AfterMASH

The episode on America’s Obsession with Exceptionalism took two takes because naturally I (Zoë) was stuck in the trees. There were some gems in there that I wanted to share. The editing is not good. But you’re welcome. ~ Zoë Get full access to AfterMASH at aftermash.substack.com/subscribe

I have been thinking about this episode for a long time. In 2025, I read Alyson Stoner’s memoir, Semi-Well Adjusted, Despite Literally Everything . Earlier this year, I read Mary Cain's memoir, This is Not About Running . These two beautiful and heartbreaking accounts scratched at the part of my brain that was wired to seek well-roundedness — that need to round out the resume that I have been prim...

Dancer turned powerlifter, Emily Socolinsky, joins Jackie and Zoe to discuss her incredible career. Her story is at once very relatable and also incredibly powerful. In this episode, Emily talks about her young adulthood as a dancer and teacher, her back spasms and years of pain and how frustrating it was to not know what to do about it, how she found strength and started the gym, and what running...

It’s been about 9 months on this project, and we’ve made it to episode 15. For this installment of our every-5-episodes joint episode, we talk pet peeves and hot-takes, and to end on a positive note, aspirations. Topics range from pigeons to Taylor Swift, and it gets pretty spicy in there! Do you agree with us? Let us know!

Jackie and I sit down to talk about what has been our most requested episode: weddings. Parting from my typical book report (and hopefully saying goodbye to that format entirely, for my own sanity), we let the capitalism of it be and just chat about weddings. We start with a recently published article from the New York Times, For Some Singles, ‘Hobbyamory’ Has Replaced Hookups by Sadiba Hasan beca...

If I say “miracle drug” what comes to mind for you? If your head hasn’t been under a rock the last few years, my guess is you will immediately think of GLP-1s , the most popular of which is semaglutide, sold under the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy . According to google search volumes, “Ozempic” first outpaced “Adderall” in early 2023, and has stayed above ever since. (I mention Adderall because i...

I started listening to podcasts in 2018. I remember the first podcast I devoured was Real Talk Radio. At some time around 2020, I found pop culture. Among the roll-call of podcasters was Shannon McNamara of FluentlyForward. So it is a DREAM to get to interview her here, and she is as lovely as she seems on her socials. In this conversation, we take it from the beginning to the end: her upbringing,...

Nothing like pulling out a handful of hair in the shower to wake you up to the fact that you've been effing stressed lately. Oops. The bad news: my hair is now 20% less voluminous than it was before. The good news: we got excellent fodder for a deep dive into a topic that I believe we will all benefit from learning more about. Thank you for your sacrifice, 20% of my hair. In this episode, we discu...

If you have been following our podcast since we started, you may think you already have a good sense of who we are, your two intrepid hosts. Here are some of the things you may have gathered from our previous episodes: * Zoe is a doctor, lives in the suburbs, is married, owns a house, has a dog and suddenly not one but TWO cats, and wants nothing more in the world than to one day add a horse to th...

There were two months in 2024 where I relied exclusively on bottled-water. I was in Florida for one month, and if you have ever tried their tap water, you understand. The next month I was in Peru where I was actively trying to avoid E. coli . All these plastic water bottles - and that time I could bring water through their version of TSA - sent my millennial soul in a tizzy. The reduce-reuse-recyc...

Dude, why does everyone have a pet but nobody has a baby? What should we make of the rise of doggy daycares and pet clothing? Is this late stage capitalism? Is it the increasing unaffordability of having kids? Is it the loneliness epidemic? Maybe all of the above?? Join Jackie and Zoe as we learn about the history of pet keeping in America, recent trends in pet ownership, and we use virtue ethics...

The American Middle Class! This episode started as a desire to understand the base definitions of income and class in order to better understand my own personal position (and privilege) in society. But it turns out a Merriam-Webster consensus of this stuff does not exist. Which is preposterous, because in middle school I learned about The Scientific Method, which tells me that to build a useful ex...

We wanted to love Yesteryear, the buzzy new book by first-time artist Caro Claire-Burke. It's everywhere right now, and like you, we were sucked in by the titillating premise: a tradwife influencer who lives on a farm waking up in the 1850s and learning what "traditional life" really entails. It's catchy, it's unique, it makes you wonder what the twist is at the end of the book. But we swear, it i...

Dating sucks; anyone who has spent any amount of time “on the market” in their 20s or 30s can tell you that. We all love to hate on dating apps. “They don’t work,” we gleefully confess to each other, which is a universal truth we all know... because all of us are still swiping. Dating apps are like social media, or #grindset culture: we love to hate them and yet we secretly can’t stop using them....

In this fifth episode of After MASH podcast, Jackie and Zoe are breaking from the typical format. Instead of one host subverting a childhood belief about xyz thing, we’re just chatting. And this week, as we leave the first third of the year (**sweats casually**), Jackie and I are checking in on our new years resolutions. We’re talking about how we feel about them (Jackie LOVES them), how we got ab...

Medical school can never prepare you for the humanity that you will bear witness to as a doctor. Shonda Rhimes may try, but the heavy-handed storylines distract from the pearls of honesty. And taking inspiration from Dr. House will probably get you fired. In this episode, I want to introduce you to the conversation and tools that have the potential to guide you and ease your mind in the scariest m...

Jackie has been staunchly opposed to diamond engagement rings ever since learning that blood diamonds were a thing. However, she realizes that she must be missing something, because we all know blood diamonds are a thing, and yet Every Single One of her friends got a diamond engagement ring anyway. So, what gives? Are diamond rings the epitome of the late stage capitalism hellscape we live in toda...

If you wake up in the morning feeling like a “Professional”, I have some questions about your identity. In this episode, Zoe will be talking about what she believes the real problem is with the educational loan caps enacted in the One Big Beautiful Bill from the perspective of the medical journey.  If you’re someone who knows how to read legislation, you can find the OBBB here . I am not. I know o...

In this, our inaugural episode, Jackie and Zoe introduce the podcast and the game of MASH. Once we are all on the same page about the best way to predict the future (circa 2006), Jackie takes us on a journey to learn about the hottest new trend in elective surgeries for women in their 30s: egg freezing. What is it, how does it work, how much does it cost, and why would one do it? For the audience...

In elementary school we thought life as an adult was simple: first comes love, then comes marriage, then you come with a baby carriage. A silly game called MASH even laid out our lives for us, answering who we would marry, what kind of house we would live in, and how many kids we would have. Maybe you were like us, and you survived the suburban-kid-to-college pipeline and graduated thinking you ha...