Spoiler: No, millennials are not the most nostalgic generation — we’re just in a deeply nostalgic moment in our lives, reckoning (sometimes gracefully, other times less so) with no longer being the Main Character in the generational story. But this moment does give us opportunity to talk about the shape and purpose of nostalgia, how YouTube both amplifies and short-circuits it, and so much more — featuring one of my favorite nostalgia thinkers, Gabe Bullard. We talk about gum commercials, inflated Limewire persecution threats, Bagel Bites, and interrogate the idea of “core memories,” and I cannot wait for your thoughts.

• Subscribe to Gabe’s fantastic Substacks, Number One With a Bullard and Together, Alone (a magazine about watching TV)

• Melody also highly recommends his episode of 99% Invisible on the Elvis stamp

• Who wants to burn off their taste buds with some Big Red

• Here’s Svetlana Boym’s obituary which nicely sums up her work on nostalgia (gift link)

• Gabe also mentions writer and music critic Mark Fisher’s usage of “hauntology”— Fisher’s whole book Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology, and Lost Futures is available as a PDF here

• You can read Fred Davis’s 1977 paper about “the current nostalgia wave” here

• The ragtime song that made it to #3 on the charts because of The Sting

• One listener’s question referenced the Richard Scarry books— here’s a round-up of some of the modernization that’s been done on them

• Trad wives, featuring a co-host who used to be one

• For our continuing series on romance novels: QUEER ROMANCE and ROMANCE BOOKSTORES

• Artificial Intelligence (we’re gonna see if we can figure out an actually interesting theme here, so send us your weirdest or most mind-boggling questions)

• The economy, a.k.a. why is everything so damn expensive right now (my dream here is like an Odd Lots guest who doesn’t have private equity brain, please let us know if you have suggestions!)

• What’s up with food blogs in 2024

• Contemporary ideas of self-care

• Buy Nothing groups and/or the current state of the secondhand market

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

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (and here’s the subscriber-only priority form)

The very first episode of this pod was on how clothes got so shitty — and it prompted a whole bunch of you to write in with your questions about how the entire experience of obtaining those clothes became so shitty. Some of it is just what’s going on in the fashion world more broadly (and a continued refusal to believe that anyone larger than a size 12 wants cute, well-made clothes that fit and wants to pay you money for them) but some of it is just the weird ever-changing world of online shopping, which encourages our worst impulses and often leaves us with earrings that look nothing like the picture and make our earlobes turn green. To answer your questions (about best online shopping practices, about email marketing tactics, about how to quell or at least abate your anxiety shopping) I wanted to talk to the best and smartest shopper I know: Caroline Moss.

• Follow Caroline/Gee Thanks Just Bought It on Instagram and join the larger community on Facebook

• Subscribe to Caroline’s free Substack, where she’s rounding up all the good Memorial Day sales

• Trustpilot.com to see if a company is indeed a legit company

• The Amanda Mull piece on returns I referenced

• Dumpster Dive King on Instagram + The Trash Walker + a NYT piece on the work they do

• Here’s the Honey browser extension and phone app (AHP remains dubious but will dutifully try it out)

• The Shop App that Caroline uses to keep all orders/notifications in one place (will also try out)

• THE TUB SHROOM!!!!!

• Home renovation shows + class! (Our guest is Jonathan Menjivar, host of Classy. If you haven’t read his interview in the newsletter, it’s fantastic.)

• What’s the deal with JEANS right now (alternate title = Jeans: Help. Co-host is

  Virginia Sole-Smith

  , so it’s gonna be great)

• For our continuing series on romance novels: QUEER ROMANCE and ROMANCE BOOKSTORES

• Artificial Intelligence (we’re gonna see if we can figure out an actually interesting theme here, so send us your weirdest or most mind-boggling questions)

• The economy, a.k.a. why is everything so damn expensive right now (my dream here is like an Odd Lots guest who doesn’t have private equity brain, please let us know if you have suggestions!)

• Anything you need advice or want musings on

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (and here’s the subscriber-only priority form)

I spent years of my life studying celebrity images and what makes them meaningful to us. A celebrity’s actions or words can make or deepen our connection to them — or they can really piss us off. But why? Is it just a classic case of dashed expectations? What makes, oh, Taylor Swift hanging out with Matty Healy so disappointing? For this episode, I asked celebrity feelings expert Margaret H. Willison to come answer your questions about the broad contours of celebrity-directed anger — and work through some very specific examples. I promise: you’ll leave this episode with a more textured understanding of your own celebrity feelings.

Note: This episode was taped before the conversation re: the Met Ball and celebrity silence on Gaza; you can read more about it here.

• Follow Margaret on Instagram (her account is a delight) and subscribe to her newsletter, Two Bossy Dames

• Register for Margaret’s TTPD Listening Party on May 19th and the Taylor Swift pilgrimage on Cape Cod in November

• Learn more about Not Sorry Productions, and sign up for the Common Ground newsletter

• A write-up of Plan B distribution at Olivia Rodrigo’s St. Louis show (how much of this was her call now seems up for debate)

• Travis Kelce’s unearthed tweets

• Jia Tolentino on Matty Healey

• If you want to read my favorite star study of all time — on Marilyn Monroe — it’s in Richard Dyer’s Heavenly Bodies. It’s somewhat academic but also very accessible for an academic text. I could read it every day. Dyer also wrote the definitive star study of Fonda in Stars, which is out of print but lots of used copies floating around

• A bit of a tangent but if you want to read a really great academic history of the economic imperatives of the Red Scare & The Hollywood Ten, whew this is it

• I’ve been thinking about the ethics of private jets (and privacy, and labor) amidst the conversations re: the WNBA moving to chartering

• Take a look at Anna Marie Tendler’s art!!!

• Just for laughs, a TikTok imagining Taylor Swift’s PR in the Matty Healy era

• Home renovation shows + class! (Our guest is Jonathan Menjivar, host of Classy. If you haven’t read his interview in the newsletter, it’s fantastic.)

• What’s the deal with JEANS right now (alternate title = Jeans: Help. Co-host is

  Virginia Sole-Smith

  , so it’s gonna be great)

• Weird TikTok trends you’re seeing on your FYP

• For our continuing series on romance novels: QUEER ROMANCE and ROMANCE BOOKSTORES

• Ben Affleck (specifically within the framework of Ambition)

• Artificial Intelligence (we’re gonna see if we can figure out an actually interesting theme here, so send us your weirdest or most mind-boggling questions)

• The economy, a.k.a. why is everything so damn expensive right now (my dream here is like an Odd Lots guest who doesn’t have private equity brain, please let us know if you have suggestions!)

• Anything you need advice or want musings on

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (and here’s the subscriber-only priority form)

If you grew up in or adjacent to evangelical culture, the sounds of ‘90s and early 2000s Christian Rock are as familiar to you as the beginning bars of Britney Spears “Hit Me Baby One More Time.” The Newsboys, dcTalk, Jars of Clay, Third Day, Jennifer Knapp, Caedmon’s Call — these groups peaked just twenty years ago, but the sound and vibe feels like an archeological find. Same for the crossover “secular” hits from Creed, Lifehouse, Sixpence None the Richer, and Switchfoot. Where did Christian rock go? Did it just get devoured by Nickelback and Noah Kahan? Was it actually good? And what purpose did it actually serve in what we now understand as the evangelical culture war?

Leah Payne, author of a God Gave Rock & Roll To You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music joins us to root the rise of Christian rock in history — and consider the ways it was wielded to control teens. If you grew up in this culture, there will be a lot of nostalgic groaning; if you didn’t, we’ve worked hard to make it as accessible as possible — and help connect some dots about how evangelical ideologies work their way into the mainstream.

• Follow Leah on Instagram and find out more about her work here

• Buy God Gave Rock & Roll To You here! (promo code CULTURE gets you 10% off!)

• An amazing little write-up of Creation Fest 1999 from The Seattle Times

• Revisit Anne’s interview with Kristin Kobes Du Mez about her book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

• Creed’s NFL halftime show two months after 9/11

• Some of my Christian Rock Greatest Hits include Jennifer Knapp:

• Jars of Clay (THE WHOLE FIRST ALBUM!)

• Third Day (oh no what is going on in this video)

• “Breakfast” by the Newsboys, cited in the ep as emblematic of the quirky corners of the genre

• Just a TikTok that’s only tangentially related but made Melody laugh

• What’s the deal with JEANS right now (alternate title = Jeans: Help)

• The State Of The Food Blog in 2024

• Weird TikTok trends you’re seeing on your FYP

• Your strong opinions on things that, in the grand scheme, don’t matter much

• For our continuing series on romance novels: QUEER ROMANCE and ROMANCE BOOKSTORES

• The Contemporary Jennifer Lopez

• Ben Affleck (specifically within the framework of Ambition)

• Artificial Intelligence (in a thought-provoking way, think expansively here)

• The economy, a.k.a. why is everything so damn expensive right now (and we need your co-host ideas for someone cool and fun who can talk about this in an accessible way!)

• Anything you need advice or want musings on

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (and here’s the subscriber-only priority form)

A platform where you can record what you’re reading and talk to others about what they’re reading doesn’t sound like a recipe for dystopia. But throw in a negligent billionaire conglomerate owner, optimization culture, and a competitive industry in which the line between reader and author is continually blurred… and you have a legitimate book lover’s hellscape. In other words: Goodreads! Today, I’m joined by book lover and book critic Maris Kreizman to talk about the rot at the heart of the platform, what feeds it, and whether there’s any hope of salvaging the entire enterprise. (Plus: a special bonus section where we give advice about dealing with self-imposed pressure to read X number of books a year). Also: it doesn’t matter if you’ve never gone on Goodreads in your life. If you read books, if you’re interested in the way we talk and think about books, you’re going to appreciate this episode.

Since you’re a paid subscriber, you won’t hear the ad for Bookshop.org at the start of this episode— but we want to make sure you get the discount code! Use promo code CULTURE to get 10% off your next purchase. (And tell us in the comments what you buy!)

• Maris on Instagram! Maris’s new newsletter, The Maris Review! Maris’s new column for Lit Hub! Maris’s old podcast, also titled The Maris Review!

• Maris’s piece in the New York Times on the decline of Goodreads: “Let’s Rescue Book Lovers From This Online Hellscape”

• Some of Maris’s favorite places for reviews and criticism:

  • Bookforum

  • Bookmarks.reviews, which she describes as Rotten Tomato for books

  • Los Angeles Review of Books

• A rundown of that weird story of the author creating fake accounts to review bomb other debut authors on Goodreads

• Just for funsies, one-star reviews of classic novels

• How we talk about the royals today (especially looking for some questions from people outside of the U.S. here!)

• The State Of The Food Blog in 2024

• Your strong opinions on things that, in the grand scheme, don’t matter much

• For our continuing series on romance novels: QUEER ROMANCE and ROMANCE BOOKSTORES

• The future of reality TV

• What’s the deal with JEANS right now (alternate title = Jeans: Help)

• The Contemporary Jennifer Lopez

• Ben Affleck (specifically within the framework of Ambition)

• Artificial Intelligence (in a thought-provoking way, think expansively here)

• The economy, a.k.a. why is everything so damn expensive right now (and we need your co-host ideas for someone cool and fun who can talk about this in an accessible way!)

• Anything you need advice on!

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (and here’s the subscriber-only priority form)

A listener submitted a question earlier this week that was basically: Why are we talking about Taylor Swift again???? And I get it: if you’re not a fan, if her music is not for you, you too might be tired of the ongoing Taylor Swift Conversation. But I’m ultimately less interested in Taylor Swift herself and more interested in the shape of that conversation: what are we actually talking about when we talk about Taylor Swift? We’re talking about work and scarcity, we’re talking about aesthetics and whiteness, we’re talking about the performance of authenticity and narratives of romance… and we’re talking about all of those things today with Sarah Chapelle, the fashion journalist behind the enormously popular Instagram account Taylor Swift Style.

• Follow Sarah on Instagram, and pre-order Taylor Swift Style (out October 8)!

• Read the NYT review one listener referenced: “On ‘The Tortured Poets Department,’ Taylor Swift Could Use an Editor”

• And as a counterpoint, how about this Bloomberg op ed: “Taylor Swift Is Proof That How We Critique Music Is Broken”

• As a reminder, here’s Taylor’s Grammy look the night she announced TTPD

• Revel in the aesthetic of the “Fortnight” music video

• Here’s the YouTube short of snippets from Taylor’s life in the past few months

• And of course, revisit our third ever episode

• How we talk about the royals today (especially looking for some questions from people outside of the U.S. here!)

• The State Of The Food Blog in 2024

• Your strong opinions on things that, in the grand scheme, don’t matter much

• For our continuing series on romance novels: QUEER ROMANCE and ROMANCE BOOKSTORES

• The future of reality TV

• What’s the deal with JEANS right now (alternate title = Jeans: Help)

• The Contemporary Jennifer Lopez

• Ben Affleck (specifically within the framework of Ambition)

• The cultural force that is nostalgia (especially interested in how it functions in different generations)

• Anything you need advice on!

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (and here’s the subscriber-only priority form)

Who can force a nationwide conversation about musical genre for a whole damn month? Beyoncé can. And I knew I wanted to be several weeks into that discussion — and several weeks into my own relationship with the album — before I dove in myself. I also knew I wanted to talk about it with someone else with a similarly deep and ambivalent relationship with country music: the good, the white, the cold-beer-nation-building, all of it. So I was absolutely thrilled when Elamin Abdelmahmoud agreed to come on the show and engage in what he calls one of his favorite hobbies: “talking about Beyoncé at length.” You’re gonna love the show and you’re gonna love Elamin and it’s gonna make you think a lot more about Cowboy Carter, even if it’s not (yet) your fav. I can’t wait for your thoughts (and to argue more about Jolene in the comments).

• Follow Elamin on Instagram and Twitter, and listen to his excellent show, Commotion (also read my interview with Elamin on Culture Study here from a few years ago here!)

• The episode of Into It with Sam Sanders and Tressie McMillan Cottom on country music and race

• A few of the country self-referential songs I mentioned: Tim and Faith, Damn Straight, She Had Me At Heads Carolina

• Watch Beyoncé and The Chicks perform at the 2016 CMAs (and also watch the crowd shots)

• Natalie Maines of The Chicks talked about the performance on The Howard Stern Show in 2020

• Elamin references Dr. Jada Watson’s studies on race in country music— check out “Redlining in Country Music: Representation in the Country Music Industry (2000-2020)” and the follow-up on representation in 2021 and 2022

• Read Doreen St. Félix’s piece in The New Yorker: “Beyoncé Won’t Burn Down the Barn with Cowboy Carter”

• Read Julianne Escobedo Shepherd’s review of the album for Pitchfork

• And just because it never gets old, revisit Miley Cyrus’s cover of “Jolene”

• How we talk about the royals today (especially looking for some questions from people outside of the U.S. here!)

• The State Of The Food Blog in 2024

• Your strong opinions on things that, in the grand scheme, don’t matter much

• For our continuing series on romance novels: QUEER ROMANCE and ROMANCE BOOKSTORES

• The future of reality TV

• What’s the deal with JEANS right now (alternate title = Jeans: Help)

• The Contemporary Jennifer Lopez

• Ben Affleck (specifically within the framework of Ambition)

• The cultural force that is nostalgia (especially interested in how it functions in different generations)

• Anything you need advice on!

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (and here’s the subscriber-only priority form)

Moms For Liberty sucks. I’m not going to even try to soften that statement, because it’s true: they’re an ideologically regressive organization that is wielding the idea of “parental rights” to censor books, teachers, and instructional materials. They make it much, much harder for educators to do their jobs — and many of the people most involved don’t even have kids in public schools.

But to defeat them, you have to understand what they’re doing — and how they’re doing it. Which is why I wanted to have journalist Laura Pappano come on the show to talk about her extensive reporting on “school moms” and the place of Moms for Liberty within the “battle” for public schools. We talk about where the money comes from, how other parents are effectively organizing against them, the history of parent-led school activism, and most importantly, what uniform you wear to a conservative mom conference.

• Find Laura’s book, School Moms: Partisan Politics, and the Battle for Public Education here

• Laura on the “Brief History of the Grand Old American Tradition of Banning Books”

• Her report from the Moms for Liberty gathering from last summer)

• Laura’s excellent piece on the effort to take back control of the school board from far-right extremists in West Bonner County, North Idaho

• A few of the pieces I mention re: my reporting on extremism in North Idaho: Here’s What Happens When Republicans Have No One To Fight and The Fight to Bear Arms

• Find Laura’s website — with links to her other reporting and work — here!

• The force and vector shifts and general dynamics of getting very mad at a celebrity

• What’s the deal with JEANS right now (alternate title = Jeans: Help)

• For our continuing series on romance novels: QUEER ROMANCE and ROMANCE BOOKSTORES

• The future of reality TV

• How we talk about the royals today (especially looking for some questions from people outside of the U.S. here!)

• The Contemporary Jennifer Lopez

• Online shopping culture, including but not limited to people’s reliance on reviews and/or compulsion to leave reviews

• The cultural force that is nostalgia (especially interested in how it functions in different generations)

• Anything you need advice on!

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (and here’s the subscriber-only priority form)

Driving, attending meetings, hunching over laptops, zooming, commuting, absentmindedly scrolling Instagram — so much of contemporary life encourages if not outright demands that we sit. But study after study (and maybe just your own body) has told you: this much sitting is not great for us. But what are we supposed to do instead? Can we get rid of the junk wellness moralizing (10,000 steps a day!) and figure out small things that actually make our bodies feel better?

Turns out, yes! And Manoush Zomorodi is here to talk about all of it — including whether those walking pads are bullshit. And I promise: this show won't make you feel like a horrible person for sitting. But it might give you some ideas about how you can listen to your body more.

• NPR/Ted Radio Hour’s The Body Electric Challenge, which is very cool

• Manoush’s recap of the challenge:

• The Roxanne Gay Work Friend column on walking treadmills

• Manoush’s piece in the Los Angeles Times re: strategies to break up sitting

• Debunking the 10,000 Steps Myth

• THE NEW BEYONCÉ ALBUM — SPECIFICALLY WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF COUNTRY MUSIC (this ep’s with Elamin Abdelmahmoud and it’s going to be so good, but we absolutely need your questions to guide us)

• What’s the deal with JEANS right now (alternate title = Jeans: Help)

• For our continuing series on romance novels: QUEER ROMANCE

• The future of reality TV

• How we talk about the royals today (especially looking for some questions from people outside of the U.S. here!)

• The Contemporary Jennifer Lopez

• Online shopping culture, including but not limited to people’s reliance on reviews and/or compulsion to leave reviews

• The cultural force that is nostalgia (especially interested in how it functions in different generations)

• Anything you need advice on!

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (and here’s the subscriber-only priority form)

As any Pacific Northwest teen from the ‘90s and early 2000s who carted a Nalgene around campus can tell you: WATER BOTTLE CULTURE IS NOT NEW. As pretty much any Grandpa or Boomer Dad can tell you: NEITHER IS STANLEY. But the demand for Stanley Tumblers (and, just as important, the inflated, often misogynistic conversation around it?) That’s (sorta) new. Like everything we talk about on this show: it’s complicated.

For today’s episode, we invited Amanda Mull back to the show to unpack the so-called Stanley Tumbler “obsession,” the relatively novel fascination with hydration, and why every kid has to have a water bottle at school. You might not think there’s that much to talk about when it comes to water bottles, but this one’s a whole lot of fun and as always, Amanda is a font of consumer behavior knowledge. (And make sure to check out Amanda’s first appearance on the pod, exploring why do clothes suck now??)

• Amanda’s piece on Stanley Cups in The Atlantic (gift link)

• Amanda’s 2019 piece on millennials and fancy water bottles (gift link)

• The TMZ video of the argument in the Target line, which you hear at the start of this episode

• The model of Nalgene we had in my family for hiking (???)

• The great Decoder Ring episode on “the invention of hydration”

• Melody wants everyone to rewatch this clip from Parks and Rec, in which Pawnee citizens use water fountains

• Virginia Sole-Smith’s piece on diet culture and Stanley discourse is also worth the read (paywalled)

• Just one example of what a Stanley collection looks like

• An official Owala TikTok on how to clean the damn thing

• Find all of Amanda’s work here and here’s one of my favs on where your returns actually go

• Specific questions for a romance author (already scheduled, she’s awesome!) and romance booksellers (send us your recs!)

• The weird TikTok trends on your specific FYP

• What’s the deal with JEANS right now (alternate title = Jeans: Help)

• Sephora Teens and teen skincare/makeup culture

• How we talk about the royals today

• Beyond Ballerina Farm [and is there such a thing as too much tradwife discourse? How do we critique but also not celebritize?]

• WHAT CELEBRITY IMAGE SHOULD WE UNPACK NEXT?

• Online shopping culture, including but not limited to people’s reliance on reviews and/or compulsion to leave reviews

• The cultural force that is nostalgia (especially interested in how it functions in different generations)

• Anything you need advice on!

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (and here’s the subscriber-only priority form)