Welcome to Karen Hunter is awesome. I know I got your attention bold, right? Yes, not really. I believe that you speak

things into existence. And when people ask me how I'm doing, I say I'm awesome.

Whether I'm having a bad day or not, I think that you can literally use words as power tools in your life.

So I do.

So this podcast is awesome, not just because I'm awesome, and I am, but because I get to talk with amazing awesome people.

So up next, stay tuned as I sit and talk with somebody who's

truly awesome. Let me welcome the author of the 272. The families who were enslaved and sold to

build the American Catholic Church. What? Let me welcome Rachel L. Swarns. Hi. Hey, thank you for

having me. Thank you for, first of all, your brother-in-law traveled to Chicago and had to meet his book

and said, I have to say, I will have to shout out to him. He's an amazing, amazing human being.

I actually work with your husband for a brief time at the New York Daily News. And your New York

Times and y'all are out there,

you know, telling us the things we need to know. So it's an honor to have you. Oh, it's great to be here.

The impetus for you writing the 272, and I feel like there's like so many nuggets of history that we

miss because this country is obsessed with just telling one kind of

story. And as I'm reading this book, I was reminded of being in Ghana in the Almena, what they call

the castle, the dungeons, the death camp. And there's a place where they take you above the carnage.

So it's just like a space where the women are packed in to the point where their,

you know, bodies are rubbing up against the walls underneath.

And then every day they went upstairs and prayed while they raped and brutalized people

right below.

And I just think about the hypocrisy of this country.

...