10 Minutes with Tamara: a video series introduction and overview

10 Minutes With Tamara, a video series

Early in the CoViD-19 pandemic (April 2020) I conceived of the idea for this video series, a collection of interviews with friends from around the globe — friends whose lives have been directly (or tangentially) impacted by childhood Lead exposure. I was inspired by the ease and simplicity of the Zoom-enabled “virtual” interviews between Late-night talk-show hosts and their remote guests being done as a creative adaptation to the pandemic and I said “Hey, I could do that!”

I started this video conversation series as a way to connect with my far-flung readers, friends, and followers personally. Most importantly, I started this to give other parents of Lead-poisoned children a voice in sharing their stories with the world. For parents in crisis and parents with questions about protecting their children alike, I wanted to have the opportunity to answer what questions I could and direct them to other resources as necessary. By doing this in a video series, I make both the stories of these parents and whatever answers I can help to provide, available to a much wider audience — hopefully creating an additional avenue for helping families around the world.

I am interviewing long-time friends — but also people I have never met before. I am interviewing parents who have been managing their child’s Lead-poisoning, and also parents who are simply working diligently to find ways of hopefully preventing their children from being exposed. I am excited to already have some amazing “celebrity” guests lined up for future interviews: journalists, pediatricians, experts in the green building arena — and even some popular “stars,” who as fate would have it, each have a very personal stake in this issue by virtue of their own family experiences and responses to Lead-poisoning, and/or its prevention!

So far, the common thread in all these interviews is that I am talking to parents; we are all connected by this journey we are on, no matter how far along on it we may be (beyond what we might bring to the conversation from a professional perspective).

As far as a long-term goal for the series, I would like for most of the interviews to serve as an archive of stories from families of Lead-poisoned children, much in the way Stephen Spielberg’s Foundation preserves the stories of Holocaust survivors. As expressed in my documentary feature film MisLEAD, America’s Secret Epidemic, I long ago learned that the most powerful tool we have in educating other parents — and in protecting future generations of children — is storytelling.

While these interviews may take off in any direction at any moment, the basic concept for each is that the guests ask me two questions, and I ask the guest two questions! Every episode is wholly unscripted, and the final interviews are edited down to about 10 minutes, with captions, so parents can watch them in bed in the dark with the sound off, as they put their kids to bed — which so many parents do these days!

If you would like to participate in a future episode (especially if you have two incredible questions to ask me!) please send the following:

a quick e-mail with a paragraph or two about yourself
a headshot (or family portrait) that I have permission to use if we make a video
the questions you would like to ask in our video interview.

If your story looks like a good candidate for a segment, I will get back to you as soon as I have an available opportunity to film your interview! My e-mail: TamaraRubin@mac.com. I look forward to hearing from you!

Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama