Sound Stories

You went to the dinner. You were surrounded by people. You came home and still felt empty. That's not loneliness, and that's you waiting for someone else to knock first.

This episode is about the kind of lonely that nobody talks about, not the alone-in-your-room kind, but the standing-at-a-party-watching-everyone-else-connect kind. The kind where you start asking why they didn't choose you. It's natural to have these negative feelings, but the real question is...are you doing everything you can to change the situation?

39% of music uploaded to streaming platforms right now is fully AI-generated, we are paying with real money you actually worked for, and we don't even know which songs they are.

We're talking about why record labels and streaming platforms are not in the business of helping you love music, they're in the business of keeping you on the app. Why going viral became a career goal instead of a side effect. Why your music taste might not actually be yours if you've been letting numbers and aesthetics make your choices for you, and why a certain very famous artist is a business plan wearing a guitar.

Because I'm not just here to ruin your day, I want to share six actual ways to find music that hits different. Let's discuss.

I've been seeing a lot of people write about failure lately. Most people's response to failure goes like this: find someone to blame, find a quick fix, move on, fail again, repeat. Nobody stops to ask where the problem actually came from.

I called out men specifically. I've watched too many of them get hit once and never get back up. You have a full hand of cards, you just played one wrong one time, gather yourself and keep playing!

Failure is something you should wear like a badge of honor. "I've failed at this, I've failed at that, I've done everything, you can't fool me." That's actually called experience, people who are afraid to fail are never really trying. 2

I recorded this while sick. Bare minimum makeup, maximum opinions. You're welcome.

Here are 17 movies that deserve a bigger life than they got, some will rearrange your brain, some will make you sob in a way that's embarrassing, and at least one will make you rethink your entire relationship with Jennifer Lopez.

Go watch something from this list tonight. Come back and fight me about it in the comments.

Full movie list:

White oleander 

Stay 

A cure for wellness

Stranger than fiction

200 Cigarettes 

Jawbreaker

Crazy/beautiful

Man up

Synecdoche, New York

Family stone 

Contact

The Cell

The rules of attraction

I Origins

Thirteen 

Josie and the Pussycats

I honestly thought this would be a quick one, it was not.

In this episode are the books I've read this year, so far, the ones I loved, the ones I didn't finish, and the one I want buried with me when I die. No full reviews, just vibes, honest ratings, and some unsolicited opinions on how you should be reading poetry (slowly, with breathing room, not in one sitting like it's a Subway order).

The list of books:
Quietly Hostile - Samantha Irby

Bluets - Maggie Nelson

Orbital - Samantha Harvey

Perfection - Vincenzo Latronico

White Oleander - Janet Fitch

Girl on Girl - Sophie Gilbert

Strangers - Belle Burden

Having and Being Had - Eula Biss

How to Fuck Like a Girl - Vera Blossom
 Raving - McKenzie Wark

Come to the Slumberness on the Land of Nod - Traci Brimmhall

How Did You Get This Number - Sloane Crosley

A Psalm For The Wild Built - Becky Chambers

Cheap Therapist Says You're Insane - Parker Young

My Year of Rest and Relaxation - Otessa Moshfegh

Rejection - Tony Tulathimutte

Yesteryear - Caro Claire Burke

#SoundStories #BookRecommendations #Booktok #BookTube #WhatImReading #SamanthaIrby #JanetFitch #WhiteOleander #MaggieNelson #OttessaMoshfegh #SophieGilbert #BookPodcast #ChinesePodcast #ReadingList2025 #GirlsWhoRead

Hot take from someone who gets the show invites, and your $900 flip-flops are not making you look wealthy, they're making you look like you have $900 and questionable judgment.
New episode on how fashion became the cheapest way to fake class, the quiet luxury shirt nobody can identify, the bag you posted three separate times, the brand that swears you're "one of us" right up until you stop spending. I name names. I work in the industry. Pray for me.
Tell me the thing you bought to feel expensive. I won't judge you...actually I might.

Solitude and loneliness are not the same thing. I don't know who needs to hear this but apparently a lot of you do.

Loneliness is something that happens to you. Solitude is something you choose — and when you do it right, it's one of the most nourishing things you can do for yourself. This episode I'm sharing five things I actually do during my alone time that have genuinely changed how I show up for myself and everyone around me.

Every generation thinks music is getting worse. Every generation is wrong， and also a little bit right.
The data is real, lyrics have gotten simpler, songs have gotten shorter, and Spotify's algorithm has been quietly flattening every genre into the same digestible mush since 2015. But nobody is saying the music isn't the problem, the room is gone, and the shared moment is gone. You can't recreate what it felt like to hear a Jay Chou song for the first time when everyone you knew heard it at the exact same time, on the same radio, in the same era.
This episode is about what we actually lose when music becomes fully personal. And whether the machine that makes it is killing the thing we love about it.
#IsMusicGettingDumber #MusicPodcast #SoundStories #SpotifyAlgorithm #MusicCriticism #JayChou #soundstories #MusicNostalgia #popculture  #MusicIsEverything #IndieMusic #MusicCommunity #DigitalMusic #streamingwars 

I slid into McKinley Dixon's DMs to help him out when he is on tour in China. He ended up on my podcast. That's just how this works.

McKinley Dixon is a rapper and multi-instrumentalist from Virginia, the kind of artist who makes rap music that sounds like it was built from the inside out. This is a last minute thing, the sound wasn't the best, I'll do better.

Also: if you win a fight in China you go to jail, if you lose you go to the hospital. We love those signs.

This one got deep faster than either of us planned. Part two is coming — and I promised it'll be funnier. Go follow McKinley. He deserves it.

Fair warning: I recorded this episode once already and forgot to press record. So what you're hearing is female rage, twice distilled.

Pink tax isn't just about paying more for a pink razor. It's a design system — built to extract money from women by first creating the problem, then selling you the solution. This episode, we go deeper than the shampoo aisle.

I'm part of the problem, as well as the victim. I said it. I own it. But knowing the system doesn't mean you have to keep paying for it.