Hope Is A Light-skinned Ideal
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Sistren. Good morrows. Good morrow to you. I'm trying new words out. I'm Sam Sanders. I'm Zach Stafford. I'm Saeed Jones, and you, my sistren, are listening to Vibe Check. Vibe Check.

This week, we have so much to talk about. We're going to talk about Tyree Nichols. We must. We're going to discuss his murder at the hands of police in Memphis. And we'll also discuss how every time this happens, it feels like police departments get better and better at all the PR and damage control around these killings, while the actual killing never, ever seems to stop.

And then later, we're going to talk about dry January. It is coming to a close for those who celebrate. And to mark the occasion, we're going to talk about the new hot big trend sweeping the nation, sobriety. Seems everybody's doing it these days. Sister Zach has been living clean for a few weeks now. I have. We're going to talk about his experience. I have.

And we'll discuss what the whole sober movement is saying about consumption as an idea in all parts of our lives. But before we get to that, I got to check in with my sister in. How are y'all feeling? Said, you go first. I was just chuckling because the way you're like sobriety sweeping. I'm like, oh, wow. It's like the temperance movement. You know, it's like it's like not for me, girl. The reboot temperance movement. Yeah. Yeah. I feel.

Well, aggrieved, pressed. Yeah. You know, I think the month of January often can feel most years like it's dragging, like it's going on forever, like it's seven weeks long and you're like, damn, you know, and then finally it's February. This one has flown by, you know, because, you know, all the state murders happen.

All the mass shootings. It's just there's a lot to process. So I guess I feel breathless. And just as an example, you know, this morning, of course, we're obviously going to talk about Tyree Nichols and his state execution. That's essentially what happened. But it was like I couldn't even read about Tyree Nichols this morning without reading.

happening across an article about a nine-year-old girl out of Caldwell, New Jersey. Her name's Bobby Wilson. In October of last year, she was out. She's a little black girl into science. And you know the whole lantern flies thing? Yeah. She was out and she made like, you know, using vinegar and whatever, like a little natural, I guess, insect repellent. Yeah. Scientists have said like if you see them, you should catch them. So she was out in her neighborhood and I believe in her own yard and a neighbor who

knew her and her family called the cops on this nine-year-old black girl. On the girl. Uh-huh, and said literally, quote, there's a little black woman walking around spraying stuff on the sidewalks and trees. I don't know what the hell she's doing. She scares me, though. And like the police arrived. She scares me. The police arrived and they interrogated this nine-year-old girl. And now like Yale University just presented her with some kind of science award, which is lovely. I

I hope this child's love of science is being encouraged. And, you know, her family calls her like Bobby wonder, but it was just so striking to me that as I'm trying to research an instance of murder at the hands of a police department in the case of Memphis and Tyree Nichols, it was like, I couldn't even get to that information without having to kind of like psychically walk through another traumatic story, a nine-year-old girl. And we know what happens when the cops get called on black people, you know? And I just, that summed it up for me. So I'm just,

Right.

I'm just trying to, as best I can, hold myself, hold my breath, hold my people. I hear you. I hear you. Zach, how are you doing? Similar. I'm tired. I'm tired because I took a sleeping pill. I'm tired because the world is so heavy. And also, I'm just tired because it feels like we've held this heaviness for so long. A friend made a joke the other day somewhere. They were introducing me, I think it was at Sundance or something, and they said, oh, do you know Zach? He's kind of like Atlas.

He carries the world on his shoulders. And it was a white person that said this. Oh, wow. I think. And it was a really sweet, you know, it was meant with love, but it did kind of hit me to my core of just the work all of us have been doing for, you know, over a decade of being conduits for death.

and for killings and kind of waking up and seeing the news on your phone and thinking, oh, I now have to say something new. And to Saeed's point, I'm struggling to find something new to say. You know, you just told the story of this young woman, but I think of Tamir Rice in Ohio. We're talking about Tyree Nichols today, and I can name...

beyond George Floyd, so many fathers who have also died at the hands of police brutality. So I'm losing adjectives and words to describe the differences between everybody, which also makes me feel like I'm stuck in that same space of being kind of flattened by all this heaviness in the world. So I think that's what I'm feeling today. I'm tired, but I'm hopeful that,

A very peak Zach Piscean kind of jujitsu move. Piscean. Taking something sad and be like, there's hope and there's a reason to keep going. So that's where I'm sitting today. I'm feeling heavy, but I have hope. It's good to have hope. Look at Obama over here. Hope. Very light-skinned people all unite forever and always. Hope is very much a light-skinned idea. Oh my God. It is. Listen, in this essay, I will argue...

Wow. Chantel, keep that in. Keep it in. Oh, bye.

Sam, how are you doing today? How are you doing, Sam? Up, down, left, right, and in. Yeah. I have so many thoughts about Tyreen Nichols, and we're going to share those in the next segment. But I am going to say right now what I'm feeling after my weekend. Pop culture-wise, I felt very much stuck in a loop.

I watched two movies that I wanted to be good but were bad, and it just felt like movies I had seen 20 times before. Okay, name them. Please, please, please. The first was the new Kenya Barris movie starring Eddie Murphy and Jonah Hill called You People. And the second was that new J-Lo rom-com on Amazon Prime called Shotgun Wedding.

And with both of them, I'm just like, they're not good. And I feel like I've been watching y'all do this shtick for 20 years now. Especially J-Lo. J-Lo has been a bride as long as she's been in movies. Yeah, it's kind of trippy. I saw the trailer for J-Lo's movie. And in addition to the fact, I mean, there was zero chemistry. Also, mind you, this was the movie that was supposed to star Armie Hammer and that he started. And he had to be taken out because he was a cannibal. You know what's not romantic, apparently? Cannibalism.

So I was watching the trailer and I realized it looks like because you're right. She's been in so many literally wedding themed romantic comedies. It looks like it's like spliced together from all the other movie issues. And that's how the movie feels. It feels very cut and paste, banked by numbers, and it's just not good. And then with the Kenya Barris movie. Sorry.

Sorry. You know, Black-ish was fun. I enjoyed it. But ever since then, it feels like Kenya Barris has been putting into movies and TV shows things you should work out in therapy. 100%. Like, what are you doing, Kenya Barris? Also, I don't understand how you make a movie that stars Nia Long, Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and more.

an all-star cast of people who can be really funny and the movie's not funny. Young Miami is in it from City Girls. It is not funny. Literally. Everyone is in it. Jordan Firstman is in it. It is not funny. Everyone is just flat. Yes. And it feels very, like when they say a joke, you can hear the silence on set. Like nothing. Totally. But even then. Yeah. And so like,

you have these two people that are very powerful in the industry. Kenya Barris is Netflix deal is worth. God knows how much JLo can do whatever she wants to do. Yet. These two creatives are making things that feel like the same thing they've been making for a long time. And it's not great. I feel like I'm just feeling this feedback loop.

Of like shitty pop culture. And it annoys me right now. It feels like Kenya Barris from Black-ish, which especially early on was just really great. Incredible performances from that cast. But it feels like he's just created an extended narrative universe out of his like therapy. His life. It's exactly like his life, but like his therapy, like it's so directly like we get it. You marry light skinned black women and you have like,

some feelings you need to process about interracial relationships. Kenya, when do we get to heal? When do we get to heal? Yes, let it go. I really want him to win too because Black-ish was a phenomenon. Well, obviously we have a lot in our minds, a lot in our hearts, but

Before we get into the episode, we want to thank all of you for sending us fan mail, reaching out to us on social media. I saw someone messaged me and said, thank you for recommending the bookstore Baldwin & Co. in New Orleans. I went this weekend, and someone else had also been there and been speaking to the owner. And I was like, oh, I love that power, you know, support our independent bookstores. Mm-hmm.

But also, I love that y'all are keeping it real with us, keeping us accountable. So a couple of you chimed in and want us to clear up a couple of things from the last episode. First of all, one, the actual real friends of WeHo viewership numbers were not 20,000. They were not 20,000.

Apparently, they were- Too bad to be true. A little better than that. It was closer to 200K. And then the second thing is that when we were talking about the recession, or that's not a recession, but it feels like a recession, Amtrak was not directly involved in the denial of paid sick days. It is privately owned freight rail companies that despite record profits,

are still just being brutal in the way they're treating their own employees. Just to underscore that with the Amtrak thing, to close that loop, it's a really weird situation when you further unpack it because Amtrak, the government entity, is broke already.

But the contractors that work with Amtrak are making record profits. The math ain't mathing. We'll talk more about all of that in some later episodes. But that's our clarification for right now. Yeah, but I love that y'all are listening and helping us kind of – like I think corrections are like an opportunity to deepen the conversation. So, yeah, all right. And then here's a snippet from a note that we would like to highlight this week. Again, a lot has happened this month of January.

Liana K said,

The silence from my work, other podcasts, et cetera, has been deafening. As an Asian American woman, there are so many times in my life I felt invisible. And maybe because it's close to home and maybe just because of who the three of you are, you shared our pain, sympathy, and rage.

I am angry at this violence, the inaction of our leaders, and how so many of our community stories are glossed over, oversimplified, and forgotten. Thank you so much for creating something that brings me light and laughter each week. I could seriously fangirl out and go on and on. Leanna, thank you so much.

That makes my day. Wow. Thank you, Leanna. I really appreciate that. That's sweet. And I just want to say, I appreciate her saying that. And just to follow up on our last conversation, the LA Times has continued to kind of really hone in on the Monterey Park shootings and really give a lot of voices and space to talk about what's happening that day and afterwards. So, you know, we were just kind of, you know, platforming and sharing the work over there and they've continued to do that work. So I would say, if you don't subscribe to the LA Times today, do it.

now because they are really invested. Yeah. I've gotten into these emails. I cannot reply. I do not have the bandwidth, but I do. Once you start that game, you don't stop that game. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard. We appreciate it. And of course, you can keep them coming at vibecheckatstitcher.com. But honey, oh, we've got so much to talk about. Ladies, are you ready to jump in? Yeah, let's do it. Cue music. Cue music.

♪♪

Tyree was 29 years old. He was pulled over for, quote, reckless driving. And we must note that every officer, reporter has shown that we have no real evidence that he was reckless driving. So even that charges, you know. The chief of police there has even said, we can't prove that. Exactly. Like, even the police are like, we don't even know about that. After he was pulled over, what we do know, he was aggressively beaten by the police and died three days later. In

Immediately, the family reported that he was beaten so badly that he was nearly unrecognizable. And an image may be popping in some of your heads of Emmett Till, the young black boy who was murdered in 1955, which, you know, these things do feel very similar. And we're going to talk about why does all of this feel so similar and never ending.

Last Friday evening, a four-part video of the incident was released on Vimeo. It revealed that officers dragged Tyree from his vehicle, beat him violently with a baton, yelled derogatory slurs, and tried to taser him. We'll stop there with the details, but what the video immediately brings up for people is another beating of another black man, Rodney King, from 1992 in L.A.,

And what I will say is that never in my life as a black man, a journalist, a person on this world, have I seen a more coordinated release of a video showing police brutality in my life. And we're really going to hone in on there and kind of break apart why that's such a big thing to talk about today.

So far, five former black officers were fired almost immediately and ignited last Thursday. Again, very abnormal. Not really seen this ever before, black or white officers. And news is broken this week of two other officers who were involved who've been suspended but have not yet been charged.

and two MTs and a fire truck driver who have been fired as well due to their involvement in the tragedy. And that part of the story is also heartbreaking, of course, because it shows them spending almost 20 minutes with Tyree and not giving him any help as he laid there bleeding. Tyree, we should note, was a father. He's a son and a photographer. He also loves skateboarding. And the big point here is he was a person that did not deserve this. So how are we all feeling after hearing all of that today? Sam, what's going through your mind?

I mean, there are a few details that I've read about the videos, haven't watched them, that just really hit me deep. He called out for his mother as he lay about to die. He laid slumped against one of the police vehicles for 20 minutes before he was even offered medical assistance. And at first, they told his mother, it's not actually that bad. This is deplorable.

And so that is enough pain just with that. But then you see the rollout, and we talked about this, Zach, and you mentioned this before. The rollout of these videos was handled like a major film's theatrical release. And you see, even as the police keep killing us, they get better and better and better with their PR machine handling the fallout. That is despicable to me.

They can mobilize to orchestrate the release of a video. They can mobilize police departments across the country to be ready for property damage should protests get heated. But they still can't mobilize and organize enough to stop killing us. I'm in L.A., and a friend of mine on Twitter was posting about how in a wealthier, whiter neighborhood of L.A.,

The LAPD had been in consultation with the homeowners association saying there's a video about to be released in Memphis. Things might get heated. Don't worry. We're here. We're watching. We'll protect you. What the hell? They're not doing that in Crenshaw. They're not doing that in Inglewood. They're not doing that in Koreatown. The amount of concern that I see applied from the authorities in this moment is

it's just misguided, misdirected, misplaced. It feels as if in this entire police response and the preparing for violence,

The authorities and these governments care more about white anxiety and white property than black lives. And that's all I can keep thinking. And several years after Trayvon, several years after George Floyd, that dynamic has not changed. Yeah, I think something that comes to mind is an article I read over the weekend in The Atlantic. The piece is titled Why Memphis is Different.

And it absolutely to the point that both of you have raised, I went into it unfamiliar with the writer. And it seemed initially to be about the point we're making that why Memphis is different in the wake of Tyree Nichols is the media rollout.

And the way that the video being released, it was basically 5 or 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on a Friday. We know newsrooms over the weekend, all of the implications of that kind of timing. Also, in terms of community response and activism, it kind of creates this container effect where people are made to feel like, okay, the city is giving you a weekend. Right.

to take to the streets and do all of that. And by Monday, have it together. And we're trying to give all these cues and different signals to say we are prepared, but we want to see peaceful responses and all that kind of stuff. And so I'm reading this article and then, whoa,

And lo and behold, the author, it's actually like basically applauding the PR rollout by saying that, quote, like mass shootings, police brutality is tragically common enough that in the U.S. we are getting better at addressing its consequences. And I'm like reading and reading. And what I realize-

Right.

And I said, isn't that it? You know what I mean? Like that is it. Like you're right. This obsession with protecting white property. Because when they say property, they're not talking about black homeowners. They mean white property. They're not going to South LA and saying, are you okay? They're not doing it. Yeah. And what's interesting to that point is the larger –

infrastructure that has been built around capturing Black death. So when we look at Memphis, we look at Chicago, we look at D.C., people have seen these video cameras before, but the large towers that are constantly kind of sirening that are always capturing people moving on the street, people were so happy locally in Memphis in the police department that those cameras captured all the different angles alongside with the police body cams.

And when I hear that, I get so sad because what we were saying, we're saying lots of things at the moment, but the big thing we're saying is that, isn't it great we've built a Hollywood system around Black death?

We now know that black people in film, we'd like to see them in pain. We'd like to see them hurt. And the police department has really seized upon this idea and this format and created a system in which it is captured. It is released and is controlled through their own machines to where you get to see, you know, the incident you get to see now a cop fired and then they just keep going and you see more resources poured into them to keep doing it over and over again. And it hasn't stopped. And the resources here, we should talk about that for a second. The,

The officers that killed Tyree were part of a special unit called the Scorpion Unit in the Memphis PD. And this was created by the black woman police chief, and I want to say 2021. And it's like a lot of units, a lot of major cities have these special forces units that are basically allowed to over-police hotspot areas in cities, mostly black and brown. And they don't have to report as much as other officers do.

And they claim that by giving these forces this special leeway, they can better just get crime right away. That's not the case. It's not the case in New York. It's not the case in Memphis. But what we've seen happen is that...

This increase in the police state, increase in their force, increase in their ability, it is often co-signed by leadership that is women-led or black or brown-led. And it just has me thinking, like, when I think about the way that police forces and our police state has PR'd itself in the last 15 years, they've gotten really, really good at

at kind of changing the paint color of the walls of this house. Oh, the Scorpion unit is great because a black woman wants it. Cop City in Atlanta is great because Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms approves it. But here's the thing about the police state, and here's the thing about these systems and structures, repainting the walls of a house does not change the foundation the house was built on. It never will. And I think we've convinced ourselves, or they're trying to convince us,

that putting a fresh coat of DEI on top of a killing machine makes it better. It does not. One of the things I hate about all of this is the illusion of, oh, this is day one. Oh, wow. Creating the scorpion. Wow, that seemed like a bad idea. I'm like, uh-uh. First of all, you created this in 2021, this unit in Memphis.

You hired or brought in, I believe, this black woman police chief. Like a lot of this was done in response to the protests of 2020. Here in Columbus, part of what people in the city of Columbus were protesting was past units just like Scorpion. Like the data is there, we know. And it's just really frustrating as someone living in another city where like a black woman was brought in to lead a police department. Like when this stuff happens,

A lot of them are like, okay, well, this was a learning experience and we're horrified too. As if there was no data, as if we're starting at square one. And it's just so insulting, particularly to the people in the community who've been living there for generations. And I should say both sides of my family go back in Memphis for over two centuries. Like, it's just so insulting. We know the game and it's just, it's horrific. And then also like in terms of resources, and they're already talking about this, they want to allocate resources.

thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to these same police departments to deal with the cops' mental health. And I just think like as an analogy, you know, at the beginning of Me Too, when someone like Harvey Weinstein was exposed, if someone had said, yeah, and so the way that we're going to deal with, you know, sexual harassment and abuse at Miramax is to, you know, give them hundreds of thousands. Give them more. More money? That's not what you do. Imagine, imagine if,

If there was a really hot, new, great restaurant in LA that most people liked, but every year five or six people died from eating there because they got food poisoning, you wouldn't say, got to give that restaurant more money. Got to save them. Yeah. You'd say, shut the motherfucker down. It would be closed. Yeah. Shut it down. Yeah. And what this all brings up for me is there are countless examples, whether you look at the Black Panther movement or even things that happened in the past few years, that when you see black community respond to state violence, it's

It isn't always through, you know, one, attacking the police directly. Of course that has happened, but that is very rare. People don't go out in a full-out war. What they do is they invest resources in taking care of community. And I think of no better example than when I was in Chicago after Laquan McDonald was shot, which was a very similar situation, but the police would not release the video. They put out lies. Then when a lot of our reporting released the video because the city couldn't hold it anymore, we found out it was worse than we could have imagined. And the city really took to the streets and changed it happened. You know, Jason Van Dyke is in prison now.

But what happened that people forget is that in front of this building called Homan Square, which is where a special unit similar to Scorpion was housed that I helped uncover, they built a place called Freedom Square. And it's the same block in which Fred Hampton was murdered by federal agents years ago, a leader of the Black Panther Unit. Because again, this goes back decades, this history. What the community did, they didn't arm up, they didn't attack the building. They built a space across the street in an open lot where they provided a library, childcare, food, restrooms.

And they said, you know, if they're not going to take care of us, we're going to take care of each other. And we're going to use this moment to really hold each other. And that's what we're just needing right now. We don't need the police to get more mental health resources. We need that, but we also need people to have housing, to protection, have jobs to be taken care of. And that's the real way in which we stop any types of quote-unquote crime in communities is by taking care of each other. And I also think this is a moment for people to get involved in their local governments and just see what the police are up to.

Every year they are increasing their power, and it is usually unchecked. And the way to actually check that power is through local government and local action. I'm obsessed with this story in Atlanta right now. The Atlanta Police Department, with the blessing of their black woman mayor, is building what people are calling Cop City. They are spending $90 million to tear down 85 acres of forest…

to build a training center for the police department in Atlanta, which will include a mock city to like practice riot control. Wow. It is obscene. There have been protesters fighting this for a while. One protester was shot and killed by police officers. Climate activists have gotten involved because they're saying we should defend the Atlanta forest. Atlanta actually has one of the highest percentages of tree canopy of any major city in the U.S.,

But chances are this thing's gonna go through. The governor, Brian Kemp, has declared a state of emergency over the protests, and it seems as if this thing will be made. And it just reminds me that the through line of the last 15 years of activism has not been the police getting their acts together. It's been them silently and stealthily, in spite of all the protests, increasing their power. And it is on no better display than what's happening in Atlanta. They're literally taking over a forest to police more.

It's wild. Power doesn't exist in a vacuum, right? Certainly funding doesn't. So it's not just that over the last, particularly five or six years, police departments have increased their influence, their power, they're getting more funding. Look, PR messaging doesn't come out of nowhere. That has to be paid for. It's that that funding is being diverted from other places. And you're seeing that in cities like New York, where the mayor there is insisting that funding to libraries is cut, though they are paying historic highs and

the New York Police Department. We're seeing this across the country. So it's not just that we're pulling money out of thin air and throwing it at police departments in the wake of these shootings and then surprise, it doesn't work out. We're pulling money from other aspects of community needs, like your roads are worse, the electric grid is worse, the response time for the fire department is starting to lag. Your libraries are having fewer and fewer resources, all because that money is going to your local police department.

Because they murdered someone again. Yeah. It's infuriating.

Yeah, you're so right. And Saeed, I've been wanting to bring this up to you specifically, and I feel like our listeners probably want you to respond to this as well. But ever since Tyree's video was released, the quote from James Baldwin has been circulating really big. And I'll read it now, and I'd love, Saeed, for you to kind of unpack quickly why people have really clung to this. And James Baldwin writes in Notes of a Native Son, quote, "'In Harlem, Negro policemen are feared more than whites, for they have more to prove and fewer ways to prove it.'"

Yeah. So in that quote in particular, he's noting that if you had to choose as a black person on the street, as a black civilian, you know you're about to interact with a cop and it could be a fatal encounter. He's basically arguing in that letter that a white cop is dangerous, but a black cop is even more dangerous because they have something to prove to their peers. And that's the issue. Obviously, our attention on this murder in Memphis of Tyree Nichols, a lot of people seemingly were surprised.

that five black cops have been charged with his murder. And it's like, oh gosh. And the racial demographics of the Memphis Police Department, I believe, more directly mirror the community than is normal. And you would think, oh, maybe that makes things better. And it's like, no, no, it's not. And I agree. I mean, look, the most powerful black man in the United States right now is named Clarence Thomas. And I

Think about it. Sit with it. The most powerful black man in America is Clarence Thomas. And I think that is kind of what James Baldwin is pointing to, that as far as interacting with white supremacists is dangerous, someone who's trying to win over the approval—

of white supremacists is even more dangerous. They'll always go even further, you know? And yeah, yikes. Listen, I already said it once, but think about Clarence Thomas. I'll say it again. It's like, you can repaint the walls of a house. It does not change the foundation it was built on.

It never will. And it's like painting the walls of the house when it's on fire. It's like, what are you doing? Get out. There you go. Get out of the house. Why are you trying to decorate? Well, we will leave it there for now, but we will be following the story, of course, and be doing checkups on each other and with you all. So stay tuned for more in the future episodes, but we'll be right back on this episode for some relief. ♪

This message is brought to you by McDonald's. Did you know only 7.3% of American fashion designers are Black? Well, McDonald's 2024 Change Leaders Program is ready to change the face of fashion. The innovative program awards a monetary grant to five emerging Black American designers and pairs each with an industry professional to help them elevate their brands.

I know specifically and distinctly how McDonald's can support and empower not just black Gen Z, but black people. My first job was McDonald's. I learned a lot there about customer service and how to relate to people. I still love that place and go there very often. Look out for the change of fashion designers and mentors.

at events like the BET Awards and the Essence Festival of Culture. And follow the journey of the 2024 McDonald's Change Leaders on their Instagram page, We Are Golden.

Here's an HIV pill dilemma for you. Picture the scene. There's a rooftop sunset with fairy lights and you're vibing with friends. You remember you've got to take your HIV pill. Important, yes, but the fun moment is gone. Did you know there's a long-acting treatment option available? So catch the sunset and keep the party going. Visit pillfreehiv.com today to learn more. Brought to you by Veve Healthcare. ♪

Listeners, we are back. You're still listening to Vibe Check, but now we're going to switch gears and talk about alcohol or the lack thereof. You know, a lot of us have been using January to lay off a lot of things. Alcohol, sugar, not me, but our sister Zach has given up both. But we stand in solidarity. Zach has been going through it. We really do.

And we want to use this moment to talk with Zach about his experience, but also talk in general about the rise in sobriety across the country, not just in January, and what it means for all of us. So the data behind this stuff, it's really fascinating. Barenberg Research Study found that Gen Z is drinking about 20% less per capita than millennials. And millennials are drinking less than Gen X and baby boomers. That's kind of wild to me.

And the marketplace, as you all can see, is responding. You have seen all the mocktails popping up in all your favorite bars and restaurants. There are even now completely sober bars that you can go to to mimic the experience of an actual bar just without alcohol. But I first want to start by asking you both, what do y'all think this is about? Why now in this moment? I mean, for me, I think...

I think we, for me, I don't know. I think a lot of us are becoming really in tune with our bodies. And we have a lot of literature that shows us, recent literature that shows us, you know, alcohol. One of the biggest podcasts of last year, Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard was a podcast about alcohol.

And how detrimental it was to you. And so there's like kind of the physiological reasons why people are moving away from alcohol. And we also see a lot more people joining AA. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I know more people who are in AA now than ever before. I know a lot of people who are practicing sobriety. I joke that every self-help guru is a sober person. So Brene Brown's one of the most famous examples of that, and she's very open about it.

But I think people, millennials especially, and I'll speak from being a millennial, were really interested in experiences. You've seen a movement from less gifts and more experiences. And I think we are realizing, at least from my part, that drinking does cloudy some experiences. It also makes me act in ways maybe I'm not super happy about. And I also just feel it in my body in ways that weren't making me happy. So we explore sobriety.

And I think it does, you know, it's very complicated because it does intersect similar to how veganism too. And I'm saying this as a person who has battled eating disorders their whole life, have been in outpatient programs, been in so many programs. But there's been moments in programs where you see people join sobriety or veganism as a way to extend some unhealthy eating habits.

So I think we're all talking about these things more. So people are willing to kind of explore them more. And that's what Glennon Doyle did last week. And that's what really inspired this conversation is that she also shared her own linkage between alcoholism, anorexia, and sobriety. So I don't know, I just think we're all in a place where we can talk about it. And that's exciting. So people are exploring it.

So, what do you think? I guess my thoughts on it are informed by two timeframes that don't necessarily contradict each other. I say within the space of this cultural conversation about sobriety, well, let's look at the last two or three years. We are now three years in the pandemic. And I would say, especially during the initial experience of the pandemic, a lot of us were home a lot more. I was drunk all day. Yeah. And it was like you didn't have anywhere to go, literally. And the Zoom happy hours. Yeah.

You were drinking alone with that shit. Oh, Lord. So within the space of the last three years, part of what I think is happening is that people are going, okay, well, we're not at square one with the pandemic. It's still happening. But I am out and about a lot more. Yeah.

And I need to kind of check in with myself, kind of do a vibe check about my alcohol consumption. Because what might have made sense in, let's say, April of 2020 does not make sense now. Doesn't make sense now. So I think we're kind of seeing that. And then January is an excellent opportunity to do that. The broader thing, if we open it, let's say, to the last 10 years, I think it's fair to say that life is tough out here. Yeah.

These streets, the highways are rough. It's scary. And so it's an anxious, at times depressing time. And alcohol is a depressant. We are talking about these things much more. I think hopefully there's less shame about this kind of consumption. So I think what's also happening is people are saying, okay, all this is going on. Alcohol is a depressant. Maybe I drink less alcohol or no alcohol, and maybe I smoke weed.

Maybe I get into ketamine therapy. Like, I think the conversation about, okay, there are actually some different, maybe I just go to therapy. Maybe I actually get some actual medication. Like, you know, I think as there is less shame about different ways to think about altering our perception, because this is really at the end of the day about chemistry and chemicals in our body. I think there is going to be naturally less reliance on alcohol as the only means to kind of feel better at the end of a rough day.

Yeah. That's my theory. I like it. I also see something else going on, and this is probably a quarter century trend.

We've always seen people drinking on TV, but there's been a cultural thing happening where TV sends us messages about drinking alone and kind of glorifies it. And all of the data and all of the science about how to drink well and do it in a way that's good for you shows that we're better off when we're drinking socially with other people than we are drinking alone.

drinking alone can be a problem. - And that's interesting to me because I think of like Scandal's heyday. Olivia with those huge, I mean, those weren't wine glasses. They were like bowls of red wine. It was like a fun kind of ha ha joke. And it's like, you don't really see that being seen. - And her little popcorn. - Yeah, and like all the science says that's actually not the best way to drink. It should be part of a communal activity, right? So I think TV has primed us

to reach a point where in deep pandemic, all we thought we could do was drink alone. And let me tell you, I was in that boat. I was living alone in a loft studio apartment in downtown LA. Couldn't leave the house. There would be some Saturdays where it was like three or four Zoom happy hours. By the end,

I've drunk a fifth of a bottle of tequila and I'm wasted by myself. Right. That can't be good. And so I am not doing dry January. I'm not going fully and completely sober. But I am thinking a lot about how I drink and who I do it with. And for me, the best thing to do is like probably save the drinking for when you're with your friends. Also, have you noticed, I feel like particularly here in Columbus, because people in Columbus love to drink.

I'm not gonna say it's a party city, but people like to live. And I've noticed in the last year or so, I see more people at bars drinking hard seltzers than hard liquors. So I wonder even if like people aren't like going sober or anything, like they're drinking like less alcohol content. At this point, I'm like, I don't want to have too much hard liquor in my house.

I'll have beer and some wine around, but like less will be better for me. In general, I have conflicted feelings about the culture of like absolutism and personal hygiene going fully cold turkey, abstaining all the way everywhere forever from all of these things. Because sometimes I think it can underscore a kind of puritanical mindset.

that exists in America's very bones where we think the only way to be good is to like punish ourselves. And I don't want my self-care and I don't want my alcohol moderation to be a thing where I feel like I have to beat myself into submission to prove that I am good. And so I wonder, and I want to hear from you, Zach, about your experience, about how you navigate that because there's a thin line between dry January and...

a pathology that can lead to disordered drinking, eating, whatever. And it's not just alcohol, right? It can be whatever you're trying to moderate. Especially with food moderation. I see people approach food moderation as a mode of self-flagellation. I don't like that. I've seen young writers do it with writing. Like, oh, if I'm not writing every single day, I'm a failure now. And I'm like, well, that's not a reasonable word. And that's the point, too. And I learned this through years.

of treatment in eating disorders is that any absolutist mentality, whether it's to drinking water, like saying I'm only going to drink 10 gallons of water a day or I'm going to only eat salads, all of this is really not good for you. You shouldn't move through a world where everything is black and white, yes or no. You have to leave room for gray. And what I love about gray, similar to

Maybe it's nice to build in checkpoints with yourself to check in and to say, okay, I'm at a party. Do I need to have a martini? Do I need to have three martinis? Why am I drinking? What does drinking do for me? I heard Tracy Ellis Ross the other day say that she answers every request to do something with...

Will I feel how I want to after that I make that decision? Will this martini make me feel good later? Will it make me want to talk to someone later? And that is checking in with your future self. And I think all of us need to really be taking care of more of our future self because that person's in us. It's talking to us every day. And that's kind of the biggest reason why we all procrastinate. When you procrastinate, what you're saying is, ah,

future self, you're too loud. I can't take care of you. I'm just trying to take care of me in this immediate moment. And that could be, I'm going to take the shot. I'm going to hook up with this person on Grindr I don't like. I'm going to do all these things. So I think all of us need to break free of what I would say we live in a binge culture and that's best embodied with

television and Netflix. We are told every day to, you get something, you should eat it all. Cookie dough, eat it all now. That new TV show, watch it all now. And we need to move to a place of moderation just so you can like enjoy. Things don't need to be rushed. Yeah. I do want to bring up one point before we close this segment because, you know, you would think slowing down on your drinking, drinking less, abstaining, you'd think it's free from the clutches of capitalism. You're spending less money on alcohol, but it's not.

The thing I've noticed in this move towards sobriety is that the absence of alcohol in people's lives is not leading to a decrease in the pressure to spend money on drinking. Yo, those mocktails are expensive. Yeah. The economy of sober cocktails and sober bars, it kind of proves to me that capitalism can monetize and profit off of anything.

Yes.

but I feel pressure to just spend more money in different ways. And that feels bad. Yeah. It's kind of incredible. And again, Glennon Doyle, she really shook me this last week talking about this on her show. And I do love her so much and her wife, Abby. But she was talking about treatments for her anorexia require her to spend more money. She has to go to the doctor more, go to a nutritionist more, buy certain foods. And to your point, Sam, every way we turn in this life to take care of ourselves leads to spending more money and more money and more

money. And I think those are moments in which you can stop and ask yourself, especially if you're not a person who has the money, the expendable money to spend, it's kind of like, what are alternative routes that don't make you lean into another form of consumption? Because I can get really messy today and talk about different stories I have in my life of people who've battled alcoholism and other addictive behaviors that they didn't actually deal with the underlying issue there, and they morphed into something else that was way more dramatic, way more tremendous than before. So I think, you know,

Spending money, capitalism, you just got to own up at the end of the day that it's not going to save your life. It's never saved anyone's life at the end of the day. And if you're using methods that require you to participate at a high level in capitalism, because we can't escape it. We all live in it. Then you should question, is this actually about taking care of myself or is this about supporting someone's underlying economic structure? There you go. I do want to say what I'm thinking about with this whole episode and both of these chats. We've basically had two conversations about consumption.

How do we consume or not consume alcohol? And how do we consume or not consume the visual trauma of black death at the hands of the police state? And I think for me, with both of those ideas that I'm dealing with and grappling with, the answer is you have to consume in ways that are kind to yourself. If you can't watch the video, don't watch the video. If you want to go fully sober, do it or not, but be kind to yourself in the process. So much of the energy in the culture right now pushes

pushes us to peak consumption of all things in all ways. But the answer is doing what's best for you and what feels kind to you. Listen to you, consensual consumption. That's the vibe for this show. I love that. I think that's three of us at least. We're going to take a break. When we come back, some recommendations to keep your vibe right. If you're listening to Vibe Check, don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

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All in one place. Find your perfect somewhere with Hotels.com. All right, my loves, we are back. And of course, before we end every show, we like to share something that's helping us keep our vibes right or perhaps throwing off the vibe. But, you know, a lot's going on out there. So I hope our recommendations this week are about like kind of giving us some hope, helping us keep it together. Zach, let's start with you.

Okay, here's my big Piscean feelings ridiculous. You real Piscean this week. What's happening? I really am. Because we're getting close. Is your moon in retrograde rising? What's happening here? We're heading towards Pisces. I'm about to be at my peak power. We're entering Aquarian season and now we're going to Pisces season. So watch out. Okay. I have to recommend episode three of The Last of Us. The zombie show on HBO.

Let me tell you. If you don't know, Last of Us is kind of the new breakout Sunday night must-see TV from HBO. It is an adaptation of the video game, which Saeed can speak to playing. Very good, very scary, very depressing video game. I'm interested to hear how this is keeping your vibe right.

So the idea is that in this world, the world that we currently live in is struck by an epidemic and a pandemic and zombies start getting created through fungus. And the show follows the story of trying to find a cure.

That's the best way I can pitch it to you. And episode three is a fishbowl episode exploring two characters you haven't met before named Bill and Frank who are in the video game but presented a bit differently. And this does not ruin anything, and I'll try not to spoil, but this episode is about these two men who meet each other in the apocalypse and build a life together. And the whole episode is about them building this life together. And it has this really beautifully tragic end

but when you watch it, it does tie into a version of consent we're talking about. They get to live a life and find love in the midst of tragedy. They get to live and find love a moment at the end of the world to cite Saeed Jones. And I personally loved it. It broke me in really wonderful ways because it just echoed many histories we all embody as black queer men of the AIDS epidemic, for instance, that when we talk about that moment, we only talk about all the darkness, the death and loss, but

Even within that pandemic that still rages, people found love. They found a way to get up every day and fight. And I feel like this episode is a really great example of you may be feeling so much around you, but there's a way to carve out beauty in the world even amidst so much darkness. So I love it. There's a reason why everyone's tweeting about it this week, and I cannot recommend it enough. And you can just watch this episode. I kind of recommend it because there's not any zombies in this one.

It's all not very gory. It's just about this little like fishbowl moment. Wow. That was a little bit of gore. You got us. Just a little bit of gore. There it goes. My Pisces powers. That was very Pisces. Okay. All right. Thank you. Sam, what about you? So I was going to recommend the same episode, but now I want to recommend a

think piece about the episode that really challenged me when I was thinking about the episode. Look at this. Girl, HBO has us in a stranglehold. Joke. I need to be free. Tighter, harder. Oh my God.

Wow. Okay, Sam. Sam said, I give consent. That was consent. Consume me, HBO. I give consent. No, I want to talk about my vibe this week with that episode and with this show. My vibe is having intellectual debates about TV shows again. So after this episode hit, one of my colleagues over at Vulture, where I also work and host another show called Into It, listeners, check that out.

My colleague Jackson McHenry wrote a piece for Vulture called The Empty Sentiment of

And he argues that the storyline of Nick Offerman's character and Murray Bartlett's character is entirely predictable and kind of one note. 100%. And then he says the show in this episode, quote, tries so hard to imitate what we think of as prestige television that it forgets to say anything at all. Call it zombified TV.

The essay makes some interesting points. I'm not sure if I agree with everything in there, but I'm glad that someone is throwing a grenade into the dialogue around this show. I miss it. I like it. I want it more. This show is meaty and full of ideas, and I love it when smart people I like are fighting over that stuff.

Sign me up. 100%. My favorite water cooler television requires a debate at the water cooler. Yeah. So that's my vibe this week. I'm living for it. The conversation on this episode and this show is great. The essay from Jackson McHenry is called The Empty Sentiment Podcast.

of The Last of Us. Listeners, watch the episode, read the essay, email us, tell us your thoughts because I love a fight over good TV. Yeah. And I also, in my pushback to that, and I say this with love and would love to like sit down with whoever wants to talk about this and talk about it forever, is we're watching the adaptation of a video game. You know what's predictable? A video game.

The storyline of a video game. So it's like... I'm not going to be catching a stray. Well, because there'll be so many moments in the show where you're like, oh, this is a video game plot point. Yes, it's like... It's like three or four of them being like, should we go to the left or go to the right to get to this place? And then you enter a space and then the music changes and it's like, you've entered the boss arena. And now the boss comes out. And it's just like, come on. I watched my roommate play The Last of Us and it was so scary and depressing. And I know...

generally what's happened to these main characters. And I'm like, "Have fun y'all, have fun HBO girlies." - It's a ride, it's a ride. - Well, I'm gonna breathe some living, fresh African-American air into this recommendation. - Yes, some black air. - Ain't no zombies here.

There are no black zombies so far. Oh, actually, that's a lie. The first episode is a lie. Shout out to African-American zombies. Yes. Wait, wait, really though? That's not my journey. I don't want to be a zombie. The Pentecostal just jumped out of her. My recommendation this week is, well, it's kind of a coffee table book. You know, I love a good coffee table book. In this case, it's Carrie Mae Weems' Kitchen Table series.

This is an iconic, I mean, this is, if you're familiar with the history of American photography, you've probably seen some of her work from this series. It debuted in 1990. Well, let me explain it. All of the images are essentially like self-portraits featuring Carrie Mae Weems herself sitting at a kitchen table in these kind of staged tableaus.

And the reason I feel like it's really resonating for me this week is with everything going on in our country and in the world, I think it's really important to nurture your interior.

And I've been thinking about black interiority and the richness there. And every shot in the series takes place like literally at a black woman's kitchen table. And it's about her relationship with this man. And they kind of fall in and fall out of love. They have a child. She has her girlfriends over. You know, it's just like all of that smoking cigarettes and drinking a glass of wine by yourself. You know, kind of going through the consumption. Like she's going through it. She's going through it. And it's all within context.

the interior, right? This private reckoning. And the reason I recommend this book, besides the fact that Cary May Weems is an important American artist and the series is great, is that I've seen some of these images in museums, like at the Studio Museum, for example. I always feel a little rushed in museums. I always feel uncomfortable lingering as much as I want. And having this work in book form, and then the delight...

to Said the poet. I didn't know that she wrote, like there's like a short story that she wrote that is woven throughout the series that's really beautiful about how the man and woman feel about one another. And I just love that in my own interior, I can sit with these images and these texts for as long as I want

And there's not like some person standing in front of me. There's not some docent leading like a tour group past as I'm trying to like figure it out. Like I can just sit in my living room in my own private interior. And like, I don't know, I've really appreciated the experience. And I think, you know, whatever America is trying to tell us about its arrogant demands upon our bodies, I think it's really important to remind ourselves

of who we are and who we actually belong to, which is ourselves. And I think that's really what Kareemay Williams is doing in the series. That was like a perfect way to talk about her work. It's so good. I mean, and she's an icon, a legend. She's an icon and she's also living.

So give the girls their flowers while they're here. She's still creating work, still living. Also, she's got a voice like black velvet. If you ever get to listen to an interview of her, ooh. So anyway. We love to hear it. Yeah, we love to hear it. We love to literally hear it. So, okay. I love those recommendations. I mean, you know, zombies, if that's your journey, or if you want to live, I have presented you with another journey. I want to live. But friends. I want to live, and I want to go to black heaven once I'm dead. Wow. Sign me up for the Christian Jubilee. Oh, my God.

Sorry. Sorry. I can't even look at you. I've like blocked out your camera. I'm like, I can't. I can't with you. You are such a class clown. Okay, friends. What are you feeling or not feeling this week? What's your vibe? Check in with us at vibecheckatstisher.com. But I got to tell you, if you want to talk about The Last of Us, send that shit directly to Sam and Zach. Oh, please do. I will debate it all day. I hate zombies. Hit me one more time. I hate zombies. I hate zombies.

Thank you for tuning into this week's episode of Vibe Check. If you love the show and want to support us, please make sure to follow the show on your favorite podcast listening platform and tell a friend, especially during Black History Month. I mean, I'm just saying. Yeah, tell them. Do your allyship there.

And huge thank you to our producer Chantel Holder, engineer Brendan Burns, and Marcus Hom for our theme music and sound design. Special thanks to our executive producers, Nora Ritchie at Stitcher and Brandon Sharp from Agenda Management and Production. And last but not least, thank you to Jared O'Connell and Amelda Skender for all of their help.

Listeners, we want to hear from you. Do not forget you can email us at any point throughout any week at vibecheckatstitcher.com. Also find us on Instagram at Sam Sanders, at The Ferocity, and at Zach Staff. Wherever you post about us, use the hashtag vibecheckpod. Also find us on TikTok because we're cool, young, and fresh. Over there we are at vibecheckpod.

And of course, stay tuned every week for another episode next Wednesday. Till then, be good to yourselves. Bye. Bye.

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