Bracing For America's Next Civil War ft. Hood Feminism Author Mikki Kendall

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Every story of survival through hard times in anyone's history,
but especially in the American history, has really been about community.
If you and your neighbor you've got carrots, your neighbors
get potatoes. This neighbor's get rice, whatever, whatever, somebody's got chickens.
It's the stone soup analogy, right. If you're all putting
things in the pot. At the end of the day,
everyone eats.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hey, ba, fam, it's your girl, Mandy Money. Welcome to
this episode of the Brown Ambition Podcast. I just want
to say thank you again for listening to the show
and supporting it.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
All your reviews I have been getting.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
I have been reading the sweetest reviews y'all have been leaving,
and I'm going to get into them really quick because
if you take the thirty seconds that it takes to
leave every review, I just want to show you how
impactful it can be. Not only is it like giving
a pep talk to the friend in your head, which
I hope you think of me as it also helps
the show keep growing, It helps our network keep investing

(00:57):
in the show. You're basically telling anyone who has any
hand in creating Brown Ambition that you want more of us.
So I just really appreciate y'all. From Listener A Jackson,
A Jackson says, I've been listening to Brown Ambition since
twenty twenty and it's helped me grow so much. Every
episode has something new for me to learn. Mandy does
such a great job of utilizing personal experiences to make

(01:19):
career and finance topics feel real and applicable, and I
love her guests at the BA Brown table too. I
can't wait to see how the show continues to evolve.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
That is so damn kind. Thank you, all right.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Also from Listener Year one, Year one says still love
the show. I'm a new slash old listener. What about
I'm a first time listener, and I'm a fan. I'm
looking forward to going backwards and listening to some of
your previous recordings. Ooh, go get in that time machine. Okay,
there's some really good ones in the archive.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
If I was going to tell anyone to start with
an episode, I would say start with any show that
airs like January of each year, because that's usually when
we do a lot of talking about who we are,
what we're going to value the year ahead. There's usually
some really good, rich conversations happening, but you know you
go at your own pace too, all right, listener says,
living life to fullest. Okay, Nandy, you're doing this solo

(02:10):
thing on BA and you doing it well, doing it
and doing it and doing it well, doing it and
doing it and doing it well. Let me not have
to pay royalties. Okay, never mind, I'll stop singing. I'm
so glad you chose the question about us working multiple
jobs to make ends meet. You were spot on with
all the points you educated and inspired.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Ps.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
I love the Brown Table too, hood Mix.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
Listen, y'all.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Brown Table Every Wednesday, and not every Wednesday. Brown Tables
when I have a couple of friends of mine, a
couple of BA friends join and we talk about whatever
is happening in the world, and then we also will
hit on all of our favorite personal finance topics as well.
So I'm so glad to hear y'all been loving the
Brown Table.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
All right.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
If you want to leave a review, all you got
to do is scroll down on whatever app you're listening
to this on, whether it's Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and
just click ratings. You pay how many stars you write
a couple of words about it being about a boom.
It is so so helpful, thank y'all. Okay, but let's
get into today's episode. I have been chasing this guest
for some time now. If you don't know her name,

(03:12):
you might know the name of her book. Her New
York Times bestseller is called Hood Feminism, Notes from the
Women that a Movement Forgot. It was published originally in
twenty twenty, not just anytime in twenty twenty, February twenty fifth,
twenty twenty. So imagine where you were at that time.
I know, this was my first day back at work.
I thought I was going to be, you know, skipping
off as a new mom back to work after maternity leave.

(03:35):
And then I got skipped right on back home because
the pandemic took hold. Everything shut down, and then we
had the craziest next couple of years, and maybe not
the craziest, but a couple of very insane years, very
intense years. And it was also at a time when
we needed a message like Hood Feminism. I mean, in
this book, we are talking about how white feminists, traditional

(03:56):
mainstream feminism has really forgotten about us, has really forgotten
about the communities that are being left behind in so
many ways. They want us to put on pussy hats
and go protest against Trump in the streets like we
saw in these women's marches in twenty twenty and prior
to that, but we weren't really seeing them show up
for us on topics like basic survival needs like food security, housing,

(04:20):
financial literacy, economic justice. So why did I want to
have Mickey on the show five years later? Because I've
been reflecting a lot on what's changed in my life
in the past five years, and I just thought she
brought up this idea. She really gave me words to
articulate for the first time some of the challenges I'm
having trying to exist in this world, especially in a multicultural,

(04:42):
multi racial family, where I'm not feeling like I'm being
heard very well. And also I don't have the ability
to just cut off a certain side of my family
because they have a different upbringing to mine. So I'm
excited to have Mickey on the show today. We're going
to get into everything. We're going to get into where
she actually was, and it's really funny where she was
the day she found out hood feminism became a New

(05:03):
York Times bestseller. We're going to talk about her dreams
of getting her doctorate, or as she calls it, a
midlife crisis. But I don't really believe in those. I
think we all get different chapters in our life. So
she's talking about a new chapter, and we talk about
the new book she's working on, which is called The
Autopsy of the American Dream.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
Will this be the uplifting episode that I usually try
to give you, guys, we get there, That's all I'm
gonna say. Hang on, Okay, We're going to talk about
some uncomfortable truths, but we promise you the conversation that
we have about the power of community and even the
ideas that I left that conversation with. I hope that
it inspires Uba Fan, because, like I tell Mickey in

(05:43):
this conversation, I do think that black women, we are
women of color in general, from Indigenous communities, Hispanic communities,
Latin communities like we are uniquely positioned to survive in
whatever is coming at us in this crazy economy and
whatever may come in the decades to come. We are
uniquely positioned to thrive because we are so good at
connecting about supporting each other, communicating working from a place

(06:07):
of what's good for everybody is good for everybody, you know,
hang on, Okay.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
Buckle up.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
But this is a really important conversation. I want to
thank Mickey again for joining me on the show, and
without further ado, here is my conversation with Mickey Kendall,
the author of Hood Feminism. Welcome to my guest, Mickey Kendall,
the author of Hood Feminism, a New York Times bestseller
that kind of became I mean, I'm in the middle
of writing a book myself right now, Mickey, And you

(06:34):
can't plan the timing of a book right because it's
such a long process. But if there was an award
for the best timed publication of a book about hood
feminism and white allyship and what's actually happened in these
communities and the inequities that are happening, I mean twenty twenty,
her Winter of twenty twenty was that it right before
that pandemic.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
The book comes out February twenty fifth. Yeah, I did
the Daily Show the day before everything shut down. Like
if timing, oh wow, magical. It was the most magical timing,
even though I didn't feel like it in the moment,
because now I have to confess that I thought this
book had flopped for like three months. Three oh yeah,
because pre orders were okay, March happened. The sales in

(07:16):
March are actually atrocious. My publisher has a portal where
you can see your sales weekly. Don't look in the portal.
I am an idiot who looks in my portal. Don't
be me, right, and so okay. In March and April,
I had sort of not recognized that, yes, these are
week to week, but these are from a couple of
weeks ago.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
Week to week, right, Oh, that's a good context to know.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yes, right. So I was sort of freaking out about
how poorly it had done. And then in May, I
want to say, like everything starts to take off. And
in my most Midwestern broad uh personality ever, I found
out the book made the best subtle list in the
drive through of a pulverse.

Speaker 3 (07:56):
Ah, I read that.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
I mean, I'm gonna laugh like you, like I just
found that out, But I didn't because I read it
in an article, in an interview, or not an interview.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
You just wrote a.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
Piece for Chicago magazine, and you also said you were laughing.
You were crying so hard. Y'all pulled run to the
drive through, and the drive through what did the drive
through girls say?

Speaker 1 (08:13):
They were like, what she looked at me right, because
she was like, Yeah, my husband's a big guy, and
like his nickname and my nickname for him is Husbies
because he makes growly noises and he's a giant, but
he always looks mean in the face to other people.
So I think what she perceived is a weeping woman
and this like stern faced, burly man. Are we about

(08:34):
to have to go upside this guy's head in the
drive through? And then they had to be like, no,
these are happy tears. I just made them there because
I'm the bestseller lists. And they were as excited as me.
These like random people who had.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
Never seen me magical.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
It was.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
It was as a first time author, that's really nice
to hear that it can happen even after the first
couple of months. Your book really spoke to me because
it just gave me a lot of the language that
I can now use with my mom when we talk
about these issues and made me feel I don't know,
I didn't grow up so much in an echo chamber
of black love and black female love, and I created

(09:08):
the echo chamber for myself once I got out of
where I grew up, and it really validated a lot
of the feelings that I was having. And so I
just want to say thank you. I don't think a
lot of readers get to thank the authors that often,
but it meant it a lot to me, and so
many others don't thank you for that.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
Thank you. It's always good to hear that. So fun
of fact, my ex husband is white, right. The guy
that I'm talking about having a bad relationship with the
book is a white guy from Texas. I made a
series of a series of decisions in my early twenties.
We're just gonna just gonna talk.

Speaker 3 (09:38):
You get into it in the book. You can read
the book. Yeah there.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
But so me and me and my daughter have had
some interesting conversations because she definitely had the black mom
black community experience, but she does not. They don't have
a terrible relationship at this point. They don't really have
much of a relationship either. And so they because that
is dad is my husband, that is the person who

(10:06):
made me like kind of framework. But they're having some
difficult conversations as much as they have conversations a brown
identity and gender and some other stuff, and she's she
was like, hey, so you should read Mom's book and
then we can come back to this. And I was like,
I don't know how that at all going on to
do it. I have no idea I have because I tried.

(10:30):
My kid is an adult, so most of my children
are adults, and I try to stay out of that relationship, right,
I just passively accept whatever I hear about it because
I'm trying not to poison the well. However, my feelings
are my feelings. But I think maybe that may end
up happening, probably in small chunks, is his feelings ebb
and flow and whatever. I don't know how I would

(10:51):
feel about a book in which basically my ex was like, yeah,
so like the best thing I did was leave you.
The greatest thing and as well is to leave you.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
Well, I mean he was there, he was extremely abusive, yes,
but I don't know that you almost died.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
I don't know that he frames it that way. Ironically,
I don't think that.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
He does the personal spin that we can put on
reality in our own worlds.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
So I think this is a complicated thing because we
can believe in redemption and restoration and forgiveness, or we
can hold people to the worst thing they ever did forever. Right.
And I'm not saying you personally have to forgive. Please
understand that it's not saying you have to endorse, support,
give people your money. I am saying everybody has the opportunity,

(11:32):
presumably to make amend for the things that they have done.
Now you don't have to believe them, right, because I
would be the highest of hypocrites to sit here and
tell you that I want anything to do with my
ex personally. But I think often in community, as we
talk about transformative justice and you know, doing away with
the carceral system, we have to understand that there are

(11:54):
things that people are going to have different feelings on.
I know there are people who do work with offenders
and work on bringing these people back into society and
correcting these behaviors. And I can also say, honestly, with
my ex, even though I have no interest in an
actual relationship with this person, now, I understand that part
of what happened with him is that his family built

(12:15):
a monster, and I opened the door on that monster.
But I don't believe that monster is all that was
in there. You don't fall in love with an abusive
person because of the worst things about them. You tend
to fall in love with some of the best things,
and then you find out the rest. Right, because we
all meet someone's representative, we don't necessarily meet just them,
and their representative often is somebody who's maybe great, and

(12:37):
you try to see the best in them, and then
you kind of get sucked into this cycle, right, honeymoon
to horror, honeymoon to horror, and then either you escape
and survivor you don't. People do terrible things, People experience
terrible things. And if I can say to you that
the worst thing that happened to me is not a
defining part of who I am, I'm not sure we
can say the worst thing you've ever done is always

(12:59):
a defining This is not, however, letting off serial killer
serial offenders. Some people I know, we just can't redeem,
We cannot correct. You cannot simply walk away from that
relationship when you share offs.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
Right, not if you want to give your child a
good shot at having some semblance of like a healthy
or honest relationship with their parent and not causing I mean,
on so many levels, I am feeling what you're saying.
I mean, I'm a child of divorce mixed race parents.
I have two white siblings and one full sibling technically,

(13:31):
and I just wonder in moments like this, what are
people holding onto that they haven't forgiven themselves for, or
they haven't like given themselves a little bit of grace
and space for. Or have you never had a loved
one that you've loved and they do horrible things? Like
I can fully say in my life, I have had
to love people who've done really horrible things, and I

(13:54):
have freed myself with this idea of like, these things
can both be true. You can do a horrible thing
that you were just saying, it doesn't have to be
the thing that defines you. But the key for me
is like the is there accountability? Is there taking responsibility?
I believe that for me there's always a door open.
Now that I'm older and I've been through so much
and I've learned that people are not perfect, and there

(14:14):
is this cancel culture that just wants everybody to be perfect.
And when you show the slightest bit of humanity which
we all have the darkness inside, then you're scene is
unfit and it's like get out of here, we don't
want you, but leaving that door open so that they
can do some work, because we should celebrate that work
if it's happening, right, right, And.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
That's the question that's sort of unanswered there. And I'll
say as someone who gets a lot of occasionally a
lot of pushback about the fact that I talk about
the fact that my ex turned out to be somewhat
racist after the fact, the thing I did not know
going into the relationship. By the time we're wrapping up
the relationship and I'm seeing signs of this, and I

(14:54):
openly say like, oh, I made mistakes, and people will say, well,
you should have known, but love it. I was twenty one.
The things we do not know at twenty one is
longer than the list of things we do know at
twenty one. Right, I got divorce.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
Racist people changed my diaper, Like yeah, racist people kissed
me on the head and put me to bed. Racist
people raised me. You know, in a lot of ways
they're among us.

Speaker 3 (15:21):
I don't know what to say. That's crazy, And.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Like I always feel like if I can see my
own growth right across time on a lot of topics,
I should give other people the country to show me growth,
and it doesn't mean I necessarily want to befriend them
or associate them in my personal life, whatever. But I
also recognize other people may feel differently because I feel like,

(15:44):
right now, what canceled culture should have been and what
people have used it as are so different, right because
I was there. I was there in the days of
yore when it was about like, hey, this person is
a serial abuser. Maybe we should warn each other that
this person is dangerous and ongoing danger. And now it's like, well,
this person should never be employed again. I don't think
we get to hand out death sentences for everything. And

(16:08):
I know that you can be like, well, I just
meant I don't want them to be employed in public again.
But I've watched people attack the guy from Cosby Show
for having a job at Trader Joe's. So we cann't
afford health insurance.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
IoT that guy?

Speaker 1 (16:22):
Yeah right, So I don't feel like people understand what
they're saying when they say someone should be canceled anymore.
For me, canceled means I'm not giving you my money,
and if you're an ongoing threat, I may tell people
I feel you're an ongoing threat. I may warn people
working with you could be dangerous to them, but if
you don't seem to be a danger to people, I'm
gonna mind my business. I'm going to be over here
not supporting you. If someone asks me why I don't

(16:44):
support you, I'm definitely gonna tell them. I'm never gonna
keep secret why I don't support you.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
Okay, ba Fan, we're going to take a break right now,
but more from my conversation with Nicky Kendall when I
come back. All right, ba Fan, let's get back into
my conversation with Nicky Kendall. She's the author of hood
Feminism Nope, from the Women that a Movement Forgot, and
she's here on Brown Ambition talking about hood feminism five
years later, and we are just about to get back
into our conversation about the what she calls a civil

(17:10):
war that is coming. Now, this is the part where
I said it's going to be a little bit hard
to listen to, but hang in there, because we're gonna
get there. Okay, We're gonna get to a place where
we can look beyond the worst case situation and talk
about ways that we can thrive and survive in spite
of that. Okay, here's the conversation, all right, so let's
get back to the show. One of the reasons I
was excited to talk to you as well is it's
been five years since the pandemic, five years since your

(17:32):
book came out, and your book I mean. Also, by
the way, I remember, I listened to the audiobook recently
to like refresh my memory, and it's you reading it,
and You're like, you have this whole spiel about how
you're not a nice person.

Speaker 3 (17:44):
And I was like, oh no, she gonna be mean
to me, Like what's it gonna be? I got stressed.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
But you, I mean, at least I don't know what
is nice. But I just feel like it's funny because
I love talking to you.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
I mean, one of my friends says that it takes
me three to five business years to warm up to
some people.

Speaker 3 (18:02):
Ah, gotcha.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
And then sometimes at the end of three to five
business years, I'm like, no, they've They've had all this time,
and I still don't like them. Please don't bring them
to me again.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
Well, I'm on day one, So I got time. You're
just saying, is I got time? I got a chance.
I got a chance.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
So far, We're fine, So far, so good. It seems
so fun. And honestly, the reason I say that is
because sometimes people will come to you, especially as a
black woman, they will come to you with some real
nasty energy and then they expect you to be kind
and patient and accepting in return, no matter how they
treat you. And uh, I am a gen xer. I

(18:42):
am from the old days of zero tolerance, and our
zero tolerance was zero tolerance for other people's Yes, that
was our zero tolerance, right, I'm not I'm not putting
up with your crap. I don't need you people that bad.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah, I mean, let's talk about that. Like post election,
I do feel like there was this collective feeling of
among black women of like, yeah, don't come to us
with your grief, don't come to us for answers to
questions anymore.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
And we're done.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
We're done trying to convince you of our worth.

Speaker 3 (19:11):
We're done.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
We tried this, We're done, like we're protecting our peace
in twenty twenty five, But did you want hood feminism
to really impact white women, especially the white feminist movement,
And if that was the case, do you feel like
anything has changed in the last five years, our white
women better at embracing all forms of feminism and embracing
the issues that affect us all instead of just what
pertains to them.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
My intent was to reach everyone, but I also wanted
us to be honest about the impact white feminism was having. Right.
It was not enough to keep going, oh, well, that's useless.
We kind of have to talk about what's going unaddressed
as we focus on these things. I feel like in
the five years since some white women have really engaged. Right,

(19:53):
the voting numbers tell me, unfortunately, that there are lots
of white women who will sell their children down the
river for about of coke and two bags of peanuts.
And I don't know what to tell you about that
voting block at this point, because we are in a
space politically where some people were going to have to
leave them behind. But I think for a lot, especially
of younger white women, they're looking around and they're kind

(20:15):
of going, hey, so listen, this isn't working. I'm going
to have to go over there with the black and
brown girls, because whatever you're doing has led us here,
and we all got to go over there. Right. The
understanding of what it's going to cost to cozy up
to white supremacy is definitely changing.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah, And I feel like, I mean, did you feel
how did you feel after Kamala last were you also
just like what was that.

Speaker 1 (20:38):
Like for you? I'm gonna be one hundred percent honest.
I knew people who were saying, you know, we can't
vote for her, and they had very good reasons, and
I was kind of standing there in my most I'm
from a state that sent seven governors to jail, so like,
I don't know why people think politicians are supposed to
be friends. Going there's no other option on the table.

(20:58):
We don't have a good option. Now we have to
go with whatever is the least awful and hope that
is enough. We did not do that. There was a
saying those who do not here will feel Now you're
going to feel you did not learn now you feel right,
And I don't want to be here for the feeling.
I would prefer to be able to exit the stage

(21:18):
left from feeling. But unfortunately they're going to make me
watch this show from the front roun.

Speaker 3 (21:26):
Unfortunately I'm going to be on stage though. What are
you working on now?

Speaker 2 (21:30):
Like, what is the life of a New York Times
bestselling author five years later. Let's get into the career
aspect of it. You're like, really really rich.

Speaker 3 (21:39):
And you got a I really.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
Wish I was really really rich. Instead, I paid for
a bunch of dead At least degrees are not cheap.
I put one kid through college during the course of
this five years, So you know.

Speaker 3 (21:52):
You're incredible for that.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
Wow. I paid for an art degree for a kid
that ended up going into tech.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
Oh well, we'll see, there's time. Give it time.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
It's a longevity thing. It's like an incremental investments in
a situation, long term investment. We'll see what happens in
give them fifteen twenty years.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Yeah, but no, So the Life of New York Times
bestseller is working on my next book. We're not going
to talk about how bloody depressing it has been to
be right in this book, because it's an autopsy of
the American dream. Don't ask me why I decided to
do that book, but I could kind of see someone.

Speaker 3 (22:38):
I was hoping it was going to be like a
romance novel.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
Oh no, I am also writing romance novels for fun.
I've gotten good, bizarrely obsessed with those Chinese mini dramas.

Speaker 3 (22:50):
What's it called great?

Speaker 1 (22:51):
Those Chinese mini dramas that are on every streaming app.
It feels like all over like they're showing up as
like little commercials on Facebook and.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
On tittern dramas. Yes, yes, okay, I don't. I do
not know about this. I'm book marking fan Chinese dramas,
got it.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
They're like vertical mini dramas, And so I started getting
kind of sucked into those and so as my like
comfort watch when like I'm stressed out by my book.
And so now I'm like, oh, I want to write
romance novels, and so I started working on a romance
novel as like a side fun thing. And then I
have also started to write a bunch of middle grade
like scripts. I want to do another non fiction graphic

(23:30):
about Jim Crow, and I want to do a fiction
graphic just because fun, because basically what I do when
I have been researching facts and I hate them is
I write something fun. It is like the most because
when the trad wife things started, I needed every opening
mechanism on the of them everyone, so that I did

(23:50):
not end up on the internet raving like a street preacher.
I did think about ending up on the Internet raving
like a street preacher about the tradwive thing. Though I did,
I contemplated it for a while.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
I still might got to pick your battles, you know.
I don't think Unfortunately, that trend is probably not.

Speaker 3 (24:02):
Going to go anywhere.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
But there's there's time, but there is when's it coming out?

Speaker 1 (24:07):
I have no idea because I still don't have a
good end for this book. Unfortunately, everything that I was
hoping wasn't going to happen is currently happening. So stimistic
finale is still it's still struggling. I watched America vote
itself into not just the constitutional crisis everyone is talking about,
but into a human rights crisis. And we are the

(24:28):
arbitrary of so many right and fall of empire is
a thing, but we are headed in many ways towards
the stage for a civil war. I have this unfortunate
history degree, and I never should have gotten a history degree.
I know too many things. The historians are all in
a circle somewhere.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
Picturing brand Brandon Stark from Game of Thrones, like you know,
underneath the whatever that tree was called.

Speaker 3 (24:52):
Yes, that's that's tired and quiet, staring down.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
Yes, not that America with ever the good None of
the countries were the good guy though, Like I'm gonna
tell you bluntley that no government is the good government.
There's no such thing, right while humans are involved. The
clock rollback that is being aimed for it is not
to the nineteen fifties. It is to the eighteen fifties.
And the thing about the eighteen fifties is that people

(25:17):
tend to think of like the slavery and this is
a like Antebellum skirts sort of beautiful time. Right. Yeah.
The reason Gone with the Wind is Gone with the
Wind for all its flaws, is because the eighteen fifties
set the stage for and we keep cherry picking moments
in our current political landscape from the years right before

(25:38):
major war. I would like us not to do that,
because we want to be un Nothing is unprecedented about
the choices being made. There is a precedent, right we
have the tariff conversation. We've done that twice before. It
was bad both times. All of these things are precedented.
It's just that what they precedent is war. And America
has a unique situation that has never existed before in

(26:00):
human history. There are approximately two hundred million more guns
in America than there are people. No one should want
America's collapse to involve a civil war. I know people
may think that America collapsing would end well, But you
don't want anyone with their finger on the proverbial nuclear

(26:22):
football who thinks guns are fun. You don't. You don't
want anyone who is a big fan of genocide with
these two.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
But then I'm like, well, the majority of Americans did
want him, did want that, So this is what we have.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
I actually don't think it was the majority of Americans.
I think unfortunately, most Americans they could vote, did not vote.
I see, I looked at the numbers, and around seventy
ish million Americans just didn't go to the polls. And
that is a scary thought, right because we could see
the end of not just America, which is the sort

(26:58):
of a conversation, It could be the end of the
world as we know it, right Like the planet will
be fine, whether or not we survive these moments is
a different conversation. And the wei is not just America.
It is Canada, it is China, it is Russia, it
is Australia. Right Like, there was an idea that like, oh,
I will move out of the US and everything will
be fine. This is the largest military force in the

(27:23):
world in the hands of people who don't think other
people are human.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
That's well and my therapy practice. Sometimes we just have
to go there, you know, just like paint the picture.
What are we talking about here? When you say civil war,
I think of Union versus Confederacy and the core issue
with slavery, But it was also the economy. It was
also economic power, you know, And how does that play
out today? Don't tell me it's about abortion. I'm so

(27:49):
sick of talking about abortion.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
No, it is not about abortion. I wish. Okay, it
could be as simple as reproductive rights. It is about reproduction.
Now I'm going to tell you my like almost crazy
can spiracy theory, except it's not a crazy conspiracy theory.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
Yeah, this is a hot take. This is a preview
via fan of this book. Yeah, do you have a
title for it yet?

Speaker 1 (28:07):
It is Autopsy of the American Dream? That's the current title.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
Well, just in and of itself. It's like, well, that's dead,
but we knew that already. Okay, go ahead, right.

Speaker 1 (28:16):
Part of my when I'm position I'm positing is that
if the American dream ever existed, Jim Crow straight strangled
it in its crip. Jim Crow is where America makes
a series of decisions that doom the American Dream. We
are staring down the barrel of a population crisis that
we don't think is a population crisis yet. Right we
keep seeing reports like the South Korean birth rate is declining,

(28:39):
that Japan's birth rate is declining. Birth rates are declining
all over the planet. Nobody is having replacement level kids
for the most part. And I know people will say, well,
third world countries, and they actually also are not really
having replacement level offspring. And the reason they're not is
because things cost too much. It is very difficult right
now to support a big family and actually send those
kids to education or anything else.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
Right, a third child is the du Berken bag for me, Like, yes,
you think I'm rich, like a third child, rise, Now
I got two and I'm hanging on by a thread.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
And this is this is the thing. Two kids is
still technically a lot a lot more people are having one.
Well one is below replacement.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
Well you got a space amount, so they're not both
in daycare at the same time, because that's when you
screw yourself. That's when you have two mortgage payments plus
whatever housing costs you have.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, and so you have people who are deciding either
not to have children, which is fine. I'm not saying
have kids if you don't want kids. But if we
don't have children, and we don't have the cability to
take care of the children we do have as we age,
we are going to run into a situation that is
already happening in other countries. Agration has been saving America
from realizing this. Right, well, now we're detarding to deport

(29:47):
all of these people, and really we're human trafficking them
because shipping them to a Salvador is not the same
as deportation. Just so we're clear, But as we're doing this,
it's not just oh, who's going to mow the lawn
or whatever other reason this thing you say about immigrants
from the Global South. It is who will be the doctors,
who will be the nurses, who will be the teachers,

(30:08):
who will be the caregivers for the babies, and the
who will pick the food is only one in the
list of things that is possible currently. Because America was
a desirable place to move to. Now what will we
do if we close our doors quote unquote protect our
borders and there's nobody inside here to do those jobs, right,
because the idea that people will start doing those jobs.

(30:29):
Immigrants are not stealing the job you were never interested
in nor qualified for. They just aren't Nebraskas looking at
declaring bankruptcy and not having people to get crops out
of the fields. And we've learned this lesson, except we
haven't learned this lesson. But when you pack a bunch
of people into an inclosed space and you deprive them
of rights, food, et cetera, they tend to react by
fighting back. In other situations, you know they took the

(30:52):
guns or the guns can only fire six billets. The
guns now are what you would have in the hands
of an army. We're all able to access the pocket
equivalent of a gatling gun these days, one hundred round bursts. Yeah,
you can get that, and it's technically street legal. It's
not really street legal. But we're a country that will
let you buy a retired tank. I don't want. What

(31:14):
do you hear?

Speaker 2 (31:15):
What's the picture you're painting? Is that civil war? And
we're just like we're fighting over what we're killing each
other for what.

Speaker 3 (31:23):
Really, we're going to.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
Be killing each other over basics. We're going to be
killing each.

Speaker 2 (31:26):
Other food necessities, water, right, because this is the other
part of this.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
Some of us live in states that have wonderful land
for growing things. We have plenty of access to water,
all of that, right. Others live in states that have
none of those things and don't realize how much they
depend on the states that they currently hate to provide
them with those things. You are dependent on road systems
that are paid for by federal dollars. You are dependent

(31:53):
on medication developed in places with lots of universities, right,
the any intellectual bias against vaccines and science and whatever.
You need those people to make the things they make,
and you need to produce food for them so that
everybody continues to live. And we've lost that idea of
collective culture in many ways, and not just in America.
This is an ongoing global problem. And if we cannot

(32:17):
imagine a future for everyone, we don't have a future
for anyone. Do I think that this will be a
logical like progress to a civil war where it's inevitable. No,
I think there are many places we could avoid this
and we could avert this future. But I think America,
and not again, not just America. The folks who are
fans of fascism do not think of a future. Eugenics

(32:38):
does not allow for any concept of a future. It
says it does. But realistically, fascism and eugenics and all
the other bigotries and yes, capitalism, but it's not the
only economic structure where fascism can happen. It all kind
of goes hand in hand. Right, bigotry will be the
catalyst in much the way slavery was the catalyst, but
it was also about finances. This will be about finances

(33:01):
and resources, but it will also be about hate. You
can't win a war based on identity. That really is
as amor l really as this would become. Right, I'm
watching people like rotate through who they hate, right, and
trans people for some reason became center stage for a while, right,
and then it was immigrants, and it's disabled people, and

(33:22):
it's old people. And at some point in that list,
everyone is on the table, everyone is on the chopping.
If you don't want anyone to have rights, but you
how does that work out? Because I hate to break
it to people, AI and computers cannot stop this, nor
can it save us.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
After its Yeah, well they're definitely not in the fields.
Chat Gypt is not picking crops. I mean, I think
that makes sense to me. I mean, you're ending up
in a we're in a country where we're desperate for
limited resources and the haves and the have nots, and yeah,
the states that are capable of denying access to their
resources to other parts of the country, and how you

(33:56):
can use that for leverage, and all of a sudden,
it's not that we're it's not like US versus China.
It's like California versus Kansas or whatever it may be.
And you know, oh you want our resources, well we're
going to charge you even more. And it's yeah, okay,
I can see it now.

Speaker 3 (34:14):
I wish you luck with that book. It sounds real,
real depressing, but you did. I did hear. I'm like
always looking for like little nuggets.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
So like we're giving us a preview, Like what do
you Our audience's eighty percent women of color, I mean sorry,
eighty percent black women, twenty percent Hispanic women, a latinas
And I want to know from you, like what are
you telling your kids? What are you telling like ba
fan as far as like what part we can play
and potentially avoiding it or at least protecting ourselves short
of going to raise my own crops, which I kill

(34:47):
tomatoes every year.

Speaker 3 (34:48):
So that's my green thumb for you.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
I have no green thumb at all. No, I was
gonna say so. One of the things I'm telling people,
aside from prepper things right like you should always have
some emergency food blah blah blah, is that community is
the only way out right. Every story of survival through
hard times in anyone's history, but especially in American history,
has really been about community. If you and your neighbor
you've got carrots, your neighbors get potatoes, This neighbor's got rice, whatever, whatever,

(35:14):
somebody's got chickens. It's the stone soup analogy. Right. If
you're all putting things in the pot. At the end
of the day, everyone eats. The only way out of
this is to stop thinking about my individual desire and
start thinking about what benefits us collectively. And collectivism gets
a lot of hits. There are good reasons to be like, well,

(35:35):
I don't want to make my decisions based around everyone
else's needs. But there's a baseline of food and medical
care and education and all of this that should be achievable,
especially as like climate change is coming. Right, climate change
is here, really, but climate change is coming. We're all
going to need each other, So don't listen to people

(35:55):
who tell you you can buy your way out of
climate change. Right, all of the billion class is kind
of saying, well, if you come with me, you'll make money,
And then they buy their bunkers in the middle of
nowhere and think they'll fill them with mercenaries and whoever
their favorite people are. That's not actually a plan. That
is a bad sci fi novel. The actual plan is
to prepare for a future in which things will require

(36:18):
you to work together and which, yes, you'll have to
make do with less, but you'll be able to make do.
If your plan is let's make sure everyone has enough
so no one is fighting over basic needs, we might
be able to solve problems if we had less energy
spent on fighting over things that honestly mostly don't matter.
I don't really care who you're sleeping with as long

(36:40):
as they're an adult and they're they're willing right, that's
none of my business. I don't really care whether or not.
You like seeing people with different bodies than yours, and
you should get some business right. Everybody's meat suit is different.
Mind your meat suit, and things would get better immediately.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
You know.

Speaker 2 (36:59):
I've recorded to a couple episodes this week, and the
underlying thread of what I'm hearing is this emphasis on community.
What do you do I live in a suburban neighborhood.
I know my neighbors on my block. We do take
care of each other. You know someone's got extra oranges,
You'll get a text to the mom group like who

(37:20):
needs oranges, and we'll you know, do that kind of
thing that's taken a lot of time effort. It's also
a privilege to live in a space where you know,
I'm able to talk to my neighbors and have that
freedom and space. And there's also this like housing crisis
happening at the same time, this like dearth of available housing,
affordable housing. It just feels like a really difficult time

(37:41):
to start building community. But what is it that's giving
you hope? And like, what do you want us to
know about how we can in small ways build community
and how that could potentially like protect us down the
line if things get worse or when things get worse.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
So one of the things that is really great, and
I'm watching it happen on the internet. And like the
internet is a terrible place be in, it is also
a beautiful place. So I'm watching people figure out online
how to do things, how to build community with each other.
Where there was a girl who posted on TikTok and
her dad has died and something was wrong with her refrigerator,
and so she's like, I don't know what to do.

(38:15):
My dad is why I call for this stuff? What
do I do now? And dads from all over were like, oh,
here's how you fix that. How they're letting me help.
Let me be your dad for a day. Right, Building
community can be as simple as offering to help someone
with the skills that you have. You do not have
to build a perfect community on the first day. You
do not have to look at well those people have

(38:36):
like a great network for babysitting in this and that
and the other. The village takes time to build. I
think people should be looking at ways to build the village.
One of those ways is I don't know if you've
seen those initiatives that get more tiny house structures or
converting motel rooms, motels into apartments.

Speaker 4 (38:53):
If we are old office buildings, Yes, if we wanted
to house everyone in America and in homelessness, we could
do that in matter of like a year and a half,
a couple of years, and it would start with converting
office parts, converting old malls, converting all of those things.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
We can push for our local governments to become more
welcoming to folks, to open more shelter beds, sure, but
also more affordable housing initiatives, because when you do that,
when you say, let's convert this empty, abandoned building that's
still got a good shell, good framework, into housing, you
immediately reduce your risk of crime, You reduce scarcity all

(39:31):
of these things. If you're in an area where you
know you've got farmers, let's say, as an example, and
money is funny, you and your neighbors can go in
to buy half a cow, quarter of a pig, all
of these things until everybody's freezer. Well, what about getting
everybody freezers? You could also start a charity to make
sure not only that your neighbors are housed, but they
have a safe way to store food that they can

(39:54):
get help with everything from utility bills to setting up
solar panels to reduce their utilities bills as examples. Right,
you can start small in your community, ask who is interested,
ask what people want to do, and work on that
first task. Right then you move on to something else.
And I'm not saying that this is a perfect solution,

(40:14):
but perfect is the enemy of progress. Small steps lead
to big change.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
And the emphasis on local community. I mean, I'm thinking
about my neighborhood and how we have this like unofficial
homeowners association and I listen, I give the president of this.
I don't know if title is is made up. We
don't pay any HAA fees. It's not like a real
official organized lation club, a black club. Black club or
black club. It's both block really yeah, both really. I

(40:41):
live in a majority well I don't know these days,
but it's definitely being gentrified, but a majority black, like
very much like a lot of black families moved here
in the nineteen forties and fifties and built these little homes.
And anyway that the people who run the homeowners association,
it can feel very like not militaristic, but like almost

(41:01):
like a sorority esque. You kind of have to know
the right people, and it's very challenging the different points
of view, the different ways of communicating, Like there's some friction.
And so in a way, I've like micro created my
little micro community on my block but tried to stay
clear of that bigger association. And I'm challenging my own
like feelings there because I'm like, even though it's hard,

(41:23):
that conflict happens when.

Speaker 3 (41:25):
You do you're in community with other people.

Speaker 2 (41:27):
It's necessary to a certain extent to push through that
conflict to get to what could potentially be helpful for
the whole greater community. I just wonder, in my own way,
like am I being a little too individualistic just like
narrowing it down to my small block, and something that
maybe I could work on is like reaching across more
and trying to engage with that greater group even if

(41:48):
I don't love the way they talk all the time
or what they focus on.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
I mean, one of yeah, one of the things could
be as simple as you know, you don't have a
green thumb. Let's say, I don't know if you have
the yard space for it. But like I have a
friend doing this right now. She's got I think three
or four chickens and she cannot grow anything, but apparently
she can get the chickens to lay eggs. So now
on like they're a little couple three block radius. They've

(42:15):
got like a little barter grocery store system set up
right where she trades eggs for produce. And I'm a
little confused on the math and the metrics because it
feels like she's getting a real good end of the deal,
but also eggs, right, eggs or eggs, And she's like,
these these chickens lay like a dozen eggs a day.

(42:36):
I would never eat a dozen eggs a day. So
people are just dropping, like, especially now the garden season
is about to be upon us. People will just like
drop a bag of tomatoes, drop some berries, whatever, and
they'll take like six eggs away because she's like a
little set up, a little framework where she puts the
eggs like an on our system, and people come up,

(42:58):
they get eggs, they leave produce, and if you don't
have produce that day, she doesn't care because she's gonna
have more eggs.

Speaker 3 (43:03):
M I mean, I don't want chickens.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
I got kids. I got a dog who is already neglected.
But that's such a good example. I do have a
neighbor who has a garden and like her elder neighbor,
this man I forget, I forget his name, I haven't
met him, gives her coaches her on her gardening and
has helped her grow corn and eggplants and things that
she was like intimidated to grow and he's helped her.
And that to me is we collectively in our neighborhood.

(43:27):
No one has like massive yards, but we have enough.
Like if we just combined, like if we said, okay,
this house will grow the tomatoes, this house will grow
the onions, whatever, like, collectively, we could create this really
great hyper local food source.

Speaker 3 (43:42):
You know.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
Yeah, you could be the person that helps with weeding
or whatever.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
Right, I'm really good at raising caterpillars. I love me
some caterpillars. I love compost.

Speaker 3 (43:54):
I have. I have a composter. My husband hates it.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
I'm just like, he's like, what is on the countertop.
I'm like, it's my compost and it's beautiful and I'm
going to take it upstairs to the compost or eventually
just deal with it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
No, So so you're the person that would then make
sure the gardens arefer lives with good compost every year.
That is a job that is community, that is contributing.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
Well, that to me is helpful. I mean I keep
imagining that. You know, when Beyonce brought out lemonade and
shood that video with all the black women like where
they're in New Orleans or somewhere.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
Yeah, then they were on the porch like doing hair
and all that.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
I mean, I just feel like as Black women, there
is this ability to connect and support one another that
I feel like we could potentially be the best positioned
to thrive in a situation where it's like very community
focused and my being a little too no Pollyanna about that,
but what.

Speaker 1 (44:45):
Do you think I think Black, Indigenous and Latino women
are like in position to like if we can communicate
with each other. Listen, and it's a running joke right,
like we have a cookout, they have the kind of
sada we could We could make this work right where
we're gonna We're gonna bring the side dishes and they're

(45:06):
gonna bring the meat or whatever. Somebody's gonna have some music,
we're gonna have a good time. I want us to
make that like an ongoing thing right where I'm bringing
the best of what I have to you and your
community and your community is bring the best of what
you have to be in my community. And we're working together.
And I feel like that's super accessible, right because one
of the weird things about white supremacy and like conversations

(45:27):
about segregation is that people tend to say, like about Chicago,
Chicago is so segregated. Chicago's not really segregated. Parts of
Chicago are segregated, and transplants tend to move to the
parts of the city that are the most segregated. Right
the rest of us on the parts that tell you
are scary, on the South and West side, We're are
on each other all the time. We are cooking for

(45:48):
each other, we are working together, we are in community
in ways that are not super visible. And I feel
like that is a thing that could happen across a
lot of ethnic lines, even quite honestly, not always people,
but what I call spicy white aka Eastern Europeans, they
people listen because I think perogis and a low tase

(46:09):
and barbecue chicken go together on the same plate, right.

Speaker 3 (46:12):
Like this is this is my friend delicious.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
But I am sometimes surprised what I call the slightly
better class of white people who have been victims of
white supremacy, so they're not confused by what it really
means when these words are said. I get out of
that bubble and I'm like, oh wait, you're still buying
into this. You're still cozying up to this, right, And
it's not like it's all but the percentage that fall

(46:37):
for it. I do sometimes kind of go, you've got
to save you. We can't make you see this, but
you've got to save you because sooner or later that
turns on you. So I think we could do it.
I think black and brown people could absolutely pull this off.
I just think we're going to have to learn real
hard on the fly, a lot of things real quick
if we don't start now.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
I mean, is that not like that could be the
ending of the book. Not to give you ideas, you're
Mickey Kendall, but so.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
Actually that might be it. That might be that might
be actually right, it could be the end of the It's.

Speaker 2 (47:06):
It's where there's got to be this utopia. There's there's
got to be examples of communities that are already doing this.
I'm thinking about the Black South. I'm thinking about where
my dad grew up in Carrollton, Georgia. You know, my
great great grandfather was this apparently brilliant businessman who had
a farm. And I'm just saying like, there's got to
be little pockets of like like if you could put

(47:27):
a lens on these communities and give examples of like, well,
in this community, in that community, so and so did this,
and give some examples. And I'm getting excited thinking about
I'm sitting here right now being like, why the hell
am I trying to grow every herb in my garden?

Speaker 3 (47:40):
Every every every crop.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
I could just tell Latanya, you got tomatoes, Brianna, you
get the rosemary, the herb situation, I'm gonna have the
caterpillars in the compost like yeah, duh.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
And and if you can manage to get marigolds going,
it'll help keep help with the composts and the and maygolds.
And I think there's a couple other plants that will
keep the pests away from their gardens. So your stuff is.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
Right and you can plant certain things together like little
home like yeah, I've I watched The Smallest Farm or
whatever that documentary was about, like all these old school
methods that can yeah, for farming and agriculture that we
can all take advantage of.

Speaker 3 (48:20):
Very smart.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
I think in this conversation, I feel ten times better
because I feel like I have something that I can
do on my own that could help the people that
I love and the community that I love, and if
we could be this little utopia.

Speaker 3 (48:30):
You got to read Sky.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
Full of Elephants and tell me what you think about it.
And when I told you my background, right, I'm a
mixed I'm a biracial batty.

Speaker 3 (48:39):
My mom is white from.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
Wisconsin, my dad is black from the South. And when
you read Sky Full of Elephants, just think about me,
because I was hanging on for dear life while I
read that book. You know the premise, right.

Speaker 1 (48:49):
I actually don't. I just someone's book. Oh you should
read this book. And you're like the third person, so
I'm like, okay, I should definitely actually read this book.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
Oh I would love you to read it. We're going
to do it for Brown Ambition Book Club when I
start that. So it's the premise is that one day
in America, modern day America, every white person in America
goes and finds the nearest body of.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
Water and drowns themselves.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
Oh wow, resulting in a new America where white people
are no longer in existence. Now there's not a lot
of answers as to like, so how much white do
you have to have and how much black is enough
to survive? But there's a biracial girl who has a
white mother and a white and a black father. She's
from Wisconsin. Her her white mother raised her there with
her siblings, and she feels very much like she's meant

(49:33):
to be white.

Speaker 3 (49:34):
Anyway.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
She survives, her whole family's dead, and so she has
to go reconnect with her black father for survival. I
started to read it when I was visiting my mom
in Wisconsin, and I was like, Mom, I'm reading.

Speaker 3 (49:42):
This new book.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
And as I started because we always talk about books,
and when as I started telling her, I was like,
it's about all the white people dying, and she was
it was so uncomfortable. I was like, but I didn't
write it. But like she's like, but you're reading it.
I'm like, I know, but it's like an allegory thing.
It's like, you know, just never mind, mom, mine, Let's
go watch the pit. Let's you know, let's watch TV.

Speaker 3 (50:03):
It's fine.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
We want to talk about it, but it's very uncomfortable.
It brought up a lot of stuff. So I'm just
I'm just saying, while you work on your stuff. Yeah,
all right, Well I want to end. I want to
wrap up a little bit with some like rapid fire questions.
So we are brown ambition. You are a full time author.
I know that you're also thinking about going back to school, Like,

(50:24):
what's the career path right now for you?

Speaker 1 (50:26):
I am thinking about getting my PhD. It's been like
a waffully kind of thing. When my kids were younger,
I did a master's degree while raising two kids and
working full time. Don't recommend, and I thought about getting
a PhD. But then I found about the stress level
of it at the time and thought, no one deserves
that version of me. I don't deserve that version of me.
Now I am thinking that I do want it right.

(50:49):
This is not in need, this is a want. But
also it's a perfect excuse for my mid life crisis
because like every other black girl, when we have free
time on our hand, we decide to go get a degree.
I am one of those. But it seems it's a
good time. It seems like a good time to be like,
you know, what. I'm going to move out of the
US for a while and get this degree that I'm
going to get anyway, and watch this from over here

(51:09):
and maybe come back and forth. But also maybe by
the time I'm sixty, I'll be doctor Kendall. Just to
be doctor Kendall, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
Yeah, I mean, I wish it didn't come with so
much debt. But education should never be something that we
mock people for wanting.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
But oh no, I'm looking for fully funded programs only.
I'm sorry, let me clarify.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
I'm okay, okay, okay, sweet wish you should be able
to get Mickey Kendall New York Times.

Speaker 3 (51:33):
Bestseller pushed with this book. Okay, so let's talk about
really quickly.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
Do you have a go to productivity hack that helps you?

Speaker 1 (51:40):
Yes? Yes, My go to productivity hack is to stop
trying to do the thing that I am avoiding and
go take a walk, and then by the time I
come back from the walk, I'm ready to do the
thing I was avoiding.

Speaker 2 (51:49):
Okay, if you could have any job in the world,
what would it be.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
I would at this point, I would actually rule the world.
But usually I say that I would love to be
one of those panda handlers.

Speaker 3 (52:02):
Ah yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (52:05):
I don't know if those people have any job stressed,
but the pandas look like they're so fun to watch.
I feel like i'd be okay with.

Speaker 3 (52:10):
It, and so squishies.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
It looks kids are kind of like baby pandas, but
they grow too fast.

Speaker 3 (52:16):
It's very annoying. It's a very limited window and.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
They start talking. The pandas just kind of chill and
like fake people sit in chairs.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
It's great, all right, I get I'm not going to
go down that ADHD path that panda panda core. All right,
what is the last thing that you read that you
were like, ugh, I need to talk to someone about this.

Speaker 1 (52:37):
Ironically, it is a manga solo LEVELENGTH, which is also
an anime now and I have been talking about it
endlessly because the basic premise is that someone, our lovely
hero has no strength. At the beginning, he goes through
a lot, he really dies, and then he comes back
and he spends all this time building up so he

(52:59):
can save other people in a way that he wasn't saved,
and like, yes, it is an anime with lots of
fighting and you know, monsters and whatever. But the core
hero's journey part of it fascinates me because it is
not a typical hero's journey. He starts off in a group,
and then because he wants to protect the group and
more broadly, everyone else, he seeks to take all of

(53:21):
the weight on himself on purpose, and I am fascinated
by the way this is structured.

Speaker 2 (53:25):
Well, given that you just said you wanted to rule
the world, I think I can see why that's an
interesting I'm also like Harry Potter, is it kind of
like sounds like anime Harry Potter, but maybe a little
bit different. Okay, if you could living or dead have
dinner with anyone, who would it be.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
I'm gonna go with it dead only because this person
ceased to be before I was ever born. Doronielhurston, Oh
what can I feel like we have? Sure? I feel
like we'd have such an interesting conversation. Or Hurst would
probably be like, please get this person off of me
after a while, because I would also have to like
do like a circular fangirl moment. That would be ridiculous

(54:02):
to see. If I were gonna go with living, it
would be LeVar Burton, except I would just scream the
entire time.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
LeVar Burton, then yes, reading Rainbow.

Speaker 3 (54:11):
Yes, I love that.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
I would just yell the whole time.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
What that might be a lot for him. I just
feel like he's just like but no, I mean certain that.

Speaker 1 (54:20):
Man is very chill. I he is a fundamental core
part of my identity, and therefore I never need to
meet him in person because I would just make stupid noises.
But also I would love to talk to him.

Speaker 3 (54:32):
It's gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
Also, if I ever get him on the show, I'll
have you back on. I'll be like, it'll be the
Mickey and LeVar Burton episode.

Speaker 3 (54:37):
It'll be fine.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
I like to abuse my position of my having a
platform to just get people that I love and want
to talk to just on the show.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
It's great trap. Jeff.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
Okay, all right, if there's something I know you said
you have adult children, there's got to be one piece
of advice that you keep banging a drum over with them.
What would that be? Can you tell us be a fam.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
It is this. It is your life to lead. You
should be making the choices that will let you be
able to look at yourself in the mirror every day.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
Okay, Well, that's a very good one. That's helpful, Okay,
all right? And then lastly, what's the last thing that
you splurged on?

Speaker 1 (55:09):
My last splurge of sorts was actually dinner in a
place in Chicago called Virtue. They have this this corn
bread Me and this corn bread of a ridiculous relationship.
This honeymore sweet bread.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
Yes, does I have little corn kernels in it for
some bite?

Speaker 1 (55:28):
I feel like it probably does, But I don't think
they're like big corn kernels. I think it's like the
smashed corn kernel kind of vibe. And then it's got
like a honey butter topping. And I know it's supposed
to be like a side dish. I could eat just
the thing of corn of corn bread and whatever about
the food. The food's great there. The food is delicious.
The cocktails are delicious. Me and that corn bread we

(55:50):
went through a phase together that was the most recent,
k like taking nap after right, Like I was like,
I need this corn bread, just this corn bread and
a drink. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
Oh that's such a home for me. Corn Bright is
like home. Mickey Kendall, thank you so much for coming
on Brown Ambition and sharing all of your insights in
your wisdom. I think there were parts of this conversation
that I'm going to be thinking about for days, weeks,
probably months after, And I think that's just why you
are so brilliant and I'm so glad that you're in.

Speaker 3 (56:18):
The world of writing.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
We need your work, especially at a time like this,
and you know what, I'm going to be selfish. One
piece of advice for a first time author, because I
have a book coming out twenty twenty six.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
My big piece of advice for a first him author
is to reach out to literally everyone in your network
right now. Start now. And also, don't be afraid to
ask for blurbs from everyone. One of the things that
happened with feminism, Gabrielle Union blurred my book because I
sent Gabrielle Union a DM asking Gabrie Unit to blur

(56:49):
my book.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
Though she's amazing, I just feel like she's fast. She's
the fast, Okay, so blurbs still matter.

Speaker 1 (56:57):
I feel like blurbs still matter. That that Kily that
had a lot of people paying attention to the book
that might not have otherwise.

Speaker 3 (57:06):
And also just time it perfectly right.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
Just get that care I'm assuming, Yeah, could I have
the crystal ball. Just could I just see your crystal
ball for a minute, just so I can like time it? Okay, Well,
thank you so much. And where where can people find you?
Where do you want to point foots tape?

Speaker 1 (57:21):
Yeah? Right now, I've been hanging on Blue Sky a lot.
It's still Carnethia. I have not really been on Twitter,
and I'm on TikTok occasionally, but really, actually, just just
find me on Blue Sky because that's that's where I'm
doing my most genanigans right now.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
That's why I don't hear from you, because I'm not
on Blue Sky. I gotta get on Blue Sky. I'm
on threads.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
Everybody should be on blue skuy at this point. You
know what, I have a thread to count and I
forget about threads.

Speaker 3 (57:42):
See that's the thing.

Speaker 2 (57:43):
I think I've like imprinted on threads. It's my new Twitter.
But at Blue Sky, I know I'm late to the game.
I gotta get on Blue Sky. But we'll put your
info in the show notes. Also your website, get on
her newsletter if you have a newsletter, so you know
when the.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
Dead book and so I have a newsletter. And honestly,
if you want to find me, just put Carnethia ka
y t Hia into your browser. You'll find me somewhere.
I'm always out here on the internet streets doing things
I have no business doing, but enjoying them anyway.

Speaker 2 (58:08):
I love it all right, Nicky, thank you so much
for coming on Brown Ambition BA fan. Don't forget to
like and subscribe to the show. Leave us at a
review and just go buy whatever Mickey selling, whatever she
comes out with, let me know. And if you're building
community and your own ways, I want to hear from y'all.
Hit me up Brandambition Podcast at gmail dot com or
you can slide into my dms on ig. We are
at Brand Ambition Podcast and I can't wait to hear

(58:31):
and see some stories of building community. And I'm gonna
talk to my neighbors about this like community garden that
I have in my hud. Now, thank you, yeah, thanks,
thank you,

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