“We were really tired of the media narrative around Black men.” From that frustration, Darlene King-Turner – CEO & President of The Unity Collective – helped birth the National Black Men in Leadership Conference, now in its fifth year and returning to Huntington Place this December as a direct response to the murder of George Floyd and generations of distorted images of Black manhood. In this Detroit is Different episode, she traces her roots from Georgia and Alabama to the downriver 48217/Southwest Detroit corridor – a Black community of steelworkers, teachers, Black doctors, and midwives – and connects that history to today’s environmental injustice, noting that those zip codes carry some of the state’s highest cancer rates while being “forgotten when it’s time for capital and funding.” Darlene walks us through being sent as a 17-year-old to a mostly white Christian college in the U.P. so she could “learn how America really operates,” then coming back to Wayne State in the early ’90s as Africana Studies, Kente stoles, and Black graduation reshaped campus culture. From building Wayne RESA’s first professional development and events department to crafting its first diversity strategy, she breaks down how “diversity brought people in the door, inclusion tried to make them feel like they belonged, but equity is what really shook the table,” and why equity isn’t “taking something from you to give to someone else,” but giving people what they need to thrive. We unpack DEI’s current backlash and Project 2025, why Black men still hold only 3.2% of leadership roles nationally, and why some are now afraid to even attend a conference with “Black” in the title, even as Darlene insists that “until Black men are in the boardrooms and the C-suites, this country will not grow in the way it needs to.” She frames this year’s theme, The Power of Us, as both a call to action and an extension of the Civil Rights fight – from Detroit’s African-centered education battles to today’s reparations and racial equity work – making this episode a blueprint for how legacy Black Detroit is shaping the future of Black leadership and why loving on Black men in public is essential to the next chapter of our culture.
Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different.
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“Detroiters are our assignment editors.” That line from Orlando Bailey sets the tone for a conversation that is both legacy-rooted and forward-looking, as he sits back in the Detroit is Different studio and walks us through his evolution from a kid in Youth on the Edge of Greatness to Executive Director of Outlier Media—one of Detroit’s most trusted sources for civic truth. In this episode, Orlando reflects on growing up East Side under the watchful love of giants like Maggie DeSantis and Donna Givens Davidson, describing ECN as an organization that “walked right beside me my entire life.” He breaks down the weight of Black leadership today, especially in a media landscape where “the truth is incendiary to the chambers of power,” and shares how becoming an ED forced him to be “as open, as honest, and with as many eyes on my stuff as possible.” We talk collard green juice on the gym floor, judges who need robes, and why Detroit storytelling—done authentically—remains the strongest defense against erasure. With wisdom, humor, and Detroit cultural fluency, Orlando unpacks everything from the future of local journalism to the politics of public transit to the spiritual power of Black people telling the truth about themselves. This episode is Detroit past, Detroit present, and Detroit future talking to each other in real time.
Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different.
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“Write it down, make it plain.” That’s how Cornetta Lane Smith steps into the Detroit is Different studio—rooted, ready, and carrying her grandmother’s legacy with her. Across this powerful conversation, Cornetta drops stories that pull you straight into the heart of Black Detroit lineage: her grandmother migrating from “two blocks of Grand Junction, Tennessee” to Greenlawn; discovering their sharecropper past through census records; and standing on the road where the plantation her ancestors survived once sat—“We realized the street changed from Plantation Road to Elliot Road. I said, this has to be it.” She shares how grief, curiosity, and faith led her to create Recipes of Resistance, a docu-series blending food, memory, and truth-telling, because “the role of the storyteller is to humanize people—especially now, when trust is disappearing.” Cornetta opens up about love, loss, religion, politics, Arab–Black Detroit relationships, and why understanding where we come from is essential to shaping where we go as Black Detroiters. This is an episode that stitches together the past and future of Legacy Black Detroit with the tenderness of a family recipe and the urgency of a people reclaiming their story.
Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different.
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“He was one of the first Black independent record producer of the postwar era — and nobody knew.” That’s the spark Marsha Music brings into this powerful Detroit Is Different conversation as she unravels the epic, unsung story of her father, Joe Von Battle — the man who recorded Reverend C.L. Franklin, who cut Aretha’s first records, and who captured the raw blues heartbeat of Black Detroit before Motown ever learned to walk. Through laughter, testimony, and hard truth, Marsha paints a living portrait of migration from Macon to Black Bottom, of a father who “refused to ever work for another man,” and of a city built by people who “carried their music wherever they went.” She shares how tuberculosis quarantines, foundry labor, postwar factory shifts, and the destruction of Hastings Street shaped — and scarred — her family’s journey. But she also gives us the beauty: John Lee Hooker sleeping on their couch, Kenny Burrell’s first recording happening behind the record-shop glass, and the way the Franklin sermons were rushed to the Guardian Building to be broadcast across the country on CKLW. Marsha doesn’t just talk history — she makes it breathe. She shows how the past explains the present: why the rebellion still echoes, why Detroit sound can’t be separated from Detroit struggle, and why honoring “the people who built this place with their hands and their voices” is the key to our cultural future.
Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different.
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From her living room in Romulus, 94-year-old Ardena Vaughn takes us from Black Bottom to the “tracks” in Romulus, weaving a lifetime of memories that tell the story of Legacy Black Detroit’s past and its unfinished future. Born at Herman Kiefer and raised on Cameron Street, Ardena remembers marching in the alley when “Joe Louis would win” with tin tubs and cans, feeling the whole block erupt when the Brown Bomber put Detroit on the map. She recalls walking past the Chesterfield Lounge, hearing Dinah Washington and the hum of Black nightlife she was “too young to understand, but old enough to feel.” In this conversation she breaks down what it meant to move from the heart of the city to Romulus in the 1940s, where “the tracks” literally divided Black and white neighborhoods. Ardena shares how she became the first Black supervisor at a micro-measurements plant supplying airplanes and automobiles—“I don’t even know how I got that job.” She talks about Saturdays riding back into the city for piano lessons, eating hot waffles with ice cream Kresge, and then coming home to build a life rooted in AME church, choir, and family. Still, her wisdom for future generations is simple: “Love everybody… try to be a good example… stay busy.” She still drives her 20-year-old Grand Am, still hosts the holidays, and still plays weekly Scrabble.
Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different.
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“We knew from the beginning we wanted to be that third space” — that’s how April Anderson, owner of Good Cakes and Bakes, breaks down why her organic bakery on Livernois is more than a storefront, it’s a whole ecosystem. In this on-location Detroit is Different conversation, April and Khary sit in the middle of fall rush and neighborhood kids’ events to unpack what it really takes to build and keep a Black business alive for 12 years on the Avenue of Fashion, the largest African American–owned business corridor in the country. She talks about the community that “showed up for us from day one and stayed with us through COVID,” and what it meant to fight through busted zoning rules, missing inspectors (“FBI came and shut down BSEED”), and a streetscape project that almost killed half the block. April gets honest about the tightrope of Black entrepreneurship in Detroit — trying to “work on the business and not just in the business,” learning that “money isn’t the motivator, people want to feel valued,” and figuring out how to keep staff paid when ingredients, labor, and everything else keep going up. She breaks down the joy and tension of working with family (“my mom had to listen to the manager too”), what she’s learning from fearless Gen Z employees who question everything, and why she refuses to chase Instagram trends that don’t fit her Southern-rooted story: “It has to connect with me and our story, or I’m not doing it.” Tied to the long line of Black Detroit shops that held neighborhoods together and looking ahead to who comes after her, April issues a challenge to any business thinking about moving onto Livernois: talk to the people first, bring what the community actually needs, be consistent, and know that “this neighborhood will support you—but they will hold you accountable.”
Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different.
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Comment, suggest and connect with the podcast by emailing [email protected]
“Man, I used to sell Skittles at school — got in trouble for it too — but that’s when I knew I wanted to be my own boss.” From that moment of hustle to becoming a collegiate athlete and rising rap artist, Chase Money embodies the new generation of Detroit legacy. In this powerful episode of Detroit is Different, Chase sits down with Khary Frazier to trace his roots from Louisiana and Eastside family ties to the quiet drive of West Bloomfield, all the way to Youngstown State, where football dreams collided with pandemic realities — and a new passion for music was born. “I never wanted to just do it for fame,” Chase says. “I wanted to do it right, respect the craft, make it mean something.” The conversation flows like a Detroit cipher, blending lessons on independence, family, artistry, and discipline, while honoring the matriarchal roots of Detroit hustle — a nod to his grandmother, media trailblazer Charlene Mitchell-Rogers. From backyard ball to studio sessions, Chase Money represents how Legacy Black Detroit keeps evolving: grounded in faith, shaped by family, and still hungry to build something that lasts. As Khary puts it, “That’s what this city does — we make creativity a survival skill.” This episode bridges generations — showing how hip hop, athletics, and entrepreneurship continue to define Detroit’s rhythm and reimagine its future.
Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different.
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Comment, suggest and connect with the podcast by emailing [email protected]
From a small town in southern India Chikodi, where “we slept on the floor,” Shri Thanedar’s story moves from caste system expectations he rejected to a life built on duty — “I worked as a janitor at 14 and gave my pay to my mother.” He traces the thread of Indian culture that raised him: reverence for education (“public school and university were free — that investment lifted me”), family obligation (sending $75 of his $300 stipend home each month during grad school), and the ethic of care that shaped his first career as a health chemical physicist—“my job was protecting workers who can’t see from a danger you can’t see.” Eventually building a business in America and rebuilding it after the Great recession. He speaks tenderly of grief — losing his first wife to mental illness — and the policy it birthed: “put counselors in every school; fund mental health like lives depend on it, because they do.” Detroit, he says, recognized the familiar grind: “Detroit chose me because I’ve struggled too.” This episode threads his India-to-America-to-Detroit journey through immigration, caste, class, and kinship, and lands on a future where policy matches the love that raised him — safe work, and strong accessible education for everyone.
Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different.
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Comment, suggest and connect with the podcast by emailing [email protected]
“You can’t call it a comeback when we never left,” says Keir Worthy, reflecting on Detroit’s cultural rebirth with a mix of reverence and reality. In this in-depth conversation, Keir—designer, cultural connector, and proud Detroiter turned New Yorker—dives into what it means to carry Detroit’s creative DNA across coasts while staying rooted in the spirit of home. From helping shape Crain’s Detroit Homecoming to mentoring the next generation of Black designers at the Pensole Lewis College of Business & Design, Worthy unpacks how legacy Detroiters are reclaiming visibility in a city long defined by reinvention. He calls out the “cost of cool”—the price of gentrification that displaces the very artists who make a city vibrant—while celebrating the optimism of Detroit’s young creators who are building new lanes through collaboration and entrepreneurship. Through stories that span from Russell Simmons’ Def Jam days to the rise of Detroit’s design renaissance, Keir and Khary trace how creativity, music, and faith in community remain Detroit’s truest exports. This episode is a reflection on what’s been lost, what’s being rebuilt, and why “legacy Detroit” still has the blueprint for America’s cultural future.
Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different.
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Comment, suggest and connect with the podcast by emailing [email protected]
“Back in Detroit is Different studios—my grandma’s house—where the organ once sat and the stories still breathe.” Episode 500 turns the mic on founder Khary Frazier, with Kahn Santori guiding a deep dive into why this platform became the safe space for stories of contemporary Legacy Black Detroit. Khary maps his roots—“Rosa Parks, Linwood, Davison, Dexter”—and how a choir-director grandmother and entrepreneurial parents, shaped a curiosity that became a catalog. In 2014 at Le Petit Zinc: “I wanted to introduce people to the Detroit I know,” from Malik Yakini and D-Town Farms to The New Dance Show’s Henry Tyler, Rev. Ortheia Barnes, Sharon McPhail, and even Slow's BBQ Owner Phil Cooley. “Detroit is clickish, but I had connections across the cliques”—into subcultures (car clubs, Hamtramck’s Eastern European community, the North End’s legendary Aknartoons) and the fractures of the 96 freeway. Khary rejects clickbait—“this ain’t the place for that”—and builds community instead: pandemic roundtables, a garden, and the Collard Green Cook-off born from a CashApp Crowdfunding campaign. He’s candid about platform attacks—“with success comes attention you don’t want”—and future films on the Detroit Phoenix Black firefighters and the New Bethel incident, linking elders’ truth to tomorrow’s archive. The heart lands where it began: “Opening this space with my Mom was my proudest moment,” a living memorial that keeps the past pulsing into Detroit’s future.
Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different.
Follow, like, share, and subscribe to the Podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and Sticher.
Comment, suggest and connect with the podcast by emailing [email protected]