In the first episode of The Antidote, hosts Amy Aniobi and Grace Edwards connect with Tracee Ellis Ross on plant care, positive self-talk and belly rubs.

Amy and Grace share their bummer news of the week, discussing the U.S. Supreme Court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson, Texas Republicans removing books from kids' classrooms and the return of the platform shoe.

Amy and Grace also share their antidotes for the week - hiking! flowers! - that helped them deal with the madness.

OUR SPONSORS:

BetterHelp Online Therapy -  betterhelp.com/ANTIDOTE

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Amy The world is a dumpster fire. I'm Amy.

Grace And I'm Grace.

Amy And we want to help. And fair warning. Our help comes with some strong language attached. So hide your kids, please. Like hide them now, because we've got to say some things.

Grace As a reflex to the f---ing madness on the news. We're keeping it positive, uplifting, but opinionated.

Amy We talk about cultural moments we love.

Grace Talk to people we adore.

Amy Crushes we have.

Grace And self-care we stan.

Amy During these trying times. We all need a show that focuses on joy.

Grace Welcome to our first episode of The Antidote. My name is Grace Edwards.

Amy And I'm Amy Aniobi.

Grace And as close as we are, we actually don't remember when or where we officially met. But since there is not a ton of Black lady comedy writers in Tinsel Town, we probably met through friends, you know. Somewhere like.

Amy Bitch. Tinsel Town, you old.

Grace Tinsel Town. I stand by it because it's what, festive. But I suppose it is more commonly known as Hollywood. But we got a lot closer when we started working together on an HBO show. You might have heard of it called Insecure, starring the wonderful Issa Rae. And we were kind of work wives. Everybody at work was very disgusted.

Amy I still remember a day that I was late to the zoom, and I came in and you were like, There's my perfect friend Amy. She's so brilliant and flawless. And everyone went, ugh.

Grace I know. Oh, my God, same. I am Amy's hype woman. I just. I don't know. I just think everything you do is perfect. Nothing you've ever done was wrong.

Amy Right back at you, girl. You're a f---ing queen. Let no one near me ever say nothing else. Okay, well, Insecure, sadly, has ended, and we no longer work together.

Grace So since we're always kiki-ing in about how f---ed up the world is right now, and we help each other through the bullsh--, we thought we could invite y'all in to join us. So here we are on this lovely ass and hopefully healing ass podcast.

Amy Mm. The world is so dark right now.

Grace It's bleak.

Amy So f---ing heavy, and it's important to us to be able to absorb the news, but we don't want the news to absorb us. So we were like, okay, we need to know what's going on in the world. But after we take in that trauma, what's our antidote? What are the things that heal us from how shady the messes we made the show The Antidote because it's what we needed. But then we actually discovered a quote by Queen bell hooks that fully convinced us the name was solid.

Grace The quote is The practice of love is the most powerful antidote to the politics of domination. Again, the pra