iHeartPodcasts and The Meteor are launching “In Retrospect,” a pop culture podcast by Emmy-winning journalist Susie Banikarim and New York Times editor Jessica Bennett.
Each week on “In Retrospect,” Banikarim and Bennett revisit a pop culture moment from the 80s and 90s that shaped them, to try to understand what it taught them about the world and a woman’s place in it. The podcasts will cast their net wide, ranging from salacious tabloid headlines, to the fragrance that defined an era, questionable soap opera couples and illicit student-teacher relationships, with the hosts dissecting the stories they lived through, and sometimes covered, each Friday.
The guest lineup on the podcast includes actor Pamela Anderson, Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural critic Salamishah Tillet, journalist and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, media studies professor at the University of Michigan Susan J. Douglas and New York Times culture editor Maya Salam.
Banikarim has run newsrooms at Vice, Gizmodo Media Group and The Daily Beast. She directed the 2020 documentary, “Enemies of the People: Trump and the Political Press.” She began her journalism career at ABC News, where she was a producer for Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos, and went on to help launch Katie Couric’s talk show. Prior to that, she was a producer on “Wife Swap.”
Bennett is known for her work focusing on gender issues and culture. She was the first-ever gender editor of New York Times, where she is now a contributing editor, and is the author of two bestselling books, “Feminist Fight Club: A Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace” and “This Is 18: Girls’ Lives Through Girls’ Eyes.”
Executive producers on the podcast are Anna Stumpf, Cindi Leive, Katrina Norvell, Banikarim and Bennett, with Lauren Hansen serving as supervising producer.
The first two episodes of “In Retrospect” will be available on Sept. 21, with new episodes releasing every Friday. It is distributed by iHeartPodcasts.