The Culture Journalist

For our cultural predictions roundup back in January, the musician and technologist Trevor McFedries predicted that 2026 was going to be a really good year—professionally speaking—for people with good taste. The jury’s still out, but it’s definitely turning into a big year for talking about taste. And for the first time in history, the tech world seems to be leading the charge, from engineers penn...

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms, from Emilie Friedlander and Andrea Domanick. You can learn more about it here . For fans of independent music, the Geese psyop allegations earlier this year raised an anxiety-provoking question: How much of our taste is our own, and how much of it is just a function of the music industry using a range of tactics (from the mundane, to the sha...

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience, we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and The Weather Report , a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what’s rained into our brains. What does it t...

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience, we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and The Weather Report , a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what’s rained into our brains. If you were on...

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience, we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and The Weather Report , a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what’s rained into our brains. We are making...

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience, we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and The Weather Report , a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what’s rained into our brains. Andrea just go...

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience, we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and The Weather Report , a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what’s rained into our brains. It sounds stra...

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience, we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and The Weather Report , a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what’s rained into our brains. Hi pals. In 20...

Hello! Emilie here. For most of my adult life, Lizzy Goodman’s Meet Me In the Bathroom has been the only definitive book about the New York music scene of my youth. The trouble is that a lot of important stuff happened alongside and after that, particularly across the river in Brooklyn. So, thank God for Ronen Givony. The founder of longtime concert series Wordless Music and former Le Poisson Roug...

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience, we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and The Weather Report , a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what’s rained into our brains. Besides the Ba...

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience, we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and The Weather Report , a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what’s rained into our brains. Hey guys. Foll...

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience, we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and The Weather Report , a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what’s rained into our brains. As special tre...

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience, we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and The Weather Report , a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what’s rained into our brains. Stay tuned for...

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience, we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and The Weather Report , a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what’s rained into our brains. On our latest...

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience — including access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and reading group meetings — we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to The Weather Report , a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you...

Just in time for Halloween, we’re hosting a virtual hauntology reading group (specifically, hauntology the music genre ) at 4pm ET next Thursday, October 30. If you want to join in, sign up for a paid subscription, or toss a few bucks into our haunted tip jar , and we’ll send you the readings and a link to log into the conversation. We hope it’ll be the first of more group reading sessions to come...

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience — including access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and the Weather Report , a new monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what’s rained into our brains — we recommend signing up for a paid subscription . Paid subscribers can no...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com Thank you ock sportello , DJ Falkor / Random Rules , Tyler Foster , Yana Sosnovskaya , Ingmar Carlson , and many others for tuning in to CUJO’s first-ever live video, featuring film critic Joshua Rivera and Macho Pod co-host drew millard . Shout out to Yuri for sparking the idea for this conversation. F...

Hey pals. A little housekeeping: We keep full-length episodes like this one free, because we want as many people as possible to be able to hear them. But every episode we put out takes at least 20 hours to produce, from researching and booking to script writing, recording, editing, and marketing — and if you love this pod, we could use your help in keeping this project economically sustainable so...

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience — including access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and our eternal parasocial friendship — we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to The Weather Report, a new monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowin...

CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience — including access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and our eternal parasocial friendship — we recommend signing up for a paid subscription. Paid subscribers also get access to The Weather Report, a new monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowin...

What do mullets, SpongeBob stick-and-pokes, and foil-wrapped sandwiches have in common? According to this week’s guest, London writer Clive Martin, they’re all hallmarks of a new type of food-obsessed, young urban professional that Clive calls the “defining person-type of 2025.” You know the type: people who queue up around the block for hours for a taste of the latest Instagram-viral, cartoonishl...

Join us in Philly on Tuesday, 29 for a special book talk with this week’s guest, Jeff Weiss , co-presented by CUJO and Lot 49 Books . The event kicks off at 7 pm, at Fishtown’s Neon Clown Dream Lounge — and will feature Jeff in conversation with Emilie , Drew Millard , and Sadie Dupuis , followed by a book signing, a Britney-themed DJ set by Domino Dancing, and, rumor has it, Britney-themed drinks...

With a catalog full of art house favorites like The Witch, Spring Breakers, Moonlight, and Uncut Gems , it’s hard to deny that A24 occupies a unique position in the zeitgeist. In a Hollywood landscape that can feel like it’s becoming more risk-averse by the year — see our recent episode with Andrew Dewaard on his book Derivative Media — the artist-forward distributor and studio has become synonymo...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com This is a free preview of a subscriber-only episode. If you sign up for a paid subscription between now and July 4, we’ll give you 50% off. For as long as any of us can remember, the NBA has been the cultural North Star of the United States. But according to Ock Sportello, author of a viral Substack art...