Who Are The Heartthrobs of 2026???

There are few things I like to do more than argue about the fine gradations of Who Is A Star Today And Why. I love the categorization element (what's the difference between a heartthrob and a sex symbol??) but I especially love thinking about what the actors we designate as heartthrobs tell us about our current understandings of masculinity. Is Pedro Pascal a heartthrob or a boyfriend? Is Leonardo DiCaprio the Eternal Heartthrob? Are the stars of Heated Rivalry the Official Heartthrobs of 2026? Do our heartthrobs age with us, or are they eternally 22? Romance author and male celeb aficionado Adib Khorram joins me to work through all of the above and so much more.

Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party (via Getty)

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Show Notes:

• Learn more about Adib and find links to all his books: https://adibkhorram.com/
• Order Adib's most recent book One Word, Six Letters: https://bookshop.org/a/56144/9781250405555
• And pre-order his next adult romance, Isn't He Romantic?: https://bookshop.org/p/books/isn-t-he-romantic-adib-khorram/3c6c724552db372c?ean=9781538739594
• Follow Adib on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adibkhorram
• The BBC Article we reference about heartthrobs through the ages: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20191218-timothe-chalamet-and-hollywood-heartthrobs-through-the-ages
• Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny!!! https://bloodknife.com/everyone-beautiful-no-one-horny/
• I reference Emma Straub's book American Fantasy: https://bookshop.org/a/56144/9798217046850
• Strongly recommend this essay collection if you want to think a lot more about the masculinity of Rudolph Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks in the 1920s: https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/idols-of-modernity/9780813547329
• As promised, the photo of when Pedro Pascal visited the BuzzFeed office in 2014:

We're currently looking for your questions on the following topics:

• HOW WE SHARE ON SOCIAL MEDIA TODAY — how we narrativize our lives, what's changed, what's weird, what's still important and keeping us on this apps....with the great Kathryn Jezer-Morton
• THE NEXUS OF LLMs/A.I. AND CREATIVITY: A.I. Boosters argues that LLMS can free us for more creative endeavors — or "facilitate" our creative work. THOUGHTS???? (This one's with the brilliant Vauhini Vara, whose work grapples with these questions in a way I've never seen before). Hopefully this piece on how A.I. keeps wasting my G-D time will spark some questions on your end.
• CONVENIENCE CULTURE: From dinner to groceries to daily news to hailing a cab to finding a playlist-- we're used to getting a lot of things we want in a "convenient" way. What's that doing to us and our society? How have you embraced or eschewed convenience in your life?
• WOMEN'S FITNESS INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. As our co-host Zoe Rom puts it: "Women are told they need to do fasting, creatine, lifting, fueling, and recovery differently than men. Sometimes the science backs it. More often the "different" is a marketing mechanism: invent a gendered problem, sell a gendered protocol, collect the markup." What's going on here? Where have you seen it, what pisses you off about it... take this wherever you'd like.

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