While it can sometimes feel like the chaos affecting... everything right now is entirely without precedent, it ain't so. In many cases, we've been here before. In About That Life, journalist Garrison Hayes explores historical Black figures who all defied unfair systems to draw inspiration for today's political causes.
Hayes, whose background includes creating documentary video content for Mother Jones, is embracing the potential of the creator economy with this bold, Gen Z-friendly project.
Episodes of About That Life have averaged just thirty minutes so far. But considering the topics Hayes covers – interviews with guests, biography, clips, historical context, relevance to today – the run time can seem a little scant. In a couple of episodes, especially the series opener on sci-fi writer Octavia Butler, it feels as if we are just getting to the good stuff as Hayes starts reading the closing credits.
Yet, About That Life never claims to be an exhaustive portrait of the important figures in question. Rather than a complete biography, the episodes act more as a jumping off point, introducing you to people worth knowing about, inspiring you to do your own further research.
Even in this compact run time, there is still room for nuance. The third episode tells the story of George Washington Williams, a writer and politician whose searing rebuke of the atrocities King Leopold II committed on the enslaved Congolese people led to him coining the term “crimes against humanity,” which Hayes draws parallels to NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s recent excoriation of Benjamin Netanyahu’s war crimes, as defined by the International Criminal Court. Williams was a fascinating character who ascended far higher politically than most Black men in the second half of the 1800s were able to. Hayes and guest Mohammed Elnaiem acknowledge that that meant signing onto some of the US Government’s less salubrious actions, but that ultimately, his evolution was what mattered more.
Hayes is an excellent host. Energetic, well-researched, and astute in the questions he asks his aptly chosen guests. A good example: Hayes talks to Maryland governor Wes Moore, the country’s only Black governor, about Gloria Richardson, the Maryland civil rights leader whose open look of disgust at the National Guardsman who held a bayonet in her face became a galvanising symbol of defiance during the 1960s. These days, it would be Moore who decided whether to call out the National Guard, and while some of his answers to Hayes’s questions are evasive in the way of any politician, it’s still fascinating to hear from someone who’s been, in Moore’s own words, on “both sides of the bayonet.”
The best guest – and the best episode – so far has been The Daily Show’s Josh Johnson talking about groundbreaking comedian and activist Dick Gregory. Black comedians had appeared on The Tonight Show before Gregory, but none had been asked for an interview on the couch afterwards. In protest at that injustice, when he was offered to do a set, Gregory initially refused, despite the tremendous boost the appearance would give his career. Surprised at the refusal, host Jack Paar called Gregory, who explained his decision. Paar then said he could come on the couch, and thus Gregory changed the game for so many who would come after him… including, eventually, Johnson.
Johnson weighs up what the choice must have been like for Gregory so thoughtfully, keeping in mind the historical context and the great benefits of representation. And throughout the episode, Johnson’s keen observations on the way an “artist’s responsibility” and a “human responsibility” both intersect and do not, and the tragedy of activists often not living long enough to see the way they changed the world, are tremendously interesting and deeply-felt.
Though still very early in its run, in exploring the lives of groundbreaking figures like Dick Gregory and Gloria Richardson, About That Life is a rousing reminder that with bravery like theirs, change is possible. With such a varied group of lives covered in just these first four episodes, it’s exciting to ponder where Hayes and his guests will take us next.
