We’re diving into dating shows set in the Regency era and dating shows set on islands – temptation islands. But first, we’ve got the latest rumors on casting for Bachelor in Paradise. We’re joined for Bachelor news and gossip today by, as Deuxmoi called her, former model and current executive assistant – and A+ TikTok maker – Lexi Stout. Then, we recap episode 3 of The Courtship, and later we try to wrap our heads around the latest season of Temptation Island.

We have gossip! And we react to pics of Gabby and Rachel’s contestants on the new season of The Bachelorette. Then, we dive into episode two of our favorite Regency-esque reality dating show, The Courtship, which forged on with a boating-and-picnicking date.

We’re heading into a Bachelor hiatus folks! But there’s still tons of news to dig into about Clayton and Susie (Claysie? Su-ton?), the double Bachelorette season and more. Then, we recap the premiere of the new reality dating show “The Courtship.” We’ll be exploring the quiet romanticism of traditional Regency-era courtship rituals… like writing love letters before you even meet someone and learning calligraphy! Extremely era-accurate.

Clayton’s journey has finally crashed to a conclusion. Today, the two of us are discussing part two of the finale, and this bizarre season as a whole.

This week, Clayton goes deeper and deeper into a mess mostly of his own making, as he tries to convince his final two to stay and meet his parents. It’s.. a mess. Here to go through this moment of collective rage and trauma and catharsis is Defector Media co-owner and host of Normal Gossip, Kelsey McKinney!

This week, coming off a brutal Women Tell All, it’s Clayton’s fantasy suites. And he just can’t stop, and won’t stop telling women he’s in love with them. Joining us to take this journey straight to hell is Amy Kaufman, senior entertainment writer at the L.A. Times and author of Bachelor Nation.

It's time for Women Tell All, a space for sisterhood, empowerment, and putting shine theory into action. Or more like… women insulting each other’s asses and slut-shaming. Here to help us remember a painful evening of The Bachelor is Buzzfeed senior culture reporter and host of The Rise and Fall of Lularoe, Stephanie McNeal!

This week, the Bachelor visits four hometowns and faces down spiders, bears, shrimping, 80-foot plunges, and a dad who wants us to know that he WILL put a guy in the hospital for upsetting his daughter. We're joined byVella Lovell, friend of the pod and star of the tv show Mr. Mayor!

Sociologist Danielle J. Lindemann joined the pod to talk about her book, “True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us.” Reality TV is a cultural product, and just like any other cultural product, it can tell us so much about ourselves, our social roles and expectations, our values, and the narratives we tell about ourselves and each other. We try to watch these shows critically, and there are a lot of ways to do that. But one way, which we wanted to explore in depth this week, is a sociological lens, which helps us see what these shows, in all their messy glory, reflect and reveal about our society.

Someone has to be thinking about ethics here because no one involved with last night’s episode of The Bachelor was. It’s episode 7 of Clayton’s quest for a wife, and the last week before hometowns. So obviously he had to spend a group date using couples therapy as a tool for measuring and comparing his options. We’re joined by the hilarious Daryn Carp, host of PeopleTV’s Reality Check!

This Valentine’s week, Clayton puts his detective hat back on and tries to get to the bottom of some very big mysteries. Is Genevieve an actress? Is Sarah not ready for an engagement? We’re joined by a special guest, former colleague, former fill-in host of this very podcast, and contributing editor of ScaryMommy, the brilliant Leigh Blickley!

Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s the time of year when we arbitrarily pay even more attention than usual to romantic relationships, and to celebrate, we convinced Claire’s husband Greg and Emma’s boyfriend Adam to join the pod. Our wonderful listeners sent in TONS of questions (thank you!), and we tried to answer as many as we could. We discuss our meet-cutes, our most awkward dates, what it’s like to live with us full- or part-time (sounds exhausting), and what we love most about each other.

It's week five of Clayton's journey. Our scrappy, self-anointed new lead, Shanae, offers a fake apology that earns her a ticket to a dramatic two-on-one date. We’re joined by Emmy Award-winning Last Week Tonight writer and long-time Vulture Bachelor recapper Ali Barthwell!

Who ate the shrimp? Who was in the hot tub? It’s episode four of Clayton’s journey to find love, and here to discuss all the small crustaceans, NFL tie-ins, and C-list country bands is Kate Casey, host of the podcast Reality Life!

It’s week three of Clayton Echard’s journey to find love. This episode features a harrowing faux-therapy group date, a harrowing public semi-nudity one-on-one date, and a harrowing beach date. Harrowing if you hate getting sunburned or trying to perform CPR on a dummy while wearing a bikini... which we do. Let’s dive in!

We continue to have an insatiable thirst for juicy rumors and gossip… and there are a few less fun Bachelor Nation news items we’re going to need to address as well. Here to help us go through it all is friend of the pod Erin Darke, who you can see on CBC’s Moonshine if you’re in Canada!

We’re joined by Chad Kultgen and Lizzy Pace, who host the Game of Roses podcast, to talk about their fascinating new book How To Win The Bachelor: The Secret to Finding Love and Fame on America’s Favorite Reality Show – and, of course, to talk about their personal journeys down the Bachelor rabbithole.

It’s week two of Clayton’s season of The Bachelor, and a dynamic duo of early season villains COMPLETELY takes over the episode. And we get to watch Clayton have absolutely no idea how to handle it. Here to discuss that, Clayton’s first one-on-one date and cameos from Hillary Duff and Ziwe, is host of "A Little Help for Our Friends" and Bachelor alum Jacqueline Trumbull!Note: The Bachelor won't have a new episode next week. But don't worry, we will!

The Bachelor is back, and this time with twice as much Jesse Palmer as ever before! The second one is Clayton Echard, whom you probably don’t remember from Michelle Young’s season of The Bachelorette. It's Clayton’s season premiere, so we’re here to talk about limo exits, shimmering golden gowns, gimmicks, first roses accepted (and rejected) plus so much more.

We take all the contestants' bios for Clayton’s upcoming season of The Bachelor and we just... absolutely tear them apart. In a loving way! And joining us is someone bursting with opinions on all things Bachelor: Producer Harry! He's better known as Harry Huggins, producer of the podcast This Is Critical.

It’s the big finale of Michelle Young’s season, and it’s got it all: Meeting the parents, last chance dates, proposals and couch cries. The most festive Bachelorette finale ever ends, as all holiday shows should, with true love. Let’s dive in!

No new bonus episode this week. So instead we’re introducing This Is Critical with Virginia Heffernan, a podcast that examines the cultural assumptions some take for granted, like the Miss America pageant as a reflection of our society. This episode features former Miss America Kate Shindle and journalist Amy Argetsinger, author of There She Was: The Secret History of Miss America. To hear the full episode, follow This Is Critical wherever you listen to podcasts.

Who’s catching feelings? Who’s literally catching the most feelings? This week on the fantasy suites episode, Michelle goes on three INTIMATE, ROMANTIC, AND SEXY dates with Brandon, Joe, and Nayte. Here to analyze that with us are writers Gaby Dunn and Allison Raskin. They're also hosts of the podcast Just Between Us!

According to some men there are two -- no, three levels to understanding any situation, and none of those levels involves apologizing for being an asshole on TV. We’re here to discuss The Bachelorette: Men Tell All with author Kelsey McKinney, Defector Media co-owner and co-host of the new podcast Normal Gossip!

We're back with another Bachelor news and gossip episode. And boy, is there a lot to discuss. Tayshia and Zac ran the New York City Marathon together, and then, two weeks later they abruptly broke up. Also, two weeks after announcing her split with Blake and jointly requesting privacy, Katie kicked off an Instagram event she called "12 Days of Messy," in which she assigned Taylor Swift songs to men from her season. It began by assigning her recent ex "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" and it ended by announcing that she is now dating John Hersey, a contestant who barely made it to week two. The chaos! There's so much to analyze, unpack, critique, and for wild speculation.

It’s hometown week for Michelle’s final four! But everything will be taking place in HER hometown. So, we’ll be visiting three pretend hometowns, meeting three red-headed moms, and watching Michelle effortlessly win over four families. Who could resist her? Certainly not us.

This week on Michelle's... sorry, Ms. Young’s journey to find love, the kids are in charge! These plucky fifth graders just want to find a nice man for their teacher -- one with lots of muscles and good fort-building skills. Meanwhile, Ms. Young is taking her dudes on a final whirlwind tour of her hometown. Here to share her insights is writer Esmé Weijun Wang!

Welcome to another episode of Love To See It, a podcast about high-maintenance females and the men who generously tolerate them. Joining us to discuss this particular brand of unruly females is new friend of the pod, author of Cultish and co-host of the Sounds Like A Cult podcast, Amanda Montell!

It’s week four of Michelle’s journey, and already she’s feeling taken for granted by this group of scrubs. We had two one-on-one dates, one group date that was more like a group bro hang, and a brand new villain: Chris S. Here to recap with us is Traci Thomas, host of the literary podcast The Stacks!

Time to recap Bachelor news and gossip! That’s right, we’re here with takes on the breakup of recent Bachelorette Katie Thurston and Blake Moynes, some Deuxmoi chatter and a mildly spoiler-y consideration of the future Bachelor.

We’re in the Danger Zone. It’s week three of Michelle's journey, and we’ve already had like three drama-splosions! Here to discuss this week of dates is friend of the pod, and our former colleague, HuffPost senior enterprise editor Erin Evans!

The first cuts have been made! Now, onto balls and explosions... Get your head out of the gutter. We’re obviously talking about basketballs and science experiments because we’re here to discuss Michelle’s first group dates! And here to talk about this week’s episode is Stephanie McNeal, a BuzzFeed reporter who covers internet culture.

It’s the 18th season of The Bachelorette! It’s about basketball, and a shot at love -- specifically Michelle Young’s shot at love! And here to help us ring in the season is a BFF of the pod, who we have missed dearly, actor Allison Williams.

There are still so many storylines and scandals from the past season that we’re desperate to know more about, and so we definitely wanted to chat with one of the women at the center of some of the juiciest moments of the season -- model, icon Chelsea Vaughn! Chelsea was on Matt’s season of The Bachelor, and when she arrived on the beach, she quickly got caught up in a love triangle -- and perhaps even love tripod -- with Aaron Clancy and some of the other dudes on the beach.

FINALLY, season 18 of The Bachelorette, starring the one and only Michelle Young!! Yeah, it’s cast bios, baby. Today we’re going to look at, make fun of, thirst over and generally pick apart the cast bios and photos of Michelle’s 30 contestants.

One thing we’ve really missed has been gossip. You just simply don’t get as much of the good stuff when you’re trapped in quarantine. Luckily, we can always count on our Bach Nation internet friends to provide. So today we’ll be gossiping. About people we don’t know who went on reality TV.

Welcome to Love to See It, where it’s no longer almost paradise. We’re here. Paradise has been consummated. And we’re here to figure out who our person is. And, sadly, who is not. Joining us to bid farewell to BIP 7 is host of the podcast Vice News Reports, Arielle Duhaime-Ross.

Welcome to Love to See It, a podcast that would NEVER circumvent the system. Unless we made a mistake. Here to discuss the various violations to the system that we witnessed this week in Paradise is Liviya Kraemer, the VP of Television for Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino’s production company.

Welcome to Bachelor in Paradise, where metaphors become reality. After weeks of Hurricanes Demi, Mari, Tammy, and so on, a very real tropical storm makes landfall and causes the same amount of damage and disturbance as a woman having negative emotions in public. Joining us to recap this week are romance novelists Tessa Dare and Rebekah Weatherspoon.

We talk to Suzana Somers, the numbers wizard behind the account that makes data just as entertaining as reality TV.

Welcome back to another beautiful week in Paradise. There’s a posse out looking for justice, and after last week, there’s still one more crime that needs to be solved on this beach… Here to make a red-yarn-and-pushpin conspiracy board with us is Justin Cole Adams of Justin Takes The Bach.

Welcome back to the beaches of Paradise, which are growing more hellish by the hour. From Brendan and Pieper to Chris and Alanna, this week’s two episodes were a nonstop trash fire. The beach is ablaze with drama, the flames of betrayal are licking at our feet, and the smoke of the wrong reasons is filling our lungs. With BIP on the precipice of full collapse into the sea, we’re joined by Erin Darke and Daniel Radcliffe.

Emma and Claire answer your questions about hypothetical Bachelor strategies, the importance (and difficulty) of friendship, and their favorite Bachelor In Paradise characters so far.

It’s week 3 of Bachelor in Paradise, and right on schedule, Bachelor in Paradise is turning into Bachelor in Hell. There’s no show if there’s no drama, and there’s no drama if people don’t start betraying, backstabbing, breaking up, and generally acting badly, so that’s exactly what this week is all about. Joining us for this recap is Mr. Mayor star and friend of the pod Vella Lovell!

Welcome to Love to See It, a podcast about a bunch of people who already know each other who show up on a beach and pretend they’re strangers so that someone can make out with their boyfriend 15 feet away from them. Here to plow through the second week of Bachelor in Paradise is Bachelor and BIP veteran, friend of the pod, Ph.D. student of clinical psychology and host of “A Little Help for Our Friends” Jacqueline Trumbull!

Welcome to our final recap of FBOY Island, in which we learn who is smart enough to take a mere $50k and a sterling reputation and who is an unredeemable FBOY.

Welcome to Paradise! We are vaxed and ready to watch some waxed people have a long-awaited hot Bach summer. From our couches, with air conditioning. And chilled rosé. Paradise 2021 kicked off Monday night, bringing fan faves like Serena P, Ivan, Abigail, and Brendan to the beach. Also Queen Victoria and Karl. Here to help us get settled on the beaches of Sayulita is friend of the pod, Vulture recapper, and Last Week Tonight writer Ali Barthwell!

Joining us to discuss episodes 4–6 of HBO Max’s reality hit is Xandra Ellin, who writes the truly great newsletter for On the Media.