Boston Culture with Josh Gondelman

Here at Culture Study we’re launching a new series on culture of place — it could be a state, a region, a city, so long as it has place-ness. The first in the series features Josh Gondelman, one of the place-iest comedians I know, and exactly what we’re looking for when it comes to co-hosts in this series: people who love a place dearly, who are deeply intimate with its peccadilloes, but who can also generate some analytical distance from that place as we talk about insider/outsider dynamics, how race and class intersect with a place’s understanding of itself, accents, tells, code-switching, cliches, and so much more.

For this episode, listeners gave us so many excellent questions — from three-way beef and the allure of Dunkin, to how a city does or does not jettison a racist reputation. And because our co-host is Josh, it’s also very funny. I can’t wait to argue (with grace) about Boston in the comments with all of you.

Thank you to the sponsors of today’s episode!

• Get 15% off OneSkin with the code CULTURE at https://www.oneskin.co/

• Ancient Nutrition is offering 25% off your first order when you go to AncientNutrition.com/CULTURE

Show Notes:

• Subscribe to Josh’s newsletter which I promise will be the best thing in your inbox every Monday:

• Follow Josh on Instagram

• The North Shore Roast Beef Sandwich: a Scientific Study (this is WONDERFUL additional reading if Josh’s description of the three-way piqued your interest and/or you already love the three-way)

• I love Josh’s piece on “The Nirvana of Ben Affleck” from 2021

• The Dunkin Robe in question

• Josh’s new pug Maggie!!!!

We’re currently looking for your questions for future episodes about:

• What 2000s pop culture did to women’s understanding of themselves

• What’s going on in AMERICAN PARENTING CULTURE (broadly conceived) right now (with Melissa Wenner Moyer!)

• TEXAS Culture, MONTANA Culture, and MONTREAL/Québécois Culture for our ongoing culture-of-place series (two different eps don’t worry)

• Evangelical Summer Camp, past and present

• How/Why Private Equity is Fucking Everything Up

• Dark Academia (as in, the literary genre)

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segment!

• As always, you can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here

For this week’s discussion: How did this discussion mesh with your own experience/understanding of Boston? And the question we’re going to keep returning to throughout this series: how do clock people as insider/outsider where you’re from?