It's Been a Minute Folgen

Every year, the Katmai National Park in Alaska puts on a March Madness-style bracket of all the fattest bears in their park. It's a celebration of fatness, because a fat bear ahead of hibernation means a healthy bear come spring. This competition is popular — there were over a million votes tallied last year — and it speaks to a larger cultural obsession with bears. In honor of Fat Bear Week, Host Brittany Luse journeys through time to unpack what bears mean to us — and why they're family, friend and foe all at once. And later, an exploration of how the queer community emulates bearness — and what the symbol of the animal can mean to them.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This week, host Brittany Luse kicks off spooky season by sitting down with the current champion of Black horror, Jordan Peele. In his most recent project, he's taken his talents from the screen to the page as the editor of a new book of short stories, Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror. Then, Brittany is joined by Black horror scholar and author Tananarive Due, to discuss her contributions to the anthology and her upcoming novel, The Reformatory. Due walks Brittany through how she honors a horrific past while offering readers satisfying scares.Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror is out today.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

A recent New Yorker piece on Hasan Minhaj found that some crucial bits of his stand-up act didn't stand up to fact-checking. Stretching the truth in comedy is par for the course, but how does that work for a figure like Minhaj, who'd previously doubled down on these stories in interviews and is known for his political satire shows? Brittany is joined by writer Imran Siddiquee and journalist Allana Akhtar to make sense of an entertainment industry that created the conditions for his fame.Then, we explore what happens when you recast western fantasies through a Black lens? We start by looking at one of the most beloved Black fantasies of our time: The Wiz. It's Been a Minute producer, Corey Antonio Rose shares how the original Broadway production of The Wiz made the storyline from The Wizard of Oz hit different for post-civil rights America. Brittany is then joined by African American Studies professor Darieck Scott to discuss the difference between representation and RE-presentation in fantasy.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy