Super Open with Tara Dennis: Recent Episodes

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In her words--
"The defining moments in your life aren’t the great things that happen to you, it’s the really difficult moments.. and it connected me with people in a completely different way that have been through trauma themselves…. I truly believe that everything that has happened to me this year, the good and the bad and the ugly, is setting me up for the next stages of my life. And a year from now I’m going to look back and be like wow, that was a crazy year, but I’m so grateful for it. And even now I’m starting to see the light."

"I am trying to help other people with things that have helped me, and that work for me. I really try to take things one day at a time, and if I am having a bad day, I don’t get down on myself about that. It is easier to stay in a negative space – you can’t be positive in a negative space… you start focusing on what you do have and it has to become habitual. Happiness is not a choice. If it were a choice, the world would be happy. Happiness is habits. It’s about creating good things every single day even when things suck."

"There’s not a lot of things that every human in the world has in common, right? We all believe in something different, we all look different… but there is one thing… there is one thing that every single human in this world has in common and that is emotions. Sadness is sadness and grief is grief and pain is pain and even the worst people in the world at the top that are doing awful things – they also experience emotions. It is the one thing we have in common and it’s the one thing they don’t teach you how to deal with in school, it is the one thing that people are terrified to talk about.. but it is the one thing that combines humanity and I’m here to start talking about it."

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In his words--

"I always want people to understand who I am beyond what they see here in America. Because a lot of who I am is really in the slum. The true definition of Joel is really the fabric of the slum. I can't separate what I do now, what I think, how I think about people, how I engage our clients, how I teach, I can't disconnect that from my experiences in the slum."

"Part of the missing element within the Architecture profession, in my opinion, is the idea of understanding what drives and makes a built environment in terms of the cash flow. It has always been a missing equation in how architecture is taught. So I would argue that understanding cash flow and how it actually gets what we envision built, should have been part of the very DNA of the profession in the first place. Real estate and architecture should have never been two different professions.”

"There is always an opportunity to question what you know, anytime you encounter what you don’t know. And I say that because I’m always going to be pulled to a place of questioning what I already know anytime I encounter a new client in a different context... All my preconceived notions have to be tested every time I encounter a new culture. So I do think that I have a desire to really create something new and a new way of thinking about urban design and our built environment, but I also totally understand that I do not want to bring Uganda to America and I don’t want to take America to Uganda.”

"Fundamentally, it comes down to, how do I interact with you? How do I interact with a stranger? Or, it will come to, how do we see each other? That’s going to take a little while. How we see each other is so radically important in shaping our built environment. And I think the conversation about how we see each other and how we talk to each other , how we interact, how we resolve conflict with each other... should be at the forefront of how we design the cities that we live in. Because that’s the cultural fabric and layer that makes the built environment.”

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In his words--
"I kind of got more serious about my own personal faith when I was in high school, and it was really interesting, because it was one of those things that looking back on it... I never really evaluated it. We talk in faith circles, and even non faith circles, people talk about calling, like, 'this is my calling.' And so for me it was, 'oh, Jesus, I like him'. I want try to live in a way that would be in response to what I feel like he's done for me. So the next logical step would be for me to become a pastor. And looking back on that I'm like, hmm, I don't know that I really thought that through all that well. I was a mediocre pastor."

"So we go to one of the very first events of Refuge and my heart began to just totally melt and soften for these friends that I made. And I think what began to happen was I began to put flesh on an issue. And so what I've learned is that when you put flesh on an issue it ceases being an issue, and begins being a relationship. And when it's a relationship, and two people that have mutual respect and love for each other, it opens the door to truly understanding that we're made of the same stuff."

"I look back on my upbringing and I lived in a very segregated town. There wasn't a lot of anything outside of black or white and even that didn't mix a whole lot. And I definitely had African American friends but I was not exposed to people of diverse backgrounds. And so, I'm so thankful that they walk out to the coffee shop, and are giving a big hug to somebody from Congo, or somebody from Syria, or they're having a conversation with someone from Ethiopia, and they feel like they're a part of something that's so much bigger."

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In her words--1. It was my first year, I didn’t know what I was doing and didn’t really have that guidance,  so I was lost for a little bit. I was working odd jobs here and there, nannying and working at a Smoothie King, and my dad was like, ‘you need to do something, you can’t do this your whole life’'. I said, I think I want to study psychology and he was like, well, what are you going to do with psychology? And I said, I don’t know. So he kind of forced me to take a Myers-Briggs test, a career test, so I did, and some of the options on there were social work, psychologist, and funeral director.

1. You get to the point when you start dehumanizing people, and I think a part of you has to so you don’t get sad, but then the other part of you has to remember that these families are grieving, and when you’re talking to them you can’t just have these tasks to complete, you have to let them process in their own way and come to you with what their wishes are.

2. I remember the first time, and it wasn't as shocking as I thought it was going to be. I think to me, in my head... I think some people have grosser jobs than this... In my head, I thought being a masseuse was more gross - you are rubbing oil over all these people's bodies and they are alive so you can't.. express if something smells bad. So in my opinion, I think there are people that have way more disgusting jobs than I do.

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This is Super Open with JB Frank, a DC native, Harvard Graduate and co-host of the Atlanta based podcast 'A Pod Name Kickback'

In his words--"A lawyer friend of my dad’s came to the house one day and said… this looks like a smart young man, are you going to go to college? And I was like yeah, of course I am, and he said, well what school do you want to go to? Well, what’s the best one out there. And he said Harvard University, and I said ok well that’s where I’ll go to school.... that’s where I’m going. [how old were you?] 8 years old.

"White people are different from black people, black people are different from Latin people, and you have Latin people that are different from Latin people dependent on the country in which they were raised or where they’re from. All of those people have different cultural nuances that are a part of who they are and being open minded or being woke isn’t saying “well nobody has any differences anywhere”. That’s not really embracing diversity. Embracing diversity is learning how to recognize what those differences are, and understand what they are, and celebrate people for those differences."

"We would talk about WWI and WWII, what Hitler did, how Mussolini invented fascism, and what that was, and why it had the name fascism. We talked about the great circle between fascism and communism, where at the extreme ends they would circle down and meet at the middle. These were the discussions that I was having with my father growing up….. all my friends used to call my dad Mr Miyagi because he always had these incredible pearls of wisdom. Plus, he looks like a little Chinese man too."

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In his words--1. I lived in a really impoverished neighbourhood. My neighbourhood was so bad that the national guard came to my neighbourhood to kind of calm things down... They didn’t come often but they came and made a presence for a little bit of time because things would get so crazy. And they used to hold us after school becuase there was shooting in the neighbourhood and the teachers wouldn’t let us walk home, because we could hear the gunshots....

1. I learned to hustle in military school. We’d go to the grocery store, and I would get a pack of Swiss cake roles, a pack of cupcakes, those big boxes that had little tiny bags of potato chips in them, and I had a foot locker, and I would put it in there, and juices and water, and people who were in trouble and couldn’t go into town to get snacks.. I would sell it to them. So I would go and spend $15-$20 and make $50. We thought we were on the block selling crack.

2. My all time classic would have to be ‘When Harry Met Sally’.. and you know why I love that movie so much? Because I was such a player when I was younger.. love just didn’t seem like it was for me. I used to be in awe of how people loved each other... Like, this shit is freaky - he would do anything for her.

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In his words--1. I’m born in New Orleans, and going back to the beginning is important for a number of reasons... One, New Orleans is a key ingredient to my entire being. It has influenced me and inspired me and informed me on things that I like, love, don’t like, have seen, want to try to re-imagine... specifically around culture, and history.... and fried shrimp.

1. For someone that’s as well put together, and beautiful and stylish and all the things that she is... she treats a tube of toothpaste like a truck driver would.

2. I have learned a lesson that they wanted to impart, which is, that you need to put yourself in the position, even though it might be difficult or scary, to lead your own life and to help inform or show other people a way that may be beneficial... to a group or a movement or a generation that goes well beyond your own benefit.

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Tara has always loved talking with people and hearing their stories, learning about their background and experiences and diving deep into whatever it is that makes them tick. So this is a space for her to do exactly that. These are sessions with no set topics and no pre-arranged conclusions. It's just Tara, and a guest, having raw, open and totally unscripted conversations. 

On this Trailer, hear more about what led Tara to creating this new podcast and a short preview of three conversations to give you an idea of what is to come.

Get ready to open your heart and mind, and let's be Super Open.