Homeownership used to be a starter pack for adulthood. Now it feels like a luxury good. This week, Akilah asks a question most of us have yelled at Zillow at least once: when did buying a house become a fantasy?

Business Insider's James Rodriguez joins to help explain how we got here and why the future might be… single-family homes you can never actually own.

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Your conservative uncle is wrong about Bad Bunny. So are Trump, all of MAGA, and the angry drunk guys who watch the NFL. They're mad because Bad Bunny will be performing the half time show at the Superbowl this Sunday, and he'll be singing in Spanish - you know, the language the songs are written in - and believe that that makes him fundamentally un-american. 

Unfortunately, this is not a unique experience. Puerto Rico, where Bad Bunny is from, has faced this same rejection and discrimination for years. But why? What did Puerto Rico ever do to them? Becca Ramos and I are going to find out.

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This is our last unedited bonus before we're back with a brand new episode next week! This week, we bring you the entirety of my conversation with Josephine Riesman who authored Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America. We talked about the parallels between wrestling and modern politics and had a blast doing it. Please enjoy and stay tuned for a new episode next week.

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Is it DEI to honor one of the greatest baseball players of all time? Our president seems to think so. Comedian Roy Wood Jr. weighs in on Trump's crusade to end diversity initiatives and tarnish Jackie Robinson's legacy.

For the full, edited episode featuring more conversations (and more of my commentary), click here.

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Remember that conversation we had last year? The one with Adam Mockler, about the nightmare that is modern masculinity? Well, we have more where that came from.

More bonuses in the coming weeks and brand new, fully edited and produced episodes coming soon. Subscribe!

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As we all know, 2025 was the best year that any of us have ever had. Nothing went wrong, no evil was done, and things were generally really, really chill. 

In reality, Akilah is joined this week by Ryan Broderick, host of COURIER’s Panic World, in order to review all of the political and pop culture chaos that went down over the past twelve months. Together they’ll try to answer the fateful question: was anything about this year better? The answer might surprise you.

You can find Ryan at @ryanhatesthis on IG, and you can listen to Panic World at @panicworldpod or on your favorite listening platforms.

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How Is This Better? is a @COURIERHQ  production.

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In a second-term Trump economy obsessed with the word “meritocracy,” Black women are being pushed out of the workforce at alarming rates — while the least qualified men fail upward. Akilah Hughes sits down with economist and author Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman to unpack her book, The Double Tax: How Women of Color Are Overcharged and Underpaid.

You can find Anna and her book at www.annagifty.com

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Intro

00:54 Black women & the workforce

07:07 What is the Double Tax?

11:41 How much does Anna’s life show up in the book?

13:58 The DEI crackdown’s impact

17:49 How do we fight for an equitable future?

24:55 This is not better.

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You may have heard a lot about boycotting this year, especially when talking about Target or Amazon. Organized actions like these have been happening year-round, but are reaching peak intensity now that we’re well within the holiday season. One such boycott, called We Ain’t Buying It, aimed to draw attention to how giant retailers are using our money against our own interests: funding candidates like Trump and policies that endanger our communities, civil rights and economic interests.

LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter who helped organize the campaign, joined the podcast this week to talk about what the campaign hoped to achieve, the history of boycotting as a political tool in the US, and why where you spend this holiday season actually matters.

You can find Latosha at @mslatoshabrown on IG, and learn more about the boycott at weaintbuyingit.com.

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Intro

01:13 We Ain’t Buying It

09:27 How corporations are funding Trump

14:17 Why are boycotts effective?

17:54 Where should people redirect their money?

19:37 Your money talks!

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What happens when a president decides America is done with space?

This week on How Is This Better?, Akilah Hughes digs into the Trump administration’s unprecedented plans to slash NASA’s budget.

Akilah sits down with Casey Dreier of the Planetary Society to unpack how America went from bipartisan support for space exploration to a full-blown dismantling of the country’s most beloved science agency—and why turning over the future of space to billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos is both dangerous and undemocratic.

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Hollywood (as we once knew it) may have collapsed, but a new form of “storytelling” is thriving in the rubble. This week on How Is This Better? Akilah Hughes investigates the rise of clipping—the 30–90 second chunks of movies and TV that Gen Z and Gen Alpha increasingly treat as the entire art form. With The Ankler's newsroom coordinator, Matthew Frank, we dig into how studios, independent clippers, and even teenagers are monetizing sliced-up IP, why these clips rarely convert to actual viewership, and what that means for the survival of traditional shows.

Then we look at the next evolution: vertical dramas—60-to-90-second cliffhanger “episodes” produced for TikTok-native audiences, now attracting major investment from companies like Disney. Kill Switch podcast host, Dexter Thomas, walks us through the booming non-union economy around these soap-opera-meets-micro-content series, the surprising demographics powering their success, and why middle-aged women—not teens—are the earliest adopters.

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Intro

00:20 - Clipping

01:23 - Matthew Frank

9:49 - Dexter Thomas

11:28 - Vertical Dramas

17:20 - Who is Watching Micro Dramas?

26:24 - Is It Better?

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