Ep. 384 Black Genius Is Not an Outlier with Tre Johnson

The Stacks

Traci Thomas

Literature, Society & Culture, Books, Arts

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week on The Stacks, essay writer and culture critic, Tre Johnson, joins us to discuss his debut book, Black Genius: Essays on an American Legacy, which examines how black American culture has driven American ingenuity. Tre shares how his grandfather inspired him to write Black Genius and how the book has evolved over the years. We also talk about the struggle of balancing a 9-5 job and making time to write, plus why he decided to leave his job and how that impacted his life as a writer.

You can find everything we discuss on today's show on The Stacks' website:

https://www.thestackspodcast.com/2025/8/13/ep-384-tre-johnson

Connect with Tre: Website | Instagram | Twitter

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Searching for a romantic summer getaway. Escape with Rich Girl Summer, the new Audible original
0:05.2	from Lily Chew. The exquisitely talented Philippa Sue, returning to narrate her fifth
0:10.2	Lily Chew title. This time, Philippa is joined by her real-life husband, Stephen Pasquale,
0:15.5	set in Toronto's wealthy cottage country, aka the Hamptons of Canada, rich girl Summer follows the story of Valerie,
0:22.1	a down-on-her-luck event planner posing as a socialite's long-lost daughter, while piecing
0:26.5	together the secrets surrounding a mysterious family and falling deeper and deeper in love with the
0:31.7	impossibly hard to read and infuriatingly handsome family assistant, Nico. Caught between pretending to belong
0:38.2	and unexpectedly finding where she truly fits in,
0:41.3	Valerie learns her summer is about to get far more complicated
0:44.0	than she ever planned.
0:45.8	She's in over her head and head over heels.
0:48.5	Listen to Rich Girl Summer, now on Audible.
0:51.2	Go to audible.com slash rich girl summer.
0:53.9	The thing that I remind a lot of people, or give the perspective of a lot of people who at least... on Audible. Go to audible.com slash rich girl summer.
0:58.0	The thing that I remind a lot of people or give the perspective of a lot of people who at least are sitting at what I perceive to be my peer class status is that a lot of us have more
1:04.2	fat to give in our lives than we realize I actually do have enough. And when I don't have enough, I have community. And so I think
1:13.1	some of this, I think particularly as a man, which is like, how do I extend myself out on the limb
1:17.9	of vulnerability? And know that even when the branch breaks, because branches do break from time
1:23.3	to time, something and someone's going to catch you.
1:35.1	Welcome to the Stats, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I'm your host,
1:41.6	Tracy Thomas, and today I am joined by writer and culture critic Trey Johnson. His debut book is called Black Genius, Essays on American Legacy, and it explores Black American
1:46.7	pop culture and history to discover the extraordinary genius of black folks in the most
	...

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