Clear!
The Drs. Doug Ross and Mark Greene of newsletters is soft-shoeing at lightning speed. Also: Free issue alert!
Two veteran editors read it ALL and deliver to you only the best: juicy yarns, big ideas, deeply personal essays, and hot goss—aka, the full Spread. Plus: original interviews, podcasts, and more. Come hungry!
Spready-boppers,
Today we come to you with puffy eyes (we finished Dying for Sex last night…good lord), full hearts, and a short staff (not literally—we are both still solidly built 5-foot-10s—but Maggie is currently vacationing on the Florida Panhandle, doing her best Jenny McCarthy at MTV Spring Break circa 1996 but, you know, with children, husband, and parents in tow). We hope you’ll enjoy this rat-a-tat roundup of surprising profiles, righteous criticism, and all-out weepers we’ve pulled together for you. Think of it as the Spread version of a girl dinner, if that’s still a thing? We’ll be back next week with the full meal.
Cowabunga,
Rachel & Maggie
An Ambitious Serve: The New York Times Magazine’s Jason Zengerle dives (extremely carefully) into the battle over trans athletes via the story of San Jose State volleyball player Blaire Fleming. His both-sides approach is a bold—and, we think, beautiful—move for the mag, which alongside the rest of the Times has come under fire for their handling of trans issues the past few years. We do not recommend wading into the comment section, however. Read “How the War Over Trans Athletes Tore a Volleyball Team Apart” here.
What a Feeling: In a hot-fire essay on her Mad Woman Substack, author Amanda Montei argues that “Libido is a myth.” Read it here.
Face First: For Allure—a title we’re happy to see doing a big feature—
reports the hell out of the celebrity-beauty brand industrial complex. Like the best business stories, it’s chockablock with good goss. Read “Inside the High-Stakes World of Celebrity Beauty Brand Ambassadors” here.Legacy Quest: In an unflinching—and absolutely gutting—excerpt from her new book, Better: A Memoir About Wanting To Die (out next Tuesday), Arianna Rebolini contemplates whether she’s passed down her chronic depression to her child. Read “My Son’s Inheritance” here.
First Words: We are not getting paid in dollars to promote Amanda Hess’s new book, Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age, which drops in less than two weeks now. We’re just excited about it, OK? (Though come to think of it: Call us, Harper Collins!) For her employer, the New York Times, Hess offers us a wrecking ball of a preview via “My Son Has a Rare Syndrome. So I Turned to the Internet.” Read it here.
Clear! Pitt junkies jonesing for season 2—which, fingers crossed, is coming in August—can get a defibrillation-style jolt of Dr. Robby from Noah Wyle’s new Fresh Air interview. He talks about the cast’s pre-shoot medical training and the spat he and his fellow producers are in with the Michael Crichton estate! Listen to it here or here or wherever you get your podcasts.
Justice for Joan: For the Atlantic, Lynn Steger Strong beautifully puts into words what’s been eating at us about Notes to John, the recently published selection of journal entries Joan Didion wrote about conversations with her psychiatrist: “Why do we need to see writers (or anyone) at their most open and despairing to be convinced that they are also human?” Steger Strong writes. “How does our understanding of the line between art and exploitation shift once the writer dies and can’t make choices for herself? Why do we feel the need to lay them bare when they can no longer speak for themselves?” Read “Joan Didion’s Books Should Have Been Enough” here.
Power Move: In a #MeToo profile with a twist, Fox Sports host Joy Taylor—who has been accused of bolstering a toxic, boys-club culture at the network—sits for a strangely moving interview with reporter Irin Carmon. Read it in the Cut here.
The Department of Baby Production: Anyone surprised by the Times report on Monday that the Trump administration is considering pitches for how to make women have more babies—with no mention of, say, early childhood education or any other resources we might need to care for more babies—must have missed the story about the pronatalist convention in Texas last Thursday! That story, by Emma Goldberg, would be an excellent piece of theater if it wasn’t, you know, a very real threat to women’s rights and all the progress we’ve made over the last century! Read “The Women Who Think the World Needs More Babies” here.
Har har: We barely knew the name Carol Leifer before this week, and now she’s up there with Paula Pell in our personal ranking of favorite comedy writers, thanks to the one-two punch of a Vulture interview and a Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend episode she did to promote her new book, How to Write a Funny Speech for a Wedding, Bar Mitzvah, Graduation & Every Other Event You Didn’t Want to Go to in the First Place. Read the interview here and listen to the Conan episode here, here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Green Energy: The headline of this zippy Los Angeles Times profile about cannabis-cookbook author Vanessa Lavorato really gets the job done: “She’s L.A.’s Martha Stewart of weed.” What’s more, Lavorato is an actual Stewart stan who learned the ropes from Entertaining, then added THC. Read it here.
Did someone forward you this email? For the full Spread, with all the fixins, every week, become a paid subscriber here.
I must be substantially older than you both, as Carol Leifer is a well known name to those of us Of a Certain Age. Somewhere I'm my basement is a signed copy of her book 'When you lie about your age, the terrorists win', purchased at a Jewish Federation East Bay event circa 2010.
I remember several comedy specials from her and also Elayne Boosler and Rita Rudner.