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 Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves, and is here to help answer your excellent questions on how all of this took root in the ‘90s, the slutty cool baby girl ideal, the weird dude raunch movies, why we don’t know how pants are supposed to fit, the abomination of Bride Wars, and much, much more. Listen and let’s navigate all this accumulated sludge together.

• Get 40% off Beam’s Dream Powder at shopbeam.com/CULTURE and use code CULTURE at checkout.

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• Stop putting off those doctors appointments and go to Zocdoc.com/CULTURE to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today.

• Buy Girl on Girl here!!!!

• You can read Sophie’s back catalog of writing at The Atlantic here — I really love this Madonna piece from 2023

• Follow Sophie on Instagram and Bluesky

• Listen to the official playlist of Girl on Girl on Spotify!

• Read an excerpt from Girl on Girl here

• This is a POSTER you can BUY ewwwwwww

• The Gail Porter FHM cover that was projected on to parliament

• An interview with Porter about the moment and its aftermath

• The Jenna Jameson interview in the Abercrombie & Fitch “Naughty or Nice” Christmas catalog:

• The Angela McRobbie work on postfeminism and “romantic individualism” I reference

• The trailer for the horrible movie Bride Wars

• The surveilling eye at work in Jennifer Lopez’s “If You Had My Love”

• My piece on Jennifer Lawrence and The History of Cool Girls from 2014

• The Katherine Heigl Vanity Fair interview where she calls Knocked Up “a little sexist” (and it then ruins her career)

• Evangelical Summer Camp, past and present

• The intersection of technology and parenting (especially how mothers are surveilled)

• REGIONAL ACCENTS!!!! (We have a accent/dialect expert as co-host!)

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segment!

• As always, you can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here

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 culture with verve and humor and great skill for decades. (Such great skill that just a week after we taped this episode, he was named as a finalist for this year’s Pulitzer Prize in commentary). I can’t wait for you to join us as we talk about making dioramas of missions out of sugar cubes, car culture, conspiracy-curious crunchy-fascists in Orange County, and so much more.

• Get $35 off your first box of wild-caught, sustainable seafood—delivered right to your door. Go to https://www.wildalaskan.com/CULTURE

• Head to moshlife.com/CULTURE to save 20% off and get FREE shipping on the Best Sellers Trial Pack

• Get $75 off a Mill food recycler at mill.com/CULTURE

• Stop putting off those doctors appointments and go to Zocdoc.com/CULTURE to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today.

• Read Gustavo’s wonderful (free!) weekly newsletter, I promise it will become a highlight of your Saturday

• Re: elementary school student mission diorama project — you can see a bunch here. As of 2017, the California Department of Education now recommends against the diorama project as a way of teaching fourth graders about the missions

• You can read Gustavo’s (Pulitzer Prize nominated!!!) Los Angeles Times column here

• For more on the idea of “Spanish fantasy heritage” — check out Phobe S. Kropp’s California Vieja

• A fantastic Mother Jones profile of Jessica Reed Kraus, the woman behind House Inhabit, and her SoCal-borne (and deeply paranoid) approach to pop culture

• The column Gustavo mentions in the AAA segment re: the anniversary of KKK city council members getting recalled in Anaheim

• Alta Baja Market!

• Mitla Cafe!

• So many Original Tommy’s!

• MONTANA Culture, MONTREAL/Québécois Culture, and Philly Culture for our ongoing culture-of-place series (different eps don’t worry)

• Evangelical Summer Camp, past and present

• Variations of American accents/dialects/linguistics

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segment!

• As always, you can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here

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 talk very openly about all the things we usually don’t talk about and why. I learned so much in this episode. But I also laughed a lot, too. Pain isn’t funny, but hanging out with others who get it — it’s like a giant, glorious sigh of relief.

• Get $75 off the Mill food recycler at Mill.com/CULTURE.

• Ancient Nutrition is offering 25% off your first order when you go to AncientNutrition.com/CULTURE.

• Head to Graza.co and use promo code CULTURE to get 10% off of TRIO which includes Sizzle, Frizzle, and Drizzle, and get to cookin’ your next chef-quality meal!

• Listen to Cramped (if you go to the website, there are also full transcripts and citations!)

• Learn more about Kate’s work here, and follow her on Instagram and TikTok

• The collection of readers’ fibroid experiences I published on Culture Study

• The INCREDIBLE theme song from Cramped (by Farideh)

• The Culture Study thread I mention re: menopause

• The New Yorker olive oil profile I mentioned in the Graza ad

• Steve Sando’s The Bean Book (where Bobby got the BIG WHITE BEAN recipe)

• TEXAS Culture, MONTANA Culture, and MONTREAL/Québécois Culture for our ongoing culture-of-place series (different eps don’t worry)

• Evangelical Summer Camp, past and present

• How/Why Private Equity is Fucking Everything Up

• The intersection of technology and parenting

• Can we have a smart conversation about Katy Perry??

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segment!

• As always, you can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here

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 talking about when they talk about getting backyard chickens. This is an episode about chickens, in other words, but it’s actually an episode about ‘wellness,’ regulation, MAHA, homesteading, the very real joy of being a steward to animals, and so much more. If this doesn’t immediately strike you as your thing, I hope you’ll give this nuanced discussion a chance.

• Head to Ollie.com/CULTURE, tell them all about your dog, and use code CULTURE to get 60% off your Welcome Kit when you subscribe today!

• Get 15% off OneSkin with the code CULTURE at

  https://www.oneskin.co/

• Make the switch to Blueland and get 15% off your first order by going to Blueland.com/culture

• Subscribe to Tove’s newsletter, follow Tove on Instagram, and buy Under the Henfluence! You can also see Tove’s chicken influence Instagram account here, temporarily (we hope) on hiatus

• Read my interview with Tove from back in 2023:

• Data sources re: increase in people keeping backyard chickens

• Write-up of the Secretary of Agriculture encouraging people to keep backyard chickens as a way to a) combat avian flu and b) afford eggs

• Tove mentioned Martha Stewart’s first book, Entertaining, as inspo for a wave of chicken popularity. Here’s a story of how people clamor over old copies of it, driving the publisher to re-issue it later this year (NYT gift link)

• What 2000s pop culture did to women’s understanding of themselves

• What’s going on in AMERICAN PARENTING CULTURE (broadly conceived) right now (with Melissa Wenner Moyer!)

• TEXAS Culture, MONTANA Culture, and MONTREAL/Québécois Culture for our ongoing culture-of-place series (different eps don’t worry)

• Evangelical Summer Camp, past and present

• How/Why Private Equity is Fucking Everything Up

• The intersection of technology and parenting

• Katy Perry?? Maybe??

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segment!

• As always, you can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here

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 McRae’s image. We talk about her sound, of course, but also consider her through the lens of her Canadianness, her Gen-Z-ness, her ‘organic’ songwriting success on YouTube, and her popular girl vibes.

• Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit ARTICLE.COM/culture and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout.

• Go to zbiotics.com/CULTURESTUDY and use CULTURESTUDY at checkout for 15% off any first time orders of ZBiotics probiotics. ZBiotics has a 100% money-back guarantee, so if you’re unsatisfied for any reason they will refund your money, no questions asked.

• Listen to the episode of Switched on Pop (re: Tate) that made me desperate to have Reanna come on the show

• Reanna on Twitter

• The referenced video for Sports Car which is trying to do….something

• Performing Greedy at the NHL All-Star Game:

  https://youtu.be/hq64R4RU1ms

• The goalie pads on the wrong legs on the album cover for Think Later:

• If you want a sense of McRae’s dancing start at the two-minute mark here:

  https://youtu.be/cr4wnsLI_Xw

• Very early McRae songwriting:

  https://youtu.be/pBk0VFLz9_s

• What 2000s pop culture did to women’s understanding of themselves

• What’s going on in AMERICAN PARENTING CULTURE (broadly conceived) right now (with Melissa Wenner Moyer!)

• TEXAS Culture, MONTANA Culture, and MONTREAL/Québécois Culture for our ongoing culture-of-place series (different eps don’t worry)

• Evangelical Summer Camp, past and present

• How/Why Private Equity is Fucking Everything Up

• The intersection of technology and parenting

• Dark Academia (as in, the literary genre)

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segment!

• As always, you can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here

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 also generate some analytical distance from that place as we talk about insider/outsider dynamics, how race and class intersect with a place’s understanding of itself, accents, tells, code-switching, cliches, and so much more.

For this episode, listeners gave us so many excellent questions — from three-way beef and the allure of Dunkin, to how a city does or does not jettison a racist reputation. And because our co-host is Josh, it’s also very funny. I can’t wait to argue (with grace) about Boston in the comments with all of you.

• Get 15% off OneSkin with the code CULTURE at https://www.oneskin.co/

• Ancient Nutrition is offering 25% off your first order when you go to AncientNutrition.com/CULTURE

• Subscribe to Josh’s newsletter which I promise will be the best thing in your inbox every Monday:

• Follow Josh on Instagram

• The North Shore Roast Beef Sandwich: a Scientific Study (this is WONDERFUL additional reading if Josh’s description of the three-way piqued your interest and/or you already love the three-way)

• I love Josh’s piece on “The Nirvana of Ben Affleck” from 2021

• The Dunkin Robe in question

• Josh’s new pug Maggie!!!!

• What 2000s pop culture did to women’s understanding of themselves

• What’s going on in AMERICAN PARENTING CULTURE (broadly conceived) right now (with Melissa Wenner Moyer!)

• TEXAS Culture, MONTANA Culture, and MONTREAL/Québécois Culture for our ongoing culture-of-place series (two different eps don’t worry)

• Evangelical Summer Camp, past and present

• How/Why Private Equity is Fucking Everything Up

• Dark Academia (as in, the literary genre)

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segment!

• As always, you can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here

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 come on the show. This conversation will take you to some very unexpected places: it will challenge you, alarm you, and I can promise you’ll never look at Elon Musk the same again. This is one of my favorite episodes we’ve recorded — I think you’ll quickly see why.

• Celebrate Earth Month and make the switch to Blueland today. Get 15% off your first order by going to Blueland.com/culture

• Stop putting off those doctors appointments! Go to Zocdoc.com/culture to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor.

• Subscribe to Arabelle’s excellent newsletter

• The piece from Arabelle’s newsletter I reference re: “Beauty is Going Backwards”

• A write-up of the BYU study of Utah women and plastic surgery that Arabelle references

• On Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: my piece in Culture Study and the Culture Study Pod episode I did with Sara Petersen:

  Will MomTok Even Survive This?!?!

• My conversation with Sam Sanders re: Nicole Kidman’s Resting Rich Face:

  Nicole Kidman's Resting Rich Face

• And now some PLASTIC SURGERY ASMR!!!

***And if you want the running belt I mention in the AAA section — this is it.***

• What’s going on in AMERICAN PARENTING CULTURE (broadly conceived) right now (with Melissa Wenner Moyer!)

• TEXAS Culture for our ongoing culture-of-place series

• How/Why Private Equity is Fucking Everything Up

• Dark Academia (as in, the literary genre)

• Van/Skoolie/RV Life

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segment!

• As always, you can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here

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 effectively with different texts, and, best of all, WHERE TO FIND THE GOOD STUFF.

This is a classic case of the Culture Study Pod making the argument that even if you’re not super into a cultural object/phenomenon (and especially if you are) there is so much interesting stuff to talk about — you just have to the find the right people, like our brilliant cohosts Emily and Vee, avid fanfic writers (and theorists) and cohosts of Mind the Tags.

Thank you to the sponsors of today’s episode!

• Take your food to the next level with Graza Olive Oil. Visit https://graza.co/CULTURE and use promo code CULTURE today for 10% off of TRIO!

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• Listen to MIND THE TAGS!

• Highlighting this great episode on AO3

• And another on Kirk/Spock and the Genesis of Slash

• My interview with The Pudding about “Who Gets Shipped and Why”

• And the piece that inspired that interview (and prompted the email exchange that led to this episode): Who Gets Shipped and Why

• Emily and Vee recommend using the extensive tagging system to find your first fic on AO3

• Read more about the Organization for Transformative Works, the non-profit that runs AO3

• TATE MCRAE (who is she, how did she get so popular, why is calling her the New Britney imprecise, take this wherever you want)

• SoCal Culture (broad, I know, but whew there’s so much — we’ll be talking with the great Gustavo Arellano, formerly an investigative reporter for The OC Weekly and current columnist for the Los Angeles Times, who pleads to consider this theme as broadly as possible! )

• Dark Academia (as in, the literary genre)

• Van/Skoolie/RV Life

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segment!

• As always, you can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here

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 layer: what if we had a cookbook editor as well? Enter: Adam Kowit, editoral director of all books at America’s Test Kitchen. You’re going to learn so much about the making of this cookbook (which, as you’ll see in the episode, I cannot shut up about) but also how cookbooks just generally go from a handful of recipes to an actual text. Again: what a delight, and I can’t wait for your thoughts.

Thanks to the sponsors of today’s episode!

• Zbiotics Sugar-to-Fiber: Go to zbiotics.com/CULTURESTUDY and use CULTURESTUDY at checkout for 15% off any first time orders of ZBiotics probiotics. ZBiotics has a 100% money-back guarantee, so if you’re unsatisfied for any reason they will refund your money, no questions asked.

• Article: Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit ARTICLE.COM/culture and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout.

• Buy Umma today!!!! (Chances are very high we’ll do this as a future Culture Study Cooking Club Pick, fwiw!)

• Follow Sarah Ahn’s incredibly popular Instagram account (and look at those tour dates near you)

• A few posts we reference:

• One we don’t reference but I found so fascinating:

• Follow America’s Test Kitchen on Instagram

• In the AAA, Anne references this newsletter from January

• TATE MCRAE (who is she, how did she get so popular, why is calling her the New Britney imprecise, take this wherever you want)

• SoCal Culture (broad, I know, but whew there’s so much)

• WTF is going on with contemporary/everyday men’s fashion (will Dockers make a comeback? How should we think about the business casual fleece/puffer vest? What’s going on with swimwear? HATS? I’m so excited for this one, with the great Jason Diamond)

• Dark Academia (as in, the literary genre)

• Van/Skoolie/RV Life

• PERIODS (and specifically, period pain) with Kate Helen Downey, host of Cramped

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segment!

• As always, you can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here

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 religiously unaffiliated doesn’t mean you don’t want some of the things that often come with religion: ritual, community, ethics, care. So what does that look like? How do we find it while also avoiding culty wellness shit?

Fellow None (and atheist Jew) Vanessa Zoltan, who’s currently teaching a class at Harvard on spiritual care for the non-religious, is here to help answer all your questions.

(Also note: this one’s for Nones and Non-Nones, people with a lot of religious experience and people with very little, people repelled by religion and people hungry for it. It might not seem like something in your wheelhouse, but if you’re interested, broadly, in ideas about friends, community, how to have serious conversations, and why people get really really into Crossfit, you’re going to love it)

• Find out more about Vanessa’s work here — and listen to Hot & Bothered, her podcast on rom-coms, here

• Find out more about Common Ground Pilgrimages here (Melody went on the Taylor Swift one last year!)

• Vanessa references Casper ter Kuile’s The Power of Ritual (I also interviewed Casper for the newsletter back in 2021!)

• I mention “75 Hard” (barf emoji, I think I call it Hard 75 but whatever) — here’s the parameters

• TATE MCRAE (who is she, how did she get so popular, why is calling her the New Britney imprecise, take this wherever you want)

• SoCal Culture (broad, I know, but whew there’s so much)

• WTF is going on with contemporary/everyday men’s fashion (will Dockers make a comeback? How should we think about the business casual fleece/puffer vest? What’s going on with swimwear? HATS? I’m so excited for this one, with the great Jason Diamond)

• Backyard chickens/farming

• Dark Academia (as in, the literary genre)

• Van/Skoolie/RV Life

• PERIODS (and specifically, period pain) with Kate Helen Downey, host of Cramped

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segment!

• As always, you can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here