I'M THE VILLAIN

Many millennials in America have gone through the experience of giving care for a loved one, but it's not something that's talked about very much in the mainstream media. In this episode, we talk with Tyler McLeod about having to be a caretaker for his father from the age of 10 after his father suffered a serious stroke. Deondre' also had to take care of his grandparents in his childhood as they were suffering from cancer. The experience of needing to sacrifice this much to care for another person, can be seen through the lens of careTAKING, where one sees providing care as shouldering a burden for another person versus careGIVING, which is the idea that the act of giving care can be seen as a gratifying end in and of itself for the person giving care. Almost all of us will likely have to fill one of these roles at some point in our lives and it is worthwhile thinking about how each of us will choose to do this emotional labor and how to support the caretakers and caregivers in our lives.

Vox article on millenial caregivers: https://www.vox.com/ad/20937084/millennial-caregiving-caring-baby-boomer-generation

PBS article explaining why more millennials are becoming caregivers: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/why-more-millennials-are-becoming-caregivers

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

Welcome to the end of Season 3! We are henceforth getting rid of seasons, we have too many episodes in our backlog and we realize it might be killing our momentum. In this episode, we talk about the feedback we have gotten on the podcast and self-reflect on how the podcast has gone so far. We would love to hear from our listeners: Do you want more disagreements? Experts? Specificity in our episode topics? Let us know by sending us an email at [email protected].

Merry Capitalism Day everyone! Due to today being Christmas, we have a very special holly jolly socialism episode for you where we talk to Kevin Gustafson, host of the Sensible Socialist podcast, about all things socialist, from worker cooperatives to Bernie Sanders to whether it is possible for the United States to transition to socialism without a violent revolution. 

Look, identity politics may get you down sometimes by driving us farther and farther away from each other by highlighting our differences, but at least we are all united in being exploited by capitalism!

Kevin's Sensible Socialist Podcast: https://sensiblesocialist.com/

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

Let's talk about BODY IMAGE. Is the modern cosmetic industry a scam? Or is it a genuine outlet of self-expression? Or...both? We talk with Elizabeth Lee, an Asian-American millennial, about beauty standards, exercise, and how social media compounds the crazy notions we have about beauty because now EVERYONE can Photoshop and filter themselves, not just models in popular magazines like Vogue. And it doesn't just effect women, either. We talk about male body image, the "dad bod" phenomenon, and whether the expectation of men going to the gym for hours is the equivalent of women spending hours on makeup and online shopping. 

Really interesting video on zyzz, the male bodybuilding sensation who died of heart failure at 22 in 2011: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fYmwhyqmYg

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

We get very candid in this episode. We sit down with Selomé Welday, Isabel's former coworker and have a general idea that we want to talk about entrepreneurship but then we get into all kinds of offshoots, talking about why we feel the need to be entrepreneurs (it's hard to parent a child when you work a 9-5 job), the changing norms around what we are willing to pay for as we look into the void of our dystopian future of social alienation, and whether or not Deondre' would make a good professional cuddler. 

If you want to follow Selome on Instagram, you can follow her at @selome.sahle.

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

Hello fellow memelords and memestresses, we had a chat with James Coan this week on how you can not ONLY can you use memes for fun and profit, you can also use them to try to create a better society!

Normally on this show we don't talk to guests with a particular expertise in anything, we just talk to people on their everyday opinions on things. But for this episode, we actually talked to a millennial who is a professor aka someone who actually knows what he is talking about. His name is Jeff Bowen, and he teaches a class on social media at the Johns Hopkins Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. 

In this episode, we talk about social media's effect on how we behave, and what kind of changes you read about in the media (Does social media make us less antisocial in real life? Does it affect women differently than men? Does it cause higher levels of depression and anxiety? Does it make a difference to communicate with someone face to face vs. over text? etc.) have a basis in research and which don't.  

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

For a lot of the issues we talk about on this podcast, we all agree that there is a problem but when we talk about what to do about them, we wind up scratching our heads. With such huge and pervasive issues as the environment or the military-industrial complex, it feels like there is not a lot we can do outside of vote for the right people to make the right legislation. But this episode is one where we talk to someone who is really showing up and doing effective work in the housing space.

We talk to Isabel's former roommate, Allison Hrabar, who is a member of Democratic Socialists of America and a leader of their Stomp Out Slumlords initiative.

DC has some of the most pro-tenant laws on the books in the United States, but many either don't know about them or they go unenforced. In DC, landlords often evict people illegally and 26% of people getting evicted never even show up to court. Stomp Out Slumlords knocks on doors of people being evicted and informs them of their rights, organizes tenants associations, and advocates with other groups as part of a broader collective called Reclaim Rent Control for more rent control in DC.

Allison has done incredible work in DC and gives us a real model for how people who are passionate about an issue can organize to address those issues themselves without needing to wait around for a politician to regulate the problem away.

You can learn more about Stomp Out Slumlords here: https://www.stompoutslumlords.org/

You can learn more about Democratic Socialists of America here: dsausa.org

On this, the first day of the new year, let's talk about success. How to get more of it, how to redefine it, and how to stop thinking about it. Following on last week's socialism episode, we talk with Ashley Jones more about how our generation feels like our current model of capitalism is increasingly unsustainable, the ways in which the traditional definitions of success have been antithetical to true human prospering, and how we can move away from seeing success as purely financial success. How will you succeed this year?

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.