Advertise on podcast: Willoughby Hills with Heath Racela

Eddie Sotto had a long career designing public entertainment spaces like high-end car dealerships, destination retail stores, and theme parks, having served as Senior Vice President of Concept Design at Walt Disney Imagineering.  In this archived conversation from May, 2020, Eddie and Heath discuss the parallels between filmmaking and theme park design, the challenges to public venues during COVID, and using creative thinking to safely entertain theme park guests.  Eddie Sotto passed away in December, 2025 at the age of 67. Get full access to Willoughby Hills at heathracela.substack.com/subscribe

Sarah Kendzior’s new book is The Last American Road Trip, a chronicle of trips that she and her family have made across the vast U.S. beginning in 2016 and continuing through 2024. It’s an examination of American identity, the changes that the last decade have brought to our soil, how Americans retell our history, and how 2020 became the clarifying dividing line of our modern era. The book travels to towns along the Mississippi River, to the Ozarks, Route 66, the desert Southwest, underground caves, outlaw hideouts, and countless National Parks, all with the goal of taking an honest look at where we are as a nation. Sarah last joined this podcast in August, 2020, while still quarantined at home to avoid the pandemic. Despite the threats from COVID though, the summer of 2020 was also a time of great promise, where Americans turned out in vast numbers to protest racial injustice after the police murder of George Floyd. This conversation also touches on the role technology has played in isolating and dividing us and how crafting and working with our hands can be a form of resistance. Get full access to Willoughby Hills at heathracela.substack.com/subscribe

Ben Napier is the co-host of HGTV’s Home Town, Home Town Takeover, and Home Town Kickstart along with his wife Erin. In his third appearance on this podcast, Ben discusses the work he and Erin are doing with Osprey, a group they co-founded in 2023 that helps connect parents who want to limit screen time and social media access for their kids. Ben and Heath discuss how their own attitudes towards social media have shifted over the last decade or so, what kids are giving up by spending time on screens, and how to have a healthy relationship with media. To learn more about Osprey’s work, please check out their website. Heath also discussed his experience with Waldorf Education, which de-emphasizes screen based learning. To learn more and find a Waldorf School near you, visit the website for the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America. Get full access to Willoughby Hills at heathracela.substack.com/subscribe

Ashley Fairbanks is an Indigenous author, artist, and activist. Ashley is Anishinaabekwe from the White Earth Nation. She was raised in Minnesota and now lives in Texas. Her new children’s book This Land: The History of the Land We’re On serves as a great jumping off point for early readers, older kids, and even adults to begin to question who used to live on the land that today makes up the U.S. and Canada. Ashley joins Heath to discuss keeping Native American experiences in the present tense, reconnecting with native lands across the world, and reframing environmental activism. Get full access to Willoughby Hills at heathracela.substack.com/subscribe

Farah Assi was born in Southern Lebanon under Israeli occupation. Her family fled to Canada for some of her childhood, but returned to Lebanon during her teenage years. Farah’s father and extended family are still living in Southern Lebanon, often a few hundred yards from the sites of bombings. In this conversation, she shares about her childhood memories of Lebanon, her experience as a refugee, the emotions that come from watching her people murdered from afar, and the strong desire she has to return home. Get full access to Willoughby Hills at heathracela.substack.com/subscribe

Audrea Lim is the author of Free the Land: How We Can Fight Poverty and Climate Chaos. The issues of climate change, gentrification, racial inequity, and corporate greed are often treated as unrelated issues, but Audrea argues that they all share a common root: the commodification of land. She not only looks at how the American system of private property ownership has been destructive, but also explores alternatives. Some of these include looking back to original Indigenous practices around land management and stewardship, while others look at models like community land trusts, public housing, and public parks. Audrea’s work looks at rural solutions in places like the Canadian tar sands as well as urban solutions in cities like New York and Minneapolis. Get full access to Willoughby Hills at heathracela.substack.com/subscribe

Akilah Hughes is a comedian, author, and podcast host, known for her book Obviously: Stories from My Timeline, her YouTube channel, her amazing Twitter/X and Instagram feeds, and her nearly two year run hosting the daily news podcast What a Day for Crooked Media from 2019-2021. Akilah's latest podcast Rebel Spirit, investigates the history of how her high school in Northern Kentucky came to adopt the Rebel team name and Confederate symbols in the 1950s and retains the name to this day. In the show, Akilah travels home on a mission to remake the Rebels into the Boone County Biscuits. Akilah joins Heath to share some stories about their shared Rebel experiences and discuss the challenges with making even small, incremental changes. They also talk about larger diversity and inclusion efforts, including navigating enjoying a visit to Disney Parks while also acknowledging the harmful narratives at play. Get full access to Willoughby Hills at heathracela.substack.com/subscribe

Author Austin Frerick's new book Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry looks at seven sectors of the American food system, profiling the company that dominates each of those markets. Some are familiar names like Cargill, Wal-Mart, and Driscoll’s. Others are foreign companies or giant conglomerates that are hardly household names but which still exert massive control over how we eat. Perhaps the most surprising revelation in the book is just how much has changed and consolidated in the last two decades. A native of Iowa, Austin also shares personal anecdotes throughout the book of how he has seen the landscapes and towns of his childhood shaped by the consolidation of our food markets. Austin has advised candidates Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Pete Buttigieg on agricultural policy before ultimately serving as Co-Chair of the Biden campaign’s Agriculture Antitrust Policy Committee. He is a Fellow of the Thurman Arnold Project at Yale University, an initiative that brings together faculty, students, and scholars to collaborate on research related to competition policy and antitrust enforcement. He also serves on the Board of Directors for Common Good Iowa as Vice President and the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project as Treasurer. In 2022, The Advocate named him a "Champion of Pride.” Get full access to Willoughby Hills at heathracela.substack.com/subscribe

J.B. MacKinnon is a Vancouver-based author, journalist, and professor. His book The Day the World Stops Shopping operates on a simple thesis: gaming out how society, economies, and our lives would change if consumer culture disappeared overnight. When the global pandemic shutdown happened in 2020, suddenly the thesis had a real world example. J.B. joins Heath to discuss intentional consumerism inspired by Indigenous people in the Kalahari and Amish Pennsylvanians, consuming quality over quantity, and the simple pleasures of eating seasonally. J.B. is also the author of books right in the bullseye of this podcast and newsletter, including The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating and The Once and Future World: Nature As It Was, As It Is, As It Could Be. Get full access to Willoughby Hills at heathracela.substack.com/subscribe

Amanda Gelender is an American Jewish writer and poet currently based in the Netherlands. Amanda was raised in a progressive Jewish community, yet she was still only taught some of the truth about Israel and Palestine. It wasn’t until college that Amanda began to deconstruct what she had been taught and question her Zionist education. Amanda joins Heath to discuss how Zionsim differs from Judaism, understanding the current genocide in Palestine, and her own learning process over the last twenty years. For more learning and information from today’s conversation, Amanda provided these additional links: On the work of Dr. Mohamed Abou Abdaljawad Omar's talk entitled, "Germany, Zionism, and the Politics of Debt" Susan Abulhawa’s piece on the number of people killed in Gaza Lancet report on killed in Gaza On systemic hospital and medical destruction On Israel’s torture concentration camps Israeli tree-planting as colonization in occupied Palestine Get full access to Willoughby Hills at heathracela.substack.com/subscribe

Tracie McMillan is a journalist and author of the new book The White Bonus: Five Families and the Cash Value of Racism in America. In the book, Tracie charts her own family’s history, plus follows the stories of four other white American families, to see how explicit government policies and implicit biases have led to massive amounts of wealth for white Americans. Tracie joins Heath to discuss her writing process in researching the book, why it’s so difficult for white people to acknowledge this bonus, and what it might take to reverse course. Get full access to Willoughby Hills at heathracela.substack.com/subscribe

Jenan Matari is a Palestinian-American content creator known for her popular Instagram page. She has amassed a large audience with her videos that explain the struggle of Palestinians before and since October 7. Jenan joins Heath to discuss the challenges of teaching children about a genocide, navigating capitalism, and what it means to have deep ties to the land. She also chats about her own upbringing, which de-emphasized her Palestinian roots. And Jenan helps connect the dots, showing how Palestine is at the intersection of so many other social and environmental crises facing our planet. Get full access to Willoughby Hills at heathracela.substack.com/subscribe

Sarah-SoonLing Blackburn is an author, educator, and speaker. She is the author of the new young reader book Exclusion and the Chinese American Story, part of the Race to the Truth series. In the book, Sarah dives into the histories of Chinese Americans who contributed to the gold rush, the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, and sharecropping in the Mississippi Delta, while also looking at stories of discrimination and racism surrounding laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. She joins Heath to discuss her research process, her upbringing as a mixed race child in several countries, her life as an Asian-American adult in Mississippi, and the philosophy behind her time as a classroom teacher. Get full access to Willoughby Hills at heathracela.substack.com/subscribe

Dennis Kucinich is an Ohio politician who has served as Cleveland city councilor, mayor of Cleveland, Ohio state senator, and U.S. representative from 1997-2013. He was a presidential candidate in the democratic primary in 2004 and 2008. He is currently running for U.S. representative for Ohio’s 7th district as an independent. Dennis joins Heath to discuss the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, how Palestine is connected to U.S. politics, the evolution of Ohio's political scene, and boyhood memories of the Racela family. Get full access to Willoughby Hills at heathracela.substack.com/subscribe

Sarah McCammon is NPR national political correspondent, co-host of The NPR Politics Podcast, and covered the 2016 Trump campaign for the White House. Her new book The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church chronicles her personal faith journey, and similar paths of former Evangelicals who have since parted ways with the church. She joins Heath to discuss her upbringing in the white Evangelical church, what caused her to question what she was taught as a child, and the intersection of white Evangelicals and Trumpism. Get full access to Willoughby Hills at heathracela.substack.com/subscribe