Maria Cristina Sherman is a music writer and culture critic currently living in Brooklyn, NY. She has worked as a senior writer at Jezebel, managing editor at Gizmodo Media Group, senior correspondent at Fuse TV, and contributor at BuzzFeed Music. You may have seen her work at NPR and in Billboard, SPIN, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly and many other quality publications. Her debut book, LARGER THAN LIFE: A History of Boy Bands, NKOTB to BTS, was published in July 2020. If she were in a boy band, she’d be the bad boy.

In this episode, I reveal the story of the time I met Harry Styles, we talk all about Maria’s amazing book, get nerdy as hell about boy bands and pop music, Menudo, masculinity, criticism and why the best critics are fans, the boy band fan life cycle, women’s influence in cultural industries, the power of the marginalized dollar, and what we want all young writers out there to know if you’re going to survive. This episode also contains the only Baldwin/Buckley-style debate about B2K EVER.

I’m not gonna hold you, this one is a HOOT.

You can purchase Maria’s book, as well as books written by previous Office Hours Interviewees via our new Bookshop page!!!!

So far, season 2 has featured interviews with some big thinkers across cultural industries. Click here to pick your preferred podcast platform and subscribe so you never miss a new episode. As a bonus, that link contains every episode of The Office Hours w/me podcast, including all of Season 1.

A few weeks ago, I was on Chicago’s NPR affiliate WBEZ talking about the best Chicago sandwich you’ve likely never had and segregation in food media. You can listen to the full segment here.

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