Luminary Announces Season 5 of Lena Dunham and Alissa Bennett’s The C-Word, Starting with Lindsay Lohan’s Battle with the Media
In Defense of So-Called “Bad Girls”: Luminary Announces Season 5 of Lena Dunham and Alissa Bennett’s The C-Word, Starting with Lindsay Lohan’s Battle with the Media
On the latest season of their fascinating feminist podcast, Lena and Alissa analyze and subvert the public narratives surrounding Lindsay Lohan, Dana Plato, Lil’ Kim, Jenna Jameson and other icons.
New York, NYLuminary, the leading subscription-based podcast and audio entertainment network, today announced Season 5 of The C-Word, hosted by Alissa Bennett and Lena Dunham, and produced by Dina Kleiner with Pineapple Street Studios. Luminary is also proud to announce that the fifth season will include a special Luminary matching-donation campaign for National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF). For donations made through luminary.link/cword, Luminary will match up to $10,000.
As in previous seasons, The C-Word explores the biographies of women, past and present, deemed “crazy” by society and relegated to the fringes of celebrities we love to hate. This season kicks off with Lindsay Lohan.
Lohan’s name has been synonymous with maladaptive child stardom, toxic tabloid culture, and the general trainwreckery of the mid-aughts—but it wasn’t always that way. Lena and Alissa unpack LiLo’s childhood, her precocious talent and early popularity, the media’s perverse fascination with her prepubescent body, and the beginnings of her Bad Behavior headlines which would drastically influence 2000s pop culture.
In episodes that are sometimes punctuated with personal stories connecting them to their subjects, Bennett and Dunham provide a comedic, insightful, well-researched, and refreshingly empathetic take on some of pop culture’s most infamous ‘bad girls,’ including: Lindsay Lohan, Lil’ Kim, Dana Plato, Jenna Jameson, Janet Cooke, Maila Nurmi (aka Vampira), Belle Gibson, and Anna Anderson (aka Anastasia Romanov). Featured guests on select episodes this season include Naomi Fry, culture writer for the New Yorker, Mike Sager, known as "the beat poet of American journalism,” and two renowned fashion designers, fashion pioneer Misa Hylton, and Mel Ottenberg, Editor in Chief of Interview Magazine.
In episode 1 that posts today, Dunham shares a personal story of when Lindsay Lohan sent her roses before Dunham hosted Saturday Night Live, even though they didn’t know each other very well. The roses came with a note that said “Break a leg. Love, Lindsay,” and Dunham said she treasured it.
Dunham says: “For as much social progress we’ve made in recent decades, we’ve arrived at a moment politically and socially that feels decidedly backwards. Well, we can go backwards too. Our next season continues to turn media narratives and collective rage upside down, exposing an underbelly of shame, fear and judgement that persists around women with talent, power, money, sex appeal and/or wild dispositions (perhaps all of the above?) that don’t fit into a pre-packaged ideal. We love to watch these women fall from grace – but maybe grace was never their goal in the first place. So join us on this wild ride and learn some new catch phrases.”
Bennett adds: “With the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in mind, we’re dedicating the fifth season of The C-Word to any person with a uterus who wants an abortion, but who is currently unable to access one without the generous support of groups like NNAF. We hope our listeners will take a moment to contribute through our donations page, for which Luminary will match up to $10,000.” She continues, “We’ve been robbed of the power to choose what happens inside of our own uteruses, and yet the nuanced science of women’s physical, mental, and sexual health has remained largely ignored by the same people who control our reproductive systems. We have to ask: who’s crazy now?”
Listeners can find Season 5 of The C-Word on luminary.link/cword
Lena Dunham is an actor, writer, director, producer, and philanthropist. She starred in and served as executive producer, writer, and director for HBO’s hit series GIRLS, which aired for six critically acclaimed seasons. She has been nominated for eight Emmy Awards and has won two Golden Globes, including Best Actress for her work on GIRLS. An accomplished author, Dunham’s book of personal essays, Not That Kind of Girl, was published by Random House in September 2014 and was a #1 NY Times bestseller. She is also a frequent contributor to The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Vogue, and later this month she is debuting her new film that she wrote and directed – Catherine Called Birdy.
In 2013, Dunham made history as the first woman to win a DGA award in the Best TV Comedy Director category. In 2010, she won an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay for her feature “Tiny Furniture,” which she also starred in and directed.
Dunham graduated from Oberlin College in 2008. In 2019, Dunham founded Good Thing Going Productions, an artist-driven media company in love with noisy voices.
Alissa Bennett is the author of the twice yearly zine Dead is Better, which investigates the relationship between our attraction to the lurid underbelly of popular culture and our own personal experiences. Her essays typically combine memoir, cultural criticism, and true crime as a means of examining the parallels between our own lives and the lives of infamous strangers. Her research revolves around instances of digital cultural "excess," such as fan message boards, comments sections, and social media. Bennett lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Pineapple Street Studios was founded in 2016 in Brooklyn, NY, with a clear, simple mission in mind: work with the most interesting and ambitious creative and corporate partners to create the highest quality audio stories in a variety of forms and across a range of genres. We take pride in our flexible approach to partnerships and we strive to make shows that represent a diversity of ideas, communities, and interests.
Luminary is the subscription podcast network with an award-winning lineup of original shows you won’t find anywhere else. Subscribers enjoy unlimited access to the full collection of Luminary Original shows, featuring celebrated creators, diverse voices, and important stories told through a new lens from creators like Dave Chappelle, Roxane Gay, Russell Brand, Lena Dunham, Guy Raz, yasiin bey, Talib Kweli, and Glynn Washington. You can find Luminary’s original content via the Luminary app, available on iOS, Android, and the web, and on Apple Podcasts Luminary channel. Driven by a love for podcasts, Luminary was founded by Matt Sacks in 2018 with a vision to elevate the podcasting experience for both listeners and creators. Key Luminary investors include Dave Chappelle, Richard Plepler, and NEA, a global venture capital fund. Luminary offers an annual subscription for $34.99, or the equivalent of about $2.99 per month. Luminary also offers a monthly subscription for $4.99. International pricing is similar to US pricing, with annual and monthly plans available in each territory. For more information about Luminary, follow @hearluminary.
