tc the culture journalist

Podcast

the culture journalist

A podcast about the future of culture, with Emilie Friedlander and Andrea Domanick.

Website ↗ Last published 30 October 2026 145 posts collected by Sputnik

Said on the culture journalist

“I think industry analysts are like, well, it's short and it's, you know, for people with wrecked attention spans. So it must be for Gen Z. But as we know, older people are even more destroyed by phones. … Talking to agents, talking to directors, talking to people involved in the industry, they all say middle-aged Midwestern women, or maybe going somewhat younger, 35 to like 65.” — Daniel Kolitz, the culture journalist
Daniel Kolitz · 30 Oct 2026 Listen →
“A huge percentage of the scripts here are just AI translated from Chinese and then localized. Localizing is a profession in the microdrama biz where it's like you take sort of Chinese idioms translated by the AI and try to make them more American sounding, but often they don't even really bother with that.” — Daniel Kolitz, the culture journalist
Daniel Kolitz · 30 Oct 2026 Listen →
“I think that they're operating on a spam logic. … They are closer to a spammy mobile game than they are to Netflix in the sense that their core business model is spending millions upon millions of dollars to advertise on TikTok and Instagram to get people to then download their platforms and ideally buy a subscription, buy tokens, whatever. But the sheer amount of money involved in acquiring customers this way and the fact that very few of those customers are sort of retained month to month make the economic model really unsustainable.” — Daniel Kolitz, the culture journalist
Daniel Kolitz · 30 Oct 2026 Listen →
“While I was in LA, the news came out that in China, the majority of actors seemingly were being replaced with AI. … And now it's like you go on the Real Short app and it is like 90% AI-generated microdramas and people love them. They're watching them more than the human-centered stuff. … It has gone from, this is the savior of Hollywood, this is the future of entertainment, to man, I wish I could get a job with a microdrama set because that stuff is gone. And it's all about AI now.” — Daniel Kolitz, the culture journalist
Daniel Kolitz · 30 Oct 2026 Listen →
“The conventional logic of the entertainment industry was let's make stuff that people like and want to see. And that didn't even have to be good. … Algorithmically oriented entertainment is less concerned about whether someone likes something than whether they will watch them at all. Pleasure is as useful a reaction as disgust, confusion, yet bafflement. … As long as it's provoking a reaction of some kind and compelling someone to keep watching, one strong reaction is as good as another.” — Daniel Kolitz, the culture journalist
Daniel Kolitz · 30 Oct 2026 Listen →
“Rorschach journalism, I think, which I think is like an emergent field in 2026. You know, the journalism where its efficacy is as much in people's responses or lack of clarity or the varying spectrum of how people respond to things as it is in like whatever story it's immediately being told.” — Andrea Domanick, the culture journalist
Andrea Domanick · 23 Oct 2026 Listen →

Hosts

the culture journalist is hosted by Ben Newman .

Recent Episodes

  1. 30 Oct 2026

    Inside the microdrama industrial complex

    With Daniel Kolitz

  2. 23 Oct 2026

    The journalist and the CEO

  3. 18 Sep 2026

    AI and the Left

    With Joshua Dávila

  4. 4 Sep 2026

    Midwestern Death Trip: Dropping out with Meaghan Garvey

    With Meaghan Garvey

  5. 21 Aug 2026

    CUJO presents: California Gothic

    With Gina Delvac , Jennifer Swann , Angel Carreras , Sophie Bridges , Henry Johnson , Molly Lambert and Kristen Torres

  6. 7 Aug 2026

    ‘Our Hero, Balthazar’ and the cinema of growing up online

    With Oscar Boyson and Ricky Camilleri

  7. 31 Jul 2026

    The summer of waiting in lines

  8. 24 Jul 2026

    Mapping "The Online Marketplace of Ideas"

    With Jack Callahan , Lil Internet , Joshua Citarella and Carly Busta

  9. 10 Jul 2026

    Welcome to the tasteslop era

    With Drew Austin

  10. 1 Jul 2026

    Let the AI music wars begin

    With Jack Callahan

  11. 19 Jun 2026

    Your music taste is being manipulated: A history

    With Harry Krinsky

  12. 5 Jun 2026

    Chronicling NYC subculture, with Matthew Gasda

    With Matthew Gasda

Guests

drew millard (10 episodes), Kevin Munger (4 episodes), Katie Bain (3 episodes), Joshua Citarella (3 episodes), Mat Dryhurst (3 episodes), Brian Merchant (3 episodes), Jack Callahan (2 episodes), Mark Redito (2 episodes), James Pogue (2 episodes), Paul Cantor (2 episodes), Harry Krinsky (2 episodes), Simon Reynolds (2 episodes), and 64 more.