Material Girls

Is your FYP and Instagram feed full of brightly colored decorations, furniture, and art? Are you finding yourself drawn to funky shaped furniture, maximalism, and painted doors? Boy do we have the episode for you! Today, Marcelle leads us through a conversation all about the “dopamine decor” trend! Through adrienne maree brown’s theory of pleasure activism, she and Hannah unpack dopamine science, homeownership amongst millennials, and why we turn to beauty when the world is hard.
Related listening:
Dopamine x Health Capitalism with Jesse Meadows
Athleisure x Optimization with Anne Helen Peterson
Pixar x Affective Economics
Works Cited:
brown, adrienne maree. Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2019.
Cancilla, Julia. “The Surprising Science Behind the Dopamine Decor Trend.” ELLE Decor. December 20, 2024. https://www.elledecor.com/design-decorate/trends/a63250266/dopamine-decor-trend/. Accessed August 4, 2026.
Cullinane, Alice. 2025. “Dopamine Decor: Why People Are Getting a Happiness Hit from Homes.” BBC News. December 14, 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg2j5l4q7wo. Accessed August 4, 2026.
Lee, Ingrid Fetell. “Does Dopamine Decor Really Work?.” The Aesthetics of Joy. March 8, 2024. https://aestheticsofjoy.com/dopamine-decor/. Accessed August 4, 2026.
Mirdamadi, Michael, and Joshua Gordon. “Millennials in the Canadian housing market: An intergenerational comparison.” Housing Statistics in Canada. Government of Canada. May 6, 2026. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/46-28-0001/2026001/article/00001-eng.htm. Accessed August 4, 2026.
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Music Credits:
“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020
Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to Material Concerns! In this episode, Hannah, Coach and Marcelle get together for a nice long check-in, followed by Apocalypse Toolkit! Time runs short so the segment continues in Part II — where you can also find a Creature Report!

Support Material Girls
To learn more about the show, head to our Instagram at instagram.com/ohwitchplease! Or check out our website ohwitchplease.ca (you can also find transcripts here!). You can gift a Patreon subscription at this link: https://www.patreon.com/ohwitchplease/gift!

Music Credits:
“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020
Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're back from our Summer Break™ with an episode about Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. It's not easy to tackle the zeitgeistiness of a poem that's been circulating for thousands of years, but leave it up to Hannah and Marcelle to try anyway. In this episode, we chat about the creation of Homeric epics, authorship, the cultural force of the so-called Western Canon, and the fluidity of The Odyssey as a culture text in and of itself.
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To learn more about Material Girls, head to our Instagram at instagram.com/ohwitchplease! Or check out our website ohwitchplease.ca. We'll be back next week with a Material Concerns episode!
Material Girls is a show that makes sense of the zeitgeist through materialist critique* and critical theory! Each episode looks at a unique object of study (something popular now or from back in the day) and over the course of three distinct segments, Hannah and Marcelle apply their academic expertise to the topic at hand.
*Materialist Critique is, at its simplest possible level, a form of cultural critique – that is, scholarly engagement with a cultural text of some kind – that is interested in modes of production, moments of reception, and the historical and ideological contexts for both.
Music Credits:
“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020
Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”.

Works Cited
Bostick, Dani. “The Classical Roots of White Supremacy.” Learning for Justice. Southern Poverty Law Centre, 4 January 2021. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/stories/the-classical-roots-of-white-supremacy/.
Hall, Edith. The Return of Ulysses: A Cultural History of Homer’s Odyssey. London: I.B.Tauris, 2008.
Kellman, Steven G. “The Literary Canon.” EBSCO Research Starters. 2023. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/literature-and-writing/literary-canon.
Mahdawi, Arwa. “Why is Elon Musk so threatened by the casting of The Odyssey?” The Guardian 22 May 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/22/elon-musk-the-odyssey-casting.
Mcleod, E.M. [@mcleodmouth]. “LUPITA GET BEHIND ME .” Instagram, 3 May 2026. https://www.instagram.com/p/DX4pI19pP0a/?hl=en.
Wilson, Emily, trans. The Odyssey. New York & London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to a very special bonus episode of The Vampire Podcast!
In this episode, Hannah, Gaby, and Zoe dig into YOUR wonderful questions about The Vampire Lestat.

Listen on for our thoughts on Gabriella’s role in the witch burnings Lestat went to as a child, Armand’s propensity for meddling, and just how many of you listened to the pod without watching the show (which we love, by the way!)

We’re taking a quick break for the coming week and then we’ll be back with a Patreon-only bonus episode with a special guest.

Music Credits:
“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020
Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to the Vampire PodCAST! In this episode, Hannah, Gaby, and Zoe unpack the season finale of The Vampire Lestat. They dig into their lingering narrative questions, why Daniel always seemed to be at a bowling alley this season, and the world’s most awkward fugue state dinner party.

We’ll be back next week with a listener Q&A! If you have questions, put them in the comments or DM us on Instagram. After next week’s episode, we’ll have a quick break and then return a week later with an exclusive Patreon bonus with a special guest.

Thanks for listening!

Music Credits:
“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020
Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.