Transformation Thursday

Penny and Penny ring in the new year by allowing Amy to sit in the second session of the "Penny & Penny Show". In this episode, Penny and Amy discuss with Penny Gold her new apartment in New York City, how transgender folx decide to discuss the surgeries if any we decide to get, and how transgender visibility from 30 years ago helped Penny get her new apartment.

With Amy and Penny taking a holiday break, we present Serena Jamison's interview for her "Voices of Purpose" column on Medium.com. Penny and Amy will post their interview with Penny Gold, Esq. on January 7, 2021. Until then, have a happy new year.

Link to the interview: https://vopserena.medium.com/voices-of-purpose-8-amy-stephens-part-1-166cc2ba01ff

Sue Jones from DitchTheLabel.org in Brighton, England, speaks with Amy and Penny about the services provided by Ditch The Label, and how the Tavistock ruling is going to marginalize further transgender and gender diverse youth in the United Kingdom. Sue also discusses the transgender experience of her grandmother, who transitioned in the 1950s. 

Penny and Amy talk with Dr. Katherine Greenberg, director of Gender Health Services at the University of Rochester Medical Center, to get her views on the appropriate treatment for trans and gender-expansive youth, and the damages draconian rulings like in the recent Bell vs Tavistock case in the UK can have on an already marginalized group of young people. 

This week as we observe Transgender Awareness Week and as the week concludes with the Transgender Day of Remembrance, Amy and Penny decided it was worthwhile to re-release the interview they did with Dr. Liam Hackett, FRSA, last year at this time. Liam is the Global CEO of Ditch the Label, located in Brighton, England. We discussed with Liam the bullying of kids, alternate ways to view bullies that are not intuitive and discuss the groundbreaking research his organization did to understand online radicalization and how it leads to violence and calls for genocide of transgender people.

This week, Penny & Amy sit down with Adam Chodak, Managing Editor and Weekday Anchor of WROC-TV's News, about this year's election, trying to maintain journalistic integrity in the post-truth, news-as-entertainment era, and how freaking cool the WROC building is.  

(Hint: It's really cool)

In this episode of Transformation Thursday Penny and Amy "Ketchup" with each other to discuss how Amy is growing as she goes through her Masters in Mental Health Counseling program, and then Penny tells another one of her fantastic stories. Topics: Transgender, Parent, Religion, and Counseling

This week Penny and Amy sit down with the founding producer and board president of the Key Bank Rochester Fringe Festival about how she helped start and steward one of the largest Fringe Festivals in America, and how she managed to turn this year's festival into an online event in three months' time. 

Also, Erica gets asked a question no one's ever asked her before.*

*In the context of her role as a producer of a massive festival. It's a pretty common question, actually. It just sounds cooler when it gets phrased this way. 

Gracie Walsh and Maddie Hubert, AKA the musical comedy duo known as Saunt Yübear, sit down with Penny (via Zoom, from the Art Spackle Room of the Pioneer Valley Masonic Temple just outside of Dubuque Iowa), and we talked about performing (or not)  in the time of Covid, doing a Virtual Fringe, and why there's two little dots above the "u" in Yübear.