After taking a much-needed break from TFG, Maya and Rebecca catch up on Trump’s troubles: legal, financial, political, and psychophysical. How fucked is he? How worried should we be? What’s the most productive way to direct our anxiety between now and November?Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

Depending on whom you ask, Academy award winner Poor Things is either a feminist masterpiece about an empowered woman, or a male fantasy about a baby-minded fuck toy. Maya and Rebecca attempt to bridge the gap, asking the really important questions: Why is Yorgos Lanthimos so obsessed with old-timey whorehouses? Is this quirky visual style more or …

College presidents forced to resign. Faculties gutted. Anti-DEI legislations cropping up nationwide. There’s no doubt about it–Right Wing activists are attacking Higher Ed, trying to “capture, restructure, and reform” centers of learning. Georgetown political scientist and Women’s Studies professor Nadia E. Brown joins us to help us understand this…

Intellectual expansion! Youthful passion! Exploited innocence! Genius writer, musician, and professional flame-throwing shit-starter Meredith Yayanos, comes on to talk about their problematic fave: Liberal Arts Education. What does college MEAN in the social imaginary? What did it mean to us? Cronyism, elitism, pranks, nubility, narcissistic facult…

Were we wrong about Taylor Swift? Actual, real live Swiftie Jenna Parrot responds to Maya and Rebecca’s takes about her favorite pop megastar. Can she help us understand Swift’s musical appeal, not to mention her cultural and political impact?Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

We can’t start the new year without talking about THE biggest pop culture story of 2023: Beyonce and Taylor Swift dominating American music, culture and even economics with their wildly popular, wildly extravagant Renaissance and Eras tours. Maya and Rebecca break down the star power, the spectacle and the songwriting, asking what makes these two m…

Apparently there are some people we didn’t alienate with our last Israel episode? Well, if at first you don’t succeed… Maya and Rebecca dive back into Israel/Palestine and try, try again to understand why this topic is so hard to have conversations about.Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

Two drunk Jewesses (one with an Israeli passport) dive into the Hamas attack on Israel and the current catastrophe in Gaza, taking apart three major talking points that have been floating around and explaining why they’re all wrong.Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

Organized labor is so hot right now. With the UAW and SAG on strike – and more industries getting ready to join – Maya and Rebecca welcome multi-talented writer/producer/director Miles Kahn to go inside the recent Hollywood writer’s strike, analyze pop culture depictions of strikes, and uncover why unions having such a moment.…

Wow, we did Nazi that coming! (Yes we did.) As Elon Musk beefs with the Anti Defamation League, Rebecca and Maya follow up on how he’s ruining Twitter and track how anti-Semitism on Twitter looks different in 2023 than it did in 2016.Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

As Trump’s legal issues mount, we revisit Part 2 of Maya and Rebecca’s discussion about Trump and mafia narratives, examining how the character types of the “fixer” and the shady business mogul shed light on the public’s perceptions of Michael Cohen and Donald Trump — as well as their apparent perceptions of themselves. This week … Continue reading…

Friends, if you’re looking for new and profound insights into the birth of the Atomic Age, you ain’t gonna find them in the turgid recent hit Oppenheimer. Rebecca and Maya welcome Very Special Guest, legendary artist Ellen Sebastian Chang, to drop personal and political context that exposes the limits of filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s historical, ci…

In Part 2, Rebecca and Maya dive deeper into what our corrupt and conservative Supreme Court actually looks like RIGHT NOW: poorly reasoned decisions! Inconsistent application of precedent for theocratic right-wing ends! Fancy RVs from billionaires! How do we not lose our minds? (Drinking recommended).…

Isn’t the Supreme Court supposed to protect our rights – not take them away? Maya and Rebecca examine how our idealized notions about SCOTUS don’t match current reality, and how that didn’t happen by accident. They dig into Supreme Court history and uncover the far right’s decades-long project to capture the court and subvert democracy.…

Rebecca and Maya break down the summer’s hottest corporate feminist blockbuster, asking all the REALLY IMPORTANT questions: How is Barbie like Schindler’s List? Is the movie really as man-hating as the right-wing pundits are promising us, or will we be disappointed? Can a 2-hour toy commercial even BE feminist? And why aren’t the Barbies humping?…

As we continue to reel from last week’s Supreme Court decisions, we return to this VERY SPECIAL EPISODE with Julia Sweeney as she ruins the Catholic Church for Maya and Rebecca! The legendary comedian, writer and longtime Sauce patron talks inside baseball about Pope Francis, Opus Dei, the Knights of Malta, why there are so many damn … Continue rea…

Sometimes it’s good to leak government secrets, sometimes it’s not? Maya and Rebecca ask how we’re supposed to know the difference, when we’re not the ones keeping the secrets. Then we talk orcas, Titanic tourism, and why the ocean seems to have something against rich people.Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

Drag bans! Trans panic! Won’t somebody think of the children’s normative gender socialization? Maya & Rebecca take a look at the massive wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation sweeping across the United States. Why is this happening? What does it reveal about the right wing mindset? Have 15 seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race taught us nothing? And … Continue re…

With E. Jean Carroll standing up to Trump and Tucker Carlson getting fired, are we finally (FINALLY) reaching a point of accountability? Or at least, liability?Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

Maya finally watched The Avengers for the first time, and she has some OPINIONS. We dig into the repeating formulas of superhero stories, why Maya doesn’t want to watch any more of them, and what the MCU is doing to all of our brains as movie-watchers.Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

We think maybe Showtime went to all the trouble of producing the hit series Yellowjackets just so Rebecca and Maya could break it down with Very Special Guest Rebecca Wright. 90s culture and music! Teen girl trauma! Middle-aged reckoning! Survival BY ANY MEANS! Pull up a drink and some steak tartare and LET’S DO THIS.…

The legendary Guy Branum DEMANDED that Rebecca and Maya watch The Fabelmans, Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical bildungsroman, and he joins us to break down the Jewishness, the queerness, and the goddamn Spielberginess of it all.Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

The Sauce has the best listeners in all of Podcastdom, and this week, they HAVE SOME SALTY OPINIONS about our episodes on Copaganda, White Lotus, and Hallmark Movies. Are we done? Oh, WE’RE NOT DONE.Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

As we grieve Tyre Nichols’ death at the hands of the Memphis PD, Rebecca and Maya finally dive into a long-time-coming topic: Copaganda, meaning pop culture media starring THE POLICE. We reach back to its radio roots, historical collaborations with law enforcement, track decades of the genre’s greatest popularity–and most troublingly, dive into why…

After a historically long (and nearly violent!) Speaker of the House election, Maya and Rebecca are joined by one of our favorite guests, political maven Kaitlin Byrd, to break down the circus that is Republican dysfunction, examine how we got here, and predict what it might mean for the country going forward.…

The New Year is here! But before we let the last one go, Maya and Rebecca have to get to the bottom of some of the biggest stories we just didn’t get to during 2022.Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

The Hallmark Channel Xmas Romance Season has branched out (heh heh) into Hanukkah, and Maya and Rebecca watched Hanukkah on Rye SO YOU WOULDN’T HAVE TO. As newbies to the genre, we ask–what the hell is going on here? And what happens when Jews get integrated into these narratives?Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

So many of you asked us to watch the wildly celebrated HBO show, The White Lotus. So God help us (and all of you), we did. What does writer/director Mike White think he’s doing? What is he actually doing? Maya and Rebecca bring insights into heterosexual marriage, luxury vacations, and being white girls who read … Continue reading "The White Lotus"…

Can Maya & Rebecca ruin the World Cup? They already did! We revisit that conversation with NY Times journalist Ken Bensinger, author of “Red Card,” which details the investigation into soccer’s massive international scandals. Four years later, with all the corruption and human rights violations in Qatar, the topic remains, ahem, relevant.…

The “Red Wave” hit a Blue Wall and Elon Musk is managing to destroy Twitter in under two weeks. Fasten your seatbelts and pour yourself a drink because boy oh boy IS THIS A BUMPY RIDE.Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

Anti-Semitism is back! And you better believe Rebecca and Maya have things to say about that. We break down Kanye’s public meltdown, Trump’s threats, conspiracy theories, American Jewish white privilege, and what we really worry about when we worry about this.Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

The queen is dead, long live America’s bizarre fascination with British royalty. Didn’t we fight a war about, dunno, throwing off the shackles of monarchy? Rebecca and Maya break down princess fantasies, pageantry, and the particularly American way we fictionalize and normalize nostalgic ideas of inherited power.…

We knew it was only a matter of time before Lauren Boebert came for us! Lesbian dance theory experts Maya and Rebecca do a grand jete right into the right wing temper tantrum over Biden’s student loan forgiveness.Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

After 30 years of attempts, Neil Gaiman’s legendary comic series The Sandman finally makes it onto the screen as a new series on Netflix. Longtime fans Maya and Rebecca have a LOT to say about how the adaptation hits, breaking down Gen X ideas of about magic, theories of everything, the male genius, and art.…

Biden. A frail ineffectual elderly centrist? OR A WILY SLAYER OF DRAGONS? A meme born from NASCAR and the dirtbag left’s contempt is turning into the maybe only way we can truly appreciate Biden’s recent political successes. Rebecca and Maya dig into the Dark Brandon meme, and parse this past insane week of The Former … Continue reading "DARK BRAND…

Sometimes an F-14 is just a giant flying dick. Rebecca and Maya return to San Diego, their hometown, to watch TOP GUN: MAVERICK and ponder Tom Cruise, masculinity, mortality, middle-aged sex, military industrial propaganda, and how all those things go together.Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

When we put out the call for Problematic Faves, *multiple* listeners asked us to break down John Carpenter’s 1980s cult fave. Can the history of American Chinatowns help us unpack the ongoing appeal of this dated flick? Why does this movie inspire so much DENIAL about how it traffics in the worst Yellow Peril stereotypes?…

Maya and Rebecca are detoxing from insane travel, weddings, COVID, and the past two weeks of political nightmarishness, and we had to go LIVE to do it! Here’s our convo from Tuesday, as we sort through the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe, gun laws, EPA regulations–and the January 6th hearings. Can Dems even DO spectacle? … Continue reading "Everyth…

As the January 6 Committee continues to unpeel the collusions and braided illegalities of TrumpWorld in the face of insurrection, we want to share this episode from 2018, in which we discuss not only the ways that TrumpWorld behaves like the mob, but how mafia narratives actually lay the groundwork for a widespread American acceptance … Continue re…

Could the “N-word”—not the actual epithet, but the euphemism itself—be problematic? A longtime listener brought up this question on the Sauce Speakeasy, our Discord channel (for Patrons only!), posing the question; what does the use of the euphemism achieve when used in a culture built on structural racism? So we went to an expert to … Continue rea…

In the wake of mass shootings in Buffalo, Laguna Woods, and Uvalde—and the imminent demise of abortion rights in this country—we repost this episode on Terrorism, how it exists in the our cultural imaginary, and how violence intended to terrorize actually performs itself in America.Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

Yeah, Elon Musk will wreck Twitter—but what if it’s already a mess? Rebecca and Maya ruin our favorite social media addiction and offer our predictions for what a post-Musk Twitter will look like.Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

We were in a great mood! Mixing cocktails! About to start recording! When the bombshell Politico piece dropped leaking Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe v Wade. So we switched course. Here we are reacting in the moment to the defining role abortion rights has had in our political lives; and the shifting tactics, racist roots … Continue reading …

Maya went to England where she was—ahem—exposed to the hit TV dating show Naked Attraction. She forces Rebecca to watch it and they try to understand: can this godawful trainwreck help explain what’s behind British TERFs and their purportedly “feminist” fear of trans bodies? Drinks recommended!Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

Last year we asked for all your problematic faves to ruin. Rebecca and Maya finally kick off the series by taking on our own problematic fave: Gone With The Wind. Is it a) a sweeping romantic epic starring some of the greatest actors of its day which set the standards for historical drama? b) racist … Continue reading "Problematic Faves: GONE WITH …

We have nothing to say about the Slap. We had a LOT to say about King Richard as a hack sports movie that avoids real stakes in favor of cheap sentimentality. Join us as we drink our way through the Will Smithness of it all!Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

Oscar weekend! The great Guy Branum returns to talk about the twisted history of straight actors playing gay to try and win Academy Awards–the length of the list may shock you! Does Jane Campion’s Oscar-bait Power of the Dog herald the return of the ’60s-style Gay Monster? Is it even a gay movie? More importantly, … Continue reading "Gay Oscar Bait…

Rebecca and Maya won’t pretend to be in any way qualified to parse the geopolitics of Russian’s horrifying invasion of Ukraine. Instead we break out the booze and break down how the propaganda around this war reveals unresolved Trump trauma, racism, historical amnesia and stupid fantasies of European exceptionalism.…

Maya and Rebecca manage to break free from their Wordle obsession long enough to ruin the strangely popular game and, while they’re at it, finally delve into Whoopi Goldberg’s remarks about Jews and whiteness from like a month ago.Av Maya Gurantz & Rebecca Cohen

A year after Biden took office, we’re finally crashing from the traumatic impact of Trump on our burnt-out adrenaline receptors. How do we tell jokes? Or do podcasts? Or, like, get out of bed at all? Rebecca and Maya get personal in this episode, with help from Very Special Guest and genius, comedian Guy Branum.…