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The Magnificat

There are no real adjectives to describe David Ambroz’s life as a child. Words like filthy, abused, and dejected sanitize the experience of what life must have been like for a seven-year-old David, precariously washing his clothes in the bathroom sink of a Wendy’s. His young eyes anxiously scanning the locked door, hoping that no one will barge in and interrupt his inconsistent cleansing ritual that for a moment, but not completely, removes the foul stench of poverty and homelessness engulfing him and his siblings. A scarcity wrought by their mother, a complex woman fighting her own demons of mental illness. Trying to unravel a system not interested in lives and uplifting humanity but driven by poll tested phrases like “personal responsibility.” Glib, disconnected slogans shouted by well-heeled officials into echo chambers of comfortable, ill informed, and unconcerned agreement. A system that David describes as a pipeline to prison and generational poverty.

This is the gritty and oftentimes unimaginable world of David’s beautiful and necessary memoir A Place Called Home. His story is at times heartbreaking. At times grotesque. And then again hopeful even as the thief called doom lurks in the corner, biding his time. And in these stories, we the reader need a totem on which to place our blame. Someone to stand as factor for our fears of what the lives of people like David trapped in these circumstances mean about us. And since the system is too big, and the well-dressed officials too far away, David’s mom, Mary, has become the focus of the outrage. 

This is not Saint Luke’s Mary of the Magnificat, rejoicing in the glory and the power of the Lord at her divine and blessed favor. This is the Mary who beats her kids. Risks all their lives. And drifts into an almost catatonic state, chain smoking cigarettes as her children silently starve. Through it all David has a dream, that the hand of God touches his mother’s head – the way He touched the other Mary’s womb – to still her restlessness and allow the true Mary she is to come through. So he can get to know her. Talk to that Mary. His mom.  

Throughout our conversation, the theme of forgiveness is rampant. It is liberal. Especially for Mary. As David says, “I perhaps am too forgiving, but it makes me the hopeful, pragmatic optimist that I am today to believe that we can do better… I will not become numb, I will not become a pessimist, I will continue to believe that we can make the world a better place.”

The dedication from David at the beginning of A Place Called Home reads, “To my mother, who taught me to understand and forgive . . . to conquer one impossible thing at a time.”


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We recorded the first episode of “At the Podium with Patrick Huey” in February 2021. Regina Bain was our first guest. At that moment in time, the world was hunkered down because of another spike in Covid 19 thanks to Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukah and New Year’s Eve collapsing into one another. The country was still reeling from and digesting the act of revolution carried out at the Capitol on January 6 that almost cost the nation our democracy. I had only one thought in mind – I had to do something to offer a different narrative to the cynical, divisive story that had gripped the country for the last four years. I believed that if we could create a platform to convene a diverse group of people committed to sharing their individual stories, that we could tap into the spirit of humanity that binds us all and become a beacon of light in an ever-darkening world. I had few requirements. The platform would be judgment free, ideologically agnostic and a place where big thoughts were not only welcomed but encouraged. And so “At the Podium” was born.

Corinne Bowen and Mary Ann Kane were two brand experts introduced to me by Tembi Locke at the end of 2020. She thought that a collaboration with them could yield extraordinary results. And she was right. From February to October 2021, we shot 10 episodes of “At the Podium,” refining the process and learning what this show was. I was green and unskilled in the beginning. They actually had to push me to start releasing the episodes. I was nervous. It was the first time that I put my name on something that was this critical. There could be no hiding with an eponymously titled show, and your name credited with “Creator and Host.” They finally Zoomed me at the end of September and said, “Patrick, you have to release these. We are scheduling to release the first one in October.” And so I said yes, and stepped into what I know to be my higher calling while I am here on this planet; to bear witness to the lives of others who walk this journey and in doing so acknowledge their worth and value.

34 episodes later, 34 people who cosigned an idea that our stories and life journeys matter, thousands of downloads and listens by people who are unknown to me, we finish Season One. I am still digesting all that has happened within me as a result of “At the Podium.” I am still learning what it all means and hopeful of how the next chapters will unfold, but for now I look back and reflect, and offer supreme thanks and gratitude to the people who have supported this act of intentional good and embraced the transformational power of saying “yes” to life.

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If you can get close enough to Charlie Davies and look him in the face, you will see eyes that sparkle with the deep and profound brightness of love and gratitude. You will see a smile that has a slight mischievous quality to it. A smile that crinkles the sides of his soulful eyes. If you are fortunate enough to receive a hug from Charlie, you will not soon forget it. Charlie’s hugs are not a noncommittal experience. He pulls you close. So close that if you are paying just the right amount of attention, you might feel his heartbeat against yours. 

If you also get close enough to Charlie, you will see a cranial scar that goes from one ear to the other ear, forming an almost crescent moon at the top of his skull. The telltale vestige of a horrific car accident that almost cost him his career as a professional soccer player. That almost cost him his life. As he says with a quiet intensity, “I put on my seatbelt, and that’s the last thing I remember.”

It is appropriate that Season 1 of “At the Podium” ends with Charlie. His story embodies much of what this first season has striven to highlight: that greatness, creativity, and authentic self-expression begin when you say “yes” to the unexpected turn of events that life constantly serves to us all.  His life is a story of overcoming immense setbacks and unforeseen detours on his rise to the top of the professional soccer world. Like growing up without many financial resources. Like managing the complexities of having a father who fought his own demons, while all the while guiding his son to athletic greatness. Like surviving a car wreck that should have ended his career; that should have ended his life. At each juncture, Charlie had to reimagine and reinvent who he was as person in order to survive and to compete as an elite athlete in the Olympics and play as part of a World Cup Team. 

As Charlie lay in the hospital with months of painful rehabilitation ahead just to hopefully walk again, the priest who had seen the wreckage of the crashed vehicle would come to him and say, “There’s a reason and a purpose for you being here. There’s a big plan for you because you’re still here.”

In his own beautiful way, Charlie says to us the same thing. Each new day is a gift. Each sunrise is second chance to live. Each interaction we have is an opportunity to put a smile on someone’s face. Beyond his immense philanthropic efforts as the Director of The ‘Quin Impact Fund, and his expertise as a CBS Broadcast Analyst, Charlie’s legacy is that of creating hope from no hope, of creating a brilliant tomorrow, from an uncertain today.

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In 2015 the Broadway musical Hamilton captured the imagination of the country. It did the impossible; it made history not only extremely cool, but relatable. By colorizing and diversifying the cast, the show’s creator Lin-Manuel Miranda dropped all of us into the heart of the American story. Miranda, a Puerto Rican, man played Hamilton. The Schuyler Sisters were cast with actresses who were of black, white and multiethnic backgrounds. Thomas Jefferson was cast as a biracial man. Aaron Burr was cast as a black man. Suddenly, those of us who are so often left out of the history books, were now front and center in this narrative of one of the country’s Founding Fathers, told with slick lyrics and a hip-hop, R&B inspired soundtrack. Even in 2015, Hamilton offered a stark relief to what were the emerging undercurrents of white supremacy and xenophobia in the country that would soon find full vocal support from our political leaders and institutions only two years after the show opened. 

 Enter Lucia Brawley. She is the Co-Founder and Chief Creative Office of AMP Global Technologies, an award-winning,  global media platform that lifts the voices of artists of color throughout the globe.  An iconoclastic figure, she is a trained ballerina from the American Ballet Theater School in New York and the Joffrey. She is Yale School of Drama trained actress. She is a cum laude graduate of Harvard University. Most recently she and her husband moved to Africa to produce an award-winning television series called Take Back the Mic. The show gives a platform to highly gifted African rappers, hip-hop artists and musicians to raise their voices and be heard. She is also a racially and ethnically ambiguous person. Like her education and work, Lucia’s identity will not be pigeonholed. As she says of herself, “Nobody knows what I am.” Her racial and ethnic roots run wide and are representative of the immigrant story of America – Irish, Mexican, Italian, African, Native American. She aptly describes herself as a map of America. 

 In our conversation this week, Lucia and I explore the uncomfortable, real conversations about identity, race, representation and who gets to say who is or is not part of any ethnic group. We live in a time when centuries of racial and ethnic oppression in America are being confronted head on, as people of all backgrounds demand to be included in the story of America. The outcome of this current moment remains TBD, however Lucia remains sanguine as we face the uncertainties that lie ahead. “The American story is such an intricate tapestry of all of these different cultures coming together. And we’re so much more connected than we realize.”

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Shahin Safai is the Founder and CEO of Royal Personal Training (RPT), one of the premier private training facilities in Beverly Hills, CA. In a town like Beverly Hills where people are obsessed with looking good, being seen and crafting a perfect physical image, making it to the top of the fitness and wellness world is no small feat to achieve. You have to have a tenacity of spirit to stay alive and beat the odds.

Shahin is of Iranian descent and born in Norway. When he arrived in California 2011, he spoke no English, had no job, and had no formal education. He had come up the hard way in Scandinavia. Leaving school in just the seventh grade to help support his family, he began making the myth of his life as a young teenager delivering newspapers. That ability to fight and survive would serve him well as he came to a country that he had only seen on television. Starting as a valet at Mr C Hotel in Beverly Hills where drunk guests would make fun of him, he would use his persistence of mind and relentless work ethic to enter the competitive world of personal training at Equinox Fitness Center. Made fun of and underestimated by his fellow trainers at Equinox, Shahin would grow his client base until he was one of the top personal trainers for Equinox in the United States. From that rarified perch, he launched RPT and began a journey that changed the trajectory of his career and his life. 

If you think Shahin’s story reads like a script for a Hollywood movie, you’re right. There is a journey to a new land, starting at the bottom and climbing to the top of an unforgiving industry, and of course, a pretty girl. But this movie is no frivolous, made-up story. His life is the result of overcoming multiple failures, getting knocked down and forcing himself to get back up, almost losing his business and living to tell his story another day. In short, it is the American Dream writ large. As he tells us his story, the tears will flow from his eyes, but they are not a sign of any weakness. They are the ocular proof of a life forged in the fire of experience and built on a character that says, “I always had a work ethic in me, and I’ve always been competitive. People work 10 hours a day? I work 16 hours, 2 days in a day.”

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We don’t talk a lot about failure. It’s an uncomfortable topic for most people. It doesn’t meld with the current vibe of the times. Today we celebrate the wunderkinds who seemingly materialize out of the ether and suddenly penetrate the global consciousness. Greta Thunberg who at 15 years old gained notice for her blunt speaking style to politicians and presidents on the topic of climate change. In 2019 she organized a global student strike called Fridays for Future to bring attention to the global climate crisis. Naomi Osaka the tennis phenom who at 23 won her first of four major tennis Grand Slam titles, famously felling tennis giant Serena Williams in 2018 on the way to her first major title in New York City of all places. Simone Biles, who at only 25 has been labeled the GOAT of Women’s Gymnastics, went to Tokyo (2020/21) to cement her greatness in Olympic Gold Medals, but instead lead the world in a conversation about mental health. 

Enter Glynis Rigsby into the conversation. She is an Assistant Professor and BFA Program Director for the School of Drama at The New School College of Performing Arts. It’s a big title to match her big thoughts. One of the biggest of her thoughts that we discuss is the idea that we all live in real time, all the time. And part of that reality, in fact a necessary part of that reality is failure. She says, “You have to expect that failure is part of your process. And if you don’t expect that, you’re probably not in a very healthy or generative process.” If you ask Glynis, she will tell you that if you want to create successful work in any field, if you want to craft a compelling vision, those things come as the result of iterative drafting processes that refine you and your ideas through time and practice. She views her greatest contribution to the art and business of theater as the seeding of ideas into artists and creators of the future, or as she calls it the chain of creation. Ideas like failure, and context matters, and trusting your physical instincts. 

 The reality is, we don’t see the hours of flipping into pits that Simone Biles does during practice. Or the twisted ankles and jammed wrists. We don’t see the hours of hitting groundies, backhand slices and serves that Naomi Osaka executes daily. We don’t know what it must be like for Greta Thunberg to be in the firing line of a once sitting President of the United States for having the temerity to express a view counter to his. 

 
We see the PR machine; we don’t see the sweat. 

 But as Glynis reminds us, you can’t have a vision for yourself, without a coherency of thought that is often born out of the 99 failures that will bring about the one success.

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McCord Henry takes us deep into his struggles with alcohol addiction. At one of his lowest points, he woke up alone in a dark room on twin a mattress with vomit in the corners and empty bottles everywhere.  His family and friends pushed away. He says that he needed it to get that bad in order to wake up. In that dark room he had come to a crossroads. He could either get better and live, or he could die. After multiple interventions, trips in and out of rehabilitation facilities and time spent in a Dallas sober house where the professionals there were more concerned about his homosexuality than his alcoholism, he would eventually choose life. McCord walked into a Santa Barbara, CA hospital on April 3, 2017, to seek treatment for alcohol withdrawals. It was in that hospital, after the many attempts and setbacks at getting clean, where he began his real road to sobriety. 

McCord’s unvarnished story is one of a young man filled with much promise looking for his place in the world as he comes to grips with his sexuality and wrestles with the demons of alcoholism. His story is also one of hope. Where a person once passed out drunk on the floor of his job, can now hold his head high with a fierce humility and say, “I am recovered. I am living.”

McCord’s life reminds us that our struggles are profoundly real. And whatever our struggles may be, the victory does not come until we are ready to own the outcomes and circumstances of our lives and do battle with the dark night of the soul. And when that prayed for time does come to step into a new direction, we must have the courage to say, as McCord did, “This is it. This is the moment,” and seize life.


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I have often felt odd in my life. Well, more accurately I have often been declared odd or queer by those outside looking in on my life. In my mind and lived experience, however, I have just been me. Reflecting on my journey I can see why others applied the odd or the queer moniker to me. At 14 years old I became the only male cheerleader on the high school Junior Varsity Squad in Alief, TX. In my sophomore year of college at Vanderbilt University, I wore braids down to my shoulders, tooled around the well-manicured campus on rollerblades and opted to be in plays as opposed to pledging a black fraternity. I have been a unicorn my whole life, and I still am to this day. I’ve never marched to the beat of someone else’s drum very well. The music is always in my own mind and in my own time. 

My conversation with Bill Thompson, the Executive Director of Young Storytellers,  was broad and it was honest. We grappled with the reality of privilege and the role it has played in his life and career. We dove headlong into access – who gets to have it and who doesn’t get to claim that prize. We discussed how one person who takes a genuine interest in you, can redirect the trajectory of your life. And we talked about what he calls "the great equalizer" of his unexpected life - education. I don’t know if we found all the answers, but we walked the road together in search of understanding. 

In the midst of our back and forth, he reminded me of two things – the person who owns and articulates their narrative can change the way people feel and more importantly can change the way that people behave – that is power. And that as participants in other people’s lives, we must hold space for them to create and tell their own stories – even the ones, most especially the ones about flying unicorns.

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“I can with almost 99.9 percent certainty that we’re looking at a malignancy.” Now what do you do? Fight. Survive. Win.

Cynthia Besteman straightforwardly recalls this highly personal moment in her life – when she knew she had breast cancer. She describes feeling all the blood in her body dropping into her stomach. Like she was suspended on a rollercoaster right before it plunges into its steep valleys and twisting turns. Even without a cancer diagnosis, we all know that loss of breath sensation when the news coming to us is not good, and instantly the world changes. Cynthia recounts the long walk home from her doctor’s office and feeling as if the “sky was not as blue.” In her hour of need, she reached out to a dear friend who was also fighting this disease. With great compassion, Cynthia’s friend offered to be her flashlight and guide through the complexities of how to fight, survive and win against a disease that kills 42,000 women and 500 men each year.

And fight is exactly what Cynthia did. She called upon her mom, those women closest in her life and her husband for emotional support. She called upon her life’s experiences in the tough worlds of acting and New York City real estate to formulate an action plan that would save her life and lead her to her true calling. During her own treatment and recovery, she began to create Violets Are Blue – a full range of skincare and body care products designed to address the specific needs of women going through treatment. The line is empathetically formulated with clean ingredients that can be healthily absorbed into the body through the skin.

With her work today, as the Founder and CEO of Violets Are Blue, Cynthia herself has become a flashlight for thousands of women battling for their lives. She eloquently and passionately calls for more education, more technology, more treatments and a cure so that Stage 4 women can stay alive for more than five to 10 years. 

As she reminds us with almost startling candor, “There is no Stage 5. Stage 4 is it.” The time for action is now.

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I met Ryland Engelhart at a Deepak Chopra wellness retreat in South Carolina. If you are a food person, his name may or may not be familiar to you, but his family’s two restaurant brands in Southern California (Café Gratitude and Gracias Madre) are synonymous with healthy, highly tasty vegan dishes that are not named after ingredients or a chef’s daughter but are instead positive affirmations. If you go to one of Café Gratitude’s eight locations in Southern California, and want a delicious, gluten-free salad of edamame, mustard-marinated kale, warm broccolini with dill, avocado and maple-toasted seeds, be prepared to let your server know when he comes to the table that I AM ENCHANCHANTING.  

 Before you roll your eyes, know that these affirmations, indeed, Ryland’s doctrine of living are genuine. He freely states that in the early 2000s when he and his brother migrated from San Francisco to Los Angeles with the concept of Café Gratitude, he specifically did so with the zeal and belief of an evangelist. He was on a mission to change the world through food, humbly serving his fellow humans and creating a culture of health. 

 That same zeal and belief underpins his “huge, foolish project, like Noah…” called Kiss the Ground, a non-profit organization that explores how we save the earth from global warming and the human species from extinction through regenerative agriculture and literally pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and putting it back into the ground. Kiss the Ground is also the name of a film Ryland produced that has had over 5 million views on Netflix and won significant acclaim for the message that paints a 3D picture of how we can sustain our food supply and the planet. 

The film, even with all its successes, has also been deeply criticized for a lack of diversity and not connecting the tenants of land management to its roots in the Native American and indigenous peoples of the North American Continent. That criticism has touched Ryland personally. It has been a source of disenchantment, self-distrust and apathy. He authentically describes how one of the greatest achievements of his life, has also been the cause of pain and the evaporation of his ideas of who he is. 

We speak to Ryland during a time in his life when he is the process of rebuilding, reflection and reexamination. This is his season of life where there is no production, but silence, stillness and tarrying as springtime glimmers on the horizon. It’s a lesson for us all, really. As he describes it, there is a “divine timing for the inhale and the exhale.” And as with each breath, there is always a pause.

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