Love is Blind as a Cultural Skeleton Key

Nov 5, 2025

Audie Cornish, a journalist and broadcaster known for her work on CNN This Morning and The Assignment, joins to dissect the cultural layers of *Love Is Blind*. She explores how the show's format compresses modern dating, making it uniquely binge-worthy. Audie highlights the ethical concerns of casting contestants with serious life issues and analyzes the evolving dynamics of gender roles across seasons. She also reflects on how the show mirrors post-pandemic cultural shifts and the impact of performative identities on reality TV.

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INSIGHT

Dating Compressed Into A TV Timeline

Love Is Blind compresses the entire arc of modern dating into a six-week TV timeline, intensifying emotions and decisions.
That compression reveals cultural patterns around commitment, performance, and relationship expectations.

ANECDOTE

Start With Season One

Audie recommends starting with Love Is Blind season one because its romance felt more genuine and raw.
She warns later seasons are more performative and harder to root for.

INSIGHT

Casting Keeps Empathy At Bay

The show casts conventionally attractive people to reduce viewer empathy and permit dehumanizing spectacle.
Producers use beauty to make exploitation feel safer and less morally fraught for audiences.

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I've never resisted Love is Blind so much as run out of time for it... but then Audie Cornish said she wanted to come on the show to talk about it, and I said: I will watch any reality show, in its entirety, to talk to you about it. (Cornish was previously best known as the co-host of NPR's All Things Considered; now she is best known as the host of CNN's early morning newscast and The Assignment with Audie Cornish). I did my homework and thought I had smart things to say about Love is Blind and then Audie had way, way smarter things to say, specifically about the ways in which this current season functions as a skeleton key for the ideologies battling for dominance in our cultural moment.

Even if you've never watched an episode of Love is Blind, there's a LOT here about how people perform their identities and politics and relationship needs that will snag you — and if you have watched this season (or any season), you're gonna love it even more. What a privilege to have Audie Cornish on-air cackling over reality television, and what a delight!

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Show Notes:

Go listen to Audie's fantastic podcast The Assignment
Follow Audie on Instagram
You can also catch Audie as the anchor of CNN This Morning, airing weekdays from 6-7AM ET and streaming in the CNN app
I really appreciate the Love is Blind Reddit and I know Audie and Melody do too
No I am not uploading my Laguna Beach grad school paper what is wrong with you the writing is horrific

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

Contemporary Dating Culture!!! Why does it suck, how can it suck less! (with Jonquilyn Hill)
Eldest daughter discourse
The sociology of NAMES (naming trends, naming assumptions)
WEIRD ENGLISH WORDS (where do they come from!) with Colin Gorrie, who writes explainers like this one on the word DOG
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: We can obviously talk about Love is Blind, but I'd also love to hear how you think other reality shows are reflecting the conflicting ideologies of this moment.