Trash Talk
What if the so-called ‘truths’ of entrepreneurship and leadership were actually keeping you confused or small?
On Trash Talk, hosts Erica Breuer and Erin Thomas cut through the tired cliches and threadbare advice that dominate business and personal development. These ideas might be popular, but that doesn’t mean they’re useful.
The aim: To shake up listeners so they uncover sharper, smarter ways to navigate the complexities that actually matter.
Trash Talk
"Be Your Best Self"
You know that phrase, “Be your best self”? This episode rips it wide open: from its shiny, self-help packaging to the industrial shame complex underneath.
Erica and Erin are joined by media scholar Laurie Ouellette to break down how makeover reality shows (Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, The Biggest Loser, Wife Swap, etc.) didn’t just make for good TV; they quietly rewired our ideas about help, worthiness, and personal responsibility. What we mistake for glow-ups, might be about control.
Find out more about Laurie Ouellette…
Buy one of her books: https://bookshop.org/contributors/laurie-ouellette
- Viewers Like You?: How Public TV Failed the People (2002)
- Better Living Through Reality TV: Television and Post-Welfare Citizenship (2008)
- Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture (2009)
- The Media Studies Reader (2012)
- A Companion to Reality Television (2014)
- Keywords for Media Studies (2017)
- Lifestyle TV (2016)
Read her work as Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal "Television and New Media:" https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/journal/television-new-media
Or as a Columnist at Film Quarterly: https://filmquarterly.org/tag/laurie-ouellette/
