Podcasts about Nathan Cummings Foundation

Highlights from this week's conversation include:Bob's Background and the Best and Worst of Running a Coffee Shop (0:11)  Transition to Nonprofit Work (1:59)  Formative Experiences in Finance (3:47)  Transforming Nathan Cummings Foundation (5:43)  Shifting Organizational Culture (7:36)Convincing Skeptics of Impact Investing (11:53)Defining Impact Investing (15:03)  Mission-Aligned Investing Toolkit (16:28)  Insider Segment: AI Solutions for Today's Financial Institutions (18:43)Custom AI Solutions (20:36)Multi-Channel Strategies (22:39)Investment Team Reflection (25:02)Due Diligence 20 Pledge (27:49)Accountability in Search Processes (32:02)Impact America Fund Investment (35:53)  Understanding Allocator Decisions (37:26) Pay It Forward Mindset (38:02)  Encouragement for Impact Investing (39:17)Flexible Capital Initiative and Parting Thoughts (41:38)Nathan Cummings Foundation is a multigenerational family foundation, rooted in the Jewish tradition of social justice, working to create a more just, vibrant, sustainable, and democratic society. We partner with social movements, organizations and individuals who have creative and catalytic solutions to climate change and inequality. Learn more: http://nathancummings.orgBottega8 offers secure and cost-efficient AI Model Training and Fine-Tuning tailored for financial institutions. If you're concerned about the expense and complexity of building in-house AI teams, or worried about the privacy and security risks inherent in Big Tech AI APIs, we provide the ideal solution for your proprietary data.Bottega8's solution is specifically designed for institutional financial clients, including PE/VC funds, hedge funds, broker-dealers, traders, investment banks, and fintechs. By partnering with us, you eliminate the need for expensive AI engineers, hefty API fees, and complex technical roadmaps—reducing your AI development costs by up to 85%. If you're seeking AI Model Training and Fine-Tuning services that prioritize security and cost-efficiency without sacrificing Big Tech fidelity, we'd love to talk to you. Learn more at bottega8.com/swimming.Swimming with Allocators is a podcast that dives into the intriguing world of Venture Capital from an LP (Limited Partner) perspective. Hosts Alexa Binns and Earnest Sweat are seasoned professionals who have donned various hats in the VC ecosystem. Each episode, we explore where the future opportunities lie in the VC landscape with insights from top LPs on their investment strategies and industry experts shedding light on emerging trends and technologies. The information provided on this podcast does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content, and materials available on this podcast are for general informational purposes only.

Andrea Day is a multidisciplinary artist, cultural advocate, accomplished musician, and citizen of the Muscogee Nation. With a profound connection to her culture, Andrea infuses Mvskoke fine art with a contemporary twist through her distinctive medium that combines acrylic paint and meticulously hand-sewn seed beads on stretched canvas. Her dedication to cultural preservation and innovation in ancestral traditions shines through her unique art form, which draws inspiration from the natural world and the collaborative spirit she experienced during her years in New York City.Andrea's artistic journey is marked by her innovative “Acrybead™” technique, which seamlessly blends acrylic paint with intricately hand-sewn seed beads, creating a visually vibrant and culturally rich medium, honoring an ancient Mvskoke beadwork tradition while pushing the boundaries of contemporary art. Andrea showcases her original works and designs through her company, A. Day's Work LLC, offering enhanced giclée prints that incorporate glass bead enhancements to create a three-dimensional effect. Recent solo exhibitions include “Evolve or Perish” at the Paseo Arts & Creativity Center, OKC, in June 2024; and her premiere solo exhibition “A. Day's Work” at the Historic Carnegie Library in Guthrie, OK, in 2023. These exhibitions provided a unique opportunity for viewers to experience Andrea's original artworks and gain insight into her artistic process.Her career in New York City was distinguished by notable achievements, including a solo debut recital at Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall in 2014 and a television debut on "All-Star Celebrity Apprentice" in 2013. Andrea also curated the “Relevant: Reflection - Reformation - Revival” exhibition for AMERINDA, hosted at the Nathan Cummings Foundation in NYC in 2009. This exhibition challenged conventional perceptions of First American art, complemented by her essay, “Relevant: Rethinking American Indian Art,” with an introduction by Dorothy Lichtenstein. Additionally, Andrea made her Off-Broadway debut in William S. Yellow Robe, Jr.'s "Thieves" at The Public Theater in 2009.During her time in New York, Andrea actively contributed to the cultural landscape as a Cultural Development Fund Panelist for the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. In this role, she assessed numerous organizations' cultural services and facilitated the distribution of The Cultural Fund across multiple fiscal years, enhancing the fine arts community in the city.Andrea's academic background includes a Master of Music in Flute Performance from the University of Oklahoma and a Bachelor of Music in Flute Performance from Pennsylvania State University. She was a Doc Tate Nevaquaya Scholar at the University of Oklahoma and received an American Indian Graduate Center Fellowship in 2004.Now residing in Oklahoma with her husband and daughter, Andrea continues to devote her time and talent to creating new work and supporting her community. Her dedication to cultural and language preservation, coupled with her innovative artistic vision, has allowed her to play a significant role in the Native and broader artistic communities.https://adayswork.arthttps://adayswork.art/instagram

Anu Gupta (he/el) is a lawyer, educator, scientist, and the Founder of BE MORE with Anu. He founded BE MORE in 2014 after witnessing the social and financial harms of bias to individuals, organizations, and communities firsthand. He foresaw the numerous possibilities available when people have access to mindfulness practices and scientific wisdom. He synthesized his skills as an attorney, research scientist, and a meditation teacher to build programs centered on advancing equity and belonging unlike any that existed before. Anu has logged over 10,000 hours of meditation and developed BE MORE's approach after 15 years of research that was funded by the National Science Foundation, Nathan Cummings Foundation, the American Heart Association, among others. The key moments in this episode are:  00:02:08 - Anu's Journey 00:10:10 - Ancient Wisdom and Social Connectivity  00:15:47 - Writing as a Process of Self-discovery  00:20:02 - Primary and Secondary Identities  00:26:38 - Moving Beyond Dualities  00:29:00 - Navigating Bias in the Workplace  00:31:27 - Hope in Challenging Times  Connect with Anu Gupta Website: anuguptany.com Instagram: @anuguptany   Connect with Amina AlTai Website: aminaaltai.com Instagram: @aminaaltai TikTok: @theaminaaltai Linkedin: linkedin/in/aminaaltai

This week, FANTI brings you another special installment of We See Each Other: The Podcast. We'll be back next week to give you the usual good good! On this week's episode, hosts Tre'vell Anderson and Shar Jossell speak with actor, Brian Michael Smith.The star shares how he is now able to bring all sides of himself to the table as an actor. But first, our hosts discuss masc representation in media, or rather the lack thereof. With cis women actors playing transmasculine characters as the norm back in the day, like Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry, our hosts discuss how this practice creates further confusion and harm into the trans conversation. Then later, we Pass The Mic to our everyday trans siblings and get a lesson on transmasculine activist and civil rights pioneer, Pauli Murray.Find us on IG: @SlayzhonYou can buy We See Each Other: A Black Trans Journey Through TV & Film the book wherever books are soldMentioned in the ShowDr. Kortney ZieglerStill Black: A Portrait of Black TransmenSoldier's GirlLaith AshleyStrut Isis KingQueen SugarIG:@Rayzhon @sharsaysso @slayzhon (WSEO IG) Twitter@trevellanderson @sharssaysso @slayzhon @vivalapalma (Producer, Palmira Muniz)@swishswish (Senior Producer, Laura Swisher) Music: Neverending Nina (IG @neverendingninanotes)Producer: Palmira MunizSenior Producer: Laura SwisherLaura Swisher is senior producer Music: Never Ending NinaWe See Each Other: The Podcast is produced and distributed by MaximumFun.orgThis podcast is supported by Critical Minded, an initiative to invest in cultural critics of color co founded by The Nathan Cummings Foundation and The Ford Foundation. It's a production of Slayzhon and Maximum Fun! 

**This week FANTI is passing the mic to We See Each Other: The Podcast while our show is on a short hiatus. But don't worry, we'll be back with all new episodes starting August 31st! This week, we have reached the end of the journey with the final episode of We See Each Other: The Podcast. Hosts Tre'vell Anderson and Shar Jossell welcome Pose and American Horror Story star, Angelica Ross. She speaks on the state of trans media representation, how comedy has been both a gift and curse for the trans community, and what it means to indict one's self. Then, our hosts speak with political journalist and host of The Anti - Trans Hate Machine, Imara Jones. Imara speaks on how trans representation in media has changed over time, going from no representation at all to hypervisibility in just the span of a few years. While media representation is still an obstacle, Imara asserts that erasure is the most violent act on the trans community. But first, some heartfelt final thoughts in Pass The Mic, where we hear from some community members from the Unique Women Coalition, and a WSEO listener.Find us on IG: @SlayzhonWe made it easy to share your thoughts. Go to SpeakPipe.com/WeSeeEachOtherYou can buy We See Each Other: A Black Trans Journey Through TV & Film the book wherever books are soldMentioned in the ShowChicago's Kit Kat LoungeThe Anti-Trans Hate Machine podcastTransLash Podcast with Imara JonesIG:@Rayzhon @sharsaysso @slayzhon (WSEO IG) Twitter@trevellanderson @sharssaysso @slayzhon @vivalapalma (Producer, Palmira Muniz)@swishswish (Senior Producer, Laura Swisher) Music: Neverending Nina (IG @neverendingninanotes)Producer: Palmira MunizSenior Producer: Laura SwisherLaura Swisher is senior producer Music: Never Ending NinaWe See Each Other: The Podcast is produced and distributed by MaximumFun.orgThis podcast is supported by Critical Minded, an initiative to invest in cultural critics of color co founded by The Nathan Cummings Foundation and The Ford Foundation. It's a production of Slayzhon and Maximum Fun! 

Today on Crushing Classical, you'll hear my interview with Ariel Grossman, Founder & Artistic Director of Ariel Rivka Dance. I've never talked with a choreographer before and I just loved finding all of the parallels between our worlds.  This episode is brought to you today by Happiest Musician Coaching. You are amazing, and I believe in you. What are you trying to create?  What do you need your career to be and do for you? What are you not seeing that you need to do and work on?  I love these conversations and supporting musicians like you. For a limited time, I'm offering a free 30-minute call to get you some clarity around your next steps, and see how I might help you get unstuck!  Ariel Rebecca (Rivka) Grossman is a native New Yorker, who trained at LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and the Performing Arts and Joffrey Ballet School. In 2008, she founded an all-female contemporary company, Ariel Rivka Dance. Most recently, Ariel received a 2023 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Ariel's work has been presented worldwide, including BAM Fisher, NJPAC, Bryant Park, NYLA, Baruch Performing Arts Center, Martha Graham Studio Theater, NYU Tisch, Rutgers University, Roxbury Performing Arts Center, and in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Houston, Cleveland, Florida, Oklahoma, Detroit, Memphis, Istanbul, Turkey, and in 2023, Perigord, France and Bari, Italy. She has been commissioned by Dance Lab NY, Konverjdans, Ballet Vero Beach, and Skidmore College. Collaborations include Rioult Dance NY, Taylor 2, Heidi Latsky, Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company, and Sean Curran. Ariel is a past recipient of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (New) Moves Fellowship, Monira Performance Residency, and a Nimbus Arts Center artist residency. ARD is an awardee of Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, The Charles & Joan Gross Family Foundation, the O'Donnell-Green Music & Dance Foundation, Jersey City Council of the Arts, and New Jersey State Council on the Arts and more. Ariel draws inspiration from the struggles and joys of the human experience, particularly through being a woman and mother of two. Through collaboration, Ariel encourages her artists to bring themselves to the work—molding pieces that are striking, evocative, and multi-layered. This conversation was fascinating. Firstly, because I loved hearing Ariel talk about her art in a way that was both brand new to me and also completely relatable. The connections are so clear and it's amazing to think about movement, interpretation, and leadership in a totally different field than my own.  Secondly, because I loved hearing her take real ownership of her own strengths - I don't hear this nearly often enough from people, even the amazingly accomplished people I'm interviewing right here, and ESPECIALLY from working musicians.  I know you will love this interview. If you are in NYC, catch Ariel Rivka Dance's 15th Annual Season presented by NYU Tisch at the Jack Crystal Theater on May 31st-June 2nd, and a special family matinee co-presented by 14Y Theater on June 3rd.  Here's a teaser for her upcoming collaboration, Never Fade Away Follow Ariel Rivka Dance on Instagram at @arielrivkadance or @arielgrossman; or on Facebook Thanks for joining me on Crushing Classical!  Theme music and audio editing by DreamVance. You can join my email list HERE, so you never miss an episode! Or you could hop on a short call with me to brainstorm your next plan.  I'm your host, Jennet Ingle. I love you all. Stay safe out there!  

FANTI presents: Episode #2,“Remain Teachable” of We See Each Other: The Podcast, hosted by FANTI's very own, award-winning journalist and authoress, Trev'ell Anderson, and FANTI MVP, award-winning journalist and media personality, Shar Jossell. Join the conversation on Trans visibility in media and go to SpeakPipe.com/WeSeeEachOther to share your thoughts. Mentioned In The Episode Soldier's Girl (2003) P - Valley (2020) Eden's gardenCandis Cayne of Dirty Sexy MoneyLady BunnyLypsinkaIn The DollHouse With Lina If you want to learn more about trans visibility and issues, here are some FANTI episodes to brush up on: Episode 165, Outta PocketEpisode 160, And The Nonbinary Oscar Goes To…Episode 132, Black, Queer & Visible (ft. Ryan Mitchell) Episode 78, No Cis-sies Allowed (ft. Dashaun Harrison)  Follow WSEO on IG: @SlayzhonYou can buy We See Each Other: A Black Trans Journey Through TV & Film wherever books are soldIG:@Rayzhon @sharsaysso @slayzhon (WSEO IG) Twitter@trevellanderson @sharssaysso @slayzhon @vivalapalma (Producer, Palmira Muniz)@swishswish (Senior Producer, Laura Swisher) Music: Neverending Nina (IG @neverendingninanotes)Producer: Palmira C. MuñizSenior Producer: Laura SwisherLaura Swisher is senior producer Music: Neverending NinaWe See Each Other: The Podcast is supported by Critical Minded, an initiative to invest in cultural critics of color co founded by The Nathan Cummings Foundation and The Ford Foundation. It's a production of Slayzhon and Maximum Fun! 

An urgent look at the ongoing surge in antisemitism in this country and beyond. I'll talk with Rabbi Jason Kimelman-Block, Washington Director of Bend the Arc Jewish Action, and Isaac Luria, Program Director at the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Also, a look back at a momentous year at the US Supreme Court. Several watershed decisions directly impacting religious freedom for all Americans, as well as other key issues, have changed life in this country - and threatened other freedoms found by past Courts in the US Constitution. You'll hear from Liz Platt, Director of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia Law School, and Interfaith Alliance Director of Policy and Advocacy Katy Joseph.

The SLC Performance Lab is produced by ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program. During the course, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Grad Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Grad Lab is one of the core components of the program where graduate students work with guest artists and develop group-generated performance experiments. Kaneza Schaal is a New York City based artist working in theater, opera, and film. Schaal was named a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, and received a 2019 United States Artists Fellowship, SOROS Art Migration and Public Space Fellowship, Joyce Award, 2018 Ford Foundation Art For Justice Bearing Witness Award, 2017 MAP Fund Award, 2016 Creative Capital Award, and was an Aetna New Voices Fellow at Hartford Stage. Her project GO FORTH, premiered at Performance Space 122 and then showed at the Genocide Memorial Amphitheater in Kigali, Rwanda; Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans; Cairo International Contemporary Theater Festival in Egypt; and at her alma mater Wesleyan University, CT. Her work JACK & showed in BAM's 2018 Next Wave Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and with its co-commissioners Walker Arts Center, REDCAT, On The Boards, Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. Schaal's piece CARTOGRAPHY premiered at The Kennedy Center and toured to The New Victory Theater, Abu Dhabi Arts Center and Playhouse Square, OH. Her dance work, MAZE, created with FLEXN NYC, premiered at The Shed. Most recently, she directed Triptych composed by Bryce Dessner with libretto by Korde Arrington Tuttle, which premiered at LA Philharmonic, The Power Center in Ann Arbor, MI, BAM Opera House and Holland Festival. Her newest original work KLII, was co-commissioned as part of the Eureka Commissions program by the Onassis Foundation and is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Walker Art Center in partnership with Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, and REDCAT. Schaal will develop and direct a number of upcoming works including SPLIT TOOTH with Tanya Tagaq (Luminato Festival, Canada), HUSH ARBOR (The Opera) with Imani Uzuri (The Momentary, AZ) and BLUE at Michigan Opera Theater. Schaal's work has also been supported by New England Foundation for The Arts, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, FACE Foundation Contemporary Theater grant, Theater Communications Group, and a Princess Grace George C. Wolfe Award. Her work with The Wooster Group, Elevator Repair Service, Richard Maxwell/New York City Players, Claude Wampler, Jim Findlay, and Dean Moss has brought her to venues including Centre Pompidou, Royal Lyceum Theater Edinburgh, The Whitney Museum, and MoMA.

The Quantum AI Series features exclusive interviews of the global innovators shaping the future of quantum computing. In Episode 3 of Season 2, Maëva Ghonda, the founder and chair of the Quantum AI Institute, interviews John Levy, the CEO of SEEQC. Prior to co-founding SEEQC in 2018, John served as the Chair of Hypres for 8 years where he remains as a member of the board; he serves on the board of goTenna, an ad hoc mesh networking company; he helped create and became the founding Chair of PlusN, a carrier aggregation software company; and, for seven years, he served as the Chair of BioLite, a distributed energy company. John also joined the investment committee of the Nathan Cummings Foundation overseeing a $450m endowment in 2012 and became Chair in 2017. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/quantum-ai-institute/message

Maurine Knighton is the program director for the arts at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. In that capacity, she is responsible for developing and overseeing grantmaking programs that support artists and organizations in the contemporary dance, theater, jazz, and presenting fields.Prior to DDCF, Knighton was the senior vice president for grantmaking at the Nathan Cummings Foundation. She also served as senior vice president for program and nonprofit investment at the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone. In the field of arts and culture, she was executive producer and president of 651 ARTS; program manager at the Nonprofit Finance Fund; and managing director of Penumbra Theatre Company. She is a former board member of the Association of Performing Arts Professionals and of Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA), where she chaired GIA's Racial Equity Committee. Knighton has also served as panelist and advisor to the National Endowment for the Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts, Arts Presenters Ensemble Theater Program, South Carolina Arts Commission, and others. She currently serves on the board of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation, chairing its Cultural Investment Fund Committee.

Last year saw a measurable drop in philanthropic donations to nonprofit arts and culture organizations. While some are quick to blame the pandemic, others believe the bigger concern is the growing disconnect between the rising generation of donors and the arts and culture sector. In today's podcast episode, our panel unpacks these latest findings and provides practical tips for how arts organizations can bridge the perceived gap by next gen donors between the arts and the social impact causes they care most about. Free 30-minute consultation for NPFX listeners: http://www.ipmadvancement.com/free Want to suggest a topic for an upcoming episode? Send an email to contact@ipmadvancement.com. Additional IPM Resources IPM's free Nonprofit Resource Library: https://www.ipmadvancement.com/resources Rich Frazier has worked in the nonprofit sector for over 30 years. In his role as senior consultant with IPM Advancement, Rich offers extensive understanding and knowledge in major gifts program management, fund development, strategic planning, and board of directors development. Melissa Cowley Wolf has 20 years of experience in philanthropy, strategic planning, and programming for art museums and higher education institutions across the United States. As a philanthropy consultant, an advisor to next generation philanthropists, and arts advocate working across industries, Melissa and her work have been profiled in The New York Times, Financial Times, Inside Philanthropy, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, The Art Newspaper, Artnet News, and more. Jaimie Mayer is a creative producer and Chair of the Nathan Cummings Foundation. She has produced theatre on Broadway and off and had films premiere at Sundance and Showtime. https://nathancummings.org/ Arts & Culture Nonprofits Mentioned in the Episode: The Laundromat Project https://www.laundromatproject.org/ Oakland Museum of California https://museumca.org/ Brooklyn Museum https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/ Recess https://www.recessart.org/ ASTEP https://astep.org/

On this week’s podcast, host Monique Aiken checks in with Nathan Cummings Foundation’s Rey Ramsey and The Case Made’s Tiffany Manuel, and chats with ImpactAlpha’s Amy Cortese about climate action news. Plus, the headlines. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/impact-alpha/message

On this week's podcast, host Monique Aiken checks in with Nathan Cummings Foundation's Rey Ramsey and The Case Made's Tiffany Manuel, and chats with ImpactAlpha's Amy Cortese about climate action news. Plus, the headlines. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/impact-alpha-briefing/message

The Nathan Cummings Foundation says it has nearly fulfilled the commitment made three years ago to align 100% of its $450 million endowment with its mission goals – and confirmed that aligning foundation assets with positive impact turns out to be a way to make a decent return as well. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/impact-alpha-tr/message

The Nathan Cummings Foundation says it has nearly fulfilled the commitment made three years ago to align 100% of its $450 million endowment with its mission goals – and confirmed that aligning foundation assets with positive impact turns out to be a way to make a decent return as well. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/impact-alpha/message

Danielle Durchslag is an artist and filmmaker whose work frequently looks at questions of Jewish identity and wealth. A great-granddaughter of Nathan Cummings (founder of the Nathan Cummings Foundation), she joins Dan and Lex for a conversation about "the Jewish 1%" -- but also about what they together come to term "the Jewish 25%."If you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!To access shownotes for this episode, click here.

On this episode of The Tight Rope, Oscar-award winning actor Mahershala Ali opens up powerfully to our hosts Dr. Cornel West and Professor Tricia Rose about his life, his religion, his supporting role in Green Book, and his upcoming leading role in Blade. You won’t want to miss this fascinating, honest, and spiritual conversation with Mahershala. In Office Hours, Dr. West and Tricia remember Breonna Taylor and discuss the specific and collective loss felt about the decision to not charge the cops involved with her death on this episode of The Tight Rope. Cornel WestDr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.  Tricia RoseProfessor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.   Mahershala AliMahershala Ali is an awarding-winning actor, producer, and former rapper, known for his roles in House of Cards (2016), Moonlight (2016), Luke Cage (2016), True Detective (2019), and Ramy (2020). With a diverse range and incredible skill set, Ali has won numerous accolades, including the 2019 and 2017 Oscar for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for Green Book and Moonlight, respectively. In 2019, Time magazine named Ali one of the 100 Most Influential People in the world.  Insight from this episode:Behind-the-scenes look at Mahershala’s journey and conversion to Islam along with his experiences with his name in Hollywood and accepting his creator’s advice. Reasons why Mahershala is so serious.Honest reflections on why Mahershala said yes to his role in Green Book, how he prepared for that role, and his reflections and regrets after the fact. Discussion on Mahershala’s upcoming role in Blade and his connection to Wesley Snipes.Reflections on the power of the arts to empower people and to create imaginative spaces and new realities.  Quotes from the show:“I was constantly in these environments where I was the “other.” In doing so, you become hyper-aware of your Blackness… I don’t think I ever allowed myself off the hook to necessarily relax and go, “Alright, I can kind of play around a little bit.” I always felt a certain pressure to keep certain things together.”  –Mahershala Ali The Tight Rope Episode #19“I’ve been very blessed in my life to have the right people at the right time filling in these spaces or at least giving me the information to fill my own voids, to be a co-creator in my own healing and my own growth.” –Mahershala Ali The Tight Rope Episode #19On Viola Davis and Aunjanue Ellis: “[They] got really good from turning water into wine. Those are the actors that make something out of nothing and get really good at it. So you actually give them some material, a little bit, you give them an inch, they're going to take a mile.” –Mahershala Ali The Tight Rope Episode #19“[Through actors, we can] expand our empathy as an audience and understand that every person is the star of their own story, and if you really get into the nooks and crannies of a life, there’s something dynamic there. I don’t care where they’re from. I don’t care what color or culture someone is from. Those actors consistently make the ordinary extraordinary.” –Mahershala Ali The Tight Rope Episode #19On changing his name: “I don’t want two more syllables to impact the type of career I have. I know who I am. I’d been fighting through this space for so long, feeling like I’m coming off the bench to come and put up shots, but I get pulled off no matter how well I play. For me, I felt like I had permission... Things popped into alignment, when I was clear about what it is I was doing, how I saw myself, what I was okay with, and also giving an audience an opportunity to learn your name.” –Mahershala Ali The Tight Rope Episode #19“I’ve never not had-- up until [Green Book]-- not had to negotiate the things that I’m okay with or the things I gotta try to limit that aspect of it because that is your experience as a Black person in this industry, or probably any industry.” –Mahershala Ali The Tight Rope Episode #19“I’m two decades into a career and haven’t been a lead yet. So you’re constantly looking at what can I do with this part? Because I have more to say, and I want to see, as a Black man, I always want to be a three-dimensional character. I actually want to not always be supporting someone else’s story and be leading the way. But you’re also looking at the crumbtrail you’ve had to follow to get to that point.” –Mahershala Ali The Tight Rope Episode #19On Breonna Taylor: “It’s not just that her black life matters. Her black life is profoundly precious and priceless.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #19“It’s like a ritual that’s being played out over and over again, where extensive discretion is being given to the police to enact what is state-sponsored violence and disregard of Black human beings over and over and over again. And then the use of a very narrow interpretation of the law, and the use of extra discretionary contexts for analysis, and the normalization of the idea of Black people as criminals work all together to continue to reproduce this kind of outcome. So it’s both about Breonna and her family and that specific location, and it’s about a collective experience.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #19On outrage to shooting of cops: “We want consistency on that tight rope.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #19 Stay Connected:Cornel WestWebsite: www.cornelwest.comTwitter: @CornelWestFacebook: Dr. Cornel WestInstagram: @BrotherCornelWest Linktree: Cornel West  Tricia RoseWebsite: www.triciarose.comLinkedIn: Tricia RoseTwitter: @ProfTriciaRoseFacebook: Tricia RoseInstagram: @ProfTriciaRoseYoutube: Professor Tricia Rose  Marhershala AliInstagram: @MahershalaAli The Tight RopeWebsite: www.thetightropepodcast.com Instagram: @thetightropepodTwitter: @thetightropepodFacebook: The Tight Rope Pod This episode was produced and managed by Spkerbox Media in collaboration with Podcast Laundry

Americans took to the streets after the murder of George Floyd, rejecting racism in all its forms. Tricia Rose explains that structural racism has a long history in the United States—and so do the efforts to combat it. Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale and Brown University, Rose authored “Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America,” “Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy,” and “The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters.” She sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc.. Focusing on issues related to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings. She co-hosts the weekly “The Tight Rope” podcast with Dr. Cornel West, covering a range of topics from pop culture and art and music, to the contours of systemic racism, philosophy, the power of Socratic self-examination. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode SummaryOn this episode of The Tight Rope, Professor Tricia Rose’s favorite MC of all time, Rakim, joins her and Dr. Cornel West for a conscious-raising conversation about the past, present, and future of hip hop and the “turning point” that this moment could be. Rakim lets us into his creative process and shows us that no one knows better than him the power of words, especially the words truth and humility. Dr. West and Tricia hold Office Hours to discuss the politics surrounding the whistleblower allegations of forced hysterectomies on ICE detainees on this episode of The Tight Rope.   Cornel WestDr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.  Tricia RoseProfessor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.   RakimRakim is an American rapper and record producer. One half of golden age hip hop duo Eric B. & Rakim, Rakim is widely regarded as one of the most influential and most skilled MCs of all time. Their album Paid in Full was named the greatest hip hop album of all time by MTV in 2006. Eric B. & Rakim created four albums together, and Rakim produced three solo albums. In 2019, Rakim, hailed for his brilliant artistic style, adding layers, complexity, depth, musicality, and soul to rap, released his memoir Sweat the Technique: Revelations on Creativity from the Lyrical Genius.  Insight from this episode:Reflections on the role that music and hip hop have played in Black traditions of survival and spiritual fortitude. Strategies for thinking and using words in an aspirational way to maintain hope and positivity.Details into Rakim’s musical influences, such as Coltrane, James Brown, and Frank Sinatra, and the direct impact they had on his hip hop. Rakim’s thoughts on the return on consciousness in music, “Hip hop 2021,” and how the hip hop scene can and should look like moving forward. Behind the scenes of the making of Paid in Full and writing the title track for Juice. Quotes from the show: “As Black folk, we should never be surprised by evil or paralyzed by despair. We have known every possible catastrophe, every possible calamity. We look unflinchingly at it, be honest and candid about it, try to preserve the integrity of our souls, and keep on moving.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #18“When hip hop came out, I felt like it was there for me. It was the young music for the young generation, and I just felt like everything that I learned prepared me for that.” –Rakim The Tight Rope Episode #18On Islam: “It taught me how to communicate, it taught me how to express myself, it taught me how to not only translate my feelings, but what I felt the world was feeling. And that’s what I thought was more important, to see vicariously through the world’s eyes and speak.” –Rakim The Tight Rope Episode #18“Knowing how deep he was, how creative he was, how mental he was, I said to myself, “What would Coltrane do?” If you’re trying to be innovative and take things to the next level, how could you do that? Well, Coltrane played two notes at the same time, so what could you do?” –Rakim The Tight Rope Episode #18“Listening to jazz when I was coming up, I didn’t know I was learning an important lesson for what I was doing, for what I would be doing. Jazz taught me how to manipulate space and time.” –Rakim The Tight Rope Episode #18“I always used to call myself an instrument. When I hear music, I would say how can I join in? It’s like a jazz band, if they let me get a solo, what would I do? How would I play it?” –Rakim The Tight Rope Episode #18“We patterned hip hop off of James Brown, his music, his drums, even the screams and the grunts. Without saying words, he let you know how you felt about the music and it made the listener feel the same way.” –Rakim The Tight Rope Episode #18“This is the best time to be conscious again with music. This is the best time to tell your story from the world’s point of view. We’re all impacted from what’s going on right now. I’m hoping it’s a good time for hip hop. Artists that may have never thought of saying anything conscious or positive are thinking that now. Even if they’re just explaining to us if they see what’s going on, it’s a change for hip hop. I’m hoping that things just going on wake hip hop up a little bit and it gets a little more conscious.” –Rakim The Tight Rope Episode #18On the golden age of hip hip: “It wasn’t about trying to tell people political messages. People like to say it was about political consciousness. No, it was about how to live and survive white supremacy with your spirit intact, with your family, and your people at the front of your mind, and your heart not completely closed to treating each other with dignity.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #18On COVID-19 pandemic: “I don’t think nobody wants to hear about no strip clubs or how much money or how many cars you got. I think the climate is going to change real fast with hip hop because this is a rude awakening.” –Rakim The Tight Rope Episode #18“When I was young, music was a teacher. We could listen to music and know exactly what’s going on in the world.” –Rakim The Tight Rope Episode #18“I started to pattern my style, and I realized that if I could show me through my work, it would be easy. I figured that would be my advantage. Can’t no nobody be me, can’t no one think like I’m thinking. No one’s going to say exactly what I say if it comes from my heart.” –Rakim The Tight Rope Episode #18“There’s a long tradition of eugenics in the United States, 31 states that had laws that allowed for reproductive violation and injustice, that allowed for sterilization. We know one of the greatest freedom fighters of the 21st century, Fanny Lou Hamer, underwent the same kind of operation without her consent. Same kind of violation without her consent.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #18“If anybody has a question about why people of color don’t trust doctors or don’t trust medical professionals in general, here’s a very clear, recent case of that.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #18“We have to be vigilant about it because we’re just being attacked and assaulted on every conceivable front.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #18“Sexual violence and physical violence against women’s reproduction is a hard topic for people to rally around in the same way as other things are because it feels like such an intimate thing, and we’ve not been trained to see the deeply public, political nature of this kind of action.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #18 Stay Connected:Cornel WestWebsite: www.cornelwest.comTwitter: @CornelWestFacebook: Dr. Cornel WestInstagram: @BrotherCornelWest Linktree: Cornel West  Tricia RoseWebsite: www.triciarose.comLinkedIn: Tricia RoseTwitter: @ProfTriciaRoseFacebook: Tricia RoseInstagram: @ProfTriciaRoseYoutube: Professor Tricia Rose  RakimWebsite: TheGodRakim.comTwitter: @RakimGodMCFacebook: RakimInstagram: @TheGodRakimYoutube: @RakimVEVOSpotify: Rakim The Tight RopeWebsite: www.thetightropepodcast.com Instagram: @thetightropepodTwitter: @thetightropepodFacebook: The Tight Rope Pod This episode was produced and managed by Spkerbox Media in collaboration with Podcast Laundry.

Episode SummaryOn this episode of The Tight Rope, Professor Noam Chomsky shares with our hosts, Dr. Cornel West and Professor Tricia Rose, the wisdom that only comes with 91 years of experience. Linguist, social critic, and political activist, Professor Chomsky confronts issues of survival as he speaks on the impacts of the COVID pandemic and the decisions of the Trump administration locally and globally as well as the feasibility and necessity of a New Green Deal and the heroics of everyday, unknown people that truly make the difference. Join us for a reframing of what really matters during this time on this episode of The Tight Rope.   Cornel WestDr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.  Tricia RoseProfessor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.   Noam ChomskyConsidered the founder of modern linguistics, Professor Noam Chomsky is one of the most influential and critically engaged public intellectuals in the world. He has written more than 100 books, including Syntactic Structures, Language and Mind, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, and most recently Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal. He is Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Professor Chomsky’s immense contributions go beyond linguistics into analytic philosophy and cognitive science. Insight from this episode:Strategies for sustaining our commitment to intellectual thought during this multilayer catastrophe. The two biggest questions that human beings are currently facing and why no one is talking about them. Critiques of the internal battles of the DNC and what we need to do if Biden is elected. Insights into how capitalistic logic worsened the pandemic.Connections between religion and justice along with Professor Chomsky’s thoughts on the “self-hating Jew,” “flatterers of the court,” and liberation theology.  Quotes from the show:“If you look at history, we’ve been through very hard times, but a lot has been accomplished. In many ways, it’s a much better country, much better world, than it was 60 years ago, a 100 years ago-- not in all respects, but in many respects. And many battles that were fought hard, and won, we can just take for granted and move on.” –Noam Chomsky The Tight Rope Episode #17“We don’t have any choice. You can either say everything’s hopeless, I give up-- help ensure the worst will happen. Or you can grasp the opportunities that exist, and they do exist, and maybe you can make it a better world. It’s not much of a choice.” –Noam Chomsky The Tight Rope Episode #17On Trump: “If this malignancy is not removed, we may not survive another four years of this. We may get to irreversible tipping points.” –Noam Chomsky The Tight Rope Episode #17“This decision [to eliminate regulations on polluting industries] is saying, “I want to kill you.” That’s what it says. “I don’t care about you. I’ll increase the pollution that’s killing you.” And doing it in the midst of a respiratory pandemic, which pollution radically increases the already sharply disparate race, class effect of the pandemic. Right in the middle of this, I’ll make it worse for you. Nobody comments on it.” –Noam Chomsky The Tight Rope Episode #17“[Trump’s] carrying out a desperate effort to try to cover up the vicious crimes he’s committed against the American people.” –Noam Chomsky The Tight Rope Episode #17“You can’t read the prophets and not be inspired by the eloquent calls for justice, for mercy, and the sharp critiques of the crimes of the powerful, the geopolitical critiques, moral critiques.” –Noam Chomsky The Tight Rope Episode #17“The ones who bring the message of honesty, integrity, support for people who need it, preferential option for the poor, working for the suffering and the needy, changing our societies so that they are directed to people’s just rights and needs instead of for maximizing wealth and profit for a tiny sector, those are the people who are bitterly attacked.” –Noam Chomsky The Tight Rope Episode #17“You get caught up trying to decide which one of those [political ideologies] is right, and you find out that every group has done both [right and wrong].” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #17“You wonder if all of this effort to keep us at each other’s throats is just to distract us from the fact that everything is being looted while the whole world ends.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #17“Greed wouldn’t be able to run amuck if they weren’t able to manipulate the racist sensibilities of folk to turn away from what really matters and to be preoccupied with these matters that allow the powerful to be the gangsters that too often they are.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #17“They’re promising to make America great again, while there’s not going to be any America left-- not that if was ever great in the first place.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #17 Stay Connected:Cornel WestWebsite: www.cornelwest.comTwitter: @CornelWestFacebook: Dr. Cornel WestInstagram: @BrotherCornelWest Linktree: Cornel West  Tricia RoseWebsite: www.triciarose.comLinkedIn: Tricia RoseTwitter: @ProfTriciaRoseFacebook: Tricia RoseInstagram: @ProfTriciaRoseYoutube: Professor Tricia Rose  Noam ChomskyWebsite: https://chomsky.info Facebook: Noam Chomsky The Tight RopeWebsite: www.thetightropepodcast.com Instagram: @thetightropepodTwitter: @thetightropepodFacebook: The Tight Rope Pod This episode was produced and managed by Spkerbox Media in collaboration with Podcast Laundry

Episode SummaryBootsy Collins transforms The Tight Rope on this Special Funk Edition. Bootsy, Dr. Cornel West, and Professor Tricia Rose talk all things funk in the context of the perils of following trends, the process of self-acceptance and self-discovery, confronting fear, and the “manipulation of the funk.” Bootsy shares details about his upcoming album The Power of the One. Hear what funk means to Bootsy Collins and how we must be funky in our own lives on this episode of The Tight Rope.   Cornel WestDr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.  Tricia RoseProfessor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.   Boosty CollinsBootsy Collins, a great “Funkmaster,” has been making music since 1968. He played bass with the Pacesetters, James Brown, Bootsy’s Rubber Band, and the Parliament-Funkadelic collective. He also wrote songs and arranged rhythm. Black music “artistic nobility” from Cincinnati, Bootsy was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by Bass Play magazine, and he is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. No one says it better than Dr. West when he describes Bootsy as an “exemplar of the greatest modern tradition in the world which is Black music wrestling with suffering and transfiguring and transforming it into such a way that the sonic effects on souls, soul to soul, [are] mediated with genius, mediated with talent, mediated with discipline, mediated with vision.” Check out Bootsy’s new album The Power of the One, which includes a collaboration with Dr. West. All proceeds from the streams and downloads of his new song, “Stars,” will go to the MusiCares COVID-19 Relief Fund.  Insight from this episode:Secrets behind the key to the funk and how to make something out of nothing. Insights into the past, present, and future of funk music. The story behind the bassline of “Flash Light” and Bootsy’s artistic self-discovery.  Bootsy Collins’s take on Black Lives Matter and the current moment.Behind-the-scenes details on past and present collaborations between Boosty Collins and Dr. West.  Quotes from the show:“I don’t never want to lose that kid inside me because when I lose him, I lose a part of myself.” –Bootsy Collins The Tight Rope Episode #14“One of the things about funk, and one of the great gifts that we Black people have brought to the world in terms of the depths of funk… is to acknowledge that in the world in which we find ourselves, which is white supremist America, they want to deodorize everything, they want to sanitize and sterilize everything, keep it on the surface. We say, no, we want to do some deep sea diving, and by going all the way deep into the funk, we’re going to get all the tears, blood, the sorrow, the sadness, and the pleasure, and the joy is there and then give it.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #14“The whole thing is, do you accept being funky? Are you alright with being called funky? Are you alright with being called Black? Are you alright with it? I’m cool with it! I’m always going to be cool with being funky. But a lot of people just can’t embrace the fact of being funky.” –Bootsy Collins The Tight Rope Episode #14“The funk predates the book learning.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #14“The funk is making something out of nothing.” –Bootsy Collins The Tight Rope Episode #14“We all become less afraid. We all become more willing to engage with the world. We all become less apologetic about whatever truths are inside us cause everyone got their distinctive voices and their distinctive truths. You can’t be funky by imitating someone else. You’re going to start faking the funk.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #14“That funk, funk vibe that you got, you got to trust it. It’s just like God. It’s God.” –Bootsy Collins The Tight Rope Episode #14“African peoples have musically and sonically transformed all of the deodorized lies into certain truths of self-confidence and self-respect. We might not have no land or territory, might not have no rights or any kind of liberty, but we were still free enough in our language, in our music, to pass it on to the younger generation where they can get some kind of self-confidence, self-respect where the love can be found.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #14“Who really stands for the funk now? This is the time you have to stand for something. And we got something real. We’re talking about the funk.” –Bootsy Collins The Tight Rope Episode #14“The funk is not about success but about process.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #14“We don’t want no brand. We want a cause. We want a cause we can die for. We don’t want a brand to superficially shine. We want the shining in the life that we live, in the funk we embody, in the smiles we produce, in the love that we generate.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #14 Resources MentionedMusiCares Donation Website Stay Connected:Cornel WestWebsite: www.cornelwest.comTwitter: @CornelWestFacebook: Dr. Cornel WestInstagram: @BrotherCornelWest Linktree: Cornel West  Tricia RoseWebsite: www.triciarose.comLinkedIn: Tricia RoseTwitter: @ProfTriciaRoseFacebook: Tricia RoseInstagram: @ProfTriciaRoseYoutube: Professor Tricia Rose  Bootsy CollinsWebsite: www.thebootcave.com/Bootsy Collins Foundation: www.bootsycollinsfoundation.org Twitter: @Bootsy_CollinsFacebook: @BootsyCollins The Tight RopeWebsite: www.thetightropepodcast.com Instagram: @thetightropepodTwitter: @thetightropepodFacebook: The Tight Rope Pod This episode was produced and managed by Spkerbox Media in collaboration with Podcast Laundry

Episode SummaryFormer police officer and F.B.I. agent Dr. Erroll Southers, director of Homegrown Violent Extremism Studies at the University of Southern California, reveals how to transform racist police departments from within, his motivations to join law enforcement, and the “ticking clock” which domestic white terrorists use to countdown to the year 2045, when America's population is expected to become majority P.O.C. Plus, in Office Hours, hosts Dr. Cornel West and Professor Tricia Rose explore the structural limits and spiritual thresholds of America and ponder the existential question: Is America even capable of treating the masses of Black people with decency and dignity?   Cornel WestDr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.  Tricia RoseProfessor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.   Errol SouthersDr. Erroll Southers is an internationally recognized expert on counterterrorism, public safety, infrastructure protection, and homeland security. He serves as Director of the Safe Communities Institute and of Homegrown Violent Extremism Studies at the University of Southern California and Professor of the Practice in National & Homeland Security.  Insight from this episode:Explorations of the possibilities of the 2020 election in the context of the apparent helplessness of the current moment. Surprising statistics about America and its homegrown violent extremism. Strategies for activists looking to change law enforcement policy and create systems of accountability. Information on the power of police unions and other barriers to true accountability in law enforcement. Insights into the hope and patriotism that music and its boundarylessness produces. Quotes from the show:“Spirit [and] solidarity pushes back despair and despondency, so we have some sense of possibility.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #13 Quoting his father on why he joined law enforcement: “You can’t change the castle from outside the moat.” –Erroll Southers The Tight Rope Episode #13“When you train people and dress people for war, they go into a neighborhood to do battle… They’re in a warrior culture, when they need to be in a guardian culture.” –Erroll Southers The Tight Rope Episode #13“Police unions and police officers are afforded more protections than the people they arrest. And I can tell you, having been an assistant chief, it almost takes an act of Congress to fire a police officer. And when you do, about a third of them come back with retroactive backpay.” –Erroll Southers The Tight Rope Episode #13On community review boards: “Why is that such a horrible thing to say to a police department? Why can’t it be that the very people that you’re policing have some say in their reception of your services?” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #13“In the last ten years, we’ve had more domestic attacks here in this country by white supremacists and white nationalists than any other group. White nationalist groups, last year, increased for the second straight year 55% since 2017. The FBI finally had to label that threat a national threat priority. They were in denial.” –Erroll Southers The Tight Rope Episode #13“COVID has been the perfect environment for these extremist organizations to recruit and radicalize and share their message. They’re doing it under the guise of pushing back against the government overreach to make you wear a mask, make you stay at home.” –Erroll Southers The Tight Rope Episode #13“Start talking to the mayor. Start talking to the council. What’s the money being spent on? Are there any metrics that are being looked at with regards to how successful they are?” –Erroll Southers The Tight Rope Episode #13“What do you do when everywhere you look up you run into a different pharaoh? Well, at that point, you just say to yourself, I refuse to be a spectator. I’m going to be a participant. Therefore, I’m going to learn how to love, fight, laugh more adequately, effectively to pass on a tradition to a younger generation.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #13  “There’s potential for transforming what it means to treat Black people with dignity and decency if we can cultivate and somehow separate whiteness from the national consciousness.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #13“The problem is in order to reach that kind of policy we got to have multiracial coalitions, and if those racial coalitions are weak because of white supremacy and they associate dealing with poverty with dealing with Black people, then the racism makes it difficult to ever deal with their own poverty too. And that’s the catch-22 that we see over and over again in our society. And that’s the definition of insanity as well as a certain spiritual sickness.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #13“I don’t mind being profoundly patriotic about Aretha Franklin.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #13 Resources MentionedProsecuteKillerCops.org  Stay Connected:Cornel WestWebsite: www.cornelwest.comTwitter: @CornelWestFacebook: Dr. Cornel WestInstagram: @BrotherCornelWest Linktree: Cornel West  Tricia RoseWebsite: www.triciarose.comLinkedIn: Tricia RoseTwitter: @ProfTriciaRoseFacebook: Tricia RoseInstagram: @ProfTriciaRoseYoutube: Professor Tricia Rose  Erroll SouthersWebsite: errollsouthers.comTwitter: @esouthersHVELinkedIn: Erroll Southers  The Tight RopeWebsite: thetightropepodcast.com Instagram: @thetightropepodTwitter: @thetightropepodFacebook: The Tight Rope Pod This episode was produced and managed by Spkerbox Media in collaboration with Podcast Laundry

Episode SummaryJoin Dr. Cornel West and Professor Tricia Rose on this episode of The Tight Rope in their compelling conversation with NFL superstar and author of Things That Make White People Uncomfortable Michael Bennett. From the strong women in his life and the path to embracing his intellect, to the exploitation of celebrity and “ownership” in the NFL, Bennett engages on all levels with our hosts. Office Hours focuses on “COVID in the Classroom,” both its impact on the learning environment and its economic realities. Hear about Bennet’s thoughts on discernment, retirement, and Colin Kaepernick on The Tight Rope.   Cornel WestDr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.  Tricia RoseProfessor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.   Michael BennettMichael Bennett is a recently retired 11-year NFL veteran with three Pro Bowl victories and a Super Bowl title. He was a pivotal defensive end for multiple teams including the Seattle Seahawks and the Dallas Cowboys. Bennett, an outspoken proponent for social justice and vocal anti-racist in the NFL, has a podcast called “Mouthpeace” with his wife Pele Bennett and a book titled Things That Make White People Uncomfortable, which he is developing into a scripted TV series. Bennett also works with Athletes for Impact, an organization focusing on athlete activism, and he and his wife established The Bennett Foundation with their three daughters.   Insight from this episode:Details on Bennett’s recent retirement from the NFL and his new path forward.  Secrets to having a spine and making it shine. Personal reflections from Bennett and his wife Pele on going “back to Africa” and his work with iamtheCODE in Senegal. Strategies on cultivating leadership not driven by ego. Words of encouragement from our hosts on fulfilling your purpose while also being sensitive to what is happening in the world.  Quotes from the show:“You don’t pity people who you are fundamentally tethered to.”  –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #12“I worry that while we’re trying to survive COVID, somebody’s engineering a world after COVID that is not the world that we want.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #12“You can’t segregate me from my Blackness, you can’t segregate me from my culture, you can’t segregate me from my community because I am that.” –Michael Bennett The Tight Rope Episode #12“It’s important to be vulnerable because our children need to see us love. Our children need to see us cry. Our children need to see us say I love you. They need to see us love our women. They need to see all of it as being a full human being.” –Michael Bennett The Tight Rope Episode #12“I’m an extension of someone who never gave up.” –Michael Bennett The Tight Rope Episode #12On visiting Gorée Island, Senegal and his grandmother: “It was bigger than the Super Bowl to me. It was bigger than a lot of the things that I had accomplished because I had made it back to Africa. There’s a lot of people that accomplished a lot of things, but they never made it back to the motherland to rest their ancestors’ soul. And I felt at that moment a big release. I felt like she was back. She had made it back.” –Michael Bennett The Tight Rope Episode #12On his role in the NFL: “We’re really playing the game of liberation.” –Michael Bennett The Tight Rope Episode #12On Pema Chödrön: “There’s power within healing yourself and being able to be ready for the world. And also, when I read her books, it just makes my consciousness have a sense of peace and a sense of being happy in the moment.” –Michael Bennett The Tight Rope Episode #12“What you do has got to be as essential to you as oxygen. It’s the skin on your body. It’s the love of your parents.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #12“The need is everywhere. We settled that. There ain’t no place where we don’t have a need. So you go where you need to go.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #12On COVID in the classroom: “The main thing I’m worried about is the loss of the kind of human connection when ideas click in that way that it’s so interpersonal even in a big lecture hall. You can feel people thinking.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #12 Stay Connected:Cornel WestWebsite: www.cornelwest.comTwitter: @CornelWestFacebook: Dr. Cornel WestInstagram: @BrotherCornelWest Linktree: Cornel West  Tricia RoseWebsite: www.triciarose.comLinkedIn: Tricia RoseTwitter: @ProfTriciaRoseFacebook: Tricia RoseInstagram: @ProfTriciaRoseYoutube: Professor Tricia Rose  Michael BennetTwitter: @MosesBread72Instagram: @MosesBread72Podcast: Mouthpeace with Michael Bennett & Pele BennettThe Bennett Foundation Twitter: @TMBFoundation The Tight RopeWebsite: www.thetightropepodcast.com Instagram: @thetightropepodTwitter: @thetightropepodFacebook: The Tight Rope Pod This episode was produced and managed by Spkerbox Media in collaboration with Podcast Laundry 

Episode SummaryIn this episode, Dr. Cornel West and Professor Tricia Rose nail down issues of white allyship, undoing invisible racist ideologies, and the hallmarks of possessive investment in whiteness with their beloved guest Professor George Lipsitz. They provide commentary on the leadership of the Black freedom movement of the past and present as well as the “slow violence” of racism rooted in power, interest, and property. Dr. Cornel West and Professor Tricia Rose hold office hours to offer their takes on the removal of racist monuments and its role in the larger work of dismantling systemic racism. This is an episode of The Tight Rope you will want to return to again and again.   Cornel WestDr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.  Tricia RoseProfessor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.   George LipsitzProfessor George Lipsitz is an American Studies scholar and Professor Emeritus of Black Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D in History at the University of Wisconsin, and his current studies focus on social movements, urban culture, African American music, inequality, the politics of popular culture, and Whiteness Studies. Lipsitz has authored numerous books including The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, How Racism Takes Place, Midnight at the Barrelhouse, Footsteps in the Dark, A Life in the Struggle, and Time Passages. Lipsitz also co-authored The Fierce Urgency of Now: Improvisation, Rights and the Ethics of Co-Creation. He serves as a Chairman of the Board of Directors of the African American Policy Forum and is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Fair Housing Alliance. Lipsitz is an intellectual pioneer and respected figure of the Black freedom movement.  Insight from this episode:Questions we must ask ourselves about self definition as the Black freedom struggle and crisis of the current movement passes to another stage. A reframing of “white allyship” and “white fragility” in the context of George Lipsitz’s scholarship on the possessive investment in whiteness. Details on the coordinated crimes of the Pentagon, Wall Street, and the police, specifically the connection between violence abroad and violence “at home.”A call to move beyond symbolic victories when structural changes are needed. Reflections from George Lipsitz on teaching in the prisons and the deeply cynical but astute critics he met there. A behind-the-scenes look at the origins of both Dr. West’s Race Matters and Professor Rose’s Black Noise.  Quotes from the show:“There’s a lot of spinelessness that goes with the polarization and gangsterization of our society. We need people to stand up. Not because they can do it alone, but rather because by doing it, they can inspire others to do it. And so we get enough folk [...] to create countervailing structures, countervailing institutions, along with the countervailing voices and the countervailing examples of the kind of decay and decadence we’re dealing with in the U.S. environment.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #11“It’s important for us to make sure we develop the courage and the clarity and the conviction to move the struggle along. This is a hard time for lovers of freedom. This is a hard time for lovers of social justice. This is a hard time for lovers of decency and dignity of humans. But the table is shaking, and the boat is rocking. We have meaningful work to do.” –George Lipsitz The Tight Rope Episode #11“It’s too easy to think about saving white souls or soothing white psyches and neglecting saving Black lives.” –George Lipsitz The Tight Rope Episode #11“You can’t have decent relations when the structure in which you’re operating is already a rigged game, is already meant that one party to this relationship has the power of denying, condescension, pity, and sympathy and the other person is scrambling for rights, recognition, and resources. So first of all it has to be about power and not just about prejudice.” –George Lipsitz The Tight Rope Episode #11On the leadership of the current Black freedom movement: “What we have today are people who are proud to be themselves. These queer, transgender, non-normative young people on the streets of Ferguson and elsewhere are resisting ruinous form of classification and insisting on an expansive and democratic notion of affection, sexuality, romance but also social membership. We have to applaud that. On the other hand, good intentions and spontaneity is not going to be enough in the face of a relentlessly oppressive and powerful, well financed, military, economic, and political system.” –George Lipsitz The Tight Rope Episode #11 “Many will be seduced and bribed into thinking that if they’re visual their politics are viable.” –George Lipsitz The Tight Rope Episode #11On institution building and making bridges for people: “This happens because people choose to take their time and put that kind of energy into each other.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #11“If we get too preoccupied with these symbolic gestures, they do become distractions. And the status quo says, you know what, you all change the monuments you want, but the class hierarchy, the gender-based hierarchy, the imperial hierarchy is just going to stay right in place.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #11“It’s hard to think of any human being who really deserves a monument.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #11“The monuments become monuments to ideas, and monuments to power relationships, to celebration of domination.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #11 Stay Connected:Cornel WestWebsite: www.cornelwest.comTwitter: @CornelWestFacebook: Dr. Cornel West - HomeInstagram: @BrotherCornelWest Linktree: Cornel West  Tricia RoseWebsite: www.triciarose.comLinkedIn: Tricia RoseTwitter: @ProfTriciaRoseFacebook: Tricia RoseInstagram: @ProfTriciaRoseYoutube: Professor Tricia Rose  George LipsitzUCSB Webpage: George LipsitzBooks on Amazon: George Lipsitz The Tight RopeWebsite: www.thetightropepodcast.comInstagram: @thetightropepodTwitter: @thetightropepodFacebook: The Tight Rope Pod This episode was produced and managed by Spkerbox Media in collaboration with Podcast Laundry. 

Episode SummaryIn this episode of The Tight Rope, our hosts are joined by Dr. Cornel West’s very own student at Harvard, award-winning actress, producer, and change agent Yara Shahidi of Grown-ish fame. Learn about Yara’s passion for storytelling, her new production company 7th Sun that she launched with her mother, as well as her Black Iranian heritage. Yara reads and discusses her favorite passage from James Baldwin. The episode ends with a fascinating Office Hours discussion on John Lewis, his life, legacy, and politics. Join the rich dialogue that brings together joy and justice with Yara Shahidi, Dr. Cornel West, and Professor Tricia Rose on The Tight Rope.   Cornel WestDr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.  Tricia RoseProfessor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.   Yara ShahidiYara Shahidi is a 20-year-old actress and producer, most known for her role as Zoey Johnson in Black-ish and Grown-ish. Among numerous nominations and awards, she was a 2020 NAACP Image Award nominee for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series (Grown-ish) and 2019 Teen Choice Award nominee for Choice Summer Movie Actress (The Sun Is Also a Star). Yara is a vocal activist and champion for social justice. Her newly launched production company, 7th Sun, recently signed with ABC to “develop and produce scripted and alternative television projects for cable.” The aim of 7th Sun is to focus on stories from underrepresented communities and their histories, heritages, cultures, and joys. Yara is the youngest producer to work on network television, and she is also involved with Girls for Gender Equity and the Third Wave Fund.  Insight from this episode:Strategies on creating spaces of joy and sanity in the present moment of crises and pandemics. Behind-the-scenes look at Yara’s life as a student at Harvard and growing up in Hollywood in the context of Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movement. Reflections on Yara’s connections to both Prince and the Obamas and their role in shaping her and her family. Selections and analysis of James Baldwin’s “The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity.”An honest look at Black freedom fighter and neoliberal politician John Lewis, and productive myth-making, Black violence, and the seduction of politics.  Quotes from the show:“We have to come to terms with catastrophe, such that we are not surprised by evil nor paralyzed by despair.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #10“In what ways, given the time that we were growing up, was the myth of utopia not even granted to us? We were born into a world in which we’ve seen corruption at heightened levels… In many ways, purpose has been two-pronged in that it has helped me, with an exceeding amount of clarity, move forward and say, okay, what are the moves I want to make in my world to try and make an impact?” –Yara Shahidi The Tight Rope Episode #10On being entrenched in corporate America: “How do I balance the impact of what I’m doing on a personal level to the positive impact I make to this corporate world that I’m still trying to figure out how I want to deal with?” –Yara Shahidi The Tight Rope Episode #10“I wouldn’t be where I am if people hadn’t handed the mic to me.” –Yara Shahidi The Tight Rope Episode #10 “How do I pay enough attention to the world around me to service it to the best of my ability?” –Yara Shahidi The Tight Rope Episode #10 On Prince: “I really do feel that he created the foundation for how we move through this industry.” –Yara Shahidi The Tight Rope Episode #10 “My last name, Shahidi, means witness or to bear witness. I hope that through art or whatever these other avenues are-- I’m considering law school, we’ll see-- that I’m able to do that [bear witness] to the best of my ability and to continue to open doors in every space.” –Yara Shahidi The Tight Rope Episode #10 “Many people that are frontlines in this movement are also creatives in the truest sense. It’s something I struggle with is seeing the level of vitriol sent their way in a movement that is so steeped in love. In hearing [James Baldwin’s] words of that cognitive dissonance that occurs when you see someone aware enough that it calls attention to your own state of sleep, that that is what [the vitriol] stems from really contextualizes this moment.” –Yara Shahidi The Tight Rope Episode #10 “My dear brother John Lewis was part of a rich tradition of Black people that put a primacy on morality and a centrality on spirituality. He was such a kind human being. He was so gentle. He was a sweet person. He had a soulfulness to him.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #10 “Is it a fair standard to hold him [John Lewis] to? Can a person be in Congress 33 years, 15 years, 5 years and not fundamentally have to wrestle with the contradictions that will in a sense require a less pure response? I just don’t see how you do it.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #10 “Don’t come talking to me about what my violence might look like when you’re constantly crushing my neck to death.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #10 “The arc of the force of their [Black freedom fighters] efforts is what we want to recall while we still the truth about all our human frailties.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #10  Stay Connected:Cornel WestWebsite: www.cornelwest.comTwitter: @CornelWestFacebook: Dr. Cornel WestInstagram: @BrotherCornelWest Linktree: Cornel West  Tricia RoseWebsite: www.triciarose.comLinkedIn: Tricia RoseTwitter: @ProfTriciaRoseFacebook: Tricia RoseInstagram: @ProfTriciaRoseYoutube: Professor Tricia Rose  Yara ShahidiWebsite: Yara ShahidiTwitter: @YaraShahidiFacebook: @yarashahidiInstagram: @yarashahidi The Tight RopeWebsite: www.thetightropepodcast.comInstagram: @thetightropepodTwitter: @thetightropepodFacebook: The Tight Rope Pod This episode was produced and managed by Spkerbox Media in collaboration with Podcast Laundry

Episode SummaryIn this episode, Dr. Cornel West and Professor Tricia Rose dance with their respected guest Jane Elliott on The Tight Rope. Known for her Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Exercise and continued advocacy for anti-racist education and activism, Elliott debates with our hosts about the nature of racism and the language we use to discuss it. They wrestle with the inspiration of the present moment and the necessity to recognize the economic realities of the “lies” about race, along with the ever-importance of education. Join in the spirited conversation with “moral titan” Jane Elliott who emphasizes the possibility of change in our society on this episode of The Tight Rope. Cornel WestDr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.  Tricia RoseProfessor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.   Jane ElliottJane Elliott is an internationally known teacher, lecturer, diversity trainer, and recipient of the National Mental Health Association Award for Excellence in Education. Many will know of Elliott from the now famous “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Exercise” she devised for her third-grade class of all-white students in Riceville, Iowa in 1968. Implemented the day after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the exercise was created to help her young students understand structural racism on a personal level. Elliott has spent more than 50 years as an anti-racism activist, educating people about discrimination and unconscious biases.    Insight from this episode:Strategies on white allyship and what to ask instead of “What can we do? How can we get involved?”Details on Jane Elliott’s 52 years on the tight rope of fighting racial bias.Reflections on the repetition of history and the dangers of an educational system that is meant to indoctrinate racial bias and systemic racism. Details on the racism of our language and alternative vocabulary for conversations on race. Strategies on how to effect change after education has taken place and keep fighting in the face of entrenched interests and white privilege.  Quotes from the show:“If you’re committed to spiritual integrity, if you’re committed to moral courage, you’re going to fight every evil. And white supremacy is an evil.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #9“I jumped off the boat a number of years ago when I said to my students, would you like to know how it feels to be something other than white in this country? That was the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. They all agreed that sounds fun because they had no idea what was going to happen.” –Jane Elliott The Tight Rope Episode #9 “If you want to learn about what’s going on today, in the last three and a half years, don’t go to a history book in a high school or a college. Go some place and find out the truth about what happened in those days [her childhood]. You’ll find out that it looks exactly like what is happening right now.” –Jane Elliott The Tight Rope Episode #9“The answer to this whole problem is education. In schools in this country, we do not furnish education; we furnish indoctrination: here are the ways you must act to be a good American citizen.” –Jane Elliott The Tight Rope Episode #9“With that cultural infrastructure, with that resistive tradition, we [Black Americans] were able to make tremendous strides that really weren’t logical to make.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #9“We need to stop using the phrase “white supremacist” because white people are not supreme. They are pale faces who have learned to play the game that will keep them on top and other people on the bottom. And we do that at our own peril.” –Jane Elliott The Tight Rope Episode #9“You are not born a racist. You are not born a bigot. You have to be carefully taught… It hasn’t been like this forever, and it doesn’t have to be like this forever.” –Jane Elliott The Tight Rope Episode #9“The evil… is not rooted only in ignorance. It’s rooted in interest. It’s rooted in power. It’s rooted in structures of domination.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #9“America isn’t in crisis. The United States of America is having now to come up with the penalty for what we have done to people for the last 300 years in this country.” –Jane Elliott The Tight Rope Episode #9“We believe what we have learned. We have learned the wrong thing. We need to re-educate policemen, instead of re-training them.” –Jane Elliott The Tight Rope Episode #9On the outcomes of Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Exercises: “I don’t know if I believe people who say that. How blind can you actually be? ...They say out loud, “I just never knew. It’s terrible.” What they mean is, “I don’t like when this is happening to me.” So they’re languaging it as empathy because that’s what you’re asking them to do. But I don’t necessarily trust it.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #9“The structure reinforces the ideology and the ideology reinforces the structure. You can’t break it on only one level.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #9 Stay Connected:Cornel WestWebsite: www.cornelwest.comTwitter: @CornelWestFacebook: Dr. Cornel West - HomeInstagram: @BrotherCornelWest Linktree: Cornel West  Tricia RoseWebsite: www.triciarose.comLinkedIn: Tricia RoseTwitter: @ProfTriciaRoseFacebook: Tricia RoseInstagram: @ProfTriciaRoseYoutube: Professor Tricia Rose  Jane ElliottWebsite: www.janeelliott.com/Twitter: @BlibriJaneFacebook: Jane Elliott The Tight RopeWebsite: www.thetightropepodcast.comInstagram: @thetightropepodTwitter: @thetightropepodFacebook: The Tight Rope Pod This episode was produced and managed by Spkerbox Media in collaboration with Podcast Laundry.

Episode SummaryIn this episode of The Tight Rope, award-winning hip hop artist Lecrae joins Dr. Cornel West and Professor Tricia Rose for dialogue about posturing in the world of rap, the meaning of being a revolutionary Christian in today’s world, and the importance of having moral courage no matter what your ideology. They critique the policing of genres and stereotypes of Trap music. Lecrae also speaks vulnerably about his healing journey from depression after the “American dream” failed him and all of America. Be sure not to miss this powerful episode of The Tight Rope.  Cornel WestDr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.  Tricia RoseProfessor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.   LecraeLecrae is a celebrated, award-winning, multiple platinum artist. As a rapper, author, activist, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and Christian, Lecrae has forged his own path combining his faith and hip hop talents. Houston-born Lecrae has earned two Grammys and a No. 1 album on the Billboard Gospel chart, a first for a hip-hop album. Lecrae’s seventh album Anomaly debuted at No. 1 on both the Billboard 200 and Gospel charts simultaneously in 2014, another first for any album. His 2016 memoir Unashamed inspired millions as a New York Times Bestseller, and this October, he will share more of his vulnerable honesty in his upcoming book I Am Restored: How I Lost My Religion but Found My Faith. Truly a revolutionary force in hip hop music and the Christian community, Lecrae remains true to himself standing for love, justice, and humanity. Lecrae’s newest album Restoration will be released in August 2020. Listen to his latest song “Deep End” now. Insight from this episode:Details on the sense of hope and connection to inner emotional worlds that people are looking for and are becoming more open to in hip hop music.Secrets to transforming personal suffering into creativity.Reflections from Lecrae and Dr. West on being artists, thinkers, and Christians, who speak truth, love people, and seek justice.  Details on Lecrae’s journey to form his musical and activist identities, along with his inspiration for his upcoming album Restoration.Secrets to handling backlash, standing true to yourself, and finding your path to spiritual, mental, and emotional healing. How to walk alongside people with differing views from you.  Quotes from the show:“[Hip hip] begins with this extraordinary intervention in the process of music making. It just dramatically changes what it means to make music. It brings the voices of marginal black and brown people right into the fore. It takes them from being completely spoken for in the 70s, for sure in the mainstream, to having a voice of their own. Just incredible storytelling that hip hop elevates… it’s individual, what my story is, but it’s also collective. It tells an experiential collective story.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #8“People are much more open in hip hop to a kind of interrogation of interiority.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #8  “There’s no such thing as a Christian hip hop artist. The hip hop artist just got to tell the truth, and the truth just also happens to connect to Jesus.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #8  “What we’re seeing is young folk’s hunger for something real: spiritual, moral, political, economic, institutional, personal… inside all the wounds and bruises owing to the trauma they’ve been through but also connecting to the critiques of structures and institutions.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #8  “Art is not democratic. Everybody can’t be Toni Morrison. Everybody can’t be Prince. Everybody can’t be James Brown. Everybody can’t be Aretha. We can all love her, but we can’t all be her… We got certain folk who are called out, who have tremendous responsibility and a burden but also great joy because it’s a joy to serve the people. It’s a joy to be a truth teller. It’s a joy to move people at the deepest level.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #8  “Hip hop chose me. We’re talking about an art form that was created by disenfranchised black and brown kids in the Bronx. Black and brown kids all over the world who saw that felt like, man, we have a voice.” –Lecrae The Tight Rope Episode #8“I needed hip hop. I needed to talk about the things going on inside and what was going on in my community.” –Lecrae The Tight Rope Episode #8“Many times people frown upon the South from the Northeast, and they said, “Oh they’re slow and they haven’t progressed and adjusted.” It wasn’t that there was a slowness, it was that there was a difference in how things were being seen and being approached. It’s like the blues and jazz. It’s not that one is better than the other. It’s that there are two different approaches in how they’re expressing themselves through music.” –Lecrae The Tight Rope Episode #8“Hip hop initially started as a form of expression for a lot of young people. And then it was galvanized by suburban white folks, who kind of wanted to peer into this world that folks were talking about, but didn’t actually want to experience it. It’s like watching a Scarface movie-- you want to see all the gangsterism, but you don’t want to have to live through it.” –Lecrae The Tight Rope Episode #8“Because there was money involved, now that muddied up the mixture because now you didn’t know how authentic you should be. Should I embellish these tales of trauma and terror because it sells more? I came up at the height of people embellishing these tales. So I wrestled internally.” –Lecrae The Tight Rope Episode #8On his earlier music and his spiritual transformation: “I would kind of dumb it down because it wasn’t something that was exalted or highlighted in my community, being educated and knowing about what’s going on in the world. So I dumbed it down and talked about the usual, typical stuff-- the money, the cars. But I think after my spiritual transformation, I came to the resolve that if I have worth, if I have purpose, if I have dreams, then I was purposed for something and there must be a greater being that gave me purpose and I need to investigate not only who this being is but what I’ve been purposed to do. And then there became a conflict in my life, which made me say, okay, I’ve got to start using my voice for more than the normal party, get drunk, get high.” –Lecrae The Tight Rope Episode #8“When that kind of spirituality connects to your genius, brother [Lecrae], you can start soaring like an eagle. We ain’t talking about no peacock. A lot of these hip hop artists are just peacocks, look at me, look at me, look at my foliage. We ain’t interested in your foliage; we interested in your fruit. You shall know them by the fruit that you bear, not the foliage that you display.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #8On white consumption of hip hop: “They want to define what it means to be Black by asking Black performers to perform a very narrow set of stereotypical ideas about what it means to be Black. It becomes another reinforcing mechanism, “Well, we’ll recognize you as Black, but not you as Black, because you’re telling me what I already know about what it means to be authentic.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #8On merging hip hop and his spirituality: “It takes a instant to remove a person from slavery, but a lifetime to get the slavery out of a person. So for me it was a process.” –Lacrae The Tight Rope Episode #8“Peacocks strut because they cannot fly. You got to be an eagle… We’re glad that you’re successful and you got money and you got wonderful artistry, now what you going to use it for? …Martin was broke as the 10 Commandments financially, but everyone remembers him. They don’t remember the most successful Negro in Atlanta in 1968. Malcolm only had $151 in his pocket when he was shot. We shall forever remember Malcolm. He didn’t have no cash. He didn’t have any success. He was in the world and not of it. –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #8“[Vulnerability] always drew them closer. It made them more endearing to me, and in some ways it was helpful… I want to show off my scars, so they know their wounds can heal.” –Lecrae The Tight Rope Episode #8“The trap house is an articulation of systemic racism… Wall Street is part of the gutting of Black communities and banking fraud and destroying people’s opportunities to create even a poor stable neighborhood. So the trap house become a terrible articulation of what’s left. But trap lyrics that people normally attach to that is sort of a hedonistic acceptance of the very circumstances that trap has grown out of based on the conditions. [Lecrae] says this is a trap sound, this is a trap reality, and here’s an alternative reality to that trap circumstance.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #8“We are very nuanced. But people hate nuance… They don’t want to wrestle with our nuances to see the beauty of who we are as a people and to see the trap for more than just where the drugs get sold and where the boarded up houses are.” –Lecrae The Tight Rope Episode #8“As a Christian, from my own community, I’ve got to navigate people to understand I’m not shucking and jiving because I’m a follower of Jesus. I’m not embracing white supremacy or a slave master’s philosophy or belief. I’m talking about something that predates slavery. It’s an Eastern religion if there ever was one… I’m following a brown Palestianian Jew.” –Lecrae The Tight Rope Episode #8“I continued to stand up and say something, and, man, I’ve never been met with so much visceral hate in my life. It was just constant and consistent. It drove me to one of the darkest places I’ve ever been.” –Lecrae The Tight Rope Episode #8“Curtis Mayfiled not looking to the Grammys for his point of reference. He wants to know whether in fact those who came before-- what do you think about it, Jerry Butler? What do you think about it? The tradition becomes the lens through which he views himself. So it ain’t about these prizes. It ain’t about the establishment. We want to put a smile on grandmama's face. Grandmama never questioned your worth, ever. She love you to death. So if you put a smile on her face, it don’t make no difference what these white supremacists and neoliberals who act like they lovin’ white folk who got their own little programs and agendas, that’s not the point of reference. That’s how Black sanity and dignity is persevered.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #8“Pessimism is the belief that based on the evidence, nothing’s going to change. Optimism is the belief is based on the evidence, things will change. But hope is the belief that with or without the evidence, God is faithful, I’m going to be consistent, I’m going to keep pushing.” –LecraeThe Tight Rope Episode #8“There’s a layer of restoration that is simply your mental and emotional health. You don’t have to embrace any of the spiritual health. If you do, awesome. But some people need it-- you’re just hungry. I’m just trying to make sure you’re getting fed today.” –Lecrae The Tight Rope Episode #8On community: “That’s going to be the skin on your faith--  seeing actual people who love you, who walk with you, and who care for you.” –Lecrae The Tight Rope Episode #8“You can’t police Black genius and Black talent.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #8On people with different views from him: “Disagree does not mean dislike... A rainbow is beautiful because of the multitude of colors within it, and not because it’s one color, one shade. It’s learning how to appreciate those nuances. We’re so quick to dismiss people because of these broad strokes that people get painted with.” –Lecrae The Tight Rope Episode #8“Each human being is made in the image and likeness of God. Therefore, they have a dignity that is never reducible to their politics. They have a preciousness that is not reducible to their ideology. And they also have the capacity to choose and go another way.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #8 Stay Connected:Cornel WestWebsite: www.cornelwest.comTwitter: @CornelWestFacebook: Dr. Cornel West - HomeInstagram: @BrotherCornelWest Linktree: Cornel West  Tricia RoseWebsite: www.triciarose.comLinkedIn: Tricia RoseTwitter: @ProfTriciaRoseFacebook: Tricia RoseInstagram: @ProfTriciaRoseYoutube: Professor Tricia Rose  LecraeWebsite: www.lecrae.comTwitter: @lecraeFacebook: LecraeInstagram: @lecraeYoutube: LecraeApple Music: Lecrae The Tight RopeWebsite: www.thetightropepodcast.comInstagram: @thetightropepodTwitter: @thetightropepodFacebook: The Tight Rope Pod This episode was produced and managed by Spkerbox Media in collaboration with Podcast Laundry.

Episode SummaryIn this episode of The Tight Rope, Dr. Cornel West and Professor Tricia Rose engage in an honest and invigorating conversation with emcee Rapsody. Calling in from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Rapsody speaks about current and future projects and her role in today’s young generation and music industry. Together, they wrestle with how to protect one’s creative spirit in a fad-driven, consumerist market. Tune in to this vulnerable and unforgettable episode of The Tight Rope.  Cornel WestDr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.  Tricia RoseProfessor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.   RapsodyRapsody is Grammy nominated emcee, lyricist, rapper, and recording artist. This multi talented North Carolina native is celebrated for Laila’s Wisdom (2017), her breakthrough album that earned her two Grammy nominations including best rap album in league with Lamar, Jay-Z, Migo, and Tyler the Creator. One of the greatest female rappers of all time, Rapsody continues to share her awakened, bold voice and creative rhyme schemes in her 2019 album Eve, dubbed a “masterpiece of hip-hop feminism,” released by 9th Wonder’s Jamla and Jay-Z’s Roc Nation. Each track of Eve is named for an influential Black woman, including “Michelle,” “Oprah,” and “Sojourner.” Rapsody works with the biggest artists in the industry, including Chance The Rapper, Erykah Badu, Raekwon, Anderson .Paak, Estelle, Kendrick Lamar, Busta Rhymes and Mac Miller, among others.   Insight from this episode:Strategies on supporting youth activists, empowering their voices, and harnessing improvisational creation.Benefits of intergenerational connections and opportunities in preserving musical traditions, sounds, and legacies. Details on Rapsody’s fight against the pressures of the commodification of the music industry.Behind-the-scenes reflections from Rhapsody on her inspiration for Laila’s Wisdom and Eve, including songs that did not make it onto the album. Details on Rapsody’s future projects.Secrets to defining your own path— true to your identity and goals— and forming habits to improve your life.   Quotes from the show:“Almost every emcee and producer I interviewed back in the 80s and early 90s talked about their parents’ record collection as an amazing archive of sound and experience that they were both being bequeathed and also being held away from. They said, “My daddy said don’t get in my record collection!” ...It was about really having a cultural archive that the generations wanted to relate to and connect to. That is probably [hip hop’s] most important intergenerational legacy.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #3“There’s so many connections to the Panthers, to the Civil Rights Movement, in hip hop... Through hip hop, [Rapsody’s] connecting Tupac to his mom but also to the legacy of the politics of respecting Black women and really just respecting ourselves and each other.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #3“You cannot box up black genius, black creativity, confined to any genre.” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #3“What hip hop really did was try to make music in a context in which [its] tradition was being completely undermined…. the schools are not teaching the Black music tradition, and then they’re not getting access about it. So hip hop had to work with the shards of that legacy.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #3On young leaders: “We appreciate you. We see you. We hear you. You should be celebrated for being fearless, for using your voice, for being young leaders. [And we want to] give them a space to learn how to be activists.” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3“There’s never been and there never will be a Black freedom struggle without Black music being at the center of it to keep us fortified, keep our souls determined, and also just keep a sense of humor and laughter along with the tears.” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #3“Music is the soundtrack of the times” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3On the commodification of the music industry: “Artists like [Rapsody] who become the real conduits and caretakers of the best of our tradition, which is the best tradition in the modern world— the Black musical tradition— you have a heavier burden.” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #3“The pressure that an artist who wants to be free, like [Deniece Williams’ “Free”] really expressed at its core is about how to be yourself, how to take the art form seriously, not cave into faddish sounds, not cave into basically white supremist thinking about black subjectivity. That is very hard to do.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #3“Improvisational creation is a way of putting to music and putting to words the experience and condition they’re facing. It’s in that act of creation that I think a lot of that market pressure can be pushed off… it’s in that place that you imagine new things. It’s when you’re not doing exactly what is being expected that you have your own political surprises, emotional surprises.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #3“A lot of times, the industry likes to narrow the scope of what we’re supposed to create, how we’re supposed to look creating it, and the voice that we have. Back in the days, we had so much ownership. We had mom and pop stores, we had our own radio stations, we had the Chitlin’ Circuit.” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3On maintaining her creative spirit: “The greatest thing I had was 9th Wonder and Young Guru, who were my mentors. And the first thing they did before I put out any music was they sat me down and they said, you have to define your line right now. You have to define what you won’t do, what you will do, what you won’t compromise. Know what you want out of this business first, so you know how to maneuver and make the best decisions.” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3“We first knew it was going to be a marathon. Anything you want to last 20 years, you have to build a strong foundation of.” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3“I didn’t want to be a cookie cutter version of anyone… how I am is enough, I don’t have to change that. I don’t want to become this sexual rapper. That’s not my lane, that’s not honest to who I am.” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3“You have to be willing to fall on your face, and then see what your bounce back is like because creativity goes hand in hand with a certain vulnerability and invincibility.” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #3On inspiration for Laila’s Wisdom: “One quote [my grandmother Laila] would always say… “Oh you came to give me my flowers.” It made me think what flowers do I want to give to the world? What generation do I want to inspire? What seeds do I want to leave behind? …I took that and used that as part of the album. I want to give you these flowers. I want to give you the best of me that I can give you and hope that it inspires you to be the best in you.” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3“I know what Lauryn Hill meant to me, and what Queen Latifah meant to me, MC Lyte, without them I wouldn’t be the woman I am today. Without Phylicia Rashad, without Cicely Tyson, without Nikki Giovanni. So I had to show up as myself and be that person that they were for me but for the next generation. That’s why I can’t compromise my art, I can’t afford to for the culture.” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3On compromise: “I have to go against the grain… even if I fall flat on my face and fail, I’m willing to take that risk because I have nieces, I have young girls that I know, that need to see what a woman in hip hop looks like, to see the rainbow and spectrum of what we can be. I know people want it. I just have to stick with it and knock down the door.” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3“Who cares what the Grammy’s think? The Grammy’s could have done left you [Rapsody] behind, and we’d still be behind you. That’s the point, to have our own standards.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #3On reaching a younger audience: “[Parents can make sure their children] have a good palate and good beginning of what good music sounds like. When they grow up, of course, you’re able to like what you like in your generation, but you also know and are connected to the sound you grew up in… that’s one thing that you can always do, is expose them to a wide range of music, just to lay the foundation.” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3“The best habit for improving my life was figuring out how to keep the rage that white supremacy produces at bay, figuring out how to keep it at enough distance that it doesn’t circulate in my body literally. It’s a disposition that allows my habits to thrive.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #3“Cultivate at the highest level the capacity to listen, the capacity to serve, and the capacity to find joy in fighting for freedom.” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #3“We haven’t done the best job of protecting our culture that is hip hop. We give it away too easy. And they use that against us. I’ve heard of plans to take control of our culture. And they’ve done it by taking control of the radio and the mediums, and allowing us to give our art away, and our ownership away, and our voice away, and our creativity away. And we have to find a way to get that back because it is sonic warfare at the end of the day.” –Rapsody The Tight Rope Episode #3  Music from Rapsody:The Idea of Beautiful (2012)Laila’s Wisdom (2017)Eve (2019) Stay Connected:Cornel WestWebsite: http://www.cornelwest.comTwitter: @CornelWestFacebook: Dr. Cornel West - HomeInstagram: @BrotherCornelWest Linktree: Cornel West  Tricia RoseWebsite: http://www.triciarose.com/LinkedIn: Tricia RoseTwitter: @ProfTriciaRoseFacebook: Tricia RoseInstagram: @ProfTriciaRoseYoutube: Professor Tricia Rose  RapsodyWebsite: https://genesis320.com/Twitter: @rapsody Facebook: @rapsodymusic Instagram: @rapsody Youtube: Rapsody Apple Music: Rapsody  The Tight RopeWebsite: www.thetightropepodcast.comInstagram: @thetightropepodTwitter: @thetightropepodFacebook: The Tight Rope Pod This episode was produced and managed by Spkerbox Media in collaboration with Podcast Laundry.

Episode SummaryIn this episode of The Tight Rope, Dr. Cornel West and Professor Tricia Rose extol the excellence and creativity of Black athletes, along with their special guest NBA legend Isiah Thomas. They discuss the role of education in and out of the home and how to bequeath to younger generations the tradition of having the courage to be the best. Thomas shares his experiences growing up in the 60s in the West Side of Chicago and the spirituality of taking care of people. Dr. West, Professor Rose, and Isiah Thomas take this episode of The Tight Rope back to the neighborhood with this “lane-crossing” conversation you won’t want to miss.  Cornel WestDr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.  Tricia RoseProfessor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.   Isiah ThomasIsiah Thomas is a 12-time NBA All Star, 2-time NBA Champion, and NBA Hall of Fame point guard, who played his entire career with the Detroit Pistons. Born and raised on Chicago’s West Side, Thomas is not only known for his contributions to the NBA as player, coach, manager, executive, and analyst, but also for his successful business initiatives and philanthropic endeavors. Named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History, Thomas also earned a Master’s degree in African American Studies from Berkeley.  Insight from this episode:Reasons why we must not forget the importance of Black athletes, with their inspiring moral courage, in social justice movements.Explorations of the mind, time, and body connection athletes must harness in their pursuit of excellence. Secrets into the science and music of high-performance athletes.Personal reflections from Isiah Thomas on the “absence and presence” of growing up on the West Side of Chicago.Strategies on creating structures that provide more access to stories and critical historical frameworks. Strategies on “crossing lanes” in an effort to build up and fortify communities, individuals, and our oral histories.  Quotes from the show:“Black athletes and artists have been so important in coming out of the community and giving people a sense of hope and possibility, but they understand fully the struggles that Black communities face.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #6“I always try to situate our precious Black athletes, male and female, within the context of the Black freedom struggle, [which] tries to convince us to love truth, love goodness, love beauty, love excellence, and myself as a Christian, to love God. Now we think of the athletes, they love beauty, they love truth, they love excellence. And many of them who are religious, they love God, they love goodness.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #6“The status quo does not want to connect athletic excellence to moral courage, to spiritual engagement, to political activity.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #6 “The presentation looks so effortless that people think it’s just some natural talent. Part of that is one of the ways that these creative individuals and community members are not just discredited but devalued, even as they’re celebrated.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #6“It’s in athletic context that Black people for the first time in the history of America could be in a structure of fairness, given the fact that every other site in the society was a structure of unfairness… Black excellence could flower and flourish because finally we had a structure of fairness.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #6On growing up on the West Side of Chicago: “If you couldn’t find a meal, there were always people to give you some good advice and to always give you some good music.” –Isiah Thomas The Tight Rope Episode #6“The things that you weren’t learning in school, you were actually learning in music.” –Isiah Thomas The Tight Rope Episode #6“Most of the gangs, when you read their charters and you read what they were established for and brought into existence for, it was to protect against police brutality, which we’re still dealing with today, and it was also to educate and teach you about civics and constitutional rights. That’s why the gangs were formed, and they were community based organizations trying to move away from racism but trying to also build up our communities.” –Isiah Thomas The Tight Rope Episode #6  “When you talk about the love on the West Side, what I grew up in is a spirituality, and I really didn’t realize it, a spirituality of just people looking out for each other. In particular in the sports world... the athlete, he or she who happened to make it or be a champion, their responsibility was to speak for the voiceless.” –Isiah Thomas The Tight Rope Episode #6“We were taught to look within. When you look within, then you can rise above.” –Isiah Thomas The Tight Rope Episode #6“What they would describe as instinct, my father would always tell me, no, you just think faster than the average person.” –Isiah Thomas The Tight Rope Episode #6“As we've moved away from our base, in terms of our roots and our foundation, we’ve gotten singled out into one lane. We may just go strictly into the academy, we may just go strictly into sports, we may just go strictly into music. We do not have the well-nurtured or well-rounded embrace of all the lanes.” –Isiah Thomas The Tight Rope Episode #6On his decision to return to graduate school: “Knowing what my mom and dad and that generation before me and all of us had truly sacrificed… they would not pay the rent, so you could go to school. They would not eat food, so we could go to school. That’s how important education was to that generation.” –Isiah Thomas The Tight Rope Episode #6“When we think about the 60s, we think about just very visible leaders. We don’t think about this deep infrastructure of love, support, re-education, and commitment on the ground that really is the source of the survival.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #6  Stay Connected:Cornel WestWebsite: http://www.cornelwest.comTwitter: @CornelWestFacebook: Dr. Cornel West - HomeInstagram: @BrotherCornelWest Linktree: Cornel West  Tricia RoseWebsite: http://www.triciarose.com/LinkedIn: Tricia RoseTwitter: @ProfTriciaRoseFacebook: Tricia RoseInstagram: @ProfTriciaRoseYoutube: Professor Tricia Rose  Isiah ThomasWebsite: Isaiah International, LLCTwitter: @IsiahThomasFacebook: Isaiah Thomas The Tight RopeWebsite: www.thetightropepodcast.comInstagram: @thetightropepodTwitter: @thetightropepodFacebook: The Tight Rope Pod This episode was produced and managed by Spkerbox Media in collaboration with Podcast Laundry. 

Episode SummaryIn this inaugural episode of The Tight Rope, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aka #AOC shares her whirlwind journey from New York City to the halls of Congress, pulls the curtain on power, and explores what it will take to heal our nation. Plus, hosts Cornel West and Tricia Rose reflect on the movement to #DefundThePolice in their Office Hours segment. Cornel WestDr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.  Tricia RoseProfessor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.   Alexandria Ocasio-CortezServing the 14th district of New York in the Bronx and Queens, U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez touts a 100% People-Funded Democratic Socialism platform. She is an educator, organizer, service worker with a deep understanding of income inequality. As a third-generation Bronxite, AOC believes in combating systemic problems by fighting for systemic solutions, like Medicare for all, federal jobs guarantee, the end to mass incarceration, and the Green New Deal. She attended Boston University and previously worked as Educational Director with National Hispanic Institute where she helped Americans, DREAMers, and undocumented youth in community leadership and college readiness. AOC serves working-class people over corporate interests and advocates for social, racial, economic, and environmental justice.Insight from this episode:Strategies on not being “locked in” while on lockdown. How to respond and intervene in systems that are impoverished of empathy and compassion. Behind-the-scenes look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s meteoric rise in politics, including the impact of her education, time abroad in West Africa, and close relationship with her father. How to remain true to your morals, values, politics, and spirituality when faced with pressures to conform or be reduced down to a niche. Benefits of the discipline of non-attachment to work, money, social acceptance, and ego. Details on what “defunding the police” really means to Dr. West and Professor Rose. Quotes from the show:“I am one point that is a result of waves of generational inertia.” –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez The Tight Rope Episode #7“You can’t let your identity be subsumed with this superficial political identity of red or blue or this tribe. [It’s] not what do you want to be but how do you want to be? ...People always try to analyze my actions in a strictly political context… I was already here. I didn’t know this was a political way of being. I just thought it was a moral way of being.” –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez The Tight Rope Episode #7On her time in Niger: “That level of enjoyment just does not exist in American life. [Enjoying tea with friends] is something people do on a Friday night, maybe once a week, if they aren’t exhausted by work. But this is a way of life in Niger… that interaction was the sun around which life revolved. It’s our fellowship and connection to one another.” –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez The Tight Rope Episode #7On switching majors from Pre-Med to Economics: “What you are treating and what you are healing is a result of systematic outcomes. And I knew that people would continue to be sick if our systems continued to be sick.” –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez The Tight Rope Episode #7“The interesting thing about economics is that there may be an equation, but the real quest is discovering the story that has led to a number.” –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez The Tight Rope Episode #7“In the tradition of my parents, I never was like, “I’m a Democrat with a capital D. If it’s got a blue sticker, I’m going to be for that.” I always grew up with this idea that you need to have an independent analysis of each and every individual and look at things in context.” –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez The Tight Rope Episode #7“Politics ultimately is about the scaffolding of our relationships to each other. And the reason our politics are so broken right now is because our relationships to one another as a society are really deeply broken.” –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez The Tight Rope Episode #7“I cannot be attached to keeping my seat as a member of Congress if I’m going to do my job because [my mission] is not to be the Congresswoman of New York’s 14th district. My mission is to advance principles of a better world and to advance a better world.” –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez The Tight Rope Episode #7“How has AOC gotten inside of [the system]? People are so hungry and thirsty for something deeper than the legalized bribery and normalized corruption.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #7On being intentionally vulnerable on social media: “I needed to break the mythology of perfection in people who hold power.” –Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez The Tight Rope Episode #7“The police have already been thoroughly been defunded in terms of the police that are supposed to regulate Wall Street… they are as weak as pre-sweetened Kool-Aid.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #7“That hyper funding of police ended money for social workers and mental health facilities and drug treatment centers… a complete gutting of the safety nets that allowed people to have problems. And we’re interested in helping solve them. We’re not interested in making every response a punitive punishment, profitable response for others… to defund is to invest in communities.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #7  Stay Connected:Cornel WestWebsite: www.cornelwest.comTwitter: @CornelWestFacebook: Dr. Cornel West - HomeInstagram: @BrotherCornelWest Linktree: Cornel West  Tricia RoseWebsite: www.triciarose.comLinkedIn: Tricia RoseTwitter: @ProfTriciaRoseFacebook: Tricia RoseInstagram: @ProfTriciaRoseYoutube: Professor Tricia Rose  Alexandria Ocasio-CortezWebsite: www.ocasiocortez.comGovernment Website: ocasio-cortez.house.gov/contactTwitter: @AOCFacebook: Alexandria Ocasio-CortezInstagram: @AOC and @RepAOC The Tight RopeWebsite: www.thetightropepodcast.comInstagram: @thetightropepodTwitter: @thetightropepodFacebook: The Tight Rope Pod This episode was produced and managed by Spkerbox Media in collaboration with Podcast Laundry.

Episode SummaryDr. Cornel West and Professor Tricia Rose unravel the Black pain of the present in the context of the tremendous legacy of African American creativity and music, in this special extended version of Office Hours. They connect Black musical tradition to the current political moment and pay special homage to Prince and his iconic “Purple Rain.” Discover how you can transform this current moment in this important episode of The Tight Rope.  Cornel WestDr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget, featuring Prince. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.  Tricia RoseProfessor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.   Insight from this episode:Recollections of Dr. Cornel West’s first impressions of and ensuing friendship with Prince. Reasons why Black music is important and the role it plays in social activism. Strategies on generating a new sound for the current moment, extending and elaborating on the Black American musical tradition.How to leverage the current “tipping point” as a catalyst for lasting social movement. Details on the need for creative, interactive spaces for BIPOC.Strategies on utilizing technology to create impact and effective change. Quotes from the show:On the Black musical tradition and its relationship to historical trauma and suffering: “To look unflinchingly at all the hurt and the pain and yet still dish out the compassion and creativity, the style and smile-- that’s the great gift to America.” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #2“Any time you lyrically express a catastrophe, the catastrophe does not have the last word.” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #2“Music touches the hopeless, and it can heal, sustain, equip, fortify… Once you get oppressed folk fortified, woo, Lord, that’s like Sly Stone’s “Stand!”” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #2“Part of the contemporary spiritual war against young folk, especially young Black folk, is to get them to consent to a capitalist economy that’s shot through with wealth inequality. You get them to consent to a militarized nation state that will contain them or incarcerate them if they step out of line. But also you get them to consent to a commodified culture so that they’re distracted into things that are superficial: status and spectacle.” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #2“[C]apitalism and neoliberalism have destroyed local urban cultural spaces for people of color to create.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #2“Every month should be African American music month. That should be in our curriculum.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #2On Prince’s inspiration behind “Purple Rain”: “Purple rain is the blood in the sky. The red and the blue produce purple. And so that purple rain is rooted in the blood, sweat, tears, but you’re looking up. It’s visionary. It’s in some sense grounded in the most painful situation, but it’s visionary because it’s looking up… rooted in the most visceral responses to the most vicious kinds of treatment which is bloodstained, and yet it’s still looking up, like being in a dehumanized gutter, but one has one’s eyes always looking towards the sky.” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #2On Prince: “He knew it, as Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us that “Every genius is a highly indebted person.” [Prince] knew his debts to James Brown, his debts to Little Richard, his debts to a whole host of folks who came before him. He was grounded in precisely this great Black musical tradition.” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #2On the boundarylessness of Black geniuses: “There’s no reason that we should be segregating genres along the lines of the spatial segregation that the country has constantly been invested in producing.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #2On Prince’s gender fluidity and non-binary performance: “It was a neither/nor, a both/and. He was just able to elevate above the binaries, and the boundaries, and the questions of who belongs where on the ground.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #2“The ways in which our bodies are fashioned and presented are integral to the way in which our sounds are both produced and received.” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #2“Conformity can get you a lot of company. You don’t want your goal to just have good company.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #2On despair and despondency: “Use it in such a way that in the end it becomes a source of giving to other people.” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #2  Resources Mentioned:Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America by Professor Tricia Rose (1994) Stay Connected:Cornel WestWebsite: http://www.cornelwest.comTwitter: @CornelWestFacebook: Dr. Cornel West - HomeInstagram: @BrotherCornelWest Linktree: Cornel West  Tricia RoseWebsite: http://www.triciarose.com/LinkedIn: Tricia RoseTwitter: @ProfTriciaRoseFacebook: Tricia RoseInstagram: @ProfTriciaRoseYoutube: Professor Tricia Rose  The Tight RopeWebsite: www.thetightropepodcast.comInstagram: @thetightropepodTwitter: @thetightropepodFacebook: The Tight Rope Pod This episode was produced and managed by Spkerbox Media in collaboration with Podcast Laundry.

Episode SummaryIn this episode of The Tight Rope, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore joins Dr. Cornel West and Professor Tricia Rose to shine light on the current state of crisis in America, white privilege, white fear, and citizen filmmakers. They emphatically connect the catastrophe of the criminal justice system to larger issues and discuss ways to move into a “new normal” that challenges bystander sensibility and police accountability taken out of the larger context of democratic accountability and multiracial solidarity. This is an episode of The Tight Rope that you do not want to miss. Cornel WestDr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums, including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.  Tricia RoseProfessor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (BA) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality, and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.   Michael MooreMichael Moore, one of America’s best-known documentary filmmakers and political provocateurs, has for over 30 years produced controversial and award-winning films and TV series that tackle critically important political and social issues in American society, including big business, corrupt governments and politicians, capitalism, and health care. Moore, from Flint, Michigan, won the Academy Award for best documentary for his 2002 Bowling for Columbine. He continues to produce successful and controversial films, most recently Planet of the Humans (2019), an eco-documentary and “full-frontal assault” of the failures of the environmental movement, directed by Jeff Gibbs. Moore examines and jokes about current issues on his own podcast Rumble with Michael Moore. Insight from this episode:Strategies on remaining hopeful in turbulent and violent times.Responses to the question “Now what?”Details on how to change the American police system and police accountability  to empower communities.Strategies on shattering a spectatorial stance and avoiding being a bystander citizen.Strategies on creating universal solidarity without downplaying individual suffering.A call to commitment and sacrifice in the struggle for freedom and equality. Quotes from the show:“In the time of Trump, in the time of pandemic, have we been turned into a nation of bystanders?” –Michael Moore (quoting Cornel West) The Tight Rope Episode #1“If you want to end crime, end poverty. If you want to end crime, empower women.” –Michael Moore The Tight Rope Episode #1“The very first thing in terms of saving Black lives is we have to defund the police departments across the country. We have to demilitarize the police departments. And I want a racism review board in every community.” –Michael Moore The Tight Rope Episode #1“No self-respecting, self-loving people can sit and see a policeman publicly lynch and kill somebody for nearly nine minutes.” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #1On recent arrests of protesters: “[There’s] a marvelous new militancy around affirming the rich and precious humanity of Black folk.” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #1“The focus on extreme cop violence actually normalizes the idea that police can be functional… The whole logic of the police are designed really to extract resources and contain the poor, and contain people of color, from segregated white spaces.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #1On white fear: “If we don’t examine it and expose it, we don’t stand much of a chance of deeply transforming the role of the police because what drives people’s investment in the police is to keep Black people away.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #1On systemic and structural racism: “The police are just one little cog in a whole set of systems.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #1“I want this woman [Darnella Frazier] on the stage of the Oscars next year, and I want to honor her and all the other young people who can be citizen filmmakers, and to always pull your camera out and start filming that which you see which is wrong because you then expose it to the rest of the world.” –Michael Moore The Tight Rope Episode #1On white fear: “If they [white people] have to actually share or maybe even give up some of that privilege, wow, that’s a bridge too far. And that’s what they’re afraid of.” –Michael Moore The Tight Rope Episode #1“The long-distance win is only going to happen if the short-distance survival takes place.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #1“Revenge is always blinding. We need people who have broad vision, so that people can see things that other people don’t see and feel more deeply with love that other people don’t feel and most importantly to act more courageously for people who are too conformist and complacent and cowardly.” –Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #1 Documentaries from Michael Moore:Planet of the Humans (2019)Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018)Trumpland (2016)Where to Invade Next (2015)Capitalism: A Love Story (2009; on Netflix)Sicko (2009; on Netflix) Slacker Uprising (2007; on Netflix)Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004; on Netflix)Bowling for Columbine (2002; on Netflix)The Big One (1997; on Netflix)Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint (1992) Roger & Me (1989; on Netflix) Stay Connected: Cornel WestWebsite: http://www.cornelwest.comTwitter: @CornelWestFacebook: Dr. Cornel West - HomeInstagram: @BrotherCornelWest Linktree: Cornel West  Tricia RoseWebsite: http://www.triciarose.com/LinkedIn: Tricia RoseTwitter: @ProfTriciaRoseFacebook: Tricia RoseInstagram: @ProfTriciaRoseYoutube: Professor Tricia Rose  Michael MooreWebsite: https://michaelmoore.com/Twitter: @MMFlintFacebook: Michael Moore Instagram: @MichaelFMooreYoutube: Michael MoorePodcast: https://rumble.media/  The Tight RopeWebsite: www.thetightropepodcast.comInstagram: @thetightropepodTwitter: @thetightropepodFacebook: The Tight Rope Pod This episode was produced and managed by Spkerbox Media in collaboration with Podcast Laundry.

Episode SummaryIn this episode, things get heavy on The Tight Rope as Dr. Cornel West and Professor Tricia Rose, with their special guest Gina Belafonte, navigate the balance that artists must keep to be accessible and also stand resolutely for social justice. Spotlighting the importance of lyrical vision and imagining, they uncover paths to hope and sustenance in today’s music and its role in social movements. In the context of her father Harry Belafonte’s legacy, Gina Belafonte deepens the conversation on the necessity of intergenerational connections, personal commitment, and the arts in every arena of our lives. Don’t miss the next steps to evolution in this episode of The Tight Rope.  Cornel WestDr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.  Tricia RoseProfessor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.   Gina BelafonteDaughter of Julie and Harry Belafonte, Gina Belafonte is an actress, director, award-winning producer, artivist, and cultural figure. She serves as the Executive Director of Sankofa.org, a social justice organization that educates, motivates, and activates artists and allies in service of grassroots movements and equitable change. A native New Yorker, Gina is Producer of internationally acclaimed documentary film Sing your Song (HBO), as well as The March (PBS) and Survivors Guide to Prison (Netflix). Also a member of Daughters of the Movement, she co-chaired the 2017 Women’s March Los Angeles and co-founded the non-profit organization, The Gathering For Justice, a multi-cultural, multi-generational organization that focuses on youth incarceration and the criminalization of poverty. Today, Gina lives in LA and New York and works with diverse artists, activists, and organizations worldwide to promote cultural and civic engagement in the 21st century.  Insight from this episode:Personal reflections from Gina Belafonte on honoring family legacy and forging her own path in the fight for Black freedom. Details on the life, struggles, and revelations of Harry Belafonte.Benefits of critical engagement within families.Strategies on overcoming fear and pressure in the face of radical decision making.Strategies on how progressive Black artists can move into a deeper imagining of our future and speak truth to power. Reasons why evolution, not just revolution, is needed during this time.  Quotes from the show:On the “upside” of COVID-19 lockdown: “People are listening in groups. Families are listening together and sharing things together in ways they might not have been as easily able to do before we were on collective social lockdown” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #4On Harry Belafonte and his music: “A crucial part of this longer tradition that goes back hundreds of years, and it’s the expression of deep humanity and creativity of a hated and haunted people still dishing out love and justice” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #4“[Gina Belafonte] comes from political and artistic royalty both in the Black tradition but also the American and really the human tradition. But she chose to be an artist and an actress who rendered her services to freedom and truth. She chose to be connected to organic organizations on the ground… she’s there because these are choices… Families provide the exposure, but the children have to follow through and decide for themselves which way they want to go –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #4“What breaks the back of being intimidated? It’s love, it’s compassion, it’s being tied to something bigger than you.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #4“As you grow and mature, lo and behold, you start to have relationships with the dad you never knew. You fall in love with Frederick Douglass, you fall in love with Harriet Tubman, you fall in love with Sojourner Truth.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #4“Fear does not often show up as fear... When you’re afraid to be devalued, to be marginalized, to be laughed at, to be shamed, to be accused of being irrelevant, then that shows up in very indirect ways in terms of a fear, but necessarily a fear that you recognize. It’s so important to remind young people that that fear shows up in so many different ways. And so does the courage we need.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #4“I’m not going to allow white supremist authorities, capitalist authorities, imperial authorities, patriarchic, homophobic, transphobic authorities to make me so fearful that I consent to their domination. So in that sense, the courage is something that never eliminates the fear. It allows us to work through the fear.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #4“All they can do is kill you though. That’s all they can do! ...The question is how are you going to use your death to the service of something bigger than you?”  –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #4“The best of our tradition reminds us that there are virtues higher than survival.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #4On Harry Belafonte’s rendition of “Oh Freedom”: “That song is so deep into the core of my marrow and really exemplifies so much of the struggle and the resiliency and proclamation that we make when we enter into social justice activism… It straightens my back up, and I feel like I’m ready to move forward and get busy.” –Gina Belafonte The Tight Rope Episode #4“The systems of our country, in particular our capitalist system, have really suppressed and put a tight control over the airwaves and what we’re able to hear and find as our cultural heartbeat. Right now, it’s a very interesting time how many musical artists in particular, who are looking to the legacy of my father and others like him, are using their platforms as a megaphone for social justice activism. And yet, I still am seeing a sort of trepidation in their lyrics. I’m not seeing them really full on saying “Let’s Get It On”... and having a deeper imagining of what our future should and could and will be and look like.” –Gina Belafonte The Tight Rope Episode #4“I find a lot of what we’re telling is our history, which we need to. We need to reclaim those stories for sure. But where are some of the inspirational love stories of Black people that are true and really ancient? ...showing love and celebration and resilience and how not only the way in which that world is but also how it could be.” –Gina Belafonte The Tight Rope Episode #4“You can describe what is and not get into much trouble. But if you start making claims about what that circumstance means and what you want instead of that circumstance, now you really do stand a chance of losing lots and lots of people.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #4“If all we do is provide some fascinating descriptions and don’t have enough courage to really radically project something different, then white supremacy still remains a point of reference even when we are resisting.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #4On reformist versus revolutionary imagination: “People talk about revolution and they get all nervous… Revolution is going to make you insecure because it is something that is an alternative to a present that is unknown. So you have to re-equip and re-prepare yourself. It’s not going to be a matter of just trying to incrementally patch up a status quo that has shown to be so unjust and cruel. –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #4“What we need is not only a revolution, but we need an evolution.  An evolution of our human existence, an evolution of our humanity, our moral values, an evolution of how we consider and view the opposition opposites of right and wrong.” –Gina Belafonte The Tight Rope Episode #4On Jay Richard Kennedy, an FBI informant and Harry Belafonte’s business manager: “For the rest of [my father’s] life, there was an underlying sense of paranoia, balancing who do I bring into the fold that I can trust, and how do I maintain my artistry and my cultural contribution?” –Gina Belafonte The Tight Rope Episode #4On Harry Belafonte: “He never really wavered from his desire to elevate voices and the consciousness of his fans, he would never compromise his artistry for the status quo or the bottom line.” –Gina Belafonte The Tight Rope Episode #4“As Paul Robeson said, or as my father put into the mouth of Paul Robeson...  artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are the civilization’s radical voice. We have the opportunity and the poetry through dance, through music, through theater, through film, to transform perspective, to transmute ideas, to bring not only the past but the future together in one.” –Gina Belafonte The Tight Rope Episode #4“So art plays a huge role, which is why it’s always defunded first. This world would be so different if it was art-centric.” –Gina Belafonte The Tight Rope Episode #4“Artists are the vanguard of the species. Artists are the moral and spiritual antenna of the species. So we have to look to them because they’re the ones that tend to have the vision. Where there is no vision, the people perish… So artists in this sense become essential workers, in the most fundamental sense of who we are, not just as Americans, but as human beings.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #4On Harry Belafonte’s legacy: “It’s the concrete loving and shaping he’s had on so many young brothers and sisters of all colors, including myself.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #4On their friendship: “I could not walk out more fortified. What I got from Harry Belafonte fortified me for two or three lifetimes.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #4 Stay Connected:Cornel WestWebsite: http://www.cornelwest.comTwitter: @CornelWestFacebook: Dr. Cornel West - HomeInstagram: @BrotherCornelWest Linktree: Cornel West  Tricia RoseWebsite: http://www.triciarose.com/LinkedIn: Tricia RoseTwitter: @ProfTriciaRoseFacebook: Tricia RoseInstagram: @ProfTriciaRoseYoutube: Professor Tricia Rose  Gina BelafonteWebsite: Sankofa BiographyTwitter: @GinaBelafonteFacebook: Gina BelafonteInstagram: @peaceginaLinkedIn: Gina Belafonte IMDb: Gina Belafonte SankofaWebsite: Sankofa.orgTwitter: @SankofaFacebook: Sankofa Instagram: @sankofadotorg The Tight RopeWebsite: www.thetightropepodcast.comInstagram: @thetightropepodTwitter: @thetightropepodFacebook: The Tight Rope Pod This episode was produced and managed by Spkerbox Media in collaboration with Podcast Laundry.

Episode SummaryIn this episode of The Tight Rope, Dr. Cornel West and Professor Tricia Rose connect with Tony award winning actor and rapper Daveed Diggs to dive into his career, upbringing, influences, and playing the “fool.” They wrangle with the nuances of hip hop past and present, colorblind ideologies in theater, and the healing power of Black creativity. Get ready for the twists and turns in this episode of The Tight Rope! Cornel WestDr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.  Tricia RoseProfessor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.   Daveed DiggsDaveed Diggs, Oakland native, is a rapper, actor, singer, songwriter, and producer. He graduated from Brown University (B.A.), and after his Tony and Grammy Award winning performance as Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s widely-acclaimed Broadway production of Hamilton (Best Featured Actor in a Musical (2016) and Best Musical Theater Album (2016)), Brown University conferred Daveed an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts. As a member of experimental hip hop group, clipping., Daveed has released multiple albums including their third full-length record, There Existed an Addiction to Blood (2019). He continues acting with roles in Black-ish (2016-2018), Wonder (2017), Velvet Buzzsaw (2019), and Snowpiercer (2020). Daveed wrote, produced, and starred in Blindspotting (2018), a performance that earned him a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead.  Insight from this episode:Strategies for collective healing to massive collective trauma. Details on Daveed’s recent and upcoming creative projects, including reflections on growing up in Oakland and filming Blindspotting. Behind-the-scenes look into how Daveed picks roles and his Black-Jewish heritage. Reflections on diversity in the theater and its audiences. Strategies on exposing children to new music to generate curiosity.  Quotes from the show: “How do you step into the unknown in such a way that you bring the best of the past with you? You bring all the love and all the joy and all the memories that’s gone into the shaping of who you are.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #5“The vicious legacy of white supremacy has been one in which it has tried to convince Black people that we are less moral, less beautiful, less intelligent, and ought therefore feel intimidated and never have anything really safe and never have a home. So we had to create home in our language, we had to create home in our music, we had to create home in our relationships that are always dynamic. It’s a way of being fortified that is dynamic.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #5“We’re going to have to get highly creative because Black folk without hugging… somehow we’re going to come up with creative, virtual, abstract ways. We got to have some way of affirming, enabling, and ennobling each other.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #5“I’ve been making art for as long as I’ve been alive… The work hasn’t changed that much honestly, which I’m grateful for. Just more people watch me do it now.” – Daveed Diggs The Tight Rope Episode #5On Hamilton: “Its success is directly based on the fact that it was brown and black bodies portraying the founders of our country-- and also that the music was great... The buy in from America that I felt while I was working in Hamilton was a particularly hopeful version of it… It really is a product of the Obama era.” –Daveed Diggs The Tight Rope Episode #5On Hamilton’s “colorblind” casting: “If you don’t make sure to contextualize some of the things in it, there are some dangerous assumptions there. It is about the building of a financial system, [but] it doesn’t contextualize it as one that is fundamentally racist. The revolutionary act is having black and brown bodies portray that moment in history. And that makes a statement that we should and we deserve to be able to participate in it, and in fact, it was built on our bodies. But you gotta make sure to really put that at the front of it, in a way that honestly [Hamilton] was always scared to.” –Daveed Diggs The Tight Rope Episode #5On Hamilton’s delayed public support of Black Lives Matter: “So what does that say? That a show built on black and brown bodies about giving black and brown bodies a sense of ownership over a financial system that was built on black and brown bodies refused to publicly support black and brown bodies.” –Daveed Diggs The Tight Rope Episode #5On Hamilton’s delayed public support of Black Lives Matter: “That’s just a matter of moral courage versus cash making.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #5“You have to view art in the context of the moment you’re viewing it in, especially theater. Theater takes place in a time and a place. So if you’re going to revive a play, you should have a reason for reviving that play now. What are you saying now that either speaks to the original motive for it or that reframes it in a different way?” –Daveed Diggs The Tight Rope Episode #5“The thing that has always worried me about Hamilton [is] a colorblind ideology that drives people’s enthusiasm for what is going on. That is to say, on the one hand, everyone gets to be black and brown, but on the other hand, “I don’t see color! Thomas Jefferson can be black, or can be played for a black person because I don’t see color in the first place” But you’re celebrating it because you see color, because you know there’s a racial hierarchy and you know this illusion of colorblindness creates racial privilege. But then you’re going to tell me you don’t see it at the same time.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #5“For me, it’s not color blind; it’s color specific… Turning Thomas Jefferson into this comic, foppish, uber privileged character, there’s an element of cakewalk in there. This is like being able to imitate the slavemaster in front of the slavemaster.” –Daveed Diggs The Tight Rope Episode #5“In a Broadway audience, there's like four Black people in the audience every night. We can see them. I can see who they are. And we are having a different experience than the rest of the audience is having all in the same space… The nuance of this conversation doesn’t come through on a large scale until you also diversify the audience in a better way than Broadway has managed to do… Are we really interested in Broadway anymore? Or do other spaces do this better?” –Daveed Diggs The Tight Rope Episode #5“I love playing a fool, but I like the fool to have context for their decisions. I like there to be a choice being made.” –Daveed Diggs The Tight Rope Episode #5“When you’re less known, you choose things and you happen to become known for them. Then at a certain point, the fact that you are choosing something becomes an event. At that point, I feel like I have to be a lot more careful about what it says that I choose [a role].” –Daveed Diggs The Tight Rope Episode #5On the cultural differences he experienced at Brown University: “I could not for the life of me understand why every Black person I saw wanted to shake my hand… because I had never categorized my Blackness as being part of an endangered species.” –Daveed Diggs The Tight Rope Episode #5“The thing I appreciate most about Judaism is that analysis and argument are baked into the religion. Talmudic scholarship is really about just arguing about what the Torah is about.” –Daveed Diggs The Tight Rope Episode #5On his role as an actor: “I’m responsible for this character’s portion of the story. It’s all about the story. If the story doesn’t come across, every piece of it failed... We all have to work together to make sure that the story comes across in all its nuances and it can raise all the questions it’s trying to raise.” –Daveed Diggs The Tight Rope Episode #5“August Wilson used to say, “When Black people perform, they authorize an alternative reality.” To be able to be in the water and not wet, to be on the mothership away from a white supremacist world that is putting you down but you’re still preserving your sanity by, not being stupid, but being foolish in the most profound sense of what it is to be a holy fool.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #5On the Hyphy Movement: “You’ve been calling me dumb for so long, I’m going to go out and show you how beautiful dumb is and show you what exactly dumb looks like. We’re going to act the fool in this incredibly profound way... We would all hop out of the car at a stoplight and just hold up traffic and party in the middle of the street. And it’s this performance of despite everything I have been through, that you have put me through, watch my joy. You have to stand on the sidelines cause you’re actually never going to feel it.” –Daveed Diggs The Tight Rope Episode #5“Artists are interpreters of data… cultural data analysis is what we do. So we can see something out there and break that down and take a number or an observed behavior and break that down into something that can be felt.” –Daveed Diggs The Tight Rope Episode #5“When popular culture, to me, is really making its own generational mark, it’s in conversation-- it doesn’t have to be with elders-- but with other musical traditions in a way that respects something bigger than what’s going to be consumed in a short-term way.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #5  Stay Connected:Cornel WestWebsite: http://www.cornelwest.comTwitter: @CornelWestFacebook: Dr. Cornel West - HomeInstagram: @BrotherCornelWest Linktree: Cornel West  Tricia RoseWebsite: http://www.triciarose.com/LinkedIn: Tricia RoseTwitter: @ProfTriciaRoseFacebook: Tricia RoseInstagram: @ProfTriciaRoseYoutube: Professor Tricia Rose  Daveed DiggsWebsite: Deveed DiggsTwitter: @DaveedDiggsFacebook Fan Page: @daveeddiggs Instagram: @daveeddiggsPlaybill: Daveed DiggsIMDb: Daveed DiggsApple Music: Daveed Diggs clipping. Website: clppng.com Twitter: @clppngFacebook: @clppngYoutube: clppngSoundcloud: clipping.Bandcamp: clppng.bandcamp.comApple Music: clipping.  The Tight RopeWebsite: www.thetightropepodcast.comInstagram: @thetightropepodTwitter: @thetightropepodFacebook: The Tight Rope Pod This episode was produced and managed by Spkerbox Media in collaboration with Podcast Laundry.

This week we continue with the second installment of our conversation about critics of color. Colin and Henry talk to Carolina Miranda, a writer and art critic at the LA Times, and Elizabeth Mendez Berry, Director of Voice, Creativity and Culture at the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Both critics came from a background of studying social movements and politics, but realized they could make a living as critics of art and music. We discuss that as a critic of color, you understand not to pigeonhole an artist, an ethnicity or race can influence a piece of art, yet so can a film watched in childhood. Yet in a moment where artists have direct access to their audience online, does everyone want criticism, and if so, how do we create a more inclusive infrastructure and economy to incentivize a diversity of voices?

 Mr. Blumenthal was the founding partner of Blue Wolf Capital in 2005.  Currently, he serves on the board of directors of four Blue Wolf portfolio companies: Finch Paper Holdings, Twin Rivers Paper Company, Elara Caring, and StateServ Holdings.  Elara is the fourth largest home health and hospice company in the U.S., with over 60,000 patients in fifteen states, while StateServ is the leading provider of durable medical equipment to hospice patients in the US.  Blue Wolf is a middle market private equity firm with investments in health care, forest and building products, energy services, and infrastructure services.   Leading by experience, and with a commitment to excellence, Blue Wolf transforms companies strategically, operationally and collaboratively. Blue Wolf manages challenging situations and complex relationships between business, customers, employees, unions, and regulators to build value for stakeholders.  Blue Wolf has over $1.2 billion in assets under management and has substantial liquidity through its current $540 million investment fund, Blue Wolf Capital Fund IV, L.P. From 1989 to 2002, Mr. Blumenthal built and managed American Capital Ltd., a publicly-traded buyout and mezzanine fund (NASDAQ: ACAS). Mr. Blumenthal played a central role in building it from a start-up into a publicly-traded buyout and mezzanine fund with a portfolio of over $1 billion invested in sixty-three middle market companies by the time he left in 2002.    Mr. Blumenthal served as First Deputy Comptroller and Chief Financial Officer for New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. from 2002 - 2005. In this capacity, he oversaw the capital markets activities of the Comptroller's office, including managing the assets of the New York City Retirement Systems.    Mr. Blumenthal received a B.A., magna cum laude, from Harvard College, and a M.B.A. from the Yale School of Management. From 2004 to 2007, he served on the Yale SOM's Board of Advisors, and is currently a member of the Advisory Board for Yale's International Center for Finance. In 2009, he was named a Donaldson Fellow at the Yale SOM. From 2011 through 2017, Mr. Blumenthal was a Trustee, and Chair of the Investment Committee, of the UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust, a $60 billion fund that pays retiree health benefits for over 700,000 UAW employees of Ford, Chrysler and General Motors. He has also been a trustee of, and Chairman of the Investment Committee of, the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Community Service Society of New York.         000001AA 000001A9 00003378 00003378 00044C00 00044C00 00008040 0000802C 00010DB1 00010DB1

Esta semana, Francisca nos guia en un rezo diario de gratitud en español. Se puede escucharlo y participar de cualquier lugar - solo, o en comunidad… sentado, caminando, o donde sea. Esta práctica viene de un zine que ella hizo con otros compañeros que se llama “Resistencia Ancestral,” que se puede grabar del sitio de web de Mijente aquí (es gratis!): https://mijente.net/2017/11/02/ancestral-spiritual-resistance-zine/* Download the previous episode to hear this prayer in English / Se puede escuchar este rezo en ingles por el episodio previo * También se puede escuchar el episodio conversacional con Francisca en ingles (episodio 21) donde hablamos de tradiciones de sanarse en comunidades inmigrantes Latinx y Chicanx, la fuerza de gente indocumentada aunque se enfrenten mucho sufrimiento, rituales comunales, y como podemos combinar mas el sanamiento con la lucha política. -- FRANCISCA PORCHAS CORONADO Francisca Porchas Coronado es una inmigrante mexicana, chicana, latinx, feminista, y anti-racista con más de quince años de experiencia organizando en la comunidad. Trabajando con Puente Human Rights Movement en Phoenix AZ, ella ha sido una las voces más fuertes contra deportaciones y detención de inmigrantes en este país. El año pasado como una Nathan Cummings Foundation fellow, ella fundó “Sanamiento en Resistencia”, un proyecto de salud que impacta el bienestar espiritual y emocional de las comunidades inmigrantes que están en la lucha contra la criminalización. Ella ha sido iniciada en la tradición Yoruba de IFA, que es antigua y indígena, por más que una década y está en entrenamiento para hacerse una sacerdotisa.-- ÚNETE A LA COMUNIDAD HEALING JUSTICE: Se puede juntar a nuestra lista de correo electrónico en www.healingjustice.org Estamos en Instagram, Facebook, y Twitter como Healing Justice Podcast Si Ud quiere donar algo para apoyar a este proyecto, visita a www.patreon.com/healingjustice GRACIAS:Revisión de audio por Zach Meyer del COALROOMMúsica por Danny O’Brien y Zach MeyerDiseño gráfico por Josiah Werning

WONDERLAND is a "master class" in culture change. Podcast hosts Bridgit Antoinette Evans and Tracy Van Slyke apply their experience and perspective from careers spent at the intersection of social justice and entertainment to uncover the truth about the stories we’re telling as a country, on TV, in movies and throughout pop culture mediums. Each episode of WONDERLAND brings together a nationally-recognized social change leader and an acclaimed pop culture innovator for a rare meeting of the minds. Together, they leap 'down the rabbit hole' of curiosity and ideas for intimate conversations that reveal game-changing insights and generate fresh new thinking with the power to create real change in the world.   WONDERLAND is made possible with support from the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Unbound Philanthropy and Pop Culture Collaborative. Hosts & Executive Producers, Bridgit Antoinette Evans and Tracy Van Slyke Producer, Nancy Vitale Editorial Producer, Destry Sibley Sound Engineers, Duff Harris and Alex Thompson Audio Technicians, Corrinne Smith, Kyle Maurisak, and Doug Lins Recorded at The Awareness Group Studios and Harvestworks in New York City Website: Thisiswonderland.us

Today on Startup Funding hosted by Dr. Roshawnna Novellus we have Jessica Norwood who is a fellow of Nathan Cummings Foundation and the founder of The Runway Project which uses entrepreneurship as a way to bridge the wealth gap for black-owned businesses. They do this by providing the early pre-seed capital and business support a.k.a friend and family money. Jessica who is based in Mobile, Alabama and grew up between politics and entrepreneurship, believes that the entrepreneurial spirit has always been a part of her. As a result of a childhood surrounded by politics, she saw several opportunities where black entrepreneurship could be strengthened, more than what was already being done. Having done some work with some major foundations on food investment in Alabama, Jessica saw how she could get more direct investments to support the entire eco-system surrounding black farmers from the production side to the consumption side. The problem Jessica saw was that investors cared more about later stage, growth type of capital where assets may be used for collateral but many startups are undercapitalized from the very beginning. Also, friends and family money which represents a $60 billion industry was not readily available for African Americans because of the wealth gap. If you’ve ever wanted to know about trends in the food and agriculture industry, listen to Jessica talk about innovations in the industry including business to business operations and small scale in-house farming. Jessica isn’t only interested in the agriculture sector though, in her words “what I’m most passionate about is the entire eco-system surrounding how we deliver friends and family money to entrepreneurs of color in particular.” She also outlines the innovations and movements that are going on to make her idea a reality. Jessica also gives advice to people who aren’t accredited investors but wish to support startup companies ate the seed stage. When asked how we can open people's mind to the cultural realities behind black startup founders towards seeing more social enterprises evolve, Jessica states that with a greater inclusion of people who come from those communities to be a part of creating the solution we can effect a culture change by using diversity as a strategy to understanding where good business opportunities are. Don’t miss out on Jessica’s advice to startup founders so that they can be as attractive to investors as possible. Her advice includes greater inclusion and visibility and she also shares examples of how this can be done. That’s not all, we get to learn a personal habit of Jessica’s that contributes to her success in this deeply insightful episode. Roshawnna and Jessica discuss: [02:50] Jessica talks more about herself and her she came up with the idea for Runway Project. [06:01] We get to learn more about trends in agriculture and urban farming. [09:40] We learn what other sectors Jessica is interested in asides agriculture. [19:10] Jessica shares a story of an entrepreneur that helped her push forward to create her approach. [25:40] They talk about changing the cultural perception surrounding startup founders. [32:42] Jessica shares recommendations for entrepreneurs who can’t access funding easily. [41:40] Jessica answers an interesting question from Dr. Roshawnna

Rabbi Jennie Rosenn, HIAS vice president for Community Engagement, provides an overview of the immigration crisis and HIAS' role in helping the stranger. Rabbi Jennie Rosenn, Vice President for Community Engagement, is mobilizing the Jewish community to advance HIAS’ work with refugees in the United States and around the world. Prior to coming to HIAS, Jennie played a catalytic role in building the Jewish social justice movement and the field of Jewish service as the director of the Jewish Life and Values Program at the Nathan Cummings Foundation. She developed innovative initiatives such as the Selah Leadership Training Program and the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable. Under Jennie’s leadership, the Jewish Life and Values Program also worked to amplify a progressive religious voice in America, advance American engagement in the Middle East peace process, and cultivate the environmental movement and women as agents of change in Israel.

Rabbi Rachel Cowan Wise Aging: Living with Joy, Resilience and Spirit ~Co-presented with Point Reyes Books~ Join TNS Host Michael Lerner for an exploration of spiritual biography with Rabbi Rachel Cowan, known nationally as a pioneer of contemplative practice in Judaism. Her latest book is Wise Aging: Living with Joy, Resilience and Spirit. Rabbi Rachel Cowan Rabbi Rachel Cowan, formerly the executive director of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, is working on a special project on aging with wisdom. She was named by Newsweek Magazine in 2007 and in 2010 as one of the 50 leading rabbis in the United States, and by the Forward in 2010 as one of the 50 leading women rabbis. She was featured in the PBS series The Jewish Americans. She received her ordination from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1989. From 1990-2003 she was program director for Jewish Life and Values at the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Her work has been included in Moment and Sh’ma as well as in anthologies, including Illness and Health in the Jewish Tradition: Writings from the Bible to Today, and The Torah: A Women’s Commentary. She is the author, with her late husband Paul Cowan, of Mixed Blessings: Untangling the Knots in an Interfaith Marriage. Her most recent book, co-authored with Dr. Linda Thal and called Wise Aging: Living with Joy, Resilience and Spirit, was published in June 2015. She lives in New York City, near her two children Lisa and Matt, and four grandchildren – Jacob and Tessa, and Dante and Miles Moses. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

"The Striking Challenge of Fracking: Who Does it Benefit and Who Gets Hurt?", is the second episode of Summits on Tenth, a web video series featuring conversations that provoke and disrupt conventional thinking on a wide variety of contemporary issues. The highlights video includes excerpts from the conversation with Kate Sinding, Senior Attorney and Deputy Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council's New York Urban Program, and Michael Shellenberger, President of The Breakthrough Institute, as they explore if fracking is a boon to the economy, a contributor to climate change, or a destroyer of communities. The conversation was moderated by Simon Greer, president and CEO of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and Lynn Parramore, senior editor at AlterNet.

"The Striking Challenge of Fracking: Who Does it Benefit and Who Gets Hurt?", is the second episode of Summits on Tenth, a web video series featuring conversations that provoke and disrupt conventional thinking on a wide variety of contemporary issues. The episode features a conversation with Kate Sinding, Senior Attorney and Deputy Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council's New York Urban Program, and Michael Shellenberger, President of The Breakthrough Institute, as they explore if fracking is a boon to the economy, a contributor to climate change, or a destroyer of communities. The conversation was moderated by Simon Greer, president and CEO of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and Lynn Parramore, senior editor at AlterNet.

This week: From our St. Louis series! We talk with Roseann Weiss the Director of the Community & Public Arts Department at the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission. Roseann Weiss is Director of the Community & Public Arts Department at the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission (RAC). In this position, she oversees the Community Arts Training (CAT) Institute - an innovative program centered on the belief that art can amplify the voices of communities, be a key factor in regenerating neighborhoods and be an agent for positive social change. Roseann also leads RAC's artists' support programs and creative community initiatives, which include identifying resources for new projects. She has over 25 years of experience in arts leadership in both nonprofit institutions and gallery settings. The Community Arts Training (CAT) Institute, now considered a national model, provides professional level, comprehensive cross training for artists of all disciplines, social service providers, community activists, educators and policy makers in order to develop partnerships for successful arts-based programs that impact the community at large, and particularly under resourced communities. The program provides skills as well as explores creative techniques to assure success in collaboration and community work. Roseann has initiated the expansion of the Institute's scope, including the design of a graduate program and an alternate, place-based model for community arts training. These initiatives were underwritten by the Kresge Foundation. In March 2010, the Community Arts Training (CAT) Institute presented the first At the Crossroads: A Community Arts & Development Convening. This national conference in St. Louis, underwritten in part by the Nathan Cummings Foundation, attracted a cross section of leaders in arts-based community development. In April 2012, a second arts-based community development Convening, funded in part by the Kresge Foundation, attracted about 300 participants from as far away as Dublin and Singapore. Before joining the RAC staff, she was Director of Education and Programming for the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. In her ten year post at the Museum, she instituted programs such as New Art in the Neighborhood for teens, the critics and curators studio visit and lecture series, and a docent program designed to connect high school students with contemporary art, along with many community collaborations. Roseann has curated contemporary art exhibitions in both commercial and non-profit galleries, served on arts panels, juries, committees and boards and has lectured about contemporary art and community. She is a founding member of The AIDS Foundation of St. Louis (now part of Doorways) and Critical Mass for the Visual Arts. In honor of her active involvement in the arts community, Roseann received a Visionary Award in 2009. The award is given to those who have demonstrated a unique vision to further the arts in new and innovative ways.

Charles Halpern Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom ~Co-presented with Point Reyes Books~ Join Michael Lerner in conversation with Charles Halpern—a pioneer in the public interest law movement, a successful public interest entrepreneur, an innovator in legal education, and a long-time meditation practitioner and advocate—about his book, Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom. The book illustrates the life-enhancing benefits of integrating a commitment to social justice with the cultivation of wisdom. Charles Halpern Charles is social entrepreneur and a pioneer in legal education, public interest advocacy, and philanthropy. The founder of the nation’s first public interest law firm, and a major public interest law school, he ran the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and was the founder of Demos, a New York-based think tank. During his years of activism, he began to see ways to develop his inner resources to complement his cognitive and adversarial skill, a journey described in his book, Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom (Berrett-Koehler). Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.