Article Club

In her piece "Rise, Grind, and Die," Julia Kopstein is trying to understand why Influencers are hawking life insurance policies left and right. And so are we. End of life rituals go back thousands of years and today, they cost thousands of dollars. But why is paying for them becoming the latest ponzi scheme?

Nearly half of all American men between 18 and 49 have an online sports betting account. Betting thousands of dollars is as easy as tapping twice on your phone. What is that doing to us?! Jasper Craven places a bet or 5 in Vegas to confront the epicenter of America’s gambling addiction.  https://harpers.org/archive/2026/02/on-tilt-america-gambling-epidemic-jasper-craven/?utm_source=substack&ut...

Do you know who's watching you when you’re at a concert or basketball game? This week we’re tracking you down with Noah Shachtman and Robert Silverman’s piece in Wired, The Shocking Secrets of Madison Square Garden’s Surveillance Machine. Tis timely with the Knicks all up in all the feeds this week. They’re watching us!  Check out the piece here: https://www.wired.com/story/madison-square-gard...

It was beloved. It was hated. And now it is no more. In his article in the Atlantic: The Only Thing Worse Than Spirit Airlines...is a world without Spirit Airlines , Saahil Desai analyzes the cultural icon we loved to loathe and what it means for future travel. Check out the article here: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/05/spirit-airlines-cancellation-closure/687047/

Why Are So Many Women Getting ADHD Diagnoses in Midlife? Caitlin Moscatello breaks down the theories in The Cut and we dissect em' all including why boys are more likely to be diagnosed in childhood and some spooky ties between ADHD and menopause. https://www.thecut.com/article/surge-of-women-midlife-adhd-diagnoses.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=social_acct&utm_campaign=feed-part

From Deep-Plane Facelifts to Blepharoplasty, Welcome to Plastic Surgery’s New Era. We’re talking about the full workup from a BBL (yes Brazilian butt lift) to “yoga boob” and the world of post glp1 skin de-sagging. Pucker up! Peep the article here: https://www.wmagazine.com/beauty/plastic-surgery-trends-facelift-surgeons-2026?utm_source=gloria.beehiiv.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign...

We have a light one for you this week... you guessed it, near death experiences. In her piece, What I Saw When I Peeked Over the Edge of Consciousness, Jessica Grose goes to a Near Death conference (yes that's a real thing) where people who've had a brush with death or lost a loved one gather to connect about science and spirituality. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/opinion/near-death-c...

This week we’re racking up the debt with Courtney Shea’s piece “The Doom Spenders,” where she digs into a new generation of Canadians on the installment plan. As the future looks more uncertain, the buy now, pay later life is taking over... are we doomed?! Check out the piece here: https://macleans.ca/longforms/the-doom-spenders/

We're hitting GQ this week for a piece called, "Dads Are the New Moms. How’s That Going?" Erin Somers interviews stay at home dads and turns out... they have a lot to say (like a lot they need a friend) about identity, marriage, work, and being judged at the playground.

If AI writes for us… do kids even need to learn how to write? English professor Piers Gelly tasks his Creative Writing class with using AI throughout the semester to figure out: "Do you even need me anymore?" Check out the piece:https://lithub.com/what-happened-when-i-tried-to-replace-myself-with-chatgpt-in-my-english-classroom/ **This caption was written by a human. 

It's a super light super not-that-deep topic this week... (it's not like we're questioning all the human emotions that ever existed or anything!!) In Gal Beckerman's mind bending piece, he spends time with historians who are trying to understand how feelings felt to people in the past. What did pain actually feel like to a medieval blacksmith? What did happiness feel like for a Widow in WWII. One...

Are you guilty of the automated respose, "I'm busy... but good!"? You may be a victim of Busy Culture and we're here to help. For our Season 2 opener, we're taking it to Substack for "The Cult of Busyness" and digging into busyness as a proxy for being useful in society. If we aren't busy what value do we have? Yet, it's not cute to complain about it. Press pause notifications and let's revolt aga...

Say it ain’t so! It’s the season finale of Article Club and the millennial midlife crises are upon us. In his Vox piece, “The Midlife Crisis is Coming for Milennials lol” Alex Abad-Santos explains why we’re not buying red sports cars and having affairs (who’s got the time and money for that?). It's cool. We’re freaking out over being half-way to death in a whole new way. Check out the piece he...

If you've developed the attention span of a mosquito over the last 10 years, you're not alone. In her piece, "How I’m Fixing My Broken Attention Span," Rebecca Jennings discusses how the endlessly scrolley, always-on-ness of our lives has us playing focus whack-a-mole. TLDR (because who has the time to read?)...we're a mess. Tips for how to reclaim your focus are ready for a...

Is Big Milk back to stay? We’re uncovering the underbelly of the milk industry with Kelli María Korducki’s piece, “Why everybody’s drinking milk again.” This one’s got it all: binders full of “Got Milk?” Ads, questionable subsidies, and yes… the raw milk debate. Grab a frothy one and buckle in. Check out the article here:  https://thehustle.co/originals/why-everybodys-drinking-milk-again#:~:text=M...

This week we’re heading on an ayahuasca retreat with Sarah Miller and her piece, “Pirates of the Ayahuasca" in N+1 magazine. She makes the trek to Peru to drink the trendy hallucinogenic potion which she says, “compels the drinker to vomit, witness their own death, or — my hope — develop a capacity to endure life.” She’s deeply depressed and also deeply funny and boy do we have a lot to talk about...

Do our siblings have more of an impact on our success than our parents?! This week we’re talking allllll about “The Surprising Ways That Siblings Shape Our Lives,” Susan Dominus’ new piece in NYT that explores patterns in highly successful siblings. Did you know, eldests are more likely to attend an ivy league school and youngests are more likely to play a sport professionally? If you’re “siblinge...

Move over NYT, this week's article is coming in hot from the Hedgehog Review. In his piece, "The Department of Everything," Stephen Akey, a former librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library in the 80s, takes us into the underbelly of the "Telephone Reference Division" aka the people you called when you had a question aka the Google of yesteryear. He and his team (led by a boss who ruled with a "3 ci...

Working hard feels good. But...why? Shouldn't we conserve energy and take the path of least resistance? This week we're reading, "The Paradox of Hard Work" by Alex Hutchinson. He digs into the psychological theories behind motivation (even some birds like snacks they have to fly further for!) and we tiptoe around our shared, lifelong, do-good-reach-for-the-stars-people-pleasing disease. Read along...

This week's article has nerds, gushers, and fruit-by-the-foot dancing in our heads. In her piece, "How My Trip to Quit Sugar Became a Journey Into Hell," Caity Weaver tries to kick a sugar habit by hitting up a fancy sugar detox spa. Spoiler: Things do not go well.  Check out the article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/25/magazine/quit-sugar.html

Everything’s a meme these days. We react to a never-ending stream of bad news with a 🙄, an “everything is fine” burning cartoon dog and an LOL. In her New Yorker article, Lauren Michele Jackson asks, is this “The End of Seriousness”? Using humor to deflect or deal with hard things is nothing new. But have the interwebs made us numb to seriousness?  Read along with the article here: https://www.ne...

Are we turning into anti-social slugs?! Episode 3 is all about loneliness and it’s a doozy. We’re reading Derek Thompson’s article in The Atlantic “ The Antisocial Century .”  Did you know that scientists consider the feeling of loneliness a biological signal that lets us know it’s time to fill up our social tank? Enter phones that make us *feel* connected when we’re still very much alone and you'...

This week we were pretty flabbergasted to learn that we don't *actually* know why humans sleep. Sure, scientists get that it helps us rest and repair our bodies but they are majorly in the dark about what drives our brains (or jellyfish brains, yes! they sleep!) to get those Zzzzzs. In Veronique Greenwood's piece in The Atlantic, Why Do We Need To Sleep ?, she makes a trip to a fancy new sleep lab...

This week on Article Club we ask the very light, very nbd question: “Does anyone really know you?” Joshua Rothman’s article in the New Yorker (check it out here ) digs into the layers of identity and how we see ourselves and others. Will anyone ever understand us completely? Is that ok? We talk about how being unknown––aka anonymous at weddings or on first dates––can be pretty powerful orrrr lead...

Tis true. Yet another podcast. Why, you ask? TBH we’re feeling pretty overwhelmed by everything going on out there, we miss going to a physical place to spend time together, and we like to learn and talk about things other than tornados and tariffs.  Not everyone has a pal like Allison who seems to ALWAYS have *the* zeitgeisty article of our time (or week) at the ready. In a scrolly world, she’s m...