Over on the newsletter, our book concierge threads — when people ask for specific book recommendations, and readers then offer their suggestions — regularly top 1500 comments. We wanted to bring the same energy to the podcast, and Maris Kreizman, author of The Maris Review and I Want To Burn This Place Down, reads more (and more widely) than anyone else I know. I promise: you’ll leave this episode with a new pile of books you want to read immediately. (And honestly, that’s the Back to School Adult Energy I crave).

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Texas Culture is at least a dozen cultures smashed into one enormous state — with a whopping 254 counties, four sprawling metro areas, 1255 miles of border with Mexico, the best breakfast item in the United States (fight me) and the best grocery store chain (fight me again). I needed a co-host who was up to the task — and, like all of our other regional-specific episodes, loves the place they’re from intensely… but is also willing to interrogate its mess. I needed longtime friend of the pod (and San Antonio native) Sam Sanders. In this ep, we go deep into so many corners of Texas Culture — and talk about what people who’ve never lived there just don’t *get.* It’s wonky and delightful, a perfect Culture Study combo.

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I first read about Cara Meredith’s book on evangelical church camp over at Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s newsletter, and as soon as I saw “cry night” in the subtitle, I knew any conversation with her was gonna be a real one. Put differently, I knew she was ready to talk about what drew people to these camps — but also how they worked to deftly manipulate the young people who attended them. I went to church camp for a decade. I was a counselor for several years. I cried on cry night; I watched bad skits; I highlighted the crap out of my Youth Bible — and I adored it. But I also internalized a lot of contradictory and harmful messages, and felt weird about some of the ways we were counseling young kids.

Cara and I process all of that in this episode — and also answer a bunch of your complicated questions. And as always with these episodes, we’re working hard to make the episode accessible to people outside of the culture (or who find it weird, which, real talk, it is) while also going deep into the weeds. I’m so eager for your thoughts.

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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 signifiers: of place, of race, of social status, of education, of insider/outsider status… the meanings feel endless.

I’m SO thrilled to have Dr. Nicole Holliday on this week’s episode to go deep and nerdy on all of your very complicated (or, sometimes, deceptively simple) questions about accents — most of them American, but we’ve got a few Canadian questions in there, too. And I can pretty much guarantee: you’re going to absolutely devour this episode. It’s the platonic ideal of a Culture Study ep, and I can’t wait to discuss it.

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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 s**t. I’m thrilled that Hannah Zeavin — whose work so compellingly crosses the lines of media history and history of psychology — agreed to come on the pod (and that she was such a dynamic and engaging co-host).

If you’re skeeved out by breastfeeding discourse, if you’ve ever been a childcare provider (for your own children or others’) and resent the threat of cameras, if you feel so deeply ambivalent about the nanny cam… this episode will take you to places that make all of this surveillance “make sense” (which is very different from making it feel better). I can’t wait for your thoughts on this one.

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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 answer all of your questions about very of-this-moment trends (and give some very good advice on how to keep your book club thriving). This one’s a juicy one (and yes I do talk mild s**t about Reese’s Book Club!!!)

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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 as Montana Poet Laureate, and one of my favorite thinkers on what makes Montana so easy to fall in love with — but not always a very easy place to live.

In this episode, we talk about our favorite, most contradictory, and most hostile parts of Montana culture, from exorbitant housing prices to what it’s like to live in a place that falls in love with its own area code. If your vision of Montana culture comes from Yellowstone, this is a great corrective… that will also make you want a huckleberry milkshake.

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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, and when his response was an immediate YES, we decided to turn the episode over to your (as always, very insightful) questions and probe deeper. Yes, all of this recent promotional tour is cringe, and the album is not good — but cringey people with bad albums still get their singles played on the radio.

So what is it about Perry that makes her such a target in this moment? Join Zach and me as we try to figure it out (and decipher what’s happening with those Lifetimes costumes).

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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, the joys of good tailoring, what it feels like when you put on something and really feel yourself, and just generally figuring out your style as an adult. This one’s very fun and very funny — a perfect summer listen.

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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 reasons work has become a burnout factory for so many. But I didn’t fully understand the breadth and the depth of private equity’s impact on our current economy until reading Megan Greenwell’s Bad Company — which she started writing after resigning from her position of editor-in-chief of Deadspin after private equity acquired the site and began excavating and eliminating the very core of what it made it work.

In today’s episode, Megan joins me to answer your questions about how private equity actually works, how it affects industries, what companies it’s historically targeted and who it’s targeting now (hello, dental and vet care!) This episode will make you feel like you understand a structuring reality of our culture better — and will also help you understand why so many experiences and services just feel shittier. It’s a hellscape of an episode but a deeply enlightening one!

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