Favorite Shows of the 2010s

10. Galavant

This feels like such a silly show to be putting on this list, since it takes itself not seriously at all, but fewer shows put me in a good mood like this over-the-top medieval musical.

9. The OA

The weirdest little Netflix series whose untimely cancellation means we’ll just have to live with a bizarre cliffhanger ending. Still, it was a bold, risk-taking show, that I loved.

8. Atlanta

Here’s the kicker, I’m still a little behind on Atlanta, but I’m confident enough off of what I’ve seen to give this a pretty high placement. I want more! 

7. Psych

Given that I call Psych my favorite show ever, this should probably rank a little higher, but its earlier seasons fall into the 2000s. Still, it stayed so good mostly up until the end.

6. Unbelievable

Okay, the content of this one-season limited series makes it a pretty difficult one to watch, but man is it compelling. Plus the acting performances were some of the best.

5. Jane the Virgin

Gina Rodriguez’s recent missteps aside, this show was brilliantly written, smartly self aware, and so full of heart. Plus a pretty big win for representation in a lot of ways.

4. The Good Place

Subtly, some of the smartest and funniest TV writing out there, slipped into a 30 minute sitcom format. Michael Schur tricked everybody into getting a robust ethics lesson.

3. Stranger Things

I don’t really think I can say much about Stranger Things that hasn’t already been said, but I liked it very much and thus, it places pretty high on my list.

2. Ugly Delicious

This is some of my favorite food-and-culture storytelling. The chicken episode is phenomenal. The way Dave Chang talks about race and food by going from Nashville to Japan is brain food.

1. Kim’s Convenience

A feel-good sitcom based off an off-Broadway play set in a convenience store run by a Korean-Canadian family takes top spot. The character of Appa and I have a soul connection.

Favorite Podcast Episodes of the 2010s

10. Akimbo: The Hype Cycle

Seth Godin’s breakdown of how ideas get popular, how things go from obscura to the mainstream, and how products need to adapt over time is sheer brilliance.

9. Rough Translation: American Surrogates

So many of Rough Translation’s episodes could’ve made this list, but this one actually does because it’s the one most seared into my memory. 

8. Serial: Episode 01 – The Alibi

Season One’s magic could never quite be repeated, but this episode was the one that started it on such a strong note. Sarah Koenig came out swinging.

7. This American Life: In Defense of Ignorance

This was the podcast episode so interesting that Lulu Wang’s story eventually was adapted into a movie– The Farewell with Akwafina. The original source material is worth a listen, too.

6. The Dave Chang Show: What Hip-Hop Can Tell Us About Food, With Shad

I believe that so much of creativity comes from making connections. Hearing Chef Dave Chang go back and forth with rapper Shad about parallels between their arts made my mind explode.

5. Ear Hustle: Bittersweet

Ear Hustle- a podcast produced inside San Quentin State Prison, was one of the most innovative and empathetic shows made on the medium. This was their best episode.

4. The Sporkful: Searching for the Aleppo Sandwich, Parts 1 & 2

I often tell people that most of the podcasts I listen to are food podcasts. They either get it or wonder how food could be that interesting. This episode is my response to the latter reaction.

3. The Liturgists: The Enneagram (Episode 37)

I feel like my wife and I have been having a never-ending Enneagram convo for about three years. This episode is still one of the best introductions to the Enneagram world I’ve seen.

2. Creative Pep Talk: 217 – Finding Your Style, Tricks For Getting Stuff Done, Imposter Syndrome, & More

I could’ve put one of many Creative Pep Talk episodes here, but this was one I found especially helpful. Plus it’s a good example of how packed with goodies a typical episode is.

1. Radiolab: 23 Weeks, 6 Days

To date, the only podcast episode to ever get me to tear up a little bit. Not only is Juniper’s story powerfully moving, but it was super helpful when our own journey to have kids got tough.

Favorite Podcasts of the 2010s

Funny how this was barely a thing when the decade started.

10. NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour

If I get really interested in an upcoming movie or show, there’s a good likelihood that I discovered it from PCHH.

9. We Came To Win

A one-season show released around the 2018 World Cup captured some of the most significant moments from the history of the Beautiful Game. Fascinating storytelling.

8. The Dave Chang Show

The past couple of years have made me a pretty big Dave Chang fan. He’s at his best when talking to people well outside the food world; ie. Randall Park, Michael Schur, or Shad.

7. Dissect

If you want to obsessively nerd-out line-by-line over albums by Kanye, Kendrick, Frank Ocean, or Tyler the Creator, there’s no better place. It makes you appreciate the albums much more.

6. Serial

While season one’s magic could never be recreated, it’s hard to look past the show that turned so many people into actual podcast listeners. And it was a damn good first season.

5. Rough Translation

NPR’s globally focused storytelling must be a difficult show to put together, but the payoff is huge. The podcast I host is loosely modeled after this one, and that’s no coincidence.

4. You Made It Weird

Pete Holmes is possibly the best interviewer today. (My other pick would be Stephen Colbert). His range of guests is impressive, but my favorite ones are always a surprise. (ie. Weird Al)

3. Akimbo

I have to admit that so much of my marketing knowledge comes from Seth Godin and Akimbo is one of his best outputs. What a fantastic teacher.

2. Sounds Good with Branden Harvey

I’ve discovered so many interesting and admirable personas– creatives, artists, nonprofit leaders, activists, via Branden Harvey and his podcast.

1. Creative Pep Talk

Man. Andy J. Pizza’s podcast is my gold standard. It somehow fires on all cylinders, being both fully inspiring and motivating while teaching me a TON about creativity, and even life.

Introducing Rhys Miguel

What a blessing. What an adventure. What a journey. And you know what? It’s simply just begun!

Rhys Miguel Lazaro arrived at 8:09 in the morning of October 31st at 7lbs 4oz, and 19 inches long.

I am so in love with this guy! I can’t believe I get to be his dad.

Deanna is recovering and is doing well. Rhys is a strong and healthy baby. It seems like he has his mom’s strength and spirit. I couldn’t be prouder of the two of them.

Things are about to change. A lot.

It struck me today at the doctor’s office. This is it. It’s almost done.

This time in exactly two weeks, I thought, the sun will be going down on the most surreal day of my life. I’ll be spending my first night with our newborn son.

It’s weird. We spent a year hoping and praying (and, y’know, trying) to get pregnant. Then when it finally happened, we spent most of this year preparing to become parents. A string of baby showers. A mural on the wall of the nursery. A doctor’s visit every other week. And now that it’s here it still seems so beautifully bizarre that it’s about to happen for real.

There will be a new little dude in the world I’d absolutely die for.

There will be a sense of love that goes beyond anything I can describe.

There will be a whole new rhythm to life- a pretty erratic and unpredictable rhythm, I’m betting, that changes everything I’ve gotten used to.

I wanted to capture some of what I feel. At this exact moment. Days before my son is born.

I feel ready.

I feel that in many ways you can never really be 100% ready, but as much as anyone can be ready, I’m ready.

Today, my friend H was telling me about how his life changed after his daughter was born. “I’ve never loved this much,” he kept saying. “I never knew I could love this much. It’s something I can’t really understand, like the concept of infinity or how the universe just keeps on going on forever.”

It’s not the first time I’ve heard that, and I’ve heard nearly every new parent say something to that effect. I believe that what they say is totally true, and I also think there’s no way I’ll fully get it until two weeks from now when I experience it for myself.

I’m ready for that. I’m ready for my mind to be blown, for my heart to come alive, and to feel that electricity. I’m ready to have mystery and wonder back in my life like that, and then some. I’m ready to learn new things about God, love, and wonder from this experience.

I’m excited to have a window to see the world from the perspective of a little man. Learning to breathe and eat and crawl. Then walk and explore and express himself. Then adventure and help others and create. I’m excited to see old things again fresh, like it was the very first time.

I’m ready to have all the other things I do in life matter less and more at the same time.

They matter less, because at the end of my day, my number one job is being a husband and dad. My main metric of success won’t be web visitors, views, revenue, or anything like that. It’ll be how present I was.

And they matter more, because everything I do will be shaping the world I pass on to my kid. I want him to develop a creative spirit, to realize the importance of doing work that helps other people, to appreciate the vastness of our world and all the different people we share it with. 

I’m ready to have the unessential things fade away, and to have the urgency to keep only the things that matter in focus. This is something I already try pretty hard to practice, so I’m curious to see how the baby makes that even more true.

I’m ready for our family unit to grow. For the past five years, most of my life has revolved around putting down roots. Prior to that, I was happy to move around a lot, collecting valuable but temporary experiences. There’s a part of all this that still feels a bit foreign. Knowing in my head that this kid isn’t just a tiny roommate who stays with us for a couple years then moves on. He stays and grows and turns into whoever he ends up being. This relationship will outlast just about all the other ones in my life.

I’m ready.

I’m capturing this all down, stream of consciousness, because I want to have a record of my heart and mind just before the baby arrives. The calm and the chaos and the sleepless nights and the figuring-it-out amidst the sweetness.

It’ll for sure be different.

Last night, I rested my hand on Deanna’s pregnant belly. It brought me back to a moment from the summer of last year. We had been trying to get pregnant for about five or six months at that point, and another one had just gone by where we realized it wasn’t happening that month either.

“You’re going to be so cute when you get pregnant,” I told her, able to imagine so clearly how she’d look.

“If I get pregnant,” she corrected me.

“Yeah, sure,” I acknowledged half-heartedly. Even though I was plenty discouraged, there was at least one small part of me that couldn’t let go of the feeling that it was supposed to happen. It was going to happen. I wanted to be open, humble to the fact that I wasn’t in control. But a part of me deep down must’ve known.

Last night, as I felt his head and feet protrude, I remembered all that. I was right. This is really happening.

And our lives are about to change.

What World Vision's new campaign is doing right

You’re going to want to watch this.

A coworker emailed me a link to World Vision’s newest fundraising campaign, Chosen.

World Vision is one of the largest international organizations out there. With a budget of over $1 billion dollars, they have a presence in nearly every country in need around the world. (Working for an organization with $5 million revenue to work in eight countries, I can fancy what it would be like to work with those resources!) And they’ve done some really good things with what they have.

The Chosen video started with a group of child sponsors gathered together at a church in Illinois. Nothing too unusual about that, I thought. World Vision became a fundraising powerhouse by recruiting middle class or wealthy Americans to pledge to sponsor a child in need every month.

Typically sponsors read short stories about the kids in need at a church event or fundraiser and then pick one to sponsor.

Then the video suddenly switched. Now it filmed a school in Kenya, where students were approaching a board full of photos. Photos of the sponsors in Illinois. The kids were choosing their own sponsors.

Wow, I thought right away, they fixed a lot of the problems with child sponsorship while keeping what works.

Child sponsorship is a complicated model, but it does one thing really well–

Child sponsorship moves masses of people to donate to international development. 

It’s hard to deny that this is an effective fundraising model. People give more when they can feel a sense of personal connection. Plus, it helps donors feel that they are actually making a difference in a child’s life, even if solving large-scale problems seem out of reach.

That said, operating a child sponsorship program can be really tricky. The amount of nonprofit staff resources required to report on outcomes and build the connection between donors, children, and international partners is intensive. Many organizations add a disclaimer to their sponsorship, noting that contributions actually go more broadly to the community rather than the individual child. This can make reporting and financial management easier in some cases, but this has also upset a few people when they discovered their expectations didn’t match reality

I haven’t even begun to talk about the power dynamics that are part of child sponsorship. There seems to be something off about sifting through photos of kids in rural communities to find the one who appeals to your desire to help the most. American individualism creeping into African and Latin American villages? More opportunities for more bias to affect who we think is most deserving of help? 

More often than not, I advise newer organizations not to use a child sponsorship model. I believe that there are more effective ways out there to build connection and get recurring revenue.

Simply by reversing the model of child sponsorship, it looks like World Vision found a better way

There’s got to be a lesson for other organizations there somewhere, right?

Isn’t there always?

I don’t think every organization is about to follow suit and let children pick their sponsors. I’m curious enough if World Vision will be promoting this as their main sponsorship appeal in two years or if it’s more of a seasonal campaign for the moment. I kinda want them to stick with it.

For other orgs, there are plenty of takeaways to apply:

1) In an industry full of sameness, do something different

In a world where sponsors are asked to pick children, World Vision asks children to pick their sponsors. See how clean and compelling that sounds when you read it out loud?

The nonprofit world is full of cliche. Don’t give me another video with a soft piano playing over a plea for help. Get me Kendrick Lamar. Don’t tell me to donate the equivalent of four cups of coffee. Tell me it’s the equivalent of two unicorn frappuccinos and that I can’t get those anymore anyways.

2) Always consider what your program looks like from the point of view of the people you’re trying to help

Part of the design of this campaign considers how to improve the experience of the kids who are being sponsored.

3) A fundraising campaign involves three parties: the donor, the recipient and the organization. The best campaigns work well for everyone involved.

This campaign fires on all cylinders.

• Uphold the dignity and identity of the people who will be receiving help from those funds

• Provide a meaningful experience for the donor

• Be manageable for the organization to deliver what it promised

4) Sometimes the simplest change can be the most effective

While this campaign is for sure creative, it also didn’t reinvent the wheel. It simply took what was working well enough, and flipped it to work even better. It also did so in a way that prompted more surprise and delight.

• Uphold the dignity and identity of the people who will be receiving help from those funds

• Provide a meaningful experience for the donor

• Be manageable for the organization to deliver what it promised

Designing a fundraising model that is ethical, effective, and engaging is no easy task. Believe me- I spend just about all my working hours trying to do this in some way or another. The Chosen campaign seems to represent a huge step towards empowering children to have more voice and decision making opportunities in their lives.

The Changemakers You Should Know in Fall 2019

Changemakers are driven people, and that often means we’re the competitive type. Seriously- the nonprofit world and social entrepreneurship circles, are where I’ve met some of the most competitive people that I know. And while in some small circumstances, we might occasionally compete against each other- for a grant or attention or that sort of thing, at the end of the day, we belong on the same team. People and organizations committed to bringing joy and justice to the world have the same end goal. And so, we get to learn from each other! Here are a few of the causes and changemakers who have really caught my eye in the past few months.

Equal Justice Initiative

Equal Justice Initiative is hardly a new organization. I’ve been a big fan and supporter of theirs for years. But back when I first learned about them, I wasn’t doing regular shoutout posts highlighting my favorite changemakers, so now is an excellent time to highlight what they’re doing.

EJI is the organization founded and led by Bryan Stevenson, author of the book Just Mercy. If you’ve read that book, then you probably have a good idea of what they’re all about. And if you haven’t read that book, you really should.

Stevenson is a lawyer by trade whose life work has been dedicated to helping the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned.  EJI provides legal assistance to innocent death row prisoners, confronts abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aids children prosecuted as adults. He’s especially savvy to how this problem disproportionately affects black people. His guiding belief is that each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.

Part of what makes this a very appropriate time to feature EJI is that Just Mercy will be getting the movie treatment this month. None other than Michael B. Jordan will be playing Stevenson, in a cast that also includes Brie Larson and Jamie Foxx. Last year, they opened a museum dedicated to the legacy of slavery and mass incarceration in Montgomery, Alabama. Earlier this year, one of their most high-profile exonerees, Anthony Ray Hinton, released his story in the form of a best-selling book The Sun Does Shine.

What I learn from Equal Justice Initiative: We become much better agents of change when we connect with people through our brokenness.

The Diversity Gap

I was introduced to Bethaney Wilkinson through participation in Plywood People’s events in Atlanta. When I learned that she was launching a podcast on the issues of diversity, inclusion, and representation, I was pretty excited. The only way for us to make progress in that area is by allowing ourselves to be challenged and open to the experiences of others. Her podcast provides exactly that.

Several episodes in, I’ve loved so many of the conversations that have been featured. I feel like this is one of the podcasts that I learn from the most. The first episode that especially caught my attention was one featuring Adrian Pei speaking on the emotional experience of being a minority. I also really appreciated a more recent conversation with Doug Shipman that helped me understand how not making a deliberate and articulated plan for inclusion is a good way to make sure it doesn’t happen.

This isn’t the first time this week I’ve recommended this podcast as a way to become more proactive in creating diverse and inclusive spaces. This show often speaks through the lens of organizational leadership, so I often share it with administrative leaders, HR people, or team leaders, but it’s one that anyone can learn a lot from.

What I learn from the Diversity Gap: It isn’t enough to simply think racism is bad and move on, we need to actively examine our spaces to see how we can make them anti-racist.

National Birth Equity Collaborative

Watching my wife be a fighter and champion throughout the course of a complicated pregnancy has made me much more appreciative of what a challenge pregnancy is for so many women. While our past nine months haven’t been the easiest, we’ve certainly had privileges that have made it a lot easier. We have solid jobs and health insurance, meaning our wallets have been shielded from taking too much of a hit with all those doctor visits. We have the resources to get things like a glucose monitor which helped keep our kid healthy despite his mom’s blood sugar challenges. We both come from supportive families to help us through the hard emotional parts.

But what about moms who don’t have those privileges?

Every month, I hear from our international partners asking for prayer for different things. Hardly a month goes by without somebody asking for prayer for a challenging pregnancy. Maternal health is still a very serious issue in many parts of the world- and that includes many parts of the United States.

I was surprised and angry to learn that black women are four times as likely to die from complications in childbirth than white women. And the data reveals that regardless of economic status, education, lifestyle, and access to health care, this stat is still true. Simply being a black mom increases the risk of maternal mortality about four times.

Why? I wish I knew these things well enough to explain articulately, but it is a combination of systemic racism and a variety of complicated factors. For much more information about this problem and what can be done, I’d have to point towards the National Birth Equity Collaborative. Their aim is to erase that statistic through training, policy advocacy, research, and community-centered collaboration that promotes black maternal and infant health.

What I learn from the National Birth Equity Collective: Understanding how racism shows up in levels of power, leadership, and worldviews is key to addressing health inequality by its roots.

And that’s my roundup for changemakers to keep your eye on this fall. Consider a donation to NBEC, subscribe to the Diversity Gap, and plan on seeing Just Mercy this fall. I know I’m really looking forward to that.

Telling human-centered stories about immigration can create change

“Migration is the most natural thing people do, the root of how civilizations, nation-states, and countries were established. The difference, however, is that when white people move, then and now, it’s seen as courageous and necessary, celebrated in history books. Yet when people of color move, legally or illegally, the migration itself is subjected to question of legality. Is it a crime? Will they assimilate? When will they stop?”

I recently finished Jose Antonio Vargas’ book Dear America and I can’t believe it took me as long as it did to get around to reading it.

When he was twelve, Jose Antonio Vargas was sent on a flight to California with his uncle to stay with his grandparents. He expected his mom in the Philippines to follow shortly afterwards. That never happened. It wasn’t until a bit later in life that he discovered the person wasn’t his uncle. And that he wasn’t in the United States legally.

After years of hiding, Jose had established himself as a prominent journalist. Then, he came out in public. Nine years ago, he released an article revealing his experience as an undocumented citizen.

I learned about Jose a few years after that, when he was arrested in Texas during a demonstration in solidarity with Central American refugees. I remember seeing him on the news shortly after being released from a detention center holding cell that he shared with young boys from Guatemala.

That same year, he appeared on the cover of TIME with a dozen other undocumented Americans.

Jose’s strength as a storyteller comes largely from his ability to center big issues on people’s shared humanity.

This book made a pretty strong impression on me. As soon as I finished it, I thought, this could be the defining book of the decade. The only other book I felt that had that same thought about was Ta Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. It also struck me as only the second book ever that I’ve read written by a Filipino American.

But I know Jose didn’t write this book just for the sake of flexing some writing muscle. He wrote it because we really need a new narrative when it comes to the topic of migration and his personal experience can help deliver that.

Here’s what Jose Antonio Vargas taught me about the way we approach migration:

We need to focus the conversation on the human experience 

“Humanity is not some box I should have to check.”

One thing that frequently happens during arguments about immigration is that people are quick to dehumanize others.

It becomes so much easier to detain children in squalid conditions, to overzealously separate families, or to fail to create effective pathways towards legal citizenship when you don’t see the humanity of the people affected by those decisions.

Language that dehumanizes migrant families is way too common. Unsurprisingly, inhumane policies shortly follow.

People may cross a border illegally. But a person cannot be illegal. There is a difference.

I’m not always convinced that the right set of facts will change people’s minds. I mean, facts- statistics, data, and relevant trends are extremely important when designing a policy or program. They’re less effective at moving people towards compassion.

If that’s your goal, one well told story will outweigh a thousand precise statistics.

And telling a story only you can tell does even more.

Jose’s story doesn’t just propose policy. It exposes why that would matter in the first place. It offers a micro level look at how being an undocumented citizen changes daily life.

Dear America erodes the us versus them narrative

“What would you have done? Work under the table? Stay under the radar? Not work at all? Which box would you check? What have you done to earn your box? Besides being born at a certain place in a certain time, did you have to do anything? Anything at all? If you wanted to have a career, if you wanted to have a life, if you wanted to exist as a human being, what would you have done?”

During conversations about immigration, I hear a lot of people ask the question “what should we do?” When we answer the question, we usually answer as if we were deciding for the U.S. Government. This shows that our default setting is to think of the issue from that perspective.

That’s worth asking. But another worthwhile question almost never gets asked. What would you do from the perspective from a migrant seeking shelter? An undocumented individual? When we leave out that perspective, we’re missing an important part of the story.

Many people often say, “just enter legally!” What Dear America highlights is that for many, there is no clear way to do this. Jose explains that if there were any way for him to have done it in his 25 years in the US, he would’ve done so long ago already.”

One moment that stood out to me in particular came when an interviewer started pressing Jose with the charge- “you don’t deserve to be here!”

Really, what did any of us do to deserve to be here? We didn’t pick the circumstances of our birth. Very few of us can point to citizenship tests or testimonies that can actually answer that question.

The humility to not think of ourselves as better than anyone, regardless of citizenship status is very much needed in these discussions.

Dear America fights separation by pointing to connection

“When people think of borders and walls, they usually think of land. I think of water. It’s painful to think that the same water that connects us all also divides us, dividing Mama and me.”

When it comes to storytelling, I’m a big believer in looking for the conflict that goes deeper than the obvious. Harry Potter is more about Love versus Power than it is about Harry versus Voldemort. Similarly, the conflict present in the topic of migration isn’t so much about citizens versus outsiders or one political party versus the other.

It’s about separation versus connection.

Jose first highlights the obvious separation that gets created when there are no good pathways for him to gain legal citizenship. He and his mother have only seen each other a handful of times since he came to the United States, and he points out how many families- especially from Central America have been separated in even harsher ways.

However, that’s not the only example of separation created by being undocumented.

The book goes way into depth talking about the way a person’s sense of self can be divided when they live a life of hiding. “This book is about homelessness, not in a traditional sense, but the unsettled, unmoored psychological state that undocumented immigrants like me find ourselves in,” writes Vargas. “This book is about lying and being forced to lie to get by; about passing as an American and as a contributing citizen; about families, keeping them together and having to make new ones when you can’t. This book is about constantly hiding from the government and, in the process, hiding from ourselves.”

Then there’s the separation that gets created between us and each other when our perception of migration loses the human element. When we begin thinking in terms of us versus them. When we let labels like legal versus illegal take precedent over what we owe to each other as human beings.

This book better helped me recognize the need for human centered storytelling in the area of migration. So much of how we relate to the issue comes in the form of statistics and figures and policy- all of which are important, but all of which become less humane when we lose sight of the lived experience.

I’m excited to dig deeper into Define American, Jose’s project to spark a new narrative about immigrants and identity in America, what it means to be undocumented and what it means to be a good citizen.

Cancel Culture Exists When Accountability Doesn't

What do you do when the pastor who helped you discover new spiritual insight turns out to have sexually mistreated multiple women?

When the life-changing author you’ve read for years turns out to have a bunch of racist views?

When the charity you’ve donated to for years has done more harm than good to the people it claimed to help?

Recent occurrences have brought up so many different thoughts about cancel culture and accountability in the past week. 

My own thoughts surrounding cancel culture, accountability, and our current moment aren’t exactly clean, but I had to get them out in some way.

On Cancel Culture

• First of all, when I say cancel culture, I’m talking about the current moment we’re living in when influential figures can instantaneously find themselves “cancelled” by society, usually because of a sudden discovery made about their past. This includes everything from multiple women coming out with awful stories about Bill Cosby’s sexual harassment to a bunch of racist tweets posted by Josh Hader being discovered as he was pitching during last year’s MLB All Star Game.
  
  

• So often, somebody getting “cancelled” feels a bit like justice. Like, when I think about how Bill Cosby is finally paying the price for what he seemed to get away with for decades, that seems fair. When I think about how Louis CK no longer has the reach he once had, or how Kevin Spacey won’t be making more movies anytime soon, that also seems fair.
  

• A lot of people feel like cancel culture goes too far. Standup comedians and right-wing shock jocks have become unusual allies when painting a picture of a world of oversensitive audiences. Sarah Silverman describes today as a “mutated McCarthy era, where any comic better watch anything they say.”
  

• On the other hand, a lot of people see the backlash against cancel culture as insensitive to those who have received harm. Tori Williams Douglass makes the case for this much more eloquently than I can:
  
  I wonder if the complaints about so-called cancel culture are primarily driven by those adjacent to power who believe people lower on the social hierarchy shouldn’t have a say regarding what happens to people above them.
  
  I get that. Sometimes the case against cancel culture sounds more like a thinly veiled request to keep being abusive.
  
  

• My immediate reaction is to think that people with power and privilege shouldn’t be the ones to determine where things go to far. My other reaction is that I don’t want to be the one to determine that either.

• A world where everybody’s most careless words will ultimately be turned against them by an angry internet mob seems like one dystopia. A world where people can spew all kinds of racism and misogyny with no consequences whatsoever is another dystopia. Many people would say the world we live in is already one of these two extremes, they just might not agree on which one.
  

• Neither of these is the world we want to live in. And I don’t think we need to settle for one or the other.

On Remorse and Restoration

• I question cancel culture’s ability to create actual change for the offender. You typically see one of two things:
  
  Either that person will be driven into the shadows by shame – which isn’t a desirable outcome for believers in nonviolent pathways to justice OR;
  
  That person will double-down on their toxic beliefs and harmful practices, creating an even worse offender than before.
  

• I do acknowledge that publicly shining light on somebody’s misdeeds can accomplish two very important things:
  
  It can show victims that they are not alone, that their stories are legitimate, and their experiences are valid AND;
  
  It can send a cultural message of what is and isn’t acceptable.
  

• Showing solidarity and offering support to people who have been harmed should be the number one priority. So many “apologies” and promises to do better are more focused on the offenders than the victims.
  

• I wrote a book about second chances. I am a big believer in second chances. I agree with Bryan Stevenson when he says “each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done.”
  

• Joseph James Morales tweeted this:
  
  Cancel culture calls people “trash”
  
  Instead let’s put people in the recycling bin for self-improvement, growth, and transformation.
  
  I agree. I should also add that being “recycled” isn’t at all a comfortable process. It involves things being broken down, restructured, and drastically reworked. And it doesn’t really happen publicly.
  

• A process of reconciliation that doesn’t center the victims isn’t real reconciliation
  

• Some people are truly remorseful and wish to change their patterns of behavior. The best place for that to take place is out of the spotlight. The spotlight isn’t an especially healthy place to shape your character.

Cancel Culture exists because Accountability Culture has been eroded.

Long before cancel culture became a buzzword you could easily search, a few things happened to create the conditions for its arrival.

In order to be a reputable news source, before, you needed a lot of journalistic credentials and a proper Editorial Review Board to ensure your practices were ethical. Now? If Uncle Jimmy’s Hot News & Views Blog gets millions of views, it’ll be seen as news by those millions of people.

Being a minister typically used to be a rigorous process, with denominational leadership holding each church’s leaders to high standards? Now? Many independent, nondenominational churches have formed, leaving it up to many pastors to set up their own decision-making structure.

Back in the day, most people would look to work within a larger organization. That organization would be regulated by boards and governments, based on whatever industry they’re in. At the same time that a lot of regulation has been rolled back, more people also seek to work for themselves, creating start-ups and independent projects. All of this results in fewer structures of accountability.

Over the past two or three decades, systems of accountability have been in decline. As more and more people were able to operate without accountability:

• there were no clear authority figures for victims of abuse to come out to.

• there were no people to help dismantle racist or misogynistic ideas before they did public damage.

• toxic workplaces were allowed to persist.

• conditions of trust were broken.  

Prevention is better than cure and that’s what accountability is to cancel culture. Whether you believe cancel culture is a toxic landscape or a necessary adaptation, we can probably agree that things are better if they don’t have to come to that point.

In almost every case of somebody being “cancelled,” I’ve realized that they’ve put themselves into a position of almost no accountability. In some cases they established a reputation that seemed too big to take down, in some cases they filled a board of directors with only yes-men. In other cases, they went without a board of directors altogether.

Someone with a good system of accountability should be able to answer these questions:

• Ultimately, who am I accountable to?

• Who makes sure that I do my job to the highest standards, no matter what that job is?

• Before I hit send or publish, who looks over my work?

• If I were causing harm to somebody who works with me, who would they be able to report to?

• Are the people I’ve trusted to hold me accountable simply protecting my reputation, or making sure the best interests of others are represented?

• If somebody were to support my work (as a donor, patron, subscriber, client, etc.), how could they learn about the way I worked with others in the process?

• Is my system of accountability heterogeneous? In other words, if I have a board of directors, are they all the same, race, gender, economic class, etc?

• How are people without systemic power represented in my system of accountability?

If you don’t have answers to these questions, don’t waste time in trying to make some. Action without accountability creates a huge possibility of risk. True accountability demonstrates love for yourself and the people you seek to serve.

Don't Rush the Tension

Creative magic happens when you learn to get really comfortable with discomfort

I was working on a video project pretty recently, giving feedback to how the story should flow. The video was for a nonprofit, highlighting a family they served. I was helping the filmmakers think through what story they wanted to tell in order to grab the right shots.

When we ended up looking at the different types of shots we would need, it became clear to me that we needed to capture a lot of shots of the family in their struggles, rather than their successes. This was a bit different for the organization that respectably wanted to show people as heroes rather than victims.

I agreed with that desire, but– you want that moment of victory to feel well earned, I highlighted. That means going through -not around- the parts of the story full of struggle.

I started to think of other movies as an example.

Like the Avengers. If you put the last two movies together, that’s almost seven hours to tell a single story. And six hours and forty minutes of that, give or take, featured the superheroes struggling. Things were going wrong right and left. The bad guys were winning. Literally half of the world was gone.

The more you map out stories like that, the more you realize that stories mostly consist of problems and tension.

I am so excited about this idea, that I had to bring in my friend Hasely to help me explain.

Okay, actually, I had to make up Hasely first. But he’s a character I’m having lots of fun with. Hasely became a film buff and self-certified film curator by hand picking the movies for the 3 for $5 bin at his family drug store.

By watching hits like Paul Blart 7 or Rude Gals (don’t mistake this for the more mainstream Mean Girls, he warns) he became a true expert in what makes a good story. Here’s how he explains the importance of tension.

Stories take place in the zone of discomfort.

In storytelling circles (like, literal circles that outline the structure of most stories) the place where a plot builds is associated with death, disorder, or chaos. Dan Harmon calls it the unknown. Joseph Campbell calls it the journey towards the abyss. Others have called it the special world apart from the ordinary world.

Feel free to go down the rabbit hole, and things will confirm, great stories require diving towards danger, risk, and uncertainty.

And as Hasely says, As it goes in film, so it goes in LIFE!

Your best stories begin when you ditch comfort, take a risk, and head into the uncertain and unknown parts.

Quit Chasing the Cool

One of the worst creative moves a person can make is to try to be cool. 

I was listening to a podcast conversation between David Chang and Michael Schur- the guy who created The Good Place. Towards the end, the latter went off on a mini-spiel about how trying to be cool is one of the worst ways for creators to focus their efforts.

He definitely isn’t the only person to have given this advice. Famed ceramic artist Grayson Perry famously said “coolness is a straight jacket for creativity.” As a gender-bending ceramic artist, he has never fit anyone’s expectations for cool and his work has benefitted as a result.

On that same note, vulnerability champion Brene Brown sometimes leads an exercise where she has everybody assume their “cool position,” usually a legs out, arms in front, confident pose. Then she nudges everyone to move out of the position, shedding the emotional straightjacket.

So this idea is far from new and far from original, but it’s one that I still find valuable to be reminded of. Here’s the problem with trying to be cool and what to do instead:

Being cool forces you to compare yourself to others.

The comparison game is a great one to play if you want to stifle creativity. It’s a fantastic way for you to make sure you don’t develop your own voice.

Looking to other people for inspiration or connection is one thing, but if you start to obsess over what other people are making, you’ll end up unwittingly trying to do what they’re doing but in a way that won’t be true to anyone’s real experience- yours or theirs.

Instead, stay focused with what you’re doing. Believe in it. Let other people’s great work inspire you to be more like yourself, not more like them. Don’t get distracted from the work you know you need to make.

Being cool stunts your emotional intelligence.

If you want to move and inspire people, you need to have a powerful emotional connection. You need to make them feel things, and that calls for emotional intelligence. Coolness often shuts down this part of your brain.

On the surface, coolness is often associated with detachment, being too self-important to care. A cycle of cynicism and apathy seem to run on a loop, and this is the opposite of what invites people. The most exciting and convincing creative works more frequently come from a place of sincerity and earnestness. 

Being cool tries to please people instead off trying to connect with them.

Chasing cool means constantly thinking of how others view your work. This leads to self doubt, which Picasso called the enemy of creativity.

This isn’t the same as empathy, when you’re trying to make work that others can relate to. This also isn’t the same as good editing, which involves thinking of how things will come across for the sake of your audience.

This is thinking of their perception in an ego-driven way. So much truth, beauty, and art has been cut off from the world because of self doubt. Don’t let this happen to the great works you have inside of you.

Being cool is a vain pursuit.

By that I don’t just mean it’s a self-centered goal, although it is. I mean that it’s meaningless and short-lived. Cool is a moving target, and once you’ve been deemed cool, time inevitably makes you uncool when other things come into fashion.

Instead, if you use your creativity to build bridges towards your audience, you inspire loyalty. This is far more timeless. Think of music careers whose careers have spanned decades versus those who remind you very specifically of 1998, 2004, or 2012.

If a crew as diverse and creative as Michael Schur, Grayson Perry, and Brene Brown are all “anti-cool” it seems like a reasonable suggestion. Don’t chase relevance, chase realness, and you’ll do yourself a much bigger favor.

Does the environment have a case for hope?

It’s pretty hard to be hopeful for the environment sometimes.

I’m a pretty natural optimist, but I’ve got to call this one like I see it. The planet’s outlook can be pretty grim.

Deforestation rates are high. Projections show we’re just months away from irreversible climate change. There is no political willpower to act in the places that most desperately need to. We’re also entering an era of mass extinction for many species, and that’s especially concerning.

Don’t take it from me, take it from one of the world’s most effective environmental advocates, Greta Thunberg, who just so happens to be a sixteen year old in Sweden. 

“I don’t want your hope,” she says. “I don’t want you to feel hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day and act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.”

I think Greta’s advocacy work is awesome, and I get so excited about the enthusiasm towards environmental stewardship that today’s students have. It goes far beyond the enthusiasm when I was in school. But there are some other ways in which we’re different, one of them being that I do need a degree of hope.

Thankfully, I have hope. I have hope for the environment. Against all odds. Here’s why.

The Earth is ridiculously resilient.

I don’t mean this to say that the planet will just take care of itself so we can keep living the way we’ve been. I mean this to say, it’s amazing we haven’t created more damage.

The planet, being the miracle that it is, seems to keep providing the conditions for life. I’d think that if people were more aware of how specific those are, and this, how fragile life is, a whole lot more respect would be warranted.

There are so many ways to make things better.

Planting trees just might be our biggest weapon in the fight against climate change. They help attract water, they protect soil, and they absorb carbon.

It seems like a slow process, but you can easily look online and find story after story of a farmer in rural Indonesia, Brazil, Tanzania, the Philippines, etc. who committed to planting a tree every day. The before and after pictures of these cases are astonishing.

And that’s just one example of a way for things to get better. I’ve been obsessed with Project Drawdown, a ranking of the top 100 solutions for climate change. The list is surprising, informative, and encouraging.

Educating girls is one of the best things we could do for the environment. The number one biggest area for improvement is getting better at refrigerant management. Lowering food waste is also a really big deal.

Hope is the theme of the newest Grassroots Podcast Episode. I finally interview my boss, Plant With Purpose Director Scott Sabin. I also talk to Kent Annan. All season long I’ve been asking my guests what gives them hope, and I’ve gotten answers like these:

“I get a lot of hope from feeling we're not alone in this. I get a lot of hope from you all. Jesus' longest prayer was that we would be one as God is one. So that's my constant prayer and hope. Is that we're carrying the weight of this and imagining and building something together.” (Shane Claiborne)

“It’s not something I’d call easy, but it’s something we see in the places where we are working. We see poor soil become good soil. We see poor people have their lives improve- they go to school, they eat better. It’s possible and we’ve started doing that.” (Dezo)

Grassroots’ entire first season is out now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other major podcast platforms. Check out Episode 6, The Environment’s Case for Hope.

The Creative Changemaker’s Bookshelf: Summer 2019

Every so often, I like to share some of my recent reads that have an impact on my creative work. These are books I think other purpose driven creatives could gain from. As is typical of summer reading for me, most of what I’ve been reading lately has been novel intensive.

A Map of Salt & Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar

This book is a story within a story. It switches between the story of Nour, a twelve year old Syrian refugee fleeing with her family across Northern Africa into Spain, and the legend of Rawiya, a twelve year old girl who traveled the same route as a mapmaker. It captures the tragedy of the Syrian crisis while upholding the beauty of the Syrian story.

As it stands right now, this book may go down as my favorite read from all of 2019. That wouldn’t surprise me at all. The way such a sad story and real-world tragedy were conveyed with beauty, hope, and resilience spoke volumes. The world needs more stories like these.

The lesson for Creative Changemakers? Even though your role may call you to address some of the most horrific things happening in the world, the eyes of a child and the beauty of a culture can help remind others that there are people worthy of our support in spite of calamity.

The Opposite of Hate: A Field Guide for Repairing Our Humanity by Sally Kohn

Sally Kohn made a living as a liberal commentator on Fox News. Unsurprisingly, this line of work led her to a lot of encounters with hate. This includes both a constant stream of vitriolic hate mail sent her way, and close encounters with white supremacists and others motivated by Hate.

This book goes into some of the psychological reasons why we hate. It unpacks things like how our belonging to a certain group may make us more susceptible to biases. I loved her exploration of real world efforts to overcome hate, including amongst Rwandan genocide survivors.

Creating change almost always calls for saying hard things and that almost always invites haters and pushback. Knowing how to deal, how to diffuse, and how to carry on with dignity are extremely important.

There There by Tommy Orange

This novel is beautiful but also brutal. The ending is especially jarring and violent, not to give too much away. In this novel, several stories of different individuals are told, gradually being tied closer and closer together until said ending.

But just because a scene can go in any direction doesn’t mean that it should. Some of the most important parts of an improv scene are the rules- the shared understanding by the actors of how the scene must unfold, and the conversation with the audience just before the scene that determines what goes in it.

This book was an effective reminder of the different issues facing native and indigenous populations within the United States. All kinds of challenges were presented amidst a well told story, and it made me more curious about the populations in proximity to me that I haven’t paid enough attention.

Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport

I’m familiar with Cal Newport’s writing from his book Deep Work. That book is a staple on many creatives’ bookshelves and has helped so many people I know produce richer content. Digital Minimalism is Cal’s take on how to live a digital life built around your true priorities.

To be honest, I wasn’t bought into this book right from the get go. Cal’s early admission that he doesn’t really use social media made me wonder why he was the right person to write this book. But there are enough good nuggets in here to make it worth reading.

Odds are, a good amount of Creative Changemakers are online a lot as a function of their work. I know I’m on a few social networks I would’ve long deleted if not for my job. This book makes a good case for making sure your priorities dictate your activity.

We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

This book is a little bit like a Black Mirror episode meets a Jordan Peele movie. In it, a black father has the chance to pay for his biracial son to be white. He just has to complete the tasks of participating in workplace diversity days, going on plantation tours, etc. Now you see why those comparisons make sense.

I appreciated the boldness of this read and the way the Ruffin used sci-fi elements to address real world conversations about race. So much of the book’s tone was absurdist and it functioned well as satirical commentary.

A creative take-away? That part of your brain that’s designed to ask ‘what if’ can be a powerful asset in getting people to take a second look at things that seem familiar.

Now it’s your turn. Any good reads this fall I need to get to?

Do small sustainable actions actually help fight climate change?

We don’t have any more paper towels at home. What started as a simple experiment to see how long we could go without replacing our last role led to a sweet discovery. We just didn’t need them.

Working around that seemed like a better move for the environment. Other things we’ve done differently? I stopped buying plastic toothbrushes and started stocking up on bamboo ones. We stopped buying dryer sheets and switched to reusable balls. We switched all our lotions and things to ones that were good for the ocean.

For me, making environmentally minded changes isn’t much of a chore. It’s fun! It’s like a little challenge to see how we can keep finding new, more sustainable ways to do things we’ve been doing for years.

But that raises a really interesting question- does all this matter?

You can make a pretty decent argument that it doesn’t.

It wasn’t long ago that I read a Twitter conversation between a screenwriter and an environmental scientist. The screenwriter asked what the most effective thing he could do to stop climate change would be. “Probably stop eating meat,” said the scientist, “but I’m not so sure it matters.”

The line of thinking this follows is that most of what causes climate change is the result of exploitative industrial practices and poor governance. There’s very little that can be done at an individual level to stop it.

After all, about 100 companies with extremely large profit margins are responsible for about 70% of carbon emissions globally. If nothing is done to stop their actions, what will our small actions matter?

Shane Claiborne believes they still do.

I had the chance to interview the author and activist a few months ago. In college, his writing really helped shape my worldview and understanding of my faith. Getting to talk to him for a little bit was a treat.

“It was a bunch of small actions that got us into this mess in the first place,” he pointed out. I suppose we shouldn’t underestimate the way these actions add up.

“Some people call me an idealist. What I think is idealistic is thinking we can go on living unsustainably like this without there being any major consequences.”

Nick Laparra is in it for the long game

Nick interviewed me for his Let’s Give A Damn podcast back in the spring. I interviewed him in return immediately after. Nick’s help is what led to me launching the Grassroots Podcast this year.

Away from the mic, he is taking his family on a similar journey of trying to live as sustainably as possible. “I may not get to see the immediate result of the work that I’m doing and that’s fine. I’m in this for the long haul,” he admits.

I decided to make the question- do our small actions make a difference- the theme of our latest podcast episode.

In it, I talk to Shane, Nick, and a few others.

For what it’s worth, I think our small actions do matter. I don’t want to reach the point where I stop doing all the things I can in life to make this a better world, no matter how small their impact may be.

I want to leverage whatever influence I have towards sustainability. In the realm of politics and industry, that’s relatively little. I’d still want to be a wise voter and consumer. In my personal life, that’s quite a bit.

Besides, I think it’s important to stop treating the blame game as an acceptable stalemate. Individuals saying the government needs to do more. The government saying they’re leaving it up to the businesses. Businesses saying they just respond to consumer demands from individuals. All are right, but all are also culpable. 

Tune into the Grassroots Podcast to listen to Episode 5- Do My Small Actions Make a Difference on Spotify, Apple, and other major podcast platforms.

Developing Creative Empathy

Empathy is one of the most important ingredients of creativity. Whether you’re designing a campaign for a nonprofit or trying to write a song for your EP, your goal is to make other people think and feel, “me too.”

So how do you actually do it? How do you make art that makes people feel less alone?

Your own vulnerability is required.

Empathy is all about joining somebody in their emotional experience. To meet somebody at an emotional wavelength, you need to tap into the times you’ve felt that emotion the strongest.

If you think of the songs that give you all the feels, it’s because their songwriters were able to translate their own emotional journey into a work of art that applies just as much as your own.

So get real about how things make you feel. Develop emotional intelligence. Get good at saying “when ____ happens, I feel _____.” Take it a step further and describe that feeling in as many ways as possible. Is it a knot in your throat or your stomach dropping? Is it a light going dark all of a sudden? Is it a sense of bravery that you haven’t felt since you were six and went exploring in the ocean?

Process the problems you’re solving.

You are offering something of value to the world- a product, a service, a work of art. But most of all, you’re offering a solution to a problem. Name the problem.

What is it? Climate change? Loneliness? The lack of disabled persons of color in mainstream media? Think of how that problem makes you feel. React to it. Go back to the first time you learned about the issue. Recreate the physical space in your mind. Process it.

Then think of how that problem makes other people feel. If people are currently aware of the problem, how would it make them feel? Meet them there.

Don’t create in isolation.

The worst environment for a creative to work in is isolation. This isn’t to say that some people shouldn’t retreat to a quiet, focused area to do deep work, but to say that you shouldn’t cut yourself off from people in a way that makes you lose empathy.

The design company IDEO is so committed to empathy that they make it Step Zero of their processes. They insist on listening as a practice and get to it before brainstorming even begins.

When do you take the time to listen? How do you listen? Make sure you take the time to leave the walls of your studio or office or lab.

Make sure you stay abreast of what makes people anxious, hopeful, angry, relieved, embarrassed, or proud. Don’t be afraid to name people’s concerns for them, after you’ve validated that your suspicions are correct.

Try empathy mapping.

If you’re looking for a really practical, hands on tool to give some direction to your practice of empathy, consider using an empathy map.

This is a framework that breaks down what your audience says, does, thinks, and feels. It’s helpful to have this distinction because these four things aren’t always uniform.

I personally find it helpful, because I often experience people saying one thing that ultimately doesn’t line up with their actions. Steve Jobs famously believed that customers didn’t know what they wanted until it existed in front of them. I often think that way myself, but I still believe listening matters. What people say isn’t the full story, but when combined with what they do, think, and feel it becomes much more complete.

Empathetic creativity calls for listening, observation, experience, and vulnerability. In and of itself it’s an art form. The makers who succeed at it reap the reward.

Four Ideas From ATL

I just got back from three days in Atlanta for Plywood Presents. The conference was one of my favorite events last year and I knew I had to go back. Few events demonstrate as much care for their community as this one.

While the speaker lineup was a great, diverse mix, I really appreciated the orientation around community. I met so many people who were in different stages of turning their idea into reality. The line between presenter and attendee was often blurry, and I thought that was great.

I filled up a little notebook with lots of ideas and quotes I wanted to remember. I noticed certain messages seemed to come at me from multiple angles- and when that happens I try to pay them special attention. Here are four takeaways from three days in Atlanta, and four actions they call for right away.

Some challenges persist no matter where you are on your journey.

As inspiring as an event like this can be, it can also be intimidating. You meet and listen to people who are steps ahead of you on their journey. Their advice is valuable, but it can also remind you of the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

That gap often feels frustrating, but this time I learned that everybody has this gap. Even people with an organization three times the size of mine and an audience ten times as large feel the challenge of being patient while still striving for growth.

It’s helpful to remember that you never “arrive,” and that you only grow by appreciating and tending to whatever season you’re in. This is also pretty good parenting advice. As a side note- the fact that we’re expecting our first this year came up in a lot of conversations. That led to some much appreciated tips on integrating parenthood with the pursuit of goals.

Action: Remind yourself what is better about the season you’re in now versus to where you were two years ago.

Look to see who is missing from the picture

One of the best conversations I had at the event was with a woman who wasn’t part of it and didn’t know what we were doing. Much of it took place around a brewery and distillery that was open to the public at certain points. I started talking to a woman enjoying a beer on a Friday night and discovered she was local. She told me all about the neighborhood we were in. Atlanta’s West End. She told me all about its history, it’s beloved eateries, and their rich tradition of porch parties. “Remember that when certain people tell you about this neighborhood,” she advised me.

Certain people? The gathering was predominantly white and millennial in a neighborhood struggling with gentrification. And to be honest, I’ve always had a hard time understanding gentrification and if there are any good alternatives. I live in a neighborhood in San Diego with similar challenges. But this conversation and the conference helped provide helpful ideas.

While the attendees were mostly white and millennial, others were included and integrated. The speaker lineup was fairly diverse and it included Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum. The author of Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria used the analogy of a photo where one in every six people had been removed to explain why inclusion mattered. “This is what America is like for many people.”

Action: Identify a group often left out of the day-to-day processes of your work.

Community is worth the struggle

One of the events I went to was a mentorship round table on filling up a room with enthusiastic people. One of the most helpful things I heard from most people was an acknowledgement that, yeah, it’s hard. Hard but worth it.

This was backed up by so many conversations that also acknowledged how hard but necessary it is to have people around you and to not do your work in isolation. Even when gathering people is a struggle- and it truly can be a lot of times- don’t give up doing it.

This is true in both my professional and personal worlds, to be honest. And it’s a challenge in both areas! I did learn from some helpful ideas, like making sure to have people in your corner personally, not just professionally. Or not being afraid to ask for people to help you fill a room. Or by always looking to serve other people. But the number one takeaway I got? Don’t give up pursuing people.

Action: Find some way to gather people in the next two weeks- if for no other reason, for practice.

Dig deep to find your core message

Writer and writing guide Joe Bunting led a session on storytelling. Right up front he reminded everybody to find their core message- the one that shows up in all the work they do.

In theory, this is something I understand well enough. It’s the very first thing I suggest organizations do when I work with them on branding. In my own creative life though, having a consistent core message is something that often gets neglected.

Joe helped explain why this happens. Over time, you not only develop the core message, but you develop your craft. Your craft is your toolbox for sharing your message. It includes specific skills like wordsmithing, editing, and design. Craft is important, but it is no substitute for your message. In fact, it is often in tension with your message. While mountaintop moments define your message, day to day work often keeps you engaged at the level of craft.

Action: Write down your core message. Make something in ten minutes to express it. A drawing, a chorus, anything.

Thankfully, weeks like this one are helpful in reconnecting me with my core message of hope and heart. Events like these leave me with a pretty full bucket, excited to get back to work in front of me.

Haiti's Challenge

There are few places in the world harder to live in than Haiti.

I wish this weren’t true, because it’s also a beautiful country in so many ways. But after having visited, I could say it’s easily the most difficult country out of the ones I’ve visited. The political instability, environmental issues, and persistent poverty create all sorts of trouble for Haitians.

My trip there last year was a reminder that no bit of infrastructure could be taken for granted. Neither could quieter moments without much political drama. I twice had to reschedule my visit there due to protests.

The people who lived there helped me understand the day to day challenges of life. “We in a country where everything is in disorder,” a woman named Gernita told us. “When you work, you can’t reap what you sow and we are poor people. This is just how life works.”

Natural disasters and environmental issues challenge Haiti at the same time, and this includes drought. “Sometimes you work and the dry season comes and it kills everything. Sometimes it’s the rainy season and it kills everything.”

She was one of many who expressed how difficult it was to simply survive and earn a basic living.

Haiti isn’t the easiest place to talk about, and yet it’s the perfect place to talk about.

For me, the challenge in talking about Haiti is wanting to go deeper than these problems. I don’t ever want a place and its people to only be defined by their problems.

Haiti possesses a rich and vibrant culture, enthusiastic and jovial people, and natural coastal beauty. This is as much a part of the country’s reality as the food insecurity and political issues. Telling one of these stories without the other doesn’t do the country justice.

I don’t want to make the mistake of not seeing people and only seeing the problems. Haiti is one of the countries that has suffered significantly as a result of many organizations and well-intentioned aid workers portraying the country this way.

I also don’t want to make the error of saying “oh, what happy people, who have so little and have so much joy.” To do so makes light of the reality of poverty and isn’t accurate to how most Haitians I met would want to be seen.

In spite of all this, Haiti is a clear example of how deforestation and poverty are interlinked.

Haiti is both the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and the most deforested. These two issues are deeply interlinked.

Many of the problems manifest themselves in the soil. Deforestation leaves soil vulnerable. Haiti is a frequent site of hurricanes and natural disasters, and without the protection of trees, those events rob the soil of their nutrients.

The last time a hurricane swept through Gernita’s farm, it was devastating. “When the hurricane passed through the land it destroyed all of our plantations—all of our seeds.”

On our newest episode of Grassroots, we’re taking things to Haiti.

Honestly, this just might be the episode that I’m most excited about. The first time I heard back from the producers with the draft of this episode I was floored by how good it sounded. If you have to listen to just one episode, go with this one. (But don’t do that and listen to all the others.)

We worked real hard to make sure that Haitian voices were included- and not only that but also informing our storytelling. This meant staying on a call and spending an hour struggling through terrible internet connection. It meant searching far and wide for voice actors with the appropriate accent. But it was all worth it.

In addition to the Haitian voices– Dezo, the founder of Plant With Purpose’s Haitian program; Jeanetta, a community member who joined his staff; and Gernita herself, we also hear from people who’ve worked in country for a long time. This includes Margaret DeJong from the Mennonite Central Committee, Bob Morikawa from Plant With Purpose, and Brendon Anthony from HarvestCraft.

Grassroots is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and a bunch of other podcast platforms.

In some ways Haiti is one of the most challenging places to talk about, and in other ways it is the perfect place to see where the environment and poverty intersect. It's a challenge, because Haiti has been portrayed in such harmful ways over the years.

Empathy Over Originality

One ever-present creative question is this: how can I come up with an original idea that takes off?

How do you get inspired to create something that is so good that people can’t help but tell their friends? How do you make a video that people want to share all over social media because they’re moved by it? How do you write a song that people want played at their weddings? How do you stand out amidst all that’s out there?

It’s not easy to do. There are so many things competing for people’s attention. But, if we can just make something beautiful that’s never been done before, we’ll cut through the noise. Right?

It’s easy to look at other people who’ve had creative success, and envy the way their work feels so new and inventive. Almost every creative at some point experiences the feeling of wishing they got to a really good idea first. And that only increases our appetite to do something original.

Here’s the catch though, there really is no such thing as an original idea.

Ironically, the harder we try for originality, the more we realize how unattainable it is.

Almost all songs are built off the same patterns of chord progressions. It’s been said that there are only two plots of stories: tragedies and comedies. Trying to do something that hasn’t been done before often leads nowhere.

Maybe this is why Picasso said “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Unless he was stealing from TS Eliot who said “Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.” Then again, Igor Stravinsky has already said “Good composers borrow, great composers steal.” And I stole this observation from Lion King producer Don Hahn at a conference.

Rather than chasing the unattainable benchmark of originality, make empathy the goal instead.

The times that people really resonate with a work of art isn’t when it’s extremely original or informative. It’s when they can see their story and their experiences overlap with the story you’re telling.

This is counterintuitive. Especially if you’ve been in the habit of chasing originality. Originality makes you look for things that set you apart. Empathy makes you ask what you have in common with others.

This is where the gimmicks get separated from the greats. Gimmicks are novel concepts delivered without heart. Great works are shared from the heart. If Hamilton were just a play about American History with a bunch of hip hop, it could’ve been easily dismissed as a gimmick. But deeper stories about ambition, hustle, immigration, success and failure turned it into a story that resonated with people at a heart level.

The best creative works simply help people feel less alone.

If whatever you make leaves people feeling like “I’ve been there, me too,” you’re connecting with people.

If you think about the books, stories, songs, or videos that have meant the most to you, it’s likely because they’ve given you that experience. It’s like somebody knew what you were feeling and put a soundtrack to it. Or finally used the right words to describe it. Or conjured up feelings that were buried deep.

There is so much power in knowing that you’re not alone.

It may be tempting to think that there’s no need to say what other people have said. But the way you’re able to say it in your own authentic voice will be original enough. After all, it’s not like breakup songs are in short supply, but every year, new ones make waves. The same goes for songs about love, letdown, insecurity and many other themes.

When Bon Iver released his first album- three years before it helped him win a Grammy for Best New Artist- much ado was made over the way he wrote it. After a bad breakup, he holed up in a Wisconsin cabin with a lo-fi recorder and penned emotionally raw, sad and nostalgic songs. The album that came out of that was a big success and many people romanticized the story of its creation. But the cabin story wouldn’t have mattered if the album simply wasn’t good. What helped it catch on was the way it used his haunting voice, raw guitar strums, and forlorn lyrics to set a tune to things most people have felt after a loss.

The themes and feelings in Bon Iver’s album- and any other memorable album- weren’t that unique. What was unique was his ability to articulate it and his talent in translating them into music. Your talent and ability to articulate these things are the reason you’re in the role of being a maker.

So if you want to make something that connects with people, ask yourself this: what is something you’ve experienced that taught you a ton?

Don’t think of yourself as trying to make other people understand that unique experience, as if they’re completely foreign to it. Don’t think of yourself as a spectacle because the experience sets you apart.

Instead think of yourself as an ambassador of that part of the human experience. What can you put words to that other people would feel deeply?

What’s one way to communicate that in a way that feels familiar to people? Your creative medium, the type of thing you end up producing, and all the way it interacts with genre and norms are all just a vehicle for the heart of your message.

Take all the effort you were putting towards originality and send it towards empathy. You’ll go pretty far.

It Threatens the Most Vulnerable

Climate change is unjust.

That statement may seem like an obvious one, but it was only after I started paying attention to the ways in which people were affected by climate change that I realized- it’s a cruel phenomenon. It has the harshest effect on people who already suffer a great deal.

I’m talking about the world’s poor. Especially the rural poor. While most common images of poverty depict something urban, poverty is mostly rural. Among those who live in poverty around the world, 85% live in a rural village. This means that they probably grow their own food and farm for an income and that means they need a healthy environment to survive.

The effects of climate change make this harder and harder. Deforestation creates soil infertility. Mass extinction reflects a state of crisis for the environment across the globe. People are being robbed of their way to make a living.

Over the course of my lifetime, we’ve actually made a big dent in the fight against poverty. In 1981, about 42% of the world lived in poverty. Today, that number hovers just above 10%. Most of it persists in rural areas. Poverty isn’t an invincible opponent, but it’s hard to imagine making strides against its final frontier without addressing the environment.

On our latest podcast episode, we’ll be leaning into the urgency of the issue.

From Kenya to Oaxaca to Atlanta.

In Episode 2 of Grassroots, I get to talk to Dr. Paul Robinson. Dr. Robinson grew up in the Democratic Republic of Congo and spent decades of his life studying a unique pastorial tribe living on the frontiers of Kenya and Ethiopia.

He explains how the Gabra herders occupied one of the harshest and most difficult places in the world to survive. But they figured out how to do it by mastering the art of counting and predicting the rain. With precision, they knew where to move their herds so that all could be fed.

Their way of living, however, is one that is being lost as climate change makes an impact on East Africa. What will happen to them now? I got to ask Dr. Robinson about what he’s heard from the Gabra elders over the course of years.

I also got to hear from Luis, Plant With Purpose’s Country Director in Mexico. He explained how a problem like not being able to grow enough food is one of the biggest drivers of immigration.

I then got to speak with Breanna Lathrop and Veronica Squires, who co-wrote the book How Neighborhoods Make Us Sick. I especially wanted to talk to them more about an idea in the book: our ZIP Codes determine our life expectancy more than our genetic code does.

Breanna and Veronica are medical practitioners based in Atlanta’s Good Samaritan Hospital, they were definitely able to help shine light on how environmental conditions also factor into that same dynamic.

Ultimately, they introduce the concept of social determinants, one that helped expand the way I think of vulnerability.

It’s an urgent matter.

One of the biggest reasons I wanted to release this episode really early in the series was to highlight the urgency of climate change and environmental issues. For a long time, I thought of it as an important topic, but perhaps not a top priority. That changed upon meeting people who were affected.

I started to realize that it’s not just a matter of how bad the environment might be by 2040. The environment is already unhealthy. And that’s already negatively affecting so many around the world.

Between Dr. Robinson’s mastery of the art of oral storytelling and Veronica and Breanna’s passion for seeing a healthier planet and healthier neighborhoods around Atlanta, I’m convinced we’ve assembled some of the most ideal people to help reveal the urgency of the challenge ahead of us.

Grassroots is a podcast about hope for a weary land. It's a place where leading voices on faith and the environment join voices from marginalized communities. Because whether you're in the Amazon or the Arctic Circle, Africa or Arkansas, or our very own backyard, you're living on the frontlines of this issue.

I hope you’ll find listening to this podcast as enlightening as making it was for me. Perhaps something you hear will ignite further clarity, or a new concern, or a bolder conviction. 

GrassRoots is available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Anchor. New episodes release biweekly.

Always look at root causes

Is your contribution to the world treating a symptom or curing a disease?

There are so many important and urgent causes out there. It seems like every week there’s a new urgent need to respond to. Many of them are legitimately urgent. At a certain point, though, you have to wonder if putting out all these fires is enough or if we should be asking where these fires are coming from in the first place.

Putting out scattered fires is often what the world of nonprofits and social causes can feel like. Whenever a topic is trending, it can send large amounts of interests or donations to organizations that have immediate responses in place. This response is important, but it often doesn’t address the underlying issues.

For example, if a hurricane strikes Haiti, much attention would be drawn towards relief efforts to clean up and provide immediate aid. But that in and of itself wouldn’t address the country’s vulnerability or the environmental conditions that make it prone to disaster.

Or maybe a devastating photograph from a civil war on the other side of the world starts appearing online and the world is alarmed into compassion. Efforts to provide immediate aid are good, but they are different from the long term work needed to build peace in the area.

My career in the nonprofit world thus far has moved me from simply being drawn to the most alarming stories to moving towards organizations with long term plans to empower people, reduce vulnerability, and commit to the long term work needed to create lasting change.

It seems many others are also slowly waking up to the importance of addressing root causes rather than being content with band aid solutions. At the same time, so much good could be done if this value was more widespread. Communicating the importance of root causes continues to become even more important.

How to communicate going after root causes.

This isn’t to downplay the importance of immediate responses. In the moments just after a major disaster, the arrival of aid can make the difference between life or death for thousands. These sorts of solutions absolutely have their place.

But working towards root causes means working towards a world where that sort of calamity will never happen again. Or at least it wouldn’t devastate people in the way that it has in the past. 

Organizations that do work that addresses root causes should take the time to make sure their audience really understands why this is important and what a difference it makes. Of course, in order to communicate this well, the organization must understand it well internally.

Often, it’s helpful to start with the image, story, or statistic that most people would immediately find jarring and work your way backwards. Observe what’s happening and ask why. Then ask why that cause is happening. And keep going.

Sometimes it helps to take this exercise very literally. Write out causes and effects and draw arrows. This might not be the most nuanced depiction of an issue, but it will help you see more clearly how one thing leads to another.

Roots are a great metaphor; causes are intertwined and connected.

At some point, that exercise might start to get messy. You’ll discover that one cause is also an effect and one cause is also an effect. When it feels like you’ve arrived at a vicious cycle, it’s a good sign that you’ve found some roots.

Just like roots in the natural world, social, political, and environmental problems are all connected and intertwined. For example, environmental issues are one of the leading causes of poverty around the world. But, living in poverty also leads to a surge in practices that ultimately destroy the environment.

This cycle of root causes is the one I work with every day at Plant With Purpose. It’s also one I cover extensively on the first episode of my podcast Grassroots. It’s called The Roots of Everything.

I spend time talking with Lucy McCray from The Freedom Story about how environmental issues and poverty make people vulnerable to the challenge of human trafficking and exploitation. I talk to a marine biologist from Mozambique, Abdul Ada about how the environment will determine how people recover financially from the effects of Cyclone Idai. I also explore the economic-environmental connection in the United States with Appalachian Voices.

If you want an example of some people who’ve centered their work around the value of root causes, I recommend downloading the podcast and giving it a listen. Each interview contains insights about exactly this topic.

Take a second to imagine the difference in the world that would result from people being as committed to lasting solutions as they are to the idea of quick fixes. Lasting change requires addressing problems at their roots.

Is your work addressing a long term cause? If so, are you communicating this clearly? Look for ways to integrate your commitment to lasting change into your messaging. The more people see this emphasized, the more they’ll be reminded: it matters.