In this episode of The Popaganda Podcast, survivor activists Shannon Perez-Darby and Tashmica Torok discuss HBO's Emmy-winning medical drama, The Pitt —a series hailed by medical professionals as the most accurate representation of healthcare workers and the challenges they face in a post-pandemic America.

So, if you're coming to The Pitt for some Grey's Anatomy level shenanigans, then as Dana says, "You better give your head a fucking shake."

Each episode of the series follows Emergency Department staff at the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center through a single action packed 12-hour shift. Each character navigates job stressors, personal crises, and ever-changing conditions while trying to provide efficient, budget-constrained, but still somehow life-saving care.

Together, Shannon and Tashmica talk about watching our favorite character, Nurse Dana, deliver the most acceptable SANE examination ever performed on TV and how, just like in real life, cops neglect the carefully collected evidence. The show brings new awareness to the growing violence experienced by nurses and other medical professionals while providing care to the public, and the impacts of ICE raids on community members seeking care.

Your pop culture homework:

• The Pitt
• Still Forgiven: New cases of doctors accused of sex abuse, kept license
• ICE presence rising at Michigan health care facilities, rights groups say

Content note: suicidality, medical trauma, and violence.

Hosts: Tashmica Torok & Shannon Perez-Darby

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Sponsored by: The Accountable Communities Consortium and Aletheia Coaching & Consulting

Transcript available on Apple Podcasts

In this episode, Erin Miles Cloud joins pop culture besties Shannon Perez-Darby and Tashmica Torok for a breakdown of the Law & Order: SVU episode Hubris. Erin is the co-founder of Movement for Family Power and co-editor of How to End Family Policing: From Outrage to Action alongside Shannon, Erica Miners, and Charity Hope Tolliver.

Erin is a civil rights attorney and a former family defense public defender in the Bronx. She has spent her career fighting to end family policing and building toward a world where communities — not the state — care for children. It is with that depth of experience that Erin joins the conversation, guiding us through the ways the Family Policing System fails us all.

But that's not where we end. This conversation ends with a vision for what the future could look like if we truly cared for children the way we say we do.

Pop Culture Homework:

How to End Family Policing: From Outrage to Action, co-edited by Shannon Perez-Darby, Erin Miles Cloud, Erica Miners, and Charity Hope Tolliver

Read: Chapter 12: What About Child Sexual Abuse" by C. Hope Tolliver

A Child Bumps Her Head. What Happens Next Depends on Race. by Jessica Horan-Block

Operation Stop CPS and #JusticeforKamari

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym L. Worthy and the Detroit Rape Kit Project

Hosts: Tashmica Torok & Shannon Perez-Darby

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Sponsored by: The Accountable Communities Consortium and Aletheia Coaching & Consulting

Transcript available on Apple Podcasts

This special episode was made in partnership with the Capital City Film Fest, where Tashmica moderated a live panel with filmmaker Courtney Montour and skater Hawaiian Blaze following a screening of Rising Through the Fray. Courtney then joined Tashmica and Shannon to go even deeper.

Rising Through the Fray follows Indigenous Rising — the first team in roller derby history to compete at the World Cup, representing not one country but over 30 Indigenous Nations. Courtney Montour (Kanien'kehá:ka, Kahnawake) spent years building trust with the team before cameras rolled, and it shows: this is an intimate film about the disconnection caused by colonization, homecoming, and what it means to find your people on wheels.

Listen in to hear more about Sour Cherry's journey through injury and how her identity as a skater (or maybe coach) is being shaped and reshaped by time. We discuss Hawaiian Blaze's art and how it helps make the thousands of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) more visible. We follow Krispy's story of discovery as she explores and connects with her nation through the team and her wider community.

Join us as we celebrate the Borderless team movement that Indigenous Rising sparked — and discuss the challenges ahead as the team continues to rise.

Pop Culture Homework

Rising Through the Fray is screening at the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) — director Courtney Montour will be in attendance at both screenings.

Saturday, May 16 · 8:00 PM — SIFF Cinema Uptown

Sunday, May 17 · 1:30 PM — PACCAR IMAX Theater at Pacific Science Center

Tickets: siff.net/festival/rising-through-the-fray

About Our Guest

Courtney Montour is a Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) documentary filmmaker from Kahnawake, Quebec, with 18 years in the field. Her work centers women's stories, Two-Spirit stories, and the long fractures of colonial disconnection. Rising Through the Fray is her debut feature, produced with Nish Media (an Indigenous production company), and won the Audience Award for Best Documentary at image+nation Film Festival 2025.

If you loved this episode, leave us a 5-star review and share this episode with a skater near you. It really helps!

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Days before Taylor Frankie Paul’s season of The Bachelorette was set to air, TMZ released footage of a violent incident between her and her ex, Dakota, from 2023. ABC pulled the season.

Together, Shannon and Tashmica talk through what the video shows and what it doesn’t, why one moment of volatility can’t tell us who is setting up a pattern of power and control, and who is surviving it. They unpack why the timing of the tape’s release matters. And they call out the very selective outrage of a Reality TV franchise like The Bachelor that has quietly welcomed accused abusers onto its stages season after season.

And here's the thing — we know they can do better, because they already have. In 2017, Bachelor in Paradise intervened immediately and shut down production for two weeks after a misconduct incident on set. Everyone went home. So this isn't about capability. It's about choice.

(Hint: if you want to hear more about what accountability on a reality TV set can look like — and what it costs when it doesn't show up — check out our ANTM episode: Aging Like Hot Ice Cream.)

This episode is about Taylor Frankie Paul. It’s also about every person in your life you’ve watched spiral without intervening. And it’s about what it would look like if we actually cared about getting this right.

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Shannon Perez-Darby and Tashmica Torok dig into Adult Braces, Lindy West's new memoir, Adult Braces. The internet is in a tizzy about her 15-year partnership with Aham Oluo and the process of opening their relationship. We use the word 'process' intentionally. Polyamory is only one expression of how people and the terms of their most intimate relationships can and should transform over time.

Listen in as two pop culture besties discuss what happens when the terms of a relationship changes before everyone involved is ready to stretch that far. The rupture, the repair, and the public opinions of it all.

What does it mean when the person who built the door is also the one controlling who walks through it? Netflix's Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model pulls back the curtain on two decades of harm styled as opportunity—and Shannon and Tashmica are not letting Tyra off the hook.

This docuseries revisits the 2003–2018 run of America's Next Top Model through interviews with Tyra Banks, co-hosts Miss J, J. Manuel, and Nigel Barker, and several former contestants candidly telling their stories.

Tyra's current legacy project is hot ice cream. Which is, technically, incomplete ice cream. Tashmica has notes.

Shandy is a cycle two contestant whose sexual assault—filmed by the crew while she was too intoxicated to consent—was edited and broadcast as a cheating scandal.

Tyra Banks is the creator, executive producer, and subject of this documentary—a woman whose access to power has not translated into accountability, solidarity with Black women, or care for the people she claims to have uplifted.

And the industry is doing what it always does: making the person who was harmed responsible for the story.

What we keep coming back to:

• Shandy's story is an example of how the production team transformed an assault into a scandal—in real time, before she even understood what had happened to her
• The "diversity" Tyra built was a pinprick, not a door—and the show's own alumni confirm their careers were hurt, not helped, by being on it
• What Bachelor in Paradise did differently in 2017 shows exactly what it looks like to prioritize people over timelines—and how rare that actually is

Leaving us with: when someone uses their power to control who else gets in—and whose stories get told—are they opening the door, or are they the lock?

Content note: Sexual violence, anti-Black racism and colorism, disordered eating, dental coercion, stroke and disability discussed.

Pop Culture Homework

Watch: Reality Check: Inside America's Next Top Model (Netflix)

Hosts: Tashmica Torok & Shannon Perez-Darby

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Sponsored by: The Accountable Communities Consortium and Aletheia Coaching & Consulting

Transcript available on Apple Podcasts

In this special short episode of The Popaganda Podcast, hosts Shannon Perez-Darby and Tashmica Torok talk about the BAFTAs moment that hit Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo in real time. The N-word was shouted by John Davidson, whose life inspired a nominated film, and who has Tourette Syndrome with coprolalia—meaning the slur was an involuntary tic, not an intentional act.

Listen in as we talk about why the first take isn’t always the best take, how anti-Blackness and ableism shaped the public reaction, and why the real power here sits with BAFTA/BBC production choices—including what was reportedly edited out, and what was left in.

We refuse to let this moment eclipse the art: “Sinners” deserves celebration. It’s not just an award-winning film. It is an iconic culturally rich film that puts Black talent, historical experience, storytelling, and imagination

Pop Culture Homework

• Watch Sinners, featuring Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo with Black American Sign Language (BASL) Performer Nakia Smith
• Watch I Swear, based on the true life story of John Davidson
• Follow @killk1yoshi on Instagram for more awareness content

Come for the Pop Culture. Stay for the Abolition.

Hosts: Tashmica Torok & Shannon Perez-Darby.

🎧 Stream now, and don’t forget to subscribe and leave a 5-star review—it really helps others find the show.

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Sponsored in part by: The Accountable Communities Consortium and Aletheia Coaching & Consulting

Access: Transcript now available on Apple Podcast