Welcome to Democracy-ish. I'm Danielle Moody.

I'm B.

And we are so excited to be doing kind of a two-part democracy-ish conversation on the writer and actor

strikes that have kind of joined forces to talk about the needs of workers.

And we're really excited to welcome to Democracy-ish Raphael Casal, who is a poet, actor, writer,

rapper, educator, and showrunner of the stars hit show blindspotting

based on his movie that debuted in 2018.

And now as par the course, I will turn it over to Wage for a movie phone intro.

Well, I was going to do my movie phone intro, but you did such a wonderful job introducing him.

You stole my thunder.

But what I will say and how I will flex is that Raphael, most importantly, is from the Bay area,

and specifically from the East Bay.

And anyone who knows me knows that any opportunity I can get to talk about the East Bay in particular,

and specifically creatives from the East Bay, I relish, because all of you,

New Yorkers and L.A.ites have dominated far too long this thing called the creative industry.

Rafael and I, we first met four years ago in Vancouver outside of a food truck where we tolerated

some interesting tacos.

And then recently at South by Southwest,

speaking about season two of blind spotting.

But here we are, Raphael, fast forward.

And it's a historic strike.

The first time in 60 years that writers and actors in this crazy town called Hollywood

...