Life Between the Cracks of History: An Immigrant Family's Story (with Ada Ferrer)

Donald Trump launched his political career by spreading the lie that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. He launched his second term as president trying to overturn the plain and long-held intent of the 14th Amendment. In both cases, birth certificates played a crucial role. Historian Susan J. Pearson returns to unpack the Supreme Court's recent birthright citizenship decision, the proposed SAVE Act, and why birth certificates have become one of the most politically contested documents in the United States. Drawing on the history behind The Birth Certificate: An American History, she explains how government records shape citizenship, why the United States has no national proof of citizenship, and what happens when access to democracy depends on paperwork. Full transcript is available here at relationscapes.org.  Fellow Traveler Episodes The Secret and Sometimes Sinister History of American Birth Certificates (with Susan J. Pearson) Life Between the Cracks of History: An Immigrant Family's Story (with Ada Ferrer) Unearthing Family Secrets (with Ingrid Rojas Contreras) MINI EPISODE: Little Interpreter, Big Responsibility (with Olivia Abtahi) Border Separations (with Efrén Olivares) About the Guest Susan J. Pearson (Ph.D., University of North Carolina, 2004) is an historian of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States. She is particularly interested in the cultural politics of reform, the expansion of the state and forms of governance, and the development of American liberalism. Professor Pearson is the author of two prize-winning books, including The Birth Certificate: An American History. She has also published essays and articles in The Journal of American History, History and Theory, The Journal of Social History, Modern American History, and the Journal of the Civil War Era.

History is often told through revolutions, presidents, and wars. Historian Ada Ferrer tells it through the experience of her own family. When Ferrer was just 11 months old, her mother fled Cuba with her in her arms, leaving behind a 9-year-old son she hoped to reunite with soon. Decades later, after her parents' deaths, Ferrer uncovered boxes of letters, keepsakes, and forgotten records that revealed not only what happened to her family, but what history can look like when seen through ordinary lives instead of famous names. In this conversation, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian discusses Keeper of My Kin: Memoir of an Immigrant Daughter, a memoir that blends archival detective work with profound personal reckoning. She reflects on exile, family separation, memory, guilt, forgiveness, and the uneasy truth that the people we love most can also wound us most deeply. The result is a moving conversation about immigration, the Cuban Revolution, and the quiet, complicated lives that history books so often leave behind. Full transcript is available here at relationscapes.org.  Fellow Traveler Episodes Border Separations (with Efrén Olivares) Unearthing Family Secrets (with Ingrid Rojas Contreras) Little Interpreter, Big Responsibility (with Olivia Abtahi) About the Guest Ada Ferrer is a Cuban-American historian and author of the national best-seller, Keeper of My Kin: Memoir of an Immigrant Daughter. She joined the faculty at Princeton University as the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History in July 2024. She was awarded the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in History for her book Cuba: An American History.

If you have one, your American birth certificate may be the most powerful piece of paper you own. It can open doors to citizenship, school, employment, and legal recognition. Which means it can also been used to enforce segregation, restrict marriage, erase Native identities, police gender, and m re. Historian Susan J. Pearson uncovers the surprising history of the birth certificate and reveals how a seemingly mundane document became a powerful tool for defining race, family, and belonging in America. At a moment when birth certificates are once again at the center of political battles over sex and gender, this history offers an essential guide to understanding what these documents do—for good and ill. Susan is the author of The Birth Certificate: An American History. Full transcript is available here at relationscapes.org.    About the Guest Susan J. Pearson (Ph.D., University of North Carolina, 2004) is an historian of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States. She is particularly interested in the cultural politics of reform, the expansion of the state and forms of governance, and the development of American liberalism. Professor Pearson is the author of two prize-winning books, including The Birth Certificate: An American History. She has also published essays and articles in The Journal of American History, History and Theory, The Journal of Social History, Modern American History, and the Journal of the Civil War Era.

In 1959, a young University of Florida student was pulled out of his final exam by police and taken to a motel room for interrogation. His suspected crime: being gay. Journalist Robert Fieseler uncovers the hidden history of Florida's Johns Committee, a state-backed investigation that targeted Black activists, supposed communists, and LGBTQ people. Drawing from previously confidential records, Fieseler traces how fear became a political weapon—and how ordinary people fought back through the courts, protest, and in acts of personal courage. Their conversation explores the human cost of these investigations, the rise of gay political consciousness in Florida, and why this history still matters today. Full transcript is available here at relationscapes.org.  Fellow Traveler Episodes "Safe Spaces: A Pulse Nightclub Survivor Remembers," (with Brandon Wolf) About the Guest Robert W. Fieseler is a journalist investigating marginalized groups and a scholar excavating forgotten histories. A National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association Journalist of the Year and recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship, his debut book Tinderbox won seven awards, including the Edgar Award, and his reporting has appeared in Slate, Commonweal, and River Teeth, among others. Fieseler graduated co-valedictorian from the Columbia Journalism School and is pursuing a PhD at Tulane University as a Mellon Fellow. He lives with his husband on the gayest street in New Orleans. His latest book is American Scare: Florida's Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives.

The rainbow flag signals unity. Reality under the banner is messier. Professor Kaila Story has spent her life navigating spaces where parts of her identity are welcomed while other parts are pushed aside. As a Black lesbian, she has encountered racism within queer communities, queerphobia within Black communities, and exclusion even among people who claim to be fighting for liberation. Drawing from her book The Rainbow Ain't Never Been Enuf: On the Myth of LGBTQ+ Solidarity, Kaila explores why marginalized groups don't automatically stand together, how racism and respectability politics continue to shape LGBTQ communities, and why genuine solidarity requires more than shared oppression. A challenging, hopeful conversation about identity, community, and why our liberation remains bound up with one another. Full transcript is available here at relationscapes.org.  Fellow Traveler Episodes Queer History Repeating (with Christina Cauterucci) Recovering Queer Black History for Everybody (with George M. Johnson) About the Guest Kaila Adia Story, PhD, is a professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and of Pan-African Studies, as well as the Audre Lorde Endowed Chair, at the University of Louisville. She is also the cocreator, coproducer, and cohost of Louisville Public Media’s Strange Fruit: Musings on Politics, Pop Culture, and Black Gay Life, a popular, award-winning podcast.   

Holly Brown loves TV sitcoms. Growing up, her own family looked like the prototype for must-see TV: a charismatic dad who worked on a top sitcom in Hollywood, siblings and a mother filling the other familiar family roles. Until it all started to fall apart. As though the writers were playing some kind of sadistic joke. And as her father was dying of cancer, he revealed a secret no one had told her—Holly and her siblings had five-year-old twin half brothers. Holly joins Blair to talk about her genre-bending new podcast, Everybody Knows But Me, which blends memoir, investigative storytelling, with fake sitcom scenes of her life complete with wisecracks and laugh tracks. Full transcript is available here at relationscapes.org.  Fellow Traveler Episodes Dead Dads Club, with Maddie Norris About the Guest Holly Brown is an LA-based stand-up comedian, a podcast person at Tink Media, and also the host and creator of a new darkly comedic narrative podcast called Everybody Knows But Me.

Kevin James Thornton built a massive audience singing absurd stories from his evangelical past in an auto-tune style on TikTok. But underneath the humor were years of loneliness, secrecy, religious fear, and the slow unraveling of a series of lives he thought he was supposed to live.  Kevin talks about growing up in a "super fundamentalist" church in Indiana, youth-group purity culture, heartbreak, trying to escape being gay, coming to terms with himself, comedy, and why it’s never too late to start over. Kevin’s new memoir is Big Baby: On Endings, Beginnings, and An Interdimensional Cat. Full transcript is available here at relationscapes.org.  Fellow Traveler Episodes Painfully Funny, (with Paul Scheer) Surviving the "Cure" of Conversion Therapy (with Lucas Wilson) About the Guest Kevin James Thornton is author of the book Big Baby: On Endings, Beginnings, and An Interdimensional Cat. He has built a devoted following of nearly 3 million fans across TikTok and Instagram with his hilarious, heartfelt, and occasionally cringey stories of self-reflection. Since launching his “It Was the 90s” tour in 2021, he has performed to sold-out crowds across the US, UK, Europe, and Canada for five consecutive years. In 2024, he was a headliner at Netflix Is a Joke Fest in Los Angeles. His debut comedy special, Be Yourself, is available on Amazon Prime and Apple TV.

Why do racist comments from loved ones cut more deeply than overt racism from strangers? What makes it so difficult to name harm when it comes from someone who cares about you? And how do you respond when good intentions don’t match real impact? Samira Mehta says growing up in a mixed-race family showed her how love and harm can coexist in complicated, often invisible ways. Through personal stories—about food, family expectations, code-switching, and cultural belonging—Mehta gives voice to the constant negotiations navigated by mixed-race people. Samira Mehta is author of The Racism of People Who Love You: Essays on Mixed Race Belonging. Full transcript is available here at relationscapes.org.  About the Guest Samira K. Mehta is the Director of Jewish Studies and an Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research and teaching focus on the intersections religion, culture, and gender, including the politics of family life and reproduction in the United States. Her first book, Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2018) was a National Jewish book award finalist. She is also the author of a book of personal essays called The Racism of People Who Love You (Beacon Press, 2023). Her latest book, God Bless the Pill, examines the role of Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant voices in competing moral logics of contraception.

We talk a lot about women’s reproductive health. We rarely talk about men’s. But that gap isn’t just cultural—it’s built into science itself. In this episode, Yale sociologist Rene Almeling explains how modern medicine ended up with an entire field devoted to women’s reproductive systems—and no real equivalent for men. From a failed 19th-century push for “andrology” to today’s emerging research on sperm and health, we trace how this imbalance took shape. Along the way, we look at what new science is starting to reveal: how age, smoking, and environmental exposures can affect sperm—and why most people have never heard about it. We also explore how cultural assumptions about gender have shaped everything from medical research to the way we describe fertilization itself. If reproduction involves two bodies, why has only one been under the microscope? Find the answers in Rene Almeling's book, Guynecology: The Missing Science of Men's Reproductive Health. Full transcript is available here at relationscapes.org.    About the Guest Rene Almeling is Professor of Sociology at Yale University. She is the author of two award-winning books: Sex Cells offers an inside look at the American market for egg and sperm donors, and GUYnecology examines the causes and consequences of inattention to male reproductive health.

She thought there would always be more time to explore—until a routine hike nearly killed her. In this mini episode, Bailey Buckles recounts how a sudden, life-threatening infection drove home the fact that tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. It was an especially powerful moment, because as a transgender woman of color in America, she hadn't always wanted to stay alive.  From climbing mountains to showing up online as her full self, Bailey strives to live with greater urgency, purpose, and joy. Full transcript is available here at relationscapes.org.  Show Notes Bailey Buckles, "At 38, I Still Felt Like I Was Getting Started. Then I Nearly Died," (Mar 12, 2026). Bailey Buckles, "Is This New, or Just Newly Felt," (Jan 25, 2026).   Fellow Traveler Episodes Recovering Queer Black History for Everybody (with George M. Johnson) How to Support Trans Youth (with Ben V. Greene) About the Guest Bailey Buckles is a trans content creator in Colorado who loves the outdoors, her partner, her dog, and living life. Follow her here, and at her Substack.