Stakeholder Capitalism, Tuskegee Airmen Farewell and CDC Responds

0:00:01.0 Torin: We've been about this work: Diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging. Shared through the voices of a White woman and a Black man, we bring lived experiences. We have pursued DNI progress for most of our professional lives. We use Crazy and The King to cover news, tips from colleagues and host, incredible guests. Listeners, count on Julie and I to transparently drive the conversation. We thank you for rocking with us. Check it. Julie, kick off the show.

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0:00:39.2 Julie: Welcome, welcome, welcome to Crazy and The King 2022.

0:00:44.5 Torin: There you go with that sultry introduction. I don't know what that's about. That must mean you had a fantastic weekend. Whenever you come in with the real sultry and smooth introduction, I'm like, J has had a good weekend, but I'm gonna see if I'm gonna stir things up a little bit.

0:00:58.9 Julie: Okay.

0:01:00.9 Torin: I want you... It's real light, it's real fun, real light, real fun, but I want you to look at your keyboard. Does your keyboard have juice stains? I had, what do you call that, Pho soup this weekend. So freaking good. Vegetable Pho soup. I had it twice. And so I'm vegging out, I'm doing Netflix, I wake up and turn the light on 'cause I'm always working in the dark, and I'm like, I got all types of hot sauce, brown sauce, beef broth, I got all that. So is your keyboard clean?

0:01:41.9 Julie: Well, no, but it doesn't have any sauces. However, when I looked at it, it does have four stray dog hairs.

0:01:49.8 Torin: Four stray dog... No worries.

0:01:51.5 Julie: Yes.

0:01:52.6 Torin: And you know what, they haven't made a 2022 appearance yet. We have not caught them on microphone as of yet. We'll see if we can make that happen, but I just want folks out there listening, keyboard might be a little jacked up right now, but I'm gonna put a little Clorox wipe on this joint after we record and everything is everything, and the keys smells good. I don't want you to think in any way that I'm dirty or an unclean individual, unkempt, all that good stuff. We got a lot to talk about today.

0:02:24.9 Julie: I know, I know '22 is off with a bang.

0:02:28.7 Torin: Yeah, we got a lot to talk about. And this first story, it really was, I got it from Bret Starr and his team over there at Starr Conspiracy, and they were actually talking about, there's a lot that goes into a brand, and we know a little bit about that because we've built a couple of organizations, you and I both, we've built some companies, we've had logos design. So we have an idea that there really is something that... We're actually doing it right now for Crazy and The King.

0:02:58.2 Julie: Yeah, yeah, you are leading the charge of our new rebrand, so we'll be seeing that in the next, I don't know, probably a week or two?

0:03:05.8 Torin: Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.

0:03:06.9 Julie: Yeah. Put your foreign spin on it?

0:03:09.5 Torin: Yeah, well, just a little bit. Just a little bit. We're not gonna talk about whose spin was on it. I think the spin that was on it the first time was just... We're just getting started and we were like, whatever.

0:03:20.3 Julie: Yeah, give me a logo.

0:03:22.5 Torin: I think we really, really, really went into this thing just kinda like, did you think we'd make it to four years? Honestly.

0:03:28.4 Julie: No, I was glad we made it to four episodes.

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0:03:34.5 Torin: Are you serious? You really didn't think we'd get through the first year?

0:03:40.3 Julie: Well, you know me, I was terrified the first year of everything, and so once I got over my initial fears, I was like, oh, this is kinda getting to be my favorite part of the week. And now into season four, it's like I wake up on Tuesday mornings, which is when we record, and I'm like, "Ah, I get to record today."

0:03:58.3 Torin: That's right, that's right, that's right. Yeah, and I love our little text messages going back and forth when you find something. So that's always good. So Canvas, and we love the folks over at Canvas, we have both been on their podcast with Tariq Meyers. We're trying to get Tariq to come over on our side and to record with us; smart, the dude is really, really making some things happen. He's actually now co-CEO of Canvas, but they got into a little battle last week. A little court battle.

0:04:31.9 Julie: Yeah, I was actually surprised that this didn't happen sooner, and I don't know if it's been a lot of stuff behind the scenes for the last couple of years, but if you know, there's also a Canvas that's used at a lot of universities, in a lot of places that's a learning management system, which is first how I knew about Canvas. And so now take us through this issue they had.

0:04:55.4 Torin: Yeah, so I think the company is really Instructure, it's a technology company called Instructure, and they have a system or an offering titled Canvas, and basically they're claiming that the domain name, canvas.com and its associated logo contains elements that conflict with Instructure's Canvas product and line of business. Now, I just want people to hear that for a second, not the company Instructure, but the small portion. And I've never even gone to Instructure's website. I should have probably done that so I could get a good look of it, but I don't know if I've ever really... I guess you could see the infringement, if I think about one of the big soft drink companies and they have all of these different brands under it, I guess that's what Instructure is trying to do. So the bottom line is, if you're out there trying to do a logo, start a business, 'cause a whole lot of people are participating in the Great Resignation, the great... What's the other one? It's the Great Resignation and the Great.

0:06:15.1 Torin: Reset, or something. I can't remember what... It's something. It's something. It's something. But if you are one of those individuals impacted there, and you are looking to start a business, don't just bootleg the development of your brand. I actually was having this conversation with my sister a couple of weeks ago, just saying, "Take a moment, let's see if we can do a better job of creating how people see you digitally, and all of that."

0:06:42.2 Julie: Yeah.

0:06:43.4 Torin: So it's important.

0:06:43.8 Julie: It's a thing. It's a thing.

0:06:44.7 Torin: Yeah.

0:06:45.0 Julie: But one kind of props to Canvas, they have got some great social content. Sarah over at their site, is putting out fantastic social content, and content that is not the usual BS. It's challenging. The one today that I saw was blind talent acquisition processes are not fixing the problem. They've been... I don't know if it's just 2022 and I've started noticing, but you should definitely be following those guys on social, 'cause they are playing the thought-provoking card this year.

0:07:22.5 Torin: They absolutely are. British Vogue.

0:07:25.4 Julie: Yes.

0:07:25.9 Torin: They actually put up a cover of all Black women, nine Black women. And I'm celebrating it, and a bit of me is conflicted, because I wonder why we are still happy, and celebrating these first, but wow. And let me tell you, when I looked at the cover, Jay, I don't know what you thought when you saw it, but I said to myself, "What a brilliant... " I don't wanna use the word display. What a brilliant capture of the dimensions of Black women. Just beautiful... I loved it. I absolutely thought it was wonderful.

0:08:09.8 Julie: Yeah. So 100% agree. And I'm gonna be a little bit vulnerable here, so forgive me for this moment. I'm fairly well traveled, I have a fairly diverse group of friends, I looked at this cover, and I have never seen skin this dark, this black, and so much that it took me a second, and I had to go, "Is that make up?" It's not, it's just beautiful, beautiful black, black, dark-skinded blackness, that we never get to see. So many of the times when we see women of color, they're fairly light-skinded, which I know is a play that's been done so that White people are more accepting. This is just the full range of blackness, and I think it's awesome, it's beautiful...

0:09:01.9 Torin: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:09:03.7 Julie: I feel like when it teaches me something, and I'm in this space, then I know other people are gonna see it for the first time, and learn something too.

0:09:10.0 Torin: Yeah. The artist, whoever took this image, he was on point. He had some splashes of red, a little bit of the... I don't wanna call the name. Like the seafoam blue, if you will, the ornamentation on their clothing. It was just absolutely powerful, it was rich. And one minor correction, from language standpoint, this is a pet peeve in the Black community, if we say someone is light-skinded, if we say someone is dark-skinded, if we say someone... If we use skinded, you actually... It's either a pet peeve, or you get teased. I don't want you to get teased, and I don't want it to be a pet peeve, so for our listeners, what we would say normally is we would say is, "Wow, the darkness of their skin... " Or they were dark-skinned would just keep it going. But you are absolutely right, it was beautiful. And I gotta tell you, my first glance... And I took a quick glance 'cause I'm like, "Vogue, there's nothing that's out of Vogue that I wanna see." It's not a magazine that I'm gonna read, so when I saw it, I looked at it quickly, and I actually thought they were Barbie dolls.

0:10:23.6 Julie: Oh, yeah, they're that too, that perfect.

0:10:26.9 Torin: I thought it was an image of Barbie dolls until I read the caption to go with this. So that was beautiful. I loved seeing that. Loved seeing that. We got a update on the CDC, because you got in my garage... You took me to the tool shed last week, and I appreciated it. You got in my garage around the CDC, and Dr. Walensky's comments, but we got an update.

0:10:52.7 Julie: Yeah, so disability rights advocates met with Dr. Walensky last a week. I appreciate the responses of the CDC. Three main takeaways really coming out of that meeting is that they committed to regular, and ongoing meetings, and consultation with disability stakeholder groups. That's a big step forward, should have been the first step, but a big step forward. Ground policy guidance in health evidence and data, and an understanding of how that impacts those most at risk. We're not just talking about the general public all the time, we're talking about the nuanced, and then take action to center people with disabilities, and other communities who have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 to ensure that the CDC's guidance on this, and hopefully, future public health recommendations are inclusive of the needs of people with disabilities. It's a good step forward, for sure.

0:11:54.4 Torin: Absolutely. And I was glad about that. I had... After we recorded last week's session, literally hours after we recorded, there were tweets going out that said that CBS This Morning had taken... No, they had cut the interview that she had. I think they had cut maybe 2-5 seconds, and that in doing that, it put her words out of context.

0:12:21.0 Julie: Oh.

0:12:21.1 Torin: And so I listened to it. There's a bit of truth to that. There's a bit of truth to that. I can't remember exactly what she said in the part that was cut out, and literally it was less than 10 seconds. However, I do appreciate the fact that even though she and the organization felt like she was taken out of context, she still took a meeting with the disability rights advocates. She still committed to the three things that you just mentioned. And I raise that point because it's not necessarily about always being right, it's about how do we be better.

0:13:00.8 Julie: Yes.

0:13:00.9 Torin: And I felt like what she said, what she showed in doing that, is she wants to be better. It doesn't matter that I may have been taken out of context, I just wanna be better. So let's sit down and have a conversation, and so many of us can learn from that.

0:13:15.8 Julie: Yeah, that's a sign of leadership that we wanna see in our government, is the willingness to hear people that they don't expect and encounter every day in their lives.

0:13:25.0 Torin: Yes, yes indeed. I gotta tell you. I think one of the things that I yearn for most is to be able to sit at the feet of our elders. One of the things that at my age where I am now, I'm past having to party and floss and be in clubs. I'm past putting images up on social media of the vehicle I drive and shop. I'm past all of that. I'm at a point now where I'm really on this journey towards greatness and wanting to make an impact and be in a position where I can be philanthropic, and that's the biggest thing for me.

0:14:14.6 Torin: I wanna be philanthropic before I pass away, but we lost another elder this past weekend, and that's another thing about me on my bucket list. I'd love to just sit and talk to some of these incredible people that lived lives that I would never live, and perhaps learn from them. And we lost the last Tuskegee Airmen this past weekend.

0:14:43.0 Julie: Yeah. General Charles McGee was 102 years old, and his wife said he passed away with his hand over his heart and a smile on his face, if we could all be so lucky to pass so peacefully into the next world.

0:14:58.5 Torin: And yeah, what we're gonna do is we're gonna play a clip of general. He was actually ceremoniously elevated to the brigadier general position from being a colonel. We're going to play a two-minute or so clip, and that's what's gonna take us to break. Julie and I'll join you on the other side.

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0:15:27.6 Charles Edward McGee: I'm Charles Edward McGee, Air Force retired and originally from... I was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1919. Tuskegee Airmen are Black pilots, mechanics and support people who, when our country declared war against Hitler came forward and dispelled the biases and generalizations that because of the color of our skin, we couldn't support our country in the technical area. Our task was to keep the air clear of German fighters that were destroying many of our bombers. We thought we had enough guns on the B-17s and B-24s to protect them, that wasn't so, and that's why the escort world began. We also destroyed a lot of the Germans who were making potential on the ground.

0:16:21.5 CM: The Pittsburgh Courier came out and said, "No, this is a double victory activity for Black Americans fighting against Hitler in Europe and also fighting against racism here at home." One thing, personally, folks say, "Well, how'd you face that?" I said, "Well, I grew up learning that you treat others like you wanna be treated." It's so important. And then realizing that the value lessons that sustained us, for this is important for the young people today and what they face for America's future and preserving the freedoms we claim we all so much enjoy. Don't let the circumstances be an excuse for not achieving. We could have buried... They don't like me, they don't want me, and going off in the corner with our head bowed. That's not the American way.

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0:17:32.9 Julie: I get so speechless when I listen to that generation speak and all of the things that they went to, and if you don't know a lot about the Tuskegee Airmen, not only were they phenomenally brave soldiers and heroes, but they had dramatic impact on moving the Civil Rights Act forward and getting us to the better union that we have today.

0:17:58.7 Torin: Yeah, and when you talk about the civil rights movement, that falls under the, I would say the umbrella, the tent, it falls under the atmosphere of social issues, and we have so many social issues right now that are... Can I use the word impacting us? Certainly, so many social issues that should be under consideration, is that fair? Would you say this should be under consideration?

0:18:26.2 Julie: Yeah, I think that they always, probably should have been under consideration, but as a world, we are much more acutely aware of their impact on us in our communities, so they're getting more attention than they have in the past because we have more knowledge about their impact.

0:18:47.2 Torin: Well, you know what? And I wonder, why do we have more knowledge? Is this one of the good things from social media? And I tend to appreciate it, like I use my social really to more like a 90%-10%, 80%-20%, more 90-10.

0:19:09.9 Julie: 70%-30%. [laughter]

0:19:10.0 Torin: I love to be edu... Yeah, you know. I wanna be educated, like I wanna make sure that I'm following people that are gonna deposit jewels, links, articles. That's what I'm using it for. So do you think social has a place to play in why we are more acutely aware? Is it just the internet in general? Because the internet in general, to me, is different than social media.

0:19:40.7 Julie: Yeah, I actually was gonna make that distinction when you started saying that. I think the internet itself allows us to have a great deal more access to factual knowledge. I think the great thing about social platforms, even just to the place of opinion pieces, blogs, and that kind of thing, and newspapers allow us to hear from voices that are more experienced and more diverse than the ones that we have around us, and I do think that is really, really great. I mean, I talk a lot in some of my talks about how incredibly important social media has been to organizing for disability rights, transgender rights, that's the whole thing about capitalism and any sort of technology in way that we grow as a society, is that there is always good and there's always bad. How do we find a way as a society to manage the bad without tampering access to the good.

0:20:47.9 Torin: Yeah, absolutely. And again, just on the heels of losing the Tuskegee Airman, General Charles McGee, thinking about what we are dealing with around immigration, wrestling with issues in education and healthcare, that persistent cry for better policing, we can at least go back to the '50s, '30s even, where we have desired and needed, been asking for better policing, housing, voting rights, and climate, and that's just to name a few. And speaking of climate, Larry Fink, he hit them heavy this week, he dropped his annual letter to CEOs. Do you read his letters? I read it every year.

0:21:44.9 Julie: I've read it the last two years, but that's all.

0:21:47.5 Torin: Okay, got it, no worry. And I'm maybe only a year ahead of you. But every year since 2017, 2018, I've been reading it, and in some of my talks as you mentioned, I talk about his letter and some of the things that he said around diversity and inclusion. Well, this week, when he dropped the letter, he stuck... The flag is already in the ground, but it's kinda like he climbed up the flag pole with a hammer and was really banging it deeper into the ground, he dropped his flag deep around stakeholder capitalism, and this is what he said, he said, "Stakeholder capitalism is not woke, it is capitalist." Have a listen.

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0:22:43.9 Larry Fink: What I'm trying to say is, many people believe social values or environmental issues are political and woke. I don't believe that. And by the way, Andrew, we are connected with more and more asset owners than we've ever been before. I believe our voice resonates more and more with more asset owners as evident of now... Last week and as we have now over $10 trillion of client money. And it's about building deeper, broader connectivity with your stakeholders, and for that, you're building that durable profitability. And it's about having a voice though. I do write about that in this diversion world, your voice is being hijacked at times by the media, by the extreme elements of society today, but I believe more consistency in your voice, a louder voice brings that connectivity to your stakeholders.

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0:24:02.0 Torin: So what do you think? 3300 words. He didn't just pen a little letter to his pen pal, like his best buddy, like he dropped some words. What do you think about what he had to say?

0:24:15.2 Julie: Yeah, one, just in case you don't know who Larry Fink is, he is the CEO of BlackRock. BlackRock is the world's largest finance asset management, risk management company in the world.

0:24:31.1 Torin: 10 trill.

0:24:33.4 Julie: And so, what we're talking about is someone who oversees a lot of assets, has a lot of influence and is sort of your traditional older white man who has all of the money and all of the power. And so when you have someone like Larry Fink come out and say the things he just said on CNBC to Andrew Ross Sorkin about the need to have an understanding between the balance of capitalism, stakeholder and shareholder profit, and continuing to have a base of individuals to sell to, I think it's really remarkable. It's to me the thing that always sort of dumbfounds me in our politics and our capitalism, is like, "Hey, if we have a globe that is burning, that is in crisis, we have mass migration, mass instability, BlackRock can't make money." They lose money. If we don't have a planet that's functioning, if we don't have a democracy that's functioning, if we don't have a healthcare system that's functioning, capitalists don't have things to sell people to, and I think that's really at the root of what he's getting to.

0:25:48.1 Julie: But one other thing that I wanna hear that really stood out to me is not allowing a corporation's voice to be hijacked, in that media and advocacy groups, whether it's right or left, are using your silence as an organization when you're trying to stay out of the middle of everything, as your voice. And so him really saying, at least how I took it was like, you have to use your voice to be able to meet your audience and stake your values in the ground, no matter what those values are, instead of letting someone else speak for you.

0:26:23.8 Torin: Yeah, Larry Fink's 2022 Letter to CEOs. It's titled The Power of Capitalism, and I wanna just read a couple of passages from there. Probably three or four paragraphs down, he says, "The stakeholder capitalism is not about politics. It is not a social or ideological agenda. It is not woke. It is capitalism driven by mutually beneficial relationships between you and the employees, customers, suppliers and communities your company relies on to prosper. This is the power of capitalism." Exactly what you were just highlighting, J, because the bottomline is, if we don't take care of our stakeholders, all of the people that are inside of our organization, if we don't do a better job of compensating our employees, if we don't do a better job of addressing some of the social issues that I mentioned to set up this story, then we're not going to have organizations to support.

0:27:24.8 Torin: We may not even have a country in which to be in. And he talks about COVID-19 deepening the erosion of trust in traditional institutions. He talks about COVID-19 exacerbating polarization here in Western societies, and he talks about employees increasingly looking to their employer as the most trusted, competent and ethical source of information, and that's really, really important. Not the government, not the media, not the church, not the best friend, not social media, not... It's the employer. He said that employees are looking to their employer. And I had to pause for a moment, because first and foremost, I'm an employer. I have people working with me on my team, and I ask myself all the time, Should I have said what I said in that discovery meeting, in that introductory meeting, in that RFP or client-facing meeting when it was transparency?

0:28:33.2 Torin: Should I have said that or should I maybe pulled back a little bit? Why? So we could have gotten the mandate. So we could have closed the contract and I could pay them, or we know that we have more revenue coming in. I ask myself all the time, are you standing on your principle? And in standing on your principle, is it debilitating to your business and to your employees? Do your people trust you? I ask myself that often.

0:29:08.9 Julie: Yeah, and I think as two small business leaders, two small business owners, it is amazing, the pressure that you put on yourself as a leader to take care of your people. And so often, I think, at least I'll say in my case, I've always focused on the... Not always, but I focus on the financial health. So maybe getting that contract that we didn't necessarily match our profile, our values or those kind of things, and what I found inevitably in those lessons learned over the last five years is that is the wrong thing to do, because it doesn't... We have a passion and a shared set of values, and that work didn't match that passion and that shared set of values, and ultimately, it failed or it did okay, but it didn't blow up.

0:30:01.0 Julie: It wasn't that big project that got me this speaking gig or that speaking gig or this big contract, and I have just made it a habit, I think, like you have, is if I'm not taking the job for the money, I'm taking the job for the impact, the contract, the new relationship with the company. And if a company is not there, it's gonna do more damage to my team and their trust in me if I push them into something that's not aligned with who we are.

0:30:30.6 Torin: Yeah, he really goes in. He talks a lot about climate change. He talks about fossil fuels, of course, as I mentioned before, he talked about COVID-19 and a new reality that we are in. He talks about sustainability. It's a really, really good letter, and I mentioned it briefly, 3300 words. And I highly encourage you to find it, to read it, to absorb it, and then to share it with others in your organization, others on your team, others in your business unit.

0:31:05.0 Torin: I would even encourage you to go back and read the report that he did in December of 2018. I highly, highly, highly encourage you to read the one from December of 2018. He got a lot of blow-back, a lot, a lot of blow-back from a lot of CEOs and executives that said, "He was just using his bully pulpit." Because BlackRock is so extremely large, they are so successful, he does wield a bit of power, probably a large swath of power in that space. A lot of folks said, "You're just being a bully." And so there were a number of CEOs that...

0:31:45.1 Torin: I don't wanna say divorced themselves, distance themselves, but they were vocal about their displeasure in Larry Fink telling people to be more socially conscious, to be more in tune with social issues, to be more aggressive around your D&I efforts internally, even got blow back internally, because he changed the way that they measured... Let me use the word measured, because I don't know the details around whether there were targets or compensation, but he absolutely changed the way that leaders in the organization were measured in terms of their pursuit and achievement towards D&I efforts.

0:32:30.1 Julie: And I think that's the other big thing in the article I sent you this morning, really talked about how he got some blowback from all sides. Now, obviously since 2018, a whole lot has changed and the blow-back is gonna be much different and much less in 2022. But the other thing that he got some pushback on was from the advocacy groups that said, "Hey, you're just using this for marketing." And you and I talk about that a lot, if you're not gonna do the work, don't talk about it.

0:33:01.9 Julie: I think here, what he has nicely found compromise on is that we're not saying that profits should not exist, because they should, that's part of the way that we grow and innovate as a country, but that we should be acting with the whole as a part of the process. We're not just working for our shareholders anymore, which I think has been a primary driver of the market over the past 20 years. I know it was when I worked in the stock market. Shareholder was basically the person you worked for, and you got that on every corporate meeting you went into. And when he is doing things around D&I, and he's putting measures in, or he's putting those actions into place with both his money and the way that he manages his team and his leadership, we, I think should be celebrating someone of this power coming to the table and saying, these are things that we have to deal with as a community, and not just because it's good, but because it's good for business.                                         

0:34:13.9 Torin: Yeah, he's convicted. As you get to the end of the letter, you'll see, he talks about that conviction, he talks about being deliberate, he talks about making sure that they continue to address the interest of employees, customers, communities, and shareholders, he doesn't leave them out. He absolutely is convicted. And so while he is getting a bit of pushback from environmental groups, he's getting pushback from other leaders of organization, he's a Titan in the industry that people are going to listen to, and they're gonna absolutely listen to him because he's launching a center for stakeholder capitalism, which I think is going to be incredible, because there's another report that I refer to, and I can't remember the title of it now, but it's inclusive capitalism, it was done by some folks over in London, so I'm really, really looking forward to seeing what happens when they put this center together and they start pulling all of this input, this information, the data, when they start pulling all of these examples from other academics and others that are in business across industry, across geography, I'm really looking forward to seeing how we rise in that. And one thing that I didn't mention that he talked about inside of there, he said the next 100 unicorns are not going to be social media companies, and he didn't use dating apps, but he said something else.

0:35:47.3 Torin: He said the next 100 unicorns are going to be companies that are decarbonizing the global economy. So he's betting heavy on our emphasis around the climate, and I appreciate it.

0:36:06.1 Julie: I will take that as my stock tip of the week. Thank you for that.

[chuckle]

0:36:13.3 Julie: So yeah, we're gonna post the full letter from Larry Fink on our Facebook, and access to it on our Instagram page, check it out. I think it's well worth a read, and I agree, I think it's worth a read every year. So as we close out episode number three of 2022, who do we have in Her Voice this week?

0:36:32.2 Torin: Yeah, you know again, our Her Voice segment is where we try to amplify women that are making moves, and we have two people, two that really, really stood out. I probably could have found some more, but these two: Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Lynn Nottage, N-O-T-T-A-G-E. She celebrated having three shows running in New York City at the same damn time. The same time, three shows running in New York City. In a January 13 tweet, she said, "This is a bit of an emotional moment for me. Tonight, I will have a play, a musical, an opera running in New York City. Two shows on Broadway and one at Lincoln Center Theater, no easy feat in the midst of COVID. It is the best of times, it is the worst of times. #Perseverance #BlackGirlRights." Shoutout to Lynn Nottage.

0:37:35.1 Julie: And in December of late last year, Sharon Bowen made history becoming the first Black woman Board Chair of the New York Stock Exchange. It is the world's largest equity exchange, and that is a feat... Not just for a woman, but for a Black woman, is incredible. So, congratulations to Sharon for breaking that glass ceiling.

0:37:58.5 Torin: Absolutely, "There are so many people in the business community who don't understand capitalism," says Andrew Young, former Ambassador Andrew Young. "They think that in order for them to have more, the poor have to have less." This was out of an article that I was reading by Ebony Reed and Louise Story, "The Black Dollar." You can find them on Twitter @raceandmoney. Again, you can find this story and so many others that they do around "The Black Dollar" on Twitter @raceandmoney. Real quick mention, Joe Madison, the black eagle on Sirius XM is in day 74 of his hunger strike. So if you've been listening at any of our episodes in 2022, we've kinda followed this developing story, if you will, and it's a sacrifice. And all I'm asking is that even though you may not listen to Sirius XM, you may be a Republican, you may be a... What's some of these other parties? Green party, it doesn't matter to me. What I hope is that you will call your two senators and you will tell them to pass the voting rights bill that is in front of the Senate, that you will not use politics to divide us in a way that suppresses people from voting.

0:39:29.6 Torin: Let me give you an example. In Georgia, they passed a law that if I'm standing in line to vote and Julie brings me water, or Matt Stubs brings me water, or some other person brings me water, that they can be arrested for bringing me water. You got some states who have moved their voting hours, which used to be, hypothetically, 7:00 AM-6:00 PM, they've now changed their voting hours to, hypothetically, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. That's called voter suppression. So don't allow politics to separate us from doing what's right. Every single person should be able to vote, and we should be extending, enlarging the franchise, not shrinking it.

0:40:22.1 Julie: And thank you for that. Call your senators.

0:40:26.6 Torin: And real quick, the Edelman Trust Barometer is out. This is something that I know both of us look at. And two high points from that, Jay, nearly one out of two respondents view government and media as divisive forces in society, that's number one. And the second call out from the report, business is not doing enough to address societal problems. What a perfect show. Talk to us.

0:40:53.5 Julie: I was thinking about this this morning. The last three seasons, we have done an entire show on the Edelman Trust Barometer. Is that gonna be our show next week?

0:41:01.8 Torin: You know what? That's a good look. Why don't we get into that report? So everyone tuned in, you can read it, perhaps you can tweet this, put some comments, some of the things that you might say. Tweet us @TorinEllis or Julie... What's your's? J, Julie?

0:41:18.5 Julie: Julie Sowash.

0:41:19.5 Torin: That's what I thought. I felt like there was an underscore in there, I'm sorry.

0:41:21.1 Julie: That's okay.

0:41:23.3 Torin: Tweet us and put #C-A-T-K or #crazyandtheking with your comments once you've read the Edelman Trust Barometer from 2022, and maybe we'll include your comments in our show.

0:41:38.8 Julie: Yes, and quick name drop to Miss Kimberley Jones, who I adore, tagged me in a post by Graham Spiro, a Canadian with a disability, who simply asked the question of the Hockey Canada League, Why don't they allow for equipment accommodations to support players with disabilities? Hockey Canada asked for a proposal, and I asked for an introduction to Graham. Thanks, Kim.

0:42:05.1 Torin: Boom. We close reminding each and every one of you to share the pod with your digital tribe and to find your voice. Be a better human, let's create better culture, better teams and better workplaces. For now, J and I are ghost.

0:42:17.6 Julie: See ya.

[applause]