Culturally Determined

Default Friend's critique of dating apps ... Bumble's false aura of female empowerment ... An infinite number of alternative romantic partners/Netflix shows ... App dating vs. IRL dating ... The phony promise of the "best" mate for you ... Girlbossism, gender differences, and sexual shame ... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rachel's new book, Too Much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today ... Rachel on writing very frankly about her personal life ... The origin and definition of "too much" ... Is the book a defense of too muchness? ... Should women be treated more like men? Men more like women? Neither? ... Embracing your emotions vs. detaching yourself from them ... Trump as the epitome of "too much" ......

Why it took eight years for Kirby to finish This Is Not a Conspiracy Theory ... Kirby: "Conspiracies are logistically impossible" ... Bernie fans get conspiratorial after the botched Iowa caucuses ... Donald Trump, the Conspiracist-in-Chief ... QAnon and conspiracism as lifestyle ... Will Epstein's death be the JFK assassination of our era? ... What should you do if a loved one is falling into con...

When Tim Allen proposed an ideology he called "masculinism" ... The 1950s sitcom as America's mythic Eden ... How Christian churches are grappling with Jordan Peterson ... Bill: There is always anxiety that churches are too feminized ... "Storming Area 51" and the idea that aliens will be our friends ... The strange fight over cultural appropriation and the word "y'all" ... What happened to entert...

James's new book on Trump and television, Audience of One ... When TV was about the "least objectionable programming" ... The 1980s, when cable fractured TV and Trump started to rise ... Trump's postmodern transformation into a signifier of wealth ... How David Letterman and Trump used each other ... Aryeh recalls his days watching The Apprentice ... James: The Trump campaign was "like a plane tha...

Aryeh wonders: Does Twitter matter? ... Why people on Twitter like to get mad and stay mad ... The very white and male Oscar nominations ... Kat defends Stephen King's comments on diversity and quality ... Why do so many duds win Best Picture? ... Why journalists should spend less time on Twitter ... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So what's the deal with Tulsi Gabbard? ... Tulsi's critique of the Democratic party ... Who counts as a "crank"? ... The many reasons Tulsi drives people crazy ... Why is she not just barnstorming for Bernie? ... The theory that she's a secret Trump agent ... Does Tulsi support Indian PM Modi's Hindu nationalism? ... Tulsi's foreign policy beyond the Middle East ... A brief exchange on the wisdom...

Initial reactions to The Rise of Skywalker ... Aryeh: The movie's problems start in the first ten seconds ... The bizarre revelation of Rey's parentage ... Kylo Ren's sudden personality change ... Did the finale violate a central rule of the Star Wars universe? ... Why the Marvel movies mostly worked and the new trilogy mostly didn't ... Dan: Massive corporations plus social media blowback have ru...

Explaining the wildly popular "ok boomer" meme ... Why Dan is both critical of and sympathetic toward "ok boomer" ... The Marxist critique of woke capitalism ... Twitter users offer bad life advice given by Boomers ... Do today's young people have a chip on their shoulders? ... Dan: We're still trying to develop a theoretical understanding of the Internet ... Why do college students seem to be mor...

HBO's very strange Watchmen sequel ... Why is race the show's central theme? ... What is the show trying to say about cops? ... Martin Scorsese disses comic book movies, nerds go nuts ... Milton reviews Joker, the most chattered about movie of the year ... Why so many people prejudged the film ... Milton's graphic novel Kickstarter project about Orson Welles ... Milton's documentary about comic co...

Aryeh asks Micah to convince him to vote for Bernie Sanders ... Could Bernie lead a mass movement for progressive change? ... Micah: There's a hunger in America for transformative politics ... What does Bernie mean when he calls himself a socialist? ... Bernie is old, angry, and he yells—does that matter? ... The meaning of the AOC and Ilhan Omar endorsements ... Why do people still complain about...

Cait and Drew's podcast, This Podcast Is Self Care ... Emotional labor vs. self care ... Unpacking the idea that self care is just for women ... Crystals, sage, and "fake magic is real" ... Why are Millennials so attracted to self care and the supernatural? ... Astrology as anti-capitalism ... The hot new trend of "self-grandparenting" ... Why Aryeh loves the podcast ... Hosted on Acast. See acast...

Mellie: Cancel culture is both real and fake ... Saturday Night Live's weird place in American culture ... Lenny Bruce was driven to his death but Louis CK is performing again ... Is cancellation just the market working itself out? ... Bret Stephens plays the Twitter martyr ... The Bagel Boss guy and other everyday malefactors who go viral ... Twitter libs try and fail to cancel Mellie ... Roy Coh...

Joanna's piece on Melissa McEwan and her controversial blog, Shakesville ... Actual activism vs. keyboard activism ... The ridiculous art of online war ... Was the site a cult of personality? ... Aryeh's history as a commenter and a moderator ... Shakesville's infamous "Left Tit Incident" ... The decline and fall of the Shakesville empire ... Joanna responds to her critics ... Hosted on Acast. See...

David sings a hymn of praise to the Marvel Cinematic Universe ... Transformers, The Lion King, and Shakespeare ... The return of the Hollywood epic ... Aryeh: The shared universe is a key to the movies' success ... Have we reached the endpoint of spectacle? ... David: Avengers: Infinity War is about America coming to terms with losing ... Why you should watch (and read) Jessica Jones ... The possi...

Daniel: Jeffrey Epstein's death is a defining political moment ... People were cracking jokes about Epstein's death mere minutes later. Why? ... Reasons for and against believing in a conspiracy ... Will we ever know the truth? ... Aryeh vs. Daniel on the likelihood of foul play ... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The metatextual charms of Fleabag ... What does it mean when Fleabag speaks directly to the camera? ... In praise of the show's supporting cast ... What makes the "hot priest" so hot? ... Erin on New Jersey and The Sopranos ... New Jersey, the Postmodern State ... Tony Soprano and Chris Christie ... The baroque flair of New Jersey political crime ... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more...

Jeffrey Epstein and the ruling class ... Epstein's rise through the meritocracy ... Is there something Jewish about the Epstein scandal? ... A power problem vs. a men problem ... Is it possible to have a better elite? ... Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as a Gen X rejection of Boomers ... A spoiler-filled discussion of the film's shocking ending ... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more in...

How Nathan used @steak_umm to revolutionize marketing on Twitter ... Weird Twitter vs. @steak_umm ... The complicated role that irony plays on Brand Twitter ... The bizarre trend of brands insulting potential customers ... Nathan wrestles with the ethics of advertising ... A brief history of Brand Twitter ... Nathan's massively viral tweet thread on Millennial mental health ... Twitter's crazy ris...

Affirmative action and the college admissions scandal ... Jock and Man at Yale ... What money can't (and can) buy ... Considering class-based affirmative action ... Does it matter that Trump is an immoral person? ... Is racism at the center of the border crisis? ... Whatever happened to the domestic neoconservatives? ... Why Republicans stopped caring about cities ... The GOP after Trump ... Hoste...

Jamie's NYT Magazine piece, "How ASMR Became a Sensation" ... Searching for the science behind ASMR ... Why are ASMR creators disproprotionately female? ... The strange life of Gibi, one of the top "ASMRtists" ... A temporary salve for Internet-era loneliness ... Will ASMR go corporate? ... Jamie researches the history of the Jewish American Princess ... Daddy's money, girl power, and Juicy Coutur...

Robby's new book, Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump ... Aryeh's meta-critique of reporting about college students ... Why are so many college students acting so fragile? ... The good and the bad of intersectionality ... How did the ideology of intersectionality spread so quickly? ... Do colleges view students as customers who are always right? ... The rise and possible fall of no-pl...

Rachel's essay on her mother's death, "The Fraught Culture of Online Mourning" ... Aryeh recalls mourning his father in the pre–social media era ... A moment when language fails ... Is it possible to talk about death with sincerity on Twitter? ... The many (often gendered) Victorian rituals of mourning ... Rachel's forthcoming book, Too Much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today ... Do...

Chris's new book, Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America ... Why politics and Trump are mostly absent from the book ... McDonald's, the community center for people on the margins ... Successful immigrant communities like the Somalis in Lewiston, Maine ... "This is my home" and forms of meaning you can't measure ... Why dignity is the book's central theme ... Chris's thoughts on universal bas...

Remembering the Satanic ritual abuse panic of the 1980s ... How the McMartin case launched the panic ... Sarah: Recovered memory therapy created the idea of Satanic ritual abuse ... Why hasn't there been a large-scale reckoning with the panic? ... Contemporary resonances: witch hunts and moral panics ... Sarah visits Disney World and thinks about desire ... Why are there so many absent mothers in...