The Bechdel Cast - TBC Recommends: We the Unhoused on iHeartRadio

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

This week, we’re spotlighting We The Unhoused, a show created and hosted by Los Angeles unhoused writer and activist Theo Henderson — the only podcast created by the unhoused, for the unhoused, dispelling the myths that encourage housed people to see the unhoused as a monolith. Check out the podcast at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-the-unhoused/id1490017575 and https://www.wetheunhoused.com/. Enjoy!   Follow @wetheunhoused on Instagram.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? It's right here in black and white and prints. It's bigger than a flag or mascot. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm NK, and this is Basket

Case. What is wrong with me? A show about the ways that mental illness is shaped by not just biology, swaps of different meds, but by culture and society. By looking closely at the conditions that cause mental distress, I find out why so many of us are struggling to feel sane, what we can do about it, and why we should care. Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. capitalism the patriarchy's effing vast start changing it with the Bechdel cast hello Bechdel cast listeners it's us oh I thought you were gonna say your name hi uh yeah welcome to the Bechdel cast um we're gonna be doing something a little bit different

this week in fact extremely different in fact something we've never done before. Wow. And isn't that thrilling? My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante. And this is normally a podcast where we look at your favorite movies from an intersectional feminist lens. It was last week. It will be next week. However, this week, we wanted to share a little bit of a new podcast, or rather, a newly revived podcast that is coming to iHeartRadio called We the Unhoused. Full disclosure, disclosure alert. I am a producer on this show. Amazing. Yeah, we want to sort of spread the word about this show as much as possible. It's a show that I first learned about in 2020, although it started releasing episodes in 2019. It is created and hosted by the incredible Theo Henderson, who is an unhoused activist and artist and reporter who lives in Los Angeles. He began with The Unhoused as a first-person account

of the unhoused experience in LA from the perspective of the unhoused. And that is what it will continue to be. So obviously, I mean, there's something that we've talked about on the Bechtelcast in passing because we're a media criticism podcast, but houselessness and the treatment of unhoused people as a monolith

is something that's very important to us and something that this show, I think, uniquely addresses. So we wanted to share a little bit with you and would really encourage you to subscribe to the show and also just follow Theo Henderson's work in general. It's invaluable. Mm hmm. Yeah. And find ways if you're able to support the unhoused community in your area, your unhoused neighbors. In LA, there are over 75,000 unhoused people living in this city, and our local government is doing very little to support them. And so many unhoused people rely on mutual aid from individuals and kind of small groups. So yeah, we encourage people to find ways they can get involved in supporting their unhoused neighbors. And also just be armed with knowledge. I mean, I have learned so, so much

from We the Unhoused over the years about the many complicated issues that face unhoused people today and the many, many perspectives that unhoused people come from. And so with that, we're going to kick it over to the amazing Theo Henderson. This is the first chunk of the relaunch episode of We the Unhoused. We'll be linking to the feed for the series in the description. And if you want to hear the whole thing, which you should, head over to the feed and subscribe. We'll be releasing new episodes every two weeks on Tuesdays. So get your We The Unhoused on Tuesdays, Bechtelcast on Thursdays. Really pace out your week. All right.

Here is the first episode of the We The Unhoused relaunch with Theo Henderson. It's a simple truth that we can't escape. Houselessness is everywhere. It affects over half a million people in the United States alone. We try to make sense out of this tragedy, but it is a senseless endeavor. What I'm going to ask of you is a very tall order. I want you to take what you heard about houselessness, and I want you to forget it. Are you still with me?

Good. Let us have a conversation. My name is Theo Henderson, host and creator of Weedian House, and I'm going to take you on a journey in this crisis. Being unhoused is a 24-hour job, and my lived experience in houselessness is extensive. I was one of over 75,000 people experiencing houselessness on a given night in los angeles now contrary to ill-informed people i did not grow up and say gee i can't wait to live on the streets to encounter societal rejection and violence i don't fit the stereotypes of what news media movies and many house people think of an unhoused person. Most unhoused people don't.

Being unhoused is so often made out to seem like an individual's fault, not the hundreds of thousands of systematic failures that have to take place to put someone in that position in the first place. Needless to say, the unhoused are not a monolith. My history as an activist has been difficult but a necessary journey. I drew inspiration on my role as an activist from this quote from Shirley Chisholm. Activism is my rent for living on this planet, which is kind of erotic, isn't it? Paying with activism to fight for dignity and empathy in an indifferent world. However, the bill must be paid to foster a better world than I found it. My family has ties in

activism, fighting in the civil rights era and the re-election of the first black mayor in Chicago, Mayor Washington, where I was born and raised. Living in Chicago taught me a lot, and Los Angeles has been an entirely new kind of teacher after I moved here. As I made Los Angeles my home, the motivation to speak out against housing injustice became too great, particularly when I became unhoused myself. In 2019, the house worldoused person sitting in their neighborhood. But for the unhoused people, hell was being unleashed with the new ordinance that was voted in called 4118. A word about 4118 is touted as the new Jim Crow of Los Angeles. As you have known from history, majority of unhoused people are Black and brown community members. And what this does, it makes it illegal for unhoused poor people to sit, sleep, and lie within 500 feet of a posted sign that has been posted all over the city

by city council members, neighborhood councils, and business improvement district owners. In 2019, most people never heard of a show that was going to be made by an unhoused person for unhoused people. Sure, they hear the occasional New York Times, NPR, or God forbid, Fox News broadcast. But even the good coverage was always presented by housed people for housed people about unhoused people. I tried to make an SOS symbol with this podcast,

hoping to find a knowing ear and build allyship between unhoused people and housed people. The disinformation campaign about the unhoused is threatening our will to be compassionate and empathetic to each other. We unhoused is constantly up against a pernicious belief that houselessness is a moral individual failure. Case in point, I have a friend, a friend who is adamant that the unhoused community likes being out there. There is no critical thinking required, just quick, uninformed soundbites that is being reinforced by mainstream media.

I have always believed that if you can demonize a person, then you can criminalize them. I wanted to show how individuals are affected by houselessness, and Weedian House does that. I took a figurative and literal breath and created this from scratch. Living outside, I had to utilize the tools I had available. I used a cheap phone. I edited and released episodes with the help of a couple of friends. I would speak with people about their stories, how city hall policies affected them,

how the police disrespected and abused them, and how the unhoused were mistreated throughout the pandemic. It was all from the expert opinion by the people affected. Initially, I expected the show to hit local niche audiences. Imagine my surprise at people reaching out to me from out of state and out of the country who were displaced and unhoused and wished that Weedian House was a part of their experience in their place of origin. This podcast became the lightning rod for the world's moral consciousness. All of a sudden, the mainstream media outlets that had been treating The Unhoused as a monolith for all those years were talking about my show, one that finally centered the community they'd been

misrepresenting for so long. My medium became a diverse attempt to get the message across. The podcast was only just the beginning. As I moved in these circles of people wanting to hear about the unhoused community and their struggles, I was installed as an activist in residence at UCLA in 2022 as a way to awaken the sympathy and empathy that was so sorely lacking in housed and very affluent communities. Then creating a newspaper that highlight the struggles of unhoused people and being read by unhoused people in 2022 as well. And currently in 2023, my newsletter, which highlights the struggles that are beleaguering our communities. We in House as a one-man production was an important job, but an exhausting and really heavy lift. More polished shows did not have to continue with the obstacles that I endured,

but I persevered. And now we're relaunching the show with a little more polish, but the mission of the show is still the same. So why are we launched the show now? Houselessness did not go away when I stopped doing We Need a House in September of 2022. It has continued and now has escalated. We have a lot to talk about, we have a lot to explore, and we have a lot to do to change the narrative about houselessness and how we look at our fellow human beings. If I told you that anyone that is in a medical emergency is in risk of being thrown from their home, would you believe it? If I told you that there are over 68,000 unhoused children in the Los Angeles Unified School District,

would you be empathetic or dismissive? If I told you that the people who pick the fruits and vegetables in your refrigerator are unhoused, even though they are employed, would you be motivated to speak out against this injustice? This is the crux of my show, getting you informed so we can do something about it. The show deals with all aspects of houselessness, not just the obvious unhoused encampments. We the Unhoused will break down terms such as agency and language such as NIMBYs and what they mean to our community. And in every episode, we'll spotlight unhoused news,

which is crucial to the unhoused community. My goal is to consolidate all things unhoused here, educate the community who would be unaware, my descent into houselessness, and how I navigated through it and out of it. So we're bringing in a good friend of mine and podcaster in her own right, Bay Honey. And that's what's up next on We The Unhoused. Once again, that was the first chunk of this episode of We The Unhoused. We encourage you to subscribe to the show, listen to it as it comes out. Yeah, we have a lot of amazing episodes coming up. The next one is going to be about the Unhoused Day of Remembrance, which happens every year shortly before the Christmas holiday. In LA, it's a day where the Unhoused community

memorializes people in the community that have been lost in the past year. So Theo will be covering not just the event, but the history of the event and speaking with and memorializing those we've lost this year. So a lot to look forward to. Listen to We the Unhoused.

And thank you for listening to this unconventional episode of the Bechtelcast. Yes, indeed. We will be back next week with our regularly scheduled programming, but we appreciate you giving this a listen. And yeah, we'll be back next week for a live episode on It's a Wonderful Life. But is it? But is it?

Tune in next week. Bye. Bye-bye. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. I'm NK, and this is Basket Case. What is wrong with me? A show about the ways that mental illness is shaped by not just biology. Swaps of different meds.

But by culture and society. By looking closely at the conditions that cause mental distress, I find out why so many of us are struggling to feel sane, what we can do about it, and why we should care. Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, your podcasts. It's right here in black and white in print. It's bigger than a flag or mascot. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.