Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time, a wave original.

My name is Boani Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcast.

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hater. It is Time Machine Tuesday. Not only is Howard Bryan joining us, Howard Bryant is joining us

because he has got a brand new book that is in stores called Kings and Ponds. If you're watching

on YouTube, you can see the cover right here and you will see a picture of Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson. My man, how are you? I'm good. How are you doing? All right. I'm great. I just got through reading the book. There's so many different directions that we can go in on this one, because this is one of those books that was an incredible read that kind of makes you feel bad about everybody. but at the same time at incredible read and for,

I don't know, was an incredible read that kind of makes you feel bad about everybody, but at the same time,

at incredible read. And I think as a lot of people may surmise, and a lot may not, because

we're talking about two figures that I think are kind of one who is almost faded completely,

but one who is fading from a certain omnipresence in American society. But the connection with Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson that those familiar with both will have is Jackie Robinson appearing before the House on American Activities Committee in 1949 in large part to talk about Paul Robeson. And what you mentioned in the book about this book coming

together, I thought was interesting was this is such a big moment. But in the way that you put it,

we haven't had a lot about how it came to happen in the first place. No, that's right. And

also was crazy to me about it and just sort of working on these different ideas is to your, to your earlier point,

people don't know this story. I mean, these guys are giants. I mean, I'm talking about

black people. I'm talking about when I would talk to other black people about this moment.

A lot of people, but one, didn't know what happened, didn't know that Jackie Robinson

and two had no idea who Robeson was. And that was sort

of chilling to me just from a literacy standpoint and from a history standpoint, like, do we know who

we are? And I think that to me, what I was really trying to get at in working on this was these different,

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