Every LIVE broadcast Josh hosted with Dr. Rob & Coach Lucy — recapped as a magazine, with his community's voices and the moments that mattered.
The inaugural broadcast traces a friendship and mission born fifteen years earlier in post-Katrina New Orleans. Dr. Rob recalls realizing young people of every race knew Dr. King "gave an important speech" but little of the movement's substance — and Josh's reply framed the whole series: it's not just white kids who don't understand, "it's all kids." Anchored in archival remarks from Harry E. Johnson Sr., who led the effort to build the King Memorial on the National Mall (over $100M raised). Jen Thielacker brings the arts in; Dr. Rob reads sobering disparity statistics tying health equity to King's vision. Each host closes with a 2024 pledge.
So my motivation would be to teach everyone who's willing to learn something about something.
My mother taught me growing up in St. Louis. Number one, you're no better than anybody else. But number two, nobody is any better than you. You can be anything you want to be.
This is not just a black history, black lives matter type of thing... but the knowledge of the civil rights movement matters to everyone.
When I hear something, I say something. That is my advance the dream pledge... If it's not aligned with equity, compassion, kindness, I'm gonna say something.
With Dr. Rob calling in by comment from Chicago, Lucy and Josh deliver a primer on historical literacy and the social determinants of health. Lucy names the belief that "everybody can be a force for health" while acknowledging not everyone has equal footing, access, or resources. Reacting to a claim that America "was never a racist country," Lucy plays clips from the 400 Years Since Slavery course; Josh responds that history "happened" and must be learned from, not erased. The standout teaching moment: individual decisions account for only ~36–37% of health outcomes. Community voices Cherie Meeks (NAACP Tucson) and Willie Blake Jr. share pledges to pay attention, vote, and show kindness.
It is a part of history, no matter how you put it. This did happen... it is a part of our history, our legacy.
It's one thing to talk the talk, but I think it's important to take action.
My advance the dream pledge is what it always has been... when I hear something, I say something.
This episode formally launches the weekly series and settles into its purpose: celebrating legacy makers and family heroes. Lucy and Dr. Rob retrace meeting Josh after Katrina at the Singleton School and Dryades YMCA. Josh describes his Saturday STEAM-team family club under You Do Matter — multigenerational, including a 91-year-old who arrives "every Saturday ready with her little pad to learn something new." The heart is Josh's introduction of his 30-year mentor, Dr. Charles C. Teamer Sr. (financier/educator; bank founder; former national president, Alpha Phi Alpha), who returns again and again to one theme: communication, and the duty to pass financial literacy to the next generation.
Communication is crucial. And part of our challenge that we face today is that how do we utilize communication to get to the people who really we need to communicate with?
We have a term we use often in many of our lessons. Learn it, apply it to your life, learn it, live it, and then share what you know.
He once said that the injustice in healthcare is the biggest injustice of all because it affects so much of us so critically to the health.
Aired on Super Bowl weekend, opening a month marking African American History Month and National Heart Health Month. The episode spotlights disparities — maternal and infant mortality at two-to-three times the rate of others, life-expectancy gaps of ten to twenty years in the Mississippi Delta. Dr. Rob traces how hypertension, diabetes, and stroke trace back to a single blood vessel; misconceptions, mistrust, and access — not the science — cost lives. The heart is intergenerational mentorship: Alejandro Bailey (Tulane, pre-med) and Joseph K. Byrd (retired Xavier dean; helped build the MLK Memorial). The conversation circles three words: communicate, advocate, sacrifice.
If I'm able to actually provide and get one person to change their way of living, then the living that I share now is not in vain. And I believe that until the days in which I go on away from this place.
None of us get anything out of life that's worth having without some kind of sacrifice.
You have to take care of your own health first so that you could be a more effective servant leader.
This episode uses Netflix's Rustin as a doorway into the machinery behind King's 1963 march. Lucy frames her 2024 mantra — "intentionality without action is of no value" — and Dr. Rob shares that King earned a C in public speaking at Morehouse, proof criticism is fuel. The emotional core is Dr. Rob's testimony that he is alive only because he had knowledge of and access to high-quality cardiac care — naming healthcare access itself as a civil rights issue. Adrian Wallace (30th General President, Alpha Phi Alpha) recounts the decades-long fight to build the MLK Memorial; Derek Thompson embodies the next link; the episode lands on economic empowerment and generational wealth.
It was not just about Dr. King, it was about the man, the movement, and the message... Dr. King did not see color. He saw character.
Just being a person to come from USM with a high GPA, summa cum laude, just to show people that you can go anywhere and succeed.
I'm alive today because I had the knowledge of what to do and the access to high quality care quickly... That access to care issue is a civil rights issue.
If you truly are authentic in what you feel and what you're trying to do, then just do it.
Episode six centers a single deliberate act: Lucy and Josh play Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech in full, then sit with it. Lucy proposes a "then and now" series bringing in leaders from the states King named. Josh, an Alpha for whom the speech is "woven fabric," reflects that "are we there to where he really wanted us to be? No, we're not." A Black-history spotlight honors Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, the first African American woman to earn a U.S. medical degree (1864). The emotional core is the Youth Reflections segment with Telly Medina Jr., who turns the tables to interview the hosts about why they invest in youth.
It gave me an opportunity to say, well, OK, I'm going to leave this world a little better than I found it.
I want to be able to be a mentee to someone or some young kid growing up who doesn't have a father figure in their life. So that's kind of my advanced dream.
I don't want to just say I'm advancing the dream and then sit silently if somebody says something.
Episode 7 revisits why the series exists — the lesson from post-Katrina New Orleans that people who "thrive in ordinary times can survive in extraordinary times" — then turns to the social determinants of health, noting personal accountability accounts for only ~30% of outcomes. Dr. Rob raises pulse oximeters calibrated on lighter skin as an example of structural bias. The centerpiece is a guided look at Dred Scott v. Sandford; Josh testifies to growing up with segregated "water fountains for colors" and a father who entered homes through the back door. Lucy launches the 54-mile virtual Selma march. The show closes on Colon Cancer Awareness Month.
Unlike Rob, I have experienced that hate and that decisiveness... In this small area where I grew up at in Florida, they still had separate water fountains, water fountains for colors, bathrooms for colors. My dad and them always had to enter the back door of some of the homes that they were working at.
I'm also an African-American male. Before I joined Exact Sciences, I wasn't screened. It's not in our culture. It is easy to get screened regardless of where you come from, what your culture is.
It's always for me about protecting the gift of our health... learn what you can about the past and take the action to move and serve to make the future better.
The March 16 episode frames adversity as something to prepare for rather than fear, and returns to a recurring worry: that the real history of the civil-rights era isn't being passed down. The emotional core is a clip of John Lewis recounting Bloody Sunday in his own words — the backpack with an apple, an orange, a toothbrush; the troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge; "I thought I saw death." The hosts honor Harriet Tubman for Women's History Month. Dr. Rob reframes the modern moment: today "we are all publishers... we are all Gutenbergs," making ordinary people potential witnesses with a phone.
I was hit in the head by a state trooper with a nightstick. My legs went from under me. I thought I saw death. I thought I was going to die. I thought it was the last nonviolent protest for me.
Some people think that by bringing up such tragedy during that time brings back old wounds. On my standpoint... it's more of a learning process. It makes me appreciate where I am today from the standpoint of what they went through back then before I was born.
John Lewis was not some wise, experienced senior statesman when he marched. He was 25 years old... be a John Lewis... interview the John Lewises in your life.
If I see something, I'm going to say something. And so that's my pledge to advancing the dream... I'm going to have the voice and the conviction of voice to stand up and say something.
Broadcasting from Dillard University's health fair, Josh — a Dillard life member and former National President of its Alumni Association — reframes alumni support as far more than money. Queen Williams is the joyful center: at nearly 75 she trounced the younger members in the 54-mile Selma challenge, weaving in childhood memory of segregated Jacksonville and her ongoing work registering voters. Kira Robinson represents the next leg — a Posse Scholar often the only Black person in her engineering classes, speaking candidly about "the anxiety of taking up too much space" and how she moved past it. A showcase of the intergenerational heart of the foundation.
What really matters in life is not what you buy, but what you build. And it's not what you got, but what you share. It's not our success, but our significance. And there's nothing more significant than helping a child to receive a second chance in life.
Now I'm not afraid to take up space. I want to take up space. I want to be heard. Because of what Queen said earlier, you do matter.
Episode 9 ties the series' threads into one word: relay. Lucy opens on Bayard Rustin and the reminder that "every generation has to carry their own torch." Dr. Rob introduces the difference between a "micro abrasion" and a "micro kindness." A clip of Lonnie King, Jr. describes the "racial volcano" of daily indignities that erupted with the sit-ins, and his framing of freedom as a relay. The guest, Markeith — once a reluctant teenage chaperone Josh recruited for the King Memorial groundbreaking — now develops first-generation young men through "Manhood Mondays." The Easter-weekend note lands on servant leadership and Josh's Alpha creed.
We continue to reach up, pull back, grab someone by the hands and help lift them up, because we do have a question in Alpha that we ask all the time: am I my brother's keeper? And yes, I am.
The price of freedom and justice is an eternal struggle... The relay of freedom is a relay wherein each generation, we have learned, is going to have to run their leg of this relay.
Servant leadership, take the risk and reach out. Don't wait to be asked to be that servant leader.
This episode reframes a buzzword into a call to action. Dr. Rob rejects "social determinants of health" in favor of "social barriers" — determinants sound like destiny, barriers can be overcome; Josh offers a third framing, "obstacles." Howard Rogers, serving New Orleans seniors since 1977, delivers the hard truth: by 2030 roughly 30% of the U.S. will be over 60, yet the country faces a deep caregiver shortage — "caregivers taking care of caregivers." He names the "throwaway society" tendency to set elders aside and the digital divide locking many out of telehealth. The throughline: give seniors their flowers while they can still smell them.
Just like when we go to fast foods, after we finish, we throw it away. And in some instances... when we finish with certain individuals, we place them aside, we throw them away.
[It] really developed and increased my love to make sure that seniors were given their flowers early before late.
To me, the word determinant is much too strong... There were barriers that had to be overcome.
The most personal of the season, this episode opens on connectivity — not bandwidth alone, but human connectedness. Dr. Rob recounts broadcasting from cars and parking lots to find Wi-Fi; Josh describes neighbors still on dial-up "right here in the USA," tying poor access to the loneliness epidemic. The heart is Josh introducing his only son, who traces a path from "early, early mornings" at You Do Matter meetings to a role in an Amazon Prime series alongside Pam Grier. Lucy and Dr. Rob press the son to use his filmmaking gifts to capture family legacy — Dr. Rob noting he has "zero recordings" of his own grandparents' voices.
I told them always that you can be whatever you want to be, but you got to be somebody.
Not everything is promised. You just got to always just have your head on straight and really just think forward and not backwards.
I learned more about my mom prepping for her eulogy than I did my whole time that I knew her... We need to celebrate life and the goodness of the transfer of history.
This episode honors a living institution. Josh introduces his mentor since college — Colonel James "Jim" Singleton, a former math teacher turned 24-year New Orleans councilman, born to Mississippi farmers who "sacrificed for me to be able to go to school." Singleton's candor anchors the hour: asked about New Orleans, he answers "it's bad," citing a council and mayor who don't communicate and a century-old Sewage and Water Board. His defining lesson, from Mayor Moon Landrieu: you can be a servant of the people, but you cannot get rich doing it — choose one. Katrina draws his most emotional moments — reopening his school first and turning the Dryades YMCA into a refuge. Closes with a civic charge: freedom is not free.
Be a servant and serve the people and serve them well. And I think that's the philosophy that I have tried to live by.
Always try to give someone something that they never had when you first met them. Leave them something new. Every time you meet somebody, leave them something new.
The next generation always has their own challenges to maintain freedom. It's not free.
The hosts turn to the digital divide — less a single barrier than a "super determinant" amplifying every other obstacle to health and wealth. Dr. Rob opens with a tender story: his 93-year-old mother-in-law learned of a 70-year friend's death only by chance, because the announcement went out by email she couldn't access — a reminder that knocking on the door, a phone call, or a printed page are still essential technologies of care. Josh grounds it in training seniors and young people in Gadsden County and New Orleans, including a 90-year-old former councilman joining a video call for the first time. The hosts walk through ten ways the divide widens disparities and five practical fixes.
Everyone can follow directions on a book. Everyone can't follow the directions on a computer screen. So they need that additional attention.
There's a technology called knocking on the door and making an in-person visit and checking on someone that is important... Just be kind, even when you use technology.
On the Saturday before Mother's Day, the hosts take stock at the year's halfway mark and set the table for Juneteenth. Josh opens with a reflection from a Florida ninth-grade class of 172 — in a state where the board decided African American history "is not that important" — and the urgent need for communities to teach their own history. The heart is Larry Starks's corrective history of Juneteenth: not "the news finally reached Texas," but enslaved people deliberately tracked, walked thousands of miles, and held on Galveston Island, freed only after federal troops enforced emancipation. He insists Juneteenth must be "a movement, not a moment," then turns to succession — the same "living legends" keep carrying the work.
It's a movement, not a moment. So we can't just celebrate Juneteenth once a year. We have to educate throughout the year.
Some people are afraid and ashamed of the history and they want to try to erase it. But you can't. The history is the history.
If something happened, it happened. So let's just continue to share and then grow and learn and be better.
Opening Men's Health Month, the hosts confront why men — and Black men in particular — put their own health last. Josh names the core obstacle: getting men "to understand and appreciate their health" before they can care for anyone else, noting African Americans "lead the race" on heart attack, stroke, cancer, and diabetes. Dr. Rob anchors the medical discussion around the statistic that Black Americans are ~30% more likely to have asthma — cautioning it is environmental and economic, not genetic destiny. Using the 360° Human Explorer models he walks through airway inflammation and distinguishes rescue from maintenance inhalers. Josh grounds it in his own father, a former tobacco-farm worker dependent on inhalers.
African-Americans are leading the charge for everything that's going the opposite direction. When you talk about heart attack, when you talk about stroke, when you talk about cancer, when you talk about diabetes — we're leading the race on all of it. So how can we help change that is the question of the day.
It has nothing to do with black or white. It has to do with rich or poor, or how much cash flow you have... it's an environmental issue and to a large extent an economic issue.
Episode 19 convenes a Fathers' Roundtable for Men's Health Month. With Dr. Rob recovering from surgery, Lucy and Josh welcome three generations of men to speak honestly about Black men's health, family history, and fatherhood. Josh opens by honoring everyday fathers. Glenn Howell (strength coach) and Octavius Jackson (disability specialist, single father) trace parallel careers serving vulnerable youth, then share family health history: Glenn lost his father at 59 to stroke and heart attack after a lifetime of smoking; Octavius, widowed before COVID, describes how single parenting sharpened his focus on health. The final stretch turns to parenting — communication and transparency over a "dictator" role.
We come today to actually honor some of those men... those men that have actually paved the way and stood the test of time to actually support their families, their children, their daily lives.
My parenting philosophy is communication. So I definitely have tried to have a lot of transparency and my communication with the kids.
The better we know about our family's history, the more we can know what current issues may be more likely to affect us.
This October episode braids oral health and democracy into a single message: both are a "force for health." Dr. Butch Diggs explains why the mouth is a window to the whole body — periodontal disease quietly advancing for years, worsening diabetes, heart disease, and respiratory illness — then turns to hope: his mentorship program brought students from underrepresented communities to dental school, where only 2% had ever seen a dentist who looked like them, yet 70% left wanting a dental career. Stephen L. Jones walks through Alpha Phi Alpha's century-long voter-engagement mission, urging "every voter, every election." The parting call: "brush and vote."
Two percent out of ninety students had ever [seen a dentist who looked like them]... at least seventy percent of them said they wanted to go on to a career in dentistry to go back to serve their communities.
Your vote does matter. Do not think your vote doesn't matter because it does. Elections are won by small percentages.
I truly believe that you can't be what you can't see... And that often takes just one person to reach out.
On the Saturday before Election Day, the show sets aside its usual health opening for an urgent civic-engagement special. Dr. Rob sets the tone with a football metaphor — cheering from the stands never changes the score; "you've got to vote." Josh frames the day around "Vote and be heard." Stephen L. Jones traces voter suppression from poll taxes to voter-ID laws; Eric Webb urges people to "tune in and not tune out." The heart is three young men who drove an RV across eight or nine cities to reach 18–25-year-old voters. Dr. Rob pivots to a sobering health message — Black men face roughly ten national elections in a lifetime versus eleven or twelve for white peers.
People think that their vote doesn't matter. Wrong. If your vote didn't matter, why would it be voter suppression? Why would it be a poll tax?... Elections are won on margins.
Voting is your life. That simple. It is your life... it is connected to everything else. The policies that you see that affect your health, all of the different things.
You and your colleagues at age twenty will only vote ten more times in a national election. Your white counterparts will vote eleven or twelve times because they will live four to eight years longer than you... you've got to be healthy enough and alive to show up to vote.
In this post-election episode the trio models the very thing they argue the country needs most — calm, honest, unpoliticized conversation. Dr. Rob reflects on the HHS leadership change; his takeaway is not despair but locality: when national leadership is uncertain, individuals and communities must carry health literacy forward themselves. Josh reframes the moment with quiet steadiness — the work doesn't stop when the "captain of the ship" changes. The conversation widens into a meditation on legacy, sparked by a Mike Tyson interview dismissing the word as "ego," and a Snoop Dogg clip encouraging a young Black singer. Dr. Rob then delivers a 360° Human Explorer tour of stomach cancer.
The election is over with... there's nothing we can do about the election results. What we have to do now is continue our own self-sufficiency... So our work does not stop with the change of the guard.
In the beginning, when I first came out, I was a representation of the wrong side of what we look like... This is what a young Black kid looks like.
Did you make the world a better place a little bit for someone before you went to bed? That's a legacy... If on my tombstone it said he was a force for health, that's all I'd want.
As we navigate this post-election change, we got to set ego aside. We have to be able to listen... Listen and not label.
Season 3 opens in a heavy week — wildfires in Los Angeles, back-to-back plane crashes, a new administration. The hosts ask whether, in 2025, the dream can still be advanced. Dr. Rob sets a compassionate tone, reminding viewers that "disaster doesn't know" color, gender, or creed. Josh questions why DEI has suddenly become the catchphrase blamed for tragedies it had nothing to do with. Guest Telly Medina (lobbyist) brings pragmatism, urging the work continue under any name. The emotional center is Telly's story of a New Orleans man who cursed out two Black volunteers, convinced public-health outreach meant to harm him. Dr. Rob closes with a live heart-anatomy tour for Heart Month.
I wouldn't be here sitting up here talking on this computer to a white man from Northern Pennsylvania or a white woman that's married to a black man in Arizona... if it had not been for what Dr. King put forth and tried to do.
We've become so cynical that we can't have civil discourse that if you're Republican, Democrat, Black, white, old, young, whoever, straight, gay, that we can't even have a conversation about a commonality.
You're not here because you're some token black guy. You're the guy that attracted this brain trust of people to look at what you've done after Katrina... You're here because of merit.
The launch of the monthly education episode delivers a rich, reverent survey of HBCUs. Josh opens with history — the first HBCU founded in 1837 at Cheyney University — and insists the cause "is not just a Black thing... It's our thing." Dr. Skip Mason traces the resilience of institutions "founded with very little out of old cabins... bricks made by the hands of students," and celebrates their unmatched record producing judges, lawyers, and doctors. Dr. James Alford reminds viewers that HBCU founders "were the first group of educators to train the first group of civil rights activists," and confronts real threats: removal of the Department of Education, plans to tax scholarships, chronic underfunding. Both land on leadership as the decisive variable.
It's not just a Black thing, as Lucy stated. It's our thing. And we want everyone to take ownership in this piece as we try to strengthen not only just ourselves, but our community, our nation.
HBCUs, Black colleges and universities have always been resilient, founded with very little out of old cabins and buildings constructed by students, bricks made by the hands of students.
Season 4 opens on health literacy — and becomes one of the series' most personal hours. Dr. Rob defines health literacy as knowledge, access, and skills; the heart is Josh's testimony — a light heart attack, a foot amputation, and the breath that told him his work was not complete. Out of it he launches a You Matter Health Prevention Day and a forthcoming book, I Almost Let Go. Guest Kelly Ellsberry teaches phlebotomy and free community screenings.
After that eleventh second or twelfth second, air came back in... I just believe that was God telling me then that my work was not complete. I still had stuff to do.
What you've done, Josh, you're a perfect example of learn it, live it, share it... changing from attitude to gratitude.
One in three African-Americans have the sickle cell trait. Most people don't know they have it... we need to be aware of what our blood type is, but also what's going on with the blood.
Press play on his tribute songs, or add your own memory to his Life & Legacy Book.