Podcast appearances and mentions of Heather Havrilesky

Stephen Stout (Puffs) and the lads hop into their red, white, and blue helicopters and completely obliterate France as they cover Trey Parker and Matt Stone's 2004 fraught satire of the War on Terror: Team America: World Police. Topics include Parker and Stone's origins, the film's overwhelming racism, and what a movie so steeped in the post-9/11 hysteria of the early 2000s means twenty years after its release. Stephen Stout: Twitter // Instagram // Spock Hats Twitter Puffs: Website // Amazon // Broadway HD Media Referenced in this Episode: Team America: World Police. Dir. Trey Parker and Matt Stone. 2004. “Launching a small-scale offensive” by John Horn. The Los Angeles Times. Sept. 12th, 2004. “Team America-World Police: Down-Home Theories of Power and Peace” by James Gow. Millenium: Journal of International Studies. Volume 34, Issue 2. February 2006. “Playboy Interview: Parker & Stone” by Playboy Staff. June 2000. “Puppet Masters - Interview with Matt Stone and Trey Parker” by Heather Havrilesky. Salon. October 12th, 2004. TWOAPW theme by Brendan Dalton: Patreon // brendan-dalton.com // brendandalton.bandcamp.com Commercial: “TWOAPW, Fuck Yeah (Abridged)”

I very much enjoyed Heather Havrilesky's latest ‘Ask Polly' column about remaining in uncertainty, and recommend it whole-heartedly to you. I've published it in the Walk the Pod lunchtime walk club Discord this lunchtime. Access the post via walkthepod.com

In this episode, Heather Havrilesky delves into the complexities of modern life paradoxes. She shares her journey of self-discovery and acceptance, emphasizing the struggle of balancing the “good wolf” and the “bad wolf” within oneself. Heather shares her insights into the relentless pursuit of self-improvement and the societal pressure for perfection. In this episode, you will be able to: Discover the secrets to navigating complex modern life paradoxes Learn how to find guidance in the midst of life's challenges Uncover the path to achieving transformative self-acceptance Understand the keys to emotional well-being in today's fast-paced world To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Heather Havrilesky is the voice behind the popular existential advice column, Ask Polly. This week she joins Vanessa to talk about giving advice, when to quit, and how to better be "your ragged-ass bullshit self."--This show is completely funded by Patreon, and we are so grateful to our supporters who make it possible. If you can, please considering chipping in! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus talks with Heather Havrilesky about the divine tedium of marriage. They discuss Heather's book, Foreverland and the explosive response the book initially got (especially when Heather called her husband “a heap of laundry”). Later in the show, they dig into what to do when your husband is truly being a little bit of a patriarchal jerk.   In Slate Plus, a behind the scenes look at what goes into writing the Ask Polly column.    Podcast production by Cheyna Roth and Tori Dominguez with editorial oversight by Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com.   Make an impact this Women's History Month by helping Macy's on their mission to fund girls in STEM. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus talks with Heather Havrilesky about the divine tedium of marriage. They discuss Heather's book, Foreverland and the explosive response the book initially got (especially when Heather called her husband “a heap of laundry”). Later in the show, they dig into what to do when your husband is truly being a little bit of a patriarchal jerk.   In Slate Plus, a behind the scenes look at what goes into writing the Ask Polly column.    Podcast production by Cheyna Roth and Tori Dominguez with editorial oversight by Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com.   Make an impact this Women's History Month by helping Macy's on their mission to fund girls in STEM. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus talks with Heather Havrilesky about the divine tedium of marriage. They discuss Heather's book, Foreverland and the explosive response the book initially got (especially when Heather called her husband “a heap of laundry”). Later in the show, they dig into what to do when your husband is truly being a little bit of a patriarchal jerk.   In Slate Plus, a behind the scenes look at what goes into writing the Ask Polly column.    Podcast production by Cheyna Roth and Tori Dominguez with editorial oversight by Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com.   Make an impact this Women's History Month by helping Macy's on their mission to fund girls in STEM. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus talks with Heather Havrilesky about the divine tedium of marriage. They discuss Heather's book, Foreverland and the explosive response the book initially got (especially when Heather called her husband “a heap of laundry”). Later in the show, they dig into what to do when your husband is truly being a little bit of a patriarchal jerk.   In Slate Plus, a behind the scenes look at what goes into writing the Ask Polly column.    Podcast production by Cheyna Roth and Tori Dominguez with editorial oversight by Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com.   Make an impact this Women's History Month by helping Macy's on their mission to fund girls in STEM. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus talks with Heather Havrilesky about the divine tedium of marriage. They discuss Heather's book, Foreverland and the explosive response the book initially got (especially when Heather called her husband “a heap of laundry”). Later in the show, they dig into what to do when your husband is truly being a little bit of a patriarchal jerk.   In Slate Plus, a behind the scenes look at what goes into writing the Ask Polly column.    Podcast production by Cheyna Roth and Tori Dominguez with editorial oversight by Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com.   Make an impact this Women's History Month by helping Macy's on their mission to fund girls in STEM. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus talks with Heather Havrilesky about the divine tedium of marriage. They discuss Heather's book, Foreverland and the explosive response the book initially got (especially when Heather called her husband “a heap of laundry”). Later in the show, they dig into what to do when your husband is truly being a little bit of a patriarchal jerk.   In Slate Plus, a behind the scenes look at what goes into writing the Ask Polly column.    Podcast production by Cheyna Roth and Tori Dominguez with editorial oversight by Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com.   Make an impact this Women's History Month by helping Macy's on their mission to fund girls in STEM. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus talks with Heather Havrilesky about the divine tedium of marriage. They discuss Heather's book, Foreverland and the explosive response the book initially got (especially when Heather called her husband “a heap of laundry”). Later in the show, they dig into what to do when your husband is truly being a little bit of a patriarchal jerk.   In Slate Plus, a behind the scenes look at what goes into writing the Ask Polly column.    Podcast production by Cheyna Roth and Tori Dominguez with editorial oversight by Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com.   Make an impact this Women's History Month by helping Macy's on their mission to fund girls in STEM. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Heather Havrilesky's writing career has spanned the life of the internet, starting with the satirical site Suck.com, moving through Salon, The Awl, and New York Magazine, and ending up on Substack, where she publishes two much-loved newsletters: Ask Polly and Ask Molly. Heather has mastered the art of reinvention, bending with the winds of the web, as news sites have variously chased SEO, blogging, Facebook traffic, and the rest. She settled on an approach that has worked for her: doubling down on what she likes. That attitude ultimately took her into advice giving, where she has carved out an immense reputation as one of America's preeminent practitioners of the form, primarily through Ask Polly, for years a mainstay of New York Magazine's The Cut. Polly got her start, though, at The Awl, the fan-favorite blog co-founded by Choire Sicha that was home to many of the best and most obsessive online writers of the 2010s, before social media had completely corrupted the landscape for essayists and delightful internet weirdos. While writing Polly for The Cut, Heather saw social media grow in reach and then start to infect the minds of fellow writers who toiled under its constricting influence. “It's almost like an issue of when the auditorium becomes too big and filled with voices,” she says, “you start to feel self-conscious about making sounds when everyone is in the room.” Those pressures came to bear on Heather with exaggerated force after the New York Times published an excerpt of her latest book, Foreverland, an irreverent marriage memoir that comes out in paperback this Valentine's Day. The excerpt carried the subheading “Do I hate my husband? Oh for sure, yes, definitely.” It was enough to create a meme, and Heather spent the next few days being knocked around Twitter for being a husband-hating harlot (or worse, depending on the tweets). What was that experience like for someone who has been writing online for 27 years? Well, it turns out, not easy at all—even for an advice columnist who always manages to find the right words for those who are brushed by misfortune. However, in the pain, she has managed to find a balm for herself in a book idea that emerged from her essay writing on Substack. “One thing that kept me feeling good,” Heather says, “was this idea that life could be deeply romantic even when everything felt terrible.” Her new obsession with finding the romantic in the mundane is proving to be more than just a coping mechanism—it's a way of looking at life. “Discovering new ways of being happy in spite of a lot of things that are aggravating you is—it's the most romantic thing of all.” https://www.ask-polly.com/ Heather's recommended reads:https://www.todayintabs.com/https://therealsarahmiller.substack.com/https://hunterharris.substack.com/https://laurenhough.substack.com/https://www.blackbirdspyplane.com/https://cintra.substack.com/https://griefbacon.substack.com/https://indignity.substack.com/Show notesSubscribe to Ask Polly and Ask Molly on SubstackFind Heather on Twitter and InstagramSuck.com, Salon, The AwlHeather's books: Disaster Preparedness (2011), How to Be a Person in the World (2017), What If This Were Enough? (2019), Foreverland (out in paperback on Feb. 14)Excerpt of Foreverland in the New York Times, and the New York Post responseWriting about voice lessons on Ask Molly[02:17]: Working at Suck.com[08:31] Changing San Francisco[09:13] The “jackassery” of boomer optimism [10:58] Smart, weird, fun people everywhere [12:57] The shape-shifting nature of being an online writer [16:12] Becoming an advice writer [18:43] The awe of the Awl [24:58] The freedom, and danger, of social media [30:00] Ask Molly, Polly's evil twin[31:57] Publishing books [36:59] Being misinterpreted in mainstream media  [40:55] Reacting to being attacked online[46:44] Workshopping her next book [50:31] Writing an advice column for 10 years [52:53] Recommended writers on SubstackThe Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hanne Winarsky, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, content production by Hannah Ray, and production support from Bailey Richardson. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com

“My only resolution this year is to create interesting things from the slowest pace possible” ~ Heather Havrilesky.Everyone's too busy, and everything is just too fast. This year, it is time to pace down and create your own stories of the time, age, and success. Whitney Lauritsen shows the value of slowing down to find connection and joy and why it is more important than stressing about the future and the past. Whitney also shares her personal history and evolution with social media, including feeling drawn in and trapped by the desire for validation and connection and how the relationship with social media has changed over time. This is the right time to live by your standards and values. Tune in to this inspiring episode with Whitney Lauritsen.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!Here's How »Join the This Might Get Uncomfortable community today:wellevatr.comWellevatr FacebookWellevatr TwitterWellevatr Instagram

Did you know that a votive candle is one of those short, squat candles that people use for prayer or, like, to put on their outside stairs when they're hosting a fancy party? I did not. But “votive” is the word I blurted out when Cheryl Strayed was trying to describe the type of tall candle she lit as a way to psychically summon Reese Witherspoon. A decade ago, Strayed was waiting to hear whether or not the actor was interested in taking the lead role in the movie adaptation of Wild, her best-selling 2012 memoir. So she lit the big candle (maybe it was a pillar or a taper, now that I google it) and every time she walked by it, she whispered “Reese… Reese.” It worked! Witherspoon indeed took the role, the movie was a hit, and the two became great friends. Strayed is super-famous because of Wild, which is the same reason Oprah loves her, but she's also beloved for her advice column, Dear Sugar, which she started writing at The Rumpus around the time that Wild was about to blow up. She wrote it anonymously at first, and for no pay. She just fell in love with the idea of turning an advice column into a forum for literary essays about life. She had ample material to draw on: an impoverished childhood in rural Minnesota; a much-loved mother who passed away when Strayed was 22; a downward spiral that ensued and involved a lot of sex and heroin; and a life-changing, soul-finding, shoe-destroying solo trek along the Pacific Crest Trail. A couple weeks ago, I met Strayed in Portland, Oregon, where it was raining for the first time in several months, and we talked about how she still feels abject terror when faced with a blank page, how if she goes to the Oscars again, she'll wear Dr. Martens, and about some mountain-themed advice George Saunders gave her about finding her own way forward as a writer. “I really believe story is essential to us,” Cheryl told me, lighting a candle for all who believe in the power of writing, “and we need it individually, collectively; we need those stories to tell us who we are, to show us who we can be.”https://cherylstrayed.substack.com/Cheryl's recommended read:Oldster by Sari Botton:[Sari] has this wonderful take on aging. And what I love about her focus is she always says, “Oldster is not for people who are getting older.” The whole idea of aging at whatever age you are—when you're 12, you're aging. We use that word to only mean old people, but really it's about what does this experience of aging teach us? What do we learn from being 22 and 42 and 72 and 102? And people write about that and they answer this questionnaire. And it's always very inspiring and interesting to read. I love that.Show notesCheryl Strayed's Dear SugarFind Cheryl on Twitter and her personal websiteWild by Cheryl Strayed (paperback)[01:46] Her mother being portrayed by Laura Dern in Wild[05:56] Losing someone close to you[10:58] Working with Reese Witherspoon[16:21] Finally finding financial freedom[20:08] Having “How did I get here?” moments[21:20] Falling in love with words[23:00] Murder on my feet[24:00] Dear Sugar in The Rumpus[26:47] Taking over the Dear Sugar column[30:09] Early writing on the internet[31:20] The power of story[35:25] Social media as a gift for writers[40:40] Restarting Dear Sugar as a Substack [45:00] Keep Walking, by Cheryl Strayed, a scene cut from Wild [48:20] Advice from George Saunders [52:25] Going into the cave, as a writer[53:35] Oldster by Sari Botton[54:33] Advice writers Cheryl recommends: Ask E. Jean by E. Jean Carroll, ¡Hola Papi! by John Paul Brammer, and Ask Polly by Heather Havrilesky.[55:04] Other Substacks Cheryl loves: Craft Talk by Jami Attenberg, Story Club by George Saunders, Your Local Epidemiologist by Katelyn Jetelina, Austin Kleon's newsletter, and The Audacity by Roxane Gay.The Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hanne Winarsky, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, content production by Hannah Ray, and production support from Bailey Richardson. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com

Ask Polly advice columnist Heather Havrilesky's book 'Foreverland,' an honest and savagely funny examination of modern marriage.

In the next couple of episodes I take a look at advice romance: fictional advice in a contemporary romance and a romcom set at radio stations, real life online advice, and a smart, funny new podcast called Romance Road Test.https://www.confessionsofaclosetromantic.comWhat will pull these couples closer together--or push them apart? In Romance Road Test,  good friends Kristen Meinzer and Jolenta Greenberg put romance hacks to the test in their marriages. The show is a spin-off of their long-running, popular By the Book podcast. How to Be Fine: What We Learned from Living by the Rules of 50 Self-Help Books synthesizes lessons learned from hosting the show.Here's a nice round up of some of the best female online advice columnists in modern times. Not all of the columns are still running, and some have changed hands, but the archives are a treasure trove. Bye-bye  Dear Abby.  "I implore you to do everything you can to connect yourself to peers and professionals who will offer you support and guidance. Doing so won't likely make you feel great in one day. You might not even feel great in a year. But you're going to feel a whole fuck of a lot better, I can promise you that. There isn't any reason for you to be alone in this, dear one. You are not alone. There are so many people out there who will nod their heads in understanding and recognition when you tell them all the things you just told me." Cheryl Strayed is one of the best online advice columnists. Her long-running Dear Sugar (not Ask Sugar as I said in the episode) is a modern classic for a reason.Heather Havrilesky has gathered her Ask Polly columns into a book How to be a Person in the World: Ask Polly's Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life and that's not an overpromise. Her writing is vulnerable, sometimes raw, wise and full of compassion for herself and others, so chock-full of insight on the thorny issues of life, that I have bookmarked the majority of them. She narrates the audiobook and it's fantastic.Support the show

"When someone is standing in front of you loving you and saying, 'I'm not going anywhere,' that's when your avoidant self comes out and says, 'Get me the hell out of here.'" Columnist and author Heather Havrilesky joins Zibby to talk about her latest book, Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage. The two discuss when Heather realized she was comfortable sharing intimate details about her marriage with the world, why certain reactions to the book have been particularly frustrating, and why she believes the sign of a successful marriage is death. Zibby also shares some of her favorite one-liners and how single people have been reacting to this project.Purchase on Amazon or Bookshop.Amazon: https://amzn.to/3MtNUKSBookshop: https://bit.ly/3MqKJTZSubscribe to Zibby's weekly newsletter here.Purchase Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books merch here. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers, and how it all fits together and where food comes in.This week, I'm talking to Millicent Souris, someone I have long wanted to make my friend. Millicent is to me just wildly cool. She talks about food equity and drinking bourbon, and there was no one I would rather talk to you about the dichotomy of being politically engaged with food justice, and also stocking your pantry with very nice olive oil. She's also one of my favorite food writers period; her pieces in Brooklyn Based, Bon Appetit, Diner Journal—they kind of redefined the genre. As a longtime line cook who now runs a soup kitchen and food pantry in New York City, she's someone who simply knows food—its highs and lows and is cool as hell. Did I say that already? Alicia Kennedy: Hi, Millicent. How are you, Millicent?Millicent Souris: I'm doing all right. How are you, Alicia?Alicia: Did I say your name right? Millicent: Yep! Alicia: Actually, we should have done that before. [Laughs.]Millicent: I know. Yeah, my name is Millicent. And is Alicia correct for you?Alicia: Yes. Alicia is correct. Millicent: Great.Alicia: Yeah, I'm Alicia sometimes, but only if you're a Spaniard. [Laughs.]Millicent: Fair, I'm not going to pretend…Alicia: Yeah, yeah…well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?Millicent: Yeah, I grew up in Baltimore County, north of Baltimore City, and in Towson, Maryland, and Lutherville, Maryland—which is of course home to John Waters and Divine, and also in North Baltimore County. So my dad's parents had immigrated from Greece, so I grew up eating Greek food. And then my mom's family had a dairy farm, so I grew up drinking—when I was up there—unpasteurized milk, which I would say about 10 years ago, I made the connection was raw milk. And country food, you know—my grandfather would grow his own corn and tomatoes and zucchini, and that would be summertime. We ate a lot of crabs in the summer, because it's Maryland, and then also, like, oysters were definitely a part of my mom's family. Like we'd have oysters stuffing and raw oysters at Thanksgiving, because her dad would bring them and shuck them. But then also because it's the ’70s and ’80s, straight-up shitty American processed food, was a gift, you know, for our household because my mom worked and my dad worked, and there's three of us. And, you know, even on the farm, my uncle and his wife, they would buy Steak-umms, even though they had ground beef from the steers that they sent to slaughter. You know, we would drink Tang, and we ate Stouffer’s lasagna, so it was a real hodgepodge, I think, of all that stuff. And then there was, when my mom left my dad and there was the episode called “divorce food,” which was Lean Cuisines and Hamburger Helper and La Choy and a lot of Mandarin oranges in tins. Alicia: Wow. Yeah. Was that on behalf of your mom’s side?Millicent: That was on my mom's side. And then my dad would just take us to his friends’ restaurants or bars and we’d eat there. Alicia: [Laughs.] My parents, when they got divorced, I always say, when I knew something was going wrong was when my mom started to make instant mashed potatoes. Millicent: Yeah…Alicia: I was already like, 20. So it wasn't like I was a kid. But you know it was always seared in my mind that the instant mashed potatoes were the beginning of the end.Millicent: It's the tell…it’s the tell… except I, when I did eat instant mashed potatoes and I think I was 21 I first had them, I was like, What is this magical stuff that just turns into mashed potatoes? Alicia: No, it's super cool. Millicent: It's…I mean, science. It's science. Alicia: Yeah, well, you know, as you were just talking about the dairy and also your family had a bar as well, you know, how did you end up in food, personally? Millicent: I ended up in food…uh, I mean, my Yaya would cook—Souris’s started as a restaurant in 1934. And so it was a classic Greek restaurant, which is American food and then Greek specials. And then when my dad made it a bar, there was a grill, but there was a flattop behind the bar, and so my Yaya would make totally frozen hamburgers, but she'd also have really good Avgolemono soup. But I didn't—I was just a kid and I didn't really take in all of that. So I don't have that—it would be really cool if I could lie and be like, and then yeah, romantic version of food. I got a job at the Royal Farm Stores, it was my first job on the books, when I was 14. And that was the convenience store that had fried chicken and Joe Joe's, and then you take the leftover fried chicken and break it up and make chicken salad. So that was my first job in food and everyone who worked there hated it. And, it was cleaning cases of frozen chicken thighs and cutting potatoes and deep frying a lot of stuff. And then our neighbors owned a luncheonette in a pharmacy and I remember working there and being blown away by making salad dressing from scratch. So, what I knew is that I would always have a job in food because I was willing to do that hard work and for girls like, and teenage girls, I would never be hired to be the counter person or a waitress, because I wasn't cute; I was tall and big and strong and fat, you know. And this is not now—this was the late ’80s. And like, no one was…no one would hire me to be their waitress, but I could always work in the kitchen. And so I—it's not anything I verbalized; it's just something that I knew, that I could always get kitchen jobs. I know that's not really passionate, but you know, you got to make money…Alicia: Right, well did passion emerge for it? Millicent: Yeah, I mean, I think for me I found a land that made sense to me. You know, I remember living one summer, and working um, finding a job at—I lived in Portland, Maine. And I was in this place Greedy McDuff’s, which was a brew pub, and it's still there, and English-style pub food and just working; you're just working with a bunch of heshers, you know, and a bunch of—you're hanging out listening to music, you're working hard, you're kind of gross, your skin's not great, you didn't get a lot of sleep, because you had to work the prep shift…But, you know, I remember working with a guy where when Black Sabbath would come on, we’d take the melted butter and dip a brush in it and turn off the lights and hit the grill and the flames would come up. And it just, I don't know, it was that moment: It's just fun—somewhere that felt free when there's not a lot of places to be free, you know? And so I knew that. And then, when I moved to New York, 17 years ago, I helped someone open a restaurant. And I've just always been like, I'm a good worker—everything made sense for me. So I do, when I talk about food, a lot of it, I talk about work, but there has to be a sustained level of the community of people that you're working with and that you're buying from, and that you're feeding. And also the food itself, that is passionate. It's just, that's not just, I'm not one of those people who like has that language, you know, who’s just—I'm not very over-the-top with language about myself and what I like, but don't worry, there's plenty people who have that covered, you know…Alicia: I'm one of them…so… [Laughter.] Millicent: I don't think so.Alicia: Well, you know, yeah, you've worked in restaurant kitchens for years, you write, you've curated social justice film series, you've been a DJ, now you're cooking. You know, well, how would you describe what you do now?Millicent: Right now, I mean, I work at a food pantry in a soup kitchen. And before the pandemic, I'd been there for over five years and I came on as a consultant to do a culinary job training program. We didn't—it didn't work, and it didn't get more funding, but I was I was the only person there who had worked in restaurants. So I kind of had an eye for the food. And I was like, I can work here part time, and we can get more produce and rescue food and things like that, get more produce to people, take care of the food better, increase our capacity for produce.And then I did that, and then the pandemic hit, and then it was that times a million with just the whole world shut down, so where's all the food gonna go? And all the pantries shut down, so we just got dropped all this food. So then I became—then it just became something different. So now, I mean, I don't even cook there. I just, I'm the facilitator of the pallets, you know, and trying to—There's a good grant that came out of the pandemic called the Nourish New York grant. And I think that's permanent now. And it was to really just keep the state going. And you have to spend it on New York State products. And this grant, the director and the head of the pantry, they were just like, What are we going to spend this money on? I was like, I got this, I got this, give it to me please—let me, let me have, let me buy things and not have it all just be like, donated Tyson evil meat. So those grants I take care of and I like to think it balances out all of the super-gross food bank tax writeoffs for giant companies and really just, because I've consulted on restaurant kitchens, I have a good eye for logistics in space. And so we just had to switch our entire building over to be a warehouse and I was like, the chapel can hold pallets and the waiting area can hold pallets. And if we open this up, we can fit pallets through here—so just really nerdy s**t, you know, and also where all the food goes. So that's what I'm working on. That's what I'm working on now. And now hopefully something new will happen. Alicia: Well, that grant is really interesting. Living here in Puerto Rico coming from New York, I'm always thinking about how—well, I never know if it's enough, or if it's actually good, what New York State has done to support local agriculture around the state and craft stuff. I know, I'm like, well, they support it in some way, so that's good. Whereas here, you have, there's nothing there, you know? So this grant sounds really great.But what more should the state be doing, in your mind, to kind of help that?Millicent: Well, this grant is great. Also, because I still remember the moment of, you know, you're talking about farmers or processors, or bakers, and truckers, and people were like, Thank you, you know, because there was nothing, and for all the people making food and growing food, all the restaurants were closed so there was nowhere for any of it to go. I mean, you never forget, I'll never forget, the first couple of times at different truck drivers were just like, Thank you for being open. So that grant is permanent and that's a really important grant, because in terms of, you know, everyone's like ‘supply chain supply chain,’ and then we see what horrible things happen when we're dependent upon such a consolidated supply chain and how, you know, the Trump administration got OSHA to lift their f*****g regulations and Tyson poultry workers had to process more chickens and there was no safety for them. And also, that was all the fear of, This is America, everyone has to have chicken, no one can go hungry. Where actually it's like, no, tons of people will go hungry. But to be able to have, the means, the tangible food system that you can see, I think more so, is so important. In terms of the state. I mean, I do see some holes in what's available, you know, and I do have some ideas, but I don't want to share them here, because, you know—Alicia: —you need to get paid for them. [Laughter.]Millicent: But we can't just—it can't just be restaurants and people who shop at the farmers’ market to support farms. Because those people have summer homes somewhere else. And they also have the ability to just pick up and go somewhere when the s**t hits the fan.Alicia: Yeah, no, it's very complicated. But I'm glad to hear that that's happening. That's—that's…yeah, I wish… [Laughs.]Millicent: It's also, I'll say also for a lot of farms and things like that, it has skewed their—and I work with a headwater hub; there's more infrastructure for schools, and food pantries and institutional food, which also because of brigade is turning into something that's so much more important in terms of like school foods and things like that. And we need that—we can't just be like, f*****g neoliberal people who care about what they eat and are—it's so short-sighted, the food, the food scene, which sometimes feels like the food system is so short-sighted and individualistic, it's gross.Alicia: Yeah. Well, you did write an essay sort of about this in Bon Appetit in 2019. You know, where you wrote about finding kind of about—I don't know if it was about you finding a balance, but what is that balance that between the olive oil and hunger and—I think about this, of course, as a food writer, where it's, you know, what am I selling people on? Like, what is it that I want to sell people on basically, when it comes to food? Is it just that having a good olive oil is sufficient? Of course it's not, you know. But for you, what are the gaps here that need to be filled in when we talk about food?Millicent: I mean, the gaps are major. Well, I feel there's personal consumption, right? And there's personal consumption that I prefer, and I know that, man, I know on paper, and if I told any of my co-workers the price of a glass of wine that I drink—I'm just some bougie white person, you know. Also, personal consumption is not about production and politics and everything like that—I don't quite know how to say that great.But look at how much food writing there is, look at how people's lives are curated. And the people who have the most influence and are influencers, they only talk about political issues when they need to, to stay relevant, or unless it's something that they actually care about where they're like, Abortion…Abortion. You know, ‘Black Lives Matter,’ when you know, especially two years ago—But the amount that we discuss food in conjunction with the amount of people who are hungry—and hunger can be such a vague thing, especially in this country, right? Like before, generally, it was like 10 to 12 percent [in] America, you’re like, all right. But to me, in New York, your neighbor is hungry, you know? You are moving into a neighborhood, you are opening a restaurant in a place where you have to just, where so many people are just, That's just what that corner is like. And I think that there's ambition and I think this city begs people, if you have ambition, to willfully ignore things, but the amount that food is written about… And like, I would say now, like Grub Street and Eater, and those places, now they're all also consolidated under the same media group, right? Before it used to be more competitive and they used to just be kind of a real content machine. And more 24/7, you know, because everyone's like, I can be on the internet all the time. And once it's out of the bag, then you're stuck with it. Let’s just say Salt Bae, he'll never go back; he’ll never go away, because someone's just like, Look at this guy. And then now he's there and he's validated. But think of all the people who got validated and all the s**t that we talk about. And we can choose so much of what we want to consume now, everywhere, and it's great to read about things that don't ultimately matter, because the things that matter are so painful. And it's only during a shutdown that we actually have this bandwidth to care about it. I mean, the food media is just, they're just—most of them are content creators. They shouldn't be able to write about anything that has any politics or systematic issues and anything to do with like actual workers, you know, who are they? They're not journalists.Alicia: No, it's an interesting thing, because I think right now, everyone is always asking me—like, well, asking me personally—do I consider myself a food writer and then asking, what is a food writer? And I think that it's important to, I mean, I'm aware of the market forces that create certain types of content and how you have—you have to do things in order to have a career at all. Of course, you have to then ask the question, if I have to do this, why do I want this to be my thing that I do all the time? Why don't I do something else? And so it's difficult, because you know a lot of food writers will say, I just want to write a recipe and then just look cute, and like, get things sent to me, and that shouldn't be a problem. And I'm like, for me it, you know, it is a problem. And I've written about this, that food writers don't, at large, have even a basic consciousness that comes through in their work around climate change, around hunger, around, you know, conditions of factory farming, around like any ecological significance to anything.Millicent: It’s sheer consumption. Alicia: Exactly. And that's becoming more and more, I think, because we're in this vague post-pandemic moment, so things are sort of going back to normalcy in terms of what gets covered. And it's just restaurants, restaurants, restaurants, like cookbooks, cookbooks, cookbooks. And then there's that moment where we were going to talk about the conditions, the labor conditions and the supply chains. And that moment seems like it's just going away. Now it's no longer relevant.Millicent: It's gone. And I mean, you and I both really love Alice Driver, and she's working—she and her partners are working on that book. And I am kind of stunned by the consistency in which that topic, because I thought it would be one article, one out, and if you all don't know about Alice Driver—you gotta sign up for her. She's an amazing writer. And she has interviewed poultry workers, and consistently interviewed them. And she's worked with a photographer who takes portraits of them, and she has been reporting this since the beginning. I mean, I think for her kind of a bunch of b****y dilettantes, you know, and I think that we have been taught that you cannot hold all of this and, you know, I don't really believe in balance because nothing seems to be balanced—But like, but what you were talking about before, like, How do I do these things and I know I have to do this—well, we certainly have to have joy. You know, and sometimes joy can't be just like—and trust me I know because I've been doing—working on a food pantry in the last two years during COVID. Like, there has to be joy. It's too hard to live like this all the time. But the sheer consumption and the way that the world is created, it's so easy for us on phones and the internet, of everything, is so unsustainable, climate wise, food wise, content wise. And our escapism isn't escapism anymore—it's our reality. And that's a problem. Because if everyone can be some f*****g content creator and influencer, is it possible that everyone's ability to figure out a way to survive like this means that we don't have anyone actually doing the real work? And that's why this world sucks so hard?Alicia: I mean, the fact that Alice Driver didn't have a column immediately, you know, reporting ongoingly about the conditions when she was on the ground in Arkansas with the workers at Tyson—that is such a damning fact of food media, is that that wasn't some editor's dream to have someone on the ground—Millicent: Just be like, Alice Driver, tell us about this, you know? And because—you guys, the answer isn't for all of us to buy sustainably raised chicken; the answer is for the conditions to be better for all workers and all chickens, you know? And that individualist notion of shopping, which you know, was in the early aughts was really just like, You're not going to change the world—it's such a neoliberal approach towards eating that your trip to the farmers’ market is changing systems. It's only changing you, your system, your house. And that's all part of it. You know, we're so broken right now. I mean, I think we've always been broken. But we're so broken, because the people who think that they're doing good work kind of really aren't, and they're like—I think of them as really affluent people and they walk amongst us. I am around them in New York all the time. I'm friendly with a lot of them or I might be friends with them. They might think I'm their friend. But they're not the one-percenters, so they don't think they're part of the problem. But they are part of the problem, because they're not doing anything. And their comfort is what allows so many things to happen. Like, if they actually wanted change to happen, it would happen more, because the one-percenters are untouchable to us, you know, unless there's crazy, systematic governmental and worldwide changes—that's why they're one percent. They're like, I have so much money, I'm gonna be on the moon, you can't touch me. But the affluent people who are never, still are never rich enough and someone already always owns one more house than they do: They're the ones who pat themselves on the back, because they read all the books, they went to some marches, their kids have Black friends, you know, they're doing all the good stuff, and they care. But they're not really sacrificing anything, they're not really doing anything to really change stuff. And right now, sometimes I hope, you know, I get a little tunnel vision, but I'm like, you guys got to do some s**t. And it's not what you think you should do. Because it’s never what you think you should do, because you're still very self—centered—Alicia: This is—I'm reading a book called The Imperial Mode of Living, which is what you're describing basically, which is that the way we live in the West, or you know, the global North is on the backs of so much exploitation and ecological destruction that we don't see. And then, yeah, and it doesn't matter what class you are, necessarily, and exporting also the idea of this mode of living as the good life quote, unquote, being basically a means of ecological destruction. Like, our way of living and consuming and just thinking about things is part of climate change, part of destruction, like people—and I understand that, but people, when I've written or said anything about the way people will regard their access to the tropical as sort of a human right, just when they need the release or the idea of a vacation to buy a cocktail or a piece of fruit that they probably just shouldn't have, and so, or vacation, etc., but like, people do treat that as though it is their God-given right to have that.Millicent: Yes, for sure. And they do it, they're like, I mean, that Noma pop-up in Mexico City was or—no, it wasn't it—it was in Tulum. Tulum has no infrastructure for what it has now. It certainly doesn't for a bunch of people who need to go to that. Look at all the people who have moved to L.A. I mean, look at California—we just have a straight-up fire season and all the people who moved to L.A., it's like, did you move to L.A., because you like the weather and because then you can have tomatoes all year round? It's kind of a bratty existence.Alicia: It's very—Millicent: To think it's a very—I don’t know if you can hear my neighbors come home from school—it's still consumption, you know? But also, what's fascinating is that this is all also done under the mode of “health,” you know, wellness and health and like, Oh, I get these mangoes or I have to go here. And the rest of us were just having drinks, and maybe there's a cigarette, or maybe there's some weed and more drinks. But we're not doing it for—we're not like, Well, I mean, it's wellness for a lot of us, but we're not lying to ourselves about that pedestal of wellness. Alicia: Yeah, it's no, it's interesting. Well, because especially here, here in Puerto Rico, where, you know, there's so much gentrification and displacement, because of people who come and get tax breaks for starting their businesses here. But it's been restructured so that some actual Puerto Ricans can take advantage in some ways. But for a long time, it's been, you have to have not lived in Puerto Rico for this consecutive amount of years before 2019, or [something] like it was like, or it went into effect in 2012. But you pay like a four, zero to four percent tax rate, and you don't pay federal taxes, because you become a bona fide resident of Puerto Rico. And then these are the people paying $2,000 for a studio, so that like now, none of our friends live anywhere near us because they've been completely priced out, you know— Milicent: It's all the loopholes. I mean, it's like everyone who holds on to their apartment even though they moved upstate, because it's their Airbnb, and you're like, or someone could live there.Yeah, you know, my old apartment in Greenpoint. I've had the lease on that—I'm pretty sure my old landlord is not listening to this. Since I moved here, and when I moved out, my friend lives there. And yeah, because I'm like, You're not gonna find anything. It's rent stabilized, you're like, you're not gonna find anything this affordable. I mean, and that's also interesting, because I think about that—I thought about that before the pandemic, where the food pantries in Bed-Stuy, you know, and we're across, there's a rehab across from us. And then there's like, to the right of us, there's a lot of brownstones that a lot of like gentrifiers live in, and it's like, You're the ones who moved here, because this soup kitchen has been here in this building for like, over 14 years, and the rehab has been here, you know, but also what happens when people become displaced further and further away from the place that gives them the food that they need, and the services that they need? And where are they going? And how much further displacement can the city handle or Puerto Rico? Or, you know…Alicia: Yeah, everywhere.Millicent: Everywhere. And then I think, I mean I think about that so much is how, and I have moved in my life, like being able to move freely, and kind of make decisions based on you know, where you're trying to, just moving around, is such a privilege and we don't actually talk about that. I think that the people who—the media voices that we hear the most are the worst representational voices of who most of the people are. I think that most of us are living pretty fraught financial lives. I think that if you actually have student loans— I think that we're haves and have-nots now, you know, and if you have student loans, you have to actually work for money and not just work for what you hope your life is. But the voices that we hear the most that tell us like, where to eat, what Airbnb to [stay in], you know, who have like, the most exposure, are the people we should listen to the least.Alicia: The least, yeah. [Laughs.]But it's really interesting, because people—those people are successful. People want—they have a huge audience; people want that. And that's what's troubling to me. Like, I as a person, who does, who's a writer, and then like, I have to sell myself a little bit. I think I've come around now to being like, I'm done even trying to sell myself, you know, I'm like, What is is and whatever will be will be and so—but the idea that that's a popular mode of engaging with the world is so troubling to me, existentially, because it's just like, we don't want to grapple with reality—we don't, and it becomes increasingly more necessary to do so.Millicent: Well, it's the question of do we not want to grapple with reality or are we still having problems with—because people are drawn to your work, you know. People are drawn and there's this, people would be like, That person is so real, but people are definitely drawn to it, you know. Which came first: is it like the influencer, or the following or the escapism and the inability to deal with reality.Alicia: Yeah, no, it's definitely a chicken or egg thing.Millicent: It's a chicken or egg thing. But I was reading an older essay that was in the Times, written by a woman who had moved upstate before the pandemic. And I was like, New York Times, isn't it time to stop just publishing this voice? Because this voice—do we really have that many white women in their 40s who we should be listening to about moving upstate and how they're ahead of the COVID people, because there's a slight patting on the back of like, I wasn't part of that wave. And it's like, Well, are you actually doing something or are you writing about it? But I'm like, it's the Times’ choice. And I'm like, don't do that. And then I saw that—was it the Times? They published something by a Chinese-American person who—it was all about the subway. And it was great. It was about the Sunset Park shootings, but just how this person has taken the subway his entire life, and how that mode of transportation is important. But for a moment, I was just like, Oh my god, they got an op-ed by someone who lives on the subway and don't take that away from him—Eric Adams and the NYPD, you know… And we're, I mean, look at it—media and all the people up top, how many people do they know? They just know—it is still super gatekeeper-y.Alicia: Yeah, yeah. No, it's hard. And I mean, I wanted to ask, too, because, you've written that Brooklyn is such a place of stark dichotomies, in terms of, you have the new restaurants and the extreme wealth, and you have—20 percent of its population [was] food insecure before the pandemic. And, you know, there was this moment of like, kind of what we were talking about, but there was also this moment where hunger was on the forefront of the conversation like community fridges, and mutual aid, and that sort of thing. Like, has that died down? Or, you know, what is the conversation? What is the landscape like?Millicent: That has definitely died down, and it started to die down when people had to go back to work. And like, but also like, the community fridges kind of blew too big too fast. You know, like we worked with a bunch of community fridges, and there was a lot of in vogue writing about them and anyone could open them, but they also need a community to sustain them. So, that kind of ballooned and, and some have closed.Mutual aid—there's still smaller groups that are really dedicated to their mutual aid and working with people and especially working with people who are being kicked out of shelters and all the really terrible things that the city is doing in different tenants unions. I feel like what really emboldened me over the past two years was how radicalized a lot of people became, like younger people. I'm 48, okay, so I'm Gen X. I think we've got—the boomers can move on, you know. Gen X, we're gonna die before the boomers because that's just—they got all the good stuff and we're just depressed, but it feels like a lot more people have been radicalized. But now the question is—I mean, it's a small percentage that I feel like is left because now that people are kind of going back to their really kind of decadent, made-for-Instagram ways. But things are really bad for people in this city, and there's not a lot of support. And I guess that's the part where I'm like, you have to be so willfully blind to people as you walk by them to not think that there's problems and to still stay so committed to whatever you think your life is supposed to be. And for me, I was just really tired of feeding rich people. You know, like working in restaurants, it was always a community and feeding friends and feeding community and whatever. And then it just became rich people, and I don't like rich people.Alicia: When did that shift happen? Do you feel like you felt that shift, in terms of who was able to go to restaurants?Millicent: I don't think so. I mean, I think that I challenged myself to work outside—like, I worked in Brooklyn restaurants for a while and it was when there were a lot of artists opening things because the rents were low. And then that slowly changed and I was really tired of how homogenous the kitchens were, where it was just this is all the same guy with the same liberal arts education and everybody's the same. And then I would go—and then I went to Manhattan, and I tried to learn more and it was way more intense. It was all—it's all intense, but I think there was just a point where, I don't like anyone here anymore. I'm not looking for validation from food-obsessed—I don't know. Because also when I moved here, it's not like I went out to restaurants all the time; I just worked in one. And I knew that when I was in the kitchen, friends that would come in, or people in the neighborhood that would come in and different kitchens and things like that. But through elevating or going into different restaurants or whatever, even just the concept of elevating, I just didn't—it wasn't for me. And I don't care for the status of it. You know, and also I was never the person who got the status of it, because I wasn't the chef or I wasn't the owner or I wasn't anyone.You know, for me what's always been so confusing about food—I read Kitchen Confidential when I worked in a kitchen when I was 27 and I totally got it because I also grew up going to bars, like my dad's place. And when we would go to Rehoboth Beach, we would go to the Rusty Rudder and count the bartender's tips. I've been going to bars since I was born, so I got Kitchen Confidential. And then I just didn't understand when I moved here why no one—you know, I grew up on a farm, I grew up in the business and I've worked, but no one was ever interested in me, in writing about me or talking to me, or anything that I wrote. I mean, I can only assume it's because I'm not making anyone feel good about anything, you know?Alicia: [Laughs.] They don't like that.Millicent: They don't like that! Or the way that they like it is that you have to be—it has to make people feel edgy and you have to be super charming. And, yes, I'm really charming, but I'm not going to blow smoke up anyone's ass to make them feel better about how hard it is to be a farmer or work the line or anything.Alicia: Yeah, yeah—no, that's so interesting. I feel like for me, I think leaving New York and kind of getting away from it made it a lot easier for me to divest from traditional notions of success as a writer or as a food writer. And so you know, it's been so freeing, which is great. But you know, yesterday, the James Beard media nominations came out or whatever, and someone was like, I can't believe Alicia Kennedy's newsletter hasn’t been—I didn't submit. I didn't pay $150. [Editor’s note: It’s now $100 per entry.]Millicent: Right? You have to submit, right? Oh my god, I gotta say that I learned about that through one of your podcasts about submitting and how you have to pay, because I was like, I'm sorry—are you telling me that neither you nor I, in the year 2020 of what we wrote about food, are you saying that wasn't, that shouldn't be in an anthology? I mean, I'm not a very hubristic person. But that s**t that I wrote about the partially dried duck that I got during shutdown, that two-part thing and like, nobody's writing that, okay? Nobody's writing that. Nobody is coming at it from that—nobody's experiencing that dystopia and writing about it. There were plenty of people experiencing dystopia, for sure. But it's—you gotta pay to play. And how do you—so if you always have to pay to play, then you just have the same people in the room, and even if they're different people, they have to do the same things, so how are they ever going to be different? Or there's a f*****g scholarship, you know, but you're still working with the same systems of like, restaurants are perfect. You just want them to be perfect, so you can always go to them and feel good about stuff. But they're based on ultimately exploitative work. They're based out of people who couldn't afford servants, but didn't want to cook all the time. That's what restaurants are. And the systems are all the same and the people who try to keep opening the systems up, they still want themselves to be the gatekeepers, you know, and that's the media—that is totally the media, that the person who was criticizing all the memoirs by white chefs, white female chefs. And it's like, Well, you're still here, because you're gonna gatekeep who? The Black female chef whose memoir you're gonna do? You know, yeah, you guys still just want to be the gatekeepers and make sure that you stay relevant—because you have to stay relevant, so you have status—so that you stay relevant, so you have status, so you can still make money. And your perspective of moving to Puerto Rico kind of broke that. And for me, I feel I was still trying to chase that to be an outlier. But I was still—the only reason why I was in Bon Appetit is because a friend of a friend. My friend was having a pie contest at his shop, to raise money where I worked. It wasn't because anyone at Bon Appetit was interested in me: It was a friend of a friend who's connected who hooked me up with someone. And then anytime I pitched to them, they were like, No, no, no, but they were like, Tell us about the poor people, how's it going? So I had access, but only in one way. And then I feel the pandemic kind of—I was like, Millicent, you're part of the problem, because you want to be invited to everything. I mean, I'll spite-crash any party, you know, it's fun. But I wanted to be the kind of classic—I mean, this is a very white male thing, outlier, you know, but who's still invited to everything, and has status.And like—Alicia: But you only get to be that if you're a white male.Millicent: You only get to be that if you're a white male or there's a couple, there's a couple of females—there's one who's grandfathered in. But you only get to be that. And I was like, my desire for status is not helping me and it's not helping anything. And so I'm like, f**k status. It's more freeing. But it's also something I have to keep in check. I mean, I'm always interested when you write about like, Vogue or the New York Times, and I think for a lot of us who feel like we're outside, how do we participate in these institutions? Like, man, if I was ever in the New York Times, my mom would be so excited. I've been a part of restaurants that are in the New York Times and I've never been mentioned. And it's so meaningful to our family when that happens. And also, I would imagine, for me at some point, but I'm not going to pretend that's ever going to happen. There's such weird relationships with those institutions. Alicia: Oh yeah, super weird. Like I—yeah, for me, it's always like, okay, it's nice to be seen, because it just allows me to keep doing my work. You know, if everyone stopped seeing me, then I don't get to do it anymore. And for me, and I've been really lucky, of course, like I wrote—my book will come out eventually, who the hell knows.Millicent: Supply chain issues, right? Alicia: Supply chain issues and edit—like issues of… The funny thing is to have your book sort of pre-mentioned in the New York Times, like in the T magazine by Ligaya Mishan, who's a fantastic food writer, but my publisher doesn't talk to me, so I don't actually know anything. [Editor’s note: It’ll be summer 2023.] You would think they'd want to get the book out by me because I have had moments of success and should ride it. But no, they're making you have to keep it—yeah, I have to just keep going and—Millicent: They're making you doggy paddle. They're like, when you've stuck your head up, keep your head up. And then right when you're like, I can't do this anymore, they're like, Don't worry, we got you a PR person. [Laughs.]Alicia: Exactly, exactly. But until then I must just—doggy paddling is the best f*****g metaphor for that, for how it feels, because it's, you know, I don't want to be a food writer because I want everyone to look at me. I just want to talk about things. You know, that's what I like to do! [Laughs.]Millicent: Well, and I really like how you've loosened that up for you. I mean, two years ago, we both know Melissa McCart from—she's an editor and she's great. And I had written some things for Heated. And she was like, You should be writing all the time. And I was also like, Oh, I'm out working during a deadly virus pandemic and trying to not kill my partner, or anyone I work with, and trying to figure out like, we're nowhere and we're everywhere. And I couldn't—and I had to let go of that feeling that I need to capitalize on this moment, because I had to figure out a new way to take care of myself or else I wouldn't have been able to do what I do. And it was also so physically brutal, just moving food. And I kind of gave that to myself instead of being like, I could have been somebody—because, yeah, I was like, I just I can't—I’ve just got to survive this. Alicia: Yeah, yeah. It's a hard negotiation. Millicent: It definitely is. It definitely is. I mean, hopefully I can change that. I mean, my goal is to write more and to actually have a newsletter. I've just, I think, two months ago I was like, Shut up, Millicent, just stop qualifying it and being like, there's too many newsletters and what if—just do it.Alicia: Yours would be wildly different from anyone else’s, so.Millicent: Well, because I'm writing anyway, you know, yeah. But they make it. They make it hard, does it ever—I mean, how does anyone read all the newsletters?Alicia: I do. I mean, because I was a copy editor at New York Magazine, a digital copy editor, I became a very, very fast reader. Millicent: You're such a good reader, too. Alicia: But the reason I can read fast is because of that job. Like I would have to read 10,000 words of TV recaps before 9 a.m. So, like… [Laughs.]Millicent: I mean, let's just talk about that for a second. When I was in my 20s, there was one person who had a job doing TV recaps, Heather—what's her last name? She's a great writer. She writes for…Heather Havrilesky? I'm not sure.Alicia: Oh yeah yeah yeah, Ask Polly.Millicent: Yeah, she would write about it. Now that can be a job for everyone. But shouldn’t someone who has a job writing TV recaps be in charge of making society better instead of writing TV recaps?Alicia: I think—who is, uh Mindy Isser, she did—she is a great human, she's a great writer, too, but I think she's a labor organizer. But she was on Twitter the other day, quote-tweeting someone who was like, ‘Every job deserves, deserves respect,’ it's like, or ‘every job is a valid job,’ something like that. And she's like, Actually, a lot of people should be doing something else. Like, instead of being on their computers, they should be planting trees. And I agree for myself even. The nice thing about having the freedom of what I do, and now that my book is done, and so I don't feel like I'm going to die every day—because that's how that felt—but I'm like, I need to put my energy, my excess time and energy and fruits, you know, existence into doing something to make the world better, not to make anything better for myself, because things for me are as good as they're probably gonna get. Unless, you know—Okay, I have extra time and extra, so I gotta put that energy somewhere where it'll do good for the world, like and I'm gonna figure that out. [Laughs.]Millicent: I'm always—I feel like that always, that's the balance, you know? And like, when people are like, Don't you feel good about yourself? And I was like, No, I don't feel good about myself—the world is hell. But we can't all just write TV recaps. Sorry, TV recap people, I read you, but that used to be 20 years ago; there was only one, and now it's just too much.Alicia: Yeah, yeah. No, there needs to be a big transfer of energy for doing things that actually matter. And I feel it for myself, and I feel it for the world. And I think a lot of people feel it, you know. I mean, even before, years ago, a lot of people find a lot more satisfaction in jobs that are physical, like in jobs or doing work that is not considered prestigious, than they do find in the job they do that gets them more money. And of course, you want to make an amount of money that makes you comfortable. I mean, there's a difference obviously between being comfortable and being a hoarder. But, you know, there's a reason for that. You want to—it's a way of protecting yourself and it’s way of protecting your loved ones, is to have a job that pays you a salary that is comfortable, and that's an ever-changing goalpost, especially with inflation, etc. But like, how much more satisfaction in my life did I get when I was baking, or when I was bartending, than I get from tapping on a computer? I mean, I don't know.Millicent: The visceral aspect, and I think it's also, because I feel the same. I can be a real heady person, but that's why I liked line cooking. There's a certain point where—I love working with my body and it's a different relationship with it, because it's also a relationship not built out of being seen and how do you look, but how do you function and what can you do and how strong are you? And that's such a better way to live in your body, for me, which is also—so the work I've done, you know, I had moments of being a real egghead. But I've taken care of cows. You know, I've worked in restaurants. When I worked at a record distributor, there was certainly a lot of moving of boxes of records. And like, that is—whenever I'm living like that, it's better. But then there's also the capitalist exploitative line where you're like, And you crossed it, and now I'm crumpling, which is something that restaurants are really good at doing.Alicia: Well, I mean to talk about your writing work, the issue of Diner Journal: Dear Island about doing private chef work upstate. I think upstate, right? When I say upstate, I mean New York.Millicent: It was in the Adirondacks, so it's upstate, but not like upstate—it's like closer to Canada, around Lake Placid. Alicia: Oh okay, wow, that’s up there.Millicent: It was great because it was mainly free of anyone from New York.Alicia: [Laughter.] Yeah. Well, you know, it's such a—it's so good. And like, I meant to ask you more specifically about your writing in this conversation, but I was just kind of winging it. But you know, it's such—you really are such a brilliant writer—like self-reflection, humor, the self-awareness that I think anyone listening to this is understanding exists, which is always refreshing.Millicent: I'm so red with anxiety and like, thank you!Alicia: No, it's absolutely brilliant. And I was actually, I was super floored reading it. I just read it like a book and was like—holy s**t. I knew you were great from what you wrote on the internet, but then I was like, but here you're getting like—Millicent: But the internet wasn't funny, that was COVID. That was like, Listen, and this is, What the f**k am I doing here? Who is this Wes Anderson family?Alicia: And I think that's—I'm so excited for you to launch your newsletter because I would hope to see kind of that mix a bit. Millicent: For sure. I mean, I think I've just been real—I mean, the whole reason I started an Instagram account when I started that job, and it was private chef but it wasn't like private chef money, like what private chefs would make like, and of course, I have to qualify that because I'm all—‘I’m working class,’ but not really. But it was such a weird and interesting place. But I started my Instagram account, because I was like, I'm going somewhere very strange. And I just say that because then, if anyone follows me, and then they're like, Wow, she's so intense about politics and hunger over the past two years. And well, it's been a pretty intense past two years, but I am a funny person.Alicia: Yes, yes. [Laughter.]Millicent: Not that statement. No one ever believes that when someone says it like that. Alicia: No, no, no, but I mean, I think for me, I want to be thought of as funny, which is a terrible thing to want, I guess. Because it's corny. But for me, it's funny, because I'll make jokes, or what I think are jokes on Twitter, and people will just be so serious in the replies and I'm like, Forget it. But then I did see a comedian today make a joke and people be very, very serious in the replies. And I was like, All right, like this is just, this is the environment in which we’re living in…Millicent: Our way of communicating—and you actually wrote about this, where it's like people are like, That person's right and I agree with all of it, or That person's wrong. And it's like, jokes never come across in texting. And it's real, it's real hard in any version of social media. It just doesn't work like this, and also, then that beg to—like we're communicating mostly with a really terrible means of communication, if these things aren't conveying humor and nuance, it's pretty shitty. Alicia: What good are they for? Yeah.Millicent: Fights. They’re good for fights.Alicia: Good for fights. [Laughs.] Well, I wanted to ask, because in the introduction to that, you wrote about choosing which cookbooks to take up with you and you wanted to bring Prune, and then you decided not to, and I wanted to ask, you know, what cookbooks you would take now to an island?Millicent: I mean, I've thought about this, because I was also like, I don't feel like I've purchased a lot of new cookbooks. I would take—I did just get the Gullah Geechee Home Cooking… Alicia: Oh, nice. Yeah.Millicent: Well, first of all, it's a matriarch of an island. And that is, you need someone who is on an island, because it's very specific. You don't have access to everything. Also, all of this, Emily Meggett, all of this is in my wheelhouse, of kind of like very country cooking. There's stuff, you know, there's crabs, I'm there. I would say the Olia Hercules books. Those are, I think this is what I know about cooking on an island, is that when you want to spread out a little bit, or any kind of like cooking that you're doing for hire, you don't want to like, jump to who you aren't, you need to kind of, for me, I need to have different ideas of variations on a theme and like I do, I can bake. I make pie crust, like I have variations of crust and ideas of things that I do. And I think that this cookbook, the Gullah Geechee and Olia Hercules. There's always variations on—she has so many doughs, you know, and things stuffed, greens and things like that. And I'm like, all right, that's a variation I can do. I always take a version of The Flowering Hearth, because I just want to live there. And then, I always take The Saltie Cookbook—I don't know if you have that one. Alicia: I need it! It was out of print.Millicent: It’s out of print, you better find it because—Alicia: I know, I have to buy a copy. Millicent: I use that one the most, because it's vinaigrettes, bread, desserts, and like, it's the most cross-referenced for everything. And then I always take—you ever read the Jim Harrison, the writer, Jim Harrison?Alicia: I have one of his books on my shelves, but I haven't read it yet.Millicent: You know, he's a big cook and hunter, and he had a column in Esquire called “The Raw and the Cooked”—the book is all of his essays. And for Saltie and for Jim Harrison, I always take them with me and whenever I've opened a restaurant and I haven't been able to see any friends forever, I read them because they're my friends’ voices. It's like Caroline, and A.D., and Rebecca, and Elizabeth and Saltie…And then Jim Harrison. I mean, he is—whatever. He's an old white American male; there are going to be problems. But also, he was a screenwriter, along with a fiction and poetry writer. He has an amazing essay about eating with Orson Welles where they try to like both jump out of a check, and I think there's lines of cocaine somewhere during the meal. There's an essay about a gout flare-up in the airport wearing his favorite leather boots, you know. And so, for me, cookbooks, sometimes I feel like I don't cook from them, I just like to read from them. And then also, I would totally go with vegan or vegan baking because you can really stuff someone on an island. And so I think vegan baking, also because you can have more shelf-stable things to substitute. And I don't do it enough but I like cooking with different grains, just because it gives different textures and like AP flour, just—AP flour, sugar, butter, like, we've all done that, you know?Alicia: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm in a big flour moment right now—Millicent: What does that mean?Alicia: [Laughs.] It means that, it means that people were upset that I am always doing recipes with AP flour, and not with whole grains. But I don't have access to a whole grain flour here. So I, now I have to, I'm trying to get into working with different root vegetable, quote, unquote, flour. Millicent: Oh, fascinating!Alicia: Which is cool—and it's, but at the same time, I can't, you know, when I write a recipe for a cake, it's still gonna just have AP flour in it, you know. It's just because I need other people to make it.Millicent: It's also about access, you know, and that's something that people don't talk about that much. And when you write about food accessibility in Puerto Rico, and when people write about Cuba and food accessibility there, that's really important, but also the access of people anywhere, you know? And we can get anything, I mean, this is—we talked about this—we can get anything all the time; we shouldn't be able to get anything all the time now. Things should be harder for us.Alicia: In general, things need to be harder. And that's a hard thing to tell people, but I think if my writing has a thesis point that I haven't explicitly articulated, it's: things need to be harder.Millicent: Things need to be hard, because guess what, they're hard for a lot of people. And we're—how many people for you to lead your life are exploited so you can do what you want to do? I mean, people—and I'm not, listen, there's nothing exploitation-free about me. But I think about it a lot. And consumption for me now, I’m finding how there's a shift in me where it's just what used to be satisfying isn’t necessarily satisfying for me. Alicia: No, absolutely. Millicent: I drink tea now.Alicia: Instead of coffee?Millicent: Yeah, I mean, now I think I'm back to a cup of coffee a day, maybe. But I have—that was just like the past two days. I was like, come on, let's get some life back into us. But yeah, COVID in December, and I had it again and I was like, Tea tastes so nice! But I used to drink so much coffee and smoke a pack a day and drink bourbon you know, but some things—and that wasn't right before the pandemic, but I'm just saying, I've noticed the things. I liked shutdown. I'm gonna say something real unpopular: I liked shutdown. I liked being—I also had a different life for everyone where I went outside and worked and my partner's a musician, so I had live music every week for his Instagram show. But the stretching everything and being really intentional and all of that, and not getting to have whatever, and really having social interactions sustain me—and for longer than they used to. Everything was way more meaningful. And I really appreciate that. And I hope that some of that has stayed with me, you know? Alicia: Yeah, yeah. Well, how do you define abundance?Millicent: I think—enough, you know? The feeling of enough, because I think the feeling of enough is kind of contentment. Because abundance is dangerous, look at all—everyone who has abundance, it's never enough, you know?Alicia: Right. Right. No, yeah. I think this question is about being, you know, redefining abundance to me and I have enough because, we're talking about so many people do not have enough. And so trying to reframe the thinking around what that means is, I think, a powerful tool, imaginary tool for reconsidering. Millicent: I think what they're calling it now, Alicia, is a perspective shift.Alicia: Yes, a consciousness shift or consciousness raising. [Laughs.]Millicent: I am not going to say that working at a food pantry makes me feel good about myself or like I've done anything good, but it has recalibrated what I think about my life. Alicia: Yeah, well, and for you, and in general, is cooking a political act?Millicent: I don't think cooking is but I think feeding is, and I think that they're different. And that's got to be talked about more because cooking is—no. I think people pat themselves on the back too much thinking they're doing something political. And I know, years ago, a friend of mine, we were catering—it was a social justice food award that this Episcopal Church in Long Island gave out. And I was all, I work in restaurants; we buy from farms, and I grew up on a farm and I know—and I remember one of the farmers, he was from Iowa, and he was talking about how worried they were because they'd heard that white supremacists had moved into the neighboring county and so they're just really worried about the people who worked on their farm. And I heard his speech and I was just—and this was before Trump was in office, you know, this was, this was in—let's just say before Trump was in office. And I remember feeling humbled and being like, You don't know s**t, Millicent. You know, and money's politics, but systems or—money needs to be systematic for it to be political, you know.Alicia: I think that's so important and that you allowed yourself to be humbled and have that change your approach to things is such a rare, I think, a rare characteristic to encounter.Millicent: I'm humbled all the time. [Laughter.]Alicia: Well, thank you so much for being here. This has been so, so great. And yes, it's been interesting of course, that I just get to meet people over Zoom and record it, that I've just wanted to talk to, and this was one where I've just—I just really want to talk to the person and so here we are.Millicent: Well, you know, when you, when you come to town, we'll get some tea, or a martini.Alicia: Okay!Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at www.aliciakennedy.news or follow me on Instagram, @aliciadkennedy, or on Twitter at @aliciakennedy. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Rich Text is a reader-supported project — no ads or sponsors! Coming soon: A subscribers-only episode about Netflix's batshit new reality dating show “The Ultimatum.”In the final episodes of the NBC sitcom “The Good Place,” our intrepid ensemble of Bad Place fugitives finally arrive at the real Good Place: an eternity of ease and joy. Almost immediately, they notice that all is not quite right. The denizens of the Good Place, finally delivered unto their eternal reward, are very f*****g not okay. They're happiness-poisoned, so surfeited with fun and relaxation that they're drowning in their own boredom. They've developed anhedonic armor against the relentless pleasure of heaven. The gang of newcomers looks around, shocked and horrified. All this time they'd been hearing about how rapturously wonderful the Good Place was… and this was the reality?Heather Havrilesky's new book, “Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage,” gives us a similar surprise reveal for a more earthly dream: wedded bliss. That moment of shocking reveal is what made the pages of the New York Times, in an excerpt that catalyzed a massive Twitter storm. “Until Bill has enough coffee,” she writes, “[h]e is exactly the same as a heap of laundry: smelly, inert, almost sentient but not quite.” She also writes of his throat-clearing, his sneezes, his monologues on educational sciences. Marriage, she seems to conclude, “requires turning down the volume on your spouse.” Also, she writes, “he's still my favorite person.”Yes, this is what marriage to your favorite person might actually look like — not a rosy fantasia of passionate kisses and ardent speeches and your partner somehow doing and saying everything you'd like at exactly the right moment. It might be sort of a mess, and full of frustrations and disappointments. It might also still be really wonderful, and part of the wonder of it might come through the mess and the frustrations and disappointments. A marriage is a shared project, a puzzle; figuring out, together, how to survive the boring sameness and the human failings can be the most intimate and fulfilling part. That's what Havrilesky wanted to write about: not a perfect marriage, and not a broken one, but the gripping drama that takes place in a strong, happy marriage. The kinds of conflicts that are often breezily referred to as “ups and downs,” or with the vague admonition that “marriage takes work.” We both loved Havrilesky's book (we're long-time fans of her advice column, Ask Polly) and were baffled by the backlash to “Foreverland,” so we were thrilled she agreed to join us for a conversation about her book, marriage and long-term partnership, aging and hanging on to your identity as a woman in this society, and why people had such a strong reaction to her book. This week's episode is free. For more Rich Text episodes, including podcasts on Love Is Blind, The Gilded Age, and Bridgerton, become a paid subscriber!We've been reading…Sheila Heti's “Pure Colour,” a dreamy origin myth and love story. Also, Lydia Kiesling's crackerjack essay on Horatio Alger, “Fifty Shades of Grey,” and the weird mix of American ambition and erotic predation that undergirds our culture's most successful and enduring rags-to-riches fantasies. The disturbing truth she reveals about Alger truly shocked me, though, as she points out, it's not a secret so much as rarely discussed, and her analysis of his life and work illuminates elements of the billionaire romantic fantasy that have never quite clicked into place for me before. -ClaireBlair McLendon's New York Times magazine piece on America's Black billionaires. -EmmaWe've been watching…“Minx,” the HBO Max show about a prim feminist (a Vassar grad and tennis club member) who joins forces with a porn mag publisher (played by a swaggering Jake Johnson) after no one else takes an interest in her consciousness-raising magazine, The Matriarchy Awakens. The twist he adds: nude male centerfolds. It's not groundbreaking — it's pretty classic uptight-lady-meets-charming-dirtbag material — but it's well-executed and fun, and the 1970s hair doesn't hurt. -ClaireAll the screeners of “The Ultimatum.” Netflix's newest reality romance show is a complete mess, but I cannot look away!!!! -EmmaWe've been listening to…The bonus episodes of “Biohacked: Family Secrets” on Apple Podcasts, each of which follow someone whose life and identity was upended by a home DNA test. The stories are utterly gripping. -EmmaThis week's bonus episode of Love to See It! I couldn't make the taping because I was sick, so for this episode, I get to be a fan. Emma went to see The Bachelor Live in New York last weekend, and she recaps the whole bizarre evening with our friend Liviya Kraemer and our old producer Harry Huggins. -ClaireWe've been buying…A chelating shampoo, because apparently Jersey City has ridiculously hard water. (Our faucets have the white mineral stains to prove it.) Hard water can build up in your hair and make it dry and brittle — but chelating shampoo is also super drying?? Seems like a conspiracy. Why is it so hard to have hair? Should I just try to install a showerhead filter? My level of handiness is “Ikea dresser assembly.” -ClaireI took advantage of Sephora's spring sale to get some of my favorites lightly discounted. After months of searching and revamping my makeup routine, I've finally landed on a concealer: ILIA True Skin Serum Concealer with Vitamin C. I grabbed two of those — I have been wearing some light concealer under my eyes and on any blemishes on days when I want to look fresh but don't want to do a full face of makeup. I also grabbed Charlotte Tilbury Airbrush Flawless Setting Spray, a tube of Benefit 24-Hour Lamination Effect Brow Gel, and a Beauty Blender sponge, because mine has gotten pretty gross. -EmmaGive us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireandemma.substack.com/subscribe

(00:00-09:56): A writer named Heather Havrilesky has shocked fans by revealing in her new book “Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage” she “hates” her husband — but insists she has no plans to divorce him. Brian and Aubrey shared their reaction. (09:56-18:07): How do you let your kids know you support them even when you might disagree with what they are doing? Brian and Aubrey discussed a controversy stemming from new music created by the son of Pastor Steven Furtick. (18:07-26:28): Has the COVID pandemic contributed to Mission Drift in the church? Brian and Aubrey shared their thoughts. (26:28-33:49): Travel is slowly getting back to normal after the pandemic. Brian and Aubrey talked about what that will mean for life moving forward.  (33:49-43:54): Brian and Aubrey shared their TOP FIVE Travel Annoyances. (43:54-52:17): Brian and Aubrey wrapped up the week by sharing some weird stories from the wild west of the Internet. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You can have a decent marriage, and also think your husband is a "snoring heap of meat". Virginia talks with Heather Havrilesky, author of Foreverland: The Divine Tedium of Marriage.

Has your work ever been greeted by a firestorm of furiously polarized tweets, both in fierce support and rampant opposition to what you have to say? In addition to being scathingly funny, bitingly honest, and sharply observant, author, essayist, and humorist Heather Havrilesky's work has always been provocative. And her latest memoir, Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage does not disappoint.   By writing honestly (and hilariously) about motherhood, marriage, and the contemporary female experience, Heather has amassed passionate supporters (Jen among them), in addition to nasty critics. But at the end of the day, shouldn't that be our chief aim as artists? In this episode, Jen and Heather unpack HOW creatives can truly get to the root of honesty in our work, so we too can inspire our audience.   How Heather handles negativity and misreading of her work Sometimes the beauty of writing is learning how you feel on the page Writing honestly to accept what you're made of Readers can see through everything so you're better off being honest How the editorial process of her latest memoir helped her grow closer to her husband Why Jen was afraid to ask Heather to be on the podcast How self-acceptance feeds your creativity The form and structure of Foreverland, and how it shifted from a collection of essays to a narrative experience How Heather has navigated her career and why she feels like she's just starting to take her writing more seriously, 25+ years in Taking an experimental approach to writing and learning as she goes Writing about and for women with more and more madness and freedom over time Can you stand behind your work?  Comparing yourself to people you admire and professional envy   Visit jenniferlouden.com/podcastkit to get instant access to a collection of audios that will: help you with some of the most common struggles we creatives have to manage including fear of choosing, falling into compare and despair, managing the inner critic (s), and feeling too exposed and vulnerable when you put yourself or your work into the world.

This week on The Sunday Magazine with Piya Chattopadhyay • Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov tells his country's story of resistance • How music helped Willie Thrasher reconnect with his Inuit roots • Ask Polly columnist Heather Havrilesky challenges the notion of "happily ever after" • Plus: Listeners share their memories of Canada's lost buildings Discover more at https://www.cbc.ca/sunday

David chats with Heather Havrilesky about her new book, 'Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage.'Support me on Patreon!Links:Follow Heather Havrilesky on TwitterBuy ForeverlandRead a book excerpt in the New York TimesRead the book review in The New York TimesKate Harding's article about reading criticallyHeather's Twitter thread about the reaction to her bookWeekly RecommendationsAll of Us Are Dead (Netflix)Torres and Hopalong This podcast is powered by Simplecast. Check them out at simplecast.com for a great podcast management and analytics solution.Let me know your feedback for the podcast by emailing culturallyrelevantshow(AT)gmail(DOT)com.Follow the show on Twitter.Find every episode of the show at CulturallyRelevantShow.com.

Danny Lavery welcomes author Heather Havrilesky, who recently published the book, Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage. She also writes the Ask Polly advice column. Lavery and Havrilesky take on two letters. First, from someone who feels resentment over a former lover's new relationship. Another letter writer is wondering whether sharing an old family memory will be helpful or harmful. Plus, a deep dive into Havrilesky's new book. Slate Plus members get another episode of Big Mood, Little Mood every Friday: sign up now! Need advice? Send Danny a question here. Email: mood@slate.com Production by Phil Surkis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Danny Lavery welcomes author Heather Havrilesky, who recently published the book, Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage. She also writes the Ask Polly advice column. Lavery and Havrilesky take on two letters. First, from someone who feels resentment over a former lover's new relationship. Another letter writer is wondering whether sharing an old family memory will be helpful or harmful. Plus, a deep dive into Havrilesky's new book. Slate Plus members get another episode of Big Mood, Little Mood every Friday: sign up now! Need advice? Send Danny a question here. Email: mood@slate.com Production by Phil Surkis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David, Devindra, and Jeff remember actor William Hurt. For the feature review, the Filmcast travels to The Adam Project, the Netflix sci-fi directed by Shawn Levy starring Ryan Reynolds.  Read The Daily Beast's article about William Hurt here.   Read Nina Metz's article about Hollywood's scammer fixation here.   Use #slashtag on Twitter to recommend a title for us to watch. Thanks to Mike C for building the Hashtag Slashtag website: https://hashtagslashtag.com/ Thanks to our sponsors this week: Trade Coffee, Hello Fresh, Head Space, MUBI.  Visit drinktrade.com/FILMCAST and get $20 off your first three bags of coffee beans.  Use code FILMCAST16 at hellofresh.com and get up to 16 meals free. Try headspace.com/FILMCAST and get one month free.  Visit mubi.com/FILMCAST for a month of free movies. Weekly Plugs David - David interviews Heather Havrilesky for Culturally Relevant Devindra - Reviewing Intel's NUC 12 Extreme  Jeff - https://dlc.fireside.fm/434  Shownotes (All timestamps are approximate only) What we've been watching  (~19:47) Devindra - Turning Red, Halo David - Undercurrent: The Disappearance of Kim Wall, Finales: Pam and Tommy, All of Us Are Dead Jeff - Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, Super Pumped, Making Fun Feature  (~01:38:38) The Adam Project Spoilers (~01:53:55) Support David's artistic endeavors at his Patreon. Listen and subscribe to David's newest podcast Culturally Relevant and subscribe to his YouTube channel. Check out Jeff Cannata's D&D show The Dungeon Run and listen to We Have Concerns. Listen to Devindra's podcast with Engadget on all things tech.  You can always e-mail us at slashfilmcast(AT)gmail(DOT)com, or call and leave a voicemail at 781-583-1993. Also, follow us on Twitter @thefilmcastpod. Credits: Our theme song is by Varsity Blue, the newest project by Tim McEwan from The Midnight. Our Slashfilmcourt music comes from SMHMUSIC.com. Our weekly plugs music comes from Noah Ross. Our spoiler bumper comes from filmmaker Kyle Corwith. This episode is edited by Beidi A. If you'd like advertise with us or sponsor us, please e-mail slashfilmcast@gmail.com. You can support the podcast by going to patreon.com/filmpodcast or by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.

A new book, 'Foreverland', has been called an "illuminating, poignant, and savagely funny examination of modern marriage from Ask Polly advice columnist Heather Havrilesky."

Feeling much better today and back on the cycle path in SW19. I bring some thoughts about failure from Marvin Minsky, Heather Havrilesky and Adam Savage (I remembered his second name!) --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rachelwheeleyisfunny/message

We recently asked you to tell us about the decisions weighing on you about your romantic lives. The strangeness of the past two years has impacted all of our relationships—in both negative and positive ways—yet in this time of not-normalcy, it can feel especially hard to make decisions that bring big change into our lives.  So, we gathered a panel to help you sort through it all: Foreverland author and "Ask Polly" columnist Heather Havrilesky, Gawker editor and co-host of the podcast Straightiolab George Civeris, and Tuck Woodstock, host of the podcast Gender Reveal. Listen as Heather, George, and Tuck give advice to listeners contemplating long-distance relationships, coming to terms with betrayal, navigating the fallout of a throuple, and more.

Heather Havrilesky writes the Ask Polly and Ask Molly newsletters. Her latest book is Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage. “It's not a good story when you're bullshitting people. I didn't want this book to feel like bullshit…. I wanted to show enough that you could feel reassured that it's normal to feel conflicted about your life and the people in it. It's normal to feel anxious about how much people love you. And it's normal to feel avoidant about how much people love you. It's normal to feel like a failure in the face of trying to stay with someone over the course of your entire life.” Show notes: @hhavrilesky  Havrilesky on Longform  Havrilesky on Longform Podcast Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage (Ecco • 2022) 1:00 "US author, 51, confesses she 'hates' her husband of 16 years in new memoir about what marriage is REALLY like - as she compares him to 'a pointy Lego brick underfoot' and 'a snoring heap of meat' (but they're not splitting up)" (Harriet Johnson • Daily Mail • Feb 2022) 01:00 "Woman Claims She “Hates” Husband In Memoir" (The View) 06:00 Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead Books • 2011) 06:00 What If This Were Enough? (Anchor • 2019) 06:00 Havrilesky's New York archive 06:00 askpolly.substack.com 06:00 askmolly.substack.com 11:00 "Heather Havrilesky Compares Her Husband to a Heap of Laundry" (Walter Kirn • New York Times • Feb 2022) 12:00 "Marriage Requires Amnesia" (New York Times • Dec 2021) 14:00 "Heather Havrilesky on hating her husband and her tell-all memoir, Foreverland" (Willy Somma • Times UK • Feb 2022) 15:00 "Wife calls marriage ‘insane,' hates her husband: ‘Snoring heap of meat'" (Andrew Court • New York Post • Feb 2022) 27:00 How to Be a Person in the World (Anchor • 2017) 32:00 "Our ‘Mommy' Problem" (New York Times • Nov 2014) 48:00 Havrilesky's Twitter thread addressing The View (Mar 2022) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If we knew then what we know now, would we jump into the pool of matrimony quite so quickly? A new book takes a look at the joys and irritations of being with the same person for a long time. Host Kerri Miller talks to its author, advice columnist and essayist Heather Havrilesky

If we knew then what we know now, would we jump into the pool of matrimony quite so quickly? A new book takes a look at the joys and irritations of being with the same person for a long time. Host Kerri Miller talks to its author, advice columnist and essayist Heather Havrilesky

Doree becomes a new version of herself with bangs and Kate connects with the moon in a way she's never done before. Then, author Heather Havrilesky joins Forever35 to talk about the New York Times review that didn't understand her latest book Foreveland, why glamour photoshoots should be a thing again, and why she's dubious about (but still uses) neck creams.To leave a voicemail or text for a future episode, reach them at 781-591-0390. You can also email the podcast at forever35podcast@gmail.com.Visit forever35podcast.com for links to everything they mention on the show.Follow the podcast on Twitter (@Forever35Pod) and Instagram (@Forever35Podcast) and join the Forever35 Facebook Group (Password: Serums). Sign up for the newsletter! At forever35podcast.com/newsletter.This episode is sponsored by:RAKUTEN - Start all of your shopping at Rakuten.com or get the rakuten app to start saving today.COLORGURU - Get 10% off any color consultation at yourcolorguru.com when you enter promo code FOREVER at checkout.ATHLETIC GREENS - Visit athleticgreens.com/forever35 to take control of your health and give AG1 a try today.ROTHY'S - For free shipping and free returns/exchanges, visit rothys.com/forever35.CALM - For 40% off a Calm Premium subscription, head to calm.com/forever35.KIWICO - Get 50% off your first month plus free shipping with code FOREVER35 at kiwico.com. TIM HORTONS - Tim Hortons Coffee and Donuts are better together. Find your always fresh duo at Tims. RITUAL - For 10% off during your first three months visit ritual.com/FOREVER35. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Spurs are back! Again! We glory in the Man City win, dissect the "utterly deranged narrative" (Rosa) around Spurs right now, settle the Deki/Kulu naming debate, (eventually) salute Harry Kane and reveal the various ways our behaviour during added time troubled our kids. We then look on nervously to Burnley and Leeds and toast the Spurs Women return to form. Also! The team reviews the first episode of the Kanye documentary and hand out our weekly culture picks. If you fancy skipping to certain bits:00:00 — Man City 25:10 — Burnley & Leeds 40:55 — Spurs Women45:26 — Jeen-Yuhs chat55:41 — Culture recommendations (Rosa: Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now at Tate Britain; Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage by Heather Havrilesky; Ash: Derek DelGaudio's In & Of Itself (Disney+); Tom: Cabaret at The Kit-Kat Club; Billie and Charlie: Jamal Edwards' SBTV legacy) Follow us on Twitter: @_HometownGloryThe team on Twitter: Ash, Billie, Charlie, Rosa and Tom... And we're on Instagram: @_hometownglorygram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Heather is laughing at your mean tweets about her. Show watched: Kevin Can F**k Himself, S1, Ep1 (Pilot) Support this podcast on Patreon! www.patreon.com/cringewatchers Special guest: Heather Havrilesky https://twitter.com/hhavrilesky Buy Heather's book! https://bookshop.org/books/foreverland-on-the-divine-tedium-of-marriage Binging/Cringing: Lori is cringing "feminist-baiting" for clicks including the Fresh and Fit podcast Leila is binging Station 11 Related readings: "Marriage Requires Amnesia", an excerpt of Heather's book published in New York Times Magazine https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/24/style/marriage-heather-havrilesky-foreverland.html "What Does Marriage Ask Us to Give Up?" by Kaitlyn Greenbridge https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/opinion/marriage-divorce.html "My Brush with the Black Manosphere" by Nicole Young https://www.elle.com/life-love/a38819237/black-manosphere-online-dating/ Ad: Hot Bread Kitchen https://hotbreadkitchen.org/ Credits: Our editor is Karen Y. Chan www.karenychan.com Judith Walker created our logo and cover art Dallas DL Engram created our theme song @dadollars Our ad music is by Sidhartha Corses www.siddharthamusic.bandcamp.com/ Find us on Twitter and Instagram: @cringewatchers

Staying together forever can feel like an impossible slog — just Ask Polly, aka advice columnist Heather Havrilesky. She helps us troubleshoot marital regret, absent sex drives and self-preservation and discusses her new memoir, Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage.Unladylike: A Field Guide to Smashing the Patriarchy and Claiming Your Space is available now, wherever books and audiobooks are sold. Signed copies are available at podswag.com/unladylike. Follow Unladylike on social @unladylikemedia. Subscribe to our newsletter at unladylike.co/newsletter.

Zach and Laura have a wonderful conversation with Heather Havrilesky about her new book, Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage.

For this week's episode, Emily was thrilled to chat with Ask Polly and Ask Molly columnist Heather Havrilesky, whose new book, "Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage" is out February 8. Emily and Heather talk parenting in a pandemic, anxiety, exercise, ambition, what it takes to make a marriage work, and how being a good-enough mom is enough. HEATHER'S NEW BOOK, FOREVERLANDBuy it on AmazonBuy it on BookshopHEATHER'S OTHER BOOKSHeather Havrilesky's books on BookshopHeather Havrilesky's books on AmazonMENTIONED IN THIS EPISODETreadmill deskEmily's stepperEmily's sparkly socksThe NYT article we referenced at the endFOLLOW HEATHER HAVRILESKYInstagram @heatherhavTwitter @hhavrileskyFOLLOW MOTHER MOTHERLearn more about Mother Mother at mothermotherpodcast.comFollow Mother Mother on Instagram at @mothermotherpodcastGet the newsletter: https://bit.ly/3BgTydsFOLLOW THE HOST, EMILY FARRISInstagram @thatemilyfarrisTwitter @thatemilyfarris-Questions? Comments? Want to advertise? Contact Emily at info@mothermotherpodcast.com.Thanks for listening and be sure to subscribe so you get a new episode of Mother Mother every Tuesday! The Mother Mother Podcast theme song, "Mother Mother" by Tracy Bonham, is performed by Jocelyn Mackenzie with Harry Bolles.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/mother-mother. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Nicole and Gayle discuss whether they achieved 2021 reading goals and talk about 2022 objectives for their reading routine. After giving us an update on what books they've finished, both present 7 books they want to read this year. As always you can find below the whole booklist they run through during the episode: Ghosts by Dolly Alderton | https://amzn.to/3EHyQpI (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780593319857 (Bookshop) We Are Not Like Them by Jo Piazza and Christine Pride | https://amzn.to/3lG7AQa (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9781982181031 (Bookshop) The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deeshaw Philyaw | https://amzn.to/3fFBzFx (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9781949199734 (Bookshop) Fault Lines by Emily Itami | https://amzn.to/3AmsgCW (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780063099807 (Bookshop) Crying In H Mart by Michelle Zauner | https://amzn.to/3jI7Hd5 (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780525657743 (Bookshop) Klara in the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro | https://amzn.to/33tNGmF (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780593318171 (Bookshop) Win Me Something by Kyle Lucia Wu | https://amzn.to/3kkXvbP (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9781951142735 (Bookshop) Last Resort by Andrew Lipstein | https://amzn.to/3fEneJo (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780374602703 (Bookshop) Mercy Street by Jennifer Haigh | https://amzn.to/3fF9G08 (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780061763304 (Bookshop) Honor by Thrity Umrigar | https://amzn.to/3fNbTqg (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9781616209957 (Bookshop) Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins | https://amzn.to/3GTmCve (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9781250274250 (Bookshop) The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman | https://amzn.to/3FSU5oA (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780735217959 (Bookshop) Booth by Karen Joy Fowler | https://amzn.to/32jLX2u (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780593331439 (Bookshop) Foreverland by Heather Havrilesky | https://amzn.to/3qKCLxx (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780062984463 (Bookshop) Read Dangerously by Azar Nafisi | https://amzn.to/3FQgfYz (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780062947369 (Bookshop) The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka | https://amzn.to/3fHZd45 (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780593321331 (Bookshop) The Love of My Life by Rosie Walsh | https://amzn.to/3tKFuZR (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780593296998 (Bookshop) Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso | https://amzn.to/3Ie0tIu (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780593241226 (Bookshop) The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont | https://amzn.to/3fL5n3C (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9781250274618 (Bookshop) Ocean State by Stewart O'Nan | https://amzn.to/3fEcieR (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780802159274 (Bookshop) Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka | https://amzn.to/3fMQddW (Amazon) | https://bookshop.org/a/2143/9780063052734 (Bookshop)  

In this, the penultimate episode of Series 22 of Walk the Pod, Rach takes her podcast for a walk because she doesn't have a dog. Take 10 minutes out of your day to walk in nature, and to pay attention to what's directly in front of you. Your host Rachel Wheeley is a comedian and human in the world, trying to figure out how to be happy here. In this episode Walking the cycle path in SW London and contemplating various things: the best name for a squirrel, loneliness and the stress cycle. And although I wasn't remembering it correctly, delightedly to have brought you this wonderful quote from Heather Havrilesky from this Ask Polly column from December, 2018. "This is the beauty and the horror of being a writer — or trying to be anything, really: You can feel important or unimportant. No one cares. No one is watching. You can have fun or you can suffer. No one is grading you. No one is invested. You can proclaim yourself ahead of schedule, or you can spend your whole life telling yourself that you're running behind. No one is there to measure. You can suspect that you're insecure and outdated, long-winded and short-sighted, high-strung and lowbrow. Or you can conclude that you're charismatic, a teensy bit talented, never boring, and reasonably worthy. You have choices. You are the decider. Because the truth is, no one else gives a flying f*ck." Completing the stress cycle Now that the threats to our safety are remote and intangible, how do we clear our systems of stress induced cortisol? Here are a few suggestions: Do some physical exercise Pet a dog Hug a friend Snog your partner/partners Hug your children Laugh Have a conversation with somebody Have a good cry Do something creative: make or cook something Have a bath My newsletter on the subject Thank you for walking with me, Poddies. Looking forward to bringing you the last episode of the series tomorrow. Join the Walk the Pod walking club Join the Walk the Pod walking club for regular Friyay blog posts by email, and invitations to: The next Walk the Pod walking meet up on January 9th 2022 The WtP community message board discord server. Our discord community is absolutely lovely. Poddies from around the world meet in a small corner of the internet to post photographs of their daily walks from New Zealand, Spain, Ireland, and perhaps wherever you are if you'd like to join. Subscribe to my newsletter I write a newsletter on the first and last Thursday of every series. Sign up here

Ben Smith is the media columnist for The New York Times. He was the founding editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News. ”I do think there's some kind of personality flaw deep in there of wanting to like, you know, find stuff out and tell people.... I'm not sure that's a totally sane or healthy personality trait, but it is definitely, for me, a personality trait…. I think that in political reporting, certainly, there's a kind of reporter who thinks that their job is basically to pull the masks off of these monsters. And I generally tend to think all these people—with some exceptions—are weird and complicated and often doing really awful things. But they aren't necessarily irredeemable or impossible to understand…. They're interesting.” Show notes: @benyt Smith on Longform Smith on Longform Podcast Smith's New York Times archive Smith's BuzzFeed News archive 04:00 "Goldman Sachs, Ozy Media and a $40 Million Conference Call Gone Wrong" (New York Times • Sept 2021) 11:00 "At Axel Springer, Politico's New Owner, Allegations of Sex, Lies and a Secret Payment" (New York Times • Oct 2021) 11:00 "Powerful German Newspaper Ousts Editor After Times Report on Workplace Behavior" (New York Times • Oct 2021) 15:00 "Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt On Journalists" (BuzzFeed News • Nov 2014) 15:00 "Starting Trouble With Times Media Columnist Ben Smith" (New York Magazine • Sept 2020) 15:00 "Chaos Theory: A Unified Theory of Muppet Types" (Dahlia Lithwick • Slate • Jun 2012) 21:00 "Postcard From Peru: Why the Morality Plays Inside The Times Won't Stop" (New York Times • Feb 2021) 21:00 "An Arrest in Canada Casts a Shadow on a New York Times Star" (New York Times • Oct 2020) 22:00 "What's Really Happening At The New York Times" (BuzzFeed • Nov 2019) 23:00 "Why the Success of The New York Times May Be Bad News for Journalism" (New York Times • Mar 2020) 23:00 "Exclusive: New York Times Editor Dean Baquet Has Been Running the Gray Lady from L.A." (Kali Hays • Los Angeles Magazine • July 2021) 24:00 "Why Hasn't the New York Times Made Ben Smith Sell His BuzzFeed Options Yet?" (Justin Peters • Slate • Oct 2021) 27:00 David Carr's New York Times archive 33:00 "Muslims Barred from Picture at Obama Event" (Politico • Jun 2008) 36:00 "Ghostwriting" (Alex Sujong Laughlin • Study Hall • Oct 2021) 38:00 "These Reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties to Russia" (Ken Bensigner, Miriam Elder, Mark Schoofs • BuzzFeed News • Jan 2017) 40:00 Platformer (Casey Newton) 40:00 Garbage Day (Ryan Broderick) 40:00 Ask Polly (Heather Havrilesky) 40:00 Ask Molly (Heather Havrilesky) 41:00 70 Over 70 (Max Linsky • Pineapple Street Studios) 41:00 "What's the Key to a Good Life? Ask the People Who've Lived Long Enough to Know." (Margaret Sullivan • The Washington Post • May 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Rachel Wheeley, a human in the world. In this episode I walk around a park behind St George's University hospital in SW17, Tooting, South West London in the UK. I reflect on how lovely it is to be back at work, talking to real, live, 3D humans now that everyone's back in the office. Memories of my recent holiday with the kids in the New Forest, climbing giant trees, playing with wild horses and making s'mores in the fire pit, and how much I love my new flat. Ramblechatting about how difficult it is to have fun, and how I'm not the fun friend, so much as the one who will make you a cup of tea when you've been enjoying yourself too much. Shout out to my Dad who is recording me a philosophy podcast via WhatsApp, and how my favourite philosophers are long dead (Marcus Aurelius) and very much alive (Heather Havrilesky) and how my reading is very different from my Dad's. I've been thinking a lot lately about the things I admire the most about everyone I know, whilst trying not to take on other peoples' goals. Walk the Pod Walk the Pod is a daily podcast show where I take my podcast for walks because I don't have a dog. Take 10 minutes out of your day to walk in nature, and to pay attention to what's directly in front of you. Series 19 of Walk the Pod I've been making daily episodes of Walk the Pod since November 3rd 2020. This is the first of 15 episodes in Series 19. I've picked some music for this series. Here's the playlist

Rach takes her podcast for a walk because she doesn't have a dog. Heather Havrilesky on exuberance: https://askpolly.substack.com/p/how-to-be-exuberant Henry David Thoreau: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers: https://amzn.to/3tCvZZ5 Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/rachelwheeleyisfunny Or buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/rachelwheeley --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rachelwheeleyisfunny/message

How do we find “enough” in a life that keeps getting…. harder? Our lives are shrinking. We are shrunk by the pandemic or by illness or by age or by any number of losses. And it can be difficult to feel satisfaction and enjoyment again, especially in the midst of a self-help culture that tries to tell you “EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE.” In this episode, Kate speaks with writer and advice columnist Heather Havrilesky about finding contentment in our bodies, in our parenting, in our relationships, while living a life we didn't choose. Sometimes we need a smoking appliance day (…that will make more sense when you listen). To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How do we find “enough” in a life that keeps getting…. harder? Our lives are shrinking. We are shrunk by the pandemic or by illness or by age or by any number of losses. And it can be difficult to feel satisfaction and enjoyment again, especially in the midst of a self-help culture that tries to tell you “EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE.” In this episode, Kate speaks with writer and advice columnist Heather Havrilesky about finding contentment in our bodies, in our parenting, in our relationships, while living a life we didn’t choose. Sometimes we need a smoking appliance day (…that will make more sense when you listen). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Top writers are leaving publishers like the New York Times to become newsletter writers on Substack. How will the rise of the solopreneur author impact the future of journalism? Substack co-founders Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie join PressClub host Josh Constine to break down why individuals have more power than organizations in the modern media landscape. Listen to learn:Can newsrooms survive the brain drain?Will creators earn a better living on their own? How did the move from desktop to mobile favor email over websites? Can Substack provide star writers enough growth to earn its 10% cut?Why newsletters are unlocking a weirder, more self-expressive way to build community?Plus, get thoughts on how these trends play out from top Substack writers including NYT columnist Zeynep Tufekci, Sinocism's Bill Bishop, and Ask Polly's Heather Havrilesky. Recorded live on Josh Constine's PressClub, on Clubhouse Thursdays at 6pm PT. Subscribe: http://constine.club/PressClub is one of Clubhouse's first and most popular shows, where top business leaders discuss the big issues. It's hosted by Josh Constine, an investor at early-stage venture fund SignalFire and the former Editor-At-Large of TechCrunch. PressClub is a relaxed venue where luminaries can share their stories, passions, thoughts on trends, and visions of the future. Past guests include the CEOs of Facebook, Instagram, Slack, Shopify, Spotify, Substack, WordPress, Craigslist, Dollar Shave Club, and more. Topics have included the creator economy, back to offices vs remote work, the rise of newsletters, the future of celebrity, the ethics of doxxing, and founders becoming philanthropists. Josh and PressClub's content have recently been covered by the New York Times, TechCrunch, Vogue, Bloomberg, Forbes, AdWeek, USA Today, and more.

This week's episode is a clip show intended as a starting point for new listeners. If you'd like to get someone into the show, this is something you can pass along! I'd appreciate it if you did.  Here's a run down of the segments in this collection – each clip is around 5-12 minutes or so.  • Heather Havrilesky on Fleetwood Mac • Nick Sylvester on flubbing a session gathering material for Beyoncé's Lemonade • Brittany Spanos on Madonna and how pop rejects its own history • Cates Holderness on the surprising popularity of Hozier on Tumblr • Molly O'Brien and Chris Wade on party rocking, LMFAO, and uncle magic • Trevor from Champagne Sharks on how Eminem has aged very badly • Maria Sherman on how BTS broke big in the US and became the new top boy band • Rob Sheffield on the similarities of Pavement and Sade • Sean T. Collins on Guns N' Roses

Heather Havrilesky on the books that shaped her.

I See You Made An Effort: Compliments, Indignities and Survival Stories from the Edge of 50 (Blue Rider Press) Is 50 the new 40 or is 50 still 50? Maybe. In this wickedly funny new collection of essays, I See You Made An Effort, actress and writer Annabelle Gurwitch explores the hazards of turning 50, outsourcing your endocrine system, and falling in lust at the Genius bar. From the woman the Washington Post calls “hilarious,” this new book is the ultimate coming-of middle-age story and a must-read for women everywhere. The panic began to set in when Annabelle turned 49. The solicitations from the AARP began flooding her mailbox as she weighed going back to school, getting divorced and raising llamas. She couldn't afford a vacation, so she was taking a lot of naps. A visit to her gynecologist ended not with one of his usual benign send-offs—stay healthy, stay happy, stay hydrated—but instead with the slightly ominous: "Stay funny." In this new collection of essays, Annabelle Gurwitch has taken her gynecologist's advice to heart. Whether she's navigating the extensive anti-aging offerings in the department store beauty counter or negotiating the ins and outs of acceptable behavior with her teenage son, Gurwitch bravely turns an unflinching eye towards the myriad of issues women can expect to encounter in their middle years.  For tonight's reading Annabelle Gurwitch will be joined by members of the Suite 8 Writer's Collective, Jillian Lauren, Heather Havrilesky and Joshua Wolf Shenk. Annabelle Gurwitch is an actress and author of You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up, a self-hurt marital memoir co-written with her husband, Jeff Kahn, now a theatrical play in its third national tour; and Fired! Tales of the Caned, Canceled, Downsized & Dismissed. Her Fired! documentary premiered as a Showtime Comedy Special and played film festivals around the world. Gurwitch gained a loyal comedic following during her numerous years co-hosting the cult favorite, Dinner & a Movie; her acting credits include Dexter, Boston Legal, Seinfeld, Melvin Goes to Dinner, The Shaggy Dog and Not Necessarily The News on HBO. Most recently, she starred in the adaptation of Grace Paley's A Coney Island Christmas by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Donald Margulies at The Geffen Playhouse. Live appearances include New York Comedy Festival, 92nd St Y, Upright Citizens Brigade and story salons in both New York and Los Angeles. She has served as a regular commentator on NPR and a humorist for TheNation.com. Her writing has appeared in More, Marie Claire, Men's Health, Los Angeles Times and elsewhere. Gurwitch is a passionate environmentalist, a reluctant atheist, and lives with her husband and son in Los Angeles. Jillian Lauren is the author of the novel Pretty and the New York Times bestselling memoir Some Girls: My Life in a Harem. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review Daily, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Magazine, Salon, The Rumpus and The Moth Anthology, among others. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son. Heather Havrilesky is a regular contributor to the New York Times Magazine, The Awl and Bookforum, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness. You can also follow her on Twitter at @hhavrilesky. Joshua Wolf Shenk is an essayist, author, and creative strategist based in New York City. He is a correspondent for Slate.com, and a contributor to The Atlantic Monthly, Time, Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and the national bestseller Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression, edited by Nell Casey.