Notes from America with Kai Wright

As a young woman, poet and writer Nikki Giovanni could see that no one was interested in a Black girl writing what was seen as militant and revolutionary poetry. So she formed a company and published it herself. Her second book was launched at the famous New York jazz venue Birdland as she was making a name for herself. When she was 28, she flew to London to sit with James Baldwin and record a conversation for the PBS television series, “Soul.” Baldwin was in his late-40s and an established figure in literature.

As event television, it was electric. And clips from that 1971 program continue to be shared. For many young people, that interview is how they first encounter Baldwin, and Giovanni. She's now 81 years old, and has had a garlanded career, including a Grammy nomination, bestselling books and work as a distinguished professor of English at Virginia Tech. Giovanni tells host Razia Iqbal why Baldwin’s prose is a beautiful container for the fiery rage found in his messages.

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Notes from America airs live on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts.

What do the results of the presidential election tell us about our country? We asked a veteran movement organizer to reflect on what feels like a rejection of her core values.

To help him make sense of all the post-election feelings, host Kai Wright gets advice from his mentor in the movement for racial and social justice, Rinku Sen. Sen  is the executive director of the Narrative Initiative, which focuses on social movements working to root our multiracial democracy in equity and justice. She shares reflections and lessons from her own journey as an organizer and thinker.

Plus, Kai turns to reporter Brandon Tensley, who covers national politics for Capital B News, to break down what we know and don’t know about the incoming Trump Administration, and how he is preparing for what is to come professionally — and personally.

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Notes from America airs live on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts.

Award-winning Irish writer Colm Toibin has long admired James Baldwin, ever since he read “Go Tell It on the Mountain" as a teenager, and has now written a book about him called simply “On James Baldwin.” When he picked “Go Tell It on the Mountain" from a shelf years ago, Toibin hadn’t heard or read anything about the novel, one of Baldwin’s most famous works. And without any pretense, he found himself immersed in the book’s words and characters. Reading it later in life as an accomplished author and professor, Toibin’s respect grew for Baldwin’s skill at depicting the human experience defined by interiority rather than external events. Toibin shares his insights with host Razia Iqbal, and describes how Baldwin managed to satisfy so many different kinds of readers — giving them  a diversity of ideas and perspectives to take away from the pages.

Toibin is the author of 11 novels, including “The Master,” “Brooklyn” and “Nora Webster.” He's also written essays, journalism and a book of poetry. His work's been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times and he has won the Costa Novel Award and the Impact Award. He writes regularly for the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, the New York Times and many other publications. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University in New York, where we sat with him in his office, teeming with books, papers, and as you’ll hear, a love for Baldwin. 

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Notes from America airs live on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts.

Former President Donald Trump has spent the last days of his 2024 campaign casting doubt on the U.S. election system, even taking the stage at a rally in Pennsylvania to say he “shouldn’t have left” the White House in 2020. The rhetoric and lies coming from the Trump campaign have also included a false narrative that non-U.S. citizens are voting illegally in large numbers, setting a stage to justify mass deportations or, if needed, declaring a stolen victory.

To put it bluntly, there will likely be no simple resolution to the outcome of this election. 

Anne Applebaum, a staff writer for The Atlantic, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and co-host of the podcast Autocracy in America, joins host Kai Wright to discuss and dissect the ways the Trump campaign has laid the groundwork for distrust in the election results, no matter what they are.

Plus, we hear from NBC News disinformation reporter Brandy Zadrozny about the spaces where these lies are spreading and how to weed through disinformation on Election Day and beyond.

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Notes from America airs live on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts.

 In the seventh episode of “Notes on a Native Son" our guest is writer, philologist and James Baldwin biographer David Leeming. 

In the biography, Leeming tells us that almost from the moment h e met Baldwin, he recognized that he was in the presence of a highly complex and driven individual, who was more intensely serious than anyone he had ever encountered.

It was in 1961, during Leeming’s time as head of English at the Robert College in Istanbul, that he first met Baldwin. Over the years, Leeming worked as an assistant to Baldwin, who gave him permission to take care of his papers. He tells host Razia Iqbal that he was at the author’s side during some of Baldwn’s liveliest years.

Leeming eventually became professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Connecticut. He has written several books on comparative literature and mythology, as well as a biography of the painter Beauford Delaney, who Baldwin regarded as his spiritual father.

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Notes from America airs live on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts.

This presidential election is likely to be a squeaker, decided by a handful of votes in some key swing states. In this episode from our friends at the podcast Code Switch, we visit one of them — Michigan — in order to hear from some of the most influential and misunderstood voters in the country: Arab Americans in Dearborn.

Code Switch host Gene Demby reports that The Dearbornites they met said that the war in Gaza is one of the key issues weighing on their minds as they consider how to cast their ballots. But what that will mean in the voting booth is still a complex question. Will they go for Kamala Harris? Donald Trump? A third party candidate? No one at all?

What these voters ultimately decide could have huge consequences for the whole country.

Companion listening for this episode: "Voter Vibe Check: Democratic Voters Are Torn Over Biden’s Gaza Policy" (published March 18, 2024)

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Notes from America airs live on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts.

With the 2024 presidential election right around the corner, all eyes are on the swing states. In this episode, host Kai Wright travels to Atlanta, the heart of one swing state where early voting numbers are at a record high, to hear about the historically large political gender gap.

While the show was in town, Atlanta hosted homecoming festivities for Morehouse and Spelman Colleges, two of the nation’s most famous historically Black schools — and the perfect campuses to talk politics with students and alumni in between the parties.

Kai is joined by Omar Ali, a local Atlanta business owner and political organizer; Rose Scott, host of the daily news magazine Closer Look on WABE, Atlanta Public Radio; and Errin Haines, co-founder and editor-at-large of The 19th, a newsroom that covers the intersections of gender, politics and policy. Plus, listeners tell us how the candidates’ appeals to their gender identity will affect their vote.

Thanks to our station partner WABE for collaborating on this episode.

Tell us what you think. We're @noteswithkai on Instagram and X (Twitter). Email us at [email protected]. Send us a voice message by recording yourself on your phone and emailing us, or record one here.

Notes from America airs live on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts.

In the sixth episode of “Notes on a Native Son,” writer Caryl Phillips shares the experience of getting to know James Baldwin beyond the pages of his work. Phillips not only respected Baldwin as a writer, but regarded him as a friend and perhaps a mentor, too. 

Phillips was born on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, and moved to Leeds, in northern England, when he was just 4 months old. It was as a student at Oxford where he first encountered the work of Baldwin. He tells host Razia Iqbal that meeting Baldwin was the first time he’d ever met a writer, something he knew he wanted to be.

Caryl Phillips was on the 1993 Granta list of Best of Young British Writers. His literary awards include Britain's oldest literary award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, for “Crossing the River,” which was also shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize. “A Distant Shore" was longlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize, and won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of the Arts, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He currently teaches English at Yale University.

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Notes from America airs live on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts.

There is a longstanding, widely held belief that the best chance at a better future is to go off to college – especially for people from marginalized communities.

Whether it was your teacher, general political rhetoric, or one of many sitcoms that reflect middle class American life, the message was to go to school or risk failure — dismissing millions of people who decided not to go to college and created viable, sustainable careers in trade professions, from manufacturing and welding to plumbing and software engineering.

And now, as college costs continue to rise and more people want to develop a sense of financial stability, education and careers in the trades through vocational schools are becoming not only more accepted, but also encouraged across all factors of society. 

In our latest episode, host Kai Wright talks to ​​Maya Bhattacharjee-Marcantonio, co-founder of The Marcy Lab School in Brooklyn, New York, and Eric Kelderman, a senior writer at the Chronicle of Higher Education about the shifting cultural cachet around earning a 4-year college degree. We talk about what motivates some students to pursue vocational education, what this change might mean long-term for Americans across demographics, and why some still prefer a professional path that includes college.

Support of WNYC’s coverage of economic mobility and opportunity is provided in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. For more information about how the Gates Foundation supports economic mobility and opportunity, visit usprogram.gatesfoundation.org.

Tell us what you think. We're @noteswithkai on Instagram and X (Twitter). Email us at [email protected]. Send us a voice message by recording yourself on your phone and emailing us, or record one here.

Notes from America airs live on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts.

In the fifth episode of Notes on a Native Son, our guest is Turkish-British writer Elif Shafak. She has published 21 books, 13 of them novels — including “The Forty Rules of Love” and her latest, “There are Rivers in the Sky” — and her work has been translated into 58 languages. Shafak is among those contemporary writers who are both lauded with awards, and deeply beloved by her readers.

Born in Strasbourg, France to Turkish parents, Shafak’s early life was peripatetic, living in both Ankara and Istanbul for long periods of time before moving to London. She tells host Razia Iqbal that her love for Istanbul connects her to James Baldwin, who also lived there on and off during the 1960s and early 1970s. 

Tell us what you think. We're @noteswithkai on Instagram and X (Twitter). Email us at [email protected]. Send us a voice message by recording yourself on your phone and emailing us, or record one here.

Notes from America airs live on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts.