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Last month marked the 30th anniversary of the iconic comedy "The First Wives Club." And as two ladies who are now at a stage of life that Elise Eliot might term "district attorney," we jumped at the opportunity to discuss the film's zany plot, stacked cast, and hilarious but poignant exploration of divorce, ageism, male entitlement, and women's empowerment. When the movie opens, three college friends, played by Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn and Diane Keaton, are reunited following the public divorce and suicide of the fourth pal in their old clique. Elise (Hawn) has had a storied Hollywood career; Annie (Keaton) lives a comfortable upper-middle-class life and has a loving daughter; Brenda (Midler) helped her husband Morty build a discount electronics store empire and is planning her son's long-awaited bar mitzvah. But they quickly learn that all of their lives have gone wrong in the same humiliating way: their husbands have left them for much younger women. Now in their mid-forties, the women have been left with floundering or nonexistent careers, perceived as disposable by their industries and their selfish spouses. They decide to band together and seek revenge – no, justice. What follows is a madcap romp that, for all its storytelling flaws, is so viciously funny and so masterfully acted that it became an immediate box office hit and remains a beloved classic.The film's popularity also reflects how deeply it spoke to its (predominantly female) audience in its depiction of ageism, the stigma of divorce, and the financially devastating consequences of women sacrificing their careers for their husbands. Sure, it's not a gritty examination of what divorce really looks like for the average woman. Like Belle Burden's recent memoir, "Strangers" – but much, much funnier – "The First Wives Club" mingles aspirational lifestyle porn with a dark warning: if even these affluent, well-heeled women aren't safe from the financial and personal embarrassment that comes with divorce, what woman is? Thankfully, we can all find some hope in sisterhood, as these three iconic characters do. In this episode, we discuss the film's background and reception, recap the entire movie (and perhaps quote a little too liberally from it – how could we resist?), and discuss the film's multifaceted depiction of divorce and ageism, fatphobia, queerness, witches, the Trumps, the financial exploitation of housewives, and the sexualization and desexualization of women in midlife. Hope you enjoy!Reading list:"Hollywood's Best Revenge," by Kim Masters, Time"‘Club’ Draws Strength From Its Members," by Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times "The Ladies Who Lunge," by Richard Corliss, Time"Taking Action Is Best Revenge for First Wives," by Lynn Smith, Los Angeles Times"Make Way for 40-Plus ‘Club’" by Claudia Puig, Los Angeles Times"The First Wives Club," by Roger Ebert"Love's Revenge, Or, Spite Is A Many-Splendored Thing," by Janet Maslin, New York Times"The Story Behind the Iconic Casting of ‘The First Wives Club’," by Mitchell Sunderland, Vice"Goldie Hawn says she was ‘irate’ over initial ‘First Wives Club’ script: ‘It was very male bashing’," by Eric Todisco, New York Post"Heather Locklear says James Naughton not at fault for ‘gross’ moment," by Leah Bitsky, Page SixShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

A new Rachel Cusk novel is an international event. Her Outline trilogy became the kind of breakthrough hit that few novelists (especially writers of austere autofiction) can ever hope to attain. But what could make the latest novel from such a literary rockstar even more buzzy? Well, a little celebrity scandal couldn't hurt!Over the summer, reports began to circulate that Cusk's new novel, "Life of M," would be about A-list movie star Natalie Portman – and that the novel, based on their personal friendship, was so unflattering that Portman felt personally betrayed by it. The scandal blossomed before the book even hit bookstore shelves. Was Cusk a monster for stabbing her friend in the back for book sales? Was Portman an idiot for agreeing to the project to begin with? When the book did come out, one month ago, it complicated this narrative of the cunning, vicious writer and the beautiful fool. "Life of M" does attempt to imagine the inner life of a movie star, M, who is inarguably, identifiably Natalie Portman. But it is, perhaps even to its detriment, quite clear that M is merely a vessel for the narrator's own identity crisis. The two character barely even know each other (much like, presumably, Cusk and Portman). Instead of faithfully exploring M's inner life as gleaned from a real intimate knowledge, the novel uses M as a representation of pure, distilled celebrity, as the narrator meditates on how fame, and the violence of being perceived, drive us toward alienation and living death. In this episode, we look back on the original scandal and how it took shape, consider the critical reaction to the novel, and discuss our own thoughts on the novel and its flaws, strengths, and overarching themes. We dig into Cusk's fraught relationships with gender, cruelty, motherhood and fame, and her apparent desire to move past narrative to the relative permanence of objects. (Richly embroidered curtains, it's time for your close-up!) Hope you enjoy! xoReading List:"Life of M," by Rachel Cusk"A novelist’s dark portrait of Natalie Portman" by Valerie Stivers, UnHerd"Natalie Portman, her novelist friend and a literary assassination" by Leaf Arbuthnot, The Telegraph"How a Highbrow Novel Became Celebrity Gossip" by Alexandra Alter, New York Times“Rachel Cusk Tried to Caricature Natalie Portman. She Only Caricatured Herself” by Parul Sehgal, New York Times Magazine“Can Celebrities Be People, Too? In a New Novel, Rachel Cusk Isn’t Sure” by Alexandra Jacobs, New York Times“Proust Is in the Room” by Emily Witt, London Review of Books“Rachel Cusk’s Protest Against Personhood” by Becca Rothfeld, The New Yorker“Is Rachel Cusk’s Life of M Actually About Natalie Portman?” by Laura Miller, Slate“Why genre matters” by Colton Valentine, The Drift"Against ‘Women’s Writing’" by Andrea Long Chu, VultureShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

This week on the podcast, we were ready to let loose and have a little fun. After a few relatively heavy topics, it was time to get back to the important business of frivolous television. In this episode, we chat about three TV shows we've binged in the past month: The Alix Earle reality series "Earle Meets World," a fascinatingly vacuous reality show about making brand content; the mediocre but serviceable YA romance "Crew Girl"; and the luminous, irresistible romantic drama "Sterling Point." All three shows are, in some spiritual sense, the offspring of millennial pop culture that shaped our generation. "Earle Meets World" is a rather limp attempt at recapturing the "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" magic, while "Crew Girl" and "Sterling Point" both reflect a renewed demand for WB-style romantic teen soaps. But are they worth watching?First, we discuss "Earle Meets World," starting with Alix Earle as a cultural figure – a relatable hot-girl influencer who has now become a reality TV protagonist – and our general reaction to the show. (Overwhelmingly, boredom.) We discuss how the familial drama of the show, which stars not just Earle but her entire immediate family, is sublimated into professional grievances and assertions of workplace hierarchy, and we also look at how the entire show functions as brand management for Earle – at the expense of any real vulnerability or narrative excitement.Then, we discuss the current state of the teen soap renaissance. With "Crew Girl" and "Sterling Point" added to the growing pile of WB-esque YA romance series coming out on streaming platforms (especially Prime), we wanted to dig into why these shows dwindled in number, why they're having a resurgence, and what need they fill for audiences today. We chat about the class, race, and sexuality politics of these shows, as well as how they portray coming-of-age experience through those all-important love triangles. We also have a little fun breaking down the more absurd details of "Crew Girl," before turning our attention to the best show we cover in this episode: "Sterling Point." We talk about what made this show so winning to us, and dig into its melodramatic but resonant exploration of daughterhood, sisterhood, and what it means to be a family. Hope you enjoy! xoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

CW: Though we will be discussing the Lindsay Clancy case only in broad strokes in this episode, this events are extremely disturbing, and we will be referencing child murder and severe mental illness. If you choose to listen, please do so with care.Last week, following a month of wall-to-wall media coverage and feverish social media discourse, the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy ended in a mistrial. Clancy was charged in the deaths of her three young children; her defense team did not contest that she had committed the acts, but argued that she was not guilty by reason of insanity. Her trial became a site of consciousness-raising around the terrifying condition of postpartum psychosis, from which Clancy and her team claim she suffered, but also wild conspiracy theorizing. The debate over one woman's culpability also metastasized into a debate about the validity of postpartum mental health diagnoses, the perceived crimes of feminism, and whether women should be stripped of the vote. To be honest, neither of us wanted to pay close attention to the trial or the social media firestorm around it. The killings were horrific; the suffering of the children, and now their family and loved ones, is agonizing to contemplate. But as the discourse heated up and quickly grew politicized, we began to feel that we could not look away. Ignoring a massive news story that has not only exemplified most of the toxic tendencies of our current media and social media ecosystems, but has fueled a disturbing movement to strip women of our civil rights, seemed impossible. That's why we eventually decided to discuss the Lindsay Clancy case here: Not to dig into the details of the investigation or the trial, but to examine the public conversation that has raged around it. In this episode, we discuss the salacious true-crime fascination that immediately surrounded the case, how social media algorithms fuel this fascination and incentivize creators to grow or monetize their brands by making content around it, and how conspiracy theories and fake news spread rapidly in our fractured media ecosystem. We also discuss how many women related to what they learned about Lindsay Clancy's postpartum mental health struggles and her repeated attempts to get the right help – and we discuss why this specific white, affluent, educated mother has garnered widespread empathy and support, while others charged with similar crimes have not. We also get into how politicized this discourse has become, as right-wing hacks have taken it as an opportunity to argue for the repeal of the 19th Amendment. Below, for reference, is a selection of the reading we did prior to taping this episode.If you choose to listen to this episode, we hope it helps you process the upsetting state of the public frenzy around the trial, just as it helped us to talk it through together. Reference List:"The Women Obsessed With Lindsay Clancy," by Stephanie McCrummen, The Atlantic "Why People Want To Believe The Lindsay Clancy Conspiracy Theories," by Jessica Winter, The New Yorker"The Patrick Clancy Conspiracy Theories Are Rooted in the Harsh Realities of Motherhood," by EJ Dickson, Wired"What If Doctors Missed My Postpartum Psychosis, Too?" by Erica Schwiegershausen, The Cut"The Lindsay Clancy Conspiracy Spiral," by Eren Orbey, The New Yorker "Lindsay Clancy admits to killing their children. So why is there an online groundswell blaming her ex-husband?" by Rebekah Riess, CNN"How ‘forensic fandom’ in Lindsay Clancy trial threaten postpartum psychosis awareness," by Christopher Mathias, The Guardian"Not Skinny But Not Fat Podcaster Responds to Backlash for ‘Grossly Inappropriate’ Betting Ad About Lindsay Clancy Trial," by Toria Sheffield, People"The Meaning of the Lindsay Clancy Mistrial," by Elizabeth Bruenig, The Atlantic "Lindsay Clancy's case is a Rorschach test," by Moira Donegan, The Guardian "I Understand Why a Jury Could Not Convict Lindsay Clancy," by Jessica Grose, The New York Times"The Real Stakes of the Lindsay Clancy Gender War," by Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day"The Lindsay Clancy Fan Club," by Caitlin Flanagan, The Free Press "The Lindsay Clancy Trial Is Sparking a Political Divide on the Right," by Nikki McCann Ramirez, Rolling Stone"Lindsay Clancy Truthers Are The Best Argument For Repealing The 19th Amendment," by Rebeka Zeljko, The Federalist "Lindsay Clancy Democrats," by Ann Coulter "Feminism should also be on trial in the Lindsay Clancy case," by J.P. De Gance, Washington ExaminerShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

In honor of the "Love Island" USA season 8 reunion, we are making our July episode featuring Anna Peele, author of "Enter the Villa: The (Unauthorized) Reality Behind 'Love Island,'" free for all Rich Text subscribers. By the beginning of July, I have entered my now-annual "Love Island" fugue state. I fall asleep watching new episodes, and I wake up and immediately reach for my phone to scroll social media reactions. I try to recap the major plot points to my husband, who is usually baffled by the onslaught of details and my feverish emotional state. It's all I know how to think about about at the moment. So I was thrilled to get a chance this week to chat with, Anna Peele, contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of "Enter the Villa: The (Unauthorized) Reality Behind 'Love Island.'" As a relative newbie to the "Love Island" universe, I'm always looking for more insight about the show's history, influences, and impact, and Peele's deeply researched and reported book is the motherlode. She analyzes the show's forerunners and how executives put together the show that has evolved into an international mega-franchise, and breaks down that franchise's rocky introduction to the American market. She offers insight into how producers actually shape – or don't shape – storylines and character arcs, and into how contestants perceived their experiences. In our conversation, we discuss the evolution of the "Love Island" format, what made it tricky to bring to America and how it contrasts with "The Bachelor," the significance of the show's hosts and inimitable narrator Iain Stirling, how contestants experience being in the bubble of the show's set, our takes on the most recent "Love Island" USA seasons, and much more. Hope you enjoy! xoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

Recently, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez revealed that she was freezing her eggs during the August recess. In fact, in a very AOC move, she documented the entire process on Instagram, and used her videos to speak directly to her followers about her decision, the experience of freezing eggs, and policies she believes could provide childbearing people with more options for planning their families. Predictably, MAGA mockery and backlash ensued. AOC was accused of using her fertility for a campaign stunt – and, still worse, tricking normie women into believing they could put career first and still have kids.Meanwhile, Anne Hathaway hit the red carpet in a Prabal Gurung crop top that showed off her baby bump. The 43-year-old is currently expecting her third child with husband Adam Shulman. And this, too, drew mockery and backlash. Hathaway was not only criticized for conceiving a child at such an advanced age, but scrutinized for evidence that her bump was an advanced prosthetic for a fake pregnancy. In this episode, we discuss the contours of these two backlashes and what they say, individually and together, about the right's view of fertility, pregnancy, and women's rights. We talk about the puritanical disgust for women's bodies – and pregnant bodies – evinced by the freakout over Hathaway's bump photos, and the reactionary belief that pregnant people are inappropriate for public view. We also get into the frequent conspiracy theories about celebrity women's baby bumps, and the underlying attitudes about what kind of woman can be a mother. And, of course, we dig into the far-right pronatalist outrage at women having children after 35 – at least, women who aren't tradwives and don't already have 10 children. Plus, we look at how the increasingly punitive and rigid pronatalist ideology being advanced by male conservatives is deepening a rift between men and women on the right. Hope you enjoy! xoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

CW: Pregnancy and childbirth are discussed in detail in this episode. It's a big week on Rich Text, because Emma is back in the (metaphorical) building! On the two-month birthday of her daughter, we recorded her first postpartum podcast, and it was such a pleasure to be back to our old tricks. (She will be taking more time before returning to Love to See It, so don't be alarmed to see that Leigh is still manning the cohost mic in the coming weeks.) Given the huge event that just took place in Emma's life, what topic could be more natural, more fitting, than her birth story? In this raw and personal episode, Claire asks all of her burning questions about the labor and delivery, how Emma got through the hormonal rollercoaster of the first few weeks postpartum, her feeding journey, and what her daughter's personality is like (so far? mostly ravenous) – and Emma shares the ins and outs of her wild couple of months getting acquainted with parenthood. Plus, we get into the unbidden arrival of mom guilt, the still-more unbidden arrival of hospital bills, and all of the structural supports that would make this life-altering experience easier and healthier – like universal healthcare and childcare, home health visits, and subsidized pelvic floor therapy – which our country refuses to provide for birthing people and new parents. Hope you enjoy! xoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

In the opening scenes of the new (certified fresh!) Netflix movie "Don't Say Good Luck," Sophie Birenbaum (Sunny Sandler) is abuzz with pleasurable nerves. She's rehearsing her audition song for her high school's production of "Waitress," helping get her twin brothers off to school, giggling with her best friend. By the end of the day, she has learned – thanks to a poorly timed butt dial from her dad's cell phone – that her mother's cancer has returned. Shaken, she gives such a raw and vulnerable performance in her callback for a secondary part that, in a shocking upset, she lands the lead role. It's an overwhelming scenario for any teenage girl to face, with excitement and anxiety and fear all jumbling together with the already potent adolescent blend of hormones and budding independence. And it's one that I had heard a version of before, because it's based on the real experiences of my dear friend Laura Hankin, the novelist and screenwriter behind the original screenplay. I had been eagerly anticipating this movie for years; Laura had been at work on the script, her most personal project yet, for half a decade. As a devoted reader of her books, I knew that the story would be thoughtful, tender, and funny. But now that I've actually watched the movie, I'm bowled over by it. The script, co-written with Jordan Horowitz and Julia Hart (who also directed), is big-hearted, nuanced, and at times hilarious. The performances, from a truly stacked cast (including Melanie Lynskey as Sophie's mom and Max Greenfield as her dad), are touchingly real. It may be a cliché to say that I laughed and I cried, but there was nothing cliché about how loudly I was snort-laughing through my sobs by the final third of the film. So I was thrilled to get to sit down with Laura to talk about the winding path that led to this movie being made, the joys of collaboration, the details from her own life that made it into the final movie, the finer points of high school theater culture, the thematic resonances between "Waitress" and Sophie's story, how becoming mothers has changed our perspectives on losing our own, and much more. In the 20 years that Laura and I have known each other, we have shared many long conversations about loss, grief, motherhood, ambition, and art, and this is by far the most personal, and emotional, one we have ever recorded. (Though I remain partial to our 2023 conversation about "The Lizzie McGuire Movie"!) I hope you enjoy – and I hope you stream this gem of a movie. Share Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

The Bravo and Bravo-adjacent cinematic universe has been in full swing in recent weeks, and I needed to talk to an expert. So this week, Gibson Johns (entertainment writer and host of Gabbing With Gib) joined me to discuss ex-"Vanderpump Rules" star Stassi Schroeder's return to reality TV with her Hulu series "House of Stassi," the back half of "In the City," and the finale of "The Valley." First, we got all the way into Stassi's comeback show. Gibson came to the show with years of prior knowledge of her as a reality TV character, whereas I had never seen Stassi in her element. The long-time "VPR" star was fired in 2020, along with Kristen Doute, after a racist incident in which they reported a Black castmate to the police for crimes she had nothing to do with. Like Kristen, she has now made a full comeback from what Stassi terms "cancellation." This time, she is the undisputed center of the show – and clearly sees herself as The Big Boss. The creators of "House of Stassi" are certainly trying to do something different with this show; the visual language of the series, with lush cinematography and ornate title cards, draws more from prestige scripted TV than it does from the Bravo-verse, and the tone (played up by winking on-screen annotations) is darkly comic. Though we rarely see cameras, Stassi and her crew are very forthright about their awareness that they're making a reality show; the fourth wall is discussed so often it's practically a character in its own right. But has Stassi herself changed? The show frames her as an almost monstrous antiheroine – controlling, narcissistic, hypocritical – though the hangers-on who surround her are nearly as unlikable. We discuss all this, plus the flipped gender-role conflict between Stassi and her reluctant stay-at-home husband Beau that anchors the season. Next, we caught up on the end of "In the City," a first season that gathered momentum and ended with an explosive fight about Friendsgiving room assignments and Whitney's claim that Lindsay always pulls the "single mom card." We got into our takes on the standout moments of drama, as well as overall assessments of the show's freshman season and its rookie castmembers. Last, we dipped into "The Valley" for a brief chat about the finale, Luke's comments about putting pregnant Kristen in a "coffin," the Solo cup bonk heard round the world, and Danny and Nia's future on the franchise. Where can the show go from here, after yet another season relitigating drama that the cast shows no interest in resolving and moving forward from? This is a TV genre about conflict resolution! Let's see some, people.Hope you enjoy! xoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

CW: This episode will contain discussion of domestic abuse. Please listen with care.The fourth season of "The Ultimatum: Marry Or Move On" has limped to a miserable conclusion – and we're finally caught up and ready to talk about it! This week, Bachelor in Retrospect cohosts Carrie Rosen and Annemarie Navar-Gill joined me to discuss the depressing finale, which saw all four of the remaining couples get engaged, and the wretched reunion. From the outset, this season of "The Ultimatum" had a darker aura than seasons past. During the dating period, men openly leered at the new women they were meeting, and couples berated each other verbally and via clandestine note. As the episodes went on, the toxic behavior escalated, especially between Hayley, Blake, Ashley and Killian. Castmembers openly swapped alarming conspiracy theories, weaponized therapy buzzwords to win arguments, and relied on ChatGPT for relationship advice. It all culminated in a car crash of a finale and reunion. First, four couples who should all have broken up instead got engaged on TV. Then, in the reunion, the psychological terrorism only escalated, with Nick and Vanessa Lachey standing by ineffectually as rampant emotional abuse (largely from the men) was given a massive platform.By the time the reunion taped this summer, a year after filming wrapped, three of the five engaged couples had split up (as had Alex and Jebin, the only couple to leave without a proposal). The two happily engaged couples beamed from their loveseats, sharing wedding plans and smartphone video footage of their past year; David and Casey even got Nick Lachey to legally marry them onstage in anticipation of their Amalfi Coast nuptials in September. But all four of the other couples were haunted by claims of abusive treatment. Jebin, unprompted, admitted to having written Alex an even nastier note than the one she read aloud on camera. Jessica Grace accused Edris of having subjected her to "humiliation rituals" during the end of their relationship, a claim he then gave credence to by trying to humiliate her onstage. Ashley described Killian smashing her phone during one altercation, and he blamed her for "triggering" him. And Blake and Hayley lobbed allegations back and forth, each claiming the other got violent with them. Alarmingly, Jessica Grace and Edris have since gotten back together, and in a joint appearance on the Viall Files, she took blame for trying to "vilify" Edris on the reunion and tried to rationalize his nasty behavior. Ashley and Hayley have become friends, as have Killian and Blake, and all of them are now making the podcast rounds, getting their stories on the record. They have all alleged emotional and physical abuse, though Ashley, Hayley, and Blake have given the most specific and detailed accounts. (Since we taped this episode, Jebin has leaked a recording he made of Hayley admitting to slapping Blake during their relationship, and she has released a statement confirming that this happened.) The season has devolved entirely into a melodrama that mines entertainment out of abuse. That these ex-couples were even put onstage together for the reunion, given the gravity of the accusations they've made – and the fact that Blake was arrested for assault following an altercation with Hayley last year, though charges were dismissed – is shockingly irresponsible. In this episode, we discuss each proposal, each beat of the horrific reunion, the Netflix reality dating show aesthetic and political slant, the Lacheys' reunion performance, production's culpability, and what made this season of "The Ultimatum" so dark (and so much worse than "The Ultimatum: Queer Love," RIP). We focused primarily on what took place onscreen, though we touch on some of the post-show media interviews. In some relationships, the truth of what happened remains murky. One truth is clear: production made choice after choice to put their cast in unsafe situations for the sake of explosive TV.Share Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

This week, the brilliant Ali Barthwell – author of the forthcoming book "Reality TV for Snobs," Emmy-winning "Last Week Tonight" writer, recapper extraordinaire, and dear friend of the pod – joined me to discuss episodes 5-8 of "The Ultimatum" season 4! And we had as much fun as we could recapping these episodes, which are brutal to watch. (I haven't watched the finale and reunion yet, but from what I hear, they will be even more soul-shredding. Recap coming next week!) Out of the eight people who remain in the experiment, perhaps two are likable; most of the relationships seem not just dysfunctional but abusive. Even when Killian engages in demeaning and sexually threatening conversations about his trial marriage partner, he is allowed to remain and continue the experiment with her. We watch as Ashley quickly rationalizes his disrespect and verbal abuse, to which she has clearly become accustomed during their relationship. But they're far from the only couple enmeshed in a deeply toxic dynamic. The cast this season is so bleak that our most crushable man wants to lead his wife in a Biblical marriage – at least it's in a kindhearted way!In this episode, Ali and I discuss the rancid conservatism of this season, the underreaction to Killian's group chat, Hayley and Blake's fixation on love languages and therapy buzzwords, David's control issues, and much more. Hope you enjoy! xoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

Season 4 of "The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On" has dropped, just in time to help fill the cavernous void left by the finale of "Love Island" season 8, and the vibes are worse than ever. "The Ultimatum" has an inherently fraught premise: It brings together six established couples who disagree about whether to get married. They "break up," date the other people in the experiment and choose one to have a three-week "trial marriage" with, and then return to their original partner for another trial marriage. The show ends with each person deciding whether to get engaged, leave alone, or leave in a relationship with someone they met in the experiment. It's never a feel-good show, given that it carries so much deeply rooted pain and disappointment from each relationship – and the potential for such a great betrayal – but this season is taking it to another level.Tess Higgins, aka Reality Scholar on Instagram, joined me for a lively recap of the first four episodes of this season (the first half of the first drop). We have so many questions about this season, starting with casting: Where do they find these people, and specifically, where do they find these men? Reality dating shows have reflected an overall cultural shift toward rigid gender roles in the last few years, as women seek "protectors and providers" so they can "lean into their feminine," while men search for bubbly and nurturing "homemakers" with taut bodies. This season of "The Ultimatum" is a prime example. But it's not just reactionary values on display this season – it's the wedge that those values drive between heterosexual couples, who are buckling under the pressure to perform gender for each other. And can we blame the manosphere for why almost all of these guys are emanating absolutely noxious energy, or is that just a quirk of casting? This motley array of two-faced, manipulative man-children is enough to convince any rational woman to choose a life of celibacy. And yet here these ladies are, considering a lifelong legal partnership with them. We discuss all of this, as well as the risks of casting 23-year-olds on a marriage show, appropriate date conversations and behavior, disrespectful group texts, and much more. Hope you enjoy! I will be back next week to recap episodes 5-8 with another special guest. Share Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

We laughed, we cried, we gawked at leaked wedding photos! This week on the pod, I'm joined by the wonderful Kelsey McKinney, co-owner and journalist at Defector Media, for a two-part conversation: first, a general chat about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's epic wedding at Madison Square Garden, then a recap of the Netflix rom-dramedy "Voicemails for Isabelle." Though neither of us particularly wanted to pay attention to l'affaire Swift-Kelce, this splashy event has a gravitational pull on the discourse. We chatted about how Swift's choice of wedding venue clashed with many people's expectations and assumptions about her taste – including ours – and what it means that the word "tacky" has been thrown about so liberally. We also got into the spectacle of billionaire weddings and conspicuous consumption at this particular moment, as well as what it signifies that the couple made massive charitable donations in conjunction with the wedding. Then, we turned our attention to a Netflix romance that we both liked much more than we expected: "Voicemails for Isabelle." We unpack how deeply creepy the concept of the movie is, and how many unsettling choices the male lead makes... and why we found ourselves getting on board anyway. We got in our feelings about how the movie captures the joy of sisterhood and the devastation of grief, and we recapped the whole thing – the silly moments, the millennial-core details (a gourmet dessert nacho food truck? hell yeah), the satisfying physical comedy and goofy side characters, and every moment that made us cry. Hope you enjoy! xoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

By the beginning of July, I have entered my now-annual "Love Island" fugue state. I fall asleep watching new episodes, and I wake up and immediately reach for my phone to scroll social media reactions. I try to recap the major plot points to my husband, who is usually baffled by the onslaught of details and my feverish emotional state. It's all I know how to think about about at the moment. So I was thrilled to get a chance this week to chat with, Anna Peele, contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of "Enter the Villa: The (Unauthorized) Reality Behind 'Love Island.'" As a relative newbie to the "Love Island" universe, I'm always looking for more insight about the show's history, influences, and impact, and Peele's deeply researched and reported book is the motherlode. She analyzes the show's forerunners and how executives put together the show that has evolved into an international mega-franchise, and breaks down that franchise's rocky introduction to the American market. She offers insight into how producers actually shape – or don't shape – storylines and character arcs, and into how contestants perceived their experiences. In our conversation, we discuss the evolution of the "Love Island" format, what made it tricky to bring to America and how it contrasts with "The Bachelor," the significance of the show's hosts and inimitable narrator Iain Stirling, how contestants experience being in the bubble of the show's set, our takes on the most recent "Love Island" USA seasons, and much more. Hope you enjoy! xoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

It's a hot romance adaptation summer. After years suffering through a rom-com movie desert, streamers have discovered that rom-com television series might just be where its at. At a time when heterosexual dating has never seemed bleaker and toxic men are wreaking societal destruction at the highest levels of government and tech, it makes sense that a lot of us are yearning for the uncomplicated fantasy of safe men to love.In mid-May "Off Campus" became a runaway hit for Prime Video. Based on the first book in Elle Kennedy's sexy hockey series, millions of viewers fell in swoony, embarrassing levels of love with the romance between Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli) and Hannah Wells (Ella Bright). The show shot to the top of the streaming charts, launched a viral soundtrack, and spawned a spate of thinkpieces about why women in their 30s and 40s couldn't stop watching. (The two of us were among them.)So when we saw that "Every Year After," a show based on Carley Fortune's bestselling novel "Every Summer After," was also coming to Prime Video, we were anticipating another banger. Unfortunately, where "Off Campus" broke through with fans and critics, "Every Summer After" decidedly did not. Is it still #1 on Prime Video? Certainly. But it feels like people are doing more hate-watching than crush-watching. These two shows share surface-level similarities. Both are part of Prime Video's obvious push to recapture the magic they found with "The Summer I Turned Pretty," both are based on popular novels, and both feature young hotties finding and bungling and finding love again. So we wanted to dig into what made them land so differently. Part of the issue is tone (fun vs. somber), part is that ineffable chemistry between two leads that either leads the audience to invest in a love story or detach from it, and part of it might just come down to structure. Where "Off Campus" effectively integrates trauma into a sparkly, sexy series, "Every Year After" seems to view grief and trauma as totalizing. (Even "Every Year After's" big sex scenes somehow manage to feel dark and dour.) As Angie Han wrote in her review of "Every Year After" for The Hollywood Reporter: "So besotted with its own heartbreak, it forgets to sell the romantic fantasy that would make it worthwhile in the first place."Before we wrapped up the episode, we took a slight detour into Bravo-land to give our high-level thoughts on "Summer House: The Aftermath." (TLDR: It was mostly a nothingburger, West deserved to be fired, Ciara forever, and Lindsay did some good tough love work.) Hope you enjoy! XoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

Another week, another feast of televisual content about the high crimes and misdemeanors of Amanda Batula and Westling Wilson! Tuesday night brought not only the premiere of "Love Island USA" (see our coverage over on Love to See It), but part two of the "Summer House" season 10 reunion and episode three of "In the City." Both Bravo shows now revolve primarily around investigating how long this couple have been sneaking around, and the more episodes come out, the worse it looks!The second installment of the three-part "Summer House" reunion didn't ease off the gas. Amanda is pressed to consider whether West would take their relationship as lightly as he's taken his past romances, which actually seems to strike a nerve – and leads her to flee the stage in tears. Ciara and Kyle reveal, in side chats, that they've been in touch with West's recent ex Meija, and have learned just how serious and longstanding their relationship was. Dara offers a devastating read on West, who, meanwhile, sits in vacant silence for most of the episode. Kyle is asked about his tantrums this season and his self-admitted history of being inappropriate with other women, which he attributes quite liberally to Amanda's coldness and their dead bedroom. ("Hurt people hurt people," he explains.) We discuss Amanda's fragility and lack of remorse, the void onstage where West should be, Kyle choice to lean into a victim narrative, and the coming reckoning over West's secret off-camera girlfriend. "In the City" kicks off with its own perspective on the Amanda-West-Ciara-Kyle saga. Amanda welcomes the other two tripod legs of her "perfect little trio," West and Ciara, outside the building where she's signing a one-year lease on her new apartment. (So much for that one-month trial separation.) West calls her "Manders!"; Ciara gives her sound advice about staying involved in Loverboy so that she's aware of her and Kyle's joint financial situation. As Amanda sits for a confessional, beaming and gushing about her best friends, the camera glitches out and jumps forward to May 2026; producers ask a more sullen version of Amanda whether she had a crush on West at the time of this scene, and she dutifully denies it. Chilling stuff! Meanwhile, Lindsay goes on a bad date with a hunk ripped straight from "And Just Like That...", beefcake-themed nostalgic food delivery business and all. Whitney's boxes arrive from L.A. and Kenny, spiraling at the prospect that his new live-in girlfriend will actually have decor and possessions that take up meaningful space in his apartment, teases her until she cries – laying the groundwork perfectly for Lexi and Yvonne to tell their new pal that Kenny has been telling the guys that he questions their "spark" and sees their future as "murky." The Kenny-Lindsay clash continues over a group brunch. We discuss all of this, plus our overall take on "In the City" so far. Share Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

Between Ciara Miller absolutely eating Amanda Batula up at the "Summer House" reunion, "Off Campus" becoming a full-blown obsession (check on your millennial friends, people!), and right-wing pink pill influencers melting down about Alex Cooper's pregnancy... we had a lot on our minds this week. So what is the Rich Text podcast for other than brain dumping to each other and all of you?We started this episode by getting into part 1 of the "Summer House" reunion. The entire Bravo-verse has been eagerly awaiting this moment of catharsis for Ciara Miller. And it was, indeed, satisfying to see Ciara eat Amanda Batula and West Wilson up, with strong assists from Mia, Carl, Kyle and Lindsay. We discussed Amanda and West's detached affect, whether they were actually there to apologize and take accountability (spoiler: no), the messiness of the timeline, and what it means for Ciara to be allowed to have her anger on full display. We also detoured briefly into some non-Scamanda standout moments, including Bailey going hard after Ben, and KJ opening up about his mental health struggles. After a lengthy discussion about "Summer House," we took some time to dive into our latest all-consuming television obsession: "Off Campus." The Prime Video hockey romance series is firing on all cylinders. The fervor that it has inspired among so many viewers reminds us of the heyday of the WB (complimentary). We got into Claire's massive crush on Belmont Camelli, why the show is hitting so hard, the show's construction of healthy masculinity, and what the cast's press tour can tell us about this particular cultural moment.Finally, we talked about the deranged meltdown some women on the right are having in the wake of Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper's pregnancy announcement. Turns out that you can have casual sex, date around, get married and have a baby in your 30s! Who knew? Hope you enjoy! xoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

After 10 seasons of anchoring "Summer House," it's time for the show's preeminent Peter Pan party boy, Kyle Cooke, to say goodbye. Kyle, along with his erstwhile wife Amanda Batula and longtime friend Lindsay Hubbard, are being shipped out from the Hamptons share house to the new Bravo series "In the City." On Tuesday night, Bravo aired a finale-premiere combo that saw Kyle, Amanda, and Lindsay closing one chapter and opening the next. But this transition didn't hit the way production clearly anticipated while filming last summer; there's no clean break, no bittersweet transition to a new era. Instead, there are dangling threads galore. We already know we're gearing up for a season of watching Kyle and Amanda's marriage fall apart, and their current storyline has far more to do with their "Summer House" ex-colleagues West Wilson and Ciara Miller than with their new "In the City" cohort.Despite the spanner thrown in the works, the "Summer House" finale packed a punch. Carl and Lindsay finally sit down and talk for the first time since their on-camera breakup two seasons ago (so that Carl can profusely apologize, of course). West explains to Ben that he knows Ciara couldn't handle casually dating and he doesn't want to lead her on, just hours before kissing her and trying to get her in bed. Ciara tries to give Amanda the kick in the ass she needs to do something about her crumbling marriage, and they share an emotional goodbye. And then Amanda sits Kyle down on the stoop of the empty house and tells him she was going to stay at a hotel – alone. "In the City" opens with the news of their breakup this winter, and a scene the couple filmed after the news broke that Amanda was dating their friend West, before the episode rewinds to last September when filming commenced. We see some brutal post-couples-therapy conversations between a frazzled and angry Amanda and a clueless Kyle; we meet Lindsay's baby daughter, who already has the same death glare perfected; we meet Bachelor Nation's own Whitney Fransway and her extremely unlikeable boyfriend Kenny, who keeps calling her a "doll." Plus, Amanda questions the murky origins of Danielle Olivera's relationship with her married boyfriend, and Lindsay's bestie Yvonne cheerily admits that her husband once didn't notice when she went to San Diego unannounced for multiple days. Weird vibes!We dig into all of it in this episode. Hope you enjoy! xoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

When we stepped into the Lawn Club in downtown Manhattan last Thursday night, we immediately knew we were among our people – reality TV people, that is. Reality stars, producers, casting directors, content creators, podcasters and journalists, all together in a room listening to the dulcet tones of John Denver as remixed by DJ Kyle Cooke, thanks to Vulture’s Reality Masterminds event.The wide-ranging content package and celebration were a great reminder that reality television has become a legitimately important piece of the entertainment industry, complete with its own media ecosystem. After 10+ years of covering reality television as journalists, podcasters and cultural critics, it's satisfying to see that ecosystem taken seriously and given its due. Plus, we got a great party out of it. So on this week's podcast, we decided to gossip. We review Kyle's DJ-ing, discuss which members of the "Summer House" cast were there to support him, and talk about our favorite reality sightings -- Boston Rob and Rob C. hanging out together! Kristen Kish! Kathy Hilton! Andy Cohen! Ariana Madix! Various gorgeous realtors! We also got into the Jenn Fessler-West Wilson drama that came out of the night and then share all of our many thoughts about the latest episode of "Summer House."In the back half of the episode, we wanted to dive into a few other things that have been on our minds, including the way that Threads is melting Claire's brain, and the intense discourse about Olivia Rodrigo's babydoll dresses and bloomers. Are her fashion choices subversive? Tools of the Epstein class? Somewhere in between? Emma and Claire have slightly different viewpoints on this topic, but we can agree on one thing: Social media platforms are where nuance goes to die.Share Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

In 2006, “The Devil Wears Prada” was already on the brink of being a paean to the bygone glory days of magazines. The hollowing out of print media was already well underway. The brief boom of digital media was in the offing, but that would quickly collapse as well. The prosperous era of Vogue that the original movie was satirizing has ended. Twenty years later, we are all – magazine editors, digital journalists, freelancers and self-employed newsletter purveyors – fighting over the meager scraps that remain. This is the world that “The Devil Wears Prada 2” places us in. A world where plucky journalist Andy Sachs has found professional success and acclaim, neither of which protect her from her insolvent publication laying off its staff. A world where Miranda Priestley’s Runway still has prestige and cultural impact, but must chase web traffic and produce fashion spreads on shoestring budgets. And a world where, just as in this one, tech billionaires treat vital industries like playthings. It is the sad state of the media that brings Andy, who has just been laid off via text while receiving an industry award, back to Runway. The magazine has been savaged online for spotlighting a brand that a later exposé revealed to be using sweatshop labor, and their prodigal daughter, now a respected and unemployed investigative reporter, is hired to restore the publication’s journalistic gravitas. Meanwhile, Miranda is fighting to save her promotion to global head of content for Elias-Clarke, which owner Irv Ravitz has been dangling over her head. But before their happy ending, Andy and Miranda also must navigate McKinsey consultants, tech bros, and billionaires who see no distinction between the art of fashion and A.I. slop. To save their careers, ultimately, they have little recourse but to find a billionaire they trust more than the other billionaires.In this episode, we discuss the film’s depiction of a media industry that has been ravaged by late-stage capitalism, of goofy tech billionaires, and of billionaire divorcées. We get into the idea of the “good billionaire,” who uses her wealth benevolently, and why it always seems to be a woman. We also talk the changing face of fashion, as unevenly depicted as it was in this movie. And we discuss “TDWP 2” as a girlboss movie (complimentary?!), and the space it makes for female ambition.  Hope you enjoy! xoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

"Summer House" and "The Valley" are two Bravo shows about young(ish) people on opposite coasts working through a plethora of banal relationship horrors. In this episode, we dive into the last few episodes of both shows.Share Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

It was only a matter of time before the tradwife novels arrived. Not only have we been fascinated by these women – and their addictive yet alarming blend of aestheticized nostalgia porn, motherhood and domestic arts tips, and veiled (or not-so-veiled) reactionary politics – for at least half a decade, they are public figures optimized for projection, psychological speculation, and sheer fan fiction. After all, how well do we really know these women? Beneath their carefully constructed images, the precisely curated videos and photos of maternal and wifely bliss they show us, what are they truly thinking? What drives them? And what darker or less wholesome parts of themselves are they cropping out of the frame? These are not the self-narrativizing, confessional mommy bloggers of 20 years ago: they're the opening scene in a horror movie or a thriller, and we're just waiting for the grisly reveal. This week, we're discussing the book du jour, Caro Claire Burke's buzzy tradwife novel "Yesteryear." This isn't the first tradwife novel – for example, our friend Jo Piazza published an extremely fun murder mystery set in this world last year, "Everyone Is Lying to You" – but it is at the center of the cultural conversation right now. So this seemed like an excellent time to discuss not just Burke's literary take on the topic, but also the unique allure and unique problems of the tradwife novel. In "Yesteryear," we follow the story of Natalie Heller Mills, a Christian tradwife influencer whose profile is unmistakably inspired by the ur-tradwife, Hannah Neeleman (known as Ballerina Farm). She has five photogenic children and one on the way; she has a handsome cowboy of a husband; she has two nannies, and an on-site content producer. She has a closet full of expensive dresses and cashmere sweaters that she wears each morning to collect eggs from the chicken coop, and a rustic kitchen with hidden appliances. But one morning, she awakens in a version of her life that she barely recognizes, a wholly unromanticized homestead with no microwave, no cashmere sweaters, and no nannies. Instead, she has four children she doesn't recognize, and a hardened, weathered husband who will brook no disagreement. As the novel progresses, we learn more about how Natalie built herself an influencing empire, and the scandal that was threatening to destroy it – and, ultimately, why she ended up back in 1855. It's an irresistible premise, especially for those of us who have contemptuously dismissed tradwives as living out a safe, cosplay version of a past that was always more dangerous and oppressive than their content seems to admit. What would a modern tradwife do if she awoke on a real homestead? She couldn't hack it! Right? Burke is a compelling writer, and her heroine is unlikable, unreliable, and deeply fascinating. The novel plumbs her psyche for all the resentments and wounds that have formed her into such a bitter and calculating person – and, ultimately, an unstable one. There's a lot in the book that makes it an obvious hit (no wonder it's already been optioned for a project starring Anne Hathaway!). But we also found some aspects of the book disappointing or perplexing.In this episode, we dug into the idea of tradwife fiction writ large, and the challenges we see as inherent in the genre. We also talk through the whole of "Yesteryear" (so a huge spoiler alert here!) and touch on some of the major themes. And we discuss some of the aspects of the book that didn't work for us, like the glossing over of her experiences of pregnancy, postpartum, and the effects of having a large number of children, as well as the relative absence of broader political context. And did that big twist work for us? We're a little bit torn! We hope you enjoy! xoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

During the season 3 premiere of "The Valley," there is a scene that lit us up with rage. Kristen Doute's fiancé Luke Broderick is having a heart-to-heart with fellow castmate Jesse Lally about his relationship. “Our relationship is completely lacking intimacy, which is tough,” he says. “[Kristen] shuts down every advance. At what point do you stop trying?” On its face this seems like a normal thing to express frustration to your friend about... until you realize that Luke is whining about not getting enough sex from his partner who is just THREE MONTHS POSTPARTUM. The man legitimately wants a gold star for not pressuring Kristen for physical intimacy before she has been medically cleared by a doctor.This scene also made us think about similar conversations we've seen between Jace Terry and Mikayla Matthews on the latest season of "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives." And then, in episode 2, not only did Luke bring these "issues" up again, but we saw a similar exchange between Danny and Nia Booko! Three makes a trend, so we knew we had to discuss. We got into why so many men seem unable to grasp that their partners might need some physical space after a traumatic medical experience like birth, what it says about how male partners use weaponized incompetence, and how the Bravo community is responding to these on-screen issues! In this podcast episode, we also take a slight detour to discuss our April 6th outing to see Mark Ballas and Whitney Leavitt together in Chicago on Broadway! We recap what the show was like, the energy in the room, Whitney's theater-kid vibes, and what this means for how she is constructing her career trajectory outside of "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives." Hope you enjoy! XoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live," Joan Didion famously wrote at the outset of her 1979 essay collection "The White Album." This was always descriptive, rather than self-congratulating. It's not that our souls are fed by art, but that we need to convince ourselves that our lives are more than random chaos. In order to continue on, in order to give meaning to lives filled with pain and drudgery and confusion, we must edit and construct. We must, as the girlies say, romanticize our lives. And wives are asked to endure a great deal by romanticizing it. Perhaps that is one reason we are so gripped by their raw confessions. In two much-discussed recent memoirs, Lindy West and Belle Burden puncture the fairy tales of wifehood that they once bought into, reiterated, and sought to embody. In "Adult Braces," West's followup to her hit memoir "Shrill," she reconsiders the triumphant ending of her earlier book: her marriage. In "Adult Braces," she admits that her marriage was troubled from the start by her husband Aham's insistence that they embrace polyamory, a desire she hoped to dispel by becoming the perfect wife. She learns that Aham (who has since come out as nonbinary and uses he/they pronouns) has secretly acted on their arrangement and has a girlfriend, Roya; as she processes his betrayals, she rents a van and road trips to Florida to find herself. When she returns, she is ready to turn their couple into a throuple. Her vision of a happy marriage has been revised. But for Burden, the happy marriage disappears into a puff of smoke. After almost two decades of marriage, during which she gave up her legal career to raise their three children, she discovers that her husband is having an affair with a younger woman. Soon after, he walks away from not just Burden, but their children, their home, and their entire life. Left to pick up the wreckage, she spends the memoir sorting through her ideals of marriage, wifehood, and motherhood, trying to understand how she surrendered herself financially and emotionally to a man who could sever himself from her so abruptly. Both West and Burden find themselves grappling with the crumbling of the stories they told themselves, and reevaluating the wifely roles they sought to embody. They linger over the value that being married to men granted them in the eyes of the world, and the terror of having that taken away; they consider how their anxiety about being a perfect wife (and, in Burden's case, mother) may have made them brittle and exhausted. But we also see what relief they find in being able to sink into having a partner to protect, if not control, them. If there is a cost to pay, well, it's a bargain they were happy to make. In this episode, we discuss both books (and West's ill-fated rollout, the fevered discourse around the state of her polyamorous marriage, and Aham's furious public response). We delve into their conceptions of ideal wifehood and how they revise them as their marriages founder. We discuss the much-rumored death of millennial feminism, and whether embracing the right ideology can ever really make you happy. And, of course, we discuss how being a Good Wife always, always means doing PR for your husband – and consider whether a divorce memoir is so alluring because the author can finally stop spinning. Hope you enjoy! xoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

It became clear that "Love Story," the FX-Hulu limited series about JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, had broken through in a major way when Curbed ran an article titled "Kennedy Cosplay Is Eating The City." Young women were flocking to C.O. Bigelow, the pharmacy where Bessette shopped for her headbands, in droves. Panna II, where the fictional Kennedy and Bessette went on their first date (likely apocryphal) was being discovered by a new generation of New Yorkers and tourists. The same thing was happening with Bubby's and The Odeon and even the stoop outside of the couple's former Tribeca loft. "It seems the city is caught up in 'Love Story' mania," wrote Clio Chang. Except it wasn't just New York City. Seemingly out of nowhere, we were all being deluged with reels and TikToks about how to recreate Bessette's '90s minimalist style or style your boyfriend like JFK Jr. or shop for vintage Calvin Klein and Yohji Yamamoto. A mini-series had officially become a cultural flashpoint."Love Story" itself, executive produced by Ryan Murphy, is a totally passable, very schlocky, incredibly imperfect cultural product. But what felt more interesting than the piece of art itself was interrogating why it was able to pierce through in an increasingly atomized pop cultural ecosystem. What is it about JFK Jr. and CBK that still has us collectively in a chokehold, nearly 30 years after their tragic deaths?To interrogate that question, I felt like there was only one guest that could fill in while Claire was out on vacation: writer and iconic New Yorker Glynnis MacNicol. Not only is Glynnis a friend, but she also happens to have a somewhat outsize knowledge of '90s New York and Carolyn Bessette. She even wrote a fabulous essay for the NYTimes about the "Love Story" phenomenon: "Carolyn Bessette Was Living the Dream. Then She Met John.Carolyn Bessette Was Living the Dream. Then She Met John."In this episode, we get into the mixed critical reactions to "Love Story," why '90s nostalgia has gripped the masses, the intersection of fashion, politics and Hollywood wrapped up in JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette's pairing, and whether this "love story" is actually more of a horror story. Hope you enjoy! Xo Share Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

We watched Netflix's latest experiment in romance, the age-blind dating show "Age of Attraction," with a blend of boredom and horror that eventually shaded into a spicier blend of horror and fascination. The show's finale dropped this week, and we are finally ready to weigh in. So let's go!"Age of Attraction" brings together a group of mixed-age singles to explore relationships without learning each other's ages, in the interest of showing that age is just a number, that we shouldn't put each other in boxes, yada yada yada. The show concept is not only ludicrous on its face, as singles can see each other while dating and should be able to assess what age their potential partners are, but is quickly given the lie during a quick montage midseason, which reveals that all of the couples who turned out to be close in age were summarily cut from the show. (You guys age-blind dated too hard, sorry!) This is a show that invites us to both gawk at and romanticize relationships between people who are decades apart and in completely different life stages. We are asked to consider the deeper compatibility between a 38-year-old father of tween daughters and a 22-year-old who seems just about old enough to be hired as their babysitter. After all, he is young at heart, and she is desperate for a man who is emotionally mature enough to listen to Taylor Swift without spontaneously combusting. (Dear God, are the Gen Z lads okay?) We are told that a 33-year age gap has nothing to do with the breakdown of a relationship between a 60-year-old man who treats his 27-year-old girlfriend like an underperforming intern; they simply didn't share communication styles. The immaturity on display is immense, and it is mostly from the older partners, who are drawn to the youthfulness of their younger loves but also easily retreat to the authority of their bigger ages to regain control in their relationships. This is particularly unsettling when it involves one woman being pressured for sex by her older boyfriend, who clearly hopes to defeat her boundary through superior debate skills. But it's not just Vanelle and Jorge; unhealthy dynamics are all over this show. In this episode, we discuss the show's concept and structure, the cultural moment it's speaking to, and how the central relationships unfold – plus, that reunion trailer and how it hints at the state of these romances today. Hope you enjoy! xoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

Season 4 of "Secret Lives of Mormon Wives" is a dark one, but its darkest moments arrive in the second half of the season. Most of them involve star Taylor Frankie Paul, whose toxic cycle with her ex Dakota Mortensen is fully reignited as the season progresses, even as she's gearing up to star on "The Bachelorette." By the end of episode 10, it's abundantly clear that Taylor is in no way prepared to cut off Dakota, responding with coy ambivalence when he asks her to save him a rose. And she's in no way prepared to take on this role. As we were preparing our coverage for the second half of this season, more news broke: Taylor and Dakota were involved in a domestic dispute last month, and both have alleged physical violence by the other. The police were called, though no arrests were made. Dakota has also reportedly accused Taylor of other assaults, and of abusing their young son. There is an ongoing investigation with DCFS, as well as with the local police, regarding these allegations. (Note: We will be discussing these allegations in some, though not excessive, detail in this episode. Please listen with care.)Taylor has said very little publicly about these reports, and ABC and "The Bachelorette" production have said even less. It appears that the show will air as scheduled; the network clearly hopes to weather the storm. But the backlash to ABC's decision to cast Taylor, who already had a documented history of domestic violence (she was still on probation for the prior incident while filming the show) has been intense. In this episode, we discuss what we see unfold between Taylor and Dakota in the last five episodes of "SLOMW," as well as the current allegations and the implications for "The Bachelorette" and the reality TV genre as a whole. Then we turn to the other women's storylines for this batch of episodes, notably Whitney and Jen's falling out, Layla opening up about her struggles with an eating disorder, Jessi and Jordan's functionally defunct marriage, and Jace and Mikayla's separation. Related Reading and Resources:National Domestic Violence Hotline"Taylor Frankie Paul’s Turn on ‘The Bachelorette’ Is Coming Under Fire," by Shivani Gonzalez, NYT"‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ filming on pause amid Taylor Frankie Paul investigation, sources say," by Rebecca Cohen, NBC"Cinnabon Cuts Ties With ‘The Bachelorette’ and ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ Amid Taylor Frankie Paul and Dakota Mortensen Domestic Violence Investigation," Jack Dunn, Variety"Taylor Frankie Paul Breaks Silence After Domestic Violence Investigation News: 'It's a Heavy Time,'" by Liza Esquibias and Benjamin VanHoose, People"Taylor Frankie Paul Says Domestic Violence Headlines Feel 'Like the End of the World' in First Televised Interview Since Scandal," by Rachel McRady, People"Taylor Frankie Paul's ex Dakota speaks out amid domestic violence investigation," by Sarah Hearon and Ryan Coleman, EW"The Price of Perfection: Layla Taylor on Mormonism and the weight of belonging," by Shaquille Heath, The CutShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

There are few moments more off-putting in season 4 of "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives" than when Jessi Draper's husband, Jordan Ngatikaura, earnestly tells the camera that "DadTok is a lot funnier than MomTok." But in a way, it also sets the tone of the season. "SLOMW" is now a reality show about Mormon (and lapsed Mormon) mom content creators who have become bonafide celebrities. And that celebrity status is kind of upending everything in their lives – most prominently, their patriarchal family structures and their wider ambitions. Many of the husbands are navigating stepping into primary caregiver roles and trying not to lose their own identities in the process. Some, like Jordan, are lashing out and resentful as a result. Others, like Connor, are purely magnanimous, while the rest of them fall somewhere in the middle. DadTok becomes a refuge for a lot of the male partners (or in the case of Dakota and Chase, former partners), which is part of why Jordan is so desperate to insist that the brand can stand apart from MomTok.At the same time, the women are getting a plethora of opportunities outside of MomTok – "The Bachelorette," book deals, modeling gigs, "DWTS," Broadway shows, major brand deals – while still keeping one foot firmly planted in MomTok world. It's these two overarching dynamics which create the majority of conflict throughout season 4. And then, of course, there's Taylor and Dakota. Those two are a hurricane of toxicity that stands alone.In this episode, we'll get into all the major action of episodes 1-5: Jessi and Jordan's marriage, DadTok heading to Vanderpump Villa, Whitney and Jenn moving to LA for "DWTS," Taylor and Dakota's total inability to detach from each other, and the fascinating pre-"Bachelorette" storyline the show is crafting for Taylor. In a separate recap next week, we'll dive into the back half of the season. Share Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

And she's finally ready to talk about it. So, let's get into it in the way we know best – a podcast chat. 😉If you haven't already linked your subscriber Rich Text feed to your podcast-listening app of choice, instructions are here.

If you’re a Substack subscriber, go check your email for a gift link to access Rich Text! (If it's not there, it will be within an hour or so.) Everyone else, welcome! A little over five years ago, we started Rich Text on Substack because we needed a change. We had been at HuffPost for a decade, from the peak of its heyday to its somewhat ignominious acquisition by BuzzFeed. We had cycled through different positions as writers and editors, and we had survived round after round of layoffs. We had started Here to Make Friends, a feminist reality dating show podcast, and it had lasted despite occasional attempts by management to pivot it to video. We had been lucky enough to collaborate with brilliant editors, writers and producers, but we had also watched those colleagues leave. We were burnt out and rudderless. Our hope was that a little side project on Substack would give us a low-stakes, chill place to mess around, blog, try random stuff, and get back in touch with our voices. A creative refresh, if you will. Then, almost exactly five years ago, the layoff cycle finally came for us. We were called into our virtual HR meetings with a taped (but unedited) “Bachelor” recap still dangling. It was never published. But we weren’t ready to say goodbye to podcasting, and we were suddenly energized by the possibility of taking control of the show, of our writing, and of our creative futures. Substack became not just a space to experiment, but the home base of our entire body of work. And our wonderful subscribers allowed us to keep doing that work – while paying our bills, including Claire’s eye-popping daycare tuition.In so many ways, our time at Substack gave us all of the things we had ever hoped for. We were able to build, brick by brick, a tiny media company of two. We were able to pay for our health care (Emma) and child care (Claire). We found a vibrant community full of brilliant, challenging, funny people – all of whom wanted to analyze culture in the way that we did! After years of being limited to “Bachelor” recaps on our podcast, and following the whims of editorial leadership when it came to story selection, we were able to truly take the reins, writing and podcasting about all the reality shows, rom-coms, weird viral essays, prestige dramas, and sociopolitical trends our little hearts desired. And we got to do it all on our terms, for the best audience in the business. We have never taken these gifts for granted, not for one single day. We recognize how very lucky we are to be able to make a living doing something that we truly love, and we're incredibly, profoundly grateful to all of you for supporting our work.But as with any media ecosystem, even a relatively scrappy indie one, there came challenges. After years of natural growth and support from Substack staffers, both waned. The platform began to prioritize bringing over large, institutional publications and celebrity writers over mid-size publications like ours. Discoverability became more challenging, and Substack kept ending up in the news because of its tacit support for Nazis and transphobes. The latest big development is that Substack has partnered with… Polymarket. All of these things left us with the looming sense that we would have to make the leap to another platform at some point in time. But, of course, making a big change is really fucking scary. Especially when that change could upend your ability to pay your bills. So when Patreon reached out, it felt like a golden opportunity to make a leap with real support – and one we might never get again. Patreon is a platform built originally for podcasters, which is a big part of what we do on Rich Text. We loved the idea of being in a place where audio content is truly valued, and where we can be an active part of shaping what the newsletter product will be in the future. We loved that the financial investment that Patreon was willing to make into our scrappy little media project would allow us to rebuild without complete and total panic haunting us at every turn. Patreon, of course, isn’t perfect. No platform will be. But the hope is that we can write our next chapter sustainably. We want to set ourselves up so that Rich Text is something we can continue making for the next five years and then another five years after that. And we feel like some of the new features we’ll have access to on Patreon – organized collections! The ability to pay for one-off posts or series! More tier options! – will allow us to grow in a healthy way.Now that we’re here, in our unfamiliar new home, surrounded by moving boxes and art we don’t know where to hang yet, it feels a little scary and stressful. There’s a lot to do. But that also means a lot of possibility. All the same things you knew and (hopefully) loved back at Substack will be here: weekly recommendations and podcasts, occasional essays, subscriber chats. We’re also looking forward to experimenting with new features and bonus content – and implementing your feedback from our big reader survey last month! – as we figure out what will make Rich Text itself an even richer text in the coming years. There will be more conversations about the motherhood divide, our personal lives, reality television scandals, bizarre made-for-streaming holiday rom-coms about sexy snowmen and viral essays that set your group chats ablaze. There will be more writing about girl culture, the ways fatherhood is treated vs. motherhood, books we love, TV we love, and progressive politics. Trust us: We KNOW that asking you to change over your subscription to a whole different platform is super annoying. The whole point of a subscription is that it’s seamless! You should never have to think about it! We, too, hate dealing with the process of moving our information over to a new app, linking up custom podcast feeds again, etc. We did not make the choice to inflict this on you lightly. We really believe that Patreon will be a more sustainable and welcoming space for our work and for this community. And we are here – along with the REAL HUMANS of the Patreon team – to make this transition as easy as possible!⚠️ Important note for Substack subscribersIf you’re coming from Substack, we're gifting you access to our paid membership on Patreon. You should have received an email with your redemption link and details on how to claim it.Check your email for details on claiming your FREE access If you’re still running into issues → submit a support requestWhat’s included on Patreon?Free MembershipWeekly Recommendations: Get our weekly dispatch on what we’ve been reading, watching, listening to, buying, and making.Weekly Podcast Previews & Occasional Full Episodes: Listen to periodic full-length episodes of the Rich Text podcast.Essays: Read our occasional musings on topics cultural, political, and personal.💬 Frequent Texter ($6 per month) 💬Access to Rich Text Podcast Episodes: Access our weekly member-only podcast, and the full archive of episodes.Weekly Recommendations: Get our weekly dispatch on what we’ve been reading, watching, listening to, buying, and making.Essays: Read our occasional musings on topics cultural, political, and personal.Comment Access: Post comments on any post and join the community!Rich Text Chat: Connect with other members and discuss your favorite topics, from appointment TV to political news to random gossip, in private, subscriber-only spaces.Reminder: If you’re coming from Substack, your gifted access link is in your email. (If it's not there, it will be soon.) Make sure to redeem it so you’re all set.Thank you for being here! xo Claire & EmmaShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

The bosoms, they are heaving. The corsets, they have been unlaced. With the release of Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights,” a film that offers such a stickily horny and romanticized take on Emily Brontë’s tale of emotional trauma and Gothic horrors that multiple critics glossed it as “fan fiction,” it seems that the cultural triumph of the spicy historical romance has been made complete. The arrival of “Bridgerton” season 4 part 2 (the sexy half!) just a couple of weeks later only underlines this. And, generally speaking, we’re not complaining! (Though, in the wake of the overwhelmingly steamy “Heated Rivalry,” the bar for success has been raised.)But, after absorbing the sight of Jacob Elordi lifting Margot Robbie effortlessly by the corset strings to the throbbing beats of Charlie XCX, we’re left wondering if things have been taken a bit far. What is lost from “Wuthering Heights” when it is reduced to a tale of star-crossed lovers who have a boinkfest all over the moors? Is our obsession with smut giving all of us, including Fennell, just the teensiest bit of brain rot? In this episode, we discuss the ongoing boom in sexy costume dramas and its implications. Then we dig into “Bridgerton” season 4 part 2, which manages to bring most of its storylines to a satisfying conclusion after a part 1 overstretched with table-setting. We get into the impossibility of a happy ending for our class-crossing couple that didn’t rely on one fortuitous exception for one lucky illegitimate maid, and the rather rote sex scenes. In an unlikely twist for the romance series, the heart of this drop was its depiction of grief, which was the subject of its most deeply felt and moving scenes. We also discuss Penelope’s retirement, Varley’s return, Lady Danbury’s voyage, and what seems to be coming next for the series.Finally, we turn our focus to “Wuthering Heights.” We share our prior relationships with the Brontë novel, our first impressions of the movie, and our reactions to all the finger-licking and smashed egg yolks. We try to figure out why Robbie and Elordi felt like uncanny dolls, or children in adult bodies, and we talk about Sara Petersen’s essay about the removal of mothers and motherhood from this adaptation. We also discuss the discourse around the whitewashing of Heathcliff and the notable choices Fennell made in casting and storytelling that seem to pointedly center whiteness — and intentionally sanitize the central couple to present them as romantic heroes. References and reading:“Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights Is Fan Fiction,” by Annie Berke“‘Wuthering Heights’ Is Pure Fan Fiction,” by Emma Camp“Finally, a Smooth-Brained Wuthering Heights,” by Allison Willmore“Wuthering Heights Has No Space For Mothers,” by Sara Petersen“Margot Robbie’s hot take on filmmaking goes viral as critics slam her latest movie, ‘Wuthering Heights’,” by Jude Cramer“Wuthering Heights: Emerald Fennell Defends Her Controversial 'Version' of Emily Brontë's Classic Novel,” by Benjamin VanHoose “Wuthering Heights is at its heart a story of class and race. Emerald Fennell has got it all wrong,” by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett“How the Latest "Wuthering Heights" Interpretation Is More Than Just Whitewashing; It’s a Pattern,” by Jess, the PrideBrarian“Jacob Elordi, Heathcliff and the Controversy Over ‘Wuthering Heights’,” by Esther Zuckerman"Is Heathcliff White?” by Jasmine VojdaniTimestamps for easy listening:0:00 — What’s going on with all the period piece smut?6:27 — The second half of “Bridgerton” S4 41:50 — Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights”Share Rich TextIf 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

In 2009 on “Tell Me Lies,” Lucy’s life is crashing and burning right into the ground. In 2009 in the real world, Tyra Banks was teaching young women how to “smize” on the hit show “America’s Next Top Model.” This week, we dive into both versions of the late aughts — fictional and reality. After three dark, twisted, and completely fucked up seasons, “Tell Me Lies” came to an end on Tuesday. Showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer announced the news on Instagram on Monday night, writing that “this was always the ending my writing team and I had in mind, and we are insanely proud of it.” She added that the audience’s “incredible response to this season inspired us to explore whether there was another organic way to continue the story, but ultimately we felt it had reached its natural conclusion.” So in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, viewers were left to see if the team could stick the landing and wrap up all of the chaos that had been building in both the 2009 and 2015 timelines. The result was a mixed bag. Some major plot holes that left us yearning for a fourth season, but also some “imperfect justice.” The series’ ambiguous final moments leave some things up to viewer interpretation, and as two culture critics, we often find that that’s where the real fun begins. (Plus, that “Toxic” needle drop was simply perfection.)We also traveled back in time to the glory days of “ANTM,” via Netflix’s new documentary, “Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model.” The three part docu-series, which features interviews with Tyra Banks, Ken Mok, Jay Manuel, Nigel Barker and Miss J. Alexander, as well as prominent former contestants like Shandi Sullivan, Danielle Evans, Whitney Thompson, Keenyah Hill, attempts to grapple with the dark and complex legacy of the reality juggernaut. And boy is there a lot of darkness to sort through. “Reality Check” attempts to contextualize “ANTM” within the racist, homophobic, fatphobic time period it emerged during, and the even more racist, homophobic, fatphobic industry that it was attempting to broaden. But what becomes clear is that whatever lofty goals Banks had when she created “ANTM,” were overshadowed by the utter lack of protections in place for the cast members — who were predominantly vulnerable, very young women. Not only were the aspiring models cast subjected to microaggressions — Ebony Haith, a Black cast member from Cycle 1, has her hair texture mocked by white stylists during makeover day; Thompson, who won Cycle 10, shows up to castings where they’ve refused to pull clothes in her size — but also to physical dangers. (Sullivan’s story of being sexually assaulted on camera in Milan during Cycle 2, and then being framed as a cheating harlot on national television, is particularly harrowing.) And unfortunately, the decision makers interviewed still seem unwilling to take full accountability. In this episode of the Rich Text podcast, we get into it all, from our own experiences watching “ANTM” as teenagers, to the lingering questions “Tell Me Lies” left us with. We hope you enjoy! Timestamps for easy listening:0:00 — The “Tell Me Lies” series finale43:12 — The twisted legacy of “America’s Next Top Model”Share Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

A decade or so ago, it seemed like the coolest kind of mom to be was a bad one. They blew off PTA meetings, were fueled by rosé, and wrote irreverent blogs about their children’s tantrums and diaper blowouts. They rejected the sentimentalized idea of motherhood as a sacred calling in service of which a woman must relinquish her independence, her sexuality, her anger, her very identity. Smash cut to 2026, and the mothers of America seem to be locked in a constant, frenzied battle about who can gently, authoritatively, attachedly, and and intensively parent the best. The government lionizes white, conservative mothers who bear large broods, while separating immigrant mothers from their children and smearing liberal women who oppose the administration as “gangs of wine moms.” The labels of “good mom” and “bad mom” seem more oppressive than ever. How did we get here?

The central theme of this season of Netflix romance series “Bridgerton” comes into sharp focus at the end of the first episode. After charming rakish second son Benedict Bridgerton at his mother’s masquerade ball with her witty banter and sense of wonder, our masked heroine rushes home. We see her remove her formal glove, shoes and mask. Suddenly, she is staring into the humble mirror in her bedchamber, her full face in view for the first time. And instead of finery, she is dressed in a maid’s outfit. The major roadblock to a relationship between Sophie Baek and Benedict Bridgerton will not be a misunderstanding or a clash of personalities or a one-sided desire to end a bloodline. Instead, it will be something quite tangible, especially during the Regency era. It will be about class.It’s a fascinating moment for this season to hit our screens. On the one hand, as many viewers have noted, the uneven power dynamics of a Cinderella-inspired story — as this one definitively is — feel less fun to explore in fiction when we’re seeing the very real rollbacks of the rights of women in this country. (Part of why “Heated Rivalry” felt like such a salve to so many women viewers.) On the other hand, it’s clear that the writers injected some real class consciousness and modern labor politics into the text of the show. And that revamped text feels quite timely. (See: Mrs. Varley telling Lady Featherington off for using the language of “family” as a way to underpay her for two decades.) In this episode, we get into it all: the class dynamics, the power of AAPI representation, the ways in which the Cinderella tropes work and don’t, the many ancillary B-plots, and the pointed ways that the writers changed the plot of the show from its source material. Hope you enjoy! XoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

This week, we’re diving into two topics that, somehow, both involve evil Stephens who want women to have their babies for nefarious reasons: the recent wave of high-profile, propagandistic pregnancy announcements in the Trump White House, and the current season of the dark teen soap “Tell Me Lies.” First, we get into the MAGA baby boom. Over the past month, three prominent Trump administration officials — Vice President J.D. Vance, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, and Chief Architect of Evil Stephen Miller — have announced that they are expecting babies. For Vance and Miller, these will be their fourth children; Leavitt, who is just 28, is expecting her second. Having a baby shouldn’t be a political act, nor should it be right- or left-coded. But it’s clear from how these officials, and the White House, have framed these announcements that a mini baby boom within their ranks is doing valuable political work for them: it’s not only a sweet and fuzzy distraction from the violence being wreaked on American communities by ICE, but an advertisement for their so-called “pro-family” policies. We also unpack the telling language used by the Vances and Leavitt to discuss their pregnancies, how these ideologically tinged announcements work to brand motherhood as inherently conservative, and how the right’s pronatalism and anti-child policies devalue the lives of actual kids.Next, we catch up on the first few episodes of “Tell Me Lies,” season 3, which finds our flawed heroine Lucy still emotionally entangled with her controlling and toxic ex-boyfriend, Stephen. We discuss the major narrative developments so far this season, including a reshuffling of the romantic deck that we didn’t see coming. We also try to figure out why this season feels like it’s really driving discourse; perhaps in part because its feminist lens on male toxicity and emotional abuse is more striking as the story continues unfurling and Lucy still can’t free herself from Stephen’s orbit of control.Meanwhile, Meaghan Oppenheimer, the show’s creator, has spoken in interviews about how critical the show’s audience is of Lucy’s bad behavior; the torment she endures this season, Oppenheimer says, is the punishment fans have been asking for. “I was posing a question to them with this season: are you happy now?" We unpack how the show and the discourse around it illustrate the reactionary desire to find female blame in a story of male abuse. We also discuss how the show’s 2008-2015 setting offers a bit of nostalgia for the Obama years, when we were still blissfully ignorant of the descent into fascism that lay ahead of us. Maybe flat irons and side parts will always make us think of simpler times. Timestamps for easy listening:0:00 — The spate of pregnancy announcements from Trump’s White House44:00 — Why season 3 of “Tell Me Lies” is hittingShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

On this week’s episode of the Rich Text podcast, we’re tackling two totally disparate topics: the rage-fueled war on liberal white women and the end of “Love Is Blind Germany” season 2. Because, as we alway say… women contain multitudes.First, we dive into the right-wing ire being directed at white women who are choosing to mobilize against ICE. In the wake of Renee Good’s Jan. 7 killing in Minneapolis, right-wing media has found a new target for its hate-filled rhetoric: middle-class wine moms! Fox News commentator David Marcus warned that we are “seeing across the country as organized gangs of wine moms use Antifa tactics to harass and impede Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.” Some on the right are even deploying a fun new acronym: AWFULs (Affluent White Female Urban Liberals), a group which morning radio host Pierce Outlaw labeled “the scourge of polite society.”Much ink has been spilled over the years about the ways in which white women as a voting bloc often prioritize access to patriarchal and white supremacist power structures over gender solidarity. During the 2024 presidential election, exit polls showed that 53 percent of white women voted for Trump, and the majority of white women have broken for the right in nearly every presidential election since 1952. So what’s going on here?Turns out, it’s a few things. (1) As a bloc that the right has invested heavily in wooing — see: the MAHA movement, tradwife content, Erika Kirk — white women who become part of the resistance are the ultimate traitors. As Michelle Goldberg wrote in her NYTimes piece on this subject: “In the right-wing imagination, these women are acting like harpies — an epithet often seen online — when they’re supposed to be helpmeets.” (2) The right sees these increasingly politically mobilized women as a threat to their fascist project — in part because of their numbers and in part because of their privileged place in society. And (3) There is a need to cleave these women from their white privilege in the public sphere in order to neutralize their power as part of the resistance. Hence, wine moms and childless cat ladies become Antifa domestic terrorists.After this conversation, we do an abrupt tonal change and get into the final two episodes of “Love Is Blind Germany” season 2. We discuss which of our three final couples tied the knot, and whether any of them are still married a year later. Plus, one cast member makes an announcement during the reunion that’s a “Love Is Blind” historic first. Timestamps for easy listening:0:00 — Why the right is so furious at liberal white ladies44:20 — “Love Is Blind Germany” weddings episode and reunionReading materials referenced in the episode:“After Renee Good Killing, Derisive Term for White Women Spreads on the Far Right,” Clyde McGrady, NYTimes“The Right Is Furious With Liberal White Women,” Michelle Goldberg, NYTimes“Wine Moms Gone Wild,” Erin Gloria Ryan, Just Enjoy It While You Can“After Renee Good’s Murder, Wine-Mom Gangs Are Now the New Antifa,” Virginia Heffernan, The New Republic“white woman is the white woman of the world,” B.D. McClay, NotebookShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

You know we had to come back and finish discussing the first drop from “Love Is Blind Germany” season 2, and we are doing that today! But first, we needed to unburden ourselves about a couple other Cultural Conversations: the Golden Globe Awards adding a Best Podcast award, and Ashley Tisdale French’s essay in The Cut about leaving her toxic mom group. First, we get into the momentous decision of the Golden Globes to finally recognize all the valuable podcasting work being done by celebrities. We get into our feelings about celebrity podcasts in general (with all due respect to our queen Amy Poehler), the swamping of the industry by big-money deals for big-name movie stars, and the Golden Globes’ approach to recognizing this entire diverse genre of art and journalism.Next, we turn to actress and businesswoman Ashley Tisdale French’s underbaked but provocative essay in The Cut about how her mom group turned toxic — and how she bravely chose to leave. We break down the speculation that followed about the mom group, which was instantly identified as likely being Hilary Duff and Mandy Moore’s well-publicized crew of celeb and celeb-adjacent moms. The speculation was followed by a denial from French’s camp that the piece was about Duff’s group, but also tacitly confirmed by the prickly reactions from the direction of that particular social circle. Duff’s husband Matthew Koma posted a parody of French’s Cut portrait and headline strongly implying that she was squeezed out of the group for being self-involved and tone-deaf! Meghan Trainor posted an “I’m so unbothered” TikTok about the gossip! We discuss the essay’s weaknesses, why it seems to have backfired on French to some degree, and why we’re so fascinated by the idea of “mean” or “toxic” moms. Finally, we run through the major plot points of “Love Is Blind Germany” episodes 5-8, which take our newly engaged couples from honeymoons in Crete to daily life together in Munich, culminating in the beginning of their weddings. There are a couple of relationship casualties on the way, and cracks begin to form in some of the stronger couples. But there’s one real exception: Josy and Gunnar seem to go from strength to strength, slowly blossoming in each stage of the experiment. They remain our sweethearts, our favorites, our babygirls. Don’t fail us; we need this right now. Timestamps for easy listening:0:00 — A rant about the Golden Globes podcast category14:06 — Ashley Tisdale French toxic mom group drama 47:19 — “Love Is Blind Germany” eps 5-8Share Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

We have long been fans of the Emily Henry romance-novel universe. So when we heard that “People We Meet On Vacation” would be getting the movie treatment, we were unquestionably excited. “People We Meet On Vacation,” which was published in novel form in 2021 and dropped on Netflix in movie form on Jan. 9, follows polar opposite best friends Poppy (Emily Bader) and Alex (Tom Blyth), who after meeting in a gender-swapped “When Harry Met Sally” post-college road trip, decide to go on vacation together every summer… platonically, of course. Poppy is quirky and chaotic and wanderlust-y — a classic free-spirited gal. Alex, on the other hand, loves structure and steadiness and home. But when he goes on vacation with Poppy, his more adventurous side awakens. The book, which we unfortunately did not have time to re-read before recording this podcast, is a delight. The movie… is fine? Like most rom-coms that make it to Netflix or commensurate streaming platforms, “People We Meet On Vacation” is watchable and cute. But when it comes to the things that differentiate a rom-com you watch once and a rom-com that burrows into your soul — distinctive and dense dialogue, truly funny comedy, a story that makes you really feel something — the adaptation falters. It’s hard to put your finger on exactly what’s missing. Perhaps it’s the fact that the interiority of a character in a novel is simply tough to translate into movie form. Perhaps the story’s non-linear structure would have been better served with a mini-series. Perhaps it’s that Bader’s Poppy is a little too much of a caricature, and Blyth’s Alex is a little too flat. (These deficiencies are particularly notable when we meet Poppy’s parents, played by Alan Ruck and Molly Shannon, who pop more in their one scene than most of the other characters do in the entire film.) Perhaps the screenplay packs too much plot in without enough room to let us see why these two unlikely friends are so ultimately right for each other.Whatever it is, “People We Meet On Vacation” left us wanting more — even as we found a few moments of true enjoyment. This rom-com ultimately felt neither like a true escape from real life nor a reflection of it. Share Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

In 2026, the sun never sets on the “Love Is Blind” empire. With two US seasons a year, plus endlessly proliferating international spinoffs, there’s a new set of pod daters clamoring for our attention every time the last reunion has begun to fade from memory. And this month, we’re headed to Deutschland! “Love Is Blind Germany” season 2 has landed, and if you watched any of the first season (which Claire accidentally did, assuming, in a post-holiday fog, that she was viewing screeners for the new drop), you’ll quickly see that this edition has leveled up. The characters are popping, the love geometry is mathing, and one man takes it upon himself to innovate a dastardly new form of pod dumping. Let this be a lesson to us all: Never trust a tall 42-year-old with a stacked roster.The first drop was a staggering 8 episodes, so we took it upon ourselves to break it into two manageable halves. This week, we’re discussing the first four, which carry us through the drama-packed pod dating and into the beginning of the couples’ dreamy honeymoon in Crete. We get to know the new daters, form some snap judgments, and discuss the ongoing tyranny of gender role discourse in contemporary dating shows. And of course, we have many, MANY words for the audacity of Andi. Next week, we’ll be back to break down episodes 5-8 — and in the meantime, we have a pod coming soon with our thoughts on the Netflix adaptation of Emily Henry’s rom-com “People We Meet On Vacation.”Share Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

2025 felt more like a lifetime than a year. Personally and globally, a lot happened in the last 12 months — much of it filled with darkness and despair, but also punctuated by bits of joy and light. To round out 2025 and welcome in 2026, we decided to sit down and tape a bit of a reflection. We discussed our highlights (Emma’s wedding! Claire’s home purchase!), the lowlights (everything that the current administration is doing to our nation and the world), and our hopes and dreams for the year to come. Thank you for being a part of this community of ours — one of the bits of light in the darkness. We are so grateful for you. Cheers to a 2026 we can all be proud of. Share Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

When I got screener access to the season finale of “Heated Rivalry,” aptly titled “The Cottage,” I knew that the holiday break simply couldn’t stand in the way of a conversation about the back half of the super-gay hockey show that has become a solid 75 percent of my personality. Unfortunately, Claire had to do things, like… spend time with family… and her children… and celebrate Christmas (fine, fine, fine), but as a Jew who found herself with some free time on her hands while in South Florida this week, duty called. Luckily, pop culture commentator Josh the RHONY Stan was game to watch the finale of the little Canadian show that has taken two nations by storm and hop on to chat all about it with me. We got into the overarching plot points of episodes 3-6, and then zoomed out to talk about the heated discourse that has surrounded “Heated Rivalry.” We laughed, we swooned, and we shared our hopes and dreams for the show’s second season. Hope you enjoy! (And please forgive any slight audio quality issues. I was recording this from the floor of a bedroom in my mother-in-law’s Boca Raton home. We all do our best over Christmastime.) Related Reading:“Down to Puck: Why Women Are Going Wild for ‘Heated Rivalry,’” Seth Abramovitch, The Hollywood Reporter“Heated Rivalry Scores Big, With Hockey and Sex,” Erik Piepenburg, New York Times“Heated Rivalry’s Elder Statesman,” Jason P. Frank, VultureShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

Happy holidays, y’all! Here are the presents you didn’t ask for: two staggeringly bad seasons of scripted TV. First, “Emily in Paris” is back, and this time she’s Emily in Rome, Emily Back in Paris, Emily in an American Embassy, Emily in Venice, and Emily Back in Paris Forever This Time. Emily is madly in love with Marcello — her new Handsome Boyfriend, Italian Edition — but Emily also misses her family of origin, Pabst Blue Ribbon and Pop-Tarts. Emily and her glamorous French mentor, Sylvie, are kissing their way across Europe, too boy-crazy to notice that Agence Grateau is on life support. Mindy is singing in every episode, sometimes in a giant martini glass. Alfie is just there to be toyed with by beautiful women, and Gabriel lives on a yacht now. Somehow, this is still not the last season of “Emily in Paris.” Send this girl back to the greater Chicago area already!Next, the so-bad-it-must-be-camp Hulu drama “All’s Fair” has crash-landed into its season finale. (Don’t worry: season 2 is coming.) Allura is in divorce mediation with her sociopathic sex-addict NFL-star husband, during which he suddenly falls madly in love with her again and begs her to start over. Immediately afterward, he begins fucking her nemesis. Carrington Lane commits a series of ethical and conduct violations so profound that disbarment seems like the only reasonable consequence, but instead her long-time enemies begin to court her as a possible partner for their lady lawyer firm. Liberty becomes insecure that her best friends are judging her for being a posh blonde Brit who eats scones. And the law firm’s matriarch, Dina, is arrested for the murder of Emerald’s assailant — was she framed?? These two shows each offer us a heightened reality — one bubblegum Technicolor, the other raunchy and lurid — that, despite their differences in aesthetic and tone, both bend towards a nightmarish sense of wrongness. We discuss all the problems, and all the unhinged details we could remember, in this two-part episode. Hope you enjoy! xoTimestamps for easy listening:0:00 — “Emily in Paris,” season 51:04:08 — “All’s Fair,” end of season 1Share Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

On this week’s Rich Text podcast, we’re talking about a spicy new television show, and a “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” reunion special that dangled the possibility of spice and instead fed us white bread. First, we get into “Heated Rivalry,” a Canadian sports romance show that has broken out into the mainstream since it’s first two episodes dropped (on HBO Max for U.S. viewers) on Nov. 28. The show, created for Crave by actor/writer/producer/director Jacob Tierney, is based on the second novel in romance writer Rachel Reid’s Game Changers novel series. “Heated Rivalry” follows two rising hockey stars of Major League Hockey (a fictionalized NHL): Canadian Shane Hollander, who plays for the Montreal Metros, and Russian Ilya Rozanov, who plays for the Boston Raiders. They meet during their rookie years, and the tension is basically immediately palpable. They quickly end up developing a very public heated rivalry (see what we did there?), while entering into a private situationship that spans years.In this episode, we get into why “Heated Rivalry” has broken through into the cultural conversation so quickly, the insane chemistry between the lead actors, whether it matters that this queer romance was written by a woman in a genre largely consumed by straight women, and why more romance shows should take the genre as seriously as Tierney clearly did.Then we move on to the much-anticipated, but deeply disappointing, season 3 reunion of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.” As fans of the show who have been breathlessly following the adventures of MomTok both on-screen and off, we had high hopes. But unfortunately, this reunion special offered a lot of throat-clearing and very little that actually cleared much of anything up.The hour-long special, hosted by Stassi Schroeder, gave us… nothing? We were left with multiple frustrating back-and-forths that only ended when Stassi stepped in — not to ask a follow-up question, but to simply move right along to the next segment. It left us wondering who is to blame here: The filming schedule? The fact that the cast is holding back for Season 4? The host? The editing? All of the above?Before we wrapped up, we also got into some of the far-more-interesting off-screen “SLOMW” news, including the big Fruity Pebbles reveal, and Jessi and Jordan’s dual Viall Files appearances.Timestamps for easy listening:0:00 — “Heated Rivalry”50:06 — “SLOMW” S3 Reunion1:16:45 — “SLOMW” non-reunion gossipHope you enjoy! xoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

It was a big week for vampy girlbosses with flawless blowouts and questionable politics. Olivia Nuzzi, the wunderkind politics reporter who left NYMag in disgrace when her digital affair with her source and then-presidential candidate RFK Jr. became public, has returned with not only a plum gig at Vanity Fair but a splashy memoir that seems to position her ethical lapse as a romantic tragedy. Meanwhile, her problematic ex Ryan Lizza, who left his own prestige media job in disgrace after being accused of sexual misconduct, has begun dropping Substack missives accusing Nuzzi of more and more lapses: another affair in 2020 with another source and then-presidential candidate, Mark Sanford; writing strategy memos and doing catch-and-kills for RFK Jr. while still covering the race as a reporter. (We recorded this episode before his second installment dropped on Friday night.) We discuss the framing of Nuzzi’s comeback tour, the purple prose and the emptiness behind it, the media rot that enabled it, and the grotesque parade of older, powerful men (very much including Lizza) who have participated in her rise and fall.Next, we dug into season 4 of “Selling the O.C.” After season 3 ended in complete chaos, it’s unsurprising that the cast has been completely overhauled — but it is surprising, and disappointing, that the show has been almost completely whitewashed in the process. Yes, Alexandras Rose and Jarvis, classic MAGA Barbies, are gone, but they’re not the only ones. Every cast member of color was either ousted or reduced to occasional cameos. And to replace them? A host of new white women from the San Diego office. We discuss the new additions — Ashtyn the pregnant pot-stirrer, Fiona the Alex Hall acolyte, and Kaylee the raver chick — and break down the major points in this season’s drama. We also discuss the MAGA drift in the “Selling” franchise, the return of a much weepier Tyler Stanaland, and the persistent unlikability of the show’s central protagonist, Alex Hall.Finally, we get into the hit Hulu drama “All’s Fair,” which stars Kim Kardashian, Naomi Watts, and Glenn Close as feminist divorce lawyers serving the fairer half of the uber-wealthy, alongside a crack investigator played by Niecy Nash-Betts. The show had been panned so roundly that we couldn’t resist taking a peek. And yes: it is that bad. It’s so bad that, while watching, we felt unmoored from reality. The pacing is off-kilter, the dialogue is flat and stilted, the plot is unhinged and leans too hard on half-baked feminist politics, the lighting and visuals are harsh and ominous, and the acting is so wooden that it’s hard not to root for the one person really going for it in her performance: Sarah Paulson as the villain, a female misogynist divorce lawyer whose sole objective is to destroy the show’s heroines. We talk about all of the above, as well as the show’s obsession with wealth and conspicuous consumption — including the consumption of expensive beauty procedures.Timestamps for easy listening: 0:00 — The Nuzzi drama 51:06 — “Selling the O.C” 1:29:37— “All’s Fair” Hope you enjoy, and happy Thanksgiving! xoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

As people who talk and write about reality television professionally, we know that being on a high-profile show can incentivize people to act in all sorts of ways. Everything is heightened, everyone has an agenda, and everything is — even when it’s very real and raw — in some part for TV. So when you combine that landscape with sexual assault allegations, things very quickly become very icky. In this episode, we’re tackling the back half of season 3 of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” episodes 6-10. (If you missed our earlier coverage, here it is!) And, unfortunately, much of this half of the season is spent parsing assault allegations made by Demi against “Vanderpump Villa’s” Marciano. We tried to approach this as sensitively and thoughtfully as possible, but, as always, please listen with care.But we promise this episode isn’t all doom and gloom! We also get to talk about Whitney’s rise from the social ashes, Stagecoach fuckery (if you’ve watched “Bachelor In Paradise,” you know that a Stagecoach hookup is never a good idea), and the final nail in the Taylor and Dakota relationship coffin. We hope you enjoy! (As much as possible, given the subject matter.)Share Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

Season 3 of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” is back, and it’s full of the juicy answers we’ve been waiting for: Did Jessi have an affair with slimy “Vanderpump Villa” star Marciano? Did Demi have an affair with slimy “Vanderpump Villa” star Marciano? Is Whitney still in MomTok? Did Jen and Zac Affleck fix their crumbling marriage? And what unspeakable thing finally blew up Taylor and Dakota’s on-again-off-again relationship? In this episode, we tackle the first half of the season, which mostly revolves around the first two questions. Marciano has become a de facto cast member, as his shifting accounts of his relationships with Jessi and Demi keep upending the narrative. But we finally do get some answers — with the help of a polygraph test that the women trust a little more than the science warrants. We also discuss the darker side of Jessi’s marriage to Jordan, the DadTok/MomTok rift, Whitney’s burning desire to audition for “Dancing With the Stars,” and so much more. We’ll be back soon to discuss the deeply upsetting second half of the season, but for now… we hope you enjoy! xo Share Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

For this week’s episode, we’re trying something a little different: a grab bag! We had three topics we wanted to cover — our reactions to this week’s elections, Lily Allen’s buzzy divorce album, and the deeply unpleasant “Selling Sunset” S9 reunion — so we chatted about all three. First: We all needed a shot in the arm, and the off-year election gave it to us good and hard. Tuesday’s elections were a Democratic rout, with candidates from 34-year-old Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani to bland liberal Mikie Sherrill romping to victory with eye-popping margins. Abigail Spanberger won easily in the VA gubernatorial race, as did the rest of the Democratic ticket. But Dems also notched massive wins in state legislature races and in ballot measures, notably California’s Prop 50 (which backs Gavin Newsom’s retaliatory redistricting plan). They flipped two state utility board seats in Georgia and won a campaign to retain three Democratic state Supreme Court justices in Pennsylvania. Moms for Liberty candidates lost almost every contested school board race. We discuss the unfamiliar feeling of hope and the importance of channeling it into the fight ahead, as well as our (cautious) takeaways from how this election cycle played out.Second: Lily Allen’s “West End Girl” has dominated the cultural conversation since it hit the airwaves — and we, too, have been enjoying our sonic trip from the West End to the “Pussy Palace.” The raw and diaristic album tells the story, inspired by the breakdown of Allen’s marriage to David Harbour, of a woman whose husband asks for an open marriage while she’s across the ocean, performing in a play in London. While she’s wracked with jealousy and anxiety about their new arrangement, he bends and breaks their rules; the infidelity destroys her, though she tries to get her own back by also taking advantage of the open relationship. Ultimately, the marriage falls apart.The gruesome details, which Allen has coyly hinted may or may not be entirely factual, are delivered in candy-sweet melodies that only make her rage more pointed. We discuss our reactions to the music, the dark story it tells, Lily Allen as a public figure with a troubled history of her own, and the popularity of confessional pop music.Third: The “Selling Sunset” reunion made a dark season even darker. Nicole refused to properly apologize for bringing up Chrishell’s late parents. Chrishell revealed more about the offensive language she’d witnessed and experienced from Emma’s on-and-off manchild boyfriend Blake, but was dogpiled by the rest of the cast for failing to be sufficiently supportive of Emma. Mary offered a limited apology to Chelsea for overreacting to the flower arrangement Chelsea sent her, but the depth of the racist subtext to the interaction was never addressed. And with Chrishell and Chelsea seemingly isolated from the rest of the group, it’s impossible to ignore how undercurrents of bigotry have shaped the social dynamic of the office. Will this season be the last we watch? We discuss this, along with the ins and outs of the reunion.Hope you enjoy! xoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription

Our favorite stiletto-wearing, drama-producing, luxury real estate agents are back, baby! Season 9 of “Selling Sunset” premiered on Netflix on Oct. 29., and it faces the difficult task of balancing petty grievances between modelesque agents at The Oppenheim Group with a genuine mass tragedy — the 2025 Los Angeles Wildfires.The first few episodes of the season are a return to form. Nicole and Chrishell are feuding. Mary and Chelsea are feuding. Bre and Chelsea are feuding. And Emma’s dating a 27-year-old real estate heir who has NEVER EATEN A FRUIT OR VEGETABLE! There’s a lot of feuding! And a very alarming manchild!And then the wildfires break out, and the city of Los Angeles — and certainly the real estate industry — is thrown into crisis. “Selling Sunset” is more frothy intrigue than hard-hitting documentary, but the show does its best to thread the needle. Some of the most affecting scenes of the season are when we meet real women who had to flee their homes during the fires, and ended up losing everything.In this episode, we discuss the shifting dynamics of the office, the cracks that are beginning to show in the Chrishell-Emma best friendship, Mary’s unraveling, and Nicole’s last hurrah. Hope you enjoy! XoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free

The first season of “Nobody Wants This” was, fortunately for a show with that title, a smash hit. Based on the life of show creator Erin Foster, who converted to Judaism for her now-husband, the show followed the unlikely interfaith love story between unfiltered podcaster Joanne (Kristin Bell) and hot rabbi Noah (nerdy millennial women’s fantasy boyfriend, Adam Brody). In the process, we and some other critics believed, the show fell into replicating some nasty stereotypes about Jewish women, while positioning Joanne and her sister Morgan (Justine Lupe) as the blonde shiksa goddesses of every onscreen Jewish man’s dreams. But hey, at least the central couple shared banter, chemistry, and a searing first kiss that left its audience weak in the knees!Recapturing the magic of Joanne and Noah’s meet-cute is a tall order for season 2. And while the season does get a lot right — fleshing out some of the ensemble characters, exploring a flaw or two in the almost too-perfect Noah — it seems to have been too tall of an order to fulfill. “Nobody Wants This” spends the entire season taking us in what feels like a perfect circle, rehashing the same fundamental conflict between Noah and Joanne: she doesn’t want to convert, and if she doesn’t, being in a relationship with her is damaging to his rabbinical reputation. In the repeated argument and tabling of the argument and reintroduction of the argument, the sizzle of their spark is a bit dampened. What’s more, Joanne’s resistance to truly considering conversion only underscores how mismatched they seem, how much he seems to be willing to sacrifice for her without receiving much in return. The struggle to like, or even enjoy hating, our heroine remains real — and that’s a real issue for a rom-com.At least, in developing side characters like Noah’s sister-in-law Esther (Jackie Tohn) (and, sadly, mostly dispensing with his mother Bina (Tovah Feldshuh)), season 2 of “Nobody Wants This” dials back the cartoonish stereotypes of Jewish women and offers a more three-dimensional, sympathetic portrayal. But the walking-back and course-correcting of certain plots strains credulity — after a season of seeming sexually hypnotized by Morgan, Noah’s brother Sasha (Timothy Simons) is now a sincere wife guy who views Morgan as Just A Friend!!! — and results in a season that feels more like table-setting for next time around. In this episode, we discuss the major plot points that stood out to us from this season, including the reveal that Noah really is such a Good Boyfriend that he actually becomes a Bad Boyfriend, Sasha’s attempts to reignite the spark with Esther, Morgan’s horrifying romance with her therapist, and Noah’s new job at a Reform temple so laissez-faire about, well, Judaism that it verges on the offensive. We also discuss the revealing (dare we say, telling?) Hollywood Reporter deep dive on the messy making of season 1, and we get into how the showrunners and creator have reacted to the criticisms of season 1’s portrayal of Jewish women — and how those portrayals has shifted in season 2. Hope you enjoy! xoShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free

Diane Keaton was one of those rare public figures who seemed to collapse the space between celebrity and the rest of us. She was relatable, ethereal, warm, effervescent. She was magic in corporeal form.That’s probably why for so many of us the news of her passing hit especially hard. Maybe you first met her as the unbearably charming Annie Hall in “Annie Hall,” or mom extraordinaire Nina Banks in “Father of the Bride,” or as reformed doormat Annie in “First Wives Club,” or as yuppie girlboss J.C. Wiatt. Regardless, you probably fell in love with her through the screen.As Rhonda Garelick wrote of Keaton in a tribute for the New York Times: “In seeming so authentic and unfettered — both physically and personally — Ms. Keaton felt like a reminder of those promises [of 1970s feminism], like a rare bird soaring in from bygone days when progress and growing freedoms for women seemed inevitable.”The two of us were struck by how genuinely sad we were when we learned over last weekend that Keaton had passed away at the age of 79. We knew that we wanted to use this week’s Rich Text episode to explore what she and her work meant to us. We contemplated rewatching a beloved movie of hers to discuss, and then realized that both of us had the same gap in our Diane Keaton knowledge: 1987’s “Baby Boom.”“Baby Boom” follows yuppie self-described “Tiger Lady” J.C. Wiatt. She’s married to her high-powered job, having four-minute sex with her live-in boyfriend Steven (Harold Ramis), and gunning for partner at her firm. A wrench is thrown into her carefully constructed plans when she ends up saddled with a (very cute) baby after her distant cousin dies and designates her as the guardian. Hijinks — so many hijinks — ensue. She and Steven break up, she ends up mommy-tracked at her patriarchal office, and eventually she buys a Vermont estate on a whim and moves to the country, where she meets a very handsome veterinarian (Sam Shepard), and she manages to launch a multimillion-dollar business of artisanal baby food within approximately six months.In a 2020 Vulture interview, Keaton spoke warmly about the experience of making “Baby Boom” and her adoration of J.C. Wiatt. “I love the woman I was playing,” she said. “I mean, it was fun. And let’s not forget Sam Shepard. Let’s not forget him … because wow. [Laughs loudly.] That was really fun too.”Watching the 1987 film in 2025, we found that after nearly 40 years, the themes still resonate. Women are still navigating inequities in the workforce, and negotiating the motherhood penalty, and contending with the allure of the cottagecore fantasy. And for all of “Baby Boom’s” imperfections — including some fairly egregious plot holes — Keaton’s performance stands the test of time.So cheers to you, Diane. We’re so glad that your work gets to live forever.Related reading:“Why Diane Keaton’s Death Hits Harder,” Rhonda Garelick, NYT“A Delightful Conversation with Diane Keaton,” Rachel Handler, Vulture“FEMINIST HEROINES; Women As Victims,” Charles Shyer & Nancy Meyers, NYT“FILM VIEW; Are Feminist Heroines An Endangered Species?,” Caryn James, NYT“Putting Down The Independent Working Woman,” Chicago Tribune“Film Review: Satire That Lowers The ‘Baby Boom,’” Kevin Thomas, LA TimesShare Rich TextIf you liked reading this, click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Patreon!Give us feedback or suggest a topic for the pod • Subscribe • Request a free subscription