Podcast
Afternoon Coffee Break with Darren Watts
Hosted by Darren Watts · EN
Every day is racism for black people. Most people are not open-minded to understand racism, nor are most people open to believing in racism. Afternoon Coffee Break with Darren Watts serves two purposes. One, education in discrimination. Two, a platform to talk about racism. Dive in with me to learn the history and the hypocrisy of those who don't believe racism exists. We will look at current events involved with racism as well. Let's have an uncomfortable conversation.
122episodes
Episodes
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Who Gets Protected: Nolan Wells, the WNBA, and the Selective Outrage of a Country That Chooses Whose Safety Matters
2w ago00:22:57Tap to summarizeJuly 4th, 2026. Horn Island, Mississippi — a barrier island accessible only by boat. Eighteen-year-old Nolan Xavier Wells went out to celebrate the holiday with his friends. He was the only Black person in the group. His friends came back. He didn't. His body was found two days later. The cause of death is still pending.The Jackson County Sheriff concluded no foul play before the autopsy was complete — while simultaneously putting out a public call for bystander video of what the family's attorney Ben Crump describes as a documented altercation on the island. Messages were deleted from Wells's phone while it was in a friend's possession. His friends now have lawyers. An independent autopsy is being conducted by Dr. Roger Mitchell in Washington, DC, funded by Colin Kaepernick. His family will not stop until they have answers.In the same week, eleven Republican members of Congress sent a letter to WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert demanding the league protect Caitlin Clark from what they called racially motivated attacks. Alyssa Thomas — the player in the same story who is actually receiving death threats — got no letter. As journalist Jemele Hill put it, the WNBA is 70% Black and more than a quarter identifies as queer, and there is nothing that sells better in this country than making Black women a target.This episode connects both stories to Pew Research data — 75% of Black Americans say they have experienced racial discrimination, 73% say the system was designed to keep them down — and to a personal truth about what it means to be the only Black person in a group when something goes wrong, and whether anyone in authority will move with urgency to find out what happened.This is a developing story. We will follow it.SourcesNolan Wells — AP News: https://apnews.com/article/nolan-wells-death-mississippi-island-mystery-4b4e63036e7fa2ad3e3cf7e505e05c8cCaitlin Clark/WNBA — The Root: https://www.theroot.com/republicans-ask-wnba-to-protect-caitlin-clark-from-raci-2000115475Racial Discrimination Data — Pew Research Center: https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2024/06/15/racial-discrimination-shapes-how-black-americans-view-their-progress-and-u-s-institutions-2/Criminal Justice Data — NAACP: https://naacp.org/resources/criminal-justice-fact-sheetTimestamps00:00 - Disclaimer01:01 - Introduction02:44 - The Thesis04:38 - Opening08:13 - The Background12:52 - The Data16:08 - Personal Thoughts20:24 - CloseAfternoon Coffee Break with Darren Watts. Follow the show wherever you listen. Rate and review on Apple Podcasts — thirty seconds, it matters. Number 17 Cult All Time. Number 33 Business News All Time on Goodpods — because of you.
Transcribe →After The Brew: Normal Results, Missing Pieces & The Transparency Nobody's Giving Us
2w ago00:13:31Tap to summarizeDarren follows up on Tuesday's episode — Nolan Wells, Mitch McConnell, and the frustrating pattern of Black people always being asked what they did wrong instead of holding the right people accountable. Then he gets personal. His lumbar MRI came back normal. His heart monitor showed no plaque buildup, no explanation for the blackouts, no explanation for the rapid heartbeat. Everything is normal — except none of it feels normal, and none of it started until COVID. Long COVID still won't be officially diagnosed. ADHD still won't be officially documented. And Darren is sitting on a MacBook full of notes, articles, and stories about all of it that he hasn't been able to get out yet. He's scheduled an appointment with a spine specialist because he knows what he's feeling in his body, and a normal MRI result doesn't change that. He connects it all to a bigger thread — the lack of transparency running through his own medical care, the Nolan Wells investigation, and the Mitch McConnell situation. We're missing pieces everywhere. And he's determined to keep putting them together.After The Brew, Darren Watts, Afternoon Coffee Break, lumbar MRI, normal results, long COVID, ADHD, undiagnosed, medical gaslighting, spine specialist, back pain, heart monitor, tachycardia, transparency, Nolan Wells, Mitch McConnell, Black community, accountability, patient advocacy, missing pieces, Substack, unsolved case files, real talk, Black podcast, July 2026, health update, no answers, keep pushing,
Transcribe →After The Brew: Nolan Wells, Mitch McConnell & Stop Playing Politics With the Truth
2w ago00:08:37Tap to summarizeDarren keeps it brief but doesn't hold back. He opens with Nolan Wells — a young Black man whose death at the hands of people he considered friends has Darren thinking hard about who is genuinely in your corner and who is just performing it. He connects it to a larger pattern of the elimination of Black lives and says it out loud: it makes you reevaluate everything, including the people closest to you. Then he turns to Mitch McConnell and the political games being played around his condition. Darren breaks down the August 3rd Senate vacancy deadline under Kentucky's HB 622 and why he believes that date is exactly why the truth is being withheld. His message is simple: stop playing politics, tell the truth, and let Kentucky have proper representation. He has no sympathy for McConnell's legacy. He doesn't pretend otherwise.After The Brew, Darren Watts, Afternoon Coffee Break, Nolan Wells, Black lives, racism, friendship, trust, racial violence, Mitch McConnell, Kentucky, Senate vacancy, HB 622, August 3rd deadline, political games, Supreme Court, Barack Obama, McConnell legacy, real talk, Black podcast, July 2026, opinion, no filter, political commentary,
Transcribe →Hate Crimes Through 2024: Indiana — Coming Home to the Data
3w ago00:24:11Tap to summarizeFourteen states into this series. Fourteen consecutive times Anti-Black bias has led the cumulative hate crime data — every state except Hawaii. Indiana makes it fourteen in a row, with Anti-Black bias leading at 265 incidents.But this episode is different. Indiana is home.The most common location for a documented hate crime in Indiana is Residence or Home — 292 incidents. Not a public square. Not a school. Someone's front door, front yard, their house. Four federal cases put names to that number: a man who burned a cross, displayed a swastika alongside anti-Black slurs and a machete, and played "Dixie" on repeat to terrorize his Black neighbor over a tree removal. A Whiting man who spent more than a year shouting racial slurs and threats at a multi-racial family next door until they left — then lied to law enforcement about it, until a recording said otherwise. A 67-year-old Indiana man who left antisemitic death threat voicemails at ADL offices across the country. And a Bloomington woman who stabbed an 18-year-old IU student of Chinese descent in a racially motivated attack and was sentenced to six years in federal prison.This episode also sits with two numbers that stand out in Indiana's data: Anti-Gender Non-Conforming at 42 — the highest that category has appeared in this series — and Anti-American Indian or Alaska Native at 25, in a state whose very name means Land of the Indians, built on the forced removal of the Miami, Potawatomi, and Delaware nations in the 1830s.The data this series finds at home is the same data it has found in thirteen other states. The pattern does not change because the address is familiar.00:00 - Disclaimer01:01 - Introduction02:44 - The Thesis05:08 - Opening07:57 - The Background10:45 - The Data17:21 - Personal Thoughts21:27 - ClosingAfternoon Coffee Break with Darren Watts. Follow the show wherever you listen. Rate and review on Apple Podcasts — thirty seconds, it matters. Number 17 Cult All Time. Number 33 Business News All Time on Goodpods — because of you.
Transcribe →We the People: The Declaration of Independence, the Three-Fifths Compromise, and the Holiday That Was Never Meant for Us
3w ago00:21:53Tap to summarize"All men are created equal." Written by Thomas Jefferson — a man who enslaved more than 600 people over the course of his life. Formalized into a constitutional framework by James Wilson — the same man who helped write "We the People" and who also designed the Three-Fifths Compromise, the provision that counted enslaved Black people as three-fifths of a person to give their enslavers more political power in a government those people could never participate in.This episode does not celebrate the 4th of July. It examines it.That examination runs through the Declaration of Independence and what it actually promised, the Constitution and the contradiction written into it at founding, and a recent conversation with democratic reformer Tom Joseph — founder of the American Main Street Party and creator of the People's Primary model, built explicitly on James Wilson's legacy. When Tom appeared on eight other podcasts, every host celebrated the innovation: the blockchain, the approval voting, the app mechanics. Not one of them asked who "the people" included when the document was written. Not one connected "We the People" to the Three-Fifths Compromise written by the same hand.This show asked. It raised Texas Senate Bill 1, the 2022 mail ballot rejections that disproportionately hit Black, Latino, and Asian voters, and the core framework question: does this reform reach people locked out since 1787, or does it just make a closed room more efficient?250 years from the Declaration of Independence — and the answer to who it was written for is still being fought over in courts, state legislatures, and at ballot boxes that some people are still being kept from reaching.00:00 - Disclaimer01:01 - Introduction02:51 - The Thesis04:39 - Opening07:25 - The Background11:35 - The Data16:30 - Personal Thoughts19:28 - ClosingAfternoon Coffee Break with Darren Watts. Follow the show wherever you listen. Rate and review on Apple Podcasts — thirty seconds, it matters. Number 17 Cult All Time. Number 33 Business News All Time on Goodpods — because of you.
Transcribe →After The Brew: Heat Wave, Major Jason Watson & 29 Pounds Down on Mounjaro
3w ago00:08:37Tap to summarizeDarren checks in during one of the hottest weeks Indiana has seen in a while — heat index pushing past 105, air conditioners barely keeping up, and sleep taking a hit all week because of it. He briefly touches on some unnecessary office drama he's still not ready to fully get into. He takes a moment to acknowledge Major Jason Watson of the Air Force for his act of courage in speaking out against the way the military is being used under Trump — arrested for it, but Darren thinks it needed to be said and done. On the health front, the lumbar MRI is finally scheduled for July 8th, and nearly two months into Mounjaro he's down 29 pounds. Appetite is steadier, blood sugar feels more level — but he won't know the full picture until insurance approves the continuous glucose monitor he's still fighting for. He wants to get back to running. That itch is getting louder.After The Brew, Darren Watts, Afternoon Coffee Break, heat wave, Indiana heat, Mounjaro, weight loss, 29 pounds, lumbar MRI, back pain, continuous glucose monitor, CGM, insurance appeal, Major Jason Watson, Air Force, military protest, Trump, long COVID, type 2 diabetes, blood sugar, running, jogging, real talk, Black podcast, July 2026, health update, patient advocacy,
Transcribe →After The Brew: Still Adjusting, Still Exhausted, Still Moving
3w ago00:08:13Tap to summarizeA few days out from saying goodbye to Luscious, Darren talks about how strange it is adjusting to a house with the gates gone and the rooms wide open — the small absences hitting harder than expected. He also gets honest about the exhaustion that bled into yesterday's episode, tracing it back to an unplanned office day, church, and the kind of social drain that's been a pattern since his 2024 COVID diagnosis — a pattern that still hasn't been formally recognized as long COVID, nearly three years later. Celeste Warren has graciously rescheduled for August 4th. A dietitian appointment is coming up in 30 minutes that he almost forgot about. He knows he should be resting. He's doing the opposite anyway.After The Brew, Darren Watts, Afternoon Coffee Break, grief, pet loss adjustment, long COVID, post-viral fatigue, exhaustion, social anxiety, ADHD, office stress, Celeste Warren, dietitian appointment, chronic illness, real talk, Black podcast, June 2026, pushing through, undiagnosed, self-awareness,
Transcribe →Hate Crimes Through 2024: Illinois — A Mosque, a Penitentiary, and a Six-Year-Old Named Wadea
4w ago00:23:40Tap to summarizeIllinois reports more hate crimes than almost any state this series has covered — 347 documented incidents in 2023 alone. But scale isn't the only thing that sets this state apart. Religion is Illinois's second-largest bias category, far above what this series has documented anywhere else, and three specific federal cases explain why.In 2017, a domestic terrorist militia called The White Rabbits drove from Illinois to Minnesota and bombed the Dar al-Farooq Islamic Center while worshipers gathered for morning prayer. In 2021, two white supremacist inmates at Illinois's Thomson Penitentiary beat a fellow inmate to death because he was Jewish — one was later sentenced to life. And on October 15th, 2023, in Plainfield Township, a six-year-old Palestinian American boy named Wadea Al-Fayoume was stabbed to death by his family's landlord; his mother was severely wounded protecting him. The Attorney General himself issued a public statement on the killing.This episode goes through the full cumulative data — bias types, offense types, locations shaped by Chicago's transit system, and an offender-race breakdown more evenly split between White and Black offenders than any state this series has documented so far. It holds the grief of three different communities — Muslim, Jewish, and Palestinian American — without ranking one above another, because the mechanism connecting all three cases is the same one this series has named in every state: somebody deciding a life mattered less because of a category, not because of anything that person did.00:00 - Disclaimer01:01 - Introduction02:34 - The Thesis04:37 - Opening07:22 - The Background10:34 - The Data16:17 - Personal Thoughts20:23 - ClosingAfternoon Coffee Break with Darren Watts. Follow the show wherever you listen. Rate and review on Apple Podcasts — thirty seconds, it matters. Number 17 Cult All Time. Number 33 Business News All Time on Goodpods — because of you.
Transcribe →After The Brew: Saying Goodbye to Luscious
4w ago00:29:15Tap to summarizeDarren explains why he stepped away from After The Brew for two days — Luscious, Darrell's 15-year-old dog, declined rapidly over the course of a week, and Thursday and Friday were spent watching him suffer, weighing an impossible decision, and ultimately saying goodbye. Darren walks through the entire day in detail — the wait at the first clinic, the decision to go to Noah's Animal Hospital instead, Darrell's final words to Lucious, and the quiet weight of walking back into a house that suddenly felt different. He's grateful to his sister Nicole for stepping in to help cover the cost, and grateful, above all, that Lucious is no longer in pain. It's a long episode. It needed to be.After The Brew, Darren Watts, Afternoon Coffee Break, Lucious, pet loss, euthanasia, grief, family, Darrell Watts, losing a pet, end of life decisions, Noah's Animal Hospital, hard goodbyes, real talk, Black podcast, June 2026, family grief, gratitude, relief from suffering,
Transcribe →Twice in Ten Days: Jeremiah Spearman and the Cost of Walking Home
4w ago00:21:09Tap to summarizeSixteen-year-old Jeremiah Spearman doesn't have a car. Walking is how he gets places. Twice in ten days, that walk ended in handcuffs. On June 4th, he was tackled to the ground by Battle Creek's Gang Suppression Unit while walking to his aunt's house in his socks. On June 14th, walking home past an Arby's, he was stopped again. "Someone call my mom," he yelled. "This is the second time." No charges were filed either time.The officer's written report from the second stop claims Jeremiah was wearing a full face covering — one of the details cited to justify the stop. The city's own dashcam footage, obtained separately, appears to show his face uncovered the entire time. That's not a matter of camera angle. It's a specific claim in an official record that the city's own evidence doesn't support.Police Chief Shannon Bagley has defended both stops as appropriate. Battle Creek's mayor has said he's concerned about the officer's aggressiveness but is deferring to the city's Community Oversight Board, which reviews the case July 8th. A law professor and former Michigan State Police detective has weighed in on the legal standard at play — and why handcuffing someone changes the legal stakes the moment it happens.This episode also connects Jeremiah's story to Price Lomonte, a Black man stopped this month for simply walking through a wealthy, mostly white Grosse Pointe neighborhood — and what it means that one of them walked away clean while the other ended up on the ground, twice.00:00 - Disclaimer01:01 - Introduction02:34 - The Thesis04:23 - Opening07:15 - The Background11:25 - The Data14:11 - Personal Thoughts18:58 - ClosingAfternoon Coffee Break with Darren Watts. Follow the show wherever you listen. Rate and review on Apple Podcasts — thirty seconds, it matters. Number 17 Cult All Time. Number 33 Business News All Time on Goodpods — because of you.
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