The Stakes

The Declaration of Independence was America’s first act of social design. The men who drafted America’s founding document recognized the tension between their ideals of liberty and the realities of the nation's slave economy. But they couldn’t deal with that tension, so they chose to avoid it. A generation later, in a July 5, 1852, speech in Rochester, Frederick Douglass delivered one of history's most stirring oratorical responses to the contradictions embedded in the Declaration. In this episode, reporter Jim O'Grady visits the New York Public Library to check out Thomas Jefferson’s handwritten copy of his early draft of the Declaration, and considers how the document shaped today’s society. Then, we hear excerpts of Douglass’s famous speech. 

Plus, we bake a pie (literally), meditate on the stories we tell ourselves, and hear from The Stakes' listeners.

Host of The Stakes Kai Wright visits the Alabama Women's Center, one of three remaining abortion providers in the state—and the sole provider within 150 miles. Alabama passed the nation's most restrictive abortion law in May—a law that would make the providers at this clinic into felons. It was one of a dozen states that have passed new abortion restrictions already this year. But from the vantage of the Alabama Women's Center, the story of abortion access in 2019 is revealed to be the story of gerrymandering in 2010. More than a third of all restrictions placed on abortion have been put in place since that election.

Also, producer Jessica Miller investigates a clinical trial that would safely bring abortion care into a patient's home, expanding access across the country.

We speak to:

- Dr. Yashica Robinson and nurse LaShonda Pinchon of the Alabama Women's Center

- Michael Li of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University

- Rep. Laura Hall, Alabama statehouse

- Melissa Grant, Carafem COO participating in Gynuity's clinical trial

WNYC’s health coverage and The Stakes is supported in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Jane and Gerald Katcher and the Katcher Family Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

In honor of Stonewall’s 50th anniversary, it’s time for an intergenerational queer conversation. Kristin Tomlinson is a gender fluid, pansexual 21-year-old. She takes Kai into her very fluid online and IRL world of cartoon cats in crop tops, Instagram icons and friends who see gender as just another construct. Along the way, we look at the meaning of labels and categories for youth today and whether they’re necessary to create and claim political and social space in the LGBTQ community.

We also hear from:

- Pose actor Bhawk Snipes

- Paulette Thomas-Martin, teaching artist at SAGE Center Harlem, Vice-President of HarlemYes, Inc. 

Hosted by Kai Wright. Reported by Kristin Tomlinson. Produced by Jonna McKone.

Radio Rookies is supported in part by the Margaret Neubart Foundation and The Pinkerton Foundation.

Drug wars, recessions and record violence in the 1980s had US cities in crisis. Hip hop artists responded by shifting from party music to a new style called "conscious rap." Artists like Public Enemy and Digable Planets championed a sound that was political, community-minded and deeply pro-black. But about six years after it started, that first wave of socially-conscious hip hop seemed to be over. Who killed it? And what’s the story of its rise and fall tell us about the relationship between culture, politics, and commerce?

We speak to:

- Rapper Kool Moe Dee

- Writer and filmmaker Nelson George

- Dan Charnas, author of The Big Payback

- Ann Carli, former hip hop record executive

Listen to the songs from this episode here.

Hosted by Kai Wright. Reported by Christopher Johnson.

A black woman in America is three to four times more likely to die than a white woman during pregnancy, childbirth, and in the year after the baby's born, according to the Centers for Disease Control. As more and more black women share their near death experiences while giving birth, including world tennis champion Serena Williams, we see this reality affecting black woman regardless of education or wealth. So what are black women supposed to do with this information as they think about pregnancy? And what’s being done in the medical field to change it? In a deeply personal search for answers, producer Veralyn Williams talks with celebrated author Tressie McMillan Cottom, with black women in her own life and with Doctor Deborah Cohan, a white OB-GYN from the Bay Area who is confronting her own implicit bias. 

We also speak to:

- Helena Grant, Director of Midwifery, Woodhull Hospital

- Leeann Rizk, Associate Director of Community Organizing, Planned Parenthood

- Linda Villarosa, New York Times Magazine contributor and Program Director of the journalism program at the City College of New York.

- Wendy Willcox, Chairman, OB-GYN, Woodhull Hospital

WNYC’s health coverage and The Stakes is supported in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Jane and Gerald Katcher and the Katcher Family Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Former US Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr. told us that that only happens when people put their hands on that arc and pull on it. He joins host Kai Wright and a live audience to discuss the Mueller Report, voting rights, the state of democracy in America and whether or not we should have faith in our national institutions.

One of the longest-running public health epidemics in American history involves a handful of baby teeth, a creepy cartoon character and The Young Lords. This is a story about a fight for accountability.

Hosted by Kai Wright. Reported by Christopher Werth.

Support for WNYC reporting on lead is provided by the New York State Health Foundation, improving the health of all New Yorkers, especially the most vulnerable. Learn more at www.nyshealth.org. Additional support for WNYC’s health coverage is provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Jane and Gerald Katcher and the Katcher Family Foundation, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Coming up on The Stakes podcast, host Kai Wright and team identify what's not working about our society and imagine ways to fix it. From healthcare to climate change, from the music we consume to the food that we eat, everything we experience is the result of some rule, decision or system that someone put in place. That means that if we don't like the world we live in now, we can design a better one. And we have to. From the people who brought you Caught, There Goes the Neighborhood and The United States of Anxiety. 

Follow Kai on Twitter at @kai_wright.