AMERICA, WHO HURT YOU? EPISODE 7
Sarah Jones 00:30
Hi, everybody, welcome to America who hurt you the pod where we talk in many voices about politics, our trauma, and how we can heal them both. I’m your host, Sarah Jones, and I’m here with a few co hosts; Rashid.
Rashid 00:35
Yeah, you know who it is
Sarah Jones 00:37
Nereida.
Nereida 00:38
Hola everybody!
Sarah Jones 00:39
Lorraine,
Lorraine 00:40
Oh, hi there. How are you?
Sarah Jones 00:41
And Bella.
Bella 00:42
Hi everyone.
Sarah Jones 00:54
And by now you know they’re not exactly co hosts. They’re my characters from my one person shows and my movie Sell, Buy, Date, who live in my head and they also may pop in during interviews with our guests.
Rashid 00:56
Yeah, I might have to sit this one out though. My stomach hurt. I think some messed up my microbiome.
Sarah Jones 01:02
Oh, Rashid. Wait microbiome. You’ve sound like you’ve been listening to a lot of wellness podcasts?
Bella 01:09
No, he just started following this fitness influencer on Instagram. Now all his ads are for like gut health seminars and raw hemp yogurt.
Nereida 01:20
Good for him. I mean, we’re all trying to get healthier, right? Especially people of color. I am jealous though. I tried this 10 Day juice cleanse, and I only lasted eight hours. I swear I’m just never going to lose my freshman 15.
Lorraine 01:35
Oh Nereida you’re back in college?
Nereida 01:38
No, it’s the same 15 pounds from like, 12 years ago when I was a freshman. I just can’t lose it. My daughter teases me that my BMI stands for banana muffin index.
Bella 01:47
Okay, but you do know that like the BMI is totally made up, right? Like you should google that.
Sarah Jones 01:52
Yeah, that’s a whole other look. I don’t even think dieting is the answer. There are so many other ways to be healthy. You guys. I mean, that’s actually the topic of today’s episode. Most of us have bought into the idea that wellness means we have to eat a certain way and look a certain way just to be a good person. But the truth is, a lot of us are judging and blaming ourselves, when really what’s keeping us from wellness often isn’t our fault. We’re in a culture that overworks and overwhelms us with impossible standards. And plus, they’re like harmful chemicals in our environment, our health products, even our food
Rashid 02:24
Wait hold up. Are you saying my hemp Yoga is the problem or the solution?
Sarah Jones 02:35
I’m saying it’s more complicated than that. But luckily, our guest today knows a lot about all of this. You may know Jamila Jamil from her roles on the Good Place or She Hulk, But she’s also a wellness mythbuster extraordinaire. After years in the spotlight in the UK, having her own body picked apart by the FAMOUSLY body positive British press (hope you can hear my sarcasm) and seeing the way the entertainment industry promotes an unrealistic body image for women, Jameela decided enough was enough. She started her own podcast iWeigh, that interrogates diet culture, the wellness industry, and how our obsession with alleged health is actually making so many of us LESS healthy. Since its start in 2018, iWeigh has grown into a movement that helps millions of people struggling with health issues body image, including me. Now right before we recorded this interview, we had like a little tech issue that had me feeling not very well or at least nervous. And Jamila reminded me to just pause and breathe. It was so helpful, I thought, let’s leave that in.
SJ:
So now we’re gonna be great. Okay, here we go. Hi.
JJ 03:24
Take a deep breath. Let’s just do a deep breath together. Let’s do six No, sorry, three seconds in. And then six seconds out.
Sarah Jones 03:31
Can we please keep this in the pod?
JJ
One more time. Slow reset.
Sarah Jones 04:20
Parasympathetically way better. Thank you. This is why this is why you, you, missy. So here we go. In addition to being my breathing coach to be with Jameela Jamil, I was gonna say like, seriously, this episode is about wellness and how many of us ironically, have an unhealthy relationship to it. Right. And I’m wondering, is our obsession connected to the country being so unwell politically, like you just proved right then breathing is free. Our bodies are naturally self healing, right? Yet we are constantly inundated, overwhelmed, distracted, especially as women, I think, by everything that’s going on, including the next new health product we have to buy. Would you say the wellness industrial complex might be distracting us from making things better around here?
JJ 05:10
Yeah, I don’t think it’s distracting by mistake. I think it’s distracting by design. If you look at how gendered so much of wellness culture is, it’s very clear that it is. I mean, I’m not allowed to say it’s clear because then I sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it is an amazing coincidence. Uncanny coincidence, that women specifically are expected to be terrorized of every inch of our bodies, we are supposed to fight time and gravity. We are supposed to have a thin face that is somehow Forever Young, which is not fucking possible. We’re supposed to have big tits, but thin arms but big asses, but skinny thighs, we’re supposed to worry about elbow fat. We’re supposed to worry about armpit wrinkles. There is not a centimeter left on a woman’s body that someone has not committed.
Sarah Jones 06:04
And the wild part is none of this is actually about wellness, right? It’s purely about how we look. But somehow we’ve conflated being healthy with appearance and attractiveness, usually demand right? It’s like we’re cosplaying the idea of wellness. But actually, we’ll do anything including having dangerous procedures on all our body parts.
JJ 05:55
Was it earlobe-plasty? That was like the moment that I bottomed out and I was like, That’s it. This is end stage capitalism. We’re here. It’s arrived. We’re fucked.
Sarah Jones 06:06
Well, one of the things we wanted to talk to you about the royal we apparently it’s just me, but no, there will be like,
Bella 06:45
Hi. I made her promise that she could just like let me say what’s up to you? Because like I Stan, what’s up? What’s up? I’m sorry. Hi. We love a little bit nervous. Okay. Yeah.
Sarah Jones 06:25
Okay, so Bella loves you like not, it’s not a normal amount. And my characters may pop in, because one of the things that you’re so helpful, I think at helping people navigate is we’re not, we’re not the problem. And specifically, you know, this show is about politics and our trauma and hopefully healing them both so that they don’t keep killing us all because they’re in a little loop together. And I think a lot of us have like wellness trauma, like I’ve been that person who’s like, need to get some calorie you know, need to get the rest of this treadmill burn, I don’t think I’m gonna make it to my voting place. Like I was that way around body image, almost to the point that I didn’t have a life much less a political awareness and feeling like my personhood was dependent on what I weigh and all of that.
JJ 07:18
All of that, if women aren’t eating enough, if we’re not sleeping enough, because we’re getting up early to do our hair and go to the gym, and then we’re thinking all day about how to cheat time and gravity. It’s like, of course, we’re going to be distracted from our proper end goals, which are not eternal youth. It is not eternal fuckability, it is supposed to be our happiness, and our health, and our friends and our families, our community
Sarah Jones 08:15
Ourselves, for fuck sake.
JJ 08:18
Well, we’re supposed to squeeze those things in as an indulgence, pleasure has been rebranded as an indulgence rather than a necessity. And instead, we are just supposed to spend all of our time terrified over things that men are congratulated for, I know that there is an increase in body shaming for men, but when it comes to their wrinkles when it comes to their, their salt and pepper hair, you know men are not pressured in the same way to do this sort of thing. So it’s hard to to to not think of it as a conspiracy. So for now, we’ll just stick with extraordinary coincidence.
Sarah Jones 08:49
Wild coincidence and may it’s almost like diet, culture, fat phobia have rebranded themselves as No, no, no, this is good for you. This is part of the you know, you’re on social media, you care about self care, right? This is you’re a good person, so don’t worry, your obsession with weight is actually you know, we’re gonna rebrand it as something that’s virtuous.
JJ 09:13
Yeah, it’s all it’s, it’s clear that it’s a lie because you can get on a plane and then six hours be somewhere with a completely different beauty standard. And we’re in the same year, we’re in the same day, month and year, all over the world. And yet, in India, the brown girls want to be lighter skinned, in America, the white girls are putting tanning products which are doing God knows what to their skin to get darker, threadings so their eyes look more Asian. And then you got Asian girls trying to widen their eyes to look more Western, like it’s chaos.
Sarah Jones 09:50
So I– talk about gaslighting. I really believed all of the like BMI and I want to be really careful here obviously if people you know have health issues that need to be dealt with, that’s one thing, but an entire culture where you know the illusion that skinny by any means necessary equals health and wellness and good for you. Meanwhile, I remember reading it I believe it’s called fear of the black body by a professor called Sabrina Strings. She kind of breaks down the history of fatphobia as rooted in anti blackness and anti people of color narratives. So we’re all running around people of every background are running around panicking about an extra inch on their body or like you said, every inch of our bodies, and it’s impacting younger and younger people, of course. But also, I feel like if all of us who were like Black Lives Matter, okay, then stop your diet, because actually, this whole thing of like measuring ourselves against this impossible standard is rooted in, you know, racial hierarchy that blew my mind.
JJ 10:50
Yeah, I think Listen, everyone should be eating nutritiously according to their own individual needs. Right? I don’t think it’s I don’t think that we should ever generalize with anything when it comes to people’s individual health. But you’re right that it is rooted in white supremacy, as is the hairlessness obsession, you know, that they used to look as look at people of ethnic minority, especially black and brown people as closer to animals and so then I got them having body hair. Alok is really brilliant about this. They’re a great educator on this subject. But they were telling me on my podcast that, you know, there is a there is a link to seeing hairiness as closer to being animal like and therefore, what they associate that with brown and black people and that’s why white people must be seen as completely hairless. And then obviously that then started to bleed out across other cultures where then we started to feel similar shames around hairlessness. But it all comes from it’s all it’s all rooted in racism.
Sarah Jones 11:50
But this is so key because I think if people realized, I don’t wanna say it was my ethos, but I really was like, Okay, this is who I have to be. It just seeped in, I was an intelligent person otherwise, but I like you said, I was distracted by design. From all the politics, I knew I wanted, you know, I wanted to be living my values. And instead, I had no idea that, you know, all of the kind of chasing of these impossible body standards was itself counter to the politics that I believe in. And I don’t think people make that. And this is no shade to anybody. But yeah, there is a direct link between, you know, live real liberation, real wellness, and hopefully not needing to go under the knife to feel acceptable in this world. It’s funny, Jamila mentioned conspiracy theories. But what we get into next really is controversial territory for a lot of people. And especially as a Brit, I know she can get a lot of flack for being critical of what’s going on here in the US. But I found her critiques to be really helpful reminders that we can’t talk about the wellness industrial complex, without facing these industrial size harms that are being done to many of us in the name of health and beauty.
I was thinking even about just sort of the depths of cause the political includes all of our racial, you know, kind of class, and political stuff, it’s all over the world. I mean, we’re talking specifically about America here. But you know, we are leading the charge, like disguised as self care, and looking your best helps you feel your best and all that, you know, I get that.
JJ 13:45
But you don’t need any of this in any other country on Earth. There are so many hundreds of chemicals that are legal here that are illegal in Europe where I grew up, like there is something wrong with the products in this country. And so rather than fix the products, they were like, brilliant, we’ll make these people sick. And then we will sell them increasingly unaffordable products. So this like poison and then sell you the cure system of America. This doesn’t exist. I cant believe how much this country has been gaslit into thinking it’s their fault.
Sarah Jones 14:24
I hope this pod is to help people see it’s not you, you and you can actually have a role in reclaiming your power. And it’s not easy.
JJ 14:30
It’s supply and demand, right, you know, like we keep perpetuating it, when we give attention to certain body types, or certain manufacturers or certain, you know, surgeons on Instagram or Tiktok, then what we’re saying explicitly, is that we are interested and therefore they keep supplying to our demand, this is a two way street. And we have to take some accountability, we can’t just play victim here. Because we, because it’s very important not to play victim because then you don’t feel like you have any power, it’s important to recognize that actually, you do have some power. And if we could all just stop fucking giving our time and energy and money to these people, they would shift accordingly, we can see that things shift when we want it to, we were able to for a while at least get body positivity to be a thing. And then as ozempic came in, and then everyone stopped supporting body positivity, and then it was sort of gone. And it was out in a massive way. And all the people I know who are working in that space are just like, can’t get a booking, right.
Sarah Jones 15:30
But that reminds me around wellness. This, this is all stuff like body positivity versus body neutrality, right or things like orthorexia, which I had never heard of, but it’s the unhealthy obsession with eating only healthy, like only pure food, right? Or exercise bulimia, which I also didn’t know was a thing, even though I was doing it, right, like trying to burn off whatever you eat with exercise. So I think so few of us really know about all of this stuff, or how to name it. And we don’t realize we’re doing it while calling it health. So kind of like you said, you know, we don’t want to become victims. But how do we get informed but not overwhelmed around all of this?
JJ 16:13
Okay, so what I would say is that how I have gotten to a personal place of peace is education. Right? I have educated myself about the history of the beauty industry, I have educated myself about the current state of patriarchy, I have educated myself about the side effects of a lot of the quick fix medications and pills and laxatives that are available to us. And when you understand it, it’s much harder for you to be manipulated and swayed, because then you can see it for how arbitrary it is. But I swear to God, if we could get our nutrition, and our exercise and our general education level of like, what’s happening in our society up, we would feel so much more in control right now. Because we just have we’re like this headline reading generation who just have been I used to be like this. Like just tidbits of information. And there’s just so much information that we’re being bombarded with our brains were not, our brains were never designed to take in this much information we were just supposed to identify is this very poisonous or not poisonous. You know, like, we just had such simple, simple brains that haven’t updated. According to this,
Sarah Jones
we don’t have a new operating system.
JJ 17:30
So because of that, it means that we don’t dig deep into anything I learned this expression of what is it the call give me a second it is the illusion of explanatory depth. Wow. Okay, the illusion of explanatory depth. And I’ve only just learned about this recently, which perfectly explains me four years ago, and everyone I know, which is that we, we think we know about race, different things that we talk about. But if we were actually asked to explain them, we wouldn’t be able to we would be completely stumped. Because we’re just like a soundbite generation. We have this illusion of thinking that we understand what we’re actually dealing with or talking about. It’s like all these complex systems and hierarchies and chemicals and diseases like everything just coming at us all of the time, geopolitical nightmare after nightmare. And we have a kind of just like a 1% knowledge about all these different things and we speak about them with such confidence. Yes, we think we genuinely think we understand and we don’t and so to educate oneself, and actually learn to an explanatory level, about the things we care about, would massively inform how can we fill in the world because it is the feeling of chaos and not actually understanding what is happening. That is, I think, increasing our level of anxiety. And I only say that from my own personal experience, because the more I’ve grown to understand everything, the more I can understand a system, you cannot navigate a system that you do not understand. Right.
Sarah Jones 18:45
Right, and that’s when you feel powerless. I, what I was going to mention is this, I believe it’s that the human brain is still wired, because we haven’t had a supposed upgrade to our systems. We’re wired to be able to make 125 executive decisions per day, per day, right? That’s the berries. So if I’m on Instagram first thing in the morning deciding like, what to like and what not to, like, 125 times I’m done. I’m fried for the rest of the day. And then I’m supposed to go out and interact with the world and be a responsible citizens now.
JJ 19:10
protect your decision making at all costs, right?
Sarah Jones
The decisions are in our hands.
JJ 19:16
We have the power. Part of the problem is us. The market is always going to supply what they think that we demand. So they do manipulate us to think that we want these things. But once we wake up from the spell, and go Oh, actually, why did I come to the conclusion that I should look ageless forever? Where did I write conclusion that my labia is too big?
Sarah Jones 19:46
When did I come to my ear low but I’m really this Yeah, all my pierced places. I’m exaggerating…
JJ 19:55
Once you once you wake up from the gaslighting, then I think that you have to unfollow the fucking people and the brands, and the surgeons and all the different people like stop giving it power, the market will change and shift towards us.
Sarah Jones 20:10
So let me ask you this right, it? You’re absolutely right. I’ve had the experience myself. I’ve had to do like physical, tangible exercises. And I’d love to hear anything because the whole point of America, Who Hurt You? is like, How the fuck do we heal though? Like, we can see the damage? How do we undo the damage in practical ways. I remember being told if you can stay out of the mirror like Okay, make sure you don’t have spinach in your teeth or whatever. But as much as you can get out of the orientation toward your appearance as who you are. Right? Do you have any kind of practical has anything?
JJ 20:40
Yeah, I only look at the mirror, twice a day i i normally have never lived in a house with like a full length mirror until recently. And I just kind of avoid it unless I’m about to leave the house for a red carpet. And I just have to glance to make sure I don’t have any like jizz on me or something.
Sarah Jones 21:00
Okay. First of all, thank you for the jizz on me. But secondly, I have to interrupt with what Lorraine is saying to me right now. I’ll just let her say it.
Lorraine 21:15
Okay, it’s all well and good. Look at you. You don’t have to look at a mirror. Anybody could tell you. You’re absolutely perfect as you are. I’m sorry. I hate to break it to you. But you gorgeous sweetheart. So that’s my point. When you’re my age. Unfortunately, I have a mirror around every corner just to remind me of the harvest from all sides.
Sarah Jones 21:33
Now, that’s not ideal, because the rain was raised in at a time when it really was like, You know what, how you look, I wanted to say that are living, right? Like it’s real that I’ve been told I either need to lose weight or gain weight for a role. So how do we navigate a world that even outside the entertainment industry is fat phobic in hiring practices. Like how do we navigate the realities of how the you know, this illusion of wellness or health or whatever, can be institutional and kind of imposed on us even if we’re trying to do the right thing where we are?
JJ 22:12
It has to be a group effort, and it has to start with you. So you have to also start checking yourself as to what you say to yourself in the mirror what you say about yourself, you know, that’s so funny. How often will be like, Well, I’m too unattractive for anyone to love me. You would never say that to a friend of yours. You would never say that to a colleague. You would never say that to anyone that you care for or respect and yet you freely say these things to yourself like I don’t deserve this. I’m gonna sabotage myself. So first of all, it comes in building ourselves up. Another thing I would suggest is exercise. I cannot stress this enough how important exercise is and how bizarre it is that diet culture has taken over exercise and bastardized it and made it something that we do for our aesthetic. Oh my god. Yeah, for your mental health. I am literally begging you to move your body in any way you can. Even if you cannot walk, find a way to move your arms, but for 15 minutes and nine seconds a day. That is how long it takes for your body to release happy endorphins right ASICs did a study it’s 15 minutes and nine seconds a day. It immediately starts to make you feel more in control. Get off your phone, get off your phone, look at your screen time. Fuckin cut it in half and then cut it down to a quarter spend as little time on social media as you can spend as little time following people, like unfollow all the people who are toxic, do not participate. If you do not if enough of us and encourage your friends not to participate, if you see that they are having a toxic reaction to the people that they’re following online and comparing themselves and trying to change themselves to match that, give them the same advice, start a walking clubs or any kind of joyous exercise, it doesn’t have to be an expensive gym, you don’t have to wear the Lululemon matching bra and thong, please don’t take the power back over your own body like doing that, when I was training for Marvel was the first time I’d ever exercise and it wasn’t to lose weight, it was to gain balance to be able to kick higher and to be able to have bigger thighs, like stronger thighs. Yeah, and it completely what I what I didn’t even really notice the physical changes that much because I was in so much pain. And there’s that part don’t like get that level of fit at the age of 37. Because it will kill you. But the difference in my mental health was unbelievable. I came down on anti anxiety meds, I stopped shopping as much as when you’re unhappy as when you’re more likely to buy things to acquire to fill the void. And I made a I did a huge call on the internet of who and what I look at, I was like, You know what, I just actually don’t need to be that informed. If information is that important, it will find me just like it did when I was younger, I don’t need to know everything that everyone was doing. I don’t need to look at these images of these poreless ageless women who are older than me, I just need to I need to exist and be present in the moment. I also highly recommend spending time with animals. Yeah, spending time with them. They don’t give a shit what you look like they are so much more sane than the rest of us. And and then like I said, voting with the dollar man, like you get to decide who’s famous. You get to decide who is successful and what is successful. And so take that power back and protect your mind.
Sarah Jones 25:12
Yes, yes. So all of this. And for me, this is kind of a bridge to a conversation about our political power. Because I really meant it, that like the size of my thighs about you know, and I want to be clear about this. I had anxiety and this was a way for my anxiety to manifest that was socially acceptable. I could get together with all my friends and panic about carbs. And it just seemed normal. When really what I needed was, I started to say like, did my therapist send you because I’m like, I can’t write down all the things she says. But luckily, we’re recording this. Like the there is a practical almost like a manual of things that you can do to be restored to who you are so that then you can look around in the world instead of at your phone or at your ass in the mirror and say wait a minute, this society doesn’t reflect who I am.
JJ 26:00
It’s a sick society. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying is that get offline, get offline, get back to your friends go and do things in your community. I spend very little time on the internet now, very, very little I spend most of my time with my friends or with animals or outside. I am not interested in absorbing myself anymore in this virtual gaslighting.
Sarah Jones 26:24
That part. Well, that brings me to I am kind of irrationally hopeful, in spite of how bad the onslaught is, because ultimately wellness is social justice. Like that’s what it really is. It isn’t diet culture, or fat phobia or body obsession. And I think as people, you know, can come home to themselves as a source of their own wellness. Like literally, when I can just stop, like you said, and notice that I just said something terrible inside my own mind about my own body, then I can stop and say, Wait a minute, where did I get that from? And realize it was some kid on the street in New York, you know, 15 years ago, and then work on that. Like it actually does work to change your mind? Yeah, wellness.
JJ 27:08
I think wellness is affection. It’s time with loved ones. It is eating nutritious whole foods, it is getting a little bit of exercise every day. And in an affordable way that works for you that fits in with your schedule. It is not living to work, it is not waiting to rest when you are dead. Or when you’re older. It is learning to be present it is spending time with nature, it is spending time in love. Like that is what true wellness is none of those things can be sold to you in a tincture bottle. Like none of those things can be sold to you in a pill. All of those things can maybe slightly alleviate the pain that we’re in. But until we get back to the fundamental values of what makes humanity amazing, which has connection and compassion and community and and true care for oneself looking at your body as an engine that you are fueling for the day. Until we can get back to that and look at that as real success rather than acquisition and acquisition of bullshit that we don’t need. Then we’re never gonna get well it all lies in us as individuals and as I said it is much harder to manipulate people who are awake, who understand who are kind to themselves and who are well.
Sarah Jones 28:28
I mean, I this equipment is too expensive, but I’d like to drop this mic. Okay, not gonna drop it. My engineer just screamed no. So virtually dropping it. Thank you Jamila. It’s so good to hear you. I’m giving you grace. Thank you, my dear, appreciate you.
Nereida 28:58
You know what, I think I really needed to hear that. Just thinking about all the hours I’ve spent juicing root vegetables for these diet cleanses. I don’t even like jicama!
Rashid
Yeah and I might have to cancel my yoga subscription, saying they got me on auto pay son.
Lorraine
I think that’s Jamila’s was point Rashid. As much as wellness is about putting good things in your body, fancy yogurt that costs more than your sneakers, just go for a walk in your sneakers.
Sarah Jones 29:52
Yes, Lorraine, because you know, the marketing may be about wellness. But ultimately, these companies are also trying to make money. So we just got to be careful about believing everything they say even the experts, it doesn’t mean we can’t trust them. But we also get to trust ourselves a little bit. And our common sense
Bella:
Totally, like the common sense that if you’re so stressed about eating only organic that you’re having anxiety attacks, then you might be getting diminishing returns on the whole clean eating thing. That’s why I use a rose quartz chakra cleanser I got on Tik Tok to regulate my internal balance instead.
SJ:
Well, I mean, sure, Bella, maybe also try what Jamila said about being on social media less. But that brings me to this week’s prompt. And as usual, I hope you will join me in getting quiet and putting your hand on your heart. Or maybe don’t, maybe this time, you could wiggle around and make some noise. I don’t know, you get to choose whatever would feel good to you. If wellness is ultimately about feeling truly happy and healthy inside your own skin, then maybe you can find something that makes you feel alive internally, even alongside whatever is going on externally. You could practice deep breathing. You could make some art without judging it, please, you could go outside and listen to the birds. You don’t have to buy anything. You don’t have to restrict anything. And if whatever you choose feels healthy but not happy, then maybe it’s not the right answer to the prompt for you. So you can try again. Maybe even come up with your own prompt. If you need some inspiration, check out our show notes, we’ll link to some of what Jameela mentioned, including her pod, iWeigh, and the episode with comedian and poet, Alok Vaid-Menon. Also if you do try the prompt, I hope you’ll share it with us on socials at yes-I’m-Sarah-Jones. And no matter what. Here’s to your health.
Sarah Jones 32:59
America, Who Hurt You? was created by Sarah Jones and Sell/Buy/Date LLC. Remember to follow, rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts. You can keep up with pod and share your prompt responses at Yes-I’m-Sarah-Jones on Instagram and TikTok.
America, Who Hurt You? is a collaboration of Foment Productions and The Meteor, made possible by the Pop Culture Collaborative. Our host is me, Sarah Jones, our producer is Kimberly Henry, with editorial support from Phil Surkis. Our executive producers are me and Cindi Leive. Our audio engineer is Shawn Tao Lee. Our Logo was designed by Bianca Alvarez, and our music is by Coma-Media.