229! Attractiveness

How important is attractiveness? 

This week, Joey and Jess talk about self-rating, the butt phase, dating apps, dating profiles as brand strategy, TMI, and hotties. They don’t talk about teratophilia. 

references 

• Debutante Ball's are real 

• ... as are narwhals 

• "Physical and Psychosocial Correlates of Facial Attractiveness" by Marco Costa and Dario Maestripieri (PDF) 

• "80% Of Women Choose Only The Top 20% of Attractive Men" Is A Big Fat Incel Lie 

• Pew Research: The Virtues and Downsides of Online Dating 

• Institute for Family Studies: On Internet Dating Sites, Women Prefer Men With Higher Incomes and More Education 

• Fast Company: I Found Out My Secret Internal Tinder Rating And Now I Wish I Hadn’t 

228! Patriotism and Empanadas

What is patriotic? 

This week, Jess, Aaron, and Joey talk about American Democracy, fusion foods, the spirit of the thing, beer holding, the cronut, and empanadas. They don’t talk about pastechi. 

references 

• Dance Moms 

• BuzzFeed: "Maddie Ziegler On Being Sia's 'Muse' From Age 11" 

• "Majorities in most countries have a positive opinion of the U.S." 

• "Will Democracy Win? Barack Obama in Conversation with Christiane Amanpour" 

• Revisiting: Critical Nonsense 233! The Familiar Unexpected 

• Empanada Mama 

• TasteAtlas: "100 Most Popular Dumplings in the World" 

• USA! USA?: A patriotic playlist for people who aren't sure how they feel about America 

227! Tendies

Why are we all suddenly calling these chicken "tendies"? 

This week, Jess and Joey talk about children's food, compression, self-deprecation, cutification, Big Chicken, and expressivity. They don’t talk about brekky. 

references 

• Chicken Fried 

• philology 

• ScienceDirect: Compression and communication in the cultural evolution of linguistic structure 

226! Collective Vibes

Do you believe in the idea that collective vibes could exist, and are we fully entering into a new vibe? 

This week, Joey and Aaron talk about the debt ceiling battle, the Writers Guild of America strike, AI, not sitting idle, Lucy Lawless, and pasta. They don’t talk about cowboy pasta. 

references 

• A long "May-tember" 

• ARTnews: Hannah Gadsby’s Disastrous ‘Pablo-matic’ Show at the Brooklyn Museum Has Some ‘Pablo-ms’ of Its Own 

• The Writers Guild of America strike 

• Cascatelli pasta 

• The New York Times: "The Best Canned Tomatoes" 

225! The Year of DnD

What have you learned in one year of playing DnD together? 

This week, Jess and Joey talk about Dungeons & Dragons, body doubling, Type 1 and Type 2 Fun, hobbies, forks, and the Metaverse. They don’t talk about the D&D All-Stars. 

references 

• Dungeons & Dragons 

• DM = Dungeon Mster 

• OBS 

224! Optimism

How should we feel about optimism? 

This week, Joey and Jess talk about genetics, pessimism, risk aversion, oxytocin, hugs, and butt pats. They don’t talk about why cats like butt pats, though. 

references 

• chanteuse 

• Is Optimism Genetic? 

• oxytocin 

• Do you believe in life after love? 

• Chimp Empire 

223! The Familiar Unexpected

When was the last time that you experienced something familar unexpected? 

This week, Jess, Joey, and Aaron talk about mochi, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, chord progressions, rollercoasters, Warrior Cats, and Doppler radar. They don’t talk about The Lloyd Dobler Effect. 

references 

• Corrections Department: The original The Parent Trap film came out in 1961 

• Kramer vs. Kramer 

• Mochi 

• Star Wars Jedi: Survivor 

• Carolina Chocolate Drops "Hit Em Up Style" 

• "7 Common Chord Progressions You’ll Instantly Recognize" 

• Boomerang Coaster 

• Suspended Looping Coaster 

• Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky 

• Warriors 

• Blindness by José Saramago 

• This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone 

• Critical Nonsense Bookclub 

222! Watching Things

What are you watching right now and why? 

This week, Aaron, Jess, and Joey talk about SpongeBob, YouTube shorts rabbit holes, RuPaul's Drag Race, the NBA Playoffs, Alan Wake, and bikinis. To the Sunbathing Angel's dismay, they don’t talk about The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. 

references 

• Calm Down 

• Revsiting Critical Nonsense 217! AI Centaurs 

• Progress Report Edition 092: Consider the Centaur 

• Only Murders In the Building 

• "A potato flew around my room until you came" 

• The Ren & Stimpy Show 

• Stephen Hillenburg 

• John K. 

• BuzzFeed News: The Disturbing Secret Behind An Iconic Cartoon: Underage Sexual Abuse 

• "... babyyyyyyy" 

• How The Design Of Spongebob Has Changed Over The Years 

• RuPaul's Masterclass 

• RuPaul on How to Live Your Best Life 

• Jungian Therapy 

• Daisy Jones & the Six 

• Riley Keough 

• The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch 

• Alan Wake 

• How It's Actually Made - Bread 

221! The Genuine Maybe

How do you summon The Genuine Maybe? 

This week, Jess and Joey talk about the Confidence Interval, curiosity, viewquakes, the gender norms of being assertive, rightness, and openness. They don’t talk about Björk. 

references 

• Confidence Interval 

• The New Yorker: Emojis That Parents Are Still Waiting For 

220! Graduation Advice

What do I know? 

This week, Joey, Aaron, and Jess talk about not having all the answers, amoebic sponges, career archs and karma, graciousness in success, recognizing your value, and being dumb. They don’t talk about low-performing assholes. 

references 

• Revisiting Critical Nonsense 215! Success 

• Randy Johnson 

• Men at Work

219! The Cake Renaissance

What does cake tell us about now? 

This week, Jess, Aaron, and Joey talk about Cake Boss, Duff Goldman, Instagram cakes, Julia Child, wedding cakes, and enlightenment. They don’t talk about Daniel Craig. 

references 

• Claire Saffitz on Instagram about the Cake Renaissance 

• Saveur: How to Make Those Fabulously Unhinged Cakes You Saw on Instagram 

• Corrections Department: "Cake Boss" Buddy Valastro's Carlo's Bakery in ... Hoboken 

• "The Other Dude" Duff Goldman's Charm City Cakes in Baltimore 

• Netflix: Is It Cake? 

• Japanese game show Candy or Not Candy 

• The New York Times: Let Them Eat Wacky, Whimsical Cake 

• The New York Times Style Magazine: The Latest Trend in Baking? Making a Mess 

• The 7 charatceristics of the Renaissance 

• Molecular gastronomy 

218! Pop Music Solos

What do you think is going to be the next musical instrument solo in pop music? 

This week, Aaron, Jess, and Joey talk about sax solos, the digitization of music, musicianship, sonic genre markers, Ice Spice, and background music. They don’t talk about Raphael Ravenscroft. 

references 

• Running to your circles of flame 

• Plain English podcast with Derek Thompson: Why the Cult of Achievement in Schools Is Making People Miserable 

• A phenomenon like Uncle L and Melle Mel 

• Who will always love you? Dolly. And Whitney. That's who. 

• Jason Isbell: Running With Our Eyes Closed 

• Switched on Pop podcast: The L.A. guitar shop that reinvented indie folk 

• Quartz: The economics of streaming is making songs shorter 

• Ice Spice 

217! AI Centaurs

How do you feel about centaurs and what centaurs do you want to be? 

This week, Joey and Jess talk about ChatGPT, Garry Kasparov, workplace production, individualistic augmentation, the Chinese zodiac, and mitochondria. They don’t talk about manticores. 

references 

• Falkor the Luck Dragon 

• Revisiting Critical Nonsense 191! AI Art and Hamsterstanistan 

• How To Become A Centaur 

• "Experimental Evidence on the Productivity Effects of Generative Artificial Intelligence" by Shakked Noy and Whitney Zhang 

• "When and How Artificial Intelligence Augments Employee Creativity" by Nan Jia, Xueming Luo, Zheng Fang, and Chengcheng Liao 

• Lump of labour fallacy 

• Chinese Zodiac 

• Factor analysis 

• Mitochondria 

• The sporkife 

216! Reflection

How do we reflect? 

This week, Jess and Joey talk about rumination, perseveration, internal monologues, employee reviews, radical candor, and feedback. They don’t talk about "2000 Seasons". 

references 

• Joey makes money moves. 

• "MotorSport" 

• LLM (Large Language Model) 

• Corrections Department: RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback) 

215! Success

How should we approach success? 

This week, Joey and Jess talk about whales, personal comparison, persistence hunting, gender dynamics, emotional labor, and lunch prep. They don’t talk about fairyfly hearts. 

references 

• Foxy Brown's "Candy" 

• Corrections Department: A blue whale's heart isn't actually the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. 

• Kajornwan Chueng's twitter thread about her kid "doing the bare minimum." 

• Emotional labor 

• The New York Times: ‘Fleishman Is in Trouble’ and the Angst of the Striving Upper Class 

• Boston.com: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck reveal they shared a bank account in their teens and 20s to fund their showbiz dreams 

214! Packing

Why are we so bad at packing? 

This week, Jess and Joey talk about reducing travel expectations, The Uniform Project, embodying different personas, punting decisions, efficiency, and shoes. They don’t talk about Kevin. 

references 

• The Uniform Project 

213! Pondering Pettiness

When or how or where are the places that we should be deploying pettiness and feel okay about it? 

This week, Joey, Oliver ... er ... Aaron, and Jess talk about petty/offense pairings, berms, feedback loops, Karens, The Pettisphere, and FAFO. They don’t talk about Jemelle Hill. 

references 

• You don't know how it feels ... to set fire to the rain. 

• Arena Is Free on Mortal Kombat 

• Savannah James claps back 

• Nancy Pelosi claps back 

• The Atlantic: The Mythology of Karen 

• The petticoat 

• The not-very-petty mountain bluebird 

• The very FAFO magpie 

• A goose! 

• So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson 

212! Feelings

How do we navigate the tricky feelings? 

This week, Jess and Joey talk about whistling, the Circumplex Model of Affect, anger in the workplace, navigating of negative spaces, being a squeaky wheel, and heightened emotional points. They don’t talk about Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam. 

references 

• "The circumplex model of affect: An integrative approach to affective neuroscience, cognitive development, and psychopathology" by Jonathan Posner, James A. Russell, and Bradley S. Peterson 

• The 16-box version of the Circumplex Model 

211! Question Asking

How do you ask a good question? 

This week, Jess and Aaron talk about 5-cent vs. 25-cent questions, tempo, performance question-asking, prioritizing curiosity over confidence, checking for clarification, and signposting. They don’t talk about Gang Starr. 

references 

• Aaron's Lullaby 

• Revisiting Critical Nonsense 174! Askers vs. Guessers and Working Hours 

• Harvard Business Review: The Surprising Power of Questions 

• The New York Times: The 36 Questions That Lead to Love 

• Ryan Hall, Y'all 

• America's Test Kitchen 

210! Metering Confidence

What's the best way to encourage people to own their confidence and speak their minds? 

This week, Jess and Joey talk about flatness, self consciousness, modeling vs. metering, explicit conversations, confidence intervals, and pants-pants. They don’t talk about Julie Andrews. 

references 

• Six Thinking Hats: An Essential Approach to Business Management by Edward de Bono 

• The New York Times: A Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled 

• Stratechery