Where Was I?

07. What Is Nostalgia Trying To Tell Us?

You remember the Pizza Hut shaped like a Pizza Hut. You remember the smell of Blockbuster... plastic and popcorn in a way that cannot be fully explained but you know. You remember standing on your tippy toes reaching for a movie case that was already empty and grieving it in real time under fluorescent lights. That wasn't nostalgia. That was your nervous system working exactly the way it was supposed to. In this episode we go to Milwaukee, we bet on a building, and we ask the question nobody wants to answer. Who decided that beautiful things were too expensive to keep? We talk about what greed actually took from us. Not just Blockbuster. Not just the mall. Not just the Pizza Hut roof. It took the places where we became ourselves. It took the third places. It optimized the humanity out of everything and called it progress. This episode also contains a 24-hour cupcake ATM, a phantom step, and a measurable drop in cortisol. Slow down....we kind of have to. Show Notes: Barry Schwartz / The Paradox of Choice — Psychologist at Swarthmore College. Documented that unlimited choices don't make us freer — they make us more paralyzed, more anxious, and more dissatisfied. Too much choice can lead to clinical depression. Cortisol + Nature — Meta-analysis of 31 studies across 12 countries found that 20–30 minutes in a natural setting produces the biggest measurable drop in cortisol of any duration studied. Benefits are enhanced when green space includes a water feature. Sprinkles Cupcakes — Founded by Candace Nelson in 2005. Sold to private equity in 2012. Closed all locations December 31, 2025. Nelson found out two days before. Maine — One of two states that prohibits highway billboards. Most forested state in the country. This week's song: I'd Miss the Birds — Joy Oladokun

06. Hilary Duff, Lizzie McGuire, and Everything She Survived to Make Luck or Something

In the last episode, we found out what was underneath the mall. In this episode, we go back and get our girl. Because Hilary Duff was never a footnote in someone else's story. She was inside the machine ... the Limited Too catalogs, the Disney channel, the industry that turned her into a product before she finished middle school — and she felt all of it from the inside. The body comments at 17. The eating disorder she carried quietly for 20 years. John Mayer decided she was an object of desire exactly three months after she turned 18. The sister she lost not to death but to the world we're all living in right now. And then she made an album about all of it. On her own timeline. For herself. With her husband producing it and telling her it didn't have to go anywhere. It went to number three on the Billboard 200. The Lucky Me Tour sold out with 175,000 people in the waiting room. We were always in the waiting room. We just didn't realize it. In this episode, we see her... really see her ... and then we celebrate her. Because if we have the chance to celebrate another woman, we have to take it. Now more than ever.   Show Notes: Luck or Something — Hilary Duff, released February 20, 2026. Atlantic Records/Sugarmouse Inc. Produced by Matthew Koma. The Lucky Me Tour — Hilary Duff's world tour, June 2026–February 2027. Hilary Duff on Hot Ones — Season 2026. Watch it. You'll laugh. We're not ruining it. Lizzie McGuire x Limited Too — 2002 back-to-school collaboration. 9 million catalogs. First licensed line for Limited Too. First direct retailer license from Disney Channel. As discussed in Episode 5. This week's song: Adult Size Medium — Hilary Duff

05. The Truth Behind Our 90s Girlhood and the Malls That Shaped Us

You know the smell. Bath & Body Works from three stores away. The carpet. The popcorn. The particular feeling of walking into Limited Too and believing — truly believing — that you were the main character and you deserved to feel that way. We did deserve to feel that way. That part was real. What we didn't know was who built it for us. And why. In this episode we walk through the mall together — Limited Too, Abercrombie & Fitch, Bath & Body Works, the AIM era, the catalog pages, the shopping bags on our walls — and then we find out what was underneath all of it. One man built almost every store we grew up in. He gave power of attorney over his entire fortune to Jeffrey Epstein. He hired the man who would be indicted for sex trafficking to run Abercrombie & Fitch. And Disney put their name on a clothing line for seven year olds with his company in 2002. We were just at the mall. On a Saturday. With our moms. This episode is about what was stolen. And what they don't get to take.   Show Notes: Les Wexner & L Brands — Founded The Limited in Columbus, Ohio in 1963. Built an empire including Limited Too, Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Works, Abercrombie & Fitch, Lane Bryant, Express, and Henri Bendel. Limited Too x Lizzie McGuire — 2002 back-to-school licensed clothing line. First licensed line for Limited Too. First time Disney Channel licensed a show directly to a retailer. 9 million catalogs photographed on the set of Lizzie McGuire, targeting girls ages 7–14. (Just Style, July 2002; LaughingPlace.com) Wexner & Epstein — Relationship began mid-1980s. Wexner granted Epstein power of attorney over his entire fortune in 1991. Ghislaine Maxwell described Wexner as Epstein's closest friend. Wexner's name appears more than 1,000 times in the Epstein files. Epstein posed as a Victoria's Secret talent scout to lure victims. At least two women filed police reports. Wexner testified before Congress in February 2026 and denied wrongdoing. (Rolling Stone; CNN; NBC News) Mike Jeffries — Hired by Wexner in 1992 to run Abercrombie & Fitch. Indicted in October 2024 on 16 federal charges including sex trafficking. Accused of using his position as CEO to recruit young men for sex parties around the world. Abercrombie & Fitch named in civil suits. (NBC4; ABC News; NPR) White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch — Netflix documentary, 2022. This week's song: Mature — Hilary Duff

04. Why Good Men Stay Quiet (And What It's Costing All of Us)

This episode was released one day after CNN published a months-long investigation into a global network of men coaching each other on how to drug their partners, film their rape, and sell access to watch it live. I recorded this episode before that story broke. I'm releasing it anyway. Because the boys we're talking about in here didn't do that. And what we do next still matters. Not all men. But enough. The Manosphere didn't create broken men. It just found them. In this episode, we sit with one of the hardest conversations of our time. Not the loud, performative masculinity at the top of the Manosphere, but the ordinary men underneath it. The ones who were handed a cage before they were old enough to know what it was. We dig into the Netflix documentary The Manosphere by Louis Theroux, the male loneliness epidemic, and what the data actually says about why so many men are struggling, and why feminism isn't the answer they keep reaching for. We talk about the emotional cage built around boys from the time they are four years old. The way men are trained to rely on one person for all emotional support and what happens when that person leaves. The algorithm that finds lonely young men and hands them a villain to blame. And the women who have been doing the emotional labor of holding all of it together while being told they are the problem. This episode also asks the harder question... not just what went wrong, but what we do next. For our sons. For our daughters. For the men in our lives who are capable of more than what they've been asked to offer.   Show Notes: The Manosphere — Netflix documentary by Louis Theroux Male Loneliness Epidemic — declared a public health crisis by the U.S. Surgeon General, 2023.  CNN Investigation - "Exposing a Global Online Rape Academy" — published March 26, 2026. Reporters: Saskya Vandoorne, Kara Fox, Niamh Kennedy. Gisèle Pelicot — drugged and raped over 200 times by 70 men, including her husband of 50 years. Her trial in France brought global attention to drug-facilitated sexual assault.

03. The Alpha Male Myth: How Bad Science Shaped the Patriarchy

What if one of the most influential ideas about masculinity… was never true to begin with? In this episode, we unpack the origins of the alpha male myth, tracing it back to flawed wolf studies that were later debunked, but never fully corrected in culture. What started as bad science didn’t just stay in textbooks. It shaped how we understand power, leadership, gender roles, and masculinity today. From the rise of the manosphere to the persistence of the patriarchy, we explore how misinformation can reinforce existing systems, especially when it confirms what society already wants to believe. This conversation moves beyond theory and into real-world impact. The wage gap. Social expectations placed on women. The emotional isolation many men experience. The way leadership has been defined through dominance instead of care. We also look at what nature actually shows us about leadership, including how matriarchal structures function in the wild, and what it could mean to rethink the systems we’ve normalized. This episode is about unlearning. It’s about questioning what we’ve been taught. And it’s about asking a bigger question: What if it doesn’t have to be this way?   Show Notes: The Alpha Male Myth David Mech, wildlife biologist. Original alpha wolf concept: Rudolph Schinkel, 1944, wolves studied in captivity. Mech's correction paper: 1999. His book The Wolf (1970) — he spent decades trying to get it pulled from shelves. The Complementarian Movement Ephesians 5:22 — "wives submit to your husbands." The verse they skip: Ephesians 5:21 — "submit to one another." The Wage Gap (2025 data) Women: 76 cents. Black women: 63 cents. Latina women: 54 cents. Native American women: 53 cents. Women with advanced degrees still earn less per hour than men with only a college degree. Orca Menopause Research Dr. Darren Croft, University of Exeter. Six species on earth experience menopause: humans, orcas, belugas, narwhals, short-finned pilot whales, false killer whales. Ancient Female-Centered Societies Çatalhöyük, Turkey — occupied nearly 1,000 years, female-centered, women buried with up to 5x more grave goods than men. Research published June 2025. Minoan Crete — matrilineal society, ~900 years of recorded peace, first advanced civilization in Europe.