The SZA Profile, Culture Podcasts, and Distinctive Books That Got Us Through the Week

Happy Friday, Happy World Smile Day, and happy beginning to your (hopeful) three-day weekend. The forecast, at least in New York, is (more) rain. That’s OK, because the first full weekend of October is the perfect time to cozy up on your couch or inside a movie theater and scare yourself shitless or piss yourself from laughter. But if neither of those particular experiences speaks to you right now, the Jezebel staff has plenty of books, podcasts, and potential record-breaking basketball games to help you still enjoy your extra 24 hours of freedom this weekend.

This week, Rolling Stone’s Mankaprr Conteh profiled SZA. The result is a truly revelatory piece of writing, reaffirming that meaningful music journalism is still—somewhat—alive and well. In the story, SZA does what so few artists profiled by Rolling Stone do these days: allow herself to be vulnerable, and not in a publicist-approved way. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter freely tells Conteh about a recent split and admits she still wants to be with the person; relegates a dalliance with Drake to “youth vibes”; and tears up about the legal woes of her longtime friend, Lizzo. Her transparency is a testament to the trust Conteh was clearly able to establish early on. If you long for the confessional-type artist profiles of yesteryear, read this. —Audra Heinrichs

The idea of a podcast by cultural critics at The New Yorker certainly runs the risk of being eye-roll worthy, but I’m here to shout from the rooftops how absolutely, indulgently fun the newest series “Critics At Large” is. Hosts Naomi Fry, Vinson Cunningham, and Alexandra Schwartz have so far put out three episodes covering Elon Musk, Taylor Swift, and cringe-worthy comedy.

Sometimes pop culture podcasts (and I know this because I listen to many), can be a lot of bluster with very little cultural context or knowledge. But these three hosts have an incredibly thoughtful (and enjoyable) way of discussing what’s in the zeitgeist, connecting it to past cultural touchstones, and giving it all the appropriate amount of weight. They refreshingly declare the Musk biography by Walter Isaacson “boring” and they rightly come to the conclusion that an upside of Taylor Swift’s dominance is that haters can have their day in the sun. —Kady Ruth Ashcraft

“How in the world is she going to milk 400+ pages out of this premise?” I thought when embarking on Naomi Klein’s latest, Doppelganger. Granted, it’s an amusing premise: Klein, a well-known and successful leftist writer (No Logo), discusses her frustration (and obsession) with being confused with Beauty Myth writer-turned-antivax provocateur Naomi Wolf. But through a close reading of the antics of the woman to whom she refers as “my big-haired doppelganger,” Klein traverses so much ideological ground: diagonalism (that is, when ostensibly politically opposed parties find themselves aligned on key issues, like vaccines), Zionism, neoliberalism’s fallacies, and conspiracists who “get the facts wrong but often get the feelings right—the feeling of living in a world with Shadow Lands, the feeling that every human misery is someone else’s profit, the feeling of being exhausted by predation and extraction, the feeling that important truths are being hidden.” It’s all part of what Klein describes as “doppelganger culture,” a symptom of our divided yet hopelessly intertwined society. Doppelganger is a diagnosis of much of what’s wrong with our culture and a paean to the joys of hate reading in one swoop. Astounding! —Rich Juzwiack

This story has it all: a female villain, a terrifying premise, international travel, goat sheds—and, most horrifying of all, it’s true.

Stephanie Nolan, the New York Times global health reporter, tells The Daily host how, after the near eradication of malaria, the mosquitos (already considered the deadliest animal in the world) have adapted and it’s...not great. Sometimes it’s nice to take a break from all the well-covered horrors of the world to learn about new horrors you weren’t already scared of, you know?

In Africa, a new mosquito, Anopheles, or Steve—which is what entomologists are calling her (yes, her; only female mosquitoes bite since they need protein for their eggs)—is wreaking havoc on the decades of progress made against mosquito-borne diseases, especially malaria. Steve loves the heat, dry places, wet places...basically, if Steve wasn’t a bug infecting people with a deadly disease, she’d be kind of a badass. Malaria, which used to be a disease found primarily in rural Africa, is now spreading through big cities, where health systems aren’t equipped to respond quickly enough. (A few years ago, roughly a dozen or so residents would be infected in a given city annually; now in some places, it’s thousands.)

Luckily, Nolan says she doesn’t think the situation is hopeless—but you should listen yourself to learn why. —Lauren Tousignant

The Las Vegas Aces crushed my girls on the Dallas Wings last week, but I’m still rooting for the Aces as they attempt to be the first team since 2002 to win back-to-back championships! It would also mean coach Becky Hammon would be the first coach to win back-to-back season victories in her first two seasons, but we’re trying to ignore her after the anti-pregnancy accusations. Instead, I’d like to focus on the Aces’ A’ja Wilson and Kelsey Plum going up against New York Liberty’s Sabrina Ionescu and Breanna Stewart.

The Liberty are vying for their first-ever championship, and, as I said, the Aces are chasing history too. After watching disappointing preseason NBA games in inexplicably in Abu Dhabi (literally why??), it’ll be great to watch athletes at the top of their game go head-to-head.

You can watch Game 1 on Sunday on ABC at 3 p.m. E.T. —Caitlin Cruz

With Eve, author Cat Bohannon has pulled off an impressive feat, writing a book that is once highly complex—covering literally dozens of academic disciplines—and very readable.

It is, however, somewhat difficult to summarize. The titular Eve is broken out into multiple, each one representing a crucial evolutionary element of the female Homo sapien body—Morgie (a nickname for a species that lived 205 million years ago), the “Eve of mammalian milk”; Donna, the “Eve of placental mammals” (67-63 million years ago); Habilis (Homo habilis, 2.8-1.5 million years ago), “the Eve of simple tools and associated intelligent sociality,” and so on. Through these amalgams, Bohannan tracks how our bodies have developed over the millennia, and teaches you very many facts that you will be dying to repeat to anyone in your orbit. It is weird, it is cool, it made me gasp aloud multiple times. —Nora Biette-Timmons

I somehow just learned that Geri, FKA Ginger Spice, is a YA novelist. She’s also just a lovely-sounding person?? (To be fair, her delightful accent also helps.) This interview on Keep It!—in which she says things like, “If you stand in truth, your words have power,” and “Resentment is like drinking poison and expecting [the other person] to die”—was a balm for my weary soul. It starts 42 minutes into the podcast, but before she joins, the hosts take a fun romp through girl group history, starting at 15 minutes. Give it a listen, then maybe queue up some Spice Girls afterward. —Susan Rinkunas

On this week’s episode of Las Culturistas, hosts Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers talk with Aaron Jackson and Josh Sharp, the writers and stars of Dicks: The Musical. Rogers, while talking about the reaction to the movie so far, brought up this anecdote: “You guys [Sharp and Jackson] said ‘We want Megan Thee Stallion winning an Oscar for her song ‘Out Alpha The Alpha’ in the film’ and I think I sent like 50 texts in a row...planning out a way that it can happen, because I do believe there’s a path forward.”

I also believe there’s a way for this to happen, so consider this my official endorsement. Go see Dicks this weekend (a perfect movie in which I literally left in pain from laughing so hard), then stream “Out Alpha The Alpha,” and also the entire Dicks soundtrack. I’m not sure how exactly we get them an Oscar nom but I really, really want to see them all win a gold statue for this song which includes the lyrics, “These men are fuckin’ dinosaurs about to be destroyed/And I’m the asteroid.” —LT