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In This Episode
In the season finale, damon talks to stephen scatter field, creator and co host of high on the hog, about the racial and economic politics embedded in food creation and consumption. Later he’s joined by Panama Jackson for a conversation about money, anxiety, and what’s next for both of them.
TRANSCRIPT
Stephen Satterfield: I almost want to create it like it’s own political party. Like the food, party. [laughter]
Damon Young: I mean, there’s the Green Party. So, I mean, why can’t there be a food party?
Stephen Satterfield: We might be constructing this in real time Damon.
Damon Young: So welcome, everyone, to the final episode of Stuck Damon Young, the show where we want you to notice when we’re not around. I want to close the season talking about two of my favorite things. Food. And well, me. And who better to talk about food and the racial politics, inherited in the creation and consumption of it than Stephen Satterfield, the host, the co-creator of the amazing docu series High on the Hog. And who better to talk about me? Then my good friend Panama Jackson. As we talk about the journeys we both made to be full time creatives and what’s next for both of us. All right y’all. Let’s get it. [music plays]
Damon Young: Stephen Satterfield is the host, co-creator of the amazing docu series High on the Hog. And the second season is available right now on Netflix, so please go check it out. Stephen.
Stephen Satterfield: Damon.
Damon Young: So how are you doing?
Stephen Satterfield: Oh man, I’m feeling really good. I’m so relieved, honestly, that this second season is in the world.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: And just feeling all of the things that come along with that. Mostly just a huge amount of gratitude.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: For the opportunity to make the work for the reception around the work. And I’m just trying to feel that, you know what I mean, as opposed to just being a viewer like everybody else, watching myself and being like, Damn, it’s crazy that this show is out and this is so much about my own personal thesis, you know, in life and what I believe and food identity and movement building and everything like that. So it’s just an incredible feeling and I feel super grateful.
Damon Young: Now. Can you watch the episodes?
Stephen Satterfield: No [laughter] I can’t watch it. I’ve actually never seen a full episode ever.
Damon Young: Wow.
Stephen Satterfield: They send you, you know, you’ve got to approve what’s on there.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: So there’s no surprises. So I do one hard, kind of like final look.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: Before the final edit. And after that, I can’t touch it [laughter] you know, when it’s playing in the background. I got to leave the room. I hate to see it.
Damon Young: Yeah, I haven’t listened to an episode of this podcast on Spotify.
Stephen Satterfield: Yeah.
Damon Young: I’ve obviously listen to the edits and the drafts and all of that. And did the final version.
Stephen Satterfield: Yeah.
Damon Young: But like when it’s up on like Spotify or Apple Music or wherever, I literally have never listened to an entire episode all the way through, which I should.
Stephen Satterfield: Yeah.
Damon Young: Because it helps on the numbers. That’s like one less. [laughs]
Stephen Satterfield: There you go.
Damon Young: One less audience member that’s being tracked.
Stephen Satterfield: Hustling backwards.
Damon Young: But yeah, I can’t do it. I just can’t do it.
Stephen Satterfield: Why is that for you?
Damon Young: I think podcasting isn’t a natural thing for me. Right. And so it is difficult for me to listen to my voice over and over again. And then I want to like I want to go back and I want to change a thing that I said. I want to edit a thing. And the thing is, you know, I had to learn to just let things go right or let things go enough for a weekly cadence of a show in order for it to be produced. But I still have that anxiety. When I listen, I’m like, Fuck, I should have said this differently. And the thing is, it’s not. It’s nothing like the change I would make. It’s like nothing worth.
Stephen Satterfield: Right right.
Damon Young: Going in and actually changing, but it’s just my own shit swirling around in my head that I’m just always going to be that way. Like, there’s no way around that.
Stephen Satterfield: I hear you. Completely. Yeah. There’s a lot to pick apart when you’re looking at yourself and watching game tape, as it were.
Damon Young: It’s really fascinating to me, the people who actually can. I think there’s more people who feel this way where they can’t necessarily consume the finished product, but then you have people who are just fine with it and it’s like, Yo, do you have nothing in your head? Do you do you have like no anxiety, you have no neuroses, no nothing. [laughs]
Stephen Satterfield: They have an enormous like impossible to deflate ego, which kudos to them.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: Or they are the most egoless person on earth. They’re like a Buddhist monk, you know [laughs] and then the rest of us who are anywhere in the middle got to deal with all the anxiety.
Damon Young: So High on the Hog is one of the best documentaries I’ve ever watched. Like it’s my top five with like Hoop Dreams, the two Spike documentaries that I think are iconic. When the Levees Broke, and Four Little Girls and yours really? And also one of the Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary too. Right. It just in terms of ones that just stick in my head. Right. In terms of just being like core iconic hit all the points, no notes, no nothing. And so thank you for creating that and given that to us.
Stephen Satterfield: Ah man, thank you.
Damon Young: I guess I wanted to ask just about the creation of this. And I think of. I’m thinking about memoir, right? When you when you write memoir, when you write a personal story. Right. And there’s so much to choose from when you write memoir and you have to have this process of discerning, okay, what do I include and what do I leave out? And there’s stuff that you could leave out that could be a part of this memoir, part of the story, but you just don’t have space or maybe it just doesn’t fit the story that you’re trying to tell. And so when creating a docu series about diasporic food, about Black American food, there are so many different stories that you could tell. There’s so many different places you could be, so many people you could talk to. So can you walk me through a bit of the decision to include some stuff and leave some stuff out.
Stephen Satterfield: Yeah I mean, it’s a burden that is shared and distributed among a number of stakeholders. You know, the executive producers of the show, the director.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: Myself, etc.. But I think the thing for us was with this work, it follows the text of a book of the same title.
Damon Young: Mm hm.
Stephen Satterfield: Written in 2011. And so for us, there were like lines to color inside of.
Damon Young: Okay.
Stephen Satterfield: Where we wanted to do the retelling of this text High on the Hog. And that is a story. Our story written by Jessica B. Harris. Dr. J.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: That is a chronicle of Black Americans as told through food.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: And so what we really wanted to do is obviously, there’s so many of our people who could be vessels for that larger story.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: But we really kind of focused on the geography. Right. What were the places?
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: That we wanted to highlight and then work backwards into kind of the preservational sort of keepers of that work.
Damon Young: Now, you’re attracted to this book. Right. And I’m wondering now, which came first, your idea to create a docu series. And then you went searching for texts that kind of fit what you had in mind or the book, and then you’re like, yo, I need to do something.
Stephen Satterfield: For sure the book. So my background is in the hospitality business and the wine business more specifically. So, you know, I came into media with food as like my vehicle. You know, that was the web that I was in. And the reason that I got into media is because as a person who had been in the trade of hospitality for like, you know, 15 years or so, at that point, I was very underwhelmed with what I was seeing out there. The media that was being produced was, like, very whitewashed.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: And we talk about, like, representation. You know, this was in 2015, 2016. There was just no real deep analysis about food other than best restaurants. Top 30 places to go, best ethnic food, best cheap food, etc.. And this was like a very lazy analysis around food that I knew, you know, from kind of dedicating my life to it, because food A is not unique to, you know, people from the U.S. can afford to eat out, which is how it’s being covered. But also the story of food in a more literal way is actually about human beings. It’s actually a way to tell the story of the world, to tell the story of human beings, of wars, of power, of famine, bloodlines, etc..
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: And so that has always been, I say always, but for a long time, many years been the way that I look at food, which is as a way to educate people, activate people, organize people, because it’s a powerful vessel, as in it’s the only thing that we all have in common. Like we can’t unify around the fact that we all breathe.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: You know, it’s not enough.
Damon Young: Yeah.
Stephen Satterfield: But if we unify or have the capacity, rather, to unify around anything, it’s going to be food. And the opposites are true, too, you know, ways of division or destroying a people, etc.. So looking at my work, I actually did have the idea to create High on the Hog. The book had such a big impact on my life and career.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: Because it was our kind of foremost scholar of Black foodways. Like just breaking it all the way down, like, this is where we came from, but make it food. And so that was kind of like in the back of my mind already for years.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: As a way to inform my kind of more anthropological look at food and specifically Black, you know, as a Black man from the South. And so Dr. J actually with this book gave me permission, you know, to kind of pursue an otherwise esoteric position in the media, the food. Media realm. So the show actually came from two women in California, two best friends, Fabienne Toback and Karis Jagger, who were like, we are obsessed with this book. Someone was like, I got to talk to Stephen. And you know, the rest is history. We got an amazing director attached to it and the rest is history. So I can’t really say that it was my idea, but I can say that the book was really seminal in shaping my own career and ideas and ultimately why I got, you know, hit up for that position.
Stephen Satterfield: I’m glad you spoke to the book, not just the seminal text, but also like the anchoring entity throughout this whole process. And that’s the great thing about books and about writing is that they can exist as these anchors, as these like these fulcrums that other things end up springing from. And sometimes the author has no idea what is going to happen after they write the book. They just write the book. They don’t envision that it’s going to be a play or a movie or TV show or docu series or whatever. Right. And how did this align with Dr. J’s vision for the docu series? Like, did it take any convincing in order to like, Oh, we’re going to take this book and we’re going to make a series? We’re gonna put it on Netflix. You know, I’m going to travel around the world, right? And again, your book is going to be the seminal text. But how did that process go?
Stephen Satterfield: It’s a great question because for me, in our little corner of the world, in the food world, as we call it, Dr. J was already like a very well-known person.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: Especially for Black chefs, Black food writers, scholars, etc.. So she’s someone who already had an elevated position.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: As I said, she has been deeply influential in my own career. So when I had to step to her, I was nervous. You know, I was nervous. [laughter] I’m like, it’s very hard to sell a TV show. You know.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: It’s very hard. And the odds of a show like High on the Hog getting sold, my brother, it is a miracle.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: And I’m holding that truth on the one hand. And also, if we can’t get her blessing, I’m not trying to be the one to be the face of this thing. You know what I mean?
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: I don’t want that. So I had to basically say, like, this is the opportunity, but I need you to bless this thing, too. For me.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: Because it is her book. And even though she’s in it, you know, she really had to acquiesce a lot around the creator, like some of these people she found on these people. You know, so there’s a level of trust both with me and with the team more broadly. But obviously we got there. And having done the second season now, I think we all feel in each other that it’s just a special thing to be a part of. In the same way that I have to have faith in our team, showrunners, directors, etc. producers like sometimes I pop up on some interviews. I’m like, this is my first time learning this story and I have to hold that space. And so that takes trust.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: So I think we’re there now. But I did have to get the blessing off the top.
Damon Young: Yeah. I can imagine. Especially when you take someone’s baby, someone’s book, right? And you want to adapt it. You’re very rarely going to have a 1 to 1 adaptation.
Stephen Satterfield: Yeah.
Damon Young: Regardless of who’s working on the thing, regardless of how closely they want to, you know, mimic what’s in the pages, you know, to the screen, it’s just not going to happen. And there is some letting go, some acquiescing that needs to occur because it’s a level of control. And writers are control freaks, right? [laughs] Right. And asking a writer be like, you know, we we’re going to change this thing and this thing a little bit. And that’s just how it’s going to be. You know.
Stephen Satterfield: Especially a Black woman in her 70s. [laughter] Good luck with that.
Damon Young: So you brought up how food is inherently political. You know, and there’s so many ways to discuss the politics of food. I mean, we could talk about, you know, just who has access to certain foods and we could talk about where supermarkets are. We could talk about how certain foods have certain like racial and cultural and even economic connotations. We could talk about like, I don’t know, even the way that food is consumed.
Stephen Satterfield: Mm hmm.
Damon Young: Right. Who is hungry? Who is, quote unquote, “allowed” to starve? Who is allowed to be hungry? And it’s always regardless of the country you’re in, it’s always the browner, the darker skinned people. Right. And so I’m curious, just like for your own political sense ability. How is being a part of this series affected you in that way? How has it affected your politics or has it?
Stephen Satterfield: Honestly, it has not.
Damon Young: Okay.
Stephen Satterfield: And by that I mean, I’ve been on this bullshit for a minute. [laughter] You know, I would say that probably the most important milestone for me was when I was a teenager. I got into the wine business. I went to culinary school. I wanted to be a chef. And then I was like, It’s hard work. I learned that you could actually make a career as a professional drinker called a sommelier. Just make it French and then it makes it okay. [laughs] So I pursued that path, fell in love with wine, and became a sommelier by my 21st birthday. So I spent my early 20s working tableside at really nice restaurants, visiting wineries, etc. But then after about five years doing that, I just started to become overwhelmed by the homogeneity of the business of wine. Like this was just only white people everywhere. I was just like trying to understand where other Black people and this is before Facebook and all that. So I’m like, Where are my people at? So I literally and this is some 20 years, you know, so my confidence and ignorance, I was like, I’m going to go to South Africa and I’m going to start working with Black women there.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: Who work in the wine business because it’s a longer story. But basically after apartheid, there was some programs that made funding available for Black vintners, Black winemakers.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: So when I went to South Africa, it changed my whole life because I saw what it looked like for a people who had been colonized and forced to live on the same land for many generations, in some cases over 12, 15 generations on the same land that they had no ownership of.
Damon Young: Hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: And horrible stuff like a system called the DOP system where they would feed the workers or rather pay the workers not in wages, but in alcohol, creating cycles of dependency, creating fetal alcohol syndrome, all kinds of health complications. In these little villages like [?].
Damon Young: Wow.
Stephen Satterfield: So I was so struck that there was no dialogue around this in the international wine community. And then I’m like, oh, well, we can’t really talk about this because it’s only white people.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: And the way like that, we would have to talk about this getting into Dutch colonization and the British and all that, like this not polite conversation for this community. And so I started a nonprofit that made it my business to work with these women in the wine industry in South Africa. This is in like 2007, 2008. And that’s really how I first got into media by sort of chronicling and cataloging the stories of these women.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: And, you know, from there, I was not ever able to unsee the relationship between colonial imperialism. And racism. And food. I just. I couldn’t unsee it. Because even though wine is not the same as food, it’s about occupying, dominating, exploiting agriculture.
Damon Young: Yeah.
Stephen Satterfield: And exploiting the land, exploiting the labor. And this is a 500 year old playbook that is run continuously that has not been stopped. Like we do not have a defense for this playbook.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: And so once you drink that particular Kool-Aid, there’s no going back, because the entire world will remind you continuously about this fundamental truth. In other words, land is a thing to be exploited. Land is where food comes from. Right. So if it is a thing to be exploited and a thing that also feeds us, you have now commodified something that is essential for human survival.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: This is the story of our modern world in the world of the last 500 years.
Damon Young: Yeah. And you can’t escape it. Like once you’re in a circumstance like that where you, you know, you drink the Kool-Aid, you take the red pill or whatever, and your eyes are open and food is everywhere.
Stephen Satterfield: Everywhere.
Damon Young: Right? Everywhere. Every corner, everywhere there’s food. Right. And there’s a reminder of like, okay, so how is this food made? Where does it come from? Whose the supplier? Why is this restaurant in this neighborhood? Like, who is going here? Who is, you know, frequent in here? Who pays to rent here? How much is to rent near which restaurant was here before? How come they’re not here anymore. And all of that is politics.
Stephen Satterfield: All of it.
Damon Young: You know what I mean?
Stephen Satterfield: I almost want to create it like it’s own political party, like the food party. [laughter]
Damon Young: I mean, there’s the Green Party. So, I mean, why can’t there be a food party?
Stephen Satterfield: We might be constructing this in real time Damon [laughter] because, like, I really find it to be to borrow from Angela Davis, like the most intersectional framing. You know what I mean? Like.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: There is a particular dialog of which I’m pretty cynical. That’s like food brings us all together. It doesn’t. Okay. People who are racist, who love Mexican food or who love Asian food will continue to be racist and love those foods.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: But for the people who see food as a means of breaking bread, for whom the euphemism of breaking bread actually means something to them, that actually happens to be the majority of the world.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: And whether you’re talking about, like, gentrification and displacement and urban gardening and agriculture, like there’s really nothing that anyone could talk about in the realm of politics, school lunches, school boards, that isn’t going to be prominently tied to food. And so if we come back to an ideology that is around healthy and equal access to food, that’s actually a massively disruptive and transformative kind of political period.
Damon Young: When we think about it in that way, because there are certain things where if you do not approach them with a political framework, then they make no sense. Like, for instance, when free lunches are politicized, when you have politicians who are opposing that children are able to eat free at school. It makes it’s like, what the fuck is wrong with you? It makes no sense.
Stephen Satterfield: What’s really going on?
Damon Young: But then when you pull back, it’s like, Oh, this is why they feel this way. Because they don’t want a certain type of kid to be getting the lunch. Right. It’s not so it has nothing to do with food, even though it has everything to do with food.
Stephen Satterfield: Right.
Damon Young: But it has everything to do with racism, with with colonization, with supremacy, ultimately.
Stephen Satterfield: With anti-Black racism.
Damon Young: Yeah. I mean, let’s let’s talk about why and how the school lunches ended up in the school in the first place because of the Black Panther Party.
Stephen Satterfield: Mm hmm.
Damon Young: And the Free Breakfast program. And it was actually seen as a threat to the US government to have civic leaders who were participants and functionally recruiters for the Black Panther Party. They could not be seen as anything other than militant and violent. And so it was an effort to undermine the Panthers that actually brought school lunches to everyone to discredit and undermine their work. And so, once again, you know, it actually Black folks have advanced. You know, I’m just talking about the U.S.. Our democracy in so many ways, just in our own advocacy, which is why to have a pro-Black position, especially in the U.S., it’s not just a radical position. Like that’s good politics.
Damon Young: Yeah.
Stephen Satterfield: You know, look at the Voting Rights Act. Look at all of the things that Black people have done in our freedom that have helped the country get more freedom. And unfortunately, those stories really get erased. They get obfuscated. And then to your point, we don’t understand the connection. But if you’re like, oh, they never wanted to feed Black kids. That’s why we had to do this anyways.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: So then when you see them standing on like, well, we just need to, like, cut the budget or whatever, we know what it is because we have a 30, 40 year kind of analysis around what that lunch is actually about.
Damon Young: So, I mean, even becoming like a sommelier. I hope I’m pronouncing that right.
Stephen Satterfield: You got it.
Damon Young: I got my Pittsburgh accent, my Pittsburgh tongue. I fuck up words all the time. I fuck up names.
Stephen Satterfield: You’re good.
Damon Young: What attracted you to that? Like, you know, we talked about like how getting into food or getting into wine radicalized you. Right. But you’re in this space where there aren’t a lot of us.
Stephen Satterfield: Mm hmm.
Damon Young: Right. And so how does a young kid, a teenager, decide like, you know what this is? This is the lane that I want to take?
Stephen Satterfield: Yeah. Well, I think part of it is just I was born just naturally as a person who loves leisure. You know [laughter] I was born naturally as a person who loves to catch a little fade, you know. And so.
Damon Young: Yeah.
Stephen Satterfield: Things that are to some indulgent or opulent, maybe even excessive to me, I’m like, I fit in right here, this right where I belong. So in other words, I just love nice shit.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: You know, and so when I was younger, I went to a private school. And so I kind of had this very bifurcated childhood.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: Very Black family community upbringing. And then I would go to this super white private school.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: And basically, when I was there, one of the people. A good friend. Yeah. So one of my best friends would stay. His father. We were probably, like, 16 years old would invite us to have wine at the dinner table. And they were like, you know, people who also would with nice shit, that we could actually afford it. And so I remember one time watching his dad, like, go into the cellar and then come back out like, I don’t know, maybe 15 minutes later.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: With two bottles and I go, What the fuck were you just doing down here? Like, he was, like, so pleased, you know? [laughter] And I was really so captivated by this specialized knowledge that he had.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: Because he’s a really smart dude. And I’m like, All right, there’s a language happening here that I wanna learn.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: And if I can learn that language, like some people want to learn golf.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: You know what I mean? As a way to network and so on. I wanted to learn about wine. Not necessarily for the networking, but it was just like a language that sounded good to me. Like, yeah, that would actually be a good look for me to be a wine person. And so when I got to culinary school, I was a teenager, I was 19. I did the cooking thing for just a couple of months. And then I realized, oh, if I transfer into hospitality part of that curriculum, I get to like taste wine. And as a 19 year old.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: This is a no brainer.
Damon Young: Yeah.
Stephen Satterfield: So I enrolled in this class in my culinary school. Introduction to Wine Studies 101, with Jon Ellison. And I never looked back. I just really fell in love with it. To answer the point around that kind of radicalization specifically is a concept. And I’m actually writing my first book about this right now. But the concept that I did learn that I’m really affected by and attached to is the concept of terroir, which is a French word that describes a site or place or geography. More specifically, what it’s describing is the characteristics of the wine.
Damon Young: Okay.
Stephen Satterfield: So the thing that makes wine expensive and specialized is where it was born.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Stephen Satterfield: So just in the same way that humans look at people who come from bloodlines of wealthy. Which is prestigious or aristocratic or so on. That’s good stock. Right. Effectively, the wine business mirrors that kind of colonialism. And so what you’re actually learning is about the historical characteristics of a site. And there is a whole kind of analysis that goes into it that has to do with the soil, the climate. How many days of sun, the elevation, etc.. All of that is called the terroir. So my takeaway from that is that we are all born with our own terroir or in a specific or unique terroir. That is our geography, our human intervention, our environment. And once I started to see, oh, these white people who are my colleagues, they understand terroir. They have empathy for these grapevines and the stories and all the things that make them special. But they cannot apply this same analysis, you know, in kind of an anti-Black or anti-racist lens. That’s when I knew this was a jig. I’m like, Y’all get it intellectually, because when we talk, when it’s about the wine, all the differences, the characteristics, the nuances, we have space and we have a framework of analysis that allows us to explain, Oh, no, this is really what’s going on with this person because they came from this environment.
Damon Young: Yeah.
Stephen Satterfield: Or the grapevine, as it were. So that’s just kind of how I have been teaching and learning. You know, as a student of wine, understanding people through their own terroir, understanding history through terroir, through borders that are constructed by colonies and imperial countries, then things really are remarkably clarified. So yeah, that was that’s kind of the, I guess, radicalizing conclusion from the wine business more broadly.
Damon Young: Stephen Satterfield thank you for coming through. Please, please, please. If you haven’t watched High on the Hog yet, go and do so. Season two is available right now. Start with season one. You can start with season two and go back to season one. You could do it. You could do it however you want, but it’s the sort of show that rewards your participation and your consumption of it. So again, thank you for the time thank you for giving this to us. And I guess I’ll see you soon.
Stephen Satterfield: Appreciate you, brother. I’ll see you in Pittsburgh, maybe or in Atlanta.
Damon Young: [laughs] All right.
Stephen Satterfield: Be easy. Peace.
Damon Young: Up next, Panama Jackson and I talk about our journeys. As you know, full time workers to becoming full time creatives and all the hustle and anxiety and neuroses that attached to all that. But first Damon hates. [music plays] So in this week, I guess, which is the last episode of Stuck with Damon Young you know, the Damon hates is something that has been dear to me, dear to everyone who works on this show, dear to a lot of people that I know and is that there is just a shrinking place, shrinking opportunity for people to be able to create full time. We’re recording this from the studios in Spotify, right? They just had layoffs 17% of their workforce. And that is not unique. There are places The New Yorker has had layoffs. There are places all over the landscape that are shutting down. Shuttering, Jezebel, just shut down. We all know what’s happened. But there there’s been Gawker shut down. And so, of course, you’re going to have those institutional places. The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, which again, all those places are not immune, but those places are still going to be there. But I guess the issue that I have, the thing that is really on my mind right now is like, what about those in-between spaces? You know what I’m saying? What Hillary Crosley Coker referred to as the spaces where the conversations that the writers and journalists are actually having right in those spaces. And also the spaces for people like a 28, 26, 25 year old who’s getting their start and wants to become a writer, but maybe doesn’t have an MFA, maybe doesn’t have a traditional background, but has a voice, right, and needs an editor and needs a platform. Like if I talk to a kid in a college student, they ask me, you know, how can I do what you did? I don’t have an answer. Now, I’m not saying that you can’t necessarily be a writer for a living, but the path that I took where I was able to start on blogs and then transitioned into like more traditional media spaces, whatever that path is just doesn’t exist anymore, the path where the voices, the opinionated, the snarky, but still rigorous but still intentional but still meaningful. Right? It’s just been swallowed. And that’s not just for writing. That’s for podcasting. That’s with TV, that’s with the sort of content that, again, that people like me, that people like, the people that I love, the shit that we love is going away. And again, I don’t know how to remedy that. I don’t know what to do to fix that. But again, it’s just a thing that has been on my mind and it’s just getting worse by the year. I don’t want to leave on such a down note, but maybe this could be a call. Maybe someone listening might have an idea. Maybe people who have been affected by this will come together and think of something. But something has to happen because we can’t continue this way and just lose. So much of what made us who we are, what made us, what gave us that political sensibility, what gave us what radical assets, what gave us those platforms or what gave us those spaces to be able to be ourselves. And without that. What do we have left? [music plays] Panama Jackson is columnist at TheGrio, hosted a dear culture podcast, also at TheGrio. Also one of my very best friends, Panama. What’s good man?
Panama Jackson: Nothing much man, just chillin, hanging out, blacking it up. As usual.
Damon Young: I got to let you know you were the cause of some controversy earlier today because they apparently did not know that Panama is not your real name. And people in here were, like, bamboozled, questioning their religion. You know what I mean? It was a lot happening when I told them the truth.
Panama Jackson: I mean, one, I’m flattered that people think that Panama Jackson is a real name because that means I picked a good name.
Damon Young: Yeah.
Panama Jackson: I picked a good pen name to have. But also my real name is out there. It’s in the streets. It’s been in the streets since 2016. When Damon being you, you tried to get me fired from my job on Capitol Hill by the release of the article that announced, I think it was your book. We had like a feature on us in The Washington Post.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Panama Jackson: And I remember when that article dropped, I thought I was going to get fired, but my name was in that article is the main bullet point.
Damon Young: Yeah. And so for context. Okay, so 2016 Washington Post runs a big profile on Panama and I on Very Smart Brothas and we had was it to announce the acquisition?
Panama Jackson: It was to announce the planned acquisition. And you had just signed your book deal, I think too was the main thing.
Damon Young: Yeah. And so it was also announcing a book deal. And a reporter spent like an evening with us in D.C.. I happen to be in D.C., right. And Panama was a little shook because he had a job on Capitol Hill. Right. And thought that, you know what, My name gets out there I’m gonna get fired and then it ends up like people at your job knew who you were.
Panama Jackson: Yes.
Damon Young: And were reading you this entire time.
Panama Jackson: It was one of the more heartwarming moments I’ve had when I realized that all of my coworkers actually liked me enough to not want me to get in trouble. So the funny thing about that day was, though, the day that article dropped, the director of my organization, the head honcho, randomly decided to come to my office that day of all days. He’d never done this to tell me I did a good job on one of the estimates I wrote. But when I saw him walk in, I thought I was getting fired, bro. Like, I literally was like, It’s a wrap. It’s over.
Damon Young: Oh, wow. Wow.
Panama Jackson: For more context. By that point, we thought we would have already signed the deal for the acquisition of Very Smart Brothas at the time and had moved on. So I thought by the time the article came out, we wouldn’t even be worried about this anymore. It would have just been a, Hey, here’s what happened, blah, blah. Everybody would have found out, been like, oh, yo, that’s crazy. Nope, I was still there.
Damon Young: Yeah. And so my apologies for because the reason why he still kind of feels away about this seven years later is because I was pushing for article to be published and Panama wanted to wait a little bit and I was like, We should just let them run it now.
Panama Jackson: Point is, my name was in an article, though. My name was in there. So.
Damon Young: Yeah, Dwayne Wright is known.
Panama Jackson: Yes.
Damon Young: You’re Dwayne Wright in my phone too. Even though it’s funny because there are times when I’m looking for your number and I can’t find it and it’s because I’m looking for Panama.
Panama Jackson: That’s funny.
Damon Young: Yeah.
Panama Jackson: Well. I’m sorry for all those people that didn’t know that Panama was not my real name. But I’m a superhero, you know, Panama Jackson and Clark Kent, Superman kind of thing, you know? But Panama Jackson is a good name. I have a middle name. Did you tell them my middle name? That is Panama Dontavious Jackson. I have a full name. This way.
Damon Young: Yeah. You’re like Chuck E. Cheese. You know what E stands for? With Chuck E. Cheese.
Panama Jackson: Probably entertainment. I always call him Charles Edward Cheese. I think Chuck E. Cheese just is like, you know, shortened version of the name.
Damon Young: [laughs] Yeah, it is entertainment. Charles Entertainment Cheese, the host of the Child Casino, Charles Entertainment Cheese. Oh, man. But, you know, it’s funny because this relates to what I want to talk about.
Panama Jackson: Okay.
Damon Young: Because we started Very Smart Brothas, you know, for people, again, who are not familiar with, I guess, the lore. We started VSB in 2008 after we had known each other for a few years. We decided we both have blogs and we decided to create like a group blog. It was us and we had a third partner at the time, Liz Burr, and we didn’t meet in person until 2011. So we had VSB up running popular bam, for three years before we actually met in person. Right. And it’s not like we live that far from each other. You’re in D.C.? I’m in Pittsburgh, it’s a four hour drive. But we met in person and we had a party for the three year anniversary of the site in D.C. And I came out to D.C. and that’s when we finally met. But we both had full time jobs when VSB started. You were on Capitol Hill, a budget analyst. If I’m not mistaken, I worked at Duquesne University. I got laid off of my job at Duquesne in 2009, so I was unemployed, doing freelance stuff, whatever. But we both have been able to make a transition from full time jobs, right? To being able to write and create and produce and edit. And do whatever full time.
Panama Jackson: Yeah.
Damon Young: Right. And there’s something that, you know, we started VSB 2008. This is 15 years later. Right? And so there are a lot of dips and valleys and plateaus and whatnot, but that’s what we were able to do. And so I guess I wanted to talk to you about that. And just about like one like where do you envision is the next path for you? Right. Considering that so much of the stuff that that both of us have done in the last like 5 to 10 years has been things that we created, jobs that we created jobs that were created for us. Right. Do you think that you’re going to continue on that way, or would you prefer to be like more settled into like a I don’t know, I’ll just say an editor at The Atlantic or whatever. I’m just using that as like something that is relatively solid.
Panama Jackson: I mean, that’s a good question. I think so much of the stuff that has happened for us, like you said, has been created like I teach at Howard now. Right? And that’s because I cold emailed the chair of the department that I’m teaching in at Howard to see if they had space for me there. And you know, even being where I’m at now, at TheGrio, like, you know, that kind of worked out after as being at The Root. Look, I have four kids so settled and security is always something I’m concerned about, you know? But the truth is, every day I look at my email and I really have no clue what might possibly be in there. Right? Like, you never know. Like, that’s how I feel. Like life is worked out for us.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Panama Jackson: For like, 15 years, like you said, like, you just never know who’s going to pop in to your email and say, I have this opportunity or I would like to meet or do this, whatever. And it’s really been working out for us. You know, I haven’t figured out a five year plan since we started VSB, I think. I haven’t thought about where we might go next. What I do know has been interesting about this journey is that we seem to be running like these parallel lives to some degree. So even if we’re not doing the exact same thing the same way, it’s very similar in what we’re doing in some way, shape or form.
Damon Young: Yeah.
Panama Jackson: So, you know, you and I talk offline about the kind of things we have going on in our lives at the same time. So I’m very excited based on some of the things you tell me, my life’s about to be lit. You know, assuming this parallel life thing goes, you know, it happens. [laughs] But, you know, I’d be lying if I didn’t say whenever you told me something that’s going on, I’m like, Huh? I wonder what that means for me. Even when I told you I got the job at Howard, then you started telling me about what you got going on at Pittsburgh, right? It’s like, man, it’s crazy how these things work. So, you know, we’re just kind of late, so if something good happens for me, I’m assuming something amazing is about to happen for you and vice versa. And I try not to think too much about it or what that might be because I’ve been wrong so often, and every opportunity that’s come is one that I didn’t see coming.
Damon Young: Well, you make a good point, too, about how even though this has been our lives for the last, you know, however many years, you have a family, you have four kids, you got a wife, you got a mortgage, you know, you got other responsibilities, other people whenever you know, and this is the case for so many of us is that when someone is doing well, you are supporting other people, too, right? Not just people in your immediate family, but maybe a friend, maybe you know, someone who lives outside of your house, you know, things of that nature.
Stephen Satterfield: Yeah.
Damon Young: And so I have two kids, a wife, a house, a mortgage, you know, private school, both. And so it’s one of those circumstances where, yes, you know, this sort of freedom to just, hey, I don’t know what I’m going to be doing next year, but I’m sure I’m going to be doing something. It is still attractive. But the other part of it, where maybe something more secure, maybe something that gives less of that anxiety, even though that anxiety for me is what helps to generate some sort of ambition like it. It’s almost like this self synthesizing thing or almost like a generator where it enters me as anxiety. Then it leaves me as ambition. And I don’t even know if I could replace that ambition if I didn’t have the anxiety. Like that’s something that I’m actually actively thinking about. Like.
Panama Jackson: It’s interesting. Yeah.
Damon Young: If I was somewhere where it was like relatively safe and secure, would I just be chillin and just be good?
Panama Jackson: So for me, I have a little more security, so to speak, right?
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Panama Jackson: I’m at TheGrio. As a columnist, I have a contract. It renews every year, though. They have the option not to, obviously.
Damon Young: I mean, you have a billionaire who’s your boss right now.
Panama Jackson: Yeah, but, you know, billionaires also like to save their money. So if they don’t get returns on their investments, you know, they can be like they have the option to not renew that contract, right? Like.
Damon Young: Yeah.
Panama Jackson: My contract renewal is in a month at this point, right? So there’s always a little bit of that anxiety for me, but I feel pretty secure in where I’m at, right? Like, I feel like I do my job well. I show up whenever they need me to show up. I give the best version of myself. So I don’t really. Worry about that. But like the version of life. Like when you feel the anxiety turning into ambition, I think that’s really interesting because sometimes I think I need some of that, right? Like, there’s all these ideas, you know, you and I talk about stuff and I’m the king of ideas. I have a million great ideas and I don’t get to a lot of them because maybe the thing that I need to drive me getting to them would be the absolute need to do the thing right. And since I don’t have that need to get those things, I’ve been talking about writing a book for years. Right? I watched you do it. Your book came out in 2019. That’s four years ago. Almost five at this point, right?
Damon Young: Yeah. You don’t have to remind me. [laughs] I know it’s been a minute.
Panama Jackson: But you did it. You know what I’m saying in your book is a thing. And, like, part of me wants to do that and part of me doesn’t. But I almost think if I was painted into a corner, I would want to do it more and I would deliver, you know what I’m saying? So sometimes I think I need less security to achieve some of the greatness I think is in me because I think I do a great job of being myself and getting things done. But sometimes I wonder if to maximize whatever my talent is, if I need a little more inspiration in the form of desperation. Not that I want that, but sometimes I do think about that. And you know.
Damon Young: Well, your circumstance, though, and to be fair, you know, a lot of these things that we’re talking about are highly circumstantial and are dependent on our situations. And you’ve had more of a need to be and settle situations with health care, with benefits or whatever. I mean, you leave the Capitol Hill, then, you know, you leave that go to The Root where we walk into a job with full benefits, nice salary, and then you leave that and go to TheGrio with, you know, a job with the same thing. But the thing is, you live in a in a one of the most expensive cities on earth.
Panama Jackson: Facts.
Damon Young: Right. You had kids before. I did. You had a house with a mortgage before I did. And so I was in a circumstance where I was able to be a bit more nimble in that regard because when I live in Pittsburgh, so I didn’t have as much of an immediate need to make a whole lot of money to be able to support myself. And also yeah I was married, but I didn’t have any children yet. And so my wife and I could still, like hustle and.
Panama Jackson: Right.
Damon Young: You know, do whatever and, you know, live in an apartment and live like in a refurbished house, renting or whatever. And so, again, I think and I guess this is making your point, though, about how success can be a thing that I’m not going to say that it did or flattens ambition, but is the thing that maybe constricts it in a way where it gives it like a ceiling.
Panama Jackson: Yeah, especially for us. I mean, think about it. Like in the world that we live in, both of us are probably considered some of the most successful of the blogging world. Like we probably have done more with this than most people. Obviously not all people. We know a lot of our friends and a lot of people that we know have been very successful in this space. But to kind of always find something else that allows us to find new versions of success or find some new way to get paid doing the thing purely because we started blogging. I mean, you know, I never rest on those laurels and I never, you know, I guess there’s always a hustle when you got a family or you always need more, you need more, you need more. But to some degree, it’s it’s I could stop trying to find the next thing at this point and I’d still be considered a success. I think it would just be I’d be leaving stuff on the table. And I think that’s also the thing that makes me afraid sometimes. Like, what am I leaving out? Like if I never write a book? Because that seems like the thing that we do, like the people like us, we do that. But if I never do that, is that something I’m going to wish I had done? But I don’t. I also don’t know what else is the thing, you know, like, where do we go from here? But again, this gets back to the I never know what’s going to be in my email, right? I never know what’s going to be there. And that’s always exciting to some degree.
Damon Young: Well, let me ask you this. So this year, 2023, now you don’t have to tell me exactly how much money that you made. But can you share with me all the different ways that you made money this year?
Panama Jackson: Right. So obviously, there’s writing for TheGrio. I’ve done some public speaking. I just had a public speaking gig in a recent weekend. I get paid for those things. I narrated an audiobook, I got paid for that.
Damon Young: Which audiobook?
Panama Jackson: It’s called Steel Drivin’ Man: John Henry, the Untold Legend of an American Folk Hero, or something along those lines, something like that. But then I also did some podcast episodes for them for that, and that was an old contract I had that finally came to fruition. So I did that. I teach at Howard, so I got paid for that. There’s probably other stuff that I just can’t think of immediately, but there’s all these small, you know, and I realize with all the things I do when tax time comes around, I get all these damn 1099s.
Damon Young: Oh. It’s a mess.
Panama Jackson: And I’m like, Man, I got to pay for this too? That’s when I found out all the stuff that I’ve done. And it usually breaks my heart because nobody takes taxes out of any of that stuff.
Damon Young: Yeah. And let me think for me like, okay, this podcast is one thing. My residency at University of Pittsburgh is another thing.
Damon Young: Mm hmm.
Damon Young: I have a speakers bureau, Keppler. And the last thing they hooked me up with, I was doing a thing for Fisher, I think Fisher Electronics, a Zoom talk back in like September. October.
Panama Jackson: We hosted an awards ceremony.
Damon Young: Oh, yes, yes. I forget ever got about that. That was another thing. Yes.
Panama Jackson: We got paid for that. Hosting an awards ceremony. One of those things you never think about that you will be doing that ends up in your email box.
Damon Young: Yeah.
Panama Jackson: And I had to convince you to do it. By the way, let me be clear. Like, remember you were on the fence.
Damon Young: It took like a day.
Panama Jackson: Right? It took a lot of convincing, but you were on the fence about it and that was like, we have fun.
Damon Young: It was a great time. I’m so glad that we did that.
Panama Jackson: That’s kind of the thing. When I was talking about before, like so much of our own lives, even if they’re done differently, they still run parallel. Like we’re still working together and doing all the similar kind of things. We still get an opportunity to do things as like VSB is you and I, and that’s part of the reason I wanted to do that. Hosting thing is like, we’ve never done anything like this together. We’ve done speaking engagements and we’ve gone to universities, we’ve done all this kind of stuff. We’ve done podcasts. You’ve been on mine, I’ve been on yours. You know, we’ve done all of these things. But that was something that I’d never even thought about before and that we got the opportunity and we had a good time. I mean, it was a it was a blast, right? So.
Damon Young: Yeah, you know, the point that I was trying to make is that even with relative security and security, you know, I’m going to say that with, like, the scariest air quotes possible because all this shit could be gone.
Panama Jackson: Facts.
Damon Young: Tomorrow, right? Even with that, you still have to hustle and still have to like, yeah, I got this full time job, but I’m also teaching. I’m also hosting. I’m also traveling to this place to speak. I’m also ghostwriting a thing. I’m also doing an audio book. I’m also, you know, teaching I don’t know people how to write. I forgot about that. I went down to Miami for a week to to to do a writing workshop, right? I’ve done a few other workshops like that. There’s another writer of homie of mine. I forgot. I forgot who exactly told me this. I think it might have been Dee Watkins who was talking about, you know, he has a thing where he teaches mayors how to write memoirs.
Panama Jackson: Yes. When he told so, he mentioned the type of stuff that he does. I was like, bro, the checks that you get in in the most random ways, we need to get on some of that stuff.
Damon Young: Yeah. And I think he’s even a consultant on the show about the cops in Baltimore. So and that’s the thing like if you want to make a living doing this, unless you are a person who is writing like a book that sells a million copies or whatever, you have multiple bestsellers every year or whatever, You have to have your ten up.
Panama Jackson: Yeah.
Damon Young: Right now it helps to be a person who has done other things because the more things you do, the more people that will approach you.
Panama Jackson: I was going to say, you get on people’s radar.
Damon Young: Yeah, you get on people’s radar, but you still need those antenna up. And so when you get these opportunities, how do you discern to decide like which ones to pursue and which ones to say no to?
Panama Jackson: So if it’s something that I haven’t done before, then I typically do it just so I can have the experience right. So I can say I did that thing, I didn’t like it. I’ll never do that again. Like narrating an audio book, Like I didn’t know how long that was going to take. I was going to sit there and read somebodies words. They weren’t mine. It’s a book by a white guy who I like Scott Reynolds Nelson. Cool dude. I’ve spoken to him several times, but I’m like, you know, I don’t want to read somebody else’s book so much so that, you know, I was like, this has to be worth my time, right? I don’t necessarily want to do it, but I enjoyed it. Now would I do it again. I don’t know. It was laborious. It takes forever. Like it’s droning. I got bored, but usually it’s if it’s something I haven’t done before, I’m usually willing to give that a shot and then that helps inform if I do it again, because I’ve been offered other audiobooks since then and I’m like, Yeah, I’m cool. Unless you’re just really dropping a bag off. I don’t know that I really want to read anybody else’s book.
Damon Young: Yeah, well, speaking of bags, I made that same question. Like my first question is, okay, how much? Now the, the how much? Okay. Once that is straight, then I make the decision, okay, this is fit.
Stephen Satterfield: Right.
Damon Young: And I guess it’s more of an art where there are some opportunities where, you know, the ask is like, you know, yeah, I’ll do it. Doesn’t matter how much you pay me, I’m going to do this. It sounds fun. It sounds interesting.
Panama Jackson: HBCU’s, because I’m like that with HBCU’s, I’ll do that. Yeah.
Damon Young: Like I was going to do the thing at Pitt regardless of how much they paid me to do it. You know what I mean? I was going to like oh residency at the University of Pittsburgh. I’m a writer in residence. I’m going to take that just to have that on my resume.
Panama Jackson: Right.
Damon Young: You know, I mean, I negotiated a salary or whatever, but it still was something that like, yeah, I’m definitely going to I’m not saying no to this shit.
Panama Jackson: Right.
Damon Young: Right, right. I’m sure you get this. I get this a lot. When people ask if like VSB is ever going to, you know, do like an official. Thing like we’ll start a new blog or we’ll be working together in some real official consistent capacity. And I feel like you kind of answered that question already because we’re doing our own thing, but we always have these these next is a point where we come back, you know. Right. And work together. It has been that way ever since. We have VSB, then we were both at The Root. And then I left The Root first and then you left The Root. But even then, we have still been, you know, in community. And I think that a lot of this stuff has happened over the pandemic. Right. And now that things are opening up more doors, even more opportunities for us to head out sort of connection. But again, would you be interested in like a a new thing?
Panama Jackson: I’m not not interested in that, you know what I’m saying? I think it just depends on what what we’re doing. You know, like we do stuff together all the time, right? Like we’re always going to be connected in that sense, right? We’re always Damon and Panama, like, there’s always a thing. And I think it’s always going to be that way, you know, when the opportunities are available for us to do things together too. I will say that’s more attractive to me. If somebody were to say, what about you and Damon doing this? The idea is more attractive to me with us doing it because we still do have fans and people that really loved what we did. Rebooting VSB of some sort. I remember I joked at one point, what was I going to do? We were going to do something called like Damon in Panama were VSB something like I was trying to play around [laughter] with some kind of thing that made sure we didn’t get caught in legal crosshairs. I don’t know if that was for a podcast or from could have been a party. I have no idea. But you know, if the right opportunity presented itself in some way, you know, of course I would like I would never you know, especially there’s a way when, you know, people don’t realize that as VSB we did not make money together. For real, for real until we sold the site. You know, that was the first time we saw money. For real. For real from VSB. So if there was a way that we could do things and actually make money as a duo in some sort, you know, maybe I play the flute now and, you know. You need to. [laughs] But I don’t know. I don’t know what we did. But I’m just saying, like, if the. If that opportunity presented itself in a real way, of course I you know, there’s not I don’t think there’s any reason not to because so far in terms of like hitching your wagon to a horse, I think for both of us it’s been very beneficial. Like we’ve literally been very successful and fortunate that and we’re still real friends, right? We still talk daily. We still, you know, like we our families know each other. We’re, you know, there’s not this is not just a business thing, like this is family, you know what I’m saying? So the fact that we have that relationship still, I think speaks volumes. And I think it would allow us to to do something if we wanted to, if we wanted to put the time and effort into kind of creating something new, you know. But we also got a lot of stuff going on and life ain’t too shabby, you know what I’m saying?
Damon Young: Yeah. And that’s what I’m thinking. I mean, if, if, if a perfect situation happens, it comes and that’s great, but like, I think we’re fine where we are.
Panama Jackson: Yeah, we still do all the same stuff together that we can when the opportunity presents itself, you know what I mean? VSB doesn’t exist the way that it did, but it’s still a thing, you know what I mean?
Damon Young: VSB is wherever we happen to be.
Panama Jackson: There you go.
Damon Young: Panama Jackson.
Panama Jackson: Damon Young.
Damon Young: Thank you. You are the last guest. Well, or at least this iteration of Stuck with Damon Young. There might be a different version of this somewhere going forward, but this is the last episode of season, likely to be the last episode of the series. So.
Panama Jackson: Well, I appreciate that. Thanks for having me. For one and for all the times I’ve been on and the times I couldn’t get on for various reasons. But, you know, I’ve enjoyed this journey. I listen to the episodes. You know, I like the podcast. And, you know, I’m always I’m always rooting for you. So I’m honored to be on, you know, one of the final guests on on this this finale episode. But I know there’ll be more in the future in some way, shape or form, some different version, whatever. So I look forward to seeing how that looks and—
Damon Young: Or not or not. [laughs] I mean. We will see, we will see.
Panama Jackson: Well, maybe not like this, but in some other way, who knows? I see it. But, you know, I will wait and see. But I appreciate being here is my main bullet point. Like, thank you for having me on this. And, you know, shoutout to everybody that I’ve gotten to know through being on your podcast a couple of times who make this thing go like it’s it’s been a pleasure.
Damon Young: Yeah, that is Ryan. That is Morgan. We’re all in the room right now. So for now, you know. We’re all here. So, yeah.
Panama Jackson: All right brother.
Damon Young: All right. I just want to thank Stephen Satterfield, Panama Jackson for coming through. Great conversation, great guests. I learned a lot with both conversations. And that’s not something that I feel like I can say on every episode. But this episode, I was like, oh, shit, this is this is new, new information. So again, thank you for both of them. Thank you to everyone who has worked on this show. Thank you for all the listeners just for lending us your ears for 42 episodes. Actually 54 count season one too. So again, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for us. Now, even though there will not be any more episodes this season, Stuck with Damon Young will still be available wherever you get your podcasts. So if you’re on Spotify, if you’re on iTunes, if you’re on wherever you could find Stuck with Damon Young there too right, and go hit archival stuff up. If you haven’t listened to, you want to go back to season one. You can still do that. But again, it’s all there. So take your time. Knock yourself out. And again, thank you, everyone. And that’s it. So I will see you soon. And have good holidays. Happy New Year. Whatever the fuck you celebrate, I want you to be happy. I want you to be joyful and to be safe. So I’ll see you all soon. [music plays] From Crooked Media, our executive producers are Kendra James and Madeleine Haeringer. Our producers are Ryan Wallerson and Morgan Moody. Mixing and mastering by Sara Gibble-Laska and the folks at Chapter Four. Theme music and score by Taka Yasuzawa. And special thanks to Charlotte Landes. And from Spotify our executive producers are Lauren Silverman, Neil Drumming and Matt Shilts. Special thanks to Lesley Gwam and Krystal Hawes-Dressler. [music plays]
