Getting Back Up Podcast: Finding Life After Death
Two fathers. Two stories of loss. One mission to get back up.
Real conversations with two men learning to navigate life, raise children, and find love again…after loss.
Hosted by Jamal Jones and David McClain, Getting Back Up: Life after Death is a real, raw, and often humorous podcast about what comes after the unthinkable—losing a partner, facing grief, and finding your way through it. As two widowers, now devoted girl dads (and one remarried man), Jamal and David create space for honest conversations around healing, identity, and starting over.
Getting knocked down is part of life. Getting back up is how we live.
Getting Back Up Podcast: Finding Life After Death
21: A Son’s Reflection on Love, Loss, and Legacy with Russell Hornsby (Part 1)
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Getting Back Up: Finding Life After Death (Season 1)
Episode 21: A Son’s Reflection on Love, Loss, & Legacy with Russell Hornsby (Part 1)
In this deeply personal conversation, Jamal and David sit down with acclaimed actor Russell Hornsby to talk about the kind of loss that doesn’t always make headlines—but leaves a lifelong imprint. Known for his roles in Fences, Grimm, The Hate U Give, BMF, and many more plays, movies, and tv shows, Russell opens up about him and his brother, Jonevan, losing their mother, Eva Redd Hornsby, to complications from dementia, and growing up in Oakland without a consistent father figure in their home.
This episode isn’t about celebrity—it’s about sonship, memory, grief, and the quiet weight of family history. Russell reflects on his mother’s strength, her legacy, and the subtle grief of never fully knowing the woman behind the illness. He shares what he learned at her repast, the artifacts he discovered while clearing her home, and what he wants the world to know about Ms. Eva—both as his mother and as a woman with a story of her own.
Getting Back Up: Finding Life After Death is a podcast that explores the raw, unfiltered reality of surviving profound personal loss—and finding a way forward. The idea for the podcast was born after David and Jamal met in 2023. Both widowers, who had lost their wives to cancer, quickly found a deep connection through multiple conversations about pain, perseverance, and parenthood. They realized that while men often bond over music, sports, or TV, they rarely speak candidly about loss or emotional recovery. Getting Back Up was created to change that narrative—blending the everyday with the existential in a format that’s as relatable as it is real.
Thank you for your support!
Hosts: David McClain & Jamal Jones
Executive Directors: Marlon Jackson & Ted Winner (Like A Gazelle Productions)
Editing: Chris Gazzo (Reel Media)
Music:
- Grenada, "Treasure"
- McDonald, Otis, "Phife for Life", otismusic.com
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