I'M THE VILLAIN

Trigger Warning: At about 2 minutes in, Deondre' gives a graphic description of the Golden State Killer's violent attacks on victims in California. You might have heard the story of how police used the DNA of a relative of the Golden State Killer to catch him back in April 2018. Since that case, many true crime fans (people who follow shows about real-life crime cases, both solved and unsolved) ha...

Almost everyone is a gamer now in some form, especially now that the pandemic has left many with way more free time than usual. In this episode, we sit down with Tom Derr, a socio-cultural historian who studies the history of games. He tells us about why pinball was banned for 30 years in New York City and how games came to be associated with skill, the first RPGs, and how morality started getting...

In this episode, we sit down with DeWayne Anderson, host of the Instagram Live show, Wine Down Sunday. He talks about his experiences with mental health, why it is so stigmatized for black men to pursue self care, and how it is almost inescapable for the average Black person in America to have PTSD with all of the gruesome depictions of Black death and brutalization in the media and our history cl...

In this episode, we really engage in The Discourse™ - there is a larger Internet conversation going on about whether billionaires should be lauded for giving money to charitable causes or if we should be skeptical that they are doing so to preserve a fundamentally exploitative status quo that ultimately harms more people than it helps. And we (as Phil DeFranco, one of Deondre's favorite YouTube st...

Have you ever had to work overtime without getting paid for it? Had an abusive boss, or just a boss who didn't know how to manage? We talk about how so many workplaces, especially nonprofits an social mission-driven organizations wind up being toxic and what we can do to make workplaces more humane. So much of the time, bad bosses don't wind up getting fired because they have the trust of the high...

In a time and place when our generation has come to terms with the fact that the society we live in is not working for huge swathes of the population, and is in fact actively working against them in many cases, how to we move closer to a more equal society? In the case of gender equality, should you bridge the gap between men and women by asking women to be more masculine, or by asking men to be m...

We try to talk to people who are doing good and having an impact on our show, but rarely do we get to talk to someone who is truly doing as much as today's guest is. On this episode, we talk to Ashley Johnson, who is a death doula and nurse working at a hospital in Central Florida, one of the areas that is getting hit the hardest by the coronavirus pandemic right now. A death/end of life doula is...

In their previous job, B. Pagels-Minor had a senior female leader tell them they wouldn't go far in their industry because they were nonbinary despite also using them as a symbol of diversity for their company. B. is here to tell you that does not fly. (Also, we will note, that lady was wrong: B. is thriving.) In this episode, we talk to B. Pagels-Minor, who is a Black, nonbinary product manager b...

In this episode, we talk with Alieshia Nunally, host of the podcast Millennial Thoughts, about gig work and the financial freedom she gets from being able to work multiple jobs. She believes everyone ought to have at least 2 streams of income as a form of insurance, because as we are seeing with this pandemic, you never know when one of your jobs might tank unexpectedly. We talk about whether or n...

If you are an environmentally-minded person, it can be really difficult to compare which actions are going to have the greatest effect on the planet if you're going by the public awareness campaigns. Is it recycling? Going vegan? Using metal straws? Turns out that not taking ONE Transatlantic flight actually saves more than all of those things combined. And not flying isn't even number one or numb...

SPOILER ALERT: This episode contains spoilers for Hamilton: An American Musical. So this past July 4th weekend, 'Hamilton,' the Broadway musical about Alexander Hamilton that everyone is so crazy about, hit Disney+. It re-sparked some controversy around whether or not the writer of the play, Lin Manuel-Miranda, should have included more mention of slaves in a time when many of the main characters...

In case you were concerned that this podcast has too much structure, we tried experimenting with even less structure in this episode, and just went where the wind blew us. If you are curious where it blew us, we started off at Mount Rushmore, where we talked about the Native American leaders who are calling for the removal of Mount Rushmore, and then moved on to Minneapolis, where we followed up o...

It's a worthwhile question to ask from the jump: why do we really care about diversity? Is it because it makes businesses more profitable? Is it because it makes our schools more intellectually because more perspectives are represented? Or is it because there are vast swathes of the population that have been historically oppressed and placing value on diversity is one way to try to counteract that...

Think about the last time you heard someone casually talk about losing weight in the workplace. Did you think about how it could affect the self-image of your fat co-workers? Or if your fat coworkers weren't listening, how it would affect you if you were fat? It is so normalized to talk about weight in our society that it's often hard to recognize internalized fatphobia, and rarely do we think of...

Defunding the police seems like something that was completely unimaginable even 3 weeks ago. Now it's being talked about in most major media sources. Not only was this the result of the protests in honor of George Floyd, but also the result of a huge public awareness and education campaign which has largely happened on Instagram. In this episode, we use the resources from MPD150 and Cure Violence...

Did you know 7% of Americans don't have a bank account? Having a bank account is probably something every person reading this takes for granted, but is a huge problem for around 23 million Americans. To add to the problem, many banks around the country are removing their low-cost offerings like accounts with no annual fees. But can fintech come to the rescue? Find out in this exciting new episode...

In another solo ep, Deondre' and Isabel discuss whether it is healthy to expect reciprocity in a romantic relationship. Reciprocity is often touted as the hallmark of a healthy relationship, but how do you aspire to something that is so hard to quantify, especially when different people value everything differently? How much should doing the dishes when you don't want to count vs. calling your par...

What have your house policies been around coronavirus? In this episode, we get into the governance structures of various group houses during coronavirus, since most of our friends live in group living situations, and we thought it has been interesting to see the differences in response to this pandemic, because it has varied widely. We also talk about how being nonmonogamous has been for us (hint:...

If you haven't heard of effective altruism (EA), it is a utilitarian philosophy where a bunch of academics and researchers try to calculate what you should do with your career if you are trying to have the highest social impact. The effective altruists came up with the notion that one very ethical option is actively trying to make as much money as possible and giving as much as you can away, which...

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 Mina...

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 t...

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....

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 li...

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 episo...

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...