Julián Castro served as the mayor of San Antonio, Texas before joining the Obama administration as housing secretary. And he was briefly in the race for president, the only Latinx candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary. But he admits he still gets stagefright. When he spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2012, “for the first 30 seconds, I thought I was going to pass out on-stage in front of 25 million people watching,” he tells host Rebecca Carroll. “That's my advice for people just getting into it: be prepared for the nerves at the beginning, but then it'll be fine.” These days he’s stumping for the U.S. Census and he’s encouraging undocumented people to participate. “[Organizers] can’t take that information and turn it over to Immigration,” he says. “I know that it takes a little bit of a leap of faith during this Trump era especially, but that is what the law says and that’s how the law will be enforced.” Plus, we end the podcast season as we began it, with Rebecca’s best friend, Caryn Rivers.

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As a struggling screenwriter, Twitter was exactly what Ira Madison III needed to get noticed. More than 200k followers later, he’s writing for Netflix (“Daybreak” and the upcoming “Q-Force”). He tells host Rebecca Carroll, “I think that by virtue of being Black and telling your story, you are already analyzing and critiquing what it means to be Black in this era.” For writer and producer Kay Oyegun (NBC’s “This is Us”), “Black women are always my protagonists.” When she writes a script, “I always say, ‘assume everyone's Black unless I say otherwise.’” 

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Waubgeshig Rice is a Canadian journalist and bestselling author (Moon of the Crusted Snow) from the Wasauksing First Nation, who grew up in an Anishinaabe community. He hopes COVID will be a wake-up call to a crisis that has been going on for decades: climate change. “People from so-called ‘marginalized communities’ know what it's like to have that sort of tenuous hold on life and know that the world can end at any time, if it hasn't already,” he tells host Rebecca Carroll. “And the dominant mainstream majority is finally understanding just how close they are to chaos.”

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Ava DuVernay was a young teenager when she went to a U2 concert and encountered a flier for Amnesty International that changed her life. She tells host Rebecca Carroll, "it was just that little piece of something that said, 'There's more than you in the world. Look outside, look beyond. Think about the majesty of other people outside where you sit.' All of that opened up a whole new world for me." She recently launched an online education initiative that uses her Netflix series "When They See Us" to teach high school-age kids about systematic racism and the impact of social justice. Plus, Rebecca talks with Desmond Meade of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition about why it’s more important than ever to vote.

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Gabrielle Union is a force. But before she became an actress, activist, and businesswoman, Gabrielle was a Black girl from Omaha trying to find Black community, belonging, and love in a largely white suburb in California. After years of difficult relationships and trying to fit the standards other people had set for her, she finally feels like she’s come into her own. And now, she's trying to instill that confidence in her daughters. That requires "being super conscious," she tells host Rebecca Carroll, and "really questioning every single thing that we've been taught about skin color and body type." It's all a work-in-progress. 

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Over the past several years, we’ve watched Don Lemon go from a semi-conservative broadcast journalist to an emotionally expressive, openly opinionated public figure. The CNN anchor has even drawn the ire of President Trump. And Lemon is OK with that. “If the President is exhibiting racist behavior,” he tells Rebecca Carroll, “it is incumbent on journalists to point that behavior out and to say what it is: to call racism, racism; to call a lie, a lie. You're doing your job.”

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Author Bassey Ikpi always struggled with a certain kind of heaviness and worry growing up. In 2004, she was able to put a name to those feelings when she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She joins Rebecca Carroll to talk about the particular stigma black women face when it comes to mental health, how TikTok is actually a form of self-care, and what she’s doing to try to stay healthy in the midst of a pandemic.

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On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery was jogging in his suburban neighborhood when two white men, a father and son, decided Arbery might be the culprit of a suspected robbery. They got in their truck, chased him, and ultimately shot him. News reports have referred to the incident as a “shooting,” a “murder,” and a “killing.” But lawyer and commentator Elie Mystal says it’s clear that it should be called a “lynching.”  He unpacks the country’s unique and horrific legacy of control and violence towards Black Americans -- and he tells Rebecca Carroll why it’s so important to use that word.

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Does Freedom of Speech have limits in the workplace? Walter Mosley was working as a writer on a TV show. One day, in the writers' room, he shared with his colleagues the story of his disturbing encounter with a police officer who used the n-word. That story -- more specifically that word -- landed Mosley in HR. He ended up quitting. “You could write it in a script if you want,” he tells Rebecca Carroll, “but you can't use the language. You can’t say it.”

Journalist Jeff Yang was stunned after experiencing a racist attack at the grocery store. Now, he’s finding himself asking some tough questions about what allyship looks like in the age of Covid-19. He joins Rebecca to reflect on the disturbing trope of the “model minority,” the ways that communities of color continue to be encouraged to work against one another, and how to find solidarity when you've become a national target.