Whether you already have read or are interested in reading How to be an Anti-Racist, and perhaps also White Fragility or Me and White Supremacy, we have a list of 10 podcasts below to help you continue learning about social justice issues and about race in America.
How to listen
A podcast is a unique format that allows a listener to learn about a topic in hour or less long chunks, and to follow along at their own pace. Visit the website of a podcast and listen to an episode or two. Subscribe via the website or the podcasts app on your iPhone / Android device to get notified when new episodes drop.
Selected Podcasts Centered around Race in America
This weekly podcast analyzes news, politics, and culture in America to see what they each say about race and identity in America. Topics have included history, literature, culture, ethnicity, current events, and much, much more. In case you prefer the print format to the auditory format Code Switch is also a weekly e-newsletter.
1619 tells the story of the very beginnings of slavery in America, when 20 enslaved Africans first landed in the English colony of Virginia in 1619. There are 7 total episodes.
3. Pod Save the People with DeRay
Pod Save the People discusses the issues he finds most important each week to ensure that listeners have the information they need to move through the world thoughtfully. Includes interviews with analysts and experts covering social justice, politics, and current events. Read this interview by the Columbia Journalism Review with Mckesson to learn more.
4. Seeing White from Scene on Radio
Made by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. There are four seasons. Find them all here. The second season, Seeing White, was Peabody nominated, and explored concepts, history, and the meaning of whiteness.
5. The United States of Anxiety
A free, listener supported, podcast connecting present day events with the context of our collective American past beginning in the post-civil war reconstruction period. The goal of the podcast is to educate listeners on what is at stake in elections. Started in the fall of 2016, there are four seasons. WNYC Studios is part of New York Public Radio, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit.
6. 74 Seconds
This Peabody-winning podcast has 22 total episodes. In July of 2016, Philando Castile was shot by officer Jeronimo Yanez at a traffic stop in a suburb outside the Twin Cities. 74 Seconds follows the aftermath.
7. Still Processing, a NYT Podcast
NYT Culture Writers Jenna Wortham and Wesley Morris process America today through culture, art, music, TV & movies, and stuff they find moving, either positive or negative.
8. The Nod
Brittany Luse and Eric Eddings explore the complexities of Black Life. Recent episodes have discussed Kamala Harris as a VP pick, watching HBO’s Watchmen, Black journalists, Black women & Hip Hop, and more. By Gimlet media.
Each week the hosts responds to fan-submitted questions and discuss whether something is or is not racist. Submit them a question via their blog.
Floodlines follows New Orleans in the wake of the devastation and flooding of Hurricane Katrina and Rita in 2005 from the perspective of people who lived through it. Nine total episodes.
Bonus Podcast:
Groundings is a place where storytelling, dialogue, history, and theory meet. Hosted by Devyn Springer. Often discusses current events and invites guests each week to collaborate on the analysis of a topic.