Before becoming the host of NPR’s news and culture program “It’s Been a Minute,” Brittany Luse (B.A. ’10) was once a Howard University student, an experience she credits for sharpening her sensibilities and teaching her how to think.  

On “It’s Been a Minute,” the award-winning journalist leads conversations with creators, journalists, and experts on understanding the “why” behind cultural shifts and the news impacting our daily lives. The podcast’s tagline, “a show about what’s going on in culture and why it doesn’t happen by accident,” acts a throughline connecting each episode.  

Luse told The Dig that with the show, she “finds different entry points for people who may be unfamiliar with a topic to feel at home learning about it, to feel brought in.” 

“I have always been interested in everything,” she quipped. “Sometimes that felt like a problem. One of the things I love about [“It’s Been a Minute”] is that it allows me to indulge myself in all of my curiosities. Like anybody else, I have curiosities that run the full gamut, and I feel grateful I can get into all of it, including so much incredible Black storytelling.” 

Luse’s roots in Black storytelling took shape on Howard’s campus, where she cultivated enduring relationships with peers who have become close friends and collaborators.  

“At Howard, I got just as much out of being around my peers and being in the environment,” Luse noted. “It wasn’t just about what we were learning in the classroom, it was about what we were learning from each other, what we were soaking in from our environment, and from all of those other in-between times. That’s really what sharpened my sensibility and what sharpened my taste.” 

Bison Beginnings 

Luse, who hails from Farmington Hills, Mich., was introduced to Howard at an early age, recalling her first visit to the university when she was in kindergarten. Even before attending the university, she was “always into writing, performing, and running my mouth,” she said. “Teachers put on report cards that I socialized too much … look where it got me.” 

More than a decade later, she was encouraged to tour the university’s campus by her older sister who lived in D.C. and worked with college students in the area, which included Bison students. During her spring break in 2003, Luse took her sister’s advice and joined one of Howard’s guided tours. 

“Walking around the campus, it just felt right — I couldn’t tell you what it was, but it felt right,” Luse shared. “I liked how alive the campus felt, how beautiful it was, and there was a real love there that really permeated the entire campus … it immediately gave that family vibe that just felt right to me.” 

When it came time for Luse to apply for undergraduate programs, she chose a different path than her family’s tradition of attending universities in Michigan (her younger sister, Tiffany Luse (B.B.A ‘11), would later attend Howard as well). Howard was the only out-of-state school to which she applied, and she was accepted with a full scholarship offer. 

“I felt like I was on cloud nine,” she recalled. “I had already made my decision to go there but the scholarship just made it feel even more right. My family was so surprised about Howard and how I was so sure in my decision. That sure feeling came from the first tour that I took in 2003.” 

At Howard, Luse majored in film production and minored in art history. She fondly reminisced on learning under the tutelage of faculty members such film professor Haile Gerima, the late art professor Raymond Dobard, and journalism professor Lawrence Kaggwa.  

“So many things that I learned about journalism, I learned from Kaagwa’s class,” said Luse. 

A New Era of Black Storytelling 

Luse’s gift of gab, along with the connections she made and maintained with fellow Bison classmates, led to her being recognized as one of the trailblazers of podcasting. After graduating from Howard, Luse teamed up with friend Eric Eddings (B.A. ’08) to create “For Colored Nerds” in 2014, a show that explored the intersection of pop culture and everyday life. The pair started the show as a way to maintain their friendship. 

“Those challenging, intellectual, hilarious, deeply personal conversations that we were having from all those years, that’s where ‘For Colored Nerds’ came from,” Luse said. “Those kinds of conversations we were having during those in-between times at Howard, we were still having them, but it felt harder to fit them into our daily lives and the podcast really became a place for us to talk through that.” 

Those conversations created a buzz, landing “For Colored Nerds” as a featured show on iTunes’ “New and Noteworthy” section in 2015. That feature caught the attention of Alex Blumberg and Matt Lieber, co-owners of the podcast network and digital media company Gimlet Media. Months later, Luse and Eddings began working at Gilmet. Luse hosted the show “Sampler,” which won the Best Podcast in the Apps and Software category at the 2016 Webby Awards.  

Even with full-time jobs at Gimlet, Luse and Eddings continued to work independently on “For Colored Nerds” before pitching a new show to Gimlet called “The Nod,” a podcast that told “the stories of Black life that don’t get told anywhere else.”  

“We wanted to turn our gaze outward and look at how Black people were living, and that’s what ‘The Nod’ became,” Luse explained. “It started off as just reported stories about Black people and then we realized, what about conversations, what about games, and pop culture?” 

“The Nod” was greenlit in 2017, running for three years before transitioning into a daily streaming show on Quibi, a short-form mobile streaming service. Luse and Eddings produced nearly 140 episodes of the show before the platform shut down in 2020.  

“I think the hunch was right that people would want to watch short-form content on their phones, but I think the timing wasn’t quite right,” Luse shared. “They overshot on the kind of quality that people might have been looking for, the type of content people wanted to see. Quibi was about having high production value. We had the best crew possible, and we have the most incredible writers and producers.” 

The Bison connection extended beyond the show’s hosts, which also included JaSaun Buckner (B.A. ’00) as a supervising producer of the Quibi show.   

“We were so lucky and I’m so grateful they invested in us because we were able to learn through working with those talented people for the time that we were able to,” Luse said.  

The Next Chapter 

After briefly reviving “The Nod” as a podcast in late 2020 and assuming other roles reporting, editing, producing, and consulting on other shows, Luse said she needed to slow down. NPR would subsequently reach out to Luse to consider applying to be the new host of “It’s Been a Minute,” originally hosted by its creator Sam Sanders.  

After an extensive search, Luse became the host of “It’s Been a Minute” in 2022, a role that allows her to lean into her curiosities.  

“I get asked a lot, ‘Don’t you get depressed reporting the news?’ and I say ‘no, not at all,” said Luse. “I have a job where if I have concerns or questions about the world, I can go and ask people who are deeply invested in solving those problems. I can ask them what they think. I can ask them what we should think, what we should be considering.” 

Even as she dissects news and pop culture trends with “It’s Been a Minute,” Luse shared that “with me, there’s always room for Black storytelling.”  

“I’m fortunate that I work with an incredibly diverse team of people who all bring their own unique perspectives to the table,” she said. “The same way that I have appreciated working alongside them, I get the sense that they have appreciated working alongside me.” 

Luse noted that alums like Ayesha Rascoe (B.A. ’07), current host of NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday,” made her feel like there was a place for her at the news organization. As she reflected on her career journey, the connections she made, and the way she views the world, Luse often returns to her beginnings at Howard.  

“So much for me about Howard was me learning how to think and really having an understanding that the world is so much bigger than what traditional storytelling outlets would have you think and believe,” Luse emphasized. “Some of the greatest, most incredible thinkers, change agents, and artists — not just of our time, not just in American history, but of all time — attended Howard University.  

“All of that collective consciousness that Howard creates is imprinted upon by all of the people that attend and that’s what I find very beautiful about it,” she concluded. “I am emboldened and heartened by the ways in which the collective Howard consciousness permutates to become broader, more inclusive, and more vital.”