If you’re not looking forward to this month, for whatever reason that may be, know that your pals here at Witch, Please Productions HQ are rooting for you! We hope you can light a candle or cozy up with a blanket at least some of the time.
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three types of people
Fun fact: WPP is 40% Sagittarius! Coach just had her birthday at the end of November, and Gaby’s is the first week of December (for those keeping up, that means Gaby and Coach’s intergenerational friendship means that for six days, they are only [redacted] years apart instead of [redacted]. If you want to give us a gift, you can support us on Patreon so we can keep wreaking Sag havoc on our beautiful team for years to come!
We were so lucky to be joined in our episode about Les Misérablesby Erin Keif (she/her) of the beloved Headgum podcasts Hey Riddle Riddle and Sitcom DnD. If you're a fan of Les Mis, or any musical, you'll appreciate this special episode that covers Stuart Hall's theory of encoding/decoding, while also getting into the lyrics and musicality of the megamusical itself. Erin, a musical enthusiast (among other things), brings some much-needed levity (as well as a catchphrase) to a discussion that touches on some more difficult themes including: death, parental loss, and violence against the oppressed.
Gaby had a HUGE Les Mis phase as an impressionable teenager, so this episode rocked for her. She also gets vulnerable and shares her love of Newsies AND the fact that she has a One Direction tattoo. Is this lore fun for you?
We also had to talk about Taylor Swift more — especially as so many of you had great comments, feedback and specific inquiries! We structured this bonus like our usual Patreon-only Q&A episodes, except this time we only answered questions you submitted about Ms. Taylor Allison Swift. We talk Gay-lore, billionaires, private jets, the Jets and holding many feelings at once. Part II of this bonus is available on Patreon to all of our tiers! Join today for just $5 USD/month to get the rest of the conversation in your feed and for all the bonus perks we've already released!
Finally, Hannah led Marcelle through an episode about Blackout Tuesday. At Material Girls, we’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of using social media for social change and what those calls imply about the role of social media in our collective imaginations. And so, in the spirit of always historicizing, we recorded this episode to look back on the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 and, specifically, to that one day everyone posted a black square on their Instagram accounts. Our Behind-the-Episode stack last month was about this episode and, if you missed it, you can read it here.
Our beloved Marcelle was on ’s podcast Doing It! to talk all about sex positive parenting! This is actually the last episode of the Deep Dives series of Doing It!, so it’s such a treat to have Marcelle on the show before it officially ends. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts!
And a fundraising update
Thanks to the incredible generosity you’ve shown, we’ve raised over $9,000 for the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. Our goal was $5,000, and you all surpassed that in a matter of days. Thank you so much for supporting this vital organization! The fundraiser will remain open if you feel inclined to donate. <3
A Message from Coach
We love saying zeitgeist so much that sometimes, late at night, I wonder if the only reason we launched this podcast was to give ourselves the opportunity to scream it into mics ad nauseam. And then I promptly fall asleep because there are worse decisions we could have made and I regret nothing.
Anyway, in that spirit, we have a fun Patreon perk for our $10+ tiers called In the Zeitgeist. It’s a video perk we record with our guests all about a time when they were very **on trend.** It’s goofy and fun and I think you’ll like it. Here’s an unlocked peek at In the Zeitgeist with Erin Keif. Here’s a graphic full of clues about what we talk about to whet* your palate:
*another good word I like that I’m pretty sure Marcelle hates. “Whet Girls, the podcast” coming soon!
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I need you all to stop whatever you're doing and go watch Deadloch, an absolutely brilliant feminist noir comedy / murder mystery set in a fictional town in Tasmania that is actively being gentrified by lesbians. As a result, the town is rife with tensions between the white women opening cool restaurants and starting arts festivals, the white men who resent their presence and respond to it with escalating hostility and violence, and the Aboriginal girls and women trying not to get priced out of their own homes while fighting to regain access to their land (in between being asked to do official welcomes at said arts festivals). And that's before straight white men start turning up dead in the midst of the Winter Feastival [sic]. Kate Box and Madeleine Sami star as the hilariously mismatched team of detectives trying to find their misandrist serial killer before all the men in Deadloch are wiped out, while literally every man they interact with makes their lives infinitely harder even though they are trying to stop those men from being murdered. It's perfect social satire, a compelling mystery, exquisitely shot, not particularly gory or violent, and full of extremely attractive women. Plus it's only 8 episodes! 100/10, what are you doing, why aren't you watching it right now.Like many of you, I recently checked out my Spotify Wrapped and I gotta say, I was... unmoved? LOL surprise! I listened to a lot of Taylor Swift this year! But the only person who needs me to recommend Taylor Swift before they'll listen to her is my friend Steve (who currently only listens to Jazz produced in Hackensack, NJ* between 1946-1959). My point is, no one (except Steve) needs a Taylor Swift music recommendation, but maybe you're looking for an artist who, like Taylor, is also a stellar songwriter? And who, like Taylor, also has gorgeous generic range in their work? But who, unlike Taylor, may not be on your radar??? Let me recommend Corey Gulkin! Their most recent album is called Half Moon and I'm literally listening to it right now! Half Moon is such a rad blend of boppy bangers (try "Faceless Woman"), boppy bops (try "Aquarium"), boppy ballads (try "Raya"), and bangin' bops (try "Half Moon"), that I really think you're gonna love it!*"I say Hackensack Because there was one particular sound engineer nerd who recorded virtually all of the greatest records in his parent's house there." - Steve, also a nerd.On Sunday, the incredible writer and performer Cat Huck launched a Substack and I genuinely feel like she did it for me. Reader: She did not. But that’s how it feels because I love it so very much and think her words, much like her live work, have an original and deft lyricism that sets her apart. Here’s one piece of her first essay about health scares, art and love that really moved me: “I’ll keep ordering wraps like a wimp until the neck slice is healed and I can unhinge my jaw like a growing boy. I will create some stupid rippling thing every few years until I turn to dust. I will never say, ‘it’s you’ to anyone as I did to him, and him, a child. I will memorize one child’s name and not become The Knee. Hani*. Hani. Hani. My body is awake and the dinosaurs come alive. Okay, I understand. I will eat the sandwich - ha! Nobody correct me.” If you end up subscribing to Hitman, let me know via DM @hmrehak so we can talk about it.I know every podcaster and influencer in the world has been trying to sell you Native products for the last year, I know.But actually, this stuff slaps.Specifically the 100% plastic free, paraben free, aluminum free deodorant.I have been looking for a good natural deodorant for a while now. I’ve tried Tom’s, Humble, and Crystal and none of them have worked. Half way through the day they give up the ghost. Not to get into the gory details, but I work part time at a cafe and you really need to be able to depend on your deodorant through out the work day! Customers don’t want to smell you! They want to smell the coffee!I also really appreciate that Native has this plastic free option! There are some issues with the plastic free packaging, mainly that the deodorant stick slides down inside the tube between uses and you have to push it back up with your fingers every time. But, I feel that it’s worth not using the plastic. Native deodorant definitely counts as a luxury deodorant (coming in at $13), but it’s something I had the funds to invest in this last month.Also, right now they have seasonal scents: Spiced Egg Nog and Candy Cane! They sound delightful!*chanting* COOKIES! COOKIES! COOKIES! It’s nearly time to break out my favorite holiday cookie recipes: Vaughn Vreeland’s Gingerbread Latte cookies and Eggnog Snickerdoodles. These go CRAAAAZY. The gingerbread cookies are perfectly chewy with the help of the molasses and dark brown sugar, and have just enough espresso powder to give a little coffee punch. And the eggnog snickerdoodles are fucking absurd. Who gave them the right. Even my dad, who refuses on principle to engage in any cookie that isn’t chocolate chip, gave a begrudging shrug and said, “sure.” Trust me when I say this is a rousing endorsement!
Okay, bye! xoxo
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