Poptarts

Latest Episodes:

Poptarts Episode 120: Melissa Etheridge! Dec 09, 2021

Show notes

Melissa Etheridge is an unparalleled singer-songwriter, guitarist, author, and activist who has been making irresistible blues-rock albums for over 30 years. She was a bit of an underground sensation when she first got started in the late ‘80s, but in 1993, everything changed when she released her breakthrough fourth album Yes I Am. It spent 138 weeks on the Billboard charts thanks to the monster hits “I’m The Only One,” and “Come To My Window,” it went Platinum, and then it went on to sell more than 6 Million copies. Now, the Oscar-and-Grammy winner is back and touring with her 17th album, One Way Out, a collection of songs from her early life that are finally getting to see the light of day. On BUST’s latest “Poptarts” podcast, Etheridge recalls her coming out story, celebrates her intergenerational fandom, and gives sage advice on how to keep the show going when fans keep showering the stage with panties and bras.

Poptarts Episode 119: Feminist AF Author Brittney Cooper! Oct 23, 2021

Show notes

Dr. Brittney Cooper is an incredibly engaging and insightful feminist author, professor, activist, and cultural critic currently teaching at Rutgers University. She is also cofounder of the Crunk Feminist Collective, a scholar-activist group for feminists of color that began as a super-popular blog and has now evolved into the thriving Substack newsletter, The Remix. In 2017, she co-authored and edited The Crunk Feminist Collection anthology and also released Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women, which she followed up with her acclaimed 2018 book Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower. Now, she’s back with a helpful handbook called Feminist AF: A Guide to Crushing Girlhood. A treasure trove of resources for young activists—out now, from Norton Young Readers—the book uses intersectional feminist frameworks to help teens grapple with the most pressing challenges they face today. On BUST’s latest “Poptarts” podcast, Cooper explores her “cool auntie” persona, tackles her breakups with pop-culture baddies, and predicts the future of feminism.

Poptarts Episode 118: Patti Cake$' Danielle Macdonald! Oct 08, 2021

Show notes

Danielle Macdonald has been lighting up screens large and small with her plucky personality and big-girl badassery for the last decade. She’s Australian, but you’d never know it based on her spot-on 2017 performance as Jersey rapper Patti Dombrowski in the indie hit “Patti Cake$,” or by her star turn in 2018 as a Dolly Parton-obsessed Texas teen in “Dumplin'.” She’s also had notable roles in “Bird Box,” “Skin,” and “Unbelievable” just to name a few. And now, she’s back with another starring role as a gal with a dream in the IFC film Falling for Figaro, a romantic comedy set in the world of competitive opera singing that just opened in theaters and on demand October 1. On BUST’s latest “Poptarts” podcast, Danielle shares how she rejected “fat friend” roles for years to become a plus-size leading lady and much, much, more.

Poptarts Episode 117: Punk Icon Lydia Lunch! Sep 24, 2021

Show notes

Lydia Lunch is a true radical in every sense of the word. A high priestess of punk, she arrived in New York when she was just 16 in the mid-’70s and made a name for herself downtown with her band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. That band became synonymous with the hugely influential No Wave movement and launched Lunch’s multifaceted career of over 40 years as an actor, performance poet, writer, public speaker, solo artist, and frontwoman for her subsequent bands 8-Eyed Spy, 13.13, Shotgun Wedding, Big Sexy Noise, and Retrovirus. Now, her life and career are being celebrated in a new documentary by director Beth B called Lydia Lunch: The War is Never Over—currently making the rounds at festivals and art house cinemas nationwide. On Lunch’s provocative episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, she makes extremely controversial comments concerning Harvey Weinstein, Andrew Cuomo, R. Kelly, and much, much, more.

Poptarts Episode 116: Actor/Writer/Director Natalie Morales! Sep 10, 2021

Show notes

Natalie Morales is an accomplished actor best known for her work on Dead to Me, The Little Things, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Abby’s, and Parks & Rec among her many credits. But this year, she also emerged as an exciting feature film director with an incredibly relatable and undeniably feminist point of view. First, she released the teen road trip comedy Plan B in May on Hulu, about two high school girls who have a wild adventure trying to get their hands on the morning-after pill in South Dakota. And on September 10, she released the astonishingly poignant drama Language Lessons in theaters, about an unusual relationship between a lonely man and his online Spanish teacher. On Morales’ excellent episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, she shares how being marginalized as a queer Latina in Hollywood inspired her to blossom into the emerging auteur she is today.

Poptarts Episode 115: Supernatural Sculptor Lauren Fensterstock! Aug 27, 2021

Show notes

Lauren Fensterstock is a sculptor and installation artist whose sparkling, intricate creations look like secret treasures stolen from a gothic witches’ cathedral or like the charred remains of a fairy swamp. Made from materials including glass, vintage crystal, quartz, obsidian, onyx, hematite, shells, sand, plexiglass, paper, charcoal, and wood, her most recent installations—like the one on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery in D.C. earlier this year—are enormous, completely black, and suck all the surrounding light into the curves and edges of thousands of individual objects assembled in patterns that both imitate nature and take nature to dramatic new heights with architectural precision. Other pieces—like some of the seven crystal encrusted suns that were featured in Fensterstock’s show Impermanent Conditions, at the Claire Oliver Gallery in New York this summer—play similar visual tricks with all-white palettes of light-reflecting glass and quartz. Both her imagination and the objects she produces are precious and rare and on her excellent episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, we discuss the occult, the apocalypse, and the enduring magic of female friendship.

Poptarts Episode 114: Star Trek's Gates McFadden! Aug 06, 2021

Show notes

Gates McFadden has been sci-fi royalty for over 30 years. Best known for playing Dr. Beverly Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation—both on TV from 1987 through 1994, and in four feature films—she also worked with Jim Henson as a choreographer and director of puppet movement, most notably on Labyrinth with David Bowie. For many years, she taught in university theater departments across the country and was the Artistic Director of the Ensemble Studio Theatre in Los Angeles. And now, she‘s hosting the riveting podcast, Gates McFadden Investigates: Who Do You Think You Are?, in which he has totally unexpected conversations with members of her Star Trek family. On her out-of-this-world episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, she spills the tea about getting fired—and re-hired!—on Star Trek for speaking her mind, maintaining her decades-long relationship with her “space son” Wil Wheaton, and how Whoopie Goldberg made the Enterprise a better place for women.

Poptarts Episode 113: Rock Critic Jessica Hopper! Jul 23, 2021

Show notes

Jessica Hopper is one the most insightful rock critics working today. A long-time contributor to the Chicago Reader; she’s been a columnist for The Village Voice, Chicago Tribune, and Punk Planet; the music consultant for This American Life; the editorial director for MTV News; and a senior editor at Pitchfork and Rookie. For over 20 years, she has consistently been covering women in music who women care deeply about through a feminist lens, from Liz Phair to M.I.A. to Janelle Monae to Hole to Bjork just to name a few. Her knowledge is deep, her opinions are surprising, and her writing style is fearless which is why so many music fans return to her work again and again. The extensively updated and expanded new edition of her career-spanning book, The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic came out July 6, and on BUST's latest Poptarts podcast, she explains what being “first” really means, how she helped wake the world up the crimes of R. Kelly, and the challenge of “making people care.”

Poptarts Episode 112: Heart's Ann Wilson! Jul 09, 2021

Show notes

Ann Wilson is lead singer and songwriter of the band Heart, which she has fronted for over 40 years with her sister Nancy, earning them a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The first hard rock band fronted by women, Heart has sold over 35 million albums, and their hits, including “Barracuda,” “Crazy On You,” and “Magic Man,” are undisputed classics. As a solo artist, Ann released the 2007 album HOPE & GLORY and 2018’s IMMORTAL, along with multiple singles. And this past May, she released a surprising and beautiful EP from the archives of the band she was in before Heart. The Daybreaks was a band Ann fronted in the late 1960s and now four tracks of her flower-child pop from1969 are available on all streaming platforms for the first time. Throughout the pandemic, WIlson has been writing and recording. And on BUST's latest Poptarts podcast, she talks body image, healing a very public rift with her sister Nancy, and why she’s a feminist “constantly.”

Poptarts Episode 111: Comedian Iliza Shlesinger! Jun 28, 2021

Show notes

Iliza Shlesinger is an award-winning comedian, actor, writer, producer, and author who earned her massive fan base by doing tons of touring all over the world. In 2008, she became the first woman to ever win NBC’s Last Comic Standing, she’s had five Netflix comedy specials and her own Netflix sketch show, and she’s currently finishing her second book, hosting the podcast Ask Iliza Anything, and developing multiple TV projects while traveling once more on her new “Back In Action” tour. On June 23, she debuted the hilarious “anti-rom-com” Good On Paper, on Netflix, a film based on her life which she stars in and also wrote. And on BUST's latest Poptarts podcast, she describes writing her first feature film script about a lying ex, navigating sexism in standup, and why she’s “a real feminist.”

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