The $83,000,000 Question
The $83,000,000 Question
The Bengay and NyQuil of newsletters is limping into your inbox with axes to grind and grand possibilities to ponder.
What would make the perfect women’s magazine? Juicy yarns, hot goss, big ideas, deeply personal examinations of women’s lives—and none of the advertiser obligations. Welcome to the Spread, where every week two editors read, listen, and watch it all, and deliver only the best to your inbox.
Spreadables,
Maggie has a good old fashioned eyeball-fricasseeing fever-’n-chills flu. Rachel has a shoulder injury that requires a sling-like heating pad, acupuncture, muscle relaxers, anti-inflammatories, massage therapy, and PT (if you can believe it, she doesn’t turn 40 for another couple of months!). And both of us, who owe some of the most important people in our lives to the science of IVF, have spent the past week twisted up in knots about so-called “embryonic children” and the sad, sad state of Alabama. Luckily, while we feel like a pair of deflated whoopee cushions this week, our unsinkable friend and Spread Fairy Godmother / American Shero
has once again swept in from Oz on a tsunami of sparkle, wit, and inspiration, opening the floor to suggestions on how she should invest the damages Donald Trump owes her to help make the world a better place. Readers, thank you for showing up for us; our laundry list of woes aside, we do have some good reads for you this week. But what we really hope you’ll do is hop, skip, and jump over to Auntie E.’s comments section to weigh in on where YOU think those big bucks would do the greatest good. This lady’s got a big fat checkbook and an even bigger heart—and, anyway, when was the last time someone asked you how to spend $83 mil?See you next week for a full-fat edition of the Spread. In the meantime, Epsom salts, anyone?
Rachel & Maggie
At the risk of becoming a Jordan Kisner-slash-Jodie Foster fansite—though, hey, we could do worse—we’re charging ahead in recommending Kisner’s new, ultra-elegant profile of forever-loner Foster, our favorite star of the moment, in the Atlantic:
“There’s a deliciousness to loneliness … There is nothing like the loneliness of lying in a pool of fake blood at three in the morning in Prospect Park with 175 people around you moving things and whatever—and knowing they will never understand what you’re going through.”
Speaking of True Detective: Night Country—or what Who? Weekly has blessedly rebranded True Detective: Cold Lesbians—now that we’ve devoured all the episodes, we are consoling ourselves with this GQ shakedown of the season’s creator, Issa López, and this Vulture one, too.
So many of our favorites are weighing in on J.Lo’s dizzying $20 million vanity project, This Is Me… Now. If you’re still glitching out over it: Popcast (Deluxe) episode, “Pop Stars vs. the Attention Economy,” was the most helpful to our processing.
Y’all see Saltburn? If so, you’re welcome/we’re sorry about all this (W).
If you liked “The Rachel Weisz Gay Index” or Vulture’s hardcore investigation into screen time at bedtime, behold “The Crying Game,” another showcase for hilarious pop-culture savant Rachel Handler: This time, she’s on a quest to learn to cry on demand, Claire Danes-style.
If you’re already a Jenny Slate person, you’ll enjoy this literally inside-baseball (OK, inside-softball) New Yorker interview she did with Jeremy Strong’s No. 1 foe. (If you’re not that into Jenny Slate, don’t worry about making time for this one.) Also from Michael Schulman this week: “Can You Really Want an Oscar Too Much?”
Sloane Crosley’s new book, Grief Is for People, about the death of a close friend, is getting raves. Here, an excerpt.
Two worthy installments of David Marchese’s New York Times Magazine “Talk” column, both of which dig into ideas about the morality of the present: Author-prophet Marilynne Robinson, who’ll soon publish a literary analysis of the book of Genesis, and Patric Gagne, who’s got a highly anticipated memoir coming out called Sociopath. Gagne has a particularly interesting riff on what it’s like to find a partner or become a mother as a neurodivergent non-empath (and, in her case, a sociopath).
Melania Trump used her East Wing office so rarely it became a gift-wrapping room. Delicious details abound in Katie Rogers’s close-up on the Melania Trump-to-Jill Biden FLOTUS handoff in the New York Times. Rogers’s book about the modern first lady, American Woman, dropped yesterday. In a review, the Atlantic’s Helen Lewis trains her gaze on Barron’s mom, arguing in “The Most Consequential Recent First Lady” that Melania’s rejection of the role makes her the ultimate pathbreaker.
“What if we just had one?” In “The Rise of the One-and-Done Family,” Maclean’s goes deep on the downright tantalizing idea of birthing and raising a single child.
The Cut/New York Mag’s fashion issue1 dovetailed with our “spring break” last week, which means by now you’ve likely lost sleep over its two buzziest pieces: Spreadfriend Charlotte Cowles’s confession of being scammed out of $50,000 (cash) in a single afternoon and Emily Gould’s gobsmackingly honest marriage story. What’s still keeping us up at night, though, is the issue’s exhaustive ride-along with eight micro-gaggles of tween girls as they catalog their current obsessions and shop for fake nails, pricey face wash, and not coats2.
In the New Yorker’s “A Professor Claimed to Be Native American. Did She Know She Wasn’t?” Jay Caspian Kang profiles the embattled Elizabeth Hoover. It’s edifying and complicated, and we recommend the audio version!
Shrinks everywhere should fear the latest from Radio Atlantic, which suggests “Maybe You Should Quit Therapy.” Proof: Since the episode went up a few days ago, 50 percent of your Spreaditors have cut their psychological apron strings.
Lyz Lenz, who writes the Substack
, has been all over promoting her new book, This American Ex-Wife. This Esquire interview gives the gist: We should burn down the whole marriage thing as we know it.
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Kudos to Cut EIC Lindsay Peoples, this was a great issue. But the backhanded compliment it garnered from Puck fashion reporter Lauren Sherman—who implied these stories were the Cut’s first worth buzzing about in… years?—still has our ears ringing. Anybody else out there in Spreadlandia taken aback by the casual violence of Sherman’s critique?
This pullquote makes moms everywhere feel seen: “No one really wears coats at recess. Even if it’s freezing outside, no coats, no scarves, no gloves, no hats — just pants and a sweatshirt. I’m over coats and the drama of zipping them up.” —Joni, 11
My Gawd! I love you Rachel and Maggie!!!!
You guys made me feel so much better with your various maladies as I'm limping around Tokyo with a slightly busted ankle. Crap! It happens to the best of us! (But wishing you both the speediest recoveries.) xo