Claim The Stage: A Public Speaking Podcast For Women

Controversial and upsetting events are happening around us all the time. What are you doing as a public speaker to address these events and open the conversation? Deciding not to talk about something because you don't know how or don't want to "go there" isn't helping your audience think differently, understand other viewpoints, or change their perceptions. In today's episode, I derailed from the original plan so I could ask my guest, Hari Stephen Kumar, a teacher, scholar, story-crafter, and vision-caster who speaks and teaches about issues of whiteness, gender, religion, politics, and mass media about the events that took place in Charlottesville last Saturday. As I'm still searching for the right way to ask questions about it, I turned today's episode into a chance to practice "going there" from a place of sensitivity, openess, and compassion toward other people's experiences. Hari and I discuss how public speakers can bring up tough subjects, what it's been like for him living as a non-white man in a larg