A bite-sized daily podcast from the Culture and The Goods teams at Vox that goes wherever our (and your!) pop culture and consumerism curiosities take us. Hear the stories behind the news and trends, get personal about purchases, and find your next book or binge watch. New episodes daily, Monday to Friday. Each 15 minutes or less.
We’re going to make this goodbye short and sweet: Vox Quick Hits is ending.
All of us from the Vox Culture Desk and the team at The Goods want to thank you for following our work and tuning in to Tell Me More, Ask a Book Critic, The Best Money I Ever Spent and What to Watch. You can still keep up with us on vox.com.
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Everything you should have watched this summer as recommended — for the final time — by Vox's film critic Alissa Wilkinson (@alissamarie) and critic at large Emily VanDerWerff (@emilyvdw). Thanks for listening to What to Watch. If you enjoyed the show, please rate Vox Quick Hits ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.
Hosts: Alissa Wilkinson (@alissamarie) and Emily VanDerWerff (@emilyvdw)
Writer Gray Chapman tells us why a dinner of oysters, caviar, and champagne the night before she gave birth was the best $298 she ever spent.
Link to essay: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22456529/best-money-birth-c-section-oysters-cocktail
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For our very last episode, a listener asked for books with disabled protagonists. Specifically, characters whose disability is not their defining trait. Ask a Book Critic will continue in text form, so don’t stop sending your requests! Check out vox.com/ask-a-book-critic. Thank you for listening!
Constance recommends:
Writer Mae Rice goes to Starbucks every day. She tells us why she has no plans to stop.
Link to essay: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/4/9/18296792/starbucks-habit-millennials-money
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HBO’s hit series The White Lotus takes the darkly comedic mind of creator Mike White and turns it loose on an elite resort in Hawaii. It’s a very funny, very engrossing look at the global mega-rich, with phenomenal performances up and down the cast list. And you can watch all six episodes right now.
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A listener asks for help with getting out of a reading rut. A voracious reader as a child, they now need some help falling in love with reading again. Vox Book Critic Constance Grady recommends big, grab-you-by-the-throat books to help us all rediscover our love of reading. Plus, hear some of Constance’s conversation with Tamsyn Muir from their Vox Book Club Zoom event.
Constance recommends:
Three movies and a TV show perfect for back-to-school season.
Alissa’s picks:
Emily’s picks:
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What to Watch has new episodes every Friday. Support the show by...
Writer Doree Shafrir explains why she and her husband spent $3,000 on dog training for their unruly yet deeply loved dog, Beau.
Link to essay: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/7/9/20677946/doree-shafrir-dog-training-best-money
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T...
CODA is a heartwarming coming-of-age story about a teen, her dreams, and her deaf family. In theaters now and streaming on Apple TV+.
What to Watch has new episodes every Friday. Support the show by rating Vox Quick Hits ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, or by making a financial contribution to Vox: bit.ly/givepodcasts
Episode by:
Hosts: Alissa Wilkinson (@alissamarie) and Emily VanDerWerff (@emilyvdw)
Produ...
A listener asked for books that are mysterious, intriguing, and may or may not involve a murder. More specifically, books like The Secret History. Vox book critic Constance Grady gives four recommendations this week, including an entire genre. Plus, hear part of last year’s Vox Book Club Zoom event about The Secret History with writer Nicole Cliffe.
Constance recommends:
Summer vacation is top of mind here at What to Watch. Grab your flip flops, some popcorn (or perhaps a piña colada?) and pretend you're on holiday with one of these four fantastic films.
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What to Watch has new episodes every Fr...
Writer Deepa Lakshmin explains how spending $29 on a concert ticket – for a show she didn’t even attend – taught her to love doing things alone.
Link to essay: https://www.vox.com/2019/12/3/20991951/best-money-concert-ticket-solo-activities
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A swashbuckling tale of adventure that feels dragged out of the mists of time, the new A24 film stars Dev Patel and is based on one of the most famous and important works of English literature: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a 14th-century Arthurian tale penned in Middle English that has inspired centuries of study, contemplation, and scholarly bickering.
Vox film critic Alissa Wilkinson explains why you should spend time in Gawa...
A caller asks for books that feel like The Wonder Years. Vox book critic Constance Grady recommends three books that are perfect for summer nostalgia. Plus, Constance discusses the “free narrative” of The Princess Bride in a clip from the Vox Book Club Zoom event.
Constance recommends:
If you’re looking for a book recommendation, you can ...
This week: Sports! You had to know we were going to talk about sports, right? Yes, the long-overdue 2020 Tokyo Olympics are here. Get in the competitive spirit with these movies, TV shows, and episodes.
Did you love something we recommended? Rate Vox Quick Hits ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and tell us about it in a review o...
It seems reasonable to assume that food packaging saying the contents are expired indicates inedible food. You can trust the labels on what you buy in the grocery store, can't you? Except America’s food label system isn’t standardized, and it has very little to do with food safety. In other words, you could be tossing eggs and milk and other goods that are perfectly fine to eat. Vox’s Alissa Wilkinson explains.
Learn More:
K-pop is hugely popular worldwide, and boy band BTS’s “Dynamite” was virtually inescapable in 2020. And yet, the genre is hard to find on American radio. Despite K-pop’s takeoff online in the US and all over the globe, radio DJs still find most of it too risky to play for a Top 40 audience. Aja Romano, a culture writer at Vox, explains why.
Learn more:
Read Aja’s story about K-pop and American radio here.
Just like teen getting famous on TikTok over night, products are now going viral on the platform. Vox’s in-house TikTok expert Rebecca Jennings explain how this phenomenon works, the relationship between influencers and brands, plus the inevitable pitfalls that come with a rapid rise to recognition.
Learn More:
Read Rebecca’s story here.
This episode of Tell Me More was made by:
Katherine Oung’s mother says “I love you” with plates of cut fruit. Katherine say it with cups of coffee.
The Best Money I Ever Spent is a personal essay series from The Goods about the purchases that changed our lives in ways big and small. This episode was produced by Schuyler Swenson, edited by Alanna Okun and mixed by Paul Mounsey.
You can read Katherine's essay here.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Hosted by Laura Beil (Dr. Death, Bad Batch), Sympathy Pains is a six-part series from Neon Hum Media and iHeartRadio. For 20 years, Sarah Delashmit told people around her that she had cancer, muscular dystrophy, and other illnesses. She used a wheelchair and posted selfies from a hospital bed. She told friends and coworkers she was trapped in abusive relationships, or that she was the mother of children who had died. It was all a con. Sympathy was both her great need and her powerful weapon. But unlike most scams, she didn’t want people’s money. She was after something far more valuable.