In this special episode of Interesting Minds Podcast with Veronica Dodds, filmmaker Abassi Okoro sits down for an exclusive conversation about his film 3rd Floor, a character-driven drama that examines race, class, ideology, relationships, and the assumptions people make about one another. Okoro discusses the film’s central relationship between Maya Turner and Brett Hawkins, two people from very different political and social worlds whose lives intersect in unexpected ways, and how their conversations force both characters to confront their own biases. He also explores the film’s deeper themes, including the diversity of Black American experiences, class and social status within the Black community, political polarization, empathy, and the difficulty of truly listening to people whose experiences differ from our own. The episode also takes listeners behind the scenes of the writing process, character development, casting, production, and Okoro’s broader philosophy of using film not to tell audiences what to think, but to create conversations that continue long after the credits roll.