The Week In Recommendations 3.26.25
"Temptation Island" enemies, jeans and a wedding guest dress for spring, and a civic call to New Yorkers!
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 “Severance” season 2! Rich Text is a reader-supported project.
Civic challenge of the week:
New Yorkers: Governor Hochul is reportedly trying to force a mask ban through the state budget. Call your local reps and express opposition to this. NYCLU has put together a digital toolkit.
Claire has been reading…
I have a subscription to the Nation, and it has been really hitting the spot for me lately.
Orlando Reade’s piece “Why Is the Right Obsessed With Epic Poetry?” has a fascinating read on how right-wing “thought leaders” such as Jordan Peterson and Peter Thiel misread epics like “Paradise Lost” and “The Iliad.” In the process, it sheds light on the warped view of masculine virtue and purpose these men advocate – and what it would really mean for the rest of us to embrace it.
I also read David Klion’s review of the 2020 Stephen Miller biography “Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda,” which has sadly become all-too-relevant again. He pulls out telling details, like Miller’s teenage habit of throwing garbage on the floor at school and loudly proclaiming that it was the place of the janitors to clean it up, which certainly suggest he has always been a deeply curdled and nasty person. He also points out how Miller’s position as an outspoken conservative in a liberal milieu – he was born and raised in Santa Monica, California – offered him an easy path to media attention, funding and mentorship from the right. It’s no real mystery how such an intellectually mediocre and morally vacuous person ended up in such a position of such influence. It’s just depressing.
Lastly, I’ve been reading “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism” by Sarah Wynn-Williams – also known as “that book about Meta,” which is how I requested it at my local bookstore. About halfway through, I’m back in my perennial Trump-era mood: shocked but unsurprised. Sheryl Sandberg emerges as a glamorous hypocrite with a bad temper; Mark Zuckerberg is incurious and narrow-minded, interested in nothing but endless growth for his company. Wynn-Williams, a former diplomat from New Zealand, saw early on that Facebook would need an intentional approach to foreign policy as it expanded, and successfully pitched herself as the one to lead it. But from her depiction, these foreign policy discussions were handled pretty much as you would expect: in half-hearted, ignorant, and strategically disastrous ways. What fresh hell awaits in the second half? I’ll report back next week.
Emma has been reading… 📖
’s new(ish) Substack! I was particularly struck by her essay, “Eternal Sunshine Of The Fascist Mind.” Something that I have been turning over and over in my mind lately is what is behind the absolute lack of a personal survival instinct that I see in right-wing circles. I understand that a lot of these people are simply hateful, and want to see large swaths of people suffer. But they are also enacting policies that will inevitably make *themselves* and their ilk suffer as well. Don’t they want to fly without fear of crashing? Or know that the best care will be available if they get cancer? Or live in a country with functioning national security? Traister addresses this dynamic in her essay, putting into words what I’ve been unable to:
“This administration is trying not simply to efface and distort a past, but to blot out a future, to put an end to innovation, knowledge, art, safety, things from which they too would surely benefit.
The joke here, I guess, is that they are embodying the bougie, woke-adjacent call of the urban elite: to live in the moment. For these guys, there is no history they don’t like, and no future in which they might not have control. There is only now, and their near-orgiastic awareness—mindfulness, if you will—of their own brutal dominion.”
Claire has been watching… 📺
The Netflix “Temptation Island” reboot, an experience for which I truly have no words. Each time I watch the show I am struck anew by its depravity, a show born of an Internet porn sensibility and a diabolical spirit. The men this season, almost to a one, are giving sociopath. I’m shaken to my absolute core by the things I’ve seen. We’ll be discussing on Love to See It this week, so stand by.
And a little treat: GOP rep Harriet Hageman getting booed and heckled while defending DOGE at a town hall. These town hall and protest clips are, perversely, a balm for my soul. We truly love to see it!
Emma has been watching… 📺
Still working my way through “Temptation Island,” which fills me with rage and misandry in a way that no other reality show quite does. If you thought we had enemies from the “Love Is Blind” universe… they don’t hold a candle to our Island enemies. Looking at you, Grant. And Tyler. And Brion.
Claire has been listening to… 🎧
The latest installment of NPR’s Embedded podcast: “Alternative Realities.” Reporter Zach Mack hosts this painfully personal series, which revolves around a bet he makes with his dad. The sole Christian conservative in a family of Jewish and atheist liberals, Mack’s dad has spent the last few years going down the rabbit hole, becoming a devoted follower of New Apostolic Reformation prophets who push far-right conspiracy theories. When Mack’s sister came out as gay, his dad refused to accept her sexuality, driving a wedge in their relationship as well as his marriage. In hopes of breaking through to each other, Mack and his father bet $10,000 on ten predictions for 2024. His father believes, for example, that Biden and the Clintons will be arrested and imprisoned for crimes like treason and murder, and that Trump will be reinstated without an election. During the series, we hear emotional conversations between Mack and his dad, and a few with his frustrated and bewildered mother and sister. There’s clearly a lot of love there; as someone with no Trump supporters in my life, it was wrenching to hear his dad express such love (love he believes is unconditional) for his family, while refusing to waver on the beliefs that are hurting them. When 2024 ends, none of his predictions have come true – but that doesn’t mean there’s a neat ending for the family.
Emma has been listening to… 🎧
Our former colleague
’s fantastic new podcast, Debt Heads! It deals candidly with money and shame and denial, and the way that the two can intertwine in our lives, all anchored in Jamie’s personal financial journey. As someone who can deeply relate to dissociating from my financial reality with disastrous results, this pod both speaks to me and makes me deeply anxious!! Probably a good sign that I needed to listen to it!!Claire has been buying… 🛍️
My anxiety and grief for the future has led me out of my “shopping is meaningless” phase back into a “shop the pain away” phase. (This is basically the journey I go on with my physical appetite for food after a painful event, so… that tracks.) This week, looking for a slight spring wardrobe refresh, I turned to Everlane for a linen tee in a beautiful dark brown and Way-High Curve jeans. I wear a lot of barrel-leg linen pants, but I love how the structure of denim shows off the shape of the silhouette — and while their Way-High waistlines have, in the past, somehow suffocated me in the front while gapping at the back, these were perfect.
Emma has been buying… 🛍️
My dream wedding guest dress from Self-Portrait, which is currently on major sale at Saks. I’m truly *obsessed* with Self-Portrait’s slinky, metallic-embellished mesh fabric. I’ve borrowed a similar dress from my friend Liv a few times and always felt so amazing in it, because the fabric hugs your body’s curves, drapes beautifully, and has enough stretch that you don’t feel constricted. So when I saw that this midi dress (it’s a full-on maxi on me) was on deep sale, I jumped at it. And I have ZERO regrets. I wore it for the first time over the weekend to my friends Steven and Liz’s beautiful early spring wedding upstate, and I truly have never gotten so many compliments on a dress. This will be in my frequent rotation from now on.
I also got to be a petite ~model~ for my beloved Nelle Atelier’s spring drop, and it was truly a blast. I got to take two pairs of jeans home from the shoot: The Maddy (my personal favorite style) in Sapphire, and the Laura in Sky, which I now own in three washes. Been obsessively wearing both since. (My code EMMA10 still works if you haven’t yet discovered the wonders of denim for shorties.)
Claire has been making… 🧶
I’ve been making Alison Roman’s biscuits on the weekends lately (though my preschooler recently told me, gently but reprovingly, that he doesn’t like them as much as pancakes). I’ve been cutting them into 12 instead of 8 so we can ration them out for longer — for example, with a Monday night dinner of baked chicken thighs, green beans, and oven-roasted corn on the cob, which almost made me feel like it was summer and I was at a barbecue. Biscuits really are the ultimate any-time-of-day food.
Emma has been making… 🧶
Melissa Clark’s Vegetarian Skillet Chili from NYTimes Cooking. This is the kind of recipe that doesn’t require going shopping for specialty ingredients, which is exactly why it worked for me during this busy work week!
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While I don't love the Selling Sunset-ification of the new Temptation Island (the music! the visuals! this should look like the bachelor!), I DO love being reminded of why men are terrible.
I shared your Love to See It podcast with my highly discerning and wonderful 30 year old daughter and she is a new fan. Her comment, I want to be friends with them. It’s a fun thing we now share. Next, will send along Rich Text. Love your work, always!