People Know What They Need - Move at the Speed of Trust
How To Citizen with Baratunde
iHeartPodcasts
4.4 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 17 April 2025
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We’re told some people just need to be saved. But what people really need is to be needed. This community of young single mothers in Lexington, Kentucky reveals a version of this story.
Full video viewing options for this story plus links to the Instagram and LinkedIn versions:
https://newsletter.baratunde.com/p/young-mothers-asked-to-lead-and-they-did
This episode features Tanya Torp, Executive Director of Step by Step, a nonprofit that chose to stop assuming what young mothers needed—and started asking.
These moms didn’t just receive support. They shaped it. They requested Narcan training. They showed up. They led. They built trust and built community. And in the process, they reminded us:
People need dignity. Agency. The opportunity to contribute.
More stories and updates: https://stories.howtocitizen.com
🎙️ This story series is a collaborative effort by Shira Abramowitz, Jon Alexander, Elizabeth Stewart, and Baratunde Thurston. Video produced by Alexa Lim.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | In 2020, a group of young woman found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. |
| 0:05.8 | Someone was posting photos. |
| 0:08.1 | It was just me naked. |
| 0:09.5 | Well, not me, but me with someone else's body part. |
| 0:13.2 | This is Levitown, a new podcast from IHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Colliderscope, |
| 0:18.2 | about the rise of deep fate pornography and the battle to stop it. |
| 0:22.1 | Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, |
| 0:28.3 | or wherever you get your podcasts. Good day, April 17th, 2025. And have we got a story of |
| 0:36.0 | citizening for you today? |
| 0:38.5 | Hi, I'm Barrettin Day Thurston, host of the How to Citizen podcast, which feed we are using to add a few stories into the mix in this moment of attacks on democracy and undermining self-governance, there is another story. |
| 0:57.9 | There's a story of people practice and power, of committing to the collective, of showing up |
| 1:03.0 | and participating, of investing in relationships. |
| 1:05.8 | And so we are counter-programming this sense of collapse with short but potent stories of people power. |
| 1:13.8 | And today's story represents all that. |
| 1:16.8 | You know, it's really common to lean into a hero story where a savior shows up, a great business |
| 1:26.8 | leader, a great community leader, a great politician, |
| 1:29.9 | just somebody great, maybe Alexander or something like that, they show up and they got the answers. |
| 1:36.5 | And they're like, I have come to save the people. You, little people need saving. I'm a savior, |
| 1:43.6 | so I'm going to do my thing at you. And that's not |
| 1:47.2 | what this moment needs. This moment does not need more centralized authority. It does not need |
| 1:52.5 | paternalism and condescension and well-intentioned, but ultimately and inherently disrespectful way |
| 2:00.3 | of treating people. |
... |
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