Cultural Mixtapes

About Cultural Mixtapes

An attempt at probing the minds of writers, musicians, artists and pretty much anyone else making intriguing contributions to the cultural zeitgeist.

Publisher

Tejas Srinivasan

Category

society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

3 Jul 2022

Latest episode

4 Jan 2026

Latest episodes

23 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   4 Jan 2026

   A Love Letter to Excess with Writer Becca Rothfeld

   There are very few critics that are able to effortlessly move between writing about novels, movies, TV shows, non-fiction, politics, culture, life, ethics and more. But today’s political climate and attention economy that seems to demand more and more from those who aim to catalogue the winds that drive our culture, requires just that: an ability to place different forms of media, fictional and not, in conversation with each other, to develop cohesive criticism of the present moment. Becca Rothfeld is one of those critics. As the non-fiction book critic at the Washington Post, she has taken on everything from works of philosophy to political memoirs to postmodern novels to as recently as last week, The West Wing. Becca’s criticism brings a steady hand to analyzing often chaotic and multifarious narratives, and is grounded in her Philosophy background. Reading her, it’s immediately obvious that no piece of culture is off limits, and she’s willing to mine even the most banal texts to find some sort of value -- and that value for her comes in the form of a deeply nuanced critique of how we live. Becca’s 2024 essay collection, All Things Are Too Small, published by Macmillan, is a celebration of excess. Her subjects range from Marie Kondo, to Sally Rooney, to David Cronenberg, to love. Through this diverse cast of characters, her thesis is clear, and as you’ll soon hear in the interview, the collection somehow brings together disparate ideas to create a sort of manifesto of liberal artmaking that often encourages you to introspect about not only your cultural consumption but also your habits, ethics, and politics… the hallmark of an effective essay collection. Becca and I sat down to primarily talk about and read from her book, and we touch on several of my favorite essays from the collection, as well as her writing on other platforms. We also speak about one of our shared obsessions, the novelist Norman Rush, as well as the writer whom everyone seems to have read these days, Sally Rooney. But there comes a point towards the end of the conversation where we turn to the present moment; and like all of my favorite episodes of cultural mixtapes, Becca starts to essentially perform criticism on the present moment, dissecting the ways in which political movements in the United States are influencing artmaking in various genres; and our conversation, albeit slightly dated, elucidated some prescient truths that are becoming more and more obvious as we continue to explore what this unique political and cultural moment has in store. (https://www.beccarothfeld.com/)

2. 

   9 Jun 2025

   Poetic Evolution & Media Technologies with Writer Ryan Ruby

   Writer Ryan Ruby discusses his book *Context Collapse* with the host, exploring the influence of capitalism and technological evolution on poetic works and media theory in this interview.

3. 

   15 Jun 2024

   Crystallizing and Unraveling The Now with Novelist Paul Lynch

   Sometimes I find myself in the throes of writing agony. I don’t like the term writers’ block because it implies a certain impermanence. But what is vernacularly referred to as writers’ block, is part and parcel of the creative act itself.  Anyone who’s tried to do something creative for an extended period of time can vouch for this. No one can exactly figure where creative impulse comes from,  just that you have to be ready to receive it when it does. I was in one of these meandering phases where I couldn’t write much of anything. I’d abandoned a long story that took a few months to write, because of its lack of pulse, and overt dogmatism, and I had resolved to just write academic papers for the time being. This was before I spoke to 2023 Booker Prize Winner Paul Lynch. I wanted to chat with Paul before he won the Prize. I’m a sucker for Irish fiction, and came across Prophet Song during a binge of Dublin-based novels. The novel fundamentally reimagines the city of Dublin in an ambiguous and ahistoric time-period where autocratic forces have come to power. These forces have clearly systematically disbanded the functioning democracy. The story is exceptionally contemporary, but there are no historical references as to why the situation is the way it is. Lynch’s writing has been stuck into the umbrella category of dystopian fiction, but it’s really not a dystopian novel. As you’ll see from the reading he gives at the beginning, he juxtaposes a beautiful and plaintive prose style with horrific events to find meaning in the spaces between them. Lynch chronicles the methodical unraveling of a world through the lens of his protagonist Eilish Stack, a mother and scientist whose husband has been taken by the police forces of the new regime. Through this personal conceit, Lynch interrogates ideas of grief, unity, longing, and the veiled ways power is accumulated and utilized in space. My conversation with Paul centered around the novel, but it turned into a poetic articulation of creativity. From the first question to the last his answers provide a picture of artmaking that quelled any writers-block induced self-loathing that I had, and led to tremendous creative inspiration that fueled a semester of writing prose and poetry. I’ve been lucky on this show to get many writers to speak candidly about their processes, and it’s clear Paul has thought deeply about the art he makes. We weave between the textual and the impalpable and create a vision for how art and fiction can function in contemporary times. (https://www.paullynchwriter.com/) Prophet Song (https://bookshop.org/p/books/prophet-song-paul-lynch/20428618?ean=9780802163011) Recommendations Louise Glück Mary Oliver Other References Don DeLillo Cormac McCarthy Joseph Conrad Louis MacNeice

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.6 / 5

11 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

22 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 21 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

22

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

51

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Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.