Brooke Shields on the Sexualization of Girls in Hollywood
In the late nineteen-seventies and into the eighties, Brooke Shields was one of the most famous and most controversial people in America. At age eleven, she appeared in the film “Pretty Baby,” playing...
4 Apr 202320min
Jon Meacham on How the Trump Fever Breaks
In 2018, at the midpoint of the Trump Presidency, the journalist and historian Jon Meacham wrote a book called “The Soul of America,” warning of the gravity of Trump’s threat to democracy. This was ha...
31 Mar 202330min
Who Was H. G. Carrillo? D. T. Max on a Novelist Whose Fictions Went Too Far
H. G. Carrillo was a writer’s writer—not a household name, but esteemed in literary circles. He began writing later in life, and was in his mid-forties when his first novel, “Loosing My Espanish,” was...
28 Mar 202332min
Jia Tolentino on the Ozempic Weight-Loss Craze
The prescription drug Ozempic was designed to help people with Type 2 diabetes manage their disease, and, under the name Wegovy, to treat obesity. But it has been embraced recently as a tool for weigh...
24 Mar 202317min
How the Culture Wars Came to the Catholic Church
The pontificate of Pope Francis, which just reached its tenth year, has brought a greater willingness to engage with modern issues. Francis has addressed Catholics on the climate emergency, arguing a ...
21 Mar 202321min
What if the Supreme Court Ends Affirmative Action?
In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appears likely to strike down affirmative action, in a decision expected by this summer. The practice of consideri...
17 Mar 202328min
Trans Activist Janet Mock Finds Her Voice
Janet Mock first heard the word “māhū,” a Native Hawaiian word for people who exist outside the male-female binary, when she was twelve. She had just moved back to Oahu, where she was born, from Texas...
14 Mar 202325min
Masha Gessen on the Battle Over Trans Rights
Many culture-war politicians are attacking the rights of trans people, and making a regressive view of gender as biology the key to their platforms. In this episode, David Remnick talks to two people ...
10 Mar 202349min
