Episodes
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Debating "Biden-Cheney 2024?" with Chris Novembrino
Culturally Determined is leaving BhTV, so here's how to keep following the show ... Tom Friedman's controversial column, "Biden-Cheney 2024?" ... Why Israel's anti-Netanyahu coalition could never happen in the US ... Aryeh's defense of Friedman's column ... A Hamilton song on Zoom, and other...
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More Than Meets the Eye, with Milton Lawson
The strange history of the Transformers action figures ... Diving into Transformers: The Movie (1986) ... Unicron, the giant planet-eating robot god voiced by Orson Welles ... Why the film is more than a glorified toy commercial ... Does the movie have any sort of politics? ...
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Creating Content for the Algorithm in the Sky, with Douglas Lain
How Doug came to run the leftwing book publisher Zer0 Books, and why he got kicked out ... Dave Chappelle, cancel culture, and the attention economy ... Doug narrates his ejection from Zer0 ... Doug's new company, Diet Soap Media ... How Bloggingheads was ahead of its time (yet failed to conquer...
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Online Vibes Edition, with Max Read
Max's new newsletter, Read Max ... The significance of Buzzfeed's underwhelming IPO ... Where are the cool kids online? ... Private equity squeezes a bit more blood from online media ... What is web3? And is it bullshit? ... Why Melania Trump is embracing NFTs but Elon Musk isn't ... Max's…
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Riding the Waves of Prediction Markets, with David Rees
David's podcast, Election Profit Makers ... Riding the waves of political prediction markets ... David: I don't think there's a limit to the depravity of the GOP ... Weighing the odds of American politics ever becoming normal again ... Can J.D. Vance out-crazy Josh Mandel in Ohio? ... Elon Musk,...
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The Many Mistakes of "Newark," with Erin Schwartz
The many disappointments of The Many Saints of Newark ... Was any Sopranos prequel doomed from the start? ... How the opening scene undermines a key theme of the series ... Clumsy dialogue, broad acting, and flashes of the classic Sopranos wit ... Why Erin loves The Masked Singer ... An...
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Holding Out for a Hero, with Matt K. Lewis
Is it still possible for America to have a great leader? ... Why the pandemic sparked division instead of unity ... Why Obama was not a transformational president ... Will America just muddle through? ... Matt sees possibility on the anti-corporate right ... "Let's Go Brandon" and the return of...
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Memes and the Left, with Mike Watson
Mike's new book, The Memeing of Mark Fisher: How the Frankfurt School Foresaw Capitalist Realism and What To Do About It ... Subconscious narratives today and in interwar Germany ... Walter Benjamin and Herbert Marcuse in the digital world ... Mike wants memes that will slow people down ... How...
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Live from New York, It's Class Struggle! with Seth Simons
Seth's newsletter covering comedy from the left, Humorism ... Seth: Saturday Night Live is conservative ... Is being hired by SNL a Faustian bargain? ... Lawsuit alleges SNL ignored Horatio Sanz's sexual abuse of a minor ... The bizarre nature of SNL as a cultural institution ... How the pandemic...
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How Social Media Swallowed Real Life, with Justin E. H. Smith
Justin: It is morally imperative to not say true things on social media ... Why Justin loves Substack ... Pros and cons of writing without an editor ... AOC's real audience at the Met Gala ... Are social media editors purposefully riling up the mob? ... Sally Rooney and Israel, the Twitter...
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Special Thriller Edition, with Kat Rosenfield
Kat's new novel, No One Will Miss Her ... Writing YA vs. adult fiction ... A narrator speaking from beyond the grave ... The subtle art of crafting a twist ... Kat reviews Hillary Clinton's new thriller novel ... Who are all these political children's books actually for? ...
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"Dead Jews" and Living Jews, with Dara Horn
Dara's new book, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present ... Anne Frank, Jewish self-erasure, and the actual lessons of the Holocaust ... Unique features of Jewish literature and history ... The case for Jewish anger ... The myth of Jewish immigrants' names being changed at Ellis...
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The Bard of Twitter, with William Shakespeare
A new YouTube channel for Culturally Determined ... Meet the man who tweets as William Shakespeare ... The most secret and most grave truths of @Wwm_Shakespeare ... Spying a kind of hope in Shakespearean ambiguity ... Have you heard the joke about the old lady who reads Hamlet for the first time?...
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War of Shadows, with Gershom Gorenberg
Gershom's new book, War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East ... How Gershom rediscovered forgotten heroes from Bletchley Park ... Fascist mythology and Italian colonialism ... The strategic importance of the North African front ......
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Returning to Roth, with Jacques Berlinerblau
How #MeToo shaped Jacques's new book, The Philip Roth We Don't Know ... Jacques: Roth aimed to obliterate the critic ... Is it unethical to write a nasty fictionalization of an ex? ... Three levels of analysis of the misogynist charge ... Fiction and morality ... Roth's underexamined ideas about...
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Small Moments of Delight, with Sophie Haigney
Sophie's exploration of the use and misuse of "the Irish goodbye" ... The strange joy of watching a Picasso painting fall to the ground ... NFTs and the question of authentication ... What makes an object a valuable collectible? ... Sophie investigates the hidden melodies of subways ... The…
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The Nickelodeon Generation, with Katie Baker
Katie's recent essay, "Nickelodeon’s Generational Divide" ... Children's entertainment that didn't pander ... The early '90s as a midpoint in the shifting cultural battle of kids vs. parents ... The ultimate childhood dream: the Super Toy Run ... The people behind Nick's creative ferment ......
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Reconsidering Online Disinformation, with Joe Bernstein
Joe's new essay on online disinformation ... Does advertising actually work? ... Joe: Maybe the real critique of Facebook is that it's a worthless product ... The ivermectin craze and the end of media gatekeeping ... How do you solve a problem like Bret Weinstein? ... The indigenous American...
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"The White Lotus" and Black History, with John Ganz
Why John hated The White Lotus ... Is the show more of a farce than a satire? ... Debating whether the staff was thinly characterized on purpose ... John critiques the show's treatment of race and class ... Why the 1619 Project made so many people mad ... The controversial idea that Black…
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"The Netanyahus," a Novel, with Joshua Cohen
Joshua's new novel, The Netanyahus ... How Harold Bloom inspired a novel about Bibi Netanyahu's father ... Other influences: Philip Roth, classic sitcoms, and Yiddish anecdotes ... Jewish assimilationism vs. Jewish identitarianism ... The semi-forgotten history of Revisionist Zionism ... Those...
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The Intellectuals Who Went Trumpist, with Laura K. Field
Laura's essay, "What the Hell Happened to the Claremont Institute?" ... Background on Harry Jaffa and the West Coast Straussians ... Why did many East Coast Straussians become NeverTrumpers? ... Michael Anton, the cosplaying conservative intellectual ... A recent "crazy rant" published by...
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Arendt, Trump, and Truth, with Rebecca Panovka
Rebecca's essay on how Hannah Arendt was misread during the Trump years ... A capsule biography of Arendt ... The real meaning of Arendt's famous line about "the ideal subject of totalitarian rule" ... Rebecca: Trump's lies were mostly "boardroom bullshit" ... Are Trump's post-election…
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Pandemic Poetry, with Leigh Stein
Leigh's new poetry collection, What to Miss When ... How the collection emerged from lockdown ... Leigh's poem "Simulation Theory," which was inspired by a MeaningofLife.tv episode ... Leigh's essay, "Sympathy for the Girlboss" ... Women taking down other women in the name of feminism ... Michael...
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TikTok Influencers and American Despair, with Barrett Swanson
Barrett embeds at a TikTok "collab house" ... Pleasant young people who are starstruck at themselves ... Why are so many college students anxious and depressed? ... Joan Didion and despair ... Barrett and his brother's unusual journey to a spiritualist enclave ... Barrett's new book of essays…
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Nine Nasty Words, with John McWhorter
John's new book, Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever ... The original profane words: damn and hell ... The four-letter big ones ... How donkeys and buttocks got the same name ... The nasty word we still euphemize ... How profanity can become pronouns ...
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Meet the NYT Pitchbot, with DougJ
The origins of Doug's "New York Times Pitchbot" project ... The "In this Ohio diner..." trope ... The NYT's de facto national status and the hollowing out of local journalism ... The Opinion page's lack of ideological and geographic diversity ... Aryeh: The NYT's real tribe is the wealthy ......
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The Ghosts of American History, with Daniel Bessner
The absurd exercise of ranking presidential greatness ... Aryeh: We all agree on Lincoln and Washington, but then it's a fight ... Daniel: George W. Bush was much worse than Trump ... Did America react hysterically to the storming of the Capitol? ... Ghostbusters as a cultural expression of...
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A Literary Analysis of Recent American History, with Christian Lorentzen
Christian on gothic, sentimental, and ironic strains in recent US history ... Biden the pre-Boomer sentimentalist ... Trump as a postmodern gothic figure ... Why the gothic and the sentimental are two sides of the same coin ... Aryeh: It turns out that irony is never actually dead ... Who is the...
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On Millennial Jews, with Rabbi Ari Hart
Rabbi Ari introduces himself ... How do Millennial American Jews understand their Judaism? ... The unique Jewish community in Skokie, Illinois ... Identity, tribalism, and communal thickness ... The failures of Hebrew School education ... Rising anti-Semitism on both right and left in America ......
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Special Non-Cheugy Edition, with Nicholas Clairmont
Nicholas's essay, "The Language of Privilege" ... Bottom-up vs. top-down language change (e.g. "cheugy") ... Nicholas: This is a mean way of talking ... The lefties who mock woke language ... Coca-Cola and the CIA got woke. Hooray? ... Trump's trolling and lack of virtue ... Why did the...
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Amazon, Chipotle, and Unions, with Alex N. Press
Amazon launches "AmaZen" to keep its warehouse workers mindful ... Amazon's total war against unions ... Jeff Bezos blasts off ... Will the feds break up Amazon? ... NYC sues Chipotle, alleging 600,000 labor violations (some involving rats) ... Why many restaurant workers are not returning ...…
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After the Orgy, with Default Friend
Default Friend's new podcast, After the Orgy ... 2008 as a hinge point in sexual culture ... Is sex positivity over? ... DF: Young people want to get married and have kids sooner ... Ancient wisdom and cosplaying as a way of life ... Get ready for hot vaxx summer! ... Why today's teens are...
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A Critique of the Contemporary Left, with Ben Burgis
Ben's new book, Canceling Comedians While the World Burns ... Joe Rogan, Louis CK, and the online left's moralistic overreactions ... A material analysis of how Twitter distorts political movements ... Stalin nostalgia, guillotine gifs, and other performative radicalness ... Critiquing left...
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The Philip Roth Biography Mess, with Laura Marsh
Accusations of sexual assault against Philip Roth's biographer, Blake Bailey ... Laura's early negative review of the biography ... How Bailey justified Roth's mistreatment of women ... Aryeh worries about an alleged rapist framing the historical record ... Laura argues against the "this changes...
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Juggalos, Simps, and Cat Guys, with Magdalene Taylor
Mourning MEL Magazine ... Everything you ever wanted to know about Juggalos ... Do Juggalos vote? ... Why Magdalene identifies as a Juggalette ... Simps, incels, and pickup artists ... Trends in male horniness ... Should cat guys on dating apps pretend to not be cat guys? ... Male anxiety and the...
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Know Your Enemy, with Matthew Sitman
Matt's podcast on the conservative movement, Know Your Enemy ... Matt's journey from movement conservative to democratic socialist ... Trump and the conservative intellectuals who tried to defend him ... Can there be a Trumpism without Trump? ... A cheer or two for the anti-Trump neoconservatives...
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The Philip Roth We Don't Know, with Jacques Berlinerblau
Jacques's essay on race in Philip Roth's fiction ... Roth and Updike, compare and contrast ... Was Roth always totally in control of his powers? ... How Roth depicted the Newark riots ... Portnoy's Complaint and offensive humor ... Will we be reading Roth in 30 years? ... Roth's fictional (and...
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Only on OnlyFans, with Cathy Reisenwitz
All about OnlyFans, which is like Substack but for porn ... Parallels between online journalism and online porn ... Cathy's experiences on OnlyFans ... When the NY Post "outed" an NYC medic as being on OnlyFans ... Is Twitter going to embrace the OnlyFans model? ... Why Cathy moved away from...
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Framing Britney, with Alana May Johnson
The new NYT documentary on Britney Spears ... The many ways the media mistreated Britney ... Revisiting the paparazzi, the head shaving, and the umbrella ... The conservatorship and the #FreeBritney movement ... Why we should have listened to the "leave Britney alone" guy ... Jason Alexander (the...
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Fake Accounts, with Lauren Oyler
Lauren's new novel, Fake Accounts ... Autofiction in the disinformation age ... Why the novel's narrator is unnamed ... Berlin, the city of expats hanging out ... The uses and abuses of a fragmentary narrative ... Twitter is made out of people ... When a book reviewer publishes her first novel ...
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Why Are We Still on Twitter? with Phoebe Maltz Bovy
Phoebe's new position as a senior editor at The Signal ... "Cleansing your timeline" vs. "doomscrolling" ... The agony and the ecstasy of Twitter ... Twitter's insane risk-reward ratio ... How Twitter makes unpopular ideas seem popular ... With Trump banned, will Twitter return to being a niche...
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QAnon as Symptom, with Daniel Bessner
Daniel's analysis of QAnon and the storming of the Capitol ... Is QAnon a religious cult? An alternative reality game run amok? ... Cultural vs. material explanations for Trump's rise ... Did the rioters get close to actually accomplishing anything? ... America's civic religion and why the left…
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Arranged Marriages for Millennials, with Justin Murphy
Justin's new company that arranges marriages for Millennials and Zoomers ... Do city men and country women want to be forced to wed? ... The ideal eligible NYC bachelor: tall and anti-Trump ... Justin: I quit academia because it was "satanic" ... Justin's podcast, Chat for God ...
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We're Storming the Capitol, It's a Revolution! with William R. Black
Reflections on a bizarre week in America ... Protest, riot, insurrection, coup—or something stupider? ... The postmodern politics of symbols and cosplay ... Aryeh: Blaming this on "white supremacy" is both inaccurate and bad politics ... The link between anti-Semitism and Flat Earthers ......
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Materially Determined, with Tommy Craggs
Tommy's recent essay, "What’s the Matter With Cultural Politics?" ... Police defunding and the case against "backlash" ... Can the austerity stalemate be broken? ... How the debate over trans rights is and is not like the debate over gay marriage ... Tommy: Racial and gender identity affiliation...
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The End of Takes, with Meghan Daum
Why Meghan is retiring from writing think pieces ... The devolution of the take, from op-eds to tweets ... The virtues of not knowing what to think ... Aryeh: The "Dr. Jill Biden" debate shows that the Trump era is ending ... The problems of too much speech ... Should we be optimistic about the...
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Speech and Censorship on YouTube, with Douglas Lain
The mysterious removal of Doug's YouTube video on "the Great Reset" ... Does YouTube have an anti–Alex Jones algorithm? ... Content moderation in an age of infinite content ... What videos should YouTube be taking down? ... Aryeh: The problem isn't people being silenced, it's too many people...
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The Particulars of Peter, with Kelly Conaboy
Kelly's new book about her dog, The Particulars of Peter ... Everything you always wanted to know about Peter the dog ... Kelly: Dogs should be able to talk for 25 minutes a day ... The profound mysteries of the dog-human relationship ... "Doggo," "dog mom," and the cultural shift around pets ......
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Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste, with Ryan Cooper
Reviewing Obama's new memoir, A Promised Land ... Ryan excoriates Obama's response to the financial crisis ... Should Obama have gone much harder on the banks? ... Aryeh: Obama is an institutionalist to his core ... Was Obama just the wrong man for the job? ... Why the GOP gets away with…
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The Great Jeopardy Rules, with Joanna Mang
How Joanna became a Jeopardy! champion ... The source of Alex Trebek's popularity ... Joanna on who should replace Trebek ... Why Aryeh was happy that he failed to get on Jeopardy! ... Trivia in the age of Google ... Is Vanderpump Rules the perfect reality show? ... A reality TV show starring...
About this show
Aryeh Cohen-Wade speaks with guests about culture in all its forms—pop, high, and low—and American society in general.
Hosted by
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