Flipping Tables

Check out Christina Ray Stantons Book at https://christinaraystanton.com/product/out-of-the-shadow-of-9-11

A licensed New York City tour guide since 1995, Christina Stanton has led more than 50,000 visitors and is one of the city’s longest-serving guides. A 9/11 survivor who lived a few blocks from the World Trade Center, she now conducts weekly tours of the 9/11 Memorial and has written more than 40 articles about the attacks and their ongoing aftermath. She is the author of Out of the Shadow of 9/11, which received both the 2020 IPPY Award and the Benjamin Franklin Award.Stanton’s journalism spans the history and culture of New York City as well as stories of social justice and inspiring individuals around the world. She writes regularly for the NY Daily News, and her work has appeared in publications including The Daily Beast, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and Time magazine.She is a member of the 9/11 Visionary Network, sponsored by the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, and The Newswomen’s Club of New York.
Stanton speaks frequently about 9/11 and has addressed live audiences worldwide from Tokyo to Mozambique. In 2016, she and her husband co-founded the nonprofit organization Loving All Nations, which supports vulnerable communities in countries such as Madagascar and South Africa. Christina and her husband Brian have lived for a quarter century in the same home in Manhattan's Financial District, where they love taking their rescue dog, Nala, on long walks through the historical streets.

I cried a lot of tears when we lost Dolly and also writing this script. WHAT A LEGACY!
This week on Flipping Tables, we celebrate the life, love, and legacy of Dolly Rebecca Parton. We will cover her childhood of growing up in poverty, her iconic music career, movies, books and most of all- her generosity. Dolly could have been a billionaire and chose to help people instead giving upwards of $600 million dollars throughout the course of her life. Dolly was an example of how to be superstar who was known most of all by her love.
Sources: Full source list on patreon.com/montemader
Anderson, E. J., et al. (2020, December 17). Safety and immunogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA-1273 vaccine in older adults. New England Journal of Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2028436
ABC News. (2026, March 13). Dolly Parton shares health update at 2026 Dollywood park opening. https://abcnews.com/GMA/Culture/dolly-parton-shares-health-update-2026-dollywood-park/story?id=131063621
ABC News. (2026, August 25). Dolly Parton's family shares her final message amid news of her death. https://abcnews.com/GMA/Family/dolly-partons-family-shares-final-message-amid-news/story?id=135948668
ABC News. (2026, August 26). Dolly Parton's legacy of giving: Inside her decades of philanthropy. https://abcnews.com/GMA/Culture/dolly-partons-legacy-giving-inside-decades-philanthropy/story?id=135947174
Afar. (2020). New Nashville mural highlights Dolly Parton's Black Lives Matter quote. https://www.afar.com/magazine/nashville-mural-highlights-dolly-partons-black-lives-matter-quote
American Eagle Foundation. (n.d.). Dollywood. https://eagles.org/dollywood/
American Songwriter. (n.d.). Behind the major financial risk Porter Wagoner took when RCA signed Dolly Parton. https://americansongwriter.com/behind-the-major-financial-risk-porter-wagoner-took-when-rca-signed-dolly-parton/
American Songwriter. (n.d.). The first song Dolly Parton wrote at age 5 with the help of her mother, "Little Tiny Tassel Top." https://americansongwriter.com/the-first-song-dolly-parton-wrote-at-age-5-wrote-with-the-help-of-her-mother-little-tiny-tassel-top/
American Songwriter. (n.d.). On this day in 1975, Dolly Parton released one of her most underrated (and controversial) career hits—banned by radio over one single lyric. https://americansongwriter.com/on-this-day-in-1975-dolly-parton-released-one-of-her-most-underrated-and-controversial-career-hits-banned-by-radio-over-one-single-lyric/
Appalachian Regional Commission. (n.d.). Education in Appalachia. https://www.arc.gov/about-the-appalachian-region/the-chartbook/education-in-appalachia/
Appalachian Regional Commission. (n.d.). High-poverty counties in Appalachia, 1960 and 2019–2023. https://arc.gov/map/high-poverty-counties-in-appalachia-1960-and-2019-2023/
Appalachian Regional Commission. (n.d.). Income and poverty in Appalachia. https://www.arc.gov/about-the-appalachian-region/the-chartbook/income-and-poverty-in-appalachia/
Appalachian Regional Development Act. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved August 29, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_Regional_Development_Act
Axios Nashville. (2026, August 27). Dolly Parton's philanthropy extended far beyond books. https://www.axios.com/local/nashville/2026/08/27/dolly-parton-philanthropy-donations
The Bargain Store (song). (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved August 29, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bargain_Store_(song)
Billboard. (n.d.). A timeline of Dolly Parton's good deeds. https://www.billboard.com/lists/dolly-parton-good-deeds-timeline/
Billboard. (2024, November 15). Dolly Parton's brother David Parton dies. https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/dolly-parton-brother-david-parton-dies-obituary-1235831296
Billboard. (2026, July 27). Dolly Parton's older brother Coy "Denver" Parton dies at 82. https://www.billboard.com/music/country/dolly-parton-brother-coy-denver-parton-dies-1236304122/

check out Tim on substack! https://substack.com/@timwhitakerspeaks/p-209161563

Tim and I share similar stories about leaving evangelicalism around a lot of the same reasons- but how do we get to the young men? Men, especially at a young age, are being pulled into the manosphere, extreme conservatism, and Christian fundamentalism. Today we talk about how the movement pulls them in, weaponizes their loneliness and anger, and keep them trapped.

Learn more about our stories, how we got out and how to reach young men in the movement.

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
- Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born July 18th, 1918 in Mvezo, Transkei, into the Madiba clan of the Thembu royal house. His father, a chief, was stripped of office by a colonial magistrate for refusing to answer to colonial authority. Raised after his father's death as ward of the Thembu regent, he underwent Xhosa initiation at sixteen and took the name Dalibunga. He was expelled from Fort Hare in 1940 for a student boycott, fled an arranged marriage to Johannesburg, and qualified in law.
He joined the ANC in 1943 and co-founded its Youth League, pushing the organization from petitions toward mass action. He served as Volunteer-in-Chief of the 1952 Defiance Campaign and opened South Africa's first Black law firm with Oliver Tambo. After the 1960 Sharpeville massacre and the banning of the ANC foreclosed legal protest, he went underground and co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe, the movement's armed wing.
Arrested in 1962 and tried at Rivonia, he opened his defense from the dock in 1964, calling a free and democratic society an ideal he was prepared to die for. He received life imprisonment and served 27 years — most of it on Robben Island as prisoner 466/64, breaking limestone in a quarry that permanently damaged his eyes, denied leave to bury his mother and his eldest son. He refused conditional release in 1985, answering that a prisoner cannot negotiate.
Freed in 1990, he steered negotiations through near-civil war, shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with F.W. de Klerk, and became president in May 1994 after the first non-racial election. His single term produced the 1996 Constitution and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He stepped down in 1999, in a region where liberation leaders rarely did.
The unfinished business was economic: the Freedom Charter's redistributive commitments were traded away, land reform stalled, inequality endured. He admitted his government moved too slowly on HIV/AIDS, then spent his last years campaigning on it. He died 5 December 2013, aged 95.

References 
Boehmer, E. (2008). Nelson Mandela: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press. Chikane, F. (1988). No life of my own: An autobiography. Skotaville. 
Frankel, P. (2001). An ordinary atrocity: Sharpeville and its massacre. Yale University Press. Gevisser, M. (2007). Thabo Mbeki: The dream deferred. Jonathan Ball. 
Gordimer, N. (1990). My son's story. Bloomsbury. 
Kathrada, A. (2004). Memoirs. Zebra Press. 
Lodge, T. (2006). Mandela: A critical life. Oxford University Press. 
Madikizela-Mandela, W. (1985). Part of my soul went with him (A. Benjamin & M. Benson, Eds.). W. W. Norton. 
Madikizela-Mandela, W. (2013). 491 days: Prisoner number 1323/69. Ohio University Press. 
Mandela, N. (1964). Statement from the dock at the opening of the defence case in the Rivonia Trial, Pretoria Supreme Court, 20 April 1964. 
Mandela, N. (1994). Long walk to freedom: The autobiography of Nelson Mandela.
Mandela, N. (2010). Conversations with myself. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Mandela, N. (2018). The prison letters of Nelson Mandela (S. Venter, Ed.). Liveright. Meredith, M. (2010). Mandela: A biography (rev. ed.). PublicAffairs. 
Sampson, A. (1999). Mandela: The authorised biography. HarperCollins. 
Steinberg, J. (2023). Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a marriage. Alfred A. Knopf. Suttner, R. (2008). The ANC underground in South Africa, 1950-1976. Jacana. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. (1998). Report (Vols. 1-5). Juta. 
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. (1997). Special hearing: Mandela United Football Club, Johannesburg, 24 November - 4 December 1997. 
Umkhonto we Sizwe. (1961). Manifesto, 16 December 1961.

Trigger warning: extreme racial violence and discrimination
Thank you to patreon supporters for making this episode possible: patreon.com/montemader
The Dutch arrived at the Cape in 1652, dispossessing the Khoikhoi and San and building a slave economy racially ordered from the start. Britain took over in 1806; abolition in 1834 helped drive the Boer Great Trek inland. Diamonds (1867) and Witwatersrand gold (1886) demanded cheap Black labor, producing pass laws, migrant labor, and compounds — apartheid's machinery in embryo. The 1910 Union unified white rule and excluded Black voters; the 1913 Natives Land Act confined the African majority to 7% of the land. The ANC formed in 1912.
The National Party won in 1948 and codified segregation into a total system: race classification for every citizen, forced removals from Sophiatown and District Six, an education policy designed to train Black children for subordination, and Bantustans that stripped millions of citizenship.
Sharpeville (1960) ended nonviolent strategy; Mandela was imprisoned in 1964. Soweto (1976) and the 1980s township revolts made the country ungovernable. Sanctions forced De Klerk to unban the ANC in 1990. Apartheid law was repealed in 1991, and the first nonracial election came in April 1994.
Sources:
Beinart, W. (2001). Twentieth-century South Africa (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. 
Bundy, C. (1979). The rise and fall of the South African peasantry. University of California Press. 
Callinicos, L. (1980). Gold and workers, 1886-1924. Ravan Press. 
Crais, C., & Scully, P. (2009). Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A ghost story and a biography. Princeton University Press. 
Davenport, T. R. H., & Saunders, C. (2000). South Africa: A modern history (5th ed.). Macmillan. 
De Gruchy, J. W., & De Gruchy, S. (2005). The church struggle in South Africa (3rd ed.). Fortress Press. 
Dubow, S. (2014). Apartheid, 1948-1994. Oxford University Press. 
Elphick, R., & Giliomee, H. (Eds.). (1989). The shaping of South African society, 1652-1840 (2nd ed.). Wesleyan University Press. 
Giliomee, H. (2003). The Afrikaners: Biography of a people. University of Virginia Press. 
Hobhouse, E. (1901). Report of a visit to the camps of women and children in the Cape and Orange River Colonies.
Legassick, M., & Wolpe, H. (1976). The bantustans and capital accumulation in South Africa. Review of African Political Economy, 3(7), 87-107. 
Lodge, T. (1983). Black politics in South Africa since 1945. Ravan Press. 
Lodge, T. (2011). Sharpeville: An apartheid massacre and its consequences. Oxford University Press. 
Mager, A., & Mulaudzi, M. (2011). Popular responses to apartheid, 1948-c.1975. In R. Ross, A. Mager, & B. Nasson (Eds.), The Cambridge history of South Africa (Vol. 2). Cambridge University Press. 
Marks, S., & Rathbone, R. (Eds.). (1982). Industrialisation and social change in South Africa. Longman. 
Peires, J. B. (1989). The dead will arise: Nongqawuse and the great Xhosa cattle-killing movement of 1856-7. Ravan Press. 
Plaatje, S. T. (1916). Native life in South Africa. P. S. King & Son. 
Platzky, L., & Walker, C. (1985). The surplus people: Forced removals in South Africa. Ravan Press. 
Ross, R. (2008). A concise history of South Africa (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
Sanders, J. (2006). Apartheid's friends: The rise and fall of South Africa's secret service.
South Africa. (1913). Natives Land Act, No. 27 of 1913. 
South Africa. (1950). Population Registration Act, No. 30 of 1950. 
South Africa. (1950). Suppression of Communism Act, No. 44 of 1950. 
South Africa. (1953). Bantu Education Act, No. 47 of 1953. 
South Africa. (1967). Terrorism Act, No. 83 of 1967. 
Thompson, L. (1985). The political mythology of apartheid. Yale University Press. Thompson, L. (2014). A history of South Africa (4th ed.). Yale University Press. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. (1998).
Wolpe, H. (1972). Economy and Society, 1(4), 425-456.