Welcome to another episode of Lurie Breaks It Down, a podcast where we dig deeply to connect the dots on the issues that shape our world.

I'm Lurie Daniel Favors, author, activist, attorney, and the host of the Lurie Daniel Favors show on Sirius XM's Urban View, Channel 126. If you like what you're about to hear, go ahead and give us five stars and then tell everybody that you know. And if you don't like it, just, child, keep it to yourself and pray our strength. Okay, thank you so much. Also, don't forget to check out my YouTube page, Lurie Daniel Favor's Media, where you should subscribe, like, and share, because then you'll get notified when I post videos from my show, which I do just about every single day and when I go live with my YouTube audience. We have a ritual on this show that we use before we get into all the news. And the ritual

is pretty important because this show is dedicated to existing in the spirit of Black Talk

landia. For those of you who are not familiar, Black Talklandia is a pretty significant space.

And it is the efforts to embody the best in the Black Talk radio tradition. And that means that

on this show, on this channel definitely, but on this show for sure,

we have the very difficult conversations about how our world got to be so very messy when

it comes to issues of race, gender, culture, identity, politics, and the law.

Now, these conversations matter because even though they are very heavy and difficult to

navigate, they help us to learn how to be better people who then learn how to build better communities.

And as a result, we are then able to shape a better world.

And for us, that is how talk empowers and becomes action.

And we approach that work of Black Talklandia with a very specific ritual to make sure that our emotional health, our spiritual health, and our mental

health are as positively attuned as they can be so that we are approaching these issues with a sense

of optimism because we know that when we are rooted in joy, gratitude, and appreciation,

we cannot be trapped by fear, loneliness, and depression. And that's really important in a time

like this, especially you're going to realize

just how important it is when we get to today's moment of gratitude and so this ritual

that I've been talking about is called a moment of gratitude and it's a pretty simple ritual

so simple in fact it goes a little something like this in just a minute you're going to hear music

that music is going to be an invitation to you to join the rest of us,

because when we hear it, we are going to collectively begin taking the slowest, deepest,

...