Elizabeth is ready for the cardigans.

But before fall officially lands, there was Bumbershoot.

Elizabeth’s youngest texted to ask if she wanted to go see Bikini Kill together, and the answer was obviously yes, even though Elizabeth hasn’t set foot in a music festival crowd in roughly two decades. She reports back: the festival is smaller than its wild ‘90s self, but well-run, clean, and safe, with a full weekend (she went for the day, gotta ease back in) of music, vintage fashion, comedy, wrestling, and — yes — a cat circus.

Highlights from the day include a band called XCOMM that made Elizabeth want to punch someone (a compliment, from her), and Joey Valence & Brae, who she assumed from the name alone would be a Christian rap duo and who turned out to be gloriously Beastie Boys–coded instead.

Then Bikini Kill took the stage, her kid disappeared into the pit to make their own memories, and Elizabeth — planted safely halfway back with a couple of women her own age — started crying while singing along.

Not exactly punk.

Except it kind of was.

She gets into why: the girl-punk bands of her youth weren’t singing from the guy’s point of view, they were singing her whole messy experience back to her, and hearing it again cracked something open about the person she used to be before “the warm blanket of conformity” settled over her shoulders.

She closes with a small, sincere thank-you to her kid for the reminder that Bikini Kill heals — and a quick, weary aside about sharing a name with a certain notorious tech founder. This Elizabeth is currently not in prison, actually.

Then, because sad doesn’t cancel out good things happening, a couple of glimmers: a wonderfully un-heckled night watching Chelsea Peretti work out new material at Solaris Hall, and a surprise new favorite album from an artist recommendation that actually stuck.

And because sometimes the best way through sad is mad, the episode closes on a rant. Cory Doctorow’s new book has confirmed every suspicion about the tech and finance sectors being built on inflated valuations and borrowed credibility, and there’s a real conversation here about pedestals, participation, and what happens when we stop supplying both.

In honor of Dolly: be kind, wear what you want, and think for yourself.

Vince Staples - Cry Baby

You know the trend — “kinda chic to know your barista’s name,” kind of stuff.

Ma’am.

That’s not chic. That’s a caption generator having a stroke.

New episode is me working out why this specific flavor of online garbage got under my skin, and it turns into a whole thing about the fourth guy at the party who tries to add one more joke to a bit that already died a natural death.

RIP that joke. Let it rest.

Anyway I have thoughts.

Then she opens an unofficial case file on House Hunters and Beachfront Bargain Hunt: the couples who narrate their own house tours like they’ve never seen a bathroom before, and the husbands who will torch a family’s actual bedroom count for a fancy grill they can “see themselves” using. The wives are holding it together by a thread and Elizabeth is, frankly, here for the drama. Wraps up getting the ick from our weird celebrity culture and making the call now: cable’s coming back, baby.

It’s a Yiddish word commonly used during the Catskills-era for the person whose actual job was turning a hotel of strangers into a temporary community.

Not the performer on stage. The one actually out working the room — at breakfast, the pool, the lobby — making sure nobody’s left standing alone.

This week I’m making the case that a huge number of the women in our lives are doing this work constantly, for free, and calling it “being nice” instead of what it is: a real, underrated skill.

We get into what it looks like, whether it’s dying out or just migrating into group chats, and why you should text the tummler in your life and tell her you appreciate her.

Also this week: a quick check-in on my July whimsy movie project. Darby O’Gill and the Little People is a glorious practical-effects mess (Sean Connery’s Irish accent, less glorious). And A Fish Called Wanda — my first time watching, four decades late — reminded me that Jamie Lee Curtis is stunning, and her wardrobe, whew, I’m still envious of those dresses today. Well, maybe not the bright florals.

And because the universe has a sense of humor, the memorial service landed on the exact same day as her class reunion. She called her sister looking for permission to skip both. Her sister gave her a whole thing about examining old narratives instead. Rude, but not wrong.

She went to both. One was a 10 out of 10 — genuinely really lovely. The other, not so much. This week: which was which, and what she actually learned about the stories we carry that were never fully ours to begin with.

In this episode:

• The 31-movies-in-July project: a fast no on Fitzwilly, a charming surprise in The Reluctant Debutante, and a full roller-skating Xanadu spiral (plus a Kenny Ortega fact that connects way more dots than expected)

• Two documentary recs: Martin Short and Billy Idol

• What “boundaried” digital detox actually looks like — camera on for whimsical walk photos, podcasts off

• Curating a weekly soundtrack with zero logic required

• A soft, nostalgic detour into sprinkler summers, pajama dinners, and slipping into bed with nothing left to optimize

What’s she’s found so far is that plan was never really about the movies. It was about letting rest be simple again.

A saliva test for endometriosis is finally in development — now that scientists know men can get it too. Same morning, a retired guy turned “cleaning up the highway” into a personal discovery project, unaware of how the state’s existing program has been running this the whole time, I guess.

Different headlines. Same mechanism. Legitimacy doesn’t show up with the problem — it shows up with whoever walks into the room last and gets noticed first.

This week I’m mad, I’m bitter about healthcare I didn’t get, and I’m not smoothing any of it out for you. Come sit in it with me.

This week: the full machinery of the 1976 Bicentennial — Little House on the Prairie priming me for pioneer life, a Martha Washington biography that rerouted me straight into colonial gowns, the Miss America pageant’s bicentennial opening number, and every variety show in America doing a patriotic sketch — and how thoroughly it worked on a kid whose brain wasn’t even fully cooked yet.

Then: the adult reckoning.

Turns out all that flag-waving was engineered a few years after Watergate and the fall of Saigon, which tracks less like organic pride and more like parents plowing ahead with the family reunion while the marriage quietly falls apart.

I talk about what it’s like to hold the nostalgia and the disillusionment at the same time, why this year’s 250th anniversary is coasting on fumes by comparison — no commemorative Grimace cups in sight, no theme packaging, no Oreos, nothing — and why I’m still doing the bar-b-que and the red-white-and-blue this year anyway.

This episode, Elizabeth follows the thread from a Leap Frog product placement rabbit hole to something that’s been sitting with her: for the first time in history, there will be kids who grow up barely playing with toys — not because they don’t have them, but because something more addictive got there first.

This isn’t a “kids today” rant. It’s an honest look at what screen saturation actually costs — in empathy, in development, in the small moments that sneak up on you in a carpool line. Elizabeth reflects on what she would have done differently had tablets existed when she was raising her own kids (spoiler: she would have handed them over constantly and never forgiven herself), and why the fact that she couldn’t is one of the things she’s most grateful for.

Also: Edith Wharton predicted the Kardashians. The Custom of the Country is this episode’s Radiant Recommends, and the case is airtight.

The alarm has been sounded. It hasn’t taken hold. So we sound it again.

Turns out smooshing down grief doesn’t make it disappear. It just relocates.

This week: what happened when the relief finally hit, a decluttering project that turned into a reread of Gretchen Rubin’s Better Than Before, and what I’m learning about which of my habits actually serve me — including my habit of expecting bad outcomes, and my slow project of shifting that.

Plus: two college graduations, two totally different vibes, and why the contrast moved me more than I expected.

I talk about getting off the treadmill of aspiration, why parenting is a verb and not a status, and the one thing my aesthetician said to me when my kids were teenagers that completely changed my approach.

That line? It applies to every relationship in your life. Not just the ones with your kids.

My youngest graduates from college on Friday. I am a mess. This episode is, in part, a love letter to that.

New episode is live.

Getting Work To Work podcast

Also, playlist - feed your ears while feeding your soul.

Riot Crone Playlist #1

She’s also talking about glimmers and joy, so it’s kind of a ride.