Black and Snerdy Podcast

Ode and Mo "Kid" Licorish
  • 4.9 (7)
  • Entertainment News
  • Weekly

What happens when pop culture, anime, and mental health awareness collide? You get the Black and Snerdy Podcast. Every Friday, NYC-based hosts Ode and Mo AKA Kid Licorish spend an hour breaking down the latest in film, TV, and music through a cultural lens you won't find anywhere else. Whether we’re reviewing the latest blockbuster in "Watch Out Now," struggling through "Ode's Anime Breakdown," or catching up on our mental health journeys, we’re bringing you raw, funny, and essential conversations. Join the community! Where Snerds of a feather flock together! Connect with the Snerdy Crew: Watch, Listen, or Sponsor the show: https://beacons.ai/blackandsnerdy⁠

  1. 2d ago ·  Bonus

    Bonus: Double Fisting HIStory with Le’Asha Julius

    Black and Snerdy welcomes actor, playwright, director and music artist Le’Asha Julius for a bonus episode as Ode (@thatsod.e / @thatsod_e) and Mo “Kid” Licorish (@licorishislegit) trace a career that runs from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts and SUNY Purchase to NPR’s Tiny Desk with The LOX. Le’Asha explains how the hip-hop duo Quincy Vidal started with classmate Caleb Eberhardt when DJ equipment proved too expensive, and what opening for Kendrick Lamar and Talib Kweli taught her about respect. The conversation moves to Black Thought’s School of Thought program at Carnegie Hall, where imposter syndrome met one very specific note about articulating a fast verse, and then to the Tiny Desk session with Jadakiss, Sheek Louch and Styles P. Le’Asha also names home as the truest place to recharge between plays, tours and an upcoming trip to Greece, and explains the difference between following the heart and following anxiety. Then comes a punishing round of This or That built on Black music icons: Aaliyah vs. Mýa, Teddy Pendergrass vs. Luther Vandross, Aretha Franklin vs. Patti LaBelle, Stevie Wonder vs. Prince, and Michael Jackson vs. Beyoncé. Along the way, Le’Asha reveals she went to elementary school with Mýa’s little brother, once ran into Aretha, and has performed at Paisley Park, while Ode picks Beyoncé despite a childhood spent double fisting Michael Jackson’s HIStory. In What’s Making Us Mad, Ode addresses the Cornell and LSU sexual assault cases and the victim blaming that followed, and Mo takes aim at unleashed dogs on Flatbush Avenue. The episode closes with Goo Punch from My Brother and Me, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Fridays, and Le’Asha’s plans to finish a new play and album, with more on Instagram at @leeocious. Find Le'Asha on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leeocious/ Find her on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheLeeocious Connect with the Snerdy Crew: Watch, Listen, or Sponsor the show: ⁠https://beacons.ai/blackandsnerdy⁠⁠

  2. 6d ago

    Ep 204: Just Read, Please Vote with Percy

    Ode (@thatsod.e / @thatsod_e) and Mo “Kid” Licorish (@licorishislegit) welcome Percy (she/they), a comics, gaming and literature devotee whose fandom began with Sailor Moon and grew through years of high school fandom blogging. Percy explains how New X-Men made Quentin Quire a favorite mutant, while Mo stands up for Beast and Ode claims Mystique and Storm. The conversation moves through DC’s Speed Force, Mo’s gloriously overbuilt Dungeons & Dragons backstory, Percy’s towering reading backlog, Call of Duty, Cardcaptor Sakura and a Sharon Draper book Percy wants on the big screen. Percy closes the interview with advice for anyone intimidated by decades of comic continuity: ignore the retcons, pick a character, grab a reading guide and just read. In Pop Topics, Black and Snerdy celebrates Debbie Shields, the Bed-Stuy owner of Confessions bar who went joke for joke with Conan O’Brien on SubwayTakes, then weighs the reported news of Jay-Z headlining the Super Bowl halftime show, from Reasonable Doubt turning 30 to Ode’s prediction that Beyoncé drops Act III at the game. Disneyween revisits Hocus Pocus, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Halloweentown, Twitches, Under Wraps, Tower of Terror and Don’t Look Under the Bed, and Percy refuses to let anyone slander Belle. Big Mad covers Percy’s call to vote, the George Washington Bridge killing of Con Edison worker Koran Irvine and the charges against retired NYPD detective Victor Romero, and Mo’s tribute to Looney Tunes voice actor Eric Bauza. The episode ends on Black joy with 3-year-old soccer phenom Nevada and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure going weekly, and Percy can be found at @krakoais4luvrs and @evangelinedovie on X, genosha_is_forlovers on League of Comic Geeks, and @persephoneyyyy on YouTube. Connect with the Snerdy Crew: Watch, Listen, or Sponsor the show: ⁠https://beacons.ai/blackandsnerdy⁠⁠

  3. Oct 28 ·  Bonus

    Bonus: Just a Little Cartilage with Kai Grayson

    Ode (@thatsod.e / @thatsod_e) and Mo "Kid" Licorish (@licorishislegit) welcome Kai Grayson to a Black and Snerdy bonus episode, a screenwriter, producer, cosplayer and pro wrestler whose credits include Work It Out Wombats!, The Creature Cases and Genevieve's Playhouse. Kai arrives with blue hair from her Mollymauk Tealeaf cosplay from Critical Role's The Mighty Nein and traces her path from Altadena to Emerson College, London and Tokyo. She credits Over the Garden Wall with turning her from a would-be director of Narnia-style fantasy films into an animation writer. She also describes having her own experiences edited out of scripts and being let go from two shows about Black families. The conversation moves to the ring, where Kai explains how a joke about late friends became Kai Maintenance, a mean janitor who debuted at Dyke Day LA and earned a standing ovation at her first in-ring show. She names Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender, Jade Cargill and Nyla Rose as dream tag team partners and talks about Roles for Initiative LA, her D&D live play improv show. Two games follow: an anime and video game trivia round covering Ouran High School Host Club, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Jujutsu Kaisen, Gurren Lagann, Persona 5 and Baldur's Gate 3, then Emoji Me, Senpai with Gojo, Tanjiro, Nezuko, Link and Sora. The closing segments cover The Legend of Zelda concert tour, New York bureaucracy, subway etiquette, and Halloween cosplay season. Kai Grayson's Linktree: linktr.ee/kaigrayson Connect with the Snerdy Crew: Watch, Listen, or Sponsor the show: ⁠https://beacons.ai/blackandsnerdy⁠⁠

  4. Oct 23

    Ep 203: Mo Don’t Sport, Ode Don’t Horror

    Ode (@thatsod.e / @thatsod_e) and Mo “Kid” Licorish (@licorishislegit) open Episode 203 of Black and Snerdy with a weekend recap featuring Blerd by Nature, then break down Megan Thee Stallion’s debut at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. Mo crowns her “Megan the Pegasus” for wearing the brand’s signature wings, while Ode points to Meg’s resurfaced 2011 tweet about one day walking that runway. Ode also praises the dancers and the thicker bodies on a stage long criticized for its lack of body diversity, recalling how Tyra Banks was once called fat over five pounds. The segment wraps with Meg’s upcoming album and her beef with GloRilla. The heart of the episode is a Watch Out Now double feature of two horror hits from YouTube creators. They review A24’s Backrooms from Kane Parsons, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, covering its 4chan roots, 30,000 square feet of practical sets and $81 million opening, and comparing its found footage to The Blair Witch Project and The Shining. Then they take on Curry Barker’s Obsession, the first original film of the 2020s to pass $500 million, digging into the nice-guy deconstruction, the One Wish Willow, Jordan Peele’s influence and Inde Navarrette’s performance. The episode closes with Ode on the Haitian Revolution and the protests in France, and a happy recap of a visit to Kodansha House. Connect with the Snerdy Crew: Watch, Listen, or Sponsor the show: ⁠https://beacons.ai/blackandsnerdy⁠⁠

  5. Oct 20 ·  Bonus

    Bonus: The First Black Man to Survive in Space with D. Frie (The Lando Cal Experience)

    Ode (@thatsod.e / @thatsod_e) and Mo "Kid" Licorish (@licorishislegit) welcome D. Frie, founder of the SOLC Network and host of The Lando Cal Experience, to a Black and Snerdy bonus episode. D. Frie starts at the beginning: a February 1981 birth in Chicago delayed by the bad brakes on his father's Gremlin, then a St. Louis childhood on rollerblades in the Mighty Ducks era, with Nas's "Project Windows" as the soundtrack and neighborhood guys asking about Green Lantern back issues. The three trade notes on JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, One Piece in both its anime and live-action forms, and the night each of them gave up on the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender movie. He also explains his show's name, crediting Lando Calrissian as the first Black man to survive in space after Yaphet Kotto in Alien, and shares the story that Billy Dee Williams was once positioned to replace Harrison Ford's Han Solo. From there, D. Frie breaks down the SOLC Network, named for Straight Outta Locash from CB4, and its twelve shows, including I Only Listen to 90s Music, Womanology, Everyone Needs an Aquarius with its Surviving Diddy series, and Hip-Hop What Ifs, which has tackled Canibus and LL Cool J, Lauryn Hill, Eminem and Dr. Dre, and Tupac and Death Row. He gets candid about editing, YouTube analytics, and why consistency beats polish. Ode then hosts a Star Wars edition of Emoji Me, Senpai, where Mo and D. Frie race to name Chewbacca, Palpatine, Jar Jar Binks, Jabba the Hutt, Mace Windu and more from three emojis each. The hour closes with a mental health check-in, gripes about YouTube monetization and MTA subway etiquette, and praise for A Different World, Mahershala Ali's new film, and JoJo's Steel Ball Run. Find the Solc Networks Linktree: https://linktr.ee/Solcnetwork D. Frie's Instagram: instagram.com/diggameisu Connect with the Snerdy Crew: Watch, Listen, or Sponsor the show: ⁠https://beacons.ai/blackandsnerdy⁠⁠

  6. Oct 16

    Ep 202: Frolic More, Men with Keith Benn

    Howard alum Keith Benn, host of the Build Different podcast on the Watts Productions Network, returns to Black and Snerdy for the first time since episode 50 to sit down with Ode (@thatsod.e / @thatsod_e) and Mo “Kid” Licorish (@licorishislegit). Keith explains how a producer’s pitch for a politics podcast became Build Different, a show about perspective, Black love and late-night rabbit holes about life. The conversation moves from Black boy joy and the case for men to frolic more, to his uncle’s argument that Good Times was more realistic than The Cosby Show, to Howard University’s range of backgrounds and the professor who asked a full class who had been called “not Black enough.” Ode adds her childhood love of Avril Lavigne, Billie Holiday and Harry Potter, along with a pointed word about J.K. Rowling. Pop Topics opens with the sentencing of Duane “Keffe D” Davis to 40 years to life for orchestrating Tupac Shakur’s 1996 killing, after his book and Vlad TV interviews, with Keith drawing a comparison to O.J. Simpson. The hosts honor RJ Mitte of Breaking Bad and an Atlanta teacher who died on the Goliath at Six Flags Over Georgia, then celebrate Druski hosting Saturday Night Live. Ryan Coogler’s X-Files reboot with Danielle Deadwyler and Himesh Patel gets a full breakdown, from Coogler’s mother’s love of the original to hopes for David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson cameos. The episode closes with the federal raid on Representative Ilhan Omar’s home, Howard Homecoming, Jools Lebron’s new teeth, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and John Boyega’s growing family. Find Keith Benn on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keithingtonb Find the Built Different Podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/@BuiltDifferentKB Connect with the Snerdy Crew: Watch, Listen, or Sponsor the show: ⁠https://beacons.ai/blackandsnerdy⁠⁠

  7. Oct 13 ·  Bonus

    Bonus: A Warm, Hard Welcome with S. Carlos Carbon

    Ode (@thatsod.e / @thatsod_e) and Mo "Kid" Licorish (@licorishislegit) welcome S. Carlos Carbon, co-host of The Blerd Effect podcast and founder of Harlem Cinematic Universe, to this Black and Snerdy bonus episode. Carlos traces his fandom from West Baltimore, where Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series and Kevin Conroy's Batman were his way into DC Comics, to a Harlem cafe where a barista's latte art led him to Demon Slayer. He lays out why The Blerd Effect treats One Piece, Attack on Titan and Code Geass as political texts, and why Black nerds need institutions of their own. That conversation runs through Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, Octavia Butler, W.E.B. Du Bois and Afrofuturism. Mo counters with his case for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and Hirohiko Araki, while Carlos argues that Demon Slayer moved anime forward and compares the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack to Waiting to Exhale. The interview closes with My Hero Academia, the Deku and Bakugo scene that made Carlos cry, and a Golden Girls versus Living Single breakdown he uses to coach new podcasters. Then comes an anime edition of Emoji Me, Senpai, with clues for Tanjiro, All Might, Light Yagami from Death Note, Eren Jaeger and Mikasa from Attack on Titan, Guts and Griffith from Berserk, Anya from Spy x Family, Speed Racer and Roronoa Zoro. The mental health check-in covers therapy, anxiety medication and managing bipolar II. We Big Mad takes on a Hasan Piker interview with Symone Sanders, split streaming rights for Spy x Family on Netflix, and AI deepfake channels that manufacture Black trauma stories. The closing segment turns to Big Brother on CBS, Black women's friendship, and the weekly return of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run. Check Out S Carlos Carbon's Linktree: https://linktr.ee/s.carloscarbon Connect with the Snerdy Crew: Watch, Listen, or Sponsor the show: ⁠https://beacons.ai/blackandsnerdy⁠⁠

  8. Oct 9

    EP 201: The Butterfree Effect

    Black and Snerdy clears out months of headlines in this bonus episode, as Ode (@thatsod.e / @thatsod_e) and Mo “Kid” Licorish (@licorishislegit) record from opposite coasts, with Mo in Oakland and Ode at home in Brooklyn. Their one-word rapid fire round opens with #EmmysSoWhite after the 2026 Primetime Emmys, Jasmine Guy’s return as Whitley Gilbert in Netflix’s A Different World sequel, and ER Fightmaster’s resurfaced comments, along with the responses from Drew Afualo and Franchesca Ramsey. From there, they react to Sky’s documentary on the Duane “Keffe D” Davis murder trial, Jay-Z’s accuser recanting her claims in the Tony Buzbee lawsuit, and Crystal Mason’s acquittal by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The round wraps with Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s $131.5 million DoorDash settlement for New York City delivery workers and Stanford and Arc Institute scientists using AI to design bacteriophages that fight drug-resistant E. coli. The hosts also pay tribute to Angela Stribling, The Mighty Sparrow, Christy Knowings of All That, Michael Wright of The Five Heartbeats, and AEW wrestler PAC. Then they take on the viral Views from the Seven clip claiming nobody on Living Single was attractive. Mo answers with a three-point rebuttal, and Ode breaks down the colorism, sizeism and homophobia in the take while celebrating Khadijah James and Queen Latifah. The mental health check-in covers Ode’s experience with a new anxiety medication and the five-minute stillness challenge Mo gives her. In We Big Mad, Ode discusses an Arizona congressional candidate’s account of being assaulted and Mo argues that GTA VI could become Sony’s excuse to end physical media, before the episode closes on Opal Lee’s 100th birthday and the planned National Juneteenth Museum. Connect with the Snerdy Crew: Watch, Listen, or Sponsor the show: ⁠https://beacons.ai/blackandsnerdy⁠⁠

See All (271)

Ratings & Reviews

4.9
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

What happens when pop culture, anime, and mental health awareness collide? You get the Black and Snerdy Podcast. Every Friday, NYC-based hosts Ode and Mo AKA Kid Licorish spend an hour breaking down the latest in film, TV, and music through a cultural lens you won't find anywhere else. Whether we’re reviewing the latest blockbuster in "Watch Out Now," struggling through "Ode's Anime Breakdown," or catching up on our mental health journeys, we’re bringing you raw, funny, and essential conversations. Join the community! Where Snerds of a feather flock together! Connect with the Snerdy Crew: Watch, Listen, or Sponsor the show: https://beacons.ai/blackandsnerdy⁠

Information

  • Creator
    Ode and Mo "Kid" Licorish
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    271
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Ode and Mo "Kid" Licorish
  • Show Website
    Black and Snerdy Podcast

You Might Also Like