Culture Study Podcast

Jan 29 2025 59 ep. 51 mins 645

Culture Study Podcast artwork

A podcast about the culture that surrounds you — with Anne Helen Petersen and a bunch of very smart co-hosts

culturestudypod.substack.com

Society & Culture Arts

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Reclaiming "Self-Care" from the Brands

Jan 29 2025 48 mins

We’re at the point where we know a b******t 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. Poo

Who Gets To Ski?

Jan 22 2025 58 mins

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 las

The Wild and Banal Future of Celebrity Gossip

Jan 15 2025 56 mins

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 —

How Did Thrifting Get So Bad?

Jan 08 2025 52 mins

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 th

The Rise of Therapy Speak

Jan 01 2025 51 mins

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

All Your Questions About The Weird World of Kids' Toys

Dec 18 2024 43 mins

As an Registered Auntie, I get to watch kids’ toy trends from the backseat. I’ve bought annoying things (sorry, parent friends) and learned how to play new things (Beyblades, I rule) and passed down precious things (all of my My Little Ponies from the ‘80s). We could talk forever about the merits of various toys, past and present, but your listener questions this week underli

The Expansive World of Queer Romance

Dec 11 2024 54 mins

Sometimes we do episodes where I know a fair amount about the subject and end up on a three minute digression about picture palaces. And sometimes I’ve only started to learn about a topic — or read within a genre — and am absolutely thrilled to spend an hour listening to someone else’s expertise. That’s what we’re doing today with queer romance writer Adib Khorram: tack

WTF is Going On With That Clothing Brand

Dec 04 2024 56 mins

What is Quince and why is it everywhere? Who is running Albion Fit? Who buys clothes at Altar’d State? Why is Madewell so sad? This is an explainer episode, but it’s also a brands-feelings processing episode, because any time millennials try and talk about how J.Crew or Madewell has changed, they’re also talking about how their own feelings about fashion have changed. And no

Why Is It So Hard to Make a Good Blockbuster?

Nov 27 2024 70 mins

Sometimes I forget just how many classes I took on the history of cinema — or that I used to teach a class on it! — but then I have a conversation like the one you’re about to listen to and remember: oh right, I am a huge film history dork. This episode, featuring the brilliant Hannah McGregor, travels all over the past, present, and future of the blockbuster, from the theory

Nicole Kidman's Resting Rich Face

Nov 20 2024 54 mins

I could talk about Nicole Kidman for hours. Very few Hollywood actors have had careers this varied, this delightful, this weird — oh, and she’s also been married to Tom Cruise. She manages to be both chronically underestimated and overrated, and she’s recently found herself in a slew of roles where she embodies a slew of different rich white ladies, each miserable in their ow