Mikaila Unmuted: Beyond A Mammy, Mule, & Maid

Professional Black women in America have fought our way into rooms, careers, opportunities, and levels of economic independence that generations before us worked to make possible. But what happens once we get here? In this episode, I unpack the crossroads I see facing professional Black women through the very different choices represented by Symone Sanders-Townsend and Nikole Hannah-Jones. Do we c...

Dolly Parton’s passing left me wondering: Do we have celebrities like her anymore? But the more I sat with that question, the more I realized this may not be about whether people like Dolly still exist. It may be about how much celebrity itself has changed. Dolly became famous in a world where privacy was still possible. Today, we expect access to nearly every part of a public figure’s life—their...

Was Target’s racist Halloween costume really a mistake? I have a conspiracy theory—but it led me to a much bigger question about corporate power and individual responsibility. Why are ordinary consumers expected to give up the things that bring us ease, pleasure, and joy in order to hold massive corporations accountable? Boycotts can create pressure, but do they actually redistribute power? And wh...

The recent death of Cambridge professor Jason Arday has me questioning one of the oldest lessons many Black children are taught: you have to work twice as hard to receive the same recognition as your white counterparts. But buried inside that lesson is a promise—that if we're exceptional enough, credentialed enough, hardworking enough, we can somehow outrun racism. In this episode, I explore...

I’m in the middle of a major life transition—and for once, I know it while it’s happening. In this episode, I’m reflecting on the unexpected beauty of middle age: having enough evidence of your own survival to trust yourself, enough agency to imagine an entirely new life, and enough self-awareness to decide what you want to carry forward and what you’re finally ready to leave behind. I also explor...

I'd make this one slightly more intimate because someone encountering it as a podcast doesn't need as much SEO-oriented setup: I hate creating content. And yet, no matter how many times I want to walk away from it, something keeps calling me back. In this episode, I'm turning the lens inward and asking why being visible feels so difficult for me—even after years of teaching, public...

What if the people we resent the most are actually the people who believe in us the most? This week, I explore the psychological themes behind the movie Obsession and why I believe it's less about romance and more about accountability, validation, and personal growth. Through the lens of Bear and Nikki's relationship, I examine Red Pill culture, incel ideology, and why accountability is...

What happens when a Black woman refuses to hide her pain? After watching Aniyah's emotional breakdown on Love Island, I found myself asking a much bigger question: Why did witnessing her vulnerability make so many of us uncomfortable? In this episode, I examine my own initial reaction and explore what Aniyah's experience reveals about Black women's emotional expression, internalized...

Every four years, millions of people celebrate diverse teams, immigrant athletes, and multicultural excellence. But the 2026 World Cup also exposed something deeper: many of us embrace diversity when it helps us win, while resisting it in nearly every other context. As a recovering DEI expert, I use this year's tournament to explore why DEI exists in the first place, what it means to compete...

Welcome to Mikaila Unmuted , where we amplify Black women's realities in a world that too often prefers to ignore them. This is the first episode of our new chapter! For generations, society has quietly decided whose pain deserves attention, whose stories deserve empathy, and whose voices can be ignored. Too often, Black women have found ourselves on the wrong side of that equation. But somet...

BAMMM is a documentary-style podcast exploring the lives of Black women through story, theory, and cultural critique. In this special mid-season episode, Mikaila revisits the conversation that started it all. Recorded before a single episode of BAMMM existed, this intimate dialogue with her close friend Crystal becomes both a podcast origin story and a deeper exploration of the questions at the he...

BAMMM is a documentary-style podcast exploring the lives of Black women through story, theory, and cultural critique. In this special live episode, we go deeper into Episode 3:  “What You Carry Can Break You — The Refusal.” Together, we unpack what it means to be shaped by systems that reward self-erasure — and how many Black women learn early to suppress their needs, their truth, and their voice...

BAMMM is a documentary-style podcast exploring the lives of Black women through story, theory, and cultural critique. In Episode 3, we enter one of the most misunderstood parts of any transformation: the refusal of the call. Often framed as fear or hesitation, refusal is something deeper for Black women. It is learned. Conditioned. Reinforced through love and survival. Through the stories of Misha...

This episode is a live, unfiltered continuation of Episode 2 of the podcast Mikaila Unmuted—where the conversation goes even deeper. Together with Ashanti, Christina, and Charlotte, we move beyond the stories themselves and into the questions underneath them. We explore the ways identity can both ground us and restrict us…how many of us have been conditioned to perform—for safety, for acceptance,...

In this episode of B.A.M.M. — Beyond a Mammy, Maid, and Mule , we begin retelling the story of everyday Black women — not as side characters, but as the superheroes they’ve always been. Using the frameworks of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and Maureen Murdoch’s Heroine’s Journey , we explore Black women’s origin stories — the moments that shape how we learn to survive, perform, and disconnect f...

This is a special bonus episode of B.A.M.M.M. — Beyond a Mammy, Maid, and Mule . After the release of Episode 1, I sat down live with the three women whose stories opened this season — Dr. Yvonne, Piper, and Ashanti — for a multigenerational conversation about identity, family, and what it felt like to hear their lives reflected back through the podcast. Together we talk about: • what it was like...

In this opening episode of Mikaila Unmuted , we journey across five generations of Black women in one family, exploring the stories, survival, and expectations passed from mothers to daughters. Through intimate storytelling, we examine the legacy of always being strong and what it means to begin choosing ourselves when the women before us often could not. This conversation asks: What do we inherit...