Notes from America with Kai Wright

Dec 30 2024 18 ep. 3.7k

Notes from America with Kai Wright Podcast artwork

A show about the unfinished business of our history and its grip on our future.

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Not Just Forgotten, but Erased From History: A Final Note from Notes from America

This is the last episode of Notes from America with Kai Wright. If you’ve been with the show through its multi-year history and iterations as a NYC-based narrative podcast and local call-in show called The United States of Anxiety before becoming a nationally distributed program, then you may remember the conversation in this finale. It’s with cultural historian, Columbia Unive

The Real Heartbeat of D.C. Isn’t Politics. It’s Go-Go Music.

The drumbeat of Washington, D.C. and the surrounding area is not politics. It’s go-go music. The genre developed by Chuck Brown in 1976 features syncopated rhythms, a large ensemble of musicians and a rich drum beat to create a live experience that has fans dancing ’till they can't dance no more. Go-go has been nurtured by D.C. natives for decades, from the time the District wa

Dear Listener: A Celebration of Our Best Moments with You

Host Kai Wright celebrates the many years and iterations of Notes from America by revisiting some of the show’s most engaging listener moments. He’s joined by producer Regina de Heer to open up the listener mailbag of responses to recent episodes and highlights from live events and focus groups. Then, we listen back to a conversation with Lindsay Kimball, program director for M

A Year After Being Shot in Vermont, Palestinian Student Hisham Awartani Sets His Sights on Home

College student Hisham Awartani, 21, 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. Awartani and the other two young men, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmed, all survived. However, Awartani was left pa

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

This episode was originally published March 1, 2024. 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 introduces listeners to people who were affected in the early years of the HIV and AIDS ep

Writer Ekow Eshun on James Baldwin’s History

Our guest on the final episode of “Notes on a Native Son” is British writer Ekow Eshun. He has been described as a cultural polymath. At a startlingly young age, 29, he became the first Black editor of Arena, a mainstream magazine in the UK. He continued to break new ground when he became the first Black director of a major cultural institution, London’s Institute of Contempo

An America Without Police is Safer Than You Think

The public debate over policing has made more of us more familiar with ideas like defunding or abolishing the police, but these ideas are still often dismissed as infeasible. In this episode, host Kai Wright is joined by three experts who have seen communities sustain and improve public safety absent of law enforcement. First, we meet Dennis Flores, a Nuyorican multimedia artist, a

Writer Hisham Matar on James Baldwin’s Patience

In the 10th episode of “Notes on a Native Son,” host Razia Iqbal sits down with writer and former architect Hisham Matar. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his profound and painful memoir, “The Return,” which chronicles his return to Libya after the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi. Gaddafi had his father Jaballa kidnapped and thrown into jail, never to be seen again. This has haun

Presenting This is Uncomfortable: Writer Hanif Abdurraqib on what it Means to “Make it”

This is Uncomfortable is a podcast from Marketplace. For their season premiere earlier in 2024, host Reema Khrais shared a conversation with one of our favorite writers, Hanif Abdurraqib, and we're excited to share it with you. He joins her for a wide-ranging conversation about the moral judgments we’re quick to make about people’s financial circumstances, notions of success an

It’s Trump’s Policy, But Both Parties Set the Stage for Mass Deportations

For nearly a decade, Donald Trump and his political allies have made it clear that one of their primary goals is mass deportation of undocumented people living in the U.S. After the election, this rhetoric is set to become a policy reality, affecting millions of people across all sectors of society. While Trump and right-wing conservatives have proudly embraced an anti-immigration