Show Notes
The future of the chain restaurant is... chicken? I learned so much from this conversation with food systems (and chain restaurant) expert Austin Frerick — from how Sysco maintains its restaurant supremacy (and what Sysco "tastes" like) to which chain restaurants have significantly changed in quality (Wendy's) and are on the verge of extinction (also Wendy's). Did you know what makes a chain restaurant resistant to suckage? The answer will and will not surprise you! This was such a fun, enlightening conversation — the sort that you'll think about every time you eat in or drive past a chain restaurant — and does exactly what we always hope for a Culture Study episode: it'll make you think a lot more about the (very everyday, very unassuming) world around you. Enjoy! GREAT NEWS: WE HAVE VERY GOOD EPISODE TRANSCRIPTS NOW! They come out within 24 hours of the pod — just come back and click here. We pay an actual human for help with these, so thank you for either being a paid subscriber or listening to the ads that make this model possible!If you're a paid subscriber and haven't yet set up your subscriber RSS feed in your podcast player, here's the EXTREMELY easy how-to .And if you're having any other issues with your Patreon subscription — please get in touch! Email me at annehelenpetersen @ gmail OR submit a request to Patreon Support. Thanks to the sponsors of today's episode!Use code CULTURE at jonesroadbeauty.com to get a Free Shimmer Face Oil with your first purchase!Go to https://zbiotics.com/CULTURESTUDY and use CULTURESTUDY at checkout for 15% off any first time orders of ZBiotics probiotics.Get an additional 20% off better plants and better growing at FastGrowingTrees.com using the code CULTURE at checkout.Get 15% off your first order of cleaning products by going to Blueland.com/CULTUREShow Notes:Learn more about Austin Frerick's work here: https://www.austinfrerick.com/Buy Barons (and get links to a whole bunch of excerpts) here: https://www.austinfrerick.com/baronsThe episode of Odd Lots with Austin as the guest (it's so good) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mega-corporations-that-control-what-americans-eat/id1056200096?i=1000650703441The Top 250 US Chain Restaurants (as of 2025): https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/top-500-2025-rankingThis is a very fawning look at the history of Simplot (which we mention briefly) but you'll get the larger Baron moves: https://www.readtrung.com/p/jr-simplot-became-a-billionaire-sellingA history of frozen food in America: Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in AmericaRevisit our episode from last year on how private equity ruins everythingWe're currently looking for your questions for future episodes about:WHITE LADY HAIR! Cultural critic Sarah Mesle will be joining us to talk about her new book Tangled: Seven Iconic Moments in White Women's Hair and What They Tell Us About Power, Pleasure, and Complicity. If there's a white lady whose hair interests you, I guarantee you it interests Sarah, too. We can talk about specific celebrity/actress haircuts but also specific styles/trends. I cannot wait for this one. EMILY BLUNT! (and secondary characters becoming primary ones!) with Xochitl Gonzalez — obvi we're gonna talk a lot about Devil Wears Prada and 2000s-era striving but you can take this in so many directions BOOMER MOMS! Tracy Clark-Flory and I need your questions about why boomer moms (very broad designation here, I realize) are the way they are — we're specifically going to talk about the constrictions of growing up in '60s/'70s U.S., particularly around femininity, race, education, body image, employment, and motherhood. This one's gonna be really good, I know it. INTERGENERATIONAL FRIENDSHIP with Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less (and Villa Coco, a new book with an intergenerational friendship at its center). You can ask questions about how to find intergenerational friends, how to sustain those friendships, what people seem to love so much about them, wherever
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The third installment in our BACK TO SCHOOL Fashion Series is here! Corinne Fay is one of my favorite style writers — in part because she's writing for people that "Style" has largely ignored. She's out here finding the clothes that are actually inclusively sized, that work on all sorts of bodies, and that fit with your vision of self and gender. Her work delights me and expands my own style repertoire, and I think you, too, will be delighted as we work through so many listener questions about the everyday problems of just getting dressed. How do you figure out your style vs. what media has said should be your style? How do you find your sense of style postpartum? How do you deal when shopping for clothes feels like distress? How do you figure out your late-in-life queer style? We tackle them all.
This episode is so chaotic! (Also very fun, very interesting, and obviously very smart.) All of our best laid plans for how it would go went straight out the window — that's what happens when you talk to two of the smartest, most introspective personalities in podcasting right now. We talk about NPR Voice (and how it's continuing to change), ticks of rural speech, what people actually mean when they say 'I didn't know you were Black' or 'I didn't know you were gay,' and so much more. This episode is a real just trust me — I hope you laugh as much as we did.
This is not an episode about whether or not you should delete your social media accounts — we've had that conversation, and we'll keep having that conversation. Instead, this is an episode about all the weird habits we've developed around posting: posting on vacation, posting (or not posting) when sick or on leave, posting about your everyday life to your 200 followers like you're an influencer. It's about what compelled us to start posting in the first place — all the small pleasures of knowing things about people — and how those pleasures have been wrung out of the process. Social media taught us a different way of telling the story of our lives. But now those stories feel dystopian and uncanny. Is it the end of posting as we knew it? Kathryn Jezer-Morton, author of the fantastic new book The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything, joins the pod to work through these questions and more.
It feels like a real symptom of the modern age that an article of clothing can just start... following you around online. There it is, in your Instagram feed (again, and again, and again). But it's also there in between paragraphs while you're reading the New York Times, or suggesting you click while you're sifting through your Buy Nothing group on Facebook, or accosting you every tenth video on TikTok. It'd be one thing if these things were cute... but so many of them feel like they're trying to make fetch (or a barrel leg) happen. I'm so thrilled to have veteran fashion journalist Cheryl Wischhover here to explain how an item of clothing goes viral (we tackle so many of your specific asks) and how virality, e-commerce, and influencing intertwine. This is an absolutely fascinating ep — I can't wait to hear your thoughts! Thanks to the sponsors of today's episode: Machine Washable Rugs, Made Better. For a limited time only, our listeners get 10% off + free shipping at tumbleliving.com/CULTURE Ollie. Feed the Obsession. Go to ollie.com/culture and use code culture to get 70% off your first box! Listen to rePROS Fight Back wherever you get your podcasts. Get $35 off your first box of wild-caught, sustainable seafood—delivered right to your door. Go to: https://www.wildalaskan.com/CULTURE Show Notes: Strongly suggest subscribing to Cheryl's newsletter, Good for Your Age Her piece on the Ruti pants that made me want to pod with her immediately Cheryl's Bloomberg piece on how affiliate links are even taking over group chats This is the second entry in our 'Back to School' Fashion Episodes — check out our previous episode on All Your Questions About Personal Style, Answered We're currently looking for your questions on the following topics: WTF IS GOING ON WITH TELEVISION RIGHT NOW with Phil Maciak and Kathryn VanArendonk — podcasts-as-television, Netflix's Season Season Problem, what the networks aren't learning from Widow's Bay, ask us more! WOMEN LEAVING THE (CHRISTIAN) CHURCH — what are you seeing, what are you curious about, what are they leaving for? VENMO CULTURE: People who won't let you treat, people who say they're gonna Venmo you after you put a big dinner on your card and then don't, the utility (and annoyance) of Splitwise, Venmo-ing for a $4 coffee... convince Melody that there's an episode here LOW KEY SUPER RICH PEOPLE — ever since I read this piece on 'American Gentry' I've wanted to do a big episode about how the real (diffuse) wealth in this country is people who own care dealerships, HVAC companies, and other "pass-through" S-Corps. How does that wealth persist, what power does it wield, why do they vote the way they do, WHO ARE THEY, REALLY? (We're talking with some economists who've really crunched the numbers on this, so it's gonna be fascinating) THE LATEST IN BOOK TRENDS with Alyssa Morris (from our very popular BookTok episode!). Ask Alyssa about whatever you're seeing in the book world: covers, genres, how it's handling fan-fic, BookTok trends..... JOURNO-INFLUENCERS with s.e. smith — yep, another episode on influencers, this time on how they're changing the norms of journalism. What journo-influencers do you follow and what makes them compelling? What's the future of journalism when it's wed to this style of promotion? Is it actually anything new? Ask away! Anything you need advice for/want musings about for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything — it’s literally the name of the segment.
There are eight books in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, and people have bought fourteen million of them. First published online, then self-published on Amazon, with an audiobook version that people won't shut up about, Dungeon Crawler Carl has become the fantasy phenomenon of the year — and earned the moniker of "the book that all your [dude] friends who don't read are actually reading." I went in skeptical: video game fiction is decidedly not my genre. But there were enough people in the Culture Study universe reading and loving them that I knew there was something going on — with the style, the worldview, the genre play — that would be the makings of a good podcast episode. (I just didn't expect to like it quite as much as I did — as you'll hear in the ep, I'm on now on Book Four!) If you're deep in DCC and want to talk about what works (and doesn't), we go there. If you're mystified by the popularity, we go there too. And we try really, really hard to make this an episode that'll still be interesting to people who haven't read the books, but want to think more about why these books are so popular. Also discussed: Princess Donut as child sidekick, editing (or lack thereof), Katia's surprising arc, whether this book is for teens, Foot Buffs, D&D, a particular stylistic tick, Wenatchee in-jokes, and truly so much more. (And if you'd like access to this paid podcast-subscriber-only episode, you can upgrade your Culture Study subscription SO EASILY here. If you have any issues, just email me at annehelenpetersen @ gmail dot com) Quick Show Notes: As always, follow Margaret on Instagram and subscribe to Two Bossy Dames The piece I repeatedly reference: "You deserve better literature than Dungeon Crawler Carl" The best thing I've read on Dungeon Crawler Carl, no question: "Left in the Dungeon"