My name is Michael Shemwell and I’m the host of this podcast. My dream has been to help connect people through greater understanding of who they are and who other people are as well. As a life coach and a cult survivor I’ve seen enough of the “us vs. them” mentality that is pervasive in our culture. I’ve had to let go of awful ways of seeing others that I was taught as a child growing up, and I’ve had to open my own eyes and be curious about the world around me. I’ve been shunned for four years now along with my wife by everyone we knew previously. I know what it’s like to not have a voice. I also know what it’s like to take that voice back, and to rise above one’s past. A better life is out there and I help people to find it just like I did for myself.
My goal with this podcast and the videos that I do is to find out who the people around us are. Who is that guy you see at the gas station in the mornings when you get your coffee on the way to work? Is the person from that end of town really that much different than you in your end of town? What are the lives like of the people that we think might have it easy, or those that we think have it hard? What can we learn from one another? How does it make us look at ourselves in a different light?
I want to find these things out by giving a voice to the voiceless. The people that feel marginalized, like nobody cares about them. I want to give people that are hurting a chance to be seen and heard and to help others out there know that they aren’t alone. I know what it’s like to have your voice taken away and to have millions of people around the world shun you for taking a different path simply from the life I’ve led. I took my power back and gave myself a voice in my first podcast called This JW Life. After doing so people reached out that wanted me to give them a voice and I do that currently in my podcast called Shunned.
Now I want to get to know people locally and find out who you are and what makes you tick. I want to find out where your struggles lie and maybe even identify systemic issues that we could work toward fixing. I want to humanize the people around us because as long as there is an “us vs. them” narrative, you can bet that someone is being dehumanized. Let’s talk, and maybe more importantly, let’s listen. I named this LouisvilleOne because my goal is to unite and heal lives through understanding and transformative discussions.
