season 1

Episode 15 | w/Mark Anthony Neal

Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined by Pastor Carl Kenney in a discussion of sex and sexuality in the Black Church, the emergence of the “Prosperity Gospel” and the Bishop Eddie Long controversy. Neal is joined by novelist Zelda Lockhart, who has been using her writing in support of HIV advocacy […]

Episode 14 | w/Mark Anthony Neal

Left of Black Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined by composer T.J. Anderson and Queer media activist and writer Alexis Pauline Gumbs on location at the Beyu Caffe in Durham, NC T.J. Anderson is one of the leading composers of his generation. Born in 1928 Anderson received a Ph.D in Composition […]

Episode 13 | w/Mark Anthony Neal

Left of Black Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined by Professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad, the next director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem and Sociologist Ben Carrington, author of the just published Race, Sports and Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora. Khalil Gibran Muhammad is Assistant Professor […]

Episode 12 | American Work-force and Black Males School

Left of Black Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal discusses the crisis of Black Males and schooling, the de-skilling of the American Work-force and Social Media with Columbia University Professor Marc Lamont Hill. Neal is also joined by University of Pennsylvania Professor Salamishah Tillet as they discuss the career of Kanye West, the […]

Episode 11 | w/Mark Anthony Neal

Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is on location at the Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, NC with curator Trevor Schoonmaker, who curated The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl, which runs at the Nasher Museum until February. Schoonmaker’s previous exhibitions at the Nasher Museum include Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool […]

Episode 10 | w/Mark Anthony Neal

Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal talks with William Jelani Cobb Author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress and spoken-word poet Bassey Ikpi. Cobb is Professor of History and Africana Studies at Rutgers University and the author of To The Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the […]

Episode 9 | w/Mark Anthony Neal

Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal discusses the controversy over Tyler Perry’s big screen adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls and surviving the Bronx, New York with writers Joan Morgan and Sofia Quintero.   Joan Morgan is the author of When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: My Life as a Hip Hop […]

Episode 8 | w/Mark Anthony Neal

Host Mark Anthony Neal has a wide ranging conversation with economist and sports talk host, Bomani Jones About the branding of Lebron James, the lack of interest in baseball by African-American youth, the proposed “All-White” basketball league and the travails of rap artist T.I. Neal is also joined by Nathaniel Friedman aka Bethlehem Shoals, founder […]

Episode 7 | w/Mark Anthony Neal

Host Mark Anthony Neal discusses the mid-term elections and NPR’s firing of Juan Williams with journalist Farai Chideya, founder and managing editor of Pop & Politics and former host of NPR’s News & Notes. Neal is also joined by Cathy J. Cohen, the David and Mary Winton Green Professor of Political Science at the University […]

Episode 6 | w/Mark Anthony Neal

Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined by Bucknell University Professor James Braxton Peterson in a discussion of the legacy of the Million Man March, The Morehouse College dress code, homophobia and bullying, and Hip-Hop Masculinity. Neal also talks with former Baltimore Sun music critic and current pop culture […]