Writer and comedian Sophia Benoit joins Dani Loftus to discuss the art of complaining as a form of connection. They touch on texture-based food aversions, surveillance culture, and people who take jokes too literally online. Also, we learn what a "rat room" is.

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Sophia's podcast

Sophia's website

Dani's newsletter

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00:00 — What is this podcast

00:54 — How Sophia doesn't like talking about herself (despite writing a memoir)

02:20 — Sophia's approach to complaining and how it got her all her jobs

04:11 — European-style complaining as connection, not misery

05:29 — Biggest industry ick: pretending writing is hard work

07:41 — When your dentist wants to discuss your sex writing career

08:00 — How writing about relationships affects personal expectations

12:27 — Is messiness a personality trait or a diagnosis?

14:15 — Being seen as negative online when you're actually positive

15:00 — The wealthy patron system vs. needing hundreds of thousands of followers

17:42 — The guy in Ohio who thinks you're the worst person alive

18:16 — "Can they eat you?" Sophia's grandfather's motto for anxiety

18:41 — Good morning texts...ick

19:47 — Cottage cheese and other aversions

21:11 — American individualism and pretending cities are that different

22:39 — Surveillance culture

24:38 — People taking jokes too literally online and explaining things back

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Our music, Stamford Brook Style, is by Adrian Michna.

Writer and editor Greta Rainbow joins host Dani Loftus for a tour through the icks that shape her taste: from airplane armrest invasions to cagey creatives, hidden gluten, weak PDA, celebrity beverage empires, and a deeply cursed Homeland Security tweet.

They dig into gossip as community protection, transparency in the creative economy, why the literary world runs on shame, and how momentum truly works (“like a 15-year-old boy”). Plus: dating icks, tech icks, virtue icks, environmental icks, and Greta’s Ick of the Week.

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Dani's newsletter

Get Greta's book industry column

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00:00 — Welcome to Creative Complaint

00:55 — “Sir, Turn Off Your Phone”

04:50 — Complaining as High Art

05:30 — The Gospel of Gossip as Public Service

10:00 — Lack of $$$ Transparency

11:30 — Shame, Sales, and the Literary Hunger Games

12:40 — Momentum Is a 15-Year-Old Boy

15:00 — Earnest America vs. Irony-Pilled New York

16:00 — Best Friends After Two Hangs? Immediate Red Flag

17:00 — The Affection Olympics

18:45 — Bad vs. Good PDA

19:15 — Hidden Gluten, Hidden Rage

20:20 — New Yorkers, Please Learn to Recycle

21:50 — Emma Chamberlain Should Start a Publishing House, Actually

24:15 — Rejection as a Luxury Commodity

27:20 — Fascism: Final Boss Ick

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Our music, Stamford Brook Style, is by Adrian Michna.