Imagine, if you will, a show from NPR that's not like NPR, a show that focuses not on the important but the stupid,

which features stories about people smuggling animals in their pants and competent criminals in ridiculous science studies,

and call it, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, because the good names were taken.

Listen to NPR's, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, yes, that is what it is called wherever you get your podcast.

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. And my guest today is filmmaker Ryan Coogler. You probably know his name as the director of Fruitvale Station, Creed, and both Black Panther films. While his new film is called

Sinners, and it hit theaters just last week. It delves into horror with a genre-bending thriller

set in 1930s, Mississippi. The story follows, Twin Brothers, Smoke and Stack, both played by

Michael B. Jordan. After surviving the trenches of World War I and navigating

Chicago's criminal underworld, the brothers return home to Mississippi, hoping to start fresh by

opening a juke joint. But peace does not last long. Instead, they're met by supernatural forces,

vampires, who act as metaphors for oppression, exploitation, and systems that feed on black life, body, and spirit.

I only ever heard stories. I ain't never come across them myself.

What stories you heard?

How Haynes work. They switch places with the soul of a man.

But vampires is different.

Maybe the worst kind.

The soul gets stuck in the body.

Can't rejoin the ancestors.

Hurst to live here with all this hate.

Can't even feel the warmth of a sunrise.

Okay, then. Can we bring them back? Maybe if I killed the ones that made them this way.

Smoke. They have a connection, but they live on. Even if the one that made them is killed.

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