Reppin

at nine, a car accident took her father and left one of her arms permanently paralyzed. every time since, when someone decided what she couldn't do, she went and found out for herself. tiffany yu relearned how to write. got herself to the bathroom alone in a wheelchair. stood at the bottom of a climbing wall telling herself she couldn't, and climbed it anyway. somewhere in there, she stopped letting other people set the limit. she built diversability, a community where disabled people find pride and power together. she started speaking on stages when speaking terrified her. she wrote the anti-ableist manifesto, now reaching the people who needed exactly what she went through. she's a forbes accessibility 100 honoree and a tedx speaker whose talk has crossed a million views, and her book is an amazon editors' pick now in its fourth printing. underneath all of it is someone who stopped asking permission to take up space, and can say it plainly: "i love who i'm becoming." "just watch me." if you liked this, listen to eva noblezada next. https://open.spotify.com/episode/04IsNCUXJexaglKUAVikvR tiffany's website: https://www.tiffanyyu.com tiffany's book, the anti-ableist manifesto: https://www.tiffanyyu.com/book diversability: https://mydiversability.com reppin: https://reppin.tv reppin's instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reppin_podcast/?hl=en here, we're human first. music: dj ace the cut lieutenant Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

what happens when both choices are the right thing: the life you want, and the family who needs you? liz sargent lived that question for years. every time her sister anna needed help, the phone rang. so she did what she does with fear: she wrote it down. then she turned it into a film and cast anna as the lead. as one does, right? take me home looks like a story about disability and caregiving. it's really about what happens when someone you love needs more of you than you know how to give, and you still have to find room for your own life. we get into the moment she knew this was coming for her, ready or not. fighting a system built to wear you down. why the people we protect most are sometimes the ones we should challenge. and how you live with doing everything you could, and it still not being enough. love isn't the moment you show up. it's the moment you stay after you want to leave. that's family. it's the one class none of us signed up for, and all of us are enrolled in. if you liked this, listen to next. yia vang next: he ran from who he was. now, it's his greatest superpower. take me home: https://takemehomefilm.com/feature liz sargent: https://www.instagram.com/lizziesarge/ reppin: reppin.tv instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reppin_podcast/?hl=en here, we're human first. music by dj ace the cut lieutenant Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

i was there. this is my city. this is what i actually remember. this is the real moments i had. i'm re-releasing this one for the 25th anniversary. it's just me this time, no guest — my own reflections on 9/11, as a new yorker, in my home, twenty-five years later. i don't want to give you the highlight reel version of that day. i want to tell you what it actually felt like to live here when it happened — the fear, the quiet, the way the whole city held its breath together for a while. and i want to talk about what's changed since, and what hasn't. because twenty-five years is long enough to ask a harder question than "where were you." it's long enough to ask: what did we actually learn? and are we still living like we learned it? this isn't a history recap. it's personal, and it's a little uncomfortable in places, because i think it should be. i'm asking you to sit with your own memory of that day too — what it changed in you, what it didn't, and whether the way you're living right now is actually in line with whatever you promised yourself back then. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

**listener discretion is advised. twenty-five years ago, rais bhuiyan was shot in the face, ten days after 9/11, just because he looked different. i'm re-releasing this conversation for the 25th anniversary — him telling you what happened next, in his own words. rais came to america for the idea of it — the cowboys, the fairness, the wide-open promise of the whole thing. in the fear and anger after the attacks, people who looked like rais became targets. a man walked into his gas station, asked where he was from, and pulled the trigger. rais survived. a few other men weren't as lucky. here's the part that doesn't leave you: rais forgave him. not quietly. he campaigned to keep his own shooter off death row, wrote him letters--forgiving him, he fought the state of texas — and lost. the execution happened anyway. rais kept going: a nonprofit, a documentary, a fight in congress to get these hate crime victims recognized by name. this isn't just about 9/11. it's about what a person does that day, the day after. and the day after that. and the twenty-five years after — carrying trauma that could easily define you, and choosing not to let it. it's the difference between forgiveness as a feeling and forgiveness as something you decide, again and again, on purpose. rais made a choice. then he made it again. every day since. which is the only question that matters: what have our choices been, since that day? because rais understood something before most of us do — we don't have to agree, or look alike, or worship alike, to choose not to destroy each other over it. that's not weakness. that's the harder, stronger path. and he's also figured out how to transform that pain into purpose. listen to the whole conversation. think about what you've overcome, and what's still asking to be overcome. look at the choices you've made, and the ones we've made together. sit with someone different from you. extend the hand first. it doesn't have to be big — just make it your choice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

a kid threw away his mother's Hmong food so no one would see it — the same food just made his restaurant one of Time's "World's Greatest Places." yia vang is a Hmong chef in Minneapolis, a James Beard semifinalist whose restaurant vinai has landed on the New York Times Restaurant List and Bon Appétit's Best New Restaurant. he named it after Ban Vinai, the refugee camp in Thailand where his Hmong parents — refugees who fled Laos after the Vietnam War — met and where he was born. he calls it a love letter to them. but before any of that, he hid his lunch for years — rice, fish sauce, anything that made him look like the Hmong kid instead of a normal one. he'd toss it, keep the empty containers, tell his mom he ate. then he trained in every cuisine that wasn't his — Italian, French, Tex-Mex — before he'd go near the food he grew up on. what brought him back wasn't a lesson. it was an egg his grandmother handed him every time he left her house. he thought it was the saddest gift a kid could get. he didn't understand it until decades later, standing in his own kitchen. we all did some version of this too — shortened a name, dropped an accent, swapped a lunch for one that wouldn't get you laughed at, wore your hair differently. this episode isn't about a chef. it's about what it costs to go back for the thing you gave up and finally, embracing who you are. all of you. no matter your race, gender, background, orientation to social status. there are no apologies. here, we're human first. watch and listen on spotify : ⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/1tq2vuZiWLvhmTMaaWX2w8⁠⁠ reppin's gram jam: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/reppin_podcast/⁠⁠ follow yia on social: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/yiavang70/⁠⁠ yia's restaurant: vinai https://www.vinaimn.com/⁠⁠⁠https://www.vinaimn.com/⁠⁠⁠ music by dj ace the cut lieutenant Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices