Welcome everyone to another episode here at the Damage Report. Excited to present a big

day of news to you. And we decided we're going to have a special treat. So you know like every

once in a while, I'll mention that like I'm like technically like writing a book or whatever.

I decided as a little bit of inspiration for myself and possibly for you as well.

Why not get a New York Times best-selling author to join us for an episode and that's what we have.

Joining us as a full co-host for the first time on this program author of The Black Friend

available now. Frederick Joseph, welcome to the Damage Report.

Going on man, how's everything?

Great to have you here. Congratulations by the way.

Deeply appreciating, you know, it was it was all you probably, you know, the second I came

on the show. All right, thanks John. Sort of doubt it. I think hitting the zeitgeist at the exact

right time as well as a ton of big names encouraging people to read. Probably more important than me,

but thank you. I do appreciate that. And excited to cover the news with you. We had you on a couple

weeks ago. It feels like to talk about your book. By the way, for those who might not know about

The Black Friend, give people a little rundown of what the book's all about.

Yeah, yeah. So the book is basically conversations with activists, celebrities, so and so forth

about microaggressions and racism in society. You know, I give a lot of first-hand experiences

from growing up as to things I dealt with to try to help people understand things that are more

nuanced when it comes to racism and not only be ashamed, I suppose about it.

Exactly, exactly. And we had when we talked, we talked about the initial reaction to it.

Anything that's talking about racism or encouraging people to be a little bit better.

A lot of people's need for reaction is to get defensive about that. We talked about some of the

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