Back in America (Stan Berteloot)

In this episode of Back in America, we sit down with David McCloskey, a former CIA analyst and the author of The Seventh Floor, Moscow X, and Damascus Station. David shares his insights on the current conflicts in the Middle East, discussing the potential for escalation and the complexities facing the intelligence community today.

We explore whether Americans are attuned to global events and how domestic issues may overshadow international concerns. David reflects on his experiences living abroad in France and the Middle East, revealing how they transformed his perspective on America’s values and place in the world.

Diving into his latest novel, The Seventh Floor, David discusses the themes of political polarization and societal fissures through the lens of his characters. He opens up about his journey from being an intelligence analyst to becoming a novelist, highlighting how writing became both a creative outlet and a means of processing his experiences.

David also talks about his writing process, the challenges of authentically portraying espionage, and how he navigates the pressures of social media as an author. We touch on his concerns about the politicization of intelligence agencies and get a sneak peek into his upcoming novel set against the backdrop of the Israel-Iran shadow war.

Finally, David shares what America means to him, emphasizing the nation’s ideals of openness and opportunity for all.

Join us for a conversation that bridges espionage, literature, and America’s identity.

His latest book The Seventh Floor can be found here
To learn more about David visit his website

Hey everyone, Stan Berteloot here, your host of the Back in America podcast. After a long two-year break, we’re back with fresh, insightful episodes exploring American culture, values, and identity through the eyes of an expatriate.

I’ve been busy working with amazing companies like NeuTigers, Pontosense, and Nytro Marketing, and staying active with Share My Meals, fighting food waste. The world has changed since COVID-19, and so have I. The Me Too movement, Black Lives Matter, and climate change have profoundly impacted me.

We’re back with new interviews, amazing guests, and fascinating stories. Episodes will be released monthly. Meanwhile, check out previous favorites like “Diving on Shipwrecked Slave Ships” and “John Lam: Boston Ballet Principal Dancer.”

Check out AI in Marketing my personally curated and AI-Generated podcast

Share the news, tell your friends to subscribe, and see you soon!
#AmericanCulture #ExpatLife #Podcast #BackInAmerica

In this episode of Back in America, we sit down with Coco Kee, a global leader in blockchain and cryptocurrency, as she shares her remarkable journey from Peking University to Silicon Valley success. Coco, co-founder of Key Global Advisors and host of the Blockchain Asia podcast, recounts how her background in literature and theater enhanced her ability to connect with people and think creatively in the world of startups.

We dive into the dynamics of the 2024 Trump election, the Chinese American vote, and cryptocurrency’s rising influence. Coco offers insights into why Trump has gained surprising support within segments of the Chinese American community and how his pro-crypto stance contrasts with the regulatory challenges faced under the Biden administration.

From her early days as a telemarketer facing rejection to becoming a major voice in the blockchain space, Coco shares how resilience, curiosity, and cultural adaptation shaped her success in America.

🎧 Available on all podcast platforms. Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe!

In this episode, we sit down with Alvaro de Cozar, an award-winning journalist and podcast producer, to explore the power of storytelling in a time of political upheaval and misinformation. I talk with Alvaro about his story and podcast episode on Aquilino Gonell, a Dominican immigrant, former U.S. Army soldier, and U.S. Capitol Police officer who defended the Capitol during the January 6th insurrection. Gonell’s journey from pursuing his American dream to confronting its harsh realities offers a profound reflection on democracy, truth, and what it means to be an immigrant in today’s America.

Alvaro, who has a knack for unraveling amazing stories, discusses his approach to bringing stories like Gonell’s to life through his hit podcast, “True Stories,” which has captivated millions of listeners worldwide. He explains the challenge of making such a deeply American narrative resonate with a global audience and his efforts to combat the rewriting of history in a time where truth is often under siege. Join us as we uncover the emotional depth, universal appeal, and raw power of telling the real story behind the headlines.

Listen to discover how Alvaro crafts stories that challenge perceptions, inspire empathy, and hold power to account in an era when every narrative is contested.

Sources:

Hechos Reales 

Video shows Trump's role in Jan. 6 at 2024 Democratic National Convention

American Shield: The Immigrant Sergeant Who Defended Democracy

In this episode of “Back in America,” we sit down with Tamar Huggins, founder and CEO of TechSpark, a platform empowering Black, Indigenous, and people of color through technology education. Tamar shares her journey from building computers with her father to launching Sparkplug, an innovative AI tool that translates classical literature into African American Vernacular English (AAVE). We explore the critical issues of AI bias, the importance of diverse training data, and how education can bridge gaps in tech. Tamar explains why she considers Sparkplug a “human AI” and discusses her mission to make technology accessible and inclusive for all students.

In this episode of Back in America, we confront one of life’s most challenging realities—caring for a dying loved one at home. Join us as we talk with Dr. Andrea Sankar, professor of medical anthropology at Wayne State University and author of Dying at Home: A Family Guide for Caregiving. Drawing from her experience and extensive research, Dr. Sankar offers profound insights into the emotional and logistical complexities of turning a home into a sanctuary for end-of-life care. Learn about the cultural perspectives on death, the crucial role of community support, and practical advice for caregivers. This heartfelt conversation is a reminder of the importance of compassion and the deep connections that can be forged in the final stages of life. Listen in to gain valuable understanding and support, whether you’re a caregiver, healthcare professional, or someone looking to learn more about end-of-life care. Don’t miss this enlightening discussion, and be sure to subscribe for more impactful stories.

In this episode of Back in America, Stan Berteloot sits down with David Reaboi, a national security expert, media analyst, and Claremont Institute Fellow, known for his incisive takes on political warfare and influence operations. Dubbed a “right-wing Twitter pugilist” by Politico, David shares his unique perspective on some of the most contentious issues shaping the United States today.

We discuss his views on Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and the evolving dynamics of federalism. David offers his candid take on January 6, the role of political violence, and how America’s fractured unity might lead to a breaking point. Our conversation also explores Hungary’s role as a beacon for some conservatives, the influence of figures like Elon Musk, and whether America needs to reconcile its history of slavery and Native American displacement.

David provides a window into his worldview, shaped by his upbringing, intellectual pursuits, and career at the intersection of national security and political commentary.

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The following interviews are edited versions of live interviews that were recorded on October 20th and 21st. You can what the entire broadcast on Back in America's Youtube channel.  

Welcome to Back in America, the podcast. I am your host Stan Berteloot, and in each episode, I trace America’s identity, culture, and values back to its source: its people.

A few weeks ago Jon, a good friend from college visited us for the weekend. At night we were joined by a couple living next door and we started to talk about politics as we drunk beers by the pit-fire in the back yard.
You had two French persons: my wife and I, and three Americans.
I can't remember exactly how or why Jon started to speak of gun rights but the conversation became intense when he said that not only did he support the right to bear arms but that it was essential to the protection of civilians against the tyranny of the government.

This made me dig further into the gun debate. I've learned that many support the idea of owning guns, any types of gun and that in the US some people believe that they have a God-given right to carry a gun.
What has God to do with guns? How can a democracy work when its citizens trust their guns more than their votes?

To try to make sense of all this we are going to hear from 3 persons: first Jon Phebus, my friend will clarify his views; then David Treibs a Christian and Gun Activists will talk about what he believes is a god-given right to bear arms. Finally, Professor Robert Spitzer from SUNY Cortland, an expert on constitutional law and gun control will give us his interpretation of the constitution and bring some historical context to the debate.

Love Letter to America, by Tomas Schuman

The Persecutor by Sergei Kourdakov 

Marx & Satan by Richard Wurmbrand

The Politics of Gun Control 8th Edition
by Robert J. Spitzer

Casablanca 
by Michael Curtiz

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This episode is an edited version of a live interview that was recorded on September 16, 2020, and streamed on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

My guest, Majid Padellan might be better known under his Twitter name BrooklynDad_Defiant and his handle @mmpadellan.

He is a social justice warrior, social media expert, and Twitter celebrity, an author, a digital designer, and a proud father of 5. And I will add that he is pissed off!

He has been upset at the politics of this country since November 8, 2016, and the election of Donald Trump. So upset that he decided to change his twitter handle to BrooklynDad_Defiant.

When asked if his online rage could be polarizing Majid Padellan said, "If if what I say is polarizing, so be it, but you have to you do have to pick aside, [Trump] is not somebody who is a regular leader. This is not a George W. Bush. This is not a Ronald Reagan. He's not a Jimmy Carter. He's not a Gerald Ford. This is a guy who has lied 20,000 times."

He rapidly grew his Twitter fans to over 682K followers (665K at the time of the interview) becoming one of the most popular anti-Trump commentators on Twitter. BrooklynDad_Defiant has been quoted across the globe from L’Obs in France to Newsweek and CBS in the U.S.

"I realized that not very many people have an audience the size that I have. I understand that I have a responsibility to use that audience for good. And I think the best good I can do right now is to help not only elect Joe Biden but elect as many Democratic candidates across the country so that we can give Joe Biden a helpful Congress so he can actually get something done," said Majid Padellan.

In this episode of Back in America we will try to go beyond the Twitter persona to understand who’s the man behind the handle.

The Liddle'est President can be found on Amazon 

His website is brooklyndaddefiant.com

In this episode of Back in America, I speak with Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, former chair of the Maryland Democratic Party, political consultant, and activist. She recently ran to represent Maryland’s 7th District in Congress after undergoing a double mastectomy.

Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings is the widow of Congressman Elijah Cummings, a good friend of former Congressman John Lewis. When Lewis died in 2020, hundreds of Twitter account accidentally posted memorial photos of Cummings since the two looked so much alike!

On Back in America, Dr. Maya Rockeymoore. Cummings discusses the ongoing fight for civil rights. “I fight for the right to exist. I fight for the right of everyone to be recognized on the level of our common humanity. I fight for the history in this country that has been suppressed. I am the fourth generation from slavery in this country. My parents grew up in the Jim Crow South. My late husband, Elijah Cummings grew up in the Jim Crow South. They were born into a world that denied African Americans the right to exist,” she said.

We also spoke of Black feminism and the importance for Black women to take charge of their struggle against racist and institutionalized patriarchy.

In recent months, Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings has been working to publish We're Better Than This: My Fight for the Future of Our Democracy, her husband’s final, unfinished book. The book came out last September and she talks to me about the importance of getting her husband’s voice out there.

We're Better Than This - My Fight for the Future of Our Democracy

In this week’s episode, Podcast Editor Josh Wagner takes a look at transhumanism, the philosophy, and ideology that the next stage in human evolution will arrive through artificial enhancements. Started in the early 1990s in Silicon Valley, transhumanism has accrued a wide variety of adherents, ranging from Ray Kurzweil and Elon Musk to Jeffrey Epstein, who believe that the human body itself needs to be upgraded. In their minds, such technological enhancements will increase the quality of life and abilities of every human being––“if nature is unjust, change nature!”

But, are such transhumanist dreams even possible, and would such biological enhancements actually help transform the human race rather than reinforcing the social, racial, and economic divides which are tearing at the foundations of our democracy?

Joining us this week is James Clement, director of BetterHumans, the world’s first transhumanist-oriented biomedical research lab. A former international tax lawyer and brewpub founder, Clement now works on the scientific side of anti-aging, often collaborating with Havard geneticist George Church to discover why certain humans are able to live for more than 100 years. At the heart of his transhumanism rests a fundamental belief in human capabilities and their liberation, beliefs which motivate his biological research. For him, transhumanism is a real technology, fundamentally linked to medical vaccines, stitches, and contact lenses. The only difference is that, like any new technology, transhumanism is not fully understood, especially by Americans who are resistant to such changes.

At the core of this interview lies a concern that a so-called transhumanist utopia, while possible, may not be entirely desirable. Like Odysseus’ searching beyond the limits of human cognition in Dante’s Inferno, transhumanism crucially aspires to alter our relationship with our own bodies, potentially increasing carbon emissions, overpopulation, and racial/social inequalities.

James Clement: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jwclement/ 

Transhumanist Manifesto: https://natashavita-more.com/transhumanist-manifesto/ 

Humanist Manifesto: https://zelalemkibret.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/humanist-manifestos.pdf 

A few words before this episode.

Gil who's interviewed here has been laid off since I recorded this episode and the NYC Compost Project and the curbside compost collection in NYC, for which he worked are coming to pass. Curbside compost pick-up will end on May 4 and the Compost Project will be completely mothballed in July, he told me. 

However, Gil’s spirit is still high.

“I’m doing okay,” he wrote to me. “I was laid off last month but I received my first unemployment check today. 

 I’m am blessed beyond words to have my community garden to go to and be outside in the sun and soil basically whenever I want”.

Now, on my side, I am sheltering in place with my wife and three daughters. We never expected to have Zoe, our 21-year-old at home with us again and are enjoying this extra time with her.

I hope you, my listeners are well. Please stay home and stay safe! 

In this episode, I am on the phone with Gil Lopez the founder of Smiling Hogshead Ranch an urban garden in Queens New York. 

The Smiling Hogshead Ranch started 9 years ago as a “guerilla garden” on a set of abandoned railroad tracks. After many backs on forth with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, they managed to secure a lease.

Today the Ranch is an agriculture farm and community garden by day, and a social club and cultural venue. 

-- Gil, I have read that you see the more important effects of community gardens as being psychological, off-setting mindsets of commodification and enhancing ideas of community.

The coronavirus is devastating our economy, deeply impacting our way of life and putting a stop to production and consumption. It is a costly reminder that in order to survive our communities must transition to a more resilient model. 

Book

Basic Call To Consciousness 

by Akwesasne Notes 

Documentaries (YouTube)

HyperNormalisation: by Adam Curtis

The Century of the Self

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Back in America is a podcast exploring America's culture, values, and identity. This episode is part of a series on positive initiatives to save our planet. In his last interview, Stan Berteloot spoke with Navi Radjou about the frugal economy. Today, he is talking to Bruno Sarda, an internationally renowned expert in sustainability. 

For years, corporations have advertised their green initiatives to reassure both investors and customers about their sustainable practices. Yet as we know, climate change is only getting worse, so we wanted to ask Bruno if this was just “greenwashing.” 

On a personal note: Back in America now boasts more than 50 episodes, and we am very grateful to you, our listeners, for your support during all this time. This summer, Stan will be going back to France for the first time in two years, and he will take a podcast break until September. 

However, Back in America’s interns Josh and Emma will be keeping the lights on by releasing podcast episodes and newsletter articles (subscribe here).

Josh has been working on a series of episodes discussing American music and poetry, which will be released every week in July and August.

So Back in America will be in summer mode, and we know you will love it!

To learn more about Bruno Sarda check out his Linkedin profile.

Today I am speaking with someone who wants to be a voice for the voiceless.

Someone passionate about civil justice. I am talking with Thomas Parker or Tommy, as he likes to be called.
Tommy is 67. He was hired as a janitor in 1979 by Princeton University and joined the Print and Mail Services of the University in 1983.

In 2011 The University recognized your social engagement with the Martin Luther King Day Journey Award, for Lifetime Service for your role as an advocate and adviser to co-workers and your dedication to community service.
Indeed you work hard both at the university and in the community where you lead numerous organizations to help the underprivileged.

In the early nineties, you organized, with the Labor Relations Director Fred Clarke the first Labor & Management Committee on campus to help with day to day processes of contract enforcement and mutual considerations for bargaining unit protection under the collective bargaining agreement. Today, you are the president of Princeton’s Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 175.

In this interview, Tommy talks about the Freedom Riders who were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern US in 1961 and after to challenge the non-enforcement of the Supreme Court decisions which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. The Southern states had ignored the rulings and the federal government did nothing to enforce them. The first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C. on May 4, 1961.

I ask Tommy about what he thinks of Reparations to the African American and he mentions the 40 acres and a mule, which is part of Special Field Orders No. 15, a post-Civil War promise proclaimed by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman on January 16, 1865, to allot family units, including freed people, a plot of land no larger than 40 acres (16 ha). However, according to Wikipedia, Freed people widely expected to legally claim 40 acres of land (a quarter-quarter section) and a mule after the end of the war. Some freedmen took advantage of the order and took initiatives to acquire land plots along a strip of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida coasts. However, Lincoln's successor, President Andrew Johnson explicitly reversed and annulled proclamations such as Special Field Orders No. 15 and the Freedmen's Bureau Act.

Man Child in the Promised Land
by Claude Brown

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
by Maya Angelou

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I am publishing this episode once again for all of the listeners who might not have heard it yet. 
I find it strangely prophetic and visionary which if you know my guest shouldn't be much of a surprise.

John Micheal Greer a widely respected author and blogger in the fields of nature spirituality and the future of industrial society.
He is the author of more than fifty books and his blog, Ecosophia. He lives in Rhode Island with his wife Sara.
John, a look at your Wikipedia page made me realize that you are a pretty complex person. The most striking aspect of your life for a layman is probably that you are a Druid. When I realized, thanks to you that Druids made their way from Europe to the US was a surprise and I want to learn more about it. 
The reason for my reaching out to you, however, is that you’re one of the leading minds, in the US, behind the concept of societal collapse.
You were quoted on this topic back in 2008. In 2016, you wrote Dark Age America: Climate Change, Cultural Collapse, and the Hard Future Ahead. Since then you published 8 books and countless articles on collapse.

Collapse means that our fossil fuel-based civilization, cannot sustain itself and will fail.
As our world is going through an unprecedented pandemic and is bracing itself for recession I am delighted to get your view on the situation.

John’s blog can be found at https://www.ecosophia.net/

Here is a link to his books on Amazon https://amzn.to/3cANDom

Read the Transcript

Matt Dubberke, Ron Menapace, Fernando Freitas from Homestead Princeton

Ron Menapace owner of Homestead #Princeton talks about his experience from corporate America working in sales for a #Pharma company to creating a home décor and furniture store in Princeton. He shares his challenges competing against large online retailers and the commoditization of furniture as well as his fears of a business slowdown due to the #Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. 

Princeton Homestead is a furniture and home décor store specialized in custom barn wood furniture located in the heart of Princeton, on Palmer square. 

Ron's dad was a carpenter, after a degree in Sport Management Ron also had a stint at woodwork, fixing and refurbishing furniture. Yet he went on to work in sales for a large pharma corporation. 12 years later, however, he and his wife Kristen decided to follow their dreams and, in 2011, opened what was then called the Farmhouse.

Today is March 8, International Women's Day, and on this day I suggest that we listen to Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings and her work for civil justice.

This episode was previously released on Jan. 22, 2021. In this episode of Back in America, I speak with Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, former chair of the Maryland Democratic Party, political consultant, and activist. She recently ran to represent Maryland’s 7th District in Congress after undergoing a double mastectomy.

Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings is the widow of Congressman Elijah Cummings, a good friend of former Congressman John Lewis. When Lewis died in 2020, hundreds of Twitter account accidentally posted memorial photos of Cummings since the two looked so much alike!

On Back in America, Dr. Maya Rockeymoore. Cummings discusses the ongoing fight for civil rights. “I fight for the right to exist. I fight for the right of everyone to be recognized on the level of our common humanity. I fight for the history in this country that has been suppressed. I am the fourth generation from slavery in this country. My parents grew up in the Jim Crow South. My late husband, Elijah Cummings grew up in the Jim Crow South. They were born into a world that denied African Americans the right to exist,” she said.

We also spoke of Black feminism and the importance for Black women to take charge of their struggle against racist and institutionalized patriarchy.

In recent months, Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings has been working to publish We're Better Than This: My Fight for the Future of Our Democracy, her husband’s final, unfinished book. The book came out last September and she talks to me about the importance of getting her husband’s voice out there.

We're Better Than This - My Fight for the Future of Our Democracy

I have edited my interview with Chris Tyler into three installments.

In part 1 we meet Chris. After being a carpenter for 15 years he is thinking about becoming a monk in a Zen monastery.
We discover what its like to seat for hours practicing mindfulness. Chris shares moments of doubt and awakening when what he calls a 'voice,' helps him move forward with his new life.

Listen to part 2 to hear Chris talk about his experience working with victims of domestic violence.

He wants to help men step out of a cycle of trauma and abusive behaviors.

This conversation brings us on the topic of masculinity.

Music from Kabbalistic Village
https://soundcloud.com/kabbalisticvillage

Hi, my name is Stan Berteloot. I'm a French journalist living in Princeton, New Jersey and I'm the host of Back in America.

In this podcast, I explore what makes America, America. To do this. I've met with black activists, abuse survivors, men questioning traditional masculinity, business people, teachers, gay dancers, and politicians

"Well I love America, I think they're very few places in the world. Where are young foreigners can come And be established on a completely equal footing to people who grow up in the culture"

"At no point in time in the history of this country was a black man allowed to be fully seen and to fully represent himself as a man"

"To be American to me is to make your dreams truly come true I mean, I dreamt of being a principal dancer. being gay and married to a man and having children. That was my dream when I was little."

"I was 12. We were also expected, just as we would have if we had been in Mexico is to help contribute to the family and so we went to work in the fields."

"We were all sold a lie that holding in our feelings and not sharing them not talking about them equated with manhood"

"My father was a nuclear engineer and while he was a brilliant man. He was also a monster. My abuse started very young when I was a toddler."

"This young lady. Fade in a meeting which was right on the money. You always talk to us about living in the past or can we get away from the past? How can we get away from the past when the past presents itself in the present?"

In this podcast, I want to understand why people do the things they do. What drives them? And how this culture and this country, is influencing them. Don't miss upcoming episodes of Back in America.

Subscribe now wherever you get your podcast!

The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.

These lines, from the opening pages of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, emphasize unseen background noises as constituting an environment. The bees, working through the grass, create the biological condition of possibility for nature and the world, especially in their unseen state. And, so too, does the roar of London create the background chatter that allows the plot of the novel to take off. In this week’s installment of Poetism, we’d like to ask a similar question about our own age: what is the background noise that has made all this––society, labor, world–– possible?

Michael Leon Thomas, a professor of philosophy at Susquehanna University, joins Josh in the studio to tackle the vicissitudes and interisies of Alfred North Whitehead’s conception of philosophy alongside Pharoah Sanders’ 1973 album Izipho Zam, particularly the 28-minute titular track which closes the album. For Whitehead, a worldview is always in the process of emerging, and our language needs to follow suit. A reformed logician, Whitehead balks against a wholly systematic view of philosophy, suggesting that it is in the gaps, silences, and wetness of philosophy that something happens.

And to figure out what this something might be, we turn to Pharoah Sanders’ enigmatic, if expansive, composition which traverses through various languages, instruments, and cosmologies. The bandleader himself cannot be heard until the last third of the track, creating and leaving space (a society?) in which music creation can happen. In other words, it’s a slow reconditioning process.

Along the way, Michael and I talk about why he’s decided to spend his life with philosophy, how experience feeds into our listening habits, the postcolony of American, and why philosophy might have more in common with poetry than one might assume.

To read more about Michael’s work on music, check out an interview in Aesthetics with Birds.

Here is the 2016 Pharoah Sanders performance mentioned in the episode.

***

For Poetism, stay tuned for next week’s episode on Brigit Pegeen Kelly and the Cocteau Twins with Scott Stevens

Part 1/2

I am Stan Berteloot and this is Back in America, a podcast where I explore American's identity, culture, and values.

My guest today is a candidate running as an independent for president of the United States. A man who's not white, not black but a dual citizen of The United States and The Navajo Nation.

For three years he lived with his family in a one-room hogan with no running water or electricity out in a Navajo reservation. He dreams of a nation where 'we the people' truly means 'all the people'.

Yet as we prepare to celebrate Memorial day he reminds us of the “ethnic cleansing and genocide” the United States carried against the indigenous peoples of this land.

Welcome to Back in America Mark Charles.

Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery
by Steven Newcomb 

Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery
by Mark Charles, Soong-Chan Rah

Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action (2005)
Director: Roberta Grossman

Somebody's Daughter by Rain 

Hello Back in America's fan!

I hope that you are well and safe wherever in the world you are. This is a short update about the podcast and myself.

The podcast is doing very very well. I am receiving amazing feedback and have some exciting interviews lined up.

On a personal note, we've moved over the memorial day weekend and we are living among boxes. Since my wife my 3 daughters and our 2 dogs are all sharing the same roof 24/7 I struggle to find a quiet space to record...

Anyway, I want to find a way to engage more with you and this is why I would like that you go to backinamericathepodcast.com or the Facebook page Back in America and that you subscribe to our mailing list for exclusive content.

Once part of the list, you will receive, from time to time unique content and opportunity to influence the conversation.

Also, I am very excited to announce that I will soon release an interview with Mark Charles a Native American who's a candidate for the US presidential election. Rember to subscribe to the mailing list.

Stay safe
And share your love for this podcast!

What is really at question is the American way of life. What is really at question is whether Americans already have an identity or are still sufficiently flexible to achieve one. This is a painfully complicated question, for what now appears to be the American identity is really a bewildering and sometimes demoralizing blend of nostalgia and opportunism. ––James Baldwin

In recent months, shows about Jewish thought and theology (Pretend it’s a City, Unorthodox) have populated Netflix’s “Trending Now” tab. But what does it mean to be an American Jew in 2021? Why are many Jews today turning towards Hasidism and more conservative forms of religion in a time of unprecedented secularism? Are spirituality and personal faith compatible with traditional Jewish precepts? Why is it the case that Jews have both benefited from and been victimized by white nationalism? And how does Zionism, Jewish nationalism, fit into this story?

To think about these questions, Podcast Editor Josh Wagner spoke with Sam Shonkoff, Professor Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) in Berkeley, California as well as two of his students. Sam’s research delves into the intersection between secular spiritual practices and the contemporary Hasidic movement, especially in the thought of not-quite theologian Martin Buber. For Buber, religion was less about acting according to the letter of the law than cultivating a sense of “embodied theology” in the everyday––faith as less of a regulating authority than source of spiritual transformation (tiqqun). His students, Eva Sturm-Gross and Jonah Gelfand both took Sam’s Jewish Mysticism seminar at Oberlin College and became fascinated with the downright odd and weird mystics in Jewish thought. Eva is a junior from Vermont who works at a bakery and is majoring in Studio Art and Religion with a minor in Jewish Studies. Jonah just graduated from Oberlin last June and has followed Sam to the GTU and hopes to continue his personal and professional engagement with Jewish thought. Both Eva and Jonah grew up as secular Reform Jews, yet have decided to become more seriously devout. 

While their experience cannot speak for all American Jews, Sam, Eva, and Jonah tell a story about their return to a practical faith in a time of uncertainty and doubt.

To find out more, listen to the episode on Podbean, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you usually find your podcasts!

Links: 

Sam’s latest book on contemporary Hasidism, edited with Rabbi Ariel Evan Mayse: Hasidism: Writings on Devotion, Community, and Life in the Modern World

The book on top of Sam’s desk at the time of recording this episode: The Obligated Self

Maternal Subjectivity and Jewish Thought by Mara H. Benjamin

Eva’s art Instagram

Martin Buber’s I and Thou

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In this episode, I speak with John Michael Greer (JMG) an author and blogger in the fields of nature spirituality, and the future of industrial society.  He is the author of more than fifty books and a blogger.  He lives in Rhode Island with his wife Sara.

Our conversation takes us to the suburbs of Seattle in the 70s. We discuss Druidry since JMG is a druid and ecology.

John is one of the leading minds, in the US, behind the concept of societal collapse.

He was quoted on this topic back in 2008. In 2016, he wrote Dark Age America: Climate Change, Cultural Collapse, and the Hard Future Ahead. Since then John published eight books and countless articles on collapse.

Collapse means that our fossil fuel-based civilization, cannot sustain itself and will fail.

As our world is going through unprecedented pandemic and is bracing itself for what might be also an unprecedented recession.

John’s blog can be found at https://www.ecosophia.net/

Here is a link to his books on Amazon https://amzn.to/3cANDom

Join our exclusive mailing list!

"COVID-19 has created a worldwide public health crisis, and the resulting lockdowns and social distancing measures have sent most country’s economies into a severe downturn. But we believe these crises are only the tip of the pandemic’s iceberg," writes Mario Iacobacci and Mathieu Laberge in a recent Deloitte study.
"There is another crisis looming – a human crisis," they add.  "Our past research ... has revealed a potential for increased incidences of mental illness, poorer educational outcomes, an increase in substance abuse and crime, and the weakening of the community fabric."
 
The researchers called on the governments to get ready for the looming crisis. It is particularly striking that they stressed the need for employers to address employees' mental health, reviewing the mix of employee benefits and to see how to better accommodate employees in this stressful period, sometimes by introducing flexible benefit options that respond to different needs from employees at different stages in life. 

Since 1989 in France, employers must 1989 ensure the physical and mental well being of their employees. This is in line with the European tradition of social class differences and community solidarity. 
The American tradition is influenced by the like of Locke, Jefferson, Smith, and Mill, and favors individual freedom and economic freedom.

In the US, a country of hard work, individualism, and personal privacy culture, many corporations are hesitant to tackle employees well being.

Indeed, The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply impacted our lives as families sheltered in place and juggled homeschooling, work from home together with keeping their household afloat. According to a poll conducted in mid-July, by non-profit 
Kaiser Family Foundation 53% of adults in the United States reported that their mental health has been negatively impacted due to worry and stress over the coronavirus. This is significantly higher than the 32% reported in March.

In this episode of Back in America: corporate America, COVID and Employees well being, or lack of.

Back In America speaks with Glenda Wrenn a psychiatrist, chief medical officer for Franklin, Tenn.-based 180 Health Partners, and previously the founding director of the Kennedy Satcher Center for Mental Health Equity in the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine.

"I think we are addicted to working in our culture," said Glenda Wrenn. "it is promoted by our work environments. What is the incentive for your employer to get you to slow down? You're rewarded for working more. I know this from personal experience as a true recovering workaholic. I love working. I do. I really love working. And it has been such a process for me to redirect that energy to my home. The same excellence that I put into doing mental health policy work, now I'm just redirecting it at home. I'm giving it to myself and my family. I was honestly incapable of doing that before this pandemic."

A People's History of the United States 
by Howard Zinn 

Between the World and Me
by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America
by John Lewis

Hello back in America fans!

This is just a quick update - Tomorrow on Thursday at 8 PM we are releasing an amazing interview of the principal dancer at the Boston Ballet. John Lam is the son of Vietnamese refugees. He grew up in a poor neighborhood of San Fransisco, is gay which in his parents' culture is pretty tough, yet he married a man and had two sons.

I look forward to your comments after you’ve heard this amazing story

Talking of engaging with my listeners.

If you want to know more about the adventure of back in America if you want to see behind the scene video if you want to hear soundbites from my interviews before they are aired or if you just want to reach out and give feedback follow back in America on the social media
on Instagram Facebook and on YouTube, just search for Back in America.

Once again if you like back in America make sure you share it with your friends, with your family, and help people discover the podcast it would mean a lot to me.

Back in America explores the American's identity, culture, and values. 

In this podcast, journalist Stan Berteloot explores American life stories from his French perspective and questions the way we understand this nation.

​Each episode explores why and how Americans do what they do. While easy and entertaining to listen to, Stan doesn't shy away from difficult and personal questions and explores issues from different angles and perspectives. Every topic is game; politics, social issues, climate crises, gender issues, racial issues, sex, and diversity... and everything else in-between.

Provocative ideas for inquisitive and open-minded listeners. 

Read the episode's transcript

These soundbites are taken from 12 episodes of Back in America, recorded between November 2019 and August 2020. They are representative of the diversity of the guests and of the topics addressed.

Here are in order of appearance in the trailer the list of interviewees.  

Eric is a Black activist and social worker in Philadelphia.

We speak about being a black man in America; the impact of slavery. The impact of Trump election; consumerism.

Sheri is the CEO and founder of VictimsVoice an app that provides a legally admissible way for victims to document abuse incidents.

Sheri speaks about her father’s abuse that started when she was a toddler, her recovery from post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD, and how she reclaimed her life to become who she is today.

Denis Devine a 46 years old man from Fishtown, Philadelphia. Denis, an ex-journalist, is the organizer of Dad's night a monthly meeting of men.

For the last 6 years, Denis' Dads Night has brought together dads from his neighborhoods at different bars.

This safe space allows men to address topics related to dad-hood, dads-related cause, and non-traditional understandings of masculinity.

Elan Leibner is the chair of the Pedagogical Section Council of North America and a teacher at the Waldorf School of Princeton. Elan grew up in Israel, lived in a kibbutz, and moved to the US at the age of 23. He was a class teacher at there for 18 years, before directing the Teacher Education program at Emerson College in England.

John Lam, is the principal dancer at the Boston Ballet.

His parents immigrated to California from Vietnam. He grew up in an underprivileged household and discovered his love for dance at the age of four.

I met Imani at the Kneel for justice protest in Princeton.

She was one of the speakers. She is a Prospective Molecular Biology Major at Princeton University.

Gil Lopez is the founder of Smiling Hogshead Ranch an urban garden in Queens New York. 

The Smiling Hogshead Ranch started 9 years ago as a “guerilla garden” on a set of abandoned railroad tracks. After many backs on forth with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Gil managed to secure a lease.

Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Price talks to Back in America about the current racial unrest, about meritocracy, the values, culture, and identity of this country. We speak about the separation between the military and the government and of the current administration.

Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Price is known for his published research on terrorism and counterterrorism. 

Mark is a candidate running as an independent for president of the United States. A man who's not white, not black but a dual citizen of The United States and The Navajo Nation.

For three years he lived with his family in a one-room hogan with no running water or electricity out in a Navajo reservation. He dreams of a nation where 'we the people' truly means 'all the people'.

Richard Heinberg is a Senior Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute and one of the world’s foremost advocates for a shift away from our current reliance on fossil fuels.

Erden Eruç, a Turkish-American adventurer, is the 1st man to do a solo a circumnavigation by human power. He has done it on a 24-foot ocean rowing boat. He & his wife Nancy Board joined Back in America to discussed the challenges and the mental health issues experienced by Erden upon return.

In July 2020, according to the census bureau, nearly 25 million people would not be able to pay rent in the next month and almost 30 million people said they didn't have enough to eat.

Without federal intervention, housing experts and advocates warn of an unprecedented wave of eviction in the coming month. Louise Kekulah is a woman who grew up in Liberia, Africa. Moved by herself in the US as a child. Had a baby, graduated from Rutgers, and now works as a counselor for families at risk of losing their children.

Happy July! While Stan and the usual Back in America podcast are on a hiatus this summer, Podcast Editor Josh Wagner will be hosting a new series entitled Poetism, tracing the foundations of and influences behind American poetry and music.

Each week, Josh will invite a guest on the air to talk about an unusual pairing of a poem and song––seeing how they overlap and converse with one another. In the process, we hope to expose listeners to new poets and songs and make a case for the enduring relevance of poetry in an age of digital and visual media.

In our inaugural episode, Josh is joined by Fang Liu, a linguistics major from Stanford, to talk about memory and imagination in Patrick Rosal’s 2015 ekphrastic poem “Children Walk on Chairs to Cross a Flooded Schoolyard” and The Doors’ “Wild Child” off of the 1969 record The Soft Parade.

Stay tuned for next week’s episode on sensations of loneliness through the Airborne Toxic Event’s early 2000s bop “Numb” and poet Lisa Robertson’s R’s Boat (2010).

First published on November 18, 2019

When a French journalist returns to live in the US 25 years after leaving it as a student, he struggles to recognize the country he loves. He embarks on conversations with Americans of all backgrounds in a quest to understand what America means today.

This was the first installment of Back in America.

The episode is part of a series on masculinity in America.

Here I speak to Eric Marsh a Black activist and a social worker in Philadelphia. 

We speak about being a Black man in America; the impact of slavery. The impact of the Trump election; consumerism.

We discuss an art piece by Hank Willis Thomas, Branded Head, a photo of a Black man’s head with the shape of the Nike swoosh, and what Thomas called commodifiable blackness.

I am Stan Berteloot and this is Back in America. Today I am speaking with Richard Heinberg a Senior Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, and one of the world’s foremost advocates for a shift away from our current reliance on fossil fuels.

Richard has written for many publications including Nature, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, The American Prospect, Public Policy Research, Quarterly Review just to name a few. He’s been quoted by Reuters, the Associated Press, and Time Magazine, and has appeared on Good Morning America, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Al-Jazeera, and C-SPAN, NPR and others. Leonardo DiCaprio’s called on Richard’s expertise for his documentary the 11th Hour.

Richard, I wanted to speak with you about a topic that’s increasingly present in Europe and which is making its way into North America that’s the concept of our society’s collapse or l’effondrement has it is now called in French.

The idea is that the process by which basic needs (water, food, shelter, clothing, energy, etc.) are no longer provided (at a reasonable cost) to a majority of the population by services regulated by law. 

As Pablo Servigne puts it, collapse is both distant and close, slow and fast, gradual and brutal. It involves not only natural events but also (and above all) political, economic and social shocks, as well as events of a psychological nature.

Collapse means that our fossil fuel-based civilization, cannot sustain itself and will fail. 

People that study how societies collapse believe that tomorrow is going to be very different from today. That no green energy and no technology are going to save our way of life. Not even the concept of degrowth will work since we can’t force humanity into stopping production and consumption, especially in developing countries. So yes, they say, we are running into a wall.

But what’s interesting is that that same person, those that a convinced that we will sooner or later collapse are also full of hope. They say that we have to do everything we can today to smoothen this collision. We have to decelerate, we have to put on our seatbelt and prepare everyone for the shock.

They are convinced that preparing for the world to come will give us hope as we work to create for a better society, more collective and resilient.

Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market
by David Fleming

Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It Hardcover
David Fleming

And here is a link to Richard's many books

The death of George Floyd, a black man who died on Memorial Day after he was pinned down by a white police officer, has sparked protests across the United States and even abroad.

In France, the event has even revived anger over the death of Adama Traore a black Frenchman who died in police custody 4 years ago. Some 20,000 people demonstrated in Paris on Tuesday.

I met my guest at the Kneel for justice protest yesterday in Princeton.
She was one of the speakers.
She is a Prospective Molecular Biology Major at Princeton University. Welcome to Back in America Imani Mulrain

She recommends watching the following video 
how to financially help BLM with NO MONEY/leaving your house (Invest in the future for FREE)

 to help the Black Lives Matter movement

Transcript

In this episode, I speak to Share My Meals's President and Co-Founder Isabelle Lambotte about her vision for Share My Meals Inc. The non-profit was initially created to fight hunger by recovering meal surplus from corporations and Universities cafeterias.
Since the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, Share My Meals's volunteers are working non-stop to feed the community in need.

Councilwoman Michelle Pirone Lambros from the Municipality of Princeton comments on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on restaurants and businesses in Princeton.

Two restaurant owners Michele Moriello of La Mezzaluna, and husband and wife Amar Gautam and Amanda Maher owner of The Meeting House a new restaurant in Princeton are sharing their experiences. Both restaurants have decided to keep a reduced team and to partner with Share My Meals to cook meals for the families served by Isabelle and her team of volunteers.

Patty Yates, is an African American community leader and a Share My Meals recipient. She talks of the need of her community and explains how she redistributes the meals received from the non-profit to her community.

Visit Share My Meals at https://sharemymeals.org/

Hilary Porta is a leading mindset expert and life architect who helps people design a career and life they love by combining neuroscience-based mindset coaching to shatter the mental limits and provide strategy and a framework for an epic life.

Hilary travels across the globe not only speaking on stages both domestically and internationally but also where she helps Fortune 500 CEOs, professional motorsport as well as pro sports (think: Formula One driver, NFL ) to level up and become unstoppable.

However, life hasn’t always been easy for Hilary. She went through some very dark times but that's where she learned the power of resilience and choice and has turned her loss into leverage.

Hilary Porta's website

• The Kindness diaries
• The Noticer: Sometimes, all a person needs is a little perspective

In July, according to the census bureau nearly 25 million people reported they had little to no confidence they would be able to pay rent in the next month and almost 30 million people said they didn't have enough to eat.

Without federal intervention, housing experts and advocates warn of an unprecedented wave of eviction in the coming month and one far more devastating than the 2008 crisis.

Today I am releasing a series of two episodes on housing assistance.

In this episode, I speak with Louise Kekulah, a woman who grew up in Liberia, Africa. Moved by herself in the US as a child. Had a baby, graduated from Rutgers, and now works as a counselor for families at risk of losing their children.

The fact that Louise is very bright and highly driven probably explains how she managed to do so well. Yet, she says that the Housing Initiatives of Princeton has changed her life and allowed her to bounce back and secure a better carrier. You will hear Louise mention Carol. 

In part two I then speak with Carol Golden the chair of Housing Initiatives of Princeton and also a member of the Affordable Housing Board of Princeton.

Richard Heinberg is a Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute and is regarded as one of the world’s top advocates for a shift away from our current dependence on fossil fuels. He is also the author of thirteen books on climate and energy.

Today, in this episode I am releasing the complete interview I had with Richard on November 11. This interview was broadcasted live and you can watch it on Youtube. 

Richard and I talk about the election and what impact the new government might have on the environment.

Richard asks, who's going to cleaning up the fracking mess as the oil and gas companies go bankrupt? 

We wonder if Trump in the time he has left at the White House can do more damages to the climate and Richard warns that Biden will need to prepare Americans for the hard change looming ahead.

If you enjoy this podcast please share it with your friend and leave us a review on Apple podcast.

I would like to wish you all a happy holiday and to thank you for your incredible support in 2020. A big shout out to my top fans: Celine, Missy, Jon, Caroline, Natja, Nicolas, Mark, Aurelia, Ben, Zoe. 

Our Intern is Josh Wagner and he is busy editing the episode on the BBC Series Enslaved: The Lost History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

I hope to be publishing it before the end of the month. make sure you listen to it as we are working on a new no linear format mixing the interviews with great soundtracks. Bye for now and have a great day.   

This is part 3, the final part of my interview with Chris Tylor, in parts 1 and 2 we learned how he worked as a carpenter for 15 years. How he went on to lived in a Zen monastery for a year before deciding to go back to university for graduate social studies.

Here in episode 11, part 3 we talk about white men's privileges and reparations to the African-Americans.

How can white, educated men deal with the reckoning of their privileges?

As often in this podcast, I will ask Chris where he thinks this country will be in five years from today and what it means to be an American.

Music from Kabbalistic Village
https://soundcloud.com/kabbalisticvillage

As Biden announces new executive actions on gun control, the Back in America team invites you to re-listen to an episode on guns in America, initially published on Oct. 23, 2020.

In his executive actions today, Biden restricted the sale of “ghost guns,” untraceable guns which are sold in kits.

Today’s announcements are less expansive than the president’s initial campaign promises. Yet, administration officials suggest that these measures are only the first steps of Biden’s plans for addressing gun violence. Further legislation will require Congressional approval and include a nationwide assault weapons ban (something that Australia successfully adopted 25 years ago) and universal background checks.

The following episode is an edited version of live interviews that were recorded on October 20th and 21st. 2020. You can watch the entire broadcast on Back in America’s YouTube channel.  

A few weeks ago Jon, a good college friend, visited us for the weekend. At night, we were joined by a couple living next door and we started to talk about politics as we drank beers by the fire pit in the backyard.

In the backyard were two French nationals (my wife and I) joined by three Americans.

I can't remember exactly how or why Jon started to talk about gun rights, but the conversation became serious when he professed not only his belief in the right to bear arms but also that it was essential to the protection of civilians against the tyranny of the government. Historically, the people most affected by governmental tyranny (forced displacement, slavery) have been denied access to firearms and the ability to use them.

This made me dig further into the American gun debate. I've learned that many citizens support the idea of owning any type of gun and that some believe that it is a God-given right.

What has God got to do with guns? How can a democracy work when its citizens trust their guns more than their votes? And with the recent bankruptcy of the NRA, will gun control actually work?

To try to make sense of all this we are going to hear from three people: first, my friend Jon Phebus will clarify his views; then David Treibs, a Christian and gun activist, will talk about his God-given right to bear arms. Finally, SUNY Cortland’s Professor Robert Spitzer, an expert on constitutional law and gun control, will offer his interpretation of the constitution and bring some historical context to the debate.

Love Letter to America by Tomas Schuman

The Persecutor by Sergei Kourdakov 

Marx & Satan by Richard Wurmbrand

The Politics of Gun Control by Robert J. Spitzer

Casablanca (1942)

Elegy

Who would I show it to

In this short one-line poem, W.S. Merwin condenses the anguish of loss, of being alive, and of the limitations of languages into a neat little package. Why write in the absence of finality? And what happens when mortality catches up with us?

In this installment of Poetism, Podcast Editor Josh Wagner takes to the studio to ask about the honesty of writing––can writing ever reflect a true impression of reality? To field such questions about life, poetry, and everything in between, Stanford graduate student Gabriel Ellis takes the mic. Studying musicology, Gabriel focuses on contemporary pop music, and especially what he terms “anaesthetics,” music that describes, induces, or creates a sense of narcotic escape.

Our conversation loosely tracks Gabriel’s musical career before turning to Jos Charles’ 2018 poetry collection feeld, which he reads in a faux-Chaucerian accent: “i care so much abot the whord i cant reed.” Then, we talk about the late SOPHIE’s 2018 track “Immaterial” off of Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides to explore a sonic tapestry of vibe.

Stay tuned at your dials for next week’s episode of Poetism, featuring dead Irish myths, Seamus Heany, Hozier, and more Stanford friends!

Note: Both Charles and SOPHIE identify as trans and use she/them pronouns, so we use both interchangeably.

In this episode, Back in America’s host, Stan Berteloot speaks with Navi Radjou, internationally renowned Indian-French-American scholar, innovation and leadership advisor, and bestselling author based in New York. Navi’s most recent book, Frugal Innovation: How To Do More With Less, shows how companies can innovate faster, better, and more sustainably. 

The conversation focuses on Navi’s work on developing an alternative to capitalism and concrete actions individuals and businesses are taking to build a better, more sustainable world.

“My job is to introduce Americans to new ways of doing business, new ways of creating economic and social value in a sustainable way,” says Radjou. 

He describes the “frugal economy” as a new economy that is built on business-to-business (b2b) sharing, local production from micro-factories, the notion of regeneration, or how companies can consciously have a positive impact on society and the planet.

Since Navi is multicultural, the episode focuses on the values, culture, and identity of America. Navi comments on an excerpt from a previous Back in America interview with American writer and thinker John Michael Greer. 

In the audio clip, we hear Greer say that America is all about independence and every man for himself, while European countries have a more communal attitude.

In response, Navi asked: “Why do we have to choose? Why can we have both? Why can we go into a kind of the third dimension where we try to integrate the goodness of America, the goodness of Europe? The ideal society,” he says, “is the one that tried to find the sweet spot between maximizing individual expression while contributing to social integration.”

Navi backs up his theories with concrete examples of companies, such as Xometry, People + Work Connect from Accenture, Unilever, Civica RX, or Convoy that are currently working according to the frugal economy precept.

Here are two of Radjou’s articles on Frugal Economy and B2B Sharing :

The Rising Frugal Economy

The sharing economy’s next target: Business-to-business

The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium Paperback 

by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 

The Life Divine Paperback 

by Sri Aurobindo

Losers on Netflix 

Watch the full, unedited, interview on YouTube

This episode was originally recorded live and you can watch the entire interview on our YouTube channel.

Trica Baker was the VP of Marketing Services at Merrill Lynch for 13 years before leaving her job to take care of her teenage son who was struggling with severe depression.

After battling this disease for three long years, her son tragically committed suicide. In the aftermath of those dark days, Tricia fell into a terrible depression and suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress, barely able to leave her bed.

Yet, her dog Miki, guided by a mysterious instinct, helped her deal with her depression and got her out of bed each day. “Miki saved my life,” says Tricia.

In this episode of Back in America, the podcast we hear from Tricia who has since dedicated her life to training dogs to prevent suicide.

You can find Tricia’s suicide prevention organization, Attitudes In Reverse, at  https://air.ngo/. 

20 Paws is her dog training business: https://20paws.com/. 

If you or a loved one is depressed or having suicidal thoughts, the suicide prevention text line can be found by texting ‘AIR’ to 741 741. To speak to a counselor call 1 (800) 273-TALK (8255) or go online: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/. 

Careful listeners of Back in America may have noticed that we have expanded our team and welcomed two interns to research, record and write the podcast alongside me, Stan Berteloot.

In the spirit of transparency, I’d like for you to formally meet my interns Josh Wagner and Emma Myers in true podcast fashion as they interview each other!

They also discuss their own exciting projects coming soon: be on the lookout for Josh’s Poetry and Eugenics series both releasing this summer, and Emma’s deep dive into the history of vaccine hesitancy and medical ethics later this month.

This episode was originally published on December 17, 2020

In this episode, I interview three crew members of the EPIX / BBC docuseries Enslaved: The Lost History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

While 2020 has been a year of intense examination of racism in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, Enslaved takes a deep dive at the historical realities of the Middle Passage. Starring Samuel L. Jackson, The Guardian’s Afua Hirsh, and investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici, the series travels across the globe to sites of slave ships to uncover what these sunken graveyards can reveal about life onboard––lives of which there is little historical record or archive. 

Our first guest is the British marine archaeologist Dr. Sean Kingsley who served as a historical advisor to the series’ diving crew.

Then two of the divers will join me: Kinga Philipps and Kramer Wimberley.  An award-winning journalist, writer, TV host, and esteemed member of the Explorer’s Club, Kinga provided a European perspective to the shoot, and also was one of the few non-Black divers for Enslaved. Next, Kramer will introduce himself as the series’ lead diving instructor who also leads “Diving with a Purpose,” a maritime archaeology program that protects the legacy of the Transatlantic slave trade shipwrecks.

Each of the three interviews was broadcasted live and can be watched in full on the Back in America’s YouTube channel.

As I conducted these interviews, I wanted to understand two things. First, what did diving on the wrecks of slave ships us about the history of the slave trade. Then, I wanted the divers to speak about their own experiences as they dived and explored these sunken mass graves, especially in light of recent activism in America.

Dr Sean Kingsley Wreckwatch Mag 

Kramer Wimberly Diving With a Purpose

Kinga Philipps

This episode was partially edited by Back in America’s Podcast Editor Josh Wagner.

I am speaking with John Lam, the principal dancer at the Boston Ballet.

John is joining me via Skype from his home in Quincy Massachusetts.

His parents immigrated to California from Vietnam. He grew up in an underprivileged household and discovered his love for dance at the age of 4 at Marin Ballet, through the Performing Stars of Marin a children's program that has helped some of the most impoverished children in the Bay Area. 

John’s parents were definitely not expecting him to be gay, become a professional dancer, mary a man and raise two sons. He constantly had to fight against the expectations of his culture, his peers, and his family.

John Lam: When John was 14,  at Marin Ballet, Mikko Nissinen cast the young dancer. 16 years later, John and Mikko continue to work together, John as Principal Dancer and Mikko as Boston Ballet's Artistic Director.

At age 35 John is the first Vietnamese American male in history to become a principal dancer in a major ballet company.

At the beginning of the podcast, I mention a story in Dance Magazine that states that almost 60% of the men in dance companies were gay. The same article writes that as if to protect their own macho image,  Americans, in particular, love to embrace the idea that the stereotype of male dancers automatically being gay. Here is the link 

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In this episode, I talk with Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Price about the current racial unrest, about meritocracy, the values, culture, and identity of this country. 

We speak about the separation between the military and the government and of the current administration.

Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Price is known for his published research on terrorism and counterterrorism.  He holds a B.S. from the U.S. Military Academy in U.S. history, an M.A. in international relations from St. Mary’s University (TX), and an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University.

Bryan and I talk about leadership -- he is the Founding Executive Director at the Buccino Leadership Institute at Seton Hall University. 

During the interview, Bryan shared a story that exemplifies George Washington’s leadership skills, he then asked: “You can probably guess some individuals that that are in power today. What if they were the George Washington at that time? How differently would our country have a look like?”

I ask him if he thinks that the military will escort Donald Trump from the White House should the president loses the election and refuse to leave his office.

For my guest, American is a dream, not a reality. Yet he believes that American is the greatest experiment of democracy that the world has ever known and that's a worthwhile cause to fight for. 

Alexis de Tocqueville -- Democracy in America

David Lipsky -- Absolutely American

Ron Chernow -- Washington: A Life

Facebook

Twitter @BryanPrice7

Top Mental Game

She listen to a little of that D’Angelo music, some love’s melody, sophisticated-type rap, which she say sounds more like real music, like intelligent music, than some of that other music, then she cuts the radio off ––Gayl Jones, The Healing

Like the narrator in Gayl Jones’ The Healing, this week’s installment of Poetism focuses on and around “black music,” that is music which conveys a specific feeling of a sensation or time without explaining anything. For me, it’s like being a child at an adult’s card table; no one tells you how the game works, you have to learn by being attentive and tuning into the tricks at hand. But the joy is in the puzzle, almost as much as in the rules of the game.

When his producer tried to market his serpentine music as “neo-soul,” D’Angelo rejected that moniker for the more expressive and expansive “black music.” There’s history and respect in his 2014 collaboration with the Vanguard, “Black Messiah,” but also affection, nostalgia, and rage. In scholar D’Angelo’s own words, “it’s all about capturing the spirit. It’s all about capturing the vibe. I’m kinda a first take dude.” 

To tackle such questions of lineage and history, actor and tap dance instructor Johnnie Hobbs joins me in this week’s episode. Our conversation starts with Johnnie’s own background and love for films––especially the rare period piece that displays the mundane. As Sumana Roy and Xander Manshel have noted, it’s rare for art made by people of color about the everyday to be accepted by mainstream culture. The vast majority of literary awards given to writers of color are for historical novels which focus on their ethnic identities. To be taught within the university, Indian novels need to be about what it means to be a postcolonial subject;––it’s uncommon to see a novel about one’s dreams of becoming a famous poet, midnight walks, and family fights.

And Johnnie has developed his own test to see whether a historical film can do more than just showcase violence against Black bodies. In the final minutes of the podcast, we turn towards Amiri Baraka’s “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note” (1961) to unpack it’s own relationship to Black suffering and its future(s).

Stay tuned for next week’s episode on bubblegum pop and Old English verse in Jos Charles’ feeld (2018) and SOPHIE’s “Immaterial” (2018)––guided by anesthetic wizard Gabriel Ellis, who you might remember from his cameo in last week’s installment.

This episode was recorded live on May 26 and includes questions from the audience.

It is part of a series on sustainable initiatives to save our planet. In his latest interviews, host Stan Berteloot spoke with Navi Radjou about the frugal economy and Bruno Sarda about how corporations are experimenting with sustainability. 

Stan’s guest, Stefan Gallard, is a French-American working for Grain de Sail, a company that has built the first modern wind-powered cargo ships. 

Grain de Sail transports wine, coffee beans, and chocolate across the globe in its 80- foot schooner. Its sailboat cargo is an essential part of the company’s green logistics chain.

More information on Grain de Sel at: Graindesailwines.com

Join our exclusive mailing list!

The podcast is an edited version of the first live interview of the podcast Back in America. 

The original can be seen on the Podcast YouTube or FaceBook page.

My guest is a model, a dancer, a singer, and an incredible performer. Look him up on Spotify or wherever you listen to your music and you will understand why he is such a rising star in this industry.

Getting where he is today has been a long and challenging journey. A Journey that started in New York with a drug addict father and abusive stepfather. A journey that took him through homeless shelters and psych wards. Despite the pain and humiliation he somehow managed to make it to school, to rehearsals, and to castings. His determination and hard work paid off. 

The Alvin Ailey Theater hired him to do a series of recitals. He won a modeling contract for 7 for Mankind and for Marc Jacob, which lead to his now 8th year as a  professional model. 

While working as a dancer and a model in New York City, He teamed up with Nate Beats, and D.Gatez, who produced and released his early singles. 

Now living in Los Angeles he is working with Grammy award-winning producer Ebonie Smith. He’s recording his latest music at Atlantic Records and Warner Music studios. He was even invited to become a member of the Recording Academy and is now recognized by the Grammy Board as a recording professional.

https://www.instagram.com/d_cobb

https://www.dcobbnow.com/

Leticia Fraga is the first Latinx ever elected to Princeton Municipal Government.

She has many responsibilities in Princeton. Born in Mexicali, Mexico, Leticia is one of eight children. At the age of 12, she immigrated to the US, settling in Washington State with her family.

During their first five years in the US, she worked in the fields, side by side with her siblings and parents.

With their earnings, the Fraga family was eventually able to purchase their plot of land on which they cultivated asparagus.

In this episode, Leticia shares her experience as a young Mexican immigrant, her first meal at KFC, her difficulty settling in Princeton and how she made it to an elected councilwoman.
Leticia also shares her hope for some of the large projects she is currently working on.

For more information about Leticia Fraga visit her website (you will find the photo that she describes in this episode)

Links to the books mentioned in this episode

Enrique's Journey: The Story of a Boy's Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with His Mother

American Dirt: A Novel

Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

If the particular cannot be repeated, it remains forever lost; and this is why there can be no final closure to mourning. There can only be, alongside of mourning,​ learning to love new particulars ––Louise Fradenburg

In this week’s installment of “Poetism,” we’d like to ask about how words, poems, songs, and other kinds of art objects help bring life to a world. And by world, we mean a perspective, something experienced and understood in the innermost part of our being. Whether faced by inner solitude or loss, words attempt to communicate a state of affairs. But do they have to? Is there a way of placing listeners and readers directly into an experience without only describing it? Are there more direct ways of touching or “worlding” or elegizing? Or, in the words of this week’s poet, a moment: “Stands, the way a status / does in the mind.​​

Perhaps! And it is in this great abyss of a perhaps that this episode takes off. Our working theory is that the sonic qualities of words, and of language in general, can help transmit moods and sensations without the need for specific meanings. To ask such questions, Josh is joined by his college roommate Scott Stevens, a recent English graduate of Stanford University (and incoming Fulbright Scholar) who also speaks in Japanese and French. And, in the course of their dialogue, Scott they are assisted by the Cocteau Twins’ 1984 track “Amelia” off of Treasure as well as Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s “Field Song” from the collection Song (1995).

Over the course of their conversation, Scott and Josh touch upon the uniqueness of sound as a medium of communication, their difficulties of listening to the lyrics of a song, and poetry’s collective oral tradition.

***

For more Poetism, stay tuned for next week’s two-part series finale on Rachel McKibbins, blackface, and FKA twigs.

While President Trump has been calling the Coronavirus the Chinese virus and while the US is facing unprecedented protests against police violence and racial discrimination, Back in America is examining how these events have affected the Chinese Community.

In this episode, I speak with Cecilia Birge a former Montgomery, NJ mayor, a form bond analyst on Wall Street, now a head coach and a member of the Princeton High School Speech and Debate Team.
Cecilia shares her experience organizing fundraising with the Chinese community to help local first responders.
For us, she revisits her childhood in Chineses labor camps. As a student in Bejing during the Tiananmen Protests, she talks of her fear at the time and the turmoil in the city.
Today America is her home and the way she talks about this country and understands it help us see America in a different light. 

As countries worldwide scramble to vaccinate their citizens against the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, governments have to make the uncomfortable calculus of who deserves to get the vaccine right now. The ones who are spreading it the most? The ones in essential high-risk jobs? People over a certain age? That threshold is unclear and hotly contested. With several months to go before vaccines are readily available to any desiring American adult, legislators have to ask The Question: who first? And, as more vaccine becomes available, they will also have to ask whether it is morally justified for the U.S. government to mandate every citizen or every healthcare worker to take the vaccine? If many states mandate every child to be vaccinated against measles, mumps, and rubella, is COVID-19 significantly different?

In August 2020, Justin Bernstein, a philosopher at Florida Atlantic University, co-authored a paper answering precisely this question. And while the state of the world has changed significantly since then, the core question of how governments value their citizens, when, and why remains constant (if you’re curious, the U.S. government places the monetary value of a human life at roughly $10 million).

Podcast Editor Josh Wagner sat down with Justin to ask precisely these burning questions. For Justin, vaccines are just like any other vital resource that the government needs to allocate. And, in his mind, while our government has been failing in its mandate to protect public health, it is still the best means we have. 

Listen in to find out the answers to these questions and more!

Justin’s website

Alexander Guerrero’s blog post about dividing up the United States

In this episode, I interview three crew members of the EPIX / BBC docuseries Enslaved: The Lost History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

While 2020 has been a year of intense examination of racism in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, Enslaved takes a deep dive at the historical realities of the Middle Passage. Starring Samuel L. Jackson, The Guardian’s Afua Hirsh, and investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici, the series travels across the globe to sites of slave ships to uncover what these sunken graveyards can reveal about life onboard––lives of which there is little historical record or archive. 

Our first guest is the British marine archaeologist Dr. Sean Kingsley who served as a historical advisor to the series’ diving crew.

Then two of the divers will join me: Kinga Philipps and Kramer Wimberley.  An award-winning journalist, writer, TV host, and esteemed member of the Explorer’s Club, Kinga provided a European perspective to the shoot, and also was one of the few non-Black divers for Enslaved. Next, Kramer will introduce himself as the series’ lead diving instructor who also leads “Diving with a Purpose,” a maritime archaeology program which protects the legacy of the Transatlantic slave trade shipwrecks.

Each of the three interviews was broadcasted live and can be watched in full on the Back in America’s YouTube channel.

As I conducted these interviews, I wanted to understand two things. First, what did diving on the wrecks of slave ships  us about the history of slave trade. Then, I wanted the divers to speak about their own experiences as they dived and explored these sunken mass graves, especially in light of recent activism in America.

Dr Sean Kingsley Wreckwatch Mag 

Kramer Wimberly Diving With a Purpose

Kinga Philipps

This episode was partially edited by Back in America’s Podcast Editor Josh Wagner.

Je suis Stan Berteloot et vous écoutez Back in America, un podcast où j’explore la société américaine à travers des parcours de vie hors du commun !

Cette interview est pour la première fois en français.

Mon invitée est la peintre française Carole Jury. Carole vit à Princeton dans le New Jersey depuis cinq ans. Elle est à l’origine du groupement « Women Artists I From France to USA ». Hyper active, et de plus en plus sollicitée, elle expose aux quatre coins des Etats-Unis, en Europe et à Dubaï.

La peinture a toujours eu une place centrale dans la vie de cette femme de 44 ans, mais l’art restait un hobby, une passion jusqu’à son installation à Princeton, dans le New Jersey avec son mari Kamel et ses trois enfants.

Avant de signer sa lettre de démission, Carole était responsable de la communication d’une grande entreprise de l’industrie chimique et pour elle l’idée de rester à la maison, loin de ses racines et sans sa propre identité, était une perspective inédite et difficile.

Lorsque nous avons préparé cet entretien, Carole m’a dit, “Je suis devenue ‘la femme de mon mari’. Ne plus avoir de profession c’était comme perdre mon identité.”

En effet d’après le baromètre Humanis-Lepetitjournal.com seuls 14% des professionnelles envoyées à l’étranger sont des femmes, qui partent en solo pour un tiers d’entre elles. En conséquence, dans 91% des cas, le conjoint d’expatrié est une femme, qui met très souvent sa carrière entre parenthèses.
Par ailleurs, malgré un niveau d’études élevé (un bac + 4 et trois langues parlées dans 72% des cas), seule la moitié des conjoints qui veulent travailler – ils sont 8 sur 10 – trouve un emploi sur place.

C’est donc dans ce contexte que Carole devient consultante en communication pour des entreprises françaises installées aux Etats-Unis.

Mais la peinture ne te quitte pas et, un an après son arrivée, elle s’y consacre à temps plein.

L'amie prodigieuse, Elena Ferrante

Le site web de Carole Jury

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

Back in America is a podcast exploring America’s culture, values, and identity. This conversation was recorded live on September 17. You can watch the unedited version on our Youtube channel. 

Listen to this episode to learn more about the release of the Pentagon report on UFOs to Congress. The importance of cosmos exploration. The chances of finding extraterrestrial life in our lifetime.

After taking a long summer break during which my intern Josh Wagner took over Back in America with his excellent series Poetism I am happy to be back behind the mic.

My guest, Seth Shostak is a Doctor in Astronomy, and an Alien Hunter working with the SETI Institute, a research organization whose mission is to explore, understand, and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe. In fact, SETI stands for the "search for extraterrestrial intelligence". He has published more than 400 articles on science including regular contributions to NBC News MACH, gives many dozens of talks annually, and is the host of the SETI Institute’s weekly science radio show, “Big Picture Science.” 

During our conversation, he said, “The equipment is getting faster and faster. We're looking at more and more of the universe. And on that basis that I've bet everyone a cup of Starbucks coffee, that we will find some evidence that we're not alone by 2035.

The SETI Institute https://www.seti.org/

Dr. Soth Shostak http://sethshostak.com/

The Big Picture Science Podcast https://radio.seti.org/

Rejoignez notre mailing list exclusive

Aujourd'hui, et une fois n'est pas coutume,  Back in America est en français et contrairement aux épisodes précédents nous n'allons pas traiter de la culture, des valeurs et de l'identité des Etats-Unis.

Mon invité, Thierry Sauvage, va me rejoindre dans quelques instants. Si je lui ai demandé de partager son expérience avec Back in America c'est qu'à l'image de beaucoup de mes invités interviewés depuis le début de la pandémie de COVID, cette période a été pour lui l'occasion de réfléchir sur sa vie. 

Eric Marsh nous disait que les Américains ont profités du confinement pour réaliser l'ampleur du racisme systémique aux Etats-Unis. Glenda Wrenn de son côté à redécouvert ses enfants et l'intérêt de diner ensemble chaque soir. D'autres ont été confrontés à la dépression et aux violences domestiques. Positivement ou non, le COVID n'épargne personne.

A New York, depuis mars, plus de 246 000 personnes ont quittés la ville ce qui représente une augmentation de presque 100 % par rapport à la même période en 2019. En France, d'après le magazine Capital, 1 cadre parisien sur 2 envisage une mobilité régionale. 

Pour mon invité, la COVID 19 a été le déclencheur d'un changement de vie radicale. En février il vivait avec son épouse chinoise et son fils de 4 ans à Shanghai. 

Cadre de l'industrie automobile, il est également DJ et producteur de musique électronique pendant son temps libre. Il est booké un an en avance pour jouer dans les plus grands clubs de Shanghai !

Quatre mois plus tard et après de nombreuses nuits blanches, c'est au Croisic, petit port de 4000 habitants en Loire-Atlantique, qu'il vit avec sa femme et son fils.  

Retrouvez la video de l’entretien en direct sur YouTube.

Before we dive into today’s episode, a personal note: This summer, I will be going back to France for the first time in two years, and I will take a break from podcasting until September. 

However, my interns Josh and Emma will be keeping the lights on by releasing podcast episodes and newsletter articles (subscribe here).

Josh has been working on a series of episodes discussing American music and poetry, which will be released weekly in July and August.

So, Back in America will be in summer mode, and I know you will love it!

Now, it is time for our interview.

Starting this podcast back in November 2019, I wanted to make sense of the Trump years, and the sadness I felt for a country I loved but no longer understood.

In more than 50 episodes and countless conversations, I have time and time again asked my guests: What is America to them?. Careful listeners to this podcast might have gained a better understanding of the fabric of this country––I know I certainly have. 

In this episode, I turn to Professor Douglas Steinel, a man whose life has been dedicated to just that: understanding America.

His students have praised him for forcing them to confront opposing views, and his course syllabi require reading political critiques from both sides of the aisle.

Professor Douglas Steinel has been a professor of American Political Thought since 1982 at the George Washington University, just a few blocks away from the White House.

Professor Steinel's book suggestions

Plato's Republic

Bertrand Russell Collection, Selected Works, 1912-1922: The Problems of Philosophy, The Analysis of Mind, Why Men Fight, Free Thought and Official Propaganda

Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects 

by Bertrand Russell 

The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite

by Michael Lind 

Witches are everywhere! Your neighbor might be a witch, you can run into one at the farmer market, the organic food store, the alternative medicine section of your bookstore, and definitely at feminist rallies––you could even be a witch without knowing it!

Since the 1960s, the historical stereotype of the witch has been reclaimed as a feminist icon. 

In their everyday lives, American witches act just the same as anyone else. While it is forbidden for outsiders to enter certain covens, many sell protection spells on Etsy for $15 a pop. They post pictures of Midnight Sabbaths on Instagram and Livestream Tarot readings on YouTube.

Beyond the folklore and the spells, the modern American witch is taking a stand against the patriarchy. 

You will hear from three witches in this episode: Amanda Auchter, an American writer, professor, and editor. Amanda has won several literary awards and is currently working on her third book of poems which focuses on how witchcraft and faith empowered women.

Then, Cabra Woodwell, a witch “dedicated to changing the narratives of magic to decolonize, decarcerate, and liberate” comes in.   

The third witch is Pixie from Salem, Massachusetts. The interview with Pixie was recorded live and can be watched in full on YouTube. 

If you want to learn more about Amanda, her books and her new witchcraft store, and if you want to explore what Pixie and Cabra are up to, see this episode's note.

To explore even further witchcraft and feminism check out Back in America's Newsletter on Substack!

Amanda Auchter

Amanda is about to open an occult-based shop, Midnight Apothecary, on March 1, with her creative partner, Eddy Roberts. Their information and stories are available on Instagram, here: https://www.instagram.com/midnight.apothecary/.

Pixie

Pixie’s Instagram account is https://www.instagram.com/thisisreallypixie/

Cabra Woodwell

Cabra Woodwell on Instagram is https://www.instagram.com/garlicwitchzines/

Their astrology school can be found on https://starsdanceastrology.com/mystery-school/

This part two of a series on housing assistance. I am publishing these episodes at a time when nearly 25 million people reported they will not be able to pay rent in the next month and almost 30 million people said they didn't have enough to eat.

In this episode, I talk with Carol Golden the chair of Housing Initiatives of Princeton and also a member of the affordable housing Board of Princeton. 
If you haven't listened to episode one of this series I encourage you to do so. 

Carol and I talk about US politics and the crossroad at which is America according to her.

She regrets the lack of government social safety nets and blames the current situation to a "loss of devotion to public education and to the antagonism to teachers and public schools. 

As the chair of Housing Initiatives of Princeton (HIP) Carol talks about the challenges facing HIP, its successes, and upcoming initiatives such as an emergency rental assistance program HIP is working on.

Today is The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

In this episode, first published a year ago, I speak with Sheri Kurdakul the CEO and founder of VictimsVoice an app that provides a legally admissible way for victims to document abuse incidents.

Sheri speaks with Back in America about her father’s abuse that started when she was a toddler, her recovery from post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD and how she reclaimed her life to become who she is today.

Since I first interviewed Sheri Kurdakul the pandemic has struck and VictimsVoice experienced massive growth.

“The law enforcement officers that I've spoken with have said that while the number of reports has decreased, the severity of the incidents, by the time they do report, they are pretty much at the life or death stage,” says Sheri.

She adds, “You have people who probably have lost their jobs, money is tight, the Feeding America saw a double increased need in food distribution, for people needing food. You have people that normally are being watched all the time when their spouses or significant others are home. And now they're forced to be home all the time. So whereas an abuser may have gone to work, or, left the house for any length of time, that was an opportunity for a victim to be able to talk to a nonprofit and put together a safety plan to get out or be able to just have some downtime, where they're not being controlled and abused. They don't have that anymore. They don't have the luxury of having any downtime at all. And if the victim is also employed, now they must act professionally in a space where they're being abused."

Sheri says, “We saw six states between January and February. And then we compared it to March and April. We had six states in the US that had triple-digit percentage increases, Utah saw a 450% increase in usage. And we had over 30 states that had double-digit percentage increases as well. New Jersey is one of those.”

For more information about Victims Voice https://victimsvoice.app/

I am Stan Berteloot and this is Back in America. Today I am speaking via Skype with Princeton High School Principal Jessica Baxter.

Jessica, as most school leaders across the globe, is faced with the challenging task of adjusting to the reality of the Coronavirus pandemic.

When the school closed, initially for two weeks on March 16 putting in place remote learning was only part of what had to be done. The staff at PHS had to ensure that every kid had access to a computer and the Internet. Curriculums had to be adjusted for kids to learn online.

Strategies had to be put in place to ensure well being of students.

Jessica, when we prepared this interview you told me that you are reassessing and re-planning what you do, not day to day, but minute to minute.

Thank you for taking the time to speak with Back in America and to share your experience keeping Princeton High School strong for the students and their families.

Daring Greatly, by Brown, Brene, Ph.D. 

Tell Me Who You Are: Sharing Our Stories of Race, Culture, & Identity
by Winona Guo, Priya Vulchi

In part 2 of my interview with Chris Tyler, we talk about his experience working with victims of domestic violence.

Chris is now a student in social studies and works with abusers. This conversation brings us on the topic of masculinity.

Chris is helping men step out of a cycle of trauma and abusive behaviors.

He talks about the social stereotypes of men and how to deal with them.

Listen to episode 11 part 3, the third and final episode of this conversation. Chris will dive into the notion of privileges.

How can white educated men deal with the reckoning of their privileges?

Chris will also discuss the difficult topic of reparation to the African-American.

Music from Kabbalistic Village
https://soundcloud.com/kabbalisticvillage

Why are we so blind, why do we see so little, when there is much around us to see?

So asks philosopher Alva Noë in Strange Tools, an exploration of how art objects contain, persuade, envelop, and direct our attention. What happens when we love a song, poem, or a moment in a day? How do these works of art direct and misdirect our attention? What––physically, emotionally, actually––happens to us in these moments of transport? And how can we talk about any of this without poorly paraphrasing that direct experience?

These are the questions Podcast Editor Josh Wagner was left with at the end of our last episode of Poetism. So, in this week’s installment, Josh invited Mitch Therieau, a Stanford researcher working on contemporary literature, to unravel the interstices of Lisa Robertson’s R’s Boat (2010) and the Airborne Toxic Event’s 2011 hit “Numb” off of All at Once.

Robertson’s poetry captures fleeting moments of stillness and the everyday, placing them in complex and abstract forms, while Numb’s soundscape desensitizes listeners to the world around them. Over the course of their conversation, Mitch and Josh plumb the surface-level depths of Robertson’s avant-garde poetry and trace the music history at the core of the Airborne Toxic Event’s track.

Longtime listeners might be interested to compare Mitch’s idea of what America is with Josh’s––way back from his first episode with Back in America.

Stay tuned for next week’s episode with Los Angeles-based filmmaker and tap dancer Johnnie Hobbs, featuring Amiri Baraka and D’Angelo and The Vanguard.

Check out frontman for the Airborne Toxic Event Mikel Jollett’s 2020 memoir Hollywood Park.

This is the second installment of Back in America

In this podcast,​ I explore unique and amazing American stories from my multicultural perspective.

This episode is part of a series on masculinity in America. Here I speak to Toby Fraser a social worker and manager at the Lutheran Settlement House in Philadelphia.

I met Toby at a workshop on toxic masculinity that he has been running for some time now. During our conversation, we speak about his own experience working with domestic violence, gender roles, the impact of Trump on American men, and many other topics around what it means to be a man in America.

This is the third installment of Back in America
In this podcast,​ I explore unique and amazing American stories from my multicultural perspective.

This episode is part of a series on masculinity in America. Here I speak to Robert Kandell an author and coach. I met Robert in New York as he was promoting his book, unHIDDEN - 'A book for Men and Those Confused by Them'.

I speak with Robert about how his own personal challenges prompted him to work on masculinity.

For the first installment of a series on amazing survivors of domestic violence, I speak with Sheri Kurdakul from Princeton, NJ. Sheri is the CEO and founder of VictimsVoice an app that provides a legally admissible way for victims to document abuse incidents.

Sheri speaks with Back in America about her father’s abuse that started when she was a toddler, her recovery from post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD and how she reclaimed her life to become who she is today.

In the United States, an average of 20 people experiences intimate partner physical violence every minute.

This equates to more than 10 million abuse victims annually.

1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men experience severe intimate partner physical violence, intimate partner contact, sexual violence, and/or intimate partner stalking with impacts such as injury, fearfulness, posttraumatic stress disorder, use of victim services

Photo (C) Kapu Patel 

Hello Liliana,

I meet you a few weeks ago and I immediately realized that you are a pillar of the Latino community here in Princeton.

You work for Princeton public schools and for the Princeton township human services department.

You are highly educated: you have a law degree from the University of Madrid and a Minor in international law from Harvard.

You've moved to Princeton in 2007 and a year later you were already deeply involved as a volunteer helping the immigrant community.

In 2010 you joined the board of the Koko Fund which subsidizes after school activities for children whose family can't afford it.

And in 2015, you were officially working as a community outreach liaison for the Princeton Public Schools. At the same time, you started distributing food for the needy in a program that was officially recognized as the Henry Pannell Mobile Food Pantry in 2018

Today you are part of Solidaridad that assists the immigrant community and the Princeton Children fund and other food sharing association which we will cover on another podcast.

Recently you became the Princeton coordinator for the Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund (LALDEF) a program that assists first-generation immigrants in going to college.

Last May, the Princeton Council recognized you for your work for the community, the students and their families.

It seems that you’ve always lived to give and to help others. Is that so? If I could have asked your mother: ‘How old was Lily when you first realized that she cared so much for other people, what do you think she would she have told me?

Music from Kabbalistic Village

This is the first installment of Back in America.

In this podcast, I explore unique amazing American stories from my multicultural perspective.

This episode is part of a series on masculinity in America.

Here I speak to Eric Marsh a black activist and social worker in Philadelphia.

We speak about being a black man in America; the impact of slavery. The impact of Trump election; consumerism.

We discuss an art piece by Hank Willis Thomas, Branded Head, a photo of black man’s head with the shape of the Nike swoosh and what Thomas called commodifiable blackness.

In this episode, we explore the idea behind a school system created 100 years ago in Germany and which is increasingly popular throughout the world: the Waldorf education based on the educational philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy.

My guest is Elan Leibner the chair of the Pedagogical Section Council of North America and a teacher at the Waldorf School of Princeton. Elan grew up in Israel, lived in a kibbutz, and moved to the US at the age of 23. He married Tertia, the woman who recruited him to teach at Waldorf. He was a class teacher at there for 18 years, before directing the Teacher Education program at Emerson College in England.

Altogether, he has been involved in Waldorf education for almost thirty years.

Anyone researching Waldorf School on Google quickly realizes that the school has many fans but also some skeptics.

Elan recommends two movies:

What Dreams May Comes 
Round Midnight 

Marina Ahun's website: https://www.marinaahun.com/

Monday at 3 pm EST with Derrick Cobb a singer, model, and performer.

Wednesday at 1 pm EST Majid M. Padellan known on Twitter as @BrooklynDad_Defiant!. Majid who has over 260K followers is an anti-Trump political commentator.

The event will be streaming live from Linkedin, Twitter, and the podcast Facebook page.

Facebook @backinamerica.podcast

Twitter @Back_in_America

Linkedin @Berteloot

Twenty-four years ago, I was living in Washington D.C. while studying at the University of Maryland. I came back to America in August of 2016, this time with my family. It was just a few months before Trump's election. As I settled in the US and tried to understand why Trump got elected, I noticed how much the country had changed.

I believe that two major crises have determined the shape of what the country is today: the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and the subprime economic crisis in 2008.

Then came Trump. A man loved by half the country for being anti-elite, playing tough, and speaking his mind and hated by the other half for pretty much the same reasons. Trump has polarized America and the world at large, pushing what we thought was politically possible. Lies and mediocrity became the new normal.

For a year now, with this podcast, Back in America, I have been exploring and questioning America's culture, values, and identity. In every episode, I ask my guests “What is America?”. Quite often, they say that America is a story, an idea in the making.

By many standards, the 2020 election is historical and will once again help define what America is. The pandemic, the foreign interferences, the mistrust in the democratic voting process, and now the legal attacks against Biden's victory. 

I have asked Americans what they thought of the outcome of the election.

Jake Hoffman, the president of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans.

Mark Charles, an independent candidate who ran in the 2020 Presidential Election who holds dual citizenship to the United States and the Navajo Nation.

https://twitter.com/wirelesshogan

Previous episode https://pod.fo/e/a048d and https://pod.fo/e/a048e

Richard Heinberg, a Senior Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, and one of the world’s foremost advocates for a shift away from our current reliance on fossil fuels.

https://twitter.com/richardheinberg

Live Interview

David Treibs, a Constitutionalist, Christian, and gun-rights activists from Fredericksburg, Texas.

Previous episode https://pod.fo/e/a2f78

Live Interview

Chivona Renee Newsome, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter chapter in Greater NY.

https://twitter.com/newyorkvonni

Live Interview

Majid Padellan, social justice warrior, social media expert, Twitter celebrity, an author, a digital designer, and a proud father of 5. His Twitter handle is BrooklynDad_Defiant.

 https://twitter.com/mmpadellan

Previous episode https://pod.fo/e/9f4f2

Live Interview

The 2020 election cycle has been wracked with scandal, accusations of fraud, and uncertainty. Fearing the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of Americans voted by mail, and have little idea what in-person polling looked like in this historic year. Join us this week as Stan sits down with Back in America’s new Podcast Editor and poll worker Josh Wagner. 

A native Los Angeleno, Josh worked the polls in Downtown Los Angeles at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, site of the Los Angeles Opera. Amid a startling amalgamation of modernist and abstracted artworks, voters took to the polls, casting their ballots in the decisive 2020 presidential election. To make sense of the opulence of the polling station alongside the monotony of the democratic process (not to mention the scores of unhoused people living just blocks away), Josh spoke with several of his fellow poll workers––comic Chistine Medrano, high schooler Emilee Salas, and assistant lead Harrell Greene––as well as several voters. 

How were poll workers kept safe? Who voted at The Music Center? Listen to find out what it was really like to vote in the 2020 election downtown!

You can find Josh’s published works here and make sure to look out for future episodes with him.

Part 2/2

I am Stan Berteloot and this is Back in America, a podcast where I explore American's identity, culture, and values.

My guest today is a candidate running as an independent for president of the United States. A man who's not white, not black but a dual citizen of The United States and The Navajo Nation.

For three years he lived with his family in a one-room hogan with no running water or electricity out in a Navajo reservation. He dreams of a nation where 'we the people' truly means 'all the people'.

Yet as we prepare to celebrate Memorial day he reminds us of the “ethnic cleansing and genocide” the United States carried against the indigenous peoples of this land.

Welcome to Back in America Mark Charles.

Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery
by Steven Newcomb 

Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery
by Mark Charles, Soong-Chan Rah

Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action (2005)
Director: Roberta Grossman

Somebody's Daughter by Rain 

Bridging COVID-19 Isolation and the Digital Divide with Bridging Tech

In 2021, it is nearly impossible to get anything done without a laptop: apply for a job, go to school, safely connect with friends, or schedule a COVID-19 vaccine appointment. Yet, there are fewer laptops in existence than humans on this planet, presenting a unique challenge for unhoused students. Not only are they disadvantaged in terms of their living situation, but also have to deal with this extra technological hurdle known as the digital divide.

Naturalized Americans have a unique set of familial and institutional knowledge about how to navigate the complex and confusing American system: What is an SAT? Who can I ask for help on my math homework? Where can I get free public Wi-Fi? While these questions might seem obvious to a second-generation resident, they are anything but for immigrant and first-generation communities. This week’s episode of Back in America, hosted by Podcast Editor Josh Wagner, highlights Bridging Tech, a charity devoted to providing hardware and other educational resources for unhoused students. Having donated nearly 1,000 laptops nationwide, Bridging Tech is developing infrastructure for companies and individuals to donate disused computers to be wiped/refurbished before being donated to unhoused communities. Founded by rising Stanford seniors, Isabel Wang and Margot Bellon, Bridging Tech is committed to listening to the unhoused community and creating actually helpful resources, rather than assuming what would be best and offering potentially unhelpful solutions. Holly Giang, Bridging Tech’s Foundation Relations Manager, also joins us for the interview.

To find out how unhoused youths can go to online school, what policy measures are holding back their success, and how to get involved with Bridging Tech, listen to our episode!

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In the coming weeks, the Back in America team will be launching an eight-part series investigating the relationship between music and poetry, tentatively titled “Rhythmic Verses.” Join Podcast Editor Josh Wagner as he poetically travels around the country, asking the age-old question: What is American to you?

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Back in America is a podcast exploring America's culture, values, and identity.

After my interview with Cadex Herrera a lead artist of the memorial mural of George Floyd in Minneapolis, I asked Eric Marsh a Black community leader and activist in Philadelphia what he thought of controversy around the mural.

Some black activists, including Keno Evol, the executive director of Black Table Arts, have voiced their concern about the fact that Black artists had not been invited to participate in the mural creation. 

Back in America is a podcast exploring America's culture, values, and identity.

The death of George Floyd, a black man killed by a Minneapolis police officer has triggered protests against police brutality, police racism, and lack of police accountability. Three days after Floyd's death a group of artists painted a mural on the Cup Foods building at the corner where George Floyd was killed on May 25. 
The artists started at about 7 a.m. on May 28 and finished the mural at  5:30 p.m. the same day. 

Most of us have seen an image of the mural since almost every American TV station live-streamed the George Floyd funeral whose backdrop was a digital version of this mural.
Inspired by this work, artists across the globe started producing similar tributes to George Floyd, and a digital database of such art has gathered a repository of 1324 pieces of art so far.

In this episode, I speak with Cadex Herrera a co-artist behind this iconic memorial mural of George Floyd. Cadex immigrated to the United States from Belize when he was 19. Today at 45, he works as an elementary school behavioral specialist and social justice art is his passion.

Cadex can be found on Instagram 
His website is www.cadexherrera.com

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 

The Platform
FOUTAISES (THINGS I LIKE, THINGS I DON'T LIKE)

Across Northern Europe, so-called “bog people” have often been discovered shuffling around in the peat. While no one is quite certain where these quasi-mummified bodies come from––some date as recently as the 1940s––they have posed a strange mystery for countless poets and artists.

This week, Back in America’s Poetism team takes a look at one of Seamus Heaney’s bog-inspired poems “The Bog Queen” from his 1975 collection North. Written in the spring of the May 1968 movement and the beginning of the Irish “Troubles,” “The Bog Queen” ventriloquizes the voice of its eponymous queen, pretending to experience underground life before her eventual discovery.

In 2014, Irish musician Hozier released a setting of the poem, “Like Real People Do, ”removing many explicit references to Heaney himself, while keeping the ethos of the poem. For Hozier, the relationship of the fallen queen to her discoverer is one of love, even if from afar. Is it possible to love those who we will never meet? Can such a love be anything more than one-sided or wonderfully ironic?

To explore these questions, Stanford graduate student Lorenzo Bartolucci joins Josh in the studio to offer his take on love, Heaney, bog bodies, and American-ness itself.

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If you’re enjoying this summer series, stay tuned for next week’s installment, featuring Susquehanna Philosophy Professor Michael Leon Thomas and the works of Alfred North Whitehead and Pharoah Sanders.

In this episode of Back in America, I meet with Denis Devine a 46 years old man from Fishtown, Philadelphia. Denis, an ex-journalist, is the organizer of Dad's night a monthly meeting of men.

For the last 6 years, Denis' Dads Night has brought together dads from his neighborhoods at different bars.
The idea of dad's group, which count 350 members, came to him one day at a play-ground when he was watching over his kids.
This safe space allows men to address topics related to dad-hood, dads-related cause, and non-traditional understandings of masculinity.

In Back in America Denis talks about how he came to realize what toxic masculinity behaviors are after being beat-up one day, after school. He had the chance to be mentored by one of his school provisor who told him to embrace empathy and to express his emotions.

In the interview, we also talk about the links between the traditional behavior associated with masculinity and the marketing promotion of the fossil fuel industry.

Denis raises his children to behave in an environmentally conscious way and he wants to help them to understand how their lives will be affected by climate change.

Denis and his wife gave-up their car last year, ride on a cargo-bike for his current job and to take his kids to school. He turns the heat down in winter and the AC off in summer.

Music from Kabbalistic Village

Erden Eruç, a Turkish-American adventurer, is the 1st man to do a solo a circumnavigation by human power. He has done it on a 24-foot ocean rowing boat. He & his wife Nancy Board joined Back in America to discussed the challenges and the mental health issues experienced by Erden upon return.
Now Erden embarks on a new adventure, the #Themidgardexpedition to explore sustainable ways to live.

Website and crowdfunding site:

http://www.erdeneruc.com/

https://midgardexpedition.com/

https://midgard-expedition.causevox.com/

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Music from Kabbalistic Village

In this installment is speak with Cassandra Shuck from Hunterville, North Carolina. I met Cassandra, at a press event in New York last October and her story immediately struck me as amazing.

Music from Kabbalistic Village

In this episode, Stan Berteloot continues to explore how leading American collapsologists thinkers conceive of the collapse of our Western civilization.

Since the 1990s, scholars have been predicting that the end of the Cold War and the struggle between capitalism/communism will also bring about “the end of history.” But, are these worries founded? What are we to make of the last 30 years?

After previous episodes with John-Michael Greer and Richard Heinberg, Stan sat down with Derrick Jensen, an American author, ecophilosopher, radical environmentalist, and anti-civilization advocate. He once said that “We’re going to watch the end of the world on television until the TVs go out.”

For Jenson, the solution is essentially to return to the Stone Age. You say that’s ridiculous?!

Well, his movement, the Deep Green Resistance (DGR), is gaining international traction in the West. In any case, many people agree that, whether we want it, our civilization is on the brink of extinction.

In this episode of Back in America, host Stan Berteloot interviews acclaimed journalist Brendan Koerner about his undercover investigation into the world of OnlyFans, a platform that connects adult performers with subscribers, through his Wired cover story - 'She has 80,000 subscribers but she always has time for you'. Koerner reveals the hidden workings of the platform and the surprising reality of its chat services. From his initial encounters to becoming an undercover chatter himself, Koerner exposes the intricate business operations and psychological dynamics that drive OnlyFans. Tune in to uncover the truth about the creators, their chat specialists, and the emotional connections forged in this digital age.

Read the article on the Back in America's Substack blog

In this provocative episode of Back in America, we sit down with Dr. Patti Fletcher, author of “Disruptors: Success Strategies for Women Who Break the Mold.” Dr. Fletcher challenges traditional notions of empowerment and exposes the systemic barriers holding women back in 2024 America. Drawing from her personal journey—including her family’s legacy of overcoming adversity during the Armenian genocide—she reveals why true disruption requires efficiency, effectiveness, and equity. Listen as Dr. Fletcher explains why she can’t stand the word “empower,” how women can harness their own inherent power, and what it takes to break free from antiquated status quo. If you’re ready to rethink leadership, gender dynamics, and the very language we use around women’s advancement, this episode is a must-listen.

Find Dr. Patti Fletcher's book - Disruptors: Success Strategies for Women Who Break the Mold, on Amazon
Read Back in America's exclusive interview with Dr. Patti Fletcher on Sustack. 

In this episode of Back in America, Stan Berteloot explores the extraordinary life of Tom Peine, who left a corporate career in Germany to become a deputy sheriff in the deserts of Arizona. At 40, Tom stepped into an entirely new world, navigating America’s complex gun culture, immigration, and race dynamics from the front lines of law enforcement. His story challenges assumptions about identity, resilience, and belonging in America. Join us for a conversation on the twists and tensions of Tom’s unique journey—and what it really means to protect and serve as an outsider on the inside.

Tom's book: Deputy While Immigrant: The Story of a German Who Became a Deputy Sheriff in Arizona