Monica Grace

A few years after the Wright brothers’ first flight, Bessie was working the Texas cotton fields with her family when an airplane flew over their heads. It buzzed so low she thought she could catch it in her hands. Bessie was fearless. She knew there was freedom in those wings. The daughter of a woman born into slavery, Bessie answers the call of the Great Migration. She moves to Chicago, where she wins the backing of two wealthy, powerful Black men—Robert Abbott, creator and publisher of the Chicago Defender, and Jesse Binga, the founder of Chicago’s first Black bank.

Black scuba divers across the world are searching for buried shipwrecks from the transatlantic slave trade, when millions of enslaved Africans were trafficked to the Americas during the 15th to the 19th centuries. A new six-part podcast series, Into the Depths, follows National Geographic Explorer Tara Roberts as she sets off on the journey of a lifetime to meet the divers, marine archaeologists, descendants of those brought over on ships, and historians investigating the lost stories of the slave trade. She’s inspired to share their accounts both to expand the historical record and to honor...

Eleanor knows she's a mess. But today she will tackle the little things. She will shower and get dressed. She will have her poetry and yoga lessons after dropping off her son, Timby. She won't swear. She will initiate sex with her husband, Joe. But before she can put her modest plan into action - life happens. Today, it turns out, is the day Timby has decided to fake sick to weasel his way into his mother's company. It's also the day Joe has chosen to tell his office - but not Eleanor - that he's on vacation.