Podcasts about san quentin

Two people are connected by a terrible crime, committed over 30 years ago. What do we owe the people we hurt, and how long does that debt endure?  Subscribe to Ear Hustle Plus! In the feed this week: Earlonne and Nigel get a reading from San Quentin village's resident Mayan astrologer and clairvoyant. And coming up: Nigel takes EH+ subscribers on a mysterious "friend date." Sign up at earhustlesq.com/plus or directly in Apple Podcasts.  This episode was scored with music by Antwan Williams, David Jassy, Derrell Sadiq Davis, Bruce Wallace, and Earlonne Woods. Thanks, as always, to Warden Andes, Lt. Berry, and Sgt. Graves at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center; Acting Warden Padilla, Associate Warden Lewis, and Lt. Avina at the California Institution for Women; and Warden De La Cruz and Lt. Vogel at the Central California Women's Facility, for their support of the show. Thanks also to R. Hosea Collins at the Calvary Baptist Church of Hawthorne and Commissioner Robert Barton and the California Board of Parole. Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On today's episode of Uncuffed, we hear how Producers at San Quentin, Solano and the California Institution for Women, find family in unexpected places. 

California's death penalty is once again at the center of a major political and constitutional fight.California gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra says that, if elected, he would extend Gov. Gavin Newsom's moratorium on executions. Becerra's position is notable because, while serving as California attorney general, he previously expressed support for capital punishment and his office defended death sentences.In this episode of Left Coast News, we examine California's long-running battle over the death penalty, executive power, the initiative process, victims' rights, and the role of voters in determining state law.California voters rejected Proposition 34 in 2012, which would have abolished the death penalty. In 2016, voters rejected Proposition 62, another effort to abolish capital punishment, while approving Proposition 66, which sought to change procedures governing death-penalty appeals.Then, in 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order establishing a moratorium on executions, withdrawing California's lethal-injection protocol and closing the execution chamber at San Quentin. The order did not overturn existing convictions or death sentences.Now Becerra says he would continue the moratorium if elected governor. That raises a larger debate extending well beyond capital punishment: How should executive authority interact with laws and policies previously approved by voters?We break down Becerra's record, Newsom's executive order, California's ballot-box history on capital punishment, and the competing arguments surrounding justice, constitutional government, public safety and the rights of crime victims.Subscribe to Left Coast News for commentary and analysis on California politics, public safety, government accountability and constitutional issues.#CaliforniaPolitics #XavierBecerra #GavinNewsom #DeathPenalty #CaliforniaGovernor #CaliforniaNews #CapitalPunishment #CriminalJustice #VictimsRights #PublicSafety #RuleOfLaw #ExecutivePower #CaliforniaElection #Sacramento #LeftCoastNews

She spent four years teaching poetry to inmates of a maximum securityprison.

A century after 11-year-old Janette Lawrence was brutally murdered walking home from a babysitting job, her ghost is still seen wandering the streets of Madison — seeking justice that never came.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/KluxenWoodsFEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: I narrate a chapter from the audiobook, “Suffer the Children: American Horrors, Homicides and Hauntings” by Troy Taylor. The chapter is entitled “1921: Murder at Kluxen's Woods” - a murder that has yet to be officially solved, although many hundreds of people in the area feel they know exactly who got away with murder. A murder that resulted in a haunting!LISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Murder at Kluxen's Woods” is from the audiobook, “Suffer the Children: American Horrors, Homicides and Hauntings” by Troy Taylor: https://amzn.to/45NQExh(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: June 2021LIKE WHAT YOU'RE HEARING? WEIRD DARKNESS posts episodes 7 DAYS A WEEK! Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts or visit https://weirddarkness.com/listen. • Paranormal • True Crime • Ghosts • UFOs • Cryptids • Unexplained • Want even more? Become an OFFICIAL WEIRDO for commercial-free episodes, bonus episodes, weeknight live chats, audiobooks & more at https://WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIALThis episode of Weird Darkness follows the 1921 murder of an 11-year-old babysitter beside a New Jersey winery, the two suspects tried and acquitted for killing her, and the ghost that motorists still report walking the same street toward a home she never reached.It opens on Fairview Avenue in Madison, New Jersey, on the evening of October 6, 1921, when 11-year-old Janette Lawrence left a babysitting job at the Sandt home and walked past the wooded edge of the Kluxen Winery estate toward her house at 142 Ridgedale Avenue. Two Boy Scouts found her body beside a tree stump in Kluxen's Woods about two hours later, stabbed 23 times, her hands bound behind her with the kind of cord local rose greenhouses used for shipping. The Madison borough council ordered the arrest of 14-year-old Francis Kluxen III, grandson of the winery's founder, the next day, and a judge released him on bail after calling the arrest unjustified. Morris County prosecutor John M. Mills went after a different man, 29-year-old greenhouse worker Frank Jancarek, on the word of Frank McGrory, a fired ex-convict who claimed Jancarek confessed to him the night of the killing. Jancarek's April 1922 trial in Morristown featured a letter opener with blood under its handle, a single hair that "closely resembled" his, a witness who conferred with the sheriff before picking him from a lineup, and a defense that told jurors to disregard the chemist's findings because he was German; the jury acquitted him in under an hour. Attorney General Thomas F. McCran then won an indictment against Kluxen, whose trial that July turned on his Boy Scout knife, his footprints at the stump and a nearby hydrant, trousers his mother soaked in water that night, and two mended handkerchiefs from the crime scene that a sewing teacher matched to five taken from a cabinet outside his bedroom. That jury deliberated three hours before acquitting him as well. Kluxen was later adopted by Monell Sayre, the wealthy founder of the Episcopal Church Pension Fund, joined the Marine Corps, shot a neighbor named Joe Hollman dead in San Diego in 1933, and went to San Quentin for a string of burglaries in 1934. The chapter, drawn from Troy Taylor's audiobook Suffer the Children: American Horrors, Homicides and Hauntings, closes with the houses now standing where the woods were, where a family with no knowledge of the case reported a thin, light-brown-haired girl appearing in a child's bedroom, and where drivers on Ridgedale and Fairview Avenues describe a girl in an old-fashioned coat and beret who vanishes in their headlights.

A psychic. An RV park. A one-room post office. San Quentin's prison gets all the headlines, but just over the wall, there's a whole other world to explore. This episode was scored with music by Antwan Williams, David Jassy, Derrell Sadiq Davis, Bruce Wallace, and Earlonne Woods. Thanks, as always, to Warden Andes, Lt. Berry, and Sgt. Graves at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center; Acting Warden Padilla, Associate Warden Lewis, and Lt. Avina at the California Institution for Women; and Warden De La Cruz and Lt. Vogel at the Central California Women's Facility, for their support of the show. Support our team and get even more Ear Hustle by subscribing to Ear Hustle Plus today. Sign up at earhustlesq.com/plus or directly in Apple Podcasts. Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A woman from Cleveland moved to Wisconsin, took the surname of Watts – a man serving five life sentences for killing his entire family – and filed to marry him. Women have been doing this for well over a century, and the ones who later walked away have almost never been asked why.BOOK: “They Told Me My Newborn Died – They Lied” by Darren Marlar: https://amzn.to/4ihvu3kEPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/wattsandlizzieREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yzmw3jdnThis episode includes references to suicide and to the deaths of children. If you are struggling, you are not alone, and help is available. https://WeirdDarkness.com/HOPE is a free directory of mental health resources, organized by country, for anyone anywhere in the world who needs somebody to talk to. And if you're in the United States or Canada, you can get immediate help over the phone by dialing 988.FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Eight years after Chris Watts strangled his pregnant wife and smothered their two daughters, a woman from Cleveland has moved to Wisconsin, started signing his surname, and filed paperwork that now sits on a prison warden's desk. And Chris Watts is not the only man in permanent lockup who is seeking matrimony. Later, we'll look at the women who build relationships with men who will die behind bars, and what draws them in.CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:51.635 = Show Open00:03:19.353 = Ten Seconds At Dodge Correctional00:20:26.768 = Shannan, Bella, Celeste and Nico ***00:48:21.294 = He Will Write Back ***01:04:25.333 = Dead In All Respects ***01:24:35.204 = Nobody Counts Any Of This ***01:29:55.177 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: August 19, 2026This episode of Weird Darkness covers the marriage application Chris Watts filed from a Wisconsin prison eight years after murdering his pregnant wife and their two young daughters, and the long record of women who write to, visit and marry men who will never get out.It opens at Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wisconsin, where an inmate may touch a visitor twice, once at the start of a visit and once at the end, an embrace reporting puts at roughly ten seconds. On August 12th, 2026 the Daily Mail reported that Chris Watts, 41, and a 39-year-old Cleveland realtor named Lizzie Henderson had applied to marry inside the Wisconsin prison system. Lizzie had moved from Ohio to Wisconsin with her mother, filed a sealed petition for a confidential name change on September 12th, 2025, and appeared in prison visitor logs roughly twenty times during 2025, plus a visit on Christmas Day of 2024. Wisconsin handles these requests under policy 309.00.06, PIOC Marriages, which routes the application through a marriage coordinator and leaves the decision with the warden. No ceremony or license has been documented, and Watts has no projected release date.From there the episode goes back to the family. The Watts family doorbell camera recorded Shanann Watts arriving home at 1:48 in the morning on August 13th, 2018 at 2825 Saratoga Trail in Frederick, Colorado. She was 34 and fifteen weeks pregnant with a son the couple had named Nico, raising daughters Bella, four, and Celeste, three, and selling Thrive for Le-Vel while her husband worked for Anadarko Petroleum and carried on an affair with co-worker Nichol Kessinger. Watts failed a polygraph administered by Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent Tammy Lee, blamed Shanann for the girls' deaths, then retracted it. A drone over an Anadarko site called CERVI 319 found Shanann in a shallow grave and both girls submerged in crude oil inside storage tanks with eight-inch hatches. Judge Marcelo Kopcow sentenced him on November 19th, 2018 to five life sentences plus 84 years. In a February 2019 interview at Waupun, Watts described smothering Celeste in his truck while Bella sat beside her, and hearing Bella's last two words, "Daddy, no!", every time he closes his eyes.The second half opens in the autumn of 1921, when French railways ran extra trains to Versailles for the trial of Henri Désiré Landru, a furniture dealer who placed lonely-hearts advertisements in Paris newspapers and murdered eleven people. Women mailed him proposals of marriage while he awaited the guillotine. The modern version runs through Meet-An-Inmate, launched in 1998, and WriteAPrisoner, founded by Adam Lovell in 2000, which post profiles written on paper because American prisons allow no internet access; Susan Smith drew more than six thousand letters before pulling her listing in 2003. Hybristophilia, the term journalists reach for, was coined by sexologist John Money in 1986 and has never appeared in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Sheila Isenberg's Women Who Love Men Who Kill, forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland's "perfect boyfriend" model, and sociologist Megan Comfort's San Quentin fieldwork in Doing Time Together supply what the women themselves say they are getting.Two 2025 studies found that actively seeking out romanticizing TikTok content correlated with attraction while passive exposure predicted nothing. The risk is documented in the killings of Regina Capobianco and John Mann by her pen pal Thomas Knuff in Parma Heights, Ohio, and in the strangling deaths of Stephanie Dowells and Tania Thomas during family visits at Mule Creek State Prison. The marriages run from Nina Van Zandt, who married Haymarket defendant August Spies by proxy in 1887 and may have married an innocent man, through Ted Bundy and Carole Ann Boone, Doreen Lioy and Richard Ramirez at San Quentin, the Twinkie that served as Erik Menendez and Tammi Saccoman's wedding cake, and James Whitehouse, who wrote to Susan Atkins in 1985 and went on to Harvard Law School to serve as her attorney. All of it rests on Turner v. Safley, the 1987 Supreme Court decision in which Justice Sandra Day O'Connor noted that most inmates are eventually released, leaving the man who never will be an untested case. Rhode Island's 1909 civil death statute declared lifers "dead in all respects", and Britain barred whole-life prisoners from marrying in 2024 after Milly Dowler's murderer Levi Bellfield was granted permission.The episode closes on the women who leave, absent from every study in the field. Lynn Hartman ended her engagement to Steven Avery in October of 2016 and wrote that she had been fooled by the Netflix documentary. Paula Williamson married Charles Bronson at HMP Wakefield in November of 2017, had it annulled in 2019, and died that July at thirty-eight. Anna Eriksson divorced Lyle Menendez in 2001 and still argues for his release. No agency counts prison marriages, and every figure circulating online is unsourced. Chris Watts belongs to a long file rather than a new one, having received his first letters from strangers within weeks of his December 2018 sentencing, before he had written a word to any of them.LIKE WHAT YOU'RE HEARING? WEIRD DARKNESS has new episodes 7 DAYS A WEEK! Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts or visit WeirdDarkness.com/Listen • Paranormal • True Crime • Ghosts • UFOs • Cryptids • Unexplained • Want even more? Become an OFFICIAL WEIRDO for commercial-free episodes, bonus episodes, weeknight live chats, audiobooks & more at WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIAL

Explore APSC's My Family Audio Series A story-driven 3-part audio project about Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, Vietnamese, and other Southeast Asian families doing everything possible to breathe with ease and live freely besides the people we love.  Created by the Asian Prisoner Support Committee and APEX Express, and hosted by writer and activist Michelle MiJung Kim, My Family seeks to answer many of the questions countless families in our communities are grappling with today. Mass deportation and family separation are fueled by isolation and silence. With My Family, we aim to dismantle both with stories full of heart, compassion, and an honest look at the tangled paths many of us take to reckon with the past, rebuild our lives, and make a new place home.  Our deep gratitude extends to all the community members who shared their stories with us, even while painful to recount. Their commitment to creating stronger, more informed communities is unparalleled.    My Family Ep. 1: How did we get here?  In our first episode, we talk to Roger Viet Chung to bring APSC's longstanding Restoring Our Original True Selves (ROOTS) program from inside San Quentin to listeners outside. Roger is faculty in the Department of Ethnic Studies at Laney College and a founder and faculty lead of Restoring our Communities (ROC), Laney College's program for formerly incarcerated students and justice involved juveniles. He previously served as the lead instructor and curriculum designers of ROOTS.  We also speak with NC, Pam, and T. NC was deported to Laos this past year. Pam was deported to Cambodia three years ago, and T was deported to Cambodia six years ago.  Music from episode 1, as well as related resources, can be found below in the show notes. If you are an impacted community member in California or have a family member who is directly impacted by detention and deportation, we encourage you to contact APSC at info@asianprisonersupport.com or our partners at New Light Wellness and the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants.   Music: Somleng Tro Khmer by Satiya, a Cambodian Australia singer and songwriter Pka Kompong Thom by Satiya   Resources: My Family Episode 1 discussion guide  APSC Data Report on Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Asians and Pacific Islanders Asian Law Caucus legal resources and video explainers for Southeast Asians facing deportation threats Eddy Zheng's story    Transcript Michelle MiJung Kim: [00:00:00] All across the United States, ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is terrorizing immigrant neighborhoods. Every time I scroll on social media, I see horrifying videos of children being ripped apart from their parents as they get shoved inside unmarked cars of ICE agents. You can hear the family's cries for help, children wailing, neighbors and protesters yelling at the abductors.   The scene is [00:01:00] pure chaos, swirling with desperation and fear. I notice I'm clenching my jaw as I imagine the trauma of the moment that will last a lifetime for these families. But the scene usually ends here, and not long after I scroll away, I'm met with another slew of videos of similar intensity. But what happens to the people after this painful moment?   What happens to the families after the protesters depart? What happens when their loved ones actually get detained, get deported? where do they go, and what happens to those who remain? I'm your host, Michelle MiJung Kim, and I'm partnering with the Asian Prisoner Support Committee and APEX Express to bring you stories from families who are grappling with the impossible choices amid the cruelty and horrors of mass detention and deportation, stories full of truth, understanding, and lived experiences that are too often hidden or silenced. [00:02:00]   Tony (pseudonym): Even though I don't have no family and I don't even have no family over there, and I don't even know nothing about Vietnam because I left the country when I was 10 years old.”   My dad raised all four of m- you know, me and my sibling all by himself. So just emotion and everything rush in, it's just like, you know, heartbreaking.   So every time, when my dad come to visit me, he always break down and cry because he just like, feel sad that his oldest son is gonna get shipped back to his country.   Pam (pseudonym): My son bought a car for me. He bought a car. He's like, “Mama, you're not getting deported. I got you a Honda Civic already. I got you a car. I got a place for you.” You know how, that affect me when your family member bought you stuff be thinking they'd be coming home?   Michelle MiJung Kim: [00:03:00] Every family threatened by ICE is different, with their unique traditions, memories, and inside jokes. But there are also fears and questions that every community being ripped apart shares, whether our families are Asian, Latino, Black, or Arab. For many Southeast Asians in the United States, there's one other thing in common.   Their families found refuge here in the '70s and '80s, fleeing unthinkable genocide and war in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Most have loved ones who didn't survive. The ones who made it out, around one point one million, are the largest refugee community ever resettled in the United States. Upon arriving here, families were forced into impoverished and under-resourced neighborhoods.   Parents who just lived through war and genocide never got the mental and physical healthcare they critically needed. To survive poverty and attacks in their neighborhoods and schools, some youth turned to gangs and [00:04:00] crimes. After serving their time, they've since grown up, transformed, and found their ways to heal.   They are now mentors, parents, small business owners, homeowners, just everyday neighbors who, like most of us, take their kids to school and pick up groceries and call this country home. And yet, around sixteen thousand of these Southeast Asian community members are facing imminent deportation based on convictions from years, if not decades ago, and despite the fact that they already served their sentence.   Today, California is home to the largest Southeast Asian American population, followed by Texas, Washington, and Minnesota. And these families are seeking answers. How did we get here? What can we do to keep our family safe and together? And their friends and neighbors are asking questions, too. How can this be?   What can we do? That's where these stories come [00:05:00] in. We're taking a closer look at what happens to families after the headlines pass and the blaring noise quiets down. You'll hear directly from people who are living on all sides of this nightmare, all trying to do what's best for their kids, their parents, their loved ones.   Welcome to My Family.   As some listeners may know, the Asian Prisoner Support Committee based in Oakland, California, was born out of the campaign to support the San Quentin 3, Eddy Zheng, Viet Mike Ngo, and Rico Riemedio. The San Quentin 3 advocated for ethnic studies in the California State Prison, and in retaliation, the prison administration sent them to solitary confinement.   Out of that struggle, they started the Restoring Our Original True Selves, or ROOTS program at San Quentin, which the Asian [00:06:00] Prisoner Support Committee continues today, teaching hundreds of people under the motto, ” No history, no self. Know history, know self.” Together in ROOTS, community members incarcerated in California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation prisons, or CDCR, learn immigrant and refugee histories, address intergenerational and inherited trauma, and build lifelong leadership and community skills.   Many ROOTS alumni are now mentors and counselors in California, while others are working in reentry, violence prevention, faith, and other community organizations across the state.   To kick off our first episode, we'll start with some context from Roger Viet Chung. Roger is faculty in the Department of Ethnic Studies at Laney College in Oakland, and founder and faculty lead of Restoring Our Communities, Laney's program for formerly incarcerated students and justice-involved youth.   He has served as the lead instructor and curriculum developer of the ROOTS in San [00:07:00] Quentin.   A content warning for our listeners that in today's episode we'll be discussing war and genocide, inherited trauma and self-hatred, depression, and family separation. Here's Roger.   Roger Viet Chung: My name is Roger Viet Chung. Uh, I'm from Oakland, California, and I currently work for Laney College. At Laney College I instruct in the Department of Ethnic Studies, a range of classes that range from Southeast Asian studies all the way to courses like race, gender, and sports.   In 2013, um, I had the honor and privilege of, supporting and facilitating a course for Asian Americans and others in San Quentin State Prison, and which launched me on a, a journey of understanding more about incarceration, the prison industrial complex, abolition, the way pipelines form. And since 2013, I've been deeply involved in figuring out how to work reentry, how to support those in custody, how to help people come home, how to help people on parole tell their stories.   Um, [00:08:00] and so since 2013, uh, I've been working for a program called Restoring Our Communities, which is a reentry program at Laney College, where we support the reentry of folks coming home from prison, jail, juvenile hall and help them explore their post-secondary pathways and dreams. In addition to that, I also run our Laney College, a satellite campus inside the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center, where, we work with, uh, young people who are interested in going to college, transferring to four-year universities, um, and, uh, reuniting with their families.   Uh, I'm a Vietnamese American. I was born in, uh, 1978 and, born in the United States, my proximity to incarceration and the entire carceral landscape you know, was pretty distant up until I went to graduate school. Uh, when I was in graduate school in, um, the early 2000s, I heard a story about a person named Eddy Zheng, who at that time was incarcerated in San Quentin State Prison.   We heard this story about how Eddy and two other folks were asking for ethnic studies programming at their [00:09:00] prison when there was a growing movement for education inside CDCR. Uh, we understood that, you know, that movement, um, you know, landed Eddy in solitary confinement, got him transferred, uh, to another prison.   And I think for me, that was my first moment where as an Asian American, I connected both with this idea that Asian Americans were doing time, but also you know, it intersected with my field of study, ethnic studies. And so, that was probably my first moment where I saw myself possibly in the work.   Michelle MiJung Kim: Before we come back to Roger, we had a chance to talk to Eddy Zheng about his fight for ethnic studies at San Quentin, the early days of APSC, and how he continues to support incarcerated and formerly incarcerated community members. Let's hear from Eddy   Eddy Zheng: Happy New Breath everyone. My name is Eddy Zheng.   The importance of ethnic studies, Asian American study, [00:10:00] is really focuses on the long tradition of the struggles, that many of the immigrants and refugees, the people who came to this country, uh, for multiple reasons, right? Some of them came voluntarily, and some of them came as refugee because the forced migration as a result of the United States' foreign policies, and then many of the push and pull challenges that came from other, uh, countries across the world.   The long tradition of, of that struggle really is a internal one, right? The internal struggle is finding a sense of belonging in a foreign country or in a country even though we may be born here sometimes, there's still this sense of being treated and being respected as an American versus a perpetual uh, foreigner.    And for many of the people who were impacted by the criminal legal system [00:11:00] and by this type of oppressive foreign policy and systemic racism oftentimes people don't necessarily get an opportunity to understand their culture and history that informs their identity. So therefore as even I was learning how to read and write and speak English and to eventually to become thinking critically I have experienced the power of when I was able to comprehend and articulate the connection that I have, right, with my ancestors and my culture and the history that informs my identity.   Immediately, I was able to, find confidence and find that sense of belonging that I was not alone, that there, there was a long lineage of the knowledge, The connected point to, not only who I am as an individual, but then who I am connected [00:12:00] to, the rest of the humanity, right?   I think when we talk about that lineage really ties back to the 1968 Third World Liberation Front, when students and people in the community, the activists that who stood up fighting for the opportunity to have curriculums and, or materials that really teaches a more well-rounded history around, the makeup of the United States of America, So the fight for the Asian American studies, women's studies, and global studies was very important, as it continue to 1969 in UC Berkeley, and then also later on in 1999, where students are also facing threats of having ethnic studies and Asian American studies eliminated, from the university curriculum, right?   So I have experienced all those lineage of struggles to fight for what the basic academic right, for people [00:13:00] to learn about each other's culture and history and how that historically has been continued to also trying to erase history. when I was in San Quentin State Prison, then once I was able to start to become a thinker, then I realized especially after September 11, the scapegoating of people of color, scapegoating of people that who came from other countries is perpetuated within the prison industrial complex, myself and three of my friends, we were advocating for, uh, the opportunity to be able to, uh, engage, in this process of, Asking to have Asian American studies or ethnic studies within the prison college program, And so that, that was when we signed a proposal, you know, advocating not only for the opportunity, to study, Asian American histories a- and cultures, but other people's culture and [00:14:00] histories at the same time, and then also honoring the prisoners' rights, right?   To choose, what we want to learn and how we participate in the decision-making process within the volunteer-ran college program in the San Quentin State Prison. The outcome was the three of my friends who signed the proposal you know, Mike Ngo Rico Riemedio we were, uh, put into solitary confinement uh, for signing that proposal.   And then my other friend that, who signed the proposal, Stephen Liebb, you know, even though he didn't go to solitary confinement, that he, but he was punished as a result of signing the proposal. That's when the forming of an unexpected Asian American movement, right, in the Bay Area, which is the Asian Prisoner Support Committee, where volunteers and activists that who have heard of the struggles, of the activism inside San Quentin advocas- in advocacy for Asian American studies, ethnic studies, and prisoners rights, that they [00:15:00] came together to support us, you know, inside the prison system.   And so it's very interesting in that, the dynamic, uh, between, we want you to, uh, learn and we wanna give you opportunity to learn, but then learning and applying what you learn comes at a price, that's where the importance of why ethnic studies of Asian Americans are important because it allow us to gain power, right? when we gain power of thinking, and critical thinking, then there's this fear from the, the people that, who have power and don't wanna share that power.   And so that's why it's very important. So fast-forward to post-incarceration after… first of all, I spent 11 months, uh, in solitary confinement as a result of that advocacy in San Quentin. And then later on, uh, when I was finally released after, uh, being incarcerated for 21 years, [00:16:00] I've never forgotten the importance of, creating more learning opportunities within the prison system for those that who are still incarcerated.   Around 2012, that's when we, you we meaning that, you know, that's when I me and members of the Asian Prisoner Support Committee, we started thinking about how do we go inside the prison and create Asian American studies and ethnic studies program inside, We were able to went under you know, as volunteers, we were able to go into San Quentin State Prison to participate, uh, in in this program called, TRUST. I believe the acronym is, uh, Teaching Responsibility Utilizing Sociological Training, uh, which is designed to transform incarcerated men, uh, from social liabilities into assets, right?   So, Uh, while we were participating, we were able to get an opportunity to engage The participants who are [00:17:00] AAPIs to ask them if they are interested into creating a program where we're able to, learn about our culture and history, And they all agreed that it's important.   After about, like, almost like a year or more of kind of like a collaboration, brainstorming, and advocacy from within the prison, finally in 2013, I think that's when, we started the first cohort of the ROOTS program. The ROOTS acronym is Restoring Our Original True Selves, uh, which is, really came about as a result of the brainstorming of the prisoners, a lo- of many of the lifetime prisoners who were inside.    Because they felt that along the way they have lost themselves, right, as they were trying to find a sense of belonging.   So the goal is to, uh, use that as a way to heal intergenerational trauma that many of the prisoners experience when they came to the United States, and that ended up, making poor choices and then, [00:18:00] uh, involved in the criminal legal system.   that's when the first ROOTS program was started in 20, uh, 13. And then what is interesting was that when it started, I wasn't allowed to go in to participate in the program that I co-founded with the people inside, it wasn't, uh- Until the graduation of the first cohort of ROOTS, uh, that they allow me to go in to do a keynote speech, right? Because the participants inside, advocated saying that, “Hey, we would like Eddy to come in to be our keynote speaker at our graduation.”   And so that's when I was able to go in and really, experience this fruition of all the advocacy. seeing many of those leaders and participants graduating from the first year of the ROOTS program really solidified why an Asian American study is so important, right? It really focuses on, uh, for the participant to [00:19:00] learn about the connection the, to the ancestors and the culture and, and the history.   I mean, That sense of belonging they had lost along the way or for many was not able to learn in traditional economic environment, and then part of this is also even though the curriculum focused Asian American studies, but then it also connects to other people's colors of histories and how the intersection of that of that experience domestically, internationally, are connected to the same systems of oppression in, in that space.   I think what, what is also important is that once they were able to learn about their own culture and history, they inform their identity. They're able to also learn about other people's history, other people's culture that inform their identities. So immediately there's opportunity to, humanize each other And so that's why this is so important that we must engage in the collective learning [00:20:00] process that allow us the opportunity for collective healing. And when the collective learning, collective healing is invested and engaged in racial solidarity, that's how we can embark on this journey of collective liberation.   The ROOTS program is the first ever Asian American studies ethnic studies program in the history of the penal system, and then this continues on to today, right? since 2013.   Michelle MiJung Kim: That was Eddy Zheng. In 2017, Eddy founded the New Breath Foundation to help underserved frontline groups empower, heal, and change the lives of Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander community members with a focus on the incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, and those who have been impacted by immigration and criminal legal [00:21:00] systems.   Let's return to Roger and what stood out to him when he first started working in San Quentin.   Roger Viet Chung: I think when I first went into San Quentin State Prison in 2013, um, again, I mentioned I was born in 1978, and, um, you know, I looked across the room to people who were around my age, um, none of whom were actually born in the United States. And so I think there's this really interesting question that needs to be pursued around Southeast Asians, Asian Americans that have immigrated at a young age, you know, largely through, the pathways of war that make that experience so much different than a, an experience like my own, right?   Born here in the United States, but also different than my parents, who immigrated to the United States as adults. And so the 1.5 generation as we will frame it today, we're gonna be talking about Asian Americans, Southeast Asians, refugees, immigrants that came to the United States at a, a young age, you know, all the way up until their adolescence. We're looking at a population that has had significant experience with [00:22:00] social institutions like schools, uh, elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools that their parents may not have.   This was a time in California where we began to see more prisons being built, more apparatuses designed to be able to figure out how to work with young people, mainly through the lens of punishment and deterrence.   And so I think the idea of coming into, a state like California during a political landscape where, punishment, prisons and tough on crime positions were being applied to both adults and young people is something to consider when we're thinking about the 1.5 generation, um, that has been incarcerated.   I think that as the 1.5 generation immigrated into the United States you know, through various refugee and immigration policies, you know, they're inheriting a context in California where they've already been criminalized and their pathways into, uh, juvenile halls, into county jails, and into state prisons are being mapped out, without them really even knowing.   In [00:23:00] ROOTS, um, which was an Asian Prisoner Support Committee sponsored program, everyone has an, a unique and individual story, but, you know, the more we learned about people's stories, there just seemed to be a lot of collective threads that, tied everyone together. so if we were to talk about the 1.5 generation, you know, like a common collective journey would be something like this, right?   You know, whether a person escaped from Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos a lot of the common stories were, young people were born in Southeast Asia during or at the tail end of the wars in Southeast Asia, and most of them were not part of the original refugee exodus, which mainly featured, the elite and the educated.   And so one of the collective stories has been that a lot of the 1.5 generation, who would have otherwise left at much younger ages or even been born in the United States were experiencing significant transitions in countries that, were returning from civil [00:24:00] war. a lot of that destruction and a lot of the, the trauma and those experiences, right, began right around there.   And when people began thinking about, exiting, these positions, whether it be for political or, or class-based reasons or both, one of the collective stories that we tended to hear very often was that young people were really able to visualize, remember, right, even today, a lot of violence, a lot of trauma, that, you know, really propelled their, either their escape or, their emigration Young people met, went to camps oftentimes.   If they left Vietnam, they were in the Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong or Thailand. And if, you left Cambodia or you left Laos, you ended up in a variety of different forms of camps in Thailand awaiting for United Nations sponsorship. I think this is an important part of understanding the journey, because a lot of the one point five generation that became incarcerated were exposed to a variety of different traumas at [00:25:00] young ages that they still had kind of these vivid memories of.   And so as they, they left camps, you know, many stayed in camps for months, some even years. They were resettled into the United States, often in places that didn't have a lot of Asian Americans. And so at the time, United States refugee policy really asked all the states to share, right, some sort of, right, burden in resettling refugees.   And so a lot of the one point five generation that we met inside San Quentin, you know, their story in the United States didn't actually originate in California. Many of them were in Wisconsin or Ohio or Florida or Arkansas as their first stop into the United States before their parents did a secondary migration into a place that had more support, had a stronger ethnic community, um, and in some cases, right, just had, more protection against racial discrimination.   And so as parents, moved into ethnic communities and, and sought spaces that could protect themselves from racial [00:26:00] discrimination, the young students, right, the one point five generation didn't have, those same protections. And so many of them were enrolled into public schools, oftentimes schools that were underfunded and oftentimes schools that, uh, were in districts that had young people of color competing for resources.   When it came to that, that 1.5 generation, that journey into United States schools, was, I think, the beginning of understanding how to survive in a place where, a unique form of racial discrimination, a unique form, right, of class identity had to be navigated as they began their journeys in education, a lot of them feeling a lot of pressure to be, strong students in order to, you know, deliver their parents out of poverty. A lot of themes came up. One of the approaches that we took in the ROOTS program was looking at trauma.   We're not the first program to look at this, but I, I do think that it's a very important and interesting way to think about, [00:27:00] understanding the stories of people who are incarcerated. You know, oftentimes the, the narrative of people who are incarcerated is that they have committed an act that has traumatized another person, and therefore, right, their own trauma is something that we often either don't allow, ignore, or outright say, right?   “You don't deserve your own trauma because of the things that landed you in custody.” And so I think one of the projects that we really wanted to look at was to help people kind of, like, name their trauma, explore it, and, right, heal from it. And so when we thought about, the activities and the curriculum design, you know, we had people kind of, share stories of immigration, share stories of how, their parents came to name them, stuff like that.   And, you know, one humongous theme that came out in the ROOTS program was this idea of self-hatred and how much being in, right, the United States and being in places where you experience discrimination and you experience poverty led to really, really low concepts of [00:28:00] self and, , really resulted in, people, literally writing, right, reflections, saying things like, “I hated myself.   I hated how I looked,” right? “I hated my name.” Those are some of the themes that kind of were fleshed out as we explored the ROOTS program. And we wanted to take a look at, How that trauma not only would h-help people kind of understand their own trajectories more, but how that trauma could also be translated into, right, a more institutional form of advocacy for themselves and understanding how to do things like describe and explain, right, and be introspective about the things in their youth that led to, right, their incarceration.   Because one of the things we also noticed was that people were struggling to tell stories about their families because they didn't wanna bring shame, they didn't want to blame their families. And so, a lot of our 1.5 generation folks struggled with being able to tell a story to a parole board that kind of held their freedom in their hands.   And so being [00:29:00] able to have people tell their stories, right, to engage, right, some of the things that they experienced as traumatic, help them heal from those things, but also name them, , through ethnic studies concepts, through, history and through culture, was in a lot of ways, very freeing.   I think I'd be remiss to not mention that, you know, when we did programming inside ROOTS, there was a very, very, I think collective agreed upon, workshop that people inside wanted to do, and it was a workshop about gangs. Not just the criminalization of gangs and how gangs have become criminalized into the '90s, into the 2000s, but I think, incarcerated people, were really advocating around things like gang prevention. And so a lot of stories came out around, like, why people join gangs in the first place and, , it's not a brand-new story at all, but it was something that they wanted to explore and they were really, I think, very adamant about exploring among themselves.   And, you know, I think if you talk to incarcerated people, one of the things that they're so passionate about is [00:30:00] making sure their stories reach young people, which has also inspired me to go into juvenile hall to do a lot of work. But, one of the things that they wanted to develop, I think conceptually, was the idea of the migration to school-to-gang pipeline.   And, you know, whether or not the gang itself, should be conceptualized as, right, a protective, mechanism against racism, against bullying, against harassment, against exploitation. I mean, those are all things that we know, young people are looking for, as they join gangs, especially those that are immigrating from Southeast Asia or even, right, Latin America.   I think the folks inside were really, really adamant about making that connection and understanding that, not only their participation in gangs, but the criminalization of the gangs through that participation was one of the pathways that led them to places like juvenile hall, the California Youth Authority, the Division of Juvenile Justice.   I think the folks inside would, um, say that they need to be accountable to you know, the decisions that [00:31:00] they made and they wish that they were stronger about not making decisions to do things like join, criminal-based organizations. But, I think that there is a reality that, you know, there are a lot of social forces that, drove, that type of youth behavior.   And so, when we were in San Quentin, I think a lot of the folks were like, we need to improve this idea by, you know, understanding that, part of our journey has been, as 1.5 generation young people is , our responses to our trauma, our responses to racism, our responses to, disconnects between us and our families, particularly our parents, right, led us through a path, that was laden with policies that were designed to punish us.   You know, I think something that's really important that that I would wanna mention is, you know, the apparatuses that were designed to control and to rehabilitate and to correct youth, those apparatuses have been abolished because they didn't work.   And so when I think about the 1.5 generation that immigrated to the United States during a time of [00:32:00] heavy, heavy juvenile punishment, had they immigrated today, right, and, these systems not existing, you know, would they have done a significant time in state prison? You know, I don't know.   Would they been criminally adjudicated as adults? I don't know. And so I think that when we think about, you know, Asian Americans and Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders that are coming to the United States at a very specific time, specifically those guys we worked with in ROOTS, you know, history was just not on their side, and that's not something that individuals can control.   And so when we think about the situations that we're put in, I reflect on my own life about, you know, looking at people that look like me that were the same age as me and, just weren't born in the United States and had privileges like I did. You know, I think those are some of the things that, I would ask the community to reflect upon.   That, you know, we're looking at, such a traumatic and punished time in California and U.S. history to really kind of take, a broader approach and to be able to, you know, deconstruct some of the things that have happened to help understand the lives of people who, you know, are in ICE detention today   Michelle MiJung Kim: [00:33:00] That was Roger Viet Chung, faculty in Laney College's Department of Ethnic Studies and founder of Restoring Our Communities. This is APEX Express. We'll return after a short break. [00:34:00]   NC (pseudonym): We were refugees. It was because of the, the war, the secret war in Laos, I guess.   Michelle MiJung Kim: This is NC. He grew up in California after his parents' harrowing escape from war and persecution in Laos. He was incarcerated for 24 years as a result of a conviction when he was a young person. He earned parole last year in [00:35:00] 2025.   NC (pseudonym): You know, I don't know for sure, but I'm just going off what people say and what they tell me is because- we were refugees, and we were hunted, and, so we fled, and crossed the river into Thailand.   And from Thailand we were, um, we were sent to the US. That's it.   When my, when I came here, my dad says, ” Well, you gotta learn everything here, know the language and everything, because this is your country now.   You're gonna live here.” So that's, that's what he told me.   Things were tough because my parents don't know nothing about this country, so they don't, You know, it's help was very, I would say, I think the best word I can use is help was very narrow, because we had, like, an…   I had, like, an uncle who knew the language, and they would help my, dad and my mom. And then, um, my dad actually went to a vocational training school to learn how to do auto body, This was in when we were in, in Long Beach, but they [00:36:00] came over to, uh, Stockton to open up a, um, garage, you to fix cars and do auto body. Growing up it was just hard because, you know, we were, uh, always poor and we didn't know how to adjust to the c- you know, the community.   America is, like, totally different, 'cause we go to school and then we read, write, speak English, and then we don't, we don't do none of that inside the house. So there's kind of that culture clash where, you know, the parents wanna teach you something and then you go to school and you learn something else, and then you're s- you struggle with your, um, you know, everyday life because, those are two different things   I was basically working while I was in prison, taking a lot of self-help classes and, um, earning certifications and trying to better myself, um, learning job skills. So when I, parole, I can, become a productive member of society. So while I was in, also incarcerated, I was taking college courses, to try to, attain a [00:37:00] AA degree.   So I was doing a lot of that stuff while I was in prison programming. My plan was… when I got out, as far as for work I would just like any job will do, just as long as I got work, any job will do.   But the goal was to continue my education, get my, uh, degree in, um, sociology, try to to open up a, a place and to be, um, LCSW certified, a licensed clinical social worker so I can help people, just like how, um, when I was, um, incarcerated, I was talking to, um, an LCSW so they can like, help you when you get back from this environment to the streets to help you adjust. First of all, it's helping people, and a lot of people, when you come out and get out, there's really nothing, like nobody's… the way I see it is, like- I don't see a lot of help, you know?   I don't see a lot of help or any [00:38:00] help, in my community that I'm at. I figured that, you know what? More help or help is always good, and a lot of times people… While, while I was in, um, incarcerated, you know, incarceration does affect you, it, in a way, institutionalizes you and makes you think a certain way, act a certain way, be a certain way, and when you come out, you have to, like, try to adjust to, you know, the norms of, outside living.   When I was talking to my, um, social worker, she was giving me a lot of those pointers. So I was thinking, like, “Okay, you know what? This is something I could do.” I could help, you know, like, a youth who's been incarcerated or young people coming out or anybody of any ages from anywhere that has, um, cultural issues, You know, like, if they're coming from a different country and they're, they're coming to the US and they're having, like, cultural issues. it's just about transitioning from one place to another place.” when I paroled from prison and they told me that, I have a ICE hold, an immigration hold. And [00:39:00] then I wasn't sure, like, what that was, if it's happening or not. And then when they paroled me, uh, immigration came and picked me up and took me to a detention facility.    ICE came and picked me up at the prison and, um, I went to a detention facility in Bakersfield called Mesa Verde   Michelle MiJung Kim: We're gonna come back to NC and what he experienced at Mesa Verde on the next episode, and what happened after he was deported to Laos just four months ago. Right now, I want to introduce you to another community member, Pam. Pam also grew up in California. She was incarcerated for 16 years. Three years ago, she was detained by ICE and then deported to Cambodia   Pam (pseudonym): [00:40:00] So I'm gonna start it off when the day I find out that, um, I probably get deported in 2000… yeah, 2012. ICE came and see me, and they say, ” Well, we got you on record that, you know, you're on a list that you're gonna get deported when you parole.” So if I have any kind, like American citizen to prove that, you know, I can't parole, and this and that.   I was like, “Okay.” I really didn't pay attention. My mind was more like stuck. On that day, my mind was more like, “Wait, my attorney told me I'm not ever gonna get deported,” and it just, my mind is like wondering off, like, why is this happening now? So other than that, I started doing research. I just signed the paper.   I didn't even hear exactly what they told me because I, my mind's already like blow. So I just signed the paper. Didn't even know what I'm signing, so I just signed the paper like so they can leave me alone. I just [00:41:00] need to process something on my own.   When I finally process, I start doing research and…   But before I start doing research, I call my parent up and told them, “What's gonna happen?” And they, you know, and my parents tell me, “Just tell them you don't have a family over there. There's nobody over there that could support you, take care of you. You've been, uh, here in America all your life. There's nobody.   Nobody. So why they came and… why did someone send it to you, send you over there, and since you already did your time?” So it's some kinda- mixed feeling. It's a lot of mixed feeling as I can see there's a lot of hurt inside my family. I can see what they go through, and then I was like, “Okay, now just too much.”   So after I talk to my parent and then see how they feel about it, and I understand, and I do feel them, too.   And I do understand, and, um, ‘ cause I've never been really separate from my family that long until I got [00:42:00] locked up. So it's harder difficulty than anything. I don't even move away from my mom that far.   I live across the street. So it's hard for me to see that, I'm really, like, can't see my mom ever again. I started doing research for years and years and still, hoping that I could fight and why I'm in prison, but people keep on telling me, “You can't fight your case until you get through, um, the ICE detainer, and that's how you fight your case.”   And it's like, eh, I need to find a… You know, I started doing more research on the law library about ICE and, you know, about deportation, everything about the law. I did all that, but it's nothing that really helped me unless it's something against my life. So and I did more research about, like anything They say the only way you could get away from it is, like, something affects your life, something that danger you. It's like, it mean life or death. [00:43:00] But I even do research on that. They say if they stop the war in Cambodian… So it was hard. It was just a lot. It was just a lot of paperwork that I would have to go through and try to do the research and find out.   So I started talking to more about with my family about that, and then my dad say, “You know, I can see this is really stressing you out, and I can see that you're looking through a lot of stuff that don't help you to get out. But we still have hope that you're gonna come home to us.”   Michelle MiJung Kim:  Every person who shared their story with us talked about the family members and friends who supported them through these traumatic experiences, those who have stood with them in the darkest of times. Those relationships are what keeps people going, and it's no different for the person you're about to hear from, T.   T served his time in prison many years ago. After he got out of prison, he led a [00:44:00] full life. He got married, became a father, and grew in his career as a superintendent of a welding business, including jobs for the US Navy. And then one day, everything changed.   T (pseudonym): You know, I, I'd been reporting, uh, as scheduled, to the, you know, the ICE agent e- every, you know, I start out once a month, once every three months, once every six months, once every year.   And I, I, I've been reporting perfectly how they want. And then one day, you know, I, I came home and I went look at, check my mail and, there's a, a mail from them. So I opened the mail up and it tells me, the mail tells me they're gonna detain me. They give me a date to be there, and they say they're gonna detain me.   You know, I, and my, my heart just sank, you know. When I saw that letter- Mm … I'm like, “Oh my God.” And you know, I, I, it broke me down right there, standing over there by the mailbox. And then I told my wife and, , we [00:45:00] both, sat and, you know, did a little, a little crying.   And it's just like depressed knowing that they can, uh, detain me, that scheduled date that they gave me, yeah, it, it, it was tough. It's like a, a little… I think they gave us like a, a month or something. No, three weeks, half a month, something like that. it, it, it was tough 'cause I, I, me, me and my wife and my two daughter we, you know, we have family.   They, they okay, you know. yeah, I, I've checked in and, uh, they, they, they did detain me and, uh, of course my wife's all crying and, you know, my daughter, my, both my daughters young at that time. They're still young. They don't know what, what happened, you know. They asked my wife, “Hey, where's Dad?”   And you know, my, my wife didn't tell them what happened yet because they didn't, my wife didn't want them to, you know, worry. So my wife just told them, “Oh, you know, uh, your dad went to work. Maybe he'll be gone maybe a month or so.” She just don't want them to feel bad.   But yeah, my wife went through some stuff and trying to figure things out while I was in the detention center. and uh, [00:46:00] yeah, I got interview and got deported. and my wife, she was struggling at that time. She didn't work either because she's the, you know, she stayed home as a housewife, take the kids to school and stuff like that.   Michelle MiJung Kim: T's wife and daughter are now with him in Cambodia. He's currently serving as a staff member at New Light Wellness in Phnom Penh providing mental health and healing services to other people and families who are deported and separated   T (pseudonym): Yes. To me it's very important, to have someone to talk to 'cause when you're deported, uh, you, you already broken. you feel like you're a broken person, and, and sometime you don't know who to talk to because you're at a new, new place.   You don't really know no one, you know? And, uh, it, it, it's heartbreaking you trying to, uh, find someone to talk to. You, you feel like you're alone.   But at New Light, [00:47:00] we provide all that. You need someone to talk to, here. We, we, here you could pick one of our team here to talk to. You can go to the facility that we have over there and just talk to someone and just relax over there and just, you know, we, we have, always have someone there to help, talk about anything you want, to guide to bring closure, that, that's the thing, uh, about our team here.   We wanna make sure we have all that, everything Cause we understand, we understand, uh, being deported need someone to talk to, because that's what I, I did when, uh, the first couple years when I got deported here and I, I was so stressed out, and I don't know who to turn to, where to go.   Luckily, I found New Light, and I'm so glad, and I'm still with them now.   Deportation to me, I feel it is very cruel. It breaks families apart, and then it'll change the life and future of, your children. You know, it, it… Deportation, it, it's just a sad [00:48:00] word, it's just a sad word. It, it's just… It's like pain. It's a lot of pain, that word deportation.   It's a lot of pain. I mean, I, I… It, it's just… To me, it's just a lot of pain. It is just getting ripped off from your family, and affect everyone. It affect, you know, your brother and sister, your cousin, your niece, your nephew. You know, that's how, that's how I, I sees it,   Roger Viet Chung: Yeah, I think it's, um You know, I, I think it's important to, understand that, um, you know, deportation, isn't something that existed, since 1776, right?   Michelle MiJung Kim: That familiar voice is Roger, who you heard from earlier. Here's what he thinks about previously incarcerated people getting deported despite having already served their time.   Roger Viet Chung: And so I think when we kinda think about the logics of a [00:49:00] person who is serving a sentence and is being released by even authorities around in the carceral state and determining that they're not a threat to society, that they're no longer harmful to society, that they've done their rehabilitation in order to continue to contribute to, right, the nation and to their families and their communities, I think we have a very contradictory message where, you know, you actually have, a, a carceral apparatus naming a person as no longer a harm to society, but then, right, being deported.   And so when we think about these stories and, you know, I remember talking to a life term prisoner who has children who were born in the United States. And, he's going up to the parole board, and he has, an ICE hold. He has, you know, a mandatory deportation because of his conviction. He's asking the questions to himself, you know, “What do I do? do I fight to be released from prison? If that's the case, I might get taken to ICE custody right away and, [00:50:00] get my travel documents prepared to be deported. Or do I stay in prison so that my family can continue to see me in the United States, right?   And maybe, I don't do the types of things that are gonna win me my freedom in front of a parole board.” And I think those are the types of contradictions in the stories that I think illuminate the contradictions and, right, like, the problems with the way that we approach, deportation today.   There's, the idea of deportation, we often, I think because it's related to law, oftentimes, right, you know, our communities, see that as an objective or neutral phenomenon, that's always been that way. And so I think, when we try to get folks to kinda understand the ways that deportation and, you know, immigration policy, has been shaped, one of the things that I'll ask students, I remember being inside San Quentin, and I, I ask this of my Laney students all the time, you know, I ask them, “When was Immigration and Customs Enforcement founded?”, “What year was like the birth of what we understand now as ICE?” And, [00:51:00] students will guess, they'll guess, they'll guess, and maybe they'll look it up online, and they'll say, ” Oh, Roger, it's 2001.” Then I'll ask people, “Who's older, you or ICE?”   And most of the time, the people that I ask are older than ICE. And so I think one of the ways that we kind of approach this is, you know, by understanding that what's happening now is a, a very new and contemporary phenomenon immigration in its most brutal form, right? Or deportation in its most brutal form.   And I ask people, right, you know, “What was ICE called before it was called ICE?” There was an, a, an organization that existed before. And, you know, people will struggle a little bit, and then, you know, I'll say the initials, uh, INS. And then people will say, “What does that stand for?” INS stands for, uh, Immigration Naturalization Services.   And so you have this really significant institutional difference, just in the name itself around how a migrant is being treated and perceived. Right? On the one hand, right, you have enforcement through [00:52:00] ICE. But for the most part, right, immigration policy in the United States was not ICE. It was Naturalization Services, right?   It was about welcoming people to come to the United States, contribute, be taxpayers, right? And, become citizens, become naturalized. And so I think that's one of the ways that we begin thinking about how to deconstruct the idea that deportation is just a matter of law, it's a neutral idea, and that it's always existed in the form that it has.   And, you know, we know that the law that really is driving Asian American deportation or a- and other immigrant-based deportation today is a law that was designed in 1996. And so- The way that we see, right, immigration today is really kind of like a parcel, a very small piece of immigration history and deportation history for that matter in the United States.   And I think that's one way that I think helps people understand that you know, what we're seeing now is, a phenomenon that doesn't have to be what it is.   I'm lucky enough to be able to be [00:53:00] part of a post-secondary system that is, you know, one of the largest in the world and one of the most welcoming in the world.   I feel like part of my passion or my drive to keep going is I feel like there are some things that are still very much unexplored around this concept of re-entry. When I was in juvenile hall a couple of years ago, I met a young person who told me that he didn't have a good relationship with his dad.   His dad wasn't in his life. His dad has been in and out of prison and learned mostly about his dad through his sister, but began reconnecting with him a little bit. this young person had, a pretty significant conviction inside the juvenile hall which, like I mentioned earlier, which had it happened 10, 15 years ago, he would be in the California Youth Authority.   And, you know, he was telling me about his dad and, you know, there were so many things that felt like I knew him. He told me the job that his dad had, which was a very unique job [00:54:00] that is not very common. And I wrote who I thought his dad was on a piece of paper and I showed it to him and he said, “Yes, that's my dad.”   And so his dad, came to Laney College, um, joined the machining program after years in prison and got you know, a living wage job, in the steel industry, was able to buy a home and he was able to put his daughter through graduate school. but he never mentioned a son to me. And I left the hall that day and, I called him walking to my car and I said, “Hey, like, um, I think I met your son.   I didn't know you had one.” And he said, “Yeah, that's still a shameful part of my life that I'm, still trying to figure out.” And so I, I think that there's something that we're missing still. I think, you know, when in San Quentin we talked about, intergenerational trauma and the trauma that you can inherit from your parents and your parents' parents, and I think there's something here where, you know, we, we can engage both generations at [00:55:00] once to really kind of figure out some of this healing.   I feel like there's still something that, we as a team as a family and as a community are on the verge of understanding a little bit better and breaking those cycles.   Michelle MiJung Kim: I can't stop thinking about what T said about the word deportation. It's cruel. It's a painful word. It's a sad word that rips you off from your family. Many of our listeners are here because you believe a different world is possible, one that replaces isolation with kinship, trauma with repair, and loss with transformation.   You want a future full of families together and safe. That's the kind of future we at My Family want, too. Each story we share is not only a reminder about the violent systems that harm so many communities, but it's also a reminder of how much each of us is [00:56:00] needed in this fight for a more just and liberatory future.   There is so much pain and trauma in each person's story, there's also so much strength, resilience, and a steadfast belief in community and hope. I'm taking a deep breath as I reflect on these stories, and I invite you to do the same.   And if you're impacted by mass deportation and detention, there are organizations and advocates who can help you, from mental health and wellness to legal help and family support. In Northern California, where we are based, we encourage you to reach out to the Asian Prisoner Support Committee, the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants, and New Light Wellness.   You'll [00:57:00] find links to these organizations in the show notes at kpfa.org/programs/APEX-express. The music in today's program is by Cambodian Australian singer and songwriter Satiya. We'll include links to his songs in the show notes, too.   We hope you'll join us for episodes two and three of My Family, where we'll deep dive into what happens when our family and neighbors are detained, and what happens when they are forced to move to a country they've never known. Thank you for joining, and we'll see you next time on My Family.   I'm your host, Michelle Mijung Kim, and this podcast is brought to you by APEX Express and the Asian Prisoner Support Committee. APEX Express is produced by Ayame Keane-Lee, Anuj Vaidya, Isabel Li, Jalena Keane-Lee, Miko Lee, Miata Tan, Preeti Mangala Shekar and Swati Rayasam.   Have a great night.   [00:58:00]    The post APEX Express – 8.20.26 – My Family Ep. 1 appeared first on KPFA.

In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we explore a little‑known chapter of American history: the establishment of California's penal system as a form of coerced labour that replaced chattel slavery.When we think of slavery in America, we think of the southern states. But California has a far more complex and underexplored history. In 1849, the year after gold was discovered, California was a lawless frontier. There were no courts, no jails, no police. Vigilantes and self‑appointed "tribunals" dispensed "justice" with fists, guns and ropes. White paramilitary groups like the Hounds terrorised Latino and Black communities, robbing, raping and mutilating with impunity.As California moved towards statehood in 1850, it needed to establish order. But the state had no money to build prisons. The solution was to put prisoners to work – and to make them pay for their own incarceration. From the 1850s onwards, legions of shackled prisoners built roads, broke granite, laid pipes and even built San Quentin prison itself. Convict labour was leased to private businesses, creating a system of penal slavery that would endure for generations.Drawing on Jean Felser's California, a Slave State, we trace the origins of this system. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery – but with a crucial exception: "except as a punishment for crime". That exception allowed California to build an economic colossus on the backs of unpaid prisoners, disproportionately Native American, Black, immigrant and poor. And the system never went away.Topics covered:California's lawless gold rush eraThe Hounds and vigilante justiceThe 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of IndiansThe establishment of San Quentin prisonConvict leasing and penal slaveryThe 13th Amendment's "punishment for crime" exceptionThe racialisation of crime and punishmentThe prison‑industrial complex in historical perspectiveIf you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting us – we are migrating from Patreon to Substack. Details in the show notes.Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode covers real-life horror far more extreme than usual, including a Russian professor arrested in 2011 for keeping the mummified corpses of 29 women and girls in his apartment, each one fitted with a hidden music box. It also includes the story of a 19th-century whiskey heir who paid six handkerchiefs for a 10-year-old girl so he could watch cannibals kill and eat her, and the theory that Alexander the Great was declared dead nearly a week before he actually died. Content is more graphic than usual, so listener discretion is advised.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/necropolystREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8e5emeCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:00:47.354 = Show Open00:01:58.356 = Alexander the Great00:05:52.710 = The Ravenous Beast of Gévaudan00:09:41.943 = The Rape and Burial of Jessica Lunsford ***00:11:55.911 = The Dyatlov Pass Incident00:15:29.080 = The Torture Dungeon of Leonard Lake and Charles Ng00:19:10.197 = Robert The Doll00:23:08.785 = The Disappearance and Eerie Return of Bobby Dunbar ***00:26:33.271 = Albert Fish – The Brooklyn Vampire00:30:06.498 = The Strange Disappearance of the Sodder Children00:34:28.570 = Anatoly Moskvin, The Russian Who Mummified Dead Girls00:38:41.505 = The Jameson Whiskey Cannibal ***00:42:29.572 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Real-Life Horror Stories More Freaky Than Fiction” by Marco Margaritoff for AllThatsInteresting.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8p9c72(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: March 2022Weird Darkness this episode gathers real-life horror too extreme for scripted television, spanning from ancient Macedonia to the Congo basin and landing, along the way, in a Russian apartment stacked with mummified girls.It opens with Alexander the Great, who collapsed in Babylon in 323 B.C. after a 24-hour drinking binge triggered a sudden fever, a stabbing pain in his back, and creeping paralysis that eventually left him speechless; doctors pronounced him dead at 32. His body reportedly stayed "pure and fresh" for six days afterward, evidence ancient Greeks took as proof of his divinity. In 2019, Dr. Katherine Hall of New Zealand's University of Otago proposed in the Ancient History Bulletin that Alexander actually suffered from Guillain-Barré Syndrome, an autoimmune disorder that paralyzes the body while leaving the mind fully intact; since fourth-century-B.C. doctors checked for breath rather than a pulse, Hall's theory suggests Alexander may have been declared dead nearly a week before he actually died, and was buried alive.From there, the story moves to 18th-century France, where a wolf-like creature killed or mauled close to 300 people across three years in the Gévaudan region, most of them women and children. Fourteen-year-old shepherdess Jeanne Boulet was the first confirmed victim in 1764; a fifteen-year-old girl killed a month later survived long enough to describe her attacker as "a horrible beast". Militia leader Jean-Baptiste Duhamel organized a 30,000-strong hunting party, and King Louis XV eventually dispatched his own bodyguard, François Antoine, who killed a large wolf in September 1765; the attacks resumed within months regardless. A farmer named Jean Chastel is credited with killing the actual beast using silver bullets, reportedly after finding human remains inside its stomach.Next, the episode turns to the 2005 murder of nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford in Homosassa, Florida. Convicted sex offender John Evander Couey broke into her family's home, took her to his trailer, raped her over three days, sealed her inside garbage bags, and buried her alive in his yard while she still clutched a stuffed dolphin her father had won her at a state fair. Prosecutors later determined Jessica may have still been alive in the house during Couey's first police interview. Couey was convicted of first-degree murder and kidnapping in March 2007 and died on death row of natural causes in 2009.From Florida, the episode jumps to the Ural Mountains and the Dyatlov Pass incident of January 1959, when hiking leader Igor Dyatlov and eight fellow students from the Ural Polytechnic Institute died during an expedition toward Otorten Mountain. Investigators found their tent slashed open from the inside and shoeless footprints leading nearly a mile into the forest; the first bodies recovered, dressed only in underwear despite temperatures near negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit, were ruled hypothermia deaths. Two of the last four bodies found, Lyudmila Dubinina and Semyon Zolotaryov, were missing their eyeballs, Lyudmila was also missing her tongue, and both had clothing that tested positive for radioactivity. More than sixty years later, no single explanation, from avalanche to secret Soviet weapons testing, has been confirmed.The episode then moves to a cabin in California's Sierra Nevada foothills, where Leonard Lake and Charles Ng tortured and killed as many as 25 people between 1983 and 1985. Lake, a Vietnam veteran discharged for psychological reasons, built a cinderblock bunker behind a one-way mirror where he and Ng held women as sex slaves before killing them, dismembering the bodies, and dissolving the remains in acid; investigators eventually recovered twelve victims' remains along with roughly 40 pounds of charred bone. The pair was caught in June 1985 after Ng tried to shoplift a bench vise; Lake swallowed a cyanide capsule sewn into his jacket lining and died in custody before trial, while Ng was convicted of eleven murders in 1999 and remains on death row at San Quentin.Next comes Robert the Doll, manufactured by Germany's Steiff Company in 1904 and given to a Key West boy named Robert Eugene "Gene" Otto, who reportedly carried the doll everywhere and spoke of it in the first person. After Gene died in 1974, new owner Myrtle Reuter said the doll continued moving through her house with no explanation and eventually donated it to the Fort East Martello Museum, where curator Cori Convertito now oversees a steady stream of visitors who claim their cameras stop working in Robert's presence.From there, the episode circles back to 1912 Louisiana and the disappearance of four-year-old Bobby Dunbar from Swayze Lake. Eight months later, authorities found a boy matching his description traveling with a man named William Cantwell Walters, who insisted the child was Bruce Anderson, son of field hand Julia Anderson; the Dunbar family claimed the boy as their own anyway. It took until 2004, after years of research by Bobby's granddaughter Margaret Dunbar Cutwright, for a DNA test to prove the man raised as Bobby Dunbar shared no blood relation to the Dunbar family, meaning the real Bobby likely died in 1912 and the family had unknowingly raised Julia's son instead.The story turns next to Albert Fish, born in 1870 and later known as the Brooklyn Vampire, who spent decades torturing, killing, and cannibalizing children after enduring severe abuse in a New York orphanage as a boy. In 1928, posing as a farmer named Frank Howard, Fish lured ten-year-old Grace Budd away from her family and killed her; he wasn't identified until November 1934, when a letter he sent to Grace's mother describing the murder in graphic detail was traced back to him. Fish was executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison on January 16th, 1936.Following that, the episode covers the unresolved 1945 Sodder children case in Fayetteville, West Virginia, where a Christmas Eve house fire killed, or apparently killed, five of George and Jennie Sodder's nine children. No bones were ever recovered from the wreckage despite a coroner attributing the deaths to the blaze, and the family spent decades chasing tips and alleged sightings after strangers had made ominous threats about the house burning down in the months before the fire. George and Jennie erected a billboard along Route 16 asking for information and died in 1968 and 1989, respectively, without ever learning their children's fate.From there, the story turns to Anatoly Moskvin, a Russian journalist and college professor fluent in thirteen languages who dubbed himself a "necropolyst" and visited 752 cemeteries around his hometown of Nizhny Novgorod. Moskvin was arrested in 2011 after police investigating the desecration of Muslim graves found him painting over photographs of the dead; a search of the apartment he shared with his parents turned up the mummified remains of 29 women and girls, dressed, made up with buttons for eyes, and fitted with music boxes inside their chests. Moskvin told investigators he dug up the bodies because he was lonely and confessed to 44 counts of abusing graves and corpses.The episode clos

This episode is a rerun of "Courtside Stories: Rivalries, Redemption, and Prison Reform?" Prison sports are about to become California law. Before the policy fight, hear from the men inside San Quentin on what the game has meant to them - and from the critics who say programs like these teach the wrong lesson. What if a basketball game could offer more than just a win? This week on Sportly, we head to San Quentin, where the Golden State Warriors face off against incarcerated players in a decade-long rivalry that's redefining second chances. But are these programs as beneficial as they seem, or do they risk perpetuating systemic injustices? From historic prison sports leagues to global initiatives like the Twinning Project, host Kavitha A. Davidson uncovers the untold stories of how sports inspire hope, foster connections, and spark debate about the role of rehabilitation in the justice system. Host: Kavitha A. Davison | Producers: Saadia Khan & Shei Yu I Content Writers: Nicholas Black, Suhasini Patni, Shei Yu & Kavitha A. Davidson I Sound Designer & Editor: Paroma Chakravarty I Immigrantly Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson | Other Music: Epidemic Sound | Cover Art Graphic Designer: Sarah DiMichele Join us as we create new intellectual engagement for our audience. You can get more information at ⁠http://immigrantlypod.com⁠. Please share the love and leave us a review on ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠ & ⁠Spotify⁠ to help more people find us!  Remember to subscribe to our Apple podcast⁠ channel ⁠for insightful podcasts.  Follow us on ⁠social media⁠ for updates and behind-the-scenes content. You can reach the host, Kavitha, at ⁠kavitha@immigrantlypod.com⁠ Follow us on TikTok ⁠@immigrantlypodcast⁠ IG ⁠@immigrantlymedia⁠ Sportly is an Immigrantly Media Production For advertising inquiries, you can contact us at info@immigrantlypod.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Al Capone begged his way into the prison band, Robert Stroud spent eleven years in the hospital, and every inmate at Alcatraz learned fast that on the Rock, almost everything beyond a meal and a cot had to be earned... and a single broken rule could send you into total silence and darkness in the hole.EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/alcatrazREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y7sjc7zwCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:23.422 = Show Open00:02:30.901 = Being An Alcatraz Inmate00:19:49.953 = The Impossibility of Escaping Alcatraz ***00:40:10.152 = Prisons More terrifying Than Alcatraz ***00:52:59.621 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*SOURCES and RESOURCES:“Being An Alcatraz Inmate” by Melissa Sartore for Ranker.com's Weird History:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/535vhu7n“The Impossibility of Escaping Alcatraz” by Melissa Sartore for Ranker.com's Weird History:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/bdfj2ypt“More Terrifying Than Alcatraz” by Michelle Nati for Ranker.com's Unspeakable Times: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3jwhh268(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: February, 2021Weird Darkness takes listeners inside the federal penitentiary on Alcatraz Island — what daily life was actually like behind its walls, the fourteen escape attempts that mostly ended in the San Francisco Bay, and a tour of American prisons whose conditions make the Rock look mild by comparison.It opens with the texture of everyday survival at Alcatraz, where the prison held roughly 330 men in cells measuring five feet by nine, and where food, clothing, shelter, and medical care were the only four rights an inmate had — everything else, from library access to a spot in the prison band, had to be earned. Warden James A. Johnston enforced a code of silence that lasted until 1937, so inmates like Jim Quillen talked through the pipes between cells, and Quillen described nineteen days in solitary as total silence and darkness. Al Capone begged his way into the Rock Islanders band and learned tenor guitar, tenor banjo, and mandola; Robert Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz, spent eleven of his seventeen years there in the hospital, studying law and languages. Prisoners were counted thirteen times a day, allowed a single two-page letter each week to a blood relative, and served food widely regarded as the best in the federal system — and still, by inmate Bryan Conway's account, fourteen of three hundred seventeen men went violently insane during his last year, one dock worker chopping off the fingers of his own left hand with an ax.From there, the episode turns to the men who tried to leave. Joseph "Dutch" Bowers became the first, shot off a fence on April 27th, 1936, while working the incinerator detail. Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe sawed through a window in the Model Industries Building and vanished into a storm-driven current in December 1937, their bodies never found. The 1938 breakout by James Limerick, Jimmy Lucas, and Rufus "Whitey" Franklin killed guard Royal C. Cline with a hammer; Arthur "Doc" Barker, son of Ma Barker, was shot in the head near the shoreline in January 1939. The May 1946 "Battle of Alcatraz" pulled in the Coast Guard and the Marines over two days and left guards William Miller and Harold Stites dead. And the most famous attempt of all came in June 1962, when Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin chipped through their cell walls with spoons, left dummy heads made of soap and hair in their beds, and disappeared on a raft stitched from raincoats — three men the FBI never found.The episode closes by leaving Alcatraz behind for prisons still standing. ADX Florence in Colorado, the "Alcatraz of the Rockies," holds inmates like Ted Kaczynski and Ramzi Yousef in seventy-five-square-foot concrete cells for twenty-three hours a day. At the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, an inmate named Andre Thomas removed his own eye. Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Maricopa County Tent City Jail in Phoenix housed people outdoors in the Arizona heat until it was dismantled in 2017. Orleans Parish Prison in New Orleans has stood on the same ground for three hundred years, first used to hold enslaved people who tried to escape. San Quentin, built in 1852 and once home to Charles Manson and Richard Ramirez, drew a court-appointed report describing a facility so old, dirty, and overcrowded that housing people there was called dangerous.

In this episode we invite the pioneering Geoffrey Cannon to reminisce about his stint as The Guardian's rock critic between 1968 and 1972. Commencing with the pop baptism of his first hearing Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers in a Horsham record booth in 1956, our guest talks us through his early work for New Society and The Listener — including his prescient reviews of albums by the Velvet Underground and the Mothers of Invention. He also explains how the 1969 Granada film Johnny Cash at San Quentin came about. Geoffrey then recounts how he pitched a weekly rock column to Guardian editor Peter Preston, and how he sustained it from late 1968 until 1972 while simultaneously editing the Radio Times. Clips from the late Pete Makowski's 2008 audio interview with Jack Bruce give us a chance to discuss the origins of Cream, and how the relative innocence of the '60s collapsed into the druggy decadence of the '70s. The conversation with Geoffrey concludes with our guest's post-rock adventures in writing about health and nutrition, plus his 2000 uprooting to Brazil and subsequent love of singers such as Belchior and Caetano Veloso. Finally, William and Jasper talk us out with their thoughts on articles about Ornette Coleman (1969), Plastic Bertrand (1978), Jools Holland (2004) and James Blake (2025). Many thanks to special guest Geoffrey Cannon. Pieces discussed: Pop Music Democratised, Mother's Rites: Freak Out/Absolutely Free, Aesthetics of Outrage, Johnny Cash at San Quentin was my idea, Jack Bruce audio, Plastic Bertrand, Jools Holland, Second opinion: Ornette Coleman and James Blake is taking on TikTok, Live Nation and 'Free Music'.

A new documentary takes viewers into the large, West Oakland homeless encampment 'Wood Street.' Community and resistance among Oakland's unhoused people. Then, we'll head to San Quentin to hear how listening to a song from your culture can make you feel a bit closer to home. And, Californians have weighed in and voted for their favorite state parks.

Aryan Brotherhood leader, Michael Thompson, reveals what life was really like inside California's most violent prisons — from Old Folsom and San Quentin to the rise of The Brand, prison gang politics, violence, survival, and ultimately walking away. In this explosive interview, he breaks down how the Aryan Brotherhood gained power behind the walls, how prison gangs controlled money, drugs, alcohol, protection, and violence, and why the California prison system of the 1970s was unlike anything seen today. He also opens up about growing up on a Native reservation, being recruited inside prison, surviving brutal conflicts, getting shot multiple times, building influence within the AB, and the moment he decided to leave that life behind. This is a rare inside look at the Aryan Brotherhood, Old Folsom Prison, prison gang history, redemption, and the reality of surviving decades behind bars. Go Support Michael! YouTube: @michaelskythompson Book: https://a.co/d/0cfbYgLn This Episode Is #Sponsored By The Following: Cash App! Download Cash App Today: https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/1ekoiacn #CashAppPod Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Cash App Visa® Debit Flex Cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC, and The Bancorp Bank, N.A., pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, Sutton debit flex card, and Bancorp debit flex card. Cash App Green features, Savings, Direct deposit, Round ups, Overdraft coverage and Discounts provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit https://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. Superpower! Head to https://superpower.com and use code CONNECT at checkout for $20 off your membership. Unlock your new health intelligence. 100+ biomarkers. Every year. Detect early signs of 1,000+ conditions. #superpowerpod #AryanBrotherhood #PrisonStories #FolsomPrison #PrisonGangs #TrueCrime #TheBrand #CaliforniaPrisons #SanQuentin #PrisonInterview #TrueCrimePodcast Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow 00:00 Opening: Gangs and Violence in Prison 01:17 Michael Thompson's Background & Aryan Brotherhood 02:53 Prison System Changes Over Time 04:40 California's Prison Expansion & Crime Trends 06:08 Race, Gang Control, and Prison Culture 09:13 Growing Up on a Native American Reservation 14:09 Survival, Community, and Formative Years 21:50 This Episode Is Sponsored By Cash App 23:15 Transition: Institutional Life & Youth Ranch 27:03 Joining the Aryan Brotherhood: Gangs in 70s Prisons 33:59 Violence, Rackets, and Organized Crime Inside 41:44 Weapons and Survival in Prison 44:04 This Episode Is Sponsored By Superpower 45:27 Folsom's Culture of Violence 53:10 Structure and Economics of the Aryan Brotherhood 01:05:04 Building the Brand: Racketeering & Operations 01:13:47 Evolution of White Supremacy and Expansion 01:23:09 Moving to San Quentin & Gang Alliances 01:36:18 Forming the Commission: Running the Organization 01:46:13 Stepping Away: Moral Dilemmas and Defection 01:55:15 Testimony, Cooperation, and Attempts on His Life 02:09:41 Life After the Brand and Modern Incarcerations 02:18:28 Release, Challenges, and Reflections 02:27:32 Life After Prison & Giving Back 02:32:31 Memoir, Advocacy, and Closing Thoughts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

RL Stine is on notice for meddling in state-level politics with his G-rated Psychobilly nonsense making a Mr. Frumble type blunder endorsing Rudolf von Flugel. When he was Ricardo he pretty much ran San Quentin after running over a worm driving an apple and no one even glutted him out

For many new immigrants, learning English is an important goal. Sometimes at the expense of their mother tongue. Today, how growing up straddling two languages can have lasting impacts on family and identity. Then, we'll head to San Quentin to hear the power of an R&B Slow Jam. And, we hear from an All-American track star on growing up in 1960s San Francisco.

A skeptical reporter is sent to debunk England's most famous UFO hotspot — but the more nights he spends on Star Hill, the harder it becomes to dismiss what he sees, and the woman who keeps appearing there may be asking him to believe in far more than he ever bargained for.Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/OTRCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “A Message From Space” (February 28, 1978) ***WD00:46:14.309 = The Sealed Book, “Death Spins a Web” (April 01, 1945) ***WD01:15:36.156 = The Shadow, “The Ghost Walks Again” (March 16, 1941) ***WD01:40:19.756 = Sleep No More, “To Build a Fire” and “Three Skeleton Key” (February 20, 1957) ***WD02:09:17.703 = BBC Radio 4 Spine Chillers, “Doppelganger” (January 01, 1977)02:34:22.138 = Strange, “Greenwood Acres” (October 10, 1955) ***WD02:46:54.981 = Suspense, “Defense Rests” (March 09, 1944) ***WD03:16:42.462 = Tales of the Frightened, “Mirror of Death” (November 27, 1957)03:21:37.453 = The Creaking Door, “Cards” (1964-1965) ***WD03:49:11.172 = The Saint, “Mr. Important” (October 15, 1947) ***WD04:17:00.318 = Theater 1030, “Trespassers Will be Experimented Upon” (1968-1971) ***WD04:45:47.834 = Tales From The Tomb, “Hooked” (1960s)04:50:01.149 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0701Tonight's #RetroRadio — Old Time Radio in the Dark brings together a full night of vintage horror, mystery, and supernatural suspense, from a UFO sighting on an English hillside to a steel hook left dangling from a car door.The CBS Radio Mystery Theater opens the night with "A Message From Space," written by Ian Martin and starring Tony Roberts, in which a skeptical American feature writer named Pete Heron is sent by his editor uncle to debunk the wave of UFO sightings around Warminster, England — an ancient stretch of Wiltshire ringed by 45,000-year-old burial mounds, or barrows, and crossed by invisible electromagnetic ley lines. Guided by a strange radio man called Bryce Bond up to Star Hill, Pete watches a glowing craft settle into a wheat field and leave behind a scorched, counterclockwise depression no wind could explain. But it's the violet-eyed woman named Maru who keeps appearing there — claiming to be a reporter, smelling of roses and lily of the valley, and seeming, somehow, entirely out of this world — who tests everything Pete thought he knew.From The Sealed Book comes "Death Spins a Web," a tale narrated from the pages of the keeper's ponderous volume about the dying Mrs. Oliver Drake, who summons her three worthless grandchildren — Blanche, Vivian, and the charming polo-playing scoundrel Chris — to her mansion and announces that her entire fortune will go to just one of them. As Chris courts both beautiful cousins at once to hedge his bets, a canoe trip across a deserted lake sets a deadly scheme in motion, and the old woman proves to be playing a far stranger game than anyone suspects.The Shadow presents "The Ghost Walks Again," with Lamont Cranston and Margot Lane traveling to a small New England town terrified by the apparition of Sir Roger Mathis, the village's stern Puritan founder, dead more than two hundred years. Townsfolk who favor opening the ancient meeting hall to the public keep turning up dead inside its torture stocks and presses, each victim clutching a death warrant signed in Sir Roger's own hand, and Cranston must determine whether a real ghost or a very human killer haunts the old colonial hall.Sleep No More, hosted by Nelson Olmstead with Ben Grauer, offers two literary terrors. First is Jack London's "To Build a Fire," the unforgettable Yukon tale of a confident, imaginationless newcomer — a chechaquo — who sets out alone across the frozen trail at seventy-five below zero with only a husky for company, ignoring an old-timer's warning never to travel alone in such cold. Second is George G. Toudouze's "Three Skeleton Key," the story of a lighthouse keeper stationed on a tiny rock twenty miles off the coast of Guiana, who watches a derelict three-master sail straight toward the light carrying a writhing, starving army of ship's rats that soon lay siege to the tower with three men trapped inside.BBC Radio 4's Spine Chillers delivers "Doppelganger," a modern psychological horror about Noah, a frazzled young assistant who keeps waking at exactly 3:44 a.m., drowning in FOMO and social-media envy as she frantically tries to be everywhere at once — her mother's birthday dinner, a girls' trip, an exclusive private members' club. When her doorbell camera records her leaving the apartment one night but never coming back, and a voice on the phone that sounds exactly like her own begins narrating her every move, the question becomes whether she's sleepwalking or being replaced.Strange, hosted by author and supernatural expert Walter Gibson, presents "Greenwood Acres," the account of Army Lieutenant Seth Proctor, who, on leave in a small backwater Georgia town in 1952, goes fishing among the water lilies and discovers a gleaming white plantation house that his landlady insists has been a crumbling ruin since a Civil War tragedy in 1865. There he meets a beautiful blonde woman named Laura swimming in the river, who somehow already knows his name — and whose own story is bound up with a jealous uncle named Cassius and a renegade Northern soldier.Suspense brings "Defense Rests," starring Alan Ladd as Robert Tasker, a young ex-convict and aspiring writer paroled into the law office of Max Krager, the only friend he's ever had, played by John McIntyre. When Krager's partner Arthur Hines — the very district attorney who once sent Tasker to San Quentin — turns up dead in his own office with Tasker's fingerprints on the paperweight beside him, the case looks open and shut, until a missing $50,000 and a switchboard girl named Peggy complicate everything.Tales of the Frightened tells "Mirror of Death," the brief, eerie story of Celeste Collins, a pretty Irish girl of twenty-one whose hand mirror shatters on the floor on the morning of her birthday — and who, despite dismissing the broken-mirror superstition as nonsense, receives a tall, gift-wrapped delivery that evening with a reflection waiting inside it.The Creaking Door, sponsored by State Express 555 cigarettes, presents "Cards," set at a charming English village fete where a devout vicar reluctantly agrees to have his fortune told with a pack of tarot cards by Mrs. Heyman. When she falls into a trance and warns him to fear death by fire, fear that which flies in the air but is not a bird, and fear the things of night — the bat, the wolf, and the leopard — the vicar plans to fly to Tanzania anyway to tour the mission stations funded by the fabulous Shelby Diamond fortune.The Saint stars Vincent Price as Simon Templar, the Robin Hood of Modern Crime, who refuses a five-thousand-dollar bribe to leave a corrupt town and instead hunts the unknown crime boss who gunned down his childhood friend, Treasury agent John Daniels. Following a trail of frightened informants — undertakers, a doomed dame named Rose Taylor, a bookkeeper named Al Boston, and a terrifying insect-obsessed killer called the Professor — Templar closes in on the one man whose name nobody dares speak.Theater 1030, a CBC Toronto production, offers "Trespassers Will Be Experimented Upon," a darkly comic supernatural tale by Anthony Lee Flanders about Nigel Hurdstrom, a winner of five Nobel Prizes, who drives his glamorous wife Vanessa across the Saskatchewan prairie toward a long-dreaded reunion. A storm strands them at the misty castle of the wicked Baron von Schenck — the mysterious figure who once taught a lonely farm boy everything the wind had to teach — and the pupil has come back to challenge his master, with a monstrous transplant machine waiting in the dungeon.Tales From The Tomb closes the night with "Hooked," the classic campfire legend of Ronnie and Cindy, two Jefferson High teenagers parked on a deserted road by the woods, who hear a radio bulletin about an escaped killer with a steel hook for a right hand just moments before a loud thud strikes the passenger side of the truck.

Film Festival Tickets: https://buytickets.at/thedopeyfoundation/2216905 PAtreon: www.patreon.com/dopeypodcast This Week on Dopey Greatest Hits! My dad is back and we catch up on all things dopey and life including Alan's deeply specific breakfast routine. Dave also reads listener emails and comments about grief, recovery, Motley Crue, Safe Spot, Steve Poltz, Dopey socks, and whether celebrities actually bring the Dopey. Then the episode replays Dave's interview with the legendary Danny Trejo. Danny talks about growing up in Pacoima, smoking weed at eight, using heroin at twelve, idolizing his Uncle Gilbert, surviving violence, robberies, prison, Soledad, heroin withdrawal in the hole, and finally finding recovery through 12-step programs and a higher power. He also talks about his kids, helping addicts get treatment instead of prison, staying clean for decades, why he can't smoke weed, acting as a way to revisit—but not live in—the darkness, and why food, tacos, and pancakes can sometimes reach people better than lectures. All that and much more on this week's Dopey Greatest Hits!   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today's Mystery: Two armed convicts escape from San Quentin and head for Los Angeles, where they launch a desperate crime spree while police race to track them down. As Joe Friday and Ed Jacobs follow a trail of robberies, stolen weapons, and frightened witnesses, the fugitives make a bold dash for freedom across the Mexican border.Original Radio Broadcast Date: March 20, 1952Originating from HollywoodStarred: Jack Webb as Sergeant Joe Friday and Barney Phillips as Sergeant Ed Jacobs.Also featuring Whit Connor and Herb Ellis. Script by Jim Moser. Music by Walter Schumann.Announcer: Hal Gibney.Technical advice from the Los Angeles Police Department.Support the show monthly at patreon.greatdetectives.netSpecial thanks to Sandy for becoming a Patreon supporter at the Master Detective level.Support the show on a one-time basis at support.greatdetectives.netMail a donation to: Adam Graham, PO Box 15913, Boise, Idaho 83715Take the listener survey at survey.greatdetectives.netGive us a call 208-991-4783Become one of our friends on Facebook at facebook.com/radiodetectivesFollow us on Instagram at instagram.com/greatdetectivesFollow us on Twitter/X at twitter.com/radiodetectivesJoin us again tomorrow for another detective drama from the Golden Age of Radio.

Danny Trejo holds the record for most on-screen deaths by an actor. His go-to role is the bad guy – the baddest guy. The guy you do not mess with. And for the first 25 years of his life, he was that guy for real. He led a life of violence and drugs that landed him in just about every hardcore prison in California, including Folsom and San Quentin. On the inside, he ran the gym, the drugs, and protection rackets. And then one day, the tables turned and Danny Trejo was the one who needed protection. After the dust settled on a bloody prison riot, Trejo found himself staring down the death penalty. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Even though they share a difficult past, Sadiq and Demarion had never met in person, and it was probably best that it stayed that way. When an event at San Quentin brought them together, Demarion faced an agonizing choice. This episode was scored with music by Derrell Sadiq Davis, Demarion English, David Jassy, and Antwan Williams. Thanks, as always, to Warden Andes, Lt. Berry, and Sgt. Graves at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center; and Acting Warden Padilla, Associate Warden Lewis, and Lt. Avina at the California Institution for Women for their support of the show. Help us reach 1,000 donors by June 30. Make your gift today at earhustlesq.com/donate. Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This episode contains descriptions of murder, mob violence, historical racial violence, and the execution of a convicted killer. If you need to skip this content, advance past the 18:00 mark. Support resources are listed at the end of these notes.This EpisodeSeason 40: Fifty states, fifty forgotten crimes, America's 250th year. Episode 9 covers California and Alabama — two cases, two communities that looked at the legal system and reached for something uglier. October 10, 1890. A woman named Helen Riche is playing cards in her tavern near a California quicksilver mine when ten men in flour-sack hoods crash through the door. She does not run. She reaches up and rips the mask off the nearest man's face, and in that single act she solves the crime that is about to kill her. This is true crime history from the American frontier, and the legal system that followed would leave you cold.December 1888, Birmingham, Alabama. A railroad engineer named Richard Hawes boards a streetcar with his eight- year-old daughter May. He gets off with her at East Lake. He gets back on alone. The body of a young girl is found floating in the lake the next morning. On the same day, Hawes is across the state line getting married. When Birmingham finds out, two thousand people march on the jail.The VictimsHelen Matilda Riche ran the Campers' Retreat tavern on sixty-two acres near the Bradford quicksilver mine, three miles south of Middletown, California. We do not know where she was born or how she came to run a mining-camp saloon in hard hill country — the historical record is thin on her life before October 10, 1890. What it preserves is a woman who managed a clientele of mercury miners in one of the most physically dangerous industries of the era. She was shot five times during the raid. She fought back, reaching for her husband's .44 Winchester with five bullets already in her body. She died four days later. Her husband J.W. Riche died less than three months after her, his own bullet wound never having healed.May Hawes was eight years old when her father took her on a one-way train ride to East Lake on the evening of December 3, 1888. She had been doing the work of a parent since she could walk, looking after younger siblings in a household already coming apart. She was laid out for public identification at Lockwood & Miller's Funeral Parlor in Birmingham, unidentified for a full day. A local butcher recognized her. May, her mother Emma, and her six-year-old sister Irene — all three murdered by Richard Hawes — lay in an unmarked grave at Oak Hill Cemetery in Birmingham for more than 135 years. In April 2024, they finally received a headstone.The CrimesThe Lake County White Cap raid followed personal grudges that had been tightening for months. Blackburn, a mine foreman, had been thrown out of the Campers' Retreat after a brawl with the bartender Fred Bennett. Others in the group had boundary disputes, cattle quarrels, neighborhood debts to settle. They put flour sacks over their heads and called it a community morality action — the Whitecapping movement had spread from Indiana through the Southern states and into California by 1890. The plan was to flog Bennett and run him to the county line. Helen Riche unmasked Henry Arkarro the moment the men crashed through the door, and the plan collapsed into gunfire.Richard Hawes murdered three members of his own family to clear the way for a new marriage. Emma and Irene Hawes were found bound with curtain cord and weighted with railroad iron curve-braces in a Birmingham lake on December 8, 1888 — the same day a mob of approximately 2,000 people converged on the Jefferson County Jail demanding to hang him on the spot. Sheriff Joseph S. Smith fired into the crowd. Ten men were killed. Approximately thirty were wounded. The historical murder case that followed Hawes would take fourteen more months and a formal trial to reach the same conclusion the mob wanted.The Investigations and Legal OutcomesIn California, ten men were arrested within days. The mining community was small; Helen Riche had identified one attacker herself. The trial opened February 6, 1891, in Lakeport — *People of the State of California v. B.F. Staley et al.* Four men were convicted of second-degree murder: Blackburn sentenced to twenty-five years, Staley and Cradwick to twenty years each, Osgood to twelve years. All four were released from San Quentin within approximately three years. The Governor had commuted Blackburn's sentence to ten years following an extensive lobbying campaign. Three years, for a home invasion that killed two people.In Alabama, Richard Hawes was tried beginning April 22, 1889, before Judge Samuel Greene. The prosecution built the case around May's murder — the strongest evidence available, though entirely circumstantial: eyewitness testimony placing father and daughter on the streetcar together, and only the father returning. The jury deliberated fifty-five minutes. Death. After multiple appeals to the Alabama Supreme Court, all denied, Richard Hawes was hanged by Sheriff Smith on February 28, 1890 — the same man who had fired into a crowd to keep him alive for this moment. Hawes wore a geranium in his lapel. The gallows were built by a man who had served on his jury.Historical ContextBoth cases sit at a specific American intersection: communities losing faith in institutional justice and reaching for extralegal violence, with consequences that fell hardest on people who had nothing to do with the original grievance. The Whitecapping movement was already documented across Indiana, Tennessee, and Mississippi before it reached California. In Alabama, the Birmingham riot of 1888 killed ten bystanders, including Maurice Throckmorton, thirty-three, the city's postmaster, who was reportedly trying to calm the crowd when he was shot. The legal system delivered the outcome the mob demanded — it just took fourteen months and cost ten additional lives to get there.California's legislature responded to the broader wave of hooded vigilantism during this period with enhanced anti- vigilante and anti-mask statutes. For the Hawes case, Fannie Bryant — the family's cook and a key witness for the prosecution — was herself sentenced to death for allegedly aiding Hawes. She died in a prison riot before the sentence could be carried out. Her actual level of involvement remains contested. She was a Black woman in 1880s Alabama, easily targeted by a system that offered her no protection.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kensington Publishing: https://www.kensingtonbooks.com* Check out Mood and use my code SHANE for a great deal: https://mood.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In this episode of the Cannabis Accounting Podcast, host Raymond Guns sits down with @luna_stower (Luna Stower), founder of Luna Stower Strategies and cannabis brand-marketing expert, to explore what it actually takes to build credibility and lasting impact in this industry.Luna was employee #1 at both Jetty Extracts] and Ispire Vape, helping navigate two very different public exits. She has been working with cannabis for over two decades, is a certified Ganjier, sits on the NCIA board and multiple other industry organizations, and consults globally across the Americas and Europe.Luna opens up about:

For the finale of the Feel Good Tour, we will be hosting the Ultimate Feel Good Party. Party Nights with Ankle Tap Live will be broadcasting live from Prison Break Market, San Quentin, on 29 May. Joining him will be Jacaranda FM's very own Rob Forbes, Mack Rapapali, and DJ Willy. But for such a huge celebration, we had one more surprise up our sleeves: for one night only, the formidable DJ Jazzy D will return to Jacaranda FM. Breakfast with Martin Bester spoke to DJ Jazzy D about his return and what audiences can expect from the Ultimate Feel Good Party.

FROM THE VAULT with Bob Goff: ✅ Why hovering over your family is one of the most important things you can do as a dad ✅ How to leave behind treasures your kids will discover long after you are gone ✅ The courage it takes to quit something that no longer fits and start fresh ✅ What Bob learned from his friends at San Quentin about feeding the people around you SUMMARY There are around 8 billion people alive right now, and there have been 107 billion who came before us. That context changes everything about how you spend today with your kids. In this From the Vault conversation, Bob Goff returns to talk about hovering over your family the way God hovered over the earth, leaving behind treasures your kids will discover for years to come, and finding the courage to make bold moves when something in your life needs to change. Bob shares why being fully present matters more than providing, how to live a "no capes" kind of life, and why the small moments will be the bookmarks your kids carry forever. TAKEAWAYS The kind of grandfather you want to be will be a byproduct of the kind of dad you are right now. Hovering over each person in your family means asking what they uniquely need that only you could provide. Living a "no capes" life means doing meaningful things without making a big deal about them. Your family needs you fully present far more than they need what you provide. When something in your life stops fitting, having the courage to quit and start fresh can change everything. GUEST Bob Goff is the bestselling author of Love Does, Everybody Always, Dream Big, and Undistracted, along with several children's books co-written with his daughter Lindsey. He is the founder of Love Does, a nonprofit that operates schools and safe houses for children in conflict zones around the world. Bob and his wife, Sweet Maria, live in San Diego and spend much of their time at The Oaks, where they host gatherings for dreamers and world changers. They have three grown children and several grandchildren.   Quotes "The kind of grandfather you want to be will be a byproduct of the kind of dad that you are." — Bob Goff "Hover over each person in your family. What does kid number one need that I could only uniquely provide them?" — Bob Goff "What your family really needs you to provide is you, like, fully present." — Bob Goff "Sometimes the familiar will get in the way of what's actually possible." — Bob Goff "Everybody doesn't get a slice, but everybody's fed." — Bob Goff Links Join the DadAwesome Prayer Team: Text "pray" to (651) 370-8618 Send a Voice Message to DadAwesome Apply to join the next DadAwesome Accelerator Cohort Subscribe to DadAwesome Messages: Text the word "Dad" to (651) 370-8618 Send a Voice Message to DadAwesome 7-Day Video Series: dadawesome.org/book DadAwesome Podcast: dadawesome.org/podcast Free Chapter + Intro Video Series: dadawesome.org/book Apply to join the next DadAwesome Accelerator Cohort: Email awesome@dadawesome.org Subscribe to DadAwesome Messages: Text "Dad" to (651) 370-8618 Dad Awesome book: dadawesome.org/book https://www.bobgoff.com/ Bob's BOOKS

This week's Copeland's Corner featured a full slate of political analysis, pop culture commentary, and candid personal stories. The panel—comedians Brian Mallow, Ronn Vigh, and Mike Larsen joined Brian for a sharp and often emotional roundtable spanning conspiracy theories, science, comedy, and culture. Discussion Highlights 1. Trump Assassination Attempt Conspiracies The group dissected widespread disbelief in the Trump assassination attempt, noting that even educated progressives were circulating skepticism online. Debate ranged from Secret Service failures to the administration's handling of messaging, with humor but also concern about erosion of public trust. 2. Jimmy Kimmel, Free Speech & Media Pressure The panel tackled Melania Trump's outrage over Kimmel's White House Correspondents' Dinner joke. Topics included First Amendment limits, Disney's possible response to cancellation threats, and hypocrisy in political outrage. The consensus: Disney will likely stand by Kimmel given his strong ratings and audience loyalty. 3. Trump's Science Board Firings A major portion covered the Trump administration's dismissal of all 22 members of the National Science Board. Mallow and Larsen discussed fears of politicization of science and potential long-term damage to U.S. research leadership. Ronn Vai connected the issue to personal loss, recounting his father's death from COVID-19 and frustrations with misinformation. 4. Personal & Emotional Moments Ronn's story of losing his father to COVID-19 provided a heartfelt segment about grief, misinformation, and performing through trauma. The comedians discussed using humor for healing and shared how the pandemic reshaped their outlook on family and science. 5. Cultural Commentary — Michael Jackson Biopic Debate The panel debated whether watching the Michael Jackson film equates to endorsing alleged abuse. Copeland defended separating art from artist, while Larsen cautioned against whitewashing history. Discussion extended to Cosby's legacy, cancel culture, and how Black audiences uniquely relate to Jackson's cultural impact. 6. Government Integrity & Leadership Conversation touched on government chaos—Secret Service competence, unqualified appointees, and renaming ICE to “NICE.” Mallow highlighted the pattern of replacing experts with loyalists and the cultural “war on expertise.” 7. Closing Humor & Projects The show ended on a lighter note with plugs for upcoming performances: Brian Mallow at STEAM Fest, Saratoga (May 16) Mike Larsen's writing work and San Quentin projects Brian Copeland's continued appearances on the History Channel's “The Unbelievable” -- Connect with our Guests... #RonnVigh - On Instagram @RonnRonnRonn #BrianMalow - ScienceComedian.com #MikeLarsen - @WriteMikeLarsen on Instagram -- #TrumpAssassinationAttempt #ConspiracyTheories #SecretService #WhiteHouseCorrespondentsDinner #FreeSpeech #MediaAccountability #FCC #DisneyPolitics #NationalScienceBoard #ScienceMatters #TrustInScience #Misinformation #COVID19Lessons #PublicHealth #JimmyKimmel #LateNightComedy #MichaelJacksonBiopic #CancelCulture #ArtVsArtist #BillCosby #PopCultureDebate #GriefAndComedy #COVIDLoss #HealingThroughHumor #RelationshipsAndRecovery #BrianCopeland #CopelandsCorner #HeadlinersOnTheHeadlines#CopelandUnfiltered #ComedyCommentary #PodcastersOfYouTube #ComicsOnAir #TalkPodcast#PoliticalHumor #PoliticalPodcast #HotTalkTopicsPodcast#ComedyNewsShow #CurrentEventsComedy #NewsCommentaryShow#WeeklyComedyTalk #BayAreaTalkShow #ComedyPodcastInterviews #ComedyPodcastHost Hosted by the Bay Area's own Brian Copeland, a longtime Actor, Comedian, Author, Playwright, Television and Radio Personality. Brian and The Copeland's Corner Network of content creators provide a weekly mashup of news, interviews and comedy.--For more from Brian...Visit his website: www.BrianCopeland.comFollow on Social Media: Instagram - @CopelandsCorner & @BrianCopieEmail: BrianCopelandShow@Gmail.com --Copeland's Corner is Created, Hosted, & Executive Produced by Brian Copeland. This Show is Recorded & Mixed by Charlene Goto with Go-To Productions. Visit Go-To Productions for all your Podcast & Media needs.Our Booking Producer is Tom Sawyer. For any show inquiries, please email CopelandsCornerPodcast@gmail.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nigel says no matter where you are, everyone has a story to tell about a hug: good, bad, or awkward. Earlonne isn't buying it. Thanks to Alonzo, Deonza, Harmon, Maurice, Ralph, Carlos, Michael, and Rocky for speaking to us on the yard at San Quentin. This episode was scored with music by David Jassy, Antwan Williams, Earlonne Woods, Derell Sadiq Davis, and Bruce Wallace.Big thanks to Warden Andes, Lt. Berry, and Sgt. Graves at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center; Acting Warden Parker, Associate Warden Lewis, and Lt. Avina at the California Institution for Women; and Warden De La Cruz and Lt. Vogel at the Central California Women's Facility for their support of the show.Ear Hustle is coming to the East Coast! Get your tickets at earhustlesq.com/tour. Help us reach 1,000 donors by June 30. Make your gift today at earhustlesq.com/donate.Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

What starts as a childhood in East Los Angeles turns into a life shaped by gangs, prison, and violence. In this raw and unfiltered interview, a former Mexican Mafia member—Mundo—breaks down his journey from rebellion and low self-esteem to becoming deeply embedded in one of the most feared prison organizations in the United States. He shares firsthand stories about growing up in gang-infested neighborhoods, his first time in juvenile hall, and how prison culture transformed him. From brutal violence and survival tactics behind bars to the psychology of gang loyalty, identity, and fear—this is a rare inside look into a world few ever truly understand. In this episode: -Growing up in East LA and early influences -Why people really join gangs (it's not what you think) -First time in juvenile hall and adapting to survive -The moment everything changed: first homicide -Prison politics, race dynamics, and gang structure -The rise and influence of the Mexican Mafia -How violence becomes normalized behind bars -The reality of loyalty, fear, and identity in gang life This isn't glamorized. It's real. And it's a story about consequences. Go Support Mundo! Books: https://www.policeandfirepublishing.com/ YouTube: @convictsandcops Movie: https://www.amazon.com/Mundo-Vince-Romo/dp/B07MMP45GC This Episode Is #Sponsored By The Following: GLD! New customers get 40% Off with code MITCHELL at https://GLD.com Superpower! Head to https://superpower.com and use code CONNECT at checkout for $20 off your membership. Unlock your new health intelligence. 100+ biomarkers. Every year. Detect early signs of 1,000+ conditions. #superpowerpod BetterHelp! When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at https://betterhelp.com/connect Hims! To get simple, online access to personalized, affordable care for ED, Hair Loss, Weight Loss, and more, visit https://hims.com/connect Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow 00:00 Mundo's Violent Life Begins 02:00 Introducing Ramon "Mundo" Mendoza 03:30 Why Mundo Wears a Mask & His Early Life 06:30 Growing Up in Boyle Heights and Gang Culture 09:00 Juvenile Hall and the Onset of Violence 13:00 Gang Identity and Early Violence 17:00 Life in Juvenile Hall: Survival and Respect 20:38 This Episode Is Sponsored By GLD 22:13 First Major Gang Beefs & Beatings 26:00 Mundo's First Homicide and Its Impact 31:00 Retaliation, Machine Guns & Escalation 37:34 This Episode Is Sponsored By Superpower 39:01 Going to Prison: The Start of a New Chapter 44:00 Early Days in Prison: Riots and Survival 51:00 Prison Politics: Gangs, Drugs & Race 56:00 Murder in Prison and Evasion of Justice 58:35 This Episode Is Sponsored By BetterHelp 59:14 Killing Inside: Desensitization & Prison Life 01:10:00 From Prison Violence to the Outside World 01:14:12 This Episode Is Sponsored By Hims 01:15:44 Joining the Mexican Mafia: Becoming a Member 01:23:00 Life as a Made Member: Hits, Power & Respect 01:31:00 The Evolution and Expansion of La Eme 01:39:00 Organized Crime: Heroin, Money & Murder Inc. 01:47:00 Structure of Surenos & Influence Over California 01:54:00 La Eme, the Cartels, and National Influence 02:01:00 Collection, Power, and Street-Level Operations 02:07:00 The Murder Case That Changed Everything 02:15:00 Conversion, Remorse, and Turning Point 02:21:00 Leaving the Mafia & Finding a New Path 02:24:00 Becoming an Author & Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For our latest installment in the ”revisiting” series, Nigel and Earlonne time-travel back to Season 4 and the uncertain futures of men who were living on San Quentin's now-shuttered death row.  Big thanks to everyone who shared their stories with us for this episode: Al aka Watson Allison, Abu Qadir Al-Amin, Lt. Sam Robinson, and Lonnie Morris.This episode was scored with music by Antwan Williams, David Jassy, and Rhashiyd Zinnamon, and a remix of our theme music from listener Ingibjörg Friðriksdóttir.Thanks to Lt. Sam Robinson and Warden Ron Davis for their support of this episode.Big thanks to Warden Andes, Lt. Berry, and Sgt. Graves at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center; Acting Warden Parker, Associate Warden Lewis, and Lt. Avina at the California Institution for Women; and Warden De La Cruz at the Central California Women's Facility for their support of the show. Ear Hustle is coming to the East Coast! Get your tickets at earhustlesq.com/tour. Support our team and get even more Ear Hustle by subscribing to Ear Hustle Plus today. Sign up at earhustlesq.com/plus or directly in Apple Podcasts. Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom is facing backlash after comments she made comparing the crimes of San Quentin inmates to accidents. The remarks, delivered during a discussion on prison reform, sparked criticism from victims’ advocates and renewed debate over how leaders talk about accountability and criminal justice reform. Please Like, Comment and Follow 'Philip Teresi on KMJ' on all platforms: --- Philip Teresi on KMJ is available on the KMJNOW app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever else you listen to podcasts. -- Philip Teresi on KMJ Weekdays 2-6 PM Pacific on News/Talk 580 AM & 105.9 FM KMJ | Website | Facebook | Instagram | X | Podcast | Amazon | - Everything KMJ KMJNOW App | Podcasts | Facebook | X | Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom is facing backlash after comments she made comparing the crimes of San Quentin inmates to accidents. The remarks, delivered during a discussion on prison reform, sparked criticism from victims’ advocates and renewed debate over how leaders talk about accountability and criminal justice reform. Please Like, Comment and Follow 'Philip Teresi on KMJ' on all platforms: --- Philip Teresi on KMJ is available on the KMJNOW app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever else you listen to podcasts. -- Philip Teresi on KMJ Weekdays 2-6 PM Pacific on News/Talk 580 AM & 105.9 FM KMJ | Website | Facebook | Instagram | X | Podcast | Amazon | - Everything KMJ KMJNOW App | Podcasts | Facebook | X | Instagram See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

(April 09, 2026) US fertility rate dropped to another record low in 2025. More Americans are breaking into the upper middle class. The war in Iran is causing U.S consumer prices to rise. Gavin Newsom’s wife shares sisters’ death, empathizes with San Quentin inmates.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ceasefire collapse: shortest in history—or master deal of the century? The legacy media and Iran propagandists work overtime to convince the world that the strait of Hormuz didn’t really open and that Trump agreed to all of Iran’s extreme demands in the “10 point deal”. White house truth bomb: trump ‘trashed’ Iran’s 10-point plan. What did Trump agree to? Karoline Leavitt laid out Trump’s continued red lines. Ignore the lies. Andrea has the facts. Trump-backed candidate crushes Georgia special—total domination. Trump racked up another win, this time in the special election to replace MTG. Trump’s endorsed candidate won BIGLY over the Dem. What does it mean for the mid terms? California first “partner’s shocking confession: story about killing her sister?! What did Newsom’s wife do to her sister and why did she tell this story at San Quentin? Wellness Wednesday warning: are unmarried people facing a cancer crisis? With Guests Jennifer Kelly, The Jennifer Kelly Show & Dr. Jeff Barke, rxforliberty.comSupport Our Mission: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=ZMGRBFGDJKRS8See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today, we hear from Congressional candidate, Connie Chan who's in the race to take over Nancy Pelosi's US House of Representatives seat. Then, a song by a San Quentin musician that reminds his peers that change is possible. And, a live show in Oakland that is described as “Shark Tank” meets “Soul Beat.”

Author Candice Fox doesn't just write crime; she lives it through research for her books, including a chilling five-hour, "full-contact" visit in a San Quentin jail with one of America’s worst serial killers, the notorious "Toolbox Killer.” In this episode of I Catch Killers, Candice gives host Gary Jubelin a peek into a childhood she calls a madhouse…growing up with more than 150 foster siblings and a father who worked as a parole officer, giving her a glimpse into humanity’s darkest corners before she even hit double digits. Hear how she channels real‑world evil into compelling stories.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. Tonight on APEX Express Host Miko Lee speaks with Restorative Justice Educator and Author Tatiana Chaterji about her work on the power of tenderness. Tune in!   Tatiana Chaterji's website Show Transcript [00:00:00] Opening Music: Apex Express Asian Pacific expression. Community and cultural coverage, music and calendar, new visions and voices, coming to you with an Asian Pacific Islander point of view. It's time to get on board the Apex Express.   [00:00:44] Miko Lee: Good evening. I'm your host Miko Lee, and tonight we are speaking with Tatiana Chaterji about Restorative Justice. Restorative justice is a movement and a set of practices that stands as an alternative to our current punitive justice system. It focuses on people and repairing harm by engaging all the impacted folks working together to repair that harm. RJ is built off of ancient indigenous practices from cultures around the globe, including Native American, African, first Nation, Canadian, and many others. So join us with Tatiana Chaterji.    [00:01:23] Tati, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?    [00:01:28] Tatiana Chaterji: Thank you for the question, Miko. The first thing that comes to mind, my people are the people we're, we're, we're coming up on the cusp of a possible teacher strike, and I'm thinking about workers and the labor, movement and comrades in my life from doing, work as a classified school worker for about a decade.   [00:01:49] Then my people are also from my homelands. The two that I feel very close to me are in Finland, from my mom's side, and then in Bengal, both India, west Bengal, and Bangladesh. And my people are also those who are facing facing the worst moments of their life, either from causing harm or experiencing harm as a survivor of violence.   [00:02:11] I think about this a lot and I think about also the smaller conflicts and tensions and issues that bubble up all the time. So my people are those that are not afraid to make it better, you know, to make it right. And I carry, oh gosh, what legacy do I. I wanna say first kind of the legacy of the Oakland RJ movement that really nurtured me and the youth that I've encountered in schools and in detention on the streets in the community. [00:02:41] Youth who are young adults and becoming bigger, older adults and, and, and also elders. To me. So sort of that's whose legacy I carry in shaping the. Society that we all deserve.    [00:02:55] Miko Lee: Thank you for answering with such a rich, well thought out response that's very expansive and worldly. I appreciate that. Can you share what brought you to this work personally?   [00:03:07] Tatiana Chaterji: Sure. As a young activist involved in Insight Women of Color against Violence and aware of the work of Critical Resistance, and I had a pretty clear politics of abolition, but I didn't. Really think that it impacted me as personally as it did when I was in my early twenties and I suffered a brain injury from a vehicular assault, a hit and run that may have been gang affiliated or, a case of mistaken identity. My recovery is, is, is complicated. My journey through various kinds of disabilities has shaped me. But I think the way that I was treated by the police and by the justice quote unquote justice system, which I now call the criminal legal system, it because there was no justice.   [00:03:52] I sort of don't believe that justice is served in the ways that survivors need. yeah, I really, I got very close to the heart of what an RJ process can do and what RJ really is. I got introduced to Sonya Shah and the work of Suha bga and I was able to do a surrogate victim offender dialogue and then later to facilitate these processes where people are kind of meeting at the, at the hardest point of their lives and connecting across immense suffering and layers of systemic and interpersonal internalized oppression.   [00:04:26] Just so much stuff and what happens when you can cross over into a shared humanity and recognition. It's just, it's just so profound and and from that space of healing and, and, and compassion, I've been able to think about. Other ways that RJ can look and have sort of been an advan, what is it evangelical for it?   [00:04:51] You know, I think that because we don't see these options, I, I, because I knew people, I was able to connect in this way and I would just shout out David uim, who's the one who told me that even if I didn't know the person who harmed me, that this was possible. People so often give up, they're just like, well, I have to feel this way.   [00:05:10] I have to just deal with it. Swallow the injustice and the lack of recognition. Just sort of keep going. Grit your teeth. I think we don't have enough knowledge of what's possible and so we harden ourselves My name is Tatiana Chaterji. I'll be reading my flash essay split. Before I didn't know what a traumatic brain injury was. My tongue had not curled the letters TBI together shaping the sound of nightmare. I had not heard the clipping of staples from a scalp fused after it was split to release pressure.   [00:05:46] They said, removing the right cranial bone flap, not conceived of the skull as giving pressure, a living organism of its own, a piece of its stored in a freezer for months after being removed in the dead of night. Attempted murder, vehicular assault under a blanket of fog. This city, these hidden stars.   [00:06:07] Never concerned myself with science or medicine or the mechanics of survival, the filaments of me unbreaking encased as they were in a thick clay from where I stood young and forceful, standing or walking or sitting, because I wanted to willful, bold, joy, stubborn, had not needed to wait for the all clear discharge orders that released me to a world of indifference.   [00:06:33] Before I didn't know life without its sense. Its tastes that the olfactory nerve stretches behind the eyes, vulnerable to bruising or severing from an impact to the head that you won't know until you know an extended game of dice that ultimately rolled no permanent damage. You will smell again, but with loss.   [00:06:52] Unfamiliar associating Jasmine for coffee, revulsion to orange comfort and cinnamon. Before I had not been the target of any physical or lasting harm. Had not thought that victim or survivor would ever describe me. Had not organized a vigil for rape survivors as I did while unconscious dreaming, waking up to pelvic bruises, believing I was one of them.   [00:07:19] The brain injury bisected my life until I realized it was one in a string of paper cuts that stop hurting eventually, that there will be other moments that change me, that there are many ways to slice a life when I pull her to my chest. A sticky, slimy worm, six pounds, four ounces, eyes closed, mulling to find her place on my chest for the first time.   [00:07:44] My chin against the wet mess of hair. When he carries me over the threshold into our suite at the Wise Owl Hotel in South Colta, garlands of sweet Jasmine adorn my hair and my henna painted arms drip with gold. When the drama therapist asks the group to simulate the attack rushing towards me so I can do what I wished I had done, run away.   [00:08:11] It returns my power and I own what's mine Fingertips. Throbbing with the life they can grasp. Sirens through the dark machines. Beeping into a week of unconsciousness, awakening to wonder and madness. One toe at suicide's brink, recovering in this outpatient patient treatment program for depression and anxiety.   [00:08:31] All of it here. The breath and meat and sky. When I walked through the gates of San Quentin State Prison for the first time, shuttering at the cold, heavy clank permanence at my back. The man in front of me breathes nervously in his starched blue uniform, gently meeting my eyes to say, I've never met a real victim before.   [00:08:53] Thank you for coming. He is, of course, a crime victim, but also an offender, and there isn't room to be both in this place. I am here for the penultimate session of Victim Offender Education and Dialogue where the men have met for over a year now, each week to learn empathy and build rigorous self-reflection muscles to take accountability.   [00:09:18] They are ready to present their crime impact statements and to listen to a panel of survivors. None of us directly harmed or were harmed by each other. We are all surrogates. This then is the greatest innocence, the widest Gulf I've crossed before, sitting with men who have killed, who have touched this threshold, this fever wound of life and God and pain.   [00:09:44] My eyes were full of dew. I was blind to the logics of violence, the way the toxins seep under and you merge with its poison that you become dehumanized. Brutal. A mentality of war. The hurt echoing at a different pitch. Copper pebbles in an empty cave. Before I sat alone in confusion, untangling the threads of my trauma with what I knew from a peaceful life of privilege.   [00:10:12] In that first circle at San Quentin and every subsequent circle, I uncloak this ache, hear from men who explain the numbness, danger in every corner under the shadow of each day. I let them hold my story, share its load. Listen to theirs, my witness body lifting off bits of the weight they carry. I welcome insights previously unimaginable.   [00:10:39] Receive apologies I didn't know I needed. It's as if the lights switch on all at once, a brightness. The dialogue melts the isolation of my suffering. Its icy blanket of shame, allowing me to see what had been there all along, not monster. A human did this to me, broken alone, and suddenly I have permission to heal for 10 days.   [00:11:07] Baby birds remain in the nest. Their mother has built. I spent 10 days in a coma from within the protective circle. My family had drawn around me for the entirety of my two plus decades on earth. Infant wind, bone creature before flight 24 years collapsed to 10 days in the coma nest so I could bear free the weight of the universe.   [00:11:33] Soaring my mind at ease. A fresh page appears the dotted line of life's flashpoints waiting to blink on forward cuts and selves.   [00:11:46] Miko Lee: I just finished your new book. Wow.    [00:11:48] Tatiana Chaterji: Oh you did?   [00:11:48] Miko Lee: Yes I did.    [00:11:49] Tatiana Chaterji: Yay!   [00:11:50] Miko Lee: Yes I did. Everyday Restorative justice, moving from crisis Response to positive school culture. Big title, weighty title. It's so much, it's so rich, it's so beautiful. It has so many different elements for, um, for a classroom teacher, an educator, a community organizer. And it has not just like lesson plans, but amazing quotes and rubrics.   [00:12:15] Even rubrics. 'cause you could tell your classroom teacher with real experiences, which is like the land I live in. Stories and Spanish translations. So tell us how this amazing book, what, I mean you've been doing this work for years, but what inspired you to collect this into book form?    [00:12:33] Tatiana Chaterji: Oh, thank you Miko for reading it. That is the biggest gift ever. I want to shout out Heather Manchester Anita Vva and Evelyn Aquino. They wrote a book a few years ago on inter international Intergenerational Restorative Justice and really youth and adult partnership. And in that book, they featured the work that I had been doing at Fremont here in East Oakland.   [00:12:57] And I think that was the first time when I was like, wait, maybe we are really doing something special that deserves to be in a book. You know, like, what is this secret sauce? Or what is the, what is the combination? Things that we're doing that's really working that we want to share out with the world.   [00:13:14] And and so, yeah, so fast forward a little bit of time. There's, I, I've actually now left the district. I've had more time to reflect on what that time was and what it was we were doing. And I had this invitation with Teachers College Press to, uh, to put it forth and really make it legible for classroom teachers who might not have always felt like they were invited into this work for a variety of reasons.   [00:13:41] Miko Lee: Well, one, I think that's fascinating that it took somebody else writing about your work for you to say, Ooh, look at this. I think that's fascinating. Uh, more to that later, but I'm wondering I think many classroom teachers already do this whole, oh, let's come up with our rules for the classroom. It's like respect.   [00:13:58] I mean, it's a lot of the principles around restorative justice, but actually implementing a whole system feels. Overwhelming or like you were just saying, they don't have access to it, so how does this book give them access?    [00:14:14] Tatiana Chaterji: Uh, well, and I, I wanna clarify from the top that I'm actually, I am, I have served in the role of a classroom teacher, but that's not my training or background. And that I've, I've actually seen this schism or this kind of divisiveness between people who are in youth organizing, where I've, that's my background. Youth organ organizing, youth leadership development, sort of student and youth services. Vis-a-vis classroom educators. And I was straddling both of these roles as a classified employee doing restorative justice alongside case managers, the school security officers who are now called culture keepers in Oakland Unified, and and administrators as well.   [00:14:56] And I was partnering with teachers to figure out classroom systems. I ended up co-teaching and then solo teaching a class within the Mandela academy for Law and Public Service. That continued until when that school, when that mini school closed down. But I learned so much from classroom teachers. The educators that I was working with are amazing and they are the original. RJ people, I would say, but they, they are not positioned that way and they aren't often recognized or given the time and space to do circle and to do that culture building in their classrooms because they have any number of deliverables and test you know, requirements that they are responsible for.   [00:15:37] And so what I really saw was a kind of a sidelining of their work into the teaching and then the culture work happening in other pockets and primarily held by people who are not in front of the kids day after day dealing with. Management and communication and all the things that happen when you're bell to bell responsible for so many different combinations of kids and communicating with their parents and making sure everything gets synced up. So I think I really wanted to honor their labor and and open the door. And, and, and I'm sure others have done it as well, but I just felt it wasn't open enough. It wasn't a, a sort of a strong enough like, here, you already do this. Why? What if you could take it a step further or here are some things that are legible for the systems and the, the tasks that you are responsible for, that you have to be responsible for. Let me create it in your, in your language. And really with great humility from my own position is, has not having the same training.    [00:16:41] Miko Lee: Thank you for pointing that out. And those titles of, you know, the classroom educator, the community organizers, the youth development person, people often like separate them, but really it's about the creating the best culture for the students is what we're talking about.   [00:16:56] Tatiana Chaterji: Yeah. We should be on the same page.    [00:16:58] Miko Lee: Yeah.    [00:16:58] Tatiana Chaterji: And I think very often we are pit against each other and there's sort of, you know, being in this violent, extractive society that that's sort of what happens. But it shouldn't happen, in fact. Right. And we should be more hand in hand working together when there's been this smooth handoff between different roles on a campus. That's when it's just the best. And I want to, I hope to see that more.    [00:17:19] Miko Lee: Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about the story behind the, forward to the book? You write in a dedication to a young woman, and can you share a little bit about that story?    [00:17:30] Tatiana Chaterji: Oh gosh. Shamara Young her memory lives within me and with so many people in the Fremont community in Oakland. She was a student leader who was in the very first iteration of this RJ class, this restorative justice class that I taught for ninth graders, which really is the inspiration for this book. And she was killed shortly after we had just come back from distance learning from the pandemic, and it really shocked our, our entire community, an incident of road rage, and just the excess of the excess availability of weapons, you know, and, and firearms.   [00:18:07] So just wanted to honor her legacy, honor honor other students and young people who've been stolen from us, from violence here at home, and also in any number of imperial projects that, that. US government is responsible for just really seeing the interconnection between people's struggle and the loss of life is tragic all the time. And the loss of a student is a particular pain that I just, I wanted to name because it is, it is so tender and other educators, youth organizers, parents, people who've known young ones to, to die in that way. It's just something, a wound that stays and definitely motivates me to, to do this work.   [00:18:49] My name is Tatiana Chaterji. I'll be reading my Vielle, a poem called Losing Shamara. When he tells me she's gone, the air leaves my lungs losing shamara. The adults are loud in their grief. Students' eyes down to forget their own stolen ones. Circles the forced ceremony of blood on false tongues, homage to her memory, her story without relief.   [00:19:15] When he tells me she's gone, the air leaves my lungs. There's enough rage in the streets, enough guns, too many per person drowning dreams. All the beef students' eyes down to forget their own stolen ones. We fend for ourselves, feeding off crumbs, unmet needs of volcano. The lava, a sharp reef. When he tells me she's gone, the air leaves my lungs. [00:19:41] Healing hearts. Now the school spins as she hums her voice and my mind a faint shaking leaf when he tells me she's gone, the air leaves my lungs losing shamara. The adults are loud in their grief.   [00:19:57] Miko Lee: Well, thank you so much for grounding the book in that story, because I think there's something about talking about doing that work, but keeping in mind a real person and the impacts of our violent society and what's going on, but also how we keep moving on. So I, and    [00:20:13] Tatiana Chaterji: to say that, you know, Shaara really embraced this. She already, like so many of us and so many young people, she knew how to communicate through difficult situations, through drama and the gossip and what people are posting. And I saw that clarity and that maturity in her and wanted to just instill this book with that wisdom that, that young people often know how, already how to navigate these complex and oppressive systems. And that if we can offer a spotlight to them or something that's substantive and really honors that intelligence, they're, we, we could learn a lot.   [00:20:49] Miko Lee: Speaking of drama and learning a lot. I know that you have a background in theater and theater of the oppressed, and I'm wondering how you bring that work into your RJ work.   [00:21:00] Tatiana Chaterji: Oh, well that's a big passion of mine. I have not done it as much in the classroom space as I might have liked. But it's it when, when there is the invitation or the, the, the container to really go deep and create stories. Using theatrical forms and, and our bodies, this, this magic of image theater, it can be so powerful.   [00:21:22] The bulk of my work in that area has been inside of prison and doing programming in that highly violent system where there is generative, juicy, beautiful art to be made. And I just shout out all of the incarcerated artists that I've worked with who helped to shape those spaces and do performance in the prison where, where there was kind of like a witnessing and a participation across the audience and the performers who are on stage. That is that that gives me a lot of just light and hope and yeah. Good stuff.    [00:22:02] Miko Lee: I wonder if you could share a bit for folks that are not as familiar with rj uh, restorative justice work, and particularly at school sites, if you could share about the carpet of community building, what is that all about?   [00:22:15] Tatiana Chaterji: Oh yeah. Well, in the book I talk about the standard model of three tiers of restorative justice using kind of a triangle diagram where the, the bottom third, it's not even quite a third, it's the biggest chunk of the triangle, but that bottom layer is tier one. And this is not just in restorative justice, a lot of people will be familiar with this, where tier one is kind of universal. It's supposed to be for everybody. It is supposed to work for everyone, kind of the way that you shape the culture and the conditions of a learning environment.   [00:22:48] Tier two is when things go wrong or rather. People might need more support, more individualized attention in an RJ context, that's often if there's conflict or a pattern of, uh, behavior that is harmful. And then tier three is at the very top where it's the fewest people. But the idea that maybe somebody needs to be removed in a typical school that would be through.   [00:23:15] Expulsion or suspension or even juvenile detention and that they are in a restorative justice framework, they are welcomed back with intention and clarity on what that means. Doing something that's called a cosa, a circle of support and accountability that looks at the ways that a young person can succeed and holds them to account with a lot of love and care.   [00:23:39] So that triangle is great. Kind of, but it also could be Reconceptualized as a carpet of just interconnecting reasons for meeting in Circle. And I really wanna credit one of my mentors and friends, Kamoa Johnson, who helped me to think about this as a sort of, there's so many reasons to get, come together and circle that none of them should be prioritized more than the other. Or rather that every single thing should be grounded in the strength of the community and building relationships. So if I'm meeting with someone because they did something. Wrong, quote unquote, you know, that's also an opportunity for relationship. And there should be, uh, a piece of us getting to know each other as human.   [00:24:23] That is part of that as well. And yeah, so I think like just thinking about the carpet you can think about the different kinds of circles that people practice. That is all happening as community. That community building has to happen first and alongside all of these other interventions. So it's almost like the two top layers of the triangle would actually be situated in the bottom triangle or the bottom little chunk. And that bottom chunk would actually be a circle    [00:24:50] Miko Lee: or just reconfiguring the whole idea of a triangle.   [00:24:54] Tatiana Chaterji: Right, exactly. Yeah.    [00:24:55] Miko Lee: Yeah. So that we are all on one level space working in collective, uh, communication.    [00:25:02] Tatiana Chaterji: Yeah, and I think I might've explained it in sort of a confusing way. You'd have to really look at the book to see the, the reconceptualization, but I wanna emphasize that The reason that this framework and this redesign is so crucial is because people jump into rj, they jump into a circle and they don't do the groundwork to prepare everyone, including themselves to be there. But in a school environment, there's any number of toxic elements that students are absorbing, that teachers are absorbing, that we're all kind of just surviving with, you know, we're hungry, we're tired, we're overstimulated, the lights are too bright. We didn't get enough sleep. There's distractions on our cell phones.   [00:25:44] There's so many reasons that prevent us from sitting with each other and listening and being willing to learn from what another person might say or what their experience might be. And so if we can just go. Backwards and start with authentic connection and community building and skilling people up on how to listen. Then we'll be more successful. Any number of people who have tried to do a circle and it fails, and I count myself in that group as well. It's not. All your fault. In fact, it might not be your fault at all. There's so many reasons why a circle will flop, and I think the assumption that I make is that people are not going to bear their souls to me or be vulnerable to me right off the bat.   [00:26:32] And maybe they won't really ever. But that there are steps that can be taken to soften the hostility, the inherent hostility or harshness that is in our society, and to kind of slowly work towards a, just a, like a, a warmth. A warmth where people feel like it's not dangerous to talk about the icky stuff and the uncomfortable stuff, and that we have to do it very slowly and in a container where students and really anyone can relearn the part of ourselves that we have to strip away when we grow up.   [00:27:11] Miko Lee: So I feel like you're talking about multiple things. One is creating a safe environment for the young people to be able to speak what's on their heart, what's on their mind, and, and to recognize that everybody's coming from such a different space. Even in one school. Even in one classroom. It reminds me of that theater game the moment before. Like you never know what happened to that person the moment before they came to that circle.    [00:27:34] Tatiana Chaterji: Yeah.    [00:27:34] Miko Lee: And so it's just to be very conscious of that, that, uh. All of the environment that they're coming from.    [00:27:41] Tatiana Chaterji: Yeah. Conscious of it and accepting of it, but also not accepting that that's it. Like if someone is showing up and they're on their phone or they're kind of listening in a superficial way, they give a a cheap answer to a question that that's not all they're capable of. And I think we know that and educators would know that, but they might not have the tools to allow the student to go deeper or to, or even the time in their day in the semester to allow that growth to happen. And so I spotlight this experiment that we did at Fremont, which was 12 weeks long, and it rotated three times.   [00:28:18] It was an intro to the Media Academy, introduction to that. Architecture academy, and then it was a restorative justice class. And in those 12 weeks from the start to the finish, I noticed an incredible change in the student's ability to connect with each other, to feel empowered, to take, uh, sort of shape what they understand and shape what they care about and what they might wanna advocate for. And it was an intensive laboratory. I was super strict about phones. You know, I was, it was like, that was the place where you had to listen, learn how to listen, which was, in fact, the, the, my biggest, deliverable for them was that they should know how to listen and that they, of course, knew how, but this was a way to practice it further.   [00:29:02] Miko Lee: Can you name a few other things in that 12 week session that were able to foment this, uh, community?    [00:29:10] Tatiana Chaterji: Yeah, I think because it was a non-academic space, I was really able to prioritize how people are listening and how they are, uh, speaking or communicating. So everybody has a different comfort level with speaking out loud. And being in circle can feel extremely intimidating if you're not someone who likes to talk in front of people or likes to have the spotlight on you. So through the course of the class, there were, there were smaller activities to practice, people's public speaking, and even reflecting and then articulating what it is that you wanna say and practicing what does it mean to divulge something but not too much that you feel exposed.   [00:29:50] That skill, I think, is something that adults often take for granted, that we know how to evaluate a situation and shape our story correctly. And not all adults either, but it's something that for young people that is some that, that they can grow into that. Understand what they might wanna share that would be meaningful without making them feel too naked in front of their peers. So it's sort of like all of these dimensions of what are the pressures that they're feeling among this group of people? What feels comfortable to share? And when we got, when we broke into the more vulnerable and tender territory, it was pretty incredible to see and, and witness the shift in energy and how letting people's guards down could happen, like in a responsible way. I, in no way, am advocating for having students and encouraging students to open up about their trauma and then be let loose into the, to the world. You know, there are so many dangerous things that, that people are dealing with and having to say,    [00:30:53] Miko Lee: especially our social media world.    [00:30:56] Tatiana Chaterji: Right, absolutely. That's a whole other terrain. But to say that there is perhaps more possible than what we accept. So, so we kind of, I think we give up on like, well, you know, people are gonna shut down. They already are shut down and they're guarded, and boom, that's it. Let's just roll with it. Let me give them as many worksheets as possible, but I'm not gonna ask them to talk out loud because that's too much and    [00:31:23] Miko Lee: watch a bunch of movies.    [00:31:25] Tatiana Chaterji: Yeah. Well, I mean, teachers would tell me that they were so grateful that this space was being held because of what I think they understood as like a, a naturally therapeutic environment. And then of course, it's crazy because it wasn't always great. Sometimes it, you know, it didn't, I couldn't contain the space as well as I wanted to, but then students would say that I was the only teacher that would. Require them to speak out loud. Um, and so, and I didn't do    [00:31:48] Miko Lee: what of the whole day? That was the only class?   [00:31:51] Tatiana Chaterji: Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty easy for some of them, you know, some of them and not all of them, but like, it's, it's remarkable to, to understand that education can happen that way. And increasingly with remote learning and with everything being sort of through this technological interface, it is possible to pretty much not communicate out loud. So then what does that mean? We are losing so much of what we're capable of.    [00:32:13] Miko Lee: Yeah. It's not giving voice to students at all. Literally.    [00:32:16] Tatiana Chaterji: Well, right. Yeah. Yeah.    [00:32:19] Miko Lee: I mean, you make me think of a couple things. One, when you talk about the public speaking, clearly that's where your theater training comes in, not just naturally to do the public speaking, but then I also, when you're talking about consent and what you're sharing and how much you're sharing of yourself, 'cause that can be very vulnerable for young folks, especially folks that are survivors. And I'm thinking about Dr. Danielle Allen from Harvard and her work around the youth participatory politics. Are you familiar with her stuff?    [00:32:47] Tatiana Chaterji: No,    [00:32:47] Miko Lee: she's amazing she, she has this whole theory about how youth should share, and one of her components is sharing, um, digitally what they wanna share about who they are in the world. But I was just thinking about these as you're speaking about how you're getting them to talk about who they are. And I'm wondering if you could share a little bit more about youth leadership and how that's part of the development of the program, how important that is.    [00:33:15] Tatiana Chaterji: Absolutely. Um, I have a quote from one of my favorite RJ comrades to BD Gibson where he says that anything a young person can do, they should do that. We should hand it over, you know allow for more scaffolded, kind of shared responsibility. When I think about from the beginning of a school year to the end, that, that there's kind of a, the teacher is, and the, or the youth worker, whoever's holding the space, is doing a lot of the work to, to teach the skills, to transfer, the skills, to mentor and empower or skill up the young people. And that through the course of the year, by the end of it, that the young people are taking it on, shaping it, and they're doing so. In collaboration with the adults. And that it is not so much just youth adult partnership, but that there's a, a sense of intergenerational ness even among young people.   [00:34:08] There might be two people on the same grade level, one of whom has been in a youth leadership program and already kind of feels confident about doing any number of things. And I and a and their peer who could learn from that. Or an upper class person and a younger class person or a recent graduate. Many of the teachers and staff at Fremont were actually alumni of the school, which was really powerful for students to see someone who had gone through those same hallways. I think that's all a, a, a piece of it.   [00:34:38] The other thing about youth leadership is that the model of restorative justice in schools that I'm grounded in and that I would say many of my people in Oakland are grounded in is peer leadership. So when students are leading circles, and not just leading circles, but also kind of having their ears to the ground and listening to what students are worried about, if there are social and political phenomena that are affecting students and staff, how, how can they shape the questions or the activities that might need to happen? And, um,    [00:35:12] Miko Lee: for sure they know what's happening way more than any teacher does.    [00:35:16] Tatiana Chaterji: Right. I mean, often or in a different way.    [00:35:18] Miko Lee: Mm-hmm.    [00:35:18] Tatiana Chaterji: And so to be able to invite their voice in a, in a, in a meaningful container that isn't tokenizing it, that isn't sort of celebrating them just for being young or oppressed. I mean, I see that a lot in, in, in the work of youth leadership even. But to sort of meaningfully integrate them, which also requires training them in various, skills. And that partnership and that kind of coming together and doing things as a community can be transformative for everyone involved. I mean, for the staff that I've worked with, not just at Fremont, but at other schools when I've had students that are leading a training in circle keeping, for example, that can be so magnificent because the teacher gets to literally learn from their students, which I think is a dream that many people already are already want to do.   [00:36:06] Miko Lee: Absolutely. I think that's true.   [00:36:08] Ayame Keane-Lee: We're gonna take a quick break from the interview and listen to Slow Fade by MILCK.   MUSIC   [00:40:26] That was Slow Fade by MILCK.   [00:40:29] Miko Lee: I wanna pull a little bit bigger and talk a little bit more about restorative justice for just a moment. You write in your book about this need for a cultural shift, a paradigm shift because we are living in a capitalistic, uh, you know punishment based world in that we have this whole prison industrial complex and in, in fact the education to prison industrial complex. So can you talk about the different questions that are asked that, that restorative justice uses versus re, re versus like.    [00:41:01] Tatiana Chaterji: retributive.    [00:41:02] Miko Lee: Yes. Cannot say that word. So talk a little bit about the difference in our current system, which is this punishment base versus a restorative justice based. What kind of questions are different?    [00:41:13] Tatiana Chaterji: Yeah, definitely. Uh, uh, and, and to say that it's not just oppressive, capitalistic, it's also very transactional, that our relationships are not human. They're about just what people can get from them. And I'm seeing that just a lot. Um, but Howard Zer, I think is one of the people that I would credit with these contrasting questions in our current system, in, in sort of punitive and criminal or carceral spaces, the questions are who what law or rule was broken?   [00:41:40] Who broke it? You know, who's at fault? And then what should be the consequence? And often consequence means punishment or retribution. It means a payback because you broke a law. And in that system, the law or the institutions, right, is. Is is more important than the person and the victim or survivor is invisible.   [00:42:02] They are not even really of concern. And our, that's how our criminal legal system works. You don't really often have to consult a victim or a survivor around what they want to have happened because they literally don't matter. Their, their voice is taken away. It's the state of California versus the person who is accused of a crime vis-a-vis the person who's hurt or their mother, their community versus someone who, who has caused harm in a restorative approach.   [00:42:30] We ask. What the heck just happened? What, what's going on? You know who was harmed? Who else was affected? And what needs to happen to make things right? And that what needs to happen to make things right? Also includes who needs to do what. So it's going into the impact, the needs that arise from that impact, and then the obligations that. flow from there. So it's a really sort of, it's a more holistic and humanizing approach to situations that are complex. There's always a backstory, and that backstory isn't to justify the harm, it's to give the context.   [00:43:14] It's to understand how things happen. I have, I'm now a mom, I have two kids. If something's going on at school or if my child is blamed for something, I have to ask what prompted this kid to do the thing? I mean, when you're a parent, you really feel it quite closely, but it's there all the time. There's sort of, there's cycles that get played out in any number of of problems that we attend to.   [00:43:38] Miko Lee: Thank you for breaking that down so clearly. We're living in this time right now where the Epstein files are just being released and every day there's a different story in the news. And I'm just wondering for folks right now that may be triggered every time they're listening or reading or what, taking in the news, what are some RJ methods for coping with that?   [00:44:01] Tatiana Chaterji: My gosh, I'm one of these people that is triggered constantly and I just wanna give a shout out to all the survivors of, um, of child sexual exploitation, commercial sexual exploitation, and um, uh, sexual violence, all the, the, um, the predatory stuff that happens on the streets in my community and definitely at the schools where I've been. It is extremely. Unjust on the local level, and we're seeing it at these, at the scale, right? Of power. So blatant,    [00:44:34] Miko Lee: so big, so international, so wild.    [00:44:39] Tatiana Chaterji: Yeah. So in terms of how can RJ help, I mean, I would say that there is such a lack of any kind of accountability right now for the harm doers for people who have caused harm. There's no, there's not, there's not, there's not punishment, right? If you wanna look at retributive justice, there's not sort of    [00:44:57] Miko Lee: no accountability.    [00:44:58] Tatiana Chaterji: There's no accountability, but there's no compassionate encounter with with people who have done harm either. I mean, the framework I guess I would offer is the social relationship window. Um, ol and waktel, Ted Wachtel, various people have reenvisioned it, Dorothy Ving, and if you get the book, you can see all that. So that legacy, but that we sort of, we hold people who are causing harm. We hold them with love, and we also hold them with with a clear structure and boundary around what's acceptable.   [00:45:28] And so we're not sliding into a permissive zone where where we just let it go and enable the behavior to happen. And we're also not trying to dehumanize people who have caused harm and only see them as as monsters. I, I don't know, miko when it comes to people with such. Positional power, privilege, and just impunity. I, I don't know if I would apply that to the, to the perpetrators, right, to the people who, who are responsible for such harm right now. Like, that's not the conversation that I'm interested in having. I think, yeah, I, I don't know. Maybe I'm messing up this question.    [00:46:02] Miko Lee: No, you're not. I's so complicated because as an abolitionist, you know, I don't want these. I don't want people to be incarcerated necessarily, but these are some hideous, awful people that are like, so how do, how do you like wrestle with that?    [00:46:18] Tatiana Chaterji: I think it's like the, there's individuals right, who cause harm, but I think the main thing is that there are systems that allowed this harm and are allowing and have continued this harm to happen. I,  [00:46:29] Miko Lee: and it's perpetrated. It's still going on.    [00:46:30] Tatiana Chaterji: Right? Right. So I think like it's really about dismantling these systems and, and shining the light on what is there that we don't always see because we are caught up in the interpersonal, right. And so much of conversations about oppression will get into interpersonal because that's what we see.   [00:46:46] Miko Lee: Mm-hmm.    [00:46:46] Tatiana Chaterji: So students and community members will feel that someone is racist because someone has made a comment or this, that and the other. They're not seeing the kind of racial capitalism, the structure of poverty and what's baked into our laws that are behind it. So I think what circle and what restorative justice spaces can do is for me as someone who resists.   [00:47:08] Racial capitalism and resists structural inequality and the existence of poverty and racialized poverty in the way that it is, that it is. I think it is a space for dreaming together, for, for identifying shared struggle. What are the common things that we're dealing with? A circle is really good because it breaks people out of isolation that they think they're grappling with a thing on their own, and actually it is shared by other people and perhaps everyone. [00:47:38] So then from that place of shared struggle, what do we dream that, could be different? And how do we, organize together? I see the healing component of storytelling and of channeling grief and rage as connected to action and, and strategy. So that's primarily what I would say. Thank you for that question, for this timeliness. Yeah.   [00:48:02] Miko Lee: I'm wondering what you want folks to understand after reading your book. What do you want them to walk away with?    [00:48:09] Tatiana Chaterji: I think I want people to maybe f feel a, a little bit more confident that they could to the heart of pain with students and with others in your life, that there are frameworks and structures or ideas that can really. Hold you and support you in navigating that hard stuff or that even to study it. Maybe I want people to be curious about how do people create justice? What is, what is healing based justice look like? What's possible? Let's study it together because it takes a lot of work. It's not apparent. Our media and Hollywood, they glamorize, you know, there's propaganda.   [00:48:58] There's just like a glamorous portrayal of vengeance and that humanity, we can have vengeance, but we can also have other things. And those things might be the ones that we, the, the healing based justice systems is what we want when it's representing our best selves and what could help us and future generations.   [00:49:17] So to walk away with a little bit of hope. To not throw away RJ because of your past experiences where it sucked. RJ often sucks because of how, because of any number of factors and that it doesn't, don't give up. Don't give up. It can be better. And it, and, and there's some things that we can all learn, including myself and any of my own mistakes, that there's perhaps, it's still worth fighting for and it's still worth trying, and that we can do it slowly with care, with intention, and to give that.   [00:49:51] Allowance that people aren't going to be always ready, and it's not their fault. They, that doesn't make them less good or smart or wise or politically, you know, savvy. It's that there's so much that we are working against all the time to, and, and our survival mechanisms are very toxic. We don't really treat each other well, and that's on purpose. In fact, we tear each other down and that's, how, systems are allowed to continue to exploit us. So, yeah, that's, it's kind of a mouthful, but maybe a little bit of that, like a little bit of inspiration to try things on.   [00:50:26] Miko Lee: Okay, I wanna go back. Can you give a breakdown of what copaganda is?    [00:50:32] Tatiana Chaterji: Oh, I mean, copaganda is what we all, I mean, I consume it certainly. It's like the, it's Paw patrol, it's my kids getting exposed to superhero dogs that are the police because they quote unquote save the day. So it's these stories that the police are going to help. And in fact, we should look for them. There was a one time at a story circle, this person was reading a book and the, and the refrain was, help is on the way. Help is on the way. It gets kept going through any number of crises. That, anyways, just to say that help is not always on the way, as many of us know from trying to seek police protection from harm.   [00:51:14] And that when it does arrive, if it does, that it can cause harm to us, that we can be the target of it, especially if we're disabled or marginalized in another way. So propaganda is so pervasive, but it's this idea that the police will will help us. And we'll keep us safe. And I know from personal experience, my students know that that's not always true. So then what is the alternative? We kind of like add our voice and creativity into the mix, which is also very hard because it's a lot to work through. People are so culturally accustomed to thinking about external sources of help and protection from the state. You know?    [00:51:52] Miko Lee: And many marginalized communities have created their own pods of safety, like the Black Panthers and queer and trans folks because they knew that they could not rely on the cops to be able to help.   [00:52:04] Tatiana Chaterji: Absolutely. Yep. And that's how I learned with Insight, women of Color against Violence, learning from people, immigrant women, sex workers, people who are not protected, who could not, or undocumented immigrants who couldn't call on the state for help. What. What do they need and how do they create that for themselves?   [00:52:22] Mimi Kim was a big inspiration for me. So in my politics, kind of like trying to bring more people into this, right? Like, what, what does it look like when you talk about abolition? And students are like, no, are you kidding? Like, we can't get rid of prisons. And, and, and that is absolutely okay to have that conversation and to sort of open up the possibilities there, recognizing that many people have not even gotten the kind of justice or protection that a prison might afford for some people and maybe has in some instances. Right? So to start with that and to be like, you deserve better now. You deserved better, your family deserves better.    [00:53:00] Miko Lee: You deserve food and shelter.    [00:53:02] Tatiana Chaterji: Yeah.    [00:53:02] Miko Lee: The basic things. Yes.    [00:53:04] Tatiana Chaterji: Yeah.    [00:53:05] Miko Lee: Thank you so much for sharing. I really appreciate it. So I found this quote in your book by Aurora Levin Morales, and I'm just wondering, please read that quote for me, and then tell me the why. Why you included this, why it's so important. [00:53:20] Tatiana Chaterji: Aurora Elevens Morales is this poet who has given me so much inspiration with her work. And this quote was on the website of Restore Oakland, where I've partnered and I just, uh, shout out to Kari and Tash and everyone. So she says, for what is revolution, if not healing? And I put it, uh, to start off my I think it's the conclusion, breathing in shards from a broken sky, new air, and new lungs.   [00:53:46] And I kind of put forth this idea of RJ lungs, which really like strength are, are, are strong with the power of empathy and connection. And yeah, I think that political work and change making happens with healing, it's before and after and all around that there has to be that synchronicity between healing what's wounded and, and, and giving us space for that while also activating change that they shouldn't happen in these bubbles, which I think is, uh, more and more people are embracing that interplay between the two. It's not just you, you heal over here and therapy. You do your political work where you burn out and people are getting abused and hurt all the time. It's like more we should hold all of our human messy selves in the political work.    [00:54:35] Miko Lee: Thanks so much. And then my final thing is you included a quote by a ninth grade student. Could you share that quote with me and    [00:54:43] Tatiana Chaterji: Yes.    [00:54:43] Miko Lee: Why it's so important?    [00:54:44] Tatiana Chaterji: One of my, um, teacher comrades Danielle Zimmerman, this quote came from one of her students in a writing exercise. And Ms. Z is someone who just really embraces RJ in all, in, in all ways. And so the student says, feed your heart with love, forgiveness, hope, and healing words. There is no other way to survive. And I think for me, it's like if we are supposed to live in this world, if we want to live here, and we are taught that we have to be hard, we have to protect ourselves and be harsh and battle the hostility, uh, what is going to happen to us as a result? How are we shaping the, the, the next generation, our families the school environments that we're part of, so that instead of that hardness feed yourself with this love, with this softness, with the power of of tenderness and and healing and it just, yeah, this student is so brilliant.   [00:55:46] Miko Lee: Thank you so much for listening tonight. Remember to reconnect to your ancestral technologies and hold in the power of tenderness.   [00:55:55] Please check out our website, kpfa.org/program/apexexpress to find out more about our show and our guests tonight. We thank all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating, and sharing your visions with the world because your voices are important. Apex Express is produced by Ayame Keane-Lee, Anuj Vaidya, Cheryl Truong, Isabel Li, Jalena Keane-Lee, Miko Lee, Miata Tan, Preti Mangala-Shekar and Swati Rayasam. Tonight's show was produced by me Miko Lee, and edited by Ayame Keane-Lee. Have a great night.   The post APEX Express – 3.19.26- The Power of Tenderness appeared first on KPFA.

Bostyon Johnson at San Quentin on "Standing Outside The Fire," by Garth Books. It's the Uncuffed My Mixtape, where we listen to our producers' favorite songs.

The Bay Area has a long history of women who were ahead of their time. Today, the history of the bohemian women of San Francisco. Then, we take a look inside the California Condor Recovery Program in Oakland. And, a journalist at San Quentin shares a song that gives him motivation.

From beatboxing, to blues, to a song of praise once heard in the Met Museum, musicians in San Quentin have created some indelible songs. And we have featured a number of them on Ear Hustle. In this episode, Earlonne and Nigel listen back to some of their favorites. You can hear more of the music we've featured on Ear Hustle here.Thank you to Matthew “Redbone” Brown III, Jason “Jukebox” Griffin, Tam Nguyen, the Mexican Nationals Band, David Jassy, Lemar “Maverick” Harrison, Charlie Spencer, and Richie Morris, for playing music for us. This episode was scored with music by David Jassy and Antwan Williams.Big thanks to Warden Andes and Lt. Berry at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center; Acting Warden Parker, Associate Warden Lewis, and Lt. Avina at the California Institution for Women; and Warden De La Cruz and Lt. Williams at the Central California Women's Facility for their support of the show.Support our team and get even more Ear Hustle by subscribing to Ear Hustle Plus today. Sign up at earhustlesq.com/plus or directly in Apple Podcasts. Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Derrell “Sadiq” Davis doesn't get to see his daughter that often. He's incarcerated at San Quentin where visits and phone calls are monitored and brief. But one day last year, the prison held a prom for fathers and their daughters. 

There were ghosts at the San Quentin gallows. That's what the hangman saw. San QuentinExecutioner Amos Lunt Jump to Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 95 explores a different point of view of capital punishment, a behind the scenes look at the gallows of San Quentin Prison from the hangman's point of view. One of the minor characters in Episode 84 “The Belle in the Belfry” was the hangman, Amos Lunt, who seemed quite shaken by the event and was reported as “seeing spooks”. That was enough to get me to look a little deeper into Amos Lunt and his descent into madness. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.You can pay more if you want to, but rent at the Safe House is still just a buck a week, and you can get access to over 400 ad-free episodes from the dusty vault, Safe House Exclusives, direct access to the Boss, and whatever personal services you require.We invite you to our other PULPULAR MEDIA podcasts:If disaster is more your jam, check out CATASTROPHIC CALAMITIES, telling the stories of famous and forgotten tragedies of the 19th and 20th centuries. What could go wrong? Everything!For brand-new tales in the old clothes from the golden era of popular literature, give your ears a treat with PULP MAGAZINES with two new stories every week.

My guests this week are two absolute legends, Jackie Sharp and Jill Hoffman-Kowal of the punk rock video team Target Video (who documented hundreds of incredible live performances by Iggy Pop, The Screamers, Black Flag, Throbbing Gristle, minutemen, The Cramps, Hüsker Dü, Survival Research Laboratories, Bauhaus, Dead Kennedys, Lydia Lunch, and Young Marble Giants to name just a few). They are lifelong friends to this day… so get ready for jaw-dropping stories galore!We discuss Target Video's origin story & meeting head honcho Joe Rees, how they got their first old-school video camera at the time, Joe's unusual approach to documenting bands, the origin story of The Mutants, their initial cable TV show, how their first color shoot was filming the iconic performance of The Screamers, how they shot The Cramps at the Napa State Mental Hospital, Glenn O'Brien's TV Party, Jello Biafra staying in fancy hotel rooms in the UK, crashing on the floor of The Members, The Stray Cats playing the UK for the first time, how Jackie and Jill gained the trust of bands to film them in an era when bands were suspicious of being filmed, how the SF punk scene changed when Circle Jerks first came up from LA to play there, using fake addresses to keep the cops away from the Target headquarters, having eight-hour viewing parties in Paris, touring Europe with Dead Kennedys, the powerful footage of Throbbing Gristle playing a basketball court, CRIME playing San Quentin, Black Flag being nerds in the studio and making comedy videos with Target, shooting the TV PARTY music video, Target documenting rarely seen tours by Devo and Iggy Pop, being P.I.L.'s tour guides in NYC, Target video reunion shows, hooking up your VHS player to your stereo and more!So let's fly the Target flag high and play this episode loud on this week's episode of Revolutions Per Movie!TARGET VIDEO: targetvideo.blogspot.com/REVOLUTIONS PER MOVIE:Host Chris Slusarenko (Eyelids, Guided By Voices, owner of Clinton Street Video rental store) is joined by actors, musicians, comedians, writers & directors who each week pick out their favorite music documentary, musical, music-themed fiction film or music videos to discuss. Fun, weird, and insightful, Revolutions Per Movie is your deep dive into our life-long obsessions where music and film collide.Revolutions Per Movie releases new episodes every Thursday on any podcast app, and additional, exclusive bonus episodes every Sunday on our Patreon. If you like the show, please consider subscribing, rating, and reviewing it on your favorite podcast app. Thanks!PATREON:The show is also a completely independent affair, so the best way to support it and keep it going is through our Patreon at patreon.com/revolutionspermovie. By joining, you can get weekly bonus episodes, physical goods such as Flexidiscs, and other exclusive goods. It helps the show to keep going and is greatly appreciated!TIP JAR:ko-fi.com/revolutionspermovieSOCIALS:@revolutionspermovieBlueSky: @revpermovieTHEME by Eyelids 'My Caved In Mind'www.musicofeyelids.bandcamp.com ARTWORK by Jeff T. Owenshttps://linktr.ee/mymetalhand Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Prosecutors wield extraordinary influence over how justice is carried out—from decisions about charging and diversion to how victims are supported and public safety is defined. Yet too often, their on-the-ground expertise is missing from legislative conversations about criminal justice reform. “A Voice for the People” brings San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins and formerly incarcerated community members into that conversation. This timely program elevates the role of modern prosecutors as essential leaders in building a smarter, more equitable, and community-centered justice system. Sitting at the intersection of law, public safety, and community trust, prosecutors are uniquely positioned to translate reform ideals into policies that work in practice. Together, the speakers will discuss what meaningful reform looks like on the ground, how accountability and compassion can coexist, and why inclusive leadership is critical to restoring trust and improving outcomes. About the Speakers Brooke Jenkins is the 31st district attorney of San Francisco, first appointed in 2022 and elected by voters in 2022 and again in 2024. She leads the San Francisco District Attorney's Office with a focus on public safety, victim advocacy, and the responsible implementation of criminal justice reform. Vincent O'Bannon is a justice-impacted advocate and reentry professional whose work centers on prosecutor-led criminal justice reform, community safety, and pathways to accountability. Following his release from incarceration in 2025, Vincent committed himself to rebuilding his life through consistent employment, civic engagement, and collaboration with justice system stakeholders. He has worked with the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO), where he gained firsthand experience with evidence-based reentry practices that reduce recidivism and strengthen public safety through employment, structure and accountability. His perspective is shaped by lived experience and reinforced by professional discipline, allowing him to bridge the gap between impacted communities and institutional leadership. Dante D. Jones is a 43 year old Black man from South Central Los Angeles who was just released from San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. After serving 17 years of a 39-years-to-life sentence, he was released by way of P.C. 1170(d)—the resentencing law. While incarcerated, he used his time wisely by taking full advantage of the programs available to him. Specifically, while serving nearly three of his 17 years at San Quentin, he found his purpose as an advocate for the incarcerated. He exercised that advocacy through the power of video, photo and written journalism while working for the award-winning San Quentin News. As a staff writer and head of its video department, he created over 35 videos, photographed more than 20 events and wrote more than 20 articles that focused on challenging the status quo and changing the narrative of who incarcerated citizens are and can be. He also produced, directed and edited a documentary (Unhoused and Unseen) that was nominated top three in the “Documentary Short” section of the 2024 San Quentin Film Festival and was also shown during a special screening at this year's Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. Our moderator, Emily Hoeven, is an opinion columnist and editorial writer at the Chronicle. In 2025, she won first place in the San Francisco Press Club's contest for political commentary and second for feature columns. In 2024 and 2025, she placed third and second in the Best of the West contest for general interest column writing, and in 2024 she won the Sacramento Press Club's award for best commentary and placed second in the California News Publishers Association's contest for best editorial comment. Her columns have also sparked changes to San Francisco and California law. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why would a man go from toting a Bible to toting a gun? Clinton Goodwin will explain how he went to San Quentin for armed robbery. Don't miss this true dramatization coming soon from the Classic files of “Unshackled!”

William Noguera spent 42 years in San Quentin on California's death row. There, he lived alongside notorious serial killers, including Joseph Naso, the “Alphabet Killer.” Naso eventually confided in Noguera, revealing details of crimes that had never been solved. Offered a path to freedom, Noguera instead chose to stay on death row to help bring justice to Naso's unidentified victims. Artist, speaker, and former death row inmate William Noguera details how he uncovered the truth, as detailed in the new true-crime docuseries Death Row Confidential. For more on this story, listen to Emily's past episode with Detective Ken Mains. Follow Emily on Instagram: @realemilycompagno If you have a story or topic we should feature on the FOX True Crime Podcast, send us an email at: truecrimepodcast@fox.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meridith Baer grew up on the grounds of San Quentin prison, acted in TV and movies, wrote scripts in Hollywood … and then, at 50, started over – and built one of the best known home-staging companies in real estate.Meridith's life unfolds like a movie: As a teenager, she was forced to give up her baby for adoption. In her twenties, she was a writer for Penthouse. In her thirties and forties, she was a screenwriter in Hollywood, hobnobbing with Sally Field and dating Patrick Stewart.But in her late forties, Meridith hit a wall. Her writing career stalled, so she poured her energy into fixing up the house she was renting. When the owner sold that house almost immediately, she stumbled onto a strange new idea: why not stage homes for a living?From there, Meridith turned a few pieces of thrift-store furniture and potted plants into a full-blown business: trucks, warehouses, hundreds of employees, and high-end homes across Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and beyond. Along the way, she weathered the pressures of scaling a creative service into an operational machine—without ever raising outside capital.What you'll learn:How to reshape a career at 50 (or any age) without a master planHow Meridith priced her work based on value created, not hours workedWhy you don't always need investors to grow a multi-million-dollar service businessThe psychology of home staging: designing spaces that make buyers fall in love in the first 10 secondsHow Meridith thinks about legacy, stepping back, and seizing new opportunitiesTimestamps: 06:08 – Growing up as a warden's daughter inside San Quentin11:01 – Teen pregnancy, forced adoption, and reunion decades later12:43 – From Pepsi commercials to Penthouse magazine19:58 – Selling a major movie script, recoiling at the finished product22:47 – How a breakup with Patrick Stewart totally reshaped Meridith's life27:41 – The accidental first staging job at age 5035:17 – Early days of the business: vans, day laborers from Home Depot, and naming her price47:18 – Unexpected struggles: tax trouble, a cancer diagnosis51:07 – The business expands to New York and beyond1:00:22 – Running a 320-person company at 78—and what comes next1:05:56 – Small Business SpotlightThis episode was produced by Alex Cheng, with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Noor Gill. Our engineers were Patrick Murray and Kwesi Lee.Follow How I Built This:Instagram → @howibuiltthisX → @HowIBuiltThisFacebook → How I Built ThisFollow Guy Raz:Instagram → @guy.razYoutube → guy_razX → @guyrazSubstack → guyraz.substack.comWebsite → guyraz.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merle Haggard was what authorities liked to call a “repeat offender.” He was arrested for riding trains, for skipping school, for stealing cars, for robbing gas stations, and for attempting to knock over a restaurant – during the Christmas Eve rush. He was committed to juvenile halls, correctional facilities, and reform schools 17 times, and 17 times he escaped. When he was arrested for the final time, he was sent to do hard time at San Quentin. He turned 21 in prison. And it was in prison that he found the freedom he'd been running towards his whole life – freedom that was delivered from an unlikely source. For the full list of contributors, visit ⁠disgracelandpod.com⁠ This episode was originally published on July 25, 2023. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to exclusive content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠X⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠ ⁠TikTok⁠ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Stewart Northcott arrives at San Quentin. The parents of the murdered boys seek answers…For more information, visit https://www.thelostboysofwineville.com/Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/theywalkamongus. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Revisiting our 2018 episode “Future on Ice,” about the lives of immigrants in San Quentin.Being an immigrant in an American prison can pose unique challenges, like deciding which racial group you'll identify with. But sometimes the biggest hurdles don't become apparent until the day you are released.Thanks to Martin Gomez, Miguel Sifuentes, Wayne Boatwright, Phoeun You, David Jassy, Ai Borey (aka PJ) and Marco Villa for sharing their stories with us. And thanks to Jose Diaz, Vicente Gomez and Gerardo Sanchez-Muratalla, the Three Guitarists.This episode was scored with music by David Jassy, with contributions from Antwan Williams. As always, much gratitude to Lt. Sam Robinson and Warden Ron Davis for their continued support of Ear Hustle.“Nobody comes back” episodeBig thanks to Warden Andes and Lt. Berry at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center; Acting Warden Parker, Associate Warden Lewis, and Lt. Newborg at the California Institution for Women; and Warden De La Cruz and Lt. Williams at the Central California Women's Facility for their support of the show.Support our team and get even more Ear Hustle by subscribing to Ear Hustle Plus today. Sign up at earhustlesq.com/plus or directly in Apple Podcasts. Ear Hustle is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices