Culture Study Podcast - One Gwyneth Episode to Rule Them All

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00:00:39.160 You know, it's funny when I was telling people I'm writing about Gwyneth Paltrow, at least

00:00:43.560 one person was like, oh yeah, I remember her wearing green and great expectations.

00:00:48.180 green Donna Karen like it's it's just remarkable the moments that we remember about her

00:00:53.080 and then that came back when she finished the ski trial yes and emerged victorious that was one of

00:01:00.400 the first things I saw online was that image of her and the green Donna Karen with Gwyneth

00:01:04.860 across it that's so interesting I mean I think for at least for me I'm slightly older so that

00:01:13.560 movie was like very formative in terms of like what I thought of as like sophisticated beauty

00:01:19.380 yeah there was like Britney Spears beauty and then there was Gwyneth Paltrow beauty and obviously

00:01:24.700 both of them are blonde both of them are ideals in different ways and this I think also was very

00:01:29.280 formative in my understanding of what a movie star was a contemporary movie star and really

00:01:34.940 feeding into that idea that like this isn't Reese Witherspoon like Reese Witherspoon is

00:01:39.080 quote-unquote like us Gwyneth Paltrow is not like us and sometimes I think people 0.97

00:01:45.340 are like well she's not very relatable and I'm like that's the point that is a fucking point 0.61

00:01:51.560 exactly and I think to miss that is to miss the allure of her 0.54

00:01:57.880 this is the culture study podcast and i'm ann helen peterson i'm amy odell the author of

00:02:10.060 gwyneth the biography so i've always gotten the impression that gwyneth paltrow doesn't care

00:02:16.460 if people like her right right well i guess so that was the question that i had having done all

00:02:23.660 the research of, you know, over three years interviewing more than 220 sources, is where

00:02:29.040 is that line of caring? Because there are moments in the book where she does react to coverage of

00:02:34.860 her that she's not happy with. And then there are, you know, I asked so many people, did she care

00:02:41.280 what people were saying about her? Because she was subjected to some pretty gnarly coverage that I 0.63

00:02:44.940 think we can easily go back and look at today and say, well, that's pretty sexist. And she was able

00:02:50.300 to brush so much of it off, but, but not all of it. So yeah, I do wonder, and I do think that

00:02:55.500 she tries to be relatable. And I actually think that that's when she gets herself into trouble.

00:03:02.200 Yeah. And when she says something that's very triggering to people is because she'll try to

00:03:06.380 get on the level of an average person and she just can't do it because she doesn't know

00:03:12.620 an average life. Like she's never had an average life. Yeah. So your last book was

00:03:20.180 a biography of Anna Wintour which you had access for and there's a real difference between like

00:03:28.680 the person who you are profiling is cooperating and talking to you in some capacity and then

00:03:34.660 in the business we call this a write-around when you do like a magic trick of talking to

00:03:40.120 as many people and reading as much stuff as possible to figure out as much as you possibly

00:03:45.320 can and in some ways talking to the star like it doesn't even matter right because we're this is

00:03:52.060 not you trying to like write Gwyneth Paltrow's memoirs this is trying to understand how she

00:03:58.320 navigated her stardom over the course of the last 40 years um so how did you choose her as your

00:04:05.040 subject well she's someone who has had real cultural impact love her or hate her yeah she's

00:04:11.580 been in the public eye for 30 years. She fascinates people. She's polarizing. She's impacted 1.00

00:04:19.140 a number of industries, fashion, beauty, entertainment, obviously. And I think most

00:04:25.420 importantly, wellness. And she's someone who, you know, it seems like countless profiles have

00:04:31.160 been written about her. And so many of them were called the real Gwyneth. It was actually

00:04:37.340 kind of astonishing. But I really came to see that those profiles just barely scratched the

00:04:45.100 surface of who she really is. Yeah. Did it seem natural to go from like, the world of Vogue?

00:04:51.720 Like, did you have did you feel like you had the beginning connections to try to make this work?

00:04:56.000 Yeah, so to me, so I worked in media in the 2010s. And I've been an independent journalist since

00:05:01.780 2018. So that time that I was an editor for websites, including BuzzFeed, where we overlapped

00:05:09.820 I think very, very briefly. Like two weeks. Yeah. Yeah. So during that time, Goop was kind of it.

00:05:17.200 I don't know what you remember of Goop from that time, but they were doing all these things that

00:05:22.080 I know my employers wish that they could have done. So they had great sponsorships. They had

00:05:28.980 this great newsletter they had engagement they got so much press they had live events they had

00:05:33.980 a podcast they were doing product lines like I have seen these efforts from other media companies

00:05:41.080 not work so I think from the outset for me it's like okay well this book is culminating in the

00:05:45.300 creation of what is basically a media company so in that sense I did feel like yeah there was

00:05:50.180 overlap and then Anna Wintour is kind of a character in the book she comes in and out

00:05:53.940 yeah and I I did some reporting on Condé Nast because Goop had a partnership with Condé Nast

00:05:58.500 another thing I'm sure many publications would have liked to do. And Conde Nast, I'm sourced

00:06:06.180 there. And it's actually pretty easy to report on Conde Nast now. It's gotten easier since I did

00:06:12.080 the Anna Wintour book. Yeah, no, that's such an interesting way to think about it as like,

00:06:16.420 this is in part a profile of a media company, which it absolutely is. And I love that last

00:06:21.900 third of the book where you really go in deep about her as an entrepreneur, as a media entrepreneur,

00:06:28.500 so that scratches all the parts like that I love about like thinking about media history and media

00:06:34.340 industry but then there's all the really interesting early stuff too like how did you

00:06:38.420 get in with like her friends from Spence like they're so that was really hard yeah so Spence

00:06:45.340 is it's sort of like Gossip Girl yeah that type of school and Gwyneth had grown up in California

00:06:53.780 and she and her brother went to school there and then when she was entering seventh grade her

00:06:57.580 mother Blythe Danner who's one of the great actors of all time probably said you know she Blythe is

00:07:03.320 from Pennsylvania she said I want my kids to have an east coast education so they pack up and they go

00:07:07.780 to New York they buy a townhouse on the upper east side and Gwyneth enrolls in Spence as a

00:07:13.160 seventh grader and this is a very different environment from California because in Los

00:07:17.660 Angeles the student body it was like all kind of Hollywood and entertainment nepo babies but in New 0.72

00:07:24.180 York, it's like a different kind of Nepo baby. So you get the banker Nepo babies and the 0.99

00:07:28.340 law Nepo babies and society people, Grecian princesses were attending. So it's like just 0.67

00:07:34.580 a different, there's like a different fabric to the student body. What was she like in high school?

00:07:40.720 So she was polarizing. That's what I thought was so sort of fascinating. I think because

00:07:47.160 her father was this way too. She would just say like things would just come out of her mouth

00:07:52.020 that could really rub people the wrong way. 0.51

00:07:54.420 But she also had this really potent charisma. 0.77

00:07:57.360 People said she was irreverent.

00:07:59.200 She was not into academics.

00:08:01.540 She decided from a young age

00:08:03.080 that she was going to be a famous actress.

00:08:06.420 She grew up in a wealthy family. 0.67

00:08:08.960 She had means.

00:08:10.140 She had this glamorous life.

00:08:11.460 Her godfather is Steven Spielberg,

00:08:13.040 so she had connections.

00:08:14.680 So I kind of wondered if she felt like

00:08:17.820 she didn't have to do the academic part

00:08:19.760 because her fate just seemed so sealed.

00:08:21.560 so she was not into that she sometimes just didn't go to school and the faculty would have

00:08:27.560 to call the house and be like hey like she needs to come to school but they passed they passed her

00:08:33.940 like the the thing about her too it's like the same thing that we see today even when she did 1.00

00:08:38.200 these things that were against the rules like people just weren't that mad at her like she

00:08:44.080 just had a way of kind of playing it off and I think she's very good at that today like yeah like

00:08:48.540 oh, so I'm in detention and I ordered a pizza. I was just hungry, guys. She had a way of playing

00:08:56.280 it off and then nobody was ever that mad at her. The faculty anyway. The students may have felt

00:09:01.560 differently. Can you talk about her very early career, which I think is so interesting and

00:09:07.760 kind of the crescendo in the 90s and 2000s and then the pathway to goop?

00:09:12.540 yeah okay um that's a lot of ground i know i know she started her earliest acting work was at

00:09:22.640 williamstown theater festival which is summer stock theater in the berkshires in massachusetts

00:09:26.580 and her mother would go every summer to perform just for the pure love of the theater because

00:09:33.100 her mom was really not materialistic she went to a quaker high school

00:09:36.720 at one point when she when she had her breakout role on broadway she replaced the star on her

00:09:45.280 dressing room door with a peace sign so i think that tells you what you need to know about blythe

00:09:49.720 well and this is also a place where like paul newman and joanne woodward were always there

00:09:53.960 like it's very much like they're like we're down to earth really good actors who go to the town of

00:09:59.660 williamstown which is like so freaking tiny and then like have sandwiches named after us on the

00:10:05.020 exactly have you been there I have I have not been to the festival so okay so yeah they would

00:10:11.640 go just for the love of so Blythe could perform and the maestro of the festival this Greek guy

00:10:16.740 named Nikos Sakharopoulos he wanted to perform the best plays he had a way of getting these

00:10:21.820 movie stars to show up summer after summer Blythe wanted to go every every summer he had a very

00:10:27.180 ambitious vision for a summer theater festival so they were doing Shakespeare they were doing

00:10:30.660 Chekhov and Gwyneth was around that and she was absorbing it and so she was hearing from a very

00:10:36.060 young age her mom performed basically the best plays ever written yeah um and she when she was

00:10:42.480 older I think around eight she started just getting little parts in the productions they

00:10:47.580 would just throw her in because they loved Blythe Blythe was like royalty and so Gwyneth was like

00:10:52.240 the princess and so they would throw her into these plays and uh you know people were like

00:10:57.480 yeah nepotism whatever I mean that's what it was but she did a good job yeah Nikos would not have

00:11:03.220 he would not have had her in the play if she wasn't doing a good job yeah um so she did that

00:11:10.340 summer after summer she did some theater at Spence and she really wanted to to be a child actor she

00:11:18.140 has said but her parents were like no you need to be a kid and go to school so then and she fought

00:11:23.960 with them. She fought with her father because she wanted to not go to college and just pursue an

00:11:29.320 acting career. And they wanted her to have a fallback because they both worked in the

00:11:33.200 entertainment industry. Bruce Paltrow was a very successful producer. His biggest hit was St.

00:11:38.160 Elsewhere, which was a show about a Boston hospital in the 80s. And they felt like she

00:11:45.060 needed that degree just in case because they saw how unstable entertainment can be, particularly

00:11:52.240 for actors so she continues performing at williamstown after she did about like a semester

00:11:59.840 at uc santa barbara where she did according to one of my sources no work she was just having a

00:12:05.380 good time um after that she um she takes a part in this play called picnic with her mother yeah

00:12:13.260 picnic and people thought she was incredible and her father watches her and says you were so great

00:12:20.660 I don't think you should go back to school.

00:12:21.960 You should be an actor.

00:12:22.780 So then she gets her acting career started.

00:12:25.960 She has a manager at first who her father disdains

00:12:28.740 because he feels like she's keeping her from going to school,

00:12:32.200 even though I don't really think anyone can tell Gwyneth Paltrow what to do.

00:12:36.860 But then she does like Shout.

00:12:40.240 Steven Spielberg puts her in Hook.

00:12:42.280 She has like a very, very tiny part as a young Wendy.

00:12:45.440 Yep. 0.97

00:12:46.100 Yep.

00:12:46.540 I remember this.

00:12:47.540 Oh, oh, yeah.

00:12:49.160 Yeah, she does a TV movie called or TV miniseries.

00:12:53.260 I think it was called Cruel Doubt.

00:12:55.120 She gets really good reviews.

00:12:57.100 That's also alongside her mother.

00:12:58.480 Many of the early parts were alongside her mother.

00:13:00.880 And then her breakout part was Flesh and Bone, which came out in the early 90s, early to mid 90s, with Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, like amazing cast.

00:13:10.860 And she's kind of the standout and then therefore one of the breakouts of the year.

00:13:16.120 people were talking about how she should get an oscar nomination for this movie and then she gets

00:13:20.460 the part in seven her parents connections really help her along the way because a lot of the

00:13:24.620 casting directors know that she's bruce and blythe's daughter and they want to see her like

00:13:28.220 understandably yeah um you know and of course for your casting director of course you want to 1.00

00:13:32.860 discover the next blythe danner yeah so they they see her she has that help um she does seven with 0.87

00:13:38.680 brad pitt and that's when she really her fame just just takes off because he was people's sexiest

00:13:45.480 man alive he was a major star on the up and up and she became a tabloid fixture i think from that

00:13:53.640 relationship they get engaged uh that does not last then she dates ben affleck and like her

00:14:01.180 she does shakespeare and love she wins the oscar when she's 26 gosh and she after she wins the oscar

00:14:07.360 she says i want to do different parts she had been doing these sort of elitist parts uh viola

00:14:13.060 shakespeare in love great expectations she plays like a wealthy sort of socialite type

00:14:18.400 a perfect murder she's playing a trophy wife who carries a kelly bag um it's her type it works

00:14:24.780 she succeed i think she my my takeaway from doing this book and i just hadn't really thought about

00:14:31.020 it she really did the best um when she was playing those types of parts like i think those came out

00:14:37.960 those movies came out the best and like to be fair a lot of this the the stinkers that she did

00:14:43.620 sorry but she did do some stinkers um shallow hell shallow hell view from the top yes like

00:14:49.980 a lot of it even you know those movies like they really weren't her fault but anyway she wanted to 0.81

00:14:56.020 try comedy because she wanted to do something different as an actor makes sense right um but

00:15:01.320 it just didn't really work out she did kind of a lot of middling things in the 2000s and then she

00:15:05.420 has this epiphany of like hey like i'm doing endorsement work for other brands uh she was

00:15:11.380 doing estee lauder people might remember that american express like a whole slew of brands

00:15:15.580 hired her to be their face and she says why don't i use my image to start my own brand and that

00:15:21.100 obviously was a very impactful decision that she made because now i think stars really want to have

00:15:28.020 brands i would say that the the art supports the brand whereas the brand used to support the art

00:15:34.420 Yes, absolutely. I think what's so interesting to me, too, is that she so she had something that was very similar to Julia Roberts in that, like, she looked different. There were no other stars that look like her precisely at that time. And part of it was like this swan likeness. Sometimes people evoke Grace Kelly, which I think is like, somewhat right. And also similar in terms of like, Grace Kelly, I think was always at her best when she was playing a socialite in some way.

00:16:03.860 and like figuring out how to explore that role she was also talented and this is not always the 0.51

00:16:10.800 case but unlike Julia Roberts who also took like an interesting like deviation into like serious 0.95

00:16:17.900 stuff from her primary niche of rom-coms like Julia Roberts could return she could be like

00:16:24.100 I'm back in my best friend's wedding my hair is big and curly like you like it come back and see

00:16:29.520 me and then have a runaway string of hits in the early 2000s gwyneth doesn't do that she and also

00:16:36.280 can't you know there are these hits these rom-coms of the 2000s like kate hudson rides that wave

00:16:43.680 to increasingly diminishing returns but she like that's not her she is not a rom-com star

00:16:50.500 no and she poo-pooed uh julia roberts she poo-pooed that kind of star when she was starting

00:16:58.720 out yeah of course she was very very young yeah when she did flesh and bone she was like 21 or

00:17:04.080 something yeah um so she would say like you know I'm not that type of actress like or Sandra Bullock

00:17:09.760 she specifically I think called out like I'm not going to be a Sandra Bullock and I think that

00:17:13.280 that's because her parents you know Saint Elsewhere Bruce's show it was not the most watched show but

00:17:20.740 it was very well respected and highly regarded yes and well written and uh Blythe too you know

00:17:28.340 she had this she had this kind of refined taste when it came to what she was doing and that's why 1.00

00:17:34.300 she wanted to go do checkoff every summer at the williamstown theater festival or shakespeare

00:17:38.160 and they steered gwyneth toward these uh toward indies really yeah and she really was great

00:17:45.560 in those miramax movies i mean she was yeah even the ones that weren't very good like the pallbearer

00:17:50.300 like she's the probably the best thing in the pallbearer uh david the david schwimmer movie

00:17:54.680 yes exactly oh I remember or sliding doors that's not like you know that's kind of borderline indie

00:18:01.340 mainstream but yeah yeah she did she did really well in in those parts and she kind of she was

00:18:08.240 like yeah I'm not going to be like that like I'm going to do like basically I'm paraphrasing but

00:18:12.600 her sentiment was I'm going to do the good stuff like I'm not going to do the stuff that's just

00:18:15.660 going to make money I'm not going to hold a you know wear a bikini and hold a gun like that was

00:18:20.480 her attitude when she was young. And I get that. I think that like a lot of people can probably

00:18:24.660 relate to that if they've ever had a creative pursuit. Because when you're young, you just like

00:18:29.720 you want to break the rules and you want to do things your way. And then when you get older,

00:18:34.340 you kind of realize like, oh, it's like maybe good to go along with your industry or go along

00:18:39.260 with business people. And she eventually did seem to kind of turn more toward making money and doing

00:18:46.120 those big blockbusters i mean she was an iron man which kicked off the whole marvel thing right

00:18:50.700 but also like i can't remember what movies i'm in right like so dismissive in this like

00:18:56.440 really fascinating way that like is funny but also kind of rude um but that's you know that's

00:19:03.600 how we've come to understand her i do think you point this out a lot in the book and i love the

00:19:07.680 reporting on like how gwyneth was kind of like uh brad pitt's a little bit of a hayseed and i know

00:19:12.680 that that was always a tension in her relationship with ben affleck and in my reporting on ben

00:19:17.280 affleck like he was always so like aspirational about gwyneth like because he had so much like

00:19:23.840 class anxiety and wanted to be like show that he was a high class person and dating gwyneth is one

00:19:30.420 way to do it but at the same time like she effortlessly performs this like high class

00:19:36.740 respectability and he is a striver yeah that's i love that analysis of ben affleck yeah so brad

00:19:42.580 Pitt I think that he's a useful character when it comes to understanding Gwyneth because if you look

00:19:47.880 at his upbringing he is from Missouri he grew up in a religious Baptist household and he went to

00:19:55.820 college and then he decides before he right before he graduates so he had more education than her

00:20:00.920 more college education than her he decides right before he graduates to head west to LA and just

00:20:06.400 see if he can make it as an actor. So that's like the bootstrap success story that we love in

00:20:12.740 America. Whereas Gwyneth, very different because she had her parents' connections, doors opened

00:20:18.780 for her. She performed when she got into those rooms, but she wasn't fighting to open the doors

00:20:24.640 necessarily the way many other actors have to. She was keenly aware of that. And she wondered

00:20:30.760 if Brad was smart enough for her. She expressed that enough times that I heard about it from

00:20:35.860 multiple people and there is a quote from a 90s interview she did when they were dating where she

00:20:41.640 says she kind of reveals this she says something like you know brad and i had very different

00:20:46.660 upbringings when we're out to a restaurant and we order caviar i have to say brad this is beluga

00:20:51.960 and this is etc okay we have so many questions about who i could just be like let's just talk

00:20:58.900 about who gwyneth dated for the rest of the show but because with this first question comes from

00:21:04.460 Florencia, and I think it will allow us to form a sort of like thesis statement for the rest of

00:21:09.600 the episode. I saw something recently on the internet, maybe a comment on W. Kamau Bell's

00:21:15.620 recent pieces on the Rogan sphere, I'm not sure, stating that Gwyneth is to white women what Joe

00:21:21.480 Rogan is to white men. I'm not well-versed enough in either to assess the comparison,

00:21:27.220 but maybe y'all could. Does this comparison do any helpful work for us as critical consumers

00:21:32.280 of cultural texts. Okay. So this is like a fast forward to the last part of your book,

00:21:37.620 but I'm really interested in your thoughts here. I'm interested in your thoughts too,

00:21:41.280 but I would say, so I don't listen to Joe Rogan. I've never listened to his show,

00:21:44.980 but I've heard clips and seen plenty of coverage about him as a general news consumer does. So my

00:21:51.620 understanding of him is that he will spread misinformation about health and kind of frame

00:21:56.820 it as I'm just asking questions. And I just want to hear what everybody has to say. And I do think

00:22:02.200 that's very similar to Gwyneth. Yeah. And I don't think she's promoting things that she doesn't

00:22:08.300 believe in, to be clear. I never got that sense. But people were perplexed by the wellness gurus

00:22:14.480 who she was attracted to and wanted to promote. For instance, this guy, Anthony William, the

00:22:20.600 medical medium, who has absolutely no medical training. He's not a doctor. But he says that

00:22:26.180 he hears a spirit in his ear that allows him to diagnose people's health problems and come up with

00:22:33.020 treatment plans. So the experts that I interviewed find this type of thing deeply concerning because

00:22:39.580 basically what happens is that people will follow the advice of gurus and they will avoid getting

00:22:50.180 proven treatment for their illnesses. And that can be deadly if you have, say, cancer that needs

00:22:58.440 to be treated in a timely fashion. So I do think that Gwyneth is like Joe Rogan in that way. I mean,

00:23:04.340 Joe Rogan is so, like that podcast, I think is very powerful. I think it influences politics,

00:23:11.200 maybe in a more direct way. And also like more omnipresent, like Gwyneth is not

00:23:17.800 hosting a three-hour podcast like several times a week do you know what i mean like goop i there

00:23:25.160 there is a lot of goop content but it is not like you cannot immerse yourself in the goop sphere in

00:23:30.220 the same way that you can in the rogan sphere um and but i the point too though about like i'm just

00:23:36.460 asking questions like they're both platforming these people yep they both they elevate them

00:23:42.040 and allow their ideas to gain credence but sometimes lost in this conversation is the

00:23:49.220 fact that oprah did the same freaking thing like she did think about that she does she still does

00:23:54.620 she just did a menopause special not that long ago yeah and like and dr oz like dr phil all of

00:24:01.540 these people like their prominence and their cultural power which is significant and also 0.95

00:24:06.780 deeply fucked up comes from Oprah and her platforming them. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Oprah has 0.98

00:24:13.880 platformed some non-science backed health advice. I mean, her menopause special, I read about it on

00:24:21.380 Dr. Jen Gunter's Substack, which is so great, which is so fantastic. Uh, I interviewed Dr.

00:24:28.240 Gunter. She's one of Gwyneth's critics, uh, who's been quite vocal about the harm she feels

00:24:33.240 Goop has done. I interviewed her at length for the book. But yeah, I mean, this stuff is everywhere.

00:24:37.740 I mean, influencers now like, and I actually think that this is why Goop doesn't get as much

00:24:44.380 air anymore in the press is because wellness, social media has become so extreme. If you go

00:24:51.460 on Instagram reels or TikTok and you search raw diet, you will see some shocking videos

00:24:56.780 of people chugging raw eggs and eating large pieces of raw meat. Like I just think that

00:25:02.060 it's gotten so much more extreme than some of the things that goop was promoting and goop has

00:25:06.760 dialed back in the wellness content yeah and i actually think now like it's not people aren't

00:25:11.660 getting this information from gwyneth as much it's all downstream with all of these other like

00:25:16.200 maha influencers and sarah peterson wrote a piece that's all about your book and it's connecting

00:25:22.260 these dots that she sees between like all of her work on momfluencers and how they are really

00:25:29.100 taking this invitation from goop because i would say goop i not gwyneth i would say goop they're

00:25:35.480 taking this invitation from goop to just to just ask questions and to seek other things and sarah

00:25:40.900 makes this really astute point that like here are these women whose material lives are devalued in 0.98

00:25:48.120 so many ways like they have no authority and essentially goop is deputizing them to be like

00:25:53.160 you can be the authority on your own body exactly exactly and that's really that's a very

00:25:58.320 Yeah, that's such a great point. And she's such a great writer. And that was a really great piece. But yeah, I think I agree with that. Goop does kind of prey on this idea that healthcare is not for you.

00:26:11.860 yes that like your doctor is not looking out for you medical researchers are not looking out for

00:26:16.820 you but we're looking out for you i did ask you know the experts that i interviewed about that

00:26:22.300 point um and they said you know yeah i know like big pharma not perfect big health care not perfect

00:26:28.460 but we're not going to fix it with pseudoscience yeah that's what i see i'm like i understand why

00:26:33.780 this is popular i still reject it yeah exactly and i also think like to be fair it's so confusing

00:26:40.900 to be a woman and like a mom and a consumer right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like in, in wanting the

00:26:47.240 best for your household and for your children, it's just like, what do you buy? Like I, I feel

00:26:52.660 very confused by it myself. Um, you know, and I try to stay informed and follow the science and

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00:32:18.200 Okay, next question from Katie. I love this question.

00:32:22.680 Why do I like Gwyneth Paltrow? She's problematic in so many ways, has an unattainable lifestyle, and seems to be a beige superfan. But she's funny? Doesn't give a fuck? Why am I following her on Instagram? 1.00

00:32:40.700 Okay, I have a question for you. Do you like Gwyneth Paltrow?

00:32:44.420 So I like her as a, as a person and having done this book, I think that when you spend

00:32:50.160 so much time researching somebody and thinking about them, you just have more empathy for

00:32:56.660 them.

00:32:57.520 I like a lot of things about her.

00:32:59.560 And then I really part company with her on Goop and the health misinformation that Goop

00:33:03.740 has promoted and many of the experts that she's platformed through Goop.

00:33:07.660 And seemingly, you know, I do, I still ask myself, like, you know, like all this information

00:33:12.800 is available.

00:33:13.420 like she could get accurate information she could get accurate information out to the public like at

00:33:17.320 one point at what point do you just willfully disregard all of that and is that a self-protective

00:33:22.520 mechanism for her having been so dragged through the mud before but i think the reason people like

00:33:27.580 her and i almost hate to use this word but i think it it works here she's authentic like she's never

00:33:33.440 she's never pretended to be someone that she's not and people can smell that yeah on the internet

00:33:39.420 especially like with Meghan Markle if they think she's being inauthentic they can they can smell

00:33:43.700 it and they pounce and I think that Gwyneth she has just never pretended to be something that

00:33:48.760 she's not even when she started goop and she was getting all this flack for promoting expensive

00:33:52.800 things she was like well I can't pretend to be someone who makes $25,000 a year yeah yeah and

00:33:58.460 she she's a movie star like sometimes I think we overthink it we're like why do I like this person

00:34:04.060 you're like because they're a movie star um and real like enduring movie stars and you point this

00:34:10.680 out like they are good at acting and thus they are good at convincing you that they are likable

00:34:16.840 in some way even when they're unlikable they are still likable and part of that is the performance

00:34:21.200 of authenticity as you point out they have that charisma they have i think of it as like the light

00:34:26.680 like when it's shining on you you feel like you are the best person in the world yeah she's very 0.98

00:34:31.660 good at that I was told and then it can turn away from you and you feel like you've fucked up in

00:34:36.580 all these irreparable ways um that's why it's hard to work for her yeah um and that's probably

00:34:42.780 why people like to follow her on Instagram I think you know the the recent so we got a lot

00:34:47.880 of questions about like can you do a very close reading of like the ski accident testimony

00:34:53.240 and that I think resurfaced part of what people really love about her can you talk a little bit

00:35:00.080 about that I know you've talked about it like yeah interviews but you know people people haven't asked

00:35:05.300 me about the ski trial as much I thought they would because I interviewed Terry Sanderson

00:35:08.580 yeah to suit her and I talked to him in February um and he had he only took my call to be honest

00:35:15.600 with you because uh he thought I was going to be someone else but then he ended up and I'm having

00:35:19.940 a nice conversation so so uh yeah any any aspiring journalists out there you always got to pick up

00:35:26.680 the phone and a call but um yeah so that she basically uh and she's come out and said this

00:35:32.840 like she felt like she was wrongly sued and she wasn't going to stand for it and i asked terry

00:35:38.820 sanderson like did you like was there ever an opportunity to settle and he said no there was

00:35:43.180 never an opportunity to settle it just went right on to court like she was going to make her point

00:35:47.780 and he talked about how there was nothing he realized like there was nothing he could do

00:35:53.300 to go up against someone like this with this kind of power. And I think that what captivated the

00:36:00.620 public about it, I guess it was two things. One, it was like a performance, like she hadn't given

00:36:05.900 in forever because she hadn't been doing movies, really. I mean, she did those little Marvel

00:36:12.160 things, but I didn't watch that stuff. No, no. When she's like, when they ask her, like,

00:36:17.600 are you an intermediate skier? Like, I could watch that forever. I was just like, what a movie star.

00:36:23.300 So amazing.

00:36:24.360 I love it.

00:36:24.520 Yeah.

00:36:24.760 So she knows how to play the part that she needs to play in any situation, whether she's, like, in the boardroom or raising money from VCs or testifying in this trial.

00:36:36.860 And then the other thing I think that was fascinating about it, because her clothes got so much attention.

00:36:41.040 Yes.

00:36:41.880 And I think that they really stood out because she was in kind of the most pedestrian setting you can imagine.

00:36:48.740 Yes.

00:36:49.000 And the drabbest setting you can imagine, which is court.

00:36:51.580 it's like Gwyneth at the DMV yeah and it was kind of like that dichotomy that kind of fascinates

00:36:58.440 people about her where she's like I have to say to Brad this is Beluga and this is etc

00:37:01.600 like it's her her glamorous natural self in this really drab place where everyone else is just

00:37:09.460 like normal it's like her colliding with the normal world and this prolonged way and because

00:37:15.280 Utah streams these trials we could all watch it every single day so I think that's what was

00:37:19.540 fascinating about it yeah like how often do you get to like watch a live stream of a movie star

00:37:23.260 going to the dmv sitting there well and as us weekly so brilliantly pioneered like we love

00:37:29.800 photos or footage of stars when they have to interact with the rest of the world like stars

00:37:35.980 are just like us like ten thousand dollars for a picture of someone pumping their gas like oh my

00:37:41.160 gosh this is gold and you point out too that like utah allows cameras in the courtroom so that allowed

00:37:47.540 us like a much more visceral experience than if it was just like a transcript and a sketch

00:37:54.680 of what was happening.

00:37:56.060 Oh, yeah, exactly.

00:37:57.480 To be able to witness, I mean, and even, you know, his testimony, too.

00:38:01.600 I remember him imitating her scream.

00:38:05.080 I mean, this trial led to, I believe, two plays or two musicals.

00:38:11.140 I saw one of them in New York.

00:38:13.420 It was such great fun.

00:38:17.540 Well, because there's this camp version of her. Actually, before we talk about that, let's do the next question because I think that will allow us to talk about it a little bit more. This comes from Andrea.

00:38:28.060 When did Gwyneth become the villain? I'm an elder millennial and have such fond memories of her

00:38:33.820 in Emma and Sliding Doors. She was dating Brad Pitt. She was a great actress with good style

00:38:39.320 and a solid career. Then she kind of disappeared, at least for me. I'm not a huge follower of

00:38:45.160 celebrity culture. And when she reemerged, it was as this kind of new agey snake oil salesperson

00:38:52.240 trying to sell us all jade vagina eggs. What happened? 1.00

00:38:57.000 I love hearing your listeners ask the questions. It's absolutely magical.

00:39:03.340 Well, I do have an... I know exactly when people turned on her, and that was right after she won

00:39:09.920 her Oscar. Yeah. Yeah. So she won the Oscar. Everyone was glowing over it. The press was

00:39:15.760 happy for her. People were saying, you know, she's like impossibly beautiful. She's so talented.

00:39:20.760 kid she was so young 26 it's a great romance like happening even in the acceptance speech

00:39:27.280 like she doesn't fit her dress there's something charming about that all that stuff yes yes she

00:39:33.080 cried she broke down and cried her father was sick you know that wasn't out there and but um

00:39:38.940 it's just like a lot of emotions for her there was a real like excitement about that and uh

00:39:44.320 But she – so the praise was just so, so glowing that I just quickly turned.

00:39:51.780 And the through line I saw in those early essays about how she's annoying and people don't like her, it was really her privilege that people were pouncing on, that she was – not that anybody called her a Nepo baby.

00:40:03.640 We didn't have that term back then, but she was a Nepo baby, that she was this pampered it girl.

00:40:10.120 People were calling her an it girl in the 90s.

00:40:12.640 and there was one article in the New York Times that came up again and again in these stories,

00:40:18.120 and it was about how Gwyneth, when she went to the Oscars, she was wearing a diamond choker,

00:40:22.800 a simple diamond choker with her pink dress by Harry Winston, and she had borrowed it,

00:40:26.920 as stars often do, and her father, she goes to the Oscars with her father and her mother,

00:40:32.320 and her father is sitting there, and he looks over at her during the ceremony, and he's so

00:40:36.560 proud of her, and he thinks she looks so beautiful, and he decides to buy her the necklace,

00:40:41.220 And Gwyneth tells a Harry Winston rep, my daddy's buying me the necklace.

00:40:45.360 The Harry Winston rep repeats that comment to the New York Times in a very small item.

00:40:50.400 And then it just got picked up again and again, like this pampered girl whose daddy is buying her $160,000 necklace.

00:40:58.080 He's a major star.

00:40:59.780 Like, there's not a lot of money.

00:41:02.940 But I get it.

00:41:04.020 I get it.

00:41:04.580 I get it.

00:41:05.540 And so that becomes the recycled piece of information.

00:41:08.640 And I love I know that, you know, this intimately because I did the same sort of research when you're doing like these Lexis Nexus, New York Times historical research, like you see you get to see just how often a quote is repeated again and again and again, like how it becomes this foundational stone and how people understand who she is.

00:41:31.260 yeah and at that time i mean we didn't really have so much internet media yeah you know so

00:41:38.040 there wasn't as much and and people didn't count on her quotes as much yeah and she wasn't this

00:41:44.340 was before like the gossip blogs the disruption in gossip media as it were like this was still

00:41:51.620 we're still in kind of old school understanding so it was very easy for a narrative to take hold

00:41:56.180 that way though yeah and then she also started doing those comedies that didn't work out like 0.95

00:42:00.760 She did Shallow Hell, which she genuinely thought was going to bring attention to fat shaming.

00:42:05.060 It did, but not in the way she expected. 0.92

00:42:07.500 She did View from the Top.

00:42:08.840 Like, she did these movies that did not come out well.

00:42:11.540 And I understand why she wanted to do them.

00:42:13.120 Like, if you wanted to do comedy at that time, you wanted to work with the Farrelly brothers.

00:42:17.000 They were doing the big blockbuster, number one at the box office, comedies.

00:42:21.700 And their movies, you know, Shallow Hell, I wouldn't say is among their great movies, but they did some funny movies.

00:42:27.800 yeah so um yeah so there was that sort of hatred of her kind of combined with her movies just not

00:42:34.840 coming out well through really no fault of her own and in many instances and then she emerged

00:42:40.940 i think with goop that's kind of when she came back and she was hated until she wasn't for goop

00:42:44.940 right right right okay let's talk about something that we haven't talked about yet and that is like

00:42:49.960 hovering like an evil specter in the background of all of this which is harvey weinstein so we

00:42:55.980 have a question that's teeing us up for this. This comes from Amy. I read She Said several years ago

00:43:01.840 and remember the moment when Harvey Weinstein showed up at Gwyneth Paltrow's house several

00:43:06.120 hours before a party. She hid in the bathroom and called one of the New York Times reporters.

00:43:11.280 She wasn't as out front as Ashley Judd or Rose McGowan, but it feels like Gwyneth didn't get

00:43:15.500 the recognition or appreciation for her part in taking down Weinstein. Is that because it was

00:43:21.220 after Goop and people were sick of her? Or do I remember her playing more of a role than she did? 0.79

00:43:25.980 Okay, so she said is the book by the reporters Jodi Cantor and Megan Toohey that recounts like everything that happened all of their reporting with Harvey Weinstein's long history of abuse. People didn't know. It's very good. So can you expound on this scene a little bit? I have this memory of Gwyneth being like, actually kind of a linchpin and breaking things open. Yeah, she confirmed some things that they were trying to confirm, but I might be misremembering.

00:43:51.560 Yeah, so that is such an excellent book, she said by Jodi and Megan, who broke the story, which was an incredible feat of journalism. And they did, they did credit her. I don't know that their credit of her went as wide as maybe it should have. But they did say that she was really instrumental in breaking open the story when others were afraid.

00:44:14.420 and she wanted to be part of a chorus of voices and the story that they did with her and that

00:44:21.580 the story that they did with her came out after they just broke the story in general about

00:44:25.420 Weinstein using NDAs to cover up the harassment and assault. Um, you know, people told me like

00:44:32.100 when Gwyneth got, uh, sort of, uh, or when she started working with Miramax and doing the

00:44:37.060 Miramax movies in the nineties, it made sense because they were doing those Indies as well

00:44:42.440 written, sort of beautiful, interesting movies that critics really liked. It was her sweet spot.

00:44:49.440 And there were great people working there. Harvey Weinstein was, I talked to a lot of people in

00:44:54.340 Miramax, super difficult for just about everybody who worked with him. He ran Miramax with his

00:44:59.140 brother, Bob. And one person told me they had a saying about them, which was that Bob would run

00:45:05.420 you over with a bus and keep going. And Harvey would run you over with a bus and come back and

00:45:10.280 offer to take you to the hospital. So I think that shows you how complicated it was to deal

00:45:15.940 with him. And Gwyneth, from what they observed, Gwyneth was supposed to be like Miramax's Grace

00:45:24.040 Kelly. And he tried to build her up into that star. I think she kept what happened between

00:45:31.820 them at the Peninsula Hotel, where he offered to give her a massage, pretty private. Didn't tell

00:45:37.740 a whole lot of people um people at miramax that i talked to didn't didn't know about it interesting

00:45:43.380 interesting that so there was something i'm trying to remember like brad pitt confronted

00:45:48.720 him that's right can you talk about that that was so interesting so she told brad pitt was one of

00:45:54.640 the few people she told because they were dating and uh she was going to star in emma the 1996 movie

00:46:01.860 and that was going to be her first leading role and uh so it was having got that part but before

00:46:08.460 the filming started that Weinstein uh harassed her in this hotel room she tells Brad Pitt and

00:46:13.480 then they end up at a Hamlet premiere I think it was in New York City and Harvey was there

00:46:17.580 and Brad Pitt confronted him there and said basically don't put your hands on her

00:46:21.480 it did disturb her I mean yeah understandably and obviously I guess but when she did go to

00:46:27.520 film emma and he showed up she was uncomfortable when he was there when he showed up on the set

00:46:34.000 which it wouldn't be abnormal for him to show up on his movie sets and you know hang out for like

00:46:38.100 a few days or whatever it may be but she was uncomfortable because of what had happened there

00:46:42.700 but she had a bit of control over him too right like he was somewhat bewitched from what many of

00:46:48.640 my sources observed she seemed to have she seemed to be able to deal with him yeah and people said

00:46:53.800 to me like she was always the girl the kid who had like no problem talking to grown-ups yeah very

00:46:59.240 very extroverted just kind of seemed to have like the world at her fingertips I guess and she see

00:47:04.840 people got the sense that she knew how to manage him yeah I the point that she wanted to be part

00:47:11.620 of a chorus of voices is really interesting to me because I think that like she was one of the

00:47:19.660 Like, if she would have spoken out earlier, she had a star wattage that could have absorbed the damage in a way that a lot of these other women that were saying things about Harvey Weinstein for years, like, they couldn't, in part because Harvey Weinstein had ruined their careers, right?

00:47:37.300 Yeah.

00:47:38.580 Yeah, I think that's true.

00:47:39.960 But she was still nervous about it.

00:47:41.240 And according to the reporting in Megan and Jodi's book, she was nervous in part because the Jade Egg controversy was unfolding.

00:47:47.380 Oh.

00:47:47.880 And she told them that she couldn't.

00:47:50.120 She was worried about wrecking her business, which was interesting to me because I asked

00:47:55.860 people, so many people in Goop land, if she seemed worried about the backlash, which only

00:48:02.740 drove up sales of the egg.

00:48:04.840 And they said that she did not seem, it didn't seem to bother her.

00:48:10.100 And in fact, Goop would try to court that backlash because it would lead to a spike

00:48:14.300 of traffic and then therefore a spike in sales.

00:48:16.640 Not necessarily of the product in question, but it could be like, you know, you go over there to be like, what's going on with this jade egg?

00:48:22.120 And then you buy a sweater.

00:48:23.560 Totally.

00:48:24.200 I remember going to look at the jade egg, did not buy anything because it was all way out of my price range.

00:48:29.280 This is when I was working at BuzzFeed.

00:48:30.820 So, of course, I didn't have enough money to buy anything at Coop.

00:48:38.300 Today's episode is brought to you by Honeylove.

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00:52:13.580 okay last question about Gwyneth I think this will bring us full circle this comes from Mary 0.98

00:52:24.940 what is it about Gwyneth Paltrow that her quirks are so extreme and then moments after we mock them

00:52:30.500 they become mainstream I think of Apple as the first crazy celebrity baby name now that's normal

00:52:37.660 even for non-celebrities conscious uncoupling was so widely mocked when she coined it but now that

00:52:44.200 seems like the standard messaging for celebrity breakups when they have kids tom cruise jumping

00:52:48.880 on the couch did not become normal so why do gwyneth paltrow's eccentricities become part of

00:52:53.700 culture what's your theory on this i think because she's she has some good ideas i like i think that

00:53:05.860 so many of us have seen divorce hurt a family or hurt our own family. And I think that the idea

00:53:14.320 of conscious uncoupling is fantastic. If you can get divorced and be around your ex for the sake

00:53:20.920 of your children, that's amazing. And I think a lot of people can understand that. I think when

00:53:27.800 it comes from her, again, it's wrapped up in privilege. But I also think, as I tried to point

00:53:34.460 out in the book. When she says things that trigger people, for instance, when she was doing Shallow

00:53:39.640 Hell, and she practiced walking around in the fat suit, the fat suit was supposed to make her look

00:53:44.860 basically three times as large as her size at the time. So she put on the fat suit to just kind of 0.72

00:53:50.080 walk around and see what it was like to be in the fat suit and to practice for playing Rosemary.

00:53:56.920 And it was really hard for her. And people observed her doing it, who I talked to, who said

00:54:01.300 like there were points when like there was one point where she like had to stop she couldn't do

00:54:05.200 it anymore because of the way she was being regarded and she was aware of that like she

00:54:09.080 would pass by teen girls and they would snicker or like men men who probably otherwise would have

00:54:14.000 stared at her just kind of like skirted around her like she was a fire hydrant or something

00:54:17.980 on the sidewalk so that was a difficult experience for her and the quote that she

00:54:23.020 gave about it that really traveled at the time was i'm paraphrasing i got a real sense of what

00:54:28.540 it was like to be overweight and every pretty girl should be forced to do that so i can

00:54:34.420 intellectually understand what she's saying like i think she was trying to say that that was a 0.85

00:54:39.580 valuable experience for her but then the way it comes out is kind of triggering and revealing of

00:54:44.620 her own privilege yes and so i think that's the reason why like these things explode and they're

00:54:49.600 triggering but then people realize oh like she kind of has a point um but it's also coming from

00:54:55.000 this place where like and you're also reinforcing norms of like thinness from like everything that

00:54:59.800 you do and the like it's just it's so hard in that way yeah or like after princess diana died

00:55:06.980 uh she gave a quote saying that like tabloids shouldn't exist and then we wouldn't have this

00:55:12.280 problem you know and it's like kind of reducing a very complicated issue but it's like you can

00:55:18.440 kind of understand what she's saying so i think that like you can understand that there's some

00:55:24.720 logic and truth in the things that she says and not always but i think that when there's maybe

00:55:30.020 some logic and truth that's when like things kind of catch on but when she did conscious

00:55:34.120 uncoupling too they published i think people are used to you know what we would call like woo-woo

00:55:38.580 content yeah or woo-woo health gurus whatever maybe they published an article on goop by this

00:55:44.180 guy dr sadegi and his wife dr sadegi is an osteopath who's promoted some pseudoscience

00:55:50.020 some very troubling pseudoscience on his own, but it just explained like conscious uncoupling

00:55:56.740 and it just went on and on. And it was just sort of, I want to say a British writer called it the

00:56:02.300 most deluded tosh she had ever read or something like that. It was just like, it was kind of

00:56:08.200 annoying if I'm being honest. I don't know how else to describe it. And it just, it didn't really

00:56:12.980 fit with like culture and media and wellness as we understood it at the time. So I think it just

00:56:18.960 seemed extremely pretentious right and then in hindsight you can see like oh well this is a way

00:56:25.680 for celebrities to break up and still be in each other's lives but at the time I think it actually

00:56:29.780 was widely ridiculed this is my memory of it it was yes because the the sentiment in the media

00:56:35.980 was like she's she's trying to have a better divorce than you like totally it's like she's

00:56:40.360 better than you I do think the other thing that you pointed out in the beginning is that she 0.99

00:56:47.100 she's very good at having other people say the crazy shit the pseudoscience like it's not coming 0.98

00:56:56.020 out of her mouth per se and so that's different than like tom cruise getting memed jumping on 0.99

00:57:03.340 the couch right like that is tom cruise like you cannot distance the couch jump from tom cruise

00:57:09.760 there's no distancing whereas this is part of this larger constellation that is her brand

00:57:14.800 and like you can think of it as something like a phase she's going through do you know what i mean

00:57:19.180 that's such a good point yeah you're right because she platforms these experts and people are like

00:57:24.120 she's really smart i don't understand why she believes in these people but as i understand it

00:57:28.640 she does believe in these people yes and and one thing we didn't talk about is she came to believe

00:57:33.240 in these people in part through like in a route that's actually very similar to what a lot of i

00:57:38.640 think like Maha moms and people who believe in pseudoscience take which is her a family member

00:57:45.120 becoming very ill and wanting to help them and then her experiencing some inexplicable symptoms

00:57:50.660 which in hindsight were probably like a panic attack but felt very unknowable to her right

00:57:57.400 yeah so her father Bruce Paltrow was diagnosed with throat cancer around the time that she was

00:58:03.080 filming the talented Mr. Ripley in the late 90s we didn't even talk about talented Mr. Ripley

00:58:07.820 I know there's so much, but she, she was obviously, you know, I think a lot of people

00:58:13.860 can under, you know, people who have a loved one who's gotten a diagnosis like that know

00:58:18.040 what a gut punch that is and how scary. And he, he was treated for the illness,

00:58:24.700 but never fully recovered. And then he died kind of suddenly when they were visiting Italy to

00:58:30.320 celebrate her 30th birthday and they were together and she was alone with him and he died in the

00:58:34.740 hospital. And, um, you know, like really gut wrenching, horrible situation. My father died

00:58:40.960 when I was 27. So I, I know what that feels like and no two situations are exactly alike, but

00:58:46.660 just to have something like that happen, it feels like you're in a nightmare and you just want to

00:58:52.080 wake up, but you never do. And you want answers. Like, how did this happen to me? How did this

00:58:56.160 happen to the person that I love where there are just not good answers. And I think that she

00:59:00.920 started looking into, you know, what, what, you know, I'm injecting my dad's stomach when he was

00:59:06.820 had a feeding tube, like with this substance, but like what, what's in it, what's in our food? Like

00:59:11.460 what, what could be hurting us? I think she found some answers in wellness. And I also think that

00:59:17.640 when you're a movie star, when you're that famous, people don't tell, you know, exactly.

00:59:23.780 People don't question you. So if you decide, you know, I'm going to fall down this wellness

00:59:27.360 rabbit hole and I'm going to find the answers people don't tell you that you have the wrong

00:59:32.040 answers yeah god no and that's so hard like no one tells you no and she probably is like well

00:59:41.840 yeah I want to make money off of this exploiting other people's feelings but she probably thinks 0.85

00:59:46.700 that she's helping people I think so she yes she is a very much a business person like she wants 0.99

00:59:52.220 if she's selling supplements she wants to sell the supplements uh she doesn't want them to sit

00:59:56.360 around and go bad you know so she has to throw them out but yeah i no one ever said that she

01:00:01.620 didn't believe in what she was selling that's interesting because like i think about other

01:00:07.880 charlatans like alex jones who like sells you know like the virility pills and that sort of thing 0.92

01:00:12.940 like alex jones is not taking this fucking virility pills um but i do think that gwyneth 0.89

01:00:19.520 paltrow is like this is her her pipeline is like i here are things that i'm exploring or i'm 0.97

01:00:24.580 thinking about so just like a couple of weeks before we recorded this Gwyneth was in the news

01:00:33.020 again because of her appearance in a commercial for astronomer what did you like I mean that's

01:00:40.720 great timing for your book do you know do you feel like it like because your book got so much

01:00:46.100 press that like part of me feels like she's like okay this is I'm attracting the narrative to me

01:00:51.320 this way and deflecting it from this book. What do you think? I don't know. I mean, only she knows

01:00:57.320 what's going through her head. So I don't know if the book to her is like, I mean, Us Weekly had an

01:01:02.060 item saying that a source close to her said she's not too bothered by it. And she's been doing the

01:01:06.480 Hollywood game for so long. I think the book is really fair. And there's some really nice stuff

01:01:11.360 in there. And there's some stuff in there she's probably not going to like as much. But I really

01:01:15.240 don't know if she's brushing it off or if it's bothering her. Like some of the stories that in

01:01:21.100 the past have bothered her um when she was in talk magazine as i point out in the book at like

01:01:26.240 the early 2000s she was annoyed both times she was in in the magazine for various reasons she

01:01:31.840 was annoyed by harper's bizarre story peg to shallow how like so it does happen and i don't 0.86

01:01:36.880 i just don't know i mean the astronomer thing i think that she knows how to create a viral moment 0.98

01:01:41.840 to say the least be it her this smells like my vagina candle or that ad yeah and i think that 1.00

01:01:47.760 she thrives on those moments and she's a face of a lot of brands. Like this is the, this is the 0.99

01:01:53.440 other thing that I think is just shows her power is no matter the controversies associated with 0.92

01:01:59.240 her, no matter the pseudoscience that she promotes or the troubling people who she platforms, like 1.00

01:02:05.820 brands want her to be their face like that. It just, it hasn't really interfered with that.

01:02:11.760 And then it also hasn't seemed to interfere with her ability to get movie roles. I mean,

01:02:16.340 we'll see what happens with her acting career but yeah around christmas her movie with timothy

01:02:20.360 chalamet marty supreme is going to come out and i think it's going to be a really big deal yeah

01:02:23.780 we're going to have a really interesting press tour and i saw in your interview with vulture i

01:02:28.180 think you pointed out that she will probably do like an actors on actors talking to actors

01:02:32.460 interview with dakota fanning which would be dakota johnson sorry dakota johnson yeah which

01:02:37.460 would be so great i just two nepo babies very like an interesting contrast between how they grew up

01:02:45.100 and their lineages in all of these ways god i would have loved it but and also very funny

01:02:50.960 secretly yeah but yeah dakota johnson is very good at that stuff as is gwyneth so i think yeah

01:02:58.540 we'll see because dakota had the materialist which i haven't seen but i know people really

01:03:01.800 liked it but also maybe it'll be like two stars like hitting each other and exploding like maybe

01:03:06.380 it will be just really awkward and bad we'll see that will be my favorite anticipation of the

01:03:11.440 upcoming season if that's variety that does that yeah i think it's variety yeah but like you know

01:03:15.840 maybe like you know hopefully someone from variety is listening make it happen uh amy this is a great

01:03:22.240 place to stop thank you so much for coming on the show this has been a wonderful conversation

01:03:26.580 thank you and we will of course put a link to the book in the show notes um where can people find

01:03:32.500 you on the internet if they want to find more from you yeah i write a substat called back row

01:03:36.800 focused on culture and fashion. It's amyodell.substack.com. And my primary social network

01:03:43.160 is Instagram. I'm instamyodell, I-N-S-T-A-M-Y-O-D-E-L-L.

01:03:50.220 Amazing. Thanks again.

01:03:52.100 welcome to ask an anything this is the part of the show that's usually just for paid subscribers

01:04:07.720 but today everyone is getting this discussion for free if you're new here the title is self

01:04:12.940 explanatory you can submit a question about anything if you need advice if you want my

01:04:18.240 opinion on something, if you want Melody's opinion on something, whatever. Sometimes this is related

01:04:23.200 to the rest of the episode and sometimes it's not. Melody's going to help me answer today's

01:04:27.320 question, which comes from Madison. Madison says, I just quit my job from burnout and have a lot of

01:04:33.320 people giving me advice on how to quickly jump back into work. What things or activities do you

01:04:38.360 do to reset and bring yourself back to writing? Oh my gosh, Madison, do not listen to these people

01:04:43.920 who are telling you to get back to work I think if this if Madison quit her job because of burnout

01:04:49.680 she probably has at least a little bit of a cushion don't you think I think so and I think like

01:04:57.420 what you really need what your brain needs is actual rest your brain needs rest and so how

01:05:06.460 do you give it like that rejuvenation period everyone's different on what it takes and I

01:05:12.340 think this is what's hard right because I can say like what I do in order to get back into writing

01:05:17.220 I think that for me it's spending time in my own head without thinking about how I need to

01:05:25.160 produce something for money or for feedback so like the freedom from constraints and also from

01:05:33.760 pressure because the pressure is oftentimes like what and also like the process like for me when

01:05:40.080 I was super burnt out when I was working at BuzzFeed like I just I was so allergic to like

01:05:45.660 pitching an idea and then people giving me feedback like how dare they right

01:05:50.940 that was the hard part was like I knew that I like I was so fed up with and exhausted by the

01:06:00.320 process and so I think like how can you make your mind like take a break from all of those things

01:06:07.800 it's certainly not reading deeply on your subject or like doing something that's like related to it

01:06:13.940 in some way i think like figuring out and depends on what sort of work that madison does like

01:06:19.680 what's the thing that made you want to do that thing in the first place like is it like

01:06:23.700 do you like playing around do you like like is there some like artistic corner or experimental

01:06:30.100 corner or like math corner whatever that thing is that when you first did it you were like that's

01:06:35.580 fun. Like, I actually like doing that. That would be, I think, getting back to that. That's the

01:06:42.200 only work-related thing. Otherwise, do things that you actually really like. Like, what have

01:06:46.180 you done, Melody? What have you done when you've been really burnt out? Well, I mean, this whole

01:06:50.900 year, I've devoted to recovering from burnout because I really overworked myself last year.

01:06:57.940 I also just want to say the biggest red flag to me in this question is the word quickly

01:07:02.440 because you cannot shortcut that process like you basically have to treat yourself as though

01:07:10.520 you are an injured athlete yeah and if you go too far too fast too heavy like you're just

01:07:16.500 gonna hurt yourself again and I think that we are trained to like oh I took a week off like I'm

01:07:22.860 ready to go again right right if you are an injured athlete that is not how it works yeah

01:07:28.400 so yeah I at the beginning of this year told myself like I'm only gonna do strict scrutiny

01:07:34.860 and culture study and everything else I'll give to a subcontractor or just turn down and I'm gonna

01:07:42.560 do that for the whole year and it's September and I just in like the past month or so feel

01:07:51.080 like I have energy yeah and like there has been there's been a lot of hobbying yes but there has

01:07:58.780 also been a lot of laying around and when we're talking about rest I'm not talking about like

01:08:06.140 yeah but I'm still like reading for my book club and I'm still like you know I took up quilting

01:08:12.180 earlier this year that's still productive and so that's not even necessarily restful yeah so

01:08:19.440 I also think, and this is, we're kind of turning Madison's question on its side here, but one of the things to keep yourself from burnout, the most important things, and we obviously talk about this on the newsletter all the time, is that you have to train yourself to not have work be the center of your life.

01:08:36.280 Yes.

01:08:36.980 To not have it be the axis around which everything else is rotating.

01:08:41.480 And how do you do that?

01:08:42.980 You have to create things that are other forms of gravity.

01:08:45.660 so like some people have kids and that forces them to have another center of gravity in their life

01:08:50.980 you and i have really cool hobbies um but really like dogs it makes us sound trivial but i think

01:08:59.260 like i in all seriousness like there are other parts of my life that feel very valuable and

01:09:04.860 wonderful that i have devoted more time to and that's like friends and community obviously but

01:09:12.120 then also like spending a lot of time with my dahlias and like just de-centering that and then

01:09:17.600 the last thing I would say too is like since we're using the athletics metaphor like when I get go to

01:09:26.180 PT what they do is they're not like go rest forever don't do anything they're like here's

01:09:31.680 the strengthening exercises that you need to do before you can do the activity again yeah and so

01:09:37.520 like some of the things that you need to do before you can go back into work are like involve

01:09:43.420 strengthening those muscles that were so weak that you got injured last time yeah so for you

01:09:48.600 it was saying no yeah and I've had to say no to more than just work like I have had to do so much

01:09:58.360 less than what I think I can even do like one of the things I realized at the end of last year was

01:10:05.580 like I had this really intricate calendar system for making sure I got everything done on time

01:10:10.340 and it was still really overwhelming and I was like wait if I need a really intricate calendar

01:10:16.500 system to get everything done on time like to keep track of everything maybe I have too much

01:10:22.120 to keep track of right right right and I have not had to use said calendar system in the past nine

01:10:28.380 months and it means sometimes it means saying no to social things sometimes like I have not

01:10:36.780 visited my twin baby nieces as much this year which sucks but that was also one of the things

01:10:44.280 that kind of burnt me out last year was just like way too much travel yep exactly no I have the same

01:10:49.600 thing it's like oh do you want to go to this incredibly cool um conference in Budapest yes

01:10:56.280 I do but also I cannot like I just have to be really honest about how much time I can spend

01:11:02.940 traveling and doing the other things and like not feeling completely overwhelmed with work when I

01:11:08.080 come back to do the other things so yeah yeah so we kind of we kind of answered do my my summary

01:11:15.540 for Madison is do so much less than you think you can do for so much longer than you think you need

01:11:23.420 to right and then you can double everything you can start adding right but you have to go low

01:11:28.680 first yeah and then rebuild from there it's kind of like when people have way way way too many

01:11:33.940 meetings like you have to go meeting zero yeah and then re-add what is actually necessary so that

01:11:41.100 would be my advice is like cut everything out and then figure out what you actually like doing

01:11:47.040 and i do think like there's all sorts of like if you're trying to get the creative energy back

01:11:52.460 that's a slightly different story than trying to get energy to just like be dedicated and good at

01:11:58.520 your job again right yeah yeah good luck medicine don't go listen to those people who are telling

01:12:04.720 you to get back to work right now no if you have a question yeah listen to us lay on your couch

01:12:10.000 play games on your phone for at least six months uh and then grow 1600 dahlias with your friends

01:12:16.680 and then make a quilt the end

01:12:22.460 thanks for listening to the culture study podcast if you want to support the show

01:12:28.680 become a paid subscriber at culturestudypod.substack.com it's just five bucks a month

01:12:34.200 or fifty dollars a year and you'll get ad-free episodes the ask and anything segment and weekly

01:12:39.960 discussion threads for each episode and be sure to subscribe to the culture study podcast wherever

01:12:45.000 you get your podcasts we have so many great episodes in the works and i promise you don't

01:12:50.100 want to miss any of them we're working on episodes about running a creative small business without

01:12:54.920 burning out baseball culture just in time for the playoffs and what would make a society actually

01:13:01.020 family friendly if you want to submit a question for any of these or for future ask in anything

01:13:06.120 segments go to our google form at tinyurl.com slash culture study pod or check the show notes

01:13:12.920 for a link and if you're a paid subscriber head over to the discussion thread and keep the

01:13:17.320 conversation going we always have very vibrant discussions when we talk about stars and star

01:13:24.520 images so I would love to hear about what we didn't touch on with Gwyneth's image and also

01:13:31.960 I think like we tried to tease out a lot of stuff to do with how to balance the fact that she's

01:13:38.320 essentially like propagating misinformation with like her ability to distance herself from that 0.71

01:13:44.500 Like, so where would you like to go deeper there?

01:13:47.520 The Culture Study Podcast is produced by me,

01:13:49.800 Anne Helen Peterson, and Melody Raul.

01:13:51.940 Our music is by Ponnington Bear.

01:13:53.880 You can find me on Instagram at Anne Helen Peterson,

01:13:56.780 Melody at Melodias47,

01:13:58.320 and the show at Culture Study Pod.

Culture Study Podcast - September 03, 2025

One Gwyneth Episode to Rule Them All

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