How a single decision made a century ago split a family by race

leaning into one message that the political system is rigged to favor the wealthy. "There's only one direction we need to be pointing fingers, and that is up. It's not left and right."

“Can that message help Democrats take the Senate in this year's midterms?”

Graham Platner, this week on NPR's Newsmakers, watch or listen wherever you get podcasts. This is Fresh Air, I'm Tonya Mosley. Today, a story about how American racism tour a family apart, and how Pope Leo the 14th was the catalyst for bringing them together. Last spring, when the news broke that the newly elected Pope had Creole Roots in New Orleans, and that his own grandparents had quietly become a white family in Chicago,

journalist Susan Solney recognized the story immediately. Her family had lived a version of it. Her grandfather, George, was a black bricklayer who raised his children in New Orleans. His brother, Edward, was black too, but a shade lighter. Light enough to leave for Chicago in the

early 1920s, remake himself as a white man, and never come back. Susan grew up with just one picture

of him, a young man, barely 19, propped on her grandfather's China cabinet. Five words in Creole did all the work of explaining, "Edward, pass a block, white passing." A century later, Susan set out to find the white family Edward built in Chicago, and to see whether what racism had broken could be put back together. Her piece in the New York

“Times is called "A Family Secret No More." Susan Solney, welcome to Fresh Air. Oh, thank”

you, and it's a pleasure to be here. Take me to the moment you saw the headline about the new Pope. I was at home in Washington, DC, and I saw this news in like a lot of America. I was stunned, and I'm in touch with a lot of people in New Orleans over different social media channels or text threads, and immediately I saw an eruption of excitement, and I figured that's completely normal for a city as Catholic as New Orleans. You know, but what I began to see is that, "Hey, everybody, he's got roots here,

he's cringle," and I thought, in tiny, you know, the amount of misinformation, but that same night, a historian in New Orleans, a very well-known researcher who helped me on the story, who went on to do that, and the archdiocese of New Orleans confirmed that news, so it was an amazing feeling.

Here's what you also recognized instantly, and I find this really fascinating. The Pope's family,

they didn't just have roots in New Orleans, they moved to Chicago, and so did your great uncle Edward. Why do you think you never went looking before the Pope headline for this particular story about your family? You know, my grandfather kept Edward's secret right from the very beginning out of a sense of protectiveness for him. He knew that this was a very dangerous and risky thing that Edward was doing, and when Edward left, he was just a teenager or a very young man in his 20s.

“My grandfather was the oldest, and I think felt a real sense of protection toward him, and that's”

the feeling that he passed down to all of us. We don't talk much about Edward. We don't want this to get out. We protect Edward because black men who were found to be posing as white could face all sorts of violence, even death in the Jim Crow era. So to my grandfather, this was a matter of life in death, and he passed that feeling on to my mother's generation, and then they passed it on to me. So when I lived in Chicago, I was very busy with other things news-related, and finding that to point,

I just want to step in just for a moment to say, you lived in Chicago, the same city where your relatives were living several years ago. And so you kind of knew about this, but go ahead, continue from there. Yes, I knew about it, but I didn't look into that the time because I think I had a little bit of my grandfather's voice still in my head saying, "Leave well enough alone." What made this moment different, it's the confluence of a lot of things. It's my mother's age,

and that she never knew what happened to Edward, and she's 85, and she's losing her memory.

And I wanted her to know what happened to her uncle and the Pope's announcement. And the fact that this generation of Chicago cousins, this third generation, they have a new attitude and a new spirit. And I had a feeling that they might be open to hearing this information and sure enough, my hunch was right. That's one of the more fascinating parts of this story that we're going to get to. But I want to know a little bit more about the protective nature that your grandfather had

for his brother, how you saw it, because you would sometimes be in conversation with him.

resignation? Was it bitter? Was it resigned?" My grandfather was someone who sort of, he didn't do a lot

“of complaining. He took what like, gave him and tried to do the best he could. He walked a lot”

with me and other grandchildren, because he never owned a car. He never learned how to drive.

So I have lots of memories of walking around different parts of New Orleans with him. And one walk that we liked to make was toward Bayou Saint John to see the water. And I remember on one of these days, I just asked him, "There are so many people in my family, everyone had brothers and sisters, and there's so many aunts and uncles that said, you know, it's been like Grandpa, why don't you have any brothers and sisters?" And he said, "I do." And that was a surprise to me. And he said, "He often spoke

in little French or Creole phrases, little catch phrases." And the one he said then was possible. And say, "Lovey." As a child, how did you interpret that? It was often frustrating, but

“he had his reasons, I understand now. And I think back, and I wonder, how would the truth of”

helped a little black girl that he's trying to raise with pride and ambition? I think he was trying, just like he was trying to protect Edward, he was trying to protect me. So you did this thing that you had not necessarily been avoiding, but you hadn't come to yet in your mind on actually covering and digging yourself. And you turned your reporters' tools toward the story, this family, and you didn't just find your missing great uncle, you went back generation starting with one of the

early settlers of your family, a French wine merchant, who steps off a boat in New Orleans in 1834.

Who was that first-to-grange that you found?

Shock the Grange came from the alpine region of what is an Al-South Eastern France, and he prospered almost immediately selling wine in New Orleans. And prior to this reporting, I didn't know much about him. What we found was he came to America and did well, and most immediately enslaved women and children, and his son went on to be one of the first men to volunteer to fight in a civil war. So what I learned that I hadn't known was that my family, on the French side, they were

diehard defenders of the Confederacy. They weren't just in New Orleans and sort of going along for the ride. They were very much a part of the active fight for the South, and the extent of that

had never been cleared to me. The Colonel, your great-great-grandfather, he was one of the first men

to volunteer, as you said, in the Confederacy, and by the end, he had like a house that was 8,000 square feet, right? Exactly. Yes. Yes. And his hands were kind of, and just about everything in New Orleans. Who was he behind all of that? He was a force in the city. He had a mast, a lot of wealth, and a lot of economic and cultural power. If you name a board or an organization from that point of time, you can almost be sure that he's on it. You know, whether it was the library, or the volunteer,

firefighters, or the French opera, different martygrapes, crews of people who throw the praise. He was just everywhere and in everything, and it seems as though from reading newspapers of the time, he was very well-known in the city. People followed him socially, wrote about when he went abroad,

“and when he went on business trips. People were very much interested in his life. I think to some”

of the Confederates, sympathizers who were still in New Orleans, they looked up to him in some way. He had a very complicated life, and I'm sure very complicated, with his son, once he realized his son was having an open relationship with a black woman. And that's your great grandfather, Ned. Yes. He starts a relationship with a black woman, which is almost unthinkable at the time, an open relationship. Right. And what surprising details did you learn about that relationship,

that family that he essentially built? That's your grandfather's family. Yes. I think we know from history that a lot of white men had secret families or a second family, or perhaps a mistress. But that's not the relationship he had with the manor of a based on all of the evidence that I found. He had a very open relationship with her. They were public. That's what was different about this

buggy. He even brought them to places where his father was a patron like he exposed them to opera.

My grandfather had a lifelong love of opera that comes from the exposure he got back then. Ned and Minerva had something special that I don't think I can even understand now.

“They were both Catholic. They were both French speaking. And I think that having those two things”

in common might have helped bridge some of the social gulf between them, because even if she was educated and a woman of some means, they were not on equal social footing just by law in New Orleans. So what they were doing was still somewhat risky and courageous. What did you find out about Minerva?

Minerva's father was enslaved on a huge plantation south of New Orleans called Bellevue.

It was a sugar plantation. And after the war, after the civil war, the widow who was running this plantation, I guess it was just too much for her. So she started selling off parcels of the plantation to people who had worked on it, including some of the formerly enslaved. Minerva Davis's dad, smart man, bought a piece on credit, bought a piece of prime riverfront property. So he became a landowner

“in 1868. And I have the records to prove it. That is to me extraordinary. And imagine if that”

had happened across the board. Now imagine he didn't have the cash outright, but the person who owned

this plantation sold it to him on credit. And so I'm sure the land will produce and you'll be able

to pay it off. And he did. And so by the time Minerva was born, she grew up in a family that owned its land outright instead of having to be sharecropping or, you know, or worse. So she had the benefit of some education and a solid foundation, some stability in life, when she decided to move to New Orleans, where she met that degrange. Minerva does not live very long. She dies at the age of 41 of pneumonia. And Ned takes his children after he can't take them to his home of his white father

to an orphanage. And what does that set in motion? A terrible turn of events for these children who had been a happy family in Chamey at their mother's cottage on North Robertson Street, knowing their mother and their father. Yeah, Minerva's death caused everything to spiral. Ned was all of a sudden alone with four black children in a city with segregated housing and his family around 1912. And his family won't open the door to taking these children.

Despite having 8,000 square feet of space, I might have. Once Ned's family rejected the idea of taking in the children and he was a white man alone with four black kids, he turned to an order of Catholic nuns in the French Quarter who ran orphanages. And he proposed they take the children as borders. Now, I can't imagine the tears, the trauma, the screaming that must have been involved when these kids who had lived a happy family life with their mother. And sometimes

their father at a cottage in Chamey were suddenly handed over to an orphanage. And the youngest to were quite little, the youngest, maybe just a little more than two. So to be institutionalized

“at what was called an orphan asylum, just the cruelty of it, the awfulness of it. Honestly,”

once I realized what the place was called, that it was the Lefon orphan asylum for colored boys, my stomach turned. How did your grandpa, did he ever talk about his childhood when you were a kid? So not in these terms, he told me that after his mother died, he went to live with the sisters and he put it in very gentle terms. And being a kid, I thought, oh, with the sisters like in the sound of music or something like that, that couldn't have been farther from

the truth, right? The orphanage was pretty grim. He didn't tell me the full story, no one did. And again, I think this was an effort on his part if I can speculate for a moment to not pass on his pain and trauma to a new generation. Having this conversation with him, I'm somewhere between seven or 11 years old, and I'm guessing that he thought to himself, what good would it do hurt to know about all the pain I've been through right at this moment in time? So on one level, he was honest

with me, so his mother died, and he went and he lived with the nuns, and he made it sound as though, you know, they saved him in a way. After your great grandpa puts his children in this orphanage,

nothing. What did you find out about the contents of that will and actually what happened? Right, we're just finding the will was a shocking thing in itself, and to read the words that he was leaving everything in his estate to his father, Colonel Joseph de Grange, was just a punch in the gut. I have no way of knowing how that will came to be, so it's hard to make any concrete judgment. I just know that that's the will and reality played out from there for

destitute children. When George got out of the orphanage, just so I have this correctly, he went to his grandparents' house, hoping that they kind of their feelings of rejection towards him would have eased, and can you talk about what happened in those early days when he was trying

“to find his footing, and he actually went there to try to get help from them?”

Yeah, so what I've been told by the older people in the family, his oldest daughter, my aunt, Evelyn, was that he was absolutely destitute, and he thought that since so much time had passed since Minerva died, and that maybe his grandfather's attitude would have softened toward him, that maybe he would open the door and say, "Let me give you a hug, so glad to see you. You remind me of my son or something." I guess he had his hopes set really high and thought that this could

be a moment for some sort of reconciliation, but that didn't happen at all. In fact, it was just

the opposite that happened. My aunt said that he was told in those uncertain terms to never show

his face around there again, and to get off the property. So you've got these two boys,

“your grandpa, George, and his brother Edward, and the same building, and they have younger siblings”

who are in another building, another orphanage, in the times article, it's very visual, because they're these pictures side by side of your grandpa, George, and then his brother, and it is so clear that there's siblings. I mean, the only difference is that there are kind of a few shades apart, which of course, the country sorts them differently, solely based on their skin color. That's the fork of the whole story. Take me to the story, you've been able to construct about how Edward

ends up on a train to Chicago, where he ends up living the rest of his life as a white man.

I wanted to show that these two men were basically the same in terms of upbringing and DNA

but for a bit more time in the sun, the difference of color that for anyone might just be a dark

“sun tan, they had completely different lives because one could be classified as white and the other”

as black. And I was hoping that by laying out the very stark contrast, the arcs that their lives took, it could help show how arbitrary and absurd it is to sort people by race and color. And I want to talk to you about what is such an interesting step that happened next. You finally do the thing that you've circled 20 years. You find Edward's family and set up a dinner in Chicago and you write that right up into the last minute, you weren't even sure you could go through with

you, you even brought with you to this meeting notes on a piece of paper on how you were going to

talk to them. Tell me about what happened when you saw them when you first laid eyes on them.

Right. Well, I was nervous going into that because, you know, I was raised by Grandpa George and that little voice was still in the back of my heads and leave well enough alone. But I thought, you know, if I could talk to you, Grandpa, I would tell you that the world is a different place and that this might be the time to do this. I have a feeling it is. So I walked into the restaurant and I looked around. I asked the hostess if the Degrenges were there

and I'm trying to figure out who they are and I see three women who are already like zeroed in on me. They're looking like they recognized me before I recognized them and once I laid eyes on them, I knew immediately as well. One of the cousins sitting there says, "Oh, she's with us!" And she tells us, "Because there was something about us that just seemed a cousin Louis for lack of a better word." I mean, it's interesting. You guys look so much alike even down to the skin tone.

Yeah. They reminded me of people I knew from home. Like every one of them had a twin back in New Orleans

physically, it was a moment. Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is

“journalist Susan Salmi, her New York Times piece, a family secret no more, traces what happened when a”

single decision a century ago split her family into. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tony Mosley and this is Fresh Air. The surreal horror film "Back Rooms" is a smash. The director is a 20-year-old YouTuber and it's based on his popular web series. Why is this online phenomenon taking off at the box office? We get into it on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Listen via the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You were searching for them and you also found out though in a way that they were searching for you and your family too. Right, that was a revelation because I thought going into this that I had some information and I was going to be sharing it with them. But what really happened is that information flowed in both directions and I learned things about my own side that I had misunderstood. So it was just new understanding all around. But what I learned specifically from them is that

they had an inkling suspicions a longstanding and they were hoping to know more. They were asking their parents questions that their parents wouldn't answer. So they hit certain walls and trying to figure out their past. They weren't told an accurate story and they had a feeling it wasn't accurate. But they were somewhat of a loss to figure it out because Edward passed away in the 70s and a lot of the people who knew the real story weren't around anymore. Let's break this down a little bit.

So what's the story first off that their dad and granddad Edward told them about his origins?

He told them that he was from New Orleans, that he was the son of a French doctor who had a relationship with someone but then had to leave for France and some had him coming from Montreal. Different cousins on the Chicago side had different versions with story. None of it fit together

“to make any kind of sense. That's what it had in common across the many cousins.”

They knew there was some connection to New Orleans and Christine, one of Edward's grandchildren in my generation, she actually tried to reach out some time around Hurricane Katrina but she had an uncle who was disapproving of this connection who shut that down. He made it clear that he did not want her to do that. The white democracies have a fascinating story all in their own because your great uncle Edward's wife Laura, she was also passing. So they were kind of partners in this

cover story. Yes, they were bonded by marriage and their cover stories. Now I don't know if they met in the south or amongst the many considerable number of white passing creoles in Chicago but they found each other somehow and they were both doing the same thing passing as white and they didn't let their children know. When I thought about doing this story I really wanted to go beyond just saying passing happened because as a historical fact we know that, right? It's already been

well documented. What I wanted to do was show the psychological toll of that decision on Edward's line and on George's line and I thought if I could do that and to show the real lived experiences of an actual family then maybe I'd be adding something to the conversation and someone might assume, oh well once Edward left it was all sunshine and rainbows for him when he succeeded, it wasn't that way at all and there was a lot of trauma and stress in the family that got past,

“straight through his children, right to the grandchildren. So when I think about who suffered in this”

story, everyone suffered. Everyone suffered because of racism. White or black if you go back to my great grandfather, everyone suffered because of racism and that's so sad. It's really

astounding to read, especially the fact that the white side of your family in Chicago just always

knew that they were not being told a complete story. They may have looked white, but one detail that I thought was actually sort of funny was the cooking told another story. So they're passing, but Laura, what if the suns told you that? She was quite good. And it stayed with him, the taste of that gumbo long after she had passed away. He told me that he went from restaurant to restaurant,

when he was growing up eating that gumbo. He thought his mother was white woman from Chicago

that found a good recipe. I guess into no hat. But he said he found the taste of her gumbo once on a camping trip along the Gulf of Mexico and he had no way of knowing at the time, but he was very close to where she was actually born. Gosh. I mean, and obviously that was an imprint. It's not just that, oh, this is so, this is so close to my mom. It stayed with him all these years

“because there was something in the knowing that he knew he didn't know. That's what it sounded like to me.”

Yes. Yes. And Edward and Laura, it seems that they were only able to be themselves fully in the kitchen and their children and grandchildren remember them spending long hours in the kitchen together and they would make things like bread, beans and rice and bread pudding and all of these southern specialties. How does a white woman in the Midwest know how to cook like this, all right? You know, the thing about holding a secret like this is that sometimes genes tell the story. So,

I mean, two light skin white passing people can't really guarantee that their children will come out looking white and that was the case for at least one of Edward's children, specifically Charles. What did you find out about him? Yes. People described Charles to me as having moderately brown skin without being in the sun. You know, so as a result of that, he hardly ever wanted to be in the sun and would wear long sleeves and long pants and hats

and among his own children, most had a fair skin but he had one daughter with especially curly hair. And I guess he didn't like that. So, as a chemist by profession, he started mixing his own concoctions and different potions that he thought could straighten her hair. And even as a little girl, he would put these things, these mixtures on her hair and try to make it straight and slip it back into a ponytail and the other members of a family told me they watched this

and just shake their head and horror. Like, her hair was first of all beautiful as it was and they

could see that there was something painful going on inside of him that was causing him to react this way. And it was another one of those moments that led to a deep sense of suspicion that they didn't know the whole story. Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is

“journalist Susan Salmi. Her New York Times piece, a family secret no more, traces what happened”

when a single decision a century ago split her family into. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is fresh air. Brazil used to have one of the fastest growing economies in the world. People called it the country of the future. There are songs, "obrazi, papayiz, do futur" because it seems like we have it all, man. But then the music stopped. On the planet money podcast, a lot of countries these days aren't rich, they aren't poor,

they're just kind of stuck in the middle. Why is that? Listen on the NPR app or wherever gets your podcasts. Susan, how do you hold the fact that these people that provide it lives for you and I'm thinking about you and your newfound cousins, they held so many secrets. They held so much back from you while also trying to provide a good life for all of you. I tried to not be judgmental about what they did in the past, right? Different time,

different plays, "harsher, much harsher circumstances," then I've ever faced. And what I appreciate that my grandfather did, he modeled a kind of composure and grace and dignity that we don't see enough of these days. He could have been bitter and angry. He could have taught us to hate. But he was just a very humble working class man, he came home tired and dirty with brick dust all over him, but I don't know if you saw the picture of him walking my mother down the aisle in the article

in the Tuxedo. He looked absolutely regal to me. So I think the lesson he tried to teach the family was, it matters what society takes from you, but they cannot take away your dignity. He lost

brothers and sisters, lost his parents, grandfather rejected him. They never took away his spirit,

“his ability to create a loving family or his dignity. And that's what I choose to focus on.”

Yeah, I mean, there's a way of seeing passing kind of not as betrayal, but you know, if you could see a way out for someone you loved and the most brutal stretches of our history of this country, maybe why wouldn't you want that for them? Right. I think the story struck a chord because

future for your children, longing for home and identity. It hit all of those things and you can see how each character in whatever flawed way they may have attempted, they were forced by a society that was incredibly unfair to them to make some really hard choices to try to provide those things that we often take for granted today. So yeah, I'll say again, I don't look back with judgmentalize at all and I wish that the world had been a better place for them. Now that the story has been out,

what have you heard from people from both sides, as far as how they're thinking about this and their own lineages, it's been incredible to see people encouraged by this to ask their own hard questions

and to look at their family trees, at the blank spots or the gaps with critical eyes or more

“loving eyes, I think our attempt to heal has shown the possibility of it. I see through my cousin's”

eyes now and their white Midwestern eyes and when I talk to them, I try to explain the way I look at things through my black southern eyes and you know what? Everyone is seeing more clearly now. What we've done? You give me an example of that. Yeah, we talked about something that's really hard. You know, we talked about white privilege one day and would it meant to have it, would it meant not to have it? And I think the first generation of kids from George and Edward, you can see the

difference most clearly there. Let me explain this Edward Jr went to college in law school and became a partner in Chicago, a law partner. George Jr dropped out of school at 13 to help his father Lee Briggs to support the family. So look at the different life trajectories between George who was

black in his son and Edward who was passing for white in his son. By the third generation,

we got together and we look at each other and we're like, well, you know, you're a professional person on a professional person. It seems like we're living really comfortable lives. What made the

“difference? And I think my generation had the benefit of things like the civil rights act, of the”

voting rights act, of programs like affirmative action that we're looking for potential in merit in places where they hadn't looked before. And if we gained any ground to be on somewhat equal footing now, I think it's because of a lot of the things that our parents generation fought for, my parents generation black people in the South. And going into this, I didn't see how resonant the story would be with our times right now today and that we're seeing some of these things that made all the

difference to my generation being picked apart, being diluted, being attacked, most recently the voting rights act, which was the signature achievement of the civil rights movement. You know, my grandfather was disenfranchised. So there are so many things about the 2020s that look uncomfortably to me, like the 1920s. But I get hope from the fact that we were able to heal this family and the responses I saw across the internet, other people who cheered it, applaud it, said,

we want more conversations like this. We want to do more of this kind of thing over here where I am, over there where you are, there was sort of like, I got the feeling that people were ready for something like truth and reconciliation, you know, because that's really what we did, the white degranges and black degranges. We had a moment of truth and reconciliation. And that's something

that America as a whole has never done, has never done about its racism problem.

You know, the thing that really also struck me so much is just from the outside, the white degranges, as you mentioned, they had a pretty privileged life. And by all accounts, it looks like the American dream, they're a nuclear family, but there was so much lost by the fact that they were an isolated island. And they talked to you about that, that they actually felt that loss of not having extended family and cousins. Yes. You know, so many people in the aftermath of the

“story asked me, but no, really, who do you think was better off? Was it worth it in the end?”

And I say, okay, first of all, I think it's an unanswerable question, but if someone were to force that it depends on what standard you're using, what is your measuring stick? Is your measuring stick community and kinship and culture and building a family from nothing? You know, if that's the measuring stick, might lead you in one direction, if your measuring stick is purely financial

lead you to a different answer. I don't answer that question because I think it's unanswerable. And

I think they both had hard times, and I think they both had things that they wanted to achieve, that they achieved. Now, I think George's riches, just because I spent the most time with him, and can speak to what I think he thought made his life rich, it was kinship and culture.

“And it sort of makes me think that that's why African-American kinship and culture is as strong”

as it is because it augmented some of the poverty of what was there, some of what was taken away, some of it was lost. We doubled down on that and look what it produced. I mean, in New Orleans, it produced wonderful things if you consider the food, the music, the impact on gosh, so many

things to even name. You end your story with your mother, finally being able to speak to her first

cousin Arthur in Chicago. Tell me a little bit about that phone call. So, from the moment I discovered that Arthur existed, I knew I wanted to get them together. But we're talking about an 85-year-old in a 95-year-old, right? But it was just so stunning that my mother didn't know she had a first cousin who could have been in her life. She was so happy to hear about him when I said, "Guess what,

“I found you have a first cousin." One of Edward's children is alive in Chicago and he wants to talk”

to you and her face just flushed and she was like, "I have a cousin!" And similarly, when I visited Arthur in Chicago, arms were just outstretched toward me and he said, "I would love to know your mother." And so we thought about having him come to the reunion in New Orleans, but he wasn't doing well health-wise, so he couldn't make that trip. But we decided, let's get them on the phone face time and just let them have a conversation. So, that was the moment. Hello, hello, Linda.

Hello, Arthur. And just like little kids were meeting for the first time, you know, they had

just the cutest conversation. And I heard the tone of regret almost immediately from Arthur. When he said something in long and lines of, "I'm sorry, this is happening so late in life and I wish we had done this a long time ago." And I know she felt the same way, but you know that catchphrase

“that was very popular in the family, because that's what came to mind when she said, "I would have”

liked that too," but say, "Lavi, beautiful, but bitter sweet." Yes. Yes. Susan Solney, thank you so much for this remarkable story and thank you for your time. Oh, it was my pleasure. Thank you, Tanya. Susan Solney's piece in the New York Times is called "A Family Secret No More." Coming up, TV critic David B. and Kooley reviews the new series from the team behind Stranger Things. This is fresh air. A grassy green lawn might look nice, but it's going to eat up resources,

like drinking water and the gas you put in the mower. You can do a solid for the environment by ditching even just some of your lawn and replacing it with a wildlife friendly garden. Life kit has tips to get you started. No green them required. Listen to the life kit podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. The Duffer Brothers, the team behind the Netflix series Stranger Things, are back as executive producers of the new Netflix series The

Burrows. And it, too, is a show about sinister forces, mysterious creatures, and a group of neighborhood misfits who emerge as heroes. Our TV critic David B. and Kooley has this review. Part of the appeal of Stranger Things was that its protagonist were quirky outsiders. Unpopular teens for the most part, who found themselves and one another while battling monsters and bad guys in their isolated small town. The Burrows plays with that same theme

but on the other end of the age spectrum. Its quirky misfits are all elderly, living in neighbouring homes on a call to sack in an exclusive retirement community. The newest resident is Sam, a reluctant arrival played with dead-pan gruffness by Alfred Molina. He is recently widowed and doesn't want to be there, but there he is. It's a seemingly sparkly and welcoming place, but there may be strange creatures crawling behind the walls and there definitely are odd and nosy neighbors

living next door. Like Art and Judy, a long-time married couple played by Clark Peters from the wire and the wonderful Alfred Woodard. As Sam is moving in, Judy is on her laptop checking out Sam's

That makes it stalking. This wife died of a stroke five months ago. Oh gosh, she was young.

“Not even 70. He worked for Northrop Grumman 35 years as an aeronautical engineer.”

So we know he's smart. Education is not the learnings of the facts, but the training of the mind to think. Who said that? Einstein. No, maybe Mr. Peabody, one of the other. All the neighbors in this particular hood have their own defiantly individual personalities and are played by veteran actors who fill them with depth and sadness and humor. It's great to see Peters and Woodard strut their stuff here, and that's just for starters. Other talented veteran cast members,

include Bill Pullman, Ed Beigley Jr., Jane Kazmaric, and Gina Davis, playing a spirited woman named Renee. She meets Sam when unsuccessfully trying to start her loud car engine early in the morning.

“He comes out with his tool kit throws open her hood and fixes it. After which, he begins to”

retreat on foot while she pursues him in her car. I'm Renee. Sam, you've got it on the block. I guess, try the engine. Just like that? Just like that. All right. Thank you. Hey, I'm trying to thank you. I don't want it. I just want to get some sleep. Well, they say you're welcome. Excuse me. Here's a tip. When somebody says, thank you, you just say you're welcome. The other person will happily go on their way,

and you can go back to doing what all grumpy old men love to do. Be alone. You're welcome. Hello, boy Sam. And one of my favorite characters and actors here is Dennis O'Hare. He plays a retired doctor, Wally, who has a brazenly outgoing and unfiltered personality.

He demonstrates this when first meeting Sam, who has been invited to a party,

welcoming him to the neighborhood. Sam is reluctant to enter, so he's just standing outside the door. When Wally shows up with a startling opening line. I have stage four prostate cancer. I probably don't have much time left. It seems a waste to spend a standing outside a party. Not that it called six people in a backyard, much of a party, but sadly as close as I get since they banned me from the

“community center. Cowards. I'm Sam. Wally. You're going to stand out here all night, Sam?”

I'm not very good at parties. My wife was the sociable one. People only like me when I was with her. Well, I'm beloved. It's a stick plus. I predict you'll warm to all these characters immediately.

Sam takes a little longer to warm to them. At first, he's like Bob Newheart,

reacting wearily to all his therapy patients on the Bob Newheart show. But eventually, Sam embraces and confides in them all. He has to as it turns out if they're going to get out of the burrows alive. The plot thickens in an intriguing but predictable way, especially if you're familiar with strange your things. And cocoon and ghostbusters and even jaws. But it's all good fun, even when it scores some serious points and has some serious scenes about death and dementia and loneliness.

The cast is more than up to it all, and there are younger cast members contributing to, including Jenna Malone and Carlos Miranda. And because it's central to the plot, the burrows doesn't skimp on the music soundtrack, especially from the catalog of Bruce Springsteen. The plot of the burrows is good. The music is better, and the acting from this team of old pros is the best. David B. and Kooley reviewed the burrows now streaming on Netflix. Tomorrow on

fresh air, Clark Peters. His breakout role was in the HBO series The Wire, as police detective Lester Freeman. And Spike Lee's defied bloods, he played a Vietnam veteran. And real life, Peters opposed the war, and was arrested at a protest which changed his life. He moved to London, starred in musicals there, and now stars in the series The Burrows. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews,

Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and

“edited by Phyllis Meyers, Roberta Shorak, and Marie Boldenado, Lauren Crenzel, Monique Nazareth,”

Fayette Challenor, Susan Yuckundy, Anna Balman, and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer

is Molly CV Nesper. Teresa Madden directed today's show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.

Richard Reeves is unimpressed by online influencers who pedal ideas about hyper-masculinity.

You're talking about boys and men. Where's your policy agenda? You're good on podcasts,

“but we've actually done a bunch of stuff for boys and men. Sorry, what have you done?”

Ideas about the next era of manhood. That's on the Ted Radio Hour podcast, Listen on the NBR app or wherever you get your podcasts.