WONDERLAND

Midway through our season, WONDERLAND co-host B​ridgit Antoinette Evans​ sits down with writer, showrunner, and producer, Mahyad Tousi, to discuss the conflicts and connection points between culture change strategy and the creative process. Evans and Tousi share their personal artistic journeys, explore the nature of matching culture change strategy to an artistic practice, and offer insights from their experiences of being values-based artists navigating the entertainment industry.

Guests: Mahyad Tousi, Co-Founder and CEO of BoomGen Studios; Television Producer; Writer and Bridgit Antoinette Evans, Co-Host of WONDERLAND, Executive Director of Pop Culture Collaborative; Founder of Fuel Change; Artist

We begin the second half of the season exploring both the inner workings of the entertainment industry and the external forces needed to create long-term shifts through pop culture storytelling. In this episode, television writer and producer Diana Son joins anti-child trafficking advocate and bestselling author Rachel Lloyd to reveal the process of creating a social justice-infused pop story world. From sharing how pop culture has influenced each of their personal storytelling approaches, to taking us inside the writers room for the making of a television series, to discussing the personal and societal stakes we all have in television characters, Son and Lloyd show us what is possible when social justice advocates and pop storytellers can more deeply work and imagine together.  

Guests: Diana Son, Television Showrunner of Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why and American Crime; Rachel Lloyd, Founder and President of Girls Educational & Mentoring Services; Author

From laugh-tracked sitcoms to The Walking Dead, audiences see cliched, and often harmful, characters and storylines. Racial justice sci fi expert N​ayantara Sen​ and TV critic ​Sean T. Collins​ explore these narrative tropes and traps -- from redemptive justice to the heroic protagonist -- that prevent our favorite TV shows and films from being truly transformational. Through their conversation, they guide us to imagine what new stories, characters, and themes  could reflect more authentic experiences.  

Guests: Nayantara Sen, Culture and Content Project Manager at Race Forward; Sean T. Collins, Cultural Critic for Rolling Stone

This special two-part episode of WONDERLAND begins with co-host T​racy Van Slyke​ talking with fan community leader S​hawn Taylor​ about the future of people-powered storytelling, diving deep into the ways pop culture fandoms are generating new content, pushing the pop storytelling industries into the next generation, and they imagine what it would take to intentionally bring fan communities and social movements together as part of a culture change movement.

In Part Two, Black Lives Matter co-founder ​Alicia Garza​ joins Hollywood fan community designer K​enyatta Cheese to discuss how technology, digital strategy and offline immersions can shape the way entertainment audiences and social movements experience  community, and they offer insights on what binds powerful, networked communities together.

Guests:

Shawn Taylor, Co-Founder of The Nerds of Color, Writer, Teacher;

Tracy Van Slyke, Strategy Director for Pop Culture Collaborative, Writer;

Alicia Garza, Special Projects Director for The National Domestic Workers Alliance, Co-Founder of the Black Lives Matter Network;

Kenyatta Cheese, CEO and Co-Founder of Everybody at Once, Co-creator of Know Your Meme

Racial justice leader Rashad Robinson wraps up the season with hosts Bridgit Antoinette Evans and Tracy Van Slyke, exploring the question first asked by Alyssa Rosenberg, can the entertainment industry change? Together, they unpack the power structures that shape entertainment, identify the industry rules we need to break, and connect the dots between the LGBT marriage equality culture change strategy of the last decade to the racial justice culture change movements of now and tomorrow.

Evans and Van Slyke wrap up the first season, highlighting the insights gathered from each episode in the crafting of culture change, and hint at what’s next for WONDERLAND.

Guest: Rashad Robinson, Executive Director of Color of Change

Get ready to call on your high school biology class! Because the genesis of any culture change starts with understanding more about the impact of the little known, but critical part of our brain, the limbic system. Cognitive scientist and artist Heidi Boisvert joins labor leader and storyteller Saket Soni for a deep dive into how stories affect the human body and brain. Together, they question if we empathy should be the goal of stories, and examine how the power and use of virtual and augmented reality need to be reimagined by the people who need them most.

Guests: Heidi Boisvert, CEO and Creative Director of the futurePerfect lab, co-founder of XTH, Fellow at the MIT DocLab and Saket Soni, Executive Director of the National Guestworker Alliance and the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice

“Should we keep telling stories?” asks Immigrant Rights Organizer and 2017 MacArthur Genius Cristina Jiménez. Together with narrative consultant ​Ryan Senser, we explore how important stories are in shaping American culture until they become as familiar as the lyrics of an old song. Together, they take us through the process of developing narrative strategies that impact the perceptions and beliefs of mass audiences. And as the immigrant rights movement now confronts xenophobic values embraced by the highest levels of our government,  Senser and Jiménez discuss how what a new narrative strategy must do to truly create transformational culture change.    

Guests: Cristina Jiménez, Executive Director of United We Dream, 2017 MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellow; Ryan Senser, Independent Organizational Change and Narrative Consultant

From laugh-tracked sitcoms to The Walking Dead, audiences see cliched, and often harmful, characters and storylines. Racial justice sci fi expert N​ayantara Sen​ and TV critic ​Sean T. Collins​ explore these narrative tropes and traps -- from redemptive justice to the heroic protagonist -- that prevent our favorite TV shows and films from being truly transformational. Through their conversation, they guide us to imagine what new stories, characters, and themes  could reflect more authentic experiences.  

Guests: Nayantara Sen, Culture and Content Project Manager at Race Forward; Sean T. Collins, Cultural Critic for Rolling Stone