Hope After Heart Attack: Trymaine Lee's Journey [WASHDAY WOOSAH]

This week on Brown Ambition, Mandi sits down with Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, author, and MSNBC contributor Trymaine Lee to discuss his powerful new book, A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America.

From reporting on Trayvon Martin and Ferguson to confronting his own family’s legacy of gun violence, Trymaine opens up about what happens when decades of unprocessed trauma take a physical toll. After surviving a near-fatal heart attack, he was forced to reckon with the emotional weight of his work — and the generational pain carried by so many Black families.

Together, Mandi and Trymaine unpack what it means to be a storyteller, a parent, and a survivor in a world that often normalizes Black pain. They also explore the economic ripple effects of gun violence, the healing power of vulnerability, and how mindfulness, breathwork, and community have helped Trymaine reclaim peace.

📚 Resources Mentioned

• A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America — by Trymaine Lee
• Hope in High Water: A People’s Recovery 20 Years After Hurricane Katrina — streaming now on Peacock
• Trymaine’s podcast: Into America (MSNBC)
• bookshop.org — to support Black and independent bookstores

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, Hey, ba.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Fam, Welcome back to Brown Ambition. I have a very
very special guest in the studio with me today, someone
who I admire and respect and had the pleasure of
getting to meet in person. It's not every day you
get to meet someone whose words have meant a lot
to you and whose career has inspired you.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
And then you get to be at.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
A conference and walk into a room that you didn't
plan to be in and there they are on stage.
Then they tell you their story, then they make you cry,
and then they are gracious enough to say yes, Lee,
come on my podcast, and they answer yes. The guest
today is Pulitzer Prize an Emmy Award winning journalist, author,
and MSNBC contributor Trimaine Lee, who is known for his

(00:47):
searing reporting that covers the intersection of race, justice and democracy. Today,
he's the host of MSNBC's Into America podcast. Please go
check it out. You're listening to Brown Ambition, You're gonna
love it. Go check out to America. He has earned
a Webby Award for Signal Awards. If you're watching on YouTube,
you can see them for yourself. The man is just

(01:07):
covered in gold and from being the first national journalist,
to report on the tragic Trayvon Martin case, to leading
groundbreaking coverage of ferguson, the Tulsa race massacre, police violence,
and so much more. Lee really has become a defining
voice in political and cultural storytelling.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
But he's here to.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Talk to us about Brown Ambition. Yeah, so what's he
doing on a business and finance show? Well, his new
book is called A Thousand Ways to Die And this
book is I mean, I think you could have titled it.
This book is a thousand times more difficult to read
than any other book, but it's so worth it an

(01:50):
incredible It's more than a story of the way that
gun violence has ricocheted through Black American life through generation centuries.
It's also a personal account of Trimaine's journey through understanding
his own family's relationship to gun violence. And the book,

(02:12):
you know, almost didn't even make it to our shelves.
So I want to welcome try Maine. I want to
get into you know, what the book is all about,
and hopefully a little about your career. But first and foremost,
thank you so much for joining me on Brown Ambition.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Thank you, Mandy. It's been great. And of course I
have a tricky name is Tremaine, just to just to
make sure everyone to hear and it not try main
about that.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Let me clean it up.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Great, listen, it's my life's it's my life's burden. I
had his name of the why and it throws everyone else.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
All right, Well, congratulations the book and all of the success.
But this book almost didn't even make it to our shelves.
And you open up the book with like a really
chilling anecdote about you know, after you know, I don't
want to date you, but maybe decades of covering violence
in our communities as a journalist across the country, how

(03:07):
you ended up having more than a health scare of
your own. Can you talk a little bit about where
you were at in the book when that happened and
what actually took place.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Yeah, So, in twenty fifteen, I got this book deal
to write a book about the true cost of gun
violence in terms of actual dollars, and I was going
to use that as a kind of pill in the
apple sauce to talk about the cost that families and
communities pay every single day. And I was two years
into writing that book when I suffered at the age
of thirty eight, a heart attack, a widow maker. It's

(03:38):
like the worst kind of heart attack. And it really
not only stopped me in my tracks, it stopped the
writing of the book for a moment, but it really
forced me to be introspective in a way that even
for a journalist who's covered trauma, who's covered death, who's
covered the myriad ways in which these forces weigh on
black people, that I had to reconsider how I was

(03:59):
experiencing trauma and violence and all those things. So they
came out of nowhere. It shook me to my core
and that there's nothing like facing your own mortality, especially
at thirty eight, with no warning signs, no previous markers,
no family history. Yeah, it's stopped me almost dead at
my tracks.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
And you also, you know you write about I think
one of the beautiful things about the book is how
you sort of anchor it. Not that you're speaking directly
to your daughter Nola, who is how old she's in
middle school? Now?

Speaker 1 (04:31):
She's thirteen now, so she's a big girl. Now is thirteen?

Speaker 3 (04:36):
So what she's really like the anchor?

Speaker 2 (04:38):
You know, you're writing it sort of you're writing the book,
or at least the reason the book sort of shifts
is because she, like most like five or six year
olds do, they ask these questions that sort of and
they ask the questions and you give them an answer,
they're not satisfied. And I have almost six year old
and every day he's like, but why, but why, but
digging deeper. And so I really felt it when she's

(05:00):
asking me, why did this happen to you? And at
that time the book kind of start, It stops being
the million dollar bullet and it starts to evolve into
the book that it's become. Had you planned to go
back into your family history and like really like unpack
the way that gun violence had peppered your family's history

(05:21):
before that moment, And.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
In some ways you're right, the original the original conception
with million dollar bullets, that the true costs, like the
actual dollar costs. My heart attack forced me to engage
with this idea of violence and how I was carrying it.
But what really sparked this change. As I was getting
physically healthy, mentally and emotionally healthy recovering from this heart attack,
little Nola then not so little Nola anymore, but little

(05:43):
Nola five turning six, was asking me, Daddy, how and why,
And I really wanted to be honest and truthful with her,
which forced me to be honest and truthful with myself.
You know, for a decade at that point, I've been
telling stories of black death and survival and never truly
unpacking what it was that I was carrying the stories
of so much black death, And in trying to answer her,

(06:06):
it forced me to take a direction in the book
that I hadn't necessarily planned on taking. And so originally
I was going to talk about my grandfather's killing. My
grandfather was murdered in nineteen seventy six, so I planned
on touching on that as a way of saying that,
you know, even your friendly neighborhood reporter, even the author
of this book, hasn't been immune from the pangs of

(06:28):
gun violence. But once I was trying to like answer
Nola's question and dig digging myself, it forced a kind
of refocusing of what this book truly was, and it
became to me what it was supposed to be, but
so much more personal, so much more vulnerable, digging into
my family's history in a way that I hadn't expected,
and I learned things along the way. Certainly I understood

(06:49):
the weight of my grandfather's death, but I didn't know
about the earlier killings in my family and forcing me
to engage with that kind of inheritance in a way
that I know had no no plan on ever doing.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Yeah, you know, so much of our I mean, you
couldn't you can't know this. But I'm thirty eight now,
and I chose business journalism to be my niche, you know,
And I used to think that was like a way
of inoculating myself from what I could see peers heading toward,
you know, especially in like the last decade. I mean,

(07:27):
so much of the breaking news and the news on
the front page, it's either it's mass shootings, it's some
kind of catastrophic natural disaster, or it's you know, the
violence against black and brown bodies, and you know, these murders.
And I sort of always kind of struggled even with

(07:49):
this podcast. You know, we would show up, especially the
summer of twenty twenty, we'd show up to talk about
business and finance and the economics of things. But the
weight of what was, you know, these worries, these deaths,
these murders, was always in the air. And I and
I think as black people, no matter what your career
path is, Like we're all kind of going into work

(08:09):
day to day like carrying that heaviness. But you, as
a journalist, like there was I mean, was there it was?
It just that there was no way to like compartmentalize
it at that point because you're just you were not
able to. It's not just about you know, coming on
air and talking about it for a little bit. Like
you're in these people's homes. You're sitting across from the

(08:31):
mothers of you know, black children who were murdered, and
you talk about like how hard it was to even
look them in the eye or at least to like
engage with that amount of pain.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
What do you think changed.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
For you over your career where you know you were
able to kind of hold that and then eventually like
it started to break you down, you know physically.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Well, I think part of the issue for me at least,
I mean, I'm sure other journalists, black journalists particularly cover
black death and violence, it's that we do a too
good of a job of compartmentalizing it. I think I
was definitely I was putting it over here, and I
was packing it here and packing it here without fully
acknowledging the way that all of that packing and compartmentalizing

(09:16):
was weighing me down. And so for a long time
as a young journalist, I think we push further into
the work, especially for those of us who feel mission driven,
right like I felt like it's my obligation in my
job and my mission to tell our stories, the good,
the bad, the ugly, to shine light in dark spaces
and to go and confront what's ailing us as the people.

(09:37):
But you know, as journalists, we just work harder, We
drink and hang out, we do all kinds of stuff,
rather than engage with the potential of all of that
compartmentalizing oozing out into us. And so certainly it would
be tough when I was actually doing it, having those conversations,
sitting on the on the front porches, sitting on the sofas,

(10:00):
hearing those stories, looking into the eyes, you know, arriving
at crime scenes and finding a young young black man
looks just like me dead from gunshot wounds. All those
things that are not normal to be engaging with as humans.
But that was my job. So every single day for years,
especially as a police and crime reporter in Trenton and Philly,
and New Orleans and New York gathering like the most

(10:21):
terrible you know, chips of glass and bits of ribbon,
and you're adding to this, you know, this terrible quilt
of death and violence and experience, and still trying to
with the add of pressure of trying to humanize people
and trying to make sure that people are remembered in
their truest light, that people are experiencing this violence not
just because of the neighborhoods they live in, but from

(10:41):
being black in America, the systemic nature of all this violence,
and so you know, it was hard, but it wasn't
until the heart attack where I really had to refocus
and understand, you know, what it means to carry that
weight and how it manifests physically.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
You know, I mentioned that we cross paths at the
nash Association of Black Journalist conference in Cleveland. This was
like a month or two ago, and you know, one
of the things I noticed just being an attendee at
this conference, it's thousands of journalists. You know, I've been
a part of NABJ for my whole career, even before
I was in college, but there was something about this
particular conference. So many of the sessions were around mental

(11:17):
health and coping with trauma, and there seemed to be
this like kind of this this heaviness and space to
be held for like what it can do to us,
you know, as humans in this career, in this field,
and how we're carrying that. I know that your session
wasn't so much about that, but I wonder if you
have any you mentioned in the book too, some of

(11:39):
like the the ways that you're taking care of yourself
differently now that have helped you, you know, and your
effort to just not to stop you. You haven't stopped
doing the work, which I think is amazing and courageous,
but you have like shifted your lifestyle a bit so
that you can do it in a healthier way for
yourself and your family.

Speaker 3 (11:56):
Can you talk about that a little bit?

Speaker 1 (11:58):
So? You know, before the heart attack, I didn't have
any real tools, right, healthy ways to really break down
everything that I was absorbing. But post heart attack, as
I was healing physically, which included you know, physical therapy
and working out and making sure that my heart was
as strong as possible, I began this journey of mindfulness

(12:21):
and meditation and breathing and finding real ways to when
the weight feels too heavy on my shoulders, that can
take some of it off, and that has been critical.
And I think fortunately we're in a space now where
you know, we can be vulnerable enough to admit when
the weight is heavy. I think we do have the
language now, We do have tools at our disposal within reach,

(12:45):
where just a decade or two before we simply didn't
have those, and there was a sign kind of not weakness,
but you know, allowing and admitting that things do affect
us emotionally mentally, you know, especially for those of who
are in the front lines who are telling these stories,
but also being black and existing in America comes with

(13:06):
a kind of mental and emotional weight, let alone a
physical weight that we're not sleeping, we're stressed out, or
eating habits, all those things that we're turning to instead
of addressing and engaging with what really is affecting us.
And so I think when you have a gathering like
the National Association of Black Journalists, and there are so
many of us who are trying to make our way

(13:26):
through this white world and these newsrooms and all the
pressure of just navigating, keeping your sense of self and
advocating for your people, and advocating for yourself and the
pressure of the job that come regardless of what your race, ethnicity,
or walking life is. And then on top of that
you add telling stories of you know, what it means
to struggle and survive and thrive. Being black in America

(13:50):
comes with a lot of weight. But you're right, it's
a I love that there's a whole new generation of
young journalists who hopefully understand they don't have to be
afraid to now only bring their whole selves to the job,
but also that we can, you know, be honest about
what you know, what's burdening us. And you know, I'm
loads of it that burden.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, I mean, it's hard to listen to you talk
because I feel like I'm so I'm so exactly like
in the not healthy part of like coping with a
lot of stress and I mean and a lot of
heaviness and the weight of the world and raising tiny
children and being a black woman, and like being in
my space where you know, a lot of my work

(14:31):
outside the podcast is creating building community for women of
color who are navigating their careers and struggling. And I
don't think there's been a more difficult time to be
in front of those types of rooms, and I've struggled
to find the words of like hope and inspiration, which

(14:54):
is like my whole job. So I probably should figure
that out. But some days it's just really hard, hard
to show up and to have to feel for ourselves
like a sense of Okay, there's something on the other
side of this. And I think the meditation and the
wellness journey is is one of those things where you're like, damn,

(15:17):
it is something to it, because you know, with good sleep,
hygiene and breath work like you mentioned, like these are
tools that I'm finally like learning myself how to use.
And it's affirming to me that they've been really helpful
for you because I'm like, Okay, stick with a girl,
like you know, keep putting in that practice.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
But you know, but you know, I will say that
there's the you know, there's the practice, and there's there's
finding ways that work for each individual and for yourself
right whether it's meditation or breathing. But I think we
also have to understand and put our current, you know,
how we're living life now politically and socially in its
proper context, and that black folks unfortunately we've always had

(16:00):
to fight and struggle, and so imagine that if we
feel this way in the year twenty twenty five, what
it was like in nineteen twenty five when my people
were joining the Great migration, what it was like time
after time, And that we do have everything in us
to push forward. And I do truly believe that as
a people, that we have everything inside us that we need.
And certainly it's not easy, and certainly there's the wear
and tear, and certainly there's the inheritance of all the things.

(16:22):
But when I think it's bad and I think it's
tough to have to walk into this white newsroom with
my salary and my resources and tools and I feel
bad for myself, I have to remember, you know, from
whence we came and who we are, and that also
gives me great resolve and streath too. So sometimes we
just can't forget that we're not disconnected from mighty, mighty people,
even when it feels like the barriers are insurmountable, and

(16:46):
you have to have these conversations and all the aggressions
and microaggressions and all of the attempted erasure, the violence
of erasure of our history and our pat we come
from from mighty mighty stock. So it's like you know,
balancing that. Okay, how can we you know, tinker with
their lifestyle and tinker with our mindset and how can
we you know, breathe and you know, physically get ourselves
together but also spiritually reminding ourselves of who we come from.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yeah, I mean the journey that you go through, I
mean one of the most chilling parts of the book.
I mean, there's many moments that kind of give you goosebumps,
but one of them is you're digging back into your
family's history and your people originate Well, I know, we
all originate from Africa obviously, but your family, your great
great grandparents, they were living in Georgia, the Deep South,

(17:30):
and it was their twelve year old boy, your grand
was it your great grandmother or your grandmother's brother.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
My grand just just my grandmother's brother. Yeah. So sometimes
it's like these histories seeming further back than they actually are.
It wasn't that far, right, It's yeah. So my great
grandparents were tenant farmers in rural jim Crow, Georgia, where
they had my grandmother, you know, her brother and her sister,

(18:00):
my aunt Rose and her two older brothers, and one
of those brothers was twelve year old Cornelius. In nineteen
twenty two, he was sent off to run errands one
day and he was shot and killed in a neighboring sundowntown.
And for many listeners, probably like me, thought sundown towns
were kind of colloquial like places that you know, there

(18:20):
was a racist town and they just didn't like black
folks there went. In fact, years earlier, the white men
of this town came together and took a vote to
expel black people, to keep black people their interaction in
this town limited. Couldn't be there after certain times, couldn't
participate in voting, just couldn't fully integrate into society. Decided this,
and the newspapers of the day wrote that Fitzgerald, this

(18:43):
town handled the negro problem the way no other city
in America could. Right, so this place was lauded as
a place that again handled the so called negro problem.
And the irony of this place also is that it
was heralded as a community that was founded by former
Confederate and former Union soldiers. So these Confederates and Union
soldiers veterans came together in magnanimity, right, and embracing this

(19:07):
kind of collective spirit of americanness, so much so that
they'd have criss crossing streets, some named after Confederates, some
named after Union soldiers. Right, this beautiful town that also
was a legit sundown town. And this is where my
great uncle Cornelia Is, twelve years old, was shot and killed.
And I'll never forget discovering the death certificate as his

(19:29):
age twelve called the death gunshot wounds, and seeing those
words next to each other was startling. And then I
couldn't help but think about Tamir Rice in Cleveland, who
was shot and killed by police officers with a toy gun,
and think about twelve years old. I think about my
own daughter twelve, their little chubby faces, and think about
Cornelis's murder and what that would have done to my

(19:51):
great grandparents, who, again, you know, shortly after experiencing that,
joined the Great Migration, like so many other black families,
headed north looking for sil and peace and opportunity.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
I spent some time looking at that certificate as well,
and that artifact, and you know, to have a record
of it at all seems like a bit of a
I don't know. I was going to say gift, but
you know, having a record, it's almost like it just
underlines the importance of journalism in general, like someone to

(20:24):
take record and to make it true, like this actually happened,
you know, this was real. Yeah, just yeah. I can't
say enough how much that touched me. And you know,
ever since I had kids, it's like and you mentioned
a child, and I'm just gone, Oh, I'm just gone.

Speaker 3 (20:41):
But your family.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
But you know, it's also important to I think it's like,
you know, the narrative and it's true to some degree,
is that for a lot of black folks, our records
to stop at certain places. Right, But in these small
towns and in these municipal buildings, in these court basements,
there are acts, a lot of records and the National Registry, right,
there are a lot of records out there that can

(21:04):
help black folks piece together bits and pieces of their history,
of our history. Certainly, it stops at a certain point,
because you know, we were considered property at a certain point,
and that's the great tragedy of one of the great
tragedies of enslavement, the erasure of pieces of our humanity. Right.
But there are a lot of records out there, and
you don't have to necessarily just be a reporter, even

(21:25):
though this is what we do. But there are a
lot of records out there that can help folks. So never, never,
never stop trying. If you're interested in your family history,
go to the municipal buildings, go to the census records, right,
go to the newspaper accounts, newspaper, dot com, ancestry. There
are a lot of you know, great resources there.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, I bet you've gotten a lot of questions from
people who are like, how did you start to follow
this trail backwards?

Speaker 3 (21:47):
And then how can we how can we do that?
As well? My aunt, my aunt Brenda, I love her
so much.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
She is she's a Baptist associate pastor in Atlanta. And
you know, ever since I was like a teenager, I
feel like I remember and Brenda talking about the family curse,
that there was like a family curse. And I used
to and you know, people in the family, which is
not all it's just say Brenda going on again, and

(22:17):
and it was it's to me, it kind of seemed
like like it wasn't like a real thing, or like
I'd never really knew what she meant about it. And
it wasn't until like a few years back, you know,
really during that that that summer of Black Lives Matter
and that whole movement, when I started to like, you

(22:38):
know how you're kind of like a shitty teenager, you
just ignore your elders and all that kind of stuff.
At least I was like finally start to ask her
more questions and like ask about that curse, and found
out things about my family that I had not known,
you know, about how I had a cousin who has
gone down in a night club in Atlanta, and you know,
before I was born or right after I was born,

(23:01):
and no one really ever talked about him, and so
I really didn't know much about him, And how this
curse she was kind of talking about was like it
was a mixture of violence in our family but also.

Speaker 3 (23:15):
Chronic illness.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
And I think a lot about how, like I've talked
on the show about my dad's like his health challenges
and how he's four of six children and or sorry,
he's the fourth of six children, and four out of
those six children have died from some sort of chronic condition,
like complications of high blood pressure, diabetes, so kidney failure,

(23:41):
kidney cancer, you know, and how like I've thought a
lot about like how that is also mixed in like
not just the gun violence, but also the the health,
like the the way that these chronic conditions proliferate.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
In these communities.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
And yeah, I'm just saying all that to say that
I think your book has just reminded me again, like
to to push through that discomfort and to like look
at my family and like sit with them and actually
like talk about these things, like excize them a little bit,
because the not talking about them has almost made us

(24:16):
more vulnerable, you know, to these like these same conditions,
these same tragedies like befalling us. And it's really hard.
Did you struggle, like as you're writing this book to
talk to your parents about you know, like your your
grandfather's passing for example, and his I'm sorry, not just
his passing, his murder, and like how did you navigate

(24:37):
those those conversations with them?

Speaker 1 (24:39):
Well? I think I think the first part of what
you said there this idea of a curse. I think
what we're describing as a curse most certainly there is
a psychic kind of ethereal residue from the violence of
the past that we haven't fully shaken off, we haven't
been able to wipe clean. But I think it speaks
to the way trauma is passed along and inherited. Certainly,

(25:01):
there's this idea of epigenetics which says that when we
experience trauma and violence enough, it starts to kind of
reorder yourself on a genetic level, and that we pass
that on. And so the way we respond to violence,
the way our bodies physically respond and at a cellular
level changes, and so there isn't much And I argue
in the book that there is the blood clot and

(25:23):
the bullet right different things, but both have the ability
to twist and shadow of life. That blood clot is
a slew of is a vehicle for a slew of
conditions that we experienced because of the way we've lived
and died in America, from the high blood pressure to
the lack of sleep to all those things really are
you can't just you attribute that to salt intake and

(25:44):
poor eating habits. It's not that it's much deeper than that.
And so that curse that families often speak of the
curses from the very beginning to me, and I argue
in the book The Devil's Deal between European powers and
African powers in our original enslavement by way of the gun,
where guns were traded for enslaved people, and the gun

(26:05):
created war and fomented instability on the continent to create
more enslaved people. Right, So, I think there is something
to that idea, that there is something beyond the physical
that's been guiding us right on this path. But when
it comes to engaging with family members, I think about how,
you know, we talk about the Greatest generation and the

(26:26):
generation that came from World War Two, and these folks
who came in and they were quiet, a silent generation
who were quiet because of what they've experienced. And in
so many of our communities there is an implicit or
explicit rule of like not talking about family business and
not talking about the worst of what we experienced. And
so I think for a whole generation, it's been very difficult.
How do you talk about the murder and rape of

(26:48):
people of the people's for generation, as part for the
course the constant dehumanization, how do you address that in
this case? You know, the emotions of my grand father's
murder are still very raw fifty plus years later in
nineteen seventy six. So I mean we're getting there almost
fifty years or is there fifty years? Yeah, fifty years.

(27:11):
And so talking to my aunts and uncles, most of
whom are still alive. Of the eight, there are six
of the children remaining. My mother, who is the youngest,
could cry to this day if she talks about her father,
brings tears to her eyes. Talking to my aunts and
uncles who were older than her when he was killed,
you know, they were opening the way that I didn't anticipate.

(27:34):
But in some ways, my documenting of our story and
even the pain is also an opportunity to speak to
what he meant for our family. This towering man with
a heavy voice that everybody loved, and this salt and pepper,
and this this man that everybody adored and respected and loved.
And that's why it's like it hurts so much because

(27:55):
of what was lost and because of what was stolen.
And so, in approaching this book in that way where
it is very much about how we experienced the pain
of loss and violent loss, it also is about showing
love and respect for those who survived, and love and
respect for those who didn't survive, and that we are
not defined by the worst of what we've experienced. We

(28:15):
are not that we are not my grandfather's murder. My
grandfather was not his murder, right, He was the way
he lived, not the way he died. And so, you know,
it was tough. The writing of it now was tougher
than the actual talking about it and having the conversations
me sitting in that for myself and for the first
time understanding and feeling out like a visceral level, what

(28:40):
it means to not have my grandfather. Writing this book,
I cried for the first time for my grandfather. Before
I always knew about his murder, I could, you know,
I could understand the impact of my mother and her
siblings because it hurt is that that was their father.
But that was the extent of what I felt, you
know what I'm saying writing this book and articulating my

(29:02):
grandfather's murdered in a string of murders up to that
point in my family. You know, again, I cry like
a baby at certain points writing this book and then
the audiobook where I had to I had to speak
the words that wrote cried all over again, and that
that that was tough because in so many again, I
never had to I had never had to feel, and

(29:24):
I had never been as open, right, I'd never been
as open. And so this book is like me opening
my chest up and I'm pouring myself out. But I'm
also find letting things in that I didn't know really
truly even existed.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
Hey, ba fam, We're going to take a quick break,
pay some bills, and we'll be right back. Yeah. I think,
you know, raising young boys and being raised by like
a very proud, stoic black man like I have a
lot of hope, you know, reading your book, and there

(30:01):
are these like moments when you you know, you write
about like these emotional times when you break down crying
and when you're finally kind of letting the feelings come in.
And I think it's a really wonderful example to set
just for you know, young black men or men of
any age really to feel and process those emotions. So,
I mean, I just thank you for that so much.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
Thank you. It does not mean we have to we
have to engage, and we have to engage with those
feelings because you know, the burden of carrying it it's
killing us. And I don't think we can properly break
up that big cinder block of emotions until we name it,
call it trauma, call it what it is, learn to

(30:46):
identify its source. Right, you're you're not, You're not feeling
that way just because that not in your stomach or
that anxiety or that anger or that No, it's not,
it's not coming out of nowhere. That's that's not who
we are spiritually. And so I think it's it's hopefully
an opportunity to engage with the trauma and call it trauma,
call it, call it that. But it's been our it's

(31:07):
been so routine and so common, and we've all society
has accepted a degree of black pain. A degree of
black pain has been so par for the course that
we've normalized it, where none of this, none of this
has ever been normal.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
Thinking, you mentioned this cinder block, and I'm thinking back
to the idea of a piece of plaque in your
artery that kind of breaks loose and becomes this whitow
maker and it resonates because I'm thinking, you know, this pain,
this trauma.

Speaker 3 (31:36):
Is like that.

Speaker 2 (31:37):
It's like, that's the plaque, you know, that's the the place.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
That can break off. It can cause so much damage, So.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
Can I switch through and think is I'm sorry, it's
it's dangerous because it's just it accumulates and it's volatile
because it can break off at any point. I think
that's a perfect illustration because what happened to me is
that soft clack broke off and a blood clot worked
to fill its place, right, to try to repair it.

(32:07):
But I think, I think again, it's so it's so
volatile and it's were accumulating that sometimes without or notuth
I didn't know what I was accumulating, right, because it
wasn't so bad that it killed me earlier. It wasn't
so bad that I that it blocked my arms I
needed bypass surgery. But it was just it was just
gathering and gathering, and it's volatile, and that's how our
emotions and trauma.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
My dad survived a heart attack a couple of years ago,
and so I was thinking about I drew a picture
of a heart when he went through that, and I
was like trying to just like make sense of it all,
and it was similar, like you know, envisioning how it
could happen. But there's something about I do believe that,
you know, I really deeply believe in like the long
toll of trauma and unprocessed trauma and unprocessed grief and emotion.

Speaker 3 (32:52):
And all of that.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
And yeah, it's really hard. I feel myself even, like
to be honest, even having this conversation, and there's a
sense of wanting to pull away from it, talk about
anything else because it's just but you know, in my practice,
like in my practice of all my things, it's like
you have to kind of learn to question that feeling

(33:13):
and not necessarily judge yourself for it. I'm like, am
I being a terrible interviewer right now? I really don't,
But it's you know, I can't remove myself like from
it in that way. That is just how I'm feeling. Yeah,
I will take a deep breath, though, well cleansing breath.

(33:36):
I'll take one, God bless you on this book tour.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
No listen, I've been like I've been city by city
having these conversations, and I've been on the verge of
tears every time, Like, without question, I'm surprised I havn't cried,
like every time I have to stop myself I talk
about my grandfather. But there is something that is all
so so healing and cleansing about having the conversations and

(34:05):
connecting with other people, people who have experienced similar things
or who haven't but can connect emotionally. And I think
there is something so powerful about us connecting an experience
that we share. There is a universality, especially among black
folks and black people, which is ninety eight point nine
percent of who I'm engaging with have been Black people

(34:25):
who can't connect to these experiences but also want to
unburthen themselves and knowing that there is great power in
who we are. And that's that's the part. Again. It
hurts because of what we're losing, but even with all
the emotions and pain and almost in the verge of
tears and real tears, I think there is so much
strength in our connecting and in a way that I've

(34:45):
never had before. I always felt connection to my people,
and my people have always connected to me the stories
I'm telling. They see me as the neighbor, as the brother,
as the nephew, as the sun. Right. So I've always
had that kind of familial connection to people, to strangers
I've never known who see me doing the work. But
to connect in this different facet of myself has been
in power as empowering as it has been. Again, I've

(35:06):
been on the burgessiers every every stop, every conversation.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
Maybe you're just being tough because you can see I'm
on the bride, I'm losing, you're losing her.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
Well you were you were when I when I mentioned
you were, you were crying over there, So I can
tell you're a sensitive spirit.

Speaker 3 (35:23):
So yeah, it's uh, yeah, I don't have it. I
I don't know. I don't know what I am.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
Now, but I'm just a a It's it's kind of
debilitating sometimes I just have to keep going. But also
I think it's a superpower in a way, because God,
if I wasn't feeling it, like for those who aren't
feeling and I kind of worry more for them, especially
given what you've writ in the book, if you're not
really processing and feeling it, and like, oh God, I

(35:53):
feel bad for your insights and what could be happening
and how it's going to show up for you in
other ways, there was a pardon.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
But too often we haven't. Too often we haven't been
able to be vulnerable enough to connect. And this is
our humanity, and it is it is fragile, right, it
is vulnerable and it's fragile, and that's why there's this
deep unfairness to the way we've had to carry it,
and so certainly we have to find ways so we're
not debilitating because it is as it is, not as
we would like it to be the past, or the present,

(36:22):
and possibly the future. But I think that's that's a
great show of our humanity that we haven't fully become
so hardened, because a lot of us have that we're
not harder from what we experience or the experiences of
our brothers and sisters and neighbors. And sorry to cut
you off, but you just.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
Spark that there was an incredible heart in your book.
I know you've told this story many times, but my
first time hearing it was by reading in your book
of that mantra that your mom would say to you,
like every day before you went to school or like
a lot of times.

Speaker 3 (36:50):
I tried it on my five year old this morning
before he left the door.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
I was like, he was like, because he's again such
as But I was like, Rio, you know, say this
after me.

Speaker 3 (37:03):
I am.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
He's like, I am. He said somebody. He said somebody
and he was screaming it. But he loves this. He
loves that smash mouth song all Star that's in Shrek
that starts out with Somebody, so he immediately takes it
there and starts singing this smash mouth song. And I
was like, no, no, no, We're gonna try again. And then
he's like, I am I Am a Dino.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
But I'm like, listen, he's getting there, He's getting there.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
But it's such a beautiful, such a beautiful, you know
mantra gift that your mother gave you from a young age.

Speaker 3 (37:38):
Can you talk a little bit about your mamma for
a second. I just love moms in general, but.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
My mother is has been such a force for me.
I wouldn't say a guiding force, but an empowering force.
Going back to when I was a little boy, before school,
we stayed. She'd get down her knee and we're face
to face and she would say I am and I
would say somebody. And we do have three were times,
and you know, to this day, any room I walk into,

(38:04):
I walk into very proudly, very confidently, because I am somebody.
And this is before any of the awards, this is
before this, before anything, I am somebody and I was somebody,
and I will always be somebody because of the way
I'm loved and cared for and pushed and encouraged, and
the level of encouragement that my mother has poured into
me always to this day. I don't know where I'd

(38:26):
be without that. To be able to confront and move
through this world as a black man with all of
the pangs and arrows aimed at us and all the
barriers erected around us and all the bridges burned before
we even get there, that we are strong enough, and
that I am strong enough to push through and I
can do so with love and power and all of
those things. And my mother again, you know, coming from

(38:50):
a big family, a big, hard working family, an imperfect family,
but a strong, beautiful, lovely family of good people, and
finding a way to push forward. And you know, and
even with me, my brother and sister were born. You know,
my mother got married when she was sixteen years old.

(39:11):
When she had my she was sixteen. She had my
sister at sixteen years old and my brother at eighteen
years old and was married and then I come along
at age twenty five, and so that she found a
way to be a good mother because it's probably it's
hard even if you have resources, let alone, you're a
young mother who's still basically a teenager yourself, but finding

(39:34):
a way to continue to pour into her children, and
certainly by the time she got to me at twenty five,
you know, being able to see the possibilities for her,
her youngest, her baby boy, and giving me everything she
had at that point is the greatest gift of all.
And so I can't stop talking about my mother, who
is the greatest mother on the face of the earth.

(39:57):
She did she no, she did. She would get to
the crib with me when I was younger. And it's
doesn't matter that. I mean, certainly, all children are arriving
with their set of possibilities, right, and they are enormous
and immense. But when we don't nurture those possibilities and
nurture those seeds, the power of nurturing that I mean again,

(40:19):
I think I would have been whatever okay is. I
guess I'd have been okay. I'd assume I have been okay.
But the difference that she's made in my life where
I've been able to chart this path is super super
unlikely path that I've been on. And there were so
many crooks in the road that could have derailed me.
There were so many, so many things that happened in
my life that could have sent me that way, but

(40:39):
I managed to like keep moving forward. There zero doubt
to me that some of that is is spirit. Some
of that was gonna happen no matter what. But I
think a lot of that is from my mother making
sure that seed had you know, even when it was
in rocky soil and the sun was blocked and you know,
the winter was bad, and she kept nurturing that seed
and I found a way to keep growing. It's it's

(41:01):
beyond me, and I am. I am somebody.

Speaker 3 (41:04):
I am somebody that's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
Hey, ba, fam We're going to take a quick break,
pay some bills.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
And we'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
I do want to know, though, because you tell this
insane anecdote in the book, and it made me so
mad as a mama, you know what I'm talking about?

Speaker 3 (41:22):
Did she know about that?

Speaker 2 (41:24):
And you guys got to read the book to read
the or you can talk tell about him, but did
your mom know that you had put your whole academic
career at risk with that whole fake gun Halloween fiasco
when you were in school or did she read about
in the book.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
She read about it in the book. So we're just
talking about this two days ago. She was like, she
didn't know about that one or the more with my
brother later on, with this this actual gun, she she
was she was very she was shocked. I could not
believe it. For those who haven't read the book yet,
this is an anecdote where I almost got myself and
there was some serious, serious trouble with a fake gun

(42:03):
that sent all these ripples throughout the school community. And
I went to this boarding school for poor children, this
great gift, the Milton Hershery School. It's the richer school
in the country, with eighteen billion dollar endowment. But to
get into the school, you have to be poor right
to get into it. And so it's this great opportunity
which I did end up graduating from. But I almost

(42:25):
derailed my entire act in the career with this fake
gun fiasco. But that's the one thing I didn't really
besides the family history stuff, I didn't talk to anybody
mother included about what was in this book. So this
was all a surprise to them. And so I had
a conversation with her just this weekend. I went to Jersey,

(42:45):
went to a diner that that we freaking we started.
We're talking about the books. She loves the book, of course,
but there was a lot of stuff in there. It's
very personal to our family and including her, and she
trust me this is your story too, so she doesn't
begrudge me. But she was surprised at, you know, the
stories I told. But I feel like, yeah, there were

(43:05):
so many moments where everything could have been very different
but for the grace and but for whatever it has
been that has been keep me on this path. I'm
still here to.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
Your children have these lives, and I'm like, oh god,
my son's gonna have some sneakerts someday. I'm so grateful
that did not, you know, because even though it was
a dumb thing, it was also like a kid thing,
like you know, how bad my five year old wants
a NERF gun?

Speaker 3 (43:29):
And I'm like, hell to the now.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
So he could have said that the same gun on
the shelf at Walmart and thought it was hilarious and
you know, something to put in your pocket and carry around,
and you know, just in this country, and this time
it's like, yeah, we're not it's not worth it.

Speaker 3 (43:45):
Sometimes to put yourself.

Speaker 1 (43:47):
Well to invokee to me Rice's name again, a twelve
year old boy with a toy gun and who you know,
the callers into police saying that there's a there's a
man with a gun. And so not only are black
boys not ever fully afforded boyhood, were so soon considered
and viewed as men and treated as black men are treated.

(44:07):
And so you add even a toy gun in that,
and you're you know, perceived as a menace and a threat.
And so often that means, you know that the police
and other agencies can can kill us. And so if
my mother knew, then she probably would have passed out.
But fortunately, fortunately I survived.

Speaker 2 (44:26):
I'm glad you spared her safe, right, you know, I don't.
We don't have tons of time left, but I would
be remiss if we didn't get into the economic impact
of gun violence. And that was sort of the original
mission of the book was to try to equate a
dollar amount, put a price on what gun violence is
costing black and brown families in America. And can we

(44:51):
you still include some of that in the book, and
can we talk a little bit about that. I think
from just the standpoint of you know, what work can
be done, you know, in terms of increasing economic equality
and opportunities and financial literacy, and if that could have
any impact on, you know, relieving some of the pain
and the financial pain that these families have to endure.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
Yeah, well, well, I think on a very micro deliberate
kind of context, I don't think there's any one personal
decision that a black family can make to alleviate the
broad systemic, broad myriad costs that we have society pay
for gun viotes every single year, to the tune of
five hundred and sixty plus billion dollars a year in

(45:37):
the broad cost. But I'd be remiss if I didn't
speak to the earliest seeds of this book when it
was million dollar bullets. Was a young man I met
in two thousand and three as I was an intern
at the Philadelphi Daily News named Kevin Johnson. And Kevin
Johnson unfortunately was shot during a robbery attempt for his

(45:58):
Allan iris in basketball Jersey was shot in the back
of the neck and left paralyzed. And it was only
eighteen years old. And I met Kevin in his hospital
room maybe a week or two after the shooting, and
what I found was a young man who was physically
broken in some ways, but emotionally was like he had
this buoyancy about him and this huge smile on his

(46:19):
face as he told me about his dreams of walking
one day and he knew, he just knew he'd walk
one day, And he told me about his literal dreams
of playing basketball and feeling the sensation like he wasn't
paralyzed anymore. And I remember like feeling great hope from
this young man had so much stolen from him by
that single bullet. But then there was the look I

(46:40):
found in his mother's eyes across his hospital bed as
she started to describe to me literally the dollar cost
was going to take just to get him home. It
was going to be a special wheelchair. I think it
was thirty five or thirty six thousand dollars that they
didn't have for this wheelchair, a special van to transport
the van. A ramp would have to be built on
their row home in North Philly. They'd have to widen
the doors that the wheelchair can get in. They have

(47:03):
to have a special electrical outlets to keep them for
a breathing machine to keep them alive. This was all
just to getting home and they were just a poor
family from North Philly. And that was the first time
I fully fully considered, oh my god, the economic ramifications
of a single bullet. And Kevin survived, and he's just
one of tens of thousands of people who are shot

(47:24):
every single year who survived. And most people who are
shot in this country don't have private insurance. They have
public insurance. So that means we're all literally footing the bill.
And as soon as that bullet hits flesh and it
hits your spinal cord, a million dollars just for the
surgery alone, and that's before you talk about all the
costs that the individual families are going to need to
pay to revamp their homes right let alone the cost

(47:47):
of the investigations and all the other the lifetime of
health care costs, and businesses leaving violent communities right so
to tax paradolars, all these mirrid costs. And so I
think my earliest approach might have been a bit cynical,
but I said, you might not care about the Kevin
Johnson's of the world, but maybe you care that we're
all paying a literal dollar amount. And then I was

(48:09):
going to pull people into these broader costs, these non
financial costs. But if anything, you might not care about
the Kevin Johnson of the world. You might not, and
there are so many of them, unfortunately. But how much
longer can we continue to pay these actual costs when
those costs could go to feeding hungry children, could go
to workforce development, could go towards, you know, creating a

(48:34):
larger pool of a labor force. But the sad part is,
I think America is willing to pay this cost because
they perceive this as a primarily black issue, even though
gun violence is not the domain of black people alone.
Certainly it's disapportionate the way we experience gun violence, But
forty plus percent of other people killed by guns in
this country every year are white people, and the vast

(48:55):
majority of those killings are committed by white people. Right,
so we have a gun proper in America. This is
a very specific lens looking at how historically the gun
has been used systemically to to blunt our broadest aspirations
of freedom. But certainly there's there are great costs that
we pay every single day, and I would argue that
the steep the costs are just entirely too steep.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
I would agree. I think that the cynicism for me came.
I mean it comes into play every time there's another
very public shooting. You know, we had the Charlie Kirk assassination,
and but I always go back to Sandy Hook and
how you know twenty six six year olds, babies, babies,

(49:40):
and largely white babies too. I mean, for me, that's
the what the whisper of a thought in my mind
that I'm like, can I say that out loud, that
they didn't do anything for them or in the wake
of that, And for me, that was like.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
The hope, well, well, guess what. Charlie Kirk said that
the cost of liberty is going to be some gun death,
and he paid that price, right, And so I do
wonder how his family and supporters it was this a
cost worth pay? Some of them would argue yes, And

(50:14):
that's that's part of the problem here, that some of
the costs might be twenty six beautiful twenty six, twenty
seventy beautiful babies and their teachers. Right. It might be
the synagogue shooting, It might be the everyday gun violence
we see in urban communities that are already hungry for
so much more, and unprotected and disinvested in right, or
the suicide of the white kid who disfills disconnected society,

(50:35):
or the inceel who goes and murders, you know, goes
on a rampage. These costs are worth this idea of liberty.
And that's part of the problem with the gun is
so central to the American ethos and so central to
American masculinity and manhood, right, and this idea of taming
the savage land and savage people who've existed on this right.
And so as long as we see the gun and

(50:57):
gun violence has core to that will continue need to
pay these costs, these literal dollar costs, but also the
costs that are burdening us every single day, every every
single day in this country.

Speaker 3 (51:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:08):
How important is for your independent journalists now, right? Or
are you still affiliated with like a network.

Speaker 1 (51:14):
I'm semi so I'm like independently. My relationship shifted an
MSBC to an independent kind of deal, so my foot
is still in the mainstream, but I'm also producing my
own stuff.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
Now, how important is it or how important is it
to you now to kind of be whether it's semi independent,
but be able to like say something about the Charlie
Kirk assassination without fearing for your job, like we've seen
other journalists and especially educators lose their their work over
just seeing the truth about situations like that.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
Yeah, I think, I think, I think we have to.
I mean, I think it's like there's a I think
there is. There's also a way to have these conversations
that keeps intact, even people whose views seem repugnant and
repulsive and racist. We all deserve humanity. And that might
be a controversial take, but I do believe there's a
way to approach all of us with a degree of humanity,

(52:06):
even though we find repulsive and repugnant, because we're all
deserving of humanity, right, And so I think as long
as we have these conversations understanding that we're all flawed
and fallible and just humans, even when I'm talking about
the man who killed my grandfather in the book, or
the African co conspirators who helped enslave us right under duress, certainly,

(52:29):
but up enslaved us. We all deserve humanity, right, And
so I think we have to have that approach and
not get caught up in this the politics of the
moment necessary necessarily because no, we have to address the
wild politics and the bile, dangerous politics. But I think
there's a way to approach it. And I think also
understanding that this is still kind of the plantation, right,

(52:50):
and so when you're dealing, you're at working at the
behest of the plantation. If you speak out, that's the plantation.
They can decide that they rather have an allegiance or
a baseline that does not protect or favor you, right,
and so if you have certain views or express certain
views or opinions, they have the power to, you know,
get rid of you. And so I think we have

(53:12):
the addresses, and I don't typically I am careful, but
also I think, like you, no, as long as you're
leading with the right intentions, well even that doesn't work sometimes,
but we have to. Somebody has to engage with the
violatile stuff.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
Yeah, I have those really difficult conversations. I'm so glad
that yours is one of the voices out there. Y'all
got to go check out his podcast, it's called Into America.
You also have a documentary. Do you want to quickly
mention that A Thousand Ways to Die the documentary Hope
and high Water.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
That's right, for a second. So yeah, so yeah, So
I cut my teeth in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina,
where I was a local newspaper reporter, And so twenty
years later, for the anniversary of Katrina, I went back
to New Orleans to engage with folks about how they
are healing their own communities when everyone else has failed them,
and policies and politicians, the hypocrisy, how they are healing themselves.

(54:01):
And so the documentary is Peacock right now. It's called
Hope in high word of people's recovery twenty years after
Hurricane Katrina. And so check that out on Peacock and
also get a Thousand Ways to Die. The true costs
the bottles of black Black in America wherever you buy books,
I would argue bookshop dot org support independent bookstores and
black bookstores, but also feel free to get it wherever
you buy books.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
Do you still call yourself the gun Grio or can
we think of something better? I mean for the brand,
you know.

Speaker 1 (54:28):
Well, I will always be a gun brill. I will
always be a grill, you know, and you have if
you have another one for me.

Speaker 3 (54:35):
I'll take a sucker for literation. Mandy Money Mandy money Makers.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
It's very basic, but that was one that stuck out
for me. We'll please Brown Ambition. Y'all know how to
buy some books now, okay, A thousand Ways to Die?
We know all about bookshop dot org. We'll put the
link in the show notes. Tremainly, thank you so much
for sharing your story and for writing and for getting
this book ten years across the finish line. Congratulations, and

(54:59):
it's such an achievement. I'm really I'm so grateful that
we were able to cross paths and just grateful for
your time and for us spending some time with us
on Brown Ambition.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
Mandi, thank you so much having us and a pleasure.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
Thank you, okay Va fam, thank you so much for
listening to this week's show. I want to shout out
to our production team, Courtney, our editor, Carla, our fearless
leader for idea to launch productions. I want to shout
out my assistant Lauda Escalante and Cameron McNair for helping

(55:32):
me put the show together. It is not a one
person project, as much as I have tried to make
it so these past ten years, I need help, y'all,
and thank goodness, I've been able to put this team
around me, to support me on this journey, and to
y'all be a fam I love you so so so
so much. Please rate, review, subscribe, Make sure you're signed

(55:53):
up to the newsletter to get all the latest updates
on upcoming episodes, our tenth year anniversary celebrations to come,
and until next time, talk to you soon be a bye.