anne helen petersen

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For the maiden voyage of the Culture Study podcast, we’re taking a hard look at a problem that plagues us all: terrible clothes. Why are shirts falling apart or pilling after just a few wears? Why does Gucci charge $3200 for a polyester sweater? What happened to ironing and will we ever dry clean en masse again?

Amanda Mull, staff writer at The Atlantic, joins me for a deep dive into the past twenty years of fashion production (and consumption) trends.

If you like the ep, it helps a fledging pod SO MUCH if you can help us get the word out. Share it with your friends, post it to social media, “follow” it in your podcast app, or write us a review on iTunes. You’re the best and we literally could not make this pod without your help.

If you want to support the show financially, and get some cool perks, check out our Substack.

Got a question or idea for a future episode? Let us know here.

Show notes:

• The tweet I describe in the beginning of the podcast
• Read Amanda Mull’s piece in The Atlantic: “Your Sweaters Are Garbage”
• Read Sarah Zhang’s piece in The Atlantic: “How I Got Bamboo-zled by Baby Clothes”
• Amanda mentioned: Sofi Thanhauser’s Worn: A People’s History of Clothing
• Some other Amanda pieces I love: Millennials Have Lost Their Grip on Fashion, The Free-Returns Party Is Over, How Shoppers Got Tricked By Vegan Leather
• You can see Amanda’s Jeffrey Dahmer glasses in the bio of her Instagram (which is private, so don’t friend request unless you actually know her)
• Paul Mescal’s rat tail situation (perhaps more appropriately called a mullet)

This week, we’re looking for your questions for future episodes about:

• Resurgent interest in early 2000s music (with Switched on Pop’s Nate Sloan)
• The Mean Girls Trailer
• A deep analysis of Taylor and Travis Kelce discourse
• Kevin Bacon’s Hott Instagram and Gen-X/Elder Millennial Instagram in general
• “Little treat” culture

You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here.

Everything is interesting. That idea has guided the tremendously popular Culture Study newsletter, and it’s at the heart of the Culture Study Podcast, where host Anne Helen Petersen and the smartest people she knows answer listeners’ questions about the nooks and crannies of contemporary culture, from “why are clothes like this now” to “what’s the deal with F1?”

Subscribe to the Culture Study Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Listeners can submit their own questions here, and find weekly discussion threads, extensive show notes, transcripts and a lot more on Substack.

It's Work Appropriate's 50th episode, one-year anniversary episode, and last episode, all rolled into one. Producer Melody Rowell joins host Anne Helen Petersen to talk about their favorite moments from the show and share updates from listeners who have written in.

• Keep in touch! Subscribe to Anne's newsletter (it's free!) to stay in the know about future podcast plans.

So your company put out a statement about its commitment to DEI (or DEIB, or IDEA, or whatever your workplace calls it)-- now what? Efforts to make workplaces more diverse, equitable, and inclusive can often get bogged down by the processes and culture that made the efforts so necessary in the first place. Sameera Kapila, product designer and author of Inclusive Design Communities, joins host Anne Helen Petersen to answer listeners' questions about how to keep doing the work, and make it effective.

• Get 50% off of Inclusive Design Communities with code WORK15, from September 6-20.
• Need advice about a sticky situation at work? Head to www.workappropriate.com and tell us about it, or send us an email at workappropriate@crooked.com.
• Follow @CrookedMedia on Instagram and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events.

What do you do when your job is burning you out, but you can't really *care less* about it? When children need teachers and vulnerable populations need social workers and hospitals need nurses-- how can you walk away? Dena Simmons, founder of LiberatED, joins host Anne Helen Petersen to answer listeners' questions about how to make caring professions more sustainable.

• Follow @CrookedMedia on Instagram and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events.

A sneak peek of the first book from Crooked Media Reads, Mobility, by Lydia Kiesling. Mobility is a gripping coming-of-age story about navigating a world of corporate greed that's both laugh-out-loud funny and politically incisive. The novel tracks themes of class, power, politics, and desire throughout the life of its compelling main character, Bunny Glenn. 

Vulture called Bunny Glenn “a complicated heroine for the ages, a striver who values the comforts of her oil-industry job even as she must reckon with the fact that the world is quite literally on fire.” 

Mobility is out on August 1. Pre-order your copy today at www.crooked.com/mobility

Lydia Kiesling, author of Mobility, joins host Anne Helen Petersen to answer listeners' questions about the amorphous intersection of parenting and work. We’re talking about big, philosophical questions about fulfillment, passion, and even division of ambition with your co-parent.

• Pre-order Mobility at crooked.com/mobility, and be among the first to read it when it comes out August 1.
• Follow @CrookedMedia on Instagram and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events.

There's a persistent idea that when you finish high school or college, you pick a career and then do that one thing for the rest of your life. But what if you get a few years, or even decades, in... and you hate it? Can you pivot? Ailsa Chang, host of NPR's All Things Considered joins host Anne Helen Petersen to answer listeners' questions about making a change.

Need advice about a sticky situation at work? Head to www.workappropriate.com and tell us about it. Some episodes we’re working on include problems around taking a much-needed vacation, juggling parenthood with work, and making caring professions (e.g. teaching, nursing) more sustainable.

Follow @CrookedMedia on Instagram and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events.

If you spend a lot of your life doing something, it's natural to care about it! But sometimes the amount we care about our jobs does not match the way our jobs care about us. So when you come to the realization you need to care a little less about your job... how do you actually do that? Simone Stolzoff, author of The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life From Work, joins host Anne Helen Petersen to answer questions from listeners who want to dial down the caring.

Order The Good Enough Job at Bookshop.org. Use the code WORK to get 10% off!

Got a sticky situation at work that you need help figuring out? Tell us about it at www.workappropriate.com.

Follow @CrookedMedia on Instagram and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events.

In a lot of workplaces, compensation isn’t transparent— and sometimes it’s actively obscured. Leaders and managers work to implicitly and explicitly communicate that you shouldn’t talk with your coworkers about money — arguing that it’s demoralizing, or “private,” or unfair to share what you make with your coworkers. But that mindset only keeps compensation deeply inequitable. On today's episode, Maya Lau, host and creator of Other People's Pockets, joins Anne Helen Petersen to advise listeners on all things salary-related. When should you ask for a raise, and how? And to whom? And what do you do when you find out your coworkers make a whole lot more— or less— than you?

• Got a workplace quandary you need help figuring out? Head to www.workappropriate.com and tell us about it!
• Follow @CrookedMedia on Instagram and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers, and other community events.

Workplaces are often very, very skilled at making us feel very, very bad about ourselves. Sometimes you need structural reform of the whole workplace, and sometimes you just need a good, old-fashioned pep talk. Whether the crisis in confidence comes from imposter syndrome, or from feeling like you're the only one who thinks it's weird to give a CEO a holiday gift-- we've got some advice. Comedian and writer Josh Gondelman joins host Anne Helen Petersen to answer questions from listeners who are struggling to feel confident at work. 

If you've got a workplace quandary you need help figuring out, get in touch! Check out submission guidelines at www.workappropriate.com, or send a voice memo with your question to workappropriate@crooked.com.

"Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" sounds like sage advice, but it doesn't account for the burn-out, demoralization, constant churn, and low pay of so many passion jobs. Lisa Sánchez, city council member for Boise, Idaho, joins host Anne Helen Petersen to answer listeners' questions on how to manage when a passion job is wearing you out.

Got a workplace quandary you need help addressing? Head to www.workappropriate.com and let us know.

This is Work Appropriate's version of a holiday episode! As work parties ramp up, so do small talk conversations about diets and eating habits. So what can you say at the holiday potluck when your boss comments on people's weights, or says she's being "so bad" for eating a brownie? What can you do when your workplace cafeteria has calorie counts plastered everywhere? How can you have a frank conversation about accommodations you need for work travel when you have a larger body? Virginia Sole-Smith joins host Anne Helen Petersen to answer all these listener questions and more.

Got a workplace quandary you need help figuring out? Head to www.workappropriate.com and let us know!

There are plenty of reasons people choose to freelance-- better hours, more money, freedom from all-staff emails. But then... there's often a moment when you look around and realize that you've created a toxic work environment for yourself. In this episode, freelancer extraordinaire Wudan Yan joins host Anne Helen Petersen to help freelancers everywhere become better bosses to themselves.

Got a workplace quandary you need help figuring out? Head to www.workappropriate.com and let us know!

Sometimes there's no amount of therapy that's going to fix your relationship with your job. Sometimes your company's culture might be irreparably toxic. And also, sometimes you're just... bored. But when should you cut bait and move on? Jane Coaston, host of the New York Times podcast The Argument, joins host Anne Helen Petersen to answer listeners' questions about whether it's time to quit.

Got a workplace quandary you need help figuring out? Head to www.workappropriate.com and let us know.

Often, people get promoted into management because they're good at their jobs-- not because they know anything about managing people. In this episode, Melissa Nightingale from Raw Signal Group joins host Anne Helen Petersen to posit that management is a skill that can be learned. From learning to manage a remote workforce, to dealing with generational differences in the workplace, to setting a good work-life-balance example to young reports-- we answer listeners' questions about all things managerial.

If you've got a workplace quandary you need help figuring out, head to www.workappropriate.com and let us know.

American society is still organized around a presumption that every family unit has a full-time caregiver in the home. Jessica Grose, mom of 2 and opinion writer for The New York Times, joins host Anne Helen Petersen to answer questions about the struggle, sadness, and burnout that comes from trying to still get by in that space, even when it isn't reality for millions of families.

If you've got a workplace quandary you want help figuring out, head to workappropriate.com to tell us about it.

At work, we deal with people, and people inevitably bring up feelings. Host Anne Helen Petersen teams up with comedian and TV writer Josh Gondelman to answer questions that range from petty (what if I hate the company holiday gift?) to systemic (is it okay to give up on advocating for my voice to be heard?).

Thanks for listening to the first episode of Work Appropriate! Please rate and review us so other people can find the show. And if you've got a workplace quandary you want help figuring out, head to workappropriate.com to tell us about it.

This week, Lisa and Jules take a few minutes to talk about the fantastic Scandals of Classic Hollywood by Anne Helen Petersen. Drop by in the comments on realbossybritches.com, or shoot an email to info@realbossybritches.com with some of your favorite scandals and biggest copy editing pet peeves! (Apologies for the weird sound quality: Lisa was […]

The post Bossy Shorts – Classic Scandals appeared first on Bossy Britches.