Break Week #03 – Season One Recap

Luke W Russell:

Welcome to Lawful Good, a show about lawyers and the trials they face, inside and outside the courtroom. I’m your host, Luke W. Russell. I’m not a journalist. I’m not an attorney. I’m trained as a coach. I love human connection, and that’s what you’re about to hear. Today we have another Break Week episode, and this time I am joined by the one and only Kirsten Stock, who is our producer. Good morning, Kirsten.

Kirsten Stock:

Good morning.

Luke W Russell:

We wanted to go back through Season One and share with you something we loved from every single episode. What we’re going to be doing is we’re going to be alternating. Kirsten has the odd episodes and I have the even ones. We’re just going to share a little bit about it, listen to the clip, maybe talk about it a little bit, and then keep moving through. Season One’s recordings took place, they started in early March and then went through late September. What we’re about to listen to were recordings from spanning six months. All right, so with that, Kirsten, I’ll turn it over to you.

Kirsten Stock:

Of course we started with the one and only Mike Papantonio, otherwise known as Pap. I chose this clip because I was not expecting it. Behind the camera when I’m off and I’m muted, I’m generally crying or cracking up. Then when Pap told this story about meeting this asbestos guru and almost getting run over by a bus, I’m like, “This is a wild ride.” This really set the tone I think for Season One. I just loved it.

Mike Papantonio:

His spiral staircase that went up to the second floor of this hotel, and in the room, it was a suite. She said, “Follow me.” She goes up the spiral staircase. I’m just like, “Oh my god, this is uncomfortable.” I go up the spiral staircase, the person from Texas is in the room. The guy’s got coke up underneath. It’s very obvious. Either he put baby powder-

Luke W Russell:

Oh my goodness.

Mike Papantonio:

… on his face or he’s got coke up under his nose. I’m going, “My god, Warfield.” I’m thinking, “What have you done? Who is this nutcase? Who is this person?” I said, “Good to meet you,” yada yada yada, “I got theme grid.” He’s out of it. He’s in la-la land and, “Let me tell you how I plan to do this.” He said, “Son, don’t worry about it. I got it,” like he’s something. He was a big zero. He was a zero. “I got this under control,” gives me all that Texas crap. Trial starts. I go to the partners, I say, “This guy was coked up with some … I don’t know. I don’t know what her role was, but she was in a negligee in his condo, and it just didn’t look right. It doesn’t pass the smell test here.” I go to the partners, I said, “Guys, I need to try this case alone. I can’t have this guy doing this with me.” I said, “I don’t need him.” Said, “Oh no no no, Warfield struck a deal with him and he’s getting some percentage of the trial.”

Mike Papantonio:

We go to the courthouse. I pick a jury. He gives opening statement. I’m sitting there listening. It’s the worst I have ever heard. He has the name of the clients wrong. He’s got the name of the company wrong. For all I know, the guy’s still coked out. I don’t know. I said, “Judge,” after opening, I said, “Judge, I need something, okay. I need 24-hour continuance. You heard what just happened in this courtroom.” I said, “I may lose my job over this, I don’t know, but this guy will not say another word in the courtroom.” I looked at him, I said, “You may not speak again in this trial.” I knew the client really well. The client was all behind it, “I don’t want this guy doing anything.”

Mike Papantonio:

We walk out of the courtroom. We start coming back to the office. The office was just really across the street pretty much. He starts to fight out in the street, out in front of the client. I’m going, “This is weird.” He tries to push me in front of a bus. I grabbed a pole. It’s the only thing that stops me from falling out in front of a bus.

Luke W Russell:

Wow. I remember when we get to that story in this interview, and I’m just like, you can’t make this stuff up.

Kirsten Stock:

No. I like how he’s just casually like, “Oh, this is weird,” before he’s about to be pushed in front of a bus.

Luke W Russell:

Oh my gosh. By the way, fun fact, my interview with Mike was my first ever interview I conducted. I remember I was so nervous going into that, having never done this before.

Kirsten Stock:

It definitely started off with a bang.

Luke W Russell:

I know, right? Oh my gosh. Then we go to Episode Two with Anne Andrews. I would be remiss if I didn’t call out my wife’s absolute favorite moment from probably the whole Season One, which was Anne’s story about when she was in a deposition and the men in the room did not want to make it possible for her to be able to take a break to breastfeed her daughter.

Anne Andrews:

I represented a guy that wasn’t very likable in Salinas, but the case was extremely provable. I would say about eight months after my daughter was born, the depositions for that case had to be taken. It was going to be in Monterey. I loaded up the nanny. I loaded up the car with baby and baby supplies for a week. I set all the depositions for a hotel in Monterey for a week. I went on the record and I said, “I have a child here at the hotel for today’s proceedings and throughout the week I will be taking breaks to feed my daughter. I plan on taking them at this time and this time and this time. Thank you for your attention.” I went on the record with this. Lo and behold, they didn’t want to honor it.

Luke W Russell:

Oh, wow.

Anne Andrews:

They refused. “This witness has to go. She’s only here for this time. If you leave this room, you’re banning the deposition. There’s no order that allows you to leave.” Can you imagine what I did? I said, “Fine.” I brought my daughter into the deposition room and fed her. To the horror of all the men in the room.

Luke W Russell:

How dare you feed your child?

Anne Andrews:

Let the record reflect that I am feeding my child, I am breastfeeding my child, because these men wouldn’t allow me the 20 minutes I needed to go down the hall.

Luke W Russell:

Wow.

Anne Andrews:

I’m going to attend this deposition. That’s how it happened. My daughter was with me all the time. I raised her for the first two years in my office. Because I was my own boss, I had the luxury of being able to do that. Not everyone could do that today. We have to change the way we allow women to raise children in the legal profession and other professions.

Luke W Russell:

I love how Anne just stood up for herself and what was important to her. What I really admire about Anne is how she’s such an advocate for women in the legal space.

Kirsten Stock:

I think I just remember thinking during that, “Boss ass bitch. Hell yeah.” Just admire her for that.

Luke W Russell:

It’s interesting how many different people, women, I’ve heard different women comment on that moment. It’s just the most biologically normal and necessary function, and yet the men in the room felt like it was appropriate for them to deny her that.

Kirsten Stock:

I was at a dinner with some family, and one of the women there had a newborn. She goes to feed her, and she just apologizes to the table. I was like, “Do not apologize for keeping your child alive. Can we please just de-stigmatize the fact that you’re feeding your child?”

Luke W Russell:

It’s really a beautiful thing.

Kirsten Stock:

Absolutely. Then Episode Three with Darren, which I loved every single one of them. I think after every single interview I would be like, “That was my favorite.” Then you get to 20 and I’m like, “I have 20 favorites.” Every interview’s so wonderful. The clip I chose is, Luke, you were talking about Darren’s lowest point of the year, which was following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and just the honesty and the vulnerability around that of just feeling like, “I’m so angry and I don’t know what to do anymore.” I think a lot of people feel those things. I just thought it was a really good expression of what he’d gone through. Then after explaining that, him deciding, “No, I’m staying here, and I’m going to be part of the change.” I thought it was really powerful.

Luke W Russell:

The last year has been tough for a lot of reasons. I know we had listened to one of your shows, because you have a few shows of your own. You had mentioned that it was the lowest point in your year following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

Darren Miller:

Yes. Man, I got to tell you, Luke, that was really tough. It was really tough for me. I don’t want to get into a whole bunch of politics here, but seeing the way in which this country was going and seeing what was happening to people and how it was okay to end people’s lives based upon skin color, and it’s just so depressing to me. It was just so hurtful. My wife and I were just so disgusted, like, god dog it, how many of these kids have to die before people have to realize that this is not a Black or white thing, this is an American thing, and we can’t just allow these things to happen and not do anything about it, because if we keep doing it, it’s going to bleed into other cultures and other situations and it’s going to affect you. You can’t do that.

Luke W Russell:

I really appreciated how we just, in each episode, created space for people to talk about what mattered to them.

Kirsten Stock:

It’s such an important conversation to have. I just really like the, “We can’t do that. We have to stop this.”

Luke W Russell:

Moving into Episode Four with Sara Williams, when we started all of this, diversity was a big part of just our values and our principles driving this show, but more than that it was about, for me as a host, learning to ask questions and talk about things that didn’t always feel comfortable, ranged from asking people about heartaches and learning how to navigate that, and then race and gender, learning, basically a public forum, how to talk about race and gender. This kind of format was something new and really vulnerable for me to be sitting in these interviews and asking questions. I really appreciated in my interview with Sara just some of the questions I asked and just really allowing myself to be uncomfortable as an interviewer, because then as a result, I think I did a good job creating space for Sara to share her story.

Sara Williams:

I can’t count on any hand or my feet the number of times I’ve been told, “Don’t get upset,” or, “Calm down.” If I’m mad, you’ll know I’m mad. I think that we are placed in situations where we are not allowed to express ourselves, where we are concerned about the manner in which we express ourselves, because we’re so worried about how they’re going to say, “This is a angry Black woman.” It happened to me in law school. I love this particular coach. He wasn’t my primary coach. He was very concerned with judges in a competition viewing me that way. He really tried to reel in my personality. I have a naturally, not necessarily loud, but my voice has a lot of oomph to it. I have a natural presence. It just is what it is. He really tried to reel that in. I couldn’t do it. Finally, he would get so frustrated during our rounds, because it’s just not me. I think that because I’ve seen it, so many of my students who will say, “I can’t say this that way, because then people are going to think I’m the angry Black woman.” My advice is, people are going to think what they’re going to think about you, irrespective of anything you do. There’s nothing I can do to change, if someone has that viewpoint about Black women. There’s nothing I can do to change that. That’s work that they have to do.

Sara Williams:

The thing I try to do and try to remember and try to tell students and friends, because it is a constant issue for Black women professionals, you have to protect your own mental health. You have to ensure that you are being heard. You can’t change who you are to fit someone else’s expectations, because there’s nothing you can do to change that. You will end up suppressing yourself and being depressed and anxious, while they’re just bopping along doing their thing. We just can’t worry about it. I think that’s the place we have to get as Black women is I cannot control how you feel about me and what you think about me. I’m just going to be me. If I’m in an environment where that’s not appreciated, then I got to make some changes about my environment. I’m not going to change the essence of who I am to make you more comfortable.

Luke W Russell:

I love, love that quote, “I’m not going to change the essence of who I am to make you more comfortable.”

Kirsten Stock:

Yeah. Don’t silence yourself just because some other person perceives you a certain way. Really good. Ken Hardison, I really enjoyed his interview. Like I said, I have lots of favorites. In this clip, Luke, I don’t know if we ask this in every episode, but I think it’s nearly every episode, is when a young lawyer or maybe a young law student is looking in the mirror and they’re struggling and they’re wondering, “Should I do this?” What Ken says is, “Being a lawyer isn’t necessarily for everyone. It’s really hard. It’s a really hard profession to be in. Maybe the right decision for you is to walk away.” I think that that’s something that we’ve had discussions internally is bringing stories to the table but also stories of like, it’s okay to leave the profession if that’s what you need to do.

Luke W Russell:

For the lawyer who is just struggling with that, whether it’s their business isn’t going well, or maybe their business is going well but there’s stress and overwhelm, but they’re looking in the mirror and they’re wondering, “Should I really keep doing this?” What would you say to them?

Ken Hardison:

A good question, Luke. They might be right. I don’t know. It depends on the individual. Listen, this business is not for everybody. You got to have a thick skin. You got to be tough. It’s not a easy business. It’s not for everybody. I think it really depends on what you want out of life. If you’re going into it just for the money, then yeah, you want to get out of it, because here’s what I’ve always told all my kids, Luke, and I’ve told you this too probably, I don’t remember, I probably tell everybody young, find something you got a passion for and we’ll figure out how to make money out of it.

Kirsten Stock:

I like that, just that. Good stuff.

Luke W Russell:

I loved our one and only duo for Season One, which was Amy and Justin Lovely. I’ve known them for quite a while. What I think is for me one of the really, really cool things about their interview was listening to how they look and think about each other, especially within the context of doing business together and thinking about marital stress. What I heard, not once, as if it was some sort of idea that they’re like, “Oh, this is my favorite person,” but it felt like the theme of their interview was like, “No, really, this person next to me is my favorite person in the world, and so if I can’t make that relationship work, nothing else is going to work.”

Luke W Russell:

Before the break, we heard Amy and Justin sharing how they navigated those stressful years of starting their law firm and having their first child. We left off with them talking about how they focus on different types of practice areas. Amy and Justin, as I’m listening to your story, I’m left wondering, do either of you ever find it difficult to defer to each other’s expertise?

Justin Lovely:

Is it ever difficult?

Luke W Russell:

Yeah.

Justin Lovely:

I would say nah.

Amy Lovely:

Nah. It’s weird that I’m saying that, right? The deal is with Justin and I is we don’t compete with each other. I am his biggest cheerleader and he is my biggest cheerleader. My success is his success. His success is my success. We don’t compete with each other. I think when you get to that mindset, there’s no butting heads. Does that make sense?

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Once we got past that first year, obviously stressful for so many reasons, has running this firm together left your marriage strained, or how do you make it work, because I assume it’s not all sunshine and rainbows every day.

Amy Lovely:

No, but I will say-

Justin Lovely:

I thought it was all sunshine and rainbows.

Amy Lovely:

I will say this. There are days where you’re pissed and you clear a desk, not necessarily the whole desk, but a file, sling it off or whatever. I really like him. I adore him. He is the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. I think he feels the same way about me. This is the deal. I could be mad at him every day for some stupid shit that he says, and he could be really mad at me about some stupid shit that came out of my mouth every day, but we know that we have each other’s back and that we have each other’s best interests at heart always, and so we just don’t get mad about stuff.

Justin Lovely:

We get mad, but we leave it in the office. You got to be able to detach from the office to home.

Luke W Russell:

My wife refuses to work with me. You two just display such an incredible capacity to work together. Your sister, Amy, commented that you two are best friends. Is that what underlies and allows you to make this type of both working and in family relationship function?

Amy Lovely:

I think so. When I say he’s my favorite person, he really is my favorite person. Matter of fact, our kids get mad, because they always say, “Who do you love the most?” They expect me to say one of them, and I always say, “Daddy.” He’ll always say, “Mommy.” I’m like, “Because this is the deal. We always have to love each other just a little bit more, because you all are going to grow up and you’re going to get married and have babies and all those other things and leave us, and we’re going to be stuck with each other.”

Justin Lovely:

Stuck.

Amy Lovely:

Not stuck, but it’s going to be us, empty nesters, and we want to still like each other when this is over.

Luke W Russell:

Do you both have equal ownership of the firm?

Amy Lovely:

Yeah. It was never even a question. He just sent it all in 50/50. Never a discussion. It’s funny because I know husband and wife duos and it’s always a fight because the male always wants 51%. It’s never even a question, because they call me and ask me, and I’m like, “It was never even a discussion. It just was what it was.” We’re equal partners in everything.

Luke W Russell:

Jeez. I knew I was going to love my interview with them, just having known them for a while, but it was like hearing threaded throughout the interview that genuine love and care for each other, it was just so cool.

Kirsten Stock:

I aspire for that in my marriage, just always have each other’s backs. Next up is LaRuby, who is a wonderful, wonderful person. I really enjoyed this part, because we’re talking about how did you get to a point where you started your own firm, and she talks about going back home and going to her niece’s basketball game and realizing, “I’ve got a law degree. I can use the power of the pen,” and realizing in that space that that’s where she needed to be to make the impact that she wanted in her life. Bonus is I just kept laughing probably the entire evening when she was like, “Oh yeah, I have a law degree,” like she just forgot. It’s just so funny.

Luke W Russell:

When your time on city council ended, you’d had your JD for about a decade, yet hadn’t practiced law really. How did you go from politics to starting your own firm?

LaRuby May:

Stupidity. Nah, I’m just playing. When I lost my election, I obviously had the option to go back to what I was doing, which was more development, realistic type work. The leadership was doing well. Didn’t want to go and take over that leadership. I was like, “What am I going to do?” I was like, “Oh my goodness, I have a law degree. I should open a law firm.” I said, “I’m going to open up my own law practice.” I didn’t know what I was doing, so I started talking to people, and then I realized, “Wow, maybe not.” Then I started actually entertaining offers from firms who were like, “Hey, we didn’t even know you were a lawyer.” I was like, “I know. Me, right? I just play one on TV.” I actually then made a decision. I said, “You know what? I’m going to go with that firm. I’m not going to open my open firm. This firm, great negotiations with the firm. We had negotiated for a while. I had seen the draft, contract agreement.

I said, “You know what? I’m going home. I’m going to go see my family.” It was on Martin Luther King Jr birthday. It was in January. I said, “I’m going home, and let’s clean up.” I think we had a couple things to clean up in the language. I said, “When I come back, I’m going to sign and I’m going to start working for you all.” Said, “Okay, LaRuby, good deal.” I went to Pensacola. I played basketball almost all my life. Played one year in college. Big fan. My niece plays basketball. Almost all my family plays some sports. I went to my niece’s basketball game when I was home in Pensacola. I’m told in the city we’re a little bit more aggressive than in Pensacola in the country, so I received that.

I’m at my niece’s basketball game. I’m just being supportive. I’m not disrespectful. I don’t curse. I’m not whatever. There’s some very poor officiating going on. I was vocal about that. The next thing I know, the game stops, literally. The referees are over to the side. They’re talking to each other. Then someone is talking to the referees. This person walks around the gym and they come up to me. They’re like, “I need to escort you out the gym.” I was like, “Dude.” My mom’s sitting right here like, “What are you talking about?” He’s like, “Yeah, game is not going to start back again until you walk out, until you leave.” My niece is on the court. I don’t want to embarrass her, although I probably embarrassed her. I was like, “Fine.”

I walk out into the foyer of the gym, which they allowed me to stay in the foyer, because my mom was still in the game watching. My niece played on varsity, and the junior varsity team, they were all in the foyer, at the concession stand or whatever. They were like, “Aren’t you Armani’s aunt?” I was like, “Yeah.” They was like, “They did you wrong. They put you out.” They had come to my rescue. These 9th and 10th grade young Black girls are like, “We with you. We with you. We’ll get that referee, man. She shouldn’t have done that to you. She was wrong.” I was like, “Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. I’m a lawyer, so I use the power of the pen. You all are right. We going to write up a letter on her. We’re going to be really aggressive with this pen, ladies,” and kept talking to them.

What I realized in that experience with those young ladies was that my niece is okay and understands as one of her first lines of offense the power of the pen, because she’s my niece, but her circle of friends and the young women that she spends the most time with don’t. That’s because folk like me are not spending time with them. I said, “You know what? Good god, you’re right. I hear you. I not only need to find a way to spend more time with my niece, but I need to spend more time around the young girls that my niece is around. I can only do that if I spend more time in Pensacola.” I thought about it. I was like, “The only way I’m going to be able to spend more time in Pensacola, I only got two options. The firm that think they’re going to hire me is going to have to open up a Florida office or I’m going to have to work for myself so that I can come back.”

I go back that Tuesday, after Martin Luther King’s birthday. I’m sitting with the folk or whatever. They have the contract. They open it up. I was like, “The only thing, I just got one more request. I got to be able to work at Florida.” I explained what happened. Obviously that didn’t work. That wasn’t part of the package. I said, “Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity, but I think that my decision is going to be to open up my own firm.”

Luke W Russell:

I love how people just take such different journeys. Some people just go through, they become a lawyer, they open up their law practice. LaRuby’s journey was just so nonlinear per se. Looking at Episode Eight with Bibi, oh my goodness. What I want to highlight here was how our question prep played out in the interview. This is something, as the interviewer I could not believe the way it unfolded. It started with, before we have the interview with our guest, we have what we call ancillary interviews. They’re pre-interviews that Kirsten conducts with people from our guest’s life. The people we pick are the people suggested to us by our guest. It’s like, “Hey, Bibi, could you introduce us to three to five people?” Then Kirsten schedules interviews with them. Kirsten had picked up on something had been happening in Bibi’s life. Throughout the course, the people got permission from Bibi to share with Kirsten what was going on. It was that Bibi’s daughter, five years old I believe, was diagnosed with cancer.

Luke W Russell:

When we were going into this from a development standpoint, we felt like, how do we want to give Bibi the opportunity to talk about this? We developed a series of questions on it. What was remarkable, so in some of our interviews we do a high-velocity round, which is something we started about halfway through the season. A high-velocity round is a place for us to stick some silly questions that we’re like, “Oh, we really want to ask about this, but I don’t know, there’s no place to put this.” In my document, I had the last high-velocity question was, “Can you tell me a story?” or, “Can you tell us a story?” Then right after that is a whole series of questions that were prepared if Bibi was willing to talk about her daughter Maddie in this environment. As it started to unfold it was such an unbelievable opportunity, that it showed how our prep work allowed us … Me, I was not surprised by the stories, but I was certainly surprised by how smoothly we moved right into it.

Luke W Russell:

Can you tell us a story?

Bibi Fell:

Story. Sure. What story do you want to hear?

Luke W Russell:

I was told you are a fantastic storyteller and I should ask you to tell us a story.

Bibi Fell:

All right. The only thing I can think to do is tell you a story that’s at the forefront of my mind. That is that things were going along really well until January 18, 2021. We took my daughter in for a routine pediatrician checkup, and he felt her tummy, and he looked up at me and he said, “I feel something. I feel a mass.” I could see in his eyes that this was serious. He never had to say the word cancer. He never had to, but we both knew exactly what he was thinking.

Luke W Russell:

If you’re up for it, Bibi, I have some questions that we prepared relating to your daughter Maddie, but if you prefer, we can pass on that.

Bibi Fell:

No. It’s at the forefront of my mind. How can I not talk about it?

Luke W Russell:

What matters to you at this point in your life?

Bibi Fell:

Time. People had always told me that time is so precious, they grow so fast. I didn’t understand it until this year. There is nothing more important than time with the people you love. You can never get that time back.

Luke W Russell:

What I think was so cool about this again was this way, what we … A lot of times what I do, I didn’t do it originally intentionally, but tried to segue from our high-velocity into the next series of questions without even there being a clear transition, so we don’t always have a, “This is the high-velocity,” and, “Now it’s over.” With this one, we just go from our yes-no questions, and now Bibi’s sharing what … Again, it’s about giving her the opportunity to talk about what matters to her. There’s also the tactic that … My father spent a lot of time working with us on questions throughout this season, is that, “Feel free to pass on this,” language that allowed me to ask questions that I wasn’t sure, that I was uncomfortable with, like, “Hey, I don’t know if you want to talk about this, so feel free to pass on it, but here’s my question.” I don’t ever think anybody passed on a question. It allowed me to feel more comfortable asking. Then with Bibi here we saw I think on Instagram that her daughter was in remission. It was this question of like, “Oh, that sounds great.” It was actually my father pointed out, he’s like, “Let’s ask a question that can allow our guest, Bibi, to address what is the experience here with remission.” We had this question prepped that I think really was in step and tonally aware with Bibi’s experience.

Luke W Russell:

We heard that Maddie, that her cancer had gone into remission. How should we feel about that?

Bibi Fell:

I have such mixed feelings about it. Remission sounds like good news. It is good news. It means that there’s no sign of cancer. She is complete remission. There’s currently no sign of cancer in her body. When you say remission, people think it’s over. It’s not over. There’s a lot of treatment that she still needs to have. Childhood cancer survivors, 95% of them have a permanent issue for the rest of their lives. They can be very serious. Maddie has lost hearing. She has permanent hearing loss in the high frequencies that will affect her ability to hear consonants. She is still in danger of having very bad outcomes from the chemotherapy itself. That fear of treatment, that fear of what’s going to happen through the treatment and will they be responsive, will they hit remission, is entirely replaced by fear of recurrence. Remission is a happy day that I really looked forward to, but when they day came, I realized that it was far from the end of our journey.

Luke W Russell:

Thank you, Bibi, for sharing so much of your heart with us.

Luke W Russell:

That was just for me such an amazing demonstration of our really, really thoughtful and intentional question development process, which makes this show so beautiful and special.

Kirsten Stock:

You mentioned it already, but I just like that you gave Bibi the space to be like, “Yeah, I’d prefer not to talk about it,” but also she talked about it and it was very vulnerable, and of course I was in the background just crying. I think for some people maybe that’s something they needed to hear. I just appreciated her sharing that with us. Next up, Byron Brown, the anti-lawyer lawyer. In this clip we were chatting about his tattoos and ones that have the most meaning to him and the ones tattooed on his hands, and this phrase, “Bet it all on Brown.” In the clip you’re about to hear, I just hear this total belief in himself, and just having that total belief in yourself, and then also his wife being like, “Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s go.” I loved it.

Byron Brown:

It’s hard to see on my fingers. That one says “Bet it all,” and then this one says, “On Brown.” When I put them together, I can read it, “Bet it all on Brown.” That’s definitely the most significant tattoo I have. The story behind it is, my wife and I moved here, like I said, in 2014, and I remember this exact conversation. We were sitting in our old house on Weathervane, and I was on the couch looking for different ideas and ways to market myself. I came across this company called Big Yam. Bob Parsons, who started Go Daddy, had this company Big Yam, that closed at the beginning of the pandemic. Big Yam created all the ideas for PXG and Bob Parsons’s other companies. I met with them.

Byron Brown:

This is the first time I’m saying this probably out loud, but my first TV commercial cost me $100,000. I said to my wife, I was like, “Look, that’s obviously an obscene amount of money to spend on a TV commercial. I’m going to have to cash in my 401k and basically we’re going to bet it all on Brown.” My wife, without a beat, she just goes, “Yeah, do it.” She’s always had faith in everything that I’ve ever done. She’s always been supportive of it to the fullest. From that TV commercial, I’ve gotten everything. I’ve shot three TV pilots. I’ve got a manager. My manager is the ex-president of Virgin Records. I’m going to shoot another TV pilot. I’ve had two to three different meetings with the executives at NBC over a show, Netflix. It all came from betting it all on Brown. That’s everything. Everything my wife and I have, in my opinion, stems from that conversation and her supporting that decision. Neither of us looked back.

Kirsten Stock:

I love that.

Luke W Russell:

After that, the “bet it all on Brown,” that was seared into my brain. I have thought, “Bet it all on Brown,” so many different times when I think, “Oh, what do I want to do in this.” It’s like, “Bet it all on Brown.” I’m like, “Such a self-empowering and fierce approach.” Looking up at Ben Crump’s episode, this was naturally very difficult in developing questions for. We spent probably double to triple the amount of time we normally spend on prep, because as someone who’s interviewed so many times, I viewed it as my responsibility to make sure it wasn’t the same interview that people had already heard and the same stories and the same way. I think we did a really pretty good job of that. Then in our high-velocity round, I’m just going to let you hear this, and then I’ll talk about it after that.

Luke W Russell:

I’ve got a series of questions for you. We call this a little high-velocity round. They’re all yes-no questions. The only rule is you’re not allowed to answer just yes or no.

Ben Crump:

I can say more?

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. First question, should brownies be warm when served with ice cream?

Ben Crump:

Absolutely. Absolutely yes. I got to stop eating brownies and ice cream. That’s one of my favorite things in the world, hot brownies with ice cream.

Luke W Russell:

Should the ice cream be on top or should it be next to it?

Ben Crump:

The ice cream should be next to it or beneath it. Then you smush the brown into the ice cream. I like the ice cream to melt on the brownie. It’s something I got to quit doing. I want to cheat every now and then with brownies and ice cream. I have to do something really significant to get brownies and ice cream now. I look for those days. I have to have a big vertical or a big accomplishment. Then I say, “All right, I can get brownies and ice cream.”

Luke W Russell:

Oh my goodness, that belly laugh. This was the only interview I did in person for Season One. It was such a cool moment. Those questions were prepped that way. One, we had been in pre-interview, had learned about brownies and ice cream. Just coming up with that playful question. I had no idea that question would land with such joy and delight. Then there was having that followup question. I just felt like when we were writing them out, it was like this question seemed so similar, but I was like, “No, it might be the perfect followup question to be like, should it be on top of or next to.” Then the fact that Ben actually had an opinion, it was just so fun and such a beautiful moment. I think really just leans in on that shared humanity that we’re all people at the end of the day.

Kirsten Stock:

I just noticed too he’s like, “It has to be something significant for me to have brownies and ice cream.” I’m like, “As if you’re not doing something significant every day. You should get brownies and ice cream as often as you’d like.”

Luke W Russell:

Really significant.

Kirsten Stock:

Next up with the Honorable Judge Sandra Mazer Moss. I remember I felt in a lot of moments during her interview, admiration and feeling inspired. Then she was telling a story of she’s out of law school and she goes to her first job, and the judge tries to manipulate her into sleeping with him, by threatening her whole career. I loved her response. I found this story really powerful.

Luke W Russell:

Going back to law school, you graduate. You start clerking for a judge, who within six weeks of working there, said, “I want you to sleep with me. If you don’t sleep with me, you’ll never practice in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I will ruin you.”

Sandra Mazer Moss:

That’s exactly what he said. That’s exactly word for word. That kind of thing you don’t forget. The Me Too movement brought that home to me, because people say, “I was sexually harassed,” and they don’t know what to do about it. I didn’t know what to do about it. I was so horrified. I didn’t see it coming. There were signs, remarks he made, and not letting me take work home, making me stay late so that everybody would leave and it would just be the two of us and that kind of thing. When he said that, there was nobody there, even the cleaning people. I didn’t know what to do, except that I wanted to get the heck out of there. I said to him that I had to go home and think about it, because I figured that would get me out of there. Then I went home and I thought, “Okay, after everything that happened, after four years of night school, this is going to be the shortest legal career. I could always become a city hall reporter.” I was already planning. I came in the next day and I told him that I wanted to be his law clerk, I didn’t want to be his mistress, and that evidently was not going to work, and so I was going to have to quit. I thought I’d give him two weeks notice. I thought that would be fair.

Kirsten Stock:

I don’t feel like I have a good grasp of the words. First of all, I’m just disgusted by that and his actions and also feel disheartened that we live in a society where it’s gotten better, yeah, but where that happened, and she had to go through that and other women had to go through that. I think with the Me Too movement, there’s a place of being empowered to come forward and share your story and have a space for that and stop that from happening. I think I just felt anger and sadness for her, but also grateful that she shared that. She came from her own place of power, being like, “No. Even if this is the shortest legal career of my entire life, I’m not going to do that.”

Luke W Russell:

Sandy was one of two guests we ended up doing a two-part interview with. During this second one, there’s so, so much of Sandy’s life that it was just so powerful. I think one of the things that I thought was really interesting about her own story was how much she didn’t view herself as a pioneer and didn’t view herself as someone who was standing up for really, really important women’s rights. Then one of the things I wanted to highlight from her second part was this fact that when you’re doing legal work, not everyone really gets justice. They might get justice, but they might not get compensation or treated in the sense that we follow the rules, the laws, but sometimes you have to make decisions. That’s where I think injustices happen. Sometimes it’s the nature of living in a system, that we have to have a system that we make rules and decisions by, and it’s never perfect, and how do we live with that. It was in this second episode that Sandy shared some of the difficulty of being in that place as a judge.

Sandra Mazer Moss:

I learned early on that you couldn’t look at it by the numbers, because that was about people. It was about plaintiffs who were dying of old age or their illnesses before they could get into a courtroom, and it’s about companies that were going bankrupt because of the litigation. People were losing their jobs. I can tell you that there were two instances early on that shaped what I did in the asbestos program to begin with that changed the way the litigation was run. I did it around people that I met. In the very beginning all the cases were stopped, and I had to organize them and see who went first, so the lawyers had status conferences, I called status conferences. Lawyers brought their clients in, and we decided which cases were worthy of getting pushed toward the front of the line and which weren’t.

Sandra Mazer Moss:

There was two plaintiffs. It was a husband, and he had asbestosis I believe, but his wife was the one who was really sick. She had metastatic lung cancer that metastasized to her brain, and she wasn’t going to live very long. That became apparent in this status conference. They were a little old man and a little old lady, which probably were younger than I am now. To me they looked like they were very old. The lawyers explained the illnesses and asked them to step out of the room. Then when they stepped out of the room they said she wasn’t going to live six months and they really wanted her case on trial. I didn’t know how I was going to do it. I had all these mesothelioma cases, and they were supposed to go first, but she was a lung cancer case. She hadn’t been a smoker. This was asbestos-related lung cancer, unfortunately. I finally denied them the expedited listing.

Sandra Mazer Moss:

Later that day I went down to Samson Street, which is where all the jewelry stores are, to pick up a watch I was having repaired. I saw a little old man and a little old lady standing in front of a jewelry store. Now I knew these people didn’t have two nickels to rub together. He was pointing in the window at these beautiful pieces of jewelry and showing her, “This would be even, if we could get you a necklace.” I stood on a street corner and I started to cry. I had just denied these people a courtroom. I denied them their due process because I had to balance the due process of people that were even sicker than she was. I was just determined that this wasn’t going to happen again, that somehow we had to do something. I started asking for more judges to help, hoping that I could get more cases on trial. Even that wasn’t helping.

Sandra Mazer Moss:

I was trying one of my first cases. I’ll never forget, the plaintiff’s name was Bossy Moses. He had asbestosis, but he was pretty terminal. He was in the lighter stages. They brought him every day in one of those ambulance things that they can transport people. He had oxygen in the courtroom and everything. The day that he was supposed to testify, when they went to pick him up they found him dead in his bed. I had to of course grant a mistrial. I just sat there and thought. This wasn’t even denying him his right of due process, but it was too late.

Sandra Mazer Moss:

He coined the Bossy Moses Rule, which was what started me thinking about consolidating cases. The Bossy Moses Rule was one 10th of a courtroom in your lifetime with nine other plaintiffs was better than a whole courtroom after you’re dead. That’s what happened. He would’ve gotten a really high verdict. He had children that were going to testify. He had a wife. The case was tried. It was tried several months later. He didn’t get the really high verdict because he was dead. He couldn’t speak for himself. I don’t even know if I had a video of him in those days. This was early on in the program, and they expected him to be able to testify. These are real people.

Sandra Mazer Moss:

I can tell you that there were executives from the asbestos companies, and don’t forget most of these companies that I was dealing with had not made asbestos, they had bought companies that made asbestos, and they bought their liabilities, so they were on the hook. They were executives in those companies when they declared bankruptcy that came to my courtroom to say goodbye and to thank me for at least trying to give them due process.

Luke W Russell:

Man. Here she is doing all of this good work to orchestrate all of these cases, but she had to make choices. It’s the heartbreaking reality of someone who showed up and said, “I’m going to stand for people, but some decisions are going to be still hard to live with and hard to handle and to watch.”

Kirsten Stock:

Episode 13 was Ben Glass. My impression of him was he’s just very upbeat and enthusiastic. He believes in the potential of everyone. I really liked it when he was talking about superpowers and how everyone is really unique.

Ben Glass:

Everybody has a superpower. Your superpower might just be your story, at least the beginning. Nobody has your story. Whatever your journey is to being a lawyer and to the place in the profession and your career and your practice area, you have that story. I’m telling you that there’s somebody else out there who would benefit from just hearing your story. Particularly if you will be, as my favorite author and speaker Brene Brown talks about, being vulnerable and being willing to get into the messiness of human interactions. I ask everybody. High school kids will come in, they’ll bring me lunch, or college kids or kids who are thinking about going to law school. I ask them all that question, “What’s your superpower?” It usually makes them stop, but they all have an answer for it. It’s like, what is a thing that you would do, that if you did it, time would fly, you would do it for free if you could, figure out a way to make money. Usually I’m like, “There is a way to make money, with whatever the power is.” I just know that you were born uniquely. Your job is not to look at the next person and say, “Oh my gosh, they’re bigger, faster, stronger than I am. I could never be like that,” because there are certain things that you are just better at than they will ever be. The world needs all of us.

Kirsten Stock:

I just really liked that and it being like, “You have something important to offer the world that somebody will benefit from.”

Luke W Russell:

I love the like, “Somebody out there will benefit just by hearing your story.”

Kirsten Stock:

You don’t have to do something grand or huge to make a difference in someone else’s life or to have a big impact.

Luke W Russell:

Looking onto Episode 14 with John Morgan, I have here an example of asking … We have prepared lots of questions. Then of course in the moment of exploring and trying to what kind of questions pop up in the moment, and here is an example of a question, and it’s one of those moments it just really stood out in my mind, as an interviewer, of a story I, one, hadn’t expected, and two, a perspective I hadn’t expected, and then there’s that I think beautiful opportunity as an interviewer to just discover, co-create with the guest.

Luke W Russell:

Do you have any fond memories with your mother?

John Morgan:

Yes, I do. I have fond memories. My mother loved me and then she didn’t love me. My mother really never loved the baby, because she really never was there enough to. The question is, is it better that you were loved and then not loved, or just never to have been loved. Which one do you want? Both of them are bad. I don’t like mine, because I was extremely close to her, loved her dearly, and she loved me dearly, but the friction came because I was the oldest, because I was the one grabbing the liquor bottles and pouring the liquor out, and her chasing after me to grab the liquor bottle, and I’m trying to pour the liquor out. I became the defender of the children and then her antagonist. I’m the one that was raising hell with her about drinking. She went from really loving me to not liking me at all, and maybe even hating me. I don’t know. She was never nice. Even at the end she was never nice.

John Morgan:

When we went to visit her one time in Kentucky, she hadn’t seen my brother Tim. He was in his 30s and he got hurt when he was 17, and she’d never seen him in the wheelchair. Then she asked, “Who’s that other man with Tim?” I said, “Mother, that’s your youngest son.” She said, “Who is that?” I said, “He’s a dentist now.” Really it does sound like Angela’s Ashes, a bunch of white trash from Kentucky, but on the other hand, I just wrote her off as mentally ill and topped off by alcoholism, which was a disaster.

Luke W Russell:

Maybe a little context before that was just we had been talking about his mother and how she had succumbed to, had been overtaken by, and was struggling with the challenges they had as a family. It was just in that moment that I just decided to ask, “Do you have any fond memories?” I was really glad as an interviewer to open that up for our listeners and for John to be able to share about that.

Kirsten Stock:

I feel like, man, that’s just really heavy, and I’m glad that a topic that could maybe be just mostly sad, that there were good parts of that. Next up we had LaMonica. I think if we play the clip first, I might be able to have better thoughts well formed after I listen to it.

LaMonica Orr-Love:

A lot of people don’t understand about kids that grow up in poverty or kids that grow up, because especially I hear a lot of people talking about things like, “Oh, pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” or even when I’m talking to my friends and they’ll say things like, “You turned out fine, LaMonica. You worked really hard.” I think the difference is that my family, my community identified that I was really smart, and so it was almost like everybody that had anything poured whatever it was they could into me. It shielded me from a lot of those things. If I had an uncle, maybe he didn’t work a lot or was underemployed or didn’t, but he would say, “Oh, this is what you need. You need tablets. You need these types of things.” It was almost like I was the one the one that did not go without. I feel like that is something that is common, that I’m learning amongst people like me, the outliers, the people who were able to make it out of these terrible situations. People in your family and your community, they identify that you have something, and they want to do whatever it is to protect you or give to you. I don’t feel like I had a lot of that burden.

Kirsten Stock:

I’m glad we’ve played that first, because that solidified two things for me. It was one, I remember in the interview just being a privilege check of thinking, like, “We can pour all of our resources into this one person.” I think, “I have a sister who I think is smarter than I am,” but we both got the same opportunities, the same resources, and the same support from everybody in our family, because we were able to do that. Then also this idea, I always think, no, you worked hard, you can really work hard and get whatever you want, and it pushes up against this idea of the American dream for me. If you just grind, you work really hard, and you work long hours and you put everything you have into it, and you can get everything you want. I think of people who don’t have the resources to be able to do that. No matter how hard you work, if you’re not going to have the same opportunities. I think that just sparked for me an interesting debate in my mind of, one, check your privilege, and two, thoughts about the American dream and if everyone can get the white picket fence and the dog and the family.

Luke W Russell:

I don’t want the dog.

Kirsten Stock:

Same. I love cats.

Luke W Russell:

LaMonica was just such a powerful … I really enjoyed where she took us in her interview. I felt like one of the things I enjoyed as an interviewer was how she also helped guide the conversation at times. I think sometimes it’s more like me guiding more. I think with LaMonica it was a really cool give and take. Next up we have Mark Lanier, and we have notes on all of these clips, except apparently I didn’t make any notes on this. Let’s jump in and listen to this section I picked for Mark, and then we’ll talk about that.

Luke W Russell:

Speaking of energy, you’re a high-energy, high-intensity person. How do you take care of yourself?

Mark Lanier:

I try to eat right. I try to exercise every day. I try to keep myself balanced spiritually. I spend quiet time each day in my faith walk. I try to spend time balanced with family and things that matter. I had a boss one time who called me into his office. I’d been practicing law for about five, five and a half years. He called me into his office and he said, “Lanier, I got a problem with you.” I said, “What’s that?” He said, “You put your faith and your family before the practice of law.” He said, “You need to put law first.” He said, “Out of 60,000 lawyers in Texas, there are only five A-plus lawyers.” He said, “I’m one of them.” He listed a bunch of the other four. He says, “You’re young, so right now at best you’re a B-minus.” He said, “If you don’t change your ways, you’ll never be better than a B-plus or an A-minus lawyer. You could be, you’ve got the skillset to be an A-plus lawyer, but you got to sacrifice your family and your faith to get there. You understand me?” I said-

Luke W Russell:

Wow.

Mark Lanier:

… “I’m hearing you.” He said, “My daughter’s 13. I’ve never been to one of her birthday parties. I’m too busy paying for them.”

Luke W Russell:

Wow.

Mark Lanier:

I said, “Okay.” I went back to my office after that little chat with a light step. I was pretty happy, because my thought was, “This is so cool. I can be a B-plus lawyer and still have a faith and a family.”

Luke W Russell:

I love it.

Mark Lanier:

“This is great! This is classic. Who’d have thought? I’m not going to be a average C lawyer.” What I learned over time is if you sacrifice your family and your faith, you will never be the kind of lawyer you want to be, because you will lose that grounding that is essential to becoming the best you that you can be. I try really hard to this day to do things that are family and faith first and then the practice of law. That’s all part of a balancing act.

Luke W Russell:

Jeez. There’s a lot of things I like in that. For starters, I love that here’s a lawyer who’s achieved billion-dollar-plus verdicts. He’s known for his creative trial strategies. He’s creating incredible results for his clients. He’s also saying, “No. I don’t have to be all work. I can have my faith and then prioritize that. I can have my family and prioritize that. Then I become the best me.” One of the threads I enjoyed through just all of this interviewing we did with different attorneys is how there’s just this, whether it’s adversity or people who are just telling you you’re never going to be great unless you give up everything you care about. It’s fascinating to me that his response wasn’t, “Oh no, man, you’re raining on my parade.” Instead he was like, “Wow, this is great.” He goes on to achieve remarkable things. I just think that’s super inspiring. At the point of this coming out, the prior week’s episode was Michael Mogill of Crisp, and it was a similar thing where he’s talking about different things that happened. Somebody basically undercuts his entire business, and he’s like, “Okay, I’m going to come back and build it back up.” He gets excited about it. There’s just this certain mental agility and response to outside people having basically not really playing for you or with you.

Kirsten Stock:

I really like that. I think it speaks to two things for me. One, that clip speaks to my harmony. For those who don’t know about Gallup Strengths, my top one is harmony, and if you’re an Enneagram person, I’m number nine, a peacemaker. Him talking about that balance, and I just can’t think of anything more important than the relationship you have with yourself and the relationship that you have with your family. For me I’m like, I would never, ever want to put that above work. For me it’s all about the quality of how I love myself and how I love others. I think that makes me in turn a better worker. I just love, he’s clearly very busy, accomplishes a lot, but he’s still like, “First, the things that come first is family.” I think that’s really cool.

Kirsten Stock:

Moving into Bunmi, she was our next two-parter. Oh my gosh. She’s just so great. First of all I just have to say her laugh is a best. If you haven’t listened, it’s so contagious and it’s wonderful. I think I laughed the most during her interview. I remember this part of the interview really well, because I remember I’m off camera, crying, petting my cat. This is such a beautiful story about one human helping the other just to be a good person, and by doing that in a act of kindness, changed things for Bunmi. It was a huge impact. It was like Ben Glass talking about you can do something small, like someone just sharing something small can change the trajectory of someone else’s life.

Bunmi Emenanjo:

Come the first week of school, I went to buy my books, and Marvin, who I don’t remember his last name, he was the bookstore manager, and he said … I went to go pay for my books, and I think they came to almost $500, and I just didn’t have it. I didn’t have a credit card or anything. My mom, she was also struggling. She had written me a check for $50. She said, “Keep this for emergency, in case of emergency.” I said, “Okay.” I get to go pay for my books, and I think I had $200. Marvin said, “Oh.” I said, “Oh, I don’t have it, so I’m just going to get these two books that I can afford, and I’ll come back for the rest later.” He said, “You need your books, because you’re going to get so far behind. You need those books.” He said, “Okay, let’s do this.” He said, “I’ll give you my employee discount,” which was 30% off or something like that. I still didn’t have enough, because I had just $200. I said, “I have this check that my mom gave me. I’m going to take this $50 check and add to it.” He said, “Is this an emergency?” I said, “Yeah, I need my books.” He said, “No, save that for a true emergency.”

Bunmi Emenanjo:

He did something I will never forget. This was, what, 15 years ago, if not more. He said, “Here’s what we’ll do. Just give me what you have. You have $200. That’s fine. My total came to almost $500. Give me what you have. Don’t worry about the rest.” I said, “Oh my gosh, no. I can’t do that.” He said, “Why not?” I’m like, “No, I can’t do that. I can’t accept that. I can’t accept that. I can’t make you do that.” He said, “God is speaking to me, and He’s telling me that you’re going to do great things in the future, and I just want to be a part of your story.”

Luke W Russell:

Wow.

Kirsten Stock:

That’s so crazy. What a huge act of kindness, and then Bunmi could go into law school and be prepared. My whole heart is just like aw!

Luke W Russell:

I love it. In her part two, we highlighted her book club, and with it, and her journey as an entrepreneur into that, and so the guiding star for this show is a program called How I Built This. The host is Guy Raz. He’s probably nearing 27,000, 28,000 interviews in his life now. I remember a few years ago he was at 25,000. He’s so good. So good. He’s been my model and role model for how we do this show. I was just recently listening to one of his interviews with, oh shoot, this was a woman, I can’t remember, I just forgot. Oh, Title IX. Anyways, he was asking her about how much of this was her plan versus how much unfolded over time. The discussion was really just about this idea that for so many entrepreneurs and for so many people, there’s this unfolding, and it’s not like, “Oh yeah, I’m going to set out and build this specific company a certain way,” versus one thing leads to another that leads to another. I really enjoy Bunmi’s response to my question about this experience that my father describes.

Luke W Russell:

My father has told me that at various times in his life he would feel like his path was going in zigzagging directions, but then when he would look back, it looks more like a straight line. Can you relate to that?

Bunmi Emenanjo:

Yeah, I can. Absolutely. Especially in this time of my life where I am in the job of my dreams. I think the part of me that loves this country so much is the part that recognizes that a 16-year-old Nigerian American came to this country at that age with nothing and find myself working for the Biden administration. It’s not lost on me that this, just that arch from when I first arrived to this country to now, just how that represents the American dream, the land of opportunities that everyone around the world knows America for. When I look back on my career, it makes complete sense now. This time last year, not so much. If I look back, it would have looked more like a zigzag. Now it is very evident that every single thing that I did in my career was to prepare me for this position.

Luke W Russell:

That’s beautiful. I love that. If every single one of these episodes was carefully prepared for and beautifully executed, which is a huge props over to Kirsten and the editing team, I just love it all.

Kirsten Stock:

I know. I’m just like, mm, that’s good stuff. Our 19th episode, Krystal Brumfield. Gosh, I just enjoyed her ancillary interview so much. Like you just mentioned and we talked about earlier, the ancillaries are just so there and needed. They are it. They are so important to the process of how we develop our questions and we get to the know the person ahead of time. By speaking with her family members, I heard a story of her going on a field trip with her godsister and her standing up for kids who have disabilities on a different bus.

Krystal Brumfield:

I do. I do vaguely. I just remember traveling again from my hometown, my small elementary school, went on a field trip, and there was a young girl who had a disability. She was in a wheelchair. She wasn’t able to walk. I was so young I didn’t understand that she had had a disability or disadvantage. All I knew was that she was being made fun of because of it. I knew that deep down inside it was just not a good feeling. As a kid you don’t know what you’re feeling. You just know that it’s not a good feeling as a kid. It hurt her feelings. I didn’t like how it made me feel, and I really didn’t like how it made her feel. I stood up on the bus and I think I said something to the other kids my age about, “What? She doesn’t have anything or didn’t have anything to do with her disability. This is the way she is. You all are going to stop making fun of her.” They stopped. They stopped making fun of her. I think that that definitely showed guts as a kid. Looking back at it now, it really shows how much of a leader I was of those around me and how much of an influence, a positive influence I had on them.

Krystal Brumfield:

Then later I went to talk to my mom about it, because again, I was a kid, I didn’t understand people who have disabilities or those who are at disadvantage or marginalized. I just asked my mom about, “Why does God make people this way? How do we stand up for them? What do we do to protect them and really show them we’re allies and supporters?” She really explained it to me in the way that you explain it to a small kid, and that I did the right thing and that you’re always going to find people who sometimes may have less than you, or you may have run across people who have more than you, but at no point will you be better than them or worse than them. That’s what happened, and that’s the lesson that I learned from that.

Kirsten Stock:

I felt really the story is a really good demonstration of Krystal and her character, just even at this young age it’s like, “Something feels wrong. I don’t know why, but I’m still going to do something about it.” That is really cool.

Luke W Russell:

Yeah. Our final guest for the season was John S. Berry Jr. What I love, I’ve said, is we have had such a intentional approach, just as our value system for this show, of saying we want to have different stories, different voices, and you see that spanning gender and race and where people are born and where they are in their practices. What I love, there’s so many things I loved about John, in particular this highlights he was our only veteran, as far as I’m aware, from our Season One. He just brings different beautiful perspective and is a beautiful addition to our bouquet of humanity. In this clip I just really appreciate how for him as his journey of leaning into his own unique self, owning his journey, that’s where he’s able to really make a unique and powerful impact.

Luke W Russell:

We just watched Afghanistan fall to the Taliban. As a veteran, what have you felt over the last month either for yourself or your comrades?

John S. Berry Jr.:

It’s been difficult. It’s been tough for a lot of our clients. One of our websites, ptsdlawyers.com, a national site, where we represent thousands of veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The Vietnam veterans felt this, and now our Afghanistan veterans are feeling this. It’s very difficult, because it’s invoking a lot of memories. See, I think what most people don’t understand is we didn’t just go over there as war fighters, we went over there to conduct humanitarian missions as well, building schools, building infrastructure, helping families. A lot of those marines and soldiers that were over there developed relationships with those communities. To see us abandon them is sickening to those veterans. I understand now where the Vietnam veterans were coming from when we left Vietnam. It’s heartbreaking. As you may know, one of the marines that recently died over there as we were evacuating was from Nebraska, a corporal from Nebraska. Right now Berry Law has 17 Marine Corps veterans working here.

Luke W Russell:

Wow.

John S. Berry Jr.:

Stuff like that impacts our organization quite a bit, because they’re helping veterans every day. One of the great things about representing veterans is we can hear these amazing stories.

Luke W Russell:

I think partly when I was writing the notes too, what I love about what they then do with these stories is they’ve been working on collecting these stories and putting them together. Again, when we think about as plaintiffs needing a lawyer to represent them, and you look out and you see someone who has a shared experience or some sort of experience that’s important to you, I think it’s just so beautiful and powerful for our veterans to be able to look out and see powerful, prominent lawyers who are out there, who want to fight on their behalf once they come home.

Kirsten Stock:

I love that interview. It felt so different, in a good way. We talked about so many different things. I think a big part of that being he’s a veteran. I learned a lot. The whole time I felt just so engaged. I thought it was great.

Luke W Russell:

We did it. We did a whole 20 episodes, never having done it.

Kirsten Stock:

I know. I don’t know when it will sink in. I’m thinking maybe some week in January, after the holidays.

Luke W Russell:

What did you learn about yourself through this process?

Kirsten Stock:

Oh my goodness. That’s such a good question. I’ve learned a lot. I think neither of us have never podcasted before, brand new idea, of my ability to take something that’s super ambiguous and develop skills that I don’t have, and then at the end to look at this product and be like, “Damn, this is really good. This is really good.” I know I’ve also enjoyed listening, but I really think I’m a good listener. I like using that skill. I really enjoy one-on-one talking with people. When I do ancillaries, I’m just having a really good time. I love that, I feel like it’s that feeling you get like when you love it, it doesn’t feel like work. It’s like that, because I’m like, “This is really enjoyable, and I’m getting to learn about this person that we’re going to interview soon, and I feel like I’m getting to know them well.” I find it really rewarding. As someone who is very empathetic as well, I enjoy being able to connect. They might not know it, because I’m obviously off screen and no one can see me, but I’m like, “Yes. Yeah. I get it.” It’s good.

Luke W Russell:

It’s an interesting facet of the whole show that no one sees except those people you’re interviewing. Then I get to see the transcripts, which has been really cool to see. You’re so good at connecting with people and the ancillary interviews, as you mentioned earlier, that just we couldn’t have the kind of depth to this show without the insight from people from their life.

Kirsten Stock:

Absolutely.

Luke W Russell:

The thing I learned about myself through this process, and something I wanted to learn, which two things, one, I talked earlier about learning how to talk about race in a public forum, which is uncomfortable, but it was being vulnerable and authentic through that. Then I realized I’m a good interviewer. That’s something that I wanted to believe about myself. I don’t know. I hadn’t interviewed people. It was really cool to come into this as someone who’s never conducted interviews, and realize that, one, part of it’s just my love and passion for human connection drives some of that curiosity and listening. When I’m in the actual interview space, I’m listening. Then I have all these questions up in front of me. Then I’m thinking about what this person’s saying and what they’re not saying, thinking about what I know about them. Then I’m thinking about our listeners and what is it that our listeners might want to hear, and what question do I want to go to next or do I want to ask a question that we didn’t plan for or dig further on this and that. I’m holding all these things at once while also connecting with someone. I just have been really proud of myself with how I showed up and discovered that, you know what, Luke is good at interviewing.

Luke W Russell:

I’m excited when I look at someone like Guy Raz, who has interviewed tens of thousands of times. I think, wow, I don’t expect ever to hit 25,000 interviews in my life, however I do want to keep interviewing people, and it’s been cool to get better at it and to grow. Some of it’s just being more comfortable so I can be more curious I think at times. That’s been really cool.

Kirsten Stock:

I’m glad you could juggle all that in your head at once, because I’m at like one and I’m like, “What’s happening?”

Luke W Russell:

Season Two has officially started. Season Three will start sometime January, maybe February. It’s a little up in the air, because we’re conducting interviews every week right now.

Kirsten Stock:

We’re just doing a few things.

Luke W Russell:

I know, right? There’s probably over a dozen interviews scheduled over the next several weeks. Then it’s holiday season. Then there’s just all the normal other stuff we do. This was a delight.

Kirsten Stock:

Can I read the exit?

Luke W Russell:

Yes.

Kirsten Stock:

Oh my god.

Luke W Russell:

You do it.

Kirsten Stock:

I will be like, “Look, mom, I’m on a podcast.”

Luke W Russell:

Yes, do it.

Kirsten Stock:

Thanks so much for listening to us this week. This podcast is produce by me, Kirsten Stock, and mastered by Guido Bertolini. A special thanks to the companies that make this project possible, the Russell Media and the SEO Police. You can learn more about these groups by visiting our website www.lawfulgoodpodcast.com. Luke is our host, and you’ve been listening to Lawful Good.