What does masculinity have to do with climate change denial? F-ing everything! Daniel Penny, host of the new Drilled podcast Carbon Bros, joins me to answer all of your questions about how the Manosphere and its ideologies of dominion, virility, control, and anti-wokeness collide with climate change narratives. We talk about petro-masculinity, of course, but also how environmentalism became “feminized,” the intersection with “muscular” Christianity, the Spotted Owl, fear of the electric truck, and how the Trump Administration has successfully exploited fears of a cucked, climate-focused nation. This one will piss you off and give you a lot to think about.

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The podcast only works because of your questions (and episode ideas!) and we want more of them (and your ideas about bonus episodes, pricing, etc.) It’ll take five minutes tops, and really helps us figure out the future of the entire Culture Study extended universe. Thank you ahead of time, and just click here to take it.

Baseball is so romantic!! There is SO MUCH RITUAL! It’s beautiful, it’s meditative, it’s the very best thing to listen to on the radio. And I’m so glad that we convinced Ali Liebegott [Mets Fan] to come join Melody [Royals Fan] and me [Mariners / Twins fan] to answer all of your questions about baseball culture (and there were SO MANY OF THEM). We talk about how to respond to people who say it’s boring; we talk about the changes in the game over the last two years (and how casual and opposite-of-casual fans feel about it); we talk about MR MET and Homer Hankies and Dadness and being a queer fan of baseball and how long a game should be (Ali says: forever). It’s just a really delightful conversation, and I’m so excited for you to join it.

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Maybe your mom endlessly scrolls Facebook every time you visit. Maybe your kid has to be asked six times to get off his tablet. Maybe your friend is always checking Instagram when you’re out to dinner. Maybe your partner keeps checking their phone while you’re watching a movie together. Or maybe you find yourself doing all the things you find SO ANNOYING when others do them — and know these behaviors are affecting your relationships, but struggle to change them. Are you one of the 510234 moms who submitted a question about feeling guilty being on your phone (even if you’re just reading an eBook!) in front of your kids? Welp, this is the podcast for you.

This isn’t a podcast episode about how ALL SCREENS ARE BAD and YOU ARE BAD FOR ENGAGING WITH THEM. It’s about recasting our relationships with them so that we can have better relationships with each other (which sometimes involves watching a screen… together!) Ash Brandin, founder of the tremendously popular Instagram account The Gamer Educator and author of Power On: Managing Screen Time To Benefit The Whole Family, joins me for a nuanced and deeply empathetic conversation that I know we’ll continue in the comments.

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By the mid-2010s, Jen Hatmaker had become one of the most important voices in white Evangelical culture. She had multiple best-selling books; she headlined massive women’s retreats; she was an influencer before we really even used that term. But then she broke with Evangelical doctrine when it came to LGBTQ people… and everything fell apart. More accurately, they started to fall apart — because the real life implosion wouldn’t come until 2020, when she woke up to the sound of her husband, a pastor, sending a voice memo to his mistress. Then things really fell apart.

Hatmaker hasn’t spoken publicly about the details of her divorce, but after five years, a lot of therapy, and her five children all entered into adulthood — she’s ready. Her life exploded. But then she was able to rebuild it using her own designs — not the church’s. Today she’s on the pod to answer your complex questions about midlife reinvention: how it happens, all the reasons it can happen, and who gets the “privilege” of pursuing it. I really loved this conversation, and if you like rolling around all the ways we can (and sometimes struggle) to change our lives, you will too.

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I love talking about food as culture — and like all parts of culture, food has trends that ebb and flow. We asked you to provide us with food trends you’ve noticed (and/or confuse you) — and then we asked the great Evan Kleiman (chef, cookbook author, and longtime host of KCRW’s Good Food) to come unwind them with us. Want to know what it takes for a dish to show up at every corporate catering event? Why every restaurant in the U.S. (still) has a brussels sprouts dish? How hot chicken got franchised? WE’VE GOT YOU. This episode is filled with delights (and will make you want to browse expensive tinned fish online).

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This one’s a weird one! But it’s also going to elucidate a bunch of bewildering phrases that you might have noticed popping up in advertisements or in teens’ conversations. Adam Aleksic runs the incredibly popular TikTok/IG/YouTube account Etymology Nerd, where he breaks down how new phrases and memes travel across the internet. Today, we’re talking to him about the way these phrases also make their way into our spoken language — and how algorithms function as a new engine in language change. Like I said, it’s a weird one — but it’s also incredibly interesting.

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There aren’t many contemporary celebrities with images layered enough that I could talk about them all day. But Gwyneth? She’s one of them. She’s it. She’s never pretended to be “just like us,” which is part of what makes her beguiling — and infuriating. She knows exactly what she’s doing, and sometimes what she’s doing is trying to get a bunch of people to talk about jade eggs you put in your vagina. She’s a master marketer of self, a promoter of charlatans, and impossible to ignore. And I’m so thrilled to have Amy Odell, author of the new, impeccably reported Gwyneth biography, here to discuss all your excellent questions.

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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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