The country was barely on the other side of a period of deep thought about the cultural meaning of O.J. Simpson, and then last week we found out that O.J. will be a free man this October. We explore the vexing empathy that racism toward him inspires in us. Second, we can’t believe how much fun we had watching "Girls Trip"! Comedies starring black women – in which they aren’t the butt of the joke – are virtually non-existent. We cheer the movie for giving us four fun, sexual black women without also denying their humanness.

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2017 feels sort of like the End Times, and we’re leaning into science fiction TV shows and movies to imagine the outcome of our current political and geological climate. If science fiction functions as a cautionary tale, offering lessons in morality and asking us to consider our relationship with technology, what should our country’s leaders be watching? We discuss “War for the Planet of the Apes,” in which highly intelligent apes and plague-riddled humans battle for control of the Earth. Then, we serve up a list of sci-fi homework for ourselves and our elected officials.

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“4:44” is Jay-Z’s first album since Beyoncé turned their marital trouble into a masterpiece called "Lemonade." On “4:44,” Jay-Z expresses regret for his infidelity and ruminates on the socioeconomic state of black America. The album is knotty and contradictory, especially when compared with the psychological clarity of "Lemonade." We spend the episode unpacking “4:44” as a work unto itself, and also in the context of “Lemonade.” We also discuss why the survival and performance of Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s marriage means so much to the culture and to us.

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It’s barbecue season! But let’s be clear: We aren’t talking about throwing burgers and veggies on a grill. We’re talking about the rich culinary tradition of slow-cooking meat over a dirt pit, a cuisine cultivated by enslaved Africans in the American South. We both live in Brooklyn, where barbecue is gentrifying as quickly as our neighborhoods. To talk through our feelings, we invited two Southern food experts on the show: John Thomas Edge Jr., the author of “The Potlikker Papers,” and Nicole Taylor, a chef and the author of “The Up South Cookbook.” They help us remember the central role that African-Americans played (and continue to play) in establishing one of our country’s most signature styles of eating. Then we venture to a Carolina-style pit in the middle of Bushwick. It's a truly American tale.

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What responsibility does a movie have to the details of history? In Sofia Coppola’s new film, “The Beguiled,” a remake of Don Siegel’s 1971 psychological thriller set in the American South during the Civil War, she omits a key character from the original film: a slave woman named Hallie. Is Coppola’s omission a correction of history or an act of artistic cowardice? Speaking of history and responsibility: We take a look at “All Eyez on Me,” which tells the story of the brief but remarkable life of Tupac Shakur. At a time when the safety of black men’s lives seems dubious, is there significance in people’s refusing to accept that Tupac is truly dead?

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June is Gay Pride month: four weekends of parades, pageantry, and partying, all over the country. But now, a year after the Pulse nightclub shooting, people are asking whether Pride celebrations are sufficiently black, political and confrontational. We talk about the joy we feel during Pride, while also recognizing the limits of the parade and the gay rights movement in general. We also reckon with the racism in gay life, and where that leaves the two of us.

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In a live-stream to promote her new album, “Witness,” Katy Perry put on an elaborate performance, giving a series of confessional interviews about her cultural missteps. We analyze all the reasons this was an experiment gone terribly wrong. We then turn to a much more sinister attempt by a celebrity to reshape his image by performing for the public: Bill Cosby pretending he is Cliff Huxtable at his trial for the sexual assault of Andrea Constand. The cross-examining of Constand strangely reminded us of Jim Comey’s testimony before Congress, leading us to a discussion of the different ways these two victims — one male and powerful, one female and powerless — were received in the culture.

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Summer is here, and so are the superhero movies and hit pop songs that define the season. We discuss the politics of “Wonder Woman,” the first female-fronted and female-directed superhero blockbuster. We also search for the definitive summer jam of 2017 and try to define what makes a great summer song along the way.

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Last week, the Baywatch franchise returned — this time on the big screen — with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Zac Efron leading a cast of tan, muscled lifeguards. But the film isn’t just a goofy romp; it presents the beach as a place of danger that needs to be patrolled, raising questions about who beaches are for. Jenna spends as much time at the beach as she can, while Wesley has always resisted going. As they try to untangle why that is, they discuss the history of American beaches and American beach movies, and the beach as a place of infinite possibility and mystery, as bearing the traces of racial segregation and as being one of the most liberating environments in the world.

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In the last 30 years, blackness has migrated from the margins of American popular culture to its center. Right now, a bounty of television, movies, and music engages with the question of how people signal to each other that they’re down with blackness. And it isn't just white people doing the signaling. It's black people too, albeit in a different way. We’ll dig into Netflix’s new show “Dear White People,” and television and film from the 1980s and 1990s and try to understand: what does it mean to perform blackness?

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