Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Anthony Corona, Host and Executive Producer, Sunday Edition with Anthony Corona

**🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Anthony Corona, Host and Executive Producer, Sunday Edition with Anthony Corona** https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-10-14-2026/ In this candid episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Kirk Adams welcomes Anthony Corona, founder of Anthony Corona Media and Sunday Edition, who was connected to Kirk by Jeremy Grandstaff and recently joined the Persons with Disabilities Media Co-op. Anthony describes his life before blindness and after blindness: he was the East Coast entertainment editor for The Associated Press when shingles in the tissues of his brain, eyes and ears left him completely blind at 40, and he says he is now 10 years in. He talks about teaching himself VoiceOver, mobility training, guide dog school, his first American Council of the Blind convention in Rochester, New York, in 2019, the internship that led to Sunday Edition, and his work at Open Doors Organization, where he was asked to head communications. Anthony explains how Sunday Edition grew from ACB's weekly news magazine show into an independent family of eight podcasts, with 10 expected by the end of the year, plus Corona FM, its 24-hour streaming channel, and how he mentors contributors to host their own shows, including Sylvia Stinson-Perez, whose Treading the Waters of Life is going solo in January. Kirk and Anthony discuss intersectionality, Anthony's role as vice president of Blind Pride and why it left the American Council of the Blind, and Anthony's focus on sponsorships, short video content and the Double Tap Live network. Kirk closes by describing the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion, an online membership community on the Circle platform. Listeners can find Anthony at https://anthonycorona.com and Kirk at https://drkirkadams.com. **TRANSCRIPT:** **Podcast Commentator:** Welcome to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Dr. Kirk Adams. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. I am that very same Dr. Kirk Adams talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And today, I have a guest who I'm a little bit intimidated because Anthony is a very experienced podcast host himself. So we'll see how I do, Anthony. You can give me a grade at the end. **Anthony Corona:** \[laughs] **Dr. Kirk Adams:** But it's Anthony, Anthony Corona, founder of Anthony Corona Media and Sunday Edition. Say hello, Anthony. **Anthony Corona:** Hello, everyone. I'm really glad to be here. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Glad you're here with us. And I was connected to Anthony by Jeremy Grandstaff, another fellow blind guy who I have known and worked with for eight or nine years now. And Anthony attended the virtual launch of the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion on September 1st, which I'll talk a little more about later. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** But Anthony is out there doing great work in making the world a more inclusive place for people, and in particular people who are blind. And he has put together a number of really exciting initiatives, and we're happily joining forces in a couple of ways. One is Anthony recently joined the Persons with Disabilities Media Co-op, which is a group of us who share our social media platforms. So between all of us, we have social media platforms with over 200,000 followers. And through the management and direction of Aaron Di Blasi of Mind Vault Solutions, anyone in the media co-op can get a message out to all of those social media platforms at the low, low cost of $25 per message. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** So if anyone listening is interested in learning more about the Persons with Disabilities Media Co-op, I'll tell you how to get in touch at the end of the podcast. So Anthony, I'm gonna hand you the microphone and ask you to tell us your life story in about 40 minutes. **Anthony Corona:** \[laughs] **Dr. Kirk Adams:** \[laughs] Where have you been? What's been the journey to get you to this point? What are things looking like now, and what's your vision for the future? What's working well for you? Any challenges that we can help with? So the floor is yours. **Anthony Corona:** Well, I kinda say that there's Anthony and/or Anthony 2.0, or BB and AB, which, you know, before blindness and after blindness. I was sighted until I was 40 years old. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Oh, wow, okay. **Anthony Corona:** Yeah, so I'm 10 years in. March 24th is that anniversary. And I threw myself a virtual party. \[laughs] But— **Dr. Kirk Adams:** So it was an event then? It wasn't a gradual degenerative situation? **Anthony Corona:** No. I am one of those very rare statistical persons who had shingles in the tissues in my brain, in my eyes, in my ears. Had a medically induced coma, woke up three days later and was completely blind. They had to drill a hole in my skull to relieve the pressure. And yeah, the world completely... I was 40 years old, and the world completely changed access. It felt like north was south and south was north, and I had no idea how life was going to exist \[laughs] moving forward. **Anthony Corona:** Before that, I was the East Coast entertainment editor for The Associated Press, but I lived a bunch of lives in 40 years. Played baseball, a year of minor league ball all through high school, college. Worked in retail, worked in restaurants. My degree was in recreational therapy, so I worked in the autism community for a couple years doing early intervention, home-based services as well as ABA, behavioral analysis modification, things like that. **Anthony Corona:** None of these jobs were high-flying career-paying jobs until I got to The Associated Press. And even then, I mean, the salary was great, but the perks of travel and things like that made life incredible. And then, in the space of three days, I— **Dr. Kirk Adams:** So how do you move into a job like that? **Anthony Corona:** I actually had always been writing. And I took a per diem job with The Village Voice, a famous newspaper on the West Coast in New York. A headhunter actually contacted me and said that The Associated Press is interested. Their arts and culture division is going through some changes, would you be in... You have managerial experience as well. Would you be interested in taking a sort of half editor, half managerial position? And I really didn't think I would get the job, so I kinda threw everything I wanted in a job at them, and they gave me everything. **Anthony Corona:** And seven months later, they asked me to actually take over the entertainment division for a year or so, and clean it up and transition. Media was really changing at that point. When I first walked into that department, we had 17 support staff through researchers, secretaries and such, and there were barely four by the time this happened. And I never left. I loved it. I loved the job, I loved the fast pace, the energy, traveling around the world, meeting incredible people. There were some trade-offs, life-wise. Work/life balance was always hard, and I have a very demanding family. But I loved it. The only thing I joke about is towards the end I was getting really burned out typing the name Kardashian, and major news events in the entertainment industry would happen, and for a month straight you'd just be typing the same things over and over again, recycling the same material. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** \[laughs] **Anthony Corona:** That part of it became a little frustrating towards the end, but I had no plans to leave or anything like that. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** So were you in that role when the shingles occurred? **Anthony Corona:** I was. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Oh, wow. **Anthony Corona:** Folks who listen to Sunday Edition, my father passed away. It was happening all at the same time. I didn't know what it was. I was seeing flashes, getting these migraines. By the time I got to the hospital, they rushed me actually to a eye and ear specialty hospital. And that's the last time I drove, I drove myself to the emergency room. And three days later woke up in Manhattan. I was living in Staten Island, New York at the time. **Anthony Corona:** And after that, I don't really remember a lot about the first year. I think the brain protects you from the harsh parts. I mean, if I sit and focus I can really bring up memories, but they're not part of the kind of fabric of my life. It kind of jumps over until guide dog and becoming involved in the organizations, and life started to pick back up and I knew I wanted to figure out how to find a way to take the skills that I had and turn them into a viable career as a blind person. We all know that— **Dr. Kirk Adams:** So what was step... My retinas detached when I was five years old, so I've been blind since first grade and I went to school for blind kids, and there was just no question I needed to learn braille, how to use a long white cane. I needed to learn how to type on a typewriter so I could go to public school. So my path was pretty clear-cut. For you at age 40, the first year you say is a bit of a blur, but what was kind of the first coherent strategic thing that you did to move into living as a blind person? **Anthony Corona:** And this is something we advocate for, the first couple of months I didn't get any real information, and maybe there was a little bit of it, but my brain is, there's so much going on. And honestly, they thought they could save some of the sight, so I did a couple of surgeries with scar tissue and such. **Anthony Corona:** So by the time that all settled in I realized, okay, I'm gonna have to start figuring out how to live like this. I'd already figured out a few hacks and I wasn't even using a cane yet. And so I reached out to The Lighthouse in New York, and that kind of set me up on that first-year path. But even then it was basically only mobility training. I did a lot of YouTube. I taught myself, thankfully I was in a Mac environment beforehand, so I taught myself VoiceOver and had a really good visual memory of how the phone and MacBook operated. So things like that, I started teaching myself while taking mobility. And then like I said, going to guide dog school really changed everything. That's where I got so much information and got connected, and realized how much I didn't even know about Commission for the Blind. **Anthony Corona:** \[laughs] I was paying for my mobility services out of my severance pay. Yeah. And then I got hooked up and I'm like, "Okay, this is really expensive. I need help." \[laughs] But JAWS training, more specialized skill set training, that was all those first two, two and a half years. And I sat at it like a job. They say when you're looking for a job you need to spend like six hours a day actively working on looking for a job. So I took that mindset and said, "Well, if God is good to me, I'm gonna live another 40, 45, 50 years. How do I do that?" Well, I worked to do it and I started learning the skills I needed to learn. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Hmm. And then? **Anthony Corona:** And then a bunch of things happened in a relatively short time. I went to my first national convention. It was for the American Council of the Blind in Rochester, New York. And I had no plans on doing that, but I had sold a story. Got a check that was really nice, and said, "You know what? It's a train ride and a couple of nights in a hotel." And I hadn't traveled on my own anywhere at that point. I had taken Greyhound back and forth to Virginia where my family was, but there was somebody meeting me directly on the other side. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Was this like 2018-ish, 20— **Anthony Corona:** 2019. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Yeah, I was there. I was there. **Anthony Corona:** Yeah. And so I was really faking it until I made it. And I met a bunch of people including my partner in life. Got involved with Blind Pride International, Blind LGBT Pride, and various other Guide Dog Users Incorporated. I was a new guide dog user. I met all these amazing people. And I can only explain, people have asked and I say it like this, it feels like you're meeting these incredibly capable, talented, amazing people listening, sitting in lectures listening to people, that first time around because you're fumbling, you know? \[laughs] Or at least I was. I had no clue what I was doing. Honestly, I was making it by the seat of my pants. **Anthony Corona:** But all of that turned it around and a couple of months later I got an internship through the Commission for the Blind and the American Council of the Blind. I worked for them as their communications intern for a year, and a lot happened during that year. Led to starting Sunday Edition and took some contract jobs. I worked for Democracy Live for a while. Started Sunday Edition. That morphed into three podcasts. And again, life sort of started to shift. I took on leadership roles in Blind Pride, in the American Council of the Blind itself. And another great symbiotic moment, I met Eric Lipp, the director of Open Doors Organization. **Anthony Corona:** And started working for them as a contractor, and they saw that... And I honestly said, "You don't want me in this role." And it was for the Amtrak compliance and training and all of that side of their operations. I was like, "You really don't want me for this role, but I'm gonna take the job because, A, I need the job, and B, I'll show you..." My father always said, "If you want the job, do the job, and eventually they'll give you the job." And I figured, you know what? I'll show you everything that I have and make myself somebody that... And less than a year later, they asked me to head communications. And at the time, Sunday Edition was really blowing up, and the other podcasts were doing well, so I had to make a decision, and the American Council of the Blind and I parted quite amicably at the time, so that I could do things with Sunday Edition that under a nonprofit structure like that I wasn't able to do, and grow. **Anthony Corona:** And the mission became amplifying the voices of marginalized communities, especially focusing on the blind and low vision community, the LGBTQIA+ community, all of disability, across the disability spectrum, and anyone who has a voice with something interesting to say or conversations that are adjacent to the advocacy that we're all doing. And my mission is through storytelling. I do traditional interviews, of course. We do a lot of entertainment stuff. We do a lot of straight up tech talk. But the storytelling really is the center of it all, and the mission for the Sunday Edition family of podcasts and Anthony Corona Media itself is really to prepare folks. Take the voice that they have and harness it to put it out there into the world. And if that means you stay with us forever, great, but if you wanna learn sort of the tips that have worked for us, both traditional media and podcasting and digital media content. **Anthony Corona:** And then, in fact, our first podcast that came on after we left the American Council of the Blind is going solo in January, and I can't be more happy and more proud. And they're building subsequent podcasts off of that. That's Sylvia Stinson-Perez and Treading the Waters of Life. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Oh, nice. **Anthony Corona:** Yeah. I'm so proud. It's my first fledgling leaving the nest. \[laughs] **Dr. Kirk Adams:** So let's back up just a little. I'm gathering you were doing communications work for American Council of the Blind, and part of that was creating a podcast or podcast platform or podcast structure, and then you moved out of the ACB umbrella and established Sunday Edition, and you mentioned three podcasts. So could you talk about the structure and scope of Sunday Edition? You talked about supporting people and now helping them spin off into their own podcast empires, so if you could talk a little bit about the shape of Sunday Edition, the components of it. A description of Sunday Edition as an entity would be really helpful. **Anthony Corona:** If I could take one step back first. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Yeah, of course. **Anthony Corona:** I do wanna give the American Council of the Blind credit for, one of the responsibilities that I had was helping to organize and put together the very first virtual convention during the pandemic. And that was invaluable. Getting that much trust in being able to oversee projects and implement and the knowledge that I learned gave me a base that I couldn't have gotten anywhere else. So I will always hold a very special place in my heart and in my career path for the things that I gained with the American Council of the Blind. Sunday Edition started out as a news magazine show. We used to break it up into three segments, kinda movers and shakers, an interview— **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Was it called that while it was part of ACB? **Anthony Corona:** Yeah. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** It was called Sunday Edition? **Anthony Corona:** Yeah. Sunday Edition. And it was literally labeled ACB's news magazine offering, weekly offering. And we did it live. We used to have, like, 70, 80 people in the room during the pandemic. It was amazing. We had a lot of fun. There was no real direction those first couple months, and then it started to take direction. And there was something in me between the point where I lost my eyesight and really sitting behind the mic as... I was involved with a podcast, a soap opera podcast for 12 years at this point, so at that point, about seven years. But it's different when you're sitting with a bunch of people, and all you have to do is show up on recording day with your opinions and talk than harnessing an entire show. And my interviewing skills really started to come back, and I felt confident again. I felt in my element and that I was really putting my skills to use, and it morphed into a more roundtable panel/one-on-one interview, in-depth, two hours on a topic, on a focused topic. **Anthony Corona:** We would throw fun shows in along the way. You're doing four or five of them a month, so not everything was advocacy related. There was a lot of introducing new ACB members, staff members, talking about conventions, interspersed with a lot of advocacy work, and then around the third year, we started really moving into tag conversations, and the companies and entities liked coming to Sunday Edition because it wasn't a 15-minute spot. It was a two-hour conversation. And I started getting companies coming to me that wanted to introduce themselves to the blind and low vision community. We were the first to bring OKO and HapWare. **Anthony Corona:** EchoVision was in early, I mean, before they even had a prototype, they were on Sunday Edition. And little by little it grew. And so by the time we left we also had something called Behind the Music, which is sort of a karaoke performance adjacent, and an Intimate Evening, which is sitting down, again, another two hours, but with an artist or someone who is functioning in the world, and then we tell their story through their art, their music, as well as their in-depth interview with them. And those are the three that we took and went independent with, and quickly started adding podcasts to the fold. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** And you mentioned three podcasts. Is that the current— **Anthony Corona:** There was— **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Or four? **Anthony Corona:** That was three then. We are at eight, and we will be at 10 by the end of the year. We have two more premiering this year I'm very excited about. So... And I am not hosting all of them. That would be way too much Anthony Corona in the world. \[laughs] But yeah. And I think, at that time also, I started working for Open Doors, and I had to decide leadership versus career. And I will always have space in my life for advocacy and for leadership, but I still want work, I still wanna make a difference, and I still am vital in that world. So it all comes to— **Dr. Kirk Adams:** And is Open Doors currently the career piece? **Anthony Corona:** Open Doors is kind of the career piece. And that's— **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Can you describe Open Doors for those who aren't familiar? **Anthony Corona:** So Open Doors is cross disability. We advocate and we're in the travel hospitality retail spaces. We do ADA compliance, we run workshops, we consult in new construction for airports, train stations, Amtrak, Brightline, all of the major airlines. We also have the service animal portal— **Dr. Kirk Adams:** What's that? **Anthony Corona:** It's a portal for guide dog users to make the paperwork process a lot easier. We have two of the major airlines and we are seven American carriers, including two of the major 11 global total, bringing more on this year. But it's a hard administration to be a nonprofit, and it's just a hard space to be in right now. But I love the work, I love the people that I work with. And quite honestly, I'm strong in voice and personality, and so if I can use my voice for my community, I want to. And if I can get paid for it, I mean, score. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** That's— **Anthony Corona:** And that's... Yeah. \[laughs] **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Hear, hear. \[laughs] **Anthony Corona:** Yep. \[laughs] **Dr. Kirk Adams:** I high five you on that one. And then back to spinning off for, I don't know what the right term is, but you have one of the podcasts you said is going to be moving in— **Anthony Corona:** Into an independent space. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** From beneath the Sunday Edition umbrella into independence. So— **Anthony Corona:** Graduating, so to speak. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** You talk about story... Graduating. **Anthony Corona:** \[laughs] **Dr. Kirk Adams:** You talk about storytelling and mentoring and helping people develop, so why don't we talk a little bit about those aspects of what you do? **Anthony Corona:** Well, you know what I found, once Sunday Edition really started to hit its stride, I found people would often come, "Hey, are you gonna do a show about this? Can we talk about this topic?" And, \[laughs] as the other two podcasts came on board and I'm working full time, I suddenly didn't have the same amount of time that I had during the pandemic to really go in depth with research and conversation and finding panelists and coordinating everything. And so, just organically, I started asking folks to sort of partner with me for some of these conversations, and that's really where the idea was built from. And I said, "You know what? Instead of constantly owning the entire space—" And there's tons of podcasts out there, don't get me wrong. **Anthony Corona:** But people are hesitant to do a long form conversation and stuff like that, and after they do a two-hour conversation, they're like, "Oh my God, that flew by. We could talk for another hour." And it's not as hard as they think it is. I realized, wow, if this is a way for me to pay it forward. If they only want to bring an idea to the world and move on, great. You know what? It benefits Sunday Edition, it benefits the community. But if this is the space they're interested in, then why not teach them what they need to know? If they stay with us, great. If they... It's a lot. You have to upload, you have to edit, you have to follow... \[laughs] If people constantly change, we're scheduled for Thursday at 2:00 to record and something comes up and it can be a lot. So the flow of Anthony Corona Media and the Sunday Edition family is, where you are is where we're gonna meet you, and if you have no experience whatsoever, we'll walk you through it. **Anthony Corona:** And if you get to a space where, like Sylvia, you're ready to take it to the next level, she's writing a second book and her next podcast is gonna focus on that, God bless. I don't wanna gatekeep. We have enough of that in our community to begin with. In humanity, I think it's microcosmed because we're so internet with each other, and we are such a small portion of the larger community. But these things happen, and one of the things that I'm really anti is anti-gatekeeping and anti that whole elite structure. **Anthony Corona:** Who's a super blind? Are you a super blind? Am I a super blind? I'm a blind guy getting through the day. And I think that's how most of us feel. But at the same point in time, I do understand when you get to a certain space, you don't really wanna look back, and you don't really wanna be held in that space. So it's a really unfortunate dichotomy that we find ourselves in. So those of us that have platforms, and that's why I love the co-op and the things that you are putting together for a cross, I call it cross-pollination. **Anthony Corona:** We can only be better if we amplify each other. We create the spaces, we share the spaces, and we open the door for others, you know? I look at both organizations and lots of other spaces, and it's the same people doing the same things. And that's not a bad thing, don't get me wrong. But what's the session plan? Have somebody next to you doing it with you so that it— **Dr. Kirk Adams:** When you say both organizations, you're talking about Federation and Council? **Anthony Corona:** Federation and the Council, yeah. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Yeah. Okay. That's fine. I was sure we're thinking about the same organizations. **Anthony Corona:** \[laughs] But I think it spills over into a lot of spaces in our life. Even the social hierarchies. And I think that's part of, that's my unofficial mission, but I want the doors open. And I want people to feel that they have a space, and they're valuable. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** And I wanna talk about Blind Pride a little bit. I wanna frame up my interest in learning deeply about those dynamics. So I talk a lot about intersectionality and disability, and I'm in the diversity, equity, and inclusion spaces writ large, not just disability, but everybody, everybody. And that's where the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion comes in, a space where everyone can bring their lived experience and their perspectives into play. And when I'm talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion, one thing that often comes up is intersectionality, and my argument that if an organization, a company, an employer, an institution does a good authentic job of disability inclusion, they're going to be doing a good authentic job of inclusion overall, because disability knows no demographic boundary. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** So there are people with disabilities and impairments of every ethnicity, country of origin, economic status, affectional orientation. You name \[laughs] a demographic category, there's people with disabilities within that category. So you are involved in Blind Pride. So I don't know if you identify as gay or queer, how you like to self-identify, but I'd love to know. And then you are a blind person, so you obviously have a visual impairment as well. So one thing I often cite is data I found in my dissertation research that showed only 35% of blind people are in the workforce, and of those who are, the people who make the most money, who have the highest income are white males with lots of usable vision or legally blind. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** And the people who make the least are totally blind Black women. So I say there's these cascading dynamics of marginalization, oppression, institutional barriers and discrimination that kinda layer upon one another. So, as I blurted out those top of mind thoughts, would love to get your take on those dynamics of Blind Pride and your lived experiences occupying multiple identities of, I'll say, oppressed, marginalized people. **Anthony Corona:** Well, I'll start off with my pronouns are he/him. I do identify as gay. Caucasian Italian man from New York City, so I recognize the privilege that I was born into and, for lack of a better word, enjoyed for most of my life. Athletic, relatively good looking, relatively smart. I had a lot of advantages, a lot of luck. I knew when to take advantage of luck when it crossed my path. And I did a lot of advocacy in the LGBTQIA plus community beforehand, gay marriage and archiving, working with Eric Marcus in Making Gay History and the Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York, archiving our history and understanding where we came from. And I say that because when I got to convention and found out, oh my God, there's a group, and there's folks that \[laughs] excuse me, are doing good things together, I was so excited. **Anthony Corona:** And I think that there's a lot of overlap for all marginalized communities, but especially the blind, low vision and the LGBTQIA plus community. There really is a lot of overlap in the types of advocacy we've needed to do, the unfair stereotypes that have been placed on us and the villainization of our communities, the other-izing for political purposes. So to be involved in an organization that really cares for the intersectionality of blind, low vision, and the LGBTQIA+ experience touches right at my heart. I'm the current vice president. I came in running. They didn't have a secretary in 2019. Nobody volunteered. And I finally did because they needed it, and I had the skills to do it, and never looked back. We've had some rough patches. We've had some amazing triumphs. And it's a really great organization. We have a lot of allies. And we make sure to create those safe spaces for the intersectionality that is blind, low vision, and LGBTQIA+. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Are there any particular challenges that you might have not thought about \[laughs] before becoming a blind person, to that intersectionality? **Anthony Corona:** The same challenges, I think, in different ways that we all face. And I'll say it this way. A couple of weeks before all of the events that led up to losing my sight, I had been in one of my favorite bars in the Village on Christopher Street in Manhattan, and I had a really, almost unfair amount of attention. I did not lack for conversation, companionship, or anything else. A couple months after being blind, the first time I walked in there, it was like I was invisible. **Anthony Corona:** And so what I think the challenge is trying to align with the big organizations and the big advocacy movements in the LGBTQIA+, we get all the same questions, all the same fears, assumptions. "Well, what could you really do?" "How much help are you gonna need?" All that kind of stuff. But the other side of it, it's no secret, I'm sure, to a lot of your listeners, Blind Pride left ACB as well. \[laughs] **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Oh, I had no idea. **Anthony Corona:** Yeah. No. We're an independent organization. January will be three years. So BPI left a little bit before I did, and the two events had nothing to do with each other. Leadership of ACB and I were in conversation about how to gently part, and potentially running some of my content, which they still to this day do. Like I said, we left on pretty amicable terms, but not Blind Pride. There's a lot of the blindness and blindness only, leave the rest of yourself at the door, and that works really well for white Christian folks. It doesn't work for almost everybody else. Hispanic community, the African American community especially, the LGBTQIA+ community. And we've never been ones to say, "Oh, we have it doubly hard because we're doubly... We're disabled and gay." But when it comes down to it, to completely ignore half of someone's lived experience, it can only fester for so long, and that's what ended up happening. **Anthony Corona:** And I think honestly, both organizations are better for having gone through it. And we can act as subject matter experts for, and we do. We are now for both ACB and NFB. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Okay. So how do people listening who are sharing those identities of blindness and LGBTQ, how do they get involved with Blind Pride? **Anthony Corona:** Well, we have a really easy website. It's https://bpi.gay. There is tons of information there. Membership email address is there. You can always reach out. You'll either get me or one of my committee members. Have a conversation and join us or come to one or two of our events, feel us out. We do a lot of social networking. Most of our advocacy at this point, we've morphed more into a partner organization rather than a full-blown advocacy organization. For many reasons. But also, the smaller fish, we can do some specialized stuff for the bigger organizations, and it works out well that way. But there's a lot of opportunity for social gathering, advocacy, and peer support. And you can find all of that at https://bpi.gay. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** I like it. And then Sunday Edition is a portfolio of, I think you said eight, soon to be 10 podcasts. You're not managing, hosting all of them. What's your vision for the future of Sunday Edition? **Anthony Corona:** Well, joining the co-op was a big... I guess you could say it wasn't a bucket list, because I didn't know the inner workings of it until very recently. But it was something that I was looking towards. I just recently also joined the Double Tap Live network with two of the podcasts. What I see for the next two years is what I'm really focused on, moving into short video content, expanding the reach of the podcasts themselves, looking at sponsorship opportunities. And my contributor list is growing, like, almost daily at this point now, which is great. Keep 'em coming. But keeping that— **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Contributors meaning financial contributors, content contributors? **Anthony Corona:** Meaning content contributors. Folks that are writing editorials, helping with the tech spotlights, bringing conversations to one of the various podcasts. And now, it is hard to sustain financially. I had a great sponsorship opportunity last year, which got us through the first half of this year. Everybody who does, actually not bringing ideas, not part of conversations, but my editors, my background, everybody who works for Sunday Edition gets paid. That was something that I absolutely insisted on from the moment we started. But it is expensive, so this, the year of '27 is gonna be about sponsorships, growth, opportunities, and keeping the doors open and then amplifying as many voices as comes to us, and I'm always actively seeking out. I talk people \[laughs] into, instead of just taking your idea, you come do it. Me or one of our partners will co-host with you. You're gonna set the conversation. And I just wanna keep doing that and grow. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Can people do a one-off? If someone's super interested in blind chess, can they do an episode on that and contribute that passion and that knowledge? **Anthony Corona:** Absolutely. I had somebody do a one-off. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** You're not committing to create a blind chess podcast, but do an episode on one of the existing? **Anthony Corona:** I will always try to talk you into doing, and I've done a few of these, limited edition series. And what I always say is, "You know what? Have the first conversation." Structure it so that it's not everything that you know and everything that you wanna say, and honestly, no one does a two-hour podcast out of the gate. We usually plan for 45 minutes to an hour for a first podcast. So structure what you really wanna say in that first podcast, but think about, if you like doing it, we get good engagement. Think about how we might turn this into an... I've only done maybe three one-offs in the last three years because they have turned in, most of them turn into something. A couple of them have turned into full-blown podcasts. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** So if someone has an interest, a passion, an interest, something they would like to share, they can contact Sunday Edition and fit in somewhere in the portfolio of activities that are going on. **Anthony Corona:** Absolutely. I can't say too much about this, but I'm working with the Kentucky School for the Blind on a project that will result in a bunch of one-offs. \[laughs] But they're getting credit for learning journalism and such, and their finished project will also be a podcast that they can keep for— **Dr. Kirk Adams:** So these are students? **Anthony Corona:** These are students. And we'll be featuring them through the Sunday Edition channels. We have our own 24-hour streaming channel, by the way, Corona FM, which plays all kinds of content from the Sunday Edition family as well as music and fun stuff. One of the podcasts, the soap opera one that I'm involved with, we partnered and branched off and we do legacy entertainment interviews. I just literally yesterday spoke with Mimi Kennedy. Last week was Rosanna Arquette. We're sitting down with, oh, God, J.R. Ewing's wife. I just looked at her email two minutes before we got on this. Next week, Linda Gray, amazing actress. Jon Lindstrom, the author. We have a conversation coming up with Stephen King actually for the holidays. So yeah, there's just a lot under Sunday Edition, but whatever day you have— **Dr. Kirk Adams:** How do people find Corona FM? **Anthony Corona:** https://www.anthonycorona.com, anywhere you listen to your podcasts. It's Sunday Edition with Anthony Corona, and links for all the other podcasts are on https://anthonycorona.com. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** That's— **Anthony Corona:** But I'm out there everywhere. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** That's the hub. **Anthony Corona:** That's the hub. Yeah. Anthony— **Dr. Kirk Adams:** If we go to https://anthonycorona.com, we can find everything else? **Anthony Corona:** Yes, or Anthony Corona Media on Facebook. I'm a version of Anthony Corona on all socials. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** \[laughs] **Anthony Corona:** \[laughs] Yeah. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Okay. Look for Anthony Corona wherever you prefer to do your social media hangout. You'll find him. **Anthony Corona:** \[laughs] You'll find me somewhere. \[laughs] **Dr. Kirk Adams:** That's great. **Anthony Corona:** And the easiest email is sundayedition, all one word, @anthonycorona.com. I am responsive. I answer everything that comes in. And if you've got an idea, I always say, "We'll take it from mind to mouth to microphone to podcast feed, or from mind to fingertip, word to one of our publishing arms." And we have quite a few distribution arms of anything written that we publish. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Well, I don't know how in the world I have not encountered you before, sir, but I'm glad it's happened now. Thank you Jeremy Grandstaff for connecting us. **Anthony Corona:** Absolutely. Same here. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** And now you're part of the Persons with Disability Media Co-op, which we talked about a little earlier. If people wanna get in touch with me, I have a website, dr for the doctor, https://drkirkadams.com. You can email me there, sign up for my newsletter. I'm on LinkedIn every day, Kirk Adams, PhD. And I do want to talk a little bit about the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion. I was asked to join a board in the fall of '24 for a nonprofit here in Seattle called the Institute for Sustainable Diversity Inclusion, which has been around about 30 years doing great work here in the Seattle community, mostly working with local corporations and being sponsored by companies that are based here, all the Seattle gang, Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, Costco, Boeing, et cetera. And their model had become less and less impactful as corporations started to move away from formal commitments to DEI. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Sponsorship started dwindling. The pandemic didn't help. And then I agreed to join the board under the condition we could lead a strategic planning process, which we did last summer. A very good one. Convened 60 DEI leaders and got input and got a clear message that there was appetite, interest, and a community where people could gather, share information, learn from one another, teach one another, enlist support from others, and rapid response of emerging issues. So we decided to create an online membership community based on being welcoming to everybody who has an interest in making the world a more inclusive place, with people interested in human dignity, social justice. It's called the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion. It's on the Circle platform. There's a website. There is an Android app, iOS app, and it is a monthly membership with various levels. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** I invite you all to come check it out. And it's a place for you if you care about fairness \[laughs], equity, and justice and want to make sure those issues aren't buried under the onslaught of evil forces. I'll leave it at that. But Anthony, it's been a pleasure to have you. It wasn't two hours, but as you said earlier, it sure could have been. But I will be going to https://anthonycorona.com. I wanna check out Corona FM for sure. And again, if people wanna get in touch, go to https://anthonycorona.com or email sundayedition@anthonycorona.com or get in touch with— **Anthony Corona:** It's Corona like the beer. \[laughs] **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Yes. That doesn't sound bad right now. It is about that time here in Seattle, Washington, on a sunny fall afternoon. **Anthony Corona:** Same here in Miami. Absolutely. And we'll do a part two of this on Sunday Edition. I think there's a lot you and I can talk about. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that. **Anthony Corona:** All right. **Dr. Kirk Adams:** Thank you, Anthony, for being on this episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, and we'll see everybody next time. **Podcast Commentator:** Thank you for listening to Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. 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