“Everyone has something to offer, but the person you have to offer the most is yourself” Ryan conveys genuinely through personal experience. In episode 37, podcast host Aalia Lanius welcomes close friends Tim Ryan and Jennifer Gimenez to speak about their experiences with addiction, recovery, and the actions they are taking to help others struggling with addiction. Ryan is a recovering addict who has used his sobriety to help other addicts and their families with substance abuse. Founder of the nonprofit A Man in Recovery, he is also the author of best-selling book From Dope to Hope, the subject of A&E documentary Dope Man, and a featured thought leader on the topic of addiction for numerous media outlets. Wife and business partner, Jennifer Gimenez, who also struggled with addiction is a model, actress, and recovery advocate for A Man in Recovery Foundation. ... - READ MORE

Aalia sits down with Jill Gurr in episode 36 of Unsugarcoated with Aalia. Together they discuss Create Now, the non-profit organization Gurr founded in 1996 to empower underserved communities through arts education and mentoring. Create Now specifically aims to help people who have experienced homelessness, abuse, neglect, incarceration, and similar challenges through arts programs in music, fashion, writing, performance, visual arts, digital media and culinary arts. Gurr transitioned from an impressive career in script supervising to working on the frontlines with forgotten youth after an encounter she had while shooting the movie Mi Familia in East LA. “It was about two in the morning on a Thursday night, and there was an eight year old boy and his eleven year old brother hanging out with the crew. I said, ‘Where are your parents?’ and the eight year old said, ‘I don’t know where my mother is. My father don’t give a *bleep*,’ Gurr recalls. “That really shook me.” ... - READ MORE

“I don’t want to be some cookie-cutter rapper talking about gold watches and misogynistic shit, right, I mean I think we’ve had enough of that in our music and society. I think that we can build more,” states podcast guest, That Yung Lad. Episode 35 features rapper, songwriter, and recording artist, That Young Lad; also known as TYL (‘till’). With the recent release of his debut album, TYL The Wheels Fall Off, TYL keeps it real by focusing on topics such as poverty, racism, and white privilege in his work. He uses his voice to represent the “underdog,” people who don’t get the recognition they deserve. “Normalizing being wrong, just in general, would be a good thing for this world and humanity but specifically as it pertains to white people” ... - READ MORE