Skull Sessions Devin Higgins

As a young black girl growing up in the affluent white-dominated suburbs of Portland, Oregon, documentary filmmaker Melissa Lowery learned lessons her daughters would themselves be taught years later.
Her desire to chronicle what life was like for both her and other Black women around the country spurred her debut film, 'Black Girl in Suburbia.'
She talks about making it, as well as gives a first-person account to the Portland Black Lives Matter protests that dominated both the news and political headlines for much of 2020.
We cover how we need to revisit American history in order to create a more multi-racial future, and how if we really want to heal the longstanding racial divide in this country, White Americans must be active in that change...but they cannot lead from the front.
Thanks for tuning into this week's Skull Session, with documentary filmmaker Melissa Lowery.

Before I ever dreamed of being a journalist, I only really wanted to be a storyteller.
As a kid, I wrote stories, read books, watched movies, played video and role-playing games and that interest in creating and crafting characters in precarious situations has never really gone away.
British author Antony Johnston grew up in a similar way just outside Birmingham in the mid-1970s. His interest in comics, video and role-playing games led him to a near 20-year career.
His latest book, 'The Tempus Project' is the second in his series of high-tech spy novels featuring MI6 cyber-analyst Brigitte Sharp. But his most celebrated work to date was a little graphic novel called "The Coldest City" which became the 2017 Charlize Theron action movie, "Atomic Blonde."

According to the National Institute for Mental Health, by 2019, more than 51 million Americans were dealing with some form of mental illness. That's one in every five people in this country.
My own battles with it have spanned more than 30 years, but it wasn't until I suffered a complete emotional breakdown in 2011 that I realized how bad mental illness can get. Ove the years, I've developed coping skills to help get me through it, but I wasn't able to find a therapist I could afford to work with until last year.
I'm not alone in that struggle.
I met Relationship and Mental Health Counselor Sovann Pen over a decade ago, and he joined me to talk about what he's seen in his patients during the Year of COVID, how relationships with someone dealing with mental illness requires work by both parties, how the societal stigmas and taboos still surrounding mental illness need to be addressed and resolved and how one of the best things you can do to booth your mental health is get a good night's sleep.

Welcome to the premiere episode of 'Skull Sessions!'
In my 15 years as a working journalist, I developed the theory that 'behind everyone and every idea is a story worth telling.'
Tara Dublin started life as a Jersey girl before becoming an alternative radio personality in the 2000's. The Great Recession took away her self-professed 'dream job' behind the mic, but this single mother of two transitioned her energy from music to politics in the social media age.
Her story of earning her blue checkmark on Twitter is not an easy one, as Tara encountered the worst of what the internet has to offer along the way.
She talks about that journey, along with how she got into radio and if it can still be saved, her 30-year 'purely platonic' association with Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, the impact of the last four years of politics, and how all she wants now is for an agent to help her get published.
It's my very first Skull Session - with Tara Dublin!