Episodes

  • What YouTubers Understand That Nonprofits Don't

    What YouTubers Understand That Nonprofits Don't
    Oct 20 2026
    Why do some videos attract millions of views while great content goes unnoticed?


    The truth is, creating good content isn't enough. You have to understand what makes people click, watch, and share.


    In this episode, I sit down with Leslie Morgan, CEO of ClockwiseTV, who brings 18 years of experience in the creator economy, working with creator-led businesses and global production companies.


    We explore what successful YouTubers understand about capturing attention, why nonprofits often struggle to reach audiences, and how better storytelling, titles, thumbnails, and distribution can make all the difference. We also discuss AI and the changing creator economy.


    Whether you're a nonprofit leader, filmmaker, journalist, or content creator, this conversation will challenge how you think about making videos people actually want to watch.
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    55 mins
  • She Led U.S. Homelessness Policy. Why Is the Crisis Getting Worse?

    She Led U.S. Homelessness Policy. Why Is the Crisis Getting Worse?
    Oct 5 2026
    Barbara Poppe has spent more than 40 years fighting homelessness, helped lead the Obama administration’s historic effort to end it, and today she has something most people in public service rarely have: the freedom to tell the truth.

    Barb is one of the smartest people I know on homelessness and someone I’m honored to call a friend. In this deeply personal conversation, we talk about how America once moved toward ending homelessness, why we’re now going backwards, and the painful reality that the solutions we knew 40 years ago are largely the same solutions we know today.

    Barb takes on criminalization, misinformation, lived experience, affordable housing, and the policy choices that keep people homeless.

    Her message is both devastating and hopeful: We know how to house every single person. We could do it. We’re choosing not to.
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    51 mins
  • What If We Treated Homelessness Like a Business Problem?

    What If We Treated Homelessness Like a Business Problem?
    Sep 22 2026

    A for-profit company working to end homelessness sounds like a contradiction. For Mike Shore, it’s been his family’s work for more than 30 years.


    Mike runs HOM Inc., a mission-driven for-profit company helping communities manage the complicated work of getting homeless people into housing. We talk about whether profit can actually be a force for good, why homeless services have become so complicated, and whether business, technology, and a different way of organizing the work could help us do better.


    Mike and I go way back, all the way to the early days of Twitter, when social media was actually fun. We were experimenting with a new way to talk about homelessness, building unlikely communities online, breaking some rules, and occasionally getting ourselves into trouble.


    We talk about whether profit can actually be a force for good, why homeless services can be so frustratingly complicated, what business and technology can bring to the fight against homelessness, and what we lost when social media stopped feeling social.


    Today’s Homeless Unfiltered podcast is sponsored by Padmission Journey: https://padmission.com/invisiblepeople


    Padmission Journey is an end-to-end housing program management platform built specifically for homeless housing programs. It helps organizations manage rental assistance, rent calculations, inspections, payments, and other complex housing processes in one place, replacing spreadsheets and disconnected systems with modern tools that make the work easier.
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    46 mins
  • The Fight to Stop Trump’s Homelessness Policy From Hurting People

    The Fight to Stop Trump’s Homelessness Policy From Hurting People
    Sep 8 2026
    What happens when the systems meant to prevent homelessness start failing the very people they were built to help?

    Mary Francis Kenyon, Chief Equity Officer at the National Alliance to End Homelessness, joins me for a deeply personal conversation that starts with her own journey through addiction and recovery and expands into a much bigger story about homelessness in America.

    We talk about the safety net that helped Mary Francis recover, why rural homelessness is so often invisible, the growing crisis facing older adults and people with disabilities, and why housing, treatment, harm reduction, recovery housing, and other solutions shouldn’t be pitted against each other.

    Then we get into the political and legal fight over the Trump administration’s homelessness policies and what could happen to people who have already fought their way out of homelessness.

    At the heart of our conversation is a simple idea: leave no one behind.

    UPDATE: Since this conversation was recorded, a federal judge vacated HUD’s 2026 Continuum of Care funding notice. The Trump administration and HUD have appealed that ruling, so the legal fight continues.
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    45 mins
  • Art From Surviving Homelessness

    Art From Surviving Homelessness
    Aug 8 2026
    Justin and Denise both turned their pain into art, and their art into a way to help others. Justin, who performs as Surfing Sofas, spent over a decade bouncing between friends' couches, night shelters, and temporary housing before moving into his first flat just weeks ago. Denise built a career as a writer and filmmaker after years battling addiction and homelessness of her own, work that eventually became the award-winning short film This Is Depression.


    They talk about what actually happens after the emergency ends, or in Justin's case, what it feels like when it's only just starting to. Denise is years out from her own homelessness and still carries it with her. Justin is brand new to having his own front door and still isn't sure he believes it's real. Justin recites two original poems, including one written from inside a night shelter. Denise opens up about the PTSD that still catches her off guard, and the recovery handbook she wrote for people going through what she went through, which later led her into prison workshops writing a book with incarcerated men that's now shortlisted for two national crime writing awards.


    This episode is about the realities of homelessness, why listening to people with lived experience matters, and how art can turn the dark into hope.


    Watch Denise's film This Is Depression here: https://youtu.be/loHMurD0jGU?si=kTtI8OOiNZZYCkbt


    Order Denise's book Sparks in the Dark here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sparks-Dark-Prison-Project-1/dp/1917061730


    The Good Work – a poem by Surfing Sofas: https://homewards.org.uk/the-good-work-by-surfing-sofas


    Listen to Surfing Sofas' poem "Till the Day We Meet Again" on the Museum of Homelessness website: https://museumofhomelessness.org/news/poet-in-residence
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    1 hr
  • We're Reversing Homelessness Progress and Nobody's Talking About It

    We're Reversing Homelessness Progress and Nobody's Talking About It
    Jul 28 2026
    What does it actually take to end homelessness in America? And why is that progress getting erased right now? Julián Castro has been in this fight at the local and federal level: as Mayor of San Antonio, and as HUD Secretary under President Obama, where he helped cut veteran homelessness by 47 percent. Today he leads the Latino Community Foundation, focused on civic engagement and economic opportunity in Latino communities.


    Today on Homeless Unfiltered, Castro talks Housing First versus criminalization, why the federal government's role is absolutely critical, and how policy driven by ideology instead of evidence is putting already-housed people back on the street, while gutting the programs proven to actually work. He also gets real about what advocacy looks like and where he still finds hope.


    Thanks to Ann Oliva and the National Alliance to End Homelessness for helping make this conversation happen.
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    37 mins
  • What a Psychiatric Ward Taught Vijay Gupta About Music

    What a Psychiatric Ward Taught Vijay Gupta About Music
    Jul 4 2026
    Vijay Gupta was 19 years old when he became the youngest violinist ever to join the LA Philharmonic. On the night he turned 20, he was playing the Hollywood Bowl with John Williams in front of 18,000 people waving lightsabers. By every measure, he had made it.


    Then he took a wrong turn while learning to drive and ended up on Skid Row. His father was in the passenger seat, screaming at him to get out of there. Less than a mile from Disney Hall.


    He couldn't stop thinking about it.


    What followed was 18 years of showing up at Skid Row shelters, county jails, state hospitals, and VA clinics, convinced he was there to heal people through music. It took a long time before he understood that the people he came to help were the ones healing him.


    Vijay Gupta is the founder of Street Symphony, a 2018 MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, and the author of the new memoir Restrung. In this conversation, he and Mark talk about what it really costs to see people who have been made invisible, why homelessness is an epidemic of spiritual alienation, and what a man in a psychiatric ward taught a Juilliard-trained violinist about music when nobody applauded.


    Some conversations deserve more than a listen. They deserve to be passed on. Share this episode with someone you care about, and if you want to go deeper into Vijay's remarkable journey, pick up a copy of Restrung https://www.vijaygupta.com/book.
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    59 mins
  • The UK Once Housed 39,000 in Days. Now Rough Sleeping Hits Record Highs.

    The UK Once Housed 39,000 in Days. Now Rough Sleeping Hits Record Highs.
    Jun 26 2026
    Rough sleeping in London and across the UK just hit a record high. Every measure of homelessness is at its worst level ever recorded. And yet during the COVID pandemic, the UK government got roughly 39,000 homeless people off the streets in a matter of days. The political will existed. The problem got solved. Then it stopped.

    Matt Downie is the Chief Executive of Crisis, the UK's national charity for people experiencing homelessness. He's been inside this fight for over a decade, watching rough sleeping numbers climb while proven solutions go ignored. In this conversation we get into why the homelessness sector's own fundraising messaging helped build the very stereotypes that make the public look away, what Finland and Japan did to dramatically reduce homelessness and why those lessons aren't being applied, how the UK just abolished a law criminalizing rough sleeping while the US moves in the opposite direction, and what it's actually going to take to change the narrative around homelessness for good.

    Whether you're in London, across the UK, in Canada, or anywhere in the United States, homelessness is growing. And the solutions already exist. Share this podcast with everyone you know. Talk about it in your community. Because the only thing missing is the will to act.
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    58 mins