This week, we’re talking about prison. We ended up talking about this subject because during the holidays, there are a few people in our family missing each year. We presumed it’s not just our family gatherings that are missing family members year in and year out who are incarcerated, so we decided to speak on the current prison system as we see it. Now, we all know by now who makes up the majority of prisoners in America. And, we all know the 13th Amendment left open the loophole so these prisoners could be legal slaves. But, what we tried to tackle in this episode is: Should we, as black people, be pushing for abolishing prisons altogether? We had more than a few ideas of how that would look.

This week, we’re talking about marriage (kinda). We ended up going off on a tangent (as usual), but we started off talking about something that’s new to us, but maybe we were just left behind on this: The practice of having wedding guests reimburse the bride and groom for the wedding. The idea of having minimum dollar amounts for wedding gifts or making your guests pay for their plate is all new to us (and stupid as hell), so we decided to address how we felt about it.

This week we’re talking politics. A few things happened over the past few weeks that made this (feel) necessary. First, a meeting was conducted in Atlanta recently that revolved around one specific topic: What would it take to get black people to vote for Trump in the upcoming election? One of us attended the meeting, so we talked about that experience. Next, Trump showed up to Atlanta and a group of lost souls called “Blacks for Trump” were there to show their support (which, at this point, ain’t even surprising, to be honest). Both of these events plus the overall political climate made us ask “Why bother voting?”. I’m sure everyone has their prepared statements as to why someone should or shouldn’t, but we decided to talk about how we’re thinking of approaching this next election.

This week we talking about traditions. Actually, it started with two separate events this last week that were unrelated, but both made us ask the same question: Why do we do that? The first instance was a simple sneeze and the act of saying “God bless you”. Regardless of where this actually started, it made us question how many things we do on a daily basis because someone else at some point told us it was customary or tradition and we accepted it. The second instance (that same day) reinforced that question when someone asked us what Thanksgiving was about. Although we told them the origins, it brought back the same question. So, we decided to explore that question as it relates to our personal lives on this episode and let the conversation go where it went.

This week, we’re talking movies. Specifically, Harriet. This isn’t a movie review, it is more of a discussion questioning the motives behind Hollywood’s apparent infatuation with the “slave movie” format and whether or not we have an issue with it. In recent years, we’ve seen the release of several movies and TV shows with the main plot surrounding slaves and slavery and we’ve talked about whether or not this could be a good thing (to spark conversations that may lead to education) or if it’s just another situation where someone is profiting off of black trauma. Do we really need more of these? Or is it possible this subject matter has been done to death and we need to leave it alone and explore other forms of blackness on screen?

This week we’re continuing on Mia’s quest to learn more about hip hop culture. We’ve been watching documentaries and listening to music in an effort to introduce her to the essence of what hip hop culture in general, and rap music specifically, is about and what it can do to enhance lives when it’s in it’s purist form. This journey has been admittedly hard because there are too many people with no talent masquerading as rappers and confusing her a bit, but we’ll continue taking baby steps with this episode and her second mini lesson. This conversation was inspired by an AMC docuseries we watched called “Hip Hop: The Songs That Shook America”. So, the backdrop of this short talk is based on this series which focused in on 5 hip hop songs and Mia getting more in depth on some of the period of hip hop music she missed.

This week we’re talking sports. It’s about that time again when it’s hard not to talk about sports (especially while the Saints have a winning season going). We were all over the place on this episode. We talked about California’s attempt to get college players what they should’ve been getting for years: Paid. We also talked about the NFL and the discussion around loosening the penalties for players testing positive for marijuana. We planned on talking about Roger Goodell as well, but I think subconsciously we realized during the conversation neither of us really give a f*ck about that guy, so we never really made it too deep into that subject.

This week we’re talking about regret. More specifically, regrets of the dying. There’s a book called “The Top 5 Regrets Of The Dying” by Bronnie Ware. The basic premise was that she was a nurse that specialized in taking care of those with terminal diseases. As she talked to more and more of her patients, she started documenting some of the regrets that came up over and over in conversations with various patients that didn’t know each other. She eventually wrote this book with the top 5 regrets that kept resurfacing. We decided to talk about those 5 regrets and, hopefully, avoid having any of them in the future.

This week we’re talking about forgiveness. This subject is about a year old. We had initially planned on bringing it up when we talked about the Charleston Church massacre and we decided against it. A week ago, we were watching a documentary about Black Wall Street and toward the end there was a portion where they talked about how the survivors (said they) forgave so they could forget the massacre. That portion of the documentary was what we had planned on basing our feelings about black people’s peculiar relationship with forgiveness…and then the Amber Guyger hug-fest happened and we felt like we had to purge ourselves of our feelings before both of our heads exploded.

This week, we’re complaining for about an hour because we heard they’re (Hollywood) remaking New Jack City. Now, many episodes ago, we talked about how the remakes/reboots/re-dos Hollywood execs have been putting in front of us to consume has to stop, but this (in our opinions) is going too far. We talked about some of our theories on why this seems to be the new wave in movie making and also gave some personal alternatives to doing remakes. Is this happening because it’s easier, safer and cheaper or is it what the public really wants and we’re just out of touch? Or is it happening because many of the newer creatives have found it damn near impossible to get funded and supported for original content and this is all that’s left? We gave our take on both of those questions and more.