When the University of Alabama sorority rush became a TikTok phenomenon in the early 2020s, Anne Helen Petersen wasn’t the only journalist to write about it. But in her analysis of the trend—the shifting face of Southern femininity, alumni power structures, white supremacy—there was also a real affection for the young girls squealing with excitement and showing off their rush outfits. That thread of sincere but critical interest runs through her work, including books and her Culture Study newsletter and podcast. She covers anything that tempts her to fall down a rabbit hole of research, from millennial burnout to making friends as an adult. Armed with a PhD in celebrity gossip—her Media Studies dissertation was on its history—the Idaho-raised Petersen now publishes from the waterfront home on Lummi Island she shares with her partner, The Atlantic writer Charlie Warzel. “I think that if your relationship to something…is simply mockery, then it’s not a good thing for you to write about,” she says. “The work that I’m trying to do with culture writing is trying to make us think more, not less.” 

I grew up in Lewiston, Idaho, which is right on the border with Clarkston, Washington. Clarkston was where you went to Costco and the slightly nicer Albertsons.

Whitman College especially was, like, what if all of your dreams came true in terms of a beautiful, academic environment? But also Walla Walla as a town—what if the very best parts of your town were still alive and amazing and thriving?

I’ve always been a very curious person.

Maybe it’s part of why I have always been interested in the dynamics of gossip; I like knowing things. I don’t like hurting people, but I just like knowing things.

The first piece that I wrote for Buzzfeed...was about Jennifer Lawrence and the history of cool girls. It was one of their first longform pieces to go viral.

That was like proof of concept to them. We can write a long, interesting thing about celebrity.

I got a thrill out of pushing myself and stretching myself. Around 2016, during the first Trump campaign, Buzzfeed was sending a reporter to every single rally and I was like, I want to do that. I wrote a piece about what women said about Trump.

People were like, How can you talk to these Trump voters? How do you get them to talk to you? And for me, well, they’re just like every person that I grew up going to church with.

I got in on the ground floor of what is now the newsletter boom.

If you’re not someone who’s very into Substack or in that world, it sounds like you’re writing, like, a church newsletter.

I named the newsletter Culture Study because it’s such a useful and expansive term. I can write about anything I want, because everything can be framed as part of culture.

If we can turn [a subject] over and look at it in different ways, what does that tell us about who we are? What do we value in this moment? What ideologies are in conflict or shifting?

If people meet my partner and I together, they take his work more seriously because he works for a publication with brand-name recognition.

I’ve matured with time to understand that maybe I don’t have that outward prestige necessarily, but I feel like I don’t need it. I know that the work that I do matters to a lot of people.