An Army of Normal Folks - An Army of Normal Dead Folks: Thomas Clarkson

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

We’re kicking off a new special series called “An Army of Normal Dead Folks”, where we celebrate normal folks from history who did what they could to serve their fellow man. With our friend Larry Reed, our first episode features abolitionist Thomas Clarkson!  Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At one moment in anguish, he couldn't take it anymore. He got off his horse, fell to his knees, and said, if what I have written is true, someone must see these calamities to an end. And he resolved right then and there to do whatever necessary to bring it into slavery. Welcome to an Army of Normal, folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, a father, an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in inner city Memphis. And the last part, it somehow led to an Oscar for the film about our team. That movie's called Undefeated.

Guys, I believe our country's problems will never be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits talking big words that nobody understands on CNN and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks. Us, just you and me deciding, hey, you know what? Maybe I can help. That's exactly what Thomas Clarkson did. His efforts led to the abolition of the slave trade in Britain, and today, along with Larry

Reid, the author of Real Heroes, we pay tribute to him as part of our special series, get this, An Army of normal dead folks. I cannot wait for you to meet Thomas Clarkson right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more.

After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens.

So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Katie Couric. Well, the election is in the home stretch and I'm exhausted. But turns out the end is near, right in time for a new season of my podcast, Next Question. This podcast is for people like me who need a little perspective and insight. I'm bringing in some FOKs, friends of Katie's, to help me out like Ezra Klein, Van Jones, Jen Psaki, Ested Herndon.

But we're also gonna have some fun, even though these days fun and politics seems like an oxymoron. But we'll do that thanks to some of my friends like Samantha Bee, Roy Wood Jr., and Charlemagne the God. We're gonna take some viewer questions as well. I mean, isn't that what democracy is all about? Power to the podcast for the

people. So whether you're obsessed with the news or just trying to figure out what's going on, this season of Next Question is for you. Check out our new season of Next Question with me, Katie Couric, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all. I'm Maria Fernanda Diaz. My podcast, When You're Invisible, is my love letter to the working class people and immigrants who shaped my life. I get to talk to a lot of people who form the backbone of our society, but who have

never been interviewed before. Season two is all about community, organizing, and being underestimated. All the greatest changes have happened when a couple of people said, this sucks, let's do something about it. I can't have more than $2,000 in my bank account, or else I can't get disability benefits. They won't let you succeed. I know we get paid to serve you guys,

but like, be respectful. We're made out of the same things. Bone, body, blood. It's rare to have black male teachers. Sometimes I am the lesson and I'm also the testament. Listen to When You're Invisible as part of the MyCultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Is your country falling apart? Feeling tired, depressed, a little bit revolutionary? Consider this, start your own country. I planted the flag. I just kind of looked out of like, this is mine, I own this. It's surprisingly easy. 55 gallons of water, 500 pounds of concrete. Everybody's doing it.

I am King Ernest Emmanuel. I am the Queen of La Donia. I'm Jackson I, King of Capriburg. I am the Supreme Leader of the Grand Republic of Montonia. Be part of a great colonial tradition. Why can't I track my own country? My forefathers did that themselves. What could go wrong? No country willingly gives up their territory.

I was making a rocket with a black powder, you know, with explosive warheads. Oh my God. What is that? Bullets. Bullet god. What is that? Bullets. Bullet holes. We need help! We still have the off-road portion to go. Listen to Escape from Zakistan.

And we're losing daylight fast. That's Escape from Z-A-Q-istan on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So the book says Lawrence Reed. So I feel like I'm supposed to welcome Lawrence Reed to the show, but it's just Larry. That's right. I go by Larry. Except unless you're from the IRS, then you got to call me a Larry. I understand. Yeah. When the government calls your Lawrence. That's right. Otherwise, Larry. Flew in from Atlanta to join us and really appreciate your time.

My pleasure. Larry Reed is the author of Real Heroes, subtitled Inspiring True Stories of Courage, Character and Conviction. And I gotta admit to you until Alex brought me the book, I'd never seen it, held it, touched it, read it. And in preparation for your visit, Larry, you know, I started tooling through a few chapters and there were some that Alex wanted me to specifically read, which of course being the diligent host that I am, I do as my producer tells me. And so I read those. Or else.

But what happened after reading those was I woke up at five this morning and read most of the book because I was just enthralled and every story is so interesting. So let me tell the readers what this book is and then we'll get into it. And actually your book and my book in one sense is very similar in that each chapter is a distinct story unto itself. Yes.

Which is how I wrote Against the Grain. Certainly completely different type of content, but it was my hope that when reading my book, you could read a chapter, set it down, and come back and read another chapter in a week and that would be fine. And that is what this book is. It is a book of 40 chapters. Each describes a hero as a real hero, as the book's title would indicate. Each chapter is, I would say between five and eight pages, so enough that you could read with your breakfast each morning. But it is beautifully researched.

And you can tell written, Larry, by you with an enormous care for the story. And most importantly, while each story is really historically interesting, each tells a story of exactly what your subtitle says, a person with courage, character, and conviction. But maybe even more importantly, each story is inspirational. And the reason I'm so excited about getting into this with you is because our whole idea here at An Army of Normal Folks is that governments and bigwigs are not ultimately who's gonna change or fix what else is, but more just the average person who sees an area need, employs their passion

and discipline, and makes extraordinary changes in the area of the world. And your book is a historical iteration of 40 such stories. Yes. Well, thank you, Bill. How long did it take you to write this thing? And why did you write this thing? Well, I'll take your second question first. I've always been fascinated, for as long as I can remember, with uncommon, extraordinary

people. I think it goes back to something my father taught me when I was a young boy, and that is that commonness is nothing to aspire to. That it's what is uncommon about each and every one of us that really we owe so much gratitude for. The uncommon, the uncommonly good, the uncommonly honest, the uncommonly faithful, the uncommonly generous. You would never tell your child as they're growing up, work hard and someday maybe you can become common. I mean, that would be a kind of child abuse.

You want your child to grow up to be uncommon and uncommonly good in every way. So I've always had a fascination with men and women who accomplish great things, but who come from humble beginnings. And so- You mean average people. Yeah, average people, that's right.

And you know, if a firefighter rushes into a burning building and saves a child, everybody would regard that person, for that moment anyway, a hero. And I wouldn't take anything away from such a person, but I was interested when I started writing this book in finding people who typically weren't well-known, but whose stories deserved to be dusted off and retold, but who lived not just heroic moments, but heroic lives. And so every one of the people in this book did so much more than a momentary heroism.

They were heroic because they had the character to be a hero. And I know this is important to you. I saw Undefeated last night and the message came through loud and clear that character makes all the difference in the world. So the people I'm talking about in Real Heroes, all were people of character, not in every case from the moment of adulthood. Many of them had an epiphany. Many of them came from backgrounds quite questionable and you might have thought that that person wasn't going to go anywhere in life, but they did. They made a change. They had an epiphany and made character a high priority and the result of that was they left the made a change they had an epiphany and made character a high priority and in the result

The result of that was they left the world a better place And you just wanted to share those stories with everybody is your idea that these stories as a collection Become inspiring for other folks who are on the sidelines to engage? Exactly. I wanted people to read it and be inspired. I wanted them to come away saying, wow, maybe I need to step up to the plate a little more often, raise my standard of character, and maybe I can leave a kind of mark that some of these people in this book left. All right. Well, when writing something like this, I mean, look, not everybody's written a book and I get that.

When I wrote my book, it took me a year and a half and it was arduous, checking facts, making sure what I was saying wasn't, you know, over the top. But so much of my book is me regurgitating my own thoughts and my own beliefs, not historical values. Not historical values is the wrong word, not historical accuracies. This had to have been a monumental undertaking to not only tell the stories, to tell them in a short format so that you could tell so many and to get it right. How long did this take you? It took me a little over a year. I can't believe that that it only took a year. That to me is a

short period of time for this thing. Well it was many long hours of research and reading. I started out with a list of people that I knew I wanted to write about. Some of them along the way I decided, well, for various reasons, maybe I won't include that one. But then I discovered other people as a result of my research that I didn't know of before that I wanted to cover. I ended up with, I think, with about 60 chapters and the publisher said, that's about 20 too many. So I had to cut it back. I disagree, or it's enough to start your second one. That's right. Yeah, I got a good start on the second one.

I don't know the story of the 20 that were left on the edit floor. I want to know those too. Well, there's some good ones. And even though they didn't make it in the book, I think most of those 20 I did write about and publish as articles, which could be chapters in a future book. Got it. Got it. So a year. What's that? So a year. Yeah, about a year.

That's insane. I had to do one a week just to meet my schedule. There's no way. I mean, if I'd have started on this in 1987, I'd still be writing it. I don't even know how you do all this work. So, I want to go through a few chapters. Unfortunately, we don't have the time to go through every chapter. But there's a few that actually, to be candid, Alex said, you know, Bill, make sure you pay attention to these particular chapters. And then I added one to his this morning that really got to me.

And so we'll go in chronological order of the ones I just would love for you to kind of tell our listeners a little more about. Okay. about. So in no particular order other than chronological throughout your table of contents, a moral steam engine that never quit, Thomas Clarkson, and I have to tell you, never heard the name before I read this this morning. Yeah, I didn't know of Thomas Clarkson until maybe 20 years ago, even though I knew much about the story of the anti-slavery movement in Britain.

His name just hadn't come up. Most people know the name of William Wilberforce from that period. Now, there's a name I've studied in, I think, history class or something before. Yeah, and I found. Who has something to do with Amazing Grace. That's right.

Is that not right? That's right. His former pastor, when Wilberforce was a young man, his pastor was John Newton. Who wrote Amazing Grace. Amazing Grace. That's right. Well, there's the... You've got my sum cumulative total of historical knowledge. Yeah, I did that. Well, Clarkson is important even in the estimation of William Wilberforce. Historians give so much credit to Wilberforce and he does deserve a great deal for bringing an end to the slave

trade and then abolishing slavery within the British Empire itself. But Wilberforce himself said he couldn't have done what he did without the help of Thomas Clarkson. He was his right-hand man. He was the one who inspired him. Wilberforce was the actual parliamentarian. He was the politician that got policy eventually passed into law to stop the slave trade. But he would have never been able to do that, I learned today, had it not been for Mr. Clarkson. Oh, yeah. Clarkson created the world's first think tank. It was a single issue think tank, the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.

He created that in 1787 with the help of 11 other people who were all Quakers. And they needed somebody in Parliament to carry a bill to abolish the trade in slaves, and they thought William Wilberforce would be a good candidate. So they famously met with him, knew that he was sympathetic to the cause, but wanted him to muster the courage to actually introduce the bill,

which he would do every year for the next 20 years until it passed. But meantime, you had Clarkson riding 35,000 miles on horseback all over Britain, giving lectures, sermons, gathering evidence, taking testimony, building a movement among the general public that would put pressure on Parliament to do the right thing. They ultimately prevail. We'll be right back. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max.

You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout?

Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Katie Couric. Well, the election is in the home stretch and I'm exhausted, but turns out the end is near, right in time for a new season of my podcast, Next Question. This podcast is for people like me who need a little perspective and insight.

I'm bringing in some FOKs, friends of Katie's, to help me out like Ezra Klein, Van Jones, Jen Psaki, Ested Herndon. But we're also going to have some fun, even though these days fun and politics seems like an oxymoron. But we'll do that thanks to some of my friends like Samantha Bee, Roy Wood Jr., and Charlemagne the God. We're gonna take some viewer questions as well. I mean, isn't that what democracy is all about?

Power to the podcast for the people. So whether you're obsessed with the news or just trying to figure out what's going on, this season of Next Question is for you. Check out our new season of Next Question with me, Katie Couric, on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all. I'm Maria Fernanda Diaz.

My podcast, When You're Invisible, is my love letter to the working class people and immigrants who shaped my life. I get to talk to a lot of people who form the backbone of our society, but who have never been interviewed before. Season two is all about community, organizing, and being underestimated. All the greatest changes have happened when a couple of people said, this sucks, let's do something about it.

I can't have more than $2,000 in my bank account or else I can't get disability benefits. They won't let you succeed. I know we get paid to serve you guys, but be respectful. We're made out of the same things, bone, body, blood. It's rare to have black male teachers. Sometimes I am the lesson and I'm also the testament. Listen to When You're Invisible as part of the MyCultura podcast network.

Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Is your country falling apart? Feeling tired, depressed, a little bit revolutionary? Consider this. Start your own country. I planted the flag. I just kind of looked out of like, this is mine. I own this. It's surprisingly easy. There are 55 gallons of water, 500 pounds of concrete.

Everybody's doing it. I am King Ernest Emmanuel. I am the Queen of La Donia. I'm Jackson I, King of Capriberg. I am the Supreme Leader of the Grand Republic of Montonia. Be part of a great colonial tradition. Why can't I create my own country? My forefathers did that themselves.

What could go wrong? No country willingly gives up their territory. I was making a rocket with the black powder, you know, with explosive warheads. Oh my God. What is that? Bullets. Bullet holes, yeah. We need help!

We still have the off-road portion to go. Listen to Escape from Zakistan. And we're losing daylight fast. That's Escape from Z-A-Q-istan on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So I'm going to read something that's directly from your book, that when I read it, it gave me chills. At sea in late November 1781, the captain of the British slave ship Zong did the unspeakable. He ordered his crew to throw 133 chained black Africans overboard to their deaths.

He reckoned that by falsely claiming the ship had run out of fresh water, he could collect more for the cargo from the ship's insurer than he could fetch at a slave auction in Jamaica. The captain and crew were found out, but not one person on the Zong after was prosecuted for murder. A London court ruled the matter a civil dispute between an insurance firm and a client. As for the Africans, the judge declared that their drowning was just as if horses were killed, which was not far removed from the conventional wisdom of the time. Shocking. Shocking, isn't it? But it was not uncommon in those days. And the backstory to that episode involving the ship, the Zong, was that it had an unusually long voyage.

It didn't apprehend a sufficient number of Africans as slaves on the first stop or two in Africa. They had to spend weeks stopping in several places in Africa until they had enough to fill the ship. And what that meant was that those who had been on the ship in chains and enslaved, by the time the ship left Africa for ports in the West Indies, they were malnourished, they were emaciated. And as they approached the West Indies, the captain of the ship took inventory and realized that he wouldn't get much for them. They were too sick, too near death to proceed to auction. So he took the sickest of them, about 120 or so, and threw them overboard.

And not just threw them overboard, they were changed. Absolutely. And then he put in for an insurance claim saying that, well, we had to throw some of the, quote, cargo overboard because of the shortage of water on the ship. This is treating human beings no differently than a large cargo ship today would treat grain that got wet. Yeah, exactly. It's just a spoiled asset. That's right.

And then had been going on for centuries. Britain in the late 18th century was the world's biggest slave trading power, but there were many nations that had been involved in this grisly business for centuries. So what was Clarkson's background? Well, he was a student when this happened, planning to go to Cambridge, hoping to become a minister in the Anglican Church. But there was a professor at Cambridge who every year would announce a topic that students could enter an essay contest about. And this was a professor who was very moved

by the jury and the verdict in the Zong case. He was appalled by nobody being prosecuted for murder. was appalled by nobody being prosecuted for murder. So he decided to make the issue, this is almost verbatim, resolved that it is wrong for one man to own another. Any Cambridge student could enter that contest. And every year, whatever the topic was, many did because it carried a very coveted prize and a lot of notoriety for the winner. And Thomas Clarkson decided to enter the contest, but he knew nothing about slavery.

He'd never seen it in any way firsthand. But he was a very diligent student and he decided that he wasn't going to simply write something off the top of his head. He was going to try to do some research. So he went down to the ports of Bristol and Portsmouth to try to interview any crew members of slave ships who would talk. And some of those men did have a conscience and they told him stories of what they had seen at sea. And Clarkson wrote an essay and came to the very powerful conclusion in it that this was wrong,

that this was an inhumane institution, a blot on the conscience of Britain and that it must end. And then after he won first prize in the essay contest, there's a famous moment where it happened to this day is marked along a road outside of London by an obelisk, but he was on his horse headed back to his hometown contemplating all that he had learned in the process of researching this essay. And at one moment in anguish, he couldn't take it anymore. He got off his horse, fell to his knees, and said, if what I have written is true, someone must see these calamities to an end. And he resolved right then and there to do whatever necessary to

bring an end to slavery. He wouldn't have known, of course, that he would spend the next 61 years of his life. He set aside his planned profession as an Anglican minister to devote full-time to forming organizations, taking testimony, spreading the word about this evil institution that had been around for centuries, and he succeeded. It could be argued that Thomas Clarkson was the beginning and the end of slavery. Oh, absolutely. And certainly he was one of the greatest humanitarians ever to live. And so few people even know his name. I know. Isn't that a shame? There is a reason for that, and that is that even though William

Wilberforce credited him with immense courage and value in the campaign against slavery. One of Wilberforce's sons wrote the first biography of his father. And because he wanted to shine the light entirely on his father, he virtually excluded any mention of Thomas Clarkson. And historians subsequently looked to that as the definitive biography of Wilberforce.

So Clarkson ended up being shortchanged by historians. But in more recent years, his reputation has been dusted off. And thanks in part to a movie called Amazing Grace that came out about 20 years ago, the name Clarkson is better known today than it was for decades. And rightly so.

You know what's interesting as I hear you, we recently did a podcast about the movie coming out, Bonhoeffer, from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And as I learned more and more about the Bonhoeffer story, which I was only very peripherally aware of. And I started to understand one of the things, one of Bonhoeffer's most important contributions He brought people, he awoke people from their social slumber. And that's what I mean, that's my words. And what I mean is, I think in general people in Germany knew Hitler was bad, but you know, things were getting okay in Germany. And I think in general they knew that the Jewish population in Germany was dealing with

some strife. But they didn't want to ask too many questions because it really didn't affect their life. In other words, I don't think the largest population of people in Germany were actively engaged in rounding up and gassing Jews. But their complacency on the issue made them complicit. And as I read the story of Thomas Clarkson, I can't help but wonder if there was this majority of subjects in Great Britain who certainly knew the slave trade was going on, but they weren't profiting from it, or they weren't directly profiting from it, and they weren't engaged in it.

And it was kind of somebody else's problem. That's right. Kind of like many Germans during World War II. And that complacency then ultimately history would show also makes them complicit in the sin and the horror. And it took somebody like Dietrich Bonhoeffer to wake them up from their complacency. And as I read the story of Thomas Clarkson, I can't help but wonder if his greatest contribution was just waking up the public to the horror

of what their country was doing and making them face the realities of it. Oh, very definitely, Bill. In 1770, I believe it was, there was a court order or decision in Britain that banned slavery within Great Britain. There hadn't been much of it within the country. British slavery took place in the West Indies, for the most part, with captured Africans

that the Brits would take across the Atlantic to the West Indies for the most part, with captured Africans that the Brits would take across the Atlantic to the West Indies. So the typical British citizen by the 1780s, they couldn't visually see slavery. It didn't exist within Great Britain. You couldn't walk down the street to a plantation and watch slaves being whipped or anything. You couldn't see it. So Clarkson had the challenge of making it real to the British people. He turned out to be a genius in marketing.

He knew that images would go a long way to convincing people how evil this institution was. So he went to Josiah Wedgwood, the pottery business man, who he knew to be sympathetic to the cause, and he said, we need an image that we can put on plates, on metals, anything. If they had t-shirts then they would have put it on t-shirts, I'm sure. And Wedgewood created an image of a kneeling black man with his hands in prayer looking skyward, and around that image, wherever it appeared, were the words, Am I not a man and a brother?

Well, that had a powerful impact on the British people. That was a question now every- It woke them up. Yeah, they had to answer it. They had to deal with it. And they had to learn firsthand from those who could say, I saw it in the West Indies. One escaped slave, Olaudah Equiano, he knew slavery very well, but he made his way back to Britain and joined the

anti-slavery cause, and he was able, along with Clarkson's help, to tell the people here's what I saw. So it became real to them, and when that happened, its days were numbered. Ironically enough, Wedgwood, I assume, is the fine china that many of us have in our homes today. That's the guy. He started the company. Well, from now on, I don't buy Noritake. I buy Wedgwood. Thomas Clarkson, a normal guy who got passionate about an issue, used his abilities, saw a need and filled it and changed

the world. And one of his biographers summed him up so well, Ellen Gibson Wilson, when she said this, Thomas Clarkson, 1760 to 1846, a man who gave his life to help people he never met from lands he never saw. Doesn't get any better than that. No. Thank you for joining us for this special series, An Army of Normal Dead Folks. I mean, Alex, I can't believe we're actually calling it an Army of Normal Dead Folks. You like that, huh?

I kind of do like that. It's pretty funny. You're welcome. Yeah, thank you. Your producer's not always as dumb as you say. Oh, I don't think you're dumb as I say I is. Just ignoring. Okay.

All right. Well, here's the deal. If Thomas Clarkson or other episodes have inspired you in general, or better yet, by taking action, by making your own stand in our time, buying Larry Reed's book, Real Heroes, where this story came from, or if you have story ideas for this series, please let me know.

I'd love to hear about it. You can write me anytime at billatnormalfolks.us, and I promise I will respond. And yes, I'm asking you for stories that will go to an army of normal dead folks. Actually, it'll go to a live folks, but it's about dead folks. Yeah, too live about dead folks. Anybody who's a true dead folks, well, dead folks, but what we're trying to do is highlight dead folks that we can no longer talk to but we're an army if they were

alive today there would be an army of normal folks but since they're dead they're now an army of normal dead folks. They can still inspire us even though they're dead. That's right, dead inspirational dead folks. So send us stories of inspirational dead folks because we want to highlight them too. Why discriminate? Why discriminate why discriminate? Why hold it against somebody for dying All right. Well if you enjoyed this episode share it friends and on social subscribe to the podcast rate interview it Join the army at normal folks dot us consider becoming a premium member there all of these things that will help us grow an army of normal folks and shop talk and an army of normal dead

folks. Thanks to our producer Iron Light Labs. I don't know if they'll continue to produce us after we highlight dead people, but thanks to them anyway. I'm Bill Courtney. Until next time, do what you can. Do what you can. going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. But we're also going to have some fun, thanks to some of my friends like Samantha Bee and Charlemagne the God. We're going to take some viewer questions as well. I mean, isn't that what democracy is all about?

Check out our new season of Next Question with me, Katie Couric, on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all. I'm Maria Fernandez. When You're Invisible is my love letter to the working class people and immigrants who shaped me. Season 2 shares stories about community and being underestimated. All the greatest changes have happened when a couple of people said, this sucks, let's do something about it.

We get paid to serve you, but we're made out of the same things. It's rare to have black male teachers. Sometimes I am the testament. Listen to When You're Invisible on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Had enough of this country? Ever dreamt about starting your own? I planted the flag. This is mine. I own this. It's surprisingly easy.

55 gallons of water, 500 pounds of concrete. Or maybe not. No country willingly gives up their territory. Oh my God. What is that? Bullets. Listen to Escape from Zakistan. That's Escape from Z-A-Q-istan

on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.