Spotify didn’t just change how we listen to music — it changed what a genre even is. In this episode, producer and rapper Quinn reflects on being thrust into the spotlight at age 15 as one of the breakout faces of Spotify’s meteoric Hyperpop playlist.. Then, music journalist Kieran Press-Reynolds breaks down how Spotify’s made-up micro-genres—like Goblincore ... Show More
Feb 26
Send Pics? Roblox Wants to Know Your Age
Roblox is one of the most popular gaming platforms for kids, with millions of young gamers playing user-created games. It’s also been heavily criticized for its track record on child safety, and is now facing more than 80 lawsuits alleging child abuse and grooming. In response, t ... Show More
34m 19s
Jul 2025
Shani Adia Evans, "We Belong Here: Gentrification, White Spacemaking, and a Black Sense of Place" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Although Portland, Oregon, is sometimes called “America’s Whitest city,” Black residents who grew up there made it their own. The neighborhoods of Northeast Portland, also called “Albina,” were a haven for and a hub of Black community life. But between 1990 and 2010, Albina chang ... Show More
32m 37s
Jun 2024
Richard E. Ocejo, "Sixty Miles Upriver: Gentrification and Race in a Small American City" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Newburgh is a small postindustrial city of some twenty-eight thousand people located sixty miles north of New York City in the Hudson River Valley. Like many other similarly sized cities across America, it has been beset with poverty and crime after decades of decline, with few o ... Show More
1 h
Oct 2024
Candace Owens, Marc Lamont Hill and Lord Jamar On Diddy & Kamala Harris
While the world waits for the next big revelations on Diddy, pundits, critics, celebrities and fans are all speculating over who knew about his crimes, and crucially, did nothing. Candace Owens and academic Marc Lamont Hill discuss the scandal, focusing particularly on whether th ... Show More
59m 49s
May 2022
Sean J. Drake, "Academic Apartheid: Race and the Criminalization of Failure in an American Suburb" (U California Press, 2022)
In Academic Apartheid: Race and the Criminalization of Failure in an American Suburb (U California Press, 2022), sociologist Sean J. Drake addresses long-standing problems of educational inequality from a nuanced perspective, looking at how race and class intersect to affect mode ... Show More
55m 27s
Jun 2024
Alvin Hall's other America
Writer Alvin Hall returns to Wakulla County, Florida, the world he grew up in, to shed light on the political present and share a haunting portrait of a disappearing way of life. It has long been deeply rural, a place of unspoilt wilderness and incredible natural beauty. But it h ... Show More
49m 26s