It's Always Personal

This episode was really supposed to be, at the least, more about host Wood's inaugural experience at the annual MACC One Love Century Labor Day weekend road cycling event. The OLC did get brought up but time had to be spent reacting to the content world's most popular topics in Shannon Sharpe, (the fallout from) Cam'ron getting Adrien Broner together, Cam Newton and his 4th and 1 podcast. The message from IAP will continue to be the need to keep turning away from most of this noise and messiness. It's all too costly to remain living while under the influence.

Host Wood has a new interesting TV series in Apple TV+'s latest drama SMOKE. Leads Taron Egerton and Journee Smollett join forces to investigate a pair of active arsonists terrorizing a smaller city, and the show's gotten off to a solid start, but a couple major early reveals cause one to ask: The creators know they have 6-7 more episodes to fill up, right?

Hip hop personality and rapper Jim Jones lent an unsolicited helping hand to all-time great rapper Nas by boasting that the Queensbridge legend's Billboard stats pale in comparison to his stats. Wood takes a look at a peculiar appearance by Jones on Shannon Sharpe's Night Cap. Unc is a Nas fan?

Other topics include Pacers' guard Tyrese Haliburton and his costly NBA Finals Game 7 decision, as well as the latest and greatest with the WNBA's Caitlin Clark. Ok, Angel Reese has been on a bit of tear, so the Chicago Sky Big had to be praised as well. Oh yeah, Wood shared some observations about being a Black man while attempting to meet Black women on a dating app.

The IAP film review of Tyler Perry's latest Netflix film STRAW.

Other topics include the 2025 NBA Finals, the 2025 French Open champion Coco Gauff, Angel Reese being named B.E.T.'s Female Athlete of the Year and more current sports and entertainment headlines.

This episode is all about a newer series streaming on Netflix, FOREVER, and Wood's reaction to the 8 episodes of Season 1. Tap in and help celebrate the efforts and performances of creator Mara Brock Akil and wonderful cast including Michael Cooper Jr, Lovie Simone, Wood Harris & Karen Pittman. With FOREVER, Black storytelling and love/romance - both young ad old - are in very skillful and caring hands.

TV veteran Mara Brock Akil's latest series, FOREVER, started streaming on May 8, 2025 and Wood thought you should know. This episode lightly covers episodes 1-3.

Other episode topics include Wood's experience with a couple sessions of therapy as he continues to work through grief, the continuous choice of digesting the anger of others, and some thoughts on the WNBA's Aliyah Boston - recognizing a real Queen.

Wood discusses online and soc media's "Black Fatigue" thing, questioning if it's really a rejection of certain aspects of Black culture.

A good, informative interview of Lanny Smith, the founder of the Actively Black apparel brand, on Jemele Hill's Spolitics podcast changed Wood's stance "wearing Black."

A few series have been getting pushed through the IAP queue of late with AppleTV+ dominating the rotation. Wood shares some thoughts on two seasons of Shrinking, Dope Thief, Jon Hamm's Your Friends & Neighbors, plus shares his final praises on the series finale of Bosch Legacy (Prime Video).

Wood speaks on Shedeur Sanders' 2025 NFL Draft experience being a matter of a combination of bad advice and "others" looking at street culture for what it is.

And then, just when the NBA gets the majority of the daily talking points to being favorable, the conclusion of the Eastern Conference's Pacers vs Bucks series had a pretty disturbing moment.

Host Wood just dealing with random headlines, soc media posts, comment section exchanges, topics, culture & gender wars etc etc

No sense in really bothering with a full-on review of director/creator Ryan Coogler's popular new motion picture SINNERS, as Google can get to one in podcast or article format in just a few seconds. However, Wood revisits a few more details and themes from the film by building off of RogerEbert.com contributor Robert Daniels' polarizing review - 2.5 out of 4 stars - of the Jim Crow era-based horror film.

Another segment of the show takes a look at some of the recent behavior of Higher Learning podcast co-host Van Lathan. Over a couple recent episodes Lathan made a biting take about his rival Kanye West, and then had an interview with author Jason Wilson where he broke down into tears after seemingly dealing with being pressed by some in his circle. The podcast, or content, game can just be a very awkward space at times.

IAP might have a different, and very likely unpopular, opinion about Ryan Coogler's new highly acclaimed film SINNERS. For this episode host Wood asks three major questions about details that the bigger, more popular podcasts seemingly overlooked.

Overall, salute to Coogler, lead actor Michael B. Jordan, Wunmi Mosaku, Omar Benson Miller, Delroy Lindo and Hailee Stanfeld. However, I dig the movie but hold onto some degree of objectivity to question why some choices were made with character development, as well as historical accuracy when it comes to the dialogue.

So let's talk about the hottest movie of 2025. And if you don't dig the opinions and views shared here - well, It's Always Personal.