Ep. 406 A Consumer of Pop Culture First with Christiana Mbakwe Medina
The Stacks
Traci Thomas
4.9 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2026
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today on The Stacks, we are joined by Emmy-nominated TV writer, former co-host of What Now? with Trevor Noah, and creator of the Pop Syllabus newsletter and podcast, Christiana Mbakwe Medina. We talk about how Christiana became a comedy writer and culture critic, the intersections of wealth and access in celebrity culture, and what we can get out of taking pop culture seriously.
The Stacks Book Club pick for January is Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert. We will discuss the book on Wednesday, January 28th, with Christiana Mbakwe Medina returning as our guest.
You can find everything we discuss on today's show on The Stacks website: https://www.thestackspodcast.com/2026/1/7/ep-406-christiana-mbakwe-medina
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | England, it's a country where the expectation is that the class you were born into is the class you will die in. |
| 0:05.9 | In the sense that if a lord dies penniless, he's still a part of the aristocracy. |
| 0:13.4 | You are who you are. |
| 0:15.1 | It doesn't matter what you accomplish. |
| 0:17.5 | Ambition is frowned on. |
| 0:18.7 | It's seen as, ugh, nasty. |
| 0:20.7 | Whereas in America, if you say to someone, I'm going to build the biggest tech company |
| 0:25.0 | that ever existed, they'll be like, oh, wow, you know what, I need to connect to you |
| 0:28.6 | with so and so. |
| 0:29.5 | Let me, like, people really believe. |
| 0:32.1 | And unfortunately, that's kind of like the tragedy at the heart of the nation because |
| 0:35.5 | everybody believes that maybe there'll be a billionaire one day and it's, you know, it just means you get a King |
| 0:41.7 | Kardashian, you get Trump, you get Mamdani. |
| 0:49.2 | Welcome to the Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. |
| 0:52.6 | I'm your host, Tracy Thomas, and today |
| 0:54.3 | we are joined by Emmy-nominated TV writer, journalist, and host of the pop syllabus podcast, |
| 1:01.0 | Christiana Mbacue Medina. Today we talk about how Christiana became such a critical reader and |
| 1:07.6 | thinker of pop culture, the ways that celebrities perform themselves and how |
| 1:11.5 | we think critically about them, and some of her all-time favorite books. |
| 1:16.2 | Our book club pick for January is Girl on Girl, how pop culture turned a generation of girls |
| 1:21.1 | against themselves by Sophie Gilbert. |
| 1:23.6 | Cristiana will be back on Wednesday, January 28th, to discuss this book with us. |
... |
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