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Grab your popcorn and your feelings, because this week we're diving headfirst into the YA romance takeover happening on your TV right now. We're joined by Christine Riccio (author of 'Thirty, Flirty, and Forever Alone' and 'Attached at the Hip', host of Those Forking Fangirls podcast) to talk through whether we're actually living in a golden age of YA romance television, or if it just feels that way because Netflix and Amazon can't stop greenlighting shows built for people who grew up on The CW and obsessed over the Twilight saga. We get into what's different about the hype around shows like Off Campus, Heated Rivalry, and The Summer I Turned Pretty, how much of this we can credit to BookTok (and social media more broadly), and whether virality now matters more than a built-in fanbase ever did.

Christine also brings her perspective as a published romance author to weigh in on how this boom is rippling into publishing. Plus: why does it seem like contemporary romance is winning while sci-fi and fantasy YA (RIP Vampire Academy and First Kill) can't get a second season? We break down what we think is really going on, and what we'd love to see more of on screen.

Recs this week: Laura's got Obsession, Pam's bringing author Elissa Sussman, and Christine is serving up 'Cherry Baby' by Rainbow Rowell.

Where to find Christine: Instagram, YouTube, Those F%#king Fangirls, Amazon

And don't go anywhere after the credits roll — After Dark is getting personal this week with a round of "get to know each other better" questions pulled straight from Teen Vogue's best-friend deep-cuts. Head over to Patreon and support the show at the OTP tier or higher to get instant access!

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This week on Millennial, we're deep in Dumpster Fire Corner territory, and honestly, we can barely keep up. Is Mitch McConnell alive? Is he not? We talk through the whispers, the hypocrisy math, and why nobody inside or outside the beltway is even surprised anymore. Add in a looming primetime Trump address that may or may not relitigate the 2020 Georgia Senate races (again), and you've got a news cycle that feels more like a fever dream than a Tuesday.

Then we shift gears to something a little more grounded, but no less infuriating: hobby inflation. Turns out that pottery class or new fishing reel isn't in your head — the cost of having a personality has genuinely gone up. We talk about how TikTok turned hobbies into status symbols, why the pandemic sent everyone sprinting toward socially-distanced pastimes, and how tariffs are somehow now a factor in whether you can afford new lures. We get into what happens when hobbies price out the middle class — the community you lose, the people you no longer get to know, and how this all feels a lot like losing another third space. Basically: it's not just rent that's gotten unaffordable, it's joy.

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Hi PALs! Since we're off this week, we're releasing a recent installment of After Dark to give y'all a taste of what life is like behind the paywall. We're sharing personal medical tales, as well as reflecting on someone's lesson learned about assigning beneficiaries. If you like what you hear, head on over to https://www.patreon.com/millennial and consider throwing some support our way!

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We're turning 250 this weekend, and honestly? We need to talk about it. Join us as we reflect on what it means to be American right now—the good, the bad, and the absolutely infuriating. We're checking in with ourselves and our audience about where we're at as a nation and what patriotism actually means when you love your country but are genuinely horrified by what it's doing.

What does patriotism actually feel like? Is it possible to be critical of America without being branded anti-patriotic? And whose history gets left out of the American story we're celebrating?

And in this week's installment of After Dark: We're looking back on the participation trophy—how it became a caricature for millennial stereotyping, and why we're still hearing about it in the workplace. Come feel that generational rage with us!

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Welcome to the Millennial Special Anniversary Edition—we're celebrating 50 years of Star Wars by doing what we do best: connecting fictional universes to our very real problems.

Then we get into the real meat: how the Prequel Trilogy—Episodes 1-3—basically predicted the slow-motion collapse of democracy. We draw the obvious parallels to modern executive overreach, the erosion of checks and balances, and how Congress just... stopped checking anything. We even dig into what George Lucas actually said about all this—spoiler: he was thinking about Vietnam, Nixon, and the way democracies don't get overthrown, they get given away.

We're also connecting the dots between fictional servitude and the very real greed on display right now, complete with a deep dive into Walmart's electronic price tags that could—with existing tech—charge you a different price based on what the system thinks you can afford.

On theme for this week, we're keeping our recommendations pop culture centric: The 'Family Guy' Star Wars parodies (Eric) and the 2009 film 'Fanboys' (Pam).

In After Dark, we're getting personal with some lighter questions: What's your Roman Empire? Have you experienced a friendship breakup? What do you think you'll be like at 80? Join us as Pam and Eric get to know each other better.

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The World Cup is delivering, and not just on the pitch. This week we start with a genuine feel-good moment: cross-cultural chaos and connection across North America, from Cape Verde stunning Spain in Atlanta to a German tourist discovering Helen, GA and a Japanese visitor writing a love letter to free chips and salsa. Sometimes the world is actually kind of great.

Then we get into it. AI is officially the number one reason people are losing their jobs in 2026. We dig into the 2026 International AI Safety Report, which finds that AI is impressive in some areas and genuinely concerning in others. These tools might be making us worse at the very things we're supposed to be getting better at.

We also get into AI and grade inflation — a new Berkeley study finds professors in writing- and coding-heavy courses are handing out significantly more A's post-ChatGPT. And Pam weighs in from a journalism angle on what AI can and can't do for freelancers, and we get honest about the tasks we've tried to hand off to AI that just... made more work.

And in this week's installment of After Dark, it's the AI Honesty Corner: we asked our AI platforms to profile us, roast us, and name our blind spots. The accuracy was mixed, occasionally devastating, and in at least one case, deeply funny.

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Happy Pride, millennials! This week Laura and Eric are getting personal. They share their results from the Kinsey Scale and the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid and dig into what those numbers actually mean — and what they don't. Do these tools change how you think about your identity? When do labels feel useful, and when do they just flatten the full picture?

The conversation expands from sexuality to gender, including a thought experiment that asks: if you could wake up tomorrow in a different body — with no one batting an eye — would you press the button? For a deeper dive on figuring out gender identity, check out Doc Impossible's piece on Substack: https://stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/how-to-figure-out-if-youre-trans

Then Laura and Eric zoom out to talk about the state of Pride in 2026 — what it means to celebrate, and what corporate involvement in queer spaces has come to look like. We dig into the cautionary tale of Target, which built its entire brand identity around inclusion and aspiration, then quietly walked away from it under political and economic pressure — with real consequences for its bottom line. (Full piece from the Minnesota Reformer linked below.)

Recs this week: Laura's watching The Birdcage — a forever classic. And Eric wants you to check out Doc Impossible on substack.

After Dark is an extension of today's conversation — what does "heterosexual, more than incidental homosexual tendencies" actually mean for how we think about own identities? We dig into this and more personal questions inspired by today's discussion!

Links:

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Happy Pride, Millennials! We're kicking off with a Dumpster Fire Corner that basically writes itself — UFC fights on the South Lawn of the White House, an America 250 concert lineup that's... something, and Georgia gas prices ticking back up at midnight. Oh, and Jill Biden is doing press for her new book. We have thoughts.

From there, we're checking in on our 2026 predictions, then catching up on stories we've been tracking: a jury found Live Nation acted as a monopoly, Ticketmaster's president admitted the queue isn't randomized (lol), and listener John asked us to dig into FIFA — so we went in on corruption, Qatar, migrant worker deaths, and whether we're personally watching the World Cup.

We've also got a great mailbag this week — a listener used the confessional to blow the whistle on the current Ebola outbreak, a dispatch on government protests in Ireland from a Gen Z/Alpha listener on the ground, and a beautiful email about grandparents secretly canceling each other out with rogue baptisms.

Laura's rec this week: take a mental health day. Pam's rec: 'Off Campus' (on Amazon Prime) And patrons, stick around — After Dark gets candid about what's really changed behind the scenes since Pam and Laura took over the pod. 👀

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In the Dumpster Fire Corner: Is anyone really surprised at the reported under bookings of hotels leading up to the FIFA World Cup in US host cities? Then, Pam has some insights into what this year's TV Upfronts mean for what audiences will be seeing on the small screen in the next year. We break down what the annual TV industry preview event actually is, what studios announced for the upcoming season, and what it all means for your watchlist. The big headlines: scripted programming is making a comeback on broadcast networks, lighter and more optimistic TV is the vibe networks are chasing, and comedy is somehow still getting left behind. Also, AI is everywhere — even in how advertisers are targeting you mid-episode.

Then we get into something we're all guilty of: the second screen problem. We're sharing our favorite background shows (no judgment) and already calling which Upfronts announcements are destined for the "playing while I fold laundry" category.

This week's recommendations are on theme with our TV-themed discussion: 'Amadeus' on Starz (Laura) and 'The Other Bennett Sister' on BritBox (Pam).

Join us over on our Patreon for this week's installment of After Dark, where we get very personal and take some questions and topic suggestions from our live audience. 👀

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It's Mental Health Awareness Month, so we're doing a real check-in on the show this week. How are we actually doing? We dig into this year's Mental Health America theme, "More Good Days, Together," and get honest about where we're at. We also get into looksmaxxing — the online subculture pushing young men toward increasingly extreme methods to "maximize" their attractiveness — and ask the uncomfortable question: why does it take men being harmed for society to notice what women have lived with forever? Then we zoom out to the male loneliness epidemic. The red pill crowd says men have it worst, but the data tells a more complicated story.

Per usual, we've got fun and timely recommendations! "The Drama" (available to rent) (Laura), checking your voter registration status (Pam), and Mario + Rabbids “Sparks of Hope” (Eric). 

And in this week's installment of After Dark:

Someone shit the bed. Literally (oops). And we reminisce about our cringiest roommate stories, and the experience of communal bathrooms in college dorms (how did we do this every day??).

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