Gentle answers for awkward everyday moments.
Awesome Etiquette treats manners as everyday relationship maintenance, not a stack of fussy rules. Its questions move from bread buttering and theater rows to wedding dress codes, digital condolences, awkward gifts, and how to leave a phone call kindly.
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Awesome Etiquette is a listener-question show about the everyday work of being considerate. It is not interested in manners as decoration. It treats etiquette as a practical tool for getting through weddings, dinners, family visits, public spaces, workplaces, and awkward social handoffs with a little more grace. The questions are often small on the surface. Should a guest cut all the meat at once? How should bread be buttered? Is it too much to ask houseguests to turn off lights? What happens when a friend sleeps through plans, a check is made out to the wrong name, or someone keeps sending unwanted political posts? The show takes those moments seriously without making them heavy. Its answers usually begin by validating the messiness, then move toward a clear action that preserves dignity for everyone involved. That balance is the appeal. A question about children chewing with their mouths closed becomes a lesson in instruction, repetition, self-awareness, and the social purpose behind the habit. A wedding attire question turns into a careful reading of time, formality, travel logistics, and what “encouraged” might mean to a guest. Public behavior gets the same attention. Episodes consider tight theater rows, subway staring, standing ovations, uniformed army personnel, and loose acquaintances who may or may not remember a face. Home life is just as central, from guest sheets and sober households to generous relatives, used car seats, and family meals with young children. The format has familiar recurring pieces: community questions, weekly etiquette challenges, etiquette salutes, and Postscript conversations. Named guests and segments bring in topics like style, cotillion traditions, restaurants, food history, and digital condolences, but the core remains the same listener-led exchange. The show’s warmth matters because the advice can be corrective. It rarely scolds. Instead, it asks what responsibility belongs to each person in the exchange and how a small adjustment might protect the relationship. For people who like clear guidance but dislike social shaming, Awesome Etiquette offers a steady, domestic, conversational kind of authority.
Made for: For people who want practical social guidance without being talked down to, especially around hosting, dining, weddings, family expectations, work boundaries, and public courtesy. It suits listeners who like advice that explains the reason behind the behavior.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is its reciprocal framing: etiquette is rarely only one person’s job. It keeps classic manners in conversation with present-day situations, from Substack communities and digital condolences to subway etiquette and blended social customs.
Hosts Lizzie Post and Daniel Post Senning answer audience questions about modern etiquette, offering advice grounded in consideration, respect, and honesty. As the great-great-grandchildren of Emily Post, cousins Dan and Lizzie look to the reasons behind traditional rules to guide their advice in a wide range of contemporary situations. Test your social acumen and join the discussion about civility and decency in today's complex world.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Lizzie Post and Dan Post-Senning make social uncertainty manageable by pairing humane judgment with specific, usable advice.
Awesome Etiquette turns awkward social moments into practical judgments about consideration, boundaries, and the signals people send one another.
A potluck recipe dispute and a 3 p.m. wedding ceremony: your social second-guessing has company.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Practical etiquette for weddings, workplace boundaries, and the awkward business of recognizing people in public.
Awesome Etiquette threads together a set of everyday etiquette headaches, from a black tie wedding split between a 3 p.m. ceremony and a 6 p.m. reception to a co-worker who will not stop sharing political social media posts, plus a wedding registry that needs firmer handling.
Episode 600 folds ordinary etiquette problems into practical advice, with a celebratory postscript that looks back and ahead.
Episode 600 gathers a set of ordinary etiquette problems: leaving a book club, helping an eight-year-old learn to chew with a closed mouth, tipping a friend's apartment building valet, and bringing alcohol to a sober friend's house.
A thoughtful look at how holiday hosting turns table manners into a family negotiation.
Social courtesy gets tested when family rituals harden into house rules. Lizzie Post and Dan Post Senning move from a Valentine's Day exchange into odd guest behavior, keeping kids at the dinner table, and a tricky monogram, with a community prompt about balancing a social life…
A warm, practical look at applause, house rules, and everyday consideration.
This episode frames etiquette as a constant adjustment between gratitude, attention, and personal comfort. Standing ovations, thanking a server, and houseguests who leave lights on all become small tests of how much courtesy asks from people in the moment.
A potluck recipe dispute opens into a warm look at courtesy, ownership, and the limits of managing other people.
A potluck recipe dispute gives Awesome Etiquette a clean way into the awkward overlap between courtesy and ownership. Dan Post-Senning grants that the person who brought a dish into a group may feel some attachment to it, then shifts the point toward recipes as shared knowledge…
A warm, practical etiquette episode about thoughtful gestures, respectful language, and modern social obligations.
Awesome Etiquette takes on a varied set of social questions here: how to end a gift-giving tradition, how to address an envelope to a divorced woman, how to announce an engagement, and how to approach non-binary pronouns with care.
A calm, practical episode on bread bowls, resort tipping, and the everyday choices that shape courtesy.
Bread bowls in a formal restaurant give this single episode an easy doorway into a wider discussion of courtesy, and tipping at an all-inclusive resort gives that same idea a more uncertain edge.
Ira Glass frames weekly theme-driven segments spanning family secrets to Portland's protest conflict.
Shankar Vedantam unpacks the psychology behind relationships, careers, and money through researcher interviews.
David McRaney interviews researchers on cognitive bias, motivated reasoning, and why minds change.
Ryan Holiday pairs daily Stoic lessons with long-form guest conversations at his Texas bookstore.
NHPR's Jason Moon investigates the Bear Brook barrel murders and a New Hampshire wrongful-conviction case.
Russ Roberts interviews authors and economists on ideas from classical liberalism to AI.
Lizzie Post and Dan Post-Senning answer listener questions on modern etiquette dilemmas.
Lizzie Post and Dan Post Senning answer listener questions on modern etiquette dilemmas.
This episode of Awesome Etiquette addresses listener questions on modern etiquette topics including gifting diamonds, handling overheard racist comments, and elevator behavior, while also discussing wedding-related etiquette.
Lizzie Post and Dan Post Senning open with a wedding question about whether to change clothes for a 3 p.m.
This episode of Awesome Etiquette addresses various modern etiquette questions, including dining practices like cutting meat and buttering bread, handling generous financial offers from relatives, making appropriate small talk with military personnel, and navigating theater seating customs.
This episode of Awesome Etiquette addresses listener questions on modern etiquette topics like handling physical cards, phone call interruptions, and guest sheet etiquette, while also featuring community segments and a discussion on digital condolences.
This episode of Awesome Etiquette explores modern etiquette topics including gift cards, halftime show drama, and avoiding subway staring, while featuring listener questions and an interview with Jennifer L.
The hosts of Awesome Etiquette discuss modern etiquette topics including handling social situations like missed plans and dress code issues, while sharing personal stories about Valentine's Day celebrations.
Lizzie Post and Dan Post Senning open from their snowy Vermont home offices as they mark episode 600 of Awesome Etiquette.
The hosts begin with a conversation about Valentine's Day plans.
["Episode 598 of Awesome Etiquette, titled A Standing Ovation, opens from snowy Vermont with Lizzie Post and Dan Post-Senning following up on a Time article about the courtesy of not accusing people of using AI.", "A listener from California asks whether remaining seated at a performance in Salt Lake City is rude when everyone else stands, and Dan answers with a defense of live theater and audience gratitude.", "Another question asks how often to thank servers for bread, water, and utensils, and Lizzie and Dan compare casual restaurant habits with formal table service.", "The episode also tackles bedroom lights left on by houseguests before ending with Margaret Visser's The Rituals of Dinner, including rice morsels, lagma, and finger-licking rules."]
Awesome Etiquette from snowy Vermont opens with Lizzie Post and Dan Post-Senning previewing questions about a delayed lunch, a potluck recipe dispute, a pregnancy announcement, and a postscript on generative AI.
This episode of Awesome Etiquette addresses listener questions on modern etiquette topics like gift-giving traditions, addressing envelopes to divorced women, and engagement announcements, while also covering non-binary pronouns and core principles from the Emily Post Institute.
This episode of Awesome Etiquette explores modern etiquette topics including hosting a tea party and wedding-related etiquette questions.
This episode of Awesome Etiquette addresses listener questions on modern etiquette topics like eating nuts with shells, being confused for a twin, and under-ordering at business lunches, while also discussing community questions and wedding gift etiquette.
This episode of Awesome Etiquette addresses etiquette questions about ordering to-go items on company expenses, along with other topics like age-related inquiries and moving abroad announcements.