Podcast
Aspire with Osha: art, nature, humanity
Hosted by Osha Hayden · EN
Osha interviews people who are dedicated to working to create a better future for us all in the fields of art, nature and humanity. We explore stories and discover people on a quest to deepen our connection to life and to our common humanity. On Aspire with Osha you’ll meet people who are passionate about creating a more positive future. There will be music, poetry and inspiring stories. Come hang out with us and if you like what you hear, like us and help spread the word. Thank you!
10episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
A Healthcare Collapse? Or A Tax on Billionaires?
Apr 1300:27:10Tap to summarizeOsha and guest, Erin Kelly, discuss the California Billionaire Tax Act, a one-time tax on billionaires to help fund the gap left by the bill Congress passed that gave huge tax cuts to the wealthiest 1 % and cut funding for healthcare. (called "The big beautiful Bill" by its sponsors).As a result of the cuts, our healthcare costs continue to rise, millions will lose their coverage, and hospitals and clinics will shut down, threatening the very fabric of our healthcare system. How does the Billionaire Tax Act work to address the coming healthcare collapse? How does it work? Who pays and how much? Will it cause billionaires to flee California to avoid a one-time tax, or is that a scare tactic? Listen to learn more. For more info https://billionairetaxnow.org/Funding details https://www.fppc.ca.gov/If you enjoyed this show, please leave a positive review and share with your friends. Thank you! Osha
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What's Up With The Giving Pledge? with guest Bella DeVaan
Feb 100:38:41Tap to summarizeWith wealth inequality growing by the minute, and the dismantling or hollowing out of public programs, there is now, perhaps more than ever, a need for charitable giving. In today’s interview, we’ll reveal the results of an important report on the status of the Giving Pledge - 15 years after its creation. You may be wondering, what is the Giving Pledge? Founders Bill Gates, ex-wife Melinda French and Warren Buffet established the Pledge to encourage greater charitable giving by billionaires to fulfill their commitment to the public good. Stay tuned to hear what this report reveals about philanthropic giving. The funding bill passed in 2025 by Congress transfers even more wealth from working people to billionaires and large corporations by lowering their tax rates. Are they using that wealth to give back to the common good through charitable giving? How have things changed in the past 15 years?BioOur guest is Bella DeVaan, Associate Director of the Charity Reform Initiative and a Co-editor of Inequality.org. DeVaan graduated cum laude with a B.A. in American Studies from Columbia University, where she studied inequality and philanthropy. This podcast covers a lot of information, so I'm including relevant links.Report on the Giving Pledge, 15 years later: https://ips-dc.org/report-giving-pledge-at-15/https://inequality.orghttps://inequality.org/subscribeBook: Burned by Billionaires - by Chuck Collins If you enjoyed this show, please leave a positive review and share with your friends. Thank you! Osha
Transcribe →A Dark Cloud Hangs Over America
Jan 2800:02:33Tap to summarizeHello Friends,This is Osha and I want to share a poem that came tumbling out yesterday morning in response to the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and all the brave souls who gathered in the streets of Minneapolis, in below freezing cold to protest. I stand with you.If you enjoyed this show, please leave a positive review and share with your friends. Thank you! Osha
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Billionaires and You
Jan 2500:33:21Tap to summarizeHow is the billionaire class harming you? The answer may be deeper and more pervasive than you imagined.My guest, Chuck Collins, author of Burned by Billionaires, is an expert in the subject of rising wealth inequality. The share of US wealth concentrated in the top .01% has grown exponentially. Within one year, during the pandemic, while many people and small businesses were struggling to survive, the total wealth of the billionaire class grew by about 54%. Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies where he co-edits Inequality.org - and is the author of numerous books and articles.The greatest social disruption is driven by households in the top one-tenth of one percent. The excesses of the few have out-sized costs for the rest of us. As we talk, you may recognize some of the harms you have experienced in your own life. How about the rising costs of food, housing, health care, education, and the increasing effects of the climate crisis and media consolidation. Is this situation sustainable?How can we change the status quo and shift to a healthier more prosperous system for everyone? You may recognize my guest, Chuck Collins, from our previous episodes: #54 How Trillions in Hidden Wealth Impacts Us; #52 Unveiling the Power of Activism in the Climate Crisis, and in the more recent episode #59, Hijacked by Billionaires. Why so much attention to this issue? Because a small adjustment to wealth accumulation by the few can have a tremendous benefit for the future of humanity and our planet. This episode is a call for a better world, one where we can thrive together. After listening, you may want to gather and talk with your neighbors and friends, share stories and ideas, and celebrate the joy of community. When we join our voices and work together, we are powerful. For more information:Chuck Collins https://www.chuckcollinswrites.comAn excellent newsletter https://inequality.orgExcessive CEO Pay: https://inequality.org/article/pope-ceo-pay/Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Rashida Tlaib are spearheading an effort behind one particularly promising solution: hefty tax hikes on companies with huge gaps between their CEO and median worker pay. Their recently introduced Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act would base the CEO-worker pay ratio on five-year averages of the total compensation for a firm’s highest-paid executive and median worker. The tax increases would start at 0.5 percentage points on companies with gaps of 50 to 1 and top out at five percentage points on firms that pay their CEO more than 500 times median worker pay. Billionaire wealth concentration. https://inequality.org/article/billionaire-wealth-concentration-is-even-worse-than-you-imagine/Charity Reform Initiative https://inequality.org/action/charity-reform-initiative/If you enjoyed this show, please leave a positive review and share with your friends. Thank you! Osha
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Honoring Dorothea Lange
Nov 2100:03:41Tap to summarizeHonoring Dorothea Lange, the American documentary photographer and photojournalist who, through her snapshots and commentary, recorded the consequences of the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression and WWII in California.Snapshots in black & white illustrate the human suffering and struggle to survive of farmers fleeing the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, and the internment of Japanese American citizens.A walk through the past brings us back to today. Here we are, 95 years years after the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. Poverty is spiking in the country with the highest concentration of billionaires in the world, the U.S.A. Through the machinations of the billionaires and fossil fuel corporations, the White House has rolled back progress in dealing with the climate crisis. Remember the suffering and loss caused by the Dust Bowl? Remember the devastation caused by the Great Depression? I don’t. I wasn’t even born yet. But we have much to learn from that bleak period. Much that applies to our times, to 2026 and beyond. For information on those times, see my blog post https://oshahayden.com/honoring-dorothea-lange-95-years-later/ After experiencing the live performance of Last West Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, this is what floated up for me. https://svma.org/exhibition/last-west/For more: https://oshahayden.com/RELEVANT HISTORY The DUST BOWL “Between 1930 and 1940, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered a severe drought. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Most of the settlers farmed their land or grazed cattle. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. As the demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were plowed and planted.Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually, the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow away. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. The sky could darken for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. In some places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. Nineteen states in the heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. With no chance of making a living, farm families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers.”“In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices.”“In his 1939 book The Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west--from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless--restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do--to lift, to push, to pick, to cut--anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land." Library of Congress US History If you enjoyed this show, please leave a positive review and share with your friends. Thank you! Osha
Transcribe →Hijacked by Billionaires with guest Chuck Collins
Jun 28, 202500:33:15Tap to summarizeToday we are talking about the billionaires that have hijacked the American government. My guest, Chuck Collins, is uniquely qualified to talk about this issue. As heir to a family fortune, he had an insider’s seat at the table of wealth management - and what he learned about how things operate - caused him to do something considered radical - by the others at the table. He chose to donate his inheritance and dedicate himself to exposing the corrupting influence of dynastic wealth. This is Aspire with Osha; art, nature, humanity, and I’m your host, Osha Hayden. My guest Chuck Collins, has been on the show several times. Let me tell you more about this remarkable man.Chuck Collins is the Director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies where he co-edits Inequality.org. Author of several books on wealth inequality, including most recently, The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions. He also wrote a novel, Altars to an Erupting Sun and has a new book coming out this Fall, and we’ll hear more about that.You may have listened to our previous interview from Nov 5, 2023, available on my podcast https://oshahayden.com/podcast/how-trillions-in-hidden-wealth-impacts-us-insights-from-chuck-collins/Osha and Chuck Collins discuss what happens when wealth is transferred from working citizens to the top .01% and billionaires are able to influence policy and elections.Are you curious about how billionaires have captured such a large percentage of the world’s wealth? About how they have rigged the system in their favor and yet pay so little in taxes? Chuck Collins states that “the combined wealth of the nine-figure club is now $16.1 trillion, up $2 trillion from a year ago.” What are some steps we can take to challenge the takeover of our government by Billionaire oligarchs?We discuss what happens when mega billionaires seize control of the levers of power, and how that affects middle class and poor citizens.In Tolkien’s masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, he describes the rings of power and the one ring to rule them all. In the trilogy, evil and hatred are on the rise and the dark lord Sauron seeks to find this ultimate ring of power. Because - once he takes possession of the ring, he has control over everything. But the ring is toxic in its power, it utterly corrupts the soul of whoever carries it. Osha notes the relevance of this story to the corrupting influence of extreme wealth and power.It’s worth noting that although one of Musk’s corporations, Tesla, is valued at over $1 trillion, it paid zero income tax last year. (ITEP, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Jan 30, 2025) https://itep.org/tesla-reported-zero-federal-income-tax-in-2024/The US Debt is now over 36 trillion. It is estimated that the budget package being proposed would add another 5.1 trillion to the deficit. Who is on the hook for that deficit?Chuck Collins has a new book, Burned by Billionaires, coming out this Fall. Learn more about Chuck’s work and his books: https://inequality.orghttps://www.chuckcollinswrites.com/Other Sites of Interest:https://www.postcarbon.org/. Richard Heinberg, author of Power: Limits & Prospects for Human SurvivalIf you enjoyed this show, please leave a positive review and share with your friends. Thank you! Osha
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Chaos to Joy - guest Justine Toms of New Dimensions Radio
Jun 24, 202500:47:40Tap to summarizeIn an inspiring conversation with Justine Willis Toms, co-founder of New Dimensions Radio, Osha and Justine discuss the power of deep listening and holding space as they navigate the troubled water of these times with vision, spirit and joy. Justine shares powerful practices and lessons from her storied career. As one of the founding conveners of the Millionth Circle Initiative, she has been engaged in Circle Work for decades and speaks about the value of these Circles, especially in difficult times. The Millionth Circle Initiative, is based on Jean Shinoda Bolen’s groundbreaking book, The Millionth Circle.About Justine Willis Toms is Co-Founder, Executive Director and Host of New Dimensions Radio & Media which has been broadcasting since 1973. New Dimensions is an internationally syndicated radio series, featuring dialogues with the world’s most visionary wisdom leaders. Justine, along with co-founder Michael Toms, was inducted to the 2011 Broadcasters Hall of Fame.Justine Willis Toms has also hosted the radio series In Her Company: Deep Dialogues with Women of Wisdom, and has produced many award-winning radio series. Besides her radio work, she leads workshops on Finding Grace in a Chaotic World. She is coauthor with Michael Toms of True Work: Doing What You Love and Loving What You Do, and author of Small Pleasures: Finding Grace in a Chaotic World. In June 2004, she was one of thirty people in the world invited to participate in the Synthesis Dialogues with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.Check out New Dimensions Radio & media: https://newdimensions.org/You can hear Justine on her podcasts: New Dimensions Radio, and New Dimensions Cafe https://newdimensions.org/podcasts/Learn about Circle Work: https://millionthcircle.org/Jean Shinoda Bolen: https://www.jeanbolen.com/@aspirewithOsha, @buzzsprout, @newdimensions.org, @millionthcircle.org, @oshahayden.comIf you enjoyed this show, please leave a positive review and share with your friends. Thank you! Osha
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How the Jazzmen Used Joy to Transform America
Oct 17, 202400:48:38Tap to summarizeToday we’re talking with guest, Larry Tye, about how the joyful swinging sounds of jazz broke through racial barriers during the time of Jim Crow - not only in America - but across the world — and how famous jazz men, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong & Count Basie, basically wrote the soundtrack for the Civil Rights movement in America.ABOUT LARRY TYEMy guest is Larry Tye, New York Times bestselling author who has written nine books - including his recent, The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong & Count Basie Transformed America. From 1986 to 2001, Tye was an award-winning reporter at The Boston Globe, where his primary beat was medicine. Tye graduated from Brown University, was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, and taught journalism at Boston University, Northeastern, and Tufts.In the preface to his book, The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong & Count Basie Transformed America, Larry Tye states:“This book lies at the intersection of two American stories — one about this country at it most hidebound and straightlaced, the other about jazz, the all-American music form, at its most locomotive and sensuous. We’ll follow those contortions in the enclosed and electrifying settings of honky tonks - and concert halls.” Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong & Count Basie were trailblazers who brought jazz to the masses and in so doing, broke racial boundaries. Ultimately, they became global ambassadors for the United States as they exported their joyful swinging sounds and brought crowds to their feet. For more information, you can read Larry Tye's deeply researched book, The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong & Count Basie Transformed America.It’s ironic that the grandson of slaves, an abandoned son raised by a family of Lithuanian Jews, and the son of a coachman & laundress rose to fame and became the face of jazz on the international stage - they met the Queen, were toasted by numerous Presidents, were on the celebrity A-list. Because of them, people began to see black men in a different light. The Jazzmen created the soundtrack for the Civil Rights Movement and opened doors for those to come.My question for you: Can we help lift and unify the world through our art forms? Can we go go viral with the expression of joy? What would you rather experience and support - doom and negativity - or joy and hope? Perhaps the example of these jazzmen shows us the way.Thanks for listening. Have an inspired week - and live your joy!https://larrytye.com@buzzsproutIf you enjoyed this show, please leave a positive review and share with your friends. Thank you! Osha
Transcribe →The Transformative Force of Art in Society: A Conversation with Ken Grossinger
Apr 30, 202400:47:08Tap to summarizeJoin our journey through the captivating world of art and its profound influence on societal transformation with Ken Grossinger, a strategist and documentary producer with a wealth of experience. This episode promises to reveal the often underestimated power of art to incite and sustain meaningful change. We reminisce about the civil rights movement and the United Farm Workers, where anthems and theatrical performances weren't just acts of expression but were essential to the courage and unity of those fighting for justice. Ken provides insights into how these artistic endeavors have left an indelible mark on our society.Our conversation takes an exciting turn into the realm of cinema, where we unpack the extraordinary impact of films like "The China Syndrome" and "Nine to Five" and "Chasing Ice" on public awareness and activism. These cultural landmarks demonstrate the unique ability of movies to inform and mobilize, creating ripples of change that extend far beyond the silver screen. We also discuss the evolution of environmental activism's artistic expression. From silent landscapes to resonant songs in the campaign against Alaska's Pebble Mine, we see how art has become an integral voice in the chorus for environmental preservation.The episode rounds off with a look at the transformative role of museums and foundations in community activism and social justice. Museums are stepping out of the shadows to become beacons of progress, taking an active stance on pressing issues by engaging with the stories and struggles of the communities they represent. Through the lens of initiatives like the Art for Justice Fund and the JPB Foundation's integrated funding approach, we uncover how strategic collaborations between artists, philanthropists, and activists are crafting a new narrative for social change, proving that the brush, the lens, and the pen are mightier than ever before.For more info: https://www.artworksbook.comIf you enjoyed this show, please leave a positive review and share with your friends. Thank you! Osha
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Dr. Brian Williams on Racism, Gun Violence, and Healing America: From Trauma Surgeon to Congressional Candidate
Feb 21, 202400:38:35Tap to summarizeWhen the harsh realities of racism and gun violence collide, the result can be life altering. This week's guest, Dr. Brian Williams, a trauma surgeon turned congressional candidate, opens up about one such pivotal night that altered his trajectory: the July 7, 2016 Dallas protest shooting. Amid the chaos of that evening, Dr. Williams found his voice in advocacy, pushing for societal healing and unity in the face of discrimination and tragedy. As we listen to his journey, you'll feel the weight of history and the urgency of his mission to serve a nation, especially as he reflects on his family's military legacy and the racial barriers they've endured.Our conversation with Dr. Williams doesn't shy away from the uncomfortable truths that lay at the intersection of professional obligation and racial identity. His impromptu call for unity, born from the depths of despair and hope after the Dallas shooting, serves as a powerful reminder of the work needed to forge safer communities. Dr. Williams's experience as a Black man in America and his commitment to ending violence extend into our discussion on the role of empathy and storytelling. It's an exploration of how these tools can lead to profound social change and the importance of acknowledging our shared humanity to overcome health disparities and systemic injustice.By the end of our dialogue, it's evident that Dr. Williams is not only a physician committed to saving lives but also a visionary aiming to reshape the fabric of our society. He shares insights from his book, "The Bodies Keep Coming" and discusses his aspirations for Congress—where his unique perspective as a trauma surgeon, veteran, and Black American can influence policy for the betterment of all. This episode is an invitation to recognize the potential for change that each of us holds and the critical impact our individual actions can have on the collective journey toward equity and justice. Join us for this powerful episode, and leave with a renewed understanding of the complexities of race, gun violence, and the potential for healing in America.The Bodies Keep Coming: Dispatches From a Black Trauma Surgeon on Racism, Violence, and How We Heal https://brianwilliamsmd.com/https://drbrianwilliamsforcongress.com/If you enjoyed this show, please leave a positive review and share with your friends. Thank you! Osha
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