Culture Study Podcast

Spoiler: No, millennials are not the most nostalgic generation — we’re just in a deeply nostalgic moment in our lives, reckoning (sometimes gracefully, other times less so) with no longer being the Main Character in the generational story. But this moment does give us opportunity to talk about the shape and purpose of nostalgia, how YouTube both amplifies and short-circuits it,

The very first episode of this pod was on how clothes got so shitty — and it prompted a whole bunch of you to write in with your questions about how the entire experience of obtaining those clothes became so shitty. Some of it is just what’s going on in the fashion world more broadly (and a continued refusal to believe that anyone larger than a size 12 wants cute, well-made clo

I spent years of my life studying celebrity images and what makes them meaningful to us. A celebrity’s actions or words can make or deepen our connection to them — or they can really piss us off. But why? Is it just a classic case of dashed expectations? What makes, oh, Taylor Swift hanging out with Matty Healy so disappointing? For this episode, I asked celebrity feelings expe

If you grew up in or adjacent to evangelical culture, the sounds of ‘90s and early 2000s Christian Rock are as familiar to you as the beginning bars of Britney Spears “Hit Me Baby One More Time.” The Newsboys, dcTalk, Jars of Clay, Third Day, Jennifer Knapp, Caedmon’s Call — these groups peaked just twenty years ago, but the sound and vibe feels like an archeological find

A platform where you can record what you’re reading and talk to others about what they’re reading doesn’t sound like a recipe for dystopia. But throw in a negligent billionaire conglomerate owner, optimization culture, and a competitive industry in which the line between reader and author is continually blurred… and you have a legitimate book lover’s hellscape. In other w

A listener submitted a question earlier this week that was basically: Why are we talking about Taylor Swift again???? And I get it: if you’re not a fan, if her music is not for you, you too might be tired of the ongoing Taylor Swift Conversation. But I’m ultimately less interested in Taylor Swift herself and more interested in the shape of that conversation: what are we actuall

Who can force a nationwide conversation about musical genre for a whole damn month? Beyoncé can. And I knew I wanted to be several weeks into that discussion — and several weeks into my own relationship with the album — before I dove in myself. I also knew I wanted to talk about it with someone else with a similarly deep and ambivalent relationship with country music: the good

Moms For Liberty sucks. I’m not going to even try to soften that statement, because it’s true: they’re an ideologically regressive organization that is wielding the idea of “parental rights” to censor books, teachers, and instructional materials. They make it much, much harder for educators to do their jobs — and many of the people most involved don’t even have kids i

Driving, attending meetings, hunching over laptops, zooming, commuting, absentmindedly scrolling Instagram — so much of contemporary life encourages if not outright demands that we sit. But study after study (and maybe just your own body) has told you: this much sitting is not great for us. But what are we supposed to do instead? Can we get rid of the junk wellness moralizing (10

As any Pacific Northwest teen from the ‘90s and early 2000s who carted a Nalgene around campus can tell you: WATER BOTTLE CULTURE IS NOT NEW. As pretty much any Grandpa or Boomer Dad can tell you: NEITHER IS STANLEY. But the demand for Stanley Tumblers (and, just as important, the inflated, often misogynistic conversation around it?) That’s (sorta) new. Like everything we talk