Hello Good Ancestors!
It’s me, your host, Laya Saad! And I am back with some really exciting news.
We have a new digital home and a new podcast! But let me back track for a moment to give you some context and let you know what’s happening.
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I’m thrilled to share our final bonus episode of 2021 Good Ancestor conversations.
(You can find our first bonus episode here)
As you listen to these wonderful excerpts from Episodes 50 through 59 you will find all the joyful emotions come to surface. What a glorious way to end our podcast listening year with our special guests who have uplifted our spirits and showed how to continue to live the life of a Good Ancestor.
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As we close out this year it is my honor and pleasure to bring you the first of two bonus episodes highlighting our memorable episodes this wonderful year.
We wanted to close out this year with a celebration of all of the wonderful guests we've had the pleasure of speaking with this year. Thank you for sharing your time this past year, which as Layla mentioned in the introduction of this episode is the most valuable thing in the world. We are grateful for our Good Ancestor community.
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In this episode, I speak with best-selling author, lawyer, filmmaker, educator, and civil rights leader, Valarie Kaur.
Valarie Kaur’s debut book, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love is our Good Ancestor Book Club selection for the month of November 2021.
Valarie Kaur is a renowned civil rights leader, lawyer, best-selling author, award-winning filmmaker, educator, innovator, and celebrated prophetic voice. She leads the Revolutionary Love Project to reclaim love as a force for justice. Valarie burst into American consciousness in the wake of the 2016 election when her Watch Night Service address went viral with 40 million views worldwide. Her question “Is this the darkness of the tomb – or the darkness of the womb?” reframed the political moment and became a mantra for people fighting for change.
In the last twenty years, Valarie has won policy change on multiple fronts – hate crimes, racial profiling, immigration detention, solitary confinement, Internet freedom, and more. She founded Groundswell Movement, Faithful Internet, and the Yale Visual Law Project to inspire and equip advocates at the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and justice.
Valarie has been a regular TV commentator on MSNBC and contributor to CNN, NPR, PBS, the Hill, Huffington Post, and the Washington Post. A daughter of Sikh farmers in California’s heartland, Valarie earned degrees at Stanford University, Harvard Divinity School, and Yale Law School. Valarie’s debut book, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love, was released in 2020 and expands on her “blockbuster” TED Talk.
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In this episode, I speak with Black poet, Jasmine Mans.
Jasmine Mans is a poet from Newark, New Jersey. Her recently published book, Black Girl, Call Home (Penguin Random House) has been named one of Oprah’s Most Anticipated LGBTQ Books and a TIME Magazine Must Read, to name a few; and Jasmine herself named as Essence’s #1 Contemporary Black Poet to Know.
Jasmine’s poetry has gone viral many times over on YouTube. She has opened packed shows for Mos Def and Janelle Monae; and performed at such esteemed venues as the Kennedy Center, Broadway's New Amsterdam Theater, the Wisconsin Governor’s Mansion, and the Sundance Film Festival. Mans also participated in "Brave New Voices", an 8-episode poetry documentary on HBO.
Jasmine is a contributor to the 1619 Project and co-hosted the Kennedy Center’s Arts Across America series alongside renowned poet Jason Reynolds. Jasmine is also the voice behind Ulta Beauty’s MUSE campaign. Jasmine created the company Buy Weed From Women, where she sells her own designs in support of women working in the cannabis industry.
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In this episode, I speak with embodiment practitioner and leadership coach, Thérèse Cator.
Thérèse is a mother, a trauma-informed embodiment practitioner, leadership coach, artist, and founder of Embodied Black Girl, a global community that stands for the embodied liberation of Black women and femmes and women of color everywhere. Embodied Black Girl is devoted to creating a safe space for Black women and femmes and women of color to heal from intergenerational trauma, racialized stress, and colonial conditioning in service of our individual and collective liberation and healing.
Her work deeply explores the shadows and gifts of humanity and bridges leadership, spirituality, healing, somatics, mindfulness, decolonization, and social change. Thérèse deeply believes that healing is both personal and political; spiritual and corporeal.
In 2020 alone, Thérèse led many healing circles for the Black community, attended by nearly 5,000 folks. She also led Becoming Human, a series of lessons for white people to dismantle white supremacy, for thousands of people. Thérèse’s work has been featured in Forbes, Motherly Magazine, Mind Body Green, and Women’s Health Magazine.
Thérèse grew up in Brooklyn, New York. These days you can find her hanging out with her son watching or building trains and tending to her plant babies.
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In this episode, I speak with writer, speaker, and lawyer, Savala Nolan.
Savala Nolan is a writer, speaker, and lawyer. Her first book, Don’t Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender and the Body is our Good Ancestor Book Club selection for the month of October 2021.
Savala is executive director of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. She and her writing have been featured in Vogue, Time, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, the Boston Globe, and more. She served as an advisor on the Peabody–winning podcast, The Promise. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.
Don't Let It Get You Down is a powerful collection of 12 memoiristic essays - lyrical and magnetic in their cadence - that offer poignant reflections on living between society’s most charged, politicized, and intractably polar spaces—between black and white, rich and poor, thin and fat.
Content warning: in the opening of this conversation, Savala shares her connection to her second great grandmother who was murdered at the hands of racist vigilantes in the 1890s.
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In this episode, I speak with the anti-bias facilitator and mental wellness advocate, Leesa Renée Hall.
Leesa Renée Hall is an anti-bias facilitator who has helped over 65,000 leaders with quiet, gentle, and highly sensitive personalities go on an Inner Field Trip® to explore their unconscious biases so they protect their energy, stand on the side of justice, and become better ancestors.
In 2017, Leesa embarked on a personal journey of writing half a million words over 365 consecutive days. Over that year she used questions to help her unpack her own unconscious biases around her race, gender, religion, ancestry, and nationality. This led her to the work that she does today, leading thousands of people through her signature body of work called the Inner Field Trip®, a process of self-reflection using guided questions and reflective writing.
Leesa is also the host of the Inner Field Trip Podcast where she hosts conversations with those who have advice on how to Stumble Bravely, and the creator of the Inner Field Trip card deck, which includes 40 guided prompts to help people uncover their hidden stereotypes so they can be more courageously on the side of justice and create a future without bias.
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In this episode, I speak with author, speaker and behavioural & data scientist, Pragya Agarwal.
Pragya Agarwal is a behavioural and data scientist, who has worked as a consultant and speaker for the United Nations, UNESCO, Environment Agency, NHS, UK Police Commissioners, Cabinet Office, and US Defence Services, and various international universities including Oxford, Cambridge, Columbia, Koblenz, Imperial College and more. Pragya has held a Leverhulme Fellowship and senior academic positions in US and UK Universities for over 12 years. She has also held fellowships at University of California- Santa Barbara, University of Melbourne and Johns Hopkins University.
Pragya is the author of a number of academic books and numerous scholarly articles, and three non-fiction books and many articles for a general audience. Her writing has appeared in Guardian, Prospect, Forbes, Huffington Post, BBC Science Focus, Scientific American, WIRED and New Scientist, Wellcome Collection, as well as magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Stylist, Elle and so on. Her creative non-fiction writing also appears in a number of literary magazines. Besides non-fiction books for adults, she has also recently written her first book for children. She is a two-time TEDx speaker and has appeared as an expert on many international podcasts and shows such as NPR, BBC Women's Hour, BBC Radio 4 'The Spark' and Darren Brown's podcast 'The Bigoted Brain'.
Pragya moved to the UK from India 20 years ago, and now lives in the north of the country, near the sea, with her family. She has three children, a dog and a cat.
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In this episode, I speak with the co-authors of What's your Story?, Rebecca Walker and Lily Diamond.
Rebecca Walker is a bestselling author, editor, and cultural critic who has contributed to the global conversation about race, gender, culture, and power for over two decades. She has spoken at over four hundred universities, conferences, literary festivals, and corporate campuses around the world, and is a co-founder of the Third Wave Fund, an organization that supports women and transgender youth working for social justice. Rebecca has won many awards, and was named by Time magazine as one of the most influential leaders of her generation. She lives in Los Angeles.
Lily Diamond is a writer, educator, and advocate working to democratize wellness through storytelling, accessible practices for inner and outer nourishment, and revolutionary acts of self-care in relationship to our earth and human communities. Lily is the author of the bestselling memoir-cookbook Kale & Caramel: Recipes for Body, Heart, and Table, and her work has been featured in the New York Times, VICE, Healthyish, Women’s Review of Books, Refinery29, and more. She lives in Maui, Hawai‘i, where she grew up, on occupied native Hawaiian land.
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