Hard Corners with Tom Synan

Send a text In this episode we speak with Gil and Meagan Guthrie. A young couple, still newlyweds and how Gil’s sudden cancer diagnoses turned their lives upside-down. It is not just the physical that can cause the most trauma but the sudden reaction that life as you know it has changed. Plans, dreams, hopes not as certain as they once were. Fear and anxiety an understandable side effect when life...

Send a text We continue our underlying theme of forgiveness in this powerfully emotional episode. We interview Kasey Ladd who grew up in the small town I police. Kasey lost his mother in the Who concert tragedy. He growing up in pain and anger  set my personal car on fire in the police department parking lot while I was on duty. Kasey walks us through his healing. Anger-to-pain-to-wisdom. I held n...

Send a text This is an astonishing story of tragedy and equally an astonishing story of resilience.  Jeff shares a story of what the world saw was not what his home was. His brother punching a hole in the wall, his mother covers it up with a picture of the family smiling. A prophetic gesture that would dictate much of Jeff’s life. Some ask how much can one person take? Jeff Higgins lived that ques...

Send a text It is so hard to forgive when someone betrays you, life doesn’t meet expectations, your world unexpectedly changes or when someone takes away the very thing you cherish the most.  In a world of choices and consequences, the death of a son leads a father from picking up the shattered pieces, to his sons life being a beacon of hope and forgiveness, even for the person that sold the drugs...

Send a text Police reform has become a hotly debated topic in policing, public and politics. There are controversies on all sides.  Is it divert or invest in police? Should reform include our communities and society? Has the role of policing changed so much that the term law enforcement is not enough to describe the need and service provided? Are police warriors or servants? Can they be and do it...

Send a text There was a time psychedelics were used to escape reality. Now they are being used to heal reality. In this episode we talk to Diane Goldstein with Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP). Sarko Gergarian, LEAP speaker and Peter Grayson, Director of Addiction and Recovery at Nushama psychedelic wellness clinic. Our guest discuss the use of psychedelics for first responder and militar...

Send a text The Urban League of Greater Southwestern Ohio, Center for Social Justice- Gabriel Fletcher and Fanon Rucker join us to have an open, raw, sometimes uncomfortable conversation about police accountability, race and community. We ask the questions- is the criminal justice system fair and just? What is justice? How can we collaborate to improve policing as well our communities? 

Send a text For this episode we are joined by former General Counsel to the White House Office of Drug Policy Robert Kent.  Drug policy in the U.S. has been shifting from enforcement to diversion, deflection and treating addiction as a chronic health condition. Robert takes inside national and international drug policy. Impact of illegal drug supply. Why his work is so important to him and the imp...

Send a text This is a real, raw and perfectly imperfect conversation of policing, being a police leader and what it all means to be the human under the uniform. There are not enough words to thank and express my gratitude to Chief Thomas Wells, Chief Scott Hughes and Capt. Steve Saunders; for their incredible insight and opening up about their police careers, how the job has impacted their mental...

Send a text Fentanyl: What is real? What is myth?  Dr. Ryan Marino, Addiction Specialist and Toxicologist joins  us via Zoom to discuss what fentanyl is and what it isn’t. His passion to ensure the media doesn’t help spread the myths. Which has gained the attention of high profile national media personalities. And, setting the record straight about fentanyl. 

Send a text Serial killers and active shooters fascinate us in part because most of us are not capable of comprehending how someone can be driven to commit such heinous acts of inhumanity.  In this follow up to the “Super power of empathy” episode, trauma specialist, Melissa Adamchik, offers some insight into why and how human behavior can take this hard turn away from connecting to others.

Send a text Empathy can be both emotional and cognitive. A conscious decision to understand the plight of another. Empathy has been called “the currency that can change the world.”  If it is so valuable, worth sharing, such a superpower; then why do we need use it more often? In this episode we invited Melissa Adamchik of the Tristate Trauma Network to help us learn more on these topics and explor...

Send a text The Founding Fathers believed one of the most critical principles to maintaining a democracy was a free press. So important they made it part of the 1st Amendment.  As confidence in many institutions has diminished, including the news media...Has our faith in the 1st Amendment diminished too? A conversation with Mike Canan former news director at WCPO and now Director of Journalism Str...

Send a text I have often told the story of an entire family, an entire generation in my community dying from addiction, it changed my life as a cop and human being. I wanted to know how it impacted the third generation of addiction as a human being.  Not everyone that deals with addiction makes a choice. Shelley was exposed to the family “normal” of substance use at the age of 12. By 14 she was ad...