If youre looking for a digital kiki, some parasocial comradery or takes on current events,
Give these a try–
New York City based TV show writers and comedians ‘ride’ for different ideas and explore bits around them.
Stand up comedians, tutors and babysitters in New York City, Natalie and Charlie explain ideas by naming them and continuing, ‘this is the thing where’ and explain something tangentially corresponding to their name of the concept/event.
Cultural Connoisseurs, interrogating history and pop culture in episodes like ‘The Self Care Industrial Complex’, ‘Astral Projecting in Whole Foods’ and ‘Sylvia Plath Plagiarized my Tumblr’. Chapel Hill native and PhD in Psychology, this duo conquers [most] of it all.
Nuanced takes on cultural from two British baddies, dissecting norms and takes in bite sized episodes.
Coiners of ‘coquette’; This podcast saved my life and by that I mean they traced Hawaiian shirt patterns to orated records of mixology. They utilize fashion as a catalyst for interdisciplinary conversations including episodes on ‘Fashion and Psychoanalysis’ with the FIT museum curator, the ‘Opium’ aesthetic and ‘whimsimod’ for example.
More cultural analysis, typically using fashion as catalyst and with an academic relating to the topic, episodes include ‘infrastructure aesthetics’, ‘disney adults’, ‘gorp core’, ‘metrosexuals’ and ‘hunting fashion’ to name a few, 10/10 discography.
While these all tackle how we got here and where here is, this podcast takes that on through the lens of food, a topic that the average industrialized american is quite removed from holistically, they discuss the interdisciplinary historical origins of tomatoes, tacos, beer and cities, the rise of quinoa, mint, soap and beyond including closing the food waste loop.
More timeline analysis, including recent episodes regarding the origins of the US-Mexico border and its current state, ICE, a history of settlements, cruel and unusual punishment, the right to remain silent, search and seizure, war crimes, and Tupperware, to name a few.
Amazing, three part episodes typically dissecting a person and their contexts, people include Lee Atwater, Frank Fay, Robert Maxwell. Who? You might ask, exactly. This podcast divulges the characters behind our political scenes and has a particularly good series of MK Ultra.
Zippers and how they relate to the military, sunglasses, school uniforms and clergy. It’s got it all as it relates to what we wear, why and what it means and signals.
WUNC’s podcast series focusing on themes related to the body, including the next generation of funeral directors, single motherhood, disability in fashion and more.
Local news featuring episodes on native history, ICE in Charlotte, Medicaid and SNAP and more featuring the arts, culture and things that brighten our local communities amongst chaos and increased instability.
Cultural critics about large scale cultural moments, I love them. Tracing origins and context they dive into ideas such as ‘why horror still haunts us’, ‘how the trad wife took over’, ‘why we travel’ ‘materialists and the modern rom com’ and more <3.
Circling back to ideas that washed by in our rapid trend cycle such as ‘facetune’, ‘glossier’, ‘baby botox’, ’emos’, ‘disney adults’, ‘dating apps’ ‘the end of buzzfeed’ ‘bye sister’ and ‘bad art friend’.
‘Horny For War: The History of How Sex Became a Weapon’, are you not entertained? ‘Bot armies, misinformation, and dead internet’, ‘art/propaganda spectrum’, ‘nuance has a PR problem’. This podcast might be one of the most sharp tool in your belt against the media illiteracy epidemic, posing us to question or consumption and digital realities.
More theory based, they delve into topics such as ‘philosophy and magic: the politics of the occult and thinking magically in a disenchanted world’, ‘manic culture and the end of capitalist realism’, ‘the politics of ghosting: absence, intimacy and digital life’, ‘fascism and work democracy’,’ romanticism and communism’ and revolutionary ethics. Very good, very informative and inspiring for informed moral actors in a time that calls for it informed by history and humanity.