The Glorious Mess
The Glorious Mess is a storytelling space for the ones who grew up in chaos and still became something. Hosted by Raymond Jordan Johnson-Brown — a social worker-in-training and multi-hyphenate creative — the show explores the power of story: the ones we lived, the ones we hid, and the counter-stories we’re claiming now.
Each episode sits in narrative, not advice. You’ll hear lived experience, moments of meaning-making, and conversations that open space for listeners to draw their own conclusions. Every season brings a new guest host as we talk healing, identity, and all the messy, brilliant ways people rebuild their lives.
The Glorious Mess
The Convenience Question | Why Do We Blame Individuals for Structural Problems?
In this episode of The Glorious Mess, Raymond and Carla start with squirrels and somehow end up talking about capitalism, environmental guilt, and the politics of convenience.
We unpack why individual behaviour is so often blamed for massive ecological and social crises and how “do better” narratives can oversimplify problems that are actually structural. From reusable straws to lifestyle purity tests, we question who really benefits when responsibility gets pushed onto individuals instead of systems.
The conversation moves through implicit bias, our grievances with disorganized advocacy, and how good intentions can still reproduce harm when they lack strategy, accountability, and imagination. We reflect on why movements sometimes eat their own, why clarity gets lost in performance, and what it means to want change without knowing how to hold each other through it.
Messy, curious, and unexpectedly political exactly as promised.
New episodes every month. Recorded at Virage Studios.