Streetlight Angels Podcast
Creating safety awareness and mindfulness to the nation to help our children take back the ability to play outside "until the street lights come on".
Streetlight Angels Podcast
Life Keeps Lifing: Navigating Change with Common Sense
Welcoming Eugene Basham as the new co-host, Joshua explores how we can reclaim the neighborhood values of yesteryear when kids played outside until the streetlights came on and neighbors looked out for each other.
• Eugene introduces himself as a comedian, mental health advocate, and father of ten with experience in the military, education, and mental health fields
• Kasey has stepped away from the podcast to focus on raising her three teenagers as a single mother
• The hosts discuss how to navigate life's challenges while maintaining focus on what's most important
• Eugene shares how he sacrificed his martial arts career to prioritize visitation time with his daughter
• They emphasize the importance of knowing your neighbors and building community trust
• Both hosts advocate for balancing life responsibilities with personal dreams
• Laughter and shared wisdom are highlighted as healing forces in difficult times
• Future episodes will feature guest perspectives, video content, and more direct conversations
Email us at streetlightangelspodcast@gmail.com or find us on Facebook to join the conversation about bringing common sense back to our communities.
Hey, welcome back to Streetlight Angels podcast. I am your host, joshua, and I've got a brand new host with me and we'll get into details as to why that's happening, but I've got Eugene Basham here with me.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone, glad to be here. Appreciate being your co-host man, that's right.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to have him take the floor real quick and kind of introduce himself and who he is and where he comes from, and a little bit of back, and then we'll go from there.
Speaker 2:Yes, I am a native of Nashville, tennessee. Now I travel all over the world doing stand-up comedy and pretty much PSAs, in a sense of talking about mental health in the guise of suicide prevention and depression awareness. So I do those on military bases as well as private venues, town hall meetings, things like that. But I'm also a parent and so that's what makes Streetlight important to me, because I remember having to be home before the streetlights came on and don't let mama have to stand on the porch and call your name out, because then all your friends will be messing with you.
Speaker 2:But that's what caused me to gravitate, because I have children, and what surprises a lot of people about me is that I have 10 kids and for some reason, I don't know why, people don't believe that I'm very gorgeous. I can have 10 kids. But I also believe that if you can't make the world a better place, just make better people. That's awesome. I mean. I've had a lot of careers. I've had some time in the Navy, I've worked for the school system, I've worked in the mental health field, working with children and adults with autism and Tourette's, as well as campus supervisor, which allowed me to mentor kids and watch over them in the school system. So I've done so much that you'll see, as this podcast progress, that I'm a jack of all trades, a master of none. I love that. It's the best way to be honestly. I actually think, if you're going to a master of none.
Speaker 1:I love that and it's the best, best way to be Honestly.
Speaker 2:I actually think if you're going to be a homeowner, you should be. That's right. When you get that plumbing quote and you're like man, all he did is change this. Yeah, I could have YouTubed it.
Speaker 1:That's right, that's right. It's time to be a new jack of a trade, learn a new trade, I should say. But yeah, man, dude, it's going to be great to have you on here. I know the dynamic is a little bit different for our listeners just because we had that, that idea of one male, one female type thing. But don't let that, you know, kind of discourage you. And the reason I say that is because we have, we're going to be having guests almost every episode we do, we're going to have a guest. Oh yeah, females perspectives. Eugene and I are going to be playing devil's advocate, you know, flipping scripts on each other and trying to. I'm going to be a female for a day, he's going to be female for the day.
Speaker 2:As far as you know what we've seen or what our listeners want us to kind of explore or talk about, I should say Share our experiences, but also share our observations from our interaction with different dynamics and demographics, when it comes to the female perspective as well as the male perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly Exactly. But you know, obviously the root of Streetlight Angels is always going to be the same, you know getting back to where we need to be as a nation and getting the kids to play outside until the streetlights come on.
Speaker 2:With our, you know, ability to trust that, oh yeah and trust the process that is going to happen. We can't just sit around with the wishful thinking. That's the important thing about what we do is that we put action to observation.
Speaker 1:That's right. You actually take the step forward, right, dude? You said something to me not too long ago, I think the very first meeting you and I had. We sat down here and we were up to like two o'clock in the morning in our office kind of just shooting it, and you had said something and he goes. Oh well, it almost sounds like the podcast, sounds like bringing back Common Sense, Exactly, you remember that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember that because I think about Common Sense a lot, because I know that's what's helped me make it as far as being on a national level and now international level doing comedy. Now, I may not be a household name, but I know that my common sense when to talk and when to listen it's helped. But I remember my grandmother looking at me and saying there's a time to talk and a time to listen, and when grown folks are talking you listen. If we ask you a question, then you answer it. But now if you look at some of our newer generations, you ain't got to ask them anything but they're going to tell you the first thing that come to mind.
Speaker 1:That's right, that's right. I don't know. It's one of those things where, if you don't have the idea to kind of set your pride aside and really get down to the nitty gritty of what needs to be said or what needs to happen, you allow yourself that time to interfere on that final process. So you want yourself to be vulnerable on this subject. I don't know. It's just. It's something that you and I are going to be doing throughout the entire time of the rest of this podcast to kind of just bring that awareness and allow ourselves to open our vulnerabilities up and talk about the stuff that nobody wants to talk about. Right, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, especially when it like, when you look at our neighborhood and our social observations and things like that, a lot of times you'll hear people talking around things as opposed to just like going directly at it. And we've had conversations where they're great because we don't sugarcoat them, and so that's what we want to bring to this open air is that, hey, these are issues, let's not sugarcoat that. You know, kids don't play outside in good neighborhoods with no crack heads. No, this, they just don't know their next door neighbor. That's right. And what's the problem with going next door and saying, hey, I just moved in. I just want to say hi, I know my next door neighbor, mr Harry, 70 years old. I can tell you you know how many times I've had conversations with him because I respect my elders. Sure, yeah, I'm not going to be like, well, I'm trying to finish cutting the grass, right, my elders. So I'm not going to be like, well, I'm trying to finish cutting the grass, I'm going to listen to Mr Harry because I was taught, you know, I respect my elders.
Speaker 1:So if he's got a story to tell, I'm going to listen, you know, and then you build that trust factor with your next door neighbor, mr Harris, and then you can then kind of open up and allow the distance for your child to just go even to the next door and know that they're going to be somewhat safe based on you know their toys are found in his yard. You know where they came from yeah, exactly, he'll pick them up and sit them right on my porch and so that's cool.
Speaker 2:But that's just from me and him having a conversation. He hadn't even hung out with the kids. He just knows. Oh, such as kids you know drifted over in my yard as opposed to I don't know that person or if that person gonna go out for my kids, so I'm not gonna let them sure yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Or if something happens to kids, they're gonna actually say something to you versus allow it to happen or pull out their phone and start freaking recording or something stupid like that.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, as opposed to stopping my kid from running towards the street, they're just gonna record and be like yeah, watch this, watch this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah, what world star? Whatever stupid crap, like it happens anyways, yeah. So we're trying to get away from that. All right, we don't have time for that crap anymore. But before we get more into some hard times in life, I got to talk a little bit about Casey. So Casey is not gone, she didn't pass away, she's not sick. She is just life right now. Life. Be life, amen. That's right, and it is life in the hell out of her right now. Be life, man. That's right, and it is life in the hell out of her right now. You know, she's essentially kind of taken a step away from certain endeavors and taken a couple of irons out of the fire, so to speak. She's trying to get her life with her children and everything like that redirected and kind of more focused. That's where she is stepping aside from Street Light Angels podcast. For now it is the way it is.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, because time management is important and so when she looks at her schedule and her time, she has to prioritize what she has to take care of first. That's right, and we most definitely respect that and love it for it. That's right, because that's what this is all about is what's important and go after it. That's right, because that's what this is all about is what's important and go after it. That's right, whether it's career-wise, family dynamics and she's doing a lot of it on her own.
Speaker 1:Oh she is. She's a single mom with three teenage kids. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:I honestly want to low-jack my teenagers. Just so I got to call them all all the time. I know where they're at. It's like, okay, that's good we're good, yeah, like they need to have that. You know that. You just slip into their favorite pair of jeans because you know teenagers wear the same pair for a week.
Speaker 1:That's right, that's right. Yeah, exactly, man, and that's kind of where it's at, and she's almost doing it all by herself and she really is diverting everything to her kids, which I think is admirable. I think it's amazing, it's a beautiful thing, and I support her a thousand percent. So you know, some people like drama man, they do too. I guess I probably could have got some more numbers. I would have said yeah, we got into a big fight, she's off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as opposed to you know, it was just timing it is, and that, like you said, is that open door to where she's probably going to do some guest spots, because she's got time and she's like hey, let's talk about this.
Speaker 1:That's right. We're definitely going to have her on kind of explain. You know what happened and where she's at now. You know what.
Speaker 2:I mean, and put those well wishes in the atmosphere so that she knows that we're always thinking of her and that the listeners are thinking of her, even if they've never met her. You know, go back to those previous episodes and hear her voice and know where she stands because, that perspective and she is important.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. She's almost exactly what we want to talk about when, when hard times come and life comes, and she's living it 100 percent right now and she has the support of all of us. She's making this decision as an adult.
Speaker 2:This is not an easy decision for her right to flourish and just be on the outside looking in, it's tough, but when you have other babies that breathe, yeah, yeah that are that are moving around in the world and you have to help them navigate. You know the way our culture should be we should all be co-parents so that that way, we look at the safety and concerns of all the children out there, whether they're in a school or in a neighborhood.
Speaker 1:Right, and time is money, and money is time and time is luxury and some people just don't have the luxury, the time or the money to be able to continue to do stuff. Even if you just remove one of those factors, you're still going to be affected by the other one, essentially, correct, you're still going to be affected by the other one essentially. So just understand, you know, listeners, that she is giving her all to her, her babies, and I would never, you know, impede on that. That relationship is still super big with her and it's sustained. You know what I mean. The relationship is sustained and just the listeners need to understand that, you know. You know, have you ever had it to where you, like, had something going with someone and then it just didn't work out and then you just lost everything with that person?
Speaker 2:Well, I was in the fire department for a long time, and you know how we put our lives on the line together department and, like some of those connections that were tighter than others, the ones that weren't as tight, yeah, kind of still grew, but the ones that I thought were the tightest kind of just went away. But when you look at their life, life keep lifing, and so it wasn't really a lack of love or anything, it was just that that they still had just as much going on as I did, and so I can't fault them, but I do miss them, gotcha.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, no, I totally make sense.
Speaker 2:But you know your military experience from base to base and different deployments and things like that. You develop these connections and you're like man yeah, you know this person is going to be a staple Right. And then you know, you move on to the next installation and and it's like man, I ain't talked to that person in five years. But you didn't even realize it's been five years. That's right, dude, Y'all just y'all lined up on the same TDY together, right, and it's like man, you know that happens all the dang time.
Speaker 1:Why haven't we been talking?
Speaker 2:bro, you're just so cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the good thing about that is that reconnection that happens. I could hit up my boy Phil probably today. I could hit up my boy Phil probably today. I haven't talked to him in years. I can hit him up right and it would be like we haven't skipped a beat man, like straight up, best friends forever. But we just know life life's and life is life in the hell out of everybody.
Speaker 2:Nowadays, everybody's just adding ING to everything. So life keep lifing.
Speaker 1:Yes, oh, it is, it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and for me, for, for example, is when I was at the height of my career as a martial artist and nationally touring martial artists in a sense of competitions and fighting, um, I literally had to choose whether I was going to be home and take care of my kids, and at the time I was a single parent and I only got visitation every other weekend. Well, martial arts tournaments are every weekend, so it's kind of like if I wasn't going to stay at the national level, it didn't make sense to pay to compete every other weekend because my numbers wouldn't make it. Because that's how you do it you win a fight, you get a certain amount of numbers as far as ranking, right, right, and so I could be number one in every fight I had, but number two could beat me out on points if they came to every week. Yeah, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. And so I chose that I'm going to be with my kid. I have every other weekend that I need to maximize my time, sure, and I think that time was important and and it shows because my daughter now is 32 and she has a degree in construction management and business specifically because of the time we spent on the weekend, I'm like her mom was a nurse in the nursing field. Well, I had a big family, yeah, and so I had to renovate the two bedroom into a four, wow, and so she was the oldest, so she was the only one who could hold this while I nail it or screw it.
Speaker 2:She, she was my little assistant, yeah, and so that evolved into her career. As far as where she wanted to do, she actually wanted to either be an engineer and possibly a developer and just decided the math ain't mathing as far as like, she did not like calculus. Sure, she made it through it. And they say, oh, yeah, they have calculus too and all this other stuff. And she's like, nope, no, no, I'll just do construction management. And and right out of college she was making more than what she was making three times as much as I did at the fire department. Wow, and uh, like the fire department in georgia, they started me out at nine dollars and 76 cents.
Speaker 2:Dang to give your life, dude right, and then I had and you had to work the 40 hours right, you get time and a half Yep, yep, I know. I was like but I did that because it's kind of like, when we talk about life choices is where our desire lies, and so my desire wasn't to get paid more than it was to serve Gotcha, and marriage helps with that, it's supposed to.
Speaker 1:It may not help all the time, but yeah, it really boils down to. You know, life happened to force you almost into a sacrifice, but that sacrifice you took and you owned it, and then you reapply that to help benefit you and your children. On the sacrifice, yes, and so it doesn't determine the destination, sure, but it determines the direction.
Speaker 2:At that time, like you may have, like with me, like when I was a kid, I used to want to be an actor, but as I got older, I got away from that. But then, as I got wiser, I realized that I may be able to do the things after my family is taken care of. That I have a desire to do, sure, and so, even though life takes you in a direction where you have to feed your family, you don't have to give up on those dreams, right, you know, you don't have to give up on the first commitment that you had as far as your, you know, oh, I want to do this, but I have this, okay, well, take care of that until you can get back to your goals or your dreams, because everybody has to eat, you know. And so you focus on your bread and butter, but you make baby steps towards your dream. Sure, you know, it's like an artist. Like I tell my daughter, who loves art don't give up on that, continue to, to draw and nurture that, because now you have graphic design, you have animation, you have all these different fields in the art that you could pursue.
Speaker 2:Now, it takes a long time sometimes to have that career in it. We will support you. You're in a different generation now I understand supporting is the most important thing when it comes to building that career. Sure, that's a blessing, because I didn't have that support financially from my family because we were all poor. But as I got older I saw that even though you're poor, if you got that backing, that eventually you'll be able to make it.
Speaker 2:You know, it may take a little bit more time because some people, like I have a friend who had his own private practice by the time he finished interning as a doctor. Sure, but his family all pulled and so I was like man, you know, if we could do that, no matter what, my son wants to be a welder, all right, man, whatever, you need to be a welder, let me know. Sure, we'll figure out how to get it. Yeah, he's like oh no, you don't have to do that. I'm like I know I don't have to do it, but I have that desire. Right, it needs to happen because I have that desire.
Speaker 1:So, like with life happening, you want to go with the flow of it. I feel like right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, see, don't think that life is attacking you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, You're living Sure, and so it's like anytime you have opposition is an opportunity to plan through it, think through it, and some things may be coarse, meaning rough to go through Sure, but just do it.
Speaker 2:You know, it's like when I was in high school I was ready to quit because my brother was killed, and so I was like it was true to me personally that most of the people in my community are not going to live till 21, because my brother was only three years older than me. But my guidance counselor said that, like his, the biggest quote that stands in my head from that conversation was that a GED is good, but your high school diploma shows commitment. You know, your GED shows that you understand the information and can think, but this shows commitment. College shows commitment more than education, yeah. And so I was like I need to show the commitment, just like I showed the commitment as far as my kids. Sure, the same way, you know, I have to show that commitment to myself, because you're not really necessarily showing it to the world is that you know that if you could do this, then you could do that.
Speaker 2:Right, and some people take joy with the flow, as you're being too relaxed about it. No, it's like you're going along. You know, if you fight against the current, you know the current's gonna eventually take you. Yep, you know. So you, you still have to understand the process of even making it through the currents of life without it overtaking Right. And sometimes I mean stepping back from something so that you could have a breather. Some people can handle doing 20 different things at one time, but they also need that vacation. That's right, so they can decompress and they can prioritize, but they can also reconnect, recalibrate themselves for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's kind of like what Casey's doing, what I'm doing, I'm about to go on a vacation. I haven't taken one that I feel like it's an actual vacation and I don't even remember. But yeah, so you know the words of wisdom. I think Eugene Basham has them.
Speaker 2:I think he did. That's comedy. The words of wisdom from Eugene Basham Everybody in Nashville is like OK.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean honestly, like you, you bring it down to a more foundational level and I think it's everybody can kind of relate to that. And so, yeah, that may be words of wisdom, you know, maybe not to a senior or your neighbor, but it could be words of wisdom to somebody. Oh yeah, and I agree, I agree. If I didn't, I would tell you I didn't agree. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I just, you know how you look at yourself.
Speaker 2:You don't consider yourself wise, which I think that you should, because you know we are what we think. Sure, so it always just surprised me, because I grew up and then you know we would call them like old heads, like the old guys who had just come back from Vietnam and really, taking it one day at a time, they like literally the ones who didn't struggle the most, were the ones who literally went with the flow. It's like one of my uncle friends, he would. He had this van that had them captain chairs in it and like every day at like five o'clock he would pull up and they would play cards and just chill. And you like, man, that was like that's the life. They just hang out with their old military buddies and play cards. But that was their way of, I guess, fellowship and after all the trauma that they seen from Vietnam and things like that and you know, one of them had really bad burns and everything but they all stay connected. They was like they was like brothers.
Speaker 1:And they, they like, probably fed off of each other's wisdom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and laughter, like literally. I think that's what I learned the most growing up about laughter was that you're going to have hard times and sorrows and things and you have to find that joy and that humor in life because it relieves the stress. You know, you can, you know I've seen people who had these unrecognizable burns being with the fire department. I've had a firefighter who lost a finger and and still be able to laugh about it and and joke because that that laughter is healing. And so I'm like you know, why not have a profession that helps people heal the most? That's right. I mean, doctors do help heal and things like that. But after a while some doctors lose that joy.
Speaker 1:You know I hadn't found too many comedians who lose the joy of making people laugh, sure, so you can integrate, um, laughter, um, with the wisdom, um that you don't even know you have, and then, um, your, your life experiences from the past to allow, uh, us to really capitalize on that, to help regress. Uh, you know what we're, what we're really ultimately trying to do.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:And so I believe that in time, you know, the listeners are going to kind of start plugging in information to us that we're asking, so that we can start expounding on their thought process for this kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, we want comments and concerns. We want to be able to see what the public thinks about our different topics, what their opinions are and whether they agree or disagree, because we both know we're not always right. Somebody who observes well does have a good perspective, but may not always. It's not going to reach everybody, it's not going to be on point. It's like you know, you can look at, read a book and what you get out of that book It'd be completely different, right?
Speaker 1:I get it. Yeah, it's relative, so a lot of things are relative or it's a matter of their own perspective. Yeah, and you just can't take it as gospel, right.
Speaker 2:This is not gospel. This is is informing people of the different things that come at us in life, whether it may be taxes. Some people get really stressed doing tax season. Some people don't have a care in the world and, you know, some people don't you know. That's why we glad we know and network with people who who do tax.
Speaker 1:That's right utilize the resources and and and I mean that's what streetlight angels is one of the things that streetlight angels is about is is is a resource yeah, protect our tax write-offs exactly.
Speaker 1:No, you're not wrong, but utilize, utilize us and, um, help us. Help us talk about the things that we have problems with as a village. But, as you can see, changes constantly happen with life and we've got so much product to be putting out here and just episode after episode that are going to be coming out to talk about, you know, getting us to where we need to be, where we're going to take life and what has been lifing us, and we're going to put that on this platform and give everyone else the platform to where we can try to bring common sense back to where it should be.
Speaker 2:Right, yes, sir, and when I mentioned the comment, sometimes we want to address those comments in some of these speaking points. So feel free to comment, not just say, oh, I see a lot of comments on podcasts and blogs that just say, great blog or great conversation and things like that Mention, what part was great? So that we know whether we hit the nail on the head. Or if somebody makes a comment and we're like, oh, that's valid, we may share that on the next episode, as, hey, we had a member mention this on their comment and it was, it was very valid, so we wanted to share it, or or or that this was the other side of the coin.
Speaker 2:This was a thought that was on the other side of the coin because we don't. We don't want this podcast to seem like a dictatorship to where our thoughts are the only thoughts. That's relevant, that's right, especially if it takes a village to raise a child. This is our child, but not only. This is our village that we're in and we want to be a prime example of fellowship in the sense of communication.
Speaker 1:That's right. That's right Absolutely. And so with episode 10 comes change into our life and, uh and that's where um Eugene Basham comes in heavily to to streetlight angels podcast. Shoot us an email at um streetlight angels podcast at gmailcom. Check us out on Facebook. Another really big, awesome thing we're going to be doing soon is going to be doing video, so you'll actually be able to see our goofy faces on here soon. Also, too, sapro is coming live, and Sapro is Streetlight Angels Productions. That's going to give many organizations many platforms to be able to do what me and Eugene are doing here and me and Casey were doing. It gives them nonprofit organizations We'll talk about this more later to come and kind of record for free, based on sponsorships.
Speaker 1:It's going to be amazing. So what's going to happen is a Streetlight Angels podcast is going to be on the website streetlightangelsprocom, and then you'll be able to see. You know, the video we're going to be streaming. Um, we're going to probably going to start doing some live streams very, very soon. We're going to start kind of pivoting now, uh, streetlight angels into a very, very deep, no pulled punches, no holds barred type conversation. We are going to stay the hell away from politics. That's not where we need to start. We need to start about what needs to be said to get our kids to go outside and play until the streetlights come on. Exactly no sugarcoating, no more sugarcoating. With that being said, eugene, welcome to the team man. This is going to be an amazing adventure. I cannot wait to see what we're about to produce.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Look forward to talking to you more and the public.
Speaker 1:All right, y'all, we want you to be safe. We love all of you and we'll talk to you later.