The hottest Celebrity Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Culture Topics

Afroman Is an American Hero

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 616 implied HN points • 20 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. Afroman used the First Amendment to fight back and won a court victory, showing free speech can protect people who speak out.
  2. Police raided his home while he was performing, caused heavy damage and seized cash. They found no incriminating evidence or filed charges, which suggests police overreach.
  3. The case shows recordings, public exposure, and lawsuits can be used to hold law enforcement accountable and defend individual rights.

The Weekend Press: Bad Therapy, Coming to a Screen Near You

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 259 implied HN points • 21 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. Popular TV and reality shows are glamorizing bad therapy by showing therapists who break boundaries and people using “therapy-speak” to excuse harmful behavior, which can mislead viewers about what real therapy looks like.
  2. A recent legal win for an artist who mocked police after a flawed raid is being seen as a strong defense of free speech and a check on official misconduct.
  3. The newsletter highlights cultural reinvention and leisure—profiles of people who reinvent their careers, movie and music picks, and simple weekend recommendations to read, listen, or get outside.

Ryan Gosling’s New Film Will Have You Crying Over a Rock

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 343 implied HN points • 20 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. This year’s awards season and the Oscars were chaotic and controversial, with surprising wins, no-shows, and public political gestures.
  2. Ryan Gosling’s Project Hail Mary is a moving, human-centered sci-fi that hits hard emotionally despite its space setting and mostly single-character focus.
  3. Red-carpet interviews and awards coverage have become influencer-driven spectacles chasing viral moments, often at the expense of real conversation.

The Over-Therapized Lives of Mormon Wives

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 231 implied HN points • 20 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. The women aren’t really living secret lives or fitting the image of traditional Mormon wives; fame and follower counts have become their main identity.
  2. Their lives are saturated with therapists, specialists, and healing retreats, but the heavy use of therapy often looks like a performance rather than real recovery.
  3. The show spotlights messy relationships, breakups, and personal struggles while turning private life into entertainment, making micro-celebrity status more important than stability.

It's "Mental Illness Doesn't Do That" Season Once Again

Freddie deBoer • 51763 implied HN points • 26 Jan 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. Mental illness can and does cause extreme, harmful, and self-destructive behaviors in real life, so the blanket claim “mental illness doesn’t do that” is simply false.
  2. People often practice moral convenience by demanding sympathy for trendy or mild self-diagnoses while denying nuance or compassion to those with serious, visible illness, and that hypocrisy harms genuinely sick people.
  3. When judging harmful behavior we should be willing to consider mental illness as a factor and tolerate uncertainty; this doesn’t require forgiveness but does require a more honest, complicated moral approach.
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Do good work and your fits will follow

Blackbird Spyplane • 3277 implied HN points • 15 Oct 24
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. Doing good work can enhance how people see your style. When you focus on creating and contributing positively, your overall vibe improves.
  2. People tend to admire others' fashion sense more when they appreciate their talents and achievements. Great style is often seen through the lens of the person's accomplishments.
  3. Fashion is evolving to include a wider range of styles that reflect individuality and personal expression. What was once considered 'normal' can now be stylish if presented well.

Did you know Gordon Ramsay is basically two different people on television?

Erik Examines • 716 implied HN points • 16 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. Gordon Ramsay appears like two different TV personas: explosive and confrontational on American shows, but mentoring and empathetic on British programs.
  2. Production choices—fast cuts, dramatic music, and repeated reaction shots—amplify conflict on U.S. reality TV, while British shows use more observational editing that lets scenes breathe.
  3. This highlights a cultural difference in storytelling: the same events can feel very different when one culture presents them more loudly and dramatically than another.

It’s Not His Fault He Used the N-Word

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 2165 implied HN points • 24 Feb 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. A man with Tourette’s involuntarily shouted the N-word during the BAFTAs and the moment was captured on camera, visibly upsetting the presenters.
  2. The outburst divided people into two camps: those prioritizing anti-racism and those warning against ableism toward someone with a neurological condition.
  3. Many argue the proper response should be compassion and understanding of his involuntary symptoms rather than public disgust and punishment.

Have you ugly cried this week? I hope so. (Plus: my thoughts on Taylor Swift's book.)

How to Glow in the Dark • 679 implied HN points • 18 Oct 24
📚 Literature Celebrity
  1. It's okay to feel your emotions deeply; sometimes crying is part of processing those feelings.
  2. Taylor Swift's upcoming self-published book is shaking up the publishing industry by bypassing traditional methods.
  3. This move could encourage traditional publishers to rethink their strategies and invest in diverse authors instead of focusing only on mega-celebrities.

I Miss When Homoeroticism Was Erotic

Freddie deBoer • 20668 implied HN points • 24 Nov 25
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. Gayness has been turned into a marketable, sexless identity sign that values spectacle and safe signaling more than actual desire.
  2. Contemporary queer culture is polarized between sanitized, inoffensive portrayals and mechanical promiscuity, and both extremes erase real intimacy and erotic joy.
  3. Eroticism depends on uncertainty and risk, so when hookups, publicity, or social norms remove chance and possible rejection, they drain sex of what makes it truly erotic.

Things Worth Remembering: James Van Der Beek Was the Best of Us

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 2198 implied HN points • 15 Feb 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. He wanted to teach his kids how easy it can be to laugh, to love, to cry, to learn, and to find joy in both the plans and the detours alike.
  2. He became a defining teen idol through Dawson’s Creek and left a strong nostalgic imprint on the generation that grew up watching him.
  3. His death at 48 after battling cancer prompted people to remember both his on-screen work and the heartfelt life lessons he shared.

‘Marty Supreme’ Is a Gift to Jews

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 180 implied HN points • 13 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. Marty Mauser is presented as an amoral, gifted, and reckless Jewish antihero who insists on being his own man.
  2. Breaking free from narrow, often flattering stereotypes about Jews in pop culture matters, even if the new portrayals are unsettling.
  3. The film is framed as defiant because it resists turning Jews into one-dimensional villains and instead engages provocatively with Jewish history and identity.

Why Is Everyone So Nice to Eileen Gu?

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 1558 implied HN points • 17 Feb 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. She’s one of the world’s best freestyle skiers and among the highest‑paid athletes, winning multiple Olympic medals and earning huge sponsorship money.
  2. Born and raised in San Francisco to an American father and a Chinese mother, she switched from the U.S. team to compete for China in 2019 and has since represented China at major events.
  3. Despite the potential for controversy over her country switch, she faces little mainstream criticism and is broadly celebrated, with most negative commentary coming from a few right‑wing voices.

two new YouTube video essays!

Switch Hitter • 438 implied HN points • 15 Oct 24
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. New YouTube videos explore parasocial relationships and gender issues. They look closely at how fans' behavior can mimic harassment.
  2. One video challenges the idea that trans people reinforce gender stereotypes. It argues that this view is based on flawed logic and double standards.
  3. There are plans for more video essays in the future, covering various topics. The creator is still committed to writing while expanding to video content.

The Green Room

Altered States of Monetary Consciousness • 1147 implied HN points • 08 Feb 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. Many powerful people combine real influence with deep personal insecurity, and they often chase status and connections to mask loneliness and fragility.
  2. Offering an exclusive, confidential social space—a ‘green room’—can relieve that loneliness and be used to attract and entangle elites into networks of dependence and complicity.
  3. Those networks have many entry points and cross ideological lines, creating odd alliances and a FOMO-driven culture that can normalize risky or abusive behavior.

The Oscars Died This Weekend, Did Anyone Notice?

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 61 implied HN points • 17 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. The Oscars have lost their place as a shared cultural event and now feel like an insider industry banquet that many ordinary viewers ignore.
  2. The ceremony and its winners often don’t match what mainstream audiences have seen, while the broadcast tries to juggle honoring films, chasing ratings, and delivering political messaging, which makes it feel unfocused and awkward.
  3. A fragmented media landscape and countless parallel awards and online debates have eroded the Oscars’ authority, turning the show into a self-congratulatory ritual largely disconnected from everyday audiences.

I Survived My Father’s Kidnapping. This Is My Message to the Guthrie Family.

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 287 implied HN points • 27 Feb 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. Savannah Guthrie’s 84-year-old mother was kidnapped from her bed and remains missing weeks later, and the family has offered a $1 million reward to find her.
  2. Waiting in uncertainty for a missing loved one makes time feel like it stops and forces people to endure unbearable stress while clinging to the hope of a miracle.
  3. Public sympathy is widespread but few truly understand the lived experience; surviving a parent's kidnapping gives someone a rare, personal insight to share with the family.

Darius Rucker

Steady • 22799 implied HN points • 07 Jan 24
🎶 Music Celebrity
  1. Darius Rucker is a successful country music artist with a big heart for philanthropy.
  2. He has supported causes like childhood cancer treatment and Musicians on Call.
  3. Rucker's journey in country music breaks stereotypes and highlights progress in the genre.

The Greatness of Catherine O’Hara

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 941 implied HN points • 01 Feb 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. Her sudden death at 71 was especially shocking. She had been consistently brilliant in every role across a long career.
  2. She never had a single peak or a career lull, making it hard to point to one best performance; she was exceptional throughout. This steady excellence is particularly rare for a female comedy performer.
  3. She stayed active and delivered strong work into her seventies, including a notable recent role on Seth Rogen's show The Studio.

#252: The American spectacle of ‘Marty Supreme’

Maybe Baby • 1322 implied HN points • 18 Jan 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. The film sets out to critique American individualistic ambition, but its glossy style and star-making spectacle end up glamorizing the same monomania it aims to condemn.
  2. It’s beautifully made and thrilling to watch with strong performances, yet it offers little interior depth and the emotional payoff, especially the ending, feels unearned.
  3. By mixing marketing, celebrity, and art, the movie reflects and reinforces a cultural obsession with measurable success and spectacle over communal or moral values.

Two Drinks with . . . Michael J. Fox

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 741 implied HN points • 06 Feb 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. Michael J. Fox has returned to acting and plays a character with Parkinson's, even delivering a defiant line saying “Fuck Parkinson's.”
  2. The show portrays the progression of Parkinson's and uses blunt, dark humor to show how people with the disease support and reassure each other.
  3. Fox's role and frank attitude help remove shame, raise visibility, and challenge the stigma around Parkinson's.

Why Conservative Influencers Can't Stop Talking About Brooklyn Beckham

Taylor Lorenz's Newsletter • 1104 implied HN points • 26 Jan 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. Right-wing influencers quickly weaponized Brooklyn Beckham's Instagram post, casting Nicola Peltz as a villain and comparing the situation to Meghan Markle while framing Brooklyn as a ‘Prince Harry 2.0’.
  2. The backlash reveals how people react when men set boundaries with powerful families — society often blames women for men’s choices and leans into boy-mom culture and gendered narratives.
  3. Tabloids, PR machines, and online influencers distort celebrity drama into smear campaigns and digital propaganda, manufacturing moral panic to control the story.

Odessa A’zion Needs to Stop Listening to the Mob

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 816 implied HN points • 30 Jan 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. Giving in to online mob pressure can push public figures to quit jobs, and publicly thanking or praising those attackers looks weak and encourages more outrage.
  2. Odessa A’zion stepped away from a role after critics objected that she wasn’t the half-Mexican character she was cast to play, and she apologized for not checking the source material first.
  3. The episode highlights how casting and identity controversies, celebrity privilege, and snap public apologies can collide to make careers vulnerable and conversations worse rather than better.

Brooklyn Beckham Needs to Grow Up

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 932 implied HN points • 23 Jan 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. Many young adults are quick to 'cut out' their parents, treating perceived slights as grounds for estrangement rather than working through conflicts.
  2. Brooklyn Beckham’s public, detailed accusations against his parents come across as immature to some and show how airing private family disputes on social media can escalate tensions.
  3. Parents can be baffled when kids interpret jokes or awkward moments as contempt, and those generational misunderstandings sometimes turn small issues into lasting rifts.

Ancient Wisdom: Dick Van Dyke Is (Almost) 100 and He’s Still Having Fun

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 2652 implied HN points • 07 Dec 25
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. A performer can stay active and joyful even at 100, still dancing, singing, and embracing life every day.
  2. The 'old man' comic persona grew out of watching and learning from elders in the family, showing how personal history shapes performance.
  3. Iconic character roles can be easily forgotten, and credits or pseudonyms sometimes obscure who actually played them.

The Reiners’ Tragedy Without End

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 1891 implied HN points • 22 Dec 25
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. A beloved public-figure couple were murdered by their son, a shock that underscores the human cost of such family tragedies.
  2. A brilliant young man with schizophrenia once seemed to recover and even attracted media and Hollywood interest; after stopping his medication he spiraled into psychosis and killed his pregnant fiancée.
  3. Serious mental illness and addiction can lead to sudden, violent outcomes despite appearances of recovery, showing how fragile progress is and how inadequate interventions can be.

The First Lady Really Doesn’t Care. Do U?

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 421 implied HN points • 31 Jan 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. The documentary is visually lavish and full of staged, glamorous moments, but it stays tight-lipped and offers little real insight into the First Lady's inner life.
  2. The film's release was wrapped in big-money deals and controversy, with Amazon spending heavily to acquire and promote it and a director who has a troubled past, drawing extra scrutiny.
  3. Much of the attention felt performative and press-driven, with reports of chaotic production, contested ticket sales, and premiere audiences dominated by reporters rather than regular viewers.

The Winter Olympics Is the Best Reality TV Show

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 324 implied HN points • 06 Feb 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. The Winter Olympics plays like the best reality TV — it’s full of big personalities, unexpected drama, and moments that feel made for television.
  2. Ice dancing is the theater kid of Olympic sports: flashy costumes, pumping music, exposed personalities, and subjective judging that heightens backstage drama.
  3. Opening ceremonies and national displays are a big part of the show and can spark controversy, so people tune in to see how countries present themselves.

What happened to J.K. Rowling?

The Path Not Taken • 1388 implied HN points • 08 Dec 25
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. A once-liberal critic who defended the right to dissent has shifted to a more hardline, single-issue stance on transgender matters, and their tone and language have become less respectful.
  2. An intense single-issue focus frames the debate in Manichean terms and forces people to pick sides. This approach sidelines other important public priorities like climate change and social inequality.
  3. As the campaign won legal and media support it also grew more militant and began to align with conservative or authoritarian tendencies, which has alienated some earlier sympathizers.

The Weekend Press: On ‘Melania,’ and Chugging Milk with RFK Jr.

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 384 implied HN points • 31 Jan 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. Ancient myths and ritual stories still matter because they help people make sense of life and death, while modern obsessions with reversing aging often miss that moral wisdom.
  2. Celebrity and political figures increasingly become fodder for performative media spectacles, turning serious debates into quirky, chaotic controversies.
  3. Popular TV exposes cultural contradictions: shows can brand themselves as progressive while promoting traditional fantasies, and fandoms often react in unpredictable, overheated ways.

Rob Reiner Deserved a Happily Ever After

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 1196 implied HN points • 16 Dec 25
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. He was unexpectedly talented and genuinely kind, often deflecting credit to collaborators and staying modest about his work.
  2. He directed a rare run of wildly different, hugely influential films—like This Is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride, and When Harry Met Sally—that shaped multiple generations.
  3. Because he was so decent and generous, the tragic end to his story feels especially unfair and he deserved a happier finish.

Is Melania The Worst Film Ever Made?

Slack Tide by Matt Labash • 412 implied HN points • 01 Feb 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. The Melania documentary is widely panned and many viewers call it one of the worst films they’ve seen because it’s boring, lifeless, and unintentionally funny.
  2. It feels like a bought, clumsy PR piece — a cobbled-together vanity film financed and scripted to flatter Melania and backed by sketchy people.
  3. Melania is portrayed as shallow and inauthentic: the voiceovers sound robotic, scenes are staged with endless shoe close-ups, and the film’s sympathetic lines clash with her husband’s actions.

We are all going to regret Kalshi and Polymarket.

The Future, Now and Then • 242 implied HN points • 10 Feb 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. Prediction markets and sports betting are becoming ubiquitous and too easy to access. Celebrity endorsements and media tie‑ins normalize betting on everyday events.
  2. These platforms are negative‑sum: winners win what losers lose, minus platform fees, so they don’t create new value. Over time money flows to professional bettors and the house, hurting casual players.
  3. Gambling should be legal but treated like cigarettes — heavily regulated, hard to access, banned from advertising, and taxed. That would help limit social harm, reduce corruption risks, and prevent normalization of betting.

The show is over, say goodbye

Disaffected Newsletter • 4316 implied HN points • 21 Mar 24
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. Madonna's recent performance highlighted her struggle with aging and the desire to cling to her past fame, which some people found sad and awkward.
  2. The concert's production quality was disappointing, with issues like poor sound and lip-syncing, leaving many fans feeling cheated.
  3. The author's views on Madonna shifted over time, reflecting a broader change in attitudes towards celebrity culture and its impacts on personal growth.

The Weekend Press: Which Beckham Do You Believe?

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 361 implied HN points • 24 Jan 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. A very public family split — exemplified by Brooklyn Beckham’s post — has sparked a heated debate about when it’s acceptable to cut relatives out, with some calling it a Gen Z trend and others seeing it as a response to being raised in the spotlight.
  2. Personal stories from powerful people show how politics, influence, and performance mix in elite circles, where hunting trips and boastful tales also serve as networking and reputation-building.
  3. The cultural pieces cover a wide range of themes — provocative memoirs and the long shadow of #MeToo, young people turning fame into money, and older adults finding renewal through things like Latin dancing.

Two Drinks with. . . Bill Maher

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 853 implied HN points • 19 Dec 25
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. His home podcast studio is very casual and cannabis-friendly — he smokes during recordings and prefers getting high over having drinks.
  2. He just got his first Golden Globe nomination but says he won’t go to the ceremony and would be annoyed by a room full of "super-woke" Hollywood people.
  3. He projects a provocative, irreverent persona, shown by keeping an anatomically correct Whitney Cummings sex doll in his studio and making blunt, playful remarks.

Jennifer Please

Hung Up • 5129 implied HN points • 18 Jan 24
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. Jennifer Lopez presents a unique visual album called 'This is Me...Now' with a mix of different movie inspirations.
  2. The trailer hints at a narrative of love, heartbreak, and inner healing through fantastical storytelling and celebrity cameos.
  3. The film will be available on Amazon starting February 16, showcasing a new artistic side of Jennifer Lopez.

The Post-Post-#MeToo Novel

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 329 implied HN points • 23 Jan 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. Jennette McCurdy’s new novel fictionalizes a teenage girl’s relationship with a much older teacher and shows how an adult’s grooming becomes sexual and emotional abuse. It turns private trauma into a tense, unsettling story.
  2. Told entirely from a 17‑year‑old’s viewpoint, the book vividly captures obsessive thinking, impulsive behaviors, and the cycle of psychological violence that comes with such a relationship. It makes the reader feel the cravings for approval through fashion, food, social media, and a dangerous romance.
  3. Following her brutally honest memoir about childhood abuse, this novel pushes readers into even more uncomfortable territory and sharpens the conversation about adults abusing power over young people. It’s part of a wave of stories testing how we see and respond to abuse in the post‑#MeToo era.

We've Never Seen TDS Like This - Online Left Devastated As David Ellison’s Paramount Wins Warner Bros Bidding War

Unmasked • 69 implied HN points • 01 Mar 26
🎭️ Culture Celebrity
  1. Hollywood is overwhelmingly left-leaning, with many in the industry pushing progressive views and often sidelining conservative voices.
  2. David Ellison’s Paramount bid for Warner Bros. has provoked strong liberal backlash because he’s seen as more commercially focused, less overtly political, and linked in some ways to the right.
  3. There’s a common argument that politically driven content has alienated audiences and hurt studio finances, so shifting back to broad-appeal, non-ideological entertainment could help revive the industry.