PAST, PRESENT, PUSHBACK

Every year on the 4th of July, America fires up the grills, lights the fireworks, and celebrates freedom. But most people don't know the real story behind the date — that the actual vote for independence was on July 2, not July 4. That most of the founders didn't sign the Declaration until August. That the man who wrote 'all men are created equal' owned 600 enslaved people over his lifetime. That a clause calling out the slave trade was removed from the Declaration before it was signed. And that

Cannabis has been used by human beings for over 10,000 years. It was medicine in ancient China. It was used in religious ceremonies across Central Asia, India, Egypt, and Africa for thousands of years before the United States existed. The American Medical Association was against making it illegal in 1937. And the man who pushed hardest to make it a crime — Harry Anslinger, the first director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics — left a documented record of quotes that tell you exactly why he did

June on Past Present Pushback was something different. We covered the origin of Memorial Day — and the freed Black people who actually started it. We went deep on the Black Panther Party, Provident Hospital, and Red Summer. We talked about Marvin Gaye the man, not just the music. We covered Juneteenth, Father's Day, and Mother's Day — the real histories behind holidays most people celebrate without knowing where they came from. We did a Weekend Special on Karmelo Anthony and Cyrus Carmack-Belton

As of June 2026, the United States is carrying $39.2 trillion in total national debt — growing by $8.19 billion every single day. The government is paying $1 trillion a year just in interest alone — more than it spends on Medicare, national defense, or Medicaid. And the Congressional Budget Office projects that interest payments alone will grow to $2.1 trillion a year by 2036. This is not a political conversation. It is a math problem. And it has real consequences for everyday Americans — especi

In Part 1, XO, AZ, and CDA broke down the real science of where every human being on earth came from — Out of Africa, Mitochondrial Eve, and how skin color actually evolved. Now in Part 2, they go into the harder conversation. How did real science about human origins get twisted into 'race science' used to justify slavery, colonialism, and the Holocaust? What was eugenics, who pushed it, and how far did it actually go in this country? And the question that gets debated every single day online —

You've heard it said — everyone came from Black people. It gets repeated online, in barbershops, in family group chats, and it's met with both pride and pushback. So in this episode, XO, & AZ decided to actually find out what the science says — not what a meme says, not what gets shouted in a comment section, but what geneticists, paleoanthropologists, and the global scientific community have actually documented through fossil records and DNA. This is Part 1 of a two-part deep dive. In this epis

Most people know Father's Day as ties, grills, and greeting cards. But the real story starts in 1909 — with a 27-year-old woman named Sonora Smart Dodd sitting in a church pew listening to a Mother's Day sermon and asking a question nobody had asked before. Why isn't there a day for fathers? Her father was a Civil War veteran who raised six children alone after his wife died in childbirth. He braided his daughter's hair with calloused hands. He kept the family together when it would have been ea

Most people know June 19 as Juneteenth. But most people don't know the full story of what that day actually was — and why it took more than two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation for Black people in Texas to hear the word freedom. Or that some enslaved people weren't told until after the harvest season was over — because their enslavers wanted to squeeze out one more crop. Or that it took a 94-year-old woman named Opal Lee walking 2.5 miles every year in tennis shoes for decade

On May 28, 2023, a 14-year-old Black boy named Cyrus Carmack-Belton was shot in the back outside a Shell gas station in Columbia, South Carolina. Surveillance video showed he had not stolen anything. Witnesses described him running away in fear. He was chased more than 130 yards from the store by a 61-year-old store owner and his adult son before being shot once in the back. He died from that wound. On June 1, 2026 — three years later — a jury acquitted Rick Chow of murder. Not guilty. The famil

he enemy doesn't always come dressed like an enemy. Sometimes he comes dressed like your mother. Your brother. Your cousin. The family member who smiles at your face and speaks doubt over your life behind your back. The one whose addiction keeps pulling the whole family into chaos. The one who has never celebrated a single win you've had. The one whose words — spoken over you in childhood — you are still fighting to unhear as an adult. In this episode of Past Present Pushback, XO, AZ, and CDA go

Most Americans think Memorial Day started with a general's order in 1868. The real story starts three years earlier — and it starts with Black people. On May 1, 1865 — less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered — freed Black men and women in Charleston, South Carolina organized what historians now recognize as the first Memorial Day in American history. They exhumed the bodies of 257 Union soldiers from a mass grave at a Confederate prison camp. They built a proper cemetery. They erecte

Every generation thinks they got discipline right. The generation before them thinks they went too soft. And the generation after them wonders why they turned out the way they did. The conversation about how to discipline a child — especially in Black families — has never been louder, more contested, or more personal. Old school said: the belt teaches respect. New research says: it teaches fear. The old way produced grit. The new way produces therapy bills. Or does it? In this episode of Past Pr