You're listening to The Times, Daily News from the LA Times.

It's Monday, February 14, 2022.

Happy Valentine's Day.

I'm Gustavaryano, and this is Amir Questlove Thompson.

Back when I was teaching at NYU, you know, my students were rather young.

And you can't take for granted that they know what a thriller is or who run or DMC is.

It's like, all right, boomer. Like, what's important this week? Public enemy? Great. Okay. You know,

how do you make this resonate with them? That this is just not another history film about old people in their time.

Suddenly, once George Floyd comes to the conversation,

I'll just say that you really, truly couldn't tell what was real on television

and what was our film footage.

It was interchangeable.

Music and what was our film footage. It was interchangeable.

The film footage Questlove is talking about, it just earned him an Oscar nomination.

The Roots drummer and music legend sifted

through 40 hours of archival footage

of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival for his film. It was a festival where legends like Nina Simone and Stevie Wonder performed in the same

summer as Woodstock, and he used that festival footage to put together his debut documentary,

Summer of Soul, which was released last year. The film was now in the running for Best

Original Documentary at this year's Oscars. So So today we're airing an episode with Questla from

our sister podcast, The Envelope. And we

know you're going to love it, so yeah, think of

...