Not a single review this past week?? Blasphemy by absentia! Good thing it took me a million years before writing this review. Can I update my review every week? That would be weird. Material girls is my preferred way to hear of and learn about pop cultural things! More! I want more! Thank you, Material Girls <3

This podcast feeds my soul. The discernment that Hannah and Marcelle bring to pop culture helps me to embrace my radical side.

I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to review this podcast because it is my absolute favorite and brings me so much joy and knowledge! The content is so interesting and funny and I also just love the dynamic of the whole team. I have gotten so many book/tv/music recommendations from them that I can’t even remember what was recommended by my real life friends versus my podcast friends. Paying for the Patreon is also so worth it! I’m a history teacher and I dream to one day figure out how to incorporate an episode into class, maybe something about the Gulf war?? Anyway bye love you guys xoxo

Listening to Material Girls is like getting a burnt CD in 2004 from your cool friend. There’s some bangers that you recognize (Foucault! Said! Butler!) but it’s mostly obscure B-sides and indie artists that blow your mind.

I followed Hannah over from a different podcast I listen to and now I like this one even more! Hannah and Marcelle are so smart and funny and have (unfortunately?) inspired me with so many topics I want to bring into my gender and adaptation literature courses now! They perfectly blend theory with the objects and media I know my students are interacting with every day, and I have learned so much from them. P.S. Even though I’ve looked them both up, I can’t stop picturing Hannah as Sue Perkins (who is definitely also British?!)—please don’t hold this against me.

Listening to this podcast is one of my favorite parts of the week. I love considering aspects of culture from the lens they bring and having the opportunity to learn more about theory. I often talk about the episodes as the conversations linger in my brain. I even brought some into a sw graduate class I had the opportunity to teach which was a fun conversation. One of my favorite episodes is Hamilton x Hagiography but I appreciate them all. Also deeply appreciate the commitment to the truth as someone who did thing “hydrangeas aren’t red” 😂

I love this show, and am always so down for whatever critical theory thing is going on, but I never would have watched Heated Rivalry if not for this episode. It was, for me, the perfect framing for the show and maybe the books later on. Similarly, the Hunger Games episode was one of my favorite (is that the right word?) deep dives on all of the things we are looking at (and watching) right now. Just such super solid work. Thanks for having these conversations.

I’ve loved this show since its beginning but have never left a review. This episode was SO GOOD! I literally was saying “YES!” over and over like I was in a revival meeting. I’ve loved smutty fanfic for years and have always felt like it was radical. It gave me such a completely new, healthy understanding of my own body and sexuality outside of my millennial upbringing of purity rings and Cosmopolitan magazine. I love talking about fanfic to anyone who will listen and love that I now having some theory to back that up!

This is far and away my favorite podcast! Highly recommend if you’re someone who enjoys thinking deeply. Marcelle and Hannah’s insights shape how I see the world around me while making it feel like a good parasocial hang. The Barbie X Petrocapitalism episode in particular blew my mind, but they’re all great.

Absolutely love this show from the Harry Potter seasons to now. Slightly redeemed Harry Potter from the TERF dustbin for me. My favorite podcaster that writes about feminist dinosaurs :)

Hannah and Marcelle are super smart, funny, entertaining hosts who dive into so many zeitgeist-y pop culture phenomena while connecting them to historical perspectives, literary and political theory, and keeping me laughing the whole time. My favorite podcast!!!!

This is one of the shows I look forward to every week! I learn things and really enjoy the dash of silliness alongside

I listen to various podcasts on media and culture, but Material Girls is my favorite. Every episode is so well made. I can tell Marcelle, Hannah, and the rest of the team put so much TLC into each one. I also enjoy listening to them catching up and riffing. Their joy and laughter are so contagious! 10/10 recommend!

Two brilliant academics making me thinking expansively and critically about the pop culture landscape? Yes please.

Literally my favorite podcast of all time.

I have so much fun listening to Hannah and Marcelle. The blend of pop culture and critical theory is always interesting and I learn stuff (even if I only half remember some of the theories sometimes), so double cool! Give them a listen.

I started listening to Witch, Please episodes a couple of months ago and now go back and forth between the backlog and new episodes of Material Girls. This podcast is my FAVORITE of all time. I get so excited and passionate about what I learn from these fabulous folks that I immediately send episodes to just about everyone I know so I can talk about it with them. They talk about things that matter to pop-culture through a critical lens (and add their own personality and humor) which really makes it a conversation about things that ACTUALLY MATTER (to, like, the human experience and people on the margins). This show is fun, quirky, educational, hilarious, and deeply meaningful. I can’t recommend it enough!!!

I love that Material Girls usually makes me ponder and laugh all in the same episode. The hosts take topics that could be heavy or overwhelming and they add some thoughtful humor and analysis. There’s usually cultural connections I would have never thought but I end up continuing to think about!

Pretty funny how Hannah and Marcelle want to burn down all the institutions except for the ones that provide THEIR status and paychecks.

Love love love Marcelle and Hannah, but I miss Witch Please.

This is one of my fave podcasts—I especially love the rebooted Harry Potter run, but I’d honestly listen to Marcelle and Hannah talk about anything. I’m a queer disabled femme in an English PhD program (currently reading for my exams) and this podcast gives me hope that I can do academia while also being myself.

Great listen! Fascinating subject matter, I learn every time I listen. They have fun while discussing interesting topics in an in-depth manner. Definitely offers takes you won’t get from commercial media.

Love this love them finally I have found my people!

This is an incredible, charming, honest, and thoughtful podcast! So glad I heard about this podcast through Culture Study. Thank you both for helping me make sense of our zeitgesty world!

I listen to a lot of podcasts. Like 4-5 hours of podcasts per day. I’ve been obsessed with listening to this form of audio media since like 2008. So when I tell you that this is my very favorite podcast of all time—the PINNACLE of the form—know that I have listened to a lot of shows before coming to that opinion. I’m just oh-so-thrilled that they’ve rebooted! I loved the original version, and I’m loving the reboot. Congrats, and I hope you gain a much broader audience—you deserve to be extremely broadly listened to!

IMGONNACUMONYOU IMGONNACUMONYOU IMGONNACUMONYOU IMGONNACUMONYOU IMGONNACUMONYOU IMGONNACUMONYOU

Where has this podcast been all my life?! I love both the hosts and their brilliant and insightful ideas. I also love the array of topics and I feel like I learn so much from every episode. Keep up the good work!

Love the show! An incredibly funny, well-researched romp that consistently shifts how I see and think about the world I’m moving through on the reg. Listened to the Athleisure/optimization ep while filling out another w-9 and if that’s not praxis, I don’t know what is!! ((I might NOT “know what is” but they could definitely explain it in a way that really STICKS.)) Big fan. Came for the Coach content, stayed for the consistently amazing podcast, longtime listener first time reviewer etc etc — Looking forward to many more!

Listening to the reboot was truly one of the best educational educational experiences of my life, and I’m working on my second masters degree so I have a lot of different experiences to compare this with!

So I teach Spanish and the other day in class we came across the word "somnolencia" and my students are like "what's that mean?" And I go "somnolence" and they're like ok, what's somnolence? And the ONLY thing I could think of in that moment was the phrase "somnolence of the Kendom," which I knew would not help my students understand at all. I said something about Barbie and a podcast and my students go, "Maestra, do you have time for podcasts?" No, I haven't graded your essays yet, but yes, I do have time for my favorite podcast. Thanks to Hannah and Marcelle for being simultaneously the best and worst thing to happen to my pedagogy! Couldn't get through the semester without them.

Both the new iteration as Material Girls and the previous runs of Witch Please have been a delight to listen to this year. As someone with no background in media theory, they are able to make some big academic ideas much more digestible and relevant to daily life (except maybe the idea of ‘publics'. I don’t think anyone can crack that nut for me.) On top of feeling intellectually enriching, the dynamic of friendship between Hannah and Marcelle and their occasional guests just feels wonderfully wholesome. Nice job you all. Since I can’t figure out how to contact the show and don’t follow social media, I have a content suggestion for the hosts, in hope that they still read their good reviews (or maybe at least Coach does). For a ‘Why here, why now’ that I’ve been pondering, I think it would be interesting to look at the recent phenomenon of the Lo-Fi beats hip hop musical sub-genre. Its popularity with Millennials and Gen Z seems interesting, especially as it compares and contrasts with another easy listening sub-genre beloved by the Boomer crowd: Smooth Jazz.

I thought I was too dumb to listen but after a couple rewinds and start overs .. I have came to understand so many things. The “Omg, now it all makes sense” moments are priceless. You don’t have to be a scholar to enjoy this podcast. Just have to be willing to rewind a few times lol!

This is one of my favorite podcasts. I started listening when it was Witch Please but love even more now. These hosts make scholarship come to life and bring me new ways of looking at things I already live in a deeper way. The Reading the Romance episode was especially amazing. Highly recommend!

Hosts giggle too much

What a great way to better understanding all sorts of critical theory tools. Hannah and Marcelle are fun to listen to and incredibly informative. Star Wars is one of my favorite IPs. And I really enjoyed this analysis of the problem with popular culture.

I run a monthly insights group at a healthcare company and used a snippet of the Barbie episode when talking about micro plastics found in a human heart. People went wild for the “medium is the message” knowledge bomb. TY.

I’ve been listening to this dynamic duo for years and years. Love their rapport, intelligence, and content.

Updated for the current Material Girls show: I stand by my original 5 stars and add another 5 stars. These ladies are on fire! Materialist critique of pop culture? Yes, please. Thoughtful, insightful, funny, engaging, wicked smart. And a big shout out to the whole production team as this show is slick, so well made from start to finish including all the bonus content. I love it. My heart cheers with each new episode Previous review: The original version was just a delight to listen to, and the reboot is soooooo good. The episodes are so thoughtful and interesting, well-researched and cited; they are an amazing framework for critically thinking about HP and every other form of media, as well as your normal daily interactions on planet earth. The only thing I would change is to make the episodes twice as long because they are so meaty. I often listen to them twice, but only because I am usually multitasking while listening, and I don’t want to miss a single drop. Love it! Thank you!! And when you finish this project, please apply your approach to something, anything else. I dread the day that I won’t have Hannah and Marcelle in my ears.

Hannah and Marcelle’s hilarious and well researched content has been my favorite for a while and this new podcast is even better!!! Politics, history, philosophy, and more that contextualize the pop culture touchstones we know and love, it’s thought provoking and informative and mostly just fun (for dorks!!) !

You gotta listen ,it’s so good, read the description of the show. Then leave a five star review

Thought provoking, hilarious, intellectually rigorous and so much fun. I am a theory nerd who never actually learned much theory in school and OMG materialist critique! This podcast lights up my brain and warms my heart and helps me process living in late capitalism. Thanks y’all!

Witch, Please has been an all-time favorite podcast of mine for years. It’s the light of my day every time I listen. Their readings are insightful, and I love the way the hosts collaborate to build an argument together. Every episode feels like reading the best of academic essays, the kind that rearrange your mind and make you a slightly better human. Edit: Gotta come back and say that Material Girls is more of the same. Every episode awakens new thoughts in me. Their most recent episode on romance novels with Vanessa Zoltan made me newly aware of the ways that romance as a genre has shaped my understanding of the world and the ways in which the genre does and doesn’t make space for different forms of queerness. Every episode seems to shake my foundations. Please treat your ears, and give the pod a listen. Thank you to the hosts and staff who make the podcast possible.

I can't recommend enough this critical examination of pop culture material. Every week, the themes, guests and conversations stretch my critical reading muscles beyond capacity. It feels like I'm taking a college course - the winders of learning things you never knew without the droll and tests. I'm so grateful to learn about the pitfalls of literature & films that I love while simultaneously exploring how to be a better member of my community through the lenses Hannah and Marcelle choose. Thanks for your work Hannah, Marcelle, Zoe, guests and Coach

Hannah and Marcelle have cultivated a community I’m so grateful to be a part of. I’m a working class girlie who never got the real ‘academia experience,’ and these episodes equip me with a tremendous vocabulary to understand so much of what makes this world an abhorrent and wondrous place. It’s an outlet for my rage against the white supremacist cis-het patriarchal capitalistic nightmare and an ever expanding toolbox that helps me fight against it. And it’s chock full of LAUGHTER, joy, and kinship.

This podcast is for all the people who miss school and learning from cool professors who study awesome topics

And this podcast of perfect for it! Having dedicated time set aside to think critically about pop culture and how it impacts us and the world is such a joy! I learn something new with every episode. I bring topics up in conversations with friends, family, and coworkers. Hannah and Marcelle do such a great job of breaking down uber complex theories and concepts and making them accessible to folks. The show has helped me think about the way I interact with pop culture and how to find ways to still enjoy things while being able to be critical of where they fall short. (I’m looking at you Barbie Movie!) I am a material girl. And thanks to the podcast I’m a much smarter one than I used to be!

This feminist-forward analysis of pop culture is the perfect combination of thoughtful and hilarious. H & M’s insights and observations strike the chord of a song I definitely need on repeat. Most importantly, I feel less alone because I know this song will grow into the anthem that leads us to burn it all down. Thank you, team!

This podcast is wonderful! I recommend it if you’re interested in popular culture (not my particular jam) or if you love learning tools for interrogating stuff that you already love (that’s me). I always come away grateful for what I’ve learned. Five stars also to Marcelle and Hannah for being delightful :)

Love forever to Marcelle and Hannah and Coach and Gaby and Zoe and Erik. This team brings so much joy to my life with each new episode, while always challenging me to think more deeply about the things I consume. Listen if you want to make your world and your heart grow three sizes. And if you think chaos muppets are the best muppets, you’ll love Marcelle.

My brain loves it, my heart loves it, the little ethical moral compass that lives inside my brain love it. Looking to feel seen, heard and held all at once - then look no further. Hannah and Marcelle are wicked awesome and their team is awesome too! SERIOUSLY fall in love with this Pod and feel like your soul mates are reflecting back to you your innermost feelings and reactions to living in this beautiful terrible world 😍