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In May 1893, a man is thrown out of a train, on the platforms of the train station of Pietermaritzburg, a little city of South Africa, for daring to sit in a first-class compartment. This young Indian lawyer by the name of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has disembarked on the continent just a few days before and is having there his first experiences of racism and violence. Of this South-African life, that will last twenty-one years, Gahndi will learn lessons that will fuel his long non-violent struggle for the independence of his great country, then under British domination: India.

A new initiative by the University of California system uses first-generation faculty to guide first-generation students, with the goal of decreasing dropout rates. As part of our series Rethinking College, Hari Sreenivasan visits UCLA to see how the program is working.

This program highlights 100 years of the African-American experience through the life of Isaac Pope, an unassuming WWII hero who was the grandson of slaves and the son of sharecroppers. He reflects on his struggle to achieve the "American Dream" and reveals the path forward in order to achieve racial peace and harmony in the South. Pope was the First Sergeant of the 969th Field Artillery Battery and he fought in the Battle of the Bulge—one of the deadliest battles of WWII. After the war, Isaac Pope continued to serve as a mentor, church leader and advocate for civil and workplace rights. Filmmaker Paula J. Caplan, whose father served with Pope, presents a poignant portrait of the man and the African-American experience.

Over the last year, Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo traveled to all 50 US states, collecting personal stories about race and intersectionality. Now they're on a mission to equip every American with the tools to understand, navigate and improve a world structured by racial division. In a dynamic talk, Vulchi and Guo pair the personal stories they've collected with research and statistics to reveal two fundamental gaps in our racial literacy -- and how we can overcome them.

Netflix changed the world of entertainment -- first with DVD-by-mail, then with streaming media and then again with sensational original shows like "Orange Is the New Black" and "Stranger Things" -- but not without taking its fair share of risks. In conversation with TED curator Chris Anderson, Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings discusses the company's bold internal culture, the powerful algorithm that fuels their recommendations, the $8 billion worth of content they're investing in this year and his philanthropic pursuits supporting innovative education, among much more.