This Is Your Captain Speaking

The Ginger and Mary Ann of newsletters 💅 is all about the billions. Plus: Justice for Marnie, love for Naomi, and gifts for your bougie grad and/or babysitter.

We’re here to reclaim the “women’s magazine.” Two veteran editors read it ALL to bring you everything we believe women’s media should be: juicy yarns, big ideas, deeply personal essays, hot goss, and the odd shopping tip—aka, the full Spread. Come hungry!  

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Fellow travelers, 

We hope you’ve popped some Scopolamine and your sea legs are ready to rock. The Spread Cruise sets sail tomorrow, departing Port Canaveral, “docking” in the Bermuda Triangle, and hopefully returning Saturday. What, we’re on a budget. (Speaking of: If you haven’t subscribed to our illustrious enterprise yet, you can do that here.) Once we’re all afloat, paying subscribers will be treated to the finest Costco caviar, while the cheapos among you will get to experience the seafaring adventure of a lifetime from steerage (BYO snacks). Here’s the big question: Which esteemed publication will send a writer to cover this rollicking nautical jamboree from an intellectually curious remove? You know the magazine microgenre we’re talking about. Just this month, Slate brought us a ride-along on a Creed-themed cruise—a story that, because we are not monsters, we greeted with arms wide open (sorry). Also this month: The Times of London whipped itself into a frenzy over an upcoming sex cruise, though we feel confident such things have existed since the dawn of time (or at least since the dawn of Carnival in 1972). It’s a storied tradition, these cruise features: Over the years, we’ve experienced the Kid Rock cruise (GQ, 2013), the Disney cruise (New York Times, 2018), the Oprah cruise (the Cut, 2017), the Gronk cruise (SB Nation, 2016), and—our favorite and yours—the Goop cruise (Harper’s, 2023). The latter article was of course itself a send-up of the beard-scratching article about a regular luxury cruise written by David Foster Wallace in 1996, also for Harper’s. And you know the forthcoming Taylor Swift cruise is already sitting pretty on a lineup (or ten).

But honestly, it’s all making us a little seasick? Editors, we can’t help but wonder: Has the reliable ole first-person cruise “adventure” story jumped the shark? Upon further review, we’re thinking a freshly renovated Hampton Inn with an indoor pool (read: no sunscreen required) and a toaster oven for Hot Pockets in the “gift shop” may be a better fit for Spread Nation. 

Cannonball,

Rachel & Maggie 

P.S. After reading that 3M has been knowingly and irrevocably marinating us all in “forever chemicals” for 50+ years, we really needed a burst of fresh hope for the future of humanity. Then into our inbox dropped an alert about a new podcast for kids being Kickstarter-ed. Radio Kazoo, from Spread reader and Kazoo mag EIC Erin Bried, promises to pack “mind-boggling science, never-before-heard stories, riveting interviews, big laughs…into 12-minute episodes kids will actually want to listen to.” Throw some support behind this worthy endeavor here. Readers, do you have a project you’d like to share with Spread Nation? We live at rachelandmaggie@thespread.com.

P.P.S. We invite you to play our kazoo, so to speak, by hitting that ❤️ button up top.

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“Optimized” progeny Octavian George, Torsten Savage, Titan Invictus, and (in vitro) Industry Americus Collins stacked like cordwood in their Farrow & Ball bunks in a corner of daddy’s office.

Will Fraulein Simone make playclothes out of these curtains? 

For days now, Twitter has been alive with the howl of countless Guardian readers, reacting to the story of Pennsylvania’s pronatalist poster children, Malcolm and Simone Collins, who are cranking out as many kids as they can to, ya know, save the universe (not just Earth because ideally their superrace of children will also enjoy some space travel). We could go on for days about Simone’s wardrobe¹, Malcolm’s AR-15, and superdad Elon Musk’s backing of their pronatalist nonprofit. If only Malcolm hadn’t spoiled the fun by unabashedly slapping his two-year-old across the face in the midst of the interview (yep!) which as you may know by now has elicited a stream of perfectly sensible alarm about right-wing fundamentalism masked as “hyper-rational effective altruism blahblahblergh,” as well as the couple’s own YouTube retort, which naturally opens with a montage of jokes from the Simpsons about how funny corporal punishment can be.² Heads up, y’all: Simone is running for office—not sure which office, just “office”—in PA this fall as a Republican! 

Read it here. 

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Here’s what paying subscribers are swappin’ like a norovirus aboard the Love Boat this week…

• Why does “freedom” still poo-poo motherhood? 

• The woman who shtupped Elon and could be your next VP! (Not really.)

• The man who makes your bottom smile.

• When one writer spills another writer’s beans.

• The exclusive Spread graduation-season gift guide!