Shows
The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenEVERYONE IS TWELVEIs “everyone is 12” the unifying theory of our times? Through the power of dramatic reading and drawing upon their experience wrangling actual 12-year-olds, Maya and Rebecca explore whether we can survive the immaturity of those currently in power and holding guns. Drinking highly recommended.
2026-01-281h 16The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenHeated Rivalry (with Very Special Guest Guy Branum)How did gay hockey player smut become the most galvanizing pop culture artifact of our fascist times? Very Special Guest Guy Branum joins us to figure out why HBO’s HEATED RIVALRY is making so many people freak out, and to talk cottaging, cock-sucking, house porn, and what happens when straight romance novel tropes meet the erotics of the closet.
2026-01-161h 13The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenSauce Classics Trump’s DementiaHuh, people are talking about Trump and dementia? Funny, WE TALKED ABOUT THIS A YEAR AGO! Rebecca and Maya revisit our episode where we investigate Trump’s lapses in memory, behavior and language and ask how well they match up with the medically defined symptoms of frontotemporal dementia.
2025-10-2848 minThe Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenVetBros and Pete Hegseth (with Guest John Armenta!)Who is Pete Hegseth, how in hell did he end up Secretary of Defense, why is he renaming it the Department of War, and what were he and Trump doing calling 600 top generals into a room for a Big Boy Pep Talk? Very Special Guest John Armenta–an army vet and communications professor who studies masculinity and patriotism in VetBro culture, explains it all to us.
2025-10-221h 25The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenCharlie Kirk, Jimmy Kimmel, and Free Speech Part A MillionWhy were flags at half mast for a grifting podcaster? In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, Rebecca and Maya break down his life and the aftermath of his death–along the way noting flagrant political opportunism, right wing abuses of “free speech”, and key differences between various terminally online young male subcultures.
2025-10-101h 11The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenProblematic Fave: BOB DYLAN (with very special guests Elizabeth Nelson and Jeff Jackson)Bob Dylan is many things. A basic bitch isn’t one of them. We welcome brilliant lifelong Dylan-ologists Elizabeth Nelson and Jeff Jackson to pull apart what Dylan means, why music biopics suck, and everything James Mangold missed in the most recent filmic attempt to contain Dylan’s legacy, the nostalgia-fest A Complete Unknown.
2025-09-151h 12The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenThe Biggest LoserRebecca and Maya watched Fit For TV, the recent streaming Netflix docu-series on The Biggest Loser, and talk fat-shaming, abuse as motivation, fake therapeutic breakthroughs after which nothing changes, and why it takes a decade and a documentary for us to publicly acknowledge that the thing that seemed so fucked up back then was, indeed, fucked up.
2025-09-021h 04The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenThe Epstein Files!Will the Epstein Files put the final dagger into the rise of fascism? Rebecca and Maya are here to ruin any hopes you have. We’ve known for DECADES that Donald Trump was a creepy-buddy with mysterious financier-pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Is this going to trigger a MAGA-Trump breakup? Might the administration be hoist on its own conspiracy theory petard? Or will this all turn out to be the Mueller Report Redux?
2025-08-2535 minThe Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenSeveranceMaya and Rebecca ride the down elevator into Apple TV’s hit Severance. Identity. Work-life balance. Bullshit jobs. Setting good boundaries. The toxic rot and unremitting evil at the very heart of Capitalism. Is this show hitting the BIG GESTALT BUTTON of THIS MOMENT?
2025-06-251h 10The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenMartial Law (with Very Special Guest Dr. Carrie Ann Lee!)As Trump deploys National Guard and Marines to LA in the face of widespread civilian protests against ICE raids, we talk Martial Law and autocratic use of force (and drink!) with Dr. Carrie Lee, an expert in civil-military relations who concisely breaks down the specifics of what we should be looking for in this Administrations’s language and actions: why to worry, why to be hopeful, and what to do next.
2025-06-1649 minThe Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenRIP Free SpeechFor years, right wingers have loudly decried supposed attacks on free speech. Yet now those free speech warriors are strangely silent as Trump punishes universities and ICE arrests students for expressing dissent. Maya and Rebecca explain how this turnabout is not simple hypocrisy, uncovering how right wing discourse about free speech paved the way for the totalitarian suppression which was their goal all along.
2025-05-011h 09
Art Is Awesome with Emily WilsonCiara Ennis - CuratorWelcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. This week, Emily features an interview with curator Ciara Ennis, director of the De Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University. Ciara discusses her evolution from painter to curator, her efforts to challenge traditional museum practices, and her initiatives aimed at fostering inclusivity and dialogue within the art community. Key programs highlighted include the Flat Files of Curiosity Initiative and the Project Room for South Bay artists. She shares insights into her curatorial p...
2025-04-1515 minThe Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenDems in DisarrayWith Trump and Musk trampling American democracy, why aren’t elected Democrats doing more to stop the carnage? Maya and Rebecca piece together why the opposition party can’t seem to get its shit together and draw unexpected insight from the Drake and Kendrick Lamar feud to figure out what Democrats should be doing differently,
2025-02-251h 07The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenRuining Huck Finn, with VERY SPECIAL GUESTS David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame AndersonLet’s ruin the Great American Novel. Maya and Rebecca are joined by Artist (and longtime Sauce listener!) Marcus Kwame Anderson and writer David F. Walker to discuss their new book– Big Jim and the White Boy, an audacious (and inspired) retelling of Huck Finn. Listeners may remember Marcus and David from the last time we spoke about their Eisner Award-winning The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History. In this episode, we dig into the question of what gets revealed when difficult histories get told by different main characters.
2025-02-131h 15The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenBread and Circuses: Michael Jackson ONE and Cirque du SoleilHow are we going to survive the fascist takeover of our government? Through a delicate balance of activism and avoidance. Maya and Rebecca introduce a new ongoing feature, BREAD AND CIRCUSES with Cirque du Soleil’s insane Michael Jackson show, and unpack what it teaches us about how to make a spectacle out of a very bad man. Wait, I thought we were trying to do denial?
2025-02-061h 19The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenTRANS PANIC! (Election 2024 Edition) with Special Guests Guy Branum and Grace FreudAfter a nice long stretch of denial, Maya and Rebecca dip our toes back into political waters with Very Special Guests Guy Branum and Grace Freud, who bring queer and trans perspectives to the transphobic messaging the Trump campaign relied on so heavily this past election season. Why was it so effective? How did it connect to anti-immigration messaging? Is there any good way to respond to these right wing demonologies?
2024-12-1755 minThe Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenTrans Panic! ELECTION EDITIONAfter a nice long stretch of denial, Maya and Rebecca dip our toes back into political waters with Very Special Guests Guy Branum and Grace Freud, who bring queer and trans perspectives to the transphobic messaging the Trump campaign relied on so heavily this past election season. Why was it so effective? How did it … Continue reading "Trans Panic! ELECTION EDITION"
2024-12-1755 minThe Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenWTF Happened?Welp, America has chosen fascism. But the rejection of liberal democracy didn’t start with Donald Trump; it’s been taking shape for decades. Maya and Rebecca sort out how things went so horribly wrong, both this election cycle and over the last 40 years of American politics. Is our political system broken? And what do we do now?
2024-11-211h 37The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenThe Trump Cult: RevisitedSo we’re all freaking out in this final stretch before Election Day 2024. Rebecca and Maya revisit our episode on the Trump Cult from four years ago, recorded right before Biden’s inauguration, which we then thought—perhaps naively—would be the last one we’d have to do. We listen to it again and ask: why are we still here?— finding answers in Trump’s Nazi Rally at Madison Square Garden, Steve Hassan’s BITE Model of authoritarian control, and the basement incels who’ve grown up and now gotten jobs in the Republican Party.
2024-11-041h 33The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenWhy Is the Race So Close??On the one hand, a demented felon on a cross country tour, swaying and screaming nonsense into the void. But on the other hand–wait, HOW IS THERE ANOTHER HAND? Rebecca and Maya assess Trump’s increasingly fascist language, rapidly deteriorating coherence, and try to wrap our heads around how this can even be close. And the JD Vance Self Owns JUST KEEP COMING.
2024-10-221h 07The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenAll-American Fascism Part 2: Neo-Nazi BoogalooWe all know Trump is a fascist, but lately he and JD Vance have taken it to a whole new level. Maya and Rebecca break down the unvarnished neo-Nazi talking points in their recent rhetoric and ponder the question: Is white nationalism really an effective campaign strategy?
2024-09-301h 16The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenThe Harris-Trump DebateWhat did we want to see in last week’s Debate between TFG and VP Harris? Nothing that would make us want to puke. Maya and Rebecca talk about the impossibility of debating Trump, the things Kamala actually made possible, and whether our brains have been too broken by all of this to even see clearly anymore. And the JD Vance self-owns JUST KEEP COMING.
2024-09-1650 minThe Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenVance, Walz and Dueling MasculinitiesJD Vance and Tim Walz represent a stark contrast in not just donut-ordering skills, but also performances of masculinity. Maya and Rebecca compare the drastically different representations of maleness embodied by each VP candidate, uncovering what their rhetoric and political philosophies reveal about their attitudes toward gender roles, and examining how it all connects to right wing attacks against Walz and why they just keep failing.
2024-09-091h 27The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenSauce Classics: RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA!As the DOJ indictments on Russian interference in right wing media and politics begin rolling out this week, Maya and Rebecca thought it would be a good time to share this episode about the changing roles Russia has played and continues to fill in the American cultural imagination.
2024-09-061h 04
The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenTrump’s DementiaIt doesn’t take a geriatrics expert to see that Donald Trump is deteriorating. Is it just normal aging, or something… else? Maya and Rebecca investigate Trump’s lapses in memory, behavior and language and ask how well they match up with the medically defined symptoms of dementia.
2024-08-291h 24The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenMAGA MELTDOWNCouch sex, race baiting, menstrual tracking—MAGA-world is melting down while the Dems are energized and in array. Maya and Rebecca dig into this wild few weeks and ask: why are couch jokes so funny? And why are these people so fucking weird?
2024-08-081h 01The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenKAMALA 2024! With Special Guest Kaitlyn Byrd!It’s KAMALA FOR PRESIDENT! Maya and Rebecca are wildly gratified to have our favorite political analyst Kaitlin Byrd back on to talk about the handoff from Biden, the instant national sea change it triggered, and our theories on what happened behind the scenes, how Veepstakes will go down, and what Vice President Harris will wear at the Convention.
2024-08-021h 28The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenRevisiting from 2020: Kamala Harris and Political Double Standards, Part A MillionFriends, LET’S BE READY. As Kamala Harris accepts the mantle of the Democratic nomination, Maya and Rebecca open up the time capsule and share our Kamala episode from four years ago when Biden first selected her as VP. We’re eerily prescient about the specific ways the left, right, and center would attack Kamala—attacks we’re already seeing again, and expect to see more of in the coming months.
2024-07-2251 minThe Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenSauce Classics: The Supreme Court (Part 1)Happy (Possibly Last) 4th of July! In the wake of the recent horrifying decisions by the Supreme Court on presidential immunity and Chevron deference, Maya and Rebecca thought it was important to repost our episode from 2023 about the Supreme Court, our idealized notions of what it’s supposed to be, it’s real history, and the far right’s decades-long project to capture the court and subvert democracy.
2024-07-041h 16The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenThe Trump VerdictWe followed every moment of Trump’s first criminal trial, and now that the verdict is in, boy is there a lot to talk about. From Trump falling asleep (and farting himself awake), to his defense team’s dumbest moves, to the electoral implications of 34 felony convictions, Maya and Rebecca dive into the all pleasures and surprises of watching this real-life procedural drama unfold.
2024-06-181h 16The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenThe Death of 90s Rock
Grunge is dead (again). As Maya grieves the death of iconic producer Steve Albini, she and Rebecca break down whether this Gen-X’s John Lennon moment, if the concept of “selling out” means anything anymore, and why edge lord humor just isn’t the same as it used to be.
2024-05-3100 minThe Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenThe Dune MoviesDune is Rebecca’s favorite novel, but Maya is a pure 100% Dune virgin. We watched Denis Villeneuve’s massively popular adaptation of this legendary, and legendarily unfilmable, sci fi epic to see if we see any of the same things. Does it work as a movie series? As an adaptation? As a meditation on the white savior narrative?
2024-05-101h 15The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenGrab Bag! Beyonce, Tradwives, OJ SimpsonThere is too damn much to talk about so we try to talk about it ALL! In this episode, Beyonce Goes Country, Tradwifes Go Viral, OJ Simpson Goes Dead, and Rebecca and Maya just try to keep up. We break down Cowboy Carter, the weird fantasy of white housewife cosplay, and the legacy of a famous wife-killer.
2024-04-251h 11The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenTrump, Fucked (?)After taking a much-needed break from TFG, Maya and Rebecca catch up on Trump’s troubles: legal, financial, political, and psychophysical. How fucked is he? How worried should we be? What’s the most productive way to direct our anxiety between now and November?
2024-04-091h 12The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenPoor ThingsDepending on whom you ask, Academy award winner Poor Things is either a feminist masterpiece about an empowered woman, or a male fantasy about a baby-minded fuck toy. Maya and Rebecca attempt to bridge the gap, asking the really important questions: Why is Yorgos Lanthimos so obsessed with old-timey whorehouses? Is this quirky visual style more or less irritating when Wes Anderson does it? And is a critique of men the same thing as a feminist movie?
2024-03-261h 12The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenRight Wing Attacks on Higher Ed (with Nadia E. Brown!)College presidents forced to resign. Faculties gutted. Anti-DEI legislations cropping up nationwide. There’s no doubt about it–Right Wing activists are attacking Higher Ed, trying to “capture, restructure, and reform” centers of learning. Georgetown political scientist and Women’s Studies professor Nadia E. Brown joins us to help us understand this moment, what makes it different than usual institutional racism and sexism, and how to fight it.
2024-03-081h 16The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenProblematic Faves: Liberal Arts Education (with Meredith Yayanos!)Intellectual expansion! Youthful passion! Exploited innocence! Genius writer, musician, and professional flame-throwing shit-starter Meredith Yayanos, comes on to talk about their problematic fave: Liberal Arts Education. What does college MEAN in the social imaginary? What did it mean to us? Cronyism, elitism, pranks, nubility, narcissistic faculty, racism, classism, date rape, Jeffrey Epstein, the hangover of 60s counterculture, DEI, panicked articles in The NY Times about what the kids are doing, Real Genius, Rules of Attraction, Good Will Hunting Animal House, A Different World, Revenge of the Nerds, and Genny Cream Ale.
2024-02-201h 31The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenSwifties Strike BackWere we wrong about Taylor Swift? Actual, real live Swiftie Jenna Parrot responds to Maya and Rebecca’s takes about her favorite pop megastar. Can she help us understand Swift’s musical appeal, not to mention her cultural and political impact?
2024-01-301h 21The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenTaylor Swift and BeyonceWe can’t start the new year without talking about THE biggest pop culture story of 2023: Beyonce and Taylor Swift dominating American music, culture and even economics with their wildly popular, wildly extravagant Renaissance and Eras tours. Maya and Rebecca break down the star power, the spectacle and the songwriting, asking what makes these two megastars so powerful? And what does that reveal about politics and culture as we head into 2024?
2024-01-031h 05The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenMore Israel!Apparently there are some people we didn’t alienate with our last Israel episode? Well, if at first you don’t succeed… Maya and Rebecca dive back into Israel/Palestine and try, try again to understand why this topic is so hard to have conversations about.
2023-12-141h 12The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenIsraelTwo drunk Jewesses (one with an Israeli passport) dive into the Hamas attack on Israel and the current catastrophe in Gaza, taking apart three major talking points that have been floating around and explaining why they’re all wrong.
2023-10-251h 18
The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenHot Labor Summer w/ Miles KahnOrganized labor is so hot right now. With the UAW and SAG on strike – and more industries getting ready to join – Maya and Rebecca welcome multi-talented writer/producer/director Miles Kahn to go inside the recent Hollywood writer’s strike, analyze pop culture depictions of strikes, and uncover why unions having such a moment.
2023-10-031h 13The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenElon Musk and the Anti-Defamation LeagueWow, we did Nazi that coming! (Yes we did.) As Elon Musk beefs with the Anti Defamation League, Rebecca and Maya follow up on how he’s ruining Twitter and track how anti-Semitism on Twitter looks different in 2023 than it did in 2016.
2023-09-2158 minThe Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenSauce Classics: Consiglieri Cohen & Trump as Gordon GekkoAs Trump’s legal issues mount, we revisit Part 2 of Maya and Rebecca’s discussion about Trump and mafia narratives, examining how the character types of the “fixer” and the shady business mogul shed light on the public’s perceptions of Michael Cohen and Donald Trump — as well as their apparent perceptions of themselves.
This week our Patrons also get a VERY SPECIAL BONUS EPISODE about the emotional stages of each of Trump’s subsequent indictments, with a special focus on the very mobby Fulton County RICO indictment.
2023-09-0845 minThe Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenOppenheimer (with Special Guest Ellen Sebastian Chang)Friends, if you’re looking for new and profound insights into the birth of the Atomic Age, you ain’t gonna find them in the turgid recent hit Oppenheimer. Rebecca and Maya welcome Very Special Guest, legendary artist Ellen Sebastian Chang, to drop personal and political context that exposes the limits of filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s historical, cinematic, and narrative imagination.
2023-08-311h 11The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenThe Supreme Court (Part 2)In Part 2, Rebecca and Maya dive deeper into what our corrupt and conservative Supreme Court actually looks like RIGHT NOW: poorly reasoned decisions! Inconsistent application of precedent for theocratic right-wing ends! Fancy RVs from billionaires! How do we not lose our minds? (Drinking recommended).
2023-08-211h 10The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenThe Supreme Court (Part 1)Isn’t the Supreme Court supposed to protect our rights – not take them away? Maya and Rebecca examine how our idealized notions about SCOTUS don’t match current reality, and how that didn’t happen by accident. They dig into Supreme Court history and uncover the far right’s decades-long project to capture the court and subvert democracy.
2023-08-101h 16The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenBarbie!Rebecca and Maya break down the summer’s hottest corporate feminist blockbuster, asking all the REALLY IMPORTANT questions: How is Barbie like Schindler’s List? Is the movie really as man-hating as the right-wing pundits are promising us, or will we be disappointed? Can a 2-hour toy commercial even BE feminist? And why aren’t the Barbies humping?
2023-08-011h 25The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenSauce Classics: Catholicism (with Special Guest Julia Sweeney)!As we continue to reel from last week’s Supreme Court decisions, we return to this VERY SPECIAL EPISODE with Julia Sweeney as she ruins the Catholic Church for Maya and Rebecca! The legendary comedian, writer and longtime Sauce patron talks inside baseball about Pope Francis, Opus Dei, the Knights of Malta, why there are so many damn Catholics on the Supreme Court, and the specifically Catholic reasons Ross Douthat is an idiot.
2023-07-071h 12The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenGovernment Secrets & Rich People vs. the OceanSometimes it’s good to leak government secrets, sometimes it’s not? Maya and Rebecca ask how we’re supposed to know the difference, when we’re not the ones keeping the secrets. Then we talk orcas, Titanic tourism, and why the ocean seems to have something against rich people.
2023-06-271h 27The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenGender Panic!Drag bans! Trans panic! Won’t somebody think of the children’s normative gender socialization? Maya & Rebecca take a look at the massive wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation sweeping across the United States. Why is this happening? What does it reveal about the right wing mindset? Have 15 seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race taught us nothing? And how is it all linked to the fight for abortion rights?
2023-06-091h 22The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca CohenE. Jean Carroll and Tucker CarlsonWith E. Jean Carroll standing up to Trump and Tucker Carlson getting fired, are we finally (FINALLY) reaching a point of accountability? Or at least, liability?
2023-05-111h 15
The Institute PodcastEpisode 119: The Endurance Project with Gwendolyn Schwinke and Maya GurantzAssistant Professor Gwendolyn Schwinke and Artist Maya Gurantz discuss their latest collaboration, The Endurance Project.
A Work-In-Progress showing of The Endurance Project will be open to the public on Saturday, Feb. 26 from 5:00-6:30 p.m. in the Joan Gillings Center for Dramatic Arts, Room 102, UNC-Chapel Hill campus. People are invited to arrive as early as 4:30 to listen to the audio installation.
2022-02-2425 min
The Muck PodcastLi'l Muck Episode 33: Maya GurantzHillary and Tina interview artist, writer, and podcaster, Maya Gurantz.
Maya Gurantz is an artist and writer whose work interrogates social imaginaries of American culture, and how constructions of gender, race, class, and progress operate in our shared myths, public rituals, and private desires.
Maya’s videos, performances, installations, and social practice projects have been shown and commissioned by (solo): Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, the Grand Central Art Center, Catharine Clark Gallery, Greenleaf Gallery, Pieter PASD; (group) the Museum of Contemporary Art Utah, Angels Gate Cultural Center, the Oakland Museum of California, Beaconsfield Gallery Va...
2021-08-2043 min