It's incredibly bloody -- and incredibly misunderstood. What has come to be known as the Mexican drug war, but would be better viewed as the US-Mexico drug trade, has claimed 40,000 lives since 2006, including those of many journalists. Mexico-based writer John Gibler talks about the politics and economics of an industry that involves enormous sums of money, territorial violence, mega-profits, and the collusion of governments and banks.

Mexico has a grand revolutionary tradition, a radical lineage that James Cockcroft argues lives on in current-day struggles both within Mexico and among US-based immigrants. Cockcroft discusses the radical visions of the revolutionaries of 1910-1917; the ideological roots of waves of resistance to Mexican and US elites; and the elections-related turmoil that's periodically plagued Mexico.

Frida Kahlo's life and work are world famous -- yet what has become of the Mexican artist's radical politics? Art historian Margaret A. Lindauer argues that Kahlo's artistic legacy has been done a disservice by those who would read the painter's works off her personal life, instead of looking at the complex intellectual and political processes that created them.

On the 150th anniversary of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, author Terry Bisson talks about Brown's legacy, as well as his own radical activism in the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, science fiction, and the evangelical Left Behind novels. And celebrated novelist Paco Ignacio Taibo speaks about the dark years following the massacre of students in Mexico City in 1968.

Jackie Robinson is a towering figure, but Black Latinos like Minnie Minoso were integration pioneers as well. Adrian Burgos Jr. puts baseball's racial past in a transnational context and describes how Jim Crow and integration affected Black Latinos. Also, Octavio Solis has written an explosive play about a Mexican American family on the border.

Radical, bisexual, plagued by pain, an exceptional painter: all these describe Frida Kahlo, known the world over for her self-portraits, for her turbulent relationship with Diego Rivera, and for her ability to touch people of different backgrounds with her dramatic imagery. Curator/biographer Hayden Herrera and SFMOMA curator Alison Gass discuss Kahlo's life, work and legacy, as well as the current SFMOMA exhibition.