Culture Study Podcast
A podcast about the culture that surrounds you — with Anne Helen Petersen and a bunch of very smart co-hosts.
Episodes
What Made Our Boomer Moms... Like This?
We love our boomer moms. And our boomer moms are complicated. When Tracy Clark-Flory first told me about her memoir — in which she discovers the half-sister her mother had at age 19, and was forced to give up for adoption — I immediately thought about how so many of our boomer moms' choices were limited in ways we struggle to imagine. No matter how feminist their current politics may be, it doesn
RF Kuang Answers Your Questions About Dark Academia
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Dark Academia is a literary genre. Dark Academia is an aesthetic. Dark Academia is a fantasy space. Or maybe Dark Academia is kind of a overgeneralizing label that few authors actually embrace. That's what R.F. Kuang, author of Babel and Katabasis thinks — and having her on the pod to ta
Intergenerational Friendships Rule
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When people around my age tell me that no one else their age has time to hang out, I have a go-to response: you need intergenerational friends! Older friends, younger friends, friends at a different (and often more flexible) life stage than you — it rules. I cherish my intergenerational
BONUS EPISODE: Is Off Campus the Corniest New Show on Television... or The Hottest? [preview]
Bonus eps are when we go deep on a cultural phenomenon, text, or celebrity that's overwhelming our feeds, charming our pants off, or sparking general bewilderment. Off Campus does all three! It's a new, eight-episode hockey romance now airing on Amazon and it manages to be intermittently corny, incredibly hot, ostensibly very straight (but arguably made for the bisexual-gaze) and... does a pretty
Dozens of Irish Books for Your Summer Reading (with Maggie O’Farrell)!
I LOVE IRISH LITERATURE. And like so many of you, I love the work of Maggie O'Farrell – so when I heard her new book was very Irish (set in the aftermath of The Great Hunger in the late 19th century) I wondered if she'd be willing to come on the pod to do one of our favorite things here on Culture Study: offer very specific book recommendations. Stay tuned for a delightful conversation that will
The Future of Summer Camp, Post-Camp Mystic
I grew up going to all manner of camps: church camp, science camp, French camp, cheerleading camp... if there was a way for me to be away from home (and have a fun packing list), I took it. I loved the freedoms and rituals of camp, the goofy, cool counselors who felt like visions of my potential future, and the cachet that accumulated with each passing summer. Camp was a place where I could be a
A Big Juicy Gossip Episode
This episode is juicy, and it does have gossip — but I admit that it's actually less about specific juicy gossip and more about why we love juicy gossip... gossip about celebrities, gossip about extended family, gossip about our coworkers and frenemies and reality stars and even random people involved in high drama. We love reading gossip, whispering gossip, talking shit about people who gossip t
Checking In On The Momfluencers
This one's a classic Culture Study ep. We've got a return Culture Study guest, Sara Petersen, talking about a recurring Culture Study topic: WTF is going on with the momfluencers? Because when we talk about momfluencers, we're obviously also always talking about the ways we want motherhood to be performed in public... and how we also want/crave/need to police that performance. How are today's up-
What Do We Do With All This STUFF??
This episode is just satisfying. I've heard from so many of you about how to deal with accumulated stuff. Not just accumulated linens, or too many hair products, but stuff with emotions attached: stuff that's been directed your way (with great import) from relatives, stuff you're trying to sift through when a parent died unexpectedly, or just artifacts from the last few decades of your life that
SPECIAL BONUS EPISODE: Late to The Pitt Party [preview]
In today's BIG MARGARET ANNOUNCEMENT, we mentioned that we'll be doing (consistent) monthly bonus episodes from here on out — and here's the first one! It's part of an ongoing series that we're either calling 1) Late to the Party or 2) Cool Takes, in which we arrive a few weeks late to whatever cultural text is dominating the discourse (because that's when most of us have actually found the time t
The Content-ification of Wedding Culture
Weddings are such a rich text. Maybe the richest text? At least how they're performed today, at the intersection of conspicuous consumption and cultural capital. What do your wedding favors say about you? What about your cell-phone policy? The number of times you post your wedding photos? If you have three separate wedding outfits, is that extra? But is just one... not enough? And if people talk
What's With All The Nostalgia For 2008?
When we wax poetic about the wonders of 2007 and 2008... what are we actually yearning for? Serendipity? Hope? The as-yet uncompromised belief that the arc of history bends toward justice? Or maybe just... a world without smartphones? Atlantic writer and bestselling novelist Xochitl Gonzalez joins the pod to talk about what it felt like to be at the epicenter of 2007/2008 nostalgia, and how it cr
A Compelling Conversation about The Morality of Taxes (Especially Right Now)
Did you see the stat from last week that the U.S. could've fully funded universal daycare for two million children... using the money spent on the War on Iran (only leading up to the ceasefire)? Do you look at the billions spent on ICE enforcement and think: my federal taxes are funding this? Are you super annoyed that only the rich get praised for "tax loopholes" — while the poor get told they'r
Surviving Eight Years of Conversion Therapy
When we recorded this episode two weeks ago, we knew that the Supreme Court was planning on releasing a judgment in Chiles v. Salazar — to decide whether Colorado’s law banning conversion therapy (which is similar to laws in 22 other states) likely violated the First Amendment. We thought the decision might come in June. But it fell last week like a hammer, and has the potential to undo years of a
The Fascinating Future of the Chain Restaurant
The future of the chain restaurant is... chicken? I learned so much from this conversation with food systems (and chain restaurant) expert Austin Frerick — from how Sysco maintains its restaurant supremacy (and what Sysco "tastes" like) to which chain restaurants have significantly changed in quality (Wendy's) and are on the verge of extinction (also Wendy's). Did you know what makes a chain resta
Falling in Love with Video Games as an Adult
Did you get into gaming as an adult? Did you come back to gaming as an adult? Or, like me, did you savage people on Bubble Bobble in the early '90s... and are trying to figure out how to reproduce that feeling as an adult? Or maybe you're gaming-curious... but can't shake the feeling that gaming is a waste of time (and/or associate it with POS ex-boyfriends). Keza MacDonald, gaming critic for The
Hilary Duff's Irresistible Millennial Mom Image
It's the second coming of Hilary Duff... but real ones know she never went anywhere. This week we're so lucky to have Allie Jones — author of the superb Gossip Time newsletter and Hilary Duff superfan — on the show to answer all your questions about how Duff managed to avoid her peers' timeline, her professionalism, her relatable lack of stage presence, and the crafting of her millennial mom image
Finally a Conversation About a Car-Less Future That Won't Make You Feel Like Crap
Free Yourself from the Tyranny of the Automobile!! That's the subtitle of the new book Life After Cars, written by the hosts of the popular podcast "War On Cars." And listen, I am 100% on board: this quasi-hippy spent most of her 20s trekking around college towns on a crappy commuter bike. But like a lot of you, I also live in a place where the infrastructure has refused to catch up to my desire t
Just Trust Us on This Queer Historical Romance Ep, It Rules
When I first came up for the idea for the Culture Study Romance Book Club back in January, I knew I wanted every edition to have two books: one contemporary, and one historical. Part of this desire was selfish (I personally gravitate towards historicals) but I also wanted to explore the contrast between what you can do with a romance set in the past (with its particular confines) and one set in th
The Sociology of Baby Names
Baby names are in inexhaustible cultural text. They're a way to talk about class, race, and gender, of course — but also the way we perform familial respect and coherence. In this episode, sociologist Hannah Emery — who wrote her dissertation on baby names — joins us to talk about the history of baby names, how naming conventions and aspirations have changed over the last century, and the broad an
[PREVIEW] SPECIAL BONUS EPISODE: Wuthering Heights Teenage Feeling Edition
Unstructured conversation! Teenage Feelings! Flesh walls! Abjection! Jacob Elordi's Jacob Elordi-ness! Arguments about the purpose of adaptation! THE GREAT AND VERY SMART MARGARET WILLISON! This bonus episode's got it all. So listen on as three English Majors with various levels of affection for the source text talk about horny aspic, the melodramatic imagination, Romeo + Juliet, pseudo race-blind
A Very Funny Episode About Being a "Childless Freak"
I've written a bunch of mildly serious stuff about having BIG NO-KIDS ENERGY. I've talked with so many others — and published interviews with them! — about how they've negotiated conversations with others about not having kids, leaned in to the expansiveness of their no-kids lives, and figured out their own life priorities when they're not what society tells you they should be. But all of these co
The Ridiculously Interesting History of Weird English Words
Why is weird spelled like that? Why is yacht pronounced like that? Why is a firefighter a person who fights fires... but a pickpocket is neither a pick nor a pocket? We're so lucky to have linguist Colin Gorrie on the pod to talk about the "disaster" of English spelling and the history you can unearth in pretty much every English word. This one's such a nerdy delight — if you found yourself enrapt
The Heartbreaking (and Largely Unregulated) Business of IVF
What happens when the "move fast and break things" start-up philosophy comes for infertility treatments? Exactly what you'd expect: cut corners, bad service, aesthetically pleasing offices that can't seem to stop churning staff, upsells backed by dubious science, and more. This week, journalist Jackie Davalos joins the pod to talk about her reporting on IVF start-up Kindbody, breaking down why so
How an Audiobook Gets Made (with Julia Whelan!)
How does an audiobook narrator know how to pronounce everything? Do they have editors? How many books can they do a year? What differentiates the live voice from AI — and how do they get paid (vs. how should they get paid)? And why are so many beloved books read by Julia Whelan? WELP, FRIENDS, GOOD NEWS, WE GOT JULIA WHELAN TO COME ANSWER ALL THESE QUESTIONS. This is a conversation about mechanics
Is Everyone an Influencer Now?
If you don't make your living creating content online, you probably think of yourself as the furthest thing from an influencer — a designation that has developed the same slightly dirty connotation as being a celebrity, especially a celebrity like Paris Hilton, back in the 1990s. But influencers have cultivated and refined a mode of existing online that has filtered down into the way so many of us
Let's Collectively Fantasize About a Family-Friendly Society
"Family-friendly society" sounds SO BORING but listen: it's what we all want. It's what singles and elders want, it's what parents and partnered people without kids want, it's what KIDS WANT. A society that takes all of us — and our needs and capacities — seriously?? That considers all of us, in whatever scenario we find ourselves, AS A FAMILY? When we announced that we were doing this episode, we
How Did Dating Get THIS Difficult?
This episode is the result of years of listener requests: how did dating get SO bad, and how can we possibly make it better? Melody and I have been out of the dating game for a hot minute, but we knew that the combination of your excellent questions + an excellent co-host [Jonquilyn Hill, host of Vox's Explain It All who is, importantly, currently dating] + sociological discussion of how dating ha
What's So Great About a Freaking Hobby?
Is there something in your life that you do — with some sort of regularity, and without direct compensation — that you find tremendously satisfying? Something you do just because you like it? CONGRATS, YOU HAVE A HOBBY. And here at Culture Study, we love to talk about hobbies — how to find them, how to keep them, and how to deal with the seemingly ceaseless push to monetize them. Listeners have be
Bonus Episode: AHP + Melody's Super Weird Best of 2026 [PREVIEW]
It's BONUS EPISODE TIME! While everyone else is listing their favorite movies and albums and television shows in their end-of-year wrap-ups, Melody and I opted to make up random (but wonderful) categories and force the other person to come up answers. Favorite Internet Dog! TikTok that made you cry! Best Practical Thing You Bought Yourself + Best Extravagant Thing! There's a lot more but I won't s
What's With All This Eldest Daughter Discourse?
I don't remember when I first noticed Eldest Daughter content popping up in my various social media feeds, but like so many millennials, I loved a meme that seemed to REALLY SEE ME. Why yes, I am a consummate planner who somehow holds at least six people's yearly calendars in my head at once! Why yes, I am a perfectionist! WHY YES, I AM AN ELDEST DAUGHTER!Does Eldest Daughter discourse give Eldest
What's Behind All The BIG KOREAN POP CULTURE ENERGY
Sometimes I wish I could just have the intro paragraph to an episode be GAAHHHHHHH THIS ONE WAS SO FUN! So this is my version of that: telling you that I wish it could be that, and then also telling you that we go deep on so many components of the global spread (and embrace) of Korean pop culture. We go into the calculated political elements, the uncanny elision of North Korean stories, and why so
How to Fall in Love with Birding
Do you need an episode that's the equivalent of a big, deep, inhale and exhale? GREAT NEWS, TEAM, WE HAVE THE EPISODE FOR YOU. Journalist and urban birder Ryan Goldberg joins me to talk about the recent spike of interest in birding (particularly amongst young people), but we go a lot deeper than "wow seems like millennials are taking up old people hobbies." We talk about the intergenerational magi
What It's Actually Like to Run a Small (Creative) Business
When I went freelance full-time to write Culture Study, I had no idea what I was doing. NONE. It took me several years — and encouragement from my accountant and other writers — to begin thinking of what I was doing as a small business. And it took me several years after that to understand how small businesses, especially small creative businesses, have to figure out strategies to fend off burnout
Tracing Cultural Panics with Sarah Marshall (!!!)
What is it about a particular cultural object — or trend, or perceived trend — that makes people FREAK THE F OUT? Anyone who's looked at historical freakouts knows: it's never really about the thing itself, but more about ideologies that are under threat and in flux. If you challenge the status quo, in other words, there's a high likelihood that you could get swept up in a panic about something th
A Very Smart Conversation About Fantasy (and Romance) with Leigh Bardugo
If you're a paid subscriber and haven't yet set up your subscriber RSS feed in your podcast player, here's the EXTREMELY easy how-to .And if you're having any other issues with your Patreon subscription — please get in touch! Email me at annehelenpetersen @ gmail OR submit a request to Patreon Support. Thank you for making the switch with us — the podcast in particular is much more at home here!I
Love is Blind as a Cultural Skeleton Key
If you're a paid subscriber and haven't yet set up your subscriber RSS feed in your podcast player, here's the EXTREMELY easy how-to .And if you're having any other issues with your Patreon subscription — please get in touch! Email me at annehelenpetersen @ gmail OR submit a request to Patreon Support. Thank you for making the switch with us — the podcast in particular is much more at home here! I
What It's Like to Grow Up With Hoarders
People are fascinated by hoarding culture — in part because it presents a reality that's not that distant from our current accumulation habits. Like, turn one screw in my brain slightly more to the left, and my dahlia collecting habit becomes something that's widely understood as a social problem. When I heard about Amanda Uhle's Destroy This House, a memoir of growing up in a hoarding household,
The Outdoor Gearification of the American Wardrobe
I can’t tell you how excited I am about this one: Avery Trufelman, host of the beloved podcast Articles of Interest, is here to talk all things OUTDOOR GEAR. More specifically: how so much of our everyday clothing became gear adjacent, what the military has to do with all of this (everything), why outdoor clothes still don’t come in plus sizes, gear as Tech Bro status symbol, and SO MUCH MORE. Thi
How the Manosphere Fuels Climate Change Denial
What does masculinity have to do with climate change denial? F-ing everything! Daniel Penny, host of the new Drilled podcast Carbon Bros, joins me to answer all of your questions about how the Manosphere and its ideologies of dominion, virility, control, and anti-wokeness collide with climate change narratives. We talk about petro-masculinity, of course, but also how environmentalism became “femin
Let's Talk About Baseball Culture!!!
FIRST OFF — PLEASE TAKE OUR MEMBERSHIP SURVEY!!The podcast only works because of your questions (and episode ideas!) and we want more of them (and your ideas about bonus episodes, pricing, etc.) It’ll take five minutes tops, and really helps us figure out the future of the entire Culture Study extended universe. Thank you ahead of time, and just click here to take it.Baseball is so romantic!! Ther
Why Other People's Screen Time Annoys You
Maybe your mom endlessly scrolls Facebook every time you visit. Maybe your kid has to be asked six times to get off his tablet. Maybe your friend is always checking Instagram when you’re out to dinner. Maybe your partner keeps checking their phone while you’re watching a movie together. Or maybe you find yourself doing all the things you find SO ANNOYING when others do them — and know these behavi
Who Gets a Mid-Life Reinvention?
By the mid-2010s, Jen Hatmaker had become one of the most important voices in white Evangelical culture. She had multiple best-selling books; she headlined massive women’s retreats; she was an influencer before we really even used that term. But then she broke with Evangelical doctrine when it came to LGBTQ people… and everything fell apart. More accurately, they started to fall apart — because th
Figuring Out What's Behind Seven Recent Food Trends
I love talking about food as culture — and like all parts of culture, food has trends that ebb and flow. We asked you to provide us with food trends you’ve noticed (and/or confuse you) — and then we asked the great Evan Kleiman (chef, cookbook author, and longtime host of KCRW’s Good Food) to come unwind them with us. Want to know what it takes for a dish to show up at every corporate catering eve
How Algorithms Are Changing the Way We Speak
This one’s a weird one! But it’s also going to elucidate a bunch of bewildering phrases that you might have noticed popping up in advertisements or in teens’ conversations. Adam Aleksic runs the incredibly popular TikTok/IG/YouTube account Etymology Nerd, where he breaks down how new phrases and memes travel across the internet. Today, we’re talking to him about the way these phrases also make the
One Gwyneth Episode to Rule Them All
There aren’t many contemporary celebrities with images layered enough that I could talk about them all day. But Gwyneth? She’s one of them. She’s it. She’s never pretended to be “just like us,” which is part of what makes her beguiling — and infuriating. She knows exactly what she’s doing, and sometimes what she’s doing is trying to get a bunch of people to talk about jade eggs you put in your vag
Dozens of New-To-You Books for Your TBR Pile
Over on the newsletter, our book concierge threads — when people ask for specific book recommendations, and readers then offer their suggestions — regularly top 1500 comments. We wanted to bring the same energy to the podcast, and Maris Kreizman, author of The Maris Review and I Want To Burn This Place Down, reads more (and more widely) than anyone else I know. I promise: you’ll leave this episode
Don't Mess With Texas Culture
Texas Culture is at least a dozen cultures smashed into one enormous state — with a whopping 254 counties, four sprawling metro areas, 1255 miles of border with Mexico, the best breakfast item in the United States (fight me) and the best grocery store chain (fight me again). I needed a co-host who was up to the task — and, like all of our other regional-specific episodes, loves the place they’re f
The Potent Ideological Stew of Evangelical Church Camp
I first read about Cara Meredith’s book on evangelical church camp over at Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s newsletter, and as soon as I saw “cry night” in the subtitle, I knew any conversation with her was gonna be a real one. Put differently, I knew she was ready to talk about what drew people to these camps — but also how they worked to deftly manipulate the young people who attended them. I went to chur
The Ridiculously Interesting World of American Accents
When your family is from a place with a distinctive, often-mockable accent, and you don’t have that accent but can (and do) readily fall into it as soon as you get around anyone who does their vowels like a Minnesotan, you learn to love accents. And then, as soon as you take any class (or read any text) in the anthropology/sociology/cultural analysis realm, you start thinking about accents as sign
All the Ways We Surveil Motherhood
When I first heard about Hannah Zeavin’s new book, Mother Media: Hot and Cool Parenting in the Twentieth Century, I knew it Culture Study material. Historicizing the intersection between tech and motherhood (and how surveillance affects mothers and changes parenting norms which leads to more surveillance)… that’s some Culture Study shit. I’m thrilled that Hannah Zeavin — whose work so compellingly
All the Latest Book & Publishing Trends, Explained
This is an audience of people who love books — and people who have thoughts about the culture around books. Book clubs, BookTok, the popularization of book genres, special editions, the way other people talk about us reading — there’s endless fodder for discussion and analysis. I’m thrilled to have Alyssa Morris, one of the sharpest observers of contemporary book culture, back on the pod to answer
Why is Montana So in Love With Itself?
Montana’s unofficial tagline is “the last best place” — which should tell you something about the way the state thinks about itself. It’s a political frankenstein, incredibly beautiful, increasingly filled with tourists, and a twelve-hour drive from one corner of the state to the other. Oh, and just over a million people total live there. Including Chris La Tray, who’s just finishing his tenure as
Why Is Katy Perry So Embarrassing?
At some point in late April, near the apex of the memes and jokes and ridicule of Katy Perry’s recent “women’s empowerment” trip to space, Melody and I wondered: is it even worth doing a Katy Perry episode? Do we have anything to say, other than wow, all of this — the new album, the tour visuals, the trip to SPACE, is hilariously bad? But then we asked Zach Stafford if he had anything to say, and
Why Are Men's Clothes All Earth Tones
Why do men wear shirts under their shirts? Are you forever doomed to wear the same clothes as your 32-year-old self? Why isn’t male fashion more fun? Why are all these moms still buying clothes for their adult children? WHY IS EVERYTHING IN EARTH TONES? This week we welcome Jason Diamond to the show to answer all these questions — with side trips into slutty dad jorts, aspirational dad fashion, th
How Private Equity Destroys the Companies You Depend On
Chances are high that you’ve heard about the way that “private equity” has acquired, hollowed out, and bankrupted some service, product, or company you depend on. For years, I understood the work of private equity only in the vaguest terms — that it was bad, and that it f*cked stuff up. I had to learn a lot more when I was writing Can’t Even, because private equity acquisitions are one of many rea
Let's Unpack Some Intensive Parenting Trends (In a Way That Will Not Make You Feel Like Crap)
People often ask me why I care so much about parenting when I am not, myself, a parent. This question is always so weird to me — of course I care about parenting norms, because I’m surrounded by parents! The choices that parents make (in the voting booth, as consumers, as community members, as friends) have so many direct and indirect effects on my life and everyone’s lives. Plus I’m always intere
How 2000s Culture Messed Us Up
Is it weird that I really love talking about all the ways the formative culture of my teens screwed me up? Maybe it’s just cathartic — talking with someone else who’s spent time in the postfeminist ideological trenches, trying to unpack all of the contradictory messaging about who we should be and how we should act. Sophie Gilbert has been deep in that muck for years writing her new book, Girl on
What is SoCal Culture?
For each of these culture-of-place episodes, we look for someone who both adores a place, are very much a product of that place… and are also very much at home talking shit about that place. They see its difficulties, drawbacks, and hostilities clearly — and can hold all of that alongside their deep and abiding love for the place. And that’s Gustavo Arellano, who’s been writing about SoCal culture
Everything We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Periods
This isn’t a bleak episode about period pain. Yes, we talk a LOT about death cramps — and all sorts of other symptoms that accompany menstruation. But we also talk a lot about how ridiculous it is that we don’t talk about these things — at least not publicly, and often not even with our close friends and family members. Kate Helen Downey, host of the incredible new podcast Cramped, joins me to tal
The Backyard Chicken Glamour Campaign
Tove Danovich is the person to talk to about raising backyard chickens — at least if you want to talk about the culture and discourse swirling around raising backyard chickens. When the current administration started messaging that everyone should consider countering rising egg prices by raising some chickens in their backyard, Tove and I wanted to do an episode about what people are really talkin
Unlocking the Allure of Tate McRae
Tate McRae is one of the most popular artists in the world — but millions of my peers have only the faintest idea of who she is. Alternately, they’re baffled by her. Is she Britney rebooted? Is she talented? What does she mean? Does it matter? After listening to Reanna Cruz guide listeners through McRae’s sound on Switched on Pop, I knew I wanted them to come on the show and work through more of M
Boston Culture with Josh Gondelman
Here at Culture Study we’re launching a new series on culture of place — it could be a state, a region, a city, so long as it has place-ness. The first in the series features Josh Gondelman, one of the place-iest comedians I know, and exactly what we’re looking for when it comes to co-hosts in this series: people who love a place dearly, who are deeply intimate with its peccadilloes, but who can a
Complicating the Plastic Surgery Conversation
So many of you have been asking for an episode on plastic surgery culture for so long — but I knew I couldn’t do it until I had the perfect co-host. Someone deeply familiar with the allure and contradictions that infuse the world of plastic surgery… but also conversant in plastic surgery as a form of gender and class performance. I needed Arabelle Sicardi — and was so thrilled when they agreed to
The Immersive Joy of Fan Fiction
Whether you’ve been deep in the fanfic world for years or have only heard others talk about it — we’ve worked really hard to make this episode for all of you. Yes, you might have to hear someone define what slash is (very useful for newbies!) but then we go deep on how fanfic is influencing genres, general fanfic mainstreamification, how and why AU (alternative universe) fics work more or less eff
How a Cookbook Gets Made
This is such a delight of an episode! We’ve been wanting to do a big cookbook conversation since the start of the podcast, and when America’s Test Kitchen emailed to see if we’d be interested in talking to Sarah Ahn about Umma— the cookbook she put together with her mom (!!!) documenting the Korean recipes that have defined her past and present life— we were thrilled. We just wanted one more layer
WTF is Spiritual Care for the Non-Religious?
It feels weird to call yourself a “None,” but according to demographers, that’s what I am: one of millions of Americans who understand themselves as “religiously unaffiliated.” That means atheists, agnostics, and people who answer “nothing in particular” when asked if they practice a religion. Today, Nones make up 28% of the U.S. population — up from 16% in 2007. But just because you’re religiousl
Does Running Culture Suck?
Why does every person who runs marathon want to convince you that you too could run one? What makes running clubs so intimidating? When people get into running, why can’t they shut the hell up about it? I’ve asked avowed non-marathoner Raziq Rauf, author of the newsletter Running Sucks, to help address all of your running culture related questions. Yes, we’re both runners; but we’re also both runn
Figuring Out How To Feel About 'With Love, Meghan'
When With Love, Meghan — the Netflix lifestyle show starring Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex — first came out, I knew the only way I wanted to even touch that discourse was by talking about the show, as a show. How does it conform to or reject our understanding of what a lifestyle program should look it? What’s Meghan’s twist? And what’s going on with the (predictably) weird way I knew people wou
The Irishification of Pop Culture
This all started with my desire to do a Paul Mescal episode. A listener suggested we ask Caroline O’Donoghue — author of The Rachel Incident, host of Sentimental Garbage, noted Irish person — to be co-host. We reached out, and (gasp!) she responded that she didn’t actually know that much about Paul… but would be more than happy to do an episode about the “Irishification of pop culture.” Since my i
The Feminist Playground of Historical Romance
If you’re a historical romance person, all I need to say is: Sarah MacLean is here, and she is answering all the questions. If you’re not a historical romance person, I’ll spell it out a little more: Sarah MacLean is one of the most popular writers of historical romance today — and she’s also the cohost of the incredibly popular podcast Fated Mates. She’s a very good pod conversationalist, which i
The Enduring Myths of Budget Culture
Last month, I published an interview in the newsletter with Dana Miranda about “budget culture” — and it became one of the most popular (and discussed) interviews I’ve done since I first launched the newsletter. At the time, I asked for questions for Dana about specific myths of budget culture for us to unpack. We got dozens of those — plus a bunch of compelling follow-up questions, like “what’s t
Approximately 72 Old Movies to Fall In Love With
I love old movies — but I didn’t always! In fact, I needed many years of directed classwork to fall in love with them. But if you’re not in the mood to pause your life and take on significant graduate debt, THERE ARE STILL OPTIONS, and Margaret H. Willison and I are here to offer them. In this episode, we offer specific suggestions to listeners based on short lists of their (recent) film favs, tal
The Heart of Dad Culture
What makes something Dad? Is it pleated Dockers? A worn baseball cap? Asking (again) if you’ve checked your oil? Incompetency in the domestic sphere paired with competency outside of it? I’ve long loved thinking through both the serious and the ridiculous of Dad Culture, and for today’s episode, we have an actual scholar of it (Phil Maciak, currently hard at work on a Dad Culture book) to unpack t
Fake, Real, Imagined, & Projected CELEBRITY FEUDS!!!
I know a lot about historic Hollywood feuds. I could do an entire episode just on the magazine covers featuring Elizabeth Taylor, Eddie Fisher, and Debbie Reynolds circa 1959. But to do any episode on Celebrity Feuds right — particularly one that airs just days before Kendrick Lamar performs at the Super Bowl — I knew I needed a different sort of celebrity feud expert. When Joel Anderson, host of
Reclaiming "Self-Care" from the Brands
We’re at the point where we know a bullshit attempt to commodify our burnout when we see it. No one’s buying the self-care spiel the bath bomb companies are selling us. But the rhetoric of self-care has crept into the workplace, family dynamics, and TikTok therapy speak, usually divorced from any critique of the systems that make self-care feel necessary in the first place. Pooja Lakshmin MD, auth
Who Gets To Ski?
I grew up skiing at a mid-size mountain in the middle of Idaho. I wasn’t ever an athletic kid, but skiing — it made me feel fast and really good at something. I loved it: the routine, the long slog to the mountain, the Cup of Soup for lunch, the crappy hotels, the freedom. But the ski culture that I grew up with is largely gone, at least in the U.S. — and I’ve spent the last few years coming to te
The Wild and Banal Future of Celebrity Gossip
Let me start with this: this is a dream interview. If, like me, you spent a lot of time in the 2000s and 2010s reading about celebrity online, Go Fug Yourself was an essential part of your online diet. Heather and Jessica were simply unrivaled when it came to celebrity fashion in general and red carpet fashion in particular. I idolized them the same way I idolized Lainey Gossip — both of whom I re
How Did Thrifting Get So Bad?
Thrifting has a smell, but it also has a feel. For me, the feel is of thick, almost indestructible rayon weaves; of dense, mothbally wool; of slick, ancient crinoline; of stiff and generously cut denim. It was the feel of handstitching on a dress made from a pattern, or a cracked logo on a company picnic shirt from 1975. It was not the feel of shopping at Forever 21, even though the prices were ap
The Rise of Therapy Speak
No matter where you spend your time, online or off, you’ve encountered some form of therapy speak. Maybe it comes from a friend who loves processing their therapy with others; maybe it suffuses your TikTok FYP; maybe your friends or family members have been using it to try and describe how they’re trying to foster and maintain healthy relationships; or maybe you’ve just been keeping up on the late
