“Most people who complain about BookTok have never seen a BookTok.” Alyssa Morris drops that insight about two-thirds of the way through the episode, and it’s such a good point that I almost want to make it the title of the episode. Most people have an idea of what BookTok is (people talking about books on TikTok) but no real understanding of the immensity of BookTok. It’s talking about what you’ve read, sure, but it’s also about recommendations, and performance, and the aesthetics of reading culture — and the criticisms of it have a lot more to do with weird ideas about what reading (or talking about reading!) “should” look like.

If you’re interested in reading culture, you’ll be interested in this episode — full stop. Let it surprise you! And make sure to check out Alyssa’s BookTok newsletter, which has quickly become one of my favorite reads of the week.

• Check out more of Alyssa Morris’s work here — and subscribe to Romancing the Phone!!!

• Alyssa breaks down a bunch of the different “genres” of Booktok here — it’s so good

• One of my favorite Alyssa pieces on the appeal of the hockey romance

• The Hinge “No Ordinary Love” Collection featuring Roxane Gay

• The Atlantic piece I reference re: “college kids can’t read books”

• The Rachel Cusk reading order Tok

• The VERY FALL Laurie Gilmore books

• The special edition Bridgerton hardbacks

• Yes / No / Maybe

• Underhyped / Appropriately Hyped / Overhyped

• How Much I Read This Week (With a Full Time Job)

• Glen Powell in a White T-Shirt Recs

• SOME OF THE DAHLIA THINGS I MENTION: Kristine Albrecht’s Dahlias: From Seed to Bloom, Swan Island Dahlias, The Saran Wrap Method, The Dahlia Growers FB Group (which is absolutely full of gall pictures right now). And if you want to read the other things I’ve written about dahlias

• THE STATE OF KIDS TOYS — what’s weird? What’s interesting? What doesn’t make sense?

• Why does it feel like thrifting sucks now

• The new Gladiator + Paul Mescal JUST GENERALLY

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (this is the subscriber-only form!)

A podcast episode on the state of podcasting? Classic Culture Study Pod. At this point in my career, I’ve been interviewed on hundreds of podcasts, been adjacent to the production of dozens, been the host of three pods, and even watched a fourth pod go through two years of production only to get axed. The podcasting world is so dynamic, so weird, and so complicated… and industry analyst and critic Nicholas Quah is the best person to talk about its shifts, its future, and the best stuff coming out RIGHT NOW.

You asked so many good questions (about ads, about funding structures, about editing) that Nick and I did our best to answer — but I also can’t wait to hear your follow-ups, because this world is ever-changing.

• Find all of Nick’s writing (on podcasts and non-podcasts) over at Vulture; I especially liked this recent piece on the devaluation of the “good interview”

• Nick’s piece on the Best New Podcasts of 2024 (thus far)

• Nick’s podcast recs:

  • Hysterical, about a mysterious illness spreading among a group of high school girls in upstate New York

  • The Town with Matthew Belloni, about the business of Hollywood

  • Nymphet Alumni, about fashion and cultural trends

• WTF is going on with kids toys right now (you can take this in any direction)

• The future of (downhill) skiing and livability of ski towns just generally

• The Present and Past of NICOLE KIDMAN (with Sam Sanders!)

• The new Gladiator + Paul Mescal JUST GENERALLY

• Why does it feel like thrifting sucks now

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (this is the subscriber-only form!)

You might look at the question in the title of this episode and think: duh, it’s because we’re weird about death. But cancer is so common, with so many different variations, with so many ways it can touch your life, in ways immediate and lasting… that of course we’ve figured out ways to be weird about it. Of course there are bizarre metaphors, of course we don’t have space for the messy, extended work of recovery; of course there are bizarre tropes and plot lines intended to make cancer more understandable which just make so many people feel like they’re “failing” at cancer when their own experiences don’t fit the popular narrative trajectory.

Dr. Stacy Wentworth is an oncologist, the author of the newsletter Cancer Culture, and the host of Less Radical, a new podcast about the surgeon who revolutionized breast cancer treatment — and changed the way we understand cancer today. And I knew she’d be the perfect person to talk about the way we talk about cancer, all the weirdness that can accompany it, and how that discourse has changed over time.

• Subscribe to Stacy’s newsletter, Cancer Culture

• And listen to Less Radical wherever you get your podcasts by clicking this magic button

• Find all of Kate Bowler’s work (which Stacy mentions) here

• A good interview re: pinkwashing with the author of Pink Ribbon Blues

• Stacy also mentions a guest post in her newsletter by Judy Pearson, the biographer of the New York socialite who was instrumental to passing the bill that would grant significant government funding to cancer research — it’s fascinating

• The trailer for LOVE STORY!!!!! I’M NOT CRYING YOU’RE CRYING!

• My Life now I’m really crying

• Brian’s Song

• The Present and Past of NICOLE KIDMAN (with Sam Sanders!)

• Midwest [Dad] Masculinity / Tim Walz Memedom

• The new Gladiator + Paul Mescal JUST GENERALLY

• Explaining trends on BookTok

• Why does it feel like thrifting sucks now

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (this is the subscriber-only form!)

You know that feeling when you and a friend get weird and detailed and hilarious about something you deeply (and maybe irrationally) hate, or find ridiculous, or can’t stomach in your vicinity? It’s one of my favorite versions of friendship intimacy — talking shit about something you shouldn’t dislike nearly as much as you do, because that thing is relatively trivial, but that doesn’t mean that the thing itself doesn’t make you want to bang your head against the wall.

And that’s what this week’s episode is: talking about all of your strong opinions about trivial shit. Our co-host, Krista Burton, came up with the idea — because it’s a regular feature of her excellent and always entertaining newsletter (O Caftan My Caftan!). So join us as we talk about your strong opinions about gnomes, “journey” and “season,” boarding planes, late-in-life-lesbian-Tok, calling your romantic person “partner,” mullets, and a very juicy/useful AAA section about almond boomers. I can’t wait to talk even MORE about all of your strong opinions about trivial shit in the comments.

• Subscribe to O Caftan My Caftan!!!!!

• My interview with Krista about her AMAZING book Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest to Track Down the Last Remaining Lesbian Bars in America

• BUY MOBY DYKE !!!

• The thread where Melody said she wasn’t going to buy the porch geese costumes

• If you didn’t get the gnome situation like me here’s what we’re talking about

• The British GQ article I reference re: the feelings about the mullet

• How the “green bubble” for Android users has been part of the case against Apple re: “anti-competitive behavior”

• One of those infinitely annoying articles about how there are better ways to board a plane

• Just a hot lesbian chopping wood on Tiktok

• From the AAA: one of my favorite Virginia Sole-Smith pieces about “the grandparents are not okay” re: boomers and diet culture

• The Present and Past of NICOLE KIDMAN (with Sam Sanders!)

• Midwest [Dad] Masculinity / Tim Walz Memedom

• What Happened to the Summer Blockbuster?

• The new Gladiator + Paul Mescal JUST GENERALLY

• Explaining trends on BookTok

• Why does it feel like thrifting sucks now

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (this is the subscriber-only form!)

What’s the difference between a conspiracy theory and gossip? When does joking around about Kate Middleton’s abduction turn into something much darker? Are women actually more susceptible to contemporary conspiracy theories — or are we just finally paying attention to it? Cristen Conger, host of the new podcast Conspiracy, She Wrote joins me to talk about Taylor Swift’s evil twin, Beyoncé’s illuminati connections, Katie Holmes getting impregnated by Scientology aliens, sex trafficking panics, and how to talk to someone when they start directing a conspiracy theory your way. We go deep down the wormhole in this one, friends, but I think you’re gonna love it.

• Go listen to Conspiracy, She Wrote!

• Follow Cristen’s other (very popular!) podcast Unladylike on Instagram

• My piece from earlier this year re: the information vacuum around Kate Middleton’s disappearance from public view

• Annie Kelly is one of the leading researchers on QAnon (and women’s involvement in particular). Read her excellent op-ed in the Times and listen to her episode of QAnon Anonymous on Mothers for QAnon

• I briefly mention a book about the history of C-sections — it’s called Invisible Labor, and here’s an interview with author Rachel Somerstein

• Cristen talks about The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk — here’s a fascinating deep dive

• CORRECTION: An earlier version of the podcast referenced Naomi Klein, when we meant Naomi Wolf. The episode has been corrected and re-uploaded. Thank you to Marissa for pointing it out in the comments!

• The Present and Past of NICOLE KIDMAN (with Sam Sanders!)

• Midwest [Dad] Masculinity / Tim Walz Memedom

• What Happened to the Summer Blockbuster?

• The new Gladiator + Paul Mescal JUST GENERALLY

• Explaining trends on BookTok

• Why does it feel like thrifting sucks now

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (this is the subscriber-only form!)

You can almost hear the producers trying to sell this show to Hulu: It’s hot Mormon moms… who are also swingers. Turns out only one of them was “swinging,” and the swinging was (in her words) “soft.” But it was enough to get Hulu — and now, millions of other viewers — on board with Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, which tracks the interlocking stories of eight Mormon influencers in Utah.

Like so much of contemporary reality television, this show is glossy, melodramatic, unhinged, and addictive. It’s entertainment, sure, but it’s also a way for us to think through some of our own understandings of marriage, sex, friendship, religion, and feminism — which is exactly what Sara Petersen and I try to work through in this episode. That, and whether Dakota is a paid actor.

• Subscribe to Sara’s newsletter

• And read her latest piece on Secret Lives of Mormon Wives

• The Us Weekly aggregation of “where the women stand with the church”

• The breakdown of Demi’s relationship with Bret

• The best thing I’ve read from the Mormon feminist perspective re: Secret Lives and the church’s reaction to it

• A big feature I wrote for BuzzFeed about the women who’d left the FLDS and were trying to remake their lives

• My interview with Meg Conley re: what got left out of LuLaRich and the role of MLMs in Mormon culture

• Sara’s excellent reflection on the Times Ballerina Farm profile (and Hannah Neeleman’s reaction)

We’ve had listeners asking us to do an episode on sapphic pop for months now, and were trying to figure out who we wanted to co-host. Then Melody sent me a text: I FOUND THE PERFECT PERSON. That person is Trish Bendix, who just published a sprawling look at the past and present (and popularity) of sapphic pop, from Big Momma Thornton to Chappell Roan. I absolutely loved this conversation, where we did our very best to answer your questions about everything from the ‘80s sound in contemporary sapphic pop to Jojo Siwa “inventing” the genre. Plus we talk about “Constant Craving” at least three times (which Melody had never heard!!!!) Make sure you check out the show notes to links to all the songs we mention in the episode. Join the ranks of paid subscribers and get bonus content, access to the discussion threads, ad-free episodes, and the knowledge that you're supporting an indie pod trying to make its way in the world. If you're already a subscriber-- thank you! Join us in the discussion thread for this episode! Got a question or idea for a future episode? Let us know here.

• Read Trish’s piece on NBC News re: the history of sapphic pop

• Subscribe to Trish’s newsletter LIT FEMME!

• CONSTANT CRAVING 4EVER!!!!

• Some of the ‘80s flavor in Sabrina Carpenter’s “Please Please Please”

• We didn’t go into it but the Michigan Womyn’s Festival/MichFest shut down in 2015 amidst ongoing arguments from TERFs (including the festival’s founder) that the festival was only for “women born women.” You can read an overview here.

• Indigo Girls “Ghost”:

• Indigo Girls 1200 Curfews Live Album (especially recommend the cover of River)

• Tracy Chapman, “The Promise”

• Questions about queer romance that aren’t related to “why are all these women writing about romance between two dudes” (which we will definitely tackle, don’t worry)

• What happened to the summer blockbuster?!

• How do people access/consume celebrity gossip these days

• Midwest [Dad] Masculinity

• WTF is going on with [insert clothing brand/website] here

• Gwyneth? The new Brad Pitt / George Clooney movie?

• We’re definitely doing a Paul Mescal episode but I’d love your ideas about who should be my co-host

• Still want to do a Sydney Sweeney and Gen-Z Stardom ep!!!!!

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (this is the subscriber-only form!)

This is a dream come true of an episode: we got the owners of The Ripped Bodice to talk to us about all the ins and outs of running a romance-only bookstore. We talk about everything from the genesis of their annual State of Racial Diversity in Romance Publishing Report to their fav recommendations for tweens and teens …..and how they deal with “vintage” romances in the store. I found everything about our discussion fascinating — plus, if you’re a paid subscriber, you get very good advice on how to recommend books to others!

• FOLLOW THE RIPPED BODICE ON INSTAGRAM!!!

• Or even better, go to one of their actual bookstores in Brooklyn or Culver City

• If you can’t get to LA or Brooklyn, here’s a Reddit thread compiling a list of more romance bookstores

• The Ripped Bodice State of Racial Diversity in Publishing Report

• Listen to our previous romance-specific episodes:

  How Romance Novels Center Marginalized Joy

  How Romance Writers Rewrite Publishing’s Rules

  The ACOTAR Chokehold

• A fascinating piece on the use of “spicy” as a descriptor for romance novels

• Some of the books and authors mentioned in this episode:

  • Chuck Tingle

  • Don’t Want You Like A Best Friend by Emma R. Alban

  • The historical romance writers Bea dealt out of her backpack as a kid: Lisa Kleypas, Sarah MacLean, Julia Quinn, Lorraine Heath, Loretta Chase

  • Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend by Rebecca Romney

  • The Ripped Bodice’s collection of used and rare romance novels

  • The Flame and the Flower by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

  • Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon

  • For YA recs: Alexandra Bracken, Rebekah Weatherspoon, Sarah Kuhn, and Elise Bryant

• We’re still looking for questions about queer romance that aren’t related to “why are all these women writing about romance between two dudes” (which we will definitely tackle, don’t worry)

• Women’s Sports and/or Gender Panic in/around Women’s Sports

• SAPPHIC POP, SO HOT RIGHT NOW (especially want to talk about Chappell Roan but we can go in so many directions)

• How do people access/consume celebrity gossip these days

• How we talk and think about cancer

• Midwest [Dad] Masculinity

• WTF is going on with [insert clothing brand/website] here

• Gwyneth? The new Brad Pitt / George Clooney movie?

• We’re definitely doing a Paul Mescal episode but I’d love your ideas about who should be my co-host

• Still want to do a Sydney Sweeney and Gen-Z Stardom ep!!!!!

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (this is the subscriber-only form!)

This episode is the Culture Study Podcast’s version of a Just Trust Me. It’s difficult to describe exactly WHY it’s so good, just that after we finished recording (with Lilah Raptopoulos, host of the podcast Life and Art) Melody and I both immediately texted each other with: SO GOOD!!! The episode is ostensibly about figuring out how to cook in the world of infinite recipes, but it’s also about how we pass down recipes (or gatekeep them), recipes as a form of memory making (and retrieval), recipes as heritage… capped off with some practical advice about how to organize the recipes you do have (and how to ascertain if a recipe is “good”).

I can’t wait for you to listen, and if you don’t think you’re a person that invested or interested in recipes: just trust me.

• Follow Lilah on Instagram and listen to Life and Art here (it’s so good!!!)

• Lilah mentions Fuschia Dunlap’s The Food of Sichuan and Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat

• I mention Melissa Clark’s Dinner which is just filled with keepers

• A lot of Culture Study readers swear by the Paprika app for recipe organization (I cannot vouch for it but maybe this is the day I actually try it out)

• SAPPHIC POP, SO HOT RIGHT NOW (especially want to talk about Chappell Roan but we can go in so many directions)

• Women’s sports— our societal thinking on gender and athleticism, broadly conceived

• How we talk and think about cancer

• How do people access/consume celebrity gossip these days

• Midwest [Dad] Masculinity

• WTF is going on with [insert clothing brand/website] here

• Gwyneth? The new Brad Pitt / George Clooney movie?

• We’re definitely doing a Paul Mescal episode but I’d love your ideas about who should be my co-host

• Still want to do a Sydney Sweeney and Gen-Z Stardom ep!!!!!

• Why does it feel like thrifting sucks now

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (this is the subscriber-only form!)

We’re more than twenty years into the current reality boom — and things are getting complicated. What are the unspoken and spoken ethics of signing up to become a reality star? What resources (about harassment and protection, about brand deals) should be made available to anyone who signs a reality contract? Are reality stars scabs during strikes — and should they unionize? WHAT MAKES THESE MELODRAMAS SO COMPELLING? WTF IS SCANDOVAL??? Hollywood correspondent Natalie Jarvey joins me to talk through it all.

(And just to be clear, even if you’re not a huge reality television person, this episode has something for you — I watch very little but I’m very invested in reality melodrama reality labor as labor)

• Some of my favorite Natalie Jarvey pieces: The Year That Broke Hollywood; Why Are Movies Sooooo Long? An Investigation; Actors Don’t Want a Yacht — They Just Want to Survive Peak TV

• The truly WILD profile of Tom Sandoval in the New York Times Magazine

• A detailed timeline of Scandoval if you really want to go down that wormhole

• So much great writing on the production and legacy of Cops: The Unreality of Cops; Cops: the violent legacy of a TV show that sculpted America's view of police; Is ‘Cops’ Committing Crimes Itself?

• How Netflix Became the New King of Reality TV

• From the Triple-A segment: ARE YOU IN THE PORTAL???

• SAPPHIC POP, SO HOT RIGHT NOW (especially want to talk about Chappell Roan but we can go in so many directions)

• How do people access/consume celebrity gossip these days

• Midwest [Dad] Masculinity

• WTF is going on with [insert clothing brand/website] here

• Gwyneth? The new Brad Pitt / George Clooney movie?

• We’re definitely doing a Paul Mescal episode but I’d love your ideas about who should be my co-host

• Still want to do a Sydney Sweeney and Gen-Z Stardom ep!!!!!

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (this is the subscriber-only form!)