Saladin Ambar is author of a new book, Stars and Shadows: The Politics of Interracial Friendship from Jefferson to Obama. He’s also a political science professor at Rutgers and host of The Eagleton Podcast: This Moment in Democracy. Ambar talks with Ben and Khalil about the complex stakes of interracial friendships throughout US history. Ambar’s ten case studies include the famous bond between Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe and the relationship between former president Barack Obama and his VP Joe Biden. We hear a frank conversation about the political challenges, and political purposes, of interracial friendship in a fraught society.

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