When discussing the Titanic, I knew that women and children were asked to board the life boats first, and everyone in 1st class went before anyone else. But what I didn’t realize (which is probably really dumb) was that while everyone is panicking and trying to figure out who gets onto the boats and who doesn’t, there are already several people who are dead, the workers at the bottom levels of the ship. This was really disturbing and sad to realize. Whenever I think about the Titanic, I think about the movie because that is the only “visual” or “memories” that my brain has of those events. I think the Titanic is one of the saddest movies, but now I’m realizing that while all those hundreds of people are trying to survive for two hours of the movie, there are people who had already died. I also didn’t know that there were two black men on the Titanic, one with a white wife, who has denied access to the lifeboats. The history of the ship just gets sadder and sadder.

As for my life, I’m hoping I’ll find jobs and be successful with a Jepson degree, but I don’t know if this podcast made me feel any better about that. But, I do love that you can use leadership in any career field or job, and that Jepson majors have worked all over the place, so I know that it doesn’t limit me to one area of work. That’s one of the main reasons why I chose to major in Leadership.

This podcast was really interesting to me. I had heard some of the songs that it referenced, but it was cool to hear the backstory and meaning of some of them. Music has always been a way for people to express themselves, and that has often turned into singing about social issues and  conflicts in our world that people want to speak up about. Just like the songs during the Vietnam War spoke out against sending people into the war, songs like “This is America” speak out against racism and police brutality in our country. Music is always evolving and adapting to it’s environment and culture, and I think music will always be one way to talk about issues and inspire change. Like Dr. Bezio said, music helps us remember things and triggers memories. So when someone hears a song on the radio or a song by their favorite artist, they might be more likely to listen and remember what they are saying, than if a politician said the exact same things in a speech. I know that every time I hear “This is America,” I picture the music video in my head, and some of those images will always be a constant reminder of the social injustices in our country.

I read the “Yellow Wallpaper” at some point in high school, but the first time I read it I honestly didn’t know what was going on. Reading it again definitely helped me understand it better and read between the lines to see the symbolism in the story. Also, after listening to the author’s background in the podcast, as well as the historical time period, I think it helped the meaning of the story make more sense. Women ran the household and did what men asked them to do. I think a woman trapped in the room could be symbolizing women trapped in the household or trapped in an unhealthy marriage with the burdens of taking care of the children and the house and not getting any support. Her husband barely paying attention to her or never truly checking in on her health, could symbolize a husband working full time and never being home to help with the family or house or even wanting to help when he is home. We still see these struggles within domestic roles in the household today. I also appreciate how she used her own struggles with mental health and her “rest” order from the doctor to influence her writing “The Yellow Wallpaper”. It is sad that it’s based on a true story, but I am glad that her story was able to make a difference and have doctors not prescribe the “rest” cure again.

I found this podcast interesting because my research paper is connecting leadership and popular culture. In my project, I’ve been researching how the leadership and influence of Jennifer Lopez has increased Latinx representation on screen, and in all aspects of entertainment. Before her, only 1% of stories told on screen were about Latinx people. Although representation has increased, there still isn’t enough representation of all races and ethnicities in entertainment today. Like Dr. Bezio said, representation of viewpoints matter. The average American audience is more than just middle-aged white men, and our shows, movies, and music need to represent that. Every young boy and girl should be able to see themselves in a TV show, and see that everyone from all backgrounds is represented.

While listening to the podcast, it was interesting to realize that something like Shakespeare, what we would consider old, was at some point pop culture. What is and what isn’t pop culture just depends on the context in which you are looking at it. Someone could study how Shakespeare’s plays were pop culture at that time, but not necessarily now. What is old-school or 80’s for us now was at some point the latest trend. That was a fascinating realization for me, and one day our current pop culture will be a thing of the past as well.

Listening to this podcast reminded me of the “silences” in history that I learned about in my “Slavery and Freedom” history class last semester. Silences are basically what they sound like, parts of history that have been silenced because no one thought they were important enough to write down, and if they were written down somewhere, they were most likely destroyed or hidden and definitely never taught in schools. One thing that I learned was that freed Black men in America were a huge part of starting the abolitionist movement, the fight to abolish slavery. The way it was always taught to me was that black men and women were the slaves, and white men were the abolitionists who came in to save the day. I was never taught about all the black heroes who worked tremendously hard in the fight against slavery, and they never get any credit. They were just as important as all the white people and white abolitionists, but unfortunately people during that time did not think so. That’s also one of the reasons why there are not many stories and records of slaves. Even when we were trying to track down the slaves that worked on the land that UR currently stands on, our class barely found any records of the slaves that lived here. No names, no birthdays, maybe just a death certificate when owners needed to list the amount of slaves they owned and how many they lost. They were just numbers. It is sickening, and so sad. There is so much history we don’t know, and so much we will never get back.

Within the 2012 Democratic campaign ads, the “47 percent” ad was my favorite. In the ad, they showed Americans a video of Mitt Romney speaking to his donors at a high dollar fundraiser behind closed doors. To summarize, Romney said that 47% of Americans will vote for Obama no matter what, calling those people “victims” who are dependent on the government to care for them and think they are entitled to health care, food, housing, etc. Then he goes on to say that his job is not to worry about those people, because he will never convince them to vote for him. They then asked the Americans what they thought about what Romney had said. Everyone that was shown in the ad was very upset by Romney’s comments, disagreeing with the fact that half of the country behaves as victims who just want handouts. “I don’t think anybody is ever looking for a handout, I think that we all want chances and opportunities,” was one thing that a woman said. They thought his comments sent a bad message to the American people and showed his true character.

The reason why I liked this commercial so much was because it felt real and authentic. The interviews were done on the streets outside, so it looked like they were just random people walking by who were stopped for the video. Instead of hearing a politician or narrator try to convince me to vote for someone, it was nice to hear the voices of the American people and receive instant feedback of what other people thought. I think the ad was well done and got their point across very clearly. However, those interviews could’ve easily been staged and acted out, but out of all the ads I watched, this one felt the most authentic and convincing.

We used this game in one of high school classes a few years ago, but this was much harder than I remember it being. The first couple rounds I was really just trying to figure out how I could best divide up the family work hours to produce enough crops/food and collect enough firewood and water. I think eventually I found a good balance, but it took a little while. When the firewood was low in the town, I limited the amount that each family in the village could collect. I also tried to invest in a small business every game so the family could earn more income. Honestly, some parts of the game were very frustrating and I am not sure if it was because I didn’t know how to play that well or if the game was just really challenging to begin with. Every game my maize production was too low, no matter how hard I tried to increase our farming and resources. Also, every single time that I grew any cotton, it wouldn’t sell at the market and I would lose hundreds if not thousands of dollars on the crop going bad or not selling and loss of transportation money. Towards the end of the game, I just decided never to grow cotton again. I also struggled with keeping Kodjo and Fatou alive at times. They would get a sickness or disease, and health would be around 60%, so I would take them to the doctor and make sure they had enough food and water, and then they died. This happened many times and I didn’t know what to do or how to fix that. By the last game I played, Kodjo and Fatou were able to have a child. When Fatou was pregnant, I significantly decreased her work hours and gave her more calories to eat, but unfortunately the child died pretty quickly. Overall, the game was a good learning experience to show how difficult it is to get out of poverty and even just to survive within poverty, and I can’t imagine experiencing these burdens in real life, because this is not just a game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqWG5_7nwyk

One of my favorite ads is the 2021 Toyota Big Game Commercial: Jessica Long’s Story. I think it first aired during this year’s Superbowl, and I remember my eyes were immediately glued to the screen. I was drawn to it because it was something I hadn’t seen in an ad before. At first, I thought it was a movie trailer or something, and I didn’t know what was going on because all the “locations” in the ad, such as a house and an orphanage, are surrounded by water, and sometimes submerged in water, and Jessica Long is swimming in that water throughout the ad. Jessica’s mom is on the phone with an adoption agency talking about adopting Jessica and her rare leg condition that requires both of her legs to be amputated. Jessica is swimming while this conversation is happening, and we see a glimpse into her life, as she is looking at her mom from the outside in. It sounds confusing but is really cool if you watch the ad. As I started to put the pieces together and realized it was telling Jessica Long’s story of adoption and then success, I would’ve never imagined that it was a Toyota commercial. There is not a single car in the commercial, and it’s not showing us a fantasy, but it’s obvious that it is targeting families. It shows that Toyota is a family friendly brand, that families can rely on when purchasing a car. It is also connecting sports with Toyota, which expands the demographic this ad might be targeting. There is so much emotional appeal of a family and someone’s incredibly inspiring true story that the viewer doesn’t care that it didn’t show them anything about cars, but is just so touched by the fact that Toyota would make a commercial like this. At the end, a narrator says “We believe there is hope and strength in all of us. Toyota.” It is drawing to the emotions of its target audience, and showing empathy and compassion during a pandemic when people watching might most need it. Toyota is also a Team USA partner for the Olympics, so in a way it could also be advertising the Olympics and inspiring someone to watch the Paralympics and Jessica Long, which now I will definitely be following her along on her journey.

http://www.tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=7

As I was listening to this podcast and reading the article, I couldn’t help but think about this chart that I saw in my Quantitative social science class last week. We were discussing the difference between causation and correlation, and like the podcast briefly mentioned with the Nicholas Cage vs swimming pool drownings connection, one does not necessarily cause the other; it can just be a crazy coincidence. When I first saw this chart, I couldn’t believe it. How could it be possible that the consumption of cheese was in any way correlated to dying by being tangled in bed sheets? I didn’t even know that people died that way, let alone hundreds of people and enough people to collect data on it. Then, my teacher explained that these two sets of data in fact have nothing to do with each other, and neither caused the other to happen, there are just two sets of statistics that happen to have an almost identical progression. Therefore, this chart is extremely mis-leading. For someone who hasn’t been educated on the proper ways to read and analyze information, whether its numbers or writing, could be extremely mislead by this chart if they took this chart at face value.  If someone saw this on the news, they could freak out and never eat cheese again! Just like Lindsey, I am glad to be taking both critical thinking and quantitative social science at Jepson to learn how to evaluate things we see in our everyday life.

I have struggled putting my thoughts into words because I have so much emotion surrounding this topic. Let me start out by saying that I understand that the donors and board give millions of dollars to the university every year and help it function. But when it comes to issues of racial inequality, I struggle to find any sympathy for people who put money over people’s emotions and social justice.

Douglas S. Freeman was a man who supported segregated schools and the Confederacy. So UR claims they are making efforts to strive for more diversity, equity, and inclusion, but they can’t take Freeman’s name off of a building. They care more about the money than what Freeman’s name represents. On top of that, I find it extremely disrespectful to put Mitchell’s name next to his. The horrible things that Freeman stood for are not fixed or healed by this. Mitchell’s legacy is not honored when his name is next to his perpetrator. It is just a constant reminder that people like Freeman will continue to be honored and celebrated. It’s decisions like these that have gotten us to where we are today, and why we are barely seeing any change in our country.

What if this was in Germany and there was a building named after Hitler. Now I am not saying that Freeman organized a mass genocide that killed millions of people. But the same concept still applies. If we put Hitler’s name and a Holocaust survivor’s name on the same building, does that honor the Holocaust survivor’s life and legacy? Is that showing that our current values go against Hitler’s, or are we celebrating his name because we are too scared to take it down if we lose money from it? These are just some of the things that are going through my head as I saw the University’s decision on the buildings. And the fact that Ryland Hall will not be changed at all, Ryland who actually owned slaves, just shows how poor of an effort this was. I find it incredibly sad and disheartening that this is supposedly the best the University could do.