"This is The Read."
The Read is a weekly entertainment and pop culture podcast first released in 2013. Hosted by vloggers and internet personalities Kid Fury and Crissle West, the podcast delves into popular culture, mental health advice and struggles, and politics from a queer African-American perspective. The podcast is usually broken into three segments:
- Hot Tops - Kid Fury and Crissle break down the past week's big pop culture news, usually revolving around African-American celebrities and personalities.
- Listener Letters - Crissle and Kid Fury answer letters from the audiences; most of which are asking for relationship advice, and they range from sad to squick-y.
- Crissle's Couch - An infrequent segment where Crissle and Kid Fury talk about mental health advice and lessons they've learned from going to therapy.
- The Read - Kid Fury and Crissle deliver a scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech (aka a "read") to anyone they feel deserve it, from politicians, to celebrities, or whomever is bothering them in their personal lives. Occasionally they will "pass The Read" to a listener who writes in with a read of their own.
Since 2013, the podcast has become wildly successful and even led to a television spinoff on the Fuse channel also titled The Read. They are also huge fans of Beyoncé, to the point of dedicated entire episodes to new album releases.
This podcast contains the following tropes
- Black and Nerdy: Kid Fury is a self-described nerd and gamer, specifically with the Kingdom Hearts series. Crissle was not at first, but then she became a Gamer Chick and even found all the Korok seeds in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild without a guide.
- Catchphrase: "Break Up With Him" was said so often, that they started selling shirts with the phrase.
- Double Entendre: Kid Fury introduces the Hot Tops segments with a gay sex-related pun, some of the more infamous ones
being "Hot Tops and the Vers-Bottom Prince," "Hot Tops: No Country For Old Bottoms," and "Hot Tops: Honey I Drank the Kids." Crissles's reaction is what you expect. - Love Martyr: A frequent topic of many a Listen Letter: a woman ignoring every single red flag their boyfriend/husband displays because they love them too much. Kid Fury and Crissle are vehemently against this trope.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The Read section of the podcast is this; acceptable targets are racists, bigots, problematic celebrities, and hateful politicians.
- What Does She See in Him?: The Listener Letters are full of this, usually with women who are attracted with men that put them through hell without giving much in return.
