This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest subscriber podcast was about the ANTM doc and the “Tell Me Lies” series finale. Conversations about “Wuthering Heights” and “Bridgerton” Part 2 are coming soon!

Over on Love To See It, we’re covering “The Traitors” S4 and “Love Is Blind” S10!

Today’s newsletter is brought to you by MERIT.

Claire has been reading… 📖

I’ve still been trying to chip away at “Wuthering Heights” – highly recommend chasing the movie with the book, which is a much richer and freakier text – as well as taking in some of the reviews and critical discourse around the film. (I really enjoyed Defector’s review, with a deep cut Onion reference in the hed.)

My kindergartner has suddenly leapt from practicing phonics to reading stories, which I know is due to his teachers but feels to me like magic. He’s been practicing with Amelia Bedelia books, and we take turns reading them to each other; he is delighted by all the same goofy Amelia Bedelia misunderstandings that delighted me thirty years ago.

Emma has been reading… 📖

I loved E. Alex Jung’s New York Magazine cover story, “Girls Who Love Boys Who Love Boys.” Of course the story starts with “Heated Rivalry” mania. (As Jung writes, “The sight of Shane and Ilya kissing had awakened a libidinal desire in many women, both heterosexual and queer, like an army of sleeper-cell agents hungry for more.”) But the piece goes deeper, tracing the history of slash fiction and M/M romance stories in general, as well as looking at how “Heated Rivalry” author Rachel Reid game to the genre herself. Plus… the actual cover is unbelievably excellent.

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Claire has been watching… 📺

Women’s figure-skating!!!! It’s a cliché, but watching the women’s free-skate last week healed something in me. I have spent the better part of my life trying to figure out how to break free of the anxious A-student mentality; I burn mental and emotional energy worrying about failure, about wasting my potential, about not measuring up to other people. To see Alysa Liu skating not just cleanly but joyfully, unafraid, unconcerned with the outcome, was an inspiration. And sure, she won the gold medal. But I would tell any other skater there – like poor Amber Glenn, who looked like she wanted to vomit during half of her skates – that they should be proud of their performances regardless of whether they won gold. Alysa was the only one who skated like she already believed that. Maybe I need a smiley piercing or a gap year going to UCLA to have that mindset, or maybe it’s impossible. But I was moved! I was also moved by seeing the women on and off the podium supporting and protecting each other, even in their disappointment. Their ambition existed alongside their capacity for mutual care, rather than canceling it out. It was the most genuinely feel-good moment I watched this Olympics. I just love to see woke bitches winning!

I’ve also started to get into the latest season of “Summer House.” I’m finding Carl fairly likable for the first time since I started watching, and I’m unfortunately gripped by the West and Ciara will-they-won’t-they. But this season is about Kyle and Amanda’s impending separation, and while I’ve been rooting for her liberation day since I started watching the show, it’s miserable watching how they speak to each other in the opening episodes of the season. Kyle’s tantrums, and his contempt for Amanda, turn my stomach. Please, let this marriage end mercifully quickly.

Emma has been watching… 📺

Like Claire, I too have been enthralled by the absolute pure joy in Alyssa Liu and Amber Glenn’s figure skating. Of course, I’ve watched Liu’s gold medal-winning performance approximately one million times, but there’s a specific freedom on display in Team USA’s exhibition gala skates. No medals on the line, just pure art and love for the sport. (I mean… if you don’t smile watching Glenn cantilever, are you dead inside??)

I’ve also been watching a whole lot of “Love Is Blind” and “The Traitors” for podcasting purposes, as well as fun — and rage-inducement in the case of LIB. And I’ve been dipping into the screeners for the forthcoming season of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.” 👀 👀 👀 Those ladies are truly reality television STARS.

This segment is sponsored by MERIT:

As you all know by now, we are MERIT stans. If our faces are looking fresh and glowy, there’s about a 99% chance that it’s because of MERIT’s minimalist beauty products. And because we are very busy podcasters & newsletter writers (and Claire has two human children to care for on a daily basis), we love that our MERIT routines can be done in under 5 minutes! Plus, we were so excited to add Merit’s new Signature Lip Blushes into our routines.

Claire:

Since having kids, I’ve been drawn to the idea of having a uniform. I have a summer uniform (a sundress and huaraches), and I have a winter uniform (barrel jeans and a wool pullover). Time is of the essence, when my toddler could be dipping handfuls of Kleenex into my water glass and wringing them out on the floor next to my bed, and decisions must be kept to a minimum. But my year-round uniform is Merit. It never takes long to put on, but I always feel ready for any occasion once the face is complete. I start with a blurring, glowy coat of the Uniform tinted sunscreen, then add as many or as few products as the occasion calls for. My new obsession is the Lip Blush, a feather-light, velvety matte lip color that goes on easily and wears well. I have been wearing the limited edition Maxwell shade for months, and was thrilled to see new shades added to the core collection. The surprise for me was Gamay, a gorgeous sheer bordeaux that goes on more subtly than I expected and doesn’t overpower my look, but my everyday pick is Bespoke, a rosy brown that looks like my lips with a little extra oomph.

Emma:

I’ve written before about the struggles of being a woman in her late 30s who regularly has to deal with adult acne. But one thing that makes that struggle feel more manageable is that my MERIT products effectively even out my skin tone and cover my red spots, while still being safe for sensitive skin. The Minimalist Complexion Stick (Chiffon) is honestly my hero product. I use it every day, can blend it with my fingers, and it seamlessly covers my dark circles and acne scars without looking unnatural. On really busy days I’ll pair The Minimalist with a swipe of the Flush Balm (Archival) across my cheeks, some Clean Lash to lengthen my eyelashes and make my eyes look alive, and a dash of Lip Blush (Archival) and Shade Slick (Twin Set) on my lips. And voila! I look alive, awake, alert enthusiastic!

Use our link to shop up to 15% off sets! Plus, you get a cutie MERIT Signature Bag (pictured above) free with your first order!

Claire has been listening to… 🎧

Desperately Seeking Sjowgren, the latest episode of Hyperfixed, which uncovers the very human identities of an anonymous indie band some fans had begun to suspect was AI. It’s a charming episode, though it seems like the answer wasn’t terribly hard to find once a journalist actually looked for it. Perhaps I’m simply drawn to stories about indie bands, since this was the defining musical genre of my coming-of-age. Sjowgren has the sunny indie-pop sound that was catnip to me as a young adult, and I realized quickly that I had heard and enjoyed their first hit single, “Seventeen,” dozens of times without ever hearing the band’s name. Since they are confirmed Not AI, I will continue to listen.

But I’ve also been listening to Charlie XCX “Chains of Love,” which had a much more profound effect on me than the movie it was written for. Was it worth it to make Emerald Fennell’s ““““Wuthering Heights,”””” just so I could have this pleasurable earworm stuck in my head?

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

The latest bonus episode of If Books Could Kill, in which Michael and Peter break down the “Epstein is a moral panic” discourse. TLDR: If you’re more concerned with the mass anger about a group of uber-wealthy sexual exploiters and less concerned with the uber-wealthy sexual exploiters… you might be the problem?

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

A 2026 planner, despite being almost 1/6th of the way through the year already. I tried relying solely on Google Calendar, but my brain demands a paper planner to manage my workflow, which involves some scheduled meetings and tapings, but also daily and weekly to-do lists that tend to fall into a jumble or get forgotten unless I write them down by hand. I’m always looking for a good spiral-bound one so that it can open completely flat, but since I struck out, I went with another Leuchtturm1917 planner. It has a Moleskine-style hard binding and elastic closure, good weekly layouts with plenty of space for all of my to-do notes, and a striped ribbon bookmark that brings me joy.

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

Adam and I are supposed to be going to Mexico in two weeks (luckily, not Jalisco state), so I’ve been on the hunt for a new one-piece swimsuit. I’ve heard amazing things about the one-size Hunza G crinkly fabric, but I don’t love the price point, so like any good millennial online shopper I’ve been looking for styles that are on sale on various websites. SSENSE seems to have some good options, so I’m ordering this simple black suit to try, as well as this thicker-strapped orange one. (I’ll absolutely be returning whichever one I like less.)

I’ve also been spending quite a lot of time working from bed the last few days — #blizzardlife — which motivated me to finally swap out our sham covers for these Dusty Olive quilted linen ones from Quince. I’ve sworn by Quince’s white linen sheets for years, so I'm not surprised that I’m just as into the sham covers.

Claire has been making… 🧶

Snowstorm weekend treats for the family! The day starts with a lazy version of a big weekend breakfast (pancakes from a box mix, oven-baked bacon). In the afternoon, we bake a pan of chocolate chip banana bread (my kindergartner deigns to visit the kitchen only briefly to crack the eggs, while my eager toddler helps to dump in ingredients and stir). For dinner, a sheet-pan concoction (chicken thighs in a quick olive oil, lemon juice, mustard, honey, and herbes de Provence marinade, or this mouthwatering gnocchi recipe, to which I always add torn chunks of sausage).

Emma has been making… 🧶

Alison Roman’s Goodbye Meatballs for hearty blizzard sustenance. I swapped out full-fat ricotta for 4% milk fat cottage cheese — and accidentally bought chopped canned tomatoes instead of crushed — but the meatballs still turned out great! We served them over some penne, and I also made a side salad of peppers, cherry tomatoes and cucumbers with a simple vinaigrette. An absolutely delicious meal, and it left us with enough extra food for lunch the next day.

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Also — if you buy something through one of our links, we or our guest authors may earn an affiliate commission, at no cost to you. We recommend only products we genuinely love, enjoy and would spend our own money on!

This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest subscriber podcasts were about the labor politics of “Bridgerton” S4 Part 1, and “bad moms” with author Ej Dickson. Conversations about the ANTM doc, the “Tell Me Lies” series finale, and “Wuthering Heights” (2026) are coming soon!

Over on Love To See It, we’re covering “The Traitors” S4 and “Love Is Blind” S10!

Claire has been reading… 📖

“Wuthering Heights” (1847) – you know, the one by Emily Brontë. Taking in the “Wuthering Heights” (2026) critical discourse reawakened me to the fact that I hadn’t reread it since college, and I had actually forgotten almost everything, except for the parts that Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” (1978) kept fresh in my mind. (You know: the moors, love and hate, Heathcliff, Cathy is cold and wants to come in the window, etc.) Reading it as a 37-year-old is notably different than reading it as a hormonal teenager, but so far it is in keeping with my vague recollection that it was more horrifying than romantic. I’m only a few chapters in, but hoping to finish this week so we can really dig into “Wuthering Heights” (2026) in the coming days.

To my kids, I’ve been reading perhaps the funniest children’s picture book I’ve ever encountered: “Now Open the Box,” by Dorothy Kunhardt. I found this during the move, buried somewhere in our chaotic bookshelves, and I assume I found it in the book mail at HuffPost back in the day. Kunhardt was a children’s book author best known for “Pat the Bunny,” and NYRB reissued this story, about a teeny weeny dog who lives at a circus, in 2013. It is not unproblematic in its depictions of circus performers, though my kindergartner and I had a very productive conversation about these representations. The story is told in a breathless, silly rush of words, much like a child who can barely pause for a breath between thoughts, and it has me and both the kids laughing the entire time.

Emma has been reading… 📖

Belle Burden’s “Strangers,” which I realize I’m super late to, but have been enthralled by nonetheless. Burden, a Harvard-educated lawyer and the descendent of New York City socialites, chronicles the abrupt ending of her decades-long marriage. In the earliest stages of Covid, Burden receives the voicemail from a man who tells her that her husband is having an affair with his wife. Her seemingly steady hedge-funder husband suddenly announces that he is done with their marriage and their children and the life they have built together: “I thought I was happy but I’m not,” he says. “I thought I wanted our life but I don’t.”

What unfolds is a domestic horror story of sorts — a chilling tale of what it looks like when a person you believed you loved and could count on suddenly flips a switch and becomes a stranger. (It’s also a good reminder that even the most privileged of women can be made incredibly vulnerable when they leave the workforce and don’t adequately protect their financial interests from their male partners.)

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Claire has been watching… 📺

“Wuthering Heights” (2026), the Emerald Fennell cinematic riff on Brontë’s original source material. I took myself out for a rare movie night on Sunday, even treating myself to a Snickers milkshake – which, in retrospect, felt pretty weird to be slurping down during the stylized high melodrama that played out before me. I have not seen “Promising Young Woman” or “Saltburn,” so I wasn’t sure what to expect from Fennell’s vision, but the word that keeps coming up for me is “lurid.”

The movie is visually stunning, and she clearly has a knack for striking and evocative images. The moors, and Wuthering Heights itself, are as ominous through her lens as any haunted house in a horror flick, and every scene is scored by a relentless howling gale (not to mention some pulsating Charlie XCX). It’s a vibe! But I’m still processing my thoughts on what she chose to include, reframe, or excise from the narrative, which seems transformed into a more straightforward romantic tragedy than Brontë’s Gothic tale.

Emma has been watching… 📺

After watching the first three episodes of “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette,” I can say that I am officially riveted by the FX/Hulu depiction of this doomed, utterly American love story. It’s also making me deeply wistful for a version of New York City I never got to know. I suspect that the way I feel about social-media-free, iPhone-free ‘90s New York the way that Gen Z feels about living in Williamsburg during the early 2010s and working in digital media.

I also immediately dove into Netflix’s new ANTM doc, “Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model.” And oooh boy, was it a devastating watch. I thought that the filmmakers did a really good job of tracing the potentially transgressive roots of ANTM; the ways in which creator Tyra Banks may truly have been trying to push back against the racism and fatphobia in the modeling industry that she herself had experienced for years. But intent and impact are not the same, and what becomes very clear over the course of the three part docu-series is that the show ended up reifying many of the very structures that it intended to dismantle. And in the process, caused real harm to many of the young, vulnerable women who came through the show’s revolving door. (We’ll hopefully be talking more about the doc on a future episode of the Rich Text podcast.)

Claire has been listening to… 🎧

Nothing new this week!

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

I loved Maintenance Phase’s dive into the dark history of Metabolife, an ephedra-based dietary supplement that was used for weight loss during the 1990s into the early aughts. It led to MANY adverse health effects, and ultimately led to the FDA banning all ephedra-based supplements in 2004. (But honestly I’d listen to Michael and Aubrey talk about anything.)

I’ve also been getting a kick out of this utterly delightful TRL 1996-2005 playlist that my friend Amanda sent to our group chat! Who doesn’t love some good quality millennial nostalgia music?

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

More Everlane pants! I have been wearing the same two pairs of jeans all winter – the only pairs I own that aren’t one size too small – and a sale this past weekend enticed me to go for a third. In pursuit of the perfect wide- or barrel-leg pants to add to the rotation, I ended up trying out quite a few: the Everywhere Pant, the Seamed Balloon Pant, the Barrel Utility Pant.

While those were all pretty nice, I ended up keeping the Way-High Curve Jean in bitter chocolate (brown denim?? I’m finally ready for this style moment) and the Way-High Utility Jean. I still love their way-high cuts, which nip me in at just the right place, don’t ride down, and don’t gap at the waist. And I have doubled my hard pants collection! Big week for me.

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

Madewell kindly sent me this perfectly-sized slouchy shoulder bag, but otherwise I’ve been very much shopping my closet. A fun new accessory always makes the endeavor more fun, so this week I’ve been pairing the spring-colored bag — I have it in Serene Blue suede — with classic winter pieces I’ve had for years, like a simple cashmere quarter-zip and this leather blazer. (The latter is easily one of my most-worn items of clothing ever. Truly works in every season but the dead of summer.)

Claire has been making… 🧶

Another easy, kid-friendly dinner my children rejected: a meatball, Boursin and spinach orzo dump-and-bake. We got a giant sack of frozen meatballs and everything! All is ashes; life is a morass of futility. Aside from the fresh spinach, this was essentially a pantry meal, and super quick to throw in the oven after picking the kids up. If only they were willing to eat it. (Greg was a fan, though I think it would have been improved by the recipe’s recommended sun-dried tomatoes, which I didn’t have on hand.)

Emma has been making… 🧶

An easy salmon dinner, broiled in my beloved Wonder Oven! (Yes, I remain a stan of this adult Easy Bake Oven.) I marinated a cut of salmon for ~15 minutes in a mixture of peanut oil, mirin, soy sauce, minced garlic, honey and red pepper flakes. I then broiled the salmon at 400 degrees for 10 minutes, leaving the excess marinade in the bowl, and then added the rest of the marinade to the top of the salmon and let it broil for an additional 6 minutes. And it honestly was perfect!!! We paired the fish with steamed asparagus topped with lemon juice, olive oil and sea salt, and some air-fried plantains. The best part was that the whole thing made such minimal mess than Adam spent the whole evening referring to it as “mess-free dinner,” which really just meant that there were fewer dishes for us to do afterwards.

(Also — and I swear this is completely unrelated to me sharing this meal in the newsletter — Our Place is currently running a 20% off sale on the Wonder Oven as well as their pans using the code SaveSecretSale.)

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Also — if you buy something through one of our links, we or our guest authors may earn an affiliate commission, at no cost to you. We recommend only products we genuinely love, enjoy and would spend our own money on!

This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest subscriber podcasts were about the labor politics of “Bridgerton” S4 Part 1, and “bad moms” with author Ej Dickson.

Over on Love To See It, we’re covering “The Traitors” S4 and kicking off our recaps of “Love Is Blind” S10!

Civic challenge of the week:

Consider getting rid of your Ring camera, if you have one! The brand’s warm-and-fuzzy Super Bowl ad about finding a lost dog using their technology has raised alarms for many that these cameras can be, and surely already are, a hugely invasive surveillance network that could easily be used for far more nefarious purposes than finding Fido. (Claire just moved into a home with a pre-installed Ring and is excited to find a good way to uninstall it.)

Claire has been reading… 📖

“The Babies Kept in a Mysterious Los Angeles Mansion,” a New Yorker long-read by Ava Kofman about a wealthy California couple who used gestational surrogates to quickly have dozens of children. It’s a horrifying story, with possible implications for the relatively unregulated state of surrogacy in this country. Kofman starts with the trauma caused to the surrogates, who carried the babies for meaningful but relatively small payment because they wanted to help create a loving family; instead, they come to realize, they’ve carried and bonded with children who might be destined for a life of neglect or worse. She unfurls the bizarre backstory of the couple, who may not even be a couple so much as a wealthy older man with a breeding obsession and his right-hand woman. And she gives a glimpse into the lives their young children were likely leading while under their care. Deeply chilling stuff, especially as someone who is terrified and fascinated by the creepy obsession so many wealthy men seem to have with repopulating the earth with their seed.

While Liam Conejo Ramos was not at the Super Bowl, the widespread speculation that he appeared in Bad Bunny’s half-time show swept a follow-up piece from MPR News into my Bluesky feed: “‘He’s not the same’: Father of Liam Conejo Ramos says 5-year-old continues to suffer.” In an interview, Liam’s father Adrian Conejo Arias explained that the family is in hiding. “The truth is, we’re very scared,” he said. “He’s not the same boy he was before. Ever since he went in there, he’s suffered psychological trauma; he’s very scared… He can’t sleep well at night. He wakes up three or four times a night screaming, ‘Daddy, Daddy.’” The Trump administration is seeking to deport the family, even after the massive backlash to Liam and his father’s detention. While it may have felt comforting, even triumphant, for many viewers to believe Liam was not only free but happy, being feted onstage at the Super Bowl, the reality is that he is not truly free yet, and his trauma is surely profound and lasting. ICE’s reign of terror continues, and the consequences will last still longer. So the fight continues as well.

Emma has been reading… 📖

I obviously loved Bridget Read’s NYMag cover story, “Under the Mormon Influence,” which explores the dominance of Mormons in pop culture. (As two writers and pop culture commentators who have covered “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” tradwives, “RHOSLC,” and obsessively follow “The Bachelor” franchise which is about to star Mormon momflencer Taylor Frankie Paul… this felt particularly relevant to our interests.) Read positions this current cultural moment within the long legacy of Mormon women monetizing motherhood, and identifies that the biggest winner in all of this newfound publicity — whether the women at the center of it are “good” or “bad” or completely lapsed Mormons — is the LDS Church itself. As Read writes: “The contradicting visions of Mormonism right now are perfectly suited to a country in the middle of an identity crisis. Its sister saints can be feminists or tradwives. They are moving us forward and taking us back. We can be sure that the church will benefit regardless.”

I also started digging into our friend and former colleague Chris Mathias’ new book, “To Catch A Fascist.” It’s a deeply-reported accounting of the dangerous and essential work of antifa (anti-fascist) activists across the country. Although Chris started working on this book years ago — and I can attest to the fact that he has been in this reporting space for much longer — his work has never (unfortunately for all of us) been more timely or urgent. Plus, the book reads much less like an academic treatise and more like a twisty spy novel. And if you don’t trust my assessment, maybe you’ll be convinced by Publishers Weekly, which just gave the book a starred review.

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Claire has been watching… 📺

The Winter Olympics! While it feels odd to be rooting for Team USA at this moment, I’ve been moved by how many athletes have spoken to the press about how concerned they are about the state of the country — despite President Trump singling them out for vicious rants about their traitorousness. I got all the way into the figure-skating team competition this weekend, and even fell in love with ice-dancing, which is sort of the red-headed stepchild of the sport. It’s got an oddly incestuous vibe (most of the pairs seem to be either married or siblings) and the jump-free choreo marks it out as the least daring and athletic of the specialties. But the American pair, Madison Chock and Evan Bates (who, yes, are married) had me absolutely spellbound.

My kindergartner preferred the men’s event, and he has been chattering about the Quad God, Ilia Malinin, and his backflips since Sunday afternoon. (By the way, have we talked about the fact that our star male skater is a mop-haired, uber-confident phenom named Ilia? “Heated Rivalry” winter continues!?)

Emma has been watching… 📺

Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Show performance, basically on repeat since Sunday night. I watched at my dear friend Mariola’s apartment, who grew up in Puerto Rico and threw the loveliest PR-themed Benito Bowl party, complete with baked guava brie, PR flag napkins, and shots of coquito. We “watched” the game, but the group was really there for Bad Bunny. And oh my goodness, he did not disappoint. I danced and teared up and felt true, unbridled joy in a way that I honestly had forgotten I could. So much political and cultural symbolism was embedded within those 13 minutes, from the electrical poles that symbolized the failing electrical grid post-Hurricane Maria, to the light blue Puerto Rican flag, to the workers in the sugar cane fields. The performance was hope and love personified, and made me genuinely proud to be American. “Together, we are America,” indeed.

Claire has been listening to… 🎧

Our special guest on Love to See It last week, Peter Shamshiri of 5-4 and If Books Could Kill! I’ve recommended these two podcasts so many times in this newsletter that it feels wrong not to mention this dream crossover moment. His insights about “The Traitors,” like his insights about the Supreme Court and bad nonfiction books, are top tier.

I’ve also started listening to Bad Bunny, after realizing during the Super Bowl halftime show that I just … don’t think I’ve heard any of his music before. This seems improbable, but the songs just did not sound familiar. I am not immune to insanely catchy beats, however uncool I am, so “Tití Me Preguntó” has been stuck in my head all day. Between this and Kendrick’s performance last year, it’s truly dawning on me that I am indeed the middle-aged mom who is so out of the loop about cool music that am discovering “new” artists through the biggest televised concert of the year. Please don’t listen to me about anything hip ever again.

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

Rachel Lindsay and Van Lathan discuss Chris Harrison’s new “traditional love” dating show on their podcast, Higher Learning. I love listening to Rachel’s commentary about pretty much anything, but especially enjoyed hearing her weigh in on the disgraced former “Bachelor” host’s creepy casting call for people seeking “clear roles” and “faith-based leadership” in the home.

Also, I had to check out our friend ’s new podcast, Clean Countertops! And, predictably, it’s fantastic! Sara brings the sharp insights of her essays into audio form, and truly could an episode about tradwives AND girl bosses be more specifically tailored to my personal interests? I think not.

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

More cozy Uniqlo Heattech leggings, to layer under all of my outfits. The windchill has been well below zero in New Jersey this week, and I’m not fucking around.

We made a big purchase for the house this week: a dining room set to replace the Bob’s Discount Furniture farmhouse-style set we got when we moved in together over a decade ago. It served us well, but its time had come. Not only was the style pretty out of date, the chairs were irreparably wobbly, perhaps because the legs kept splintering apart. We got the Heidi extendable table from Article and the Ulka dining chairs, both in Walnut, and I’m in love. It’s much sleeker than our old setup, which really opens up the dining room visually, while still accommodating the same number of diners. The chairs are super comfortable but light and easy to move around compared to our old clunkers. This may not sound important, but when my kid can pull out his own dining chair unassisted, or when I can quickly move them all to the side to vacuum under the table, it matters!

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

I’ve been trying desperately to put together any outfits that feel not totally schlubby in during this endless-feeling winter, and mostly failing. But I felt pretty good about my Super Bowl-watching fit on Sunday. I paired this gray rollneck cableknit sweater from J. Crew (they have these in a million colors and patterns, and I fear I might need to get a second one in a fun stripe) with my beloved Madewell track pants and this very fun and topical 831 Stories dad hat.

(Obviously layered fleece-lined tights and a long-sleeve tee underneath, because it felt like -12 at one point on Sunday. Truly Arctic shit.) I feel like the pull-on track pants — I recommend sizing up 1 or 2 sizes for comfort if you have any amount of hips — would also look very cute with a half-buttoned cardigan like this cashmere Quince one? I’m really on a soft pants kick as of late, so any ideas for outfit formulas are welcome.

Claire has been making… 🧶

Over the weekend, I made slow-cooker chicken for taco bowls, yet again. It’s really just chicken and jarred taco simmer sauce (I use Somos brand, and it’s good), but it smells delicious bubbling in the Crockpot all day.

Weekday cooking has been a challenge, as we’re trying to settle into our new school/daycare/commute routines. A couple times a week, when Greg is commuting, I’m wrapping up work early to drive over an hour round-trip to get both kids, then get dinner ready. (Parents who both commute to work: How do you survive???) Every time I think I’ve found a hack to get us all fed at a reasonable hour, the kids throw a giant monkey wrench in things by loathing it. Last week, I made cheese tortelloni tossed in vodka sauce, which they both refused to so much as give an exploratory lick. So it’s another round of sheet-pan dinners and spaghetti, I suppose. The quest continues.

Emma has been making… 🧶

Lidey Heuck’s incredibly easy Honey Garlic Shrimp recipe from NYT Cooking! I paired 1 lb. of shrimp with white jasmine rice and a simple salad of baby spinach, pan-fried mushrooms, bell peppers, cucumber and cherry tomatoes. It was honestly a perfect weekday dinner and took me less than an hour to make everything, including a vinaigrette for the salad, and — most importantly — clean it all up.

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This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest subscriber podcasts were about about MAGA pregnancy announcements & “Tell Me Lies,” and about the labor politics of “Bridgerton” S4 Part 1.

Over on Love To See It, we’re continuing our coverage of “The Traitors” S4!

Civic challenge of the week:

Call your reps and demand that they oppose the Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act, which could effectively disenfranchise tens of millions of voters. Also, continue pushing your representatives to do everything they can to defund/abolish/claw back funding from ICE.

Claire has been reading… 📖

Chapter books, to my kids. (Well, my older kid. My younger one just climbs all over me or cradles my face in his hands while I try to see the pages around his enormous head.) The kindergartner is still in the very early stages of reading himself, but he has omnivorous taste when it comes to being read to. Lately he’s been requesting chapters of some of the childhood favorites I have lying around the house — “Anne of Green Gables,” “A Wrinkle in Time,” even my Cinderella adaptations — and it really does feel like the arrival of a new chapter of parenthood, one in which we get to enjoy things together. There are constant questions, but unlike when he was 3 or 4, these move past the repetition of simple facts and into larger conversations about human behavior, science, and history. It also feels like one blessed corner of children’s culture that hasn’t been tainted by gender policing from his peers, who have informed him that unicorns, female pop singers, and “Kpop Demon Hunters” are not for boys. The day I find out he’s been told not to enjoy Anne Shirley’s romantic scrapes anymore will be a dark day indeed.

Emma has been reading… 📖

I’ve been delighting in the across-the-board pans of Eva Braun’s Melania Trump’s new documentary film piece of propaganda, “Melania.” For reasons that should be obvious, I refuse to watch even 30 seconds of one of the most pernicious vanity projects Amazon has ever spent its corporate dollars on. However, I will spend at least a piece of my one precious and wild life reading vicious takedowns of the movie, from all angles.

In the NYTimes, Vanessa Friedman explores the way that the movie functions as an extended, two-hour brand pitch for Brand Melania. (What I’ve gleaned is that her brand is… black, white and vacant.) Sophie Gilbert writes in The Atlantic about the rot at the center of our entertainment infrastructure that the acquisition and rollout of the film expose. (“[‘Melania’ is] a reminder that the richest people in the world are investing in entertainment brands not because they care about art but because the public does, and because all of these vanity projects and capitulations are a way to consolidate their own power and fortune,” she writes.) And over at The Guardian, Xan Brooks does not mince words about the deeply insidious nature of such a piece of alleged art. (“Ratner’s film plays like a gilded trash remake of Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest in which a button-eyed Cinderella points at gold baubles and designer dresses, cunningly distracting us while her husband and his cronies prepare to dismantle the Constitution and asset-strip the federal government.”)

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Claire has been watching… 📺

We’ve been on a bit of a film kick in the past week, here at Chez Claire. Greg wanted to watch Joachim Trier’s latest, “Sentimental Value,” about an aging director (Stellan Skarsgård) who hopes to resuscitate his flailing career and distant relationships with his adult daughters through one brilliant piece of filmmaking. It’s a quiet meditation on the tension — sometimes generative, sometimes destructive — between art and familial devotion, but also on the ways in which history and place shape us and our relationships. Reinate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas are magnetic as the daughters, whose sisterly bond is perhaps the most profound in the movie.

After Catherine O’Hara’s tragic death this week, I was really heartbroken. She was so impeccable in everything she worked on, elevating every role, making every scene — and she was unforgettable in so many of the movies and TV shows that were formative for me: Christopher Guest mockumentaries, “30 Rock,” “Penelope” (one of her excellent turns as a rather bad mother who is nonetheless lovable), “Schitt’s Creek” (ditto). In her honor, we rewatched “Waiting for Guffman,” a movie that hasn’t entirely held up, but in which she is, of course, utter perfection.

Emma has been watching… 📺

Adam and I are still making our way through that Sophie Turner show “Steal,” which is gripping but also incredibly stressful! It’s continuing to be fairly standard thriller stuff, but I like that, so I’m game to finish it. Since it’s the rare show we’re watching together, I have had to resist the urge to watch ahead.

I’ve also been watching a lot of screeners for work purposes! Like the first mega-drop of episodes of “Love Is Blind” season 10, which we’ll be recapping over on Love To See It. No spoilers, obviously, but I am very excited to discuss these episodes after they drop next week. Let’s just say that Ohio is bringing it.

Claire has been listening to… 🎧

The Straight White American Jesus podcast recently published an episode featuring Sarah Moslener, author of “After Purity: Race, Sex, and Religion in White Christian America,” which really dug into the origins and evolution of purity culture in America – and how it was constructed as a way to separate out white women as idealized symbols used to justify racist hierarchies and oppression. In their conversation, cohost Brad Onishi and Moslener discuss how this history contextualizes the recent right-wing outrage at “bad” liberal white women.

Plus, they touch on the emergence of Mar-a-Lago face, which Moslener argues is primarily a signal of compliance. By visibly altering their faces to create exaggerated feminine features, MAGA women are demonstrating, in the most obvious way possible, that they are buying in – and they’re willing to undergo real suffering to conform to the idealized white female archetype that the powerful male leaders of the movement prefer.

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

The first episode of the new season of the “Betrayal” podcast, a show that tells the stories of people — predominantly women — who have experienced horrifying betrayals by those closest to them — predominantly male partners. I think I am drawn to this podcast like a moth to a flame for the same reason that I enjoy TV shows about male serial killers. There’s an irrational feeling that if consume enough content in this genre, perhaps you can inoculate yourself against ever experiencing it. Obviously, that’s not how life actually works. And yet… I am so very gripped by stories like Saskia’s, the woman at the center of this season.

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

A couple GAP sweatsuits, specifically the Vintagesoft wedge sweatshirt and high rise joggers. This cold snap has coincided with us having more space to heat, and PSE&G is truly trying to drive us into penury, so I try to keep the house as frigid as we can stand it. Sweatsuits, layered over Uniqlo Heattech leggings and long-sleeve tees, have been helping me feel tolerably put-together and swaddled. Sometimes I swap the sweatshirt for a wool sweater, like my old Toast Orla rollneck (damn the tariffs for keeping me from ever getting a second color of this perfect piece of knitwear) or a Quince cashmere fisherman pullover; sometimes I throw my big Uniqlo fleece cardigan over everything. Layers matter!

We also needed another layer for our bed, since our thin quilt has not been keeping up with the icy climes this winter. I got the Quince organic airy gauze dream quilt, which is lofty and light but super cozy. The color, mist, is lovely and muted but pulls a little more green than I expected, and I’m not sure it entirely goes with the gray-blue striped quilt we use year-round, so it will probably get rotated to the guest room bed, once we set that up. But it comes in a range of colors, and I’m considering whether terracotta, light gray, or white might harmonize better with our decor.

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

Thanks to ’s shout out in , I found myself perusing the Ann Taylor LOFT site for the first time in about a decade this week. (As Claire can attest, the old HuffPost office used to be directly above a LOFT, so I spent many years running downstairs to purchase sensible shift dresses for last-minute work events, like Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” book party — L O L — at the behest of Arianna Huffington. Thus, I think my associations with the brand remain stuck in 2014.) But turns out, there’s some extremely cute, on-trend well-priced pieces that maybe I need??? This Petite Seamed Barrel Sleeve Button Top looks so nicely constructed and versatile, and is currently 40% off. Same goes for this Striped Cut Out Tie Back Poplin button-up, which looks so similar to the significantly more expensive Simon Miller Loch shirt I bought last year.

Also, Rag & Bone is offering our readers 15% off the whole site for the month of February, using code EMMA15. I’ve personally been living in my various pairs of their sweatpant jeans lately, because they all layer beautifully over fleece-lined tights, they’re incredibly comfortable, and I don’t look like a total schlub in them. (I have this pair of wide-leg pants in faded black, these cool track pants with the green and white stripes, and this plainer pair in the Petra wash. I wear all three weekly.)

Claire has been making… 🧶

Smitten Kitchen’s ultimate banana bread, a weekend co-production with both of my kids – the toddler dumped ingredients, the kindergartner cracked eggs – that turned out flawless. My children were absolutely feral for this banana bread, perhaps because I let them add a healthy pour of mini chocolate chips to the mix. This is the only banana bread recipe I ever use, and I always swear by an 8x8 or 9x9 cake pan instead of a loaf pan. It bakes so quickly and evenly (no persistent reservoir of wet batter under the top), and the shape makes it seem even more like what it really is: a luxurious snacking cake.

I have also been “building” more furniture – a new IKEA play kitchen to replace their previous one, which was accidentally dismembered during the move; another Montessori-style bookshelf to hold their toys – and thus keeping my flat-pack assembly skills honed.

Emma has been making… 🧶

Creamy Lemon Pepper Chickpeas, adapted from Live Eat Learn’s recipe. We’re at the end of our batch of groceries but have a lot going on at night this week, so I didn’t want to buy a whole bunch more produce that would go to waste. Instead, I decided to cobble together dinner from what we had. I had saved this chickpea recipe (I probably came across it on IG?) awhile ago, and realized that I already had most of the ingredients in my pantry/fridge. I swapped out heavy cream for light coconut milk, and swapped mustard powder for fennel seed. And it still worked! We paired the dish with some rice and a salad of spinach, tomato, and air-fried sweet potato.

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Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

Also — if you buy something through one of our links, we or our guest authors may earn an affiliate commission, at no cost to you. We recommend only products we genuinely love, enjoy and would spend our own money on!

This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest subscriber podcast was about the right-wing war on “wine moms” and the “LIB Germany” reunion. An episode about MAGA pregnancy announcements & “Tell Me Lies” is coming soon.

Over on Love To See It, we’re continuing our coverage of “The Traitors” S4!

Reminder to please fill out our reader survey! We’d love your help shaping the the next chapter of Rich Text.

JUST A CUTE READER SURVEY

Civic challenge of the week:

Continue to oppose ICE and help those experiencing the worst of this militarized fascist operation in Minnesota. A few suggestions:

• Call your Senators and demand that they oppose any appropriations bill that includes increased funding for ICE or Border Patrol. Here’s a great sample script that includes tailored scripts for Republican vs. Democrat Senators. 5Calls is also an incredible resource for making calling your reps easy peasy. (Emma has been yelling at Chuck Schumer once a day and it’s been very cathartic! And takes 5 minutes!)

• Donate to any of the organizations listed in this comprehensive Stand With Minnesota directory.

• Also loved these 5 concrete pointers from :

  Leona Waller

  If every American did 3 of these 5 things, ICE would be stopped in its tracks.

  We’ve been watching our government slide towards fascism for the last year. It’s been consistently concerning, but also not quite concerning enough. It’s registered for many people on the level of “I should keep an eye on that” but below “I should put aside other priorities and focus on this…

  Read more

  3 months ago · 6436 likes · 369 comments · Leona Waller

Claire has been reading… 📖

Reports from Minneapolis, and about Minneapolis, which are accounts of unrestrained thuggery by government forces but also of profound courage and solidarity being demonstrated by local residents. I find that I’ve been weeping confused tears whenever I read or see news reports about events on the ground in the Twin Cities, overcome with intermingled horror and admiration.

In Hamilton Nolan’s report from the day of ICU nurse Alex Pretti’s killing at the hands of CBP agents, “Intolerable Things,” he writes that he had planned to take a day off after the Friday strike and protest. He was going to see a basketball game. Instead, more violence, more chaos. And amid it all: “Regular people, decent people, faced with intolerable things. That’s who all of the people that you see on the breathless cable news coverage of these protests are. People at the donut store on Saturday morning watch a man get thrown down and shot. People laying in bed on Saturday morning have to throw open their doors to passersby choking on tear gas. People planning to go out to breakfast end up spending all day standing on icy sidewalks hollering at cops in riot helmets. It’s not as if they signed up for this. This is where they live. The federal government has invaded their city with heavily armed, masked secret police. It would be weird if everyone just carried on going to brunch.”

Kristen Radtke, a writer and the creative director for the Verge, discovered only after viewing footage of Pretti’s murder that the man she had seen being gunned down on a Minneapolis street was her childhood best friend. They had grown up together in Green Bay and were neighborhood playmates, before she moved away. In her essay for the Verge, she recalls him as a child, “an easy playmate: generous, curious, sweet,” a boy who loved mandarin oranges and singing so loudly she could hear his voice from his bedroom window across the street. “There is something destabilizing about having known someone only as a child and then hearing they were gunned down in the street,” she writes. “The person you see in your mind lying in that street is still a child. I’m sure his mother feels that way, too, or she sees him at every age all at once, including those he did not live to see.”

I also read Ben Terris’s reporting on Donald Trump’s health, as told by Trump and his coterie of sycophants. Hearing the litany of bloviating lies and puffery is infuriating – especially the choice to use Stephen Miller’s absurd hed choice, “The Superhuman President” – though the intended irony is clear. Anyway, he doesn’t seem like a well man!

Emma has been reading… 📖

Robert F. Worth’s dispatch from the front lines of the anti-ICE resistance in Minneapolis, “Welcome To The American Winter.” It’s a moving tale of many, many, many everyday people: Somali immigrants, white grandparents, Church leaders, business owners. Many of these people never considered themselves to be particularly politically activated, and yet now find themselves out on the streets protesting their own government in subzero temperatures. “His voice was so thick with emotion that it felt almost as if he were telling a story of religious conversion,” writes Worth of one such protester. “It reminded me again of the Tahrir Square protests in 2011, when so many people seemed to have reached a moral and political turning point.”

I also found this piece in ’s newsletter interesting. She looks at the way that right-wing womanosphere influencers are melting down trying to convince their audiences of conservative Christian women that they shouldn’t have compassion for young children who are being abducted by ICE. Turns out that some people on the right do have a moral line, and ICE’s actions are beginning to cross it.

Number Two Pencil

"Womanosphere" influencers panic as their audiences turn against ICE

As ICE escalates a fatal terror campaign in Minneapolis and across the country, far-right female influencers find themselves increasingly at odds with their own audiences of conservative women…

Read more

3 months ago · 412 likes · 89 comments · Madeline Peltz

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Claire has been watching… 📺

“Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials,” a miniseries adapted from the 1929 Christie novel. Starring Mia McKenna-Bruce as Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent (absolutely top-tier nickname, 10/10), the series follows her investigation into the suspicious deaths of her beau, Gerry Wade, and his colleague at the Foreign Office, Ronny Devereux, who had agreed to help Bundle with the investigation.

It’s been a while since I’ve watched a charming British mystery with period costumes and English aristocrats with absurd names, so it’s really hitting the spot so far.

Emma has been watching… 📺

I remember vividly when 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped from her bedroom in June 2002, probably because I was 14 then too. Her story was splashed across the media for months, especially when, quite miraculously, she was found alive in March 2003. Victims of such media blitzed crimes often become more symbol or caricature than human, which is why I was curious to watch the new Netflix documentary, “Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart.” In it, Smart, now 38, tells her own story. There is something so moving about seeing her, a fully realized adult with kids of her own, narrate her ordeal. I think this was well worth the 90-minute investment.

Adam and I also started watching “Steal,” a new British Prime Video thriller starring Sophie Turner. Turner plays Zara, a trade processor at a London hedge fund who is taken hostage, along with the rest of her office, as a sophisticated group of robbers steals £4 billion from the fund — most of which comes directly from the pensions of working people. The robbery takes place during the first episode, and by the second episode, we learn that Zara is far more entangled in this crime than we initially thought. It’s not revelatory television, but so far it’s a pretty fun ride. And Turner is great!

Claire has been listening to… 🎧

The Lab Detective, a limited series from Tortoise Media that I have been listening to since getting into their current series, The Walkers: The real Salt Path. The series makes for very difficult listening. It’s about mothers who have been convicted of murder after they’ve had multiple young children die without clear cause. A renowned English pediatrician gave testimony in several high-profile cases, advancing the argument that SIDS does not run in families, so two crib deaths in one family is suspicious – and three is almost certainly murder. The series digs into the cases of two women who suffered the sudden deaths of all four of their babies, and who were then smeared and convicted of murder based on little more than circumstance. At the time, some experts were concerned that statistics, along with misogynistic tropes about unnatural mothers, were being misused to convict these women. Later, genetic research discovered that SIDS can run in families, as a result of new genetic mutations that can lead to fatal complications in babies. Some women have been cleared as a result of further genetic testing, including a woman once deemed Australia’s worst serial killer.

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

Ezra Klein’s sobering conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Caitlin Dickerson about exactly what ICE’s military-sized budget (it’s literally larger than the full budget of most militaries around the world!!!!) is being used for, what the administration’s wider policy goals are, and what it all could mean for the future. Dickerson, who has been covering immigration since Trump’s first term, is a perfect guest for this discussion. I can’t say listening made me feel… hopeful or good… but I am now even more informed.

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

A beautiful snake plant from Easy Plant, my first houseplant since I left my ZZ and pothos plants on the fire escape to die of exposure over a decade ago. (I had adopted a nibble-prone cat, who is sadly no longer with us, and almost all houseplants are toxic to cats.) I am now excitedly planning to turn our new home, which has far more corners and crannies than our old apartment, into a verdant bower. The only catch: my lack of a green thumb. The main issue is probably that I’m bad at remembering infrequent, routine tasks, especially around the house, and my plants go unwatered for long stretches.

So I tried out Easy Plant, a company that delivers gorgeous plants in self-watering pots. The snake plant arrived, neatly packaged in mostly recyclable materials, with warming packs to keep it alive in the chill, and it is now ensconced on a dresser in my bedroom. (I also have an Easy Plant and LOVE it!!!!! -Emma)

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

Nothing this week! But since the temperatures have been consistently hovering between 10 and 25 degrees in Brooklyn, and the sidewalks have not been fully cleared since this latest snowstorm, I have been incredibly grateful for the winter essentials I bought over the last few years: cashmere-lined leather gloves, the wool-cashmere bandana I’ve been tying over my head like Strega Nona, and a really good pair of snow boots.

Claire has been making… 🧶

When I saw 15-20 inches of snow on the weather forecast last week, I knew it was time to braise. Last month, we visited my brother’s family for Christmas, and the night we arrived he made pappardelle tossed with braised beef ragu. It was so comforting and hearty, especially after a long day on the wintry road, that it became my new ideal winter dinner. Even my toddler ate a second helping. It turns out my brother used a recipe I had read before: Albert Burneko’s Deadspin blog, “How To Braise A Big Chuck Roast, And Stave Off Scurvy, For Now.” But I had never tried to braise a big chuck roast myself. This was my time! I did encounter some hurdles: the snowstorm preppers at the local ShopRite had already taken the last chuck roast, and I ended up with an alternative roast cut; I didn’t have a big enough Dutch oven, and had to saw my seared roast into two pieces and split the stew into a Crockpot batch and a Dutch oven batch; I splashed searing hot juices onto my hand while trying to shred a not-yet-tender hunk of beef. Ultimately, I prevailed, and we had pappardelle with ragu for dinner three nights in a row. But I took some lessons away for next time: mainly, I’m getting a larger pot.

Emma has been making… 🧶

Andy Baraghani’s Sticky Miso Salmon Bowl from NYT Cooking, which was absolutely fucking delicious! Plus, I put a generous heap of Momofuku chili crisp on top of it all, which really gave the dish an extra kick.

Also, I made a big batch of Alison Roman’s buttered tomato fennel soup for the snowy weekend. I was convinced we had lentils tucked away in our pantry, and then we did not, so I ended up throwing in some barley instead. Not a perfect substitute, but it worked! Plus, the recipe made enough extras for a few lunches this week, which is a real win. I’ve been really craving acidic, tomato-y foods lately, and this soup fit the bill.

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If you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack!

Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

Also — if you buy something through one of our links, we or our guest authors may earn an affiliate commission, at no cost to you. We recommend only products we genuinely love, enjoy and would spend our own money on!

This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest subscriber podcast was about the Ashley Tisdale Mom Group Drama, podcasts at the Golden Globes, and “LIB Germany.” An episode about the right-wing war on “wine moms” and the “LIB Germany” reunion is coming soon.

Over on Love To See It, we’re continuing our coverage of “The Traitors” S4, and diving into what “Heated Rivalry” can teach us about romance.

Civic challenge of the week:

Continue to get loud about what is happening in Minnesota (and the rest of the country), and support vulnerable communities and protesters. A few specific ideas below:

• Donate to mutual aid fund Community Aid Network Minnesota (CANMN). Their Venmo is @CANMN.

• Call your Senators and urge them to oppose any appropriations bill that includes increased funding for ICE or Border Patrol. Here’s a great sample script.

• Donate to Neighbors Helping Neighbors Minneapolis, which is a community organization offering emergency rent assistance, as well as groceries and transportation support, to families who are under ICE surveillance.

Claire has been reading… 📖

Very little except for bleak news updates and Dog Man books (to my children).

But on a happier note, our conversation about “Heated Rivalry” and reality TV over on Love To See It this week, I did read some fascinating “Heated Rivalry” pieces: Julia Carrie Wong’s reported deep dive on the show’s “feral” female audience for the Guardian, Seth Abramovic’s article on the same topic in The Hollywood Reporter, Alexander Chee’s meditation on the show as a depiction of “a young man discovering himself as a gay submissive bottom,” and more! The only thing I love as much as “The Cottage” is that reported culture takes and essays that blend criticism and memoir are SO back right now.

Emma has been reading… 📖

I started reading E.J. Dickson’s forthcoming book, “One Bad Mother: In Praise of Psycho Housewives, Stage Parents, Momfluencers, and Other Women We Love to Hate.” I’m only a few chapters in, but I have long adored Dickson’s engaging, sharply-rendered writing style, and “One Bad Mother” is no exception. She dives into the evolution of our modern conceptions of what makes a good or bad mother, the way these ideas intersect with race and class, and why our culture revels in excoriating the moms we deem subpar. We’re planning to have Dickson on the Rich Text pod for a conversation about the book soon, and I am so excited!

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Claire has been watching… 📺

A smattering of things: The surprisingly wholesome end of “Love Is Blind Germany”; the finale of “The Chair Company,” which comes to a fevered crescendo of unexpected absurdity; the first few episodes of “Members Only: Palm Beach,” a reality show Netflix clearly picked up up to pander to MAGA viewers (don’t play a drinking game involving the name “Mar-a-Lago,” you’ll be dead an episode and a half in); and the premiere episodes of season three of “Tell Me Lies.” I’m still trying to piece together what happened in the first two seasons from memory, but I’m already Very Upset by Stephen’s antics.

And I’m still behind, because I want to get into “Ponies” and “Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials”! Please tell me if they’re good.

Emma has been watching… 📺

“Ponies,” Peacock’s new dark comedy / spy thriller series. It follows Bea Grant (Emilia Clarke) and Twila Hasbeck (Haley Lu Richardson), who are the wives of CIA agents stationed in Moscow in the late 1970s. In the first half of episode 1 — so this is not a spoiler — their husbands are killed under mysterious circumstances. Bea and Twila eventually decide to return to Moscow as CIA operatives to look for answers. As women working as secretaries at the U.S. embassy, they will be considered PONIs (Persons of No Interest), which allows them to fly under the radar of the K.G.B…. at least at first. Clarke and Richardson both give great performances, but Richardson really shines as Twila, a working-class, fearless agent of chaos with an ultimately soft core.

I also watched the first three episodes of the new season of “Tell Me Lies”! It’s back and dark as hell. Lucy is back together with noted sociopath Stephen, who will be, yet again emotionally torturing her and trying to ruin her life in new and creative sadistic ways. But the real magic of “Tell Me Lies,” at least for me, is the moments where the show perfectly captures the vibes of being in college in 2007/2008. When I watched Lucy, Bree and Pippa clumsily ordering MDMA to a themed party, then chasing it down with drinks from their red solo cups, it just felt so right.

Claire has been listening to… 🎧

Know Your Enemy’s episode on the killing of Renee Good and the situation in Minneapolis. Hosts Matt and Sam always help me process particularly painful political moments, with a mix of insight, moral clarity, and solace drawn from community and faith. Though I’m not an observant Catholic anymore, Matt’s evocation of his own Catholic faith still comforts me and reminds me of the steadiness that can be found in looking outside ourselves.

I’ve also been listening to Search Engine’s two-part series on “The Venezuelan Curse,” in which PJ interviews Venezuelan history Alejandro Velasco about the roots of the country’s troubles – and its fraught relationship with the U.S. It’s a thorough and engaging primer for listeners like me, who have never spent any focused attention on studying Venezuelan politics and history.

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

My dear friend Alison sent me a Winter 2025 playlist, which I’ve had on repeat ever since. I often default to putting on the television for background noise since I work from home, but that can be (predictably) distracting! Plus, Alison has great taste so I always take her recs seriously.

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

A Poplight for my new closet, which is the pint-sized version of my dream closet. It’s small, but was clearly designed by a wardrobe-conscious person; it’s cedar-lined, with well-placed little shelves and a small shoe-rack. (You know Greg is a good husband because he took the wonky, non-cedar-lined closet for himself without a murmur.) One thing the closet doesn’t have is a light. To avoid dealing with wiring, I decided to try a battery-powered light, and I went with Poplight because it was also cute (I’m not trying to ruin the aesthetic of my new cedar closet). It’s super easy to install, with pre-attached Command strips and a built-in level, and it immediately solved my lighting problem. Plus, it’s a woman- and queer-owned company!

I also ordered some fleece-lined leggings from Amazon, because my old Athleta pair has gone missing during my time of most dire need. These baleaf ones are a little less stretchy and soft, but they are much cheaper and they absolutely get the job done. I ordered a size up to be safe, and they were a little loose in the waist; next time, I’d probably go true to size.

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

I was recently given the opportunity to try a two-month subscription to Vivrelle, a luxury membership service that allows you to rent high-end accessories. I’ve done Nuuly and Rent the Runway on and off for years, but had never tried Vivrelle, so I was intrigued! Basically, for $139/month you can rent one designer handbag or piece of jewelry. I’ve been deep in the winter blahs fashion wise — it’s been absolutely FRIGID in New York City with no sign of relief, so I’ve been mostly wearing fleece-lined tights and giant sweaters layered over turtlenecks — so getting to try out a fancy accessory piqued my interest. I rented this gorgeous sequin-covered black Celine bag, and I’m fully obsessed. It just adds a touch of sparkle and glamour to every winter outfit, and it’s simply not something I’d ever fork over nearly 4k for! If next month’s rental is as successful, I’ll probably keep paying for the service at least through the frigid season. (I have my eye on this Chanel lambskin wallet on a chain, and the Loewe Flamenco bucket bag.) If any of our subscribers want to try Vivrelle, you can use code EMMAGRAY and get the first month free!

Emme Parsons also gifted me these absolutely divine Leather Ankle Stretch Boots in Espresso Napa. I’ve been wearing them regularly for a couple of weeks and now feel like I can give a proper review. Despite having an almost 3-inch heel, they are extremely comfortable to run around the city in, even in the winter. (I think it has a lot to do with the excellent construction of the shoe. The heel is set back a little bit, which allows for proper weight distribution!) The fitted leather around the ankle also makes these great for wearing under pants and long skirts of all styles. These are definitely a splurge purchase, but if you’re looking to invest in booties, I can’t recommend these enough. I’ve been hearing people rave about Emme Parsons for years, and now I get why!

Claire has been making… 🧶

Snowy long weekend essentials for the type B mom: snowballs, Swiss Miss hot chocolate with giant marshmallows, Prego spaghetti sauce souped up with ground beef and a splash of red wine, lots of pb&j sandwiches. It was a cozy weekend, and given the news in other parts of the country and world, I felt particularly grateful for it. The house felt more like a home with the familiar smell of my lazy-girl spaghetti, which I’ve made since I was a kid. I missed the city a little bit less when we were stuck inside but had more than one room for the kids to chase each other through. I also missed it a little bit less when my six-year-old was making snow angels in the backyard while the toddler was still napping – no need to wait until they were both in their parkas and boots to enjoy the snow. I missed it a little bit less when the same toddler assisted me in shoveling the entire driveway; we’ve never had any outside work we could enlist his help in, and the kid simply loves to help. I do miss it, but bit by bit, the boxes are getting unpacked, and it feels like we’re making a home here.

Emma has been making… 🧶

I’ve been in my “I need a sweet treat every evening” era — the world is hard! and dark! and so cold! — so I decided to make a batch of Genevieve Ko’s Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies. (I used almond milk instead of heavy cream, which worked out great.) I only baked about six of them to begin with, and then froze the rest of the dough in a log for later use.

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This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest subscriber podcasts were about “People We Meet On Vacation” and “LIB Germany”! A grab bag about the Ashley Tisdale Mom Group Drama, podcasts at the Golden Globes, and more “LIB Germany” is coming soon.

Over on Love To See It, we’re continuing our coverage of “The Traitors” S4.

Civic challenge of the week:

Do what you can to support those impacted by ICE. Maybe that means showing up to a local protest or engaging in local mutual aid. Or maybe that means supporting the protesters and immigrant communities in Minnesota, which has become the current epicenter of ICE assaults. Mpls St. Paul Magazine put together a great list of “Ways to Support Minnesota’s Immigrant Communities as ICE Activity Escalates,” which includes food drives, fundraisers and trainings locals and non-locals can participate in.

Claire has been reading… 📖

Frequent news updates about the descent of ICE on Minneapolis, including the depraved killing of Renee Good and the equally depraved spin from MAGA pundits and officials, who have smeared Good and her wife and claimed, despite multiple videos taken of the event that show no such thing, that the ICE agent was acting in self defense. ICE agents have caused mayhem at school pickup; city schools have temporarily closed or turned to remote learning to protect students and staff from ICE raids and disruptions. The indiscriminate campaign of terror being wreaked on Minneapolis is chilling, but seeing the courageous response of ordinary citizens is bracing. (And watching ICE goons slip-sliding on Minnesota ice hasn’t hurt either.)

I also read journalist Laura Jedeed’s account of the truly bizarre experience she had applying to be an ICE agent. She began the application expecting to make it through just enough of the process to report on some of the most preliminary stages; instead, unbelievably, despite her well-documented public opposition to ICE and her failure to provide basic documents to the agency, she was offered a job. It’s truly jaw-dropping reading.

Emma has been reading… 📖

’s essay “Renee Good Was A Victim of MAGA Misogyny.” Like Erin, I was absolutely shaken by the extended footage that came out of ICE agent Jonathan Ross murdering Renee Nicole Good. It wasn’t just the fact that he shot an unarmed woman in the face multiple times in cold blood. It was what he said afterwards: “Fucking bitch.” I spent years at HuffPost leading up to and during Donald Trump’s first term writing about the rancid and dangerous misogyny at the core of his politics. In his second, we have seen that same politics run rampant without guardrails. Good’s murder at the hands of a secret police agency operating with utter impunity is a chilling illustration of that ideology.

As Ryan writes:

Any woman (or “underaged woman,” otherwise known as a “girl”) can be a fucking bitch under this regime. You can be a fucking bitch for standing up for your neighbor. Talking back to law enforcement? You fucking bitch. You can be a fucking bitch for taking up too much or not enough space. You’re a fucking bitch for not having the right number of children, or having too many children, or having children out in public. You can be a fucking bitch for not driving away fast enough, or driving away too fast, or for letting a federal agent drag you from your vehicle. You can be a fucking bitch for crying about your husband being taken into federal custody at his immigration hearing. You can be a fucking bitch for smiling too much, or not enough, when obeying, or not obeying, the orders of an armed officer of the law. For responding or not responding to an unsolicited comment from an unhinged federal agent, or from a wannabe conservative influencer whose brain has turned into an endlessly clout-seeking bowl of mush. “Fucking bitch” is in the eye of the nearest MAGA man’s emotional dysregulation.

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Claire has been watching… 📺

Now that we have a couch and a little TV set up in our new den, Greg and I treated ourselves to a Saturday night watching a show with the sound at full volume and no closed captioning. (The joys of being a full floor and the length of a house away from your sleeping children, instead of about ten feet!) We are still finishing “The Chair Company,” and it still gets weirder with every episode. Alberto Isaac’s turn as a slightly dotty actor who has found his calling in portraying Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol,” was a high point for me.

I also finally – finally! – found a couple free hours to finish “Heated Rivalry.” I had been diligently avoiding spoilers, for some reason (I’m a romance reader, I know how these books tend to end), and I just let it all wash over me. I loved that the pace and the plot kicked in after episode 2; episode 3 had its joys, though I did feel that the Scott and Kip story suffered from being crammed into one episode. But episodes 4-6, when Shane and Ilya’s interludes go from steamy and snarky to steamy and sweet, had me in a puddle. If I were to tag myself in this picture, I’d be Shane’s mom, who may be a hard-nosed momager but isn’t so bad after all, shaking her head, teary-eyed, and murmuring, “since their rookie season!”

Emma has been watching… 📺

A completely unhinged Netflix thriller, “His & Hers.” The 6-episode series, based on the Alice Feeney novel of the same name, stars Tessa Thompson as Atlanta-based news anchor Anna Andrews and Jon Bernthal as her estranged husband, a detective living in small-town Georgia. We don’t know at the beginning of the series why these two came apart, but we do know there was ~trauma~ and we also know that a woman they are both connected to winds up murdered on top of a car in the woods. Anna, who, for reasons unexplained, has been absent from her job for a year, waltzes back into her news station and asks to be sent as a field reporter to her hometown of Dahlonega to report the murder case. Tension, drama, sex, more tension and more murder ensue. It’s a fun romp but also a totally insane one. By the end, it fully went off the rails, and yet I wasn’t mad I had spent six-ish hours on the ride. My overall read on the show is in line with Laura Miller’s review for Slate, aptly titled “His & Hers Is Trash, but Even Trash Has Its Place.” And apparently that place is on my living room television screen.

Claire has been listening to… 🎧

Like Emma (see below), I finally listened to an episode of Diabolical Lies – the Scott Galloway/Heated Rivalry episode – after seeing several of our readers recommend the podcast in our chat. It was a complete coincidence that we both happened to listen to this episode this week, but I think we both enjoyed it!

I’ve also started the new Tortoise Investigates series, “The Walkers: The real Salt Path.” This series grew out of Chloe Hadjimatheou’s reporting in the Observer last year on Raynor Winn’s hit memoir “The Salt Path,” which Hadjimatheou found may have been factually inaccurate. The wife of a previous employer came forward to tell the Observer that Winn, who wove a compelling and inspiring tale of a couple who lost everything through a stint of bad luck and found redemption and health by walking the South West Coast Path in England together, had actually fallen on hard times because she embezzled a large sum of money from her boss. I am always a sucker for a literary scandal and a scam story – and both, all wrapped into one? Say no more.

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

! Not sure how it took me this long to listen to this pod, because it’s right up my alley. Two smart, lefty ladies chatting about politics and culture? Count me in! I really enjoyed their latest free episode, diving into the masculinity crisis by way of Scott Galloway’s latest book, “Notes On Being A Man,” and my personal favorite topic… “Heated Rivalry.”

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

The sleek, two-sided garbage/recycling can from Simple Human I’ve long been determined to own one day. It holds so much more trash than our old under-sink can, which was only slightly bigger than your average bathroom garbage can, and it also has space for our bottles and cans.

Plus, humidifiers. Humidifiers are the bane of my adult life. Before kids, I simply didn’t have one; then I learned it was seen as tantamount to child neglect to let your baby slumber in a room without one. They are universally difficult to clean and, thanks to all the moisture, prone to growing mold and bacteria. To avert this, you have to clean them constantly. Every humidifier that I’ve gotten for my kids – the easy to clean ones, the filtered ones, the inexpensive ones, the splurges – has eventually become a breeding ground for pink scum. And while, yes, I take some accountability for not scrubbing them down daily, I also have to be honest about my own limitations. I was ready to give up on humidifiers. Then we moved to a house with radiator heat in the middle of winter, and immediately we were so parched at night that the health effects were obvious: the kids were coughing all night, and I was waking up with a vicious sore throat every morning.

So I tried the newest humidifier I saw being marketed as easy to clean: The CarePod. It’s super expensive, so I went with the somewhat more affordable CarePod Mini, which resembles a Brita pitcher. After a couple of nights, I’m hearing less coughing from the other room, and feeling less dried out and crispy in the morning. But will it be overrun by bacterial growth? It’s too soon to say. I’m trying to be a responsible humidifier owner this time; I’m even using filtered water.

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

Oversized cozy sweaters! It’s been so cold here in New York, and my body and mind are already over it. (I know it’s only January, but my seasonal depression has arrived in full force.) One answer to my woes? Cozy, warm knits that I don’t feel like a total schlub in. The Reformation sweater I pre-ordered back in November finally arrived, and I fucking love it! (This Quince cashmere sweater feels like a good, more affordable comp.) I’ve also been eyeing the same Cove Cashmere sweater in a solid color — maybe Husky? — and this fun, deep-red argyle V-neck.

I’ve also been in a sock deficit for awhile. (Truly, where do socks go?? Is that thing about taking off the front of your washing machine and finding a ton of them true??) So, to fix this issue, I ordered a pair of these soft trouser socks and a four-pack of everyday white quarter socks from Quince.

Claire has been making… 🧶

Our first dinners in the new house! For me, cooking in a new home is one of the quickest ways to really feel like I live there; it makes the whole place smell familiar and inviting, and I stop being on company manners with the kitchen. I made chicken thighs, sweet potatoes and broccoli in our new convection (!) oven, and Meghan Markle’s one-skillet spaghetti the next night. The kids were moderately pleased with the results, and I was very pleased at how it felt to eat dinner in a dining room, instead of at a kitchen table covered with my son’s art supplies! I think it made the children calmer? That’s what I’m telling myself!

Emma has been making… 🧶

A noodle kugel — a Jewish classic! — simply because Adam and I got the craving for one. And honestly… zero regrets, only joys. As it turns out, kugel is a perfect breakfast, lunch and dessert! And honestly, everything has felt so fucking bleak that I needed some more carbs and sugar in my life. We worked off of a family recipe with tweaks, but the Bon Appetit one is fairly similar. (I add 8 oz. of cream cheese to mine for extra deliciousness.)

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This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest subscriber podcasts were about “Heated Rivalry” and a year-end reflection! An episode about “People We Meet On Vacation” and “LIB Germany” is coming soon!

Over on Love To See It, we’re kicking off our coverage of “The Traitors” S4.

Civic challenge of the week:

Call your reps and demand that they rein in Donald Trump’s illegal acts of war.

Claire has been reading… 📖

Mostly headlines and posts, as we have been in a state of moving-induced chaos, but the headlines and posts? Have been horrifying. Greg woke me up one morning by simply showing me the front page of the NYT or WaPo, which was blaring the news of the American attack on Venezuela this week. (More on this from Emma below.)

Emma has been reading… 📖

’s Substack essay, “We Are The Bad Guys,” written in the wake of the news that the American military, under Trump’s orders (and zero Congressional approval or oversight), had captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. (Also, so as to avoid any confusion, criticisms of the Trump administration’s illegal military actions are not endorsements of Maduro and the pain he has caused the Venezuelan people.) Nolan writes about our current government’s politics of gangsterism, and clearly points to the ways that these reckless actions are only sowing the seeds of our own demise.

“It is easy, for the sort of shallow, power-drunk, unwise people who currently control our government, to imagine that because we have the biggest military, there can be no consequences from us attacking a much smaller nation,” writes Nolan. “But anyone who has read history, and who is able to conceptualize its progress in time frames longer than an election cycle, knows that strong nations who imagine themselves to be invulnerable and therefore decide to exploit everyone else at their leisure plant the seeds of the coalition that will one day overtake them on the world stage…. What is not debatable is that the United States government under Donald Trump is the most dangerous force on earth, and a serious potential threat to every other nation, and the leading cause of geopolitical instability.”

How Things Work

We Are the Bad Guys

What accounts for the U.S. government’s intense interest in the nation of Venezuela…

Read more

4 months ago · 36 likes · 1 comment · Hamilton Nolan

On a lighter note, I’m living for the Ashley Tisdale Mom Group beef. Because we deserve low-stakes celebrity gossip sometimes! For the uninitiated, Tisdale wrote a fairly useless, vague essay about how she was in a mom group that was mean to her. The essay isn’t particularly compelling, nor does it have anything particularly new to say about motherhood or female friendship. Instead, it operates as kind of a blind item. Which is why internet sleuths quickly deduced that she must be talking about a particularly celebrity-filled mom group, which included Hilary Duff, Mandy Moore and Meghan Trainor. Tisdale has since publicly denied that this was the mom group she was referring to… but… on Tuesday night Duff’s husband Matthew Koma entered the chat and posted this:

In conclusion, we love petty beefs! Thank you for your service, Matthew!

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Claire has been watching… 📺

Sadly, only the absolute essentials. Packing and unpacking are not activities that I can do very effectively while watching TV, so I’ve been unable to even finish “Heated Rivalry” (cruel!). I did finally finish “LIB Italy,” during some stints of laundry-folding, and was astonished as Giovanni’s villainousness continued to escalate to operatic levels. Nicola was more stealthy; I had allowed myself to root for his relationship with Karen by the end, but once again I was reminded never to forget a man’s red flags. Did he betray some hint of an anger problem? Bookmark that, babes. At some point or another, you’ll want to refer back to it.

Emma has been watching… 📺

I downloaded “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” for my plane ride back from Florida, and I’m glad I did! It’s not quite as campy and fun as previous “Knives Out” films, but Josh O’Connor’s performance as a priest in the midst of a crisis of faith makes up for its deficiencies.

Also, I know I’ve said that “Selling The OC” is a reality show about the worst people in the world, but I actually think that I’ve found a reality show that tops its noxious vibes: “Members Only: Palm Beach.” I truly can’t explain why I spent hours of my one wild and precious life watching tacky women with Mar-A-Lago face go at each other about the “rules” of Palm Beach society, and wax poetic about being in the vicinity of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, but here we are!!! (I personally would pay big money to NEVER be in a room with Trump and Musk… but I guess we are different.) All this is to say, learn from my mistakes. Do not watch these horrific people cosplay as budget Housewives. Save yourselves and your brain cells. However, I did enjoy Bethenny Frankel’s take on IG.

Claire has been listening to… 🎧

My Normal Gossip backlog, which has been getting me through long hours of packing and unpacking. God bless you, Rachelle Hampton and Se’era Spragley Ricks, for keeping me company and feeding me juicy bits of anonymized gossip through so many otherwise-miserable hours of moving. I knew I’d been hoarding all those episodes for a good reason!

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

I started listening to the audiobook of Rachel Reid’s “The Long Game,” the sixth book in the Game Changers series and the book that season two of “Heated Rivalry” will be anchored in. I know I probably should have read the other five books first, but I’m sorry, I just needed to know what happens to my dear personal friends Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov.

Also, I’ve been making my way through Ezra Klein’s dive into “What Trump Wants In Venezuela.”

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

Home goods! We’re trying to ease into the new house, get fully unpacked, and see how we use the space before we make too many big ticket purchases. But the reality is that we now live in a house, not a 750-square-foot apartment, and some needs were immediately clear.

We had to have a second couch for the little den/playroom, so we got one – the Article Timber couch in Olio Green and the matching ottoman. (We wanted the experience of a sectional without the commitment.) The cushions are pretty firm, and I’m hoping they’ll get a bit broken in with time, but I still think it’s a great balance of comfort, support, and style.

We also needed a new desk setup. Our office/bedroom has a little arched alcove I planned to use for recording. It’s only 3 feet wide, so I needed a shorter desk. The cheap, low-backed office chair we have used for years has never been comfortable, but is now beginning to fall apart. So we decided to take this moment to invest in a desk set from Branch. The Daily Desk is exactly the right size for the recording nook, and I love that it’s modular so you can optimize it for your home office use — I added a cord management attachment to mine — without the classic clunky office furniture aesthetic. The high-backed Softside chair in oatmeal boucle is sturdy, comfortable, and, unlike our old chair, not an eyesore.

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

I needed some loose winter jeans that would work with fleece-lined tights underneath, and these Georgie Low Slung Baggy jeans in Onyx from Nelle Atelier fit the bill! They’re so comfy, and I love the little waist tie, which lets you adjust how low you want to wear them. (And as someone who has middle school low-rise jeans trauma… these do not trigger it.) I sized up one size for added comfiness.

Also, in an effort to encourage myself to cook more, I finally bought a veggie chopper. Because chopping onions is truly the bane of existence. I went with the Mueller Pro Chopper because it’s pretty cheap and made Food & Wine’s best veggie choppers list.

Claire has been making… 🧶

Flat-pack furniture, as I am the designated handyperson in my household. (Once, when I was very pregnant, Greg insisted on assembling our son’s dresser/changer himself, with the assistance of several friends. They installed the particle-board back the wrong way around. So… never again.) I built a Montessori shelf to store toys in the den, and I assembled my beautiful new desk and office chair.

We’ve been trying to unpack our kitchen enough to actually cook, but we have a surprising problem: our house’s kitchen is actually a lot smaller than our old apartment’s kitchen. Not in total space, perhaps, but certainly in storage. Our old kitchen had a full U of cabinetry and counter, but the new kitchen has a plethora of entrances – an outside door, a basement door, a living room door, a dining room door – and so there’s only one wall left for cabinets and counters. I have been tearing my hair out as we unpack all the baking dishes and stand mixers and cast iron pots we used to easily store in our three walls of cabinet, fantasizing about doing a financially improbable remodel that closes off the exterior door (who needs it??) to allow more counter space, ordering a spice rack to hang in a small unused portion of the wall, and repacking our rarely-used kitchen items to store in the basement. The only meal I’ve managed to cook in our new place so far is a crowd-pleasing breakfast: bacon, eggs, and Pillsbury canned cinnamon rolls. Instead, we’ve been getting to know our local diners, taco places, pizzerias, and Chinese delivery spots.

Emma has been making… 🧶

Alison Roman’s Dilly Bean Stew, from the Something From Nothing cookbook. This soup / stew is a revelation. It’s hearty, rich in flavor, and I wish I had quadrupled the recipe so that I could fill my freezer with stew for the winter. It was also a huge hit with Adam, so this will absolutely be a re-make for us. (I also think that you could throw in basically whatever additional veggies are in your fridge and it would work!)

I also made this one-pan taco skillet from @mariannas_pantry. (Her whole thing is healthy meal prep for lazy bitches. And I truly self-identify as a lazy bitch!) It was super easy to throw together and made me enough food for about four days of lunches! Success!

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This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Rich Text is a reader-supported project!

Emma:

“You Didn’t Hear This From Me,” by Kelsey McKinney. This is a newsletter that loves reading, loves gossiping, and loves Kelsey McKinney. So naturally, we loved this non-fiction book.

“Girl On Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves,” by Sophie Gilbert. A masterful exploration of the deeply-ingrained misogyny of late ‘90s and early ‘00s popular culture.

“The Compound,” by Aisling Rawle. A twisty, slightly dystopian novel set in the world of a “Love Island”-inspired reality show. Obviously this one was up my alley.

“Everyone Is Lying To You,” by Jo Piazza. Journalist Lizzie and mega-trad influencer Rebecca used to be best friends in college, but their paths have starkly diverged since then. When Rebecca reaches out to Lizzie proposing a career-making exclusive interview, Lizzie says yes. But soon after, Rebecca disappears and her husband is found dead. I loved how propulsive the plot was of this novel, while exploring real questions about motherhood, the regressive tradwife movement, and the ways in which we all perform online.

“Being Jewish After The Destruction of Gaza,” by Peter Beinhart. I’ve found it tough to read about the fraught dynamics of the Jewish community in a post 10/7 world. But Peter Beinhart’s “Being Jewish After The Destruction of Gaza” was a deeply clarifying text for me.

“The God of the Woods,” by Liz Moore. This novel came out in 2024, but that I did not get around to picking up until our holiday vacation in Florida. (Shout out to my sister-in-law Jamie who lent it to me!) This book really has it all – fraught family dynamics, a sweeping generational tale, and two connected mysteries at its center. Plus, much of it is set at a summer camp, which is always going to be a hook for me. (And it’s getting a Netflix adaptation!)

“Exit Lane,” an 831 Stories novella by Erika Veurink. The book follows a “When Harry Met Sally”-esque love story between Teddy and Marin, who first meet driving from Iowa City to New York City after college graduation.

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Claire:

“Enter Ghost,” by Isabella Hammad, a masterful novel about a Palestinian-English actress who becomes involved with a West Bank production of “Hamlet” during a visit with her family – and the political tensions provoked by the staging.

“Creation Lake,” by Rachel Kushner, which follows a woman hired to honeypot her way into a group of leftist extremists in rural France, where she becomes enraptured by the pro-Neanderthal philosophies of one of the group’s intellectual guiding lights. A sometimes frustrating novel, with a rather remote and unknowable protagonist, but still absorbing.

“Banal Nightmare,” Halle Butler’s latest novel of millennial ennui. It revolves around frustrated artist Moddie, who moves back to the college town where she grew up after a traumatic breakup, and the petty politics and shallow ambitions of the academic set she falls in with.

“My Documents,” by Kevin Nguyen, a prescient and propulsive speculative novel about Vietnamese internment camps established in America after a terrorist attack.

“Liquid,” by Mariam Rahmani, a modern deconstruction of the marriage plot, which follows an underemployed, jaded academic who embarks on a quest to marry rich – a quest that does not end up where she expected.

“Audition,” by Katie Kitamura, an uncanny two-part novel about a successful older actress who meets a handsome young man who claims to be the son she never had – or didn’t she? In Kitamura fashion, it’s spare and restrained, with a rising undercurrent of eerie tension.

Emma:

As always: Search Engine, If Books Could Kill, Maintenance Phase, The Ezra Klein Show.

The Retrievals S2, which taught me that lots of women are just going through C-sections with essentially completely ineffective pain management??? To the point that they are literally feeling every moment of these surgeries??? Truly chilling stuff.

Lily Allen’s “West End Girl,” a truly great pop album tailor-made for millennial women who are staring down the barrel of middle age and also happen to be gossip fiends! “West End Girl” is a raw autopsy of the end of Allen’s marriage to actor David Harbour, and she spares no juicy details. “Madeline” and “Pussy Palace” are my personal favorite tracks.

What Happened To Talina Zar?, a podcast by our former colleague and deeply talented friend Melissa Jeltsen. Jeltsen dived into the strange and tragic case of Talina Zar, a woman mysteriously vanished in 2020 after contracting Covid. Did she truly retreat to a remote lake somewhere to die? Or did something more nefarious go on?

Allison After NXIVM. Even after watching multiple documentaries about NXIVM, I found this podcast, from the perspective of actress Alison Mack, who was sentenced to three years in prison in June 2021 for her role in the NXIVM cult, worth delving into. Thoughtfully hosted by journalist Natalie Robehmed, the podcast traces Mack’s story from her pre-NXIVM “Smallville” fame all the way to when the scales fell from her eyes and she realized she had been both a perpetrator of abuse at Keith Reniere’s urging, and a victim of abuse at his hands.

Sabrina Carpenter’s “Man’s Best Friend.” “Manchild” and “House Tour” feel like an inherent part of my personal 2025 soundtrack. (And I’ll forever be grateful for that banger of a “Manchild” needle drop deployed in the latest season of “Love Is Blind.”)

Beth’s Dead, a podcast hosted by Monica Padman (from Armchair Expert) with Elizabeth Laime & Andy Rosen (hosts of Nobody’s Listening, Right?) about parasocial relationships. Padman acts as the pseudo investigator, interviewing two of her favorite podcasters about a particularly unsettling set of fan interactions they had years ago that had dire consequences.

The Devil You Know, Sarah Marshall’s deep dive into the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. And, unsurprisingly, it turns out that the moral panics of decades past have a lot to say about the deeply conspiratorial moment we are living through now.

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Claire:

My long-time weekly standards: Know Your Enemy, 5-4, Bachelor in Retrospect, If Books Could Kill.

Kendrick Lamar’s “GNX” and back catalog, because this was the year the Super Bowl changed my life. My Apple Music year in review had three major themes, two of which were children’s music and Kendrick Lamar.

Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl,” which was the third major category in my Apple Music year in review. For me, this album was earwormy and pure fun, despite a high clanker-to-banger ratio in the lyrics.

Embedded: Alternate Realities, a miniseries for the NPR podcast that traces one reporter’s attempts to connect with his father, who has gotten sucked down a right-wing conspiracy rabbithole. It’s alarming, but it’s also a gentler, more intimate exploration of the phenomenon than most I’ve encountered.

Voxtrot’s “Esprit de Cœur,” a newish EP from an old indie scene fave. Even almost two decades later, their new music has the classic Voxtrot lo-fi sound, earnest lyrics, and sweeping choruses that I’ve always loved.

Who Weekly?, a hilarious chat show about the comings and goings of very minor celebrities, which became a true weekly staple for me over the course of this year – the exact right blend of escapist pop culture and shrewd cultural commentary that I needed to level myself out during the many destabilizing months of bad news.

Liberty Lost, a gut-wrenching investigative podcast about Liberty University’s Godparent Home, an institution where single pregnant girls from evangelical homes are sent to finish their pregnancies. Once there, according to T.J. Raphael’s thorough reporting, they were heavily pressured and manipulated to give up their babies for adoption. The series looks at the perverse incentives of evangelical adoption culture, and how it can harm young, vulnerable parents and children.

Camp Shame, a genuinely shocking podcast miniseries about a famous weight-loss camp – the exact one that inspired the popular movie “Heavyweights” and helped shape the industry – and how it declined into an underresourced, ramshackle, and dangerous place for campers.

Geese, and the solo work of frontman Cameron Winter, which is the rare new band that sounds like a band I would have listened to as a college kid, without seeming like it exists to exploit the nostalgia of millennial consumers. (Do I sound like an annoying dad who just wants to bring back classic rock bands yet?) I love the surreal lyrics and howling, jangly sound.

Only If You Get Caught, a new Defector podcast about cheating scandals. Hosted by Patrick Redford and produced by Alex Sujong Laughlin (a true dream team), the show delves into a different scandal each episode, and also examines what it means for our culture that we define cheating in the ways that we do.

Two new-to-me Fiasco seasons, deep dives on Iran Contra and Benghazi. Leon Neyfakh simply never misses, whereas my history teachers and the national media have sometimes led me astray. I learned a staggering amount about both of these national scandals from Fiasco.

Emma:

“Severance” season 2. This wasn’t a perfect season of television – sophomore seasons are notoriously tough – but it was one that I couldn’t look away from. I honestly haven’t stopped thinking about the exchange that Innie Mark has with Outie Mark at the cabin since I first watched it. (Give Adam Scott an Emmy just for that gutting argument he had with himself!!!)

“The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” seasons 2 & 3. The ladies of SLOMW give so much of themselves, and the labor pays off. MomTok has survived and thrived. (DadTok, however, I can do without.)

“Heated Rivalry.” This show has become at least 80% of my personality since mid-November. The six-episode season, which follows public hockey rivals and secret lovers Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, truly has it all: True respect or the romance genre, gorgeous cinematography, stellar performances, and some pretty excellent spicy scenes. So much was bad about 2025, and I am so tickled that a horny gay hockey show brought us together right under the wire. (I now need to read all of the Rachel Reid books the series is based on.)

“The Studio.” I love a show that effectively skewers the gatekeepers of a creative industry, and this Seth Rogen series does just that — and beautifully. I especially adored the “Oner” episode.

That video of Mark Ballas and Whitney Leavitt’s freestyle dance on Call Her Daddy… on repeat.

“One Battle After Another.” I came for Leo as directed by P.T. Anderson, and ultimately stayed for Benicio del Toro. There’s a lot to critique in this film, but damn if it isn’t a wild ride.

“KPop Demon Hunters.” This Netflix sensation, about three K-Pop stars who take on demons in their downtime, is just as wonderful as the streaming numbers indicate. “Golden” was one of my most-played songs of 2025, and I love that the woman who wrote it and voiced main character Rumi, Ejae, got her belated big break as a result. Plus, honestly, anything that can captivate both me and my 3-year-old niece is probably worth checking out.

“Adolescence.” This four-part British Netflix series, written by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham (who also starred in the show), was absolutely gutting and absolutely brilliant. “Adolescense” follows the aftermath of a murder, one that we see a 13-year-old boy (Owen Cooper) accused of committing. Usually we’d expect a whodunit structure. But this show isn’t a mystery in that sense – it’s more of an exploration of “why” than “who,” looking at how teenage boys can be radicalized online into misogyny and toxic masculinity, and even violence at the hands of those dual forces.

“Liberation” on Broadway. Bess Wohl’s play tells the story of a women’s liberation group in 1970s Ohio, through the eyes of one of the women’s daughters in 2025. It’s somehow both a play about big ideas – feminism, political engagement, the fights we engage in that seem to never end generation after generation – as well as an intimate story about family ties and the lives our parents lived beyond us that we can never quite grasp. I laughed, I cried, and I had a truly wonderful night at the theater with my friend Jess.

Claire:

Cole Escola’s “Oh, Mary!” on Broadway. I haven’t actually been to a show in years, and this madcap farce was the perfect way to return: high-energy, hysterically funny, and under two hours long.

“Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” a reality show that has been hitting on every level for the past few seasons. The shifting alliances! The scheming! The tears! The grifting! The odd religious undercurrents!

The final season of “You,” which was pulpy, overwrought, and a fitting conclusion to the series. There are twins played by Anna Camp (one of them evil, of course), a new love object named Brontë, and Joe’s final comeuppance.

“Sirens,” an eerie dark comedy about a down-on-her-luck woman, Devon (Meghann Fahy), who shows up at the lavish estate of her younger sister Simone’s employer. Once there, she becomes concerned that Simone is caught up in a toxic enmeshment with her charismatic boss Kiki (Julianne Moore). It’s an odd show, sometimes heavy-handed or campy, but that only made it more fun for me.

“The Rehearsal” season 2, in which Nathan Fielder turns his obsessively analytical eye on the problem of airplane crashes. In his quest to solve them, he reenacts the entire life of hero pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, launches a fake singing competition reality show, and gets a commercial pilot’s license. The blend of comedy and poignance is so intense it’s sometimes difficult to watch, but this season was probably my favorite season of TV this year.

“Wayward,” a Netflix mystery series created by Mae Martin, inspired by the experiences of a real friend who was sent to a reform school as a teen. They also star as Alex, a cop who moves to the quaint town of Tall Pines with their pregnant wife, who grew up there. The town revolves around a reform school for wayward youth, run by the magnetic Evelyn (Toni Collette). But Evelyn, and Tall Pines, are hiding dark and terrible secrets.

“The Perfect Neighbor,” a deeply disturbing documentary, constructed almost entirely from police bodycam footage, about the shocking murder of a Black mother of four, Ajike “AJ” Owens, by her white neighbor, Susan Lorincz. Lorincz had been harassing the neighborhood children, including with racial epithets, when they played outside. The documentary is all the more brutal for its stripped-down production, and deeply revealing of the racism at play and the permission structure created by stand your ground laws.

“The Chair Company,” a deeply weird comedy series from Tim Robinson (of “I Think You Should Leave”). Robinson plays a mall company executive who just got a big promotion – but becomes completely derailed when an office chair collapses during a crucial moment, leaving him humiliated and thirsty for justice.

“I Love LA,” Rachel Sennott’s new HBO comedy in which she stars as an ambitious young talent manager with one client (her chaotic but charming bestie, who has become a moderately successful influencer), a friend group of strivers and nepo babies, and a mild-mannered teacher boyfriend. It’s packed with excellent comic performances, and the core ensemble’s ungainly attempts to balance their determination to be famous and cool with their more cringe needs (companionship, affirmation) ring very true at this moment.

Emma:

Wedding things! A gown from Enaura, shoes from Reformation, a vintage Bob Mackie for the after party from my beloved Happy Isles, and a boucle coat from Meshki for the rehearsal dinner.

This Apparis faux fur scarf, which has saved me during cold weather.

The CurrentBody red and blue light masks, which have become absolute staples of my nighttime routine. (Code: EMMAGRAY for 10% off)

OurPlace Always Pan 2.0., which I now have in two colors and never want to cook without?

Stretchy (but chic) pants, like these Madewell track pants, these Leset silk pants, and, of course, Rag & Bone faux jeans.

Some more skin care faves: Sofie Pavitt Mandelic Clearing Serum, Dr. Diamond’s Metacine Instafacial Plasma and travel/discovery set.

The T3 Aire 360 Air Styler is, I believe, the best of the Dyson Air Wrap dupes. It’s sold out on the T3 site, but still available on Violet Grey and Goop.

Bose Quiet Comfort Headphones, which are particularly clutch for air planes and for telling everyone you are not interested in conversation with strangers on the subway.

These Alex Mill jeans, which I bought for Adam. He loves them and they look very cool on.

Roller Rabbit PJs — both these washable silk ones, and this baby tee / shorts set — because coziness is king.

The tank top I have in three colors and need in at least three more from Reformation.

Necklaces! Like a charm necklace and a grown-up beaded necklace, both from Roxanne Assoulin, a BaubleBar choker, and for a splurge, this Dorsey white sapphire necklace.

Margaux’s Phoebe flats in leopard suede, the best flats on earth.

The Italian Leather Handwoven Pouch Crossbody Clutch from Quince that gets mistaken for a Bottega.

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Claire:

Grownup handbags, to upgrade my collection of nylon crossbodies just a tad! I particularly love my woven leather shoulder bag from Quince, and my Clare V. midi sac and grande fanny.

The giant knit scrunchies from Kmellia, which I now wear almost any time I need to throw my hair up. They’re gentle on my hair, a bit of a statement piece, and make my bun look a bit more voluminous.

Merit products have continued to be my holy grail morning routine, but with some new additions this year – The Uniform tinted mineral sunscreen, which is blurring and glowy and doesn’t break me out, the shimmery shades of Solo Shadow eye makeup, and the gentle and effective Great Skin double cleanser.

Everlane Way-High Curve jeans and Way-High Gardener jeans have become my go-to denim this year, as my waistline has fluctuated a bit. The super high rise remains my favorite, and the full barrel legs and wide, seamed legs of these two silhouettes add a fun twist.

The Bounce Curl Define Edgelift brush changed my hair styling game this year. Sometimes I just pull it through to define some wave clusters; when I have a bit more time, I gently finger-twirl the clumps to add a bit more bounce. Either way, some leave-in conditioner, gel, and this brush are all I need for volume and definition.

Kizik sneakers! For some people, shopping for shoes is a treat. For me, it’s always been annoying, since my wide feet don’t fit into many popular styles. The fact that now I am often rushing out the door with my hands full of reluctant baby added to the challenge. Kizik’s easy step-in sneakers changed that. My Milan retro sneakers were on heavy rotation this year, and I’m newly obsessed with my winter-friendly Sierra boots.

A Costco membership! I haven’t even set foot into a Costco yet, and I’m already so smug about my membership. I can order bulk snacks online and have pallets of granola bars shipped directly to my house! Apparently they can even help you get deals on cars (though I haven’t tried this yet).

Pact everyday high rise briefs. I have heard mixed things about this underwear, but so far they are working great for me – softy, stretchy, thin, and just the replacement I needed for my aging collection of Everlane high-rise undies.

The Quince cashmere fisherman sweater, which I love so much I now own it in several colors. It’s a heavier weight than many of their gossamer-thin cashmere sweaters, which I personally like – it doesn’t get staticky and it’s perfectly cozy when the weather actually gets cold.

I also own several colors now of the Everlane cocoon crew in alpaca, which is loftier and lighter, but still cozy. It’s easy to tuck into jeans or trousers, but has the full ‘90s-esque sweater silhouette I love.

My favorite new dresses this year were actually from Dôen – the Pamelina in rosso, which I wore to Emma’s wedding and I’m still obsessed with, is such a floaty and striking dress, but easy to throw on for a nice event without worrying about getting it tailored, and the Quinn dress in amberwood has that classic milkmaid look and is so light and comfortable.

A house?! As of this writing, we just moved in, and I feel like I must have made this decision in a moment of madness (somehow our new kitchen is smaller? Plus, clearly no one should ever move, the most miserable process ever invented by man). But I know when the dust settles, it will all be worth the stress – and will undoubtedly be the most meaningful purchase I made this year!

Emma:

Crispy Halloumi with Tomatoes and White Beans. You all know I love a good hearty bean dish. This one is saucy, easy, and extremely tasty. A 10/10. There’s a reason that this recipe made NYT Cooking’s most-cooked recipes of the year list.

I also loved these Harissa Butter Beans with Zingy Yogurt Sauce by food blogger Gigi Goes Vegan for the same reasons.

Perfect Bean and Cheese Burritos, something that I’ve found myself craving a lot lately. I somehow had never before made my own refried beans?? It was very satisfying, and it made enough extra for a few days.

I honestly kind of hate cooking meat at home. I know it’s dumb, but I’m just much more comfortable making vegetarian dishes. So I was delighted by how much I enjoyed these Skillet Meatballs with Peaches, Basil and Lime. So many flavors mixed together that I wouldn’t have necessarily thought to put together – and yet it really works!

Golden Mushroom Orzo Soup with a Pat of Butter, from Alison Roman’s new cookbook, “Something From Nothing.” It’s so comforting and rich and simple to make! I already have like three other soups from the cookbook on my winter to-make list, so I can tell this cookbook is going to be a staple in our kitchen.

Chia pudding parfaits with homemade berry jam! Such an easy breakfast to prepare ahead in large quantities, and you’ll never be mad that you have it in your fridge.

Rosemary-Thyme Brown Butter Rice Krispie Treats. The perfect adult update to a childhood fave.

Claire:

Sidecars, my favorite winter mixed drink – easy, tart, and warming, it makes me feel like I’m tucked into a dim cocktail bar with steamed-up windows on a frigid night.

Pinch of Yum chocolate chip cookies, which I tried because they only required one egg but which turned out so well that we now use it every time. If you like a thick, soft cookie, this might work for you!

Meghan Markle one-pan spaghetti, using a blogger’s more precise recipe. It’s noodles, it’s cherry tomatoes and greens, it’s Parmesan – but it’s also a flexible formula that allows for whatever veggies you have on hand, broth, herbs, and more. It’s now my go-to summer pasta.

Strawberry rhubarb crisp bars from Smitten Kitchen, which are crunchy, sweet and tart, a wonderful dessert with a scoop of ice cream – or breakfast with a scoop of yogurt, if you’re feeling indulgent. (I always am.)

Chili crunch ground chicken bowls from Jenn Eats Good, a quick and flavorful (and sinus-clearing) dinner ideal for weeknights, especially when I’ve made pasta too many evenings in a row.

Yasmin Fahr’s Dijon chicken with tomatoes, which makes delectable chicken and tomatoes, but, more importantly, the most divine pan juices that you will want to mop up with a nice crusty break.

A broccoli orzo dump and bake with herbed Boursin cheese, a favorite way to stretch some leftover chicken into a second night of dinner. Though the name “dump and bake” is unfortunate, they are low-effort and, if you like cheese and carbs, high reward.

Turkey-feta-spinach burgers, a genius combination that makes both turkey burgers AND spinach more appetizing – to me, and even to my kids. Highly recommend some crunchy toppings for texture, and some tzatziki for that extra Greek flavor.

Slow-cooker taco chicken bowls, my most successful Crockpot meal of this fall. Make taco bowls, make tacos, make burritos, make sandwiches. Put the meat and pickled onions on bread smeared with butter or soft cheese. You truly can’t go wrong!

Budir, Iceland

If you are chasing the midnight sun in Iceland, I highly recommend exploring the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, and staying at Hotel Budir. Having a drink in the salon room of the hotel for the views is thrilling enough… and then there are the grounds. -Emma

London, England

I’ve been to London many a time, but in 2025 I went twice! Both times I remembered why I love the sprawling city so much. Great art, great food (Isabel and One Club Row were my fave new restaurant finds!), and great public transport. -Emma

Healdsburg, California (Wine Country!)

At the end of the summer, I made my first-ever trip to Sonoma County! Adam and I had a beyond fabulous time staying at The Madrona, a gorgeous boutique hotel about 5 minutes from town. The breakfast is fabulous, and the hotel will shuttle you into town for your dinner reservations and then back. Plus, you’re super close to a bunch of cute wineries! -Emma

As always, The Catskills.

My love for Upstate New York, and specifically Sullivan County, will never be topped. Special shout out to Threshold and Sunshine Colony, two of my very favorite spots in Livingston Manor. -Emma

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This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest subscriber podcast is a grab bag about “Emily In Paris” S5 and the finale of “All’s Fair”! An episode about “Heated Rivalry” is coming soon!

Over on Love To See It, we interviewed Cindy Cullers of “Golden Bachelor” and we’re revisiting the Rob Reiner classic, “When Harry Met Sally.”

Claire has been reading… 📖

I couldn’t think of one entire thing I read this week – book or article – which I can mostly blame on the demands of packing up our apartment. We’re moving over New Year’s, after spending Christmas upstate with my family, so the packing minutes have been precious. I haven’t even been able to meet my usual phone-scrolling-time quotas. But since it’s also the end of the year, and our last weekly recommendations email of 2025, I wanted to take this opportunity to acknowledge that my reading was at a low ebb this year. And, frankly, I’m feeling the effects. Every moment I spend looking at memes and videos on social media instead of picking up a book makes me feel palpably dumber and more anxious. In 2026, I want to have a reset.

Emma has been reading… 📖

I loved this feature in The Hollywood Reporter about “Why Women Are Going Wild for ‘Heated Rivalry,” which includes extensive interviews with show creator Jacob Tierney and Game Changers series author Rachel Reid. It was a great companion piece to the screener of the “Heated Rivalry” season 1 finale (humble brag). I promise “The Cottage” is worth the wait, and we’ll be releasing a podcast about it after it airs on the 26th!

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Claire has been watching… 📺

We heard that “Love Is Blind: Italy” had a particularly noxious man, and (while I wish this weren’t the case) this is catnip to me. My last couple of weeks haven’t lent themselves to much TV-viewing, so I still haven’t finished the season, but it’s already taking me on a journey of discovery. I had a suspicion of who the Bad Man was in the first episode, but then began to doubt myself — only for him to really kick things into top gear and deliver creative forms of misogyny and narcissistic displays of performative eccentricity that proved my initial instincts correct. When a man begins asking you whether you’re sufficiently committed to his dream of hosting guests at a mysterious location called The Castle — committed enough to even give up your career as a scientist — the time to pack your things and go is immediately.

Plus, the “60 Minutes” investigation into the horrific conditions at Cecot, the brutal El Salvadoran prison camp to which Trump unlawfully deported Venezuelan migrants. CBS News’s new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss spiked the package, under the flimsiest of excuses, but it was accidentally uploaded to a Canadian channel and spread like wildfire across the Internet. The reporting is thorough and devastating, and her weak justifications for pulling it (in a clearly politically motivated move) look even more absurd after watching.

Emma has been watching… 📺

“Home for Christmas” S3! This lovely community reminded me that this delightful Norwegian show was back for a season 3! “Home for Christmas” (or, in Norwegian, “Hjem til Jul,”) follows Johannes, a 30-something nurse who is always going through a series of dating-related traumas and hijinks, in addition to dealing with the issues of her loving but imperfect family members. I loved the first two seasons — season 1 premiered back in 2019 and season 2 in 2020 — so I was delighted to learn that we had gotten a season 3 five years later! Johannes is now 36, about to be promoted at work, and recently out of a longterm relationship with a man named Jonas (a major character from the first two seasons), which ends because he wants children and she does not. The series is sweet, funny, full of heart, and feels reflective of the elder millennial experience of aging. You simply can’t help but root for Johannes to find the love and happiness that she wants, and I found the end of the third season to be deeply satisfying!

Also, a +1 for Claire’s rec of the “60 Minutes” investigation into Cecot. Bari Weiss’ CBS is off to quite the disgusting, boot-licking start. Everyone should watch it.

Claire has been listening to… 🎧

A couple of weeks ago, Emma recommended Sarah Marshall’s new limited series on the Satanic Panic, The Devil You Know. And I’ve finally had a chance to binge it this week, while frantically packing my apartment (a process that began with finally sorting and, mostly, donating about 8 garbage bags of outgrown baby clothes). Given that I had previously listened to Marshall’s You’re Wrong About episodes on the panic, I wasn’t expecting to hear much that would be new or surprising. But I was wrong! The stories and themes she highlights are well-chosen, enlightening, and deeply disturbing.

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

The latest Search Engine episode, regarding a very peculiar anomaly regarding the full-body TSA scanners. I honestly learned a lot about the millimeter wave technology that is used every time we travel by air, which was pretty illuminating! I also found myself incredibly relieved that I don’t have a situation where my genitals are flagged by a machine every time I do so. Truly, the indignity.

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

Some cold-weather gear, because I am always shocked by the arrival of Real Cold. I needed ear muffs, for days when hairstyle preservation would bar me from wearing beanies, and the affordable faux-fur pair I found at Athleta has been serviceable. It doesn’t painfully squeeze my head, but does keep my ears toasty. It also muffles my hearing more than I expected, so be alert out there if using!

The Quince cashmere beanie is also solid; it’s soft, warm, and comes in a bunch of colors.

And thanks to a BFCM sale, I decided to try the Kizik Sierra boots. I’m glad I did! They are much easier to wiggle on than my lace-up Sorels, and I have enough fasteners to worry about when I’m trying to get two little kids outside in 30-degree weather.

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

My wool-cashmere blend triangle scarf, which I purchased during J. Crew’s Black Friday sale, finally arrived and I am OBSESSED. I look like a slightly chicer Strega Nona with it tied around my chin, but it doesn’t fuck up my hair and it keeps me WARM. I like that it can easily transition from a headscarf to being draped effortlessly around your neck. For something that takes up so little room, it’s an incredibly effective winter accessory.

I haven’t pulled the trigger yet, but I am considering doing so for this Donni thermal crop stripe pant and matching crewneck in Oregano. It looks like the perfect travel / lounge / work from home set, and I’m constantly looking for ways to feel comfy and and warm and also look decently put together.

Claire has been making… 🧶

Dinner reservations at all our favorite neighborhood restaurants, for one last hurrah. It’s just the necessary choice right now. With the apartment half-packed and entirely chaotic, we’ve been reluctant to make a further mess, or cut into our packing time, by cooking. We’ve been soaking in our “lasts” – the last cheeseburger and margarita at the local burger place, the last squares of pizza at our local Detroit-style pizza spot – and enjoying the lack of dishes.

Emma has been making… 🧶

The trip down to Florida with Adam for the holiday week! My mother-in-law now has a home down here, so we’re spending the week with her, my sisters-in-law and their husbands, and our two adorable nieces. It’s a lovely way to round out the year — a bit of warmer weather, a lot of sun, a slower pace, and some good quality family time.

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This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest subscriber podcast is a grab bag about “Heated Rivalry” and the “SLOMW” S3 reunion! An episode about “Emily In Paris” S5 and more is coming soon!

Over on Love To See It, we’re revisiting 1995’s “Sense and Sensibility,” which just turned 30!

Civic challenge of the week:

Donate to the Brown University Emergency Relief Fund to support students impacted by Saturday’s mass shooting, or to any of the fundraisers for the victims of the Bondi Beach Hanukkah party shooting.

Claire has been reading… 📖

The unbearable darkness of the past weekend’s news – the mass shootings at Brown University and at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Australia, followed by the shocking deaths of Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner – has been overwhelming to process. The coarseness and cruelty of the political discourse, particularly Trump’s vile tweet about the Reiners’ deaths, has only furthered the bleakness of this moment. Emma wrote below about some of the thoughtful writing that has offered some comfort and wisdom after such a gut-wrenching series of events.

I have also been trying to keep up with some of the other essential reporting about our depraved time. The New York Times published a deep dive into Jeffrey Epstein’s rise, and how he was able to bluff and scam his way to immense wealth and influence.

And the New Republic has a long read from Greg Sargent on the ideological roots of Stephen Miller’s anti-immigrant fanaticism, the self-flattering fallacies of the white nationalist views he has absorbed, and the specific ways it has influenced the administration’s approach to immigration. As the first year of Trump’s second term limps to a close, it has become painfully obvious how much influence Miller holds in shaping the priorities and policies of the administration. His fascist views should be as closely scrutinized as the president’s own.

Emma has been reading… 📖

This week, I’ve been reading to try and make sense of three tragedies that occurred over the weekend: a mass shooting at Brown University, a mass shooting on Bondi Beach at a Hanukkah party, and the tragic and gruesome deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner — allegedly at the hand of their own son. There are no words that truly can soothe when you’re forced to stare down the realities of American gun lust, unchecked antisemitism, and the loss of a singular cultural talent / political activist. But these writers have helped me try and wrap my head around the gnawing grief I’ve felt over these last few days.

“Brown, America,” by : “It is a reminder of what we already know. That even this place — this iron-gated utopian bastion — gets scattered with bodies and covered in blood. That none of us are safe, no matter what, so long as the most powerful American cult is the gun.”

The Grudge Report

Brown, America

Brown is the best kind of cult: Bright teenagers who want to do something creative about the world in a place that indulges and guides them in equal measure. A handful of them are Greek shipping heirs or a movie star’s kid but most are just the best people I have ever met. It’s just a giant carton of good eggs…

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5 months ago · 210 likes · 9 comments · Bess Kalb

“Rob Reiner and a Terrible Weekend,” by : “It’s the killing of the unicorn. It feels like the last spark of humanity in this whole damn place has been snuffed out, which is why it’s not just one family’s horror, but a deep wrong against the entire community, against anyone who knew him and was touched by him.”

The Ankler.

Rob Reiner and a Terrible Weekend

So, how was your weekend…

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5 months ago · 80 likes · 5 comments · Richard Rushfield

“The Humanity Amid the Horror at Bondi Beach,” by Rabbi Sharon Brous: “I’m tired of looking for the silver lining after such tragedies. I no longer want to hear, after a mass shooting, of the remarkable ways a community came together. I don’t want platitudes and pieties. I want justice. I want accountability for the rhetoric and the policies and — in our own country — the obscenely easy access to weapons of war that endanger us all. I don’t want to celebrate resiliency; I want to see reform.

But as a spiritual matter, I urgently need the silver lining. I need the hints of humanity that remind us that what is is not what must be. The quiet insistence that there is more light than darkness in this world, that tenderness and love can prevail over even the most virulent hatred.”

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Claire has been watching… 📺

“My Secret Santa,” the third Netflix Christmas movie I attempted this year, and the first that in any way scratched my itch for a truly wacky, narratively absurd, deeply weird holiday rom-com. It stars Alexandra Breckinridge (“Virgin River”) as a former punk rocker turned wholesome but struggling single mom. She has just lost her job at the Christmas cookie factory due to a decreased demand for store-bought Santa cookies when her 15-year-old daughter announces she’s gotten into a wildly expensive snowboarding school at the nearby resort. To make some money and also get a steep discount on her daughter’s lessons, she poses as an old man to work as the resort’s Santa Claus… while falling in love with the wastrel son of the resort’s owner, whose only redeeming quality is that he was a fan of her now-forgotten punk band. You may be noticing some holes in her plan, but the people behind this movie are undeterred by the nature of employment benefits and the existence of logic – and that’s just the way I like it.

I’ve also been binging “Emily in Paris” season 5, which we will be discussing on an upcoming Rich Text episode. I will say only that I don’t think this the season that will convert me into a fan of the show.

Emma has been watching… 📺

Like Claire, I’ve also been making my way through season 5 of “Emily in Paris” so that we can discuss it on the Rich Text pod! (Spoiler alert: I… hate it???) But I’ve also spent the last few nights revisiting the Rob Reiner films that have shaped my love of culture and cinema and storytelling. The breadth and depth of his work is staggering when you look at it all together, but two movies that stand out in my personal canon are “The Princess Bride” and “When Harry Met Sally.”

“The Princess Bride,” which came out about two months after I was born, was a staple in my home. It truly has it all: comedy, romance, period costumes, action sequences, revenge, Billy Crystal, and writing so distinct that I can quote it decades later. (“Death cannot stop true love,” Carly Elwes’ Westley says to Robin Wright’s Buttercup. “All it can do is delay it for a while.”) “When Harry Met Sally” is simply just the best of the best of the best. Not only is it arguably the greatest rom-com of all time, but it also was gifted to us in its final form because of Rob’s love story with wife Michele. He met her, a photographer, while making “When Harry Met Sally,” and changed the ending as a result. Without Michele, we never would have gotten Harry’s perfect declaration of love: “I came here tonight, because when you realize you wanna spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

Claire has been listening to… 🎧

The Byron Velvick season of Bachelor in Retrospect, of course. It’s quite a trip to learn about the season, which is barely remembered now – especially since one of our first-ever episodes was an interview with Byron’s defeated competitor, Jay Overbye. (As far as I can recall, he was lovely. Byron, in the recaps, does not come off quite as well.)

Plus, 5-4 did a recap of “Average Joe,” a movie about the high school football coach who went to the Supreme Court to defend his right to lead students in prayer on the field, in defiance of the separation of church and state. The movie apparently starts with a scene of our hero… chasing a terrified camel in a Humvee? You know, you probably have to see it to understand. Peter, Michael, and Rhiannon are very funny, and it’s nice to occasionally get to hear them being funny about something less immediately dangerous than their usual Supreme Court fare.

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

Claire recommended this last week, but I need to put another plug in for the newest season of our former colleague Melissa Jeltsen’s podcast, “What Happened In Nashville?” Melissa is such an astute and thoughtful journalist, so it makes complete sense to me that she would turn her discerning eye from more traditional true crime stories over to the absolute mess that occurred when a major Nashville fertility clinic shut down without warning. Anyone who has undergone fertility treatments, thought about fertility, or loved someone who has done either will be hit hard by this story.

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

A house! We are finally, after many years of dithering and angst, moving to the suburbs. We at last felt it needed to happen. We have really been struggling to contain two energetic boys and two work-from-home adults in our small, two-bed one-bath, third-floor walkup. I record in a glorified storage closet surrounded by, just out of frame, teetering piles of old baby gear and out-of-season coats. We keep our cardboard recycling stacked in the small space between our bathroom and kitchen table, which itself doubles as a storage space for all of our son’s art supplies and LEGO. We’re looking forward to having a basement, a yard, a third bedroom, an (allegedly) working fireplace, and built-in bookshelves (confirmed).

But our relief is matched by our grief, because we never really wanted to leave the city (I committed to it! I barely know how to drive a car anymore!). What’s more, we truly love our neighborhood. We moved to Jersey City when our first was 8 months old, and so this is where we’ve made friends with other parents, become regulars at local kid-friendly establishments, and helped our children clamber on every inch of every playground in the neighborhood. We can exit our front door and walk five minutes to the park, the pediatrician, the daycare, the public school, the library and the indie bookshop – and along the way, we inevitably see at least three people we know, plus several more whose faces are familiar though we’ve never actually met.

So it’s bittersweet to set off on the next great adventure, hoping to rebuild a community like the one we’ve been so lucky to find in our current home. But it’s happening… so here we go!

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

I preordered this BaubleBar choker that I’ve seen floating around the internet for weeks. It reminds me of this significantly more expensive (and incredibly chic) one from Veronica Beard, but I decided that I should be fiscally wise and go for the under-50-dollar version instead. I feel like it’ll be a really wearable piece throughout the winter, and who doesn’t love a little extra sparkle?

Also, finally got the chance to use my beloved Jonathan Adler menorah (see earlier photo), which doubles as home decor when it’s not Hanukkah! And I noticed that it is currently 50 percent off.

Claire has been making… 🧶

As little as possible! It’s already one of my most overwhelming times of year – my first child’s birthday is in December, followed by Hanukkah and Christmas – and this year we are also (see above) moving. Between the logistics of actually buying and moving into a house, the paperwork and waitlists involved in enrolling the kids in a new school/aftercare and new daycare, the shopping lists and events surrounding the birthday and holidays, and our annual trip upstate to visit my family for Christmas, we are maxed out. We kept the birthday party simple this year – Chuck E. Cheese and a cake, easy peasy – and made sure to get gift shopping done before December for a change. But there has been no time for the baking of seasonal treats or even much cooking. It’s been delivery pizza, pasta in jarred sauce, and sheet-pan dinners until we get through this. We’ll make cookies next year!

Emma has been making… 🧶

Golden Mushroom Soup with Orzo and a Pat of Butter from Alison Roman’s new cookbook, Something From Nothing. (You can also find a version of the recipe in her newsletter.) The soup is cozy and rich and pretty easy to make. As with all of Alison’s recipes, this one is accessible for even the novice home cook. Plus, it makes for some truly excellent leftovers.

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This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest subscriber podcast is a grab bag about “Heated Rivalry” and the “SLOMW” S3 reunion!

Over on Love To See It, we got into some big “Bachelor” and “Love Is Blind” breakups, as well as the viral Danish Deception!

Civic challenge of the week:

Consider participating in USPS’s Operation Santa! It’s a truly lovely way to make sure children and families in need get the holiday cheer and gifts they deserve this year. We just adopted a family of three kids and had so much fun shopping for them! (Letter adoption ends 12/13!)

Claire has been reading… 📖

“Doughnuts and Bullets,” Kerry Howley’s NYMag feature about what it has been like to work at RFK Jr.’s CDC. Howley interviewed 16 staffers, some of whom have left the agency, about their experiences through mass firings, baffling policy changes, hamstrung public health efforts, and a shooting at the Atlanta headquarters. These events have been reported before, but Howley’s fly-on-the-wall vantage point brings home how bleak the scene at the CDC has grown. It chilled me to the bone.

Sam Kriss wrote, I think, the definitive essay on the distinctive AI writing voice that now haunts us everywhere. He lingers over the obvious tells — M-dashes, “It’s not X, it’s Y,” “delves” — and teases out some plausible reasons that certain tics have become so baked into the chatbot house style. He notices the voice in places I would never think of it: political statements on social media and in the House of Parliament, goodbye letters posted on the windows of shuttered Starbucks locations. And while the unnerving reality is probably that many of these statements were delegated to ChatGPT, it’s even more unnerving when he notes that they may not all be. Rather, we may be changing how we speak to mirror the AI prose we experience every day. And though we already used M-dashes and, yes, “delves” (I checked my inbox and Emma and I had deployed some form of “delve” in no fewer than 7 recommendations newsletters in the past three years), I cannot countenance becoming a frequent user of the “It’s not X, it’s Y” construction. AI must be stopped!

Emma has been reading… 📖

A few very illuminating essays/articles! First, this long read by Monica Corcoran Harel in New York Magazine, about how many women are “quiet quitting” their marriages in mid-life. Too exhausted at the prospect of going through the arduous — and expensive! — process of getting a legal divorce, women are simply… emotionally and physically opting out of their partnerships. Does the piece paint a picture that’s a bit bleak? Certainly! But it’s also fascinating.

I also found ’s recent piece for The Forward, “Americans are waking up to right-wing antisemitism. We’re still ignoring the root problem,” to be a deeply important read. He writes about the alarming mainstreaming of figures like Nick Fuentes, and what it tells us about the online ecosystem that is actively breeding rampant antisemitism, especially on the right. Nehorai especially points to Elon Musk’s role in this system: X has become a haven for antisemitic drivel, which is deeply unsurprising given that it is a platform owned by a man who did a Nazi salute at President Trump’s second inauguration. Nehorai argues that we need to learn from this antisemitic ecosystem in order to combat it: “If digital networks like this are the engine of political change today, then the test for any movement fighting antisemitism is whether it can build such a network of its own. The far-right has done this with remarkable focus. Our institutions have not. Instead, they’ve increasingly turned inward, creating an echo chamber focused on combatting criticism of Israel, while failing to sufficiently engage with these serious and growing domestic threats.”

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Claire has been watching… 📺

Disappointing Netflix holiday rom-coms. “Champagne Problems”? The only problem here is that the world did not need an even less zany take on “Emily in Paris.” “Jingle Bell Heist”? The only heist I want to see is one that disappears the uninspired male love interest. Emma has assured me I shouldn’t even bother with “A Merry Little Ex-mas.” Don’t worry, my time has not been entirely wasted: I have been watching “Heated Rivalry.”

Plus, Greg and I have made Rachel Sennott’s “I Love LA” our new couch date show – a much-needed palate cleanser after the gore and stress of “Task.” Not only is the comedy sharp and the core cast flawless, the smaller roles and guest parts are a veritable who’s who of actors I want to watch. Leighton Meester as protagonist Maia’s vapid but successful millennial boss! Ben Feldman as her purportedly migraine-prone partner! Ayo Edebiri as a cult-famous popstar! In episode 4, Elijah Wood pops in for a cameo, playing a sort of volcel shut-in version of himself, and it is perfection.

Emma has been watching… 📺

“Twelve Dates ‘Til Christmas” on Hallmark! If you read this newsletter, you know that I am an absolute sucker for a charming holiday rom-com. The made-for-TV options have been really slim pickings this year — not zany enough to be hilarious, not well done enough to really make you care about any characters you’re watching — but I feel like I’ve finally found a (potential) winner with Hallmark’s new holiday romance mini-series, “Twelve Dates ‘Til Christmas,” which is based off of Jenny Bayliss’ novel, “The Twelve Dates of Christmas.” My first clue that it might be worth watching is that the lead, 30-something Kate, is played by Mae Whitman, an actually-talented actress! It’s also set in the London burbs (charming!), has a fun set-up — Kate’s bestie signs her up against her will for a Christmas-themed dating experience, which, as you may have guessed, includes 12 different dates — and includes an underlying potential friends-to-lovers plot line. I watched the first two episodes and I’m very in.

I also have (duh!) been keeping up with “Heated Rivalry,” and I absolutely LOVED the turn that episode 3 took! I’m now just as invested in Kip and Scott’s romance as I am in Shane and Ilya’s. If you haven’t started this series yet… RUN AND WATCH IT!

Claire has been listening to… 🎧

Our old colleague Melissa Jeltsen’s new series, What Happened in Nashville?, which is a small step away from her usual, more traditional true-crime beat. Instead, this series tells the story of the sudden closure of a fertility clinic in Nashville, which left would-be parents devastated as their IVF cycles were interrupted, embryos were held hostage in uncertain storage conditions, medical records went missing, and tens of thousands of dollars for they’d shelled out for treatment seemingly went up in smoke. Melissa always keeps the focus on the victims in the stories she reports — the small details of their lives, their big dreams, their suffering — and she does the same with the women who were left in panicked confusion when the clinic abruptly shuttered.

Plus, check out last week’s episode of the Defector podcast about cheating, Only If You Get Caught – featuring an interview with us! The episode takes on the “here for the right reasons” trope in “The Bachelor” and questions what counts as cheating in a game as unpredictable and ever-changing as this franchise.

And, thanks to an old video Mikayla Matthews posted on TikTok to celebrate Whitney Leavitt’s new Broadway role (truly can’t believe I just wrote that), I have become obsessed with Kimiko Glenn’s “When He Sees Me” from the original cast recording of “Waitress.”

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

Knowing how much I love a good scam story, a friend recently suggested that I check out the Aussie podcast Snowball, which is being dropped on the Deep Cover feed! It follows the story of a New Zealand family that is thrown into turmoil after elder brother Greg meets Leslie — a beguiling, older, American woman who sweeps Greg off his feet… and ultimately turns out to be a con artist.

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

Nothing except for more stocking stuffers and gifts! The holiday giving season is about to kick off with my older son’s birthday, and then we roll right through Hanukkah and Christmas without pausing to take a breath or think too much about our credit card bill! (In January: gruel. Gruel for everyone.)

Since my Black Friday purchases have come in, I am also in a Season Of Returns right now. Unless it’s final sale, I’d better love it! If not, it goes on the Pile Of Rejects on my bedroom floor, I print a stack of labels at the public library, and then I go on a brisk walk to Fedex, UPS, and the post office (all helpfully located in opposite directions from my apartment) and drop them off. I think of it as my holiday exercise routine.

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

My annual holiday party is this coming Sunday, so I’ve been ordering Etsy decor and doing some up-to-the-wire shopping for my outfit! I *think* I have finally decided on a dress (though I do have a few others that aren’t arriving until Thursday, because I thrive on chaos), and I’m down to two pretty perfect shoe options: these classic black velvet platforms from Steve Madden, and these contrast bow pumps from Sam Edelman. I’m also a very strong believer in the power of a pair of fun and festive tights to zhuzh up any outfit, so I picked up a few options from Calzedonia, including these sheer polka dot ones and these sheer rhinestone ones.

Also, my new Our Place Always Pan 2.0 arrived (a Black Friday purchase), and I am OBSESSED. The pan cooks like a dream!!! And it’s deep enough to make a stew or soup in. I’m really hoping this will motivate me to cook more this winter.

And, like Claire, I’ve been doing many, many, many returns. If I don’t love something I purchased, it goes right back! Me and the UPS store guys are besties at this point.

Claire has been making… 🧶

Slow-cooker taco chicken bowls! I altered this recipe around my willingness to make pesto (nil) and what jarred sauce was available at my local grocery store (taco simmer sauce), so ultimately this was more of a suggestion. But the result was everything I hoped for! Along with the chicken, quick-pickled onions, and yellow rice, I threw in some guacamole and a bagged salad. (The kids had bell pepper slices, which one of them ate, instead of salad.) Incredibly easy, incredibly delicious. The whole dish is also tasty as a burrito or taco filling. I used the last bits of chicken and some pickled onions to top a slice of toast spread with basic Laughing Cow cheese spread today, and honestly, that was phenomenal as well. Never bet against cheese!

Emma has been making… 🧶

Chia seed pudding with greek yogurt and strawberry jam! I was looking for some easy breakfasts that I could prep for the week, and then I came across this really delicious-looking yogurt/chia pudding/jam parfait from Glow Diaries, which I used as a jumping off point. I made some adjustments — for example, I didn’t have matcha powder on hand so I just made a plain almond milk chia pudding with some vanilla extract and maple syrup for flavor — but it still turned out great! (I also happened to have a bag of frozen strawberries in my freezer, so I made strawberry jam instead of raspberry, and I used plain greek yogurt instead of coconut yogurt.) All in all, it was a success! Definitely going in my weekly rotation.

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This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest subscriber podcast is a grab bag about the Nuzzi/Lizza/RFK Jr. affair, “Selling The O.C.” S4, and “All’s Fair.” An episode about the “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” S4 reunion is coming soon!

Over on Love To See It, we previewed Taylor Frankie Paul’s suitors and revisited “Four Weddings and a Funeral”!

Civic challenge of the week:

Giving Tuesday was technically yesterday, but that’s no reason to stop! Look for local opportunities to give — toy and food drives, etc. — and support national or international organizations if you have the funds.

Claire has been reading… 📖

Christa Hillstrom’s Atavist long-read on femicide counting projects, which centers on the national database founded and maintained by Texas nurse Dawn Wilcox. Like many femicide trackers, Wilcox’s is a personal project rather than an institutional one. She began keeping track of these murders after learning that a childhood friend of her daughter’s had disappeared while in the company of a male acquaintance. It’s a deeply moving read.

Also, Sophie Pinkham’s great Baffler essay about Ms. Rachel and the vast, bland expanse of contemporary children’s entertainment, “Speak and Sell.” Like me, Pinkham admires Ms. Rachel’s political convictions — she has been an outspoken and steadfast advocate for the children of Gaza — but dislikes her show. I’ve actually never shown it to my children; we had banished YouTube before she came to her current prominence, after realizing that we couldn’t bear another Bounce Patrol music video or toy truck unboxing video. But I’ve seen enough. Pinkham’s dissection of the Ms. Rachel aesthetic is sharp (“Ms. Rachel’s megatoddler costume seemed to me to embody the American assumption that the adult woman disappears with the birth of her child, when she is transformed into a caring appendage, desexed and infantilized, addressed as “Mom” even by strangers, and starts spending holidays with her children in matching pajamas”) and her concern that our children are increasingly being introduced not to art and literature but to superficial, screen-based content mirrors my own. I have rarely felt more seen by a piece about parenting a toddler.

I’ve also been reading the Olivia Nuzzi reviews — more on that from Emma!

Emma has been reading… 📖

Some very well-written reviews of Olivia Nuzzi’s memoir, “American Canto,” which published on Dec. 2nd. There are few things quite so satisfying as a sharply-rendered, critical book review, which meant that I really loved reading both Becca Rothfeld’s review for The Washington Post (“Olivia Nuzzi tries and fails to save her reputation in ‘American Canto’”), and Helen Lewis’ in The Atlantic (“Olivia Nuzzi’s Tell-Nothing Memoir”).

Some choice passages below:

Rothfeld: “I can’t say I care very much about any of it, because Nuzzi risks so little of herself throughout. There could have been a version of this book in which she dared to interpret her fall from grace as continuous with the country’s — in which she, too, was shocked to find herself seduced by charismatic vulgarity, in which she admitted to ugliness or inelegance.”

Lewis: “There is no real, believable regret in American Canto, not even when Nuzzi acknowledges that Kennedy used her badly and discarded her. Memoirs of temporary madness are usually written from the safe shore of sanity. But based on what’s in the book, I suspect that if RFK Jr. turned up at Nuzzi’s door tomorrow with a single rose and a hopeful smile, she would fall for it, and him, all over again.”

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Claire has been watching… 📺

“The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” season 6! I’m finally caught up, after some sneaky holiday weekend binging. These women are consummate professionals, and the way they expertly alternate fun activities, during which they pretend to be friends, and meals, during which they casually drop nasty allegations about each other’s businesses and husbands and instigate screaming matches, should be studied. But this season the drama that has really broken my heart has been Britani’s estrangement from her daughter. Britani, a disconcertingly childlike 54-year-old whose main pastime is managing her on-and-off situationship with Jared Osmond, claims halfheartedly to be devastated by the rift, but the more she attempts to explore this as a storyline, the more clear it becomes that she is unwilling to make any meaningful sacrifice in order to restore her daughter’s trust.

Emma has been watching… 📺

After seeing many, many, many sexy memes on Evan Ross Katz’s Instagram page, I dove into the first handful of episodes of Crave’s “Heated Rivalry,” which is airing in the U.S. on HBO Max. The show follows two rising star hockey players, Canadian Shane Hollander and Russian Ilya Rozanov. They end up in an extended, secret situationship, which grows into something bigger alongside their respective careers. It’s very spicy and well-constructed and I was hooked basically immediately.

I also started watching Netflix’s latest unhinged holiday rom-com, “Champagne Problems,” at the urging of my dear friend Laura who said that it made her happy and dissociated. In my humble opinion, many of us could use both more happiness and dissociation right now.

Claire has been listening to… 🎧

Per Emma’s recent suggestion, I’ve been listening to Beth Is Dead, the true-crime-meets-parasociality podcast featuring Elizabeth Laime and Andy Rosen, who, along with fellow podcaster Monica Padman, take us through the unsettling events that led them to shut down their popular podcast years ago. It is as gripping as advertised.

I also listened to the recent Decoder Ring episode about the sudden popularity of protein — which I really needed, because I have been totally baffled by it. It seems that one day, protein was just another meal component (add it to your salad, make sure it’s part of your children’s dinner, etc.), and the next I was getting shown nonstop reels and recipes urging me to blend cottage cheese into everything to ensure I hit my protein goals for the day. I’ve never felt that I lacked protein, despite lacking any cottage cheese in my lifestyle, so the Decoder Ring episode was reassuring and extremely informative about the backstory of protein obsession.

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

Sarah Marshall’s new podcast, The Devil You Know! I’ve adored Sarah as a writer and podcaster for years, so was very excited to see that she had a new show out with CBC podcasts about the Satanic Panic of the ‘80s/’90s. I’ve done some reading and listening about moral panics in general, and specifically about the Satanic Panic that began to grip the nation around when elder millennials were born, but I’m learning so much from Sarah’s reporting, and it is gripping.

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

Way too much in the Black Friday sales — mostly, to be fair, holiday and birthday presents for my kids. My younger son is starting to steal his brother’s Yoto Mini, so he’s getting his own. He also adores Magna-Tiles (“wanna build a house” is his constant refrain), so I got him a castle set with cute window and door tiles to add to his creations. His other major interest is trains (or “choo-choos”), so he’s getting a little Brio set. My older son has become obsessed with sports, so he’s receiving some hockey gear, including his first pair of roller blades, as well as a tennis racquet and a two-wheeled scooter. Plus, I picked out some stocking stuffers, like these spinning costume rings for my older son, niece, and nephew. (The toddlers will be getting less choking-hazardous gifts from Santa.)

But I did also talk myself into a couple treats while assembling our BFCM guide (whoops) — the merino Bombas with little bows, the apple-red Christy Dawn cardigan I was eyeing, and the Merit eyeshadow in Palladium.

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

I also did some Black Friday damage — both for myself and others. My mom and I popped into the Jenni Kayne store in Bethesda, MD when I was home for the holiday, and she gifted me the navy version of my all-time favorite Cashmere Fisherman Sweater as an early Hanukkah present. (It’s just so soft!!! I’ve already worn it no less than 4 times!!!)

As for my own purchases, I bought this excellent Italian Leather Triple Compartment Work Tote from Quince as a Hanukkah gift for a family member when I saw it was on a Black Friday flash sale. I also got myself a few lil treats, like these Pull-On Track Pants from Madewell (size up if you, like me, have hips — they are cut pretty straight), a cozy wool-cashmere blend bandana, leather “tech touch” gloves (another item I lose and repurchase yearly), and a pair of wide-leg satin trousers.

Claire has been making… 🧶

Just survival meals. My mother-in-law kindly excused us from bringing anything to Thanksgiving this year, as we’re having an even more hectic fall than usual. Greg and I are taking turns feeling under the weather, and most days it’s all I can do to get some dino nuggets and broccoli on the table. When will sick season end??

Emma has been making… 🧶

Fancy Rice Krispie treats for a Friendsgiving! My friends Jess and Maxwell host a beautifully curated Friendsgiving celebration every year, so I knew I had to come correct. I decided to make these Rosemary Thyme Brown Butter Rice Krispie Treats, inspired by my friend Sami. And they were DELICIOUS. Only issue was that I failed to properly grease the bottom of my baking dish, so people had to really work to extricate the treats from their home in order to eat them. But… I think the effort was worth the reward.

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Happy Thanksgiving week! It’s a time for rest, reflection, and — let’s admit it — an ungodly number of sales. To do the Black Friday sales justice, we decided to put together this super-sized shopping newsletter this week, filled with all our past favorites that are available at a discount this week and all the tempting things we’ve been considering adding to our own carts. Plus, a list of some places that could use your Giving Tuesday dollars. And we encourage you NOT to shop at places like Amazon, Target and Home Depot this sales season.

Places To Donate To Before You Shop:

• The Loveland Foundation, an org focused on therapy, healing and opportunity for communities of color, especially Black women and girls.

• National Network of Abortion Funds, a network of almost 100 independent abortion funds around the country.

• City Harvest NYC, which helps feed New Yorkers. (Or any food bank in your area!)

• World Central Kitchen, which provides fresh meals to people in need during crises.

• Trans Lifeline, a peer support and crisis hotline offering support to trans people by phone.

• Envision Freedom Fund, which, among other things, provides much-needed immigration bond assistance.

• The Florence Project, which provides free legal services, social services, and advocacy to immigrants facing detention and potential deportation.

• Feeding America, which battles child hunger around the country

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What We’re Recommending (And Eyeing For Ourselves) :

Hill House Home: 25% off everything, plus additional “stock up special” discounts

• What Claire recommends:

  • The tulle Ellie, which is such a frothy, fun, and eminently stylable special occasion dress, is on sale for just $149!

  • The Olivia PJs are in my regular nightwear rotation – they’re soft, cute, and just cozy enough for cool weather.

• What Claire is eyeing:

  • New holiday party dresses on markdown! I am obsessed with the ‘90s-coded Augustina maxi, which is still a splurge on sale but might be worth it if you have an elegant winter event to attend. There are other cute party looks on double discount, like the mini brocade Joelle.

• What Emma recommends:

  • Hill House’s jackets are truly underrated. The ones that I own, like the Clarisse, are pretty sold out. But there are still some sizes left of the Aubriella (those clasps!!), and the Dax.

• What Emma is eyeing:

  • I’m a sucker for a sweet PJ set, so I have my eye on the Cleo Pointelle Set in Rose Ikat.

  • Also, this extremely cutie claw clip!

La Ligne: Discounts on select items under “Mercigiving”

• What Emma is eyeing:

  • I’ve been on the hunt for stretchy-waistband pants that don’t look super casual / loungewear-like. And the Sabine Pant fits the bill! I feel like I could dress them up or down and wouldn’t look like a total schlub??

  • I’ve also been lusting after the Colby Pant, but unfortunately most of the colors aren’t on sale and the ones that are on sale got bought up immediately.

Tradlands: 25% off everything but the latest holiday drop.

• What Claire recommends:

  • The Shelter crewneck, a classic, high-quality cotton pullover, which is on sale in chocolate brown, blue/red/cream stripe, and black/cream stripe. (Sadly the bold midcoast stripe colorway isn’t on sale, as it’s part of their holiday drop, but your girl is obsessed.)

Christy Dawn: Selected items up to 50% off, plus daily flash sales

• What Claire recommends:

  • Knitwear!!! My Christy Dawn sweaters are among my favorite items of clothing, and some of them are on flash sale today (Tuesday) only! My wool Clover cardigan and cotton Nola cardigan are my favorite sweaters to top off a dressy outfit, and they’re both marked down right now.

  • Simple Dawn dresses! They’re a less gussied-up version of their staple piece, for a significantly lower price point.

  • The girlier, more romantic Brynne dress is another one of my favorites, and they have two special discounted colorways on sale right now – a dark red floral and a cream-and-red calico.

• What Claire is eyeing:

  • The Emmi sweater vest, as I’ve been craving sweater vests ever since we watched “Baby Boom” and were reminded of Diane Keaton’s inimitable style.

  • The Gigi cardigan in apple red, which is the most precious dress topper I think I’ve ever seen.

Everlane: Up to 50% off sitewide

• What Claire recommends:

  • Denim! I love my Way-High Curve jeans and Way-High Gardener jeans – I even wore the latter in our family holiday photos instead of a fancy dress. That is commitment!

  • Cocoon Crew sweaters in alpaca. They’re light and lofty, easy to partially tuck into your jeans if you’re still doing the French tuck (guilty), and super soft. (I’m still considering the merlot and toffee colors, which I think are gorgeous, since they’re such a good price.)

  • Luxe rib tees and turtlenecks, which are polished enough to wear alone but also thin and snug enough to make ideal base layers. I’m considering adding a black crewneck and a turtleneck or two to my collection.

• What Claire is eyeing:

  • I’ve been so close to buying their Half-Zip Sweater in merino so many times – will this be the moment? I adore my old Everlane half-zip sweatshirt, which is the perfect shape, and a slightly elevated version sounds like it would come in handy.

Nelle Atelier: Save between $65 and $165 depending on how much you spend

• What Emma recommends:

  • Basically everything??? I own so many Nelle pieces and truly adore them all and wear them weekly. These jeans (and beyond) are godsends for a petite gal. My current favorites are the dark-wash Miri Baggy Jean and the matching Miri Boxy Jacket.

  • The Ali Horseshoe Jeans in Olive have also been in my frequent rotation!

Madewell: 40% off (almost) everything

• What Emma is eyeing:

  • As I said, I’m on the hunt for chic pull-on pants. So I think I’m legally obligated to buy these bootcut track pants? I also love these satin ones, which come in petites.

  • Striped tops! Like this Striped Polo Sweater in merino wool and this striped cashmere tee.

Reformation: 25% off everything

• What Emma recommends:

  • The Cove Cashmere Oversized Crew. I truly want this sweater in every color and pattern.

  • The Eugenie top is the going out top of my DREAMS. So sexy while still being pretty comfortable.

  • The best basic tank I’ve ever owned.

• What Emma is eyeing:

  • These gorgeous Carolina Pants in Navy with white lace trim! They’re similar to the satin shorts I got from Ref over the summer.

  • The Clara Cashmere Crew Cardigan in Navy Multi Argyle or Dark Pine Multi Stripe or with a Leopard Faux Fur Cuff. Too many choices!

  • Another striped sweater! I felt this one in-store and it’s so soft!

COS: 25% off sitewide, early access with code VIP25

• What Emma recommends:

  • This perfect Oversized Boxy Tee. A staple!

• What Emma is eyeing:

  • This chunky cashmere sweater – allegedly a great dupe for The Row’s Ophelia sweater – which is sadly excluded from promotions.

Quince: Deals on select items

• What Emma recommends:

  • The Mongolian Cashmere Fisherman Crewneck sweater, a great alternative to the pricier Jenni Kayne version.

  • My other fave Quince knit, this cashmere quarter-zip!

• What Emma is eyeing:

  • These shearling earmuffs. I lose and promptly repurchase a pair of earmuffs nearly every year.

  • This to-die-for, perfectly oversized 100% Leather Bomber Jacket.

Dôen: Limited selection on sale

• What Claire recommends:

  • The Quinley dress in noir rosier, which I wore to an event last month. It’s a crisp, semisheer cotton voile, but the earthy colors are seasonless and it was easy to layer. It’s probably a bit small in the bust if you are more curvy; I’m pretty flat-chested and the bodice fit well.

  • The Quinn in amberwood, which has a very similar silhouette to the Quinley. It runs a bit bigger and has more room to adjust the bust as well.

• What Claire is eyeing:

  • The Rhoda dress in noir prairie de montagne – the slightly sculptural sleeves and elegant drape are calling to me.

  • Knits! The robin’s egg blue hue and slightly nubbled texture of the Iva sweater are eye-catching.

  • Blouses! Tops are my favorite category to shop for Dôen – I haven’t found another brand that consistently nails the elegant cottage-core look in blouse form. The gathered-neck button-down Julienne top in Provençal paisley is currently topping my list.

Nour Hammour: Discounts on select pieces

• If I had more money than I currently do, I would immediately purchase this perfect chocolate brown suede trench coat with a removable fur collar. Even 40% off it’s a bit too splurge-y for my budget, but damn is it perfect.

Jenni Kayne: 25% off nearly everything

• What Emma recommends:

  • My most-worn sweater continues to be this Jenni Kayne Cashmere Fisherman Sweater. I got the chocolate brown one on Black Friday last year, and the minute the weather gets chilly I throw it on weekly.

• What Emma is eyeing:

  • The Cashmere Stevie Polo, in either Camel or Navy.

Lisa Says Gah!: 30% off sitewide

• What Claire is eyeing:

  • All of the sweaters I’ve been curious about! Many of their sweaters are $150, so they’re marked down to $100. I finally ordered a Lauda cardigan in olive argyle, as well as the fluffy Issa v-neck cardigan in blue and the Cory turtleneck sweater with kissing swans, and I will report back.

• The Shani turtleneck with multicolored stars seemed a little bold for my personal style, but it is super cute!

Rag & Bone: 25% off select items

• What Emma recommends:

  • The entirety of the Miramar line! I’ve been raving about these cozy, comfy, chic sweatpant jeans for months, but now is a great time to grab a pair! My favorites are the classic wide-leg pants, but the Sofie’s have a belt loop which is great if you really wanna take the these-are-denim ruse to the next level.

Shopbop: 25% off select items (but a lot of them!)

• What Emma recommends:

  • Staud Wally boots in any color or variation. I have bought 4 different pairs of these (both short and tall) over the years and they are truly perfect.

  • My best-fitting everyday baseball cap from Anine Bing.

  • Heaven Mayhem’s necklaces look much more expensive than they are, IMO.

• What Emma’s eyeing:

  • This Damson Madder slouchy blue cardi.

  • An elegant cinch-waist blazer from Aligne.

  • This cool girl leopard print (a neutral!) crew sweater.

  • A perfect holiday season top.

Aureum Collective: 35-75% off sitewide

• What Emma recommends:

  • The No. 16 belt is my most-used belt! It’s so sturdy and versatile and makes any outfit better, IMO.

  • My runner-up belt is the No. 10 in brown suede with a chunky gold

• What Emma is eyeing:

  • The Portofino sunnies! Obsessed with the shape.

  • Been lusting after this Mercer leather jacket for months.

Ring Concierge: 30% off sitewide

• What Emma recommends:

  • I got this mini diamond tennis bracelet in 14k white gold a year ago and basically do not think I’ve removed it since? It’s perfect for every day, very durable, very elegant, and adds a bit of sparkle to any outfit. Obsessed is an understatement.

Bombas: 25% off sitewide

• What Claire recommends:

  • Slippers! I have the Sunday Mules (a gift from last Christmas) and they’re still in great shape after one year of frequent use.

  • Toddler socks, which come in such fun bright colorways and in big multipacks for stocking stuffers or just stocking up.

• What Claire is eyeing:

  • Obviously some of their fancier pairs, like these precious bow-printed and merino cashmere socks.

Sheertex: $35 or less sitewide

• What Emma recommends:

  • As I said last year, these are truly the BEST tights of all time. They do not rip. And if you can get them on sale, they are BEYOND worth it. My favorites are the classic sheer nude tights and classic sheer black tights.

Stripe and Stare: Up to 50% off select items, plus daily deals

• What Emma recommends:

  • I wear these Stripe & Stare Original Briefs nearly every day. I’d get whatever color combination happens to be on sale and available in your size.

  • Also love their no-underwire bras, like this fun mesh one.

• What Emma is eyeing:

  • More uber-soft pajamas!

Margaux: 20% off sitewide

• What Emma recommends:

  • The most comfortable flats I’ve ever owned, the Phoebe Flats in Leopard Suede. I also love that all Margaux shoes come in Wide, Narrow and Regular sizes.

• What Emma is eyeing:

  • These cozy, shearling-lined suede mules!

  • Also… every pair of shoes in the Alex Mill x Margaux collaboration? These low-heeled booties! These sleek flats! All so freaking chic!

Rothy’s: Up to 30% off sitewide

• What Claire recommends

  • The square-toed Mary Janes, which are a comfy and durable basic ballet flat. I own the Maxi Square version in red, but I don’t have a black pair, and I’m intrigued by the studded black Mary Jane – on sale for $99 right now!

Sam Edelman: Additional 35% off sale

• What Claire recommends:

  • The Laguna Chelsea boot, which is on sale in a few colors! I own too many pairs of these and wear them almost daily in the fall and winter.

Merit Beauty: 20% off sitewide

• What Claire recommends:

  • Always, always the essentials: The Uniform tinted mineral sunscreen, The Minimalist perfecting complexion stick, Flush Balm (I love Fox and Bespoke), Bronze Balm, Brow 1980 and Clean Lash mascara.

  • I’ve also been using the Great Skin Double Cleanse to remove my makeup at night, and it’s so gentle and effective.

  • Plus, I’ve been wearing Solo Shadow in Iris almost every day, and I love the weightless feel and subtle shimmer. Iris is a soft plum and it’s very neutral and wearable, but I’ve also been considering Surrealism (gold) and Palladium (warm silver) for an even brighter look.

Dr. Diamond’s Metacine: 20% off sitewide

• What Emma recommends:

  • My favorite, extremely expensive skin care is on sale! These products only go on sale once or twice a year, so I highly recommend grabbing them now if you’ve been wanting to try. If you only get one full-size product, I recommend the Instafacial Plasma serum.

  • I also love this little sampler / travel size set, which comes with a small Plasma Growth Factor Serum, Infusion Microcollagen Matrix Serum, and
    Emulsion Retinoid Night Cream.

Solly Baby: 25% off sitewide, and up to 70% off select items

• What Claire recommends:

  • If you’re having a baby and you’re interested in baby-wearing, I always recommend the Solly wraps. They do take a little practice, but I loved how cozy, lightweight, and pretty they were. My younger son used to snuggle inside his Solly while I went on walks, managed his big brother – even vacuumed and prepared snacks. He could even nap happily all the while, and getting to do a contact nap with a cuddly baby while going on a little walk to get coffee is what I call a top-tier parenting experience.

• What Claire is eyeing:

  • Toddler pj sets! My youngest sadly outgrew the baby versions of their incredibly soft, stretchy pj sets – but now I see they have toddler sizes. Come to mama!

Super Smalls: 20-30% off sitewide

• What Claire recommends:

  • If you’re looking for children’s gifts, these beading kits and beauty sets are very cute. I’ve gotten my son and niece mini beading sets in the past, and they are always a hit – they include special custom beads that add a little wow factor (tell me this fruity beading kit is not sweeter than a goddamn peach). There are also MLB and NBA beading sets for tiny sports fans.

• What Claire is eyeing:

  • My older son has been curious about nail polish for a while, and I never keep any in the house anymore, so his interest has gone unexplored. I’m getting him one of their peel-off nail polish sets for the holidays, so he can experiment safely.

Primary: 40% off sitewide

• What Claire recommends:

  • Puffer coats! We cycle the kids through lightweight puffers and heavier parkas from Primary all winter. They’re great coats, but I can’t deny that a big draw is that they come in a rainbow of colors. Let your kid pick her favorite – or choose a really bright hue so you never lose them on the playground. (Yes, this is why my son’s parka is bright red.)

  • Joggers! My son prefers sweatpants, so he’s in Primary joggers from fall to spring. They’re durable, wash well, and look good.

• What Claire is eyeing:

  • Their adult sweat sets, which are quite nicely priced for adult athleisure. If the quality is anything like the quality of their kids’ items, they seem more than worth the sale price.

Hanna Andersson: 50% off everything

• What Claire recommends:

  • Matching PJs! Obviously.

• What Claire is eyeing:

  • These very cute long-sleeve tees!

  • And matching sets for babies or toddlers, my weakness. Their sweat sets have unbeatable patterns and are great quality, but this red embroidered corduroy set is actually killing me. It shouldn’t be allowed for something to be this adorable and Christmassy.

Our Place: Up to 35% off sitewide

• What Emma recommends:

  • The Wonder Oven, the very small-space efficient, aesthetically-pleasing kitchen appliance I use for toasting, roasting, baking, and air frying! If my counter was a little bigger I’d upgrade to the slightly fancier Wonder Oven Pro.

• What Emma is eyeing:

  • A few of my workhorse pans are on their way out, so I’m thinking about jumping on the Always Pan 2.0! I’ve used this pan at my parents’ house over Thanksgiving for years and it’s truly so good!

Dyson: Deals on specific items

• What Claire recommends:

  • The Dyson Supersonic hairdryer is That Girl. I use this hairdryer and diffuser attachment every time I wash my hair, and my stylist never fails to rave about how healthy and undamaged my hair is.

• What Claire is eyeing:

  • The Dyson 360 Vis Nav™ robot vacuum, because I trust Dyson and I hate both vacuuming and dirty floors. Is this a bad idea given that my floors are consistently covered with legos? TBD.

• What Emma recommends:

  • The Airstrait is a holy grail hair product. No notes!

  • Also, my Dyson vacuum – a former Black Friday purchase – was worth every penny. I have the V8, and it’s been cleaning my apartment for years now.

• What Emma is eyeing:

  • As always, the Dyson Airwrap multi-styler.

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This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest subscriber podcasts are about the new season of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives”!

Over on Love To See It this week, we’re talking reality TV news and gossip!

Civic challenge of the week:

Ahead of the holidays, donate to a local food bank!

Claire has been reading… 📖

Caity Weaver’s delightfully unhinged story on a less-than-delightfully but even more unhinged topic: the federal government’s decision to simply stop minting pennies. Weaver lays out, as she has in the past, how absurd the penny is, as a form of currency: Because almost no one ever uses pennies, the U.S. Mint pumps out billions of the coins every year to replace the pennies needed to provide exact change. If all the pennies currently in existence (mostly lying in drawers or pockets) were cashed in at banks, the financial system simply could not handle them. And yet… there still ought to be a plan, surely, for what will happen now that there are to be no new pennies. Guidance on how to provide correct change for any amount not ending in a 0 or a 5, for example! A place to send in old pennies, perhaps to recycle them! But no plans of any kind exist, except to stop minting pennies. It’s a fantastic read.

I’ve also been tracking Olivia Nuzzi’s media tour. The New York Times profile and the Vanity Fair excerpt of her book, “American Canto,” with their accompanying photoshots, both seem very carefully packaged to position her as a sort of glamorous, semi-tragic figure, a combination of an old Hollywood screen siren and Joan Didion. It’s actually astonishing how quickly certain media elites have moved to rehabilitate a journalist who betrayed her readers’ trust by having an affair with one of the subjects of her coverage, a man who was at the time a presidential candidate running on a deeply noxious and harmful platform. And for all that… the writing is bad. Are we willing to throw away our integrity as an industry so that we can have the pleasure of reading gems like this: “He desired. He desired desiring. He desired being desired. He desired desire itself.” Or this: “From his mouth the bullet theoretical launched the bullet possible. I did not like to think about it. About the armed man at his speech. Or the armed man who broke into his home. Or the armed men he paid to guard him from armed men who sought to harm him while the federal government denied his pleas for protection from the security agency whose modern protocols were carved by the same bullets that cut boughs from his family tree and cut the track of the American experiment.” Like… what are we doing here??

Emma has been reading… 📖

Like Claire (and the rest of media), I’ve been unable to tear my eyes away from Olivia Nuzzi’s gauzy, fawning media tour. And like Claire, I’ve been truly gobsmacked by the lyrical emptiness of her writing. The excerpt of “American Canto” published by Vanity Fair is full of lilting, overly flowery prose that might sound deep if you’re just skimming each paragraph, but upon closer examination are simply word salad. This sentence is a great example: “There was the flag as it mutated from metaphorical to literal weapon, as it was marred by a corruption of the American character that could not be understood or even fully observed through the prism of the partisan binary.” Or this one: “And here I mean to tell you that character is not what you are in the end; character is the thing you cannot outrun or outgun that spars with fate all along.” So many words. So few complete, incisive thoughts. Even fewer details about the affair at the center of this tale; the reason for all of the fawning, gauzy profiles.

However, if we are being forced to suffer through the “American Canto” promo rounds with nary a drop of tea being spilled, at least Nuzzi’s ex-fiance Ryan Lizza is dumping out whole teapots on his Substack. I have to admit that I devoured “Part 1: How I Found Out,” and though it is filled with an incredibly annoying bamboo metaphor, at least it was also filled with gossip. THIS IS A GOOD OLD-FASHIONED MEDIA SCANDAL, PEOPLE!!! The gossip part is key!!!

Telos News

Part 1: How I Found Out

Olivia had just returned from a reporting trip—at least that’s what she told me it was—and her Herschel backpack, the one with the flap that never quite closed properly, was tossed beside our bed, its contents scattered on the floor…

Read more

6 months ago · 432 likes · 14 comments · Ryan Lizza

A few other things I’ve been reading:

• So many disturbing emails between Jeffrey Epstein and his buddies! Thank you to for going through all of them.

• Alison Roman’s new cookbook, “Something From Nothing.” Alison’s cookbooks have long been a staple in my home kitchen, and I know this new one will be no exception!

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Claire has been watching… 📺

I ripped through the first few episodes of Rachel Sennott’s new HBO show “I Love L.A.” this week. Sennott plays Maia, an aspiring talent manager who can’t get promoted at her firm. She’s still nurturing a deep resentment for her ex-bestie Tallulah (Odessa A’zion) after Tallulah flaked on their plan to move to L.A. together. Back in New York, Tallulah has become a major influencer and it girl. When Tallulah unexpectedly arrives in L.A., Maia is soon yanked out of her rut – and into a series of sometimes disturbing adventures. I’d seen the comparisons to Lena Dunham’s “Girls,” and they are warranted on some level. Like “Girls,” Sennott’s comedy is a window into a city’s striving young creative class (in this case, influencers and celebrity hangers-on rather than writers). The show also betrays little fear of making its central characters unlikable; their obliviousness, narcissism and base ambition are constantly on display. Perhaps the show makes it a bit more clear that it’s a satire rather than an aspirational dramedy, or perhaps, after “Girls,” we are less baffled by women protagonists who don’t jockey for the approval of the audience. The first few episodes are fun, if a bit aimless – yet another take on the absurdity of cancel culture is, rather boringly, a central plotline – and I have high hopes for the rest of the season.

Greg and I finally finished “Task”! Sadly, this brings to a conclusion our new nightly ritual: somberly reminding each other that we had another task (“Task”?) to complete. I have many outstanding questions, mostly involving why the gang isn’t still going around trying to kill people, but I’m willing to accept that in life, sometimes, we never get the answers we seek.

Emma has been watching… 📺

Cheesy made-for-TV holiday movies and TV shows! It’s the most wonderful time of year… to watch a steady stream of absolutely smooth-brained, trope-ridden television. Hallmark’s murder mystery/Christmas romance series “Mistletoe Murders,” based on the Audible Original series of the same name, is maybe the best of this genre of the content that I’ve consumed recently? (To be clear, I’m grading on a curve.) It just came back for season 2, and I’m already enjoying the tension between Christmas store owner Emily and local detective Sam.

Claire has been listening to… 🎧

In the Dark: Blood Relatives, a new season of the excellent New Yorker investigative series. In Blood Relatives, journalist Heidi Blake reexamines the White House Farm murders, one of England’s most notorious mass killings. Though I had somehow never heard of the case, which has been British tabloid fodder for decades, it’s easy to see why the Agatha Christie-esque elements of the case captured the public interest. The victims – local gentry Neville and June Bamber, their adult daughter Sheila, a former model, and her small twin sons – were all fatally shot inside the family home, which was locked from the inside.

Sheila had struggled with schizophrenia, and her brother Jeremy claimed their father had called him in a panic at 3 am, saying Sheila had a gun. When police finally entered and found the family dead, they believed it was an open-and-shut case of murder-suicide. Sheila was even found with the murder weapon. But Jeremy, a handsome, dissipated young man who had a reputation as a womanizing cad, drew the suspicion of his cousins. In the days after the killings, these cousins brought evidence to the police that made Jeremy the main suspect in what investigators came to see as a carefully staged murder plot. Blake goes through the evidence, and what she finds is profoundly shocking.

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

Allison After NXIVM, a CBC / Campside Media podcast that dives into actress Allison Mack’s story. Mack, an actress previously best known for her role in WB show “Smallville,” was a central player in NXIVM, the cult led by Keith Raniere. Now four years out from Mack’s 2021 sentencing, journalist Natalie Robehmed walks listeners through her story. Mack is a complicated figure, both a victim and a perpetrator, as so many in Raniere’s organization were. But Robehmed does a fantastic job of balancing it all.

I also was gripped by Ezra Klein and John Ganz discussing the mainstreaming of Nick Fuentes on the right, as facilitated by Tucker Carlson and his ilk. There’s been a lot of talk lately about antisemitism on the left — some of it real, some of it a projected bogeyman. But I have found myself worried that we aren’t paying enough attention to the burgeoning, dangerous antisemitism infecting the right. This conversation clarified what’s going on to me, and made me even more certain that Jews will never ever be served by embracing an enthno-nationalist politics.

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

Everlane has a big Black Friday sale running right now, and I’m thinking of taking the plunge on another pair of jeans – maybe the Way-High 2.0 – to round out my new denim wardrobe. I’ve realized that my Way-High Gardener jeans and Way-High Curve jeans are pretty much the only jeans I wear lately, so I’m leaning in to the Everlane denim selection — I just need a slightly dressier pair than anything in my current selection. But given the sale, I also want to re-endorse the cozy Cocoon Crew in alpaca, which has added a beautiful heather merlot shade since I bought mine.

I’ve also been eyeing some things at Tradlands, which has its Black Friday sale going right now. Of course, what I’m really obsessing over are pieces from the new holiday drop (which isn’t part of the sale): this boldly striped cotton pullover, this gorgeous pintucked plaid blouse, these adorable striped track pants, this gauzy black textured dress. This time of year can easily descend into a frenzy of chasing sales and spending irresponsibly (at least, uh, for me), but when I am going to add something to my wardrobe, it feels a little better to support a slow and sustainable brand like Tradlands at the same time.

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

Cozy knits! I’d been lusting over this Reformation Cove Cashmere Oversized Crew in Thunder Multi Argyle, so when I saw that it had come back in stock for preorder, I jumped on it! (I’ll be waiting to make any other Ref purchases for after they launch their Black Friday sale on the 25th.)

I’ve also been contemplating this classic v-neck sweater from Quince, and a sweater-y set from GAP’s CashSoft line — this chunky cardigan and matching shaker-stitch sweater pants. It feels like a step up from sweats, while still being very cozy/comfy. Plus, both pieces are currently 20% off.

Claire has been making… 🧶

Slow-cooker recipes, as threatened! Never the most avid Crockpot user, I had stowed mine in a forgotten cupboard corner for years. Suffice it to say, I have a long way to go in mastering the art.

This week I made honey teriyaki chicken, but I think I overcooked the chicken (probably by keeping the original cook time despite halving the amount of chicken) and over-thickened the sauce. It was still a perfectly respectable dinner, but I’m taking notes for next time.

I also tried apple crumble in the crockpot, using the remaining drawerful of softening apples left over from our apple-picking adventure last month. The verdict? Apples, sliced and simmered all afternoon with a little sugar and cinnamon, are the nectar of the gods, especially with a dollop of vanilla ice cream or simple Greek yogurt. But I think I prefer crumble topping that’s been crisped and browned in a more traditional oven setting. Don’t let that scare you, though – everyone in my family, including me, demanded seconds.

Emma has been making… 🧶

The (very quick) trip to London to see my dear friend Katelyn! Adam and I had a whirlwind weekend across the pond, and managed to squeeze in some pal hangs, some art, and a whole lot of delicious food. Standouts included dinner at One Club Row (insanely delicious scallops, barbecue carrots, leek salad, and burger — plus a very cool vibe) in Shoreditch and breakfast at Forno in Hackney. (Get the tomato focaccia if you go!)

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This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest subscriber podcast is about the Blue Wave, “Selling Sunset” reunion and Lily Allen’s “West End Girl”! Episodes about the new season of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” are coming soon!

Over on Love To See It this week, we’re discussing the finale of “Golden Bachelor”!

Civic challenge of the week:

Call and express your ire to the eight Democratic senators who folded like leaves after the longest shutdown in U.S. history and made all of that suffering worth absolutely nothing??? And call your senators to ask them to support a leadership change in the Senate, because it’s past time for a new direction.

Claire has been reading… 📖

Jessica Winter’s excellent New Yorker essay on the masculinity crisis, “What Did Men Do to Deserve This?”, which takes on the whole save-our-men movement, from Scott Galloway to Richard Reeves. Winter is not unsympathetic to some of the specific struggles of men, working-class men in particular, and to some of the specific solutions that have been offered, like recruiting more men to join healing and educating professions. But her piece makes a compelling case that even centrist thinkers often approach the problem in a way that obscures or ignores how women are affected. They’ll suggest raising wages for teachers to attract more men, not lingering on what this implies — that women are routinely paid less for their work than what men would accept. And they will focus on rebuilding men’s sense of status, not noting that the status in question is simply the continuance of at least a small margin of dominance over women.

“Galloway,” writes Winter, “presents masculinity not as one side of a fixed binary but as a state of mind and a life style, one equally available to men and women, and therefore impossible to define. (It’s a feeling, and we know how Trump supporters feel about those.) Within this amorphous framework, men’s biggest problem is, likewise, a feeling—an unreachable itch, or a marrow-deep belief—that men should still rank above women in the social hierarchy, just not as much as before. This belief may be misguided or unconscious, but it is nonetheless insuperable, and it must be accommodated, for the good of us all.”

I also got drawn into The Atlantic’s long read on Ryan Borgwardt, a 44-year-old husband and father of three who disappeared while kayaking on a Wisconsin lake. After months of searching the lake bottom, investigators learned that he had crossed the U.S.-Canada border the day after his disappearance. Borgwardt had faked his own death, as it turned out, because he wanted to start a new life with his Ukrainian online girlfriend without dealing with the mess of a divorce. (How original!) I’d read about the news coverage when his deception was uncovered, but Jamie Thompson’s deeply reported piece is still suspenseful and shocking.

Emma has been reading… 📖

Lots of great rebuttals to the absolutely deranged NYTimes article that asked whether women had ruined the workplace. One of my favorites was Sophie Gilbert’s “No, Women Aren’t the Problem,” for The Atlantic. This really summed it up for me:

“In the midst of all this—the testosterone-addled executive branch, but also the supplicant legislative and compromised judiciary that are bending to its will—[Helen Andrews’ original] essay comes across as someone watching a tsunami roll over a coastal city and complaining about trash collection. Maybe this particular era, with masked officers (overwhelmingly male, at least as far as anyone can tell from bystander footage) deploying tear gas as families were assembling for a Halloween parade, isn’t the optimal moment to do a head count of the number of women at The New York Times and extrapolate end times for the Age of Reason.”

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Claire has been watching… 📺

We have been tearing through screeners of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” and we will be reporting back soon with our detailed thoughts on an absolute scorcher of a season. Stay tuned for a two-part recap later this week!

Greg and I have been continuing to work our way through “Task”; unfortunately I require frequent nights off to recover my emotional equilibrium because of the constantly hovering threat of biker gang violence.

“Pluribus” and “All Her Fault” are on my radar, but I haven’t had a chance to watch yet! Damn those hour-long “SLOMW” episodes and my children’s school closure schedules. (Veteran’s Day apparently falls on a different day, depending on whether you’re a public kindergarten or a private daycare.)

Emma has been watching… 📺

The first three episodes of “All’s Fair,” because… I love to inflict pain on myself???? As foretold in all of the scathing reviews, the performances are deranged, the dialogue is deranged, the outfits are deranged. “All’s Fair” feels like Ryan Murphy gave a poorly-trained AI the prompt to write a 2010s girlboss faux feminist legal drama, and this is what it spit out.

It honestly takes quite a bit of talent to create a show starring Naomi Watts (Oscar, Emmy and Golden Globe nominee), Glenn Close (Oscar nominee, Emmy and Golden Globe winner) and Sarah Paulson (Emmy and Golden Globe winner) where the performances and dialogue are so very detached from any approximation of real human beings. And yet, I unfortunately do see why this show has become a genuine hit for Hulu. It’s the perfect combination of car crash and Instagram scroll; somehow both a horror show you can’t tear your eyes away from and the sort of smooth-brained social media aesthetic we’ve become deeply comfortable with watching into oblivion.

Claire has been listening to… 🎧

An election night reaction pod from Jamelle Bouie and John Ganz’s movie podcast Unclear and Present Danger, which offered a nice balance of optimism and realism after last week’s heady Tuesday night.

I also really enjoyed the latest Hyperfixed episode, an investigation into the recipe behind a very special layer cake. A woman reached out to the podcast for help after a Brooklyn bakery suddenly closed after sixty years in business, leaving her family without the hard iced layer cake that they ordered for every occasion. This was a particular problem because it was the only cake beloved by the family matriarch, who heaped scorn on all possible substitutes. (Full disclosure: I initially thought this woman, who has her daughter on a wild goose chase all over New York seeking a cake that will mollify her, would be the villain of the episode, but that is not the direction they go with it.) Instead, the episode culminates in an appearance by food detective Claire Saffitz, who provides a genuinely gripping education in the various forms of cake-making.

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

Beth’s Dead, a new podcast from Armchair Expert’s Monica Padman alongside fellow podcasters Elizabeth Laime and Andy Rosen. Monica walks listeners through her own parasocial-turned-IRL friendship with her favorite podcasters, Elizabeth and Andy, and then dives into why they ended their hit comedy podcast Totally Laime, which launched in 2010. Beth’s Dead is part culture study, part true crime investigation, and explores what can happen when parasocial relationships go wrong and boundaries are crossed. I was so enraptured by early episodes of this show that I joined the Patreon so that I could binge the whole series, and I have zero regrets.

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

This week I’ve been more focused on selling than buying, in an attempt to release the sweaters I don’t wear much and make more room for the ones I’m always reaching for.

But I did finally take a dress out for a whirl for the first time! This Dôen Quinley dress in a dark, earthy floral is made of a fairly sheer cotton voile, but it is surprisingly crisp and floaty enough to wear well with tights. I wore it to the Signal Awards event on Monday night, which turned out to be frigid, and it provided zero warmth whatsoever! But I think the color palette and texture make it appropriate year-round, and I felt amazing in it. (Bonus points, as always, for a stretchy waist.)

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

I’m on the hunt for a holiday party dress for the annual party my friend Liv and I throw, but currently have not purchased one. (I do however have many dresses sitting in my virtual carts across clothing brand websites. Unfortunately I find it impossible to tell whether any of them will look good or not on my actual body. So… stay tuned for when I pull the trigger(s) and actually start trying stuff on.)

But while I online shop/browse in between podcast tapings, I’ve been living in my Rag & Bone Miramar sweatpant jeans! I now have three pairs and I am truly obsessed with them all. They just came out with some more sporty track pant-style sweatpant jeans, and I’m pretty into these washed black ones with the green stripe down the side? In case you’ve been looking for an excuse to try these, Rag & Bone gave me a 15% off code for Rich Text subscribers: EMMA15

Claire has been making… 🧶

The usual suspects – pancakes for breakfast on Sunday with scrambled eggs (which I’ve finally learned to make without any sticking to the pan, by using a fully preheated pan properly coated with oil and constantly turning them over with a spatula), one-pot sausage pasta, sheet-pan chicken thighs and diced sweet potatoes tossed with a maple-honey glaze. We’re in a busy season right now, but the cold weather is inspiring me to bookmark cozier recipes; I’m even thinking about hauling out our old Crockpot.

Emma has been making… 🧶

Some very delicious tomato soup with a very cheesy crouton topper from this The Kitchn recipe! I love soups and stews for the winter months, and I’d been itching to use my beautiful Great Jones Dutch oven, so this recipe seemed perfect. And honestly I just wish I had made more of this soup! The croutons did end up soaking up a good amount of the liquid, so I’d probably make more of the base next time. (For dairy-sensitive folks, I also think it would still be great if you used shredded vegan cheese and margarine.)

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This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest subscriber podcast is about S9 of “Selling Sunset”!

Over on Love To See It this week, we’re discussing Gerry Turner’s bitter memoir and “Golden Bachelor” fantasy suites!

Civic challenge of the week:

Keep donating to food pantries — especially since Trump has been threatening to withhold SNAP benefits despite a court order.

Also… enjoy the aftermath of an election night filled with hope rather than existential despair! 💙 🌊💙 🌊💙 🌊

Claire has been reading… 📖

A good old-fashioned juicy long-read!

In The Cut, Bindu Bansinath’s “The Nanny Who Moved In And Wouldn’t Move Out,” the story behind a dispute between a well-off couple in Hillsdale, a small town in the Hudson Valley, and their part-time nanny. Looking for care for their baby daughter, Jamie and Philip Nordenström – both consultants – ended up hiring Barbara as a part-time babysitter. She asked if she could live in the guest house on the property, and though the couple had been hoping to reserve this living space for a full-time nanny, they ultimately agreed to let her stay there rent-free. But the relationship began to break down, and the Nordenströms began to question Barbara’s judgment. Less than a year after she moved in, they were ready for her to leave. Just one problem: she wouldn’t. Bansinath tries to unpack this story from every direction, even including a mid-article perspective shift in which she offers a sympathetic ear to Barbara. (Barbara’s daughter, in an interview with the New York Post, suggests that her mother was likely the problem. “What she did with this family is what she does — and she did the exact same thing to me and my children the summer before,” she told the Post.) The story dances around questions like the possibility of legal reforms to weaken renter protections, but the reality is that while rich homeowners are more likely to have the opportunity to take their grievances to a prestige media organization, renters are often more vulnerable and need protections to ensure they have safe and well-maintained homes. I read the story more in the spirit of a shocking bit of gossip, and in that mode, I did feel for the Nordenströms.

Emma has been reading… 📖

This absolutely bonkers longform piece in The New York Times Magazine: “She Was Ready to Have Her 15th Child. Then Came the Felony Charges.” Journalist David Gauvey Herbert dives into the story of MaryBeth Lewis, a 68-year-old mother of 13 who forged her husband’s signature on documents in order to move forward with having more children via donor embryos and a surrogate — and has ultimately left the lives of two toddlers in the balance. It’s a really wild story that brings up a lot of questions about what constitutes parenthood, how fertility-related industries should be regulated, and what it means for older children in giant families such as this one to be parentified.

Also… I delighted in this absolutely devastating, scorched-earth review of Ryan Murphy’s new Kim Kardashian-led legal drama “All’s Fair.” Have I watched the show? Certainly not. Do I want to hate-watch it now that I’ve enjoyed this 0-star review from The Guardian’s Lucy Mangan? Certainly yes. As a little treat, please enjoy this lede:

“I did not know it was still possible to make television this bad. I assumed that there was some sort of baseline, some inescapable bedrock knowledge of how to do it that now prevents any entry into the art form from falling below a certain standard. But I was wrong.”

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Claire has been watching… 📺

“The Chair Company,” Tim Robinson’s new comedy thriller about a mall executive, Ron Trosper, who becomes obsessed with investigating an office furniture company after a humiliating incident in which one of their chairs collapses beneath him during a major presentation. What initially seems like a juvenile distraction from his work — where he has recently been promoted to head up a new mall development — turns into something darker, as he begins to suspect that he’s stumbled onto a far-reaching conspiracy.

Greg admitted to me after the first episode that he was skeptical that Robinson’s brand of sketch comedy would translate to this kind of show, despite the success of “Detroiters” (which still hits). But he was won over. Robinson’s humor often rests on an unsettling escalation from a moment of pettiness or social discomfort to a larger crisis, as his toddler-like characters blow past opportunities to exit or deescalate the situation. So far, it’s delirious fun to watch Robinson and co-creator Zach Kanin construct a madcap thriller by stringing together daisy-chains of these escalations, whether it’s Ron breaking into an abandoned warehouse in the dead of night because he can’t find a customer service representative from the actual chair brand to speak to or his employee requesting an HR investigation because he accidentally saw under her skirt while lying dazed on the floor.

Emma has been watching… 📺

Screeners of the forthcoming season of “Maxton Hall,” a bonkers German teen melodrama, which is back for its second season on Prime Video on November 7th. I enjoy watching it, in a very smooth-brain way. Most of that credit goes to the two leads, actors Damian Hardung and Harriet Herbig-Matten, who have unquestionably excellent chemistry. The rest of the show is pretty unhinged and bad, including a student-teacher romance storyline that seems to be teetering on the edge of asking the audience to root for it???? (Truly, what is going on in Germany??) But my favorite thing about the show is that it took me about half of season 1 to realize that it’s a German-language show about British teens who go to an elite prep school in England. I was so confused about how they could just zip over to Oxford to look at universities, because for most of the first season I just assumed they were supposed to be in Germany. That’s what I get for not paying close attention.

Claire has been listening to… 🎧

Only If You Get Caught, the new Defector podcast hosted by Patrick Redford and produced by our friend Alex Sujong Laughlin, which delves into cheating scandals in the sports world and beyond. The general idea of the show is that rule-bending – and rule-breaking – can illuminate how those rules serve us, and ultimately show us something deeper about ourselves and our world. It’s little wonder that cheating scandals are intensely fascinating; they give us an opportunity to examine what we think should be done, and why. The first episode is about a cheating scandal I didn’t know existed: the 2002 Western Conference finals, in which some suspicious refereeing led fans to theorize that the NBA had fixed the series so that the nationally popular L.A. Lakers would defeat the small but mighty Sacramento Kings. Redford draws from his own Kings fandom and interviews experts (like our old editor, Tommy Craggs) to unravel the conspiracy.

Plus, the Dear Shandy interview with Theresa Nist! We both read Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner’s post-divorce book, “Golden Years,” with mixed fascination and horror. In it, Turner goes out of his way to blame, criticize, and disparage Nist, his ex-wife whom he met on the show (you can hear our reactions on this week’s bonus episode, which is out now). But I was also glad to see that Nist went on Dear Shandy to discuss the book and give her perspective on the relationship and its untimely end — a perspective which was badly needed. While the ins and outs of their relationship will always be a bit of a he-said she-said situation, personally I found her account more credible on many points.

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

Blood Relatives, a new investigative podcast from the New Yorker. Blood Relatives re-investigates a notorious 1985 British murder case, the White House Farm murders. Five members of the Bamber family were found dead, and the one surviving member, adoptive son Jeremy Bamber, was eventually implicated and convicted. Forty years later, journalist Heidi Blake has uncovered information that suggests Bamber’s conviction may not have been accurate.

Also, adding a +1 to Claire’s recommendation of Dear Shandy’s leave-nothing-on-the-table interview with Theresa Nist! So glad Theresa got a platform to rebut the claims made in Gerry Turner’s extremely bitter memoir. And I can’t think of a better place to do it than with our dear friends Sharleen and Andy!

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

Sweaters remain my weakness. As I have taken to saying to Greg, sweaters are the sundresses of the winter. And Christy Dawn is my personal Achilles heel. They surprise-dropped the cozy Enid sweater, with a paneled gray knit that evokes granny-square afghan and colorful pictures knitted in – and I’m trying to be strong.

I’ve also been eyeing the Lauda cardi from Lisa Says Gah!, which seems to be exactly the kind of big, soft, button-front cardigan I’ve been wanting to throw over my year-round T-shirt-and-big-linen-pants ensembles. But none of the colorways seem exactly right, so I keep hesitating.

I did get matching sweaters for the boys from Primary, because I’m actually trying to get a professional family photo taken this fall. And who wouldn’t want to put a picture of two sweet moppets in Fair Isle snowflake sweaters on their fridge?

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

I’ve been very into heatless curls ever since the trend kicked off on TikTok a few years ago. My hair is notoriously resistant to holding a curl, so the whole set them overnight while you sleep thing has been great for me. I’ve used — with great effect! — both the Kitsch heatless curling set and a plain old pair of socks, but I recently discovered Sleepy Tie’s Curly Tie, and I’m obsessed. This system stays put overnight, is very comfortable to sleep in, and has all the pieces needed to secure everything in place attached. I am constantly losing things, so a one-stop shop is ideal.

Also… some Sephora sale picks! I always wait for the Sephora sale to restock my makeup, skin care and hair care faves. (You can find all of my picks here — for example, I’m currently flush with Merit products so don’t need to restock right now!) Here are a few things that are sitting in my cart until VIBs can get our 15% discount:

• Dieux Instant Angel moisturizer

• Makeup By Mario SoftSculpt® Transforming Skin Perfector

• Dae 3-in-1 styling cream

• Sofie Pavitt Mandelic Clearing Serum

• KVD Liquid Liner

• Charlotte Tilbury Pillow Talk lip liner

Finally, some of you asked for an update on the Reformation x Camille Rowe top I was debating in last week’s newsletter. So here it is, styled with the previously mentioned Nelle Atelier horseshoe jeans! Should I keep it???

Claire has been making… 🧶

A tofu stir-fry! I have to admit that I find tofu prep annoying — the pressing, the drying — but my kids actually like it, so I’m trying to work it back into the rotation. A stir-fry seemed quicker than the batch air-frying I have done in the past, especially giving myself permission to not ensure that each side of each cube is seared golden brown. I used this Well Plated recipe, subbing a stir-fry veggie mix (snow peas, bell peppers, onions, broccoli) for spinach. It was fine, though I added extra soy sauce and still found it a bit dry. This is probably at least partly due to the vegetable swap, since spinach would have introduced more water as it cooked down. But the kids DON’T like spinach, so I might try a recipe with a sauce next time.

Emma has been making… 🧶

Pinch of Yum’s incredible Miso Peanut Ramen bowls! This recipe was a real hit in our household of two, and honestly I’m sad that I used our only can of coconut milk to make this, because I’m now nursing a cold and would love to eat this again immediately. I had never before considered grating firm tofu as an alternative to meat crumbles! (Note: I didn’t have teriyaki sauce handy, so I ended up using hoisin instead and it worked great.) The end result was super filling and full of umami and just a perfect wintertime meal. Plus, it was pretty easy to make and took well under an hour. I’ll be making these again for sure.

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This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest subscriber podcast is about season 2 of “Nobody Wants This.” An episode on “Selling Sunset” season 9 is coming soon!

Over on Love To See It this week, we’re discussing the “Love Is Blind” S9 reunion and “Golden Bachelor”!

Civic challenge of the week:

Donate to a food pantry! SNAP benefits are set to expire at the end of the month, and the Trump administration – which already slashed federal aid for anti-hunger programs this year – has made clear that it will not be stepping in to ensure SNAP is funded. It’s critical that we do what we can to bridge the gap. If you have cash, that is the best donation, as food pantries know what items they need to stock and they can stretch a dollar further than a retail shopper. You can find local pantries, and you can also donate to an umbrella organization like Feeding America.

Claire has been reading… 📖

“Audition” by Katie Kitamura, which I finally finished! As I wrote a few weeks ago, the first half of the novel dragged for me, and I was questioning whether I would press forward. Then I reached the hinge point of the novel, a midway resetting of the board that sets us into what appears to be an alternate timeline. We’re left to make sense of how reality seems to have shifted underfoot. From what I can gather, this is a divisive component of the book, but to my surprise, it won me over. The blandness of the first half gives way to an almost eerie tension, the uncanniness of the two almost identical but somehow vastly different lives of the narrator superimposed over each other without logic or explanation. Kitamura’s precise, taut prose began to work its magic on me. The novel becomes a subtly thrilling exploration of performance and identity, and how they can create, derive from, or float free of each other.

Emma has been reading… 📖

This delightful NYT interview with friend of the pod & newsletter, Allison Williams! We’ve been lucky enough to know Allison for years, and it is a real treat to see someone you know and admire represented as so wholly themselves in print. At one point during the interview, journalist Alexis Soloski asks Allison about the vitriolic response she has historically engendered in people — to be exact, she says “People hated you so much. Do you understand why?” It’s… a rough question that, candidly, would probably break me in two. But in classic Allison fashion, she answers honestly and generously in a way that makes her all the more likable:

“Deeply. First, the theater kid energy is triggering for a lot of people. There’s a reason I don’t sing regularly. I get to do it once a decade without it becoming too annoying. The other thing is, I have so many different layers of privilege that it’s hard for me to put together the idea of a person it would be less fun to root for. I’m much more satisfying to root against. I really get it. I really, really get it. I always have cared about what people think about me, I still do, but I can’t begrudge people their reactions. I feel like it’s changed though. Gen Z has a totally different read on Marnie. They have a much more charitable and warm feeling toward her.”

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Claire has been watching… 📺

I watched the documentary “The Perfect Neighbor,” which uses body-cam and interrogation room footage to tell the story of the killing of Ajike Owens, a Florida mother of four who was shot by a neighbor who had been harassing the neighborhood’s children for playing in communal areas outside. The footage shows that police were frequently called to the address by the woman, Susan Lorincz, who complained that the children were trespassing and too loud. While the cops encouraged the kids to keep playing, and mostly wrote Lorincz off as a kook (or even a “psycho”), they repeatedly placated her, even as the children reported that she was calling them racist slurs and verbally abusing them. It’s chilling to watch, and some of it is almost unbearably intimate and painful, as the cameras capture the aftermath of the shooting and the grief of Owens’s children.

I also randomly decided to try out “Platonic,” an Apple TV+ comedy that premiered in 2023, starring Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne as former besties who rekindle their friendship in midlife. He’s just gone through a painful divorce, and she is facing a personal crisis now that the youngest of her three children, whom she left her law career to raise, has entered kindergarten. And look, quality is quality. Rogen and Byrne are a dynamic pairing, and I will watch them through any loud, foul-mouthed argument or wild caper – of which there are many in this show.

Emma has been watching… 📺

Luxury realtors feuding with each other! I’ve been working my way through the new seasons of “Selling Sunset” — out today — and “Selling The OC.” Double the Oppenheim brothers, double the… fun? Maybe? (Definitely double the drama.) My head always starts to spin a bit after see that many celebrities look at that many terrazzo-floored, Miele-applianced, all-white 16-million dollar mansions. But the gals of “Selling Sunset” get into some pretty intense conflict this season, and perhaps most interestingly, we see the show try to tackle a genuine tragedy: the January 2025 Los Angeles Wildfires. More on “Selling The OC” when we get closer to its release, but after the absolute disaster that was season 3, I can confidently say that it was the right decision to clear house on much of the OG cast, and bring in some new blood from the San Diego office.

Claire has been listening to… 🎧

Jesse Palmer’s season has kicked off on Bachelor in Retrospect, so obviously those recaps jumped to the top of my personal queue. His season has been something of a black box for me – aside from the blooper-reel moment when he said the wrong woman’s name at a rose ceremony, it has been basically lost to time – which is sad, because it sounds like a fun and infuriating one!

Plus, my kindergartner has REALLY gotten into “KPop Demon Hunters” at last, so we’ve been having frequent dance parties to our favorite songs, “Golden” and “Soda Pop.” (He also loves “Takedown,” but this one makes the toddler anxious.)

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

Lily Allen’s absolute banger of a divorce album, “West End Girl.” I have adored Allen’s music since her 2006 album, “Alright, Still,” so I was excited to see what she had cooked up in the wake of the implosion of her marriage to actor David Harbour. (After all, there are few things more delicious than a breakup album.) And boy… she did not disappoint. The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis aptly describes “West End Girl” as “an act of unstoppable personal exorcism.” When I learned she had recorded the whole thing in just 16 days last December, it made perfect sense.

This album is gripping, sharply-written, and spares none of Harbour’s feelings — nor her own. “Tennis” explores the particular pain of discovering your partner has betrayed you emotionally, not just sexually. “Pussy Palace,” perhaps the catchiest song on the album, describes finding butt plugs in a secondary apartment. “Dallas Major” is a wry ode to the hell of getting back on the dating apps. As Petridis writes: “There are moments when you find yourself wondering if airing this much dirty laundry can possibly be a good idea, impeccably written and laced with mordant wit though the lyrics are.”

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

The Everlane cocoon crew in alpaca, which I ordered during their recent sale in the mallow heather/camel stripe and moss green, intending to just pick one. I love them both so much that I’m struggling to choose – though the light, pistachio-adjacent green is currently unrepresented in my wardrobe, and I was shocked at how flattering the shade was. The wool is so soft it doesn’t even slightly irritate my sensitive skin, and the knit is lofty and light.

I’m still struggling with pants, since most of mine no longer fit. I tried the Everlane way-high gardener jeans and was immediately obsessed – except that they run large, so I’m exchanging for at least one size down. The giant hip pockets and unique stitching make them a stylish spin on wide-leg denim, and the fit is both cute and comfortable.

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

I’ve been staring at this olive green pair of Nelle Atelier horseshoe jeans ever since I saw my friend rocking them, and I finally bit the bullet. And like pretty much every item of Nelle clothing I own, they are perfect. I love the slight crop, the cool fall color, and the construction. The horseshoe shape really holds, but it’s not too extreme. I’m still trying to figure out the best ways to style them, but I feel very cool in them.

I’m also always on the lookout for a “going out top” that feels wearable to me. (I am *so* bad at dressing even slightly sexy.) So when I saw this lace Eugenie top in Reformation’s new collaboration with Camille Rowe, I jumped on it. My size was sold out, so I sized up, and I think I may like it better loose?

Claire has been making… 🧶

Chicken Caesar smash tacos, a recipe idea I immediately filed away after seeing someone making them on Instagram. Basically, you season ground chicken, press a thin layer onto a taco-sized tortilla, and grill it chicken-side-down on a hot griddle. Once it’s cooked through, about 2-3 minutes, you flip it over, toast the tortilla, then put a scoop of Caesar salad on top and fold it up taco-style. If you use a bagged salad kit (which I did), this is a ridiculously easy meal to have on the table 15 minutes after you get home. The kids had quesadillas instead, because they are afraid of salad (and, if my personal history is anything to go by, they will remain afraid of salad for at least a decade and a half), but Greg and I devoured ours. I also love the idea of using this formula with other flavor profiles — Thai sesame salad, cabbage and carrot slaw! — to throw together a last-minute weeknight meal.

Emma has been making… 🧶

Ali Slagle’s Miso-Butter Chicken with Grapefruit! I was very intrigued at this mix of flavors — it never would have occurred to me to pair miso with grapefruit — and it sounded like a good recipe to add to my mental list of not-super-time-consuming weeknight dinners. I ended up needing to broil my chicken thighs for a couple minutes at the end of their cooking time in order to get some of the char that the recipe describes, but it turned out great! The umami-forward chicken thighs were a great pairing with the crisp arugula I had sitting my fridge, and I roasted up some green beans in my fave Our Place mini oven for a side. Adam seemed unsure about the flavor profile at first, but we both ended up cleaning our plates!

I also made the trip back to my hometown of Silver Spring, MD and went to my 20th high school reunion! I wasn’t sure what the experience was going to be life — there’s obviously a huge possibility of intense awkwardness at these things. But my friend Jamie was organizing it, so I knew that there would be at least like three people I wanted to see there. And honestly, I’m so glad I went! It was such a warm, open, friendly, chill environment. And unlike the 10-year reunion which felt more like a reversion to high school dynamics, everyone is now too old to give a fuck. Ah, the joys of aging into more comfortable versions of ourselves.

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This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest subscriber podcast is about Diane Keaton, by way of 1987’s “Baby Boom.” An episode about the second season of “Nobody Wants This” is coming soon!

Over on Love To See It this week, we’re discussing the “Love Is Blind” S9 finale and “Golden Bachelor”!

Civic challenge of the week:

We’re less than TWO WEEKS out from election day! There are a number of very important state and local elections coming up — including in our home states of New Jersey and New York — so please make sure to look up what’s going on in your state, and make a voting plan.

Claire has been reading… 📖

“What Happened to the Migrants the U.S. Dumped in Panama?,” an investigative piece by Tanvi Misra in New York Magazine. The article, which follows the story of Nepalese migrant Jharana Chhetri, brings the actual experiences of the asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants the Trump administration has been haphazardly shipping off to third-party countries into sharp focus.

I also devoured Andrew Federov’s piece for The Nation on a recent bit of literary world news: “What Is Lorin Stein Doing At Tablet?” It’s not that I’m surprised that Stein, who resigned from the Paris Review in disgrace almost a decade ago following sexual harassment allegations, is now accepting a plum job at a controversial right-wing publication. It’s almost the most obvious thing he could possibly do! But the book-world gossip in me can’t look away.

Emma has been reading… 📖

Frank Rich on Zohran Mamdani! Rich effectively defangs the most mainstream (and I believe overblown) criticisms of Mamdani. He also outlines why taking a chance on Mamdani may be akin to finding some true hope within the Democratic Party.

“Mamdani is not angling to go to Washington or be anointed the “savior” of the Democratic Party, does not want to broker the Middle East, and does not want to flee to Florida. An immigrant who fell in love with his family’s adopted city and country, he is a politician who actually wants to do the job he is running for. That is a truly radical idea.”

I also loved Gary Shteyngart’s NYTimes piece on tactical frivolity, the weaponization of joyful resistance to expose the absurdity of the powerful and oppressive! This concept perfectly explains why the inflatable animal costumes we’ve been seeing all over Portland and Chicago and at so many No King’s Day rallies are so effective. As Shteyngart writes:

“Frivolity and absurdity are kryptonite to authoritarians who project the stern-father archetype to their followers. Once the pants are lowered and the undies of the despot are glimpsed, there is no point of return.”

Finally, I chuckled at this NYMag review of Travis Kelce’s new Kansas City restaurant by Mia Mercado. Honestly, the headline really sets the tone: “My Dinner at Travis Kelce’s New Restaurant Cost More Than My Monthly Electric Bill.”

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Claire has been watching… 📺

“Task,” the new Delco crime drama from “Mare of Easttown” creator Brad Ingelsby. (A little Claire lore drop: I only recently realized that Ingelsby is the brother of my childhood celebrity crush, then-Notre Dame basketball player Martin Ingelsby. Small world!) I realize the world has already seen the finale of “Task,” but Greg and I have only managed two episodes so far. Like “Mare,” it features a crime – in this case, a series of armed robberies of drug dealers, which culminates in a shocking multiple murder and a kidnapping – and a grizzled investigator who is struggling to manage their grief and the ongoing dysfunction in their own family. But, as it’s set in the world of gang crime, the violence is even more graphic, organized and inescapable. This is tough for me, but so far it’s worth it. Mark Ruffalo’s performance as the troubled ex-priest-turned-FBI-agent leading the task force – while coping with his own shattered family life by falling into a Phillies souvenir cup full of liquor – is gripping. Emilia Jones, as the hard-edged but secretly soft-hearted niece of the robbers’ ringleader, not only nails the Delco accent but steals every scene she’s in.

I’ve also been binging screeners of “Nobody Wants This,” which drops tomorrow. Can’t wait to talk about it soon!

Emma has been watching… 📺

I watched the first three episodes of “Murdaugh: Death In The Family,” a dramatized series exploring the true-crime story of the downfall of the South Carolinian Murdaugh family. (For those unfamiliar, patriarch Alex Murdaugh was convicted in 2023 of murdering his younger son Paul and wife Maggie in the wake of a series of financial crimes.) I’ve listened to journalist Mandy Matney’s podcast — which provides the basis of reporting for the series — for years, so I was curious to see how Erin Lee Carr and Michael D. Fuller would bring such a talked-about true crime story to life. So far, I’m pretty compelled by it! Patricia Arquette and Johnny Berchtold give particularly standout performances as Maggie and Paul, and Jason Clarke’s accent is uncannily similar to the real Alex Murdaugh’s. I’ll definitely be continuing to watch as episodes are released week-to-week. (And the companion podcast is also quite good!)

Claire has been listening to… 🎧

Geese frontman Cameron Winter’s solo album, “Heavy Metal,” on the recommendation of a reader last week. (Thank you Estee!) My first, nonscientific impression is that it’s a little more stripped down than Geese’s “Getting Killed,” with fewer anthemic, layered choruses, and even more of it rests on his unusual voice, which drones and howls and mumbles. It gives me that moody, nostalgic feeling, which suits the autumn weather. I just want to snuggle into a big wool sweater, make a pot of coffee, and blast “Nina + Field of Cops,” “Cancer of the Skull,” “Love Takes Miles,” and the almost operatic “$0.”

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

Sombr, the indie singer-songwriter whose music has pierced my soul to the point that I almost forget he was born the year I graduated from high school. (Sob!) “Undressed” was my gateway into Sombr’s “I Barely Know Her” album, and I haven’t looked back since.

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

New Levi’s jeans for fall. After a summer of stretchy pants and billowy dresses, I realized I had gone up a jeans size without noticing. I hate buying duplicate pants, but we dress the body we have! Along with my staple Ribcage jeans, I tried a pair of the Cinch Baggy jeans, and they were a hit. I love how they hug my waist and let my legs breathe. The Chasing Dreams shade, a nice medium blue rinse, is fairly lightweight, but it will be easy to transition them into cooler weather by layering tights underneath.

I also decided to get a full bottle of the Odele leave-in conditioner that I’ve been using for my new wavy-hair routine. (I brush it into my hair after I get out of the shower, then brush in some hair gel and use my Bounce Curl brush to style.) It was my favorite of the four travel-sized leave-in conditioners I tried out, and thankfully it was also one of the least expensive! It’s very light and leaves my hair bouncy and touchably soft.

And I picked up the Stila liquid eyeliner in brown, because I’ve been enjoying a winged eye lately, but black liquid liner is a little harsh on my coloring.

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

Not much! But I did start to go through my closet ahead of my quarterly consignment appointment, which led me to identify three of my most-used fall tops:

1. Jenni Kayne’s Cashmere Fisherman sweater. This is a splurge, but one I made last Black Friday and haven’t looked back. I wear this sweater so, so, so often. The chocolate brown color I have is no longer in stock, but I absolutely love the navy. (Also, Quince has a pretty good dupe.)

2. This one is not *technically* strictly a top, but I love the blazer-as-shirt look, so I was pleased to discover that it works with this Quince leather blazer! It’s such a great piece, that feels both elevated and easy.

3. For a winter white look, I love this Fisherman Cashmere Quarter Zip. I’ve had it for about three years, and it’s still in great condition. I know the french tuck is *so millennial,* but I simply can’t stop.

Also, now that the weather has officially reached “brisk,” I’ve started lighting my favorite fall and winter candles in the apartment. I obviously returned to my #1 cool-weather candle, Homestedt’s Seasons In The Catskills candle in Winter, but my friend also sent me the most delicious-smelling Homewood by Nicole Jacques candle! (It’s also non-toxic, which Adam is always getting on me about when it comes to candles.) Cue the cozy vibes all season.

Claire has been making… 🧶

Autumn memories! We took the kids to pick apples and pumpkins this weekend, and now I have to figure out the best way to use the giant bucket of apples we brought home. We did buy a pie at the farm store, and it’s so mediocre that I’m feeling the urge to make an apple pie of my own.

I also made an appearance at the No Kings rally in Jersey City! My older son and husband have soccer on Saturday mornings (Greg takes his coaching responsibilities VERY seriously), and so I took my toddler down to City Hall alone. He hated the noise and commotion – he’s so averse to crowded public spaces that he clung to us like a tiny sloth at the apple orchard as well, despite having reached an age where he generally prefers to run free – so I ended up spending most of the time slowly pushing him around the perimeter in his stroller, pointing out friendly grandmas in dinosaur costumes. But it was great to hear some of the speakers talking about standing up to ICE and supporting our immigrant communities, and to see how many different kinds of people had shown up to make their voices heard.

Emma has been making… 🧶

The trip up to the Catskills with some friends! It was the most perfect fall weekend. We made s’mores, drank hot apple cider, ate some apple cider donuts, saw a fox eating a pumpkin, and took a lovely hike. (And my friend Liv made the most incredible eggplant parm.) It might be basic, but I fucking love some good fall foliage and I love upstate and the whole weekend just made me feel like I could breathe again.

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This is the free edition of Rich Text, a newsletter about cultural obsessions from your Internet BFFs Emma and Claire. If you like what you see and hear, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our latest subscriber podcast is Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl”! An episode celebrating Diane Keaton, by way of 1987’s “Baby Boom,” is coming soon!

Over on Love To See It this week, we’re discussing “Love Is Blind” and “Golden Bachelor”!

Today’s newsletter is brought to you by MERIT.

Claire has been reading… 📖

A truly fascinating and alarming investigation into Peter Thiel’s obsession with the Antichrist and its roots in his half-baked understanding of René Girard and the work of Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt, written by Laura Bullard for Wired.

Also, two profiles of New York mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani. Astead Herndon went long on the candidate in a New York Times piece titled “Inside the Improbable, Audacious and (So Far) Unstoppable Rise of Zohran Mamdani.” In The New Yorker, Eric Lach wrote about “What Zohran Mamdani Knows About Power.” Between them, the two profiles contain an abundance of charming campaign trail anecdotes and impressions of his formative years, as well as a portrait of a candidate who knows he has a tiny needle to thread. A member of the DSA who has been outspoken on lefty causes like defunding the police in the past, he now finds himself on the precipice of being responsible for the NYPD, a powerful political actor in its own right. He’s pushed a millionaire tax and rent freezes, but also hopes to mollify and work with business leaders and landlords. It’s clear that he hopes to stay firm in certain stances and focus on outcomes, but is already softening his stances on certain left-wing dogmas in order to win over a broader coalition. I’m not sure whether it makes me queasy to see his platform being watered down, or heartened to see a realistic approach toward accomplishing the fundamental goals – after all, politics exists in the real world, with the people we have now. Time will tell!

Emma has been reading… 📖

Gerry Turner’s forthcoming memoir, “Golden Years: What I’ve Learned from Love, Loss and Reality TV”… for work purposes! I swear! Everything that had leaked about it sounded ~messy~ and chaotic, so obviously Claire and I had to get ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies). We’ll be recording a Rich Text episode about it closer to its pub date!

There were also a few articles that really stuck with me over this last week:

• I have long loved Emily Nussbaum’s cultural writing, and her sweeping profile of canonically cool Keri Russell is so exception. Keri in “Felicity” will always be my North Star, and every word of this profile confirms that she is just as effortlessly cool and down-to-earth as you’d hope.

• I also needed this ode to Diane Keaton by Matt Zoller Seitz for Vulture. “Cinema, popular culture, fashion, and the general perception of women’s attractiveness all benefited from Keaton’s lifelong creative mission,” he writes. “The remarkable consistency of her life’s work came from her understanding of coded languages and the difference between superficiality and profundity, the fleeting and the eternal.” (We owe Diane Keaton so many cultural debts, not least of which is her ability to rock menswear better than any other human who has ever lived on this earth.)

• Finally, I was very struck by this NYMag deep dive into the way that the cleave in the American-Jewish community over Israel-Palestine has trickled into peoples’ therapeutic relationships. As someone who recently found a new therapist who is also Jewish — and whose politics largely mirror my own — it made a lot of sense to me that both patients and therapists are finding some of these political gulfs too wide to overcome.

Claire has been watching… 📺

John Oliver’s segment on The Free Press and Bari Weiss’s installation at the head of CBS, which is pitch perfect from top to bottom.

I also finished “Wayward,” which turns out to be more directly about the complexities of the parent-child bond than I realized! There’s some classic pregnancy-related horror (and also some confusing moments for those of us who have experienced pregnancy and childbirth, like a mother who first feels her child kick when she is seemingly about 8 months pregnant, and a newborn who is quite obviously 3 months old being put to sleep completely swathed in loose blankets). But it’s moreso about the Philip Larkin of it all, the inevitability that mom and dad will fuck you up. The violence that goes into maintaining familial bonds, weighed against the violence that comes with destroying them, is the fundamental tension the series explores. I’m intrigued enough to watch a season 2!

Emma has been watching… 📺

Diane Keaton movies! I was honestly shocked by how devastated I felt when I learned about her death. But from “Annie Hall” to “First Wives Club” to “Something’s Gotta Give,” Keaton’s filmography is full of absolutely iconic performances — and not just iconic, but unbelievably charming, warm, and moving. The weather was pretty gloomy all weekend long in Brooklyn, which means it was the perfect weather to get nostalgic and weepy while watching movies. On Saturday night, Adam and I grabbed a cocktail out and then brought in a feast of takeout and settled into our couch to watch “Father Of The Bride” for the first time in at least a decade. (An objectively deranged film, but gave me the warm and fuzzies nonetheless.) And then on Sunday, I watched “Baby Boom” (1987) for the first time ever — a gaping hole in my Diane Keaton cultural knowledge — and it was such a god damn delight. I’m incredibly excited to unpack it with Claire later this week.

This segment is sponsored by MERIT:

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The Minimalist perfecting complexion stick was my gateway product, and I now use it as a base nearly every day. I love that I can blend it with my fingers, cover my acne scars and any new breakouts. On a normal day, I’ll add some Bronze Balm (Clay) to my cheeks and eyelids, tap some Flush Balm (Stockholm) onto to my cheeks, fill in my brows with Brow 1990 (Brown-Black), apply Shade Slick (Pointelle or Twin Set) to my lips, swipe on some Clean Lash mascara and be out the door – or at my laptop for a podcast taping – within 5 minutes. At this point in my life, I’m not someone who has the time or will to painstakingly apply heavy products all over my face for 30 minutes each morning. And thanks to MERIT I don’t have to sacrifice that kind of time, nor do I have to sacrifice feeling great in my own skin.

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Claire has been listening to… 🎧

More “The Life of a Showgirl,” as I continue to digest the discourse – so much discourse has happened since our episode last week! – and as the songs continue to be stuck in my head. The lyrically ludicrous chorus of “The Fate of Ophelia” has earwormed its way into my favor, and the lyrically vague “Honey” still charms me with its palpably tender flirtiness. I think of it as this album’s “Sweet Nothings.”

After I had played him most of “TLOAS” last week, Greg insisted on playing a song by a band called Geese. “Husbands” is a howling, jangly rock song with lyrics so nonsensical they verge on the surreal: “Will it wash your hair clean / when your husbands all die?” (Lead singer Cameron Winter happens to be the son of Molly Roden Winter, whose memoir about opening her marriage, “More,” made major waves in Book Discourse last year.) I also love “Taxes,” another track from their latest album, “Getting Killed.” (“If you want me to pay my taxes / you’d better come over with a crucifix / you’re gonna have to nail me down.” Okay!) As a veteran of the indie rock era, I find Geese’s sound a bit nostalgic and a bit fresh all at once; the part of me that still cries at a Frightened Rabbit or The National deep cut thrills to it.

Emma has been listening to… 🎧

The audiobook of “Told You So,” SLOMW star Mayci Neeley’s new memoir, once I realized that it was available through my Spotify subscription. Mayci has always been one of my faves from “Secret Lives,” and the bits and pieces of her backstory that we’ve gotten on the show have been moving, so I was curious. The most fascinating revelation to me from the memoir is that Mayci identifies as a pro-choice feminist! I would imagine that my politics and Mayci’s don’t necessarily align in many ways, but in this moment where access to reproductive care has been absolutely bulldozed, it feels essential to have voices within conservative communities (like Mormonism) speaking out for access to sexual education, abortion care and birth control.

Claire has been buying… 🛍️

Not much this week! But I did finally get and try on the Christy Dawn sweaters I mentioned a couple of weeks ago… and I love both the huge, snuggly Ingrid and the cropped, cheery Francesca. The former looks great with jeans, but I also see leggings, dresses, and even sweats as possible pairings. The latter is the perfect crop for pants and skirts.

I also got my toddler this cheery duck rain slicker at Old Navy, with which I am obsessed.

Emma has been buying… 🛍️

Spanx pants! I’ve previously written about my love for Spanx’s AirEssentials line of loungewear — I now own a matching set and an AirEssentials cardigan, all of which are in my frequent work from home rotation. However, I hadn’t really tried their hard pants! The brand recently sent me two different pairs that are very flattering and somehow extremely comfy?? I love these Spanxshape Authentic 360 Corduroy Wide Leg Jeans in dark brown — the corduroy feels late ‘90s nostalgic to me, while the wide leg shape feels current — and the 90S Straight Leg Jeans in Marina, which I love paired with a boxier / more billowy knit. I especially love that their pants come in Regular, Tall and Petites.

Claire has been making… 🧶

Rainy-day October meals and snacks! Being stuck in our apartment with two little boys can be chaotic misery, but this long weekend was almost cozy. The kids drew on a water-art mat, played board games with us, and listened to stories. My kindergartner is listening to “Anne of Green Gables” on his Yoto for the first time, and my L.M. Montgomery-loving heart squeezed when he kept pausing it to tell me that he loved it. And we made banana chocolate chip muffins again, since they can’t resist a baking project or chocolate chips.

Plus, cold-weather meals are so back. One night I threw together a pot of easy souped-up jarred spaghetti sauce (Prego, ground beef, red wine, and a few extra dashes of oregano), and another night I defrosted some Italian sausages to roast in the oven along with all the hearty autumnal veggies I had hidden in my produce drawer. Diced butternut squash and carrots, slow-roasted until they were tender and then tossed with my favorite quick maple-mustard glaze, made for a heavenly side dish, and wedges of red onion and red cabbage harmonized perfectly with them.

Emma has been making… 🧶

This week has been a lot of prioritizing ease in the kitchen. That means I’ve been making tuna salad sandwiches, honey-roasted turkey sandwiches, and my favorite tomato-y bean dish. However, my friend Liz did alert me to this NYT Cooking recipe for Cheesy Baked Pasta With Sausage and Ricotta by Melissa Clark, which she described as “lower effort than lasagna but hits the same spot,” which sounds right up my alley. It’s a little too cheese-forward for Adam’s tastes (insane, I know), so I’ll probably make it for myself when he’s out of town on a work trip.

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