Women Are Not Funny (Can You Play Two Women Back to Back?)

In this episode, Laura is joined by performer and self-proclaimed “lyric guy” Nick Bean to talk through a deceptively simple stretch of early-90s radio playlists — and the rules hiding inside them. From the Dave Clark Five's blunt persistence to Rod Stewart’s affectionate Motown tribute that buries The Temptations deep in the mix, the conversation moves to inspiration, authority, and who gets positioned as “variety” rather than default. The heart of the episode centers on two back-to-back songs by women — Gloria Estefan’s Coming Out of the Dark and Mariah Carey’s Vision of Love — and the broadcast logic that once said they shouldn’t sit next to each other. Along the way, Laura and Nick unpack vulnerability, gendered expectations in music and comedy, the difference between empowerment and display, and what it meant to hear genuinely new voices at the moment they arrived.