E11: That's a Wrap

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

In January of 2020, Bloomberg City Lab published an article about a new study from Pittsburgh researchers naming the best and worst cities for Black women. Among cities with at least 100,000 Black women, Cleveland came in dead last in terms of livability. In this city, with a nearly 50% Black population, this news drops like a bomb, and reactions were mixed.

Do you think Cleveland is really the worst for Black women? And what do you say?

Speaker 1:

I say...

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It depends on the person they ask.

Speaker 1:

Uh-huh.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

When I dropped it in one of my Black girl group chats, the emojis were just eye rolls.

Speaker 2:

I'm not surprised. Not even a little.

Francheska Medina:

It's heartbreaking and also embarrassing.

Speaker 2:

Is it like this everywhere? Is it me? Like?

Speaker 3:

This city will make or break you.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It's a city of Black women that are looking around at their outcomes, their future, their past, and saying, "This city makes me anxious."

Speaker 4:

If anybody's out there listening in Cleveland, please get out.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

On Living for We, we talk to Cleveland's Black women from all walks of life, from the CEO of one of our major healthcare systems to self-starting entrepreneurs, judges, lawyers, doctors, artists, students, and mothers who've experienced loss. We share stories from these women as change makers and architects of their own futures, celebrating their victories, challenges, and personal growth along the way.

So is it really true what they say? Is Cleveland deserving of the least livable title? And what can we do to make lasting improvements for Black women in our city? I'm Marlene Harris-Taylor, and this is Living for We, a project of connecting the dots between race and health from Ideastream Public Media.

Francheska Medina:

Welcome to Episode 11 of Living for We. We're calling this the Living for We Aftershow.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yes. Love it.

Francheska Medina:

It's like a production wrap-up. We had a lot come in the comments, in the emails, and the voicemails, and we thought this would be a cool way for the listeners to gain some insight on the behind the scenes of building a podcast.

So before we do all of that, let's start with some introductions. I am Francheska Medina. I go by HeyFranHey on the internet. I have been in production for about 14, 15 years now. Started off blogging, YouTubing, podcasting, and kind of hit all the platforms if you really think about it, right?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

You look way too young for 14 years.

Francheska Medina:

Thank you.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

No way. There's no way. I don't believe it.

Francheska Medina:

I appreciate that. And now my passion has been in audio production and just podcast production, everything from creative directing to producing to wherever, whatever's needed. I jumped in the marketing on this podcast, and so we kind of all just threw on whatever hats that we needed on the show. That's it for me. What about you, Marlene?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

All right. Well, I'm Marlene Harris-Taylor. If you've been listening to the show, you've heard my voice. I'm the host and executive producer of Living for We, and I work for Ideastream Public Media, and I'm the Director of Engaged Journalism at Ideastream Public Media. And I have been a journalist for way too many years. I'm not giving it up. I'm not telling exactly how many years. Okay?

Francheska Medina:

You want us to do the math?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

No, I don't want you doing the math, but I've been a journalist for a long, long time. I've primarily worked in public media, started in Columbus, worked in DC. I left the business for a minute, came back, but I've been loving working at Ideastream for about the past seven years. But this is my first foray, if you will, into podcasting.

Francheska Medina:

And you've been awesome on the show.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Oh, thank you. Thank you.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

So I'm Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett. I've been a psychologist since I was 28 years old, also a very, very long time. And my day job is I'm a professor at Kent State University in the Department of Psychological Sciences. And people call me up and ask me, "Will you be a guest on the podcast?" And sometimes I say yes, but a lot of times I say no because it's in their basement and I can't find them on the internet.

Francheska Medina:

Relatable. Oh my goodness.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

And those kinds of things.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

There's all kinds of podcasts out there.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

Yeah. So this is my first time being the resident mental health expert for a podcast and it has just been such a great experience. And I tease because I am a professor and my students listen to the podcast and then they think I'm really cool like HeyFranHey. The other professors, I'm walking on campus and they're driving by and they'll stop their cars and saying, "Hey, I just heard you on NPR."

So it's brought me a lot of notoriety, at least on Kent State's campus. But it's just been a fantastic experience to use my expertise in helping Black women live their best lives.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Dr. Angela and I go back aways.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

Yes, we do.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Because I started as a health reporter at Ideastream Public Media, and she has been one of our go-to people for years when we need someone who's an expert on Black women, trauma, toxic stress. So I knew about her and I knew she was fantastic and so I knew she would be great in this podcast.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

Thank you.

Hannah Rae Leach:

And it's been a joy to have her. I am Hannah Rae Leach. I am the lead producer of Living for We. I'm a senior producer at Evergreen Podcasts, and I've been in the audio space for six years. I'm also a musician, a writer, and a music teacher. And I don't know, I know Fran knows this, but I don't know if you two know this, I host and produce a podcast at Evergreen called Sleepover Cinema. So I'm a host as well.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

All right. A woman with many hats.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yes, yes, it's very true.

Francheska Medina:

So now that we have some idea of your careers, I'm curious how you got involved with this podcast specifically. I mean, Marlene, you're the head of all of this. I don't know if you'd like to start.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yeah, I'll start it off. Well, we've been working on a project at Ideastream for a couple of years now called Connecting the Dots between Race and Health where we wanted to talk about this whole idea of racism as a public health crisis. Remember when, after George Floyd died and there was this so-called racial reckoning in the country, and there were so many places declaring racism a public health crisis, and we were like, "Well, what is that? What does that even mean? Do people understand that?" So we wanted to do a project that looked at that, and the project had a lot of different parts, but we always knew we wanted a podcast to be one of the major centerpieces of it.

And our team at Ideastream, particularly the Health team, we threw around a lot of ideas about what the podcast could be about. And we thought of a lot of issues that involve Black women because infant mortality and maternal mortality, they're such huge issues in Cleveland. And so as we were doing research, we came across this study, the Pittsburgh study, that named Cleveland the worst place for Black women. And that just resonated with me. And I said, "Wow, all these different issues that we would like to talk about, we could talk about under the umbrella of this study and what that all means."

And so then as we did more research, I started to find out that this study had already resonated with a bunch of women in Cleveland, including ChiChi and Kimra and Bethany Studenic, our partners at Enlightened Solutions, and they had already done a project, but they had talked to 450 Black women about this. And so it just really felt like this was the way that we should approach this podcast. And that's how we kind of came to it. There's more to it, but I'll talk about a little more about that later.

Francheska Medina:

But how did we get and Hannah, Hannah Rae Leach?

Hannah Rae Leach:

That's a good question. I've worked at Evergreen for a long time now, and at the time when the show was gifted to a producer, I was the only senior producer, and I have a track record of having done a show for Metro Health before that was on the opioid epidemic and it was actually intended for medical providers.

Francheska Medina:

Oh, wow.

Hannah Rae Leach:

It was how to provide more informed healthcare to people with opioid addiction. And so I kind of had a health podcast background, but also have a lot of experience with storytelling shows and just women, so I was selected to be the person to do it. And here we are, almost a year later.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

We were gifted with Hannah.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Thank you. Thank you. That's very kind.

Francheska Medina:

I love that. And I think too, being a musician, Hannah just has an incredible intuition for how to sequence the emotions in the stories, what music should go along. I don't think that's something that can be taught. You know?

Hannah Rae Leach:

Thank you. Yeah, yeah. I get a lot of feedback, positive feedback from Marlene on music placement, and the funny thing is, I do that so fast.

Francheska Medina:

Really?

Hannah Rae Leach:

That's the fastest part of the process for me is the music placement.

Francheska Medina:

It's natural for you.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It is.

Hannah Rae Leach:

I can normally do that in under half an hour.

Francheska Medina:

And I think people underestimate how important-

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Oh my god.

Francheska Medina:

Because I've listened to shows where I felt like the song they placed under the person's story was conflicted and it kind of takes you out of the emotion of it.

Hannah Rae Leach:

And that's not to say there haven't been moments where Marlene has been, "Change that."

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

"I don't know about that one."

Hannah Rae Leach:

That has happened. And you know what? She's right too.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

A couple of times. Somebody was telling sort of an intense story and the music was, "Boop boop boop," kind of happy. And I was like, "Well, I'm not sure the music matches in that section," but most of the time, Hannah is spot-on and the emphasis is just in the right spot. And it really, somebody makes a point and that music makes that point with them.

And another thing I think that people don't appreciate about audio production, sometimes you have to let-

Francheska Medina:

It breathe.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It breathe and let what a person said just hang there for a few seconds so people can take it in.

Francheska Medina:

And that's another thing that's intuitive, just knowing how long to leave that little gap to get people to think about what was just said or just leave that, if it's like grief being expressed, leaving that moment to breathe through the story.

So yeah, I think listening to this show, I think what's so exciting when the first episode came out, it was just like, "This is magic." It just felt magical.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yeah, it does. It feels like magic.

Francheska Medina:

Everything felt perfectly placed.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It does. I think I was sharing with you guys that sometimes I listen back to episodes, even after I've heard it I don't know how many times when we're putting it together, but after it's all done and I'm listening back and then I can come out of it and then I'm just the listener and it's so wonderful. And I'm thinking, "This is really good."

Francheska Medina:

And that's the best feeling.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It is.

Francheska Medina:

To actually be able to go back and listen to your show because there's some shows you just don't want to listen to.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Oh, yup.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yes, there are times. You're like, "I want to forget about that one."

Francheska Medina:

Right, right. So I know you mentioned a little bit of how Dr. Angela came on board, but could you give us more insight onto how this relationship came to be?

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

You know, actually, I was thinking about this on the drive up, and let me just say that I direct the program for research on anxiety disorders among African-Americans at Kent State. So I mean, all of my work has focused on Black Americans and mainly on Black women, Black girls. And I actually wrote a book about anxiety and Black women called Soothe Your Nerves.

And so when the study first came out, actually Marlene, you called me and said, "Would you come up? Here's this study we're going to talk about and would you drive up at six o'clock in the morning from Kent, Ohio to be on the show"-

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

The Sound of Ideas? Was that my Sound of Ideas? Which is the talk show that Ideastream Public Media produces. It's a daily talk show.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

Yeah.

Francheska Medina:

Oh, okay.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

I just realized driving up here today that I had been involved with this since that study was published. And so it's been really fascinating. And I don't even know that you asked me directly. I think you called me up and was talking about the podcast and all of this, so I guess I think Marlene just put me on it.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Well...

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

I don't recall being asked if I wanted to be on it!

Francheska Medina:

That's hilarious!

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Well, let me share this, Fran. One of the things that I'm really proud of is that as a part of this big project that I was mentioning earlier, is we really wanted to talk to Black women about this. And so we did sort of a focus group, if you will, with a small group of Black women in Cleveland and shared with them we were planning to do a podcast and what the topic was about and asked them, what would you like to see?

And one of the things the women told us is that they wanted some actionable steps. They wanted some advice in this podcast. They didn't want it to just be about all the terrible things that happened to Black women.

Francheska Medina:

Some fearmongering, yeah.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Fearmongering. And we don't shy away from any tough issues on the podcast, but we also, I think one of our shared philosophies is that we want to empower people through this podcast and that we want to leave women with hope through this podcast. And they specifically said that they wanted some advice from someone like Dr. Angela, so of course I thought of you immediately to be a part of the podcast. And lucky for us, you said yes.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

I don't remember saying yes.

Hannah Rae Leach:

This is so funny.

Francheska Medina:

She's like, "I don't know how we got here."

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

She said yes.

Francheska Medina:

And then as far as how this ray of light came on the show, Marlene and I... Well, Marlene had been looking for a partner to work on the show, a production partner.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yeah, like a production partner. And we knew that this podcast, so many things that we do at Ideastream is for a broad audience, but we knew we wanted a really niche audience, that we really wanted to produce this podcast for Black women. Everybody can listen, but it's specifically produced in a way that we hope would appeal to Black women. Right?

Francheska Medina:

Right.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And so that's a little different from what we had been doing. And so we wanted to find someone who had already been in that space. And the most important thing was we wanted it to feel authentic. And so I started looking around, and so I ended up calling Loud Speaker Network and talking to Chris Morrow and saying, "Hey, Chris," and I explained the project to him, and he got really excited about it too. It's like almost everybody who hears about this is, "That's really important. That really should be talked about."

And then Chris said, "Well, let me think about it." And...

Francheska Medina:

And he emailed me. His "let me think about it" was, "Let's see if Fran will do it."

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Do you remember saying yes?

Francheska Medina:

I do, I do. Right, I do remember saying yes. We had been working on HBO Insecure with Syreeta. We had so much on our plates between me and the other producers. So that's why he was like, "Do you think you can squeeze this in?"

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Could you please, please? Will you please, please?

Francheska Medina:

Right, yeah. So when Marlene and I had the Zoom call, once you started explaining what the project was, I was like, "Even if I can't be the lead producer or senior producer, I just want to be a part of it and in whatever capacity I could be in." And then we kept talking about it.

And that's what people don't realize. We were taking meetings and doing calls for at least-

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Months, several months.

Francheska Medina:

Maybe five months?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yeah, I'd say almost five to six months or so.

Francheska Medina:

Five to six months before the first episode even launched because it was just so much to prep from the title to the cover art to what exactly do we want to focus on? Because there's so much to talk about, how do we narrow this down? How many episodes? How long should each episode be? And then once we narrowed that down, it's like, what guests are we having go on the show? And then once we decided on the guests, reaching out to them and hoping they were interested in being on the show, trying to get everyone's schedule. I mean, it was so...

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

There's a lot. There's a lot.

Hannah Rae Leach:

I remember those days.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yes. And we should say that Fran does not live in Cleveland.

Francheska Medina:

And I don't live in Cleveland.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Fran is on the West Coast. And so she was doing a lot of this remotely.

Francheska Medina:

Very early in the morning.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And very early in the morning. She was gracious enough to do meetings, Zoom meetings early in the morning, but there was a lot to think about.

Francheska Medina:

Absolutely.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Oh, do you guys remember those discussions over the title?

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yes.

Francheska Medina:

Yeah. And then Hannah would give us the Excel sheet with everyone's vote and we-

Hannah Rae Leach:

Those were horrible. I hated those.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Now, Dr. Angela, I don't think you... You weren't in on that part.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

Oh, didn't I?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

No, you weren't in on it.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Be glad you weren't.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Be glad. It was not was a easy process.

Hannah Rae Leach:

No, no!

Francheska Medina:

And I think people don't discuss this part of a podcast.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Oh god, no.

Francheska Medina:

Just the smallest details that matter so much obviously because your cover art is what pops on the streaming services. You know?

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah, yeah.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

I should say, about the cover art, let me give a shout-out to Lauren Green from Ideastream Public Media because after we explained the concept to her, Lauren came through with just this awesome, awesome cover art. And I know the minute Fran saw it, she was like, "Oh, that's it." She said, "That's the one."

Francheska Medina:

It was the one. I had no question, which is great.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

So we didn't have to go through a long, drawn out process over the cover art. But Hannah, talk about that-

Francheska Medina:

The title!

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

The title process.

Hannah Rae Leach:

It was like-

Francheska Medina:

It was a little harder.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Okay. Well, I feel like such a big part of this entire process has been about really just communicating, finding the right way to communicate with all parties, taking everyone's ideas into account. Everyone's coming at the medium with a different perspective. And I feel like looking back at it, I think I had this feeling in my core, but I couldn't have put words to it at the time, which is I think part of why it was so hard to pick the title is that in some ways, this sort of institutionally supported stuff for Black women specifically doesn't come along very often, and so there was a lot of stakes, like we have to get this right. It has to... And it comes back to that thing. We're trying to share the voices of and represent so many different kinds of Black women and it's really hard to find something that fits because every Black woman is their own person.

So Living for We we was actually something that Ramat, one of our guests said. She was our first interview and it was highly emotional and we took a little break in the middle because she just wanted to get herself together. And she said, "Living for we" off the cuff. And we were like, "Oh, maybe that's it."

Francheska Medina:

It's so good.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah. The fact that it came from one of our guests too, I think made it especially poignant.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

I mean, and it was great. I mean, the creative team behind this show is vast. It's bigger than what you see here. And so many people on the creative team were part of the discussions, but I think in the end, when we settled on Living for We, it just felt right. It felt perfect.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah, yeah.

Francheska Medina:

And we all felt it.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yeah.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah, definitely. And of course, none of this could have happened without ChiChi and Bethany. They really started this whole conversation.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

That's so true, Hannah, because they picked up the work of the Pittsburgh study and brought it to Cleveland and started their own project at Enlightened Solutions called Project Noir.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Not only was the data and the research that they shared with us super important, but they've really put a lot of time into cultivating these super deep and intimate relationships with so many interesting and accomplished Black women in the community. And without them making some introductions for us, I don't know if we would've gotten a lot of the really incredible guests that we ended up having.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yeah, Hannah, I really appreciate the work that they did and the way that they found women in Cleveland through their survey. And not only did they find them in the survey, they did follow-up interviews and that's how we were able to find and talk to some of these incredible women on the podcast.

Hannah Rae Leach:

And their dedication to what they do just in serving Black women in the community is just really appreciated by us and by our listeners, and so we just have to give them a shout-out.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yeah, absolutely. They're part of the team.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yes, they are. Also, just speaking of a member of the creative team who isn't here, we were talking about music earlier-

Francheska Medina:

Oh my goodness.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Afi Scruggs, yeah, she's a Cleveland-based musician and also a freelance reporter.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Freelance reporter, and composer, and part-time music teacher in the schools. She does so much.

Francheska Medina:

Oh, wow.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah. All of our music was composed by her, and Fran, if you want to talk about... Do you want to talk about giving her notes?

Francheska Medina:

I just think it's funny because we had meetings where she just wanted to have a clear understanding of who is listening to this podcast, what music would they be listening to, what would pull them in? And she asked us to send her a list of what the listener would be-

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Moods? Like moods?

Francheska Medina:

No, artists.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Oh, artists. Right.

Hannah Rae Leach:

No, I was the mood!

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Oh, you were the mood. You were the artist. Okay.

Francheska Medina:

And it just cracked me up because I was like... I sent her a list and I was like, "Summer Walker?"

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Who's Summer Walker? I don't know Summer Walker.

Francheska Medina:

Exactly. But it was just funny because I know she was listening to the list like, "Oh, child." But she was a good sport. And I think that she really tapped into the range of listeners because that was the thing with this show. I felt like we're going to have 18-year-olds because the 18-year-olds these days are very different. They'll listen and listen to a political commentary, but also the 65-year-olds and the 30-year-olds. And I didn't think that we had one specific demographic that we'd have to focus on. It was very open.

Hannah Rae Leach:

And of course, speaking of people who aren't in the room right now but who have contributed greatly to the success of this podcast, our mix engineer, Sean Rule-Hoffman, he's a king. I love him. He's one of my closest friends. And Marlene, when we were pushing it timeline-wise, pushing it, he never complained. He never didn't do a great job. Never didn't? Listen to me. He always did a great job. And I know for me, it gave me so much security knowing I was working with him on this project because he's just a dream to work with.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Hannah, I can't even imagine what time you were actually sending the audio files to him late on Friday and Saturday nights. You know?

Hannah Rae Leach:

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Thankfully, he's borderline nocturnal so it worked for him, but really, fate made it work out quite well in that way.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And Hannah, we should talk about Hannah had some reservations in the beginning.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Oh, yeah.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Because she was like, "You know, I'm a white woman."

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yes. Well, that might lead into your question about being the white woman.

Francheska Medina:

That was definitely one of the questions we should ask.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

That's it.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Okay, yeah. Because I've been thinking about this all day. I'm like, "How am I going to explain this?"

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

How are you going to talk about that?

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah. Well, I think that... Okay.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yes. Because I wasn't concerned you couldn't do the work because I saw that you were a talented producer, and by the way, you did a lot more than grunt work in this project.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Oh, no, totally.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Wait, wait. Yeah.

Hannah Rae Leach:

That's what it turned into.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Right. But yes, she was asking me a lot of questions and saying, "Is this okay? Is that okay?" And I'm thinking, "Okay, well, I'm answering so many questions, I'm basically producing this." Right?

Hannah Rae Leach:

Right, right.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And so that's when I just wanted you to know that it was okay with me for you to take the lead and be the senior producer that you are.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah, yeah. I think that there's this thing that I feel like I've grown past or have a different understanding of now from doing this project, which is that I feel like in left-leaning Liberal... And most of my friends are white queer people. That demographic of people, there's this, especially after 2020, there's this level of reverence for Black women that I think is really deserved in some ways, but I think that sometimes it puts this weird distance where everyone, all these white people are, "Listen to Black women. Black women will save us."

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Oh my gosh, man. That's kind of heavy, isn't it?

Hannah Rae Leach:

[inaudible 00:26:23].

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Are you hearing that a lot, "Black women will save us"?

Francheska Medina:

Yes, yes.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Are you hearing that a lot, that Black women will save us?

Hannah Rae Leach:

It's the Stacey Abrams thing, you know?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Oh, yes. Okay, yeah. I get it. Yeah, yeah. After that election, yeah.

Hannah Rae Leach:

And it's like on one hand, white people can say that, but then on the other hand, it puts this distance in between well-meaning white people and Black women. You want to hear them, but are you asking? Are you trying to understand? And at the end of the day, it's like people are people, it's about your individual relationships with people. If you're going to do a project like this, that's hard, you got to just go for it and you know.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And you did.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Thank you.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And you stepped up and you took the lead and you have done an awesome job.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Thank you.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And I think like with anything, it takes a while for things to gel.

Francheska Medina:

To find the rhythm.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And to find the rhythm and we have a awesome rhythm now. But in the beginning, it took a minute, right, wouldn't you say?

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah, yeah. We were talking about there was this era at the beginning where Marlene and I were like...

Francheska Medina:

There were no boundaries.

Hannah Rae Leach:

There were no boundaries, yes.

Francheska Medina:

We had to learn them. We had had to set them up.

Hannah Rae Leach:

It was like me going to teach a class, coming home and starting at 10:00 PM, sending Marlene stuff at 1:00, and then Marlene at a conference sending things back at 3:00.

Francheska Medina:

On a Sunday.

Hannah Rae Leach:

On a Sunday.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

On a Sunday.

Hannah Rae Leach:

That's when it was just like, it doesn't...

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It's too much.

Hannah Rae Leach:

"Wait, we're doing way too much." And then it got better after that.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And we came up with, Fran, Hannah and I, and sometimes Stephanie Czekalinski, we'd get together and we just talk it through and we talk about the things that, in the next episode, the things that stood out to us or that were the aha moments or the, "Oh, wow, that was really cool," or Hannah might say, "Do you think we really should use that part" because we don't want to go too far and offend in some cases. And then we'd give our point of view.

Francheska Medina:

Or we do.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Or we do.

Francheska Medina:

Sometimes we do.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Sometimes we do!

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Or if we would've recorded those meetings, I'm sure that those would've been really interesting for people.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Oh, they're funny. Yeah, yeah.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

To hear some of the commentary. Yeah, so after we worked through our thoughts, and we just kind of... We don't, at least I didn't write anything down. Were you writing things down during those meetings?

Hannah Rae Leach:

Oh, I always write.

Francheska Medina:

Yeah, yeah.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

You were writing things down? I wasn't writing. I was just kind of absorbing.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Oh, I was desperately typing trying to keep track of everything.

Francheska Medina:

Because that's how the episodes were formatted to those conversations.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yeah, they really were, through those conversations. And sometimes we would say, somebody might say, "We had this one part, it was really cool." And somebody else would say, "Eh, I don't know. It didn't really hit with me." Or Fran would say, after, remember, Hannah, after we'd finished the first draft of an episode, and Fran might say, "That didn't really hit."

Francheska Medina:

That's the nice way, right? It didn't really hit.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yes.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

That didn't really hit.

Francheska Medina:

But then after a while, we all were like, "You know what? It didn't."

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It didn't really hit. Yeah, yeah.

Francheska Medina:

And it got fixed.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And it got fixed.

Francheska Medina:

And it was so much better.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yes, agreed.

Francheska Medina:

And I guess that leads me into the next part of the conversation where I'm like, do you remember a guest or a conversation or a moment in the podcast that just impacted you where you have not stopped thinking about it, and it just kind of, there's a before and an after since you heard it?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yeah. I mean, I'll start with that. And actually, it was Dr. Angela-

Francheska Medina:

Oh, always.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Because Dr. Angela gives this wonderful commentary about what the guests have said and talks about how they must have felt and gives advice. But it was in the second episode when we were talking about Black mothers losing their babies. And she talked about an incident in Akron, wasn't it?

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

Yes.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Where there was a Black man who was shot by police and he was trying to make it home. He was like a block from his house, and he was calling out his mother's name, and he didn't make it. And Dr. Angela said, "Every Black mother who heard about that heard their child in that voice." And I was like...

Francheska Medina:

Because she's a mom.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yeah, I'm a mom. I have a son who's 20 years old. I had to stop for a moment in the taping and just get myself together because it was a lot. And I've heard from so many people that that resonated with them too, that moment. It was like... ChiChi, ChiChi and Kimra, one of our researchers told me that her mom cried and she said her mother never cries.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a reason they call out for their mama. And you're right, as Black mothers, they are calling out to us. And I think that's what people don't understand. That's why the podcast resonates, I think, with so many people, and the name, because we are a collective people and we do live for we. And that just makes... It's why the podcast is having the impact that it's having on Gen Zers to Boomers because it really does encompass, as you guys were talking about, I mean for everybody, and it really has been for everybody.

And I think about what I think, and I'm going to say her name wrong, Ranat?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Ramat.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

Ramat. And just her description of the spice store, as someone who grew up with a mother who was a great cook and came home from school and there would be all sorts of smells in the kitchen, and you would smell all sorts of spices. I mean, when she was talking about the store, I could imagine myself walking up, opening the door, and all the smells that would come out from there.

And then I don't know that we played the whole interview.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

No, because we had to pick and choose or-

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah, the hardest part.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

The Samaria Rice one was just very impactful to me, and particularly-

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

The mother of Tamir Rice, we should say.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

Yes, I'm sorry. Because she had lost this child in this horrific way. She had the surviving children, and what is it, what do you do? What do you do? And it was so important for her to make sure that they all have their high school diplomas.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And I really appreciate her coming on as a guest on the program because as you can imagine, she has received over the years-

Francheska Medina:

Oh, I'm sure.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

So many invitations to be interviewed and so forth. And she didn't know me. I didn't know her. I was connected to her attorney here in Cleveland, and I explained the project to him, and he gave me her number, and she said yes right away when she found out what the project was about, so I really appreciate that.

Hannah Rae Leach:

I was just going to say, when it comes to picking what to put in, that at the beginning was also really hard. And for me too, again, every time I talk about this, I'm like, "I'm white." But it's true and I'm like, "Who am I to be"-

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Plucking.

Francheska Medina:

Decide what's of value.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Being the decider, yeah.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah. But then Marlene really empowered me. And I know she wouldn't have done it if she didn't mean it, especially now that I know her so well. And so I just, now I've gotten to the point where I can think like Marlene, I think.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Oh, that's dangerous.

Hannah Rae Leach:

I know! And I'm like... Well, one thing you said so early on is you were like, "Always think about the audience." And I don't know why just putting it that plainly made such an impact, but I'm a person who I can't handle it when things are boring. I hate it when things are boring. And then once it clicked and I was like, "Oh, wait, wait, wait. We have to make sure that literally none of this is ever boring ever."

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Ever.

Hannah Rae Leach:

And then once that really locked in, I was like, "Okay, I feel like I know how to pick it now."

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yes. Or else Fran would tell us it's not hitting.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Right, right.

Francheska Medina:

And I think the challenging part is that this is such a... We are preaching to the choir in a lot of ways. So it was like, how do we frame it in a way that's different? Or thankfully, having Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett to have perspective and give some insight on steps that you can take if you're working through grief or processing wherever you are in your life, that was the freshness. And trying to just consider the listener in every way. Is this helpful? Is this useful? Are we just adding to the fearmongering that's online all day? And I think that was the equally exciting and challenging part with putting every episode together.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Absolutely. That's a challenge because to keep people interested, they have to be hearing something new, right?

Francheska Medina:

Right.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And I think also, the research from Enlightened Solutions also I think helped make it fresh because people had heard maybe that they had done Project Noir, but I don't think they knew all the details of it.

Francheska Medina:

Right, actual stats.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

The actual stats. So to have them come on throughout the season and share some of the stats that they heard and the themes they heard over and over again from women, so to me, that made the stories that people heard even more powerful-

Francheska Medina:

And more credible, right.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And more credible.

Francheska Medina:

Because we tend to be gaslit where it's like, "Oh, Black women are always complaining or saying this or saying that," and it's like, no, look at this survey with data and charts and stats. You know?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yep.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah. Who was your favorite person, or maybe not your favorite, but was [inaudible 00:36:22] you?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Memorable or something?

Francheska Medina:

Well, to be honest, I think what stuck with me was the challenge that the guests had with what they could and couldn't say. And the frustration as someone on the back end to want to be like, "Just..." But then having to step back and remember that this is their livelihood, this is their reputation, the years they've put in to get to the position of CEO of whatever company, and having to have the empathy as a producer that you want the story, you want the truth, but a lot of times the truth, they can't afford to share that deeply.

And I think that was really challenging as we kept going. And a lot off-the-record conversations that really hit, and you're just like, "Oh my God, this is what we wanted to share," and we didn't have the right to, and respecting and honoring that space. And that, to me, was probably the most impactful part of this because you just want to just be so raw with the journalism but you have to remember that we don't always have the access to that.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

No, we don't. I mean, as a journalist who's been doing this for a while-

Francheska Medina:

Oh, I can imagine.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

I was used to that to a certain extent.

Francheska Medina:

Yeah, I wasn't.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

But it's still very frustrating because you know they want to say more, but because of, to your point, maybe the PR people are listening.

Francheska Medina:

Or are in the studio with them.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Or in the studio with them.

Francheska Medina:

Which is a whole other beast.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Which is a whole other thing, but I'm used to that too as journalists, and knowing that, to your point, people live in this town, so they want to continue to live in this town. And so they had to protect themselves, at the same time, share as much as they could. But we did have some guests who were raw.

Francheska Medina:

Oh, yeah.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Absolutely.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Who went there, like Samaria, that just talked about.

Francheska Medina:

And Leah.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And Leah, Leah Hudnall.

Hannah Rae Leach:

And we have to give another shout-out to her because she even got direct feedback from people in the community who were mad at her and she did not bow her head as she... I mean, can you even imagine?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Nah, not ever.

Hannah Rae Leach:

But she is really the real deal and is super impressive and that's why we've included her so many times. She gave us so much.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yes, she did. Leah Hudnall, she's on the Cleveland Public School Board, but she also is a person who's part of the philanthropy community and she has been. And it's so... When you talk about people being afraid, Fran, in Cleveland, the philanthropy community is so huge here and they have so much power, and there's so many people who are afraid-

Francheska Medina:

To piss them off.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

To piss them off. And the fact that Leah did so bravely share her story and not care, that's amazing.

Francheska Medina:

Yeah, Yeah. And she was, even her story of what she went through in the office, I think that was one of... There's so many stories to fall for, but it resonated so much because it was just those stories I don't think we hear enough of because we can't speak out as much. But the fact that she put it out there, she named the company, she's like, "This is the executive." And I was sitting there like, "Whoa." It was so brave, you know?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It was so brave.

Francheska Medina:

And also, I want to make sure to, like I said, have empathy for everyone so that we don't single out like, "You are fake because you didn't talk," you know?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

No, no, no. There were other people who were candid, like Ariane Kirkpatrick, for example. Her story really stuck with me because here's a woman who is the CEO of this company, doing just awesome things, she is running a construction company. She's in a space where not very many females are.

Hannah Rae Leach:

And let's not forget about the medical marijuana.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Well, that's where I was going. And so when she shared about that she is the only Black woman in Ohio who has a permit to grow-

Francheska Medina:

Which is so hard to get.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And to sell in Ohio, that was amazing right there.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Shocking.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And shocking. But then when she told the stories of getting calls at home, almost like mafia-type calls with people saying, "You might want to rethink this," I'm like, "Oh my God. What year are we in?" Right? And so all I could say to her was that somebody was afraid you were getting ready to make a boatload of money, and they wanted you to give up that license, and they did everything they could to intimidate her, but she didn't give into it. And so I just admire her so much for that.

Francheska Medina:

She was a special guest, for sure.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yes.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

I mean, for me, the medical, the three medical-

Francheska Medina:

The doctors?

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

Yeah, the doctors episodes. I think all of those women sharing their stories, it was like when I came in to record, I was like, "This is harrowing."

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It was, their stories were harrowing.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

And it was episode after episode. And again, them persevering and just what people had to do and the racism that people face just as patients and as providers was just... You were just like, "Didn't I just hear it?" And it was just another story and another story, and that, I still can't get over that Cleveland is world-class in healthcare.

Francheska Medina:

That's mind-boggling.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

Yeah. And yet these stories were just almost overwhelming.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Almost.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

I can't even imagine what it was like to live them.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Right. And some of the stories were from a few years ago, some of them were more recent. And what that tells you is that not a lot has changed and that this is still going on. And even my husband, who is not a Black woman, when he heard that particular episode, even he was like, "Oh my God." He said, "There was one story and then the next story was even more harrowing than the next story, and then the next story came on, and it was even more harrowing than the last story." He said, "You just had me. I was glued to the episode from the beginning to the end."

Francheska Medina:

And we have to give Marlene credit because you wanted the three-part, right, with the medical?

Hannah Rae Leach:

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Francheska Medina:

Because we initially had it where it was one episode and then it was two, and then Marlene was like, "I don't know. I just feel like it needs to be three."

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

"We have so much good stuff."

Francheska Medina:

Yeah. And we were concerned about not giving the other themes like education, relationships enough time. But I mean, the medical stories, like you said, we're just too impactful.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah, yeah. Technically, it's Connecting the Dots Between Race and Health, so putting a medical emphasis on it makes sense.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It makes a whole lot of sense. And even the episode with the doctors, with the two doctors, the doctor from University Hospital and the doctor from Cleveland Clinic, even them telling their perspective, what really struck me in that episode is when we asked, why do we have this problem in Cleveland with this infant mortality problem, that Black babies are not living to their first birthday at the rate we will like them to? It's really, really bad. It's getting better in Cleveland, but it's still bad. And these are two very experienced Black doctors who've been doing this for years, and they were like, "We don't know." I mean, that was their initial answer was, "We don't really know."

But then when we probed deeper, then they both said, "Yeah, it probably is racism."

Francheska Medina:

Right. It was more like, "We can't say."

Hannah Rae Leach:

Right, right.

Francheska Medina:

Now, I'm curious, now that we are done with the podcast season one, looking back from a production standpoint, is there anything you would've done differently?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Wow, that's a good question. Well, I love the episode so much with Dameyonna and the girls.

Francheska Medina:

They were so cute.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

They young girls that she has in her afterschool program that I just wish there was more we could have done with that because they were just so beautiful and so innocent, but at the same time-

Francheska Medina:

And hopeful.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And hopeful but wise, right? I mean...

Francheska Medina:

Yes, they were talking about the wage gap.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah, yeah.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yeah!

Francheska Medina:

I was like, "Wait, what? You're eight."

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And, "I got my business, I got my bracelet business," and talking about really deep issues, and it was touching, it was funny. It was just all the things. And I just wish there was more that could have been done there.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah. I fell in love with them when I was there. This is just a little side note. I love kids, especially little girls that... It's really important to me to be a positive presence in the lives of little girls especially. And going to that program and just them being so themselves, almost maybe even too much, and just seeing how comfortable they were was just really, really touching.

And Evergreen, we hosted a field trip just the other week with 18 of these girls here with their little podcast episodes. And so in Episode 10, I got to fit in a little bit more of the girls, but yeah, I wish there could have been more of them too.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yes.

Francheska Medina:

I know! They were such a special-

Hannah Rae Leach:

I know. They're so cute.

Francheska Medina:

And I think when people have shows discussing cities and stats and Black women, you don't hear the perspective of children.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

You don't.

Francheska Medina:

I can't even think of a show that has considered how they're feeling, what they're experiencing, what they're processing as well. And so to give them that space felt really, really special.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And I heard that one of the little girls was at an event that was hosted by the mayor, and she just proudly said, "I was in a podcast."

Hannah Rae Leach:

Dameyonna told me that she was like, "NPR Living for We, that's what I was on."

Francheska Medina:

She's like, "In case you want to look it up."

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah, look it up!

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

So how empowering for her, and that just like, "Wow, we're doing it." Talk about living for we, right?

Hannah Rae Leach:

Totally, totally.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

I do want to say something about that and how important it is that you guys have the girls, not only for the reason that, for instance, that we don't do do that, but you describe them as wholesome and innocent and people don't think about Black girls in that way.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

That's true.

Francheska Medina:

Or even as girls.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Or even as girls.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

And so here was the opportunity for that misperception, that myth to be busted because they were, they are innocent and wholesome and just girls.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah. Also, just in terms of the age range of the show, I was really determined to get Miss Arnell.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yes!

Francheska Medina:

That was so good.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Just an elderly person. One of the things, this is just a cultural thing that I wasn't that aware of, but we've talked about this, is we walk in and it's like immediate sun-bleached Obama poster on the wall. And then she talked about Obama. There's pictures of Obama. And Marlene was like, "That's classic."

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yeah. Yeah, it is. Culturally, it's classic. It used to be Martin Luther King. Right?

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

Right, and John F. Kennedy and Bobby.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And John F. Kennedy, JFK.

Francheska Medina:

That's my mom! My mom has Obama, Malcolm X, and it's framed with the family pictures, so it's on the wall.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

Mm-hmm, like in your [inaudible 00:48:11].

Francheska Medina:

You're like, "Oh, it's me in kindergarten, Obama."

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Everybody's got him somewhere. So Hannah was like, "That is just so classic." And she's sitting right below him as we're doing the interview.

Francheska Medina:

Oh my God.

Hannah Rae Leach:

She's sitting there and then it's a picture of Obama looking down.

Francheska Medina:

Oh, that's so good. That's too good.

Hannah Rae Leach:

It was so funny, yeah.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

She was hilarious. So I mean, she's 94 years old.

Francheska Medina:

That's incredible.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And just still mentally very, very sharp. And she wanted to do it immediately too. So I knew her, I met her through my mom. They're close in age and from the same little small town. So when I came to Cleveland, you guys might recognize this culturally too, when you go to a new town, your parents tell you everybody they know in that town and, "Go visit them," right?

Francheska Medina:

And they'll keep asking, "What's your name? Who are your people?"

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

So when I got to Cleveland, my mom was like, "Oh, you got to go visit." She doesn't call her Miss Arnell but, "You got to go visit Arnell. She went to school with your auntie," and you know?

Francheska Medina:

Classic.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

So I had made a relationship with her previously and so I thought about her, and so I called her up and she was like, "Yeah."

Francheska Medina:

That was such a good show.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

She was ready.

Francheska Medina:

I loved having the range of seven-year-olds to 94. That was beautiful to be able to work with.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And it was so interesting too because unfortunately she has some health issues that came up since the podcast. She fell, which is a hazard for elderly people. And she happened to be in a rehab when the episode came out that she was on.

Francheska Medina:

Oh, that must have been a nice boost.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It was. She said her son, what he did was he played it on YouTube and he put it on the television in her room so other people came into the room, people who worked there, and listened to it while she was listening to it.

Francheska Medina:

Oh, that's really [inaudible 00:50:13].

Hannah Rae Leach:

I didn't know that. That's so cute.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

Oh, wow!

Francheska Medina:

Well, feel better, Miss Arnell. We love you.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah, yeah. I think also, just one more thing in terms of production regrets or anything, do you remember when we were like, "We're going to work ahead"?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Oh, yeah.

Hannah Rae Leach:

"We're going to have episodes done in advance."

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

That was a pipe dream.

Hannah Rae Leach:

I know. We were so naive.

Francheska Medina:

And the funny thing is, initially, it was a weekly show.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Oh, yeah.

Francheska Medina:

So that's even funnier.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Wait, wait. Okay. I remember the first episode was coming out and I was like, "My life is about to be over." And so I got this calendar as a PDF and I filled out what every single week would look like for each of us. And I was like, "Okay, this is what our lives would look like until mid-May if we don't change this." And really quickly, you both were like, "Yeah, no." And I'm like, "Let's do it every other week."

Francheska Medina:

No stress, yeah. It was just a consensus.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

We were like, "Yeah, no."

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah, yeah. It would've been too much.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yeah. And not to mention, I do have other things that I'm responsible for at Ideastream.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Oh, yeah. I mean, you were managing a whole team, filling in the cracks for other people who they need to fill in roles. We talked the other day about Marlene working 12-hour days and that that's just her life.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

Whew.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

That's just kind of my norm at the moment, yeah.

Francheska Medina:

I'm glad we were able to find more space with the show.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. But I think if there's... I don't really have any regrets.

Francheska Medina:

That's great.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Because I feel like a lot of it was inspired in the moment. A lot of the stuff that we ended up doing, like the City Hall stuff and the little girl stuff and Miss Harnell, a lot of that, if we had premeditated any further, we may not have been able to do.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

True.

Hannah Rae Leach:

So I think the dynamicness of it is a byproduct of the fact that we were flying by the seat of our pants.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Week to week.

Do you have any regrets, Dr. Angela? Is there anything you wish you had said? You went home later and said, "Darn, I should have said something." Is there anything like that?

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

I don't.

Francheska Medina:

I love that. She's like, "No, not me."

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

You know, I'm a clinical psychologist so we know that regret, what happens when you live with regrets.

I do wish maybe that I got to be there when you interviewed some of the people just because it was just so fascinating. And I would've liked to have, if I think about it and think about, in a perfect world, I would've liked to have heard the mixed final version and then me come in, but-

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yeah, yeah. Well, we should explain. The process was you were listening back to the recordings. After we recorded the interviews, you were listening back to the recordings as you thought about what advice you wanted to share.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

Yes. But then again, being able to get those unedited versions just really gave a sense of how important each person you interviewed really felt this was. And where else, I mean, I know people were holding back for various reasons, but where else are you going to hear this broad range of Black women tell you what it is like to be a Black woman? So I think the regret is that the podcast... This is the last one, I think?

Francheska Medina:

Right, yeah.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

I'm just thinking, even from a professor's standpoint, boy, this should be played or this should be required listening in any number of courses because it's-

Francheska Medina:

Oh.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah!

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

No, really. You could do a whole class on Living for We, I think, and you could do it so slow.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

I know. See, she's encouraging me to do that, to come up with a study guide and a book.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

I mean, you really could.

Francheska Medina:

I'll be the PA, the TA, too long production.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

Well, you could! If you were in Africana studies or sociology, psychology, behavioral science, this is a master class in understanding who Black women are.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Speaking of Africana studies, Dr. Airica, when she came into the studio, Hannah and I both had the same reaction. I mean, she was head to toe and she had her swag, her African-inspired swag. She had her headdress, her earrings. She was on point. And she just looked so regal and the way she talked, the way she carried herself, she's just beautiful. And we just both had that same reaction that day.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Oh, yeah. And she was like... Because some people come in and they're pretty animated and lively and she was just very regal. In our spreadsheet of... Because I put in-

Francheska Medina:

That was my favorite part of the spreadsheet.

Hannah Rae Leach:

I put in adjectives to describe each guest, like what tone, and I put "regal" next to her.

Thank you for appreciating my adjectives.

Francheska Medina:

I thought it was the best part.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Thank you very much.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

I want to know what the spreadsheet said about me!

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

We'll never tell. We'll never tell!

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

I want to see it!

Francheska Medina:

That actually brings me to... Because we have to close it out, I know we could talk for hours.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yeah, we could.

Francheska Medina:

But I'm not in Cleveland. I'm not from Cleveland. But I'm so curious how the response from Cleveland has been to this show.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

The response has been huge in Cleveland. From people hearing it on different podcast channels or podcast platforms to people hearing it on Ideastream's talk show, because it also played on the talk show when new episodes are released, everything I've heard is positive for the most part. I mean, we've gotten a couple of people who've called in and said something negative, but considering all the people who have listened, to get one or two negative comments, I think is amazing.

Francheska Medina:

Especially a show about Black women.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Right, right.

Francheska Medina:

So I think overwhelmingly, the response has been so positive. People love the show. They love that you're involved, Fran, because there's so many people who know Fran from her other projects, from her other platforms, there's people in Cleveland who just fan girl out over Fran, over HeyFranHey, and that gives us another level of credibility, I guess you might say, to have someone with your national experience as a part of the project.

And so from people knowing that, to people hearing it on Ideastream, to people just having a chance to interact with the content, it's been nothing but good stuff from what I've been hearing. What about you, Dr. Angela?

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

Just very, very positive stuff. And I think about what we heard at the live event as well where many of the young women felt that it was a movement within Cleveland to create this place and space for them. And again, if I'm out and about and someone sees me, again, they comment on that they are listening, that they've heard it. Again, it's just opened for Black women and for others, it's just opened a better understanding for them, and also for Black women, lets them know we're not alone and we can connect with one another and make Cleveland better.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And that's the beauty I think of telling sometimes the sad, the harrowing, the bad stories. And we tried to balance out the positive with the negative. But to your point, for people to hear those stories and say, "That sounds just something I went through," it makes them feel like they're not alone.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

Absolutely.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah. I think this is kind of more a personal note, but I really feel like working on the show has changed my life in a lot of ways, just as a producer, but also just as a person especially living in Cleveland where it's so segregated. The amount of Black women I know has quadrupled over this process and know in a way where I feel like it's real, it's warm, I have a real connection. And it's so wild that that's true because again, it shouldn't be that way in Cleveland, but I just feel like my perspective has expanded so much and so has my family's. My whole family listens.

Francheska Medina:

Aw, that's awesome.

Hannah Rae Leach:

And you guys all met my family.

Francheska Medina:

And we met your family!

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yes, we met your family at the live event. Yes.

Hannah Rae Leach:

My boyfriend told me to tell all of you "hello."

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Hey! Hey!

Hannah Rae Leach:

But I think it's been life-changing in that sense and also just getting to work with all of you so much and so closely, and especially Marlene, I feel like I've learned so much from you and the stuff I've learned from you will be with me ongoing.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Aw. Well, you're my bestie now.

Hannah Rae Leach:

I know!

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

You one of my besties now and we will stay in touch.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yes, we will.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

But I have learned from Hannah as well because I am not quite a Boomer. I'm sort of like a Gen Xer, sort of a mix of a Boomer and a Gen Xer. So I had to learn from Hannah that you do things a little differently in a podcast. I come from the NPR world, everybody knows the NPR world where we're very serious and our voices are always very deep and you know the NPR world. And so I had to learn to lighten up a little bit for the podcast world, let things be a little looser.

And Hannah was so great at capturing these non, I won't call them scripted, because things weren't really scripted, but these moments that weren't necessarily meant to be in the podcast, but they showed something about that person's personality or they were a little fun moment, and including those in which I probably never would have on my own. So we learned from each other.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Thank you.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

But I can't end this without talking about the men and the episode about love and how they shared their love for their wives because we didn't have very many male voices.

Hannah Rae Leach:

No, we had Brentin Mock.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

We had Brentin Mock, the reporter from Bloomberg City Lab who wrote the article that landed like a bomb in Cleveland, and then we didn't hear from men till the very end.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yup. It was a bookend.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It was a bookend. It was a bookend. So it was so awesome to hear Black men expressing love.

Francheska Medina:

That was beautiful. And like we discussed when we were having the production meeting, it was just a nice ribbon, I think, to end the podcast on such a note of reverence for Black women after all that we went through on all the episodes.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Right, right. And to me, and I think to all of us, it was really important that it starts, the episode started about romantic relationships and we kind of ended on the love that Black women have for each other, whether that's mothers and daughters and siblings or friends or mentors. At the end of the day, the thesis of the podcast is like, how can we make Cleveland more livable for Black women? And sort of the main argument of ChiChi and Bethany's research as well is Black women need to be the ones creating the solutions to the problems that affect them the most and Black women collaborating together and sharing love and community with each other is such an important part of that, so ending on that note felt important.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yes. That's why I love when, I think it was Ramat who said, "The answer is us."

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yeah.

Francheska Medina:

And with that being said, are there any final thoughts so that we can close out this aftershow?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

I just want to say that this has been an awesome project to work on with so many dynamic, smart, beautiful women, talented women. I think it would not have been the same project without each and every piece and part, every contributor to this. It was just the right mix of ingredients to make the right cake.

Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett:

Yes, it is.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And I just have loved it.

Francheska Medina:

And thank you, Marlene, because you put it together.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Yes, Marlene!

Francheska Medina:

We're thankful for your intuition and your guidance because it couldn't have been the same without you.

Hannah Rae Leach:

Totally.

Francheska Medina:

So, thank you.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

You're welcome.

Francheska Medina:

Thank you.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Thanks for joining us for this season of Living for We. The team is incredibly grateful for all of the support and enthusiasm we've received over the past six months. We also have to thank each and every Black woman who took the time to share their story with us. We couldn't have done it without you. You can continue to listen and share our episodes at ideastream.org/livingforwe and wherever you get your podcasts.

We're so sad to say goodbye for now, but in the meantime, we would still love to hear your thoughts on the season and what you'd like to hear next. Our number is (216)223-8312. That's (216)223-8312.

If you're enjoying this season of Living for We, why not consider a gift of support to Ideastream Public Media? Donate now at ideastream.org/donate and be sure to mention that your contribution is in support of Living for We.

Living for We is part of the Connecting the Dots Between Race and Health Initiative from Ideastream Public Media produced by Evergreen Podcasts and made possible by generous support from the Dr. Donald J. Goodman and Ruth Weber Goodman Philanthropic Fund of the Cleveland Foundation.

The Living for We team includes myself, Marlene Harris-Taylor, host and executive producer; Hannah Rae Leach is our lead producer; and HeyFranHey as producer and creative director; ChiChi and Kimra and Bethany Studenic of Enlightened Solutions are our researchers, data analysts, and community partners. We get production help from Stephanie Czekalinski. Original music, including our theme song, is by Cleveland Artist Afi Scruggs. Our mix engineer is Sean Rule-Hoffman.

We'll see you next time.