I'M THE VILLAIN

Do you see people who look like you on TV? Do you think it matters? In this episode, we talk to Freeni Reza, host of the Musings of a Modern Muslim podcast, about representation of Muslims and other minorities in the media.  We discuss how Muslims were portrayed in the aftermath of 9/11, and how things have progressed to today with more mainstream Muslims getting the spotlight like Hasan Minaj, both in movies and in the news, and why it is important to have Muslims working behind the scenes as well, not just in public-facing roles.

Freeni's podcast, Musings of a Modern Muslim: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Vca5232i9KQ0iO39bayQS

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

What happens when you graduate college and start making more money than your parents ever made in their whole careers? A lot of guilt and code-switching, that's what. 

In this episode, we talk with Nichole Hill, a fundraiser and podcast producer about the dynamics of moving up in class: even though it seems like that was the goal your parents were pushing you towards all along, once you get there, everything seems weird. You realize it becomes harder to relate to your family. You might find yourself in situations where people ask you for money. You might get in an Uber and get in a rousing conversation about gentrification with your Uber driver, only to pull up to your luxury high-rise apartment building. 

All of these situations can be difficult to navigate, and can make it difficult to shape our expectations for the future. If women and people of color always feel like impostors for having wealth, how will we ever see a female Steve Jobs or a black Jeff Bezos? How will we ever see underprivileged minorities in positions of power when they have expectations to give back to their communities and rich white men who were raised rich and white don't have the same expectations placed upon them? 

Links to podcasts Nichole mentions:

Colored Girl Beautiful Podcast (podcast Nichole produces): https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-colored-girl-beautiful-llc/the-colored-girl-beautiful

Story District podcast: https://storydistrict.org/Podcast

Time Well Spent (our friend Ronald's podcast): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/time-well-spent/id1191403830

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

America was already facing an epidemic of loneliness before this pandemic hit, and now everyone is just in the shitter now that we have to be stuck in inside. But on this episode we go a step farther and talk about the people on the very end of the loneliness spectrum. Incels, or involuntary celibates, are a radical internet hate group that finds its roots in a desire for sex, intimacy, and love. While we don't condone or identify with this group, we use this extreme example as a frame to talk about how harmful a lack of intimacy can be and the negative effects our increasingly socially alienated society can have, both romantically and platonically. We also delve into the sexual marketplace, talking about how technology may be exacerbating the differences between the high market value 'Chads' and the low market value 'Virgins' and how different genders react to scarcity of intimacy differently.

We are joined by Luke Phillips, our first repeat guest, who you may remember from the Patriotism Episode. Among other things, he does work for David Brook's Weave: The Social Fabric Project, which is working to end loneliness and isolation across America by creating intentional communities, and Braver Angels, a group doing work to depolarize America.

Articles that informed this episode:

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

When you get your $1,200 stimulus check from the government, what are you going to do with it? Pay off debt? Put it in the bank? Pay your rent? Invest? We talk to a financial adviser and fellow podcaster Mykail James, aka the Boujie Budgeter, co-host of the Code and Coin podcast about the kinds of financial decisions millennials are making today an how we can improve overall levels of financial literacy in this country. She also talks about how she was inspired by the Budgetnista, one of the first prominent black woman financial advisers, to build her own brand as a financial and what it is like to be a young black woman in the personal finance and fintech space.

The Boujie Budgeter website: https://www.boujiebudgets.com/

Code and Coin podcast: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/code-coin/e/67442622

The Budgetnista: https://thebudgetnista.com/

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

We had a live show on February 28th and wanted to share it with you! We had a full house at the DC Podcast Garage, so thank you to everyone who attended. We had Ronald Young Jr. (host of 2 podcasts: Time Well Spent and Leaving the Theater) and Carlyn Crawley (host of The Femtourage podcast) on as guests and they are low-key two of the funniest people we know so bit shout out to them. In this episode, we talk about how terrible millennials are at being friends, what metrics we would use to gauge who is a good friend, whether we are even looking for new friends at all (#nonewfriends) and how the internet's growing introvert culture has been changing our expectations around what accountability looks like (which, by the way, is especially relevant now that we are all staying inside and basically living on the internet even more than before).

Special thanks to Se'era Spragley, the community manager at the DC Podcast Garage, for helping us organize this event, and Mikaela Carlton for live mixing the show for us. Also thanks to Amber Ferriera for doing the post-production.

Links to Ronald Young Jr.'s podcasts:

Time Well Spent: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/time-well-spent/id1191403830

Leaving the Theater (currently 'On the Couch' during rona times): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/leaving-the-theater/id1481268414

Link to Carlyn Crawley's podcast, The Femtourage: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-femtourage-podcast/id1407311137

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

As we watch this global pandemic unfold from the safety of our homes wondering what the future is going to look like, the youths are on the beaches partying. But make no mistake, these youths are not millennials. They're the newest gang of troublemakers: Gen Z. You'll find us millennials cowering on our couches teleworking and playing Animal Crossing, having fights with our partners and housemates about who should be let in the house, and contemplating our own mortality.

In this episode, we sit down with Big Ron from Oh, It's Big Ron Studios and talk about the impact this pandemic has had on our lives,  what is at stake if we don't respond to the situation fast enough, and what we think the world will look like after COVID-19.

It's difficult at any time to figure out what you truly believe, and who to trust, and what information sounds reputable. Right now, as much of America sits at home on our computers waiting to hear from the front lines in this invisible war against COVID-19 we have going on, we are going through an especially confusing period, where it feels like there is conflicting information everywhere, and this is about a very specific problem with an associated set of verifiable facts. But what about the questions where there is no obvious answer, questions of purpose, how to treat people, who to love? What happens when some of the answers you were given as a kid by your parents or grandparents directly contradict the answers you were given by your teachers, like whether dinosaurs exist or the Big Bang happened? What does it mean to question at all?

In this episode we sit down with Keith Chaney of the Saved(ish) podcast about his experience as a black, progressive, Christian millennial and the messiness of trying to come to some kind of understanding of the world when there are so many contradictions present, or more accurately, the process of coming to the understanding that there are a lot of questions you might just not know the answer to and you never will. 

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

As we collectively sit inside waiting for coronavirus to pass, we've been seeing a lot of memes about the "coronababies" that will likely be born in approximately 9 months. This is probably at least to some degree true, and so it might be worthwhile to take a minute to consider: what really is the state of reproductive medicine in America right now? The answer is: not very good. We talk to Hannah Davidson, a birth doula and aspiring mother, about the state of childbirth in America and the various ways the system could improve, including the shockingly high maternal mortality rate in America, especially among black mothers, our postpartum care and paid parental leave policies, and the phenomenon of hospitals having a tendency to have more C-sections than may be necessary.

A piece on the history of obstetrics and childbirth's move from the home to the hospital: https://hekint.org/2017/01/27/changes-in-childbirth-in-the-united-states-1750-1950/

DUDE before you listen to this episode, read this ABSOLUTELY BATSHIT CRAZY article linked below from the New Yorker about the water tunnels that supply New York City. They talk about the 2 main tunnels that supply all the water and how one of them is on the verge of collapse.

Chances are, if you graduated from college, you had a really rough time transitioning from your thriving college social life to the post-college social life of constant happy hours and otherwise planned events. It just takes so much more TIME and ENERGY and MONEY. SO in this episode we talk with Leslie Bozoian, the woman who co-founded Free Association, one of the biggest meetups in DC, about what it takes to cultivate community in an era when you would think technology would have made it easier than ever to coordinate and yet somehow we feel lonelier than ever. She is also starting an in-person dating business where instead of swiping on photos in an app, you go to events and talk with people who have been vetted in advance.

Free Association on Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/Free-Association/

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.