Middle Fingers Up

The one where we stop pretending everything’s fine just to keep the peace. In this episode, I sit down with Kam Bassier (from Episode 136: “You’re Not Lazy, You’re Burnt Out”) to talk about a tension so many BIPOC adults are carrying right now: Why are we — the kids of immigrant parents, BIPOC millennials and Gen Z — having conversations our families never could? Why does naming pain feel like betrayal? And what does breaking cycles actually look like in real life? We talk about harm...

I came across Shawn Ahmed’s work the way so many of us do now — through a moment of laughter that quietly turned into curiosity. What followed was a conversation that went far deeper than comedy. Shawn is a South Asian Canadian actor with an impressive body of work across television, film, and comedy — and in this episode, we talk about what lives beneath the credits. Growing up in that in-between space — being Canadian while being raised by immigrant parents — and how that lived experience ...

Reshma Kearney returns to Middle Fingers Up following Episode 128, where she first shared her experience of losing her husband to suicide and raising three children through grief. In this conversation, we go deeper — into what grief looks like over time, how it lives in the body, and how it quietly shapes our mental health, parenting, and sense of self. We talk about grief as an ongoing relationship rather than something to “get over,” how Reshma’s trauma-informed yoga and mindfulness work h...

In this episode of Middle Fingers Up, I sit down with Nisha Mody, the relational and trauma-informed coach known online as Healing Hype Girl. Nisha shares her raw journey from a childhood marked by strict expectations and silenced playfulness to navigating codependency in a marriage to an addict, ultimately choosing divorce, childfree living, and reclaiming her voice. Together, we get into the common struggles of South Asian women—living on autopilot, breaking harmful cycles from family...

Before we get into this episode, I want to name something real: there’s a moment in life when grief meets growth. Our guest Shri lived that moment. And today, she’s helping us understand it. Grief has a way of interrupting your life— but life never stops interrupting your grief. My guest today, Shri, knows this intimately. Within 18 months, she lost her father and sister… all while she was pregnant with her daughter. Imagine grief and life entering the room at the same time. That collision ...

In this episode of Middle Fingers Up, I sit down with Christian Ortiz — Afro-Indigenous social scientist, technologist, and creator of Justice AIGPT — and this conversation hit me on so many levels. Christian grew up as a latchkey kid in 80s/90s Los Angeles and later confronted internalized racism, machismo, and white supremacy in the American South. With a fierce single mother, and a lifetime of asking “why?” shaped a mission bigger than tech: challenging the systems that shape us befo...