.)
Reprinted from The Korean Vegan Cookbook by arrangement with Avery Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © 2021, Joanne Lee Molinaro
Pandan and anise puto by Abi Balingit, makes 48 puto
Ingredients

1 frozen pandan leaf (optional, but it is ideal to use if you want more of an intense flavor instead of just using the extract alone), thawed and tied into a knot
3/4 cup unsweetened, full- fat coconut milk
1 large egg white, at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon pandan extract
1 cup rice flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon plus a pinch anise seeds
Directions
In a small saucepan, bring 1/4 cup water to a boil and then add in the pandan knot, if using. Turn off the heat and let the pandan knot steep in the water for 10 minutes. Remove the pandan knot and set the water aside.

Spray 48 mini muffin molds with nonstick spray and set aside. I like to use silicone molds for steaming these cakes because the aluminum pans tend to be too big for my steamer.

In a large measuring cup, whisk together the pandan-infused water, if using the pandan leaf (if not, use 1/4 cup regular water), coconut milk, egg white, and pandan extract until well combined.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the rice flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt until the baking powder is evenly distributed.

Pour the wet ingredients into the bowl. Whisk until the batter is smooth. Let the batter rest uncovered until some tiny bubbles form at the surface, 5 to 7 minutes. This resting time allows for the flour to better absorb the liquid and helps the puto rise better. While the batter is resting, prepare a steamer by filling a large pot with 2 inches of water and fitting the pot with a steel steaming rack. Bring the water to a boil over medium- high heat.

Fill each muffin cavity with 1 tablespoon of the batter. Sprinkle a couple of the anise seeds on top of each one.

Place the molds on the steaming rack and cover the pot with a lid. Depending on the size of your steamer, you may have to steam the puto in multiple batches and add more water as you go. Steam for 7 to 8 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in one comes out clean. When you gently touch the tops of the puto they should spring back. Be careful not to burn yourself while testing them for doneness.

Using tongs, remove the molds from the steamer and allow the puto to cool for 1 minute before inverting them onto a plate. Repeat this process until all the puto are cooked.

Serve the puto once they've cooled to room temperature. Store any leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days.
Excerpted from the book MAYUMU: Filipino American Desserts Remixed Ingredients by Abi Balingit. Copyright © 2023 by Abi Balingit. From Harvest, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission.
Sesame balls by Rosie Nguyen

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1 cup hot water (add more if necessary)

1 1/2 cups glutinous rice flour

7 red bean paste
Directions
1/4 cup sesame seeds

4 cups vegetable oil

Dissolve sugar in the hot water. In a bowl, add the rice flour and pour in the syrup. Start mixing with a spatula and then knead with your hands until the dough is formed and is pliable. Wrap with plastic and let rest for 30 mins at room temp

Wet sesame seeds in a bowl, they should be moist. Set aside.

Weigh out red bean paste to 20 grams each, and set it aside on parchment. Weight out sesame balls to 40 grams.

To assemble, flatten out dough in your hands about 2.5 inches wide (keep a small bowl of water to wet hands if necessary) and place red bean filling in the middle and wrap with the dough to form a ball. Gently roll the ball in your hands until smooth.

Coat in the sesame balls and roll in your hands to adhere the seeds.

Fry in oil of 300 F for 10 mins, as the balls start to float, keep moving them around with a slotted spoon or spider. Fry for another 5-7 mins at 350 F to ensure they are crisper and have good structure.

Transfer to a rack or plate lined with paper towels. Let cool for 5-10 minutes. Best enjoyed warm.

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These Lunar New Year dishes remind those who make them of their family and friends

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As millions around the world get ready to welcome the year of the rabbit, we spoke with chefs, cooks and bakers about what dishes they're putting on their tables and what they mean to each of them.

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11 Inspiring Female Podcasts for Women's History Month (Podcast List)

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11 Inspiring Female Podcasts for Women's History Month (Podcast List)

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Hear from inspiring female podcasters and their guests this Women's History Month. Each of these podcasts features women who are using their platform to call for positive change. They are bringing women's rights to the forefront and forging powerful connections with listeners across the world.

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11 Inspiring Female Podcasts for Women’s History Month | Women for Women International

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Hear from inspiring female podcasters and their guests this Women’s History Month. Each of these podcasts features women who are using their platform to call for positive change. They are bringing women’s rights to the forefront and forging powerful connections with listeners across the world. This Women’s History Month, explore new perspectives on feminism and womanhood by delving into these podcasts. From career advice to current affairs, each episode is sure to remind you of your inner strength and your #PowerToChange.

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No Stupid Questions: Do Kids Need More Independence? (Podcast)

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No Stupid Questions: Do Kids Need More Independence? (Podcast)

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Are modern parents too protective? Why do we worry so much about things that almost never happen? And how did Mike learn about bus stops?

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‎No Stupid Questions: 178. Do Kids Need More Independence? on Apple Podcasts

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Are modern parents too protective? Why do we worry so much about things that almost never happen? And how did Mike learn about bus stops?

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For Parents: 8 Books that Celebrate Ramadan (Book List)

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For Parents: 8 Books that Celebrate Ramadan (Book List)

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The ninth month of the Islamic calendar, Ramadan, is exceedingly holy for the world’s roughly 1.8 billion Muslims, who spend the month fasting from dawn to dusk. The practice is designed to bring Muslims closer to God, to remind us of the suffering of those less fortunate, and to spiritually purify, focusing on what’s really important and letting the noise fall away. Here are eight Muslim-authored books for children celebrating and highlighting Ramadan.

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8 Books that Celebrate Ramadan | Parenting Tips & Advice

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Enjoy these eight Muslim-authored books for children that celebrate and highlight Ramadan.

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Holi Coloring Activity (Printable Pages)

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Holi Coloring Activity (Printable Pages)

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A colorful and dynamic festival, the annual celebration of Holi, also known as the Festival of Colors, is celebrated by Hindus in India and throughout the world. Revelers cover each other in colored powder, known as gulal (say "goo-LAHL"), and water to celebrate the beginning of spring and to commemorate various Hindu legends. Check out these Holi themed coloring pages as a fun and creative way to introduce kids to this colorful holiday.

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As the days become lighter and Spring draws closer, Indian families across the world will prepare for the festival of Holi. Holi, also know as The Festival of Colours, celebrates the victory of good triumphing over evil. Powders are thrown around making people and the streets beautifully colourful, bonfires are lit and sweets are shared. You'll find people of all ages from young to old taking part in these activities. Read the story of Holi HERE in a previous year's post (plus get last year's puzzle page I did in collaboration with My Little Pudding). I love that the festival brings together people of all ages, races and from all around and everyone can join in the fun!

This Holi, I've created not one, but colouring pages; one simple and the other a colour by numbers.You can download them below depending on abilities/preference and they fit standard A4 paper. If you do download and colour them, I'd LOVE to see. Please tag me in your finished artworks on Facebook (@ThePlayfulIndian), Twitter (@Playful_Indian) or Instagram (@theplayfulindian).

Updated March 2020

This entry was posted in Fun Stuff and tagged free, holi, printables.

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Free Holi Festival Colouring Pages To Download For Kids

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Learn all about the Indian festival of Holi and download your free Holi colouring pages to keeps the kids busy and teach them about this important festival.

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PBS American Portrait Collection: There’s magic in that extra chromosome (Videos & Stories)

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PBS American Portrait Collection: There’s magic in that extra chromosome (Videos & Stories)

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Each year, around 6,000 babies are born with Down syndrome in the United States. March 21st, World Down Syndrome Day, celebrates and brings awareness to those who have the 21st chromosome that causes the condition. Watch and read through this collection of videos and stories to learn about the triumphs and struggles of Americans with Down syndrome of all ages—and their families—as they live out full and vibrant lives.

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This March, for World Down Syndrome Day, we celebrate the resilience and joy of our American Portrait participants with an extra chromosome

Each year, around 6,000 babies are born with Down syndrome in the United States. March 21st, World Down Syndrome Day, celebrates and bring awareness to those who have the 21st chromosome that causes the condition. Hear the triumphs and struggles of Americans with Down syndrome of all ages-and their families-as they live out full and vibrant lives.

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"There's magic in that extra chromosome..." - PBS American Portrait

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Each year, around 6,000 babies are born with Down syndrome in the United States. March 21st, World Down Syndrome Day, celebrates and bring awareness to those who have the 21st chromosome that causes the condition. Hear the triumphs and struggles of Americans with Down syndrome of all ages-and their families-as they live out full and vibrant lives.

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Netflix Documentary: How African American Cuisine Transformed America

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Netflix Documentary: How African American Cuisine Transformed America

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Watch High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America | Netflix Official Site

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Black food is American food. Chef and writer Stephen Satterfield traces the delicious, moving throughlines from Africa to Texas in this docuseries. Watch trailers & learn more.

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Want to learn more about the Festival of Lights? From its rich historical background to beloved customs and symbols, this list of Hanukkah facts will shed light on the essence of this cherished Jewish holiday, providing you with a deeper understanding of its significance and traditions.

Hanukkah Facts Everyone Should Know

Hanukkah commemorates the re-dedication of the Temple of Jerusalem.

This beautiful Jewish holiday commemorates the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem after the Jews' victory in the Maccabean Revolt against oppressive rulers in the 2nd century BCE. Watch this video to learn more about The Story of Hanukkah.

Source: 8 Fascinating Facts About Hanukkah at Aish

Hanukkah is the Jewish Festival of Lights.

The word means "dedication" in Hebrew and the holiday is observed by lighting candles.

Source: What Is Hanukkah? at BBC

The word "Hanukkah" has many spellings.

These include "Chanukah" and "Chanukkah." The variations stem from differences in transliteration from Hebrew to English.

Source: Which Is Correct: Hanukkah or Chanukah? at Britannica

Hanukkah lasts for eight nights.

Hanukkah begins on the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kislev and concludes on the second or third day of Tevet.

Source: When Is Hanukkah (Chanukah) Celebrated at Chabad

Hanukkah starts on a different date every year.

Hanukkah is based on the Hebrew calendar rather than the Gregorian calendar most people use. The Hebrew calendar is based on the moon's calendar rather than the sun's. In 2023, Hanukkah begins December 7 and goes through December 15.

One of the central themes of Hanukkah is the miracle of the oil.

According to tradition, when the Maccabees reclaimed the Temple of Jerusalem, they found only enough oil to light the menorah for one day. But miraculously, it lasted for eight days.

Source: 13 Hanukkah Facts Every Jew Should Know at Chabad

The menorah is a significant symbol of Hanukkah.

There are nine branches for nine candles on the menorah. Why are there nine when the festival lasts for eight days? The central candle, called the shamash, is used to light the eight other menorah candles, one for each night of the holiday.

Source: 8 Things You Should Know About Hanukkah at History Channel

Oil was traditionally used to light the menorah.

Today, many use special Hanukkah candles instead, but some continue to use olive oil for this special occasion.

Source: Why Do We Light the Menorah With Olive Oil? at Aish

The candles are placed on the menorah from right to left.

But they are lit from left to right.

Source: How To Light the Hanukkah Menorah at My Jewish Learning

Hanukkah candles must only burn after night falls.

This is because their purpose is to bring light into darkness.

Source: The Laws of Chanukah at Ohr Somayach

"Hanukkiah" is another name for a menorah.

People used the the term "menorah" for years, but those who speak modern Hebrew typically use the term "hanukkiah." This is because the word "menorah" means "light" and can even be used to refer to a ceiling light. When addressing an English-speaking audience, however, using the term "menorah" is more historically accurate.

Source: Menorah vs. Hanukkiah at Chabad

Giving gifts is not a tradition of Hanukkah.

Some families may choose to give gifts to family, however, but that's a modern practice. Chocolate coins wrapped in gold or silver foil called gelt is commonly given to kids, though. The tradition of giving gelt has historical roots, as money was often given to children as a Hanukkah gift.

Source: The Real Reason American Jews Give Gifts During Hanukkah at Time Magazine

Dreidel is a traditional Hanukkah game.

A dreidel is a spinning top with Hebrew letters on each side. The letters on the dreidel represent the phrase "Nes Gadol Hayah Sham," which means "A great miracle happened there." Players take turns spinning the dreidel, and depending on which letter it lands on, they either win or lose game tokens (often chocolate coins called gelt).

Source: How To Play Dreidel at Chabad

Foods fried in oil are a common part of Hanukkah celebrations.

Foods such as potato latkes and sufganiyot (jelly-filled doughnuts) are popular choices during Hanukkah.

Source: The Surprising Origins of 5 Hanukkah Traditions at Time Magazine

An older custom involved eating cheese pancakes during Hanukkah.

Potatoes were unknown to the Jews until the late 16th century. Eventually, cheese latkes evolved into potato latkes, and a new custom was born.

Source: Discover the History of Latkes During Hanukkah at PBS

Several songs are associated with Hanukkah.

These include "Ma'oz Tzur," "Blessings on the Menorah," "Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah," and "Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel." People sing these songs during candle lighting and festivities.

Source: Hanukkah Songs by Chabad

The Hebrew bible doesn't mention Hanukkah.

That's because the Maccabean Revolt didn't take place until after the Torah, often restricted to the first five books of the Old Testament, was written.

Source: Is Chanukah Mentioned in the Torah? at Chabad

It is not a major religious holiday on the Jewish calendar.

Other lesser-known holidays, such as Sukkot and Shavuot, carry much more religious significance than Hanukkah.

Source: 10 surprising facts you didn't know about Hanukkah at Business Insider

Jewish communities around the world celebrate Hanukkah.

While traditions and customs may vary, the central themes of miracles, freedom, and light are universal.

Source: Hanukkah at Britannica

Unlike some other Jewish holidays, it's OK for Jews to work during Hanukkah.

While traditionally work is not permitted on the Jewish high holy days of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, this does not apply for Hanukkah.

President George W. Bush held the first official White House Hanukkah party.

In 1951, Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion gave President Harry Truman a menorah as a gift. Then, in 1979, President Jimmy Carter became the first American president to publicly attend a Hanukkah candle lighting. While President Ronald Reagan spoke at Hanukkah events, George H.W. Bush was the first to attend a candle lighting of his staff inside the White House. In 1993, Bill Clinton followed, and his successor President George W. Bush held an official event in 2001. President Barack Obama, President Donald Trump, and President Joe Biden continued the tradition.

Source: Menorah Lighting at the George W. Bush White House Archives

Astronauts celebrated Hanukkah in space in 1993.

In December 1993, Space Shuttle Endeavour embarked on a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Among the courageous astronauts who conducted a spacewalk was Jeffrey A. Hoffman. Aware that he would be spending Hanukkah in space, Hoffman brought a dreidel and a portable menorah for the occasion.

Using live satellite communication, he displayed his Hanukkah essentials, playfully spun the dreidel in the weightlessness of space, and extended warm greetings to Jewish communities worldwide. Here's a video of the first dreidel in space. Happy Hanukkah!

Source: Space Station 20th: Celebrating the Holidays in Space at NASA

People light the National Menorah every year in Washington, D.C.

Incredibly, it's 30 feet tall! How do people light it? With a cherry picker, of course. Here's a quick video!

Source: National Menorah Lighting

The largest menorah in the world is in New York City.

Designed by Yaacov Agam, the menorah is 32 feet tall, 28 feet wide, and weighs 4,000 pounds. It was unveiled across from Central Park on December 29, 2005.

Source: Largest menorah at Guinness World Records

To wish someone a "Happy Hanukkah," say "Hanukkah Sameach!"

This is the traditional holiday greeting.

Source: Hanukkah Glossary at Chabad

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How much do you know about the Jewish Festival of Lights? We've put together this list of Hanukkah facts to celebrate the holiday!

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Learning for Justice's Podcast, Teaching Hard History

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Learning for Justice's Podcast, Teaching Hard History

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Deepen your knowledge and improve your practice with Learning for Justice podcasts. Each episode explores an aspect of a Learning for Justice topic or framework and is produced with educators in mind. Use your commute, workout or meal-prep time to catch up on the latest thinking and scholarship that matter to you and your students.

You can subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or Spotify.

^The blurb from their website. This podcast felt eye opening and empowered me to teach history even in 3rd grade. - Ashley

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Skip to main content

Deepen your knowledge and improve your practice with Learning for Justice podcasts. Each episode explores an aspect of a Learning for Justice topic or framework and is produced with educators in mind. Use your commute, workout or meal-prep time to catch up on the latest thinking and scholarship that matter to you and your students.

You can subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or Spotify.
Take Our Podcast Listener Survey

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Deepen your knowledge and improve your practice with Learning for Justice podcasts. Each episode explores an aspect of a Learning for Justice topic or framework and is produced with educators in mind. Use your commute, workout or meal-prep time to catch up on the latest thinking and scholarship that matter to you and your students.

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A fascinating and easy read.... I learned a bit about the geography and politics of Africa and a unique perspective on the meaning of "home".

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Silver Dollar Road follows the story of the Reels family who are valiantly attempting to protect the land their family bought one generation after slavery. This documentary, based on the 2019 ProPublica article, highlights the covert ways the legal system has been exploited to keep Black land ownership fragile and the racial wealth gap growing.

Click here to watch the full documentary (free for Amazon Prime members).

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Silver Dollar Road - Official Trailer | Prime Video

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Here's how to practice yoga with cultural respect (Article)

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Here's how to practice yoga with cultural respect (Article)

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As the popularity of yoga continues to grow worldwide, it is crucial to approach this ancient tradition with cultural respect, acknowledging and honoring its origins and the South Asian people from whom it originated. By practicing yoga with cultural respect, we can deepen our understanding of this beautiful practice and ensure its authenticity is preserved.

Click here to read the article.

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10 Books to Understand Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Legacy  Today (Book List) 

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10 Books to Understand Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Legacy  Today (Book List) 

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Over five decades after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death, American society is still working towards the dream that he envisioned. These ten essential books shed light on these decades after Dr. King’s life, the Civil Rights movement, and show how his legacy has shaped the past half-century. With these books about Martin Luther King, Jr and his legacy, learn from the experiences of activists, lawyers, and journalists about the ongoing and necessary work towards racial equality.

Click here to see the book list.

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Over five decades after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s death, American society is still working towards the dream that he envisioned. These ten essential books shed light on these decades after Dr. King's life, the Civil Rights movement, and show how his legacy has shaped the past half-century. With these books about Martin Luther King, Jr and his legacy, learn from the experiences of activists, lawyers, and journalists about the ongoing and necessary work towards racial equality.

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10 Books to Understand Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Legacy Today | Penguin Random House

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Discover books about Dr. King's life, the Civil Rights movement, and how his legacy has shaped the past half-century.

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All About the Holidays (PBS Short Video Collection)  

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All About the Holidays (PBS Short Video Collection)  

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This is a collection of resources for Pre-K – Grade 5 students about the origins of different holidays that are celebrated throughout the year. The collection is broken into the four seasons and includes a bonus set of word searches. If you’d like to learn more about the holidays that will be happening this winter season (Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, MLK Day, Chinese New Year, Mardi Gras, and more) please click the link above!

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Have you ever stopped to wonder why we wear Halloween costumes, celebrate Thanksgiving in November, or choose valentines in February? These familiar traditions have fascinating and sometimes surprising origins. Get to know the history and significance behind these U.S. holidays (and more!) with this new collection of resources.

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Hanukkah Lights: Stories of the Season (Podcast) 

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Hanukkah Lights: Stories of the Season (Podcast) 

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For more than 15 years, NPR has celebrated Hanukkah with original stories inspired by the Jewish festival of lights.

Click here to listen to the podcast.

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For more than 15 years, NPR has celebrated Hanukkah with original stories inspired by the Jewish festival of lights. Hosted by NPR's Susan Stamberg, and Murray Horwitz, each year Hanukkah Lights marks the age-old Jewish celebration with contemporary fiction.

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Due South debuts with a conversation about defining the American South (Podcast)

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Due South debuts with a conversation about defining the American South (Podcast)

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The American South has been both romanticized and vilified. But who gets to define what the South is and isn't? In this inaugural episode of Due South, Jeff Tiberii and Leoneda Inge attempt to define the contours of the region.

Click here to listen to the podcast.

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The American South has been both romanticized and vilified. But who gets to define what the South is and isn't? In this inaugural episode of Due South, Jeff Tiberii and Leoneda Inge attempt to define the contours of the region.

We talk with historian Blair L.M. Kelley about the boundaries of the South, its history, and how the South's story is told. Professor Kelley is the new director of UNC-Chapel Hill's Center for the Study of the American South. She's also the author of "Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class."
Guest
Blair L.M. Kelley, director of the Center for the Study of the American South at UNC-Chapel Hill and the author of "Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class."

Erin Keever is Executive Producer of WUNC's new daily radio show, Due South, set to debut in Fall 2023. Erin comes to WUNC from Charlotte where she spent 16 years at WFAE serving in various roles from on-air announcer, researcher, web editor, to finally senior producer of "Charlotte Talks with Mike Collins."

Leoneda Inge is the co-host of WUNC's "Due South." Leoneda has been a radio journalist for more than 30 years, spending most of her career at WUNC as the Race and Southern Culture reporter. Leoneda's work includes stories of race, slavery, memory and monuments. She has won "Gracie" awards, an Alfred I. duPont Award and several awards from the Radio, Television, Digital News Association (RTDNA). In 2017, Leoneda was named "Journalist of Distinction" by the National Association of Black Journalists.

Jeff Tiberii is the co-host of WUNC's "Due South." Jeff joined WUNC in 2011. During his 20 years in public radio, he was Morning Edition Host at WFDD and WUNC's Greensboro Bureau Chief and later, the Capitol Bureau Chief. Jeff has covered state and federal politics, produced the radio documentary "Right Turn," launched a podcast, and was named North Carolina Radio Reporter of the Year four times.

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Due South debuts with a conversation about defining the American South

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In this inaugural episode of Due South, Jeff Tiberii and Leoneda Inge attempt to define the contours of the American South.

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The Black Candle (Official Kwanzaa Film) Narrated by Maya Angelou (Documentary) 

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The Black Candle (Official Kwanzaa Film) Narrated by Maya Angelou (Documentary) 

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Today, Kwanzaa has come to occupy a central role, not only in the U.S. but also in the global African diaspora. A 2008 documentary, “The Black Candle” that filmed Kwanzaa observances in the United States and Europe, shows children not only in the United States, but as far away as France, reciting the principles of the Nguzo Saba. It brings together the Black community not on the basis of their religious faith, but a shared cultural heritage.

Click here to watch the full documentary.

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The Black Candle [HD] (Official Kwanzaa Film) Narrated by Maya Angelou

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Black farmers and ranchers, it’s a dying deal (Article)

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Black farmers and ranchers, it’s a dying deal (Article)

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Black farmers and cattle ranchers are a dwindling lot, living on less land and carrying heavier financial burdens than white farmers. The USDA, once part of the problem, wants to turn things around.

Click here to read the full article.

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The morning sun hugs the horizon just as Nate Bradford Jr. hops into his pickup truck to make the hour drive home. Many in this rural Oklahoma town are getting ready to go to work. Bradford is getting off. He works as a gas plant operator, earning around $70,000 a year.

The job pays the bills, but his schedule is a grind because he alternates between working the day shift and the night shift. Seven days; seven nights. One week off. Repeat. He tells himself he can't do this job for another 20 years.

Bradford lives on a 160-acre farm and his dream is to make his living from it - hire a foreman to maintain the cows and property, build a nice home for his family on the high ground across the creek, and pass on what he can to his three children, including one already studying agribusiness west of Tulsa at Langston University.

But the past keeps blocking his future. It's just as true for other Black farmers and cattle ranchers: They are a dwindling lot, living on less land and battered by financial hardships and uncertainties that place a heavier burden on them than on their white counterparts.

One study found that Black farmers lost $326 billion in land - and wealth - between 1920 and 1997 alone. Today's Black-owned farms are smaller and earn less than farms owned by white people.

Black farmers are severely restricted by having less access to credit, the lifeblood of agriculture that allows farmers to successfully operate a farm from one season to the next. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, a lender of last resort, can help farmers who have nowhere else to go. But for decades, the department denied Black farmers credit and access to benefit programs. And it still struggles to remedy the impact of that history of discrimination. A Center for Public Integrity analysis of data from the USDA found that the agency's Black borrowers have the highest loan delinquency rates of all racial and ethnic groups.

"Black farmers and ranchers, it's a dying deal," Bradford says. The industry has changed so much that the "only ones who gonna survive now is people who are big operations."

The People's Department

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack likes to describe the USDA's role in the words of Abraham Lincoln, who, in his last address to Congress in 1862, called it "The People's Department."

"President Lincoln knew the importance of agriculture to our prosperity - particularly at a time when about half of all Americans lived on the farm," Vilsack said in a column commemorating USDA's 150th anniversary.

Now, less than 2% of Americans still live on farms. And the data confirm that today's farms and farmers are markedly different than they were in an earlier era.

For instance, the number of farmers has dropped 67% since 1900, even as the U.S. population boomed, according to the Congressional Research Service. USDA figures indicate that four of every five farmers hold jobs off their farm, like Bradford. Most spouses do, too.

Black farmers are different from their white colleagues in many ways, yet many would argue that the major difference separating them is the color of their skin. The historical impact that discrimination has had on Black people in social, political and make-or-break economic terms has continuing consequences for farmers today.
Episode 1 More from Episode 1
"Historical discrimination in this country has been about Black and white, not that others have got everything they deserve either," said Lloyd Wright, a former director of the USDA's Office of Civil Rights. "If you're trying to address racial discrimination and you don't address the Black problem, you're really not addressing racial discrimination."

Black farmers wonder whether The People's Department is doing all it can - and should - be doing for people like them.

The department discriminated against Black farmers when it "denied, delayed or otherwise frustrated the applications of those farmers for farm loans and other credit and benefit programs," while disbanding its Office of Civil Rights and ceasing to respond to claims of discrimination, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman wrote in approving a 1999 settlement agreement in a lawsuit that challenged the USDA to fulfill its mission to Black farmers.

Successful claimants received some combination of cash, debt relief and tax payments. But the agreement did not require the department to fire anyone who had engaged in discrimination or change its ways, because the plaintiffs didn't ask for that.

"There has always been a disconnect between what President Lincoln envisioned as 'The People's Department,' serving all of the people, and the widespread belief that the department is 'the last plantation,' a department 'perceived as playing a key role in what some see as a conspiracy to force minority and disadvantaged farmers off their land through discriminatory loan practices," Friedman wrote.

Referring to the USDA's role, Willard Tillman, executive director of the Oklahoma Black Historical Research Project, said "Land is the key to all of it." He added, "If there's anything they're going to do to help the farmer, it's not going to help them to the magnitude of those that have all the land."

'The culture didn't change'

For many farmers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture isn't a building on Independence Avenue in Washington, D.C. It is a branch called the Farm Service Agency, which administers many of USDA's services, including farm loans.

As a lender of last resort, USDA is supposed to be farmers' financial lifeline in a time of storms. Bad weather can affect production, which in turn can affect markets. The health of those markets affects cash flow. And cash flow affects the all-important bottom line.

In the past, Black farmers and ranchers have said that the USDA discriminates against them. They said they were denied the opportunity to submit loan applications, or access to timely loans and benefit programs that resulted in many taking on crushing debt and losing their farms. In 1999, they settled what would become a more than $2 billion class-action lawsuit against the department, which resulted in payments to about 35,000 farmers.

But the settlement in the case, Pigford v. Glickman, did not mandate that USDA change many of the things that Black farmers, advocates and academics argue are systemic problems in the department.

"The culture didn't change. The employees didn't change," said Sylvia Stewart, research communications director and senior research associate at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. "When farmers went in to apply for their loans, they still saw the same people who threw their applications in the trash. You still have that stagnant culture that continues to hang around."

The Center for Public Integrity found that Black borrowers are nearly four times as likely as white borrowers to default. Black borrowers had the highest loan delinquency rates among all racial and ethnic groups in each year from 2015 through 2021.

The disparity could be the result of a number of systemic problems that Black farmers face: less access to or participation in helpful farm loan programs; a lack of cash flow that means farmers are merely surviving from one year to the next; a lack of flexibility from their loan officers.

Zach Ducheneaux, the administrator of the Farm Service Agency, said they are taking steps to achieve more racial equity in farm lending. For the remainder of his tenure, the agency will begin to institutionalize racial equity and work on a culture change "of exercising that discretion to the benefit of the producers," Ducheneaux said.

While the agency is aware that racial disparities in loan delinquency exist, its goal is to "ensure that we're serving everyone equitably," Ducheneaux said.

"And equity isn't just about race," Ducheneaux said. "Equity is economic circumstances. Equity is diversity of production practices. Equity is where you're at in the food supply chain. So we're taking that very seriously and doing our best to ensure that the improvements we make for everybody also serve those that have been less well served in the past."

Some of the department's equity work includes taking a new approach to farm loan making and servicing that encourages more discretion in favor of the borrower. This approach will circulate more capital in rural economies, Ducheneaux said.

The department is also making administrative improvements like reducing the length of the paper loan application, and rolling out an online application with a fast-track approval process.

And they're working with third-party groups to improve access to capital and land, funding an Equity Commission that's released recommendations for how the department can improve services for underserved farmers and training future generations for agriculture jobs by funding research and education at minority-serving institutions.

Land is key

Black farmers own less American farmland than before - 5.5% at the beginning of the 20th century, but only 1% at the end. Black farms also are smaller on average, and size affects earnings.

"Farmland can contribute to wealth accumulation as the price of farmland increases, be used as collateral for obtaining credit, and provide financial stability for farmland owners," the Congressional Research Service report said.

"Black-owned farms are smaller and generate less sales and profits per farm than peers," according to a 2021 report by McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm. "By bringing Black farmers to parity on per-farm revenue and profit, there is $5 billion in economic value that can be created. Increasing business participation for Black farmers could create ladders of opportunity for 66,000 Black workers employed in the agriculture sector and beyond."

The median income for farmers - $57,081 - is 25% larger than the median household income for all Black Americans, the McKinsey report said.

Tillman, executive director of the Oklahoma Black Historical Research Project, is among those who argue that USDA's programs are tilted toward larger farms. Given how farm sizes vary by race, that has taken a disproportionate toll on Black farmers, he said.

"Some farmers of color have argued, 'previous discrimination in USDA programs has helped to produce these very conditions now used to explain disparate treatment,'" the Congressional Research Service noted.

The heist

On a gravel road around the bend from Bradford's property is a tidy, old Black cemetery. Eastern Oklahoma has the largest concentration of Black-owned farmland in the state.

All the land in these parts was once owned by Native Americans, but the federal government took it from them. First the government forced tribal nations west from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee to Indian Territory - present-day Oklahoma - along what's known as the Trail of Tears. The federal government gave this land to the tribes, then took much of it back from the ones that aligned with the Confederacy during the Civil War.

In the aftermath, formerly enslaved people started to become landowners, including some who came to Oklahoma from the Deep South.

Bradford's ancestors came here from Georgia and Louisiana around the turn of the 20th century. They settled about an hour's drive south of Tulsa, and just north of Boley, one of Oklahoma's 50 historic all-Black towns. And they and other migrants called their new home the Georgia Line. It's the namesake of Bradford's business, G-Line Ranch.

But many Black people were not able to hold on to their land due to violence and racial discrimination that deprived them of loans and markets to sell their goods. Others left their small towns and rural communities for better lives and economic opportunities in cities.

That's history. But its impacts are still felt now.

"The share of households of color is growing in this country, and we're robbing a lot of them, especially African-Americans, of the chance to build economic opportunities for themselves and their families," said Christian Weller, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a public policy research and advocacy organization based in D.C.

'A money pit'

As Bradford turns into his driveway, he's greeted by a black metal ranch sign with the letter "B" in the center. At the end of the drive is a farmhouse with a cozy porch, black shutters and a sleepy dog named Ava. By the time he gets home, his daughter will have left to catch the school bus. He might catch his wife before she's off to work in Tulsa.

Despite the comforts of home, it can be hard to get his mind off his situation. He sees white farmers and ranchers, and white-owned agriculture corporations, getting the government support they need, especially during tough times like the pandemic and the inflation that's come in its aftermath. "I had people I was competing against getting free money," Bradford said. "So as a Black producer, it's like you can't produce."

"I've come desensitized to it," he said. "It is what it is. I still have to keep going no matter how much the pressure is on."

He hopes to one day leave the land and G-Line Ranch, where he raises cattle for beef, to his children. His sons, both in college, come home on weekends to help out.

Nathaniel Trevon Bradford, who goes by Tre to friends and family, is studying engineering at Oklahoma State University. His younger brother, Fabian Bradford, is studying agribusiness at Langston, the country's westernmost historically Black university.

"They're doing the best they can, but unfortunately, they're gonna have a family at one point, and they need to change their priorities," Bradford said. "You can't blame them for that. That's just life. They can't keep hanging out here. This is like a money pit."

Bradford works on the farm until noon, then catches some sleep. Before sunset, he's on the road again to work before starting his day anew.
Data reporter Joe Yerardi contributed to this story. This story was produced in partnership with the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.

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'Black farmers and ranchers, it's a dying deal.'

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Black farmers are a dwindling lot, living on less land and carrying heavier financial burdens than white farmers. The USDA wants to turn things around.

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Kinship as Solidarity and Accountability

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Kinship as Solidarity and Accountability

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"We Believe in a collective process and a nonhierarchical distribution of power within our own group and in our vision of a revolutionary society." Combahee River Collective Statement (1977)

I am Black American and Saginaw Chippewa. I have grown up Afro-Indigenous my whole life, even though, to the outside world, I am perceived as Black. I am a cis-hetero-male. I benefit from patriarchy and surely contribute to a patriarchal system in personal and structural ways even as I strive to dismantle this sexist society. I grew up in a working poor family. We lived on welfare. While I grew up po' (not poor, but po'), my class position has shifted significantly as a tenured university professor.

Why do I mention these things? Because positionality matters. How I analyze the world, how I relate to others, and how I envision a future rooted outside of hierarchies in race, class, gender, etc., are shaped by where I come from. In many Indigenous nations, including my own, we have a clan system. The clan system is meant not only to dictate to everyone in the nation how they relate to other people; it also seeks to bridge accountability, responsibility, and solidarity, as well as resist carceral logics. For example, I am makwa dodem, or Bear Clan. It is used to describe how I relate to other people in my clan and nation. I have a responsibility to be a protector and healer. In Black communities, we have ways of relating too. If I call you a relative, I am including you into my chosen family structure. Your triumphs are my triumphs, and your mistakes are my mistakes. We are in this life together. We have a responsibility to take care of each other.

Our responsibilities to each other concern our future. Do we want to exist into the future or not? To do this, we need to resist all forms of carceral logics. That means no prisons. No jail. No probation. No using the court system. No uncritical hyper-policing of identities. No throwing away people because you disagree with them on social media. None of that.

Ultimately, we should be moving towards a kinship rooted in solidarity, based on radical accountability. Accountability does not promise constant forgiveness at every indiscretion, big and small, nor does it require acceptance by all. The point is that we move individuals and collectives into a different, more positive direction, which can take time.

I argue with my blood relatives about this all the time because conceptualizing true accountability is hard. Accountability means first acknowledging and addressing the harm caused to the individual and the perpetrator, knowing that systems of (in)justice in this country have worked to cause further oppression and disruption to Black and Indigenous communities.[1] As most of the abolitionists I know argue, there is not a clear road map for how this could look, but that's not the point of abolition. We should challenge ourselves to be free as much as possible. Freedom won't end all contradictions within our personal and structural lives, but freedom from carcerality and living without fear is the goal.

Accountability does not excuse the responsibilities we have to each other. When we mess up-and all of us will-we have a responsibility to communicate and offer some restitution, based on the collective. In addition to those who are harmed, we need to think creatively, fairly, and with the future in mind about what reparatory justice could mean. But we can't so quickly dismiss the pain that we can cause, either. Indeed, we should not expect to live pain free. We are human. We live in a colonial, capitalist society that focuses on profit over people, on individuals over the collective. Our current predicament requires more love, more accountability, and more solidarity with one another, for the benefit of our collective futures.

What does solidarity mean during a moment of increased focus on difference and an indifference to, if not outright dismissal of, our collective, relational possibilities with one another? This is the question I continue to ask myself. I want to relate better and allow for mistakes, repeated failures. This requires patience. It requires an encompassing love that sees the whole of a person. The late bell hooks reminds us that "true love thrives on difficulties."[2]

How we relate and imagine our collective future on land is crucial when thinking about responsibility and solidarity. Historically, members of the bear clan or makwa dodem were the healers and protectors of our people. It was our responsibility to pursue mino-bimaadiziwin, which means the good life. "The good life" in turn meant maintaining relationships built on reciprocity and care for all living things-humans and non-humans.[3]

Pursuing mino-bimaadiziwin means creating shared spaces of co-resistance, co-belonging, and amplifying our collective voices through centering the land. Centering land is also about kinship-and it is through kinship that we might find solidarity. We don't always have to agree, but we must share core values.[4]

Building solidarity for our collective futures requires a rethinking of how we relate. It requires looking to the land, to our elders, and to one another for guidance. But this will not be easy. As queer Black feminist Audre Lorde reminds us, "any future vision which can encompass all of us, by definition, must be complex and expanding, not easy to achieve." When I consider expansion, I think about how we must constantly reevaluate, bring in new ideas and people, and find new ways to relate. Perhaps it will build on Black and Indigenous radical traditions; it might also require creating and developing new traditions. We should never be afraid to create new ideas of self, culture, identity.

I propose we consider kinship as solidarity. For example, what if First Nations, in Canada and the United States, in exercising sovereignty, began incorporating Black people into their nations using our clan systems? We can quibble about resources, practicality, and so on, but what better way to build kinship than to expand our web of responsibility? If sovereignty means anything, it must include our bodies, our epistemologies, "and the ability to regenerate Indigenous languages, philosophies, legal systems, and intellectual systems and to nurture and continue those systems for the land."[5] I would also add that regeneration might look like building new forms of kinship. Sometimes imagining our futures requires creating something new, but often our established practices of kinship already exist and could be utilized.

Solidarity can be a difficult term. In the reissue of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, historian Robin D.G. Kelley asks the question, "But is it possible to reconcile reparations for slavery and structural racism with decolonization?"[6] He directly answered that question, but he offers on the following page a definition of decolonization that I understand as an example of solidarity in motion: "decolonization means ending capitalism and returning the land, not as 'property' but as the source of life to be stewarded by its original inhabitants and where animals, plants, and humans can coexist and thrive together."[7] Reparations and decolonization can indeed be reconciled, but it will take a sustained effort of difficult conversations, searing critiques, and constant reevaluation.

Our birthright is not subjugation, nor do we have to pass it onto the next generation. Our position moving forward should be creating sacred spaces where all our kin can not only survive but flourish and be who they be; that is, live to their fullest human potential without the limits of a patriarchal, settler colonial society. Robyn Maynard and Leanne Simpson argue, "the massive destruction, gendered and murderous, of (Indigenous) human life and land dispossession; the commodification, exploitation and fungibility of (Black) human life; and the relentless expropriation and destruction of non-human nature are inextricably linked: a disregard for all living things except for their value as property to be accumulated."[8] As my comrade and Afro-Indigenous sister-in-struggle Amber Starks would say: We need to imagine possibilities for kinship, solidarity, and accountability outside of what might seem feasible within a white supremacist society. As we move toward the aftermath of settler colonialism and white supremacy, contradictions will remain. However, our job is to address them with compassion, grace, and the determination to be free, by all accountable means necessary.
Notes
[1] Kaba, M., Nopper, T., & Murakawa, N. (2021). In We do this 'til we free us: Abolitionist organizing and Transforming Justice (pp. 58-62). essay, Haymarket Books.

[2] hooks, bell. (2018). In All about love: New visions (p. 181). essay, William Morrow Paperbacks.

[3] Nightingale, E., & Richmond, C. (2022). Reclaiming land, identity and mental wellness in Biigtigong nishnaabeg territory. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(12), 7285. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19127285

[4] Simpson, L. (2014, November 28). Indict the System: Indigenous and Black Connected Resistance [web log]. Retrieved June 5, 2023, from http://leannesimpson.ca/indict-the-system-indigenous-black-connected-resistance/.

[5] Simpson, L. B. (2015). The place where we all live and work together: Native Studies Keywords, 18-24. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt183gxzb.5

[6] G., K. R. D. (2002). In Freedom dreams: The black radical imagination (p. xxxv). Beacon Press.

[7] Ibid., xxvvi.

[8] Maynard, R., & Simpson, L. B. (2022). Rehearsals for living. Haymarket Books.

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Kinship as Solidarity and Accountability | Center for Humans and Nature

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Our position moving forward should be creating sacred spaces where all our kin can not only survive but flourish and be who they be; that is, live to their fullest human potential without the limits of a patriarchal, settler colonial society.

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Learn about Native American culture and the sport of lacrosse

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Learn about Native American culture and the sport of lacrosse

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The discussion is free and you get a free ticket to the Duke women's basketball game that night.

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Story Links DURHAM - In conjunction with Native American Heritage Month in November, Duke University and Duke Athletics have come together to host Haudenosaunee professional lacrosse player Lyle Thompson for a conversation about Native American culture and the sport of lacrosse.

Spearheaded by Dr. Larissa Carneiro, Ph.D. from Duke's Department of Religious Studies, Duke is excited to welcome Thompson to Duke's campus, Nov. 9, for a discussion about Native American history and culture and "The Medicine Game". Joining Thompson on the panel will be Duke men and women's lacrosse head coaches and Kerstin Kimel, Dr. Courtney Lewis of Duke's Department of Cultural Anthropology and Carneiro.

The event is open to the general public and will take place in The Champions Club inside Cameron Indoor Stadium from 5-6 p.m. Those planning to attend must register here. Questions in advance are welcome.

Lewis is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation and became a faculty member at Duke in 2022. She teaches American Indian Nations Today and American Indians Go Graphic. Carneiro, starting at Duke as a visiting professor in 2017, currently serves as an instructor of Religious Studies and taught a Religion and Sport class this past spring.

Hailing from the Hawk Clan of the Onondaga Confederacy of the Six Nations of the Grand River, Thompson played college lacrosse at the University at Albany. In 2014, Thompson set the NCAA single-season record for points with 128 en route to sharing the Tewaaraton Award given to the nation's top player with his brother, Miles Thompson. The duo teamed up to lead the Great Danes to the NCAA semifinals that season.

The following season, Lyle won a second Tewaaraton Award to become the first male player in history to win the Tewaaraton Award in consecutive years. His 400 career points currently rank second in NCAA history.

After graduating from Albany in 2015, Thompson went on to star in Major League Lacrosse (MLL) and the National Lacrosse League (NLL). He was the top pick in both the 2015 MLL and NLL drafts and helped lead the Georgia Swarm to its first NLL Championship in 2017. Scoring a career-best 116 points for the Swarm that season, Thompson was voted the league's Most Valuable Player Award and earned the Championship MVP honor.

In the outdoor game, he led the Chesapeake Bayhawks to the 2019 MLL Championship, scoring 46 goals and dishing 27 assists for 73 points. Thompson joined the Boston Cannons of the Premier Lacrosse League in 2021. In his second season in the PLL he set a league record for most points in a season with 44.

Thompson also has shined on the international stage, leading the Iroquois men's national team to third place at the 2014 and 2018 World Lacrosse Championships. This past summer, he captured a third bronze medal with the Haudenosaunee at the 2023 World Lacrosse Championships.

Off the field, Thompson is an active humanitarian, using his platform for positive change, and has won humanitarian awards multiple times for these ventures. Among these pursuits are his participation in the #everychildmatters movement and spreading awareness about the atrocities of the residential schools that were designed to indoctrinate Indigenous children in-to Christian Canadian culture.

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Cultural Conversations: Lyle Thompson and the Medicine Game - Duke University

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DURHAM - In conjunction with Native American Heritage Month in November, Duke University and Duke Athletics have come together to host Haudenosaunee professional lacrosse player Lyle Thompson for a conversation about Native American culture and the sport of lacrosse.

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Glynis Hill-Chandler

The book talk is at the Greensboro Historical Museum at 6 pm, across the street from the Tanger (Bryan Series is at 7:30 pm). Fergus will speak about the book, followed by an optional book signing.

He's also speaking the next night in Chapel Hill. Details below.

October 12 – Greensboro, NC

GREENSBORO HISTORY MUSEUM AND SCUPPERNONG BOOKS

6 p.m. ET – Talk followed by book signing

Auditorium, Greensboro History Museum, 130 Summit Ave. Greensboro, NC 27401

October 13 – Chapel Hill, NC

CHAPEL HILL HISTORICAL SOCIETY AND FLYLEAF BOOKS, in conversation with Mark Pinsky

5:30-7 p.m. ET

Flyleaf Books, 752 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, Chapel Hill, NC 27510

The event will begin with a signing line and the talk will be from 6-7 p.m.