The Polyester Podcast

We're back and the world has gone ape in our absence! Between X discourse about Slut Walks and criticism of Lindy West's new memoir Adult Braces, it's time for a full retcon of the past and present state of Millennial Feminism. In this week's episode, hosts Ione and Gina reflect on 2010s sex positivity, the commodification of feminism throughout the ages and the nihilistic point of view gen z femi...

Please note this was recorded and released prior to the release of series four of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, the cancellation of The Bachelorette and the news regarding Taylor Frankie Paul. Growing up, Mormonism's pop culture imprint belonged solely in South Park jokes and the occasional mention in American politics. Now, it feels like we can't move without a new Mormon influencer - from Nara S...

Before 21 year old looksmaxxer streamer Clavicular walked the Elena Valez runway at NYFW, his brand of hyper misogynist masculinity was confined to teenage boys in their bedrooms and the terminally online taking the piss out of him. But after making his fashion debut, Clavicular has garnered attention from nearly every mainstream mag imaginable. With other designers sending ‘looksmaxxing’ T-shirts...

Emerald Fennell has only gone and done it again - made a visually stimulating but emotionally empty film for posh people to coo over. Is it a faithful adaptation of Wuthering Heights? No. Is it an amazing film in its own right regardless? Also no. Do the sets and costumes make up for bad casting and crap script? Unfortunately, this time, I'm afraid it's a no. In this week's episode, hosts Ione and...

“TAKE THAT BETA BLOCKER, GIRL!" exclaims Rachel Sennott on your iPhone from the Oscars red carpet. A couple of years ago, you remember a Kardashian episode dedicated to Khloe taking beta blockers on the back of Kris's advice. Giggly Squad sell you a baseball cap with 'Beta Blockers' emblazoned across it. This week, hosts Ione and Gina dig into the normalisation of the blood pressure medication for...

As we've come to expect with a political crisis, celebrities have no idea how to act - Do you post to story even if you get labelled performative a la Billie Eilish? Do you prepare a speech in case you're stopped on the red carpet wearing an ICE OUT pin, so you're not caught out like Jack Antonoff? Do you align yourself with the worst people in the world, as Nicki Minaj as opted for in the past co...

In the final hour before recording this week, we had to push our planned research aside and get stuck into the meat and bones of the juiciest celeb drama 2026 has given us so far: Brooklyn Beckham released an eight part Instagram story tell all about his much rumoured estrangement from his parents, Victoria and David Beckham. In this week's episode, hosts Ione and Gina get to grips with the implic...

Would you like an app that analyses your Google calendar and plans your day for you? Have you tried ChatGPT for meal planning? What about this ring that tracks your sleep habits and creates a routine that will mean you get to sleep even faster than before? We're suffering a convenience endemic, where the tech and AI solutions to being uncomfortable are breeding new, depressing ways to avoid the re...

A dark new issue has arisen on the platform formerly known as Twitter (a likely place for it to happen) where users are asking X's inbuilt AI bot, Grok, for indecent and sexualised images of women and children. While, as discussed in the ep, nudeification isn't exactly a new problematic facet of life online, it's only in the last month that the act has become a "trend" - for lack of a better word....

Happy new year girlies! As is tradition in this joint (and across the internet at large), our hosts are giving their hot or not predictions for the upcoming twelve months. In this week's episode, Ione and Gina discuss the possible return of woke, whether Substack is over, Timothée Chalamet’s chances of winning the Oscar, whether we’ll finally see the death of on the street voxpop TikToks, and much...

Vanity Fair has gone and done it, they've revealed the true grotesqueness of the Trump administration with high res, close up photos of the White House staff. Or is it really all that surprising, when we've been chatting about Republican makeup and Mar-A-Lago face for months? This week, hosts Ione and Gina get to grips with the reasons behind why MAGA women are investing so heavily in this particu...

Surprise! A little midweek episode to keep you updated on the Polyester goings on! This week, hosts Ione and Gina chat the new issue with Sky Ferreira on the cover, the launch events in New York plus a little sidebar into this week's cultural going ons. Buy the issue here! Support our work and become a Polyester Podcast member <3 Order Ione's book, Poor Little Sick Girls, here! Order Gina'...

It's been a bumper week for the Timothee Chalamet stans - Marty Supreme is getting hit reviews, his hair is starting to grow back and the very controversial key holder of the kingdom has done her first ever media feature. That's right, Club Chalamet just got profiled by the Wall Street Journal. This week, hosts Ione and Gina get to grips with the reaction surrounding the feature, Club Chalamet's f...

As we're all subjected to another Wicked press tour for the second instalment of the blockbuster, the question on everyone's lips is whether the Wicked press tour ever stopped in the first place? Greeted with another series of emotional interviews, reaction tweets and harrowing body discourse, it felt urgent to dissect what precisely is dampening the furore this time around. This week, hosts (and...

Nick Fuentes has spent five years building not only a name for himself but an army of his own to fight in what the far right incel community has dubbed the groyper war. The live streamer uses his platform, America First, to push for an ultra conservative agenda not just among his peers but with actual political figures too. In this week's episode, hosts Ione and Gina track the impact of Fuentes an...

The internet, left and right leaning, has been set ablaze by a ragebait headline and a deep dive into our dating practices or rather, our online posting of our burgeoning and established relationships. The British Vogue article, titled 'Is It Embarrassing To Have A Boyfriend' feels like harkening back to an earlier time on the internet, when one op-ed could get everyone talking about one topic and...

West End Girl has taken the internet by storm as Lily Allen returns to the charts with a new confessional album dissecting the relationship breakdown between her and ex husband David Harbour. From the extremely detailed lyrics to the, well, even more extremely detailed lyrics, fans are thrilled to get fully behind the curtain of everything that's gone wrong in Allen’s marriage. In this week's epis...

Would you rather one payment of $150 or three monthly payments of $50? Is this pizza basically free if I pay $4 for a few months rather than twelve bucks at once? As the famously moral financial institution CashApp once said, “Little payments are so much cuter.” In this week's episode, hosts Ione and Gina look at the rise of "cute debt" - the monicker given to Buy Now, Pay Later schemes that point...

2025 has been the year of the pube, from bushtok going viral for promoting an overgrown mon pubis to the sold out SKIMS merkins that Kim Kardashian launched last week, we can't stop talking about our intimate hair - or lackthereof. While some point to the Margiela couture show last year that promoted fake pubic freedom for the rise in intimate hair's popularity in the zeitgeist, this week's episod...

The reception to Taylor Swift’s twelfth studio album has been markedly different than historic fan reactions; as Swifties and Swift haters unite to deliver the best meme about how bad the new music is. In this week's episode, hosts Ione and Gina dissect the poorly received Charli xcx diss track, why the album’s lyricism has fallen flat, and whether just how rubbish The Life Of a Showgirl is indica...

It doesn't take much to goad JK Rowling into a Twitter tirade these days (allegedly.) A fake news story about bra buying in Markses? Up for days raving about it? A former colleague gives a milquetoast response about differing opinions and expresses love towards her? Time to take advantage of the X Premium perk of no word count limit. Pronouns in bio? Great opportunity to go berserk. In this week's...

It's been an absolutely mental month for the US media and one face has emerged as the hero of free speech for the Left, a person none of us saw coming to the pulpit to expunge us of our sins: Jimmy Kimmel. The late night host was promptly reprimanded by being taken off the air after making light of Trump's lack of visible grief over the murder of Charlie Kirk, only to be quickly reinstated after m...

If over half of gen z have interacted with an AI companion and dating apps are rolling out bots to date on your behalf - where is the line drawn between real love and falling for a fantasy? In this week's episode, Ione and Gina dig into the growing romantic relationships people are having with Replika, how AI companies are ignoring queerness, whether or not bot love is legitimate and why everyone...

Another day, another Cumtown alumni going viral for doing something politically sound - from Adam Friedland's interview with Ritchie Torres to Stavros Halkias challenging his podcast guest on transphobic rhetoric, the former courters of controversy have apparently done a complete u turn on their previous edgelord output. This week, hosts Ione and Gina take a look at what's made the most famous mal...

The newest evolution of softboi has just landed with the most on the nose name yet - the performative male. He reads Sylvia Plath outside indie coffee shops as he sips matcha. He has a Labubu and his Labubu has a cute nickname. He is a little bit Letterboxd famous and he calls his mother once a week. He's also the worst man you have ever dated in your life. In this week's episode, hosts Ione and G...