How often does this podcast release new episodes?

This podcast updates bi-weekly.

Where can I listen to this podcast?

This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.

Does this podcast accept guests?

No, this podcast does not typically feature guests.

Layers of Now

Claim This Podcast

by key

11 episodes

Updated Bi-weekly

Accepts GuestsHas Sponsors

Podcast Authority

Beta

PoorBased on show quality, social media presence, reviews, charts, and more

Quality13

Social0

YouTube0

Engagement0

Learn more

Podcast Overview

Layers of Now is my audio journal that dives into the messy nature of our world <a href="https://keyanajmiller.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">keyanajmiller.substack.com</a>

Language

🇺🇲

Publishing Since

11/8/2024

View on Apple Podcasts RSS Feed

🇺🇸 Charts #3

Outreach generated

Apple 142

Spotify 827

Instant mention tracking

Perfect fit!

Unlock The Full Podcast Authority Score Report

See how your podcast performs across key metrics

Podcast Authority

Beta

PoorBased on show quality, social media presence, reviews, charts, and more

Quality13

Social0

YouTube0

Engagement0

Learn more

Excellent Areas

Good Performance

Growth Opportunities

excellent

Episode Length

3 minutes

Performing excellently!

good

Show Notes Quality

3.0/5

Recommendations available

Unlock the full report to see detailed tips

needs improvement

Publishing Consistency

Every 22 days

Recommendations available

Unlock the full report to see detailed tips

+16 More Metrics

Unlock comprehensive insights including:

• YouTube presence analysis
• Social media reach metrics
• RSS compliance scoring
• Podcast 2.0 features
• Technical standards

What's Included in Your Full Report

Detailed Analytics

Complete breakdown of all 19 authority metrics
Personalized recommendations for each metric
Industry benchmarks and comparisons
Technical RSS feed analysis and compliance scoring

Growth Strategies

Step-by-step action plans for improvement
Quick wins to boost your score immediately
Pro tips from successful podcasters

Get your free podcast insights report

See how your show performs across every key metric

Instant delivery

No spam

Attract Better Guests

High authority scores make your podcast more attractive to industry leaders and influencers who want to appear on credible shows.

Secure Sponsorships

Sponsors look for podcasts with proven authority and engagement. Your score demonstrates your podcast's value to potential partners.

Grow Your Audience

Understanding your strengths and weaknesses helps you make data-driven decisions to expand your listener base effectively.

2 verified contact emails on file for Layers of Now

Pitch yourself as a guest, propose sponsorships, or reach out directly to the host.

See contact details

Recent Episodes

March 10, 2026

everything is trash

I am not your financial advisor. I am your financial bully.I hope to persuade you to discard, delete, cancel, and ignore the junk corporate oligarchs are trying to sell you. I hope to fear-monger a little. I hope you feel a bit shamed.Mostly, I pray I convince you.This is propaganda for a life-long strike from corporations that want your money for cheaply made items from god-knows-where and drop-shipped straight to your front door.You do not need those things. Your children don’t, your parents don’t, your pets don’t. The problem is that we keep participating in a system that only works if we keep buying. But everything falls apart when you stop participating, because no one can play a game by themselves.So stop playing! Because you are LOSING!01. the trash in questionEverything.The endless stream of products, subscriptions, upgrades, and services exist to keep your thumb on the “Checkout” button. Online shopping, fast fashion, food delivery, etc. — all touted as necessary parts of a good life.But most of this s**t is not necessary, it is just convenient. Convenience has become the most profitable product ever sold. In a couple of clicks you can have virtually anything shipped to your front door within days, even hours. The friction of acquiring goods has disappeared. And with it, the question of whether or not we needed those goods in the first place.02. refusalThe first step is to stop spending.No subscriptions.No food delivery.No unnecessary tech or car upgrades.No impulse shopping. No more Amazon, no more TikTok Shop, Temu, Shein, or Zara.Cut up your debit card and order a new one so online stores no longer have your payment information saved. Purchasing shouldn’t be this simple— friction is your friend. If you have to buy something online, make sure you at least have to find your debit card and manually enter the information, so there’s enough friction to discourage repeating the process.03. the mindful practice of moneyNow you need to know exactly how much money you have.Budget everything. You should know precisely how much money you have at all times. No approximately. Exactly.My biggest tip: use cash whenever you can. Cash forces awareness. When the money leaves your hands, it is gone. There is no swipe, no delayed realization, no vague sense that you spent too much. Digital clutter matters, too. It hides the signals that help you control your spending and amplifies the ones that encourage you to spend more. Most digital clutter is advertising, and it distracts us from important financial messages. When those signals are harder to see, it becomes harder to track where your money is going.If you actually use your personal email, clear it out. The only emails you should be receiving are from your doctor, the bank, and your job.Declutter your digital space. Declutter your physical space. The fewer messages trying to sell you something, the easier it becomes to ignore them. 04. change! NOWThere are two things you must prioritize this year, and for the rest of your life.* Become radically anti-consumerist.* Acquire life skills that offset consumer pitfalls.That means learning how to mend things instead of replacing them. Fix the belt loops on your pants. Learn how to replace the A/C blower motor behind your glove box that’s making that weird clicking noise.You should know how to repair small problems before they turn into large purchases, and you should know how to maintain the things you already own. No more buying s**t!05. e.g.I have spent an incredible amount of money on my hair.From birth to adulthood, my hair has been the single highest price tag in my life. Oils, serums, mousses, new styles, new products, wigs, weaves, you name it— over and over again.One day I realized that I was giving money to companies and businesses with histories I did not know, and with products whose origins are as unknown to me as the bottom of the ocean. All of this spending.Two years ago I loc’d my hair.Since then I’ve been using up the products I bought years ago. I still haven’t reached the end, and I’ve given many away.And I know I made the right decision because I’m still the hottest b***h in the room.06. what we’ve lostWe’ve stopped asking our neighbor for sugar.In our race for the best and most valued products and services, we have lost the need for mutual obligation within our local communities. Instead of relying on neighbors, friends, or family, we now try to own everything ourselves. We want every tool, every service, every product available at the push of a button so that we never have to rely on another human being ever again.When we stopped relying on each other, we started outsourcing our money to third-party sellers who send us soulless products from warehouses full of underpaid workers.Economic frameworks are also social frameworks. Our relationships, power dynamics, and long-term obligations are shaped by how we exchange goods and services, regardless of how the exchange happens.07. conclusionA major reason the economy stays afloat is consumer purchasing. When people stop purchasing, things change. Entire industries depend on the assumption that we will continue buying things we do not need. The system depends on participation.And the moment participation stops, the system becomes unstable.There must be a change in the way we acquire goods. We must start bartering, mending, and making things again. Immediately. No one in the world is more important than the next. We are the currency. Move accordingly. Get full access to common dilemmas at <a href="https://keyanajmiller.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4">keyanajmiller.substack.com/subscribe</a>

November 27, 2025

for the sake of matrilineage

My only sister is the baby of the family. And in a hospital in Nashville, I heard her middle name for the first time— Ashanté.I’m unsure if she knows, but she shares her namesake with the Ghanian Ashanti people, a matrilineal society in West Africa that centers its women in inheritance and familial leadership. The Ashanti culture specifies tradition, family identity (like surnames), property, and power pass through the mother. In this cultural structure, the grandmothers are paramount and some of the most important people in the family. And as a Black woman from the south, I also see my grandmothers as pillars of the family itself. We are first children, then too quickly adults. But we always find ourselves back at our grandmama’s doorstep, waiting to hear her voice. There are some traditions the mind just knows.01. our grandmothers & an imbalance of DNAMy grandmothers raised children, grandchildren, and children that aren’t even related to them by blood. They have cooked, cleaned, wiped s**t off babies, cooked and cleaned again. When I think of my family, I think of my grandmothers. Though we live in a patriarchal society that primarily focuses around the father and his kin, I have only ever lived near my mother’s people. Perhaps that was because there was more help in Tennessee with my parent’s three young children, but it could also be because many Black people inherently align to the matrilineage of the mother, the grandmother.Today is November 26, 2025. Thanksgiving is tomorrow. I will be driving to my mama’s mama’s house to cook and clean and maybe wipe s**t off babies. It is simply what is done, and what we always do.As a daughter, I’ve inherited so much from my mother. Her face, for one. Her smile. Her poor eyesight. I inherited her zodiac sign. We share a love for information. I believe my love for reading came from her, too. I would also say my addictive personality was inherited from her, as well.She is also the eldest daughter, and it shows in how we both refuse to be wrong. There is no other way than our own, no other path need be taken. Even when we know we are wrong, there is rightness in our acknowledgment.The connection a (good) mother has with her daughter is something that can only be written about in poetry, or seen in art. Notice I say “good.” That is an important qualifier.subscribe if u like what u seeResearch states that we are all more related to our mothers than our fathers. Our mitochondrial DNA is passed down only from our mothers. This means that we all could, in theory, trace our mitochondrial DNA from our mothers to our grandmother and great-grandmother and so on, until we reach our first maternal ancestor. There’s no real way to follow this line for our fathers— and maybe that’s why men wish to tack their name over ours, to forever stake patriarchal claim to a woman’s biological heritage.That’s a bit presumptuous. But I didn’t stutter.The X chromosome from the mother also carries more DNA than the Y chromosome from the father, which means that even men are more closely relate to their mothers than their fathers. Even without any scientific explanation, this makes sense.Women raise children. Women bring life. Women have always, always created and carried and cared for.No angel stretched protecting wingsabove the heads of her children,fluttering and urging the winds of reasoninto the confusions of their lives.They sprouted like young weeds,but she could not shield their growthfrom the grinding blades of ignorance, norshape them into symbolic topiaries.She sent them away,underground, overland, in coaches andshoeless.When you learn, teach.When you get, give.As for me,I shall not be moved.—Maya Angelou, “Our Grandmothers”02. matrilineal themes in books, in lifeI’ve read two (very different) books this year that explicitly relate back to a Black woman’s matrilineage— and what our mothers’ ancestors give us. In both of these stories, though varied and not even slightly similar, I found that within all our mothers’ familial lines, there is trauma, as there is always trauma stored within the bodies of Black women. And this affliction is stamped onto our genealogy like livestock branding.Share with me your maladies, and I can tell you of your mother’s past. As an example, autoimmune diseases are disproportionately found more in women than men, and Black women comprise an even higher percentage of that rate as we are more likely to develop Lupus and Multiple Sclerosis than other race. So-and-so’s mama had this affliction, and her mother before her. Years of ailments passed on from mother to child, mother to child.Again, I say— share with me your suffering, and I might tell you where it started.In Tracy Deonn’s fantasy series The Legendborn Cycle, we follow a North Carolinian young girl named Bree that inherited novel powers from an ancestral grandmother named Vera. Bree’s story is told through a distinct YA fantasy lens, filled with romance and the hero’s journey, but her connection with her mother’s ancestry is a constant and unwavering undercurrent throughout the series. This lineage carries a real presence of power, but as she succumbs to its might, she falls deeper into the curse that binds every woman on her mother’s side. It’s a tragic and complex tale of birthright and magic told through a retelling of King Arthur’s knights at the round table.Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’ epic novel The Love Songs of W.E.B. Dubois is a tale of matrilineal ancestry from the first chapter. The protagonist Ailey finds herself at first detached, then mystified, and ultimately curious to the point of study about` her mother’s Georgian family line. In her research, and through the passage of time within the book, we follow her journey of understanding why her family is, as the reader observes the how. Often, I found myself deeply saddened by the woes of heritage throughout the book. It is a heavy read. I loved it.“We are the earth, the land. The tongue that speaks and trips on the names of the dead as it dares to tell these stories of a woman’s line. Her people and her dirt, her trees,”― Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois03. where our before-mothers goI do not know.I think sometimes they get lost in creating a new life for themselves with their new families. Our mothers became mothers and many stop being who they were before motherhood, though maybe that’s intentional. They lose their names, or their mother’s names. They are sometimes found with a new name entirely, or perhaps it’s hyphenated. Either way, our before-mothers are mostly lost to us.I know I hear my before-mother in my voice, and the way I talk. She exists in every blurry photo I take of myself. She’s in my hair. Her mother’s mother is still etched in my memory, a tiny woman that always had her gums lined with snuff. Always smelled faintly of tobacco. When I was younger, we lived with my great-grandma for a couple years. It was a household of three distinct generations of women— me and my sister, my mama, and our mama’s grandmama. Most days, my grandma would come over and we would fulfill a partial line of Bullock women, the matrilineal surname that goes back to my great-great-great grandmother’s mother born in or around the year 1834.We haven’t been able to confidently trace our familial heritage before then. There simply wasn’t any consistent documentation of slaves in West Tennessee and Virginia. Though the women in my family are making a valiant effort, it’s difficult. Not to mention, all our ancestors are hidden behind paywalls and geo-mapped proverbial tape… I digress.I sometimes envy those that can trace their ancestry back to a crest, or a name, or a time in history. I can only confidently name my great-great-grandmother’s mother, then vaguely gesture towards census data that spells her mother’s name differently on every document.It is no small task, to research your Black foremothers. To find documentation they existed and laughed and fought and cried and loved and cursed and watched their children grow up.But I know they did all these things, because I am here. And I’m every woman, ain’t I?04. a conclusionThough you may try to pry off your mother’s mother’s mother’s ironclad grip on your marrow, it will be in vain. She, an eternity of She’s, will be with you always. They will follow you to the birth of your own children, through heartache, through love, through pain.You inherited guardians, as well. Women that will forever be found in your DNA, down to the microscopic levels of you.05. poem called SacramentIt’s about the deity our mothers worship.Man made God, a man-made godOnce revered, never removedSpiritual, and yet so corporealSabotaged by HubrisToo large to carry on the back of man aloneSo He created GodTo share the weightHedonistically affixed to His likenessStaring back at HimselfTo a God that HissesGood boy, take HeedTake a wife, take a loverTake the landTake the world!—KJM Get full access to common dilemmas at <a href="https://keyanajmiller.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4">keyanajmiller.substack.com/subscribe</a>

November 13, 2025

the dilemma of digital disconnection

I am so, so tired of pretending like the internet is good for me!It is not helping me— I am falling apart after every scroll. I find myself searching for two or three specific people and either logging off due to inactivity or obsessing over what they’ve posted since I last checked. I post on social media sites like TikTok because I know there are certain people that will watch my videos. I also hope to be plucked from the anonymity of TikTok’s algorithm and one day be granted access to virality in such a way that I never have to work a day in my life every again, ignoring the thought that this could possibly affect every single personal relationship in my life for the worse. I’ll check three stories on Instagram, scroll through posts by people I do not know or do not like. I look at a DM from a friend, let the meme go without responding. Because none of it matters.I want things I don’t need, feel emotions I don’t have, and take stock of strangers’ lives in ways I was never meant to, all because of my personal relationship to social media. I turn twenty-nine next year, and I am finally ready to rid myself of the baggage that has plagued me my entire childhood and adult life— my excessive use of the algorithmic internet.I was raised in the age of Myspace, Tumblr, Oovoo, Skype, Facebook, Instagram, Vine, Twitter, etc. All of these social media sites likely still have my personal data, and are likely still selling it to ad companies to profit on my childhood fears and aspirations. I did not learn how to become myself— I was molded into who I am today by the images and words on my screens.01. the prosSocial media is entertaining— point blank. The interconnection between social media and pop culture was a catalyst for some of my favorite hyperfixations of my childhood. And when social media became the sole force for artists and performers to interact and reach their fanbase, it was kismet. Like the singularity, the universe exploded and grew exponentially.In the early age of social media, artists no longer had to cultivate their audience. The fans created space themselves— through stan and update accounts— and this use of socials pushed us into a new era of pop culture experiences. We knew everything about everyone. Oftentimes, too much. This was my niche on the internet, and I gained some amazing friends from the experience. But I did not need to know that much about anyone, much less artists that live half the world over. I believe we can see the residual effects of this constant surveillance of celebrities today, and I’m ashamed I had even a small part in it.Social media is also a space where education and information can be widely distributed without paywalls or bureaucratic tape. Depending on the source, the information is actually incredibly useful and worth the time to learn and digest. Unfortunately, we normally just passively learn this information without taking the time to let our brain process. We simply scroll on.As an activist, and proclaimed socialist, I believe that civic engagement and community building are two of the most important things we can develop as a just and more empathetic society. Social media assists in the gathering, tracking, and marketing of events, vital information, and volunteer opportunities for our communities. Really, one of the last ways to share important civic information is through social media. This is a pro that I have a hard time losing, but I will find ways to overcome the deficit. Civic engagement and community outreach has existed long before the algorithm, and will exists long after.Finally, social media stimulates and facilitations connections— with family, friends, future partners, future friends. We can keep up with people with so much ease now that we might not feel the need to contact anyone directly through their phone number or even by letter. However, I think this type of passive connectivity is a reason why we are not more connected with our direct communities. When thinking about the sphere of influence, the closest sphere to the self is control. We cannot control what we see from our friends and families on social media, we cannot control the information they give us. However, we can control how we interact with the narratives they create. We can reach out ourselves and form our own 1:1 narratives without the third-party social media app showing us what it wants to show us.I no longer want to build my world around what the internet thinks I want to see— I want to build a space where I can share, learn, and find information that I desire and aspire to connect to and with.02. the consI was on Tumblr with #thinspo and #proana was thriving. And as a 12 year old Black girl raised in the US, some of it worked on me. I didn’t have many other cultural references in 2011. I wanted to look like the girls and women that were being reposted on my feed because popularity is its own form of currency. And please don’t prescribe to the idea that Eurocentric norms are only upheld by white people. Learn nuance. I only reposted the skinny Black girls, because that was the content that spoke to me. This is just one example of the ways in which the internet disturbed my childhood, just one detrimental experience after another in the age of social media. Parents couldn’t keep up with the pace the social media usage of their children, and it showed.As a teenager raised by social media, I became less and less happy with the world I was living in. I yearned for the reality I was creating for myself online. In hindsight, I believe this led to a panic disorder that did not loosen its grip on my nervous system until I turned twenty and my hormones started regulated themselves. I am still working through the effects to this day.My excessive use of social media apps has created a gap between what I do in a day and what I see in a day. What I do might be benign— wake up, work at my job, take a s**t, go for a run. But what I see in a day tells a different story. Within a six-minute timeframe, I can scroll from breaking news in a country I will never visit, to news about a stray dog three states over, to a story time of a woman manipulated by her abusive therapist— only to find out that the woman was using generative AI to dictate how she was behaving towards said therapist. None of these stories have anything in common other than that my algorithms believed I would be interested enough in all three to keep scrolling. And it is almost always right.My avoidant attachment style also craves the anonymity of the social media, and that is another reason why I must cut a couple major cords. Avoidants really like learning and gathering intel about a person from afar, and social media is the perfect cyberspace for a girl like me to obsess and crush over someone without actually having to get to know them. I can simply create my own version of them in my head based on the limited information they’ve posted on the internet. And anyone can do the same for me, instead of actually speaking to me and getting to know my quirks in real time. Para-social relationships are ruining our world, and we don’t realize it because we assume these “connections” to be real.Truth be told, I’ve sometimes used dating apps as their own form of social media. I am sharing my best photos, with my wittiest commentary, in order to (hopefully) match with a decent human being that I may or may not meet in person. That gamble has led me to being generally detached in dating in the past, and often I find myself swiping on people just because they’re there, and not because I want to get to know them. I cannot say that this happens every time, because I’ve met some really special people through dating apps, but those are true outliers.The nuance of dating through social media has perverted the ways in which we find love, share love, and love ourselves and others. If I want to continue to find and cultivate connection with others, romantic or otherwise, I will first need to dissect the relationship with my For You page.The disinformation and rampant use of AI on social media is just the nail in the coffin. I hate AI, I hate the idea that society has decided to stop working on its media and reading literacy and we have succumbed to the reality that is fake news and AI videos of Tupac working at Arby’s. The type of brainrot, stupid b******t is going to ruin us in five year’s time (if it hasn’t already.)Ultimately, the cons outweigh the pros. I will not continue using heavy algorithmic apps like TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook simply because that is where I can find people I know. If I need to know what my loved ones are doing, I will interact with them directly. And if I want to meet strangers, I will find them some other way.03. conclusionI lied at the beginning of this essay.I am not completely deleting myself from the internet, but I am taking myself out of the algorithmic spaces that have distorted my “why” for living, simply because social media was there and I needed distraction. I will still use apps that will connect me with friends and family, but they will be niche and likely not popular places to visit. That is fine— I realized that I do not want every person I’ve ever come into contact with to have access to me.Instead, I will be updating all the contacts in my phone with birthdays, emails, and home addresses. People move and I haven’t sent snail mail to some of my friends in years. I want to know what my friends’ writing looks like, and I want to see what they thought would be the most interesting things to share with me in a letter. I want to be intentional with the information I share, and I want my friends to do the same.I also want my time back. Countless hours have been spent scrolling, staring, sharing. I do not know why or for whom. I yearn for a boredom that can only come from spending lots of time with people without our devices, and talking about nonsense until we thread a beautiful conversation together that generative AI wishes it could duplicate. I want to find myself staring out a window on the bus, thinking of nothing in particular, rather than scrolling to a video that has been curated for me specifically to watch in order to watch the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and so on.I also want to read more books. I am a reader, a researcher, and a life-long learner. I need more time to focus on personal development and recreational activities that don’t involve wireless internet or a data plan.Note: In writing this, I find myself wanting to delete every other word.It feels very self-important and even callus to write about how social media is “too much” for me. I’m aware of the incredible and nearly impossible feats people have experienced to simply inform the masses. This is good and invaluable work that can only be created through sharing content through algorithmic means.I am also not saying that I will fall off the face of the earth and become a hermit, never to connect with major social and political events again. I fully believe in community organizing, activism, and mass mobilization for the common good. I just cannot waste any more of my time fighting against an machine that wants me to stay confined to a niche digital corner of my own making, screaming into an echo chamber that spits the same rhetoric back at me. Or worse, a hate machine that learns what I detest the most in humankind and dangles that rage bait content to me like a worm on a hook. I will bite no more.The best place to find common ground with your fellow woman is in real life, with real people that you see every day. With irl humans in your community that value you and check on you, that want to know how your day went, your desires, your dreams.04. where to find meI will obviously be on Substack, as it has become my favorite place to share my thoughts via long-form writing.Check out my Linktree below for all the places you can find me on The Internet, updated when I want and if I so please.I’m unsure if there’s anyone that actually cares enough to check up on me and see what I’m writing/reading/doing, but I will share the links regardless, in the hope that some do. Get full access to common dilemmas at <a href="https://keyanajmiller.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4">keyanajmiller.substack.com/subscribe</a>

11 total episodes available

Deep-dive analytics for Layers of Now

Frequently asked questions

Have a different question and can't find the answer you're looking for? Reach out to our support team by sending us an email and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.

What is Layers of Now?: Layers of Now is my audio journal that dives into the messy nature of our world <a href="https://keyanajmiller.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">keyanajmiller.substack.com</a>
How often does this podcast release new episodes?: This podcast updates bi-weekly.
Where can I listen to this podcast?: This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
Does this podcast accept guests?: No, this podcast does not typically feature guests.

Legal Disclaimer

Pod Engine is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially connected with any of the podcasts displayed on this platform. We operate independently as a podcast discovery and analytics service.

All podcast artwork, thumbnails, and content displayed on this page are the property of their respective owners and are protected by applicable copyright laws. This includes, but is not limited to, podcast cover art, episode artwork, show descriptions, episode titles, transcripts, audio snippets, and any other content originating from the podcast creators or their licensors.

We display this content under fair use principles and/or implied license for the purpose of podcast discovery, information, and commentary. We make no claim of ownership over any podcast content, artwork, or related materials shown on this platform. All trademarks, service marks, and trade names are the property of their respective owners.

While we strive to ensure all content usage is properly authorized, if you are a rights holder and believe your content is being used inappropriately or without proper authorization, please contact us immediately at hey@podengine.ai for prompt review and appropriate action, which may include content removal or proper attribution.

By accessing and using this platform, you acknowledge and agree to respect all applicable copyright laws and intellectual property rights of content owners. Any unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or commercial use of the content displayed on this platform is strictly prohibited.