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Is Wicker succeeding where rom-coms fall short?

When the Wicker trailer dropped, all thirst broke loose. The movie -- starring Olivia Colman as a spinster fisherwoman and Alexander Skarsgård as her husband made of wicker -- sparked a lot of chatter about what exactly is so swoon-worthy about a basket-woven beau. The movie highlights women's interest in stories about non-human romantic partners, while joining the canon of sexy, sometimes silly films about finding your footing in relationships. But it also asks deeper questions about what we expect from our partners -- and what the rest of the world expects from couples.

Brittany gets into all this with Rachel Handler, features writer at New York Magazine, and Aisha Harris, critic and host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour.

For more episodes on what’s going on in movies (and how they speak to what’s going on in culture), check out:
Why Gen Z is movie-maxxing
Women deserve revenge. Do they get to have it?
Inside the Michael Jackson legacy industrial complex

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What does it cost to be seen as a ‘godly woman’?

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies author Deesha Philyaw asks that and more in her latest novel, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman. 

The book is a satirical, Real Housewives-style romp following its protagonist, Scharisse Freeman, as she navigates the highs and lows of being a pastor’s wife --including all the plotting, backstabbing, and respectability politics that come with trying to be a beacon of Christian femininity.

But when a scandal unearths her past, she learns the hard way that being seen as a ‘good woman’ or ‘good wife’ is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Deesha joins the show to deconstruct how the rigidity of church life can bring out the worst in us, and why we should be more open to other paths to living a faithful life.

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In response to the rape allegations out of Cornell University, many parents are online questioning the lessons they are teaching their children.

But what about the fathers who are raising the next generation of boys? What conversations are they having with their sons about consent? To find out, Brittany is joined by Kathryn Jezer-Morton, writer for The Cut's Brooding column, and Jenny Grossman, senior research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College.

Want more conversations at the intersection of gender and culture? Tap into these episodes:

Where did all the 'masculine men' go?
Are we fueling violence against women?

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Denée Benton is having a very good year. 

She’s currently starring in season four of the hit television show ‘The Gilded Age’ while starring in the production of ‘School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play.’ But success has been a long time coming. Since her Broadway debut in 2016, Denee has been working in television, theater and movies, often simultaneously, for a decade. She joins host Brittany Luse in a discussion about how a Broadway performance can feel like a physical workout, what’s in store for her Gilded Age character Peggy, and her most “sacred” project to date.

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Why IQ still matters to people - even if it's biased.

President Trump and Silicon Valley tech bros are obsessed with IQ, but the history of intelligence testing is full of bunk race science and eugenics. With the rise of AI's "super intelligence," should we still be ranking human intelligence at all? In this crossover episode with our friends at Code Switch, we explore who gets labeled as smart with Quinn Slobodian, author of Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right and Angela Saini, author of Superior: The Return of Race Science.

(00:00) Why Trump and Silicon Valley are obsessed with IQ
(03:27) The tech right's IQ fetishism
(06:30) How 'The Bell Curve' justified inequality
(09:05) IQ's political consequences
(15:28) The BITCH test and valuing diverse intelligences
(22:23) The myth of biological race
(26:13) Does nurture matter more than nature for intelligence?
(32:27) Rejecting IQ hierarchies

For more episodes about the politics of intelligence, check out:
The price you pay for being smart
Books vs. Brain Rot: why it's so hard to read
You might be suffering from AI brain fry

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