Ep. 441: From The Boondocks to Crownsville: Rodney Barnes Reflects on a Life in Storytelling

Rodney Barnes is an American screenwriter, producer, and author. He has written and produced such TV shows as The Boondocks , Everybody Hates Chris , Marvel's Runaways , American Gods , Wu-Tang: An American Saga , and HBO's Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty . His graphic novels and comic books include Killadelphia , Blacula , Monarch , Marvel's Falcon , and the adaptation of the first season of Star Wars: The Mandalorian. Rodney Barnes' newest comic book series, the horror-noir Crownsville , explores Maryland's Jim Crow–era "Hospital for the Negro Insane." He has received awards and honors from the Peabody Awards, American Film Institute, Writers Guild of America, BET Comedy Awards, and NAACP Image Awards, and the Eisner for creative achievement in American comic books. Barnes shares hard-earned advice from his long career about the importance of discipline, humility, building a moral center, and surviving an industry and world that can overwhelm and corrupt. He also reflects on how a life-and-death health emergency reshaped his views on art, work, relationships, and gratitude. Rodney and Chauncey discuss their mutual love of professional wrestling, Star Wars , and comic books and what shows like Sanford and Son and the other TBS classics of the 1980s taught them as men of a certain vintage. For this Thanksgiving weekend episode, Chauncey DeVega reflects on gratitude in difficult times and reads a story about how Black Civil War soldiers celebrated the holiday. Chauncey is reminded that nobody hates like family as he watches a late-night pre-Thanksgiving verbal brawl and donnybrook between a father and a son at a local business, and issues his annual public service announcement warning about the dangers of physical intimacy and other forms of romance after eating too much food on this (or any other) holiday. And Chauncey DeVega goes to the local cineplex and reviews three new films: Rebuilding , Rental Family , and Eternity . WHERE CAN YOU FIND ME? On Twitter: On Facebook: My email: chaunceydevega@gmail.com HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT THE CHAUNCEY DEVEGA SHOW? Via Paypal at ChaunceyDeVega.com: Patreon:

You can listen to Ep. 441: From The Boondocks to Crownsville: Rodney Barnes Reflects on a Life in Storytelling online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Ep. 441: From The Boondocks to Crownsville: Rodney Barnes Reflects on a Life in Storytelling is an episode from The Chauncey DeVega Show by Chauncey DeVega.

This episode is 01:43:21 long.

This episode was published on Nov 29, 2025.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from The Chauncey DeVega Show when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.