Podcasts about gen z

Brad sits down with journalist Sarah Stankorb to discuss her new book, Damned If She Does: Why Women Quit Church and What It Means for the Future of Religion, out September 15th. They dig into why women — long the backbone of American congregations — are leaving in unprecedented numbers, from Gen Z women outpacing their male peers to the erosion of the gender gap among millennials. The conversation covers the specific fractures driving women out: the Catholic sex abuse crisis and its parallels in evangelical spaces, the racial reckoning of 2020 and churches' silence in its wake, and the deep discomfort many feel over homophobia and transphobia within their communities. They also explore what comes after leaving — the difficulty of trusting institutions again, the patchwork spiritualities (astrology, women's gyms, tarot) many turn to instead, and the striking demographic differences between atheists, agnostics, and the "nothing in particulars." The episode closes with a wide-ranging discussion of institutional trust, political imagination, and whether the energy behind candidates like Zohran Mamdani is connected to this same generational exodus from organized religion.

If you've ever wondered whether Gen Z still wants anything to do with God, this conversation is for you. Dr. Tanita Maddox has spent 26 years on the front lines of Gen Z ministry, and what she taught me about talking to Gen Z about God completely reframed how I see this generation — and it's the most hopeful conversation I've had in a long time.We dig into why relationships — not statistics, not sermons, not slick programs — are still the doorway into faith for young people. Tanita shares the three things Gen Z says makes them actually feel listened to, why so many of them trust a stranger on TikTok more than the adults in their own home, and the surprising reason AI is becoming a competing spiritual authority in their lives. We also talk honestly about why being comfortable with being uncomfortable might be the most important skill we can give our kids — and ourselves.This one is for parents wondering how to reach their teenager, for pastors wondering why Gen Z church attendance doesn't always translate into real faith, and for anyone who's ever felt rejected while trying to love someone well. There is so much hope found in this conversation, and I think you're going to walk away encouraged, equipped, and ready to show up differently in the lives of the young people God has placed around you.TANITA'S LINKS:Website — https://tanitamaddox.com/Book — https://a.co/d/0btS5MXaCHAPTERS:00:00 - Meet Dr. Tanita Maddox & Her Heart for Gen Z 08:14 - Why Relationships Open Every Door to Faith 20:06 - Trust Lives in People, Not Institutions 26:19 - Answering the Questions They're Actually Asking 30:53 - How to Truly Listen to Your Kids 37:08 - Is AI Becoming a Spiritual Guide? 45:30 - Getting Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable 51:08 - The Power of Just Showing Up1 Corinthians 9:22 NASB95Psalm 22:30 NLTPsalm 71:18 NIVActs 13:36 NIVExodus 33:11 TLB2 Timothy 3:10 NIV

What's up with the kids these days? We asked a Gen Z researcher to explain her generation's politics.  This show was edited by Kasia Broussalian, fact checked by Esther Gim, mixed by Shannon Mahoney, video edited by Christopher Snyder, and hosted by Astead Herndon. An attendee wears a Vote hair accessory during a debate watch party with the Miami-Dade Young Democrats. Photo by Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images Read more about Gen Z: The Up and Up: https://www.theupandup.us/  You can also watch this episode on youtube.com/vox. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Boomers: When was the last time you invited a young person into your life? There's an entire generation—Gen Z—out their waiting to be seen, looking for godly mentors, hoping to find someone who can guide them in life and faith... Yet the older generation isn't doing their part in inviting them in! Greg Laurie talks with Ruslan KD on Gen Z's spiritual hunger, what makes them unique, and their real need for direction from those seasoned in life—even recalling a defining moment in his own youth when an older man invited him to dinner. Listen to the full conversation on The Greg Laurie Show, where you'll hear more on Gen Z and other topics. — Become a Harvest Partner today and join us in knowing God and making Him known through media and large-scale evangelism, our mission of over 30 years. Explore more resources from Pastor Greg Laurie, including daily devotionals and blogs, designed to answer your spiritual questions and equip you to walk closely with Christ.Support the show: https://bit.ly/anbsupportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's back to school season and we're getting our own Gen Z'er Alexis ready with an assignment... to watch Billy Madison and review it!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Boomers: When was the last time you invited a young person into your life? There's an entire generation—Gen Z—out their waiting to be seen, looking for godly mentors, hoping to find someone who can guide them in life and faith... Yet the older generation isn't doing their part in inviting them in! Greg Laurie talks with Ruslan KD on Gen Z's spiritual hunger, what makes them unique, and their real need for direction from those seasoned in life—even recalling a defining moment in his own youth when an older man invited him to dinner. Listen to the full conversation on The Greg Laurie Show, where you'll hear more on Gen Z and other topics. — Become a Harvest Partner today and join us in knowing God and making Him known through media and large-scale evangelism, our mission of over 30 years. Explore more resources from Pastor Greg Laurie, including daily devotionals and blogs, designed to answer your spiritual questions and equip you to walk closely with Christ.Support the show: https://bit.ly/anbsupportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dust off that giant binder of scratched CDs you definitely didn't throw away because apparently funny podcast history has come full circle: physical media is making a comeback.The show kicks off with the surprising resurgence of CDs, with sales jumping while vinyl growth slows down. Why? Turns out paying nearly $40 for a new record eventually makes people reconsider the humble compact disc. Gen Z is getting into CDs, independent record stores are stocking more of them, older cars still have CD players, and there's something comforting about owning music that can't suddenly disappear from a streaming service. Moon also realizes those boxes of old band CDs might not be useless relics after all. Congratulations to everyone who refused to clean out their basement. Your moment has arrived.Then Crap on Celebrities takes us directly into the wildly expensive world of Hollywood memorabilia. A screen-matched mosquito-in-amber prop from the original Jurassic Park sells for more than $400,000, while Christopher Reeve's Superman gear and John Travolta's famous Saturday Night Fever suit also bring ridiculous money at auction.Naturally, this becomes less about collecting important pieces of movie history and more about whether you're morally obligated to PUT THE COSTUME ON.Because if you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on Superman's costume just to leave it behind glass, what are we even doing here?The crew also gets into entertainment news, including the changing timeline between theatrical releases and streaming, Toy Story 5, a live-action Scooby-Doo prequel, and Ghost taking a hiatus after Tobias Forge admits he doesn't currently have a clear vision for the band's next album. We salute a man willing to say, “I don't know what the next thing is yet,” instead of releasing twelve remixes and a commemorative popcorn bucket.Then there's Grand Theft Auto.The latest massive GTA preview sends the room into gamer mode as the crew talks about the gigantic map, Jason and Lucia's evolving relationship, smarter cops, surveillance cameras, changing disguises, massive police chases and an enormous story that could consume roughly 80 hours of your life.So basically, Rockstar has created a second full-time job, except this one lets you steal cars.The funny podcast chaos keeps rolling with Paris Hilton landing on a list of influential people in artificial intelligence because of her advocacy surrounding privacy and non-consensual AI-generated media. Then the hunt for the next James Bond gives everyone a chance to evaluate candidates with the rigorous casting standards you'd expect from three guys who immediately nominate Mr. Bean.And finally, we tackle one of the most important databases ever assembled: tall and short rock stars.Chris Novoselic. Danny Carey. Mick Fleetwood. Buckethead. Joey Ramone. Billy Corgan. Angus Young. Prince. Glenn Danzig. Stevie Nicks. The measurements are flying, everyone suddenly seems either seven feet tall or legally eligible for a booster seat, and we discover once again that stage presence apparently adds about eight inches.Throw in celebrity birthdays, Luis Guzmán appreciation, Warren Buffett confusion, Charlie Munger confusion, additional Charlie confusion, and the traditional descent into nonsense, and you've got another funny podcast from The Rizzuto Show.Physical media is back. Movie props cost more than retirement. GTA may require PTO. And Danzig is still Danzig at any height.That's enough education for one day.Follow The Rizzuto Show → linktr.ee/rizzshow for more from your favorite daily comedy show.Connect with The Rizzuto Show Comedy Podcast online → 1057thepoint.com/RizzShow.Hear The Rizz Show daily on the radio at 105.7 The Point | Hubbard Radio in St. Louis, MO.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today's episode begins exactly where every respectable radio program should: debating canned chili and whether The Rizzuto Show should abandon broadcasting altogether to open a chili parlor. Because apparently decades of radio experience were merely preparation for serving questionable bowls of meat during a St. Louis summer.The crew gets into a disturbing local story involving two kittens rescued after being thrown from a moving vehicle, which launches a conversation about animal cruelty, punishment, and why there have been so many bizarre animal-abuse cases around the St. Louis area. Thankfully, the kittens are recovering, because this show has enough emotional damage without adding more.Then we head to the amusement park formerly known as Six Flags, talk about its new Mid America Adventure identity, and immediately start remembering the various roller coasters that have spent decades attempting to rearrange our internal organs. That leads us to California's X2 coaster and reports of riders suffering terrifying medical emergencies. Naturally, half the room hears “brain hemorrhage” and responds like someone just announced a new thrill ride they absolutely have to try.Rafe also gives us an update from the dating world, including his Texas connection and the increasingly complicated rules surrounding modern romance. That turns into the question every hopeless romantic eventually has to answer: is a grand gesture thoughtful… or are you about three seconds away from appearing in somebody's “THIS GUY IS A CREEP” TikTok?A guy goes on two dates with a woman, finds her address without asking, and sends her Mother's Day flowers supposedly from her dog. Sweet? Creepy? Thirsty? The Rizz Show Supreme Court is now in session, and absolutely nobody involved has passed the bar.Apparently this question is complicated enough to involve law enforcement, surveillance footage, social media, and an actual public search for the guy who picked up the cash. Suddenly our daily comedy podcast has become CSI: Walmart, where the suspect is armed with three ten-dollar bills and an extremely debatable interpretation of “finders keepers.”We also get into air-travel nightmares after a pilot suffers a medical emergency during a flight and still manages to help get the plane safely on the ground. Meanwhile, Moon is preparing to fly, which is exactly the kind of story you want to hear immediately before heading to an airport.The episode's namesake saga involves Yolanda Jackson, a drive-through order, a dangerously hot pot pie, severe burns, permanent scarring, and the resulting courtroom battle. Nothing says daily comedy quite like discovering your food apparently requires protective equipment.It's another episode filled with St. Louis stories, weird news, dating disasters, food catastrophes, questionable financial ethics, amusement-park trauma, and the kind of conversations that start somewhere reasonable before wandering directly into the woods.Dust off that giant binder of scratched CDs you definitely didn't throw away because apparently funny podcast history has come full circle: physical media is making a comeback.The show kicks off with the surprising resurgence of CDs, with sales jumping while vinyl growth slows down. Why? Turns out paying nearly $40 for a new record eventually makes people reconsider the humble compact disc. Gen Z is getting into CDs, independent record stores are stocking more of them, older cars still have CD players, and there's something comforting about owning music that can't suddenly disappear from a streaming service. Moon also realizes those boxes of old band CDs might not be useless relics after all. Congratulations to everyone who refused to clean out their basement. Your moment has arrived.Then Crap on Celebrities takes us directly into the wildly expensive world of Hollywood memorabilia. A screen-matched mosquito-in-amber prop from the original Jurassic Park sells for more than $400,000, while Christopher Reeve's Superman gear and John Travolta's famous Saturday Night Fever suit also bring ridiculous money at auction.The crew also gets into entertainment news, including the changing timeline between theatrical releases and streaming, Toy Story 5, a live-action Scooby-Doo prequel, and Ghost taking a hiatus after Tobias Forge admits he doesn't currently have a clear vision for the band's next album. We salute a man willing to say, “I don't know what the next thing is yet,” instead of releasing twelve remixes and a commemorative popcorn bucket.Then there's Grand Theft Auto.The latest massive GTA preview sends the room into gamer mode as the crew talks about the gigantic map, Jason and Lucia's evolving relationship, smarter cops, surveillance cameras, changing disguises, massive police chases and an enormous story that could consume roughly 80 hours of your life.Chris Novoselic. Danny Carey. Mick Fleetwood. Buckethead. Joey Ramone. Billy Corgan. Angus Young. Prince. Glenn Danzig. Stevie Nicks. The measurements are flying, everyone suddenly seems either seven feet tall or legally eligible for a booster seat, and we discover once again that stage presence apparently adds about eight inches.Carefully constructed journeys through comedy, culture, and the human condition. This one starts with an eagle call, gets yelled at by an offended listener, drinks imaginary Malört, sends Riz back to college, remembers the horrors of Rotten.com, and eventually makes everybody emotional over Dolly Parton. So… basically the same thing.The Rizzuto Show kicks off with Team JB and the Zero Prostate Cancer Run and Walk in memory of our buddy Jeff Burton, plus Greek Fire getting ready for a show benefiting Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital. Then we get into one of radio's oldest traditions: somebody getting mad enough at the show to contact the bosses.This time, a listener wasn't thrilled about the proximity of the Porno Birthday to a children's charity announcement. Riz got the dreaded “Can I see you before you leave?” message, and suddenly we're debating whether everybody is too easily offended, whether people need to watch what they say, and whether society could possibly locate that mythical middle ground where empathy and a sense of humor coexist.Rafe brings the comedian's perspective to the argument, including the audience member who loves 99 jokes but desperately needs to inform you about the one they didn't like. Our solution remains remarkably simple: maybe leave that joke at the club and take the other ones home.We discover that Malört has somehow created an entire identity around tasting terrible. Most companies try to convince customers their product is delicious. Malört basically dares you to survive it. The gang dives into its hilariously hostile marketing, its reputation as Chicago's favorite way to punish a friend, and the important question nobody has apparently answered: Is anyone ordering this stuff because they actually enjoy it?From there, we say farewell to Sam Rizzuto's dream of college independence after Riz tours the University of Arkansas and realizes he might want the full college experience himself. Suddenly we're imagining a Back to School scenario where father and son become Razorbacks together, share a dorm, take Intro to Communications, and graduate in the same class. Nothing weird about that whatsoever, Sam. Your new roommate just happens to be Dad.The real RIPs begin with tributes to Peter Cullen and Tim Curry, celebrating two remarkable careers and the voices, characters, movies, and performances they left behind.Finally, Rafe delivers a deeply personal tribute to Dolly Parton.It's funny, sincere, personal, and probably more emotionally responsible than anything surrounding the previous discussion of Malört.Follow The Rizzuto Show → linktr.ee/rizzshow for more from your favorite daily comedy show.Connect with The Rizzuto Show Comedy Podcast online → 1057thepoint.com/RizzShow.Hear The Rizz Show daily on the radio at 105.7 The Point | Hubbard Radio in St. Louis, MO.Two kittens recovering after being thrown from vehicle, covered in what shelter believes was bleachSix Flags St. Louis officially rebrands as Mid America AdventureIntense Six Flags Coaster Closed After Two Riders Suffer Brain Hemorrhages: “It's Got to Stop”Man Finds $30 on the Ground, Then Learns He's Wanted by PoliceDelta flight from LA to Boston lands in Detroit as captain gets sick: "I am the one who is ill"Woman left scarred by burns from Church's Chicken pot pie wins $20,000 in lawsuitMiss Sheri's Cafeteria closing after 54 yearsNever-Ending Pasta Bowl returns to Olive Garden menu at special price for limited timeCouple accused of stealing hundreds of library books to resellBloomington Man, 19, Charged After Applebee's Bomb Threat Over Slow FoodFlorida man caught speeding claimed he was rushing to Buc-ee's bathroomSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Gen Z political powerhouse @adammockler joins Stephanie Miller to tackle a news cycle that is both literally and figuratively overheating. They dissect the absurdity of President Donald Trump's latest obsessions—like renaming bodies of water while ignoring real-world economic pain—and roast the glaring double standards driving right-wing media. To cool things off, they take a detour to honor the legendary Dolly Parton, contrasting her radical empathy with today's political chaos.Tune in for a sanity-restoring dose of sharp analysis, cathartic laughs, and the reassuring reminder that you're definitely not the crazy one.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Some believe artificial intelligence isn't just changing how we communicate. It's rebuilding the Tower of Babel. Lance sits down with Ben Peterson, author of "When Intelligence Isn't Human," to unpack what happens when a single technology can speak to every person on earth in their own language, and why he believes that's exactly the scenario Genesis warns about. The conversation goes deep fast: an AI that refused to write part of Lance's own manuscript, the Pentagon's push to mandate AI training across the military, the arms race with China, and a young man whose family says an AI chatbot played a role in his suicide. Ben, who's ministered to more than 300,000 service members and veterans, explains why he believes AI is being built by people who follow moral relativism rather than a biblical worldview, and why that matters far more than most Christians realize. From there the discussion moves into Genesis 6, the Singularity, and what Elon Musk, Jeffrey Hinton, and others are already saying in public about where this is heading. In this episode: * Why Claude refused to write part of Lance's manuscript, and what that says about where AI is headed * Ben Peterson's case for why AI is "rebuilding the Tower of Babel," and what Genesis says happens when humanity gains one shared language * The Pentagon's mandate to train U.S. military branches on AI daily, and what that means in the AI arms race with China * Why Ben says nearly 40% of millennials and Gen Z now turn to AI chatbots as often as they'd turn to a pastor * Jeffrey Hinton, known as the "godfather of AI," and the warning he's now giving the world after leaving Google * Genesis 6, the Nephilim, and why Lance connects that account to where AI and robotics may be headed next * The Singularity, and why Ben compares the utopian promises behind it to the ones made by Hitler and Stalin Podcast Episode 2225: Why Some Believe AI Is 'Rebuilding the Tower of Babel' | don't miss this! Listen to more episodes of the Lance Wallnau Show at lancewallnau.com/podcast

Voter Views on Political Assassination: Sean McDowell and guest host Thaddeus Williams react to alarming poll data showing 17% of voters view the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson as acceptable. They examine how toxic cultural narratives, dehumanizing language, and self-righteous tribalism normalize political violence. Massachusetts Extreme Abortion Law: The hosts unpack Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey signing a bill that removes gestational age limits to allow abortion up to the moment of birth. They critique the underlying ideology, contrast it with biblical principles on protecting the vulnerable, and share global abortion statistics. Rising Stress and Existential Crises: Sean and Thaddeus discuss survey results revealing that 35% of Americans and over half of Gen Z face severe stress and an existential crisis in 2026. Thaddeus explains the mental toll of modern self-worship, while Sean highlights scripturally rooted practices for restoring peace. Devastating Floods in Nepal: The hosts highlight the ongoing disaster in Nepal, where massive flooding has claimed hundreds of lives. They call on listeners to pray and support relief efforts following this tragic event. Audience Question: Narcissism and AI Pastor Avatars: Following up on a report about a Bay Area pastor who built an AI clone of himself to counsel church members, a listener asks whether narcissism is the underlying drive. The hosts emphasize that substituting automated digital avatars for authentic, humble human presence distorts true pastoral ministry.Audience Question: Free Markets and Government Intervention in Food Supply: Addressing a question on whether government should step in when free markets fail to feed the hungry. Sean and Thaddeus explain that free enterprise still has a proven track record as the most efficient system for generating abundance.Audience Question: Navigating Suicide Discussions with Non-Christians: Addressing a sensitive audience question, the hosts offer practical wisdom for discussing suicide with non-Christians. They outline how to lovingly communicate human dignity, offer Christ-centered hope, and support individuals experiencing deep despair.==========Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture is a podcast from Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, which offers degrees both online and on campus in Southern California.   Find all episodes of Think Biblically at: https://www.biola.edu/think-biblically.   To submit comments, ask questions, or make suggestions on issues you'd like us to cover or guests you'd like us to have on the podcast, email us at thinkbiblically@biola.edu.  

Tino hosts Battle of the Rosas - where PSL's might be ending a relationship, Matt tries to decode Gen Z acronyms, Serina thinks it's creepy to clone your dog, and Are You Smarter Than Nicasio...See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Martin Andrijasevic and Hamzah El-Amad, best known for their YouTube channel Slushy Noobz, have experienced a meteoric rise since beginning their collaboration three years ago. Earlier this summer, they livestreamed their way across Canada, introducing their Gen Z audience to some of the country's biggest attractions, overlooked destinations and classic tourist locales. Martin and Hamzah sit down with Q guest host Garvia Bailey to talk about their eight-stop Canada tour, their approach to their work, and what they've come to realize about this country.

I am Rolf Claessen and my co-host Ken Suzan and I are welcoming you to episode 178 of our podcast IP Fridays! Today's interview guest is Caitlin Byczko, who is partner with Marnes & Thornburg in their IP team. Ken is discussing dupe culture with her. Here is the profile of Caitlin Byczko https://btlaw.com/en/people/caitlin-byczko But before we launch into this very interesting interview, I have some news for you: On August 10th, 2026, Navitas Semiconductor filed suit against Renesas Electronics in the Eastern District of Texas, accusing Renesas of infringing four US patents on gallium nitride semiconductor technology through its SuperGaN product lines. The filing follows a countersuit Renesas brought on July 22nd, 2026, accusing Navitas and two of its employees of misappropriating trade secrets. It shows how patent disputes and trade secret claims between competitors are increasingly being fought on multiple fronts at once, and often as tit for tat. It also emerged on August 12th, 2026, that an EPO Board of Appeal had dismissed an appeal by Atlas Global Technologies and ruled that its WiFi patent, EP 3 353 901, case T 1230/25, could not be maintained in any form at all, even though the original opponents, TP-Link and Vantiva, had already withdrawn their oppositions. That knocked out the basis for several parallel infringement suits at the Unified Patent Court, which were then withdrawn. For suppliers and implementers, the takeaway is that fighting a patent held by a non-practising entity can still be worth it, even once the original opponent has thrown in the towel. On August 10th, 2026, the Unified Patent Court in The Hague fully revoked Maxell’s patent EP 2 061 230, covering technology for handing off content to a second device, and at the same time dismissed Maxell’s infringement claim against several Samsung entities, in cases UPC_CFI_251/2025 and UPC_CFI_769/2025. The judges found the patent to be nothing more than an obvious combination of routine adaptations, with no additional technical effect. And now – let's hear the interview with Ken and Caitlin! A dupe used to be a quiet, slow thing. You’d stand in the cereal aisle, notice the generic box next to the name brand, buy it, tell a friend. Word spread over months. That world is gone. On this episode of IP Fridays, Ken Suzan sat down with Caitlin Byczko, partner at Barnes & Thornburg LLP in Indianapolis, to talk about what’s replaced it: a TikTok-driven economy where a single video can sell out a dupe product within hours, sometimes before the original brand’s own team even knows it exists. Byczko litigates and prosecutes trademarks across retail, fashion, luxury goods, technology, and pharmaceuticals, and she’s watched dupe culture evolve from a marketing footnote into one of the more active battlegrounds in trademark law. Here’s what she told us, and why it matters even if your brand has never heard the word “dupe” used about it. Counterfeit and Dupe Are Not the Same Thing, Legally Byczko opened with what she called the most important distinction in this entire conversation: the difference between a counterfeit and a dupe. A counterfeit uses someone else’s actual trademark. Think of a fake Chanel bag stamped with the interlocking C’s, or a fake Louis Vuitton logo. That’s straightforward infringement, and above certain thresholds, a federal crime. A dupe is different. It mimics the look, feel, or performance of a product without using the name or the logo at all. Elf Cosmetics, Zara, Costco’s Kirkland brand, and Quince have all built parts of their business on exactly this model. No one is pretending to be Chanel. They’re offering something that looks and performs similarly, at a fraction of the price, under their own name. Media and social media use “dupe” and “counterfeit” interchangeably. Legally, that’s sloppy, and it matters, because the two categories trigger completely different legal analyses. If There’s No Logo, What Are Brands Actually Suing Over? This is where trade dress comes in. Trade dress protects the overall look and feel of a product: packaging, color combinations, shape, label design. Byczko pointed out that most of us interact with trade-dress-protected products every day without realizing it. The test is likelihood of confusion. Courts look at how similar the products actually look, how sophisticated the shoppers are, and whether there’s real evidence that people were confused. Byczko flagged one case as a genuine roadmap for this area: Van Leeuwen v. Rebel Creamery, an ice cream trade dress dispute that came out of the Eastern District of New York. In her view, the strength of that case came down to how precisely the brand defined its trade dress for the packaging. That precision, she said, did a lot of the work toward the outcome. She’s also watching Lululemon v. Costco, which she expects to be significant partly because it doesn’t rely on trademark and trade dress alone. Byczko noted that brands are increasingly stacking causes of action together: trademark, patent, false advertising, all pointing at the same product. And she’s tracking Sol de Janeiro v. Macau Beauty, a case she finds notable because it pulls in influencer content and testimonials as evidence, not just packaging and trade dress claims. Macau Beauty, she noted, has already been sued multiple times across different jurisdictions. A note for readers outside the US: trade dress as a distinct doctrine doesn’t exist as such in Germany. The closest tools here are the three-dimensional trademark and, more practically, the wettbewerbsrechtlicher Nachahmungsschutz under Section 4 No. 3 of the German Act Against Unfair Competition (UWG). That provision protects product shape, packaging, and get-up against imitation when the original has wettbewerbliche Eigenart, competitive distinctiveness, and the copy creates avoidable confusion about origin, unfairly exploits the original’s reputation, or was built on dishonestly obtained know-how. It’s a narrower, more fact-specific tool than US trade dress, but the underlying logic Byczko describes, define your product’s distinctive features early and precisely, applies just as much on this side of the Atlantic. Why the Evidence Problem Changed Everything Ken asked what’s actually driving the current wave of disputes, and Byczko’s answer was simple: evidence. Ten or twenty years ago, if you sent a cease-and-desist letter or went to trial, you had almost nothing concrete to show about how consumers actually perceived two products. Now you have TikTok comment sections, influencer testimonials, and entire genres of “dupe content” documenting exactly what shoppers think, in their own words, in real time. In the Sol de Janeiro case, Byczko noted that part of the complaint isn’t just about packaging and trade dress. It’s about what influencers said, what claims they made, and what that content reveals about actual consumer confusion or the absence of it. That’s evidence litigators simply didn’t have access to a decade ago, and it cuts both ways: it can prove confusion, or it can just as easily prove there wasn’t any. Why Dupes Took Off: Economics, Status, and a Generational Shift Byczko was careful to frame this part as her personal read, not a sociologist’s conclusion, but it’s a read shaped by watching these disputes up close. Part of it is straightforward economics. Gen Z is shopping under real affordability pressure, and dupes let them participate in trend cycles without the price tag. Byczko cited a projected $12.6 trillion in Gen Z spending power by 2030, a generation too significant for brands to write off. The other part is cultural. A generation ago, owning a visible logo was the status symbol. Now, for a lot of younger shoppers, being the savvy one, the person who finds the dupe first and tells their followers about it, carries its own status. It’s less “I have the real thing” and more “I outsmarted the markup.” Byczko also pointed to growing public skepticism toward paying five or ten times more for a product purely because of the name on the packaging, particularly in beauty and fashion. The PR Trap: When Enforcement Backfires One of the sharpest points in the conversation was about what happens after a brand decides to enforce. Suing over a dupe can read very differently in public than it does in a courtroom. Byczko put it directly: going after a dupe can easily look, to the public, like a big corporation coming down on a small competitor, or worse, on its own customers, the same people who made the original brand aspirational in the first place. She’s seen this dynamic play out repeatedly in high-profile cases. Her advice: treat enforcement as a communication strategy, not just a legal one. Sometimes the smarter move isn’t a lawsuit at all. It’s a quieter cease-and-desist letter, a takedown request, or doubling down on marketing that explains what actually makes the original worth the price. Charlotte Tilbury has leaned hard into this approach, building campaigns around the idea that the original simply can’t be remade. Olaplex ran a similar play with its “OlaDupe” campaign. Legal and marketing, Byczko said, have to work together on this, not in sequence. What Brands Should Actually Do Byczko laid out three practical layers, all before litigation ever enters the picture. First: register your trademarks, and where a product design is genuinely distinctive, pursue trade dress or design patent protection early, before a dupe exists and before you know whether the product will even take off. That timing problem is real. Brands rarely know in advance which product will become the one worth copying. Her advice was to look at long-standing anchor products, the ones that have quietly carried a brand identity for years, and ask whether they’re actually protected. Second: monitor. A large share of dupe disputes start on social media, not in a courtroom. That means someone needs to be watching hashtags and influencer content, not just from direct competitors, but from adjacent or even unrelated brands that could end up duping a product without anyone noticing until it’s already trending. Third, and the one Byczko clearly considers most underused: consumer education and brand storytelling. “This is the original” is a weak pitch on its own in a market flooded with cheap alternatives. What works better is explaining, specifically, what makes a product different: its formulation, its sourcing, its performance, its longevity. Give people a real reason to pay more, not just a claim to authenticity. Where This Goes Next Byczko doesn’t think dupe culture is a passing trend. Her expectation is closer to “there will eventually be a dupe of everything,” and she’s watching an interesting generational pattern where teenage shoppers are teaching their mothers about dupes, who are in turn teaching their own mothers. On the legal side, she expects more clarity as cases like Van Leeuwen work their way through the system, giving brands a clearer formula for how to define and defend trade dress. On the brand side, she expects less reliance on litigation as the primary weapon and more investment in what’s genuinely hard to copy: real innovation, ingredient transparency, and storytelling that a dupe simply can’t replicate. One data point she raised stuck with us: search interest in the word “craftsmanship” is at its highest point in twenty years. After years of leaning into dupe culture, there are signs some consumers are swinging back toward wanting the original, the real ingredient, the real technique, the thing that can’t be copied to the same quality. For brands sitting on distinctive packaging, a signature shape, or a product identity they’ve never formally registered, that’s less a trend forecast than a to-do list. Here is the full transcript: Ken Suzan: Thank you, Ralf. Our guest today on the IP Friday’s podcast is Caitlin Byczko. Caitlin is a partner with Barnes and Thornburg LLP and is based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Caitlin crafts and defends global brand strategies, protecting intellectual property assets with creative solutions and highly tactical advocacy. She excels in trademark prosecution and litigation before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board and federal district courts, safeguarding trademarks and digital properties for businesses of all sizes and at every stage of the business life cycle. From startups to Fortune 500 companies, Caitlin manages clients’ intellectual property needs across diverse industries. Her experience spans retail, fashion, luxury goods, sports, technology, agriculture, venture capital and pharmaceuticals. Beyond trademark law, Caitlin brings valuable insights from her law school experience with the National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA, and her previous work serving in a technology company’s in-house legal department. Her tenacious nature and clever problem-solving skills shine through in complex matters, earning praise from clients and colleagues alike. Caitlin is co-author of “Dupe Culture Meets the Courtroom,” published in Global Cosmetic Industry on March 16, 2026. Welcome, Caitlin, to the IP Friday’s podcast. Caitlin Byczko: Hi, Ken. Thank you so much. I’m very honored to be here. Ken Suzan: Yeah, so Caitlin, today we’re talking about dupe culture, a topic that is rapidly becoming front for many brands around the world. What’s the actual difference between a dupe and a counterfeit? Caitlin Byczko: That is one of my favorite questions. This is the most important distinction to draw when we are talking legally about dupes because the difference, because media and social media often use the words interchangeably and legally they’re very different. A counterfeit is a product that uses someone else’s actual trademark. We often think of a fake Chanel bag with interlocking C’s or a fake Louis Vuitton. It’s relatively straightforward trademark infringement and generally above certain thresholds is a federal crime. A dupe, by contrast, is a product that mimics the look, feel, or performance product without actually using the name or logo. We often think of it in the beauty products, in the fashion space, some brands like Elf Cosmetics, which was in the article you just mentioned, Zara, Costco’s Kirkland brand, Quince, who are all very well known in the dupe space. Ken Suzan: What has led to the rise of dupe culture? I’m reading about it virtually every day. Caitlin Byczko: I feel very strongly about this and I’m always talking about it in my legal and non-legal worlds. It’s a very interesting societal change that I think we’ve seen over the past year. I am a lawyer, I am not a marketer, I am not a sociologist, but in my opinion, social media and influencer culture specifically has really created the kind of rise in dupes that we see today. I don’t think we can talk about modern dupe culture without talking about TikTok specifically. Dupe content is its own genre, essentially on TikTok and on Instagram. There’s a whole vocabulary that people are dupe influencers, where their whole product, everything that they’re doing and selling, all of the content they’re making is dupe related. What’s really changed is the speed, I think, around when other products or when a dupe product comes out, how it can be marketed and how people can find out about it. The speed of commerce itself has increased wildly as a result, in part because of social media. A product used to take months to build a reputation as a good alternative. When we think about things, generic cereal is one thing that I have been talking about with my parents with respect to dupe culture. It was one of the things that there used to be, you would go to the store and there would be the cereal, the name brand cereal, and then there would be the generic version of the cereal, which was usually less expensive. That in a way was a dupe. It took a long time. Your friends knew about the dupe cereal and then you knew about the dupe cereal. Then it all got around. Now a single video can send a dupe product sold out within days, within hours sometimes. Oftentimes, a brand’s own team doesn’t even know about the dupe until it’s already been wildly out. Part of it becomes this legal issue when there are claims coming around the dupe. In the Sol de Janeiro case against Macau Beauty, part of the complaint isn’t just about the trade dress and the packaging, which I think we’ll talk about. It’s about the influencer content and the testimonials and what people are saying about the dupes. There’s so much evidence now and there’s so much content and there’s so much out there regarding dupes on social media, on TikTok, and in other places. Ken Suzan: Yeah, and it’s an ever-evolving story. Every day there’s new social media content, more evidence for a potential gain, right? Caitlin Byczko: Absolutely. Ken Suzan: So if dupes aren’t using a particular brand name, how are companies suing over them at all? Caitlin Byczko: So this is really where trade dress comes in, and trade dress, as most of us know, has been around for a long time. There are a lot of very well-known things that you probably see or use every day that you don’t know are protected by trade dress, but they are. And the trade dress protects the overall kind of look and feel of a product. So if you think about things like packaging, color combinations, shape, label design, when that becomes distinctive enough, right? When consumers see that and kind of immediately understand it has the secondary meaning related to the brand owner, then it can become a protectable trademark. And so the test for trademark infringement is likelihood of confusion. And courts will look at the factors of how similar the products actually look, how sophisticated the shoppers are, whether there’s evidence that people were actually confused. I think one of the big cases in the trade dress space that came out since you and I discussed originally, Ken, is the Van Leeuwen versus Rebel Creamery ice cream case. And so for any of those interested, it’s a very interesting opinion. It just came out of the Eastern District of New York. I think that really helps people, brands specifically, kind of provide a roadmap with respect to how to define a trade dress. I think they did an excellent job there defining what the trade dress was for the packaging. And I think that that had a lot to do with the success. Ken Suzan: Yes. Ken Suzan: Why do you think younger consumers gravitate towards dupes so much more than past generations did? Caitlin Byczko: I think there are a few things that are kind of top of each other. The obvious one is economics. I think younger consumers, especially Gen Z, they’re shopping in an environment where there’s affordability pressure. And I think that dupes let them participate in certain trend cycles without the price tag. Gen Z is a significant demographic behind the growth of dupes. And they have a predicted spending power we saw recently, $12.6 trillion by 2030. Ken Suzan: Wow. That’s incredible. Caitlin Byczko: I think it is really also coupled with more of what I would say is a cultural shift. Again, I am a lawyer and this is just my opinion. But what feels aspirational is really changing, I think. And a generation ago, we saw in the fashion world, there was a really big, people really liked logos. Having a logo, owning a logo was the point. And now for a lot of younger shoppers or even more savvy shoppers, actually being a savvy shopper is the status symbol itself. So for a lot of creators, finding the dupe before anyone else or being the one who tells your followers about the dupe really has its own, and it’s less “I have this real thing” and more, “oh, I outsmarted the markup.” And I think it’s that kind of value. I think younger consumers are more publicly skeptical of the idea that something is worth five or ten times more just because of the name on the packaging. And I think that that becomes the case particularly in beauty and then clothing as well. And so I think it’s coupled with the question of craftsmanship and all of these different things. Like we can’t view anything in a vacuum, which is why I could talk for 500 years about this topic. Ken Suzan: Yeah, definitely. Now brands obviously want to protect themselves. That’s an important thing. But going after a dupe can backfire publicly, particularly on the internet. Can you comment on this possibility and what should brands do? Caitlin Byczko: Sure. I think the biggest thing is what you just said. So I think there’s the legal component. And when we’re assessing this for one of our brand clients, I think we cannot review one without the other. So I think you have to say, do we have this claim? Do we have a protectable trade dress or a look and feel claim? And what is the potential backlash in the public? I think it is also a joint PR concern, because what we see is suing over a dupe can very easily read to the public as, oh, this big brand or big corporation is coming down on a small competitor or on its own customers that made the original brand aspirational. I think that we see this in a lot of the big cases that are out right now. So brands, I think, can start to think about enforcement as a communication strategy first, because sometimes the smarter play isn’t necessarily filing a lawsuit. It’s kind of a quieter cease and desist, a takedown request, or separately, it might be really doubling down on the craftsmanship or on a marketing side of what makes the product worth the price. I think Charlotte Tilbury is a great example of this, who’s really leaned into this kind of “can’t be duped” or “you can’t remake the original” with respect to some of their really core products. And so I think people really need to, or brands really need to, assess: one, how can we define what it is that’s being duped? And again, that’s where I think that Van Leeuwen case, I think, will be really interesting over the next few years, with respect to kind of providing this roadmap to help people say, here is a way that we can try to really define what the trade dress is and then be able to protect it and be able to enforce it. Ken Suzan: Caitlin, are there cases right now, I know we just talked about the Van Leeuwen case, but are there cases right now that you think will actually set the tone for how this area of law develops? Caitlin Byczko: Absolutely. And I think some of the cases probably are even in the works, they’re not even filed yet, which is probably very exciting to us as trademark nerds. I do think the Lululemon versus Costco case will be a big one. It’s not just trademarks and trade dress, as many of them are not. I think a lot of times we see in these cases brands are very smartly using kind of all of the different types of causes of action that they bring: trademark, patent, false advertising, a lot of different things. And so I think that that one is definitely certainly one to watch kind of in the fashion space. And then the Sol de Janeiro versus Macau Beauty. Macau Beauty has been sued multiple times, I think, in various jurisdictions. And so I think part of that one is very interesting to me because I think it’s this, it loops not only trademark protection, but also it brings in false advertising, it brings in influencers, it brings in all of these different things. And so I think, like we had talked about previously, nothing is really viewed in a vacuum. And I think for all of these cases, one really important thing, maybe that we didn’t necessarily have access to 10 years ago, or certainly 20 years ago, is this like just ripe amount of evidence of potential confusion or potential non-confusion. When we go on social media and look at all of these things, and then read the comments and all of this different data that’s out there, it’s fascinating, because if you’re in trial, or if you’re going to trial, you’re sending a cease and desist letter, like there is evidence of what the consumers think right here in front of you, right? And the weight of that evidence obviously depends on what it is. But it’s fascinating the way that you can very quickly identify, you know, is there confusion? Is there not confusion, in a way that you likely could never have even thought to consider 10 to 20 years ago? Ken Suzan: Now beyond litigation, what should brands actually be doing to protect themselves in a dupe-driven market? Caitlin Byczko: I think one of the best things that we can do, right, is starting to register the trademarks. I think that’s an obvious one. And really start to consider where the product is genuinely distinctive. And so if it is genuinely distinctive, pursuing a trade dress or a design patent early, before a dupe exists, before anything happens. And I know that can be difficult, because oftentimes brands don’t know for sure what’s going to take off and what’s not. It can also be a surprise. But I think it’s really pushing brands that when you are innovating and when you are doing something that is truly unique and truly distinctive, or when you’re looking back on your brand assets and saying, this thing has been an anchor brand asset for 10 years, you know, have we sought trade dress protection? Is there a way that we can do that? The second layer really is monitoring, in my mind, because a lot of dupe disputes do start on social media. And I think it is important to have people within a company, if you have a product that you’re really keeping an eye on, or that you’re concerned about being duped or causing confusion, having someone who is keeping eyes on hashtags and influencer content and all of these various things. You know, we’re not watching just your direct competitors, we’re watching other completely different brands, or kind of made-up brands even, who could be duping the product. And then I think the third thing that I see as very important is this kind of consumer education and brand storytelling, which is when we kind of get outside of the purely legal side of it. And, you know, legal and marketing and brand and social kind of all need to work together, right? I think if the only pitch to consumers is “this is the original,” it kind of becomes a weak argument in a market where there are cheap alternatives everywhere. But I think the brands that really explain what actually makes their product different, in its formulation, its sourcing, its performance, its longevity, it really gives people a real reason to say, I want to pay more for this brand because of XYZ, you know, the technology or whatever that is. Charlotte Tilbury is one that I had mentioned. I know Olaplex kind of had a big campaign around “OlaDupe” is what they called it. So I think really unique and interesting marketing also assists with that. Ken Suzan: Caitlin, where do you see dupe culture heading? Is this a trend that plateaus or does it fundamentally change how brands operate? Caitlin Byczko: I think dupe culture itself is here to stay. I mean, I think we are only getting into a world where there is truly going to be a dupe of everything. And it’s not good or bad necessarily. I think it is just where we are in life. And I think, you know, things serve different purposes. And it all depends a lot on how the younger consumers shop. And it’s also changing how older consumers shop. You know, I’ve read a lot about teenage girls teaching their moms about dupes, who are then teaching their grandmothers about dupes, right? So on the legal side, I think we will get clarity eventually. I think right around, you know, all like all of these things, which seem so complex, and we’ll never know the answer. You know, five [years] from now, we will probably have certainly more clarity, because a lot of these cases will move forward. You know, the Van Leeuwen one, which I’ve now talked about multiple times, but I just obviously think it’s very fascinating. I think that that’s one where you have a roadmap, right? And it may be contested, or, you know, everything is very fact-specific in the trademark world. But I think it will open the door to allow people one more aggressive brand enforcement. But it will give people a roadmap proactively to kind of say, if we follow this formula for our trade dress, or, you know, defining our trade dress, then, you know, we have something we can potentially protect. And then I think on the brand side, we’ll likely see less reliance on litigation as the primary weapon and more investment in things that are actually, you know, difficult to dupe: innovation, ingredient transparency, marketing, genuinely interesting brand storytelling is something that we’ve seen. I read this past week that searches for craftsmanship, just like generally the word craftsmanship, and kind of products with craftsmanship, is at an all-time high, than it’s been in like the past 20 years. And so it’s interesting, right, that we have gone from this kind of luxury item or high craftsmanship to this dupe culture that we are in now. But there is some potential shift where people are saying, you know, now, I’ve seen all of this and I have all of these options, but now actually what I do care about is the original, right, the innovation or the ingredient transparency or all of those things that can’t necessarily be copied to the same quality. So it’s why it will just provide us with endless topic of discussion, because I think it will only just keep changing forever. Ken Suzan: That’s right. Caitlin, I want to thank you for spending time with us on the IP Friday’s podcast. This has been very insightful, and I’m sure we’ll be talking about this issue in the months and years to come. Caitlin Byczko: Thank you so much, Ken. I really appreciate it. Ken Suzan: Thank you.

Gen Z has a list of Millennial habits it wants retired, from skinny jeans and side parts to LOL, Facebook Messenger, statement jewelry, and dial-up nostalgia. Austin and his cohost decide which critiques land and which can be ignored. The show also remembers Dolly Parton's humor, Appalachian roots, philanthropy, and Imagination Library legacy. Follow Wake Up America on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so every new episode lands in your feed. Watch the full video.

Gen Z students at UT Austin conceded the argument, then said we were wrong anyway.In this episode, Pastor Daniel Hayworth and Pastor Nathan Brown break down six hours at an open debate table on the University of Texas at Austin campus, fielding Gen Z questions on Islam, Israel, just war, manhood, and whether God exists at all. An unfiltered field report on what Gen Z actually believes once those beliefs get tested out loud. Made for the commute, the gym, or the drive home.You'll Learn:✅ Why UT Austin's top five percent could handle advanced math but not basic logic✅ The question that collapsed almost every argument at the microphone✅ Why strong opinions and genuine belief are not the same thing✅ What actually reached the Gen Z students who never stepped up to the mic

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Dr. Isaiah Tatum. A 24-year-old entrepreneur, touring artist, and hotel owner:

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Dr. Isaiah Tatum. A 24-year-old entrepreneur, touring artist, and hotel owner:

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Dr. Isaiah Tatum. A 24-year-old entrepreneur, touring artist, and hotel owner:

Old school film technology is having a moment this summer. Moviegoers have traveled far and wide to see Christopher Nolan's “The Odyssey” in its intended IMAX 70 mm film format. But even theaters with non-IMAX 70 mm film projection are hard to come by. The Alex Theatre in Glendale, California was renovated to screen “The Odyssey” in 70 mm film. Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Miles Williams, the theater's artistic director, about the renovation and why old school film technology is attracting Gen Z film fans.

Old school film technology is having a moment this summer. Moviegoers have traveled far and wide to see Christopher Nolan's “The Odyssey” in its intended IMAX 70 mm film format. But even theaters with non-IMAX 70 mm film projection are hard to come by. The Alex Theatre in Glendale, California was renovated to screen “The Odyssey” in 70 mm film. Marketplace's Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Miles Williams, the theater's artistic director, about the renovation and why old school film technology is attracting Gen Z film fans.

Pardoned outlaw on the run. DeShawn Leeth hit a cop in Jesus' name. Christian apologist Frank Turek: Why pray? Gen Z atheists pretend God is real. Lady demands apology.

The Gen Z POV: I've got to make enough money to set my family up. But what if the extra you have isn't just for you? In this episode, Lina talks about what it means to handle money from a biblical perspective. God gives us resources not simply to raise our standard of living, but to expand our capacity for generosity. You'll discover that what God has given you is both a gift to enjoy with gratitude and a responsibility to steward well. You'll also learn why guarding your heart from the love of money matters, no matter how much or how little you have. Helpful resources:   

Hour 3 (08.27) Ten streaming services and close to $1,000 to watch a full NFL season. Six in ten fans say they've skipped a game because it costs too much. Petros has opinions. 8:05 — Petros comes out swinging at Stefoosh, then it turns into dating preferences. 8:20 — Why you can't find the game anymore. The 2026 NFL slate is spread across more than ten platforms — Netflix, Peacock, Prime Video, ESPN, Paramount+, NFL+, YouTube TV — and watching everything runs past $1,000 for the season. The FCC chairman has raised whether the league's antitrust exemption should survive it. 8:35 — Neil Saavedra is back for an in-depth conversation about religion and faith. 8:50 — The crew on OnlyFans, Gen Z women, and what the money actually looks like. Thanks for listening and for subscribing to the show. Follow us on all socials @ConwayShow

Listen and subscribe to Money Making Conversations on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, www.moneymakingconversations.com/subscribe/ or wherever you listen to podcasts. New Money Making Conversations episodes drop daily. I want to alert you, so you don’t miss out on expert analysis and insider perspectives from my guests who provide tips that can help you uplift the community, improve your financial planning, motivation, or advice on how to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep winning! Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Dr. Isaiah Tatum. A 24-year-old entrepreneur, touring artist, and hotel owner:

What does it mean to be a good man? In this episode, Dru Johnson talks with Professor Nancy Pearcey about masculinity, toxic masculinity, feminism, fatherhood, Christianity, and the cultural forces that have shaped modern ideas about men.Pearcey explains why she wrote her book on masculinity after seeing increasingly hostile portrayals of men in popular culture and explores the deeper history behind these attitudes. Rather than tracing hostility toward men only to second-wave feminism, she argues that its roots extend back to the Industrial Revolution and changing ideas about work, family, masculinity, and human nature.The conversation examines how Darwinism and evolutionary psychology have contributed to negative cultural scripts about male aggression, sexuality, and dominance—and how those ideas can help explain the appeal of figures such as Andrew Tate. Pearcey also discusses research suggesting that Christian men can be loving husbands, engaged fathers, and committed family members.The episode explores the importance of recovering a healthier vision of biblical masculinity centered on responsibility, virtue, service, protection, provision, fatherhood, and family. It also considers how working from home, integrating family and work, and reconnecting fathers with their children could help reshape modern family life.Order Professor Nancy Pearcey's book here: https://bakerpublishinggroup.com/products/9780801075735_the-toxic-war-on-masculinityProfessor Nancy Pearcey's website: https://www.nancypearcey.com/Contact us at The Biblical Mind: Click HereWe are listener supported. Give to the cause here: https://thebiblicalmind.org/give/For more articles: https://thebiblicalmind.org/Social Links:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HebraicThoughtInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/hebraicthoughtThreads: https://www.threads.net/hebraicthoughtX: https://www.twitter.com/HebraicThoughtBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hebraicthought.orgChapters00:00 — Covenant, new Christians, and the intellectual questions nobody knew how to answer02:19 — How the conversation will work and why the book matters04:04 — Why Pearcey wrote the book after seeing anti-male rhetoric everywhere06:38 — Abuse, feminism, and moving from blame to healing09:06 — Anti-male language before the 20th century11:50 — Darwinism, social Darwinism, and the “beast within” script13:44 — Andrew Tate as a popularizer of older intellectual ideas16:16 — The universal “three Ps” of masculinity: provide, protect, procreate18:11 — The difference between the “good man” and the “real man”21:23 — Why empirical research matters for claims about Christian men22:21 — What the studies say about evangelical husbands and fathers25:26 — Why churches often discourage men instead of encouraging them27:24 — How the Industrial Revolution changed fathers and family life34:39 — Pandemic remote work and fathers getting closer to their children36:24 — Work, family, and the real-life benefits of flexibility40:36 — Men on the daddy track and the cost of choosing family43:08 — Bringing work home for women and the recovery of integrated family life47:16 — Millennials and Gen Z want a more integrated life48:45 — What Pearcey means by secular and how the split developed50:55 — The historical reversal that made women seem morally superior53:13 — The double standard in dating and the pressure on women to police men55:25 — Why the title is controversial and how people misread the bookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Last year, Love Island USA got 2.3 billion hours of watch time, creating these huge communities of viewers who watch it together in bars and movie theaters. Especially amongst Gen Z viewers. So how did this show originate from Britain and went to have 8 insanely successful seasons in the United States? Jason and Peter bring in an actual pop culture expert, Doctor and Professor Steven Granelli, to explain what makes Love Island USA different from any other reality TV series on this episode of the Really? no Really? Podcast. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, the premise is to basically take a bunch of hot single people, put them on an island with the goal of them coupling up with somebody else. If you are coupled up with somebody else on this island, you're safe. You get to stay. But if you are single, you are vulnerable. It's sexual musical chairs but it's a manipulated game that airs nightly. The big debate we'll cover is do shows like Love Island USA cause damage to the entertainment industry by dumbing down the audience? Are their serious repercussions to appealing to the lowest common denominator? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In May, two low-budget movies from début filmmakers opened in theatres and quickly made box-office history. “Obsession” and “Backrooms,” which together have grossed nearly a billion dollars, defied conventional industry wisdom and inaugurated the burgeoning genre of “Gen Z horror.” On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz are joined by New Yorker culture editor and horror enthusiast Alex Barasch to discuss this new canon, beginning with the most recent entry, Alex Ullom's “It Ends.” Like Curry Barker and Kane Parsons—the directors of “Obsession” and “Backrooms,” respectively—Ullom is a twentysomething who honed his craft on YouTube. This content pipeline has already become a model for Hollywood executives who are scrambling to cash in on the phenomenon. But these films' sensitivity to the predicaments of young viewers, who grew up online and came of age during the pandemic, may be the real key to their commercial success. “It's people responding to another member of their generation speaking directly to them,” Barasch says. “I hope that that is what is sought and funded and rewarded in this new era.” Read, watch, and listen with the critics: “Why Horror Still Haunts Us” (The New Yorker) “Obsession” (2026) “Backrooms” (2026) “It Ends” (2026) “The Twenty-Six-Year-Old Behind ‘Obsession,' a Terrifying Tale of a Crush Gone Awry,” by Alex Barasch (The New Yorker) “No Exit,” by Jean-Paul Sartre “Weapons” (2025) “Portal” (2007) “Iron Lung” (2026) New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker that explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nine interns. Two hosts with varying levels of preparation. Our 2026 intern class joins Ronan and JR to talk about what surprised them about working in finance, how they're actually using AI, what Gen Z wants from work, and what they've learned about starting a career. Plus, the interns turn the questions on Ronan and JR, including what they'd do differently if they were starting over at 22. Hit play! 

Most churches don’t start thinking about leadership development until a key person resigns. By then, the only real option is to post the role and hope someone qualified applies. In this special compilation episode, we’ve pulled together four conversations with leaders who have built the habit of developing people long before the seat opens up. The churches growing fastest right now are rarely the ones with the best job postings. They’re the ones who already know who’s next. Don’t miss the four critical lessons every church should consider as they head into fall hiring and budget planning. From the leadership model that quietly keeps benches empty to a mindset shift about where leaders actually come from to a challenge you could give your team on Monday to the structure that produces people you can genuinely put on payroll, each conversation offers a practical step forward. The Model Nobody Names Out Loud Tim Foot explains what he calls hero-driven leadership: the habit of relying too heavily on standout individuals to carry the mission. It produces short-term results, but it creates burnout, unrealistic hiring expectations, and fragile systems. What makes it so hard to escape is that it feels good. It feels productive to be the person who solves the problems and holds the answers. Foot also names the “shiny object trap,” where churches chase talent from larger organizations only to discover that the leader arrives with a playbook that doesn’t fit and no systems to support them. Key Takeaway // Hero dependence is a staffing strategy, whether or not anyone chose it on purpose. Healthy teams are built when leaders get comfortable saying they don’t know what to do next, because that’s what opens the room for collaboration. Listen to the Full Episode // Hero Dependence Is a Terrible Growth Strategy with Tim Foot (June 18, 2026) The Leaders Are Already in Your Building Spence Shelton draws a parallel most church leaders have never made. We all agree that growing a church by reaching lost people beats growing it by transfer from other churches. Then, when it comes to leaders, we reverse the logic and look for someone who’s already trained elsewhere. Shelton makes the case for the shoulder tap: intentionally asking someone whether God might be calling them into ministry. At Mercy Church, both executive pastors and two of three campus pastors came out of the marketplace, from banking, plant management, and physical therapy. None of them would have applied. Somebody had to ask. Key Takeaway // Many future ministry leaders never consider vocational ministry because no one ever raised the possibility with them. Developing from within takes longer than hiring from outside, and it produces leaders shaped by your church’s culture rather than someone else’s. Listen to the Full Episode // Stop Plucking Talent, Start Developing It with Spence Shelton (August 6, 2026) The Challenge That Costs Nothing Chris Vaught faced the constraint every growing church knows well. Connection Point was growing fast, but budget always arrives last, and southeastern Missouri isn’t a place people relocate to for a ministry position. So the church started looking at its own congregation and treating volunteers as unpaid staff with real roles and responsibilities. The starting point was a single challenge to every staff member: go find your Timothy. One person you invest in deeply enough that if you were out on a Sunday, the ministry would still run. Key Takeaway // A leadership pipeline doesn’t have to begin with a budget line. It can begin with one question asked of every staff member about who could carry their ministry if they weren’t there next weekend. Listen to the Full Episode // From 300 to 2,500: Building a Leadership Pipeline That Fuels Growth with Chris Vaught (September 25, 2025) Training Is Not Development Dave Miller draws a distinction that reframes what most churches call leadership development. Churches are excellent at training: the sermon, the class, the book of the month, the small group discussion. All of it is content delivery, and content has never been more available. Development is something else. Miller’s team identifies seven ingredients: training, spiritual formation, soft skills, ownership, mental wellness, and developmental conversations. He also challenges leaders on where accountability sits. When a sports team wins, we talk about the players. When it loses, we replace the manager. Church leaders should apply the same standard to the people they’re developing. Key Takeaway // If content were the key ingredient, leadership development would already be solved. What emerging leaders need is proximity, ownership, and someone willing to slow down and have the conversation. Listen to the Full Episode // Who’s the Next You? Building a Gen Z Residency Pipeline with Dave Miller (September 11, 2025) These four conversations form a ladder, and you don’t have to start at the top. Most churches never start at all because they assume the only real option is a residency program they can’t yet afford. Tim named the model keeping your bench empty. Spence gave the mindset shift and the shoulder tap. Chris gave the first move that costs nothing. Dave gave the structure that produces people you can hire. As you head into this fall, the question worth bringing to your next staff meeting is simple: who on our team has never been tapped on the shoulder, and what would it take to have that conversation this month? Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I'm grateful for that. If you enjoyed today's show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they're extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: TouchPoint As your church reaches more people, one of the biggest challenges is making sure no one slips through the cracks along the way.TouchPoint Church Management Software is an all-in-one ecosystem built for churches that want to elevate discipleship by providing clear data, strong engagement tools, and dependable workflows that scale as you grow. TouchPoint is trusted by some of the fastest-growing and largest churches in the country because it helps teams stay aligned, understand who they're reaching, and make confident ministry decisions week after week. If you've been wondering whether your current system can carry your next season of growth, it may be time to explore what TouchPoint can do for you. You can evaluate TouchPoint during a free, no-pressure one-hour demo at TouchPointSoftware.com/demo. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — At the beginning of 2026, we surveyed executive pastors like you and nearly one in four named that staff health and structure, how we get our teams to work together was your top fear going into 2026. You know and I know it, you probably have an open role at your church that you’re trying to fill, or you’re maybe about to have an open role. When a key person leaves your team and your instinct is just to post it, what can we do?Rich Birch — Finding, releasing, equipping leadership is critically important. Welcome to the last compilation episode of summer 2026 here on the unSeminary podcast. Super excited about today’s conversation, all about developing leaders within our organizations.Rich Birch — I know that in many churches, we think of this as a season where new staff are hiring or we’re hiring them into new roles. We’re working on budget planning for next year. There’s all the fall ramp up.Rich Birch — All four of these conversations are going to be helpful for you. The first one, we’ve got Tim Foot. He is the CEO of Slingshot, has nearly 30 years in ministry leadership, and his team has literally worked with thousands of churches on staffing.Rich Birch — Listen to this kickoff to today’s conversation, really setting up the tension that we find ourselves in. He names the leadership model that most of us have absorbed without anyone talking about it out loud, and it could be derailing your church and my church. Let’s listen in to what Tim has to say about developing leaders. [Clip 1 Begins]Tim Foot — Yeah, I mean, the model we see is hero-driven leadership. It’s when we rely too much on individuals to actually carry the mission. And I think the cracks have happened.Tim Foot — I mean, we’ve seen it, Rich. You and I are similar ages. I think the cracks are happening generationally.Tim Foot — The builders and boomers were wired differently for a different time and culture. And us Gen Xers, we can code switch. I mean, we see that happening all the time.Tim Foot — And as we stepped into leadership, the cracks started to appear. I mean, we see it every week, another leader burning out, doing stupid things because of too much pressure. Then Millennials and Gen Z are now leading in a new way that we need to embrace.Tim Foot — And so I think we’re seeing those cracks around that hero dependence, and we’re starting to see the need more than ever to have a team awareness, a holistic approach, or we’re just going to have leaders continue to burn out. And we see it around unrealistic hiring expectations, lack of support for great leaders when they’re hired, a lack of development. Hero dependence is a terrible staffing and growth strategy and becomes a massive trap when it comes to a number of the key focus areas or patterns we’ve seen that healthy teams focus on a move mission forward.Rich Birch — Yeah, see, this is the thing when you I heard you say that once and it literally I sat up and I was like, oh, man, I’ve seen that in my own, you know, my own hiring. I’ve seen that in the way I’ve talked with, you know, I see the leaders around me. You see these people who they’ve kind of built the entire ministry around themselves and they’ve built it’s like it doesn’t work if they don’t. It’s like they’re such a unique individual. They have to lift it all. Rich Birch — Like, why do we keep coming back to that? Why? Even if we know like intellectually in our heads, yeah, that’s not a good idea.Rich Birch — But what makes that model so sticky? It feels like we just keep coming back to this same thing time. In fact, we actually reward it. We’ll be like, wow, isn’t that great? This person’s amazing. And we just kind of keep moving on. Why is that?Tim Foot — It’s the shiny object trap. I mean, the shiny object, aka the talented leader that we think is going to catapult the ministry. Often we see it in hiring conversations when a particular organization wants to go after somebody that’s been in a much bigger organization than them.Tim Foot — And often that person, if they can attract them, will come in with a playbook that isn’t uniquely suited to the organization they’re stepping into. Or there aren’t systems to support that new leader and the growth that’s going to happen. And burnout happens at every level.Tim Foot — But we both know, Rich, busy work makes us feel productive. But is it the right work? And we know that we can be ourselves the shiny object. It feels good to be the hero. It feels good to be the one that’s solving problems. It feels good to be the one that has all the answers.Tim Foot — And I think that’s one of the biggest threats in healthy leadership today, is feeling like you have to have all the answers. Because I think one of the most powerful statements from healthy leaders and healthy teams is, Hey, we don’t know what to do next. Because it actually opens up the room for new thought. It opens up the room for collaboration. And it opens up the room for teamwork. Tim Foot — But it’s easier to move quick. It’s easier to move quick and be surrounded by people who agree and play it safe. And then down the road, we realize that we weren’t growing in every sense of that word. And the mission was stalled out.Tim Foot — We know we often have to slow down, re-strategize, look at who’s around the table, work out how we work together to move faster in the long term. We have to be vulnerable to make a team work. And sometimes it requires us to actually help others win than focus on heroes.Tim Foot — I mean, you think about a winning sports team. It’s not about just one person out there doing all the work. We’ve got to work together as a team.Tim Foot — You know, it’s how do we work together and have less dependence on that shiny object, those standout leaders or those heroes. [Clip 1 Ends]Rich Birch — Oh, so good. You know, Tim named something there. Man, it feels good to be the person with all the answers.Rich Birch — Can I have a little confessional time with you, friends? Earlier parts of my ministry career, I have really struggled with that. I wanted to be the person who had all the answers, but it’s a trap. And most of us find ourselves in it. Rich Birch — We’ve got to move beyond hero dependence, either wanting to be the hero or to find heroes. It’s not a character flaw. It’s a system that ultimately rewards the wrong thing. Rich Birch — So the question that I have is what is the alternative? Where do we go if we’re not just trying to hire the next shiny object?Rich Birch — The thing that will, the person that will, you know, plug in like a thing, where do leaders actually come from? I love this conversation coming up with Spence Shelton as the lead pastor of Mercy Church in Charlotte, planted in 2015, now three campuses online, plus launching a family of churches. I want you to listen for a few things.Rich Birch — First of all, Spence parallels, makes a parallel that I really have not heard many people say between how we think about reaching people who are far from God and how we think about finding leaders and how these two are connected. Listen carefully for the shoulder tap that he talks about. You know, oftentimes one of the things I find most revealing about podcast interviews is people say things just in the sides that really do under that, that give you a sense of what’s actually going on under the hood and pay attention to where his executive pastor campus pastors come from.Rich Birch — Let’s listen in to what Spence Shelton has to say. [Clip 2 Begins]Spence Shelton — I think that mentality starts all the way down to the idea of reaching people that don’t know Christ versus just sheep swapping from one church to the other church, right? So you can grow your church by transfer growth, which I actually am one who, hey man, if somebody’s on the sideline in one church and then they plug into your church, I’m all for it. And if the same thing happens with Mercy, all for it.Spence Shelton — But our aim, what we all know as pastors and ministry leaders is our aim is, man, let’s reach lost people and then disciple them, right? The same thing I think should be true with leadership development. For some reason, when it comes then to developing leaders, we tend to go a different direction and think, well, let’s just go find where some leaders are and get them to plug in.Spence Shelton — It’s like, we don’t do that even with discipleship. Why are we switching our mindset? And so I want to just kind of, I have to, I was convicted and wanted to call our church and I would call others to the same mindset that you have with discipleship.Spence Shelton — Let that carry over into your leadership and your leadership development as well. And I think that’s how we’re going to grow, just as how we’re going to grow the kingdom by reaching lost people, how we’re going to grow the leaders in the kingdom, the number of leaders we have, it’s going to be developing them in our church. And I just, I don’t know that we’re even thinking that way and asking the question, is the guy who’s a 27-year-old physical therapist in my church, has anybody ever bothered to tap him on the shoulder and ask, Hey man, could God be calling you into ministry because I watch you?Spence Shelton — And no, we’re not doing the shoulder tap, man. And so, um, our right now, I just, I love it. I’m just a little bit of the story of our church. Our exec, both of our executive pastors and two of our three campus pastors were all in the marketplace. Spence Shelton — One of our executive pastors was in banking. Another was a plant manager. We have two campus pastors who were both, I use physical therapists cause they’re both former physical therapists. And you know, we’re sitting there having these conversations. You know, what makes a great pastor is someone who has sat with person after person, told them, Hey, you should do this to feel better.Spence Shelton — And then they come back to you later and say, Hey, I don’t feel better. And you say, did you do the thing I told you to do? And they say, no. And you say, well, you should have done that. Spence Shelton — And a patient long suffering physical therapist turns out to be a great pastor, but somebody has got to tap him on the shoulder and say, Hey man, I think God might be calling you into this. Spence Shelton — And so my, my encouragement to anybody who’s in ministry right now, kind of in that leadership development role. And you’re like, I don’t know, we’re going to have to go outside to find some talent. I promise it’s going to take longer the way I’m talking about. But if you will seek the Lord, ask the Lord, and then start shoulder tapping and giving some opportunities for guys to lead for men and women to lead there in your ministry and whatever the leadership roles might be. I think there might be more people in there than you realize, because I believe that God provides for the church that he’s growing, that he’s called you to lead. And so I think that’s true with leaders as well. [Clip 2 Ends]Rich Birch — Hey, friends, 9 out of 10 campus pastors, they do come from within. So if you are launching new locations in the future, man, we got to start developing campus pastors today. Rich Birch — But I know some of you are saying, listen, listen, listen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That all sounds good. Shoulder tapping. Great, great, great. Rich Birch — But how, how do I do it? How do I train my team to do it? How do we motivate, stay focused on this? Rich Birch — The gap that my, what I have found, it’s not desire. It’s not even understand that people don’t understand that that’s how we do it. It’s not a resistance to those things. It’s none of that. It’s just that nobody owns it because you see development is everyone’s job, which means that it’s nobody’s job.Rich Birch — It’s easy for this to fall through the cracks. Aren’t we all supposed to be developing leaders? So if we’re all developing leaders, my experience has been that means that really none of us are or we’re not doing it in a systematic way.Rich Birch — Super excited to have Chris Vaught with us. He is the lead pastor of Connection Point Church in Missouri. Listen, it grew from 300 people in 2011 to 2,500 today across multiple campuses.Rich Birch — And he outlines one challenge that Chris gave every staff member. And I really want you to listen carefully for this, because to be honest, this is pure unSeminary magic. This is like what I love about our podcast.Rich Birch — You could take this out of this interview today and put it into your next team meeting on Monday. Apply it to your church. Let’s listen in for what Chris wants to say to you about how we train people to shoulder tap, find leaders and release them. [Clip 3 Begins]Chris Vaught — You can only hire out so much, right? Because even though our church has grown fast, budget always comes up last. But you have to look at other avenues other than just, oh, I’ll hire another position.Chris Vaught — So we started looking at congregation. We began to develop our own leadership pathway or pipeline to develop not only volunteers, but our future staff. We knew we grew really fast. We need to hire from within, but we still couldn’t hire every position. Chris Vaught — So we started looking at our volunteers as almost as non-paid staff positions. And so we have an atmosphere of expectation of roles and responsibilities and also the value of what they’re doing.Chris Vaught — That the kingdom is dependent upon all of us using our gifts and talents. And so we started this pathway. And at first it was simply a challenge to every staff member. You go find your Timothy. You go find one other person that you can invest yourself into, a volunteer. Chris Vaught — So that if on Saturday night, and here was kind of the criteria for us: if on Saturday night, something were to happen and you catch COVID. Okay. We’re at that time. Could this ministry run the next day because of the person you have personally equipped… Rich Birch — I love that clarity. Chris Vaught — …to hold the ministry.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.Rich Birch — We began to put those pieces together. That’s right. You go ahead. I cut you off there. Chris Vaught — No, no. I was just saying that’s what we began. We began this pipeline and that was really the basic level at first. Every staff member finding that one Timothy, if you will, if you want to use that terminology, that could run that ministry if you were out. [Clip 3 Ends]Rich Birch — See what I told you? The Saturday night test is literally the cheapest leadership development tool in this entire episode. If you do nothing else out of today’s episode, do that.Rich Birch — But I know, listen, there can be a gap on that, a ceiling. Finding your Timothy fills gaps, but it does not produce people necessarily kind of week-in, week-out that you could put on print a payroll. You need to also do some development. You need to have some intentional leadership development.Rich Birch — Most churches, again, think that they’re developing leaders, but they’re really just handing out books or running a monthly team meeting, that sort of thing. I want to introduce you, reintroduce you to my friend Dave Miller. He’s a former worship and creative arts pastor in Las Vegas, in Kentucky, in Michigan, and he and his team have worked with over 150 churches and over 160 residents.Rich Birch — What do we mean by residents? These are people that are in the pipeline for thinking clearly in their lives about joining your staff team or staff teams of another church somewhere across the country. He defines seven ingredients.Rich Birch — Listen, I had the honor of writing the foreword to Dave’s book, Who’s the Next You? I would highly recommend you pick up a copy of that and think through that. But let’s listen in a little bit of what Dave has to say today. [Clip 4 Begins]Dave Miller — Well, we would say there’s seven ingredients. There’s a chapter in the book, seven ingredients. You can get it on our website right now.Dave Miller — Seven ingredients of what we would say is leadership development. So what you’re talking about, really, a sermon is training, if you think about it, like in a, in a market sense, I’m going to talk at you for 35 minutes. There’s four points. It’s very good. It’s inspired. It’s like Ted, Ted, long Ted Talk every 52 times a year, plus Christmas Eve and whatever.Dave Miller — And I would just say, we call that training. Churches for a long time have done really, really well with training, right? It’s either it’s the sermon or it’s Sunday school. It’s even the AI delivered small group questions I get from my men’s group, right? Dave Miller — It is staff. When I say, do y’all do leadership development? Yeah. Tell me about that.Dave Miller — And they start talking about your book or Carey's book or Craig Groeschel's book. It’s a book of the month. It’s conversation. Even now, now we’ve taken training and we’re still delivering the content, but we’re discussing it and we’re filling in blanks. Right. And we do that. Dave Miller — And, or spiritual formation. I had a well-known keynote kind of person. We just need to disciple these kids and get out of their way. And I was like, Oh, neat. Actually we don’t. Dave Miller — We did that once. It’s called the Jesus movement. I think that was the Jesus movement or the Jesus people in the early seventies, which kind of mirrors what’s going on on college campuses, you think. Dave Miller — We don’t need to just disciple them and get… We got to go with them. So, so training, spiritual formation, soft skills, which is the pain point of all the bosses, the emotional lack of intelligence of things. Those would be the three core ones.Dave Miller — And then we have to provide best practices. We have to, we have to provide ownership, which is a big thing for us in our small business, small church world at the 12 month mark. When we’re saying, well, she just doesn’t get it. She didn’t get, Oh, what doesn’t she get? Dave Miller — He just doesn’t understand what… We talk about our downline people as if they’re executive leaders with 20 years of experience. It would be totally fine for someone to accuse me of something like that.Dave Miller — But like when we think of sports, we don’t talk about individual players. We talk about the coaches. When the team’s losing, whose fault is it? As a lifetime Cincinnati Reds fan we change the manager. We don’t talk about number 78 and 14. Dave Miller — When the team’s doing amazing, it’s about the player.He’s killing it. She’s killing it. He’s killing it. When the team is losing, we have to own it similarly.Dave Miller — This is on us. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Dave Miller — Mental wellness. One of the seven things, mental wellness. If you can’t prove to me that you know, I’m not, I’m not here giving you even a theological construct. Cause we work with all sorts of churches that believe all sorts of things, right? But mental health, if you can’t prove to me that you have a plan, at least, or you’ve thought about it, that’s gonna be a problem. We’re checking it on. Dave Miller — And then finally developmental conversations. This is not delivered only through training to your point. [Clip 4 Ends]Rich Birch — What a fantastic group of conversations. Just a thin slice of so many of the conversations we’ve had over the last year in this whole area. Rich Birch — Tim, he named the model that can keep your and my bench empty. Spence gave us the mindset shift and the shoulder tap. Chris gave us the simplest form of the really first move that costs you absolutely nothing. And Dave finally gave you the formal structure that produces people you could hire, put on your team long-term.Rich Birch — Listen, you do not need to start at the top. Most churches never start at all because they only think the real option is just going out and hiring people externally. Listen, really the question I want to leave you with is where Tim started us at the beginning.Rich Birch — Maybe dear listener, you are listening in today and you have the hero mindset. Maybe you need to start with you and figure out what you can do in your area to pass it all along. Listen, we’ve got links for all these four episodes in the show notes here at unSeminary.Rich Birch — We’re on a mission to help 100 churches grow by a thousand people. We do that through these free podcasts, courses, coaching, cohorts. We do a lot to try to get in your corner.Rich Birch — We’ve got so much coming up this fall. Stay tuned. Some great stuff coming your way to see your church be more effective.Rich Birch — Thanks so much, friends. Take care.

Trucking says young people don't want to drive trucks. BULLSH*T. They're showing up. The real question is why we keep losing them.... With driver turnover still hammering parts of the industry, trucking keeps searching for the next generation while arguing about recruiting, CDL training, driver pay and a supposed lack of young people willing to work. What if the pipeline isn't actually the biggest problem? What if it's what happens AFTER they enter it? On this episode of Brake Check, Charles sits down with Lindsey Trent, President and Co-Founder of Next Generation in Trucking, and Tim Crawford, Co-Founder and CEO of Tenstreet, to dig into what it will actually take to recruit ... and KEEP .... trucking's next generation. We break down young truck drivers, Gen Z in trucking, CDL training, Workforce Pell, high-school CDL programs, apprenticeships, driver recruiting, onboarding, mentorship, home time and driver retention. Can small trucking companies realistically build relationships with high schools and CDL programs? Who pays the training bill? What happens to 18-to-20-year-old CDL holders who can't run interstate? What does the next generation actually expect from a carrier? And are fleets building careers young people want — or just feeding more drivers into the same turnover machine? Then we turn to the technology side. Tenstreet CEO Tim Crawford joins us to discuss small-fleet technology, carrier verification, fraud prevention, compliance, broker trust and Driver Pulse Fleet — including why legitimate carriers increasingly feel like they're being treated as guilty until proven innocent and what small fleets can do to better prove who they are. We also tackle one uncomfortable question trucking can't avoid:If changing jobs can cost a driver thousands of dollars and they're STILL willing to pay it just to leave your company...what does that say about YOU? The next generation isn't some future trucking problem. THEY'RE ALREADY HERE. Now trucking has to give them a reason to stay. #Trucking #TruckDrivers #GenZ #CDL #CDLTraining #DriverRecruiting #DriverRetention #OwnerOperator #TruckingIndustry #Freight ⁠Follow the Brake Check Podcast⁠ ⁠Other FreightWaves Shows⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hop into the Way Back Machine as this week on GENZ/X™, JM & Braxton go first to 1989 for the Tim Burton classic BATMAN! Starring Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, and Kim Basinger! Then we jump forward to 2008 for Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight! Starring Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman, and SO MANY MORE! […] The post 021 GENZ/X | Batman, The Dark Knight, and Dr. Frank-N-Furter appeared first on The LEFT Show.

Housing policy isn't just an economic framework, it's public health. When systemic market friction traps buyers and tenants, the human cost is chronic hypervigilance and a steady erosion of psychological safety. In this episode, host Sharlee Dixon and Peter Finger break down the numbers behind America's housing crunch (a 4.7 million home deficit, surging prices, doubled mortgage rates) and explore what that strain is doing to people's stress levels, relationships, and sense of self-worth. They cover how remote work, corporate property buyers, and migration out of the Northeast and West Coast have reshaped affordability, why millions of homeowners feel "locked in" to their current rates, and the widening generational wealth gap between millennials who bought low and a Gen Z now priced out. Sharlee shares her own family's recent home-buying experience, far more grueling than their first purchase a decade ago despite stronger finances, as a window into how automation and tighter underwriting have made the process feel dehumanizing, even demoralizing.   Follow Behavioral Health Today on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/behavioralhealthtoday/ Follow us on TikTok at: https://www.tiktok.com/@behavioralhealthtoday Follow us on Threads at: https://www.threads.net/@behavioralhealthtoday Or watch us live on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvOeCMGsF7B2gNBHuWxt-fQ

The U.S. deficit keeps climbing, Gen Z is pouring retirement money into sports betting, and crypto speculation is at an all-time high. Kevin and Bill ask the question: when did gambling start passing for investing? They dig into the biblical difference between creating wealth and merely obtaining it by luck... and why a culture that's lost its character can't be fixed by policy alone.

Dave Rubin of "The Rubin Report" gives a first look at the stories you need to know to start your day, including President Donald Trump ordering American flags flown at half-staff for one week as the nation mourns country music legend Dolly Parton, who died in Nashville at age 80 after a remarkable career in music, business, and philanthropy; New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani escalating his fight with Amazon through millions of dollars in fines and proposed regulations that the company warns could threaten more than 5,000 delivery jobs; and pickle-flavored snacks, drinks, and even personal-care products exploding in popularity as Gen Z consumers and entrepreneurs drive America's latest food craze; and much more. #rubinreport #dollyparton #trump #mamdani #genz #pickle #snacks #daverubin

Crusaders! Summer is officially OVER! We’re closing out the sweaty season with a full recovery for Snooki and, exciting news besties, her first drink in weeks! Round of applause for making it through surgery and your dry season, Snooki. Meanwhile, Joey’s had the worst summer of his life and if you thought he was being dramatic, he’s ready to spill his secret that will even devastate Snooki. We’re talking police and detectives on the scene. We are OVER IT, good riddance summer, we are fully decked out for fall! Not everyone was having a chaotic summer, Joey’s boyfriend Billy went viral on TikTok, Noah Beck has reportedly been following the trend, all the way from Paris. Hulu’s ‘The Shards’ is getting confusing, the duo talk ‘80s glam on set and are asking… where’s the horror? Meanwhile ‘Dancing with the Stars’ is casting quite the lineup, Snooki is hoping for a Julia Stiles vs. Jenna Dewan dance off! Then bestie shares her regrets on donating her iconic ‘Jersey Shore’ outfits. What a sin. Everything from spiked bracelets to rhinestoned sunglasses are making a comeback… as vintage. And speaking of iconic luxury looks, Snooki dismisses the rumors and the haters concerning her Gucci bags. Set ‘em straight mawma! While Joey breaks down the cultural shift with Gen Z trading luxury for experiences. And no episode would be complete without our messy mawmas on the hotline, calling in from ex-boyfriends with fetishes to kink play. Oh and someone wilded out and terrorized a McDonald’s on a 3 a.m. drunken hunger hunt… we’ve all been there. Right? Volume Shop at http://REVOLVE.com/WHITNEY and use code SNOOKI for 15% off your first order. #REVOLVEpartnerSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We are in the fight of our lives against a neofascist transnational crime syndicate obsessed with gutting your voting rights and turning the DOJ into a petty MAGA HOA. But if you think it's time to curl up and surrender in despair, here to wake you up is Maya Wiley, President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the daughter of relentless Civil Rights organizers, to break down exactly how we defeat this authoritarian coup.  The MAGA mob is breaking laws and shredding democratic norms for one simple reason: they are absolutely terrified of our collective power. Maya's parents faced down the exact same terror during the Civil Rights Era, landing on Nixon's enemies list while fighting off a corrupt government, and they won. Maya carries their legacy, reminding us that despair is the oppressor's weapon. Her message is a powerful call-to-action: organized joy, relentless community building, and "fighting forward" are how we create the next era of civil rights.  They want you exhausted and apathetic, but we will rebuild our democracy. Gen Z, you especially have the sheer numbers to help stop the coup if you show up for the kind of world you want to live in and flex your power.  The Gaslit Nation bonus show is now included in our Tuesday episodes. Support our independent journalism, hear the continuation of our conversation, and join our resilience community by subscribing on Patreon or Substack today. Want a plan to launch a dream project and help us build a better world? Order Andrea's new book A Reasonable Guide for Unreasonable Women: 20 Steps to Find Your Purpose and Power in a World on Fire: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/807202/a-reasonable-guide-for-unreasonable-women-by-andrea-chalupa/ EVENTS AT GASLIT NATION: Gaslit Nation Salons take place Mondays 4pm ET over Zoom and are recorded and shared on Patreon.com/Gaslit and GaslitNation.Substack.com for our community New! There's now a California Signal Group for Gaslit Nation listeners to find each other and connect in that state. Join on Patreon or Substack! The Gaslit Nation Outreach Committee discusses how to talk to the MAGA cult: Join on Patreon or Substack! Minnesota Signal group for Gaslit Nation listeners in the state to find each other: Join on Patreon or Substack! Vermont Signal group for Gaslit Nation listeners in the state to find each other: Join on Patreon or Substack! Arizona-based listeners launched a Signal group for others in the state to connect. Join on Patreon or Substack! Indiana-based listeners launched a Signal group for others in the state to join. Join on Patreon or Substack! Florida-based listeners are going strong meeting in person. Be sure to join their Signal group. Join on Patreon or Substack! As always, keep it kind in our chat groups, extend grace and assume good faith. A culture of care is how we build a better world.   

It's the end of Season 8 (what! how!), and we usually celebrate the end of the season with a read along of Sarah's new book, but since there is no new book, we have no choice but to go back to the beginning of “The Casino Series,” which is what Sarah calls The Rules of Scoundrels. We're reading A Rogue By Any Other Name, the first in the series focused on the rakish owners of The Fallen Angel, Sarah's casino. We talk Bourne, turning around big ships, writing sexy stained glass windows, and what it means to look back on the early part of a career.Next week, we're taking a little break, and then we'll be back with Season Nine of Fated Mates. As ever, we're so grateful to you for listening, reading and being a part of this community. We're nothing without you.If you'd like to spend more time talking about romance novels, join our Patreon! You'll get an extra monthly episode from us and access to the incredible readers and brilliant people on the Fated Mates Discord. Learn more at fatedmates.net/patreon.NotesThe jellyfish thing is a myth, you don't have to pee on a jellyfish sting.All about the amygdala, or Amy for short if you think of her as that messy friend who will definitely lead you astray.JB Pritzker talked about the colors of school folders, and it's A MESS. Feel free to report back on your preferences for folder colors if you, like Sarah, are outraged.New York Times hosted a conversation with Tressie McMillam Cottom, Nadja Spiegelman, and Mary HK Choi called “Have We Turned Personality into a Diagnosis?” It's worth the listen!Is it true that Gen Z is this puritanical (the Puriteens!), or are they just worried that everything is cringe?JK Rowling is a piece of shit.Gambling has always been bad, but it's especially bad on your phone. Please talk to your kids about sports betting and make sure these apps are not on their phones.Crockfords moved a lot of money in the Regency.One of the big influences for Bourne & Penelope was Alfred de Vigny's poem Éloa, ou La sœur des anges about an angel who falls in love with a stranger who turns out to be Lucifer. English translations are tough to find, but here's a website that has part of it in translation.When you think of the The Fallen Angel (the club), you might think of the famous painting by Alexandre Cabanel, but that's from 1847!SponsorsMegan Frampton, author of Demons and Diplomacy, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, or wherever you get your books.Madison Score, author of Wild About You, available in print, ebook or audiobook at Amazon.Tracy MacNish, author of Of the Ashes, available in print or ebook, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.Hachette Books, publishers of Jennifer Givhan's The Sleeping Sisters, available in print, ebook or audiobook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, or wherever you get your books.The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2026/8/25/s0849-a-rogue-by-any-other-name If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It's so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates. Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough. If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

With Fomo posting all-time high fees in August and with roughly 100,000 daily traders, co-founder Se Yong Park joins CoinDesk Contributor Kate Irwin on Markets Outlook to unpack the Solana-to-Robinhood Chain growth story, why social finance apps like Farcaster and Zora never broke out, and how prediction markets could turn a generation of bettors into traders.  - Timecodes: 00:00 - Se Yong Park Joins Markets Outlook 01:11 - Inside FOMO's Record August in Fees 02:22 - Institutional Era, Consumer Endgame 03:43 - Solana, Robinhood Chain, and the Multi-Chain Effect 06:10 - Why Farcaster and Zora Never Broke Out 08:05 - Prediction Markets Will Turn Bettors Into Traders 09:24 - Advice for Founders: Ship Before It's Perfect 10:51 - DeFi is a Matter of When, Not If 12:39 - Regulation, Innovation Exemptions, and Building in the US 13:37 - Gen Z, New Media, and the Rise of Small Creators 15:20 - Q4 Outlook: The Next Breakout App Won't Be Crypto-Branded - This episode is brought to you by RealFi, a smarter stablecoin, backed by real-world assets. RealFi is launching August 2026. Join the Testnet now at realfi.co. -

Jenna and Sheinelle take a look back at the best inspirational stories, starting with a look at who inspires Sheinelle and how she inspires the next generation of newscasters. Also, a look inside a wig shop that's helping to give confidence to women experiencing hair loss. Plus, our executive producer, Talia, reconnects with her Jamaican roots on a Jenna and Sheinelle girls' trip. And, a surprise for Mr. Lindsay, a beloved teacher and TikToker who breaks down Gen Z slang. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

August 26, 2026: I look at Reuters' report on Meta's Project OT, the internal plan to turn Meta into an AI-native company with smaller, talent-dense teams overseeing software that does more of the daily work. Then I get into Anthropic reportedly telling investors its total addressable market could exceed $30 trillion and why that number may be more about payroll than software. Finally, I unpack Gallup's new Gen Z study and why the most important support for young people may not come from schools, but from weekly conversations at home.

This week on Two Parents & A Podcast, happy Wednesday!! You guys know we record same-day, which means we get to open with actual breaking news: Meta agreed to a $17 BILLION settlement in the child safety trial. Harrison dusts off his finance-guy trick for understanding any settlement (go straight to the stock price.. what it did tells you everything) and we get into what actually changes for kids: time restrictions and nighttime blockouts. And while we're being all professional and stuff lol, Alex shares how she beat her 2 AM heartburn after Prilosec, Tums AND Pepto all failed. The winner? Baking soda and water. (NOT medical advice.. she literally ate a bag of chips first as a strategy lol) It's not until after ALL of this that we finally welcome you back to the episode :-) and Alex starts out hot. Backstory: she posted a TikTok about letting Tate wear her helmet and while mommy ALSO wears her helmet (red light mask).. and a comment saying "it's okay to tell her no" racked up over a thousand likes. So you're telling me a thousand people think we should say no to a toddler wearing a HELMET for fun?! Video two was born, the internet responded, and the ratio has spoken

How is anyone finding a normal person to date? You have to screen for Lindsay Clancy takes, porn brain, gender history, and Candace Owens opinions before the first drink arrives. Bridget breaks down the pitfalls and dealbreakers of modern dating. #ModernDating #PopulationCollapse #DumpsterFire Topics covered: modern dating, dating apps 2026, population collapse, male radicalization, female radicalization, Lindsay Clancy, OnlyFans dating market, church dating, porn brain, Gen Z relationships, marriage advice 

HOUR 2 (08/26) - Gary & Shannon preview tomorrow’s News & Brews in Downey before remembering Dolly Parton and the unexpectedly sweet note she once sent Eminem when they were inducted into the Hall of Fame. Then they get into “community-maxxing,” Gen Z’s name for the return to real-life socializing through things like pottery classes, softball and other shared activities.Plus, listeners keep weighing in on Gary’s potential calf tattoos as the show somehow circles back to California’s happiness ranking.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Housing prices are through the roof, mortgage rates are high and rents continue to climb. So what's driving today's challenging housing market?  This week, Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel, joins SoFi Chief Market Strategist Liz Thomas to break down the forces shaping today's housing market. Jonathan shares his perspective on where homebuyers are finding available inventory and why some long-held assumptions about the housing market may no longer apply. He also gives his view on how federal policy could affect home prices and why new construction alone may not solve the housing supply problem.  So what does this all mean for Millennials and Gen Z trying to enter the housing market? How are Boomers helping their kids enter the market? Where does the Sandwich generation fall in all this? They get into all of that and more. This episode is for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. Additional resources: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠On The Money⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Sign up for SoFi's newsletter for intel, insights, and inspo to help you get your money right. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Investing 101 Center⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: At SoFi, we believe investing is for everyone — which is why we've created a hub with info for beginners and experts alike. Start exploring to get investment education, advice, resources, and more. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Wealth Investing Guide⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Information you need to know to make your money work harder for you. This podcast should be used for informational purposes only and not deemed as a recommendation. Our Automated investing is via SoFi Wealth LLC, and is a registered investment advisor. Our Active investing is via SoFi securities LLC, member FINRA/SIPC. For additional disclosures related to the SoFi Invest® platforms, please visit www.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ SoFi.com/Legal⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ©2026 Social Finance, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

What if the next generation of donors wants to give, but they want giving to feel tangible, convenient, and digital at the same time?As donor expectations continue to evolve, nonprofits have an opportunity to rethink how they engage younger supporters. While online fundraising has made monetary giving easier than ever, physical-item donations and in-kind giving can still be surprisingly difficult to organize, manage, and scale.On this episode of Nonprofit Nation, Julia Campbell sits down with Logan Vaughan, co-founder and CEO of GiftDrive.org, to talk about the changing landscape of donor engagement and what nonprofits need to understand about the way Gen Z and younger millennials want to give.Logan shares the story behind GiftDrive, a platform designed specifically to help nonprofits create online wishlists and donation drives for physical goods. Since launching, GiftDrive has supported more than 55 nonprofit organizations and facilitated more than 5,500 item donations valued at over $60,000. Together, Julia and Logan explore why physical giving resonates with younger donors, where traditional tools like online wishlists fall short, and how technology can make in-kind giving more accessible and effective.In this episode, you'll learn: Why younger donors are increasingly drawn to giving physical items instead of cash How Gen Z and millennials are changing expectations around philanthropy and nonprofit engagement  Why tangible giving can feel more accessible and meaningful to younger supporters  What younger donors expect when it comes to convenience, transparency, and technology The challenges nonprofits face when managing physical-item donation drives  Why consumer tools like Amazon Wish Lists aren't always the best solution for nonprofit organizations  How purpose-built technology can make in-kind giving easier to manage and scale  The importance of CRM integrations, automated tax receipts, reporting, analytics, and customization  What Logan has learned by building GiftDrive alongside the nonprofits it serves How nonprofit leaders can prepare for the next generation of donors About Logan VaughanLogan Vaughan is a senior at the University of Vermont and the co-founder and CEO of GiftDrive.org, a platform that helps nonprofits create wishlists and donation drives to collect physical items from their communities.Since launching, GiftDrive has supported more than 55 nonprofit organizations across the country, facilitating more than 5,500 item donations valued at over $60,000. Logan is passionate about building the nonprofit technology and infrastructure of the future and believes organizations need tools designed around the ways modern donors want to give. Resources Mentioned

This Gen Z listener wants to become a financial advisor for her generation. How can she build her authority and platform?Side Hustle School features a new episode EVERY DAY, featuring detailed case studies of people who earn extra money without quitting their job. This year, the show includes free guided lessons and listener Q&A several days each week.Show notes: SideHustleSchool.comEmail: team@sidehustleschool.comBe on the show: SideHustleSchool.com/questionsConnect on Instagram: @193countriesVisit Chris's main site: ChrisGuillebeau.comRead A Year of Mental Health: yearofmentalhealth.comIf you're enjoying the show, please pass it along! It's free and has been published every single day since January 1, 2017. We're also very grateful for your five-star ratings—it shows that people are listening and looking forward to new episodes.

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Nikki & Brie are back side by side for a catch-up that goes from surprisingly deep to completely ridiculous in record time. The twins get real about independence, relationships, and why finding peace on your own can change what you're willing to accept from other people. But this is Nikki & Brie, so the conversation quickly spirals into viral Bobby pin experiments, Nikki's questionable online shopping, their kids telling wildly creative stories, Gen Z trading smartphones for flip phones, and a debate over teaching children to set boundaries. And just when Brie thinks she's safe, Nikki brings up that embarrassing story again. Press play for sisterhood, real talk, big laughs, and absolutely no shortage of TMI. Call Nikki & Brie at 833-GARCIA2 and leave a voicemail! Follow Nikki & Brie on Instagram, follow the show on Instagram and TikTok and send Nikki & Brie a message on Threads! Follow Bonita Bonita on Instagram Book a reservation at the Bonita Bonita Speakeasy To watch exclusive videos of this week's episode, follow The Nikki & Brie Show on YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok! You can also catch The Nikki & Brie Show on SiriusXM Stars 109! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Microdramas are taking over the internet. But are they art – or products?The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband. Break Me, Princess. Married the Mafioso I Saved. These are all titles of microdramas that are taking the internet by storm. In case you haven't heard, microdramas are often campy shows with short, minute-long episodes. The first few episodes get posted to social media for free, but viewers must go to another site where they can pay to watch the whole thing. And a lot of people do. It's an industry that started in China and is already worth several billions of dollars – so Hollywood is getting in on it. Issa Rae's microdrama called Screen Time got nearly 75 million views in its first week, and now, Peacock, Fox, and Disney are producing their own. But this microdrama boom raises a few questions: who are these stories for, and what makes them so popular? And is the microdrama a new art form – or is it solely a product?Brittany is joined by Chang Che, a freelance writer who wrote about microdramas for The New Yorker, and Xochitl Gonzalez, author and contributor at The Atlantic, who wrote about them there.For more episodes on what we're watching and why, check out:People are struggling financially. Even on TV.Abortion access is limited. Is Hollywood to blame?Why Gen Z is movie-maxxingSupport public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show's perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy