A bomb whose creation would tip the scales of global power.

A nuclear physicist who sought to redress the balance.

The bomb, a podcast from the BBC World Service, season two available now.

Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

My guest today has become one of the most influential voices in one of America's most heated and contentious debates,

how to confront the country's still unhealed racial wounds.

Post-slavery, post-segregation, the US is still stained and divided by

racism. Ibrahim X. Kendi, an academic and writer, whose director of the Center for Anti-Racist Research at

Boston University, wrote a best-selling book in 2020 titled How to Be an Anti-Racist. He's now followed that up

with another one aimed at the next generation of Americans. How to raise an anti-racist. His core thesis is

simple. America is not colorblind. There is entrenched systemic racism, which extends privilege to white people

and unfairly handicaps people of colour. The only way to overcome it is to confront it. Passivity is a form

of complicity. Justice demands that the anti-racist journey begins in school and continues in every

aspect of American life. Now, his conservative opponents accuse him of peddling a dangerous form of

discrimination, a form of anti-white ideology, which will deepen America's internal divisions.

Well, Ibrahim X. Kendi joins me now.

Welcome to Hard Talk.

Thank you for having me on.

Your focus right now seems to be on children

and your contention that children, very young children even,

should be told about racism, even if it's not a daily

reality that they are actually living with. Why? Because unfortunately, studies are showing

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