Episode 172: Congressman Clyburn Discusses the Importance of Communication in Advancing New Ideas and Political Change

- Welcome to The Crocs. Join one of the world's top communicators, Mike Fernandez, and guests, as they take you behind the scenes of the news of the day and explore the crocs of stories that are shaping business, politics, and our daily lives. - Today's guest is someone it's been my great pleasure and honor to have known for much of my professional life and someone whose story is in many ways intertwined with the story of the state of South Carolina and a transformation in American politics. My guest today is Congressman James Clyburn, Jim and I first met decades ago when he was leading the South Carolina Human Affairs Commission and I was a young press secretary U.S. Senator Fritz Hollings. Our friendship has endured, in fact, Sumter South Carolina where I maintain my permanent residence these days is also Congressman Clyburn's hometown. Today he remains my Congressman and we are thrilled to have him on the show today. He was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1992. He became the first African-American electing to Congress from South Carolina since the U.S. Reconstruction. And I'll come back to that in a moment. But over the course of more than three decades he rose to become one of the truly most influential figures in American politics, serving as majority whip from 2008 to 2023. And in that position, the third highest ranking Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives is influence has often extended far beyond Capitol Hill, few political endorsements in modern American history, carrying more weight than his support of Joe Biden in South Carolina's 2020 Democratic primary, a moment mini-credit with reshaping the trajectory of that presidential race. But today I want to explore something deeper than politics. I want to talk to the Congressman about leadership, communication, persuasion, and the responsibility that comes with influencing on behalf of people and important issues. Because in politics, words matter, stories matter, and as Congressman Clyburn's own remarkable life demonstrates, communication can change the course of history. Congressman Jim Clyburn, welcome to the crux of the story. Well, thank you very much for having me. Growing up in South Carolina, we did you first realize that communication could be a tool for changing people's minds rather than simply expressing your own views. Well, I suspect that really came to be meaningful to me when I was a teenager. My mother was a very hard, working, fundraising person for the NAACP. She was a beautician, and she often used that beauty shop as a forum or a venue for discussions. And you may not recall this, but early on, something was thrust into the forefront of the civil rights stuff going on in South Carolina. There was a case, a chef, nice. It's up to attorney, sued, it's up to chapter, or it's up to branch of the NAACP. And when that trial came, my mother was raising money to help defend the local branch. And one day, doing that trial, she came home, and she told me that she wanted me to go with her to the courthouse. And her words to me were, I want you to see what you can be when you grow up. And I went to the courthouse with her. And what she wanted me to see was attorney Matthew J. Perre. Oh, yeah. It's up to that time he was living in Spottenberg. He was born, of course, in Columbia. But he came to something to the fin, to something branch. And it was one of the most remarkable things that a young guy could see. He was absolutely terrific in that courtroom. And the word that going out about this black lawyer who was making mixed meat, these other attorneys down in the courthouse, something courthouse. And of course, people came from all over Sumter. That courtroom, watching this guy. This is the early 1950s. Well, I went away to South Carolina to stay graduated from high school in '57. And then I get to suck my state. And I get involved in the sit-ins. Matthew Perre came to Orangeburg to defend us after an arrest. I suspect my experience with Matthew was lasted right up to his death. And when he passed away, I got a call saying that Matthew had requested that I speak at his homegrown services. So as watching Matthew Perre over the years, it's what really told me how effective the spoken word could be. Yeah. You've spoken and written about another time, too, during the 1969 Charleston Hospital strike. And your participation in St. Julian Devine's successful campaign to become the first black to serve on the Charleston City Council, to what extent did those events shape your ideas about politics and communications? Oh, a whole lot, a whole lot. What I found out at South Carolina State was that I had some skills that the students saw. And every time we got involved in something, and they wanted somebody to talk with the administration, they would ask me to go meet the president and that guy. If I was the only one in the whole group, they'd ever sat down with the president of cyclist. It was Tennessee Turner at the time. And then, so I get this graduate college that grew to Charleston, to teach school. And after I left the classroom, I met Bill Saunders, who had been very active, come back from the military, and he was very active out on John's Island. And Charleston Hospital strike, between Mayor Mutra, who was the catalyst, and Bill Saunders, I got involved. Now, I was sort of out on the fringes of that. But, once again, they started calling upon me to have these negotiations with local people. And what people never really-- I wouldn't say not everybody, but most people didn't know. But the day that we thought the hospital strike had been settled, there was a garbage worker strike. Oh, wow. The garbage workers, they're in Charleston struck as well, all over the page. And then I was asked, while Bill Saunders was dealing with the hospital strike, they asked me to start meeting with the city officials, dealing with the garbage worker strike. And that's when I first met Mayor Palmer Gilear, and a few others down there. I didn't know what I was doing, but they thought I did. It worked pretty well. I passed the game, right? So if I recall correctly, you end up getting involved in divine campaign and even creating the slogan for that campaign. Yeah. In your mind, what makes you mess with that? Go ahead. That was another incident that my mom's got me in trouble. We were all meeting. Since you were in divine, it was a pretty good trend of Palmer Gilear. And so here we are. There, back then, the municipal elections down there were run on what we call the odd years. This has changed that as well. There's lined up with the other stuff now. But back then, there's odd years. So in 1969, there had never been a black question on Charleston City Council. And the local black community that started that every time they did a black question on the council. And so they decided on the San Julien divine being the candidate. And they started meeting in the law offices of attorney Richard Fields. And so one night, as we were sitting there, someone says, we need to develop a theme for this campaign. And so I was sitting over the corner. I think at the time I was the youngest person in the room. And so I said, well, I've thought of one this that I think might work. and they asked me what wasn't that said well said Julian divine for Ward 9 that's what was the number of the world Julian divine for Ward 9 okay great and we're about to leave and Richard Field says not somebody needs to manage this camp band run the day-to-day operation and Clyburn you seem to have a night for this stuff you're gonna make you the camp band manager and so that happened next day after the meeting I call Centurion divine and said to him I said you know mr. divine if I'm gonna run this camp I need to know a little bit more about you and can we get together and so I can get more familiar with here because I really didn't know it so I went to his house there on Cooper Street over at Charleston Z side and we sat down talking and I'm asking him all kinds of questions about him and as far as I finally said okay I answered all these questions you had about me let me ask a few questions about you so I didn't ask any questions and so finally I said oh you do you have a family I said yes I'm married and with one daughter and so he's for who's your wife and I say well Emily Ange and she's from Moxcoma and he said what did you say and I repeated it he says do you know P.J. England I said yeah Emily is his daughter that's my father-in-law he's a boy that's my cousin oh you know I was mad you he's cousin and they were from Austin it was mother grew up there on the South screen in Charleston and she got married to this guy named Peter England from Moxcoma and she had moved up there on his farm and so here I was running this camp and it taught me not just the power of the spoken word but it taught me that if it's important to speak up when the time comes because those two incidents in that one camp and probably were the two things that so they were the catalyst to my involvement in Charleston politics because as you know heaven working for challenge if it's also South Carolina there are two big things that's very very important are you a binier or come yet I was a come yet and so that relationship was said to be divine and that's a sustainable camp and in 1969 it's what had people coming to me and said well now it's time for us to do something with in the House of Representatives and then the powers to be has selected Herbot Fievin to be the person but others would have me to be the person and so both of us ran in 1970 of course Herbot got elected I didn't but then John West invited me to a staff after I got counted out in the camp ahead and the rest is history yeah well I want to go down a little bit different pathway in the sense that we've talked a little bit about communicating in-around a campaign in election what's the difference in your mind between communicating to win in election and then communicating to govern is there anything that my father may have been a key to all of that my dad used to set things up unbeknownst to me my two brothers he would he had an interesting way of teaching us life's lessons and he used to say to me all the time son he who does not read is no better off than he who cannot read and he those kinds of little things were very important to me I don't know if I realized it at the time but as I began to look back on things another thing he would say all the time because he thought he was really training me to follow him into the ministry that he said you will always say son you read you lead it by precept and example precepts were very important to him but examples were really a little bit more important and he his whole thing was communicate he told me he's a son when you speak him don't worry about getting a little nervous if you don't get nervous you're gonna mess up he's what you take you pick you three thoughts you develop those three thoughts in 15 to 20 minutes and sit now he's now for us preachers we do the father the son and the whole of ghost in public light you pick three topics to discuss doing in 15 to 20 minutes and sit now and so I developed over the years from that in talking to be outside and you mentioned Joe Biden when he was running now said to him at that time he was doing vice president when president yet and I referred to him as Joe I said no Joe you've got to change your style of speaking I said you speak and let's give you in the Senate floor walking around with that Mike hanging in your vest in your cook pocket just meandering all over the place I said I'm gonna tell you like my dad told me and I told him what my dad said to me by the father son and other girls and I said that here is what I try to do and I think you need to do this when you offer a proposal I'm okay with what the question is here is what my proposal will do for you here's what it will do for your family and here's what will do for your community develop those three things doing in 15 minutes and sit down and so with that that's always been where I developed that from my dad and I just kept that try to focus everything and then over the years my late wife insisted that when I ran for office she wanted to see billboards all the experts tell me billboards or waste of money it may be but every time I run I do billboards and so I developed about 20 to 25 years ago a theme that I still run on and that theme is very simple making America's greatness accessible and affordable for all and so as I go through the political life that's what I try to do if you're talking about health care I want to say to the public here is how we can make health care more accessible and more affordable housing more accessible and more affordable energy education whatever it is I tried to develop a theme that theme here's what I will do to help you make education more accessible and more affordable just to the litany of things yeah and that's where I continue to do it yeah I'm curious in general though when you when you come it up on a on a big speech how you orient yourself I know personally one of my favorites was your eulogy of Fritz Hollings where you punctuate each story and that's what I love too about many of your talks is because we already have seen a little bit this warning is there's a story behind that reinforces sort of the topic and in that particular speech you had a refrain thank God that a man can learn and curious when you prepare a major speech do you begin with people or policy or a story in what well I do begin with an experience It came out of my sophomore year, it's after I said I had an encounter with Professor Dr. Howell, Bill Howell, was a professor I had that I enjoyed battering with, a bottoming with, I guess we were battering too. So one day when I was, Charles and something he was saying, he stopped the class and he just walked back toward me and he said, "Now, young man, let me tell you something, you will never be any more, nor will you be any less than what your experiences allow you to be." And that struck me, this is my second year in college, and I have never, ever gotten far from that. And so every speech I developed, I tried to use my experiences at the opening of Mick at the point. And that's what it was, the speech you talked about, was a speech I gave at Fritz Holland's, going away, service at the Citadel. Now, when I got to call from his family, asking me to be one of the three speakers of Governor Joe Biden, who was his good friend in the Senate, and me. Now, I sat down to think about what I would say. And an editorial comment, I think it was a letter to the state newspaper from a local attorney who wrote his letter, "Castigating Fritz Holland." He was talking about how people were lauding his public service. And he went at the negatives in Fritz's background, in this letter, to the editor. And I picked it up and I read it. And now the family is asking me to speak at the service. And I sat down to figure out, what will I say about Fritz Holland's? There would not have a letter to the editor, like this written about my comments. Well, I started thinking about my experiences with Fritz. Then I remembered the point from way back. I don't know if my father insisted that I read. And I remember this point. Thank God a man can change. And I just went to that point to develop my speech about Fritz. My experiences with him. I don't know if I got into it. I don't remember because I had a couple of notes, but I didn't write the speech. I gave it from my experiences and I highlighted some lines from that point. And I just remembered my very first encounter with Fritz Holland was as college student. When I was at South Not State, he was governor. And the sit-ins that I helped to lead took place under his watch. And I said, "No, forget a group of students going to Columbia to meet with him. At least later, I'm sitting in the United States Congress and talking with him about our experiences." He said something to me that few people realized at the time. He said, "Yeah, as governor did, have your locked up." He said, "But, you never saw a cattle frog. You never saw a howling dog. We followed the law." He said, "The law says you were breaking the law and you locked the up for breaking the law." The law made up in the good law. We followed the law. The law didn't require unleashing howling dogs or cattle frogs. And we never did that in South Carolina. I mean, people, when I tell that story, the people, they think back. And there were stakes where that took place. Yeah, even later. I said, "Even later?" Yes. But he and I never got that. And so I remember him introducing me one time to a group up in Washington. And he knew the story about how I met my late wife and that half hamburger. And he told that story. And then he turned and looked at me in the way that nobody could do it better than Fristler says. And he's been eating now their hand ever since. I learned a lot from him. And really, he sat me down to teach me how to do airmarks. It's the whole thing when you airmark federal dollars back to your district. You make sure that these are dollars that are well spent. You make sure that you stretch the imagination. And it was my conversation with Fritz Hollins. They led to that pretty significant airmark to the defense department, or from the defense department to the medical university of South Carolina. Because using my conversation with him in the fact that I had discovered that diabetes that my late wife suffered from. And her father was a double amputee. When he passed away, the diabetes had a tremendous impact on forced readiness. Diabetes was just lethal in the African-American Minute. And South Carolina at the time I got elected was leading the nation in amputations because of the late detection of diabetes. Fritz and I had worked together on getting in mobile units throughout low South Carolina so that we could detect diabetes early and prevent these amputations and better control health care. So that research became a big thing for me. And the research center there at the Medical University of South Carolina was jump-started with a lot of months. But I played a very critical role in getting money out of the defense department because I was my whole thing was people who think it's health care when you go to the HS or something. No, I'm straight to the defense department because Fritz taught me how to make it relevant to people's lives. And so that's what we forgot to buckle that money from. So my relationship with Fritz led me to be able to make that kind of a speech. And I'll tell you what, I've never heard anything about that speech, but accolades. Oh, it was terrific. Well, and the other thing, I think you don't maybe you do fully appreciate, but he learned I think as much from you as you say you learn from him. And one of the things I admire about both of you is that you spent a lot of time as a leader building coalitions. So I'm kind of curious as we kind of move beyond sort of communications to leadership. But what did you learn about earning trust from people who don't necessarily initially agree with you? Because I think that's a bit of an art maybe even a lost art. Yes, well, once again, I go back to to my dad. He talked without ever using the word the value of communicating and the value of learning to reach out to the other side. And it all came from a little discussion we had after over here and a lady said to send you to another lady. You're in the treasure art, never so forget it. And one lady said to the other, yes. And when I see her, I'm going to give her a piece of my mind. And my dad turned to me, so James, did you hear what that that lady just said, that's it. Yes, sir. He's why I know that lady. She doesn't need to give anybody a piece of her mind. She needs to keep all she's got for herself. And for that, I start to really think to not just to be the guarded word, but I developed a little thing that I summarized in a letter that I wrote to the Washington Post years ago, not long after I got to Congress, I can't remember exactly what the issue was that made me write the letter. But in that letter, I said, it the distance between me and the opponent on any issue for five steps. I don't mind taking three of them. And I, the reaction to that letter from the other side of the aisle, come a lady to foundation for my relationships. Now Fritz was a big tennis player. My knees were not, they did not fit tennis to a big golfer. And so it turned out when I got to Congress, I found out that a lot of members came back on Sunday nights or early Monday mornings before the first word on Monday evening. And they would all spend time on the golf course. And I developed the relationship with a few people who were golfers. And at the time, I was the only real golfer in the Congress of Black Caucus. And so I started going back early and playing golf many times. I would be on the Democrat on the course with these guys and almost always the only on the black pressure. And these relationships kind of developed. And I've held on to those relationships. And you know, it was not hard for me. My dad was a Republican. He was a member of the party of Lincoln. And of course, the big shift in South Carolina from the Republican party to the Democratic party among blacks came up in 1948. Court decision that got rid of the quite only Democratic primary. And it was nothing to really 1964 that the big shift took place in South Carolina. Up north, it happened earlier, coming out of the Great Depression because the CC Civilian Conservation Corps, the work pilot administration, those jobs and stuff that came out of that. A lot of black folks in the northern part of the country, it got those jobs. But then the southern part of the country white black folks didn't get those jobs. So the big shift from the Republican party really to the Democratic party started around 1960, but it really took place in 1964. When I tell people about the 1960 presidential election, they're kind of surprised to know they're going into that presidential election in 1960 that was Nixon versus Kennedy that the majority of the black folks in the beginning of that campaign were going to Nixon the Republican. Fritz Hollins had had a relationship with the candidates. Fritz Hollins had been all over South Carolina. They had other places as well, camp in for Kennedy. And all of that came into focus in October of 1966, around three weeks before the election when Martin Luther King Jr. got locked up down there in the Georgia and Kennedy reached out to Coretta Scott King expressing concern. For his sake, the big shift started to take place. Most people don't realize that and I sometimes have to remind some of my Republican friends of that. You all need to check the history on this. You drove my parents out of the Republican party. So all this stuff you're talking about, you need to look back at the history here. And these kinds of discussions, I still have a lot of my Republican friends and most of them don't really know this history and when you bring it forcefully to them, they are appreciative of it and they tend to form a different opinion of it. Thinking about today, today, when I think about political discourse, it's loud. Do you think America has become better at communicating or simply louder? No, no, no, much louder and much not better by any means. I think that this drift, you know, one of the things that I had grown up politically as you can imagine, I thought like a lot of people that politics moved on a linear plane, you know, going ad infinited, going from point A to point B to point C. Well, I learned earlier that that's not the way the politics moved. It moves like a pendulum clock, going left for a while, then back right for a while, back left for a while. And I think that what tends to keep that in check is the ability to communicate. For some reason, people tend not to give much value to creating the kind of climate within which discourse, effective discourse, can take place. And so I try to maintain the climate that would allow me to take those three steps and that other person wouldn't take at least two of them. And now, sometimes, you find out that you don't have to take with two and the other side might take three. But to do that, you have to have a climate. Yeah. Oh, that can take place. Is everything we can do to improve that climate? Well, I think that, you know, one of the fears floating around the country now happens to be AI. And it's kind of interesting to me that is the current generation of scientific curiosity. Years ago, at the beginning of my political career, it was the internet. And I used to tell people all the time, the internet is a great invention. And it's also a horrible invention. And these things are depend upon how you use them. And internet can be a great thing. And it can be horrible. And the same thing with AI, it can be a great thing. But the fear is now being expressed that it could very well be a very bad thing. And it's all because of the climate within which these things develop. And so when it comes to communicating, all these forms of communication. The internet. AI is how we communicate. And so it a lot depends upon who and what kind of person has got the button that you can put the finger on. And change the course of human existence. Communication is key. And so I don't know. Yeah. I think we aren't communicating these days. Yeah. Last fall, you published a book titled The First Aid. Tells the story of eight black men who were elected to Congress from South Carolina during the reconstruction era right after the Civil War. Once they were done, it would take more than 100 years to elect you. I'm just kind of curious as you researched that book and as you reflect on it now has has has the understanding of their stories shaped your approach to leadership in any way. Absolutely absolutely that book was so important to me. I didn't realize it when I started writing it. And of course I started writing the book as a fun book. I had published my you know I did two books earlier. One was that I called Uncommon Courage. This is a book about the the folks who started Bridge V-Eliott before the original case that led to Brown the Board of Education and then I wrote my memoir that I call Blessed Experiences and took an off on that conversation I had with the professor and I said in the introduction that book that all my experiences have not been pleasant but I've considered all of them to be blessings. And so the whole book was about that. And then one day someone came into my office and saw these eight pictures on my wall and said and asked me who they were. And when I was explaining who these people were one of the people expressed amazement because they thought I was the first African American to be elected to Congress from South Carolina. So I told my staff that there's no my next book from about these eight people. And I saw the rightness of fun book about them. And then the elections of 2020 happened. And when I saw the reaction to that I detected from my long time studies having studied about Robert Smalls who was one of the eight a long long time ago I knew about Joseph Rainey who was the first of the eight. And by Richard Cain because I'm a member of Mars Brown the Amy Church not in Charleston. He was the first pastor of that church and it also passed the Emmanuel Church. I knew all of this history. I didn't know a lot about Rancia and the Lodge though I knew they existed. And so I started studying and I was amazed as to how different these people were. And how they even had their differences, public differences, but they coalesced when the good or the order was at stake. And one of the things I tried to get people to understand about these books, you know, thinking back then only three of the eight had ever been enslaved. In this old notion about these people being ignorant and these people not having an education. Robert Smalls not have been the most intelligent out of all the eight of them and he never had a formal education. Robert Brown, there he was one of the eight and he was one of the most prolific lawyers of his time. He was a lawyer up in Massachusetts before he ever came to South Carolina. Richard Kane had graduated from Louisville Force University before he ever came to Charleston and Richard Kane became the 14th AME Bishop, Thomas Miller who was one of the eight however he wasn't really black. He was raised by a black family. He graduated from the HBCU up in Pennsylvania. Lincoln University, George Washington Murray had gone to the University of South Carolina. A lot of people didn't realize that University of South Carolina back just after the Civil War was an integrated institution, had more black students and white students. So when I started researching the lives, the lives of these people and writing about it, it was reinforced the notion that you don't have to be unanimous to have unity. That thing I buy to still in young people today, you not have to agree on everything in all of the have unity and sometimes unity required, requires disagreement. So Congressman, as we close here, I'm just curious, that may be the lesson but if there is one lesson you've learned over your lifetime leadership communications that the next generation of political leaders should understand, what is it and why is it important? To me the most important thing to learn is a little axiom that all of us grew up with and maybe not given enough thought to. If at first you don't succeed, try and try again. That to me is an axiom I put in every one of my commencement speeches. I've been fortunate to all unfortunately to do a lot of commencement exercises, some for elementary students, some for junior high school, all the way up to medical graduates and law school graduates. I've done I think I've received 41-42 honorary degrees and you have to give a speech for that. So what I've learned is that people tend to give up too soon. John Lewis is one of my best friends. We met his 19-year-old college students and the first time they had attempted to go across that Edmund Peters Bridge, we all seen the results of that first march. Supposed they had given up. Where will we be? When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. In order to get that law passed Lyndon Johnson had one big conference of law that started out and Johnson couldn't get every Dirkson was the leader of the Senate to move the bill to Dirkson and since it had taken housing out of it, they took voting out of it. When that Civil Rights Act passed the only thing that was outlawed was in the discrimination in employment. And so when King and Johnson met for the signing, now John Lewis told me this story, I was not there, John Lewis said. King said to President Johnson at the time, he thanked him for the Civil Rights Act when he said to him, "Mr. President, we need voting rights." Only three percent of African Americans in Alabama at the time were registered to vote because of all these creative devices that were being used to keep them from voting. And Johnson, according to my friend John Lewis said to them, "Well, I've used up all my political capital. I just can't do voting just yet." And John Lewis said when they walked outside, King turned to them and said, "Well, boys, look like we have to go back to the South and build some political capital for the President." And that's what it was all about. Now, on that first march, there were beaten. John told me he really thought he was going to die that day. But they didn't succeed, but they were back. They didn't give up. Look at the result of them have not given up. I think, to me, that's the most critical thing about succeeding is knowing or getting to understand that they're going to be impediments. They are going to be failures. And I often say this to students, "How many times did Thomas Edison fail before he successfully got that light bulb down?" And because of that light bulb, which he successfully got done, we consider him America's most prolific inventor. And I say, "Although we don't know how many times he failed, we also know if the history were ever written accurately." He never actually succeeded until he allowed himself to step outside of his comfort zone because Edison got the light bulb done, but he couldn't keep it it it wouldn't stay on and with always overheat and it was not until he met a guy named Lewis Lanhamer hope they're in Massachusetts who had invented this filament and is when Edison got Lanhamer's filament to put in that light brob is when the light bulb became effective now it might have been some discomfort for Thomas Edison to collaborate with Lewis Lanhamer who happened to have been the son of slaves former slaves this black guy up in Massachusetts had invented the filament that this white guy down in New Jersey needed to make his light bulb work and so I say that to students all the time because most almost always integrated groups and I said in them we have to learn that you ain't going to succeed the first time all the time most times you can fail in a lot of endeavors but you shouldn't give up and then you should not be afraid to step outside of your comfort zones because sometimes in order to really succeed you need to collaborate with somebody like Edison with Lanhamer. Two great lessons never give up the power of collaboration Congressman James Clyburn thank you for being with us on the crux of the story and thank you for your service to South Carolina in the country. I'm honored and proud to call you my Congressman as well thank you very much. If you have not read it I encourage all of you to do so the book is the first eight by Congressman Jim Clyburn I enjoyed it so much I actually gifted copies to friends and family last year and thanks again to Congressman Clyburn for all the insights on political leadership and political communication today and many thanks to all of you who are listening this podcast is brought to you from the Kennedy Greenhouse studio at the University of South Carolina's School of Journalism and Mass Communication. We look forward to being with you next time when we'll explore yet another crux of the story. Thanks for listening to the crux a production of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications and Association with the Kennedy Greenhouse studio at the University of South Carolina. You can find our episodes on SoundCloud, iTunes and Spotify or by visiting our website thecroxpodcast.org you