On this episode I talk to the writer Jane Song her article “Rock Beats Scissors” about the sociological implications of the shift from dagger consumer products to our current deluge of pebble consumer products. In this episode we talk about how this phenomenon maps onto a kind of boom and bust cycle in the economy and also has larger implications for cultural powerlessness and loneliness. We also get into Sianne Ngai’s aesthetic theory of cute and how that informs the emergence of the pebble. 

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Today we have James Pogue, a journalist and contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine who has written for Harper's, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Granta, and elsewhere. We talk about his essay “Wagner in Africa” published in the extraction issue of Granta that came out this Spring which is about his reporting trip to Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic or CAR, and the presence of the Russian private military company called the Wagner Group in CAR and CAR’s geopolitical history. The Wagner group offers stabilization against rebel groups and security for CAR’s mines to operate but reportedly has profited billions of dollars from gold mining in CAR and other African countries, which funds the Wagner Group and likely the war in Ukraine. James weighs in on what the Wagner Group presence means for CAR historically and in the future.

Today I’m talking with Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman about their book What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice, a book of philosophy and cultural criticism surrounding the choice of whether to have children or not. The birth rates in the US are at a record low, and are also low in countries with the most progressive parenthood policies. What is causing this pervasive ambivalence? Is it finances, climate change, or a change in the conception of a happy and fulfilled life? The answer is more complicated than you think.

Today’s guest is journalist Donald Morrison talking with us about his article “American Rehab” published in the most recent June issue of The Baffler. This article is about Measure 110 which was passed in November 2020 in Oregon and was the most liberal drug law in the country in US history, decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of drugs including marijuana, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl. The law would also funnel the money from legislative appropriations, savings from reductions in arrests, and marijuana tax revenue into harm reduction services and treatment centers. Donald’s article follows up with what has happened in Oregon since the passing of this law, and he talks about his own experience in Portland with what services helped him when he got sober.

Today’s guest is Emily Nussbaum, Pulitzer prize winner for criticism, staff writer for The New Yorker, and author of her new book Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV. We talk about the history of reality TV, the changing conception of reality TV labor power dynamics, reality tv as modern fables, the sociological function of reality TV as a cultural object, and what feelings we are looking to have when we watch TV.

I speak with Michael Cecchi-Azzolina about his memoir called Your Table Is Ready: Tales of a New York City Maître D’ about being a maître d’ in New York City’s top restaurants from the 80s onward. This book is a historical time capsule of the culture of the past 40 years and a meditation of the restaurant as a dense site of psychology, theater, familial simulation, and the joy of communion. We discuss all of this and the changing social role of restaurants with the introduction of the internet age and shifting social mores. 

I talk with Michael W. Clune about White Out: The Secret Life of Heroin, his memoir about his heroin addiction and his recovery. His writing is experiential, poetic, philosophical, and dwells on the liminal. Clune defamiliarizes experiences and reassembles them with new language. He also puts language to experiences that haven’t been entered yet into the collective imagination. We discuss the rhetoric of perception, unpeeling perception away from language, Candy Land, and Don Quixote.

Tony Tulathimutte on the podcast today. He has written the novel Private Citizens, and a short story collection called Rejection coming out this September (pre-order here). On this episode we talk about his recent nonfiction essay for The Paris Review called “The Rejection Plot.” We explore the experiential properties of rejection, plotlessness, the delamination of an infatuation narrative from real life, and entitativity.

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I spoke with Emmeline Clein, author of the new book Dead Weight: Essays on Hunger and Harm about the cultural forces surrounding eating disorders and beauty standards in the US, and their roots in racism, classism, and nationalism. We talk about the different historic forms eating disorders have mutated through over time, the failures of health insurance and treatment centers, and more! 

My review of Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us by Rachel Aviv

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“I didn’t think I ran the risk of dying I though I ran the risk of not living the life that I wanted to live.”

On today’s episode I speak with Sarah Hepola, a journalist and the author of the book Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget, which is a nuanced and articulate memoir of Sarah’s life and her experiences with blackouts, all leading to her journey to sobriety. Check out her podcast America's Girls and Smoke ‘Em If You Got 'Em.