The Week In Recommendations 4.24.24
"The Tortured Poets Department," a buzzy and chilling Netflix series, and rom-com moms. Plus, one great thing from Laura Bassett!
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 podcast was about the hand-wringing discourse about marriage and divorce. A pod about Taylor Swift and “The Tortured Poets Department” is coming later this week! Rich Text is a completely reader-supported project — no ads or sponsors!
Claire has been reading… 📖
Andrew Marantz’s New Yorker deep dive on the A.I. doomers, a collection of self-described moral weirdos who have spent years sounding the alarm about the risks of A.I. technology growing powerful enough to accidentally (or malevolently) exterminate all human life. A fair amount of the piece invites us to simply gawk at these odd specimens, with their group houses and their polycules and their Dungeons and Dragons group chats, but there’s enough about the risks of A.I. to leave me pretty rattled by the end. Perhaps most horrifying was the moment when a doomer tells Marantz about someone he met who has a high-level position at an A.I. startup who admitted he believed there was a 50% chance A.I. could destroy humanity. “If you truly believe that A.I. has a coin-toss probability of killing you and everyone you love, Nielsen asked, then how can you continue to build it? The person’s response was ‘In the meantime, I get to have a nice house and car.’” Absolutely bone-chilling stuff!
Emma has been reading… 📖
Finally had a chance to properly dig into our bud Laura Hankin’s forthcoming novel, “One-Star Romance,” and 150 pages in, I am absolutely *hooked.*
Also, lots of smart analysis of Taylor Swift and “The Tortured Poets Department.” Some highlights include…
- ’s essay, “is that a bad thing to say in a song?” which explores the potentially subversive messiness of the album. As B.D. puts it, Taylor “vomits up the poison of the past two years and leaves the rest of us to deal with it.”
Lindsay Zoladz’s mixed review of TTPD for the New York Times, and Ann Powers’ more positive one for NPR.
Stephanie McNeal’s take on what it means that Swift has words — not all of them sweet! — for her fans on TTPD.
Claire has been watching… 📺
Like Emma, I’ve started watching “Baby Reindeer” (see her blurb below), and I’ve also been trying to stay on top of All The Reality TV: “Vanderpump Rules,” “The Valley,” “Lovers and Liars,” and the new shows from Patti Stanger and Tyler Cameron. (You can find our coverage of the latter three shows on Love to See It!) I can’t believe how sucked in I’ve gotten to the VPR world after watching the last season – watching endless beach parties and drinks meetings just to see who is going to step up and act in an enormously antisocial way in order to create content. I am riveted. Because of my TV habits, I’m also getting served lots of social media posts about “Summer House,” so I’m subconsciously developing opinions about people with names like Carl and Kyle that I’ve never met and couldn’t ID in a lineup. Maybe that’s next on the docket.
Emma has been watching… 📺
I started “Baby Reindeer” after seeing a few friends who have notoriously good taste post about it. The Netflix limited series, which stars British comedian Richard Gadd and is adapted from his based-on-a-true-story one-man play of the same name, follows Donny, a struggling comedian and bartender who ends up in a slowly escalating, increasingly dangerous dynamic with a woman named Martha— Donny the stalkee, Martha the stalker. Gadd is deeply vulnerable in this fictionalized retelling — the show and play are based on his own experience of being stalked by an older woman for four years when he was in his 20s — and not only plumbs his own complex feelings about his stalker, but also explores a past (unrelated) sexual assault. For a show about trauma that plays like a thriller, it also manages to find moments of dark comedy. I haven’t finished the series yet, but I can see why it’s getting so much buzz and I’d highly recommend watching it. (I selfishly now want to talk to everyone in my life about it.)
Given my usual penchant for bad reality TV competitions, it may seem unlikely that I became so deeply absorbed in a Japanese samurai epic set in the year 1600. But the slow-burning love story between John Blackthorne, an English sailor the Japanese call "the barbarian" whose ship washes up on Japan's shores in the first episode, and Lady Mariko, a fierce, deeply complicated woman who's assigned to translate for him, is captivating enough to carry the entire show. Frankly, Mariko herself is captivating enough to carry the entire show. We love a brilliantly written (and acted!), nuanced female character.
is a political columnist for The Cut and author of a brand new newsletter called .
Claire has been listening to… 🎧
Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department,” obviously. I’m not immune to the seductive call of a Swift album and/or discourse about a Swift album! There is much to say about the music in this album (which draws heavily from her past body of work, so much so that I often got déjà vu listening) and the lyrics (which are highly variable in quality, at least to my ear). It’s staggeringly long. It all sort of blends together at first listen, and isn’t bursting with radio-ready hits. Reviews have been extremely mixed. So I’m a bit surprised at how many of the songs really grabbed me on a second listen: “Down Bad,” “But Daddy I Love Him,” “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me,” “Florida!!!,” “imgonnagetyouback,” “The Bolter.” I even kind of love some of the ones with embarrassing lyrics, like “I Hate It Here” and “Fresh Out the Slammer.” We’ll have more on “TTPD” soon, so stay tuned.
Emma has been listening to… 🎧
Like seemingly everyone else on earth, Taylor Swift’s latest double album: “The Tortured Poets Department” and “Anthology.” I have so many jumbled thoughts — at first I was just totally overwhelmed by the vast amount of new music — but I will say that the more I sit with this lengthy album, the more I enjoy it. I’ve been particularly returning to “But Daddy I Love Him,” “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” “Florida!!!,” “Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me,” and “The Black Dog.” Both “The Prophecy” and “So Long London” made me a little weepy. Can’t wait to discuss on this week’s Rich Text pod.
Claire has been buying… 🛍️
Our gorgeous new “rom com mom” sweatshirt, designed by our wonderful production assistant Tatiana, just in time for Mother’s Day! I love rom coms, and I love being a mom, so I am obviously going all in on “rom com mom” as an identity. This is who I am now. Also I sized up two sizes for an extra snuggly fit and it’s perfectly cozy.
.
Emma has been buying… 🛍️
Nothing too exciting this week! We’ve been booking our summer travel — mostly tied to weddings — so my shopping budget has been funneled towards plane tickets and hotel reservations. However, I did re-up my moisturizer and switch to the lighter, gel version of my beloved Dieux Air Angel for the spring and summer months. I also got this insanely delicious-smelling candle from Scent Lab.
Claire has been making… 🧶
Eric Kim’s sheet-pan bibimbap, which made for a lovely Sunday night dinner. My entire family is a huge fan of egg-on-rice dishes, which is fantastic because they’re typically easy and cheap. This recipe was a bit more labor-intensive — lots of vegetable chopping comes into play — but the streamlined cooking process, which involves sheet-pan roasting all of the ingredients together, kept things simple. I dropped the mushrooms, because I forgot to get mushrooms, and I took the advice of some commenters and threw together a basic sauce with the gochujang instead of dolloping it on straight. Greg called it the best thing I’ve ever made, and even the preschooler at least ate the egg and rice before demanding a treat.
Emma has been making… 🧶
Melissa Clark’s coconut-lime shrimp! This was such an easy dinner to whip up, and because of the seafood component, it felt special. Also, I used light coconut milk instead of full-fat this time, because that’s what I had in my pantry, and it still turned out great!
Also, matzoh brei! Because it’s Passover this week! One of my all-time favorite simple Jewish foods. My dad makes it every single Passover, and I had to carry on the tradition. I used this NYT recipe as a guide, but swapped water for non-dairy milk and used more than 4 eggs. I also am strongly a SAVORY matzo brei girly — lots of salt, no sugar for me on this dish. However, I am in support of adding a sprinkling of scallions on top.
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
That rom com mom sweater is 😍. Running to website now 🏃🏼♀️ I cant remember if y’all talked about Anyone But You. What was the take there?
I wrote about TTPD in my newsletter this week extensively, probably too extensively as it’s titled, “96 Thoughts This Therapist Had While Listening to TTPD for the First Time.” 🫠😂
Very similar faves. The Bolter is number one for me, close second is But Daddy I Love Him which is surprising because as recently as last week saying “daddy” out loud was not something you’d catch me dead doing. Now I’m the one screaming, but daddy I love him.
I have a feeling the album will gain acclaim among critics over the years the way Reputation has. It's long, it's weildy. She's doing a lot there, but I have to say when the writing it's strong, some of the best in her career ("So long, London" has some strong imagery, the driving beat reminds me of running, and the way she sings it is like she's out of breath). I will say while I prefer the Aaron Dessner produced tracks the best, "My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys" will be stuck in my head forever.