November 16, 2025. What Was the Biggest Lesson from Your Worst Breakup?

What Was the Biggest Lesson from Your Worst Breakup? Hear more on this topic on today's podcast.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Still broadcasting from the Civic Cipher studios. This is the
QR code where we share perspective, seek you understanding, and
shape outcomes. The man you are about to hear from
is a man that recently reminded me that indeed we
have the capacity to change the world.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
I needed that.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
He is the Q in the QR code. He goes
by the name of Qward.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
The voice that you just heard showed me in real
time that we had the capacity to change the world.
I'm just reminding of something that he did years ago.
He is the R in the QR code. He goes
by the name ramses Jah.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
And we need you to stick around a little. Later
on in the show, we are going to be talking
about how Donald Trump wants the Washington Commander Stadium to
bear his name. That's for our entertainment segment and as
definitely on brand for Trump. We're gonna have some dialogue.
What was the biggest lesson you learned from your worst breakup?
Que get ready, I want to hear it. And right now,

(00:58):
Qward's clapback is the I'm being brown, poor or both.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
You know, that's a very very interesting question to ask
in these times because it can get really confusing trying
to figure out how the other side feels about us.
It's like they pick who to criminalize by identity and
who to pardon by power. I guess, and tonight I

(01:24):
want to talk to you about this and you might
get tired of it, but it happens so often. I
can't help it. This hypocrisy that is so loud you
can hear it echo off the walls of every institution
that claims to care about law and order. The same
people and Ramsey and I we talk about a lot

(01:46):
of this stuff when we're not in the studio. The
same people who accused New York's newly elected mayor of
being a Jihatist for daring to be Muslim are now silent,
completely silent about presidential meetings with and pardons for men
tied to terrorist financing, and billions of dollars of corruption,

(02:10):
the lesson in America, your faith makes you a suspect,
but your fortune can buy you forgiveness. During his campaign,
Mayor Zoron Mamdani was smeared as an extremist with no evidence.
Rams this not because anything he ever did, simply because

(02:32):
of his ancestry and his religion. Cable pundits labeled him dangerous.
Right wing commentators painted him as the enemy within. They
didn't attack his policies, ramses, nor did they attack anything
he'd ever done. They attacked the way he prayed. Meanwhile,

(02:53):
in Washington, the same movement that called him wajihattist and
celebrated I'm sorry that call him a jihadis just celebrated
a presidential pardon for Chan Ping Xao, a crypto billionaire
whose company admitted to enabling money laundering for Al Qaeda,
ISIS and Hamas processed that for a second, Let it

(03:19):
sink in a Muslim public servant vilified for simply existing
as a Muslim, while a billionaire who helped move money
for actual terrorists not only walked free but was pardoned
by the President of the United States. Now, they would

(03:39):
like you to believe that what they're doing to immigrants
on our streets is about national security. But if it
were really about that, if this were really about protecting
Americans from terrorism, then people shouting jihadist would be just
as loud about partons for people who funded terror networks.
But they're not because it was never about safety. It

(04:03):
was always about scapegoating. Their outrage selective, their justice selective,
Their forgiveness also selective. And that selective morality is the
oldest weapon in American politics. What does that say about power?

(04:25):
You see in this country? Power doesn't erase sin, They
just rebranded. If you're wealthy, your crimes become mistakes that
you made in the midst of a bad life. If
you're powerful, your corruption becomes some misunderstanding. If you're connected,

(04:47):
your guilt becomes a headline cycle. But if you're black, brown, Muslim, immigrant,
and or or, your existence is treated as evidence your
difference is dangerous and you're punished not for having done anything,

(05:10):
but for who you are. They criminalize identity while pardening wealth, power,
and greed. This is the machinery of hypocrisy. Fear monger
about immigrants, Muslims, and diversity, use that fear to consolidate

(05:32):
political power, protect wealthy donors even when their actions tually
threaten national security. And then when someone calls you out
for it, get on your platform and cry fake news
and just move on like nothing happened. It's performative morality.
This morality just so happens to worship money. But they

(05:55):
weaponize morality itself against anyone without it, without money. That
is the saddest part. A lot of poor brown people,
black people, they buy the lie. They think they're defending
their faith, or their freedom, or their family on What

(06:17):
they're really defending is fraud dressed as patriotism, and that
power comes back at us. We have to figure out
a way to take it back, because the antidote to
selective justice is collective accountability and a democracy that means voting,

(06:38):
not voting as a ritual or a side quest, but
as an act of self defense. They count on fatigue, cynicism,
They count on us feeling like it doesn't matter. But
trust me, it does, because power only gets away when
we stop showing up. Here's the clapback. They don't get

(07:01):
to criminalize a Muslim mayor while partying men who financed
Al Kaida. They don't get the weaponized faith against the
powerless while blessing corruption and the powerful. They don't get
to decide who's holy and who's disposable. Not while we
still vote and still speak, Not while we still believe

(07:23):
that justice, however slow, belongs to all of us, or
it belongs to none of us. You cannot build a
moral nation on selective outrage. And you can't preach Jesus
while practicing Caesar. So no, they don't get impunity, not
if we keep paying attention and keep voting, not if

(07:45):
we keep demanding that faith, freedom and fairness actually means something.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
I want to add something here too, for everybody that
has an issue with Zoran, Mom, Donnie, I want to
put it to you doctor Oz is Muslim. Doctor Oz
yep him, he is Muslim, and I want you to
like feel how that feels. Right? Is there a problem

(08:14):
now with doctor Oz or is there no longer a
problem with sornmm Donnie. Another thing I want to say
is that you know, to your point, it's so interesting
how in this country the bad guy is always shifting around,
like in terms of like who the enemy is.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
Right.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
I happen to know this because I live in a
place where they take Native American history very seriously. That
once upon a time Native Americans were considered enemies. Right,
they had a lot of language, racist languages to describe them.
Black people have course, we've always been either lazy or

(09:04):
you know, through the crack epidemic, we were either crackheads
or drug dealers. Then it went to Muslim people after
nine to eleven, so that extended to all Middle Eastern people,
and then nowadays it's you know, Mexican people and immigrants,
and so it's yeah, I could see that as the
crime being brown, poor or both. I could absolutely say it. Anyway,

(09:29):
it's time to move on. Let's have some dialogue, all right, Q.
What is the biggest lesson or what was the biggest
lesson you learned from your worst breakup?

Speaker 2 (09:42):
A lot to unpack, rand, because I don't know that
we have enough time.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Well, I think I have an idea of what your
worst breakup might have been, so it'll be pretty easy
for me to follow, but I want our listeners to
follow along. So you might have to pain a little
bit of a picture.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
Refuse to paint too much of a picture about the
relationship it self. You asked about the breakup part. Okay,
there's this thing that we do with love, love in
the romantic sense, not in the familial sense. And I
think a lot of the decisions that we make regarding

(10:21):
love have to do with fear. Fear of losing either
control of our emotions this person that we've now grown
strong feelings for, or the ability to the ability to
govern ourselves with autonomy. We treat love in the romantic

(10:43):
sense as a form of possessive feelings. This person now
belongs to me, and we have an expectation of sacrifice
from our partners to make us have right. I need
you to put me as priority one and selflessly make

(11:09):
decisions that are going to make me most comfortable, most reassured,
most secure. And then a lot of times people do
that without reciprocity. So the person most in love, or
most emotionally involved, or who wants the relationship to last,

(11:31):
most passionately ends up being the person making all those
compromises and all those sacrifices in the name of selflessly
making the other person happy. And I think that's something
that could be beautiful. But again, that word reciprocity gets lost.
If both of us are going way out of our
way to secure the emotional stability and safety and comfort

(11:55):
of the other person, it could be a beautiful thing.
But in most cases, and this is not me just
throwing this up in the air, there's statistics that back it.
There's a person in every relationship that's more involved, that
wants it to work more, that's more in love. That's

(12:16):
making more sacrifices and more compromises. And I think it's
because there's no way to stop yourself from caring about
somebody while you're still getting to know them, and by
the time you get to a point where you can
even say I know this person, because I think that's
kind of a perpetual thing. It never really stops. You

(12:36):
never stop getting to know someone. But by the time
you get to a comfortable point where you know a person,
you may have already loved them for a long time
while we're realizing the person that you got to know
is not your type. But now it's too late. You
said I love you, you moved in, you slept together,

(12:59):
you started a family, you like. There's all these things
that happen in that process, and most of those decisions
I think are made based on fear. I need to
take the next step with this person, so they don't leave,
so they don't go to their apartments, so they don't
stop spending time with me, so they don't stop coming over,
so they don't lose interest, so they don't meet someone else.

(13:19):
We start making I need to keep this person happy
so that I can keep them decisions and it's a mistake.
Let people make the decisions that they want to make,
don't attempt to control them, don't take away their autonomy,

(13:40):
don't force them to make decisions that are really just
to protect your own ego or your own comfort. Show
a person that you care, take your time to get
to know them, and if it's not reciprocated, don't force it. Well.
Or maybe if I make her my girlfriend, she won't
meet other people. Or maybe if I buy her a ring,

(14:01):
she'll know how much I care and she'll care back,
or or him, you know, whatever the case, there's nothing
that you can do to control or even really know
how the other person feels. You only ever really know
your own heart the other person's heart. You're just guessing.
And maybe they give you enough evidence or enough data

(14:24):
that you think you're making an educated guess, but you're
guessing the whole time. You know how you feel. Don't
let the fear of loss, the fear of heartbreak, the
fear of being made a fool of force you to
make permanent decisions for a person that you're still getting
to know. Because at the end of my worst breakup,

(14:48):
I was sitting across from a complete stranger.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
H I remember, well, you know what, if I had
to answer this question, what is the biggest lesson I
learned from my worst breakup? Funny you know about that
one too. I think growing up, I had this idea
that relationships are sort of a forum within which you

(15:22):
share time and space with the person that completes you. Right,
this is the other half of my heart. And that
sounds very romantic. It's like you're a puzzle piece and
you're missing your other part, you know, and once you
find them, you connect and all those right with the world.
But after my worst breakup, I think I realized, very

(15:45):
slowly and all at the same time funnily enough, that
indeed a relationship is a forum within which you are
supposed to share your completeness with someone who is sharing
their complete miss with you. And so after my worst breakup,

(16:08):
the absence, the presence of her absence was something that
I really didn't expect. I thought that that was my
forever right, and I realized that I had begun to
sort of define myself in terms of that relationship, funnily enough,

(16:33):
which isn't like me, but that's just kind of how
that went. I needed to learn that lesson, and then
years later in my life, I realized that how that
should look is I'm going to wake up and I'm
going to decide what I want to do. Do I

(16:54):
want to ride bikes? Do what makes what am I
passionate about? What are the things that make me me?
And I'm going to do those things, And then I'm
going to have those things to share with a person
who can then in turn share things with me. Right,
And we don't need to build each other up. We

(17:18):
can simply be there for each other in weak moments.
But we are not responsible for each other. I mean,
I guess in the real world, you know we are
responsible for each other, but emotionally speaking, we're not responsible
for each other. We just need to allow the bandwidth
for our partners to be who they are fully and
require of them in return that we are able to

(17:38):
be who we are. But when you're younger, I think
you're still exploring who you are, and you know it
can get a little confusing when who you are is
so heavily wrapped up in a person that you think
you're supposed to build a future with and so obviously

(17:59):
like you. I'm not dropping any names here because I
don't need anybody hitting me on social media. But yeah, man,
that was a good question, man. And you know, I
think at some point we're gonna have to figure out
what our listeners think of these questions, because I like
this part of the show. But for now, we have
to move on to entertainment, all right. Trump wants the

(18:22):
Commander's stadium to bear his name. Let's get into it.
This from CBS. The White House said Saturday, this is
an article from a few days ago. Just so you know,
by the way, we don't always get to get every
single show or every single segment on every single show
as we come across it. Sometimes we have to prioritize

(18:44):
different things. We have to move things around. So this
is from a few days ago, but I think it
still stands up. Okay. CBS the White House said Saturday,
it would be beautiful to name the new stadium for
Washington's NFL team after President Trump, following an ESPN report
that in intermediary has told the Commander's ownership group that
he wants it to bear his name. Quote. That would

(19:07):
surely be a beautiful name, as it was President Trump
who made the rebuilding of the new stadium possible. Said
Caroline Levitt, press secretary for the Republican President. A spokesperson
for the Washington Commanders told the Associated Press and a
text message that the team had no comment on the report.
The office of the city's mayor, Democrat Muriel Bowser, declined

(19:30):
to comment. Under a deal announced in April between the
team and the District of Columbia, the team will return
to the nation's capital in a new stadium expected to
cost nearly four billion dollars. It will be built on
the site of the RFK Stadium, where the team played
for more than three decades when it won three Super
Bowls in the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. The team

(19:52):
moved to Landover in nineteen ninety seven. In July, mister
Trump threatened to hold up the deal by insisting that
the team changed its name from the Commanders back to
the old name. I want to leave that name dead,
a name that was considered offensive to Native Americans. Despite
the threat, the city council and the team were able

(20:12):
to reach the framework of a deal a few days later.
So you know, Donald Trump, of course, he likes to
see his name on buildings. He's a developer, real estate guy.
It kind of feels like it's in his wheelhouse. This

(20:33):
still feels like bully energy he has. I forget who
it was, but maybe you can help me out. Que
there was a person that made a case that Donald
Trump has been on this path since he was since

(20:54):
he was refused an ownership stake in I believe it
might have been the Buffalo Bills football team that he
wanted to purchase, maybe in the nineties or in the
eighties or something like that, and he's been angry ever since.
Someone made a case for this. I'm sure you might know,
and if not, I promise it's somebody much marter about
sports to me. But Donald Trump has been fascinated with

(21:16):
football and wanting to have a I don't know, a
role in the football world, I guess so. First off,
it's super gross that he wants the Commanders to change
their name back to their old name. I've heard Native

(21:38):
groups that have advocated for teams to stop naming themselves
after Native American tribes and you know what would the
words be, like slurs and that sort of stuff. These
these Native American advocates have said things like, how can

(22:00):
my people be taken seriously? If all they know of
us is a racist caricature of who we are right.
And you know, when you hear these activists, these passionate
activists describe their plight and ensuring that their tribes and
their ancestors are presented to the world in a positive

(22:24):
light and a light that they determine is appropriate for
themselves and for their their ancestry, you kind of feel like, yeah,
they should probably not name the football team after that.
That's I don't know why people who have so much
want to takes so much more from people who have
so little left. It's a really awful thing to witness.

(22:48):
I don't want to talk up this whole time, but
you know, we can go back and forth if you want,
but Q, I want to make sure you have a
long run way here to talk about this story.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
You know, it's interesting that Trump and those of his
ilk will follow behind those saying activists like they didn't
say anything and tell you how much they love it.
They loved the name of the old team. They I
talked to many of them and they all told me
they loved it. These are things that he's actually said,
knowing he'd never heard such a thing. I had to

(23:19):
censure myself just then, you know, someone representing him saying
that he was responsible for the team being able to build.
It's not just misleading, it's untrue.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
That's Joe Biden.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
Well, it's it's there's so many factors, none of them
being down to them. Okay, that's not even something that
you would attribute to a president. That's Washington d C.
Is where the President's house is. He makes laws and
legislation for the nation. Washington d C. Has its own legislators,
It has its own mayor, it has its own, you know,

(23:55):
city council, It has its own people that make and
and run that city. And the billion there is that
own that team, and the taxpayers in and around that
city have a lot more to do with them building
a new stadium than the president. He even threatened if
they didn't change their name back to stop them from
being able to build the stadium that they seem to

(24:15):
be building anyway. So this just shows that most of
his threats are baseless and empty. But people cower and
bend the knee so readily we never even get to
see it challenged. So it's a running joke that his
villain story did start when he was denied the ability

(24:36):
to purchase a professional team. So that is not something
that Rams is made up, I say joked, because of
course he was already an awful person by that point.
Yeah right, But it is a his villain arc, starting
when he was denied entry into the good old Boys club,

(24:56):
when he was some say masker as a rich person
in rooms full of actual rich people, and just because
of I mean his personality, we've all seen it on display.
You can see why in a lot of rooms he
wasn't welcomed. And now he's in a position which to
flex his power and his muscle on the people who

(25:18):
once told him he wasn't good enough and that he
didn't belong. And Rams, as you said it plainly, it's
bully energy, an insecure small man who has power now
to rule over, take from bully, dominate, a press, hunt,
and even unlive people just because he doesn't like them,

(25:41):
to take away from people who already have so little,
to make life more difficult for people who are already struggling,
and him and his people not only cheer it a
they not only celebrate it, but they flaunt their opulence
of denying health care and food to hungry, sick, starving Americans.

(26:06):
They spend tens of millions of dollars on opulent parties
where they eat and drink all they can. They stuff themselves.
This is the president of the United States, and tens
of millions of people celebrate him and worship him. It's
a really, really sick thing to sit here and realize,

(26:28):
as I'm saying, and I've been kind of void of
this feeling for a couple of days, and it just
all washed over me. Again. Man, this is a really
awful time that we're living in.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
Well, I want to remind you of something that I
think is really cool. So Donald Trump went to a
football game for the Washington Commanders.

Speaker 2 (26:55):
The team in the same city that the story is
taking place.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
And the crowd booed him really loudly, which you know
when the crowd lets Donald Trump know how they feel,
and I'm sure that's got to get to him. So
that's not nothing. And then, you know, for what it's worth,
the Commanders lost that game to the Detroit Lions four two. Yeah.

(27:26):
I thought you'd get a kick out of that because
you know Detroit. So yeah, man, again, then none of
this is normal. This is the president. I grew up
thinking the president was the person who served the people

(27:47):
of the United States of America, and we honored the president.
We chose to honor the presidents after they had served us,
and Donald Trump obviously seeking to serve himself. And this
is another story that tells that truth louder than any

(28:09):
that I could make up.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
So you know, before you close, Rams, you asked a
question about narcissism or narcissist. Yeah, yeah, forty five and
forty seven.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
Yeah, there you go. All right, Well, that's going to
do it for us here at QR Code. Today show
is produced by Chris Thompson. If you have some thought
you'd like to share, please use the red microphone talk
back feature on the iHeartRadio app, and while you're there,
be sure to hit subscribe and download all of our episodes. Also,
be sure to check us out on all social media
at Civic Cipher that's C I B I C C
I P H E R. I am your host, Rams's
jaw on all social media.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
I am q Ward on all social media as well,
and be sure.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
To join us next time as we share our news
with our voice from our perspective right here on the
QR Code. And until then, peace,