Culture talk with nerve, warmth, and range.
Still Processing treats culture as everything people argue over, stream, share, rent, watch, and carry in their bodies. Its conversations move quickly from Colin Kaepernick and Airbnb discrimination to tennis movement, movie melodrama, Instagram, the Obamas, and the strange weather of the internet.
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Still Processing is culture criticism with the windows open. Wesley Morris and Jenna Wertham approach the week as writers, skeptics, and excitable observers of whatever everyone is suddenly talking about. The show treats culture broadly. Movies count. So do football protests, Airbnb listings, Instagram habits, tennis bodies, dating, politics, and the internet’s stranger outer edges. Its strongest moments come when a seemingly casual subject reveals a deeper social system. A conversation about Airbnb turns into a sharp look at discrimination in the sharing economy and the false promise that better software can solve racism. That thread is not abstract. The discussion stays close to what happens when people are judged before they ever arrive at a door. Sports can carry the same weight here. Colin Kaepernick’s protest becomes a way to examine public approval, race, police brutality, and the persistent wish for a more convenient spokesperson. Jesse Williams enters the conversation through a related question about who gets heard, who gets questioned, and how colorism and lookism shape public response. The show is serious without becoming airless. Its rhythm is quick, funny, and conversational, with sidesteps into favorite films, television characters, music icons, and the sensory pleasure of watching athletes move. The hosts can sound delighted one minute and unsatisfied the next. That restlessness is the point. Still Processing is less interested in final verdicts than in the pressure that builds while two curious people think out loud together. It also keeps a porous edge, with listener voicemails giving the conversation a lived-in feel. The New York Times connection gives it institutional reach, but the show’s energy is personal and chatty rather than formal. It works best for listeners who want criticism that can hold jokes, arguments, feelings, and politics in the same room. The result is a smart, social, slightly unruly map of the culture people are already living inside.
Made for: For listeners who want pop culture, politics, race, media, and internet life treated as connected parts of the same conversation. It especially suits people who like criticism that feels quick, personal, funny, and socially serious.
What sets it apart: The show’s range is unusually elastic: an Oscar question, an Airbnb policy debate, a football protest, and a tennis observation can all belong to the same argument. Its chemistry comes from real-time thinking rather than polished consensus.
Wesley Morris and J Wortham are working it out in this weekly show about culture in the broadest sense. That means television, film, books, music — but also the culture of work, dating, the internet and how those all fit together. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A sharp, roaming Still Processing episode on Airbnb, racism, and the limits of platform fixes.
Still Processing puts its sharpest pressure on racism in the social sharing economy, using Airbnb to ask what happens when a company sells hospitality while leaving prejudice in the hands of individual hosts.
A lively argument about who gets to speak for Black culture.
Still Processing uses Colin Kaepernick and Jesse Williams as entry points into a sharper, more uncomfortable question: who gets to speak for Black people, and why are some voices treated as more authoritative than others?
NHPR's Jason Moon investigates the Bear Brook barrel murders and a New Hampshire wrongful-conviction case.
Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham of the New York Times podcast Still Processing discuss Airbnb's racial discrimination problem following a Harvard study that found Black-sounding names received fewer bookings than white-sounding names.
Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham launch the inaugural episode of Still Processing, the New York Times culture podcast, with an extended discussion of Colin Kaepernick's decision to sit during the National Anthem in a 2016 preseason NFL game as a protest against the killing of Black people by police.