Be There in Five

This week, Kate is joined by fellow Chicagoan Katie Shober, founder of Beach Reads & Bubbly, the beloved book community that started as recommendations on her personal Instagram and grew into roughly 300 book clubs around the world. First, Kate introduces her new book's title and concept and shares more context for what she's been working on the past three years (feel free to skip to the interview...

The Cornell 7, Consent, Why are you adding me on LinkedIn? This week, Kate is up late whisper-screaming into the mic, starting with condescending religious commenters and meandering into a conversation about the Cornell 7 that wasn't going to be the episode but then became the episode. Kate walks through what the lawsuit and Jane Doe's 2024 statements actually say, asks why a DA publicly litigated...

This week, Kate sits down with Shannon of the Fluently Forward podcast to unpack the backlog of pop culture topics she's been wanting to dig into with someone who cares about this stuff as much as she does. Together, they mourn the lost golden age of blind items and survey the full spectrum of celebrity gossip, from publicist-planted DeuxMoi sightings to full-blown conspiracy theories. They discus...

This week, Kate crashes out over an influencer's crash out about a friend allegedly copying her home, but it happens to be a home that looks like so many others online, it's basically the Instagram Face of fancy homes. Kate goes through the series slide by slide, and discusses adjacent topics, like "stop copying me" being girlhood's first legal argument, the time her own wedding website got copied...

This week, Nora McInerny joins Kate for a witchy birthday-week episode that escalates from lyric trivia and vintage Girl Talk into a full unlicensed spiritual review via tarot, numerology, astrocartography, and a 1982 birthday book, as read by two women who believe in nothing and also everything as long as it works in their favor. They investigate whether it's illegal to talk to dolphins, unpack t...

This week, Kate is back from the book-deadline trenches with a mini dive inspired by the many fellow Beths who misread Brenda Song's new NFL gig as "color analyst." What follows is a journey through a brief history of "having your colors done" and why we can't resist things that offer to help us explain ourselves to ourselves. Also covers Taylor Swift's Grammy Museum interview, some theories on Ha...

This week (for ep 2), Kate is joined by friends of the pod, Nora McInerny and Caroline Moss, for a group hang that begins with scorpions in Nora's laundry and only escalates from there. The three of them get into the perils of too many fourth-wall breaks on House of Stassi and the collective decline of reality TV, then Kate debuts a best friend game where everyone gets assigned a day of the week a...

This week, Kate asks an important question for the sake of equality in the workplace: can a woman carry two bags and be taken seriously? Can her bracelets clank? Jury's out, and she felt inspired to take on the genre of body language coaching and weird advice people give women about how to behave. Then, she opens the floor to the Beths, who deliver a cornucopia of workplace advice: lower your regi...

This week, the air quality is apocalyptic, parents everywhere are staring down the summer childcare cliff, and Kate is feeling pro-tantrum.. What starts as a meditation on the summers of yore turns into one on modern parenting and why we never stood a chance. Through a mix of personal stories and listener submissions, this episode gets into the Nature Valley bars of motherhood (things that are str...

This week, Kate briefly debriefs her week at Cannes Lions during a record-breaking heat wave, including how she accidentally hired a private French bodyguard in an armored Maybach, sweat off her spray tan across the Côte d'Azur, and what it's like to be at Coachella for vague marketing babes without AC when your brain is so fried you give the AC repairman the wrong room number and it stays broken....

This week, Kate chats with PEN15 co-creator Anna Konkle for a conversation that's equal parts silly and heavy, like the last two people awake at a sleepover asking about the meaning of life and swapping stories of their first thong. They discuss Anna's new memoir,  The Sane One , and how it explores a different kind of nostalgia than her previous work, touching on topics like the grief, estrangeme...

This week, Kate meanders through "I Knew It, I Knew You" and the Toy Story 5 premiere, why she's changed her tune on the rumored Madison Square Garden wedding venue, and goes on various passionate detours about golf, a dramatic reading of Luke Bryan's "Fish Hunt Golf Drink," and digs through a moldy pouch of 2019 Post-it topics that yields takes on Ariel Charnas, Caroline Calloway, City High, Yike...

This week, it's just Kate, an Aperol Spritz, and the tech bro quote about wine that accidentally kicked off the conversation we've all been needing about optimization culture and being tired of treating every part of life like a performance review. Plus, a round of News You Can Use about why fruit hasn't been sweet since 1996, this season's hottest mnemonic devices, the babydoll dress of it all, a...

This week, Kate sits down with Stephani Young, the journalist (and longtime Beth!) behind the viral investigative podcast Love Trapped , the year-plus deep dive into the Clayton Echard paternity scandal that turned out to be so much bigger than a Bachelor Nation headline. Kate opens with why a story like this is so culturally tricky to talk about and the tension between believing women and recogni...

This week, Kate is joined by Caroline Moss for an episode that was supposed to be about modern pop culture and somehow turned into mostly topics from 1998. They get into the longevity industrial complex and Kate's pitch for an old-age commune, the unhinged Duggar honeymoon prep CD, Lydia and Zach's definition of "naughty," and a Full House deep dive featuring Stephanie's catering arc and Hot Daddy...

This week, Kate is trying something new by returning to her old form. After taking time off and noticing her comment section brain rot, she's trying to get back to occasional one-pass, no-edits, no-looking-things-up format to practice for a live format of the show coming soon. It's the kind of episode where Reneesme, Billie Eilish, Five Below, and the Epstein files all somehow end up in the same c...

This week, Kate sits down with Caro Claire Burke, author of the hit debut novel Yesteryear, the trad wife time travel thriller that triggered a publishing bidding war, has already been optioned by Anne Hathaway, and is Good Morning America's April book club pick. They discuss a variety of topics within the book (with spoilers, FYI), including how you write an unreliable narrator whose worldview fu...

This week, Kate is breaking her hiatus for a special report recorded before Thursday's news that ABC was scrapping TFP's season of The Bachelorette. Ultimately, she decided this episode was still a relevant conversation to have, given that she and her guest (Sam Dalton, LCSW @sam.the.therapistt) talked through the systems and cycles that made this week's fallout unsurprising long before the video...

This week, Kate attempts to revive (but then mostly records a new version of) a fan-favorite Patreon from 2021 about the way Taylor Swift pronounces words. We're talking plosives, brain-scratching vowels, and  why certain words sung a certain way make you want to listen again, but with updated takes from Midnights to TTPD to Showgirl. Enjoy! Order Kate's NYT Bestselling book,  One in a Millennial...

This week, Kate and Caroline Moss revisit the beloved Mama Slay at the Lake episode with a director's cut of our delirious 6 AM conversation about irreverent merch, warm beans, Facebook walls, Maxine culture, and Steve Madden platform loafers, followed by a brand new conversation where we get into pun drift, Disney adults in matching shirts, the grievance merch pipeline, Kate's Hamilton/American G...

This week, Kate revisits an infamous episode from March 2020 about dips, sauces, and dipping sauces. Order Kate's NYT Bestselling book,  One in a Millennial   here ! Text or leave a voicemail for Kate at 775-HEY-BETH! Right now, Betterwild is offering our listeners up to 40% off your order at  Betterwild.com/BETHEREINFIVE .  That's Betterwild.com/BETHEREINFIVE for up to 40% off your order.   Head...

The culture that made the Beths say the Beth culture was for them. Mashup ep with 40+ min of new audio.     SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS Order Kate's NYT Bestselling book,  One in a Millennial   here ! Text or leave a voicemail for Kate at 775-HEY-BETH! Whether it's a weekend away, a big night out, or just a much-needed wardrobe refresh – your dream wardrobe is just one click away. Head to REVOLVE.com/BET...

This week, Kate has an announcement that she shares at the beginning of the episode that will then explain the rest of the episode and why its title may sound familiar. Enjoy! Order Kate's NYT Bestselling book,  One in a Millennial   here ! Text or leave a voicemail for Kate at 775-HEY-BETH! SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS Right now, Betterwild is offering our listeners up to 40% off your order at betterwild...

This week, Kate reflects on 2025 for feeling depleting yet not defining, exhausting and sometimes forgettable; a year of endless micro-trends, political chaos, and moment sludge that somehow left very little to hold onto. Fun! She dives into "viral death cycle" and why nothing sticks anymore, explores the three stages of aging out of culture, explores why many of us feel our brains are broken, and...

This week, Kate welcomes back Sarah Chapelle (Taylor Swift Style) to discuss the first two episodes of Disney+'s  The End of an Era docuseries. They dissect the emotional weight of episodes 1 and 2; from the devastating Vienna terror plot and Southport attack to Taylor's leadership style, bonus day generosity, and the physical toll of performing and beyond. Kate and Sarah analyze what the docuseri...