Binchtopia

This week, the girlies are in a place of tour, reporting live from Binchicago! From the technical difficulties and gonjus gowns of live shows to meeting all the insanely impressive binchies (and their radicalized family members), they reflect on whether or not alcohol is poison, the beauty of Zanies, and the haunting image of a backpack hiked to the TOP! Digressions include: twin ethics, binchie-submitted icks, and the emotional significance of a backyard. We’re on tour!!!! Find tickets at (https://linktr.ee/binchtopia) This is a teaser for a Patreon-exclusive episode. To listen to the full episode and access over 50 bonus episodes, mediasodes, and monthly zoom hangs visit patreon.com/binchtopia and become a patron today.  

This episode was originally released on December 31, 2024 as a Patreon exclusive, and we’re unlocking it for you to make the most of the extra week in July. Become a patron today to support the show, keep us ad-free and unlock our backlog of over 50 bonus episodes and mediasodes at patreon.com/binchtopia. We’re on tour!!!! Find tickets at (https://linktr.ee/binchtopia) BOOKS Rouge by Mona Awad Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner The Searcher by Tana French The Hunter by Tana French Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliott Long Bright River by Liz Moore Freedom by Jonathan Franzen TV Say Nothing Monsters: The Lyle and Eric Menendez Story The Jinx Breaking Bad MOVIES Subservience Tangerine Sugarcane Hanna My Old Ass Sweethearts How to Survive a Plague ARTICLES The Invisible Man Bad Influence The Despair of the Young JULIA'S BEST OF THE YEAR Book - Rabbit Heart by Kristine S. Ervin Movie - When the Levees Broke TV - Baby Reindeer, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Album - Charm by Clairo ELIZA'S BEST OF THE YEAR Book - The Door by Magda Szabo Movie - Problemista TV - Breaking Bad Album - Manning Fireworks by MJ Lenderman, Power by Illuminati Hotties

This week, the girlies are hairy on main to address the question: why are we so obsessed with being smooth? From ancient sugaring practices to TikTok lasers, they trace the cultural history of body hair and explore how whiteness, misogyny, hygiene myths, and beauty marketing all converged to make your stubble a moral failing. Digressions include Eliza’s ongoing war with air travel, Lena Dunham’s latest press tour, and non-qualified med spas that will definitely leave you botched. This episode was produced by Julia Hava and Eliza McLamb and edited by Allison Hagan. Research assistance from Kylie Finnigan. To support the podcast on Patreon and access 50+ bonus episodes, mediasodes, zoom hangouts and more, visit patreon.com/binchtopia and become a patron today. SOURCES: A full Brazilian or all natural: understanding the influences on young women's decision to remove their pubic hair  ASU professor encourages students to defy body hair norms  Body Hair Removal: The 'Mundane' Production of Normative Femininity.  Caucasian Female Body Hair and American Culture  Darker-skinned people urged to take extra precautions as laser hair removal industry booms  From flint razors to lasers: a timeline of hair removal methods Hair or Bare?: The History of American Women and Hair Removal, 1914-1934 History of Hair Removal  How the beauty industry convinced women to shave their legs  How Much A Beauty Editor's Hair Removal Routine Actually Costs  Male Stigmatization of Female Body Hair Mapping 'Gross' Bodies: The Regulatory Politics of Disgust  Plucked: A History of Hair Removal by Rebecca Herzig ‘Plucked’: Race, gender, science, medicine converge in history of hair removal Pubic Hair Grooming Prevalence and Motivation Among Women in the United States  Shaving and fashion: A storied history The Casualties of Women's War on Body Hair The Hair-Raising History of Women's Body Hair  The History of Female Hair Removal  The Naked Truth: Why Humans Have No Fur The Strange Secret History Of Hair Removal Will Blow Your Mind  Trends in body hair removal as depicted through art UNSHAVED resistance & revolution in women’s body hair politics  Why women feel pressured to shave

This week, the girlies are joined by writer, cultural critic, and internet princess Rayne Fisher-Quann for a bonus follow-up to our literacy episode. We unpack Rayne’s recent essay on “poser ethics” and ask: is pretending to have read Dostoevsky really that bad? Are there different kinds of reading, and is one better than the other? Have we fully reckoned with the cultural impact of a generation of men raised on Diary of a Wimpy Kid? Digressions include everyday activities that bring us closer to lead poisoning, a crucial Nerds Gummy Cluster taste test, and a deep dive into our personal neuroses. Check out some of Rayne’s work here: https://internetprincess.substack.com/ This is a teaser for a Patreon-exclusive episode. To listen to the full episode and access over 50 bonus episodes, mediasodes, and monthly zoom hangs visit patreon.com/binchtopia and become a patron today. We’re going on tour!!!! Find tickets at https://linktr.ee/binchtopia

This week, the girlies are armed with their No. 2 pencils to ask: what’s the current state of literacy, how did we get here, and are the kids okay??? They unpack how we went from clay tablets to BookTok fairy smut and trace how phonics, poverty, and the policy failures of the Bush administration shaped how we learn to read. Digressions include Zohran Mamdani socialist prom, the power of drawing portals, and empathy for Travis Kelce. This episode was produced by Julia Hava and Eliza McLamb and edited by Allison Hagan. Research assistance from Kylie Finnigan. We’re going on tour!!!! Find tickets at https://linktr.ee/binchtopia SOURCES: A Brief History of Summer Reading  A Chapter a Day – Association of Book Reading with Longevity A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel  American Children’s Reading Skills Reach New Lows  America’s literacy crisis isn’t what you think  Ancient customer-feedback technology lasts millennia Are men’s reading habits truly a national crisis?  BookTok: A new era in the history of reading  BookTok Statistics  BookTok: The Dark Horse of the Economy Can Reading Make You Happier? Children and young people's reading in 2025  Exploring BookTok’s impact on literature   How BookTok is Reviving the Era of Physical Bookselling  How is the popularity of BookTok impacting the publishing industry?  How Literacy Became a Powerful Weapon in the Fight to End Slavery  How One Woman Became the Scapegoat for America’s Reading Crisis  How the Second World War Made America Literate  How TikTok Became a Best-Seller Machine  Introduction to the Original Edition Literacy and History   Illiteracy: “Another form of slavery”  Literacy Rate in the US 2025: Top Picks National Reading Panel - Teaching Children to Read  No Child Left Behind Act of 2001  No Child Left Behind: An Overview   Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed at Fifty  PEDAGOGY of the OPPRESSED by Paolo Freire  Report finds ‘shocking and dispiriting’ fall in children reading for pleasure  Share of TikTok users reading more books because of #BookTok in the United States as of May 2023, by state  School Summer Reading Lists: A Brief and Nerdy History  Sold a Story Soldiers Literacy Training Collection  The History of Summer Reading  The Influence of BookTok on Literary Criticisms and Diversity  The Invention of Summer Reading and the Birth of the Beach Read  The Literacy Crisis in the U.S. is Deeply Concerning—and Totally Preventable  The Nation's Report Card  The Rise and Fall of Vibes-Based Literacy  The Subversive Joy of BookTok  This is how much the global literacy rate grew over 200 years  Why I Won’t Quit BookTok 

This week, the girlies are cozied up in their Barbie sleeping bags, reflecting on the innocent beauty, brutal hierarchy, and core memories of sleepovers past in honor of the upcoming Summer Sleepover Tour. From the absolute shame of calling your mom to pick you up early to aspiring to be THAT girl with a basement, they unpack everything that made sleepovers a defining girlhood ritual. Digressions include: nerds rope slander, the power of children writing letters, and an immersive Bat Mitzvah experience. We’re going on tour!!!! Find tickets at https://linktr.ee/binchtopia This is a teaser for a Patreon-exclusive episode. To listen to the full episode and access over 50 bonus episodes, mediasodes, and monthly zoom hangs visit patreon.com/binchtopia and become a patron today.  

For pride month, the girlies mount a defense against one of the largest threats to queer people today: transphobia. They trace the long history of trans existence and its erasure, unpack how moral panic is used to justify control, why transphobia exists on both the right and the left, and how the freedom to live outside the binary can liberate us from other systems of oppression. Digressions include: the highs and lows of plant parenthood, our no-phone summer so far, and a new candy shaking up the scene. This episode was produced by Julia Hava and Eliza McLamb and edited by Livi Burdette. Research assistance from Kylie Finnigan. To support the podcast on Patreon and access 50+ bonus episodes, mediasodes, zoom hangouts and more, visit patreon.com/binchtopia and become a patron today. RESOURCES: https://transharmreduction.org/ https://www.thetrevorproject.org/  https://translifeline.org/ https://transequality.org/  https://transgenderlawcenter.org https://pflag.org/get-support/ https://transreads.org/  https://www.elevatedaccess.org/ https://www.pointofpride.org/resource-library SOURCES: 2025 anti-trans bills tracker  A History of Transphobia in the Medical Establishment  A Lost Piece of Trans History  A systematic review of TERF behaviour online in relation to sociopsychological group dynamics Advancing Transgender Justice: Illuminating Trans Lives Behind and Beyond Bars  Anti-trans legislation has never been about protecting children’ Anti-Trans Moral Panics Endanger All Young People Better mental health found among transgender people who started hormones as teens Beyond Gender: Indigenous Perspectives, Muxe  Beyond moral panic: how governments are ignoring centuries of trans history  Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton Clayman Conversations: Three scholars examine the TERF Industrial Complex Fact Sheet: Transgender Participation in Sports  Gender Identity in Weimar Germany  Gender-Affirming Hormone Therapy and Depressive Symptoms Among Transgender Adults   Impact of Ban on Gender-Affirming Care on Transgender Minors  India’s Relationship with the Third Gender  Introduction: TERFs, Gender-Critical Movements, and Postfascist Feminisms  Mental health benefits associated with gender-affirming surgery Mental Health Outcomes in Transgender and Nonbinary Youths Receiving Gender-Affirming Care Marxism, moral panic and the war on trans people  “Moving Towards the Ugly” My Words to Victor Frankenstein by Susan Stryker Online Anti-LGBTQ Hate Terms Defined: “Transvestigation”  On Liking Women by Andrea Long-Chu Othering, peaking, populism and moral panics: The reactionary strategies of organised transphobia Responses to Janice G. Raymond's The Transsexual Empire The “Empire” Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto The Epidemic of Violence Against the Transgender & Gender-Expansive Community in the U.S.  The Forgotten History of the World's First Trans Clinic How historians are documenting the lives of transgender people  The History of Two-Spirit Folks  The Institute of Sexology and the Erasure of Transgender History  The semi-sacred ‘third gender’ of South Asia       The Supreme Court’s incoherent new attack on trans rights, explained Theorist Susan Stryker on One of Her Most Groundbreaking Essays, 25 Years Later  The rise of anti-trans “radical” feminists, explained To protect gender-affirming care, we must learn from trans history Transgender History by Susan Stryker Transgender Lives in the Middle Ages through Art, Literature, and Medicine  TV and films have long taught audiences transphobia What science tells us about transgender athletes  Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law - More than 40% of transgender adults in the US have attempted suicide  Woman says she was brutally attacked in Carpentersville, Illinois because she's a lesbian

The girlies return from their summer break with a chatty episode recapping their travels, including our bodies yet again keeping the score, a shocking Alec Baldwin sighting, and the transcendent beauty of Nerds Gummy Clusters. Digressions include: Aura ring-induced health spirals, the evilness of snoring, and Baskin-Robbins’ haunting Trolli milkshake. This is a teaser for a Patreon-exclusive episode. To listen to the full episode and access over 50 bonus episodes, mediasodes, and monthly zoom hangs visit patreon.com/binchtopia and become a patron today.  

Eliza welcomes back bestie of the pod and religious scholar Kate Twomey for a tender, sprawling conversation shaped by your questions about religion and spirituality. They discuss the alchemical origins of “soulmates,” the fine line between manifesting and spiritual psychosis, coming back to community, and much more. Check out some of Kate’s work here: https://kyoteworld.substack.com/ This is a teaser for a Patreon-exclusive episode. To listen to the full episode and access over 50 bonus episodes, mediasodes, and monthly zoom hangs visit patreon.com/binchtopia and become a patron today. We’re going on tour!!!! Find tickets at https://linktr.ee/binchtopia

The hosts dive into the fascinating world of rage bait, revealing how it manipulates our emotions to keep us engaged online. They tackle the emotional toll of outrage culture, drawing parallels to historical art movements and the evolution of shock in media. The conversation also explores the economics of hate, where societal fear sparks unexpected support in politics. With a nod to the need for 'joy bait' amid negativity, they also question whether the act of being a woman can be labeled as rage bait. Engaging, insightful, and a bit cheeky!