Notes from America with Kai Wright

Notes from America with Kai Wright episodes:

• 04.22.2024

  How This Passover Feels Different For Many Jewish Americans

  Nearly seven months after October 7th and the start of the war in Gaza, emotions over the violence and devastation are still running hot here in the U.S, and inspiring an exercise in self-reflection for many Jewish Americans. It’s a...

  
• 04.19.2024

  An Investigative Journalist Is Rocked By the ‘Inconceivable Truth’ Of His Own Identity

  In this episode, we share the first part of the new podcast series Inconceivable Truth. It’s hosted by WNYC reporter Matt Katz, who has been searching for his biological father since he was a little kid. But it wasn’t until Matt...

  
• 04.15.2024

  Amber Ruffin Talks ‘The Wiz’ Revival, Writing for ‘Late Night,’ and Representation in Comedy

  Amber Ruffin is a comedy phenom. She’s spent a decade writing and performing on “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” and hosted her own show, “The Amber Ruffin Show.” She’s a co-author of bestselling books with her sister Lacey Lamar, with...

  
• 04.08.2024

  Voter Vibe Check: Why Trump Has More Support from Black Voters Than Ever

  A February 2024 New York Times/Siena College poll reveals as many as 23 percent of Black respondents said they would vote for Trump if the election were held right then. The numbers are strikingly higher than they have been in the past...

  
• 04.01.2024

  Comedian Bassem Youssef’s Honest Reflection on Fame, the Pressure of Representation, and What it Means to be American

  Egyptian American satirist and comedian Bassem Youssef was once known as “The Jon Stewart of Egypt,” after gaining notoriety for his criticism of the government during the 2011 Egyptian revolution. But it wasn’t long before the doctor-turned-comedian was forced to...

  
• 03.25.2024

  David Alan Grier Is Still Hitting Career Highs, More Than 40 Years After His Debut

  David Alan Grier has been a mainstay on TV, Broadway and film since his initial acting debut in the acclaimed Broadway show “The First,” about Jackie Robinson’s life and legacy. That role, in 1981, earned him a Tony Award nomination, but...

  
• 03.18.2024

  Voter Vibe Check: Democratic Voters Are Torn Over Biden’s Gaza Policy

  A movement is emerging among registered Democrats across the U.S. In Minnesota and Michigan, collectively, more than 150,000 voters chose “uncommitted” rather than selecting Joe Biden on their primary election ballots. Protest voting is a trend on the rise  with...

  
• 03.15.2024

  Kai Wright Presents Blindspot Episode 5: What If I Could Have Grown Old With My Brother?

  In 1985, doctors at a methadone clinic in the South Bronx made the harrowing discovery: 50 percent of their patients had HIV. Three years later, in the same neighborhood, a pair of epidemiologists estimated that as many as one in...

  
• 03.11.2024

  How Actor Danielle Brooks 'Already Won' Before The Oscars

  Danielle Brooks, nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress following her masterful portrayal of Sofia in the 2023 remake of “The Color Purple,” discusses her journey to the Oscars with host Kai Wright. Brooks was the sole representative at...

  
• 03.08.2024

  Kai Wright Presents Blindspot Episode 4: Respectability Politics and the AIDS Crisis

  By 1986, almost 40 percent of people diagnosed with AIDS in the United States were either Black or Latino. As the full contours of the crisis became apparent, a group of Black gay men began to organize in cities across...

  
• 03.04.2024

  Are We Really Having a 'Migrant Crisis?' Depends Who You Ask.

  Both President Biden and Donald Trump took campaign trips to Texas to visit the U.S. border in recent days. These simultaneous visits happened shortly after several polls found that immigration remains a top issue for voters. But the political discourse...

  
• 03.01.2024

  We Could End AIDS. So Why Are People Still Dying?

  Host Kai Wright started his career covering the impact of HIV and AIDS on communities in America. A new project brings that experience full circle. Kai hosts the latest season of the Blindspot podcast, “The Plague In The Shadows,” which...

  
• 02.25.2024

  Leading with Love: Care and Compassion in the Early Days of AIDS

  The latest season of the Blindspot podcast, “The Plague In The Shadows,” brings listeners the voices of people who were affected in the early years of the HIV and AIDS epidemics. It includes stories like that of Kia LaBeija, an...

  
• 02.23.2024

  It's Giving ‘Hell No’ — Danielle Brooks On Becoming ‘The Color Purple’s’ Sofia

  There’s something about Sofia. The iconic character was first born within the pages of Alice Walker’s canonical 1982 novel, “The Color Purple.” She is a fierce, principled Black woman — friend to the protagonist Celie and wife to Celie’s stepson Harpo,...

  
• 02.19.2024

  A Palestinian-American Victim of American Gun Violence Becomes A Reluctant Poster Child

  Hisham Awartani was visiting family in Vermont over Thanksgiving break in 2023 when he and two of his friends were shot. All three victims are of Palestinian descent and were wearing traditional Palestinian scarves when the attack happened. While his...

  
• 02.16.2024

  Kai Wright Presents Blindspot Episode 3: ‘Women Don’t Get AIDS, They Just Die From It’

  From the very earliest days of the epidemic, women got infected with HIV and died from AIDS — just like men. But from the earliest days, this undeniable fact was largely ignored — by the public, the government and even...

  
• 02.12.2024

  Intercultural Relationships Are More Common, But Are They Less Taboo?

  We’re living in polarized times – particularly, when it comes to questions of identity, such as race and culture and gender. At the same time, our growing cultural diversity is at this point baked into the future. Within the next...

  
• 02.09.2024

  Kai Wright Presents Blindspot Episode 2: If I Didn’t Have HIV, I Wouldn’t Have Met You

  It’s the 1980s — Harlem, USA — and the 17th floor of the area’s struggling public hospital is filling up with infants and children who arrive and then never leave. Some spend their whole lives on the pediatric ward, celebrating...

  
• 02.05.2024

  Voter Vibe Check: Anti-Trump Conservatives On Republican Party Politics In 2024

  With the Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries behind us, the 2024 election cycle is well underway.  Donald J. Trump isn’t the 2024 Republican presidential candidate yet, but his victories in Iowa and New Hampshire suggest that it will be...

  
• 02.02.2024

  Kai Wright Presents Blindspot Episode 1: Mourning In America

  Valerie Reyes-Jimenez called it “The Monster.” That’s how some people described HIV and AIDS in the 1980s. Valerie thinks as many as 75 people from her block on New York City’s Lower East Side died. They were succumbing to an...

  
• 01.29.2024

  What A Segregated Mental Asylum Can Tell Us About Health Care in the US Today

  If you were Black with mental illness in the early 1900s, you couldn’t seek help just anywhere. You’d have to go to a segregated asylum like Maryland’s Crownsville Hospital, formerly known as the Hospital for the Negro Insane. The facility...

  
• 01.26.2024

  Kai Wright Hosts Blindspot: The Plague In The Shadows

  The latest season of the Blindspot podcast brings listeners voices of people who were affected in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, when so little was known about HIV, and so much was misunderstood. It’s also hosted by a...

  
• 01.22.2024

  Doom. Denial. ‘Hopium.’ What About Climate Action?

  The hottest year on record was 2023, but we're expected to make the same claim at the end of this calendar year. As the world warms and reports of historic flooding, wildfires, tornadoes and droughts continue to permeate the news,...

  
• 01.15.2024

  Reclaiming Woke: Celebrating The Legacy Of Martin Luther King Jr. Live At The Apollo

  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final Sunday sermon was titled, “Remaining Awake Through A Great Revolution.” In other words, he was advising us to stay woke. Today, that term has become a political slur. “Woke” is at the very center...

  
• 01.08.2024

  What the Ozempic Craze Means for Our Personal Health

  Interest in Ozempic as a way to lose weight has only been outmatched by demand for the drug, which has been in short supply as celebrities and social media influencers continue to popularize its use. The Type 2 diabetes treatment,...

  
• 01.01.2024

  Raoul Peck Fights for Justice With His Movies

  Raoul Peck became known for his filmmaking and fight for racial justice with the released of his Academy Award-nominated film I Am Not Your Negro which attempts to complete James Baldwin's unfinished book about the assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and...

  
• 12.25.2023

  I Was A Child of Dread

  In Safiya Sinclair’s new memoir, “How to Say Babylon: A Memoir,” the award-winning poet and essayist is revisiting her youth as a Rastafari girl.  Being Rasta is about so much more than what shows up in American pop culture — it’s an anti-colonial,...

  
• 12.18.2023

  Why NYC’s Move to Privatize Public Housing Could Impact the Rest of the Country

  When Fanta Kaba was growing up, her family moved around a lot: Harlem, Queens, the Bronx, even North Carolina for a while. But when they moved into public housing, they finally found stability. Now, a controversial plan is changing the...

  
• 12.13.2023

  Remembering Rapper Prodigy As A Cure For Sickle Cell Emerges

  The FDA’s approval of gene-editing therapy to effectively treat sickle cell disease has many people hopeful while also thinking about the many lives lost to the disease. One of the most high profile people in the entertainment world with sickle...

  
• 12.11.2023

  What the New Cure for Sickle Cell Disease Really Means

  The Food and Drug Administration has approved gene therapy as a treatment for sickle cell disease, effectively making a cure available to many people affected by the genetic disease. Sickle cell disease is a group of inherited red blood cell...

  
• 12.04.2023

  Bias in A.I. and the Risks of Continued Development, with Dr. Joy Buolamwini

  This week on Notes from America, host Kai Wright talks with Dr. Joy Buolamwini, a computer scientist who uses art and research to illuminate the social implications of artificial intelligence. The self-described “poet of code” warns that A.I. could write the...

  
• 11.27.2023

  Out of hope? Maybe stop for a sandwich and a song.

  Playwright Lynn Nottage says it’s in her nature to be optimistic. And if it’s true what they say that you can manifest good things by thinking positively, well, it’s worked out for her in myriad ways. Nottage is the first...

  
• 11.20.2023

  How Boston’s Big Dig built our expectations of American infrastructure

  Boston's Big Dig started as a vision for a large-scale highway tunnel system that became a cautionary tale about American infrastructure. Guest host Nancy Solomon speaks with Ian Coss, host of The Big Dig podcast from WGBH and PRX, which dives into the history behind...

  
• 11.13.2023

  Nikki Giovanni and Kimberly McGlonn on space travel, sustainable fashion and Black liberation

  Guest host Janae Pierre sits down with legendary poet and activist Nikki Giovanni, who is the subject of a new documentary, Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project. Giovanni reflects on the legacy of Black storytelling, gospel music, what she...

  
• 11.06.2023

  Black Lives Matter, 10 years later

  It’s been 10 years since the Black Lives Matter was founded iin response to the acquittal of the man who fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Kai Wright speaks with organizer Chelsea Miller about the impact the movement has had on...

  
• 10.30.2023

  ‘It’s Worse Than Ever’

  The events of October 7th shook the world and greatly impacted different intersections of people. Arab Americans sit at a unique intersection. As an Arab American journalist, Notes From America producer Suzanne Gaber set out to find a place for her to...

  
• 10.26.2023

  Imminent Danger Ep 3: One Doctor and a Trail of Injured Women

  Imminent Danger, a new series from NYC NOW, looks into the role state medical boards had in how one doctor was allowed to keep practicing despite consistently bad outcomes. Marquita Baird has kept a bootbox full of medical records on a shelf in...

  
• 10.23.2023

  Can Osage Citizens Revive Fairfax?

  Killers of the Flower Moon, a new film directed by Martin Scorcese based on the bestselling book of the same name, tells the story of how greed and profound injustice took the lives of so many Osage. The film has...

  
• 10.19.2023

  We Don't Talk About Leonard: Episode 3

  Our friends at On the Media have teamed up with ProPublica to create a miniseries about how the U.S. Supreme Court moved so far to the right. In the third and final episode of We Don't Talk About Leonard, Leonard Leo is in...

  
• 10.16.2023

  The View From Gaza

  How can we have a more honest conversation about security, war, and peace in the region? As the humanitarian crisis in Gaza deepens, we ask two scholars with ties to the region for help. Kai is joined by Laila El-Haddad, a...

  
• 10.12.2023

  We Don't Talk About Leonard: Episode 2

  Our friends at On the Media have teamed up with ProPublica to create a miniseries about how the U.S. Supreme Court moved so far to the right. In the second episode of We Don't Talk About Leonard, Leonard Leo realized that in order...

  
• 10.09.2023

  I Was A Child of Dread

  In a new memoir, How to Say Babylon, the award-winning poet and essayist is revisiting her youth as a Rastafari girl.  Being Rasta is about so much more than what shows up in American pop culture – it’s an anti-colonial, pro-Black...

  
• 10.05.2023

  We Don't Talk About Leonard: Episode 1

  Our friends at On the Media have teamed up with ProPublica to create a miniseries about how the U.S. Supreme Court moved so far to the right. In this first episode of We Don't Talk About Leonard, ProPublica reporters Andrea Bernstein,...

  
• 10.02.2023

  Is Capitalism Working for You?

  One guest says “a free market is a mythical creature, like Santa Claus.” So how do we describe “capitalism” really, and can we make it do better? We examine our current economic system, callers’ feelings about it, and the evolution of...

  
• 09.28.2023

  Silicon Valley’s History of Fumbles with Capitalism

  Silicon Valley is notorious in the global economy and the American psyche. According to author Malcolm Harris, the Bay Area tech hub and California at large are a laboratory for the worst consequences of capitalism–centuries in the making. Harris unpacks this...

  
• 09.25.2023

  What Does It Mean to be Free?

  Ayana Mathis joins us to discuss her new novel, The Unsettled. It’s 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...

  
• 09.21.2023

  Eating Elk Kabobs in Idaho

  A new graphic memoir from New Yorker cartoonist Navied Mahdavian tells the story of his decision to move with his wife from San Francisco to rural Idaho. Mahdavian joins producer Kousha Navidar to discuss, This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America. Plus, we...

  
• 09.18.2023

  The Birth of Climate Denial

  Starting with the 1925 Scopes Trial — also known as the "trial of the century" — we look at one of the most controversial topics in our time: the debate over evolution versus a Fundamentalist understanding of the Bible. It started...

  
• 09.14.2023

  When Chicago Closed 50 Public Schools at Once

  In 2013 Chicago shut down 50 public schools – the largest mass closing in U.S. history. The city promised a chance to revitalize communities. 10 years later, it’s another reality. We speak with Sarah Karp from WBEZ and Lauren FitzPatrick from the Chicago Sun Times...

  
• 09.11.2023

  Public School’s Failing Prospects

  “The Death of Public School” author Cara Fitzpatrick tells the story of a movement, six decades in the making, that’s picked away at the very idea of public education in the U.S. Listeners from Chicago and Jersey City, including a teacher, call...