We've spent this season asking hard questions. How did we get here? Why do certain narratives keep us divided and stuck? What are the mental models that shape how we see families, how we design systems, and how we decide who belongs? We've learned that changing narratives isn't easy. It requires understanding mental models, and the art and neuroscience of storytelling. It demands that we confront generations of harmful framing. It asks us to imagine what's possible often before we can see it. But here's what I keep coming back to, that inspires me to keep going: Somewhere, right now, people are already doing it, imagining what’s possible and building better narratives. Through a meal shared across difference. Through art that makes the invisible visible. Through music that finds the thread between cultures. Through spaces where people feel safe and empowered being themselves instead of shrinking into the background. Today, we're exploring the recipes for success with Emerald Mills-Williams, Shary Tran, Rinku Sen, and Tarik Moody. Welcome to Episode 9: Recipes for Success: Building Community Through Food, Art, and Culture.
Today's episode included the following speakers (in the order they appear):
Host: Luke Waldo
Guests:
00:14–02:36 – Luke Waldo
Luke opens the episode by shifting from diagnosis to practice. After a season of examining how harmful narratives are built and entrenched, this episode turns to people who are already dismantling them, through shared meals, cultural celebration, music, and art. The question is no longer how did we get here, but what are people doing right now, and what can we learn from them?
02:36–05:22 – Emerald Mills Williams
Emerald traces the origin of Diverse Dining to a personal frustration: nearly 20 years working in public health and watching the needle fail to move in one of the most racially segregated cities in the United States. Her theory was direct: Milwaukee's public health crisis was inseparable from its inability to gather across difference. She tested the concept at her own birthday party, inviting friends to a Vietnamese restaurant, learning the owner's story, preparing icebreakers, and building in facilitated conversation. Diverse Dining was born.
05:22–08:39 – Luke Waldo, Shary Tran, and Emerald Mills Williams
Shary Tran describes the "lunchbox moment" familiar to many Asian Americans: the childhood anxiety of opening a culturally distinct lunch at school, fearing ridicule. It's a small story that carries a large weight, the internalized pressure to hide cultural identity to avoid shame. She notes a generational shift in appreciation for cultural foods and describes ElevAsian's "restaurant invasions," organized visits to Asian-owned businesses that pair exposure to new cuisines with direct connection to the people who make them. Emerald adds that food reliably draws people across geographic and psychological barriers they would not otherwise cross, including into neighborhoods they might otherwise avoid.
08:39–15:46 – Luke Waldo, Emerald Mills Williams, and Rinku Sen
Emerald shares her benchmark for a successful Diverse Dining event: at least one person in the room is moved to tears, not from hurt, but from the experience of being fully heard and understood. Luke connects this to the neuroscience from Episode 7: neural coupling, the brain synchronization that occurs when people share stories. Shared meals create the physical conditions for that synchronization.
Rinku Sen expands the argument: food and art are not optional supports for organizing, they are what sustain life. Bodies are drawn to them because, at a deep level, they know these experiences will prolong life and increase connection. Physical experiences of communion, shared laughter, collective wonder, embed themselves in the body and make isolation and hate harder to tolerate.
Emerald then names a quieter loss: the erosion of Sunday dinner. When her grandmother was alive, differences in the family didn't matter at the table. Everyone came. The grandmother ensured it. That infrastructure of connection, of showing up even when frustrated, of practicing the muscle of staying at the table, has largely disappeared. And with it, so has the intergenerational passage of stories, recipes, and wisdom.
16:23–22:33 – Luke Waldo, Shary Tran, and Tarik Moody
Shary introduces the annual STAATUS Index study from the Asian American Fund, which surveys approximately 2,500 people on their perceptions of Asian Americans. An overwhelming number report that television and film are their primary sources of information about the community. Accurate, complex, protagonist-centered representation is not a cultural nicety; it is where most Americans form their mental models of entire communities.
Tarik Moody describes building HYFIN, a Milwaukee radio platform dedicated to Black culture through the lens of Afrofuturism. Drawing on the legacy of Black newspapers like the Chicago Defender, he set out to create a new platform that would capture the full breadth of Black music and culture, hip hop, R&B, jazz, Black artists doing rock, none of it siloed or stereotyped. Storytelling is the DNA that carries through every product.
Luke highlights a specific example: Tarik's Brown, Black and Brews event, which honored Theodore Mack, the founder of Milwaukee's first Black-owned home brewery, People's Beer, a name and legacy largely erased from the city's beer identity. By placing Black entrepreneurs back into Milwaukee's beer story, Tarik gives others a story they can see themselves in, because they have always been part of it.
20:16–27:49 – Luke Waldo, Emerald Mills Williams, Shary Tran, Tarik Moody, and Rinku Sen
The episode's central argument crystallizes: cultural celebration must lead to investment. Representation without economic support is incomplete. Emerald cites the statistic that 85% of all restaurants close in their first five years, with minority-owned small businesses facing additional compounding barriers. Her Diverse Dining Market was built deliberately to provide those businesses with the support, resources, and connections to survive and grow.
Shary articulates the standard for belonging that runs through the episode: belonging is not fitting in, it's feeling safe when you stand out. ElevAsian's tagline, "unapologetically Asian," is a direct challenge to the model minority myth, which offered conditional tolerance in exchange for staying quiet and small. That is not belonging; it's suppression.
Emerald closes this thread with a foundational conviction: underneath all difference, there is one humanity. Her analogy is disarming: if a bomb dropped in her neighborhood, no yard sign would stop her from helping her neighbor. That core of shared humanity is real, and it requires active effort to protect.
27:49–33:06 – Luke Waldo, Shary Tran, Emerald Mills Williams, and Rinku Sen
The episode closes with a call to action from each guest. Emerald's challenge: don't just let this be a podcast that made you feel good. Decide on a course of action and move on it. It doesn't have to be founding a Diverse Dining, it could be committing to bring three friends to new restaurants for the rest of the year. Shary's recommendation: start with one restaurant outside your comfort zone, talk to the person working there, and let that be the beginning. Rinku's reminder: smart organizers have always made food central to their work and their lives.
Luke synthesizes the episode's core argument: connection is not the reward for narrative change; it is the prerequisite. You cannot change someone's narrative about who deserves care if you have never cared for them. You cannot shift their mental model about who belongs if you have never created a space for them to belong.
He leaves listeners with four questions to sit with: What relationships am I building across lines I usually don't cross? What am I doing with my body, not just my mind, to practice connection? What infrastructure of belonging am I helping to build? And: What dominant narrative lives in me that can only be changed through relationship with someone I haven't met yet?
He previews Episode 10: a conversation with Dr. Pegah Faed, CEO of Safe and Sound, on moving California from mandated reporting to community supporting.
Closing Credits
Join the conversation and connect with us!
Luke Waldo 00:14
Welcome to season 4 of Overloaded: Understanding Neglect, where we explore how stories and narratives shape what we believe and how we act, and how we might tell different stories that change the narrative so that all children and families can thrive.
Hey everyone, this is Luke Waldo, your host for this podcast series and the Director of Program Design and Community Engagement for the Institute for Child and Family Well-being, our partnership between Children’s Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Helen Bader School of Social Welfare.
We've spent this season asking hard questions.
How did we get here? Why do certain narratives keep us divided and stuck? What are the mental models that shape how we see families, how we design systems, and how we decide who belongs?
We've learned that changing narratives isn't easy. It requires understanding mental models, and the art and neuroscience of storytelling. It demands that we confront generations of harmful framing. It asks us to imagine what's possible often before we can see it.
But here's what I keep coming back to, that inspires me to keep going: Somewhere, right now, people are already doing it, imagining what’s possible and building better narratives.
Through a meal shared across difference. Through art that makes the invisible visible. Through music that finds the thread between cultures. Through spaces where people feel safe and empowered being themselves instead of shrinking into the background.
Today, we're exploring the recipes for success with Emerald Mills-Williams, Shary Tran, Rinku Sen, and Tarik Moody.
Welcome to Episode 9: Recipes for Success: Building Community Through Food, Art, and Culture.
Emerald Mills-Williams knows something about bringing people together. As the founder of Diverse Dining and the Diverse Dining Market here in Milwaukee, she's built a vision around confronting a troubling historical challenge: if you want to change a segregated city, start by getting people to eat together.
But it wasn't always a business plan. It was born out of frustration.
Emerald Mills Williams 02:36
Well, really my disdain with Milwaukee being one of the most segregated cities in the nation at that time. And by the time I was at Children's, I had almost 20 years of public health experience in and I just felt like as hard as we were working and as passionate as we were, that the needle was just not moving fast enough, and that the statistic around us being the most segregated city in the United States had a lot to do with it. So my theory was that people's ability, or its challenges with being able to gather together and just have real conversations, was part of the reason why our public health statistics were what they were, and many other problems or narratives that we often hear associated with Milwaukee.
Luke Waldo 03:28
But before we step into Emerald’s journey, we need to wrestle with what she said about moving the needle. Because as we heard from prudence by the car in episode four, people often don't know the history of how we got here,
Prudence Beidler Carr 03:41
We think of the structure of what we do as being about child protection, and it's so frustrating sometimes to realize that often it doesn't feel like it's about protecting children, but that makes sense because the actual legal structure and financing structure that we put into place had nothing to do with any of those things.
Luke Waldo 03:59
And therefore they're not sure where or why they're frustrated. They just know something's not right and that it's taking too long to get better. Emerald saw what wasn't working. She saw the statistics, the segregation, the isolation, but instead of turning to the services and practices and ways we've always done it. She started with people she trusted to be honest with her.
Emerald Mills Williams 04:25
So my very first experience was at Hue Vietnamese restaurant in Tosa. I met with the owner, and I got a little bit about her history, which was very interesting. I believe she was Vietnamese, and her husband was American, and they were married, and so they had, like, a very interesting story. And I asked her, would she talk about it? I came up with some questions that included the Vietnamese population in Milwaukee as a whole, which a lot of people don't know, that we have a very high Vietnamese population here. And made some icebreakers and activities.
And I invited my friends to my birthday party, which they did not know they were getting the whole presentation, but my thought was that my friends would be honest with me. Over 60% of my friends had never been to the Vietnamese restaurant. All of them said they would come back. They all had a great time. It was the most unconventional birthday party, but we had a great time, and so it convinced me to do it to the public.
Luke Waldo 05:22
And when she opened it up to the public, every event sold out.
What Emerald understood, what she was setting the table for, is that food is identity. And when we do it well, with intention, with courage and curiosity, food becomes story. It acts as a window into who we are, it opens us up.
Shary Tran, co-founder of ElevAsian and Vice President of Belonging and Workforce Development at Children’s Wisconsin, has witnessed this same transformation. From shame to celebration.
Shary Tran 05:59
So when I was growing up, and, you know, lunchtime for young Asian Americans is probably one of the most scariest times for a student's day. Because, you know, usually, you know, your mom would pack you a lunch, and a lot of times it'd be a ethnic lunch that they packed for you. And It would be a stressful time, because you'd be afraid of what other kids would say about what you brought and like how it would smell or what it would look like, and you would get teased. You know, there's like, this lunchroom shame that you would have that a lot of Asian Americans can identify with and probably share similar stories with…
Media Clip 06:36
Some call it the lunchbox moment, when a child brings lunch packed by their parents, something they would eat at home, rice, perhaps, or a curried dish, not your typical PB and J…
Media Clip 2 06:48
…and when they open their lunch box and they see what's there, they become very ashamed
Shary Tran 06:53
…no one would want to trade lunch with you because they didn't know what it was and they thought it was weird. But I think there's been a shift in appreciation of cultural foods that I'm really excited to see.
Luke Waldo 07:06
Notice what both Emerald and Shary discovered. Food gets people to cross barriers they wouldn't otherwise cross.
Emerald Mills Williams 07:14
And I began to notice that people would cross geographical barriers. They would go into neighborhoods where it may be known to be more violent, or whatever the case may be. If there was a good food spot they were going to go. And so I said, What if I mix food with the training and facilitated experience that I've had over the years?
Shary Tran 07:36
And the more we can make it approachable for people to try new things the better. I think things that ElevAsian has done in terms of hosting, we call restaurant invasions, where we invite people to try a new restaurant with us. We're supporting an Asian owned business, but we're exposing people to a business they maybe never have been to before, or may not have tried before, in a space that's kind of open and welcoming with others who are interested in the same things.
So I think it's given us an opportunity to demystify the foods of different cultures. But I think at the same time, we try to encourage people not just to enjoy different foods but get to know the people who make the food. So what are the stories that they bring, and what is the background about why you know, they choose to create food and share food? You know, there's a lot of great, rich stories that we don't often get from the people who are working in these restaurants. And you know, this labor of love, they are bringing their cuisine to to new palates.
Luke Waldo 08:39
Get to know the people who make the food and tell its story. That's where food becomes more than consumption. It becomes connection. And once people are at the table, something even deeper happens.
Emerald Mills Williams 08:52
My benchmark for how well my Diverse Dining went is to see at least one teary eye in a room. And probably to this date, you know, we have not left a conversation where someone is not crying. And you know, not because they're hurt or offended, but because it's a space for them to communicate. It's a space, it's a space for them to express themselves and be heard and understood.
Luke Waldo 09:17
That's the metric: connection, vulnerability, being seen. And here's what's happening in those moments, neural coupling.
Dr. Uri Hasson 09:27
And my task as a speaker is to make your brain similar to mine.
Luke Waldo 09:30
Remember from our earlier episode about whether stories really work?
Megan McGee 09:35
So you want to talk about trying to get people to change their behavior or actually do something or get off the couch, like stories are a tool for all that.
Luke Waldo 09:44
This is that science in action. When people share a meal, when they hear each other's stories, their brain waves start to synchronize. They're literally getting on the same wavelength, this time through breaking bread, through shared experience, through the physical act of eating together. Rinku Sen, who spent decades organizing for social justice, knows why smart organizers and narrators make food central to their work.
Rinku Sen 10:10
Food engages literally all of the senses. You can't usually lick a painting, you know, but you can lick your plate clean. And smart organizers, smart narrators, make food pretty central. All of the smart ones I've ever known have made food pretty central to their lives, including their work and community lives.
Luke Waldo 10:42
But food isn't just about the present moment. It's about memory, heritage, belonging.
Ex Fabula Speaker 10:49
My Grandma Shirley died in 2016 and you know how it goes with funerals. After everything is over with, you're kind of left to go through their stuff.
Luke Waldo 10:58
And increasingly, it's about loss.
Emerald Mills Williams 11:00
Well, I mean, the food narrative goes back as far as we've gathered it, you know, as people, and all of the great stories that we know and read and understand, from the Last Supper to Thanksgiving feasts, and you name it, if there's a culture that is doing something, it's typically food involved, and it's around some kind of food. You know, growing up, my grandmother, who was, like many grandmothers, a matriarch or my family, you know, she used to make pretty much religiously, Sunday dinner. And all of my family kind of just knew they were supposed to be there. And so, you know, even when we moved and we would get on that highway and take that, you know, hour 45 minute drive and go have dinner.
Luke Waldo 11:43
But here's the loss that Emerald names, one that so many of us carry.
Emerald Mills Williams 11:50
I'm trying to be funny, but not too funny, because even though all of my family is still this, has the same level of crazy that they had when my grandmother was alive. You know, we don't gather as much anymore. She ensured that, differences aside, this son is mad at this aunt, this cousin is mad at this cousin, and so and so, you know, gave too much opinion at the last whatever. But we were gonna get there and she was gonna treat everybody, god I didn’t know I was gonna get emotional, but she was gonna treat everybody in the family the same and like she loved them and like she appreciated them and like she wanted them to be there.
Luke Waldo 12:33
It's the erosion of the infrastructure of connection. When Sunday dinner disappears, we lose more than a meal. We lose laughter around the table. We lose the intergenerational passage of culture, recipes handed down, stories retold, wisdom shared across generations. We lose the practice of showing up for people we might be frustrated with. We lose the muscle of staying at the table even when it's uncomfortable.
Emerald Mills Williams 13:00
You know, sitting at, we sit at the table, not as often as we should, but sometimes we sit at the table and we eat. And recently, you know, it was a sitting at the table where we were able to discover some challenges that that, you know, my child was having, and I just it made me think, honestly, even in that moment, because there's been some seasons on my life where there's seasons of everybody's life where we just are so busy, right? You know? And I was so thankful that I had that dinner and that my life has slowed down just enough that I could actually look over to the other chair at that table and see what was going on with my child. I mean, in my mind, you know, those are the moments that we don't know are happening, but that if something doesn't happen in the in that moment, it could be life changing.
Luke Waldo 13:50
Life changing, not because of a program, not because of an intervention, because someone slowed down enough to sit, to listen, to ask. Rinku Sen, Executive Director of Narrative Initiative and longtime social justice strategist, understands why this matters so much.
Rinku Sen 14:09
I think food and art are two of the things that sustain life, right? You can't, you can't do life without food and art also prolongs our lives. Making art prolongs our lives, and engaging with art prolongs our lives. And certainly the social activity that food and art can often anchor, that social activity prolongs our lives. So I think people are attracted to food and art in community settings as well as alone, because deep down, our bodies know these things are going to prolong my life and make it happier, even if we're not consciously making a decision about that.
Luke Waldo
Our bodies know.
Rinku Sen
And I think that they let us experience the mind blowing innovation and creativity and ingenuity of ourselves and other human beings, and they give us a chance to get our bodies active. So if you experience communion, you know, not just through thinking about it, but being, having the physical experience of it. If you laugh together with people in a group, or you watch fireworks and go ooh together, those experiences embed themselves in our bodies, and they make isolation and hate harder to tolerate.
Luke Waldo 15:46
When you've broken bread with someone, when you've laughed together, when you've created memories together, isolation becomes uncomfortable. Hate becomes harder to tolerate. That's what our bodies remember.
Emerald Mills Williams 16:00
My grandmother, you could find her in her garden, getting rhubarb and picking tomatoes. And as kids, we didn't care that much that it was coming, you know, what was going on in the garden. We just wanted the food when it came out. But, you know, as you grow and get older, and you know, having more respect for, you know, just the way life is. You know, all of those things are relevant..
Luke Waldo 16:23
Care. Legacy. That's infrastructure, that's caregiving. That's what collective responsibility looks like in practice. When we see ourselves reflected in culture, when our food, our music, our stories are celebrated, not just tolerated, something powerful happens. But it can't stop at representation. It has to become investment. Shary Tran knows the power of seeing yourself.
Media Clip
50,000 fans are waiting for you.
Shary Tran 16:57
You know, first and foremost, I love K Pop Demon Hunters, and I'm glad you brought it up, because, wow. What an amazing experience it would have been for me, as like a 10 year old Shary to see myself on the screen and seeing every little girl in the community wanting to meet me for Halloween. You know, it just would have made such a difference to me growing up and feeling othered and feeling like I, you know, I wasn't valued enough, but when it comes to representation in media, TV, movies, print books, all of that matters, because that's where most Americans get their understanding of Asian American culture.
Luke Waldo 17:39
But it's not just seeing yourself. It's seeing yourself celebrated with agency as a driver of the story, rather than being subjected to it. It's seeing yourself as the hero, not the sidekick, as a protagonist, not the problem.
Shary Tran 17:54
There's a study called the status index that is done each year by the Asian American Fund, and they do a survey of about 2500 people and ask them, you know, just about their perceptions about the Asian American community. And where do you where do you primarily learn about Asian Americans? An overwhelming number of people say they learn through TV. They learn through movies. So representation and accurate representation is so important.
Luke Waldo 18:20
Meaningful and accurate representation, not stereotypes, not model minority myths, but real people, complex people, people who get to be their full selves.
Tarik Moody, Director of Strategy and Innovation at Radio Milwaukee and creator of HYFIN, has spent nearly two decades building exactly this kind of representation.
Tarik Moody & Radio Milwaukee Clips 18:41
Hey, this is Tarik Moody. I am the Digital Director of Radio Milwaukee. From earnest beginnings in a basement on Vliet Street to our vibrant Walker's Point home. It's a celebration of all things Black culture through the lens of Afrofuturism. HYFIN 414 Music FM. This is Radio Milwaukee.
Tarik Moody
If it wasn't for their, you know, the discussion about what they're trying to do, not just music, but this idea of using culture and storytelling to really change minds and influence minds and stuff and make a difference that way, I probably, I'd probably be still in Minneapolis or somewhere else. So I became the Program Director of HYFIN, and I have this vision of Black media and the power of media alone, even the history of Black newspapers back in the day and what they did, Chicago Defender. I wanted to do that for a new generation, a new, a new, a new century. The whole idea of creating a new platform that really looks at the breadth of not only Black music, Black culture, and create a space for African Americans and Black people in the city and beyond.
So the idea was like, imagine a Black station that plays music that was created by African Americans and Black culture. Like, not only you have hip hop and R&B, you will hear jazz, you, you hear Black artists doing rock, you, that's, that's never been done before. But we wanted to pioneer that, and then we also wanted to do the DNA of Radio Milwaukee, storytelling aspect that has to carry through every product, everything we do.
Luke Waldo 20:16
But representation alone isn't enough. What Emerald, Tarik, and their communities understand is that cultural celebration has to lead to investment. Its investment in the actual people, their businesses and communities.
Emerald Mills Williams 20:30
One of the statistics that a lot of people don't know is, minority or not, 85% of all restaurants close in the first five years. When you add on all of the other barriers that come along with small minority businesses, as I say the famous hummingbird line, the odds are not in their favor. And so we have been very intentional, so much so that I've dedicated a small portion of my life to establish the market and ensure that small businesses have the support resources, connections to grow their business.
Tarik Moody 21:06
We wanted to support Black entrepreneurs, the artists and creatives, like the whole ecosystem, the whole culture of Milwaukee, through this platform. So we have many events to showcase that what it was like, the goal to create the largest Holiday Market for Black entrepreneurs in the state, which we did. We did e-commerce summits. For a city known for beer, there were no, there were no Black-owned breweries. Chicago has five. Minneapolis two, you know, Indianapolis has two, right? Detroit has six, or something like that. Milwaukee, Wisconsin doesn't have any, but it is the home of the first Black home brewery, People's Beer, Theodore Mack, which one of the second annual of Brown, Black and Brews event, which not only celebrate Black brewers, but also Latino brewers. We brought back Theodore Mack, gave him, not Theodore Mack, but his son back, gave him, had a proclamation for him.
Luke Waldo 21:58
A proclamation for Theodore Mack, a name most Milwaukeeans didn't know. A legacy that had been erased. And here's why this matters in Milwaukee specifically. This city is synonymous with beer. It's part of our identity, but that story has been told as a White immigrant story. When Tarik brings Theodore Mack back into our beer story, he's not just honoring one man, he's placing Black entrepreneurs in a story they've been a part of, but often not told. And in doing so, he allows others to project themselves into that story because they have been there before.
Tarik Moody 22:33
You know, most people are, you know, they stick to the things they know, right? I was like that for a while, till I got to college. And, you know, my best friend is Korean, and when it comes to food, that my first experience with Korean food was in the 90s, before anybody knew what kimchi was, right? And that experience and going to his house and like saying, Oh, wow, kimchi is kind of like this in my grandma's house in Alabama, like, there's there's always a thread that connects everything, even though it might be different and unique. There's a thread and a connection in food and culture.
Luke Waldo 23:11
There's always a thread. Between hip hop and jazz. Between soul food and Korean food. Between Black brewers and Latino brewers. Between cultures that have never met but recognize each other. This is what Rinku meant about physical experience.
Rinku Sen 23:27
If you experience communion, if you laugh together with people in a group, or you, you know, watch fireworks and go ooh together, those experiences embed themselves in our bodies, and deep down our bodies know these things are going to prolong my life and make it happier, even if we're not consciously making a decision.
Luke Waldo 23:56
When you've tasted someone's grandmother's recipe, when you've heard their music, when you've celebrated their innovation, division becomes uncomfortable. Dominant narratives begin to break down because you've had the embodied experience of connection. So what is all of this building toward? What's the goal? Shary names it perfectly.
Shary Tran 24:21
I think for me, belonging is more than just fitting in. It's about feeling safe when you stand out. So I think creating those spaces where people can feel like they don't have to change who they are, that can be themselves and still be successful and be wholly accepted and celebrated is really the ultimate goal of belonging.
Luke Waldo 24:46
Feeling safe when you stand out. That's the metric, not assimilation, not code switching, not making yourself smaller so others are comfortable.
Shary Tran 24:55
Our tagline with ElevAsian is, you know, helping AAPI thrive by being unapologetically Asian, right? So it's celebrating who we are, not being, you know, not shrinking who we are, but being proud of who we are, and celebrating it as much as we can.
Luke Waldo 25:11
Unapologetically celebrating who we are. And of course, that unapologetically carries weight, because for so long, the model minority myth told Asian Americans that you could be accepted as long as you stayed down, stayed quiet and disappeared from the dominant narrative. As long as you didn't make waves. But that's not belonging. That's conditional tolerance.
Emerald Mills Williams 25:34
One of my other internal goals, I would say, was to prove that people can come together and have a conversation about, typically, anything, and still walk away respecting each other.
Luke Waldo 25:45
This is what food and art and culture give us. Permission to be unapologetic, permission to be our full selves. But Emerald reminds us, underneath all our differences, there's something fundamental we share.
Emerald Mills Williams 25:58
Which I knew this already, but I think that there's a head knowledge and a heart knowledge, right? And so I think in my heart knowledge, I understand that we really are all human. We got one blood. It's one color, no matter how we've come to the understanding of our experiences. At the core of it, we are all human.
And, you know, I often use this analogy and say, you know, if a bomb drops and Lord, hope it doesn't drop, but if a bomb drops in my neighborhood and somebody is trapped under some debris, I am going to go try to help them. You know what I'm saying, if my neighbor, who had, if my neighbor has this sign of this President, and I have this sign and the other one has this sign, in that moment that does not matter, you know, and that is, that's the part of humanity that is real, and that we, you know, we have to fight to keep it.
Luke Waldo 26:59
Because the challenge in our society is division, segregation, silos, the challenges we often stay with people who look like us, eat what we know, listen to what's familiar. Building community across difference takes intention. It takes creating spaces where people can show up fully, where cultural expression isn't just allowed but celebrated.
Shary Tran 27:21
It's about creating those really true, strong relationships. And a lot of that happens through breaking bread with people. In the Asian community, that's how we show care for one another. Like, we'll feed you, you know, like, we don't really say, like, how you doing, how you feeling, are you okay? We'll say, Have you eaten yet? Are you hungry? And we'll feed you, right? And sharing food is really that ultimate show of compassion and care that you're nurturing somebody and that creates a bond.
Luke Waldo 27:49
Have you eaten yet? That's not small talk, that's care that's building the infrastructure of belonging. So what do we do with this? How do we take these stories and turn them into practice. Let's start with Emerald’s challenge.
Emerald Mills Williams 28:03
You can do something, if it's not starting your own, something similar to Diverse Dining, it can be, I'm going to bring three friends for the rest of this year so that we can have some better conversations and so we can be connected in a different way. Yeah, do something. Don't just take this as another podcast that makes you feel really good, but decide on your course of action and move on it, because you just might change the world.
Luke Waldo 28:31
You can do something, not something perfect, not something scalable, just something. Shary offers concrete next steps.
Shary Tran 28:41
if you're not getting like far outside of your comfort zone in your community, there's, start with a restaurant in your neighborhood, you know, and just push yourself to try something different and talk to somebody who's sitting there in the restaurant or working in the restaurant, you know, just really starting, there could be a great place to learn more about where do they like to go? What are some things they like to do? You know, get to know people on that personal level and help share, sharing what's important to them.
Luke Waldo 29:06
Start with a restaurant, one meal, one conversation. And Rinku reminds us why the smartest organizers have always known this.
Rinku Sen 29:15
Food engages literally all of the senses. You can't usually lick a painting, you know, but you can lick your plate clean. And smart organizers, smart narrators, make food pretty central. All of the smart ones I've ever known have made food pretty central to their lives, including their work and community lives.
Luke Waldo 29:52
I want to end where Rinku began: Smart organizers have always known this.
Food. Art. Culture. Belonging.These aren't add-ons to the real work of narrative change. They are the real work.
Because you can't change someone's narrative about who deserves care if you've never cared for them. You can't shift their mental model about who belongs if you've never created space for them to belong. You can't ask them to see families differently if you've never invited them to your table.
Emerald, Shary, Tarik, and Rinku understand something fundamental: Connection is the prerequisite for narrative change. Not the reward. Not the result. The prerequisite.
When we eat together, our brainwaves synchronize. When we share stories, isolation becomes harder to tolerate. When we invest in each other's communities, hate becomes intolerable.
That's not metaphor. That's neuroscience. That's what our bodies remember even when our minds forget.
So here are the questions I'm sitting with and I invite you to sit with them too:
What relationships am I building that cross lines I usually don't cross? Geographic lines. Economic lines. Cultural lines. Political lines.
What am I doing with my body, not just my mind, to practice connection? Where am I eating? Who am I eating with? What am I creating?
What infrastructure of belonging am I helping to build? What tables am I setting? What spaces am I stewarding where people can feel safe standing out instead of fitting in?
And here's the question that might be most important: What dominant narrative lives in me that can only be changed through relationship with someone I haven't met yet?
Thank you for joining us today. To learn more about or, better yet, get involved with Emerald Mills-Williams and Diverse Dining, Shary Tran and ElevAsian, Tarik Moody and HYFIN and Radio Milwaukee, and Rinku Sen and Narrative Initiative, visit the show notes.
Join us for our next episode as we dive deep into conversation with Dr. Pegah Faed, CEO of Safe and Sound, to explore their recipes for narrative change that is moving her state from mandated reporting to community supporting.
You've been listening to Overloaded: Understanding Neglect.
Until the next time, keep asking: What stories shape how we see the world, and how can we tell them differently?
If you enjoyed today's episode, please share with friends, family and colleagues. Also leave us a rating or comment so that we can see your reaction and reach more people. This podcast would not have been possible without the support and talents of Nathan Fink, who is responsible for our technical production. I can't express my gratitude enough to Nathan. I'm also grateful to my team at the Institute for Child and Family Well-being at Children's Wisconsin, who drive the Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative.
Finally, I would like to thank all of our speakers that you have heard today and throughout the podcast for their partnership, their willingness to share their stories and expertise with me and all of you and their commitment to improving the lives of children and families.
I'm Luke Waldo, your host and executive editor. Thanks again for listening and see you next time.