Darren keeps it brief tonight — he's got an early morning, a bag already packed for the office, and a to-do list that needs to be done before bed. Labor Day weekend did not go the way he planned. A migraine hit Friday night and didn't fully let go until Monday afternoon — two full days in bed, light sensitivity that started the whole thing, and a suspicion about monk fruit and stevia sweeteners that turned out to be a hydration problem instead. Still not fully clear on how the light sensitivity kicked it off. That's a question for the neurologist.

Speaking of which — the health schedule is stacking up. Eye appointment tomorrow for contacts. Neurology on the 16th, almost a full year since his last visit. Therapy the following week. And then the second medial branch block on the 22nd — the follow-up to the first RFA step that gave him real but partial relief. He's hoping round two is more complete. He's also dealing with a flash drive that his computer refuses to read, a second IBJ article about Indiana's entrepreneurial ecosystem he wants to dig into properly before commenting on, and the ongoing reality that the state keeps putting itself before its citizens. Thursday and next week are where the real substance lands. Tonight he's just checking in.

After The Brew, Darren Watts, Afternoon Coffee Break, migraine, Labor Day weekend, light sensitivity, hydration, monk fruit, stevia, eye appointment, contacts, neurology appointment, medial branch block, RFA round two, therapy, back pain, lumbar arthritis, Indianapolis Business Journal, Indiana entrepreneurship, flash drive, health schedule, real talk, Black podcast, September 2026, checking in, early morning, keeping it brief,

Twenty states into this series. Twenty consecutive times Anti-Black bias has led the cumulative hate crime data. Massachusetts makes it twenty — at 673 incidents, the highest raw Anti-Black count the series has documented in any state.

But the number that defines Massachusetts above everything else is Anti-Jewish at 492. The previous series record was Illinois at 233. Maryland at 199. Massachusetts is 492 — more than double either. The federal case file explains it: four bias-motivated fires at Jewish community centers across Greater Boston, a homemade bomb placed at the entrance of Ruth's House — a Jewish senior living facility in Longmeadow — discovered before it detonated, a man who fled to Sweden with his brother's electronic devices to obstruct the federal investigation and was sentenced to more than three years in March 2025, and a Massachusetts man who called two synagogues and a Jewish organization on a single morning in January 2024 threatening to kill Jewish children and bomb their places of worship.

This episode also covers the full cumulative data — 2,424 total bias incidents, nearly double Maryland's count — plus a 2023 spike from 477 to 630 incidents, one of the sharpest single-year increases in the series. Destruction and Vandalism leads at 902, the series high. Aggravated Assault at 369, the series high. School-Elementary/Secondary at 171, the new series high. School-College/University at 145, also the series high. Church, Synagogue, Temple, or Mosque at 118, the series high. Combined educational settings: 345 documented hate crimes.

Four additional federal cases: a man sentenced to seven and a half years for threatening an interracial couple, a man who drove his car into a Vietnamese father in front of his three children, a California man who threatened to bomb Merriam-Webster's Springfield offices over dictionary definitions of "woman," and a Texas man who threatened a Boston Children's Hospital doctor for caring for transgender patients.

Twenty states. The pattern has not broken once.

Timestamps
00:00 - Disclaimer
01:01 - Introduction
02:46 - The Thesis
04:32 - The Opening
06:52 - The Background
09:22 - The Data
17:01 - Personal Thoughts
19:44 - Closing

Afternoon Coffee Break with Darren Watts. Follow the show wherever you listen. Rate and review on Apple Podcasts — thirty seconds, it matters. Number 17 Cult All Time. Number 33 Business News All Time on Goodpods — because of you.

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March 7th, 1965: six hundred marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, met with clubs and tear gas. Five months later, the Voting Rights Act became law — ninety-five years after the Fifteenth Amendment had already promised the same thing on paper. Sixty years later, this past April, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in a case that guts the last major enforcement tool that law had left.

This episode traces the throughline: the legal toolkit Southern states built after 1870 to get around the Fifteenth Amendment — poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, all-white primaries — and how the Voting Rights Act dismantled most of it within a year of passage. Then we follow the modern rollback: Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, the honest (and genuinely contested) research on voter ID laws and turnout, and this April's Louisiana v. Callais decision, which already forced Louisiana to suspend an in-progress primary and redraw its congressional map.

This show doesn't tell you who to vote for. It tells you what's actually at stake, and why a fight that started at Selma is still being decided in 2026.

Hate Crimes Through 2024 continues every Monday, same as always.

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 - Disclaimer
01:01 - Introduction
02:37 - The Thesis
04:13 - Opening
05:36 - The Background
07:12 - The Data
10:23 - Personal Thoughts
11:52 - Closing

Follow Afternoon Coffee Break with Darren Watts wherever you get your podcasts. If you're on Apple Podcasts, a rating and review helps new listeners find this conversation.

Election Day is November 3rd. Whatever you decide to do with that day — decide it on purpose.

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Darren finally found that Indianapolis Business Journal he lost weeks ago — and the article inside it was worth the wait. A July 3rd piece on Roche Diagnostics expanding their diabetes care focus includes a quote that cuts straight to the heart of the fight he's been in since June 10th: continuous glucose monitors track trends, not just single-point-in-time readings. Every five minutes. Real time. And that's exactly what finger sticking cannot do.

CIGNA denied him twice — once for the Dexcom, once for the Freestyle — citing that he's not on insulin as the reason. Darren breaks down why that reasoning is gatekeeping dressed up as medical policy. The medical necessity for a CGM is type 1 or type 2 diabetes. Full stop. The insulin requirement is something insurance companies added to protect their bottom line, not their patients. He's been building his case since June. Seventy pages of documentation, case notes, and evidence went to the Independent Review Organization — certified mail, delivered September 2nd, received September 3rd at 6:06 in the morning. Almost three months of fighting.

He also shares what happened when he skipped Mounjaro for his RFA procedure — gained 20 pounds in one week without it, which tells him everything about what his body is doing and why he needs to track those trends in real time rather than guessing. His weight is back down but the blackouts remain unexplained after tilt table tests, two heart monitors, a coronary artery scan, two EKGs, two echocardiograms, and everything coming back normal. Something isn't right. He knows it. And he's fighting for the tool that might finally help him figure out what.

Between 50 and 65% of people who take their insurance denial all the way to the IRO win. Darren did the work. Now he waits.

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Darren opens with Tedrick Washington Jr. — a 23-year-old former Division I basketball player who was pulled by his dreadlocks and punched through a shattered car window by Arkansas State Trooper Theodore Henderson during a traffic stop on August 19th. Washington was a backseat passenger. He was unarmed. The trooper claimed he "postured up" as justification. As of September 1st, no disciplinary action has been taken. Ben Crump is involved. Darren connects it to a separate August 1st incident where an Arkansas trooper tackled and punched an 18-year-old Black woman in the face — and to the pattern of lynchings that keep getting quietly covered up or underreported. He says plainly what he believes: Black people do not hang themselves. Pay attention.

He also follows up on Gary, Indiana — finally getting power back after over two weeks, while still being billed by NIPSCO during the outage. Some Indiana counties did receive FEMA approval, but Darren stands by what he said before: he doesn't believe Gary is going to get what it needs, and the speed of the response said everything about how much that predominantly Black city is valued.

Then he gets into the week he's had. Three hours of sleep before the procedure. Therapy first, then the radiofrequency ablation on August 27th — his most serious medical procedure to date. He walks through all of it: the prep, the lights that hurt his eyes, the anesthesia, waking up hungry after 12-plus hours without food, Nicole waiting in the recovery room, immediate relief in his back on the ride home, and then straight to bed with his books and journals for days. He's still recovering. The second round is coming next week or the week after. He's paying attention to the data his body is giving him and calling it what it is — they found the right nerves. This is working.

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Darren does something he doesn't usually do — he plays back Monday's recording for himself and for his listeners, and lets them hear exactly what daily life looks like inside his head when he's trying to process too many things at once. The FEMA angle, the Indiana flooding, Gary still without power, the NOAA cuts, the $5,000 disaster grants that don't come close to covering what people lost — it's all in there, circling, losing the thread, finding it again, losing it again. That's not a bad episode. That's an honest portrait of what it costs to think this hard about this much when your brain is already running on empty.

Tuesday he comes back calmer and gets to the point. Indiana voted for a governor and a president who campaigned on gutting FEMA and NOAA — the exact systems that exist for moments like this flooding disaster — and now the state has its hand out to the federal government. Darren can't square that circle. He doesn't pretend to.

On the personal side — the RFA procedure is Thursday the 27th. Therapy first, then the procedure, then bed and books for the rest of the day. He's already thinking about what recovery looks like and whether to take Friday off. The neurologist is September 16th. The ADHD and autism therapist is October. The CGM case is almost out of his hands.

And one more thing he's being honest about — a strong urge to smoke cigars or Black and Milds that showed up and won't leave. He knows what it would do to his health. He almost asked Darrell to get him some. He didn't. He's bringing it to therapy Thursday and looking for ways through it.

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Nineteen states into this series. Nineteen consecutive times Anti-Black bias has led the cumulative hate crime data. Maryland makes it nineteen — at 463 incidents, the highest raw Anti-Black count the series has documented in any state.

But the number that opens this episode is not 463. It's 144. That is the count of documented hate crimes at elementary and secondary schools in Maryland — more than double Kentucky's 65, which was the highest the series had seen. 144 children, in classrooms and hallways and on playgrounds, experiencing documented bias-motivated harassment or violence in the place they are supposed to be protected.

Maryland is the most racially diverse state this series has covered outside of Hawaii — roughly 31% Black, 41% white, 11% Hispanic, 7% Asian — and that diversity reshapes what the data looks like. For the first time in nineteen states, Highway or Sidewalk nearly ties Residence or Home as the top hate crime location, 270 to 269. Destruction and Vandalism leads the offense types at 540, edging Simple Assault at 517 — the first time property destruction has outpaced direct assault in any state this series has covered. Black offenders appear at 345, the highest in the series, consistent with a 31% Black population in a dense, diverse state. Anti-Jewish bias sits at 199 — second only to Illinois in the series — tied to large Jewish communities in Montgomery County and the Baltimore suburbs.

The federal case file includes three connected cases involving a Maryland man who threatened to kill members of an LGBTQI+ advocacy group and elected delegates who supported transgender rights — sentenced to two years in January 2024. And a white supremacist conspiracy to destroy Baltimore's regional power grid, driven by racial ideology — the Maryland woman involved pleaded guilty in May 2024, and the white supremacist leader connected to the plot was convicted in February 2025.

Timestamps
00:00 - Disclaimer
01:01 - Introduction
02:43 - The Thesis
04:32 - Opening
06:17 - The Background
08:45 - The Data
14:13 - Personal Thoughts
16:40 - Closing

Afternoon Coffee Break with Darren Watts. Follow the show wherever you listen. Rate and review on Apple Podcasts — thirty seconds, it matters. Number 17 Cult All Time. Number 33 Business News All Time on Goodpods — because of you.

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Thirty-eight million more people voted for president in 2020 than voted in the midterms two years later. Same country. Same power up for grabs. The only thing that changed was who showed up — and the people who did are the ones who now draw your congressional district, decide whether the hate crime down your street gets prosecuted, and decide whether your polling place stays open.

This episode breaks down what's actually happening in the 2026 midterms and why the election everyone calls "boring" usually decides the most. We cover the real turnout numbers (66% in 2020 down to 46.8% in 2022), everything on this year's ballot beyond the House and Senate headlines — 36 governorships, 26 secretary of state seats, 30 attorney general seats, roughly 300 state executive offices in total — and the live redistricting fight playing out in Texas, California, Ohio, Utah, Virginia, and right here in Indiana.

This show doesn't tell you who to vote for. It tells you what you're voting on, and why the years everyone skips are the years that decide the most.

Hate Crimes Through 2024 continues every Monday, same as always.

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 - Disclaimer
01:01 - Introduction
02:43 - The Thesis
04:48 - Opening
07:00 - The Background
08:55 - The Data
11:28 - Personal Thoughts
13:26 - Closing

Follow Afternoon Coffee Break with Darren Watts wherever you get your podcasts. If you're on Apple Podcasts, a rating and review helps new listeners find this conversation.

Because of you, this podcast on GoodPods ranks #17 Cult All Time, #33 Business News All Time

Election Day is November 3rd. Whatever you decide to do with that day — decide it on purpose.

Darren opens with something that isn't getting nearly enough coverage — Gary, Indiana is over a week without power following last week's storms, and the news cycle has largely moved on. He sees it. He hears the people talking about it. And he's saying it out loud even on a day when he barely has the energy to say anything at all.

Because today was one of those days. A draining meeting, unnecessary urgency at work, a brain that wants to shut down, and a body that's already tired. He's not here to make an impactful statement tonight — he says so himself. He's here to say a few words and go to bed. But in between he gets honest about something that's been sitting with him: imposter syndrome. The question of how someone who gets drained by group conversations and social media is going to build a career in independent journalism. He doesn't have the answer yet. He's sitting in the question.

One piece of good news though — insurance approved the radiofrequency ablation without a fight. The three-step process starts next week. Step one of the medial branch block is coming, and depending on how his body responds, he's already thinking about adjusting the After The Brew schedule around recovery. He's hoping this is the beginning of getting his back — and eventually his ability to walk and run again — back under him.

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Darren sits down for a lunch break recording with a plan — read the Indianapolis Business Journal, record After The Brew, get through the day. The plan immediately runs into one problem: he can't find the newspaper he was reading. It was right there. Now it isn't. And if you know anything about how his brain works, you know that nothing else is happening until it's found.

But in between searching, he pulls out what he remembers from two articles that mattered. A piece on Roche Diagnostics opening a new facility in Castleton caught his eye — because buried in the coverage was language about continuous glucose monitors that connects directly to the insurance battle he's currently in the middle of. The definition of what a CGM is supposed to do says nothing about insulin requirements. Nothing about the gatekeeping conditions insurance companies invented to avoid paying for it. Type 1 or Type 2 diabetic — the medical necessity is there. The insurance company just added layers of bureaucratic obstruction and assumed nobody would push back. Wrong person to assume that about.

He's got the denial documentation in hand now. The appeal is being built. And the question he keeps coming back to — would a white counterpart with the same profile have to fight this hard — is one the studies are already answering for him.

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