Over the last six years, our conversations on Culture Study have often circled back to a handful of recurring themes: contemporary work culture, burnout, optimization culture, intensive parenting, the often hollow pull of the algorithm, the tattered social safety net, and the desire to engage more with the world (and community) around us. We're fun, I promise! And today we're going to weave together so many of those threads in an intricate conversation about the broken promises of convenience culture.Gabe Bullard started writing Against Convenience years before "friction-maxxing" became a thing. He's thought deeply about the bad time bargains of conveniences large and small, and he's spectacularly well-equipped to work through your questions on everything from the tyranny of pre-check, the difficulty of letting go of a lunch-order-habit, and much bigger questions about how convenience culture facilitates our worst forms of individualism. There's so much for us to keep building on in the comments, too, so make sure and find us there.Thanks to the sponsors of today's episode:Get $35 off your first box of wild-caught, sustainable seafood—delivered right to your door. Go to:  https://www.wildalaskan.com/CULTUREReady to upgrade your eyewear to something functional, fashionable, fun, and affordable? Head to goodr.com/CULTURE to claim $10 off your first order.Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. Visit ARTICLE.COM/CULTURE and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout.Save 20% Off Honeylove by going to honeylove.com/CULTUREShow Notes:Buy Against Convenience at your local bookstore (or through Bookshop, which is more convenient than your local bookshop but purposefully less convenient than Amazon)Subscribe to Gabe's newsletter hereGabe references Never Done: A History of American Housework by Susan StrasserHe also mentions this classic Wendell Berry essay, "Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer"We're currently looking for your questions on the following topics:WHAT'S GOING ON INFLUENCER CULTURE? with Katie Sturino — what's going on with privacy, spon, monetization, politics, algorithm fatigue — anything you want to ask someone who's watched the influencing world transform from insideTHE LATEST IN BOOK TRENDS with Alyssa Morris (from our very popular BookTok episode!). Ask Alyssa about whatever you're seeing in the book world: covers, genres, how it's handling fan-fic, BookTok trends.....JOURNO-INFLUENCERS with s.e. smith — yep, another episode on influencers, this time on how they're changing the norms of journalism. What journo-influencers do you follow and what makes them compelling? What's the future of journalism when it's wed to this style of promotion? Is it actually anything new? Ask away! Join the ranks of paid subscribers and get bonus content, access to the discussion threads, ad-free episodes, and the knowledge that you're supporting an indie pod trying to make its way in the world.Got a question to submit, a prompt for Ask Anne Anything, or an idea for a future episode? Tell us here.Catch up on everything else happening in the Culture Study universe here.Transcripts will be available here within 24 hours of publishing. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.