# The Compton Cowboys: Healing Racial Trauma with Horses | Louis Hook & Kansas Carradine | EAW 58 Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/equine-assisted-world-with-rupert-isaacson-6332132/the-compton-cowboys-healing-racial-trauma-with-horses-louis-hook-kansas-carradine-eaw-58 Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/equine-assisted-world-with-rupert-isaacson-6332132/the-compton-cowboys-healing-racial-trauma-with-horses-louis-hook-kansas-carradine-eaw-58.md Podcast: [Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson](https://stenobird.com/podcast/equine-assisted-world-with-rupert-isaacson-6332132) Published: 2026-07-09T09:00:00+00:00 Episode link: https://share.transistor.fm/s/762aed40 Audio file: https://media.transistor.fm/762aed40/b41d5c94.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/equine-assisted-world-with-rupert-isaacson-6332132/episodes/the-compton-cowboys-healing-racial-trauma-with-horses-louis-hook-kansas-carradine-eaw-58 Duration seconds: 7666 ## Resource ✨ "I believe that in our ancestry we were equestrians, and that's why it's connected so hard with my family." – Louis Hook For 35 years, the Compton Cowboys mission has run a self-development program in Compton, California, that leverages horses to help kids grow into upstanding young men and women β€” serving roughly 30 kids a year. Founding member Louis Hook and HeartMath practitioner Kansas Carradine, who has worked alongside the organization for years, join Rupert Isaacson to talk about the mission's history and how it works today. What started when Louis's sister Maisha Akbar moved to Compton's Richland Farms neighborhood in 1988 has grown into a four-track program covering horsemanship, equine science, farming, and self-development. Kansas brings the science side of the conversation, explaining how heart rate variability and heart coherence research from the HeartMath Institute is being used to help kids and horses regulate together. The conversation ranges from the history of West African cavalry culture and Mansa Musa to the concept of epigenetic and intergenerational trauma, and what Louis calls "Shadow PTSD" in kids growing up in high-violence neighborhoods. It's a wide-ranging discussion about ancestry, the funding challenges facing Black equestrian nonprofits, and why reconnecting to the history of Black horsemanship matters for healing. If you want to support the show, you can do so at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LongRideHome πŸ” What You'll Learn in This Episode How the Compton Cowboys mission began 35 years ago when founder Maisha Akbar moved to Compton's Richland Farms neighborhood Why Compton developed an equestrian culture at all, and how a protective land deed kept it from being lost to urbanization How the Compton Cowboys' "four tracks" model β€” hor… ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/equine-assisted-world-with-rupert-isaacson-6332132/episodes/the-compton-cowboys-healing-racial-trauma-with-horses-louis-hook-kansas-carradine-eaw-58/transcription-requests` β€” Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/equine-assisted-world-with-rupert-isaacson-6332132/the-compton-cowboys-healing-racial-trauma-with-horses-louis-hook-kansas-carradine-eaw-58.md` β€” Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.