The Cut
The Cut is a weekly audio magazine exploring culture, style, sex, politics and more. Each week, an ensemble of voices, led by host Avery Trufelman, engages in the conversations that matter most in our current moment. Intimate, provocative, and probing, the Cut aims to ask questions before listeners even know they have them, always with a generous wit and an expansive idea of what is possible. From New York Magazine and The Vox Media Podcast Network. New episodes every Wednesday.
Episodes
May 5, 2021 • 31 min
Michelle and her mother were nothing alike. Now the lead singer of Japanese Breakfast, Michelle Zauner grew up as a little punk kid running around the Pacific Northwest wearing Daniel Johnston T-shirts and patched overalls. Her mother was glamorous, refined, and secretly homesick for her hometown of Seoul, Korea. The bridge between them, however, was their shared love of adventurous eating and Korean food. Although Michelle only re...
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April 28, 2021 • 22 min
As soon as producer Jazmín Aguilera got vaccinated, she felt like she could daydream again. The possibilities for a life post-vaccination seemed endless. A summer of love! Debauchery! Parties! Travel! Jazmín finally felt there was a light at the end of the tunnel. And so she followed that light to somewhere she never expected to go.
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April 21, 2021 • 27 min
When producer B.A. Parker was looking to decorate her apartment, she wanted to buy a poster of one of her favorite films from 1943. And upon revisiting the poster she realized... it was just a little more racist than she felt comfortable with. So what do we do with the problematic art of the past? B.A. Parker goes in search of answers.
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April 14, 2021 • 28 min
We are all fried. Doctors, teachers, therapists, activists and even white collar workers and podcasts hosts are working longer hours and smashing into a wall of depletion. But what does it mean to be so burnt out, even if you have a job where you just sit in front of a computer all day? What if you’re feeling burnout in a job you’re supposed to love? And is there any way to break free? Host Avery Trufelman sets out for answers, gui...
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April 7, 2021 • 39 min
Lindsay Peoples Wagner's meteoric career in fashion and media is impressive. She was the youngest Editor In Chief of a Conde Nast publication while Editor In Chief of Teen Vogue magazine. She is an ASME Next Winner and a Forbes 30 under 30 recipient. She authored the highly acclaimed piece on The Cut "Everywhere and Nowhere: What It's Really Like To Be Black And Work In Fashion" and started The Black In Fashion Coun...
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March 31, 2021 • 27 min
No matter who you are, inevitably there is someone telling you to “be nicer” or “stop being so nice”. Girlbosses preach that nice girls don't get the corner office, and yet Instagram slogans plead to "be nice." But what is niceness? Is it a virtue? A defense mechanism? A personality trait? And how can one try to be nice in a mean world? Host Avery Trufelman turns to Jonathan Van Ness for answers.
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March 24, 2021 • 22 min
There is so much to say about Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters. Lauded as the first book by a trans author to be released by a major publishing house, Detransition, Baby is a novel about queerness, motherhood, mothering, and, ultimately, the way we all present our genders. This week, Torrey speaks about how the Kardashians have “transitioned” from female to female, the impossible performance of womanhood, and how the common feel...
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March 17, 2021 • 40 min
U.S. politics are starting to look a little bit more like the United States itself. More queer people, women, and POCs. People who have never worked in politics before, have no corporate backers and are running campaigns out of their kitchen. So, what about you, or your friends? Producer Jazmin Aguilera tests whether she could actually run and what she would have to give up in the process. Writer Brock Colyar profiles Sarah McBride...
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March 10, 2021 • 24 min
It's been an awful year for almost every single person on the planet. And at the one year mark of the pandemic, Cut producer B.A. Parker decided to try to escape the stress and trauma by getting out of her own head. But it turns out getting out of your own head is a real mindf--k.
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March 3, 2021 • 34 min
When Avery Trufelman was a pre-teen, the film 13 Going on 30 was like a roadmap to everything she wanted to be as a grown up: "thirty and flirty and thriving." But as Avery enters her third decade, she revisits the movie and grapples with what 30 means today.
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February 24, 2021 • 35 min
It's always exciting when there's a new first: the first Black President, the first Latinx Supreme Court Justice, the first woman Vice President. But when you're first, you're only just arriving at the starting line. Comedian and activist Cristela Alonzo talks with Avery Trufelman about how to be first, when to say no to being first, and discusses her new documentary podcast series, Chicano Squad.
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February 17, 2021 • 25 min
Celebrities like Armie Hammer and Marilyn Manson have tried to deny allegations of abuse by excusing their behavior as just kink. So what is kink? And why is it considered either a super scary taboo thing or a nerdy pastime? Writers Lux Alptraum, R.O. Kwon, Garth Greenwell, and Roxane Gay weigh in on the power of kink.
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February 10, 2021 • 26 min
Desire, commitment, passion — these are all words that often make up a romantic relationship. But what if you feel a strong, deep love for your best friend? This week, Cut producer Allison Behringer on what happens when your soul mate moves away.
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February 3, 2021 • 30 min
The burden of quarantine has made a lot of people question their drinking habits. Among them is producer Alex Sujong Laughlin, who has been cutting back on alcohol but isn't quite ready to be sober. This week, why we drink. And what happens when we don't.
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January 27, 2021 • 28 min
President Biden was sworn in a week ago, but we’re still dealing with the emotional and global turmoil left by the previous administration. The Cut talks to journalists Olivia Nuzzi and Maria Ressa, who both cover their country's presidents. And they have both learned ways to deal with the last four years of fear and anxiety.
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January 20, 2021 • 30 min
With yoga studios shuttered, people are practicing and teaching yoga in their living rooms and bedrooms. Or at least, they're trying to. This week, what yoga means without the studio- for students, for teachers, and for the entire culture of American Yoga.
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January 13, 2021 • 20 min
Black girls growing up in the 90's grew up seeing actors who looked like them on film. But these child actors were rarely in the spotlight. Usually, the spunky black kids were cast as sidekicks on childhood adventures. Producer B.A. Parker navigates the feeling of being relegated to the sidelines with a little help from her favorite ‘90s Black child actresses.
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January 6, 2021 • 37 min
The Lost in the Mall experiment is a classic case study in Psych 101 classes. The study's conclusion: if you are told something happened to you as a child, you're inclined to believe it and that we're all susceptible to false memories being implanted in our minds. But the story behind this study is complicated. And so is the nature of memory. Cut writer Katie Heaney and host Avery Trufelman investigate how an accusation...
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December 16, 2020 • 26 min
For richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, people continue to get married. The way that people have been getting married in 2020 might change weddings forever. And that's for the better—or at least, that's what host Avery Trufelman is trying to convince her friend, who is wondering what kind of pandemic bride she's going to be.
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December 9, 2020 • 22 min
For more than a decade now, NYM Editor-at-Large Stella Bugbee has lived with her parents, and raised a family in the home she grew up in. But for a long time, she kept that a secret, perhaps because it's so stigmatized in American culture. But the percentage of people living multigenerational households has been on the rise since the 1980s. In this episode, we'll hear from people who've done it out of necessity, and by ...
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