Michael O’Bryan and Coffee Iman on Power, Equity & Culture
In this powerful episode of We Talk Weekly, the team delivers a dynamic blend of civic insight, cultural commentary, and inspiring interviews. ☕ We sit down with Coffee Iman, who shares her multifaceted journey as a cultural strategist, creative entrepreneur, and advocate for community healing. She dives deep into the importance of authenticity, storytelling, and protecting creative voices in an age of digital commodification. 🧠 Then, we welcome Michael O’Bryan, the founder of Humanature, for a profound discussion on systemic inequity, economic mobility, and how emotional well-being connects to the political choices we make. His reflections on civics, grief, and equity will challenge the way you think about policy and power. 📰 In our "Good News and Bad News" segment, the team covers the latest stories shaking the headlines — from Philly politics to entertainment buzz. 🎤 And of course, we kick things off with host commentary, top news highlights, and wrap up with final shoutouts and reflections. This episode is a full-circle blend of social commentary, heartfelt stories, and urgent calls to action. Tune in and stay woke. — 🎧 Listen on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.
📡 Produced by: We Talk Weekly
📅 Aired: January 18, 2025 — 🎙️ Segments Included:
- Opening Commentary & News Rundown
- Interview: Coffee Iman
- Interview: Michael O’Bryan
- Good News / Bad News
- Final Thoughts & Shoutouts
#WeTalkWeekly, #CoffeeIman, #MichaelOBryan, #Humanature, #BlackVoices, #CultureAndCommunity, #GriefParalysis, #CivicEngagement, #PhillyNews, #BlackCreatives, #PodcastInterview, #HealingAndEquity, #GoodNewsBadNews, #BlackMedia
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/we-talk-weekly-news--2576999/support.
Subscribe to We Talk Weekly News' YouTube channel for full podcast video show episodes:
https://www.youtube.com/@WeTalkWeeklyTV
Follow We Talk Weekly News across all social media platforms for exclusive content, breaking updates, and behind-the-scenes access:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wetalkweekly
Twitter (X): https://twitter.com/WeTalkWeekly
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wetalkweekly
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Hey, what's going on, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your boy, Charles Gregory, the Beautiful Arka and we are definitely in the house today. We got a jam packed show in I got an interesting conversation that I'm gonna talk about. Somebody, uh, you know, wanted to mention me in one of their posts, you know, so I said, Okay, no, prow to shave my friend. You know, we'll we'll, we'll, we'll get to talking about it. On the other side. You know, a lot of this is just friendly banter and uh, you. Don't need to bring your boxing skills out. Nah, I don't need to bring out no boxing skill. I mean, it's just funny cause cause you know how Actually the funny thing is, I actually respect this guy, right, I respect and I talk a little bit more about him a little later. But I'm super excited, uh about the show. We have two dynamic interviews, right, we have one in the house today. We're gonna bring one about eight thirty is to talk a little bit about Civics, talk about his movement, some things that he's doing within his organization. We're gonna also talk uh to someone who's streaming and so I'm gonna talk a little bit about that. Got good news? Bad news? Is this? Like? Because is the game to listen if you shout out to the Philadelphia Eagles. I had to put on my green today. Man. Like I say, I'm super excited about the Eagles. You know, Gang Gang to mar Gag day tomorrow. And uh, you know what you think they're gonna do? What do you think they're gonna do? I hope that they use the weather to their advantage. You know what I mean. They're supposed to snow. And if you from Philly, you know how to work in this snow. So hopefully they take and use the the weather to their vanas no doubt. Go birds, go birds, go birds. Right, And so I'm just super excited about the game. I'm gonna be don't call me during the game, turning off my phone. I didn't bet on I didn't bet on the game, right, I didn't bet on the game. But I also met know this and it's a lot of women that are Eagles fans sports fans. I'm not discounting that. I'm just saying, when a game happens, if it's your team or not, you are not a player. Like, don't be making the whole house feel like somebody died, Like it's like the worst feeling. Like don't get frustrated with the wifey or even wife, you don't get don't get that way with the husband. But whatever it is, either way, either gender, just know you know better luck next time. That's it. Like he was gonna win, they go, No, they don't win. I'm just saying for any team that doesn't make it. I mean, some people really act like they you know, sign the contract. They really be like yeah yeah, And I know with real sports sports sportsmanship feels like I know what that feels like when you be like, oh man, you know it's a downer, but. Yeah, yeah, no, Shout go birds. They got it. Eagles winning, right, you're gonna go Birds, Go Birds. Shout out to Philadelphia. Shout out to all the fans of Philadelphia. You know something that was in the news. A Philadelphia fan got really belligerent to uh a couple of people who are in the stands, and it went viral and that has been a huge conversation I l on the show. Can bring it up, Yeah, I bring it up. You didn't see it? Wow, he was really granted you know, he was really disrespectful, using certain words that you should be saying to a young lady, right, and so he gets no path for that. That's it. As a Packers fan, you don't go try to find the worst section of to or purposely sitting that toentice people to respond to you a certain way. You're going to get you want to get this. Everybody knows Philly fans. If you if you want to mess with a Philly fans, get ready for some some action because everybody knows that like that's and Philly don't have no picks. You from Philly or not. If you not doing what you're supposed to do to bring a win for whatever. Period, then you you gonna feel it. They even make the players feel it. You're gonna be like, y'all know what that you know what that is. They know that Philly like they have no pick. So how was your day though, how let's talk about your day. I don't know if y'all can hear it, but I got a little it's still it's I'm at the end. I'm not contagious, but the junk like it's a lot of stuff going around. I just got over a bad respiratory thing, like I was down for. Like three days, and I'm pretty healthy, like the way I eat. And the vitamins. But this Joine was like, we're gonna put you down. So I'm drinking my hibiscus tea, my honey, you know, oil of a Regan. Now I'm doing all of what I was supposed to do, and I feel good today. So I don't have no updates because for the past three days I've. Been down for the county. A lot better, a lot better. I had a nice nap and everything. What's up with your How was your day? It was cool? Everything was great, Everything was cool. It was cool up until, uh somebody decided to mention. They decided to mention me. Uh so they got to get these these verbal hands I got here. I want to see what this is. Yeah, we'll talk a little bit like why why? I mean, I like a healthy debate. I like to see a healthy debate, especially between intellects, like all right, what you going? And then if you could put some wittiness. In there, yeah, sure, it's solid, good fun. Shout out to the Shout out to the gentleman. Shout out to dus who are fans of Nellie Snoop and everybody else that's out there that I'm sure that you'll be talking about in a minute, get around the floever that. Banter is, Oh, I really want to hear that. Uh. Obona Hagen said, what time we get it? We get off air at ten o'clock, my brother, Yeah, I think if you want to come through, come come on down. It's fine. We can talk a little we can chat a little bit. I actually want you to come down to the show next week. I think we got a spot for you. But you know, you're a friend to the show, so you always welcome to come to the show. My brother. We can talk a little bit, but I don't want you guys to go anywhere. When we come back, it's it's almost about eight thirty, right, and we have a gentleman coming on, so we probably won't get to good news and back just yet. Well yeah, yeah, we'll hold off on it. Right then, when you do good news and bad then I talk about my little rant. Somebody just decided to mention my name and it was cool, you know, it was all in good, funny receipt. It wasn't disrespectful. Yeah, got receipt, Okay, Yeah, it wasn't disrespectful, y'all, So don't get mad. Don't know. This is all in funny. Were down with you. Bro all. I'm also gonna be like very vocal on who I think was probably right. Yeah, there you go, Yeah, absolutely absolutely around. So so let me see eight twenty four. So let's put on one of our young youth who we have been working with. They've been doing some dynamic work as it relates to news kids. I love the kids, so you Civic News and this young lady, Willow interviewed her pop I think it pop, Papa uncle, her papa, papay and she did an amazing job, and you prepared her for that, right, was I did? I worked with these a little bit about it, these. Young reporters, specifically, I worked with the young ladies. The guys were really behind the camera, so I did work with them on the reporting side, but the journalism side, specifically with Willow. Willow was very shy. She was one of the girls who was whisper when she talks. And you know, she wasn't like thinking outside of the box. If you ask her a question like well, what do I say. After as I. Say, child, after I was finished with her and her I mean when I say I finished with her, she was already where she needed to be, meaning it was already in her. You know, just like any plant, once you warder it, if it's sunlight, talk to it, it starts to flourish, and it's already gonna flourish. What beauty is there? That's what Willow did. Willa was able to start flourishing. She started to have her you know, her her information. Lauren Sizzle was right there. You know, I'm learning from Lauren based on Lauren having her master of journalism. And we worked with these young ladies and they made us proud. So we were some proud aunties up in there looking and just beaming. At their success. So, yeah, I'm interested to see what Willow has up. So are you gonna play the clip? Yeah, I'm gonna play I'm gonna play the clip right now. I've almost said thanks for the next week. Who he's gonna stop by next week? And can he post a few links? You absolutely can feel free too. You know. One of the things that we say on the show is not only once you come to the show you a friend to the show, but the show is for the community, right and so we understand that the community isn't a community of monolists, right. Everyone doesn't think the same, everyone doesn't always agree about certain things, but you're still a part of the community and you have to accept that, right. And so we have open dialogue, and we have contrasting opinions oftentimes, and you know, the goal is to find a solution, right. Our show is solutions based, right, And so we understand that we can point fingers all day at problems or issues, but it's about how do we fix those issues and problems, right, And so that's what we talk weekly is. And so absolutely, my brother posts your links, let us know, send me something, send me whatever, but you definitely come down to the show next week. And so, without further ado, let let's go on to Little Willow. Shout out to Willow for this. This is Young Willow, youth reporter for Youth Civic News, a spin off for We Talk Weekly, our youth program. Take a look at this. Shout out to the twins. Hi, I'm Willow Jordan with you Civic News, and I'm here with my grandfather Willie Jordan and Gpat. What brings you out tonight? Well, I'm here to discuss the importance of the election that's coming up and important. The responsibility that we have to do is out, get. Out the vote. What is your role? I have wear many hats, but one is a community activist, and that means to keep people aware and make them informed on the issues of the day so they can come out and make a real good choice on voting for the right candidates. What are some of the issues you see? Housing, education, transportation. There's a lot of things. Anything that we do in our lives, it has to do with elections. Politicians, elective officials making those decisions. The amount of time that you stay in school and the amount of days you stay in school is based on what some elective officials came up with. How important? How important is it to vote? It is very important. It's not just important, it's responsible voting. Ship is not a selfish activity. It's a selfiless You vote to help others, so as you have others people help you and be a better world, a better city, a better country to live in. Where do some of your beliefs come from? Well, my belief is based on I guess I would first come from my home training. My parents told me the importance of civic responsibility, caring, loving, sharing, being involved, being responsible on your actions. Is there any positive knowledge you would give to the people who don't vote. I would tell them if they can't come up with a reason why they should vote for themselves, come up with a reason why they should vote for someone else, for their parents, for their children, for more street lights, how they want a better community, do it for someone else. I'm Willow Jordan reporting from you Civic News, and I'm here with my grandfather, Willie Jordan. Thank you, you're well. A little well aroundable clause for that did an excellent job. She did. She did an excellent job. You know, it's exciting to see the process that they go through in developing their stories right. And so what for those who don't know, So we taught weekly taught a twelve week class called U Civic News, and it was to engage young reporters to get them the understanding of what research looks like when developing stories right. And so we talked a lot about fake news, false information, We talked about media literacy, we talked about the technical side of it. And it's twelve weeks and we'll probably do another one. Yeah, ages, what was the ages I. Can like fifteen fourteen, fourteen eighteen, and. Also to learn about the camera, assistant, director, director, producer, different terms just in allso civics. Yeah. Also that also civics, right. And so they create they beat, they they understand the beat. You know. Uh, they sat down with Lawn Sizzle and Larnce Sizzle was able to uh give a discussion based around defining terms as it relates to their beats and understanding beats and news and things of that nature. And they picked it up really fast and they was able to start understanding what beat they wanted to do right, research, write their story right, newsworthy story, and edit and put it up right. And we didn't do anything. We just supported them and they did all the work right. So I'm super excited about that. So I don't want you guys to go anywhere when we come back. We have a gentleman with whom I have a tremendous amount of respect for. We're gonna wait for we waiting for Mom Dukes to come on. Right. So yeah, we love, we love see, we love the community. This is what we do. And I want you all to stay tuned because after we do good news and bad news. I gotta get somebody's hands, so I just I just want. You out the whole type. They gonna get a little mouthful. It's all a good fun note, but right now it's always about the civics specific conversation. And let's put on Ella, another person from our U Civic News, Dynamic Talent Dynamic Information did a lot of great work. But we're going to bring in our interview and we'll be right back after this show. Hollow Reporter Ella presents a new recipes that can help me looking over to you. Ella, Thanks fellow. Now that follows upon us. What's not a better way to start the fall seasons than an easy and simple recipe. Pumpkin bed is. The most delicious and easiest food you can make for yourself, family, and friends, and your community. Take a look, right, we're going. To make pumpkin bread, So make sure you screenshot this recipe and let's get started. First, preheat you out into three fifty degrees. In one of your bowls, mix your flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and pumpkin pie spice with your fork. Mix Now with your second bowl, mix your sugar, oil and apple sauce with a whisk. Once everything is mixed together, add your pumpkin and mix again. When everything is mixed evenly, combine both mixtures together. Make sure you scrape everything out so nothing is wasted. Now mix evenly until there's no lumps. After that, you want to set that aside and grab your breadpan. Lather some butter all around and add a little flour and spread it around until it looks like this. Now you want to pour the bread batter into the breadpan. Sure you scrape everything out so nothing is wasted. Cut a line in the middle, and it's ready for the oven. Make sure you were up and mix and let the bread bake for sixty minutes. Once the sixty minutes is up, take it out of the oven and let it. Sit for a few minutes. When the breadpan is safe to touch, use a straight edge to separate the pan and bread. This stuff is optional, but if you have like sliced the bread into thick slices and it should look something like this, you are all done. Dig in and enjoy your pumpkin bread. This your It's a perfect way to feed your family, friends, and your community. Well what did you think about this recipe? I think that This recipe is perfect for the horizon fall weather. Substituting the egg with the apple sauce is a great option for others with an ecology. Thanks well. I'm Ela Kwanzon, reporting for Youth Civic News. Back to Ullo. Random applause for our young reporter Ella in a building right, super excited about these young kids, these young you know, this is the new generation out there. We have to support them and help them through the process the things that we already know. We have to make it a little easier to get through the door. Stop making these kids jump the hoops that we already do. We did it so they didn't have to do that, So we supposed to walk them through it, right, And so without further ado, this is a segment that I absolutely love. And why do I love this segment because it's the interviews. I get the interview the good old folks, right, listen to some of the things that they're doing and have a good old time. So while further ado, classy lady, who do we have today? Who do we have to d I am glad to announce that today we have Michael O'Brien. Michael O'Brien is the founder of human nature and the Wealth and Work Futures Lab at Drexel University champions humanity centered innovation and organizations and economic development. Michael integrates developmental science, neuroscience, and equity driven strategies to foster thriving communities. Y'all already know what to do. Give a warm retail weekly. Welcome to mister Michael O'Brien. Hey, how are you? How are you? Thank you for having me? I'm pretty good. Yeah, that's great, that's great. It's a good weekend. It's warm today, it's yes, finally right, a snow story tomorrow. But at least the day was like forty five. Yeah, it was really I was excited about the day. I was able to get through the streets without worrying about too much. Right all the shnow have you slipping and sliding? Slipping? I love I mean, I was gonna say I love the snow. I don't love I love hot, hot, But I think that when we get cold weather it makes a lot of things die off. So it's a lot of whatever germs that just die off with very you know, cold temperatures. True transitions, that's it. Yeah, and you're familiar with transitions. Yeah, yeah, because you'll have to do a lot of strategies. A lot of strategies. It's excellent. And see why you do it. Go ahead, excellent segue, excellent segue, you know. And so since we're there, shout out to the eagles, I got shout out the equals again. There, let's go birds, y'all to give around for the birds. Uh. And so since since we're talking about transitions and just new beginnings, right, let's talk a little bit about your organization and how it even started. But before that, how did you get into the work that you're doing. Yeah, no, fantastic question. And again, thank y'all for having me. I really appreciate the space to share with the team and I are working on and all the things. So human nature was really birthed out of years of learning and years of trying to figure out why was it so hard to center humans and their humanity in any of the work that was taking place that I saw that I participated in. To be really specific, I was working in emergency housing for families back in two thousand and seven. I feel like I'm dating myself. I turned forty this year. Actually, I'm embracing Thank you, Thank you milestones and absolutely so. Back in two thousand and seven, I was introduced to the science of trauma. It's called trauma theory. That's where trauma and form care, trauma informed practice comes from. These terms have become real popular now. Back then, nobody really knew what they were, and a lot of the focus was on the science of how what happens to humans shifts, how you see the world, how you behave, how you predict your way through the world even and what you learn to expect and how you manage expectations of the world at large. I mean when I said the world at large, I mean the big systems were in the closest relationships. You're in all of it. And I just found in my role there as a youth case manager that you know, if a young person in the shelter was involved in three or four different systems, those public systems treated the family as if they had three or four different children with that one child. And so that really burked for me, this quest of like curiosity and learning that turned into the practice of trying to help people learn how do you use science and design to center humans and their humanity and whatever? Intervention prevention program like, whatever you're designing for people, how do you put them at the center and really make their their needs present? Right? Well, you said something about the science of it. Have you ever heard the term epigenetics? Yeah, so do you think that epigenetics and tell us what epigenetics is for people who don't know and how that, how that it's not DNA changing but it's environmental. So have you been doing your reader? Yeah with it? Oh yeah, so tell us about epigenetics. And how that. So yeah, so epigenetics are So this is I want to I try I try my best to be translational, right, so, like take big old science concepts and make it real easy. Oh, there's a video that's great. So I'm going to be super simple and like, this isn't perfect science, but you'll get the point. The demonstration is the point. So let's say this circle is we'll call it like your genome package. It's got your DNA in it, that double helix looking thing that we all have seen. And then if they're there are a bunch of other things in the package though. There are other proteins and things called alleles, and there's a bunch of stuff in there that together with the DNA itself, they're going to work together to facilitate a number of processes. What we have learned over time through varying groups of people, through looking at what's happened to them and looking at generations after really big things like a famine hits a large group of population of folks, what we've seen is that there are changes in the package that don't alter the DNA, but it's altering the things around it essentially that affect how the DNA performs, how it does its job, and effectively, what you can have is the experience of it being as if something is wrong with the DNA, and so you do have these these different types of issues that can arise for a person physiologically, et cetera. That again, to your point earlier, it's not changing the situation. Didn't change the DNA, right, but the emotional environment, the things happening in the physical environment, all these things. So this is why stress is such a problem. Right, these things, and particularly in utero, when a birthing person, a person that can give birth, is pregnant and there's a ton of stress present, there's a lot So when a person who can give birth is pregnant and is experiencing stressors chronically and while the baby is in utero or in the womb. There's a lot of research there about the complications it can create for the baby and for subsequent gen nations particularly, you know, you think about it. I learned this from some other really wise folks, that a woman is born or you know, a cis gendered woman is born with all of the eggs shall ever have so? Right, So grandma having a a child born female in the womb, you know, like I was in my grandma, right and so and so we're these these things. So we're unpacking what it means. And I remember when I was first introduced to this science some years ago. We're still trying to get our minds around it and learn from it. Luckily, the field has progressed. There's some really great books out there. I don't know them off the top of my head, but if you even just go to ted dot com, there's a fantastic ted talk that a researcher and author give, a scientist gives on epigenetics. It's worth looking into for sure. I'm so glad you asked that question. M interesting, I mean, that had that has me. I didn't even anticipate going that deep into it. And I think that's interesting as it relates to even how we look at our own communities, how the communities develop, right, because we to a degree already have some trauma to us. Right, And so if we do know this, right, how do we not necessarily remedy because all of this can't be fixed per se, Right, But there is some soothing that we can do or some you know, supports that we can give resources to ease the traumas of the community that we're in. And so I would love for you to take a stab at there, peel back those layers in context to your study or your field school. Yeah, so human nature and the reason we focus on people's work lives. People spend a huge portion of their lives at work. Right. There are families where people will see their work colleagues more than they'll see their children on a regular basis. Right. And you can spend so much time at work, and no one has put in deep thought. I won't say no one. That's a little too much for locole Very few people have put in deep thought. Particularly, take that epigenetics thing and think about it in terms of again the social and emotional environment as much as the physical environment are having impacts on you and your well being, and children and their well being and descendants, etc. How often have we thought about the amount of stressors present in a work environment for different people based on their identities and based on the varying life challenges they're bringing to the table because of the way life fell out for them. We don't think about that. We don't talk about that. What stresses one person doesn't naturally travel to the next. So, as an example, I'm a cisgender male. That means I was born male and I agree with the gender I was assigned at birth, and I identify that way. I did not know that women, trans folks, non binary folks have tactics for keeping themselves safe on the street when they walk, like putting their keys in between their fingers, because we've created a society where particularly sis gender men can visit violence upon lots of people as just like they're right, almost right. I didn't know that kind of stressor existed for people that weren't like me just walking down the street, right. And that's just one example of the way identity and stress have this really interesting and dynamic relationship. So you put that in a workplace, and you have to think about race, gender, class, being differently abled in any kind of way, and how much people are not considered or considered. So those experiences are stressful. They can also introduce trauma. So we try to help people better attune to the humanity of folks. First you got to sensitize people to their own humanity and then the humanity of others, and then start on the process of what does it mean to design environments where people can thrive and do well. At the lab, we look at other places besides work, to your point, thinking about neighborhoods and communities. One of the research projects we have right now looks at the what's called longitudinal data. So we're looking at about forty three years worth of data around the experience of the death of a sibling or parent over again over a forty three year period, and we have two big data sets, one up to the age of eighteen and then one where those experiences happen up to the age of twenty four. For forty plus years, Black people have disproportionately experienced the loss of a parent or sibling by the age of eighteen and then again by the age of twenty four. There's no way we've not organized what that means. We've not asked enough questions about what that means for a young person who is developing and transitioning from young adulthood to adulthood, trying to find work in a world where seven to twenty five is still a wage that we say is okay for people. Right, So, like, there's a lot to unpack there, But the first thing you got to do is be able to organize the problem contextually and properly, and frame it properly to then organize and design your way towards the best solutions. And we think those solutions are best designed with the people experiencing the issue in real time and who have historical touch points with it. I've heard that. Children from inner city young children to at least you know, young adulthood have probably experienced more trauma than and people who went off to war that or in the military that didn't go to war, but they've experienced it based on losing friends from gun violence, from household and all of that. Tell us what your organization and give us an example of how you unpeel to help with your organization those type of families. Yeah, so one of the things that we believe in this anti gas lighting, right, Like there are So I'll take a step back. The economist rog Chetty, doctor roch Chetti's out of Harvard runs a research institute there called Opportunity Insights. Ten years ago he did some landmark research looking at economic mobility at the looking at the fifty largest metropolitan areas in the country. Did a refresh of that data set and Philadelphia is now fifty out of fifty for economic mobility for the age group of folks who are roughly I want to say, like this is a loose quote somewhere between like thirty three and about forty six to forty eight. So it's my generation. I'm nine. And when you look at our experiences, I think about the amount of gas lighting and the amount of lies narratives that have been put into media space and never corrected. So think about the crack epidemic, everything about crack babies, everything about who did it and why, et cetera. Tons of narratives went out there into media space, and when they were proven to be not true, no one corrected it. One hundred yes, yeah, let me get you around with a class for yes, and because I want you to, I want you to continue. I just want to put a small speed bump there because that's one of the things that we talk about all the time as it relates to media literacy, right and understanding what messages are being put out there and how to discern do your own research to find out, well, is there intentions behind while they're putting out some of those images and messages in a rhetoric that follows it. Absolutely, And there are research articles. I'm actually digging looking for more, but I found one that came out roughly early two thousands that looked at the non correction in the nineties around the crack epidemic and all of the fake I don't won't call it fake, all of the misinform thank you, all of the misinformation. And so I'm really interested in digging through, like how much have we tracked this with other narratives that have impacted black folks, migrants, took any other excluded group and dig in and see have we corrected anything. And so one of the things we work on we have a media Fellowship program for eighteen to twenty six year olds. Let's get new narratives out there. And let's also use media in the ways in which young people and even emerging adults and older but young or adults, the ways they like to consume information and learning. Let's get this information out there, let's correct the record, and then let's also share all of this new science about healing, about resilience, about what it takes. Because if we believe that everybody is going to have access to a therapist to heal, we've known for decades we don't have enough supply to human capital thing right, talent supply and demand. We don't have enough clinicians for the whole population in the country, let alone black clinicians or clinicians who speak multiple languages to address everybody else. Or understand nuance absolutely right, right, yeah, yes, So there are other ways to heal which Black people have actually been invested in, Indigenous Americans have been invested in for centuries because before there was the. Technical role of a therapist who was allowed to even treat people not of their own race, we were still healing through enslave and genocides. So there are ways of healing and knowing that we can get back to a lot of it's in arts and culture. It's in being connected to community. It's in again this thing around anti gaslighting, the kind of stress you can alleviate from a family or a person's shoulders by just saying I hear you, and I am bearing witness to the reality of your existence and your suffering. For some people, that first cry from that is so cathartic. Yes, yes, yes, because you've been told in gas lit for so long and you just keep chugging away like I guess, I'm okay, I got some Okay, it's okay, and you're about to pop. I think one of the things that black fool has a challenge with. It's not that we don't like X, Y and Z. It's the fact that you just won't acknowledge. Once you acknowledge it, then we're okay you Now you can come to the cookout. Is not really but it's about saying, yes, I was wrong, I did this, This has actually happened. Now we can move forward. I think also, and it impacted you, yes, yes, yes, right, Like what I am expressing to you, I think about how black women, often in medical situations are literally gas lid. There's this fantastic clip I've used in some of our workshops in experiential learning sessions for organizations of a doctor is talking about a black woman who was coming in for one thing, but she would she was animated or whatever the language is, right, and so people kind of was like, all right, here comes the kind of hysterical lady, the hypochondriac. Blah blah blah blah blah, and they're trying to get her like half calmed down every time she comes in, and this one time the doctor is like, no, she keeps hurt her differently for the first time and was like, wait, she keeps complaining about X and Y, she's compromed, she's grabbing her heart. Get this woman an ekg, get to an ekg and bise she's having a series of small, many heart attacks. And I was like, oh God, she was not She literally was not making that up. She was saying the truth and expressing her pain and showing it. But for whatever reason, how we were culturized, if you were, how we were socialized, that information was not coming in a way that I could receive that woman could receive, right, And I think that kind of thing happens across multiple identities in varying ways, which can make it very hard to try to get to solutions right. It's particularly in public policy working with foundations, etc. You can have the best of intentions and still miss it. I've worked in healthcare for thirty years. I've been a victim of that as well as have viewed it. So I've definitely seen it. But I also want to ask you when you were speaking about. The way that the media delivers information. One, I think that the newer generation with TikTok, I think that a lot of things are starting to be like more learned about when it comes to mental health, when it comes to history. So that kind of new wave has been you know, we'll talk more about that in good news and bad news about what TikTok they. But I wanted to ask you this, and maybe it's just me, but do you think that far as news delivery, news is always highlighting everything horrible bad because it brings in more if yeah, so do you think that that may be like a setup in regards to even trauma that you're bringing into the house, to your households. I think it's a little bit of chicken and egg, right, Okay, you know, so what I mean by that is this, right, like there are a ton of really not good things happening. There are a ton of good things happening. Unfortunately, a lot of the not so good things happening do outweigh the good things happening. And what I mean by that, though I want to get into the nuance. We do focus on specific groups, however, and they're not so good things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Oh, because public policy has some not so good things happening, the private sector has not so good things happening. The black community, but so does the white community. Soa does it like every community has not so good things, so many good things happening, right, but there are groups whose stuff is put on blast and on pedestals more than others. I think that then, does FEE need a certain kind of stress level. I think it does feed a certain type of reorganization of self and views on communities. But some of that would be happening anyway, just because of the prevalence of what's present already, right, like the thing and I'll just be very specific about this here. There are certain communities I've worked in for multiple years where the median income is like fifteen thousand dollars a year. There's going to be a lot of bad stuff happening. And I don't mean bad as in like judgment called bad. I just mean like, and I'll be really care about my language's not that harmful things that are just going to take place because you cannot with fifteen thousand dollars possibly build health into your family life and the way that you want to. And that doesn't And I think people should be able to define healthy the way they want to, as long as it means not no harm, you know what I mean, like other than that, like defining how you want. But even with that definition, it's hard, Yeah, you know what I mean. So I think that it's it's a tricky balance. But what I'll say, it's like that what the media is doing is is pouring gasoline on a thing that's already kind of out of control while not highlighting the things that could help promote people to want to be able to because I don't even think it's that they don't want to to be able to see and imagine some other ways of handling conflict or other ways of being. Yeah, I won't, I won't. I won't totally blame legacy media, but I do believe that's the problem. Why it's also important to have media outlets like ours hyper local that's truly in the communities and can say that, hey, no, there are some problems with some issues that's going on here that's not being seen or spoken about. So here's an amplification for and someone can truly say, oh, maybe I didn't know giving you a pass to a degree I didn't know. Now you know now what you want to do. Now you held responsible for it, right, And to that point we go into the community conversation and then talk to civics piece right. So one of the questions that I always ask is one, how do you how do you define civics right? And in the context of what you do, how do you pull that idea of civics within that conversation. Here's a good question. I'm a nerd. You probably picked up on that. I wear it prouably. I because we speak English. I tend to go to the Oxford English Dictionary to help settle some arguments. The queen speech. Yeah yeah, you know, I mean people like I'm like, well, okayt listen. The first quace we're gonna start with is the record. That's right, that's right, that's right, So that like I. Do this with equity all the time. Talk about it. That's right, I know, love it. Oeed says, the state of being fair and impartial. It's a mouthful in itself, because if there's anything right there, what this country has clearly not been is impartial. It's actually, let's make America great again. Right, Let's not go there. No, but here's your deal. You know what. I don't mind going there because there's a that we are in Pennsylvania, and I think there are so many ripe things there, right, because there's something to the point around media literacy. There is something diabolical at play when rural, poor white folks have an awakening that they might be closer an economic experience to the migrants and poor black people in Philadelphia. I think it's actually it's it's it's it's its own kind of ironically beautiful awakening that I think can be energizing because the reality is that's the truth, right, And you see it play out. And actually what happened with public education where the lawyers who were defending the Republicans in court with the landmark case around fair funding said to one of the superintendents out in Western Pa where it is a much more royal space. Essentially, I'm paraphrasing, but like, is an education's job to prepare people for the jobs that are available around them. So that's pizza hut and like McDonald's here, right, And this is all in record and the papers. So wouldn't you say you're doing that? I mean, just like, make it plain, make it plain, make it clear, right, And so I do think these things are linked there important, and there's an opportunity for learning in this moment that's different than the other. And this all gets back to this definition around civics, right, which is the study OD says, the study of government and and the rights and responsibility of citizens. Everything I just talked about fits squarely into that definition. So for us, and particularly with the media program with the young folks, one of my pushes on with them, they picked some themes around grief and loss. In fact, they coined this term, I love grief paralysis. That's what their age group is experiencing. Again, these are eighteen to twenty six year olds. This is what they're experiencing as they're transitioning to adulthood to emerging adulthood and the workforce as the resources beneath them just bottom out, and they kept talking to me about why and what, And I said, did you know where you really got to go? Like for a moment, don't pay attention to voting yet, Let's pay attention to the budget. How is that budget aligned to your well being? How does that budget address forty three years of disproportionate grief and loss in your community? How does that budget attune to the fact that you don't have the re sources to grieve properly. I've worked with so many people that don't have tombstones for dead loved ones. There's just so much there to unpack. And that's just the death part. There are so many other types of losses that are also present and compounded for them. And the question we have to ask, and this isn't an indictment on anybody in council or whatever. Unfortunately we have the budget that we have right Council's coming in to manage the thing, essentially black of a better term manage. I'm same with the administration, but the city deals with the fact at large that no matter who's in charge, the budget it's got small. So can can someone argue or attribute that to voting? You know, the argument that you need to vote for someone to fight for more funding or a bigger budget, so to speak. Can you argue that that's. Complicated, I mean you could so, yes, all right, it just gets real complicated because city budgets. And I'm not an expert here, right, I'm learning alongside the young people and we're talking to people across the country to keep learning and growing together. One way you do that the major where's taxes? Okay? Right, but we're we're we are in a fight around that. It's not the say do we text? Do we further text the four. I'm going to be so I'll I'll say it like this. There are ways in which larger institutions could could pay taxes. And this is a conversation that's happened been happening around pilots, right, payments and lieu of taxes. So one one group of people says, no, they need to pay taxes. The other say no, they don't need to pay taxes. They can do pilots. You know, for the sake of today, I'm not going to get involved with that conversation. When I am going to say is that the city budget can't handle the needs here. We are fifty out of fifty and economic mobility. That's wow. And black people here are disproportionately experiencing that. Hispanic folks Latin next, that folks are disproportionately experiencing that women in both of those groups experiencing that. Eve and Harsher actually did we Roger's work does point out that black men are experiencing a certain kind of harshness when it comes to economic mobility. Yes, even when they break out, they have a humongous chance and likelihood of falling back into poverty and having all of that erased. So I don't want to put a number around the chances that I don't remember exactly what it was, but I've heard him talk about this a bunch, so I can at least say that much to be true, that there's that that is a thing. So we've seen this. These data point to let me be clearer for folks too. Why I pointed out black women in Hispanic or Latinate women is when you look at something called occupational segregation, which it looks at research the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia did looking at the usage of public dollars within the workforce system, and just to be brief, there are disparities there. On average, white men are getting pipeline to jobs that pay five thousand more per year, and there are clusters of jobs that are lower paying that Black women and Latin Latin X women are getting pipeline too, And we have to deal with these realities. They're uncomfortable, you know, But we're not going to address economic mobility without again framing the problem accurately. Learning as much as we can not just from these big data sets I can show us those trends, you got to talk to people and understand what is the experience like of being there. Because the map is not the territory. Right. A map will give your mind some mental model representation, but river as a squiggly line on a map, you can use that to help you get to the river, But once you're at the river, you got to actually look at it and take it and to understand because it's not the same as crossing a little squiggly line on the map, right, And it's that kind of metaphor for where we're at in the sense making their in. So we need politicians locally, nationally, at the state level, et cetera. We need politicians that are going to partner with us in that kind of learning and try to figure out what is it that we can do differently and collectively. And then sometimes on certain issues the hands are kind of tied because the stuff is complex and there are other spaces where there might be some innovation to be at. Wow. Wow, you said a lot. That's a lot to unpeck and I agree. I agree with you. I agree full stop. I agree. I think I think City Council is doing what they can. Uh, there is some wom. To do more. There is, yeah, a lot more. There is someone to do more, because I won't discount the great work that I have seen personally seen, right, And we're really heavy with holding people accountable and at the same time asking for their vote, right, So if you want them to vote for you, we would like you to do certain things for the community that you're asking for voting and not just seeing you during the time that you're campaigning, right, And so that's a problem there. But I agree, I agree. It's it's just super layered, and I like that there's a conversation that's happening now to start to pill back those layers, all right, to have different trains of thought, because if one is a full for what they don't know, right, so they don't understand the different dynamics right, and even a deeper pedagogy to have. Then they can't do anything to fix it, right, And so us leading with solutions. It always starts there. Okay, this is the barrel of issues. You know, what can we do? Let's start with the first apple. How can we fix that? Right? Two things can happen at the same time. So no amazing conversation. That time went just that quick. Hopefully mom, Hopefully Mom was okay with that. And so why don't you real quick talk a little bit more about your organization and how they can find you in some of the great work that you're doing. And you got to promise that you're coming back because I think there's more conversation that need to we had around. Thank you, I would love to come back. I appreciate the space that you are holding for these complex conversations, right, because again, we gotta partner with our politicians, you gotta partner with the private sector, we gotta we gotta partner with everybody community. We gotta figure this out. We can't. We can't stay being fifty out of fifty. That just sounds like more dead kids, you know what I mean, and I don't want that, right So you can find us on the web at www. Www. Human Nature dot works. That's human Nature with one N so h U M A N A t U r E dot works with the s on the end. Because human nature dot com is about fifteen thousand dollars just considered prime. Digital real estate. I didn't even know that was the thing until I went to buy seven years it was like, So anyway, that's where you can find us there. And again we're working. We're actually doing some work right now around this issue with occupational segregation and partnering with the Commerce Department for the City of Philadelphia, Philadelphia Works and the Chamber of Commerce. So that's what I mean. The people are stepping to the table to do the work, and they've already been doing the work. This is just complex stuff and we got to keep to your point peeling back the layers and that the other side of the work at Drexel. So that's the Wealth and Work Futures Lab. You can google it. We have a landing page at at Drexel. Our website will be up soon. It's my fault. I will own that because my team will watch this and I love them and it is me and the copy. So I'm going to get out of their way. By the end of this weekend, we're going to have that website up. But those two things and then I'm Michael O'Brien. You can find me on LinkedIn on Instagram. Yeah, thank you so much. You know what, just just real quick, I want to I want to know because you're a wealth of knowledge and I think you have a lot they give to the world. Right. I appreciate that absolutely, absolutely. This is conversations that we need to have constantly in the nuances, and I don't think we have enough of that. But I want to know what would be the legacy that you feel like you would like to leave. That's so funny. I just answered the same question for generosity and an article that I was able to my personal legacy. Yeah, your personal legacy, because. I always think about my team, because nothing happens by yourself. Yeah. Yeah, there's all these lone entrepreneur stories. I'm like, that's a person that didn't really start a business and you're just lying one of the two. So so let's start. Let's do that. Let's do that. Then, because let's talk about your team, like the team and the organization that you put what would be the legacy. You would like for that that to leave that other people could pick up our work wherever we've left it off. I'm sorry wherever we left it off and continue pushing forward. I'm standing on the shoulders of so many giants, named and unnamed, and I think it's my responsibility. That's why I started building these particular kind of way from the advice and guidance of some elders. Right, the work should outlive us. The work should be larger than us. I'm comfortable with us just being a footnote in the larger story and not the story, you know what I mean. And I think for me personally, I would love for people to say two things about me when I transition, because we're all ancestors making our way to that journey. And that point one, Michael was a nerve with guy. That guy was funny, you could make me laugh. And the other being that he really was able to help widen the lens of human concern. And I think about that with the team too, because again I can't do that by myself. It's the team, it's the products. It's the learnings, it's the way we capture it. It's the way that lives on with all the fellows and the programs and the young people we work with. Like that, we were able to keep pushing at the edges, coming back to the middle and telling everyone, look, look, there's more space. And then we run back to the edge of pushbore and come back and go, oh my god, there's more space again. You know. So that's a fantastic fantasy. So real quick, do you know what a Cheryl O'Bryan that is? Yes, bring him back, my mama. I love her, Thank you, mom. And that's well before you go very briefly, because I know we have another guest to what made you get into this field? Like what what was that pivotal moment? You know? Actually, so I was fortunate to go to a performing arts high school that changed my life back in Hartford, Connecticut. Nice And you know, I'm open about this story. We my mom survived foster care. She's given me permission to share these stories. And my mother was an opportunity youth and all the things in terms that we disconnected youth, the things we talk about now that had no designation back then, and no one really cared that much about those young people the way that And I'm not saying we I'm not so we care that much now, but it's a little bit more. And so I grew up the child of a person who a young person who was disconnected and figuring it out, and so she sacrificed a lot. And art made a major difference in my life. And people surrounded me with love and care and art. And my mom did, but others did. And I did this program called Looking in Theater that really changed my life because what it did, it taught me I didn't know this, but it was teaching me how to be a designer. It was teaching me about human centered design. It was teaching me about how there's the best humanitarian education I could get, how to not make caricatures out of issues that people experience in the people themselves. And so just really quickly that it's a. Teen theater troupe that makes up scenes about any issue a teenager could face, interracial dating, eating disorders, bullying, coming out of the closet, being trans I mean whatever, a young person parents using being you. Know, suffering from addiction, the kids suffering from addiction, what erasism, I mean, you name it, sexual abuse, physical abuse, do whatever they could experience. We wrote scenes on. But the way that we wrote the scenes, you'd do the training over the summer and your initial core and you get these topics in the first week and you do some improving and then you would get critiques back from you know, your facilitators and trainers and then but you wouldn't get critiques on like did you portray the issue well or not, because the next thing they did was have these guest speakers come in that you could interview, and you talk to people who live through those issues and survived. You talk to the people who were professionals that worked on those issues, and you talk to their family members. So by the end of all that, you didn't redid the scenes. When I tell you that was the most life changing thing, cause I was like, damn, excuse me. I did not know how to center anyone's humanity. And that started me on that journey and then it's just been a successive learning journey everywhere else I went. And that's what did it. Fantastic, fantastic shout out to Mom again. Mom says she loves you, darling. Think you friend for us for my real quick she holding you down. You know, we love the moms over here. We love the mom and thank you for what y'all are doing holding down here, Philly, really honestly, thank you. Absolutely, we're doing the work. We're trying to do the work out here. And again, one thing we say on the show is once you come to the show, you're always welcome your friend to the show. So you're always welcome. To come back. So we'll make sure that we'll schedule some time for you to come back whenever you're available, because I think I want to start bringing you on more consistently, because I believe that you hold that piece of that feeling knowledge that's necessary to start to have those deeper conversations. I appreciate, absolutely, absolutely appreciate. So there you have. She said, a lot of hat, Mom said a lot of let me come back to my head. Thank I appreciate you, Mom. We love bird, Gang Bird Gang Bird. Appreciate you, Mom. And so I don't want you guys to come go anywhere when we come back. We got coffee in the building, coffee man and hopefully I said her name actually correctly, and uh, we don't want you guys to go anywhere. We had a dynamic to This was a great discussion. I really appreciate that. I appreciate y'all tuning in and we got more conversations that happen. But now we're going to close. Lady Sparkle, I think you're gonna like this. Don't go in the world, be right back. We just want to get a. Little background as to who are Fantastic Noises and the noisemakers if you can let us know. Yes, absolutely so. Once again, I am fantastic noise. I am the original noisemaker. So no one's gonna make as much noise as to me. Okay, and right here we have a noisemaker bad This is only half of it. The other stuffs are upstairs, the My, My, Kevin, Kevin, Lamar, Lannie and Dobbs, who are the actual band members. These are the background singers and we came to make some noise. We can to bring that noise today. So that's that's what we do. That's right. How did you guys get together? Man? So it started with I've been doing this on my own for almost three years now, and man, I guess each of these people here have different background stories. Most of us went to the same church together, and we just kept going. This one her, this is my one of my assistants, said one of like the my my biggest support of my biggest shitar hear, she's assistant. So we just been building and the same thing with upstairs with the band, just meeting through people, kept networking, kept seeing them. It was just like God or dang bab here we are awesome. Yeah. Well, could you guys, do we talked weekly a favor? Yeah? Can you give us a drop in a melody type. Way Ameli type way? Okay, so we talked weekly. Okay, So we're gonna do something like the wag talk weekly. You come in here with us, we talk. We come in here them we talk. We come in here, we talk. Me come in here, we talk. We come in here. Now we's all me. Me, come in. Give you they already cord Yota. See that that. Every time you play that, I just feel like I'm so loud, and I do have my loud moments, but. It's loud and good. It's a loud a good way. She really just did that. I mean that was straight off the dome in the heat of the moment, So I was really excited for my sister. All right, so we have someone that you're waiting for. Yeah, you know, I'm sorry. You know. We have someone with whom might have a tremendous amount of respect for. First of all, First of all, Coffee, thanks for your patients, Thanks for your patience, Thanks for your patience. But someone who I have a tremendous mount of respect for, class leader. Let us know who do we have to date? Who do we have to d I. Am glad to announce that today we have Coffee Summers journalists and editor in chief. Of Coffee Magazine. It's dedicated to amplifying emerging entrepreneurs and creatives through storytelling and representation. With extensive media experience, she champions diversity and resilience, shaping platforms that highlight unrepresentative voices and foster innovations. Y'all already know what to do. Give a warm we talk weekly. Welcome to miss Coffee Summers. How are you? How are you? Can she hear us? Yes? Oh there you go? There you How are you fine? How you doing all as well? All as well? I love your name? Thank you? So where are you at today? I'm in the. Midwest, so it's a little icy. I'm sure you know how it is. It's one time though, so I'm used to it. Yeah, it was warm today. They were just talking about it. Yeah, we're in the Midwest. I'm right outside Chicago. So it was a city called Joliette, about thirty minutes from Chicago. Yeah, oh, y'all real cold. It's good, real cool. Yeah, it's getting cold, but I mean you used to it. It's like it's one a time. Yeah. Yeah, Well, Coffee, thank you for your patients backstage, as you can see, we get yeah, we get real into it and everything. Well, tell us a little bit about yourself about Coffee Magazine and how that developed. I actually started the concept like way back in two thousand and nine, and it was a thing where I was kind of like a hip hop head to pick up magazines. But every time you pick up these magazines, you'll get the same people. On the cover monthly. And it was like, Okay, what about the people behind the scenes, what about the people that are making these celebrities or the people that we that inspired us make it to this point, Like who's on their team? And so I was like, I would love to interview like the stylists, the cameraman, the the businessman, the pr that make these changes and make these things happen. And so I started there and i'm here now. I pivoted out of the actual magazine spectrum and now we do digital interviews and just digital covers. Oh nice, wonderful. Well, tell tell the viewers about the magazine era, because I remember that was an era that I grew up around, which I truly miss. I mean, digital is great, but that was just a time where you know, you're at the airport, like let me pick up this magazine before I jump on the plane, or if I'm on the bus, the trend wherever, it's just it was just a time. So tell us about that and a lot of the the I guess magazines that you were featured in. Well, I started there. I really love the magazine era. I'm like a field person, you know, I need the book, I need the paper in my hand. So I used to collect different magazines from like Double Xales, Source, Vibe, Essence, whatever I can get off the shelf I was reading, and so I started off doing print with Coffee Magazine and I really liked it. But of course, since I was a smaller company. You're dealing with prices, you're dealing with different things that you can't match up if you want to mass produce. So right now, I pivot into a space where we're gonna start offering, like you, like. A yearly yearbook. So it'd be a coffee table book instead of like the magazine itself, because I don't want to miss out on that. I can keep it for ages, it can sit on my coffee table, I can take it with me when I go, like you said, to the airport on a trip. It's like it's the collector's item when you see yourself on the cover. That's how I feel about it. Awesome. So let's talk a little bit about because you know we're in a digital space, right, and you know I love the idea. First of all, how you the focus of interviewing the people kind of behind the scenes, right, because when you talk about like like your stylists, right, when you talk about just people who are really doing the work right, sometimes they don't necessarily get any visibility, right, me understanding as a as a wardrobe stylist, right, one of the things that we care about the most, I mean, we love the money. Most people don't really have the money to pay. It's but it's more specifically, it's about the credit, all right, we need our credit. We want our credit. So from the hairstyles to make up artists, you know, the costume designers, people in the back, you know, we won our credits. So I love that you started thinking that way. Why is that though? Why did you say, you know what, I want to interview them? What was it that made you or encourage you to start like that. Because anytime I like something, I take a deep dive. So like say I was into let's see who's big back then, maybe JODI's he or something. I'm like, oh, I wonder where they got the booths from. You know, like I was one of those deep divers. So you couldn't find information back then. In those magazines you can see maybe like the photo cred who took the photo, But you're trying to search everywhere to find these things, and you're like, Okay, why is that? Why do I have to see this? I know the celebrity story. They've told it to us in a couple of magazines, or you see it in different interviews that are on the news, but we never hear anyone else's story. So I know it takes a team because anytime I try to do a project, it took a team. And I was like, these stories need to be told because these people are working on everyone's career there are they are the reason in many shapes and forms, why these people make it to the next level. So I just thought it would be intriguing and know why they why they are okay with being that support system, what made them begin, what part of the love? What love they have for each piece that they put together. Because my stelf I was a creative so I used to like to draw, do painting, and I'm like, okay, so does that mean when I start painting and stuff, no one would know my name? You know, it was like the starving artist's mentality where You're like, these people should have a light shine on them as well, because it takes a ton of ton of time to complete these projects, not just to finish projects. So Coffee tell us how the journey was launching Coffee Magazine from the beginning until now, Like what challenges did you encounter and how did that shape who you are and your vision for the publication. Now, the biggest challenge was, you know, getting people around you to believe in your vision, because what happens is you're like, I'm the type of person I come out the gate and I'm excited. So if you share your story. Most people tell you other people are not going to be ast excited or they're going to tell you, oh, it's not possible. You need to just get a job. So it was a challenge for me to try to break into entrepreneurship with being raised as in saying you need a job with a pension, you need to be somewhere for twenty years doing the same thing. So that part was like the biggest challenge. Other than that, it was the challenge of believing that I can complete it. So it's like, Okay, I got all my pieces, but where do I get the information? How do I find the resources? If I don't personally know anyone who's doing this thing I'm trying to accomplish, Will someone help me? Will someone mentor me? How would I gain information? And you can remember back then, if technology wasn't big, you couldn't just google how. To create a magazine. There was no YouTube video oh on how to create a magazine. So I'm starting everything from scratch with knowing without knowing anything or any details about how to take it to another level. So I just decided, well, there's no rules when it comes to be an artist, so I should be able to complete it. However I wanted to be However, I wanted to look whatever rules I want to apply, and that should be the basis of you being an entrepreneur. This is why you do not want to work in corporate because you don't want to follow those rules. So I just decided to make my own rules. Fantastic. I'm sure since you're in a digital space now do you? I'm sure you cover like red carpets and things of that nature. Right that it just hasn't been my main fult Okay. All right, all right. One of the conversations that we had a few years back was the absence of black media or smaller black outlets, right, and so there was a video that pretty put I guess you could say it went pretty viral as it relates to Holly Berry, her pr kind of rushing her, you know, past a black media outlet right in Given that context, right, do you think that now we have a firmer footing or do you think we have more work to do do you think that we are still being kind of boxed out from the conversation between like legacy media outlets. What do you think where do you think we stand now? Just as media? I think we are still boxed out to an extent because it just depends on what event you're trying to get to. You still have to go through the general screening process of getting to that event, and then I feel as if we still need to do some more networking across. So if it's an. Event where they're highlighting entrepreneurs, they should allow a set of local media or a set of small media companies to cover those events as well, because these are the people they're representing, people that are actually making your career pop, your fan base, the general population that's saying you need to be number one, and whatever award you're receiving. So I feel like it's going to always be a give and take. Will it change, I don't know, But I feel like as we grow in media and create our own award shows, because that has been an issue as well, that we should be able to kind of bridge that gap and share media spaces. And I mean, we have to change perspectives as well. So if you're used to having only larger media outlets cover you, then you should be willing to, as an artist or someone in the industry to say, hey, I want to be interviewed by this local or a smaller entertainment or media company, versus saying, well, I've reached this level. I do not want to be interviewed by them. Yeah. I agree with you on that one. I think Michelle Obama was a great example of that because a lot of her fashion or things that she knew, she that she was like a platform. She was like a walking billboard. So she always wanted local fashion designer's, local artists to paint her portraits. So I agree. It's like sending the. Elevator back down. So coffee. I also want to ask you, because of where the media is evolving with technology and innovation, what is it and you name something even about the awards, what is it that you or others can do to stay relevant or stay ahead of the curves with. The Well, I've started getting been out a yearly Entrepreneur of the Year award to people that just submit and then I have the you know, I have people actually vote and then go through another. Screen of process. I feel as if you give everyone an opportunity of fifteen minutes, that's like my whole biggest thing. So even though I see smaller media outlets, they always I won't say everyone, but people will gun for a bigger name. I feel that you should still do like the networking across you can build a larger fan base and a community if you shine light on those that are actually putting in a ton of work. Not saying that everyone else doesn't put in a ton of work. I'm saying that that first bit of grind is a feel like a bigger heel to climb for some. So if you give people. Opportunity to gain more resources, you can, I feel in a digital agent to stay more relevant and think about the target audience. I wouldn't focus on numbers, but focus on the people that are supporting you. So if you have five thousand people that are coming to your site daily, you need to cater to those five thousand people instead of saying, oh, I need to have a million people, But five thousand people is a lot of people. I don't know five thousand people personally. So I feel as if you can still keep a shopper, keeps mentality and give people what they need and still be consistent with what you're saying you're going. To give them. That your audience and whatever you need will grow over time. But I believe and still keeping it. Going back to the basis, you still have to put in general work to gain the trust and the fan base that will carry you ten fifteen years. I want you to take a listen to this and respond once I read this out for you. One of the shout out to Shania, one of the viewers are has asked the question. She said, yes, but marketing plays a huge and finding out about a small media company outlet. She then goes on to say, it takes more than just networking. What would you say to that? Yes, I feel you need to show up. That's right, That's right. You can't just putting behind a computer. You have to That's what I mean by going back to basics. You need to go to these expos You need to go and support people in those rooms. You need to travel, you need to if you get to know one time, you need to fly again and get a yes to get to the red carpet. You have to keep working and meeting people in shaking hands. I don't I think the marketing and networking has been changed. They feel like networking means I can send one hundred emails and then I'm done, or marketing means paid for AD five hundred dollars. For that month and then I'm done. No, I don't think that's what it is. I think we have to figure out the new meaning to that word and how much work you need to put in to find your target audience, because I feel that that part has been missed. People are just. Blindly warning numbers and not marking to the people that will actually enjoy your products. Interesting, when did you come to uh? I guess that the point where you knew who your target audience, who your target target audience was, right? I know. We went through we've been doing this for a while. We went through a number of different like, well, we're catering to this, but it's actually these are the people who's actually watching us, right, So we had to we started, well it's about them, right, and talk. A little bit the dream target audience. I would say that. So then you have. A group of people that actually say, no, you have what I need. So I think it's it takes a lot of self discovery. I used to just put myself in the shoes of the person I'm trying to reach and say, well, I am the person, what would I want to see? But I believe it kind of fluctuates over time, especially with digital media only because people may see something and then you like, may spark a different interest. Before it's you seem more committed to only like in one thing because you only really had one option. But I find myself even liking things that I probably would never pick up on my own because I'm scrolling and finding things saying, oh, I really like this. So I think it pivots over time, and you have to be willing to be flexible. But what I mean is is to focus on to keep the focus of I guess, the mission of your company, and then make sure that that target audience can understand it completely or it's very easy for them to pick it up and digest. So I guess that's what I mean by making sure you cater to the target audience, because sometimes you're chasing things and you just seem like you're all over the place, So you have to still keep the aspect of mind saying, well, when they come here, they deal wants to find this information, whether I change it up of how I'm serving it to them or not. Yeah, Cafey, let me ask you this as far as tomorrow, and we're gonna be talking about that more today. About TikTok being banned. You know a lot of streaming services have decreased in their cable usage based on a lot of you know, TikTok social media, and you were talking about target audience. What's an approach when it comes to using social media to amplify your voice or your brand. As we've known that each platform has a different audience of how they digested. So it's always great to have a team because I can only see things one way. I would say that, so I would. Say when you're developing these strategies, try to even if you have to go back to getting a focused group, try to see what works for what I believe social media is still a big tool. You just have to believe that's what it is. It's just social media. It may not be locked into the actual person on what they be willing to do because just for instance, if you have an event and you have like say you have two hundred thousand people on your social media page, you have an event, only ten people buy tickets. Something was lost, so you have to figure out, Like I said, you have still get out there, and you have to make sure that those are solid people that will actually still translate to meet you outside of the digital world. And I think that's how sometimes the dollars are translated, because it's only so much that you can can navigate to say, Okay, this person may actually like this. You may have all these followers that one day based on one situation, but that doesn't mean those people are returning. So it's real fickle. But I feel like social media needs to be taken as what it is. It's social media. You can be on there being social. You can't just worry about your page. You need to go in there and comment on other people's page. You need to go on pick pull and stuff out from them, and you still need to socialize. You can't just say, oh, pick me, pick me and come over here and I'm not gonna talk anybody else. Your bigger name is. It seems like they going through another loop of hoops. But we have no idea what bigger media has to deal with or what they're going through behind the scenes. What's one of your what's one of the biggest standout moments that you had from you know, either your magazine or some of the things that you've been doing. Yeah, just people circling back saying they either enjoyed being interviewed or someone saying they saw interview I was able to send when I did the hard copies and I interviewed. T J. Jackson. He had a fan over in France and I was able to mail them a copy or like maybe a month ago. Q Parker's circle back around from one to twelve and was like, oh, this is probably one of the best interviews that I had, and I really appreciate you doing your homework or your due diligence on trying something different versus giving me asking me the same questions everyone else asked me. So it's just people having a good time and then even having results from the interview. My main mission is to once your interview by me or you're able to get on my platform, that you gain more people, or you gain more followers, or people have a different level of respect from you based on your experience with us. So fantastic she needed. She's the utter in chief of Coffee Magazine and she'll talk a little. I'll make sure that she talk a little bit more about that. She asked the name of the magazine coffee, and I want you to answer this because she wrote some information. At least I want your take on it. She said, I was teaching a small class of students ask them about who is their ideal customer versus their buyer PERSONA that this is interesting, Sita. She said some didn't understand who it was and who they weren't, which would help them understand who they would like to target and then complete the market and research to I identified their audience, so I provided them with how to conduct their client profiles by focusing on a group of people to help them also create their marketing messages. So what's your thoughts on that? She is seems like she's mentioning that she told them to create a focus group, which is like marketing. One on one. Yeah, And a lot of times you will say you'll create something and say why want these people to buy? And it's like why would they buy it? So you still have to answer those questions, the why, the how, and the when, and you just still have to have those basic questions and then see if that ideal target audience would even like it. So say your case, say you wrote a children's book and you're saying, my book is for ten year olds, and then you take the book to a class of ten. Year olds and they're like, I don't want to read this. So it's like maybe ten year olds in nineteen in the nineteen hundred, nineteen eighty nine will read it, but what about the ten year olds in twenty twenty five? You may have to up it up. So I think she did a great exercise for them to learn what that is and kind of readjust their perspective on what business is now. So, like I said, networking and marketing is two different strategies, and I think a lot of people just think of, oh, if I put my product out there, that's marketing. Like it's so many levels to marketing something that a team, to me is necessary. That's right, that's right, that's right. Even the idea what a brand is. And I don't think a lot of people even know what a brand is. They just throw the word around. I actually people all the time like do you even know what that word means? Like because it's just. Like brand and then it goes away. But if you take it back to basics, like serial box or anything. You know how much time and effort was putting into them, designing using the color scheme that works, using the font, using the shape of something, using something big and bold, something fatigue like, it's really overwhelming if you try to do it by yourself and not do the research. I agree with you. It's like human development mixed with psychology. That far. Absolutely, yeah, yeah, all right, this is a little bit off the beaten path. So I wanted to know because you have that creativity and you know your storytellers. So I'm going to ask you these three questions. What's your go to meal or cuisine? Well, my mill cuisine Okay, so it's changed because I changed my lifestyle, I will say that. Okay, So I'm now I'm a salad and hummus and fruit girl. So anything that's fresh, it can be fresh hummus with with bread, I'm great. My other snack meal would be strictly popcorn. I know that's weird, but Chicago popcorn. That's all I need in a move. So those are my my go to comfort meals where I'm like, Okay, this is easy, this is quick, and I'm full. Hm hmm. Okay, So next question what about music music off and fuels creativity. Who's your favorite musical artist. I am still old school hip hop, so I'm still in love with Common and Nas and if I can find Kendrick in there, I'm great. So I usually throw in some old school hip hop. I even got still some Little Brother in rotation, so okay, that is like my go to thinking music. But you know, I'll play some trap and some guerrilla if it's like I'm sleepy in the morning and I'm like, okay, I gotta get up. I gotta get ready to conquer the world. So she's definitely on that on that top ten list right there. All right, and last question, because storytelling is such a huge part of your work, tell us about one or two of your favorite all time movies. Now, do not judge me, but my favorite movie it's weird, but it's the Last Dragon. Oh wow, twenty different times. I'm even a said alot. I can watch the said lots with DS yes, with the Door. But like creative movies, I'm into a lot of I'm like a mystery buff, so I'm into like mystery type movies. I can I don't know any new ones I like. I can still do probably a Superman or maybe even I can do a Creed on a good day. So I'm all over the place with movies because I'm visual with it. So if I have a connection with something in a movie that just that just triggered an emotion I had, that's my movie, she. Said a wild last draggon. I think it's because the area came out. But truly, I used to watch kung fu movies and so every people would say, you don't even know what they're saying. So when it came out, I was like, oh, it's a kung fu movie and I can understand the dialogue, so. It just sucks. So it was one of those. I guess, you see you can recognize the people that people look like us, and it was a kung food flick. So it just had me. Well, last question, who and what inspires you? Who and what? Who? Or what? Who or what? I will say just life in general inspires me. I've had people that I've witnessed going through just crazy mishaps or illnesses and still get up and they are ready to party during the day. So as long I feel, as long as I have breath and I'm healthy and I have my limbs and I'm moving around. I need to get up and make something happen. So that's me all day. I try to get more than five hours of sleep, it doesn't work. I'm usually super excited about Okay, what can I get done next? And so I try to keep that same energy. So life itself inspires me. I know, we go through a lot and it's always going to be something happening. But the fact that you survived it and you are into the next day thumbs up. With that all fantastic. What do you have anything? Why don't you let everyone know if you have anything coming up? Where can they find you? All that good Otle stuff before we let you go? This time went that fast. But I also and I always say this, but you specifically because you had a magazine, I would love for you to make some appearances. Just come on the show. Let's talk a little bit about some pop cultures. A lot of stuff going on. Yeah, we'd love for you to come on. Well, recently I started doing with my digital cover collection series, So every month you're gonna find digital cover as well as their interview on our YouTube. So that's something new that we're doing this year. It's gonna be every month. The next thing we have every year around the fall time, we have an Entrepreneur of the Year award, so we'll start promoting that around August, so you can put your name in a half for that. If you have a business, or if you know someone you can also recommend and put their name in the hat for that. And then each year Coffee Magazine will start coming out with a coffee table book and it would have everything that we've done that year as well as all the interviews. So I know you miss us having a physical magazine, but this would be like your collector's exclusive thing you can pick up and you'll get everyone interviewed from that year. So fantastic, fantastic, no doubt, no doubt. I gotta throw this up. I don't want to date myself, she needed. I ain't gonna date myself, but she said, I used to go to the Capitol to watch Kung fu movies all day for a dollar. I'm gonna tell you how. Right she is. This is an accurate statement. Up there. You need to say you have any you got a YouTube channel. Yes, you can find me at D Coffee Emon channel or D Coffee Network. So that's f f E A for the name of the magazine network and then you can find us at coffeemag dot com. That ce O F F E A M A g dot com. Fantastic. So make sure you go. She need to go like and subscribe, you know, show some support for you know, you know, share to love you know, make sure you like and support subscribe you are I'm sure you well, you better be subscribed. We talked weekly already. I don't want to fuss when you here. She needed this. This is my people right here, so you already know. But we talked weekly. Have to talk. I wanna thank you Coffee for coming on the show. Excellent, excellent, excellent. One thing that we say on the show is once you come to the show. She said, can you can y'all put me sing? She cut me. She wanted to get in contact with you. She love you, Coffee. Can y'all pin her YouTube channel? So, Coffee, this is what I want you to do. Why don't you become a little contributor, right and then if you come become a contributor yeaheah, yeah, we'll we'll we'll keep you plugged on the site with whatever you want. And they know how to get in contact with you. We shent a direct linked to you if you want to do something like that. Okay, we'll just talk to me. Let me know what I got to do. Absolutely absolutely, So there you go. I'm talking for you, talking for you. You know so well, like I said one time, you know, once you come to the show, you a friend to the show, so you always welcome to come back. She said thank you, she said thank she likes you, she said, thank you all some interview. Appreciate it. You got a new fan, you got a new filler. I'm sure it's up. You gotta shut up. There you go and make sure you come back. Coffee. We love you here, so make sure you come back. So we'll make that happen. All right, there you go, all right, y'all, don't go anywhere and were coming. No you're ready, no go, all right, So we're gonna go right to some good news and bad news. Thanks for coming to the show, Coffee. We appreciate you. You the real MVP, as we say, you know you. Too. Take care now. And so we talked weeklies after the talk with w PPM on p Philadelphia one o six zero point five FM, we talked weeklies after the talk, well andrus with the beautiful classy ladies sparks, and you already know what we got, com know what we got coming up. We've got good news and bad news. You want to cause for this? All right, we'll get it to the earl. All right. So the Los Angeles fires have been a huge concern for Americans. It's still unknown about the origins of the blaze that has over twenty seven fatalities. These fires have forced the evacuation of more than one hundred and seventy thousand residents. I have friends and family who have been affected by this. The cause of these wildfires are currently under investigation, and authorities have formed the Joint Regional Fire Crimes Task Force to probe fire related crimes. Including potential arson Have you heard about that? While two individuals have been arrested for setting fires outside the wildfire zone, there is no confirmed information about and arsonist being responsible for the major fires. Contributing factors to the rapid spread of the fires include severe drought conditions and wrong winds. Firefighters are making progress and containing the efforts, aided by temporary weekend winds. However, LA officials. Are saying they don't have the manpower to contain the fires. For instance, some of the fire hydrants have ran dry. Firefighters said, for a typical house fire, a department may roll out five trucks. But for one house, that's great. If you have one hundred homes, you need five hundred trucks. If you have a thousand structures. There aren't enough fire engines in the state of California. Wow, hold on, So you're saying that for one home you need one fire truck. For one home, he said that you need at least five trucks. Some of them houses are huge. Ye, So they're saying that they don't have the infrastructure for it. All right, You guys may know about this. TikTok is supposed. To be going away tomorrow Sunday, January nineteen of twenty twenty five. So I don't think it's going to happen. But if they don't sell to a US company. So for people who do not know about why TikTok is going to be banned, you need to listen to this. This all began from a national security concern regarding TikTok's ownership by a Chinese. Company called byt Dance. US feared that the Chinese government would exploit TikTok to access American user data or spread disinformation. TikTok has tried to do some changes, including storing the US user data on Oracle servers if the app goes offline. This sets an example for US actions against foreign owned technologies. Now, Trump acts the Supreme Court to temporarily pause the band's implementation to give him time as president to negotiate a sale for TikTok because he's a businessman. Even if TikTok band does go into effect, a sale of the app to a non Chinese owner could restore the. Access for US users. So allegedly, a group formed by a billionaire entrepreneur and former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCord and Shark Tanks investor Kevin o'larry made a bid earlier this week, I'm sorry, this month, earlier this month to buy TikTok from the China based company by Edance. So did you know this TikTok has worth one hundred billion dollars ESU A hundred bill what billion dollars in the elevator? All right? TikTok owner Benjing, the person who was founder of TikTok. He mysteriously passed away last year. So that's TikTok, the the creator of TikTok cash act. There's another like huge tech guy who started one of these big tech companies that mysteriously doe cashat guy do interesting. So the tik tok so TikTok is available to over one hundred and seven and the million Americans. I don't have a percentage, but thousands of people are going to lose who if TikTok does go away, They're going to lose their livelihood and they said that they'll have to completely rebuild. So people use TikTok to pay their bills like mortgage and everything. Yeah, that's the only the only reason I feel a little hmmm, because I'm going to fence with this, right, But that's it's it's the people that I feel a little sad that if it goes away, then they don't lose their business, right. That's one of the reasons why we just we can't depend on someone else's platform. But I mean, honestly, if your product is what it is, like you said there, what was the first my Space face? A Facebook is an updated or upgraded my Space vine Vine. A TikTok is an up. So somebody used. Somebody gonna come and do it, all right, This next story really is like to me, is sad and it's a senseless. Seventeen year old Noah Scurry was an academic and talented basketball player. He was shot in the Fittonville area, I'm sorry, Feltonville area, Yeah, Fellonville, Feltonville area of Philly, as he was getting into his mother's car. She was taken him to Samuel Fell's High School, where he was a student. Noah's peers and teachers admired his intelligence, leadership, and his unshakable positivity. Tragically, this promising young man with dreams of college basketball and the bright future was taken away. There's a video also surfacing of Noah brandishing a gun on social media, which police is still saying is being investigated. Police have located a white, cheap Grand Cherokee that they believe was involved. Police are asking for anyone who may have any information to call the anonymous hotline at two one five six eight six tips. That's two one five six eight six eight four seven seven. There's a lot of rumors and everything going around about this young man in his killing. But there's oh, there's so many. There's an extended family member of ours that just lost his life as well. He was coming in the house and they shot it in front of his house. Yes, and his mother didn't see it, but she heard what was going on. And then this young man he was getting into the car and his mother was right. There, like, and they're getting younger and younger. Yeah, he's seventeen. Extended family member, he was eighteen. It's yeah, it's it's the tip two one five six eight six tips Okay, yep two one five six eight six eight four seven seven. All right, here's the Uh. I don't know if this is goodbad or what, because I ain't give y'all no good news, but. It is what it is, all right, So press. Then Elect Donald Trump's inauguration will be moved indoors. He announced this Friday and said it's due to dangerously cold temperatures projected in the nation's capital. I have ordered the inauguration address, in addition to prayers and other speeches, to be delivered in the US capital Rotunda, as was used by Ronald Reagan in nineteen eighty five. Because of the very cold weather Trump posted this on his Truth social The swearing and ceremony will take place inside the capital, Rwanda. Reagan, like I said in eighty five under similar weather conditions, the Ratanda can accommodate around seven hundred people and will only host members of Congress, their spouses and VIPs, so most ticketed guests. Initially, when it was outside, it was expected to exceed two hundred thousand people, which will not attend now in person due to the limited space. The ceremony is labeled a national Special Security event, with agencies adjusting their plans now because instead of being outdoors, it's now indoors. So the Secret Service of US and law enforcements are still, you know, working on the blueprints. Trump emphasized the potential health risk for attendees due to freezing temperatures, expressing concern for law enforcement personnel and first responders. Like I said, Reagan's last time it was indoors was in nineteen eighty five. All right, So here's the honorable mention of the inauguration being indoors. Honorable. The honorable mention is the performers that will be at the inauguration or have already done something for the inauguration. So basically this is all around performing for Trump. Now, just a little reminder, do y'all remember when Chrisette Michelle performed at the inauguration and shout out that child's I think her whole I think her whole brand, her whole professional career plummeted because she performed there. I have not heard from her since that time she started. They gave her so much flag. I don't know how Steve Harvey got back, but he was like right there on the top of block anyway. So the performers at the inauguration are going to be Carrie Underwood, the. Village people who had hits like. Mc A, country singer, Lee Greenwood, Kid Rock, and Billy Ray Cyrus. They're going to be there and others too. But on Friday, at the Inaugural Crypto Ball, that's an event held for members of the crypto industry celebrating Trump's return to office. They said, with Red make big con great again. I'm sorry, yes, with Red make bitcoin great again. Hats making his rounds among guts. So some of those performers are rapper Snoop dogg rapper Rick Ross, and rapper Nelly, and there's other ones, so they have been Basically this is an endorsement to show their support for Donald Trump. All right, so y'all tell us what y'all. Think in the comments, call us or you know, even if you after you see this live, let us know what you think. Do you think now there is something going viral with Snoop? Yes, there's a there's a. Comment Snoop made when Trump ran the first time as our president. He said, yeah, who's gonna be shocking and driving? Or yeah, I want to see so. I can roast you whoever's going to be performing at the inauguration. And that's why they say. It's a saying that be careful who you let that fact, those are the ones you become. That's was your good news and your bad news from classy lads Park, good. News, bad news, class lates Park. I'm your boy, beautiful classy. There you go this we talked after they talking w PP. I want to know about the rent. You ain't gonna let me calm down as yelling again, I'm gonna know about the rent? Can you talk? So? All right, So I'm gonna give you all a little context because I said that, I give you all rant. So everybody who's watching. Most of the people who watching, they probably know me already, right, and so, uh, you know today based off of because I think this is an excellent transition, right, So we know that the inauguration is coming up now. Honestly, if I'm being honest, if I'm being honest, I never knew who was going to be there, right, And you're saying now that this is actually they're not gonna be at the inauguration. They're going to be at an event. They already did it. It already happened. It was the CRISP Crypto Bitcoin Inauguration, Bring make Bitcoin Great. Against Okay, So that's that's fake news, false information that's already out there because the narrative is that they were performing at the inauguration now, which is inaccurate. Right, So that's the first thing that's inaccurate, right, So they performed at this crypto situation, right for those who don't know, inauguration aka inauguration. Yeah, true, true, true, true. And there's a lot of people very very upset. A lot of it has to do with one that it is Trump or get it to Uh. There was some pushback and forty five, the forty five inauguration, right, and you know that was fresh out the air. You know it was fresh and everybody Trump, this is what like nothing? You better not do anything about Trump? Right, I get it, I get it, I get it. I was one of them, right. And so fast forward, they're talking about this stuff, right. And so one of the comments, let me see if I could bring this up, one of the comments that I happened to mention or you know, someone posted and I can say that he you know, someone that I truly respect. Let me see is this it? Let me see if I can find him? All right? Cool? So this was a comment that someone posted right now. Mind you, I wouldn't be saying anything about this. Okay, I'm gonna read it. I'm gonna read it. I'm gonna read it for those who you know, just concer, we won't say that. But you know so the comment said Nelly and Snoop Dogg. If you don't make them suffer any financial hardship or pain, your outrage is wasted. Period. Okay, cool? You know blow that. I don't know if you see this, and this will probably come up in context later. It says the generation behind us are lazy physically and intellectually excuse me, sir, But okay, right, she talked about like he talking about like our generation or which is cool? A younger generation. It's all right, no, we get it. Cool cool cool. So he was mad. So this rant, you know, is just me acknowledging this gentleman for mentioning me. Now, I wouldn't have said anything, but they wanted me to put a petty cake on the thing. Petty eddy, They want me to be petty. Why would you mention me though? Right? And so he mentioned you. So I'm gonna tell you. I'm gonna I'm gonna show you this one post, right, okay, and then I'm gonna play the audio. He didn't just mention me. He gave you an audio. He gave me audio audible. We call it audible, right. And so let me matter of fact, before I do all that caught audible right, called an audit, I caught audible, right, So let me let me go through before I play the audio, right, let me go through some of the text and so I can explain some of the stuff that's going on, so you can understand, right, what he's talking about. So he posted that, right, and then uh so this is my comment, so I said, do anyone on your timeline even listen to them anyway? Because he's talking about Nellie and Snoop? Right, cool, this is his post. Okay, yeah, yeah, this is post. You know, so that's cool. Yeah, okay, you know what I'm saying, like who who on the timeline is listening to him? So in context for me posting this is kind of like, yo, they hold no weight for us to even support a Trump anyway, Like who is following Nelly and Snoop? But anyway, this is what I said. I said, do anyone on your timeline even, you know, listen to them anyway? I said, sometimes I think we picked the wrong things to be hysterical about. Okay, I agree with that, right. It's like, come on, so he says to me, with all due respect, my brother, if you don't understand why they're performing is wrong thing, then we don't have anything to talk about. I was like, all right, cool, I mean, like, you know, it's all good. If that's you know, you got a right to your opinion. You gotta right to how you feel, right, So I'm like, all right, look, you know it's for me, it's not a big deal, right, it's like, yo, we it's rich people problems. I don't care about these people. So then I respond, I said, I guess not. I said, I guess not. Brother. I'm much more concerned about the lady begging for food on the Jerid Avenue exit every day here in Philly. So I got your right. Rich people problems don't sway me that much. So for me that I'm only talking for me that them performing at Trump. We are paying too much attention to that, paying too much attention to it. We shouldn't even care, so he responds. And you don't think we, he said, And you I need some music on here. Let meet here, you go so he can put some good music on, so he said, And you don't think we. And I have been concerned about that either. I've been multitasking all my life, all my life, regardless of the issue. What's Snoop Nelly, Rick Ross and the rest are doing is wrong and disrespectful to that black community. Next time you have their here, ask them to cut a check for those poor, for that poor woman worried about, and tell me what happens. Okay, he took a little shot. I'm like, all right, it's all good. Player like you know. I listen, I see you getting a little ruffle. You're getting a little ruffled. It's all good, So I respond, I'm sure they wouldn't cut a check. They don't know about this young woman. They don't know about us in Philadelphia. They don't even know us. To my point, risk people problems, right, I said, I never said you wasn't concerned. Nothing in nothing in my post said that he wasn't because he wasn't concerned. Never said that, right, I said, I know much more. I said, I know much of your work. Also, you will always get flowers for that. I'm giving them kudos. I'm giving them a note, right, I said. I'm just saying, I'm not sure why people are hysterical over this ass. The people who I saw mentioned this don't even listen to him anyway. To that point is, if they don't listen to him, you think they following or even care what they do. They don't care about snoop Ornelli. I know, I don't really. I said, it's interesting that we are not promoting to just turn off the TV when this happens. But hey, you posted this is your post. I'm sure expecting people don't comment right, I said, uh, you know, I'm just giving my two cents. I'm done, no bad intentions over here. Have a great night. He gave it. Have a great night, right, I mean here he said. After that post, so after this post. Right. So then he goes to, uh, hold on, let me go here. I want you to see this. He goes, well, I'm leaving soon. Now this was a day ago. He said, well, I'm leaving soon, and it looks like TikTok is coming with me. TikTok being meta free technically saying he's going or he's leaving. Right, all right, cool? Interesting, now you heard what I said, right, Why don't you just turn off your TV? He says, turn off you turn your TVs off tomorrow and make sure Trump inauguration inaugural is the least watch of all times. This is exactly what I said from the door. So while you met, while you mad Son, while you met. If anything, you should feel good that he you know, it's not the messenger, it's the message, and no matter how he got it, he's still presented it exactly. So I'm going to play a little something. Why why and this is the context. Why. It's Saturday night and I've been going back and forth with a number of you about the inaugural and Snoop and Nelly, Rick Ross, Soldier Boy, Charles Gregory, Pastelle, Denise Clay, Cherry Gregg. All of you. Everyone. I've been going back and forth with. What you don't want to do is normalize and legitimize Donald Trump. And that's what performances by Snoop Dogg and Nelly and anyone else with the black community does. It normalizes and legitimizes everything this man has done up to now and who he is. Donald Trump was just using these folks to better set forth his agenda. But ask yourself a question, how many black folks has he tried to get confirmed for any position? Remember all those black folks that most. Of us never heard of, Iron Donald's and Tim Scott, what happened to them? They haven't been appointed to anything. There hasn't been one major black man or woman talked about being appointed to anything in the new Trump administration. Just one position over at HUD and he filled that with a black face none of us have ever heard of or even know. So, Charles Postel said, Man, do. Any of your followers or listeners even listen to Stoops music anymore. I know, I play it on the air. I played at Night one. Un two point three played some of his music. We played Nelly's music, we played Rick Ross, we play Soldier Boy. So yeah, when I was the host of Sounds of the Underground over in Jersey at my Horns, I met Snoop. I met them all back then. I mean I was an MC, a host of a popular hip hop rap TV show, so of course I met them all. Nowadays, guys like Snoop, they're making incredible endorsement deals. So it's not about listening to their music. It's about listening to them and following them as influencers and pitch men and women. All right, So oh wow, So guess who's not boy. I'm not even gonna call it out. For mister Native is a very. Familiar voice here in Philadelphia. And so so so petty Eddie, given that I'm a little petty, you know, I felt the need just to address it. And it's all fun. It's all good fun, you know, because I respect this guy, right, But he mentioned me. He mentioned my name, right, So because you mentioned me, now I gotta mention you, sir. I gotta dress it right. And so the fact that he brought up Denise Clay and Sherry greg First of all, I didn't like that because you're talking about two dynamic women who are very very intelligent, very very smart, and do a lot of work in these communities. Right. Well, I don't think he said anything bad. I don't think he said anything bad either, But the fact that he felped me to come on live and address them addressed us because he put me in there, right, it wasn't necessary, It wasn't necessary. So maybe he just wanted content, which is cool, you know, but when you do that, you just have to risk somebody saying something back. That's it. That's it. I mean, one, I don't know why people have taken me this life is so important, like as if this is your next of kin, And I mean, I don't know. I think that. I think that when they when we look at celebrities, depending on who you're looking at, they feel as though even though he said he played the music, but even though he doesn't, or who the followers are. To your point, they're the ogs of who's coming up. So if he's looking at it that like vicariously. Yeah, you don't have to look at Soldier Boy, Chris, Nelly, Rick Raws or Snoop. But these are the ones who influence those that are coming. So even though it's not them, they still have a very high impact on the generation that are moving up ladder. And I even I will even consider that. Right, we know what happened in the selection. They had Beyonce up there for the Biden administration. They still not. They not in office now. So that's my thing. It doesn't matter. People are smarter than a fifth grader. Right, you can see who needs to or who I would like to vote for, not because someone told me to do so. That's the old way of thinking. And I think that was one of the biggest mistakes that the Democratic Party did this, this going out doing what we said didn't work, what people were saying didn't work. Instead of listening to the people, they decided to do their old strategies from the old playbook. Right. The reason and I forgot to mention Sojia Boy because he did it too. The reason Soldier Boy, Rick Ross, Snoop Dogg and Nelly. I don't even know why Nis ain't there. They made millions off of crypto. They not there for Trump. They there because they like, Yo, we made bread off. Of this digital coin, and now we want it back because it lost its value value, and we're going to perform because more than likely we're getting paid, more than likely we endorse this crypto. And really, even if they do want Trump or whatever, it don't have nothing to do with Trump. It's from the business. Side, exactly, exactly. So it's really if anybody's looking at that, the native man is in his feelings opposed to him being in his logic as to why, you know, why, what's going on? So you can look at different types of scenarios and say, hey, I got a mechanic who is he smells bad, he he's you know, he has the worst customer service. But my car purrs like I'm gonna take my car to him every time time. It's just, you know, make it makes sense, That's what I'm making. Makes sense. So you're talking about people who got rich off bitcoin, right, and it was a bitcoin of fair right. Rick always talks about how much he got all the time. And so. It's less about Trump and more about, uh, the the new movement to support a digital currency. That's it. That's it, right. So I think sometimes we get to this point where we start to overstand, we overstand it not to mention in the little rant that he gave me. You know, Charles Gregory Pastels said, he said, my whole Hi, this is a movie phone, right, Hi trolls Gregory Pastel, this is the problem with you, right and so uh he uh so it's a little rant. Right. He mentioned Trump like three four times in a minute two minutes. It's literally like another issue. Stop mentioning this guy. Stop mentioning Trump. Can I ask questions? Okay, So when comedians talk about things that are off limit, the first thing we say is what they're comedian, And they're like, hey, don't take Dave Chappelle for every word, because he's what a comedian. If you're an artist, the one thing that you want to do is expand your target audience. Every artist, every actor always says, I don't want to be boxed in. I want the other ethnicities or the other audience so that I can be what is it global? You know what I mean? Like a lot of times when here in the US, they say, hey, I want to go over to Japan, I want to go over to the Philippin, I want. To go over So people can know who we are. Why would these artists not take the stance of being in a room full of people that don't look like them, that don't listen to their music to go ahead and have that opportunity to do that to stay relevant. These are older generations that have died off that people. Probably probably I'm quite sure they hurt and. Listened to him. But Snoop is the He's the king of it with Marthur Stewart. Who would have thought so for them to take that opportunity. I think the native man is not looking at it from a business perspective. He's looking at it from a feeling and his feelings. It's just feeling. He's just in his feelings. So pretty much bottom line is get out your feelings, right, It's not that big of a deal. Just turn off the TV. Like for me, I'm just like, look, I'm not really concerned of his people problems. The reason why we know forty five is because of what we didn't want to say his name, So he was known as forty five. Everyone just called him forty five. Meanwhile, someone's overstanding and mentioning his name over and over again. If you didn't even mention his name, mentioned that they were even going to be at this thing. I wouldn't even knew man. But this same generation, I just said, I had nothing else. The same generation didn't say that. Back in the early nineties, late eighties. Every every athlete, every rapper, everybody was like, Yo, you're going to Trump Plaza, you going to the casino. It wasn't then, like what changed? And to your point, you turn your TV off one, you still can hear a tree fall or the tree still makes a noise if you're not in the room, So turn your TV off. I get it. But it's still a part of history. So if you turn your television off, you're just going to miss that part of history. And it still happened. So if it's going to happen and you're living here, why not keep it on to see what part of history that you can still see. Don't don't look at it from you know. It is what it is, So it's watch it. He's going to do another sparkle sparkle hobble. You shouldn't be telling people to watch something like that because you're you are going and a community or not. He still our president. They cannot put his picture in the post office whatever it is, he's still our president and you don't have enough time to get dual or citizenship somewhere else. So you're an American. He's a president. It is what it is. And honestly, honestly. If you go from a spiritual perspective a God perspective, you're going to say, hey, I'm supposed to pray for him because he. Is our leader. He's our commander in chief. So as that same person, I want to know, Native man, are you a man? Are you a man that believes in God? Because if you do, then then this kind of conversation is futile. Do you know what I'm saying? Because it is what it is, So pray for him that he leads us in the right direction. Okay, all right, well, you know Spark saying, Spark saying. Keep me TV on. You're gonna tag him on this? I needed I'm sure to get around. I'm sure to get around because he didn't tag me. He just mentioned my name. And again, you know, full as a disclaimer, the only reason I'm talking about this is because he put me out there. He mentioned my name twice, and he made sure that he mentioned me, and maybe he knew that I was saying. That Trump is about to do not the IRS, but the ers, an external revenue service, where tariffs are going to start now being charged. Where are taxes for the American dollar he's taken? And he's what has he done? He said that there's no more children being able to do sex changes. It's a lot of things that he has done that he hasn't even been elected that he's like, hey, this is what we're changing. Yeah, the qorum and certain things. No politician, you're supposed to put your trust in totally because it's too many people that they got to please that you're going to that they can't please everybody, even Biden's administration. There's a lot of things that people can say they didn't like. Absolutely absolutely. So I just want to go back to exhibit Let me see, it's this exhibit. Yes, what you said last time? All right? Let me see. All right, so let me see. Let me say all right, so go back to the exhibit three was b you'll see right, literally you can see here. I said, it's interesting that we are not promoting turn to turn off the TV. I literally said that in the post, right, he was fussing. He did another he did a video he fussing, fussing, fussing. About an hour later, fussing, fussing, fussing. Right about an hour later, he says, just turn your TVs off. Literally it did all that. Listen if you can see here it said nineteen eighty one Ben Vereen performing in black face. So he talked. He pretty much was saying that I was acting like Ben Vereen, and or he's saying that, you know, the shucking and job and that X, Y and Z, which was another reason I'm doing this right, Yeah, he alluded to it. And so the whole thing was just like, dude, you serious, like you here, you really want to go there, just you really want to go there. But at the end of the day, whatever message you was trying to deliver, the helm he got because he absolutely Yeah, if you can't take credit for for it, then then don't because it ain't about credit for you. It's about the message being properly you know, delivery. So, mister native man, are you understanding the words that's coming out of my mouth? I will be turning off my TV, not watching it, and I'll just wait to hear your rent afterwards to tell people how black they are not all right. And so with that said, I love you, my brother. We just this is just fun conversation. Everything is good, Everything is good. I don't want no body take this bag. Oh he was no do you hearing it from the horse's mouth. It's just come on the show. Oh yeah, go invite him, come on this show. He's very well known in Philadelphia, and I hold a high respect for him. But I want to know what he has to say. Come on, come on, come on, clean this, come on, come on. So that's our show man. We talked after you talk about w ppm P Philadelphia one six point five, and we talked you have to talk with your boy chis Gregory beautiful and we here we talk weekly. Have to talk with me out here. All the flowers. You deserve all the flowers. Though you did a lot in the community, you did a lot for radio shout out. You deserve all your flowers. So no, this is not a shot. I'm just punching back, punching me. I gotta punch you back, as simple as that. But yeah, audible called audible, right, So make sure you tune in next week. Thanks, make sure you like to subscribe. Tell a friend, and tell a friend share this video. You got something to say, Hiler Attics. You want to come on the show, High Lattice. You feel like something that we said was entertaining or would like to hear no more or hear more, Just let us know. We talk weekly. Young we out here like last year. Peace ya

