It was just after her first birthday that the parents of Journee Perry noticed that she was not verbalizing as expected for a one-year-old. Her father, Ira Perry, comes to The Offshoot Podcast to tell what it was like learning that his youngest child of nine was on the spectrum for autism. There was a lot of waiting for professional assistance and a lack of resources, so instead of passing the time waiting for appointments, he turned to artificial intelligence. Perry is utilizing his entrepreneu...
Jun 15, 2025•42 min•Season 3Ep. 13
From Angela Harper, daughter of Archie Harper Archie Harper is 91 and still hitting the gym three times a week. That tells you something about his approach to life. Growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, he made a decision at 18 that would shape everything: he joined the U.S. Air Force. What followed was three decades in uniform, with deployments that took him across the globe - including service during the Vietnam War. After military retirement, his service continued: first as a procurement speci...
Jun 01, 2025•1 hr 15 min
Emmy nominated and executive producer of movies and television shows like "A Match Made In Heaven," "Call Me Zaddy," "False Advertisement," and "Sorry About That," Lena Jenkins-Smith doesn't give a lot of interviews. She is more comfortable being behind the camera, managing a team of creatives, to produce non-traditional content - films different from typical Hollywood stories. She has been in the game for more than 20 years, having got her big break working for renowned comedian Katt Williams, ...
May 22, 2025•41 min•Season 3Ep. 11
Dating isn't what it used to be - at least not prior to the advent of social media and reality TV dating shows. It seems that in today's world of dating, there is an over emphasis on romance, which is not always a bad thing, when it is genuine, but it is certainly not a good thing when it is expected to be what is seen in the fictional world of motion pictures. On this episode of The Offshoot, the discussion is about the fantasies surrounding dating in a time of heavy social media use and false ...
May 07, 2025•59 min•Season 3Ep. 10
Baltimore, that once thriving industrial city caught between the nation's capitol of Washington, D.C. and the city of brotherly love Philadelphia, is again making noise with music. A new form a house music and club music, that is unique to Baltimore, is drawing dancers and club goers to the city, and the musicians behind it all are now taking their creations to wider audiences globally. DJ and producer S.DOT is among the artists bringing attention to Baltimore's new and growing music scene, and ...
Apr 28, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Season 3Ep. 9
Not forgiving someone for a wrong is never discussed as often as forgiving someone for a wrong. The mantra is to forgive and move on, but what if not forgiving someone who has perpetrated an act of betrayal, violence, broken trust or theft , which could lead to triggers or trauma, is healing? What if it is not? On this episode of The Offshoot Podcast, Dr. Yve Michaels flips the script and has me, the host, on her couch, as we talk about not forgiving versus forgiving as part of process toward he...
Apr 22, 2025•42 min
On this episode of The Offshoot Podcast, three incredible chefs define what makes food good, and it turns out good food is more than just about taste. Chef Sherise, the owner of Sweet Sage Catering, Chef Steven Steven German-Jones the co-owner of Palate202 Catering, and Chef Maine, the owner of The Maine Course, define what is good food by telling stories about their grandmothers' cooking, the family connections, the history of Black food, and rising costs to prepares dishes like collard greens ...
Apr 07, 2025•52 min
I am going to venture and bet that there are many of us who went through the public education system, and perhaps throughout college and grad school, did not have many, if any, Black men as educators. I would venture and add that for those individuals that attended private schools, there were not many Black men educators in their classrooms either. The lack of Black men in the classroom, direct correlation or not, seems to have impact on many youth in schools today. The impact seems to hit harde...
Mar 27, 2025•49 min•Season 3Ep. 6
For young Black men, their voices are not often heard, and often times if their voices are head it is typically a soundbite, misconstrued and/or taken out of context. Additionally, their voices seem to not matter unless it is via music (particularly Hip Hop), and sports, and even via music and sports, their voices are often dismissed as being irrelevant or less important because they are Black and young. Why is that? Why is that the given despite their small size in number that much of what ever...
Mar 17, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 3Ep. 5
Are you Black Indian? Well, if you're from South Carolina and you have Gullah Geechee roots, then there is a likely possibility that you are Black Indian - from a tribe called the Yamassee. Though small in number today, in the 1600s and 1700s, the Yamassee Tribe was a force of nature. The tribe battled perpetrators on their land, now known as The United States of America, specifically South Carolina, and they fought to protect and help all people, particularly the Gullah Geechee peoples of South...
Mar 06, 2025•9 min
The president of the United States of America, in a recent press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accused the visiting diplomat of wanting a third world war. Zelenskyy rejected that notion, and his disbelief of the comment was self-evident given his response - his faced looked of shock. The behavior from the American president was unbecoming of any world leader, but what the behavior exposed was the American president's call for World War III by using a tactic called Accu...
Mar 04, 2025•5 min
The brief interruption of access to TikTok prompted many Americans to find alternatives like RedNote, and what Americans found were images of China they had never seen before. Not surprising to me, they were shocked as to how developed the country has become - especially compared to the United States of America. Then it got me thinking, why were people so shocked? Then I realized it's because most Americans have never traveled outside the country. And in thinking further, it led me to conclude t...
Feb 24, 2025•5 min
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, and in The White House have put out statements, made comments, and put forth legislation targeting Washington, DC under the premise that the District is a failing jurisdiction. They are trying to put forth a narrative, a false notion, that the city is full of crime and has a corrupt government. The truth of the matter is Washington, DC is a vibrant, beautiful city that has its share of issues, and strives despite constantly being...
Feb 17, 2025•22 min•Season 3Ep. 5
Buying and selling a home can be a daunting task, especially when it is your first. There are so many things to know, and one individual can't expect to know it all. Now, throw in a change in politics that comes with much ambiguity and you get a lot of unknowns when it comes to buying and/or selling a home. This creates fear for some people - no matter it be their first time buying or their second or third. To help ease the fear, three experts in the field of real estate take part in a lively co...
Feb 12, 2025•33 min•Season 3Ep. 4
From The Offshoot Podcast is another segment called "Thoughts." Life is Fair.
Feb 05, 2025•4 min
Most people can't define trauma let alone recognize it - even when they've experienced trauma themselves. Too often, we ignore and dismiss incidents and experiences that truly are traumatic under the auspices that it will pass and things will be fine. But the trauma is still there, and we often don't realize until after that fact or until it's too late the need to acknowledge the trauma and process it. On this episode of The Offshoot, trauma expert Cory George answers the question how to recogni...
Jan 19, 2025•51 min•Season 3Ep. 3
This episode of The Offshoot is 10 years in the making. It began a few years after the passing of my grandmother Irene Moody Nelson, at a time when I was beginning to question friendships - particularly friendships as relationships. My grandmother had the best friends, and there were many friendships she cultivated. To better my friendships, to work on them as friendship, I wanted to know what made her relationship with her friends so great. How were they able to be and remain such good friends ...
Jan 13, 2025•36 min•Season 3Ep. 2
People forget that Black Americans/African Americans make up less than 13 percent of the US population. But that population has impact far beyond the population of its size - culturally, spiritually, economically, socially, politically, and globally. The reason, or one of the reasons, Black identity is so expansive, and so well known and so copied is because of the stories. Most of our stories, rather it be movies, music, television, books, etc., come out of some form of oppression. Present oppr...
Jan 06, 2025•2 min
In this clip from The Offshoot podcast, Dr. Okey Enyia talks of meeting Black men where they are. Catch the full episode on various podcast platforms.
Dec 29, 2024•2 min
The Offshoot podcast has some exciting new episodes coming in 2025. Please be sure to follow and like to catch every episode.
Dec 28, 2024•5 min
Despite the success of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), better known as Obamacare, there are still a number of Black men not getting and/or taking advantage of the healthcare options available to them. Grave and serious disparities remain. Dr. Okey Enyia, an expert on healthcare and policy, particularly as the topic relates to Black men, comes to The Offshoot Podcast to explain the disparity. He comes with a plan to increase the rate of Black men taking advantage of healthcare programs like the AC...
Dec 21, 2024•26 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Talk to any Black man, of any generation, and he will tell you that he isn't being heard. Throughout most of the 2024 political season, it seemed that everything was being talked about, everything was on the table, except for the issues and concerns of Black men. That changed about six weeks ago. All of a sudden, corporate media and the leading pundits of the networks, started talking about Black men "abandoning" the Democratic party in support of the man atop the Republican party's presidential...
Nov 03, 2024•1 hr 34 min
The war between Israel and Hamas has a lot of people talking and it has an equal, if not greater, amount of people not talking ... at least not publicly. In the Black/African American community, there has been a lot of the later. Why? That's a question no one individual or groups of individuals can answer as if there is a homogeneous Black community in which one persona or consortium can speak for. But, however, there is a deeper issue within the conflict that some Black Americans are speaking t...
Nov 20, 2023•54 min•Season 2Ep. 2
With seven children, Bridget Desmukes and her husband, Jeffrey, wanted to give all their offsprings the best education. They wanted to ensure that their children learned about the world, business, the economy, languages and other cultures. Additionally, they wanted their children to have positive social experiences with other children and educators while at school. They had their children in the District of Columbia Public School system, which for a while seemed to support their children's needs...
Nov 15, 2023•45 min•Season 2Ep. 1
In some major U.S. cities, there appears to be a reduction in crime, but in the nation's capitol, Washington, DC, crime continues to rise. From gun violence to robberies, carjackings and blatant theft, DC seems to be plagued with a surge in crime that one could argue is reminiscent of the city's crime wave in the 1990s. Washington, DC 5C07 Commissioner VJ Kapur has been trying to address and combat crime in his part of the city, and he answers the question, why elected officials can't reduce cri...
Oct 04, 2023•38 min
August 2023 marks 50 years of Hip-Hop/Rap music, and over the corse of those 50 years, the genre of Black/African American music has grown to become a global powerhouse. Across the planet, Hip-Hop/Rap music is the dominate sound on various radio and streaming music platforms. Travel to practically any country, and you'll hear Hip-Hop/Rap being performed in various languages by various cultures, but in every iteration, there still remains the essence of Black/African-American people ... The Cultu...
Aug 14, 2023•40 min
"If we can't protect the little ones then we as humans are failing God by not allowing plans to come to fruition," says Robert Thompson, the father of 5-month-old Jeremiah Eli Thompson whose death was ruled a homicide due to blunt-force trauma to the head. Baby Jeremiah, as Robert and his wife Melissa still like to call him, was a healthy, vibrant infant, when, along with his twin, Zachariah, was taken to the daycare facility approximately 7am on February 17, 2019. Less than two hours later, his...
Jul 31, 2023•1 hr 17 min
After more than five years working the streets of Washington, DC as a police office for the Metropolitan Police Department, Adonis Savage says crime is much worse than what people believe and what they are told to be believe about crime by the politicians and the police leadership. In the second part conversation with Savage, he gives a full accounting of how crime is and is not reported, specifically when it comes to juveniles. All across the United States of America, in big cities and small to...
Jul 10, 2023•34 min
Adonis Savage was a police officer with the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Department for more than five years ... he left the police force in April 2023. In this two-part conversation of The Offshoot, Savage explains that the apathy prevalent within police departments stems from the leadership within the police force. Additionally, he talks about the lacks behavior of some officers, and he talks of some officers who sought professions in law enforcement only to be able to exert power over p...
Jun 28, 2023•31 min
It’s happening all across the United States, in big cities and small towns, in liberal and conservative places of government … people’s cars and homes are being broken into, and in many occurrences, the perpetrators of those crimes are young children as young as age 10. The outcry from people, victims and non-victims, is growing. Most recently, in Washington, DC, a 13-year-old, Karon Blake, was shot and killed by a resident who alleged that Blake was breaking into cars between 3am and 4am. There...
Feb 05, 2023•45 min
