I'M THE VILLAIN

It's difficult at any time to figure out what you truly believe, and who to trust, and what information sounds reputable. Right now, as much of America sits at home on our computers waiting to hear from the front lines in this invisible war against COVID-19 we have going on, we are going through an especially confusing period, where it feels like there is conflicting information everywhere, and th...

As we collectively sit inside waiting for coronavirus to pass, we've been seeing a lot of memes about the "coronababies" that will likely be born in approximately 9 months. This is probably at least to some degree true, and so it might be worthwhile to take a minute to consider: what really is the state of reproductive medicine in America right now? The answer is: not very good. We talk to Hannah...

DUDE before you listen to this episode, read this ABSOLUTELY BATSHIT CRAZY article linked below from the New Yorker about the water tunnels that supply New York City. They talk about the 2 main tunnels that supply all the water and how one of them is on the verge of collapse. Notable quotes include: >  “No one wants to talk about it, but we’re flirting with disaster.” (!! wtf?!) > &nbsp...

Chances are, if you graduated from college, you had a really rough time transitioning from your thriving college social life to the post-college social life of constant happy hours and otherwise planned events. It just takes so much more TIME and ENERGY and MONEY. SO in this episode we talk with Leslie Bozoian, the woman who co-founded Free Association, one of the biggest meetups in DC, about what...

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 w...

Is the American Dream a real thing or was it just propaganda created to appease the masses? Or was it just a form of social optimism that came out of a nation going through the throes of massive technological change that reshaped the economy in ways that gave more people access to the middle class than ever before? Maybe the reason millennials don't buy it anymore is simply because we have normali...

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...

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 politic...

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 i...

We get very candid in this episode. We sit down with Selom é 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 o...

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! As has been an ongoing theme this season, we wanted to focus on not just the problems our generation is identifying in our society, but also the possible solutions, and like our housing episode, James...

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 Bra...

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 whe...

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...

Do you talk to your friends more now that you can text them at any time? There are a lot of ways in which technology has made communication easier but in this episode we talk about whether that convenience has really led to more frequent interactions and stronger friendships. We live in both a more connected and more isolated time, when we are less likely to know our neighbors but also more likely...

It seems like people are getting cancelled left an right these days. Did you boycott SoulCycle when you learned the CEO was a Trump supporter? Did you support Kevin Hart when he stepped down from hosting the Oscars last year? In this episode, we talk to Carlyn Crawley, a fellow podcaster who runs her own podcast called the Femtourage (tagline: "Bad bitches on the road less traveled"), about her th...

This season is about to get political.  We hadn't planned it this way: it just sort of happened. Almost all the guests we invited this season wanted to talk about socialism, local politics, call-out culture, etc. So with the media inundating us with political headlines for the next 11 months, we figured it was a good time to record an episode on our political stances as a backdrop for this se...

Not only do you get to stay with your lover, you also get to have sex and romantic relationships with other people!  Including your ex! In the last episode of this season, we talk about how restrictive the classic script on romance is and why we think breaking down those rigid barriers actually can create an even more stable and communicative relationship. In short, there's no one way your re...

If you are a scientist, you know that the frenzy for funding can be fierce, which is why, as with any system where people are competing for a pool of money, there can be perverse incentives to fudge the numbers, or select your variables to give you the most significant result. This practice, known as "p-hacking," is rampant, as argued by a mathematician known as Jordan Ellenberg, whose book Deondr...

WAR. Good god y'all. What is it good for? Making a FUCK TON of money for defense contractors like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing. The US currently spends $649 billion dollars on our military, which is more than the next 7 countries combined. And to justify that expenditure, we are constantly at war. Every single child living in America today has lived in a country that has been at war their...

If you care about climate change, things might look a little bleak right now. It is so easy to listen to the news of the Amazon rainforest fires, see the ever-climbing emissions statistics, and watch Greta Thunberg admonishing the United Nations and get overwhelmed with the sheer scope of the issue and the collective action it would take to solve it.  In this episode, Spencer Schecht talks to...

Strap in, we are taking you on an emotional rollercoaster this season. In a swift departure from the upbeat mood of the last episode, on this episode, Isabel talks with her friend Christen about what it's like to grieve a sick family member who is in and out of the hospital and how to cope with those emotions. Even if you have friends to support you, it can be really tough to even figure out how y...

Look, it is tough out here. Especially in the rough-and-tumble world of dating apps, where the Super Likes are few and far between, ghosting is imminent, and the zaddies are on the prowl. According to Greek myth, it was a golden apple labelled "for the fairest" that set off the Trojan War over whether Hera, Athena, or Aphrodite was the hottest goddess. In today's world, not much has changed. Now t...

Let's get it out in the open: it's 2019. Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that the meat industry is morally bankrupt and also terrible for the planet. And yet, as of 2015, only 3.4% of the population said they were vegetarian and 0.4% said they were vegan. At the same time, Beyond Meat had the largest IPO of any company in 2 decades when it went public in May 2019. This means lots...

This is where things start to get uncomfortable. We are trying actively push ourselves out of our comfort zones on this podcast, and to do that, we are inviting more guests onto the show and letting them pick the topic. Our first real guest of the second season is named Luke Phillips and he identifies as a social conservative and economic liberal, and he suggested for this episode that we talk abo...