It's Been a Minute

Have some people forgotten how to behave at music festivals?

Summer is peak music festival season, and that means many of us are braving huge crowds and sweltering heat to see a bunch of artists we love in one place. But is there a decline in social decorum in these concert settings? From using phones to being in the front row to navigating crowds, our friends at Pop Culture Happy Hour are sharing personal and passionate takes about music festival etiquette.

For more episodes on culture and social etiquette, check out:
How should we behave online?
The social etiquette of sharing location
Is your neighborhood riddled with dog poop?

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Welcome to the age of ‘Broke TV.’

It seems like the days of prestige TV shows about the wealthy elite have been replaced by the vocal majority: the downwardly mobile.

New Yorker TV critic, Inkoo Kang, noticed that her favorite shows so far this year all focused - in some respect - on the people whose lives have been financially squeezed beyond recognition by the very elite we used to enjoy watching.

Building resentment about the shrinking middle class, a hopeless job market, and few political pathways towards change has made our entertainment reflect a devastating reality back to us. Inkoo joins the show to break down how we got to this point and the fine line between entertainment and catharsis on screen.

You can read Inkoo’s article, ‘Welcome to the Age of Broke TV’, here.

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Do you have what it takes to be "High-T?"

Service members are about to find out, as Defense secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the military will be screening men for low testosterone, a hormone found in both women and men that supports bone mass development, red blood cell production, energy levels, and more. It's an important marker of overall health in men, but will it push the United States military to the 'leading edge of lethality' as promised by Hegseth? To get into the facts and fictions around testosterone, Brittany is joined by NPR health correspondent Will Stone, and Dr. Helen Bernie, Director of Sexual and Reproductive Medicine and associate professor of urology at Indiana University.

Want more on gender and health? Check out these episodes:
Boundaries, bodies, and better sex
The key to thriving later in life: menopause

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What does it mean to be ‘working class’? 

It’s a term that we hear often (especially around election time), but more specifically, who are we actually talking about? According to labor economist Kathryn Anne Edwards, host of the Optimist Economy podcast (@optimist_economy), the working class is a group of people who have the least amount of pay, benefits, and protections in the labor market. In this week’s episode of It’s Been a Minute, host Brittany Luse chats with Kathryn about what economists, politicians, and everyday people get wrong about the working class.

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You might be more influenced by yuppie taste than you’d think.

Back in the eighties – when pop music drowned in synths, the volume of everyone's hair was set to loud, and neon was in vogue – a new age dawned: the era of the yuppie. “Yuppie” comes from the acronym “YUP” – which stands for young, urban professional. Think Patrick Bateman from American Psycho or even Miranda Hobbes from Sex and the City. Nowadays, cities are full of young urban professionals, but this wasn't always the case. In his new book, Yuppies: the Bankers, Lawyers, Joggers and Gourmands Who Conquered New York, author Dylan Gottlieb argues that New York City was the first city to reorganize itself to cater to yuppies.  And it's not just cities that have changed. Yuppies have transformed our country's economy, politics, and culture, too.

Brittany is joined by Dylan, assistant professor of history at Bentley University, to break down how yuppies catapulted us into our current moment.

For more episodes on the history that explains our culture today, check out:
How often do you think about the American Empire?
Americans want a royal family. Now they have two
Were Americans actually healthier in the past?

(00:00) What exactly is a yuppie?
(05:37) The economics that created yuppies and their "meritocracy"
(13:12) The violent cost of city revival
(19:35) How yuppies created foodie culture
(23:16) The politics of marathon-running
(25:14) How yuppies remade the Democratic party
(29:36) Should we bring back the term "yuppie"?

Follow Brittany on Instagram: @bmluse

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How has literature changed your life?

For poet and lawyer, Reginald Dwaye Betts, books meant freedom. After getting sentenced to 9 years in adult prison at 16, Dwayne felt a sense of hope and possibility whenever he was reading.  Upon his release he founded Freedom Reads, an organization that builds libraries within prisons across the country to provide a physical space where those incarcerated can read and dream together.

Today on the show, Dwayne joins Brittany to discuss how books and language can help us transform our reality. 

You can learn more about Dwayne's journey in his documentary, March Forth. 


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Would you pay for an app that might encourage your worst impulses?

Some users are asking themselves the same question as Meta rolls out Instagram Plus, a new suite of features that promises users the opportunity to 'deepen your relationships.' But what do these features say about the way we interact with each other online, and how might they reflect our deepest anxieties back at us? To find out, Brittany is joined by Tatum Hunter, writer and journalist covering digital privacy and internet culture.

Want more on tech and social media?

The hidden money financing your favorite songs
Who needs to know where you are?

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Have our favorite shows and movies shaped the way we think about abortion?

Hollywood has a huge impact of how we understand abortion. It can drive a plot, like in Dirty Dancing, or inspire conversations about who gets abortions, like in the television series Maude. It can also be dramatized – turning a common medical procedure into something good, bad, or anything in between, depending on who is telling the story and how. Brittany Luse chats with Janet Goldwater, a director of the documentary Hollywood Does Abortion, and Steph Herold at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) to understand how Hollywood handles, or mishandles the topic of abortion.

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“Baby woman” is the girlboss’s Wario. 

“Baby woman” is a term coined by Shannon Keating in a piece for The Cut to describe a particular kind of affect some women have: it’s not just girlishness, but also some abdication of adult responsibility. And Shannon’s seen some baby women behavior out in the culture, from Lena Dunham to Amanda Batula. But what drives some women to be baby? And what do they get out of it? 

To find out, Brittany is joined by Shannon Keating, freelance writer, and Ashley Reese, writer, culture critic, and author of the Bad Brain Substack. 

For more episodes on the women’s relationships to themselves and culture, check out:
The price women pay for being online
Numb girls & the humiliation of caring too much
"Girl Math" does not add up to financial freedom

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Monoculture is so back…in more ways than one. 

From record breaking blockbusters, to nail-biting sports wins, to the chaos that is Love Island - there has been something for everyone this summer. 

But while we were in the streets rooting for the Knicks, following the World Cup, or waiting for IMAX tickets… heatwaves, wildfire smog, and explosive diarrhea also made notable appearances. Apparently, monoculture can be good, bad, and everything in between.  

Friend of the show and senior correspondent at Vox.com, Alex Abad-Santos, joins It’s Been a Minute to unpack the highs and lows of our deep desire for monoculture. 

Read Alex’s article, Welcome to America’s post-World Cup hangover, on Vox.com right now. 

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