Podcast appearances and mentions of Bryan Stevenson

You are more than your grades, your struggles, or your past, says Bryan Stevenson (author of Just Mercy and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative). Stevenson shares his journey defending the wrongly accused and why he's hopeful about the next generation. Click here for this episode's transcript.The conversation was produced by Kiran Bhatia from Brookline, MA. Lead Podcast Producer Briget Ganske produced this episode with editing and mixing by Genesis Magpayo and help from Wyatt Mayes. Ryan Janes is the camera and audio operator.  

QUOTES FOR REFLECTION“There is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can't otherwise see; you hear things you can't otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us.”~Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy “On the cross we see God doing visibly and cosmically what every human being must do to forgive someone, although on an infinitely greater scale. I would argue, of course, that human forgiveness works this way because we unavoidably reflect the image of our creator. That is why we should not be surprised if we sense that the only way to triumph over evil is to go through the suffering of forgiveness, that this would be far more true of God, whose just passion to defeat evil and loving desire to forgive others are both infinitely greater than ours.”  ~Tim Keller, The Reason for God “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”~Pablo PicassoSERMON PASSAGEHebrews 9:15-28 (ESV) 15 Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. 16 For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. 17 For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. 18 Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. 19 For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, 20 saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.” 21 And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. 22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. 23 Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24 For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, 26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

The Federal Communications Commission is currently investigating CBS for “intentional news distortion” for its editing of an interview with Kamala Harris. On this week's On the Media, what the new chairman of the FCC has been up to, and what led a top CBS producer to quit. Plus, what a growing effort to rewrite the history of Watergate tells us about the American right.[01:00] The Federal Communications Commission is currently investigating CBS for “intentional news distortion” for its editing of an interview with Kamala Harris. Host Brooke Gladstone talks with Max Tani, Semafor's Media Editor and co-host of the podcast Mixed Signals, about Brendan Carr's busy first three months as Chairman of the FCC and the impacts that these kinds of investigations could have on press freedoms.[15:37] Host Micah Loewinger speaks with Michael Koncewicz, political historian at New York University, about the fight over who gets to tell the story of Watergate and the years-long conservative movement to rehabilitate Richard Nixon's image.[29:26] Brooke sits down with Bryan Stevenson, public interest lawyer and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, a human rights organization based in Montgomery, Alabama, to talk about the Trump Administration's war on museums, especially those that deal with our nation's history of racism.  Further reading:How Nexstar dodged a Trump lawsuit, by Max TaniShari Redstone kept tabs on ‘60 Minutes' segments on Trump, by Max TaniThe Alarming Effort To Rewrite the History of Watergate, by Michael KoncewiczThe Worst Thing We've Ever Done, On the Media (2018) On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing onthemedia@wnyc.org.

Send us a textJoin me for a compelling conversation with my guest, Dameon Wroe. His story is one of struggle, survival, and ultimately, redemption. Growing up in Southern California, Dameon faced challenges early on. After his parents' divorce, he lived with his sister and, by his teenage years, had already experienced run-ins with the police. He learned his lesson and set out to become a police officer, studying law enforcement in college.Music became his avocation. He performed at the Roxy, and was discovered by The Whispers—an iconic R&B group known for hits like "And the Beat Goes On" and "Rock Steady." He landed a record deal with Capitol Records. It seemed like he was on his way to stardom.But life took a drastic turn. While working as a security officer and preparing to enter law enforcement, Dameon found himself on the wrong side of the justice system. He endured the trauma of wrongful accusations, jury trials, and a million-dollar bail that kept him locked up. Books like Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson and The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander give us a powerful background for Dameon's journey.Dameon just published his fifth book - a captivating account of his painful journey - The Road to Redemption (July 2024). It's the “non-fictional story of an author's relentless pursuit of justice, and full vindication. After being wrongfully arrested and maliciously prosecuted for murder, Dameon tells the truthful version about what happened on the night of January 1, 2004.”Now, as an author, motivational speaker, mentor, and life coach, Dameon draws on his experience to inspire change. Join us on this episode as we unpack the realities of the justice system, share this story of resilience, and spark conversations that matter. SHOW NOTES Support the showBecome a Patron - Click on the link to learn how you can become a Patron of the show. Thank you! Ken's Substack Page The Podcast Official Site: TheBeachedWhiteMale.com

In our world of urgency, certitudes, and immediate access to a flood of information, could it be that a humble curiosity, inspired awe, and delightful wonder might give us the strength to heal and thrive?Using an expansive emotional vocabulary matched with wit and care, TV host, podcaster, and author Kelly Corrigan is inviting the world to relational vulnerability, compassionate curiosity, and stalwart bravery to face our biggest problems through listening and loving wonder.In this conversation with Kelly Corrigan, we discuss:Her approach to having conversations that feel transformative—the kind that unlock and open us upHow wonder grounds her spirituality and personal vocationThe profound lessons she learned from her mother and father, and how each showed up for her when she was at her lowestHow to learn wisdom and leadership through coaching and mentoringHow to build the emotional container of home for a familyWhat it means to be brave in our world todayAnd how to communicate love through the simple act of listening through three simple invitations: “Tell me more!, What else?, and Go on.”About Kelly CorriganKelly Corrigan is a journalist of wonder. Through hundreds and hundreds of conversations with some of the world's most interesting people, she approaches both timeless questions and contemporary problems … through focused and generous listening, an attitude of awe, and a joyful expectation to be surprised and delighted, even in life's most challenging and painful circumstances.She's the author of four New York Times bestselling memoirs: Tell Me More, The Middle Place, Glitter and Glue, and Lift. Her most recent offering is a children's book, Hello World, which celebrates the people in our lives and explores the meaningful connections that come from asking each other questions.Her podcast, Kelly Corrigan Wonders, is a library of conversational wisdom ranging from current events, to arts and entertainment, to psychology and philosophy, and an approach to spirituality and transcendence through the gift of everyday, ordinary life.A master of conversational hospitality, downright funny storytelling, and journalistic listening, she's also the PBS television host of Tell Me More, and recently spoke on Bravery at the 40th annual TED Conference.You can find her podcast, Kelly Corrigan Wonders wherever you listen to podcasts and her full library of resources at kellycorrigan.com.Books and Media by Kelly CorriganListen to Kelly Corrigan WondersVisit [KellyCorrigan.com](http://KellyCorrigan.comhttps://www.kellycorrigan.com/)Watch Tell Me More with Kelly Corrigan (PBS)Read Kelly's books, such as Tell Me More, The Middle Place, Glitter and Glue, Hello World!, and Lift.Show NotesKelly Corrigan's storytelling and journalismKelly's interviews with famous figures like Bono, Bryan Stevenson, David Byrne, and Melinda Gates.Celebrities are just people.“What happens almost instantly… is that they become people.”“You are a never-to-be-repeated miracle.”Core questions to know a person:  ”Who raised  you, and where, and what happened  that you still remember vividly.”Finding the extraordinary in the ordinary”All the quotidian facts of their life that make us equals in some  weird way, it puts you at ease.”“There's this story about how being an adult is holding in one pocket that you are ashes to ashes, dust to dust, one of billions And holding in the other pocket that you are a never to be repeated miracle. And that adulthood is knowing when to pull out which piece of paper.”Childhood and parental influence reveal deep insights into a person's adult self.Vivid childhood memories help shape storytelling and personal understanding.“A strong, detailed memory of an experience is an indicator that there's a lot there for you.”Famous people also deal with everyday concerns, which makes them relatable.“They're just looking for a sandwich at lunchtime.”Perspective shifts with age, realizing that many things once thought important aren't.“There's 8 billion people here. It doesn't matter what I say and do.”Embracing the paradox of being both insignificant and uniquely valuable.“Being an adult is holding in one pocket that you are ashes to ashes, dust to dust… and in the other pocket that you are a never-to-be-repeated miracle.”Kelly's father, George Corrigan, was an enthusiastic listener and deeply engaging with others.“The thing you need to know about me is I'm George Corrigan's daughter.”Her father's ability to find something lovable in everyone influenced her deeply.“He wasn't looking for people just like him… he could become engaged in something he knew nothing about.”Kelly Corrigan's TED Talk, "To Love Is to Be Brave"Her mother, Mary Corrigan, was structured, disciplined, and devoted to family. “She went to church every single day.”Passed away six weeks before the interview, leaving a strong legacy.”I felt like I  had been loved and people cared about me. Not excessively, not obsessively, but you know, like I was safe in the world.”Getting the love you needRecognizing bravery in everyday family life and personal struggles.Nick Hornby's experience of receiving a book—that filled him with a sense of pride and recognitionCoaching JV Lacrosse in Piedmont, CA—and seeing the impact of “seeing people” and offering loving recognition—the power of making young girls feel seenParents handling difficult conversations with children require immense courage.“There's so much happening inside every house that's deeply brave and very complex.”Kelly Corrigan's spiritual upbringing—raised Catholic and participated in church traditions but felt distanced from the institution because of patriarchy and abuse scandals“The dominant feeling I had in Catholicism was that there's this superstructure of men who tell you if you're good or bad.”Disillusionment with the Catholic Church following abuse scandals.“My religion is wonder.”Finds spiritual connection through nature, puzzles, painting, and observing small details.“I mean, I can really go crazy on a leaf.”Painting as a practice of attention: “ it slows you way down and you have to focus on something so minute.”How to deal with emotional flooding through physical practices like walkingKelly Corrigan on Thriving—deeply connected to being in service to others.“I probably thrive best when I'm in service to something.”“And then they say, ‘Okay, Kelly, we're ready. Action.' And then it's just me and this other person and the fullness of our attention to one another is thrilling by  virtue of the fact that it's so damn rare. And sometimes when I'm finished, I'm like, there's almost like a romance to it. You know, like where I'm like, I, I love you. I love the experience that we just had.”Clarity and purpose often come in caregiving moments, like her parents' passing.“90 minutes of pure connection.”Pam King's experience of her daughter's hospitalization after a rare infectionKelly describes her experience of cancer in her thirties.Be mindful of what you consume—both media and information.“Junk in, junk out.”Engage in hobbies that disconnect from screens, such as painting and cooking.“Read poetry. Read it out loud.”You should be really careful what you let in your head.“If you're small in the frame, you're just going to move more freely. And if you're big in the frame, if you're the most important thing in your whole life, God help you.”Politics and voting or acting against your own self-interestsKelly Corrigan's conversation with April Lawson on abortionRedefining bravery“And the reward is a full human experience.”The meaning of familyThe experience of selling her childhood home after 55 years and how that raised questions about the meaning of family and connection—“We bought it on July 7, 1969, and it sold on July 7, 2024.”“Will it hold? … Is it durable? … A place of comfort?”“I think most parents would say the biggest project they've ever undertaken was to try to build a family.”“Is this thing that was the most important thing I ever built durable?”The emotional container of homeAn expansive emotional vocabulary“More questions, fewer statements.”Encouraging curiosity in her children as a lifelong tool“Ask questions. Tell  me more. What else? Go on.”“Just ask questions. Nobody's listening. So just be the person who listens. It's like the lowest bar.”Enabling someone to get over themselvesCreating space for another person's life, story, and emotions to unfold“So embrace intellectual humility and just assume that you do not have any relevant information to give them and that your only work is to keep saying, tell me more, what else go  on? And  they'll talk their way into a solution.”“And so it's a little bit of like physiological adjustment. And then it's also this intellectual pause. And it's also a big emotional pause. So like, do your dishes slowly with a scent that you like. … It's like a tiny reset.”Live takeaways from Pam and Kelly“Wonder is cheap and accessible and effective. It's like, free!”Embody wonder into the power of listening.“Part of the reason why Christy Turlington is so beautiful is her posture. So sit up straight.”“500 questions before you marry someone and commit your life to them is not a bad idea.”“Junk in, junk out. Like be careful what you put in your head. Your head is a sacred space. Do not put junk in there. Don't listen to junk. Don't watch junk. Don't read junk. Like, it's sacred. Think of it as like a cathedral. You wouldn't take like a shitty meatball sub and eat it in the backseat of a cathedral. You know what I mean?”“ The fullness of life involves this full cup that is full of joys and sorrows.”“ It only takes one person. It only takes one person to correct for a lot of absence. Doesn't mean it's going to be perfect. It doesn't mean it's going to wipe away every ounce of pain, but one person investing can compensate for a lot that's been missing.”Deep interviews as rare opportunities for pure connection“It's weirdly unusual to have a full hour of pure connection.”Facing fear and hardship as part of the full human experience“A full human experience includes all the emotions at full maximum dosage.”Finding purpose in slowing down and being intentional with habits“Evaluate your diet—not just food, but content, relationships, and daily habits.” About the Thrive CenterLearn more at thethrivecenter.org.Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenterFollow us on X @thrivecenterFollow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter About Dr. Pam KingDr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking. About With & ForHost: Pam KingSenior Director and Producer: Jill WestbrookOperations Manager: Lauren KimSocial Media Graphic Designer: Wren JuergensenConsulting Producer: Evan RosaSpecial thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Each Friday during Black History Month, Mayor Arceneaux highlights an individual whose impact, courage, and achievements inspire us all. Their stories remind us of the resilience, innovation, and leadership that have shaped history.This Friday, his inspiration is Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer, social justice activist, and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. Bryan Stevenson has dedicated his life to fighting for the rights of marginalized communities. His work challenging wrongful convictions and advocating for criminal justice reform has changed countless lives. His bestselling book Just Mercy sheds light on systemic injustices and continues to inspire change. Enjoy!

Description: In this thought-provoking conversation, Jen and Amy speak with “poet laureate of the ordinary” Kelly Corrrigan about the valuable lessons from life she's reflecting on in this season: the significance of saying hard things, the power of listening and understanding in relationships, observations from parenting and from a career as a writer, podcaster and storyteller, and the importance of participating in democracy, regardless of who is in power. In this episode, which was recorded on Election Day 2024 (prior to knowing the outcome) Kelly uses her trademark wit and steadfast wisdom to offer listeners evergreen words of encouragement for our political landscape and for our lives in whole. Segments: Bless & Release: Lies we tell ourselves GenXcellence: MTV music videos *** Thought-provoking Quotes: “We have created this way of interpreting someone changing their mind as a flip-flopper and we have left no room for someone to grow.” – Kelly Corrigan “Making is good for individual well-being. Having an inventor's or innovator's mindset is just good for society.” – Kelly Corrigan “Once you say something out loud, it just gets smaller. It packs less of a punch. It's the stuff that we're holding and never saying to anyone that's going to be the death of us.” – Kelly Corrigan Resources Mentioned in This Episode: The Strumbellas - https://thestrumbellas.ca/ Arcade Fire - https://www.arcadefire.com/ Mt. Joy - https://www.mtjoyband.com/ Bless and Release sweatshirt - https://shop.jenhatmaker.com/collections/apparel-accessories/products/bless-release-sweatshirt Jamie Wright - https://www.instagram.com/jamietheveryworst/ MTV - https://www.mtv.com/ American Bandstand TV show (1952-1989) - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049993/ Madonna - Like a Virgin - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s__rX_WL100 American Top 40 with Casey Kasem (1970-1988) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Top_40 The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan - https://amzn.to/3AgM14g Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say by Kelly Corrigan - https://amzn.to/3UGcjUf Kelly's IG post about the NYC Marathon - https://www.instagram.com/p/DB7IZumy6aR/ National Lampoon's Animal House film (1978) - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077975/ Nantucket Project - https://nantucketproject.com/ Nantucket Project 2024 - Kelly Corrigan's Annual Wrap-Up - https://nantucketproject.com/2-2024-gathering/ Aspen Ideas Festival - https://www.aspenideas.org/ TED - https://www.ted.com/ Marianne the Maker by Kelly Corrigan and Claire Corrigan Lichty - https://amzn.to/4hBUY92 George Sweetland (illustrator) - https://www.georgesweetland.org/ Bryan Stevenson on Kelly Corrigan Wonders - https://www.kellycorrigan.com/podcast/category/Bryan+Stevenson Jennifer Garner and Christy Turlington Burns on Kelly Corrigan Wonders - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jennifer-garner-and-christy-turlington-burns-talking-moms/id1532951390?i=1000654904522 Steve Kerr on Kelly Corrigan Wonders - https://www.kellycorrigan.com/podcast/kerrkamau Guest's Links: Kelly Corrigan Website - https://www.kellycorrigan.com/ Kelly Corrigan Wonders Podcast - https://www.kellycorrigan.com/podcast Kelly Corrigan Books - https://www.kellycorrigan.com/books Kelly's Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/kellycorrigan/ Kelly's Facebook -https://www.facebook.com/kellycorriganauthor Kelly's YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@kellycorriganvideo Connect with Jen! Jen's website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen's Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmaker Jen's Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/ Jen's Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmaker Jen's YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/JenHatmaker The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A new book by the acclaimed neuroscientist Lisa Genova is always a big event. Genova, best known for her best-selling 2007 novel, Still Alice, has a new novel out this week, More or Less Maddy, which follows a 20-year-old aspiring stand-up comedian who is diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The protagonist, Maddy, grows up in affluent suburban Connecticut with a father who disappeared when she was young, leaving mysterious boats stranded on their front lawn – a hint at his own undiagnosed bipolar disorder. In our conversation, Genova emphasizes the importance of accurate representation in her fiction, having conducted extensive research with psychiatrists, psychologists, and people living with bipolar disorder. She explains that bipolar disorder affects about 2% of the general population and has a genetic component, with children of bipolar parents having a 10% chance of inheriting the condition. Our conversation explores how bipolar disorder manifests through episodes of mania and depression, with Genova noting that the average time to correct diagnosis is 7-10 years. She discusses the challenges of treatment, including medication side effects and the stigma associated with mental illness. Genova advocates for using the term "neurological disorder" rather than "mental illness" to reduce stigma. She explains that the new novel uses stand-up comedy as a backdrop, not just for its inherent ups and downs that mirror bipolar episodes, but also to explore themes of normalcy and identity. Genova stresses that while bipolar disorder is a serious condition, with proper treatment and support, individuals like the fictional standup comic Maddy can live functional and fulfilling lives.Acclaimed as the Oliver Sacks of fiction and the Michael Crichton of brain science, Lisa Genova has captured a special place in contemporary fiction, writing stories that are equally inspired by neurological conditions and our shared human condition. She is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels STILL ALICE, LEFT NEGLECTED, LOVE ANTHONY, andINSIDE THE O'BRIENS. Her first TED talk, "What You Can Do To Prevent Alzheimer's" has been viewed over eight million times. Her most recent TED talk, "How Memory Works--and Why Forgetting is Totally OK" was the sixth most watched TED talk of 2021. A sought-after speaker/edutainer, she has headlined in speaker series alongside Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Gloria Steinem, Jay Leno, Malala Yousafzai, Bryan Stevenson, and Goldie Hawn.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Host Nancy Wiegman speaks with Steve Ferchaud, a published illustrator from Paradise, and Bryan Stevenson, a New York Times bestselling author.

Previewing Trump's cabinet confirmations with Rina Shah, Steve Benen, Philip Bump, Errin Haines; the problematic history of the death penalty with Bryan Stevenson; what we learned about the Black voting bloc in the 2024 campaign cycle with Basil Smikle and Quentin James; South Carolina's proposed abortion bill with Mia McLeod and Melissa Murray; the discriminatory policies undermining black homeownership with Bernadette Atuahene; an interview with 13-year-old political influencer Knowa de Baraso

Govert Buijs speaks to Carmody Grey about Integral Ecology and the Encyclical Laudato Si', by Pope Francis (2015). Carmody Grey is the newly appointed special professor in Integral Ecology at the Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. The chair is part of the Laudato Si' Institute for Integral Ecology in cooperation with Socires, the independent think tank in The Hague. Carmody Grey's doctoral thesis Theology, Science and Life (2019) was published by T&T Clark in 2023 and is available in paperback, hardback and e-book. Govert Buijs is philosopher and professor at the VU University Amsterdam in Political Philosophy, Worldview and Economics-- Support De Nieuwe Wereld by joining our year-end's rally: http://gofundme.com/dnw2024. Prefer direct transfer? Then you can transfer your donation to NL61 RABO 0357 5828 61 under the name Stichting De Nieuwe Wereld. You can become a patron via http://www.petjeaf.com/denieuwewereld. -- 00:00 Personal introduction 01:28 Laudato Si' and Catholic Social Teaching 09:10 How a social encyclical like Laudato Si' comes about 14:57 Ecological concern is native to the Christian tradition 17:08 Distinct focus, intertwinement and scope of Laudato Si' 18:20 Has Christian anthropology caused the ecological crisis? (Lynn White) 22:25 Estrangement from nature as our common home (Günther Anders) 25:34 Unequal responsibility for ecological destruction 28:20 Integral ecology unifies environmental and social justice 30:30 Carmody's personal journey towards integral ecology 35:42 Remaining hopeful in spite of the climate crisis (Václav Havel, Rowan Williams) 42:00 Hope as the condition for action (Pope Benedict XVI, Bryan Stevenson, MLK) 44:50 Bridging the divide between a Christian hope and a secular world (Thomas Merton) 50:23 The human sense of identity, meaning, purpose and value 55:00 Interpreting the turning political tide against ecological concern -- Mentioned resources (chronological order) Encyclical Letter Laudato Si' of the Holy Father Francis on Care for our Common Home (2015) https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html Lynn T. White. "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis." Science, Vol 155, Issue 3767 (March 10, 1967) https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.155.3767.1203. Günther Anders. Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen. Volume 1. München: Beck, 1956. English translation: https://libcom.org/book/export/html/51647. And Volume 2. München: Beck, 1980. English translation: https://files.libcom.org/files/ObsolescenceofManVol%20IIGunther%20Anders.pdf. Hannah Ritchie. Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet. London: Chatto & Windus, 2024. "Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." From Havel, Václav. "Never Hope against Hope" Esquire Magazine (October1, 1993) https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a12135/vaclav-havel-hope-6619552/. Rowan Williams. The Tragic Imagination: The Literary Agenda. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi of the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI to the Bishops, Priests and Deacons, men and women religious, and all the lay faithful on Christian Hope (2007) https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html Equal Justice Initiative founded by Bryan Stevenson (JD): https://eji.org Martin Luther King. "I Have a Dream" (1963) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3170387.stm. David Foster Wallace. "This is Water" (2005) https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/.

Bryan Stevenson, the prominent lawyer and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, has blazed a trail representing the poor, wrongly convicted and those on death row. Geoff Bennett sat down with Stevenson to discuss his career and the re-release of his best-selling book, "Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption." PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, shouted and struggled with law enforcement Tuesday before entering a Pennsylvania courthouse for an extradition hearing. Mangione was denied bail and contested extradition to New York.Albertsons called off a $25 billion merger with rival Kroger after a judge temporarily halted the deal. The grocery chain is also suing Kroger for willful breach of contract and breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing. CBS News Moneywatch correspondent Kelly O'Grady explains the latest developments.While Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow was playing in an NFL game on Monday, authorities say someone was breaking into his Ohio home. It's the latest in a string of burglaries targeting the homes of NBA and NFL athletes. In October, the homes of Kansas City Chiefs superstars Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce were broken into just days apart.A new consumer survey shows package thieves have stolen from 14 million Americans in just the last three months. National consumer correspondent Usher Quraishi shows how to protect yourself from porch pirates.The end-of-the-year holiday travel rush begins next week and AAA is expecting more than 119 million travelers. Most, 107 million, will drive, with gas prices nearly $.15 cheaper than a year ago.Civil rights lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson revisits his award-winning memoir "Just Mercy" with a new edition that reflects on its enduring impact.Emily Bear, co-creator of "The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical Album," has worked with Beyoncé and co-written songs for "Moana Two." Natalie Morales visits her Los Angeles studio to see her creative process."Sonic the Hedgehog 3" brings back director Jeff Fowler and introduces Keanu Reeves as Shadow, Sonic's powerful and enigmatic rival from the video games. They join "CBS Mornings."See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Bryan Stevenson, the prominent lawyer and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, has blazed a trail representing the poor, wrongly convicted and those on death row. Geoff Bennett sat down with Stevenson to discuss his career and the re-release of his best-selling book, "Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption." PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

In our final episode of 2024, the 16:1 hosts share reflections and takeaways from the 2024 NCTE National Conference held in Boston, Massachusetts. The event was inspiring and energizing, featuring notable figures such as Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, comedienne Kate McKinnon, social justice advocate Bryan Stevenson, and beloved authors such as Jo Knowles. Though exhausting, the conference left us re-energized and brimming with ideas! Join us as we cover:Nationwide initiatives to protect intellectual and academic freedom, combat book bans and censorship, and prioritize student mental health.Classroom-focused discussions on the ethical and practical applications of artificial intelligence in education.Innovative uses of games, podcasts, and other “new” media to create compelling and accessible learning experiences.Solutions journalism as a tool to de-escalate political discourse and empower student journalists.Thank you for listening to 16:1. Your ratings and reviews help us reach teachers and learners around the world, so please consider leaving a note for us in your favorite podcasting app. If there's a story from your educational community that you would like us to cover in 2025, please write to hello@sixteentoone.com to get in touch with our editorial team. See you in the new year!Sources & Resources:The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science | Anderson's Bookshop NapervilleBryan Stevenson | Equal Justice InitiativeThe Supreme Court: Justice Ketanji Brown JacksonGreat Molasses Flood - WikipediaHow to Fight Book Bans: Proactive Tips for Educators - PEN AmericaK. A. Keener Headquarters (NCTE Presenter on Narrative & Gaming)News Literacy ProjectSolutions Journalism NetworkUSS Constitution Museum

With the U.S. election just days away there’s a palpable sense that with whichever candidate emerges victorious, it could signal the beginning of the end for their opponents.   Whether this election is truly different from those of the past, or simply a byproduct of hyperfocus from the media — voters shouldn’t throw their hands up in despair. Throughout American history, everyday people have driven change in small and incremental steps. And these steps are largely unseen and unheralded.   In her book The Small and the Mighty; Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, author and former high school teacher Sharon McMahon emphasizes that now is not the time for apathy: “We get so caught up in Trump vs. Harris, that it's easy to forget that our real lives are being deeply impacted by the people who literally work on the other side of town. … We do not have to wait for the right leader to win an election.” McMahon says hope is a key element in fighting any anxiety we may have about the election. “Hope is not a feeling that you wait to experience,” McMahon tells us. “Hope is not attached to an individual. It is not attached to the outcome of an election.”   “Hope is a choice that we can make,” she continues, “Hope is an orientation of the spirit. In the words of Bryan Stevenson: ‘It's an orientation of our spirit, and we do not have the luxury of giving up hope.’ Because hope is our only chance at making positive change in the United States and in the world.” The deep political divisions in America have fostered a belief that as a nation we have become increasingly tribal. In fact, if you listen to any pundit, “tribalism” is used in a negative way. In his new book TRIBAL: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together, author Michael Morris explains why the words triablism or tribe are not only misused, but also misunderstood. Tribes used to be referred to as “an enduring community,” Morris says. “During the era of colonial expansion and imperialism, tribalism started taking on a negative connotation involving notions of stasis and primitivism.”  “The distinctive way of social life in our species is living in very large communities that transcend kith and kin, that are that are glued together by shared ideas, by shared beliefs, otherwise known as culture,”  Morris affirms. “And so, large groups held together by cultural glue is the human form of social organization. Otherwise known as tribal living.” Morris highlights that tribes have played a crucial and positive role in human evolution.  Tribes are, “what enable us to collaborate intellectually. And almost everything impressive that humans have built has come from intellectual collaboration.”  Tribes also facilitate the sharing of knowledge as Morris further imparts: “Today, 99% of what you and I know is not something that we figured out directly ourselves. It's the knowledge that we inherited. We can not only do impressive things based on other people's knowledge, but we can collaborate with other members of our culture because we have this shared legacy of knowledge in common with them.”  Delve deeper into life, philosophy, and what makes us human by joining the Life Examined discussion group on Facebook.

Michael Lezak is a rabbi who spends most of his time in service, shoulder to shoulder with some of America's poorest citizens in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, living his faith day to day. He also leads pilgrimages from SF to Montgomery, Alabama to see Bryan Stevenson's incredible memorial there and still manages to take a 25 hour break from technology every week. He and Kelly talk about how his devotion to his practice of Judaism enriches his life on the deepest level. Special thanks to the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, our production partner on the Belief series. Please subscribe, rate and review us wherever you listen to podcasts! We read and appreciate every review. Join Kelly on Instagram @kellycorrigan. (Originally aired on 10/5/2021) To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Send us a textDaniel K. Forkkio is CEO of Represent Justice, building a critical mass of “system-impacted storytellers” using film and media to mobilize audiences to take action and transform the legal system. Because, those closest to the problem are closest to the solution. About this transformational approach to filmmaking, Daniel says, “What I started to learn about these (grassroots) films is that the films themselves were part of the reconciliation process for the person that had gone through a (traumatic) experience. And so, the act of writing down what had happened, thinking about their audience, the different characters ... and what were the myths around those characters. And what did they want the audience to do and think and feel concerned about, allowed for a reconciliation of all of the different frames that they had been told about their story … and allowed for a different level of control and empowerment around their story. And then, with the film screening, they could go to their local community, their local council members, their local community partners and they could just gather people differently. When you learn together, and when you learn someone's story and see how it connects to yours, it just creates this inspiration and this understanding that allows you to tell your story more effectively.” In the 5 years since inception, RJ now has people in 20 different states producing films & campaigns about their own lived experience, learning and growing from one another in ways that are completely transformative. RJ provides training, support, compensation and mental health resources ... all of which culminates in folks being able to produce a campaign about their unique personal experience rather than relying on whatever Hollywood has produced most recently. For this exceptional work Daniel was recently named a 2024 Elevate Prize winner, chosen alongside 9 other nonprofit leaders from across the globe for leading some of the most impactful missions to change our world for the better. RJ began as part of the impact campaign for the highly acclaimed Hollywood film, Just Mercy, starring Jamie Foxx and Michael Jordan, about the life of acclaimed public interest lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, and the civil rights work he does helping the incarcerated and the condemned. A policy expert conversant in the film's core issues, Daniel witnessed something remarkable at the screening and advocacy events he organized for Just Mercy - the unexpected impact of the people present connecting with each other through their own real life stories of similar lived experience. Says Daniel, "It got me thinking … what about this power of firsthand storytelling should extend beyond a campaign? What if we we were constantly working with folks who were impacted by this issue and, in fact, what if they were the ones producing the film? What if it wasn't a matter of a Hollywood actor? What if it wasn't as much a matter of a studio release? What if impacted folks, in their communities, had these skills of convening and using film as a medium? And, that became really the blueprint for Represent Justice." Learn more and watch some of these magnificent films at RepresentJustice.org@danielforkkio@werepjusticeShare your Swan Dive at www.swandive.us

Sometimes you really need someone to believe that you are good. Unshakably good. Over 30 years ago, Father Greg Boyle started working with gang members in Los Angeles through Homeboy Industries. The lessons that he learns from whom he calls “homies” are contagious. Every day, they teach him about what it means to heal, to belong to one another, to practice compassion, and to relearn how to feel good again to God and others. These are just some of the transcendent truths that he has to share with us today. In this conversation, Kate and Greg discuss: what it means to see unshakable goodness in others what it would mean for our carceral system if we sought to heal instead of punish how can we have a greater capacity for joy If you liked this episode, you'll also love:  Bryan Stevenson on rethinking what “justice” means Francis Collins on treating people kindly and with love Nicholas Kristof on hope as a muscle   Watch clips from this conversation, read the full transcript, and access discussion questions by clicking here or visiting katebowler.com/podcasts. Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler. Links to social pages and more available at linktr.ee/katecbowler.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Host Razia Iqbal sits down with the celebrated civil rights lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson, a man as dedicated to his chosen profession as James Baldwin was to his.Stevenson is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, based in Montgomery, Alabama, which has not only transformed the conversation about the disproportionate numbers of incarcerated Black Americans, but has also challenged how we think about the criminal justice system and the system's treatment of children in particular. He's been described by the late South African bishop and civil rights activist Desmond Tutu as “America's Nelson Mandela.” Stevenson also initiated the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, and continues to make us all think about the lived legacy of more than 200 years of slavery in the U.S. By Stevenson's own admission, Baldwin has had a profound impact on his life, professionally and personally. When asked to choose a single Baldwin quote that inspires him, Stevenson chose three, and an exception was made in the interest of an exceptional conversation. Tell us what you think. We're @noteswithkai on Instagram and X (Twitter). Email us at notes@wnyc.org. Send us a voice message by recording yourself on your phone and emailing us, or record one here.Notes from America airs live on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts.

“Notes on a Native Son” is a new, limited audio series about how and why the writer James Baldwin continues to matter. We hear from people who turn to his words again and again for ideas and inspiration, including Ta-Nehisi Coates, Nikki Giovanni, Bryan Stevenson and many more.Hosted by journalist Razia Iqbal, each episode explores a Baldwin passage chosen and beloved by her guests. Their conversations underline Baldwin's lasting power and remind us of his prescience and acuity on issues such as race, class, sexuality, power, belonging and love.New episodes are available on-demand every Saturday in the Notes from America podcast feed. This project was made possible through partnership between Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs, Sea Salt & Mango Productions and WNYC Studios. Tell us what you think. We're @noteswithkai on Instagram and X (Twitter). Email us at notes@wnyc.org. Send us a voice message by recording yourself on your phone and emailing us, or record one here.Notes from America airs live on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof understands how to hope—especially in the face of despair or disappointment. He has spent his life shining a light on global tragedies like the Tiananmen Square massacre or the genocide in Darfur. And yet, despite all the horrors he has born witness to, he maintains a sense of hard-won optimism. “Hope is a muscle,” he says, and one we can all learn to develop.    In this live conversation, Kate and Nicholas discuss:  How to maintain hope in the year ahead Nicholas' best argument as to why this is the best time to be alive His strategies to seeing pain and courage up close over and over again Why our small actions matter (even when it feels like a drop in the ocean)    If you liked this episode, you'll love:  Bryan Stevenson on justice in the face of unthinkable odds David Fajgenbaum on how hope pulls us forward Sarah Polley on why we should run toward what scares us   Watch clips from this conversation, read the full transcript, and access discussion questions by clicking here or visiting katebowler.com/podcasts. Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler. Links to social pages and more available at linktr.ee/katecbowler.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Popular PBS Interviewer and New York Times best-selling author Kelly Corrigan sat down with Michael Krasny to talk about a wide range of topics including her experiences decades ago as Professor Krasny's student as well as her views on interviewing. She spoke of her interviews ("A lot like a date and full of emotion") with Francis Collins; Jennifer Garner; David Byrne; Bryan Stevenson and Judd Apatow and delved into the question of why do good and the problem of what media buyers want as well as the importance of positivity and humor. She then spoke of her Ted talk and her children and the recent shocking revelations about Nobel prize winning Canadian author Alice Munro ignoring her daughter's molestations by Munro's second husband. She talked about the importance of forgiveness to save oneself and about her mother, daughters and husband and his mother. She also reflected on wellness and how to pursue it and, calling herself "a person who loves the afflicted," she spoke of the heartbreak of too many around us afflicted with unhappiness. She opined that taxes could solve the problem of poverty and the conversation concluded with her speaking about how and why she became a writer. A terrific, enlightening and fun conversation between two masterful interviewers.

America allegedly observes a separation of church and state, but if you've bought anything with a U.S. dollar, pledged allegiance to the flag, or just lived through an election season, you know it's more complicated than that. In this episode, Sarah talks with On Being host Krista Tippett about her own religious journey, her “hellfire and brimstone” grandfather, and the past, present, and uncertain future of religion and politics. (“I do not think that one Tuesday in November is the only day that is going to matter in terms of how we turn out,” she says.) Whether you're mid crisis-of-faith or you've never given it much thought, this conversation dives into the deeply personal role faith plays in all our lives—and might even make you start smiling at strangers. You can follow Krista Tippett's podcast, On Being  wherever you get your pods, and keep up to date with the show on Instagram  and Facebook. More on...Proximity, with Bryan Stevenson. Ocean Vuong, in conversation with Krista Tippett on her show, On Being.Living the Question concept from Rainier Maria Rilke. You can follow Sarah Jones, see pod updates, and respond to AWHY prompts @yesimsarahjones on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. This podcast was produced in collaboration with The Meteor.

Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, author of Just Mercy, thinks with Kelly about repair in the face of deep societal ruptures. Can memorials transform thinking?  Can laying bare  injustice and its personal and collective effects foster a collective understanding -- followed by a durable commitment to equity?  From Berlin to South Africa to Montgomery, Alabama, people are confronting past harms and leaving with a Never Again spirit that just might save us.  Join us for the special episode in our Rupture and Repair series, sponsored by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.Previous podcast episode with Bryan Stevenson here.You can watch Kelly's previous video interview with Bryan Stevenson on her PBS show Tell Me More here.(And here's the link to Kelly's TED talk on bravery, which refernces Bryan Stevenson and his grandmother -- please share.)

Lawyer Stephen B. Bright is a hero to Fairfax criminal and DUI defense lawyer Jonathan Katz and to many other people. Steve left the security of his public defender salary at one of the nation's premier defender offices, to barely receive pay during some of the early months of his working to overturn death sentences imposed in the Georgia capital punishment machine. While Jon Katz was yearning to shift to serving social justice when at a corporate law firm doing litigation and regulatory work, at a 1990 post-Supreme Court oral argument reception at the nearby ACLU, Jon met Steve Bright, arguing lawyer Charles Ogletree, and Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson.  Professor Ogletree had argued what would lead to a unanimous Supreme Court's reversing a death penalty conviction involving racially motivated jury selection, in Ford v. Georgia, 498 U.S. 411 (1991). The room included numerous criminal defense lawyers. This gathering helped provide Jon Katz the extra oomph to become a criminal defense / public defender lawyer eight months later. At this gathering, Jon asked Steve Bright about any enlightened law firms Jon might consider applying to. Steve's answer was along the lines that such a phrase is an oxymoron. Stephen B. Bright is a criminal defense and civil rights powerhouse. He won all his four Supreme Court cases. Steve's Southern Center for Human Rights quickly made its reputation for great and devoted work that even law students and lawyers whose resumes could have earned them stellar salaries, went to work at the SCHR. Steve Bright underlines the necessity of fighting hard and well both at the trial and appellate levels for capital defendants and all criminal defendants, and the necessity of abolishing the death penalty, which he recognizes as being rooted in slavery. Steve has witnessed four of his clients being executed in the electric chair and one by lethal injection. He underlines how improved capital defense has reduced the nation to around forty annual death sentences from a high in the three figures, but even one death sentence is too many. Stephen B. Bright now consults with lawyers and is a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School and a visiting professor at  Georgetown Law School. Read his essential co-authored book about his work and Supreme Court victories, The Fear of Too Much Justice: Race, Poverty, and the Persistence of Inequality in the Criminal Courts (2023). See his detailed wesbite related to that book. https://www.thefearoftoomuchjustice.com/See Steve's online  capital punishment course at https://campuspress.yale.edu/capitalpunishment/ and  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNez7ZuPRY3KNJ2ef16qebyZeThis podcast with Fairfax, Virginia criminal / DUI lawyer Jon Katz is playable on all devices at podcast.BeatTheProsecution.com. For more information, visit BeatTheProsecution.com or contact us at info@BeatTheProsecution.com, 703-383-1100 (calling), or 571-406-7268 (text). Hear our prior podcasts, at https://podcast.BeatTheProsecution.com/If you like what you hear on our Beat the Prosecution podcast, please take a moment to post a review at our Apple podcasts page (with stars only, or else also with a comment) at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/beat-the-prosecution/id1721413675

Trey's Table Episode 107: Last Seen Ads In this episode, I talk about the amazing Bryan Stevenson, the Legacy Museum, Last Seen Ads, and the brilliant new show on Netflix: Supacell. https://eji.org/https://youtu.be/1K-PdwmRxnQ?s...https://youtu.be/XoF_OgOl99c?s...

QUOTES FOR REFLECTION “Oh! that gentleness! how far more potent is it than force!”~Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855), novelist and poet in Jane Eyre “Meek. Humble. Gentle. Jesus is not trigger-happy. Not harsh, reactionary, easily exasperated. He is the most understanding person in the universe. The posture most natural to him is not a pointed finger but open arms … You don't need to unburden or collect yourself and then come to Jesus. Your very burden is what qualifies you to come.” “When you come to Christ for mercy and love and help in your anguish and perplexity and sinfulness, you are going with the flow of his own deepest wishes, not against them.”~Dane Ortlund in Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers “Our attitudes control our lives. Attitudes are a secret power working twenty-four hours a day, for good or bad. It is of paramount importance that we know how to harness and control this great force.”~Irving Berlin (1888-1989), famed songwriter “People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude.”~John C. Maxwell, author and speaker “As we come to grips with our own selfishness and stupidity, we make friends with the impostor and accept that we are impoverished and broken and realize that, if we were not, we would be God. The art of gentleness toward ourselves leads to being gentle with others – and is a natural prerequisite for our presence to God in prayer.”~Brennan Manning (1934-2013), author and clergy “The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving. It's when mercy is least expected that it's most potent.”~Bryan Stevenson, lawyer, activist, and professor at NYU School of LawSERMON PASSAGEselected passagesGalatians 5 (ESV) 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Proverbs 15 (NIV) 1 A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. 2 The tongue of the wise adorns knowledge, but the mouth of the fool gushes folly. Ephesians 4 (ESV) 29 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. Philippians 2 (NIV) 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. 5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature God,  did not consider equality with God  something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing  by taking the very nature of a servant,  being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man,  he humbled himself        by becoming obedient to death—  even death on a cross!Matthew 12 (ESV)[said of Jesus, as quoted from Isaiah 43:1-3]18 “Behold, my servant whom I have chosen,  my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased.  I will put my Spirit upon him,  and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles.19 He will not quarrel or cry aloud,  nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets;20 a bruised reed he will not break,  and a smoldering wick he will not quench,  until he brings justice to victory;21 and in his name the Gentiles will hope.” Matthew 11 (ESV) [Jesus speaking] 28 “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

For the first time in nearly 25 years, Russia's President Vladimir Putin is in North Korea to visit its leader, Kim Jong-un. The leaders have signed a new strategic partnership agreement – a reflection of how important this burgeoning alliance has become to both countries, as Putin increasingly relies upon North Korean weaponry to support his war in Ukraine. Correspondent Mike Valerio walks us through the visit so far, joining the show from Seoul.  Also on today's show: Sue Mi Terry, Former CIA Senior Analyst / Senior Fellow for Korea Studies, Council on Foreign Relations; Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director, Equal Justice Initiative; Bryant Terry, James Beard Award-winning Chef / Author, “Black Food: Stories, Art and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora”  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode features Jonathan and Sy talking with Pastor Rasool Berry. They discuss:-        The importance of acknowledging and understanding your own and your community's power-        The social and spiritual forces behind the opposition to CRT or DEI (or whatever they're calling it today)-        Pastor Berry's incredible documentary about Juneteenth and Christian faith-        When to leave communities that push back against racial justice-        And after the interview, Sy and Jonathan reflect on the work it takes to pass on a tradition like Juneteenth well, and the truly, literally unbelievable levels of ignorance whiteness creates in people-        Plus, they discuss the Daniel Perry pardon, and the threads that connect it to the Donald Trump convictionsMentioned in the Episode-        Our anthology - Keeping the Faith: Reflections on Politics and Christianity in the era of Trump and Beyond-        An abridged version of Pastor Berry's article from the anthology.-        His subsequent article, “Uncritical Race Theory”-        The documentary Juneteenth: Faith and Freedom-        Resources for screening Juneteenth and inviting speakers involved with the film-        The soundtrack for Juneteenth-        Pastor Berry's podcast, Where Ya From?-        The article on Daniel Perry Sy put in our newsletter-        The Texas Monthly article about how legally unusual Perry's pardon wasCredits-        Follow KTF Press on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Subscribe to get our bonus episodes and other benefits at KTFPress.com.-        Follow host Jonathan Walton on Facebook Instagram, and Threads.-        Follow host Sy Hoekstra on Mastodon.-        Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.-        Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.-        Transcripts by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.-        Production by Sy Hoekstra and our incredible subscribersTranscript[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending – F#, B#, E, D#, B – with a keyboard pad playing the note B in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]Rasool Berry: There was a lot of nicknames and still are for Juneteenth. One was Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, but Jubilee Day. And when I discovered that, that's when I said we got to get involved in this process. Because you mean to tell me that these formerly enslaved people at a time when it was illegal to read, that they understood enough of the story that they picked out this festival, that it was this reordering of society, the kingdom of heaven coming back to earth. And in the context of this, of their faith, they saw God doing a jubilee in their lives?[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you're building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]IntroductionSy Hoekstra: Welcome to Shake the Dust, seeking Jesus, confronting injustice. I'm Sy Hoekstra.Jonathan Walton: And I'm Jonathan Walton. Today, hear us talk to Pastor Rasool Berry about his thoughts on the movement against CRT, or DEI, or whatever the term for the moment is right now when you listen to this. We're also [laughs] going to talk about his incredible feature length documentary called Juneteenth: Faith and Freedom, which is available for free on YouTube right now. And then after the interview, hear our thoughts on the pardon of Daniel Perry and the conviction of Donald Trump in our segment, Which Tab Is Still Open?Sy Hoekstra: The 34 convictions of Donald Trump.Jonathan Walton: All of them.Sy Hoekstra: All of them [laughs]. We're going to talk about each one individually…Jonathan Walton: Exactly.Sy Hoekstra: …the specific business record that he destroyed, whatever.Jonathan Walton: [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: Don't be afraid, we're not going to do that. By the way, I said at the end of last week that the guest this week was going to be Brandi Miller, and then we realized that we had to do the episode that was about Juneteenth before Juneteenth. So Brandi Miller's going to be in two weeks from now. And this time [laughs], it's Pastor Rasool Berry.Before we get to that, just a reminder, we need your subscriptions. Please go to ktfpress.com and become a paid subscriber on our Substack. Your support sustains what we do, and we need that support from you right now. We've been doing this as a side project for a long time, and like we've been saying, if we want this show to continue past this season, we need to get a lot more subscribers so that we can keep doing this work, but not for free as much as we've been doing it.So go and subscribe. That gets you all the bonus episodes of this show, which there are many, many of at this point. And then it also gets you access to our new monthly subscriber conversations that we're doing. Jonathan and I will be having video chats with you to talk about all the different kinds of things that we talk about on this show, answer some questions, just have a good time. And if you cannot afford a subscription, if money's the only obstacle, just write to us at info@ktfpress.com. We will give you a free or discounted subscription, no questions asked. But if you can afford it, please, ktfpress.com. Become a paid subscriber. We need your support now.Jonathan Walton: Pastor Rasool Berry serves as teaching pastor at The Bridge Church in Brooklyn, New York. He's also the director of partnerships and content development with Our Daily Bread Ministries. Pastor Berry graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor's degree in Africana Studies and Sociology. He's also the host of the Where Ya From? podcast sponsored by Christianity Today, and the writer, producer and host of Juneteenth: Faith and Freedom. Let's get to it. Here's the interview.[the intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out.]Sy Hoekstra: Pastor, thank you so much for joining us on Shake the Dust today.Rasool Berry: Oh, well, I'm glad to be here with you all, back at it again, Keeping the Faith.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Yes, exactly [laughter].Jonathan Walton: Amen. Amen.The Importance of “Mapping” PowerSy Hoekstra: So, you wrote this fantastic essay for… so, well, actually, it was originally for your blog, I think, and then we kind of took it and adapted it for the anthology. And it was about critical race theory, and you broke down a lot of the history and sort of the complex intellectual background of it and everything. But you talked specifically about something that you said, critical race theory and the Bible and the Black Christian tradition in the US all help us do something really important, and that thing is mapping power. Can you talk to us a little bit about what power mapping is and what the importance of it is?Rasool Berry: Yeah. I first kind of got wind of that framework when we were launching a justice ministry at our church. And two friends Gabby, Dr. Gabby Cudjoe Wilkes and her husband, Dr. Andrew Wilkes, who do a lot of great work with justice, actually walked our church through thinking about mapping power in our church as a way of evaluating what types of justice initiatives did it make sense for us to engage in, in light of what we had in the room. And so for instance, when I was in my church in Indiana, a lot of the parishioners worked at Lilly who's headquarters is in Indiana. And so when they decided to do something for the community, they ended up opening up a clinic in the church building, which still exists and serves the local community, because they all had medical backgrounds.So when they do mission work, they do mission work with a medical component, because that's a effective way of mapping power. Where our church in Brooklyn average age is about 28, 29 and they're more artsy. So we're not opening up clinics, you know what I mean? But what we can do is events that help inspire and help engage with people. And then eventually with our pastor's leadership started something called Pray March Act, which looks to be a place to mobilize churches around issues of justice in New York City. So what is oftentimes overlooked in Christian spaces, and I really am indebted to Andy Crouch and his book, Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power, for really surfacing the need for us to have a theology of power.That this is something that oftentimes especially evangelical churches, or more kind of Bible oriented or people kind of churches, there's a sense in which we don't know how to think about power. And I believe, I suspect this is one of the reasons why the church has been so susceptible to issues like sexual abuse, to egregious theft in money, is because we are not really conditioned to think about power, which is really ironic because the scriptures really do point to… I mean, we literally have two books, First and Second Kings, and those books are pointing to you have the king, this king was a good king, and it impacted the kingdom of Israel this way. This king was a bad king, and then this is what happened.And so it's wired in the text, right? Amy Sherman in her book, Kingdom Calling, Dr. Amy Sherman points to this when she points to the proverb that says, “when the righteous prosper, the city rejoices.” And it's this idea, when she says righteous, she's not thinking about it in the kind of traditional pietistic aspect of righteousness, but she's talking about “tzedakah” in the Hebrew, which has this connotation of justice. Because when people who are put in positions of power and influence, when they do right by the people underneath them when they do right, that people celebrate. Versus when there's somebody who's a tyrant that's in office, the people groan because there's that sense of they recognize we've mapped power dynamics, and somebody who's going to do ill is going to have a disproportionate impact on all of us.And so power mapping is bringing to surface the awareness of what is it that we have in the room. And it's also a very humbling way of being aware of our own power, right? Like how do I show up as a man in a space, in certain things? Like I know if I get up and I'm about to preach that there's some different dynamics depending on who I'm talking to in a room. Like if I'm in a predominantly Black context that's younger, then the locks might actually kind of give me some street cred. Like, oh, that's kind of cool. But if I'm in a older, traditional space, looking younger is going to be more of a uphill climb to say, okay, what's this guy coming at? And if I'm in a White space, versus but I also recognize that when our sisters come up, that there's a whole different type of power mapping situation.And so all of these things are helpful in being aware of how we show up and how that matters. And Andy's kind of thesis is that unlike the kind of post Nietzschean postmodern suspicion and critical view of power that only sees it as a negative, that God has actually given us and ordained us to exert influence and power in redemptive ways. But we can only do that if we map it, if we're aware of it, and if we use it in a way that's not just for our own self or comfort or glory, but for those who we're called to serve.Sy Hoekstra: Can I ask, just for some like to get specific on one thing, because I'm not sure this would be intuitive to everyone. You said if we map power, then we might not end up in the same situations that we are with, like abuse scandals in the church?Rasool Berry: Yeah. Yep.Sy Hoekstra: And I think I… where my mind goes is I think we would react differently to the abuse scandal. I don't know if the abuse scandals themselves would… those happen unfortunately. But I think where the power mapping might come in, is where so many people are then just deferring to whatever the person in, the pastor's narrative is. Is that kind of what you're talking about, like the reaction?Rasool Berry: I think it's on both sides.Sy Hoekstra: You do? Okay.Rasool Berry: Yeah, because for instance, if I am aware, very aware of power dynamics with children and adults, I would see the value in a practice of not leaving an adult in a space with a child by themselves.Sy Hoekstra: Oh, I see. You might put systems in place ahead of time. Yeah, yeah.Rasool Berry: Right. So there's the sense in which we can put policies in place that recognize… it's the same thing why we put the labeling system on kids when they check into childcare, right? Like you put the little label so that some random person can't just come and pick them up because a kid can't defend themselves. Or they may not have the capacity to understand what's going on if somebody just random comes up and says, “Hey, your mom and your dad told me to come get you,” and then they believe that. And so we have systems that we put in place to recognize those power dynamics. And I think unfortunately, that in a lot of our church context and culture there's an overly naive sense of, and really sometimes idolatrous view of pastors and leaders that essentially say, well, they're good and they're godly people, so there isn't a need for accountability, or there isn't a need for, you know…And so no, it's like, well, in the same way that we have trustees in certain churches, or there's a elders board, depending on what your church polity is, that polity should reflect a sense of accountability and transparency so that there is an awareness on the front end as well as on the backend that when it does come to bring people into account, that there's also an awareness of a power dynamic at play there too.Jonathan Walton: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense especially when [laughs] we throw those things out, all we have are the systems of hierarchy and social dominance that exist to define what power is, right?Rasool Berry: Right.Jonathan Walton: So the train just keeps going.The Social and Spiritual Forces behind the Fight against CRT/DEIJonathan Walton: So leaning into that a little bit, you wrote an essay focusing on CRT power mapping and things like that. But it feels like nobody in the Trump camp really had an idea of what CRT was, and it didn't even really matter to them what it was.Rasool Berry: Right.Jonathan Walton: So what do you think is at the core of what's going on with White people when they reject CRT or DEI or whatever the—conscious—whatever the term would be?Rasool Berry: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: What do you think the underlying concern is?Rasool Berry: Well, you know, after… and it's so funny because when I wrote that first piece, I wrote it as a way… [laughs] I wrote it just to get it off my chest. And in my mind, almost nobody was going to read it because it was like a 20-something minute read, and I just didn't care because I was just like, “I'm getting this off my chest,” and this is the last I'm going to say about it. Like I thought that was going to be just this thing, just so I can point people to, if anybody asks. I did not intend, nor did I think that it was only going to kind of position me as this person that people were listening to and reading and resonating with about it. So that was funny. But then what ended up happening, and especially after I was on the unbelievable? podcast with Justin Brierley, kind of in this debate format with Neil Shenvi, who's kind of been one of the most outspoken evangelical Christian critics of critical race theory. Critics is probably too mild of a term, kind of a…Jonathan Walton: Antagonist.Rasool Berry: Antagonist, even stronger. Like this doomsday prophet who says that, who's warning against the complete erosion of biblical norms because of the Trojan Horse, in his mind, of critical race theory. In the midst of that conversation, that kind of elevated, it was one of their top 10 episodes of the entire year, and it just kind of got me into these spaces where I was engaging more and more. And I kind of sat back and reflected, and I had a few more interactions with Neil on Twitter. And I ended up writing a separate piece called “Uncritical Race Theory.” And the reason why I did that, is I went back and I was curious about what kind of insights I could get from previous instances of the way that there were being controversies surrounding race in America in the church, and how the church talked about those debates.So I went back and I read The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Mark Noll, who looked at and examined the actual debates during the time of the antebellum period of pro-slavery Christians and anti-slavery Christians, and he analyzed that. Then I went back and I read The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby, who looked at the pro-integrationist and segregationist arguments in the church. And what I found was that there was incredible symmetry between what was argued in each of those instances, going all the way back to the 1800s, to the 1960s, to now, and there were two things that emerged. The first was that the primary response from those who were supportive of slavery in the 1800s, or those who were supportive of segregation in the 1960s was to claim first of all, that the opposing view were not biblically faithful, or were not even concerned about biblical fidelity.So this is different than other types of discussions where we could say, even going back to the councils, right? Like when there's some type of, like during the Nicaean Council or something like that, they're debating about how they're understanding the text about certain things. Whereas is Jesus fully God, is he man, is he both? But there's a basic premise that they're both coming at it from different aspects of scriptures. What I noticed in the American context is that there was a denial that the side that was kind of having a more progressive view was even biblically faithful at all.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Christian.Rasool Berry: The second part is related to the first, is that there was this allegation that there was outside philosophies that was actually shaping this impetus because it wasn't clearly the Bible. So in the 1800s that was the claim, “Oh, you're being influenced by these post-enlightenment ideas.” In the 1960s it was straight up Marxism, communism. You see the signs. “Integration is communism.” Like you see the people protesting with that, and of course the new version of that is kind of the remix of cultural Marxism, or these type of things. And so what I acknowledged in each of those scenarios is that part of the problem is that there is such an uncritical understanding of race that it causes, I think especially those in a dominant culture or those who've been susceptible to the ideologies of White supremacy, which can be White or Black or other, There's a tendency to see any claim that race is a problem as the problem itself because there's an underlying denial of the reality of racial stratification in our society, and the what Bryan Stevenson refers to as the narrative of racial difference or what is more commonly known as White supremacy. So when your default position is that you are introducing a foreign concept into the conversation when you talk about the relevance of race in a scenario, then it causes… that sense of uncritical nature of the reality of race causes you to then look upon with suspicion any claim that there's some type of racial based situation happening. And that is what I call, it is really ironically uncritical race theory. It's the exact opposite of what critical race theory is trying to do.And so I think that that's my take on what's happening. And then I think that's more of the scientific sociological, but then there's also a spiritual. I am a pastor [laughter]. And I have to end with this. I have to end with this, because in some ways I was naively optimistic that there was, if you just reasoned and show people the right analogies or perspectives, then they would, they could be persuaded. But what I have since realized and discovered is that there is a idolatrous synchronization of what we now know of different aspects of White Christian nationalism that is a competing theological position and belief system that is forming these doctrinal positions of what we now kind of look at as American exceptionalism, what we look at as this sense of the status quo being… all the things that are moving toward an authoritarian regime and away from democracy, that that is all solidifying itself as an alternative gospel.And I think that at the end of the day, I'm looking at and grieving about mass apostasy that I'm seeing happening in the church as a result of an unholy alliance of political ideology and Christian symbols, language, and values expressed in this kind of mixed way. And that's what is really being allowed to happen with this unmapped power dynamic, is that people don't even realize that they're now exerting their power to kind of be in this defensive posture to hold up a vision of society that is actually not Christian at all, but that is very much bathed in Christian terms.Jonathan Walton: I want to say a lot back, but we got to keep going, but that was good.Sy Hoekstra: We got to… [laughs]. Yeah. I mean, we could talk forever about what you just said, but we could also talk forever about your documentary. So let's transition to that.Rasool Berry: [laughter] You all are like exercising restraint.Sy Hoekstra: Yes.Jonathan Walton: I am.Rasool Berry: Like, “oh, I want to go there.” I just threw steak in front of the lions [laughter].Why Pastor Berry Made a Documentary about JuneteenthSy Hoekstra: But it's because, I mean, the documentary's interesting in a way... It's sort of like, okay, you've seen this movement of mass apostasy and everything, and you've had all these people tell you you're not faithful. And with this documentary in some ways, you're just sprinting on down the road that you're on. You know what I mean? It's like sort of [laughs], you're just going straightforward like we need to remember our past. We need to learn about power dynamics in American history. So you wrote this—[realizing mistake] wrote— you were involved in, you're the kind of narrator, the interviewer of this documentary Juneteenth: Faith and Freedom. And you went to Galveston and you went to Houston, Texas to learn more about the history of Juneteenth and the communities and the people that shaped the celebration and everything.And I guess I just want to know how this got started and why it was so important for you to engage in what was a very significant project…Rasool Berry: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: …to teach people about this kind of history that I think the movement against CRT or DEI or whatever is quite actively trying to suppress.Rasool Berry: And these two stories are very much intertwined…Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: Absolutely.Rasool Berry: …in ways that I didn't even fully anticipate in some ways. In some ways I knew, in some ways I didn't. But I grew up in Philly, where there was not growing up a significant Juneteenth awareness or celebration or anything like that. So I had heard about it though when I was very young, the concept of it. I had a classmate whose middle name was Galveston, and I was like, “That's a weird name. Why is your middle name Galveston?” [laughter] He told me that it's because his mom had told him about this situation where there were Black people that didn't know they were free for two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. I was like eight years old when I first heard that, but filed that away.It wasn't really until more recent years with the, just massive racial justice movement spurred on by the murders of Tamir Rice and George Floyd and others, Sandra Bland. And so, as that movement started to gin up, conversations about race that I was kind of plugged into, I heard about this 90-something year old woman that was appearing before Congress…Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Rasool Berry: …and challenging them to make Juneteenth a national holiday.Sy Hoekstra: I can't believe you got to interview her. She was amazing.Rasool Berry: Yeah. And I was like, why would a 90-something plus year old woman be like this committed to this? So I started looking into it and realizing, I think both spiritually and socially, that there was incredible potency and opportunity in the recognition, the widespread recognition of Juneteenth. I'll go socially first. Socially, the reality has been the United States has never had a moment where we collectively reflect on the legacy of slavery in our country. And if you do the math, from the first enslaved people that we have documented coming into the States in 1619 until if even if you go to the abolition of slavery in 1865 or 1866 with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, that's about 244 years.If you go from 1865 to now, it's like 159 or so years. So we still have way more time in our society that has been shaped by this most intense version of a caste system and brutal slavery that had global, it literally reshaped the globe. And sometimes we forget. I live in Brooklyn where most of the Black folk are Afro-Caribbean. When you think of Jamaica, you think of Usain Bolt or Bob Marley. Do you realize that all of those people are from Africa, like our African descent people. That like the native people of Jamaica would've been Native Americans. So the legacy of slavery and colonialism has literally reshaped population centers in our world. That's how significant it was.And so to not have a moment to reflect on all of it, the implications of how the legacy still shapes us, but also the progress of what we've seen happen and how we are not in that same place is a missed opportunity. But on the contrary, to put that in place is an opportunity for reflection that I think could really help ground us toward being a more perfect union, toward us being a unified people. Because we're basing it on the same story and information, which increasingly in the age of misinformation and disinformation, that the erosion of us having a shared narrative is really upon us. So I think it's interesting and important from that standpoint. Spiritually, it was even more dynamic because one of the… so there was a lot of nicknames and still are for Juneteenth. One was Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, but Jubilee Day.And when I discovered that, that's when I said, “Okay, Our Daily Bread, we got to get involved in this process.” Because you mean to tell me that these formerly enslaved people at a time when it was illegal to read, primarily because they didn't want people to read the Bible, that they understood enough of the story of the Old Testament, that they picked out this festival in Leviticus 25, this ordinance that God had put in place, that on the Jubilee year, the Sabbath of all Sabbaths, I call it the Super Bowl of Sabbaths [Sy laughs]. Seven years times seven, forty nine years plus one, fifty. That on that day that it was this reordering of society, the kingdom of heaven coming back to earth, which simultaneously anticipates the wickedness and the brokenness of human systems in power, but also projects and casts vision about the kingdom of heaven, which would allow for equity and equality to take place. So debts were forgiven, lands were returned, and people who were in bondage primarily because of debt, that was the main reason back then, they would be set free. And in the context of their faith, they saw God doing the jubilee in their lives. So what that gave was the opportunity for us to talk about and reintroduce in many faith traditions the relationship between spiritual and physical freedom, and see that in the Bible story those things were wedded.What's the major account in the Old Testament is the Exodus account. Like it was both physical and spiritual freedom. And in the same way we see that is why Jesus, when he reveals himself and says, “The kingdom of God is at hand,” notice when John the Baptist starts to waver because he's expecting this conquering king. He's still in prison and he says, “Hey, are you the one or we should expect another?” Jesus points to physical and spiritual aspects of liberation in his response. “Tell John what you see. The blind receive sight. The sick are healed. The gospel is preached. Blessed is the one who is not ashamed of me.” So in the sense of that, what we see elements of the kind of seeds of in the gospel is this aspect of the physical and spiritual liberation being tied together.And that is what Jubilee gives us opportunity to explore and investigate. And I think lastly, seeing the role of the Black church in bringing out that insight, I think is particularly valuable in a time where oftentimes those contributions are overlooked and ignored.Jonathan Walton: Yeah, absolutely. I think being able to watch the documentary was transformative for me. Mainly because I'm 38 years old and it's being produced by people who look and sound and act like me. It's interviewing the people who came before us, trying to speak to the folks that are younger than us. And each generation I think has this, this go around where we have to own our little piece of what and how we're going to take the work forward. You know what I mean?Discerning Whether to Leave Communities that Push back on Discussions about RaceYou interviewed Lecrae in the documentary and he's taken that work forward, right? And you both say that you've had the experiences of believing you are loved and accepted in these White evangelical spaces until you started talking about racial justice issues.And so I feel like there's these moments where we want to take the work forward, and then we're like, “All right, well, this is our moment.” Like Opal was like, “Hey, I'm going to do Juneteenth.” Where now you're like, “I'm going to do something.” [laughs] So I wonder, like for you, when you have to make decisions about how to stay, not to stay or just leave. What is the effect of constantly engaging in that calculus for you?Rasool Berry: Oh, man! It's exhausting to do it. And I think it is valuable to count the cost and realize that sometimes you're best suited to reposition yourself and to find other ways to express that faithfulness. At other times, God is causing you to be a change agent where you are. And I think how to navigate through that is complicated, and I think it's complicated for all of us, for our allies who see the value of racial justice as well as for those of us who are marginalized and experience, not just conceptually or ideologically the need for justice, but experientially all of the things through macro and microaggressions that come up, that weigh and weather us and our psyche, our emotions, our bodies.And I think that it's important to be very spiritually attuned and to practice healthy emotional spirituality as well as, best practices, spiritual disciplines, all the things that have come alongside of what does it mean to follow Jesus. I was recently reflecting on the fact that in the height of Jesus' ministry, when it was on and popping, he's growing, the crowds are growing in number, it says that he went away regularly and left the crowds to be with God. And then the verse right after that, it's in Luke, I can't remember which chapters, I know the verse is 16 and 17. And then it talks about how he had power as a result of going away to do more. And there's this relationship between our needing to rest and to find recovery in the secret place in the quiet place with God in order to have the energy to do more of the work.And that's a lot to hold together, but it's really important because otherwise you can end up being like Moses, who was trying to do justice, but in his own strength at first when he kills the Egyptian, and then he tried to go to his people being like, “Yo, I'm down!” And they're like, “You killed somebody. We don't want to hear from you.”Jonathan Walton: [laughs] Right.Rasool Berry: And then he flees. Because he tried to do it in his own strength. And then when God reveals himself at the bush, now he's totally broken and not even confident at all in himself. And God has to say, “No, the difference is going to be I'm with you.” So I think in my own journey, I've been one of many people who've had to evaluate and calculate where I've been in order to kind of see where there are opportunities to move forward. For instance, I was on staff with Cru for 20 years and then as the opportunities to work with Our Daily Bread, and I remember specifically the podcast Where Ya From?, that we launched and then Christianity Today got connected to it.They were eagerly looking, or at least supporting the idea of us having conversations about faith and culture and race and all these things. Whereas in my previous environment, I felt like that was not something… I didn't even feel like it, I experienced the pullback of talking about those things. So it has actually, by repositioning myself to kind of be able to be in spaces where I can tell these stories and advocate in these ways, it has been a better use of my energy and my time. Now, even in that other space, everything isn't perfect. It's still the same type of challenges that exist anywhere you go in the world where you're a minority in race and racial difference is prominent, but at least it's a opportunity to still do more than I could do maybe in a previous position. And all of us have to make those type of calculations.And I think it's best to do those things in the context of community, not just by yourself, and also with a sense of sobriety of encountering and experiencing God himself. Because at the end of the day, sometimes, I'm going to just say this, sometimes the answer is leave immediately. Get out of there. At other times, God is calling you to stay at least in the short term time. And it's important to be discerning and not just reactive to when is the right situation presenting itself. And the only way I know to do that is by doing it in community, doing it with a sense of healthy rhythms and time to actually hear the still small voice of God.Sy Hoekstra: Amen.Jonathan Walton: Amen.Sy Hoekstra: Because you really can err in either direction. Like some people, “I'm getting out of here right away,” without thinking. Meaning, when you're being reactive, when you're not being discerning…Rasool Berry: Right.Sy Hoekstra: …you can get out right away or you can have the instinct, “No, I'm going to stick it out forever,” even if it's bad for you, and it's not going to accomplish anything.Rasool Berry: Yup, yeah.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Which I think leans into jumping all the way back the critical versus uncritical.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah [laughs]. There you go.Jonathan Walton: Like if we're not willing to lean into the radical interrogation of the systems and structures around us that inform our decisions each day, we will submit to them unconsciously, whether that be running when we should resist or whether that be resisting where we actually should flee. So yeah, thanks for all that.Where you can Find Pastor Berry's workSy Hoekstra: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. And so we will have links to both of the articles, to the documentary, which is entirely free on YouTube.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: So you're just wasting your life if you're not watching it, really [laughter]. And a couple other things you talked about, we'll have links. But is there anywhere that you want people to go to either follow you or your work online?Rasool Berry: Yeah. So the other thing that what we did with the Juneteenth documentary, because the response was so strong and overwhelming, really, people wanted to host screenings locally. And so we did a few things to make that more possible. So you can actually go on our website experiencevoices.org/Juneteenth. And you can fill out like a form to actually host a screening locally. And we have designed social media so you can market it, posters that you could print out, even discussion questions that you can use to host discussions. And sometimes people invite some of us from the production on site. So I've gone and done, I've been at screenings all the way from California to Texas to Wisconsin and here in New York.So you can reach out to us on that website as well if you're interested in hosting a screening with the director or one of the producers or myself, and we can kind of facilitate that. Also be looking at your local PBS stations. We partnered with PBS to air screenings so far over a hundred local channels.Sy Hoekstra: Oh, wow.Rasool Berry: And have aired it. Now, the PBS version is slightly different because we had to edit it down to fit their hour long format. And so the biggest version is the PBS version doesn't have Lecrae in it [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: Oh no [laughs].Rasool Berry: We had to cut out the four-time Grammy winner. Sorry Lecrae [laughter].Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Rasool Berry: You know what I mean? But it just so happened that way it, that it was the best way to edit it down.Jonathan Walton: You had to keep Opal.Rasool Berry: Had to keep Opal, had to keep Opal [laughter].Sy Hoekstra: I feel like Lecrae would understand that, honestly.Rasool Berry: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was so gracious. And actually, the other thing that Lecrae did, I had told him that we were working with Sho Baraka, a mutual friend of ours, to do the music. And he said, “Yeah, I heard something about that.” He's like, “I have a song I was going to put on Church Clothes 4, but I feel like it would be a better fit for this. If you're interested, let me know and I can send it to you.” I'm like, “If I'm interested? Yes, I'm interested.” [laughter] Yes. I'll accept this sight unseen. And so he sent us this incredible song that features, well actually is listed as Propaganda's song, but it features Lecrae and Sho Baraka. And you can get the entire Juneteenth: Faith and Freedom soundtrack 13 tracks, poetry, hip hop, gospel, rnb, all on one thing. And wherever you listen to your music, Spotify, Apple Music, anywhere, you can, listen to it, stream it, buy it, and support this movement and this narrative. So yeah. And then personally, just @rasoolb on Instagram, @rasoolberry on, I still call it Twitter [Sy laughs]. So, and we're on Facebook as well. That's where folks can follow me, at rasoolberry.com, website. So thanks for having me.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, pastor, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it.Jonathan Walton: Thanks so much, man.[the intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out.]Reflecting on the InterviewSy Hoekstra: Hey, Jonathan, you know what's really useful, is when in the middle of an interview with one of our guests, we say, “Oh no, we don't have time. We'd really like to get into this, so we have to move on to another subject.” It's really useful when we have these little times that we're doing now after the interview to talk more about the subjects than we did with the guests [laughter]. This works out well for us.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: Why don't you tell everybody what you're thinking after the interview with Pastor Berry?Passing on a Tradition Well Takes Significant WorkJonathan Walton: Yeah. I think the biggest thing for me that I took away among a lot of the nuggets that he… nuggets and like big things that got dropped on me while we were listening, was like the amount of work that he went through to make this film. Like traveling to Galveston. There's a lot in the documentary that reminds me of how much it costs us personally to create things that are moving. To be able to have these conversations, sit down with these people, smell the smells of these folks' homes. That's just a big thing, particularly for me, like not having… I grew up with the Juneteenth story and needing to think through my own traditions and what I'm going to pass to my kids and stuff like that.It's just I'm challenged to do that work so that I have something substantial to pass on to Maya and Everest. And to the folks who listen to the preaching that I give or the stories I write, or the books I'm going to write, just so I can communicate with the same amount of intimacy that he did. So, Sy how about you? What stood out for you?The Literally Unbelievable Racial Ignorance of WhitenessSy Hoekstra: I think what stood out for me was actually right at that point where we said we really wanted to talk more about something, I really did have more thoughts [laughs]. When he was talking about the thing that underlies the fight against CRT and DEI and all that sort of thing. Being just a straight up denial of any sort of racial caste system or racial stratification in our country, I think that point is extremely important. That so much of our disagreements about racial injustice, at least on the intellectual level, not on the emotional and all that kind of thing, the intellectual level that come down to a difference in beliefs about the facts of reality in America. It is literally just do you think racism is happening or not? Because if you do think that it's happening, then everything has to change [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: And there's not a lot of room… you'll have to do a lot more like kind of active denial. A lot more having a very active lack of integrity [laughs] to continue in the way that you're thinking when you believe that there is no racism in America if you find out that there is. Which kind of explains why there's so much resistance to it. But I think one story that sort of illustrates how this dynamic works a little bit that just, this is something that happened to me that this reminded me of. I was an intern right after college at International Justice Mission, and I read Gary Haugen's book, The Good News About Injustice, where the intro to this book is about his childhood growing up in kind of suburban, I think he's outside of Seattle, somewhere in Washington. A suburban Christian home, things were pretty nice and easy and he just did not know anything about injustice or anything in the world. Like oppression, racism, he did not know anything about it. And then the book takes you through how he discovered it and then his theology of what God wants to do about it and what the organization does and all that kind of thing. But just that intro, I remember talking to one of the other interns who was at IJM m when I was there, who was a Black woman who was ordained in the Black Baptist Church and had grown up relatively low income. And I was talking to her about this book because I read that intro and I was like, “yes, I totally resonate with this. This is how I grew up, check, check. That makes sense. I understand all of it.”And it makes sense to a lot of the people who support IJM, which are a lot of suburban White evangelicals. She told me, she read the intro to the book and her immediate reaction was how, there is no way that anyone could possibly be this ignorant. It is not possible [laughs]. And I was like, [pretending to be hurt] “but I was” [laughter]. And there's this wrench in the gear of our conversations about justice where there's a large spectrum of White people who are, some engaging in actual innocent good faith about how much nonsense there is, like how much racism there is in America, and people who are engaging in complete bad faith and have ignored all the things that have been put right in front of them clearly.And it is just very difficult for a lot of people who are not White to understand [laughs] that there are actually… the level of ignorance of a lot of White people is unbelievable, by which I mean it literally cannot be believed by a lot of people. And I don't know, that's just, it is a complication in our conversations about race that doesn't really change what you have to tell people or how seriously you should take your conversations or whatever. It's just a note about what you might need to do to bring people kind of into the fold, by which I mean the fold of the truth [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yes. This is true of like a lot of White people. And the sad part is that it can also be true of a lot of people of color…Sy Hoekstra: Well, yeah.Jonathan Walton: …who say, “I'm just going to deny, because I haven't experienced.” Or, “We have opted into the system of ignorance and don't want to engage.” And so I'll tell a story. Priscilla was at the airport this week.Sy Hoekstra: Your wife.Jonathan Walton: My wife Priscilla, was at the airport, not a random woman [laughter], was at the airport this week. And someone said, “Yeah, everyone who came to this country, like we're all immigrants.” And Priscilla said, “Actually some people came here as slaves.” Then the person says, “No, that's not true.” And it's like, what do you say to that? When someone just says slavery doesn't exist? And that's literally why we celebrate Juneteenth. So I don't know what this person's going to do on Juneteenth, but when there's a collective narrative and acknowledgement that this happened, and then there's a large group, James Baldwin would say, ignorance plus power is very dangerous.If there's a large group that's ignorant and or like intentionally not engaging, but also has power and privilege and all the things, the benefits of racial stratification without the acknowledgement of the reality of it, which is just a dangerous combination.Sy Hoekstra: So when somebody says something like that, like that didn't happen, people didn't come over here as slaves, I think it is possible that they legitimately don't know that I suppose [laughs], or that they think it's a conspiracy theory or whatever. My guess is, tell me what you think about this. What I would imagine happened there was, “Oh, I never thought about the fact that Black people are not immigrants. And so I'm just going to say no.” Do you know what I mean?Jonathan Walton: Oh yeah. Well, I agree. I think some people even, so let's say like, I write about this in 12 Lies. Ben Carson says that we all came here as immigrants, even if it was in the bottom of a ship. He says that. And I think that is a, to be kind, a gross misrepresentation of the middle passage [laughs], but I see what he's trying to do. He's trying to put Black folks in a narrative that fits in the American narrative so people can, so he's not othered. Because what happens when you acknowledge enslavement is that you have to acknowledge all that. They all come with each other. It's like being at a buffet and there is literally no other menu. Like once you say, once you go in, you can't order one plate. If you talk about slavery, you're opening up all the things and some people just don't want to do that. And that sucks.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Which Tab Is Still Open: Daniel PerryJonathan Walton: It's true. And [laughs], I think this feeds into a little bit of this segment [laughs] that we have aptly called Which Tab is Still Open. Because out of all the things in our newsletter and our podcast, there's stuff that comes up for us and it's just still hanging on our desktops, we still talk about it offline. So for Sy, like for you, which one, which tab is still open?Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. We're going to talk about Daniel Perry and Donald Trump today.Jonathan Walton: Fun times.Sy Hoekstra: So I recently had an article in the newsletter that I highlighted as one of my resources, that is about the case of Daniel Perry, which I think kind of flew a little bit under the radar in the fervor of 2020. But he was a known racist, meaning we have now seen truckloads of social media posts and text messages and everything revealing his out and out racism, his fantasies about killing Black Lives Matter protesters, all these kinds of things. Who in the summer of 2020, during those protests, drove his car through a red light into a crowd of protesters. And he did not at that moment hurt anyone, but another, an Air Force vet, Daniel Perry's also a vet, but another Air Force vet named Garrett Foster, walked up to him carrying, openly carrying his, in Texas, legal assault rifle.He didn't point it at Daniel Perry, but he was carrying it. And he knocked on the window and motioned for Perry to roll his window down, and Perry shot him through the window five times and killed him. He was convicted of murder in 2023 by a jury. And the day after he was convicted, governor Greg Abbott republican governor of Texas said that he wanted his case to be reviewed for a full pardon, so that the pardons board could send him a recommendation to do it, which is the legal way that a governor can make a pardon in Texas. And that happened a couple weeks ago. Daniel Perry walked free with all of his civil rights restored, including his right to own firearms.Texas Monthly did some really good reporting on how completely bizarre this pardon is under Texas law, meaning they very clear, they kind of laid out how these pardons typically go. And the law very clearly says that a pardon is not to be considered for anyone who is still in prison, like hasn't finished their sentence, except under very exceptional circumstances, which are usually that like some new evidence of innocence has come to light.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: And the actual materials that the board reviewed were basically just his defense case where like him arguing that he was doing what he did out of self-defense. He was standing his ground, and that he was afraid of Foster and therefore allowed to use deadly force. In any other case, the remedy for that, if you think that's your defense and you were wrongly denied your defense by the jury is to appeal. Is to go through the appeals to which you have a right as a criminal defendant. And in this case, he became a bit of a conservative cult hero and the governor stepped in to get him out of jail. It was so bizarre. So the weird thing here is, for me at least, for these cases, for the cases surrounding like where someone has been killed either by the police or by an individual, it has always been pretty clear to me which way the case is going.Like if you're someone who's actually taken a, like me, gone to law school, taken a criminal law class, you've studied murder and then like the right to stand your ground and the right to self-defense, and when you can use deadly force, most of these cases are pretty predictable. I knew that the killers of Ahmaud Arbery and Walter Scott and Jordan Davis were going down. I knew that people were going to get off when they got off. Like those were not confusing. And that isn't because the law isn't racist or whatever, it's just the law doesn't take race into account at all. It just completely ignores, it has nothing to do with the cases, according to the law. So it's like this one was stunning.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: Because if it had gone to the appellate judges, the judges who actually are thinking about like the whole system and the precedents that they're setting would say, “Hey, in an open carry state like Texas, we do not want to set a precedent where if someone who is legally, openly carrying a gun walks up to you, you can kill them.” That is not a precedent that they want to set. But this is not an appellate case, so we're not setting that precedent, we're just letting this racist murderer go. That's it.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: And that is like what effectively Greg Abbott and the Board of Pardons in Texas have conspired to do. And I didn't know this was coming actually. I hadn't heard the news that he was calling for the pardon when it happened, but it's wild. And I just kind of wanted to give that additional context and hear what you're thinking about it, Jonathan, and then we'll get into Donald Trump a little bit.Normalizing Punishing Protestors and Lionizing MurderersJonathan Walton: Yeah, I mean, I think first thing for me is like this is a PG podcast. I won't use all the expletives that I would like to use. The reality of like Kyle Rittenhouse lives in Texas now. George Zimmerman, after he killed Trayvon Martin, he was in other altercations with people with guns. So this is not a person or a scenario that is new, which is sad and disappointing. But the reality of an institution stepping into enforce its institutionalized racism, is something that feels new to me in the environment that we're in. And what I mean by that is like, I think we now live in a society that desires for protestors and folks who are resistant to the system that oppresses and marginalizes people, if you believe that is happening.There are individuals and institutions that desire to punish that group of people. It is now normed that that group of people can be punished by anybody.Sy Hoekstra: If you're in the right state.Jonathan Walton: Well, I won't even say the right state, but I almost think if you can get caught in the zeitgeist of a certain media attention, then you will be lauded as someone who did the right thing.Sy Hoekstra: Oh yeah. Even if you might still end up in jail.Jonathan Walton: Even if you might still end up in jail, like you'll become a hero. And so the circumstances have been created where protesters can be punished by regular members of society, and then their quote- unquote punishment could be pardoned in the court of public opinion, and so much so you could end up being pardoned by the institution. There are going to be more protests on campus. There are going to be more protests in light of Trump's conviction and potential election. The chances of political violence and protests are very high, highly probable there're going to be thunderstorms. And what we're saying is like, let's give everybody lightning bolts [Sy laughs]. And we all know if this is a racially stratified society, which it is, if it's a class stratified society, which it is, then we will end up with things like Donald Trump getting convicted and becoming president.Sy Hoekstra: And the racial stratification is important to remember because people have pointed out, if there had been a Trump rally and someone had been killed, that like, not a chance that Greg Abbott does any of this, right?Jonathan Walton: The hallmark of White American folk religion is hypocrisy. If this were a person of color, there's no way that they would've got pardoned for shooting someone at a protest.The Criminal Legal System was Exceptionally Kind to Donald TrumpSy Hoekstra: And this is the connection to the Donald Trump case [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: Because despite the fact that he was convicted, he has been treated throughout this process in a way that no poor or BIPOC would, like no poor person or any BIPOC would ever be treated by the New York State courts. I can tell you that from experience [laughter] as an actual attorney in New York state. Donald Trump had 10 separate violations of a gag order, like he was held in contempt by the court and required to pay some money, which is significant, but nobody does that and doesn't spend some time in jail unless they are rich and famous and White. It was shocking to watch the amount of dancing around him and his comfort that the system does. And this is, pastor Berry mentioned Bryan Stevenson, another Bryan Stevenson quote.I've mentioned, we've mentioned Brian Stevenson so many times on this show [laughter]. But it's true. One of the things he says all the time is that the system treats you better if you're rich and White and guilty than if you're poor and BIPOC and innocent.Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: And, that's the demonstration. So the Trump indictments happened when we're recording this yesterday. Or the convictions, I mean. And in terms of what it'll do to the election, probably not much. In terms of what it'll like [laughs], like Jonathan was just saying, like this is the situation that we're in here. We don't have a lot of political analysis to bring you about this case because I don't think there's much political analysis to do except to continue to point out over and over again that this is not the way that people are treated by the criminal justice system. This is an exception to what is otherwise the rule.Outro and OuttakeOkay. I think we're going to end there. Thank you all so much for joining us today. Our theme song, as always is “Citizens” by John Guerra. Our podcast Art is by Robyn Burgess. Transcripts by Joyce Ambale. And thank you all so much for joining us. Jonathan, thanks for being here. We will see you all again in two weeks.[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you're building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]Jonathan Walton: Yeah, I think the biggest thing for me was like the amount of work that he went through to make this film. I'm challenged to do that work so that I have something substantial to pass on to Maya and Everest, just so I can communicate with the same amount of intimacy that he did.Sy Hoekstra: So now you're going to go make a documentary about Juneteenth, is what you're saying?Jonathan Walton: [deep exhale, and Sy laughs] At least a reel [laughter].Sy Hoekstra: A reel… yeah, those are pretty much the same I'd say. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ktfpress.com/subscribe

Welcome to the Season four kick-off! Today, we have our first interview with one of the authors from our anthology on Christianity and American politics, the incredible Dr. Randy Woodley. The episode includes:-        How dualism defines White worldviews, and how it negatively affects White Christians-        How love and vulnerability are central to a life with Jesus-        Why our voting decisions matter to marginalized people-        And after the interview in our new segment, hear Jonathan and Sy talk about the attack on teaching Black history in schools, and the greater responsibility White people need to take for their feelings about historical factsResources Mentioned in the Episode-            Dr. Woodley's essay in our anthology: “The Fullness Thereof.”-            Dr. Woodley's book he wrote with his wife, now available for pre-order: Journey to Eloheh: How Indigenous Values Led Us to Harmony and Well-Being-            Dr. Woodley's recent children's books, the Harmony Tree Trilogy-            Our highlight from Which Tab Is Still Open?: The podcast conversation with Nikole Hannah-Jones and Jelani Cobb-            The book A Race Is a Nice Thing to Have: A Guide to Being a White Person or Understanding the White Persons in Your LifeCredits-        Follow KTF Press on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Subscribe to get our newsletter and bonus episodes at KTFPress.com.-        Follow host Jonathan Walton on Facebook Instagram, and Threads.-        Follow host Sy Hoekstra on Mastodon.-        Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.-        Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.-        Production by Sy Hoekstra.-        Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy HoekstraTranscript[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending – F#, B#, E, D#, B – with a keyboard pad playing the note B in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]Randy Woodley: So the Europeans were so set in this dualistic mindset that they began to kill each other over what they consider to be correct doctrine. So we had the religious wars all throughout Europe, and then they brought them to the United States. And here we fought by denomination, so we're just like, “Well I'm going to start another denomination. And I'm going to start another one from that, because I disagree with you about who gets baptized in what ways and at what time,” and all of those kinds of things. So doctrine then, what we think about, and theology, becomes completely disembodied to the point now where the church is just looked at mostly with disdain.[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you're building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]Jonathan Walton: Welcome to Shake the Dust, seeking Jesus, confronting injustice. My name is Jonathan Walton.Sy Hoekstra: And I am Sy Hoekstra, we are so excited to be starting our interviews with our writers from our Anthology in 2020 that we published when we [resigned voice] had the same election that we're having this year [Jonathan laughs]. So it's still relevant at least, and we're really excited to bring you Dr. Randy Woodley today. Jonathan, why don't you tell everyone a bit about Dr. Woodley?Jonathan Walton: Yeah. So Dr. Woodley is a distinguished professor emeritus of faith and culture at George Fox Seminary in Portland, Oregon. His PhD is in intercultural studies. He's an activist, a farmer, a scholar, and active in ongoing conversations and concerns about racism, diversity, eco-justice, reconciliation ecumen… that's a good word.Sy Hoekstra: Ecumenism [laughter].Jonathan Walton: Ecumenism, interfaith dialogue, mission, social justice and indigenous peoples. He's a Cherokee Indian descendant recognized by the Keetoowah Band. He is also a former pastor and a founding board member of the North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies, or NAIITS, as we call it. Dr. Woodley and his wife Edith are co-founders and co-sustainers of Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice situated on farmland in Oregon. Their Center focuses on developing, implementing and teaching sustainable and regenerative earth practices. Together, they have written a book called Journey to Eloheh: How Indigenous Values Led Us to Harmony and Well-Being, which will come out in October. It's available for preorder now, you should definitely check it out. Dr. Woodley also released children's books called Harmony Tree.In our conversation, we talk about what he thinks is the key reason Western Christians have such a hard time following Jesus well, the centrality of love in everything we do as followers of Jesus, the importance of this year's elections to marginalize people, and Dr. Woodley's new books, and just a lot more.Sy Hoekstra: His essay in our book was originally published in Sojourners. It was one of the very few not original essays we had in the book, but it's called “The Fullness Thereof,” and that will be available in the show notes. I'll link to that along with a link to all the books that Jonathan just said and everything else. We're also going to be doing a new segment that we introduced in our bonus episodes, if you were listening to those, called Which Tab Is Still Open?, where we do a little bit of a deeper dive into one of the recommendations from our newsletter. So this week, it will be on The Attack on Black History in schools, a conversation with Jelani Cobb and Nikole Hannah-Jones. It was a really great thing to listen to. That'll be in the show notes to hear our thoughts on it after the interview.Jonathan Walton: Absolutely. And friends, we need your help. We're going into a new phase of KTF, and as you know, this is a listener supported show. So everything we do at KTF to help people leave the idols of America and seek Jesus and confront injustice is only possible because you are supporting us. And in this next phase, we need a lot more supporters. So we've been doing this show, and all of our work in KTF as kind of a side project for a few years, but we want to make it more sustainable. So if you've ever thought about subscribing and you can afford it, please go to and sign up now. And if you can't afford it, all you got to do is email us and we'll give you a free discounted subscription. No questions asked, because we want everyone to have access to our content, bonus episode, and the subscriber community features.So if you can afford it, please do go to www.ktfpress.com, subscribe and make sure these conversations can continue, and more conversations like it can be multiplied. Thanks in advance. Oh, also, because of your support, our newsletter is free right now. So if you can't be a paid subscriber, go and sign up for the free mailing list at www.ktfpress.com and get our media recommendations every week in your inbox, along with things that are helping us stay grounded and hopeful as we engage with such difficult topics at the intersection of church and politics, plus all the news and everything going on with us at KTF. So, thank you so, so much for the subscribers we already have. Thanks in advance for those five-star reviews, they really do help us out, and we hope to see you on www.ktfpress.com as subscribers. Thanks.Sy Hoekstra: Let's get into the interview, I have to issue an apology. I made a rookie podcasting mistake and my audio sucks. Fortunately, I'm not talking that much in this interview [laughter]. Randy Woodley is talking most of the time, and his recording comes to you from his home recording studio. So that's nice. I'll sound bad, but most of the time he's talking and he sounds great [Jonathan laughs]. So let's get right into it. Here's the interview.[the intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out.]What Dualism Is, and How It's Infected the White ChurchJonathan Walton: So, Dr. Woodley, welcome to Shake The Dust. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for contributing to our Anthology in the way that you contributed [laughs].Randy Woodley: I'm glad to be here. Thank you.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Your essay, I mean, was really, really great. We're going to dive deep into it. But you wrote in the essay, the primary difference in the lens through which Western and indigenous Christians see the world is dualism. And so if you were able to just define what is dualism, and why is it a crucial thing for Western Christians to understand about our faith, that'd be great to kick us off.Randy Woodley: Yeah, except for I think I want to draw the line differently than the question you just asked.Jonathan Walton: Okay.Randy Woodley: When we say indigenous Christians, by and large, Christians who are Native Americans have been assimilated into a Western worldview. It's a battle, and there's lots of gradient, there's a gradient scale, so there's lots of degrees of that. But by and large, because of the assimilation efforts of missionaries and churches and Christianity in general, our Native American Christians would probably veer more towards a Western worldview. But so I want to draw that line at traditional indigenous understandings as opposed to indigenous Christian understandings. Okay. So, yeah, Platonic Dualism is just a sort of… I guess to make it more personal, I started asking the question a long time ago, like what's wrong with White people [Sy laughs]? So that's a really valid question, a lot of people ask it, right? But then I kind of got a little more sophisticated, and I started saying, well, then what is whiteness? What does that mean? And then tracing down whiteness, and a number of deep studies and research, and trying to understand where does whiteness really come from, I really ended up about 3000 years ago with the Platonic Dualism, and Western civilization and the Western worldview. And so Plato of course was the great dualist, and he privileged the ethereal over the material world, and then he taught his student, Aristotle. So just to be clear for anybody who, I don't want to throw people off with language. So the thing itself is not the thing, is what Plato said, it's the idea of what the thing is. And so what he's doing is splitting reality. So we've got a holistic reality of everything physical, everything ethereal, et cetera. So Plato basically split that and said, we privilege and we are mostly about what we think about things, not what actually exists an our physical eyes see, or any senses understand. So that split reality… and then he taught Aristotle, and I'm going to make this the five-minute crash course, or two minutes maybe would be better for this [laughs]. Aristotle actually, once you create hierarchies in reality, then everything becomes hierarchical. So men become over women, White people become over Black people. Humans become over the rest of creation. So now we live in this hierarchical world that continues to be added to by these philosophers.Aristotle is the instructor, the tutor to a young man named Alexander, whose last name was The Great. And Alexander basically spreads this Platonic Dualism, this Greek thinking around the whole world, at that time that he could figure out was the world. It goes as far as North Africa and just all over the known world at that time. Eventually, Rome becomes the inheritor of this, and then we get the Greco-Roman worldview. The Romans try to improve upon it, but basically, they continue to be dualist. It gets passed on, the next great kingdom is Britain, Great Britain. And then of course America is the inheritor of that. So Great Britain produces these movements.In fact, between the 14th and 17th century, they have the Renaissance, which is a revival of all this Greek thinking, Roman, Greco-Roman worldview, architecture, art, poetry, et cetera. And so these become what we call now the classics, classic civilization. When we look at what's the highest form of civilization, we look back to, the Western worldview looks back to Greek and Greece and Rome and all of these, and still that's what's taught today to all the scholars. So, during this 14th to 17th century, there's a couple pretty big movements that happen in terms of the West. One, you have the enlightenment. The enlightenment doubles down on this dualism. You get people like René Descartes, who says, “I am a mind, but I just have a body.” You get Francis Bacon, who basically put human beings over nature. You get all of this sort of doubling down, and then you also have the birth of another, what I would call the second of the evil twins, and that is the Reformation. [exaggerated sarcastic gasp] I'll give the audience time to respond [laughter]. The Reformation also doubles down on this dualism, and it becomes a thing of what we think about theology, instead of what we do about theology. So I think I've said before, Jesus didn't give a damn about doctrine. So it became not what we actually do, but what we think. And so the Europeans were so set in this dualistic mindset that they began to kill each other over what they consider to be correct doctrine. So we had the religious wars all throughout Europe, and then they brought them to the United States. And here we fought by denomination, so just like, “Well, I'm going to start another denomination. And I'm going to start another one from that, because I disagree with you about who gets baptized in what ways, and at what time,” and all of those kinds of things.So doctrine then, what we think about, and theology becomes what we're thinking about. And it becomes completely disembodied, to the point now where the church is just looked at mostly with disdain, because it doesn't backup the premises that it projects. So it talks about Jesus and love and all of these things. And yet it's not a reflection of that, it's all about having the correct beliefs, and we think that's what following Jesus is. So when I'm talking about Platonic Dualism, I'm talking about something deeply embedded in our worldview. Not just a thought, not just a philosophy, but a whole worldview. It's what we see as reality. And so my goal is to convert everyone from a Western worldview, which is not sustainable, and it will not project us into the future in a good way, to a more indigenous worldview.Dr. Woodley's Influences, and How He's Influenced OthersSy Hoekstra: So let's talk about that effort then, because you have spent effectively decades trying to do just that.Randy Woodley: Exactly.Sy Hoekstra: Working with both indigenous and non-indigenous people. So tell us what some of the good fruit that you see as you disciple people out of this dualistic thinking?Randy Woodley: I feel like that question is supposed to be answered by the people I effected at my memorial service, but…Sy Hoekstra: [laughter] Well, you can answer for yourself.Jonathan Walton: Yeah, I mean…Randy Woodley: Yeah, I mean, it's a bit braggadocious if I start naming names and all those kinds of things [Sy laughs]. I would just say that I've had influence in people's lives along with other influences. And now, I mean, first of all when I look back, I look and the most important thing to me is my children know I love them with all my heart and I did the best I could with them. And then secondly, the people who I taught became my friends. And the people I've mentored became my friends and I'm still in relationship with so many of them. That's extremely important to me. That's as important as anything else. And then now I look and I see there's people and they've got podcasts and they've got organizations and they've got denominations and they're... I guess overall, the best thing that I have done to help other people over the years is to help them to ask good questions in this decolonization effort and this indigenous effort. So yeah, I've done a little bit over the years.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs] How about for yourself? Because I don't think, I think one of the reasons you started asking these questions was to figure things out for yourself. What fruit have you seen in your own “walk,” as evangelicals might put it?Randy Woodley: Well, I think as you get older, you get clarity. And you also realize that people who have influenced you, and I think about a lot of people in my life. Some I've met, some I've never met. Some you've probably never heard of. People like Winkie Pratney, and John Mohawk and John Trudell, and public intellectuals like that. And then there's the sort of my some of my professors that helped me along the way like Ron Sider and Tony Campolo, and Samuel Escobar and Manfred Brauch. And just a whole lot of people I can look back, Jean [inaudible], who took the time to build a relationship and helped me sort of even in my ignorance, get out of that. And I think one of the first times this happened was when I was doing my MDiv, and someone said to me, one of my professors said to me, “You need to see this through your indigenous eyes.” And I was challenged. It was like, “Oh! Well then, what eyes am I seeing this through?” And then I began to think about that. The thing about decolonizing, is that once you start pulling on that thread the whole thing comes unraveled. So yeah.Jonathan Walton: Yeah, I think like, just to speak a little bit to your impact, I think something you said to someone that was said to me, was like we're all indigenous to somewhere. And the importance of looking upstream to see how we're influenced to be able to walk into the identity that God has called us to. Including the people who led me to faith being like Ashley Byrd, Native Hawaiian, being able to call me out of a dualist way of thinking and into something more holistic, and now having multi-ethnic children myself being able to speak to them in an indigenous way that connects them to a land and a people has been really transformative for me.Randy Woodley: Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. See? Right there.Love and Vulnerability are Central to Christian LifeJonathan Walton: [laughs] Yeah. And with that, you make a point of saying that you're somebody who works hard to speak difficult truths in a way that is loving and acceptable to everybody. I would say that's like Jesus, right? To be able to speak hard truths and yet people are curious and want to know more even though they're challenged. And so why, I could guess, and I'm sure people would fill in the blanks. But like if you had to say why that's important to you, what would you say?Randy Woodley: Well, I mean, love's the bottom line of everything. If I'm not loving the people I'm with, then I'm a hypocrite. I'm not living up to what I'm speaking about. So the bottom line to all of this shalom, understanding dualism, changing worldviews, is love. And so love means relationship. It means being vulnerable. I always say God is the most vulnerable being who exists. And if I'm going to be the human that the creator made me to be, then I have to be vulnerable. I have to risk and I have to trust and I have to have courage and love, and part of that is building relationships with people. So I think, yeah, if… in the old days, we sort of had a group of Native guys that hung around together, me and Richard Twiss, Terry LeBlanc, Ray Aldred, Adrian Jacobs. We all sort of had a role. Like, we called Richard our talking head. So he was the best communicator and funniest and he was out there doing speaking for all of us. And my role that was put on me was the angry Indian. So I was the one out there shouting it down and speaking truth to power and all that. And over the years, I realized that that's okay. I still do that. And I don't know that I made a conscious decision or if I just got older, but then people start coming up to me and saying things like, “Oh, you say some really hard things, but you say it with love.” And I'm like, “Oh, okay. Well, I'll take that.” So I just became this guy probably because of age, I don't know [laughs] and experience and seeing that people are worth taking the extra time to try and communicate in a way that doesn't necessarily ostracize them and make them feel rejected.Jonathan Walton: Yeah, that definitely makes sense. I think there's all these iterations of the last 50 years of people trying to say, “Hey, love across difference. Hey, love across difference.” And there's these iterations that come up. So I hope a lot of people get older faster to be able, you know [laughter].Randy Woodley: I think we're all getting older faster in this world we're in right now.Jonathan Walton: It's true. Go ahead Sy.The Importance of Voters' Choices to marginalized PeopleSy Hoekstra: Yeah. So we had another interview that we did, kind of about Middle East politics, as we're thinking about the election coming up. And one of the points we hit on that we've talked about before on this show is that to a lot of people in the Middle East or North Africa, whoever gets elected in the US, it doesn't necessarily make the biggest difference in the world. There's going to be drones firing missiles, there's going to be governments being manipulated by the US. America is going to do what America is going to do in the Middle East regardless. And I assume to a certain degree, tell me if I'm wrong, that that might be how a lot of indigenous people think about America. America is going to do what America is going to do regardless of who's in power, broadly speaking at least. What do you think about when you look at the choices in front of us this November? How do you feel about it? Like what is your perspective when you're actually thinking about voting?Randy Woodley: Yeah, that's a really good question. And I understand I think, how people in other countries might feel, because Americans foreign policy is pretty well based on America first and American exceptionalism, and gaining and maintaining power in the world. And I think that makes little difference. But in domestic affairs, I think it makes a whole lot of difference. Native Americans, much like Black Americans are predominantly Democrats and there's a reason for that. And that is because we're much more likely to not have our funding to Indian Health Service cut off in other things that we need, housing grants and those kinds of things. And there's just such a difference right now, especially in the domestic politics. So I mean, the Republicans have basically decided to abandon all morals and follow a narcissistic, masochistic, womanizing… I mean, how many—criminal, et cetera, and they've lost their minds.And not that they have ever had the best interest of the people at the bottom of the social ladder in mind. Because I mean, it was back in the turnaround when things changed a long time ago that there was any way of comparing the two. But ever since Reagan, which I watched, big business wins. And so right now, we live in a corporatocracy. And yes, there are Democrats and the Republicans involved in that corporatocracy, but you will find many more Democrats on the national scale who are for the poor and the disenfranchised. And that's exactly what Shalom is about. It's this Shalom-Sabbath-Jubilee construct that I call, that creates the safety nets. How do you know how sick a society is? How poor its safety nets are. So the better the safety nets, the more Shalom-oriented, Sabbath-Jubilee construct what I call it, which is exactly what Jesus came to teach.And look up four, that's his mission. Luke chapter four. And so, when we think about people who want to call themselves Christians, and they aren't concerned about safety nets, they are not following the life and words of Jesus. So you just have to look and say, yes, they'll always, as long as there's a two-party system, it's going to be the lesser of two evils. That's one of the things that's killing us, of course lobbyists are killing us and everything else. But this two-party system is really killing us. And as long as we have that, we're always going to have to choose the lesser of two evils. It's a very cynical view, I think, for people inside the United States to say, well, there's no difference. In fact, it's a ridiculous view. Because all you have to look at is policy and what's actually happened to understand that there's a large difference, especially if you're poor.And it's also a very privileged position of whiteness, of power, of privilege to be able to say, “Oh, it doesn't matter who you vote for.” No, it matters to the most disenfranchised and the most marginalized people in our country. But I don't have a strong opinion about that. [laughter]Jonathan Walton: I think there's going to be a lot of conversation about that very point. And I'm prayerful, I'm hopeful, like we tried to do with our Anthology like other groups are trying to do, is to make that point and make it as hard as possible that when we vote it matters, particularly for the most disenfranchised people. And so thank you for naming the “survival vote,” as black women in this country call it.Dr. Woodley's new books, and Where to Find His Work OnlineJonathan Walton: And so all of that, like we know you're doing work, we know things are still happening, especially with Eloheh and things like that. But I was doing a little Googling and I saw like you have a new book coming out [laughs]. So I would love to hear about the journey that… Oh, am I saying that right, Eloheh?Randy Woodley: It's Eloheh [pronounced like “ay-luh-hay”], yeah.Jonathan Walton: Eloheh. So I would love to hear more about your new book journey to Eloheh, as well as where you want people to just keep up with your stuff, follow you, because I mean, yes, the people downstream of you are pretty amazing, but the spigot is still running [laughter]. So can you point us to where we can find your stuff, be able to hang out and learn? That would be a wonderful thing for me, and for others listening.Randy Woodley: Well, first of all, I have good news for the children. I have three children's books that just today I posted on my Facebook and Insta, that are first time available. So this is The Harmony Tree Trilogy. So in these books are about not only relationships between host people and settler peoples, but each one is about sort of different aspects of dealing with climate change, clear cutting, wildfires, animal preservation, are the three that I deal with in this trilogy. And then each one has other separate things. Like the second one is more about empowering women. The third one is about children who we would call, autistic is a word that's used. But in the native way we look at people who are different differently than the West does: as they're specially gifted. And this is about a young man who pre-contact and his struggle to find his place in native society. And so yeah, there's a lot to learn in these books. But yeah, so my wife and I…Sy Hoekstra: What's the target age range for these books?Randy Woodley: So that'd be five to 11.Jonathan Walton: Okay, I will buy them, thank you [laughter]Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Randy Woodley: But adults seem to really love them too. So I mean, people have used them in church and sermons and all kinds of things. Then the book that Edith and I wrote is called Journey to Eloheh, how indigenous values bring harmony and well-being. And it's basically our story. The first two chapters really deal, the first chapter deals more in depth of this dualism construct. And the second one really deals with my views on climate change, which are unlike anybody else's I know. And then we get into our stories, but I wanted to set a stage of why it's so important. And then Edith's story, and then my story and then our story together. And then how we have tried to teach these 10 values as we live in the world and teach and mentor and other things and raise our children.So, yeah, the journey to Eloheh, that's all people have to remember. It's going to be out in October, eighth I think.Jonathan Walton: Okay.Randy Woodley: And we're really excited about it. I think it's the best thing I've written up to this date. And I know it's the best thing my wife's written because this is her first book [laughter].Jonathan Walton: Awesome.Sy Hoekstra: That's great.Randy Woodley: Yeah, so we're proud of that. And then yeah, people can go to www.eloheh.org. That's E-L-O-H-E-H.org and sign up for our newsletter. You can follow me on Instagram, both @randywoodley7 and @eloheh/eagleswings. And the same with Facebook. We all have Facebook pages and those kinds of things. So yeah, and then Twitter. I guess I do something on Twitter every now and then [laughter]. And I have some other books, just so you know.Sy Hoekstra: Just a couple.Jonathan Walton: I mean a few. A few pretty great ones. [laughs] Well on behalf of me and Sy, and the folks that we influence. Like I've got students that I've pointed toward you over the years through the different programs that we run,Randy Woodley: Thank you.Jonathan Walton: and one of them is… two of them actually want to start farms and so you'll be hearing from them.Randy Woodley: Oh, wow. That's good.Jonathan Walton: And so I'm just…Randy Woodley: We need more small farms.Jonathan Walton: Yes. Yes, absolutely. Places where stewardship is happening and it is taught. And so, super, super grateful for you. And thanks again for being on Shake the Dust. We are deeply grateful.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Randy Woodley: Yeah, thank you guys. Nice to be with you.[the intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out.]Sy's and Jonathan's Thoughts After the InterviewJonathan Walton: So, wow. That was amazing. Coming out of that time, I feel like I'm caring a lot. So Sy, why don't you go first [laughs], what's coming up for you?Sy Hoekstra: We sound a little starstruck when we were talking to him. It's kind of funny actually.Jonathan Walton: Absolutely.Sy Hoekstra: I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if people know, in our world, he's sort of a big deal [laughter]. And we have, neither of us have met him before so that was a lot of fun.Jonathan Walton: No, that's true.Sy Hoekstra: I think it was incredible how much like in the first five minutes, him summing up so much about Western theology and culture that I have taken like, I don't know, 15 years to learn [laughs]. And he just does it so casually and so naturally. There's just like a depth of wisdom and experience and thinking about this stuff there that I really, really appreciate. And it kind of reminded me of this thing that happened when Gabrielle and I were in law school. Gabrielle is my wife, you've heard her speak before if you listen to the show. She was going through law school, as she's talked about on the show from a Haitian-American, or Haitian-Canadian immigrant family, grew up relatively poor, undocumented.And just the reasons that she's gotten into the law are so different. And she comes from such a different background than anybody who's teaching her, or any of the judges whose cases she's reading. And she's finding people from her background just being like, “What are we doing here? Like how is this relevant to us, how does this make a difference?” And we went to this event one time that had Bryan Stevenson, the Capitol defense attorney who we've talked about before, civil rights attorney. And Sherrilyn Ifill, who at the time was the head of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund. And they were just, it was the complete opposite experience, like they were talking about all of her concerns. They were really like, I don't know, she was just resonating with everything that they were saying, and she came out of it, and she goes, “It's just so good to feel like we have leaders.” Like it's such a relief to feel like you actually have wiser people who have been doing this and thinking about this for a long time and actually have the same concerns that you do. And that is how I feel coming out of our conversation with Randy Woodley. Like in the church landscape that we face with all the crises and the scandals and the lack of faithfulness and the ridiculous politics and everything, it is just so good to sit down and talk to someone like him, where I feel like somebody went ahead of me. And he's talking about the people who went ahead of him, and it just it's relieving. It is relieving to feel like you're almost sort of part of a tradition [laughter], when you have been alienated from the tradition that you grew up in, which is not the same experience that you've had, but that's how I feel.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I mean, I think for me, coming out of the interview, one of the things I realized is similar. I don't have very many conversations with people who are older than me, that are more knowledgeable than me, and have been doing this work longer than me all at the same time. I know people who are more knowledgeable, but they're not actively involved in the work. I know people that are actively involved in the work, but they've been in the silos for so long, they haven't stepped out of their box in ten years. But so to be at that intersection of somebody who is more knowledgeable about just the knowledge, like the historical aspects, theological aspect, and then that goes along with the practical applications, like how you do it in your life and in the lives of other people. He's like the spiritual grandfather to people that I follow.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: [laughter] So it's like, so I think you said it, like we were a little starstruck. I do think I was very conscious of being respectful, which I think is not new for me, but it is a space that I don't often inhabit. And I think that's something that has been frustrating for me, just honestly like the last few years, is that the pastoral aspect of the work that we do, is severely lacking.Sy Hoekstra: When you say the pastoral aspect of the work that we do, you mean like, in the kind of activist-y Christian space, there just aren't a ton of pastors [laughs]?Jonathan Walton: Yes. And, so for example, like I was in a cohort, and I was trying to be a participant. And so being a participant in the cohort, I expected a certain level of pastoring to happen for me. And that in hindsight was a disappointment. But I only realized that after sitting down with somebody like Randy, where it's like, I'm not translating anything. He knows all the words. He knows more words than me [Sy laughs]. I'm not contextualizing anything. So I think that was a reassuring conversation. I think I felt the same way similarly with Ron Sider, like when I met him. He's somebody who just knows, you know what and I mean? I feel that way talking with Lisa Sharon Harper. I feel that way talking with Brenda Salter McNeil. I feel that way talking with people who are just a little further down the road.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Lisa's not that much older than us [laughter].Jonathan Walton: Well, is she?Sy Hoekstra: You compared her to Ron Sider. I'm like, “That's a different age group, Jonathan” [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Well, I don't mean age. I do mean wisdom and experience.Sy Hoekstra: Right. Yeah, totally.Jonathan Walton: Yes, Ron Sider was very old [laughs]. And actually, Ron Sider is actually much older than Randy Woodley [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: That's also true. That's a good point.Jonathan Walton: Yeah, right. Ron Sider is, when the Anthology came out, he was legit 45 years older than us, I think.Sy Hoekstra: And he very kindly, endorsed, and then passed away not that long afterwards.Jonathan Walton: He did, he did.Sy Hoekstra: He was such an interesting giant in a lot of ways to people all over the political spectrum [laughs]…Jonathan Walton: Yes, right.Sy Hoekstra: …who just saw something really compelling in his work.Which Tab Is Still Open? Legislators Restricting Teaching about Race in SchoolsSy Hoekstra: So Jonathan, all right, from our recent newsletter recommendations. Here's the new segment, guys. Jonathan, which tab is still open?Jonathan Walton: Yes. So the tab that's still open is this article and podcast episode from The New Yorker, featuring a conversation with Columbia School of Journalism Dean, Jelani Cobb, and Nikole Hannah-Jones from Howard University and the 1619 project. They talked about the attack on Black history in schools. And so there's just two thoughts that I want to give. And one of them is that there are very few conversations where you can get a broad overview of what an organized, sustained resistance to accurate historical education looks like, and they do that. Like they go all the way back and they come all the way forward, and you're like “expletive, this is not okay.” [Sy laughs] Right? So, I really appreciated that. Like, yes, you could go and read Angela Crenshaw's like Opus work. Yes, you could go…Sy Hoekstra: You mean, Kimberlé Crenshaw [laughs]?Jonathan: Oh, I mixed, Angela Davis and Kimber… Well, if they were one person, that would be a powerful person [Sy laughs]. But I do mean Kimberlé Crenshaw, no offense to Angela Davis. I do mean Kimberlé Crenshaw. You could go get that book. You could go listen to Ta-Nehisi Coates testimony in front of Congress on reparations. Like these long things, but like this conversation pulls a lot of threads together in a really, really helpful, compelling way. And so that's one thing that stood out to me. The second thing is I think I have to acknowledge how fearful and how grateful it made me. I am afraid of what's going to happen in 20 years, when children do not know their history in these states. And I'm grateful that my daughter will know hers because she goes to my wife's school in New York.And so, I did not know that I would feel that sense of fear and anxiety around like, man, there's going to be generations of people. And this is how it continues. There's going to be another generation of people who are indoctrinated into the erasure of black people. And the erasure of native people in the erasure of just narratives that are contrary to race-based, class-based, gender-based environmental hierarchies. And that is something that I'm sad about. And with KTF and other things, just committed to making sure that doesn't happen as best as we possibly can, while also being exceptionally grateful that my children are not counted in that number of people that won't know. So I hold those two things together as I listened to just the wonderful wisdom and knowledge that they shared from. What about you Sy? What stood out for you?White People Should Take Responsibility for Their Feelings Instead of Banning Uncomfortable TruthsSy Hoekstra: Narrowly, I think one really interesting point that Jelani Cobb made was how some of these book bans and curriculum reshaping and everything that's happening are based on the opposite reasoning of the Supreme Court in Brown versus Board of Education [laughs]. So what he meant by that was, basically, we have to ban these books and we have to change this curriculum, because White kids are going to feel bad about being White kids. And what Brown versus Board of Education did was say we're going to end this idea of separate but equal in the segregated schools because there were they actually, Thurgood Marshall and the people who litigated the case brought in all this science or all the psychological research, about how Black children in segregated schools knew at a very young age that they were of lower status, and had already associated a bunch of negative ideas with the idea of blackness.And so this idea that there can be separate but equal doesn't hold any water, right? So he was just saying we're doing what he called the opposite, like the opposite of the thinking from Brown versus Board of Education at this point. But what I was thinking is like the odd similarity is that both these feelings of inferiority come from whiteness, it's just that like, one was imposed by the dominant group on to the minoritized group. Basically, one was imposed by White people on to Black people, and the other is White people kind of imposing something on themselves [laughs]. Like you are told that your country is good and great and the land of the free and the home of the brave. And so when you learn about history that might present a different narrative to you, then you become extremely uncomfortable.And you start to not just become extremely uncomfortable, but also feel bad about yourself as an individual. And White people, there are so many White people who believe that being told that the race to which you belong has done evil things, that means that you as an individual are a bad person, which is actually just a personal emotional reaction that not all white people are going to have. It's not like, it isn't a sure thing. And I know that because I'm a White person who does not have that reaction [laughter]. I know that with 100 percent certainty. So it's just interesting to me, because it really raised this point that Scott Hall talks about a lot. That people need to be responsible for our own feelings. We don't need to legislate a new reality of history for everybody else in order to keep ourselves comfortable.We need to say, “Why did I had that emotional reaction, and how can I reorient my sense of identity to being white?” And that is what I came out of this conversation with, is just White people need to take responsibility for our identity, our psychological identity with our own race. And it comes, it's sort of ironic, I think, that conservative people who do a lot of complaining about identity politics, or identitarianism, or whatever they call it, that's what's happening here. This is a complete inability to separate yourself psychologically from your White identity. That's what makes you feel so uncomfortable in these conversations. And so take responsibility for who you are White people [laughs].Just who you are as an individual, who you are as your feelings, take responsibility for yourself.There's a great book that my dad introduced me to a while back called A Race Is a Nice Thing to Have: A Guide to Being White or Understanding the White Persons in Your Life [laughter]. And it's written by this black, female psychologist named Janet Helms. It's H-E-L-M-S. But it's pronounced “Helmiss.” And she just has dedicated her career to understanding how White people shape their identities. And she has so, like such a wealth of knowledge about different stages of white identity formation, and has all these honestly kind of funny little quizzes in the book that she updates every few, there's like a bunch of editions of this book, that it's like asking you, “What do you think is best for America?” The campaign and ideas of this politician or this one or this one. And she asks you a bunch of questions and from there tells you where you are in your White identity formation [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Wow. That's amazing.Sy Hoekstra: It's really, “how would you feel if somebody said this about White people?” whatever. Tons of different questions, it's kind of like taking a personality test, but it's about you and your race [laughs]. That's just a resource that I would offer to people as a way to do what this conversation reminded me my people all very much need to do.Jonathan Walton: Amen.Sy Hoekstra: I just talked for a long time, Jonathan, we need to end. But do you have any thoughts [laughs]?Jonathan Walton: No. I was just going to say this podcast is a great 101 and a great 301.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: Like it spans the spectrum. So please do if you haven't, go listen to the podcast. Yeah, just check it out. It's very, very good.Outro and OuttakeSy Hoekstra: We will have that in the show notes along with all the other links of everything that we had today. Okay, that's our first full episode of season four. We're so glad that you could join us. This was a great one full of a lot of great stuff. Our theme song as always is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess. The show is produced by all of you, our lovely subscribers, and our transcripts are by Joyce Ambale. Thank you all so much for listening, we will see you in two weeks with the great Brandi Miller.[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you're building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ and you call us citizens/ and you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]Randy Woodley: You know, I think I've said before Jesus didn't give a damn about doctrine. Excuse me. Jesus didn't give a darn about doctrine. I don't know if that'll go through or not.[laughter]. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ktfpress.com/subscribe

Join us for a special episode of Today's Conversation podcast with Bryan Stevenson and Bishop Derek Grier. Hosted by NAE President Walter Kim, the leaders discuss the promise of greatness that's available to a society unburdened by hate, violence and discrimination.They talk about why we must reckon with the past in order to experience racial healing and reconciliation, and why the aspiration for a society that's rooted in love, peace and joy is essential to the work of racial justice.You'll also hear about a recent trip, hosted by National Unity Weekend and the National Association of Evangelicals, with 100 Christian leaders to the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. Bryan shares his vision for the museum as a place of truth-telling where narratives are recovered and where people can grapple with dreadful elements of America's history and at the same time be inspired by the perseverance of those who suffered.They also discuss:How fear and power are barriers to racial reconciliation;Why there can be no reconciliation without reckoning;How the conviction in our hearts motivates change; andHow we can be liberated through repentance and experience redemption.Go to NAE.org/stevenson-grier-podcast for show notes.

Jessica Pryce believed a career at Child Protective Services would be a rewarding way to help keep kids safe. What she learned on the job completely changed her mind, as the system itself kept getting closer and closer to home. Now she's a scholar of the system and works as a public advocate to help change it for the better.  Dr. Jessica Pryce joins us to talk about her new book, Broken: Transforming Child Protective Services—Notes of a Former Caseworker. Pryce earned her Master's of Social Work degree from Florida State University and a PhD from Howard University. She's currently a research professor at Florida State University's College of Social Work.  Transcript JESSICA PRYCE: I was very close to the people I worked with. I was in their homes. I was opening up their kitchen cabinets. I was talking to their neighbors. I was very close. But I wasn't engaging them. I didn't really see them. I was investigating them and objectifying them. BLAIR HODGES: When Jessica Pryce began working for Child Protective Services, she was shocked at some of the living conditions she encountered. She wanted children to be safe, so she worked with the courts and police to figure out who should be taken away from their parents or what parents needed to do to prove their fitness. It was a tough job, and it got even tougher when people she personally loved got wrapped up in the system. She started to see cracks in the foundation—ways the system harmed families instead of helping them. It set her on a path to advocate for big changes. In this episode, Jessica Pryce joins us to talk about her book, Broken: Transforming Child Protective Services. There's no one right way to be a family and every kind of family has something we can learn from. I'm Blair Hodges, and this is Family Proclamations. FIRST DAY WITH CPS - 01:31 BLAIR HODGES: Jessica Pryce, welcome to Family Proclamations. JESSICA PRYCE: Thank you so much for having me. BLAIR HODGES: Your book starts off right in the thick of things when you were a graduate student in social work. You'd landed this internship with Child Protective Services, CPS—this is a government agency that's tasked with protecting children from neglect and abuse. Take us to your first day in the internship when you visited the home of who you call Naomi Harden. JESSICA PRYCE: Sure. A big part of writing this book was me trying to make sure the reader understood what happens when you get a CPS case. On my very first day I was going to meet my internship supervisor and didn't really know what to expect. As soon as I got into the office, she had a case so we were thrust out into the field to go meet this mom. As an intern we're really supposed to observe and ask questions afterwards and take notes if we can. We weren't allowed to do any of the direct interviewing or things like that. It felt overwhelming at the time, but I still said, "Okay, I have my supervisor with me. I'll see what happens," and was bewildered by what we walked into. BLAIR HODGES: Naomi was a woman in her late twenties. She was Black. She was a mom of three. She'd been reported for an environmental hazard. When you got in the house, how did you feel? Do you remember walking in there and kind of taking it in? What was it like? JESSICA PRYCE: I do. It's one of those things you could never forget because I hadn't been in a house that looked like that. It looked very—you know, I'm trying to say messy, but it was it was deeper than that. It was clear that Mom was having some sort of issue around the home because typically, as I learned on that day, environmental hazards are deeper than a messy home. It really depends on the ages of the children, and because there was an infant in the home this became a huge issue for CPS. We know what infants do. They crawl around, they get into things. So I think that was why it was a big red flag for the system to go into the home in that way. Because again, I was shocked that we got called for messy homes, but because the child was so young they wanted us to come and investigate. BLAIR HODGES: You say you felt things like disgust and righteous indignation. You had an attitude toward the mom of like, "Who is this person? This is disgusting and terrible." JESSICA PRYCE: I did. I talk about the fact that I didn't grow up in a home like that and I had never seen a home like that. I immediately felt like, why would she do that? Why would she be raising kids in this sort of environment? So yes, absolutely came in thinking this is ridiculous. These kids shouldn't live here. We have to do something. That was my mentality at the time. ROLES IN THE SYSTEM - 04:07 BLAIR HODGES: It was so different from your upbringing. You grew up in this small town. Everyone cared for each other. It was a clean home. You didn't have to worry about environmental hazards in your house. You had parents who took good care of the home and of you. So this was like walking into an alien planet or something. You're learning quickly how removals of children might work, the type of people who are involved. Walk us through the roles of all the different people in the system who would be involved in deciding whether or not they needed to remove a child from a home. JESSICA PRYCE: We typically start with calling the reporter of the abuse. Around the country, there are mandated reporters. They call in a CPS report and we touch base with them on. what are your concerns? Is there anything else you want us to know about before we make contact with the family? BLAIR HODGES: This could be teachers, doctors, and stuff like that? JESSICA PRYCE: School social workers. We talk to the school, we talk to collateral contacts—which is sometimes neighbors. Again, these collateral contacts are people that don't live in the home but know the family. We're talking to teachers, school social workers, sometimes knocking on doors around the home to say, "We have this going on with this neighbor and her kids. What are your thoughts about it? Do you have any concerns about it?" After we compile all this information, if we feel there's a danger threat, we then have to call our attorneys, really debrief the case, tell them our concerns, tell them what we found, and they let us know, "Hey, this isn't enough for removal," or "I think we have something here, let's take it to the judge." That's how removals work. We have to consult with our attorney to see if there's enough to do that. BLAIR HODGES: You had to do it every time? Sometimes I'm sure you would just know based on the system's rules, you'd be like, "Oh, this is a pretty clear-cut case." But investigators have to call attorneys regardless, and then they would make the call, and then they would call a judge to get an order to remove the child—is that right? JESSICA PRYCE: What's interesting about that is we remove kids and then see the judge. We do talk to our attorneys to see if we have enough to petition the court, but that happens after the fact. As you read in the book, those children were removed before we ever went to court. So we do make the removal based on an attorney saying, "I think we have enough to do this. Go ahead and shelter the kids." Then we put the kids elsewhere, and generally the very next day we go before the judge. I learned very quickly during the early days of my internship that sometimes judges send kids back home. Sometimes judges say, “You know what? This looks like you did the right thing, let's keep them in foster care.” People don't realize we actually take kids away from families and then ask for permission to keep the removal. BLAIR HODGES: Sometimes police get involved too. That's another element of this, that cops can be involved in the removal process. JESSICA PRYCE: Absolutely. Generally, when we're removing kids we're encouraged to call law enforcement. In the book I take folks through my training, and during that training phase we are told if you're going to remove a child, also if you're dealing with family violence around intimate partner violence or domestic violence, we are encouraged to bring law enforcement. They play a big role in removals, because it gets very heated, and we wanted to make sure we had some support. BLAIR HODES: If I recall correctly, there are also special doctors who are licensed to assess children. They're going to look at a kid and figure out if there's been abuse and things like that, right? JESSICA PRYCE: Absolutely. If you're dealing with a case around particularly physical abuse, sexual abuse, and some cases with medical and physical neglect, we have physicians examine the child. That's really something we add to the evidence when we go to the judge. These are all pieces of the puzzle we're pulling together to take to the judge for a ruling. And sometimes the judge says, "Yes, the child should be removed." But the consolation prize, as I call it, for some families is, we're not going to remove your kids, but you're going to be monitored by the court for the next year or so. Again, somewhat a success, right? We didn't remove the children, but I think it's also important to know now you have the court system in your home really dissecting everything you're doing for the foreseeable future. NAOMI'S CASE – 08:28 BLAIR HODGES: Okay, so on the surface, Jessica, this seems pretty comprehensive. It seems fairly reasonable when we look at the process at this level. There are mandated reporters, there's investigators, there's attorneys involved, there's judges that make decisions, there's police that provide some protection, there's special doctors that assess the health of children, and it's an ongoing process. We all want children to be safe. This process seems important. It seems like it could work well. What your book does is show us the gaps in these services, the problems with some of these approaches and how yhe system disproportionately affects some people compared to other people. You experienced this firsthand. You had a follow up visit with Naomi, the mom you introduce us to at the beginning of the book, and she was told by the court to do certain things. When you went back, you were really troubled because you felt like she wasn't doing everything she could do. You felt like, “If I was a mom, I would be doing everything I could to prove I'm a worthy mom,” and you didn't see that with Naomi. So you were still bringing this judgment to her and now you had to build a case. Maybe talk about the case building that you had do at that point and the kind of things parents might be expected to do by the court to either prove they were fit to have their children or to get their children back. JESSICA PRYCE: With Naomi, I remember feeling like, why wouldn't she clean up her home in order to get her kids back? I just felt this was a very simple ask. But what I'm hoping people realize as they read the book, because a lot of these cases are left unresolved in the book—I give them what I experienced and then often I move on to a new case or I move on to the next part of my experience. And what I want folks to ask themselves, even if they're not in the field—I don't know who will read this book—is that what you would have done? Did that feel like a compassionate way to help a mom that was clearly going through something? If someone is not doing what you would do in a situation, how do we react? Do we react, saying, "You're not trying. You're not doing the right thing. Why are you doing it this way?" We need to ask ourselves, are we putting that judgment on this mom because it's something we would do? Are we projecting our standards on this person? Are we able to drill down into what's really going on? So she was asked to do several things, one of which was to clean up her home. There were several things I discovered a few weeks after her children were taken, and we realized she had been dealing with domestic violence in the past, that she was dealing with a lot of mental health issues. Her family started to weigh in on it. That she hadn't been the same since the domestic violence incident. She hadn't been the same since the birth of her child. It hit me in that moment, we saw what we saw, and we made—in my opinion, with our knowledge at the time, we made—the decision we thought was best. But what happens with a lot of families is we miss what's truly going on. As you saw in the book, we placed the children with Grandma, she lived about an hour away. We thought we were fixing a situation, but it created so many other issues with the kids possibly having to move schools, and Grandma being an elderly woman that doesn't drive much anymore. It became this issue of what does the system need to do differently with families? How do we pull the community in to help a family stay together? Somebody asked me who's read the book, "Why can't we bring in people to help clean the home? And mental health services?" Again, I know we're living in a certain type of world, but that was the point of the book. I wanted people to see what CPS professionals see every day and how they might have done things differently, and what we did in the moment and why we did it. INTRUDE AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE – 12:07 BLAIR HODGES: I think you made it clear the one person in the entire scenario that didn't get support was Naomi. There were things that could have been done perhaps to help her, instead everything was put on her in a sense of blame and shame and personal responsibility, instead of looking at systems and things around her that were contributing to this. Postpartum depression, and abuse, and mental illness—all of the different things that could be addressed for Naomi, and that's not what the system was doing. You found that more and more as you were working there, because you didn't just internship there, you became a full-time employee. That's when they took you through a short training. It's so funny when you're talking about how short it is. You're like, compared to what we're doing, it was pretty lightning quick to tell us what to do. [laughter] I have this quote from the training materials, it says, "CPS intervention should intrude as little as possible into the life of the family, be focused on clearly defined objectives, and take the most parsimonious path to remedy a family's problems." That's an ideal that you say did not match the reality of what you ended up doing. JESSICA PRYCE: Absolutely. I was in that training cohort with other colleagues that had either been in the field or done an internship and we're in training thinking, "Wow, this sounds good." And I do understand what they're asking us to do, but how are we not translating what we're learning into actually what we're doing in the field? That continues today, where people are trained, and then they come into the field and their supervisors and colleagues say, "I know you just got trained, but let me tell you what we're really going to do." I think that disconnect continues to create confusion and moral conflict with folks that are coming into the field to actually promote child safety. What we really start to do, as other colleagues of mine have said, if we start to police families and over surveil them—a lot of families are under surveillance and we're really not getting to what's actually going on. BLAIR HODGES: The idea of “intruding as little as possible,” that's fine to say, but there weren't a lot of actual ways to monitor that. To say, what does it look like to intrude as little as possible? Because a CPS case against a family can really take over a life. JESSICA PRYCE: Indeed. And someone recently asked me what would that even look like if CPS wasn't intrusive? My only answer to that was, a lot of things would need to change. We would need to partner with families in a different way—as opposed to going in their home, walking through rooms, opening up cabinets—we would actually have to partner with not just that family, but extended family on, what are the needs? Do I need to go in here and do what I just did, or can we actually sit down and talk about, do you have food? Do you have material needs that are not being met? What can we do to support you in that way? BLAIR HODGES: There would have to be a lot of trust built there too, because as the current system is, people might be reluctant to say whether they needed food or not or anything like that. That's because of stories they hear about how CPS works, and the adversarial relationship you describe between investigators in the system and the families that are undergoing it. We're talking today with Jessica Pryce. She's a research professor at Florida State University's College of Social Work. Her book is called Broken: Transforming Child Protective Services. SCOPE AND SYSTEMIC RACISM – 15:23 BLAIR HODGES: Jessica, I wanted to zoom out a little bit and just talk broad scope, give us a general sense—you might not have the exact numbers off the top your head, we're just trying to get an idea of how big the CPS system is. How many investigations are happening, how common it is for kids to get taken into the system? Give us that broad scope of the system. JESSICA PRYCE: Absolutely. In a given year, there could be four hundred thousand youth in foster care. I believe in one of the years that I wrote about in the book, there were seven million cases called in across the country. That gives you a sense of how many people are calling in reports. I believe four million of those calls were actually screened in. I talk about in the book, every call that comes in isn't taken. We were thankful for that. The folks taking these calls try their best to screen out ones that don't seem like abuse is really happening. Then they screen in ones that really meet the protocols and the metrics they have to look for in order to accept a case. The data is clear in most of the states in this country, Native American children and Black children are experiencing disparate outcomes. They're spending more time in foster care. They're spending more time under court mandated services, meaning they didn't get taken out of their home, but their families are being overrun by the courts for a period of time, usually minimum of one year. And these youth are also moving from place to place more once they're put in the system. And the path to reunification is much longer for Black and Native youth. So that's a little bit of the data around disproportionality, disparity, and the broad strokes of how many cases the system is seeing each year. BLAIR HODGES: Let's look a little more at the racism here, because some people might hear what you just said and say, "Oh, well I guess Black parents and indigenous folks need to be better parents. It's on them. Of course, they would have more because XYZ." How do you educate people against that kind of racism and bias? JESSICA PRYCE: A lot of people feel that way. They really look at the fact that these families are who they are and they have a certain mindset toward these families. They say, "Well, of course that makes sense. They're abusing their children more." But there's actually data and scientific studies that have been done that actually have evidence against that notion. That Black and Brown families don't abuse their children more, but they're reported more and have their children taken more. So I try to educate people on what's happening and not the narrative, and also not the narrative we have in our minds around certain family. There's also a big discussion right now, that in my opinion, continues to happen around the conflation of neglect and poverty. At this point we're at 76% of the cases that come into child welfare nationwide have a maltreatment code of neglect. Often neglect is parents not meeting needs. That's the definition. They're not getting enough food to their kids. Kids are going to school and stealing lunches. These parents may not be taking their children to get medical care. These parents may not have a place to live. This broad idea of neglect is driving families into the system. When you think about the fact that indigenous families and Black families are overrepresented in the impoverished population, you start to realize there is this connection between poverty, systemic racism, and the long journey of social and racial disadvantage for families. ERICA'S CASE – 19:05 BLAIR HODGES: So it usually affects people in poverty, more often than not. Sometimes people aren't in poverty when they get trapped into the system. I think one of the most arresting parts of your book is the personal stories you tell, because things got personal for you really fast when you started working for the system. I'm thinking about your friend Erica. Tell us a little bit about Erica and how she got tangled up into your experience as a caseworker. JESSICA PRYCE: I'm so grateful I was able to share that story because that was really pivotal for my development. When people ask, "You thought a certain way in the system, and then you started to shift," I said, "Yeah, because I started to see people in my familial and social networks become entangled in the system." That's what brought me to sharing the story of Erica. And I appreciate her walking alongside me as I wrote this book. Essentially, I was in my full-time position at the Department of Children and Families, doing CPS investigations. One day there was a case that came in and a colleague took that case, and it was on my friend Erica. I was very shocked. I knew Erica had been providing caregiving duties for her godchild at the time. She had been going through a lot. She was a college student and trying to figure out how to take her courses, take care of this four-year-old, and the child's parents were in many different ways just unavailable, unreachable, and not helping at the time. Stress got to her in a situation where she did corporal punishment as a consequence for behavior. And she was reported to CPS for physical abuse. As I share in the book, everything that happened after was insane, in my opinion. I was caught in the middle of it because I understood on the system side, we have a four-year-old with evidence of abuse, based on what we call abuse and what the policies say about physical abuse, and we have a person who is not her biological mother. We need to shelter this child right away. I understood that in theory, but having the close connection I had with Erica, knowing that at that time there was possibly no other person on the earth that cared about that child as much as she did, it was really a tough situation to walk through. BLAIR HODGES: Erica is caring for this young girl. The girl's parents are experiencing poverty. Mom went back to New York, believed they would leave the girl with Erica for a certain time. And you describe the corporal punishment thing, because technically corporal punishment is legal. That's a big question about whether that should be the case, but it was. And it was something Erica seemed reluctant about herself, but felt backed into a corner, just didn't have the parenting tools and the skills and the support as a parent to deal with a child who was experiencing real trauma. That trauma was coming out in bad behavior and causing problems for Erica's life. So that's when she started spanking and doing this, and at one point leaves bruises on the child. In the meantime, the child's mom who's experiencing poverty was seeking public assistance, and that's how CPS got involved on her side of things—not to find out how to help but to assess her. She went to get help, and instead of, "How can we help?" it was like, "What's wrong with this person. We need to evaluate this person." Again, the system has this adversarial approach, even when people try to seek help it can start to cause problems. This little girl, her mom on one side and Erica on the other, were both going to get sucked into the system. As you said, you knew Erica as a wonderful person. She's your best grad school friend. What a shock it must have been. You describe the scene where the girl, who you knew, shows up in your office. You have no idea what's going on. All of a sudden, she's right there behind your chair, excited to see you because she knew you. JESSICA PRYCE: Yeah, and children don't come into the office unless they're on their way into foster care. When I saw her I knew something has gone terribly wrong. I did not know what had happened at that point. I had been working the entire day on my own cases and realized pretty quickly that Erica was about to be under a lot of scrutiny and was about to go through a situation and a process I take a lot of parents through. But watching how it affected her really made me reluctant to do that to other parents. To your point, Erica is on this side of the situation, and then Didi—which is the pseudonym I gave Madisen's biological mom in the book—Madisen is the little girl—is on the other side of this trying to get herself together in a very difficult, in my opinion, place to live in this country. It's super expensive. Trying to rebuild her life. Meanwhile, this chaotic exchange has happened in Florida around corporal punishment, which a lot of people have feelings about. I could have written, "There was a corporal punishment situation," but I wanted people to think about their reactions to that scene in the book. Because I know people are going to react to, “That should never have happened, this is completely inappropriate.” But I think that is a snapshot of a much larger picture that I knew of at the time, but others didn't. I realized when I go to meet a mom on a case I am seeing a snapshot and this person has an entire life and existence that is worth trying to figure out. BLAIR HODGES: I was shocked by the numbers you report. Anywhere between forty and seventy percent of parents have reported spanking at some point. That's huge. That's a lot of people. When does it cross the line from legal corporal punishment to abuse that the system would intervene about? JESSICA PRYCE: This is a discussion that's been going on for quite a while, but I can say when it comes to CPS if there are marks or bruises—and often these marks or bruises are left unintentional, and I know that might sound strange to people because they think, "Well, if you hit a child, you're intentionally causing that”—There are a lot of people that spank their kids and there are never any marks. So I don't think most parents intend to leave marks on their children when they are trying to provide a consequence to certain behaviors. For CPS, the line is crossed if there's evidence of marks and bruises on the child. But again, even when that happens I'm hoping the system continues to evolve into, what do we do at this point and what should be our next steps? Because the immediate ejection of a child because of that isn't working very well for the system. There are a lot of issues going on—not enough foster parents, not enough placements, too many kids in the system. So how can we tease that out and find some nuances. Like okay, maybe there is stress, maybe this parent made this decision and it went further than they thought it would go. But is that an immediate ejection? Is that an opportunity for the system to say, Hey, we see this happen. We don't like it. We don't think it was the best thing to do. But how do we partner toward a future where this doesn't have to happen and this mom actually gets the help, and what you said earlier, the parenting tools she needs? BLAIR HODGES: Erica felt up against the wall. She's a student. She had to start working to afford daycare and other expenses. That made her spend even less time with Madisen. She's desperate to find a way to get Madisen's behavior to change because daycare is saying maybe we can't have Madisen here. She's desperate. She's trying to find anything. Again, it comes down to whether she had enough money to keep this going, whether she could be supportive, whether she could learn parenting tools different than corporal punishment. None of that was happening. Instead, the bruises happened and then the system comes in to say, "Did this person harm the child? We need to protect the child and possibly prosecute the caregiver." In fact, Erica was later arrested for this, and you describe the case in the book. RACHEL'S CASE – 27:12 BLAIR HODGES: Now, if that was all you had encountered as a caseworker, in terms of it touching your personal life, that would have been a lot. But that wasn't the only way your personal life got tangled up. This next part really shocked me. I have to say, Jessica, it shocked me because I'm thinking about Rachel, this is your sister. You actually yourself reported her to CPS while you're working for the system. What was it like to include this really personal story in the book? JESSICA PRYCE: Essentially, I will say it was not easy to include it because it talks about culpability and the way I used to think and what I thought in that moment. I really appreciate that my sister to this day talks about how the system intends to help but often they exacerbate already very fraught situations. I appreciate her willingness to continue to advocate for change, specifically relating to domestic violence and child welfare. Although it wasn't easy, I wanted to include it because this continues today. When there is a domestic violence situation, we're trying to figure out which victim we're going to actually come in and try to help, and who gets protected in a situation like that. At the time I felt very much like CPS and law enforcement was the best route to take when I made the call. But I realized perhaps I was naive. What happened after that with my sister, I realized her life all of a sudden became even more stressful than it was before. Again I, at that moment, maybe being a little bit naive, called it in because she was experiencing domestic violence, but realized after that her stress levels were increased and services and support weren't there the way I thought they would be. BLAIR HODGES: You talk about the double bind your sister was in, and that a lot of women are in. She was abused by her partner. She was abused. When the system got involved, she also becomes a suspect of the system because they want to know if she is a perpetrator for not protecting the children from domestic violence, or even perhaps just witnessing domestic violence. Now she's gone from being a victim to being a suspect. JESSICA PRYCE: Absolutely, and I think states are moving away from the term "failure to protect." There was a time where that was the buzzword, that this mom is failing to protect her children. Although we're moving away from that term, there are still ways in which we come on the scene and there is a mom victim, and we're trying to ask questions here and there about, "We see this is happening, what are you going to do next to protect these kids? What are you going to do next to protect your home from this perpetrator?" This is a tough situation to talk about. I think people who read the book might have certain thoughts and feelings about it. And I welcome that. I welcome folks to say, "Well, a mother should protect her kids." And “She must do this, and she must do that.” And what I'm hoping they also stop and think is what it feels like to be a victim of domestic violence, because that's an entirely other phenomenon we need to really consider. Again, I don't know if CPS is prepared to understand the dynamics associated with that sort of abuse. BLAIR HODGES: There are all kinds of reasons why someone like your sister might not call. They might have some mental health issues because of the abuse that would lead them to want to cling tight to the relationship out of trying to be protective. Or maybe there are financial reasons. They're trying to protect the circumstances they're currently in and if they left, they wouldn't have resources to care for their kids. There's a ton of different reasons why. And again, the system is not coming in and saying, "How can we support this person who's been abused and their kids and get them out of the situation?" It's trying to figure out if they have culpability in some way. JESSICA PRYCE: Yeah, and they come with a lot of, "We want you to go do this, we want you to go do that. We want you to go and take care of this." It becomes this rat race of a mom trying to do these things, because now you're under surveillance and one wrong step, or one thing you don't do, are you going to lose your kids today? And I think that was the fear she had. A lot of parents I talk to have that same fear. I'm going to go do what they told me to do, even though it doesn't feel relevant. It's not helpful. It's not genuinely something I need. But if I don't, what are going to be the repercussions for me? Again it's policing and pushing families into experiencing certain services, when we didn't do the due diligence to actually see what they really needed. MORAL INJURY – 31:57 BLAIR HODGES: They might be telling them to go take some classes or do things that further burden. Maybe they already don't have time for stuff and now they have to do a bunch more. Like you said, it's not meeting the immediate need. It's adding more needs. You describe this time, and again it's not just the people who are being investigated that the system can harm, you also talk about the dangers of the system on the employees themselves. You experienced a lot of work-related stress, and double binds, and difficulties that affected your own mental health and your own sense of wellbeing. “Moral injury” is a term that comes up in this context. I wondered about your thoughts about moral injury and the impact on employees themselves. Because you saw burnout. You saw people working and then leaving. So many people came in, worked, and then got out of there. You yourself did that. Talk about the moral injury side of things. JESSICA PRYCE: I didn't want to write this book and not mention this, because if I'm anything, I am going to speak truth about the system, but I'm also going to say the professionals on the front lines doing this work, it's far bigger than them. I think there are systemic issues, systemic racism, systemic dysfunction, and we are on the front lines trying to do the work to the best of our ability. Some people start to really experience that moral conflict, this idea of, "I'm making decisions, I'm doing certain behaviors to protect myself or protect the system. But am I really helping these families?" I started to feel that big time with what happened to my friend, what happened to my family, and then how that impacted the moms I started to interface with throughout my career. I also realized that, as it related to me and law enforcement, I think I put in the book that people don't know who's there to help. I arrive with law enforcement and I'm there trying to investigate child abuse, but these parents are looking like, “Are you here to arrest me? Are you here to help me? What is actually going on?” That conflict started to manifest in me as well. I call law enforcement because I feel safer. But what is that creating with this interaction? What is that actually doing to this interaction for the next few moments? And as you said, I started to experience a lot of anxiety. Ultimately, that impacted my departure from the system. The anxiety got to the point where I really couldn't manage anymore, and the stem of that anxiety was just the feelings of moral distress and moral injury I was perpetuating on families. ABOVE THE FRAY OR ON THE FRONT LINE – 34:43 BLAIR HODGES: That's Jessica Pryce. For the past fifteen years, she has been working in child welfare from multiple angles—directing casework, and then researching, teaching and training, and policy development. She's provided training to over two hundred child welfare organizations now, and we're talking about her book Broken: Transforming Child Protective Services. Jessica, you left the system, but you couldn't leave it alone, so to say. You wanted to know more about it. You went to Howard University to study it. A lot of people think universities are disconnected from life. There's a stereotype that if you become a researcher or go to university, you're in the ivory tower. You're away from real life so you're not able to grasp it. You brought your own personal experiences of being on the ground to the university and say in some ways it gave you an even closer perspective than you had before. You could really zoom in on the history of it. What did you learn about the history of CPS when you went to Howard University? JESSICA PRYCE: I often talk about the importance of proximity to families you're serving. When I first read a book called Just Mercy years ago, Bryan Stevenson talked about how you really need to be in close proximity to folks you're trying to help. It dawned on me I was very close to the people I worked with. I was in their homes. I was opening up their kitchen cabinets. I was talking to their neighbors. I was very close. But I wasn't engaging them. I didn't really see them. I was investigating them and objectifying them. When I zoomed out, when I left the system, I did go to the ivory tower but then I was able to look at the history of child welfare—something I never knew about, something that wasn't taught in training, which of course it wouldn't be—and realized that at the onset of child welfare, Black families weren't even allowed to be serviced by the system. They had to go a completely different route, because they were seen as inferior. And as I tracked child welfare over time, I started to realize those remnants of systemic exclusion and systemic racism were still around in many facets of the system today. That's when I went down the path of looking at disparity, disproportionality—looking at Black professionals and how they viewed the system. Also looking at leadership changes and how that impacts policy. So it was huge for me to go—I think it took about five years—to really look at the system, write a dissertation, do some research. But I felt closer to the system at that point than I did when I was actually working with families. Because again, I was too close. And I think when I zoomed out I was able to get to the bottom of a lot of things. It really ignited this advocacy that I wanted to do something to help child welfare professionals, and by helping them create more ethics and create more compassionate services, ultimately to help families. WHEN INDIVIDUAL BLAME GOT BAKED IN – 37:36 BLAIR HODGES: I think laying out the history matters so much. You show how in 1974 the United States passed this law, the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. It was informed by a group called Mothers Anonymous, then called Parents Anonymous. A woman who went by Jolly K. was abusing children. She came to see the error of her ways, changed, and then became this huge advocate for preventing child abuse or addressing child abuse in the United States. This law gets passed. Then you point out something really important here we've talked about all along the way, that it was a very individualist ideology here. The idea was to identify parents as the perpetrators and to not really, at all, look at systems around the parents. Don't look at the economy. Don't look at jobs. Don't look at parental leave. Don't look at anything else other than, “If you harm a child, you're a bad person, and you made that individual choice, you bear all the blame.” So that Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act was intended to help kids. It created this reporting system and then, to this day, laws direct money to programs that investigate parents based on this individualist approach, instead of putting funds into better mental health services, into better affordable housing services, into schools and programs that can help parents and children have better relationships and help alleviate the stresses that can lead to abuses, that can lead to neglect. Rooted in how these laws came together, you show clearly how society is focusing on individual blame, not systemic change. When you learned that at Howard, I'm just interested in your own process there because like you said, you were so close to the system. What was it like for you personally to learn that history and start to have to digest it? JESSICA PRYCE: It was bewildering and it was overwhelming, but it also created this motivation to make sure that I'm educating others, and to make sure I am always challenging people to look at how we perpetuate harm, how we perpetuate the very harmful parts of history in modern times. So it has created in me this idea that I'm not going to shy away from saying to child welfare professionals, “I used to be you. It's really hard. You're overwhelmed. You're overtaxed, and you're possibly dealing with burnout and moral injury, but families deserve a person that is going to do everything we can ethically to consider the full picture.” I appreciate you bringing up Parents Anonymous, because that was really eye-opening for me when I started to look at that, and look at congressional testimony around Jolly K. I think her story captivated America during that time because she was accepting accountability, some would say, that she was abusing her child. But she was very vocal that nothing was impacting her doing that. Now later, we found out that Jolly K. experienced so much mental illness, that she herself had been abused, and there were so many things that were going on with her that people didn't really pay much attention to. But again, I think that time in history created for child welfare, a microscope on the mom or a microscope on the dad, and what are you doing? Why can't you be better? BLAIR HODGES: You had seen that microscope come into the lives of people you loved. Erica, as I mentioned, your friend, was arrested. She does eventually get out of jail, and somehow is able to make it through the system. She adopts Madisen. People might say that seems like a happy ending then because it all worked out. But first of all, you invite us to remember all the things Erica had to go through, and Madisen, the child. But you also want us to say hold on, what happened to Madisen's mom? To Didi? There was no help there for her. So a happy ending is really complicated here. JESSICA PRYCE: Absolutely. And in the first iteration of this book, Didi's perspective wasn't included and the publisher said, "Is there any way you can get some interviews with her?" And I took a long shot. I said, "I really don't want to write this without your story." So I appreciated being able to interview her because again, in one way, it was a happy ending—we had a permanent placement between a child and a person where they were bonded and loved, and this wasn't a stranger she was being adopted by, this is somebody she really cared about. But I want the reader and folks that are considering adoption to stop and think: What world do we need to build where Didi would have had the help, the services, the support, to bring her child back in her home? Because again, I think people are going to have mixed feelings and thoughts around Didi and her behavior if you focus on the actual behavior and decisions she's making without looking at the systemic barriers she was also experiencing. WRITING AS AN ADVOCATE -  BLAIR HODGES: You say this wasn't necessarily the book you set out to write. Your publisher helped with that. You talk about in the book that originally you conducted research with Black women in particular who were in the system. You wrote in a third person voice as a researcher, an intellectual book, and the publisher and your editor challenged you to dig deeper and said, "You know, I think you can reach more people if you make this a personal story." That was intimidating for you. Talk about that, because there's a big shift. You were a CPS agent, an academic researcher, and this book is written more in the voice of a public activist. That's a different role altogether. JESSICA PRYCE: I was overwhelmed and a little bit scared about switching gears. As I sit here today, I'm extremely grateful I was challenged and pushed in this direction because I want child welfare professionals to read the book, maybe they feel certain things about the book, maybe they feel like, "Oh, I'm pinched here. I'm jabbed here. But I'm supported there and validated there." Because there are nuances to doing this work that I don't want people to miss. I don't want people to assume all child welfare professionals are evil creatures that are snatching kids. I don't want that. But I also don't want them to assume they're all benevolent. So how do we bring this together in a balanced way to say this is a very difficult job, and I was able to show that, I hope, in the pages, because it was very difficult for me when I started in that work. But how do we push ourselves as a workforce and challenge ourselves to do things differently, not just better, because we can get better and better because in many ways we have, but things haven't changed. There's not a difference in how we're approaching the families we're supposed to be serving. JATOIA'S CASE – 44:31 BLAIR HODGES: Oh, that reminds me of Jatoia Potts. This is a mom who lost her children because of no fault of her own, it turns out. This is a story of grave injustice. Maybe take a second to tell us about Jatoia Potts' story. The follow-up question I have for it is whether it ever feels completely overwhelming. You're facing such difficult odds and change seems to be slow. Tell us about Jatoia's experience and then how it affects you personally now that you're an activist. Is there activist burnout? Is there activist fear? JESSICA PRYCE: As you read the book, you see I'm taking folks back to when I first started in the field, but I also wanted them to see these things are still happening. So you have stories that happened in 2008 and 2009, which feels like a long time ago, so you could read the book and say, "Oh, that's over. Why has she taken us through all that?" But then you see a story that happened in 2021, 2022, and 2023. That's where Jatoia came in. She was at the other end of my career, where I'm moving into the academic space. I'm speaking, I'm training, and I'm also doing quite a bit of expert testimony in TPR trials—TPR is the “Termination of Parental Rights.” If folks don't know what that means, it's when a court says legally you are no longer the parent to this child, and that clears children for adoption. When I became connected to Jatoia, I became an expert witness in her TPR trial. Again, this was someone who started to suffer at the intersections of all the things we've been talking about: systemic racism, systemic dysfunction, and this narrow view of, “What did this mom do? Did she react the way we wanted her to react? Did she make decisions the way we would have made a decision? Surely she's done something wrong.” There was this mindset toward her, as folks will read, that she can't be exonerated. She certainly did something that hurt this child. And I'm so grateful Jatoia shared her story throughout this book. I think her placement in this book was huge because I don't want people to think the early cases of me when I was a twenty-two-year-old investigator are a thing of the past. These things continue to harm mothers to this day and it often results in literally severing the ties between a mom and her children. BLAIR HODGES: Someone like Jatoia becomes connected to you and is willing to use her voice to speak out about these issues. So some moms will turn into activists about the system, but not many of them either, and you also understand that. Talk about that, the fact that some moms and dads even can step forward and advocate, but a lot of others can't. Talk about those dynamics. JESSICA PRYCE: I'm always amazed when parents turn this sort of pain into purpose. That is a really good example for Jatoia and another mom in the book that I was able to highlight. To them, they want to do all they can to discuss their story, to connect with other mothers or other parents that are going through this, and to do as much community work as they can to make changes. I often say if I were Jatoia, I would want nothing to do with this case. I would want nothing to do with CPS. I would want nothing to do with being front facing for the movement. But I'm always astonished by her power that she's taken back, right? And also her resilience, and as I put in the book, Jatoia sees this as a much larger purpose than her individual story. When a mom goes through this now, Jatoia is a resource for them. And I think it's amazing. PLAYING JENGA: AN ANALOGY FOR THE FUTURE - 48:18 BLAIR HODGES: Take us through the Jenga analogy. Jenga is this game people might know where you're building these blocks, and the blocks are all stacked up and you're pulling one block out and putting it on top. You just kind of keep doing that. You use this Jenga analogy to talk about the system itself because a lot of listeners might be wondering, does the system get anything right? How solid is the system? Are there some people that are being helped by it? Are we just looking at rearranging a few pieces or do we need a fundamental change? JESSICA PRYCE: I'll start with responding to the question of, “Is the system doing anything right? What are we doing well?” I'll start by saying that I often talk about this, I believe the system needs to be here. I know not everybody believes that, but I believe that we need a CPS system—but we need a CPS system that investigates actual child abuse. I hope in my lifetime I see a parceling out of, what is child abuse and what is a family crisis? What is economic stratification? What is poverty? What is mental illness? I personally don't think CPS should be investigating as much as they're investigating. So back to the question. When there has been abuse, when there has been a child that has been willfully harmed by their caregiver, I absolutely think CPS is a structure that comes in and it's very clear this child needs protection and there needs to be accountability for what happened. I just wanted to put that out there, that I do think when it comes to willful abuse and children that are in need of help, this system can really step in in that way. Then when I go to other issues that are societal and community wide, CPS in my opinion is a little bit out of their depth. I think when it comes to neglect and poverty and mental illness and things of that nature, I don't think they're the best source of support. I don't think they're the best mechanism or structure to really come in and try to figure out what's going on with that family. You brought up Jenga, and Jenga became a powerful metaphor for me because I play it a lot with my nieces. And I realized we do that with child welfare. The entire point of Jenga is you move a block and you put it on top of the Jenga system. You're doing all you can not to make the system fall. You're just keeping it standing up. You're moving blocks from here and there, very rarely touching the bottom. If you're touching the bottom, you're being very meticulous about it, because again, we don't want the system to fall. I realized we're doing that in child welfare, and we have for a hundred years, continued to move programs, move services, add something here, add something there, but we're putting it back on the same system. But we're not getting to the root. We're not getting to the dysfunction and the assumptions that have been found in years of policies that are really driving the things we're doing. And until we actually get to the bottom of child welfare and until we start moving blocks from below and changing those blocks, I think we're going to continue to perpetuate what we're seeing. If we continue to have a block at the very bottom of our system that is absolutely targeting and blaming parents, then we're going to continue to be punitive and blaming parents with the policies and the practices we're doing. So I challenge folks to consider letting it fall. It's scary—the idea of letting the system fall down is huge and scary. People are like, "This is my livelihood. This is how I work." I think it takes courage to build something new, but that's what I'm advocating for—not being too afraid to go to the foundation of a system and say, “Why do we think this? Why is it built on that? Why are these families excluded? Why don't we send every parent to a parenting class? Why do we do the things that have built this system?” If we start to really tease that out and dismantle that part, and then rebuild a system that actually investigates actual abuse, right? And then diverts families that need assistance and support, I think that's when we get to rebuild something that we're actually proud of and rebuild something professionals can come into and feel less moral conflict, hopefully less burnout, and the families can really experience a different system. BLAIR HODGES: Do you have hope that we can move in that direction? JESSICA PRYCE: I do. I do. And the reason why I have hope is because child welfare, as a system, is doing things differently today. I was just at a convening this week around kinship care. Kinship care is when you remove a child from the home if there's a safety threat, but you place with family. Although I think we've always wanted to place with family, we haven't been having discussions about, “Are we supporting kinship here as much as we support a foster placement?” So we're having those discussions now. Don't just place with Grandma and say we've done it—which reminds us of the Naomi case. Don't place with Grandma and say we've done it, we placed with kinship. Now, how are you going to support that grandma? How are you going to support making sure those kids are connected to their mom? Because now they're far away from their mom, and not in communication. SoI do have hope we're moving in that direction. Again, I don't know how quickly we'll get there. But I think people are having those hard discussions about, “Why do we provide all of this financial support to foster parents, but we don't have that same energy toward a grandma or an older sibling or an aunt or uncle that have said, ‘I want the child to stay with us. They're our family.'" EVERYDAY ADVOCATES – 53:46 BLAIR HODGES: Is there anything actionable you would suggest everyday listeners do—like listeners to this show that might not have direct ties, a lot of them might not have any kind of direct involvement in the CPS system. Is there something that everyday folks can do to help push things in the direction you're advocating for? JESSICA PRYCE: Absolutely. I'm so grateful I was able to include some resources in the book for folks, particularly around reporting abuse. I tell people all the time, there's a resource in the book that says consider these things before you report abuse. For everyday listeners, as you said, if you have thoughts about a neighbor, or you're concerned about folks in your life—is this abuse? Should I call this in? I do offer some things that hopefully make you pause and consider certain aspects of the family before you make that call. Some people when they go through these considerations, they no longer want to make the report, right? But some people still do. Now they have a lot more information to provide to the system because they've actually thought through what's actually going on. I am grateful I was able to include that resource for folks that might be wondering about a family, might be wondering how they might be able to support. I want people to understand what happens when you report a family, what they experience when a CPS agent comes to their home, and with that sort of knowledge I hope that it makes reporters pause. REGRETS, CHALLENGES, & SURPRISES – 55:08 BLAIR HODGES: The resources you offer have some ideas for mandated reporters, and also for people who might be considering talking to CPS, and you're inviting them to think about how well you know the circumstances in that family's life. If you've considered connecting them with community or social supports that can help them out, if there's a trusted colleague or community advocate you can connect with to brainstorm about what to do. There are things people can do if they're wondering what to do in situations where they're wondering about children. The book, again, it's called Broken: Transforming Child Protective Services, really gives some good ideas and good tools that people can consider when they're trying to help out kids. Because at the bottom of it, I really believe that pretty much everybody truly does want to protect kids, and even the people who are overseeing the system and making policies that are actually damaging families, I don't see any evil people that are like, "Let's destroy lives." [laughs] JESSICA PRYCE: Yep. BLAIR HODGES: They're thinking in individualistic terms and not addressing systemic issues. The more we can get people thinking in that way, the more likelihood we have of impacting the CPS system. Jessica, I just want to say, the book was so helpful for me. I learned so much about the system. It was also really personal. I felt connected with you. So I hope people will check this book out, because together we can start to make inroads in the system. Again, that's Jessica Pryce, research professor at Florida State University in the College of Social Work there. Alright, that brings us to our final segment of the show. This is called Regrets, Challenges, & Surprises. Jessica, this is your chance to choose your own adventure. You can speak to one, two, or all three of these things. If there's anything you'd change about the book now. This book's just now coming out, so this is one of the freshest books on the show. Maybe you haven't had time to think about what you would do different at this time. But you can also speak to challenges, what the hardest part about writing it was, or the surprises, how you changed in the course of making the book. JESSICA PRYCE: I really appreciate the question. I'll start by saying the most challenging part by far was feeling that I've done justice to the stories that were shared with me. And also, connecting with former colleagues and really re-living what I did in the system. I did this exercise around narrative journaling, just writing out cases I've been on and how they impacted me and what I remembered about them, and how I thought in that moment, and how I think today. I think that was challenging in general to take that journey back. Another challenge is making sure I've done justice to the best of my ability to the stories that were shared with me. As far as surprises, I think for me, a big goal of mine was for people to see my development. I could have written this book from the seat I'm in now, and we've only talked for an hour but there's a lot of things I could have said about data and science and organizational change and culture. Because that's where I'm at now. I understand these things. But it was important for me that people saw my developmental trajectory because I hope it shows them they can also change. That if they think a certain way, if they see parents a certain way, if they have a certain opinion about certain communities, that you can get on the other side of that if you continue to educate yourself and you take a journey with colleagues who actually want to take this introspective journey. That you can also get on the other side of this work, do this work ethically, and do this work with compassion, and advocate and become an activist toward social justice and racial justice. So again, I think that's been the most surprising and the most edifying, that I was able to really show my development, and it surprised me how much I appreciated being able to share that. It's not easy to share how you used to think about families. But I think in sharing that it might show someone else they too can change. BLAIR HODGES: I certainly hope so. That's part of why I do this show myself, because I'm on a journey about all my thinking about families, what they are, about how we treat families, and your book is a really important part of that story. Again, it's called Broken: Transforming Child Protective Services by Jessica Pryce. And again, Dr. Pryce, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for writing this book, and thanks for taking the time to talk to us about it. JESSICA PRYCE: Thank you so much for having me. BLAIR HODGES: Thanks for listening to this episode of Family Proclamations. I invite you to listen to other episodes if you haven't had the time to do that yet. Special thanks to Camille Messick, my wonderful transcript editor, and to David Ostler, who sponsored the first group of transcripts. If you'd like to sponsor transcripts, please let me know. Reach out to blair@firesidepod.org. You can also send feedback about any episode you want. There's a lot more to come on the show. If you're enjoying it, please take a minute to rate and review. It makes a really big difference. It truly does. Go to Apple Podcasts and let me know your thoughts—like Ryan G. Mullen, for example. He went to Apple Podcasts and gave me five stars. He said, "Wow, I just listened to the episode with Cat Bohannon, author of Eve. I initially thought, this will be good to listen to so I won't have to read the book. But Hodges and Bohannon gave such a lively interview that I changed my mind." I'm sorry about that, Ryan. This podcast can be hazardous to your book buying budget, that's for sure. Thanks for leaving that review. Also, another thing that would help is recommendations. Let people know you listen to this show. This is the number one way people hear about podcasts. Reach out to a friend or family member and let them know about the show. Thanks to Mates of State, a great band, for providing our theme song. Family Proclamations is part of the Dialogue Podcast Network. I'm Blair Hodges, and I'll see you next time.   [End]   Transcripts are edited for readability. 

In this episode, we visit the Legacy Sites in Montgomery, Alabama, including the newly opened Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, a 17-acre site on the banks of the Alabama River. We interview their founder, the lawyer and civil rights hero, Bryan Stevenson, who says that a founding narrative of racial difference was created in America that “was like an infection. I believe the infection has spread. We've never treated that infection and the consequences of it are still with us today.” The US has never created cultural sites that have “motivated people to say, ‘never again can we tolerate racial bigotry, can we tolerate racial violence, can we tolerate the kind of indifference to these basic human rights'. So, that's what we're trying to achieve.” Hope and resilience inform the Legacy Sites. “I've always argued that hopelessness is the enemy of justice and that hope is an essential feature of what we do. I have to believe things I haven't seen,” Stevenson says. “I think we need an era of truth and justice, truth and reconciliation, truth and restoration, truth and repair,” Stevenson adds. “But we can't skip the truth-telling part.”

On this episode of Currently Reading, Kaytee and Mary are discussing: Bookish Moments: fun new hobbies and maybe not having a bookish moment Current Reads: all the great, interesting, and/or terrible stuff we've been reading lately Deep Dive: our love for all things memoir The Fountain: we visit our perfect fountain to make wishes about our reading lives Show notes are time-stamped below for your convenience. Read the transcript of the episode (this link only works on the main site) .  .  .  .  .  1:39 - Our Bookish Moments of the Week 8:06 - Our Current Reads 8:14 - Bride by Ali Hazelwood (Mary) 10:29 - Wolfsong by T.J. Klune 11:58 - Unhinged by Vera Valentine 12:29 - Renegades by Marissa Meyer (Kaytee) 12:40 - Cinder by Marissa Meyer 15:47 - The Extraordinaries by T.J. Klune 16:47 - Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera (Mary) 19:55 - An Inconvenient Cop by Edwin Raymond (Kaytee) 20:03 - Booktenders 24:51 - A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall (Mary) 28:26 - @ginnyreadsandwrites on Instagram 28:44 - Fairyloot 29:07 - Pango Books 30:16 - Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson 30:34 - Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross 31:53 - A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan (Kaytee) 32:10 - Betty by Tiffany McDaniel 35:29 - Deep Dive: Our Love For Memoirs 36:10 - Sarah's Bookshelves 39:49 - The Black Count by Tom Reiss 41:43 - My Life in France by Julia Child 42:30 - Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me by Mindy Kaling 42:32 - Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling 42:46 - Bossypants by Tina Fey 42:51 - Spare by Prince Harry 43:12 - Becoming by Michelle Obama 43:42 - Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe 43:47 - I Have Something to Tell You by Chasten Buttigieg 44:04 - I Have Something to Tell You by Chasten Buttigieg (young readers' edition) 44:59 - Waypoints by Sam Heughan 45:31 - Finding Me by Viola Davis 46:20 - As You Wish by Cary Elwes 46:58 - Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes 47:50 - Great with Child: Letters to a Young Mother by Beth Ann Fennelly 47:55 - Heating and Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly 48:06 - Glitter and Glue by Kelly Corrigan 48:10 - These Precious Days by Ann Patchett 49:04 - Soil by Camille T. Dungy 49:15 - An Exact Replica of A Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken 50:29 - Dancing at the Pity Party by Tyler Feder 50:37 - What Looks Like Bravery by Laurel Braitman 50:43 - After This by Claire Bidwell Smith (amazon link) 50:58 - Tragedy Plus Time by Adam Cayton-Holland 51:15 - Maybe You Should Talk To Someone by Lori Gottleib 51:30 - When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi 51:53 - A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter 52:02 - At Home in the World by Tsh Oxenreider 52:52 - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver 53:05 - The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green 53:12 - A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg 53:43 - The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton 53:45 - Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson 53:48 - The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore 54:03 - Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer 54:15 - I Take My Coffee Black by Tyler Merritt 55:17 - Meet Us At The Fountain 55:21 - I wish to press the Ember Quartet series, starting with Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir. (Mary) 55:30 - Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir 56:52 - A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas 56:53 - Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros 57:22 - Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros 58:38 - My wish is for more bookish board games. (Kaytee) 58:47 - By the Book game Support Us: Become a Bookish Friend | Grab Some Merch Shop Bookshop dot org | Shop Amazon Bookish Friends Receive: The Indie Press List with a curated list of five books hand sold by the indie of the month. April's IPL comes to us from A Room Of One's Own in Madison Wisconsin! Trope Thursday with Kaytee and Bunmi - a behind the scenes peek into the publishing industry All Things Murderful with Meredith and Elizabeth - special content for the scary-lovers, brought to you with the special insights of an independent bookseller The Bookish Friends Facebook Group - where you can build community with bookish friends from around the globe as well as our hosts Connect With Us: The Show: Instagram | Website | Email | Threads The Hosts and Regulars: Meredith | Kaytee | Mary | Roxanna Affiliate Disclosure: All affiliate links go to Bookshop unless otherwise noted. Shopping here helps keep the lights on and benefits indie bookstores. Thanks for your support!

In Arizona and North Carolina, MAGA Republicans are stirring up controversy and running behind their Democratic opponents, even as former President Donald Trump leads President Joe Biden. Could MAGA candidates in key swing states drag down Trump? Also: today's stories, including abortion uproar energizes Democrats, how Ukraine aid deadlock could threaten peace in Europe, migrants feeling the backlash from Moscow's terrorist attack, and a Q&A with Bryan Stevenson. Join the Monitor's Mark Sappenfield and Laurent Belsie for today's news. You can also visit csmonitor.com/daily for more information.

"Person by Person by Person" Sunday, April 7, 10:50 am, 2024 Person by Person by Person… that is how change occurs. Not once and for all, but continuously. Change changes what is possible, and each person we engage makes the possible a little more hopeful. In the words of Bryan Stevenson, “You don't change the world with the ideas in your mind, but with the conviction in your heart.” Change requires intention and a willingness to take risks. We suspect that change will not always turn out how we expected it to, and we know what was gained can sometimes be lost. But this is the Fools' way; it's our theory of change—person by person, the world is changed.    Carmen Barsody & Sam Dennison, Faithful Fools; Rev. Laura Shennum, Minister of Congregational Life; Jack Dello & Sherry Dello, Canvass Chairs; Liz Strand, Trustee; Reiko Oda Lane, Organist; UUSF Choir led by Mark Sumner, Music Director; Claudine Jones, Rusty Harris-Bishop, Morgen Warner, soloists; Jon Silk, Drummer;Wm. García Ganz, pianist Jonathan Silk, Audio and Video; Eric Shackelford, Camera; Carrie Steere-Salazar, Flowers; Linda Messner, Head Usher

Sometimes it's people outside our industry who have the biggest impact on how we grow and develop our values and our businesses. This is true for me, and this week I'm sharing more about the person who has helped shape how I conduct business and work with clients every day.In this week's episode, I'm sharing how Bryan Stevenson -- the renowned lawyer, activist and author behind Just Mercy and the Equal Justice Initiative -- ended up becoming one of the most influential figures on my financial coaching philosophy and methods.While Stevenson's work confronting injustice in the criminal justice system may seem unrelated to money, his ideas around the power of proximity, leading with empathy, instilling hope in suffering, and fighting for human dignity have transformed how I view my role and approach clients.In the episode, I'm exploring the key lessons from this modern-day hero that became foundational pillars, such as intimately understanding people's struggles for true impact, seeing the full nuanced humanity in each person, and making justice and restoration my driving mission.You'll hear how Stevenson's philosophy allowed me to shed limiting beliefs to find the courage to offer transformative high-level and high-touch support.By the end, you'll understand why this visionary activist, despite having no direct finance ties, became one of my most influential mentors for creating meaningful, lasting impact.Links & Resources:Cash Flow Planning and Control for Small Business Owners (scroll to the bottom)Ten Percent Happier: How to Keep Going When Things Get HardWe Need to Talk About Injustice TED TalkTrue Justice: Bryan Stevenson's Fight for Inequality documentaryThe Power of Proximity CEO InitiativeFinancial Coaches Unite Facebook group

In this episode, New York Times bestselling author Elise Loehnen discusses her book On Our Best Behavior, which is about the seven deadly sins and their impact on women's lives and roles in society. She also shares how women are often conditioned to disconnect from their bodies and emotions due to societal and cultural pressures and how health coaches can help them reconnect with their desires, boundaries, and suppressed feelings.   In this episode, we talk about: The inspiration behind Elise's book On Our Best Behavior  How writing the book helped Elise with her personal transformation and how it impacted her well-being and relationships The need for collective work to recognize unhealthy language and behaviors toward women Elise's journey toward self-definition away from cultural and social expectations How can people reconcile their faith with the empowerment and reevaluation of women's roles in society The role of health coaches in helping women reconnect with their desires, suppressed feelings, etc The concept of envy and how it is reframed in a positive way in the book Memorable Quotes “It's really difficult to liberate yourself from these ideas of what it is to be a good woman and stand alone, because you'll be vilified and continually sort of painted as a bad person.” “If patriarchy were so natural, we wouldn't chafe against it.” “We women, through trauma, self-hate, etc., are generally totally disembodied... So the most loving thing a health coach can do is to get women re-embodied and re-in touch with our appetites, our desires, our boundaries, our suppressed and repressed emotions.”   BIO:  Elise Loehnen is a New York Times bestselling author and the host of the podcast, Pulling the Thread, where she interviews cultural luminaries about the big questions of today, including people like Jo Harjo, Loretta Ross, Pico Iyer, Dr. Gabor Maté, and Terry Real. She's the author of the New York Times bestselling On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to be Good. Elise lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Rob, and their sons, Max and Sam. Elise has also co-written 12 books, including five New York Times Best Sellers Previously, she was the chief content officer of goop. While there, Elise co-hosted The goop Podcast and The goop Lab on Netflix, and led the brand's content strategy and programming, including the launch of a magazine with Condé Nast and a book imprint. For the podcast, she interviewed 100s of thought leaders, doctors, and experts, including Ibram X Kendi, Bryan Stevenson, Nicholas Kristof, Ambassador Samantha Power, Rebecca Traister, John & Julie Gottman, among others. Prior to goop, she was the editorial projects director of Conde Nast Traveler. Before Traveler, she was the editor at large and deputy editor of Lucky Magazine, where she also served as the on-air spokesperson, appearing regularly on shows like Today, E!, Good Morning America, and The Early Show. She has a B.A. from Yale and majored in English and Fine Arts; she also went to St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. Before that, she attended a school where lunchtimes were spent jumping an irrigation ditch. Originally from Missoula, Montana, it's important to her that people know that she went to the National Mathletes Championship when she was in 8th grade and that she's a horse whisperer. These days, she serves on two boards (Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams and Skinfix), advises a beauty bio-tech start-up (Arcaea), and spends her time writing, reading, and fundraising for causes and politicians focused on environmental action, social justice, women and children's health, and a more equitable world.   Mentioned In This Episode: Pulling the Thread with Elise Loehnen: https://eliseloehnen.substack.com/ Elise Loehnen's Website: https://www.eliseloehnen.com/ On Our Best Behavior Book: https://www.eliseloehnen.com/onourbestbehavior   Links to resources: Health Coach Group Website https://www.thehealthcoachgroup.com/ Use the code HCC50 to save $50 on our website Leave a Review of the Podcast

This episode is a master class on sticking with it, no matter what. From our friend Dan Harris on the Ten Percent Happier podcast, we're joined by Bryan Stevenson, who is a public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned. He is the author of the bestselling memoir “Just Mercy,” which was made into a feature film, and the subject of an HBO documentary, “True Justice.” In this episode they talk about:  • Bryan's “non-negotiables,” including exercise, music, and mindfulness  • The necessity of “proximity”  • How he manages fear, anger, and hatred  • How he cultivates hope and faith in the face of overwhelming odds  More on the Ten Percent Happier podcast:   A skeptical journalist, Dan Harris had a panic attack on live TV that sent him on a journey that led him to try something he otherwise wouldn't have considered: meditation. He went on to write the best-selling book, 10% Happier. The show features interviews with top scientists, celebrities and experts in the field of mindfulness. And Dan's approach is seemingly modest, but secretly radical: happiness is a skill you can train, just like working your bicep in the gym.   Listen to more Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris 

QUOTES FOR REFLECTION“One of the challenges that we have collectively as a society is that in this country, we do victory great, we do success great, we do power great. We do not do shame very well; we do not do guilt very well. We don't own up to our mistakes. And the absence of shame is what makes us vulnerable to discrimination and bigotry and abuse of power…If you see two people who've loved each other for fifty years, if you ask them what the secret is; they've learned how to say I'm sorry to one another…”~Bryan Stevenson (1959-present), lawyer, activist, and author of Just Mercy “Be killing sin or it will be killing you.”~John Owen (1616-1683), British theologian and church leader “There is a mean streak to authentic self-control. Underneath what seems to be the placid demeanor of those who are not ruled by their desires is the heart of a warrior… Self-control is not for the timid. When we want to grow in it, not only do we nurture an exuberance for Jesus Christ, we also demand of ourselves a hatred for sin…The only possible attitude toward out-of-control desire is a declaration of all-out war.”~Ed Welch (1953-present), Counselor and Author in Addictions: A Banquet in the Grave “See dawg I live by the Spirit so I don't gratifyAll them old sinful desires that never satisfy… [Sin]: Man you know you miss them old days…Yeah you right possiblyBut after that I sober up and think of Jesus holding upHis skin up on the cross for all them drunken nights I'm throwing upEvery thought of blowin' up is captured in his flowing bloodI start thinking Philippians 4:8 when you showing up. [Sin]: You know I ain't gone quit right?Yeah I know but I'm dead to youAnd one day I'll be present with Jesus who died and bled from youColossians 1:15 that's the God that I trust inThe Father crushed HimIn doing so he has crushed sin.”~Lecrae Moore (1979-present), Grammy-winning hip-hop artist in song Indwelling SinSERMON PASSAGEGalatians 5:13-26 (ESV)

I'm talking today with Professor Michalyn Steele, a member of the faculty at the J. Reuben Clark Law School, about Bryan Stevenson and his best-selling book Just Mercy. Stevenson has spent his career assisting people in some of the worst circumstances I can imagine: those on death row or facing a life sentence. He's also a Christian, and his faith in Jesus and love of the Bible are on full display in his book. Professor Steele helped me see what Stevenson's work with imprisoned people can teach all of us about mercy and justice. This is something she knows firsthand from her own experience ministering to incarcerated women in her community. As she says, “we're in a web of hurt and brokenness, but we're also together in a web of healing and mercy.” Too often, though, we look away from that web and choose not to see our brothers and sisters in their lowest moments. Or we simply don't know how to make the connections we want to make. How to “get proximate”, as Stevenson puts it, is a question we should be asking--and it's the topic of our conversation today. I hope you enjoy it.

Every so often, Kelly Corrigan Wonders will make space in our feed for someone else's podcast. In this case, Kelly is sharing a conversation between two former guests — Dan Harris and Bryan Stevenson — because we can never think about the hard work of justice enough. Enjoy. To receive a short set of our weekly takeaways in your email, sign up here.

Have you already bailed on your resolutions? Where are you on your other life goals? This episode is a master class on sticking with it, no matter what.Bryan Stevenson is a public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned. He is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, based in Montgomery, Alabama—an organization that has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, as well as reversals, relief, or release from prison for over 140 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row. He is the author of the bestselling memoir Just Mercy, which was made into a feature film, and the subject of an HBO documentary, True Justice. He is also a MacArthur “Genius,” a graduate of Harvard Law School, and a recipient of over 50 honorary doctoral degrees from institutions like Yale, Princeton, and Oxford University.In this episode we talk about:Bryan's “non-negotiables,” including exercise, music, and mindfulnessThe necessity of “proximity”How he manages fear, anger, and hatredHow he cultivates hope and faith in the face of overwhelming oddsRelated Episodes:Father Gregory Boyle on Conquering Hatred with LoveEsther Perel, Bill Hader, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Pema Chödrön's “Non-Negotiables”Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/bryan-stevensonSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today, we are re-airing one of our favorite episodes.     Bryan Stevenson (founder of the Equal Justice Initiative) is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable among us. In this episode, Kate and Bryan discuss:  The hope that motivates Bryan in this slow, sometimes frustrating work of justice What it means to be a ‘stonecatcher' (and why it serves both the one being condemned and the one doing the condemning) The power of forgiveness, maybe especially toward those who don't deserve it  CW: discussion of slavery, lynching, and other racist violence, death row Looking for the transcript or show notes? Click here. Find Kate on Instagram or Facebook or X. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Medical anthropology provides a lens through which we can view the intricate tapestry of human health, woven with the threads of cultural beliefs, social structures, and biological realities. Few have played a more significant role in creating this discipline than psychiatrist Arthur Kleinman, MD, whose early, extensive field work in Taiwan and China have shaped how we think about cross-cultural healthcare systems and their impacts on human suffering. Many of his books, including The Illness Narratives and Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture, have become seminal texts in medical anthropology. Dr. Kleiman is also a moral philosopher whose writings have explored the frailty of our existence and how uncertainty and crises sharpen our moral identities. Over the course of our conversation, we discuss Dr. Kleinman's bold explorations of human wellness across cultures, the search for meaning amid pain and suffering, the struggle to lead a moral life, and medical anthropology as a clarion call for a more nuanced and empathetic approach to health and healing.In this episode, we discuss: 2:26 - Dr. Kleinman's path to medicine 7:00 - How anthropology and psychiatry became central to Dr. Kleinman's work  11:23 - The four core questions that define Dr. Kleinman's decades of study 16:09 - How cultural definitions of a healthcare system greatly impact its effectiveness and reach22:12 - Finding meaning in experiences of pain and sorrow  33:56 - An anthropological view of human existence, morality, and ethics 46:00 - The basis for Dr. Kleinman's book The Soul of Care 47:51 - How Dr. Kleinman's search for meaning shapes his approach to medicine50:35 - The delineation between “morality” and “Morality”57:40 - Connecting to our shared humanity by “doing” careDr. Kleinman has authored seven books, including his most recent, The Soul of Care.In this episode, We share excerpts from: Dr. Kleinman's book What Really Matters, Morten Lauridsen's choral piece O Nata Lux, and Bryan Stevenson's book Just Mercy. Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you know of a doctor, patient, or anyone working in health care who would love to explore meaning in medicine with us on the show, feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments or send an email to info@thedoctorsart.com.Copyright The Doctor's Art Podcast 2023

Original Air Date: 8/31/2022 Today, as the news of Trump's various trials continues to drop out, we take a look back at this episode covering the long and illustrious history of powerful people avoiding prosecution in the United States. Be part of the show! Leave us a message or text at 202-999-3991 or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com Transcript BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Get AD FREE Shows and Bonus Content) Join our Discord community! SHOW NOTES Ch. 1: Welcome to the golden age of white collar crime (with Michael Hobbes) - Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer - Air Date 3-10-20 Why is right now the easiest time in modern history for the wealthy to get away with whatever they want? HuffPost reporter and fellow Seattleite Michael Hobbes join Zach in the studio for a deep dive into his most recent article about white-collar crime. Ch. 2: Flint Residents Outraged as Charges Dropped in Fatal Water Scandal That Poisoned Majority-Black City - Democracy Now - Air Date 5-30-22 Eight years after the deadly Flint water crisis began, the state's Supreme Court has thrown out charges against former Governor Rick Snyder and eight other former officials for their complicity in the public health emergency. Ch. 3: Obama Requests Immunity for War Criminal George W. Bush - The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder - Air Date 8-22-13 Obama's DOJ has requested that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Paul Wolfowitz be granted immunity in a case that is alleging that they violated international law with the Iraq War... Ch. 4: Obama on Investigating Bush Crimes: "Need to Look Forward" - This Week - Air Date 1-11-09 Barack Obama on This Week, January 11, 2009 Ch. 5: How George H.W. Bush's Pardons for Iran-Contra Conspirators Set the Stage for Trump's Impunity - Democracy Now - Air Date 12-4-18 In 1992, when Bush Sr. was president, he pardoned several Iran-Contra defendants, including Caspar Weinberger, Robert McFarlane, and Elliott Abrams. We speak with Greg Grandin, prize-winning author, and professor of Latin American history at New York Univ. Ch. 6: Pardon Me - Reveal - Air Date 7-6-19 Presidential pardons grab the headlines each time Donald Trump grants clemency to a controversial person. We tell the untold story of a pardon system that is completely broken and a pardon attorney's office that is being ignored by the White House. Ch. 7: Bryan Stevenson on the racial terrorism of lynching - Cape Up - Air Date 4-24-18 Bryan Stevenson wants us to confront our country's racial terrorism and then say, ‘Never again' Ch. 8: Justice Department Weighs Whether Or Not To Prosecute Trump - MSNBC - Air Date 8-29-22 New York Times Justice Department Reporter Katie Benner and former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman discuss how the inquiry into Trump's handling of classified documents poses an unparalleled test for DOJ MEMBERS-ONLY BONUS CLIP(S) Ch. 9: Restoring the Brotherhood of Union: Confederate Pardon and Amnesty Records, 1865-1877 - US National Archives - Air Date 5-21-15 "Restoring the Brotherhood of Union: Confederate Pardon and Amnesty Records, 1865-1877" Archives specialist John Deeben provides a brief legislative history of amnesty activity during and after the Civil War. Ch. 10: The power of presidential pardons - PBS NewsHour - Air Date 12-25-20 Pardons are among the most powerful tools a president has. While pardons can be politically motivated, drawing criticism, they can also change lives. FINAL COMMENTS Ch. 11: Final comments on the nature of pardons, accountability and hurt feelings MUSIC (Blue Dot Sessions)   Produced by Jay! Tomlinson Visit us at BestOfTheLeft.com Listen Anywhere! BestOfTheLeft.com/Listen Listen Anywhere! Follow at Twitter.com/BestOfTheLeft Like at Facebook.com/BestOfTheLeft Contact me directly at Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com

Original Air Date: February 17th, 2021Everything we do, every relationship we have, succeeds or fails based on our level of true spiritual connection with others. How do we get back on track when we find ourselves disconnected from people? In this episode of “Super Soul,” Oprah sits down with acclaimed spiritual teachers—including Jill Bolte Taylor, Dr. Maya Angelou, Sister Joan Chittister, Thich Nhat Hanh, Gary Zukav and Linda Francis, Meagan Good, Rob and Kristen Bell, President Jimmy Carter, Pastor Wintley Phipps, Brené Brown, Tracy Morgan, Phil Jackson, Shawn Achor, Gloria Steinem, Bryan Stevenson, Malala Yousafzai, and Elie Wiesel—to discover the steps we all can take to find creative ways to nurture the bonds of love and a connection with the people in our lives, and then gradually expanding that to the rest of the world. Interviews with these talented writers, speakers and thought leaders are excerpted from Oprah's Emmy Award-winning show “Super Soul Sunday.” You can also find this compilation and other insightful conversations in Oprah's best-selling book The Wisdom of Sundays. Want more podcasts from OWN? Visit https://bit.ly/OWNPods You can also watch Oprah's Super Soul, The Oprah Winfrey Show and more of your favorite OWN shows on your TV! Visit https://bit.ly/find_OWN 

Original Air Date: June 12, 2018Oprah continues her extraordinary interview with wrongly convicted death row inmate Anthony Ray Hinton, who shares a remarkable story about an unlikely friendship he formed in prison. He explains how he eventually found his way to freedom through the help of civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative. Anthony describes how he felt on the day he was finally released in 2015 and how he adjusted to life outside prison. He also shares the powerful lessons he learned on death row: the true meaning of compassion, the root of racism and how we can all overcome our circumstances and learn how to love. Anthony's memoir, "The Sun Does Shine," is the latest selection for Oprah's Book Club.

Original Air Date: June 6, 2018Oprah sits down with Bryan Stevenson, the law professor, civil rights attorney and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, who shares why he has dedicated his life to giving a voice to incarcerated men and women. Bryan has spent more than three decades challenging poverty and racial discrimination within the criminal justice system. He explains why he believes we are not fully evolved as human beings until we care about universal human rights and basic dignity. Bryan has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners and confronting abuse of the incarcerated. Bryan also discusses his New York Times best-selling book, "Just Mercy," his views on the death penalty, and the transformative power of mercy and forgiveness. Next week,  be sure to download Oprah's two-part podcast interview with one of Bryan Stevenson's most extraordinary clients, Anthony Ray Hinton, a man who wrongfully spent 30 years on death row until Bryan helped him win his freedom. Anthony's new memoir about his experience in prison, "The Sun Does Shine," was just selected for Oprah's Book Club.