November 25, 2025 • 52 mins
It’s not every day Bridget gets to talk to one of her heroes!
Soledad O’Brien has built her career on stories that hit hard and stick with you, winning multiple Emmys and Peabody awards along the way. Her work has inspired Bridget since she was a young girl, watching her coverage of the emerging Internet in the 1990s.
In this wide-ranging interview, Soledad talks about her two new documentaries, both of which are the subject of considerable online discussion.
'The Perfect Neighbor,' on Netflix, tells the tragic story of AJ Owens and examines the legal and systemic failures that almost allowed her death to go unpunished due in part to Florida's stand-your-ground law.
'The Devil is Busy,' now streaming on HBO Max, follows a day in the life of Tracii, the head of security at a Georgia abortion clinic, and the relentless work she does to keep the clinic operating safely. The documentary offers a powerful, ground-level, humanizing view of the challenges faced by those working to provide reproductive healthcare in the current landscape.
In addition to talking about the films, Soledad also shares her perspectives on journalism, online culture, and the roles of filmmakers and journalists in creating change.
If you’re listening on Spotify, you can leave a comment there to let us know what you thought about this episode, or email us at hello@tangoti.com
Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media! || instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc || youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
If you watched The Perfect Neighbor, be sure to check out the impact campaign highlighting Stand Your Ground laws and racialized violence, Standing in the Gap: https://standinginthegapfund.org/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The stock is about a killing and about a really
terrible policy that causes great harm to people of color.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
There Are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
As a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridge
Todd and this is there are No Girls on the Internet.
Do we want a world where a killer can walk free?
The Perfect Neighbor, now on Netflix, forces us to face
that question. The documentary tells the tragic story of a
(00:38):
j Owens and examines the legal and systemic failures that
almost allowed for her death to go unpunished. Journalists sold
At O'Brien has built her career on stories like this one,
stories that hit hard and stick with you, and this
project is exactly that. Executive produced by O'Brien with director
Gita Gondebier, The Perfect Neighbor dives into aj Owen's shocking
(01:01):
death and the systems that failed her. I am so
honored that you're here today, sold Ed. I'm such a
huge fan. If my parents were alive to see me
talking to you, and they would be so excited.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
You have no idea. Thank you, Thank you. That's so sweet.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
I appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Now you may know Solodad O'Brien as an iconic journalist
who has earned multiple Emmys and Peabody Awards for her
coverage ranging from hur King Katrina to the BP oil spill.
But my earliest memory of her goes back even further
to a short lived, but way ahead of its time
tech news show about the emerging Internet revolution. It was
(01:38):
called The Site, and it aired on the early days
of MSNBC, a network I would later go on to
work for myself, in no small part inspired by Soldad O'Brien. Now,
if you didn't catch the show, it was truly something.
Soldad's co host was a virtual reality character named dev Nall,
(01:58):
voiced by real life tech journalist Leo Laporte, and they
would sit around in an animated espresso bar talking about
the Internet. Now, in case you can't tell, this was
the nineties, nineteen ninety six to the exact, long before
newsrooms were covering the Internet the way they do now.
Solodad became one of the earliest mainstream voices explaining this
(02:19):
new digital world just as it was also taking shape,
and for twelve year old Bridget just beginning to explore
the Internet, it was a very big deal. I was
talking to my producer as I was prepping for this,
and he was like, I don't know that I've ever
seen you nervous to speak to anybody before.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
What's going on?
Speaker 3 (02:36):
And I thought back, and I realized I had a
memory of watching one of your early shows with my parents,
who were big news junkies. Do you remember the show
that you did the site on ms and.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Yes, were you one of the six people who watched
that show?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Thank you?
Speaker 4 (02:51):
I'm going to send you a fruit basket. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
My parents were the kind of people who always had
MSNBC on in the background, so and I loved that
you had like a you know, I was young when
it was on, but I loved that there was like
a virtual host. And so that was a show that
I remember very clearly watching and part of me wonders
if I'd even be doing tech media tech journalism today
if not for these memories of watching that show when I.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Was so crazy when we did that.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
That was Leo Laporte, who was basically in a I
don't even know what you would call it, a suit
that you basically had stickers right, you would capture a
motion capture suit. And then part of the show of
the six people who watched it would know that we
would do a Q and A and then we always
had to do retraction Monday because he'd get stuff so wrong.
We'd be like, and it's retraction Monday, where we have
(03:38):
to take back some of the stuff. Deb Noll was
the name of the character, got wrong, and then he
would just he was just ridiculous. We I often had
to like, I just had to like unplug him all
the time. It was a really fun show to do.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
The site really was on the cutting edge of so
much in tech and media, even in the way that
the show came to an end when Diana died, a
night that I vividly remember because my mother was obsessed
with her. The show was preempted for live breaking coverage
of her death. This was before the news looked and
functioned the way it does now, with twenty four hour
(04:14):
rolling updates and constant on air coverage. In that moment,
the network recognized that continuous live coverage was the direction
news and media was heading, and the site quietly slept
off the air as that new era began.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
The site very much cutting edge right on MSNBC in
an era before cable news became round the clock breaking
the minute Princess Diana died. That's when the switch happened,
where suddenly everybody wanted updates really by the minute. They
needed to have rolling news all the time when there
was a breaking news story. And that's not really how
(04:48):
cable had been, which is kind of interesting. And so
the site launched with MSNBC in nineteen ninety six, but
we only lasted about a year and a bit because
you know, with just the format which was taped, which
it took us. You know, we were using modems right
fifty eight eight like to do a tech show, so
(05:09):
sometimes we have to like, let's stup, download and go
out to lunch, and it would take us an entire
day to shoot a one hour show.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
And I remember when.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
People said, you know, can you do six days a
week of shows? I was like, oh my god, I
don't think so, Like I just do not think so.
But of course you look back now and you think technology,
of course, so much to report on, so much talk about,
and yeah, I think we did get a lot of people,
and hopefully a lot of women and young women kind
of interested in tech. Because my approach was that I'm
not a technologist. I was just like a person and
(05:39):
I was interested in leveraging it for my use, and
I thought that was kind of an interesting POV versus
other folks who were very into you know, they were coders,
they were computer science majors, they really knew a lot
about tech, they wrote a lot about tech, and I
was just like, I would just like this to enhance
my life. I would like to figure out how to
use a website. I would like to figure out how
(05:59):
build a way. I would like to connect with ancestry
dot com and find long last relatives.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
And it was a little more news you could use.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
I think that's exactly the sort of orientation that we
come at with our show.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
There are no girls on the internet.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
So much tech reporting and tech media either focus on
people who are super techy, right, like I know the latest,
I have the latest, I'm already totally in that world,
or it's kind of coming at it from a business perspective,
what are these companies doing, what is OpenAI doing, what
is X doing?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
And it really leaves out.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
This big group of people who are using tech every
day are probably tech literate, digital natives, but there's not
really tech media and tech stories that are really aimed
at them. If they don't consider themselves techis if they
didn't you know, get an engineering degree or something like that.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
And I do think that we.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Should be making tchech media and all kinds of media
that really gets at that group and says, hey, even
if you're not a techie, even if you're not a coder,
you still have a story to tell about how technology
shapes and shows up in you.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
And this is the bulk of the people, right.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
I mean, the thing if you're looking at a like
a pie chart, these are most of the people are
not coders, and they're not people who are going to
be investing in AI startups, right. These are people who
are going to try to figure out how it's going
to impact them and how they're going to use it.
So I completely agree with you on that, And I
think the news sometimes falls short. A lot of news
coverage of tech, right is is your child cheating with AI?
Speaker 4 (07:24):
Versus?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
You know, what are the.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Really interesting things that you can do with AI? And
so I feel like the news doesn't really go far enough.
So I love that you do this show because I
do think you need a lane for people who want
to kind of embrace the technology but don't necessarily understand
it fully.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Solidad is the executive producer of the documentary The Perfect Neighbor,
which tells the story of the tragic death of Aj Owens,
a devoted mother of four in Ocala, Florida, who was
shot and killed by her neighbor, Susan Lawrens. Susan was
that kind of neighborhood, the one everyone in the community
new to a. She called nine to one one over
(08:02):
and over again to file complaints about the neighborhood kids,
including AJ's, who were simply playing or maybe being a
bit loud in the grassy shared space near all of
their homes. Susan would hurl slurs at the children and
even throw objects at them. Police officers would show up,
talk quietly amongst themselves, and leave with the impression that
(08:23):
something was off about Susan. But even after all those visits,
nothing really changed. Everything escalated when Aj knocked on Susan's
door to confront her about taking her son's iPad. Susan
fired a gun through her lock steel door, killing Aj,
and would later claim that she feared for her life.
(08:44):
The Perfect Neighbor has sparked widespread discussion online and renewed
scrutiny of so called stand your ground laws, how they
function in practice, and the real impact they have on communities.
I've wanted to talk to you for the longest, for
most of my life. But the thing that made me
want to reach out to you was watching the new
(09:04):
documentary on Netflix that you made with director dagon Beer,
The Perfect Neighbor. I don't know that I've one had
a reaction to a documentary like this before, and two
seen a reaction to a documentary like this before, and
I watch a lot of documentaries. I know this is
a story that you've been following since it first happened.
What was it about this story that you were drawn to.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah, from our perspective, I mean as a journalist, right,
that's a story that crosses what we would say the wires,
although they're not really wires, but you read about it
and you just think, oh, my gosh, this is a
horrible standard ground case. I've covered a lot of those
standard ground case in Okawa, Florida, which is about four
hours from where I am right now. For Geeta, it
turned out that her husband's family was was friendly with
(09:49):
the woman.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Who was a victim.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Wo so aj Owens was one of those such a
close friend, almost considered like family. We're all family.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
And so I think what she has said is that
when this happened, she was just like, what do we do?
You know, she's a filmmaker where journalists rose our city
is my producer and I so we are, we're big
and you just go go just send someone, go start
covering it. And so I think once that police bodycam
(10:19):
footage became something that had been gathered from the lawyers,
right this became a criminal case, became gathered from the lawyers,
suddenly you realize, like this could be a really interesting
vehicle to tell the story.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
The editor is.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
A young woman named Vidi Deanna Lieberman, and she's fantastic
and geta laughs about how at one point, you know
in the film, when you have everybody coming to the
scene of the ultimate crime, there's like twenty police. So
keep in mind everyone has a body cap, twenty body cams.
No one's actually shooting, right, they're just capturing. And the
(10:55):
editor has to sort of sort through off of a
giant disc or all this has just been dropped and
figure out what matches with what, how do you put
it together to tell a story.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
So it's really a tremendous feat.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I mean, Gita obviously is a fantastic editor, and just
everything she does is fabulous and very as a director
also just really fantastic work.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
So The Perfect Neighbor is not your typical documentary. There
are no talking heads, no narrator guiding you through the story. Instead,
everything unfolds through raw surveillance, police bodycam video, security footage,
interrogation room recordings. It creates this unsettling, unblinking view of
the case, showing everything from the immediate aftermath of the
(11:41):
murder itself to the disturbing reality of AJ's killer simply
living her life and moving in with family instead of
being arrested. We aren't told what happened. We see it,
and that makes it all the more chilling. Do you
have any sense of how the decision was made that
the film was going to be almost entirely constructed through
(12:02):
that kind of surveillance footage, whether it's bodycam footage or
the ring camera footage that we see.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, I think generally you always start with, well, so
how do we do this? And I think for Geeta,
and she's talked about this that you know, once it
became clear that you could almost do it as a thriller, right,
it actually reads as a true crime stoy. You watch
it unfold, and even though you start with the ending
and then you backtrack, you actually it unfolds like a thriller.
(12:29):
And Geta is also an editor herself, That's how she
got her start. So I think she really saw it
that way. And once you had the bodycam footage, I
think it really helped to do something that as reporters
we never do.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Whenever there's a standard ground case, and I've covered a
handful of them, you go in the aftermath, right, you
interview people in the aftermath, and you pick and choose
who when it's the police pov, it's not my pov,
it's not Geeta's POV, it's not Very's pov. Right, this
is just from body cam, And so I think it
gives you a really interesting perspective that a lot of
(13:04):
people have said to me they felt like it was
much more true that they didn't. They didn't doubt like,
oh is this a spin? Because the police were not
shooting for us or anybody, They're just wearing body cams.
And so I think it's a really interesting look at
a story that unfolds in a terrible, terrible, deadly way,
(13:24):
and you can see step by step because of course
the police have been called basically two years of these
terrible interactions and minor interactions, right, some kind of in
a lot of way, stupid interactions that just escalated and
escalated to sus Lawrence shot her neighbor through her locked door.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
So when we think about these standard ground cases, so
much of them, and especially you know, in the lead
up to you and then after the treyvon Martin incident,
so many of them are these sensationalized headlines that really
kind of the conversation just felt feels very insidiary to me, Right,
it's just this splashy headline you might get right wing
(14:06):
talking heads on TV. But the film really, to me
kind of demonstrates what it would actually look like, all
of the heartbreaking, horrifying details of what these cases would
actually look like. And I wonder do you feel that
that was an argument that was trying to be made
in this film of like, oh, people think that you
should be able to stand your ground and if you
(14:27):
feel threatened, you should be able to shoot anybody.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Through a closed door. This is what it would actually
look like if that was the case.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
I think it's always important to show things as they are, right.
I mean, for me, documentaries are about getting in there
and saying, this is actually what it is, this is
how it unfolded, this is the ridiculously small incident that
really kept spiraling and spiraling and spiraling.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Right, it's this.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Is what exactly happened, and you can see it. And
so to me, I think that's really important. It allows
you to sort of help people again see not in
the aftermath, but is unfolding what exactly is happening. And
I don't think people really you know, I don't. Someone's
asked me the other day, you know, do you think
you'll help people change their mind on stand your ground?
I was like, I think most people don't really even
(15:13):
know what stand your ground really is, right. They don't
necessarily know it's a law, you know, but and it's
different in different states, But most people don't really know
exactly what it is. And so for me, I think
it's a really helpful way to understand that this woman
is not arrested right after there is a shooting. She
kills her neighbor, she shoots.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Through her locked doors.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
No there's no guess about who did it, right, there's
nobody trying to figure out, oh my god, who was
the perpetrator. And yet she gets picked up by her
family and she goes away.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
She's not in jail.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Why is that stand your ground right allows them to
do an investigation to see, you know, did she actually
fear for her life? And Susan certainly has had enough training,
if you will, right googling, to know that one of
the things you claim and stand your ground. I feared
for my life. I feeled for my life, I felt unsafe,
I feared for my life. So I think all of
that is a really fascinating insight into, as you say, right,
(16:09):
how these things actually unfold in real time.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Let's take a quick break at our back. I don't
even really know how to ask this, but in watching
the movie, I it the community reminded me of the
(16:37):
neighborhood where I grew up, Right, A bunch of kids
running around all the time, probably also being allowed that obnoxious.
I'll own that myself. A lot of adults who all
look out for the kids. And that's just the community
that you have. And having grown up in a community
like that, I know that it's like a precious thing.
It's like a like I'm able to look back so
fondly on my youth because that's where I was looking,
(16:59):
the kind of I was lucky enough to.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Grow up in. I don't even know how to word it.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
I think that one of the things Susan was actually
mad at was that she lived in a place where
it was a multi racial community, where folks got along
and folks looked out for each other, and there was
something about that that.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Drove her that she could not stand. What do you
think about this?
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah, no, I don't think you're wrong. I mean clearly right.
She would, you know, use racial slurs with small children.
So there was some major issue that she had around
her neighbors around race.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
You know what I thought was so interesting is that
you often hear like this is a calm, quiet neighborhood,
multi racial community, but to see it right, to see
how the police interact with the kids, to see how
the police are dapping the dad and the white mom
when the as so, which, you know, which kids are yours?
And she says, well, they're all mine, And she's not kidding.
(17:50):
She's like, in this neighborhood, we all kind of take
care of everybody, and then to see that collapse right
after the shooting, that sense of togetherness, that sense of hey,
the police are working with the community and everybody gets along.
It's pretty much gone.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Because they had something good that is like rare and
hard to find.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
They really had something good.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Something great, I would argue, right, and again, I think
the things that surprise me were like, oh, this is
a community where everybody's just hanging out and getting along.
Speaker 4 (18:23):
Number one.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Number two, here's a community where the police are constantly
trying to figure out. Yeah, we actually think this lady's
a little bit of a you know, crackpot, but we
got to tell you guys, you know, try to keep
it down a little bit. But on the other end,
their kids, they're doing kids things that could be much worse.
They're just playing. At one point, the little girl who says,
you know, we're eleven, because like, yes, they're small children,
(18:45):
and we know that, you know, especially kids of color
are often perceived to be older and more dangerous and
more worldly, et cetera, et cetera. So I think there
is a sense you really see like kids playing in
the neighborhood a lot. So yeah, you just those things
surprise me. When I first saw the video, I was like, Oh,
I don't know what I thought the police would be doing.
(19:07):
I don't know how young they were, how willing they
were to go back and forth and try to kind
of maintain the piece, if you will. Susan would call
the police constantly, but you know, the neighbors never called
the police on Susan, never, never, once.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
You know, it was obvious to everybody that Susan was
a big problem.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
There are so many red flags and the.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Way that the police talk about her among each other,
where they're like, Oh, it's her again, She's crazy.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Is there a sense from the neighbors do you think that?
Speaker 3 (19:39):
I mean, I'm not even sure legally if there was
anything to be done, but frivolous call after frivolous call.
I do get a sense of I'm happy that the
police were so cool with the kids and the families.
But at a certain point, part of me is like,
if they had done something to let Susan know that
this behavior wasn't okay, perhaps we wouldn't even be having
this conversation right now. Y.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
It's really an interesting question, and this have had this
discussion a lot right where people say the police should
have done something, And I think the rejoinder to that is,
no one ever called the police on Susan, right, I
mean not one. No one even said listen, I'm sick
of her calling the police on us. This is not okay,
She's obviously a problem. Do they just go and arrest people?
Are the calls relief frivolous? They go, they talk, They
(20:23):
you know, there's clearly some kind of a dispute, They
break it up.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
For the most part, they move on. Yeah, it would
be amazing.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
If the police had said we we see this problem.
And I think it really underscores the point of what's
being discussed with the standard ground laws, right, like, how
does a person who absolutely positively is a living, breathing
red flag get access to three guns?
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Right? How is that possible?
Speaker 1 (20:47):
How is it possible to No one says, you know,
this lady has a lot of guns. Maybe we should
rethink the fat right, No, never happens, And so I
think it is a classic sense of you know, the
person who is the perpect trader is the one who's
constantly calling the police. The other people who will end
up being the victims never called the police, and the
people who are really who really suffer at the end
(21:08):
of the day are those folks who always suffering stand
your ground laws, the people who who are victimized.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Susan shot and killed Aj through a locked steel door
while AJ's young son stood beside her, and afterward, Susan
was not immediately arrested. She claimed protection under Florida's stand
your Ground law, which allows a person to use force,
even deadly force, if they reasonably believe that they're facing
an imminent threat, without any duty to retreat. Investigators later
(21:38):
discovered that Susan had googled stand your ground laws before
the shooting, suggesting that she wasn't actually fearing for her life,
but rather setting up the killing by researching exactly how
to frame her defense. What do you think about the
conversation that we're currently having about things like stand your
ground laws. Just recently, there was that horrible situation in
(21:59):
India where a cleaner came to the wrong house, knocked
on the door, and when she knocked on it, a
man shot and killed her through the shut door, and
the case was expected to test stan your ground laws
in Indiana, but ultimately that man was charged because prosecutors
were like, listen, shooting somebody through a shut door simply
because they knocked on it does not meet the requirements for.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Stand your ground.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Even if that person thought, well, I'm defending my home
because this person knocked.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
On my door. And I don't know.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I just think that the conversation around crime have gotten
so out of control that when these things happen. Frankly,
I don't expect people to take a step back and say, well,
wait a minute, should we have a culture where it's
normalized and okay to just shoot through a door and
ask questions later?
Speaker 4 (22:44):
It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
And again, there have been so many of these stories, right,
You and I could tick off, probably just off the
top of our heads without even having to google it,
five or six recent cases where someone's been shot or
killed or both, you know, because of a you know,
clay and so inclaiming stand your ground. And I think
that person who does it feels justified, right, They feel
like I can protect my home and if I feel
(23:06):
even slightly afraid, even if it's just someone pulling into
the wrong driveway, even if it's someone looking at for
the wrong house, even if it's someone who's just gone
to the wrong place accidentally. I am justified in shooting
that person and killing that person. So yeah, it's bizarre, right.
I think it's crazy that we've gotten here and what
you really see. And there's a slide at the end
of the documentary that points out, you know, the people
(23:27):
who really suffer from strand your ground laws are people
of color. You know, those are the people who I
don't have any proof for this, but I am very
confident that if Susan had been a black woman and
she had shot a white lady through her locked door,
she would have been arrested on the spot.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Right.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
There was a good there was no question who did it.
They weren't looking for the shooter. The idea that she
was able to be free is obviously you see in
the film what sets everybody and just you know off
and makes them very angry about what potentially could happen.
And so the family and the neighbors have to really
start marching and calling attention to the crime because it could,
(24:07):
just like others, you know, become that salacious talking head
football that is, you know, some point stops being focused
on the case and starts being focused on the chaos.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
The reaction to the film has been intense. One moment
that's been particularly talked about online is a harrowing scene
where AJ's children break down after learning that their mother
has been killed. It honestly, it is one of the
most gut wrenching things I have ever seen on screen.
It was a tragedy, and the way Aja's family has
(24:40):
responded echoes the tragedy of Emmett Till. In nineteen fifty five,
fourteen year old Emmett Till was falsely accused of whistling
at a white woman while visiting family in Mississippi. He
was lynched and brutally mutilated. His mother made me Tell
made the courageous and history altering decision to hold an
(25:00):
open casket funeral, saying that she wanted the world to
see what had happened for themselves, saying, there was just
no way I could describe what was in that box,
no way, and I just wanted the world to see.
Photos of Emmett Till's body were published in black publications
like Jet and The Chicago Defender, sparking national and international outrage.
(25:22):
One photograph from JET showing Maimie Tail at the funeral
standing over her son's mutilated corpse was named by Time
as one of the one hundred most influential images of
all time.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
It ran with the caption quote.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
For almost a century, African Americans were lynched with regularity
and impunity. Now, thanks to a mother's determination to expose
the barbarousness of this crime, the public could no longer
pretend to ignore what they couldn't see. So while the
scene of AJ's children learning about their mother's murder is
deeply harrowing, it was included because AJ's family wanted the
(25:57):
truth to be told for everyone to see for themselves,
just like Mamie till the scene that I don't know
if I'll ever stop thinking about it, the scene when
we see AJ's children.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Being informed that their mom brutal been killed.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
I mean I had to stop the movie to sob
because I was unable to continue watching. I've never seen
a scene quite like that. I've seen some folks say like, oh,
this was too much. We as the audience should not
have been let into a moment like that. What do
you think about that?
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (26:30):
I would say two things. So first is what Gita
has said in her conversations, And we've spent a lot
of time with the AJ's mom, Pamela Diaz, who's in
the film as well, but has also been I've been
lots of panels with her, and she's done a lot
of sort of traveling with the doc is you go
to various film festivals, and she very clearly has said
she wanted to She saw this sort of as a
(26:51):
Mami till moment.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
Right like that.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
There was this opportunity to show the actual horror of
a horrible thing. So that's one thing. So it really
did come with the permission, if.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
You will, of a family. Number two.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
I think that off of that, this is a documentary
about a killing, and I don't think it's fair to
do a documentary about a killing and then say, but actually,
we're not gonna get to the killing. I just think
the way AJ died was horrible, and I think the
audience needs to understand the impact on her children, on
the community, on everything is palpable, and I think people
(27:31):
have to understand that.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
And I don't know that.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
It's it's a good thing to clean that up, to say,
this part's kind of hard to watch, so you know what,
we're just going to clean this up for you.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
I don't think so.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
I don't miss.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
This doc is about a killing and about a really
terrible policy that causes great harm to people of color.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
And I think that being the general public being really
removed from what this policy actually translates into the real
world harm on children, on moms, on communities, on families,
I think people do need to see that to understand, like, yeah,
it is a public policy decision or conversation in addition
(28:12):
to being like a like a personal conversation.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Absolutely, And also it's this is a documentary about a killing,
a horrible killing, and we get to see the before,
the middle, and the after and the aftermath. And so
I think it would be a very weird decision to
sort of say, no, no, no, this part we're not
going to show.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, And as you said, I think it should be
made clear that the family wants this story told.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
The family is out there.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
They her surviving family members are adamant about this story
being told. And I don't know, part of me feels
like it's a way like honoring their wishes is important,
honoring that legacy is important.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah, I think it would be very different if they said, oh, absolutely,
you know, please don't. I think that would lead to
very challenging conversations. Frankly right, I think you'd have people
who said, listen, we should honor the family. Other people say, hey,
this is a story about a killing and try to
figure it out. But no, the family was very much
I think on board with the idea of like, people
need to see how horrible this is, they need to
(29:14):
see the impact. There's also an im kept Pact campaign's
called standing in the Gap. I don't know if you've
learned about that. And you know, because again, something people
don't realize once the press goes, once the pastors go,
once the lawyers go, you have families that are hurting
that actually need support, right, they're just left. And so
I think like being very clear and true and accurate
(29:38):
about that is very.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Important and keeping the conversation going, you know, once the
film is no longer, you know the thing everyone is
talking about, making sure that that conversation can continue and
that we continue to educate folks on what these laws
actually look like and the way that they actually impact people.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
Right, and who they impact the most.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
You know, you used to be this journalist who was
really known for anchoring mainstream news outlets like see It En,
but more recently, you're making these important documentaries through your
production company and the production companies of others like Gidas.
Do you feel like you have more freedom to tell
stories in a different way, the way that you maybe
you know, couldn't if you were still anchoring mainstream news outlets.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
I think the real difference is that you just get
a lot of time. So if you're able to sell
a dock, and you get a buyer, and you have
a good story, and you you know, you're sort of
able to go ahead and produce the doc you know,
you get to really kind of wrap a lot of
time around a story. Whereas in daily news, as you know,
you know, you're just NonStop talking, talking, talking, docking. You
(30:47):
might have a little bit of time to kind of
give some context, but often you don't, especially in live
cable news. And so I what I've liked, I mean,
I love doing cable news, but I really have liked
the time. You know, you're not giving people a ten
second sound by and saying, you know, here, let me
explain the story to you. Here's their SoundBite. They're they're
giving it right. We get to tell the entire story
(31:07):
over a fairly long period of time, So you really
understand the context. And I think in cases where as
people don't trust journalists as much, you know, day after
day when we were looking at a Pew research study
that I said, something like forty four percent of Americans
say they don't trust journal terrible number. I like the
idea of being out of it, just, you know, like
(31:30):
we're not in it. There's no I'm not in the
middle of it saying here's my perspective on this story,
and I met with these people, right, It's just this
is how it went down with the police who were
called to the scene. And so I think that's actually
really part of the reason the film is doing so
well is that people believe it, you know, they just
they just don't think there's an agenda. There's no here's
(31:52):
how I feel about it. Here's how Geeta feels about it,
Here's how a Message Pictures feels about it. Right, it's
this is what happened, and we're going to show it
to you fully. So I think that's a real plus.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
And it goes back to what you were saying about
the choice to use a lot of or mostly police
surveillance footage and ring camera footage and interrogation.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Footage that the facts speak for themselves, right.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
We see it's not like Guito was there on the
site with cameras filming a story for a certain perspective.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
It's just what happened.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
And there's not really no one can say like, ah,
this seems like women of color were biased for a
certain perspective here. It's just what happened, yes, case in point.
One of Solodad's latest projects is a new short documentary
called The Devil Is Busy, now streaming on HBO Max.
The film follows a day in the life of Tracy,
(32:46):
the head of security at a Georgia abortion clinic, and
the relentless work that she does to keep the clinic
operating safely. We watch Tracy begin her day at the
clinic with a prayer, navigate confrontations with anti abortion protesters
who are such a constant presence at the clinic that
Tracy knows them all by name, and support the clinic's clients,
(33:08):
many of whom have traveled overnight from out of state
due to increasingly restrictive abortion laws. The documentary offers a powerful,
ground level, humanizing view. The challenge is based by those
working to provide reproductive healthcare in our current landscape.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
We kind of had the similar strategy with The Devil
Is Busy. Gita is one of the directors on that
doc as well, because she's amazing, So, you know, same thing, right,
No one's in it directing the traffic, no one's picking
I'm going to pick this person, and we're going to
lead with this.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
You know.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
It is the story of woman's day, a woman who's
kind of complicated and contradictory and an interesting character that
you don't see a lot, right, A deeply religious woman
who's the security guard at an abortion clinic. Usually the
deeply religious people are the people who are the protesters
out kind of on the street making old n and
so we really like that. We just, you know, we're
(34:03):
looking at this story through through her eyes, Tracy's Tracy's
journey is what tells us what happens. I'm not in
you know, I'm not interviewing anybody. The director of that,
along with GETA, is Crystaline Hampton, who we do tons
of projects with. And again, I guess what I would
also point out was a complete sidebar, but it will
be interesting to you. So often in TV news and
(34:24):
journalism and even film, of any kind. There's this idea
of like, if we could only just find the black people,
if we could just find the people of color, you know,
And I just want to say, as I'm naming them,
I'm like a woman of color, black director, you know,
Sam Paullard, black executive. Like there's it's just when you're
really intentional, it's not that hard. So that's a complete
(34:46):
sidebar to what we're talking about. But for me, every
project we've done, we've been so intentional about finding and
centering directors. And Geeta is just a really she's a
kind of an amazing mentor because what she does is
she takes people and she sort of grows them, and
then she'll say, Okay, now you're ready to be the
director on this or you're ready, so we're starting another
(35:07):
project with another one of the young women. That's anybody
who's younger than me, young women who you know, will
be directing this project for us, right. But really was
kind of grown up, if you will, under Gita and
I just love people who are so aggressive about not
just mentoring and saying I'm gonna give you some you
go girl, going to give you some good words of advice,
(35:27):
but like, now we slot you here. Now you need
experience doing this. Now you actually need this. Now you're
going to do this. And she's very intentional about it,
and I've always really appreciated that because a lot of
people talk about it, but very few people actually do it.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
As you know, how did you Ben Ghita start working together?
Speaker 4 (35:45):
That's such a good question. It's been such a long time.
I'm sure I'm gonna get our.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Like origin story wrong. I don't remember the real story.
But we were working on a couple of other projects
before this one. And you know, she just has an
amazing track record. You know, google her CV and you'll
be blown away. I think this year she's got three
projects that are all up for rewards. I mean, she's remarkable.
But again, I think she can do that because she
(36:10):
has a lot of support and a lot of people
who are working on these projects with her, who she
trusts implicitly. But we started working on a project actually
about young people who are hungry in college. We had
met this woman, a friend who ran the journalism department
at a school, and she said, you know, some of
the students are sleeping in the journalism office and she
(36:32):
thought they were just kind of like crashing there on
a late night, but they actually had no housing that
they were hungry. And another woman did a study. She's
the kind of the center of our doc, Sarah Goldgrop,
and she was saying that, you know, originally when she
did her study, she thought it was kind of like
the sad story of a handful of students who are
just in a fifty percent five zero percent of students
(36:56):
have had food and security in college, Like that's insane.
And so we decided to do that project. And I
think you to strategy and telling that story was it
just it just made for a beautiful, beautiful doc. So
you know, every single thing that we have done together
has just been a home run.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
I don't know, thinking about some of the projects that
I know that you all have worked on together, I've
obviously seen the perfect neighbor. I've seen the devil is busy.
It strikes me as the kind of topics that are
so important that definitely impact traditionally marginalized people, so subsequently
they're not told, you know, the way that they maybe
should be.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
We don't run into a lot of people. Yeah, I
used to say that all the time.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Someone would say to me, you know when we started
doing our Black and America documentaries for CNN, we didn't
for about nine, nine or ten years, and I would
just say, you know what I liked about it was
you just didn't run into people. You know that John
Banay Ramsay, it was me and ninety nine other reporters,
you know, doing the ten year anniversary of the murder
of this four little girl. But when it comes to
(37:57):
these complicated social issues, you know, you're just out there
alone reporting them, which is unfortunate because I think they're
really important.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Solodad makes documentaries about important issues like stand your Ground
and reproductive justice, topics that many people are probably used
(38:30):
to seeing addressed in quick segments on the news, but
documentary filmmaking allows for a deeper exploration, not just of
the issues themselves, but the real people at their center.
Do you think there are stories that lend themselves very
well to documentary, like actually telling someone's story and then
you see them and you hear them in their own words.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Yeah, I mean I do, But I almost could argue
that for every story, right, if you have a good character, right.
The thing I hate the word character because it makes
it seem very fake. But if you have a good
central person that you're following right, that you have access
to that story, and you have a really compelling person,
then you've got a great doc or even a great
short story. I mean, I just think you just need
(39:12):
you need those elements to be pretty amazing, and then yeah,
I think people can speak for themselves. It's why I
love documentaries. But I like a lot of forms. I
like podcasts a lot, love I love sixty minutes, I
love you know, I just like I like news. I
sometimes I feel a little unfulfilled because I think, you know,
giving people a minute twenty on a story that really
(39:35):
needs a lot more context is sometimes frustrating. But I
like all sorts of platforms.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Side note, I love your iHeart podcast about JFK. Yeah,
solo Dad likes podcasts so much that she also makes
those two. She did a ten part series exploring Who
Killed JFK? With Rob Reiner. Yes that Rob Reiner, who
first came to prominence as the son in law on
the seventies CBS to Come All in the Family and
(40:01):
went on to make truly iconic films like This Is
Spinal Tap, Stand by Me, The Princess Bride, when Harry
met Sally, and my personal favorite, The First Wives Club,
and pretty much every other movie that you probably liked
in the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 4 (40:15):
It was really it wasn't that a great podcast?
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Oh my god? It?
Speaker 4 (40:19):
Plus I love Rob Reiner was amazing, you too, should like.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
I don't know you you make the show on the road, right,
That's what I gotta I gotta call him and tell
him that. Two Petty's got this other gig that the
movie director thing he does. I guess he's working on
Spinal Tap two, which will be oh yeah, of course,
because Spinal Tap one was amazing. But yeah, that was
a great project. But I have to tell you something.
He was awesome, Like he just is the kindest night.
(40:43):
He was just so complimentary, wonderful to work with, the
nicest human being to everybody. As you know, sometimes people
come in and you know, if they're a big mucky muck,
they might not be the nicest to you know, somebody
who's you know, who's who's recording them, or if things
going wrong and we can't figure it out, you know,
and it's taking a little time. He just you could
(41:04):
not ask for a cooler, nicer, more wonderful human being
than Rob Ryder. It was such a pleasure to work
with him. I literally enjoyed every moment of it.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
That makes me so happy to hear.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
You know, they say, don't meet your heroes, but I'm happy.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
So very nice people.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
I've got some other names for you that I'll tell
you not to meet. But Rob Reiner is amazing. He
was amazing, And I just I don't know, I just
love watching people who are kind to the person who's
taking in his audio, who's amazing, to the ap who's great,
to the PA who's like, anybody need water. I just
love that, you know, because often people, as you know,
(41:41):
in this business, are really not. And so it was
amazing and I did. I loved him, and he was
my hero, my dad. He was my dad's favorite character.
Of course, you know, we watched all in the family.
So like you talked about, you know, your mom, if
your mom was still alive, she'd be impressed by our
interview my dad. My dad would be done if he
were still alive and he that I was doing a
project with Robert, like that would be it.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
He'd be like, now now I can die because he's yeah,
she's made it.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
My baby went to Harvard, she's been on TV.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
But now this is exactly that doesn't care. Doesn't care,
It doesn't care.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
Now, Yeah, oh, you know, I I one of the
kind of to wrap up here. I was reading your
your comments to Variety about just the state of journalism
and media, and one of the things that we focus
on here at the podcast is especially things like mis
and disinformation. And I feel like I don't know part
(42:35):
of me. I jokingly I've said, I feel like we
have lost the fight. You know, we gave it a
good shot.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Sometimes people ask me like, so what do you do,
and I'm like, I honestly don't know. I don't I
look at I mean what. I used to spend a
lot of time on Twitter, but I find it really
scary to forward videos and things because I just don't
can't verify if their true AI is so good, it
could be so deceptive.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
Frankly, that's just I don't.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
You know.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
There's so many things that I just don't know, and
there's so much information coming across the trans so it's
really hard to follow. So I try not to weigh
in on things that I haven't specifically covered and spent
time on because I don't want to be that person
who passes along things that are inappropriate and you know,
and just untrue. But it is a crazy time, and
(43:21):
it is I don't see I don't see a near
future where it improves.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
I mean, I was going to ask if, when you
think about the future of journalism and media, are you
hopeful about where we might be going.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
It sounds like maybe not so much.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
No.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
I mean that I think disinformation and misinformation is a
different category and journalism generally, which is also struggling at
this moment, as you well know. But yeah, I think
that the history of journalism has been like this, right
We've had really highs and lows, and so I think
there's lots of I think they're great journalists out there
who are doing really good work. I think it's a
very challenging time for a host of reasons, and with
(43:58):
a host of people there trying to interview and people
they're working for and people they're trying to put on TV.
So I think it's a bad time for journalists. But
I do think there there's always these ups and downs,
you know, where people love journalism right now, people love
their local news. They trust their local news, you know,
and yet local news is you know, there's local news.
Stations and papers are dropping every day, every day they disappear.
(44:22):
So we have to solve a bunch of problems, including monetization,
before we can say, like, yes, journalism is going to
be saved, because frankly, a lot of the garbage is
is very you know, worth it due to you know,
it's just not expensive. It's cheap, and to do good
reporting is expensive. And so you know, I understand why
(44:44):
people pick the cheap talking heads yelling at each other version.
It's easier and it's cheaper, and I think.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
It speaks to the model that you were just talking
about with documentary, where you can spend a long time
telling a story. You can tell a story over an
hour and change or two hours.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
And people are gonna rock with you. You can you can.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
I mean, I love documentary. Get a weekend spent and
watching documentaries is a good weekend for me.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
But I know not everybody feels that way.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
But the fact that you told a story about stand
your ground laws and it was the everybody was talking
about it.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
It was the thing that people were talking about.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
I don't necessarily see news stories on the news where
people are moved in that way.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
So I do. I do think it's it's.
Speaker 4 (45:26):
The last time I saw that.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
I would say Katrina, right, like, if you could think
of a time where everybody was talking about a thing,
was Hurricane Katrina. And it was a time. I was
telling someone yesterday that we were coming back. When I
was covering Katrina, we'd spend a month in New Orleans
and the month out, you know, back and forth, my
co anker would go in and back and forth. And
I remember we were coming through the Baton Rouge Airport.
(45:49):
So I'm leaving at the end of my month, and
and we haven't showered because of course there was no showers,
and it's we're all really dirty. Although my hair does
get better the dirty or it is, so I was
actually fine on that front, but we're just gross. And
I remember I had my CNN cap on because of
course everything was gross. And we got a standing ovation.
We got a standing ovation in the Baton Rouge Deep
(46:12):
South Airport CNN. And I just remember thinking, like, that's
because we are doing the thing that we're supposed to do, right,
We're getting a standing ovation.
Speaker 4 (46:21):
Not for me. Or any of the people we're.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Getting a stand in FASI because they feel like, yes,
that was what we needed you to do. Yes, that
And I think the same thing with perfect neighbor, right,
it's like, yes, thank you, thank you for helping us
understand this story.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (46:34):
I hate the way that journalists are demonized today, but
that I think that story People do actually want to
have their story told authentically and thoughtfully and truthfully.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
People do want to hear these stories. I don't know.
I think it's it's very easy.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
For me personally to get caught up in I'm so
angry about the way that people trash journalists, and I
feel that way, but not buying into it that everybody
feels that way, because people do there is trust when
when stories are told well and authentically, there is trust.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
Listen, when we were doing Black in America for CNN,
the number of people are like, why would we do this?
You guys never come here, You never come to our neighborhood,
you know, And it was a lot of work to
get people to understand, here's what we're trying to do.
It's a documentary sticks out, you know.
Speaker 4 (47:17):
But I get it.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
So, I mean some of the lack of trust is earned. Right,
it's earned. And when people say to me, so, how
do you get back trust? I always say that it's
like the bad boyfriend theory. You know, there's no baby,
you gotta trust me. Rights it is you have to
be trustworthy, right, you got to show up again and
again and again and be trustworthy. Like there's no other
(47:39):
way to get people's trust than to do that. And
so I really think that that, you know, that's what's
going to happen. So to some degree, you know, journalism
has made some big errors and lost some trust. I mean,
I remember when I worked at Keene cyn End. It
was just a long time ago that it's probably been
almost a dozen years. I don't know if you remember this.
They had this breaking news you know when they they
(48:00):
had the app and you had the breath and you
get the app and it was Britney Spears had cut
her hair.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
Do you know that came in.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Breaking news, Breaking news app that's Britney Spears had cut
her hair. You're just like, do you realize how much
you undermine when you're doing other news about how there
has been a tsunami or there has been a hurricane,
or there has been a shoot, right, Like you realize
when you put Brittany in this thing, God bless her.
(48:26):
She seems like a lovely person, but it is not
breaking news that she cut her hair. And so I
think to some degree, right, we have lots of examples
of how we have undermined ourselves strengthly.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
And it trains your audience to tune out.
Speaker 3 (48:40):
You know, it's like, oh, I don't need to I
get a million of these notifications.
Speaker 2 (48:43):
Who cares? You know?
Speaker 4 (48:44):
Exactly exactly.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
One of my last.
Speaker 3 (48:47):
Questions for you is just what does it feel like
to see the response to your to the work that
you've helped put out into the world. I mean, the
response has been huge.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
What is that like?
Speaker 4 (48:59):
You know, it's it's really really nice.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
But I will say that sometimes you do great projects
that nobody really sees. You started talking about the site.
The site was a great show. We literally had six viewers.
We were in hash marks, which means it didn't have
enough viewers to like actually count them. I love doing
that show. That was a great show right so ahead
of its time, but but no one watched it. And uh,
(49:24):
and so you know, I I guess it's always great
when the work that you've done and you're you're associated
with is seeing because that's awesome. You just want people
to see it, especially in documentaries. You want people to
see it. So it's it's amazing, it feels great. But
also I think there's just a zillion other projects. Of course,
since it's award season for Docks, you you end up
watching everybody else's doc too. So all I do is
(49:45):
watching docs all the time. There's a zillion fantastic projects
out there, a zillion, And so I would say people
should be more like you and learn to love docs
maybe more than watching a lot of you know, talking
heads rotating through every half hour are.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
Oh my gosh, there is no I've said it on
the show before. There's no truer, better medium. Things like
actual stories that have been told and happened will always
be more interesting, more layered, more complex than anything anybody
could could come up with. Documentary is where it's at.
Speaker 4 (50:17):
Yep, yep, I agree. From your mouth to God's ears.
Speaker 3 (50:20):
Let me say, Soldad O'Brien, I'm like completely peeked out.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
Thank you so much for being here. It's it's an honor.
I have chills. Where can people follow you? What what
what you've got? Like, how can people keep in talking?
Speaker 1 (50:34):
We always have projects we're doing, so we obviously we
are on the award circuit now, which means we're doing
a lot of screenings, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (50:42):
Et cetera.
Speaker 1 (50:43):
It's been really fun to go to some of these
awards shows because I'm getting to pull out some old
gowns and you know, squeeze in on them. So so
if anything that you want to follow around that kind
of stuff, I'm on Instagram of course, at Solidad O'Brien.
One word, I don't do a lot on X. People
sometimes reach out, so every four weeks I go in
(51:03):
and respond to a million people who I've ignored. So
apologies to anybody who's reaching out to me on X,
but it's just it's a little bit. I feel like
it's everything you post to posts later becomes something about
white supremacy.
Speaker 4 (51:16):
Yeah, yeah, I had to.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
I finally like from my own santade I was like,
you know what, I cannot do this consistently. So I
hop in and out and yet.
Speaker 4 (51:25):
We follow me on Instagram, you'll see a lot of
what we're doing.
Speaker 3 (51:34):
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech. I
just want to say Hi. You can reach us at
Hello at tegody dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at tengody dot com.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
me Bridget Todd.
Speaker 3 (51:45):
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative Jonathan Strickland
as our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almato is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
The stock is about a killing and about a really
terrible policy that causes great harm to people of color.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
There Are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
As a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridge
Todd and this is there are No Girls on the Internet.
Do we want a world where a killer can walk free?
The Perfect Neighbor, now on Netflix, forces us to face
that question. The documentary tells the tragic story of a
(00:38):
j Owens and examines the legal and systemic failures that
almost allowed for her death to go unpunished. Journalists sold
At O'Brien has built her career on stories like this one,
stories that hit hard and stick with you, and this
project is exactly that. Executive produced by O'Brien with director
Gita Gondebier, The Perfect Neighbor dives into aj Owen's shocking
(01:01):
death and the systems that failed her. I am so
honored that you're here today, sold Ed. I'm such a
huge fan. If my parents were alive to see me
talking to you, and they would be so excited.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
You have no idea. Thank you, Thank you. That's so sweet.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
I appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Now you may know Solodad O'Brien as an iconic journalist
who has earned multiple Emmys and Peabody Awards for her
coverage ranging from hur King Katrina to the BP oil spill.
But my earliest memory of her goes back even further
to a short lived, but way ahead of its time
tech news show about the emerging Internet revolution. It was
(01:38):
called The Site, and it aired on the early days
of MSNBC, a network I would later go on to
work for myself, in no small part inspired by Soldad O'Brien. Now,
if you didn't catch the show, it was truly something.
Soldad's co host was a virtual reality character named dev Nall,
(01:58):
voiced by real life tech journalist Leo Laporte, and they
would sit around in an animated espresso bar talking about
the Internet. Now, in case you can't tell, this was
the nineties, nineteen ninety six to the exact, long before
newsrooms were covering the Internet the way they do now.
Solodad became one of the earliest mainstream voices explaining this
(02:19):
new digital world just as it was also taking shape,
and for twelve year old Bridget just beginning to explore
the Internet, it was a very big deal. I was
talking to my producer as I was prepping for this,
and he was like, I don't know that I've ever
seen you nervous to speak to anybody before.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
What's going on?
Speaker 3 (02:36):
And I thought back, and I realized I had a
memory of watching one of your early shows with my parents,
who were big news junkies. Do you remember the show
that you did the site on ms and.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Yes, were you one of the six people who watched
that show?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Thank you?
Speaker 4 (02:51):
I'm going to send you a fruit basket. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
My parents were the kind of people who always had
MSNBC on in the background, so and I loved that
you had like a you know, I was young when
it was on, but I loved that there was like
a virtual host. And so that was a show that
I remember very clearly watching and part of me wonders
if I'd even be doing tech media tech journalism today
if not for these memories of watching that show when I.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Was so crazy when we did that.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
That was Leo Laporte, who was basically in a I
don't even know what you would call it, a suit
that you basically had stickers right, you would capture a
motion capture suit. And then part of the show of
the six people who watched it would know that we
would do a Q and A and then we always
had to do retraction Monday because he'd get stuff so wrong.
We'd be like, and it's retraction Monday, where we have
(03:38):
to take back some of the stuff. Deb Noll was
the name of the character, got wrong, and then he
would just he was just ridiculous. We I often had
to like, I just had to like unplug him all
the time. It was a really fun show to do.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
The site really was on the cutting edge of so
much in tech and media, even in the way that
the show came to an end when Diana died, a
night that I vividly remember because my mother was obsessed
with her. The show was preempted for live breaking coverage
of her death. This was before the news looked and
functioned the way it does now, with twenty four hour
(04:14):
rolling updates and constant on air coverage. In that moment,
the network recognized that continuous live coverage was the direction
news and media was heading, and the site quietly slept
off the air as that new era began.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
The site very much cutting edge right on MSNBC in
an era before cable news became round the clock breaking
the minute Princess Diana died. That's when the switch happened,
where suddenly everybody wanted updates really by the minute. They
needed to have rolling news all the time when there
was a breaking news story. And that's not really how
(04:48):
cable had been, which is kind of interesting. And so
the site launched with MSNBC in nineteen ninety six, but
we only lasted about a year and a bit because
you know, with just the format which was taped, which
it took us. You know, we were using modems right
fifty eight eight like to do a tech show, so
(05:09):
sometimes we have to like, let's stup, download and go
out to lunch, and it would take us an entire
day to shoot a one hour show.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
And I remember when.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
People said, you know, can you do six days a
week of shows? I was like, oh my god, I
don't think so, Like I just do not think so.
But of course you look back now and you think technology,
of course, so much to report on, so much talk about,
and yeah, I think we did get a lot of people,
and hopefully a lot of women and young women kind
of interested in tech. Because my approach was that I'm
not a technologist. I was just like a person and
(05:39):
I was interested in leveraging it for my use, and
I thought that was kind of an interesting POV versus
other folks who were very into you know, they were coders,
they were computer science majors, they really knew a lot
about tech, they wrote a lot about tech, and I
was just like, I would just like this to enhance
my life. I would like to figure out how to
use a website. I would like to figure out how
(05:59):
build a way. I would like to connect with ancestry
dot com and find long last relatives.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
And it was a little more news you could use.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
I think that's exactly the sort of orientation that we
come at with our show.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
There are no girls on the internet.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
So much tech reporting and tech media either focus on
people who are super techy, right, like I know the latest,
I have the latest, I'm already totally in that world,
or it's kind of coming at it from a business perspective,
what are these companies doing, what is OpenAI doing, what
is X doing?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
And it really leaves out.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
This big group of people who are using tech every
day are probably tech literate, digital natives, but there's not
really tech media and tech stories that are really aimed
at them. If they don't consider themselves techis if they
didn't you know, get an engineering degree or something like that.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
And I do think that we.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Should be making tchech media and all kinds of media
that really gets at that group and says, hey, even
if you're not a techie, even if you're not a coder,
you still have a story to tell about how technology
shapes and shows up in you.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
And this is the bulk of the people, right.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
I mean, the thing if you're looking at a like
a pie chart, these are most of the people are
not coders, and they're not people who are going to
be investing in AI startups, right. These are people who
are going to try to figure out how it's going
to impact them and how they're going to use it.
So I completely agree with you on that, And I
think the news sometimes falls short. A lot of news
coverage of tech, right is is your child cheating with AI?
Speaker 4 (07:24):
Versus?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
You know, what are the.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Really interesting things that you can do with AI? And
so I feel like the news doesn't really go far enough.
So I love that you do this show because I
do think you need a lane for people who want
to kind of embrace the technology but don't necessarily understand
it fully.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Solidad is the executive producer of the documentary The Perfect Neighbor,
which tells the story of the tragic death of Aj Owens,
a devoted mother of four in Ocala, Florida, who was
shot and killed by her neighbor, Susan Lawrens. Susan was
that kind of neighborhood, the one everyone in the community
new to a. She called nine to one one over
(08:02):
and over again to file complaints about the neighborhood kids,
including AJ's, who were simply playing or maybe being a
bit loud in the grassy shared space near all of
their homes. Susan would hurl slurs at the children and
even throw objects at them. Police officers would show up,
talk quietly amongst themselves, and leave with the impression that
(08:23):
something was off about Susan. But even after all those visits,
nothing really changed. Everything escalated when Aj knocked on Susan's
door to confront her about taking her son's iPad. Susan
fired a gun through her lock steel door, killing Aj,
and would later claim that she feared for her life.
(08:44):
The Perfect Neighbor has sparked widespread discussion online and renewed
scrutiny of so called stand your ground laws, how they
function in practice, and the real impact they have on communities.
I've wanted to talk to you for the longest, for
most of my life. But the thing that made me
want to reach out to you was watching the new
(09:04):
documentary on Netflix that you made with director dagon Beer,
The Perfect Neighbor. I don't know that I've one had
a reaction to a documentary like this before, and two
seen a reaction to a documentary like this before, and
I watch a lot of documentaries. I know this is
a story that you've been following since it first happened.
What was it about this story that you were drawn to.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah, from our perspective, I mean as a journalist, right,
that's a story that crosses what we would say the wires,
although they're not really wires, but you read about it
and you just think, oh, my gosh, this is a
horrible standard ground case. I've covered a lot of those
standard ground case in Okawa, Florida, which is about four
hours from where I am right now. For Geeta, it
turned out that her husband's family was was friendly with
(09:49):
the woman.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Who was a victim.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Wo so aj Owens was one of those such a
close friend, almost considered like family. We're all family.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
And so I think what she has said is that
when this happened, she was just like, what do we do?
You know, she's a filmmaker where journalists rose our city
is my producer and I so we are, we're big
and you just go go just send someone, go start
covering it. And so I think once that police bodycam
(10:19):
footage became something that had been gathered from the lawyers,
right this became a criminal case, became gathered from the lawyers,
suddenly you realize, like this could be a really interesting
vehicle to tell the story.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
The editor is.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
A young woman named Vidi Deanna Lieberman, and she's fantastic
and geta laughs about how at one point, you know
in the film, when you have everybody coming to the
scene of the ultimate crime, there's like twenty police. So
keep in mind everyone has a body cap, twenty body cams.
No one's actually shooting, right, they're just capturing. And the
(10:55):
editor has to sort of sort through off of a
giant disc or all this has just been dropped and
figure out what matches with what, how do you put
it together to tell a story.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
So it's really a tremendous feat.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I mean, Gita obviously is a fantastic editor, and just
everything she does is fabulous and very as a director
also just really fantastic work.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
So The Perfect Neighbor is not your typical documentary. There
are no talking heads, no narrator guiding you through the story. Instead,
everything unfolds through raw surveillance, police bodycam video, security footage,
interrogation room recordings. It creates this unsettling, unblinking view of
the case, showing everything from the immediate aftermath of the
(11:41):
murder itself to the disturbing reality of AJ's killer simply
living her life and moving in with family instead of
being arrested. We aren't told what happened. We see it,
and that makes it all the more chilling. Do you
have any sense of how the decision was made that
the film was going to be almost entirely constructed through
(12:02):
that kind of surveillance footage, whether it's bodycam footage or
the ring camera footage that we see.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, I think generally you always start with, well, so
how do we do this? And I think for Geeta,
and she's talked about this that you know, once it
became clear that you could almost do it as a thriller, right,
it actually reads as a true crime stoy. You watch
it unfold, and even though you start with the ending
and then you backtrack, you actually it unfolds like a thriller.
(12:29):
And Geta is also an editor herself, That's how she
got her start. So I think she really saw it
that way. And once you had the bodycam footage, I
think it really helped to do something that as reporters
we never do.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Whenever there's a standard ground case, and I've covered a
handful of them, you go in the aftermath, right, you
interview people in the aftermath, and you pick and choose
who when it's the police pov, it's not my pov,
it's not Geeta's POV, it's not Very's pov. Right, this
is just from body cam, And so I think it
gives you a really interesting perspective that a lot of
(13:04):
people have said to me they felt like it was
much more true that they didn't. They didn't doubt like,
oh is this a spin? Because the police were not
shooting for us or anybody, They're just wearing body cams.
And so I think it's a really interesting look at
a story that unfolds in a terrible, terrible, deadly way,
(13:24):
and you can see step by step because of course
the police have been called basically two years of these
terrible interactions and minor interactions, right, some kind of in
a lot of way, stupid interactions that just escalated and
escalated to sus Lawrence shot her neighbor through her locked door.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
So when we think about these standard ground cases, so
much of them, and especially you know, in the lead
up to you and then after the treyvon Martin incident,
so many of them are these sensationalized headlines that really
kind of the conversation just felt feels very insidiary to me, Right,
it's just this splashy headline you might get right wing
(14:06):
talking heads on TV. But the film really, to me
kind of demonstrates what it would actually look like, all
of the heartbreaking, horrifying details of what these cases would
actually look like. And I wonder do you feel that
that was an argument that was trying to be made
in this film of like, oh, people think that you
should be able to stand your ground and if you
(14:27):
feel threatened, you should be able to shoot anybody.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Through a closed door. This is what it would actually
look like if that was the case.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
I think it's always important to show things as they are, right.
I mean, for me, documentaries are about getting in there
and saying, this is actually what it is, this is
how it unfolded, this is the ridiculously small incident that
really kept spiraling and spiraling and spiraling.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
Right, it's this.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Is what exactly happened, and you can see it. And
so to me, I think that's really important. It allows
you to sort of help people again see not in
the aftermath, but is unfolding what exactly is happening. And
I don't think people really you know, I don't. Someone's
asked me the other day, you know, do you think
you'll help people change their mind on stand your ground?
I was like, I think most people don't really even
(15:13):
know what stand your ground really is, right. They don't
necessarily know it's a law, you know, but and it's
different in different states, But most people don't really know
exactly what it is. And so for me, I think
it's a really helpful way to understand that this woman
is not arrested right after there is a shooting. She
kills her neighbor, she shoots.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Through her locked doors.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
No there's no guess about who did it, right, there's
nobody trying to figure out, oh my god, who was
the perpetrator. And yet she gets picked up by her
family and she goes away.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
She's not in jail.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Why is that stand your ground right allows them to
do an investigation to see, you know, did she actually
fear for her life? And Susan certainly has had enough training,
if you will, right googling, to know that one of
the things you claim and stand your ground. I feared
for my life. I feeled for my life, I felt unsafe,
I feared for my life. So I think all of
that is a really fascinating insight into, as you say, right,
(16:09):
how these things actually unfold in real time.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Let's take a quick break at our back. I don't
even really know how to ask this, but in watching
the movie, I it the community reminded me of the
(16:37):
neighborhood where I grew up, Right, A bunch of kids
running around all the time, probably also being allowed that obnoxious.
I'll own that myself. A lot of adults who all
look out for the kids. And that's just the community
that you have. And having grown up in a community
like that, I know that it's like a precious thing.
It's like a like I'm able to look back so
fondly on my youth because that's where I was looking,
(16:59):
the kind of I was lucky enough to.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Grow up in. I don't even know how to word it.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
I think that one of the things Susan was actually
mad at was that she lived in a place where
it was a multi racial community, where folks got along
and folks looked out for each other, and there was
something about that that.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Drove her that she could not stand. What do you
think about this?
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah, no, I don't think you're wrong. I mean clearly right.
She would, you know, use racial slurs with small children.
So there was some major issue that she had around
her neighbors around race.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
You know what I thought was so interesting is that
you often hear like this is a calm, quiet neighborhood,
multi racial community, but to see it right, to see
how the police interact with the kids, to see how
the police are dapping the dad and the white mom
when the as so, which, you know, which kids are yours?
And she says, well, they're all mine, And she's not kidding.
(17:50):
She's like, in this neighborhood, we all kind of take
care of everybody, and then to see that collapse right
after the shooting, that sense of togetherness, that sense of hey,
the police are working with the community and everybody gets along.
It's pretty much gone.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Because they had something good that is like rare and
hard to find.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
They really had something good.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Something great, I would argue, right, and again, I think
the things that surprise me were like, oh, this is
a community where everybody's just hanging out and getting along.
Speaker 4 (18:23):
Number one.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Number two, here's a community where the police are constantly
trying to figure out. Yeah, we actually think this lady's
a little bit of a you know, crackpot, but we
got to tell you guys, you know, try to keep
it down a little bit. But on the other end,
their kids, they're doing kids things that could be much worse.
They're just playing. At one point, the little girl who says,
you know, we're eleven, because like, yes, they're small children,
(18:45):
and we know that, you know, especially kids of color
are often perceived to be older and more dangerous and
more worldly, et cetera, et cetera. So I think there
is a sense you really see like kids playing in
the neighborhood a lot. So yeah, you just those things
surprise me. When I first saw the video, I was like, Oh,
I don't know what I thought the police would be doing.
(19:07):
I don't know how young they were, how willing they
were to go back and forth and try to kind
of maintain the piece, if you will. Susan would call
the police constantly, but you know, the neighbors never called
the police on Susan, never, never, once.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
You know, it was obvious to everybody that Susan was
a big problem.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
There are so many red flags and the.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Way that the police talk about her among each other,
where they're like, Oh, it's her again, She's crazy.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Is there a sense from the neighbors do you think that?
Speaker 3 (19:39):
I mean, I'm not even sure legally if there was
anything to be done, but frivolous call after frivolous call.
I do get a sense of I'm happy that the
police were so cool with the kids and the families.
But at a certain point, part of me is like,
if they had done something to let Susan know that
this behavior wasn't okay, perhaps we wouldn't even be having
this conversation right now. Y.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
It's really an interesting question, and this have had this
discussion a lot right where people say the police should
have done something, And I think the rejoinder to that is,
no one ever called the police on Susan, right, I
mean not one. No one even said listen, I'm sick
of her calling the police on us. This is not okay,
She's obviously a problem. Do they just go and arrest people?
Are the calls relief frivolous? They go, they talk, They
(20:23):
you know, there's clearly some kind of a dispute, They
break it up.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
For the most part, they move on. Yeah, it would
be amazing.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
If the police had said we we see this problem.
And I think it really underscores the point of what's
being discussed with the standard ground laws, right, like, how
does a person who absolutely positively is a living, breathing
red flag get access to three guns?
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Right? How is that possible?
Speaker 1 (20:47):
How is it possible to No one says, you know,
this lady has a lot of guns. Maybe we should
rethink the fat right, No, never happens, And so I
think it is a classic sense of you know, the
person who is the perpect trader is the one who's
constantly calling the police. The other people who will end
up being the victims never called the police, and the
people who are really who really suffer at the end
(21:08):
of the day are those folks who always suffering stand
your ground laws, the people who who are victimized.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Susan shot and killed Aj through a locked steel door
while AJ's young son stood beside her, and afterward, Susan
was not immediately arrested. She claimed protection under Florida's stand
your Ground law, which allows a person to use force,
even deadly force, if they reasonably believe that they're facing
an imminent threat, without any duty to retreat. Investigators later
(21:38):
discovered that Susan had googled stand your ground laws before
the shooting, suggesting that she wasn't actually fearing for her life,
but rather setting up the killing by researching exactly how
to frame her defense. What do you think about the
conversation that we're currently having about things like stand your
ground laws. Just recently, there was that horrible situation in
(21:59):
India where a cleaner came to the wrong house, knocked
on the door, and when she knocked on it, a
man shot and killed her through the shut door, and
the case was expected to test stan your ground laws
in Indiana, but ultimately that man was charged because prosecutors
were like, listen, shooting somebody through a shut door simply
because they knocked on it does not meet the requirements for.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Stand your ground.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Even if that person thought, well, I'm defending my home
because this person knocked.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
On my door. And I don't know.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I just think that the conversation around crime have gotten
so out of control that when these things happen. Frankly,
I don't expect people to take a step back and say, well,
wait a minute, should we have a culture where it's
normalized and okay to just shoot through a door and
ask questions later?
Speaker 4 (22:44):
It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
And again, there have been so many of these stories, right,
You and I could tick off, probably just off the
top of our heads without even having to google it,
five or six recent cases where someone's been shot or
killed or both, you know, because of a you know,
clay and so inclaiming stand your ground. And I think
that person who does it feels justified, right, They feel
like I can protect my home and if I feel
(23:06):
even slightly afraid, even if it's just someone pulling into
the wrong driveway, even if it's someone looking at for
the wrong house, even if it's someone who's just gone
to the wrong place accidentally. I am justified in shooting
that person and killing that person. So yeah, it's bizarre, right.
I think it's crazy that we've gotten here and what
you really see. And there's a slide at the end
of the documentary that points out, you know, the people
(23:27):
who really suffer from strand your ground laws are people
of color. You know, those are the people who I
don't have any proof for this, but I am very
confident that if Susan had been a black woman and
she had shot a white lady through her locked door,
she would have been arrested on the spot.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Right.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
There was a good there was no question who did it.
They weren't looking for the shooter. The idea that she
was able to be free is obviously you see in
the film what sets everybody and just you know off
and makes them very angry about what potentially could happen.
And so the family and the neighbors have to really
start marching and calling attention to the crime because it could,
(24:07):
just like others, you know, become that salacious talking head
football that is, you know, some point stops being focused
on the case and starts being focused on the chaos.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
The reaction to the film has been intense. One moment
that's been particularly talked about online is a harrowing scene
where AJ's children break down after learning that their mother
has been killed. It honestly, it is one of the
most gut wrenching things I have ever seen on screen.
It was a tragedy, and the way Aja's family has
(24:40):
responded echoes the tragedy of Emmett Till. In nineteen fifty five,
fourteen year old Emmett Till was falsely accused of whistling
at a white woman while visiting family in Mississippi. He
was lynched and brutally mutilated. His mother made me Tell
made the courageous and history altering decision to hold an
(25:00):
open casket funeral, saying that she wanted the world to
see what had happened for themselves, saying, there was just
no way I could describe what was in that box,
no way, and I just wanted the world to see.
Photos of Emmett Till's body were published in black publications
like Jet and The Chicago Defender, sparking national and international outrage.
(25:22):
One photograph from JET showing Maimie Tail at the funeral
standing over her son's mutilated corpse was named by Time
as one of the one hundred most influential images of
all time.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
It ran with the caption quote.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
For almost a century, African Americans were lynched with regularity
and impunity. Now, thanks to a mother's determination to expose
the barbarousness of this crime, the public could no longer
pretend to ignore what they couldn't see. So while the
scene of AJ's children learning about their mother's murder is
deeply harrowing, it was included because AJ's family wanted the
(25:57):
truth to be told for everyone to see for themselves,
just like Mamie till the scene that I don't know
if I'll ever stop thinking about it, the scene when
we see AJ's children.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Being informed that their mom brutal been killed.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
I mean I had to stop the movie to sob
because I was unable to continue watching. I've never seen
a scene quite like that. I've seen some folks say like, oh,
this was too much. We as the audience should not
have been let into a moment like that. What do
you think about that?
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (26:30):
I would say two things. So first is what Gita
has said in her conversations, And we've spent a lot
of time with the AJ's mom, Pamela Diaz, who's in
the film as well, but has also been I've been
lots of panels with her, and she's done a lot
of sort of traveling with the doc is you go
to various film festivals, and she very clearly has said
she wanted to She saw this sort of as a
(26:51):
Mami till moment.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
Right like that.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
There was this opportunity to show the actual horror of
a horrible thing. So that's one thing. So it really
did come with the permission, if.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
You will, of a family. Number two.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
I think that off of that, this is a documentary
about a killing, and I don't think it's fair to
do a documentary about a killing and then say, but actually,
we're not gonna get to the killing. I just think
the way AJ died was horrible, and I think the
audience needs to understand the impact on her children, on
the community, on everything is palpable, and I think people
(27:31):
have to understand that.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
And I don't know that.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
It's it's a good thing to clean that up, to say,
this part's kind of hard to watch, so you know what,
we're just going to clean this up for you.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
I don't think so.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
I don't miss.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
This doc is about a killing and about a really
terrible policy that causes great harm to people of color.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
And I think that being the general public being really
removed from what this policy actually translates into the real
world harm on children, on moms, on communities, on families,
I think people do need to see that to understand, like, yeah,
it is a public policy decision or conversation in addition
(28:12):
to being like a like a personal conversation.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Absolutely, And also it's this is a documentary about a killing,
a horrible killing, and we get to see the before,
the middle, and the after and the aftermath. And so
I think it would be a very weird decision to
sort of say, no, no, no, this part we're not
going to show.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, And as you said, I think it should be
made clear that the family wants this story told.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
The family is out there.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
They her surviving family members are adamant about this story
being told. And I don't know, part of me feels
like it's a way like honoring their wishes is important,
honoring that legacy is important.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah, I think it would be very different if they said, oh, absolutely,
you know, please don't. I think that would lead to
very challenging conversations. Frankly right, I think you'd have people
who said, listen, we should honor the family. Other people say, hey,
this is a story about a killing and try to
figure it out. But no, the family was very much
I think on board with the idea of like, people
need to see how horrible this is, they need to
(29:14):
see the impact. There's also an im kept Pact campaign's
called standing in the Gap. I don't know if you've
learned about that. And you know, because again, something people
don't realize once the press goes, once the pastors go,
once the lawyers go, you have families that are hurting
that actually need support, right, they're just left. And so
I think like being very clear and true and accurate
(29:38):
about that is very.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Important and keeping the conversation going, you know, once the
film is no longer, you know the thing everyone is
talking about, making sure that that conversation can continue and
that we continue to educate folks on what these laws
actually look like and the way that they actually impact people.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
Right, and who they impact the most.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
You know, you used to be this journalist who was
really known for anchoring mainstream news outlets like see It En,
but more recently, you're making these important documentaries through your
production company and the production companies of others like Gidas.
Do you feel like you have more freedom to tell
stories in a different way, the way that you maybe
you know, couldn't if you were still anchoring mainstream news outlets.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
I think the real difference is that you just get
a lot of time. So if you're able to sell
a dock, and you get a buyer, and you have
a good story, and you you know, you're sort of
able to go ahead and produce the doc you know,
you get to really kind of wrap a lot of
time around a story. Whereas in daily news, as you know,
you know, you're just NonStop talking, talking, talking, docking. You
(30:47):
might have a little bit of time to kind of
give some context, but often you don't, especially in live
cable news. And so I what I've liked, I mean,
I love doing cable news, but I really have liked
the time. You know, you're not giving people a ten
second sound by and saying, you know, here, let me
explain the story to you. Here's their SoundBite. They're they're
giving it right. We get to tell the entire story
(31:07):
over a fairly long period of time, So you really
understand the context. And I think in cases where as
people don't trust journalists as much, you know, day after
day when we were looking at a Pew research study
that I said, something like forty four percent of Americans
say they don't trust journal terrible number. I like the
idea of being out of it, just, you know, like
(31:30):
we're not in it. There's no I'm not in the
middle of it saying here's my perspective on this story,
and I met with these people, right, It's just this
is how it went down with the police who were
called to the scene. And so I think that's actually
really part of the reason the film is doing so
well is that people believe it, you know, they just
they just don't think there's an agenda. There's no here's
(31:52):
how I feel about it. Here's how Geeta feels about it,
Here's how a Message Pictures feels about it. Right, it's
this is what happened, and we're going to show it
to you fully. So I think that's a real plus.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
And it goes back to what you were saying about
the choice to use a lot of or mostly police
surveillance footage and ring camera footage and interrogation.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Footage that the facts speak for themselves, right.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
We see it's not like Guito was there on the
site with cameras filming a story for a certain perspective.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
It's just what happened.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
And there's not really no one can say like, ah,
this seems like women of color were biased for a
certain perspective here. It's just what happened, yes, case in point.
One of Solodad's latest projects is a new short documentary
called The Devil Is Busy, now streaming on HBO Max.
The film follows a day in the life of Tracy,
(32:46):
the head of security at a Georgia abortion clinic, and
the relentless work that she does to keep the clinic
operating safely. We watch Tracy begin her day at the
clinic with a prayer, navigate confrontations with anti abortion protesters
who are such a constant presence at the clinic that
Tracy knows them all by name, and support the clinic's clients,
(33:08):
many of whom have traveled overnight from out of state
due to increasingly restrictive abortion laws. The documentary offers a powerful,
ground level, humanizing view. The challenge is based by those
working to provide reproductive healthcare in our current landscape.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
We kind of had the similar strategy with The Devil
Is Busy. Gita is one of the directors on that
doc as well, because she's amazing, So, you know, same thing, right,
No one's in it directing the traffic, no one's picking
I'm going to pick this person, and we're going to
lead with this.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
You know.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
It is the story of woman's day, a woman who's
kind of complicated and contradictory and an interesting character that
you don't see a lot, right, A deeply religious woman
who's the security guard at an abortion clinic. Usually the
deeply religious people are the people who are the protesters
out kind of on the street making old n and
so we really like that. We just, you know, we're
(34:03):
looking at this story through through her eyes, Tracy's Tracy's
journey is what tells us what happens. I'm not in
you know, I'm not interviewing anybody. The director of that,
along with GETA, is Crystaline Hampton, who we do tons
of projects with. And again, I guess what I would
also point out was a complete sidebar, but it will
be interesting to you. So often in TV news and
(34:24):
journalism and even film, of any kind. There's this idea
of like, if we could only just find the black people,
if we could just find the people of color, you know,
And I just want to say, as I'm naming them,
I'm like a woman of color, black director, you know,
Sam Paullard, black executive. Like there's it's just when you're
really intentional, it's not that hard. So that's a complete
(34:46):
sidebar to what we're talking about. But for me, every
project we've done, we've been so intentional about finding and
centering directors. And Geeta is just a really she's a
kind of an amazing mentor because what she does is
she takes people and she sort of grows them, and
then she'll say, Okay, now you're ready to be the
director on this or you're ready, so we're starting another
(35:07):
project with another one of the young women. That's anybody
who's younger than me, young women who you know, will
be directing this project for us, right. But really was
kind of grown up, if you will, under Gita and
I just love people who are so aggressive about not
just mentoring and saying I'm gonna give you some you
go girl, going to give you some good words of advice,
(35:27):
but like, now we slot you here. Now you need
experience doing this. Now you actually need this. Now you're
going to do this. And she's very intentional about it,
and I've always really appreciated that because a lot of
people talk about it, but very few people actually do it.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
As you know, how did you Ben Ghita start working together?
Speaker 4 (35:45):
That's such a good question. It's been such a long time.
I'm sure I'm gonna get our.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Like origin story wrong. I don't remember the real story.
But we were working on a couple of other projects
before this one. And you know, she just has an
amazing track record. You know, google her CV and you'll
be blown away. I think this year she's got three
projects that are all up for rewards. I mean, she's remarkable.
But again, I think she can do that because she
(36:10):
has a lot of support and a lot of people
who are working on these projects with her, who she
trusts implicitly. But we started working on a project actually
about young people who are hungry in college. We had
met this woman, a friend who ran the journalism department
at a school, and she said, you know, some of
the students are sleeping in the journalism office and she
(36:32):
thought they were just kind of like crashing there on
a late night, but they actually had no housing that
they were hungry. And another woman did a study. She's
the kind of the center of our doc, Sarah Goldgrop,
and she was saying that, you know, originally when she
did her study, she thought it was kind of like
the sad story of a handful of students who are
just in a fifty percent five zero percent of students
(36:56):
have had food and security in college, Like that's insane.
And so we decided to do that project. And I
think you to strategy and telling that story was it
just it just made for a beautiful, beautiful doc. So
you know, every single thing that we have done together
has just been a home run.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
I don't know, thinking about some of the projects that
I know that you all have worked on together, I've
obviously seen the perfect neighbor. I've seen the devil is busy.
It strikes me as the kind of topics that are
so important that definitely impact traditionally marginalized people, so subsequently
they're not told, you know, the way that they maybe
should be.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
We don't run into a lot of people. Yeah, I
used to say that all the time.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Someone would say to me, you know when we started
doing our Black and America documentaries for CNN, we didn't
for about nine, nine or ten years, and I would
just say, you know what I liked about it was
you just didn't run into people. You know that John
Banay Ramsay, it was me and ninety nine other reporters,
you know, doing the ten year anniversary of the murder
of this four little girl. But when it comes to
(37:57):
these complicated social issues, you know, you're just out there
alone reporting them, which is unfortunate because I think they're
really important.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Solodad makes documentaries about important issues like stand your Ground
and reproductive justice, topics that many people are probably used
(38:30):
to seeing addressed in quick segments on the news, but
documentary filmmaking allows for a deeper exploration, not just of
the issues themselves, but the real people at their center.
Do you think there are stories that lend themselves very
well to documentary, like actually telling someone's story and then
you see them and you hear them in their own words.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Yeah, I mean I do, But I almost could argue
that for every story, right, if you have a good character, right.
The thing I hate the word character because it makes
it seem very fake. But if you have a good
central person that you're following right, that you have access
to that story, and you have a really compelling person,
then you've got a great doc or even a great
short story. I mean, I just think you just need
(39:12):
you need those elements to be pretty amazing, and then yeah,
I think people can speak for themselves. It's why I
love documentaries. But I like a lot of forms. I
like podcasts a lot, love I love sixty minutes, I
love you know, I just like I like news. I
sometimes I feel a little unfulfilled because I think, you know,
giving people a minute twenty on a story that really
(39:35):
needs a lot more context is sometimes frustrating. But I
like all sorts of platforms.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Side note, I love your iHeart podcast about JFK. Yeah,
solo Dad likes podcasts so much that she also makes
those two. She did a ten part series exploring Who
Killed JFK? With Rob Reiner. Yes that Rob Reiner, who
first came to prominence as the son in law on
the seventies CBS to Come All in the Family and
(40:01):
went on to make truly iconic films like This Is
Spinal Tap, Stand by Me, The Princess Bride, when Harry
met Sally, and my personal favorite, The First Wives Club,
and pretty much every other movie that you probably liked
in the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 4 (40:15):
It was really it wasn't that a great podcast?
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Oh my god? It?
Speaker 4 (40:19):
Plus I love Rob Reiner was amazing, you too, should like.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
I don't know you you make the show on the road, right,
That's what I gotta I gotta call him and tell
him that. Two Petty's got this other gig that the
movie director thing he does. I guess he's working on
Spinal Tap two, which will be oh yeah, of course,
because Spinal Tap one was amazing. But yeah, that was
a great project. But I have to tell you something.
He was awesome, Like he just is the kindest night.
(40:43):
He was just so complimentary, wonderful to work with, the
nicest human being to everybody. As you know, sometimes people
come in and you know, if they're a big mucky muck,
they might not be the nicest to you know, somebody
who's you know, who's who's recording them, or if things
going wrong and we can't figure it out, you know,
and it's taking a little time. He just you could
(41:04):
not ask for a cooler, nicer, more wonderful human being
than Rob Ryder. It was such a pleasure to work
with him. I literally enjoyed every moment of it.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
That makes me so happy to hear.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
You know, they say, don't meet your heroes, but I'm happy.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
So very nice people.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
I've got some other names for you that I'll tell
you not to meet. But Rob Reiner is amazing. He
was amazing, And I just I don't know, I just
love watching people who are kind to the person who's
taking in his audio, who's amazing, to the ap who's great,
to the PA who's like, anybody need water. I just
love that, you know, because often people, as you know,
(41:41):
in this business, are really not. And so it was
amazing and I did. I loved him, and he was
my hero, my dad. He was my dad's favorite character.
Of course, you know, we watched all in the family.
So like you talked about, you know, your mom, if
your mom was still alive, she'd be impressed by our
interview my dad. My dad would be done if he
were still alive and he that I was doing a
project with Robert, like that would be it.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
He'd be like, now now I can die because he's yeah,
she's made it.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
My baby went to Harvard, she's been on TV.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
But now this is exactly that doesn't care. Doesn't care,
It doesn't care.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
Now, Yeah, oh, you know, I I one of the
kind of to wrap up here. I was reading your
your comments to Variety about just the state of journalism
and media, and one of the things that we focus
on here at the podcast is especially things like mis
and disinformation. And I feel like I don't know part
(42:35):
of me. I jokingly I've said, I feel like we
have lost the fight. You know, we gave it a
good shot.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Sometimes people ask me like, so what do you do,
and I'm like, I honestly don't know. I don't I
look at I mean what. I used to spend a
lot of time on Twitter, but I find it really
scary to forward videos and things because I just don't
can't verify if their true AI is so good, it
could be so deceptive.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
Frankly, that's just I don't.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
You know.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
There's so many things that I just don't know, and
there's so much information coming across the trans so it's
really hard to follow. So I try not to weigh
in on things that I haven't specifically covered and spent
time on because I don't want to be that person
who passes along things that are inappropriate and you know,
and just untrue. But it is a crazy time, and
(43:21):
it is I don't see I don't see a near
future where it improves.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
I mean, I was going to ask if, when you
think about the future of journalism and media, are you
hopeful about where we might be going.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
It sounds like maybe not so much.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
No.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
I mean that I think disinformation and misinformation is a
different category and journalism generally, which is also struggling at
this moment, as you well know. But yeah, I think
that the history of journalism has been like this, right
We've had really highs and lows, and so I think
there's lots of I think they're great journalists out there
who are doing really good work. I think it's a
very challenging time for a host of reasons, and with
(43:58):
a host of people there trying to interview and people
they're working for and people they're trying to put on TV.
So I think it's a bad time for journalists. But
I do think there there's always these ups and downs,
you know, where people love journalism right now, people love
their local news. They trust their local news, you know,
and yet local news is you know, there's local news.
Stations and papers are dropping every day, every day they disappear.
(44:22):
So we have to solve a bunch of problems, including monetization,
before we can say, like, yes, journalism is going to
be saved, because frankly, a lot of the garbage is
is very you know, worth it due to you know,
it's just not expensive. It's cheap, and to do good
reporting is expensive. And so you know, I understand why
(44:44):
people pick the cheap talking heads yelling at each other version.
It's easier and it's cheaper, and I think.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
It speaks to the model that you were just talking
about with documentary, where you can spend a long time
telling a story. You can tell a story over an
hour and change or two hours.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
And people are gonna rock with you. You can you can.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
I mean, I love documentary. Get a weekend spent and
watching documentaries is a good weekend for me.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
But I know not everybody feels that way.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
But the fact that you told a story about stand
your ground laws and it was the everybody was talking
about it.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
It was the thing that people were talking about.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
I don't necessarily see news stories on the news where
people are moved in that way.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
So I do. I do think it's it's.
Speaker 4 (45:26):
The last time I saw that.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
I would say Katrina, right, like, if you could think
of a time where everybody was talking about a thing,
was Hurricane Katrina. And it was a time. I was
telling someone yesterday that we were coming back. When I
was covering Katrina, we'd spend a month in New Orleans
and the month out, you know, back and forth, my
co anker would go in and back and forth. And
I remember we were coming through the Baton Rouge Airport.
(45:49):
So I'm leaving at the end of my month, and
and we haven't showered because of course there was no showers,
and it's we're all really dirty. Although my hair does
get better the dirty or it is, so I was
actually fine on that front, but we're just gross. And
I remember I had my CNN cap on because of
course everything was gross. And we got a standing ovation.
We got a standing ovation in the Baton Rouge Deep
(46:12):
South Airport CNN. And I just remember thinking, like, that's
because we are doing the thing that we're supposed to do, right,
We're getting a standing ovation.
Speaker 4 (46:21):
Not for me. Or any of the people we're.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Getting a stand in FASI because they feel like, yes,
that was what we needed you to do. Yes, that
And I think the same thing with perfect neighbor, right,
it's like, yes, thank you, thank you for helping us
understand this story.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (46:34):
I hate the way that journalists are demonized today, but
that I think that story People do actually want to
have their story told authentically and thoughtfully and truthfully.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
People do want to hear these stories. I don't know.
I think it's it's very easy.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
For me personally to get caught up in I'm so
angry about the way that people trash journalists, and I
feel that way, but not buying into it that everybody
feels that way, because people do there is trust when
when stories are told well and authentically, there is trust.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
Listen, when we were doing Black in America for CNN,
the number of people are like, why would we do this?
You guys never come here, You never come to our neighborhood,
you know, And it was a lot of work to
get people to understand, here's what we're trying to do.
It's a documentary sticks out, you know.
Speaker 4 (47:17):
But I get it.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
So, I mean some of the lack of trust is earned. Right,
it's earned. And when people say to me, so, how
do you get back trust? I always say that it's
like the bad boyfriend theory. You know, there's no baby,
you gotta trust me. Rights it is you have to
be trustworthy, right, you got to show up again and
again and again and be trustworthy. Like there's no other
(47:39):
way to get people's trust than to do that. And
so I really think that that, you know, that's what's
going to happen. So to some degree, you know, journalism
has made some big errors and lost some trust. I mean,
I remember when I worked at Keene cyn End. It
was just a long time ago that it's probably been
almost a dozen years. I don't know if you remember this.
They had this breaking news you know when they they
(48:00):
had the app and you had the breath and you
get the app and it was Britney Spears had cut
her hair.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
Do you know that came in.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Breaking news, Breaking news app that's Britney Spears had cut
her hair. You're just like, do you realize how much
you undermine when you're doing other news about how there
has been a tsunami or there has been a hurricane,
or there has been a shoot, right, Like you realize
when you put Brittany in this thing, God bless her.
(48:26):
She seems like a lovely person, but it is not
breaking news that she cut her hair. And so I
think to some degree, right, we have lots of examples
of how we have undermined ourselves strengthly.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
And it trains your audience to tune out.
Speaker 3 (48:40):
You know, it's like, oh, I don't need to I
get a million of these notifications.
Speaker 2 (48:43):
Who cares? You know?
Speaker 4 (48:44):
Exactly exactly.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
One of my last.
Speaker 3 (48:47):
Questions for you is just what does it feel like
to see the response to your to the work that
you've helped put out into the world. I mean, the
response has been huge.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
What is that like?
Speaker 4 (48:59):
You know, it's it's really really nice.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
But I will say that sometimes you do great projects
that nobody really sees. You started talking about the site.
The site was a great show. We literally had six viewers.
We were in hash marks, which means it didn't have
enough viewers to like actually count them. I love doing
that show. That was a great show right so ahead
of its time, but but no one watched it. And uh,
(49:24):
and so you know, I I guess it's always great
when the work that you've done and you're you're associated
with is seeing because that's awesome. You just want people
to see it, especially in documentaries. You want people to
see it. So it's it's amazing, it feels great. But
also I think there's just a zillion other projects. Of course,
since it's award season for Docks, you you end up
watching everybody else's doc too. So all I do is
(49:45):
watching docs all the time. There's a zillion fantastic projects
out there, a zillion, And so I would say people
should be more like you and learn to love docs
maybe more than watching a lot of you know, talking
heads rotating through every half hour are.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
Oh my gosh, there is no I've said it on
the show before. There's no truer, better medium. Things like
actual stories that have been told and happened will always
be more interesting, more layered, more complex than anything anybody
could could come up with. Documentary is where it's at.
Speaker 4 (50:17):
Yep, yep, I agree. From your mouth to God's ears.
Speaker 3 (50:20):
Let me say, Soldad O'Brien, I'm like completely peeked out.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
Thank you so much for being here. It's it's an honor.
I have chills. Where can people follow you? What what
what you've got? Like, how can people keep in talking?
Speaker 1 (50:34):
We always have projects we're doing, so we obviously we
are on the award circuit now, which means we're doing
a lot of screenings, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (50:42):
Et cetera.
Speaker 1 (50:43):
It's been really fun to go to some of these
awards shows because I'm getting to pull out some old
gowns and you know, squeeze in on them. So so
if anything that you want to follow around that kind
of stuff, I'm on Instagram of course, at Solidad O'Brien.
One word, I don't do a lot on X. People
sometimes reach out, so every four weeks I go in
(51:03):
and respond to a million people who I've ignored. So
apologies to anybody who's reaching out to me on X,
but it's just it's a little bit. I feel like
it's everything you post to posts later becomes something about
white supremacy.
Speaker 4 (51:16):
Yeah, yeah, I had to.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
I finally like from my own santade I was like,
you know what, I cannot do this consistently. So I
hop in and out and yet.
Speaker 4 (51:25):
We follow me on Instagram, you'll see a lot of
what we're doing.
Speaker 3 (51:34):
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech. I
just want to say Hi. You can reach us at
Hello at tegody dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at tengody dot com.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
me Bridget Todd.
Speaker 3 (51:45):
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative Jonathan Strickland
as our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almato is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
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