Vann R. Newkirk II is a senior editor at The Atlantic, and the host and co-creator of the Peabody Award-winning Floodlines, a narrative podcast about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. For years, Newkirk has covered voting rights, democracy, and environmental justice, with a focus on how race and class shape the country's and the world's fundamental structures. Vann was a 2020 James Beard Award Finalist, a 2020 11^th Hour Fellow at New America, and a 2018 recipient of the American Society of Magazine Editors' ASME Next Award.