A Featured Substack publication, MOPC is a majority-female collective, composed of four highly decorated, award-winning female pop-culture writers (plus one man, just to mix things up a bit), devoted to in-depth cultural reporting and analysis.
At the Ministry, all of pop culture matters, whether it happened 50 years ago, 20 years ago, or yesterday. We’re not interested in hot takes for clicks, but we are interested in cold takes with hindsight. Here, history matters, issues matter, and most of all, pop culture’s deep and lasting effects on our lives matter. We want to build a community of readers who care about the same things, who want to share their passion for pop culture, and who want to nerd-out with other smart people.
Ministry of Pop Culture was born out of a writers’ group formed during the pandemic. Five writers—Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Saul Austerlitz, Erin Carlson, Thea Glassman, and Kirthana Ramisetti— gathered together monthly via Zoom to share the loose outlines of story pitches. Often, it was the pitches that didn’t sell that seemed the most appealing—too quirky, too nerdy, too personal, without a hard peg or a major celebrity tie-in. We wanted a place to share our own stories, and Ministry of Pop Culture was the result. This Substack allows us to write what we want and share it with likeminded readers, who can support our work directly.
(For more on our origin story, check out this post at Attention Economy.)
Why subscribe?
Our team of cultural ministers will publish twice a week, offering a mix of original reporting and expert analysis. Modeled after writer-run collectives like Defector and Flaming Hydra, Ministry of Pop Culture seeks to offer a new model for smart, engaging cultural coverage, bringing together five authors who have written a combined 20 books, and whose work has been published in outlets including the New York Times, The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, BBC Culture, Vulture, Slate, The New Republic, Los Angeles Times, Elle, and Salon to form a pop-culture Avengers, if the Avengers were actually cool.
With so much cultural coverage turned over to aggregation and clickbait, we wanted to form a publication that would offer readers something fresh. Journalism is at a crossroads. It is time for something new. Why not visit the Ministry of Pop Culture and stamp your passport for something different?
Who Are the Ministers?
Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Minister of Enlightened Analysis and Heartfelt Recommendations
Jennifer Keishin Armstrong's writing takes readers behind the scenes of major moments in pop culture history and examines the lasting impact that our favorite TV shows, music, and movies have on our society and psyches. She investigates why pop culture matters deeply, from The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Seinfeld, to Sex and the City and Mean Girls, to Beyoncé, Taylor, and Barbie. Her nine books include the New York Times bestseller Seinfeldia, When Women Invented Television, So Fetch, and the forthcoming Parks and Rec. Her favorite recent pieces include a contemplation of Britney Spears' head-shaving as a radical spiritual act and an argument for more death on TV. She's currently rewatching Six Feet Under, loves Cowboy Carter, recently fell in love with the band Nicotine Dolls through their covers on Instagram, and is more Midnights than Tortured Poets.
Saul Austerlitz, Minister of Dumb Comedy and Smart Politics
Saul Austerlitz is the author of six books, including Kind of a Big Deal: How Anchorman Stayed Classy and Became the Most Iconic Comedy of the Twenty-FIrst Century, which was selected by New York magazine as the best comedy book of 2023, and Generation Friends: An Inside Look at the Show That Defined a Television Era. His favorite recent story he’s worked on was about the Apple commercial “1984.” He has been accused by his children of “liking nine-hour Ukrainian movies,” which…fair. Recent favorites include We Are Lady Parts, the Max docuseries One South, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses, and Kevin Baker’s book about baseball, The New York Game.
Erin Carlson, Minister of Lowbrow Phenomena
Erin Carlson is a journalist and author of nonfiction books about movies and the people who make them. They include the USA Today-bestseller No Crying in Baseball, Queen Meryl and I'll Have What She's Having. Her work appears in outlets such as Vanity Fair, The Cut, The Los Angeles Times, The Hollywood Reporter and her personal newsletter, You've Got Mail, which she named after her favorite movie. She's currently watching The Bear and Bridgerton.
Thea Glassman, Minister of Cozy Nostalgia
Thea Glassman is the author of the book Freaks, Gleeks and Dawson's Creek, a behind-the-scenes deep dive into the making of seven groundbreaking teen television shows. Her forthcoming book, Who's That Girl: The Definitive History of New Girl, will be released by Macmillan in 2026. If you cracked her open, you'd find Stars Hollow in the winter, Nora Ephron's New York City in the fall and Schitt's Creek all year long.
Kirthana Ramisetti, Minister of Storytelling
Kirthana Ramisetti is the author of Dava Shastri's Last Day, a Good Morning America Book Club selection optioned by Max, Advika and the Hollywood Wives, a Book of the Month pick, and The Other Lata, which will be published in April 2025. She worked on these novels while rewatching Mad Men, Gilmore Girls, The Good Wife and multiple Bravo shows, so it might not be surprising to learn she keeps a Steven Soderbergh-inspired diary of everything she reads and watches. But it is surprising (even to her) that she co-wrote a song inspired by her debut novel, which can be heard here.
Recent favorite pieces include advocating for And Just Like That to bring back Carrie Bradshaw's writing career and riding the author roller coaster with the help of Olivia Newton John.
