Welcome to I'M THE VILLAIN, a podcast about 2 millennials trying to decode, deconstruct, and dismantle the world as we know it.
The show is a conversational podcast where we talk about all the things that are fucked up about the status quo in America, with the perspective of the villain (Isabel) and hero (Deondre'). We talk about norms we think need to change in society, and talk with other millennials about how to change those norms, including our obsession with work, the culture of quantifying everything we do, social media, the way we treat relationships, and more.
162. The Code Switch Episode: Or Why Deondre' Can't Catch a Break
If you haven't heard of the podcast Code Switch, it is an NPR podcast that talks about race in America, and a person that Deondre' dated texted him to let him know that she called into the show to ask a question about their relationship. Immediately Deondre's interest was piqued, and it turns out that she went onto the show to ask about "race and dating preferences." The episode of that podcast has since come out, so we can tell you exactly what she asked:
"I've been casually seeing a guy for a few months now. For reference, I'm white, he's Black, and we're polyamorous.
I've briefly met his other partners and they are both also white women. This struck me as a little odd since we both live in a major city that is multiracial. I've met some of his friends and that group is diverse.
I'm currently at a point in my life where I want to make sure I am actually living my values, including challenging my whiteness and that comes with that.
I want to ask him about it, but I also don't want to seem like I am questioning his racial identity or trying to minimize his life or choices as a black man. I also don't know his entire dating history, so maybe he just has a type as of late? Any advice on navigating this conversation?"
In this episode, Deondre' talks about how this whole encounter made him feel, and the answer is: not great. We talk about whether or not questions like this get asked of white people as much as they get asked of people of color, as well as the baggage of the still-prevailing assumption that people ought to date within their race: despite the fact that it is 2025, we are still in a society where cross-racial dating is still not considered an unquestionable norm, and a number of commentators have openly wondered whether the Supreme Court might reconsider Loving vs. Virginia, the unanimously-decided 1967 Supreme Court case that struck down the State of Virginia's anti-miscegenation law that prohibited interracial marriages.
Links:
Code Switch Episode Featuring Deondre':
Ask Code Switch: Is it a preference or a fetish? (https://open.spotify.com/episode/3ghldWZfBeXOdMIMMw6guR?si=ba734a588ffc4cf9)
29 Jan 2025
162. The Climbing Episode: The Japanese Have the Crabby Patty Recipe!
If you share our politics you might be a nervous wreck right now, but one thing that both Deondre and Isabel like to do for our physical and mental health is go rock climbing. So we have on a super fascinating guest, David Liu, who works at a popular rock gym chain called Movement. He talks to us about how rock climbing has ballooned massively in popularity, and is now an Olympic sport. But the thing is, when rock climbing was introduced to the Olympics in 2020, they combined a number of different types of rock climbing that are pretty different from each other (bouldering, lead climbing, and speed climbing). We talk through why these different types of climbing require really different skills, and so in 2024, the International Olympic Committee actually did split the rock climbing event into 2 separate events: speed climbing and bouldering and lead. And while this is definitely better, anyone who has done bouldering and lead climbing will tell you that these are still quite different from each other.
We also talk about other aspects of climbing, like the difference between outdoor climbing and indoor climbing (the hardest climb in the world is called The Burden of Dreams in Finland, which is level V17; apparently people have been making 3D-printed replicas of this climb to try to practice on it) and whether or not we should be trying to preserve outdoor climbs as much as possible (sometimes people will try to chip away at outdoor climbs to make it more traversable).
And what makes something satisfying to climb? There are some obvious metrics, like not being too hard or too easy for your particular level, but there are also equally difficult climbs that can still be more or less satisfying to climb than others. In this way, setting a climb is sort of like music in that it is often really difficult to understand or articulate why we like certain climbs and not others, which can feel almost spiritual.
David has clearly thought a lot about the philosophy, mechanics, and power dynamics of rock climbing, and this conversation is a fascinating reflection of that.
Links:
Burden of Dreams Climb: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_Dreams_(climb)#:~:text=Burden%20of%20Dreams%20is%20a,climbing%20film%2C%20The%20Lappnor%20Project (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_Dreams_(climb)#:~:text=Burden%20of%20Dreams%20is%20a,climbing%20film%2C%20The%20Lappnor%20Project).
Climbing at the 2024 Olympics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_climbing_at_the_2024_Summer_Olympics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_climbing_at_the_2024_Summer_Olympics)
David's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/r2dliu/?hl=en (https://www.instagram.com/r2dliu/?hl=en)
25 Dec 2024
161. The Game Master Episode: "It's Just a Game!" ...Or Is It??
This Christmas as some of you go home to your families, we expect one of the things many of you will do is play some games. In this (actually fairly lighthearted) episode (especially compared to the last one), we give you an opportunity to reflect a little bit on what role that play has in your life and in the larger context of society. Do games need to be decolonizing spaces? Or is it actually OK that many of the games we like to play explore violent themes that may be on the wrong side of history from a modern-day social justice perspective? Deondre' and Isabel both really love playing Catan, which is a game that is all but explicitly colonial, as it's a game about taking over an island and extracting all of its resources.
It was a joy to have this conversation with a professional Game Master at Isabel's local board game cafe, Wesley Bogan. When people come into the cafe, called Queen and Rooke, they can ask the Game Masters what games they recommend and receive instruction on how to play them, so Wesley has had a lot of time to think about games. This conversation went deep into the philosophy of play and why we like to do it.
Is it wrong for games to provide a space to explore the darker sides of ourselves, or, on this flip side, is this actually completely necessary for us to have a space to explore things that are taboo or stigmatized outside of the "play" space of a game? One very extreme example of this is the game "Train" which, for the record, Queen and Rooke would never carry, which is a cross between a social experiment and a board game in which (spoiler) the players realize halfway through playing what otherwise looks like an innocuous train game like Ticket to Ride, that they are actually building a train to Auschwitz. Players can choose to keep playing and try to "win" or they can stop playing on moral grounds. It's one of the most often-referenced examples of a game that takes breaking the 4th wall to an uncomfortable extreme.
At the end of the episode, even though we did not know this beforehand, Deondre' comes up with a series of scenarios for Wesley to come up with board game recommendations for, from an awkward couple on a first date, to a rowdy crew of frat bros, which is exactly the training Wesley gives his new gamemasters when they start the job.
Links:
Book referenced in the beginning of the episode, Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/233221.Homo_Ludens (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/233221.Homo_Ludens)
Train game referenced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_(board_game) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_(board_game))
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Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
41 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
5 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 56 / 100
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Quality
79
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
82
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