In The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, the Visionary of Weimar Berlin, Daniel Brook revives the life story of an influential German thinker far ahead of his time.

More than a century ago, Magnus Hirschfeld argued that gender and sexuality are fluid—and later, that race is a social construct. As you might expect, the Nazis weren’t fans, but they didn’t write Hirschfeld out of history. That erasure happened in the U.S., even though, as Daniel and I discuss, it was Hirschfeld’s books destroyed at the infamous book burning in 1933. In a time of resurgent fascist politics, Daniel told me, “It’s high time” we learned about Magnus.

Daniel Brook is a journalist and author whose writing has appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, and The Nation. He’s now the author of four books.

In Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn’t, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies, Professor Michael Albertus (University of Chicago) explores how land has changed hands since the French Revolution. In places like the U.S., Canada, and Brazil, this “reshuffling” has shaped social hierarchies and the climate (spoiler: not in a good way). Today, signs point to us entering a new period of reshuffling. While there are risks of inequality deepening, Professor Albertus also sees opportunities to correct the mistakes of the past.

Today, my guest offers an account of Native boarding schools and justice long overdue.

In Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools, Mary Annette Pember shares her mother’s experience at a Catholic boarding school in northern Wisconsin. The story offers a glimpse into what those schools were like and how their legacy continues to shape Native life today. As Mary told me, both the government and the Church “need to be called out” as the U.S. finally begins to reckon with this chapter of its history.

Mary is a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of the Wisconsin Ojibwe and national correspondent for ICT News (formerly Indian Country Today). Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and many other outlets. She’s also a past president of the Native American Journalists’ Association.

I’m so excited to share today’s interview with Professor Deborah N. Archer about transportation history—my favorite subject! Professor Archer details how highways are a visceral emblem of white supremacy. We may often forget their origins, but as she reminds us in her new book, Dividing Lines: How Transportation Infrastructure Reinforces Racial Inequality, “with transportation infrastructure, history is the present.”

Professor Archer is Associate Dean and Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, and she currently serves as President of the ACLU. Her scholarship has appeared in leading law reviews, and she’s offered commentary for numerous outlets, including MSNBC, NPR, CBS, The Atlantic, and The New York Times.

I spoke with author Malcolm Harris about his new book, What’s Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis. We explored three strategies that have a chance of staving off climate change before it’s too late. Malcolm demonstrates—compellingly, I think—how and why the left needs to unite ASAP.

Malcolm is a journalist, writer, and critic.

If you missed it, the Trump administration took aim at the Smithsonian. As stated in an executive order, their goal is to end the “revisionist moment” carried out by historians.

It goes without saying, but to be clear, I don’t support that executive order. On the contrary, I’m proud that this newsletter is part of the “revisionist moment.” The study of slavery, the subject of my interview today, demonstrates why revisionist history is so integral in moving us toward justice.

In Making Sense of Slavery: America’s Long Reckoning, from the Founding Era to Today, historian Scott Spillman traces historians’ evolving interpretations of slavery since the 1700s. In tracking these debates, he helps frame “the troubling new realm” we’ve entered and the challenging questions at the heart of American history.

Today, we’re talking about the Red Scare: a time of black-and-white politics when people could be arrested just for their political views. Granted, ICE wasn’t abducting people with visas off the street, but I think you’ll find today’s interview relevant nonetheless. Among other things, Clay Risen helps draw a clear throughline from Joseph McCarthy to Donald Trump and shares some valuable takeaways for combating fascism today.

Clay is a reporter and editor at The New York Times. He’s the author of several books on American history (and American whiskey). In our conversation, we explored his latest book: Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America.

My guest today is Dr. Edna Bonhomme, author of A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to COVID-19. I don’t think Dr. Bonhomme wrote her book knowing there’d be a resurgence of measles, but here we are!

I asked Dr. Bonhomme about the history of epidemics and pandemics, both in the U.S. and around the world. Exploring earlier outbreaks sets us up to talk about measles and vaccine skepticism today. These are troubling times, and Dr. Bonhomme pushes us to go deeper and examine the inequities that link official responses to contagion over centuries.

Dr. Bonhomme is a historian of science, a culture writer, and a journalist based in Berlin. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, London Review of Books, The Nation, and many other outlets.

Today, I want to share something a little different: a personal story from “one of our country’s greatest historians.”

In The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir, Professor Martha S. Jones unearths her family’s history, dating back to when her great-great-great-grandmother survived enslavement. Over the generations—from Kentucky to North Carolina to Long Island—Professor Jones’s forebears challenged “the notion that there is a straight, clear, bright color line.” The story is at once unique to her family and quintessentially American. All of us, Professor Jones told me, have records that historians treasure (so don’t throw them out!).

Martha S. Jones is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, Professor of History, and Professor at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. She has contributed to The New York Times, The Atlantic, and many other publications and is the prizewinning author and editor of five books.

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Given how personal this story is, I’m sharing the podcast version first, which I think best captures the depth, emotion, and nuance of Professor Jones’ words. You can also read a transcript, edited for clarity, here:

In Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America, Russell Shorto brings to life the English takeover of New Amsterdam. The city that emerged from a dramatic standoff stood in stark contrast to Boston—with one place more globally minded and another more inward-looking. Russell argues that the unreconciled differences between “the two ideological centers of the colonies” spread outward and are still with us today.

Russell is the director of the New Amsterdam Project at the New York Historical and senior scholar at the New Netherland Institute. He’s the bestselling author of eight books.