2026-11-11 01:03:12
Below is a passage from the final chapter of my new book, How to Save the Media, which comes out on November 17. The book draws on my experiences as a cofounder of Substack to show how a better model for the media can help us escape our current cultural crisis. In this excerpt, I ask why the media matters. The answer, I think, has something to do with a story’s ability to scale trust and understanding—two qualities that have been compromised by more than a decade of living in the attention economy. Thank you for reading, and please consider pre-ordering the book to help this message spread. — Hamish
What exactly do we mean when we talk about saving the media? What is the thing that needs saving?
Midway through my journalism master’s program in 2006, I did an internship at the Dominion Post, the daily newspaper in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city. One day, I reported a short piece about a group of World War II veterans who were planning a trip to Crete and trying to raise funds. The journey would mark the sixty-fifth anniversary of the Battle of Crete, where more than seven thousand New Zealanders helped defend the island from a German air assault, and 671 were killed in battle. My story was brief and not especially memorable, focusing on the camaraderie of the troops and the memory of those left behind. It was buried in the middle of the next day’s paper. But one response stuck with me.
On the day it was published, one of the veterans’ daughters called the newsroom and asked for me by name. I can’t remember everything she said, but I recall the sincere gratitude in her voice. She wanted me to know how much the story mattered to her father and the eight other veterans who would be making the trip to Crete with their families. “We so appreciate the story, and it really means a lot to us all,” she said. I would go on to write many more consequential stories in my journalism career, but no single piece of feedback struck more deeply.
The reason, I think, is that it embodied the importance of the job the media does.
Much is made of the media’s role in serving democracy. It comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. It can also entertain us. But my understanding of the media is simpler. I believe that its primary function is to help people communicate and understand each other so we can see problems clearly and figure out how to solve them together. It is the ultimate community-service work, spreading information and sharing stories that would otherwise be geographically constrained. It gives us a way to talk to and think with each other across space and time. It helps shape how we think, what we want, how we relate to others, and who we are.
I’ve known since high school that I wanted to work in the media. Part of that is because I loved the idea of seeing my byline in a magazine or my face on television. I also liked how journalism offers a mix of indoor and outdoor work and constantly exposes you to fascinating stories. The main draw, however, was that good journalism helps people.
I vividly remember being photographed with classmates in the school sports field when some Air Force helicopters came to visit my hometown, Alexandra. The next day, the photo of me and my classmates appeared in the local newspaper, the Central Otago News. At eight years old, it was my first media appearance, and I was thrilled when our family friends buzzed about it and my mother clipped it for safekeeping. Later, as a teenager and a member of the Dunstan High School basketball team, I wrote recaps of the local league for the same paper, slipping in commentary about one of our older rivals being “taller than his hair.” When I got to university and became the editor of Critic, Otago University’s student magazine, I invited a reporter from the Otago Daily Times to come speak to our staff and volunteer writers. “We have the best job in the world,” she said. “We get paid to tell stories that change people’s lives.”
Sharing photos of kids beside military flying machines and running reviews written by teenagers of basketball games that no one watched might not seem like much. It’s certainly not on the same level as exposing massacres or revealing political corruption, but it does serve a similar purpose at the root. I felt it even as a child in that school field. The media tells us stories about ourselves and gives us a platform for cooperation. When it’s working well, it helps us build trust and understanding with each other so that we thrive not just as individuals but as people.
2026-11-07 22:03:24
This week, we’re reading other people’s mail, considering how the letter “s” tastes, and cherishing what we have when we have it.
LOVE
Phillip Picardi’s cat, Juniper, has had a more exciting life than most humans, appearing in Architectural Digest, posing for a custom oil painting, casting a watchful eye over a marriage proposal and multi-year engagement, and moving cross-country. Now, after nearly 12 years together, Picardi must learn how to say goodbye.
— in Religiously Blonde
I read once that everything we bury can grow flowers. We just have to tend to the gardens of our grief. It is a phrase that started to ring through my ears the moment the veterinarian looked at my cat, Juniper, then looked at me with a frown draped on her face. Juniper loves flowers—peonies especially. Every time I received or made an arrangement, she would sit next to it, pawing and nibbling at the petals until the pollen made her sneeze.
As I write this, Juniper is curled up on my lap, a faint but constant purr radiating from her tiny body. I say “tiny” because, over the past six weeks, my sweet girl has lost about 50% of her body weight. When I pause my typing to touch her, I can feel every detail of each bone on her spine. Her breath is shallow, and her face is palsied.
But then, one morning—right after the furniture had been placed and the art had been hung on the walls—it looked as though she was dying. When I went to inspect her drooping eyelid, she saw me with sadness and walked, slowly, underneath the bed.
“Not now,” I said, getting down on my hands and knees to follow her. “Please, not now.”
As if there were ever going to be a time that I would want her to leave. But the truth is, I have never yearned for what’s familiar more than I have in these past few months. “Familiar” is the right word—“family” being in there somewhere, if you look hard enough. Nothing about change has ever daunted me: not a cross-country move, not a last-minute whim to go to Divinity School, not even a breakup of nine years. I have always found, easily accessible inside of myself, what it takes to turn the page. What’s another adventure?
[. . .]
She hails from Brooklyn, where my ex and I first adopted her, but then she moved with us to Manhattan Beach, where she enjoyed an uninterrupted, panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean. There, she was a neighborhood favorite—she perched atop the street-view windowsill and said hello to passersby, placing her paws atop the fingers they pressed up to the glass.
When everything fell apart, she moved with me to MacArthur Park—the place that inspired the Donna Summer song. There, she met a whole Pride Parade of uncles, all of whom took their turns jovially testing her patience. She loved to shadow box with them—and when the nights got rowdy, she surveilled from her place up on high, looking both amused and annoyed. When work once again beckoned me to change, Juniper got her taste of South Florida living—on a golf course, no less.
I never would have thought I was bringing my cat to God’s waiting room. But cancer came for my baby suddenly and without warning. This morning, I took her outside to feel the sunshine and she walked, lopsided and at a slope, back towards the door to be let inside. What can I do but oblige the wishes of the dying?
OLD FRIENDS
SELF-HELP
Stef Dag couldn’t stop scrolling. Touring as a standup comedian, she found herself glued to her phone backstage, on planes, and even in front of UNESCO heritage sites. Now, she’s committed to writing 30 posts in 30 days as she embarks on a doomscroll-free month.
Today I sat on the M train reading a book of essays by Slavoj Zizek, which I admit is obnoxious. When the doors opened at Marcy Ave., a teenager approached and occupied the seat next to me. Before the train could even pull out of the station, he pulled out his phone and started playing Reels at full volume. I used to be like you, I thought. I pitied the poor bastard. Three days into my experiment, and I have already begun to embody the unseemly traits of someone who has just gotten into cold plunging, or vegans in 2007—really fucking annoying.
For the remainder of the ride (because my chances of concentrating went down to -0) I tried to disassociate from the cataclysmic sounds of Worldstar fights and face-to-camera videos, by taking stock of the other riders. The girl across from me was relitigating a blue text bubble, while the guy next to her bobbed his head in comically large headphones while doing a crossword and watching a video on mute on the top right corner of his screen. I was quite literally the only person not on my phone, which gave me a God complex, obviously. Instinctively, I opened Instagram to make a story about this, then remembered it was blocked.
On Day 1, I wrote about how my phone often feels like the elephant in the room, the Unspoken Other, but upon reflection, it’s actually more like Eve’s alluring apple, beckoning you with forbidden knowledge about the Middle East and your high school bully who just got certified as a life coach. At any given moment, I am all too aware of my proximity to my phone. In fact, I feel deeply uncomfortable when it’s not within reach, even if it’s only one room away. Going to sleep, doing my laundry, even 45-second bathroom breaks, all feel like dangerous expeditions that would leave me vulnerable and compromised without my Maps, Safari, and iMessage.
What if I leave my keys in my apartment (they’re in my hands) and can’t contact my landlord (he’s downstairs)? What if I lose consciousness as I’m peeing and need to call 911 (couldn’t call if I was unconscious)?? What if in the middle of the night my mom tries to contact me to tell me she’s dying and I—and only I—know the location of her life-saving medication (she’s not sick)????!!!
Today, I took stock of how much my phone, even sans scrolling, plays a part in my waking life. Walking from pilates to a pod recording, I FaceTimed my boyfriend for 30 minutes, and then again when I was walking home. In between various physical tasks, I texted my friend about her Substack and sent a photo to another friend of a passage from a book I’m reading. This constant need to be in contact, to check in and respond in a timely manner, when did that start? I remember coming home from middle school and calling my friends on our house phone, but it was usually just a means to some other end—to make a plan to hang out in the physical realm.
CELESTIAL BEINGS
TRICKERY
By profession, Matt Cooper is a mentalist, seemingly able to plop information into his participants’ brains without them being any the wiser. Below, he divulges his secrets and pulls off one, long, elaborate ruse.
— in i-D
I heard rumblings about mentalist Matt Cooper before I met him. After a performance at an engagement party, word of his act diffused through my friend group. He knew things my friends barely knew about themselves. He was able to read a person perfectly. He could place a word in your mind. On an unseasonably chilly summer night, I went to see the mentalist perform in NYC’s Morgan Library, set against a backdrop of rare books, Catholic paraphernalia and the museum’s ongoing Tarot exhibition.
[. . .]
A couple weeks after his Morgan Library performance I arranged to meet Cooper at Washington Square Diner. Before we met, he gave me strict instructions: Find someone on the street and have them write a nine-digit string of numbers on a card. Dutifully I stood on the corner of Bleecker until a man who seemed appropriately random passed me by. When I approached him, he flinched, as if I was about to ask what made him confident. “No, no, I’m actually doing an elaborate magic trick with a mentalist who’s waiting for me in a diner down the street.” He jotted down a number: 476513111.
Card folded in my wallet, I entered the diner. Cooper asked if I had followed his instructions. At some point, Cooper explained, I would feel an urge. What kind of an urge? An urge that something was about to happen. When I felt that urge, I was to let him know. Equipped with even more mystifying instruction and a piping cup of diner coffee, I set out to learn some of the magician’s secrets.
What is a day in the life of a mentalist? Walk me through it.
On an average day, the first thing I do is go to my favorite cafe. Read a book, do some writing, journaling, go home, go to the gym, and then if I’m in a creative period, I’ll work on a show or the zine. I like to go to this cigar bar, Hudson Bar and Books. I shouldn’t have said that because it’s a secret hangout.
That was actually going to be one of my questions. Where are magicians and mentalists congregating?
There used to be a spot called As Is, which is a bar that had a lot of magicians just gravitating towards there. Of course, there’s the amazing Speakeasy Magick. Another place is 69 Atlantic. It has the best magicians in the world, not just New York, flown in and they have a residency for a weekend, and it’s great.
Can you talk a little bit about your upbringing and how you came to mentalism?
My mom was a showgirl in Vegas, at [Bally’s, Folies Bergère and Jubilee]. I have this great photo from backstage where she was in between numbers and she was bottle-feeding me. My dad was a stagehand. My grandmother worked at the Golden Nugget as a cocktail waitress, amongst other things. Vegas has a lot of magicians, so I saw almost all of them by the time I was eight years old.
My first encounter with mentalism as an idea was after my grandfather died, who was an amateur magician, and I inherited all of his magic books, a small collection but a collection nonetheless. There was an even smaller subsection labeled mentalism that piqued my curiosity. Rather than it being the normal sleight of hand, card manipulation stuff, it included things like hypnosis and a little bit of psychology. But it was mostly the plots. The plots weren’t about an object moving from one place to another. It was a thought moving from one place to another. It was about people, and to me, it was far more interesting to work with human beings than it is to work with inanimate objects. I love watching magic. But the connection you feel with another person when you read their mind… It’s the emotional side of magic.
I’m feeling the moment of suspense. I want the trick.
So, just for total transparency, I asked you to go out today and to find someone completely at random. Had to be your choice, and to ask that person for a random number. Did you do that?
I did.
And you didn’t share this number with anyone? It’s been in your possession the whole time?
Yep.
ARCHIVAL FASHION
LANGUAGE ARTS
Jacqueline Novak wants us to pay heed to the mouthfeel all letters innately possess.
— in Jacqueline Novak, Quality Notions
I am sensitive about words in a way that can exhaust others. Usually when I complain about a word, how its syllables do a disservice to its meaning, I am not met with the absolute understanding I expect. Sometimes eyes glaze over and someone realizes it’s probably time to signal for the check.
The other day I was in an elevator thinking about whether a friend had disdain for me, and I realized that a huge part of my sense of the word “disdain” comes from its shape and feel, the way the word moves and also the look of the letters.
There are so many senses involved in a word: the visual associations, whether on a page, typed, or handwritten, how it sounds aloud or in the mind’s ear, and most intimate of all, the sensations felt as efforts are made in the mouth to produce it. Notably, I struggle with “s” in life. I do okay, but it’s not effortless. If I’m tired, it’s worse. Sometimes it whistles as it works.
Anyway, I feel like I can’t partake in an endeavor like this, a Substack, without alerting you to the fact that these influences are affecting me.
For me, “disdain,” at least in the mouth, is a quick but vertical short drop (dih) followed by a lateral but narrow (ay) movement. This lines up with what I picture as the gesture of a facial expression of disdain. The eyes cast downward and then to the side, as if at the disdained thing.
But the word is bigger than a face.
To disdain someone is like an entire arm dropping into a position where the hand can, at the wrist, make a dismissal. Dis-dain, the dain, is a narrow vein of hate.
The word “dismiss,” on the other hand, features two soft plummets to a soft ssss landing, but in order to plummet that second time requires a return to the top. So dismiss, in the mouth, goes DOWN-up-DOWN but still, such soft whispery sounds.
Out of disdain, you might dismiss, but to dismiss is to kill you with ballet slippers on. Despite its soft sounds (sss and mmm), it does send you away. It’s a watercolor brush, painting a downstroke and painting over it, for decent enough color to be notable but still transparent.
Some might find its gentleness even more cruel. Dismissal is round and friendlier, and the three syllables make it feel like someone is being dismissed, but in an administratively sanctioned way. They’ve gone through the proper channels, but you’re still out on your ass.
When you consider how much a word contains in even just this way, you might approach writing a single sentence with the fear of God in you. If you recognize that a single sentence could provide the opportunity for a kind of curiosity or a masterpiece in its own right, it’s hard to make a move.
Class is dismissed.
That’s a masterpiece.
A set table. The two ss’s, the lightest fabric drape. That L, a single piece of glassware. The fancy footwork of dis-miss.
Class is dismissed.
Say it a few times if you’re unconvinced. Try whispering it. It whispers very well, which some people might consider a feature. Its beauty holds at night!
A single sentence takes on so much responsibility when assembling its words for its aims. Who could stand to try?
WELCOME DISTRACTIONS
Art & Photography: , , , ,
Writing: , , ,
Brigette Romanek, an L.A.-based designer and part of Architectural Digest’s AD100 list, is now on Substack writing about “the art of living beautifully.”
Danielle Zaslavskaya Matzon has launched a Substack, where she’ll be sharing recipes, fashion finds, beauty recommendations, and other “current obsessions.”
Alessandro Baricco, an Italian novelist, has brought his newest literary work, Waterloo, to Substack.
The Guardian US, a publication for “independent reporting, opinion, and analysis with a global perspective,” has launched on Substack.
AnOther Magazine, a contemporary fashion, art, and culture magazine, is now on Substack.
Inspired by the writers and creators featured in the Weekender? Starting your own Substack is just a few clicks away:
The Weekender is a weekly roundup of writing, ideas, art, audio, and video from the world of Substack. Posts are recommended by staff and readers, and curated and edited by out of Substack’s New York office.
2026-11-03 02:32:35
Welcome to Local Issue, a series of profiles on the local news writers keeping the tradition of regional reporting alive. First up is Laura Belin, a Des Moines–based reporter who’s part of the Iowa Writers Collaborative.
It’s Wednesday, the week before the midterm elections, and Laura Belin has just spent her morning at a briefing with Iowa’s Secretary of State and representatives from the state’s National Guard.
“We’ve had very close elections in the 3rd Congressional District,” Laura says. “So I wanted to hear from him about the scenario where, if the Democrat wins and it’s close, and President Trump says it was rigged, how would that be handled? And he said, ‘We’re not even raising that issue.’”
Laura, a reporter based in Des Moines, allows the foiled query to roll off her back. Her week has been packed. On Monday she wrote about Iowa’s early voting numbers for her Substack and recorded her weekly live radio show, KHOI’s Capitol Week. Tuesday was spent covering a speech by a candidate for secretary of agriculture, a state Medicaid fraud task force meeting and press conference, and two debates: one for the gubernatorial race and another between the candidates in the 3rd Congressional District.
Tonight, she’d hoped to get into a rally for the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Zach Lahn, where an appearance from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is on the docket. “I’m not able to get into any of [Lahn’s] events anymore. His campaign allowed me to cover several of his events before the primary, but after the primary, they cut me off,” Laura says. “They stopped answering my questions.”
Laura’s readers have come to know her for this: the dogged determination that might get her barred from campaign events or lead a press secretary to slam a door in her face, which also drives her in-depth reporting. It’s what makes stories about Trump’s big Iowa steel plant project, the financial and legal woes of the GOP’s nominee for lieutenant governor, and a hot mic slip-up by Senator Chuck Grassley (a scoop that was born from an all-nighter at the state capitol) all possible. Laura will go as far as it takes to get the information she needs, even suing the governor’s office over noncompliance with open records law during the pandemic and taking the Iowa House Chief Clerk to court after she was denied press credentials.
“When I sued the Iowa House Chief Clerk,” she says, “a bunch of people wanted to chip in and donate, even though I wasn’t paying for the legal fees,” which were covered by the Institute for Free Speech. “My readers are very supportive of me and very protective of me.”
Her subscribers, whom Laura describes as “politically plugged-in,” already have their fingers on the pulse of local news. What they really want, and what they come to her for, is niche, in-depth coverage and analysis of Iowa politics. “They don’t want to just hear my summary of what happened at the legislative subcommittee meeting. Every piece I write, I’m trying to give people either a story that they won’t find anywhere else, or the deeper dive on the story that other people might be covering,” she says.
To Laura, that looks like covering an election worker’s prosecution in southwest Iowa, or explaining why the 4th District of Iowa is “deep red,” or writing about Trump’s visit to Sioux City through the lens of local leaders’ reactions. “Everybody did the story about Trump in Sioux City,” she says. “But I wanted to go through and get the key points about: What did the candidate for governor say? What did the candidate for Senate say? What did the 2nd Congressional District candidate say? What did the attorney general say at the rally?”
This on-the-go lifestyle, let alone this profession, was never what Laura expected for herself. She studied Russian politics and got a job as a research analyst covering domestic politics at an institute in the Czech Republic out of school, eventually transitioning into a similar role at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. “I had every expectation that I would spend my entire career writing about Russian politics,” she says. But when Putin came to power, the areas she was most interested in covering—“campaigns and elections, parliamentary politics, Russian media issues”—were essentially shut down. “The Russian media was greatly diminished,” she says. “So I was like, ‘Wow, I need to figure out a different idea.’”
It was around that time she and her husband relocated back to Iowa. Her father had unexpectedly passed away, leaving the Des Moines family home in her name. At the time, Laura decided to temporarily step away from reporting to raise her two young children and filled the void of political analysis through reading, and regularly commenting on, the local political blog Bleeding Heartland. Eventually, Laura’s persistence landed her the role of the blog’s primary editor. She began applying the same analytical skills she’d used to make sense of the Russian parliament to the Iowa legislature instead, and what started as an “out-of-control hobby” grew over nearly two decades into a full-time job running the blog.
Then, in 2022, Julie Gammack reached out to Laura. Julie had been building the Iowa Writers Collaborative on Substack, a network of local journalists, critics, and essayists, feeding their individual work into a centralized newsletter. Laura decided to start publishing her work on Substack too, launching Iowa politics with Laura Belin. “My dad used to say, ‘When the pie is being passed around, that’s the time to take a slice,’” she says. “It’s definitely opened up new audiences for me who weren’t familiar with my work before I was on Substack. Many of us knew each other before, but I’ve met a lot of new people. It benefits all of us.” Laura’s work is free to read—she doesn’t want anyone to miss out on what she uncovers—but subscribers can pledge support. And they have: after decades of on-the-ground reporting, Laura was able to start paying herself a salary.
At a time when local newspapers across the country have shuttered, and many see regional reporting as a dying art, Laura and other reporters like her are leaning in. In the Iowa Writers Collaborative alone, there are nearly 70 standalone newsletters contributing to twice-weekly roundups. While she believes legacy publications still play a critical role in the media ecosystem, she’s seen firsthand what a diminished press corps looks like at the Iowa Statehouse, and in turn watched new models for local journalism emerge, allowing reporters like her to do what they do best: dive in.
“Every so often, someone will say to me, ‘Why are you writing about Iowa? You should be raising your profile and writing about national politics.’ And I think, Why would I want to be one of a thousand people writing about national politics, many of them already doing it very well, when in Iowa I can literally, every single week, find stories that nobody else is covering, or I can cover something in more depth than anybody else in Iowa?” Laura says. “I’ve broken a lot of news. I’ve done a lot of deep analytical writing that, if I weren’t here, nobody else would be doing. I add the most value with what I’m doing now.”
For more local and national election news, visit our midterms hub.
2026-10-31 21:03:02
This week, we’re carving hyper-realistic imagery into pumpkins, jousting on Lime bikes, and throwing together last-minute historically accurate Halloween costumes.
ADVICE
A Maybe Baby reader finds themselves on the receiving end of a boyfriend’s fits of anger and general cynicism, writing in to Danny Nelson for advice on how (and if) to move forward.
— in Maybe Baby
“I’m writing about my boyfriend’s overall cynicism and anger at the world, because (and I mean no offense by this) I think you might be able to offer me some meaningful insight on how to better meet him where he’s at. For context, my boyfriend and I have been together for about two years and living together for about 6 months, and it’s been absolutely incredible.
We have a lot of the same values and philosophies, but our ways of being are pretty different. I’m far more sensitive and socially self-conscious than him, while he has pretty much a complete lack of social anxiety, is extremely frank about his opinions, and is kind of fueled by anger. He grew up in the skateboarding and punk-rock scenes, which I think have taught him to tap into the power of anger in a way that I actually really admire. However, my boyfriend has had a series of bad luck this month, and this has come with a string of related angry outbursts.
It started when he accidentally backed into our neighbor’s car and was barely able to contain his self-directed anger, yelling, punching the air, saying he hates himself (our neighbor is a cop so this was an extra blow to pay for repairs lol). Then he kept getting flat tires on his bike, which he uses to commute to work every day. He works a pretty dangerous blue-collar job with intense manual labor and having to stop and fix flats drove him haywire (made worse by the fact that he didn’t want to drive his car instead after backing into the neighbor’s car, of course). Now his grandfather is in hospice care and, understandably, my boyfriend says that the grief feels shocking and unbearable.
I’ve of course been trying to support him and calm him through all these frustrations, but I feel at a bit of a loss because we have such different modes of coping. My instinct is to listen to him, share my perspective when I can, and try to reassure him things will eventually get better. His instinct is to lean entirely into cynicism, insisting that life just fucking sucks. Last night he ripped up one of his favorite sweaters because he doesn’t know where else to direct his grief. If you actually choose my question I’m prepared for many readers to call him toxic and tell me to break up with him (no shade but that’s not the response to everything!), but it’s because I have full faith in our relationship that I’m coming to you to ask: How can I support him through this?
I choose this question at my peril. As a person who has spent much of his life devoted to self-destruction, I of course relate to your partner. Your patience and good faith are a gift. To the compulsive, self-loathing, and dysfunctional people in this world, compassion is a salve and a blessing. You are right that breaking up is not the answer to everything. That being said, the instinct to stay, which begins in good faith, can become a trap. Sinking energy into something that is unquenchable winds up a punishing journey. How does one avoid becoming an accomplice in that punishment? How does anyone know when to leave?
Anger is an uncomfortable emotion for most people. Your partner has learned to make it his ally only by turning it on himself. I’m going to try to describe my own experience of self-sabotage in order to illuminate what a nearly impossible cycle it is to break. I would argue, without incredible effort, it is not just “temporary.” You know, I also crashed my car recently and I also work a blue-collar job. We all have family in our lives who are suffering or will die soon. That is to say, I relate directly to the struggles he is facing. I do not come to this question with the rod of the moralist.
The secret satisfaction that is derived from self-sabotage is without a doubt its most shameful and difficult aspect. Self-destruction is a form of control. Or, worse, it’s an internal bureaucracy that disallows accountability while also prioritizing self-immolation over emotional growth at all costs. It is a mockery of the phoenix rising from the ashes when the phoenix’s only purpose is to be burnt again and again. This becomes apparent in the diminishing intervals between episodes. For all things, including crisis, there should be a season. Year-round inferno is pathology.
STILL LIFE
ON THE CLOCK
Lila Baer gets an inside look at what life as a wildland firefighter is really like.
— in Ursa Minor
Is Your Job Legit? is an anonymous interview series that asks the questions we’re all too polite to ask: what people actually do all day, what they make, and whether it’s worth it. We’re going deeper than Glassdoor. And please, don’t even compare me to LinkedIn.
Official job title?
Wildland Firefighter
And if you could rename it?
Emergency Landscaper
On a scale of luck to strategy, how did you snag this job?
Both. You have to apply at the right time, call and email hiring managers for the crews you want to join, and then maybe they’ll have you stop by the station to go for a run with them.
If they like your vibes and you are fit enough, they might offer you a job. I got really lucky and my crew reached out to me, but I still had to go visit the station and prove myself.
Sounds complicated. How did you know how to navigate the process?
Trial and error. I applied two years in a row with no results. I only figured it out once I met someone in the industry who knew how to navigate the hiring system.
What does a typical crew look like?
Most crews consist of 24 people in their late 20s to early 30s (I’m 25). At most, we’ve had two women per season. I know a lot of hiring managers are trying to bring more diversity into their crews, but it’s a slow process.
Give us the 30-second version: what do you do all day?
For 14 to 21 days at a time, our crew gets sent to wildfires across the West Coast to build “handline,” a strip of cleared land that stops a fire’s forward progress.
We cut back brush and trees with chainsaws, and then scrape several feet of bare dirt with hand tools so there’s nothing left to burn. If a fire is too intense, they’ll use bulldozers to create larger containment lines. We’re usually working on steep, rocky slopes that require three points of contact with the ground.
I’m assuming you can’t go home at night. Where do you sleep? Are you “off”?
Sort of. Shifts are 16 hours on and 8 hours off. In those 8 hours, we’re either sleeping in the backcountry or in a fire camp with the other crews.
We cook our own meals, don’t take showers, have limited cell service, and sleep on the ground with no tents. We also only get 3 days off between each assignment. You gotta love it.
GOING GOURD
HARD FEELINGS
For over two decades, Laura Tremaine saw Rena every six to eight weeks for a wax. The two shared intimate details and even raised sons alongside each other. When Rena passed away unexpectedly, Laura was left to make sense of an undefinable grief.
— in Secret Stuff
The woman who dripped hot wax onto my nether regions and ripped it off gleefully for over twenty years died unexpectedly and it has left a hole in my life. Pun very much not intended. Or actually, you know what? Pun intended. She would have laughed at that.
I started going to Rena in the early 2000s, when I was single and definitely couldn’t afford regular bikini waxes but would splurge before vacations or other special occasions. She was recommended by friends and owned the small salon on a busy street in our trendy neighborhood. Rena was efficient at the task at hand, and made it as painless as humanly possible. Of course, I didn’t have much to compare it to, since Rena was my first—and for a long time my only—wax specialist. But bikini waxes are embarrassing and unpleasant in any circumstance, and her no-nonsense demeanor made it slightly less dreadful.
Around the time I got married, these appointments became more regular and Rena and I got chattier. She doled out advice about the care and keeping of things and I dragged friends to her who were resistant about the procedure. I was a bikini wax convert, and I knew Rena could show them how the result was totally worth it.
I saw Rena throughout my first pregnancy and, eventually, after. Then Rena and I turned up pregnant at the same time. Imagine when I ran into her at our shared doctor’s office! Out of context for our relationship, but also not really. We laughed about it and then kept seeing each other, in the OB’s office and in her salon. We were due the same month. Both with our youngests. Both of them boys.
On and on our every-6-to-8-week relationship went. We always asked about each other’s children. She frequently checked in on my sister and mom, who I had toted with me to my appointments on more than one occasion. Our boys, exactly the same age, grew and hit milestones and eventually started school. I moved farther away, then her salon moved locations. I still kept up the trek.
When the pandemic hit, small salons like Rena’s were a heartbreaking casualty. She closed up shop and pivoted to doing housecalls. Our relationship really changed then. We went from specialist and client to something else, and it’s that “something else” that has spun me out for months.
There is no name for the people who are in your lives so intimately but don’t occupy a traditional role. I believe Rena and I cared about each other, but we weren’t friends. And of course there was the primary transactional nature. She was performing a service I was paying her for, so that alone often defines the nature of a relationship. And if it had stayed in the salon, that client relationship would have stayed mostly professional, regardless of the vulnerability of what she was doing to my body each visit.
And then earlier this year, I was having trouble getting a hold of Rena to schedule my next appointment. This had never happened before. After a nudge or two, I got a text back that she had fallen and broken her shoulder and would be out of commission for a while. The message came from her number but didn’t sound like her. I assumed she had someone communicating for her, so I didn’t think much of it. I wrote back my best wishes for a speedy recovery, and for the first time in a long, long time, I made other waxing arrangements.
Months went by. I wanted to check in, but hesitated. I didn’t want to sound like I was checking in for selfish reasons, nor did I want to sound overly familiar either. Rena and I had never really talked about the nature of our relationship outside of joking about it, and now I felt self-conscious about assuming an intimacy where she might have only seen a client. I regret that now, my lack of reaching out. I could have sent a quick, thoughtful text. But also I wasn’t that worried about it. She’d recover and life would march on, right?
In June, while traveling with my family, I got a text from Rena’s number. The writer identified himself as Rena’s older, college-age son. He regretted to inform me that Rena had passed away after a brief battle. She had only been diagnosed a few months before—just after our last appointment together, which I suddenly remembered clearly. The illness must have already been spreading and we were none the wiser as we complained about our various home repairs… I clumsily tried to tell him how long we’d been in each other’s lives, how wonderful she was, and then I wondered how many other clients across the city were offering the family similar sentiments. There had to have been dozens of us. Maybe we all thought we were Rena’s favorite.
BLISS
MODERN ETIQUETTE
It’s no secret that the job market is in a state of flux. Some might even call it bleak, and nailing down a job can feel like a Sisyphean task. Does that mean we should give friends a pass on where they work?
—Maya Abuali in Dazed
After months of rueful avoidance, Adam* finally faced Sam* over dinner to tell him that his ethically questionable career was a friendship dealbreaker. “Our friendship was one of respect, where we could share what we thought,” Adam says. “It felt unnatural not to be honest about something like this.” They caught up like old times for a languid hour, before Adam told Sam he was “growing increasingly uncomfortable with the idea that [he] was friends with someone who worked where they worked.” Sam froze, unable to compute that the criticism was coming not from a self-righteous stranger, but a friend who cared about him. Then he said to Adam, “I can’t change how you feel about me, and I can’t change that this is what I do.”
The two had met in the sprightly stretch of early university, still eager to emerge and remake the world in their image. But as their friends struggled to land jobs, recruiters pursued Sam, and he joined a defence-tech company on the commercial side. Adam assumed it would be a phase. “You want to see your friends have a good start to their career, where they can work for a bad company for a bit [to gain financial footing] and then eventually go on the right path,” he says. But years later, Sam was still spending 50 hours a week at a company their friends once marched against. “That was really disappointing to me,” Adam says, although he felt a sense of hypocrisy, having gone into finance himself. When a second friend followed Sam into a similar job, and then a third, an ethical line began to take shape for Adam.
For some tech bros, broadcasting their employer has become a dating-pool liability. One viral TikTok highlights a Hinge prompt warning potential matches, “don’t work at Palantir,” stirring up a storm of comments from women recounting dates with “real-life supervillains.” One comment noted, “all of these tech bros are SO good at compartmentalising,” routinely relying on the same defence mechanism: Yeah, my company is evil, but I’m just here for the pay. But it’s difficult to draw the line when it’s a friend you care about using those same rationalisations to justify their paycheck.
DUELS IN UNEXPECTED PLACES
“Jousting in London Fields” by Elliott Gunn
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
Waiting until the last minute to scrounge up a Halloween costume is a tale as old as time. Below, a solve.
—Olivia in weird medieval guys
If you’re anything like me, you love to leave Halloween costumes until the very last minute. Part of this may have to do with the pressure of finding the perfect one—a good costume is affordable, sustainable, perhaps a bit sexy and involves just enough effort to be considered DIY without requiring a massive quantity of time or skills. And, most importantly, it makes a clever and educated reference to history, mythology, or literature. A bit niche, without being so obscure that the obscurity becomes the point (sorry, gay people on Twitter).
Henry VIII
Six wedding rings. That’s it. Find some big gaudy antique-looking costume rings on Vinted/Depop/etc. or at the thrift shop for extra pizazz. You can find big lots of costume rings on secondhand sites for very cheap. If you’re an everyday ring wearer (as I am), this is the perfect opportunity to add some new ones to your rotation. Add vaguely Tudor clothing/fake or real beard/horrible open wound depending on how much effort you’re feeling.
A blemmye
This may or may not be my upcoming Halloween costume. It’s crazy simple: just find a top that roughly matches your skin tone (for the best match, look in the lingerie section of a large clothing store—they usually sell undergarments made to look ‘invisible’ under sheer clothing in a range of skin-like hues). This can be anything from a baggy long-sleeve to a tight cami, depending on how daring you’re feeling. Draw a face on the chest and you’re good to go.
Optional upgrades: black balaclava or stocking over your face to really commit to the bit. If you’re really feeling yourself, get a tight skin-colour bodysuit and add a fig leaf. Or fake genitals. Or real ones.
[. . .]
A plague rat
You can really let your creativity run wild with a rat costume. You could go basic with all-brown clothes from your wardrobe, some paper ears stapled to a headband, and a DIY tail (I feel like a pink stocking stuffed with tissue paper could be a good no-sew option). Or you can go higher-effort. I think if I was going to do this costume I would use it as an excuse to thrift a brown faux fur coat and make a cool papier-mâché mask. You don’t necessarily need to add anything to become a plague rat specifically: after all, the Yersinia pestis bacteria that caused the Black Death were microscopic and the fleas that carried them were very small. However, I think a fun way to play this one would be to print out or draw some fleas on cardstock, cut them out, and tape them to your costume with double-sided tape or similar. Make a game out of seeing how many people you can transfer your fleas to over the course of the evening!
FEELING FESTIVE
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Michelle Kaufman, who spent the past 30 years covering the Olympics, World Cups, and college and pro sports for the Miami Herald, is now on Substack.
Bethenny Frankel has launched “The List” on Substack, where she’ll be sharing “unfiltered opinions” and “insider recommendations” on beauty, fashion, travel, business, and relationships.
NFL running back, home cook, and avid collector AJ Dillon is now on Substack.
David Macias has launched Circulation, a publication that “explores how algorithms constrain the art that reaches us,” on Substack.
Six Nations Rugby, the home for stories on the Guinness Six Nations, has launched on Substack.
Inspired by the writers and creators featured in the Weekender? Starting your own Substack is just a few clicks away:
The Weekender is a weekly roundup of writing, ideas, art, audio, and video from the world of Substack. Posts are recommended by staff and readers, and curated and edited by out of Substack’s New York office.
2026-10-24 21:02:04
This week, we’re sneaking into places where we just barely belong, making peace with unruly body parts, and debriefing fashion month over a bottle of wine.
WILD-GOOSE CHASES
How one British artist turned the world into a search party after burying a precious, jewel-laden piece, leaving the only clues to its location in a children’s book.
— in Intriguing Times
On the night of August 7, 1979, British artist Kit Williams and television presenter Bamber Gascoigne were in a park in Bedfordshire. Williams was there to bury a valuable golden hare, and Gascoigne was an independent witness to the fact that a treasure had really been buried.
The magnificent hare was handmade by Williams and was made of 18-carat gold, decorated with precious stones, including a ruby eye, along with moonstone, turquoise, mother-of-pearl, and a compound called faience. It had been valued at around £5,000 (around £33,000 or $44,000 today).
Williams let it be known that he’d buried the hare somewhere in Britain, and anyone who found it could keep it. All people had to do to find it was solve a series of complicated clues hidden in an elaborately illustrated children’s book called Masquerade.
It was supposed to be a bit of fun.
What followed was one of the most extraordinary mass treasure hunts in British history. People got really, really into it. The book sold more than a million copies, and people from all over the world flew into the UK to try their luck. Williams soon found himself more popular than he wanted to be, and had to deal with thousands of desperate treasure hunters constantly hassling him.
When the hare was eventually found around two and a half years later, things got even weirder.
It all started in 1976 when a publisher named Tom Maschler approached the artist Kit Williams to see if he wanted to illustrate a children’s book. When Williams turned him down, Maschler said, “Pity, I think you could do something with books which has never been done before.”
It got Williams thinking, and the idea grew on him. He wanted people to really look at his art and spend time examining it. That was when he came up with the idea of making it a puzzle.
He then spent three years working on the intricate paintings for the book. Masquerade was essentially a magical fable for children where a hare called Jack was entrusted with delivering a precious jewel from the Moon to the Sun. Unfortunately, Jack lost the treasure somewhere in Britain.
Readers were welcome to try to find the jewel.
Williams learned traditional jewelling techniques and used tools inherited from his grandfather to make the elaborate hare. In addition to the gold and jewels, there were other decorations like bells. It was then placed in a ceramic casket and sealed with wax.
When Williams and Gascoigne buried the treasure, they carefully replaced the turf to hide what they’d done. Gascoigne had apparently also brought a fresh cowpat in a Tupperware box, and he placed it on the upturned earth to further disguise the disturbed ground.
Once they’d officially buried it, the Masquerade book was released. It proved spectacularly popular.
The first printing sold out in two days. Soon, thousands of treasure seekers across Britain were frantically searching for an ornate gold hare.
Somewhat predictably, some people got massively carried away. Quite a few became convinced they had solved the puzzle and knew where the treasure lay. They would then go and dig up a section of a park or someone’s garden and find they were wrong. Landowners were forced to erect signs telling them to go away. (Reminiscent of the Pokémon Go fad.)
Laker Airways got in on the action and offered Ten-Day Masquerade Treasure Tours. In addition to the flight, passengers also got a map of Britain and a spade, so they could get started the moment they landed.
According to later estimates, nearly two million treasure seekers in countries as far afield as Australia and Japan tried to solve the puzzle.
Meanwhile, Williams suddenly found himself inundated with mail. Over the course of the hunt, he received around 30,000 letters, sometimes more than 200 a day. He tried to read them all to see if anyone had discovered the solution. They hadn’t.
PRODIGIES
HEALTH
For much of her life, Maura Brannigan has been worried about her breasts. Mostly because, at times, it seems like they might be trying to kill her.
— in Clotheshorse
The first time, I was walking home on one of those sparkling October afternoons, fresh off a very Illinois standardized test called the Prairie State Achievement Exam. When I hiked up my backpack strap, heavy with physics textbooks and a Vera Bradley pencil case, my hand brushed against something that, as far as I knew, hadn’t been there before. Right there outside Mason Park, I felt around and found it: a blob the size and shape of a kidney bean, springy and a little soft to the touch. I was 16, certainly more worried about my ACT score than my mortality.
When I got home, I called my parents at work, got ready for ballet, and spent the next two hours trying very hard to think about pliés. Later that night, I lay in bed among my stuffed animals while my mom sat at my desk, frantically googling on the baby blue Dell laptop I’d gotten for my birthday days earlier and scaring herself half to death. I remember thinking, maybe for the first time, that I might be too old for all those stuffed animals.
It turned out to be nothing, of course: mastitis, an infection that called for a course of antibiotics and a ballpoint circle drawn around the lump so I could watch it shrink. It happened once more, about a year later, which is how I came to give myself monthly breast exams at 16, when I should have been more worried about getting boobs than losing them.
The most recent time was 10 days ago. I’d gone in for an ultrasound to monitor a new mass found on a routine mammogram six months earlier. By now, two decades in, I can perform the choreography in my sleep. The stoic ultrasound tech does the scan, then exits, leaving you tits-out in silence. Eventually, she returns with marching orders. If she comes back alone, you get dressed and go home. If she brings the radiologist, you don’t… But last week, she brought the radiologist. The mass had grown “significantly” since my last scan, which meant another needle biopsy.
In between, by my count, I’ve had two needle biopsies, two titanium marker clips, three mammograms, 15 physical exams, and 12 ultrasounds, under the care of two different surgical oncologists at two different cancer centers in two different states.
After 20 years of this, I no longer experience these appointments as emergencies. They’re more like jury duty: dreaded, unavoidable, and recurring whether I like it or not. Which is why, when the radiologist peeked in behind the tech, when she said we’d need a biopsy to rule out cancer, when she handed me a thick, glossy pamphlet titled How to Interpret Your Biopsy Result, I laughed.
[. . .]
The truth is, my boobs and I had issues long before anyone handed me a hospital gown. Breasts are complicated things to live with… Inside mine, I’ve been keeping score for my entire adult life. There’s a startup-world idea I’ve always liked: Increase the surface area of your luck. Put yourself in more rooms, and good fortune has more chances to find you. My boobs have done the inverse. Every scan widens the surface area for bad news, and after enough years of waiting for the other shoe to drop, you start thinking like a gambler. I’ve won so many hands. Eventually, the house wins, and one of these days, my doctor won’t be bringing good news.
THE GOLDEN YEARS
FASHION
Gabriella Karefa-Johnson gathers a cohort of seasoned fashion professionals to dissect what they saw come down the runways and evaluate the state of the industry at large.
— in Brain Matter
At the close of the Spring 2027 season, and as recently as *checks notes* YESTERDAY, we have seen yet another round of creative-director musical chairs and it appears that our business is only about to get kookier. The exit of Anthony Vaccarello from Saint Laurent we knew about… they famously do not accommodate me at their show, so I can’t speak to that not-so-solemn hero’s procession/ego death dipped in gold, BUT if the front row all dressed in complete black was any indication, Vaccarello was at least granted the opportunity to throw his own funeral. Fab! Veronica Leoni from Calvin Klein and Seán McGirr from Alexander McQueen, on the other hand, those were a relative surprise and, had they been announced in Paris, the news certainly would have shaken a few post-show tables and spawned a couple spirals over cigarettes and martinis.
Luckily, there really was no shortage of the proverbial shit to talk this season—nor of cigarettes and martinis. Thank god for the 10pm dinner sitch that is de rigueur for Paris fashion week because after each day, I personally needed to kiki with my friends and untangle what the hell was happening in a GROUP setting. Because, as much as I love to write about fashion, some things simply must be screamed over one another in a noisy restaurant, preferably with women who know what the fuck they’re talking about and aren’t afraid to disagree with me.
ACCIDENTAL ART
TOUGH EXITS
When Dennis Crowley co-founded the tech company Foursquare, the possibilities seemed endless. Now, a month after an acquisition that yielded a “$0 outcome for equity holders,” Crowley unpacks what went wrong and what went right, and imparts advice for fellow founders.
— in Teendrama Snippets
Almost exactly a month ago, Foursquare was acquired, marking the end of a 17-year story that started around my kitchen table in the East Village in 2009. “The terms of the deal were not disclosed,” but some details have surfaced online. One of our earliest angel investors wrote:
Several days after the announcement I got the paperwork about the sale from Foursquare’s legal counsel. [...] around page 50 was the sentence I needed to see, which said that “each share of Preferred Stock was cancelled and extinguished, without any conversion thereof or payment of any cash or other property or consideration therefor, and ceased to exist.”
Translation: The Foursquare acquisition was a $0 outcome for equity holders—$0 for preferred, $0 for common. It’s bittersweet to see these details surface publicly—at least now there’s an opportunity to comment on them.
I was heartbroken by this ending. There are so many people who put so much time and energy and passion and love into building Foursquare—the company, the products, the brand, the culture. If you were part of it (or even close to it), you know exactly what I’m talking about. To our ~1,600 former employees over 17 years, I am sorry the Foursquare story ended in such a way that makes it seem like our collective efforts were worth… nothing?
I’m writing this post for three reasons, (1) I want an artifact that that captures FSQ’s ending from my POV to exist on the internet, (2) I want to hold leadership (myself included) accountable for the outcome, and (3) I’ve learned a lot—strategically, emotionally, psychologically—about starting, scaling, and losing a company that I loved, and those learnings feel worthy of sharing with other founders and investors. “Trust” and “transparency” have always been core to Foursquare’s DNA, so if there’s going to be any last word on the company, they should echo these values.
[. . .]
I was the CEO for the first seven years (and I raised both equity and debt) and was Chair/Co-Chair of the Board for 17 years (as the company raised *more* equity and debt), so I take responsibility in part for how we got here. We raised a lot of capital under my leadership, and my decisions as CEO led us to the point where we needed additional capital, including the private equity round in 2019. (I stepped out of the CEO role in 2016 and stepped away from my day-to-day role running the R&D Lab in 2021.) I kept my Board Seat after I left and often thought of myself as a champion for the common shareholder. In hindsight, I could have pushed harder as a board member (though tricky when holding just one of seven seats).
The CEO job is impossibly hard and often thankless, but even in the darkest of scenarios there’s a way to lead with grace and humility. To many current and former employees, the final chapter of the company felt disrespectful. To provide a single example, current employees told me that, despite an in-person all hands meeting, they learned their shares would be worth nothing via an email from Foursquare’s legal team. Former employees learned these details via an email from Carta, with details buried in a 125-page PDF sent from Foursquare’s legal team. No single individual stood up to own (or even acknowledge) the outcome—the antithesis of the transparency and trust that was so core to our early DNA.
ORGANIZED CHAOS
TESTING LIMITS
David Allegretti has a treasure trove of fluorescent yellow vests he’s collected from his time reporting on music festivals at Vice. Years later, he decided to put them to the test.
— in David Allegretti
When you’re young, you have an unquenchable desire to do things. Festivals, concerts, shows. These things cost money. When you have $7 to your name, you are forced into a box, and the only way out is to get creative. Fences were my friend. Over, under, through. There was always a spot. Always a section to exploit, a place unguarded. A reward there for anyone willing to climb for it.
Sometimes there wouldn’t be a fence. Sometimes the only way in was through the front. So I became observant. Security guards are human beings, and human beings are distracted by shiny things. Life is all about picking your moments. Pick your moment right and you can slip by god himself.
This ability would come in handy more times than I can count in my early work for VICE. One of my first big pieces involved sneaking into the headquarters of Australia’s most notorious cult. A crazy thing to have done for $100, looking back. But what else was VICE built on if not the hubris and gall of 20-year-old freelancers willing to risk their lives for a byline.
Writing for VICE throughout my time at uni opened certain doors. I started getting press invites to concerts and festivals. I’d show up, and this time I’d be welcomed in. Skip the line. Here’s your pass. Here, put this on.
A vest. A beautiful yellow fluorescent vest… The vest got me everywhere I desired. All I had to do was act like I belonged.
And so I kept every vest I was given. I kept one in my bag, a couple in my car, and a whole bunch under my bed or the back of my wardrobe.
In late 2016, after a conversation with my editor, I decided to write about vests. At first it was going to be a stream-of-consciousness feature; a love letter to the high-vis vest. At the time I wrote:
The world is a stratified place. Important people get into exclusive places. Everyone else has to pay shit loads of money, or watch longingly through the fence. But there’s a loophole into getting into places for free, if you’re so inclined. You just need to pretend to be an important person. And people who wear hi-vis are important in the sense that they fix things no one else cares about. If you see someone in hi-vis stepping through a barricade, or marching past a bouncer, you naturally assume they’re headed to fix something. This makes a hi-vis vest the keys to life.
But that on its own was boring. I had to put it into action. And so I decided I had to bring the reader along on a ride to actually test that theory—to see what I could sneak into in just one day, and write about that.
We started at the movies. I wanted an easy win to ease us in. I’d been sneaking into movies since I was in my early teens, so this should’ve been a piece of tiramisu. And it was. The only bummer was that we were at the mercy of whatever was showing at the time, which turned out to be “Office Christmas Party.” We stuck around for a bit. Surprisingly, it was okay. Although the thrill of sneaking in may have played a part.
The zoo proved more of a challenge, albeit just a psychological one…
FOMO
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Jimmy Chin, a climber, skier, photographer, and filmmaker, is now on Substack.
The comedian, writer, and actor Abbi Jacobson is now on Substack, which she’ll use to share works she’s created as well as works in progress.
Delia Smith, a British chef and broadcaster, has joined Substack.
Hattie Brett, the former editor in chief of Grazia, has joined Substack to write about “women, work, and whether we’re all beginning to redefine ambition.”
British news outlet The i Paper has launched a Substack.
Shea Serrano, founder of the popular culture Substack “Good Movie” and a five-time New York Times bestselling author, has launched After Review, a weekly NBA newsletter.
Jordyn Huitema, a professional soccer player and the CEO of Jordyskin, has joined Substack. Her subscription proceeds will go toward supporting Soccer Without Borders.
The Strand, a legendary New York bookstore, is now on Substack, sharing “dispatches from booksellers, staff picks, book recommendations, and treasures from our archive.”
Inspired by the writers and creators featured in the Weekender? Starting your own Substack is just a few clicks away:
The Weekender is a weekly roundup of writing, ideas, art, audio, and video from the world of Substack. Posts are recommended by staff and readers, and curated and edited by out of Substack’s New York office.
2026-10-17 21:03:39
This week, we’re turning 74, rebooting a favorite show, and diving into Colleen Hoover’s writing process.
GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS
Perhaps by now you’ve heard the news, if not felt some sort of magnetic force field open in Brooklyn: a Girls reboot is officially on the horizon, nearly a decade after the show’s final episode aired. “We are not, strictly speaking, girls anymore,” Lena Dunham wrote in her announcement on Substack. “And I couldn’t stop thinking about where our Girls would be, and how they’d meet this milestone.” Substackers, including Dunham herself, were quick to weigh in. In the Serratore Report, best friends Em and Angela debate the concept of reboots altogether.
— in The Serratore Report
Emalie: The Girls Reboot Is Going to Ruin Its Legacy!
Let me start here: I love Girls and think it’s a fantastic show! I watched each episode live as they aired, and I’ve done several rewatches. I’m also going to say two things so fast that I’m not going to elaborate on.
Nostalgia is fun and comfy-cozy, and we need it in these dark times. But all these reboots are ruining TV and film and keeping us from getting anything fun and original.
Girls is an Obama-era show more or less and, just like Fight Club, didn’t stand up in a post-recession world when it no longer made sense to complain about owning a condo and having lots of IKEA furniture. The whole tone won’t really land anymore.
When I turned 30, I started to suddenly get interested and excited by birds. “Oh look, a hawk!” I’d say while I was out at the park, or “Wow, a cardinal!” I realized I was suddenly able to spot unusual birds because I was suddenly not thinking about myself as much. This is part of growth, and while Girls was relevant in its time for capturing the zeitgeist around archetypal millennial assholes, it endures as great art because it’s also a show about youth evolving and fading and growth!
One of my favorite episodes of comfort television is when Tally Schifrin, a.k.a. Jenny Slate, Hannah’s writing nemesis, returns, and rather than snipe at each other, the girls bond and have a beautiful day together and enter into a new friendship. The episode is so vulnerable and so unique—it basically subverts everything we expect to happen in a show about self-centered young women and shows real growth on behalf of these characters!
The entire last season of this show is about maturing, realizing what you like and don’t like, and letting go of your youth and some (many) of your young friendships and relationships because you can’t go back.
Angela: Thank You, Lena—We Needed This
On a personal level: I really needed this!!!!!!!!! It is still the only prestige TV show I watched that mirrored the world I actually lived in: one where everyone had an internship that might turn into a paying job and also multiple versions of that fuckass American Apparel dress that was like, “I want to look sexy but I don’t want anyone to know I want to look sexy.” You know the one I mean.
[. . .]
I do not think the reboot will be wish fulfillment for Lena in the way And Just Like That was for SJP and co. Sex and the City, when it first started airing, was genuinely Saying Something about the world around it, something emphasized by the fact that a bunch of Season 1 + 2 episodes were directed by Nicole Holofcener and the guys the gals were dating were all from Hal Hartley movies. As the show became more about shoes and Magnolia Bakery, the characters became less like characters and more like avatars of the actresses themselves.
Lena, for all her faults, is a deeply talented writer and fundamentally not a lazy creative, and I know and trust she’d never make the mistake of showing us a Hannah she thinks we’d want to see, or even a Hannah whose life looked too much like Lena’s. Remember: a huge part of why Girls is so good is that Hannah is a shitty writer. She doesn’t have anything particularly interesting to say, and she has no work ethic. Hannah at 27 couldn’t know this, because you can’t really know anything at 27, but Hannah at 40 definitely will know this, whether she admits it openly or not. This, to me, is a compelling starting point for a five-episode look at a person we once spent a lot of time with.
OVER THE HILL
MOVIES
Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes allowed Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim to film her final days of freedom at home before reporting to prison for her 10-year sentence. Sam Bodrojan saw the highly anticipated film prior to its nationwide release and reported back.
— in cc: helmet girl
When I was in high school, I read Jane Eyre every three months. I felt I was her on some level, though I was not married nor was I yet a woman. Often touted as a proto-feminist novel about female autonomy and choosing love without sacrificing personal morals, I have basically never wavered in my more pessimistic interpretation. Jane, whose formative years were spent abused and starved, spends the rest of the novel pursuing the love of a man so ardently that she abandons every other part of her life—her education, the promise of social mobility, an honest life partner, her sense of self. And in the end, she remains satisfied with her decision; I have always found her defiant happiness troubling.
I thought a lot about Jane Eyre during You Can See Everything, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s 174-minute hybrid documentary about Theranos founder and Silicon Valley pharmafraud Elizabeth Holmes. YCSE was made 95% in secret. Nathan and Lance arrive at a beachfront rental in San Diego on April 26, 2023—34 days before Elizabeth is to be sent to prison. They are given unfettered access to the daily lives of Elizabeth, her husband Billy Evans, and their two young children. The first portion of the film chronicles this month-and-change in intimate detail.
Lance’s approach resembles the steady accumulation of a laundry pile in the corner: It is never invisible—on the contrary, it is quite invasive—but his subjects habituate to his constant presence, learn how to walk around him without looking up or tripping. He loves watching people perform, actors and non-actors alike. He is at once condescending and sincerely interested in his subjects. He sensationalizes and lampoons them at the same time as he seems invested in depicting them honestly. He is manipulative and generous at once. You are never quite sure if you’ve “bought in” to his project, even when you undoubtedly have.
The film is predicated on a similar type of skepticism. Nominally, Nathan Fielder is focused on a single question: Is Elizabeth Holmes a liar? The answer is “yes,” and you already know that. She denies it, of course, giving absurd roundabout justifications for her previous words and present manipulations of the filmmaker (and the audience). One extraordinary scene finds Fielder trying to illustrate (justify? disprove?) how Elizabeth processes words using a specific YouTube video, only to accidentally administer something quite similar to an autism test frequently given to young children. When presented with evidence of her own dishonesty, she claims that she understood her own words differently. It doesn’t really matter whether you believe her. The real question is whether she believes herself, especially when the alternative is acknowledging how far she has drifted from self-knowledge. Not even 30 minutes in, Elizabeth Holmes has admitted that she is fundamentally incapable of communicating honestly with another human being.
At this point, the focus starts drifting towards Elizabeth’s relationship with Billy. Her husband is a classic Cali-to-Austin type: a far-right misogynist with terminal founder brain. It is not a spoiler to say that You Can See Everything is, in part, a portrait of domestic abuse. What is at first only visible through telling details, like when Billy chastises Elizabeth for how she whisks eggs, eventually escalates to absurd extremities beyond my comprehension. Dissenters on YCSE will likely say it makes a spectacle out of partner violence, but I found its gawking, befuddled helplessness to be honest and unexpectedly empathetic.
NEW ROMANTICS
WINNING SOME, LOSING SOME
When Jacqueline Sahlin started a weight-loss journey, she knew her life would look different on the other side. What she didn’t anticipate was that the people in her orbit would too.
— in Jac’s Loudest Secret
“What’s the biggest change you’ve experienced after losing 60 pounds?”
It’s a question I get often, and my answer surprises most people. People expect me to say pretty privilege, that people treat me differently, open doors for me, and give me free things. While that’s true to an extent, the biggest change was how losing weight affected my friendships.
It wasn’t every friendship, and there were certainly other contributing factors to the strain of these relationships, but losing weight and everything that came with that journey played a part. It’s an experience I don’t see many people talk about, and being on a GLP-1 added another, complicated, layer.
There are two parts of going on a GLP-1 that I wasn’t prepared for.
The first: confessing I was going on a GLP-1. And yes, at the time, it felt like a confession.
Whether they know it or not, every single person I’ve told that I’m on a GLP-1 has had a reaction. Sometimes it’s an excited, “I’m on a GLP-1 too!” Sometimes it’s concern: “Oh wow, that seems scary, injecting yourself every week.” And sometimes it’s a look of disappointment. The kind that seems to say, “Great, another person on a GLP-1.”
Seeing the look of disappointment was a blow. And I will tell you this now: I’m no longer friends with any of the people who gave me that look. I didn’t stop talking to them then and there. But looking back, those reactions feel connected to the ways I later felt unsupported. That helped ease some of the guilt I had about ending those friendships.
The second is something I really wish I’d known about. If you’re starting a GLP-1, this is the part I hope you take with you.
The exhaustion I felt after starting a GLP-1 affected my relationships.
In the initial months after starting a GLP-1, I was exhausted all of the time. I didn’t have energy for even the most basic social interactions. As someone who is normally pretty social, I went from regularly spending time with friends to sleeping or resting. I saved what little energy I had for work and getting myself to the gym twice a week.
I stopped seeing friends I used to walk with multiple times a week. Dinners I might have had were out the door. I turned down every invite. And my friendships felt it. How many times can you expect someone to hear “can’t make it” before they get annoyed?
I will be honest about my own faults here and own my part in this. My exhaustion made me selfish. I only “had energy” to think about myself. I was so focused on getting through the exhaustion that I wasn’t thinking about how my absence affected other people. I don’t just mean that I wasn’t physically spending time with them. I wasn’t making room for the fact that my absence hurt them.
ANCIENT TEXTS
ADAPTATIONS
Bestselling author Colleen Hoover sits down with Dakota Johnson to discuss her writing process, upbringing, and how “professional” a person should be.
—
ART
AGING
Dierdre Wolownick has done it all. An award-winning writer, tour guide, marathoner, rock climber, artist, conductor, musician, and mother, she reflects on what it’s like to be 74.
— in Oldster
Dierdre Wolownick’s award-winning writing is published worldwide, and her books have won 17 awards. For 44 years, she taught 5 foreign languages on 3 continents and has been an independent publisher, international speaker (in 4 languages), tour guide, marathoner, rock climber, artist (painter), airline personnel (Air France) and more. She founded and created the West Sacramento Community Orchestra, which she conducted for 4 years, and through it all has been a performing musician (piano, flute, others). She is the mother of two extreme athletes, one of whom is Alex Honnold of the Oscar-winning film Free Solo.
In 2017, she became the oldest woman to scale Yosemite’s El Capitan, and the first feature-length documentary about her, Climbing Into Life, won 13 awards at film festivals across the U.S. and will soon be available to the public. The second documentary feature about her, Au Pied du Mur/Inner Walls, was just released in Montréal and throughout Québec and will soon play in Las Vegas. Her memoir, The Sharp End of Life, is now published in five languages, and her latest book, Success in 7 Steps, which has won 3 awards, distills all her successes into a simple, how-to method that anyone of any age or gender can follow, to finally achieve their dream goal.
Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think?
20. Because at that age I lived for a year in France (did my third year of university there), and that’s when I really started to live and be aware. (I was raised in a very repressive, controlling household.)
What do you like about being your age?
Not being dead. Still enjoying life!
What is difficult about being your age?
Every age has difficult parts. Now, at my age, the difficulties are mostly physical. And I’m guessing that, as I get even older, I will begin losing more friends and family. My father always used to talk about that, in his 90s. The longer you live, the lonelier you get, simply because those you knew are gone. I’ve been feeling that lately; I’m from a huge extended family, and now we’re down to just a few.
What has been your favorite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?
I’ve never understood why people prefer being one age or another. We learn so much as we go through any/every age. Why deny any of it its importance? So I guess my “favorite” age would be the one I’m in now.
Would I go back to any previous age? Probably not… Maybe my “middle age,” but just so that I could get more done! Publish more books! Make more music. Conduct my orchestra in more places. Have more fun. But this age can be fun too!
How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?
Not sure what you mean by this. I’m still the same person I’ve always been. My person, my identity has never been tied to age. Age is meaningless; I knew that when I was 4 and following all the older neighborhood boys up the trees and onto the garage roofs. I still believe it, as I go rock climbing with my younger friends.
Age is a social construct; you can accept it or reject it. This is, of course, a health-bound concept; if you suffer from a horrible or crippling disease, obviously things will be different for you. But all things being equal, age plays no role except in how many candles to buy for your birthday cake.
PLAYING WITH FOOD
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Author and digital creator Drew Afualo is now on Substack. Her first post is an ode to women everywhere.
Singer and songwriter Sheryl Crow has launched on Substack.
Marina Hyde, a podcast host and writer, is now on Substack, where she’ll be “writing at least twice a week on entertainment, culture, politics, sport, the royals, viral moments, the media,” and other “personal obsessions.”
Interior designer, author, cabaret singer, and art editor Nicky Haslam has launched on Substack.
Inspired by the writers and creators featured in the Weekender? Starting your own Substack is just a few clicks away:
The Weekender is a weekly roundup of writing, ideas, art, audio, and video from the world of Substack. Posts are recommended by staff and readers, and curated and edited by out of Substack’s New York office.
