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16 episodes listed below
Class, money, shame, and taste made personal.
Classy with Jonathan Menjivar treats class as something felt before it is named. Through reported stories, interviews, and self-questioning narration, it follows money, shame, ambition, taste, work, and belonging into ordinary rooms where they suddenly become hard to ignore.
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Classy with Jonathan Menjivar turns class into a set of lived scenes rather than a lecture. The show is strongest when it starts small. A menu at a fancy seafood restaurant. A swap meet. A recruiter offering T-shirts for push-ups. A memory of wanting Oprah to give a mother a house. From there, it follows the emotional logic beneath the moment. Money matters, but so do manners, taste, family myth, professional status, guilt, ambition, and the strange ways people learn to perform need. The narration is personal without becoming loose. It admits embarrassment and confusion, then uses those feelings as evidence. In one episode, Chris Gethard’s anxiety at a high-end dinner becomes a way to talk about working-class suspicion of pleasure. In another, a story about Queen for a Day leads into painful family history and the costs of turning hardship into entertainment. The Army recruiting episode watches opportunity, discipline, boredom, and class pressure meet inside a school hallway. The Terry Gross episode uses archival radio to think about labor, authority, and how a voice becomes important. Classy also makes room for listener-style questions about service workers, house cleaning, and the guilt that can attach to being polite from a position of power. It is measured, but not bloodless. It can be wry. It can be grave. Its best moments understand that class is often felt as a bodily flinch before it becomes an argument. For listeners drawn to narrative nonfiction about identity, money, work, family, and social codes, the show offers a thoughtful and uneasy kind of recognition.
Made for: For listeners who like reflective narrative nonfiction about money, family, work, status, and the small rituals that reveal social power. It especially fits anyone drawn to personal journalism that stays curious rather than tidy.
What sets it apart: The show treats class less as a category than as an atmosphere people carry into restaurants, jobs, family stories, and public spaces. Its edge comes from combining reported scenes with unusually direct self-scrutiny.
*** Named one of the best podcasts of 2023 by The New Yorker, Time, The Atlantic, Apple, Vogue, the CBC, and Lifehacker. ***Classy is a collection of surprising stories, juicy and uncomfortable interviews, and engaging segments that explore the ways that class infiltrates our day-to-day lives. In the host seat is Jonathan Menjivar – a working-class Latino kid who started working in media and became someone who likes oysters, wears cashmere socks, and is very conflicted about all of it.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Jonathan Menjivar turns class discomfort into precise stories about money, status, family memory, and the uneasy experience of moving between social worlds.
Classy with Jonathan Menjivar makes social class tangible through awkward meals, workplace memories, family history, and conversations about money and status.
Parmesan foam meets working-class guilt, and suddenly your expensive dinner has an ethics committee.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
An aspiring pop star's stalled dream returns through an unexpected email and a Hong Kong protest.
The episode tracks Kashi Keegan, an aspiring pop star who put his money and time into music, set a deadline, and left it behind when it did not pay off.
A family reckoning with the TV fantasy that pain can be packaged for rescue.
Jonathan Menjivar starts with a simple, uneasy idea: a child sees television as a rescue line and thinks Oprah might save his mother. From there, the episode traces the bargain built into talk shows, where private pain gets shaped into something tidy enough for an audience.
A Montreal dinner that turns class anxiety into a sharp, uneasy story.
Chris Gethard turns a celebratory Montreal dinner into a tight study of class anxiety, starting with his Just for Laughs break and settling into the nerves that can come with fine dining.
A military detour that turns class into something felt, not declared.
Class and Combat follows Adam Linehan from a middle-class Austin upbringing into the Army, and the episode's strength is how it treats that move as both practical and unsettling.
An uneasy conversation about class guilt, politeness, and the limits of trying to atone.
Classy with Jonathan Menjivar turns class anxiety into an awkward, close-range conversation about guilt, power, and what politeness can actually fix. Menjivar sits with the discomfort instead of sanding it down.
A thoughtful portrait of Terry Gross that treats radio craft as something earned, not just a backdrop.
This piece follows Terry Gross by way of the jobs, tape work, and freelance grind that shaped her before Fresh Air settled into place in Philadelphia. The old broadcasts and studio memories give it a lived-in feel.
Anna Martin interviews writers and couples about the real stories behind Modern Love essays.
Knox and Jamie turn celebrity gossip, film deep dives, and streaming news into weekly comedy.
Two hosts revisit one film, show, or book a week, plus long personal tangents.
A Brazilian journalist spends years reinvestigating unsolved child disappearances in Paraná.
Cris Bartz and Juva Lauer alternate debate and interview episodes on Brazilian social issues.
Robert Wright interviews specialists on Iran, Gaza, Ukraine, Taiwan, and open-source AI.
This episode is a preview of What We Spend, a podcast about personal finance hosted by Courtney Harrell and distributed through the Classy feed.
This episode introduces season two of Pulitzer on the Road, the official podcast of the Pulitzer Prizes.
This episode is a preview of This Is Uncomfortable from Marketplace, aired through the Classy feed, telling the story of Kashi Keegan — a British aspiring pop star who spent over £60,000 on a music career that never broke.
He starts with a childhood belief that Oprah could save his mother.
Classy with Jonathan Menjivar presents two stories about food and class: host Jonathan Menjivar and comedian Chris Gethard eat at an upscale Manhattan restaurant neither would have visited growing up, working through their shared anxiety about fancy food, expensive menus, and the fear that enjoying class mobility means betraying their working-class roots.
Adam Linehan grows up middle class in Austin.
This episode of Classy introduces the 'Am I the Classhole?' segment, in which advice columnist JP Bramer responds to caller questions about class-related social missteps.
Host Jonathan Menjivar interviews his former boss Terry Gross about class, taste, and how work environments can reshape a person's identity.