I could talk about Nicole Kidman for hours. Very few Hollywood actors have had careers this varied, this delightful, this weird — oh, and she’s also been married to Tom Cruise. She manages to be both chronically underestimated and overrated, and she’s recently found herself in a slew of roles where she embodies a slew of different rich white ladies, each miserable in their own specific ways. For this episode, I’m joined by the great Sam Sanders to talk about our own Kidman Syllabi and answer your questions about her most recent roles, (not) aging onscreen, and what makes her such an effective miserable rich person.

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Almost all of the public conversations about sex testing and sports — or, more to the point, who should be allowed to participate in women’s sports — are pretty bad. In many if not most cases, they’re outright transphobic; even in the “best” cases, they’re still pretty ham-fisted. But Rose Eveleth is having a very different sort of public conversation about sex testing in their new podcast, Tested — one that looks to the way these tests affect the athletes subject to them, and how the concept of fairness in women’s sports has become so fraught. For today’s episode, Rose answers your questions about the history of women’s sports gender panic, why men aren’t subject to the same sex testing, and how the Paralympics imagines “fairness” in profoundly different ways. I absolutely loved this conversation. I think you will too.

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“Most people who complain about BookTok have never seen a BookTok.” Alyssa Morris drops that insight about two-thirds of the way through the episode, and it’s such a good point that I almost want to make it the title of the episode. Most people have an idea of what BookTok is (people talking about books on TikTok) but no real understanding of the immensity of BookTok. It’s talking about what you’ve read, sure, but it’s also about recommendations, and performance, and the aesthetics of reading culture — and the criticisms of it have a lot more to do with weird ideas about what reading (or talking about reading!) “should” look like.

If you’re interested in reading culture, you’ll be interested in this episode — full stop. Let it surprise you! And make sure to check out Alyssa’s BookTok newsletter, which has quickly become one of my favorite reads of the week.

Join the ranks of paid subscribers and get bonus content, access to the discussion threads, ad-free episodes, and the knowledge that you're supporting an indie pod trying to make its way in the world. If you're already a subscriber-- thank you! Join us in the discussion thread for this episode! Got a question or idea for a future episode? Let us know here.