- [Regina] A New Jersey museum recalls the painful past to educate future generations about the dangers of hatred and bigotry.

- [Shirley] See how a West Philly Clay studio is reshaping attitudes and breaking down barriers.

- [Regina] Plus we look to the stars for answers to some of our pressing questions.

- [Shirley] And sweet and salty treats for your furry friend.

- Welcome to You Ought To Know, we're so happy you're here.

I'm Shirley Min.

- And I'm Regina Mitchell.

Ken Burn's Holocaust series gave us an eye-opening look at our country's failure to take action against hatred.

While the Esther Raab Holocaust Museum in New Jersey is working to make sure that history is never repeated, they're on a mission to use the past to help future generations respect and accept all people.

- I actually started here as a volunteer and the more that I listened to the survivors the more involved I became, realizing how important their stories were and connecting them with the next generation, so that the lessons that they wanted to share from their experiences would be carried through to make sure that people's differences are accepted.

That hate is not accepted in our community.

And it's been extremely rewarding to work with survivors and children of survivors and grandchildren of survivors.

- There are tremendous lessons to be learned and when we hear one story at a time, when we understand what happened to a person, a family, when my mother came to grips with the fact that her parents were lovely, warm, law abiding, spiritual, religious people killed in cold blood in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, you don't understand it but you relate to it one person to another.

The resilience of survivors of my parents, for instance, who went on to lead, very productive, very optimistic forward looking lives.

Who raised us with love and compassion and humanity not withstanding the horrible experiences that they had.

- My grandmother miraculously survived Auschwitz, Ravensbruk, Malchow, and Eventually was liberated by the Swedish Red Cross.

And she never talked about the details but the biggest insight into her life was the USC Shoah Foundation.

Made it a mission to interview the witnesses of history.

And in the mid nineties, my grandmother was interviewed.

My grandmother is not around anymore and that's our responsibility as children and grandchildren to continue that story.

So I've been speaking in the last few years to local students and schools about my grandmother's story, pictures and really convey that it can happen anywhere, anytime.

- The important things are to learn from these lessons about identifying a certain group and attaching horrible consequences to them.

What human beings are capable of in a negative way but in a very positive way too.

There were heroes in these stories.

Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat, who's credited with saving a hundred thousand Hungarian Jews, who shows that one person can make a difference.

- We're fortunate to have an amazing collection of artifacts, especially because we know some of the people who donated some of these things.

Each artifact is part of the story of what happened.

It's part of the experience that so many of these survivors faced.

The hatred, the prejudice, the Holocaust did not start with concentration camps, it did not start with gas chambers.

It started when hate was allowed to continue growing because people did not speak up.

We say, don't be a bystander, be an upstander.

Stand up when you know that something wrong is going on around you.

- For a list of activities and hours at the Esther Raab Museum, check out their website.

- Representation is important to the founders of Black Hound Clay Studio in West Philly.

Our interns, Essie Havercamp and Gabby Rodriguez, show us how this community art space is working to dismantle racial barriers in the field of ceramics.

- So you get your clay on the wheel and you begin the centering process.

The next step would be to drill a hole into the center and then from there you lift the walls and then you shape it.

- We opened September 1st, 2016.

And I just opened it because I felt there was a real need for affordable studio space in Philadelphia.

Ceramics, like a lot of art fields, is structurally white.

So a big part of our mission is to just try to break down those structural barriers.

We do a lot of sliding scale.

So somebody who has a higher income, who's more financially secure, would pay more and then someone who has a lower income would pay less.

- There's all of these different entry points into the clay community and it ranges from people who take our one day workshops.

We have the more in depth eight week classes, then we also have our memberships.

It's really to provide people with a thorough educational experience pertaining to learning the potter's wheel.

- We don't wanna have the tool making its way around with the piece.

Same idea as when you're making- - A lot of people come because they wanna learn a skill.

Some people come because they're like, on a date night and just need to get out.

They wanna be able to do something that's new and fresh and makes them think about things that they don't usually think about.

- Black Hound found me.

The first institution that gave me the opportunity to teach.

Because if it's not round- It is extremely important for our brown face children to see another brown face creating so that they can have that connection.

Because if it's all white folks going to teach our brown kids, the connection is not gonna be there.

So it is really important that as soon as you see my work you immediately know that a brown face made it.

- It's not just socializing, it's also sharing things and connections with people.

Because it's more just about creative avenues at a community space than it is just about ceramics.

- Like ceramics and clay and art like saved my life.

Like I don't think I would be here without them.

So if I can do that for someone else that's like honestly like the best, like, I don't want anything else outta my life.

So yeah.

- So yeah, I just want the clay bug to bite everybody.

- For workshops, classes, and parties, check out blackhoundclay.com.

- Space exploration is a big deal right now, but for those of us not planning to leave the planet, the James Webb Telescope may be the next best thing - [Narrator] Space, a final frontier.

- [ Regina] To this day, we still know very little about what's really in outer space.

But a clearer picture is coming into focus, thanks to NASA's high power James Webb Telescope.

We mere humans have been able to see the most extraordinary images from billions of light years away.

And while most of us are just amazed by the pictures, astronomers like Derek Pitts, from the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, are looking at these same images and learning a lot more.

He stopped by the WHYY studio to explain.

- Well, the images are gorgeous, there's no doubt about that.

But what astronomers are looking at really, are heat signatures from different structures and different processes that will allow us to understand better how the universe formed and a bit about how the universe is currently evolving.

- [Regina] From images of stars dying, to cosmic cliffs, where stars are born, the 10 billion dollar telescope picks up fine nuances of infrared light which provides intimate details about the universe astronomers couldn't see with the previous Hubble telescope.

- Oh, there's much more information about a universe than we've understood before.

And we're just now beginning to compile all that information to try to answer some of the questions we've had about the early history of the universe.

And as we're going about doing this we're learning what was the universe like in its very earliest beginning stages?

- [Regina] Pitt says, one of the things scientists know is black holes have been around from the very start.

And because astronomers have been able to study them for so long, they have a theory.

- A black hole is the end stage in the life cycle of stars of certain sizes.

And what actually happens to the star is after a lot of other stuff happens in its evolution it can collapse in on itself.

And as it gets smaller through this collapse, it maintains the mass that it has as a full size star.

So now what you end up with is, you end up with a tiny, tiny, tiny little point that has this incredible gravitational pull.

So anything that comes near it gets pulled toward it.

And as it goes there, that material accelerates closer to the speed of light and eventually breaks down and goes away primarily as energy.

We've been able to identify them in our own galaxy.

But being able to identify black holes in other galaxies or at very vast distances away from us around the universe tells us that the process of how stars evolve into black holes has been going on for a very long time.

And this helps us to confirm theories about how we think the universe began whether it was stars that came first or galaxies that came first and how these pieces sort of worked together to evolve to where we are today.

In my mind, I think that the ultimate goal of our efforts to explore space and our efforts to understand the origin and beginning current situation and fate of the universe is all wrapped around our desire to identify whether or not there are any other life forms out there.

Are we alone?

And what does that mean sort of philosophically for us?

- I definitely believe we are not alone.

Pitt says the technology used to build a telescope will soon show up in our day to day gadget.

- Philly is hosting its first ever kimchi festival tomorrow at Love Park.

Now kimchi is a traditional Korean side dish that's largely become a symbol of Korean food and culture.

And joining me now is Insook Seol and Gail Allen, they are organizers of this year's event.

Thank you so much for being here with me.

- Thank you for having us.

- I wanna go over what kimchi is first off.

One, it's a flavor bomb, but it is essentially fermented cabbage or radish and it's just so wildly popular.

I love that kimchi is the reason we're bringing people together for the festival.

But Insook, what do you want festival goers to take away from the event?

- Have you thought of something that revitalized the city and it's people exhausted from pandemic?

- Right.

- And we found that it's food and festival.

- Yeah, and Korean food is a great way to bring people together.

- Yes.

- There is going to be so much Korean food at the festival.

There is a kimchi making workshop.

But Gail, what other activities are available to the festival goers?

- Well, we hope everybody brings their family and their children in the kid zone.

We'll be playing traditional Korean games such as ddakji.

They'll actually fold the paper, make their own playing piece that was made famous in Squid Game.

We'll be playing yut nori, where the children will throw sticks and that'll tell them how many places to move on their board.

And we'll be making dalgona, which was also made famous.

It's a honeycomb candy from Squid Game.

- I bingeS Squid Games, So I'm excited to play some of these games with my kids.

You know, when I was growing up in the Pennsylvania suburb.

So I'm Korean American, and I just remember when I would have my friends over, I would be so embarrassed because my mom would have these giant jars of kimchi in our refrigerator and my friends would ask, what's that?

You know, and, and kind of be horrified.

But I think that we're seeing this explosion in Korean culture right now.

You know, there's K-Pop, they're K dramas that are popular.

Kimchi is popular.

What do you think is behind this sort of Korean culture being in the spotlight movement?

- BTS, the famous Korean boy band, they do a wonderful job of expressing how proud they are to be Korean and they make sure they expose their fans to the Korean food and culture and customs.

And I think they're reaching a lot of young people and that's why it's becoming so popular or one of the reasons.

- Yeah.

It's exciting to see this sort of shift in the way that Korean culture is being embraced and shared.

And it's really exciting.

Now, the Korean Cultural Foundation is organizing the event.

- Yes.

- And so tell me about the nonprofit.

- Yes.

So we started the Korean Cultural Foundation to reduce culture gap and a generation gap and also promote the Korean culture and art.

- For everybody.

- To everybody, yes.

- Yeah, and the generation gap is interesting because a lot of the parents who we call first generation, immigrates from Korea or immigrates from Korea, and then the children who are born in America don't speak the language.

So there is sort of that generational cultural gap.

And so you're helping kind of bridge that.

- Yes.

- Okay, well Insook and Gail, thank you so much.

I'm gonna be bringing my family to the Kimchi Festival, so I will definitely see you there.

As Gail mentioned, the event is family friendly, and here are the details.

- From Rittenhouse Square to Maplewood Mall in Germantown, let's see how this community is uniting to rejuvenate its public spaces.

- Hey Mason, I'm Candace Price and I've had my own business, Candace Price Garden Design, for the last 20 years.

About two and a half years ago, I was hired as an independent contractor to do a public space, the Germantown Avenue Pocket Park in Mount Airy, that ended and Germantown United almost immediately called me and asked me if I was available to do their project.

It was, you know, slightly different than the project in Mount Airy, in that it has a whole community element to it.

- Germantown United has been around for a couple of years and has been a place of resources for the community.

So to businesses, to residents, we try to create a space that allows them to gain access to things that the city has to offer, things that our neighborhood has to offer.

So right now we're sitting on Maplewood Mall.

We saw a revitalization of the businesses that occupy the space, and with that they have created their own friends of group.

So we now have a friends of Maplewood Mall and these businesses are now communicating, they are now putting events together and creating these spaces into what we envision.

And that was a place for businesses and our community to come together to share those resources, share those passions, share those crafts, that artmanship that really Germantown is all about.

- This is the show in the Green plazas, fairly new to Germantown.

We want to take care of it.

It's a- it is a public space as you can see.

- Through Department of Commerce.

Over the course of the last year or two, we've adopted a new part of our program.

We are able to fund projects to take care of these green spaces and all of our streets around our corridors.

That's protecting these businesses, giving a safe and clean environment for them, but also giving these beautiful luscious green spaces for the community to enjoy.

- The plan to create this originally didn't include the care of the gardens.

And you know, gardens need constant care.

There's no such thing as a no maintenance garden.

I've been gathering community, people from the area to be a part of a garden club.

And we're calling ourselves the Germantown Garden Guild, GGG.

I'm making relationships with people in the community, which is even more important.

Not just the people who have come out to weed but people that are nearby while I'm gardening.

Gives me so much joy that already, people wanna respect the space because they see me respecting the space.

I learned lessons doing the pocket parks, that when you are showing up regularly you start to build a relationship with the community.

You start to build a trust with the community that you are always gonna come.

You're always gonna keep making it better and better.

- Germantown is a destination area.

We want somebody to come to Germantown on a Saturday spend the whole day here, go to a coffee shop, go to a a museum, go to a gallery, and finish off with a nice dinner and then come back again.

- Whether was on screen or off, Sidney Poitier was a trail blazer.

Patrick Stoner spoke with Oprah Winfrey and director, Reginald Hudlin, about their new Apple TV documentary paying tribute to the legend.

- The world I knew was quite simple.

I didn't know there was such a thing as electricity or that water could come into the house through a pipe.

I never thought about what I looked like.

I didn't know what a mirror was.

- [Patrick] Sydney Poitier was an Oscar winner.

He was an icon as well.

The first A-list black actor in Hollywood.

Oprah win wanted to make a documentary about him.

Reginald Hudlin directed it.

But from interviewing Oprah for many times I realized just how much Sidney meant to her personally.

- We were just talking about the fact Patrick, that Sidney Poitier, no matter who he met, and if you ever go out to dinner with him, it lasts forever because he's speaking to the waiter, he's speaking to the person making food, he's speaking to the- - Well, you do that too.

- Yes, I do that partly 'cause I learned it from him.

That whole interest in everybody.

That everybody matters and everybody is important.

But that's what he did.

- It's a cliche, lonely at the top.

How lonely was this man?

- He- because there was- he was the alpha.

He had to do it all himself.

I'm gonna be a black man who's not gonna compromise my integrity as a human being, as an actor.

I'm only gonna do great parts, that I believe in, that I can show my my parents.

- [Patrick] The power really to, to do that.

- [Reginald] Right, here's the thing, he created leverage when there was no leverage.

- What's lonely is having no one to share that space with.

He understands what it means to share that space.

But I would say the defining moment for me is the story that he tells of needing the money, where he was offered $750 for a role and he turns down that role.

He could have had the money, had he just taken the role.

And he did not take the role because he said his own father would not have accepted what that character- - I think I admired that about him even more than all the rest of it without, yeah.

There would would be no Oprah, as we know Oprah.

- Nobody who has been successful as a black person in America would exist as they now currently exist.

He was white America's first black friend.

He was the first person that allow white people to understand that- - I was there.

I was one of those white people.

That's how I felt.

- He normalized blackness.

- He normalized it.

- He normalized and humanitized blackness.

- Changed us all.

- And because of that, it changed us all.

And I think that's what young people need to understand.

But I bet even you learned something about him you didn't know from this study.

- Oh, I did.

- Yes.

- So many.

Especially the early things.

- Yes.

- Especially what he didn't know when he came here.

My gracious.

Thank you for giving me your time, both of you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- I'm Patrick Stone.

I'm very lucky.

- Now that we're in fall, what could be better than a walk through the park with our dogs?

Well, how about a stop at a dog ice cream bar and bakery?

It's a place where owners can truly spoil their pets.

- Dogs love to be spoiled and we love to spoil them.

The owners come in with their dogs and you know, the dogs are picking out treats and, and it's just, it's just fun to spoil your pet.

We call this a doggie ice cream bar and bakery.

Well, the ice cream is specifically made for dogs.

So it has very limited ingredients.

So like the peanut butter is lactose-free, whole milk.

It has peanuts, it has a little bit of gelatin and maybe a dash of cane sugar and salt and that's it.

We have 10 to 12 flavors at a time for the summer.

We have seasonal flavors like watermelon crush or strawberry daiquiri.

The fall, that will change.

And then we have standard flavors.

Dogs come in, they sit at the tables and they can sit on the dog beds and they eat their ice cream.

The customers love the experience and everyone's talking about their dogs.

We post all of our pictures on Instagram and it just becomes, you know, a social event.

We have meetup groups, you know, like you might have a corgi meetup group or a doodle day.

And we've partner with some rescue organizations.

There's one rescue that comes in once a week and brings in an adoptable dog and we give the dog ice cream.

Then we post that the dog needs adopted and we've done some fundraisers.

- As I go my daily walk, she typically gives me the pull and drags me over here, gets a good smell.

Friendly customer service is really helpful.

She definitely likes to come here and see the familiar faces.

And she's a big fan of the ice cream.

Usually I get the maple bacon or the cheddar cheese.

You know, I try to spoil her when I can.

She's daddy's little girl.

- Gigi loves the treats here.

She gets a cookies and all types of bites.

She does the no-hide bones all the time.

Those are her favorite.

I meet other dog parents and in exchanging stories and knowing that I'm not the only dog parent that goes through certain things.

Yes, it is a good experience.

- It's really great for the community, honestly.

- The goal is just to have a fun place, a fun experience.

So it's just another alternative than maybe taking your dog to the park.

You come here and have fun.

It's a very happy place to be.

- Here's a website to create a memorable experience for your furry family members.

- And they also serve treats for cats too.

So we don't wanna forget about our feline friends.

- Absolutely not.

And it was a treat to have all of you join us today.

- And we hope to see you next week.

- Goodnight.

- Sit.

- What flavor would you guys like?

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