Listen Now

Dr. Brittney Cooper is an incredibly engaging and insightful feminist author, professor, activist, and cultural critic currently teaching at Rutgers University. She is also cofounder of the Crunk Feminist Collective, a scholar-activist group for feminists of color that began as a super-popular blog and has now evolved into the thriving Substack newsletter, The Remix. In 2017, she co-authored and edited The Crunk Feminist Collection anthology and also released Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women, which she followed up with her acclaimed 2018 book Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower. Now, she’s back with a helpful handbook called Feminist AF: A Guide to Crushing Girlhood. A treasure trove of resources for young activists—out now, from Norton Young Readers—the book uses intersectional feminist frameworks to help teens grapple with the most pressing challenges they face today. On BUST’s latest “Poptarts” podcast, Cooper explores her “cool auntie” persona, tackles her breakups with pop-culture baddies, and predicts the future of feminism.

Danielle Macdonald has been lighting up screens large and small with her plucky personality and big-girl badassery for the last decade. She’s Australian, but you’d never know it based on her spot-on 2017 performance as Jersey rapper Patti Dombrowski in the indie hit “Patti Cake$,” or by her star turn in 2018 as a Dolly Parton-obsessed Texas teen in “Dumplin'.” She’s also had notable roles in “Bird Box,” “Skin,” and “Unbelievable” just to name a few. And now, she’s back with another starring role as a gal with a dream in the IFC film Falling for Figaro, a romantic comedy set in the world of competitive opera singing that just opened in theaters and on demand October 1. On BUST’s latest “Poptarts” podcast, Danielle shares how she rejected “fat friend” roles for years to become a plus-size leading lady and much, much, more.

Lydia Lunch is a true radical in every sense of the word. A high priestess of punk, she arrived in New York when she was just 16 in the mid-’70s and made a name for herself downtown with her band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. That band became synonymous with the hugely influential No Wave movement and launched Lunch’s multifaceted career of over 40 years as an actor, performance poet, writer, public speaker, solo artist, and frontwoman for her subsequent bands 8-Eyed Spy, 13.13, Shotgun Wedding, Big Sexy Noise, and Retrovirus. Now, her life and career are being celebrated in a new documentary by director Beth B called Lydia Lunch: The War is Never Over—currently making the rounds at festivals and art house cinemas nationwide. On Lunch’s provocative episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, she makes extremely controversial comments concerning Harvey Weinstein, Andrew Cuomo, R. Kelly, and much, much, more.

Natalie Morales is an accomplished actor best known for her work on Dead to Me, The Little Things, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Abby’s, and Parks & Rec among her many credits. But this year, she also emerged as an exciting feature film director with an incredibly relatable and undeniably feminist point of view. First, she released the teen road trip comedy Plan B in May on Hulu, about two high school girls who have a wild adventure trying to get their hands on the morning-after pill in South Dakota. And on September 10, she released the astonishingly poignant drama Language Lessons in theaters, about an unusual relationship between a lonely man and his online Spanish teacher. On Morales’ excellent episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, she shares how being marginalized as a queer Latina in Hollywood inspired her to blossom into the emerging auteur she is today.

Lauren Fensterstock is a sculptor and installation artist whose sparkling, intricate creations look like secret treasures stolen from a gothic witches’ cathedral or like the charred remains of a fairy swamp. Made from materials including glass, vintage crystal, quartz, obsidian, onyx, hematite, shells, sand, plexiglass, paper, charcoal, and wood, her most recent installations—like the one on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery in D.C. earlier this year—are enormous, completely black, and suck all the surrounding light into the curves and edges of thousands of individual objects assembled in patterns that both imitate nature and take nature to dramatic new heights with architectural precision. Other pieces—like some of the seven crystal encrusted suns that were featured in Fensterstock’s show Impermanent Conditions, at the Claire Oliver Gallery in New York this summer—play similar visual tricks with all-white palettes of light-reflecting glass and quartz. Both her imagination and the objects she produces are precious and rare and on her excellent episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, we discuss the occult, the apocalypse, and the enduring magic of female friendship.

Gates McFadden has been sci-fi royalty for over 30 years. Best known for playing Dr. Beverly Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation—both on TV from 1987 through 1994, and in four feature films—she also worked with Jim Henson as a choreographer and director of puppet movement, most notably on Labyrinth with David Bowie. For many years, she taught in university theater departments across the country and was the Artistic Director of the Ensemble Studio Theatre in Los Angeles. And now, she‘s hosting the riveting podcast, Gates McFadden Investigates: Who Do You Think You Are?, in which he has totally unexpected conversations with members of her Star Trek family. On her out-of-this-world episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, she spills the tea about getting fired—and re-hired!—on Star Trek for speaking her mind, maintaining her decades-long relationship with her “space son” Wil Wheaton, and how Whoopie Goldberg made the Enterprise a better place for women.

Jessica Hopper is one the most insightful rock critics working today. A long-time contributor to the Chicago Reader; she’s been a columnist for The Village Voice, Chicago Tribune, and Punk Planet; the music consultant for This American Life; the editorial director for MTV News; and a senior editor at Pitchfork and Rookie. For over 20 years, she has consistently been covering women in music who women care deeply about through a feminist lens, from Liz Phair to M.I.A. to Janelle Monae to Hole to Bjork just to name a few. Her knowledge is deep, her opinions are surprising, and her writing style is fearless which is why so many music fans return to her work again and again. The extensively updated and expanded new edition of her career-spanning book, The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic came out July 6, and on BUST's latest Poptarts podcast, she explains what being “first” really means, how she helped wake the world up the crimes of R. Kelly, and the challenge of “making people care.”

Ann Wilson is lead singer and songwriter of the band Heart, which she has fronted for over 40 years with her sister Nancy, earning them a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The first hard rock band fronted by women, Heart has sold over 35 million albums, and their hits, including “Barracuda,” “Crazy On You,” and “Magic Man,” are undisputed classics. As a solo artist, Ann released the 2007 album HOPE & GLORY and 2018’s IMMORTAL, along with multiple singles. And this past May, she released a surprising and beautiful EP from the archives of the band she was in before Heart. The Daybreaks was a band Ann fronted in the late 1960s and now four tracks of her flower-child pop from1969 are available on all streaming platforms for the first time. Throughout the pandemic, WIlson has been writing and recording. And on BUST's latest Poptarts podcast, she talks body image, healing a very public rift with her sister Nancy, and why she’s a feminist “constantly.”

Iliza Shlesinger is an award-winning comedian, actor, writer, producer, and author who earned her massive fan base by doing tons of touring all over the world. In 2008, she became the first woman to ever win NBC’s Last Comic Standing, she’s had five Netflix comedy specials and her own Netflix sketch show, and she’s currently finishing her second book, hosting the podcast Ask Iliza Anything, and developing multiple TV projects while traveling once more on her new “Back In Action” tour. On June 23, she debuted the hilarious “anti-rom-com” Good On Paper, on Netflix, a film based on her life which she stars in and also wrote. And on BUST's latest Poptarts podcast, she describes writing her first feature film script about a lying ex, navigating sexism in standup, and why she’s “a real feminist.”

Adrianne Wortzel is a groundbreaking pioneer in the field of robotic art who has been making and exhibiting her futuristic pieces for over 50 years. Her amazing genre-hopping projects include films, drawings, texts, robotic and telerobotic performance productions, artist’s books, photography, and online pieces. Her writing includes articles, fiction, and scripts. And her international collaborations with other artists, scientists, and engineers made her an important resource in her years as a Professor Emeritus in Emerging Media and Entertainment Technologies at New York City College of Technology. Currently, she’s working on an art book called See No Evil, and on BUST's latest Poptarts podcast, Wortzel describes how the birth of the Internet was like the “Wild West,” explains why the most realistic machines are also the creepiest, and recalls the strategy she employed at the Whitney Museum to save a suicidal robot.

Few reality shows are as popular or as divisive as Bravo's Real Housewives, a franchise that has included casts in Orange County, New Jersey, New York, Atlanta, Beverly Hills, DC, Miami, Potomac, Dallas, and Salt Lake City over the past 15 years. Feminist icon Gloria Steinem once criticized this pop cultural phenomenon on E!, saying, "It is women, all dressed up and inflated and plastic surgeried and false bosomed with incredible amounts of money spent, not getting along with each other. Fighting with each other. It is a minstrel show for women. I don't believe it. I feel like it's manufactured, that the fights between them are manufactured and they're supposed to go after each other in a kind of conflicting way." Nonetheless, some feminists like BUST’s Poptarts podcast hosts Emily Rems and Callie Watts are intrigued by the women being relentlessly documented on these shows. And even “Bad Feminist” Roxane Gay bonded with BUST in March over the antics of the new Salt Lake City cast. On the latest Poptarts podcast, Callie and Emily discuss the series’ cultural impact with Housewives superfan Sean Anthony, and provide an introductory crash course in “Housewives 101,” for the Bravo-curious.

Linda Perry first made waves in music as the lead singer and songwriter of 4 Non Blondes, a band that hit it big in 1992 with their platinum-selling song, “What’s Up?” But today, she is best known for writing and producing hits for the biggest names in pop music—she wrote "Beautiful" for Christina Aguilera; "What You Waiting For?" for Gwen Stefani; "Get the Party Started" for P!nk, and so many more bangers it’s impossible to count. Linda was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2015, and recently, she’s written scores to accompany the new documentaries Kid 90 and Citizen Penn. For the Kid 90 soundtrack, Linda released her own music for the first time in over 15 years, recording the song and new video for “The Letter” based on a letter the film’s director Soleil Moon Frye wrote as a teen to her older self. In her intriguing interview on BUST’s “Poptarts” podcast, Linda opens up about how she knows “how to be a rock star,” but “it hurts too much to be an artist.”

Soleil Moon Frye first became a star at eight years old in the hit sitcom, PUNKY BREWSTER. That show, about a tiny, street-smart girl abandoned by her mother and fostered by an elderly man, ran from 1984 to 1988, making Soleil one of the most famous children in America. In the time since, Soleil continued to act, started directing, and started a family. But in the 1990s, no matter what she was up to, she always carried a video camera, carefully documenting her young life. Now, all that footage has been made into a riveting documentary Soleil directed called Kid 90 that’s available on Hulu. Raising her profile even higher, Soleil is also starring in a new 10-episode Punky Brewster reboot on Peacock. On this nostalgic episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, she describes her real-life bond with TV bestie Cherry Johnson, shares her fascination with metaphysics, and tells us how she “found her inner balls.”

Kandi Burruss is a singer, songwriter, actor, entrepreneur, and the longest-running cast member on Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Atlanta. She first rose to fame in 1993 in the R&B group Xscape, she won a Grammy for co-writing the TLC hit "No Scrubs" and she even won the third season of The Masked Singer dressed as the dark and lovely Night Angel. These days, she’s flexing her acting muscles on the Showtime drama The Chi and on the new Lifetime Movie Envy which premieres April 17. On her juicy episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, Kandi tells all about how The Masked Singer actually works, why she needed a stunt double on Envy, and why she loves Kenya Moore despite her slut-shaming shenanigans.

Veteran journalist Brooke Baldwin has been kicking ass in the male-dominated TV news industry for over 20 years, most famously at CNN, where she hosts "CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin." During her 13 year tenure at CNN which is about to end in mid-April, Baldwin has unflinchingly held power to account while covering the most consequential issues of our day, from politics to protests to pressing social issues like gun violence. On April 6, she will be releasing her first book, "HUDDLE: How Women Unlock Their Collective Power." And on her inspiring episode of BUST’s "Poptarts" podcast, she talks candidly about her personal journey towards feminism, navigating around women with “sharp elbows,” and how her new book inspired her to leave CNN.

Margo Price is a remarkable country singer/songwriter and producer based in Nashville whose timeless anthems and crystal clear tone send shivers up spines all over the world. In the last five years, she has put out three gorgeous albums, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, All American Made, and That’s How Rumors Get Started. And most recently, she put out an absolutely devastating video in January for her song “Hey Child” and is planning to headline her first concert since 2019—a socially distanced show at The Caverns Above Ground Amphitheater in Tennessee—this May. On her riveting episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, Price talks candidly about her efforts to diversify country music, the painful story behind her new video, and about developing her own strain of weed for Willie Nelson.

A modern feminist icon, Roxane Gay is a brilliant writer of essays, fiction, comic books, newspaper editorials for The New York Times, and a fantastic newsletter called The Audacity. She is also a writing professor—most recently at Yale— and an editor of anthologies and collected works. Her many books include the celebrated collections Bad Feminist and Difficult Women, and the deeply personal memoir Hunger. And now, Gay has her own course on the streaming platform MasterClass where she’s teaching Writing for Social Change. On her illuminating episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, she shares strategies for writing about trauma, tackles the topic of fat liberation, and opens up about first-time puppy parenthood.

Consummate New Yorker Kyra Sedgwick started off in showbiz in 1982 on the classic soap Another World and quickly became a bonafide movie star in films including Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July, Cameron Crowe's Singles, and 2012’s The Possession. She is perhaps best known for her starring role as Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on the TNT crime drama The Closer—for which she won a Golden Globe and an Emmy—and now, she’s lighting up the new ABC sit-com Call Your Mother. On her A-List episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, she describes decades of rejecting “girlfriend roles,” shares how she creates gender equity in her household with Kevin Bacon, and makes us all want to take a turn in the director’s chair.

Michaela Watkins is a brilliant comic actor who has been cracking audiences up since she joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in 2008. In the decade since she left the show in 2009, she has been in a bevy of beloved indie films and delightfully weird TV shows, including Joey Soloway’s Afternoon Delight and Transparent, Nicole Holofcener’s Enough Said, the acclaimed hulu show Casual, and the Sundance hit Brittany Runs a Marathon. Most recently, she’s been lighting up the ensemble cast of the CBS comedy series The Unicorn and she has a role in the upcoming horror film Werewolves Within. In this awesome episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, she gives us the inside scoop on SNL, reminds us of the healing power of sit-coms, and reflects on the night Joan Rivers was so funny—she actually peed her pants.

Mayim Bialik is a multi talented actor, producer, director, educator, neuroscientist, and author who got her start in classic 80s TV series including “Beauty and the Beast” and “Facts of Life” before landing her breakout role at age 12 as a young Bette Middler in the 1988 film “Beaches.” Two years later, she nabbed the lead role in the super popular teen sit-com “Blossom” which ran from 1990 through 1995 and once that series ended, she went to UCLA for 12 years where she earned a PhD in Neuroscience and completed her doctorate in 2007. Bialik returned to TV in a big way in 2010 when she joined the cast of “The Big Bang Theory” where she was a fan favorite and was nominated for four Emmys before the series ended in 2019. And now, together with her “Big Bang Theory” co-star Jim Parsons, she’s executive producing the new Fox show “Call Me Kat,” which she also stars in as a single woman in her late 30s who runs a cat cafe. In this very special 100th episode of BUST’s Poptarts podcast, she rejects Spanx, embraces feminism, and reflects on a past that includes Woody Allen.