Episode 1: Love & Truth Over Headlines - Where Curiosity & Compassion outrun Certainty & Hate

You never do know what's around the bend. A big adventure or a brand new friend when you're curious like Curious George. Swing! When every day, every day is so glorious, glorious. And everything, everything is so wondrous.

Curious George, a staple of my childhood. Love that little monkey. He's just out causing mischief. Uh, but really what is he trying to do? Childlike wonder, learn, explore the world. Pretty wonderful qualities. So what I'm seeking to embody here on Win With Web, more curious than George, is a healthy curiosity into current events, topics of interest, things that I think would be fun to discuss, and maybe kind of like a book club-like atmosphere. In the future, I'll endeavor to have a guest or two perhaps, and I definitely want to get conversation going, whether it's actually on the comments or threads or with you and your friends out and about in a living room, in a kitchen somewhere, making delicious, tasty hors d'oeuvres, however you do. So excited to dive into this. And when I was thinking of topics for the first episode, it became really clear what I wanted to talk about— divine timing in the universe essentially coming down. And I'll get into that in just a moment. However, I'm gonna start out with a housekeeping item or two. So I'm doing this because I want to create a safe place for discussion, for learning, for growth. I don't know about a lot of you, but I feel that's really lacking. And the older you get, the more siloed and segmented life can be in terms of who you work with or the gym you go to, or if you go out to certain bars or, uh, certain social activities and you can meet people organically that way, but it's harder for people to maybe seek out like-minded people or know where to find them without it maybe feeling like it just happens. I, I do think that there are a lot of wonderful podcasts and other things out there that can help foster that. So that's sort of the goal is one humble person's journey, learning about a given topic for an episode, sharing that, and something I like to call a working point of view, meaning with the knowledge that I have now, Here's how it makes me think and feel. I still have more questions. I endeavor to be like that 5-year-old kid. How many questions in a row can they ask? And they ask and they ask, and that's healthy. They want to seek to understand and then understand more because a lot of things, especially the kind of things I want to talk about, are not so simple as 2 2 4. It's not math at all. It's a lot of gray. So not a simple in a box, this or that, you're either on one side or the other. It's a lot of gray. Gray, meaning that it's complex, it's convoluted, and the old saying of two things can be right at the same time. And it can make both sides, if you're in a debate, go, "Huzzah, point for Gryffindor, Slytherin," whoever. They're not all bad. You can't give me a hard time about that one. So simple rules. If you embody any sort of negativity, bullying, demeaning behavior, or energy that doesn't show that you are coming from a place of compassion in your heart, of genuine curiosity, I don't care if you're one of the smartest people of all time. I have no time and no space for that. I won't acknowledge it. Not happening. Not here. I am all about promoting a healthy sense of asking questions. I think all of us can remember a time growing up where we felt silly if we didn't know what a cool phrase was or something. And in society, we can still feel that way as adults where I don't want to be that person that doesn't know this answer or come across as silly because I don't fully understand that. Whether it's somebody that's well-informed or somebody that doesn't know, we need to be respectful of that. And we need to create this space so we can all together learn, grow, and feel, especially in turbulent times, we're not alone. We have other people out there that care about us and want to put themselves in the game. Life is about being in the game and being present for what you feel your purpose and what calls to you represents. And I could sit here and tell you, oh my gosh, like, this isn't a great podcast, or be the self-doubting voice. But there's only so much planning and prep you can do in anything in life. At a certain point, you got to put yourself in the game and do the thing. And sure, I'm confident I'll get better at this the more that I go. And I'm not going to sit here and tell you this is my first recording. You don't need to know how many times I recorded it. Kidding aside, we're going to go ahead and dive right in. So really what I thought would be appropriate for this first episode is the tragedy of Renée Goode, ICE, the state of immigration in the country, and broader stroke philosophical questions and things that I'm pondering. And throughout this, I'd love to know what you're pondering, what you're feeling, what your experiences are. I live here in St. Paul. I'm a proud member of the Twin Cities community. And I can say in a time of unrest and scared times, violent times, in the wake of this tragedy, I've seen a community band together and I've seen small business owners raise money. I've seen people get in their cars to give people rides to work. To go grocery shopping and deliver them items. I've seen companies act with compassion for the state of things, and it's amazing to see that part. And if there's any kind of silver lining in the tragic loss of Miss Good, it's the power that this community has when they come together with open hearts and care in their hearts for their fellow neighbors and people. So, All I'll say on the loss of Miss Good, it is a tragedy. Go out and look at the videos yourself. I posted one on my story that was a wonderful person who looked at a variety of videos, angles, and lenses, and I can definitively say, having watched it with my own two eyes and been patient and looked into things, It didn't need to escalate to the situation it did. Anyone that carries a firearm, whether they're in the military, National Guard, police, ICE, you should be held to a very high standard in how you use that and when the situation warrants and calls for it. And nothing, I repeat, nothing about that situation called for that officer to escalate things to the level that he did. And I hope he's held accountable for his actions. Awful, deplorable, heinous, and tragic. Now I'll back up. Let's get a more macro view. Let's look at ICE, the Immigration Control Agency of the US, formed around 2002 stemming from the events of 9/11 and under the Department of Homeland Security. I did some research, I looked at their own website and came up with some stuff here. So from their site, they aim to preserve American safety. That is their mission, that is their calling. So historically, they've gone from a worst-first approach, meaning, you know, any really bad people— murderers, rapists, um, grand theft auto, who knows, um, all these folks that illegally are here doing things that they shouldn't be doing. Drug trafficking, who, you know, you can think of all the things that historically has been their, um, main mission, main focus. However, if we want to go more recently, from 2018 in October to November of 2024, there has been 73% in detainment that had no criminal conviction or record from their own data. That means essentially 3 in 4 people were not criminals at all. Now let's define that further. Criminal. So if we take away the petty, like, traffic violations, things of that nature, nonviolent crimes, we're actually only left with 5% of people detained by ICE with violent convictions. That's crazy. For context, let me back up here. Let this sink in. From that roughly 6-year period I mentioned, 65,000+ people, that means 48,000 of them didn't commit any crime at all, and closer to, you know, 55,000 plus, you know, you can do better math than me, didn't even have a violent crime. That's wild to me. We live in a day and age where if somebody did a crime and it's nonviolent and they're here illegally, there's technology for electronic tracing where people can be at home with their families while the legal system unfolds the way that it's designed to in a democracy while people can be and maybe in the process of becoming legal naturalized citizens or green cards or any number of those things. I'm going to get into that whole plight in terms of the immigration part in a minute, because that's really what this all boils down to, right? It's not about left or right. It's about A, let's start with caring for our fellow humans. We're on this planet Earth, and whether you believe in science or religion or how we got here, that really makes no never mind. We are a community of beings that have it within our ability to care and to love our fellow man and woman regardless of age, sex, color of their skin, where they were born, any of those things. I think so many people have forgotten that. Don't you? How often do people even smile at each other sometimes? I wish that was more often. I'm that weird guy that smiles at strangers. If you know me, that probably doesn't surprise you. National media, don't get me started. It's so negative, manipulative, and misinformative. I gotta give a shout out Mr. Perlow, wherever you are in the greater Delta and the Bayou in Mississippi, I think, incredibly influential on me at a younger age in honors history, American studies. At the onset of every class, each student had an opportunity to share a current event. It was a brief section, and, you know, an article we'd summarize, such and such is happening in Iran, or such and such is coming out of the White House, and it was our job as a collective classroom to uncover the author bias What are the actual facts? What do we know and what don't we know? And trust but verify and dig deeper. And so many people that are on, you know, the left or the right, they forget that. They don't know how to slow down and be curious. They don't know how to have an emotionally intelligent conversation to learn. And it doesn't mean they don't want to. I think it can be really challenging. We all get emotional about, you know, I stub my toe, that really hurts. Let out a curse word or two, but on a more serious note, if I get into a fight with a loved one, the way that the brain works is we get into this dysregulated state and we become emotional and we have feelings. We're human. We get angry, we get sad, we get upset, we get defensive. Did you know scientifically we are not thinking with the smart part of our brain when this happens? So what do our therapists encourage is for us to recognize when we are in an unregulated state communicate that, and ideally separate ourselves from any potential conflict. If we can learn how to be more consciously aware and self-regulate these emotions, we don't have to disassociate, we don't have to pretend otherwise. We can feel those feelings, go away, go on a walk, do what we need to do, and come back when we're more emotionally regulated to have a real conversation. When I think of the world and I think of mass news, it's a lot of rich people lining the pockets of those television executives to tell you what they want you to feel, what they want you to think. Pretty smart people, right? There's a reason that they've probably accrued a lot of that money, and they do so in a way that comes across as true and authentic, and it makes you feel empowered, and I understand what's happening in the world. Nah, the events that are happening here in the Twin Cities is only further proof of that to me. The rhetoric out of the White House is making this about crime and safety, yet what I just told you, facts from their own website, 5% of people are criminal offenders of a violent nature. You look at how the story of Rebecca Goode was portrayed by the head of DHS, flat out lying, slander, manipulating truth, misinformation. Those are the tactics of a child, somebody that doesn't know how to take a step back and really open your heart and perspective to what another person is feeling or thinking. And not— you don't jump to being defensive if you're regulated and emotionally intelligent to be able to objectively discern what is happening. You do what she did if you have an agenda, and it's deplorable because I saw it with my own two eyes. I don't need to be on one side or the other. I'm on the side of humans. I'm on the side of compassion. I'm on the side of choosing to think about how we can come together and learn and grow and what we need to address and talk about. I don't care how awkward it is. The fact that we're in this state and there's no checks and balances— our democracy is— democracy was built with checks and balances. It doesn't mean they're enforced the way they should be. Do you think they are? Who right now is holding ICE accountable for how they're conducting these searches, for how they're detaining people that are unconscious, being kneed in the face, shot trying to get into their own home, warrants that aren't consistently being signed by judges but just pencil-whipped by, I don't know, the guy next to you. I have seen a lack of regard for other human life and a lack of compassion to a level that just makes my heart want to weep. This is not the best of us. This is not representative of what we can be if we choose to act with compassion. I'm going to take a minute there because this is heavy. This, this is tough. This is happening in my community. It's happened in other cities— Chicago, New York, other places. We need the elected officials to take more power. There needs to be more checks and balances from the Supreme Court. There needs to be more checks and balances from immigration lawyers. We need to do more because what's happening is not okay. Now, back up. I understand illegal immigration is a problem. It's a problem from a number of ways if we look at it, right? There's a really high probability that at some point in your ancestral DNA, there was somebody in a similar situation, really hard up, trying to find a new pay, a new place, a new way. And a lot of people like to conveniently forget that our country was founded on stealing land, slavery, and a lot of really not great stuff. But what I can look at the flag and be proud of is where we've come in terms of rights for all, regardless of color, regardless of gender inequality, there's so many wonderful things that I've seen. You know, when you look at US history, where we've come, yet the job's never done. Each day we wake up, we get to choose what type of human that we want to be. And I think there's a lot of us that are either heads buried in the sand because we don't know what to do, we're scared, we feel powerless. There's some that are just believing what one media outlet says. Without question. There's plenty that just simply don't have enough experiences to understand, and this is all complicated. I don't have an easy answer for illegal immigration. Did you know that there is backed data that shows over the life of somebody that's an illegal immigrant, it's $68,000 in terms of like the net cost? And you can add it up in terms of the number of people. Yes, they pay taxes. I won't get into the nuance of that. But the system is broken. If you think people coming here overall, again, you gotta remember, out of all the people that I just talked about that ICE has detained, 5% are criminally violent. Most of the people that come here saw the Statue of Liberty. Give me your tired, give me your hungry, give me your weak. Melting pot of America. How did this country form? There were Irish immigrants, there were Italian immigrants, German immigrants, you know, all these things. And people coming together. And there's wonderful parts of history that celebrate that diversity under the common flag of freedom, the ability to chase the American dream, a democracy where everybody has a voice and a vote. And none of it's perfect, of course it's not. And there's always going to be a myriad of issues, but one of the ones that I just don't get is how are we not looking at the systemic part of this? So stay with me. Obama put more people, like on record, go look it up, in ICE detainment than anyone else. Trump has accelerated the aggressive tactics, and this is where those checks and balances, like, we need it and it's not there. People in power should have checks and balances in a very specific and strict way over them because of that power that they wield. And I get back to what's happening. It's unacceptable. I won't stand for it. And I don't believe in living in a world where we are on the sideline. There are plenty of people that are going to be critical, and they're going to hide behind fake masks of anonymity online because it's always easier to tear something down than it is to face fear in the face to look at something that there's not a clear answer on how to build, but to choose to get your hands dirty, to choose to care with your heart about your neighbors and fellow humans, to look at the world like the female astronaut from Iran did. And forgive me, I forget her name right now, but she talked about how she didn't see country lines. She didn't see color, race, all this divisiveness. She saw humans. She saw a beautiful planet with an opportunity to learn more about one another, and to really be more thoughtful and considerate of one another. So I think about the systemic problem, and I think government using outdated technology, the backlogs of people trying to be here legally, the amount of time it takes is ridiculous— years. The process that they have to go through. Ridiculous. It's very frustrating because those that want to be here should be given an opportunity to earn that and to be here the right way. And right now it is beyond difficult. And that's sad. I think of our great country as so great because of the diversity and the people that are coming in while representing a lot of core values about treating your neighbor like you want to be treated yourself, um, the ability to choose the vocation and career that you want, to chase your own version of the American dream. There's so many wonderful things, and there also needs to be accountability. I don't believe in programs that give back if there isn't oversight into how they're administered, if there aren't quality checks. Around what is or isn't working. Anybody that continues to receive food, money, something without being taught, encouraged, given resources to elevate— it's that adage of teach somebody to fish, don't just continually give them fish. And there's some middle ground solution where there are so many smart people out there with big hearts that if we can all put our heads together, we can start to make it better. I don't think anyone wants to be in a situation where they're take, take, take, take. And those that do, there should be accountability and they're cut off. You have to earn it. Think about unemployment. It's a simple example, but the principles remain the same. If somebody's in a hard situation, there's unemployment money to help you get by up to a finite period of time. During that time, you have access to a lot of free resources, people that want to help you with your resume, interviewing skills, a career scatter test to understand where your passions lie. They have relationships with contract companies or other business owners. It is very hard to not get a job if you don't put in the effort, but what happens? I'm sure you can imagine plenty of people sit on the couch and Netflix and don't do anything about it. People that aren't choosing to want to grow shouldn't just be continually given handouts. There needs to be more accountability around those systems. But what's happening now and how we're treating people that are out there wanting to support their families, work hard, is apprehensible. We can get into other conversations on how things around school and the costs there, or the cost in hospitals and emergency care, uh, for illegal immigrants are there. Again, systemic. If there was an easier pathway to citizenship and somebody being able to be here legally, then those things inherently go away. And somebody then is wanting to be here, wanting to be educated, up themselves. And those that aren't, there's that vetting process and they don't stay. But there's no reason people should be being hauled off, beaten unconscious, and ran over like a less than human person by somebody wielding power they shouldn't have in this way that shouldn't be unchecked. I'd be curious to hear what everyone thinks, what their own thoughts are as some of this is unfolding. I truly get back to how can the system be better? How can we have a better philosophy over what's happening? Love and truth and curiosity over certainty. Love and truth over headlines. So I want to kind of just pause and, you know, hear feedback, whether comment or message me. Is this something that you want me to dig in deeper to? Is there an avenue that we can explore and learn more on together? Tag links on how you can help your local community. I truly believe it's in discussions and bringing people together that Instead of feeling powerless, like, you know, what's my vote going to do? Or what can I actually change? It's like, we can do this. We can come together and we can talk about it. And the collective voice grows stronger and stronger the more that come together that want to see change and enact change and be a part of ensuring that we hold our elected officials accountable to follow through on promises. To create a better life for all of us. And to me, if we remember our basic humanity on this planet, and we think about as a leader, as America likes to think of itself, and the prideful version that I still love and want us to really embody, it's not this. It's not what's happening out on the streets with ICE today. It's not hate mongering. By somebody in charge that doesn't lead with love and compassion. And two things can be true at the same time. There are plenty of policies that have been passed that you could say, great, but that also doesn't mean that I have to like him as a person or respect his leadership, nor do I condone or am behind him what's happening here today. It's the gray, it's the nuance. Things are more complicated than a lot of people tend to make him. So I would like to see some changes. You could do a simple search and find some valid sources that talk about, well, we could reestablish enforcement priorities with ICE, get back to worst crimes and focus on that. We can get back to independent oversight board, so somebody that's actually making sure that they are doing things the way they're supposed to be doing, you know, actual judge signing warrants, actually maybe humane treatment in those detention facilities, treating humans like humans and not the garbage that they've been treated like here in the Twin Cities, powered over subpoenas over DHS records, checks and accountability for Ms. Noeman, people that are blatantly lying and creating this unnecessary conflict. They're further creating this divide by telling me what I see with my own two eyes is wrong. They're telling me this is about safety when it clearly isn't. People like that need to be held in check and called out. That is not an elected official I take pride in representing the voice of what is best for America and for our forward you know, what we need to do to really embrace being that nation deserving of the Statue of Liberty and what she represents of leading with compassion and caring about one another the way that we should. Not one bit. So what can we do? How can we come together to talk about locally, what can we change? How can we talk about the elected officials and what needs to change in the systems and accountability? How can we grow our voice to be stronger? Because we the people do have the power and it's not easy. It's not about the clear step forward. It's about trusting your beliefs and trusting in the person next to you and hand in hand. That's what I hope this can be a start for. Um, when with Webb, more curious than George. First episode, part 1 of maybe 2. More to come. Hopefully I'll see and hear you out there. And much love for any, anyone that tuned in. Any feedback, any discussion thereof, my heart's with you. I care about you. And if you're in my neighborhood, come say hi and be safe out there. Much love.