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In this episode of YR’s Adult ISH podcast,
Nyge Turner and Dominique “Dom” French host Adult ISH’s (the podcast’s) first event, with KQED Live. Among the highlights. they explore opening lines of communication and creative solutions with young people for the climate crisis with Lil Milagro Henriquez of Mycelium Youth Network, and musician Bryan C. Simmons talks about the inspiration behind his new post-pandemic album “Nature’s Harmony Vol. 1.” The episode also features storytellers from our sibling podcast, “Inherited.” Jasmine Hardy and shaylyn martos reveal the environmental impacts their communities endure.
Adult ISH is produced by YR Media and brought to you by Radiotopia from PRX. Be sure to follow all our socials @yrAdultISH!
Episode Transcript
[YR Music]
Dom: Welcome to Adult ISH produced by YR Media.
Nyge: And brought to you by Radiotopia from PRX.
Dom: I’m Dominique French.
Nyge: And I’m Nyge Turner.
Dom: Back in February, we teamed up with KQED Live to present a live variety show with good vibes only, to highlight what’s going right in the climate fight — and how young people are shaping a more resilient and sustainable future.
Nyge: For our Eco-friendly Party Hour we interviewed a couple of amazing people amplifying the awesome work young folks are doing to lead transformational change in their communities.
Dom: And the world.
Nyge: And amazing music by Bryan C. Simmons and his band.
Dom: Our Eco Party Hour also featured live storytelling from our critically acclaimed sibling podcast Inherited, an awesome climate podcast made for, about and by young paid storytelling producers at YR Media, and distributed by Critical Frequency. In this episode, we’re bringing you the highlights from that very event.
Nyge: Jasmine Hardy is a journalist, writer and storyteller whose writing has appeared in The Bold Italic, Essence, Knee Deep Times and more. She presented her story featured on Inherited called “Oakland’s Invisible War.”
Jasmine: Imagine you’re 12 years old. It’s the weekend and you’re playing with your baby sister in your backyard, maybe jumping rope or burying toy cars in the dirt. The next day you go to school and your class decides to do a science experiment. You’re going to test the soil at your home and your school for a harmful metal called lead. When you get the testing tools and start collecting samples, you start to envision yourself as a real scientist. But when you get the results, you’re immediately snapped back to reality. You’re a child, and both your school and your backyard are filled with lead.
This is Sheila Matias’ story. She’s now a leader in the climate justice program Frontline Catalysts. Her school is located in a predominantly Hispanic and Black neighborhood called the Fruitvale District, which she learned through the program has been known to be a hotspot for lead contamination. She also learned that lead has the most severe impact on kids under six. So when she discovered lead in her home, her and her parents decided to test her two year old sister’s blood and found elevated levels. Of course, this information was upsetting to Sheila, but it also inspired her to spread awareness about lead contamination to the rest of her community.
Sheila: I was confused. I was disappointed. And I was like, Why? Why don’t people realize that this is harming poor kids? And that’s where I thought to myself, Well, if this is affecting my sister, I wonder how it affected other people’s siblings? And so since we started to do the town hall, I knew that I had to do something about it and speak to the people. And even though I was shy or scared, I had to do it for those families, for those kids and my sister.
Jasmine: After speaking to Sheila, I thought back to my elementary school days when me and my sister would spend hours in the Fruitvale District at a middle school my dad worked at. As we waited for him to finish grading papers and attending meetings, we would rummage through the hallways, play in the schoolyard and drink from the water fountains. Having no idea that this was the same district that reported children with the highest blood levels in the city.
I wish I’d known more about lead contamination back then, but now Sheila and other student climate activists like her are ensuring students on the front lines are aware of the contaminants in their schools and their neighborhoods through programs like Frontline Catalysts.
[YR Music]
Jasmine: Here’s another scenario for you. You’re now a college student sifting through soil at a park in West Oakland. A few locals come outside to ask you what you’re doing digging around their homes. You tell them you’re a part of a climate justice program called East Bay Academy for Young Scientists, and you’re testing the area for lead. They respond with gratitude. They want to know more about the harmful chemicals that exist in their community. This is Kiah Killen’s story. Kiah, like me, has a lot of family ties in West Oakland, which we both learned later in life is filled with all kinds of pollution, including lead. In fact, after Fruitvale, West Oakland has the second highest levels of lead in its children’s blood.
My entire mother’s side of the family comes from West Oakland. My grandma’s house on 16th Street was a place of refuge for all of us. It was a place for family gatherings, cousin sleepovers, a place for friends to stay in hard times. And it was passed on through generations. First, my grandma and her children. Then my aunt and her children. And then my parents and me and my siblings. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time in that house and in that neighborhood. So when I learned how Black families like mine were purposely tucked away into this toxic, polluted area of Oakland through redlining and zoning, it felt incredibly personal.
My family came from the South looking for better opportunities and better treatment, but were instead sentenced to a life ingesting poison in the same place we’re supposed to feel safest: our homes. Just like young minority students are being poisoned in their schools, a place they’re supposed to feel safe.
[YR Music]
Jasmine: I’m going to ask you to imagine one last scenario. This time you’re 16 years old and have goals of becoming an engineer. So you decide to transfer to a school that’s known to have a top-tier program. As a football player, you also check out their sports program and see that their football team is undefeated. It’s a win-win situation, except it’s not. Just a few months into the year, you get a school email about a toxic cancer-causing chemical in the groundwater. The school gets shut down and you and your classmates are sent to nearby schools.
This is Isaiah Smiley’s story. He’s now a mechanical engineering student at UCLA, hoping to incorporate climate justice into his engineering work. But just last year, he was a student at McClymonds High School in West Oakland. Before McClymonds shut down, Isaiah and most of the other students didn’t know the extent of the contamination, but they were still aware that harmful chemicals existed in their school and that little had been done about it.
Isaiah: Honestly, the first time I heard about it was in football practice because there’s this water fountain that no one wanted to drink out of, and I was wondering why. And they was talking about lead – people was making jokes. I was wondering why the showers wasn’t working. And everyone, all the team, all my teammates, especially upperclassmen, was just making jokes about the lead in the water that they had previously. And how no one used to drink it. No one uses it.
Jasmine: In our interview, Isaiah also told me that before the shutdown, he and his football teammates would complain about their heads hurting. At the time, they thought it was because of the roughness of the sport. But Isaiah later deduced that it was probably because of the chemicals they were breathing in. Isaiah also later realized that because of that disruption during his sophomore year, he had fallen behind in math, not properly learning the topics he would later need as a STEM major. He was taking college prep classes last summer when he noticed he wasn’t as far as long as the rest of his peers.
In minority communities, schools often have far less resources compared to schools in white neighborhoods. Concerns over lead on the playground or chemicals in the locker room showers is yet another barrier Black and brown students are forced to overcome while simply trying to learn. I want to end with one of my favorite quotes from the episode said by Kiah Killens.
Kiah: You don’t think about that as a kid. You know, you think the way you live is the same way everybody else lives. You don’t know that, no, living next to a freeway literally can take 10 years off your life just living next to the freeway, you know? So imagine everything else that goes into play, your tap water, everything. You know, It’s just like it’s a lose lose. Kind of like,. how do you escape it? You know, until you’re aware of it, how do you escape it?
Jasmine: The common thread here is awareness. Before reporting this episode, I wasn’t fully aware of some of the ways environmental racism was harming the people in my hometown. And, when I shared the episode with others in my community, they were shocked to hear some things as well. But, now that we do know, we can take notes from the students who are impacted the most and, like them, join climate organizations or find ways to incorporate climate justice into our other passions. Like Kiah said, we can’t escape the issue until we’re aware of it, because the path to change is that much more difficult when we’re in the dark. Thank you. [applause]
Nyge: That’s Jasmine Hardy, a journalist, writer and storyteller for our sibling podcast, Inherited. Her story is called “Oakland’s Invisible War.” You can listen to season three of Inherited right now.
[YR Music]
Dom: Lil Milagro Henriquez is the executive director of Mycelium Youth Network, an organization that empowers low income young people in the Bay Area to respond to the climate crisis through Indigenous knowledge, leadership and creativity.
Nyge: And when she joined us on stage at KQED, I asked her why she founded the Mycelium Youth Network and how she came up with the name.
Lil Milagro: So I founded Mycelium Youth Network in 2017, when the forest fires were happening across a great chunk of Northern California. And at the time I was working as the director of organizing at a school and seeing the ways that, like young people would come out of their portables in their classrooms with nosebleeds. And at the time, I was actually playing Dungeons and Dragons in my spare time with these students during my lunch hour, because it’s a great decompression tool. And I remember after one of the fires — the smoke was really bad from that fire — asking them, like, ‘what do you think about what’s happening?’ And they said that they were really terrified about climate change and about the smoke and all of it. But that the part that was scariest to them was the fact that adults weren’t talking to them about it.
And, when I asked educators around, you know, what are they doing? How are we actually actively preparing – not just saying, “here’s climate change, which is scary” – but saying, “here’s what we can do, here’s the adaptation and mitigation we can actively practice.” I was like, “How are we doing that with young people?” And they’re like, “We don’t know, because we don’t spread that knowledge out to adults, even like, in like, different spaces.”
And so I realized, like, what an incredible disservice we were doing to our young people and I had at the time a one-and-a-half, like 1-year-old, almost. She was almost one years old. And I remember — and a five year old. And I remember thinking, if the point of education isn’t to prepare our young people for the world that they’re going to inherit, then what is the point? Then it is all just, like, propaganda. It’s all just like us telling them that what they’re seeing and experiencing with their eyes, with their emotions, with their bodies, isn’t as real as this thing we’re telling them is really important. And so I really wanted to be able to create a space where we can highlight their lived reality.
And, “Mycelium Youth Network” came up as a name – that really actually, like, my partner Danny Cornejo came up with because he’s like, “Did you see that documentary about mushrooms?” And I didn’t know anything about mushrooms. And he’s like, “Well, they talk to each other and they have this whole underground web and it’s like – that’s amazing!” And like, that night we went home and watched the documentary and was like, “This is amazing.” And I took that to that first group of fifth graders. And I was like, “What do you think about this?” Because they had rejected every other name I had come up with. And they’re like, “Okay, this is good, this is good.” And so that’s how we came up with the name Mycelium Youth Network.
Nyge: Cool, cool.
Dom: I love that! The kids always tell you what’s up.
Lil Milagro: And they are not afraid.
Dom: So your organization has a wide array of climate programs, including Gaming for Justice. Can you talk about the creative and playful approach to climate skill building?
Lil Milagro: Yeah. So I come from a labor and immigrant rights background, and part of what I learned early on, like just doing organizing was if we cannot find a way to bring, as we say, in like the Justice for Janitors movement, If we can’t bring like the bread and the roses, then what are we doing, right? Like, how are we providing active space for things to not just have people survive but actually thrive and feel good? And when I saw everything that was happening in the climate movement and I thought like, ‘Okay, so how do we take this and make it joyful?’
Because what our communities have done — what Black and brown communities have consistently done over like 500 years of colonization and genocide is to create joy, to create song, to create spirit out of something that feels difficult and hard. I think the University of Bath study said about 65% of young people believe that the world is doomed.*
And, it’s because we’re giving them no option where they’re able to freedom-dream another world into being. And we’re being so limited in the way that we’re thinking, when actually, like, we are at this critical moment in human history where we need so much creativity and play and wonder. And that’s what young people do really, really well, is to be able to create that. And then, in creating that, they see themselves as leaders, as dream makers, as storytellers, as, like, organizers, and all of these amazing, beautiful things. And so to be able to have that as open space for them to dream another world into existence, that are directly tied to current environmental challenges, I’ve seen the ways like it just transforms young people and they’re like, “Oh, this is actually something I can handle. This is something that I feel comfortable doing and I want to do it.” And I see the ways that like in order to do it, we have to have our community and to be able to tie that community and joy and spirit together I think is essential.
Nyge: Right. And then, they make it their own and —
Lil Milagro: Then they make it their own and then they like, go places like I would never have gone. And sometimes it’s really violent and sometimes it’s like really cooperative. And, just like, you’re just like, ‘okay, let’s just hold space for you to dream anything you want, because we’re not doing that. We’re not doing that for adults.’ And young people feel that like constraint and then it gives them depression and anxiety.
Nyge: Yeah.
[YR Music; BREAK; YR Music]
Nyge: What role does Indigenous knowledge and leadership go into the work that you do at Mycelium Youth Network?
Lil Milagro: Yeah. So it’s, like, really critical. And so a lot of our programming is actually based around climate adaptation and mitigation. So we have two other programs, Climate Resilient Schools and our Youth Leadership Council that are really focusing on, like, how do we adapt and shift to like, our current environmental crisis and the role of an – we call it, ‘ancestral traditions and knowledge’ is the understanding that – it’s not like this, like, side thing we do – it’s like, the foundation, it’s the root, it’s our earth. So, we’re pulling in this knowledge and this root system that is very ancestral because we recognize Black and brown communities have not created our current crisis. That pre colonization we were living in regenerative and sustainable relationship to the land. And so what do we need to remember? What has been stripped away from our communities as sources of support and light and guidance that we need to think into to be able to create something new? And from there, and only from that space, can we bring in science, technology, engineering, arts and math, because otherwise we’re just doing a band aid solution and we’re using the same techniques that got us into the place where we are now – where we’re like, I think it’s like 30 seconds away from doomsday on the Doomsday Clock. Like, it’s like, we’re, we don’t want to do that.
We want to say, it’s not just like, “How do we serve these under-resourced like poor, Black and brown students?” It’s like, “No. Your community, our communities — we’re just a long line of stewards who have always stood up with, like, hope and resistance and balance and like, struggle to like, what we are experiencing. And you are just one line of, of this long line.” And then students can know and understand that they are not alone. And then we can also pull in that place-based knowledge of like, ‘What is that remembering? What is that re-relationship to the land we want to center and ground.’
Because we’re asking students to do what they already feel in their bones, which is like, “How do we — this isn’t right. Like, this current system we’re in is not right. It’s not sustainable.” And you have something else that you can lean on that is there for you and has always been there for you.
Dom: That is so… I think I’ve said beautiful like a hundred times, but it is beautiful. I want to ask you about how you center youth voices, but I also want to know how in the Indigenous learning and passing of these skills – is that something that’s always been present in these communities, the centering of these youth voices?
Lil Milagro: I mean, yes, it’s part of, like, just – what does it mean to be in community? And I’m a practitioner of Mexicayotl tradition, as is like our family – amongst like a couple of other different traditions, which were re-learning and trying to re-center. But like, young people were never in this ‘other space of, like, learning’ that was separate from, you know, elders or separate even from like other young people or separate from adults. They were always in there together and, that, elders were always passing on stories and doing storytelling and passing on teachings. Because if we like – this is like that seven generations type of thinking. Like, if we can’t do that, then what are we doing here?
There’s no, there’s no, like, individual “I” or adult that’s like trying to push forward that is separate from young people. And for us, it became really important – and it’s something that we’re still learning and growing into as an organization – to think about. Like, what does it mean to center those like, young, youth voices and how do we do it in a way that’s not just this like very — I see it all the time in like climate spaces, like – ‘How do we bring young people up to be inspirational and then move them off the stage so that we adults can do our talking?’ This is actually saying that we are – especially in the moment of climate crisis that we are in – “We need all voices. We need elder voices. We need youth voices. We need adult voices.
So we need to all work together to be able to do that. And as we’re doing it with young people – and young people have the power of being incredible visionaries. Like, there is no movement in recent history that has not started as a youth movement, because young people are like, “No. This makes no sense. We refuse to accept it.”
Dom: Yeah. [applause]
Lil Lilagro: And so to, like, think about like – how do we pull that in, and not only pull it in, but give young people institutional and infrastructural power to transform their lives. That we as adults can take a back seat and say, “Yes, you can lead us. And you can guide us through whatever it is that is happening.” Like even just when we think about Fridays for the Future and social media and tech. So it’s all about saying like, “What is their – what is that curiosity?” Because the longer as an adult that I live in this world, the more I become, and normalize the socialization that tells me that the system is okay. And young people refuse to accept that as a narrative. And then they come up with such brilliant creative ideas. And we have two youth leadership councils right now that are coming up with like, these amazing ideas for how they want to transform their schools that we would, as adults, never have thought of. Even though I’m like, “I play a lot of video games, I can imagine some stuff.” They just like, blow it out of the water in terms of what they’re imagining. And I think that, that’s what we need in this moment is to like, lean in to that visionary creativity that young people bring so strongly.
[YR Music]
Nyge: I love that. Thank you so much for sitting down with us. [Applause] Yes that’s right! Round of applause for Lil Milagro.
Dom: That’s Lil Milagro Henriquez, executive director of Mycelium Youth Network in Oakland, California, which is unceded Ohlone land. You can learn more at MyceliumYouthNetwork.org.
Nyge: shaylyn martos is an associate producer in the YR Media newsroom and a journalist who works to provide better representation for LGBTQ+ and Indigenous people in media. They presented their story featured on Inherited about learning the native language of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands in a piece called “Our Language Is Our Mother’s Gift.”
Linda Calvo: You know that song in America, they say, how are you? In the Philippines kumusta kayo. But when you are in Guam, you simply say håfa adai, håfa adai. You know that song. Have you heard it?
Well, actually, I had always wanted to learn our language, but as a young person, we weren’t allowed to speak our language. It was against the law. There were signs, “English Only.” And I tried to speak Chamoru, but it was not allowed in school… And I did not speak it at home. My parents spoke to each other in Chamoru, but they spoke to us in English.
Signora Dorothy Castro Pocaigue: [Chamoru introduction] I na’ån hu si Dorothy Castro Pocaigue. Dededo, taotao Dededo, Guahan.
My culture has always been very important to me. The rites, the rituals and the, and you know, the celebrations and all of that – the family. Though, those concepts are ingrained in me again, it’s just that I can’t express them in language. So I’m learning. The desire to speak Chamorro is very strong in me now, because I want to be able to pass it on to my grandson.
Taryn Aguon: In the beginning, there was almost like a sense of embarrassment, and shame, and guilt about signing up for a class of a language that should have been so natural to me. And, and it was in the beginning of my life, the first half of my life. And then it wasn’t. And there were moments in, in my adult life living out here that it started to feel like I had lost a sense of identity.
Shaylyn: Buenas yan håfa adai todus hamyo! I na’ån hu si Shaylyn Martos, mafañågo yu’ giya San Francisco. I familia ku manginen i Guahan giya Islas Mariana. Guaha uno na sinångan-hu para hamyo put i taotao Chamoru yan i lengguahen-måmi.
Hello all. It is a privilege to be here sharing the voices of three Chamoru women — and their language learning journeys.
The first of these three generations: Saina Ma’åse’ to Ms. Linda Calvo, the eldest of the three like I said, who remembers drinking from pure springs and the smell of fiesta foods during Independence Day celebrations.
Saina Ma’åse’ to Signora Dorothy Castro Pocaigue, a lifelong educator and history buff and new grandma – who we actually found out is my auntie on my mother’s side.
And to Taryn Aguon, closest to my own age, a stateside college grad and mother raising her daughter with her wife in an intergenerational home.
My project was on Indigenous language and how every aspect of these three women’s lives was affected by climate change, colonization and misuse of our natural resources. Across the Marianas and the rest of Oceania. Indigenous islanders are forced to deal with the disastrous effects of climate change, including coral bleaching, rising tides, and straight – nuclear testing. Pacifica folks, especially Micronesians and Melanesians, don’t often get to tell our own stories. And here I am on the stage with this opportunity to school you a little bit on our own efforts to curb climate change and colonization. I mean, I’m up here speaking Chamoru and I’m getting paid – like how rad is that??
So. for over 3500 years, the tenets of Chamoru culture — community, reciprocity, gratitude, inafa’måolek — these apply to the people, of course. But just as much for the hånom, tåno yan aire. We’ve maintained a sacred relationship with our land and sea, even through 600 years of Spanish colonization, Japanese occupation, and American militarization.
Today, the American Air Force consumes Oceania with an insatiable hunger for resources, culture and history. They continuously spill fuel on sacred parts of Hawai’i, shoutout to O’ahu Water Protectors for holding them accountable. And in Guåhan, they bulldozed the ancient limestone forest of Litekyan in order to build firing ranges; and now a grave of metal shells lies upon ancestral remains of the taotao Chamoru and our non-human neighbors, not to mention the last remaining clean water source on island — the Guam Lens Aquifer.
Ms. Linda Calvo shared with me that she’s currently undergoing treatment for breast cancer. The amount of toxins in her body shocked her doctor, and she believes this is, in part, because of the chemicals the American military subjected our people to. She mentioned agent orange during the ‘60s and contaminated water, how she knows many others with drastic health issues. Some in my own family have or had cancer — and some we have lost.
The irony of invaders poisoning the land they occupy is not lost upon me. Because the tenets of our culture – gratitude and reciprocity – clash against imperialist ideologies. They force us out of our own homes, and punish those who fight to stay.
There’s a magnet on our fridge that says, “This is a Filipino/Chamorro home. We don’t know the language, but we know all the food words!”
And my family is like many others these days. Our food, our commitment to community, and our love of music — especially karaoke — are the things that connect us to our islands.
But since the start of the pandemic, I and over a hundred others spend our Saturday mornings in Guam or the CNMI (Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands), or Friday afternoons stateside, learning and practicing fino’ Chamoru with our siñot. We meet over Zoom, to learn and talk story, but it’s also grown into an online community where we keep each other up to date on organizing efforts in the Marianas. Independent Guahan works with Prutehi Litekyan to advocate for our sacred land. Famalao’an Rights hold protests for reproductive justice on the regular. And a lot of my own cousin’s work with Guahan Sustainable Culture, is educating young folks to grow their own food, and make planet-conscious decisions. Because our island home is ours to protect, as it provides for us.
So I’m learning from Taryn, and Linda and Auntie Dorothy, to take my lessons in fino’ Chamoru as the chance to learn our history and prepare for our future. Doing my best to create space within my life for yes, the language, but everything that comes with it. Like the smile on my mom’s face when I tell her “Hu guaiya hao!” and she sings it back to me. And my children, and their children, however far away they may be — will know the words and legends of their people.
We are storytellers, after all.
Thank you everybody! [applause]
Nyge: That’s shaylyn martos, an awesome YR Media producer, newsroom editor and the host of Inherited’s third season, which you can subscribe to on this platform.
Dom: Our amazingly talented friend, film composer and keyboardist for the three time Grammy Award winner Fantastic Negrito is the one and only Bryan C. Simmons. He joined us at KQED Live for our Adult ISH Eco-Party Hour to play his new album, Nature’s Harmony Vol. 1. Not only that, he told us about how he drew inspiration from the pandemic lockdowns and the decision he made that changed his life.
Bryan: Yeah, it started pre-pandemic. Recently I started a journey into sobriety. I decided to stop drinking after years of partying, being a typical musician. You know, I woke up one day, I was like, “I need to stop.” You know, I called my fiancee and they’re like, “Yo, we’re not drinking anymore.” She’s like, “Okay. Like, cool.” So a way for me to stop drinking was actually through photography. Pandemic was happening. I was able to shoot. I was able to, like, be a part of the party and like, you know, just kind of still be involved in a way. Then the pandemic happened and people went away and I was like, “Where’s, where’s my subjects?”
So we were in the house. We were living in Benicia at the time. We were thinking of like, creative and safe ways to quarantine or like, Hmm. So, started looking on Google Maps. We see Lake Berryessa was like 15 minutes away. I’d never been. Lake Berryessa is beautiful, you know. So we went up there almost like three times a week, you know. Then we started getting more adventurous with hiking and we went to Mount Shasta. We hiked Mount Olympia.
And just, just being in nature, you know? And like I, I actually didn’t touch my instrument for about six months in the first, you know, the first six months of the pandemic. And, you know, I was like questioning myself like, you know, “Do I even like music? Yo like, Man, why am I not motivated, you know?” But I don’t know, being a support, being a sideman, being a — an artist, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re putting someone else’s vision forward. And sometimes you just, like, forget about what you’re doing.
So back to the nature story. We’re in nature. And I started shooting nature and like, I was really getting into and I’m like, editing these photos and I’m like, “Yo, like, this is amazing. I’m like, falling in love with, like, these views and these pictures.” And it was, it was actually healing, you know? A very, very healing experience. And when I finally felt inspired to make music, I sat down and I created this project. And if you listen to it, there’s sound snippets of nature, creeks, and birds, and a ton of stuff that inspired me. And that’s, that was the start of the music — nature sounds and, you know, just going with it and yeah, Nature’s Harmony. So yeah thank you. You can tell I don’t talk on the mic much, but yeah that’s all. It was very, very healing experience and it’s helped me with my sobriety.
My, my boy James, he’s been sober for five years. I’ve been sober for three years. And we’re, we’re just chugging along, you know, we’re striving to be good humans out here. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for your time.
[MUSIC/Bryan C. Simmons “Nature’s Harmony Vol. 1”]
Nyge: Adult ISH is produced by YR Media, a national network of young journalists and artists creating content for this generation.
Our show is produced by shaylyn martos, Dominique French, and by me, ya boy Nyge Turner.
Our engineer is James Riley and our audio engineering fellow is Christian Romo.
Dom: YR’s podcasting Director and EP is Sam Choo.
Nyge: YR’s senior director of podcasting and partnerships is Rebecca Martin
Dom: Our interns are Menelik Ransom and Jalen Black.
Original music for this episode created by these young musicians at YR:
Christian Romo, Anders Knutstad, Noah Holt, Jacob Armenta, Chaz Whitley, Michael Diaz, Sean Luciano Galarza, and David Lawrence.
Music direction by Oliver “Kuya” Rodriguez and Maya Drexler.
Nyge: Art for this episode was produced by the youth co-led design team at YR Media. Creative Direction by Pedro Vega Jr. Design by Marjerrie Masicat and Brigido Bautista.
Dom: Project management by Eli Arbreton (Are-burr-ton).
Nyge: Special thanks to Jazmyn Burton, Shavonne Graham, Donielle Conley, Kathy Chaney and Kyra Kyles.
And, thank you Ryan Davis, our gracious host and partner for our YR Media Eco Party Hour event at KQED Live.
Dom: And, a super heartfelt special thanks to our friends and former colleagues off chasing new dreams – Georgia Wright and Jules Bradley for creating and producing Inherited.
Adult ISH is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX — a network of independent, creator-owned, listener-supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision at Radiotopia.fm.
Nyge: And if you haven’t reviewed our show on Apple podcasts, please be sure you do. Five stars is much appreciated.
Dom: You can follow us on all the socials @yradultish and on that note, byeyeyeyeye.
Nyge: See ya!
[MUSIC/Bryan C. Simmons Nature’s Harmony Volume 1]
*[From University of Bath: “based on surveys with 10,000 children and young people (16-25) across 10 countries, found 75% of young respondents believe ‘the future is frightening.’ 65% felt governments were failing young people, while 61% said the way governments deal with climate change was not “protecting me, the planet and/or future generations”; Almost half (48%) of those who said they talked with others about climate change felt ignored or dismissed.”]