Flipping Tables

This is not an error! Because of the recent release of the Epstein files I felt sharing my true crime show Highway to Hells 2 part series on Jeffrey Epstein would be valuable bonus for people.
If you are a true crime and travel fan please subscribe and listen to Highway to Hell wherever you get your podcasts. Part 2 comes out next Tuesday on Highway to Hell.
**Please forgive some slight quality changes as this had to be recorded remotely*
3 million more Epstein files were released and yet in the US there has been no further investigation, no arrests. Files that detail the rape, murder, cannibalism of children result in no arrests.
The release of the files almost extend Epsteins story- a man of deception, greed and who skated through his life with absolutely no accountability. The middle class Jewish boy, born into an average Brooklyn jewish family but who called himself "poor, smart, and desperate to be rich". Desperate for the elite and the luxury of New York, and then the world.
A man, who with no college degree who was hired to teach at the elite Dalton school anyway because of his proficiency at math. He was inappropriate with teenage girls but removed quietly- no accountability, no embarrassment for the school. But a parent who met him there brought him into Bear Sterns, with no degree, no qualifications, and when his deceit ran out, he was released quietly. Epstein then shaped himself as the financial advisor of the elite of the elite. He only needed one client, and he found it in Leslie Wexner who gave Epstein all of the keys to his kingdom. When Epstein misappropriated funds, basically gave himself a New York mansion, they settled quietly out of court- no accountability, no embarrassment.
If any single person had exposed Epstein for who he was, the files likely wouldn't exist. And when he finally did get caught for abusing minors, the district attorney and FBI cut him the sweetheart deal of a lifetime. 12 hours a day in jail for 13 months, getting to work in his private office, privacy and a non prosecutorial agreement for all his friends who participated in trafficking and raping minors. They went so far as to lie to his victims about it.
No accountability. No embarrassment. Boys will be boys after all.

FULL LIST OF SOURCES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST
[email protected]

Metro Surge in Minneapolis brought with it horror and conflict. Civilians and US citizens were killed, migrants were abducted without warrants, legal observers were tear gassed, people were held in extended detainment without help. Federal officers murdered without investigations, the DOJ and DHS broke federal law without any recourse and it left people wondering "what can I legally do?". It's also become progressively more important to understand how our immigration system works in the US, how its flawed and what all of our rights are.
Daphne Delvaux, is a former immigration attorney and now educator who helps people know their rights and understand how the system works. She is also an immigrant herself and shares her story of going through the system in the US, one that denied her the first time because she and her husband chose not to mix finances. Here she tells her story, teaches us about our rights and gives us some hope and gentle mothering towards the end. Something I desperately needed.

Today we explore the radicalization of young men. How do authoritarian movements especially capitalize on men and bend them to their will?
How does a kind, average boy grow up to be ordered to kill and say "I was just following orders"? Why do particularly conservative men buckle so quickly under perceived "more masculine" authority?
The reality is that there are a lot of reasons. And they are the same reasons that men are living in a system that makes them feel lonely, invisible, unable to access emotions, and kills them young.
Today we explore patriarchal systems, how the narrowing of masculinity rips humanity out of the hands of men. And how movements like the Nazis were able to weaponize disenfranchised, disappointed, and angry men and transform them into weapons of genocide.

Sources:
Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. HarperCollins, 1992.
Browning, Christopher R. Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp. W. W. Norton, 2010.
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.
Welzer, Harald, Sabine Moller, and Karoline Tschuggnall. Myth of the German Comradeship: The Wehrmacht and the Politics of Memory. Cambridge University Press.
Welzer, Harald. Perpetrators: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide. Princeton University Press, 2015.
Bloxham, Donald. Genocide on Trial: War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory. Oxford University Press.
Koonz, Claudia. The Nazi Conscience. Harvard University Press, 2003.
Koonz, Claudia. Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics. St. Martin’s Press, 1987.
Neitzel, Sönke, and Harald Welzer. Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying. Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. (Based on secretly recorded conversations of German POWs)
Biddiscombe, Perry. The SS Hunter Battalions: The Hidden History of the Nazi Resistance Movement 1944–45. Tempus.
Biddiscombe, Perry. Werwolf!: The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement, 1944–1946. University of Toronto Press.
Lower, Wendy. Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.

Heinemann, Isabel. “Rasse, Siedlung, deutsches Blut”: Das Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt der SS und die rassenpolitische Neuordnung Europas. Wallstein Verlag.
Bartov, Omer. Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich. Oxford University Press, 1991.
Bartov, Omer. The Eastern Front, 1941–45: German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare. Palgrave.
Fritz, Stephen G. Frontsoldaten: The German Soldier in World War II. University Press of Kentucky, 1995.
Manstein, Erich von. Lost Victories. Zenith Press.
(Primary source memoir; ideological but useful for studying mindset)
Himmler, Heinrich. Posen Speeches (1943). Primary documents; available in English translation via Holocaust Research Project / Nizkor / German Federal Archives.
Yad Vashem Archives. Testimonies of perpetrators and victims, Einsatzgruppen records, postwar interrogation files.
Lifton, Robert Jay. The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. Basic Books, 1986.
Staub, Ervin. The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence. Cambridge University Press.
Bandura, Albert. Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm and Live With Themselves. Worth Publishers, 2015.
(Not Nazi-specific but foundational for understanding perpetrator psychology)
Kelman, Herbert. “Violence Without Moral Restraint.” Journal of Social Issues.
Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Penguin, 1963.
Rees, Laurence. The Nazis: A Warning from History. New Press, 1997.
Rees, Laurence. Auschwitz: A New History. PublicAffairs, 2005.
Haffner, Sebastian. Defying Hitler: A Memoir. Picador, 2003.
Snyder, Timothy. Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning. Crown, 2015.Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Basic Books, 2010.

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When I scheduled this talk with Odessa, one of Nashvilles staunchest activists, I had no idea what was about to unfold in Minneapolis with the shooting of Alex Pretti just 5 days after we recorded this session. I think this conversation could not have landed on a more relevant time if I had tried.

Odessa Kelly is a Nashville native, organizer, and political activist focused on racial, economic, and social justice. She was born and raised on the East Side of Nashville in a working-class community facing poverty, substance abuse, and gun violence. Kelly graduated from Tennessee State University with a degree in Business Administration and later earned a Master’s in Public Service from Cumberland University.
She spent nearly 14 years working as a civil servant for Metro Nashville’s Parks & Recreation Department, including leading the Napier Community Center, where she worked directly with youth and families. Witnessing systemic inequities and the impact of policy decisions on her community pushed her toward broader community organizing work.
In 2016, Kelly co-founded Stand Up Nashville, a grassroots advocacy organization dedicated to fighting for economic equity, affordable housing, workers’ rights, and community benefits from local development. Under her leadership, the group won Nashville’s first community benefits agreement with a major soccer stadium project, securing commitments on living wages, affordable housing, and childcare supports.
Kelly has been honored with several awards, including the National Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy Award, a National Courage Award, and Nashville Scenes Activist of the Year for her work advancing justice for working people and marginalized communities.
As a mother of two and a member of Mount Zion Baptist Church, she has also run for public office. In 2022, Kelly was the Democratic nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District, campaigning on expanding economic opportunity, housing justice, and representation for working families.
Her activism and platform emphasize lived experience, community empowerment, and challenging systems that leave working-class people behind. And now she meets with us to tell us how to carry that legacy forward.

I apologize this is late everyone, as you know this has been a really busy and tough weekend in the reporting/political realm.
So excited for this conversation with a dear friend of mine, and one of my favorite voices in town. Kyndle Wylde is a Memphis born soul, blues and rock singer. You might recognize her as the winner of the 2024 CBS morning mixtape competition with a delicious soul version of "I Can See Clearly Now". She now performs and tours with Post Modern Jukebox and her cover of "Pour Some Sugar on Me" with them has over 1.6 million views. She also released her debut, self titled EP in 2025.
But what you might not know, is that she was born and raised in a small Tennessee town. She was part of the family worship band in her grandfathers church and she had a long road of self discovery to find that not only she could be an artist but she wanted to. She shares the moment the church told her "walk the Damascus Road" and when she didn't, found the support system pulled out from her.
But it turns out love, a dream, and slow unsteady steps to self discovery- can change your world.