Baby Got Backstory with Heather Radke

For this episode, we are covering the storied history of the Butt, that humorous, salacious, anxiety-inducing part of the body, the shape and meaning of which has changed depending on the time period. Heather Radke is a reporter, essayist, RadioLab contributing editor, and the author of the book Butts: A Backstory, and she shares with me both the amusing and the darker aspects of this backstory, including its racialized history and the way that especially white culture has understood, appropriated, and exploited the body part on an ongoing basis. We’ll discuss why and how the butt has gone in and out of style over the centuries, what it has meant at different times to different types of people, and what may be the future of the butt as we know it.

Get a copy of Butts: A Backstory

Heather's Substack: Petite Patate

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