PODCASTS

Scene On Radio

John Biewen, Chenjerai Kumanyika, Celeste Headlee

Season 2 of Scene On radio, entitled “Seeing White,” pivots around host John Biewen exploring his own white racial identity while tracking the development of whiteness throughout history. He’s joined by Chenjerai Kumanyika.

MEN is the title of season 3, which shifts its focus onto patriarchal power structures, covering misogyny and the #MeToo movement with co-host Celeste Headlee.

Code Switch

Shereen Marisol Meraji, Gene Demby

A weekly NPR podcast focusing on race and culture. Gene and Shereen explore subjects of identity, often using NPR’s resources to bring in fellow reporters and experts to investigate cultural norms and current events.

Still Processing

Jenna Wortham, Wesley Morris

Both Jenna Wortham and Wesley Morris are culture writers at the New York Times. The podcast feels very much like a casual conversation between two friends who also happen to experts on beauty, art, music, and film. Their critiques of culture get seamlessly woven in with their personal experiences as black and queer people, and the end result is a podcast as enlightening as it is lovely.

 

Our National Conversation About Conversations About Race

Anna Holmes, Baratunde Thurston, Raquel Cepeda, Tanner Colby

Though this podcast went off the air in 2017, its archived episodes are still available and contain some of the most candid and intelligent conversations and debates around race you’ll likely hear anywhere. It’s almost providential the way these episodes coincide with the phenomenon of the rise of Donald Trump, providing something of a live commentary while investigating and discussing “the ways we can’t talk, don’t talk, would rather not talk, but intermittently, fitfully, embarrassingly do talk about culture, identity, politics, power, and privilege in our pre-post-yet-still-very-racial America.”

Pass The Mic

Jemar Tisby, Tyler Burns, Beau York

Pass the Mic is the official podcast for The Witness: A Black Christian Collective, hosted predominately by Tyler Burns and, whenever he’s not working on his PhD in History or traveling the country, Jemar Tisby. This was one of the first podcasts about race I started listening to, and offers incredible content in its archives for people (especially white people) looking for briefers on concepts like white supremacy, systemic racism, white privilege, etc.

Truth’s Table

Ekemini Uwan, Dr. Christina Edmondson, Michelle Higgins

“Midwives of culture for grace and truth.” The ladies who gather around this table discuss race, gender, politics, current events, and pop culture through the lens of their Christian faith, often honing in on the many ways social dynamics, patriarchy, and systemic racism play themselves out in the American church.

 

Hidden Brain

Shankar Vedantam

Hidden Brain helps curious people understand the world – and themselves. Using science and storytelling, Shankar Vedantam reveals the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, and the biases that shape our choices. Hidden Brain links research from psychology and neurobiology with findings from economics, anthropology, and sociology, among other fields.

Revisionist History

Malcolm Gladwell

Malcom Gladwell revisits events, people, and ideas from the past that we’ve often taken for granted, misunderstood, or overlooked—everything from McDonald’s french fries to the tokenization of women painters in the 19th century.

Conversations With People Who Hate Me

Dylan Marron

If Dylan Marron ran for president, he just might have my vote. In Conversations With People Who Hate Me, Dylan reaches out to people who’ve left hateful comments about him online to set up real-time conversations with. In season two, he also moderates similar conversations with others, and sis ability to do so, de-escalating conversations that are often rife with conflict and defensiveness is incredible. This podcast, like Show About Race above, deserves a listen if nothing more than to simply instruct us how to talk with each other.

 

Invisibilia

Alix Spiegel, Hanna Rosin

“Invisibilia,” is Latin for “invisible things,” and that’s exactly what this podcast explores—the hidden and often invisible forces that shape human behavior.

On Being

Krista Tippett

Each guest Krista Tippett interviews in On Being seems to be a visionary and genius in their own field (including Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow). The subjects they discuss often run the gamut, but focus on some of the meaningful questions people in our day tend to ask, bringing together spirituality, science, art, and sociology. A recent recommendation is the episode “Let’s Talk About Whiteness” with Eula Bliss.

OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS:

  1. 2 Dope Queens; Phoebe Robinson, Jessica Williams

  2. Pod Save The People; DeRay McKesson

  3. Millenneagram; Hannah Paasch