This is death, sex, and money.

It's like, yeah, you're going to die one day.

The show from WNYC about the things we think about a lot.

Where I come from is called doing the hibbitty-dibbitty.

And need to talk about more.

Now, y'all look money hungry, and that's good.

I'm Anna Sale.

And this episode is a little different.

I talked to writer Kevin Powell in front of a live audience here in New York City a few weeks ago,

and I want to share that conversation with you.

I first met Kevin when I was a kid watching MTV in West Virginia

and getting to know seven strangers who moved into a house and changed television forever.

Kevin was on the first season of the real world.

He's also an activist, writer, a chronicler of hip-hop, but our conversation focused on his latest book.

It's called The Education of Kevin Powell, a

boy's journey into manhood. And it focuses on a part of his past he's not proud of, his

quickness to anger and violence, including against women. I wanted to ask him about that.

Please join me in welcoming Kevin Powell. He started in Jersey City, where Kevin

was born in 1966. You know, it's interesting. I have no memories of the 60s. The 70s is when the things

became real for me, but I lived with my mother and my Aunt Kathy. They had migrated from the South

together along with my other Aunt Bertie, and my mother and Aunt Kathy ended up living together with my cousin Anthony. He was literally born three days before me in the same year. And it's almost as if my aunt Kathy was coming out of the hospital. After giving birth, my mother was going into the hospital. And we were tremendously poor. You know, I always tell you to people, people see me now, and they think I come from some different background. I'm like, no, I actually come from tremendous poverty. Because can you imagine two single mothers, you know, young women in their 20s, their early 20s, raising two sons. And my Aunt Kathy had a bed in the living room and my mother and I shared a bed

in the bedroom. This was the first eight or nine years of my life. That was my family. That's what I

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