Twitter's New Twit, DEI MBA, and Penn State Falls Back

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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 D&I 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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0:00:38.5 Julie: Welcome, welcome, welcome to Crazy and The King.

0:00:43.0 Torin: So listen, I'd really... I actually have to be just a tad bit quiet, because those of you who are listening, you have no idea that I'm sitting in an office in New York, and the people in the company like... Well, they're not used to a person making a bunch of God damn noise. They're just not used to... It's kind of real boring, the entire office, white furniture, it's almost like everything in here is... Well, it's black and white, but it's so quiet, J. Anyway, how are you?

0:01:18.9 Julie: You know what? I am wonderful.

0:01:21.9 Torin: Okay.

0:01:22.8 Julie: Sitting at the new place in Portugal. I've been here... What... Two weeks now. It's a dream. Living the dream, that's all I can tell you.

0:01:32.9 Torin: Living the dream. You are not by yourself. A lot of folks want to have that dual citizenship and...

0:01:40.2 Julie: Yes.

0:01:41.3 Torin: Spread their wings a little bit.

0:01:43.0 Julie: Yeah. It's funny, I was getting my eyelashes... Or not my eyelashes, my eyebrows done the other day, and I was talking to the lady who was doing it. She was like, "My God, there's all these Americans here, all of a sudden, what the hell is happening there?" And I'm like, "Nah, let's just not talk about it. Just know that we'll come hang out, bring some money in, do that thing." So yes, there's a lot of movement. We're hearing from more and poor people every day. But you know what, I'm especially thankful for you for taking our end game kind of thought that we've had for the last couple of years and really taking it to fruition. And I don't know if it was on purpose, but you gave me pretty much the entirety of the month of October off from the mic, knowing that it is the busiest month of the year for me, for Disability Solutions, and I am a person with a disability. I don't know if that was in your thought process, but I appreciate you for that, and we had some great freaking content.

0:02:48.4 Torin: We did. It wasn't on purpose. We did, and then you're welcome. So all of that.

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0:02:53.8 Torin: So we did... It wasn't on purpose. We did have some great content and you're absolutely welcome. Nothing wrong with giving a one month break that is unexpected, that allows you to pour that energy into a different part of your professional and your personal life. And I wanna just send out special thanks out to Yvette Pegues for kicking us off, I know that she was a bit nervous, but she had some incredible announcements and things that she's doing in the disability community. I wanna also thank Amanda Kirby, Theo Smith from over in the UK for jumping in and hopping on that beat and giving us a little bit of that CATK love. And then, last but not least, Amanda Burris. It's funny because when I was responding to Amanda Kirby, Amanda Burris popped up in my email, Auto pop, and I'm like, this is the wrong person. And then I was thinking about somebody else with the last name Kirby over in Australia... New Zealand, I'm sorry. I was just like really bugging a little bit, but we got it it all right. I think that all of them, for it being their first time, not a whole lot of prep, for all of them hopping on and just really contributed to the conversation last month. It was a beautiful, beautiful thing. And I'm very appreciative that you and I were able to agree that we would take a chance and do something that we had never done before.

0:04:28.9 Julie: Yeah. I mean it was... I was super nervous about it. I don't know if I've said that on air, but I was super nervous about it. And you know what, I'm kinda kicking myself in the ass right now, because you're a 100% right, everybody did an amazing job. It's hard to give up my seat, just hanging out with you and doing our thing, so that was a little bit of it. But also what a fantastic spread for our listeners to understand what disability brings to the table. Some of just the everyday people out there doing their thing, making a difference, living their life with a disability, being successful and rocking their game, whatever that is. And that's what I think, as I went back and listened to all the shows, all the guests were great, I'm super proud of Amanda, she did a fantastic job. And what I realized is, this is where we need to see people with disabilities just like that, just like that in this like, "Hey, every day life. 'Hey, doing our thing." It's not just truly saying all the time that people with disabilities are out there rocking the world and doing things all the time, but we are. And we had many very good examples this month on... Or last month now... Excuse me, it's November... Showing what disability, employment and success should look like.

0:05:57.9 Torin: Absolutely, absolutely. So let's hop into just a couple of stories and then get to our conversation for the week. Number one, I think at the big... Not at the big, but at the top of most headlines, most newsletters, at least since last Thursday, the biggest headline happens to be that Elon took over Twitter. And I gotta tell you... Well, I'm not, Well, yeah, I am gonna tell you, it was no big deal to me, honestly.

0:06:27.6 Julie: Okay.

0:06:27.6 Torin: I felt like whether it's Elon or somebody different, they're gonna do within the organization whatever it is they decide to do. These are billionaire problems, it's not my problem. I'm not trying to take over Twitter. I'm trying to use platform as I use other platforms as in a way to get out a message that I think is important. But one thing struck me over the weekend, I don't know exactly what day it was, it could have been Friday of last week, could have been Saturday or Sunday of the weekend, or even earlier this week. But there was a rise in post around anti-semitism, homophobia... I wanna say posts that were racially charged. I don't know if they necessarily said the N-word J. I don't wanna spread misinformation, but what I do remember seeing is that there was a rise in negative toxic, dangerous language in the days of him taking over. How did you feel? Did you feel anything that you care?

0:07:26.9 Julie: Yeah, I care. One, Twitter is the only social media that I still like. And we've had this talk many times, I just had to take a lot of social media breaks and I've gotten out of the habit of it for the most part. But Twitter, I really enjoy, it's like a way to connect with people who you would never, I would never, never otherwise like, sort of have the opportunity to like, sort of hear from on a really personal basis. Especially, just the really smart people in our political world. And I honestly didn't think that the deal would go through. I don't know if you listened to the Pivot Podcast with Scott Galloway and...

0:08:13.3 Torin: Kara Swisher.

0:08:15.0 Julie: Kara Swisher, thank you for saving my ass as always. But they've been talking about this for months and really, like what Elon did first was he manipulated the stock. So I own in mutual fund exec's funds Twitter stock. He manipulated the price of that to his own end. He won't pay for that. That's a problem number one. Problem really number two is that he is backed financially because he had to take on debt to make this purchase happen. So he is backed financially by a Saudi Prince, which means now that we have a foreign government who partially owns an American social media company, that I have a problem with. And then of course the last thing that you speak of is then his sort of... I'm not gonna moderate content approach, so it's really just sort of a free for all of free speech, which is then resulting in what you talked about, which is the increase in anti-semitism, LGBTQ, anti-trans language, homophobia, and I believe a dramatic increase in the use of the N word. I believe you're right about that.

0:09:31.5 Julie: As people who have otherwise been kicked off the platform are rejoining from far right platforms such as a, Truth Social, Reddit, Parlor, whatever the fuck they are things. And so it's... I don't know if it's that big of a deal, but it's, there are things about it that seriously piss me off and that this is a platform that I really, really love to use. And it's gonna be changing dramatically and I don't think it's gonna be changing for the best.

0:10:09.1 Torin: Yeah. So you raised some very, very good points. I have not listened to the podcast there, Scott and Kara's podcasts in quite some time, but I am very fond of the both of those personalities. I will also say that I like the points that you raised around the foreign government that governmental entity or individual being behind, such a prominent US brand, one that we use to... Well, actually one that's used globally. I think about Arab Spring and how it ignited a movement, how it supported so much of the uprising and the vocal activism if you will, for a variety of different things. So it is a platform that I too appreciate. I don't see Twitter as like an Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn. I do see it as being a very different platform.

0:11:10.1 Torin: So I can appreciate the balance that you gave in to my statement of whatever. I still feel the whatever. But I also embrace and feel the points that you've raised and what I think is going to happen in this, whether or not it's Elon firing a number of high ranking executives and others, whether he continues to throttle employees access to content moderation tools, whether he re-platforms some of the individuals that have been kicked off. I believe in the end, and I don't know what the end looks like, but I believe over the next 12 to 18 months, a lot is going to be revealed to those of us who care about the platform, use the platform. And I think that 18 month mark or so we might see the rise of a couple of competing platforms, not any of the ones that you've mentioned, but some very new entrance into the marketplace. So what I think is going to happen is good, a good thing.

0:12:14.5 Julie: So the most important question related to Twitter is, and listeners, if you do not know my podcast partner is Blue Check verified kind of a badass.

0:12:26.5 Torin: Yeah.

0:12:27.0 Julie: Will you pay to keep it?

0:12:28.0 Torin: Hell no.

0:12:28.3 Julie: Is it important enough for you to spend that 240 bucks a year? Nope?

0:12:34.3 Torin: Nope. Not 240, not 60, not 24. I wouldn't even make $2 a month to be verified. The only way that I would pay to be verified, and I mean this sincerely, I would actually pay to be verified. And this is actually, this is going roll into our next story. I would pay to be verified if Twitter had a verification policy for every single profile on the platform. If they were collecting driver's license, and identifying information, like I had to go through to get blue check verified, so that I knew that it wasn't a bot and it was a person, and that they can be identified and in some ways pinpointed, for some of their nefarious behavior. I would pay all day to be blue check verified, I'd pay 240, I'd pay 360, I would pay. But until they get rid of some of the bots and the fake accounts, no, I'm not paying for it.

0:13:38.1 Julie: There you go. You heard it here first Elon.

0:13:40.5 Torin: So it actually brings and goes into the story we have around Texas, and fake facial recognition becoming a way of life. And I'm not gonna go into the full story part, in part because I'm working on a laptop and have limited Windows space, but it's in fast company. You can look at the article. Here's the reason why I shared the article. There were people that were talked about in the article, Julie, that were against facial recognition becoming so prominently used in everyday life. In this instance, in the beginning it was a person or a couple trying to rent an apartment and the apartment complex wanted them to take a picture on their phone and look, they just weren't feeling it. Here's my question, I believe we can't stop that train, so do you feel this facial recognition journey, that is really just looming over the mountain, like it literally is looming over the mountain, do you feel like this technology is going to have positive or more negative impact on our daily lives?

0:15:07.0 Julie: I go back and forth. I think you're... Like after... And I'm gonna say this from an American purview first, and then try to give it a more perspective, is that after 9/11 we put the Patriot Act into law in which we created and I think not fully as a citizen who lived it as you did, not fully recognizing that we were in fact allowing at least the gateway for the creation of a surveillance state. Now is a surveillance state, good or bad? If we look at London, if we look at different parts of Europe that have heavy use of CCTV and those kind of things where crime is lower than it is here, maybe it's a good thing but maybe it's a bad thing. I don't know. What I know is as Americans, we've created a power vacuum in which that kind of technology and that kind of surveillance is going to be able to thrive. And when you pair that with really unfettered capitalism that we have in this country and the conveniences that that surveillance state is going to create, yeah, I think that ship has sailed. I think that I like to look at my phone and have it see me, I like to get on the plane with my CLEAR and my biometric scan, all of those things. And do I really think about very often anything other than giving my DNA away to like a 23 of me, which I will never do. The rest has just sort of, meh, just happened.

0:17:00.1 Torin: Yeah. I did, I signed up like you for CLEAR, and then when the pandemic hit, I started to see the efficacy of CLEAR beyond the airport, and then lo and behold, they started to accept it at some of the conference at in-person events that I was attending, and or attended by others. And so I tend to not be a person who is reticent about embracing new technology. I don't know, I think if we can get this facial recognition to... Like for instance, this camera that's on my laptop right now, I purchased it for one reason and one reason only so that I wouldn't have to hook and un hook the audio and video equipment that's in our office. I'm trying to just put it there and leave it there and not move it around, put it on planes and all that other stuff. But this camera is actually supposed to follow me. Now I don't know if it's following me because I haven't done anything but on your side, is it moving?

0:18:10.9 Julie: Oh yeah, it's moving. Oh yeah.

0:18:12.5 Torin: Oh. Interesting. So see, I couldn't even... I can't even tell. On my side it's doing what it's supposed to do, so I think that we... Personally, I like to embrace new technology when I think that it will advance efficiency, it will advance efficacy, it will advance connection with humanity. So even though the ship has sailed, I'm happy to be on the ship, I just wanna make sure that we are as individuals not afraid to govern when governing needs to be done. That if in fact we can tell that these organizations, these companies, these enterprises, if they're misusing our data and they're misusing... It's deploying technology, that we step in and we step in immediately. We don't allow it to become some erected tool in our day to day life, where it's hard for us to strip it out and we can't move forward. Kinda like you're too big to fail. Remember that whole conversation around too big to fail?

0:19:17.9 Julie: Yeah.

0:19:18.4 Torin: I just... Any technology really stood up in a way that if we pull it out, or that if we try to now regulate or do something that is for the better good, for the greater good, that it disrupts our lives totally. That I want us to try to avoid.

0:19:33.6 Julie: Yeah. And I think that's a good... One of the pieces I took away from the article is just, it's the ability to opt out.

0:19:40.2 Torin: Yeah.

0:19:41.4 Julie: And I think that's one of my big problems is if I opt in, I choose to use CLEAR. I choose to give that information to the CLEAR company. But I don't... I shouldn't have to use it to be able to purchase an apartment. There should be other ways of verifying my identity, which we've done for, how many ever, dozens and dozens of years. And we should be allowed to opt out of that kind of data collection. And not only should we have the ability to opt out, but we should have first write of refusal in terms of like, when it pops up, you can opt in, you can opt out. Not I have to go find a thing and opt out and do all that kind of stuff. And the other piece is certainly around facial recognition, around the criminal justice system, that is proven again and again to be problematic. And we don't have anything close to the type of accuracy, that we need to make that even remotely doable at this point.

0:20:48.7 Torin: Yeah. And the last story that we have before we go to our break, it's just a really quick mention, but I am really, really excited that the Wharton School of... Well, it looks like the management department, I don't wanna say the Wharton School of Business, but the Wharton Management Department is going to offer in the academic school year of 2023, 2024, they're going to offer an MBA in diversity, equity and inclusion major. It's a major, major, major academic announcement for me, which really will connect us to part of what we're gonna talk about after the break. But I thought that this was beautiful. Love that Wharton in all of its prominence and glory around building B School students, and propelling people to Wall Street and Power Quarters that they said, "Wait a minute, we have to do even more around diversity and inclusion." Stephanie Curry, who has been awesome, she's been a great friend. Just to know that even with her presence, the work that she's doing, others are doing that, the school said we have to do even more. I thought that this was good.

0:21:58.4 Julie: Yeah, it's good. Fine. It's interesting. I'll be very interested to see how it plays out and if other schools adopt.

0:22:06.4 Torin: And we will go to a break. But what I want you all to know before we do the break, is why do Julie and I talk about Twitter and Elon Musk and content moderation, and why do we talk about facial recognition and the criminal justice system, and how it impacts our personal and professional alliance. And why do we highlight Wharton starting a academic major around D&I because they're all important. We have grown in how we put our stories together, that we're not only talking about D&I specific stories, because we know that indirectly these stories impact how we pursue D&I in our personal and professional lives. So, stick with this, we'll be right back.

0:22:50.9 Torin: So this week in a flash, the Fed's proposed rate height NACE per signal that a downturn is inevitable. And the CEO that home prices are falling faster than they did in 2008. And apparently we have Airbnb, Joe's and Josettes institutional investors, and iBuyers to blame. All companies are posting American profits, early voting is up way, way up. And a man in southern China is concealing his $30 million lottery jackpot from his wife and his child, fearing J, that the winnings will make both of them lazy. I don't know if you caught it, but our jackpot here last week was $1 billion. Over at the Supreme Court, some justices press for an end to race conscious university admissions, as they heard challenges through affirmative action early in the week. And I think some of the members of the Supreme Court should probably enroll in that class from Wharton in 2023, 2024. And finally, if that isn't enough to ponder, apparently there is now a thing called the pink tax. The pink tax is a return to office tax, where women also face paying more for clothes, makeup and dry cleaning, paying more than men. That's this week's in a flash.

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0:24:17.1 Julie: All right. So, I just have the question from in a flash, which I love, by the way. Did you just learn about the pink tax or were you just updating the pink tax?

0:24:30.4 Torin: So, I thought about that. It's so interesting that you asked me that, because I said, did we talk about that before? And I didn't do a quick Google Drive search like I would normally do. But I said, but then the immediate question after that was, but how do women always pay more money for clothes, for makeup, for hair than men have. Why is there a new... What I think it is, J? I just think that people... I think that there are more people working hard to trend, go viral. So let's come up with this new phrase, whoever created the war for talent, 1996, whoever created the great resignation or the great reset. I think people are always searching for something that allows them to get a bit of notoriety. So I knew about the pink tax, I may not have called it the pink tax, but women in my life have always paid more for these things than I do.

0:25:35.2 Julie: Yes, we pay a higher tax many times on female goods, like tampons. All of those things we pay a higher tax for, or a higher price for pink razors, women's razors versus men's razors. All of those things have existed, and now as we do return to work and have to revamp those wardrobes. So all of those things are still more expensive for us to do. So excellent call out.

0:26:01.6 Torin: So this week, well, last week there was a tweet that caught my attention, and I'm gonna actually read the tweet. It was regarding Penn State lady... The Penn State university extracting plans to open up a Center for Racial Justice. The plan was actually announced in 2021 in response to, of course, George Floyd, the Summer Uprising and some of the other things that happened. But it was to highlight how the school has failed to hire and retain black faculty members. The tweet was from an individual by the name of Wyatt Massey. He's @News4Mass on Twitter News the number 4, Mass on twitter. He says, "Penn State has formally scrapped plans to establish a Center for Racial Justice, a key proposal in the wake of 2020 protests.

0:27:01.3 Torin: This morning, the morning that the tweet was sent out, President Bendapudi told the group searching for the center's director that Penn State would not fund the effort. Now we'll get back to that. So my question, how do you feel when academic institutions, corporations, non-profit entities, people who have made a demonstrative stand that D&I is important, racial and social justice is important. How do you feel when they backtrack on those declarative statements, those demonstrative positions? And just to be fair, let me not tease out the audience. What the president said is that they're going to take those allocated funds and reinvest them in existing work that is already being done, with an asterisk. That's my asterisk, not yours. That's not an article asterisk. But how do you feel when they backtrack from those demonstrative statements and positions?

0:28:18.0 Julie: Immediately when you were reading the tweet and we were prepping for the show I thought of Tim Sackett, who joined us earlier this year. And we asked him, our company's backsliding in their D&I commitments, now that we are two plus years out from the murder of George Floyd. And his answer was an unequivocal and loud, yes, they are. And I think, that's my first gut reaction is we've... Things are bad and something terrible happens, and we take action and we have that gut. But when it comes time to put your money where your mouth is, that money is reallocated, reprioritized in a potentially, and again, I'm just sort of talking out loud, less than transparent way, than a Center for Racial Justice would've been on Penn State's campus.

0:29:28.6 Julie: Now with that being said, I think that we do a lot of... I think there's a lot of academic work that gets done around social justice, racial justice. And we have a lot of very, very smart people. So if we're going to use the money for making sure that we are actually creating more diverse scholarship programs, initiatives, making sure that we're retaining and paying black and brown talent at the level that is equitable to their white peers, that we are creating more accessible buildings on campus that we're using. Creating more accessible technology more accessible learning mediums for students and faculty for disabilities. That to me is a really good use of that money. And so, maybe next time, when we start thinking about those commitments, we can see sort of the reality of being reactive versus proactive.

0:30:35.4 Julie: Does Penn State have a good DEIB strategy from its top to its bottom, right? Or when things happen, like the murder of George Floyd, did they all of a sudden wake up and go, "Oh shit, we haven't done anything. Let's make this really big promise that we then don't keep." Instead of having D&I that moves and lives and is a part of everything that Penn State does. Which again, at least at my gut, would be probably a much better use of the money than sort of the high profile building, downtown, and making that move for additional academic work. I don't know, I literally just thought of that while I was talking. It could be all wrong. [laughter]

0:31:21.1 Torin: Well, so I teased it a tad bit while I shared that Penn State had been operating, or at least this last year, operating at about $100 million deficit. I've seen a few different numbers in some of the articles that I researched or read prior to our recording. But the point is, all of the articles suggested that Penn State is... They are cash deficient at this particular point. So the piece that sort of stood out for me, and you touched on it, is are we being transparent? So I tried to be fair, because I said when I go in and consult and work with an organization, I always tell them I have to start with the discovery. I need to see where you all are, so that we can baseline how we decide to stand up programming and efforts to move forward. We have to have some degree of measurement and revelation, then we can begin to journey towards better. What most of these articles said to me, J, was that they were going to...

0:32:32.5 Torin: Some said we'll double down on our efforts, and we'll take the money that we were gonna allocate, which is somewhere between $1 and $3 million. We're gonna, for this new center, we'll take that 1 and 3 million and pour it into existing programming. But then I read one article and I said, "Is one enough for me to put the red flag up?" Yeah, it is. One article I read it said, "Well, we have to uncover what we are doing." And I said, as the president of the institution, how is it that either you can be quoted as saying we have to uncover what we are doing, behind the decision being made to say we're just gonna scrap the Center for Racial Justice. If I'm gonna get out and say, I'm backtracking off of this declaration that we made, I'm gonna backtrack and we're gonna put our money where we... I need to already know, "Well, what are we already doing?"

0:33:39.8 Torin: It logically didn't make any sense, which is the reason why I think people like Bernice King, Chief Executive of Martin Luther King Center says "Listen, we got a problem with this. Diversity efforts are not the same as working to end racism." I think it's a reason why black faculty members at Penn State are complaining. Last year, I believe that the report says that, African-Americans accounted for about 3.1% of faculty in 2020, 3.1%. I will tell you something else that I can't really elaborate on because it's not my story. I heard the story riding around in the city a couple of weeks ago. That a former or a Penn alum talked about when they were attending the university, there was the death of at least one black person. A body found on the campus, and how the campus just pretty much tried to sweep it upon the rug. And the context of that, was around Penn State has a longer history of not doing what needs to be done around equity and inclusion and representation. This is not a newer history, it's a longer history. And so for the current president to scrap it, but then say we need to do a discovery to see what we are doing, I think that's a little bit of putting the cart before the horse.

0:35:20.4 Julie: Yeah. It shows the... I'll say it, I don't know, maybe too harshly, but it shows the disingenuous of the center in the first place, because if you don't know what's wrong, and you haven't spent the time to figure that out. This is what you and I do for a living on the regular, is figure out what's broken and then build systems to correct that. And so now to say, "Oh, we're gonna go back, and we're gonna study and discover what is broken." Well, you've got 100 years of history and two years since the death of George Floyd to have been working on that, before you made this decision to cut the center. I will say though, I would like to get your opinion a little bit more on the Bernice King's statement, diversity efforts are not as the same as working to end racism, which I 100% agree with. They're not the same.

0:36:19.8 Julie: But sometimes I feel statements like that discourage good, they discourage TA leaders, DEI leaders, HR leaders, CEOs from taking action, because it's not enough. And what we really need is people who are willing to do what's necessary, to build into the systems that they control, that they can influence to start to increase diversity, which will work towards ending racism. And I sometimes I find that kind of language a little bit discouraging, and not disrespectful obviously to Mrs. King in any shape or form. But it just ends oddly with me, when we think about the work that has to be done and how it has to be systematic. And that has to be... There have to be diversity efforts to actually end racism. I think.

0:37:13.7 Torin: So, what's your question to me though? Because I hear your position. So what's your question to me?

0:37:21.4 Julie: I don't know if there's a question so much as I guess I just made a statement, and wondering sort of your gut, your reaction to it.

0:37:28.0 Torin: Yeah. So when I read the statement and when I read statements of that sort, I tend to think about the trouble that... I cannot remember her name now. She's the former D&I officer for Apple. I think it's the Denise Young Smith, if I'm not mistaken. Back in 2015 or '16, something like that. She was in Brazil and she made a statement around 14 or so white men being in a room. And that really is diversity and inclusion, if I'm not mistaken. I'm paraphrasing. And I felt that was problematic around this is a black woman, saying that 14 men being in a room is diversity and inclusion. I felt that was problematic, because I felt it gave cover and grace to individuals not willing to push hard enough to increase diversity, to increase inclusion and representation. And so when I hear a statement like Bernice King's, I hear it the same way that I read Denise, the same thing.

0:38:51.8 Torin: I feel like we sometimes can flirt with diversity, and think that we are making progress, when we are not tearing down and trying to deconstruct these systems of oppression and prejudice. And just these barriers that prevent us from really making true progress. So personally, I didn't see an issue in the statement. However, I can embrace, I can sit with what you are saying as well, because here's the beauty in that. The beauty, and there are so many times that people that are younger than you and I, J, not excluding you from that youngness if you will, but there are times when people will put stuff up on social media and they're like calling it out, like this is the problem. And I have, I literally would sit there and read it for two, three, four minutes. I don't see what's wrong. I don't see the issue, and then there will be a long thread of people commenting.

0:40:00.8 Torin: And I am trying, not necessarily trying to agree if you want, I am literally just trying to see what is the issue. So I can live with your observation around the sentiment of how sometimes a statement like that might push people away from... Who are to participate and then being a part of how we all create a better journey. So thank you for that. And what I would say is that Penn State be better.

0:40:28.1 Julie: Yes.

0:40:28.5 Torin: Penn State just simply to do better. We need you to... You are a well recognized academic institution, and like worked with earlier in this episode, you and the statement that would have been made by standing up that Center For Racial Justice, Penn State I need you to do that.

0:40:53.4 Julie: Yep, yep. Transparently better.

0:40:55.8 Torin: Transparently.

0:40:57.1 Julie: And just as we close out this segment before we go to Her Voice, I didn't wanna miss your call out In a Flash, about the arguments that are happening this week in front of the Supreme Court, about ending affirmative action at the university level, with cases against both Harvard and University of North Carolina.

0:41:19.8 Torin: UNC I think.

0:41:20.3 Julie: Yeah, UNC. Thank you. And very, very likely, then later this next year, you and I will be talking about the overturning of affirmative action by SCOTUS, and that probably deserves its own historical Crazy and the King episode, as we lead up to those. But if you haven't followed those arguments, check them out. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, excuse me, is making some compelling statements, and you're starting to hear really where the other side sits, and we are likely to lose that regulation mid next year.

0:41:54.0 Torin: You got it. We'll be right back. Her Voice segment is where we amplify women that are making moves. So this week, up first, we have Amber Coleman-Mortley. She is the Director of Innovation at The Female Quotient. FQ is an equality services company that provides thought leadership platforms for women, and develops solutions for organizations committed to closing the gender gap in the work place.

0:42:29.3 Julie: And we also have 35-year-old Canva founder, Melanie Perkins, who got rejected by 100 VCs, now her 26 billion design start-up, which... Canva is kind of a competitor to like an Adobe Design, is ready to take on Microsoft and Google. Perkins who's Australian, founded the design platform with zero Silicon Valley connections, and it's now the world's most valuable startup, founded and led by a woman.

0:43:00.5 Torin: And finally, the NBA hired Paramount Plus senior VP of consumer marketing and streaming Ms. Tammy Henault as their Chief Marketing Officer. And Laura Kavanagh will be the first woman to lead the New York City Fire Department. A shout out to all of the women that this week made it into our Her Voice segment. And we gotta move real quick to disability twitter. I think we have some interesting ones this week. You first.

0:43:31.7 Julie: Yeah, I love this first one. So it's BeingMe420 and it's a picture that says "I'm too clumsy to be around fragile masculinity." As a coffee cup, which we all need, and it says, "This is absolutely perfect #HEDS #Disability Twitter #ADHD."

0:43:52.7 Torin: Yeah. And this one here is not so much of a mystery, but we understand that people in the disability community are not employed in numbers that we can brag about. But we actually found a story this week around employment in the disability community, and it is a story dropped by Andrew Pulrang, A-N-D-R-E-W Pul, P-U-L-R-A-N-G. I'm sorry. Andrew Pulrang, he dropped the story at Forbes kind of why is the employment gap for people with disabilities so consistently wide. The one thing that I wanna mention in that is that there is a tiny morsel of good news in the article. The uptick in employment within the community was a little bit higher over the last month or so, and so that we ought to applaud.

0:44:44.7 Julie: Yes. Absolutely. Andrew is an amazing founder of the CripTheVote hashtag, in fact. Last but at least we have slykers, @slykers8. S-L-Y-K-E-R-S-8, the number 8. "Love out to the all the humans in constant chronic pain. Most people have no idea the mental and emotional discipline it takes to look like this. I love you, I see you, I honor you, and your pain and your survival, #disability twitter."

0:45:10.6 Torin: Marching towards the holiday season, we have just a few more weeks, and for all of our listeners just to know that Julie and I have curated some really good interviews to end the year, but we will be back next week live and direct. We close reminding each and everyone of you to share the pod with your digital tribe and find your voice. Be a better human, let's create a better culture, better teams and workplaces. And Now, J and I are ghost.

0:45:39.2 Julie: See ya.

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