So I was Told

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 a...

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 neut...

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 sta...

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 tim...

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...

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 ano...

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 separat...

What starts as a nostalgic question about middle school lunches, video games, and the usual playground chaos slowly opens into something much bigger: how social rules form, why they stick, and which ones actually keep us safe.

In this episode, we bounce from Mario Kart cartridges and yearbook cameras to roughhousing bans, gender expectations, school hierarchies, and the strange way unspoken rules shape who we become. Along the way w...

In this episode, we unpack what happens when the holidays stop feeling magical and start feeling heavy. From childhood nostalgia and midnight Christmases to fractured families, financial pressure, and the erosion of tradition. This conversation traces how adulthood, trauma, and economic reality reshape the way we experience the holidays. We talk about why tradition isn’t neutral, how obligation replaces joy, and why so many of us f...

In this episode we revisit our most played early release and use it as a jumping off point to talk honestly about what being “chronically online” actually means now. We trace the evolution from channel surfing and MySpace to modern algorithms designed to capture attention, shape behavior, and profit from addiction. We reflect on growth, validation, and why this podcast exists in the first place: not to perform, monetize, or chase a...

We hit play on our past selves and perform a full audio autopsy of year one. We revisit an unreleased pilot and a long early episode filled with Domino’s tracker updates, local Chinese takeout with a surprise fly, free food ethics, POS loopholes that hand out free coffee, and our sincere belief that everyone should steal from corporations, not small businesses. Then things escalate into fake meat discourse, plant feelings, cats, do...

In this solo episode, I talk about shedding the pressure to deliver a polished year end character arc and why real growth rarely waits for a calendar to give permission. I get into the psychology of “temporal landmarks,” why New Year momentum fails most people, and what it means to choose your own turning points instead of performing them for an audience. This is an invitation to let December be a hinge instead of a finish line and...

We're taking a week break to be with our friends and family, but in the meantime...Kirbs is breaking down the mess and meaning of Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and the retail blackout because nothing exposes our relationship with gratitude and capitalism quite like this week does.

We go from “be thankful” to “panic-buy everything” in under 12 hours, and we're pretty over it.
What does gratitude look like when life is compl...

What happens when the internet flattens every subculture into an “aesthetic”? And what does it mean to build identity through music when the dance floor is no longer neutral if it ever was?

In this episode, we sit down with ZAKU.86, an LA DJ, record collector, city pop obsessive, and former punk kid who somehow became a cultural bridge between Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Chinese, and Southeast Asian sounds. We talk about growing up...

This week, I’m sitting down with a guest whose life looks nothing like the script most of us were handed.
Melanie AyLin (_melanie.aylin) first gen kid, fulltime nomad, community builder, festival worker, and desert sunrise chaser joins me to talk about what it really costs to choose yourself when everyone expects you to play it safe.

At 19, she dropped out of college, converted multiple vehicles into homes, and hit the road with ...