President Donald Trump Denies Diddy Pardon, Informed CEO Kira Shishkin Talks Misinformation

We talked weekly and we're live. We talked weeklies after the talk on w PPM l P Philadelphia one O six point five film. We talked weeklies after the talk with your boy Charles Gregory and Beautiful. Classic. I wondering if it's good, goodious and beautiful laurenz both you're beautiful. It's all good. We talked weekly. We're here at w ppmo P Philadelphia, want six point five film. It's a lot of things that's been going on. Uh, we're actually virtual today. We'll be back in the studio next week, I believe. And it's just going to continue to give you some news hyper local stuff too. I mean, I think that's important for us to make sure that we tell Philadelphia what's going on in Philadelphia, how was going down in the paint. But you know, before we do anything, Uh, you know, I gotta jump right to you class ladies, Sparkle, how was your day? What you think it was good? I know that we ain't been on here for a minute, so I'm glad. Yeah, I missed both of y'all. Today was good. I've been doing a lot of d i ys around the house. When I say some real stuff like I'm doing. I got a leveler, I got a stud finder, like I just I did some powera washing. So it was good. I'm glad that the heat, you know, gave us some uh some cooler days today yesterday because we had that storm. It. I don't know if y'all got it, but I. Heard the storm. So it was a good day. Today was a good day. Yeah, you know what, shout out to Shout out to Texas because they they got hit hard, right, it was Texas that got hit pretty hard with uh that storm. A lot of people got hit with the storm. Yeah, Texas got flooded out. Yeah, really bad. So shout out to all my Texas folks who's constantly watching the stream and watching some of the things that we do. Hope everything as well with you and what's going on since what holler me? Hey, I'm very excited to be here. It's been a really, really long time. I had a busy day. It was really nice. You know. Mom Duke's had me running around, got me in Habitat for Humanity, got. Me food shopping and doing all this stuff. And then I also, you know, it's been a really long time since I had the chance to sit down and read a book like I do a lot of. Reading online and listening. To a lot of like audio stuff, but it's nothing like feeling like a book in your hands and just like going through those pages. It's nothing like it, Like I always love books. So I started off my day with that, you know, some positivitys of meditating and all that. But I had a really great day, really great day. I'm not complaining at all. I'm here. I'm here. Isn't bad that I don't read books anymore. I'm listening to audio books. I mean it's hard to even find a book. I mean, like it used to be, you know, in Starbucks, they used to have a big book kind of corner. Mm hmm. I don't know if it was Starbucks or they was in in the book Barnes and Nobles. I'm sorry, Barnes and Nobles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had the Starbucks in there, but they took that from eighteenth Street, so it's not there anymore, right, and so it's not Yeah last time I didn't see it. Maybe I just went past it. Maybe they had some displays. But I know it's been hard for me to find like sit down, so I guess I could go to like the Philadelphia Library, But I'm talking about kind of the local, you know, the local you know shops that would have some of the up and coming books, some of the new authors, uh, some displays, you know. That's what I used to like. I used to work on eighteenth and Walnut, and we'll go into the Barns and Nobles, and of course they had all of the fashion related magazines, right, so I would love to just kind of touch and feel and go through that. But since I don't have anything like that around me anymore. Uh literally, I mean they used to have even magazines. They I can't even find a magazine anymore, and so I'm constantly just on my phone. Of course I got audible, so I'm listening to audio books. You know, I'm on YouTube listening to audio books. So I don't know, maybe that's bad that I'm not reading in my hand a book. I guess I could get a kindle. That's still not the same, right now. No, you gotta have a book. I actually went to a couple of thrift stores looking for some really good books, some old books, So that might be a place to go because they got tons of books there. Yeah, I don't know. If you have time to go to a library, Like. Yeah, how about that? Right, maybe we should do a show in the library, just just you know, I think that would be cool. Us. Listen, we set up in the library, and we set up in a section where they have all I'm sure they got some updated stuff in there. That's something I went to the library. I was just like, how old are these books? Man? Yeah, they don't let you talk in the library. What do you mean I'm not talking about I know right, I'm talking. I'm not talking about like the study areas. I'm talking about more like where the community is, you know, the you know all that type of I don't know, but you know what I'm lying. I did. Oh, I was able to go to this fashion event and I'm gonna get this book. Let me show you this book about that. He did. Go run and find a book because I'm looking at it as we're talking. But black Ice, I don't know what I thought you were that was gonna be you on there. That's on the front. So this is a this is a coffee table book. And yeah, and I got halfway through it, but it talks a little bit about you know, some of the the greats you know that we look at yeah yeah, Malcolm X and they were talking Mark Luther King and they were talking about literally, uh dressing. Look here go, I'll just turned to Sidney Poortier. You know what I'm saying, so about how they dressed, right, black Ice, you know how they dressed back then, and so you know it was it's a really good well I didn't finish it though, I just pretty much I'm gonna but that was like the last book that I did get. So it's you just made me think of, you know, just reading right, I can't even remember. That's why I got at the coffee table book because I can feel it touches thick, you know, So that's important for us. I think we all need to read a little bit more books in our hands, something TANGI as opposed to looking in our screens. It's hard to read a book in the screen. I'm telling you me it is. Anyway, Yeah, I think I was listening to one of I want to say, Warren Buffett's speeches, like you know how they put like a compilation together of like a bunch of speeches and motivational stuff. That certain people have said. And I came across him, and he was talking about how like if you just read. I think it was I think it was Warren Buffert Buffett, but I think he said if you just read. Imagine if you just read only ten pages a day of a book, how much more advanced you'd be in whatever? You know, that field is just challenging myself, like, all right, I think I can do that ten pages a day, Like, come on, now, that's not. I don't think that the new generation the lost generation. I don't think that they're going to be into the you know, the hand books, anything digital you got them. Yeah, I think it's going to be a lost Yeah, that's what I call it, the lost generation. Yeah, yeah, unless maybe they age out of that, Like if they eventually age out of it until they get to a certain age and then they're like, oh, they want to rediscover like that becomes popular again, books, hand books, you know, like having a book in your hand, if that ever, like becomes a fad at some point again, like once it gets like their forties and they're like, oh, you know, you know how things become obsolete like a payphon, and. Then new it's new to them, like, oh, let me go down a book. I was teaching the kids how to write a check and my son was like, I'm not gonna need this. I'm just like, oh, so good to know. He's like, mom, I'm probably be writing checks. They're not gonna have that. And this was years ago, you know, so it's like, yeah. I mean, listen, this new generation, I mean Generation Alpha, they're not even using handwriting the school in terms of using cursive, they don't even do that in schools anymore. So they. Should, they should. They're bringing that back. And so that's you know, I was with a group of young people and they didn't even understand the idea of signing their name. They didn't know that. One kid was like, oh, cool, sign, I know how to sign, and he went into sign language, which is which was interesting because that is and I was like, kudos to you though, you know that you know how to sign, but usually cursive they don't. It's non existent anymore, non existent. So yeah, we got to do better with that. We have to do better with. Do you think the do you think it's the parents responsibility? Like they can leave into the school, but the parents could also. I mean they come from generation and I'm thinking of you know, writing in cursive or should know how. I'm not even blaming the teachers on that. I mean, I think this is this. I think it's everyone's, the school system, the parents, because you can't just dump your kid in school and expect them to know everything, right, Uh, You, as a parent, I believe, need to participate in that collective you know, leadership and learning process for them. So I think it's up to the parents also because it's a lot of stuff the schools don't even want you to learn. I'm not gonna get into that, right, and so it's up to us to make sure that they get those missing pieces. And so yeah, absolutely, man, absolutely, So I guess more of the story is go get yourself a book. I got a couple old ones. Here's some coffee tables. I like the coffee table, but I like to look at them, and so that's what that's about. Right. So yeah, So all right, so we about to jump into good news and bad news class, Lady Sparkle, You ready for me? Yep, I'm ready, fantastic, all right, Well give it to me earlier. All right, Well, there's some big changes coming over to Philadelphia, and it might be on y'all block. So Philly is undergoing a major lightning information or lighting transformation. So part of the ninety one million Philly street Light Improvement Project, over one hundred and thirty thousand street lights are now being replaced with energy efficient LEDs. Have y'all seen any changes? No, that's interesting. So we're talking about the digital world. This is part of it. So these lights are remotely adjustable, and they're going to make them brighter in higher crime areas to enhance safety, which nobody wants to. I mean, I guess crime does happen in broad daylight, but at night you can get away with a lot easier. So they're going to make it brighter in higher crime areas to enhance the safety. But they're going to make them very dim and residential zones to reduce light pollution and health disruptions. So this is back by a sustainable bond and citywide data, and this initiative aims to cut the emissions and the operating costs by half. So residents can request the brightness adjustments by dollar three one one. So if I guess the block captain, or you know some of the on the residential block, you know, say hey, I need you all to you know, make these dimmer or brighter. You can call three one one. I think there should be an app though, like an app where the person has to put on their email address, so at least it could track them. Put in the poll number, you know what I mean. Then it's a it's a better trackable system. But as of right now, three one one, you're all on board with that? Yeah, yeah, thats a one, yeah, yeah for sure, for sure. Yeah. Well, so I was just talking about how when it's nighttime, a lot of times crime happens, well in broad daylight. Something just went down in West Philly. So West Philadelphia residents are highly upset. All of Philly is upset, but specifically West Philly. So there's Philadelphia residence, says a seventeen year old young young boy because he's still a boy, rendered in connection with us shooting at Christy Recreation Center on Wednesday, July thirtieth. His name is Kiyani Kai. Kiyan Kai turned himself in on Friday evening after an arrest warrant was issued. He's now being charged with thirteen counts of aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment of another person, among other offenses. So five people were wounded. Two children, ages ten and eleven, both were raised injuries, and the sixteen year old was shot in the face, now in critical condition. The rec center pool was closed for the week and it's expected to reopen on Saturday. A few of the quotes that you know CBS wh y Y when they did the interviews. One resident said, we didn't see nothing, but you heard it, and hearing it is just as traumatic. They were all screaming and yelling. Resident Eli Mount said that he expressed personal fear and empathy and that could have been his daughter. Another local resident, Eric Parker, was blunt about protecting the community and says it's atrocious that these kids can't play. This neighborhood can't be like this. This is the safe zone where the kids are at. You can't do this type of stuff. We love our children. This is crazy. So I know that, you know, it's the end of summer, it's hot, but on the news it looks like this happened in broad daylight. Did y'all catch the the you know, the coverage on it. Yeah, that was sad man. I mean, you you can't even I mean, you can't even go out and have fun anymore. You can't go out, the kids can't go out, and I mean literally in the swimming pool. And I think this, this particular incident is not too far from I don't know if you guys remember a few years ago, maybe a year or two ago, where they had that that mass shooting on that corner I think, where a couple of people were killed. But it was like I think either days before some of them, Uh, there was a I believe a man that had filled his neighbor in the apartment or something like that, and that had happened. I think somebody called the called the police. They called nine one one to report hearing gunshots, and I think the nine ones nine one one was dispatched to the incorrect address and nothing came of the report, you know, the call, because they went to the wrong address. So the person that was actually shot and killed by this. The man. Was deceased in the apartment for like a day or two and then the man, the killer either like later went on a spree. Like do you you guys remember this? It's all wow. I think this was like either like a year or two ago, around the same time. In July. As ago. Y'all don't remember this. That sounds familiar, but. Something that was like massacre. I think it was Chester Avenue something like that. And yeah, they they I guess the nine one one got a lot of flag for that because when it was when they were called to go to the address to address, you know, the concern of the gunshots, they went to either it was like there was a discrepancy of whether it was let's just say it was, you know, for all intents and purposes, it was like nine hundred North fifty fourth Street. He went to nine hundred South fifty fourth Street like whatever, that's not town. Yeah, I'm just creating an address. But this was they went to the opposite place and they never were able to investigate the call because they went to the wrong place. Long story short, the guy that actually killed their neighbor inside the house that they were having the dispute with, he went on to murder other people because he had never been apprehended because they didn't respond about this. Yeah that you said it, Yeah he was actually had they caught him earlier? Yes, were killing. Yes, Yeah, I think it was. It was a person that was like literally walking down the street and then I think he had like an a k or something and he just started randomly shooting people. And this was I do remember this. I'm trying to think that this was last year, No, two years ago, five killed, two injured in king cessin mass shooting. Yeap, yeah, yeah, it was July third, I think, yeah, July third, twenty twenty three. And the guy that killed the person they called to report it, and it was I think. They I can't remember if like there was a shortage of nine to one one, like police dispatchers or something like that. Whatever it was, it was something that was going on, and I'm you know, I can't remember exactly, so I don't want to put out the wrong information when it when you know, yeah, but. I do recall. I do recall that time. That was fifty six Chester Avenue in the Southwest section and miss Myers record. Yeah, it was like around the corner and two blocks over. It's a shame of that. Area, like kids aren't able to just like, you know, just be out and have fun and just well. The sad part of that story is that it was a kid who who also did it, you know, right exactly along the pier. Seventeen years old. Yeah, he's rendered. I guess when people saw that the news, they probably you know, put a lot of tips in the parents, whatever it was. But now these kids surrendered and they're not going to see their son again outside of you know, until he's way, way older. Yeah. So yeah, Well, hopefully this next story can bring a little bit of joy. Philadelphia is making history again, but this time by honoring one of their own. So Mayor Cherill Parker and the Creative Philadelphia unveiled the winning design for a new statue of Dorcedie Tanner Moselle Alexander, civil rights activists, economists, and the first black woman to graduate from Penn Law. The statue will stand proudly at the Thomas Payne Plaza just outside City Hall, a symbolic location for a woman who broke barriers in both academic and public service. Alexander was one of the first national presidents of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and served as an assistant city solicitor in Philadelphia during the nineteen twenties and thirties. Wow Mayor Parker called the location location fitting for a woman whose life was rooted in service injustice. The artist Vinnie Bagwell said she hopes that the sculpture will breathe, speak and connect to alterations. This will be the only this will only be the third monument in the city of Philadelphia to honor an African American woman. It's long overdue. Fantastic, fantastic. I don't know what. That just gave me chills, Like this woman is gone and to talk about like nineteen twenties and you were the assistant of the city solicitor, Like what that is just that's just amazing. Yeah, yeah, that's great, fantastic. I think. Yeah, it's been a lot of a lot of things that women have been oppressed about, and a lot of things are starting to show that, you know, they've definitely contributed to this world, not only given birth. I think we know y'all contributed more than just giving birth, right, I mean, is there was there? Fantastic, fantastic. I wish I had my ramp up applause here. I'm not connected with that to day. But good stories spark good stories. I like this. From Classic Ladies Spark in the building. I'm super excited to uh, you know, it's that's pretty historical too. Outside of that, because of course, Mayor Schrel Parker became the hundredth mayor in first woman right to become mayor and for her to at this time erect the statue like that. It's pretty big, so we gotta get kudos to that. So a whout further ado, it looks like our guess is on. So I don't got I don't want you guys to go anywhere. When we come back, we have a dynamic interview and we'll be right back after this show. What's going on you guys? This is Bridge Kelly and you are locked into the Talk weekly. You know what? Before you go into that, I'm just looking at that little clip and the twins. I remember when Lauren interviewed them. What's their name again? The twins? They dance for Beyonce o ts Yeah, they twins, that's yeah. And so there's such beautiful people that you're like, wow, I could talk to them forever. And if you haven't seen an interview, it's still up there. I think that's one of our most views. I think it's up there in like one hundred almost a million views. It's something crazy. People really like that interview with them, and so kudos sit on there doing some amazing things and kudos to the interview. But without further do spark Who do we have today? Who do we have today? All right, today we have Kiarri Siskin, the CEO of Informed, the news concierge service to beat information overload. So Kiara is a four time serial entrepreneur, strategic advisor and investor in the technology industry. His experience spans investment, banking, corporate strategy, and private equity investment and categories defining ventures. His education includes University of Chicago, Booth School of Business and Stford. Kira was in Forbes thirty Under thirty. Y'all already know what to do. Let's give a warm we talk weekly. Welcome to Kira Schiskin. Hey, Hey, how are you hey? Thank you, Thank you Classic Lady Sparkles. That is a very generous relection. Thank you, Charles, Thank you Lauren for having me on tonight. It means a lot to be invited on your show and to share our mission, share the mission with your community. Thank you for having me. Absolutely, thank you for being here. It's a great pleasure for us. Let's let's jump right into it. You know, let's talk a little bit about your mission. But before we get into that, let's talk a little bit about what actually got you into that to inspire the mission, if that makes sense. Absolutely, I'm glad you asked that question because I think my background is pretty unique and I think it enables what we're doing now in a very unique way. So I grew up in information conflicts, you know. I so my first decade I was born and raised in Kiev, in Ukraine, as my second decade in Israel also you know, home to a lot of information conflict and very real conflict. And then for my third decade and onwards, I came to the United States and I thought, Okay, you guys have it all figured out. And being here over the last you know, almost coming out in ten years, I definitely feel like America is in the middle of a civil war right now, and it's playing out in the information realms and people are not sharing a common set of truth, common set of facts anymore. And so reflecting on sort of the Middle East, you know, Eastern Europe, now the United States, all I see is information conflict and it's been too long of you know, keeping you know, of seeing that, witnessing that, and doing nothing about it. Over the last couple of years, there is a growing interest and like, hey, you know, there's something that we can do to make, you know, make this better, make our lives, you know, more grounded in a common set of facts and realities, and to just get us at the same table, because right now, across the world, as we look left and right, people are so self isolated and self radicalized in the process that it just adds a lot of urgency to what we're doing now. But I hope that answers some of your questions. Happy to dig deeper into any component as well. No, it did, It did, and I appreciate that, especially in the age of misinformation and false information and things that we're consuming online. I think you're right up there with the need and the necessary things that we need to be informed with. And so with that said, let's talk a little bit about your mission. I think this is a great transition to that. Yeah, with pleasure, and I you know, I'm honored, especially to be here on your show, knowing your reputation as you focus on informing people and having a discussion around news that are affecting them, that are affecting the decisions that they'll make in their everyday life, and it's going to change and reshape their life and those spaces, the space that you cultivate and others similar to it, are the underpinnings of you know, how folks make decisions. But outside of those spaces, when you don't have the time to tune in, when you don't have the time to pay for expensive news out there, it's very difficult for the everyday person in the United States to be informed without being influenced, and to be informed without being overwhelmed. And it's gotten so bad at this point as the news industry as a whole, in the most corporate sense possible, has sold off the reader to the advertisers. It's become so so difficult for the everyday person to just be informed without being without being overwhelmed. And so that's where the mission comes from. And it makes the problem that we solve, you know, really rather urgent because America has been robbed of access to factual information. You know, in looking at your site. I'm actually on your site right now. I think it's really unique because you have this, you have this as piece that goes directly to your phone to inform those of I guess news basis covers like why don't you walk us through exactly what the website is informed now and what was the impetus of creating this particular look or infrastructure is wireframe of how it should be and why choose? They absolutely thank you for that question. I think the best way to think of what we're doing is a reaction to what's been the case for the last decades. I would say it's at least two decades of what we call attention terrorism. You can no longer just go online without being solicited along the way, without your attention being hijacked, commoditized and held hostage for such a long amount of time. And we see that across social media very easily. But that behavior of capturing our attention and holding in hostage is true across everything we touch online, and so we thought of okay, well, obviously, if it comes to entertainment, people are sort of opting in a little bit into having their attention hijacked. That's the part of the entertainment contract. But when it comes to information media, which is news, which is what we focus on specifically, it's unacceptable for your attention to be hijacked and for you to be influenced and solicited in the process of you trying to get informed and so we thought of how can we do everything different from the way that the industry and that the corporate beast of the news industry has been doing it today, And so we said, never advertisement, never engagement optimization. We're not trying to gage you to read more. We're actually trying to give you back the time so you can get, you know, do things that you're passionate about. And very few people are passionate about reading news all day and so it's about doing less and it's about the sort of minimalism and mindfulness around news consumption that we are pioneering. So with the SMS format that you alluded to, it's the most minimal way for folks to consume information. There is no rich media, there is no photos, videos, you know, other types of clickbait, and it is confined to a very very short text. So we're building a for people who want to be informed but have no tolerance for being influenced, to receive a SMS text every morning of the things that matter and are shaping the world in the biggest of ways. And we always filter this based on significance, on impact of the human condition, and they're able to have that executive briefing for them, whoever they are, even if they're not an executive, they're not a leader. They don't have to be. The everyday person needs access to factual information, to convenient delivery of that information and be able to make decisions in an informed way. And we've picked a format that enables that, that values privacy, that honors people's time, and it doesn't solicit or engage them in ways that they shouldn't have to be forced to, and it just seeks to do one thing, and that's. To inform them. Go ahead, Louge. So right now, when it comes to public media, you know, people rely heavily on public media, especially those that are in rural areas where there's only that one little, small, underfunded local news source that everybody relies on within that area to get their news. And now you have these drastic cuts to funding for public broadcasting totally nine billion dollars. Like, how does what do you think that how does this affect these people? Like what are what are these people going to do? And like how are they going to get you know, just local news in their communities? Absolutely, I think the gutting that is happening right now from PBS from NPR, from the entire public broadcasting agency that oversees these uh, these you know, children entities. Is extremely consequential and it's the continuation of that robbery that I alluded to earlier, of the everyday person is being robbed of information. And when you are robbed of information, it obviously has very clear implications. One of them that I think is, you know, less acknowledged, is you become more vulnerable to misinformation because an information desert in your town, in your village, in your zip code, in your you know, even suburban area. When you have that information desert. That. The information that you do here you are very very sensitive to, very attuned to. And so you have these communities that are being essentially cut off from the information pipelines. They're increasingly more vulnerable to misinformation in the process to being radicalized because now that somebody can come in and sort of take over the soapbox, so to speak, and start sharing ideas that are heard to fact check, hard to buy, hard to cross check in any way, because the pipeline has been sort of the information plumbing has been broken. And so I think it's as a crisis, and that's what adds urgency. We see the problem that we are looking to tackle. This is happening right now, It's been happening for the last decade, and it's never been more important to equip the everyday person with their own way to stay formed. And we're seeing the opposite that happen and fold in front of our eyes. We have to do so. Yeah, absolutely, and I completely agree with you. I had the opportunity to attend recently the Public Media Journalists Association conference that was in Kansas City, and I talked with several countless public media journalists and they this was even before the federal funding cut. The federal funding cuts were even made. They were already pretty much seeing the writing on the wall when it came to what was going to be done. But these journalists were already concerned that they were going to lose their jobs. They were concerned that there were going to be cuts. They were concerned about how people were going to be informed because there would be the areas that they were already employed in, there would be only maybe about one or two local stations there, and even these local stations weren't able to cover the amount of news that needed to be covered in these areas, these rural areas. So. You know, even taking that into perspective, and now with the cuts and then possibly having to shut down, now it's just going to be extremely hard for people to get news. And it's just a really, really sad time because now, like you said, like people have to take it upon themselves to become more in you know, like you have to now be be more engage. You have to like, you know, tune into people like yourself and you know, fight to get news. And that's newsworthy news, that's news that's trustworthy and not misinformation and disinformation. Yeah, that's right. And I feel like, you know, this urgency that we seem to you know, very much be aligned on, it's I'm taking these things that have been unfolding in the last couple of months as a wake up call, right, And I think this has been happening for some time, but now it's no longer ignorable. Now it's affecting everybody, and it has been for some time. But I feel people like to procrastinate, and that happens on a collective basis as much as an individual basis. People like to put things up. Oh hey, this is going to change, is going to swing back. Well, guess what it isn't swinging back, and it's getting exacerbated. And as we wait more on the sidelines, we will see, you know, the worstting of this crisis. And I believe that every crisis that winds up, you know, coming around, was initially an information crisis. And so we're now seeing that in its earliest innings, and we can do something about it. But the time to do something about it is immediately, is yesterday, and it's definitely now. And that's what givest of our work a great sense of urgency. And I'm both encouraged and disappointed that we are the only ones, when informed, who are focusing on this level of convenient and laser sniper precision delivery of straight to every single person. There's no intermediary in between us and our reader. But there's also no other stakeholders. When you think of the big news corporations that sort of dominates and monopolize the information plumbing of this country, they have no incentives to inform you and leave you alone because they make money through engaging you and through getting you to read longer, getting you to click around across their ecorsystem and get them to get the readers to click on the advertisements. Of older parties. The reality is the news companies serve the advertiser. They do not serve the person. And how easy is that to see? Do you pay for news? You don't pay for news? Nobody does? And when you don't pay for something, someone else is paying for it. And when someone else is paying for it, they are the customer, they are the client. And that's what's happened with the news and we're trying to undo some of that damage and introduce a way of Hey, you know, we're putting you back in the spot that we're putting you back on, the kind of pedestal of You are the person we optimize for, and all we think about is how do we make the reader's life, option choices, freedom, stronger and more. How can we serve the reader instead of serving We don't have investors purposefully, we don't have advertisers purposefully, We don't have sponsors that would want us to talk about certain things. And we are not beholden to any sort of platform, to social media, not to anything of the sort. We have a direct access to our readers through SMS. We run a toll free number and that's the way that we engage and that should become a much more basic expectation. I think in society of people should have that access. When you sign up. For AT and T, you should be able to say, hey, I want factional news with my subscription. I want factional news with my plan. You shouldn't have to go and fight for them every single day it's been hours. Right. Yeah, I love this idea. And I love that your mission based and not financial based, right, fiscally supported by way of someone who may have agendas and initiatives, right. And I love that you guys are focused in a way that we feel that we can trust. But to that point, you have this age of AI, right, you have this age of you know, check bodying in these these fake bots that has been misinforming. Right, how do you prevent yourselves, your organization and being labeled as part of or one of those organizations that may be misleading to the community. How do you fight against that? Absolutely? I love that you, thank you for asking that. I think we do something that this is something I generally get into, you know, a longer form conversation or something as we're doing a deep dive. But I want to share this because I think it's very important. We do something else that nobody does in the news industry is we treat our readers like adults and not as children. And what that means specifically is when we talk about an issue. For example, the Supreme Court made a certain decision, right, well, the Federal Court overturned this decision, example, the White Arms made it bound. For example, the economy expanding according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics or SENSES or Bureau of Economic Analysis. We don't just tell you about it, which we obviously do because we want to save you the time. We want to give you aid an executive news briefing every morning so that you know what's going on, but we actually give you direct access, which is not easy to do and nobody in the industry does, to the primary sources, meaning that as you read our executive news briefing, you have a link right there in your comediens. It takes you straight to the Supreme Court ruling, straight to the Bill of Congress, straight to the White House announcement, straight to the announcement from the Federal Reserve. And so instead of going through the intermediaries of one reporter tells another reporter, they tell a correspondent, and then they paraphrase it using AI with another outlet, and now it's in social media. That's what we call second hand, which is mostly third hand news. We take our readers straight to the sources, and I will say upwards of eighty percent of our sources sited and things that we leverage our primary sources. And so we take them, you know, straight to the horse's mouth and straight to that horse, so that they can you know, make up their own mind and see the primary material instead of seeing a regurgitation of that material and an interpretation inevitably of that material. And that's one way in which we you know, keep it truthful, keep it factual, and bring the reader straight to that source instead of the intermediaries along the way. I love that. I love that. So if I was to dive into informed dot now, how would I specifically for what we do, we specialize in solutions based journalism in hyperlocal news. How would we then use we talked weekly, how would we use inform dot now to target hyperlocal news and target our audience. That would be of course our job, But how could we utilize your platform and make sure that we're getting the news that's specific or that would benefit our particular audience. Totally, I think the news is broken as we've sort of knowledge and established, and local news are probably the most broken part of all the entire industry, and so there's an even greater urgency to the localism of news. With Informed we are focusing with our flagship entrances main product with the the most consequential news of the world, and they are shared through the lens of what is important to the everyday person in America. So there is definitely a huge emphasis and filter on what affects my life whether I'm in Philadelphia or whether I am in Pittsburgh, whether I'm in Pennsylvania, I'm in California, and so that is our flagship product. It's the global priorities overview that affect everyday live and so it's a we give a common fact base that anybody, no matter how local they are, can leverage as we expand, as we grow. We are in addition to what we're doing is it's called a global priorities focus, we are also tailoring to a much more hyperlocalized whether it isn't just a region or a state, it may be as specific as a city and maybe even a neighborhood. And so that is very much on the roadmap. And as we continue to expand, we create more localities that affect more people in very tangible ways, we can comat with the global priorities and a global citizen view, because before you understand your local news, you need to understand the context which surrounds all of the things that happened in the US, all the things that are happening in the world. And there's a lot of disruption, as you know better than most. Got it? Got it? No, one hundred percent agree with you? Go here, sparn't you? You kind of answered my next question. So you've started for ventures and you may have had to have some type of interaction with AI at some point. What have you done as far as your ventures till now that you've had to unlearn to create informed? I love that, And do you mean that from an AI specific lens or generally the unlearning of so sorry? Holistically, Yeah, I think one thing that I've had to learn time and again because the industries in which I've built before were very different from each other. I built a small business and I've built a venture business. We've incubated a company in the scale of a larger enterprise, and we've built also from nothing in another country. So I've had both the international, the cross industry, the incubation and in the wild experience of building. And I think the one thing I keep learning again and again is who do you focus on. Are you focusing on the investor who has certain priorities, has certain thresholds of profitability, has certain sort of financial thinking. Are you focusing on the optics of what do the things look like, what is the pr marketing spin on these things, what do the news think about these things? Or do you focus on the very, very user, the person that is actually interacting with your product, with your service and giving your feedback. Hey, I like this, I don't like this. I think one thing that I just keep learning and in some ways relearning every single time is what I call customer obsession. We want to be obsessed with the problem that our customer, our user, our client, our reader is experiencing and focusing laser focus think on that and leaving behind all the other stakeholders that can help and do help, but can create noise and can sort of diffuse your focus and distract you, which in the end of the day is always very costly experience. And so having a laser focus on who your target customer is, who is the person that you're trying to help, and steeing so clear to that has never even more important. Would informed specifically in this business and in this service that we've created, we've taken that to the extreme because, as I mentioned earlier, we've refused advertisement revenue altogether. We could have made so much more money, so much more quickly, and just focus on that financial aspect if all we did was allow advertisements, but we said no. We are a mission driven company. We are on the mission to save the news industry, not to worsen order to perpetuate its problems. And so we said no to the a whole advertiser category. We said no to the sponsor category, who would have undermined the credibility and the purity of our fact based reporting. We said no to investors who have financial thresholds, financial incentives and said, hey, we will give you money, we'll loan new things, will make it easier for you to build, but you have to answer to these financial metrics. And we said none of those things are sufficient. The only person that we care about is our reader, and if they want us to exist, they will show us. And if they don't want us to exist, then we shouldn't exist. I love this. I'm actually try to pull let me see if I could pull this side up real quick. I actually have it up, and let me see. As he's pulling the site up, can you tell everybody who may be tuning in right now? Tell everybody that could be just possibly tuning in about your journey from you know, Ukraine and in Israel and all that, and then coming to the United States and your experiences with the media and all the news and misinformation and all that, and then what brought you into creating informed yeahely through the to the site which like. Me to repeat some of the things I mentioned and expand on them. Yeah, yeah, I would say the major theme in my life has been, you know, exposure from an earliest of ages to information conflict, and I've just seen that across different environments. I was born and raised in Ukraine, in the capitol Ukraine, in Kiev, and from a pretty young age I've seen the information battle between Russia, in Russian media and Russian propaganda, which I wouldn't shy away from that word. It really is, and well have knowledge to be a propaganda that machine, and the power of that machine to sway minds, to change the way people think and make decisions has just been so powerful. So from a very young age, I've seen the Russia Ukraine information warfare unfold firsthand. And when I've had the fortune and the misfortune, because the context in which I moved to Israel for my second decade was actually rather tragic, we can go into a whole different episode and a whole different conversation. But when I've had the misfortune and the fortune to move to Israel, I've seen the same thing unfold. I've seen it actually multiplied because from the two sides of Ukraine and Russia, it actually multiplied into you know, at least six sides. There is the Israeli government, and there is the Israeli people, who I would say are not aligned very often. There's the religious community that has its own important stakeholder. There is the Gaza in the West Bank communities which are different from each other substantially. They're governed by different organizations and they have a very different climate to both the Gaza strip and the West Bank territory. There's also the perspective of the Arab League that says a lot of things and does a lot of things that are different in substantial ways from what Gaza and the West Bank have been doing. And so you have this multipolarity of perspectives that are all vying for buy in from the global observer and from the person on the ground living in the Middle East. And that explosion of information conflict has just shown me like, wow, you know, this is really consequential, and everyone's constantly trying to convince each other of their version of reality, and you, as the everyday person, are often left with having to pick from off the shelf perspectives. Do you side with them or do you side with them? Do you side left or the right? You know, the up and down? Where do you kind of put position yourself. Because we've been in America especially, that's kind of the rest of my journey is coming to the US and seeing wow, here it's in some ways more simple. In some way is much more complicated because we have the new signs, but the complexity in the nuance of how things get relayed, it's extremely complicated. And the everyday person, the way it kind of hits us to everyday woman, the everyday man is we have to pick a side, and we're forced to aide pick up perspective off the shelf, and we are robbed of the ability or rather access, to make up our own mind based on our own facts, based on our own reading. And that, I think is in no small way what informed is looking to pioneer. We are actively pioneering in Philadelphia, all over Pennsylvania and all over the United States. So we're pioneering a way for people to make up their own mind on things, make decisions not an isolation of reality, but informed by reality. Most importantly is to be informed without being influenced. M amazing. I'm sorry influenced, I was. I was just gonna say, how how do you feel like you know this, this narrative that's being created, how you feel that shapes government that we see today. I think the poisoning of news is sort of a poisoning of the well, and we all drink from it, the government just as much as the everyday person. And I think the consequences are self isolation, self radicalization, and further and further polarization. And I think the difference in the way that it's shaping government and government officials is not that different. And the way it's shaping the everyday person who is maybe a door dasher, who is maybe an uber driver, who's maybe working in the service industries, making maybe waiting tables. They are being affected in the same way that they who make law, they who legislate, they who argue in big fancy rooms in the same way. And so there's a poisoning of the well that has a universal impact. And I think it's obviously exacerbated when you have influence and when you have power. But the root of it is the same is are you picking sides and are you picking off the shelf perspectives or are you operating with facts? And are you making up your own mind from the first of principles? Wow, So based on like what you're what we're starting to see with you know, some people, I guess, and I guess just to for lack of what I'm trying to say. I'll use an example as far as like the no Kings, you know, protests that kind of like spanned across the country. Seeing things like that, do you feel like there's going to be a point where some of the polarization and that's been created over the past years. That's going to kind of subside a little bit. Like do you see any of that happening and people starting to kind of come together or what are your thoughts. You're basically saying, you're asking if I think there's going to be a swing back from what we're seeing right now? Yeah, like you know, or because you know, is there going to be like less like of people kind of like I guess when it comes to politics and you know, people being so so I guess so much against one another, and you know, are people going to start coming together or or what we see less polarization? Yeah, it's almost like what do I want to believe? Right? What I want to be the case? I do think Night Stays is extremely divided. It's extremely polarized, and I think that's well acknowledged. Do I see a return to cohesion, to unity, to a sense of Hey, we disagree, but we have the same fact base and we disagree about the same we understand what we disagree on. Right now, we don't even agree on what we disagree on. It's almost like the level of agreement is so deep, right and so divided that it's almost hard to see it, right, And I think it's it's it's painful for a lot of people, and I think it's I think it's going to get worse before it gets better. That is maybe one answer. We're in the early innings of a very imbalanced political face, right. We just have a new administration just come in. They've done a lot in the six months that have passed, and there's three and a half years left of that perspective and of that sort of poll in the polar spectrum, and I think it's going to get worse before it gets better. For sure. The question is is it going to get better in terms of like what we feel like we are a single nation, a single people again. I believe so. I would like to believe that is the case. But we can't take it for granted. We can't just sit back on the couch and say, you know what, I'm just gonna wait this one out, because you know, in a few years we're going to have a swing back. In a few years, we're going to get much more balance. I don't think we can take that for granted if we are unsatisfied with what's happening right now in the approval polls show it. We need to act. We need to do something about it in ways that doesn't have to be political. The work that we're doing with Informed Is it touches politics profoundly, but it is not a political work. It is sort of a it's information infrastructure work, and it's not really about picking sides. It's not about being political. Some of our news are political in nature, but we don't just cover that. We cover all things that shape the world. And so for me personally, I don't feel comfortable sitting back and just taking for granted that there's going to be a return to equilibrium, it returned to balance. I don't. I think that's something we can take for granted. But I'm understarily acting in a political way. I'm acting in the what can we build the rails, the picks and the access to create a society that has the tools to be more unified, the tools to be more cohesive. And so I would encourage anybody who has any sense of dissatisfaction with what's going on right now to not just wait it out, because if you wait it out, nothing's going to happen. But step in and see what is the vision of the world that you want to help create, and how can you create that. If a's political, it's great, but it doesn't have to be. It can be on so many other realms that bring us together. And I think the time to act is yesterday and it's definitely today. So it encourage anyone who's listening to take this initiative and to do it awesome. I have one last question Forbes, the Forbes thirty under thirty. Although I know you don't look, you don't like some like the term of influencer. However, with the world that the younger generation that you know being brought up, it's a part of the influence in order to, I guess, inform them. What would be your approach to influence and inform without being an influencer. I think influencer in its radical estate. And when you think of the Kim Kardashians of the world, when we think of the really big industry name influencers, right, there is always concerns about authenticity. There's concerns of like this seems just like a corporate expression of the influencer trend. But the number of people who are micro influencers but are still in no small way our influencers is substantial and continues to grow. Sort of the middle class of influencers is a growing category. There don't just have to be the superstar influencers and the just unfollowed unknown accounts. There's also a growing middle class of influencers that are I think the future of the influen sert world and industry. And I think if anything, this trend towards you can actually just pick up your phone, have a conversation, build trust with your audience, and inform and inspire people. I think that's actually a very powerful thing because it's giving the tools, it's democratizing the tools to give anybody the opportunity to have a platform, the opportunity to speak. And I think the biggest thing holding folks back is initiative and a sense of urgency and motivation. I think if you have something to say, and whether that's to inform people or to inspire people, pick up your phone. You have the tools to do it, you just need to with In the Jewish community I'm Jewish, we call hut spat, which is a mix of charisma and charm and initiative. Take that and bring it to the people. You will be met with an audience, because that's the tools that we have today. We have audiences at your fingertips, if you know, if you have the the courage to put yourself out there. So I believe that profoundly. And I think the influencer world is more accessible and more empowering. And I think we then we give it credit for it because when we give it credit, we think of the big kind of top top percent celebrity influencers. But the world of influencers is much bigger and much richer. So take advantage and have the courage. I love. I love the I want to just circle back to your site. Let me pull it up, and again I truly appreciate the minimalism of it and how you created this, but I do want to jump right into the idea that and just for those who's watching this, is Informed that now the website that they're that they have created for you to come on and sign up. And again this is an ad. This is just in informing you to be directly to actual factual news, right and so it starts right here, but I want to jump down to it. Says Informed is your deadly SMS news digest to beat information overload. We text you the most important news without ads, clickbait sensationalism underscore that, or a bias of legacy media, which we talk about all the time. We text once every day morning to minimalize the footprint or news on your attention. I love that. Can you walk me through how this was created? Was it a sit down amongst your friends. Was it something that you woke up one morning and said, hey, this, I have this idea. Was it something that you just were watching news and it was totally pissed off and was like, I need to do something right. What was the start of informed now? Absolutely, and I hope you don't mind a little, you know, maybe a bit of silly story. It was a very personal experience that he was the last straw on the camel's back. It was just such a almost like a raged moment, and it's been cooking. It's been building up for multiple years for I would say, you know, my whole life as I've described it, through information overload, information warfare, and the misinformation campaigns for every direction. But there was a specific moment and I was I was in San Francisco at the time. I've been I've been moving around a lot, which I'm you know, very I love moving around. This country is so rich and beautiful, and I having the chance to travel, I always try to take it. I was in San Francisco at the time, and I was actually a few hours away from the city, and I heard an alarm and sort of like a news headline and it said there's an earthquake and there might be a tsunami. Now. At the time, I was staying in the coastal area of San Francisco, like right on the bay, and I thought, well, hey, I should I better know if there's going to be a tsunami or not, because it might just affect my life profoundly. And so I started, you know, looking it up naturally, like, Hey, Google, is there going to be a tsunami after the earthquake San Francisco? Right now? What's going on? And I couldn't believe my eyes. The first one, two, three year results were all paywalled, right, Like I couldn't actually find out if, you know, if if this is going to happen or not unless I paid the Wall Street Journal or Washington Post or New York Times something north of one hundred and one hundred FET dollars a year. I was like, wait a second, So to find out if I'm going to be underwater the next half day or day, I need to pay a conglomerate an exorbitant amount of money to be part of their information ecosystem. It's like hell no, like that, there must be a better way. So I kept scrolling, and I was already kind of like, that's crazy. Three of the first results are gate cap for me. The third one had the sensational kind of advertisement or headline that was so dramatic that was like, is this like Arma Geddon? Like this is you know what is going on here? This is very very dramatic, And so I was already very suspicious. But I clicked into it and it claimed in the headline and in the thing to have the information They claimed to have what I was looking for. But as I kept reading, I realized they had nothing. They literally were just reposting, you know, rumor and reposting words from all other headlines, and they had no information they claimed to have in that headline. So they were just sensationalizing and the click baiting and they had nothing to tell me. So I go onwards and I keep looking like, where is a way for me to just get information or something as fundamental as an alert, and I couldn't. It was the verbosity was growing, the sensationalism, the germanization, the clickbait was growing. The pables were not going away. The amount of advertisements I saw in those couple of minutes was probably north of thirty and there were some terrible ones. There was things that were just popping up in front of you, like the you know, buy this car immediately or on the side, and then here's how to lose weight in thirty seconds, you know, do this. Doctors hate this one trick, and I'm like, wow, Like the level of solicitation that is that I'm being targeted with as I'm just trying to find a quick answer to a question is unacceptable. It's unacceptable. It's maybe okay and entertainment if you're looking to entertain yourself and you sort of like resign, okay, like I'll be a little bit hijacked, But this is not entertainment. This is information media and it's critical to not be in that sort of you know space. And that moment is when I knew that. At my rage and my frustration with the way the industry has sold us off as readers, to the advertiser, to the platform, two investors and two sponsors. That's like felt wow, like we need to do something about this immediately, and that was the birth of inform dot Now. Fantastic story. If you're just tuning in, we have Karashishkin, CEO of Informed dot Now and amazing site for you to form a decision by getting informed with factual information and news care. If I was to ask you, what's the legacy that you would like to leave, what would you tell me? Wow, you know it's it sounds dramatic, but a lot of things are. I would like to you know, in a who was it Prometheus that gave the fire back to the people? I would like to give people back the ability to make up their own mind without you know, having to pick sides, without being forced to take off the shelf, off the shelf perspectives and adapt them or reject them, but just to re empower the ability for people to make up their own mind. I think that's the legacy, as much as dramatic as it may sound, that I would like to leave, and I'm in the in the labor of delivering that legacy. Fantastic When someone signs up. Is it a particular and this is kind of like a fact frequently X question question, so to speak, when someone signs up, is it a filter that they go through to say, Okay, I want financial world news, I want political news, or is it just the hot topics or the hot news of the day around the world. This is how it works. So it always begins with the global citizen view. The things I mentioned, the things that are shaping the world in ways that you just need to know because you know things that they may not be local. They may not be happening in Philadelphia. Right If Trump just signed an agreement that you know is removing the you know, a tariff or imposing a tariff, everything in the United States is going to get more expensive or cheaper, depending on what the decisions are. If you know, if the TSA is announced that you can have a fly without taking your shoes off, that's a consequential security shift. If there are wildfires that are affecting half the country, that's going to affect everything. The air quality in Philly as much as the air quality in Nebraska. And so we start with that sort of global monitor of view the things that matter the most. But as I mentioned earlier, as we are expanding and unfolding more ways to get more specific. So right now, there are two ways to do that. The one that we are expanding over time is we are creating more ways, more topics that you can follow, more themes that you can tune into that are perhaps more specific. For example, we have one that's on technology. If you want to focus on technology news, we want to focus on healthcare and healthcare news. If you want to focus on things that are affecting a certain region right looking specifically at the East coast, if you lookingifically at the Pennsylvania news that is coming soon, but you can already have a conversation that tailor's your interests a lot more. Meaning when you get a text from Informed, it isn't just a one way conversation, which a lot of the conglomerates and the large news corporates they speak down to you and they speak you know, they pass these news down to you one way and if you want to answer, if you want to talk to them, just what you can't because there's a no reply email and there is a many walls of customer success and customer support that's layered between you and the source. In our case, it's a conversation and it's a consition with a concierge that is dedicated to you, that cares about what you want. So if you have a follow up, for example, hey, how do the tariffs affect me in this neighborhood in Philly? You get a response. That response is tailored to you, and that is meant to give you information that is useful, meant to give you the power of being informed, the dignity of being informed. And that is something that we've already unrolled today, the ability to have a conversation and text back and be able to trust the things that you get because it is not a robot and there's not a conglomerate with incentives on the other side. The only aim and north star of informed to be helpful to our reader, to be helpful to you. So that's personalization is already available, and as we unfold more and more topics, even the initial texts will become more and more personalized. I love that, ladies and gentlemen. This is something that I believe is very useful if we as we look at the I hate to use the word demise, but you know the breakup of organizations like PBS and people who really or truly understand what First Amendment means, you know, and being able to articulate factual information and give world news unapologetically with factual information without misinformingt people. I think you are in a great space right now, right, and so maybe we probably need to talk about some type of connection, affiliate link or something to give to the people. I think is very important for you to continue the work that you do. And you have a friend in us and we talk weekly, and we're going to continue to support people who we always say are doing the work right. We don't promote anything, we don't have any sponsors, we don't do that right. We support people who are generally doing the work and that comes from our local politicians. Right. I don't care if you Republican a Democrat. All I care about the facts where I see you, and if you're doing the work to help the people, right. And I just want to give you kudos because I believe this may be something that people start to look into and have the potential of being something really big. So kudos to you. If it was one last point or statement that you may have not had the opportunity to say here on this platform where we talk weekly, is it something you would like to tell the people or something you may have new coming up? You talked about some of the things you may be unrolling and informed on a website, but is there anything you would like to leave with a message or point? I would say, you know, it's maybe a challenge to the listener and maybe you know a point of maybe a bit of a push is I would encourage anyone who is you know, listening to I mean, this has been a great conversation and this is an amazing show. I would encourage listeners to think, like we are in your life, is you know your attention being hijacked and being stolen from you? And because that is a moment in which you are being disenfranchised and it begins fundamentally with information, I would say that's kind of our whole thesis, but it doesn't end there, and I would just encourage listeners to think, like, where in your life is your attention being hijacked from you? That is a moment of disenfranchisement, and that is a moment that you want to stand up for yourself for your attention and think of how can you claim it? Back, How can you regain your attention, which is your power. We focus specifically on saving your attention and honoring your attention in the news world, which we think is very fundamental. And so if you feel like you know your attention is being hijacked and robbed in the realm of news, then we also want to invite you to join us in our mission. And is something Gregor you mentioned that's new that's coming up is beyond the website. Well beyond the website, we launched a toll free number that is sort of like a eight hundred flowers, eight hundred contacts, eight hundred got junk. We want to be the next big toll free number four for facts and for factual information, and so we just rolled out eight four four four O six info, which is eight four four four o six four six three six, which is what the info resolves into. And any one who listens to this show is definitely a friend of informed as well. And you can simply text us text join to join our mission and to see if we may be helpful to you. And as you've learned in this whole conversation, we only serve our reader, and if you don't exist, we do not exist. And that's the spirit with which we built us and the spirit with which we continue to bring the solution in a solution journalism approach that we share together with you guys. Well fantastic. I don't have my switcher here with me where I would have gave you a round of applause, but we're gonna give you a round of a clause right here. I want to thank you for coming, and we talked weekly. One thing to say on the show, we always say, once you come to the show, you're a friend of the show, and we always welcome you to come back. I do want to give you a little homework and say that any roll out that you have reached back out to us and we'll bring you back out. I think what you're doing is very important and we want the world to know. I mean, we have viewers, which surprisingly in Tibet, I was like, how I mean, I mean we have we have viewers everywhere, right, and our quote unquote little show in Philadelphia, we get a lot of feedback. And so a lot of the feedback that we do get is they love the interviews that we conduct because we make them personal and organic, right, And so when it comes to people who interview, they are pleasantly surprised with how they feel after they leave. And so we want to thank you for coming to the show, and we again before you leave, why don't you let everyone know how they can get in contact with you, find your show, do the research whatever they need to get in contact with you and get signed up totally. Thank you, Thank you for that, Gregory. And it's been amazing being on the show, So thank you Lauren, thank you Sparkle. This has been absolute delight. I am Kirishishkin, the CEO of Informed and our mission is to give you news without noise. To join our mission and to be part of this medium minimalist movement and medium mindfulness movement, especially in the use You can text join to eight four four four o six info, which is the same as eight four four four oh six four six three six. That is our total free number. And if you're driven and motivated to you know, have your own news concierge that allows you to be informed without being influenced. We would love to have you join our mission, join what we're doing, join our work, and we're just getting started. Fantastic, fantastic, Well again, thanks for coming to the show, and I have to put this disclaimer out there for those who are watching We Talk Weekly is not being paid for this. This is not an ad. This is strictly information. We're just giving information to the people that we believe will keep you informed and stay on the facts. Right, No more misinformation. This is strictly for your information, all right, strictly figure. So, ladies and gentlemen, you're watching We Talk Weekly after the Talk on w PPM P Philadelphia one on six point five the film We Talk Weeklies after the Talk with our special guest Carrie hit Skin and uh, you missed a wonderful interview, so make sure you rewind and make sure you like and subscribe and follow what we're doing here and watch this video back so you can get informed. I'm your boy, Charles Gregor with the. Beautiful classic Lady Sparkle in the beautiful Laurence. And we'll see you right after this, y'all. Don't go nowhere, We'll be right back, y'all. Hello, Hi, Today, I'm just going to show you our and how everything does up. So here we're on the side. Level and see I see building here. We do a lot of film productions film programming, flood of learning and hands on activities. And one of the reasons I'm about to show you is where some of the. Students are doing their beats, which are their stories. So right now they're researching some. Things and just figuring out their lives and all their fun things that they're gonna say and then and then that's true, is where we're gonna film. So right now they're getting the cameras ready and all the other equipments of what we're filmed. Everything will goes smoothly. I'm perfectly. I have all about to good putting for Ye Civic News. Back to your. Programs, you know what. One thing, first of all, I want to say that there was a great interview. Kudos to Kira. I love that. I love that. We'll be in touch with him and we'll make sure that, you know, people are getting getting the facts. That's what this whole issue has been with Kamala Harris and this this you know, this, this this candidate, this fight, this fire pandering. Yeah, and so I think you know they Kamala would have had a better chance if a lot of that nonsense didn't didn't come out. That was just false, completely false, right, I won't say. I won't say unfortunately. I got you one second, spark, I won't say unfortunately because I do want to be fair. We have uh Donald Trump as our president right now, and and we can just hope that uh he comes around. Maybe maybe not, but he comes around and understand how important it is to to be factual with information to give to the people. Right. We're nonpartisan, we don't necessarily take a side, uh so to speak, right, but you know, we have to be fair and in giving out the information, whether we like it or not. Right, information of factu and information. And I believe the platform of informed now is important for people to stay connected to the facts otherwise, right, And I'll let you jump in. Otherwise, the problem we're going to continue to have is people just you know, getting information from social media, right, which isn't a bad thing per se, But it's a lot of false information on social media that they were getting that people were getting with this. So I guess we just have to do our due diligence and continue to inform the people. But go ahead, spark, I was. Going to say that I think both parties have negligence when it comes to media literacy. I think both parties, whichever parties they were, Democrats, Republicans, they all had influences of pandorism, misinformation. I think that. I think that's that's why I liked Kira being on the show, because I think they need to get away from that. There was one time a decorum with politics and you know, when people were presenting their facts. I think that's long gone on so many parties on both sides, and I think he made a great point to get back to the basics of let's reduce the noise, you know, add it where yeah, where we're just giving the factual emation. So that that was my whole point when I know you had mentioned Kamala, but I think on definitely thousand percent on both sides, I saw where there were pandering, there was misinformation, there was influencing, and I think it's that that's where for me, the decreasing of getting my vote for either side, I was not I was, you know, it was disingenuine to me. Well, well, what what what I would say to that is? And I'm not going to say which, I'm not going to say which side of either side, but I would say one side definitely pales in comparison to the other side when it comes to misinformation and disinformation. But the unfortunate thing about it is that this entire country is completely suffering because of the misinformation and disinformation that went out about what this administration was going to do. And and it's it's sad, it's it's painful to watch all the things that are going on. And this is just a tip of the iceberg. This is and you know, to what. Kara was saying, this is is like we we haven't seen anything yet because there's a whole nine hundred and ninety page manuscript of what needs to be done, and unfortunately, a lot of the stuff that needs to be done over this next four years, a lot of it hasn't been done yet and we're only just seeing just a little bit of what's been what's supposed to have been done. And unfortunately, like the biggest thing right now is that we were just talking about, was the public broadcasting that that there is detrimental to people being able to get news, and that's going to be harmful to so many different communities, you know, black and brown communities, even rural communities. You know, it's just going to be it's going to be terrible. And we listen, we haven't seen anything yet. It's going to be just horrible and is going to affect just is going to be it's going to affect us for so many many years to come. Yeah, and and and our president haven't even been in for. A year yet, it's been for months. It feels like seven years. Why and and we we just got to brace ourselves. And you know when we think of you know, some of the legacy media, you know, uh, you know even you know the public broadcast systems and and uh impact channels, you know, the PEG channels. We we we're we're part of an ecosystem where we can do some good. We talked weekly. We're part of an ecosystem where we can do some good. Thankfully, Uh though we have gotten some grants in the past. Thankfully, we're not swayed by sponsors. Right, and we can continue to push the clean narrative right, the true narrative right without fear of oh we can't say this or right. As journalists, just report the facts, support the facts when we're talking on a particular topic. Right. You know, me, I give some opinion pieces, but I'm very clear when I'm giving my opinion, but I want to make sure that we don't we don't be too scared with reporting what we feel is right and what's going to benefit the communities that we serve in the communities that are watching us. And I'm unapologetic about supporting and protecting the people. And so we're going to continue doing our job, continue doing our due diligence, and continue reporting the facts that we know. And we encourage you guys to continue to listen and and follow, subscribe and tell a friend to tell a friend to uh follow we Talk Weekly, to support we Talk Weekly, and learn. While I'm mad at how can they support us? Real quick, I think it's a great time to. Say, oh yeah, I mean there's several different ways that you can support us, which goes beyond just even liking, sharing, following good thing. You can support us by making a donation to dollar sign cash app to our cash app dollars sign we Talk Weekly. Can You can also go to we talkweekly. Dot com, which we need to create like a little how to video where you can show you how to go to our website and then you can go to donate and then via PayPal. I forgot about that you can go to that and then you can. Donate via PayPal and make nation. No donation is too great or too small, and it supports what we do. That's right, So supporters keep supporting this because we need your support. I want to talk. I want to say another story real quick before the sizzle jump in there, Spartan, did you have anything else you wanted to jump in? No, I just I really appreciate it. Yeah, I think because I do the hyper local news, it was really informative on sometimes even how when I, you know, present my stories like I want to keep it factual. I want to keep it brief. You don't need a lot of song and dancing with it. And I even got his aura of his conversation. Not only does he create inform but I can tell just from his personality that he's like yeah, he just he gets right to the point. There's no sugar coating around certain things, and he's very articulate with it. So yeah, that was the only time. I also loved how I loved how he talked about how, you know, what he was seeing in in different countries, like we assume that what's going on here is just unique to hear. No, it's going on in other countries. It's going on in kid, that's going on in Israel and in Russia and other areas. And I think I remember hearing. A lot about it. Going on in Russia around the time, you know, when the election was going on, and I was hearing about how Russia, you know, it's kind of basically what he was saying, like how they're you know, controlling the media there or or allowing people to see and hear what they want them to hear. Yea. And and you know, if you you know, withhold news that's news, that's just the same as misinforming people. You're not allowing them to get you know, have access to news, then you're misformed, misinforming. People, you're creating the desert. You're creating you're creating. The desert exactly. So that's I mean, we just just assume it is you know, unique to the United States, and it's not. It's not an area that's right. Sometimes you operate in your little bubble and don't know, right, Yeah, but I think this is informed is a great way to uh stay in for punting tent with what's going on globally, as he stated, global citizens and we are definitely those citizens. And so I want to jump right into some flash news that I just received. Uh, Philly Future Track trainees. If you don't know what Future Track trainees they were the earlier Oh yeah, they were the group who were hired by them mayor to clean up trash, right, the trash that we had this, I mean, if you were watching the videos, trash was everywhere, right, Yeah, I know, right. But here's here's the here's the uh, the line of Philly Future Track trainees say they haven't been paid for DC thirty three strike cleanup work, which is pretty unfortunate, right, So frustration is growing among This was reported by six ABC Extion News. Frustration has grown among some Philadelphia workers who say they haven't been paid for helping clean the city during a blue collar union strike. While District Council thirty three was on strike over the July fourth holiday, trainees with the Philly Future Track program stepped in, working twelve hour shifts, sometimes longer, to keep the city clean. They have and we witnessed it. Philly Future Track is a six month paid workforce development program launched by the Street Department that provide jobs, trainee and readiness the city. The city in DC thirty three reached a tentative agreement on July nine, bringing union members back to work, but Future Track trainees told Action News they still haven't received the pay they earned during eight days strike. They promised us we are going this is in quotes. They promised us we were going to get the same pay as sanitation workers, and we ain't received nothing. That's end quotes, one trainee said. The trainee said they jumped at the opportunity to earn higher wages, over time and holiday pay, with some cleaning up to Parkway after the fourth of July. They told Action News. They told Action News, We're told the money was coming last Friday, then this Friday, but still nothing. Quotes. I just got off the phone with my landlord, one worker said. I told him, I'm not sure the next time I'll have the money to pay rent. My daughter needs school books. The city said the Sanitations department worker with the Finance department to issue supplemental checks to the Future Track Chinese holes checks are short. Officials apologize, saying the trainees work has been invaluable. Some workers said that they are missing between sixty eight and two hundred and sixteen hours of pay. The city did not provide a timeline for when payments will be issued, but said it is investigating to ensure workers are paid accordingly. The sad part about that is that was part of the reason why they the workers went on striking the first place. Well, I go ahead, now, go ahead, finish what you I was just. Saying that, you know, that's heartbreaking because they jumped in because DC thirty three, the employees felt that they were not being compensated. They didn't have a contract that they felt was necessary for them to get paid, so they had other workers jump in to fulfill the duties of plannotation workers to which they didn't get paid. So the irony in that is just wild to me. So I just wanted to report that. Yeah, yeah, I was watching this this morning when it came on the news, and I was just like, oh, that's a shame, because like in my other capacity, I have clients that. I refer to this job to apply for the future. Track trainee jobs where you know, get employment as future track. They're not city employees until they were hired from those future track trainee positions. It's like you're a city employee in training and then once I guess you get come out of that, then you're officially if they hire you from that program, then you're officially like a city employee. So I'll like say like, hey, the city is hiring for this, go apply for that. So then I'm sitting here thinking like, I hope nobody I refer to that job doing that, and then they heay, because it's like my clients that I refer to that, they're like, you know, trying to get their lives together. So I'm like, you know, motivate them and tell them to do that. And then the crazy thing is like I saw that and I'm just like feeling bad for them, like that, that's crazy. But hopefully you know, something will come about to where they can get this straightened out, because I. Don't think. I don't think. I think it was saying something about right. They were saying something about their paid differently from how that they're not paid like directly from the city's account or something like that they're paid differently. But I mean that sounds about right, Like even city employees checks get messed up like. That happened to like city employees. That's wild, that's wild. Yeah, because they were out there like they were they cleaned everything up like when when when they were on strike. It's like they were working so much over time. Yeah, and they risk the risk. Yeah, I mean they actually were breaking lines. To do that, and so and hear them talking about what they were doing. Like that trash, that's. Yeah. Yeah, but. God no, I just said, not a good look. Yeah, definitely not a good look. Hopefully the city gets on top of that. Again, no finger pointed, but it's just the irony of that makes oyebrows rise, right, and so without further to do, all right, so ready for me? Oh yeah, yeah, oh you forgot about it. We still got some report to do early, all right. All right, I'll be quick. I'll be quick and move right through this. All right, so. Seven years Oh wait, so y'all got to get my spiel first. I forgot about that. Make sure you subscribe to We Talk. Weekly on all social media major podcast platforms, and if you want to support us by making a donation on caship, you can go to dollar sign we Talk Weekly, as I said, and then you can also go to uh we Talkweekly dot com and then you can go to donate and then you can make a donation by be a PayPal. All right, So seven years at the the infamous twenty eighteen Harper's Bizarre brawl between Love and Hip hop alum Cardi B and Rye A. Lee, the pair got into a heated argument at the airport in can Can, France. But there now there's two sides to their stories. So on one side you have Cardi B. She's claiming that she saw Riley and Rod stared her down. They started arguing, and Carti allegedly threw a JBL speaker at her head because she wanted to get her locked back from the Harper's Bizarre event. So Carti hopped on X Spaces to address the dispute. She said, I know that I'm grown and that I shouldn't have that mentality, but let's be for real. Your friends security and you attacked me. So if you guys remember the twenty eighteen Harper's Bizarre where it was Nicki Minaj and everybody was all, you know, talking about that that little that little that little fight and all that that went down. So Cardi is kind of backtracking to that, and she said, your friend's security and you attacked me. The security grabbed me and you attacked me. And if you thought I was gonna let that. Fly you out of your mind. I can't live and die knowing that somebody did put their hands on me and I never did nothing back. I'm from the Bronx. You from the Bronx. You know what's up. So now you had people. You know of course this like oh wow, so Carti you said that you didn't get attacked, that you didn't get beat up. So now you got those people too that are kind of like the in the comments down in the comments like Cardi you said, so you were lying this whole time. Well, royle Lee's claiming. That she saw this is roy Lee side. She said that she saw Cardi and they started arguing, arguing, Carti threw shoes and bags at her, not a speaker, So she's basically said, and like that did go down like that, but she didn't throw a speaker at her with is shoes and bags. And then r Lee wrote several posts on x saying I will always be ready to protect myself at all costs. However, at this stage of my life, I'm not interested in making poor choices. Anything and everything I execute is thoroughly calculated. With that being said, had anyone in this whole world hit me in my head with a speaker, you in fact, would be viewing footage of me in handcuffs. I promised to God that didn't happen. If it makes her, if it makes her feel better, I encourage you all to support that version. Mentally, I can handle it. I don't mind. I will not be on this app act in a fool. So basically that's ry Lee's side to it. But both of the ladies are kind of like, you know, commenting. So if you guys want to check that out, ray Lee's her site is on site. And then Carty she does a lot of her little comments and stuff on x spaces. So they got their two little versions. But if you want to go all the way back to twenty eighteen, because Nicki Minaj talked about the incident where she said Riley was the one because at first nobody was saying anything and then you see Carti b comes out of the event and she has this huge nod on her head. Nobody was saying anything at first, and then Nicky came out on Queen Radio and she was the one that said Riley did that, not her, and Marty was saying that it was the security. So now Carty, I guess, is saying, whatever happened. So if you want to go all the way back, then there's some receipts that you can go all the way back to. All right, So, President Donald Trump, it has seemingly removed all doubt from those who thought recently convicted Sean Diddy Combs would be receiving a pardon just weeks after a jury found him guilty of two counts of transportation to engage in prosecution prostitution. So, during the interview on Newsmax, Trump made comments about Diddy, saying he was essentially sort of half innocent, and he was celebrating a victory, but it wasn't a good victory. Trump added, you know, I was very friendly with him. I got along with him great, seemed like a nice guy. I didn't know him well, but when I ran for office, he was very hostile. He said some not so nice things about you. He said some not so nice things about me. So some of those comments that Trump could be referring to. And there was one comment I think around twenty seventeen where Diddy was saying that we got to get Trump out of office. And then there was another comment where I believe did he might have been asked something about Trump? What was his thoughts on him? And then did he said, I don't give an f about Trump. Trump, I don't know about this pardon because he says some nice, not so nice things about me. Well, fifty wasted no time poking fun. He created this whole AI image of Trump, him and Trump sitting down dressed in these suits, sitting now laughing, along with this caption where he said, can you believe he thought he was getting pardon? No, such, you are not. You said very nasty things. And then there's this picture of him sitting next to Trump and both of them are laughing. So if you want to check that out, go to fifties Instagram and see this AI generated image that he created us on there. You know, fifty always got to try to throw little. I was gonna say two cents, but throw his fifty cents, right, I was gonna say two cents, all right, So the celebrity Sizzle of the week goes to. I can't even. I can't even. You know, I don't have my camera acting crazy, you know, I don't have my uh my drum roll. Unfortunately, it's so good I'm listening now. So celebrity Sizel goes to Temple University, they are launching a new Kendrick Lamar course for Fall twenty twenty five. This Africology and African American Studies Professor Timothy Wellbeck developed the Kendrick Lamar and the Morale of Mad City. So Kendrick Lamar. Professor Timothy Wellback says, Kendrick Lamar is one of the leading voices of his generation and has a keen ability to articulate various dynamics of black life and the quest towards self actualization and particularly also capturing the narrative of marginal marginalization and rising from that. So the course will explore Kendrick Lamar's life, music from life, and music from an Afrocentric perspective while focusing on social, cultural, political, and historical issues. And it's also going to feature guest speakers in the industry who have worked directly with Kendrick Lamar. So Professor Welbeck, who doubles as a civil rights attorney, is no stranger to these courses. He's taught other courses like Hip Hop and Black Culture and No City for Young Men, Hip Hop and the narrative of marginal marginalization. So kudos to Temple Universities African American Studies Department for allowing them to have this core. I wish I could go and partake, but you know, T you is my alma mater, so you know it was near and dear to my heart. I'm super proud of then. So yeah, I think this is awesome. Hopefully they continue this course and it's not just a one time thing, and hopefully maybe people will either sponsor like some young youth to be able to take this class, and maybe it'll turn somebody's life around. I'm your girl, Laurence Sizzle and that was a sizzle. And that was a sizzle, ladies, gentlemen, I'm your boy Chos Greg. With the beautiful classic Lady Sparsal, beautiful Laurence Sizzle and this is We talked weeklies after the talk on WPP and my p Philadelphia want on six point five film. We talked weekly after the talk. Y'all appreciate you for staying on, signing on watching us, liking, subscribing all that. Goodles, make sure you continue. We'll see you next time. We have. We talked weekly and uh yeah, man, make sure you like and subscribe. Make sure you like a subscribe, like a subscribe, like to subscribe. We everywhere got our podcasts out make sure you download, stream all that little stuff, man, But we out here like last year, y'all. Please please Cala