It's Been a Minute

So you wanna be a critic...

I think we're more custodians of the culture, right? We're here to facilitate conversation about the things that we enjoy. We're here to make connections between um cultural objects or cultural productions. Um we're not here to tell you what to do. We're here to sort of like push you to think, which seems to be an unpopular thing these days.

TED

Is AI Turning Us All into the Same Person? | Sandra Matz | TED

AI turns this infinite diversity of human opinions, beliefs and preferences into statistically safe sameness.

The New York Times

Why ‘Breaking Bad’ Is the Best Show of the 21st Century

I'm kind of thinking now, seeing the world the way it is, if I had my druthers, they'd be considered cautionary tales, not aspirational. I don't know, maybe we've had enough anti-heroes for a while, seeing the country the way, the shape that it's in.

Book of the Day

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox on why he’s the 'worst possible spokesperson' for his own book

Too many Americans have lost close personal friends, have lost family members to politics where they don't talk to each other anymore. And that number is exploding. And it's incredibly unhealthy. It's bad for our country. It's bad for our souls.

It's Been A Minute

The manosphere is coming for R&B | It's Been A Minute

A genre known for love, yearning, desire, heartbreak now asks, "Do women deserve empathy?"

Throughline

How baseball got its beat

One of the joys of baseball to me is the silence between half innings with walkup music and non-stop audio. The need to secure attention, the attention of the fans is relentless. And uh the idea of a kid going to a ball game and being entitled to dream that may be lost.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Walter Russell Mead - How America Keeps Winning - [Invest Like the Best, EP.490]

The really revolutionary thing about America is not Silicon Valley. It's the combination of the Protestant ethic, the work ethic, the moral framework, and the technological dynamism. You get God and Gold and Silicon all working together, and that's what makes it so powerful.

The Prof G Pod

Debra Soh: "We're Having Less Sex Than Ever" — Here's Why

Society has never been more sexualized, yet we are having less sex than ever before.

TED Radio Hour

The price of creativity

What I see is not some momentary blip. But I see the payoffs of investments that were made 70 years ago. We are on a continued climb in this long process of America embracing creative culture as one of its founding core ideals.

Fresh Air

Best Of: ‘Odyssey’ translator Emily Wilson / Actor Jon Bernthal

It's a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle like an elaborate 4th of July fireworks display with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth.

It's Been a Minute

This summer's hottest trend? Monoculture.

It felt like we as a culture were finally on the same page. In fact, it felt like a return to monoculture. The idea of having a shared understanding and experience of culture with common reference points, values, and opportunities to connect. But if we're all in this together for the good, we're definitely all in this together for the bad.

The New York Times

How the War in Iran Is Impacting Street Vendors

For Saeed, selling books isn't only about making money. It's an act of quiet resistance.

Fresh Air

Jia Tolentino on ‘Our Plastic Surgery Nightmare’

The face is traditionally how we come to know each other, how we the first glimpse we have of a person's temperament and soul and life history and disposition. It tells us it answers so many questions. Also, you can tell if a person is tired. You can tell if they're sick. You can tell their emotions. Do they laugh a lot by their laugh lines?

Code Switch

Why the World Cup is race and class all the way down

Race and class and identity like always seem to be right there on the surface at the World Cup every 4 years. Like, maybe more so than any other sporting event.

The a16z Show

Outsmarting Uber: Why Bolt Wins in Europe

competing against much better-funded rivals, and why culture and ambition matter more than regulation

The a16z Show

Outsmarting Uber: Why Bolt Wins in Europe

competing against much better-funded rivals, and why culture and ambition matter more than regulation.

It's Been a Minute

The safety and power of knowing your neighbors

Neighborliness today means giving people their space. And that's a big change in America.

It's Been a Minute

Generative AI's race problem

I don't think that we have a lot of opportunities or enough opportunities to feel meaningfully seen. I can't really blame anybody for saying, 'Oh, this song moves me. This song makes me feel seen.' when we're in a media climate where we don't really have as many opportunities as I would like for us to feel meaningfully seen.

All Songs Considered

What makes a song a ‘millennial song’ | It's Been a Minute

I think a lot of millennial music is united by this sense of deep sincerity. Um this feeling of carefree freedom and this kind of almost careless attitude in a sense. This kind of like live fast, die young ethos.

Hidden Brain

The Past is Never Dead

human cultures create a "collective brain," and how that shared knowledge profoundly shapes who we are and how we live

Hidden Brain

The Cowboy Philosopher

Will Rogers was born in 1879 in what is now Oklahoma, to a prominent Cherokee family. He grew up roping cattle, learned to do tricks with a lasso, and eventually turned his cowboy skills into a stage act. But it was his folksy observations about politics and society that made him one of the most beloved figures in America.

Hidden Brain

The Past is Never Dead

anthropologist Joseph Henrich says the impact of culture goes even further, reaching into our bodies and our minds. He takes us on a journey through time to show how human cultures create a "collective brain," and how that shared knowledge profoundly shapes who we are and how we live.

Mixed Signals

Angel Studios Is Crowdsourcing A “Values-Based” Alternative To Hollywood

If storytelling is like upstream from culture, if our culture is going to look this way in 20 years, we're not super excited about that prospect.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

THE PEOPLE DO NOT YEARN FOR AUTOMATION

Software brain is powerful stuff. It's a way of thinking that basically created our modern world. But software thinking has also been turbocharged by AI in a way that I think helps explain the enormous gap between how excited the tech industry is about the technology and how regular people are growing to dislike it more and more over time.

Fresh Air

Malala Yousafzai

When my brothers moved to the UK, they switched to jeans right away. Nobody had any problem with it. But as soon as a girl decided to wear a pair of jeans, it became a whole issue.

The a16z Show

Inside Palantir: Building Software That Matters with Shyam Sankar

the most important thing America can do right now is inspire its latent heretics to step forward

Code Switch

The Scouts are too woke, according to Pete Hegseth

Like these are issues that have been with scouting almost since the beginning and that is what we're going to get into today. Like how these questions and controversies over race and gender have shaped the world of scouting back in the day and now.