How does a gang member make the transition from life on the streets to earning a doctorate in public policy? It’s not exactly an everyday event.

Terence Lester was born into a two-parent household, but his parents later separated. In search of safety and stability, his mother moved Terrence and his sister from place to place. Carrying the weight of that early trauma, Terence turned to gangs, became a juvenile delinquent, experienced homelessness, and at one point lived out of his car. He dropped out of high school.

But Terence’s story doesn't end there. He eventually returned to school, graduated from college, and defied the odds by earning five degrees, including a Ph.D in public policy.

In “From Dropout to Doctorate,” Terence unveils the realities of educational injustice and the profound impact of unjust policies and systems on Black communities. He shows how poverty disrupts the lives of Black families, leading to homelessness and perpetuating the school-to-prison narrative.

Drawing from his own personal narrative and scholarly research, Terence names the complex challenges faced by Black children in under resourced and socially dense environments. As a public scholar and nonprofit leader, he advocates for equitable access to advanced education and addresses the systemic barriers that limit opportunities for Black people.

Terence’s advocacy encourages us to envision a world rooted in justice and inclusivity. Offering remedies of community involvement and mentorship, Terence charts a hopeful pathway that cultivates potential and provides opportunities for Black youth to thrive.

In his podcast, Imagine Dignity, Terence focuses on homelessness and interviews people who live on the streets. His goal is to spread kindness, inspire empathy and help to create a world where no one is invisible.

Jack and Gonzo talk with Terence his personal experiences and his call on educators, nonprofit leaders, and community influencers to confront educational inequity and inspire systemic change. Listen to the conversation.

  Some people don't believe the Holocaust actually happened or that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. And some people don’t believe that 26 children and adults were massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary school in 2012.

And the man best known for creating the Sandy Hook conspiracy is conflict entrepreneur and InfoWars star, Alex Jones, who called the massacre a “fake” and a “hoax.”

Josh Koskoff, the lawyer for the families of the Sandy Hook victims, who obtained a $73 million settlement, also brought a successful legal action against Jones, who profited from the false narrative he created. Jones is a skilled communicator who knows how to communicate to a certain core of people who see him as the sole truth teller and everyone else as part of the deep state.

Jones isn’t short on charisma, and he isn’t short on showmanship.

The InfoWars stage is flashy and has a high tech look. If you didn’t know better, you would think you were looking at a legitimate major news broadcast system.

Trial testimony showed that Jones relied on a business model that was based on building a belief system with his audience so that he could sell a variety of products—male enhancements, t-shirts and more. He’s a master at seducing people with his talk so that he can get them to buy his wares. Jones couldn’t stop talking about Sandy Hook because of the amount of traffic it drove to his store.

Not surprising, Jones monetized the trial. After every day in court, Jones would be on InfoWars, making belittling comments about the court. Of course, those comments would be used in court against Jones the following day.

Jones created harm beyond his lies. It wasn’t unusual for his listeners to accost the families of the victims in public and accuse them of pretending to have lost a child.

Josh Koskoff, the lawyer for the families of the Sandy Hook victims, did what most thought was impossible. He prevailed in a lawsuit against Remington Arms, the company that manufactured and marketed the AR-15 rifle that was used to murder 20 children, between six and seven years old, and six staff members at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. But obtaining justice for the families wasn’t easy.

In part 1 of our conversation with Josh, we talk about the lawsuit. In part 2, we talk with Josh about the lawsuit he brought against Alex Jones of Info Wars, who said the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax.

The massacre occurred on December 14, 2012. Before driving to the school, Adam Lanza, the gunman, fatally shot his mother. He killed himself after killing the 26 students and staff members. The incident is the deadliest mass shooting in Connecticut history and the deadliest at an elementary school in U.S. history.

In December 2014, nine families filed suit in Connecticut against Bushmaster, Remington Arms, Camfour, a distributor of firearms, and the store where Lanza's rifle was purchased. The case was brought as an exemption under the 2005 Federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which generally prohibits lawsuits against gun manufacturers.

The families claimed that the AR-15 was suitable only for military and police use and that Remington inappropriately marketed it to civilians. Filing the complaint in Connecticut was the beginning of a seven-year saga. Remington tried to move the case to federal court and to have the case dismissed. There was much legal maneuvering. Eventually, Remington persuaded the trial court to dismiss the case.

The families appealed to the Connecticut Supreme Court. The court decided in a 4–3 vote to reverse parts of the trial court's rulings and sent the case back to the trial court for additional hearings. Remington asked the Supreme Court of the United States to review the decision, but the Supreme Court declined.

In July 2021, Remington again asked the trial judge to dismiss the lawsuit. The judge denied Remington’s request. The next day, Remington offered $33 million to be shared by the nine families. In early 2022, Remington agreed to settle for $73 million.

Is money the determining factor to school districts producing students who perform well? Surprisingly, the answer is no. If money alone were the key, a small town like Steubenville, Ohio, in Jefferson County on the Ohio River and part of the Rust Belt, would not perform as well as Upper Arlington, Ohio, an affluent community.

No doubt, adequate funding is important, but other factors are equally important, such as whether a child’s basic needs in order to thrive and succeed in the classroom are met. Many children are part of families that live in a van or perhaps in abandoned buildings. Not all children have what many take for granted, like electricity, running water or heat. Some may not eat regularly and aren’t clothed properly.

And then there’s the matter of social capital, that is, those community connections a family has. Steubenville provides a good example. Based on an audit of the Ohio Department of Education conducted by the state auditor, published in 2021, Steubenville ranks in the top 10 percent of all Ohio school districts in terms of performance. And it does so spending far less money per student than Upper Arlington.

The reason Steubenville is able to spend less money on education and still achieve high performance scores is strong community fabric. When you have social capital and those close connections that exist when adults take an interest in the life of students and teachers, students perform well.

One rural district has a practice of ensuring that all new teachers ride on the school bus to get a sense for how their students live. Think about what that level of understanding does for a teacher.

Listen to our conversation with Tracy Nájera, Ph.D., and Howard Fleeter, Ph.D.

Tracy has committed her professional career to improving the lives of children and their families, especially those most vulnerable in society. Her experience spans research, program management and implementation and public policy. For most of her career, Tracy has worked in education policy, tackling issues such as school funding, professional learning and human capital in education.

Howard has worked extensively for more than 25 years with Ohio education policy-makers to improve the state's school funding system and is the owner of the state and local government finance and tax policy consulting firm Howard Fleeter & Associates. He serves as a research consultant on education finance and policy issues for the Ohio Education Policy Institute.

Statistics show that between two and five percent of those incarcerated were wrongly convicted and are actually innocent. Can you imagine?

How do the wrongly convicted win their freedom? It’s a long and arduous process that begins with a committed attorney and, often, those attorneys are assisted by the nationwide organization, the Innocence Project.

One of those committed attorneys is our guest Charlie Weiss, a long time civil law lawyer in St. Louis, who later in his career was drawn to this work. Often the wrongfully convicted have been in prison for 20 years or more, and their families have exhausted all of resources to help with the person’s defense, and they’re all exhausted from the stress and frustration.

It takes great resources to handle these cases, and it helps if you’re part of a large firm that can commit manpower and has the assets needed to hire experts, conduct DNA testing, etc. And it takes years to cross the finish line. Perseverance is the order of the day.

The process is challenging for two reasons. The first is the judicial system’s reluctance to reevaluate a case. It's as if the system is saying, “We've tried this case. We’re done. We must have gotten it right.” Finality matters, and, besides, what trial judge wants to admit that an error was made in his court? Which is to say, it’s often an appellate court that orders a trial court take a second look at a case.

And there’s the matter of politics. Prosecuting attorneys get elected based on the convictions they win. Assisting someone getting released from prison doesn’t result in votes. The Missouri Attorney General's office has a policy that it will oppose every habeas corpus case brought—post trial proceedings to seek to overturn a conviction—regardless of how good the evidence is. “They just automatically oppose it,” Charlie told us.

Listen to our conversation with Charlie.

We continue our conversation with MAGA faithful Chuck Cordit about why he thinks Donald Trump's first 100 days in office have been successful.

Donald Trump has the lowest 100-day job approval rating of any president in the past 80 years, with public pushback on many of his policies and extensive economic discontent, including broad fears of a recession.

The concept of the "First 100 Days" refers to the early period of a U.S. president’s new term, typically seen as a symbolic window to set the tone, push key policies and demonstrate leadership. It represents a kind of political version of a first impression.

In the United States, no one talked that much about the importance of a president’s first 100 days—until Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933. He took swift action to calm the nation’s crippling financial panic (cue the Emergency Banking Act and the “fireside chats” that became Roosevelt’s signature) and began rolling out the programs that made up his New Deal, including 15 major pieces of legislation in the first 100 days. FDR’s extraordinary productivity translated into enormous popularity, and he set a first 100-day standard against which all future U.S. presidents would (perhaps unfairly) be measured.

We talk with Chuck Cordak, an ardent MAGA supporter, about why he thinks Trump's first 100 days have been successul, and, of course, we offer our view. Spoiler alert: Chuck is positively impressed; we're not.

What seems to matter to MAGA followers, like Chuck, is the volume of activity that surrounds the Trump administration. The question is, what does all that activity do for the good of the country?

Chuck is a father of six, five who serve in the military. He has been deeply involved with Ohio, Illinois GOP politics for over 40 years. A former ROTC Midshipman at Ohio State University, Chuck is a native Ohioan and says he was raised as a Truman Kenndy Democrat with conservative Catholic education and traditional values. He has worked all over the Midwest, as well as the Northeast. Chuck resides in Columbus and is currently working on releasing a thought buster book. Chuck is also a segment contributor for Sirius XM and TNT Radio and writes for AFNN.us.

So what does it take for a MAGA faithful to offer any criticism of Trump? Listen and find out.

In 1974, Ohio’s prison population was 8,400 Ohioan. By 2011, the number grew to 51,000. Are we any safer as a result? Do all these inmates need to remain behind bars?

Are we just locking up people without adequate attention being paid to things like education, drug treatment, mental health treatment and cognitive therapy? Our guest, Gary Mohr, former Director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, wanted to know, and so he called on the late Edward Latessa, PhD, of the University of Cincinnati’s Department of Criminal Justice to find out.

Latessa spent three years visiting every prison in Ohio, collecting data and examining every program prisons offered to inmates. He concluded that an inmate’s pursuit of a GED, drug treatment and other self-help programs resulted in a statistically significant difference in terms of violence and recidivism.

After Latessa completed his research, the Ohio legislature delved into revising the criminal code and created a panel of 23 individuals, consisting of legislators, defense attorneys, prosecutors and corrections staff. After a year and a half, several recommendations were made, all of which were endorsed by a legislative committee, and then—nothing. No legislation was introduced.

If Ohio’s prison population has increased from 8,400 to 51,000, while the general population has remained fairly stable, that means, Mohr explains, there’s either a staggering increase in crime, or we're not doing what we need to do to reduce criminality and the amount of time people spend in prison, or some combination.

Crime didn’t increase significantly during Mohr’s tenure, but the criminal code increased, and sentencing changed. Now we have more mandatory sentencing, which is a disincentive for inmates to engage in those programs that Latessa proved were beneficial in reducing the prison population.

Add to this that politically it’s popular to be tough on crime. Sentencing offenders to long jail time is more popular than pushing for rehabilitation. Listen to the conversation.