What is the point of Hollywood? There are two obvious answers, right? To make good stuff that entertains people. And to make money for the big studios and the people who work for them.

Those two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive. But writer Daniel Bessner believes increasingly they have been.

Bessner spent a year working on a deep dive into how Hollywood has evolved for Harper’s Magazine, called “The Life and Death of Hollywood”. Bessner is also a historian and host of the podcast “American Prestige”. He spoke to host Jayme Poisson last April.

For some time now, there’s been a growing trend on TikTok and Instagram of young women sharing about their daily lives as “trad wives.” “Traditional wives” forego the workplace, extol the virtues of homemaking, and often talk about the ways they “submit” to their husbands.

So why do these women say they’ve chosen a life at home? How does their messaging cross into religion and politics? And is this “movement” a reaction to the burdens on modern women, or a threat to feminism’s progress?

We revisit a conversation with journalist Sophie Elmhirst from last April, who wrote a piece in the New Yorker called “The Rise and Fall of the Trad Wife”.

Céline Dion is having a moment. It’s not her first. And millions of fans are hoping it won’t be her last. While Céline’s international stardom seems obvious now, it was all so unlikely. This is the [insert number] episode of the four-part series from Understood, the anthology podcast that takes you out of the daily news cycle and inside the events, people, and cultural moments you want to know more about. Hosted by Thomas Leblanc.

More episodes of Understood are available at: https://link.mgln.ai/n5NBQC