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In his new book, We Were Eight Years in Power, The Atlantic's national correspondent Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about the past eight years of his career—his pursuit of an understanding of America, and his route to becoming a celebrated author. In this episode of Radio Atlantic, our cohosts Matt, Jeff, and Alex each conduct an interview with Ta-Nehisi about what he's found.



This is a longer episode than our usual, so if you'd like to skip around, here are the three segments, for easy fast-forwarding:

[00:00] Matt's interview, focused on the questions that infused Ta-Nehisi's early writing at The Atlantic, and the answers that he's found

[32:46] Jeff's interview, focused on the two administrations Ta-Nehisi has chronicled, and his political outlook

[59:52] Alex's interview, focused on Ta-Nehisi's community, family, and life

Links:

- The Mis-Education of the Negro (Carter G. Woodson, 1933)

- “Black People, Culture and Poverty” (Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2009)

- "The Math on Black Out-of-Wedlock Births" (Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2009)

- “The Radical Critique of Obama” (Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2009)

- “On Jewish Racism” (Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2009)

- “Still More…” (Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2009)

- “Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War?” (Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2012)

- "The End of White America?" (Hua Hsu, 2009)

- "The Issues: Race" (Hua Hsu & Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2009)

- “A Plea for Straight Talk Between the Races” (Benjamin Mays, 1960)

- "The First White President" (Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2017)

- "This Is What European Diplomats Really Think About Donald Trump" (Alberto Nardelli, Buzzfeed, 2017)

- "Donald Trump's Race Wars" (Jonathan Chait, 2017)

- "Tyranny of the Minority" (Michelle Goldberg, 2017)

- Elizabeth Kolbert's author archive (The New Yorker)