One of the things that Malcolm and Martin teach us is the joy of struggle.

The joy of struggle.

They absolutely talk about the bitter side, but they also talk about the beauty of struggle.

That there's something unbelievably empowering trying to struggle and resist against oppression.

And there's a joy in trying to collectively

raise consciousness. Hello, I'm Sean Elling, co-host of The Way Through. This summer,

Sagaul Samuel and I have been taking turns, talking to spiritual

leaders, philosophers, and occasionally historians who can help us put our biggest questions

in a larger context and hopefully find something meaningful in this challenging moment. My guest

today is Poneo Joseph, a historian at the University of Texas, and the author of a fantastic new

book called The Sword

and the Shield. It's a dual biography of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. A lot of books

have been written about these two men, but this book is different in that it's much more

about the dynamic between Malcolm and Martin than it is about their individual stories.

As you'll notice, this conversation is a little

different from our previous episodes. This is not a meditation on a spiritual practice, and it isn't a deep

dive into an old philosophical school like existentialism. Instead, this is an attempt to understand

how these two towering figures defined and shaped the movement for racial equality in this country. In that sense,

it's very much a conversation about the present told through the prism of the past. But it's also

an exploration of the political philosophies of Malcolm X and MLK and why they're not nearly as

antithetical as were made to believe. In the end, as Joseph explains, Malcolm and Martin

speak to this tension between reform and revolution, idealism and pragmatism. But the story also

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