Rich Text

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A little over five years ago, we started Rich Text on Substack because we needed a change. We had been at HuffPost for a decade, from the peak of its heyday to its somewhat ignominious acquisition by BuzzFeed. We had cycled through different positions as writers and editors, and we had survived round after round of layoffs. We had started Here to Make Friends, a feminist reality dating show podcast, and it had lasted despite occasional attempts by management to pivot it to video. We had been lucky enough to collaborate with brilliant editors, writers and producers, but we had also watched those colleagues leave. We were burnt out and rudderless. Our hope was that a little side project on Substack would give us a low-stakes, chill place to mess around, blog, try random stuff, and get back in touch with our voices. A creative refresh, if you will. 

Then, almost exactly five years ago, the layoff cycle finally came for us. We were called into our virtual HR meetings with a taped (but unedited) “Bachelor” recap still dangling. It was never published. But we weren’t ready to say goodbye to podcasting, and we were suddenly energized by the possibility of taking control of the show, of our writing, and of our creative futures. Substack became not just a space to experiment, but the home base of our entire body of work. And our wonderful subscribers allowed us to keep doing that work – while paying our bills, including Claire’s eye-popping daycare tuition.

In so many ways, our time at Substack gave us all of the things we had ever hoped for. We were able to build, brick by brick, a tiny media company of two. We were able to pay for our health care (Emma) and child care (Claire). We found a vibrant community full of brilliant, challenging, funny people – all of whom wanted to analyze culture in the way that we did! After years of being limited to “Bachelor” recaps on our podcast, and following the whims of editorial leadership when it came to story selection, we were able to truly take the reins, writing and podcasting about all the reality shows, rom-coms, weird viral essays, prestige dramas, and sociopolitical trends our little hearts desired. And we got to do it all on our terms, for the best audience in the business. We have never taken these gifts for granted, not for one single day. We recognize how very lucky we are to be able to make a living doing something that we truly love, and we're incredibly, profoundly grateful to all of you for supporting our work.

But as with any media ecosystem, even a relatively scrappy indie one, there came challenges. After years of natural growth and support from Substack staffers, both waned. The platform began to prioritize bringing over large, institutional publications and celebrity writers over mid-size publications like ours. Discoverability became more challenging, and Substack kept ending up in the news because of its tacit support for Nazis and transphobes. The latest big development is that Substack has partnered with… Polymarket. All of these things left us with the looming sense that we would have to make the leap to another platform at some point in time. But, of course, making a big change is really fucking scary. Especially when that change could upend your ability to pay your bills. 

So when Patreon reached out, it felt like a golden opportunity to make a leap with real support – and one we might never get again. Patreon is a platform built originally for podcasters, which is a big part of what we do on Rich Text. We loved the idea of being in a place where audio content is truly valued, and where we can be an active part of shaping what the newsletter product will be in the future. We loved that the financial investment that Patreon was willing to make into our scrappy little media project would allow us to rebuild without complete and total panic haunting us at every turn. 

Patreon, of course, isn’t perfect. No platform will be. But the hope is that we can write our next chapter sustainably. We want to set ourselves up so that Rich Text is something we can continue making for the next five years and then another five years after that. And we feel like some of the new features we’ll have access to on Patreon – organized collections! The ability to pay for one-off posts or series! More tier options! – will allow us to grow in a healthy way.

Now that we’re here, in our unfamiliar new home, surrounded by moving boxes and art we don’t know where to hang yet, it feels a little scary and stressful. There’s a lot to do. But that also means a lot of possibility. All the same things you knew and (hopefully) loved back at Substack will be here: weekly recommendations and podcasts, occasional essays, subscriber chats. We’re also looking forward to experimenting with new features and bonus content – and implementing your feedback from our big reader survey last month! – as we figure out what will make Rich Text itself an even richer text in the coming years. There will be more conversations about the motherhood divide, our personal lives, reality television scandals, bizarre made-for-streaming holiday rom-coms about sexy snowmen and viral essays that set your group chats ablaze. There will be more writing about girl culture, the ways fatherhood is treated vs. motherhood, books we love, TV we love, and progressive politics. 

Trust us: We KNOW that asking you to change over your subscription to a whole different platform is super annoying. The whole point of a subscription is that it’s seamless! You should never have to think about it! We, too, hate dealing with the process of moving our information over to a new app, linking up custom podcast feeds again, etc. We did not make the choice to inflict this on you lightly. We really believe that Patreon will be a more sustainable and welcoming space for our work and for this community. And we are here – along with the REAL HUMANS of the Patreon team – to make this transition as easy as possible!

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Thank you for being here! xo Claire & Emma

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The bosoms, they are heaving. The corsets, they have been unlaced. With the release of Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights,” a film that offers such a stickily horny and romanticized take on Emily Brontë’s tale of emotional trauma and Gothic horrors that multiple critics glossed it as “fan fiction,” it seems that the cultural triumph of the spicy historical romance has been made complete. The arrival of “Bridgerton” season 4 part 2 (the sexy half!) just a couple of weeks later only underlines this. And, generally speaking, we’re not complaining! (Though, in the wake of the overwhelmingly steamy “Heated Rivalry,” the bar for success has been raised.)

But, after absorbing the sight of Jacob Elordi lifting Margot Robbie effortlessly by the corset strings to the throbbing beats of Charlie XCX, we’re left wondering if things have been taken a bit far. What is lost from “Wuthering Heights” when it is reduced to a tale of star-crossed lovers who have a boinkfest all over the moors? Is our obsession with smut giving all of us, including Fennell, just the teensiest bit of brain rot?

In this episode, we discuss the ongoing boom in sexy costume dramas and its implications. Then we dig into “Bridgerton” season 4 part 2, which manages to bring most of its storylines to a satisfying conclusion after a part 1 overstretched with table-setting. We get into the impossibility of a happy ending for our class-crossing couple that didn’t rely on one fortuitous exception for one lucky illegitimate maid, and the rather rote sex scenes. In an unlikely twist for the romance series, the heart of this drop was its depiction of grief, which was the subject of its most deeply felt and moving scenes. We also discuss Penelope’s retirement, Varley’s return, Lady Danbury’s voyage, and what seems to be coming next for the series.

Finally, we turn our focus to “Wuthering Heights.” We share our prior relationships with the Brontë novel, our first impressions of the movie, and our reactions to all the finger-licking and smashed egg yolks. We try to figure out why Robbie and Elordi felt like uncanny dolls, or children in adult bodies, and we talk about Sara Petersen’s essay about the removal of mothers and motherhood from this adaptation. We also discuss the discourse around the whitewashing of Heathcliff and the notable choices Fennell made in casting and storytelling that seem to pointedly center whiteness — and intentionally sanitize the central couple to present them as romantic heroes.

References and reading:

“Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights Is Fan Fiction,” by Annie Berke

“‘Wuthering Heights’ Is Pure Fan Fiction,” by Emma Camp

“Finally, a Smooth-Brained Wuthering Heights,” by Allison Willmore

“Wuthering Heights Has No Space For Mothers,” by Sara Petersen

“Margot Robbie’s hot take on filmmaking goes viral as critics slam her latest movie, ‘Wuthering Heights’,” by Jude Cramer

“Wuthering Heights: Emerald Fennell Defends Her Controversial 'Version' of Emily Brontë's Classic Novel,” by Benjamin VanHoose

“Wuthering Heights is at its heart a story of class and race. Emerald Fennell has got it all wrong,” by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

“How the Latest "Wuthering Heights" Interpretation Is More Than Just Whitewashing; It’s a Pattern,” by Jess, the PrideBrarian

“Jacob Elordi, Heathcliff and the Controversy Over ‘Wuthering Heights’,” by Esther Zuckerman

"Is Heathcliff White?” by Jasmine Vojdani

Timestamps for easy listening:

0:00 — What’s going on with all the period piece smut?

6:27 — The second half of “Bridgerton” S4

41:50 — Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights”

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In 2009 on “Tell Me Lies,” Lucy’s life is crashing and burning right into the ground. In 2009 in the real world, Tyra Banks was teaching young women how to “smize” on the hit show “America’s Next Top Model.” This week, we dive into both versions of the late aughts — fictional and reality.

After three dark, twisted, and completely fucked up seasons, “Tell Me Lies” came to an end on Tuesday. Showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer announced the news on Instagram on Monday night, writing that “this was always the ending my writing team and I had in mind, and we are insanely proud of it.” She added that the audience’s “incredible response to this season inspired us to explore whether there was another organic way to continue the story, but ultimately we felt it had reached its natural conclusion.” So in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, viewers were left to see if the team could stick the landing and wrap up all of the chaos that had been building in both the 2009 and 2015 timelines.

The result was a mixed bag. Some major plot holes that left us yearning for a fourth season, but also some “imperfect justice.” The series’ ambiguous final moments leave some things up to viewer interpretation, and as two culture critics, we often find that that’s where the real fun begins. (Plus, that “Toxic” needle drop was simply perfection.)

We also traveled back in time to the glory days of “ANTM,” via Netflix’s new documentary, “Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model.” The three part docu-series, which features interviews with Tyra Banks, Ken Mok, Jay Manuel, Nigel Barker and Miss J. Alexander, as well as prominent former contestants like Shandi Sullivan, Danielle Evans, Whitney Thompson, Keenyah Hill, attempts to grapple with the dark and complex legacy of the reality juggernaut.

And boy is there a lot of darkness to sort through.

“Reality Check” attempts to contextualize “ANTM” within the racist, homophobic, fatphobic time period it emerged during, and the even more racist, homophobic, fatphobic industry that it was attempting to broaden. But what becomes clear is that whatever lofty goals Banks had when she created “ANTM,” were overshadowed by the utter lack of protections in place for the cast members — who were predominantly vulnerable, very young women. Not only were the aspiring models cast subjected to microaggressions — Ebony Haith, a Black cast member from Cycle 1, has her hair texture mocked by white stylists during makeover day; Thompson, who won Cycle 10, shows up to castings where they’ve refused to pull clothes in her size — but also to physical dangers. (Sullivan’s story of being sexually assaulted on camera in Milan during Cycle 2, and then being framed as a cheating harlot on national television, is particularly harrowing.) And unfortunately, the decision makers interviewed still seem unwilling to take full accountability.

In this episode of the Rich Text podcast, we get into it all, from our own experiences watching “ANTM” as teenagers, to the lingering questions “Tell Me Lies” left us with. We hope you enjoy!

Timestamps for easy listening:

0:00 — The “Tell Me Lies” series finale

43:12 — The twisted legacy of “America’s Next Top Model”

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

The central theme of this season of Netflix romance series “Bridgerton” comes into sharp focus at the end of the first episode.

After charming rakish second son Benedict Bridgerton at his mother’s masquerade ball with her witty banter and sense of wonder, our masked heroine rushes home. We see her remove her formal glove, shoes and mask. Suddenly, she is staring into the humble mirror in her bedchamber, her full face in view for the first time. And instead of finery, she is dressed in a maid’s outfit. The major roadblock to a relationship between Sophie Baek and Benedict Bridgerton will not be a misunderstanding or a clash of personalities or a one-sided desire to end a bloodline. Instead, it will be something quite tangible, especially during the Regency era. It will be about class.

It’s a fascinating moment for this season to hit our screens. On the one hand, as many viewers have noted, the uneven power dynamics of a Cinderella-inspired story — as this one definitively is — feel less fun to explore in fiction when we’re seeing the very real rollbacks of the rights of women in this country. (Part of why “Heated Rivalry” felt like such a salve to so many women viewers.) On the other hand, it’s clear that the writers injected some real class consciousness and modern labor politics into the text of the show. And that revamped text feels quite timely. (See: Mrs. Varley telling Lady Featherington off for using the language of “family” as a way to underpay her for two decades.)

In this episode, we get into it all: the class dynamics, the power of AAPI representation, the ways in which the Cinderella tropes work and don’t, the many ancillary B-plots, and the pointed ways that the writers changed the plot of the show from its source material. Hope you enjoy! Xo

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This week, we’re diving into two topics that, somehow, both involve evil Stephens who want women to have their babies for nefarious reasons: the recent wave of high-profile, propagandistic pregnancy announcements in the Trump White House, and the current season of the dark teen soap “Tell Me Lies.”

First, we get into the MAGA baby boom. Over the past month, three prominent Trump administration officials — Vice President J.D. Vance, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, and Chief Architect of Evil Stephen Miller — have announced that they are expecting babies. For Vance and Miller, these will be their fourth children; Leavitt, who is just 28, is expecting her second. Having a baby shouldn’t be a political act, nor should it be right- or left-coded. But it’s clear from how these officials, and the White House, have framed these announcements that a mini baby boom within their ranks is doing valuable political work for them: it’s not only a sweet and fuzzy distraction from the violence being wreaked on American communities by ICE, but an advertisement for their so-called “pro-family” policies. We also unpack the telling language used by the Vances and Leavitt to discuss their pregnancies, how these ideologically tinged announcements work to brand motherhood as inherently conservative, and how the right’s pronatalism and anti-child policies devalue the lives of actual kids.

Next, we catch up on the first few episodes of “Tell Me Lies,” season 3, which finds our flawed heroine Lucy still emotionally entangled with her controlling and toxic ex-boyfriend, Stephen. We discuss the major narrative developments so far this season, including a reshuffling of the romantic deck that we didn’t see coming. We also try to figure out why this season feels like it’s really driving discourse; perhaps in part because its feminist lens on male toxicity and emotional abuse is more striking as the story continues unfurling and Lucy still can’t free herself from Stephen’s orbit of control.

Meanwhile, Meaghan Oppenheimer, the show’s creator, has spoken in interviews about how critical the show’s audience is of Lucy’s bad behavior; the torment she endures this season, Oppenheimer says, is the punishment fans have been asking for. “I was posing a question to them with this season: are you happy now?" We unpack how the show and the discourse around it illustrate the reactionary desire to find female blame in a story of male abuse. We also discuss how the show’s 2008-2015 setting offers a bit of nostalgia for the Obama years, when we were still blissfully ignorant of the descent into fascism that lay ahead of us. Maybe flat irons and side parts will always make us think of simpler times.

Timestamps for easy listening:

0:00 — The spate of pregnancy announcements from Trump’s White House

44:00 — Why season 3 of “Tell Me Lies” is hitting

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On this week’s episode of the Rich Text podcast, we’re tackling two totally disparate topics: the rage-fueled war on liberal white women and the end of “Love Is Blind Germany” season 2. Because, as we alway say… women contain multitudes.

First, we dive into the right-wing ire being directed at white women who are choosing to mobilize against ICE. In the wake of Renee Good’s Jan. 7 killing in Minneapolis, right-wing media has found a new target for its hate-filled rhetoric: middle-class wine moms! Fox News commentator David Marcus warned that we are “seeing across the country as organized gangs of wine moms use Antifa tactics to harass and impede Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.” Some on the right are even deploying a fun new acronym: AWFULs (Affluent White Female Urban Liberals), a group which morning radio host Pierce Outlaw labeled “the scourge of polite society.”

Much ink has been spilled over the years about the ways in which white women as a voting bloc often prioritize access to patriarchal and white supremacist power structures over gender solidarity. During the 2024 presidential election, exit polls showed that 53 percent of white women voted for Trump, and the majority of white women have broken for the right in nearly every presidential election since 1952. So what’s going on here?

Turns out, it’s a few things. (1) As a bloc that the right has invested heavily in wooing — see: the MAHA movement, tradwife content, Erika Kirk — white women who become part of the resistance are the ultimate traitors. As Michelle Goldberg wrote in her NYTimes piece on this subject: “In the right-wing imagination, these women are acting like harpies — an epithet often seen online — when they’re supposed to be helpmeets.” (2) The right sees these increasingly politically mobilized women as a threat to their fascist project — in part because of their numbers and in part because of their privileged place in society. And (3) There is a need to cleave these women from their white privilege in the public sphere in order to neutralize their power as part of the resistance. Hence, wine moms and childless cat ladies become Antifa domestic terrorists.

After this conversation, we do an abrupt tonal change and get into the final two episodes of “Love Is Blind Germany” season 2. We discuss which of our three final couples tied the knot, and whether any of them are still married a year later. Plus, one cast member makes an announcement during the reunion that’s a “Love Is Blind” historic first.

Timestamps for easy listening:

0:00 — Why the right is so furious at liberal white ladies

44:20 — “Love Is Blind Germany” weddings episode and reunion

Reading materials referenced in the episode:

“After Renee Good Killing, Derisive Term for White Women Spreads on the Far Right,” Clyde McGrady, NYTimes

“The Right Is Furious With Liberal White Women,” Michelle Goldberg, NYTimes

“Wine Moms Gone Wild,” Erin Gloria Ryan, Just Enjoy It While You Can

“After Renee Good’s Murder, Wine-Mom Gangs Are Now the New Antifa,” Virginia Heffernan, The New Republic

“white woman is the white woman of the world,” B.D. McClay, Notebook

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You know we had to come back and finish discussing the first drop from “Love Is Blind Germany” season 2, and we are doing that today! But first, we needed to unburden ourselves about a couple other Cultural Conversations: the Golden Globe Awards adding a Best Podcast award, and Ashley Tisdale French’s essay in The Cut about leaving her toxic mom group.

First, we get into the momentous decision of the Golden Globes to finally recognize all the valuable podcasting work being done by celebrities. We get into our feelings about celebrity podcasts in general (with all due respect to our queen Amy Poehler), the swamping of the industry by big-money deals for big-name movie stars, and the Golden Globes’ approach to recognizing this entire diverse genre of art and journalism.

Next, we turn to actress and businesswoman Ashley Tisdale French’s underbaked but provocative essay in The Cut about how her mom group turned toxic — and how she bravely chose to leave. We break down the speculation that followed about the mom group, which was instantly identified as likely being Hilary Duff and Mandy Moore’s well-publicized crew of celeb and celeb-adjacent moms. The speculation was followed by a denial from French’s camp that the piece was about Duff’s group, but also tacitly confirmed by the prickly reactions from the direction of that particular social circle. Duff’s husband Matthew Koma posted a parody of French’s Cut portrait and headline strongly implying that she was squeezed out of the group for being self-involved and tone-deaf! Meghan Trainor posted an “I’m so unbothered” TikTok about the gossip! We discuss the essay’s weaknesses, why it seems to have backfired on French to some degree, and why we’re so fascinated by the idea of “mean” or “toxic” moms.

Finally, we run through the major plot points of “Love Is Blind Germany” episodes 5-8, which take our newly engaged couples from honeymoons in Crete to daily life together in Munich, culminating in the beginning of their weddings. There are a couple of relationship casualties on the way, and cracks begin to form in some of the stronger couples. But there’s one real exception: Josy and Gunnar seem to go from strength to strength, slowly blossoming in each stage of the experiment. They remain our sweethearts, our favorites, our babygirls. Don’t fail us; we need this right now.

Timestamps for easy listening:

0:00 — A rant about the Golden Globes podcast category

14:06 — Ashley Tisdale French toxic mom group drama

47:19 — “Love Is Blind Germany” eps 5-8

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We have long been fans of the Emily Henry romance-novel universe. So when we heard that “People We Meet On Vacation” would be getting the movie treatment, we were unquestionably excited.

“People We Meet On Vacation,” which was published in novel form in 2021 and dropped on Netflix in movie form on Jan. 9, follows polar opposite best friends Poppy (Emily Bader) and Alex (Tom Blyth), who after meeting in a gender-swapped “When Harry Met Sally” post-college road trip, decide to go on vacation together every summer… platonically, of course. Poppy is quirky and chaotic and wanderlust-y — a classic free-spirited gal. Alex, on the other hand, loves structure and steadiness and home. But when he goes on vacation with Poppy, his more adventurous side awakens.

The book, which we unfortunately did not have time to re-read before recording this podcast, is a delight. The movie… is fine?

Like most rom-coms that make it to Netflix or commensurate streaming platforms, “People We Meet On Vacation” is watchable and cute. But when it comes to the things that differentiate a rom-com you watch once and a rom-com that burrows into your soul — distinctive and dense dialogue, truly funny comedy, a story that makes you really feel something — the adaptation falters. It’s hard to put your finger on exactly what’s missing. Perhaps it’s the fact that the interiority of a character in a novel is simply tough to translate into movie form. Perhaps the story’s non-linear structure would have been better served with a mini-series. Perhaps it’s that Bader’s Poppy is a little too much of a caricature, and Blyth’s Alex is a little too flat. (These deficiencies are particularly notable when we meet Poppy’s parents, played by Alan Ruck and Molly Shannon, who pop more in their one scene than most of the other characters do in the entire film.) Perhaps the screenplay packs too much plot in without enough room to let us see why these two unlikely friends are so ultimately right for each other.

Whatever it is, “People We Meet On Vacation” left us wanting more — even as we found a few moments of true enjoyment. This rom-com ultimately felt neither like a true escape from real life nor a reflection of it.

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In 2026, the sun never sets on the “Love Is Blind” empire. With two US seasons a year, plus endlessly proliferating international spinoffs, there’s a new set of pod daters clamoring for our attention every time the last reunion has begun to fade from memory. And this month, we’re headed to Deutschland!

“Love Is Blind Germany” season 2 has landed, and if you watched any of the first season (which Claire accidentally did, assuming, in a post-holiday fog, that she was viewing screeners for the new drop), you’ll quickly see that this edition has leveled up. The characters are popping, the love geometry is mathing, and one man takes it upon himself to innovate a dastardly new form of pod dumping. Let this be a lesson to us all: Never trust a tall 42-year-old with a stacked roster.

The first drop was a staggering 8 episodes, so we took it upon ourselves to break it into two manageable halves. This week, we’re discussing the first four, which carry us through the drama-packed pod dating and into the beginning of the couples’ dreamy honeymoon in Crete. We get to know the new daters, form some snap judgments, and discuss the ongoing tyranny of gender role discourse in contemporary dating shows. And of course, we have many, MANY words for the audacity of Andi.

Next week, we’ll be back to break down episodes 5-8 — and in the meantime, we have a pod coming soon with our thoughts on the Netflix adaptation of Emily Henry’s rom-com “People We Meet On Vacation.”

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