An Army of Normal Folks - Kevin Adler: Reuniting 1,100 People Experiencing Homelessness With Their Families (Pt 1)

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

Kevin was tired of walking by people experiencing homelessness, not doing anything, and undermining his own humanity and theirs each time. So he finally did something and his accidental nonprofit Miracle Messages has since reunited over 1,100 people with their families!Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We go out, I record a video of him to his family. Within three weeks, all four of his siblings had recorded messages back and they all flew from across the country on their own dime. Sitting there, they're sitting on a bed all surrounding him and he's looking me in the eye and he says, you know, thank you for giving me family back. Yeah, at that point. All right. There's something here.

I got the player role. 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,

which that last part somehow led to an Oscar for the film about our team. That movie is called Undefeated. 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 Kevin Adler, the voice you just heard, has done. Kevin is the founder of Miracle Messages,

which has reunited over 1,000 individuals experiencing homelessness with their loved ones. And that's just the beginning of what they've done. I cannot wait for you to meet Kevin right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. In 2012, 16-year-old Brian Herrera was gunned down in broad daylight on his way to do homework. No suspects, no witnesses, no justice. The call was horrible. I replayed over in my head all the time.

For years, Brian's family kept asking questions while a culture of silence kept the case cold. Snitches get stitches. Everybody knows it. Still, they refused to give up. I would ask my husband, do you want me to just let this go? He said, no, keep fighting. I told her I would never give up on this case. And then after a decade of waiting, a breakthrough.

We received a phone call that was bittersweet, because it's a call that we've been waiting for for a very long time. I'm Enrique Santos. This is Cold Case Files Miami, a podcast about justice, persistence, and the families who never stopped fighting. Listen to Cold Case Files Miami as part of the My Kultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Evans and on my podcast Behind the Bastards, we talk about the worst people

in all of history. We've discussed a lot of horrible monsters in our time, but this week we have one of the very worst we'll ever talk about, David Berg, founder of a cult called The Children of God. We'll talk about all of his horrible crimes with special guest, Ed Helms. He's not just like a weird religious cult leader, he was like fusing a bunch of hippie ideology in with this kind of like evangelical Christianity,

Pentecostal preaching in the mid-century. He's a very weird guy. But yeah, I'll just get into it. Like nothing you just said makes sense. That doesn't say. Right. But that's the beauty of cults. Listen to Behind the Bastards on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay, and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcasts from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts.

Every week I sit down with your favorite book lovers, authors, celebrities, book talkers, and more to explore the stories that shape us, on the page and off. I've been reading every Reese's Book Club pick, deep diving book talk theories, and obsessing over book to screen casts for years. And now I get to talk to the people making the magic. So if you've ever fallen in love with a fictional character, or cried at the last chapter, or passed a book to a friend saying, you have to read this. This podcast is for you. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app.

Apple podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts. From iHeart podcasts, before social media, before the internet, before cable news, there was Alan Berg. You dig what I do. You have a need, unfortunately you have no sense of humor, that's why you can't ever enjoy this show, and that's why you're a loser. He was the first, and the original shock shock. That scratchy, irreverent kind of way of talking to people. You're as dumb as the rest, that's, I can't take anyone.

I don't agree with you all the time. I don't want you to, I hope that you pick me apart. His voice changed media. His death shocked the nation. And it makes me so angry that he got himself killed because he had a big mouth. KOA morning talk show host Allen Berg reportedly was shot and killed tonight in downtown Denver. He pointed to the Denver phone book and said,

well, there are probably two million suspects. This guy aggravated everybody. From I Heart Podcasts, this is Live Wire, the loud life and shocking murder of Alan Berg. Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A murder happens. The case goes cold. Then, over a hundred years later, we take a second look.

I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator. And I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson, a journalist and historian. On our podcast, Buried Bones, we reexamine historical true crime cases. Using modern forensic techniques, we dig into what the original investigators may have missed. Growing up on a farm when I heard a gunshot,

I did not immediately think murder. Unless this person went out to shoot squirrels, they're not choosing a 22 to go hunting out there. These cases may be old, but the questions are still relevant and often chilling. I know this chauffeur is not of concern. You know, it's like, well, he's the last one who saw our life.

So how did they eliminate him? Join us as we take you back to the cold cases that haunt us to this day. New episodes every Wednesday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Barry Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Kevin F. Adler, welcome to Memphis. It's good to be here.

Usually I just say Kevin Adler. Right. But with you have to say Kevin F. Adler. Well you could say Kevin or. Well I'm gonna say Kevin the rest of it. I'm not gonna sit here and call you Kevin F. Adler the whole thing. But the F. Matters to you.

My mom's maiden name. Yeah, Farrington was my mom's maiden name. She passed away when I was 23. She was 59, she had breast cancer. I gotta give her as much credit as I can. So you drop the FM just to make, just to homage to mom. And just to make awkward moments like this.

When you meet people. Nothing awkward about it, I think that's beautiful. Oh, is it? Oh, okay. Sure. A young man loving his mom enough that he wants to make sure she's remembered. She was pretty remarkable, yeah, she was both the strongest and the kindest person I ever met.

So she wouldn't. It was warm. Everyone's friend in the neighborhood. You know, the house was the Sunday evening dinner spot. Classmates, neighbors. And if you messed with her values, if you did say I'm real out of line, you knew where she stood. I can answer questions now nearly 20 years since she passed on where she'd stand on issues.

She's both the Rose and the Thorn. Yeah, yeah. And there was a playful side too, because I can get real cerebral, but she'd kind of bring it to a little bit more. Straighten that out. Let's get real about this. All right, so given that, where are you from?

I grew up in Livermore, California. It's about an hour east of San Francisco. Yeah, small, it's grown a lot, but I grew up there with my... Actually do a business in Livermore. Do you really? Yeah, I just ship some lumber there. Yeah, it's great.

It's kind of an industrial area. Yeah, it is. Agricultural, we were the Livermore Cowboys growing up. It's actually pretty conservative out there, oddly. Yeah, culturally it's a world away from San Francisco, but it's about an hour east driving. So you grew up there. Yeah, grew up there.

Dad, kid, brother, sisters, what was life like? A lot of exploring the world, pretty idyllic. My parents, I'd say they were the best mom and dad I could have asked for except when they were together. They never figured out how to make it work as a couple. My dad has a lot of issues. Hey dad, good to see you. But I don't know where the camera is.

He's not gonna watch this. But he doesn't understand it either. All the things you're thinking. Now he's a wonderful dad. I saw him cry many more times than I saw my mom cry. He showed me that true masculinity is synonymous with emotional forthrightness, saying and doing the right thing.

But he also grew up in a very broken home and also escaped the war at home. And his household when he was 17 to go fight the war in Vietnam was a door gunner and has PTSD from his time in two tours in Vietnam. So, you know, he has his issues, but I never question where I my brother and I stand with him as unconditionally loved. So mom work out of the home or she said he was older adult school exercise instructor. So

she'd go down and do teaching aerobics and physical fitness and wellness to folks in nursing homes. Well, it's what everybody did in the 80s or so. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Jane Pond is like mom. Yeah. Jamie, Maria Tard kind of thing. Yeah, there was once or twice where I'd walk into the kitchen and she'd be rocking out plant put I mean, I was like, I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym.

I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym.

I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym.

I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym. I the schools he went to, middle school, high school, went to war, came back, worked at gas stations for years, nothing wrong with that. But he was just like, there's something more for me, you know, and he started taking a class at a time at a community college, and had a teacher there who recognized his potential in the math and sciences, took another class, another class, ended up transferring to Berkeley, then MIT. Became a top scientist in his field.

And so he does work on- Smart dude. Smart guy. A lot, you know? Was the phrase talent is universal, opportunity is not? You know, that was kind of his thing. So he's, most recently, he just retired, but he was working at a medical device company

for quite a few years looking at the corrosive properties of the stents kind of go into your heart make sure that that doesn't corrode and cause issues later on. So what a neat story for him. Yeah I mean yeah he's a gas station guy to that guy. Yeah the point is Livermore, mom not making a ton of money but living her best life being a great mom, dad doing what he's doing. You're a normal guy. Kind of grow up in a idyllic. That's why you brought me on this podcast. This is average. Yeah. I mean, that's it. But the point is establishing kind of Yeah, nothing overly remarkable. Just

I think the most remarkable thing maybe about my childhood was the relative freedom, but still with like, respect and rules and constraints on that. So the example, you know, I think we were talking before the show that we share a faith. You know, when I was, I wasn't raised religious. And when I was 12, I felt like something was missing in my life, besides puberty. And I asked my mom and dad if we

could start going to local churches. And through that process, we all got baptized. That's cool. And just that encouragement of a 12 year old. So yeah, you want to explore that we're going to do that. And then you know, my dad and brother and I all getting baptized through that process, right? No kidding. Yeah. so, you know, there's- That kind of is remarkable, but again, it's not like you were ordained

to go do something in the world. You just grew up a life. Lived in my life, yeah. So everybody, Kevin F. Adler, Adler is the last time I'm gonna say it now, it's just Kevin, is the founder of Miracle Messages, living in Sausalito, San Francisco area. You know, your bio says you're award-winning

social entrepreneur and the founder of Miracle Messages, which will get into social entrepreneurship here in a minute. His work is with the homelessness and relational poverty. He's been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the PBS NewsHour, Los Angeles Times, CNN, a billboard on Times Square, which we also share that, and in his TED Talk and his groundbreaking book, When We Walk By, Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can play in ending homelessness in America.

He talks constantly about what he spent many of the last years of his life learning. And that's what we're going to dive down into. But I was afraid if I read all that first before explaining where you came from, people would think, oh, he's a bigwig. And the truth is, he's just a guy who found a passion and who tripped over an idea one time, which we're gonna explain, and it's led to all of this, but much, much more. So.

And all those, there's a difference between, I think, resume items and eulogy virtues and all that. You know, that's the resume side, but I define myself more by how I try to, you know, live my life and show it for people. And that's what I call more the eulogy virtue side of things. So I can rewrite that. Yeah, I get that completely.

So tell me about Uncle Mark. So Uncle Mark was my favorite member of my extended family. This guy come over for Thanksgiving, Christmas. He's my dad's younger brother. He grew up with a lot of the same traumas and issues at home that my dad faced. And unfortunately, you know, he never was able to get on his own two feet. You know, got schizo, became schizophrenic kind of his late teens, early 20s. Years of drug use, a lot of, you know, harmful behavior. And he spent 30 years of his life living on and off the streets of Santa use, a lot of, you know, harmful behavior.

And he spent 30 years of his life living on and off the streets of Santa Cruz, California. So he ended up passing away when I was in college. He was 50 years old, which I found out later is about the average life expectancy. Person who's unhoused, chronically homeless. But Mark, every year he was on the streets, he never missed a birthday, sending me a birthday card. And I'll always just sign Uncle Mark. We'd come over, we'd have long, elaborate conversations on our shared love of super burritos. What are you going to talk, yeah, 12, 14 year old, talk with my schizophrenic uncle.

What do you like about the burritos? I love them burritos. Me too, Mark. What do you like about the burritos? I love them burritos. Me too, Mark. We got that. Let's get deep into the burrito. Yeah, so we'd have these fun conversations. And then he'd leave from Thanksgiving, Christmas. My dad would drop him off at the Greyhound station

or drive him back to, if he was staying in a transitional housing unit in Santa Cruz. And then months would go by and we wouldn't hear from him. And my dad always said, if that collect phone call comes in, and you remember what those were like, answer that. Make sure you accept it. And we'd hear from them from time to time, and then he'd disappear.

And then one day, yeah, I was in college. I got a phone call from my dad crying. And he said, you know, Uncle Mark had been found deceased. So it was his, not just the time I spent with Mark, but the time I didn't spend with Mark that kind of got me on this journey. So obviously that's a huge pivot point in the trajectory of your life, that experience.

That love for, let's just be candid, a homeless schizophrenic man. Yeah, and the kicker for me that kind of pulled it together as that turning point is I never thought of him as a homeless man. He was your uncle. He was my uncle. You know, categorize people that way, right?

Not in your own family. Not in your own family. But you do in everybody else's. That's why my shirt says everyone is someone's somebody. I was sitting, so I went to his funeral service. That was the last time I was at the gravesite. Few years go by, my dad and I are having Thanksgiving dinner at a family's house not too far from Santa Cruz.

We got some time before the meal was ready. So we go down to the gravesite. We sit there. And we had one of those father son conversations that you just want to get your entire life, right? About who his younger brother was, what his childhood was like, all the things that appear only in the dash

on that gravestone, we had the conversation. What happened in that dash? And I was just floored and heard these stories. And then I get back in my car, sitting there, my dad's driving home. And I just start absentmindedly pull out my phone, start scrolling on social media. I'm like, wait a second.

I am learning more about my random acquaintances, classmates from middle school on social media than I did about my own uncle if my dad wasn't there at his gravesite. Like I wouldn't know any of this just from the tombstone. And so I got this question on my heart, it just kind of sat with me for a while, which was how would Jesus use a smartphone?

How would Jesus use a smartphone? How would Jesus use a smartphone? How would Jesus use a smartphone? How would Jesus use a smartphone? Or social media, right? Because I was like, I like these cat videos. I like these selfies just the same as everyone else. But I wonder if he would have like GPS'd the road to Nazareth and recognized there's a lot of traffic. Ha ha ha ha.

Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha traffic. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Concerns of robbers up ahead. Concerns of robbers ahead. There's parts of the road that are washed out and maybe take an alternate route. Right. And then he's quickly texting his disciples and they're not responding.

And they're not responding. The phones are off and he's like, what's going on guys? It's like terrible. The road in Asher is a mess. We might need to head down somewhere else. And I think it's a fun thought experiment to kind of sit with like these technologies.

Like how would Jesus use this? And so my response to it was, gosh, everyone I'm walking by in San Francisco, I'm not seeing them as some kid's beloved uncle or aunt, right? I see them as problems to solve, not people to love. And so I basically spent a year where I invited 24 individuals experiencing homelessness to wear GoPro cameras around their chests and narrate their experience of what life is like on the streets.

And now a few messages from our generous sponsors. But first, we're thinking about launching a few local chapters of the Army this year. To dive more into it, check out our recent shop talk episode titled, Experimenting with Local Chapters. And if you're interested in potentially leading a chapter in your community, email army at normalfolks.us

and Alex would love to connect with you. We'll be right back. with you. Weitches get stitches. Everybody knows it. Still, they refused to give up. I would ask my husband, do you want me just let this go? He said no, keep fighting. I told her I would never give up on this case. And then, after a decade of waiting, a breakthrough. We received a phone call that was bittersweet because it's a call that we've been waiting for for a very long time. I'm Enrique Santos. This is Cold Case Files Miami, a podcast about justice, persistence,

and the families who never stopped fighting. Listen to Cold Case Files Miami as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Evans, and on my podcast, Behind the Bastards, we talk about the worst people in all of history. We've discussed a lot of horrible monsters in our time, but this week we have one of the very worst we'll ever talk about, David Berg, founder of a cult called the Children of God.

We'll talk about all of his horrible crimes with special guest, Ed Helms. He's not just like a weird religious cult leader. He was like fusing a bunch of hippie ideology in with this kind of like evangelical Christianity, Pentecostal preaching in the mid-century. He's a very weird guy. But yeah, I'll just get into it.

Like nothing you just said makes sense. That doesn't say. Right. But that's the beauty of cults. Listen to Behind the Bastards on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories

and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts. Every week I sit down with your favorite book lovers, authors, celebrities, book talkers, and more to explore the stories that shape us on the page and off. I've been reading every Reese's Book Club pick, deep diving book talk theories, and obsessing over book to screen casts for years. And now I get to talk to the people making the magic.

So if you've ever fallen in love with a fictional character or cried at the last chapter or passed a book to a friend saying, You have to read this. This podcast is for you. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From iHeart podcasts, before social media, before the internet, before cable news, there was Alan Berg. You dig what I do. You have a need. Unfortunately, you have no sense of humor. That's why you can't ever enjoy this show, and that's why you're a loser he was the first and the original

shock job that's scratchy and reverent kind of way of talking to people you're as dumb as the rest that's I can't take anyone I don't agree with you all the time I don't want you to I hope that you pick me apart his voice changed media his death shocked the nation and it makes me so angry that he got himself killed because he had a big mouth. KOA morning talk show host Alan Berg reportedly was shot and killed tonight in downtown Denver. He pointed to the Denver phone book and said, well, there are probably two million suspects. This guy aggravated everybody. From iHeart Podcasts, this is Live Wire, the loud life and shocking murder of Alan Berg.

Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A murder happens. The case goes cold. Then, over a hundred years later, we take a second look. I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator. And I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson, a journalist and historian. On our podcast Buried Bones, we reexamine historical true crime cases. Using modern forensic techniques, we dig into what the original investigators may have missed. Growing up on a farm when I heard a gunshot, I did not immediately think murder. Unless this person went out to shoot squirrels, they're not choosing a 22 to go hunting out

there. These cases may be old, but the questions are still relevant and often chilling. I know this chauffeur is not of concern. It's like, well, he's the last one who saw our life. So how did they eliminate him? Join us as we take you back to the cold cases that haunt us to this day. New episodes every Wednesday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Barry Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You got 24 folks living on the streets and you're putting GoPros on them. About an hour or two at a time. And they're joining me as homeless autobiographers, right? So it's not like I'm strapping at their sleep, right? They're participating. Well, what reason are they agreeing to do this for you? The question I put forward was,

what do you wish people like me knew that we don't? About your existence. About you, about how you see the world and what's going on. Okay, what'd you find out? I'll bite. I'll bite, yeah. And share some of the videos and what's going on. Okay. What'd you find out? I'll bite. I'll bite, yeah. Share some of the videos with you if you want. Actually, could we put some up on our...

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We need to do that. Talk about, if you're okay with it, going to meet Adam for the first time before you watch the videos. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, but hold it. Seriously, can we get some of those

and throw them up on our stuff? Yeah, I think we need to do. I got some good videos for you. That's good. OK, so all right. So I was told I had a little earpiece, you know, from from the producer there. Yeah. So so he told you about this. Didn't I tell you? Yeah, you did. Yeah, you did. You hire him for 10 minutes.

And then the two of us, we don't see a listener. I haven't responded yet. It's a universal. It's a pre So yesterday a listener emailed us and they said bill I'm taking away points from you because of how mean you are to Alex Is better than that And they have no idea. People have no idea the stuff I put up with off microphone and off camera. So, you know, that's only half the story everybody bill.

You've changed that man that listeners heart in that moment. I probably say I could do it. Listen, you're not part of the show. Please go ahead. So we're the man in the corner. Do we do you have the curtain? You know, like Oz? Oh, that's right. Yeah. Pull it back there.

Yeah, I'm down with that. The first time that I was meeting one of the individuals who was going to wear the cameras and Adam and I'll share this. I'm not proud of this. But as I started approaching this individual who I met through a mutual friend, like this is I'm not proud of this. But as I started approaching this individual, who I met through a mutual friend, like this is I'm so nervous. Right. Yes, it is. The whole thing's weird. Yeah. Right. I've got these donated GoPro cameras.

I've meeting this guy in broad daylight in the Castro district, downtown San Francisco. And instinctively, as I'm approaching Adam, I reach my hand into my pocket and I grab my keys and start fiddling with them and grab them as a weapon. As I approach this person, I've never done that before or since you know I'm a six foot two guy I'm generally pretty confident walking around the streets. That's where I started I didn't know if this guy was going to lunge at me if he's, you know's mentally, the whole thing. So that's where I started on this issue. Quickly realized this guy's pretty normal guy, he's had some tough circumstances, right? And we start having this conversation.

He says, yeah, I'll wear the camera for you and I wanna participate. I'll share his video so you'll be able to put that up. So I'm watching these videos that are coming in and it's pretty heartbreaking. And the two things that really stuck out to me. So first, you'd often see a kid walk by. The kid never just walks by.

The kid always points at the person, stares. Mom, dad, why is that man on the streets? Can we have him live with us, like whatever it is. And half the time you see the parent kind of scold the kid or say, oh, that's impolite, don't do that, and then pull him back. The other half the time, the kid is almost like guides the parent to go talk to the person, and they have a conversation,

and they have this interaction. And I have always thought, which of those kids is going to 20 years later be a little bit more trusting and open as an adult? to go talk to the person and they have a conversation, and they have this interaction. And I have always thought, which of those kids is gonna, 20 years later, be a little bit more trusting and open as an adult? And what have we forgotten then, that we knew almost instinctively to children? So basic right and wrong.

The other piece that stuck out is every single time you'd see a person experiencing homelessness on the camera, they'd start sharing stories of some loved family member, friend, classmate, former girlfriend, former boyfriend. Often the person was no longer in their life, but they still, you know, they're talking about somebody else. And, you know, in listening to this over and over again,

I just started thinking, gosh, you know, like, what do those relationships look like? And in one clip, I heard sign that changed my life. The guy said, I never realized I was homeless when I lost my housing. Only when I lost my family and friends. Home is where the heart is. It's not the structure. Four walls and a roof. That's a house. That's a house that

doesn't make a house a home. Right. And as I started digging into this concept that I've come to call relational poverty, as an overlooked form of poverty, it turns out about one in three people who are experiencing homelessness, attribute the immediate cause of how they ended up on the streets or in a shelter to some sort of relational breakdown or brokenness.

Death in the family, argument, a divorce, a suicide, a domestic violence situation where it's not safe to stay with the loved one, but some kind of falling out, something that happens. And so I got it on my heart, gosh, maybe, you know, I'm just a normal guy, I'm just gonna walk down the street, go up to everyone I see who's visibly homeless and say, do you have any family you wanna reconnect to

for the holidays? Okay, so that's weird. Yeah. It is weird. Yeah. But it's interesting. Yeah. You know, I can't help but say this as I listen to you. We might need to redefine vocabulary. I think there's maybe houselessness and homelessness.

I think homelessness is often seen as a binary and it's really more of a spectrum. That's what I mean when I say that. Yeah, so you got folks, you have 100 people who are unhoused, you got a hundred stories and reasons and contexts of why they're unhoused and what the challenges are. And it's often never just one thing. So even with that family, friends, social support, there probably was some form of tremendous

job loss, health issue, housing insecurity, being evicted, and then you're doubled up, you're tripled up temporarily, but it's that relational thing that ends up being the kind of the straw that breaks the camel's back. But it's never just one thing. What does your, we're gonna get to that first person, but as a further background,

Yeah. what as a further background. Yeah. What percent have you found among the population of these folks have a mental illness? Here's how I'd say this. What we see as the physical manifestation of homelessness is actually not the majority of people experiencing homelessness. Most people who are experiencing homelessness, they're doing whatever they can to hide the fact that they're experiencing homelessness.

They don't want anyone to know it. So there's a kind of confirmation bias that happens. As we say, we're going down the street and that person's screaming at the top of their lungs to no one in particular. Okay, that person's got some serious mental health issues. They're probably experiencing homelessness. But for every one individual we see like that,

there's another three or four that we're not seeing. So maybe 20, 25%. Yeah. My question is, and I've always thought about this, And I think that's a big part of the problem. I think that's a big part of the problem. And I think that's a big part of the problem. And I think that's a big part of the problem. And I think that's a big part of the problem. And I think that's a big part of the problem. And I think that's a big part of the problem. And I think that's a big part of the problem. And I think that's a big part of the problem.

And I think that's a big part of the problem. And I think that's a big part of the problem. And I think that's a big part of the problem. And I think that's a big part of the problem. And I think that's a big part of the problem. urban, my world is urban. As a result, I see folks experiencing homelessness to and from work and in everything I do because I'm in a city of a major metropolitan area of a couple million people and you're gonna see that. And look, I hate generalizations

and judging books by the cover, but there are people you know are suffering from mental illness that are also homeless, right? I often wonder, did the mental illness precede the homelessness, or did the mental illness come as a result of the homelessness? I always wonder of that population, the chicken or the egg?

And I just, because if I was on the street, dirty, stinky, nowhere to go, hopeless as hell and everything else, I could see how that could develop mental illness. But I can also see the way the systems are, especially in foster care and some other things, many people age out of protective systems, have nowhere to go, and are dealing with mental health issues and end up

homeless. So I think it's, I think there's both, but have you experienced people that you think, you know, I think this mental illness is a result of the homelessness. It wasn't what started the homelessness. Football doesn't build character. Football reveals character. Okay, so you just quoted me, that's weird. Homelessness reveals all the things that are broken in our society. You wanna talk about- I get the metaphor, so go ahead and talk on that. Foster care, one out of three kids

who age out of foster care will experience homelessness by the time they're 26 years old. For black kids, that's 60%. 60% will experience homelessness for no fault of their own because they've aged out of foster care. We have over 3,000 counties in the United States. There's not a single county where someone who's working full-time at the federal minimum wage can afford the fair market value of

a two-bedroom apartment in less than 1% of counties where that same hard-working person, full-time working, can afford a one-bedroom apartment. At minimum wage, right? So homelessness at its core is a housing problem. There's plenty of other countries in the world with lots of folks who have mental health issues and substance abuse issues that does not have the homelessness problems that we have throughout the United States. And even within the US, we look at a state

like say West Virginia, where they have plenty of folks who have substance abuse issues, mental health issues, don't have nearly the rates of homelessness as some of the coastal cities. Well, why is that? Cost of housing is a lot cheaper. So at the end of the day, we don't have, it's a game of musical chairs.

You don't have enough chairs for everybody. Some people are gonna be sitting on their butts, literally. And when that happens as a society, as a choice that we've made from policies, then you have a whole host of other issues that can conflate, exacerbate. And as your point, Bill, can be both causes of homelessness as well as effects of homelessness. And for many people it is an effect. You know, we, and we're talking about the systems,

kind of the government systems and the policies and the whole thing. The whole other piece that I talk about in my book is around the human systems. Right, we have this notion of rugged individualism, right? Self-made man, self-made woman. Well, if that's true, like to its extreme, let's just say that is the priority above everything else.

That is our one truth. You can pull yourself off by your bootstraps, and if you don't, does that mean you are deservedly poor or deservedly homeless, right? And I think most people would say, well, no, people got bad luck, bad circumstances, but what we discount is all the people And I think most people would say, well, no, people got bad luck, bad circumstances. But what we discount is all the people

who have helped us get to where we're at at different key moments in our lives. As well as access and access. Absolutely. And those resources. Former governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has an interesting take on being a self-made guy. You read that quote? Yeah Yeah, I can in the voice or no, it's horrible. Do it in the voice But I'll do it anyway, so, you know, you can call me Arnold you can call me short see you can call me Schwarz. You can call me the Terminator. Or whatever ever you do. Don't you ever ever call me a self-made man.

Okay, first of all, that was actually really good. Yeah, I'm gonna have to watch it back. But why don't you tell me why he says he says because for every, you know, success I've had in politics and, as a bodybuilder, as an actor, I've had coaches, mentors, people who believed in me, gave me a chance, opened the door to me. Social capital is really what he was talking about. So here we got the last action hero telling us,

who's often held up as this paragon of the immigrant success story, self-made man. He's like, don't call me that. That's an offense to everyone who's helped me get to where I'm at. That really illustrates an interesting level of humility from a guy who we think is full of love and ego. The same guy that says girly men, with speaking of people that he doesn't like. But the point is, that's an interesting take.

You don't have to agree on everything. No, we don't. The governor, to appreciate his words there, yeah. I think he's dead right on. Yeah. We'll be right back. In 2012, 16-year-old Brian Herrera was gunned down in broad daylight on his way to do homework. No suspects, no witnesses, no justice. The call was horrible.

I replayed over in my head all the time. For years, Brian's family kept asking questions, while a culture of silence kept the case cold. Snitches get stitches. Everybody knows it. Still, they refused to give up. I would ask my husband, do you want me to just let this go? He said, no, keep fighting. I told her I would never give up on this case. And then, after a decade of waiting, a breakthrough.

We received a phone call that was bittersweet, because it's a call that we've been waiting for for a very long time. I'm Enrique Santos. This is Cold Case Files Miami, a podcast about justice, persistence, and the families who never stopped fighting. Listen to Cold Case Files Miami as part of the MyCultura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app,, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Evans and on my podcast Behind the Bastards, we talk about the worst people in all of history.

We've discussed a lot of horrible monsters in our time, but this week we have one of the very worst we'll ever talk about. David Berg, founder of a cult called the Children of God. We'll talk about all of his horrible crimes with special guest Ed Helms. He's not just like a weird religious cult leader. He was like fusing a bunch of hippie ideology in with this kind of like evangelical Christianity, Pentecostal preaching in the mid-century. He's a very weird guy. But yeah, I'll just get into it.

Like nothing you just said makes sense. That doesn't set. Right. But that's the beauty of cults. Listen to Behind the Bastards on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories

and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcast. Every week I sit down with your favorite book lovers, authors, celebrities, book talkers, and more

to explore the stories that shape us on the page and off. I've been reading every Reese's Book Club pick, deep diving book talk theories, and obsessing over book to screen casts for years. And now I get to talk to the people making the magic. So if you've ever fallen in love with a fictional character or cried at the last chapter or passed a book to a friend saying, you have to read this, this podcast is for you.

Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. From iHeart podcasts, before social media, before the internet, before cable news, there was Alan Berg. You dig what I do. You have a need. Unfortunately, you have no sense of humor. That's why you can't ever enjoy this show and that's why you're a loser. He was the first and the original shock shock. That scratchy, irreverent kind of way of talking to people. You're as dumb as the rest.

I can't take anyone. I don't agree with you all the time. I don't want you to. I hope that you pick me apart. His voice changed media. His death shocked the nation. And it makes me so angry that he got himself killed because he had a big mouth. KOA morning talk show host Alan Berg His death shocked the nation. And it makes me so angry that he got himself killed

because he had a big mouth. KOA morning talk show host, Alan Berg, reportedly was shot and killed tonight in downtown Denver. He pointed to the Denver phone book and said, well, there are probably 2 million suspects. This guy aggravated everybody. From iHeart Podcasts, this is Live Wire, the loud life and shocking murder of Alan Berg.

Listen on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, This is Live Wire, the loud life and shocking murder of Alan Berg. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A murder happens. The case goes cold. Then, over 100 years later, we take a second look. I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator. And I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson, a journalist and historian. On our podcast, Buried Bones, we reexamine historical true crime cases.

Using modern forensic techniques, we dig into what the original investigators may have missed. Growing up on a farm when I heard a gunshot, I did not immediately think murder. Unless this person went out to shoot squirrels, they're not choosing a 22 to go hunting out there. These cases may be old, but the questions are still relevant and often chilling. I know this chauffeur is not of concern. It's like, well, he's the last one who saw our life. So how did they eliminate him?

Join us as we take you back to the cold cases that haunt us to this day. New episodes every Wednesday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Barry Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. ["The Way You Look At Me"] Okay, so with that backdrop, which I think is really good backfill, you meet a guy. I walk down the streets because I'm just a normal guy.

And normal people just walk down the streets on Christmas Eve, going up to every person who's on house and saying, do you have any family or friends you'd like to reconnect to? But your uncle kind of set you down a path in your brain and you were following it, I think, in your heart. I started not wanting to change the world, not wanting to do this whole-

You wanted to do something nice for somebody for somebody is self-interest rightly understood because I felt like I was my own humanity. My own empathy was being undermined by the fact that I saw these people as those people rather than my neighbors. Really? I just got tired of walking by. I use it my speech all the time in quotes, these people. What do you mean these people? Yeah. We people that's I know.

All right. So, all right. So I'm walking down the street and I, uh, I, I meet a man named Jeffrey. Uh, and at first, you know, this guy's got, you know, bottle, this is water, but he's got a bottle of not water, uh, sitting at his side and fire water, fire water, and he's got a bottle of not water sitting at his side. Fire water. Fire water. And he's talking to himself. And I'm like, this is the last guy who I should be sitting down talking to. I have a good resume.

I went to a good night's school. What am I doing with the thing? And I walk by him. I walk by him. And I go back and I sit down next to Jeffrey and I ask him all these questions and he's just out of it, not talking to me. He's just talking to whoever.

And finally I say, well, I'm about to leave, about to step away and keep my walk going. And then I say, I gotta ask him this question. So I say, Jeffrey, do you have any family or friends you wanna reconnect to? And for the first time he looks me right in the eye. He says, I haven't seen my family a long time. My dad, Harold, my niece and nephew, my sister, Jennifer,

yeah, if you could help me reconnect to them, that would be great. It's like this awakenings moment, if you ever saw that for the film. It was just this level of lucidity I wasn't expecting. And we had started having this conversation. And so I asked him, I said, Jeffrey, I'm walking around today inviting folks to record messages

to their family for the holidays, you know, a few days from Christmas, 2014. And would you like to record a message to your niece and nephew, your sister and your dad? And he said, yes, I would. I pull out my phone, hit record, and I can share that video with you as well, but he records a video to his family.

So I go home that night. What's he say? He says, Paraphrase. Yeah, paraphrase. He says, he mentions all the people that I just mentioned. He said, I intend to come home and see you someday if I can. And that's about it. Before we go any further, I gotta believe people are listening

to this asking this question because I'm asking it. If you have family that you love and that loves you, I sit on the street. Yeah. And even maybe more stark candid. And even maybe a harder question. Why are those people, society and taxpayers problems when there's family who have the means to? Which is a hard question. There's a lot in that question too.

There is a lot in that question. So let's unpack it a little bit. For every one person that San Francisco gets housed, another three people fall into homelessness. Some would argue though that they aren't falling into homelessness from San Francisco, but they're shipping in because they know that San Francisco cares more. That's true for a relatively small percentage of folks. I just want to throw it out there because I'm not doing my job if I don't make the point that others do make. Yeah, the research has shown that in California about 70% 70 to 80% of those who are unhoused in California were previously housed in California.

Okay, so there's some then that There's some. That are seeking. Yep. Whatever the state has offered. Services, whether all the things that people assume, but a lot of it, it's a homegrown thing. People were housed in a county before they're homeless. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. And I think with a family, so there's three reasons that I've heard over a thousand people experiencing homelessness now have offered this service to. I've heard three reasons that I've heard over 1,000 people experiencing homelessness now have offered this service to. I've heard three reasons over and over again

on why folks are disconnected. So first, digital literacy, digital access. So phones get lost and stolen. A number changes. People move. You call. No one answers. Did they not want to talk to me?

And the mind can wander. Second reason is there's bureaucratic barriers. So under HIPAA in the United States, it's like health and privacy, trying to make it so homelessness is protected, you don't have to reveal that to everyone and their mother, right? But shelters have gotten so terrified of being sued for HIPAA violations

that they will refuse to confirm or deny whether someone's at a facility or even relay a message. So when you go to a shelter, look at the bulletin board as you walk in, it's filled with missing person flyers, the families looking for people wanting to reconnect, but people are like, we can't tell you whether they're here or not, you have to kind of do that a very informal. But the biggest reason by far is the emotional

areas of shame. Right? I mean, we because that's what I anticipated you to say, but I didn't I wondered if you don't want we don't want to be a burden. We don't want to hurt the people we love. There's a woman I featured in the book who was in in jail. She had some substance issues. I mean, the whole thing, right. She's in prison. She gets a letter from her daughter, hasn't talked to her daughter in like 15, 20 years. It says, Mom, we I found you.

I've been looking for you for years. We have a place. You know, we got some land, we got a place for you, please come live with us. She never responded to that letter. She was ashamed. She said a mother at my age should be taking care of her daughter, not the other way around. She just never responded. They ended up reconnecting later, we helped them but but still, that shame is one of the barriers.

You don't wanna be a burden. You don't wanna be a burden. All right, so Bro said I got my sister, my cousins, and my dad, I think. Yep, so we record the video, go online, and do an online search, get in on Facebook, and found a Facebook group connected to his hometown. You know you're from Montoursville if...

Share all the inside knowledge, this restaurant, and oh, do you remember Mr. So-and-so from the school? And posted the video there with a short note. Does anybody know this guy? Does anyone know this guy? Here's his name, here's who he's looking for. So simple, why not? And I put it out there, didn't know what to expect.

And I'll share it just because I was told by, you know, the producers here, be vulnerable. Said be, be vulnerable, that's what normal people do. It's like, all right, well, my vulnerable moment here is that I just sat on that video for about a week before doing anything. Really? Yeah, because I didn't know if I could trust the guy. You know, I didn't want to get involved,

like what's the backstory here, the whole thing, right? So I just sat on it. Nobody's yelling rape, it's just a homeless guy. I didn't know what was going on, right? I didn't know what was going on. And so I, after a week of sitting on it, it's just like burned into my pocket, find the group, post it there. Within one

hour, that video goes viral. It makes the local news that night as the leading story in wherever villain tours. This is a real place. Montoursville, Pennsylvania. Yeah, that place. Classmates start commenting in the posts and saying, Hey, I went to high school with Jeffrey. I work in construction. Does he need a job? I work at the congressman's office. Does he need health care?

The town came together and raised over $5,000 to try to bring him home. We got on the phone the next day with Jennifer, his sister. She got tagged in the post in the first 20 minutes. She tells me Jeffrey has been a missing person for 12 years, broad daylight, downtown San Francisco, a few days before Christmas. And?

And so we were able to get them reconnected, first on a phone call, and then they reconnected in person a few months later. Jennifer got on a train across the country, she's afraid of flying, got on a four day train from Pennsylvania and saw her brother for the first time in 22 years. So does this immediately solve Jeffrey's homelessness? Is the blue skies, everything's peachy, hunky dory?

No, like he had, in his case, had some of those underlying mental health issues, addiction issues, and unfortunately, he never accepted the help that was offered. It's just two in the throes of the addiction. It wasn't okay to travel. He ended up dying on the streets a few years later. So you almost think, well, gosh, is that a good story to run the thing? It's a great story, and I'm gonna tell you my perspective. It's a great story. His family didn't think of him as missing anymore.

They had answers. But whatever Jeffrey was experiencing, living on the streets, clearly as you've stated, the connection to family still mattered to him because it was the only thing that he really mentioned to you and in his desperate life, he at least got to know that he was loved. That's what Jennifer told me. Almost verbatim.

So right. Yeah. Yeah. Because I almost after he passed away, I'm like, I'm sorry. We were in, you know, this was years later. We had all these reunions. Some got off the streets and now living with family. We're going to get into that. Yeah. But and I was like, I feel like I failed you, Jennifer. I'm sorry. This never worked out. She's like, are you kidding me?

Like, the closure that we got, the kids got a chance to have an interaction with our uncle. I didn't even know he knew their names. And we have a video of him recording a message to Josh and Rachel, right? And it just means so much to us. And yeah, he never was able to beat that, that, you know, devil on his shoulder. But he knew that we were there and they, you know, I always thought with my uncle,

would this work have been appropriate for him? And the answer I've come to Bill, the best I can think of is it depends on the day. Some days were good days. Sure. Offered to other days, not good days, sure, offer it to them. Other days, not good days, totally inappropriate. No informed consent, no ability to have this conversation. But whether it was a good day or a bad day for Uncle Mark, I'd like to think that we as a society would say,

here's the service, the door is open. It's up to you if you want to walk through it. And that concludes part one of my conversation with Kevin Adler and guys you do not want to miss part two that's now available to listen to. Together, guys, we can change this country, but it starts with you. I'll see you in part two. In 2012, 16-year-old Brian Herrera was gunned down in broad daylight on his way to do homework. No suspects, no witnesses, no justice. I would ask my husband, do you want me to stop?

He was like, no, keep fighting. After nearly a decade, a breakthrough changed everything. This is Cold Case Files Miami, stories of families who never stopped fighting. Listen to Cold Case Files Miami on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Evans, and on my show Behind the Bastards this week, we have one of our worst subjects ever, David Byrd, founder of the children of God cult We'll be talking about with special guest Ed Helms. He's not just like a weird religious cult leader

He was like fusing a bunch of hippie ideology in with this kind of like evangelical Christianity Pentecostal preaching in the mid-century is a very weird guy. Hmm. Yeah, I'll just get into it Like nothing you just said makes sense. That doesn't sense. Right. But that's the beauty of cults. Listen to Behind the Bastards on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay, and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts, where we dive into the stories that shape us, on the page and off. Each week, I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars, and more for conversations

that will make you laugh, cry, and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From iHeart Podcast, before social media, before cable news, there was Alan Berg. He was the first and the original shock chuck. That scratchy, reverent kind of way, talking to people and telling them that you're an idiot and I'm gonna hang up on you. This is Live Wire, the loud life and shocking murder of Alan Berg. And he pointed

to the Denver phone book and said, well, there are probably two million suspects. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A Body, a Suspect, and 100 Years of Silence. Buried Bones is a podcast about the forgotten crimes history tried to leave behind. A common misperception about serial predators is that every single time they commit a crime, they commit it the same way. The past is a way of talking if you know what to listen for. New episodes every Wednesday on the Exactly Right Network.

Listen to Barry Bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.