The Take

Parks and Rec's Ron Swanson is a mix of three key myths that underpin our culture: the manly man, the authentic libertarian, and the wise elder. This vintage superhero teaches us how to feel hopeful about the world, even when we don't all agree. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pamela Anderson has long been defined by her infamous sex tape. Now, with an upcoming official Pamela Anderson documentary, it looks like Pam is finally aiming to retake control of her narrative, her way. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bruce Willis is more than an action hero, and as he ushered in a new kind of movie star, he cemented his place as one of the most influential actors of his era. So how did he do it? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most antiheroes repeat the same mistakes in their lives and commit monstrous acts as they pass their emotional trauma on to future generations. But why? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Season 2 of Bridgerton, Anthony Bridgerton and Kate Sharma are star crossed lovers, but rather than being thwarted by external forces, it’s their internal hostility to one another that gets in the way of their obvious desire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The "Other Woman" is a threat to the family unit, always wants what she can't have, and is seemingly motivated to 'steal' a married man. Despite attempts to humanize her, The Other Woman remains a powerful, often hated taboo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who is Jennifer Lawrence, really – the cool girl who can hang with the guys she long acted like in public appearances, or the steely, resilient and deep heroine she’s often played onscreen? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The surreally intimate and disturbing Kim-Kanye-Pete feud, as well as celebrity drama as a whole, reveal a lot about the state of social media and fame today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Heather is popular, coveted, and mean. But she's also often unhappy and voiceless. So what can we learn about pop culture’s most mysterious, and most misunderstood archetype? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Buff Clown has become one of today’s masculine ideals that seems to dominate blockbuster movies, and he’s often used to skewer stereotypes of toxic masculinity and ridiculous egotism. So who is this new Hollywood hero? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How I Met Your Mothers' Lily often has her professional and personal goals sidelined. She serves as the show's ultimate "domestic goddess," modeling true, long-term romance with her own kind of assertiveness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At its core, Cruel Intentions is about elite society, and the emotional reality of kids who grow up in a rich but loveless environment and then go on to perpetuate cruelty in the greater world. So is Kathryn's rage justifiable? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If the "Special Girl" onscreen is given her status by a guy, then surely her specialness can be taken away as quickly as it’s bestowed. So beyond loving the special girl, what really makes her more deeply special? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In season 2 of Euphoria, Cassie goes bananas. Her arc has a lot to say about self-esteem, sexuality and the “slut” trope in today’s world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2022, it’s harder than ever to know what the Oscars are supposed to be. If the “slap” is the main thing we’ll remember about the 2022 Oscars, what does that say about any deeper value the Academy Awards even still hold in our zeitgeist and cultural conversation? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Coverage of Zendaya and Tom Holland's relationship often centers on the Tall GF/Short BF debate. What’s the real reason behind the media’s fixation over just a couple of inches – and why is a shorter man dating a taller woman even a story at all? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What’s expected by the time we turn 30 has changed drastically over the last decades, leading to the new 30-crisis, as seen in titles like tick, tick... BOOM!, Inside, Starstruck and The Worst Person In The World. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Power of the Dog is ultimately a story about how toxic masculinity is a corrosive force that destroys people from the inside, and so the movie’s title refers to those dark, secret selves we fear. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While 1961’s West Side Story is a tragic love story with a laser focus on the Romeo and Juliet romance between Tony and Maria, Stephen Spielberg’s 2021 update is a wider story about the bigger forces in society that contribute to hate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On How I Met Your Mother, Barney's "rules of dating" reflect our “laws” about how to act on a hook-up, who’s an acceptable match, and how a potential partner’s behaviors should be interpreted. But real love demands throwing out the rulebook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Modern Family's Gloria Pritchett tore up the "second wife" playbook, proved those caricatures aren’t all real, and gave us hope that sometimes you really can get it right the second time around. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Celebrities - they’re just like us! Or that’s what we like to believe, and nothing sells that story better than when celebrities get together with “normos”. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Game Of Thrones rushed toward a finale that left a confusing and disappointing legacy. So, are we ready yet to talk about the show again - and can it ever regain that place in our hearts? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When does something stop being trendy, and start being "cheugy" – and is it time to just stop trying ever to be “up to date”? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paul Thomas Anderson's films present a portrait of love that entails accepting the good, the bad, and the ugly in another person – seeing all your partner's flaws and adoring them anyway. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We can spot the “Disposable Black Love Interest” character almost instantly: they’re the fleeting guest star, presented as great in theory, yet we know the main character’s not actually going to end up with them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you’re a teenager everything can feel overwhelming and intense. Euphoria takes this to an extreme, communicating "emotional realism" through cinematic techniques. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Material Girl TikTok Trend can be viewed as an inclusive rallying cry for marginalized people and increasingly disenfranchised youth to declare and flaunt their fabulousness, however much material wealth they have (or don’t...). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Unreliable narrators of books, film, and TV often explore mental illness, the fickle nature of memory, and revisionist bias. And these days, it’s gotten harder and harder to trust the narrator of any story, fictional or not. This is the unreliable narrator, explained... Or is it? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Margot Robbie has always managed to bring something extra to her "bombshell" roles, but she became a master of her own destiny and widened the range of roles available to her by developing not just as an actor but as a producer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anna Delvey embodies the 21st century American dream gone haywire in a “fake it 'till you make it” world that treats image as reality. So what lessons can we take from her playbook on how to hustle? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While "That Girl's" lifestyle promises shortcuts toward fulfillment, does it actually create more work, and raise expectations for women yet higher? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Imperfect Mother is so jarring because she doesn’t fall in line with our culture’s assumption that a good mother must be selfless. The controversy around this figure reveals we haven’t come as far as we might think. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why are we even more enthralled by Bennifer’s second go-round than their first one? In part, it’s because we’re fascinated by the concept of “the one that got away.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The upcoming release of the Pam & Tommy miniseries coincides perfectly with the resurgence of interest in Barbie-&-the-Bad-Boy pairings to reexamine the couple’s cultural significance, as well as the most infamous part of their story - the leaked sex tape. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How I Met Your Father understands that today, the totally uncynical rom-com sitcom is a rare, if not extinct, relic – but that struggle to keep believing in love is still real if not far more dire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Matrix is far more than a sci-fi action classic - it's a practical guide to freeing your mind and fulfilling your potential, to becoming "The One" yourself. The Wachowskis ground-breaker - now celebrating its 20th anniversary - shows us how to follow the 7 steps of Neo's journey to Enlightenment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While And Just Like That faltered early on, it ultimately got its groove back, and left us with the classic Sex And The City takeaway that it’s the ever-evolving relationship you have with yourself that matters most. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pam Beesly is the "normal" one in The Office. Is that actually a good thing? Here's our take and find out how being normal is both the strength and the downfall of our favorite "Girl Next Desk." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How I Met Your Mother's Tracy was the perfect love interest viewers spent 9 seasons waiting for... and then the finale undercut the romantic ideals at the show's core and underestimated it's audience by treating the Mother as disposable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is The Little Mermaid actually a story about realizing you’re queer and the world you’ve grown up in can’t accept you as you really are? If it is - it suggests that there's a lot of pain, sacrifice, and compromise ahead of anyone who wishes to come out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

She's a Smart Girl, and it's never been cooler to be one, to be proud of what you know and what you can achieve. So how has this archetype evolved, and what does it really mean to be a smart girl today? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The unexpected life of the new Cool Mom both onscreen & in real life is defined by enlightened parenting philosophies, mom hacks, & venting sessions over wine with other Cool Moms. But can she really exist? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do you win an argument? Learn from the master of rhetoric: Cher Horowitz, star of Clueless. The Alicia Silverstone character may be remembered as a 90s fashion icon, but she's in fact most impressive for the debate skills she puts to use in all aspects of her life. She teaches us a few things about how to make our case so that people will listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While strides are being made around disability representation on screen, disabled characters are still often reduced to monsters, bridges to the supernatural, or bad guys. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Sex and The City, growing old with Aidan would have made more sense for Carrie if marriage was what she truly wanted – but secretly, it seems like she really prefers to be alone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dyed hair was once a visual shorthand to convey a character’s “edginess” or "alternativeness.” It even came across to some as scary, unsettling, a threatening challenge to the social status quo. Today, though, it's almost the norm. So what changed? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Don’t Look Up is an eerily accurate echo of how we continue to mine our world for non-renewable resources instead of investing in green energy, even though burning fossil fuels is explicitly causing our downfall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re told to worship (or try to be) the "Pretty Girl," but that pursuit can erode a deeper sense of self. When people see you as the "Pretty Girl" type, they’re really seeing preconceived, culturally entrenched notions of what your beauty represents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Much of Gossip Girl focuses on Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf’s endlessly destructive love affair. Why are viewers so compelled by their toxic love, and why does it make so much sense that they end up together? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices