The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca Cohen Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

After taking a much-needed break from TFG, Maya and Rebecca catch up on Trump’s troubles: legal, financial, political, and psychophysical. How f****d is he? How worried should we be? What’s the most productive way to direct our anxiety between now and November?

Depending on whom you ask, Academy award winner Poor Things is either a feminist masterpiece about an empowered woman, or a male fantasy about a baby-minded f**k toy. Maya and Rebecca attempt to bridge the gap, asking the really important questions: Why is Yorgos Lanthimos so obsessed with old-timey whorehouses? Is this quirky visual style more or less irritating when Wes Anderson does it? And is a critique of men the same thing as a feminist movie?

College presidents forced to resign. Faculties gutted. Anti-DEI legislations cropping up nationwide. There’s no doubt about it–Right Wing activists are attacking Higher Ed, trying to “capture, restructure, and reform” centers of learning. Georgetown political scientist and Women’s Studies professor Nadia E. Brown joins us to help us understand this moment, what makes it different than usual institutional racism and sexism, and how to fight it.

Intellectual expansion! Youthful passion! Exploited innocence! Genius writer, musician, and professional flame-throwing shit-starter Meredith Yayanos, comes on to talk about their problematic fave: Liberal Arts Education. What does college MEAN in the social imaginary? What did it mean to us? Cronyism, elitism, pranks, nubility, narcissistic faculty, racism, classism, date rape, Jeffrey Epstein, the hangover of 60s counterculture, DEI, panicked articles in The NY Times about what the kids are doing, Real Genius, Rules of Attraction, Good Will Hunting Animal House, A Different World, Revenge of the Nerds, and Genny Cream Ale.

Were we wrong about Taylor Swift? Actual, real live Swiftie Jenna Parrot responds to Maya and Rebecca’s takes about her favorite pop megastar. Can she help us understand Swift’s musical appeal, not to mention her cultural and political impact?

We can’t start the new year without talking about THE biggest pop culture story of 2023: Beyonce and Taylor Swift dominating American music, culture and even economics with their wildly popular, wildly extravagant Renaissance and Eras tours. Maya and Rebecca break down the star power, the spectacle and the songwriting, asking what makes these two megastars so powerful? And what does that reveal about politics and culture as we head into 2024?