Guerilla Muse

Welcome to the Guerilla Muse podcast with Resmaa. Today, I will be engaging with Kevin Dedner. He serves as founder and CEO of Washington-D.C.-based Hurdle, which provides culturally intentional teletherapy to eliminate barriers that make it harder for people of color to get mental health care.
Kevin is deeply connected to Hurdle’s mission, having suffered a period of depression where he found the biggest challenge to effective care was finding the right therapist who could truly understand and connect with his struggles as an African American man. His company equips mental health professionals with the skills needed to effectively address issues of race, ethnicity, class, and culture and exists to ensure people can show up whole, operate with joy, and live with power. Kevin recently penned his first book, The Joy of the Disinherited: Essays on Oppression, Trauma and Black Mental Health. Through honest, captivating, and humane stories of his past and eye-opening research into the effects of racism on mental health, Kevin argues in his book that we must knock down the invisible barriers to mental healthcare.
An award-winning public speaker, Kevin has over 20 years of public health experience. He currently serves as an Optum Clinical and Scientific Advisory Council member. In 2021, Kevin was named one of the top 50 in Digital Health by Rock Health. He was also recently named one of 75 Black healthcare leaders to know by Becker’s Hospital Review.
Kevin is a graduate of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and has a Master of Public Health from Benedictine University in Illinois.

Welcome to the Guerilla Muse podcast with Resmaa. Today I will be speaking with Stephanie Foo. She is the author of What My Bones Know: A Memoir Of Healing From Complex Trauma, the first literary memoir to tackle the science and psychology of complex PTSD. Previously, she was a producer at This American Life and helped create Snap Judgment. She's also had work in The New York Times, Vox, 99% Invisible and Reply All.

Welcome to the Guerilla Muse podcast with Resmaa. Today I will be speaking with Dr. Rheeda Walker. She is an award-winning Professor of psychology, fellow in the American Psychological Association, and author of The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health. She is also an expert scholar who has published more than 60 scientific papers on African American mental health, suicide risk, and emotional resilience.

Welcome to the Guerilla Muse podcast with Resmaa. Today I will be interviewing Baratunde Thurston. He holds space for hard and complex conversations with his blend of humor, wisdom, and compassion. Baratunde is an Emmy-nominated host who has worked for The Onion, produced for The Daily Show, advised the Obama White House, and wrote the New York Times bestseller How To Be Black. He’s the creator and host of How To Citizen with Baratunde which Apple named one of its favorite podcasts of 2020 and for which he received the Social Impact Award at the 2021 iHeartRadio Podcast Awards. He’s also a founding partner of the new media startup Puck. In 2019, he delivered what MSNBC’s Brian Williams called “one of the greatest TED talks of all time.” Baratunde is unique in his ability to integrate and synthesize themes of race, culture, politics, and technology to explain where our nation is and where we can take it.

Welcome to the Guerilla Muse podcast with Resmaa. Today I will be interviewing Dr. Lissa Rankin. She is a New York Times bestselling author of Mind Over Medicine and six other books, is a former OB/GYN physician, founder of the Whole Health Medicine Institute training program for doctors and therapists, radical remission researcher, and founder of the non-profit Heal At Last. After leaving her job in conventional medicine in 2007, Lissa began experimenting in her integrative medicine practice with what really helps resolve symptoms in people with chronic illness who have failed to improve with either conventional medicine or alternative medicine. All roads led to the same conclusion: People who are not responding to other treatments often have untreated, unhealed trauma, and treating that trauma can sometimes lead to seemingly miraculous radical remissions.

Welcome to The Guerilla Muse Podcast with Resmaa. Today I will be interviewing Dr. Halim Ali. He is an activist, mentor, master facilitator, mental health professional and soon-to-be author aiming to transform traumatic experiences and lifestyles by restoring strong personal foundations, bringing back personal balance and implementing wellness tools to apply for a lifetime. He works directly with the Denver Metro community and its suburbs advocating for empowerment and mental health awareness to establish healthy American families. Through community events and programs ranging from youth leadership courses, adult male health and wellness counsels, educational seminars, and community services, Dr. Ali is for the people first, at all times. Cultural connector and advocate to so many voices in Denver, Colorado, he works hard in creating new movements that are direct, intentional and purposeful throughout all platforms of healthcare lending toward healthy families and communities.

Welcome to the Guerilla Muse Podcast with Resmaa. Today I will be interviewing Dr. Bahiyyah Muhammad. She is an Associate Professor of Criminology in the Department of Sociology at Howard University (HU) in the District of Columbia (DC). Dr. Muhammad is also Founding Director for the Higher Education in Prison (HEP) Programming across all three campuses at the university and the HU Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel. To date, Professor Muhammad has spearheaded HEP courses and innovative programs offered through Howard University’s Schools of Law, Divinity, Communications, Fine Arts, and the College of Arts and Sciences. These graduate seminars and undergraduate classes have occurred in partnership with the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), the DC Department of Corrections (DCDOC), the Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC), and the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS) detention facilities in Maryland and Washington, DC. To date, approximately one thousand Howard students, alumni, faculty, incarcerated, and formerly incarcerated individuals have participated in classes inside prisons, jails, and detention facilities in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Under Dr. Muhammad’s leadership, Howard University became the first HBCU to offer award-winning post-secondary education to incarcerated females, males, detained juveniles, and their families, simultaneously.

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Welcome to the Guerilla Muse podcast with Resmaa. Today I will be interviewing Brynn Tannehill. She is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and the Air Force Institute of Technology with degrees in Computer Science and Operations Research. She is a Naval Aviator who did four deployments to locations such as the Adriatic, Middle East, and the North Atlantic. After leaving active duty she has continued to work in defense research, while as an advocate, writer, and researcher on LGBT civil rights issues and policy. She currently works at a think-tank in the Washington D.C. area as a senior analyst, where she lives with her wife and three children.


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In today's episode, Resmaa will be speaking with Carol Anderson. She is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University and author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Nation's Divide, a New York Times Bestseller, Washington Post Notable Book of 2016, and a National Book Critics Circle Award winner. She is also the author of THE SECOND: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, Anderson’s powerful assessment of the Second Amendment and how it was engineered to deny the rights of African Americans since its inception. Illuminating the history and impact of the amendment on Black Americans, THE SECOND is neither a “pro-gun” nor an “anti- gun” book. As Anderson explains, foundational to the creation of the Second Amendment, was the way that slavery and the fear of uprisings—and thus the fear of Black people—required, in the words of one colonist to, “keep a fearful monster in chains.” Access to guns was key. We, therefore, see the Founding Fathers mired in the racial politics of ratifying the U.S. Constitution and how that shaped the Second Amendment. In THE SECOND, Anderson boldly asserts that the Second Amendment is not about guns—it is about anti-Blackness. The ground beneath Stand Your Ground is like quicksand for African Americans.

In today’s episode, Resmaa will be speaking with Dr. Joy DeGruy. She holds two master’s degrees in Social Work and Clinical psychology. Her doctorate degree is in Social Work research. Throughout her career, she has held numerous workshops and seminars and given lectures about her research focused on the intersection of racism, trauma, and American chattel slavery. Her book Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing shows its readers how the persistence of that intersection suffuses our daily lives. Indeed, Dr. DeGruy travels across the globe to share this message and has held these aforementioned lectures almost everywhere. She has graced her presence, time, and thoughts with—Morehouse School of Medicine, Smith College, Stonybrook College, Harvard University, Tulane University, Everett Community College, Fisk University, Oxford University, the Essence Music Festival, and the County of LA department of mental health. She has also done consulting work with Oprah Winfrey.