Podcasts about after george floyd

After George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020, many Americans started to reexamine their communities and themselves. In Kansas City, Missouri, residents still confront a wall of racial separation, but haven't given up on progress. Also: today's stories, including a gang-member-turned-tour-guide in Nairobi, military parents suing over a DEI purge at their kids' schools, and Pakistan's Islamic boarding schools under scrutiny. Join the Monitor's Amelia Newcomb for today's news.

After George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020, many Americans started to reexamine their communities and themselves. In Kansas City, Missouri, residents still confront a wall of racial separation, but haven't given up on progress. Also: today's stories, including a gang-member-turned-tour-guide in Nairobi, military parents suing over a DEI purge at their kids' schools, and Pakistan's Islamic boarding schools under scrutiny. Join the Monitor's Amelia Newcomb for today's news.

The court-ordered reform process within the city of Minneapolis and its police department has reached a new phase. After George Floyd's murder, the state Department of Human Rights found that the City of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Police Department engaged in patterns and practices of racial discrimination. It led to a court-ordered agreement, that now is being enforced by an independent monitor. On Tuesday, that monitor released a report that looks at the progress made in one full year of the agreement. The Minnesota Department of Human Rights commissioner Rebecca Lucero joined Minnesota Now to explain where things stand one year in.

Episode 146: From Actor to Therapist—Reclaiming Identity & Embracing Self-Energy with Adeshola Nnamdi, LMFT What does it look like to live with deep intention—and how can our past lives, creativity, and cultural roots shape the therapists we become? In this episode of The Innovative Therapist Podcast, I had the absolute pleasure of talking with Adeshola Nnamdi, MA, LMFT—an actor who made a pivot into clinical psychology and psychotherapy, is IFS-trained, and deeply passionate about storytelling, healing, and identity. Shola is the first male guest on the podcast—and the first to serenade us too! We covered so much in this heartfelt, funny, and powerful conversation: Shola's journey from acting to therapy Why he changed his name to honor his Nigerian roots What creativity and presence really look like in therapy His experience with Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) How therapists can reclaim joy, connection, and authenticity in their work From the Stage to the Therapy Room Before becoming a therapist, Shola had a rich acting career—appearing in many films and on television, including on a hit NBC sitcom called The Single Guy that aired between Seinfeld and Friends, working with Spike Lee (check out the video just below this paragraph!), and even hanging out at Saturday Night Live. But despite his outward success, he found himself burnt out, disconnected, and chasing applause rather than purpose. Eventually, through sobriety and soul-searching, he found a new path: one rooted in service, meaning, and connection. “What would my life look like if I stopped seeking validation and just trusted?” Therapy as Art: The Performance of Presence Shola's artistic background deeply informs his work as a therapist. He describes therapy as a kind of performance art—not because we're faking it, but because we're bringing our full selves into the room and responding in real time. “Bad acting is pushing… having an agenda. That can happen in therapy too.” IFS, in particular, allowed him to slow down, be present, and trust in both his clients and himself. Instead of working from parts that strive or fix, he now leans into the power of Self-energy—and it's transformed his clinical work. Why He Changed His Name—and What It Means Shola also shares the powerful story of changing his name from Shawn Michael Howard to Adeshola Nnamdi, a decision rooted in personal healing and cultural reclamation. After George Floyd's murder and years of reflection, he realized he no longer wanted to carry a name passed down from a history of enslavement. “I didn't want to die with a slaveholder's name on my tombstone.” The name Adeshola means “he brings prosperity” and Nnamdi means “my father lives.” It's a name he carries with honor, intention, and power. Creativity, Joy, & the Therapist's Zone of Genius We also explored how creativity plays a crucial role in the therapist's life—not just through hobbies, but through presence, flexibility, and flow. “We're creating in there. It's art.” Shola's Zone of Genius is connection. Whether on stage or in the therapy room, he brings joy, attunement, and aliveness to the people around him. He's passionate about helping others do the same—both professionally and personally. Want to Feel More Alive in Your Work? If you've ever questioned your career path, felt boxed in by your therapist role, or longed to bring more you into your work—this episode is for you. Looking for a Therapist in California or Arizona? Shola offers individual, couples, and group therapy and brings warmth, wisdom, and a strong grounding in both EFT and IFS.

As Black History Month draws to a close, Campaign's editorial team is questioning has adland lost its commitment to DEI, and if so, why?After George Floyd's death in 2020, the advertising industry saw a flurry of activity and investment. In this episode, Campaign's tech editor Lucy Shelley is joined by deputy editor Gemma Charles to take a look at what adland has done in the four years since. They are joined by special guests Asad Dhunna, founder and chief executive of The Unmistakables, and Sonia Gilchrist, senior business director and head of DE&I at VCCP.They discuss why the agency world isn't set up for diverse talent, Heinz' errors in advertising and how adland can recapture the spirit of 2020.Further reading:Following the Heinz rows, how should brands respond to accusations of racism?Heinz faces backlash over negative stereotypes in adHow to fix the deprioritisation of DE&IThe deprioritisation of DE&I in adland: ‘You talk about race and you see people glaze over'School Reports 2024: One step forward, two steps back for diversityAdland has BAME talentFour years on, adland's diverse talent speaks out on challenges, change and next stepsChloë Davies officially launches It Takes A Village CollectiveUp next in the Campaign calendar:Campaign Big Awards (5 November)Campaign In-Housing Summit (5 November) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ring Ring! Is anyone there? After George Floyd's death in 2020, companies across the US were called upon to acknowledge the ways they were discriminatory and inequitable towards Black people. In response, they vowed to create space for Black voices, support Black content, and put Black people in positions of power. Black projects were greenlit and Black creators were asked to pitch their ideas. The “Black jobs” were on fire! Until it wasn't a priority anymore. The phones stopped ringing. Today we talk about the wave that subsided and meet with PR expert Ekaette Kern to hear her story of how she navigated the promises of corporate America that many now see as a grand facade.

Welcome to RIMScast. Your host is Justin Smulison, Business Content Manager at RIMS, the Risk and Insurance Management Society.   Justin Smulison interviews Lilian Vanvieldt-Gray of Alliant Insurance Services about her risk and insurance career journey, what DE&I initiatives mean in her growth, the sorts of programs she has launched, and how she proves their worth on social and financial levels. She tells how a professor tried to steer her to trade school so she wouldn't fail in the big university and how the lack of inclusion at her first job limited her career opportunities until a boss who saw her potential nudged her firmly ahead. She is passionate about the power of DE&I to do moral good and grow business profits.   Listen in to learn what diversity, equity, and inclusion can mean for your company. Key Takeaways: [:01] About RIMS and RIMScast. [:15] About this episode of RIMScast, coming to you from RIMS Headquarters in New York. My guest is Lilian Vanvieldt-Gray. She is the Executive Vice President and Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer for Alliant Insurance Services! We will discuss what it takes to launch and measure the effectiveness of a DE&I Initiative. [:47] Lillian will also be the honoree at this year's Spencer Educational Foundation Funding Their Future Gala on September 12th in New York City. [:58] First, let's talk about RIMS Virtual Workshops. The full calendar of virtual workshops is at RIMS.org/VirtualWorkshops. On June 26th and 27th, our friend Elise Farnham leads the two-day course, Captives as an Alternate Risk Financing Technique. On July 9th and 10th, we have Managing Workers' Compensation. [1:18] On July 23rd and 24th, we have Claims Management. Other dates for Fall and Winter are available on the Virtual Workshops full calendar at RIMS.org/VirtualWorkshops. [1:31] Let's talk about prep courses for the RIMS-CRMP. The next session for risk managers based in the U.S. and Canada will be held on August 7th and 8th, followed by a two-day session on September 12th and 13th, and lastly, on December 17th and 18th. [1:53] The next RIMS-CRMP-FED Exam Prep Course will be held on December 3rd through 5th, 2024. Additional Prep Courses are offered through NSE Academy, India, Conrad Clark Nigeria, UCLA, and others. A link to these resources and more is also in this episode's show notes. [2:14] Did you know that the RIMS Risk Management magazine Q2 2024 issue is available online? A link to the digital issue is in this episode's show notes. The new issue covers the impact of AI on insurance underwriting, geopolitical risks, ERM program tips, social media copyright claims, developments in parametric insurance, and more! [2:44] You can also head over to RMmagazine.com. [2:49] Lilian Vanvieldt-Gray is the Executive Vice President and Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer for Alliant Insurance Services. She is also this year's honoree for the Spencer Funding Their Future Gala, which will be held, on Thursday, September 12th, 2024 at The Cipriani 42nd Street in New York City. [3:15] We are going to hear about her risk and insurance career journey, how DE&I initiatives have played a part in her growth, the sorts of programs she has launched, how she measures them, and how she's able to prove their worth on social and financial levels. [3:36] Lilian Vanvieldt-Gray, welcome to RIMScast! [4:02] Lilian says that being the 2024 Honoree for the Spencer Funding Their Future Gala feels amazing, phenomenal, and stupendous! She says she's at a time in her life when she's happy doing the things she wants to do and she's making a difference. This honor helped her get there. [4:50] Lilian's risk and insurance career started in 1988. After she graduated from UCLA in 1987, she worked for a financial planner in Beverly Hills. In October of 1987, the stock market crashed. It was a disaster for the small firm where she worked and Lilian decided she wanted to have a different career. [5:38] Lilian's girlfriend worked at an insurance company. She told Lilian they were hiring interns. It would be a boost from her current $18K a year to $28K a year. Insurance had her at “Hello.” [6:43] About 22 years ago, Alliant came to Lilian's attention in a bad renewal market when they “stole” one of her clients. Listen in for details. Then Alliant offered Lilian a job and she accepted.  [8:23] Lilian tells how she moved into the EVP and Chief DE&I Officer roles she holds with Alliant. After George Floyd, Alliant made a very impactful decision. They wanted to make a difference. Recognizing what was going on, they wanted to ensure all of their employees had a space and a sense of belonging. They created the DI department. [9:05] The conversation Alliant initially had with Lilian was about leading the Alliant Charitable Foundation. The foundation's goal is to bring people in to expand the industry, make it more accessible to everyone, recognize the contributions of marginalized communities, and reward them for their contributions to the industry. [9:32] Internally, the foundation wanted to recognize Alliant employees, to ensure they have a safe space to be their authentic selves, and have opportunities to advance within the organization. Lilian was asked to help the foundation raise money and get the message out. [9:52] As that work progressed, Alliant asked Lilian to do more. So she moved some accounts around to be able to do more. [10:41] Lilian says Alliant has always had a commitment to DE&I. They haven't wavered from it. That commitment to DE&I comes from the top leadership. With commitment from the top, everything falls into place. If Lilian gets pushback from a department, when she goes to leadership about it, they'll have a conversation with them about why DE&I is important. [11:27] DE&I initiatives are morally right and also financially smart and good decisions for business. When done properly, from an authentic place, they can drive your bottom line. [11:59] Lilian's challenge is measuring her initiatives. Alliant's 2024 push is to get everyone's self-identification to be able to track how doing X results in Y. [13:35] Alliant has a six-pillar strategy to change the culture within the organization through a series of trainings, bringing in speakers on well-being and mental health, financial literacy, a 401(k), investing, and FICO. It's a culture where your employer supports your whole being, including professional development and mentoring for career advancement. [14:53] Alliant is evaluating external mentoring and internal mentoring to find which is more effective, having the employees help them come to that conclusion. They also use peer coaching, giving people different entry points to grow professionally. They also work with training agencies and industry DE&I associations such as NAAIA. [16:04] Lilian feels synergy with these associations. DE&I isn't just for marginalized people but also for their allies. Everyone grows when something is diverse. One learns when different ideas come to the table. You don't know what you don't know until you bring diverse people in, have those conversations, and get those perspectives. [17:00] Being able to show the value of that to everyone is how you move the needle and it's also how you make a lot of money. [17:09] It's RIMS plug time! Webinars! Our friends at TÜV SÜD GRC return on June 20th to present Sustainability Without the Sticker Shock: Save Green While Going Green, featuring insight from former RIMS President, Chris Mandel. Register at RIMS.org/Webinars. Webinars are complimentary for RIMS members! [17:36] The RIMS ERM Conference 2024 will be held on November 18th and 19th in Boston, Massachusetts. The agenda will be announced soon, as will a call for submissions for the ERM Award of Distinction. I'll have that link up soon on an upcoming episode. [17:55] Review your organization's ERM program, and if you feel it was successful and you have the numbers and the data to back it up, compile that information and get ready to submit your ERM program for the ERM Award of Distinction. [18:10] The Spencer Educational Foundation's goal to help build a talent pipeline of risk management and insurance professionals is achieved, in part, through a collaboration with risk management and insurance educators across the United States and Canada. This also applies to not-for-profit entities. [18:30] If this description applies to you, you should apply for a Spencer General Grant. The application deadline is July 30th, 2024. General Grant awardees are typically notified at the end of October. [18:46] Another great Spencer program is the Risk Manager on Campus Program, which brings a practicing risk manager to a university to present and engage with students about the risk profession and the insurance industry for about one to three days. There is a grant program with an application deadline of June 30th. The link is in this episode's show notes. [19:10] Check out the sample application at that link. Risk Manager on Campus Grant Awardees are typically notified by the end of September. Be sure to apply by June 30th, 2024. On September 12th, we look forward to seeing you at the Spencer Funding Their Future Gala at The Cipriani 42nd Street in New York City. Our guest today, Lilian Vanvieldt-Gray, is the honoree. [19:38] Back to the interview with Lilian Vanvieldt-Gray!  [20:18] Lilian is one of six on her DI team. One has the charitable foundation as her sole responsibility, including the Fellows program, one of Alliant's hallmark programs from the foundation. There is an internal side of DI and several employee resource groups. [21:18] Lilian calls the managers of these programs “best in class,” which has led to Alliant receiving recognition for these programs. [21:59] Lilian says women are all over the insurance industry, in roles without opportunities for advancement. For a woman to get into leadership, she has to have someone looking out for her, and sponsoring her. [23:12] When Lilian went into the insurance industry, she went into training. At the end of the training program, they assigned people to departments. All women and people of color went into claims and all men went into leadership and sales. Lilian had a boss who believed in her. He created a position for her in account support. [23:50] Lilian didn't take the job because she didn't believe she could do it. Someone else took the job. The boss asked her what was going on. He said he had created that job for her. He created another account support position for her. [24:29] Had he not created that opportunity for her, Lilian believes she would still probably be a claims supervisor. [25:49] Lilian says in DE&I, helping women and other marginalized employees up through the ranks is called allyship. There are programs to teach about the value and benefits of allyship. Allies can move the needle faster than anyone else can. [26:11] If you are considering joining a group, you can join as an ally without being a part of that community. Being an ally means you're not part of that community. Join and bring your influence to help them do better in their career. [27:54] A Fearless Fund case ruled that it is discriminatory to set aside funds for loans just to African-American women's businesses. That could affect many types of programs, like internships and fellowships. DE&I is working to change the mindset of a lot of people. DI has become a “bad word.” [29:48] Lilian stresses that DE&I helps a business financially. DE&I is right morally. Lilian wants to help people understand why being an ally is going to be an advantage to them. [30:33] Some high-profile DE&I leadership positions have been eliminated recently. Lilian speaks to this for DE&I in the risk and insurance space. DE&I might be rebranded to Engagement or a People Office. DE&I is for all employees. If there are nine ERGs, everyone in the company will have been touched by or associated with someone from one of them. [32:01] Lilian wants people to understand that DE&I impacts everyone and it's not anything they need to fear. [32:44] Lilian's DI department has partnered with the Spencer Educational Foundation to help manage an Alliant Foundation insurance degree grant program for Southern University, an HBCU in Louisiana. Lilian tells how that came to be. It's been a great partnership. [34:32] Lilian will accept a special honor at the Spencer Educational Foundation 2024 Funding Their Future Gala on Thursday, September 12th, 2024 at the Cipriani 42nd Street, in New York City. Lilian invites all podcast listeners in the New York area to attend. [35:25] The proceeds go toward scholarships for students coming into the insurance industry and programs like the grant at Southern University, bringing the insurance industry to communities that are not familiar with it and normally are marginalized out of it. [35:46] If you look at the videos of last year's scholarship two recipients, after you finish crying, you will want to send them a check.  [35:55] For sponsorship and tickets, you can contact FundingTheirFuture@SpencerEd.org. A link is in this episode's show notes to the email address, as well as to the Gala's page. [36:43] Lilian's advice for young risk professionals: “When you think about insurance; when you got up, the bed you were lying in is insured, the street you drove to work on was insured; the trees that were being cut, and the person cutting the trees that you saw are insured. The car you were in is insured. The building you walked in… Insurance is everywhere.”  [37:14] “It's in your home, your apartment. Insurance drives the world. You can come in and it's not just going from door to door selling. It can be analytics, marketing, or social media; it can be any number of things. Think about insurance and think about the future you can create for yourself. There's lots of money in this industry. Don't leave it on the table.” [37:52] “I do this because I had a professor one year tell me when I was graduating from high school, and I was an honor student, ‘I think you should consider going to a trade school because I don't want you to fail and I think going to this big school you're going to struggle and fail. I'm doing what's best for you,' and he tried to talk me out of going to the UC system.” [38:38] He couldn't see the value of what she brought to the table. Lilian is now the broker for the community college system the professor wanted her to attend. You have to believe in yourself. Don't let anyone else define who you are. Define yourself in the brightest of lights because you can't achieve it if you can't see it or dream it. Define your dreams for yourself. [39:14] Special thanks, again, to Lilian Vanvieldt-Gray. A link to the Spencer Educational Foundation's Funding Their Future Gala 2024 on September 12th is in this episode's show notes. Buy tickets; reserve a table. We want to see you there. [39:30] Final reminder: June 30th is the deadline to apply for the Spencer Educational Foundation's Risk Manager on Campus Grant. A link is in this episode's show notes. [39:47] It's Plug Time! The RIMS App is available to RIMS members exclusively. Go to the App Store and download the RIMS App with all sorts of RIMS resources and coverage. It's different from the RIMS Events App. Everyone loves the RIMS App! [40:21] You can sponsor a RIMScast episode for this, our weekly show, or a dedicated episode. Links to sponsored episodes are in our show notes. RIMScast has a global audience of risk and insurance professionals, legal professionals, students, business leaders, C-Suite executives, and more. Let's collaborate! Contact pd@rims.org for more information. [41:05] Become a RIMS member and get access to the tools, thought leadership, and network you need to succeed. Visit RIMS.org/membership or email membershipdept@RIMS.org for more information. [41:23] Risk Knowledge is the RIMS searchable content library that provides relevant information for today's risk professionals. Materials include RIMS executive reports, survey findings, contributed articles, industry research, benchmarking data, and more. [41:39] For the best reporting on the profession of risk management, read Risk Management Magazine at RMMagazine.com. It is written and published by the best minds in risk management. Justin Smulison is the Business Content Manager at RIMS. You can email Justin at Content@RIMS.org. [42:01] Thank you for your continued support and engagement on social media channels! We appreciate all your kind words. Listen every week! Stay safe!   Mentioned in this Episode: Spencer Educational Foundation — Funding Their Future Gala 2024 FundingTheirFuture@SpencerEd.org RISKWORLD 2025 will be in Chicago! May 4‒7 RIMS DEI Council Spencer Educational Foundation — Grants Page — Apply Through July 30. Spencer Educational Foundation — Risk Manager on Campus Grant — Apply Through June 30 RIMS-Certified Risk Management Professional (RIMS-CRMP) RIMS-CRMP Virtual Workshops — Next Workshop with PARIMA July 18-19, 2024! RIMS Strategic & Enterprise Risk Center NEW FOR MEMBERS! RIMS Mobile App   RIMS Webinars: Sustainability Without the Sticker Shock: Save Green While Going Green | Sponsored by TÜV SÜD | June 20, 2024 RIMS.org/Webinars   Upcoming Virtual Workshops: See the full calendar of RIMS Virtual Workshops RIMS-CRMP Prep Workshops   Related RIMScast Episodes: “Spencer's 2024 Outlook” “LAAIA Atlanta Chapter President Jose Aponte” “Giving Back with APIW President Liz Kramer” “Global Perspectives with RIMS Mexico, Australasia Chapter Leaders” “Solving Wicked Problems with Dr. Gav Schneider” “Equality and the Risk Profession with Elisa Stampf” “Pride Month with the Rainbow Risk Alliance”   Sponsored RIMScast Episodes: “Harnessing the Power of Data and Analytics for Effective Risk Management” | Sponsored by Marsh (New!) “Accident Prevention — The Winning Formula For Construction and Insurance” | Sponsored by Otoos “Platinum Protection: Underwriting and Risk Engineering's Role in Protecting Commercial Properties” | Sponsored by AXA XL “Elevating RMIS — The Archer Way” | Sponsored by Archer “Alliant's P&C Outlook For 2024” | Sponsored by Alliant “Why Subrogation is the New Arbitration” | Sponsored by Fleet Response “Cyclone Season: Proactive Preparation for Loss Minimization” | Sponsored by Prudent Insurance Brokers Ltd. “Subrogation and the Competitive Advantage” | Sponsored by Fleet Response “Cyberrisk Outlook 2023” | Sponsored by Alliant “Chemical Industry: How To Succeed Amid Emerging Risks and a Challenging Market” | Sponsored by TÜV SÜD “Insuring the Future of the Environment” | Sponsored by AXA XL “Insights into the Gig Economy and its Contractors” | Sponsored by Zurich “The Importance of Disaster Planning Relationships” | Sponsored by ServiceMaster   RIMS Publications, Content, and Links: RIMS Membership — Whether you are a new member or need to transition, be a part of the global risk management community! RIMS Virtual Workshops On-Demand Webinars RMMagazine.com RIMS-Certified Risk Management Professional (RIMS-CRMP) RIMS-CRMP Stories — New interviews featuring RIMS Treasurer Manny Padilla! Spencer Educational Foundation   RIMS Events, Education, and Services: RIMS Risk Maturity Model® RIMS Events App Apple | Google Play   Sponsor RIMScast: Contact sales@rims.org or pd@rims.org for more information.   Want to Learn More? Keep up with the podcast on RIMS.org and listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.   Have a question or suggestion? Email: Content@rims.org.   Join the Conversation! Follow @RIMSorg on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.   About our guest: Lilian Vanvieldt-Gray of Alliant Insurance Services Tweetables (Edited For Social Media Use): Insurance had me at “Hello.” — Lilian Vanvieldt-Gray   After George Floyd, Alliant made a very impactful decision. They wanted to make a difference. Recognizing what was going on, they wanted to ensure that all of their employees had a space and a sense of belonging. — Lilian Vanvieldt-Gray   Do we do things because they're morally right? 100%. Do we do them because it's financially a smart decision and a good business decision? 100%. DE&I is not just about doing the feel-good thing. If you're doing it properly, it can drive your bottom line. — Lilian Vanvieldt-Gray   When I came into the insurance industry, at the end of the training program, they had to assign us to different departments and all of the women and all of the people of color went into claims and all of the men went into leadership and sales. — Lilian Vanvieldt-Gray   What makes me sad is that now DI has become a bad word. — Lilian Vanvieldt-Gray   Define yourself in the brightest of lights because you can't achieve it if you can't see it. You can't achieve it if you can't dream it and don't let anyone else define your dreams. Define them for yourself. — Lilian Vanvieldt-Gray    

In this episode Lissa welcomes co-host Bukata Hayes as they explore the power of storytelling and the nourishment of soulful food with author Rose McGee. ROSE MCGEE, founder of Sweet Potato Comfort Pie, travels across the United States to deliver pies and nurture relationships. She was featured in the 2015 PBS documentary A Few Good Pie Places. After George Floyd's murder in 2020, her caring community pie baking and delivery gained recognition from NBC Nightly News, Ms McGee resides in Golden Valley, MiN, where she was named “Citizen of the Year”.

As founder of Harlem's Fashion Row, Brandice Daniel is a change agent. For more than 15 years, she has been working to bridge the gap between the fashion industry and Black and Latinx designers who often don't come from famous fashion schools like Parsons or FIT. Following the surge in interest in diversity, equity and inclusion following the murder of George Floyd, there are growing headwinds which are stalling progress.“We've regressed so far, so fast. It is really disappointing, especially in an industry that is supposed to be cutting edge … How can you be innovative without addressing DEI?” she says.This week on The BoF Podcast, BoF founder and editor-in-chief Imran Amed sits down with Daniel to discuss how the industry can foster real change. Key Insights:Harlem's Fashion Row was founded in 2007 — long before DEI became a corporate buzzword — after Daniel noticed how little diversity there was at US department stores. “[I] realised that less than 1 percent of the designers that were on those websites at the time were designers of colour, however … African-Americans were spending $22 billion a year on apparel. And that was when I really got my aha moment.”2020 was a pivotal year for Harlem's Fashion Row. After George Floyd's murder sparked global conversations around racism and representation, more fashion and retail brands opened the door to diversity. “It was very easy to tell during those days who was wanting to do very performative work versus who actually was interested in doing the work,” Daniel explains. “The companies who were doing the work before 2020, they are still doing the work.”Still, despite the momentum that 2020 brought, she's been disappointed in the lack of long-term action. “We've regressed so far, so fast. It is really disappointing, especially in an industry that is supposed to be cutting edge … How can you be innovative without addressing DEI?” she says. When it comes to finding your sense of purpose, Daniel believes in focusing on your goal, rather than the nitty-gritty of the process of achieving it. “Don't worry about the how. Just worry about the what and the why. If you focus on the what and the why and just allow the how to unfold as you just take one step forward, you will see that so many incredible things will happen.”Additional Resources:UK Fashion Industry Isn't Making Progress on Leadership Diversity, Report FindsA New Lawsuit Puts Fashion's Corporate Diversity Efforts in the Crosshairs Protecting Fashion's DEI Efforts During Market Disruption Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After George Floyd's police murder and the Black Lives Matter movement explosion in 2020, the field of international relations rushed to engage the topic of race after ignoring it for half a century. When they did, they largely acted as if early generations of international-relations scholars hadn't engaged with or theorized the topic. But they had. In this episode, Van sits down with Robbie Shilliam, a multidisciplinary IR scholar and postcolonial theorist, to talk about:What made Hans Morgenthau a theorist of race relations, not just international relations;Why the field of IR has a racial blind spot in the first place;Why IR's leading journals, editors, and scholars re-engaged racial questions after 2020 but without drawing on what the discipline's own canonical thinkers had to say about race;Why the Gen Z and Millennial generation of scholars are possibly built differently when it comes to racial issues and historical IR;How the concept of “frontier” unites Republicanism and imperialism in some of the early thinkers of IR like Frederick Jackson Turner, William Allen, and Merze Tate.I was sick as a dog when we recorded this, but it was one of the most generative conversations I've ever had on the pod and Robbie is one soulful human being. Hope you enjoy this one!Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.comRobbie Shilliam, “Republicanism and Imperialism at the Frontier: A Post-Black Lives Matter Archeology of International Relations,” https://robbieshilliam.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/frontier-2.0.pdf.Epeli Hau'ofa, WE ARE THE OCEAN: SELECTED WORKS (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008).

Gena Cox, Ph.D. discusses her new book that provides powerful insights for leaders to drive inclusion: “Leading Inclusion: Drive Change Your Employees Can See and Feel.” In this conversation, Gena stresses the value of human relationships, and how organizations have vast opportunities to optimize the human experiences for their employees. Gena reveals how a system that doesn't embrace inclusion will lose employees who don't feel included. Listen in for how curiosity can help your team feel even more connected.   https://bit.ly/TLP-353   Key Takeaways   [2:00] Dr. Cox tells how she is the luckiest person in the world. Her grandmother had a grade school education but was an entrepreneurial wizard. From watching her grandmother grow her neighborhood store, Gena learned the value of the human relationship in terms of getting things done. Gena's secret is that much of what she talks about comes from observing her grandmother and her customers. [2:56] When Dr. Cox was growing up, she wanted to be a journalist. She still sees journalists covering things around the world and imagines herself doing that. She supposes that journalists, like others, have a big “why” about how they can make the world better that lets them keep going. [4:22] Dr. Cox has been trained not to make assertions without evidence to support the assertions. She had known for a long time about the importance of respect. But it wasn't until the summer of 2020 when she interviewed leaders and surveyed employees about what they think leaders don't understand about inclusion, black employees said they felt leaders were distancing themselves and avoiding them. [5:54] When Dr. Cox did the content analysis to see the themes emerging from those comments, she came up with the word “respect.” These comments were all about things where people wanted to be seen, heard, and valued. [7:07] It is important not to just think about these issues in the present, but to look centuries back. In our country, there are social dynamics that have existed for generations within a community where there are significant power imbalances. These imbalances correlate with race, ethnicity, and socioeconomics. Ignoring those factors can lead to misunderstanding the experience of employees from those places. [8:21] Dr. Cox wrote one chapter about history at the beginning of her book. It makes a difference if leaders understand the broader context before they try to address specific initiatives or priorities in their organizations because they might miss the mark, otherwise. [9:19] Dr. Cox works with leaders on inclusion and with individuals to think about how they can be the best that they desire to be. It takes two sides of this equation to tango to get the outcomes that we desire. Dr. Cox shares a case of a client feeling discriminated against in their career progress. Dr. Cox suggested they look for what they could do to get past the barrier and jump the hurdle. [10:28] Dr. Cox offers three ideas that can help each of us make that difference for ourselves. 1. Have a big “why” for what kind of influence and impact you desire to have. 2. Have a track where you are working on custom master classes. Learn as much as you can that will help you get to your goal. 3. Amplify and brand yourself within our job. Dress and behave for the job you want. [11:53] If your current job does not allow you to do all that, you might have to do it on a parallel track and keep it moving until you can use what you learn to move forward overall. [14:06] Dr. Cox thinks there is a lot of misinterpretation and reinterpretation that takes place about leaders like Martin Luther King. Dr. Cox does not talk a lot about what specific people have said. Some people hearing a quote may miss the main idea. Inclusion tops diversity. It's not just about getting more representation of a particular group. DE&I is really effective leadership of 100% of employees. [16:38] Dr. Cox talks about effective leadership to create situations where every single person in a team, group, or organization feels that he or she can put in the appropriate efforts and get the expected outcomes. We all have to have a part in making that happen, especially managers. [17:49] After George Floyd was killed, corporations started offering implicit bias training and hiring Chief Diversity Officers. Those two solutions are just tactics. They need to be added to a strategy that says “Here is what we are solving for.” [18:34] The most important thing leaders can do to minimize the risk of doing things that are not effective is to start by talking to employees about what is their day-to-day experience. Then they will tell you what you should focus on first. [19:20] Dr. Cox would like leaders to attach fewer restrictions to the research-based insights, such as the size of the survey group. The research is too new to be buttoned down. Dr. Cox points to the value of qualitative data or the stories that people tell in this area. These stories haven't been told before so leaders don't understand the solutions they should implement. [21:28] Dr. Cox asked about three years ago in a LinkedIn article why, with regard to DE&I, organizations are not utilizing the same strategy and problem-solving techniques that they apply to every other problem. Because of the emotional component, including fear and anxiety, about the topic, leaders are failing to use the same kinds of judgment skills that they might have used for something else. [22:22] What research have you done? Have you gone to a solution without research or understanding what's going on so that your actions might work? Are you just throwing a dart at a board and hoping that something will stick? You would never do that if you were implementing a new initiative to support your customers or clients because you would know how high the risk would be. [23:18] The number one topic on the minds of boards of directors and leaders today, apart from making money, is talent. Under talent is the shortage of talent.  Why is there a shortage of talent? People come up with a variety of explanations. The data Dr. Cox sees is that there is a significant portion of the workforce that feels alienated from their leaders and colleagues and dissatisfied. [24:31] The latest research says that 50% of Black American employees say that they are thinking about or preparing themselves to leave their current job. There has been more data over the past couple of years because of the pandemic. [24:55] Dr. Cox asks leaders to think about why there is so much dissatisfaction and whether it is true in their organization. If so, what are the elements in their organization that could be causing it? If not true, what could they learn about it? They're about to have this problem. What can they do to make it better for employees? [25:26] This leads to conversations about compensation, speaking up, well-being, mental health, and a variety of issues that should be at the tip of the spear. [26:31] Rehumanizing the workplace means emphasizing the idea that effective leadership is a pie chart. There's a piece for task performance and a piece for human performance. All the outcomes organizations are driving to achieve have a human component. [28:23] Leaders are telling employees to “come back to the office and do it this way,” instead of considering alternative ways to work. There's a significant gap between what employees desire and what the leaders at the top think employees desire. Rehumanizing the workplace means connecting with the employees. [32:50] Dr. Cox doesn't want to believe that with MBA programs costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, organizations aren't focusing on the human experience. But she believes they are not focusing sufficiently on the human experience. The management of humans has not been balanced with task performance. Dr. Cox wants to do away with the term “soft skills” which are understood to be less than “hard skills.” [34:40] In an HBR article, “5 Strategies to Infuse D&I into Your Organization,” Dr. Cox writes about mitigating implicit bias at the systemic level. It involves looking at data the organization has about existing patterns within the organization of selection, promotion, career mobility, and visibility of people who have a variety of characteristics. [36:15] Leaders often think they are leading organizations where things are better than employees might imply that they are. Diversity is not just hiring diverse people. If new employees walk into situations where the environment is not ready for them or receptive to them, they are not going to stay. It's important for you to figure out, “What does it feel like to work in my organization every day?” [37:15] Leaders don't know how their managers behave, day-to-day, or recognize how often those behaviors are having a damaging impact. They don't put enough emphasis on setting expectations for manager behavior. Leaders need to ask, “Over the years that you have worked for this company, how often have you raised your hand to share an idea and been swatted down?” Optimize the talent you have! [38:21] If you run an organization with customer-facing people, you want to know how the customer is being treated. You should also want to know what experience your employees are having when they're interacting with your customers, and not assume that the customer is always right! Inclusion is understanding the day-to-day experience of all the employees that you currently have. [40:09] Dr. Cox has spent at least 10 years measuring employee experience, advising leaders about how to use data coming out of employee surveys. Respect is a concept that everybody understands. Nobody seems to know what belonging means. [40:49] Dr. Cox says leaders only need to ask three questions in a survey: Do you feel respected? What is it about your experience that makes you feel respected? Do you feel disrespected? What is it about your experience that makes you feel disrespected? What can we do to enhance your feelings of being respected? A three-question survey is as powerful as a long survey if you know what you're measuring. [42:25] Do not overcomplicate the issue. The only outcome that matters in this conversation is what are the experiences that employees are having and are they continuing to have good or bad experiences. What accounts for the variability between good and bad experiences, and what you can do as a leader, knowing and understanding that, to make these things a little more equitable and consistent? [43:39] Dr. Cox speaks of potential clients who ask her to talk about something and when it gets to a point where it's uncomfortable, they hadn't planned for the discomfort, and then rather than move forward through the discomfort, they back away and don't want to do the thing they should be doing. Dr. Cox is disappointed that some leaders haven't thought through what they believe. [44:34] On the plus side, while a lot of the things organizations are doing are destined not to have any impact when it comes to inclusion, more leaders are talking about these issues and are inching forward to a place where leaders can be engaged in trying to understand these issues rather than avoiding them. Dr. Cox is having these conversations more than ever before, even when some people are running away. [48:01] Dr. Cox's last thought: “I have a three Cs model. … Curiosity leads to Connection and that Curiosity and Connection are necessary in order to get to Comfort. Comfort, I think, is what we all seek.” [49:03] Closing quote: Remember, “Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.” — Martin Luther King Jr.   Quotable Quotes “While I call myself an organizational psychologist because that's my formal training, the secret that most people don't know is that a lot of the stuff that I talk about is stuff that I learned in the little … corner store just by observing my grandmother and her customers.” “When I was growing up, I wanted to be a journalist. I didn't even think about psychology, And still to this day, when I see journalists covering all kinds of things around the world, I say, ‘Gosh, I could do that. I can do that.'” “Dr. King taught us that whether we are talking about race, gender, LGBTQ+, ethnicity, neurodiversity, or other ways that humans naturally vary, we can't sit idly by and wait for others to provide the inclusion we seek. Each of us can help ourselves and others.” “I talk about effective leadership to create situations where every single person … in an organization, feels that he or she, when they show up, have a chance to be able to put in the effort that is appropriate and get the same outcomes that would be expected.” “Something about the emotion of this issue is causing people to fail to use problem-solving skills that they actually already possess.” “Are you optimizing the talent that you already have? Most people will say, when I ask ‘What is missing here about why I don't feel included?', it tends to fall into the category that ‘I'm not seen, heard, or valued.'” “By inclusion, I simply mean understanding the day-to-day experience of all the employees that you currently have.” “I remain eternally optimistic about all of this because of Gen Z and their willingness to speak for us, for everybody, about what that good human experience feels like.”   Resources Mentioned Theleadershippodcast.com Sponsored by: Darley.com Rafti Advisors. LLC Self-Reliant Leadership. LLC Gena Cox Gena Cox on LinkedIn Leading Inclusion: Drive Change Your Employees Can See and Feel, by Gena Cox, Ph.D. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “5 Strategies to infuse D&I into Your Organization,” HBR  

After George Floyd was killed by police nearly three years ago, there was a call to wake up to racism and inequity. Dianne Haulcy works in early childhood education and at the time she decided to start a project focused on how we talk with very young children about race and racism. Her podcast is called Early Risers and its fourth season launches this month. Haulcy joined guest host Melissa Townsend to talk about what she's learned from all the conversations she's had and what's in store this season.  Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.  Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.    We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here. 

Wine with Adam is back and this season begins with a discussion between host and CEO of Israel Innovation Fund Adam Bellos and Theory of Enchantment founder Chloé Valdary. Valdary, a pro-Israel African American and former activist, explains that after being disillusioned with Hasbara's ability to solve anti-semitism she created the three principled "Theory of Enchantment".The theory of enchantment is a “DEI” diversity equity and inclusivity program that uses storytelling to promote critical thinking and empathy. After George Floyd and the rise of Black Lives Matter, she realized that the Theory of enchantment was a perfect antidote and alternative to the other DEI programs that taught 'white fragility' and inbred and insolvable racism.Valdary and Bellos also discuss recent controversies surrounding Dave Chappelle's latest Saturday Night Live appearance, Kanye "Ye" West and what these mean for relations between the Black and Jewish communities.Kick back with a glass of your favorite wine and enjoy!

Uzoma Obasi is a creative entrepreneur, producer, and photographer from Minneapolis. After George Floyd's murder, he traveled with George's family and their attorney Ben Crump -- capturing powerful moments along the way. He sat down with Chanda to talk about using his skills to document history, his advice to creatives, and the evolution of his storytelling.

"Corporations can be a force for good – and they can also be very successful," says Ken Chenault, chair of investment firm General Catalyst and former longtime CEO of American Express. During the past year, Ken has been an outspoken advocate for business leaders to actively engage in societal matters. After George Floyd's death, he and Merck CEO Ken Frazier launched OneTen, a coalition to create 1 million jobs for Black Americans that now includes major brands from IBM to Nike to Walmart. Chenault has pushed corporate chiefs to use their leverage to protect voting rights, and he's come out with a platform for Responsible Innovation that puts what he calls “social due diligence” alongside financial due diligence. Standing up for what's right, Ken says, fuels long-term success: "The most important thing is the quest for truth, character, and values."Read a transcript of this interview at: mastersofscale.comSubscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter at http://eepurl.com/dlirtXSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

WIPS' JOE GIGLIO says that he sees some Tom Donahoe in Andy Weidl. Thinks he's a really sharp dude that Howie Roseman leaned on. Giglio thinks that Weidl will be running a team as the head man one day. He also thinks Louis Riddick got a real shot to be the Steelers GM. Joe says that Howie isn't looked at as a "football guy" GM, therefore the loss of Weidl will be felt by Eagles fans. Joe said he thinks the perception is that the Eagles really develop front office execs.  We talked about Rodney Gallagher. Dorin says he may be a top-10 most versatile player to come out of Western PA.  Colin Kaepernick has a tryout with the Raiders. Dorin Dickerson said there's too much baggage to sign him. Crowley brought up a USA Today poll from 2016 where people were overwhelmingly against kneeling during the anthem. After George Floyd the numbers flipped. Mack says a team can handle controversy. Dorin and Colin don't think it's worth it for a backup.  Rooting For/Against

After George Floyd was killed by a police officer two years, advocates called for change at police departments across the country, including in Massachusetts. But today, those efforts remain a work in progress.

Pastor Don Barlow sits in the front pew of his Baptist church on Rochester's southeast side, holding a piece of paper, faded by decades in Olmsted County's archives but still clear in its intent. “This property shall never be occupied by a Negro,” Barlow reads from the deed for the plat of land where his predominantly Black church now stands. It's a moment of poetic justice for Barlow, who recently learned that about a century ago he and his congregants would have been legally blocked from worshiping there. “The shock, the alarm comes from the clearness of the statement found within the legal documents,” he said. “It's not so much the usage of the word Negro, because it was the language of the day, but more so the fact that in a legal document, it was being stated and accepted as the norm.” For years, such covenants were a tool used across the nation and in Minnesota to keep nonwhite people out of white neighborhoods. They're illegal now, but their impact remains, cascading into thousands of individual decisions about schools, homes and jobs that have collectively kept cities shackled to the past. Reckoning with that past is hard for any city, but Rochester's comes with an unusual twist: New research into housing covenants makes it clear how the founders of Mayo Clinic — a giant in Minnesota and Rochester, viewed globally as a force for good — played a role perpetuating practices that favored all-white neighborhoods. Racial covenants in Rochester Roughly 850 racial covenants have been found so far. Hear from Rochester residents who own homes with racial covenants.  Map https://features.mprnews.org/2022/rochester_covenants/index.html Note: Numbers represent racial covenants found so far. This is an ongoing project and not all properties have been checked. The percentage indicates for each census tract the share of properties with racial covenants out of the properties that were both platted before 1953 and have been checked.  This map focuses on central Rochester and does not include all racial covenants found so far in Olmsted County. Source: NAACP Racial Covenant Mapping Project / Phil Wheeler. Map: Elisabeth Gawthrop/APM Research Lab. With the city expanding rapidly now around Mayo Clinic, city leaders hope Rochester can be a magnet for a diverse workforce. Part of that journey, though, means coming to terms with a troubling part of the city's history — decades of intentional housing segregation. A recent push to map the city's racial housing covenants shows how deep those roots lie and the challenges moving forward. ‘Racists buying real estate' Ken Klotzbach for MPR News Phil Wheeler refers to a map of homes in Rochester's historic "Pill Hill" neighborhood on April 13, where restrictive neighborhood covenants were once enforced. Armed with a stack of historical maps and documents, Phil Wheeler walks the streets of Pill Hill, a historic neighborhood just southwest of Mayo Clinic's downtown campus that was home to some of the hospital's first professionals. Today, homes in this neighborhood can cost millions. In the early 1900s when Pill Hill was being developed, prices were high for the time, too, said Wheeler, an urban planner who once worked in planning departments for the city and county. Now, as a member of the local chapter of the NAACP, he's leading a volunteer effort to map intentional segregation in Rochester. The project was born from a 2021 decision by the Rochester City Council to be the first greater Minnesota city to join Just Deeds, a project that helps homeowners and cities find racial covenants and then legally disavow them. Ken Klotzbach for MPR News Phil Wheeler points out homes in the historic "Pill Hill" neighborhood where restrictive neighborhood covenants were once enforced. Price minimums were required by the deeds for the land houses were built on — one way of making sure only wealthier people were able to access the neighborhood, Wheeler said. So were racial covenants. Some were applied when the land was first being developed, some applied retroactively after homes were built to preserve the demographics of the neighborhood. Courtesy of History Center of Olmsted County An ad printed in the Post Bulletin sometime in the late 1920s. The restrictions were used as a marketing tactic, too. A newspaper ad from the late 1920s for lots near Mayo Clinic warned buyers not to build on cheap land.  A Westlawn lot will add to the sale and rental value of your home and building restrictions assure of a desirable neighborhood to live in. The ad promoted a watch raffle — but the ad said that only white people 18 and older would be eligible to enter.  Some racial covenants were hyper-specific, Wheeler said. He read from one associated with a neighborhood in Pill Hill: “None of said respective tracts or any parts thereof shall be sold to or occupied by any person of Negro, Indian, Mongolian, Chinese or Japanese descent, provided however, this restriction shall not apply to a bonafide servant employed by a resident thereon and housed in his residence.” Wheeler said this language can be found repeatedly in land sold and developed by Mayo Properties Association, an entity founded in 1919 by Mayo Clinic founders and brothers Drs. William and Charles Mayo, according to the Olmsted County History Center.  At the time, the duo transferred their property and capital to Mayo Properties Association, marking the shift from Mayo Clinic being a family-run organization to a nonprofit, according to the history center.  Deeds unearthed by Wheeler and his volunteers show Mayo Properties Association started subdividing land for sale in the early 20th century.  Read Mayo Properties Association deed including a racial covenant Of the roughly 850 racial covenants Wheeler and other volunteers have discovered and mapped so far, about 25 percent of them bear the Mayo name, along with that of other Mayo and city leaders of the time, including Harry Harwick, the hospital's first administrator. Ken Klotzbach for MPR News Mike Resman holds a deed from a Rochester home dated in 1941 bearing the name of the Mayo Properties Association corporation. Wheeler said that while racial covenants were employed in many cities at the time, it's hard to decipher Mayo and Harwick's motivations. Most of the more than 5,000 plats Wheeler and his volunteers have examined so far never had a racial covenant. “I don't know how much slack we should cut somebody like Harry Harwick, who did this everywhere that he was involved in property,” he said. “The argument that he's a product of his time is countered by the fact that about 80 percent of the plats that were made during that time had no [racial] covenant, as far as we can tell.” Wheeler's best guess is that the covenants were meant to create prestigious enclaves in an effort to attract physicians to Mayo Clinic. “That depends on racists buying real estate,” he said. “And selling it too, of course.” Disparities in black and white Ken Klotzbach for MPR News Barbara Jordan, Mayo Clinic Administrator for the Office for Equity, Inclusion and Diversity. Documents dating back to this time period were disposed of consistent with record retention policies, a Mayo Clinic spokesperson said. “It's hard to know the nature of the thinking in the minds of those property holders drafting the covenants at the time,” said Barbara Jordan, the administrator for Mayo's equity, inclusion and diversity office. “But I just look at it as a sign of the times and probably along with the segregation that was occurring across the country.” Jordan, who is Black, said that it's important for Mayo not to ignore this aspect of its history.  Mayo has grappled before with racist episodes in its past. In 2018, the institution apologized for William Worrall Mayo's desecration of Marpiya Okinajin, a warrior hanged in the 1862 mass execution of Native people in Mankato, Minn. William Worrall Mayo — father of William and Charles — took Marpiya Okinajin's remains following the execution, dissected them and kept the skeleton for years for research and display. “We don't want to let [the racial covenants] go on unnoticed or, or let it sit and say, ‘That was wrong,' but to take affirmative, actionable steps,” said Jordan, noting that Mayo is lending some of its legal team to the covenant mapping project on a pro bono basis. And that's just one aspect of Mayo's work to improve diversity and equity within its walls and in its communities. After George Floyd was murdered at the hands of a police officer in 2020, the institution pledged $100 million to diversity efforts — money that's been used to pay for equity and inclusion training among staff, and a leadership camp for BIPOC teens, among other things. Meanwhile, Mayo's population of nonwhite employees across all its campuses has increased from 8 percent of its workforce in 1999 to 18 percent last year.  Jordan said she's had her own experiences with racism in Rochester. Decades ago, she said, white students at her daughter's middle school were allowed to display the Confederate flag until students and families pushed administrators to ban the practice.  When Jordan talks to new recruits of color at Mayo, she often hears that they don't feel like they fit in. Despite its international visitors and increasingly diverse demographics, Mayo Clinic remains predominantly white; the city of Rochester is 78 percent white. “They are the ones who are surprised when they see that our staff may not reflect the diversity of our community,” she said. “Our learners have told us, our employees have told us that their sense of belonging is not at levels that we would like to see.” Exclusion can take many forms, Jordan said, like not being invited to work-related social events or being told they speak too loudly. These microaggressions can accumulate over time, Jordan said.  “It's constantly helping people to understand that the white-centered viewpoint is not the only viewpoint or perspective,” she said. Addressing racism inside its walls and community is essential to Mayo's success as a health care provider. Even a decade ago, Jordan said the Mayo community was less receptive to this.  “But today, they demand it,” she said. “They expect it because we know in order to provide the best care to every patient, we have to prepare learners and our staff to care for a diverse group of patients, as our doors are open to all.” Segregation that's ‘hard to dislodge' Ken Klotzbach for MPR News Rochester's director of diversity, equity and inclusion, Chao Mwatela. It's not yet clear how these racial covenants have powered racial and economic disparities in Rochester, but city leaders are eager to use the data to better understand the city's inequities and work to fix them.  Still, Chao Mwatela, Rochester's diversity, equity and inclusion director, sees hints of the practice's legacy everywhere. Some of the neighborhoods that were born with racial covenants remain largely white, affluent, and with access to higher-performing schools. They tend to have more green space and sit farther away from industrial areas.  Meanwhile, city data shows that clusters of households that earn less than the area median income also have high counts of people of color, and seniors.  The starkest example, Mwatela said, is in homeownership among the city's nonwhite population, an indication that Rochester's residents of color today continue to be blocked from accessing generational wealth just as they were 100 years ago. In St. Cloud Somali families see homebuying as path to grow wealth, sink roots Roughly 60 percent of the city's renters are people of color — a notably high proportion, Mwatela said. Members of these communities are less likely to have had parents or grandparents who owned homes that accumulated wealth to pass on to their children, she said.  “The process of buying a home is not a simple one,” she said. “We don't realize how much of that is passed down from generation to generation and what impact it has on someone's ability to navigate that system, or to even purchase a home.”  Mayo Properties Association perpetuated racial covenants, but so did other developers in Rochester. In some cases, neighbors adopted racial covenants after homes were built in an effort to keep out nonwhites.  Racial covenants became illegal in Minnesota in 1962 and illegal nationally in 1968. But they were common in Minnesota in the first half of the 20th century, said Kirsten Delegard, co-founder and the project director for the Mapping Prejudice Project at the University of Minnesota Libraries. They were popular in part because they were promoted by the National Association of Real Estate Boards as a tool to protect property values and promote neighborhood stability, she said. The federal government's underwriting manual mandated that racial covenants be in place to get the most favorable terms.  “That mandate from those big national institutions meant that anyone who is considered to be a respectable or credible or ethical dealer in this realm was going to certainly come under a lot of pressure about racial covenants,” Delegard said. Racial covenants are still relevant today, she said. Her organization's mapping efforts of communities in and around the Twin Cities show that neighborhoods established with racial covenants are still overwhelmingly white.  And houses in Minneapolis that had racial covenants at any point are worth about 15 percent more today than an identical house that never had a racial covenant, Delegard said.  “What that does is it sets up this cascading effect for intergenerational wealth transfer, which increases inequality,” she said.  Delegard uses her own family as an example: Her grandparents bought a home with a racial covenant on it in 1942 in south Minneapolis near Lake Nokomis, and it appreciated significantly over the years. When they died, Delegard's family sold the home and gave all the grandchildren a share of the proceeds. “I took my piece and was able to put a down payment on a house in south Minneapolis that would be out of reach for people who did not have that same kind of family help,” Delegard said. “These patterns, once they're entrenched, they're very hard to dislodge.” ‘People here are so friendly' Ken Klotzbach for MPR News Mike Resman of Rochester. Racial covenants are being discovered all over Rochester by a small group of volunteers who comb through and map property records one block at a time. Mike Resman is one of those volunteers. In Pill Hill, he's sitting in the living room of the home he and his wife have lived in for 45 years. In his lap is a cache of property documents his bank sent him in the 1980s, including a racial covenant that would have prevented his two adopted daughters from Korea from living there a century ago. “I knew that it was not enforced. So I wasn't worried about it as a parent of nonwhite children,” he said. “But the thing that surprised me the most is that it had been sold by the Mayo Properties. I always associated Mayo Clinic with all good things, but here they were in the business of real estate and had put a covenant on the land.” Resman said he wants this information to be used as a tool to educate his neighbors and the community about their city's history, how some people have enjoyed privilege in Rochester at the expense of others.  Ken Klotzbach for MPR News A deed from a Rochester home dated in 1941 bearing the name of the Mayo Properties Association corporation. “I'm not one of those people who thinks that we should literally whitewash history and pretend that none of these things happened,” he said. Across town on the porch of her home in the Slatterly Park neighborhood, Wilhelmina Jacob said she wasn't shocked that her home has a racial covenant. As a Black woman, she said it's validating.  “What is phenomenal is that things that have been in the dark for years are now being exposed,” she said. “I think the validation of being rejected is not taboo, or ‘it's not real.' It is real, it has been real.” Ken Klotzbach for MPR News Wilhelmina Jacob, a homeowner in Rochester. She said that, unlike her upbringing in New Orleans, racism is harder to decipher in Minnesota; people here, she said, are hard to read and really get to know. “There are wonderful people here, but it is very Minnesota Nice. And the difference for me is that in the south, [racism] is just there. So we don't have to wonder — it just is what it is,” Jacob said, pointing out that as a child in New Orleans, there were informal rules about where Black people could go at night. “Here, you don't know. Everybody just smiles, and you don't know … I think it's a little bit more difficult to navigate.” Pastor Barlow sits on the Rochester School Board and hears echoes of racial segregation in schools today. Schools in whiter, wealthier neighborhoods reflect those demographics, a challenge the district is constantly working to address through redistricting, resources and by hiring more staff of color. But even still, Barlow can understand how it feels to be excluded in Rochester — a city purported to be welcoming when he moved here with his wife years ago so she could access long-term care at the clinic. “I was staying at a hotel downtown. It was a Friday, early evening, and a car of white youth passed by and yelled out the N-word,” he said. “It wasn't like it was the first time I heard it. But it shocked me because I've heard a number of [Mayo doctors] at the clinic say, ‘You're not going to find a nicer place to live' and ‘people here are so friendly.'  “And I'm sure from their point of view, and their lived experience, those are all true statements. But then I began to realize it doesn't necessarily apply to everyone,” he said. At Rochester's City Hall, Mwatela is thinking along the same lines. Once racial covenants are fully mapped, the city will create a process for homeowners to discharge those covenants for free. But she said interweaving this information into all aspects of city policy — in zoning decisions or in targeting homeownership classes at disadvantaged populations — is the bigger goal.  “I think sometimes when we say we want to do those things without having the data and the history to inform it, it is perceived as ‘Why is this community getting it and I don't,'” she said. “Laying the groundwork for people to understand that a lot of times [some people] are not starting from an equal playing field, whether it is monetarily, education and access.”  Back at his church in southeast Rochester, holding the deed that declares the “property shall never be occupied by a Negro,” Don Barlow said uncomfortable conversations about the city's past are necessary for it to be the welcoming community it perceives itself to be.  “We benefit when we're willing to acknowledge the truths associated with our past, however uncomfortable they may be,” he said. “Because these are the types of things that have affected generations.”  Editor's note (May 23, 2022): An earlier version of this story suggested the University of Minnesota used racial covenants. To clarify, researchers say the university in the 1950s refused to denounce the use of covenants. Table The data for the map and table in this story come from the Rochester NAACP Racial Covenant Mapping Project led by Phil Wheeler and including the following additional volunteers: Natasha Adams, Ashton Boon, Melissa Bush, Ellen Goode, Kathy Meyerle, Kelli Morin, Michael Resman, Sue Wheeler, Julie Gilkinson, Yoko Kan, Emma Miller-Shindelar, Christopher Carter, Dan Yeates Kelsey Skodje, Katie Chapman, Justin Cook, Christine Kirt and Matt Tse. Data originally comes courtesy of Olmsted County Property Records and Licensing Office. Map: Elisabeth Gawthrop/APM Research Lab. Live discussion: Racial covenants in Minnesota Click to watch. Full series North Star Journey What should we cover next? Pass the Mic Ask MPR News What questions do you have about covenants?

She needs no introduction — but in magazine history, Tina Brown is rightly deemed a legend, reviving Tatler, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, before turning to the web and The Daily Beast (where I worked for her). Her new book is The Palace Papers. We talked journalism, life and royals.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app,” which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. For two clips of our convo — on Meghan Markle’s epic narcissism, and why women make the best monarchs — head over to our YouTube page. Having Tina on the pod was the perfect excuse to transcribe our popular episode with Michael Moynihan, who used to work for Tina at The Daily Beast — which also hosted the Dish for a few years. So we’re all old friends. From the Moynihan chat:Andrew: I was talking to Tina Brown about this not that long ago, with the great days of the big magazines in the '80s and '90s. Really, when you look back on that time, it was an incredible festival of decadence and clearly over the top before the fall.Michael: I love Tina. I did a thing — you can look this up — an interview with her, when her Vanity Fair Diaries came out, for The Fifth Column. Just Tina and I sat down and talked for an hour and a half, and it was one of the best things I think we’ve recorded, and got one of the best responses. Because people miss those stories.Perhaps Bill Kristol should check out the clip with Moynihan on how to change your mind on stuff you get wrong:A listener looks back to last week’s episode:Wonderful interview with Douglas Murray, with the two of you riffing off each other with brilliant dialogue. Very warm and affirming as well. I particularly enjoyed your discussion of the religious dimension as one aspect of our present dilemma. I know you would want to provide variety for the Dishcast, but please consider having him on again.Another fan:This was the most memorable episode in a long time (although they are all great). Of course, your dialogue was choir-preaching, and so I need to be careful in avoiding confirmation bias. That said, I found Murray’s elegant way of encapsulating the obvious — which I fail to express myself — truly invigorating. I rewound and listened to many parts several times over. I ordered his book today.Another listener dissents:I find the armchair psychoanalysis regarding ressentiment — as the organizing principle of what is happening in our culture today — to be one of the least compelling arguments made in the episode. Why not go ahead and attribute our perpetual unwillingness in the West to recognize what is great about it to Christianity’s concept of original sin? Or maybe read psychoanalytic literature on why an individual or group of people who are objectively improving might hold onto beliefs of the self or society as rotten? These seem just as likely as Nietzsche’s argument. Ultimately, what a person speculates to be the primary motivator of another person or group reveals a lot. Your speculation that it’s mostly ressentiment suggests you want or need to demonize the CRT crowd. This is tragic given that this is precisely what you and Douglas accuse the CRT crowd of doing. Another listener differs:I don’t agree with everything you and Douglas Murray write, but thank you for talking about the resentment and bitterness that’s driving politics and culture today. It’s gone completely insane. I used to work for a small talent agency, and during the pandemic I coached some actors over Zoom. During the George Floyd protests, one of my clients was up watching the news all night, not getting any sleep. I told her, look, you want to be informed and want to help. But you have to take care of yourself first or you’re no help to anyone. Go to bed and catch up on the news tomorrow. People criticized me for this kind of advice, saying I was privileged, that I just wanted to look away and not examine myself for my own inherent racism, etc. I couldn’t understand why people were being so unreasonable.I’m also a Mormon. After George Floyd was murdered, our ward started to discuss racism. Mormonism has a checkered past when it comes to things like Black men and the priesthood. Or even language in some of the scriptures. These are important conversations that our church needs to have. There were good things that happened, like Black people in the ward shared more about their experiences during meetings. But almost immediately it became weird. The women’s group did a lesson on Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility,” for example. We didn’t actually ever talk about the things I was hoping we’d talk about — how Brigham Young stopped Black men receiving the priesthood, for example. We were just told we all needed to acknowledge our white privilege and feel guilty about it. There was a part about redlining. There was no acknowledgment that some of the white people in this ward lived in low-income housing, basically had nothing, and had been stressed even further by the pandemic. It just felt unnecessarily divisive. I have no idea what the Asian members made of this talk, because it basically excluded them. There were so many holes in these theories, but I wasn’t brave enough to point them out.So it was a real relief to hear you and Murray talk about the way these ideas have infiltrated churches. The Mormon thing is typically like, “God wants you to be happy. Live this structured life, show compassion, work hard, love your family, and be happy.” But the DiAngelo ideas felt like, “you can’t even be saved, at least not if you’re white. Some people don’t deserve to be happy; they should only feel guilt.” It was easier to bring in a fad book and talk about property values than to talk about the awful passage in the Book of Mormon where it says dark-skinned people are cursed, but other people are “white and delightsome.” I felt like the second the door opened to have a serious conversation about the church and race, they immediately jumped the shark instead.From a fan of opera and ballet:Douglas Murray mentioned Jessye Norman and how her obituary was racialized. Well, in January of 1961, Leontyne Price made her Metropolitan Opera debut, and she and Franco Correlli received an ovation that was around 50 minutes long ... possibly the longest in Met history, or among two or three longest. There have been so many great black singers at the Met, such as Shirley Verrett, Kathleen Battle (who was loved by James Levine but whose voice I never liked), Eric Owens, Grace Bumbry, and many others. Here’s a snip of Price’s Met debut:Balanchine choreographed Agon (music by Stravinsky), arguably his greatest dance, for Diana Adams (white) and Arthur Mitchell (black) in 1957. They danced the pas de deux, which is an erotic tangle of bodies. Balanchine wanted the black/white tension. Here is a bit of it:And to my beloved Jessye Norman, whom I saw only once, here she is at her best:Another listener rolls out some poetry:I greatly enjoyed your conversation with Douglas Murray. He is fierce! Your mention of Clive James’s “The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered” reminded me of a similarly minded poem from Nina Puro. (I suspect one of them inspired the other.) I LONG TO HOLD THE POETRY EDITOR’S PENIS IN MY HANDand tell him personally,I’m sorry, but I’m goingto have to pass on this.Though your pieceheld my attention throughthe first few screenings,I don’t feel it is a good fitfor me at this time. Please know it receivedmy careful consideration.I thank you for allowingme to have a look,and I wish youthe very best of luckplacing it elsewhere.Shifting away from the Murray episode, here’s a followup from a intrepid Dishhead:I was excited to see my letter published on the violent toll homelessness takes on communities recently. I’ll be listening to the podcast with Maia Szalavitz soon, and I’ve got Johann’s book on harm reduction to read as well. (I loved the episode with Johann, bought his new book, loved it, and stopped being so online for about a week before backsliding ...)Shortly after I wrote that last letter to you, I realized that I wasn’t satisfied with just writing indignant letters about the bloody cost of complacency on homelessness. It’s really the story of Ahn Taylor — a sweet 94-year-old lady stabbed by a homeless man as she was walking in her neighborhood — that made me understand that complaining is not enough.So I’ve started a non-profit, Unsafe Streets, to take on this challenge. It’s sort of a “Take Back the Night”-style public safety crusade. It’s early days still, but we have a website, including pages for NYC and San Francisco, a Twitter feed, and a crowdfunding campaign. Next on my agenda is to create a page for Los Angeles, a detailed policy platform, and then to recruit a board and apply for 501c3 status.I’ve been keeping up with the Dish when I can (LOVING the conversation with Jonathan Haidt, and I HIGHLY recommend this complementary Rogan episode.) I’ve been busy with the kids and trying to get Unsafe Streets going in my free minutes.She follows up:I just listened to Maia’s episode, and I am pretty unsatisfied with her proposed solutions. Non-coercive acceptance and decriminalization is fine for people who are using drugs they bought with their own money in the privacy of their home. But public drug use, public intoxication, and the associated “quality of life” crimes (public defecation, indecency, etc.) make public spaces unsafe and uncomfortable for everyone else. Laws against these crimes should be enforced, which means arresting people and taking them to jail or some kind of treatment. Injecting fentanyl and passing out on the sidewalk is a very antisocial and harmful behavior, and should not be “decriminalized.”I agree with Maia that this is a complicated mix of addiction and severe mental illness. But I don’t think the cost of housing argument holds up. (A brief scan of the news will show you that there in fact ARE homeless encampments in West Virginia.) I think she was unfair in her characterization of Michael Shellenberger’s proposal, which includes tons of resources to expand access to and quality of treatment. Overall, Maia’s perspective is very focused on the benefit to the addict, but discounts the costs to the surrounding community. Thanks for keeping a focus on this subject!Another listener looks to a potential future guest:Hello! You invite your readers to submit guest ideas here. I submit Kevin D. Williamson — another nuanced “conservative,” Roman Catholic, Never Trumper, and admirer of Oakeshott. Oh, and he was fired after five minutes at The Atlantic for a previous statement about abortion.Thanks for the suggestion. Lastly, because we ran out of room this week in the main Dish for the new VFYW contest photo (otherwise the email version would get cut short), here ya go:Where do you think it’s located? Email your guess to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in subject line. Proximity counts if no one gets the exact spot. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. The winner gets the choice of a VFYW book or two annual Dish subscriptions. If you are not a subscriber, please indicate that status in your entry and we will give you a free month subscription if we select your entry for the contest results (example here if you’re new to the contest). Happy sleuthing! Get full access to The Weekly Dish at andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe

After George Floyd's murder protestors took to the streets, angry about racially-motivated brutality and discrimination. They urged authorities to “defund the police” and over 20 cities listened. But now, with rising murder rates, many of those same places are increasing investment in law enforcement. Can you “refund” and reform the police at the same time? Mayor of Portland, Oregon Ted Wheeler tells us why his city is raising its police budget. We go back to a war on crime that's been largely forgotten. And criminal justice reformer David Muhammad discusses the best ways to cut crime while also fixing policing.John Prideaux presents with Charlotte Howard and Jon Fasman. For full access to print, digital and audio editions as well as exclusive live events, subscribe to The Economist at economist.com/uspod See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

After George Floyd's murder protestors took to the streets, angry about racially-motivated brutality and discrimination. They urged authorities to “defund the police” and over 20 cities listened. But now, with rising murder rates, many of those same places are increasing investment in law enforcement. Can you “refund” and reform the police at the same time?  Mayor of Portland, Oregon Ted Wheeler tells us why his city is raising its police budget. We go back to a war on crime that's been largely forgotten. And criminal justice reformer David Muhammad discusses the best ways to cut crime while also fixing policing.John Prideaux presents with Charlotte Howard and Jon Fasman.  For full access to print, digital and audio editions as well as exclusive live events, subscribe to The Economist at economist.com/uspod  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Rev. Celeste's guest is Leadership Development Coach, DEI Facilitator, Author, Workshop Presenter and Coach, Glodean Champion (GlodeanChampion.com). She helps her clients to move from where they are to where they want to be.Glodean's book is entitled "Salmon Croquettes". It is a novel about a 12-year old girl navigating through her sexuality. Glodean holds book readings where she also cooks a salmon croquettes meal! She does this as an homage to her mother who made them weekly.Ms. Champion became an educator after a career in mid-management corporate environments. She went where Spirit led her, and she loves teaching. After George Floyd died, she was led to do something to help. She knew she could give love, be love and teach love. She would tell people in Monterey that she loves them and paying forward in restaurants. After encouraging people to love themselves, she realized that she needs to love herself.The personal development work came from looking inward and being able to protect and take better care of herself. She knew she wasn't alone in giving to others while forgetting who we are. She started posting on social media and people would ask how. She realized that she should do the work. The personal development work and the DEI work became her focus in the last few months. She has been building her coaching work and attracting many more clients.Glodean grew up in the church but found that the people who were telling her to do things were hypocrites. She finally found Rev. Joan Steadman (https://www.agapebayarea.com) in the 90's at Oakland Center for Spiritual Living and had a transformational moment. It made sense to her and made a big change in the way she moved through the world.Glodean is also a Six Sigma Black Belt. Six Sigma is a quality and process improvement methodology. It eliminates variation and therefore defects. In Lean Six Sigma, the objective is to eliminate waste. Glodean pays attention to the people and not just the process.  She was chosen to do the work because she had good relationships and got things done. Glodean supports management in trusting people and empowering them. It moves people from "me" thinkers to "we" thinkers. Pete, who trained her, was truly a leader because he didn't make her feel bad for making a mistake. He helped her course correct in a way that was supportive.Glodean found her birth family this year. Her 16-year old birth parents were in love and allowed her adoptive mother to have her because they knew she was going to love her and take care of her. Her mother was one of 36 single Black women who was able to adopt at that time. (https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/adoption/nam/) Glodean shares Love messages on social media platforms. It started with the George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breanna Taylor murders. She felt we give nonsense so much power. When one recognizes Love, they wouldn't act that way. She chooses to help people who are willing, to love. Her upcoming webinar is DEI Done Differently on November 16th. Get more information about it here: DEI Done Differently | Glodean ChampionGlodean is on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.Listen to Rev. Celeste's Poem: Be Love. Support the show (http://paypal.me/rev107)

“After George Floyd's murder, I felt like I could be doing more with my time and in fandom…” – Ash BeardguyOn this episode we had the Giant Shooty Robots! (formerly Build Casters) co-host, Melanated Mecha Bro and Audio Engineer, Ash Beardguy, as one of our honoured guests as part of our Black History Month series celebrating Black content creators, illustrators, entrepreneurs and weebs in general. We discuss the following things:  How Ash started Black Anime Podcasts?How does he choose who goes into the directory?Do UK black content creators not promote each other as much as our US counterparts? Which anime characters would Ash go to the club with? What kind of mecha anime does Ash like?  Has mecha anime really declined in recent times? Is mecha anime just about politics and war? Is Gundam Wing the worst of all the Gundam series?Reminiscing on old anime networks We finish with the Suuuper Anime Quick Fire round!Ash Beardguy socials  Instagram: Ashbeardguy Twitter: Ashbeardguy Website:  Giant Shooty RobotsBlack Anime Podcasts website  The History of Toonami UK by DBZimran — Watch here Gundam recommendationsGundam Build Fighters Gundam Build Divers re:RISE Mobile Suit Gundam Mobile Suit Gundam 08th MS Team Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans  Mecha Anime recommendations (Non-Gundam)Code Geass Gun X SwordMars Daybreak RahXephon Vandread  Other anime recommendation Planetes Tiger and Bunny Toradora! Darker Than Black Welcome to the NHK!  Shout outsShade of Red LSF (Shade of Red Mangaka) Blade Titans Ayinde Hall (Blade Titans Mangaka) Studio MahōGet In The Mecha (Podcast hosted by Jamal)  Suuuper podcast title inspired by Nu Brand Flexxx – Gash By Da Hour| Listen Here!Social media links Facebook: SuuuperAnimePodcast Twitter: @SuuuperanimeInstagram: Suuuperanimepodcast

Hearts share truth about R. Kelly, which brings clear sight, on clocking The Predator. I share truth and temperance. BDSM dating enters discussion. The Social Contract, and Kimberly Jone's strong voice - bring light. ___________ NOTES: Doctor Ramani - emotional honesty, empathy disorder and narcissism: https://www.youtube.com/user/DoctorRamanDurvasula ___________ "Surviving R. Kelly" - documentary on survivors from, and study of, R. Kelly. https://www.netflix.com/title/81069393 ________________ Kimberly Jones, the Social Contract, being broken. After George Floyd's murder, Kimberly Jones empassioned speech, rocked the world. In her voice: https://www.kimjoneswrites.com/ A video of Kimberly Jone's speech, with nearly a million views, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llci8MVh8J4&t=2s _________________ BDSM dating, age of consent. What predators do: Church, robotically false. Spackle. _____ Innocence as currency _____ Alcoholic comedians at the post office, babysitting, me. ______ POD DESCRIPTION: This is The House on Valencia Street. This is a place where ghosts & psychics, with PTSD, exist, & I'm talking about it. Share time with a rare survivor, walking back to haunted rooms and space being claimed from long ago. This is from the survivor's perspective, communicated as I see fit, in a way that feels right, for me. I do not offer advice here, I share what worked for me. I am not a professional therapist, this is just one case study, one perspective. Please seek professional help, if mental health issues need attention. This podcast is intended for entertainment purposes, and I am a commentator. Language is explicit, Content Warning: ghosts, psychic ability, rape, incest, foster care, murder, emancipation, BDSM, therapy, lightning strikes, personal responsibility, Buddhism, recovery, codependency, domestic violence - and inappropriate humor, most likely. Picture inset: This is me, so many years ago, standing in front of my mother's Impala, and the House on Valencia Street. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/mohmah/support

After George Floyd was murdered last year, I took some time to meditate on how the early childhood field, where I work in, was complicit in this... On this episode I speak with Dianne Haulcey who has over 25 years' experience in the Early Childhood nonprofit arena. Dianne explains how families in Hennepin and Ramsey counties (MN) can qualify for early learning scholarships, and how earning a living wage affects children's educational and academic foundation. Dianne and I discuss navigating a career in a non-profit, how nonprofits are funded and the marketable skills it takes for advancement in a non-profit. Dianne and I also discuss her new podcast which in light of George Floyd's murder offers resources on how to talk to small kids about race. Think Small locations - https://www.thinksmall.org/home/locations/ Little Moments Count - https://www.littlemomentscount.org/ Early Risers : NPR - https://www.npr.org/podcasts/983816754/early-risers Hosted by Katherine Lankford Produced by Sam Graber Music by Sam Reeves

After George Floyd was murdered last year, I took some time to meditate on how the early childhood field, where I work in, was complicit in this... On this episode I speak with Dianne Haulcey who has over 25 years' experience in the Early Childhood nonprofit arena. Dianne explains how families in Hennepin and Ramsey counties (MN) can qualify for early learning scholarships, and how earning a living wage affects children's educational and academic foundation. Dianne and I discuss navigating a career in a non-profit, how nonprofits are funded and the marketable skills it takes for advancement in a non-profit. Dianne and I also discuss her new podcast which in light of George Floyd's murder offers resources on how to talk to small kids about race. Think Small locations - https://www.thinksmall.org/home/locations/ Little Moments Count - https://www.littlemomentscount.org/ Early Risers : NPR - https://www.npr.org/podcasts/983816754/early-risers Hosted by Katherine Lankford Produced by Sam Graber Music by Sam Reeves

During the trial of Derek Chauvin, the world tuned in to watch what was unfolding in a Hennepin County courthouse. The presiding judge in Chauvin's case was selected by the newly elected Chief Judge of Hennepin County Toddrick Barnette, a Black man - who made history as the first person of color to fill that position. He has worked both as a Hennepin County prosecutor and as a public defender. Tiffany Bui spoke with him about his first year as chief judge.In a year of difficult decisions, Judge Barnette said his most difficult was to remain quiet after the death of George Floyd. “During social unrest, there were many folks who wanted a statement made,” he said. “I think it was important for us to remain neutral. You see a community burning, and you see frustration, and you see anger. And that anger is at the justice system. The anger is not just with the police. … It was hard not to be able to address that.”Barnette said in order to build trust with the community, the workforce needs to be more diverse across the Hennepin County court system. He called employees the biggest ambassadors.“Me going out to the community only goes so far,” he said. “People are not just going to believe me because I'm a judge, but they will believe someone who works in our system who's a neighbor, or friend, or relative.”After George Floyd was murdered, some protesters expressed doubt that Chauvin would even be found guilty. When asked how to bridge mistrust between the public and the legal system, Barnette said the court needs to better educate the media and the public about the legal process.TB: How have you worked to bridge the gap between the public and the justice system? What do you think has been accomplished and what do you think still needs work?“We have a group called the Hennepin County Disparity Reduction Justice Strategy Work Group. I know that's a long name. But  we're able to discuss and address system-wide disparities. And because you have folks there that are decision makers, we're able to either take that back to our office to deal with, or meet and try to strategize about how we are going to solve a particular issue that impacts disparities. We have five divisions in our court system. So we have the Criminal Division, which is our largest division; we have civil; we have family; we have juvenile, and we have probate mental health. We have what we call a judicial retreat twice a year. And that's with judicial officers, meaning judges and referees, and also our top leaders in court administration. What we've done, since I've been Chief, our first retreat, what we did was we broke out into those five divisions. And we talked about where in your division, where do you see disparities, or are there areas in which you would like to work on disparities? And then our second retreat, what we did was, we came back to report out, hey, here's your list of areas that you thought [about], what areas did you touch on and what did you do to address those disparities? So there's a large effort going on right now across the courts, in which each division is looking at that it's not just the judges, but you have, you'll have a supervisor for that division from court administration that can help implement things, change procedures, things like that. Looking specifically in [each] division is really helpful, because... we have disparities throughout our court system that we need to address.” TB: The murder of George Floyd has led to more discussions about the need for not just police reform, but criminal justice reform as a whole. And you may have seen some mistrust among committee members about whether courts can actually deliver justice. For example, when an officer gets a sentence that the public doesn't think is as harsh as it should be. I'm wondering what you make of this as chief judge and kind of what you think can be done to address this mistrust.JB: You know, I think there's two big areas for us in addressing mistrust. And it definitely became apparent when the Derek Chauvin trial was coming up. The media plays an important role in the information that people receive. And it's so important that we make sure that the media understands the process, the legal process, and what's happening in the courtroom, so that they are reporting it accurately. And I probably wouldn't have said that before I was chief. It's not about something that the court's doing that's wrong that I don't want him to report, I just want them to report it accurately, you know, report and understand the process to report accurately. And I think that we have been more open about answering questions, and making sure they understand the process. The second thing that I think is super important for us, and as the court system, I don't think that we've done a good job at educating the public, in just getting out and just being able to say this, this is the process. This is why this happens this way. And so I think that's very important for us is to at least educate folks, you can disagree with the end result, but at least understand maybe why a judge can only give a certain sentence or why someone might get bail, and someone might not get bail. TB: I'm wondering if you can just kind of tell me how you think the social justice movements –  the responses to various police shootings, the sort of energy that has generated discussion – how has that affected your work generally?JB: I think that there's been a lot of folks who worked on disparity issues in the court system way before me. And they have pushed and pushed and pushed. The momentum at this moment is so great that the voices for change are not just from people of color. It's also from people where maybe some white folks have been in the minority of speaking up to help in this change, but now, the group as a whole is so much more diverse in asking for changes to be made to improve our criminal justice system. It's just not talk, talk, talk, talk, talk anymore. It's actually hey, discussion, action. And so that's been so impressive to see, and so impressive to see from elected officials. People have been appointed, who have just been great at saying how can I help this issue? Or this problem be resolved? There might have been some negatives outside of our building, but there have been a lot of positives inside of the building. A lot.TB: Can you share some difficult decisions you've had to make as chief judge, and how you came to your decision in a year of many difficult decisions?JB: This might be a surprise. The toughest decision, or decisions, I've made is to remain quiet or silent after the death of George Floyd, and to remain silent during social unrest. And I think those are two of the toughest ones, when you see so many folks speaking out in support, and speaking out about things they would like to see happen. And I think it was important for me in order to have a fair trial, that nothing I say or do would be a distraction, and nothing from our court system as far as a statement, that there not be a distraction. And there were many folks who wanted a statement made. And I think it was important for us to remain neutral. That's our job.TB:  Can you talk about why that was a difficult decision for you?JB: Because you see so much pain from folks in and you see a community burning, and you see frustration, and you see anger. And that anger is at the justice system. The anger is not just with the police. I mean people don't enter our courthouse and say I only just trust the police. I'm only angry at the police. No, they're angry at all of us. And it was hard not to be able to address that. And difficult not being able to talk about some of the things that I think were important.But it was very important that the trials that we're having – and ethically there's certain things judges can't say but it's just important that that process be on that's fair.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

President & CEO of Double Forte Lee Caraher shares how simplicity and transparency have built love and loyalty for her agency amongst clients and employees alike. The agency is built to solve business problems through communications and they make sure every assignment stays true to that. After George Floyd's murder last summer, she and her colleagues brought the same focus and tenacity to tackling their DE&I problem.  Listen and learn how they worked together to tackle this business problem.

The Judge has spoken. A 22 and ½ year sentence. Parole eligibility in ⅔ of the sentence. Was justice for George Floyd served? Was this really a fair outcome for a helpless and restrained Black Man being murdered by the Police, as America watched and the world cried for justice? As Derek Chauvin stood with his hands in his pockets, defiantly and brazenly glaring directly into the camera, deaf to all the bystanders screaming for him to stop?   For Dr. Venus, the answer is no, justice wasn't served. However, it's not because of the sentence. It's about the fact that until we hold police truly accountable and see reform, it's truly an empty gesture. However, to understand this and see how real change can come about, we must understand how Whiteness protects itself and how systemic racism is very much here and alive today. Let's talk about it.   Key Takeaways: [3:49] Dr. Venus discusses how the public murder of George Floyd broke her brain and changed her forever. Not because she didn't know history or cultural trauma, she is educated and deeply rooted in an understanding of it. But, because of how confident and brazenly Derek Chauvin was in taking a Black life, with spectators, in the middle of the day. [6:22] Seeing this changed Dr. Venus in a way that couldn't and wouldn't let her go back to business as usual. How could a police officer, who is supposed to serve and protect his citizens, put his knee on the neck of a man for over 9 minutes with such cavalierness, looking into the camera as people screamed for him to stop? [8:50] The world marched in protest, from Antarctica to Iceland. Dr. Venus felt as though real change had been made when she saw White women putting their bodies in front of Black Men and Women to protect them. Then, the election happened and she found out 56% of White women voted for Trump. Her feeling of defeat came less from it being about Trump and more from realizing that things hadn't changed as much as she expected and that to win at all, we needed to create our own structures and make our money in the game of capitalism. [9:04] After George Floyd, Dr. Venus shifted her content away from marketing and more towards police reform and social change. She also took her focus away from the impact of White Supremacy on Black Men and Women, and the effect it had on society and started looking at it from their point of view. Finally, it made sense why Derek Chauvin could be so brazen. He has had law and privilege on his side and has had 19 prior examples that the law would back him up. It was just another example of systemic racism protecting its own. [15:06] Dr. Venus discusses the effect of slavery throughout her bloodline. She has been the first one to go to high school, let alone college. The murder of George Floyd clearly showed us that the impact and institutions of White Supremacy, an ideology rooted in positioning yourself as superior, is still very much clearly at play. [17:57] Dr. Venus talks about the Confederate Bible, where it was set up to create a level of belief and passion behind a group of people relating to themselves as God. They even accounted for history in a way that said slavery was a good thing for Black Men and Women, and remember history in a way that serves their narrative. It's important to read this and learn about it because you can't win unless you know what your opponent believes. [23:03] Dr. Venus doesn't think justice was served for George Floyd. Not because of the sentence, but because we haven't dealt with how we are going to turn it around and create our own system. She is a patriot and loves America, and has even served in the military, and will join you in the marches, but Dr. Venus knows that we need to play at their level or higher in their own game — capitalism. [25:02] This is why Dr. Venus is building her own digital platform, so we have our own outlets to have conversations rooted in honesty and truth without getting barred or trolled. As Black Women have a buying power of $3.8 trillion, we don't need White money and until we know that and create our own, we will always be enslaved. [28:58] When we take our buying power and use it in a way that is for us and buy us, they lose money. They depend on us to buy from them and don't take us seriously so that we can really change things. [30:11] We are awake and aware now, or at least Dr. Venus is. It's not about needing and hoping for favoritism or a break, it's about learning to fund a system ourselves that can have a lasting change for generations to come. Let's capitalize on capitalism and systemically make our own money. [33:52] For Dr. Venus, it's about putting culture in the cloud and making money from what you know rather than what you do. For you, it can be real estate, business, or anything else. [33:52] We need to stand up and deal with their ugly, and know that our brightness is beyond their ugly.   Quotes: “I cried when White women put their bodies on the line for Black bodies.” “Their ugly is not a match for your bigness.” “I'm committed to creating a safe space for Black Women to tell the truth.” “Change is here and we are the change we want to see in the world.”   Mentioned: Dr. Venus Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram  “Hot Mess Millionaire” Amazon Pilot  ”Hot Mess Millionaire” Complete Series (https://www.youtube.com/c/DrVenusOpalReese) Join the conversation! Hot Mess Millionaire Facebook Group Free Gift When You Join The Truth Tribe The Black Woman Millionaire Hot Mess Edition   ATTENTION BLACK WOMEN:   If you want to be THE FIRST to know about ALL things Dr. Venus' tech start-up, fill out the form below so you get access FIRST to updates, launches, and the behind the scene scoop! http://bit.ly/DrVenusAppInfo   RESOURCES Why Derek Chauvin's sentencing for murdering George Floyd is a rarity Black men sentenced to more time for committing the exact same crime as a white person, study finds The Confederate Bible How Southern socialites rewrote Civil War history White Privilege Shapes the United States Anointed for the Altercation — Bishop T.D. Jakes

After George Floyd's murder, police departments across the country faced criticisms of systemic bias and a failure to reflect the communities they patrol and so they worked to enact reforms. But diversifying efforts have been underway for years inside the Miami Police Department. Roughly a quarter of all officers in Miami PD are Black, which is a much greater percentage than the city's overall Black population. Over the past year, Black officers have been pushing for even more reform within the department, from the top down. One of those officers is Sergeant Stanley Jean-Poix, President of the Miami Community Police Benevolent Association, the second oldest Black police union in the country. Jean-Poix joined the force over 20 years ago with the goal of enacting change from within the department. He led a two-year fight against the former police chief Jorge Colina, alleging he oversaw a department that treated Black officers unfairly, and let racist cops slide. Colina resigned last year.But can true change come from the inside? James Valsaint, a Miami-based artist and activist, doesn't think so. Valsaint was born in Little Haiti, one of the neighborhoods that Sgt. Jean-Poix patrols. His interactions with the police growing up were not positive, whether the officer was Black or white. Valsaint got active following the killing of Trayvon Martin; he joined the Dream Defenders, who fought against Florida's Stand Your Ground law, and later helped to organize actions in Miami following George Floyd's murder. For Valsaint, defunding the police is just the first step on the long march to police abolition.For these two men from Miami, the goal of reducing police violence against Black Americans is shared, but they see different paths forward. Trymaine sits down with Sgt. Jean-Poix and Valsaint for a frank and challenging conversation on the progress and limitations of police reform.For a transcript, please visit https://www.msnbc.com/intoamerica. Thoughts? Feedback? Story ideas? Write to us at intoamerica@nbcuni.comFurther Reading and Listening: A look at the racial makeup of law enforcement agencies in South FloridaMiami Black police association claims racism in department 

"Corporations can be a force for good – and they can also be very successful," says Ken Chenault, chair of investment firm General Catalyst and former longtime CEO of American Express. During the past year, Ken has been an outspoken advocate for business leaders to actively engage in societal matters. After George Floyd's death, he and Merck CEO Ken Frazier launched OneTen, a coalition to create 1 million jobs for Black Americans that now includes major brands from IBM to Nike to Walmart. Chenault has pushed corporate chiefs to use their leverage to protect voting rights, and he's come out with a platform for Responsible Innovation that puts what he calls “social due diligence” alongside financial due diligence. Standing up for what's right, Ken says, fuels long-term success: "The most important thing is the quest for truth, character, and values."Read a transcript of this interview at: mastersofscale.comSubscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter at http://eepurl.com/dlirtX

"Corporations can be a force for good – and they can also be very successful," says Ken Chenault, chair of investment firm General Catalyst and former longtime CEO of American Express. During the past year, Ken has been an outspoken advocate for business leaders to actively engage in societal matters. After George Floyd's death, he and Merck CEO Ken Frazier launched OneTen, a coalition to create 1 million jobs for Black Americans that now includes major brands from IBM to Nike to Walmart. Chenault has pushed corporate chiefs to use their leverage to protect voting rights, and he's come out with a platform for Responsible Innovation that puts what he calls “social due diligence” alongside financial due diligence. Standing up for what's right, Ken says, fuels long-term success: "The most important thing is the quest for truth, character, and values."

This week, a year since the death of George Floyd and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, writers and artists reflect on the impact of those events. After George Floyd's death, thousands of people took to the streets calling for change and an end to systemic racism. US Politician and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams has been working to bring about that change. She's also an acclaimed author who has written her first political thriller, While Justice Sleeps. Reflecting on events of the last year, Stacey Abrams tells Sherri Jackson how storytelling is the common thread through her work and a powerful tool in politics. During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, statues representing slavery and oppression were torn down and murals started going up in the US and all over the world. From the Kibera settlement in Nairobi, Kenya and the highways of Sao Paulo, Brazil, we hear why street artists near and far from the States have taken up the cause of Black Lives Matter and made it their own. Hailing from Ferguson, Missouri, Grammy award winning jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold ‘s powerful ‘MB Lament' responded to the 2014 death of Michael Brown in his home town. In the wake of George Floyd's death, Keyon Harrold has spoken out against racial injustice and turned to music to process trauma and pay tribute. Keyon speaks to Sherri about using jazz as a language when words fail him. And how do we talk about racism and anti-racism to children? Jason Reynolds, poet, author and the US National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, explains how he tackles difficult subjects through his writing for teenagers. Presented by Sherri Jackson (Photo: Kenyan mural artist Allan Mwangi, also known as Mr.detail.seven, paints a graffiti mural in the Kibera settlement in Nairobi, Kenya. Credit: GORDWIN ODHIAMBO/AFP via Getty Images)

Here's your morning news: The LA City Council has approved plans for how to spend more than $56 million it diverted from the LAPD; After George Floyd's murder, a series of major police reforms fizzled in Sacramento last year, including Senate Bill 2, the Kenneth Ross Jr. Police Decertification Act of 2021. It would empower a state commission to investigate officers, fire them, and even prevent them from going to another department, and more This program is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people. Support the show: https://support.laist.com/laistnav

The public expression of objection — otherwise known as a protest — is woven into the very fabric of Portland’s culture.After George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis in May of 2020, Portlanders took to the streets every day for weeks that stretched into months, capturing the nation’s attention even during a pandemic.Shortly after Derrick Chauvin was convicted of the murder, George’s brother Rodney Floyd acknowledged the Portland protests for keeping the issue of racial injustice in the national consciousness.“I would like to thank all the advocates, the activists,” said Rodney Floyd. “I’d like to thank the people who stayed in these streets, marching, night and day. People in Portland stayed in the streets for 83 days, I think I may be wrong, but thankful for everyone who stayed out there, making a statement for us and carrying us during our dark days.”Join your host Sean Reynolds, owner of Summit Properties NW and Reynolds & Kline Appraisal as he takes a look at this developing topic.Support the show (https://buymeacoff.ee/seattlepodcast)

After George Floyd's murder, Matt Fogal, the D.A. in Chambersburg, Pa. wrote "Black Lives Matter. Period. Full Stop". His political party didn't like it and tried to punish him. But the former military vet, shrugged it off and kept fighting.

Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop TODAY'S HEADLINES: For the first time last night, and just short of his hundredth day in office, President Joe Biden addressed a joint session of Congress. He said America is on the move again, and back to stay – got it, Jack? Meanwhile, three new studies reveal the plague of environmental racism. Lung-damaging air pollution harms Black Americans at rates more than twenty percent above the average. And lastly, the feds raided the home and office of Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. The warrant was apparently held up until Merrick Garland became Attorney General. THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW: It’s a wonk’s delight. The Biden administration yesterday detailed a $1.8 trillion policy plan to expand access to education, reduce the cost of child care and support women in the work force, according to the New York Times. The American Families Plan, as the White House calls it, includes $1 trillion in new spending and $800 billion in tax credits, much of which is aimed at expanding access to education and child care. The package includes financing for universal prekindergarten, a federal paid leave program, efforts to make child care more affordable, free community college for all, aid for students at colleges that historically serve nonwhite communities, expanded subsidies under the Affordable Care Act and an extension of new federal efforts to fight poverty. It’s to be financed by additional taxes on high earners. Biden presented the details to a joint session of Congress last night. Biden spoke to a House chamber that was sparsely populated but fully masked. He listed some accomplishments from his first hundred days, including progress against the pandemic and campaigns against hunger, opioid addiction, and child poverty. He laid out what his plans could yet accomplish, such as creating jobs to replace hazardous lead pipes and providing child and elder care for hundreds of thousands of families. And he pushed back against skepticism that democracies can’t compete against autocracies in the twenty first century, by showing what government can do to meet people’s needs. He praised labor unions and criticized greedy CEOs. Biden said, "trickle down economics has never worked, and it’s time to grow the economy from the bottom and the middle out." Air Pollution Disproportionately Harms POC Racism is in the air we breathe. Nearly every source of the nation’s most pervasive and deadly air pollutant disproportionately affects Americans of color, regardless of their location or income level, the Washington Post reports. The news comes from a study published yesterday in the journal Science Advances, authored by researchers from five universities. The analysis of fine-particle matter, which includes soot, shows how decisions made decades ago about where to build highways and industrial plants continue to harm the health of Black, Latino and Asian Americans today. The particles studied have diameters of no more than two point five micrometers – one-thirtieth the width of a human hair – and can become embedded in the lungs. Known as Particulate Matter Two Point Five, they account for up to two hundred thousand premature US deaths each year. The Post says the new paper, coupled with two other analyses also released yesterday, bolsters the argument that environmental advocates have made for years that Black, Latino, Asian and Native Americans bear a heavier burden. And this growing body of research is showing the full scope of the problem. Joshua Apte, one of the authors, said, "The deck is stacked against people of color, for almost every emission source." The study found that Black people are exposed to twenty one percent more fine-particle pollution compared to average Americans, the Post reports. Exposure was eighteen percent greater for Asian Americans and eleven percent more for Hispanics. White Americans, by contrast, have eight percent less pollution exposure than the average. This is yet another urgent reason the country needs a Green New Deal. Feds Search Giuliani's Home, Office This isn’t how you want to wake up on a weekday. The New York Times reports that federal investigators in Manhattan executed search warrants early yesterday at the home and office of Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who became Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, stepping up a criminal investigation into Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine. The investigators seized Giuliani’s electronic devices and searched his Madison Avenue apartment and his Park Avenue office at about 6 am.Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, called the searches unnecessary, according to the Times. Costello said, "What they did today was legal thuggery." FBI agents on yesterday morning also executed a search warrant at the Washington-area home of Victoria Toensing, a lawyer close to Giuliani who had dealings with several Ukrainians involved in seeking negative information on the Bidens. Toensing, a former federal prosecutor and senior Justice Department official, has also represented Dmitry Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch under indictment in the United States whose help Giuliani sought. The federal authorities have focused on whether Giuliani illegally lobbied the Trump administration in 2019 on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs, who were helping Giuliani search for damaging information on Trump’s political rivals, including Joe Biden. The Times reports that the US attorney’s office in Manhattan and the FBI had sought for months to secure search warrants for Giuliani’s phones and electronic devices. Under Trump, political appointees in the Justice Department repeatedly sought to block such a warrant. After Merrick Garland was confirmed as Biden’s attorney general, the Justice Department lifted its objection to the search. Funny how that works. AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES: The city of Alameda, California yesterday identified three police officers who were placed on administrative leave in connection to the death of twenty six-year-old Mario Gonzalez, the San-Jose Mercury News reports. The officers are James Fisher, Cameron Leahy and Eric McKinley. Body camera footage shows officers pinned Gonzalez on the ground for about five minutes, attempting to arrest him. Gonzalez’s family says the footage shows the officers murdered him. After George Floyd, who can deny their outrage? The Guardian reports crematoriums in Delhi have become so overloaded by Covid-19 deaths that they are being forced to build makeshift funeral pyres on spare patches of land. And the BBC reports that police in India are prosecuting a man who used Twitter to try to find oxygen for his dying grandfather. Officers in Uttar Pradesh state charged Shashank Yadav with spreading a rumour over oxygen shortages. That’s one way to deal with the problem. Connecticut will no longer allow a religious exemption from childhood immunization requirements for schools, colleges and day care facilities, the Associated Press reports. It becomes the sixth state to end that policy, after California, New York, West Virginia, Mississippi and Maine. More than two thousand opponents rallied outside the state Capitol building, arguing the legislation infringes on their religious liberties and parental rights. Ah yes, the god-given right to let your children contract preventable illnesses, and infect others... Workers trying to block the sale of a Renault car parts factory held seven managers against their will for twelve hours in the latest boss-napping to hit French industry, the Guardian reports. A union rep said the union had decided to release the managers because, " they still didn’t want to have a dialogue." Well, at least they tried. APRIL 29, 2021 - AM QUICKIE HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner WRITER - Corey Pein PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn

P.J. Hill is a graduate of North Community High School, played basketball for Ohio State University and continued to play professionally for close to a decade afterward.Today P.J. works as a financial advisor, owns a real-estate company, and coaches basketball. He is committed to dismantling racism in his community and recently helped organize the “Take the Knee” rally and the “10K March.” P.J. serves on the Juxtaposition Arts board of directors as their treasurer and as a finance committee member.After George Floyd's murder in May 2020, P.J. was inspired to step up and help his community demand change. He talks with Freddie Bell and Chantel Sings today.

Brenda Gayle Plummer, Ph.D., professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and foundational scholar in the realm of race and international relations, joins the Council to discuss the deep global roots of today's U.S. movements for social justice. After George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota protests for racial justice erupted around the world. The words “I can't breathe” appeared on protest signs in cities from Berlin to Seoul. On this episode, we ask: what made these protests go global so immediately? How has the movement for civil rights always been a global movement?Special thanks to this episode's partners: Greater Hartford Links Chapter, Central Connecticut State University Political Science Department, African American Studies, Africana Center, and International Studies program.Read Dr. Plummer's article, Civil Rights Has Always Been a Global Movement, in Foreign Affairs magazine.For more visit: www.ctwac.org/podcastsFollow us @ctwac on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Check out our website for upcoming programs and events.Be sure to like and subscribe to State of the World podcast and share new episodes with friends, family and colleagues! See you next week.

On the matter of social justice and spirituality, Lettie Sullivan is a force and a voice of experience. After George Floyd's murder, she offered space for community lament and to seek the strength to be resilient. Her offer went viral, expanding her circle of connection one hundredfold.  As a Priestess of the Sacred Arts and the Creatrix of the Goddess Ministry, Lettie's mission is to anchor energetic activism centered in Love, Divine Feminine wisdom, metaphysical principles and cosmic time cycles. As Lettie says, now the real work begins to create a renaissance in cultural intelligence and new cultural forms. Join the Pastor and Priestess as they engage Lettie in a conversation about sacred activism that is energized to move from the invisible to the visible.  And be guided in an activation prayer from Lettie at the end of the episode.

After George Floyd was killed the world watched, and the world reacted. Part of that reaction was a shift in how some people talk about racism. MPR News reporter Brandt Williams talks with his cousin about the killing of George Floyd, and how its capture on video made it impossible to look the other way. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, RSS or the podcast platform of your choice.

Distracted driving kills about 9 people every day in the US. We've tried doing something about this phenomenon. Unfortunately, providing more information does not seem to be working. Despite all of the public service announcements, the statistics continue to follow a discouraging trend. Distracted worship is also on the rise in 2020. For anyone sensitive to the spiritual needs that a worship service is designed to meet, attempting to worship from home has been completely inadequate. Then, the numerous restrictions placed upon churches created additional divisions. After George Floyd and the BLM riots, we have seen various churches take radically different views regarding cultural issues. All of this adds up to a confusing time for most of us. Even if you are trying to stay out of the fray, you wind up with a very distracted mind when you show up Sunday morning. What does it take to snap back into focus? Revelation may provide just the answer that you need. Keep in mind the context of the original audience. The seven churches in Asia Minor received direct address in https://ref.ly/logosref/Bible.Re2-3 (Rev 2-3). Already, late in the first century, most of these churches had compromised to some degree with the culture. They were entertaining false religions, especially the imperial cult where the cities competed for Caesar's accolades. In other words, they faced many distractions that pulled them away from glorifying God. Because we are fascinated by things that are new or unique, we are prone to transfer our worship to whatever captures our attention in the moment. That initial motion toward worship is typically unthinking. You cannot worship with a divided mind and heart. Devote your minds and hearts to worship the returning Lord because He has revealed Himself to be wholly trustworthy. Read https://ref.ly/logosref/Bible.Re22.6-9 (Revelation 22:6-9) › The first exhortation we receive is to...  Keep  the Prophecy of Revelation (6-7)John emphasizes the authenticity of Revelation. The angel (6), Jesus (7), and John (8) testify to the “trustworthy and true” revelation found in this book (cf. https://ref.ly/logosref/Bible.Re21.5 (Rev 21:5)). What causes the words of Revelation to be “trustworthy and true” is that they come from the source of truth. Through this angel, God has revealed “what must soon take place” to his servants. John received the revelation and faithfully passed it on to the Church.  In the introduction to our series, we talked about how this idea of events taking place soon alludes to Daniel's prophecy of events that would take place in the latter days (https://ref.ly/logosref/Bible.Da2.28-29 (Dan 2:28-29), https://ref.ly/logosref/Bible.Da2.45 (45)). He is not suggesting that everything would be fulfilled right away, but that the events portrayed in these visions would begin to be fulfilled right away. Throughout history persecution paces church growth. These latter day events would take place “soon” even as Jesus is returning “soon”. Clearly, Jesus has not returned in the sense of bringing final judgment, but there were immediate implications for the original audience just as there are implications for every succeeding generation throughout the age between Christ's first and second coming. Jesus says “I am coming soon” three times in this chapter (https://ref.ly/logosref/Bible.Re22.7 (Rev 22:7), https://ref.ly/logosref/Bible.Re22.12 (12), https://ref.ly/logosref/Bible.Re22.20 (20)). That is the primary theme of this section. The word “Advent” simply means “Arrival/Appearing.” It is used in reference to Christ's birth and return. John concludes with this theme of hope, encouraging the perseverance of the saints. We frequently find thematic bookends in Scripture. We find the phrase “must soon take place” in https://ref.ly/logosref/Bible.Re1.1 (Rev 1:1). The threefold repetition of “I am coming quickly” alludes to Christ's public

After George Floyd was murdered, there were a lot of protests around the country and we spoke internally about what that meant to us and whether we felt like we should say something publicly about it. Erik felt it was important for the company to make some sort of a statement. But he felt that if he personally came out and said something, it would automatically be making a statement for the company since the Erik J. Olson brand is very intertwined with Array Digital. He knew that making a statement could cause the company to maybe lose some clients so it had a big impact on the business. Erik pitched it to the company, everyone supported it, and he then worked with Briana and Shannon to craft a statement that we put up on social media and on the website. And guess what the response was… Listen in to find out

Join Health Affairs Insider.After George Floyd's killing, a physician reflects on how the health effects of racism become embodied for her and other Black Americans. Read by author Brooke Cunningham, originally published in November 2020.

Andrew, Fabeku, and Aidan (aka Stacking Skulls) get together to talk about living during this ongoing pandemic. They talk about astrology, racism, colonialism, magic, getting by, and so much more.  Think about how much you've enjoyed the podcast and how many episodes you listened to, and consider if it is time to support the Patreon You can do so here. If you want more of this in your life you can subscribe by RSS , iTunes, Stitcher, or email. Aidan is here.  Fabeku is here.  Andrew is here. Thanks for joining the conversation. Please share the podcast to help us grow and change the world.  Andrew You can book time with Andrew through his site here.  Transcript is below.  Andrew: Hey, folks. Welcome to another episode of The Hermit's Lamp Podcast. At the time of this recording, it is, basically, the end of August, and been on a hiatus since the earth of spring from podcasting. Just too busy with dealing with all of the chaos of COVID and all of that chaos and everything else. But, I was thinking that the last episode that I did with Stacking Skulls was called WTF, and I think that the title for this one is probably WTF Still? Because, here we are so many months out from what's going on, and yet still life is chaotic and uncertain, and, really, especially for folks in America, way worse in some ways than it was back then. I don't think that we are still cruising around the idea that it might be, "Yeah, three weeks of lockdown, maybe a little bit longer," and now we're in the phase of, "Is there an end? When's the end? How does an end of this come together?" And, all that wear and tear that's kicked around. So, anyways, if you don't know Stacking Skulls, well, number one, you're in for a treat. There's a whole bunch of episodes of us clowning around together. But, I'm here with Fabeku and Aidan, and we're just going to check in as my fall relaunch of the podcast happens. So, yeah, who wants to go first, what's going on? How's the last five months been?  Aidan: The last five months have been ridiculous. Andrew: Yeah.  Aidan: It's been crazy busy, partially. We were pointed at doing... When I say we in this context, that's me and my wife... doing another class but with COVID and everybody being sent home, we realized that that didn't make any sense to try and put anything out that was a larger money thing. Because, it seemed like it was quite possible we weren't going to have much money and we didn't really feel great about trying to get 300 bucks or something out of people at that moment in time, because, really, we couldn't tell how things were going. So, we changed gears back to my second book, and so I've been rapidly finishing that and then learning InDesign to put it all together and get it printed. So, that's launched as an e-book now and in 10 days, 9 days, something like that, the print books start landing on people's doorsteps. Andrew: Nice. Aidan: It's overall just been weird. We're in one of the states that are... our governor has always taken this thing really seriously. So, we didn't get hit nearly as hard as most other places with the exception of some places on the reservation got hit really bad. So, we've been in lockdown way before a lot of places that didn't get hit as hard have been. We're now at the place that it's masks if you are outside of your home, period. So, I haven't really been on the bike for a while, because it is not fun to go riding around on that. We're super supportive of it. Because, it's just not being one of the people that is necessarily at as much risk as other people are, though... obviously, everybody can get it and can get messed up by it. You certainly don't want to be involved in spreading the shit.  Andrew: For sure.  Aidan: So, it's been crazy on that sense, but at the same time, we're homebodies anyway, and it's us at home with the animals. So, we've shifted a few things, but they've not been great. Not been huge for us. Then yeah, just doing book promo stuff and then launched the first episode of my podcast. But other than that, it's just been working on the book, working on getting the book out there, working on understanding InDesign. Andrew: It's not at all a small task to do a thing like that, right? Aidan: Yeah, it's interesting. I'm glad I know how to do it because it sets me up to do more. So, I'll be doing the e-book of Six Ways next and then I've already got part of the third book going. So, it's nice because it allows me to take the reins for that whole project now, but it is a lot of work. Keeping busy with that. Chickens, lots of chickens.  Andrew: Yum, yum. I mean, wonderful. Aidan: I don't eat them but I yum yum for their eggs. Andrew: How about you Fabeku? Fabeku: Yes, same. It's been crazy, like everybody. I think the last time I left the house was end of February, maybe first couple days of March. Have not been out of the house since then. Like Aidan, I don't go out of the house much anyway. But, this many months has been a strange thing. Yeah, I've been busy with a ton of stuff too. I just finished a book with some writing and art and some shit like that, that's going to be published by Revelore in October. [inaudible], so that's a cool thing. It was weird for a while. The first few months, I had a hell of a time doing art. I could do some stuff for clients or collectors or whatever but my own stuff is just, "What the fuck am I doing?" It was awhile that I didn't do any art which is weird for me. So, finally, back at that which is good. I feel like that was sanity preserving kind of things. Yeah, excited about the book, excited about the couple of books after that, that I'm finally back in motion after stalling out for a while and just busy with a ton of people stuff and trying to help people manage this fuckery that is 2020 at this point. Yeah, it's been a pretty high bandwidth task moment. Yeah, I don't know. It's a strange time in so many ways. In so many ways. Andrew: Yeah, I feel like this hit, probably around the time we were doing the last episode, things were slow-ish for me, and I was just trying to figure out what was going on and all that kind of stuff. Then, just things got super busy between the store and client work and suddenly having two kids that I'm solo parenting half the time. Not in school, all that kind of stuff. All of a sudden, it's just, wow, I'm just working as a parent or working as my regular job continuously and all the time. That was just an intense run all the way through until, really, maybe two weeks ago or three weeks ago, when I... here in Toronto, things went pretty good. We had a lot of stuff going on, but we're down to maybe 20 new cases a day, maybe less. We've had some single digits and restaurants are open and a lot of stuff. Gyms are open, with social distancing, of course, but it hasn't brought about a big spike in anything.  So, cautiously optimistic about it. Have been, and then, of course, the next big question is, school starts next month, and it's, what's going to go on with that and so on. Right? So, it's just trying to have a wrangle all that stuff with COVID. Then, I think, the other big thing that... this happened in this time since we last talked, right, was George Floyd's death. Right?  Aidan: Absolutely.  Andrew: The resurgence of what, really, should be a continuous thing of, how do we fix these racial divides and inequities and all this stuff. It's definitely a thing that's taken up a chunk of my attention as well in terms of trying to stay attentive to it, right. To not just drift back into day-to-day life, and whatever. Because, that's been the history of it, right? It erupts into the media and into our consciousness because there's some horrible thing that happens. Then, from a broader perspective, it dissipates, right? It doesn't build momentum. So, yeah, I would say I'm hopeful that it's going to change at this point. I have no idea, right. But, I think that there, definitely, felt like there's a different quality to what's been going on around that stuff, that I have some hope that it will make bigger changes. Yeah. Aidan: Yeah, that's been a huge thing too, obviously. And, it's interesting because it's even where you get stuff that's... I have folks in my family that still don't perceive what the issue is, you know? Which is weird to me on a personal level because I have, in my immediate, immediate-immediate family, people of color. So, you don't even want to take their word for what they're experiencing, even though they are technically your family, right? You're so set in your belief structure here that you can't see that or can't see the difference or the shifts between it. There's folks in my family that, again, have children that are children of color, that still don't see it. It's, really? How are you that unaware? How do you maintain that? That's what, I guess, I don't understand. I've never been able to maintain that. I didn't start with it, I think, and that's why. But, it's been good to see the attention. So, the reasons behind why it needs to be there are horrible, but yeah, I don't know.  Then, for us in the US, to me, there's like an almost psychotic nature to the United States right now. Where the whole discourse is so stratified and so divisive and so peculiar in where people can and will go. It's really, you don't see that in yourself or you don't see that in the people that you're supporting? How do you pull that off? I just don't get it. Fabeku: Its been interesting for me, my mother is in her 80s and grew up in a little teeny tiny, literally, a shack in the hills of Kentucky. After George Floyd was killed, every single time I've talked to her, that's almost all she's talked about, and how she realizes, at this stage of the game, that she's spent 80 something years oblivious to this shit, and not paying attention and not listening to people, and having the privilege to not pay attention to it because it didn't affect her. And, she's trying to have conversations with her sisters and her brothers, almost all of whom are completely oblivious to it and entirely entrenched in, what's the big fucking deal, kind of thing. I It's interesting to me, the way it's shaken things, loosened her in a way that I've never seen before, right? It's not that we didn't have conversations about it before but, I don't know, I don't think she got it. As opposed to her sisters and brothers, will actively push against it. It was never that so much, it was just, well, yeah, that's really bad. But now, I mean, we have hours and hours of conversations of just, how the fuck have I not paid attention to this? How the fuck if I lived my entire life not understanding how, and completely, fucked things are for people that aren't white in this country? It's been an interesting thing to see. I think she's hopeful that her sisters and brothers will wake up and get it. I don't think they will. They're about as deeply entrenched in that kind of bullshit as it gets. But, yeah, it's been interesting to listen to my mother, of all people, have long conversations about this. When John Lewis passed, she was talking about, how did I never really pay attention to who this man was? How did I not know his life and his legacy and his history? Yeah, it's been an interesting come to Jesus moment, in some ways for her. Andrew: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It's funny, when I started this podcast many years ago, the first thing I did was a series of interviews on why some people change and why some people don't, right. I talked to people [inaudible] they're right there, the early episodes still existent. Should be on iTunes, and whatever I talk to. That time I was mostly tarot focused so I've talked to a bunch of tarot readers about it. It's, nobody's got an answer for that, right. I think that it's such a significant question now, right. Can we understand how to make change in society? I think that we're seeing a lot of stuff around that, that the answer is, maybe it doesn't. Maybe it can't be polite, maybe it can't be quiet, maybe it can't be whatever, right? Because, I see the things that make change, and the quiet, polite route is predominantly a route of quiet and polite with money and power behind it, right? You know? Aidan: Oh, yeah. You get to be very quiet and polite if you have lots of privilege. Andrew: Right? But also, thinking about the people who follow Stalking Skulls. They're our groupies, right? They are those people who are part of our magical communities, right? I think that it's such a... number one, if we want to work magic, we have to try our best to see the world as it is, right? That means, from my point of view, seeing racism and sexism, and all the different things that are going on, right, and engaging with that, right. I think that it's not that you can't do magic without being aware of lots of things, but I think that the more aware we are, the more it gives us capacity to see and make change both in ourselves, and depending on what's going on in the world too, or see where change might be able to happen.  Aidan: Yeah, I think that it's very interesting on the magic side, because I agree with you totally. The more aware you are of how things are unfolding or how things can unfold or how things... for me, my own tendencies to, where will I not consider change? Because, there are places that I really don't want to do that, like quitting coffee, which I did. Andrew: What? Aidan: Because, my wife finally said, I don't think this is working well for you, even though you've been doing it for 40-something years so you should drop all of the caffeine. I, totally, entrenched for several hours and then went, Okay, I know that this is not good. I said, I need some space to go and think about this, and went, okay, let's examine myself and go, oh, yeah, this is typical junkie behavior. It's the same as any other addiction I've dealt with, so I'm not really down with that. So, something's got to change. But, if I didn't have the ability to go, okay, I'm being given information of everyone outside of me that I don't like. I've been given a suggestion that I don't like.  Yes, this is an entirely personal and minor one, but if I can't actually go, okay, this is also from somebody that I believe is serious and has intelligence. So maybe, I should take some time and figure out why I don't want to hear it, let alone consider it. It's an interesting thing. I think that's critical in magic. I think it's critical in life, but we can get away with it without doing it. It's just not necessarily the best way, I don't think. Andrew: Yeah, I don't even know what else to say about this. I'm just, "Fuck!" I think that's part of what's tough about the racial issue. It's like, "Man." I think that there are plenty of places to go look up what you could do, right? You know I mean? Fabeku: Absolutely.  Andrew: It's not that I [crosstalk] specific things or I'm not taking actions around it, right. But, I think that this moment where the scope of COVID, the scope of these issues is so big, so daunting, right? Yeah, it's [inaudible] this space where it's [inaudible], so big so much. It's, yeah, staring at that abyss, right, and know that it's staring back at you and then start walking into it, right. But, nonetheless, it's interesting. It's interesting times, for sure.  Fabeku: Yeah. I think, for me, a lot of the magic, personally, has been aimed at either expanding or maintaining that capacity, right? Because, I think that one of the things that's easy to do when we're looking at something daunting, whether it's the racial issues or the virus stuff or personal, whatever it is, you just shut down, numb out, turn off. Obviously, I think, for the people that have the privilege to be able to do that, that's the thing a lot of people do. The reality is, there's a ton of people that never have that option, right? Because, they're so fucked, they just can't say, "Well, this is too big. I'm going to watch Netflix for a few hours and not give a fuck."  I think that I've really been looking at that capacity thing. How do you expand the capacity enough to keep your eye on the abyss? To keep walking forward, to not tune out. To not say, well, somebody else will handle it, because, listen, we've done that shift for too long, and, obviously, it's failed in every possible fucking way. Yeah. Yeah, capacity seems to be a big thing right now.  Andrew: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, I think it's huge, right. I think that it's a piece that I learned mostly from you, right, actually. I had some very clumsy ideas around it, and your work clarified it. It gave me a real focus. It's, yeah, that's what I've been trying to get at, but I couldn't quite see it, right? I think that working to increase capacity, in whatever way you want to work on it, magically and otherwise, I think is crucial, right? I mean, in my parenting, there are definitely times when it's, all right, somebody, somewhere give me some more capacity right now because I am overwhelmed by this business. I think that working to call that in and expand that and stretch that and so on is super, super important, right? Aidan: It's interesting. I think, three days ago, we hit a place, my wife and I, where we went, Okay, we're not actually doing things the way that we know work well for us. So, how do we get that space back? Because, we lived in a cabin with no power or anything for a couple years, and we were really looking at that time, and going, there's a way that we were very well in that space. Anyway, as a result of this... this ties into your capacity thing for BQ, we decided that once we're both awake in the morning and ready to go, we turn on our cell phones, and we turn on the wifi, and we do, maybe, an hour of stuff that needs to happen through those tools. Then, we turn them all the way off, we turn off the wifi, we unplug the router, we turn off our cell phones all the way. We might have some stuff stored on our computer that we downloaded that we need to work on or whatever, but that's it for being connected.  Then, usually, we'll do that again in the afternoon and try and be done with that by about six. This is sharing not... primarily, because it's been incredible for us for just these last few days. So, it's not as much as suggestion as something to think about if people are super overwhelmed, because the 24-hour cycle has become just crushing in a way right now. But, we had a weird day. The first day was really weird. Like, okay, well, what do you do if we're not streaming Netflix for the last three hours of the day? Well, then I'm playing guitar for the last three hours of the day. One of these things is good for me, one of these things is at best neutral, right. The same thing during the day, that the amount of time that we're actually spending talking and working on our plans and thinking about how we do stuff together, is huge. It's probably an 80% increase in the last few days. Instead of the magical overt side of building capacity, which, I'm with you, I learned from Fabeku.  But, there's also the really base level of just going, can you step out of all of the noise and then check in to get what you need. It causes you to weed your sources out, figure out what do you need to see, what do you need to know, and if your time is limited to that and you're not going in and out of it all day, at least, for us, it's been an immense change that I don't see going back to that at all. It's, no, two hours of fucking net and cell phone access is more than planning for us. Everybody's going to be in a different situation. Fabeku: Yeah, this summer, my partner and I have been doing more leisure, and more, just, super-leisure. I've been lucky to be able to take a bit of time off and so on. So, we went to this place and it's a spa place and spent the second day there, literally, just either in the pool, on a lounger beside the pool or eating, having lunch or whatever. Yeah, no phone, no mess, no whatever. I didn't look at my phone, I think I looked at once through the, almost, two days that I was away. What actually needed to be responded to during that time? Not very much, right? I've been working on trying to institute more of this space, right? And, noticing, I like my movies and my TV, but also, I've been reminding myself that if I'm looking at my phone while I'm watching TV, something is wrong, right, for me?  People do whatever makes you happy, right? But its, either the show's not interesting enough, or I'm not looking at something that I need to address or, whatever, in order to be present with the thing that I'm doing. I think that if something's not engrossing me enough that it's holding my attention, well, then what's going on with that, right? I think about, I've been doing a lot of rock climbing again, and when I go by myself and do boulder, I will, sometimes, keep my phone around and read things on my phone while I'm resting in between climbs because I'm just sitting there by myself. But, last night, I went with my friend who I go with every week, and I left my phone in my locker, which is not a thing I would have done, at some point. I would have brought it with me, I would have checked in every now and then and whatever. But, it's, what am I doing, I've got a person to talk to, I've got an activity that I'm engrossed in. Yeah.  Aidan: Yeah, it's an interesting thing. Yeah, I had a place, I guess, it was about a month and a half ago which is interesting because, again, my life isn't that different, pandemic-wise than it is usually. But, I hit a place where I really couldn't get into any of the movies, any of the TV shows, anything. Even stuff that I like, wasn't happening. That moved me in that direction, and I shifted back towards reading more. Then, one of the weirdest things that we've had and I'm sure that there's lots of people that have studied things like EMF and all of that is, we live in a really quiet house because we're on a couple acres in a really quiet town. But, at the point that the phones are actually turned off and the computers are off and the wifi is off, it feels so quiet. In a way that even if the router is still on, it doesn't. Which makes sense, we know that these things are radiating stuff.  But yeah, it's a crazy difference to go, "That's noticeable. That is really different", and then balancing that out from, we're all old enough to have not had these things. So you go, "How interesting is that? This is really the first big chunk of my life, probably, felt like this, and what did I do? I played music, I read books, I talked to the people who around me, I engaged in a very different way." It's not to say I want to throw all that stuff away, but, definitely, it's opened my eyes to finding its place, rather than just letting it find its place in my life, I want to be the one that decides what its place is. Andrew: Yeah, I think it's a really good way to put it, right? Aidan: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Andrew: So, now we all need to do a group working to break the internet's hold on us. It's an exorcism of sorts. Aidan: I don't if we're the ones who need it from what I see. Andrew: Wow. Did you do any magic around quitting coffee or did you just stop?  Aidan: No, my wife is our house apothecarist and herbalist so she treated it as a situation that could be dealt with herbs and using them in a homeopathic way. Not really using homeopathic medicines, but using some tinctures that she'd made. So, she's having me check-in with her every couple hours, "Tell me what's going on? How's your head? How's your... How's this, how's that?" Because, my tonsils were going off a little bit. I definitely detoxed like a crazy person for the first five days. That's always one of those signs. I had that same experience when we quit... when we went paleo, and we dropped all processed foods and all the grains and stuff. This is the total TMI, but you can absolutely tell how foul you are inside by how foul your poop is when you quit eating it. Your body goes, "Oh, you're not going to put more in, okay, well have this because we don't want it anymore."  Andrew: Get rid of all of it.  Aidan: Get rid of all of it, because oh, that's nasty. So, I think that now that my liver and all of that have had some time to back off away from the caffeine, things feel good, but I didn't have to do magic on this one.  Andrew: Mm-hmm (affirmative). [inaudible], Fabeku, is giving up coffee in your future? Fabeku: You know, actually, yeah, I haven't had any caffeine since early May, I think?  Andrew: Wow.  Fabeku: Yeah, for me, I reached a point to, between some body stuff and just the chaos and the anxiety of the moment, I'm, "What fuck am I doing? What the fuck am I doing?" Because, I really think up until then, I was drinking either coffee or yerba mate, then I'd throw in some caffeine pills. I'm, "What the fuck am I doing? This makes no sense."  Andrew: What are you, 16? Fabeku: Exactly. Acting like [inaudible] 7-Eleven to get [manodos] or whatever the fuck those things were. It was absurd. I think, for me... and this is what Aidan was talking about, about not doing things in a way that works. It was like, listen, if I'm structuring my life in a way that this makes sense, then something's wrong because this doesn't make any sense at all. If you're recreationally enjoying coffee, one thing. Chugging caffeine all day and then throwing a fistful of caffeine pills on top of it, it's, listen, something is sideways. So, yeah, for me, it's been, yeah, late April, early March, or early May, since I've had any caffeine at all. Aidan: Oh, very good.  Fabeku: Yeah. Aidan: So, I could blame you, it was you, reaching out through the ethers, right? Fabeku: I want decaffeinated company.  Andrew: Oh, boy. No, I feel so embarrassed about my coffee cup [inaudible]. Fabeku: [inaudible] on.  Andrew: I actually know that it's not great for me. Well, it's part of a bad cycle for me, right? For me, coffee and being too busy, just go hand in hand, right? When I stop being too busy, then I stop hitting the coffee. It's just it rolls back. I remember when I moved into the last location where the fire was, I had quit coffee, I quit sugar, and I was just eating food, right? Making my own food most of the time, and I felt great. Then, I spent a month building a new shop. So, getting up as early as I could, doing construction, going to my old space, seeing clients, going to the new space, working until I felt like I might be a danger to myself, stopping, and I was just doing that. I did that every day for a month, right?  Somewhere in there, one of the people who was helping was, "I've got to take a coffee break and go to Tim Hortons and get something." I was, "Yes, give me coffee." Right? Then, probably, a few days later it was, "Yeah, get me a donut, too." And, that it was that was it, right, because it was just an unreasonable time. Then, been sort of, on and off wrestling with it ever since, right? I think that this time actually... again, going into COVID, I was maybe drinking more coffee when I get up kind of thing, right? But now, I'm having three again and I'm, ah, it's not ideal, but also, this is hangover of the massive pace that I've been running on, and trying to... my life is slower, but I have that velocitization like I've been on the highway, right, where I feel like I've go faster than I do. So, I'm sure everybody's loving it right now, conversation about our caffeine habits.  All right, it's official, Stacking Skills is anti-coffee. Stop it, it's bad for you. Just kidding, do what you want. There's a show called Beastmaster. You guys know that show? It's a super obstacle course kind of thing, right? If you like watching people with ridiculous physical capacities, to ridiculous challenges and climbing over things and swing from stuff, go check it. But, either way, it doesn't matter so much. But, I was noticing that all the people who were on it were working on themselves to get better, physically, and working on themselves as a person and working whatever. You see a lot of that in a lot of places, right. Certainly, if you're on the socials, you'll see that stuff a lot, right. I was, "Maybe, I'm done working to evolve. Maybe this idea of self-improvement is one that I should just jettison." What happens if I don't try and self-improve, but instead, just live and navigate? Right?  Does that mean that I'm going to stop learning new things? Of course, it doesn't, right? Does it mean that I'm going to stop making changes in my life? No. But, if there's this narrative of improvement, or evolution or whatever around these kind of things, I feel like there's a real pitfall in that. I don't buy into too much, but a little every now and then I do. I'm, "It's okay to be done with that. Just be like, this is just my life. I'm just navigating my life now". Is it going to change? Yeah. Is it going to change radically over the next 10 years? Maybe. But, does it have to do with evolution or, that kind of stuff? The perpetual cycle of self-improvement and so on. I don't know that I want anything to do with that, in the way that I see it anyway. Aidan: I go off about this somewhere, recently, I think. It's probably in Weaving Fate, I don't know. Which is about the whole thing about optimal now, right? I think this is totally tied in there. It's optimal nutrition, optimal training, optimal study habits, optimal work habits. I think it doesn't serve anything. It's, well, that's great if you're already... if you're already on Beastmaster and you're trying to win, then yes, you need to be worried about optimization. But, if you're climbing rocks or lifting weights, because you enjoy it, or you think it makes you healthier, then optimization is probably not actually all that relevant to you. It's another marketed obsession.  Andrew: But I feel like I see it in magic, too, right? Aidan: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Andrew: A little while back, I posted something being, "Hey, everybody, don't forget, astrology is completely optional, right? You actually don't need to do anything with astrology to do magic." This isn't a criticism of this direction, right. But, the swing into grimoire magic and the resurgence of astrology as a prominent influence in spiritual and occult communities over the last five years, or whatever it's been. It's always been there, but it's really been ramping up, right, to be a thing that you see on the internet all the time. I think that there's this notion towards optimal and less around magic too, right. Well, I better make sure that this is the most astrologically auspicious moment that I have summoned the angels and the four governors, and the four kings and the [inaudible], and on and on and on, towards stuff.  I think that there's a direct or indirect pressure from things moving in that direction that I think doesn't need to be a part of any of it, right. It's all really deeply optional. Yet, isn't presented as optional, right. There's a drive behind it. Because, one of the things that was really interesting in the comments on that post, right, was people... it's the internet, people want to share their opinions and stuff, which is great, and people jumping in and being, "Well, you're being influenced whether you know it or not. Whether, you're whatever." I'm, "But, are we? Are we really?" I don't know about that. I'm not sure that I believe that big, grand narrative behind all these different things, is universal. You know what I mean? Yeah. I've talked- Aidan: Yeah, I'm with you on that. It's an interesting one. Lonnie and I were talking about this a little bit. My take has been since I got what I thought was... I started getting respectable results from my magic, was to go really hard on those things. The things that are working, I want to get really good with. I think the term I used... it made Lonnie laugh because I said, "If sigils are your jam, be a savage sigil magician, right, and see if you need anything else. Because you may not." I think this is where I totally agree with that is, there's an amassing of classically, historically relevant information that is fabulous, if that's what you're into. But, there's some dude out in the bush somewhere in some country who is whatever, he's got the skull of some rodent, and a little fire made of twigs, and you don't want to fuck with that guy. He's never heard of any of this shit you're talking about?  It is totally my take. I also think that if we look at it historically, that's the history of magic, except for the last equivalent of 10 minutes. So, people want to go, "Well, this is the thing." Yeah, for the last few hundred years, and that's a blip. That's, of course, my take. Take whatever you want.  Fabeku: I was talking to somebody. I made some planetary magic talismans and turned out remarkably potent and effective. They were saying, "Oh, but, when you made them, this planet was doing this thing in the sky. So, the talismans should have been fucked. How did you make them and they worked?" I said, "Because, I don't give a fuck what the planets are doing in the sky. It doesn't matter." So, this idea that it's always an influence whether you know it or not, I'm with you, I don't know that that's true. At least, I don't know that it's a prominent enough influence to matter.  I think a lot about currents, right? I think that for people immersed in a particular current, the effects or the shaping influence of that current is going to be stronger because you're immersed in it. I'm not saying there's no effect, but it seems to be less of a factor than somebody who is super centered in whatever current is, whether it's astrology or anything else, I think it's the same shit. I think there's this idea that you have to be immersed in a billion different currents and have your eye on them and line them all up in some kind of perfect Venn diagram of magic. That doesn't make any sense to me. One, I don't know if it's doable. Two, I don't know that it is actually necessary for most people. I think it's a weird thing.  Going back to the self-improvement stuff, a conversation I had with a client last week, they showed up with all of the shit that they wanted to sort out this magical strategy for. As they were talking, my body started to tighten up. There was just this feeling of grinding and grinding and grinding and it was, "I don't know how to do this, and what to do about this." I said, "Listen, we can circle back to this in a second but"... It was all like, doing more. More money, more this, more that, which is, again, fine, there's nothing wrong with it. I've done a shitload of magic for more stuff, it's fine. But I said, "Have you considered doing magic for more joy, for more flow, for more peace, for more ease, for more creativity?" There was this long silence, and then they started to cry because they never considered that. They came with this To-Do List of, "Okay, help me figure out how to do these 10 things to do more, to optimize, to improve.? I said, "Cool, do that. But, what if you also had more joy in your life, and that was the focus? Especially now as fucked as everything is."  I agree, I think that's this weird trap that we get into with the self-improvement stuff. It's just another version of grinding. It's just another version of never being enough. Never having enough, not pushing hard enough. Again, I think in this global moment of all moments, fuck. Let's look at some shit that's not that, let's look at some shit that is ease and peace and coherence and whatever the fuck it is. Because again, I'm going back to the capacity stuff, at some point, you can't expand capacity infinitely enough to just keep grinding on every possible fucking front. It's just not doable. Yeah, I think it's super easy to fall into that shit with magic and everything else. But yeah, it's a mess.  Andrew: So I want to circle back to something you said, and then come back to this as well because I want to talk about both. But, I think that, I [inaudible] this way. There was this big push to go back to, is there a singular truth, right? We can't deny that influence of Greek thought and other thought on our culture, right? You know what I mean? If we can go back to those philosophers and see the origin of stuff and see the origin of Western magic, going back to some of that stuff, in certain ways, right? That's cool and dandy and all, right. I think that if we look at the astrologies or other systems, I think that they're holistic models of everything, right, which is amazing. I think that having, and participating in, a holistic model of the universe, magically speaking, is a powerful thing to be engaged with. I think that the thing is that in Kumi, right, Orisha tradition, it's a holistic model of the universe that has no relationship to planets at all.  So, if both are describing something, and they're both describing it accurately within their holistic model, it doesn't mean that anything crosses over from those, and whatever that actual experience of the universe or... whatever's going on that we're engaging through one of these models, it's all accounted for in one way or another, right? Aidan: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Andrew: And, it's not necessarily to say that we could equate, well, Egon said you were having this problem right now, ancestors say you're having this problem right now through divination, astrology says you're having this problem because of whatever, this hard planetary placement in your family situation or whatever, but those things aren't the same. Right? They don't have the same meaning. They don't have the same lived experience. They certainly have very different solutions and approaches, right. I think that this notion, which to some extent goes back to the Greeks and people who are smarter than me about philosophy might trace it further, that there's this true universal core that we can participate in through our intellectual perception.  Then, you compound that with, basically, the Victorian era magicians, Golden Dawn, Crowley. All those people who are like, everything is interwoven. Right? Everything is the same and symbolically resonant with each other at some level. I think it's an extension of colonialism and of that Victorian worldview to continue that process. Somebody sent me a list of [inaudible] and how they line up on the tree of life and they're, "What do you think? I'm, "I think this is colonial crap. I think it's not helpful. I think it's completely meaningless and disrespectful to this other completely coherent and self-reliant worldview."  It's not to say that there aren't philosophical things or similarities that we could talk about the crossover those things, but I think that the minute that we start to say that one is inherently true, or that those bridges are inherently true, I think that we start to get into very dicey waters, and probably we're wrong. Does that make sense?  Aidan: Yeah, totally. This came up recently in the Six Ways group, that somebody was saying that their background is in Western magical Kabbalah.  Andrew: Yeah.  Aidan: They were, "I'm having trouble mapping this kind of elements, middle world, world above, world below to that map." It's, because they're not talking about same thing. You can find somebody, I'm sure, who can give you something that says that this is, but if we look at it, the model that I'm using is rooted on, what would now be considered, very primitive people's viewpoints of the world. This was not folks who were trying to work out mathematics of language in the written word, this is a totally different thing. They were just looking at, what do we see and what do we interact with, and what is that thing?  It's not a map of something that you fit everything into? It's not a tool to categorize. It's, these are places you can interact with, or beings you can interact with that dwell in those places. In that sense, it's, yes, it's a metaphorical model, but it's not trying to be a universal model. It's, if you want to know what the underworld is, go there and learn that thing. You're not going to be able to map enough information on top of that lack of experience to make up for that experience, right?  It's, again, it's nothing against any of the systems, it's just realizing that they are not all the same. Like you said, with the Orisha tradition and the tree of life, they're not the same thing. They're not intended to do the same things. They're not experiential tellings of the same event, however you want to view it. I think it's a very interesting thing. I wanted to also tap into what Fabeku said because I'm also a total current guy. So, I'm going to do the work when I need to do the work, and when the allies are on board with it. That may be related to what's going on in the heavens, I don't know, but I'm certainly not going to start work based on what I think that is according to what somebody tells me is going on astrologically if the allies aren't going, "This is a good time to do that." But, if they'll say, hey, it's a go, and everybody else is, it's total shit city, it's, I don't care what you're seeing because my people say, it's a go and maybe we need to do this thing in total shit city. Again, what does that have to do with optimal. Sometimes it's shit city and you've still got to work. Fabeku: It's the title of your third book, Shit City.  Aidan: Shit City. No, at least the subtitle.  Fabeku: I totally get what you're talking about, Andrew, with the colonialism kind of thing, right? Because, I remember having a conversation with somebody, I was talking about was Oshun, the Orisha, and they were saying, "Oh, yeah, I totally get it because I've worked with Venus for however long. I'm, "What the fuck does that have to do with what I just said? I'm not talking about Venus, I'm talking about Oshun." They said, "It's the same thing." I said, "It's not the same fucking thing. It's not the same thing. They're entirely different." Are there places that, like you said, might crossover or ping a little bit? Sure, But, it's not the same thing. It's weird to me that we apply it with shit like this, but we don't say, well, this river is the same as that river or that ocean is the same as that creek, or a rose is the same as an orchid. It's not the fucking same.  Sure, they both have roots, they grow in soil, they're flowers, so they're similar in that way. But beyond that, it's not the same shit, right. I think, at best, it's sloppy thinking, at worst, it's all sorts of other shit, when we start pretending that this is that, is that, is that, and it's all different names for the same shit. I don't think that's true. I think it's it's lazy thinking, right, because it's convenient to say, Oh, well, no, I know Oshun because I know Venus, so I know Aphrodite. So, but that's not real. I think then when we do that, we miss the nuance, we miss the capacity to build a relationship that's coherent with whatever we're building a relationship with. Because, that would be like me saying, well, Andrew and Aidan are the same. No, you're not.  Andrew: [inaudible] start with A. [crosstalk]- Fabeku: Exactly, right.  Aidan: We wear glasses and we have tattoos. All the evidence is there. Fabeku: For sure. We don't do that in this way, but we do it with magic. I think it's a total failure of perception, and logic and relationship and understanding and nuance, and I'm just unconvinced that it works.  Andrew: Well, I think, as animism has resurfaced as a world model in certain pockets of the occult communities, I think that people are starting to understand that all of these plants are people, right. All of these stones and places, that they are their own things. I think that we haven't extended that to spirits, right? To say that, does Oshun have their own concrete specific existence, right? Sure. Beyond that, even, Fabeku's Oshun has its own concrete, specific, singular, individual manifestation that's different than my Oshun. Right? Not just because, maybe, our paths are different, or maybe this or that or who it came from, no, it's own distinct, separate living entity that is not the same as all the rest of them and there are relationships and, within religion, there are those, well, they're all Oshuns. But you know, Eleggua versus [inaudible] versus whatever, they're all different. The priests who have those Orisha's, each of those Oshuns has their own character, right, because they're their own people. Right.  I think it's a place where the magical community... I'm going to be curious to see if there is a point at which people stop doing this and start really holding that devotion to Kali or to whoever without any sense of crossover, and, so on. I think it'll be very interesting to see what comes of it, if anything. Fabeku: I think even beyond spirits... spirits in the usual sense, if we go to plants as people, you and I can talk about our experiences with rose or with sunflower or with gardenia or with mandrake. I'm willing to bet that your experience with rose is different than mine. Maybe they overlap in places, but there's nuances, there's differences, right? Just like two different people that know you are going to experience you in different ways. It's the same thing, which is where I think the common logic of, okay, well, what does rose do, what does rose quartz do, what is amethyst? I don't know, what the fuck does it do for you? I can talk about what it does for me and that might have nothing at all to do with your relationship with it. that might have nothing to do with whether that stone person or plant person will work magic with you, the type of magic that it works, how well you get on with that particular spirit.  That's the thing. I was just talking about this yesterday when I was teaching, there's a worldview problem, right, because we think that what does rose do, is a real question. It's not really a real question. But, we keep answering it, and so we're perpetuating the idea that it's a real question, but I don't think in practice it is.  Andrew: Yeah, I think it's true, plants, in the same way it's true of Orisha, within the traditional context, within traditional context of their religion, we don't say, "Oh, you've got a problem with work, who's the Orisha of work who's going to fix this thing for you, right?" We say, "You have a problem with work, will anybody come forward to fix this for you?" Maybe, it's an Orisha that we associate with work, like Ogun. Or maybe, Obatala is, "I've got you, brother, don't worry. You're covered. Give me this and we'll be good." The answer's to those are super nuanced by divination, by Odu, by story, by knowledge of Ebo, like, offerings, and so many things that are impossible from the outside. Those kinds of ways of working, only, can exist within the traditional context, I think.  In the same way, burdock is a really close friend of mine. Me and burdock, we're tight. And, the things that burdock and I have had conversations and done, have nothing to do with traditional associations, but it is also a source of power that can be applied in many directions, if the spirit of the plant is amenable, right? It's, yeah, maybe spearmint would be better at getting you some luck right now. It's a more traditional association, right? "But, you know what, I'm going to work a little extra hard, because it's not my area of expertise, but I'm still going to make it happen for you." Problem solved, right.  Fabeku: Well, I think the other super relevant point of what you said is that, not only is that the way to do it, but it's an individual thing. So, all three of us could have problems with work, all three of us could sit in Divine and get entirely different solutions to how to fix the work shit, even if the works shit looks the same. Right? So, one of the things that happens a lot when I'll do some divination in a private space of mine, when I post them, I get the question... It's not a criticism of anybody that asked the question, but I'll answer somebody's question... usually I'll include some magical stuff to do, and, inevitably, people will say, "Oh"... Well, let's say somebody's asking about a relationship thing and then we talk about whatever the solution is, inevitably, somebody will come along and say, "Oh, is this a thing that anybody can do for relationship stuff?" No, it's not. Listen, I don't know, maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't. But, this was a specific solution given to a specific person with a specific problem based on these cards that were pulled. It's not, here's the cure-all for everybody with a relationship problem. It's one conversation, one relationship in this moment.  Again, to me, that's the way that this shit really works. But, if we try to turn that into, oh, well, this thing will do the same shit for everybody having a relationship thing. I don't think that's real. I think if it does work, I think we've gotten lucky. But, I don't think that's an indicator that it's some universal solution. I get it- Andrew: [crosstalk], you can be the same solution for the same person down the road- Fabeku: Exactly- Andrew: On the same spot, right? Fabeku: Right. It is a very specific solution to that person, with this thing, with me, in this conversation, in this moment. Aidan: Absolutely. Yeah. That's, I think, the thing that I hit on a lot with people, and even with people with Six Ways that have got that, we'll be trying to figure out, "I'm now working on this, but I haven't got here yet, and I feel bad that I haven't got here yet." I'm, "Don't do that. Just find a way in. That's the whole idea here, is find a way into anything that works for you, and see where you can go with it." Because, that's where you get that depth. Then, you go, "Oh, yeah." I've got people saying I need to talk to the goats or I need to talk to some deity and or I need to get right with... to do some stuff to remediate some astrological influences, but maybe you can do all of the things that you need to do with your allies that you don't even know their names, that you just make offerings to and that's your only relationship, and all that you might have to do, is to go in and go, "This is hard, I need help with this or I would like to more capacity for joy in this because I feel really just fucked up by what's going on", right.  For everybody that I know that figures this piece out, they're really good magicians, with the work that they do works for them, and that doesn't have anything to do. Some of them know everything about everything, and some of them know nothing, essentially, from that other person's point of view. So, it is, it's about current, it's about relationship, it's about that reality of context. So, that, yeah, you and I could both be having trouble getting our point of view across to our partners, and it could have, on the surface, in the way we describe it, in the way we describe that it feels, it can all seem exactly the same, and it could be totally not the same.  I think this is going on constantly. It has to, right? But, magic tends to go, here's the formula to fix this. I've not really ever seen that to be true. It was, realizing, oh, if I'm just playing within the structure of, what Jason called zone rights... So this was, for me, LBR star ruby-based stuff, just as the shape of the operation, not using those words forever, but I figured out I could do all of the various operations that I read about in the magical books using these, even without learning all the different pentagrams. I wasn't doing that, I was doing incredibly basic versions of it. It's, no, I can connect to the powers and the quarters and the above and below and then put forward that I want help healing this or help this person out in their relationship, right, because I was building relationship with my allies and with that current.  So, yeah, great. So, Hermanubis is the one who does that. I don't know that guy, why would I go there? I've people saying, "Yeah, we got it." It's, I don't know if they are the ones who do that. They say they are and I have faith in them, so I'll go that route.  Fabeku: Yeah, maybe it's time for faith to make a comeback. How about that? [crosstalk]. What would that look like in the magical world, right? Aidan: Man. What is faith if you don't have religion?  Fabeku: Good question. Aidan: What is your faith in? Fabeku: Uh-huh (affirmative)- Aidan: Or rather, what is your faith for, which might be the better question.  Andrew: Really, the only answer to that should be, everybody's face should be in Stacking Skulls. In Stacking Skulls we trust. Stack them 23 high, and you're good. Everything [crosstalk]. The world will unlock, [crosstalk] will open.  Aidan: Once the stack gets taller than you, while you're standing up, things get better.  Andrew: Right. Back to my mind, we went on this lovely detour into things and I'm still, all right, but, what the hell? What the hell, universe? What the hell, 2020? What the hell is going to go on? Does anybody find feel like they're doing stuff or needing to do stuff? Maybe this is just a reiteration of the capacity conversation, but to just manage themselves through this time. You know?  Aidan: I definitely have some of that. Again, we talked about that earlier for me, backing off of the internet and connectivity and just going, Oh, yeah, I really like fooling around on the guitar for hours. I like talking to my wife for hours. Then, being really aware. In our house, we have this saying that, that the end of the world is happening all the time. But, sometimes it's very obvious for the people that it's happening in because it's clearly catastrophic, right. But, it's happening. It's ending, it's reforming, it's changing. I think, right now, is a really interesting moment because it's so clear that it's changing in a really huge way for a lot of people.  I don't think, we, in America... using the US term of America, which is totally wrong, but I'm going to do it here, because that's the language that's most appropriate here in America... I don't think all of this stuff has piled in on each other simultaneously in such an obvious and unrelenting way. So, it is. It seems clear to me that we're in a really major crisis point, at least in North America, which is what I can see in the United States primarily. It is an interesting thing, because if I look forward or in backwards, I can see the roots of the moment we're in, I can see logical outcomes, I can see outcomes that I would prefer, I can see the potential backlashes to the outcomes that I would prefer, right.  That's, I think, what's really interesting to me, is, I see, because we're in this election cycle and because things have been so insane politically here... I hope that people aren't assuming that if we have a change in the presidency, that that will fix what's going on. Because, we've had a whole lot of changes in the presidencies and they have not fixed what's going on.  Andrew: Yeah.  Aidan: So, yes, I would think that that would be a step in the right direction, for sure, but then you got to step on the gas at that point, if you want to see a lasting and real change. That's step one. Andrew: Yeah, for sure, right. Because, if there's a change in the presidency, that's great. But, that doesn't automatically change the system, and that systemic piece of stuff. The piece that is [inaudible]. Yeah. I've been going back to an old mantra of mine, which I've adapted slightly for this situation. It goes like this, other people's urgency doesn't need to be my urgency. I think that because there's so much going on right now, there are a lot of people who have a lot of urgency around stuff, right.  I remember, when my first godfather always used to say... because he ran a store and was a really well-known psychic in the Detroit area, and he used to say, "Look, if it's an emergency, you call 911. Otherwise, you can make an appointment and come see me whenever you can come and see." I've been working to not act with urgency, because I think that when stuff is as wonky and strange as it is, consideration and pacing and time and respecting capacity, and all those kinds of things, is super helpful, super important, I think. So, it's really, well, that's cool and all, but I'm not going to run around for this, I'm not going to run around for whatever. With my kids too, it's, is there an actual emergency, or is there some discomfort that maybe I'ma let you sit with for a bit so you can learn how to sit with discomfort instead of jumping into things, right?  It's an imperfect science, for sure. Right? It's just a general approach. But, I think that, yeah, that, I can't run around on this. I can't make myself do whatever. I can just do what I can do and I'm going to own my own directive around that, right. Sometimes I might be looking at something like, yeah, that is really urgent, I should jump on that. I should push myself to do that, even though I know there'll be a falling for it someway. But, yeah, that's been my thing.  Fabeku: I think, for me, it's been, because the clients stuff has been super busy, I've had to figure out a way beyond what I did previous to this, too, to not absorb that high-level, constant anxiety, angst, panic, fear, whatever it is, because, after a few weeks of that shit when all this stuff really ramped up, I just felt like I'd been through the blender. It's, okay, well, this is not ending anytime soon, and I'm happy to support people, and this can't be the way it goes. This can't be the way it goes. I think that's probably been the biggest piece, for me, was figuring out how to keep how to keep that capacity, but also how to not end up, at the end of the day or the end of the week, feeling like I've just been taken apart with this stuff. So, part of that has been magical practice, part of that has been mundane stuff, part of it has just been, okay, realistically, given this intensity, this is how many times a week I can have conversations with people that are really difficult and adjusting accordingly. Like you said, in some ways, not giving in to that, okay, but there's more people. There's 10 spots and 30 people, so let me figure out how to get 30 spots. That's not the answer, because then we end up back with coffee all day, caffeine pills, nonsense shit, right.  So, it really is like, this is what I can do and do it well, do it effectively, and also not be dismantled at the end of this, and it is what it is. That's it. There's no more space, there's no more bandwidth. There's no more room to fuck around with a calendar. Andrew: Hmm, yeah.  Aidan: I think that that thing too, which is what you brought on, the realizing where you've got to back down, or ramp things down, is really important, because there is so much out there, just saying, no, just go harder. Grind. There's times for that, but all of them all of them are not that time. Andrew: For sure. By where I go climbing... it's probably not surprising, it's an industrial building and there's some CrossFit type stuff in there, right? One of them has something painted on their garage door to their space. I think it says, "Somebody with less time than you is working out right now." I'm, that's cool. Good, for fuckin' [inaudible].  You know what I mean? A couple years ago, I shifted my climbing goals to be, still be climbing at the end of the year. That's my climbing goal, right. I have some very loose... I'd like to be able to consistently climb 5.8, 5.9. I'd like to be able to cycle 40 kilometers, 50 kilometers anytime. There's some very loose things that are indicators to me that I'm spending enough time being active to be able to continue being active, and that I believe that those things are good for me. Not in and of themselves, because they're indicators of a broader attention to my health, right.  Am I ever going to climb super higher levels than I'm climbing right now, I have no idea. Maybe, probably not. Does it matter? It doesn't matter. Am I always going to be able to cycle as far as I can cycle today? I'm doing a lot of distance cycling. Nah, probably not. There'll be times where I'm, I can't cycle that far right now. It doesn't matter. You know? Just keep showing up. Keep showing up. Keep doing the stuff to rest and recharge to show up.  Aidan: Yep, absolutely. I've definitely had to make adaptations on all of that stuff just because I'm getting smart enough to go, oh, this isn't really doing what I want it to do. So, instead of more, what does less do? I'm working out about half as much as I used to, and it's working better because my body can recover from that better. Interesting, okay.  Andrew: It makes sense, right? It makes sense. Well, maybe, we'll wrap it up here. I assume everybody knows where everybody is, but just in case, Aidan, where do people find you?  Aidan: You can find me at aidanwachter.com and as Aidan Wachter on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, whatever that other one is.  Andrew: What's the name of your podcast, that people search? Aidan: My podcast is called Aidan Wachter Six Ways. It's up on Google, Stitcher, Apple, and someone else... I can't think who the other one is right now, but it's generally out there in the main places.  Andrew: I hear it gets heavy rotation in the underworld, so you can just go there and listen to it. Aidan: Exactly, you can find it down there. Yeah, you can get my books at all the major retailers. Andrew: Fabeku? Fabeku: Fabeku.com, Facebook, and, yeah, the book will be out in October with Revelore. Andrew: It's exciting.  Aidan: I'm stoked about that.  Fabeku: Hmm, me too.  Andrew: Yeah, and, obviously, I'm the Hermit's Lamp everywhere. Podcast is the Hermit's Lamp Podcast everywhere. I didn't talk about it, really, in this, but I'll throw it out here at the end. I'm going to be launching a Kickstarter for my next Oracle deck, which has the title of the Bacon Wizard Breakfast Oracle. So, if you like food and you like divination, I can certainly... I was going to launch it, actually, back in March. My original timeline was end of March, Kickstarter, but obviously didn't do that. But, it's going to be end of September, early October, Kickstarter for that, and you can check it out on my website and other places as I'm building up to that. So, all right. Thanks, folks. Have a great rest of your day. Aidan: Thanks for having us.  Andrew: Oh, my pleasure. 

After George Floyd was murdered, Sheletta had to have "The Talk" with her teenage son about what to do if he has an encounter with police. The fact that he was a target simply because of the color of his skin made Andrew angry, his mother is trying to help him turn that anger into action to help heal their town.