Bari Weiss’s “news” website The Free Press is launching a pop culture podcast called Second Thought, hosted by none other than Suzy Weiss, formerly of the New York Post and Bari Weiss’ younger sister. Who asked for this and who it’s for exactly is unclear.
Second Thought is a pop culture column from Suzy Weiss, who also has a co-founder credit at The Free Press. I had no idea this existed, because The Free Press is not a place where I would go for opinions about pop culture, or for any news or writing in general. The podcast appears to take this column and translate it into video, a trend I think is extremely tiresome. If I’m not reading your writing, I don’t really want to be listening to it either.
How this podcast expands on Suzy Weiss’s column is unclear. For the most part, hosting a pop culture podcast is the easiest job in the world—you just be talking about shit! In fact, that’s all that the trailer for this podcast depicts:
This is Second Thought—a new pop culture podcast from @SnoozyWeiss and @StandUpDan.
— Second Thought (@SecondThoughtFP) April 13, 2026
What everyone’s watching, arguing about, and quietly obsessed with—explained with sharp, funny, no-BS commentary.
Pop culture is fun—but we take it seriously. Coming to headphones near you on… pic.twitter.com/OnN4RJoFxu
In the video trailer, Suzy Weiss and her cohost, deeply unfunny Zionist comedian Dan Ahdoot, talk about current pop culture events like Wuthering Heights, a movie that came out in February; the latest Taylor Swift album, which came out in October of last year; Heated Rivalry, which came out in November of last year; and Anthony Bourdain, who is dead. They’re joined by illustrious guests, who appear to just be a parade of white men including Casey Neistat for some fucking reason. The post from The Free Press describing this endeavor calls the podcast “pop culture, decoded,” and promises “sharp, funny, no-BS commentary” (I love the idea of a podcast that offers “full BS commentary”—we’ll bullshit you, don’t worry!), but the trailer does not demonstrate any of these things.
The thing about being a cultural critic is that, while it is easy compared to hard news and reporting, it’s also actually pretty hard to do well. It’s easy enough to observe culture—movies, books, television shows, music—and then make a recording of that observation. Convincing the person reading or listening to your take that it is worth listening to a gargantuan task that most people fail. Any asshole can grace us with takes about pop music and television, but why should I listen to you is also a question you have to answer.
Some of the best examples of this demonstrate a breadth of knowledge about a particular niche subject matter. I remember reading friend of the site Julianne Escobedo Shepherd’s review of Beyonce’s Renaissance and feeling not just like I had new language to talk about what I liked about the album, but also that I could place it in a cultural lineage of black dance music. Bad culture writing is writing that does not evolve beyond “this is good” or “this is bad.” I’m reminded of a terminable Substack essay about Sabrina Carpenter that spent a lot of words to say “posing in lingerie while short is pedophilic.”
What Second Thought fails to provide me with is a reason to listen to Suzy and Dan specifically over the thousands of people who yap into a microphone every week. But I suppose that matches with the general mission of The Free Press, a platform created by members of the Weiss family to publicly embarrass themselves.
