It's Been a Minute

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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Monoculture is so back…in more ways than one. 

From record breaking blockbusters, to nail-biting sports wins, to the chaos that is Love Island - there has been something for everyone this summer. 

But while we were in the streets rooting for the Knicks, following the World Cup, or waiting for IMAX tickets… heatwaves, wildfire smog, and explosive diarrhea also made notable appearances. Apparently, monoculture can be good, bad, and everything in between.  

Friend of the show and senior correspondent at Vox.com, Alex Abad-Santos, joins It’s Been a Minute to unpack the highs and lows of our deep desire for monoculture. 

Read Alex’s article, Welcome to America’s post-World Cup hangover, on Vox.com right now. 

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