So I was Told

Remember when the internet had a bottom? In this episode Kirbs and Crispy talk Vine, the never-ending “MySpace comeback” rumors, and why nostalgia keeps lying to people who weren’t even there. We get into why Instagram/TikTok aren’t really “social” anymore and how infinite scroll turned every app into an attention casino.

Time for a fun episode! For the first time on So I Was Told, we step into the internet’s courtroom and start reading Reddit’s Am I The Asshole? We get into a birthday party blowup over a nut allergy cake (boundaries vs entitlement), a bride who tries to bench a 98 year old grandma from the reception (ageism), a sister who sells concert tickets for coke money (addiction, resentment), and a gym situation where a woman keeps filming and then flips the script with weaponized therapy language when she’s called out.We also talk consent, accountability, group chat literacy, and why some people will do anything except simply adjust the tripod.

When people who have lived with relative safety (usually white Americans) feel instability for the first time, something strange happens. Fear gets loud, processing becomes public, and conversations that were meant to challenge systems start orbiting around personal discomfort.In this episode, we talk about what happens when fear gets misnamed as danger, how privilege shows up in moments of crisis, and why neutrality isn’t as neutral as it feels. Living in Minneapolis has made these conversations impossible to ignore. But this isn’t just about one city. It’s about who gets to panic, who gets to process out loud, and who has been living with instability all along.We also dig into protest art, collective action, and the difference between feeling something and doing something. Discomfort can be a signal. It can open doors. But only if we’re willing to listen instead of recentering ourselves.Recommended pages on IG to educate yourself:riseabovejusticemovementmnicewatchthegeneralstrikeusocjusticeinitiativepeopleoverpaperspopulistsriseupdear_white_staffers50501movement

American Christianity insists it’s being attacked, but the real crisis is credibility.In this episode I walk directly through Scripture, history, and real-world data to confront an uncomfortable truth: when you take Jesus at his word, the values of modern right-wing ideology repeatedly clash with the teachings at the heart of Christianity.This isn’t a partisan rant, but a sober rebuke. From wealth and poverty to borders, punishment, nationalism, and power, this episode asks a simple question Christians often avoid.Are we actually following Jesus or using him to protect comfort, control, and hierarchy?

In this episode, Eva and Kirbs talk about what daily life looks like right now living in Minneapolis as ICE activity escalates across the city. We cover the constant police presence, helicopters, sirens, bomb threats, and the fear shaping how people move through public space.They share firsthand observations about ICE deployments, mutual aid networks, Signal alerts, door-to-door enforcement, and how residents are protecting one another. We also unpack how misinformation spreads online, how official narratives contradict what people are experiencing on the ground, and why “this could never happen here” is a dangerous assumption.We discuss the emotional toll of living under surveillance, how identity and visibility increase risk, and why community response matters more than ever. The episode closes with information about the January 23 nationwide general strike and what collective refusal looks like in practice.

What do you do when nothing feels like it’s blooming, but nothing feels broken either?In this solo episode, I talk about tending to the garden of the heart. About seasons of stillness and growth that happens beneath the surface. About the pressure to always be producing, healing, or becoming something visibly better and what it looks like to resist that.

What happens when people demand that mental health stay “apolitical”?In this solo episode I unpack a real time online confrontation that exposed something deeper than an argument: the belief that comfort should come before truth, and that some people don’t deserve a political voice at all.Drawing on psychology, lived experience, and what it means to live in a city where violence isn’t abstract, I explore why trauma can’t be separated from systems, why silence is often mistaken for neutrality, and why mental health spaces become dangerous when they don't name harm.This isn’t about being divisive.It’s about being honest.Because healing that refuses to speak when people are being erased isn’t healing. It’s compliance.Sources:World Health Organization (WHO).Mental Health: Strengthening Our Response.American Psychological Association (APA).Stress in America (annual reports).Bonanno, G. A., et al. (2011).“Weighing the Costs of Avoidant Coping.”Psychological Science.Jost, J. T., & Banaji, M. R. (1994).“The Role of Stereotyping in System-Justification and the Production of False Consciousness.”Psychological Review.Bennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2012).The Logic of Connective Action.Information, Communication & Society.Fricker, M. (2007).Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing.Oxford University Press.Decety, J., & Cowell, J. M. (2014).“The Complex Relation Between Morality and Empathy.”Frontiers in Psychology.

What starts as a nostalgic question about middle school lunches, video games, and the usual playground chaos slowly opens into something much bigger: how social rules form, why they stick, and which ones actually keep us safe.In this episode, we bounce from Mario Kart cartridges and yearbook cameras to roughhousing bans, gender expectations, school hierarchies, and the strange way unspoken rules shape who we become. Along the way we unpack why some social constructs exist for protection, why others are purely aesthetic, and why trying to “escape the system” often just recreates a new one with different rules.We talk about masculinity, femininity, power, safety, community, off-grid fantasies, generational fear, teachers who saw potential before we did, and how adults believing in us can alter an entire life trajectory. There’s humor, memory gaps, philosophical detours, and a lot of “wait, why is it like that?”

On this episode we revisit a time when housing was temporary, holidays were shared, and everyone was just trying to figure things out. Through mismatched memories and a lot of hindsight we talk about what it’s like to stay in someone else’s home, how stress messes with time and perception, and why certain moments stick with you more than others

In this episode, we unpack what happens when the holidays stop feeling magical and start feeling heavy. From childhood nostalgia and midnight Christmases to fractured families, financial pressure, and the erosion of tradition. This conversation traces how adulthood, trauma, and economic reality reshape the way we experience the holidays. We talk about why tradition isn’t neutral, how obligation replaces joy, and why so many of us feel indifferent rather than festive. We hope you enjoy listening as much as we got to share our perspectives!

The airstrike on Iran didn’t just hit the news, it detonated across TikTok. We look at the psychology of digital panic, the architecture of algorithmic fear, and the slippery slope from information to indoctrination. Not all viral is vital.

In this solo episode, I talk about shedding the pressure to deliver a polished year end character arc and why real growth rarely waits for a calendar to give permission. I get into the psychology of “temporal landmarks,” why New Year momentum fails most people, and what it means to choose your own turning points instead of performing them for an audience. This is an invitation to let December be a hinge instead of a finish line and to honor the shifts that never made it into a highlight reel. If you have been feeling behind, scattered, unfinished, or simply human this one is for you.Sources:Milkman, K., et al. (2014). The Fresh Start Effect: Behavioral Science Explains Why “Temporal Landmarks” Motivate Change. Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.Norcross, J. C., et al. (2002). Auld Lang Syne: Success Predictors, Change Processes, and Self Report Outcomes of New Year Resolvers and Nonresolvers. Journal of Clinical Psychology.University of Scranton. (2014). Study on New Year’s Resolutions and goal abandonment rates.

We're taking a week break to be with our friends and family, but in the meantime...Kirbs is breaking down the mess and meaning of Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and the retail blackout because nothing exposes our relationship with gratitude and capitalism quite like this week does.We go from “be thankful” to “panic-buy everything” in under 12 hours, and we're pretty over it. What does gratitude look like when life is complicated? How does Black Friday trap us in manufactured urgency and why is choosing not to participate actually a form of protest?We dig into intentional spending, opting out of the noise, and redirecting our support toward actual people and local communities, not corporations built on scarcity and chaos.If you’re tired of feeling guilty for what you buy, guilty for what you don’t buy, or just ready to reclaim some peace this holiday season, then this one’s for you.

What happens when the internet flattens every subculture into an “aesthetic”? And what does it mean to build identity through music when the dance floor is no longer neutral if it ever was?In this episode, we sit down with ZAKU.86, an LA DJ, record collector, city pop obsessive, and former punk kid who somehow became a cultural bridge between Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Chinese, and Southeast Asian sounds. We talk about growing up feeling uncool while everyone else had Mustangs and perfect high school lives, buying turntables with stimulus checks, digging through crates like it’s religion, and accidentally becoming the guy who shifts energy in rooms people don’t expect.We get into the collapse of real subculture, the myth of “apolitical art”, nostalgia as survival, and why city pop isn’t just cute music, but a whole archive of memory, migration, and longing.If you care about music history, identity, third spaces, or what happens when cultural obsession becomes community, this episode is for you.

This week, I’m sitting down with a guest whose life looks nothing like the script most of us were handed.Melanie AyLin (_melanie.aylin) first gen kid, fulltime nomad, community builder, festival worker, and desert sunrise chaser joins me to talk about what it really costs to choose yourself when everyone expects you to play it safe.At 19, she dropped out of college, converted multiple vehicles into homes, and hit the road with nothing but instinct and stubborn courage. Since then she’s lived everywhere and nowhere: national parks, parking lots, Burning Man, Joshua Tree, and more concerts and festivals than most people see in a decade.In this episode, Melanie and I dig into:the immigrant roots that shaped her fireturning loneliness into chosen solitudesustainability and off-grid livinghow rejection becomes redirectionbuilding real community in spaces built to be temporarythe moment she realized she didn’t want to wait to “feel ready” for her own lifeIf you’ve been craving freedom or feeling stuck in your routine, Melanie’s story is going to challenge you in the best way because she’s proof you can build a whole life out of courage and curiosity.

When artist and writer Eva (@birdlets) asked their therapist for help, they ended up locked in a psych ward. In this one-year anniversary episode, we talk about surviving childhood abuse, an eating disorder that nearly killed them, a $130K porn lawsuit pinned on an ex, and the long climb back to self-trust. ⚠️ CW: sexual assault, eating disorders, psychiatric abuse, self-harm.

Why are this year’s costumes mid while horror cafés and niche coffee shops are thriving? We get into men flopping photo poses (sorry, Travis), Eric André winning, Sabrina-core, the Xbox → Sega pipeline, and how third spaces beat corporate beige. The nerds won, the vibes are local, and Halloween doesn’t end on Oct 31 it just moves to your favorite spooky café.

In this solo episode, I break down why we need monsters and why we keep making new ones. Drawing from Frankenstein, queer horror, and modern psychology, “The Myth of the Monster” explores what happens when difference gets mistaken for danger.We talk dehumanization bias, cultural fear, and the instinct to exile whatever reminds us we’re not as healed as we pretend.Sources:Shelley, M. (1818). Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.Allport, G. (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Addison-Wesley.Haslam, N. (2006). “Dehumanization: An Integrative Review.” Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(3), 252–264.Benshoff, H. M. (1997). Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film. Manchester University Press.Farrimond, K. (2020). “Horror as a Safe Space for Queer Identity.” Feminist Media Studies.Cohen, J. J. (1996). “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” In Monster Theory.Tufekci, Z. (2018). Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. Yale University Press.

Eva (@birdlets) is back to talk spooky with us! In this episode, we map the spectrum of October: from pumpkin-patch cozy to slasher-movie chaos. We talk why Jennifer’s Body sits weirdly (and importantly) in the queer canon, and how horror can be cathartic when you feel physically safe, mentally detached, and in control. We trade childhood Halloween stories, Bloody Mary bathroom lore, and a couple UFO tales that had the jets circling (yes, really). It’s anxiety, nostalgia, and autumn aesthetics in one place with a tease for next time: the micro-revival of horror culture in everyday spaces.

Cold fronts, rain-memory, and Horror Nights chainsaws. Salem plans, pumpkin pie beef, Sonic nostalgia, VR ethics and a real talk pit stop on SAD, sleep, and why your October mood isn’t just “in your head.” Press play cause we’re carving deeper.