Culture Study Podcast

When your family is from a place with a distinctive, often-mockable accent, and you don’t have that accent but can (and do) readily fall into it as soon as you get around anyone who does their vowels like a Minnesotan, you learn to love accents. And then, as soon as you take any class (or read any text) in the anthropology/sociology/cultural analysis realm, you start thinking about accents as sign...

When I first heard about Hannah Zeavin ’s new book, Mother Media: Hot and Cool Parenting in the Twentieth Century , I knew it Culture Study material. Historicizing the intersection between tech and motherhood (and how surveillance affects mothers and changes parenting norms which leads to more surveillance)… that’s some Culture Study shit. I’m thrilled that Hannah Zeavin — whose work so compelling...

This is an audience of people who love books — and people who have thoughts about the culture around books. Book clubs, BookTok, the popularization of book genres, special editions, the way other people talk about us reading — there’s endless fodder for discussion and analysis. I’m thrilled to have Alyssa Morris , one of the sharpest observers of contemporary book culture, back on the pod to answe...

Montana’s unofficial tagline is “the last best place” — which should tell you something about the way the state thinks about itself. It’s a political frankenstein, incredibly beautiful, increasingly filled with tourists, and a twelve-hour drive from one corner of the state to the other. Oh, and just over a million people total live there. Including Chris La Tray , who’s just finishing his tenure a...

At some point in late April, near the apex of the memes and jokes and ridicule of Katy Perry’s recent “women’s empowerment” trip to space, Melody and I wondered: is it even worth doing a Katy Perry episode ? Do we have anything to say, other than wow, all of this — the new album, the tour visuals, the trip to SPACE, is hilariously bad ? But then we asked Zach Stafford if he had anything to say, an...

Why do men wear shirts under their shirts? Are you forever doomed to wear the same clothes as your 32-year-old self? Why isn’t male fashion more fun ? Why are all these moms still buying clothes for their adult children? WHY IS EVERYTHING IN EARTH TONES? This week we welcome Jason Diamond to the show to answer all these questions — with side trips into slutty dad jorts, aspirational dad fashion, t...

Chances are high that you’ve heard about the way that “private equity” has acquired, hollowed out, and bankrupted some service, product, or company you depend on. For years, I understood the work of private equity only in the vaguest terms — that it was bad, and that it f*cked stuff up. I had to learn a lot more when I was writing Can’t Even , because private equity acquisitions are one of many re...

People often ask me why I care so much about parenting when I am not, myself, a parent. This question is always so weird to me —  of course I care about parenting norms, because I’m surrounded by parents! The choices that parents make (in the voting booth, as consumers, as community members, as friends ) have so many direct and indirect effects on my life and everyone’s lives. Plus I’m always inte...

Is it weird that I really love talking about all the ways the formative culture of my teens screwed me up? Maybe it’s just cathartic — talking with someone else who’s spent time in the postfeminist ideological trenches, trying to unpack all of the contradictory messaging about who we should be and how we should act. Sophie Gilbert has been deep in that muck for years writing her new book, Girl on...

For each of these culture-of-place episodes, we look for someone who both adores a place, are very much a product of that place… and are also very much at home talking shit about that place. They see its difficulties, drawbacks, and hostilities clearly — and can hold all of that alongside their deep and abiding love for the place. And that’s Gustavo Arellano , who’s been writing about SoCal cultur...

This isn’t a bleak episode about period pain. Yes, we talk a LOT about death cramps — and all sorts of other symptoms that accompany menstruation. But we also talk a lot about how ridiculous it is that we don’t talk about these things — at least not publicly, and often not even with our close friends and family members. Kate Helen Downey , host of the incredible new podcast Cramped , joins me to t...

Tove Danovich is the person to talk to about raising backyard chickens — at least if you want to talk about the culture and discourse swirling around raising backyard chickens. When the current administration started messaging that everyone should consider countering rising egg prices by raising some chickens in their backyard, Tove and I wanted to do an episode about what people are really talkin...

Tate McRae is one of the most popular artists in the world — but millions of my peers have only the faintest idea of who she is. Alternately, they’re baffled by her. Is she Britney rebooted? Is she talented? What does she mean ? Does it matter? After listening to Reanna Cruz guide listeners through McRae’s sound on Switched on Pop , I knew I wanted them to come on the show and work through more of...

Here at Culture Study we’re launching a new series on culture of place — it could be a state, a region, a city, so long as it has place -ness. The first in the series features Josh Gondelman , one of the place-iest comedians I know, and exactly what we’re looking for when it comes to co-hosts in this series: people who love a place dearly, who are deeply intimate with its peccadilloes, but who can...

So many of you have been asking for an episode on plastic surgery culture for so long — but I knew I couldn’t do it until I had the perfect co-host. Someone deeply familiar with the allure and contradictions that infuse the world of plastic surgery… but also conversant in plastic surgery as a form of gender and class performance. I needed Arabelle Sicardi — and was so thrilled when they agreed to...

Whether you’ve been deep in the fanfic world for years or have only heard others talk about it — we’ve worked really hard to make this episode for all of you . Yes, you might have to hear someone define what slash is (very useful for newbies!) but then we go deep on how fanfic is influencing genres, general fanfic mainstreamification, how and why AU (alternative universe) fics work more or less ef...

This is such a delight of an episode! We’ve been wanting to do a big cookbook conversation since the start of the podcast, and when America’s Test Kitchen emailed to see if we’d be interested in talking to Sarah Ahn about Umma — the cookbook she put together with her mom (!!!) documenting the Korean recipes that have defined her past and present life— we were thrilled. We just wanted one more laye...

It feels weird to call yourself a “None,” but according to demographers, that’s what I am: one of millions of Americans who understand themselves as “religiously unaffiliated.” That means atheists, agnostics, and people who answer “nothing in particular” when asked if they practice a religion. Today, Nones make up 28% of the U.S. population — up from 16% in 2007. But just because you’re religiousl...

Why does every person who runs marathon want to convince you that you too could run one? What makes running clubs so intimidating? When people get into running, why can’t they shut the hell up about it? I’ve asked avowed non-marathoner Raziq Rauf , author of the newsletter Running Sucks, to help address all of your running culture related questions. Yes, we’re both runners; but we’re also both run...

When With Love, Meghan — the Netflix lifestyle show starring Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex — first came out, I knew the only way I wanted to even touch that discourse was by talking about the show, as a show . How does it conform to or reject our understanding of what a lifestyle program should look it? What’s Meghan’s twist? And what’s going on with the (predictably) weird way I knew people wo...

This all started with my desire to do a Paul Mescal episode. A listener suggested we ask Caroline O’Donoghue — author of The Rachel Incident , host of Sentimental Garbage , noted Irish person — to be co-host. We reached out, and (gasp!) she responded that she didn’t actually know that much about Paul… but would be more than happy to do an episode about the “Irishification of pop culture.” Since my...

If you’re a historical romance person, all I need to say is: Sarah MacLean is here, and she is answering all the questions . If you’re not a historical romance person, I’ll spell it out a little more: Sarah MacLean is one of the most popular writers of historical romance today — and she’s also the cohost of the incredibly popular podcast Fated Mates . She’s a very good pod conversationalist, which...

Last month, I published an interview in the newsletter with Dana Miranda about “budget culture” — and it became one of the most popular (and discussed) interviews I’ve done since I first launched the newsletter. At the time, I asked for questions for Dana about specific myths of budget culture for us to unpack. We got dozens of those — plus a bunch of compelling follow-up questions, like “what’s t...

I love old movies — but I didn’t always! In fact, I needed many years of directed classwork to fall in love with them. But if you’re not in the mood to pause your life and take on significant graduate debt, THERE ARE STILL OPTIONS, and Margaret H. Willison and I are here to offer them. In this episode, we offer specific suggestions to listeners based on short lists of their (recent) film favs, tal...

What makes something Dad? Is it pleated Dockers? A worn baseball cap? Asking (again) if you’ve checked your oil? Incompetency in the domestic sphere paired with competency outside of it? I’ve long loved thinking through both the serious and the ridiculous of Dad Culture, and for today’s episode, we have an actual scholar of it ( Phil Maciak , currently hard at work on a Dad Culture book) to unpack...