EPISODE DESCRIPTION:Diana McLain Smith is the author of the new book, Remaking the Space Between Us: How Citizens Can Work Together to Build a Better Future for All. She has spent the past 35+ years as a renowned thought leader and systems change expert helping organizations transform conflict into a constructive force for change. 

Every day, the news delivers the same story: as a nation, we are so divided, we spend more time picking fights than solving our most urgent problems. It's exhausting and exasperating. In Remaking the Space Between Us, Smith invites us to see what lies behind this story: a growing trend in which more and more of us are seeking refuge in like-minded groups while distancing from groups different from our own. Although it's a natural response to the uncertainty and adversity of the past fifty years, this trend is fraying our social fabric, negatively affecting  our politics, and weakening the moral foundation upon which our future together rests. Despite all we are up against, Smith shows why we need not—and why we must not—give up on each other or give into forces so overwhelming they make us feel powerless. Through emotionally affecting stories, Smith recounts how tens of thousands of citizens across the U.S. are working together under the radar to bridge divides, heal our nation, and rebuild our democracy.  Diana will discuss  tools and insights to help people better relate to those on the opposite side of their political spectrum and to work together to find solutions to our most pressing challenges and work alongside each other to create a future that is better for all.

 

                                         

 

DIANA MCLAIN SMITH has spent the past 35+ years helping organizations transform intergroup conflict into a powerful force for change. She has led change initiatives in a wide range of contexts – from Fortune 500 companies to cutting edge nonprofits – and her groundbreaking Leading Through Relationships (LTR) approach has been used by thousands of teams and organizations around the world to break free of intractable conflict and co-create powerful change. She is a former Partner at Monitor Group Consulting, former Chair of Monitor University, and former Chief Executive Partner at New Profit, and the author of Divide Or Conquer, The Elephant in the Room, the co-author of Action Science with Chris Argyris and Robert Putnam. She has served as an advisor to the Harvard Negotiation Project and the Rebuild Congress Initiative. She holds Masters and Doctorate degrees from Harvard University.

(https://www.linkedin.com/in/diana-smith-bb8b505/)(https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555850530104) www.remakingthespace.substack.com/)

Website: remakingthespace.org

https://www.remakingthespace.org/about

 

 

 

 

Rhode Island International Film Festival

Shawn Quirk, executive director of the 2025 Rhode Island International Film Festival, joins us to discuss missions of the festival, as well as what the festival has to offer. Now in its 28th year, the FLICKERS' RHODE ISLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL celebrates the independent spirit in film and has become a haven for independent filmmakers from throughout the world. In 2024, the Festival presented 350 films representing works that were shot and produced in 106 countries. There were 94 World Premieres and US/North American Premieres. Expanding the Festival to its pre-covid presence was the goal of the 2024 event, which maximized its in-person screening offerings, expanded its industry panel events, and hosted numerous receptions, galas, and industry mixers throughout the week. This, along with expanded outdoor screening options (both on the coast and within Providence) allowed the festival to raise the bar yet again in its industry presence and ever growing audience following both home and abroad.

FLICKERS is a 501(c)(3) non-profit arts organization that supports and promotes the film arts in Rhode Island and throughout New England. Over the past two decades, its production, the Rhode Island International Film Festival, has screened 6,720 independent films and videos out of 87,532 entries, presented 1,621 World/North American premieres, featured over 1,350 entries that were locally produced, and hosted 4,582 filmmakers and crew. Since its inception, over 595,000 film lovers, in-person and online, have enjoyed the Rhode Island International Film Festival and its programming, not including those in New England watching its weekly broadcast and cable programming series, doubleFEATURE, now in its ninth season.

ABOUT SHAWN QUIRK

Shawn Quirk is the executive director of the Rhode Island International Film Festival. He previously worked as the lead programmer, where he scheduled events and organized different areas of the festival. Before taking these positions, Shawn was an independent filmmaker, artist, and scholar who has directed a number of short films and short documentaries. His film “Ouroboros” won the Audience Choice Award at the Spokane International Film Festival in 2008 and his film “The Coast” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010. After receiving his Bachelor of Science in Film Production from Boston University, he worked for two years as an English assistant in France for l’Éducation nationale. During his time abroad he became involved with a number of film productions in both Belgium and France, which included camera work for the two-time Palme d'or winning Dardennes Brothers on their film “Le gamin au vélo” (The Kid with the Bike).

https://filmfreeway.com/RIFilmFest

https://www.instagram.com/flickers.riiff/

                              

                                     

DESCRIPTION: Jim Murphy, author of  Inner Excellence: Train Your Mind For Extraordinary Performance and The Best Possible Life, has been  a professional baseball player in the Chicago Cubs organization. Jim Murphy’s sense of worth revolved around his performance. He was focused on achievement but also afraid of failure. When he started coaching professional and Olympic athletes, he often encountered the same mindset. He became obsessed with learning how the best in the world performed with poise under pressure.   Inner Excellence is the life guide that has empowered athletes and developed world champions, and most importantly, transformed their hearts and minds. This step-by-step training manual from one of the world's top mental skills coaches will teach you how to train your mind like the very best.     After years of research, interviews, and writing, Jim will share  how to develop self-mastery and let go of what you can’t control, explain how to overcome anxiety and build powerful mental habit, give tips for removing mental blocks and share how to  release limiting beliefs.   About Jim Murphy: #1 New York Times bestselling author Jim Murphy is a Performance Coach to some of the best athletes and leaders in the world. He began his career as a professional baseball player in the Chicago Cubs organization. After experiencing vision issues that ended his playing career, Murphy coached with the Texas Rangers as well as the South African Olympic baseball team. He has worked with some of the world’s best golfers, including world champions, FedEx Cup champions, and world #1’s. The majority of Murphy’s clients have the best year of their careers in their first year working with him. In addition tocoaching professional athletes and executives, Murphy leads Inner Excellence off site retreats around the globe. He is the president of the Inner Excellence Freedom Project whose mission is to build communities to alleviate spiritual and physical poverty around the world.   https://innerexcellence.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/innerexcellence/ https://www.facebook.com/innerexcellence/ https://www.instagram.com/innerexcellencejimmurphy/

DESCRIPTION: 

Ilene Dillon, author of Emotions in Motion: Mastering Life’s Built-in Navigation System, and six-time Amazon best-selling author for various other books, will discuss realigning with emotions (including Anger Mastery), solving life problems in ways that last, and parenting consciously.

Emotions in Motion explains a new way of working with emotions that allows you to move yourself into mastery over emotions, rather than allowing them to dominate your life, and includes stories to illustrate the point about how to work with 12 different emotions.

She believes that we're all in a “Giant School” so we can learn and grow throughout our lives, and the learning will never end. Ilene will discuss the system for learning, why we want to embrace and continue to “work the system,” and the benefits of completing lessons.  She will introduce focus because “what we focus on, we tend to become.”, and share the importance of decision-making, and how it's the simple route to learning, growing, and making changes. 

GUEST BIO:  

Ilene Dillon, MSW, LCSW, LMFT, is a “Recovered Angry Person.” “Recovering” led her to a successful half-century study of emotions—what they are, why we have them and how to work with them as they’re designed to work. Now 82, Ilene is writing books, making personal appearances on podcasts and Summits and continuing to work individually with people who want to get in charge of their lives.

https:www/emotionalmasteryforlife.com

https://twitter.com/EmotionExpert

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilenedillon/

https://www.instagram.com/ilenedillon/

Insights on Love & Lost Later In Life   With grey divorces (divorces between adults ages fifty and up) at an all-time high, Virginia DeLuca’s memoir constructs a timely and refreshingly honest guide to finding yourself in the face of loss and adversity. If You Must Go, I Wish You Triplets is an empowering read not just for “silver splitters,” but for anyone who has or is currently facing change and uncertainty in their life. DeLuca will disscuss unflinching exploration of her past, present, and, ultimately, her future, provides readers with a powerful reminder that life has a way of expanding in beautiful and unexpected ways.   https://www.virginiadeluca.com/bio                                                                  ABOUT VIRGINIA DELUCA Psychotherapist and Boston resident, Virginia DeLuca, dedicated her life to helping her clients navigate unforeseen challenges and painful losses. However, when her sixty-year-old husband leaves saying he wanted babies, she struggles to deal with her loss and the life she’d once envisioned. She’s the award winning author of the novel, As If Women Mattered  and her essays have appeared in the Iowa Review, The Writer, Huffington Post, Self, Glamour, and Parenting Magazine.

Reflections and Lessons Learned from a POW Father

For the first time, Sid Stockdale, one of four Stockdale children, tells stories from his 8- year experience (from age 11 to 19) while his father was a POW in the Hanoi Hilton and his mother started The National League of Families of POWs and the Missing in Southeast Asia. Sid will discuss his experiences of these years of trauma in a new memoir, “A World Apart – Growing Up Stockdale During Vietnam.” 

Major themes include dealing with the loss of Sid's father emotionally and the long term uncertainty with him a POW; coping with his mother’s physical and emotional exhaustion and eventually her severe depression; coping with his brother Stan’s emotional blindness and its impact on his mother; coming to know the “Sid” that emerged at boarding school surrounded by a healthy and safe culture; the joy of his father’s release and return; the beauty of getting to know his father and witnessing the  strength, courage, and determination of both my parents who were an exceptional couple.

https://coronadotimes.com/news/2023/05/22/sid-stockdale-speaks-new-memoir-chronicles-a-familys-story-of-survival-love-and-grit/ 

 

 

                                                       

 

ABOUT SID STOCKDALE 

Sid Stockdale, class of 1973 is the son of distinguished military hero, James Bond Stockdale. Sid Stockdale was eleven years old when his father’s US Navy fighter jet was shot down over North Vietnam and he was held a POW in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” for the next seven years. Sid authored  a memoir, about his father and his time as a POW during Vietnam, titled A World Apart: Growing Up Stockdale During Vietnam. It wasn’t supposed to be a book.But when Sid Stockdale was sent a copy of his mom’s diary in 2016, a year after her passing, he started journaling. Once he started, he didn’t stop.

Sid was only eleven years old when his father, Vice Admiral James Stockdale, was shot down in his Navy fighter jet and captured in North Vietnam in 1965. Stockdale was held as a prisoner of war in the “Hanoi Hilton” for seven years, four of them in solitary confinement (two of them blind-folded) while his mom, Sybil, was left raise four boys and await his return.

The words in Sybil’s diary filled in the missing pieces of Sid’s memories, allowing him to reconcile a tumultuous childhood of nightmarish proportions with the strength and love of his family.

 

 

FINDING THE SOUL OF BIG BUSINESS

Paula Marshall is the CEO of the Bama Companies, Inc, which manufactures oven-ready products for customers in the quick-service and casual restaurant industry and private label products for retail in more than 17 countries. Paula is the founder of Paula Marshall Foundation, which builds schools in Ghana for children to provides education that offers an opportunity for a new life. in this episode, Paula  talks about food safety week that is global, dealing with fear of uncertainty at work and home, the schools her foundation has built in Ghana to provide education for children and adolescents, and how entrepreneurs and executives need similar skills to success. 

ABOUT PAULA MARSHALL

As Bama’s Chief Executive Officer, Paula provides strategic leadership and direction to the entire organization. Her vision stands as a beacon for Bama team members, inspiring the organization to achieve the Bama mission – “People Helping People Be Successful”. Paula assumed responsibility as CEO of the Bama Companies in 1984, which now includes Bama Pie, Bama Foods, Bama Frozen Dough, Beijing Bama and Bama Europa. Under her leadership, Bama has expanded to provide a wide variety of frozen desserts and baked goods to fast food chains and casual and family dining restaurants. Paula received her Bachelor of Science in business from Oklahoma City University (OCU) in 1982, and her PhD in commercial science, also from OCU, in 1993. Paula is the author of four books and believes all business people must embrace both entrepreneurship and management to succeed.

https://thepaulamarshall.com/story/ 

                                                 

 

                                     

Support for Teens with Incarcerated Family Members

 For most teens, home is a place where they can be themselves, where they can relax and breathe, and where they feel safe, nourished, and valued. For teens who carry the weight of having a loved one incarcerated or deported, home is also a place where they are not judged, where they are seen, heard, and respected by adults, and where they find unexpected connections with teens in similar situations. In the arts-based support meetings provided by The PATHfinder (Paving a Trail of Hope) and POPS (Pain of the Prison System) Clubs, these young people have a place that, in their words, “feels like home.”

Drawing on their understanding of innocent young people who have been traumatized and stigmatized by their association with the criminal justice system, Friedman, as well as Leticia Longoria-Navarro and Victor Trillo of the PATHfinder Network, as well as youth they serve, will discuss, Supporting teens affected by parental incarceration and emotional struggles is critical—safe spaces like The PATHfinder and POPS Clubs help them share pain, build judgment-free friendships, and express themselves through writing and art. Schools and communities must promote mental health awareness, challenge stigma, and create empowering environments that foster healing, connection, and activism.

https://thepathfinderclub.org/ 

 

                                       

Amy Friedman                                                                       Leticia Longoria-Navarro

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Amy Friedman an author, Out of the Woods Press editor, and criminal justice activist, founded POPS the Club in 2013, with her second husband, Dennis Danziger, a writer and high school teacher, as an inclusive space for youth who have been stigmatized and silenced by their experiences with the criminal justice system. Having been previously married to a man who was in prison, Amy’s stepdaughters inspired her to find a way to support youth in ways that her girls never were.  From a single club at Venice High School in Los Angeles, POPS the Club expanded to schools across the country.

Leticia Longoria Navvarro is the Executive Director of The Pathfinder Network, a nonprofit that provides justice system-impacted individuals and families the tools and support they need to be safe and thrive in our communities. Having been personally impacted by parental and family incarceration, Leticia is an expert on the profound impact of incarceration on the whole family. She is an advocate and founding team member of The PATHfinder Club.

 

UNLOCKING LIFE'S TRUE POTENTIAL 

Olivia Chadwick—a personal trainer, young mother, and her family’s primary breadwinner—first met insurance magnate Garnet Morris before dawn on a winter morning in Saskatoon, Canada. Her task was to help prepare her new client for the grueling, 100-mile Kananaskis relay. She knew very little about him going into it, except that he could be unpredictable and they were separated by a generation—at the time, Garnet was just over 50 and Olivia was approaching 30. Yet gradually, their training sessions led to profound conversations and a life-changing bond.    

In 17 RUNS: The Unbeaten Path to Unlock Life's True Potential Olivia Chadwick and Garnet Morris chart the course of their year-long journey of discovery and mutual transformation. Through opening up to one another during their runs, Olivia and Garnet learned that they had experienced similar troubled childhoods and struggles with loss. What’s more, they shared similar values. While coaching Garnet, Olivia came to realize that she needed coaching herself—on self-esteem and self-forgiveness. And Garnet, who had lost 130 pounds, quit smoking, and rebounded from bankruptcy to build a phenomenally successful new business, needed a reminder on the renewing power of friendship. 

Honoring all the emotional, philosophical, and deeply personal topics they discussed, again and again, Olivia Chadwick and Garnet Morris can offer the benefit of their insights and wisdom to inspire your audience to re-envision what is possible, overcome obstacles, and find the strength and confidence to run toward a life they truly choose. Along with a gift for telling stories—some heartbreaking, others heartwarming and amusing—with meaningful lessons, Olivia and Garnet have developed exercises to help anyone move from feeling hopeless and stuck, based on where they are, to finding a way up. 

Dynamic speakers and true believers in their life transforming message, Olivia and Garnet can also share their secrets for cultivating resilience, the power of celebrating your idiosyncrasies, and the magic that happens when you surround yourself with supportive, caring people—your chosen family. 

https://literarytitan.com/tag/garnet-morris/

                                            ABOUT THE AUTHORS:  

OLIVIA CHADWICK, MSc Kinesiology, is a mental performance coach, certified exercise physiologist, podcaster, speaker and founder of Movement Medicine, a first-of-its-kind coaching practice consisting of an integrated team of world class leaders in the application of exercise science. As the host of the “She Knew Better” podcast, she aims to showcase guests that offer expert and loving advice to help us overcome life’s challenges, deal with mistakes and setbacks, and level up. Chadwick lives in Saskatoon in Saskatchewan, Canada. 17 Runs is her first book.   

GARNET MORRIS is an entrepreneur with over 40 years of experience in the insurance industry. With only a high school education, he founded The Targeted Strategies Group (TTSG), the premier Canadian brokerage firm dedicated to helping entrepreneurs and their families protect, preserve and optimize their net worth through life insurance policies. At the age of 40, he transformed his health by losing 130 pounds, after which he became passionate about personal fitness, self-development and lifelong learning. Morris was born and raised in small towns in Saskatchewan, where he still resides. 17 Runs is his first book.               

 

 

Bill Hanney, is owner and producer of Theatre By The Sea in Wakefield, Rhode Island and North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly, Massachusetts. Theatre By The Sea, which is on the National Register of Historic places and is located on the ancestral lands of the Narragansett People, has had many incarnations over the years. Bill Hanney purchased the property and historic theatre in 2007 and the theatre continues to produce a four-musical subscription season along with a children's theatre series.    Since 1955, North Shore Music Theatre has become one of the most attended theatres in New England, with approximately 250,000 patrons annually. With a national and regional reputation for artistic achievement, NSMT has received numerous industry awards. It continues to annually produce a musical subscription series,  celebrity concerts  and children's programming along with year-round education programs. Bill Hanney's company, Entertainment Cinemas, currently owns and operates seven movie theaters across four states. He is an award winning business owner and has been recognized as business person of the year. Bill will discuss the seasons shows at both theatres with a behind the scenes look at the making of the shows.                                                                 ABOUT BILL HANNEY   Bill Hanney (Owner/Producer) is honored and proud to have been responsible for the re-opening of the nationally renowned North Shore Music Theatre in 2010. Aside from his work operating North Shore Music Theatre, one of Bill's crowning achievements was the 2007 purchase and re-opening of Theatre By The Sea, a landmark 500 seat professional summer theatre and restaurant, which is entering its seventeenth successful year of operation in Matunuck, RI.   Bill was a co-producer on the Broadway play, The Shark Is Broken, and recently co-produced a New York City workshop of The SeaView Nursing Home for the Newly Deceased.  Bill was also an investor in the Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of Pippin, as well as the First National Tour. Bill is currently expanding his group of live theatres.    He began his career in show business at age 19, leasing and developing movie theaters, including his first multiplex in Quincy, Massachusetts. Before long, he was booking rock shows (Jefferson Starship, Rush) and other types of live entertainment, which eventually led to the presenting and producing of Broadway productions. One such show was an appearance by the legendary mime artist, Marcel Marceau. As president of Broadway Productions, Bill presented national tours such as Annie, Amadeus, Dancin', Peter Pan, Rocky Horror Show and Mark Twain starring Hal Holbrook, throughout New England including Worcester, Springfield, Portland, Maine and Boston.   Throughout his career, Bill has stayed focused on his movie theatre chain having bought, built, owned, operated, and sold more than 30 cinemas. His company, Entertainment Cinemas, currently operates six movie complexes in three states. In 2009, Bill is currently Chairman of the Board of the Theatre Owners of New England. Bill has been named to the North Shore Top 100 by the North Shore Chamber of Commerce. He received the Leslie S. Ray Hall of Fame Award (2015) and Businessperson of the Year Award (2012) from the Greater Beverly Chamber of Commerce, as well as Businessperson of the Year from the Salem Chamber of Commerce (2011).