Libsyn Directory

Hey White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady & White Woman Whisperer | 54 | White Rapture Day

Release Date: 10/23/2025

Hey White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady & White Woman Whisperer | 58 | Puritan Whiteness

Hey White Women

This episode is a wide-ranging conversation between Daniella and Rebecca about the everyday and systemic ways whiteness shapes culture, identity, and behavior. They discuss how beauty standards, camera technology, tanning culture, and even small tech features like autocapitalization reflect racial bias. A major theme is how white women often derail or center themselves in conversations about race, sometimes unintentionally, through whitesplaining or over-explaining. They explore beauty labor, the politics of hair and appearance, and how the same practices (such as time-consuming beauty...

Hey White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady & White Woman Whisperer | 57 | Who's Speaking Matters

Hey White Women

This episode features a deep, nuanced conversation between Daniella Mestyanek Young and Rebecca about whiteness, power, community, cultural disconnection, and the complicated dynamics of speaking about social issues publicly. They explore how race, gender, and perceived authority shape who is “allowed” to say what, and how society reacts differently depending on the identity of the speaker. Their discussion spans topics such as the weaponization of “niceness,” internal policing within white communities, the loss of joy in white American culture, the effects of cult-like systems,...

Hey White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady & White Woman Whisperer | 56 | Enablism

Hey White Women

In this wide-ranging and incisive conversation, Daniella Mestyanek Young and Rebecca (White Woman Whisperer) examine how white womanhood functions within patriarchal and white supremacist systems. They discuss cultural habits like performative complaining, body-shaming as small talk, and the defense of harmful relationships as coping mechanisms inherited from historical gender norms. The two connect these behaviors to broader enablism within oppressive systems, drawing parallels between interpersonal and systemic patterns of abuse. They explore the emotional labor of deconstruction—how...

Hey White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady & White Woman Whisperer | 55 | Weaponizing Whiteness

Hey White Women

In this episode, Daniella Mestyanek Young (Knitting Cult Lady) and Rebecca (White Woman Whisperer) unpack the process of recording the audiobook version of Daniella’s upcoming book and explore how their collaboration reflects deeper dynamics of race, privilege, and creative responsibility. They discuss rejecting the “easy” or most cost-effective route in favor of ethical decisions that honor Black voices and resist capitalist shortcuts. The conversation then broadens into weaponizing whiteness for good—how white women can leverage social privilege to confront injustice—and the...

Hey White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady & White Woman Whisperer | 54 | White Rapture Day

Hey White Women

Rebecca (White Woman Whisperer) and Daniella (“Knitting Cult Lady”) explore how white American culture is shaped by control, conformity, and suppression of individuality—from the witch trials to modern social norms. They connect white supremacy’s emphasis on stoicism and sameness to military culture, patriarchal family structures, beauty standards, and cult dynamics. Their conversation also unpacks the social coding of “whiteness” as denial of self, contrasting it with cultures where expression, emotion, and difference are normalized. The episode concludes with reflections on...

Hey White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady & White Woman Whisperer | 53 | It Can Be That Easy

Hey White Women

In this episode, Daniella (“Knitting Cult Lady”) and Rebecca (“White Woman Whisperer”) have a deep, layered conversation about deconstructing whiteness, celebrity culture, and over-identification through the lens of Taylor Swift. Daniella shares her personal process of deconstructing her identity as a lifelong Swiftie and connecting it to her broader work dismantling white womanhood and American cultic structures. Rebecca brings in a critical Black feminist lens, exploring the difference between individualism and community, white women’s relationship to innocence and denial, and how...

Hey White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady & White Woman Whisperer | ep52 | Consumer Privilege

Hey White Women

In this episode, Rebecca and Daniella explore the intersections of race, consumer privilege, tone policing, and digital labor—particularly how these dynamics play out for women of color online. Rebecca revisits her viral “caption gate” controversy, unpacking how white women often use moralized accessibility language (“just add captions”) as a covert way to assert dominance and demand labor. The two also dissect the cultural discomfort around Black women expressing anger, the dehumanizing expectations placed on female creators, and the myth that public educators or creators owe...

Hey White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady and White Woman Whisperer | ep51 | White Woman Tears

Hey White Women

This episode features Daniella (“Knitting Cult Lady”) and Rebecca (the “White Woman Whisperer”) unpacking themes of violence, privilege, whiteness, cult dynamics, and the demands placed on public figures to perform morality online. They reflect on recent events, including reactions to political violence and how white Americans process (or avoid processing) martyrdom, policing, and systemic violence. The conversation critiques the idea that “violence is never the answer” as a privileged stance, explores how audiences police creators’ responses to current events, and discusses the...

White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady & White Woman Whisperer | ep50 | Paradox of Proving Yourself

Hey White Women

In this conversation, Daniella Mestyanek Young (“Knitting Cult Lady”) and Rebecca (aka “White Woman Whisperer”) explore how cult dynamics show up in the U.S. military, publishing, and everyday systems of power. Daniella shares insights from her forthcoming book Culting of America, reflecting on the accessibility of ideas across mediums (books, documentaries, TikTok), and the challenges of being taken seriously while calling the military a cult. The discussion ranges from personal deconstruction journeys, the paradox of proving oneself, and the caste-like structures of whiteness, to...

Hey White Women w/ Knitting Cult Lady and White Woman Whisperer | ep49 | Un-Gaslighting Whiteness

Hey White Women

This episode brings Daniella Mestyanek Young and Rebecca into a candid conversation about cult dynamics, purity culture, whiteness, and the process of building communities rooted in truth rather than secrecy or shame. They unpack how cult logic—like the weaponization of secrets, unquestioned authority, and worship of the written word—maps onto broader systems like white supremacy and American culture. Daniella reflects on her work writing Uncultured and her upcoming projects, highlighting how her extreme experiences serve as an entry point for others to recognize parallels in their own...

More Episodes

Connect with Daniella at:

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Preorder for Culting of America: The Culting of America PRE-SALE (SHIPS BY JANUARY 20, 2026) – Knitting Cult Lady

Uncultured by Daniella Mestyanek Young

Key Takeaways:

The fear of standing out in white culture traces back to witch trials and remains embedded in social norms.
White supremacy and patriarchy teach emotional repression as moral strength.
The military and corporate systems reinforce conformity and replaceability over individuality.
“Non-practicing white” fails as a concept because whiteness itself is an imposed norm that denies difference.
Beauty standards valorize proximity to whiteness while extracting ethnic features.
Cultural evangelism—needing others to adopt your way of life—comes from fear of isolation within whiteness.
Self-care and emotional expression are forms of resistance against white patriarchal conditioning.
Dance and communal expression highlight how joy is systemically stripped from white cultural spaces.
True cultural integration requires curiosity and humility, not performance or token participation.
Reclaiming identity means finding safety in individuality rather than sameness.

Chapters

00:00 Rapture and Cultural Identity

03:56 Beauty Standards and Societal Expectations

07:17 Emotional Expression and Leadership

09:54 Racial Identity and Perceptions

12:42 Self-Care and Societal Pressures

15:39 The Rapture and Right Supremacy

24:43 Navigating Personal Interests and Social Expectations

26:24 The Cult of Corporate America

28:19 Batch Living and Shared Experiences

30:20 The Power of Storytelling and Relatability

33:14 Challenging the Narrative of Relatability

36:45 The Pressure to Conform and Evangelize

39:06 The Legacy of Witch Trials and Individuality

43:15 Identity, Attractiveness, and Societal Expectations

48:37 Cultural Expressions and Dance

51:03 The Boredom of White Parties

54:02 Navigating Cultural Spaces

57:59 Visible Identity and Acceptance

01:00:53 Cultural Appropriation vs. Inspiration

01:03:56 Compliments and Objectification

01:07:22 Stress Tolerance and Cultural Context

01:12:12 Consequences of Cultural Advocacy

01:13:52 Understanding Privilege and Awareness

01:16:37 The Burden of Whiteness

01:19:27 The Power of Survivor Voices

01:22:18 Living in the Present

01:26:18 The Illusion of Control and Crisis Management

Produced by Haley Phillips

TOPICS