1619 Project

The is a companion to the New York Times. We recommend the segments on , , and (particularly relevant in this pandemic) about the impact of racism on healthcare for Africans Americans.

Code Switch

explores overlapping themes of race, ethnicity, and culture. Timely episodes include: , , and .

Democracy Now

offers the best daily source of independent news on TV, radio, and in a podcast. Each day, the headlines are followed by several in-depth reports, many of which make ideal classroom viewing. With the elections, they expose voter suppression. Stories on the include and refugee camps. Their extensive coverage of the climate crisis includes interviews with scientists and activists around the world. Ideal for people’s history teachers and students.

The Edge of Sports

is a sports and culture podcast hosted by Nation magazine Sports Editor Dave Zirin. His guests are the “trailblazers and earth-shakers at the intersection of sports and politics.” New episodes come out weekly.

Justice in America

Each episode of addresses a criminal justice issue (such as ) and features conversations with experts and advocates. This helps fill the silence around mass incarceration in textbooks and the media, especially at times like these when prisoners are among those most vulnerable to epidemics.

Louder Than A Riot

Hosted by NPR Music’s Rodney Carmichael and Sidney Madden, reveals the interconnected rise of hip-hop and mass incarceration. From Bobby Shmurda to Nipsey Hussle, each episode explores an artist’s story to examine a different aspect of the criminal justice system that disproportionately impacts Black America.

Reveal

offers in-depth stories based on investigative reporting. Recent episodes on the coronavirus, the environment, incarceration, and housing include , , , , and . High school teacher Lindsey DiTomasso has used the episode, , with The Homestead Strike lesson.

Scene on Radio: The Land That Never Has Been Yet

, the latest in the Scene on Radio podcast series, calls into question the United States’ claim to democracy. The first four episodes explore our country’s founding period — and those too-often glorified events and documents, like the Revolution and the Constitution — showing their fundamentally antidemocratic nature. They could be paired with the Constitution Role Play and the #1619Project.

School Colors

is a narrative podcast that focuses on the story of Ocean Hill-Brownsville in Brooklyn where “Black and Puerto Rican parents tried to exercise power over their schools and they collided headfirst with the teachers’ union — leading to the longest teachers’ strike in U.S. history.” It will be of interest to students studying the history of New York, labor organizing, and/or schooling.

StoryCorps

Many interviews highlight people’s memories of movements and events in U.S. history, like the Stonewall Riot, voter suppression, Japanese American internment, racial profiling, immigration, and more. A good way to interest young people in the audio podcasts would be to begin with some of the beautifully designed .

This Land

In , hosted by Rebecca Nagle, an Oklahoma journalist and citizen of the Cherokee Nation, this podcast provides an in-depth look at how a cut and dry murder case opened an investigation into half the land in Oklahoma and the treaty rights of five tribes. Follow along to find out what’s at stake, the Trump administration’s involvement, the larger right-wing attack on tribal sovereignty and how one unique case could result in the largest restoration of tribal land in U.S. history. Selected segments can be used with The Cherokee/Seminole Removal Role Play.

Throughline

In NPR’s podcast, “the past is never the past.” This weekly series explores the history of stories in the headlines today. Recent episodes cover the history of vaccinations in the United States, the , the , the biography and legacy of Qassem Soleimani, LGBTQ activism before Stonewall, Andrew Johnson’s impeachment, and more.

Uncivil

By profiling everyday people whose current circumstances are inextricably tied to the Civil War and its memory, makes the past present. In the first episode, “The Raid,” we meet Fallon Greene, a descendant of Pa Shed, who escaped slavery, joined the Union Army, led a daring and successful raid with Harriet Tubman, and eventually bought the very land on which Fallon’s church sits today.

The episodes are miraculous in their brevity (usually about 25 minutes), given the largeness of the history they reveal — perfect for young listeners.

More
Suggestions

Selected Episodes from Additional Podcasts

(A People’s History of Kansas City) How Wyandot nation member Lyda Conley and her sisters fought to protect their tribal cemetery by occupying it and taking their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

(Moyers & Company) Tim DeChristopher spoke with Bill Moyers about the necessity of civil disobedience in the fight for justice, how his jury was ordered to place the strict letter of the law over moral conscience, and the future of the environmental movement.

(The American Project) Harriet Washington, author of the book , explains, the Tuskegee syphilis study was just one example in “a sea of abusive and, frankly, racist experimentation.”

(This American Life) In reports from the frontlines of the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” asylum policy, listeners hear from asylum seekers in a makeshift refugee camp in Mexico and from the officers who sent them there to wait in the first place.