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- [00:03]
Rachel
Welcome back to another special bonus episode of Concrete Mama, the podcast. Before we close out the season next week with our finale, we wanted to take a short break from our regular programming and answer some more questions from our listeners. On today's episode, Rachel sits down with the team again to discuss everything from what kind of food we eat in prison to whether or not pets are allowed. Some of our answers may actually surprise you.
- [00:28]
Anthony
Here's that conversation now.
- [00:34]
Host
All right, so we got a lot of fun questions that were asked by our listeners that we've been kind of building a repository of. And I'm just gonna popcorn some of these out, and whoever wants to answer can answer. We don't have to all go around and answer each one, but there's, you know, inquiring minds, they want to know. So here we go. Let's see. First question, what kind of books can you read or do you have access to? And what's been the most meaningful book to you while incarcerated? Who wants to go first? Yeah, Red.
- [01:13]
Red
So we can, we can get any books that our family or somebody else sends us off of Amazon. I think there's a couple other ones, too. There's not really too many books that we can't get. And I think the most important book that I've read lately, especially since we've been doing the history lessons, is Kelly Messinger's book Walls of Secrecy. Just because I look to that a lot for information about the 70s. And he was a great person to hear it from.
- [01:46]
Host
Awesome. Others want to answer this one? This is a great question. What other books?
- [01:51]
Anthony
Yeah, I'd actually like to answer this one. I did a lot of reading when I was incarcerated over the five years. I think I at one time I counted, and it was definitely like 250 books I had read. A lot of it was during county time, for sure, because you don't really have much to do when you're in jail. And there's two books I think I would say are the most impactful, and they are ones that I requested from my family. So one is A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. And that is one of Eckhart Tolle, just himself and all of his literature is amazing. Completely redefined my viewpoint on spirituality and life and existence. And I would say New Earth is definitely one of my touchstone guidebooks for living my life. And it was just everything is just an aha moment after an aha moment of reading that. And then Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, I think was also really really impactful for me. For those that don't know, Viktor Frankl was a concentration camp survivor. Anthony's holding up a new earth right now. Yep. Love it.
- [03:02]
Vic
Love it.
- [03:04]
Anthony
Viktor Frankl was a concentration camp survivor in World War II. I believe. I even believe he was held at Auschwitz. And he lost everything. He lost his wife and all of his family members. And he was actually a psychotherapist or psychologist. And he came up with this. His own set of principles or a therapy technique. He called it logotherapy, which is basically that if you. You can survive almost anything as long as you have something to live for and something to hold on to. And he created a whole practice around that, and it just really blew my mind and was really hopeful and meaningful to me to just read about this man that experienced some of the worst horrors and atrocities, I think, in human history and was able to come out of it and still live his life after losing everything and just made me realize how much more I had to live for and. And how grateful I. To still have the things that I had in my life at that time, during my incarceration. And there's a very famous quote from it that actually want to get tattooed on me. I've been meaning to. I just have not had. There's two tattoos I want to get post incarceration. Haven't gotten either of them. But one of them is a quote from it, and he says that he. After they were liberated from Auschwitz, he didn't feel free for many weeks until it was. At one point he was traveling or walking down a country road. And I believe he said it was a Bible verse or a religious verse that came to him. And it said it. It says, I called to the Lord from my narrow prison, and he answered me in the freedom of space. And he fell to his knees and wept. And then that's when he felt free. And that just resonated with me in so many different ways. And it still to this day does. And, yeah, that's something I'll never forget.
- [04:58]
Host
I'm gonna. I'm going to broaden this out and say another question. People are asking, are you offered educational opportunities and how easy or difficult is it to access?
- [05:10]
Vic
Man, I can jump on that one. So the quick answer is, yes, you are offered education. The difficult answer is that it's not just offered to everybody. You know, they have a system of people that are considered priority when it comes to getting education. And so if you already have a sentence that's beyond 10 years, then you aren't considered priority. For education. But you can still participate in what they call is taking satellite classes as you're able to participate but you don't get credit. One of the other option is you can pay for your education. That's what I ended up doing while I was incarcerated. I paid for my education to achieve my associate's in applied science degree from Walla Walla Community College while I was in there. And mind you, it's a depreciated amount that you have to pay, but still a very difficult amount you have to pay because you got to think of how much you make when you work. 42 cents an hour or so, sometimes get a CI job, make a dollar or so. And so to be able to pay that off is a huge thing. It's difficult to access, especially if you're a lifer, because it's deemed like wasted resources because you're never getting out of prison. And so a lot of lifers will do self. They'll get the books from guys that are in classes and things like that, and they'll read through them. Never working towards a degree, but wanting to just self study and be educated anyway. And so there is opportunity for education. It's just, there's a lot of barriers to entry.
- [06:45]
Host
Adding to that, people are curious. Is there a theater or arts program at WSP or any sort of creative outlets that y'all have? No, obviously the podcast.
- [06:57]
Josh
Yeah, well, we got, we, of course we got, you know, the new Concrete Mama podcast. But I think the most creative, creative space at WSP is, is the SPL Lab Sustainable Practice Lab here with our team, Josh Lancaster and Chris McGill. This space is a space where people come and do various things, whether it's, you know, carpentry work, woodworking. There's classes in here. Guys are pouring epoxy, letting their minds, you know, do creative things with that. There's also a aquaponics program here. We have the Green Zone, where guys are able to go out there and really connect with nature and with the natural resources of some of the animals and things that we do have here. And so, but as far as like the, the bigger vision at wsp, we'd like to have something in the future that encompasses more creative spaces like theater, screenwriting, digital design. They do have that in the college area. You can actually go through the college program and get your degree and things like that. But we want to have something where people can really pour all their creative energy into it because they're in prison. That's kind of like, that's an escape other Than going to the yard in the weight deck is actually using your creative side.
- [08:12]
Host
And I'm seeing something in the background right there in the podcast studio, the backs of some paintings. You want to speak to that red?
- [08:20]
Red
The paintings?
- [08:21]
Host
Yeah. How do people get to do those?
- [08:24]
Red
Well, if you work out here, there's a couple people that are able to work in the paint shop, and they can do some paintings and stuff like that, but you can order some stuff off of. I think it's called blick. And you can order, like, paint supplies, pencils, little canvases, that type of stuff, watercolors, and you can actually make some cool stuff in the unit. Somebody actually just made. Did a painting for me of a plant that I sent to my dad in the mail last night. So, yes, it's pretty cool. So, you know, you just have to. You have to purchase that stuff yourself, and then you can do the, you know, have a curio, which is like basically your permission to be able to do arts and crafts and stuff in your house, in your cell, I should say. And then you can. You can send it out or whatever you want to do with it just.
- [09:23]
Josh
To kind of add on that, too. Like, for people that don't know what it's like to be in here. Most of the creativity that goes on here is we do a lot with a little, you know, people are creative on the tears. People are creative in their sales in the day rooms when they have access to go out to the day room spaces. And I've seen people take stuff like tissue and create roses out of it. Anything that has been discarded, guys use that to be creative, you know, and so our.
- [09:53]
Red
Our friend Joey made this table right here that we're. We're sitting at. You know, the Concrete Mama breaking the barriers table in that clock right behind D there. You know, he made that here in spl. So that's another. Another nice little art thing we can do around here.
- [10:11]
Host
Yeah, that table is epic. It's got. Just for people that are listening to this and not looking at it, it's got inlays, it's got. I don't know all the right terminology, but it's got, like, burned into the wood, the. The name Concrete Mama breaking barriers. They took little pieces of cement from the prison and epoxied them into the. So that you can always have a piece of it there in the table. The underneath part of the table is pretty epic, too. Just the. I don't know the terminology, but the scrolly legs, you know, they look very Alice in Wonderland. So. Yeah, so there's other questions too about like, what opportunities do you have to write and to, you know, do other activities. And Vic, I know that you spent a lot of time writing while you were incarcerated. Do you want to take that one?
- [11:04]
Anthony
Yeah. So, I mean you, technically at that time you could have bought a typewriter on store, but it was like ridiculously expensive. I think it was like 200 or something. So I just hand wrote everything. I, Writing is a passion of mine and it's something I do for a living as well. And I hand wrote two screenplays actually when I was at Walla Walla. So I was writing back in Snohomish County Jail too, like just writing some essays and personal memoir stuff. And then I actually, yeah, sat down and over the course I think it took me, I think it was over the last, I don't know, six months to a year that I fleshed out and then hand wrote majority of two screenplays. One was a TV pilot of a story that was a fictionalized version of my life getting out of prison. And then another is a feature film that I'm still writing and finishing, but I finished about 2 of it as well. That's like this dark comedy romantic crime drama that I really am excited to finish because I, I, I think it's a dope story. So. But yeah, that's, that's what I did for, for writing. But I know that there's, you know, writing classes offered and, and things like that as well. What was the other part of the question too? It wasn't just writing, right.
- [12:24]
Host
Just other activities or programs.
- [12:26]
Anthony
Yeah. And then I worked out. I worked out almost every night on the way deck. From the minute I got to Walla Walla to the day that I left.
- [12:36]
Josh
I kind of got a quick add on too. Music group. We got a lot of cool music groups inside here.
- [12:42]
Vic
Yeah.
- [12:43]
Josh
And hopefully just to give you guys a, you know, a little bit of, of a, of a reward to be waiting on, we look to link some of that stuff to the podcast in the future. There's a lot of original music in here, but we have music rooms on the medium side of Walla Walla, which is the south complex, where medium and long term minimum people are housed to do their time. You can go in those rooms and just kind of mess around. There's electric drums in there, there's keyboards. Red is actually learning the drum right now. My boy, my boy's learning to drum. He's all of a sudden, he's a drummer on the weekends. So that's cool, man. The creativity he got me wanting to learn. I'm like, hey, man, I'm thinking about learning the drums, too, so you can be creative.
- [13:27]
Host
Are you driving people baddie from that?
- [13:30]
Josh
Yeah, man. There's some guys that have actually been in bands that are incarcerated, and so they're teaching people how to drum, and that's really cool. We have guitars, and we also invite bands to come in on the inside. One of the officers, not too long ago, Officer Schroeder, he invited his kids who actually have a band called Bad Real. They came inside, was actually interviewed by Concrete Mama, the podcast, and he had his children come into the yard. They got access to the yard and was able to play for us. So that was really, really co. So, absolutely.
- [14:04]
Red
And, Rachel, to answer your question, the music room is far enough away from the cells that it's not a problem. Yeah, Yeah.
- [14:13]
Host
I was wondering, because my. My brother won't let me buy my nephew a drum set. He's like, I will kill you if you bring drums into this house. And I'm like, if everybody's all right next to each other and you're pounding on a drum, they're probably like, what the heck? But that's good that there's a little bit of distance. So this one is also related. We have some teenage listeners, and they had some great questions, and one of them was, can you have a pet, like a dog or a cat or a fish? And if you could talk a little bit about the, like, animal program, the training program and stuff, too. But the. Our listeners are curious. Can you have a pet?
- [14:51]
Josh
Yeah, some people got pets, unofficially. You know what I mean?
- [14:58]
Host
Like a rat or a mouse.
- [15:00]
Josh
Yeah, you got some guys. So what I will say, or selling. Well, like, there's a couple guys that work out here in spl and some of the things that they find outside sometimes, like, you know, gardener snakes and stuff like that, we're able to take them and use them in natural habitats that already exist. But as far as, like, in the sales, we have a dog program here. So there's actually people here that are certified to train dogs to go back out into the community, which is really awesome because some of these dogs actually go to people that have disabilities. And so, you know, you're able to give back and. But we don't. We actually. A different prison, like Column Bay, they had the cat program, so there were cats at one point in Column Bay. I don't know if it still exists. And also here, I just learned from Josh that they did have A cat program here, but no fish, no frogs, no. No lizards. That would be cool, though.
- [16:00]
Red
Hey, Anthony, you remember when everybody had praying mantises? There was, like, a thing. There was a thing like. Like at least 20 people I knew had a praying manus in their house. And then. Absolutely, yeah, they started getting mad about that. But, yeah, that was cool.
- [16:18]
Vic
We used to have a guy that was at SPL that had a. A little mouse that he caught. He had it on a little string and running around, running up on him, running all over him as a little partner in there, you know.
- [16:30]
Host
Wow. So another question is, do you get to have religious services, or are those limited? How important is religion in prison to you? Personally?
- [16:42]
Josh
I think it's big. You know, some people do their time hanging on to their faith. You know, me being one of those individuals, I'm a spiritual individual. You know, I believe in God, and so I read the Bible a lot, not go to church when I can. My schedule sometime is so packed that I have to do Bible studies in the unit, or sometimes I do it with my celly from those that used to list that have just started listening, or you're just now getting hip to the Concrete Mama podcast. When me and Anthony were cellies, when we lived with each other, we used to do Bible studies together in the morning, share scripture. And so this place definitely gives you the religious freedom. Some people are meditating. They're into Buddhist practices. There's Muslims here that pract Islam and things of that nature. So they definitely give you the space to do that. So you can go to, like, the gym areas and do your practices and prayers. They have church volunteers that come in from the outside community and actually bring a message. A lot of people are now going to church. As of recently, they're watching these videos that are actually being recorded at Anthony's church. So I've been hearing that people are hoping to see, yeah, life Church. They're like, man, man, we hope we see Anthony. We watching the videos, probably. We see Anthony. So that's really, really cool.
- [18:03]
Host
Did that happen because of you, Anthony?
- [18:05]
Vic
No, I wish I could say that, but nah. There's a lot of people that work up there that help out, volunteer with religious services and things like that. And when I got word that they were doing it, I thought that was super dope. And I was like, yeah, man, by all means. I know some brothers up there that would really appreciate that, you know, but, no, I had no hand or anything in the making of that. I'm just grateful that it did happen. And that the brothers are having another opportunity to get some more services and things like that and getting that outside. You know, I'm saying it's important that we get people from the outside inside, you know, to build those relationships and those connections and things like that. And a lot of those avenues are done through religious services, you know, because I think even DLC recognizes that religion is a very important thing for people, you know, and so they do have a lot more, I would like to say, openness to, like, religious practices and stuff like that.
- [19:04]
Host
Right on. Vic, do you want to add anything to that kind of the alternative spirituality side of things?
- [19:09]
Anthony
Yeah, I, I, I think having a connection to something greater than yourself is important. It was, it was, is definitely part of my transformation. I don't abide by any religious doctrine, but I do believe in God and a higher power. I consider myself like a New age spiritualist. I think there's truths that can be found in all religions. Eckhart Tolle even talks about that in A New Earth, that there's truths in everything. I think there's a lot of similarities there. I have my own personal thoughts about organized religion, but I think everybody should be free to practice, you know, whatever, whatever they believe in their connection to something greater than themselves. So I found a lot of beauty in Buddhist teachings and doctrine and literature. I found a lot of Buddhist books that I was reading, and that helped me just shape sort of my connection to God and existence. And I started meditating for the first time when I was in prison, when I was at Walla Walla, and it became a daily practice, and it's something that I KE every day and continue to do so in my life. Now I meditate every morning, and it's led me down a path of becoming an energy healer and reiki practitioner, which is energy work, and has just expanded my consciousness and my understanding of life and spirituality. So I'm very connected to my spirituality. It just doesn't abide by one particular religion.
- [20:47]
Host
And I remember you telling me, and we don't have to say the name of the individual, but the person who really supported you in your Buddhist practice in the early days. And so I think there's a lot of times where it might not be like an organized church service, but it's like one person, you know, who's on their journey teaching another person, you know, and holding space with each other, even one on one.
- [21:10]
Anthony
Yeah, definitely. So a brother of mine inside, he was an elder, and so he definitely guided me on my meditation practice. And he's a devout Buddhist and really helped me me implement that. And I came to him with questions. He was always there to guide me and when I would share experiences of what would happen when I would meditate in different energetic experiences. And so yeah, I definitely had guidance and I have always had guidance or looked to teachers down this path. So I have and continue to work with spiritual teachers and advisors as I continue down my own path. Tough.
- [21:53]
Host
So I'm going to switch it up a little bit here. So I'm going to say these question, both of these questions and I, and I know everyone's going to have thoughts about this. So do you have to go to bed and, or wake up at a specific time every day and do you have to eat in a cafeteria with everyone at a specific time or you can, can you eat elsewhere or skip meals? So whatever you feel called to answer. I'm curious. Yeah, Red, you got your hands up.
- [22:18]
Red
So this place specifically is a little crazy for those two things because we're locked down a lot here. Like there's, I want to say it's like something crazy like 13, 14 hours a day or something. I'd have to figure it out. But we don't have to go to bed at a certain time, but we have to be in our cell at a certain time. And there's a couple different counts. You know, we lock down at 8:30 at night and we don't come out again until around 7:30 the next day for breakfast. But you also don't have to go to a cafeteria and eat here. You can get your food and go back to yourself if you want to. You know, you don't have to navigate trying to eat at tables or none of that. So that's a, that's a cool thing about this place. But the being in the cell so much is kind of a, a, you know, not a great thing about this place either.
- [23:14]
Host
So are you saying you go over to the cafeteria and get the food and then bring it back to your cell potentially, or is it in the day room or where does it come to?
- [23:22]
Red
Yeah, we get our trays in the day room. There's like a little window, like a pantry window.
- [23:28]
Host
Okay.
- [23:29]
Red
We get our trays and, and you can, you know, go straight back to your house if you want.
- [23:33]
Host
Got it.
- [23:33]
Anthony
So I will say it was different at the minimum security unit and at the penitentiary. So we all went to a chow hall a majority of the time on what's called mainline, which is like the like general population eating times. I guess you could for Lack of a better term. So, yeah, there was one main chow hall for all three units. And then we would just get called by unit and we would go eat. And that was for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And so we would just fill the chow hall. Other times, if you're like off site or, you know, at work in a place that's not like in the main area of the prison or in the housing units near the chow hall, you get what, back when I was there, you get what was called a boat.
- [24:18]
Vic
Oh, man. Nobody misses the boats, man.
- [24:20]
Anthony
Is there still? But there's still boats, right?
- [24:22]
Josh
Yep. On the weekends.
- [24:25]
Vic
Boats.
- [24:25]
Anthony
What do you guys eat out of? Spl?
- [24:27]
Josh
Boats. They don't give us food, but like, boats would come on the weekends, so we get like boats for breakfast on the weekends.
- [24:37]
Red
They're terrible.
- [24:38]
Vic
What's all in the boat?
- [24:39]
Josh
What's in a boat? They call it a boat too. They call it a boat because it literally looks like a little canoe.
- [24:47]
Anthony
Cardboard canoe.
- [24:48]
Red
Cardboard.
- [24:49]
Josh
Cardboard canoe. And in there you get your little, you know, your cookie and you get your two PB and Js and you get some sun chips. That's it. It's horrible.
- [25:01]
Vic
Oh, the boats, man. I remember we used to get beat up with the boats, man.
- [25:04]
Josh
Yeah, man. It's a lot.
- [25:07]
Host
Anthony, you're a big foodie, as am I. We've talked a lot about food. We connected over food. Can you speak to the food situation and how you navigated it while you were inside? You know, like, what would you do to supplement from what came from the cafeteria, all that?
- [25:23]
Vic
Oh, man. At the end of the day, man, I am a foodie. I love to eat, man. And so anytime we can get our hands on some chicken that's on the main line. Get some of them beef strips. That's on the main line. You know, we just. We'll take it out. Whatever. Whatever was thrown together with it in it. We'll take it out, rinse it off, you know, season it ourselves, reheat it up in the microwave, cook our own rice, cook our own beans, whatever we're gonna make. You know, I'd like to say that we were cooks, but we're actually just heat up warriors because all we do is heat everything back up in the microw, you know, but with. We make some amazing things. You know, one of my favorite things to make as I was like my own chicken Alfredo. You know, it really wasn't Alfredo, but it'd be more like chicken provolone. So we get the provolone cheese bars and melt Them down and, you know, add our little powdered milk into it, you know, season it up with the dehydrated vegetables. Throw that in there. And so the way we supplemented a lot of the meals was just being creative. You know, I got. You got guys in there that can make these huge, massive cakes. They take the muffins, leftover muffins, and stuff like that that other people don't want, Build cake set up for people's birthdays. You know, not every meal was terrible. You know, we get some meals like chicken nugget day. You know, me and them chicken nuggets, man, had a real close relationship. You know, couple. Couple packs of soups might get you an extra tray of them.
- [26:49]
Josh
You get four. Get your little four nuggets.
- [26:52]
Anthony
Four nuggets bomb, too. I. I remember 300 pounds.
- [26:56]
Vic
I need more than four nuggets.
- [26:57]
Josh
What you say?
- [26:58]
Anthony
I was saying the chicken patty was good too. Yeah. I don't know if you guys still got the chicken patty with a little, like, red sauce, barbecue sauce, ish on top of it. That was pretty good. Yeah. Coming back to me now. Yeah. The nuggets there were never enough that. Yeah, you only got, like, four, right?
- [27:11]
Josh
Yeah, you only get four nuggets, man. Yeah, you gotta play. You gotta take a soup and see if you can make a little deal. Get you another one. See if somebody let me get that tray for a soup.
- [27:21]
Anthony
Yeah.
- [27:21]
Josh
You know, so big. You used to cook, man. You and Anthony were the cooks. Yeah. You have some recipes, man.
- [27:27]
Red
You.
- [27:27]
Josh
You want to lay down?
- [27:29]
Anthony
Ye, I did. I would make a. I would make chicken pad Thai noodles.
- [27:34]
Josh
How you do that?
- [27:34]
Anthony
My thing. So I would take the. The Thai rice noodles, and I would cook that in the microwave with the spices that it comes with in water and, like, boil that in the. In the microwave. And then halfway through, I throw in the pack of chicken. You can get, like, chicken that's in these pouches, like, kind of like tuna is chicken breast. So I throw that in there, heat all that up, and then I would make, like, a peanut sauce out of peanut butter, soy sauce, and sugar, and I would mix all of that up, and then it would be like this delicious, like, chicken pie.
- [28:05]
Host
Sounds pretty good, actually.
- [28:06]
Red
It was pretty good.
- [28:07]
Anthony
Yeah. Yeah. I'm not gonna lie.
- [28:09]
Host
Yeah.
- [28:09]
Vic
I make these mondo burritos, man. I remember those massive mondos, man.
- [28:18]
Host
So we only have a few minutes left. The. Another question is, do you get to play video games or watch tv? What about movies, man?
- [28:29]
Vic
I could speak to that when I was in there. Man was my celly demore when we were cellies, man. He would tell you I'm a video game fanatic or whatever I can do that has to do with gaming. I am what they call a nerd and I'm proud of it. You know we got on our tablet you can get like these little games. They got a little game store on there where you can get like play like little RPG games on their board games on there, all these different things. There's nothing like a lot of people outside probably want to be recognized a lot of the names because they're like B grade games and stuff like that or whatever secure store at the time, JPEG secures whatever could get their hands on. But that was always really cool. And I know that we had the movies that you also can rent, you know, to be able to watch. And I know sometimes we try to. Me, me and my guy got my guy hooked on Blumhouse, you know, so we both rent the same movie and sitting there and watch it and you know, I'd make sure he wasn't jumping and stuff. You know, get scared with the movies and everything.
- [29:29]
Josh
Yeah, yeah, they're jumping on that, watching that. Insidious for sure.
- [29:38]
Host
Can somebody explain a little bit more for our listeners or viewers? Like what, how does the tablet work? Like what can you access on there? Does everybody have one?
- [29:47]
Josh
So the tablet is, is a really unique device that has really propelled us as far as doing our time to a different space. We could email on that tap tablet. It was about 7, 8 inches. It's like, you know what a tablet would be out there. And so we can email our families which allows us to correspond with our family members via a secure network. Through secures, we also can play games like Anthony stated on there. We can rent movies and also books. We talked about books earlier. There is an ebook app on there. So it allows us to access books. There's thousands of books on there that you can actually read via ebook. You can also read religious text on, on there. There's a stopwatch on there if you're someone who works out. We're also able to buy TV shows and what'd you say B?
- [30:36]
Anthony
I said music.
- [30:37]
Josh
Yeah, music. Yeah, we're able to actually access a lot of different music stuff like that. And all of our pictures, we can get pictures sent through there via email as well. So which is really cool.
- [30:48]
Anthony
And now in Washington state you don't have to buy the tablet so they, they hand them out. Right? Is that correct? To everybody that comes in and that.
- [30:55]
Josh
Tablet is actually your telephone as well. So you can go to the day room, use the phones in the unit, outside on the yard or the patio in back of the unit, but you actually can call that. It has a phone app. And so you can actually make calls from your cell or anywhere else in the prison that allows you to have your tablet.
- [31:16]
Anthony
I just want to reiterate this is they do not have access to the regular Internet. So it is a closed, secure network inside the prison. So there's no regular Internet. So nobody's, nobody can access any web pages or anything like that. It's very, very limited.
- [31:32]
Host
And Edovo, like you were talking about earlier, is kind of like a Netflix sort of app for the inside. Right. But you can get more than just TV and movies on it. You can get podcasts and learning content and all kinds of stuff. So, last question and we'll wrap up for this particular interview. So since you don't have social media and, and if anybody doesn't know that folks inside don't have social media, how do you find out what's going on in the world and how do you get your news?
- [32:02]
Red
We got a news app on the tablet as well. Acap, Associated Press, Associated Press. So you can check, you can check that you can read the headlines for free. But if you want to subscribe, I think it's like $6 a month. And then, then also, you know, we do have, you know, if you have a TV in your house or you can go to the day room, there is cable. So I mean, you're going to be able to watch local news, you know, and other stuff as well on there. But that's pretty much the, the easiest way to get it in here is either on the TV or on your tablet.
- [32:43]
Anthony
Yeah, I would, I would start every day. She's not on CNN anymore, but Brooke Baldwin, that's my girl. Girl. I'd start every day watching Brooke Baldwin on cnn. She was great.
- [32:52]
Host
Any other thoughts anybody want to share about just like day to day stuff? All right, well, we'll wrap for this interview and we can come back and do another list of questions here. We got plenty more that listeners have written in with. So we'll do another one of these segments soon.
- [33:13]
Anthony
More to come. Yes, more to come.
- [33:16]
Host
All right.
- [33:16]
Vic
You keep sitting, keep sending them, keep sending them.
- [33:21]
Rachel
Listening back to that conversation, it reminds me of one of the biggest lessons I learned while doing time. And it's actually a testament to Victor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning. And that is you are so much stronger than you think and you actually can get through anything that life throws at you. If you would have asked me in my 20s on whether I thought I could survive prison, I would have answered with a big old fuck no.
- [33:45]
Anthony
But I did.
- [33:46]
Rachel
And not only that, I actually used the experience to become the best version of myself. And in prison, we learn to be ingenuitive, to be crafty, and to use what's at our disposal to achieve our goals. Whether that's cooking food for a spread, working out, or even doing artwork. Our ability as humans to survive and thrive in the darkest of times or settings is actually awe inspiring. So to any of our listeners out there, if you're facing dark times in your life, I promise that you can make it through. Just dig deep and believe in yourself. Because I believe in you and you can get through this. Thank you for listening to this bonus episode of Concrete Mama the Podcast, and we wanted to once again give a huge, heartfelt thank you to all of our listeners. The amazing response to Season one has been more than any of us could have dreamed, and we appreciate all the love and support for the show. And stay tuned next week as we finish out season one with something special for our finale. Don't miss it.
- [35:00]
Red
Sa.