The United States vs. Billie Holiday

NPR’s Anas Baba is one of the last remaining journalists in Gaza working full-time for an American news organization. A year into the ceasefire, more than 1400 people have been killed in Israeli attacks, nearly 5,000 injured. And those numbers rise nearly every day. What has the ...  Show more

We live in a moment with almost daily reminders of how fragile life on Earth is whether it be from climate change, nuclear weapons or AI. In this episode, we bring you a story from the not-so-distant past when we learned what drove dinosaurs to extinction. And how it might have h ...  Show more

Billie Holiday makes a decision. The jazz singer will perform "Strange Fruit," the protest song about lynchings, no matter what happens to her—and no matter how many times law enforcement tells her to stay quiet. But that puts her in the crosshairs of one federal official, who us ...  Show more

Sophie Duker, Daliso Chaponda and Kemah Bob riff over jazz singer Billie Holiday, who sang Strange Fruit. Producer Beth O'Dea 

Andra Day tells Alec that she almost turned down the opportunity to play Billie Holiday in Lee Daniel’s The United States Vs. Billie Holiday. Day considered herself a singer, not an actress. She went on to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress for the part and brought h ...

Monica Johnson is a social justice educator who uses the legacy of Billie Holiday’s world renowned performance of “Strange Fruit” to expose the world to the true struggle of being a Black woman in America. This talk was filmed at TEDxBloomington. All TEDx events are organized ind ...  Show more