Like Whatever

A laptop dies, the internet lies about being connected, and somehow that turns into the question we can’t stop asking: if AI is supposedly going to end humanity by 2030, what does that even look like in real life? We talk through the headline panic, the quieter risks people ignore (water use, energy draw, and companies skipping basic containment), and the oddly calming point a smart NPR guest makes: you can unplug it, you can...

Some of what happened in Gen X classrooms sounds fake until you say it out loud: hygiene inspections in front of everyone, paddles hanging in the office, teachers who could shame you publicly and nobody blinked. We’re Nicole and Heather, and we’re taking you back to school in the 1970s and 1980s to talk about the rules, punishments, and power dynamics that were once considered “normal” and would get a teache...

You can feel the difference between a celebrity people admire and a person people genuinely trust, and we’re chasing that line with a very Gen X mix of humor, grief, and blunt honesty. After we talk through pop culture losses and a quick true-crime spiral about how modern forensics catches the “I bought a saw at Walmart” crowd, we pivot to something sweeter: our personal Mount Rushmore of good people. Not “f...

A tornado hits near Nicole’s house and she realizes two things fast: nature does not care about your plans, and neither does a dead phone battery. We start with that near miss, the chaos of hunkering down in a central room with five cats, and the weird aftershock of sirens and helicopters that makes your body stay tense long after the warning ends.

Then we pivot into something a lot of Gen X listeners are living throug...

A 400-pound white tiger on a Vegas stage, no real barrier, pyrotechnics popping, and an audience sitting just feet away. That kind of spectacle feels impossible now, which is exactly why we wanted to revisit the strange, glittery, complicated world of Siegfried and Roy and the era they helped define on the Las Vegas Strip.

We trace how two kids growing up in postwar Germany build an act that fuses classic stage magic with bi...

A bald eagle you’ve never met can still make you cry, and that’s where we start. We talk through the death of Jackie from the Friends of Big Bear eagle cam, what the rescue team shared about her anemia, and why “just let her go” isn’t as simple as it sounds. We also dig into the unexpected upside of a viral wildlife story: real conservation impact, land protected from development, and why even small do...

A fishing tournament where a two-minute mistake can erase millions, a one-pound difference can decide a fortune, and the docks feel like the Super Bowl is not a metaphor in Ocean City, Maryland. We dig into the White Marlin Open, the week every August when Harbor Island turns into a live-action scoreboard and the whole town seems to hold its breath waiting for the next boat to clear the bridge and hit the scales. 

We wa...

You know that one sibling who grew up in the same house but somehow got a completely different childhood? Heather’s sister Jessica joins us as our late Gen X, 1979-born “cusp” kid, and we get honest about what changed between our eras and what stayed exactly the same. We talk feral independence, family weirdness, and the kind of small-town freedom that meant you were either outside all day or getting yelled &ldquo...

America turning 200 in 1976 was not a normal birthday party. It was a year-long, red-white-and-blue fever dream that somehow doubled as a group therapy session, and we get into why that matters now that the 250th anniversary is here. Along the way, we start exactly where real life starts: surviving a brutal heat wave, watching fireworks from the kitchen window, and taking in a tiny four-week-old kitten who shows up sick, starving, ...

The heat is disrespectful, Prime Week is annoying, and we’re both one weird interaction away from snapping, so we’re channeling it into something useful and way more entertaining. We start with real life updates (Nicole moves, Heather is melting on the route) and then get oddly practical about summer survival: what to say to your mail carrier, what not to say, and how a cold drink can change somebody’s entire day....

Your hormones are missing, you’re sweating through black clothes, and the pharmacy is looking at you like you asked for contraband, so naturally we end up talking about RuPaul. That’s the energy today: messy midlife reality, sharp Gen X humor, and a surprisingly moving look at reinvention when your body and your life refuse to stay the same.

We start with the menopause patch shortage and what it does to sleep, mo...

The World Cup hits the United States and we expect to feel annoyed, embarrassed, or defensive. Instead, we end up watching visitors from Europe, Australia, and beyond fall hard for the stuff we barely notice anymore: strangers saying good morning, random compliments on the street, the sheer size of our states, the chaos of thunderstorms, and the kind of natural beauty that stops you in your tracks. When people start saying “w...

Blood doesn’t automatically make someone safe, loving, or present and Gen X learned that lesson early. After a quick round of travel chaos, cats, and the kind of airport anxiety that ends with an $11 beer and no time to eat, we pivot into a Pride Month conversation about chosen family and why it became a lifeline for so many LGBTQ people coming of age in the 1970s through the 1990s. 

We talk about what it meant to...

One dumb joke can derail hundreds of people’s day, and one great song can define a decade. We start out in classic Like Whatever mode with best-friend banter, post-sickness exhaustion, and a headline that’s equal parts funny and infuriating: a passenger naming their in-flight Wi‑Fi device “BOMB” and forcing a transatlantic flight to turn back. From there, we dig into a question that gets uncomfortably person...

You can’t forget a slogan that’s been burned into your brain since elementary school, and that’s exactly what makes America’s safety mascots so fascinating. We’re Gen X, so our childhood came with a rotating cast of animated guardians, trench coat enforcers, and neon warning faces that somehow taught us real world habits before we even understood what “public health messaging” meant. <...

Lorena Bobbitt’s name got frozen in time as a late-night punchline, but the real story is about domestic violence, marital rape, and what happens when the public treats a survivor’s trauma like entertainment. We sit with how the 90s media machine framed the case, why so many of us absorbed the wrong takeaway, and why that kind of coverage still shapes how survivors are treated today.

We also dig into the systems ...

Your phone rings and you instantly know something is wrong. A parent is in the hospital, nobody is giving straight answers, and you are suddenly managing medications, paperwork, and family emotions like it’s your second job. We’re Nicole and Heather, two Gen X friends trying to make sense of what it means to “raise our parents” while we’re still working, paying bills, and barely feeling like adults our...