We made a reality TV podcast. Stay with us.

Hi friends,

You probably know by now that something we’ve really been mulling over and working on post-2024 is thinking about the ways in which our work can be most effective. Especially when our work is the hard stuff, the type of content that would make anyone want to tune out, because we get it, shit’s overwhelming.

How can we better reach more people who give a shit, who need a way in that doesn’t feel like homework? Who have been diligently eating their vegetables, but maybe just need some cheese slathered over them (the veggies, not the people)?

We decided that the answer wasn’t another newsletter about the intricacies of climate. It was meeting people where they actually are with subjects that resonate with them directly, whether they are birders, or parents, or sci-fi nerds. Or on their couch watching The Traitors (ahem, me).

And so — stay with me — we created a podcast about reality TV.

Introducing: It’s Called Reality. It’s the discourse for people who give a shit.

Look, I watch a lot of reality TV. Like, had a Survivor-themed wedding a lot.

And as a woman with two degrees who loves Serious™subjects like science and journalism, for a while I was a little embarrassed about this “guilty pleasure” (although I’m pretty sure I brought up The Bachelor in my first interview with Quinn for this job, and at least once in a month in a work meeting since then, so clearly not that embarrassed).

I saw a Tweet once that said something along the lines of “watching Love Island is like micro-dosing ignorance for an hour a day” (the author of which has been lost to the cacophony of the internet, my apologies), and nothing has ever resonated so hard (side bar: imagine reading that sentence to someone in the 1800s).

Because I think like many people, I started watching reality TV as an escape from the aforementioned horrors of the world.

A little bubble full of bright lights, quick shots of abs and asses, conversations about where Europe is on a map, mascara-streaked faces, men in overalls with snake tattoos, finger pointing, hot people making out, scheming and strategy and game-playing, hot takes, love, betrayal, and (my personal favorite) female friendship.

But the more I watched, the more I noticed all the ways in which the reality I was trying to escape was being reflected back to me in these little microcosms and social experiments playing out onscreen.

And it started to dawn on me that if you look closely enough, all the same forces and systems that show up in our other newsletters and podcasts — bias, misinformation, who controls the narrative, who profits from insecurity — come through every week on these shows.

And I don’t just mean that in an abstract “culture is a mirror” kind of way. I mean it concretely.

As much as I hate to use this example…Donald Trump is the president of the United States in large part because he was a reality TV star first. Spencer Pratt was this close to becoming the Mayor of LA. Reality television reinforced for millions of people that confidence reads as competence, that a good villain can be more compelling than a good person, and that the edit can be more powerful than the truth.

The Kardashians essentially invented the influencer economy. The Bachelor has been reflecting and reinforcing ideals for women about what femininity and being “marriage material” look like since 2002.

These shows reflect, distribute, manufacture, and sometimes hand power to people who have no business having it (or have just always had it).

Something that other voices in this space have been saying for a long time is that reality TV is a sport.

There are approximately 75 ESPN channels dedicated to analyzing games that already happened, dissecting the strategy, the calls, the personalities, and the drama. And good for them! But nobody calls that a guilty pleasure, or thinks that hobby isn’t serious enough to merit analysis.

But reality TV — which requires the same investment, generates the same community, and if anything, in a world where we’re all constructing our own mini-reality TV shows online, has more of a direct social and cultural impact than whether your favorite sports team makes the playoffs — is often written off as trash.

I’d just like to lightly point out that sports are predominantly marketed towards men, while reality TV is predominantly marketed towards women, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence when considering who tends to be taken seriously and who doesn’t.

In a moment where finding joy, anywhere you can, feels more important than ever, and where media literacy is alarmingly scarce, taking a critical look at the messages reality TV is sending us, and the impacts it has on actual reality, feels less like a guilty pleasure and more like due diligence.

So. Welcome to It’s Called Reality. It’s the discourse for people who give a shit.

Every episode, my close friend, co-host, and fellow reality TV connoisseur, Briana Brown, and I hop on the mic to dig into a different reality TV franchise and pull the thread on all the ways these shows impact and reflect the larger culture.

From how the Taylor Frankie Paul/The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives/The Bachelorette drama (if you know, you know) demonstrates how we treat women in media to the game of The Traitors being the perfect case study for bias and how misinformation spreads, to how Survivor shows us the ways the edit is a form of power, to how America’s Next Top Model was a public health event for young women and girls watching in the early aughts, we’re getting into all the paradoxes and messy contradictions these shows reveal about society at large, and about us at home watching.

If anything I’ve said so far resonates with you, please check out our first episode. If you love it, tell your group chat and subscribe wherever you listen. New episodes will be dropping on Fridays!

And if reality TV isn’t your thing yet, give us one episode. We might change your mind.

Thank you as always for giving a shit,

Willow