It’s the most-hyped wedding of the year: Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce got married at Madison Square Garden on July 3rd. There’s a lot that we know – a thousand guests, 20-minute vows, a jumbotron announcement. And there’s a lot that we don’t know – what did Taylor’s dress look like, and more importantly, what did Adam Sandler wear? 

But what does the spectacle reveal about celebrity performance, fandom, and what public figures owe the people who put them there? In this episode, Jena and Michelle unpack how two of the biggest personal brands in music and sports came together, and why fans are more conflicted about Taylor's happy ending than you might expect.

Plus: Air-conditioning sparks cross-Atlantic culture wars, and people have mixed feelings about America’s 250th birthday. 

Find us online!

Michelle Ciulla Lipkin

Feed for Thought by Jena Wuu

Read our writing about Taylor Swift: 

MEdia Notes (Taylor's Version), Michelle Ciulla Lipkin

Check out our recs: 

The End of an Era, Disney+, 2025. 

There are plenty of power publicists. But only one works for Taylor Swift., The Wall Street Journal, 2024.

The people who brought you Travis Kelce, The New York Times, 2024.

Learn more about the photo we discuss:

Patriot Front members and a solitary woman travel on a DC train: a picture and its story, Reuters, 2026.

Audio clip sources:

Wedding March by Felix Mendelssohn

CBS Mornings (TikTok), 2026.

CBS Mornings (TikTok), 2026.

CNN (TikTok), 2026. 

Ricki-Lee & Tim (Instagram), 2026. 

Morgan St. Jean (Instagram), 2026.

Meredith Lynch (Instagram), 2026. 

Page Six (TikTok), 2026. 

Jojo (in KC) (TikTok), 2026. 

ABC7LA (TikTok), 2026. 

Learn more about the heatwave in Europe:

Air conditioning creates political divide after France records hottest day, BBC, 2026.

Geopolitical Europe needs air-conditioning, Carnegie Europe, 2026. 

The overlooked reason Europe doesn’t have AC, The Atlantic, 2026. 

Why Germans don’t have air conditioning, Deutsche Welle, 2026. 

Learn more about America’s 250th anniversary celebrations:

One birthday, two party planners: Freedom 250 vs. America 250, explained, NBC News, 2026.

What is Freedom 250? And why are musical artists distancing themselves from its concerts? The Hill, 2026.

White nationalists march in Washington amid 250th anniversary celebrations, The New York Times, 2026.

Learn more about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce: 

All of Taylor Swift’s lyrics about getting married, from “Love Story” to “Honey”, Today, 2026.

The defiant conventionality of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, The Atlantic, 2025.

How Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s hand-picked charities learned about $26M donation: “Boy, have I got news for you”, People, 2026.

Inside Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding: 20-minute vows, Paul McCartney singing, and “bars everywhere”, People, 2026.

Jason and Travis Kelce sign reported $100 million podcast deal with Amazon’s Wondery, Forbes, 2024.

Kylie Kelce unseats Joe Rogan as top podcast with debut episode, The Hill, 2024. 

Taylor Swift and the philosophy of Easter eggs, London School of Economics, 2024.

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce unite in marriage, The New York Times, 2026.

Taylor Swift, what are you doing?, The New York Times, 2026.

What does it cost to take over Madison Square Garden?, The New York Times, 2026.

With SpaceX’s IPO, Elon Musk is officially a trillionaire. But he’s not just wealthy. He’s also shaping how people understand the world through the media platforms and infrastructure he controls. How did we get here?

In this episode, Jena and Michelle unpack the growing concentration of power in media. Using recent developments involving Musk, the Murdoch family, and Larry and David Ellison, they explore how media empires are evolving and what happens when a small number of people controls most of what everyone else sees and hears. 

They also discuss the turmoil at 60 Minutes, the future of news, and why it’s essential for the public to understand who owns what.  

Plus: Celebrity Row takes center stage at Knicks games, and the UK announces a social media ban for people under 16.

Find us online! 

• Michelle Ciulla Lipkin
• Feed for Thought by Jena Wuu

Read our writing about power in media: 

• On Charlie, Jimmy, and Larry, Feed for Thought, 2025. 

Listen to our episode about Australia’s social media ban:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Substack

Check out our recs: 

• The UK’s violent riots were stoked by Elon Musk and a global far-right network, On the Media, 2026. 
• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Corporate Consolidation (S4 E24)
• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Tech Monopolies (S9 E14)
• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Bari Weiss (S12 E26)  

Audio clip sources:

• Knicks Win Championship, ESPN footage, 2026
• Keir Starmer endorses Netflix drama Adolescence as a wake-up call on online violence, The Indian Express, 2025.
• Justice Department Approves Merger, CBS News, 2026
• Meet the billionaires who control your media, It’s Been a Minute, 2026.  

Want to learn more?

New York Knicks: 

• Why the Knicks really won, The New York Times, 2026. 
• The Haves and Have-Nots: How the Knicks’ Celebrity Row works, Front Office Sports, 2024.

UK social media ban:

• Fact sheet: New rules to protect children online, UK Department for Science, Innovation, & Technology, 2026. 
• Five big questions about the UK’s under-16s social media ban, BBC, 2026. 
• It makes no sense: 16- and 17-year-olds on UK social media ban, The Guardian, 2026. 
• Panic first, evidence later, Kids Play Tech Lab, McGill University, 2026. 
• Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s resignation speech in full, BBC, 2026. 
• Use, views and worries on age bans on social media: responses form 29,169 children in 19 European countries, EU Kids Online, University of Oslo, London School of Economics, 2026. 

Power in media: 

• How a $45 million donation brought Larry Ellison deeper into Trump's circle, Wall Street Journal, 2026. 
• How Elon Musk is boosting far right politics across the globe, NBC News, 2025. 
• Justice Department approves Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, NBC News, 2026. 
• A Murdoch builds his own media empire. Is this Succession or secession?, The New York Times Magazine, 2026. 
• The Murdoch family fight is over. So what does Lachlan control?, The New York Times, 2025.
• Paramount agrees to pay $16M to settle Trump lawsuit, Pew Research Center, 2025. 
• Paramount CEO promises editorial independence for 60 Minutes, says Lesley Stahl, The New York Times, 2026. 
• Rivalries and rumors: how the new order of the Murdoch dynasty is playing out, BBC, 2025. 
• Scott Pelley on the Bari Weiss era and his last days at 60 Minutes, The New York Times, 2026. 
• SpaceX IPO makes Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, Reuters, 2026. 
• Student who called out CBS at News Emmys says Scott Pelley did the “right thing” amid network upheaval, NBC News, 2026. 
• What Fox’s Roku acquisition says about Lachlan Murdoch’s vision, The Poynter Report (Poynter Institute), 2026. 

What is it about trad wife influencers that's so captivating – even to die-hard feminists?

In this episode, Jena and Michelle dive into the world of trad wife content: where it comes from, how it evolved from family vlogging into a warmly-lit homesteading aesthetic, and why so many people find it hard to look away.

That conversation serves as the backdrop for Yesteryear, the buzzy debut novel by Caro Claire Burke. Its heroine, Natalie, is a modern-day trad wife influencer who wakes up in 1855 and has to survive the reality she'd been romanticizing online. Jena and Michelle discuss what the book gets right about performance in life and online, where it falls short, and why its premise was compelling enough for Anne Hathaway to purchase the film rights while the manuscript was still a first draft.

IF YOU WANT TO STAY SPOILER-FREE WHILE LISTENING, SKIP AHEAD FROM 26:20-34:30.

They also explore the growing scrutiny of momfluencers and family vlogging, and what impact it can have on the children who appear in their parents’ content.

Plus: Pope Leo has spoken on AI and humanity, and Stephen Colbert says goodbye to The Late Show. 

Find us on Substack!

• Michelle Ciulla Lipkin: https://michelleciullalipkin.substack.com/
• Feed for Thought by Jena Wuu: www.feedforthought.com

Read our writing about trad wives: 

• From #childlesscatladies to #childfreebychoice (Part I), Feed for Thought, 2025. 

Check out our recs: 

• Like, Follow, Subscribe by Fortesa Latifi, 2026.
• The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom by Shari Franke, 2025. 
• Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing, 2025. 
• The Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke, 2025. 
• Educated by Tara Westover, 2018. 
• An Update on our Family, 2025.

Want to learn more? 

• The Caro episode, Diabolical Lies, 2026.
• Child Influencer Project - UK and Ireland, University of Essex.
• I was raised in conservative evangelicialism. Yesteryear missed its mark., The Pomegranate, 2026. 
• Meet the queen of the ‘trad wives’ (and her eight children), The Times, 2024. 
• MomTok is the apotheosis of 21st-century womanhood, The Atlantic, 2024. 
• The rise and fall of the trad wife, The New Yorker, 2024. 
• Shari Franke tells all, Under the Influence with Jo Piazza, 2025. 
• She gave birth two weeks ago. Now she’s in a beauty pageant., New York Times, 2024. 
• The trad wife paradox, What Now? with Trevor Noah (guest: Anne Helen Petersen), 2024. 
• TN bill regarding children in social media content heads to gov’s desk, The Tennessean, 2026. 
• Utah passed a law to protect child influencers, Teen Vogue, 2025. 
• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke review – the downfall of an all-American trad wife, The Guardian, 2026. 
• Yesteryear with Caro Claire Burke: trad wives, secret lives, and twist ending, Be There in Five, 2026. 

Links from the open:

• Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah’s remarks on Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical “Magnifica humanitas,” Anthropic, 2026.
• Magnifica Humanitas, The Holy See, 2026. 
• Main takeaways from Pope Leo’s encyclical on AI, New York Times, 2026.  
• Only in Monroe, Monroe Community Media, 2026.
• Wanton destruction of CBS property – Letterman & Colbert toss stuff off the roof of the Ed Sullivan, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, 2026. 

Australia implemented the world's first under-16 social media ban in late 2025. Now, the government's own compliance report confirmed what a lot of people predicted: a substantial proportion of Australian kids are still on these platforms. So is the ban working? And more importantly, is a ban the right answer to the teen mental health crisis?

In this episode, Jena and Michelle trace how we got here, and how a deeply emotional debate about teen mental health became a mandate for governments to simply cut kids off from social media. They dig into what the Australian law actually covers, why banning access may be quietly letting platforms off the hook, and what the research actually says versus what the headlines told us.

Plus: our thoughts on the new book, Yesteryear, and the Met Gala.

Find us on Substack!

• Michelle Ciulla Lipkin
• Feed for Thought by Jena Wuu

Read our writing about social media and teen mental health:

• Michelle Ciulla Lipkin's response to The Anxious Generation, NAMLE newsletter, 2024. 
• Is the online child safety debate for young people, or for adults?, Feed for Thought, 2026. 

Check out our recs:

• Is social media bad for kids' mental health?, Aspen Ideas Festival, 2023.
• Growing Up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World by Devorah Heitner, 2023. 

Want to learn more?

• Anxious Generation Movement
• Health advisory on social media use in adolescence, American Psychological Advisory, 2023.
• Social Media Minimum Age: Compliance Update, Australia eSafety Commissioner, March 2026.
• Social Media and Youth Mental Health, Office of the Surgeon General (US Department of Health and Human Services), 2023.
• The great rewiring: Is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?, Nature, 2024. 
• We're not the anxious generation by Maximilian Milovidov, 2025.