Podcasts about san francisco state

In 1945, Wesley Johnson, a San Francisco State graduate from Texas, rode down Fillmore Street, announcing Juneteenth and inviting all around to celebrate. At that time, the Fillmore district was the heart of San Francisco's Black community, and famously known as the ‘Harlem of the West.'  But over the decades, systemic displacement in the name of urban renewal has dramatically shrunk the neighborhood's Black population. Between 1970 and 2020, the Black population in the Fillmore dropped from 57% to just 16%. In this episode, we head to the Fillmore's annual Juneteenth celebration and talk to a Fillmore native dedicated to keeping the community alive.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"A sparkly rainbow that defies category." That's how this week's guest describes themselves, and honestly, it fits. For the first time, Kirk and Andy sit down with someone who isn't a designer or a founder: Mika Okimura, an educator and learning professional with over a decade of experience building inclusive, student-centered classrooms across the Bay Area, from UC Berkeley to Merritt College to San Francisco State, plus years at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.Mika opens up about growing up queer and Japanese American in a conservative pocket of California, the long road to claiming their they/them identity at almost 40, and how tiring it is to code-switch before you finally decide to just be yourself. They talk about teaching as the art of connection, the meditation teacher who told them they have "infinite wellbeing," and a little ramen otter that explains everything about why they love this work.There's also real talk on boundaries in the classroom, self-care and neurodivergence (including a three-hour nail routine), the "Learning to Pretty" Instagram, and a closing message you won't forget: fuck the model minority.Funny, heartfelt, and a little sweary. Follow The Kirk + Kurtts Design Podcast so you never miss an episode, and learn more about Mika's work as Your Academic Advocate in the show notes.Send us Fan MailSupport the showAbout Kirk and Andy.Kirk Visola is the Creative Director and Founder of MIND THE FONT™. He brings over 20 years of CPG experience to the packaging and branding design space, and understands how shelf aesthetics can make an impact for established and emerging brands. Check out their work http://www.mindthefont.com.Andy Kurts is the Creative Director and Founder of Buttermilk Creative. He loves a good coffee in the morning and a good bourbon at night. When he's not working on packaging design he's running in the backyard with his family. Check out Buttermilk's work http://www.buttermilkcreative.com.Music for Kirk & Kurtts intro & outro: Better by Super FantasticsShow a little love. Share the podcast with those who may benefit. Or, send us a coffee:Support the show

Immigrant artists have a big impact on their adopted countries, but many also leave a legacy in their countries of origin. Daisy Zamora has been a foundational force of poetry here in San Francisco… but before she left her home of Nicaragua she was an active combatant in the movement to topple the Somoza dictatorship in the early 70's.Today she is a professor of Latina/Latino Studies at San Francisco State. Here, Bay Poets host Josiah Luis Alderete reads her poem 'Another Time,' that was published in 1992.

Dr. James Hollis is a prominent Jungian psychoanalyst; Paul Hoover has published over 16 books of poetry and teaches creative writing at San Francisco State; and the host, Terry Pettit, is a former coach at the University of Nebraska and a current author of poetry and non-fiction. 60 years ago, Hoover and Pettit were students in Jim Hollis' poetry class at Manchester University. That relationship changed their life journeys. This is a podcast featuring three friends discussing poetry, archetypes, coaching, and their individual journeys. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Bay Area is known for its beautiful natural places and for being the birthplace of many social movements. One school program has found common ground between the two. For over 25 years, two high schools in the city have combined ethnic studies with environmental studies.Reporters Paula Sibulo and Olivia Mendez are recent graduates of San Francisco State. In this story, they wanted to explore how this helps young people feel a stronger sense of connection and responsibility to the land and themselves.

Latest up from Spoken Label (Author / Artist Podcast) features making his debut is, Stephen Small.Stephen has been writing fiction and non-fiction for many years alongside careers in academia, publishing, communications, and consulting.His debut novel, The Life and Death of Abercrombie Lyle, emerged from academic interests and private passions: a fascination with political power – and what people will do to get it; a love of Italy based on extensive travel and research; and a desire to write the kind of fast-paced, twisty mysteries and thrillers he enjoys reading himself.His writing is informed by a doctorate in Modern History and a BA in Politics, Philosophy & Economics, both from Oxford University, and an MA in History from the University of Michigan – as well the history of his own family of Irish immigrants to Liverpool in the early 20th century.Stephen has taught history and political thought in several US and UK universities, including UC Berkeley, Boston College, San Francisco State, and St. Mary's University Twickenham. He has written several non-fiction works, including An Irish Century 1845-1945 and Political Thought in Ireland, 1776-1798, published by Oxford University Press.A native of Liverpool, Stephen now lives in Warrington with his wife and their dog, Sebastian.More details can be found at: https://www.stephensmall.co.uk/

Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.  This week, Emily interviews Emory Douglas, the Black Panther Party's Minister of Culture and revolutionary artist. The episode centers on a retrospective of his work, Emory Douglas in Our Lifetime, on view at San Francisco's African American Arts and Culture Complex. About Artist Emory Douglas: The former Minister of Culture and Revolutionary Artist for the Black Panther Party, Douglas helped define the aesthetics of protest at the height of the Civil Rights era, cementing his status among the 20th century's most influential radical political artists. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he designed all but one of the Party's newspapers, each issue marked by the artist's bold, figurative illustrations outlined in thick black line and contrasted with bright colors, block text, and photomontage. The clearly rendered imagery, applied to a range of printed media from newspapers to posters, notecards, and pins, became a hallmark of liberation movements around the world, as supporters calling for an end to the oppression and subjugation of Black, Indigenous, and other communities sought to project a spirit of shared struggle through a common artistic vocabulary. Douglas was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In 1951, his family relocated to San Francisco, where he continues to live today. Widely known as an epicenter of radical countercultural politics in the post–World War II era, the city was also deeply divided and segregated, and it was the injustices that Douglas observed as a child that informed his political ideology as an adult. Beginning in the early 1960s, as a student of commercial art at City College of San Francisco, Douglas made frequent trips to nearby San Francisco State University to see civil rights leaders like Amiri Baraka, Stokely Carmichael, and H. Rap Brown speak. He soon lent his talents to the nascent Black Arts Movement, creating fliers and other promotional artworks to advertise events held across the city. These formative experiences solidified his intentions to dedicate his work to the broader struggle for Black liberation that was taking shape around him. In January 1967, Douglas met Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, two young activists from nearby Oakland, who, months earlier, had founded the Black Panther Party (BPP). Black self-determination was the Party's primary motivation, seeking to improve the position of underprivileged people of color in America through “whatever means necessary.” The organization initially focused on an individual's right to bear arms for defense against police violence, but its attention eventually turned to social justice issues like free breakfast for school children and fair housing. Seeking to promote their civil rights agenda to a primarily Black American audience, the Panthers developed a newspaper, the first of which Seale created and published in April 1967. That first issue was simple in layout and design, leading Douglas to offer his expertise in print production, understanding the power that strong visuals could lend to political action. Beginning with the second, he designed every issue thereafter—some 537 newspapers, from 1967 until it ceased publication in the early 1980s. Douglas quickly rose through the ranks of the organization: he was officially named its Revolutionary Artist and, eventually, Minister of Culture, overseeing all aspects of the BPP visual identity. Douglas's familiarity with the print production process was a fruitful asset, as he employed simple tools like markers, rub-off type, and prefabricated texture materials to create his visually impactful designs. To keep costs low, each paper was printed in one or two colors—black ink, often with a contrasting bright color. His illustrations shone a spotlight on state-sanctioned brutality, depicting law enforcement officers and politicians as pigs, while also portraying Black people bearing arms and defeating their oppressors. Some issues featured images of Black suffering, lambasting the political establishment for failing to meet the basic needs of people of color across the United States. Douglas strategically employed photomontage as well, integrating photographs alongside text and illustrations to emphasize urgent issues facing the Party. The impact and influence of Douglas's designs underscored the importance of a consistent graphic strategy in conveying complex political messages in very simple terms. This success was underscored by the massive global distribution of the newspaper and the frequent use of Douglas's illustrations in the political campaigns for organizations like the Organización de Solidaridad con los Pueblos de Asia, África y América Latina, Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, known as OSPAAAL. Despite the popularity of the Panthers' programs and their frequent struggle against the established white political order, the Party was disbanded in the early 1980s. Douglas continues to work as a political artist and activist, producing work that seamlessly translates complex political issues into easily understood illustration, a hallmark of the pieces he produced as a member of the Panthers. His striking figural illustrations connect him to generations of American artists like Elizabeth Catlett, Aaron Douglas, and Charles White, while his combining of type and image draw on generations of political art emanating from across the world, including contemporaries working in Cuba during the Communist Revolution. Deeply bound to American history and politics, his imagery evokes a powerful, globally resonant narrative. For more on Emory, CLICK HERE.   To learn about the exhibit honoring Emory's revolutionary work, CLICK HERE. -- About Podcast Host Emily Wilson: Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women's Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco. Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast -- CREDITS: Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.  Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.  For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Prabhu sent me a video of his mom this morning. It was when he was teaching her how to chant japa. She was 91, I think, and physically she was having a hard time. Her hands were hard to move but she was determined to do it. It was really sweet, and it just reminded me that I miss her. When my siblings and I got to know her, they used to come out and visit, and we would do family gatherings at their house in Lafayette. I remember my sister saying, "I found my real mother." That's just how she was. She just welcomed everyone with love, and she was such a great role model. She really was. She was in college, and she got married during the World War II. Then she had two children, and she had left college. There was a big gap between Prabhu and his brother and the two older kids. Prabhu was the youngest, and when Prabhu went to school, she decided to go back to college. She had to finish her undergraduate degree. Then she went on and got her Master's; then she went on and got her PhD, and taught sociology at San Francisco State. And then, in her 60s, she went back to school while she was still teaching and got a Master's in family therapy or something like that. Then she started working for the Alameda court system to help determine when there were difficulties in the families; she would give advice. She had such a great background because she was a sociologist, she had taken the psychology courses as well, and she had raised four kids, one of whom left home at 16 to become a devotee. She had been through an awful lot. So I was just really remembering her today, and all the sacrifices that mothers make, that kids have no idea, right? We have no idea until we get older, or until you are mothers yourself. Prabhupāda says it's the closest thing to pure love: the love that you have for your kids. So on this Mother's Day, I am so grateful for all of your association, for all of your examples, for your determination, for your dedication to your families, to your gurus, to Prabhupāda, and to Rādhā-Madana-Mohana. Thank you for giving me your association and your example. I'm always inspired by you. (excerpt from the address by HG Nirakula Dasi) To connect with His Grace Vaiśeṣika Dāsa, please visit https://www.fanthespark.com/next-steps/ask-vaisesika-dasa/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=launch2025 https://vaisesikadasayatra.blogspot.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Add to your wisdom literature collection: https://iskconsv.com/book-store/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=launch2025 https://www.bbtacademic.com/books/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=launch2025 https://thefourquestionsbook.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=launch2025 ------------------------------------------------------------ Join us live on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FanTheSpark/ Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sound-bhakti/id1132423868 For the latest videos, subscribe https://www.youtube.com/@FanTheSpark For the latest in SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/fan-the-spark #spiritualawakening #soul #spiritualexperience #spiritualpurposeoflife #spiritualgrowthlessons #secretsofspirituality #vaisesikaprabhu #vaisesikadasa #vaisesikaprabhulectures #spirituality #bhaktiyoga #krishna #spiritualpurposeoflife #krishnaspirituality #spiritualusachannel #whybhaktiisimportant #whyspiritualityisimportant #vaisesika #spiritualconnection #thepowerofspiritualstudy #selfrealization #spirituallectures #spiritualstudy #spiritualquestions #spiritualquestionsanswered #trendingspiritualtopics #fanthespark #spiritualpowerofmeditation #spiritualteachersonyoutube #spiritualhabits #spiritualclarity #bhagavadgita #srimadbhagavatam #spiritualbeings #kttvg #keepthetranscendentalvibrationgoing #spiritualpurpose

California faces a sharp 1.3% drop in public school enrollment for 2025-26—nearly 75,000 fewer students than expected. This episode of The California Report analyzes the emerging enrollment cliff hitting K-12 and public higher education, with CSU campuses like San Francisco State and Sonoma State seeing steep declines while UC sets records.1716 Experts discuss demographic shifts, migration patterns, and parallels to Midwest university crises, alongside campus responses, economic implications for tech and healthcare workforces, and strategies to meet the state's 70% postsecondary attainment goal by 2030. Listeners gain insights into California's education adaptability amid tightening pipelines.

April is National Poetry Month and to celebrate in proper style Bay Poets has been exploring the Poetry Center at San Francisco State's archives. Josiah Luis Alderete is the host of KALW's series, Bay Poets. And he has dug up audio of four San Francisco poets that have had a deep and lasting impact on the city's literary landscape. We will be presenting them to you throughout the month. Today's poet was is from the East Coast, but helped shape San Francisco's literary scene. Here's KALW News Editor, Sunni Khalid, speaking with Josiah about Q.R. Hand Junior. 

April is National Poetry Month and to celebrate in proper style Bay Poets has been exploring the Poetry Center at San Francisco State's amazing archives. Josiah Luis Alderete is the host of KALW's series, Bay Poets. And he has dug up audio of four San Francisco poets/ that have had a deep and lasting impact on shaping this city's literary landscape. We will be presenting them to you throughout the month. Here's KALW News Editor, Sunni Khalid, speaking with Josiah about San Francisco poet, Al Robles.

April is National Poetry Month, and to celebrate in proper style we're exploring the amazing archives at San Francisco State's Poetry Center. Josiah Luis Alderete is the host of KALW's series, Bay Poets. And he has dug up audio of San Francisco poets that have had a deep and lasting impact on shaping this city's literary landscape.  Here, KALW's Sunni Khalid speaks with Josiah about Alejandro Murgia - and the historical context that led to him becoming San Francisco's first Latino poet Laureate. 

Episode 446 of Airey Bros Radio features Josh Nolan, Head Wrestling Coach at Northern State University, breaking down his first season leading the Wolves wrestling program in NCAA Division II.In year one, Nolan led Northern State to an 8–5 record, Top-25 NWCA ranking, and NCAA D2 All-American finish from Rudy Lopez (149 lbs)—a strong foundation for one of the rising programs in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference (NSIC).A former NCAA Division II All-American at San Francisco State, Nolan has coached Fargo All-Americans, USA Wrestling standouts, and national-level athletes, bringing a deep developmental perspective to college wrestling.This episode is a must-listen for:High school wrestlers navigating the recruiting processParents looking for the right college fitCoaches building culture and long-term developmentFans of NCAA Division II wrestling

#mitchhampton #DrKurtDaw #shakespeare #theatre #hamnet #life #podcast #folio #shakespeare Dr. Daw's journey is in many respects similar one ideal or representative journey I have in mind for the journey of our podcast name. I have always felt that Shakespeare has a universal value and this episode was in many respects an expression in conversation of what such a phenomenon in art and culture could possibly mean. During this episode I mentioned in passing the now somewhat obscure but once culturally significant figure of the great jazz/hispter comedian Lord Buckley and his “Willie The Shake” routine. I have no idea whether this registers much anymore but the very fact that in the 1950s a “hipster”and “beatnik” comedy could have a sort of hit about the glories of Shakespeare is but one of many and myriad examples of just how one author can have a most comprehensive and, indeed, eternal journey. I really enjoyed this conversation and episode immensely and hope this pleasure connects with the audience and listeners in the world.More about the magnificent Dr. Kurt Daw:BIOGRAPHYKurt Daw is a professor of Theater Arts at San Francisco State. He has previously served as arts dean at SFSU and at SUNY-New Paltz. He was the president of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education from 2000-03. He twice participated in National Endowment for the Humanities seminars on Shakespeare and Performance at the Folger Shakespeare Library. He has directed numerous Shakespeare plays, operas and musicals for the stage.RESEARCH INTERESTSEarly Modern print cultureTextual Criticism and EditingEnglish Renaissance LiteratureHamletPrint CultureTheatre ArtsTheatre HistoryPhilosophy of Dance and Theatre ArtsGreek Language and Literature - theatre and historiographymoreAFFILIATIONSSan Francisco State University, Theatre Arts, Faculty MemberWEBSITEhttps://midsummer.playersreference.com/midsummer/experiential/BOOKS:Acting: Thought into ActionRevised Acting Shakespeare & His Contemporaries A Guide to Scenes & Monologues from Shakespeare and His Contemporaries #theater #uk #1500s #1600s #england #folio #foliosociety #marjoriegarber #frankkermode #haroldbloom #midsummernightsdream #measureformeasure #romeoandjuliet #hamlet #hamnet #art #acting #maggieo'farrell #chloezhao #jessiebuckley #ireland #scotland #cinema #film #literature #literarycriticism #theory #hermeneutics #kinglear #peterbrook #paulscofield #laurenceolivier #mickeyrooney #jamescagney #maxreinhardt #hollywood #1930s #1940s #1950s #1960s #1970s #1980s #1990s #2000s #shakespeareinlove #tomstoppard #emmathompson #kennethbranagh #damejudidench #gwynethpaltrow #brucepaltrow #colinfirth #lordbuckley #bebop #comedy #beatnick #awinterstale #thorntonwilder #ourtown #theskinofourteeth #thematchmaker #shadowofadoubt #alfredhitchcock #jospehcotten #teresawright 

TRANSCRIPT Gissele: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. And if you’d like to support this podcast, don’t forget to buy us a coffee at, buymeacoffee.com/loveandcompassion Gissele: Today we’re talking about relationships and my guests today are Gissele: Zeke and Terry Mead, who are empty nesters, midlife adventure travelers from the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021. After 25 years of marriage and nearly getting divorced, they accidentally rebooted their relationship and embarked on a new set of adventures. Gissele: Embracing their differences in challenging themselves to grow individually and as a couple on a daily basis. They couldn’t be more different, but they have a long history, a solid foundation, and a steadfast commitment to making it work as they travel and explore the world mostly together. Please join me in [00:01:00] welcoming Zeke and Terry Mead. Gissele: Hi. Terry: Hi. Gissele: Hello. Welcome to the show. I was wondering if you wanted to tell the listeners a little bit about how you actually met. Zeke: Terry is the one who usually does it so . Go ahead. Terry: Yeah, usually I do. we’ve known each other for 45 years. We, yeah, we both grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and when we were in elementary school, there was the gifted and talented education program gate. Terry: And all of the kids who are part of gate converged at the same school once a month, twice a month for enrichment activities. And I have an identical twin sister. And one month we showed up at a school. Zeke remembers meeting us. I don’t really remember meeting him. But a couple years later, we all went to the same junior high school. Terry: And so we were in the same classes. And in the eighth grade we went together. For about six weeks. I dumped him. That makes for a better [00:02:00] story if I say that. And then we were friends through high school and if you want the full origin story, we went to different colleges. We dated when we were 21. Terry: I dumped him again. We dated again when we were 24. I dumped him again and then we were 25. I made a list of everything that I wanted in a man for the rest of my life. And Zeke met all the criteria, except he was essentially the boy next door that I dumped three times. So then we were skiing when we were about 25 and had a little bit too much wine that night. Terry: And I just said this needs to be the last time and either we’re going to get married or friendship has to be over ’cause we just can’t keep doing this. And 14 months later, we were married. Gissele: what kept you holding on there? Zeke? Terry: Insanity. Zeke: Yeah. When you are 10, 12, 13 years old and you start to develop these relationships with people, you are [00:03:00] your conscious, gloms onto just interesting, specific, different characteristics. Zeke: And Terry was always someone that was just this person that I was always drawn to. And so whenever our planets would circle back around and come in alignment, it would all be like, okay, so I’m attracted to this person, and let’s see what this is all about this time. Zeke: And then the counter to that, the joke is Terry’s ability to evaluate things at 25 obviously wasn’t very good. Terry: I was playing the long game. Really? I was playing Gissele: the long game. so fast forward you, do you have children? Terry: We do. Our son is 24. He is doing a master’s degree at San Francisco State. Terry: He’s back living with us and our youngest is they them and they’re 21 wrapping up their college, their undergrad at University of Vermont in Burlington. Gissele: Beautiful. Beautiful. Okay. So you are married, are having relationships. Fast forward to the, when you start to have problems again. [00:04:00] Terry: I think, Terry: We’ve done a lot of work on ourselves and especially in the last four years, I guess it’s 20, 26, 5 years when we thought we were gonna get divorced. We came into the marriage at 26. We look at back at it just so young and so naive and with really the wrong expectations and assumptions about what a relationship is and what a marriage is. Terry: And Zeke was in a software sales or banking when we got married and later decided to become a police officer. And that ended up putting a significant amount of pressure on our relationship with the shift work. four days on, four days off, five days on, three days off, back to back fives called in for overtime, called in for court times. Terry: And, after the kids were born, I was essentially a single parent working full time. And I launched a consulting company, and so then I was managing a company as well, and that really, we did not know how to navigate that. what we later learned is I have [00:05:00] an anxious attachment style and he has an avoidant attachment style, so naturally going in different directions. Terry: He’s an only child. I’m an identical twin, so I used to doing everything together. I shared a womb with someone and Zeke: I didn’t share a room with anyone. Terry: exactly. So what we had was a solid foundation in that we grew up in the same place, knew a lot of the same people. But we did not know how to do the work. And so our relationship I think in our early forties was when it really started to, it really started to get, I wanna say bad logistically we’re really great with each other. Terry: But I think emotionally lovewise there was a lot of resentment there and there was like a huge chasm. And over the course of about 10 years, we would each show up. One of us would show up and say, okay, I think we’re done. And the other one would say, I’m not ready. And so we battled that for. seven to 10 years. Terry: Early in, like when I was about 43, I started [00:06:00] perimenopause and I didn’t really know it. So of course that also introduced a new set of challenges that I neither of us knew was really going on. Andour forties, it was it was very difficult, but then the pandemic hit when we were 50, and of course we came together in order to support the kids in order to be better citizens of the world. Terry: And logistically, I think we did really well. But, in January of 2021 both of us, it was like the first time we’d had like a text fight and I was in the bathtub and he came in and one of us was like, I think we’re done. And the other one was like, yeah, I think we’re done. it was a long time coming. Gissele: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. It must have been really challenging. I just wanna go back just for a moment. When you talked about the avoidance style in the anxious style, can you tell the audience a little bit about what that looks like? Because some of them might not know they are an anxious style or avoidance style. Gissele: So what does an anxious style look like, and what does an [00:07:00] avoidance style look like? Terry: So for me, the anxious is I’m constantly looking for validation. am I loved, am I worthy? yeah. Does he love me? Does he not? And so when there’s any sort of friction or conflict, I’m like wanting closeness and validation. Terry: And for him, when there’s conflict and whatnot, then he pulls away. So then there’s this whole chasing kind of thing. So I want more. He runs away. That makes me feel more insecure. I go chasing after it. That makes him insecure and he wants to go into his cave. it’s this chasing kind of thing. Terry: And Zeke: it doesn’t work out well, Terry: not when you don’t have an awareness of it. I I’m trying to get better about it. He’s getting better about it. And I think also growing up so there were three of us kids in the family and there was a lot of dialogue and there was a lot of fighting. Terry: And I wouldn’t say it was good communication, I learned how to fight, not necessarily dirty, but I learned how to fight. Whereas he didn’t [00:08:00] practice that with with siblings. And so then also with that also complicates it in that he would need extra time to think about whatever was going on. Terry: And I’m like, engage, engage, engaged. And he’s like, whoa, I need some space. And I’m like, engage, engage, engaged. And that would just make me more anxious to not have the engagement. It would make him more uncomfortable when I’m coming at him. And so you, you have that complicating the anxious avoidance clash as it were. Gissele: Yeah. if you’re anxious which I used to be. Whenever you have the withdrawal the avoidance, it’s interpreted as there’s a withdrawal of love. I’m not lovable. Mm-hmm. I’m not worthy. but really it has nothing to do with that. Gissele: It has to do how the other person’s ability to cope and need to regroup. Right. And so for me having to shift that I had to really be aware of how little I was there for myself and how little I love for myself that I could, [00:09:00] I had to realize that I could tap in instead of going outward. I could tap inward and be able to give that to myself. Gissele: And sometimes it’s so funny, is a weird dance because I’ve seen situations where I would have the opposite effect. I would be more avoidant if the person was different. if their energy was more anxious, I would be more avoidant and then they would gravitate. Terry: Yeah, it’s an interesting dance and one of the things that I’ve tried to be better about is to express my insecurity to Zeke and just say, look, right now I need a little bit more, I need some validation right now. ’cause I’m, I also have ADHD. So then you’ve also got that tied into it. Terry: And so if I communicate to him, look, I need a little bit more. I need some I need to know that I’m loved right now, I’m feeling in a sensitive and vulnerable space. And then having that specific request, then, if he’s able to at that moment and we’re not talking like in a fight, we’re just talking in life in general, then he’s able to step in I think a little bit more easily to respond [00:10:00] to that request. Terry: And then I’ve asked him, it’s okay. If you’re gonna go avoid me, can you just say, look, I just need some time. I wanna deal with this. I need some time. And that’s also super hard for him to do because in those moments when he pulls away, he shuts down. And so to have the wherewithal to go, look, I need a minute. Terry: I’ll come back, I will come back. Gissele: it’s the understanding that it’s not about you like that, it’s not about either of you. It’s that it’s about the person’s ability to cope in that moment and how they cope or how they’ve learned to cope based on their own childhood environments. Gissele: And so really when you have an understanding of each other’s childhoods and when you have an understanding of what each of the you need in the moment I think it’s really helpful for relationships. Yeah. Terry: We’re still practicing that by the way. We do not have Gissele: that dial. Gissele: Yeah, of course. And you know what? Relationships are an ongoing, there’s peaks and valleys, there’s highs and lows, and I love that you said that, at one moment you both had to be [00:11:00] wanting out. ’cause as long as one of you wanted to stay in, that’s usually how people stay in a relationship. Gissele: Right. But when you get to the point where you both want out, I think that’s where you, start to decide we have to really look at this and either decide to go in and out. So what happened after you both decided that it was like, that it wasn’t working and that you needed to maybe move forward differently? Terry: So it happened on a Sunday morning and the both of the kids were home. Our youngest was still in high school and our oldest was home for winter break. And we both decided, okay, we’re gonna communicate to the kids that this is what’s going on. So at dinner that night, we told the kids, and the kids were like, it’s about time. Terry: kids totally know when there’s friction. They know and they’re just like, yeah, it’s about time. And we did not model, I think healthy partner relationship for our kids. We’re still trying to fix that. We still apologize for that too. Our kids. And the timeline on this is going to seem really fast, but I process things really fast [00:12:00] and I’m a silver lining kind of gal and I can usually get over things within 24, 48 hours because it was the middle of the pandemic we’re in the San Francisco Bay area. Terry: We were still in lockdown. And, our son was going back to school, we had an extra bedroom. So Zeke moved into our son’s bedroom. But, oh, we decided we were gonna work through this together. we are friends first. We have known each other for so long, and we’re also very committed to our kids and providing a solid foundation for our kids. Terry: So he moved into the bedroom, and so the next day, he was in the bedroom doing his work. I was in the office doing my work and and our youngest was doing remote school. And I would come out and I would just start sobbing. and we would be talking through what is this gonna look like? Terry: He did look at apartments. But we also decided every night we would cook together, we would have dinner together. And while we hadn’t really watched TV together before each night, we were trying to do that to demonstrate to our youngest that we were still a united front for them. [00:13:00] And so Monday rolls around. Terry: I was devastated. I really thought my whole world had fallen apart because what I thought my future was going to be had collapsed. I thought we were going to be partners forever, the kids were getting older and it was supposed to be just us again. And so Tuesday rolls around and I am still devastated. Terry: Wednesday rolls around, I am still devastated. And I remember asking Zeke, I’m like, how can you not be devastated by this? And he said, you always move through things much more quickly than I do. This is gonna hit me later. We researched over the course of that week, we researched buying a house in the same street so we could still be near each other, still support each other. Terry: We we talked about what it was gonna look like and Thursday, Friday rolls around and I just looked at him. I’m like, I periodically I’d go in, I’d sob, he told me. And I would just say it was like, who’s gonna be my emergency contact? And he said, I will always be your emergency contact. Terry: And it was at that moment that I think [00:14:00] that was the, I know that seems silly, but that was like the last thing that I needed to go. It’s gonna be okay. So I did some research on dating and how to move forward, past divorce, we were never actually gonna get fully divorced because our financial situation is so complicated. Terry: So we would leave very separate lives, but the legal part of it would, we weren’t gonna make happen, and neither of us ever wanted to get married again. So it was like, okay, we’re not gonna deal with the legal side of it, but what logistically does this look like? And then Saturday morning I went to go play tennis. Terry: the weather was absolutely fantastic. I had some great tunes in the car and I just felt myself opening up. It was like I was blooming. It was like the color was coming back as if I’d been living in gray for a decade. And I thought, if I’m gonna get out there and dates, I need to get back into shape and I want to become again, the sexual being that I used to be. Terry: And like, how am I gonna do that? I’m like, I wanna play, I wanna experiment. I wanna come get back in touch with [00:15:00] myself. So I did a little research about that and realized that it’s not uncommon for couples going through separation to continue to have sex. And I’m like, during a pandemic, okay, fine. So after dinner, we’re sitting on the couch and I just said, Hey, what would you think about having sex? Terry: He’s is that the right thing to do? And I said, well, why not? I said, I trust you. I wanna experiment and explore with stuff. Why don’t we give it a try after this? I’m gonna go take a bath. I’m gonna crawl into bed naked, join me. So he is like, he’s not sure about that. Anyway, he comes in and I’m in bed and he goes, you sure? Terry: And I said, absolutely. And what that. Opened up is we had closed the door in our relationship. We had closed the door on who we were as a couple, and we got to embark on who we were individually doing the work that we had not done at the age of 25 and 26 and throughout our lives. And so like every night for a couple of months, we explored, I call it sex [00:16:00] exploration. Terry: We played, we were vulnerable with each other. We laughed. it was a lot of fun. We both went to therapy and over a period of time we decided to start dating and we accidentally rebooted our relationship, Zeke: kind of because we actually developed a new relationship. Yeah. We didn’t reboot the old one. Zeke: We’re still the same people in the relationship, but we developed and. Created a whole new relationship. Mm-hmm. Because all of that explorations, exploration stuff that she’s talking about didn’t happen in the last 25 years. So that was new and allowed us to, allowed her to try things and allowed me to I don’t know if I would’ve been hesitant to trying things, but that wasn’t part of the relationship previous. Zeke: So with all of that new, in this new entity, if you will then that sort of started off and created a whole different vibe for the relationship. Terry: Mm-hmm. With [00:17:00] vulnerability communication, trust that we hadn’t had before. Lack of resentment you going to therapy and committing to yourself to doing the therapy. Terry: It was a amazing signal. ’cause we’d done therapy before and individual therapy and. Just hadn’t seen the level of commitment that I saw after after we decided to separate. Gissele: So, Zeke, at any point, ’cause I have to ask, at any point when Terry suggested about you being intimate, did you go, wait a minute, Gissele: is this the path to us getting back together? Zeke: That’s a great question. I, I, initially, I was like, I don’t think this is a good idea. What, where is this coming from? And so she talked about it a little bit. And again, it was January of 2021. Terry: Mm-hmm. Zeke: I was not gonna go jump on an app and go try, that Terry: you didn’t download, you didn’t download Tinder? Zeke: No. That was not in the middle of a pandemic, a good idea in my [00:18:00] book. And I was like okay. So. Going back a step or two being her emergency contact, we’re still parents to two kids. We have to support them in, especially in this world and their world at this point in time. It was not 1992 when I got out of college and I could survive on a $10 an hour job in Sacramento and tell my parents I, they had no financial responsibilities anymore. Zeke: So I knew that we were going to be working together to support the kids as well as everything else for quite some time. So the relationship, it’s not like I was gonna pack a bag and walk out the door, and that was gonna be the end of that. the sex part of it was in the cocktail of what it was like to live in 2021. Gissele: Yeah. Zeke: And there was a freedom to it as well of, no, as much as, as it could be for that element of it, no strings attached. And that wasn’t there for the last 25, 30 years. And so it [00:19:00] seemed like there was a question mark to it, but not a lot of particular downside. Zeke: I’ve talked about this before. I do equate it to the one time someone approached me for a job and I went into the job and I said, well, this is how I’m gonna do the job. And if you don’t want me to do the job this way, and you’re not open to me trying some new things, then I’m gonna leave because you asked me to do the job. Zeke: I’m not looking for the job. I don’t need the job. Right. So not that having sex with you was a job. Gissele: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Gissele: just being, you’re putting some boundaries right? Zeke: is, yeah. Was just like, okay, so we’re gonna do this and you need to be open and I’m gonna be open to doing it differently. Zeke: And I’m not gonna go do it anywhere else because it’s in the middle of a pandemic. Yeah. Gissele: Yeah. Terry: Yeah. So when I made the suggestion, never did I even consider that it was going to be a path to reconciliation. I really both of us had just had completely shut the door and was like, okay, we’re setting ourselves up for what we want, who we wanna be for the next half of our lives. Terry: Because at that point, he had turned for 51, I was about to turn 51. And if we [00:20:00] assume we’re gonna live to be a hundred, it’s like, okay, we wanna be happy, we wanna be content, we wanna be satisfied, and we wanna operate in the world in a way that is healthier than what we’ve done up until this point. Gissele: So I wanna go back to what you said. Gissele: ’cause you said that your children said, well, it’s about time. So you basically had their support. What was their reaction to you rebooting your relationship? Terry: Well, as long as we don’t talk about how we rebooted our relationship through sex, they’re totally fine. I don’t really remember what they’re, Terry: Adam was so caught up in his college life that he was checked out, he’s like, whatever. He had issues of his own to deal with and our youngest was just trying to get through day to day of virtual school during the pandemic. So Terry: They were 16 going on 17, but they’re wrapped up in their own lives. So I don’t recall them having any sort of either kid having any sort of thoughts or comments [00:21:00] about it. It would be really interesting right now to have a conversation with ’em and just say, Hey, let’s reflect on that and tell us what we were, you were feeling, thinking or paying attention to. Terry: And I’m sure Adam would say, I had no idea. I was too busy with my own stuff. And our youngest I’m sure they’ve talked about it, therapy with their therapist. Zeke: thinking back that it was such a slow kind of turn of the Titanic at that point in time, that there wasn’t a day in which it was like, ta-da, right? Zeke: As well as we are investing in this new relationship in a different way. we were concerned about the kids, but at finally, I think they weren’t the center of our universe at that point in time. The center of the universe for us had changed, and so we were less concerned about them. Zeke: And for all those reasons Terry just talked about. And so. They might have been going, wait, why is everything not pointing at me? Terry: Well, no, but our youngest was actually afraid when our oldest went off to college that everything was gonna point at them. [00:22:00] So I am pretty sure that, ’cause we would have dinner together every night, and Zeke and I would be on two ends. Terry: They would be across, the two kids would be across from each other. And I remember our youngest expressing concern about when Adam was gone be like, oh my gosh, now all of the attention’s gonna be directed on me. So I’m sure that they were probably relieved that we had a different focus and it wasn’t all on them so that they could do their own thing. Terry: that would be my guess. But we’ll have to text them later and see if they respond. Gissele: Yeah. So thank you for that. Do you think that your relationship blossom or changed because you each were willing to change Terry: Oh yeah, Gissele: yeah, Terry: yeah. I mean, there’s no way this would’ve worked if we showed up exactly the same way. Gissele: Well, I think often people, want their partner to change. They’re like, I’m gonna be happy if so and so changes. But I think what you’re saying, or at least what I’m hearing from you is that each of you committed to changing and to doing something different and to showing up more vulnerability, more authentically.[00:23:00] Gissele: Whether that meant, that it wasn’t gonna work together, but the surprising thing was that it actually brought you back together. is that accurate? Terry: Oh yeah, I mean it would not have worked if we hadn’t done the work, but the fact that we were committed to doing the work for ourselves, I think was really important. Terry: we had all sorts of fights and discussions over the years where I’m like, you need to do this. You need to do, this is what I need from you. And then of course, the disappointment and the resentment when I didn’t feel like there was a commitment to me and what I didn’t feel heard. Terry: I didn’t feel seen in terms of what I said I needed in the relationship. And I have worked with an executive coach, I’ve worked with therapist. I’m constantly, every day trying to work on something as we Gen X women in a patriarchal society have been conditioned to do that. There’s always something wrong with us. Terry: And, we’re always trying to find the constant improvement. And so yeah, there was no expectation I no longer had any sort of demands on him changing because it was like, you do, you, as long as we can show up for the [00:24:00] kids the right way, as long as we can show up as friends the right way, build healthier communication paths, then you know, that middle piece, that Centrif Venn diagram, our lives were our own except for those central pieces where we needed the touch points. Gissele: What about Zeke? Zeke: Yeah, it, again, because it became this different entity and I had a different way to approach it and I don’t know if the word reinvention allowed me to sort of take on this different, approach to it and let go of what had happened and have a different approach going forward. Zeke: So that was, that’s the gist of my navigations through that. Terry: Well, let me ask you this question through our entire relationship, I was, would be like, I need you to do this. I, this is what I need. I don’t think, I don’t remember you placing similar demands or asking me similar things. Zeke: No, no. Gissele: So, you found your way back [00:25:00] to each other. So what’s currently working for your relationship? How have you changed and grown and expanded that enables you to continue to have a committed, loving relationship? Terry: As we said, we’re continuing to work on this on a regular basis. Gissele: Yeah, of course. That’s just, that’s life. Terry: Yeah. So what, works? We have instituted a number of things that I think are. Are helpful. We’re not always great with ’em, but as you know, every morning we decide to commit to the relationship. Terry: And one way that Zeke shows me is he gives me a kiss in the morning and says, I love you, and then I’m just there. No, I’m just kidding. I’d read this book called The New I Do. While we were trying to, before we decided to, to call off our original relationship and learned about, there are seven or eight different types of marriages that you can go into and you can get into it for, the kids for money, for companionship, for sex. Terry: there are these [00:26:00] various different things and there can be time limits on these things, first of all you establish what you both expect out of the relationship or the marriage. And then you kind of put a plan together and then you have periodic check-ins. Terry: And so it could be annual check-ins to make sure, are we still on the same page? Are we moving in the right direction? But I like the idea of. The daily commitment to the relationship that at any point we can choose to get out, that one of us could say, you know what, this really isn’t working for me and I don’t wanna be here anymore. Terry: So there’s a lot of freedom in that. And you’d think that for somebody with an anxious attachment style, that there would be a lot of uncertainty in that, but there really isn’t. So the daily commitment, we also implemented and we were really good about it for the first couple of years and now we do it every three or four weeks. Terry: It was a weekly check-in and there are like five or six questions that we do in order to make sure that chasm that developed during our pre previous relationship didn’t develop into the future. [00:27:00] And we always started by being super close together and saying. Is there anything I can do to make you feel more loved and more comfortable right now? Terry: And I think this is stuff I found. It’s probably Gottman Institute stuff. I mean, there’s nothing magical here. it’s not innovative on my part other than we decided to implement this. And then it was like, is there anything that I’ve done to inadvertently hurt you over the last week? and then so if there is something that we have not addressed over the previous week, that is the opportunity to talk about it in a very close, loving, intimate setting. Terry: in a safe space. It doesn’t end up being like a big argument. I think we’ve only ended up in an argument after that, like twice out in the last five years. And then it was like, how’s our sex life been? And that’s usually an easy one to answer which is usually really great. And then we ask, Terry: what’s coming up next week? Is there anything stressful? And is there anything that I can do to make it a little bit easier for you? And that gives us an opportunity to talk about what’s coming up so we can talk about what’s happened. We [00:28:00] can talk about what’s coming up that keeps us connected through the communication. Terry: And then like two years ago I added is there anything I did to make you feel loved this week? And so then we can tap into it. we either end on the sex question or we end on the, is there anything that makes you feel loved? ’cause I like us ending on a high. so that’s been a really helpful tool to help us stay connected. Terry: So I hope that answered your question in terms of some of the things that we’ve done. We try not to let things fester the way that we used to. But we launched a new business, Zeke andTerry Adventures two years ago. And I’m super, as you can tell, I’m super outgoing. Terry: I’m super chatty. He’s more of an introvert. And more I would like to say thoughtful about the things. And that has been really great for our relationship because we are doing all sorts of new things together and at the same time. It’s also really challenging because we have not had the results that we wanted, and [00:29:00] we both have our insecurities about what it is that we’re doing in the business. Terry: And so that is creating actually the biggest conflict for us, and it’s also creating the biggest opportunity for us to have good communication and work together through the various different challenges I get to show up and be very compassionate to him about his insecurities around it, which I think really makes this beautiful broth of a relationship, Gissele: There’s a few things I wanted to pick up on and then I’d love to talk about the travel. the first thing I wanted to mention is that I wholeheartedly agree with you is that I think we have this expectation or this belief that, ideal relationships don’t have conflict, but it is how you manage the conflict that helps you actually come closer together, that helps you overcome things together. Gissele: The second thing really is about the fact that, I find it interesting that you talked about this is an ongoing commitment, but we also [00:30:00] know that at any point we could just say, I can’t make this commitment. Gissele: And that is so refreshing. And the reason why I say that is because, The institution of marriage is one where we have been taught that a decision you made when you were younger, let’s say you were in your twenties when you get married, You are always gonna feel the exact same way from here into infinity, and that’s doesn’t make any sense because we grow, we change. Gissele: Sometimes we grow at the same rate. Sometimes we don’t grow at the same rate. And so how do we think about relationships in a way that no matter how long they last, it’s not a failure, right? Mm-hmm. everything that you go through, is still a learning opportunity, still an opportunity to love. Gissele: It’s still an opportunity to learn about ourselves without having that extra judgment of, well, if this isn’t forever, then It didn’t work, and then I’m a failure, or that you have to push yourself to stay in something that maybe you’ve outgrown. Gissele: And so I think those are two very important points that you are making. and I think because the institution of marriage is different, right? [00:31:00] before it was really, for women it was a security, right? Because when you had the children, the men could go and sow their seeds anywhere and then, like you had the kid. Gissele: And so the institution of marriage became one where there was so security, right? But I think, relationships are morphing and changing and women have the ability to make their own money, their own businesses. And so the need for that kind of like security and stability, maybe not necessarily be there. Terry: Oh yeah, absolutely. And we’re seeing it in these next generations. Who are these these women in their twenties and their thirties who are like, I’m not settling. I can have my own money. I can have my own house. I have my friends. Terry: I can make my own choices. I can choose to have kids if I want to or choose not to have kids. And so this whole, you’re gonna die an old cat lady. I’m like, how many cats do I get to have, in my own space? so we’re seeing in society a time when the men are actually having to step up from an emotional perspective and doing the work, whereas before they’re like, I’m bringing on the paycheck. Terry: [00:32:00] You can’t get a credit card. You can’t get a loan to buy a house. You get pregnant, you get kicked outta secretarial school. So you know, you’re stuck with me. And now women just have so many more options available to them, and I think it really is. a huge opportunity for a society in general for heterosexual men especially, to have to step up in a way that women have had to step up and endure for centuries. Zeke: Well, at the same time, it opens another set of doors for men because Gissele: Yeah, Zeke: we were on the early side of this and we didn’t do it exactly right. I didn’t do it exactly right, but when the kids were three and six years old, I stopped being a police officer and became a stay at home dad. because Terry was making way more money than I was making, even as an overtime police officer, which was a very generous pay package, mm-hmm. Zeke: And so we flipped roles and I think the upside of that is that we showed our kids that that could happen. Didn’t exactly show them [00:33:00] the best way for it to happen, but that it was a possibility because up until then. I’d worked since I was like 17 years old. up until 38 years old. Zeke: And then it was like, wait, this doesn’t make sense. Financially, I’m spending half of my paycheck on childcare. Gissele: Yeah. Zeke: And I’m still getting in the way of Terry making more money. This doesn’t make any Terry: sense. Oh. When our relationship was terrible and our kids, we were eating out way too many days a week. Terry: Yeah. It was not the lifestyle that we were looking for because when we decided to get married, the agreement was he was gonna stay home with the kids. We knew from the get go that going into it was gonna be flipped, but then he became a police officer really liked the work, and then it was like, wait, this is not working. Zeke: I liked, I liked the work. I didn’t like the schedule Gissele: Yeah. Fair enough. I wanna talk about, just since you’ve mentioned it a couple of times, like self-forgiveness. And the reason why I bring that up is like there has to be an element of self-forgiveness because we make mistakes as parents in our relationship, in the modeling things that we do to our kids. Gissele: And I [00:34:00] remember talking to my kids when they were very young and telling them, I’m gonna make mistakes. Mommy doesn’t always know what she’s doing. there’s no kid manual and I’m gonna be apologetic and I’m gonna be honest and sometimes I’m gonna make mistakes. Gissele: we don’t always get it right. We’re human beings here. Right? And so there’s gotta be a level of self-forgiveness because of the mistakes you made. Terry: Yeah. So we would joke when the kids were younger that we were putting money away for their therapy, that we knew that we were going to be contributing to some sort of their, negative side of their emotional and psychological well-being. Terry: I’m not sure that was the right way to handle it. I wish that we’d had the wherewithal to say, look, we’re human. We’re gonna do the best that we can with what we have at the time. And I hope that if we make mistakes that there will be some forgiveness there. We just did not have that level of awareness going in. Terry: What we’ve done over the last, five years with the kids is just apologize for not modeling the right relationship. And, both the kids are in therapy. There our youngest has [00:35:00] been in, since high school and then our oldest did in high school and then has been for the last year. Terry: we believe in getting professional help. And there are times . We’re like, oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. We didn’t model this better for you. And they’ll say, yeah, why are you doing it now? You’re doing great. Now. You could have done this. And I’m like, we were just not in a place to do this. Terry: Mm-hmm. So at least now we’re able to model, and I was called out on this whole self forgiveness thing a couple weeks ago. you’re owning too much of this and you need to forgive yourself for it. I was like, I think I’m, I think I’m exaggerating a little bit just for the joke, for the bit. Terry: And I’m super proud of ourselves for modeling better stuff and being able to say, look, we know we didn’t do that right, but here’s what we’re doing now and we hope that you can learn from what we’re doing now that it is not too late. What was also helpful is sometime in the last five years, we saw the statistic that parents are only like 20 to 30% responsible for how [00:36:00] the kids turn out in their emotional wellbeing and et cetera. Terry: And I have to. Remind Myself of that regularly to say you’re not a hundred percent responsible for how screwed up your kids are. You’re only 25% responsible. And it’s like, oh, it takes the pressure off to say for me, once again, having in a patriarchal society as a Gen X woman, I was supposed to have it all be it all be perfect in every aspect of my life. Terry: And this is one place where I feel like I failed. And being able to go, I did the best that I could with what I had. It’s not an excuse, but it’s an opportunity to recognize, forgive, and go I want to do better. And look for ways for better communication, for better modeling. I started back up with my therapist on Monday, ’cause I don’t think right now I’m managing my kid, my relationship with my kids. Terry: As best I can right now in setting boundaries and communication, et cetera. So I think modeling that now, I’m hoping that they will pick up on [00:37:00] that. Because We talk about all this kind of stuff. What is really interesting is what we expect from our parents. A month ago I had a partial knee replacement and our son, who’s living at home could not see me in pain, could not see me out for the count. Terry: And I was in a lot of pain ’cause I can’t take narcotics ’cause I, my body just can’t handle him. And I was in a lot of pain. I’m also a very active person. And last night he said his friends were over and they’d had a few too many beers. And he goes, yeah, it’s really hard. He’s like, you’re the soccer player, you’re the tennis player, you’re the runner, you’re the one with the business. Terry: You fly helicopters, you do all this stuff and you’re not doing that right now. And I was like, it’s just a pause honey. It’s just a pause. I am still that person. But it’s interesting how our kids see us, whether it’s us individually or as a couple And now I know exactly what his issue is, and now I can be there to help him, work through that in order to set him better for the [00:38:00] future. Terry: But it’s, it’s absolutely fascinating. Gissele: Hmm. Yeah. I love that you said that because it is so true we’re human beings. We evolve, we change. I was not aware of how much anxiety I had when my kids were very little. Oh. And how much I modeled that for them, and as I grew and expanded and, found my way through mindfulness and compassion and all of these things, how much I had to forgive myself. Gissele: And also how sometimes the people in our lives wanna hold onto those old identities because that gives them a sense of consistency and safety. But as you evolve. They have to evolve too. And their vision of you has to evolve. And so sometimes that can be a little bit challenging for them. Gissele: But kudos to you for helping them navigate through that journey. ’cause it’s, life is all about growth. Yeah. We probably screw Terry: up on that too, but that’s okay. Gissele: Yeah. You know what the truth of the matter is? I feel like everything is a gift and a journey and it’s an experience. Gissele: And, I feel like the kids are gonna be all right. And [00:39:00] that’s one thing I hold onto, no matter what’s happening, and sometimes, things happen, right? my kids are always all right. they’re more resilient than I believe. Gissele: they’re good. They’re great. I wanted to go back to a comment you had made about the financial, because financial issues tend to be the things that probably places a wedge the most on relationships. And you seem to have navigated that before with the policing, right? what’s helping you navigate some of those waters currently as you’re growing your business? Terry: Well, we are very privileged in that. we’re financially comfortable. I we’re not off the chart rich or whatever, especially living here in the San Francisco Bay area. But we are comfortable. my consulting was lucrative. my parents did well on, an investment, so they have provided us with some extra cushion as well. Terry: I would never say that I am, super comfortable to the point where I would never worry about it. I think there’s gonna be a certain [00:40:00] amount of concern, especially with the instability of what’s going on in the world right now. It’s like, how comfortable can you actually be? Terry: So just when I think is, I look at the numbers and I do our monthly financial former accountants, so I do our monthly financials and We should be okay, but if we live another 50 years, are we going to have enough? And are we going to have enough to continue to provide some level of financial support for the kids? Terry: Because our oldest has expressed an interest in getting a PhD in philosophy and teaching at the collegiate level where we know he is not going to make a lot of money. We are willing to provide him with some level of financial support. Knowing that education is a very important issue for us and our society in, the United States doesn’t value education, doesn’t really pay teachers very well. Terry: And so we see that as part of our financial contribution in providing him with some support so that he can be the best possible teacher he can. Our youngest is still trying to figure out what they’re going to do next, but we imagine it is going to be in service to something and will probably [00:41:00] not make a lot of money and will probably be in an area that is also in alignment with our values. Terry: We need to provide them with some sort of financial support not live high on the hog, but to do Okay. we are in a decent position to do that. When we did launch the business last year. I did some projections to make, to see how long we could do it for comfortably before I would have to go back into consulting. Terry: horrors of horrors. But always thinking about what the back plan is gonna be. So we’ve made it so that I understand what our runway is on that, so we’re gonna give it one more year. And if we’re not seeing what we want from it, then may have to return to something that is actually generating revenue Right now. Terry: it’s just output. But, our company is a startup and I have been an angel investor for the last 10 years. I understand what it’s like to be a startup. Having my own consulting company, I know what it means to run. Business. I know what this all looks like. And I am not a huge risk taker, but I am a calculated risk [00:42:00] taker. Terry: Zeke he doesn’t pay as much attention to the financial stuff. We should get back to reviewing it on a monthly basis so that it’s a shared responsibility. ’cause right now it’s all on me. And he’ll say, Hey, can we pay that off? What can we do to streamline this to make it easier so that you’re doing less and we can worry about these other things more? Terry: And so he helps with that. But we are incredibly fortunate that we have a bit of time to be experimenting with what it is that we’re experimenting with. Zeke: And what got me convinced on this venture was I enjoy getting out and it. Zeke and Terry Adventures is the name of the YouTube channel. Zeke: And the word adventure in there plays a key role in my mental approach to it. Because adventure is whatever you can make it. and we’ve heard of people and know people who have never left California, they’ve never left the Bay Area, they’ve never seen snow, Whereas I’m like, I’ve never been to South Korea, so that’s on my list of things. So adventure is whatever [00:43:00] you can make it. So if we can inspire people to do that, and at the same time, I can go do things that I might not be able to do when I’m 65, when I traditionally retire from whatever day job. Zeke: And so if we can make a go at this point in time then I get to do some things that I won’t be able to do later on. And that’s what we’re also trying to communicate to folks through the channel. Is to live life while you can. I’ve been very fortunate in the last five or six years to do about 10 or so two week bike tours with some friends. Zeke: And so we’ve ridden bikes from a lot of different places to other places and had a great time. And we come back from these things and we meet places and talked to people about our trips and we can guarantee somebody’s gonna say oh, I wanna do that someday. And we always tell them, there is no someday. Zeke: There’s only today. You’ve gotta do it. Now if you say I’m gonna do it someday, you just keep pushing it off. You’ve gotta do it now. So that’s why Part of my mind is like, this is crazy. What are you doing financially? [00:44:00] This is a startup and I’m not a startup guy. Terry’s the startup person. Yeah. Zeke: And but the other half of my brain is do it while you can, because at some point in time you’re not gonna have a choice. You’re not gonna have an option. Terry: Yeah. And I just wanna expand on something about the adventure because not everybody has the financial means to do it. And not everybody’s as comfortable with adventure, like his cycling trips, I have zero interest in his cycling trips. Terry: But so what is adventurous for me and pulls me outside of my comfort zone, and that’s the thing, our tagline is we wanna inspire Midlifers, mostly Gen Xers, but people over the age of 50 to get out, get uncomfortable and go adventure It could be taking a bus to go do a hike someplace, so maybe the bus is a couple bucks. Terry: You can go do a hike, which should be free. hopefully you have some comfortable shoes. You can bring a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and you just add some water, don’t forget the water. And you go and you see something from a different angle. You push yourself beyond your normal [00:45:00] comfort zone. Terry: When I worked for my dad’s accounting firm back when I was younger we would always have this conversation ’cause I was very black and white. we would look at the tax law and it would be like, it would be this or it’d be this. And my dad’s no, there’s black and there’s white, and there’s the gray area in between. Terry: And that gray area is our play area. I’m not saying it was, bad or fraudulent, but he always wanted to stretch me like a rubber band. And I always, every time you do something that’s outside your comfort zone, you stretch that rubber band, you stretch that rubber band and that rubber band, once stretched, never goes back to the same place. Terry: And so for on this last trip, we both flew into Munich, and then I took a train to Strausberg because I am absolutely determined to see all the France, and I’m determined to speak French fluently one day in my life. And so he cycled with his friends from Munich to Venice, and they did it. They do it on the cheap. Terry: I they camp, they do warm shower places. They share, four stinky men in a room kind of situation. And I had [00:46:00] this little air and B right on the river Ill in Strasburg, and I spent two weeks by myself in Strasburg, working on my French, working on some other content. And, but that being solo and doing that, oh, and I got to go to all the museums I wanted and the cathedral and I got to do all the cultural stuff that I love to do while he was outside doing his outdoorsy stuff. Terry: I play tennis, I don’t cycle. And me being alone as an identical twin, as somebody who likes to have somebody around that is uncomfortable for me. and Zeke was like, ah, that would be super uncomfortable for me and I would absolutely hate it. And, but with that. it expanded who I was. Terry: And granted, that is a more expensive option. But we live in the Bay Area and there are all sorts of places to go hike. I don’t love to hike, but sometimes our youngest will drag me out and is oh wow, maybe this isn’t so bad. Look at how beautiful this is. I’m bitching and complaining all the way up, all the way up the hill. Terry: or when we go and we [00:47:00] do saunas and places, and they go, ’cause there’s a new one up in San Francisco. this isn’t necessarily uncomfortable, but really what a great experience. Gissele: Hmm, I love it. First of all, I think your dad was a great teacher in terms of the willingness to see, okay, there’s black and white, but there’s always a middle way to do things. Gissele: There’s always possibilities. I think when you’re inviting the listeners to consider is different ways of aging, because I think the more you get active and get adventure or get beyond your limitations, the more likely that you’re going to be aging. Very well at the end, for this podcast, I interviewed a 75-year-old lady who is, she started when she was 65, I believe. Gissele: She’s like the 15th time world champion pole dancing. She still does it like she’s, she’s 75. She’s still like the world leader and so can we reimagine how we age? because what I noticed in aging is there’s a constriction more and more, and more and more people are less likely to go out. Gissele: They’re less likely to [00:48:00] socialize, and so there’s an outward constriction, whereas your business is enabling people to go, okay, can we go outward instead, can we. Reimagine aging. Can we reimagine mobility? Can we reimagine adventure? Adventure doesn’t mean I have to go to the south of France Gissele: Can I even just say, that I’m willing to try that makes me out of my comfort zone? It doesn’t necessarily mean having to go outside. It could be just, public speaking. it could be anything that helps me shift and open up to life. And there might be a lot of opportunity around with organizations that are helping people become more mobile. Gissele: Because I think your organization it’s not just the traveling, it’s really is opening up people beyond their limitations and especially around aging. Can we really reimagine ourselves? Yeah, go ahead. Terry: Yeah. So in 2019 I wrote a book called Piloting Your Life to Inspire Women over the Age of 40 to design and live lives of our own Creation. Terry: And and the reason why it’s piloting your life is [00:49:00] as a woman in male dominated spaces, especially in, like investing in stuff. I am a commercially rated helicopter pilot, so I have my brand around, yeah, I fly helicopters for fun, really. I have my branding around aviation and so I had a podcast for a couple years called Piloting Your Life that ultimately focused on women. Terry: And then I wrote this book because I realized there wasn’t the what to expect when you turned 40. Book for women. We’re seeing more conversations about perimenopause and menopause and what happens to our brains and our bodies. It’s more than just hot flashes. And it was like I wanted to better understand that. Terry: So I love that you tapped into the redefining what aging means, and I think Gen X especially has an opportunity to really model moving forward. what aging means. And we do not have available to us, at least in the United States the same, you work at the same place for your entire life. Terry: You have a [00:50:00] pension and then you’re set up for the future. A lot of us are not going to be retiring at 65. A lot of us are not going to have grandkids. we’re not necessarily gonna have the retirement and aging lives that have been modeled before us. Terry: And so I do see that as a huge opportunity for us to redefine what aging means, focusing on what good health means. And good health is focused on not just, your fitness or your weight, but it’s brain health, it’s mobility, it’s flexibility, and it’s friendships. Terry: I interviewed 36 diverse women from around the world, from my book. So I can share their stories. ’cause a lot of us need to see it to be it. And it’s maybe they didn’t like my story, but they might like my friend Carle’s story or, somebody else’s story. And in the research, in order to really set ourselves up well for the next phase of our lives is we need a little bit of activity, exercise. Terry: We need deep and meaningful relationships or friendships and we need meaning or [00:51:00] purpose. And in doing further research on purpose, not having a big p purpose, but a little p purpose is important. ’cause all of those things build up. So I’m doing this drawing challenge right now so that I can start Painting Again, which I haven’t done since high school. And so every day for 10 minutes I’m drawing. And it’s so fun to do something new and know that I can completely fail at it. No one’s gonna judge me. I am pushing it out on Instagram so that I can inspire other people to be silly and whimsical as well. Terry: But I think, my focus is on women. if we decide to be selfish for once, put ourselves first focus on how we want to be in the world, do the work make the decisions on what we want, we can model it better, not only for the women coming up behind us, but also for the men in the world. Terry: And then our society in general becomes a better thing. and so like Zeke going out and doing his cycling stuff, he’s the young one in the group. Just by a a year or [00:52:00] two. But getting out there and doing. a 400 or a 700 mile cycling. And we’re talking pedaling just like, doing it on the cheap, Terry: that is just so funny. it’s not always just the physical, it’s the mental. And that’s the other thing with it, with this new business, every single day we are learning something new. We are throwing so much pasta on the wall and so much of it is not sticking in terms of what we’re trying and experimenting with. Terry: It’s it is very frustrating sometimes, but it’s also so good for our brains. Terry: it’s so exciting to be 55 almost 56. And every day it’s like, What are we choosing today? Terry: So I paid $10 for the drawing thing for the month, so it wasn’t an expensive thing. But one of the coolest things was we’ve been to so many museums and one of my new favorite artists is Egon Shield. And yesterday the thing had to do with negative spaces I think it’s called Draw Together, and Wendy Mack is the gal leading it. Terry: And she showed Igon Shield’s work and I’m like, oh my God, I love Egon Shield. And [00:53:00] like a couple days before it was some sort of line drawing thing and it was s Tumbly. And I’m like, I saw Slys stuff in Munich. I got to see Egon Shields stuff in Vienna. And I know my privilege is showing right now. but I love seeing these things connect together. Terry: That something I learned in one place, I now seeing it in play in another, and then I get to do something with it. It is so fun. Gissele: Yeah, Zeke: at same time, just a quick reference of that although we are in the San Francisco Bay area, which is of course a world class leading art center, education center. Zeke: But we’ve been in enough places around the world where we’ll walk into some little museum or art installation or a church or whatever is in some little town. ’cause Terry wants to go to every single one of ’em. And we’ll find something there. It’s like, wait, we’ve seen that other places. So wherever you are at out there in the world you look around and you’ll find some things somewhere that can be just as interesting and or inspired by some of these things that you [00:54:00] find here. Zeke: And the nice thing about the little towns that have these is there’s, it’s probably free. And two they’re, you’re not gonna spend six hours stumbling around in the Louvre looking for something and with a crowd of millions. Zeke: which is my trigger point because I don’t have the patience to, to deal with crowds. Zeke: Yeah, Gissele: That’s fair. I think what you’re modeling for us is the potentials, right? we have so many limiting beliefs in our society, you’re too old to start, a business in the fifties or tool to go cycling a little cheap. like all of those things are just limiting beliefs in what you’re showing us as a world of potentials. Gissele: A couple more questions. what’s your definition of self-love? Terry: You go first Zeke: definition of self-love. Yeah. I’m Gissele: asking everyone to season that question. Zeke: Sure. That’s a good question. Good Terry: answer ’cause I’ve got one now. Zeke: Go ahead. Terry: Okay. I think self-love right now as a 55-year-old woman, gen X conditioned in a patriarch [00:55:00] society is putting myself first without apology, showing up, being unapologetically me. Terry: I think that is the definition of self-love for me right now. Gissele: Beautiful. Zeke, I Zeke: would say, I’m not gonna articulate it. Don’t think. As well. it’s probably giving myself permission to either admit that I was wrong or admit that I hadn’t understood something. and maybe in this patriarchal society, part of that is that the man is always right and he’s always figured everything out and I haven’t and so trying to deprogram that and enter a new space of saying, yeah, I don’t, I didn’t do that right. Zeke: I don’t know what the answer to that is. And I’m sorry to anyone I’ve impacted with those previous decisions, and I’m sorry to myself and I’ve given myself permission to forgive myself for myself, either acting that way and having to change and needing to change and I should change, and I don’t [00:56:00] even exactly know what to change too. Speaker 3: Terry: So I love your question about self-love because it really got me thinking aboutwhat that means and showing up unapologetically me. ’cause I feel like I’ve been apologizing for who I am my entire life. And then also choosing myself first, which is such a struggle as a Gen X woman who’s been conditioned to put everybody else first. Terry: And there’s a line in my book. Which is be the first in the buffet line and take the last fucking cupcake because so many of us women. at least in the United States, my friends in France, they were not raised similarly, but we are told, let everybody else go first. And if there’s one last thing, don’t take it. Terry: And so I love this concept but I have to be very intentional and think about it. I love this concept of choose you first. Men have no problems choosing themselves first. And the thing that I have modeled so poorly for my kids is that. selflessness is important and always being in [00:57:00] service to somebody else is important and you put yourself last. Terry: And if I could turn back time and change one thing, I would change and show that I put myself first. More because I think it was so important for both boys and girls, men and women, to see that it is okay for women to show up unapologetically, put themselves first, being aware of the impact, but putting themselves first. Terry: So I loved that you forced me to think through, and I’m actually gonna put a reminder on my desk. It’s like practice acts of self-love every day so that it can become less. Of a practice and it can be part of who I am, so thank you for that. Gissele: Ah, thank you for that. ’cause I can totally appreciate that. Gissele: I grew up here in Canada, so not the states, but I felt the same way. There’s this messaging that a good mother puts themselves last. A good mother puts their kids first, eats last, like all of those things. And that’s not true because what it does is it leads to burnout. In fact, the less that I [00:58:00] loved myself and filled my cup, the more I gave from my reserves and the more I resented it, sometimes I was snappy my case. Terry: Yeah, and we go through perimenopause and that’s what we’re seeing is women just completely burned out going through perimenopause and the menopause transition, especially if you have a DHD and you’re just like, what the hell happened? And that’s why I see the, our forties is such an incredible opportunity to shift out of being in service to others because our bodies and our minds are saying. Terry: you’ve gotta focus inward. You’ve gotta focus less outward. And that’s what’s fun about the four. The forties suck, but the fifties, once you’ve done that work, the fifties are amazing. Speaker 3: great answers. Thank you to both of you. Last one is, where can people find you? Where can they work with you? Where can you find your book? Share anything you wanna share? Terry: So my book, piloting Your Life is. Available on Amazon. I’m sorry if you’re not, we don’t shop on Amazon, but it’s in audiobook. Terry: I narrated it. Ebook and paperback. You can [00:59:00] also order it through like bookshop.org. Request it through Libby, your library, so it’s pretty much everywhere. Or go to my website http://www.piloting your life.com. Zeke and Terry Adventures is available at http://www.zekeandterryadventures.com. You can find us as Zeke a

Please join us for a special film documentary screening of Epicenter:The Struggle for Black Studies in the Bay Area, followed by an intimate conversation with filmmaker Doug Harris, Douglas Harris Jr. and cast members.  The film examines the early student activism of the 1960s and 1970s, which brought the first Black studies departments to higher education in the entire country. The film is very timely, as African American studies programs at institutions of higher education are currently being targeted for closure around the country.  In chronological order, the documentary will feature segments about Merritt College (1966), San Francisco State (1968) and UC Berkeley (1970), as told by cast members of the film who were on the ground floor of the Bay Area struggles through protests, strikes and riots. The Bay Area stood at the forefront, taking the leap toward introducing the study of Black and other minority cultures that would eventually spread throughout the country. The Commonwealth Club of California is a nonprofit public forum; we welcome donations made during registration to support the production of our programming. An Arts Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums. Commonwealth Club World Affairs is a public forum. Any views expressed in our programs are those of the speakers and not of Commonwealth Club World Affairs. Organizer: Robert Melton  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conversations on Groong - February 5, 2026Topics:Defining the “Canceling Russia” phenomenonThe “cancel Russia” lobbyContainment shifts to coercive transformationRussian Orthodox Church as battlegroundKremlin “towers” and civilizational logicBooks by Tsygankov:“Canceling” Russia (2026): https://a.co/d/0izauT7TRussia's Foreign Policy (2025): https://a.co/d/07NNNT6dGuest: Andrei TsygankovHosts:Hovik ManucharyanAsbed BedrossianEpisode 514 | Recorded: February 4, 2026SHOW NOTES: https://podcasts.groong.org/514VIDEO: https://youtu.be/WOLR5AuizEQ#CancelingRussia #RussianForeignPolicy #UkraineWar #StateCivilization #TowersOfTheKremlin #RussianOrthodoxChurchSubscribe and follow us everywhere you are: linktr.ee/groong

Jason Welch joins Episode 156 of the Athletor Podcast to share a clear look at leadership, culture, and the state of college wrestling. As Head Coach at San Francisco State, Welch talks through building programs with limited resources, leading athletes with purpose, and staying committed to development beyond wins and losses.The conversation centers on accountability, opportunity, and what coaches owe athletes inside and outside the room. Welch breaks down real challenges facing programs today and explains how wrestling continues to shape discipline, resilience, and long-term growth for those involved.

APEX Express is a weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. On this episode, host Miata Tan speaks with three guests from the Coalition for Community Safety and Justice (CCSJ), a leading community-based resource providing direct victim services for Asian Americans in San Francisco. They unpack CCSJ's approach to policy change, community advocacy, and public education, and reveal how their Collective Knowledge Base Catalog captures lessons from their work. Important Links: Community Safety and Justice (CCSJ) CCSJ Collective Knowledge Base Catalog CCSJ‘s four founding partners are the Chinatown Community Development Center, Chinese for Affirmative Action, Chinese Progressive Association, and Community Youth Center. Transcript: [00:00:00]  Miata Tan: Hello and welcome. You are tuning into APEX Express, a weekly radio show, uplifting the voices and stories of Asian Americans. I am your host, Miata Tan, and today we are focusing on community safety. The Coalition for Community Safety and Justice, also known as CCSJ, is the leading community-based resource in providing direct victim [00:01:00] services for Asian Americans in San Francisco. The four founding partners of the Coalition are Chinatown Community Development Center, Chinese for Affirmative Action, Chinese Progressive Association, and the Community Youth Center. You might have heard of some of these orgs. Today we are joined by three incredibly hardworking individuals who are shaping this work. First up is Janice Li, the Coalition Director. Here she is unpacking the history of the Coalition for Community Safety and Justice, and the social moment in which it was formed in response to. Janice Li: Yeah, so we formed in 2019 and it was at a time where we were seeing a lot of high profile incidents impacting and harming our Asian American communities, particularly Chinese seniors. We were seeing it across the country due to rhetoric of the Trump administration at that time that was just throwing, oil onto fire and fanning the flames. [00:02:00] And we were seeing those high profile incidents right here in San Francisco. And the story I've been told, because I, I joined CCSJ as its Coalition Director in 2022, so it says a few years before I joined. But the story I've been told is that the Executive Directors, the staff at each of these four organizations, they kept seeing each other. At vigils and protests and rallies, and it was a lot of outpouring of community emotions and feelings after these high profile incidents. And the eds were like. It's good that we're seeing each other and coming together at these things, but like, what are we doing? How are we changing the material conditions of our communities? How are we using our history and our experience and the communities that we've been a part of for literally decades and making our communities safe and doing something that is more resilient than just. The immediate reactive responses that we often know happen [00:03:00] when there are incidents like this. Miata Tan:  And when you say incidents could you speak to that a little bit more?  Janice Li: Yeah. So there were, uh, some of the high profile incidents included a Chinese senior woman who was waiting for a bus at a MUNI stop who was just randomly attacked. And, there were scenes of her. Fighting back. And then I think that had become a real symbol of Asians rejecting that hate. And the violence that they were seeing. You know, at the same time we were seeing the spa shootings in Atlanta where there were, a number of Southeast Asian women. Killed in just completely senseless, uh, violence. And then, uh, we are seeing other, similar sort of high profile random incidents where Chinese seniors often where the victims whether harmed, or even killed in those incident. And we are all just trying to make sense of. What is happening? [00:04:00] And how do we help our communities heal first and foremost? It is hard to make sense of violence and also figure out how we stop it from happening, but how we do it in a way that is expansive and focused on making all of our communities better. Because the ways that we stop harm cannot be punitive for other individuals or other communities. And so I think that's always been what's really important for CCSJ is to have what we call a holistic view of community safety. Miata Tan: Now you might be wondering, what does a holistic view and approach to community safety look like in practice? From active policy campaigns to direct victim service support, the Coalition for Community Safety and Justice offers a range of different programs. Janice Li, the Coalition Director, categorizes this work into three different [00:05:00] buckets.  Janice Li: It is responding to harm when it occurs, and that's, you know, really centering victims and survivors and the harm that they faced and the healing that it takes to help those, folks. The second piece is really figuring out how do we change our systems so that they're responsive to the needs of our communities. And what that looks like is a lot of policy change and a lot of policy implementation. It's a lot of holding government accountable to what they should be doing. And the third piece is recognizing that our communities don't exist in vacuums and all of our work needs to be underpinned by cross-racial healing and solidarity. To acknowledge that there are historic tensions and cultural tensions between different communities of color in particular, and to name it, we know that there are historic tensions here in San Francisco between the Black and Chinese communities. We have to name it. We have to see it, and we have to bring community [00:06:00] leaders together, along with our community members to find spaces where we can understand each other. And most importantly for me is to be able to share joy so that when conflict does occur, that we are there to be able to build bridges and communities as part of the healing that we, that has to happen. Miata Tan: Let's zoom in on the direct victim services work that CCSJ offers. What does this look like exactly and how is the Coalition engaging the community? How do people learn about their programs? Janice Li: We receive referrals from everyone, but initially, and to this day, we still receive a number of referrals from the police department as well as the District Attorney's Victim Services division, where, you know, the role that the police and the DA's office play is really for the criminal justice proceedings. It is to go through. What that form of criminal justice accountability. Could look like, but it's [00:07:00] not in that way, victim centered. So they reach out to community based organizations like Community Youth Center, CYC, which runs CCSJ, direct Victim Services Program to provide additional community. Based services for those victims. And CYC takes a case management approach. CYC has been around for decades and their history has been working, particularly with youth, particularly at risk youth. And they have a long history of taking a case management approach for supporting youth in all the ways that they need support. And so they use this approach now for people of all ages, but many of the victims that we serve are adults, and many of them are senior, and almost all of them are limited English proficient. So they need not only culturally competent support, but also in language support. And so the case management approach is we figure out what it is that person needs. And sometimes it's mental health [00:08:00] services and sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's trying to figure out in home social services, sometimes it's not. Sometimes for youth it might be figure out how to work with, SF Unified school district, our public school system you know, does that student need a transfer? It could be the world of things. I think the case management approach is to say, we have all of these possible tools, all of these forms of healing at our disposal, and we will bring all of those resources to the person who has been harmed to help their healing process. Miata Tan: I'm curious. I know we can't speak to specific cases, but. how did this work evolve? what did it look like then and what does it look like today? Janice Li: What I would say is that every single case is so complex and what the needs of the victims are and for their families who might be trying to process, you know, the death of one of their loved ones. What that [00:09:00] healing looks like and what those needs are. There's not one path, one route, one set of services that exist, but I think what is so important is to really center what those needs are. I think that the public discourse so much of the energy and intention ends up being put on the alleged perpetrator. Which I know there's a sense of, well, if that person is punished, that's accountability. But that doesn't take into account. Putting back together the pieces of the lives that have been just shattered due to these awful, terrible, tragic incidents.  And so what we've learned through the direct victim services that we provide in meeting harm when it occurs is sometimes it's victims wake you up in the hospital and wondering, how am I going to take care of my kids? Oh my gosh, what if I lose my job? How am I gonna pay for this? I don't speak English. I don't understand what my doctors and nurses are telling me [00:10:00] right now. Has anyone contacted my family? What is going on? What I've seen from so many of these cases is that there aren't people there. in the community to support those folks in that sort of like intimate way because the, the public discourse, the newspaper articles the TV news, it's all about, that person who committed this crime, are they being punished harsh enough? While when you really think about healing is always going to have to be victim and survivor centered.   Miata Tan: Janice Li describes this victim and survivor centered approach as a central pillar of the Coalition for Community Safety and Justices work. I asked her about how she sees people responding to the Coalition's programming and who the communities they serve are. Janice Li: So the Direct Victim Services program is just one of the many, many programs that CCSJ runs. Um, we do a wide range of policy advocacy. Right now, we've been focused a lot [00:11:00] on transit safety, particularly muni safety. We do a lot of different kinds of community-based education. What we are seeing in our communities, and we do work across San Francisco. Is that people are just really grateful that there are folks that they trust in the community that are centering safety and what community safety looks like to us. Because our organizations have all been around for a really long time, we already are doing work in our communities. So like for example, CCDC, Chinatown Community Development Center, they're one of the largest affordable housing nonprofits in the city. They have a very robust resident services program amongst the dozens of like apartment buildings and, large housing complexes that they have in their portfolio. And so, some of the folks that participate in programs might be CCDC residents. some of the folks participating in our programs are, folks that are part of CPA's existing youth program called Youth MOJO. They might [00:12:00] be folks that CAA have engaged through their, immigrant parent voting Coalition, who are interested in learning more about youth safety in the schools. So we're really pulling from our existing bases and existing communities and growing that of course. I think something that I've seen is that when there are really serious incidents of violence harming our community, one example Paul give, um, was a few years ago, there was a stabbing that occurred at a bakery called a Bakery in Chinatown, right there on Stockton Street. And it was a horrific incident.  The person who was stabbed survived. And because that was in the heart of Chinatown in a very, very popular, well-known bakery. in the middle of the day there were so many folks in the Chinatown community who were  they just wanted to know what was happening, and they were just so scared, like, could this happen to me? I go to that bakery, can I leave my apartment? Like I don't know what's going on. [00:13:00] So a lot of the times, one of the things that CCSJ does as part of our rapid response, beyond just serving and supporting the victim or victims and survivors themselves, is to ensure that we are either creating healing spaces for our communities, or at least disseminating accurate real-time information. I think that's the ways that we can Be there for our communities because we know that the harm and the fears that exist expand much more beyond just the individuals who were directly impacted by, you know, whatever those incidents of harm are. Miata Tan: And of course, today we've been speaking a lot about the communities that you directly serve, which are more Asian American folks in San Francisco. But how do you think that connects to, I guess, the broader, myriad of demographics that, uh, that live here.  Janice Li: Yeah. So, CCSJ being founded in 2019. We were founded at a time where because of these really [00:14:00] awful, tragic high profile incidents and community-based organizations like CA, a really stepping up to respond, it brought in really historic investments into specifically addressing Asian American and Pacific Islander hate, and violence and. What we knew that in that moment that this investment wasn't going to be indefinite. We knew that. And so something that was really, really important was to be able to archive our learnings and be able to export this, share our. Finding, share, learning, share how we did what we did, why we did what we did, what worked, what didn't work with the broader, committees here in San Francisco State beyond. I will say that one of the first things that we had done when I had started was create actual rapid response protocol. And I remember how so many places across California folks were reaching out to us, being like, oh, I heard that you do community safety [00:15:00] work in the Asian American community. What do you do when something happens because we've just heard from this client, or there was this incident that happened in our community. We just don't know what to do. Just to be able to share our protocol, share what we've learned, why we did this, and say like, Hey, you translate and interpret this for how it works. In whatever community you're in and you know, whatever community you serve. But so much of it is just like documenting your learning is documenting what you do. Um, and so I'm really proud that we've been able to do that through the CCSJ Knowledge Base.   Miata Tan: That was Janice Li, the Coalition Director at the Coalition for Community Safety and Justice, also known as CCSJ. As Janice mentioned, the Coalition is documenting the community safety resources in an online Knowledge Base. More on that later. Our next guest, Tei Huỳnh, will dive deeper into some of the educational workshops and trainings that CCSJ offers. You are tuned into APEX [00:16:00] Express on 94.1 KPFA​ [00:17:00] Welcome back to APEX Express on 94.1 KPFA. I am your host, Miata Tan, and today we are talking about community safety. Tei Huỳnh is a Senior Program Coordinator at Chinese Progressive Association, one of the four organizations that comprise the Coalition for Community Safety and Justice. Here's Tei discussing where their work sits within the Coalition. [00:18:00]  Tei Huỳnh: CPA's kind of piece of the pie with CCS J's work has been to really offer political education to offer membership exchanges with, um, other organizations workshops and trainings for our working class membership base. And so we offer RJ trainings for young people as well as, in language, Cantonese restorative justice training. Miata Tan: For listeners who might not be familiar, could you help to define restorative justice? Tei Huỳnh: Restorative justice is this idea that when harm is done rather than like implementing retributive ways. To bring about justice. There are ways to restore relationships, to center relationships, and to focus efforts of making right relations. Restorative justice often includes like talking circles where like a harm doer or someone who caused harm, right? Someone who is the recipient of harm sit in circle and share stories and really vulnerably, like hear each other out. And so the [00:19:00] first step of restorative justice, 80% of it in communities is, is relationship building, community building. Miata Tan: These sorts of workshops and programs. What do they look like? Tei Huỳnh: In our restorative justice trainings we work with, we actually work with CYC, to have their youth join our young people. And most recently we've worked with another organization called, which works with Latina youth, we bring our youth together and we have, uh, a four-part training and we are doing things like talking about how to give an apology, right? We're like roleplaying, conflict and slowing down and so there's a bit of that, right? That it feels a little bit like counseling or just making space, learning how to like hold emotion. How do we like just sit with these feelings and develop the skill and the capacity to do that within ourselves. And to have difficult conversations beyond us too. And then there's a part of it that is about political education. So trying to make that connection that as we learn to [00:20:00] be more accepting how does that actually look like in politics or like in our day-to-day life today? And does it, does it align? More often than not, right? Like they talk about in their classrooms that it is retributive justice that they're learning about. Oh, you messed up, you're sent out. Or like, oh, you get pink slip, whatever. Or if that's not their personal experience, they can observe that their classmates who look differently than them might get that experience more often than not   And so building beginning to build that empathy as well. Yeah. And then our adults also have, trainings and those are in Cantonese, which is so important. And the things that come up in those trainings are actually really about family dynamics. Our members really wanna know how do we good parents? When we heal our relationship, like learning to have those feelings, learning to locate and articulate our feelings.  To get a Chinese mama to be like, I feel X, Y, Z. Elders to be more in touch with their emotions and then to want to apply that to their family life is amazing, to like know how to like talk through conversations, be a better [00:21:00] parent partner, whatever it may be. Miata Tan: Something to note about the workshops and tools that Tei is describing for us. Yes, it is in response to terrible acts of hate and violence, but there are other applications as well. Tei Huỳnh: And you know, we've seen a lot of leadership in our young people as well, so we started with a restorative justice cohort and young people were literally like, we wanna come back. Can we like help out? You know, and so we like had this track where young people got to be leaders to run their own restorative justice circle. It might sound like really basic, but some of the things we learn about is like how we like practice a script around moving through conflicts too. and that, and we also learn that conflict. It's not bad. Shameful thing. This is actually what we hear a lot from our young people, is that these tools help them. With their friends, with their partners, with their mom. One kid was telling us how he was like going to [00:22:00] get mad about mom asking him to do the dishes he was able to slow down and talk about like how he feels. Sometimes I'm like, oh, are we like releasing little like parent counselors? You know what I mean? Uh, 'cause another young person told us about, yeah. When, when she would, she could feel tension between her and her father. She would slow down and start asking her, her what we call ears questions. and they would be able to slow down enough to have conversations as opposed to like an argument . It makes me think like how as a young person we are really not taught to communicate. We're taught all of these things from what? Dominant media or we just like learn from the style of communication we receive in our home , and exposing young people to different options and to allow them to choose what best fits for them, what feels best for them. I think it's a really, yeah, I wish I was exposed to that . Miata Tan: From younger people to adults, you have programs and workshops for lots of different folks. What are the community needs that this [00:23:00] healing work really helps to address? Tei Huỳnh: What a great question because our youth recently did a survey Within, um, MOJO and then they also did a survey of other young people in the city. And the biggest problem that they're seeing right now is housing affordability because they're getting like, pushed out they think about like, oh yeah, my really good friend now lives in El Sobrante. I can't see my like, best friend we have youth coming from like Richmond, from the East Bay because they want to stay in relationship. And so the ways that, like the lack of affordability in the city for families, working class families has also impacted, our young peoples. Sense of health. And, this is actually a really beautiful extension of, growth, right? In what people are seeing termed as safety, From like a really tangible kind of safety previously safety was like not getting punched, interpersonal violence to now understanding safety from systemic violence as well, which includes, like housing and affordability or [00:24:00] gentrification.   Miata Tan: Through the workshops that Tei runs through the Coalition for Community Safety and Justice Communities are also exposed to others with different lived experiences, including speakers from partner organizations to help make sense of things. Tei Huỳnh: It was a huge moment of like humanization. And restorative justice is really about seeing each other, I remember too, like after our guest speaker from A PSC, our young people were just so moved, and our young people saying like this was the first time that they've shared a room with someone who was formerly incarcerated. they were so moved with like, how funny he was, how smart he was, how all the things you know, and, and that there are all these stories to shed. We really bring in people to share about their lived experiences with our Asian American youth. And then people wanted to like follow up and also Mac from A PSC was so generous and wanted to help them with their college essays and people were like, [00:25:00] yes, they wanna keep talking to you. You know? Um, and that was really sweet. In our. Recent restorative justice work, and our most recent training with POed which works with Latina youth while we saw that it was harder for our young people to just, connect like that, that they were able, that there were like other ways that they were building relationships with  Miata Tan: What were you seeing that went beyond language? Tei Huỳnh: I think it was really sweet to just see like people just trying, right? Like, I think as like young people, it's like, it's also really scary to like, go outside of your, your little bubble, I think as a young person, right? One year we were able to organize for our adult session and our youth session, our final session that happened on the same day. and so we had we had circles together, intergenerational, we brought in a bunch of translators and youth after that were so moved, I think one young person was [00:26:00] talking about how they only like. Chinese adults, they talk to other parents and to like hear these Chinese adults really trying, being really encouraging. There's like something very healing. Restorative justice is not an easy topic for young people. I think at the first level it is about relationships in community to hold those harder feelings. I was really moved by this, a really shy young girl, like choosing to like walk and talk with another young person that they didn't have like that much of a shared language, but Wiley was, they were just really trying to connect. There are moments like when the, youth, like during our break, would wanna put on music and would try to teach the other youth, how they dance to their music. You know, like it's just, it was just like a cultural exchange of sorts too which is really sweet and really fun  ​[00:27:00] [00:28:00]  Miata Tan: You are tuned into APEX Express on 94.1 KPFA, a weekly radio show uplifting the voices and stories of Asian Americans. I'm your host Miata Tan, and today we are [00:29:00] talking about community safety. Since 2019, the Coalition for Community Safety and Justice, also known as CCSJ, has been leading the charge in helping Asian Americans in San Francisco to heal from instances of harm. From Direct Victim Services to Policy Work. The Coalition has a range of programs. Our next guest is Helen Ho, research and Evaluation manager at Chinese for affirmative action in San Francisco. Her research helps us to better understand the impact of these programs. Here's Helen describing her role and the importance of CCS J's evaluation  Helen Ho: My role is to serve as a container for reflection and evaluation so that we can learn from what we're doing, in the moment, we're always so busy, too busy to kind of stop and, assess. And so my role is to have that [00:30:00] time set aside to assess and celebrate and reflect back to people what we're doing. I was initially brought on through an idea that we wanted to build different metrics of community safety because right now the dominant measures of community safety, when you think about like, how do we measure safety, it's crime rates. And that is a very one dimensional, singular, narrow definition of safety that then narrows our focus into what solutions are effective and available to us. And, and we also know that people's sense of safety goes beyond what are the crime rates published by police departments and only relying on those statistics won't capture the benefits of the work that community organizations and other entities that do more of this holistic long-term work. Miata Tan: The Coalition for Community Safety and Justice, has been around since 2019. So was this [00:31:00] process, uh, over these five years, or how did you come into this? Helen Ho: Yeah. The Coalition started in 2019, but I came on in. 2023, you know, in 2019 when they started, their main focus was rapid response because there were a lot of high profile incidents that really needed a coordinated community response. And over time they. Wanted to move beyond rapid response to more long-term prevention and, uh, restorative programming. And that's when they were able to get more resources to build out those programs. So that's why I came on, um, a bit later in the Coalition process when a lot of programs were already started or just about to launch. So what I get to do is to interview people that we've served and talk to them about. Their experiences of our programs, how they might have been transformed, how their perspectives might have changed and, and all of that. Then I get to do mini reports or memos and reflect that back to the people who run the programs. And it's just so [00:32:00] rewarding to share with them the impact that they've had that they might not have heard of. 'cause they don't have the time to talk to everyone . And also. Be an outside thought partner to share with them, okay, well this thing might not have worked and maybe you could think about doing something else. Miata Tan: Certainly sounds like really rewarding work. You're at a stage where you're able to really reflect back a lot of the learnings and, and, and work that's being developed within these programs.  Helen Ho: The first phase of this project was actually to more concretely conceptualize what safety is beyond just crime rates because there are many, Flaws with crime statistics. We know that they are under-reported. We know that they embed racial bias. But we also know that they don't capture all the harm that our communities experience, like non-criminal hate acts or other kinds of harm, like being evicted that cause insecurity, instability, feelings [00:33:00] of not being safe, but would not be counted as a crime. So, Um, this involved talking to our Coalition members, learning about our programs, and really getting to the heart of what they. Conceptualized as safety and why they created the programs that they did. And then based on that developed, a set of pilot evaluations for different programs that we did based on those, ideas of what our, you know, ideal outcomes are. We want students to feel safe at school, not only physically, but emotionally and psychologically. We want them to feel like they have a trusted adult to go to when something is wrong, whether. They're being bullied or maybe they're having a hard time at home or, um, you know, their family, uh, someone lost their job and they need extra support. And that all, none of that would be captured in crime rates, but are very important for our sense of safety. So then I did a whole bunch of evaluations where I interviewed folks, tried to collect [00:34:00] quantitative data as well. And that process. Was incredibly rewarding for me because I really admire people who, uh, develop and implement programs. They're doing the real work, you know, I'm not doing the real work. They're doing the real work of actually, supporting our community members. But what I get to do is reflect back their work to them. 'cause in the moment they're just so busy then, and, and many people when they're doing this work, they're like: Am I even doing, making an impact? Am I doing this well? And all they can think about is how can I, you know, what did I do wrong and how can I do better? And, and they don't necessarily think about all the good that they're doing 'cause they don't give themselves the time to appreciate their own work because they're always trying to do better for our communities. Miata Tan: The Coalition for Community Safety and Justice is cataloging their learnings online in what they call a Collective Knowledge Base. Janice describes the [00:35:00] Knowledge Base as the endpoint of a long process to better understand the Coalition's work. Helen Ho: The Coalition for Community Safety and Justice was doing something, was building something new in San Francisco, and the idea was that there may be other communities across the country who are trying to build something similar and contexts across country, across communities. They're all different, but there is something maybe we could share and learn from each other. And so with this Knowledge Base Catalog, the impetus was to recognize that we're not experts. we're just trying things, building things, and we, we make a lot of mistakes and we're just doing the best that we can, but we've learned something and we'll, we'll share it. and this. Kind of approach really reminded me of a recipe book where you develop a recipe after many, many, many times of testing and tweaking and [00:36:00] building, and there's a recipe that really works for you. And then you can share it. And if you explain, you know, the different steps and some of the. You know, ingredients that are helpful, the techniques and why you chose to do certain things. Someone else can look at that recipe and tweak it how they want. And make it suitable for your own community and context. and once I got onto that analogy it blossomed to something else because. Also the act of creating food, like cooking and feeding our communities is something so important , and yet sometimes it can be seen as not serious. And that's really similar to community Safety is a very serious issue. But then. There's some worries that when we talk about like restoration and healing that's not a serious enough reaction response to safety issues, but when in fact it is crucial and essential, you know, healing and [00:37:00] restoration are crucial for our communities as much as cooking and feeding our communities and both are serious, even if some people think that they're not serious.  Miata Tan: I hear you. I love that metaphor with cooking and the recipe book as well. For our listeners, could you explain where the Knowledge Base Catalog lives online and how people can access it? Helen Ho: Sure. You can go to our website@CCSjsf.org and there's a little tab that says Knowledge Base. And you can either access it through the PDF version where you can get all of the catalog entries in one file, or you can search our database and you can filter or search by different things that you're interested in. So there a lot of programs have, cross functions or cross, aspects to them that might be of interest to you. So for example, if you. We're interested in programs to cultivate trusted community figures so you can look at the different programs that we've done that in different contexts in housing, at schools, or in business [00:38:00] corridors, because when you cultivate those trusted figures, when something bad happens, people then know who to go to, and it's much easier to access resources. You can also, if you're interested in, in language programs, you know, how did we think about doing programming for immigrant communities in their native languages? You can look at our tags and look at all of the programs that are in language. So our Chinese language, restorative justice, or our Chinese language victim services. You can look at all the different ways that we've, done our programming in language and not just in terms of translating something that wasn't English into Chinese, but creating something from the Chinese cultural perspective that would be more resonant with our community members. Miata Tan: How are you reflecting back this work through your research and the Knowledge Base Catalog?  Helen Ho: Before each evaluation, I interviewed the implementers to understand, you know… what's your vision of success? If your [00:39:00] program was successful beyond as wildest dreams what do you think you would see? What do you think people would say about it? And based on those answers, I was able to create some questions and, and measures to then understand. What you know, what assessment would look like in terms of these interviews with, um, program participants or collaborators. And so then I was able to reflect back in these memos about, insights that program participants learned or feelings that they, that they had or for. Program collaborators, what they've seen in their partnerships with us and what they appreciate about our approach and our programming. And also avenues that we could improve our programs. Because we know that harm and violence, although we often talk about them in terms of singular incidents, it's actually a systemic issue. And systemic is a word that people throw around and we don't even know. Like it's so thrown around so much out. I, I don't even remember what it means anymore, but. But we know that there are [00:40:00] big societal issues that cause harm. There's poverty, there's unaddressed mental health and behavioral health issues. There is just a lot of stress that is around that makes us. More tense and flare up and also, or have tensions flare up into conflict which makes us feel unsafe. And so there are policies that we can put in place to create a more. Complete instead of a patchwork system of support and resources so that people can feel more secure economically physically, uh, health wise. And all of that contributes to a, strong lasting and holistic sense of safety.  Miata Tan: As Janice and Helen have both mentioned The Coalition was able to grow in part due to funding that was made during 2019 and 2020 when we were seeing more acts of hate and [00:41:00] violence against Asian Americans. California's Stop the Hate program was one of those investments. Helen explains more about how the work has continued to expand.   Helen Ho: Another reason why the Coalition has been able to evolve is the, government investment in these programs and holistic safety programming. So. The city of San Francisco has been really great through their grants in looking in funding, holistic programming for different racial and ethnic communities and the state. Also, through their Stop the Hate grant has been able to fund programming and also the research and evaluation work that allows us to learn and evolve. Improve and also. Take these learnings beyond when grant programs might end and programs might end, and so that we can hopefully hold onto this, these learnings and not have to start from scratch the next [00:42:00] time Miata Tan: Thank you for laying all that out, Helen. So it sounds like there's a lot of different stakeholders that are really helping to aid this work and move it forward. What have you seen, like what are folks saying have had an impact on their community in a, in a positive way?  Helen Ho: Yeah. There's so much that. The Coalition has done and, and many different impacts. But one program that I evaluated, it was community Youth Center, CYC's, School Outreach Program in which they have teams of adults regularly attending lunch periods or school release periods at several schools in the city. And the idea here is that. At lunchtime or at score release period, kids are free. They're like, we're done with class, we're just gonna be out there wild. And they're figuring how to navigating social relationships, how to be in the world, who they are. , That can come with a lot of conflict, [00:43:00] insecurity a lot of difficulties that then end up, if they escalate enough, could turn into harm. For example, it's middle school kids are playing basketball and so when someone loses a game, they might start a argument and what the school outreach team would do is they're there. They've already built relationships with the students. They can step in and say, Hey, what's going on? Let's talk about this. And they can prevent. Conflicts from escalating into physical harm and also create a teaching moment for students to learn how to resolve their conflicts, how to deal with their difficult emotions of losing and equipping them with tools in the future to then also navigate conflict and, and prevent harm. And so I was able to interview the school collaborators uh, administrators or deans to understand, you know, why did they call on CYC, why did they want to establish this partnership and let adults outside the school come into the [00:44:00] school? And they were just so appreciative of the expertise and experience of the team that they knew. That they could trust the team to develop warm, strong relationships with students of all races and, and identities. That there was not going to be a bias that these adults, the team would be approachable. And so this team brought in both the trust, not only social emotional skills and conflict navigation, but also the organization and responsibility of keeping students physically safe. Another program which is the development of in-language Chinese restorative justice programming and also restorative justice program for Asian American youth. And in interviewing the folks who went through these training programs, I myself learned, truly learned what restorative [00:45:00] justice is. Essentially restorative justice takes the approach that we should, not look to punishment for punishment's sake, but to look at accountability and to restore what has been harmed or lost through, you know, an act of harm in order to do that, we actually have to build community you know, restoring after harm has been done requires relationships and trust for it to be most effective. And so what was really transformative for me was listening to. Youth, high schoolers learn about restorative justice, a completely new idea because so much of their life has been punitive at the home. They do something wrong, they're punished at school, they do something wrong, they're punished. And it's just a default way of reacting to quote unquote wrong. But these youth learned. All of these different [00:46:00] skills for navigating conflict that truly transform the way that they relate to everyone in their life. youth were talking to me about, resolving conflicts with their parents. To believe that their parents could change too. So, you know, what does that have to do with criminal justice? Well, when we think about people who have harmed, a lot of times we're hesitant to go through a restorative route where we just want them to take accountability rather than being punished for punishment's sake for them to change their behavior. But one criticism or barrier to that is we think, oh, they can't change. But you know, if your middle-aged immigrant parent who you thought could never change, could change the sky's the limit in terms of who can change their behavior and be in a better relationship with you. Miata Tan: These workshops are so important in helping to really bring people together and also insight that change. Helen Ho: We also wanna look ahead to [00:47:00] deeper and longer term healing. And so what can we do to restore a sense of safety, a sense of community and especially, um, with a lot of heightened, uh, racial tensions, especially between Asian and black communities that you know, the media and other actors take advantage of our goal of the Coalition is to be able to deescalate those tensions and find ways for communities to see each other and work together and then realize that we can do more to help each other and prevent harm within and across our communities if we work together. For example, we're doing a transit safety audit with our community members, where we've invited our community members who are in for our organization, mainly Chinese, immigrants who don't speak English very well to come with us and ride. The bus lines that are most important to our community coming in and out of Chinatown [00:48:00] to assess what on this bus or this ride makes you feel safe or unsafe, and how can we change something to make you feel safe on the bus? it's so important because public transportation is a lifeline for our community, And so we completed those bus ride alongs and folks are writing in their notebooks and they shared so many. Amazing observations and recommendations that we're now compiling and writing a report to then recommend to, um, S-F-M-T-A, our transit agency the bus. Is one of the few places where a bunch of strangers are in close quarters, a bunch of strangers from many different walks of life. Many different communities are in close quarters, and we just have to learn how to exist with each other. And it could be a really great way for us to practice that skill if we could just do some public education on, how to ride the bus.    Miata Tan: I asked [00:49:00] Helen about how she hopes people will access and build on the learnings in CCS J's Collective Knowledge Base. Helen Ho: Each community will have its own needs and community dynamics And community resources. And so it's hard to say that there's a one size fits all approach, which is also why the recipe book approach is more fitting because everyone just needs to kind of take things, uh, and tweak it to their own contexts. I would just say that for taking it either statewide or nationwide, it's just that something needs to be done in a coordinated fashion that understands the. Importance of long-term solutions for safety and holistic solutions for safety. The understands that harm is done when people's needs are not met, and so we must refocus once we have responded to the crises in the moment of harm, that we [00:50:00] also look to long-term and long lasting community safety solutions. Miata Tan: So with this Knowledge Base, anyone can access it online. Who do you hope will take a peek inside? Helen Ho: Who do I hope would take a peek at the Knowledge Base? I would really love for other people who are at a crossroads just like we were in the early. Days who are scrambling, are building something new and are just in go, go, go mode to come look at some of what we've done so that they just don't have to reinvent the wheel. They could just take something, take one of our templates or. Take some of our topics workshop topics. Something where it just saves them a bunch of time that they don't have to figure it out and then they can move on to the next step of evolving their programs even more. Um, I think that's my greatest hope. I think another this might be too cynical, but I also feel like with [00:51:00] the political. Interest waning in Asian American community safety, that there's going to be a loss of resources. You know, hopefully we can get more resources to sustain these programs, but in reality, a lot of programs will not continue. And it is a tragedy because the people who have developed these programs and worked on them for years Have built so much knowledge and experience and when we just cut programs short, we lose it. We lose the people who have built not only the experience of running this program, but the relationships that they've built in our community that are so hard to replicate and build up again. So my hope is that in however many years when we get another influx of resources from when people care about Asian American community safety, again, that somewhere some will dust off this Knowledge Base. And again, not have [00:52:00] to start from scratch, but, start at a further point so that we can, again, evolve our approach and, and do better for our communities. Miata Tan: That's really beautiful. Hoping that people for the future can access it.  Helen Ho: Another thing about, people either from the future and also in this current moment when they're also asking what's being done. Because I think a part of feeling not safe is that no one's coming to help me and the cynicism of no one's doing anything about this. And and also.  a withdrawal from our community saying, oh, our Asian, the Asian American community, they're approaching it in the wrong way or not doing the right what, whatever it is that your criticism is. But my hope is that folks in our community, folks in the future, folks outside of our, you know, Asian American community, can come to this Knowledge Base and see what we're doing. [00:53:00] Realize that there are, there is a lot of work being put into creating long-term, equitable, holistic safety solutions that can heal individuals in our community, heal our communities at a as a whole, and heal our relationships between communities. And there's so much good being done and that. If more folks join in our collaborations or in our efforts to get more resources to sustain these programs, we can really continue doing great things.  Miata Tan: With this Knowledge Base catalog, is there a way you hope it will continue to evolve to help better inform, I guess someone who might be on the other side of the country or in a totally different place? Miles away from San Francisco. Helen Ho: I would love to be able to do more evaluations and documenting of our work. I mean, we're continually doing more and new stuff. , Even [00:54:00] in a period where we don't have as many resources, we're still doing a lot of work. For example. We are continuing our work to get SFPD to implement a language access policy that works for our communities. And we're doing more and more work on that. And to be able to document that and share that new work would be really exciting. Um, and any other of our new initiatives I will say, going back to the recipe book analogy or metaphor, I don't know if this is just me, but when I have a cookbook, it's great. It's like so long. There's so many recipes. I only use three of them and I use those three all of the time. so that's what I was also thinking about for the Knowledge Base where there's a lot of stuff in here. Hopefully you can find a few things that resonate with you that you can really carry with you into your practice. Miata Tan: Thank you so much for speaking with me today, Helen.  Helen Ho: Thank you for having me. ​[00:55:00]  Miata Tan: The music we played throughout today's [00:56:00] episode was by the incredible Mark Izu check out stick song from his 1992 album Circle of Fire. Such a beautiful track, Now, a big thank you to Janice Tay and Helen for joining me on today's show. You can learn more about the Coalition for Community Safety and Justice via their website. That's ccsjsf.org  Make sure to check out their fantastic Knowledge Base Catalog that Helen spoke to us about from examples of victim centered support programs to rapid response resources during instances of community harm. There's some really important information on there. And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. For show notes, check out our website. That's kpfa.org/program/APEX-express. APEX Express is a collective of activists that include [00:57:00] Ayame Keane-Lee, Anuj Vaidya, Cheryl Truong, Jalena Keane-Lee, Miko Lee, Miata Tan, Preeti Mangala Shekar and Swati Rayasam.  Tonight's show was produced by me, Miata Tan. Get some rest y'all .  ​  The post APEX Express – 1.22.26 – What Is Community Safety? appeared first on KPFA.

Long Island born musician talks about getting his engineering chops together at San Francisco State and eventually creating great sound for so many seminal albums at Westlake Studios and beyond.

The fight over the soul of higher education is very alive right now, with the Trump administration engaged in dozens of investigations and multiple lawsuits against colleges and universities around the country. Billions of research dollars at those schools have been frozen, too. So today, in a special series called Code Switch History Class, we're looking back at another time of upheaval — a long, bloody strike at San Francisco State that forever changed higher education in the United States.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Beginning in 2021, when Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (now X) censored posts by Palestinians protesting their expulsion from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah to today's genocide in Gaza, Big Tech has advanced an imperialist agenda and betrayed its own alleged commitment to free speech and democratic values. Through alliances with the Israeli government and Zionist activists, they have leveraged their massive power to spread propaganda, silence criticism of Israel, and smear dissenters. In our latest, we talk with Prof. Omar Zahzah (@omarzahzah.bsky.social), professor at San Francisco State, and author of "TERMS OF SERVITUDE: zionism, silicon valley, and digital settler colonialism in the palestinian liberation struggle," to discuss the censorship of pro-Palestinian voices, targeting of the Palestinian liberation movement in Gaza and beyond, and the spreading of Zionist propaganda being done by Big Tech. Please listen in on this important interview. Bio//Omar Zahzah is a writer, poet, organizer of Lebanese Palestinian descent, and Assistant Professor of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies at San Francisco State University. Omar has covered digital repression in relation to Palestine as a freelance journalist since May 2021, with work appearing in such outlets as Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, CounterPunch, and more. He is the Author of “TERMS OF SERVITUDE: zionism, silicon valley, and digital settler colonialism in the palestinian liberation struggle."—————-

Pablo Torre spent six months digging and still couldn't tell the truth. Riley Gaines breaks down the Mother Jones “investigation,” exposes what Pablo conveniently left out, reveals the agenda behind the smear campaign, and sets the record straight on Kentucky, coaching scandals, San Francisco State, and the so-called “anti-trans empire.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Here's Al Robles reading an excerpt from his poem, “Cold Mountain in Chinatown,” which he performed at the Poetry Center at San Francisco State on November 10th, 1976. 

Caro De Robertis is an author based in Oakland, and a creative writing professor at San Francisco State. They're mostly known for their magical works of fiction. But for their most recent project, they wanted to focus on the true stories of queer elders of color. The book is “So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color.” 

Eric Frandsen and Jason Walker preview Utah State men's basketball season debut vs Westminster. Comments from Jerrod Calhoun about his team. USU women's soccer opens the Mountain West championship with a 1-0 win over New Mexico. USU women's volleyball wins their 13th straight and clinches an invitation to the Mountain West tournament. Observations about Utah State women's basketball exhibition game vs San Francisco State.

Eric Frandsen and Jason Walker discuss the introduction of Utah State University's new president Brad L. Mortensen. Mortensen comes to USU from Weber State. What role does a university president play with athletics? Looking ahead to Mountain West football games this weekend. Which could be the most interesting? Utah State women's basketball hosts San Francisco State in an exhibition game. Big games for Utah State women's volleyball this week. Utah Jazz unveil new City Edition jerseys - Jason doesn't like the concept.

How exactly does the mind work? How do we learn and make decisions? And how does that compare to the way AI thinks? In their new book, “The Emergent Mind: How Intelligence Arises in People and Machines,” San Francisco State psychologist Gaurav Suri and Stanford's Jay McClelland examine how neural networks work in our brains, and in AI. Guests: Gaurav Suri, computational neuroscientist and professor, San Francisco State University Jay McClelland, professor and director of the Center for Mind, Brain, Computation and Technology, Stanford University Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After nearly 400 conversations with Olympians, Paralympians, and trailblazing women athletes from 55 countries, one thing is clear: no two stories are alike. Some athletes train with world-class facilities, others without basic equipment. Some are household names, others are fighting for visibility in sports you've never even seen on TV. And yet, across all these differences, certain themes echo again and again.That's what this new Best Of series is all about—spotlighting both the range of experiences and the threads that connect them. We've pulled together the most powerful moments across years of conversations, including:✨ Best Advice to Younger Selves — from “give yourself grace to be a beginner” to “don't dim your light for anyone.” ✨ Best Stories of Resilience — tales of athletes coming back from devastating injuries, near-misses, and moments when the world doubted them most. ✨ Best Moments of Role Modelship — athletes lifting the next generation, mentoring teammates, and carrying entire communities with them to the world stage. ✨ Best Stories of Identity & Joy — how athletes embrace who they are on and off the field, from glitter on the track to pride in their heritage. and many more!You'll hear voices as different as the sports they represent, yet together, they reveal what it really takes to rise to the top. This isn't just one story. It's hundreds woven together. And this is just the beginning.In this episode — My Identity (Part 1) — we explore who athletes are beyond medals and headlines. Two-time Olympic champion Caster Semenya says “take me as I am” and challenges narrow ideas of womanhood in sport. Three-time Olympian Shannon Rowbury opens up about the identity shift after stepping away from competition, how she “meditates through movement,” and the power of running community (including her time supporting the San Francisco State team). Claire Taggart, a boccia athlete from Northern Ireland competing for the United Kingdom, reflects on being multifaceted — a woman and a disabled elite athlete — and on boccia's post-Tokyo move to gendered events giving women new space to shine. This is identity in motion: honest, layered, and unapologetically real.Flame Bearers is a women's sports storytelling studio, illuminating the unsung stories of exceptional women athletes from around the world. We tell stories via podcast, video and live events.For more videos about elite women athletes, subscribe to our YouTube channel ► / @flamebearersFollow us - Instagram - / flamebearers Facebook - / flamebearerspodcast Linkedin - / flame-bearers Tiktok- / flame_bearers X- / flame_bearers Our Website - https://flamebearers.com/Leave a comment and tell us what you liked in the video. If you like the content, subscribe to our channel!

Recently, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at fundamentally changing how the country addresses homelessness. The order promises to crack down on street homelessness across the country, in part by institutionalizing people with mental illness. Here in California, Governor Gavin Newsom has criticized Trump's recent order, while at the same time encouraging a more punitive approach to getting people off the streets. There's so much debate around the issue, but we rarely hear from the unhoused people at the center of this controversy. Vanessa Rancaño introduces us to Armando Herrera Vargas. He once had a family, a house and a job, but he has been living on the streets of San Francisco for the past decade.  And our series of conversations about resilience continues with Dr. Shanice Robinson. She's a visiting assistant professor at San Francisco State. Resilience is central to her scholarly work, which focuses on the school-to-prison pipeline, and to her advocacy work with incarcerated people. It's also core to her personal experience as a self-described “prison wife” whose husband is serving multiple life sentences in prison.   Plus we visit Fresno where this summer, a group of teens got a chance to study a musical genre they have a deep cultural connection to. And they got to put their own spin on it. Reporter Esther Quintanilla with the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative and KVPR takes us to a rehearsal of Mariachi Unidos.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Speaking Out of Place we have a special episode on the war in Iran. Scholars and activists Persis Karim and Manijeh Moradian discuss both the Iranian national issues involved as well as the regional context, connecting this war with the genocide in Gaza and Israel's extensive wars elsewhere. At stake is both Iranian sovereignty and the calls for so-called “regime change.” We question the use of that term, delve into how the struggle for liberation in Iran rejects both the repressive Islamic state and the US/Israeli war machine.  Our discussion draws the frightening parallels between Iran's stifling of dissent and imprisonment of political enemies and others with our own government's.  Finally, we recall the Woman, Life, Freedom movement and build hope for international solidarity with groups working for liberation in Iran, Palestine, and elsewhere, and insist liberation will never be achieved by dropping bombs.                Persis Karim teaches in the Department of Humanities and Comparative and World Literature at San Francisco State University. She was the creator and director of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies during its entire existence there. Since 1999, she has been actively working to expand the field of Iranian Diaspora Studies, beginning with the first anthology of Iranian writing she co-edited, A World Between: Poems, Short Stories and Essays by Iranian-Americans. She is the editor of two other anthologies of Iranian diaspora literature: Let Me Tell You Where I've Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora, and Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian-American Writers. Before coming to San Francisco State, she was a professor of English & Comparative Literature at San Jose State where she was the founder and director of the Persian Studies program, and coordinator of the Middle East Studies Minor. She has published numerous articles about Iranian diaspora literature and culture for academic publications including Iranian Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asian, African and Middle East Studies (CSSAMES), and MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States. “The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life,” is her first film project (co-directed and co-produced with Soumyaa Behrens). She received her Master's in Middle East Studies and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UT Austin. She is also a poet.Manijeh Moradian is assistant professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her book, This Flame Within: Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States, was published by Duke University Press in December 2022.  She has published widely including in American Quarterly, Journal of Asian American Studies, Scholar & Feminist online, and Women's Studies Quarterly. She is a founding member of the Raha Iranian Feminist Collective and on the editorial board of the Jadaliyya.com Iran Page. 

April is National Poetry Month, so here's some more poetry! To celebrate in proper style Bay Poets has been exploring the Poetry Center at San Francisco State's archives. Today's poet was from the East Coast, and also helped shape San Francisco's literary scene.

Today, we hear Al Robles reading an excerpt from his poem “Cold Mountain in Chinatown” which he performed at the Poetry Center at San Francisco State on November 10th, 1976. You can watch Al's reading as part of the Poetry Center Digital Archive here!

Show Notes: Robert de Neufville dropped out of grad school after spending over a decade in grad school and not finishing his PhD. This was around the time of the financial crisis. Robert realized that after a decade in academia he was less employable than when he graduated from Harvard. He had done a lot of teaching at Berkeley and San Francisco State, but found himself struggling to find a job. He eventually moved to Hawaii to work freelance editing projects. He moved there because he had a friend who wanted to rent out his house. Working as a Forecaster and Political Writer Currently, Robert is working as a forecaster and political writer. He has a sub-stack newsletter called Telling the Future, which has about 1500 subscribers. While he is not particularly happy writing about politics right now, he believes it's necessary for his career and personal growth. Therapy and Political Theory Robert discusses their first period after college and therapy. He mentions the stigma surrounding therapy and the importance of normalizing it. However, he eventually reached a breaking point. He didn't know what he wanted to do after college. He drove to New York and worked at several different places, including consulting and Booz and Allen, which he ultimately found lacked meaning and decided to pursue a more intellectual career. He knew that he liked thinking and writing about things, so he applied to grad school for political science, where he studied political theory and moral issues related to community living. However, he found the academic culture at Berkeley to be toxic and, combined with an unhealthy lifestyle, he decided it was not for him.  Robert touches on his difficult childhood, which was characterized by narcissistic parents and abusive mother. He eventually sought therapy and found that he felt better, but struggled to complete his dissertation. He dropped out of grad school, despite their professors' concerns, and was diagnosed with chronic PTSD. Finding Solace in Teaching Robert found solace in teaching, but disliked the part where he had to grade students. Some people had unhealthy relationships with grades, and he felt he had to refer them to suicide watch. He realized that teaching was great because it allowed them to understand a topic better by explaining it to others. He found that teaching was the only way they could truly understand a topic, but he realized he didn't want to do academic work. Additionally, he found that there was a backlog of people who wanted to become political theory professors who spend their time teaching adjuncts and spending money on conferences and job opportunities. Robert believes that his experience in grad school was intellectually rewarding and that his training and political theory shaped who he is. Writing for Love and Money Robert  talks about his experience writing for mainstream publications like The Economist, National Interest, California magazine, The Big Think, and The Washington Monthly. He shares his struggles with freelance writing, as he finds it slow and fussy, and finds it frustrating to be paid for work that takes time to complete. He also discusses his writing about forecasting, becoming a skilled judgmental forecaster. He makes money by producing forecasts for various organizations, which is a relatively new field. He encourages readers to support writers they love and consider paying for their work, as it is hard and not very rewarding. Forecasting Methods and Examples The conversation turns to Robert's writing and forecasting. He explains his approach to forecasting and how he uses history to guide his predictions. He shares his method of estimating the probability of events in the future, which involves looking back at similar elections and establishing a base rate. This helps in estimating the probability of what is going to happen in a specific situation. Robert also mentions that there are some situations that require more analytical thinking, such as discovering AGI or other technologies. He talks about The Phil Tetlock project, a government agency that helped invent the internet, aimed to determine if anyone could forecast geopolitical questions. The research showed that people were terrible at it, even analysts and pundits. However, a certain percentage of people consistently outperformed intelligence analysts using methodical extrapolations. Robert participated in the tournament and qualified as a super forecaster in his first year. He works with Metaculus and the Good Judgment Project, which produces probabilistic forecasts for decision-makers. The forecasting community is now working on making forecasts useful, such as understanding the reasons behind people's forecasts rather than just the number they produce. Influential Harvard Courses and Professors Robert stresses that he found his interaction with fellow students to be most enriching, and he appreciated Stanley Hoffmann's class on Ethics and International relations, which was taught through a humanist lens and emphasized the importance of morality. He also enjoyed watching the list of movies and reading academic articles alongside his classes, which eventually informed his teaching. He also mentions Adrienne Kennedy's playwriting class, which he found exciting and engaging. He enjoys table reads and reading people's plays fresh off the presses and believes that these experiences have shaped his forecasting skills. Timestamps: 03:16: Robert's Move to Hawaii and Career Challenges  06:16: Current Endeavors and Writing Career  07:58: Therapy and Early Career Struggles  10:14: Grad School Experience and Academic Challenges  22:41: Teaching and Forecasting Career 26:21: Forecasting Techniques and Projects  41:27: Impact of Harvard and Influential Professors  Links: Substack newsletter: https://tellingthefuture.substack.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertdeneufville/ Featured Non-profit: The featured non-profit of this episode of The 92 Report is recommended by Patrick Jackson who reports: “Hi I'm Patrick Ian Jackson, class of 1992. The featured nonprofit of this episode of The 92 report is His Hands Free Clinic, located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Since 1992 His Hands Free Clinic has been seeking to honor God by helping the uninsured and underinsured in our community. The clinic is a 501, c3 nonprofit ministry providing free health care to Cedar Rapids and the surrounding communities. I love the work of this organization. The church that I pastor, First Baptist Church, Church of the Brethren, has been a regular contributor to the clinic for the past couple of years. You can learn more about their work at WWW dot his hands clinic.org, and now here is Will Bachman with this week's episode.” To learn more about their work, visit: www.HisHandsClinic.org.  

Peter Kirby is a researcher, writer, and activist based in San Rafael, California. Born in 1971 in San Francisco and raised in nearby Brisbane, California, he has a background in radio, television, and film, having studied at Cal State Long Beach and San Francisco State. Since 2009, Kirby has focused extensively on researching and writing about geoengineering. Kirby is the author of Chemtrails Exposed: A New Manhattan Project, a book in which he argues that a large-scale, covert scientific program—akin to the original Manhattan Project—is responsible for a plurality of projects that are impacting the earth's climate. He asserts that this operation involves major institutions, and is backed by significant funding and numerous patents. His work suggests that these activities are hidden from the public through a mass-disinformation campaign. Kirby has collected significant evidence tying elevated levels of toxins like aluminum and barium in rainwater and air samples to geoengineering activities.

This month marks the anniversary of the resolution of a landmark student strike at San Francisco State, on March 21, 1969. Patrick Salaver helped organize the protests, demanding the university better reflect and support students of color and admit more non-white students. The protests also led to the creation of the nation's first-ever college of ethnic studies – a template for colleges and universities across the country. Salaver's niece Nicole didn't didn't know about her uncle's activism until she went to San Francisco State in the early 2000s. She was shocked to see his name in one of her textbooks, and now, she wants the world to know his story. Today's show is an excerpt from Inheriting, a podcast from our friends at LAist Studios and the NPR Network. The show, hosted by Emily Kwong, is centered on the stories of Asian American and Pacific Islander families. It explores how one event in history can ripple through generations.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At seven this week's guest, Rikki West, begged a mysterious God for help, praying that her drunk father won't harm their family and that he won't be sent to hell. But when nothing seems to happen, she worried: Is anyone up there really listening? This question triggered a lifelong search for the great, loving being she imagines her prayers might reach. Delving into Catholicism, psychedelics, transcendental meditation, yoga, AA and Buddhist chanting, she explores every available path. She studies genetic science at UC Berkeley and humanities at San Francisco State, combing through the knowledge they offer for answers to the big questions.On this guest episode I was delighted to interview the wonderful Rikki West. She was kind enough to send me a copy of her book, The Empty Bowl, and it was so smoothly and beautifully written I gobbled it up in days! Not only is Rikki a phenomenally talented writer she also has incredible life story. I try not to spoil it and let Rikki share her tale on the show of taking acid in 1960's Berkeley, having dinner at Roman Polanski's house, exploring the line between science & spirituality, surviving a violent rape that brought her face to face with the guilt and denial that shames women into silence, and fueled her addiction, how she has stayed sober for decades, and how losing everything ultimately led to a joyous late-life renaissance. Rikki West is the author of The Empty Bowl: Pursuing Truth in a Messy World, a former spiritual seeker, and a UC Berkeley–trained scientist. She spent decades trying to reconcile scientific explanations of existence with her ordinary, real-life awareness. One adventure at a time, she found her way to a peace and beauty that changed all the questions. Her book Rootlines, a memoir of family healing, was published by She Writes Press in 2020. Mother of Noli and Godmother of Morgan, Rikki loves being outside in the alpine desert of northern New Mexico, where she lives with her wife Jill and that old Yamaha.Learn More About Rikki Here:https://www.rikkiwest.com/ 

We're pumped to have Christopher Cobbs as our guest! Christopher's story is one for the books. From singing church hymns as a kid to studying vocal music at the Oakland School for the Arts, he's been chasing his creative spark from the start. After earning his degree in Broadcasting at San Francisco State, he launched ItsCobbsProductions and brought some amazing projects to life—like the stage show The Gift and the web series Big Girl Blues, which landed on Keke Palmer's KeyTV this year. Oh, and did we mention he's also worked with Disney Streaming and the Golden State Warriors Studio? Talk about wearing a lot of hats! Christopher's all about creating art that inspires young people to dream big and go for it. Come hang out with us and hear from a guy who's making waves in entertainment. And doing it his way. Join BraveMaker's conversation hosted by Tony Gapastione and Priscilla Lam. Watch the weekly LIVE stream on ⁠⁠BraveMaker ⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow BraveMaker on social media: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠ #BraveMaker #BraveMakerPodcast #LIVEstream #Filmmaking #music #entertainment

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and it's Friend Friday, which means I'm chatting with someone interesting from the Chicken Soup for the Soul world. Today I'd like you to meet Ashonti Ford, who wrote an inspirational story for our latest book about 101 Ways to Think Positive. Ashonti graduated from San Francisco State with a degree in Broadcast Communications, took an unpaid internship at a TV station far, far away, and is now an award-winning journalist who appears on over 100 different television news stations every morning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on Speaking Out of Place we talk with Professor Persis Karim, co-producer and co-director of a new documentary film, The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life. She is joined by Roya Ahmadi, a student at Stanford who interned at the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University and was part of the production team for the film. The film captures the lives of young Iranian-Americans who come to the San Francisco Bay Area around the time of the Iranian Revolution, and find themselves involved with, and helping to shape, a vibrant, international culture of politics and art. We talk about both the similarities and differences between those days and today—especially with regard to diasporic identity formation in different historical times, and the persistent need to resist racism and bigotry and act in solidarity with others. Persis Karim is the director of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University, where she also teaches in the Department of Humanities and Comparative and World Literature. Since 1999, she has been actively working to expand the field of Iranian Diaspora Studies, beginning with the first anthology of Iranian writing she co-edited, A World Between: Poems, Short Stories and Essays by Iranian-Americans. She is the editor of two other anthologies of Iranian diaspora literature: Let Me Tell You Where I've Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora, and Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian-American Writers. Before coming to San Francisco State, she was a professor of English & Comparative Literature at San Jose State where she was the founder and director of the Persian Studies program, and coordinator of the Middle East Studies Minor. She has published numerous articles about Iranian diaspora literature and culture for academic publications including Iranian Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asian, African and Middle East Studies (CSSAMES), and MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States. “The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life,” is her first film project (co-directed and co-produced with Soumyaa Behrens). She received her Master's in Middle East Studies and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UT Austin. She is also a poet.Roya Ahmadi is a senior at Stanford University studying Human Biology with a self-designed concentration in Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) Women's Health and a minor in Interdisciplinary Arts. She is interested in Muslim and SWANA women's sexual and reproductive health and culturally/religiously sensitive pregnancy care. Roya is a co-chair for the Stanford Institute for Diversity in the Arts Undergraduate Fellowship and a video and sound installation artist who has presented work in group shows across the US. Roya interned for the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at SFSU for two summers when she was in high school; the Center has had a deep impact on her artwork and her identity as an Iranian-American.Trailer:https://vimeo.com/1002914645

In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Professor Persis Karim, co-producer and co-director of a new documentary film, The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life. She is joined by Roya Ahmadi, a student at Stanford who interned at the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University and was part of the production team for the film. The film captures the lives of young Iranian-Americans who come to the San Francisco Bay Area around the time of the Iranian Revolution, and find themselves involved with, and helping to shape, a vibrant, international culture of politics and art. We talk about both the similarities and differences between those days and today—especially with regard to diasporic identity formation in different historical times, and the persistent need to resist racism and bigotry and act in solidarity with others.Persis Karim is the director of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University, where she also teaches in the Department of Humanities and Comparative and World Literature. Since 1999, she has been actively working to expand the field of Iranian Diaspora Studies, beginning with the first anthology of Iranian writing she co-edited, A World Between: Poems, Short Stories and Essays by Iranian-Americans. She is the editor of two other anthologies of Iranian diaspora literature: Let Me Tell You Where I've Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora, and Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian-American Writers. Before coming to San Francisco State, she was a professor of English & Comparative Literature at San Jose State where she was the founder and director of the Persian Studies program, and coordinator of the Middle East Studies Minor. She has published numerous articles about Iranian diaspora literature and culture for academic publications including Iranian Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asian, African and Middle East Studies (CSSAMES), and MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States. “The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life,” is her first film project (co-directed and co-produced with Soumyaa Behrens). She received her Master's in Middle East Studies and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UT Austin. She is also a poet.www.palumbo-liu.comhttps://speakingoutofplace.comBluesky @palumboliu.bsky.socialInstagram @speaking_out_of_place

In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Professor Persis Karim, co-producer and co-director of a new documentary film, The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life. She is joined by Roya Ahmadi, a student at Stanford who interned at the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University and was part of the production team for the film. The film captures the lives of young Iranian-Americans who come to the San Francisco Bay Area around the time of the Iranian Revolution, and find themselves involved with, and helping to shape, a vibrant, international culture of politics and art. We talk about both the similarities and differences between those days and today—especially with regard to diasporic identity formation in different historical times, and the persistent need to resist racism and bigotry and act in solidarity with others.Persis Karim is the director of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University, where she also teaches in the Department of Humanities and Comparative and World Literature. Since 1999, she has been actively working to expand the field of Iranian Diaspora Studies, beginning with the first anthology of Iranian writing she co-edited, A World Between: Poems, Short Stories and Essays by Iranian-Americans. She is the editor of two other anthologies of Iranian diaspora literature: Let Me Tell You Where I've Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora, and Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian-American Writers. Before coming to San Francisco State, she was a professor of English & Comparative Literature at San Jose State where she was the founder and director of the Persian Studies program, and coordinator of the Middle East Studies Minor. She has published numerous articles about Iranian diaspora literature and culture for academic publications including Iranian Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asian, African and Middle East Studies (CSSAMES), and MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States. “The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life,” is her first film project (co-directed and co-produced with Soumyaa Behrens). She received her Master's in Middle East Studies and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UT Austin. She is also a poet.www.palumbo-liu.comhttps://speakingoutofplace.comBluesky @palumboliu.bsky.socialInstagram @speaking_out_of_place

In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Professor Persis Karim, co-producer and co-director of a new documentary film, The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life. She is joined by Roya Ahmadi, a student at Stanford who interned at the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University and was part of the production team for the film. The film captures the lives of young Iranian-Americans who come to the San Francisco Bay Area around the time of the Iranian Revolution, and find themselves involved with, and helping to shape, a vibrant, international culture of politics and art. We talk about both the similarities and differences between those days and today—especially with regard to diasporic identity formation in different historical times, and the persistent need to resist racism and bigotry and act in solidarity with others.Persis Karim is the director of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University, where she also teaches in the Department of Humanities and Comparative and World Literature. Since 1999, she has been actively working to expand the field of Iranian Diaspora Studies, beginning with the first anthology of Iranian writing she co-edited, A World Between: Poems, Short Stories and Essays by Iranian-Americans. She is the editor of two other anthologies of Iranian diaspora literature: Let Me Tell You Where I've Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora, and Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian-American Writers. Before coming to San Francisco State, she was a professor of English & Comparative Literature at San Jose State where she was the founder and director of the Persian Studies program, and coordinator of the Middle East Studies Minor. She has published numerous articles about Iranian diaspora literature and culture for academic publications including Iranian Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asian, African and Middle East Studies (CSSAMES), and MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States. “The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life,” is her first film project (co-directed and co-produced with Soumyaa Behrens). She received her Master's in Middle East Studies and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UT Austin. She is also a poet.www.palumbo-liu.comhttps://speakingoutofplace.comBluesky @palumboliu.bsky.socialInstagram @speaking_out_of_place

The murals inside of San Francisco's Coit Tower are a popular tourist destination, but have been a source of contention from their inception. In his new book, “The Coit Tower Murals: New Deal Art and Political Controversy in San Francisco,” San Francisco State professor Robert Cherny chronicles the history of the murals, which were painted in the style of Diego Rivera and depict life in the Bay Area during the 1930s. They were created as part of the New Deal programs that supporting artists following the Great Depression. But controversies sprang up over the murals' perceived pro-Communist imagery and the value of public art. We'll talk with Cherny about the murals and their legacy. Guests: Robert Cherny, professor emeritus of history, San Francisco State University; author of "The Coit Tower Murals: New Deal Art and Political Controversy in San Francisco"

In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Professor Persis Karim, co-producer and co-director of a new documentary film, The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life. She is joined by Roya Ahmadi, a student at Stanford who interned at the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University and was part of the production team for the film. The film captures the lives of young Iranian-Americans who come to the San Francisco Bay Area around the time of the Iranian Revolution, and find themselves involved with, and helping to shape, a vibrant, international culture of politics and art. We talk about both the similarities and differences between those days and today—especially with regard to diasporic identity formation in different historical times, and the persistent need to resist racism and bigotry and act in solidarity with others.Persis Karim is the director of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University, where she also teaches in the Department of Humanities and Comparative and World Literature. Since 1999, she has been actively working to expand the field of Iranian Diaspora Studies, beginning with the first anthology of Iranian writing she co-edited, A World Between: Poems, Short Stories and Essays by Iranian-Americans. She is the editor of two other anthologies of Iranian diaspora literature: Let Me Tell You Where I've Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora, and Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian-American Writers. Before coming to San Francisco State, she was a professor of English & Comparative Literature at San Jose State where she was the founder and director of the Persian Studies program, and coordinator of the Middle East Studies Minor. She has published numerous articles about Iranian diaspora literature and culture for academic publications including Iranian Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asian, African and Middle East Studies (CSSAMES), and MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States. “The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life,” is her first film project (co-directed and co-produced with Soumyaa Behrens). She received her Master's in Middle East Studies and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UT Austin. She is also a poet.www.palumbo-liu.comhttps://speakingoutofplace.comBluesky @palumboliu.bsky.socialInstagram @speaking_out_of_place

Through its direct contact with the public and its protection by the First Amendment, news media has long been considered the “fourth branch of government.” As the media landscape continues to change and partisan news becomes increasingly popular, many journalists are examining their own profession and responsibilities. Investigative reporter Bigad Shaban, himself the son of immigrants and educators, wants folks to understand the importance of media in a civil society.  Bigad, in conversation with San Francisco State's Dr. Laura Moorhead, talks to an audience of high school journalism students about the belief he has in his profession. Bigad discusses his beginnings as a journalist, what he's learned over an 18-year career, and why a healthy democracy relies on a news media to hold it responsible. This program is part of the Commonwealth Club World Affairs' civics education initiative, Creating Citizens. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a textCarson City is represented on the show today. Coach Vince Inglima is in the house! Coach Inglima takes time to share his playing and coaching journey in an episode that will give young athletes (from our area especially) the vision to expand their future in hoops beyond high school.Vince Inglima attended Carson High School. He was a late bloomer going from a backup guard on the Freshman team to earning Sierra League Player of the Year as a Senior. He went on to have a Hall of Fame Career at Sonoma State. Inglima earned CCAA Male Athlete of the Year, All-West Region, and All-American honors. He also holds the school record for career 3-point percentage (44.6) and is third in free throw percentage (82.5). Inglima was an Academic All-American, and was awarded Academic All-District by ESPN The Magazine. Vince helped lead his team to winning the CCAA for the first time in school history. He was inducted into the Sonoma State Athletics Hall of Fame in 2012. He also played professionally in Australia before jumping into the coaching world where he is currently the Head Coach at San Fransisco State. Vince shares great stories about Carson High School, David Padgett, Jeff Rowe, Sonoma State, experiences in Australia, Joe Ingles, CJ Massingale, coaching, San Francisco State and MUCH more!Big thanks to Coach Inglima for taking the time to share his journey in hoops with us today. This is such a great example of hard work paying off whether you want to be a great high school basketball player, continue on to the next level as a player, or find your way as a coach. We know you'll all enjoy this one!Thank you Coach Vince Inglima!You can find this episode on Apple, Spotify or any source for podcasts.Follow us on social media for news, updates and highlight reels!Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/notin.myhouse.79Instagram- @Not_in_my_house_podcastTwitter - @NOTINMYHOUSEpc

Anti-Asian hate incidents rose dramatically during COVID, likely fueled by prominent statements about the “Chinese virus.”  VIewed through the wider lens of history, this was just the latest in a long experience of Anti-Asian hate, including the murder of Vincent Chin, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII.  For those who think that anti-Asian hate has receded as the COVID has “ended,” just two days prior to recording this episode a Filipino woman was pushed to her death on BART in San Francisco. These incidents are broadcast widely, particularly in Asian News outlets. Today we talk about the impact of anti-Asian hate on the health and well being of older adults with Russell Jeung, sociologist, Professor of Asian Studies at San Francisco State, and co-founder of Stop AAPI-Hate, Lingsheng Li, geriatrician/palliative care doc and T32 fellow at UCSF, and Jessica Eng, medical director of On Lok, a PACE, and Associate Professor in the UCSF Division of Geriatrics.  We discuss: What is considered a hate incident, how is it tracked, what do we know about changes over time The wider impact of Anti-Asian hate on older Asians, who are afraid to go out, leading to anxiety, social isolation, loneliness, decreased exercise, missed appointments and medications. Lingsheng (and I) recently published studies on this in JAMA Internal Medicine, and JAGS. Ongoing reports from patients about anti-Asian hate experiences  Should clinicians screen for Anti-Asian hate? Why? Why not? Proposing the clinicians ask a simple follow up question to the usual “do you feel safe at home?” question used to screen for domestic violence.  Add to this, “do you feel safe outside the home?” This question, while providing an opportunity to talk about direct and indirect experiences, can be asked of all patients, and opens the door to conversations about anti-semitism, islamophobia, or anti-Black racism. See also guides for how to confront and discuss anti-Asian hate in these articles in the NEJM and JGIM. And to balance the somber subject, Lingsheng requested the BTS song Dynamite, which was the group's first English language song, and was released at the height of the COVID pandemic.  I had fun trying to make a danceable version with electronic drums for the audio-only podcast.  Maybe we'll get some BTS followers to subscribe to GeriPal?!?   -@AlexSmithMD  

Why is the ocean full of moon jellies? How do snails use fishing nets made of slime? What's actually happening when a mosquito sucks your blood? These are just some of the questions that the producers and scientists behind “Deep Look,” KQED's Emmy-award winning video series, take on. Now in its 11th season, “Deep Look,” uses ultra-high definition video to give viewers an up close – and sometimes microscopic look – at the insects, animals and plants that we can find around us. We'll talk to the team behind the show, and hear from you: what's something in the natural world that you've given a deeper look, and how did that make you feel? Guests: Damon Tighe, biotech educator and naturalist Sarah Cohen, professor of biology, San Francisco State's Estuary & Ocean Science Center Gabriela Quirós, supervising producer for Deep Look, KQED Josh Cassidy, lead producer and cinematographer for Deep Look, KQED