Category Archives: the inspired minds podcast

In today’s episode, Rick and Sam are joined by singer-songwriter Larry Long to discuss the role of music in promoting social justice and building community. Through stories and conversation, they examine music as a tool to build and create common bonds, which bring together generations and cultures, inspire change, and power transformation.

Lifelong social justice advocate, Larry Long (www.larrylong.org) is a singer-songwriter, poet, educator, organizer, activist, and storyteller. Long’s work has taken him from rural Alabama to the Lakota communities in South Dakota. He has given voices to struggling Midwest farmers, embattled workers, and veterans. He was the troubadour on the American Agriculture Movement Tractorcade to Washington DC for parity, ran with Oceti Sakowin children on the Run For Freedom from Standing Rock to the prison in Sioux Falls, performed on Soviet/American peace cruises along the Volga and Mississippi Rivers, sang for Mrs. Rosa Parks at the 45th anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and organized the Mississippi River Revival, a decade long campaign to clean-up the Mississippi river. Through a curriculum called Elders’ Wisdom, Children’s Song, (www.communitycelebration.org) Larry has honored over one-thousand elders of many nations with youth in story and song from throughout the United States.

Long is the Executive Producer of the award winning documentary “Dodging Bullets: Stories of Survivors of Historical Trauma” and co-host of ‘Conspiracy of Goodness’ (https://wdrt.org/conspiracy-of-goodness/) heard every Monday morning on http://www.WDRT.org radio at 8:30 AM (CT).

Larry Long is a recipient of the prestigious In The Spirit of Crazy Horse Award, Bush Artists Fellowship, Pope John XXIII Award, Leadership In Neighborhood Fellowship (St. Paul Companies), and Sustainability Award for his work in forgotten communities.

Sam Scinta is President and Founder of IM Education, a non-profit, and Lecturer in Political Science at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and Viterbo University.

Rick Kyte is Endowed Professor and Director of the DB Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership at Viterbo University.

Music compliments of Bobby Bridger- “Rendezvous” from “A Ballad of the West”

In today’s episode, Rick and Sam are joined by William & Mary law school professor Laura Heymann to discuss Section 230, which recently has been in the news as people across the political spectrum have called for its repeal. The conversation begins by examining the nature and intent of Section 230 and why internet content is treated differently from newspaper or book publishers. The discussion then dives deeper into the implications of Section 230 on the First Amendment and free speech generally, along with the costs and benefits of social media and internet content as it relates to civil discourse.

Laura Heymann is Chancellor Professor of Law at William & Mary Law School. Prior to joining the faculty in 2005, Professor Heymann was the inaugural Frank H. Marks Visiting Associate Professor of Law and Administrative Fellow in the Intellectual Property Law Program at The George Washington University Law School. She has also served as an assistant general counsel at America Online, Inc., and as an associate at Wilmer, Cutler, and Pickering in Washington, D.C. She also served as a law clerk to the Hon. Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Professor Heymann has received several awards for her teaching and served as Vice Dean of the William & Mary Law School from 2013 to 2017. She has published numerous scholarly articles in the areas of copyright law, trademark law, and naming, including recently “The Satellite Has No Conscience: Section 230 in a World of ‘Alternative Facts’.”

Sam Scinta is President and Founder of IM Education, a non-profit, and Lecturer in Political Science at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and Viterbo University.

Rick Kyte is Endowed Professor and Director of the DB Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership at Viterbo University.

Music compliments of Bobby Bridger- “Rendezvous” from “A Ballad of the West”

In today’s episode, Rick and Sam are joined by Minnijean Brown Trickey and Spirit Tawfiq to discuss storytelling and education as catalysts of change, particularly in relation to racism and social justice. Through their conversation they examine America’s need for a more inclusive and complete telling of our history, developing a vocabulary for talking about racism as a means to bring bigger change, and educating young people to become societal change agents against racial injustice.

Minnijean Brown Trickey is one of the “Little Rock Nine,” the students who desegregated Little Rock High School in 1957. She is the recipient of numerous awards for her community work for social justice, including a Lifetime Achievement Tribute by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation and the International Wolf Award for contributions to racial harmony. With the Little Rock Nine, she received the NAACP Spingarn Medal and the Congressional Gold Medal. She holds a Bachelor of Social Work in Native Human Services from Laurentian University and Master of Social Work from Carleton University, in Ontario Canada, and is the recipient of four Honorary Doctorates.
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Ms. Trickey is the subject of a documentary, Journey to Little Rock: the Untold Story of Minnijean Brown Trickey, which has received critical acclaim in international film festivals across the globe. She has been featured on Oprah, People Magazine, Newsweek, the Ottawa Citizen, the BBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp, CNN, the History Channel Turning Points in History, and the HBO documentary, Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later.

Spirit Tawfiq is an Antiracism Educator & founder of Roots of the Spirit, an organization created to uproot racism through Storytelling, Education and the Arts. She is the creator and host of Roots of the Spirit Podcast, a space to galvanize change through honest conversations about identity, “race,” racism and intersecting social justice issues.

As a professional speaker and playwright, Spirit speaks and hosts workshops in k-12 classrooms, colleges, universities and organizations about her legacy as the daughter of Minnijean Brown Trickey, inspiring people from all walks of life to discover their own roots and our interconnected history.

Sam Scinta is President and Founder of IM Education, a non-profit, and Lecturer in Political Science at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and Viterbo University.

Rick Kyte is Endowed Professor and Director of the DB Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership at Viterbo University.

Music compliments of Bobby Bridger- “Rendezvous” from “A Ballad of the West”

In today’s episode, Rick and Sam are joined by Jacob Hundt for a discussion on education as a means of engaging together in community. The conversation explores the influence of common values and shared stories, the value of experiential learning, and the role that conversations in the classroom play in creating moments for personal and intellectual growth.

A big thank you to guest Jacob Hundt. Jacob is a founder and current Director of Thoreau College in Viroqua, Wisconsin. He grew up on a dairy farm in the Driftless Region of southwestern Wisconsin. He studied at Deep Springs College, the American University in Bulgaria, and the University of Chicago Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences, earning a BA in History and an MA in Social Sciences. Since 2004, he has worked as a trained Waldorf high school teacher and guidance counselor at Youth Initiative High School in Viroqua and was a founding board member and instructor of the Driftless Folk School. Jacob is passionate about the importance of the liberal arts for our civilization and has created a model that enables students to freely choose a post-secondary education dedicated to the cultivation of thinking, feeling, and willing.

Sam Scinta is President and Founder of IM Education, a non-profit, and Lecturer in Political Science at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and Viterbo University.

Rick Kyte is Endowed Professor and Director of the DB Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership at Viterbo University.

Music compliments of Bobby Bridger- “Rendezvous” from “A Ballad of the West”

In today’s episode, Rick and Sam are joined by Lee Rasch to discuss ethical leadership in politics. Beginning the conversation, they define ethical leadership and then delve deeper, contemplating tough questions: how did Americans become so politically polarized? How do we find middle ground? And what can the average citizen do to encourage responsible and ethical political leadership?

A big thank you to guest Lee Rasch. Lee founded LeaderEthics-Wisconsin, a non-profit/non-partisan organization committed to promoting ethical leadership among elected officials, in 2018. He serves as the Executive Director of the organization. Prior to this experience, he served as President of Western Technical College from 1989 to 2017. Throughout his career, he has actively promoted leadership development, continuous improvement, economic development and sustainability at the national, statewide and local levels. He has written articles and given numerous presentations on these topics. Lee was Chair of the Legislative Committee for the Wisconsin Technical College System for more than 15 years, and he was a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Congress in 1994 and 1996. In his spare time, Lee sings in a quartet and plays bass guitar in a rock band.

Sam Scinta is President and Founder of IM Education, a non-profit, and Lecturer in Political Science at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and Viterbo University.

Rick Kyte is Endowed Professor and Director of the DB Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership at Viterbo University.

Music compliments of Bobby Bridger- “Rendezvous” from “A Ballad of the West”