Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show, a production of Shondaland Audio, in partnership with IHeart Radio.

Now, there are certain people in America that would rather burn it to the ground than share it with you.

Amen.

Okay, let's be clear.

They'd rather take it down.

No one will have it.

And there's a fair number of those.

We've heard people say, well, you know, you're the police, you know, a few bad apples.

It's not bad apples.

It's a bad orchard.

Right?

And we have to recognize that it's been grown that way.

Yeah. that way.

Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show.

I'm Laverne Cox.

Last year for the first time, I heard the term post-traumatic slave syndrome.

The moment I heard this phrase, I was intrigued.

I was familiar with the concept of epigenetics and research that found that intergenerational trauma can quite literally be transmitted through our DNA and passed down to the next generation. I thought about my grandfather and great-grandfather who were sharecroppers, who were

beaten on plantations and then trapped in indentured servitude post- emancipation, and the painful

legacy that violence and trauma have had on my family.

I knew I wanted to talk to the woman who coined this term about her research

and how we might begin our collective healing from post-traumatic slave syndrome.

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