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On the character Bianca in Taming of the Shrew

She does have a mind, but she's outwardly, at any rate, very obedient. She does what her daddy wants her to do,; everybody courts her and she reacts suitably. And in fact she runs off with a man she wants to marry, but it's all a projection ... Shakespeare doesn't even know women properly.

There were lots of pamphlets at the time saying "Can you beat your wife? Is it alright to beat your wife?" And the answer was, "Yes, it's alright to beat your wife, but don't kill them."

On the play with a more sophisticated female character

It's really quite astounding because — Romeo and Juliet. There's a huge break between those early plays where the women are more one dimensional or perhaps two-[dimensional]. Suddenly, in one huge leap, not only does [Juliet] have equal billing in the title, but ... we follow the insight to her character, how she feels, how she thinks. She's just as courageous as Romeo. [Shakespeare] doesn't turn away from how difficult it is for women, but as far as her courage is concerned, it's equal to Romeo's.

"Whether they're women creating love in the world or whether they're women creating pain and suffering in the world, he never steps back from their full humanity as human beings."

- Tina Packer, on Shakespeare's later works

And he never goes back from that ... from there after. Whether the women are disguised as men or whether they're in their women's dresses, or whether they're women creating love in the world or whether they're women creating pain and suffering in the world, he never steps back from their full humanity as human beings.

On why she thinks Shakespeare's understanding of women changed

I think he was a great artist. And he was a great artist who wrote about human beings all the time. You can have a great artist like Wagner who writes great emotions, but is a horrible human being, but for Shakespeare he was writing about what does it mean to be a human being.

And I think because he was a great artist, he was deeply in touch with his own feminine side. And as he did that he began to see more and more, not just the bind the women had been in, but how those attributes, the creative attributes, and the way in which women saw the world, could be the way we could stop all of this violence.

women

Shakespeare

In the mid- and late 1800s, the Buffalo Soldiers were all-black cavalries and regiments deployed to patrol and protect what would eventually become America's national parks.

Their moniker was said to have been given to the cavalries by Native Americans who thought the soldiers' hair resembled the woolly texture of a buffalo.

It's a name that carries a lot of pride — and one that lives on today. But instead of horses, today's Buffalo Soldiers ride bikes.

As a "modern progressive motorcycle club," one that strives to promote positivity, they pay homage to the frontier soldiers of the Ninth and Tenth cavalry.

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Soldiers of the 25th Infantry — some wearing buffalo robes — pose for a photo in Montana in the late 19th Century. Like the men of the 9th and 10th cavalry, these troops were referred to as Buffalo Soldiers. Library of Congress hide caption

itoggle caption Library of Congress

Soldiers of the 25th Infantry — some wearing buffalo robes — pose for a photo in Montana in the late 19th Century. Like the men of the 9th and 10th cavalry, these troops were referred to as Buffalo Soldiers.

Library of Congress

Welcoming A New Season

One morning this spring, more than 50 bikers from the club gathered in the parking lot of Lillie Mae's House of Chicken and Wafflez in San Jose, Calif..

They're here to welcome a new season of riding together — and to have their bikes blessed.

The Rev. Jeff Moore, wearing a long gold robe, does the honors, pronouncing "the spirit of God is in the wheels of the bikes that we ride." Then he presses anointing oil on the forehead of a biker nicknamed Squirt.

"Squirt, we ask that he guides you and loves you," he says.

Haymon Jahi, the president of the San Jose Chapter, shows off the patches on his leather motorcycle jacket — from one that says Buffalo Soldier, with crossed sabers, to some with more individual significance.

"I'm a member of the National Brotherhood of Skiers. I wear dreads; I'm definitely an advocate of Bob Marley," he says. "You kind of put your identity on the front."

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But the most important symbol is on the back of his jacket: A Buffalo Soldier from the late 1800s.

"We are representing a legacy of a group of men that fought and died for this country," says Jahi.

'It's 24/7 Love'

In the modern day, these bikers pride themselves on not being your average motorcycle club.

"The Buffalo Soldiers is multi-racial, multi-gender and multi-bike," says Mark Nielsen, whose ride name is Wolfguard.

Wolfguard is more than 6 feet tall, wears a leather sleeveless vest and has thick arms full of tattoos. He says being a white member of a mostly black bike club is actually the place where he's felt most at home.

"The brothers like to joke around — you can't be thin-skinned," he says. "But it is all in love — it's 24/7 love."

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Reverend Jeff Moore blesses a biker at the Buffalo Soldiers Motorcycle Club rally in San Jose, Calif. Leila Day/KALW hide caption

itoggle caption Leila Day/KALW

Reverend Jeff Moore blesses a biker at the Buffalo Soldiers Motorcycle Club rally in San Jose, Calif.

Leila Day/KALW

Also among the crowd is rider Cheryl Morgan, who has prepared for the day by baking cookies in the shape of buffaloes.

"Everyone has this image of a hardcore female biker who's more male-oriented than female-oriented and ... bikers don't bake cookies," she says with a laugh.

After handing out cookies Morgan gathers the bikers. They hold hands and bow their heads while Moore leads a prayer.

"May God hold you and your bikes. May God keep you in the palm of His hands," he says. "Because He says, 'Once I have you in the palm of my hands, can't nothing take you out of that.' "

Local chapters of the Buffalo Soldiers are gearing up for the riding season. Some will deliver scholarships on their bikes; other chapters will be re-tracing routes of the original Buffalo Soldiers.

And if their bikes weren't loud enough, they make sure their voices are. Chants fill the parking lot: "Buffalo! Soldiers!

"It's what? It's all good!"

motorcycles

History

Action, espionage and secrets fill the new NBC show American Odyssey.

But Peter Horton, the show's co-creator and executive producer, says it's easiest to describe the show by saying what it's not. "It's not a police show, it's not an FBI show, it's not a CIA show," he tell's NPR's Arun Rath. "It's a modern-day thriller told in three story bubbles, basically, about three very ordinary people."

Those three people all stumble upon the same massive government conspiracy: A lawyer unearths a cover-up, a political activist tries to expose it and, at the center of it all, a soldier, Sgt. Odelle Ballard, struggles to get home from North Africa after her team is wiped out by the U.S. government.

"There's a really human story underneath all this action and tension. For us that's the little dirty secret underneath — that this is a character piece. But the tension on top of it's what drives it."

- Peter Horton

The show takes its name from Homer's epic The Odyssey.

"The thing that stuck with us was the basic theme of someone going through a real journey or an odyssey to get home," Horton says. "There's something achy about that theme, so we just started running with that — but that's the only thing we stole from Homer."

Interview Highlights

On whether the government conspiracy plot points are a product of the post- Edward Snowden era

It's a combination, I think, of the post-Snowden era and the post-Citizens United era ... where suddenly you can give as much money as you have to a candidate to promote your cause. It's post-Snowden in the sense that indeed what we know is the extent to which not only government agencies and, frankly, private industry can invade our private space. It's also the post-Citizens United because this series is ultimately about power: Do we have it as individuals in our country or anywhere in our world? They're three Davids up against the Goliath of money and power.

On portrayals of Muslim terrorists and the potential for criticism

I think especially with the Muslim world, there's such trope, such stereotype out there. And it's not the Muslim world — it's a segment of the Muslim world. So really ... the fun of it is taking on a trope and saying "OK, here it is, yes that does exist in our world," and then suddenly you'll see a character in episode three comes along who is a "terrorist" but has a whole different point of view — and what you start to find is that his point of view is reasonable, you know, he's human. He's not a bad guy.

On the risks of setting a show in the present and incorporating news events like the Greek election

The Greek election was a shock to us because we started working on this three years ago ... way before the Greek election stuff ... it was just at the beginning of Greece's problems and we thought, "Wouldn't it be interesting if there was a candidate who came along and it was a people's candidate who said, 'I'm gonna just toss this debt and we're gonna pull out of the eurozone'? " Well, lo and behold, right around the time our show launches, that's what happens in Greece.

So, so far, for better or worse, world events have cooperated with our story.

I was born in Vietnam and fled as a refugee in April of 1975 with my family to the United States. And even though I grew up as an American, deeply Americanized, this shadow of the war and of history hung over me, because I was constantly hearing stories about what had happened to the Vietnamese people from my parents or from the extended Vietnamese community that I was living in. And so I just absorbed that sense of a persistent memory, of persistent trauma, of this feeling that the war was not over, and that the country had been lost, and that we still hoped that one day we would take that country back.

On the Vietnam War in American movies

When I was growing up in the 1980s, the idea that Hollywood was fighting the Vietnam War again, through all manner of popular movies that many people have seen, was very important to me. Because I would go to these movies and on the one hand, I would identify with American soldiers [like Rambo] because I was an American moviegoer.

[Rambo] is an action hero. He's Sylvester Stallone. He's beautiful on screen. There's pleasure to be had in shooting big guns and showing off big muscles — until the moment when I realized, "Wait a minute, I'm also the gook on the screen being killed."

I remember sitting and watching Platoon in a movie theater, and when the Vietnamese were shot, people would cheer. I was like, "Wait, that's weird, who am I supposed to identify with at this moment?" ...

Apocalypse Now was a movie that was very important to me. I think I saw it when I was 10 or 11 years old, one of the early movies I saw on a VCR — [and it] totally traumatized me. My voice would shake even 10 years later describing a scene from the movie where the sailors massacre a sanpan full of Vietnamese civilians.

On the one hand, it's an incredible work of art. I think I admire that film. On the other hand, it puts me in a very difficult situation as the Vietnamese person who gets killed in the movie. ...

It's much better to be the villain and the anti-hero than to be the extra who gets killed. And that's what essentially is happening in American Vietnam War movies of the 1980s. Yes, they depict a very dark side of the American experience, but that also means that they cast Americans as the central subjects of history.

On whether the Captain's story is the great American story

He has to come here and remake himself. And actually, part of the story is that he first came to the States in the '60s as a foreign exchange student. And this is where his love affair with America begins. So he's certainly aware of all these issues about being a part of the American dream, of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, of reinventing yourself in America in a completely new fashion.

He's infatuated with all those things, but he's deeply skeptical of them at the same time. Because he's absolutely cognizant that all of this narrative of the American self-transformation is partially what justified the American intervention in Vietnam, and partially how Americans saw themselves in Vietnam.

Vietnam War