Americans are being warned by their government that before they leave the country they need to check their luggage for any "stray ammo" or weaponry that they might have stashed in there. Is the world getting sick of America's nonsense? Europe is ending its golden visa program, Turks & Caicos has Americans under arrest for trying to bring guns etc on vacation, and Venice is now charging entry fees for disembarking from the foul cruise ships. Jessa and Nico contemplate the American "the...

Civil War is a hit! Both blue states and red states agree that watching a movie that lets you fantasize about the half of the country you don't agree with being buried in a shallow mass grave is a great time. Could it happen here? Probably. Jessa and Nico get into why so many people want it to. And what a film, devoid of any insight into political polarization or who is paying for those Western Forces helicopters, by Alex Garland has to say to us now.  This week's sponsor: ...

The Dept of Health and Human Services ruled that hospitals could no longer do pelvic exams on unconscious women without their consent, in the year of 2024. Nico and Jessa get into the horror of having a human body right now, with telehealth companies selling drugs to cure baldness that have been linked to psychosis to abortion laws that change every day to the rise of entrepreneurial and hedge-fund ruled health care.  This week's sponsor: http://betterhelp.com/culturewedeserve ...

DEI is the new Critical Race Theory is the new Affirmative Action -- a way to distract you from the way finance is ruining everything. Jessa and Nico get into the online conspiracies that soon your doctors, pilots, and dentists will just be some guy they pull from the streets. Also: Is Berlin over? If Trump becomes President again, are we ready for four more years of hideous anti-Trump "art"? This week's sponsor: http://betterhelp.com/culturewedeserve http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

America's oldest art school, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, is closing its degreed programs after a perilous drop in enrollment. It is just one of the many arts and humanities programs that are being slashed, retooled, and shut down across America. Nico, who both attended and taught at art school, and Jessa discuss the state of arts education, the tight grip the MFA has on the imaginations of our young artists, and why our world trains so many artists for jobs that do not exist. This...

Every week there's a new docuseries where the victims of horrific violence or exploitation have to get in front of the camera and tell us the bad things that happened to them. And within a few days, we've forgotten again. Nico and Jessa look at the overproduction of nonfiction content, from the multiple "investigations" into Twin Flames to the multiplicity of deep dives on Nickelodeon damaged child stars, the constantly refreshing stream of information, and the way clickbait media feeds off...

Are the tradwives coming to take your husbands? Page Six printed an essay by a woman whose partner got addicted to depictions of effortless domesticity and wondered why his house was not as blissful. Divorce rates are high, marriage rates are low, what is the meaning of wife in this moment? Jessa and Nico talk tradwive propaganda, why the feminists are divorcing, and whether we should abolish the family altogether. Today's sponsor: http://betterhelp.com/culturewedeserve ...

The viewership of the Oscars is less than half of what it was a decade ago, and yet the award ceremony dominates celebrity media more than ever. The films themselves are almost secondary to what the awards represent, which is... racial equality? social harmony? proof that our democracy is working? Unclear. People take sides in the awards so much that Emma Stone was threatened with cancellation immediately for winning Best Actress over Lily Gladstone. Nico and Jessa dig into the discourse and...

Hey, hey you. No no no, act cool. Listen, I have discovered some pretty potent information about the dealings of our government in (Iran/Nicaragua/Chile/Brooklyn). People have died knowing this stuff, you know what I'm saying? So this is for your eyes only, well, yours and the rest of the Netflix audience. Netflix has been releasing very successful conspiracy-related docuseries the last few years. The latest is American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders, which dives into the CIA's involvement...

The Oscars love the Holocaust. Jessa and Nico look back at the short history of the Oscar bait Holocaust film, from Sophie's Choice to Schindler's List to Zone of Interest, and why we set so many films in this apocalyptic moment. And what is the lasting effect of a culture overstuffed with these good vs evil tales and allows our historical education to be done by entertainment properties? http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com Episode is sponsored by Better Help. For more information go...

Families of the victims of mass shootings are participating in The Shotline, where AI recreates their loved ones' voices to plea for political action. How useful is sentimentality as a political tool? Jessa and Nico look through how various advocacy and political groups have used appeals to sentimentality to sway opinion in the name of gun control, support for Israel, amnesty for FARC in Colombia, and abortion rights. Are there better ways to build empathy than to overwhelm the voter with...

Has TikTok ruined music? With its users flooding concert venues to meow at the artists, with the "oh no" song playing in the background of videos of puppies falling down and actual atrocities, with a standoff between two global corporate forces in its battle with Universal Music Group? Or will Spotify have that honor, by algorithming us all into mediocre bliss, as we toss our pennies at our geniuses and amuse ourselves to death? Sponsored by http://betterhelp.com/culturewedeserve

With the release of "Griselda," a Narcos-adjacent Netflix show that reboots Scarface as a woman as if this were the Ghostbusters, Jessa and Nico look at the specific place Colombia and the international drug wars has in the American imagination.  http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

America has an arrested development problem. But while men are castigated regularly for not meeting the markers of basic adulthood, the feminine, the girly, the infantile in women's culture is cause for celebration. Women want to be girls forever. Hosts Nico and Jessa discuss the auteur of childishness Greta Gerwig, our eternal teen Taylor Swift, the taboo of aging, and the dark side of staying in toddler mode forever. 

Media continues its decline with layoffs and closures. The only winners appear to be the tech intermediaries like Meta, Amazon, and Google. (X continues to lose at everything.) Hosts Jessa Crispin and Nico Rodriguez discuss the new models of journalism, the fantasies of meaningful work in the modern age, and why everyone profits except the people who do the work. http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com  

As we head into our end of the year break, here is a sample of our bonus episode, a discussion of what the last four years of Marvel Cinematic Universe vs Scorsese discourse has really been about -- the pivot from an auteur-focused cinema to corporate movie culture. Hosts Jessa Crispin and Nicolas Rodriguez cover this transition, argue over whether Scorsese cares about women, and why A24 has its own devotional fan culture. The full episode is available at...

Jessa Crispin speaks with two working artists, Philadelphia Orchestra bassoonist Daniel Matsukawa and mezzo-soprano singer Amber Fasquelle, about the sometimes precarious life in music. But there's a missing element: what is the role of the audience member in this ecosystem? Are we all just consumers or do we have other choices?

We tend to think of the art world as being more progressive than the rest of society -- mostly because we confuse libertine with progressive -- but actually it's extremely conservative, especially when it comes to gender. In classical music, the men are geniuses, and the women are support systems or vessels or ornaments. Which is, in part, why Gustav's wife Alma, who certainly was no support system or vessel or ornament, is still reviled by fans of her husband's music today.  As we think...

Over the next three episodes, we'll be exploring the state of classical music. Times are fraught! Attendance is down, institutions are broke (and in some cases broken), and scandals involving sexual harassment and racism have destabilized the music culture. On top of that, what do we want with the dusty old white guy music anyway? In this episode, host Jessa Crispin discusses how hard it is right now to get into difficult music as a listener. Using the figure of Gustav Mahler -- overlooked...

Coming in November 2023: The Culture We Deserve podcast! . Hosted by Jessa Crispin, produced by Zach Toman.  http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com