Ever heard of something called podcasts? Let me scream every true crime podcast that exists. Just kidding! I want to recommend a limited series podcast to you. I like series because they have an end.
The Dream Season One investigates the history, impact, and problems with Mid-level marketing (i.e., Amway, Mary Kay, Lula Roe, Herbalife). This series is great because it’s a true cultural investigation. One episode is historical, one is ethnographic, and others are investigative.
Support longform journalism! These are good reads. I usually load them up on my kindle, lie in bed, and fall asleep within the first minute of reading them. But then read them the next morning!
Rebekah Neumann's Search For Enlightenment Fueled WeWork's Collapse
An excerpt from Marissa Meltzer’s This is Big
Wikipedia Is the Last Best Place on the Internet
What am I working on? Here’s the assortment of things I’m hard at work* doing:
A term paper on how period underwear is an example of Marshall McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” and menstrual products as technology
A book chapter on women who direct horror films; I claim that feminist progress and “women’s horror” is actually a manufactured, industry strategy (womp womp)
A presentation on an article about gay cookbooks in the 1960s
editing a podcast episode of Alt! Ack! about Valerie Solanas
*or hardly working?
What is this? A semi-regular newsletter about being a culture studies graduate student. Do you like it? Great. Please share it widely.
What to look forward to:
Academia shenanigans
More Showgirls, the novelization
Recommendations of culture to consume at home
Possibly some fiction…?