An Army of Normal Folks - Chris Brewster: We Don't Love Kids in Oklahoma (Pt 1)

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

When 80% of kids aren't reading on grade level in Oklahoma, Chris Brewster believes that they don't love kids in his state. His wife told him "Suck it princess, get to work" and so Chris did. He founded Santa Fe South Schools, which has an inner-city population of 5,000 students that usually score in the bottom 5-10% in the state, but their elementary and early childhood students are in the top 5-10%! Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When people ask me the sort of broad question, what's wrong with education in Oklahoma? We managed to languish around 50th, sometimes up to 47th, 48th, in the nation, in almost all indicators. What's wrong with education in Oklahoma? And I say something that kind of pisses some people off sometimes. And what it is is, I say, I don't think we love kids in Oklahoma. What do you mean we don't love kids in Oklahoma? I said, well, I don't think we love. I can prove to you that we don't love children in Oklahoma.

I think we love our kids and those that... You love your own children. Yeah, I'm not saying you don't love your kids. Or those that play football with your kids or soccer, or go to church with your kids. I mean, you might even like some of those kids, but there is a mountain of evidence that we do not love those kids. Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.

I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband. I'm a father. I'm an entrepreneur. And I've been a football. coach in inner city Memphis, and that last part somehow led to an Oscar for the film about our team. That movie is called Undefeated. Guys, I believe our country's problems are never going to be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits using big words that nobody ever

uses on CNN and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks. Guys, that's us, just you and me deciding, hey, you know what? Maybe I can help. That's what Chris Brewster, the voice you just heard, has done. Chris has made his life's work loving all kids in Oklahoma. He's the founder of Santa Fe South Schools, the largest comprehensive charter school in the state with 12 different campuses serving 5,000 students, and they're achieving extraordinary responsibility. souls. I cannot wait for you to meet Chris right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. Hi there, this is Josh Clark from the Stuff You Should Know podcast. If you've been thinking,

man alive, I could go for some good true crime podcast episodes, then have we got good news for you? Stuff You Should Know just released a playlist of 12 of our best true crime episodes of all time. There's a shootout in broad daylight, people using axes in really terrible ways. Disappearances, legendary heists, the whole nine yards. So check out the stuff you should know true crime playlist. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. At 19, Elena Sada believed she had found her calling. In the new season of Sacred Scandal, we pulled back the curtain on a life built on devotion and deception.

A man of God, Marcial Massiel, looked Elena in the eye and promised her a life of purpose within the Legion of Christ. My name is Elena Sada and this is my story. It's a story of how I learned to hide, to cry, to survive and eventually how I got out. This season on Sacred Scandal hear the full story from the woman who lived it. Witness the journey from devout follower to determine survivor as Elena exposes the man behind the cloth and the system that protected him. Even the darkest secrets eventually find their way to the lights. Listen to Secret Scandal, the mini-secrets of Marcial Masiel as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network on the IHeard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Bridget Todd, host of the Tech and Culture Podcast, There Are No Grows on the Internet. There Are No Gros on the Internet is not just about tech. It's about culture and policy and art and expression and how we as humans exist and fit with one another. In our new season, I'm talking to people like Emile Dash, an OG entrepreneur and writer who refuses to be cynical about the internet. I love tech. You know, I've been a nerd my whole life, but it does have to be for something. Like, it's not just for its own sake. It's a fascinating exploration about the power of the internet for both good and bad.

They use WhatsApp to get the price of rice at the market that is often 12 hours away. They're not going to be like, we don't like the terms of service, therefore we're not trading rice this season. It's an inspiring story that focuses on people as the core building blocks of the internet. platforms exist because of the regular people on them. And I think that's a real important story to keep repeating. I created there are no girls on the internet because the future belongs to all of us. New episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Listen to there are no girls on the internet on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcast. I had this like overwhelming sensation that I had to call it right then. And I just hit call. I said, you know, hey, I'm Jacob Schick. I'm the CEO of One Tribe Foundation. And I just wanted to call on and let her know there's a lot of people battling some of the very same things you're battling, and there is help out there. The Good Stuff Podcast, season two, takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a non-profit

fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. I was married to a combat army veteran, and he actually took his own life to suicide. One Tribe saved my life twice. There's a lot of love that flows through this place, and it's sincere. Now it's a personal mission. Don't have to go to any more funerals, you know.

I got blown up on a React mission. I ended up having amputation below the knee of my right leg and a traumatic brain injury because I landed on my head. Welcome to Season 2 of the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Chris Brewster, welcome to Memphis. Good morning.

Where'd you find in? Last night sometime. Last night sometime. And I hear Alex is, Alex has told me you got a busy day here in Memphis. We do, we do. With some of your friends, Bill. We could talk about it. Yeah.

So where are you headed after this? Do you even know? We're going to do some work studying how you guys are attacking the sort of the health care initiative. Oh, so you're going to go see Scott Morris and Church Health? That's right. Good. And get to figure out how Memphis is solving for underinsured or uninsured health care, especially for kids. That's my.

I think you're going to be floored. Yeah. I think, do you know much about the facility? I've been to Memphis a couple of times looking at some of the ed reform stuff here, and I visit the Cross Town Concourse because we're looking at a mall project, but never looked at any of the health care. So I'm excited about that. I've been learning and reading.

It's pretty impressive. We'll get to that later in your story. Everybody, Chris, is from Oklahoma City, and he is the pastor of the well, which is a Southern Baptist Church, which I don't think he's handling snakes or anything, but it's still Southern Baptist. I don't know, you're handling snakes over there. Well, not unless they get in a building.

Then they tell me there's a snake in the building. Hey, it's just, you know, I'm a presbyterian. I'm going to, you know, take my, you know, I'm sure you think we're heathens. All right. And so then for the purposes of our time together today, and very impressively, folks, he is the founder and superintendent of Santa Fe South Schools.

spoiler alert he founded it it's a charter school organization and we'll get into all of how a pastor is a superintendent of schools and and all of it and before we start I want to say that I love all of our interviews and guests but your work is near and dear to my heart because your focus is on schools and children yep which is what I I've spent the last 35 years of my life engaged with. So I feel like we're probably going to reveal that we're kindred spirits by the end of this chat. And I'm genuinely very excited to visit with you today.

And I can't wait to hear, I can't wait to learn from what you have to share with, with me in our audience. So first, though, tell me about you. You know, where are you from? What do it? Tell me, tell me how you kind of came around and your story kind of picks up when you start teaching, but get us there. Well, my, my daddy is in Oakey from the Bixby area in Oklahoma, and my mom is from southeast Missouri. If you're from Missouri, you say Missouri. I was just to understand that. I thought there was an eye on the end of that word.

Not for real folks from Missouri. I love it. The Show Me State folks will understand that. But they met in college at OBU in Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, Oklahoma. And my dad came from the kind of family that my mom's family probably would not have been supportive of. He came from alcoholic, divorced family, a lot of issues. My grandpa was a high steel worker who traveled around all over the country building, skyscrapers and dams and stuff. And was a functioning alcoholic, and so it was hard on the family.

I bet he was a tough man. Yeah, my grandpa was a, I only met him once, but he was a tough man. He used to, my dad would talk about the way that he and his crew would work drunk because it would stabilize their nerves to be up on top of those buildings. Forget what alcohol may do to your balance walking around out there, but at least we're not nervous when we're falling off a scarecre. Not an OSHA approved safety technique for sure. That's for sure.

So I grew up here in the stories of, you know, my dad's upbringing, and he was saved. He found a relationship with God as a young man, was mentored and really kind of found his own way. My dad's a tough man. He's one of my heroes, probably my main earthly hero, to come from the background he came from.

He had a learning disability, put himself through college. He was dyslexic, right? Put himself through college, through graduate school, married way up. He's taught all of his boys to do the same. thing. We've all married way up. And both he and my mom felt a call to serve overseas at some point and served in local churches until 76 or so when they went to the Philippines. I was born in Kansas City,

lived in Topeka, Kansas, and a few places around the Midwest until the last church they served in the U.S. was in Conno Wingo, Maryland. And so we left the East Coast and went to the Philippines. I grew up in the Philippines from about second grade on until I got. graduated from high school and came back. I don't think I realized that. So you grew up and lived in the Philippines from the second grade till the end of high school. Yeah, I was a missionary kid. My siblings and I grew up around people like my parents who were highly educated,

extremely talented, who spent their life in service. That's what they did. How many siblings? I've got three, so two brothers and a sister. And what is it like as an American Anglo-Saxon kid? spending your entire childhood in a place like the Philippines because you are a minority. Yeah, it was really, my minority experience was radically different than the minority experience in the U.S., which is part of my sort of, the arc of my story was formed early because

we were accepted and loved and cared for as a minority and honored by the Filipino people treated with tremendous hospitality and graciousness. they had had a deep loyalty to Americans since they were liberated during World War II. General MacArthur and others... I was going to say MacArthur's still a hero there. Still a hero, right? So I grew up in a society that revered America

and honored those that would come, especially those were missionaries that would come and genuinely serve to help other people. My minority experience was very different than when I came back to go to college here in the U.S. and I saw a really different approach to how minorities are treated in the country that I have been taught

was the land of the free and home of the brave. And it was very patriotic in my upbringing, but I'd never really lived in the U.S. So when I came back, it was jarring to me to see the sort of radical inequity in society, but even in the church. Like, what's going on on Sunday morning? We're radically segregated, socioeconomically divided. And after about one year back in the States,

I was like, I'm done with this. I got to go back. I got to go somewhere else because this country doesn't have this thing right. And this is supposed to be a country founded on, you know, Christian principles. There's this disconnect between what I grew up hearing for the foundational principles and the reality of, you know, vast swaths of kids who just didn't have opportunity and mostly black and brown kids. So it was culture shock, but it was not culture shock about food.

in clothing and music, it was about, like, what the heck is going on? This is the richest country in the world, but we had this entire, like, subculture. In fact, the majority of the kids I was around were underserved and under-resourced compared to those like me who were white and had opportunity to go to college and those types of things. So that began to really kind of to shake my world when I came back. This happened your first year back. Freshman year in college.

Where were you in college? Oklahoma Baptist University. studying music education. I want to be a teacher. But you're a freshman in college. I mean, how are you even getting exposed to this culture shock? Well, I just looked around, right? I would go to church, and it was all people that looked like me, right? I'd grown up, and I knew there were black and brown people in the town I was in,

and then I began to look at the school system in Oklahoma and see, just starting to understand, like, there are some people who always do well and a whole bunch of people who never do well. And there's no, there's no real approach to how we, we bring these things together. I didn't understand anything really about, you know, the vast academic outcome differential between whites and blacks or Hispanics. I didn't understand what was going on, but it was beginning to sort of bubble up in me, especially through the church, that we were not a United States at this point.

We were very divided. And the main divide was socioeconomic, but it tends to be, of course, concentrated in minority populations who maintain that sort of level of poverty, like generation after generations. I was just sort of waking up to these things and, again, my experience had been very different, coach, than what I was experiencing as a majority. Well, and I guess I'm, you know,

those of us who don't grow up in the Philippines, which is 99.9.9% of us, I guess. I can't help but listening to you wondering if we see it too, but because it is so common, we get to sensitize to its wickedness. Yeah. And because you didn't see it growing up, you were hitting a face stark with it. Yeah, they describe kids like us as green culture kids.

Is what? Green culture kids. Green culture kids. You mean missionary kids? Yeah, and sometimes military kids. Your parents are a blue culture and they take you to a yellow culture, and you become this sort of combination. you don't fit in either anymore, right?

I'm not a Filipino, but I love the Philippines, but I also see the real problems with government and poverty and corruption there. And I love American. I'm an American, but man, I can see with real clarity what the real issues are because I grew up outside of the culture. So my loyalty might be to the American concept

and American ideal, but not to the embedded systems unless they're a part of helping. So I think missionary kids get this sort of weird worldview that helps you see some things. The other side of that is you just don't fit in anywhere anymore. Now, that's really, really interesting. That's also in some ways a tax that missionary kids pay for their children's service. Yeah, that's exactly right.

That's another whole podcast for you, Coach. When you talk to, I didn't realize what my parents had sacrificed in all different ways. but especially that piece that was related to their kids. Now, I didn't grow up impoverished in any way, mind, body, or spirit. But there were some real sacrifices growing up outside of your culture, being educated outside of your culture. And then I left home at 14 to go to boarding school, so they lost me.

And then I left again to go to college. So I moved out of the house when I was 14. They were sacrificing that relationship in proximity so I could be well educated and go to missionary kids' school. for high school and then off to college. So there's an interesting piece there as well. And now a few messages from our generous sponsors, but first, are you following us on Instagram?

More than likely or not, but you should be because it's awesome and we're cool. We briefly mentioned a few times this cool normal folks wisdom feature that we've started doing there, where we distill down the most powerful points data and quotes from our guest into punchy text because normal folks got wisdom too and it's fun and a quick way of getting it from them. I've even started writing them out

on a coach's clipboard because I'm a coach and you guys need to see graphics and they are highfalutin graphics. So get on it. Follow us on Instagram at Army of Normal Folks to check out normal folks wisdom and other inspirational content. We'll be right back. Hi there, this is Josh Clark from the Stuff You Should Know podcast. If you've been thinking, man alive, I could go for some good true crime podcast episodes, then have we got good news for you. Stuff You Should Know just released a playlist of 12 of our best true crime episodes of all time.

There's a shootout in broad daylight. people using axes in really terrible ways, disappearances, legendary heists, the whole nine yards. So check out the stuff you should know true crime playlist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. At 19, Elena Sada believed she had found her calling. In the new season of Sacred Scandal, we pulled back the curtain on a life built on devotion and deception. A man of God, Marcial Massiel, looked Elena in the eye and promised her a little bit of a little bit of, life of purpose within the Legion of Christ. My name is Elena Sada and this is my story.

It's a story of how I learned to hide, to cry, to survive and eventually how I got out. This season on Sacred Scandal hear the full story from the woman who lived it. Witness the journey from devout follower to determine survivor as Elena exposes the man behind the cloth and the system that protected him. at him. Even the darkest secrets eventually find their way to the light. Listen to Secret Scandal, the mini secrets of Marcial Masiel as part of the My Cultura podcast network on the IHeard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get her podcasts. If a baby is giggling in the back seat, they're probably happy. If a baby is crying in the

back seat, they're probably hungry. But if a baby is sleeping in the back seat, will you remember they're even there? When you're distracted, stressed, or not usually the one who drives them, the chances of forgetting them in the back seat are much higher. It can happen to anyone. Parked cars get hot fast and can be deadly. So get in the habit of checking the back seat when you leave. The message from NHTSA and the ad council. The internet is something we make, not just something that happens to us. I'm Bridget Todd, host of the tech and culture podcast. There are no grows on the internet. There are no grows on the internet is not just about tech. It's about culture and policy and art and expression, and how we as humans exist and fit with one another.

In our new season, I'm talking to people like Emile Dash, an OG entrepreneur and writer who refuses to be cynical about the internet. I love tech. You know, I've been a nerd my whole life, but it does have to be for something. Like, it's not just for its own sake. It's a fascinating exploration about the power of the internet for both good and bad. They use WhatsApp to get the price of rice at the market that is often 12 hours away. They're not going to be like, we don't like the terms of service, therefore,

we're not trading rice this season. It's an inspiring story that focuses on people as the core building blocks of the internet. Platforms exist because of the regular people on them. And I think that's a real important story to keep repeating. I created There Are No Girls on the Internet because the future belongs to all of us. New episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Listen to There are No Girls on the Internet on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I had this overwhelming sensation that I had to call it right then.

And I just hit call. I said, you know, hey, I'm Jacob Schick. I'm the CEO of One Tribe Foundation, and I just want to call on and let her know. There's a lot of people battling some of the very same things you're battling, and there is help out there. The Good Stuff Podcast, Season 2, takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a nonprofit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. I was married to a combat army veteran, and he actually took his own life to suicide. One tribe, save my life twice.

There's a lot of love that flows through this place, and it's sincere. Now it's a personal mission. Don't want to have to go to any more funerals, you know. I got blown up on a React mission. I ended up having amputation below the knee of my right leg and the traumatic brain injury because I landed on my head. Welcome to Season 2 of the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

Yeah, but. I think you're discounting your own sacrifice there, even though you weren't making it cognitively as a kid, but I'm just saying for the level of service of missionary does, I think the children are also paying some of that tax, as I hear you. There's a lot of work being done around the trauma that some missionary kids have gone through. I know many of my peers went through some real struggles.

Well, just the mere fact that you have your own term, green culture kids. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. So this green culture kid comes back to go to, I'm sorry, Oklahoma Baptist. Oklahoma Baptist University. Oklahoma, O.B.U. Southern Baptist.

Oh, O.B.U. The Bison. There we go. The O.B.U. Bison. So there you are, and you want to go into education, start to look around the church, start to look around society. And you're taking aback. by what you grew up believing the America culture is versus the reality. Yeah.

So again, my heroes are role models through high school where my coaches and my teachers. So I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I knew the kind of people who had the best or the most profound impact in my life were my coaches and my teachers. So that's not familiar, Bill? Yeah, a little. So I said, well, I want to be a coach and teacher. In fact, I...

It's exactly why I was in the coaching teacher. These were the people that, like, form me. So I thought, well, if I can ever be called coach, it's like the highest, you know, I think it's one of the greatest titles you can ever get. So I sought out opportunities to teach as I graduated in the inner city of Oklahoma City, a place called Capitol Hill High School. And Capitol Hill High School, such as they were the Redskins at that point before they changed their name. But the Redskins were a typical inner city urban environment.

that had been abandoned as White Flight sort of empty of the neighborhood. And there was no pressure on the system to improve. And so it declined. And academic outcomes were horrendous. Gangs were rampant at that point in early 90s. What were you teaching? I was teaching music. Good grief.

Yeah, coaching, wrestling, and soccer and volleyball. So I had, you would appreciate this. You didn't really have to be in my choir just to play. But if you wanted to improve your chances that I understood your skill set, you were going to be in my choir. My first teaching job, I started a chess team. Yeah, yeah. And I played chess in high school as well as everything else I did, right, sports-wise. And the statistics and the data say, and they prove out that playing chess actually makes you smarter,

not increases your intelligent quotient, but it teaches you to be more analytical, it teaches you to think ahead, and it provides your brain activity that actually helps. Yep. All right, study, concentration, everything. So I had a chess team in a club that grew to 56, and there were the 12 kids that really wanted to play chess.

and then the rest of the football team that decided, oh, I see, if I play chess, coach will let me play football. If you have, if I could have brought a picture of my choirs during those days, and this will speak to you because I was like, I was talking to the football coaches and they're like, you're a soccer boy, we're not talking. No, I said, I'll take care of your athletes, get them in my choir. Back in the 90s. Back in the 90s.

Football coaches today love soccer guys. They do now. They did well, they butt well, and. typically are pretty tough and pretty good school players. At that point, they were like, they made us play soccer in the spring just so it wouldn't interfere with football in Oklahoma. So they're like, you're the soccer guy. I don't know, but we start to recruit these kids,

and I've got the whole football team, and I've got most of the basketball team and all my soccer guys. And when I left Capitol Hill, we had 276 kids in the choir. Love it. A third of the school was in my choir. I love it. And we were not very good, but we were loud. I bet you were.

And when we rolled into choir competition, I mean, I've got blindmen in their choir robes, right? I mean, these guys were huge. We filled it. And nobody, everybody was polite and kind to us because we rolled in, I mean, deep getting off that bus. But they weren't a little skinny choir kids. These were enormous athletes. And it was funny because nobody ever made fun of us. Nobody ever said anything mean to us.

Don't mess with their choir. Capitol Hill showed up. Everybody sat quietly while we made our joyful noise, and then we got back on the bus and then went back to school. All right. So you're here, but you're kind of angry. Yeah. Yeah.

I didn't really know why I was so agitated. I didn't. I just saw inequity, but had no concept of the depth or hadn't quantified it or didn't understand. We were poor, but we didn't know we were poor. I mean, like to this day, my favorite foods are those things that we would consider, you know, poor people food. So cornbread and I like cabbage and I like all of these things that my mom made feel like home food, but they were actually just affordable food.

So we didn't have any kind of poverty per se and how much money. But when I began to understand what real poverty was, that subsistence living cycle that so degrade, grades the human experience. It was like, are you kidding me? These kids, just to get up and show up at school, there's an enormous conquest every single day, whether they had food or not, that they're in school. Like, how in the world do you talk about ACT scores when, I mean, there's just chaos around the situation?

Alex has encouraged me not to pontificate too much, but too bad. It's my show. I know about what you're about to say. We've already said it in like five podcasts. I don't care. I want to hear it. I'm going to share it with you. We interviewed Arsay Cooper.

Do you know Arshae? I do not. We interviewed Arshae Cooper from Chicago. He, long story short, he started a rowing team in the inner city. Yep. Just imagine that. Yeah, we've got one too. Actually, Arshae's been big in Oklahoma City.

Yeah. So I think it's been Arsha helping. He actually was just in town last week with the mayor. With the rowing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We've got this wild. You need to connect with Arche.

Anyway, he grew up in the projects, and he grew up going to school, passing prostitutes turning tricks in alleys, which he could see as a child, literally stepping over, pulls of blood, hearing gunshots, watching drug deals rampant. And that was before he got out of his building, before he was then able to only walk three blocks to school that was a gauntlet of danger every single day. and he said, you know, Bill, if you walked into the neighborhood right now and saw that, you would be absolutely floored and shocked, and rightly so. He said, in our apartment, we had a fan to keep cool with, and one of the blades was out of balance, and so it ticked. And he said, and if you walked into our apartment, it would have driven you nuts because it's been tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, it would have driven you nuts.

He said, but you know what, after living with that, fan for a while we didn't even hear the tick and he said what ends up happening is after living in that environment as a child for a while you begin to think that's just normal yeah and that is how generational poverty generational crime and generational all the things that are destroying a large percentage of our population starts is because the unthinkable the wicked becomes common and it becomes so common. You don't even recognize it as inconceivable and wicked any longer. As you talk about that, a story, I mean, the image just came to my mind

of something that taught me that probably my second or third year as a teacher was by the main office on the bottom floor of our building. And there was this sort of rush of kids. You know, when something's going on, kids all run toward it. That's usually a fight. It's usually a fight. So I'm like, they've got another fight going down to break this up. in my mind.

The soccer guy breaking up a fight? All the time. I love it. These teeth are false. That's another story, but it was from breaking up a fight. They're all got knocked out. So my hope was, I hope it's not girls, because girls are really hard to break up. They're trying to kill each other.

The boys, they're just positing. They also yank on hair, and it's hard to un latch them. They claw over you. Girls, girl fights are way worse than boy fights. They really are. They are way worse. But I was thinking it was a fight, hoping it wasn't a girl fight. And then I realized the kids are not.

stopping in front of the office, they're going out the doors to the street next to the school. And it's Walker in 44th, so people in Oklahoma City will know exactly what I'm talking about. And a fight had happened, it sort of spilled out into the street, which was unusual. They'd gone out into the street. And these two kids were squaring up. I see at the corner of my eye, another young person runs around with a brick in their hand. and strikes one of the kids at the base of the skull with this brick. And he falls right to the asphalt and begins to convulse.

And this is an absolutely surreal moment for me. This is, again, this is the United States of America. This is the most powerful, wealthy, affluent, educated nation. It's ever existed in the history of mankind. and this is in the street. These are children. This child is laying there in his blood beginning to pool. And I'm like, somebody should be doing something right now.

This is like, this is wild that this is occurring in the street. And I'm sort of standing over the kid. As the other kids begin to realize, this is pretty serious. They just sort of back off. And I'm standing in the middle of the street trying to stop traffic from rolling up on this young person is laying in the street. A car comes up real fast, stops, a couple of kids get out, their fellow gang members, throw this kid in the back seat and then drive off.

And I'm literally standing in the street looking at blood in the street going, what has just happened here? Somebody should be doing something. I turn around the kids just sort of walk slowly back in the building, and we go back to school. I have no idea what happened to this kid. Even to this day. Even to this day.

It never showed up in the news. No administrator was talking to me about it. There were no police involvement. It was just like literally blood in the street. I'm like, I just could not wrap my mind around as you meant to the normalization of this type of just catastrophic violence. Barbarism. Barbarism. This is base humanity at, and nobody was there stopping this from occurring.

We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Hi there, this is Josh Clark from the Stuff You Should Know podcast. If you've been thinking, man alive, I could go for some good true crime podcast episodes, then have we got good news for you. Stuff You Should Know just released a playlist of 12 of our best true crime episodes of all time. There's a shootout in broad daylight. People using axes in really terrible ways.

disappearances, legendary heists, the whole nine yards. So check out the stuff you should know true crime playlist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. At 19, Elena Sada believed she had found her calling. In the new season of Sacred Scandal, we pulled back the curtain on a life built on devotion and deception. A man of God, Marcial Massiel, looked Elena in the eye and promised her a life of purpose within the Legion of Christ.

My name is Elena Sada and this is my story. It's a story of how I learned to hide, to cry, to survive and eventually how I got out. This season on Sacred Scandal hear the full story from the woman who lived it. Witness the journey from devout follower to determine survivor as Elena exposes the man behind the cloth and the system that protected him. Even the darkest secrets eventually find their way to live. find their way to the light. Listen to Secret Scandal,

the mini secrets of Marcial Masiel, as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network on the IHeard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get her podcasts. If a baby is giggling in the back seat, they're probably happy. If a baby is crying in the back seat, they're probably hungry.

But if a baby is sleeping in the back seat, will you remember they're even there? When you're distracted, stressed, or not usually the one who drives them, The chances of forgetting them in the back seat are much higher. It can happen to anyone. Parked cars get hot fast and can be deadly. So get in the habit of checking the back seat when you leave.

The message from NHTSA and the Ad Council. The Internet is something we make, not just something that happens to us. I'm Bridget Todd, host of the Tech and Culture Podcast, There Are No Grows on the Internet. There Are No Grows on the Internet is not just about tech. It's about culture and policy and art and expression and how we as humans exist and fit with one another. In our new season, I'm talking to people like Emile Dash, an OG entrepreneur and writer who refuses to be cynical about the Internet.

I love tech. You know, I've been a nerd my whole life, but it does have to be for something. Like, it's not just for its own sake. It's a fascinating exploration about the power of the Internet for both good and bad. They use WhatsApp to get the price of rice at the market that is often 12 hours away. They're not going to be like, we don't like the terms of service, therefore we're not trading rice this season. It's an inspiring story that focuses. on people as the core building blocks

of the internet. Platforms exist because of the regular people on them, and I think that's a real important story to keep repeating. I created there are no girls on the internet because the future belongs to all of us. New episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Listen to there are no girls on the internet on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcast. I had this overwhelming sensation that I had to call it right then. And I just hit call. I said, you know, hey, I'm Jacob Schick. I'm the CEO of One Tribe Foundation, and I just want to call on and let her know. There's a lot of people battling some of the very same things you're battling, and there is help out there. The Good Stuff podcast, Season 2, takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a non-profit

fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. I was married to a combat army veteran, and he actually took his own life to suicide. One Tribe saved my life twice. There's a lot of love that flows through this place, and it's sincere. Now it's a personal mission. I don't have to go to any more funerals, you know.

I got blown up on a React mission. I ended up having amputation below the knee of my right leg and a traumatic brain injury because I landed on my head. Welcome to Season 2 of the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. People not from that areas have heard these stories before. and we become

my belief is we become desensitized to it because so long and we're just like what can you do about quote these folks and they've made their bed they're going to lie in it and we have a free country and we have a free education

and we have all these opportunities and if people choose to live that lifestyle why should I be concerned about it? And all of these other things that I would say is equally apathetic and evil. When people ask me the sort of broad question,

what's wrong with education in Oklahoma? We managed to languish around 50th, sometimes up to 47th, 48th, in the nation, in almost all indicators. What's wrong with education in Oklahoma? And I say something that kind of pisses some people off sometimes.

And what it is is, I say, I don't think we love kids in Oklahoma. You're like, what do you mean? don't love kids in Oklahoma. I said, well, I don't think we love, I think empirically I can prove to you that we don't love children in Oklahoma. I think we love our kids, right? And those that... You love your own children. Yeah, I'm not saying you don't love your kids, or those that play football with your kids or go to church with your kids. I mean, you might even like some of those kids, but there is a mountain of evidence that said, we do not love those kids. So to your point,

those are not my responsibility. Those children are not some of the children. Those children are not something that I should be doing something about. And if, I mean, I'm, I am, I'll be honest with you, Coach, I'm sort of, I don't, I'm, I mean, I don't like grownups very much. I think we have made, we made our bed, we're lying in it. I mean, we've grown at this point, but kids, right? There should be a collective agreement that children should be, at least held harmless for what their parents or grandparents have done or not done for them.

We should be doing something about those. So I began to assert early on no matter what we should be caring for children. Like, y'all sort this political thing out, but at least the children should be able to start fresh. And that's been the real challenge, trying to sort of convince people that that kid is our responsibility. Those children are ours. I've said this as well a thousand times, and I'm going to keep saying it because I don't think people hear it enough. if you don't care from a spiritual or social or cultural viewpoint about that kid, if you just don't have a heart for it, well, then you need to be a pragmatist

because that kid is going to become an adult. And that kid is either going to contribute to the tax base or take from it. That kid is either going to have a job and be a productive member of society or be a drag on society either having to rely on sustenance or be a homeless person or continue to fill our jails. So either as a pragmatic viewpoint, do you want our children becoming part of a productive and citizenry creating jobs, filling jobs, and contributing to our tax base, or do you want them detracting from our entire culture and society?

So we... From a pragmatic standpoint. That is so true. I mean, economically, why can we not look at that data set? Just look at it economically if you don't care about it socially. And make legislative decisions around that. That's what you said the politics thing. I'm not caring about right-left anything.

What I'm saying is there's a political, economic, data-driven point here that I don't see how policymakers don't care. I was talking to a lobbyist about this. I said, look, here's the economic result of this good policy. He goes, you don't understand. So what do I not understand? This is a numbers thing. If I look at this, it makes fiscal sense for these conservatives to make this choice.

He goes, good policy isn't always good politics. Let's explain that to me. Well, the people that are electing these people don't necessarily care about the policy. They care about the politics. and those being elected need to pay attention to the politics, even if it's not good policy or if it is. I'm saying, so I have to find some sort of perfect blend between policy and politics to get something passed and said, yeah. No. Ideally.

Policy, policy, politics, and culture. Yeah. It's a tough blend. So chronologically, back to you as a teacher, I think I read that at some point you just got fed up. Yeah, six years in, I said I'm quitting. Six years is a lifetime in that environment. In that environment. Trying to coach.

It was just, there was no, I mean, there was no pathway to a win. I mean, I'm all about tactics and strategy. I want to get to a goal. But I couldn't see any, there wasn't an avenue forward. And I was just frustrated. I'm like, I can't spend my one precious live doing this thing. We're going to depress some. Was that torn up about it a little?

Yeah, yeah, it was angst-ridden. Like, I think I'm supposed to. be here. I've got to be doing this work, but I was just anxious. I can't. I know the feeling. Talking to my best friend. So many educators know that feeling. I mean, you're stuck. You're just, you're doing everything every day and seeing there's no

long-term light at the end of the, there's just no hope. I guess it is about hope. When you see hope, you can, if there's some agency, right, to attain that, you'll move forward. But when you stop seeing that you have a path forward, it's like, I'm going to do something different. John Wilfong is a very good friend of mine. I don't know if you're at all a basketball fan,

but he was the shooting guard back when Memphis State was always in the Final Four in Suite 16. At some point, you're going to talk about the Grizzlies, aren't you? I will if you would like to. We don't have to go that way. Well, honestly, I don't need to speak to anybody from a city about the Grizzlies. We just need to keep our mouths shut. This year.

I'm happy to tell you that your barbecue is minor league in Arsus's Major League. You get that win for sure. Oh, you give me the win. Thank you very much. We don't have to do another deal on that. We're going to go verify that later today. He coached A.

You bought his son. And when after the games in fifth grade, they would go to Applebee's or whatever in between games. And then they'd take the team and some of the kids on the team didn't have any money. He would buy lunch or dinner. And every single time a guy named Frank would order exactly what it was. his son did. His son would order chicken fingers. Frank say, I have that. His son would order cheeseburg. Frank would say, have that. His son would order a strawberry milkshake with sprinkles on top of it. Frank would have that. And John finally realized that the reason

Frank was ordering everything his son did is because he couldn't read the menu. He has since started a thing called coaching for literacy. If you ever see college football coaches, basketball coaches, baseball coaches with a little lime green ribbon on their lapel, those coaches, are supporting financially, coaching for literacy, what John found out is, and I'm going to, the reason I'm telling the story is I'm going to let you take it, is if a third grader is not reading on grade level by third grade, there are data points galore that says that he is like five times more likely

to not have a job or be in jail by his 21st birthday than he is. Third grade, we can predict the data is proven that we can predict really, really, really well, the outcome of a human being's life simply by the reading on grade level by third grade. That's correct. How then are we not as an entire society hammering? bring down on making sure every child reads on grade level about third grade, because we could empty our jails, we could fill our coffers full of earned tax dollars. Yep.

And we could fix society and culture in a generation if we would just look at the truth and the data. Yet we continue to look at the inner city and the poverty and stuff, our nose at them, and think you can't help these people. I really don't know why. I mean, to me, the natural, like, instinct or response to that is, let's teach kids to read. That would be... I mean, it's not, I don't want to overcomplicate this, but we know now through the science of reading,

exactly how humans acquire the ability to read. We can train teachers to do this. We've got the curriculum resources and the public school structures to do it. There really is no reason, no reason that we cannot teach children. to read. Now, all kinds of other good things happen, right? Then you read to learn after age of third grade, you learn to read prior to that. All of a sudden, all of the actual learning, the content knowledge begins to accrue. We start to make tremendous gains. But, I mean, as an educator, I know we pour into our early childhood programs in our schools, focusing on math and reading

and not equivocating. It is essential so those kids are positioned to be successful beyond. I don't know why. And that concludes part one of my conversation with Chris Brewster, and you don't want to miss part two. It's now available to listen to. Together, guys, we can change this country, but it starts with you. I'll see in part two. Hi there, this is Josh Clark from the Stuff You Should Know podcast. If you've been thinking, man alive, I could go for some good true crime podcast episodes, then have we got good news for you.

Stuff You Should Know just released a playlist of 12 of our best true crime episodes of all time. There's a shootout in broad daylight, people using axes in really terrible ways, disappearances, legendary heists, the whole nine yards. So check out the Stuff You Should Know true crime playlist. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sacred Scandal is back, the hit True Crime podcast that uncovers hidden truths and shattered faith. For 19 years, Elena Sata was a nun for the Legion of Christ. This season, she's telling her story.

When I first joined the Legion of Christ, I felt chosen. I was 19 years old when Marseille and Masel, the leader of the Legionaries, took me in the eye and told me I had a calling. Surviving meant hiding, escaping took courage, risking everything to tell her truth. Listen to Sacred Scandal, the many secrets of Marcelle. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Smokey the bear. Then you know why Smokey tells you when he sees you passing through.

Remember, please be careful. It's the least that you can do. It's what you desire. Don't play with matches. Don't play with fire. After 80 years of learning his wildfire prevention tips, Smokey Bear lives within us all. Learn more at smoky bear.com.

And remember, only you can prevent wildfires. Brought to you by the USDA Forest Service, your state forester and the ad council. I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the psychology podcast. Here's a clip from an upcoming conversation about how to be a better you. When you think about emotion regulation, we're not going to choose an adaptive strategy, which is more effortful to use unless you think there's a good outcome. Avoidance is easier. Ignoring is easier.

Denials is easier. Complex problem solving. It takes effort. Listen to the psychology podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's important that we just reassure people that they're not alone, and there is help out there. The Good Stuff podcast, Season 2, takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a nonprofit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. One Tribe, save my life twice.

Welcome to Season 2 of The Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast.