Ta-Nehisi Coates Has a Message to Deliver. Can We Hear It?

Few writers have pressed more urgently on the tension between history and morality than Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Last fall, on the heels of his new book The Message, Coates joined Sam for a conversation live in Los Angeles. At the top, they discuss how his Atlantic piece The Case for Reparations guided these three new essays (6:10), Coates’ early education growing up in West Baltimore (14:57), and his powerful dispatches from South Carolina (22:00) and the Middle East (29:30).

On the back-half, Coates unpacks why he believes the mainstream media prioritizes “factual complexity over self-evident morality” (37:47), his advocacy for Palestinian journalists (39:20), and his reflections about the U.S. election (47:28). To close, a formative passage from James Baldwin's The Lost Generation (52:38) and a story about love and writing (57:45).

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