Let's Grab Coffee

Episode Notes November is National Adoption Month, which adoptees have reclaimed as National Adoptee Awareness Month (NAAM). In honor of NAAM, this month on Let's Grab Coffee, I'm featuring conversations with authors of books that center adoptee voices. Child welfare services, including adoption and foster care, are often framed around the “best interests of the child,” but who gets to decide what...

Episode Notes November is National Adoption Month, which adoptees have reclaimed as National Adoptee Awareness Month (NAAM). In honor of NAAM, this month on Let's Grab Coffee, I'm featuring conversations with authors of books that center adoptee voices. In the last few years, loss and grief have become a shared collective experience, particularly in the wake of the COVID19 pandemic. This period ha...

Episode Notes What does it mean to be trans? Cisgender? And why should we all use our pronouns as part of how we introduce ourselves? Isn’t gender biological? Many of us have questions like these yet we don’t know who to ask or how to have these conversations. On today’s show, I’m joined by Schulyer Bailar. He’s the author of He/She/They: How We Talk about Gender and Why It Matters, a book that is...

Episode Notes The desire for success and achievement are part of our culture, a culture that tells us ambition is a virtue – to do more, to be the best, to work hard, so we can play even harder. But what does all that ambition ultimately get us? Are we healthier, happier, more fulfilled? With burnout at an all-time high, according to a recent study by the Future Forum, is it time to rethink ambiti...

Episode Notes There’s more to food than just what’s on your plate. Food can be a weapon of suppression and a tool of resistance. In fact, food was one contested site of freedom during the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. Bobby J. Smith II details this story in Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement . Today we discuss the 1962-1963 Greenwood, Mississippi Food Blockad...

Episode Notes In 1990, Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a federal civil rights law banning discrimination against people with disabilities in many areas of life. However, despite the ADA and more precisely the work of the disability rights movement in bringing public visibility to the injustices faced by disabled folks, the law doesn’t cover accessibility or inclusion in...

Episode Notes According to the US Census, the United States is home to more than 45 million immigrants, about 14% of the total US population. And while this country’s origin story is one of immigration, there have almost always been anti-immigration attitudes, deep misconceptions about the immigration process, and biases about who is worthy of belonging. On today’s show I’m joined by Alejandra Oli...

Episode Notes Child welfare services, including adoption and foster care, are often framed around the “best interests of the child,” but who gets to decide what’s best and who’s best for the child? What happens in cases of adoptive parent and foster parent abuse, neglect, and murder? On this episode, I sit down with Roxanna Asgarian, author of _We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Ch...

Episode Notes In the U.S. coffee is commonly associated with Starbucks, a daily pick-me-up taken on the go, or a fancy specialty coffee shop often located in a gentrified neighborhood. However coffee has a deeply Black and deeply communal history. What would it mean to understand coffee’s Black history and its Black future? Cxffeeblack is on a mission to find out. On this episode, I’m joined by Ba...

Episode Notes Doctors are trained to save the lives of countless patients but what happens when the person who needs saving is themselves? On today’s show I’m joined by Dr. Anthony Chin-Quee, author of I Can’t Save You. In this memoir, Anthony gives us an intimate look at one doctor’s journey into and out of medicine. Anthony Chin-Quee, M.D., is a board-certified otolaryngologist with degrees from...

Episode Notes Have you ever expensed a lunch that wasn’t solely a business meeting or maybe added a little extra time on your timesheet? If so, that’s fraud. Fraud is not just identity theft, ponzi schemes, or embezzling millions of dollars. Fraud is all around us and maybe even happening to us without our knowledge. On today’s show, I sit down with Dr. Kelly Richmond Pope author of Fool Me Once:...

Episode Notes In the last few years, loss and grief have become a shared collective experience, particularly in the wake of the COVID19 pandemic. This period has also put the inequities in the U.S. healthcare system front and center along with the ways that what has been “normal” has often been harmful or unsustainable. In _A Living Remedy: A Memoir, _Nicole Chung shares her personal experience of...

Episode Notes Recent acts of racial violence are often explained aways as isolated incidents yet a longer view of our nation’s history provides much-needed context to understand our present moment and what may lay ahead. In his latest book, American Whitelash: A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress, Wesley Lowery brings together insights from history, interviews, data, and a close examination...

Episode Notes SunAh revisits her conversation with Dr. Victor Ray about his book  On Critical Race Theory: Why It Matters & Why You Should Care.  Dr. Victor Ray, Associate Professor in the Departments of Sociology and Criminology and African American Studies at the University of Iowa and and a Nonresident Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution. .  Over the past couple years,...

Episode Notes What does it feel like to be visible and invisible, American and presumed foreigner, neither Black nor White? What does it feel like to be Asian in America? In Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America, Julia Lee takes readers on a personal journey of finding her place in the U.S. It is a journey of rage, shame, and grace, a journey that will be familiar to many ma...

Episode Notes Children often feel pressured to live up to their parents’ dreams, but for the children of immigrants this pressure is particularly acute. So, what happens when who you are and what you desire conflicts with your parents’ visions of success that are constrained within heteronormative constructions of family, children, and career? On this episode, SunAh chats with Dr. Anthony Christia...

Episode Notes What are some key events, places, or people in Asian American history? If you struggle to come up with an answer, you’re not alone. Asian American history is a history of erasure and not-knowing. On this episode, SunAh is joined by Dr. Catherine Ceniza Choy, whose latest book, Asian American Histories of the United States, brings to the forefront the many stories of Asian American hi...

Episode Notes Have you ever felt like you don't have enough energy, care, or motivation to continue with your daily tasks? That's burnout and it's becoming more and more common. On today's show I'm joined by Amelia Nagoski, co-author of Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. She talks about why burnout is so common, especially among women, and what we can do to overcome it.   Amelia Na...

Episode Notes Every day we are bombarded with messaging from media, advertisers, friends, and family about what our bodies should look like and how we can take control of our bodies. Many of these messages are inaccurate and harmful, but how can we break free? And, what is at the root of all of this focus on body management? Today I’m joined by Chrissy King, author of The Body Liberation Project:...

Episode Notes “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced,” wrote James Baldwin.   In THE KNEELING MAN, Leta McCollough Seletzky takes us on her personal journey of investigating her father’s life as a spy within Civil Rights organizations. Questioning her father’s life reopened her family’s wounds, yet it is through her exploration that she comes to...

Episode Notes From everyday social blunders to corporate scandals and social issues, denial is a common strategy used to address or rather ignore problems. On this episode, SunAh is joined by Dr. Jared Del Rosso, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology & Criminology at the University of Denver and author of “Denial: How We Hide, Ignore, and Explain away Problems.” Dr. Del Rosso brea...

Episode Notes According to the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child, everyone has the right to identity, the right to know one’s history and origins. Everyone, including children adopted transnationally out of a war. But how can these adoptees begin to know their history and origins, if their nations of origin deny their existence? On today’s show, I’m joined by Dr. Elizabeth Barne...

Episode Notes “Anyone with an internet connection can be a propagandist.” Yes, that means you and me. If you don’t believe it – and trust me, I didn’t either – you will once you learn more about Dr. Samuel Woolley’s research on propaganda in the social media age. In today’s show, I sit down with Sam to talk about the conditions of social media that make propaganda easy create and circulate and who...

Episode Notes We all want to be believed, yet not everyone is believable. Criteria for credibility reflect cultural norms and our own desires to leave what we already know unquestioned, but how do these biases affect what we hear and the choices we make? In her latest book, Who Gets Believed? When the Truth Isn’t Enough, _Dina Nayeri uncovers how we listen, who we believe, and the tragic consequen...

Episode Notes This month Let’s Grab Coffee features conversation with Black Is America host and creator, Dominic Lawson. On today’s show, Dominic and I reflect on our time together this month before listening to Part 2 of the Black is America episode about Marian Anderson.   The Black Is America podcast highlights little-known African-American figures and stories. This award-winning podcast helps...