The Joyous Justice Podcast

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ Inspired by April’s appearance on a panel entitled, “Religion is…divisive,” and in the shadow of Martin Luther King Jr Day, we dig into the ways religion can be used to defend or to dismantle systemic oppression. Together, we think through what we believe comes after the ellipses (we don’t LOVE ‘Religion is… di...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ In a follow up to our last episode, today’s conversation focuses on joy in adulthood. We talk about joy as abundance and about the ways we can weave joy into our everyday life and give it structure–not to squelch it, but to help it serve our best interests. April also explains how she has tweaked her habit trac...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ We’re on the other side of 2022, and we're thinking about how we can cultivate joy in 2023. April recounts a moment from several years ago when she was struggling to even access joy and reflects on where she is with that journey now. Plus, we harken back to our childhoods and talk about what brought us joy...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ 🌟 In Episode 120 of the Joyous Justice Podcast, during this season of short days where light becomes a precious commodity, hosts April Baskin and Tracie Guy Decker delve into the transformative power of light as a metaphor for change.  This isn't just a conversation; it's a journey through the dynami...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ Inspired by the Chanukah themes of rededicating the Temple, April and Tracie explore what it would look like to practice rededication, particularly as an alternative to New Years’ resolutions. While resolutions might feel transactional or center around deficit, rededication recognizes what we’re working for and...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ As we’re hosting our Roadmap to Resilience workshop, we’re feeling reflective and appreciative about where we are and where we’ve been. So, we’re sharing a conversation from last spring inspired by a session of Grounded & Growing, the program on which Roadmap to Resilience is based. April and Tracie recentl...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ There are MANY amazing people doing change-making work, and there are some chronic challenges playing out. In this week’s conversation, we’re digging into these five core barriers: stress and anxiety, lack of confidence, isolation and loneliness, not knowing the next steps or how to move forward, and the fragme...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ For the third year in a row, we’re bringing mindful attention to the American holiday on the fourth Thursday of November, commonly known as Thanksgiving. We think (and grieve) together about how Americans talk and think about the holiday and the Indigenous people who Thanksgiving by turn whitewashes or simply i...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ We dig into a phrase (attributed to Ricardo Levins Morales) that we can and should apply to social justice movements and our lives more broadly: slow, deep, and irreversible.  Mainstream American/Western society often prioritizes speed and urgency. This conversation gets into why that’s often ineffective and ca...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ In our first official episode as the Joyous Justice Podcast, we take a moment to reflect on what the phrase “joyous justice” means–in both our lives and leadership. While the phrase itself might seem oxymoronic in a world where many assume that pursuing justice requires the justice-seeker to suffer, we know tha...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ We’re sensing that for many of you, the present moment is filled with overwhelm and despair. In this week's episode, we’re sharing some insights for how to navigate it all. We talk about acknowledging the state we’re in, determining the level of intervention we need based upon the oppression/danger scale,...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ As we reflect on the high holidays, we delve into lessons we can glean from this past season and the moment we’re in now (and all the heaviness many of us are feeling). How can we align ourselves with the future we want by being aware of ALL of our vibes and nurturing and holding ourselves in whatever we’re fee...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ After Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene's tweet about the 2018 California Wildfires being caused by a space laser controlled by the Rothschild family ignited a slew of jokes on social media, April and Tracie take some time to think about different reactions to antisemitism. Join our mailing list at http...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ This week, we’re bringing back last year’s juicy conversation about Simchat Torah (lit. “Joy of Torah”) where Tracie and April discuss some of the holiday’s traditions. The symbolism of the holiday--appreciating the totality of the Torah and starting the cycle anew--illuminates for ways we can do the same with...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ This week we’re sharing an oldie but (definitely) a goodie! Sukkot proves a rich holiday for April and Tracie's meaning-making. Together they discuss the importance of gratitude, *especially* in the wilderness, what Black Panther can teach us about Sukkot, and the holiness and sovereignty of the body. Join...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ A few days into the new Jewish year, we connect to reflect on what we learned in our Elul offerings, and to offer some lessons about the practice of cheshbon hanefesh , or accounting of the soul. Taking cues from the English word accounting, we play with what it means to have an accurate assessment of our liabi...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ “You are not obligated to forgive someone who has offered neither apology nor repair.” This opinion is one both April and Tracie have received at different points in their lives, and which is surfacing now as we approach the high holy days. And though we both needed to hear that message when it was delivered, w...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ As April sings at the beginning of the episode, “Oh, the world (and Joyous Justice) is changing, and I am changing too.” This week, we’re getting a glimpse into April’s mind and spirit around the multi-year journey she’s been on to shape Joyous Justice as a bold, leading-edge organization in and for the Jewish...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ As we move through this sacred and deeply reflective Jewish month of Elul, it is the perfect time to look backward at what has been and forward at what can be. We’re inviting you to engage in some meaningful reflection and let us know how you’re doing and what’s been on your mind and heart (we have a form for y...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ In this week’s episode, we’re bringing back some wisdom from last year’s Elul episode and  reflecting on the meaning of this month in the Jewish calendar that leads up to Rosh HaShanah and the high holidays. This time of anticipation calls us to prepare ourselves spiritually for the new year. We talk about the...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ This week, we’re having this big and exciting conversation in the same room (a first for the podcast!). We’re entering the next iteration for Joyous Justice and the podcast and opening up about our thinking. Reflecting our growth, Jews Talk Racial Justice will soon have a new name: the Joyous Justice Podcast. W...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ In part inspired by behavior we’ve seen on social media, April and Tracie discuss the importance of recognizing and holding multiple truths, even when some truths are less-than-savory. Western/American society pushes either/or dynamics in many facets of life, including in understanding oppression: we’ve been ta...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ In a continuation of the conversation started in the last episode, April and Tracie talk about the rupture Tish B’Av marks and the meaning we can glean from the proximity of Tish B’Av and Tu B’Av, the Jewish holiday of love. In an extended conversation about love and healing, we use the Japanese art of kintsugi...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ In our 100th episode, we dig into the holiday of Tish B’Av, the ninth of Av, and its commemoration of the Jewish people’s collective trauma and grief. April and Tracie interrogate the intellectual and embodied grief processing inherited in Tish B’Av, and talk about what resonates and what just doesn’t. Plus, we...

Send us a message via text message! Link accessible at joyousjustice.buzzsprout.com. ✅ In today’s conversation, Tracie recounts how the meditation practice that is part of her karate class–and the transcendence that has eventually come with it–is a growing edge for her. It validated something April has known and been teaching for a while – that spiritual work is not divorced from justice work. In...