The Offshoot Podcast

From Angela Harper, daughter of Archie Harper
Archie Harper is 91 and still hitting the gym three times a week. That tells you something about his approach to life.

Growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, he made a decision at 18 that would shape everything: he joined the U.S. Air Force. What followed was three decades in uniform, with deployments that took him across the globe - including service during the Vietnam War. ...

Emmy nominated and executive producer of movies and television shows  like "A Match Made In Heaven," "Call Me Zaddy," "False Advertisement," and "Sorry About That," Lena Jenkins-Smith doesn't give a lot of interviews.  She is more comfortable being behind the camera, managing a team of creatives, to produce non-traditional content  -  films different from typical Hollywood stories.  She ...

Dating isn't what it used to be - at least not prior to the advent of social media and reality TV dating shows.  It seems that in today's world of dating, there is an over emphasis on romance, which is not always a bad thing, when it is genuine, but it is certainly not a good thing when it is expected to be what is seen in the fictional world of motion pictures.  On this episode of The Offshoot, the discussion is about th...

Baltimore, that once thriving industrial city caught between the nation's capitol of Washington, D.C. and the city of brotherly love Philadelphia, is again making noise with music.  A new form a house music and club music, that is unique to Baltimore, is drawing dancers and club goers to the city, and the musicians behind it all are now taking their creations to wider audiences globally.  DJ and producer S.DOT is among the art...

Not forgiving someone for a wrong is never discussed as often as forgiving someone for a wrong.  The mantra is to forgive and move on, but what if not forgiving someone who has perpetrated an act of betrayal, violence, broken trust or theft , which could lead to triggers or trauma, is healing?  What if it is not? 

On this episode of The Offshoot Podcast, Dr. Yve Michaels flips the script and has me, the host, on her couch,...

On this episode of The Offshoot Podcast, three incredible chefs define what makes food good, and it turns out good food is more than just about taste.  Chef Sherise, the owner of Sweet Sage Catering, Chef Steven Steven German-Jones the co-owner of Palate202 Catering, and Chef Maine, the owner of The Maine Course, define what is good food by telling stories about their grandmothers' cooking, the family connections, the history ...

I am going to venture and bet that there are many of us who went through the public education system, and perhaps throughout college and grad school, did not have many, if any, Black men as educators.  I would venture and add that for those individuals that attended private schools, there were not many Black men educators in their classrooms either. The lack of Black men in the classroom, direct correlation or not, seems to have im...

For young Black men, their voices are not often heard, and often times if their voices are head it is typically a soundbite, misconstrued and/or taken out of context.  Additionally, their voices seem to not matter unless it is via music (particularly Hip Hop),  and sports, and even via music and sports, their voices are often dismissed as being irrelevant or less important because they are Black and young.  Why is that? Why is that...

Are you Black Indian? Well, if you're from South Carolina and you have Gullah Geechee roots, then there is a likely possibility that you are Black Indian - from a tribe called the Yamassee.  Though small in number today, in the 1600s and 1700s, the Yamassee Tribe was a force of nature. The tribe battled perpetrators on their land, now known as The United States of America, specifically South Carolina, and they fought to protec...

The president of the United States of America, in a recent press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accused the visiting diplomat of wanting a third world war.  Zelenskyy rejected that notion, and his disbelief of the comment was self-evident given his response - his faced looked of shock.  The behavior from the American president was unbecoming of any world leader, but what the behavior exposed was the Americ...

The brief interruption of access to TikTok prompted many Americans to find alternatives like RedNote, and what Americans found were images of China they had never seen before. Not surprising to me, they were shocked as to how developed the country has become - especially compared to the United States of America.  Then it got me thinking, why were people so shocked?  Then I realized it's because most Americans have never travel...

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, and in The White House have put out statements, made comments, and put forth legislation targeting Washington, DC under the premise that the District is a failing jurisdiction.  They are trying to put forth a narrative, a false notion, that the city is full of crime and has a corrupt government.  The truth of the matter is Washington, DC is a vibrant, beautiful city...

Buying and selling a home can be a daunting task, especially when it is your first. There are so many things to know, and one individual can't expect to know it all. Now, throw in a change in politics that comes with much ambiguity and you get a lot of unknowns when it comes to buying and/or selling a home. This creates fear for some people - no matter it be their first time buying or their second or third. 

To help e...

Most people can't define trauma let alone recognize it - even when they've experienced trauma themselves.  Too often, we ignore and dismiss incidents and experiences that truly are traumatic under the auspices that it will pass and things will be fine.  But the trauma is still there, and we often don't realize until after that fact or until it's too late the need to acknowledge the trauma and process it. 

This episode of The Offshoot is 10 years in the making. It began a few years after the passing of my grandmother Irene Moody Nelson, at a time when I was beginning to question friendships - particularly friendships as relationships.  My grandmother had the best friends, and there were many friendships she cultivated.  To better my friendships, to work on them as friendship, I wanted to know what made her relationship with her frien...

People forget that Black Americans/African Americans make up less than 13 percent of the US population. But that population has impact far beyond the population of its size - culturally, spiritually, economically, socially, politically, and globally.  The reason, or one of the reasons, Black identity is so expansive, and so well known and so copied is because of the stories. Most of our stories, rather it be movies, music, televisi...