This Day-After-Thanksgiving, some conversations about coming together, across differences:

• Jay Caspian Kang, opinion writer for The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine and the author of The Loneliest Americans (Crown, 2021), talks about how he thinks Asian-Americans -- a large and not monolithic group -- fit into American society. 
• Celeste Headlee, author of Speaking of Race: Why Everybody Needs to Talk About Racism―and How to Do It (Harper Wave, 2021) draws on science and her own experience to offer guidance for having good conversations around issues of racial identity.
• Childhood friends Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of History, Race and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and director emeritus of the Schomburg Center, and Ben Austen, journalist and author of High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing (Harper, 2018), talk about their new podcast, "Some of My Best Friends Are...," which examines race and racism through the lens of their interracial friendship.
• Tracy K. Smith, Pulitzer Prize winning poet, former Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019, author of Such Color: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf, 2021) and editor of The Best American Poetry 2021 (Scribner, 2021), shares some of the best recent poetry, her own and that of other poets, to end the show.

These interviews were edited slightly for time, the original versions are available here:

What Does the Label 'Asian-American' Really Mean? (Oct 7, 2021)

Let's Talk About Racism (Nov 4, 2021)

Race and Racism Through the Lens of an Interracial Friendship (Sep 14, 2021)

Tracy K. Smith Reads 'The Best American Poetry 2021' (Oct 13, 2021)

Tracy K. Smith Picks the Best Recent Poetry (Oct 14, 2021)

Tracy K. Smith Shares Poems From Her New Collection (Oct 15, 2021)