ICYMI

On today’s show, Rachelle and Candice are joined by Slate staff writer Luke Winkie. The three go back in time to 2010 when a lucky few creators of Tumblr blogs like Hipster Puppies, This is Why You’re Fat and Garfield Minus Garfield were able to leverage their popularity into book deals. They discuss the blog to Urban Outfitters pipeline and the optimism that colored the memes created in that era,...

Emily is a successful career and executive coach in Ohio, who has done well finding clients through word-of-mouth. But in order to expand her business she knows she has to up her online marketing game. The only catch? She is terrified of social media. On this episode of How To!, co-host Amanda Ripley brings in Suzy Wagner, president of Brand & Buzz . Suzy has some surprising advice for creatin...

On today’s episode, Rachelle Hampton and Candice Lim speak to Sidney Madden, the host of NPR’s music podcast Louder Than a Riot . The three discuss the meteoric rise of 23-year-old Bronx rapper Ice Spice and how she went from going viral for a TikTok challenge to appearing on the Met Gala red carpet as Anna Wintour’s special guest. They dive deep into the criticism levied at Ice Spice and discuss...

On today’s episode, Rachelle is joined for the first time by ICYMI’s new co-host. Tune in to hear their first internet memory, what four subreddits they visit every single day and the time they got catfished on mileyworld.com. This podcast is produced by Se’era Spragley Ricks, Rachelle Hampton and Daisy Rosario. Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out ou...

On today’s episode, Rachelle is joined again by Nadira Goffe for a sequel to their August 2022 episode  “What is A Clean Girl?”  The two dive deep into TikTok’s latest favorite fashion trend: quiet luxury, or stealth wealth. The aesthetic’s adherents posits that rich people don’t dress in ostentatious labels, but instead communicate their wealth through brands like Brunello Cucinell, Loro Piana an...

On today’s show, Rachelle is joined by ICYMI favorite, Nadira Goffe to talk about the makeup meltdown that’s taken over TikTok. The two dissect a Miami F1 brand trip sponsored by Tarte Cosmetics that ended in multiple apology videos and a promise by Tarte CEO Maureen Kelly to make her brand’s creator program more equitable. They dive deep into Tarte’s less than inclusive history and explain how ex...

On today’s episode, Rachelle is joined by the co-host of NPR’s Throughline podcast,  Ramtin Arablouei , who recently did an episode about the  history of public contrition  from the Salem witch trials to the infamous notes app apology. The two discuss how the internet turbo-charged the commodification of apologies, the cynicism it’s led to and where we go from here. This podcast is produced by Se’...

On today’s show, Rachelle is joined by Hannah Jackson, the culture writer and reporter behind the recent  Cut article “Meet the People Working Three Jobs to Afford Erewhon.”  The two discuss how Erewhon transformed from a humble Boston market stall into what Jackson described as a “a luxury-wellness behemoth.” They dive deep into the culture cache that shopping at Erewhon offers to people from Hai...

On today’s show, Rachelle is joined by Wailin Wong, Darian Woods and Adrian Ma, the hosts of NPR’s daily economics podcast The Indicator from Planet Money. They discuss The Indicator’s recent  five-part series on the $15 billion influencer industry  that delves into where all that money is going—and where it’s not. They dive deep into the rise of the industry and how it emerged out of the economic...

On today’s episode, Rachelle is joined by Sarah Marshall, writer, critic and host of the  You’re Wrong About  and  You Are Good  podcasts. The two discuss Marshall’s recent  You’re Wrong About  episode about Napster , the ill-fated peer-to-peer file sharing app that helped create the internet as we know it. They dive deep into the moral and ethical quandaries around pirating content in an age wher...

On today’s show, Rachelle is joined by Slate staff writer Nitish Pahwa for a mailbag episode. The two answer questions about Jojo Siwa’s rumored pregnancy, the fate of the music industry after an AI-generated Drake song went viral and the most recent instance of internet vigilantism. This podcast is produced by Se’era Spragley Ricks, Rachelle Hampton and Daisy Rosario. Need to set up your Slate Pl...

On today’s episode, Rachelle is joined by Alex Sujong Laughlin, a supervising producer and co-owner of Defector Media where she makes the podcast,  Normal Gossip . Alex and Rachelle dive deep into the age-old debate over concert spoilers, a debate that’s been turbo-charged by TikTok where over 80 million people watched the first two nights of Taylor Swift's "Eras" The ease of finding a livestream...

On today’s show, Rachelle is joined by Jonquilyn Hill, reporter and host of Vox’s politics and policy show  The Weeds . The two take a deep dive into the  most recent season of the Netflix reality dating show  Love is Blind  and how the internet has become the show’s shadow producer. They discuss Netflix’s attempt to muscle its way into the live-streaming market and  the spectacular failure of the...

For the third installment of Internet Diaries, Rachelle is joined by 21-year-old cultural critic and internet essayist Rayne Fisher-Quann, who has amassed a devoted following on  TikTok ,  Substack ,  Instagram  and  Twitter . The two discuss Fisher-Quann’s online work around leftism, feminism, mental illness, along with her ethics of posting and how she resists brandification even as her star con...

On today’s episode, Rachelle is joined by Alex Kantrowitz, the writer behind the Big Technology newsletter and podcast . The two discuss the recent changes to Twitter Blue and how paying for Twitter might be a joke, it won’t be for other platforms like Instagram and TikTok. As paid verification models become de rigueur in a bid to woo content creators, what will that mean for the average social me...

On today’s episode, Rachelle Hampton is joined by Terry Nguyen, a culture writer and critic and staff writer for the digital culture newsletter  Dirt . The two discuss Angela White, better known as Blac Chyna, who has taken to Instagram to document the process of her  cosmetic surgery reversal.  She’s been met with near universal praise which raises the question: are we entering a new plastic surg...

On today’s episode, Rachelle Hampton is joined by Justin Richmond, co-host of the music podcast Broken Record and host of the new podcast Started From the Bottom . The two discuss what, if anything, has changed with the online ticketing giant Ticketmaster since ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour dominated headlines . How did Ticketmaster come to account for 70% of the ticketing and live eve...

On today’s episode, Rachelle Hampton is joined once again by BuzzFeed internet culture report Kelsey Weekman. The two discuss the fandom surrounding Succession’s Kendall Roy, the second son of billionaire Logan Roy, played by Jeremy Strong. This podcast is produced by Daniel Schroeder, Se’era Spragley Ricks, Daisy Rosario and Rachelle Hampton. Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed...

On today’s episode, ICYMI goes international! Rachelle Hampton is joined by Lucia Odoom of Poptillægget, a Danish podcast about pop culture. On stage at CPH:DOX, the two discuss growing up online as black women in predominately white environments, the joys of fandom and answer the question of whether you can keep up with internet culture without being on TikTok. This podcast is produced by Daniel...

On today’s episode, Rachelle Hampton is joined by Kate Lindsay of the Embedded newsletter to talk about the latest in diet discourse. They discuss Gwyneth Paltrow’s recent interview and the flak she got for revealing she drank bone broth most days for lunch, the recent rise of weight loss drugs like Ozempic, and how the ways people are talking about them sound all too familiar. This podcast is pro...

Today, we’re revisiting one of our early favorite episodes from August 2021 about selling bones on TikTok. In the episode, Rachelle Hampton and Madison Malone Kircher try to figure out if it’s legal to buy and sell human remains. They’re joined by  Tanya Marsh , a professor at Wake Forest who specializes in funeral and cemetery law, to find out what the legal system says about the human bone marke...

On today’s episode, Rachelle Hampton is joined by Slate’s Madeline Ducharme to talk about the internet’s thirst for Pedro Pascal. They discuss how he started edging into the role of Internet Daddy with Game of Thrones, his recent turns in The Mandalorian , and The Last of Us , and why his own surprise as this online adoration makes people love him even more. This podcast is produced by Daniel Schr...

Today, we’re bringing you an episode of the recently relaunched Dear Prudence podcast hosted by Jenée Desmond-Harris. In this episode, Prudie (Jenée Desmond-Harris) is tackling questions about text etiquette, whether or not to allow children at a wedding, and weighing the heavy decision of surrogacy for a sibling. Slate’s own Rachelle Hampton (host of ICYMI) joins dole out some words of wisdom. Po...

On today’s episode, Rachelle Hampton is joined by Deepti Sahrawat, the host of Pop Culture Prisoner , to discuss a shocking cheating scandal within the cast of the Bravo reality series Vanderpump Rules , and why it blew up on the internet in such a big way. They talk about how the history of the show led us up to this point, the ways it’s so different from the usual cycle of reality scandals, and...

On today’s episode, Daisy Rosario is joined by Nitish Pahwa and they’re talking about the places they go to when they need online comfort. They discuss cute cartoon affirmations, the need for satisfaction, and hear from a few Slate colleagues about their own comforting online enclaves. Some of our recommendations: @unclogging_drains  on TikTok @catsofyore  on Instagram @itslennie , an animated blo...