STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW

Two popular podcasters opine on topics skewed—intentionally or not—toward real or stereotypical masculine interests, such as cars, guns, and military derring-do.

About two-thirds of podcast listeners are men, typically ages 25 to 49, and slightly more than half are White, so perhaps it’s natural that in their first book, Stuff You Should Know co-hosts Clark and Bryant gravitate to topics likely to appeal to that demographic. What’s harder to fathom is why they omit or underrepresent so many others—female, Black, and LGBTQ+ readers among them—in breezy essays on pop-cultural miscellany laced with hit-or-miss humor. With ghostwriter Parker, the authors set the tone in an early section called “How To Start or End a Facial Hair Trend,” which follows 13 thumbnail sketches of a youngish White man showing varied beard and mustache styles. Then come chapters on traditionally male interests—cars (“Demolition Derbies”), guns (“The First Gun(s)”), and military exploits (“Kamikaze”)—and on things men invented or popularized: “Mezcal,” “Do(ugh)nts,” “Backmasking,” “Mr. Potato Head,” “The Pet Rock,” and more. “Dog Smells” begins with the intriguing fact that dogs’ feet often smell like Fritos (which were “invented” by Charles Elmer Doolin), a phenomenon known as “Frito Feet” that occurs when paws pick up yeast and bacteria on walks, but the chapter soon turns adolescent: “Poop smell…generally carries the message that it comes from some kind of poopy pathogen and we should, therefore, move along and not hang around said poop.” The only chapter that focuses primarily on a woman, “The SCUM Manifesto,” deals with Valerie Solanas, Andy Warhol’s mentally ill lesbian assailant. Monardo partly masks the problem with her cartoonlike illustrations, which represent women and minorities more fairly than the text does. For readers other than White men under 50, however, this brand extension remains—as the authors might say—“kind of a bummer.”

Infotainment short on diversity for fans of jejune humor and pop-cultural curiosities.