Blerd On The Street

**Listener Discretion Is Always Advised**

The Blerds- Jillian, Lillie, and Jenna- talk about the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and what's in store for Black History Month.

At the end, we make some TBE (to be experienced) recommendations.

For today's episode, Lillie, Jenna, and Jillian are joined by JHawk from The Blerd Bar for our annual Blerdsgiving podcast. This year we're serving up hot takes (that might be lukewarm, but we'll let y'all be the judge). 

Please be sure to support our guests by listening and subscribing to The Blerd Bar podcast here. You can also find them on Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter. The Blerd Bar, serving you content, cocktails, and culture.

For this episode, Jillian sits down with Cool Colas to discuss the recent controversy following an IGN article interviewing the head developers for Final Fantasy 16. We also get into the importance of representation and what we can do as black creatives to get our stories out there.

Cool Colas also known as the Pro-black Blerd King is an author, comic and board game creator and black media analyst. He is a native of Oak Park, Michigan and stands for creating a brand that empowers blacks in the entertainment media realm. He is the owner of Cool Colas LLC, has written one book called Rem Realm:Curse of a Billionaire thus far and establishes himself as an enthusiast of comics, games and other relevant forms of blerd culture. 

Please be sure to check out his podcast, The Pro-Black Blerd Kingdom Podcast and visit his website. You can also follow him on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

As always, thanks for listening and we'll be back soon with another episode.

Jillian sits down with Spencer Waddell (aka Simply Samurai on Instagram) to talk about his journey as a professional swordsman. 

Spencer has been studying martial arts since he was 8 years old. He discovered Historical European Martial Arts in 2005 while stationed in Germany and his current focus is full-contact armored steel fighting or “buhurt” as it’s known in Europe. He is the 2022 USA Historical Medieval Battle Men’s Longsword Champion. Spencer currently serves as a council member for the Historical African Martial Arts Association. He is also one of the founding members of the Wandering Sword Project, a 501c3 non-profit dedicated to the education of swords and general weaponry as well as martial cultures from around the world.

Be sure to follow Spencer on his Instagram @simply_samurai. To learn more about the Wandering Sword Project, follow their Instagram @the_wandering_sword and support them on Patreon! Also show some love to Spencer's sponsor: @american_buhurt. 

For today's episode, we are joined by Walter Johnson of the Blerd Point of View blog (https://www.blerdpointofview.com/) to discuss the greatly anticipated follow-up to Marvel's Black Panther, Wakanda Forever. 

We do a shot-by-shot breakdown of the latest trailer and diver deeper into what it means to see ourselves on screen. 

We hope you enjoy and please be sure to give Walter some love on his blog or on Instagram (@blerdpov2.0)!

Welcome back to Blerd on the Street! For our first episode of season 3, we sit down for a chat with author Gabrielle Prendergast. If you're on TikTok, you may have seen her Young Adult novel, Zero Repeat Forever, blow up among book lovers. We discuss that and her other books, how she got started writing and what the heck is up with her publisher (we want the last book!!!!) We hope you enjoy.

You can find Gabrielle on Instagram and Tiktok at gsprendergast and be sure to pick up a copy of her books!

If you like us, follow us and give us a rating or review on Apple or Spotify. We’ll be back with another episode soon.

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Blerds Jillian and Lillie sit down with bookstagrammer Emani, AKA GoldenBookHunter.

Find Emani at: GoldenBookHunter on Instagram and TikTok, and GoldenBookMuse on Etsy.

**Correction: Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé was identified as a YA paranormal, but it is a YA thriller.**

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The Blerds discuss the YA novel, The Dead and the Dark by Courtney Gould. General spoilers for the book, including the author's CWs at the top of the review. 

No major content spoilers for the mystery or the ending.

Mentioned in the episode

TV series: 

The Haunting of Bly Manor

Riverdale

Veronica Mars

SurrealEstate

Books:

White Smoke by Tiffany D. Jackson

Blackout (anthology)

Black Fatigue: How Racism Erodes the Mind, body, and Spirit by Mary-Frances Winters

The Dominion of Leviathan by Manish Melwani: https://www.tor.com/2022/04/13/the-dominion-of-leviathan-manish-melwani/

*Listener Discretion Always Advised*

Jenna, Jillian, and Lillie discuss Welcome To South Africa, the first episode of Netflix's: Young, Famous and African.. 

Spoilers throughout for events that happen in the episode.

A note to our listeners: The audio in this episode has a few issues. the main one being a near constant, soft, staticky or clicking noise. There is also some background noise from all of us, that usually isn't heard or gets filtered out. While we hope you listen and enjoy the episode, we also recognise that these noises may trigger certain types of misopohonia. Please keep this in mind, and if you have to skip this episode, we hope you'll return for our next one.

Thanks,

From The Blerds

*Listener Discretion Always Advised*

The Blerds take on the first episode of The Courtship, the new NBC/Peacock show about dating, regency-style. There are spoilers for the events that take place, as well as for the men that are eliminated.

Mentioned In The Episode:

The 1619 Project (book)

The Many Deaths of Laila Starr (graphic novel)

Boom Studios

The Love Con (book)

Blood Scion (audiobook)

Okoye To The People (audiobook)

Bahni Turpin (voice actress)