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You might be more influenced by yuppie taste than you’d think.

Back in the eighties – when pop music drowned in synths, the volume of everyone's hair was set to loud, and neon was in vogue – a new age dawned: the era of the yuppie. “Yuppie” comes from the acronym “YUP” – which stands for young, urban professional. Think Patrick Bateman from American Psycho or even Miranda Hobbes from Sex and the City. Nowadays, cities are full of young urban professionals, but this wasn't always the case. In his new book, Yuppies: the Bankers, Lawyers, Joggers and Gourmands Who Conquered New York, author Dylan Gottlieb argues that New York City was the first city to reorganize itself to cater to yuppies.  And it's not just cities that have changed. Yuppies have transformed our country's economy, politics, and culture, too.

Brittany is joined by Dylan, assistant professor of history at Bentley University, to break down how yuppies catapulted us into our current moment.

For more episodes on the history that explains our culture today, check out:
How often do you think about the American Empire?
Americans want a royal family. Now they have two
Were Americans actually healthier in the past?

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How has literature changed your life?

For poet and lawyer, Reginald Dwaye Betts, books meant freedom. After getting sentenced to 9 years in adult prison at 16, Dwayne felt a sense of hope and possibility whenever he was reading.  Upon his release he founded Freedom Reads, an organization that builds libraries within prisons across the country to provide a physical space where those incarcerated can read and dream together.

Today on the show, Dwayne joins Brittany to discuss how books and language can help us transform our reality. 

You can learn more about Dwayne's journey in his documentary, March Forth. 

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Would you pay for an app that might encourage your worst impulses?

Some users are asking themselves the same question as Meta rolls out Instagram Plus, a new suite of features that promises users the opportunity to 'deepen your relationships.' But what do these features say about the way we interact with each other online, and how might they reflect our deepest anxieties back at us? To find out, Brittany is joined by Tatum Hunter, writer and journalist covering digital privacy and internet culture.

Want more on tech and social media?

The hidden money financing your favorite songs
Who needs to know where you are?

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Have our favorite shows and movies shaped the way we think about abortion?

Hollywood has a huge impact of how we understand abortion. It can drive a plot, like in Dirty Dancing, or inspire conversations about who gets abortions, like in the television series Maude. It can also be dramatized – turning a common medical procedure into something good, bad, or anything in between, depending on who is telling the story and how. Brittany Luse chats with Janet Goldwater, a director of the documentary Hollywood Does Abortion, and Steph Herold at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) to understand how Hollywood handles, or mishandles the topic of abortion.

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“Baby woman” is the girlboss’s Wario. 

“Baby woman” is a term coined by Shannon Keating in a piece for The Cut to describe a particular kind of affect some women have: it’s not just girlishness, but also some abdication of adult responsibility. And Shannon’s seen some baby women behavior out in the culture, from Lena Dunham to Amanda Batula. But what drives some women to be baby? And what do they get out of it? 

To find out, Brittany is joined by Shannon Keating, freelance writer, and Ashley Reese, writer, culture critic, and author of the Bad Brain Substack. 

For more episodes on the women’s relationships to themselves and culture, check out:
The price women pay for being online
Numb girls & the humiliation of caring too much
"Girl Math" does not add up to financial freedom

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