This show is the answer.
My son was fifteen years old, watching Tony Hawk skate. He wasn't asking about fame or money. He wanted to know how much Tony Hawk had practiced when he was young — because he wanted a plan. Not inspiration. A roadmap he could actually follow.
I didn't have the answer. And I realized in that moment that nobody was giving young people that answer. We put the result in front of them and call it motivation. We never show them the road.
That question stayed with me for two decades.
A couple of years later, my daughter had the opportunity to interview two Atlanta Braves players. She asked me what she should ask them. I told her: ask how much they practiced as kids. She thought it was too simple. Too boring. Not impressive enough for a real interview.
She asked anyway — because she had nothing else.
"Nobody ever asks us this."
Two professional athletes. Genuine surprise. At a question a teenager asked because she ran out of ideas.
That reaction told me everything. Celebrities and athletes are asked about their fame, their opinions, their controversies. Nobody asks them about the work. The hours before anyone was watching. The failures that didn't make the highlight reel.
That is exactly what a young person needs to hear. Not just to be inspired — but to survive.
Twenty years later — with the platforms to reach the people who need it most — BreakN exists.
Young people make choices based on what they believe is possible for them. A young person who cannot visualize themselves in a future is a young person at risk.
BreakN exists to change what feels possible.
When a young person in a detention center watches someone they respect describe the specific, unglamorous, daily work it took to get where they are — the failed attempts, the early mornings, the years before anyone cared — something shifts. Not inspiration. Evidence. Proof that a different identity is available to them.
When Jackson sits across from a guest and asks "where do I start?" — a young person watching sees someone their age being taken seriously by someone powerful. That representation alone is an intervention.
BreakN is licensed to juvenile detention centers, alternative schools, and at-risk youth programs as a structured discussion tool. Every episode is a roadmap. Every guest is proof that the road exists.
This is not a podcast that talks about helping young people. It is one that actually does.
Amie Ray Davis is a law professor, wrongful conviction advocate, co-founder of Justice 929, founder of Micawber Publishing, and the author of Confessions of a Teenage Mama Queen. She has spent her career giving voice to people who were counted out — in the courtroom, in the classroom, and now on air.
She knows what it means to need a roadmap and not have one. She was a teenage mother who took the long road to where she is now. That is why she built this show.
Every episode of BreakN, Jackson sits across from a celebrity, athlete, or public figure and asks them the founding question:
"How much did you practice when you were my age? And where do I start if I want to get that good at something?"
No PR filter. No rehearsed angle. Just a kid asking a powerful person something real — and a powerful person who cannot give a polished answer to a child asking sincerely.
If you have a path — and everyone does — we want to hear it. Jackson has a question for you.