Katie Porter, fresh off a loss in the California governor's race, has announced she is going to be a book influencer now. Come join her book group, it recommends all the same books that the others do, too! As President Obama releases a new podcast about books, Dua Lipa interviews Booker Prize winners, and the daughter of President Bush tells you which slop books to read, we have to ask, why is everyone a book influencer now?

Nico and Jessa chart the evolution from the Parisian salon to BookTok and every horrific stop along the way, to figure out why, in a time when no one can read, having a book club is the chicest thing you can do.

Shownotes and references:

http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

The youths don't like sex in movies anymore. The director of the new romantic comedy One Night Only decided to cut a considerable amount of nudity and suggestive moments out of the film in order to cater to a squeamish audience.

As eager as people are to declare horny movies back, due to the release of four erotically themed movies back to back (The Invite, ONO, Camp Miasma, and I Want Your Sex), Jessa and Nico consider whether this is a trend or a blip. Also: are any of these movies good or are they just older people expressing exasperation with the New Prudes?

Also: how does this chaste approach to films relate to the filthy run of TV (Heated Rivalry) and books (the having sex with dragons thing)?

Shownotes and references:

http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

About five years ago, there was a conversation between journalists who had done years of work under precarious conditions and the YouTubers who used that work to create monetized content that made them a ton of money. If someone spends ten years of their life covering a story, and then some 22-year-old reads a simplified version of that work to the camera while doing their make-up and makes 10x as much money for it, is this a fair distribution of resources?

Now the conversation is about YouTubers being pushed out and losing income because of AI. Science YouTuber (a word thoroughly lacking in elegance) Hank Green was caught using AI to help with research and note taking, and his audience is furious. In the content industry, the demand is for authenticity, originality, and endless productivity. And AI -- the solution to all these problems -- is the siren whose song must be resisted.

Jessa and Nico posit that in the future, the only job in the creative field will be feeding the machine. But what does the backlash say about creator anxiety?

Shownotes and references:

http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

Elon Musk is going to save Western Civilization from migration, Sharia law, and Christopher Nolan films. He bravely offered up Grok as the tool to generate a woke-free version of The Odyssey, after spending months of his life complaining about casting choices and insults to traditional Greek culture.

Jessa and Nico rehash how The Iliad and The Odyssey became culture war flashpoints, how Elon became such a RETVRN guy, and why weirdos look to the past to shore up their identities so they don't have to deal with what disappointments they all are.

Shownotes and references:

http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

So that 250th anniversary thing was kind of a letdown, huh? A poorly attended (and even more dismally entertained) fair in DC, a fiasco of a July 4th celebration in Philadelphia, the only thing in the movie theaters being a new Minions movie...

In this moment of disappointment, Jessa and Nico take the New York Times's lead in figuring out which films define America. Their list included things like Disclosure Day, Killer of Sheep, and There Will Be Blood, but J&N have a few additions.

Shownotes and references:

http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

Jessa and Nico survey the World Cup discourse. Why and how do we love things that we know are corrupt? Why can't the United States stop itself from cheating every time it plays on an international level? Did the CIA send in Evangelical missionaries to convert everyone away from Catholicism to undermine the power of Brazilian football? And has globalized soccer created a monoculture, where all homegrown variety and innovation has been lost?

Shownotes and references:

http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

With the release of the final Jackass film comes nostalgia and reverie. Because our media class is the way it is, it includes a lot of think pieces about masculinity. Can't a man just hit another man in the balls without it being theorized? Can scatological entertainment resist inquiry?

Jessa and Nico also discuss Jackass's failsons: the YouTube pranksters, the violent and exploitative streaming show Fishtank, and fascism-curious podcasters. How did skateboarding subculture curdle into its current form?

Also: Rick Rubin is CIA, right?

Shownotes and references:

http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

Everything is an emergency! There's genocide(s), environmental collapse, capitalism, patriarchy -- and it all has to be taken care of now! Revolution!

It's the attention economy, baby -- and everyone wants your attention on the emergency because it is making them a lot of money. Jessa and Nico look at the off-putting and unpersuasive language of the Emergency and wonder if there's a way of talking about these issues in a more reasonable way. If everything is trauma, and trauma makes us helpless and overreactive, then how is anything going to change?

Also discussed: Ezra Klein cozying up to the antichrist, the natural birth movement kills another woman, and Bosnia is probably not going to win the World Cup........... but maybe?

Shownotes and references:

http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

We all agree that identity politics need to die, yes? They've been infiltrated and exploited by the wealthy and the elites, they led to years of scamming, and they have created a standstill where nothing can be done because nothing can be totally equal. But a return to the bad old system where various identity groups have their needs belittled and ignored would also be a mistake. Could the answer be a politics of dignity? As the Catholic church pivots toward human dignity as the center of their priorities, can we as political actors learn something from this? And is the Catholic Church now the new counterculture?

Shownotes and references:

http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

Lately social media has been inundated with the loneliness influencer, the people (mostly women) who glamorize and romanticize a cozy little life alone: frozen pizzas, a glass of wine, and a sweet treat eaten in front of a TV, snug in yoga pants or luxury sweats, in your perfectly gray urban apartment. Is this helpful for those still stuck in our loneliness crisis, teaching them to turn solitude into meaningful me-time? Or is this going to drive everyone insane and lead to the dying out of humanity as a species? Why not both? Jessa and Nico look at the so-called loneliness crisis to see how it got so gendered, whether it's a crisis at all, and how this is how American infrastructure wants us, atomized and confusing people on our screens for our friends and enemies.

Shownotes and references:

http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com