Hi daily listeners, I'm Ezra Klein, an opinion columnist at The New York Times and host of the

Ezra Klein Show, where I have conversations with fascinating people whose ideas are shaping

our lives or should be. Today I wanted to share with you an interview I did with the writer

Tomassi Coates and the Times' own Nicole Hannah Jones. We covered the backlash to the 1619 project,

a fight over how we tell and who gets to tell the story of American history, the nature of American

democracy, how we should teach journalism, the nonfiction they love, and so much more.

So enjoy the interview and if you like it, subscribe to The Ezra Klein Show wherever you get your podcasts.

My guest today need a little introduction. Nicole Hannah Jones is an award-winning investigative

journalist from The New York Times magazine where she led the 1619 project. She won a Pulitzer

Prize for the lead essay in that. She's also done amazing work over the years on racial inequality

and segregation in the American education system. Tomassi Coates of course is the author of the

National Book Award winner between the world and me. The Oak Road Book Club picked water dancer,

essays like the case for reparations, Marvel comics like Captain America and Black Panther,

and now he's writing the next Superman movie. So he's a busy guy. They're both busy, but the

official reason for this conversation is they're adding another affiliation. Both of them are

taking faculty positions at Howard University. In Hannah Jones's case, this comes after the University

of North Carolina Chapel Hill initially recommended her for position, but then over the objections of the

faculty, the University's board of trustees denied her tenure because as best as we can tell,

some of them were uncomfortable the 1619 project. Then under more political pressure, the University

of North Carolina Chapel reversed that decision and tried to offer her tenure, but Hannah Jones decided

to go to Howard. And so the conversation begins in what Hannah Jones and Coates are trying to build

at Howard. But the conversation revolves around a topic that they've both wrestled with across

...