9 Broadly Videos to Watch Before The Year Is Over

In Romania and New York, in cahoots with witches and dragons, and in so many other scenarios, we found people with incredibly beautiful, tragic, and/or funny stories that they were willing to share about gender, identity, and culture, and we're thrilled to have spent time with them.

If you find yourself with some downtime this holiday season: Whether you're looking for a distraction or an education, we encourage you to get comfortable, press play, and check out the stories we poured our hearts into this year.

Two years after we met one of the most powerful witches in Romania, Mihaela Minca, we went back to witness the marriage of her son Antonio to his cousin Beatrice, a young witch herself. Catching up with old subjects and getting to see a wedding fit for royalty—and the drama that followed—made this piece particularly unforgettable and fun to watch.

By altering our features, Snapchat filters, Instagram filters, and Facetune allow us to see the most conventionally attractive versions of ourselves, but what happens when you decide to make that image permanent in real life? For this episode of Plastic Planet, our show on all things plastic surgery, we met with two women who underwent cosmetic procedures in order to look more like their altered selfies to see if the procedures succeeded in making them feel better about themselves.

In this episode of The Scarlet Letter Reports—our show where host Amanda Knox talks to prominent women about the deeply personal journey of being sexualized, scrutinized, and demonized by the media—Amanda sits down with Amber Rose to discuss her fight against slut-shaming. This episode, and the series as a whole, made us re-examine the way we viewed these women while the media was vilifying them, as well as acknowledge the strength they needed to rise above it all.

In this Broadly Special, staff writer and host Diana Tourjée spends the day with Eva Tiamat Medusa, a trans woman who modified her body to become a dragon. This video turned out to be a surprisingly emotional watch that showed us what it meant to be human beings, too.

With so many exotic dancing spaces that cater to men, we wanted to meet with the women of City of Doms, a striptease cruise that features both femme and aggressive dancers, to see what exotic dancing looks like when it caters to lesbian women. We follow some of the dancers as they share the ups and downs of their job, and learn that, even though they dance for women, their work isn't entirely free from sexism.

Twenty-six-year-old Meera Dalal had a promising future and a strong career as a hospital liaison officer. That all came to an abrupt halt when she began dating an abusive man. Along with being violent toward her, he would isolate her from friends and family in order to manipulate and control her, a common tactic of abusers. When Dalal finally found the bravery to break up with him, their relationship didn't end. Instead, he began stalking her. On February 15, 2016, Meera died by suicide. We spoke to Meera's friends about how being abused and stalked ultimately contributed to her death.

In this episode of High-Powered Fails, we sat down with actress Gabrielle Union, who told us how she learned to chase her happiness through her divorce from her first husband. "When I did fail, I failed very big and I failed very publicly, and I failed at marriage," she told Broadly. We were surprised and grateful for how honest and open Union was willing to be, making this video one of our favorites this year.

In this piece, we visit Fat Camp, a body-positive camp for fat people that isn't focused on dieting or exercise. Instead, a weekend at Fat Camp is filled with affirmations, self-love practices, and fun outdoor activities. The women in the video, who graciously shared their stories with us, prove why communities like this are so important.

In this sex-ed-focused episode of Broadly Hotline, Queer Eye star Karamo Brown opens up to us about his own personal journey learning to communicate about sex with not only his partners but also himself. "I don't think I got to a place where I understood how to communicate what I needed until I was in maybe my mid-twenties, late-twenties," he says. "I remember feeling obligated to do things that I thought my partner needed. My self-esteem told me, if you don't do what they want, they're not going to want to stay with you."