Ethically Questionable

This week's news cycle had it all, and Jamila and Jenn are not holding back. First up: CFDA CEO Steve Kolb's shocking physical altercation with PETA protesters at a COS runway show, caught on camera and now under investigation. Then, adult content creator Lily Phillips teams up with Yellow Dot Studios (the team behind Don't Look Up) on a provocative climate change campaign that's turning heads for all the right reasons. Next, Sydney Sweeney's baffling ad for sports betting company Novig has the internet asking who is advising her, and what it means for women's sports at a moment when female athletes are finally getting their due. Finally, the Ed Sheeran and Macklemore tour fallout: a timeline of what actually happened when Macklemore said "free Palestine" onstage, and why staying silent might be its own kind of statement.Four stories, one big question: when you have a platform, what do you do with it?Electrified by Polestar Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why "Polyester" Became an Insult (And Why Brands Are Still Making More of It)Shayeza Walid, sustainability journalist at The Business of FashionPolyester turned into a slur online this year. Teenagers use it to mean cheap, plastic, fake, and people now read clothing labels the way they read ingredients lists. So the obvious question is whether any of that hatred has changed what the industry actually makes. It has not. Shayeza Walid, who covers sustainability at The Business of Fashion, brings Jamila the numbers: fashion's carbon emissions rose 14 percent in a single year, and rising polyester production was one of the reasons why. From there the conversation goes somewhere more uncomfortable than material swaps, into why a brand can print organic cotton on every label while hiding the only figure that matters, why the $800 sustainable sweater wrecked the whole movement, and why a working journalist says she does not trust certifications 80 percent of the time. If you have ever stood in a shop trying to work out whether you are the problem, this one is for you.About the guestShayeza Walid is Senior Editorial Associate covering sustainability at The Business of Fashion, based in London, where she reports on fashion's environmental impact, climate accountability, supply chains and labour. She writes BoF's sustainability newsletter, The Frayed Edge. Before BoF she was a contributing reporter at The New York Times covering South Asia, and contributed to Variety, Esquire and Screen International. She holds a masters from Columbia Journalism School.What you will learnWhy fashion's carbon emissions rose 14 percent from 2023 to 2024 while every brand was announcing climate targetsWhy hating polyester online has not reduced how much of it gets produced, and what actually wouldThe reason a sustainability journalist does not trust certifications about 80 percent of the timeWhy scale is the one number a brand can hide behind a conscious collection, and what to look at insteadHow the $800 regenerative sweater narrative made sustainability feel like a class marker and pushed people away from itWhy durability is a better metric than material makeup, using Patagonia's heavy polyester use as the exampleWhat the new French anti fast fashion levy and the incoming EU green claims rule will and will not fixWhy recycled polyester is a genuinely good idea that still fails the Global SouthNotable quotes"Scale is the one thing that's very easy to kind of hide when you're marketing your brand." Shayeza Walid"One polyester sweater that lasts 15 years is better than somebody buying 15 organic cotton sweaters every season." Jamila Brown"The average person can't afford the $800 sweater." Shayeza Walid"I don't trust certifications about 80 percent of the time." Shayeza Walid"Regulation doesn't change the motivation or the incentive of why corporations work, which is profit." Shayeza WalidResources mentionedThe Business of Fashion, and Shayeza's sustainability newsletter The Frayed EdgeThe Apparel Impact Institute, whose 2024 data showed the 14 percent emissions riseFrance's anti fast fashion law, in force from 1 September, levying Shein and TemuThe incoming EU green claims regulation on misleading sustainability marketingOshadi, the South India brand that owns its own farms, and Kotn, the Canadian Egyptian cotton brand working directly with Egyptian farmsBrands discussed: Shein, Temu, H&M, Zara, Mango, Primark, Patagonia, Stella McCartney, Another Tomorrow, Everlane, Abercrombie & Fitch, American Apparel, Gap, MadewellCollaborations discussed: Stella McCartney x H&M, H&M x Elie Saab, Coach x Penguin book charms, Jonathan Anderson's Dior book totesConnect with Shayeza WalidInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/shayeza_/Newsletter: The Frayed Edge at The Business of FashionConnect with Ethically QuestionableYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EthicallyQuestionablePodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ethicallyquestionable/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This year's heatwaves have produced what English wine growers are calling a genuine vintage year for sparkling wine, and that's not a coincidence. Jamila and Jenn get into three reports that landed this week and what they add up to. The UN's new Limiting Overshoot report says the world is on track to blow past 1.5°C, likely reaching 1.8°C or higher under current policies, and lays out what actually has to happen to bring warming back down once we overshoot it. Copernicus confirmed August 2026 as the joint-hottest month ever recorded globally, tied with July 2023, with ocean temperatures at their highest August level on record, alongside the human cost of a hotter world, including this year's glacial flooding disaster in Nepal. And The Earthshot Prize and the University of Exeter released a more hopeful counterpoint, "The Tipping Points Playbook," mapping five areas where climate solutions could hit a point where they become cheap, accessible and self-sustaining if the conditions are right.Jamila and Jenn talk through why a great wine harvest and a terrible barley harvest are the same story, why clean energy is closest to its tipping point in the UK, and what a good vintage really costs.Some questions we get into:What "overshooting" 1.5°C actually means for the next decade, not just the headline numberWhy carbon removal keeps getting sold as a fix it isn'tWhat has to be true for a climate solution to go from niche to mainstreamWhether we can toast a good vintage and reckon with a bad summer in the same breath Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Jamila and Jenn look at two very different "cancellations" making headlines right now. The Met Gala had to scrap a planned museum exhibition honoring designer John Galliano after backlash over antisemitic remarks he made back in 2011, remarks serious enough that a French court actually convicted him for them. Meanwhile, Washington Post opinion columnist Karen Attiah was fired within 24 hours of a single post about Charlie Kirk, only for an arbitrator to rule a year later that the firing was unlawful and order her reinstated with full backpay. Same news cycle, same word getting thrown around, but two stories that raise pretty different questions. Does everyone get a path back, and should they? Where's the line between accountability and overreaction? And is "cancel culture" even the right term for either of these? Jamila and Jenn break it down.Electrified by Polestar! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gen Z has a new insult and it is savage. This week Jamila and Jenn break down "polyester," the TikTok slang word taking over from "larp" to call something fake, janky, and low effort. Except it turns out the word did not come out of nowhere. Its a direct analogy to the actual fabric. Tune in as we trace how a fiber that was once sold to 1950s housewives as a wrinkle free miracle became such an insult that Gen Z is now using its name as a diss. We also get into the linguistic term for why this happens (semantic pejoration, try saying that three times fast), the case of "Karen" basically vanishing from birth certificates since 2017, and whether TikTok slang might be doing more to change how people shop than a decade of brand messaging ever did. Naturally we try to invent the next viral insults themselves: "emissions queen" (it backfires, sounds aspirational), "farmed salmon" as shorthand for anything cheap and gross, and "renewable" as an actual compliment. Consider this your homework: start using them immediately. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.