Poptarts

Latest Episodes:

Poptarts Episode 110: Robotic Art Pioneer Adrianne Wortzel! Jun 11, 2021

Show notes

Adrianne Wortzel is a groundbreaking pioneer in the field of robotic art who has been making and exhibiting her futuristic pieces for over 50 years. Her amazing genre-hopping projects include films, drawings, texts, robotic and telerobotic performance productions, artist’s books, photography, and online pieces. Her writing includes articles, fiction, and scripts. And her international collaborations with other artists, scientists, and engineers made her an important resource in her years as a Professor Emeritus in Emerging Media and Entertainment Technologies at New York City College of Technology. Currently, she’s working on an art book called See No Evil, and on BUST's latest Poptarts podcast, Wortzel describes how the birth of the Internet was like the “Wild West,” explains why the most realistic machines are also the creepiest, and recalls the strategy she employed at the Whitney Museum to save a suicidal robot.

Poptarts Episode 109: Real Housewives 101! May 28, 2021

Show notes

Few reality shows are as popular or as divisive as Bravo's Real Housewives, a franchise that has included casts in Orange County, New Jersey, New York, Atlanta, Beverly Hills, DC, Miami, Potomac, Dallas, and Salt Lake City over the past 15 years. Feminist icon Gloria Steinem once criticized this pop cultural phenomenon on E!, saying, "It is women, all dressed up and inflated and plastic surgeried and false bosomed with incredible amounts of money spent, not getting along with each other. Fighting with each other. It is a minstrel show for women. I don't believe it. I feel like it's manufactured, that the fights between them are manufactured and they're supposed to go after each other in a kind of conflicting way." Nonetheless, some feminists like BUST’s Poptarts podcast hosts Emily Rems and Callie Watts are intrigued by the women being relentlessly documented on these shows. And even “Bad Feminist” Roxane Gay bonded with BUST in March over the antics of the new Salt Lake City cast. On the latest Poptarts podcast, Callie and Emily discuss the series’ cultural impact with Housewives superfan Sean Anthony, and provide an introductory crash course in “Housewives 101,” for the Bravo-curious.

Poptarts Episode 108: 4 Non Blondes' Linda Perry! May 14, 2021

Show notes

Linda Perry first made waves in music as the lead singer and songwriter of 4 Non Blondes, a band that hit it big in 1992 with their platinum-selling song, “What’s Up?” But today, she is best known for writing and producing hits for the biggest names in pop music—she wrote "Beautiful" for Christina Aguilera; "What You Waiting For?" for Gwen Stefani; "Get the Party Started" for P!nk, and so many more bangers it’s impossible to count. Linda was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2015, and recently, she’s written scores to accompany the new documentaries Kid 90 and Citizen Penn. For the Kid 90 soundtrack, Linda released her own music for the first time in over 15 years, recording the song and new video for “The Letter” based on a letter the film’s director Soleil Moon Frye wrote as a teen to her older self. In her intriguing interview on BUST’s “Poptarts” podcast, Linda opens up about how she knows “how to be a rock star,” but “it hurts too much to be an artist.”

Poptarts Episode 107: Punky Brewster's Soleil Moon Frye! Apr 30, 2021

Show notes

Soleil Moon Frye first became a star at eight years old in the hit sitcom, PUNKY BREWSTER. That show, about a tiny, street-smart girl abandoned by her mother and fostered by an elderly man, ran from 1984 to 1988, making Soleil one of the most famous children in America. In the time since, Soleil continued to act, started directing, and started a family. But in the 1990s, no matter what she was up to, she always carried a video camera, carefully documenting her young life. Now, all that footage has been made into a riveting documentary Soleil directed called Kid 90 that’s available on Hulu. Raising her profile even higher, Soleil is also starring in a new 10-episode Punky Brewster reboot on Peacock. On this nostalgic episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, she describes her real-life bond with TV bestie Cherry Johnson, shares her fascination with metaphysics, and tells us how she “found her inner balls.”

Poptarts Episode 106: RHOA's Kandi Burruss! Apr 17, 2021

Show notes

Kandi Burruss is a singer, songwriter, actor, entrepreneur, and the longest-running cast member on Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Atlanta. She first rose to fame in 1993 in the R&B group Xscape, she won a Grammy for co-writing the TLC hit "No Scrubs" and she even won the third season of The Masked Singer dressed as the dark and lovely Night Angel. These days, she’s flexing her acting muscles on the Showtime drama The Chi and on the new Lifetime Movie Envy which premieres April 17. On her juicy episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, Kandi tells all about how The Masked Singer actually works, why she needed a stunt double on Envy, and why she loves Kenya Moore despite her slut-shaming shenanigans.

Poptarts Episode 105: CNN's Brooke Baldwin! Apr 02, 2021

Show notes

Veteran journalist Brooke Baldwin has been kicking ass in the male-dominated TV news industry for over 20 years, most famously at CNN, where she hosts "CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin." During her 13 year tenure at CNN which is about to end in mid-April, Baldwin has unflinchingly held power to account while covering the most consequential issues of our day, from politics to protests to pressing social issues like gun violence. On April 6, she will be releasing her first book, "HUDDLE: How Women Unlock Their Collective Power." And on her inspiring episode of BUST’s "Poptarts" podcast, she talks candidly about her personal journey towards feminism, navigating around women with “sharp elbows,” and how her new book inspired her to leave CNN.

Poptarts Episode 104: Country Queen Margo Price! Mar 19, 2021

Show notes

Margo Price is a remarkable country singer/songwriter and producer based in Nashville whose timeless anthems and crystal clear tone send shivers up spines all over the world. In the last five years, she has put out three gorgeous albums, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, All American Made, and That’s How Rumors Get Started. And most recently, she put out an absolutely devastating video in January for her song “Hey Child” and is planning to headline her first concert since 2019—a socially distanced show at The Caverns Above Ground Amphitheater in Tennessee—this May. On her riveting episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, Price talks candidly about her efforts to diversify country music, the painful story behind her new video, and about developing her own strain of weed for Willie Nelson.

Poptarts Episode 103: Bad Feminist Roxane Gay! Mar 05, 2021

Show notes

A modern feminist icon, Roxane Gay is a brilliant writer of essays, fiction, comic books, newspaper editorials for The New York Times, and a fantastic newsletter called The Audacity. She is also a writing professor—most recently at Yale— and an editor of anthologies and collected works. Her many books include the celebrated collections Bad Feminist and Difficult Women, and the deeply personal memoir Hunger. And now, Gay has her own course on the streaming platform MasterClass where she’s teaching Writing for Social Change. On her illuminating episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, she shares strategies for writing about trauma, tackles the topic of fat liberation, and opens up about first-time puppy parenthood.

Poptarts Episode 102: Kyra Sedgwick! Feb 19, 2021

Show notes

Consummate New Yorker Kyra Sedgwick started off in showbiz in 1982 on the classic soap Another World and quickly became a bonafide movie star in films including Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July, Cameron Crowe's Singles, and 2012’s The Possession. She is perhaps best known for her starring role as Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on the TNT crime drama The Closer—for which she won a Golden Globe and an Emmy—and now, she’s lighting up the new ABC sit-com Call Your Mother. On her A-List episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, she describes decades of rejecting “girlfriend roles,” shares how she creates gender equity in her household with Kevin Bacon, and makes us all want to take a turn in the director’s chair.

Poptarts Episode 101: The Unicorn's Michaela Watkins! Jan 30, 2021

Show notes

Michaela Watkins is a brilliant comic actor who has been cracking audiences up since she joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in 2008. In the decade since she left the show in 2009, she has been in a bevy of beloved indie films and delightfully weird TV shows, including Joey Soloway’s Afternoon Delight and Transparent, Nicole Holofcener’s Enough Said, the acclaimed hulu show Casual, and the Sundance hit Brittany Runs a Marathon. Most recently, she’s been lighting up the ensemble cast of the CBS comedy series The Unicorn and she has a role in the upcoming horror film Werewolves Within. In this awesome episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, she gives us the inside scoop on SNL, reminds us of the healing power of sit-coms, and reflects on the night Joan Rivers was so funny—she actually peed her pants.

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