When President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump shared the stage for the first presidential debate of the 2024 election season, it was memorable for all the wrong reasons.

Namely, it displayed a concern of many Americans: Biden’s age and acuity. We watched two men, both in the late years of their lives, both of whom have already spent decades as rich and powerful people, both of whom have already been president, and neither of whom can conceive of a future in which they aren’t in charge. Many in the Democratic Party were left angry and terrified, and the event prompted an op-ed from The New York Times’ Editorial Board calling for Biden to remove himself from the race.

In this episode, host Kai Wright is joined by New York Times columnist Lydia Polgreen to talk about the calls for Biden’s removal and her own suggestion that Vice President Kamala Harris step in instead. They also sit down with Christopher Ojeda, a political scientist at the University of California, Merced, and author of the forthcoming book “The Sad Citizen,” to hear about his research on how politics impacts our mental health and what that in turn means for elections. Plus, we hear why some of you are starting to feel anxious, depressed, and angry about the upcoming presidential election.

Companion listening for this episode:

Voter Vibe Check: Anti-Trump Conservatives On Republican Party Politics in 2024  (2/5/2024)

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.

Minority rule – by which a few get to decide the outcomes for many – is eroding American democracy at nearly every level, according to veteran journalist Ari Berman, author of Minority Rule: the Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People―and the Fight to Resist It. 

In this episode, host Kai Wright talks to Berman about how the U.S. has been in a push-and-pull between oligarchy and democracy since 1787 when the Founding Fathers put systems in place, like the Senate and the Electoral College, to prevent the will of the people from having too much influence in national government. Berman explains how these systems have laid the foundation for modern day partisanship, making the future of America’s democracy seem increasingly shaky as right-wing political leaders engage with authoritarian ideals, and as the will of the people is curtailed by the wants, fears and needs of white, wealthy Americans.

Berman is the national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones and a reporting fellow at Type Media Center. His previous books include Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America and Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics.

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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.

The promise of American democracy could not be fulfilled until all Americans were free.

Following the moment of Black liberation marked by Juneteenth, Black Americans began the ongoing project of securing and protecting their rights to vote, and to lead. In this special Juneteenth episode, host Kai Wright traces the lineage of our democracy being actualized to the period after Emancipation, when political leadership like that of late Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan emerged and began to shape the potential and the power of the Black vote on our nation.

Recorded live at Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church where Jordan was a member, Kai welcomes Rev. Ronald Bell, the church's senior director of membership, and scholar Mary Ellen Curtin, author of the forthcoming biography "She Changed The Nation: Barbara Jordan's Life and Legacy in Black Politics," to reflect on the first Black person elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction and the first Black woman from the South to serve in Congress. They're also joined by  Sonny Messiah-Jiles, CEO and Publisher of Houston's Defender Media Group, a Black community news organization, to discuss how Black voters continue to shape politics in an election year that's crucial to the sustainability of our democracy.

Special thanks to event partner AHF through its We The People Coalition, marching forward to protect democracy. Thanks also to Houston Public Media, Rice University and the community of Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church including Pastor D.Z. Cofield, Linda Whitley, Mark Taylor, David Donaldson, Daniel Williams, Ian Chestnut and Travis Rucker.

Companion listening for this episode: "Juneteenth is an Act of Bravery" (6/19/2023)

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.

Back in April, some of our listeners told us they were “Trump curious.” A few months later, the former president is now a convicted criminal and other listeners have lingering questions.

The Notes from America inbox is always teeming with interesting takes from our audience and in this episode, host Kai Wright is joined by producer Regina de Heer to go through the various messages the show has received in recent months. They include notes about this year’s presidential election, one listener’s chance interaction with a performance of “The Wiz” in a historic town, and a touching response to our request for your stories about summer. 

By the way, it’s not too late to send in your summer stories! Do you have a summer tradition that you will be breaking this year, for whatever reason? Will you make an intentional change to your seasonal routine, whether big or small? If so, we want to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at 844-745-8255 with your name, location and the story of what you’re doing differently. Or you can record a voice memo on your device and email it to us at [email protected]. Regina just may reach back out to you for a more detailed version of your shifting summer experience.

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.

Ten years after its original staging, “Appropriate” has received eight Tony Award nominations. Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins talks about the moments of his life that inspired it.

The play tells the story of three siblings reuniting in their family home after the death of their father. Charged with going through his belongings, the children discover troubling relics within the home. They are left to deal with the question of an inheritance, but also this new challenge to their late father’s legacy.

Jacobs-Jenkins has since staged “Appropriate” several times, been a Pulitzer Prize finalist for two subsequent plays, and been awarded a MacArthur “genius” fellowship. But it wasn’t until December 2023 that the playwright made his Broadway debut with “Appropriate,” which is now up for eight Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Play and Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play for actress Sarah Paulson.

Host Kai Wright sits with Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins to discuss the real-life moments that inspired the creation of this show, and the playwright’s efforts to understand the complicated inheritances of race in America.

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.

Notes from America producer Suzanne Gaber returns to the campus of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, for an update on Hisham Awartani, a 21-year-old student of Palestinian descent, who was paralyzed after being shot during a holiday break in Vermont in 2023. As Awartani continues to work on his physical recovery and navigating life in a wheelchair, he has also assumed a high profile role on campus in the student-led movement to urge Brown to divest from companies doing business in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Companion listening for this episode: 

A Palestinian American Victim of American Gun Violence Becomes a Reluctant Poster Child (2/19/2024)

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.

Last week, a jury in Manhattan handed down a guilty verdict in the hush money trial of Donald J. Trump for 34 counts related to falsifying business records to influence the 2016 election. Even though the verdict made Trump the first former president to be convicted of felony crimes, most American voters say the outcome of the trial doesn’t make much difference to how they’ll show up to the polls in November.

In this episode, host Kai Wright is joined by award-winning journalist Andrea Bernstein, who has covered five of Trump’s trials in New York for NPR, including this latest one, and who is the author of a book about Trump’s enterprises called “American Oligarchs: the Kushners, the Trumps and the Marriage of Money and Power.” Bernstein is also the co-host of the podcasts Trump Inc., Will Be Wild and We Don’t Talk About Leonard. She shares her takeaways from the New York courtroom where the former president was found guilty, and looks ahead to his sentencing and the series of legal challenges facing Trump in the months to come. Plus, callers from around the country share their reactions to the historic verdict, and their questions about what this outcome means for the rest of this election year.

Companion listening for this episode: Voter Vibe Check: Why Trump Has More Support From Black Voters Than Ever (4/8/2024)

A new poll says if the presidential election was held today, 23 percent of Black voters would cast their ballot for Trump.

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.

Author Ayana Mathis' new novel, The Unsettled, is an intergenerational story centered around one Black family’s struggle to find freedom in the 1980s. Like her previous work, migration and movement are major themes in the book. But this time, her characters are at a crossroads, unsure of their next step in search of self-determination. Mathis joins host Kai Wright to reveal the questions that torment the characters in her gripping novel, and discuss her own journey grappling with those themes.

During this episode, Kai refers to a previous episode about our Future of Black History series featuring Saidiya Hartman, which can be found here.

This episode was originally published September 25, 2023.

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.

We should all know by now how foolish it is to underestimate youth. Gen Z, the generation of people born between 1997 and 2012, has already changed the world in ways that no one could have anticipated, from mass protests against gun violence to international movements to reckon with climate change. 

For members of this generation who are part of the graduating class of 2024, a series of unfortunate and unprecedented events have shaped the way they engage in political, social and cultural issues. Many of them missed the opportunity to walk the stage of their high school graduation as Covid-19 swept over the world. That same year, they witnessed and participated in massive uprisings in support of Black lives, only to see a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol a few months later. Now, some of their college graduation ceremonies are being shaped by protests in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, or — much like high school — canceled altogether.

Amidst all these challenges, these graduates and their peers have been burdened with the expectation that they are the generation that will change the world. Yet, they are often dismissed as lazy, selfish and overly sensitive. 

In this episode of Notes from America, host Kai Wright is joined by Gen Z educator and podcast host Taylor Coward. Kai and Taylor take calls from several class of 2024 graduates, including “Cee Kay” who participated in a walkout protest during their commencement; and Gabe Fleisher, author of the WakeUp2Politics newsletter, which he started in elementary school. They talk about how their experiences have influenced their outlook and optimism about the future, and about the societal pressures they face as they enter the workforce and a world in turmoil. 

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.

While news coverage has been justifiably focused on the aggressive police response to anti-war college protests at campuses around the country, it’s noteworthy that a handful of U.S. schools have agreed to come to the table with students and discuss their demands. At the top of the list for many campus activists: divestment. 

At Brown University, where protests against Israel’s war have been occurring since the fall of 2023, students want the administration to cut ties with companies that do business with Israel’s occupied territories. As student negotiator Isabella Garo explains, it’s less about hurting the companies financially and more about being a moral model for academic institutions, large and small. In this episode, Garo joins host Kai Wright to talk about taking on her university over a contentious issue, and where she sees the role of Brown Divest in the larger Free Palestine movement. Click here to read a statement from a Brown University spokesperson about why the school agreed to negotiate with students and take a vote on the issue of divestment in October 2024.

Then, Kai discusses how the current calls for divestment echo previous student-led protest movements on campuses with Chris Marsicano, assistant professor of educational studies at Davidson College. Marsicano breaks down the history of university divestment and why it can be a complicated ask, particularly at state schools and elite colleges.

Companion listening for this episode:

A Palestinian-American Victim Of American Gun Violence Becomes A Reluctant Poster Child (2/19/2024)

Brown University student Hisham Awartani processes his injuries, and the trauma of his community back home in the West Bank.

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.