The Smut

The Smut Book Club: Flowers in the Attic

Welcome to the very first installment of The Smut Book Club, in which host Michelle Ruiz and a rotating cast of brilliant minds-in-the-gutter break down the best (and worst) smut of our time. Our first selection is smut canon: V.C. Andrews's demented 1979 classic, "Flowers in the Attic!" It's gothic horror, a black fairy tale, it's a story of puberty and tingles and, unfortunately, incest. Michelle and special guest Leslie Golden revisit "Flowers in the Attic" in all of its deeply problematic glory...

Harry Styles's Sonic Erotica

Whether Harry Styles is engaged or not, a feverish fan base is engaged in him. A new season of Styles is upon us , with his glittering dance party of an album, "Kiss All the Time, Disco Occasionally" and a long-awaited tour launching in Amsterdam in May. This week, Harry superfan Rocky Cautadella joins The Smut to break down Harry's enduring eroticism and his appeal as a sensitive, non-toxic sex god. As Rocky says: "This man is giving us all an orgasm, and I'm here for it." Harry sings about sex; he oozes and embodies it. But he's more than just veiled oral sex innuendo! With his sweet yearning, vulnerable lyrics and "treat people with kindness" mantra, he's also a pop star who meets the moment of Trumpism... Rocky and Michelle discuss Harry's solo canon, the deep cultural significance of of "Watermelon Sugar," his One Direction roots, his attraction to mature women, and his many highly inadequate imitators!

Robinne Lee on the State of Smut

The Bard of High-Class Smut and "The Idea of You" author Robinne Lee sprinkles flirtatious crumbs about her new novel, "Crash Into Me," plus: the state of smut in 2026, the landmark significance of "50 Shades of Grey," writing Duran Duran smut in her teens (naturally), the majesty of sex scenes that *go there* and what's on her secret Pinterest board...

The Kennedys & The Windsors (w/ Caroline Hallemann)

Welcome to The Smut, a podcast about the sexiest stories in news.  I’ve been reading smut since I was definitely too young to be reading smut. A tattered Danielle Steele at a Long Island garage sale hated to see me coming! I grew up to be a sex editor at Cosmo; my desk was littered feather ticklers from 2012-2015. I just love stories that go there and that’s what I try to as a culture journalist for Vanity Fair, Vogue, The New York Times, and others. It’s why I’ve been obsessed with Heated Rivalry and Harry Styles; why I regard Normal People (the book and movie) and The Idea of You (absolutely only the book) as biblical texts.  According to the New York Times, we’re in the midst of a smut renaissance! Like “bitch” before it, the word once used as a burn is now being reclaimed as a high compliment. On The Smut, I want to keep rethinking it. At my first job at ABC News, a veteran editor referred to a story as “sexy” - not necessarily in the literal sense - but the kind of story that is juicy, colorful, complicated, maybe a little salacious and gossipy. The pop cultural fodder you text and DM about and forensically analyze all day long. Like Belle Burden’s memoir Strangers. Or the backlash, and the backlash to the backlash, to Timothée Chalamet. In addition to the actual smut of our times, those are the kind of all consuming stories and  people I want to get into on The Smut. Ithink my first episode is very much one of those.... "Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette" is one of the most feverish cultural, nostalgic, stylistic TV obsessions I can recall. From the beginning of binging this show, I saw the parallels between the Kennedys, America’s ostensible royal family, and the British royal family, in all of its deranged glory, which I’ve covered for Vogue and VF over the years. In episode 8 of Love Story, the worlds of these two royal families collide when the characters of John and Carolyn have big, emotional reactions to Princess Diana's death.  It just so happens that there is a new book, "The Kennedys & The Windsors" by Caroline Halleman, that delves into the "Homeland" wall of connections between these two dynasties. We get into the real kinship between Diana, John and Carolyn, including a now-not-so-secret lunch that John and Diana had in New York, and his real-life reaction to her death... we talk about Megan, Harry, RFK Jr., how The Crown and Love Story are even allowed to exist, and so much more...