Anyway, We're Pretentious

Episode 025: Two Memers and a Dog Guest Madi Alten wanted to hop onto last episode's conversation about memes and how important they figure in culture. Dog Moses shares some encouraging barks as well. Where is the gap between generations and understanding memes? What will the murky legality surrounding memes look like in the future? All this and more in Episode 025. Find out more on the Anyway, We're Pretentious website.

What movement does art exist in nowadays? It's easy to blurt "post-modernism!" but that movement was active in the 1970s! John Armour, an artist and printmaker himself, and I explore art in the age of mass reproduction and the internet. Of course, we touch on memes and hardly find a true answer. 

This week Claire and her guest Sarah, a thespian, explore the notion of who owns a story. If your story has personal details or inflammatory portions about family, friends, lovers, and more—can you share it? Is it yours to share? Who owns the spaces where stories take space?

It's part two of the human rights discussion, but this time Dakota takes the reins with a bit of economic theory while Claire rides along. Does it get them closer to an answer? Who knows?

Reoccuring guest Dakota Potts launches into the heavily contested idea of human rights. World organizations, philosophers, and idealists alike struggle to define quite what they are—will these two have any better luck? Probably not, but they will certainly attack from all sides.

Why the hell do we love the hype? Why have hypebeasts dominated men's fashion? Where do women factor in this and why is it a boy's game? Jack and Claire tackle this baffling trend with an appropriate amount of criticism, skepticism, and admittance.

Consistent friend and guest, Dakota Potts joins Claire today to discuss what bullshit is philisophically and in reality. Are lies or bullshit more dangerous to truth? WE MAYBE FIND THE ANSWER.

Justin and I ask another buzzy question: can you teach creativity? While we are full of yeses and nos, we are also full of personal anecdotes and assumptions and such about our own experiences as creative people. Sit down with us, have a cup of whatever you like and navigate the complexities of creativity with us. Oh and check out his videos on the YouTube at JMontage. 

It's part two, my dudes! David and I talk about the haters who try too hard at Animal Crossing. You just need to let it happen, make your own goals, and just chilllllllll. We end on expert predictions for the inevitable Nintendo Switch Animal Crossing installment.

What makes video games so dang fun? Especially the Animal Crossing franchise, known for literally revolving around menial tasks and paying back debt. David and I deep dive into our mutual love for this life simulation game that exploded and still dominates the Nintendo market. This is a two part series! Stay tuned for Part 2!

Dakota joins Claire to act as commentator to the things in history that just really piss her off: Andrew Jackson's Bank War and The Destruction of the Library of Alexandria. Along the way they learn that the things they thought to be true were just shrouded in mythos. Join this historical romp with lots of sound effects I found time to add. Wow!

Claire and Nadine dive into the geeky, multi-faceted depths of the beauty industry, touching on the power YouTube beauty gurus have, the democratization of makeup and what it does to help and hurt brands, as well as their favorite and coveted products. Full of sidetracking, rants, and unrelated discussions about Japanese YouTube cooking channels, this episode is in the spirit of Episode 001's Wild Noodlings.

A behind the scenes look into what we really sound like when we're allowing ourselves to truly be as petty and rude as we can be. DISCLAIMER: DO WHAT YOU WANT WITH YOUR LIFE. Find out more on the Anyway, We're Pretentious website.

It's that time of year, where people get married a bunch. Today Allison and I break down the ridiculous cost of marriage and why, in fact, it exploits women and excludes men. Ironically, feminism helps push that along, as well as the general male population and their inability to pick up the slack (or lack of interest in doing so.)

Happy Spring! Spring means flowers. Inevitably it reminds us all of the famed 17th century Dutch Tulip Market Crash. Every year I ruminate on this fabulous story and sigh in happy remembrance of the joyful fact that an entire country got really stoked about a flower market. In this telling of the tale, we nod to the mania that think-pieces on Business Insider or something loved to point at frantically when Bitcoin got popular, but also use the new information from Anne Goldgar's new book "Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age" to acknowledge that, in fact, it wasn't really much of a mania at all. 

Discourse is a matter of course for me and one of the main reasons I wanted to create a podcast that could facilitate that much needed space. Originally I was inspired by the 18th century Parisian salons and their amazing salonnières, but ended on the idea of pretentiousness. In this episode we explore what the special soup of societal conditions, governmental unrest, and gender stereotyping that led to women guiding the philosophical giants of their time and also what happened to those spaces in the modern era. We also end on the Latin phrase that I want to instill in my listeners: aut delectare aut prodesse.

In honor of the Hallmark Holiday Valentine's Day, Emma and I walk you through Gary Chapman's 5 Love Languages, a method of understanding how we give and want to receive love, romantic or otherwise. How do you want to get love? How do you want to give it? Does understanding it help us interact more effectively and understand the people around us? Emma and I investigate, as we analyze our own love towards friends, family, and etcetera.

People are always asking me for book recommendations and I never really know what to say. Dakota and I decided that we were both too exhausted and lazy to do some research for this week, so we landed on a topic where the research is built into the act itself: reading. Thus, look no further for the books that affected us the most and that we would definitely recommend to you. If you're not sure if you'll like them, then our cursory explanations may help you decide whether or not to pick these literary staples up.

Being in a band isn't all glamourous. This week I chat with local musician, JD Cupple, who lets us know what the Cleveland music scene is all about and the struggles of being a musician trying to make it. Do you sell out if you have the chance? Do you experiment in the face of making popular music for cash? How do you negotiate the artist and the moneymaker? We explore these inquiries.

At the 2018 Golden Globes, celebrities and industry members alike wore black in solidarity with the #TimesUp movement. Was this a successful sartorial stand? Or was this another example of putting on a costume/identity for social capital? Today I ask the question: can we wear our politics? Looking at couture, mainstream t shirts, and identity politics through the lens of Dress (as defined by Eicher and Roach-Higgns) I try to answer this question.

You've heard your parents say it in their exasperated groaning or perhaps you've felt it as you've grown to see the new generation change the status quo. Anyway you slice it, the youth is always threatening, wild, and blindly tearing up what you've built. What do we call that? Juvenoia. Claire and Justin try to postulate on why we're always afraid of the next generation and how to avoid yelling at kids to get off your lawn when you've hit your golden years.

When we call something pretentious, what do we really mean? Are we even using that word correctly? In this über-meta episode of Anyway, We're Pretentious, guest Dakota and host Claire try to strip away the layers of the word that is often attached to those with intellect or artsy inclinations: pretentious! 

Want to get to know us way, way, way too well? Now's your chance! And now if you run into us you know to avoid or become our friends.

Why do modern, science-loving, cynical people tune in to their weekly horoscopes? How did horoscopes hit the ground running in the modern era? What do the stars reveal to us when we analyze our birth charts? All these questions answered (or postulated on) for this episode of Anyway, We're Pretentious.

Dakota and Claire attempt to explain the complex notion of the Final Girl. The Slasher film is lowly regarded as the lowest form of art in the horror genre, but it still has a lot to tell us about its audience and of gender attitudes in our society. The last one standing is always a competent, slightly tom-boyish woman. Through torture, trauma, and pain she triumphs against the nearly sexless killer. Is this a case of Freud-like gender confusion? Is it a tale of maturity? Or is this just another trope? Let's be pretentious together and find out.

You heard it here first folks, Thomas the Tank Engine lives in a dystopian nightmare headed by a chubby tyrant. David and Claire dive into the conspiracy and uncover the structure of the devious Island of Sodor, questioning whether or not it truly is the idyllic paradise it's purported to be. We take our source information from the show, the books, the Thomas the Tank Engine Wiki, Tumblr and Reddit posts, as well as Jia Tolentino's excellent New Yorker piece "The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of 'Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends'". All links can be found on clairestemen.com for further perusal. Find out more on the Anyway, We're Pretentious website.

Episode 001: Wild Noodling Welcome to Anyway, We're Pretentious, a podcast for lovers of discourse and for those who delight in things deemed pretentious. I'm Claire, your host and resident discourse nerd, and my guest this week is Allison, a childhood friend and excellent graphic designer. We share a passion for ethical purchasing and talk about the various issues that arise when you're post-grad and anti-fast-fashion. How do you act and exist in a space that isn't going to cater or have the necessities for green living? Where to get your clothes when the affordable ones aren't the ethical ones? Soon after we renamed the entire podcast after speaking on the rather tangled mess that is the word "pretentious" and I decided to own it. All this while drinking rosé. I hope you enjoyed this experimental first episode. Join me for the next one, as we grow and chat together.