Basically Unbothered

Basically Unbothered Recapped: A Different World, Same Old Tropes

Basically Unbothered Recapped turns ONE! 🎉

In this anniversary episode, Gabi is back with a pop-culture roundup, a life update, and a full recap of Netflix’s A Different World reboot.

The verdict? It’s entertaining, it gets significantly better as the season progresses, and the nostalgia hits. But for a show carrying the name A Different World, Gabi expected something that pushed the boundaries of Black representation the way the original series did.

This episode digs into what the reboot gets right and where it falls short, including HBCU culture, alternative Black identities, Afro-Caribbean representation, LGBTQ+ representation, ADHD, relationship tropes, cheating, love triangles, and the importance of showing young Black people as more than a handful of familiar archetypes.

And yes, there are plenty of things to love too. The returning characters, the cameos, the HBCU setting, the political conversations, and seeing the original characters thriving all bring some much-needed warmth and nostalgia.

Plus, Gabi shares a personal update about returning to work, navigating expectations as an indie author, building community through content, and learning to measure success a little differently.

Come for the recap. Stay for the side-eye. 🫖

Basically Unbothered Recapped: A Different World, Same Old TropesBecause sometimes loving something means saying, “Okay, but we can do better.”

Basically Unbothered: A Plan to Live

In honor of the upcoming Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Basically Unbothered is bringing back this special episode featuring Gabi and her mom, Anicia.

Originally released as a special conversation about Anicia’s experience with stage four metastatic breast cancer, this episode is an honest and deeply personal look at diagnosis, chemotherapy, surgery, faith, family, grief, community, and what it means to keep living when life completely changes.

Anicia shares what it was like to hear that her cancer had reached stage four, navigate treatment, and eventually receive encouraging results. At the center of her journey was one powerful message from her doctor: “We have a plan to live.”

Gabi also opens up about experiencing her mom’s diagnosis from the other side, including the fear, caregiver role, emotional aftermath, and realization that serious illness affects an entire family, not just the person receiving the diagnosis.

It's vulnerable, funny, sometimes heavy, and filled with the very real mother-daughter energy that makes Basically Unbothered what it is.

💗 This is a rerun, but some conversations are worth bringing back.

Content note: This episode discusses cancer, chemotherapy, grief, mortality, and the emotional impact of serious illness.

What if you stopped looking for “your person” and started asking whether your person even needs to be romantic?

This week on Basically Unbothered, Gabie gets personal about relationships, safety, friendship, trauma, and why she's questioning the idea that romantic love has to be the center of our lives.

Plus, a pop culture roundup covering Nolan Wells, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, Raven-Symoné, Black identity, representation, and why sometimes the internet needs to collectively sit down. 😂

Maybe life doesn't have to fit the blueprint we were handed.

Maybe we're allowed to build something else.

🎧 Listen to the newest episode of Basically Unbothered wherever you get your podcasts.

This week on Basically Unbothered, Gabie sits down with mystic mentor, strategist, and psychic healer Ashley for a conversation about spirituality, healing, burnout, alignment, and what happens when you stop trying to live according to everyone else's expectations.

The conversation starts with astrology, energy, and the very real exhaustion of existing in a world that sometimes feels relentlessly heavy. From there, Gabie and Ashley get into leaving corporate careers, finding work that actually feels aligned, and turning difficult experiences into something that can help other people.

Then it's time for the pop culture roundup. Sam Smith is engaged, Raven-Symoné and Keke Palmer are finally getting their Hollywood flowers, and Ariana Grande's body becomes yet another reminder of how comfortable people are commenting on women's bodies without knowing what is actually happening in their lives. The two also unpack celebrity culture, fame, representation, awards, and the complicated relationship between visibility and success.

But the heart of the episode is the deeper conversation about healing.

Gabie and Ashley explore femininity, patriarchy, spirituality, boundaries, standards, relationships, control, and surrender. They dig into why boundaries can be difficult to maintain, why people sometimes resist the new version of you, and the difference between setting a boundary and trying to control another person's behavior.

Because sometimes the real work isn't controlling what happens next. It's learning that you only control yourself, your choices, and what you are willing to accept.

It's spiritual. It's messy. It's funny. It's occasionally very much "girl, let's talk about this."

Basically Unbothered.

Follow Ashley here.

Unbothered and Redefining Modern Womanhood Part 2

We’re going deeper.

In Part 2 of my conversation with Persephone Rose, we move past the surface-level arguments about gender and into the much harder question: what does modern womanhood actually mean?

This conversation gets vulnerable as we talk about lived experiences, the trauma that can shape how we understand gender, the complicated places where cis and trans women’s experiences overlap, and the ways those experiences can sometimes collide instead of bringing us together.

We talk about the insecurities women carry, the expectations placed on our bodies and identities, the bathroom debate, and why reducing womanhood to biology misses so much of what it actually means to live as a woman.

But more importantly, we talk about what comes next.

What if womanhood could be understood as a spectrum of experiences rather than one rigid definition? What would it look like for cis women, trans women, and nonbinary people to stop fighting over who gets to belong and start finding the places where our experiences connect?

This isn't a debate. It's not an attempt to have the perfect answers.

It's two women from different lived experiences sitting down, asking uncomfortable questions, listening to each other, and trying to imagine something better.

Because sometimes the most important conversations aren't the ones where everyone agrees.

They're the ones where everyone is willing to listen.

This week on Basically Unbothered Recapped, Gabie is back with a full plate of pop culture chaos.

We start with Ariana Grande wrapping up her tour in the most unexpected way after an injury, and why the outrage over her changing her footwear says something much bigger about the expectations we put on women. From there, we get into KATSEYE’s changing identity, the mental health breaks happening within the group, and whether the group is still delivering the K-pop-inspired vision it originally promised. Plus, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is coming back, and Gabie has some thoughts about the way reality television builds its villains.

Then it’s time for the Love Island reunion.

Gabie breaks down Jaden and Caleb, Kayda’s blunt honesty, Zach and Kayda taking their relationship at their own pace, Corbin and Parmita, KC and TiTi, Trinity’s refusal to let KC rewrite history, and the endless Melanie discourse that somehow consumed the reunion.

We get into the Kenzie and Melanie friendship fallout, Dylan inserting himself where he absolutely did not need to be, Sol’s complicated relationship with the other women, Bea’s ongoing need to police Melanie’s behavior, and Amora’s complicated feelings about Sincere.

But beneath all the reunion drama is a much bigger conversation about accountability, friendship, internalized misogyny, victim mentality, and why women so often hold other women responsible for the behavior of men.

Why was Melanie the center of so much of the reunion? Why did the women have so much smoke for each other while some of the men escaped the same level of scrutiny? And what happens when taking accountability means admitting that we participated in our own bad situations?

Gabie also gives some love to the reunion's true MVP: the unseen footage, which may have done more work than the actual reunion.

And finally, spooky season is officially here. Gabie reveals plans to watch the entire Scream saga, revisit The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, and bring all of that chaos back to you.

Grab your tea. We have a reunion to discuss.

Basically Unbothered: Modern Womanhood, Gender & The Gray Areas | Part 1

What happens when two women sit down to talk about modern womanhood, gender, identity, and all the messy gray areas in between?

In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Gabie sits down with Persephone Rose, a writer, actor, and BDSM crisis actor, for a conversation that refuses to fit neatly into a box.

Persephone opens up about coming out as trans at thirteen, detransitioning for six years, and eventually coming back out of the closet after watching the world debate the experiences of trans kids. She shares what it was like navigating discrimination, relationships, healthcare, identity, and the complicated reality of being seen as both a man and a woman at different points in her life.

The conversation also gets into BDSM safety, consent, gendered expectations, the gender pay gap, pronouns, queer identity, representation, and why lived experience can completely change the way you see the world.

And because this is Basically Unbothered, we obviously couldn't have a serious conversation without getting into some pop culture chaos.

We talk Zendaya's paycheck, Angel Reese getting her own Barbie, Matt Damon's female stunt double, JK Rowling's latest controversy, the Barbie movie, Harry Potter, Pride, and why sometimes the real problem isn't disagreement. It's the complete absence of respect.

This episode isn't about pretending everyone sees the world the same way. It's about asking what happens when we stop demanding perfect answers and start making room for complexity.

And we're only getting started.

Part 2 goes even deeper into modern womanhood, trans identity, privilege, gender, and the uncomfortable gray areas we don't talk about enough.

In this episode of Basically Unbothered, Gabi is joined by ArtRogueMel for a conversation that proves two Caribbean women can cover approximately 47 different topics before remembering what they were originally talking about.

The episode kicks off with island family culture, growing up as the eldest child, navigating Caribbean expectations, and the very specific experience of being an island person living far away from the islands.

Then we get into the pop culture chaos. Zendaya is taking over Hollywood, Rihanna may finally be returning to the studio, and Blake and Mel have plenty of thoughts about representation, celebrity culture, Marvel, DC, Poison Ivy, Batman, Spider-Man, and why some franchises desperately need to stop making everything three hours long.

But eventually, we get where we were always going: books.

Gabi and Mel dig into the realities of being indie authors, readers, ARC reviewers, and content creators. They talk about paid book reviews, influencer culture, unrealistic ARC expectations, review platforms, DNFing books, reading slumps, criticism, and the strange pressure placed on both authors and readers to turn something they love into a measurable performance.

They also get into what authors sometimes forget: an ARC reader is still a person. They have a life. They have a job. They have hobbies. They may have four other books open at the same time. And if you turn a book they were excited to read into another deadline-filled task, you can accidentally suck all the joy out of the experience.

At the heart of the conversation is something bigger than reviews or algorithms: community.

What happens when authors stop looking for people to validate their books and start building genuine relationships with the readers who actually want to be there? What can honest criticism teach us? And how do we create spaces where readers and authors can talk about stories without every disagreement becoming personal?

Basically, this episode is about books, but it is also about people.

And yes, there will absolutely be side quests.

🎙️ Featuring ArtRogueMel📚 Basically Unbothered

Find Art Rogue Mel Here!

Basically Unbothered: AI, Art, Burnout & the Problem With Doing Everything the Hard Way

What happens when technology becomes another thing women are expected to either master perfectly or feel guilty for using?

This week on Basically Unbothered, Gabi sits down with Julianna Johnson, the woman behind Digital Darling, to talk about AI, technology, creativity, and why the conversation around all of it is a lot more complicated than “AI bad” or “AI good.”

But the conversation doesn't stop at AI.

Gabi and Julianna talk about using technology as a form of self-care, especially for women and small business owners carrying an enormous mental load. They unpack why women are often taught to struggle, why making something easier can feel like cheating, and how automation can create more space for the things that actually matter.

Then, because this is Basically Unbothered, they pivot into pop culture. Ariana Grande's body becomes a conversation about why we are still so obsessed with commenting on other people's bodies, Hollywood casting gets dissected, and Practical Magic 2 enters the chat for a round of Petty or Facts.

Because maybe the real question isn't whether we're using technology.

Maybe it's why we've decided that suffering through everything manually makes us better people.

In this episode:

AI, authors, and the ethics of creative technology

Why AI-generated art and writing are such complicated conversations

Privilege, access, and the indie author community

Technology as self-care for women

Mental load, burnout, and doing everything yourself

Why women feel guilty about making life easier

AI as a tool rather than a replacement for human creativity

Ariana Grande, body commentary, and why everyone's opinion isn't necessary

Hollywood casting and Practical Magic 2

A little Petty or Facts for good measure

Basically, use the damn tool. Or don't. But maybe stop policing everyone else's choices while you're at it.

Find Juliana here.

Basically Unbothered | The Addiction, Shame & Vulnerability Episode

This week on Basically Unbothered, Blake sits down with author Austin Rampt for a conversation that starts with a book about addiction and somehow ends up unpacking shame, masculinity, loneliness, trauma, money, success, vulnerability, and what it actually means to recover.

Austin’s memoir, One Last Hit, chronicles a life that sounds almost too unbelievable to be real: starting drugs and alcohol at a young age, addiction, an overdose, multiple attempts at recovery, losing businesses and millions of dollars, fleeing to Mexico, and spending years caught in a cycle he genuinely believed would eventually kill him.

But this conversation isn't just about the chaos.

Blake and Austin dig into what was underneath it all: the desperate need for acceptance, the belief that achievement makes you worthy of love, the masks we learn to wear, and the ways addiction can become about much more than a substance.

They talk about faith-based recovery, the pressure to perform wellness instead of actually confronting what's happening, narcissistic traits and addiction, male loneliness, the fear of vulnerability, and the complicated relationships Austin had with the people who tried to love him while he was still deeply entrenched in addiction.

And then there's Nate.

A friendship formed in rehab becomes one of the most important relationships in Austin's recovery because Nate showed him something he hadn't been able to give himself: permission to be honest about the parts of himself that weren't pretty.

This episode ultimately asks a much bigger question:

What happens when you stop performing who you think you're supposed to be and finally allow yourself to be seen?

It's raw, uncomfortable, occasionally hilarious, and deeply human.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of Basically Unbothered.

One Last Hit by Austin Rampt is available at onelasthitbook.com, with Austin on social media as @onelasthitbook.