Introducing CNN’s Engagement Party newsletter: Where the hottest takes are the smartest takes in pop culture

By Scottie Andrew, CNN

(CNN) — The party’s about to start. Are you on the guest list?

Just kidding, everyone’s invited! This is Engagement Party, a brand-new newsletter companion to the pop culture podcast of the same name hosted by Audie Cornish and Ari Shapiro. We’re here to make you the best-read guest at the gathering, if by “read” you mean “caught up on ‘The Odyssey’ discourse and what the ominous return of fro-yo means,” of course. (It’s kind of a sneaky recession indicator, right?) Silly, smart and spicy are the main ingredients here.

If that sounds like your cup of tea, subscribe to Engagement Party! Read our FAQs for more on what this party’s all about.

Uh, what is Engagement Party?

You mean you don’t already watch and/or listen to the podcast?! Please rectify this at once. On Engagement Party the show, longtime BFFs Audie and Ari make sense of what’s happening online, “re-knitting” together our tattered timelines and disparate algorithms, and explain why it matters to you.

Engagement Party the newsletter is an extension and expansion of their conversations, with new takes about how internet absurdity shapes our offline lives. If that sounds serious, please know that any anthropological assessments of our collective psyche that come out of these conversations are purely incidental.

Who’s the writer?

She is me, Scottie Andrew, a lifelong pop culture obsessive and CNN writer of 7 years who’s covered everything from pickle-palooza to the innocent joy of “6-7” to the clownish art of looksmaxxing (no offense to clowns). I scroll and stew for a living!

What else should I expect?

I’ll give you a taste: Last week, Audie and Ari got into the made-up controversy surrounding “The Odyssey” and friend debt on Venmo. Engagement Party’s print edition may declare that Christopher Nolan is overrated and the perfect adaptation of “The Odyssey” already exists (it’s a musical)! And as someone who has lived through both sides of the friend debt problem, I’ve got anecdotal advice on how to avoid friend breakups and bankruptcy. I’ll talk about new stuff, too, that Audie and Ari can’t get to each week, because they have a million other jobs.

Most importantly, we’re gonna have FUN together. But culture reflects the times, so EP won’t totally ignore the bad news. We’ll just squeeze as much meaning and humor out of it as we can.

And listen: the EP team knows there are a lot of cultural analysis products competing for your attention. But consider that ours is hosted by best friends who have sharply honed their reporting skills over the past two decades, so they’re well-versed in weightier current events, but who are also voracious consumers of the same media you’re talking about with your friends. You can trust them when they say that you should really be paying attention to Kylie Jenner’s accessories right now (surveillance chic!). I promise to keep things weird and irreverent but informative nonetheless on my end.

Oh, and Engagement Party is not a one-sided conversation. We need your POV, too! Is there a trend you just don’t get, or a take that must be heard to be believed? Send a selfie video, 30 seconds to a minute, to engagementparty@cnn.com, and you may find yourself in a future episode. Audie and Ari assured me there are no stupid questions. “We may shame each other … ,” Audie said, before Ari finished her sentence, as soul mates do: “… But we won’t shame you.”

I’m in. Now what?

Well, subscribe to the newsletter and podcast, of course. New episodes are released every Friday, and the newsletter is delivered to your inbox on Saturday mornings. My aim is to eventually unleash a pop culture opinion so bizarre and unexpected that you spit out your morning coffee in shock. Let’s get there together!

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