Episode description

This week Farai Chideya talks with California Congresswoman Barbara Lee about housing, climate change and Covid in the East Bay Area. Dr. Jonathan Metzl breaks down how the country’s racial hierarchy affects healthcare access for white Americans. Our weekly Covid update looks at the frontline workers exposed in the White House, and the impact of the pandemic on schools in New York City. And the "Rise" segment features Black explorers in search of sunken slave ships. Plus: an intrepid woman who refused to let Covid slow down her dating life.

Episode Rundown

0:35 This week’s happenings - Trump gets COVID-19, Minneapolis police officer gets bailed out, Puerto Rican voters at the polls, and the dialogue divide. 

2:44 “Here to talk to us about the debate and what America faces next is Representative Barbara Lee of California.”

3:25 Representative talks about the historic moment of Kamala Harris on the Vice Presidential Debate stage. 

4:55 “We're in the midst of a pandemic upon a pandemic upon a pandemic.” 

7:11  Amna Nawaz on the Vice Presidential Debate and what voters learned this time around. 

11:11 The Supreme Court and abortion. 

13:12 Women in the workforce and how the pandemic has disproportionately affected women. 

16:28 The pandemic is absolutely political for women because this is part of their daily lived reality.

18:27 Covid update: The virus in the White House and a resurgence in New York City neighborhoods. 

21:40 Dr. Jonathan Metzl on his book "Dying of Whiteness," about how the racial resentment affects all americans. 

23:47 What whiteness means in this pandemic

25:35 How maintaining a white identity is bad for individuals and public health. 

28:28 To some, the Affordable Care Act has turned into a social system that defies “whiteness.” How the Supreme Court could change that. 

32:03 Two years after Jamal Khoshoghi was murdered, Farai talks to Karen Attiah, global opinions editor at The Washington Post. 

36:26 Attiah on the pandemic: “It's a slow moving mass casualty event on par even beyond the scale of the wars that America has participated in.”

38:45 Forty dates in the pandemic with Jareen Imam.

40:17 “I didn't think in this point in my life that I would be alone. I thought I would be married.”

42:18 Some good news: Women of color in film, Angela Davis and the Divine Nine. 

43:24 Diving for sunken slave ships with Tara Roberts

45:58 “I love the quote by Chimamanda, the writer who talks about the danger of a single story.”

48:00 Searching for her roots and knowing that a story that begins with pain isn’t the end of the story.