Slavery is not as deep in the past as some may think. That’s the premise of Clint Smith’s new book, How the Word is Passed.

Today, he joins Wednesday host Ali Muldrow on the show to discuss the history of slavery and its echoes in present-day America.

Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the poetry collection Counting Descent (Write Bloody Publishing, 2017) and the nonfiction book How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America (Little, Brown and Company, 2021).