Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns

38:31

Faith the Size of a Mustard Seed with Dr. Tiffany...

Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns ·

2026/10/06

Dr. Tiffany Crutcher joins the class ten years after a Tulsa police officer killed her twin brother, Terence. She is a descendant of Black Wall Street and the founder of the Terence Crutcher Foundation. She talks about the mother who taught her quiet strength and about the brother the news never showed. She shares her freedom dreams for the next generation and her plans for Greenwood North, a 65,000-square-foot home for rebuilding Black Wall Street. She also answers the hardest question: who takes

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23:15

What It Cost Us: Najya, Brown, and the Black Tax

Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns ·

2026/09/29

Ten years ago, Nikole Hannah-Jones chose a school for her daughter and called it the just choice. Now she has told the world what that choice cost.Dr. David J. Johns takes the class past the arguments to the questions underneath them. What did Brown v. Board give us, and what did it cost? What does the Black tax take from us, generation after generation? Why do Black teachers matter so much? And why does a systemic problem need a collective answer? Grace for every parent making constrained choices

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13:47

We Wrote It Down

Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns ·

2026/09/22

In March of 1972, ten thousand Black folks went to Gary, Indiana, and came out with an agenda. Fifty-four years later, we wrote it down again.Dr. David J. Johns takes the class inside the State of the People Black Papers, the community-driven policy briefs built by more than a hundred Black experts across ten states, and the two companion documents being built on top of them: a Day One list of five asks for the next Congress and the fuller people's platform underneath it.Then he takes us to Tulsa,

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17:13

Three Rings: Nobody Taught Us the Rules

Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns ·

2026/09/15

We never left. But this is the first new class since June.Dr. David J. Johns opens the fall with a correction he's been carrying in public. For years he told rooms full of people that PBS should bring back Schoolhouse Rock. He was wrong twice—and the second mistake turns out to be the whole episode.In 1979, ABC shelved a three-minute cartoon explaining checks and balances because network executives feared the government being checked would come after their broadcast license. Nearly fifty years

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39:00

A Classroom Teacher’s Perspective w/Stephanie Allen

Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns ·

2026/09/08

ICYMI: A Back-to-School Special RerunStephanie Allen does God’s work. A career educator for more than two decades, Ms. Allen currently teaches high school in Guilford County Schools in Greensboro, North Carolina, the third largest school district in North Carolina. She was recognized as a Teacher of the Year in 2019 and 2024–a recognition she’s earned. This episode features the front-line experiences of a classroom teacher, centers stories about under-supported students, and describes necessary

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42:56

Th Whole System Is Broken with Andrea Foggy-Paxton

Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns ·

2026/09/01

ICYMI!Andrea Foggy-Paxton brings a unique perspective to leading change across sectors, drawing from leadership roles in start-up organizations, established organizations, and philanthropic organizations supporting systems transformation. This episode answers the questions: What is civics, and why should it be taught to all students? Andrea shares lessons from her experience as an industry titan and appointed school board member. She also talks about philanthropy and corporations' responsibility

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60:35

Preserving Legacy and the Power of Mutual Aid with...

Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns ·

2026/08/25

Summer Rewind EpisodeIn this deeply personal and politically urgent conversation, Dr. David Johns welcomes his White House family—Deesha Dyer, former Social Secretary to President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama—for a raw discussion about what we lose when power demolishes history, and what endures when community builds with intention.Deesha takes us inside the moment she saw excavators tearing down the East Wing of the White House in October 2025—the space where she orchestrated state

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40:18

Refusing the Shame — with Dr. Terrell Winder

Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns ·

2026/08/18

I'm from Los Angeles. So when I picked up Dr. Terrell Winder's Shameless: The Making of Black Gay Identities in LA, it read like a love letter to a home I'm watching change—and a map of how young Black gay men build family, selfhood, and joy inside all that change anyway.This week, Dr. Winder—sociologist and urban ethnographer at UC Santa Barbara—pulls up to the classroom to teach us unspoiling: his framework for refusing shame and rejecting the burden of stigma outright, no matter what it costs. We

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65:22

TTB Rewind: Kimberlé Crenshaw: Born a Backtalker

Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns ·

2026/08/11

In case you missed it... In this rewind episode, I'm in conversation with the brilliant Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw—legal scholar, civil rights advocate, chief architect of Critical Race Theory. From her parents' kitchen table discussions that shaped her critical consciousness, to her groundbreaking work challenging legal institutions, to founding the African American Policy Forum, Professor Crenshaw has spent decades translating academic theory into tools for resistance. In this powerful

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17:59

TTB Rewind: The Klan Never Left. They Just Changed...

Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns ·

2026/08/04

In this Rewind episode, listen as Dr. David J. Johns discusses voting and our rights under attack.The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is gone. Not weakened. Not under threat. Gone. The legal architecture that turned 7% Black voter registration in Mississippi into 60%—dismantled, decision by decision, by a Supreme Court that was never neutral and was never on our side.But that's not even the whole story. Because while the courts were killing the VRA, the Justice Department was being turned into a weapon

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43:36

The World Is Being Destroyed by Some Little Boys with...

Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns ·

2026/07/28

What does it mean to tell a Black boy “I love you”—period? Not “love, bro.” Not “love you, big dog.” Just: I love you.That question sits at the heart of this conversation between Dr. David J. Johns and Phil Agnew, Dream Defenders co-founder, community organizer, and co-author of P.S. Eye Value You, a children’s book created with Brandon Vega and artist Damon Davis through their imprint Black House Publishing.Phil talks about what it took to write a book he desperately needed as a child—and still

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57:16

Reaping Rewards: Black Women and Democracy with Dr....

Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns ·

2026/07/21

In case you missed it, this episode is a re-release of an amazing conversation with Dr. Christina Grant.Andre 3000 told us the South has something to say, and Dr. Christina Greer wants us to heed the lessons that Black women political leaders from the South are teaching us. Dr. Greer stops by the class to talk about her latest publication, “How to Build a Democracy. From Fannie Lou Hamer and Barbara Jordan to Stacey Abrams,” and what it means to grow beyond fear, to build upon foundations

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47:33

Show Up for Our Kids with Dr. Bianca Baldridge

Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns ·

2026/07/07

Dr. Bianca Baldridge is back in the class—and this time she brought her new book.Associate Professor of Education at Harvard University and former youth worker for over two decades, Dr. Baldridge has spent her career shining light on the spaces where Black children are seen, held, and loved outside of school walls. Her new book, Laboring in the Shadows: Precarity and Promise in Black Youth Work (Stanford University Press, 2026), is one of the most necessary things I have read in years. I don't do

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28:07

We Want the Whole Menu with Dreisen Heath

Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns ·

2026/06/30

Dreisen Heath doesn't do sequencing. She doesn't want the appetizer. She doesn't want to wait for the main course. She wants the whole menu—reparations legislation, economic justice, striking the punishment clause from the 13th Amendment, restored benefits for Black veterans, and protected Black history and cultural institutions. All of it. All at once.In this episode, Dr. David Johns sits down with Dreisen Heath—reparations researcher, movement strategist, and founder and executive director of the

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41:40

Freedom Summer 2026 with Brittany Packnett Cunningham

Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns ·

2026/06/23

Freedom Summer didn't end in 1964 — it lives in every classroom, every protest, every young person who picks up a book and sees themselves as their own liberator. In this conversation, Dr. David J. Johns sits down with his sister and colleague Dr. Brittany Packnett Cunningham — strategist, educator, Webby Award-winning host of UNDISTRACTED, and Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer of the Children's Defense Fund — to trace the direct line from Mississippi 1964 to the urgent work of this

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27:37

In Our Comfort, We Cannot Get Free with Tiffany Loftin

Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns ·

2026/06/16

Tiffany Dena Loftin has been in this work for over two decades — from a TRIO student at UC Santa Cruz organizing against tuition hikes, to leading the United States Student Association, to fighting for student debt cancellation at the NAACP and the Debt Collective. She's a labor organizer, a voting rights strategist, a founding member of Freedom Side, and one of the most disciplined relationship builders in the movement. She also served on the advisory board when Dr. David J. Johns led the White

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34:20

Equity Week- All of Us. All the Time. with- Dr....

Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns ·

2026/06/02

Dr. Marcus Anthony Hunter is back in the classroom — and this time, the lesson is urgent.One week out from Equity Week 2026, Dr. Hunter — professor of sociology and African American studies, author of Radical Reparations: Healing the Soul of a Nation, and NBJC board member — walks us through everything you need to know. Why the week exists. Who it was built for. What it asks of you.Then we go deeper. The Trump administration’s $1.7 billion fund to compensate January 6th participants is not just

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30:01

Greenwood Was Never Just a Place. It Was a State of...

Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns ·

2026/05/26

There are moments in this work when you sit across from someone and realize you're not just talking to a lawyer. You're talking to a son. A keeper. A man who has spent his entire adult life making sure that what happened in Greenwood — and what Greenwood actually was before they burned it down — is never forgotten and never left unanswered.This week, we’re joined by civil rights attorney, author, and Justice for Greenwood Foundation executive director Damario Solomon-Simmons. His first book, Redeem

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17:59

The Klan Never Left. They Just Changed Their Clothes.

Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns ·

2026/05/19

This one is different. No guest. Just me—and the truth I can't stop sitting with.The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is gone. Not weakened. Not under threat. Gone. The legal architecture that turned 7% Black voter registration in Mississippi into 60%—dismantled, decision by decision, by a Supreme Court that was never neutral and was never on our side.But that's not even the whole story. Because while the courts were killing the VRA, the Justice Department was being turned into a weapon. FBI agents raided

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24:33

Black. Single. Mother. with Jamilah Lemieux

Teach the Babies w/ Dr. David J. Johns ·

2026/05/12

Jamilah Lemieux is a writer, cultural critic, and — officially, loudly, and necessarily — a published author. Her debut book, Black. Single. Mother.: Real Life Tales of Longing and Belonging, dropped in March 2026, and it is already doing exactly what the best books do: making people uncomfortable in the most clarifying ways.In this conversation, Jamilah and I go deep. We talk about what Aunt Toni Morrison taught us about writing the books we need—and what it means to actually do it. We trace the

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