Black and Snerdy Podcast

Ode (@thatsod.e / @thatsod_e) and Mo “Kid” Licorish (@licorishislegit) welcome Australian stand-up comedian Clay McMath, host of Welcome To The Poddy, to a bonus episode of Black and Snerdy, with Mo calling in from a business trip in Oakland, California. Clay traces his show back to his pro basketball career, when a weekend away for a family funeral turned into a binge of the I Am Rapaport: Stereo Podcast and a plan to buy microphones with a teammate. He explains how Welcome To The Poddy grew from talk about hip-hop, movies and Donald Trump’s first term into a weekly movie and TV review show built on personal stories. He also covers going solo after co-host Dante moved back to the US, his first open mic after retiring from basketball, and a first episode that reached about 450 people.The movie talk centers on Clay’s snack-pairing method. A Kit Kat Chunky gets the call for Bad Boys: Ride or Die, while the hosts lobby for chocolate-covered blueberries in honor of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, which leads into a debate about “ghetto famous” versus “black famous.” Clay recalls sitting through Holmes & Watson with Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly and The Human Centipede 2, explains his half-point rating scale and his love of Jason Statham action movies, and teaches the proper butter-to-Vegemite ratio. The Mental Health Corner, Big Mad and Happy segments cover Clay’s 18-year friendship trip, AI-generated food photos on restaurant menus, subway riders who won’t give up seats for a dad carrying an infant, and Clay’s son trying to save an injured crow.Find Clay McMath on Linktree: https://linktr.ee/welcometothepoddyConnect with the Snerdy Crew:Watch, Listen, or Sponsor the show: ⁠https://beacons.ai/blackandsnerdy⁠⁠

On Episode 205 of Black and Snerdy, Ode (@thatsod.e / @thatsod_e) and Mo “Kid” Licorish (@licorishislegit) recap a Halloween spent as Bowser and Princess Peach, complete with a deep dive into Mario lore, Jack Black’s “Peaches,” Pikachu and Ash Ketchum, and a spirited defense of plumbers. Recording on election night, they talk early midterm results, the last “I Voted” sticker in the building, and a Princess and the Frog reference for the road ahead. Pop Topics opens with Druski’s multi-year Netflix deal, the megachurch pastor series Collect & Praise, and his Saturday Night Live hosting debut. That last story sparks a debate over whether Issa Rae and Quinta Brunson beat him to being the first digital creator to host. They also cover the viral videos of fast-food workers wearing blackface for Halloween before giving Druski the official Black and Snerdy endorsement.The tributes begin with Kool DJ Red Alert, whose farewell to WBLS caps fifty years of DJing and a legacy tied to A Tribe Called Quest, Jungle Brothers, Monie Love and Black Sheep. They honor United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta, who created the rallying cry “Sí se puede.” They also remember Sir Patrick Stewart, from Professor X in X-Men and Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek to Deputy Director Bullock on American Dad, along with his lifelong friendship with Ian McKellen. The Daytime Emmys segment celebrates Tracee Ellis Ross for Solo Traveling with Tracee Ellis Ross, Keke Palmer for Glam Through the Ages, and Tamara Tunie for Beyond the Gates, with a detour through General Hospital, The Young and the Restless and Passions. A mental health check-in, a We Big Mad segment on bullying and YouTube’s redesigned interface, and a Because We’re Happy round featuring JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and WWE’s Trick Williams and Lash Legend close out the night.Connect with the Snerdy Crew:Watch, Listen, or Sponsor the show: ⁠https://beacons.ai/blackandsnerdy⁠⁠

Two sexy Black nerds talking about anything and everything through a Black and nerdy lens.Welcome to The Black and Snerdy Podcast, where snerds of a feather flock together! Ode (@thatsod.e) and Mo AKA Kid Licorish (@licorishislegit) come to you every Tuesday and Friday, straight out of Brooklyn, breaking down anime, movies, TV, video games and whatever the culture is arguing about this week. Expect guest creators, comedians and fellow Blerds, games like Anime or Ani-Nay, What’s Making Us Mad, What’s Making Us Happy, and a mental health check-in every episode.Five years and over two hundred episodes in, and we’re just getting warmed up. Hit Follow so new episodes show up every Tuesday and Friday.Watch full episodes on YouTube and find everything else here: https://beacons.ai/blackandsnerdyInstagram: @blackandsnerdy

Black and Snerdy welcomes actor, playwright, director and music artist Le’Asha Julius for a bonus episode as Ode (@thatsod.e / @thatsod_e) and Mo “Kid” Licorish (@licorishislegit) trace a career that runs from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts and SUNY Purchase to NPR’s Tiny Desk with The LOX. Le’Asha explains how the hip-hop duo Quincy Vidal started with classmate Caleb Eberhardt when DJ equipment proved too expensive, and what opening for Kendrick Lamar and Talib Kweli taught her about respect. The conversation moves to Black Thought’s School of Thought program at Carnegie Hall, where imposter syndrome met one very specific note about articulating a fast verse, and then to the Tiny Desk session with Jadakiss, Sheek Louch and Styles P. Le’Asha also names home as the truest place to recharge between plays, tours and an upcoming trip to Greece, and explains the difference between following the heart and following anxiety.Then comes a punishing round of This or That built on Black music icons: Aaliyah vs. Mýa, Teddy Pendergrass vs. Luther Vandross, Aretha Franklin vs. Patti LaBelle, Stevie Wonder vs. Prince, and Michael Jackson vs. Beyoncé. Along the way, Le’Asha reveals she went to elementary school with Mýa’s little brother, once ran into Aretha, and has performed at Paisley Park, while Ode picks Beyoncé despite a childhood spent double fisting Michael Jackson’s HIStory. In What’s Making Us Mad, Ode addresses the Cornell and LSU sexual assault cases and the victim blaming that followed, and Mo takes aim at unleashed dogs on Flatbush Avenue. The episode closes with Goo Punch from My Brother and Me, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Fridays, and Le’Asha’s plans to finish a new play and album, with more on Instagram at @leeocious.Find Le'Asha on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leeocious/Find her on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheLeeociousConnect with the Snerdy Crew:Watch, Listen, or Sponsor the show: ⁠https://beacons.ai/blackandsnerdy⁠⁠

Ode (@thatsod.e / @thatsod_e) and Mo “Kid” Licorish (@licorishislegit) welcome Percy (she/they), a comics, gaming and literature devotee whose fandom began with Sailor Moon and grew through years of high school fandom blogging. Percy explains how New X-Men made Quentin Quire a favorite mutant, while Mo stands up for Beast and Ode claims Mystique and Storm. The conversation moves through DC’s Speed Force, Mo’s gloriously overbuilt Dungeons & Dragons backstory, Percy’s towering reading backlog, Call of Duty, Cardcaptor Sakura and a Sharon Draper book Percy wants on the big screen. Percy closes the interview with advice for anyone intimidated by decades of comic continuity: ignore the retcons, pick a character, grab a reading guide and just read.In Pop Topics, Black and Snerdy celebrates Debbie Shields, the Bed-Stuy owner of Confessions bar who went joke for joke with Conan O’Brien on SubwayTakes, then weighs the reported news of Jay-Z headlining the Super Bowl halftime show, from Reasonable Doubt turning 30 to Ode’s prediction that Beyoncé drops Act III at the game. Disneyween revisits Hocus Pocus, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Halloweentown, Twitches, Under Wraps, Tower of Terror and Don’t Look Under the Bed, and Percy refuses to let anyone slander Belle. Big Mad covers Percy’s call to vote, the George Washington Bridge killing of Con Edison worker Koran Irvine and the charges against retired NYPD detective Victor Romero, and Mo’s tribute to Looney Tunes voice actor Eric Bauza. The episode ends on Black joy with 3-year-old soccer phenom Nevada and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure going weekly, and Percy can be found at @krakoais4luvrs and @evangelinedovie on X, genosha_is_forlovers on League of Comic Geeks, and @persephoneyyyy on YouTube.Connect with the Snerdy Crew:Watch, Listen, or Sponsor the show: ⁠https://beacons.ai/blackandsnerdy⁠⁠

Ode (@thatsod.e / @thatsod_e) and Mo "Kid" Licorish (@licorishislegit) welcome Kai Grayson to a Black and Snerdy bonus episode, a screenwriter, producer, cosplayer and pro wrestler whose credits include Work It Out Wombats!, The Creature Cases and Genevieve's Playhouse. Kai arrives with blue hair from her Mollymauk Tealeaf cosplay from Critical Role's The Mighty Nein and traces her path from Altadena to Emerson College, London and Tokyo. She credits Over the Garden Wall with turning her from a would-be director of Narnia-style fantasy films into an animation writer. She also describes having her own experiences edited out of scripts and being let go from two shows about Black families.The conversation moves to the ring, where Kai explains how a joke about late friends became Kai Maintenance, a mean janitor who debuted at Dyke Day LA and earned a standing ovation at her first in-ring show. She names Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender, Jade Cargill and Nyla Rose as dream tag team partners and talks about Roles for Initiative LA, her D&D live play improv show. Two games follow: an anime and video game trivia round covering Ouran High School Host Club, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Jujutsu Kaisen, Gurren Lagann, Persona 5 and Baldur's Gate 3, then Emoji Me, Senpai with Gojo, Tanjiro, Nezuko, Link and Sora. The closing segments cover The Legend of Zelda concert tour, New York bureaucracy, subway etiquette, and Halloween cosplay season.Kai Grayson's Linktree: linktr.ee/kaigraysonConnect with the Snerdy Crew:Watch, Listen, or Sponsor the show: ⁠https://beacons.ai/blackandsnerdy⁠⁠

Ode (@thatsod.e / @thatsod_e) and Mo “Kid” Licorish (@licorishislegit) open Episode 203 of Black and Snerdy with a weekend recap featuring Blerd by Nature, then break down Megan Thee Stallion’s debut at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. Mo crowns her “Megan the Pegasus” for wearing the brand’s signature wings, while Ode points to Meg’s resurfaced 2011 tweet about one day walking that runway. Ode also praises the dancers and the thicker bodies on a stage long criticized for its lack of body diversity, recalling how Tyra Banks was once called fat over five pounds. The segment wraps with Meg’s upcoming album and her beef with GloRilla.The heart of the episode is a Watch Out Now double feature of two horror hits from YouTube creators. They review A24’s Backrooms from Kane Parsons, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, covering its 4chan roots, 30,000 square feet of practical sets and $81 million opening, and comparing its found footage to The Blair Witch Project and The Shining. Then they take on Curry Barker’s Obsession, the first original film of the 2020s to pass $500 million, digging into the nice-guy deconstruction, the One Wish Willow, Jordan Peele’s influence and Inde Navarrette’s performance. The episode closes with Ode on the Haitian Revolution and the protests in France, and a happy recap of a visit to Kodansha House.Connect with the Snerdy Crew:Watch, Listen, or Sponsor the show: ⁠https://beacons.ai/blackandsnerdy⁠⁠

Ode (@thatsod.e / @thatsod_e) and Mo "Kid" Licorish (@licorishislegit) welcome D. Frie, founder of the SOLC Network and host of The Lando Cal Experience, to a Black and Snerdy bonus episode. D. Frie starts at the beginning: a February 1981 birth in Chicago delayed by the bad brakes on his father's Gremlin, then a St. Louis childhood on rollerblades in the Mighty Ducks era, with Nas's "Project Windows" as the soundtrack and neighborhood guys asking about Green Lantern back issues. The three trade notes on JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, One Piece in both its anime and live-action forms, and the night each of them gave up on the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender movie. He also explains his show's name, crediting Lando Calrissian as the first Black man to survive in space after Yaphet Kotto in Alien, and shares the story that Billy Dee Williams was once positioned to replace Harrison Ford's Han Solo.From there, D. Frie breaks down the SOLC Network, named for Straight Outta Locash from CB4, and its twelve shows, including I Only Listen to 90s Music, Womanology, Everyone Needs an Aquarius with its Surviving Diddy series, and Hip-Hop What Ifs, which has tackled Canibus and LL Cool J, Lauryn Hill, Eminem and Dr. Dre, and Tupac and Death Row. He gets candid about editing, YouTube analytics, and why consistency beats polish. Ode then hosts a Star Wars edition of Emoji Me, Senpai, where Mo and D. Frie race to name Chewbacca, Palpatine, Jar Jar Binks, Jabba the Hutt, Mace Windu and more from three emojis each. The hour closes with a mental health check-in, gripes about YouTube monetization and MTA subway etiquette, and praise for A Different World, Mahershala Ali's new film, and JoJo's Steel Ball Run.Find the Solc Networks Linktree: https://linktr.ee/SolcnetworkD. Frie's Instagram: instagram.com/diggameisuConnect with the Snerdy Crew:Watch, Listen, or Sponsor the show: ⁠https://beacons.ai/blackandsnerdy⁠⁠

Howard alum Keith Benn, host of the Build Different podcast on the Watts Productions Network, returns to Black and Snerdy for the first time since episode 50 to sit down with Ode (@thatsod.e / @thatsod_e) and Mo “Kid” Licorish (@licorishislegit). Keith explains how a producer’s pitch for a politics podcast became Build Different, a show about perspective, Black love and late-night rabbit holes about life. The conversation moves from Black boy joy and the case for men to frolic more, to his uncle’s argument that Good Times was more realistic than The Cosby Show, to Howard University’s range of backgrounds and the professor who asked a full class who had been called “not Black enough.” Ode adds her childhood love of Avril Lavigne, Billie Holiday and Harry Potter, along with a pointed word about J.K. Rowling.Pop Topics opens with the sentencing of Duane “Keffe D” Davis to 40 years to life for orchestrating Tupac Shakur’s 1996 killing, after his book and Vlad TV interviews, with Keith drawing a comparison to O.J. Simpson. The hosts honor RJ Mitte of Breaking Bad and an Atlanta teacher who died on the Goliath at Six Flags Over Georgia, then celebrate Druski hosting Saturday Night Live. Ryan Coogler’s X-Files reboot with Danielle Deadwyler and Himesh Patel gets a full breakdown, from Coogler’s mother’s love of the original to hopes for David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson cameos. The episode closes with the federal raid on Representative Ilhan Omar’s home, Howard Homecoming, Jools Lebron’s new teeth, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and John Boyega’s growing family.Find Keith Benn on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keithingtonbFind the Built Different Podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/@BuiltDifferentKBConnect with the Snerdy Crew:Watch, Listen, or Sponsor the show: ⁠https://beacons.ai/blackandsnerdy⁠⁠

Ode (@thatsod.e / @thatsod_e) and Mo "Kid" Licorish (@licorishislegit) welcome S. Carlos Carbon, co-host of The Blerd Effect podcast and founder of Harlem Cinematic Universe, to this Black and Snerdy bonus episode. Carlos traces his fandom from West Baltimore, where Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series and Kevin Conroy's Batman were his way into DC Comics, to a Harlem cafe where a barista's latte art led him to Demon Slayer. He lays out why The Blerd Effect treats One Piece, Attack on Titan and Code Geass as political texts, and why Black nerds need institutions of their own. That conversation runs through Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, Octavia Butler, W.E.B. Du Bois and Afrofuturism. Mo counters with his case for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and Hirohiko Araki, while Carlos argues that Demon Slayer moved anime forward and compares the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack to Waiting to Exhale.The interview closes with My Hero Academia, the Deku and Bakugo scene that made Carlos cry, and a Golden Girls versus Living Single breakdown he uses to coach new podcasters. Then comes an anime edition of Emoji Me, Senpai, with clues for Tanjiro, All Might, Light Yagami from Death Note, Eren Jaeger and Mikasa from Attack on Titan, Guts and Griffith from Berserk, Anya from Spy x Family, Speed Racer and Roronoa Zoro. The mental health check-in covers therapy, anxiety medication and managing bipolar II. We Big Mad takes on a Hasan Piker interview with Symone Sanders, split streaming rights for Spy x Family on Netflix, and AI deepfake channels that manufacture Black trauma stories. The closing segment turns to Big Brother on CBS, Black women's friendship, and the weekly return of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run.Check Out S Carlos Carbon's Linktree: https://linktr.ee/s.carloscarbonConnect with the Snerdy Crew:Watch, Listen, or Sponsor the show: ⁠https://beacons.ai/blackandsnerdy⁠⁠