The Sh*t Pile Episode with Paul Rucker

Artist, musician, and archivist Paul Rucker shares one of the messiest moments that shaped his life and work. Paul opens up about the first time he experienced explicit racism as a young classical musician—an experience that derailed an audition and revealed the deep inequities embedded in the systems he aspired to join. From everyday microaggressions to structural exclusion in classical music auditions, Paul explains how these injuries became fuel for his life’s mission: to uncover what has been erased from our collective memory and to help us see our histories—and one another—more clearly. His work urges us to confront the sanitized stories we’ve inherited and to embrace historical truth, no matter how uncomfortable, as a pathway to empathy, accountability, and better decisions for the future.