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(10/03/25 2:14am)
“It’s our National Day. We are happy and gay!” proclaims one line high above the frames of the Arthur Ross Gallery. “When I grew up, we were expected to be happy and gay, by the government, by the Party,” cries out another. Read once, the words sound chirpy. Read twice, they leave a bad taste in the mouth, like a smile that was rehearsed too many times. That is the structure of Hung Liu: Happy and Gay—a promise, then a question.
(10/17/25 4:00am)
From his pocket, One An (C ’27) takes out a deck of cards, each one bearing either a black–and–white or colored image. He asks me to shuffle the deck, pick a card, then spread the rest face up in front of him. He looks at the cards for just three seconds before I gather the deck, turn it over, face down, and hand it back to him. He splits the deck into four groups. I don’t realize what he is doing until he turns each section of cards over—he’s sorting the cards by color and the object they depict. After a quick perusal, One proceeds to name which card I took out of the deck, explaining that it is just a trick of practiced memorization. Though he makes the trick seem simple in its execution, it’s hard not to be impressed.
(10/15/25 4:44pm)
“I’m just obsessed with the idea of belonging,” playwright Shay Overstone tells me. “It’s the second most important part of being human.”
(10/17/25 7:22pm)
When Melissa Broder’s debut novel The Pisces was published, The New York Times heralded it as “a modern–day myth for women on the verge.” That was seven years ago, when Broder was among the few writers carving a niche with novels that gave voice to the sad girl. Since then, the ‘women–on–the–verge’ genre has only mushroomed (think Miranda July’s All Fours, Otessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, and Mona Awad’s Bunny). The impetus behind the genre—which has its roots in writers like Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, and Clarice Lispector—was an earnest quest to portray the raw reality of mental illness in women. Today, it has devolved into a race for female protagonists to ‘out–weird’ each other, each one exhibiting progressively more bizarre behavior with diminishing emotional reality. Readers who once turned to the genre for comfort in their own struggles are now alienated by its catalogue of cultists and cannibals. Broder’s work, however, continues to stand out for its unflagging wit and poignancy, as well as its adherence to emotional truth over literary clickbait.
(09/29/25 2:00pm)
Welcome to this week’s Street Sweeper! I’m your host, Fiona Herzog.
(10/01/25 1:02am)
In June of this year, the Department of Justice served the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia with a subpoena ordering it to turn over medical records, provider documents, and even text messages related to gender–affirming care. It also demanded Social Security information, personal and medical patient history, addresses, and many other pieces of private information. This infringement violates HIPAA and the basic privacy rights to which all patients and families are entitled. The attack on transgender children and their families is scary—not only for them, but for everyone.
(10/03/25 2:13am)
I’d just finished watching A Portrait of a Lady on Fire when Spotify decided I wasn’t done feeling emotionally devastated. Up popped playlists like “do all lovers feel like they’re inventing something?” and others which sought to channel some form of yearning or heartache. None were soundtracks or platform mixes; just curators chasing a mood.
(09/26/25 12:00pm)
For many of us, the greek life rush process is an era in our lives we’re all too happy forgetting—hours of banal small talk, mediocre alcohol, and the ever–present awareness that you are being evaluated by upperclassmen who don’t particularly want to be there. What could make this process even slightly more bearable?
(09/26/25 1:48am)
Every time I visit the doctor, I freeze.
(10/17/25 4:00am)
I woke up with a start at the beginning of this summer. I had dreamt that a human–sized pig saved my life and then looked me in the eyes to say: “Please don’t eat me and my friends.”
(09/26/25 4:00am)
The past few months in the Bravo universe have been a whirlwind of controversy. For longtime fans, it’s come as no surprise that reality TV veteran Jax Taylor has been fired from The Valley shortly after opening up about his decades–long addiction to cocaine and amidst his messy divorce from southern belle Brittany Cartwright. Jax has been a liar, a cheater, and a thief for his entire life in the public eye. The only question when it comes to his firing is: What took so long? Bravo producers were quick to fire women like Brandi Glanville and Camille Grammer for the simple sin of being unpopular, but Taylor seems to have been the focus of a new controversy each episode without any real repercussions—until now. Why is it that male reality stars are rewarded for their bad behavior, while their female counterparts are reprimanded for even the slightest of errors?
(10/17/25 4:00am)
If there’s anything that setting my fantasy football lineup has taught me, it’s that making your own choices can be incredibly painful.
(10/17/25 4:00am)
Julia Ducournau has redefined body horror. She makes films about what happens when belief collapses and all that’s left is the body—hurt, grotesque, unrecognizable, still trying to mean something. Her breakout films Raw (2016) and Titane (2021), which turned her into a critic’s darling, obliterate the boundary between flesh and metal, motherhood and monstrosity. They’re some of the most emotionally destabilizing films I’ve ever seen.
(11/17/25 5:00am)
When Defne Tim (C ‘26) showed up to The Mask and Wig Club’s auditions during her freshman year, she expected free food. Instead, she discovered a love for musical comedy and a community that “basically raised her” at Penn. As both an international student from Turkey and a member of Mask and Wig’s first gender–inclusive class, Defne faced a doubly confusing first year. Now that she’s cast director, those experiences are guiding her vision as the troupe prepares for their upcoming shows. Amid writing sessions and rehearsals, Defne reflected on how language, leadership, and serendipity have shaped her journey at Penn.
(09/26/25 4:00am)
For more than a decade, Twenty One Pilots has built one of the most ambitious mythologies in popular music. Since the success of Blurryface, Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun have spent their last five studio albums creating the world of Dema: a city ruled by faceless bishops, an allegory for depression and self–destruction. Fans were cast as fellow travelers (dubbed “Banditos”) alongside Clancy and the Torchbearer (Joseph and Dun’s fictional stand–ins), fighting toward escape but always being pulled back into cycles of control. Breach, the duo’s latest record, finally closes this saga. But it doesn’t end in triumph. Instead, it insists on something quieter: Healing is cyclical, and survival is never permanent.
(10/03/25 2:12am)
Ed Sheeran wants you to believe Play is a rebirth. The cover is Pepto–pink, the mission statement says he’s “leaving the past behind,” and the press cycle swears this is Sheeran embracing global sounds. Then you hit play and realize that beneath the tablas and Hindi hooks, he’s still the guy writing ballads for your cousin’s first dance. Reinvention? No. This is a man who treats world music the way most of us treat a new spice at Trader Joe’s—interesting in theory, but mostly there to garnish the same old dish.
(10/22/25 12:27am)
I need you to think of someone who is killing it in pop right now. Take a second—notice how you didn’t think of a man? For the past two years, women have been taking the pop genre by storm. Sabrina Carpenter, Tate McRae, Chappell Roan, Charli xcx, Taylor Swift—female artists have led the charge in bringing the excitement and energy the genre is known for. While it’s good to see women at the top of the music industry, it does beg the question: What ever happened to male pop stars?
(10/17/25 7:48pm)
“There’s nothing more satisfying than the intricately curated playlists Spotify cooks up for you—sometimes, I feel like my Spotify knows me better than I know myself,” my roommate confessed when I asked her about the platform. She gushed about how Spotify has become a kind of emotional companion for her, but as a proud Apple Music user, I was skeptical about this “friendship” users feel with the app—is it truly as good of a friend as we like to believe?
(10/03/25 2:13am)
Every generation has its own version of the "enlightened young man”—ours happens to wear thrifted sweaters and read Sylvia Plath like it’s scripture. He traded in his tie–dye shirts for baggy jeans, Beatles mixtapes for female indie artists on streaming, organic food for matcha, and rebellious protests for fabricated feminine appeal. He is ... the performative male (cue Darth Vader soundtrack). Turn your head in any direct, and your gaze will land on one of his many manifestations; from campus contests (yes, even ours) to newspaper articles breaking down the trend for Gen Xers, his reign truly knows no bounds.
(09/24/25 4:00am)
This summer was a big one for lovers of love triangles. Amidst the weekly releases of The Summer I Turned Pretty’s final season, the entire second season of My Life with the Walter Boys was dropped onto Netflix, allowing fans who miss the coastal vibes of Cousins Beach to escape to the scenic landscapes of Colorado and indulge in an equally complicated rural love triangle.
