It's Been a Minute

Welcome to the age of ‘Broke TV.’

It seems like the days of prestige TV shows about the wealthy elite have been replaced by the vocal majority: the downwardly mobile.

New Yorker TV critic, Inkoo Kang, noticed that her favorite shows so far this year all focused - in some respect - on the people whose lives have been financially squeezed beyond recognition by the very elite we used to enjoy watching.

Building resentment about the shrinking middle class, a hopeless job market, and few political pathways towards change has made our entertainment reflect a devastating reality back to us. Inkoo joins the show to break down how we got to this point and the fine line between entertainment and catharsis on screen.

You can read Inkoo’s article, ‘Welcome to the Age of Broke TV’, here.

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Do you have what it takes to be "High-T?"

Service members are about to find out, as Defense secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the military will be screening men for low testosterone, a hormone found in both women and men that supports bone mass development, red blood cell production, energy levels, and more. It's an important marker of overall health in men, but will it push the United States military to the 'leading edge of lethality' as promised by Hegseth? To get into the facts and fictions around testosterone, Brittany is joined by NPR health correspondent Will Stone, and Dr. Helen Bernie, Director of Sexual and Reproductive Medicine and associate professor of urology at Indiana University.

Want more on gender and health? Check out these episodes:
Boundaries, bodies, and better sex
The key to thriving later in life: menopause

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What does it mean to be ‘working class’? 

It’s a term that we hear often (especially around election time), but more specifically, who are we actually talking about? According to labor economist Kathryn Anne Edwards, host of the Optimist Economy podcast (@optimist_economy), the working class is a group of people who have the least amount of pay, benefits, and protections in the labor market. In this week’s episode of It’s Been a Minute, host Brittany Luse chats with Kathryn about what economists, politicians, and everyday people get wrong about the working class.

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You might be more influenced by yuppie taste than you’d think.

Back in the eighties – when pop music drowned in synths, the volume of everyone's hair was set to loud, and neon was in vogue – a new age dawned: the era of the yuppie. “Yuppie” comes from the acronym “YUP” – which stands for young, urban professional. Think Patrick Bateman from American Psycho or even Miranda Hobbes from Sex and the City. Nowadays, cities are full of young urban professionals, but this wasn't always the case. In his new book, Yuppies: the Bankers, Lawyers, Joggers and Gourmands Who Conquered New York, author Dylan Gottlieb argues that New York City was the first city to reorganize itself to cater to yuppies.  And it's not just cities that have changed. Yuppies have transformed our country's economy, politics, and culture, too.

Brittany is joined by Dylan, assistant professor of history at Bentley University, to break down how yuppies catapulted us into our current moment.

For more episodes on the history that explains our culture today, check out:
How often do you think about the American Empire?
Americans want a royal family. Now they have two
Were Americans actually healthier in the past?

(00:00) What exactly is a yuppie?
(05:37) The economics that created yuppies and their "meritocracy"
(13:12) The violent cost of city revival
(19:35) How yuppies created foodie culture
(23:16) The politics of marathon-running
(25:14) How yuppies remade the Democratic party
(29:36) Should we bring back the term "yuppie"?

Follow Brittany on Instagram: @bmluse

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How has literature changed your life?

For poet and lawyer, Reginald Dwaye Betts, books meant freedom. After getting sentenced to 9 years in adult prison at 16, Dwayne felt a sense of hope and possibility whenever he was reading.  Upon his release he founded Freedom Reads, an organization that builds libraries within prisons across the country to provide a physical space where those incarcerated can read and dream together.

Today on the show, Dwayne joins Brittany to discuss how books and language can help us transform our reality. 

You can learn more about Dwayne's journey in his documentary, March Forth. 

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