[MUSIC PLAYING] TRACEE ELLIS ROSS: I'm Tracee Ellis Ross, and I want to share with you the America that I know. I find that listening to these podcasts that we created these stories, it's like sitting and having the best dinner conversation with somebody that you don't know. It's a tapestry of humanity that is filled with people who define and redefine their own identity outside of what society says they are, a sense of community and the possibility of who you can be when you lean into those things. [MUSIC PLAYING] We really started with the hidden angel part of it, the people that all of us were like, oh my God, yes, I want to hear more about that person. And the miraculous thing was that there was a through line that developed not in how we chose the people, but after they started to share their stories. And it was that through line of pulling back the curtain on unexplored stories that are people all searching for a sense of belonging and in their journey of looking for that ended up creating more space for belonging for other people. The reason podcast is so special. I love reading, and I love podcasts. They hold something similar. They allow your imagination to fill in the blanks so that your preconceived notions of who a person might be because of what they look like gets to be moved away, and you get to just hear the story. [MUSIC PLAYING] Well, you know, what my mother taught me as a child. You buy gifts for other people by buying them something you would want. So I have taken that into this area in what I create and the content I create. I try and create things that I hope other people would like. But I start with, does it wake me up?