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

Subscribe and leave a 5-star review — it really helps others find the show. www.popagandapod.com | Merch: https://shopaganda.sellfy.store/

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.

To learn more, visit: www.popagandapod.com

Help keep Popaganda independent—shop our merch! → https://shopaganda.sellfy.store/

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

Access: Transcript now available on Apple Podcast

What if the apocalypse showed up… as excellent customer service?

In this episode of The Popaganda Podcast, survivor activists Shannon Perez-Darby and Tashmica Torok bring pop culture obsession and Transformative Justice-flavored analysis to Pluribus (Apple TV+), Vince Gilligan’s sleek, unsettling sci-fi series starring Rhea Seehorn as novelist Carol Sterka—a woman who becomes the world’s least willing VIP.

The premise: an alien virus transforms most of humanity into a calm, coordinated hive mind with one main hobby—politely assimilating everyone. Carol is one of 13 immune people, which means she gets to process catastrophic loss while an entire city of synced-up humans keeps saying her name like an HR training video: “Hi, Carol.”

(Respectfully: no.)

Carol survives the mass “switch up” that turns most of humanity into a calm, coordinated hive mind—while her personal world collapses, leaving her cycling through a full range of complex human emotions. Somehow, the internet’s hot take is: she’s too mad.

We dig into the show’s central seduction—and its menace: the hive mind is efficient and nonviolent, restoring order so smoothly it’s almost soothing—until you notice what it can cost in privacy, culture, and self-determination. But to Carol’s shock, not everyone experiences “collective” as the ultimate threat.

Then the season drops its most abolition-adjacent, TJ beat: after harm happens, the hive doesn’t retaliate. It doesn’t cage. It doesn’t escalate. The virus sets a boundary that reaches for safety and healing rather than punishment.

Leaving us with an important question: what could our world look like if we built responses to harm that keep people alive and cared for—while actively limiting the conditions that allow more violence to happen?

• Watch: Pluribus (Apple TV+), Season 1
• Pay attention to: the moments when “care” feels soothing… and when it starts to feel like control
• Report back: Are you Team Carol (absolutely not) or Team “okay but the infrastructure is kind of impressive”?

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.

To learn more, visit: www.popagandapod.com

Help keep Popaganda independent—shop our merch! → https://shopaganda.sellfy.store/

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

Access: Transcript now available on Apple Podcast

In this episode of The Popaganda Podcast, survivor activists Shannon Perez-Darby and Tashmica Torok bring intimate storytelling and expert analysis to Virginia Giuffre’s posthumously published memoir, Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice.

Before “release the Epstein files” became the public’s favorite internet punchline, Giuffre was a teenager trying to escape her father’s sexual and physical abuse by running away—only to find herself working for Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. She became one of the most prominent survivors to share detailed accounts of how Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein targeted, groomed, and sexually abused children—then trafficked them through Epstein’s network of rich, powerful global leaders and celebrities, including Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

Tashmica and Shannon wade through the public’s performative shock and unproductive political theater to center one simple, devastating question: Why did we ignore the truth that survivors have been telling us for years?

As more unredacted files are released to the public, the justice promised by the criminal legal system only gets more elusive. The details are horrific, triggering, and retraumatizing for survivors of sexual violence—but don’t worry: this is not your typical true crime wrap-up.

Listen in as two pop culture besties who also happen to be survivors share survivor-to-survivor care and truth-telling, connecting Nobody’s Girl to the systems that enable harm, use children as political leverage, and prop up a criminal legal system that can’t—and won’t—ever live up to the hype.

Read (or listen): Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

Read: “Sex Trafficking Prosecutions Won’t Stop the Next Epstein. Here’s What Will.” (Truthout)

Revisit: our episode on Sound of Freedom + how Christian nationalist anti-trafficking narratives shape public “common sense”

Revisit: our Wayward conversation + the troubled teen industry connections that show up here

Reflect: what would it mean to treat child safety like an emergency at scale—not a scandal, not a spectacle, not a campaign prop?

Subscribe and listen everywhere you get your podcasts. Come for the pop culture. Stay for the abolition.

This episode discusses themes of domestic violence, sexual violence, child sexual abuse, sex trafficking, and suicide. We focus on themes and systems, not graphic details.

If you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, and leave a five-star review—it really does help people find the show. Come for the pop culture. Stay for the abolition.

You can also send us love or suggest show topics by emailing us at: popagandapod@gmail.com.

Sponsored in part by: The Accountable Communities Consortium

Access: Transcript now available on Apple Podcast.

To learn more, visit: www.popagandapod.com

What happens when your comfort shows stop comforting—and your “fun little apps” start feeling like tiny extensions of state power?

In this episode, Shannon Perez-Darby and Tashmica Torok talk about how living under fascism is reshaping our relationship to pop culture, streaming, and the platforms we’ve treated like default companions. From canceling Hulu/Disney after the Jimmy Kimmel controversy (and the bigger question of what a boycott is actually asking for), to rethinking Spotify amid reports of ICE recruitment ads, we share what we’re wrestling with: values vs. convenience, visibility vs. safety, and how to stop “overstaying” in unhealthy relationships.

We also get real about grief (yes, even for a 20-year relationship with Grey’s Anatomy), the algorithmic slide into right-wing propaganda and diet-culture-as-evangelism, and why our nervous systems are demanding different kinds of stories right now—like audiobooks, games, and community-centered ways of staying connected that don’t depend on billionaire-owned platforms.

Are you in your breakup era, too? Then put on your softest sweatpants, order some takeout, and come on over for a lonely hearts club episode of The Popaganda Podcast.

Listen: Dungeon Crawler Carl (audiobook)

Watch: No Other Land and support Masafer Yatta.

Reflect: What platform or subscription are you “overstaying” with—and what would a clean, loving exit look like?

If you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, and leave a five-star review—it really does help people find the show. Come for the pop culture. Stay for the abolition.

Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? In Tashmica’s house, absolutely—and it’s also a masterclass in copaganda.

In this special holiday episode, Shannon and Tashmica rewatch Die Hard the way Tashmica’s family does every year: loud, talk-back style, like a Christmas Rocky Horror—except the call-and-response is all about how the “good cop” story gets built.

We break down how the film makes John McLane (Bruce Willis) irresistible—young, tender, “just a guy trying to get his family back”—while quietly selling us a whole worldview: cops can bend rules, instincts count as evidence, police violence is redemption, and everyone else (dispatch, LAPD, FBI, the “system”) is incompetent until the right cop takes charge.

Along the way, we unpack: why the “terrorists” being white matters, how the Black characters are positioned (from “Black nerd” to “cop who needs his gun back”), why the ham-radio emergency line moment is peak “rules don’t apply to cops,” and how even the Christmas sparkle (hello, “Ho Ho Ho, now I have a machine gun too”) is part of the package.

Welcome to the holiday copaganda workshop you didn’t ask for—but probably need. Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!

Pop Culture Homework:

• Watch: Die Hard (1988)
• Read: The Fence: A Police Cover-up Along Boston’s Racial Divide – the book Tashmica mentions on police culture + the “blue wall” logic*
• Reflect/Discuss: What’s the ‘cop intuition’ moment in your favorite cop show/movie—and what does it train us to excuse?

*Correction corner: Michael Cox, the focus of the book The Fence, was brutally beaten, but he survived the attack and the cover-up that followed.

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. To learn more, visit: www.popagandapod.com

Help keep Popaganda independent—shop our merch! → https://shopaganda.sellfy.store/

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

Access: Transcript now available on Apple Podcast