Time for a fun episode! For the first time on So I Was Told, we step into the internet’s courtroom and start reading Reddit’s Am I The Asshole?

We get into a birthday party blowup over a nut allergy cake (boundaries vs entitlement), a bride who tries to bench a 98 year old grandma from the reception (ageism), a sister who sells concert tickets for coke money (addiction, resentment), and a gym situation where a woman keeps filming and then flips the script with weaponized therapy language when she’s called out.

We also talk consent, accountability, group chat literacy, and why some people will do anything except simply adjust the tripod.

When people who have lived with relative safety (usually white Americans) feel instability for the first time, something strange happens. Fear gets loud, processing becomes public, and conversations that were meant to challenge systems start orbiting around personal discomfort.

In this episode, we talk about what happens when fear gets misnamed as danger, how privilege shows up in moments of crisis, and why neutrality isn’t as neutral as it feels. Living in Minneapolis has made these conversations impossible to ignore. But this isn’t just about one city. It’s about who gets to panic, who gets to process out loud, and who has been living with instability all along.

We also dig into protest art, collective action, and the difference between feeling something and doing something. Discomfort can be a signal. It can open doors. But only if we’re willing to listen instead of recentering ourselves.

Recommended pages on IG to educate yourself:

riseabovejusticemovement

mnicewatch

thegeneralstrikeus

ocjusticeinitiative

peopleoverpapers

populistsriseup

dear_white_staffers

50501movement

With a new album on the way, we take the long route through his career, his timing, and why his trajectory matters in hip-hop and pop culture. This isn’t a review or a reaction, but history.

We talk about where J. Cole came from, how he navigated the industry without abandoning craft, and why The Fall Off isn't a comeback.

Whether you’ve followed his career closely or only know the headlines, this episode is meant to set the stage before the album drops and explain why people are paying attention.

We heard the whistles, heard the screaming, watched people run, and walked toward the scene before we fully understood what was unfolding. What followed wasn’t a headline for us. it was bodies in motion, armed agents in plain clothes, flash-bangs, tear gas in the air, neighbors helping neighbors, and a day that stretched into something unreal.

In this episode, we share what we know without pretending we know more than we do: the timeline as we experienced it, what it felt like to stand face to face with armed men who looked like a militia, how quickly it escalated, how the neighborhood organized in real time, and what it’s like to go back inside your own apartment afterward.

Content notes: state violence, death, protest footage described, tear gas/chemical irritants, anxiety/fight-or-flight, harassment.

American Christianity insists it’s being attacked, but the real crisis is credibility.

In this episode I walk directly through Scripture, history, and real-world data to confront an uncomfortable truth: when you take Jesus at his word, the values of modern right-wing ideology repeatedly clash with the teachings at the heart of Christianity.

This isn’t a partisan rant, but a sober rebuke. From wealth and poverty to borders, punishment, nationalism, and power, this episode asks a simple question Christians often avoid.

Are we actually following Jesus or using him to protect comfort, control, and hierarchy?

In this episode, Eva and Kirbs talk about what daily life looks like right now living in Minneapolis as ICE activity escalates across the city. We cover the constant police presence, helicopters, sirens, bomb threats, and the fear shaping how people move through public space.

They share firsthand observations about ICE deployments, mutual aid networks, Signal alerts, door-to-door enforcement, and how residents are protecting one another. We also unpack how misinformation spreads online, how official narratives contradict what people are experiencing on the ground, and why “this could never happen here” is a dangerous assumption.

We discuss the emotional toll of living under surveillance, how identity and visibility increase risk, and why community response matters more than ever. The episode closes with information about the January 23 nationwide general strike and what collective refusal looks like in practice.

What do you do when nothing feels like it’s blooming, but nothing feels broken either?

In this solo episode, I talk about tending to the garden of the heart. About seasons of stillness and growth that happens beneath the surface. About the pressure to always be producing, healing, or becoming something visibly better and what it looks like to resist that.

What happens when people demand that mental health stay “apolitical”?

In this solo episode I unpack a real time online confrontation that exposed something deeper than an argument: the belief that comfort should come before truth, and that some people don’t deserve a political voice at all.

Drawing on psychology, lived experience, and what it means to live in a city where violence isn’t abstract, I explore why trauma can’t be separated from systems, why silence is often mistaken for neutrality, and why mental health spaces become dangerous when they don't name harm.

This isn’t about being divisive.

It’s about being honest.

Because healing that refuses to speak when people are being erased isn’t healing. It’s compliance.

Sources:

World Health Organization (WHO).
Mental Health: Strengthening Our Response.

American Psychological Association (APA).
Stress in America (annual reports).

Bonanno, G. A., et al. (2011).“Weighing the Costs of Avoidant Coping.”
Psychological Science.

Jost, J. T., & Banaji, M. R. (1994).“The Role of Stereotyping in System-Justification and the Production of False Consciousness.”
Psychological Review.

Bennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2012).
The Logic of Connective Action.
Information, Communication & Society.

Fricker, M. (2007).
Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing.Oxford University Press.

Decety, J., & Cowell, J. M. (2014).“The Complex Relation Between Morality and Empathy.”
Frontiers in Psychology.