Our pre-order sales are less than stellar right now. This is something I wish authors didn’t have to obsess over but alas we do. In full transparency we are only at 1,228 right now, half ebooks and half hardcovers. I’m sharing that because I always promise transparency throughout the publishing process and also because it’s one of the reasons I really need a break right now!

Reminder that to celebrate the release of The Parisian Heist, I’m offering a live writing and publishing masterclass on June 30th at noon ET.

This one will be an hour long with plenty of time for Q&A and the only price of admission is that you buy the book. You will also get a free year of this substack.

» REGISTER HERE «

I took the Parisian Heist to the Philadelphia Museum of Art today to visit the their new Sunflowers exhibit.

Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting in the Philly Art Museum were one of the inspirations for the book. I have loved them since I was little and Emma, one of my main characters is as enchanted with them as I have always been. Here’s that scene from the book:

The Sunflowers have been lodged in my brain since the first time I visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art with my mom. I was only three. I tried to grab at the painting because the petals on the twelve stems seemed real enough to touch. Each flower had its own personality. I still remember the sharp rebuke from the museum guard.

Back then I assumed there was only one painting of the flowers. I only learned how many van Gogh painted years later in school. He did three of them while he was in Paris, maybe more. When he moved to the countryside in Arles he had plans to paint a group of models one day out in the fields, but they never showed up. It was unbearably hot, and not wanting to waste a burst of inspiration, he gathered a bunch of newly grown Provençal sunflowers and brought them inside, where he placed them in a locally made ceramic pot and started painting as many as he could to welcome his friend Paul Gauguin to paint with him in the South of France. The exact number he made has never really been known.

They inspire her to become an art and travel to Paris. There is also a lost van Gogh Sunflowers in the book. I’m telling you guys, this novel has it all. Here is a tantalizing excerpt of that part:

Inside is a painting in an orange wooden frame that complements the riot of colors and thick brushstrokes that take up more than two dimensions. The images swirl, entirely alive in front of me. The background is an intense blue, a color found nowhere in nature. The flowers too are somehow intensely realistic and yet also fantastical. I feel like I could pluck out a seed and pop the salty fruit into my mouth. I gasp slightly as I count the number of sunflowers. The number is important. I glance behind me and see Stella’s face, now a bare canvas.

“Stella, what is this?”

She smiles at me slowly. “I think you know. And right now, we’re the only ones alive who know it exists.”

Anyway, I took a copy of Parisian to visit Van Gogh's Sunflowers: A Symphony in Blue and Yellow. It brings together two of Van Gogh's sunflower paintings side by side for the first time in Philadelphia since 1954. The museum's own version—painted in 1889 with that striking turquoise background—has been part of the collection since 1963, and it's paired with the 1888 yellow-background version on loan from the National Gallery in London.

I have to tell you that seeing them together was pure magic. I’m hoping we can collaborate with the museum to do something fun with the book and do a field trip to view the sunflowers.

In other fun news my Lingua Franca Parisian tour sweater has arrived and I may never take it off. I wore it on NY CBS this morning and everyone loved it.

Starting tomorrow morning I will be on vacation.

I keep having to repeat that to myself over and over again because I am very, very bad at taking a break. I am not proud of this but I was still editing a manuscript while in labor…twice.

We’re heading out to a dude ranch in Wyoming and going on a fossil hunt in Colorado with all the kids and my mom. And yes, I am writing a dude ranch murder mystery and a middle grade fossil hunter book, but research is all part of the adventure. It’s not WORK. I keep telling myself that.

I have a few things scheduled, but I won’t be writing this newsletter. I will try to stay off social media as much as I can (I’ll post promo reels once a day and get off) and I’m not taking any meetings.

I will not check my sales or my Amazon number.

Thinking about that is making me break out in hives a little, but I definitely need it.

I’m currently in the manic phase of book promotion where it feels like I am screaming into the void about The Parisian Heist. I know we are still three weeks out, but checking pre-sales (which are low) and my Amazon number every day is giving me massive anxiety and making me truly depressed. So I’m going cold turkey for a week.

And Nick Aster shall be enforcing this. Or at least he will be trying his best :)

I used to think I was just wired this way. That the inability to stop was some quirk of my personality, maybe even a feature. But it turns out it’s basically an epidemic. Women are burning out at record rates, and we’re also the least likely to take the vacation days we’re owed, the least likely to fully disconnect when we do, and the most likely to feel guilty about it the whole time anyway. One Gallup report found that women are 32% more likely than men to experience burnout regularly. So if you also feel like you are running on fumes and spite: hi, same, and apparently we’re in very good company.

I’m also not recording any more podcasts until September (I recorded the entire summer in the past month). But I have a ton of good ones for you to listen to.

Sad Beige Babies and Sad Beige Parents

Diving into the internet aesthetic that convinced an entire generation of mothers that parenting should look like a luxury hotel lobby in Denmark. We talk with Hayley DeRoche, aka The Official Sad Beige and author of Dress Your Baby in Sage and Taupe, about how influencer culture turned motherhood into a perfectly curated performance built on guilt, consumption, and extremely expensive neutral-toned stacking cups.

Girls Gone Wild Go Feral—Behind the Scenes of the Show That Shaped a Generation

What if the women from Girls Gone Wild finally got the mic?

We go all the way back to the horrifyingly normalized misogyny of the early 2000s with author and podcaster Courtney Kocak, who spent seven deeply unsettling weeks working on the actual Girls Gone Wild tour bus.

Courtney takes us inside the world Joe Francis built: drunk college girls signing contracts they didn’t understand, creepy power dynamics disguised as “fun,” and the moment she realized the entire machine was designed to separate women from their agency while making terrible men rich.

Royals Were the Original Reality Television Stars

Before there were influencers, there were royals.

For centuries, the British royal family has provided the world with fashion trends, family feuds, public scandals, doomed romances, and enough gossip to fuel generations of headlines. Long before social media, people were obsessing over what royals wore, who they married, and what happened behind palace walls.

Bestselling author Melanie Benjamin joins us to talk about her new novel, The Windsor Affair, which revisits one of the most consequential scandals in modern history: King Edward VIII’s decision to give up the throne for Wallis Simpson.

Together we unpack why we’re still fascinated by the royals, how the monarchy became the blueprint for celebrity culture, and what really happened between Wallis Simpson and the future Queen Mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. They also dig into the parallels between Wallis and Meghan Markle, the media’s obsession with pitting women against one another, and why history keeps recycling the same female archetypes.

And that’s it. I’m turning off. I swear.

EEEEEEEK.

Order the book guys. If everyone reading right now ordered, requested it at the library, told a friend about it, or did all three then I think we would be in a good place to get the word of mouth going.

Ok…now I’m really done. I feel like Ferris Bueller at the end of the movie when the camera just won’t turn off.

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This one will be an …

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There’s a lot of talk right now about how to Nonna-max your summer (how to live like an Italian grandma). I’ve got thoughts on that. Much more to come on the nonna. But right now I am entering my Mrs. Roper summer.

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And Nick Aster got me new sweatpant jeans on our way home from our Mother’s Day with this amazing racing stripe. I haven’t taken these off.

Real Simple magazine also gave this rave to Parisian Heist.

“It’s a dazzling read with a powerful message about taking control of your legacy.”

And finally, me seeing my billboard for the very first time. Yeeeeeeeeep!

And then Glynnis came to see the billboard too after a two-Bloody Mary Brunch.

Ok so now onto my latest productivity hack. I have starting making a DONE list, in addition to a TO DO list.

I am a massive list maker, my to-do list runs my life and I am insane about making sure that everything is ticked off every day or moved onto the next day’s list.

I got this cutie list when I was in Carmel-by-the-Sea.

As much as I love checking items off my to do list, it’s just not enough for me right now. I often feel like I’m simply not getting enough done, like I’m failing at a certain part or many parts of my life every single day.

I also know rationally this is not true. I am actually doing about five jobs right now, writing books, consulting, making various podcasts. And then momming, wife-ing and friending.

Yet, by the end of the day something starts to nag me. Did I work on the new book enough? Did I promote Parisian Heist enough for the day? Did my kids feel loved enough? And then what about all the housework—laundry, general clutter. Should I text a friend?

It’s the hamster wheel of feeling like we should be doing all the things all at once.

BLARGH! So at the end of the day I have been doing a DONE list.

And this can include work, family, social, domestic tasks. I either write it or type it to myself in an email. Sometimes I send myself a voice memo and have my transcribing app write it up for me so I’m not giving myself even more work. Here is what it looked like for yesterday. Nothing is too big or small for me to put on it.

I am giving away a one-year subscription to this substack FREE when you pre-order Parisian Heist from any bookstore. You can enter your details here. I hate asking people to pre-order. It feels shameful and dumb and yet it is the number one thing you can do to support me and my writing right now. THANK YOU. SMOOCHES.

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I love otters. I can’t help myself. I love the way they hold hands so they don’t float away from one another, how they hide shells and rocks in the pockets of their coats, how they tie their babies to kelp to keep them in one place (goals!) while they dive for food and how a group of otters is called a raft because they float together along the surface of the water.

Some people like to remind me that otters can actually be quite prickish to one another and to people. Their bear is also as strong as a black bears. None of this makes me love them less. If your entire population was nearly wiped out by the 19th century fur trade you’d have some generational trauma too. It’s not them. It’s us.

So this week while being a writer in resident at the Northern California Writer’s Retreat (an absolutely splendid experience that I’ll share more about later this week) I decided to revisit an otter kayaking trip that I had taken eight years ago while I was still deep in the throes of postpartum depression and anxiety (that I didn’t even realize was happening then).

It was a reminder for me that we all need breaks from our babies, human and creative. And I saw so many otters and sea lions and seals. My Merlin Life List is now teeming with new birds.

It also sparked all of my creativity and joy.

And I was nearly swept out to sea!

The whole story, pictures, and an audio-diary below.

I am giving away a one-year subscription to this substack FREE when you pre-order Parisian Heist from any bookstore. You can enter your details here. I hate asking people to pre-order. It feels shameful and dumb and yet it is the number one thing you can do to support me and my writing right now. THANK YOU. SMOOCHES.

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I started writing this essay before the Daily Mail broke a story that former Homeland Security Czar Kristy Noem’s husband was into a very particular kink that involves chatting online with women who aren’t his wife and wearing large fake boobs in a sort of role play called Bimbofication. Noem claims she was blindsided and is asking for privacy during this trying time. That seems like a large ask for someone who has literally been invading thousands of people’s privacy and stripping away their human rights as the head of ICE. Her husband, Bryon says he will tell his side of the story soon.

We haven’t seen think pieces on this yet claiming that women who adhere to conservative politics are more likely to have husbands who tape on fake big boobs and chat up strangers on the Internet. No one has written that this story is clearly an expression of the death of traditional marriage.

And yet, media on both sides of the aisle have been very quick to go after journalist and author Lindy West’s complicated marriage woes as a symbol of the decline of feminism and what happens when women embrace progressive values.

The New York Times actually published not one, but two, opinion pieces on Lindy West’s polyamory memoir Adult Braces this week. One by the always astute Elizabeth Spiers which I enjoyed reading even though I think two opinion pieces on this subject within days of one another in the paper of record when the world is burning to the ground is definitely overkill, and one by Michelle Goldberg which seemed like genuine clickbait. It inexplicably opened with a lede about Ballerina Farm which made me think it wasn’t an essay about Lindy, but then it was and the comparison made no sense.

The The Wall Street Journal recently ran an op-ed titled Progressivism Destroys Its Most Loyal Servants.

The Atlantic went with The Death of Millennial Feminism, calling West’s memoir its tombstone.

Lewis frames West as “the most successful feminist writer of her generation,” then says Adult Braces shows the limits and contradictions of millennial feminism rather than a triumphant feminist arc.

And The Free Press chimed in with OK, Millennial Feminism is Dead, What Comes Next.

I’m only going to say this once.

One woman’s shitty marriage to a narcissist is not the death knell of an entire movement. And the idea that it is? Well, it’s just clickbait and lazy journalism.

Just because Lindy West happened to be a feminist writer and also happened to be in a complicated relationship involving polyamory that seems to have backfired badly for her depending on who you ask about it, doesn’t mean the two don’t have anything to do with one another.

Massive sigh. I didn’t even want to weigh in on the Lindy book, but now it has all gotten so out of hand, I want to make this one point about it.

I’m also always a little hesitant to write about feminism because every single time I do someone shows up to tell me I’m doing it wrong. It’s always other women and “feminists” who think they are doing feminism better. To me, this is part of the problem. We spend a lot of time eating each other alive in order to feel like we’re getting it right. Which brings me to Lindy. It also brings me to the reason this is behind the paywall. I don’t feel like being shit on whilst on Spring Break with my kids (hiiiiii from Niagara Falls). So here are my thoughts.

Here’s your daily reminder to order The Parisian Heist now. You will freaking adore it. (and if you order tell me here so I can give you this substack for free for a year and then you can read below the pay wall…yay).

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Here’s your daily reminder to order The Parisian Heist now. You will freaking adore it. (and if you order tell me here so I can give you this substack for free for a year).

I don’t know about you all but I am super pumped about the Artemis II launch this evening. I’ve got a space obsessed six-year old girl who is just so psyched to see Christina Koch bl…

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Y’all know how much I love a good heist. It’s the reason that …

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Over the weekend we did a Bookcase Books popup at Scribners Lodge in Hunter. Scribner’s was the first place we stayed when we started coming to the Catskills and it was one of the reasons we fell in love with it up here.

I hand pressed so many new books into people’s hands that they didn’t know they would love, but they have already messaged me to say they stayed up all night reading them.

Here are some of the recs I made!

I am giving away a one-year subscription to this substack FREE when you pre-order Parisian Heist from any bookstore. You can enter your details here. Preorders matter so much for getting this book attention so I am starting the hard push now. You can get personalized and signed copies from Bluebird here.

We’ll be putting a ton of great stuff behind the paywall going forward and doing just one free newsletter a week, so if you were going to order this wonderful book, it is a great time to do it.

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You can enter your details here. Preorders matter so much for getting this book attention so I am starting the hard push now. You can get personalized and signed copies from Bluebird here.

Today’s post comes from Nick Aster and is a delightful dose of goodness withi…

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I love reading articles about how much people spend on things. I’m addicted to Lindsey Stanberry’s Substack The Purse where people talk honestly about how much they make and how much they spend.

I also want to know everything about how much people spend on childcare and how they make it work.

We are all very aware that the U.S. childcare system is fundamentally broken. The true cost of providing quality care is far higher than what most families can afford, and there’s no mechanism to bridge that gap. As a result, most families pay a huge share of their income for care, yet providers still struggle to stay afloat and childcare workers are paid so little that many live near poverty themselves.

I think it’s really helpful to see how other families do it, what they spend and how they cobble it together. I thought I would share mine and if you want to share yours we can do another post with a bunch of people’s childcare costs.

So here goes….over the past nine years we have spent approximately $350,000 on childcare. I want to go through that piece by piece starting when we had our first baby.

I am giving away a one-year subscription to this substack FREE when you pre-order Parisian Heist from any bookstore. You can enter your details here. Preorders matter so much for getting this book attention so I am starting the hard push now. You can get personalized and signed copies from Bluebird here.

We’ll be putting a ton of great stuff behind the paywall going forward and doing just one free newsletter a week, so if you were going to order this wonderful book, it is a great time to do it.

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I also get asked about my “diet” a lot lately, which makes me snort laugh because I have never been a diet person. I like food way too much. In my twenties (when it was so absurd I thought I had to be on a diet, but it was the 2000s and that is what the world told us) I once tried the Atkins diet where I only ate red meat and bacon and it made me enraged….like Taylor Frankie Paul throwing a bar stool enraged. It also made me understand the manosphere a little better.

I lost about 30 pounds over the past couple of years (that I gained and couldn’t lose after Baby 3 at 42) and a GLP-1 did a lot of that work. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. I had hit a wall at 43 where I was working out a ton, eating pretty well, and my body was like we’re done here.

I now microdose a GLP. I still work out the same amount. I still eat pretty well. I just eat…vaguely less.

So here’s a pretty typical day for me.

I am giving away a one-year subscription to this substack FREE when you pre-order Parisian Heist from any bookstore. You can enter your details here. Preorders matter so much for getting this book attention so I am starting the hard push now. You can get personalized and signed copies from Bluebird here.

We’ll be putting a ton of great stuff behind the paywall going forward and doing just one free newsletter a week, so if you were going to order this wonderful book, it is a great time to do it.

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And how do you become a paid subscriber? Thanks for asking. You can p…

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But seeing it as a parent, it is actually pretty cool. She’s learning responsibility and math and how to talk to people and how to run a little business. I’m surprised that I’m having so much fun with it.

I saw this post on Instagram earlier today that made me crack up and I immediately had to share it because it describes exactly what I am planning to do tonight.

I am going to be in my bathtub eating Girl Scout cookies. Of course I will do it after I put the Thin Mints in the freezer, because that is the only way you are supposed to eat Thin Mints.

If you happen to live in a Girl Scout cookie desert, which I am not entirely sure exists , you can order from Bea and her troop at this link. There is no pressure, but if you want some Thin Mints and you want to eat them in the bathtub like you deserve here they are.

Now on to the most toxic sporting event I’ve ever been to.

I’m gonna preface this by explaining that I’m a Philly sports fan through and through. Some people (the ones who don’t live here) think Philly fans are bullies and savages. We’re actually just passionate. Loving our teams is like a religion for us. On Eagles game day (and sometimes other random times if you see someone in green, especially in another state) you greet people with a “Go Birds!”

It’s the Philly, Peace Be With You.

But while I LOVE the Eagles and Phillies, I’ve never been that into the Flyers, except for Gritty, America’s greatest mascot.

Still we support all Philly teams in our house and I have an eight year old experimenting with fandom and in love with all winter sports after the Olympics. So we got tickets to a Flyers game. They were purchased before the unfortunate men’s hockey team incident, but none of those players are on the Flyers so I felt OK about it.

Anywho. I don’t think I’ve ever hated being at a sporting event more. I also don’t think I’ve ever felt like I 100% did not belong in a room (and I have been in some weird rooms…one time I was on a river boat in the Hudson with a bunch of drug-dealing mobster pimps, but that is a story for another day).

The first thing that struck me was something that I think a lot of you probably already know, but that I genuinely did not . In hockey you are not just allowed to rumble and shove each other against the glass and slam each other around (hopefully before french kissing your opponent), but you are also allowed to actually fist fight. Two players can drop their gloves and start punching each other like they are in a boxing match. Technically it is against the rules, but they sort of allow it and then give the players a timeout afterward which feels a little like telling my kids they can beat the shit out of each other in the face as long as they go sit quietly in their rooms for five minutes afterward, which does not seem like a particularly effective way to discourage anything.

I had never seen this happen in person before, so I was genuinely a little shocked when all of a sudden there was a full boxing match happening on the ice. Not everyone, but I would say about ninety five percent of the crowd, which was a very male crowd, jumped to their feet and started cheering. People were yelling things like get him, kill him, finish him, like they were the bad guy coach in The Karate Kid or The Mighty Ducks (just watched it with the kids…totally holds up…Emilio Estevez is cute).

But I could have lived with that as a part of the game and a part of a culture that I’m just not used to. It was not for me, but not everything is. I also don’t love Shamrock Shakes or chihuahuas.

What happened next is what really got to me.

I am giving away a one-year subscription to this substack FREE when you pre-order Parisian Heist from any bookstore. You can enter your details here. Preorders matter so much for getting this book attention so I am starting the hard push now. You can get personalized and signed copies from Bluebird here.

We’ll be putting a ton of great stuff behind the paywall going forward and doing just one free newsletter a week, so if you were going to order this wonderful book, it is a great time to do it.

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And I that means I get to walk on a red carpet with my my two narrators Sarah Reny and Rachel Hirsch (both goddesses).

But alas….I had nothing to wear. Literally nothing.

But really quick before I go through the options for the red carpet. I want to see you and I have a bunch of in-person events coming up!

Tomorrow night I will be at one of my favorite local indies, Mainpoint Books, to celebrate the launch of Alli Hoff Kosik’s Too Blessed to Stress. I chatted with Alli on my podcast about her book (and also what the hell happened to Love Taza, one of the original influencer girlies). You can give it a listen here:

And then on Wednesday night I’ll be at the launch of the Italian America Writer’s Association for a reading at Fergie’s Pub in Philly (1214 Sansom Street). In addition to doing a reading of Sicilian Inheritance I’ll be doing a Bookcase Books pop-up with books by Italian-American authors and with Italian themes. Come by at 7. No need to RSVP. And next week I am heading to Utah to the wonderful woman-owned bookshop Folklore.

So much fun stuff.

Ok now onto my outfit conundrum. I’ve lost thirty pounds in the past two years thanks to diet changes, workout changes and being on a GLP. I’ve talked about that a ton! And you can read more about that here.

I’ve updated most of my wardrobe, but not my formalwear since we have aged out of first weddings for our friends and haven’t hit a spate of second weddings yet. I also don’t attend many galas. The Audies are black tie optional and since I get to walk on a red carpet I figured I should be a little fancy. But I also completely forgot about all of this until yesterday which was a day packed with manning a Girl Scout cookies booth and an eight-year-old’s playoff basketball game (he scored!). So I had 45 minutes to run to Anthropologie in Center City and try to snag a dress. Thankfully my friend Tara was already downtown and she scoured the shop for me. Now….which one should I wear.

I’m putting this one behind the paywall because every time I post about my body I get all sorts of hateful comments and one of my new year’s resolutions was to be kinder to myself! But let me know what you like in comments.

I am giving away a one-year subscription to this substack FREE when you pre-order Parisian Heist from any bookstore. You can enter your details here. Preorders matter so much for getting this book attention so I am starting the hard push now. You can get personalized and signed copies from Bluebird here, but honestly just order wherever is easiest for you. You deserve nice things.

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Quick note…I promise to keep everyone updated on what I am reading and book recommendations. Right now I am deep into Kate Quinn’s latest New York Times bestseller The Astral Library and I am obsessed. More to come.

Also this warning from the Georgia police not to put canned martinis in kids lunches is killing me (and making me want a canned martini).

Now onto the matter at hand…..

Should I have another baby?

This is a question I actually asked myself yesterday morning.

I am giving away a one-year subscription to this substack FREE when you pre-order Parisian Heist from any bookstore. You can enter your details here. Preorders matter so much for getting this book attention so I am starting the hard push now. You can get personalized and signed copies from Bluebird here, but honestly just order wherever is easiest for you. You deserve nice things.

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You’re such a man-hater you fucking dyke.

I posted a reel on Instagram yesterday that’s gotten about a million views and with a million views come at least a thousand hateful comments from both men and from other women.

Let’s back up for a hot sec and get a bird’s eye view with some facts. After winning gold in men’s ice hockey Team USA took a congratulatory call from Trump, arranged and facilitated by FBI bro-in-chief Kash Patel, in their locker room.

During the call, Trump invited the team to his upcoming State of the Union and to the White House. Then he made a joking remark that he “has to” invite the US women’s hockey team as well or he’d be “impeached.” The men in the room laughed and cheered at the joke. You can hear all of it quite clearly in this video.

There’s a quote I love from Tina Fey, “you can tell how smart people are by what they laugh at.”

The women’s team politely declined the invitation to the White House, but accepted a lunch and wine invitation from one of my favorite good men, Stanley Tucci.

You know what I would love to see now that the women aren’t going to the White House? I want them all to join Connor Storrie onstage for his opening monologue of SNL this weekend. Can we make that happen, universe?

One of the messages I got on my post about the men’s hockey team laughing read: I don’t see what the problem is here. They’re just laughing along when he said he should invite the women too. No one is being mean here. I want to understand why this is such a big deal. He was saying he was going to invite the women. It feels like everyone is blowing it out of proportion.

This note came from a woman I don’t know, but someone seemingly my age, with kids, girls and a boy.

And I want to answer this honestly because my goal these days is not to shut anyone out, condescend or judge. As progressive women who want a better future for this country we need to make our tent bigger, not shove people out of it.

Here’s why the laughter matters so fucking much and why we need to keep talking about it and showing it to our sons with an explanation about why this is not OK.

I am giving away a one-year subscription to this substack FREE when you pre-order Parisian Heist from any bookstore. You can enter your details here. Preorders matter so much for getting this book attention so I am starting the hard push now. You can get personalized and signed copies from Bluebird here.

We’ll be putting a ton of great stuff behind the paywall going forward and doing just one free newsletter a week, so if you were going to order this wonderful book, it is a great time to do it.

Read more

We’ll be putting a ton of great stuff behind the paywall going forward and doing just one free newsletter a week, so if you were going to order this wonderful book, it is a great time to do it.

Hey all. I narrowly escaped the East Coast blizzard last night to come to Phoenix for a work thing and don’t hate me, but it is sunny and golden and last night I got to hang out with one of my favorite people in the world, Nora McInerny. One of Nora’s many love languages is picking people up from the airport and despite being a person who rarely drives and hates having to find parking when I return to my house, I really want to be someone who does more of this. We all have limited time and finding moments to get in hangs isn’t always easy. Hugging Nora in the airport and getting to have a quick catch-up and life pep talk made my week (maybe my month).

On the plane I watched the movie The Roses, which is a loose remake of the Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner divorce flick from the eighties, War of the Roses, where a previously happy marriage implodes into competitive, ego-driven destruction set off by a wife who moves from the domestic sphere into the workforce. This one starred Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman as a married couple of Brits living in California who see their relationship upended when his architecture career fails and her career as a chef soars.

It is hilarious and dark and has so much to say about gender roles, ambition, ego, parenting, and trying to be people who make a mark in the world and who gets to do that.

It felt really fitting to watch it right after reading this story in The Times about the White House’s Very Manly Week.

To recap, last week Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was on camera bench pressing over 300 pounds and reminding himself to keep his glutes glued to the bench. “Don’t touch it!” he yelled at his teenage son when the poor kid tried to spot him.

Meanwhile Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted what USA Today called an “erotic workout video” with Kid Rock.

Are we meant to believe that the new mark of manliness is bro-ing out in a teeny tiny sauna with another man without your shirt on in too tight jeans?

Who rides a bike without shoes? No one asked to see RFK’s feet. I will now never unsee those feet.

Is RFK Jr., a never nude? Has he never heard of moisture wicking atheleisure?

I’m only here for this type of sauna manliness if those men are hot twenty something hockey players who are going to start making out in the cold plunge.

But watching two old guys sweat through a healthy dose of body oil, their leathery chemically tanned skin stretched taut over wrinkly bellies and chests that no one asked to see, is not something the general population is craving right now. Especially not after spending the past two weeks cheering on real athletes in Milan.

Oh and speaking of Milan, America’s self-nominated top Bro, FBI director Kash Patel popped over to Italy to chug a beer and frat out on America’s dime with the US Men’s hockey team on Sunday night.

But what does all of this say about how Americans define manliness these days and why should we care?

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