“Wake up people, we stay asleep”—and from that call, this Detroit is Different conversation with Kevin Tolbert, 12th Congressional District Democratic Party Chair, moves like a family reunion and a strategy session. Four generations deep—Kentucky, Tennessee, Black Bottom, then East Side to West Side—Tolbert maps how Legacy Black Detroit culture gets made through migration, work, and neighborhood bonds. He shares a laugh and love of how his parents and older siblings discovered his intellect at an early age, then turns serious about Bates Academy and Dr. Gibson’s lesson: “Excuses are tools of the incompetent.” From there the talk widens to labor power and city politics—how unions built an American & Detroit’ Black middle class, why government contracts “make millionaires,” and why Coleman A. Young mattered because he changed the power dynamics. Tolbert connects the past to today’s fights over media narratives, water, data, and corporate greed, warning that when people stop learning history, they repeat it. It’s a Detroit story about family, discipline, and organizing—why our legacy is a toolkit, and why the future depends on whether we wake up. He honors the skill, talent, and brilliance of Black Detroit and insists, “we’re made of something different”— and at our best when faith and collective action are at our center.

“Worthiness. We all want to feel worthy… but just who we are being validates us.” That’s the energy Lanasia Angelina brings to the Detroit is Different studio—fresh out of the church service, East-side rooted (48205, Black Bottom lineage, Gratiot-Gunston memories), and ready to shake the room with her new book ‘Stop Playing Small: How to Go From Stuck to Unstoppable.’ From sleeping under pews at Perfecting CHurch as a child during choir rehearsal to blue-collar lessons (“my dad worked for Chrysler… my mom was a phlebotomist”), Lanasia breaks down how Detroit survival can harden us—and how healing can free us. She talks sisterhood, moving schools, and the kind of grit where you learn quick, then flips it into compassion and perspective about what we all carry as children carry. Her Pretty Girl Campaign years (serving 2,000+ girls) taught integrity: “I wanted to really hold that integrity so that I was really walking what I was talking.” In a city shaped by displacement, faith, and hustle, she names the trap of chasing titles and things—“they’re looking for something outside of themselves when it’s all within”—and offers a blueprint for Legacy: disrupt what shrinks you, rebuild your inner authority, and pass that power forward.

“Government power is derived from the consent of the governed—and can you consent if you’re not informed?” BridgeDetroit’s Malachi Barrett joins Detroit is Different for a candid, funny, and urgent conversation about the broken information environment shaping American politics. A military kid who was “always the new kid,” Malachi maps his route from Battle Creek to Lansing’s “blue blood” Capitol pipelines to Detroit in 2022, choosing to cover City Council so residents don’t have to sit through (at times) “eight hours” of government jargon to understand what’s really being decided. He warns we’ve “slipped into this collective psychosis,” where outrage beats reporting, “news influencers” outrun qualifications, and AI threatens any shared set of facts. Yet he calls the work “patriotic,” pushing back on the idea that journalists are “enemies of the people,” because accountability is how a city protects itself—especially in a battleground state where local choices echo nationally. From canvassing neighborhoods Malachi and Khary land on a simple ethic: “with great power comes great responsibility.” Detroit is Different, he says: the stakes are personal—and that’s the point. In a city remaking itself, that clarity links Detroit’s past, present fights, and future votes.

“Aneb and I met in 1974 when I was incarcerated in prison,” Matthew D. Jones Jr., LMSW, ACSW tells Detroit is Different—and from that first line, this episode becomes a masterclass in how Legacy Black Detroit culture survives, adapts, and teaches. Jones walks us from Black Bottom (“Chene & Gratiot”) to Forest & Van Dyke, where “seniors… looked out for the kids” and community love was “the normal process for black folks at the time.” He doesn’t dodge the hard truths: the “Big Four” police harassment, the anger it produced, and the 1966 case that changed his life—plus the haunting image of a military tank rolling through Detroit during the 1967 rebellion. But the heart of this interview is transformation: “the only way I was going to get out… was education,” reading thousands of books, earning degrees inside, and being guided by elders like Dr. Gloria “Mama Aneb” House. When a freedom fighter challenges him—“violence is not going to save us… use your mind”—Jones turns pain into purpose, and his memoir Fire in My Belly becomes a roadmap for our past and a strategy for our future.