Episode Notes:
Stories shape how we see one another, and whether we believe change is possible.
In this episode, we travel to the Foster Museum in Palo Alto to speak with Scott Budnick, a film producer, the CEO of 1Community, and the founder of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition; Rachel Cooke, the vice president of Impact at 1Community; and Sarah Jones, a Tony Award-winning performer/writer/director/producer and founder at Foment Productions. Together, they explore how storytelling across film, community organizing, and comedy can shift perception and create space for empathy.
The conversation examines the role of narrative in criminal justice reform, the importance of hope and opportunity for transformation, and how humor can open minds in ways traditional advocacy often cannot.
Darren Isom:
Welcome to "Dreaming In Color: Live", a special series within the Dreaming In Color universe. This series is rooted in our belief that the equitable future we seek requires celebrating the genius of today's leaders of color and creating space for their brilliance, lived experience, and imagination to shape how we think about our impact. "Dreaming In Color: Live" is a live conversation and convening series—small rooms and shared tables where bold questions, creative spirits, and community energy meet. Each gathering brings artists, funders, thinkers, and community builders together to explore the ideas shaping a more just and more beautiful world.
Today's conversation comes to you from Palo Alto, California, where we gathered for a private evening of art, storytelling, and philanthropy in a room filled with funders, creatives, and narrative strategists. We explored how stories across film, performance, and community engagement shape culture and anchor social impact.
Joining me are Sarah Jones, Tony Award-winning performer, writer, and founder of Foment Productions; Scott Budnick, film producer, founder of Anti-Recidivism Coalition, and CEO of 1Community; and Rachel Cooke, vice president of Impact at 1Community, working at the intersection of communications, culture, and social change. Together, we examine how narrative power shifts perspective, deepens understanding, and helps build the cultural conditions necessary for lasting impact.
I'm your host, Darren Isom. Welcome to "Dreaming In Color: Live". If you've had a chance to listen to the podcast, you know I'm a New Orleans boy. I'm in California now, so I joke that I'm a New Orleans native who was expatriated to California. California's definitely home, but as a tribute to my good New Orleans upbringing—I love starting with a bit of an invocation—a good Jesuit Catholic upbringing. I will not read from the Bible for you, but this one is from Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower: "All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change." And so with that, good evening and welcome. Tonight is about stories, not as decoration or messaging, but as living forces.
Stories shape how we see, how we feel, and ultimately what we build together. In a moment that feels very heavy and uncertain—I don't know, none of us knew that we were going to be here. "What a time to be alive," I say every day, at least three times a day. Imagination is not an escape; it is a strategy.
And this conversation's about how we choose to use it. So, really excited to have all of you here. Really excited about this moment. It looks like we have some expert storytellers here, and I think of stories being so incredibly soothing. It helps us make sense of the world and helps us actually forecast a world that we'd want to create as well and live into it. So with that, I'm going to start with a question. Rachel, I'll start with you.
Rachel Cooke:
Excellent.
Darren Isom:
All right. So you're sitting close to me, and you look wonderful, by the way. You all do. And this room does too. California always shows up. I love it, right? So just to start us off, what called you into this room tonight? No need for a bio, but just a quick story of who you are and what brings you into this room. What's calling you into the room?
Rachel Cooke:
Excellent. I'm Rachel E. Cooke. I am a proud native of the District of Columbia and the VP of Impact at 1Community, where we turn your favorite TV and films into spaces where people actually show up for each other.
I am a much-beleaguered middle child whose sisters used to lock me in closets for long periods of time. We'll talk about that later.
Darren Isom:
I'm sure you were the problem. Don't try to play it.
Rachel Cooke:
I absolutely was the problem. A total snitch. And as such, I truly believe that imagination is one of the most powerful forms of liberation that you have. It's one of the most powerful tools that we have. And I think not only is that, but it's where culture really takes hold. It's where we meet each other. And if you can meet a great story with the right community relationship, you really cannot just change hearts and minds, but literally move people. And that's the work I'm excited to do.
Darren Isom:
Scott, want to take it from here? Same question.
Scott Budnick:
Uh, yes. Scott Budnick from Atlanta, Georgia. Son of Steve and Carol who are in Atlanta. Father of a young boy named Trey—he's not so young anymore, he is 22. I came out here into Los Angeles in '99 to get into the film and television business and got in with a director and made a lot of those stupid movies you saw in there. I mean the stupid ones like The Hangover and Old School and those sort of things. And then took a big detour, working with—when I was doing Old School, started going into juvenile halls and working with kids in the criminal juvenile justice systems.
And ended up leaving the business after the last Hangover movie and as we were doing this movie called War Dogs. And started an organization called ARC, the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, where we worked in prisons and juvenile facilities all throughout California, helping people come home and live their best lives. And then as I was doing that, I realized that my biggest tool in the toolbox was storytelling. So, ended up starting 1Community. I get to work every day with the brilliant Rachel Cooke and Just Mercy and Nonnas and those films you saw there as kind of the more mature version of my immature mind. So thanks for having me.
Darren Isom:
Sarah, tell us something good.
Sarah Jones:
Oh, so I wanted to start like this and just sort of say, oh, I'm here because I'm observing your wonderful country, but I was born a storyteller and I'm so grateful that that has put me in contact with you, Darren. And you know, I'm a listener of Dreaming In Color. I'm a writer and a performer. I'm fortunate that I won a Tony—my mom wants me to tell you that I won it—because when I say I was born into storytelling, my family kind of looks like this room. And so I'm from New York, and the Black American and Irish American, German American, Caribbean, Jews—everybody who made me. I wouldn't have survived that if I couldn't kind of channel them into stories. And so they're with me all the time. And in a time like this in America, sometimes the only way I get through is, I remind myself that I come from people who survived even worse. And we'll get through this. So that's why I'm here. I want to be with all of you. Tomorrow night, we are doing a show, which I'm very excited about, and this is inspiring us. So you'll come to that too, but first focus here. Okay?
Darren Isom:
Let's focus here to start. Thank you, Sarah.
Rachel Cooke:
Amazing.
Scott Budnick:
Is that Grandma Etsy?
Sarah Jones:
No, that's my aunt..
Darren Isom:
How am I supposed to tame this panel, right? So I think what is worth noting here, listening to you all, is just the importance of stories and how quietly they shape what we notice. They shape what we value, what we believe is possible. And so I want to dig into that. And Sarah, I'm going to stick with you a little bit. Talk really about the craft and the creative force that is storytelling. And the question I have for you—because I have questions, my team gives me these wonderful questions, right—you've built a career inhabiting many voices with humor, precision, and care. What does humor allow people to hear or stay with that other approaches often do not?
Sarah Jones:
Ooh. I mean, I remember realizing that wherever there is an open laughing mouth, there's an open mind right behind it. Just a little bit more spaciousness than there was when the person walked into the theater or turned on that television show. And really, it's living with the realities of America pre-2020, 2016. Right? This didn't all just start, as we all know. And so even now as I'm writing and thinking about the 250th anniversary of this country, there's a narrative there. That if we don't remind ourselves to look at the humor and the joy and the love that has sustained us through this experiment up till now—and Lord, please let us get through another few years—we got this. We got this. But my point being, we got this, and if I don't laugh to keep from raging, there's going to be a lot of prescriptions needed. So yes, we need humor. It is—I dare say it might be the most important plank in a larger storytelling. Of course, we need drama, but if you don't have that levity, it becomes a dirge and people are exhausted. And so we need the joy as resistance. Joy as resistance.
Darren Isom:
Joy as resistance. And Scott, I want to move to you next. I think that you've worked across entertainment alongside communities that hold deep wisdom and resilience. It's been so key to your career and your work and your thinking. What becomes possible when stories expand, when people are seen in their full complexity and humanity? How do we use these stories to really show the full force of people in humanity?
Scott Budnick:
Yeah, it's interesting because when I started ARC, which is a nonprofit working with kids in the criminal justice system—kind of like philanthropy, because I think philanthropy is so late to the table as it comes to narrative change and culture change. To me, it was like, oh, direct services. How do we help one person at a time? And then it was, okay, let's pass some bills in Sacramento and do that. And then I realized that every single person I brought into a prison to sit with a young person who was incarcerated, no matter if they were a district attorney, a victim of crime, someone super conservative—lock 'em up and throw away the key—if they sat across from a human being and felt and saw their humanity. I mean, Bryan Stevenson always talks about proximity, right? When you were sitting there talking to a person, no matter what you believed your entire life, I've never seen anybody walk away from that and believe the same thing afterwards, right? So everything was proximity, everything was storytelling. When they saw someone as human, everything changed. And I just realized when I was doing that, is there's a limit to the amount of people I can bring into prisons. There's a limit to the amount of people I can bring into our office to meet formerly incarcerated people. But when you can make Just Mercy, right, with two massive movie stars, and you have Warner Brothers spending 20-plus million dollars on the movie and probably 50-plus million dollars on a marketing campaign, all about a film that shows the injustice of a system, right, then you're reaching 10, 15, 20, 25 million people, right? And so to me, everything was about showing the humanity. Because even like I've gone through prisons, I've met the people they've called the "worst of the worst." And people are kind of only the worst of the worst when they're hopeless, right? The second they find some hope, the second they start believing in themselves, you see who they were really meant to be and who they were as a child really begin to come out. And so to me, it was just about finding ways to bring that hope, finding ways to motivate people to change and give them opportunities, and then shining a light on their incredible transformation and redemption.
Darren Isom:
Thank you. Thank you. We're going to come back to the humanity piece, definitely, and also the systems piece. But I'm reminded—we're talking, we have a Howard connection. Howard, it's always a Howard, you know. I mean, there were other colleges and luckily for other people, right. But I had a wonderfully positive and optimistic history professor who used to always say that America's founding documents were all 100% correct and perfect when they said that all men were created equal; we just spent our country's history deciding who is a man. Right? The definition of who is a man is constantly, hopefully opening up, and now we're seeing a rolling back. Right? And so really think about how to use stories to kind of share that humanity. It's really important. Rachel, I want to come to you because going back to the systems piece—and you work really at the intersection of storytelling, culture, and impact—and from where you sit, what distinguishes stories that move people emotionally from stories that really actually move systems?
Rachel Cooke:
I love that question. Thank you so much for having me here. I think for a long time, when people hear impact entertainment, they think of a screening. They think of a discussion guide or some sort of toolkit, and that's cute. It's maybe the bare minimum of where we should be. But I spent a lot of time thinking about what would it look like if, as Sarah said, right, entertainment helps open up sort of that window into people's hearts and minds, but that window closes really quickly, right? How do you use that attention and put it into practice? How do you use that practice to create a feeling of belonging and community? Something that is durable, something that is scalable, something that is replicable. Because I do believe when people are in sort of formation with each other in these sort of formation spaces, that is actually how we truly move systems. Right? Scott just said, like, once you're in front of someone, you can't help but see their humanity. There are not enough spaces where people can practice being in community with each other, and that is, I think, something that we're really missing—that sort of infrastructure around that.
Darren Isom:
And this is really helpful. Thank you. I want to do a quick round-robin with a question, but I want to reflect on the question before I ask it. And the question is about when a story moved you or made you think of something completely differently. And I'm going to ask each of you to answer that. And I'm reminded all the time—I talk about how as a Gen Xer, I'm generation integration. Gen Xers, shout out to Gen X! What the hell, y'all, right? Like, what is this? No, seriously. Gen X is like, we were not expecting any of this, but here we are. But I also talk about how being from New Orleans, like my family's been in the city now for nine generations. I'm a seventh generation and I'm generation integration. I'm the only generation that went to integrated schools in New Orleans. They were legally segregated before me, de facto segregated after me. And I'm constantly reminded of what beautiful stories and narratives my family gave me, fed me to make me normalize the world that I lived in. I remember coming home from school one day and my grandmother was cooking in the kitchen and they were trying to help me hold on to—they wanted me to hold on to my faith, because faith was important. We're Black people, right? At the same time, faith can be a little problematic, right? So... and I remember—it is what it is, right—and so I remember, I was like, "Grandma, we learned in school today that the earth was created in a billion years. We learned in church it was seven days. Which one is right?" I mean, you know, it seems pretty straightforward. And I remember my grandmother looking over, she's like, "You learned in church that the earth was created in seven God days. Maybe that is a billion. Let's not confuse religion and science. Go do your homework." Right? I love her. I learned many years later I was stressing my family the fuck out. No, I'm serious. Like this boy had all these questions. "Jonah was in a whale for three days? Come on, Ella!" Right? But the way they were giving me stories to kind of normalize my existence and allow me to calibrate the world. So with that as a tee-up, I would love you guys to talk about a story that shifted how you think about the world or gave you some space to think of things differently.
Rachel Cooke:
Oh goodness. You gave a really lovely, thoughtful response.
Darren Isom:
Yeah. I mean...
Rachel Cooke:
Mine is not going to be that way. So if you know me, my very favorite movie of all time, of all movies, of all human history, is Who Framed Roger Rabbit. And I love this movie. I watched it all the time. And what I love about it is that it taught me some really important life lessons, surprisingly. And I think a very important story about our history is that, one, the power of humor to bring people together. Sarah can speak about this so perfectly—that there's something that happens, there's a chemical connection. When you make someone laugh, that bond is sort of forever. And using humor as a way to reach people, to remind people of their humanity, but also part of a revolution, right? Revolution without joy is just a long meeting. And so you need that joy and inspiration. The other important point about Who Framed Roger Rabbit is—
Darren Isom:
You're giving Roger Rabbit a lot of credit.
Rachel Cooke:
I owe Robert Zemeckis, please. I would run an impact campaign on the same. But there is like a B-story of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which is a shadowy corporation trying to destroy a minority community, displace the toons with a highway. And how many times have we actually seen that take place in real life? We've seen that in Seneca Village. We've seen that in Austin, Texas. We've seen this in Chicago. We've seen it in my hometown of D.C. And so, so much of stories, whether intentional or not intentional, are trying to teach us important lessons. They're trying to signal, "Pay attention to this, this thing is happening." And that is why Who Framed Roger Rabbit is my favorite film.
Darren Isom:
This is amazing. I give you credit. I think that deserves an applause. Boy, you made Roger Rabbit work hard.
Sarah Jones:
I'm renting it immediately.
Darren Isom:
Scott, what you got from a story perspective that gave you a sense of narrative power?
Scott Budnick:
I'll give you three things that quickly shaped my life. The first one that made me want to get into the film business was Stand by Me. And a coming-of-age story of just male friendship—that taught me a lot about myself at that part of my life. I would say later on, when I was making comedies, I went and saw obviously a very serious movie called 12 Years a Slave, and I just remember when the credits started rolling, I couldn't move. And when the lights came up, I couldn't move. And they came and started sweeping popcorn and I couldn't move. And the next day I went to Todd Phillips, the director I worked with for 15 years, and said, "I can't do this anymore. I want to leave the movie business and start a nonprofit." That's how powerful that experience was to me. And then the third piece of it, which was not a movie but a story, was the first day I walked into the juvenile hall in 2004. The first visual I saw was a nine-year-old in shackles. And that visual is something I'll never get out of my head. And I walked into the compound, which was the prison within the prison, and I was part of a creative writing class and there were 12 kids sitting around a table. And the kid sitting next to me, named David, was 15 years old, and I said, "How was your week?" And he said, "It was a tough week. I just got sentenced to 300 years to life in prison." To see that come out of the mouth of a 15-year-old... and I said, "What happened?" He said, "I stood next to my friend who shot the victim in the butt. The victim was in and out of the hospital in a day, and for standing next to the guy with the gun, I got 300 years to life." And I just, in that moment, I'm like, "If that was my kid with this skin tone, if that was my kid with my resources, he would be out on bail. He wouldn't be sleeping in that cell, and he would have the best lawyer in LA and would get probation—not a day in prison—for not shooting someone in the butt." But David, who came out of the foster care system, didn't have parents that loved him, was going to prison for 300 years to life. And on that day I said to those kids, "I want to start teaching this class. If you guys are committed to change, I'm going to start coming in." It was the number one most important day in my life. And it was that story from David and those two movies that kind of changed everything for me.
Sarah Jones:
So powerful. So I'm really deeply moved. And you know, as you said, Bryan Stevenson talks about proximity and your work—all of everyone's work in here. There's a redemptive storytelling. Those narratives help us see the full humanity of people and hopefully also hold up a mirror to remind us that, as Bryan says, we're not as bad as the worst thing we ever did. And I had a similar—I was teaching poetry in New York on Rikers Island, believe it or not. Yes. So, and there were girls in there who looked just like me. And I remember looking at them and realizing that the accident of birth—that my parents happened to be fortunate to be two doctors, which was so rare. And these young kids had no guardians and were in foster care and ended up in this pipeline. And years later, I ended up making Sell/Buy/Date, my film, because it was so draconian to sit there with 14-year-old girls and feel the "there but for..." the incredible inequities in our society, I would be sitting there. And I'm a rare one. So, and what I realized about that as well is that those girls are me. And if I can remind myself that the only reason I'm not there is—people like... it's PBS, it's what are the things that intervened? And a lot of times it was storytelling. And so the coda of my stories that moved me: Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street. Wow. I'm not kidding. Those were the first moments that I saw other people who looked like me all together. It wasn't like segregated, you know? And monsters, but lovely monsters—not the ones we have in power now. Yeah.
Darren Isom:
Friendly monsters.
Sarah Jones:
You know, furry, friendly monsters and people of true diversity that didn't have to be called diversity; it was just a street. And so, you know, I literally had to start a company to make a movie to get that clarity for myself—that I don't want to just go buy a nice house and work in Hollywood. I actually want to do what Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers and those girls on Rikers Island did for me.
Scott Budnick:
Yeah.
Darren Isom:
Sarah, I'm going to stop there for a second and then I'm going to come to Scott in just a second as well. Sorry, I'm pointing all around. I'm also naming who I'm talking to. I was told that you have to let them know in the podcast. You know, you say, "And you go next."
Sarah Jones:
Hey, hey, you.
Rachel Cooke:
You, girl.
Darren Isom:
Because that Mr. Rogers story really moves me in a lot of different ways. And partially because I joke, going back to this whole idea of being generation integration and the normalization. My parents made... I was in St. Joan of Arc, the Black Catholic prep school for kindergarten, right? They have graduated generations of wealthy and upwardly mobile Blacks across the city. And my family made the decision to pull me out of that school to put me in the integrated school, because my grandmother was like, "He's going to have to know how to deal with white people. Like, we can't keep him in a Black bubble for the rest of his life. The world has changed." Right? And I went from St. Joan of Arc to the Willow School—I shit you not, the name says it all—where we had a Black woman with an Afro in the eighties singing us Beatles songs to start the day. And with project pride diversity, and I'm just constantly made aware of how much the world was orchestrated to normalize desegregation, right? From Mr. Rogers, 3-2-1 Contact, Sesame Street—all these shows which normalize reality. And at some point you look up and you're like—insert Florida Republican wherever—like, he didn't watch Mr. Rogers. Right? And you realize actually you were the one living in The Truman Show. America was out being America, and you were in this beautiful, curated world. But it also makes you realize the obligation you had because you lived in such a beautiful world. And so, I mean, can you talk just a little bit more about how these narratives really impact how we see the world, but also they give us a new horizon to live into?
Sarah Jones:
Yes. I mean the debt that I owe. You know, I think it was the Ford Foundation for PB, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Plug, plug, plug. We know they trying to... I know she down bad, but we can still resurrect the bones. It still... she down bad. I hang around too many Gen Z babies, but the point being... this moment that we are in, and I'm a cuspy... like, my mom, sometimes my thinking sounds like this, which is wild to me. But like for people born in the 1900s—it's a slow burn. Were you born in the 1900s? Probably, yeah. It's no shade. But like the idea that you all had this whole other... sorry, I am thinking from all of the angles that I can about how for some young kids doomscrolling... we had Muppets and whatever that was, and they have, you know, K-Pop demons. I'm not saying it's the same, but I guess the sort of onslaught of messages that alienate and put people into silos at that age is the exact opposite of what we were taught. I mean, I had a cousin with Down syndrome. I looked up on my television screen and there was a child with Down syndrome on screen reminding me that all of us belonged. It's belonging, as Rachel was saying. So I think—and I want to just stress that—as people in this climate, to be committed to that vision and not just want The Hangover check. Or in my case, my agents, you know, "Can't you just use the funny voices and stop caring about the social justice?" And I can't. The answer is no.
Scott Budnick:
Just entertain.
Sarah Jones:
Just...
Darren Isom:
Shut up and entertain.
Sarah Jones:
Right? That's right. But yes.
Darren Isom:
Scott, I want to come back to you. I mean, a few years ago you were asked whether we could actually measure what stories do, and what has the Just Mercy research with Stanford shown, and why does that matter in this moment?
Scott Budnick:
All right. It's kind of a funny story. So, when we were editing Just Mercy, I'm on the Obama My Brother's Keeper board. His body guy called and said, "The boss needs to see you ASAP. Can you fly to DC?" I'm like, "Yeah, when?" He's like, "This week." And I'm like, "Oh shit, I'm getting fired from the board." This is not good. Never had a one-on-one with Obama. So I go there and it's in his Georgetown office and it's me, him, and his guy. Door's shut. I sit down and we're just editing Just Mercy at this time; we don't even have a real cut of it. And he looks up and he says, "Why can't a brother get a DVD?" He's allowed me to tell the story. So, like, "Mr. President, we don't have a cut yet, and we can send you a link, not a DVD." But he was obsessed with Just Mercy. He loved it and he's like, "I really think that empathetic storytelling can literally change people's brain matter." And he goes, "I think with this movie you should try to prove it." And I go, "Tell me what you're thinking." And he said, "I think starting my Netflix company, I can have more of an effect on people than I even did as President." And he said, "You should do a brain study. And you should take people who are skeptical of Black Lives Matter and racial justice and criminal justice and all this stuff, and you should have 'em watch the movie and you should measure." And so we went to—I found one of my heroes is Jennifer Eberhardt at Stanford. She's like the global expert on racial bias. And I talked to her about it and she's like, "I want to do this, but I want to bring in my colleague at Stanford, Jamil Zaki, who's the global expert on empathy." And we want to do a brain study, hooking electrodes up to people's brains as they watch this incredibly empathetic, tug-on-your-heartstrings film. And we want to measure change in sentiment, change in brain, change in all of these things both from a racial bias point of view and from an empathy point of view. And it's taken, because of COVID—it's taken four or five years. But it's over and we're about to publish the results. It's incredible. President Obama was not wrong. Literally, you could be set in your ways for six decades of your life, and then it could take you seeing or hearing. And not only did we show people Just Mercy, we recorded a hundred stories of formerly incarcerated people. Formerly incarcerated for 15 years, and then went to Berkeley—all these stories. And the combination of the film plus the testimonies was just life-changing in terms of people's trajectories.
Rachel Cooke:
Yeah.
Darren Isom:
This is really powerful.
Rachel Cooke:
And can I ask... I think what's really interesting about what Sarah and Scott are just pointing out is that the empathy wasn't a bug in the machine; it was the machine. It was the entire infrastructure. It is a strategy that you have to put in place and it's the cumulative effect. Right? Years and years and years of Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street. Years and years of movies like Just Mercy. All those things add up to a sum greater than its whole.
Darren Isom:
And I think it also speaks to this—and I'm going to ask you a little bit more about Grandma's House. But I think it also speaks to how to use imagination as rigor, right? We think the two are kind of separated, but they're really connected. And so with that, you help bring to life Grandma's House, Rachel. What is it and what does it reveal about where entertainment impact and community-led formation are headed?
Rachel Cooke:
I love this. So Nonnas is our last film as 1Community, based on a true story. A guy named Joe in Staten Island—he loses his mom and his grandma, and as a love letter to them, he opens up a restaurant that's staffed by the Nonnas, or the grandmas of the neighborhood. It is a real restaurant. It's called Enoteca Maria. It is lovely; call me if you need reservations. And what we sort of put together through running this campaign—and this campaign that we did to support Nonnas was about an eight-month campaign, so much longer than most of the campaigns most people do—is that people were so hungry for community and people just wanted to talk to a grandma. It was the simplest, purest thing. And I thought to myself, how can I make this scalable? How do I put this into practice, right? And so, we reached out to real grandmas in Los Angeles, and while I will say the idea of the scaffolding is my brainchild, the actual house was built by them. We reached out to a Black grandmother, an indigenous woman from Oaxaca, a Mexican grandma, and a Sicilian grandma, and I asked them, "What should this house look like? What should your room look like? What should it feel like? What should it be inside?" And they're the ones that really made the space real. And then when we brought people in, they were able to practice formation, right? So they were able—400 people showed up, which is incredible in Los Angeles terms. Incredible anywhere, especially on a rainy day. 400 showed up. And then they came and they did practice, right? We didn't just do a seminar on what it means to be lonely. We had people write letters to isolated seniors. We didn't have people just talk about healthy lifestyles. We had people make food together in a kitchen. These things, when you're able to put into practice, builds community. And we were able—people invited each other to Thanksgiving dinner. We had people sing each other Happy Birthday. While perhaps that sounds maybe like a little amorphous sort of experience, what happens in these sort of formation spaces is that we remember what it means to belong to each other. We remember what it looks like to be in community with each other. And then that also has, I think, a lot of economic impacts too, right? Because once you're talking to someone at a dinner table, you're sharing job recommendations, childcare, you're talking about networking. You're helping each other out in ways that you would not have if you literally were not in proximity to each other. And so, the reason why I know that was successful, beyond just the experience of it, was that we had people all over the country ask if they could bring it to them. And I thought that was probably the most remarkable thing: to see how durable that idea is.
Darren Isom:
Wow. That's really powerful. Sarah, I'm going to come to you now so you can brag about all the great stuff you're up to. Through your podcast America, Who Hurt You?, you're inviting long-form listening, complexity, and intimacy. You've also been building a broader slate through your production company, Foment, with a commitment to pluralism and cultural depth and all the good stuff. What does it take to sustain that kind of work in this climate, especially as the need for plural storytelling grows and the conditions to sustain are shifting? The language there's really asset-based in a really good way. So hopefully it gives you...
Sarah Jones:
It's very asset-based language. Look, do I have a PowerPoint? I thought I had my... no. I will say in practical terms, and I am—you know, I'm from New York, but I live in Los Angeles now—I've been making... I did a television show, film. I really wanted to see just what we're talking about, that force multiplier of being able to reach people so that they feel like they belong in a way that can be difficult when it's just one theater, 600 people at a time. If you can reach 6 million, right? And here's the thing: right around the beginning of the new administration, work that we had got defunded because it became illegal DEI to share the kinds of ideas that we have up here. And so a kind of anti-woke chill sweeping across LA has meant learning just how resilient this culture really is. Because here's the truth: it doesn't matter who puts their name on the Kennedy Center. If you can't get two butts in those seats because your culture ain't relevant, that's a reminder to the rest of us that we actually have the power, no matter who is being flooded with cash. And when the narrative bullhorn is taken over by Turning Point USA and Prager University being funded to the tune of more money than I can count, we just need a countervailing force. And so my company Foment... America, Who Hurt You? has its premiere at Oxford. We also are working with Bryan Stevenson on some interesting things. I mean, Bryan is just the wind beneath the collective wings of the country. But I mention all of that because part of what's also happening is, for example, even the kids on... even me on TikTok, depending on the political winds and who owns what kind of media outlets, it means storytellers like us who are really committed to—frankly, democracy, that's really all this is—we need the kind of support, robust support that unfortunately the right has sort of run away with and it's part of their playbook. And I was joking that they had Project 2025 and we had Project Nothing. When it comes to narrative change and really having a concerted effort to make sure that folks like us aren't stuck in the shadows or unable to make sure our projects get greenlit because there's an anti-woke mandate. Now, what I'm finding is, thank God, there are people in philanthropy, there are people who understand the value of these stories. And I want to keep telling them. I don't want to have to go to England. I want to be able to tell... I want to still be able to be an American storyteller. And so that requires robust support, and I've learned how to become more of a head of a company to really make sure that I'm also in community with other folks. Because that's the thing: it can be very isolating to literally be under attack. I know Don Lemon, you know, to get snatched off the streets. It's across journalism, it's across storytelling. So we need each other. That's the other piece—is that we need robust support at the obvious financial level, but we also need ways that we can be safe.
Darren Isom:
And I want to come back. I'm realizing that we're coming close to the end. I know it went fast. Y'all were good. But I have a few questions. Obviously, we can go over a little bit as well. You brought this up, and I want a room full of Californians... and you were a new Californian to some degree. I had a great-uncle many years ago who had brothers who, one lived in New York, one lived in LA, and used to always say, "New Yorkers prove themselves through work. Californians prove themselves through the stories they tell." Right? We're storytelling people. You come out, you tell a story. As long as it's remotely plausible, we give you space to live it. Like, "You doing what? Well, okay, if you say so." How has it shifted how you think about the work, being on the West Coast?
Sarah Jones:
Oh, what a great, great question. I mean, I was going to go for like the avocado toast and the turmeric jokes, but I would say that I feel more... I feel less of the kind of pressurized... I love New York, I'm a Broadway baby, all that stuff, but man, when you walk... I love it here. It's 500 degrees below zero and you're in a parka and you have to pretend that you're enjoying the experience in your tiny box of an apartment.
Darren Isom:
Winter is so incredibly uncivilized.
Sarah Jones:
It's uncivilized. I'm from there and I'll love it to the day I die. And thank God for Zoran. But that's a whole other thing. My point is that I feel as a Californian with a New York heart, but a very much Californian understanding of the multiplicity here that looks and feels more expansive. You're not going to believe this, but my character, who, you know, he come from New York—y'all going to meet him tomorrow if you there—but he starts now. He's starting to sound a little bit more like California. You know what I mean? Like the words... yes, you lean now. That's right. Like, you know, you got some spaciousness in a lawn. You know what I mean? So that's what I just like: I got my lawn now. And in all seriousness, I think there's more capacity to dream in color here because there's less of the oppressive sense of sort of tightness and constriction. That doesn't mean you can't be a great storyteller in New York, but I think having this lens has opened me up to more possibility.
Darren Isom:
Beautiful. And I see all the time as someone who lived in New York for many years, they're like, "I still love New York." I love New York as a city in there often. But I feel like I'm a different person in California and I like that person a whole lot more than the person I was in New York. No, seriously. Like, I'm just a nicer person here. So I want to jump with a few questions. One, we're living in a moment that feels heavy as hell, but also full of possibility. And from where you sit and just for everyone here, what feels newly possible now that maybe was not five years ago? Rachel…
Rachel Cooke:
I think what I really appreciate about this moment is that we now know for sure that the old playbook did not work. And that means we get to create a new playbook. Yes. And I think if we... thank you very much. I think if we... I know that we can rise to the challenge. I absolutely know that we can because we are creative people. And while I think the conservative right might have better infrastructure, we have better stories. And if we actually lean into community and lean into that storytelling, that is the way that we can win.
Darren Isom:
Scott, what you got? What's possible now?
Scott Budnick:
Beautiful. I mean, I think what's possible now, even from like a year or two ago, is my obsession right now. I watched my son, who's like the greatest kid ever, get radicalized on social media. And like, just as a high school football player, get sucked down like an Andrew Tate rabbit hole and the algorithm take him to the worst, most grievance-filled actors on the internet. And then we saw during the election them massively kind of go against Kamala and Biden and all that. And I think everything's swinging back now. I feel like even the influencers online that were unhappy or didn't feel seen by the Democratic Party—I feel like everyone, virtually everyone—not everyone, but virtually everyone—I think…no one's there anymore, right? And I think right now, to be able to build a digital media company as part of what we do around film and television, but a digital side on social... all of these influencers that have 25 million followers, 50 million followers—we know them because they want to be in movies, right? And they're asking, "What can we do? How can we be of service? How can we help young people? We see where your son's gone and where other people have gone." So I think now there's a real chance to build the "Justice League" and swing young men back towards something that's not a misogynist, not a racist, not anti-immigrant, and swing 'em back towards kind of values that will make them better people.
Rachel Cooke:
Yeah.
Sarah Jones:
Yes, yes, yes. You know what I am experiencing? I've been having salons with other creatives who, whether they're executives in the industry who were sort of scared to speak up over the past couple of years or fellow writers, actors. There's a new space. There's a hunger for mutual aid, for real. The expression you keep hearing: "we all we got." That's not a lament. Yeah, that's wonderful. We are so deeply resourced. We just didn't reach out before. I'd call CAA; I wouldn't call you. And now I know there's more power in the collective of us that we haven't been tapping because of the old guard. So we've got really fertile new ground that we get to kind of root into. And I think it will make us more resilient. I think when we come out of this, we will have a whole new kind of DNA as storytellers. So I'm excited while also we got to pay the bills. So this is a bridge, you know, that we are crossing with our full—as the kids say—with our full chest. Yeah, we're crossing this bridge and taking that adage of "take a step before you know the staircase is there."
Darren Isom:
100%. And I think it builds on the point I was talking with... please, applause... a philanthropic elder who said that we're gearing up to fight the fight of the sixties. We actually have more money, more leaders, more organizations; what we lack is organization. And so I'm going to close with a question for you guys, going back to the "more money" part. How do we motivate that more money? If this room really wants to fund to win, not just respond, what should people be resourcing right now in storytelling, culture, and narrative power, especially to support pluralist work as the field evolves? Where should folks be funding? Who wants to start?
Sarah Jones:
I mean, I'm happy to jump in. I will, not just selfishly but for the collective that I know I'm speaking for who's back in LA and everybody's figuring it out... creatives want to jump ship. They don't want to be part of legacy media companies that are bending the knee. They don't want to watch a $75 million documentary about the First Lady and think about how well that $75 million could have been spent on 15 other projects.
Darren Isom:
What a time to be alive.
Sarah Jones:
There are a lot of... well, "be best," now Darren, "be best." But there are so many talented folks who are creating. And I'm not saying we jettison the legacy media system—we all here have been part of it. So we want to be a bulwark against the worst excesses of people just handing over the keys to literal right-wing mouthpieces. And there are alternatives. People are buying media outlets. There are ways to fund that work so that the only ownership class isn't also invested in autocracy. And companies like mine—we are raising right now, funding like I've never needed to raise before because I used to always be able to go to other companies to make my work. Now, with the support of other people who've done this before, I'm able to drive those stories and make sure that I'm collaborating in the ways they need to. So they can call me.
Darren Isom:
Yes. Thank you. Scott, what you got?
Scott Budnick:
I think first off, the "manosphere" wasn't built by philanthropy on some side of things. It was built through investment. So I think we need to think of other ways to fund and build these types of organizations—impact investments, PRIs, MRIs, etc. Because these digital media companies or influencer networks... something like the opposite values of what Barstool was, if you know what that is. Barstool Sports was for that. It's like these things can be unbelievably profitable and can be sustaining every year, where you don't have to go beg to philanthropy every year to sustain something. But they can also... the amount of impact they can make, especially on young people who are not watching TVs, they're not going to movie theaters. It's not their church. It's not their union foreman. Like, the people that are literally developing their identity are on that phone, right? And they're on that phone in places where I'm super focused on young men, because they've just swung so much in the crazy direction. They're on the phone in the spaces they exist in. So it's finance, it's fitness, it's sports. It's comedy. It's gaming, right? Your gaming influencers are raising your kids. And so I think figuring out not just the philanthropic solution of it, where it's all C3, but smart investing, I think is crucial. And I think the other thing that we've just been so bad on are just these purity tests. And you might get an influencer who your kid watches and is incredible, but on one topic they might not be great, right? And if you're like, "Oh, I'm not going to support this influencer who has a huge impact on turning my kid in the right direction because he wants to help the children of Gaza," then we have problems. And so I think we have to take the purity test, kind of kick it away a little bit, and fund the things that are actually going to lead us to win.
Sarah Jones:
Get it.
Rachel Cooke:
Yeah, love that. I thought about this question. I wrote some notes. So I think there may be four areas where I think philanthropy can really be helpful. The first one is patience—understanding that this work is cumulative, like I mentioned, and it can't just happen in an 18-month grant cycle; it's not even a three-month grant cycle. This is 10-year, this is 20-years’ work. And being comfortable with understanding that. Trust—yes, unrestricted funds are great, it helps make our work so much easier, but also that means really trusting the communities to know what they need and to be very vocal about that. Partnership, not direction—philanthropy can be really great at creating the conditions where communities can come together. And I think that would be a really good space. And the last one is comfortability with invisibility—a phrase I just made up.
Darren Isom:
I love it.
Rachel Cooke:
That was really magical. Because I think the things that we need to measure are not sexy headlines; they're not "this many people came to this event." The things that I think we need to measure is what is the return on community? And that is a new way of thinking rather than sort of being beholden to some old paradigm of numbers.
Sarah Jones:
I love it. ROC instead of ROI.
Rachel Cooke:
That's right. The ROC. Not ROI, ROC. There you go.
Darren Isom:
My Bridgespan heart is singing. You want to come over? All right. Well, that's the conversation for today, guys. I really want to thank the panelists. It was a great conversation…
Sarah Jones:
Thank you, Darren.
Rachel Cooke:
Thank you, Darren.
Darren Isom:
It feels fitting to end this conversation by turning to Sunday. Growing up in New Orleans, Sundays were important. There was a ceremony and pageantry of church for sure, but Sundays were feast days, and just as sacred as church were the gatherings that followed. We convened at my Grandma Lucinda's in Carrollton for Sunday dinner—more late-afternoon feast than an evening meal. New Orleans is a Catholic city, but most Black Uptown New Orleans homes are layered in faith: Catholic fathers and grandfathers, Baptist and Methodist mothers and grandmothers. And there was always the Muslim uncle and cousins making their way from New Orleans East and Gentilly, sometimes much later in the evening. When Sunday dinner fell during Ramadan, Grandma would wait to break fast with them. There at one table sat different churches and different doctrines, but what we shared ran deeper than denomination fine print and theological bookkeeping. We believed above all that God was goodness—a love that lived inside and beyond our respective traditions and within each of us, holding us together. And at that table, we shared story as testimony. It was its own kind of prayer. Some stories were serious, some were silly. My mother would share something that had been sitting with her all week. My uncle Renard would interrupt with humor. My grandpa Royal would fold in a memory. Laughter would ripple across the table and settle into something softer. What began as separate voices became something held in common. We bragged on the graduates. We honored the elders. We remembered ancestors with reverence and a wink. We passed plates and opinions in equal measure. We told stories that stretched our imagination about what was possible, stories that reminded us of our strength, stories that held pride and tenderness in the same breath. And without anyone announcing it, we were steadied. Our destination reconfirmed, our path forward quietly recalibrated. Sitting in Palo Alto listening to Sarah speak about laughter creating space, hearing Scott talk about hope revealing who someone was always meant to be, listening to Rachel reflect on what unfolds when story meets community—I felt that same grace in the room. It felt familiar, like a table, like my Grandma Lucinda's Sunday table. The world may feel chaotic. Systems may feel too large to move. But before policies change, something else shifts: a story, a laugh, a reminder of shared goodness and possibility. Stories shape culture. Culture shapes people. And people shape systems. And so, keep dreaming in color.
And that's a wrap for today's "Dreaming In Color: Live" conversation. These are the kinds of rooms where new ideas take shape, where truth gets spoken, and where community grows. And I'm grateful you chose to be here with us. "Dreaming In Color: Live" is a Bridgespan-supported production, created in partnership with Content Allies. A special thank you to our show producers, Denise Savas and Dustin Sese; our associate producer, Sakeena Khan; and our onboarding producer, Lambert Cruz.
Thank you to our onsite production team, Richard Bier and Max Fancher, and deep gratitude to Judy Powell of Seven Hills Philanthropy and Delvin Worthy of 3Roots for helping shape and host this evening's event. Your leadership and care made this gathering possible.
And of course, a huge shout-out to my Bridgespan production partner, the ever-brilliant Cora Daniels, my partner in good trouble and all the dreaming that happens behind the scenes. If you enjoyed today's conversation, be sure to subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen to your favorite podcast, and that's how this community grows. Thanks for listening. Until next time, keep Dreaming In Color.
