Welcome to Pop Syllabus! A newsletter and podcast that deconstructs the zeitgeist and answers the big cultural questions. How did we swing from body positivity to thin-being-in? Why do so many people trust wellness influencers over medical doctors? And how did tech oligarchs become the new celebrities?
Pop Syllabus is where I attempt to understand the moment while living through it.
Why should I listen to you?
Honestly, valid question. I despise self-promotion (very un-Nigerian of me!), but for those that don’t know… I’m an Emmy-nominated writer, journalist, and cultural critic. I’m an Innit Black from South London who’s spent the past decade in the U.S. I’m a Columbia Journalism School alumna, and cut my teeth in both newsrooms and TV writers’ rooms. I’m also super early internet. Some of you might remember me from a blog I had (that I won’t name, not trying to get cancelled via the wayback machine), and I used to go viral a lot on Twitter before it became a fascist hellscape.
As a journalist, I’ve written features on topics as varied as Baltimore’s underground Black skateboarding scene to how divorced Chinese émigrés in New York City use WeChat to find love. I coined the term “ethnic smudging” to describe millennial women manipulating their appearance to seem ethnically ambiguous, later cited by Metro UK, Huffington Post, and Stanford University’s School of Humanities. My cultural commentary and distinctively international worldview has attracted a cult online following (IYKYK), including highly influential followers from film, music, literature, and academia. I go crazy on my insta stories, and so many of you shouted “start a substack sis!!!”, I figured it was time to do something more cohesive and less ephemeral.
I was a staff writer for The Daily Show and Head Writer for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2023. Most recently, I wrote on season 4 of Apple TV’s The Morning Show and co-hosted What’s Now? with Trevor Noah.
The reality is though, I’m entertainment industry “insider” who’s really an outsider. More on the margins than part of the core. This outside status has meant that I’m constantly observing and have become pretty good at making connections between seemingly random things. I’m good at predicting what will happen next. Analyzing how we got to where we are. I contribute this to my tendency to over-think, over-read, and growing up highly religious. Being raised in the (Black) church means I’ve always been deeply concerned with the existential. What were we made for? Why are we the way we are? What is it about (pop) culture that manages to encompass our collective memory? Why is it able to contain our highest hopes and darkest parts? Can it be harnessed for good? What is good? You get my drift.
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