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FIRST THINGS FIRST: IF YOU NEED HELP ADDING YOUR SUBSCRIBER-ONLY FEED TO YOUR PODCAST PLAYER, JUST CLICK HERE ! 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 friendships, and I'm thrilled to have Pulitzer Prize winner Andrew Sean Greer on the pod to talk ab...
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 excellent job of handling of storylines involving sexual assault and physical abuse?? A wonder, trul...
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 add a solid half dozen books to your TBR list. Thanks to the sponsors of today's episode: Go to https...
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 different person, or at least a better, more likable one. I thought I was a camp person. But when I r...
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 too much (or not enough)... gossip is a primary means of making sense of the world, and we should all ...
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-and-coming (and old school and tired) momfluencers managing politics, MAHA, privacy, and the consta...
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 you feel like you should keep (but definitely don't want to, or have space to). Professional organi...
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 to watch/listen/read/whatever). This month, we're talking about Season Two of The Pitt, which also me...
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 so much shit about weddings (going to them, paying for them, planning them) why don't we just get ma...
Hosts discuss the surprising nostalgia for 2007-2008, an era paradoxically marked by both economic optimism and looming crisis. They delve into how factors like Obama's election fostered hope, Brooklyn's evolving cultural and economic landscape, and the impact of rising costs and technology on community and social interaction. The conversation also examines the origins of millennial hustle culture and Gen Z's emerging rejection of disembodied work, seeking a new path forward.
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're freeloaders? And what about billionaires bragging about not paying taxes? So many of you have aske...
Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez, author of "Conversion Therapy Dropout," shares his eight-year ordeal with conversion practices, revealing the psychological damage and the fear of damnation that kept him trapped. The episode discusses the current political and legal landscape surrounding conversion therapy, its rebranding, and its continued targeting of LGBTQ+ youth, particularly trans individuals. Timothy offers critical advice on identifying harmful therapy and outlines strategies for allies to support queer youth in unaffirming environments.
Anne Helen Petersen and Austin Frerick delve into the complex world of chain restaurants, discussing how food distribution giants like Sysco standardize taste and how private equity degrades quality through acquisition. They explore the rise of new chain concepts, the decline of old favorites, and the emotional connection people have to their dining experiences. The conversation also touches on the need for regulatory guardrails and a more balanced, sustainable food system.
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 Guardian and author of a stunning new book on the history of Nintendo, is here to field all your qu...
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. (Melody fans will also appreciate her appearances in this episode touting bottomless Duff knowled...
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 to have fewer cars on the road. So here's what I absolutely loved about this conversation: we talk...
Author Cat Sebastian discusses her journey and craft in writing queer historical romance, touching on her new contemporary sci-fi book, "Starshipped." She shares insights into balancing plot with "vibes," the importance of personally engaging with historical settings, and how themes organically emerge in her work. The episode also explores the evolution of the genre, the empowering nature of queer happy endings as a form of resistance, and the nuances of the author-editor relationship, offering a comprehensive look at the world of queer storytelling.
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 and specific requests parents bring to her as a naming consultant. It's all fascinating — and I can't ...
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 casting, the 2005 Pride & Prejudice , and whether director Emerald Fennell is enough of a perv...
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 conversations have been pretty, well, serious . But not having kids can be many things. More specifica...
Linguist Colin Gorrie joins Anne Helen Petersen to uncover the hidden histories within English words, from the quirks of "it is raining" to the origins of "weird" and "yacht." They discuss how factors like sound changes, French influence, and societal shifts have contributed to English's unique spelling and pronunciation, offering a captivating look at linguistic evolution.
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 many of these women's health start-ups give us the ick ... and also answer all your questions about ...
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 and production flows and vocal health... but it's also a conversation about how we conceive of an...
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 navigate online spaces: in the way you craft your profile on LinkedIn, in your font choice for a pi...
"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 got a ton of questions asking us to also consider people who weren't parents in their 30s and 40s, ...
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 has historically functioned (and why it no longer functions that way) could lead us to something th...
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 been asking for a hobby episode for years, so for the New Year, we asked two great hobbyists — Doree S...
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 spoil them for you other than to say if you need a little very low stakes delight in your life right ...
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 Daughters a means to communicate their (sometimes contradictory) feelings about their familial and...
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 many of the Korean narratives resonating with American audiences are ones crafted by Korean-America...
