I'm Curious with Ashley Asti

I haven’t stopped thinking about this conversation. Artie Gonz is the creative who almost never was. A juvenile-tried-as-an-adult at the age of 16, he spent 21-years of a Life sentence in the California prison system, eight of which included housing within Pelican Bay’s notorious super-max Solitary Confinement unit. After choosing to commit himself to deep inner work, Artie transcended the brutality of his surroundings and discovered the universal truth within himself and all of us: love.

This conversation is all about love.

Today, Artie has fulfilled his dream of working in the television world. He’s the Creator and

Executive Producer of the developing series, “Lessons From A Lifer” (it’s so good!), which seeks to bridge the culture between those who are system-impacted and society by highlighting universal wisdoms and commonality. He’s writing a book of the same name, a collection of lessons in essay form.

You can follow Artie on: Instagram (@artiegonz) and Twitter (@ArtieGonz_)

*You can find a full transcript of this episode here.*

Dorie Hagler believes that listening to someone for 10 minutes can change the world. Dorie is a visual storyteller and advocate who creates platforms for communities, for women, and even for those incarcerated to be seen and heard. She believes it is this act of witnessing that has the power to transform us.

About Dorie:

Dorie is a storyteller, photographer, and advocate based in New York City. In her work, she’s as interested in photographing news-breaking events as she is in patiently covering long form documentary projects. In 2016 on International Women’s Day, she launched me&EVE, a storytelling platform that holds space for women to be witnessed and to tell their stories. She is also currently working on a documentary about solitary confinement.

Dorie Hagler Photography Website

me&EVE blog

Instagram: @meandeve @doriehaglerphotography

Twitter

Facebook

This is a fun one! My guest is one of my best friends, Brittany Schiavone. Brittany is the founder of Brittany’s Baskets of Hope, a nonprofit on a mission to spread resources, hope, and love to families with new babies with Down syndrome across the United States. Brittany is creative, playful, sassy, and she happens to have Down syndrome.

Brittany and I have been guests on a bunch of podcasts together, but today we’re dishing on some never been told before inside stories! We talk about our friendship and play a game of how-well-do-we-know-each-other trivia. We talk about our celebrity crushes, a scandalous 30th birthday party, one epic week spent together in New York City, and of course Brittany’s Baskets of Hope.

I’m blessed to serve as a Board Member and the Social Media Director of Brittany’s Baskets of Hope. I featured my friendship with Brittany in my book, Up: A Love Letter to the Down Syndrome Community.

Brittany’s Baskets of Hope:

Website

Instagram

Facebook

Twitter

Request a basket of hope here.

“I will leave this body having danced for Madonna,” Nilaya Sabnis says in this episode. But even on tour with one of the biggest stars in the world, Nilaya doubted whether she was an artist. Having studied economics and pre-med in college, she teased that while she was dancing across the world, she still told herself she was an investment banker “on sabbatical,” a practical adult just taking a short break from the responsible adult world.

She shares her journey to becoming a dancer and unapologetically embracing herself as an artist. If you’ve ever had a dream or a calling or struggled with your own sense of belonging, Nilaya’s message will speak to you.

Nilaya Sabnis is a dancer, portraiture + documentary photographer, and storyteller based in LA, telling stories of the work of humanitarian and disaster relief organizations such as World Central Kitchen and CORE, as well as uplifting the voices and stories of her fellow BIPOC humans and women.

Website: nilayasabnis.com

Email: [email protected]

Instagram: @nilayeah

Without Bard Prison Initiative, Stacy Burnett says she would have “rotted in a prison cell.”

My guest today is Stacy Burnett, who got her college degree in her forties while she was in prison. Stacy was part of the groundbreaking program BPI, or Bard Prison Initiative, which was featured in the acclaimed documentary, College Behind Bars. The program enrolls hundreds of incarcerated students full-time in college programs. When these students graduate, they cross that stage with a real degree from Bard College in their hands.

Stacy has worked for years as a writer and now works for College & Community Fellowship in New York, where she helps criminal justice-impacted women get into college.

In the episode, she shares the life-altering impact of a higher education—and who’s worthy of it, the criminalization of mental health issues especially for women, and the grief of being a mother behind bars.

You can follow Stacy on Twitter @stacylynburnet2

You can find a full transcript of this interview here.

She talks to dead people. At least, that’s part of it.

My guest today is my dear friend Denise Correll, a psychic medium who calls herself the Grateful Messenger. As I tease about Denise, she brings the normal to the paranormal: she’s fun and grounded and dead on (pun intended!) in her psychic messages and timely insights.

In this episode, we explore belonging + fear, dreamland, and this present moment of crisis and shift.

You can find Denise at thegratefulmessenger.com. Still curious? Check out her podcast Enlightened Empaths, which she hosts along with Samantha Fey.

When Morgan Godvin gave her friend Justin some heroin, she didn’t imagine he’d end up dead. Not, at least, until a SWAT team showed up at her house, pointing guns at her, and arresting her for his overdose.

In this powerful episode, Morgan shares her story and the devastating drug policies that are failing us and continuing to leave, as Morgan says, “too many of my friends dead.”

Morgan is now a student at Portland State University studying public health. She’s a prolific decarceration and drug policy reform advocate, researcher, and speaker with hopes for law school.

Full episode transcript available here.

In this episode, I speak with Native American reporter and filmmaker Tsanavi Spoonhunter about her documentary Crow Country: Our Right to Food Sovereignty. On the Crow Reservation where food sources are already scarce, the one affordable grocery store has burned down and tribal members are restricted from their traditional hunting grounds. Crow Country: Our Right to Food Sovereignty follows several tribal members who are fighting for better food and a better future for their community.

As Tsanavi makes it clear, this is a deeper crisis than simply not having access to healthy food: this is food apartheid. “It’s food racism,” she says. Systematic oppression.

Catherine Ward is a photojournalist and humanitarian aid worker in Syria. She has not entered the country just to capture its war with her camera: this is her home. She grew up in Aleppo.

In this episode, Catherine talks about her war photos, grappling with the past decade of her life that has been surrounded by conflict. This is not an episode about the politics of the war, but one artist’s reckoning with her country’s past and future, as well as her own.

Episode Photos

Catherine and I discuss two of her photos in the episode:

First photo

Second Photo

Video (Post Traumatic Diaries 2)

Connect with Catherine

Instagram: @catherineward22 and @streetarchivesy

Facebook

For two years while Lisa was incarcerated, she and I hand-wrote letters to each other, sent between New York and California. Lisa Strawn, a trans rights activist, is a transgender woman who served time in San Quentin’s men’s prison until her release in July 2020. In this episode, Lisa shares her story from childhood to the present, talking about her early gender confusion, life in prison, activism, getting COVID while incarcerated, and what the freedom she never expected to experience feels like.