The Culture Journalist

Jan 30 2025 79 ep. 52 mins 75
The Culture Journalist Podcast artwork

Cathartic conversations about culture in the age of platforms, with Emilie Friedlander and Andrea Domanick

theculturejournalist.substack.com

  Society & Culture  Music
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Do algorithms make culture boring?

Jan 30 2025 8 mins  
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theculturejournalist.substack.comAre algorithms actually making culture boring? It’s easy to point to the Spotifys and Instagrams the world and blame them for what we perceive to be stagnant cultural production, flattened tastes, and generally bad vibes. But, in a recent piece for the Atlantic titled “The Technology

The great Spotify swindle, with Liz Pelly

Jan 24 2025 80 mins  
Let’s take a step back in time to the halcyon days of late 2011, back when a little Swedish music app called Spotify landed in our app stores.Its arrival, alongside the rise of early smartphones and “public square” platforms like Twitter, seemed to herald the utopian ideals of a democratizing tech future just on the horizon. Here was an app that professed to level the playing

A people's history of Zyn

Jan 09 2025 52 mins  
On the surface, Zyn seems like just another post-cigarette nicotine push from Big Tobacco. But look a little closer, and you’ll find that these little white nicotine pouches have taken on an entire life and culture of their own, complete with political connotations, subcultural slang, and even social media “Zynfluencers.” You can count Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and even “J

Reality, fiction, and Luigi Mangione, with Joshua Citarella

Dec 20 2024 69 mins  
No cultural phenomenon — and yes, it’s a phenomenon — has been dominating the discourse more these past few weeks than the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. And in addition to seeming like a dark Hollywood thriller come to life — down to alleged killer Luigi Mangione’s brooding good looks and a literal backpack full of Monopoly money — the story has

How to log off, with Douglas Rushkoff

Dec 05 2024 89 mins  
An AI Agent that can do your shopping for you (or, maybe one day, your job). Driver-less Waymo cars that take you to work. A notetaking app that can attend multiple meetings for you at the same time. These days, it can seem like our obsession with using technology to be more efficient (whatever that really means) has reached a fever pitch.But who’s in control here? The humans usi

How the Dems became the party of the Professional Managerial Class

Nov 15 2024 67 mins  
By now, you’ve all already heard the news: After coming in hot with Brat memes and aligning itself with Wall Street and Liz Cheney, the Kamala Harris campaign suffered a historic and existentially unsettling defeat—delivering America straight into the hands of what the Democrats warned us was the worst outcome possible, which was another four years of Donald Trump. Here to help

So your song has gone viral on TikTok

Oct 31 2024 6 mins  
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theculturejournalist.substack.comWhat’s it like when a song you wrote more than half a decade ago goes viral on TikTok? Well, that’s exactly what happened to Massachusetts indie band Vundabar with their 2015 track “Alien Blues”—to the tune of 83,000 TikTok videos and 600 million Spotify streams. This week, fron

Astra Taylor's age of insecurity

Oct 24 2024 53 mins  
The Culture Journalist is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. After disappearing into a black hole of summertime sadness, inflationary headwinds, and soul searching in Eastern Europe, we are back with a fresh batch of episodes and bonus content, so buckle up.Also, this podcast recently turned four years old. To celebrate, between now and Friday, November 8, we are offe

How a bill to save local journalism turned into a mysterious AI incubator

Aug 30 2024 6 mins  
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theculturejournalist.substack.comToday, we dive into the strange story of the California Journalism Preservation Act, a groundbreaking bill promising to making tech giants like Google and Facebook compensate news organizations with a small portion of the money they bring in when they host stories by California journalist

Tomorrow's music today, with Simon Reynolds

Aug 15 2024 6 mins  
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theculturejournalist.substack.comWhat can electronic music tell us about our past, present, and future? Today, we take a walk through the annals of electronic music history with Simon Reynolds, one of our music critic heroes and author of a new book called Futuromania: Electronic Dreams, Desiring Machines, and Tomorrow�