Society & Culture

Goldsberry played Angelica Schuyler in Hamilton, and was also in the Broadway productions of Rent, The Color Purple and The Lion King. On TV, she's appeared on Ally McBeal, The Good Wife and One Life to Live.

In their new book, Forget the Alamo, Bryan Burrough and co-writers Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford challenge common misconceptions surrounding the conflict — including the notion that Davy Crockett was a martyr who fought to the death rather than surrender.

In his new book, Mercury Rising, Jeff Shesol writes about Friendship 7, the United States' first mission to put an astronaut in orbit around the Earth and, more broadly, about how Cold War fears fueled the early days of the space program.

When Daisy Hernández was 5, her aunt in Colombia came down with a mysterious illness that caused her large intestine to swell. Hernández details her aunt's story — and her own — in a new memoir.

Rita Morena was the first Latina actor to receive the Oscar, for her performance in West Side Story, but she almost didn't take role. She went on to other memorable roles, but had to fight typecasting, and sexism in the industry. Now at the age of 89, she's the subject of an upcoming documentary.

In her new book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, Carol Anderson traces racial distinctions in Americans' treatment of gun ownership back to the founding of the country and the Second Amendment

In his new book, How the Word Is Passed, Clint Smith visits eight places central to the history of slavery in America, including Thomas Jefferson's Monticello plantation and Louisiana's Angola prison, which was built on the site of a former plantation.

Bandleader and reed player Hutchings was born in London, but partly raised in Barbados. His new album with Sons of Kemet highlights the criss-crossing trajectories of African musical diasporas.

Juneteenth celebrates the day slavery ended in Texas, June 19, 1865. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed studies the early American republic and the legacy of slavery.

Dawnie Walton's debut novel centers on a fictional interracial rock duo from the 1970s: Opal is a Black proto Afro-punk singer from Detroit, and Nev is a goofy white British singer-songwriter. Walton's book 'The Final Revival of Opal & Nev' has gotten lots of critical acclaim.

Boyega has been outspoken about systemic racism in Hollywood. Last year, he talked about how his character in Star Wars was sidelined, along with the other characters played by actors of color.

The son of a Jewish father and a Guatemalan mother, Goldman grew up mostly in working class suburbs of Boston. His new novel draws on his own experiences, including being physically abused by his dad

Director Barry Jenkin's new series is based on Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about an enslaved teenage girl who escapes from a brutal Georgia plantation. He says it was the most difficult undertakings of his career.

There is a 30-year gap in the life expectancies of Black and white Chicagoans depending on their ZIP code. Journalist Linda Villarosa says the disparity in life expectancies has its roots in government-sanctioned policies that systematically extracted wealth from Black neighborhoods — and eroded the health of generations of people. She writes about her family's own story in The New York Times Magazine article "Black Lives Are Shorter in Chicago. My Family's History Shows Why."

Bechdel's new graphic memoir is about her lifelong obsession with exercise. She says she has a "predisposition of being extremely self-conscious and very caught up in my head" — and exercise helps.

When Nicole Lynn Lewis got pregnant in high school, she thought it might end her dream of going to college and having a career. She felt ashamed, in part because of how people regarded her as a pregnant Black teenager. Lewis, who is now in her 40s, was named a CNN Hero in 2014. Last year, she was named one of the inaugural awardees of the Black Voices for Black Justice Fund in recognition of her work addressing structural and systemic racism in America. Her new memoir is called Pregnant Girl: A Story of Teen Motherhood, College, and Creating a Better Future for Young Families.

Winslet stars in the new HBO series, Mare of Easttown. She spoke to Fresh Air in 2020 about her breakout turn in Titanic when she was in her 20s. "I was learning on the fly," she says.

Stephen Colbert reflects on life and doing his show during the pandemic, and surviving the Trump presidency.

There's clearly a limit to what the former president will say —even on his own platform. Obama's conversation with the Boss is at its most fluid and introspective when the two discuss masculinity.

Writer Lauren Hough grew up in a nomadic doomsday Christian cult called the Children of God. She says she remembers being taught animals could talk to Noah — that's how he was able to get them on to the ark — and that heaven was located in a pyramid in the moon. Her new collection is 'Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing.'