#54
1619
The New York Times
United States
1619 is a sweeping, impassioned reframing of American history, where Nikole Hannah-Jones tells the story of a nation through the legacy of slavery with the cadence of a manifesto and the rigor of a scholar. It’s journalism as elegy and indictment, peeling back the patriotic gloss to reveal the blood in the mortar. Bold, provocative, and at times operatic in its moral clarity, it demands not just to be heard, but reckoned with.
"Masterful writing. Personal and national, present and past all swirled together. Really stretched what I thought was possible in an audio essay."
- Latif Nasser, Radiolab
1619 is a bold, haunting reframing of American history, told with the precision of great journalism and the emotional force of a personal reckoning. Created by Nikole Hannah-Jones, the series argues that the true founding of the United States began not in 1776, but in 1619, with the arrival of the first enslaved Africans. From that premise, each episode builds outward—into health care, capitalism, music, and democracy itself—tracing how slavery’s legacy remains etched into the country's foundation.
Hannah-Jones narrates with restrained intensity, allowing historical facts to land with devastating clarity. The sound design is rich, the pacing deliberate, and the storytelling unflinching. More than a podcast, 1619 is a historical intervention—an insistence on seeing the past not as prologue, but as the present’s shadow. It challenges listeners not to learn history, but to feel its consequences. It’s essential listening: rigorous, artful, and impossible to ignore.