Deeper reading

Is it possible to avoid online distractions and read deeply? I say yes.

Dear VIPs,

Thank you for being paid subscribers and for supporting me and Article Club.

This weekend, I have for you an audio letter, where I share some of my thoughts on deeper reading — and whether it’s possible to read deeply with so many online distractions swirling around, competing for our attention.

I’ve been thinking about this topic for a while, but Meta’s launch of Threads really got me wondering if there’s any way for us to escape the endless bombardment, besides of course destroying all our tech and moving to a mountain in Montana.

A mountain in Montana, plus moose.

I do think there’s hope, and in this audio letter, I talk about four things we can do to promote and preserve deeper online reading. They are:

  1. Limiting our reading sources

  2. Choosing a dedicated reading device

  3. Consciously compiling our reading collection

  4. Scheduling a regular time and place to read

These steps sound commonsensical, but at least for me, they’re easier said than done. I hope you’ll listen to my musings, and I’d love to hear what you think!

Do you do any of these four things? Do you have an online reading system that works for you — or any secret tips to share? You can leave a comment, email me, or record a voice message.

Leave a comment

Also, if this deeper reading thing interests you, I warmly invite you to Quiet Reading Hour next Sunday, July 16, 9-10 am PT. Let me know if you’re in!

Have a great weekend, and happy reading,

Mark

PS - Want to listen to these audio letters (and all other AC-related audio) on your phone? Click “listen on” to the right of the player above, then click “email link” to receive the private, subscriber-only RSS feed. Go to your phone, find the email from Substack, and click “add to podcast app.” Voila!

#401: Make the most of Article Club

Plus: A great article on school integration and my annotations of a SCOTUS decision

Dear Loyal Readers,

Now that we’re in the middle of summer and on the other side of Issue #400, I’m taking July off to step back a bit: to reflect on the last eight years of doing this newsletter and to figure out what’s next.

Don’t worry, because I can’t help myself: You’ll still receive issues every Thursday this month. They’ll just be a little different from the standard fare.

Today’s issue focuses on four ways you can make the most of Article Club. Some are simple; some are more advanced. My hope is that you’ll try at least one and let me know how it goes.

If you’re perfectly happy with your current experience with Article Club, and all you want to do is read more good stuff — well, I’ve got you. Scroll down past the pet photo, and you’ll find a great article on school integration, followed by my annotations of 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, the Supreme Court case that pitted freedom of speech against the rights of queer people. Please enjoy.

Happy reading,

Mark

A sunrise outside Sebastopol, California.

4 ways to make the most of Article Club ⭐️

For many of you, this weekly newsletter is enough. It’s exactly what you want. You’re happy with the articles, the blurbs, and the pet photos. Nothing else is needed.

But for many of you, you want more. Here are a few things you can try to make the most of your Article Club experience.

1️⃣ Join a discussion (or other event)

Sometimes when I read an amazing article, I don’t have any urge to share my thoughts about it. I just want to sit with it. But other times, I want someone to talk to. The problem is, It’s rare that folks are reading the same articles at the same time.

Article Club fixes that problem. Our monthly discussions bring together kind people eager to read, share, listen, and dive deep. If you’re a new subscriber, or if you’ve never participated in a discussion, I recommend that you try it out.

How about you join our discussion of Matthew Desmond’s “Why Poverty Persists in America” on August 27? It’d be great to have you. Here’s more information. If you’re interested, click the button below to sign up.

Sign up for the discussion

If talking about an article isn’t your thing, you may prefer connecting with other thoughtful readers in other ways. Here are two upcoming gatherings:

2️⃣ Share what you think

Most of you get this newsletter in your email inbox, so it might feel like a one-way interaction. But there’s me on the other end, plus more than a thousand other kind people, and we’re all reading the same articles. As they say in Great Britain (or so I’m told), don’t be a stranger. Sharing your voice makes our reading community stronger.

If you’re moved by an article, or you just want to reach out, here are some ways to engage with Article Club:

  • To reach me: Write me an email or leave me a voice message

  • To reach others: Write a comment — to share your thoughts on an article, or to share what you’re reading, or to offer suggestions for how to make AC better

Leave a comment

  • To make a contribution to the newsletter: Share a photo of your pet, nominate an article for publication, get your friends involved (click the button below), and if you’re really bold, share a photo (or video!) of yourself reading

Share Article Club

Even though this newsletter is no longer called The Highlighter, I’m still highlighting away. Here’s last Friday’s New York Times, on affirmative action.

3️⃣ Make it easier to read the articles and listen to the podcast

No doubt the biggest complaint I get from readers about Article Club is that the newsletter doesn’t get delivered to their inboxes. Without fail, every Thursday at approximately 9:13 am (or sometimes 9:17 am), I get emails with messages like, “Where’s my issue?” and “Did you skip a week?”

This happens because Google likes to send newsletters to people’s promotions and updates folders instead of their inboxes. Silly Google. To fix this annoying problem, you have to train Gmail in these three ways:

  • Reply to the email — a quick “hi” to me will do the trick (go ahead, do it now!)

  • Add articleclub@substack.com as one of your contacts (it takes just a second)

  • Mark the email as “not promotions” or “not updates” and drag it to your inbox

Worse news is if you’re on Yahoo, Outlook, or a school-based email. Sometimes they think Article Club is spam. The horror!

➡️ Here are two more tips to improve your reading and listening experience:

  1. Save articles to read later
    There’s too much good stuff to read, I know. And it’s impossible to get a 30-min break from your workday to dive into an article. Plus maybe you suffer from Too Many Tabs. Many of you have said you skip articles you otherwise would read because it’s too much trouble saving them for later. My go-tos to solve this problem have been Pocket (free) and Reader (paid), two great apps that let you save articles and then read them later on any device. I’m a big fan of both.

  2. Listen to the podcast on your phone
    Many readers have told me they appreciate the author interviews but that “listening with the player thing you send out isn’t ideal.” You mean, the one that looks like this?

Well, I have good news for you: Article Club is not just a newsletter. It’s a podcast, too, that you can get on your phone. (Who knew?) All you need to do is search for “Article Club” in Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast player you use, and voila! Success.

4️⃣ Download the Substack app

Now comes an advanced move, thanks to loyal reader Nick, who years ago said, “You know what your real problem is? You need an app!” Well, I don’t personally have an app, but Substack does, and I have to say, it’s awesome. You can:

  • Have a dedicated, uncluttered place to read Article Club (and other newsletters)

  • Get notifications (if you want a reminder) or turn them off (if you want peace)

  • Have newsletter issues read to you (the voice is pleasant)

  • Listen to the author interviews and podcast episodes

  • Engage and interact more easily (you can share, comment, and chat)

Get the Substack app

I fully acknowledge that this advanced tip might not be for everyone. After all, who wants to download yet another app? I was skeptical at first, too. But now I’m a believer. If you try it out (or have already been using it), let me know. One big danger: It might be very easy to get the app, forget about it, and never read Article Club again. That would make me sad. 😔

Peppercorn, who belongs to loyal reader Rebecca, is a loyal and intrepid dog. Once when he was staying with friends for the weekend, Peppercorn bolted and ran 1.5 miles through Oakland to get back home to his owner. hltr.co/pets

Two things to read ⭐️

I’m purposely trying this month not to be on the lookout for articles to feature in Article Club, but I really can’t help myself. Here are two selections that I think you might find valuable.

Is the Fight for School Integration Still Worthwhile for African Americans?

Last week’s Supreme Court decision on affirmative action reminded me there was a time when more people in our society believed in integration in order to remedy past injustice. Stefan Lallinger, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, explains why the majority of Black people favored integration in the 1960s and 1970s and how that support reversed over time. He also discusses the power of all-Black spaces, the racism of our K-12 educational system, and the difference between data (that shows school integration “works”) vs. lived experiences (that highlights the suffering).

➡️ Read the original article• Read the article with my annotations

303 Creative LLC v. Elenik

You’ve likely read about Lorie Smith, the website designer from Colorado who loves all people and has no problem with gay people — unless they want to get married, which she calls a “gay marriage,” and which she believes is “false.” But have you read the Supreme Court decision and annotated it? I bet you haven’t! Good thing I have. Reading the actual decision didn’t make me any less frustrated with the Supreme Court’s decision, but as a former journalist and advocate of the First Amendment, I appreciated reading Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion and his discussion of free speech. (Justice Sonia Sotomayor brought the shade in her scathing dissent.)

➡️ Read the decision • read the decision with my annotations

Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀

To our 8 new subscribers — including Ajay, Ryn, Anita, Sarah, Barry, Kit, Kristina, and Karin — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. To our long-time subscribers (Mel! Melanie! Melany!), you’re pretty great, too. Loyal reader Enrick, thank you for sharing the newsletter and getting the word out.

If you like Article Club, please help it grow. I really appreciate your support. Here are two ways you can help out:

📬 Invite your friends to subscribe. Know someone who’s kind, thoughtful, and loves to read? I’d love it if you encouraged them to subscribe. Word of mouth is by far the best way to strengthen our reading community. Thank you for spreading the word.

Share Article Club

❤️ Become a paid subscriber, like Monica (thank you!). You’ll join an esteemed group of readers who value Article Club. Plus you’ll gain access to our monthly discussions, our monthly quiet reading hours, and my personal audio letters from me to you. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year.

If you like to read great articles and connect with other kind people, consider supporting Article Club by becoming a subscriber.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT.

#400: Looking Forward

Some gratitude, an announcement, a great article, and two invitations

Dear Loyal Readers,

Here we are at 400 issues (and 113 podcast episodes and 38 discussions and 33 audio letters and 20 happy hours). Not bad, right?

I launched this newsletter eight years ago with a bold belief that I still hold today: If we read more of the best stuff, and if we connect with people about what we’re reading, then we might gain the knowledge and empathy to make ourselves a better world.

Some may say this was (and is) a naïve belief. Some may go further, calling it absurd. If you have ever felt this way, you’re not alone. I’ve felt this way, too.

But what we’ve built (and are building) here — a thoughtful group of kind people who care about issues of race, education, and culture — demonstrates the power and possibility of reading in community.

It’s happening, thanks to all of you. People from across the country who otherwise do not know each other are coming together to have moving conversations about the critical issues of our time.

No matter how long you’ve been a subscriber, I’m very grateful. This includes readers like Marni and Erin, who signed up eight years ago this week. And it also includes the 64 new readers — including Lana, Inbal, Karyn, Jenna, Jamie, Jillian, Bailey, Lindsey, Vanessa, Ilana, Nicole, Alison, Anne, Laura, Jenn, Christine, Joel, Lauren, Samantha, Kaitlyn, Jess, Sukriti, Danielle, Barbara, Jade, Silvie, Ellie, Brooke, Chris, Nathaniel, Tanya, Rebecca, Becca, Veesam, Mackenzie, Nellie, Maeve, Melanie, Adriana, and Kate — who signed up just this week. Welcome. Hope you like it here.

This week’s issue is a little different than your typical, regular fare. Even though this is an anniversary issue, I won’t be talking about the past. I’m more interested in looking forward. What’s next for us? Below you’ll find:

  • a rebranding of this newsletter

  • one great article that I think all of us should read and discuss together

  • two invitations to upcoming events this summer, maybe you’ll join?

  • what’s coming up in July

Hope you like it. Thank you again,

Mark

1️⃣ We’re now Article Club!

Hey Mark, something’s changed! Where’s your face?

You’re right, long-time readers: My face is gone, replaced by the handsome face of my dog Arlo, an avid and ardent reader and highlighter.

And we have a name change, too: What used to be The Highlighter Article Club, and before that The Highlighter, and before that Iserotope Extras (anyone remember?), is now Article Club.

I’m excited. I like the new name and branding because it’s less me and more we.

Certainly I’ll still be highlighting away and bringing you outstanding articles every week for you to read and for us to discuss. And yes, that also means actually highlighting and annotating them sometimes (an example).

But I’m also interested in where this experiment in community reading will take us. In addition to the weekly newsletter, I’m thinking of these ideas and more:

  • Expanding our monthly article discussions to include in-person options

  • Designing ways to support one another to read more and more deeply

  • Hosting in-person and online gatherings for us to deepen connections

I’m really looking forward to this next chapter. Hope you are, too.

One last thing: It’s OK if you still want to call it The Highlighter. Nobody is going to correct you. (All feelings are welcome and valid.) And thank you to my partner Peter for the new nameplate and logo.

2️⃣ Let’s read & discuss: “Why Poverty Persists in America”

Even if you don’t know his name, you’ve heard of Matthew Desmond before. He’s the sociologist who wrote the “Capitalism” chapter in The 1619 Project and the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Evicted. Now he’s studying why the United States has essentially the same poverty rate now as it did 50 years ago (12.6 percent then, 10.5 percent now). The reason is decidedly not a decline in government spending. (It’s more than doubled.) Rather, Prof. Desmond argues, the primary reason is exploitation. In housing, labor, and banking, rich people exploit poor people because they can, under the laws we’ve passed and the systems we’ve built.

For the past half-century, we’ve approached the poverty question by pointing to poor people themselves — posing questions about their work ethic, say, or their welfare benefits — when we should have been focusing on the fire. The question that should serve as a looping incantation, the one we should ask every time we drive past a tent encampment, those tarped American slums smelling of asphalt and bodies, or every time we see someone asleep on the bus, slumped over in work clothes, is simply: Who benefits? Not: Why don’t you find a better job? Or: Why don’t you move? Or: Why don’t you stop taking out payday loans? But: Who is feeding off this?

Originally published in The New York Times Magazine in April, this article is an excerpt from Prof. Desmond’s bestselling book, Poverty, by America. It is a wake-up call to all Americans who say they’re progressive and want to do something to bridge the gap between the rich and poor — but who also hide behind their mortgage interest tax deductions and their segregated schools and their free checking accounts.

Prof. Desmond reminds us that we do indeed have a welfare state in our country, but the welfare is for the well-off. After all, he writes, when somebody wins in America, it means that somebody else is losing. I hope you read the article.

Read the article

⭐️ BONUS: Prof. Desmond is participating in Article Club in August, recording a podcast interview with us as we read and discuss his piece.

Come discuss “Why Poverty Persists in America” in a small group with other thoughtful readers. There will be two events: The in-person event is open to paid subscribers and is limited to 6 people. The online event is open to all subscribers and is limited to 24 people.

Discussion: “Why Poverty Persists in America,” by Matthew Desmond
Sunday, August 27, 2023
11:00 – 1:00 PT (in person in Oakland)
2:00 – 3:30 PT (online on Zoom)

Sign up for the discussion

Matthew Desmond is the is the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at Princeton University. He is the author of four books, including Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016), which won the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Carnegie Medal, and PEN / John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction. The principal investigator of The Eviction Lab, Desmond’s research focuses on poverty in America, city life, housing insecurity, public policy, racial inequality, and ethnography. He is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, and the William Julius Wilson Early Career Award.

Sid, who belongs to VIP and loyal reader Abby, is all parts beauty, joy, and light. Want your pet to appear in Article Club? It’s easy: hltr.co/pets

3️⃣ Introducing two new events at Article Club. You’re invited.

For many of you, this weekly newsletter is enough. It’s exactly what you want. You’re happy with the articles, the blurbs, and the pet photos. Nothing else is needed.

But for many of you, you want to talk about the articles. You want to connect with other kind, thoughtful people. You want to find time and space to read more, and you’d like be part of a reading community. For all those reasons, I’m experimenting with two new gatherings at Article Club this summer that might interest you.

  • Quiet Reading Hour
    Sunday, July 16, 9:00 - 10:00 am PT (online on Zoom)

Quiet Reading Hour is a fun, comfy, informal space for us to read whatever we want to read. We did a soft launch last month, and it was a big hit. It’s exactly what it says it is: a dedicated space to read for pleasure. (No, you don’t have to read an article. Last time, most everyone read books.) The format is simple. The first five minutes, we say hi and share what we’re going to read. Then we go off video and audio and read for 50 uninterrupted minutes. We close the hour back together and share how it went. Easy peasy, plus plenty of peace and reading.

  • NYT by the Lake
    Sunday, July 23, 10:00 am - 12:00 Noon (in person at Lake Merritt in Oakland)

I’ve long been a fan of good people coming together to read as a community live in public. There’s something beautiful about it. I say let’s do it. If you’re nearby Oakland, we’ll meet at Lake Merritt, exact location TBD. You’ll bring your coffee or tea, and I’ll bring print copies of The New York Times, plus plenty of Arizmendi pastries. After saying hi, we’ll get into trios, get to know each other, share one newspaper among the three of us, read for about an hour, and then discuss what we’ve read at the end.

If you’re interested in either or both of these events, click on the button below and write me a one-sentence note saying, “I’m in!” It’ll be great to have you.

Let me know if you’re interested

4️⃣ What’s coming up in July

As we head into the ninth year of this thing, I’m going to take July to pause, reflect, and ask the big questions. I’ll still be sending out weekly issues on Thursdays, and you’ll still receive great articles to read. But the newsletter will be a little more experimental in nature, and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Some ideas I have include:

  • My favorite articles and podcast episodes of all time

  • An AI edition (where Chat GPT writes the blurbs, will anyone notice?)

  • The Article Club Enneagram: What’s your reading personality type?

  • 10 ways to make the most of Article Club

  • The first-ever reader-curated issue (you interested?)

Got ideas? I’d love to hear from you. What would you like to see at Article Club? Let’s do this old-school style, with a good, old-fashioned voice message.

Leave me a voice message

Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀

To our 64 new subscribers, I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. To our long-time subscribers (Lynn! Lynna! Lena!), you’re pretty great, too. Loyal reader David, thank you for sharing the newsletter and getting the word out.

If you like Article Club, please help it grow. I really appreciate your support. Here are two ways you can help out:

📬 Invite your friends to subscribe. Know someone who’s kind, thoughtful, and loves to read? I’d love it if you encouraged them to subscribe. Word of mouth is by far the best way to strengthen our reading community. Thank you for spreading the word.

Share The Highlighter Article Club

❤️ Become a paid subscriber, like Nellie, Tanya, and Christine (thank you!). You’ll join an esteemed group of readers who value Article Club. Plus you’ll gain access to our monthly discussions, our monthly quiet reading hours, and my personal audio letters from me to you. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT.

#399: Across Difference

How to (and not to) stop culture wars, fight racism, integrate schools, and build housing

Happy Solstice, loyal readers, and thank you for being here.

Today’s issue explores the benefits and struggles of engaging and working with people across difference. I think you’ll like it. The lead article examines how a community in Ohio worked together to stave off an incendiary culture war. The second piece explores how collaborating across race demands commitment and thoughtfulness. The third article takes on the issue from a systems lens, explaining how a school integration plan in Seattle failed to meet its goals. Rounding out today’s issue is an essay that uncovers different notions of what it means to be liberal.

Hope you find at least one of the articles thought provoking. If so, tell me about it! I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Leave a comment

1️⃣ How One City Stopped a Culture War

There are so many dispiriting stories out there about communities across the country ripping themselves apart. You know about these. They involve adults yelling at each other at school board meetings about books and masks and vaccines and saying gay and CRT and trans kids. I’m pleased to say, This is not one of those stories. Courtney E. Martin travels to Middletown, Ohio, to report on how when things got bad, a Black superintendent reached out for support from religious leaders. Their message? Everyone belongs here, no matter our differences. And: Let’s focus on the kids. “Middletown is a strong city,” one resident said. “It is strong because of our faith to love and respect one another. It is strong because of our diversity. Last but not least, it is strong because our students are resilient.”

➡️ Read the article | Christian Science Monitor | 13 minutes | Printable version

2️⃣ When Teaming Up to Fight Racism Gets Complicated

After they witnessed a white barista call the police on two Black businessmen asking to use the restroom at a Starbucks in Philadelphia five years ago, Michelle Saahene and Melissa DePino knew they needed to do something to combat racism. They teamed up, launched a nonprofit, and led workshops on diversity and inclusion. They were a big hit. Corporations booked their services, and their careers skyrocketed. It helped that Ms. Saahene is Black and Ms. DePino is white. They were a dynamic duo who demonstrated the power of working together across race. That is — until the Reckoning of 2020 subsided and they started blaming each other, accusing each other of abuse. Ms. Saahene said, “Black people shouldn’t always have to be in therapist or coach mode.” Ms. DePino said, “I’m not really sure what I did wrong.”

➡️ Read the article | Los Angeles Times | 13 minutes | Printable version

Watson, who belongs to loyal reader Maria, is a snuggle bug who loves to chew on just about anything. When she isn’t playing with her toys, she can be found napping on her pillow. Want your pet to appear here? hltr.co/pets

3️⃣ Seattle Schools Chose Integration. Then It Fell Apart.

It’s hard for me to believe that back in the 1970s, there were some cities that successfully forced families to bus their children to school in the name of racial integration. It just seems so far-fetched to me, given today’s politics. But beginning in 1978, Seattle did it, as this well-written article explains. First came voluntary programs, then mandatory busing, which desegregated the schools — but also led to white flight and resistance from Black families, whose kids had to travel farther and more often. “I don’t need someone of a different race sitting next to me in order to learn,” said Superintendent John Stanford, who was Black. By the 1990s, when integration had reached its height, the backlash grew too strong, and the district retreated to a ranked choice admissions policy with a race-based tiebreaker. That wasn’t enough for white families, who sued and won at the Supreme Court. Now Seattle schools are as segregated as they were in 1970. Special bonus: The piece includes a photograph capturing loyal reader Matt when he was 6 years old.

➡️ Read the article | The Seattle Times | 12 minutes | Printable version

4️⃣ In Berkeley, Everyone’s a Liberal, but Housing Divides

I grew up in the Bay Area, and went to college in Berkeley, so I know firsthand (as do many of you!) that white progressives here really want social justice — as long as it doesn’t inconvenience us and everything remains the same. In this piece, Daniel Duane recounts his idyllic childhood growing up in Berkeley in the 1970s, when fighting for a better world meant preserving People’s Park and protecting natural resources against capitalist intruders. But times have changed, Mr. Duane argues, and his mother, who still lives in his childhood home, has not. “Where are all the birds supposed to go?” she asks, when her younger neighbors call for new housing. “Are we just going to turn everything into Manhattan?”

It was hard not to wonder if we all reach a point in our lives at which personal convenience and a fear of change become imperceptibly commingled with our sense of the common good.

What I appreciate most about this piece is that Mr. Duane is able to criticize his mother (and other Berkeley NIMBYs) but also to explain their perspective and practice empathy for their lived experiences. But there’s a difference between having empathy and allowing privileged people to maintain their comfort at the expense of others.

➡️ Read the article | The New York Times Magazine | 15 minutes

Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀

To our four new subscribers — including Rob and Peter – I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. To our long-time subscribers (Kati! Katie! Katy!), you’re pretty great, too. Loyal reader Charlene, thank you for sharing the newsletter and getting the word out.

If you like The Highlighter Article Club, please help it grow. I really appreciate your support. Here are two ways you can help out:

📬 Invite your friends to subscribe. Know someone who’s kind, thoughtful, and loves to read? I’d love it if you encouraged them to subscribe. Word of mouth is by far the best way to strengthen our reading community. Thank you for spreading the word.

Share The Highlighter Article Club

❤️ Become a paid subscriber, like Rob (thank you!). You’ll join an esteemed group of readers who value Article Club. Plus you’ll receive surprise perks and prizes. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT for Issue #400.

#398: An interview with Sarah Zhang, author of “How Much Would You Pay to Save Your Cat’s Life?”

Let’s talk about it together on Sunday, June 25, 2:00 – 3:30 pm PT

Dear Loyal Readers,

Thank you for being here! I have three things for you this week, so let’s get right to it.

1️⃣ Article Club

This month we’ve been focusing on “How Much Would You Pay to Save Your Cat’s Life?” by Sarah Zhang. Originally published in The Atlantic last December, it’s a piece I highly urge that you read. Here’s why:

  • It explores the rising trend of cat kidney transplants (expensive! controversial!)

  • Ms. Zhang asks a provocative question and examines it from all sides

  • Even though the article is about pets, it’s really about human relationships

Where’s the line between being a caring pet owner and doing too much? If you consider your pet a part of the family — or if you judge people who consider their pet part of the family — you’ll love this article.

Sign up for the discussion!

I hope you’ll sign up to discuss the piece on Sunday, June 25, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT on Zoom. Article Clubbers are kind and thoughtful and welcoming. Our conversations are always in small, intimate, facilitated groups. Reach out if you have questions or if you want to participate in the conversation but are secretly shy or nervous.

2️⃣ My interview with Sarah Zhang

One of the best parts of Article Club (in addition to our monthly discussions) is the generosity of journalists and how they share their insights on the outstanding articles they write. Ms. Zhang (who has two cats herself!) was kind and thoughtful, and it was a delight to chat with her. We talked about a number of topics, including:

  • why this topic — how much we are willing to spend on our pets — is fraught with judgment (what’s too much? too little?)

  • how cat kidney transplants raise major ethical questions (namely: the kidney comes from another cat, who can’t consent)

  • how pets serve an “in-between” role in our lives — how they’re not exactly our children, but they’re not exactly our property (and how that’s confusing)

I hope you take a listen! (You can click here or subscribe to The Highlighter Article Club on your favorite podcast player.)

Delia, who belongs to loyal reader Allison, enjoys sitting in boxes and looking adorable. Want your pet to appear here? hltr.co/pets

3️⃣ Issue #400 is coming! What do you think about all this?

We’re coming up on eight years and 400 issues of this newsletter, which is a mild marvel, and to celebrate the occasion, I’d love to hear from you. What has been your experience of reading The Highlighter Article Club or participating in the discussions? Do you have any kind words, or words or wisdom, or requests for the next eight years? Feel free to leave a comment or reply privately. Thank you!

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀

To our new subscriber Susan – I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. To our long-time subscribers (July! Julio! Julia!), you’re pretty great, too. Loyal reader Brett, thank you for sharing the newsletter and getting the word out.

If you like The Highlighter Article Club, please help it grow. I really appreciate your support. Here are two ways you can help out:

📬 Invite your friends to subscribe. Know someone who’s kind, thoughtful, and loves to read? I’d love it if you encouraged them to subscribe. Word of mouth is by far the best way to strengthen our reading community. Thank you for spreading the word.

Share The Highlighter Article Club

❤️ Become a paid subscriber, like Susan, Courtney, and Sara (thank you!). You’ll join an esteemed group of readers who value the mission of The Highlighter Article Club. Plus you’ll receive surprise perks and prizes. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT.

#397: The Clarence Thomas Issue

Great articles and podcast episodes about a complex Supreme Court justice

Thank you for being here, Loyal Readers. If you’ve been a subscriber for a while, you know that I like to follow topics over time. In doing so — by reading tons of articles and then sharing them with you — I find that my knowledge deepens, or my thinking changes, or my empathy grows. Such is the case with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the focus of this week’s issue.

I used to know little about Justice Thomas. He was the justice who replaced the revered Thurgood Marshall on the Court and who called his confirmation hearings a “high-tech lynching.” He was the justice who never asked questions from the bench. For me there was nothing much to know, except that he was one of the most conservative justices on the Supreme Court.

But then came the allegations of corruption. And the allegations that his wife believed the last election was stolen and urged the former president not to concede. And the pressure for him to resign, or be impeached. These developments spurred me to read more articles and listen to more podcasts about Justice Thomas.

A weird thing happened when I did. It brought context and nuance. No, it didn’t lead me to condone his sexual harassment or appreciate his jurisprudence. But it did get me to understand a little bit more where he comes from and what makes him tick.

I hope you’ll do some reading and listening, too, and share this issue with friends.

Share

💬 ARTICLE CLUB: You’re invited to our discussion of “How Much Would You Pay to Save Your Cat’s Life?” on Sunday, June 25, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT on Zoom. You don’t need to be a cat owner to participate! Author Sarah Zhang explores several illuminating and controversial issues in her piece, and even though the article is about animals, I think we’ll find that it’s also about the depths and limits of humanity. It’d be great to have you join Article Club this month. Please sign up below.

Sign up for the discussion

1️⃣ America’s Blackest Child

Most profiles of Clarence Thomas involve the reporter visiting Pin Point, the small town in Georgia where the Justice was born. Inevitably, no one wants to talk to the reporter, partly to protect the man, partly to shoo the outsider away. In this outstanding episode of Slow Burn, writer Joel Anderson at first gets the same treatment. Except there’s a difference: Justice Thomas’s mother Leola grants him an interview. What follows is an intimate recounting of the Justice’s childhood, his journey from Pin Point to Savannah to Kansas City, from wanting to become a priest to protesting the Vietnam War to memorizing the speeches of Malcolm X. For many people, Justice Thomas’s political transformation from his radical youth to reactionary adulthood makes no sense. But Mr. Anderson connects the dots and suggests that notions of self-reliance and Black nationalism may explain the Justice’s journey.

➡️ Listen to the podcast | Slow Burn | 56 minutes | Apple Podcasts | Transcript

2️⃣ Clarence X

“I was a bit of a radical, but that’s what happened back then,” Justice Thomas says in this episode of More Perfect, which includes archive clips of the Justice’s past speeches and interviews. “You were Black, things were changing, and we were very, very upset. I was tired of being in the minority, and I was tired of turning the other cheek.” Yes, Justice Thomas believed in the tenets of Malcolm X, but by no means did that make him a left-wing radical. In fact, the opposite was true. This podcast episode explores how Justice Thomas’s worldview is best explained as a response to racism by white liberals. He agreed with Malcolm X that white liberals are more dangerous than white conservatives. Black people are not a monolith, he argues, and should not be treated as such by the white establishment. As a result, Justice Thomas does not want to be lectured about voting rights or affirmative action. He says, “Any effort, policy or program that has, as a prerequisite, the acceptance of the notion that Blacks are inferior is a non-starter with me.”

➡️ Listen to the podcast | More Perfect | 60 minutes | Apple Podcasts | Transcript

Lucy, who belongs to VIP Erin, enjoys boxes. Want your pet to appear here? It’s easy: hltr.co/pets

3️⃣ Looking For Clarence Thomas

“You want to understand Clarence Thomas?” Pulitzer Prize winner Mitchell S. Jackson asks us this question in his extraordinary piece. His answer? Self-hatred. He continues, “Hatred directed not outward but inward, where it does the oppressor’s work for him. The man’s a human being, so his self-hatred couldn’t have been a conscious choice. But be that as it may, my concern for a single suffering human ain’t the purpose of this writing. My purpose is to try to understand Clarence Thomas not because of what the world did to him but because of what he’s doing to us.”

In other words, Mr. Jackson is not striving for empathy. Although he does the work to understand Justice Thomas more deeply, Mr. Jackson is not interested in making his subject more palatable. Instead, he addresses Justice Thomas head-on. “My god, dude, what the hell happened to you?” he asks.

➡️ Read the article | Esquire | 32 minutes | Paywall-free version

4️⃣ “The Risk Is That You Humanize Him”

Last October, Article Clubber Sarai and I got to interview Mitchell S. Jackson about “Looking for Clarence Thomas.” It was one of my favorite interviews we’ve done. Mr. Jackson was kind and gracious from the start. He laughed that I insisted on calling him Mr. Jackson. And right from the first question, everything felt natural, like we were talking to a friend rather than to a famous writer whose prose is changing the canon (Sarai’s words, and I agree!) of longform nonfiction.

We talked about a number of topics, including:

  • how he didn’t want to write about Clarence Thomas at first

  • how his trip to Pin Point inspired the piece’s opening

  • how James Baldwin’s writing helped him understand Mr. Thomas, and

  • how Mr. Thomas is a man of deep contradictions, whose time on the Supreme Court has caused “dramatically malevolent things to wide swaths of Americans”

Most of all, though, Mr. Jackson talked about the craft of writing, how if he’s going to spend months on a feature story, he wants to push himself, he wants to break convention, he wants to do something new with form.

I’m very much concerned with the sentence. I’m almost concerned with the sentence over the story. And so the benefit of writing nonfiction is that, You don’t have to invent the scenes, but the kind of ethos of wanting to make beautiful sentences, that’s really what I want to do.

➡️ Listen to the podcast | Article Club | Apple Podcasts | 29 minutes

Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀

To our 7 new subscribers – including Sherese, Vinci, Megan, Emily, Ale, Suzanne, and Bonnie — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. To our long-time subscribers (Irene! Ira! Ivan!), you’re pretty great, too. Loyal reader Angelica, thank you for sharing the newsletter and getting the word out.

If you like The Highlighter Article Club, please help it grow. I really appreciate your support. Here are two ways you can help out:

📬 Invite your friends to subscribe. Know someone who’s kind, thoughtful, and loves to read? I’d love it if you encouraged them to subscribe. Word of mouth is by far the best way to strengthen our reading community. Thank you for spreading the word.

Share The Highlighter Article Club

❤️ Become a paid subscriber, like Mike (thank you!). You’ll join an esteemed group of readers who value the mission of The Highlighter Article Club. Plus you’ll receive surprise perks and prizes. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT.

#396: Cat Kidney Transplants

Sign up to discuss Sarah Zhang’s “How Much Would You Pay to Save Your Cat’s Life?”

Happy June, loyal readers. I’m happy to announce that this month, we’ll be reading and discussing “How Much Would You Pay to Save Your Cat’s Life?” by Sarah Zhang. It was published in The Atlantic last December. I hope you’ll join us.

I’m personally more a dog person, but I know many cat people (not necessarily “Cat People”), and one benefit of being a cat person is that you can prolong your cat’s life with a $15,000 kidney transplant. But should you?

That’s the question Ms. Zhang answers in this funny-yet-serious article on the American trend of loving our pets (and investing in them) like our human children — especially among those of us who don’t have human children, an ever-growing group. Where’s the line between being a caring cat owner and doing too much? Is it maybe when you force another cat to give up their kidney without their consent?

Read the article

Here’s a paywall-safe version, just in case.

Our reading community has been resoundingly pro-pet since its inception, but this will be the first time we focus on a pet-related article. And a controversial one, at that. So let’s bring it on, shall we?

I’d love it if you read the article and joined our discussion on June 25. If you’re interested, this is how things will go:

  • This week, we’ll read the article

  • Next week, we’ll annotate the article as a group

  • The following week, we’ll hear from Ms. Zhang in a podcast interview

  • On Sunday, June 25, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT, we’ll discuss the article on Zoom.

Sign up for the discussion on June 25

If this will be your first time participating in Article Club, I’m 100% sure you’ll find that you’ll feel welcome. We’re a kind, thoughtful reading community. Feel free to reach out with all of your questions.

If you’re agnostic or perhaps even antipathetic about pets, you might need a little encouragement to dive into this 29-minute piece. Never fear, fellow Article Clubber Melinda and I are here to pump up the article and introduce you to all the ethical issues it raises. (There are many.) Here’s our mini-podcast episode, with plenty of banter interspersed with serious talk — hope you take a listen. Warning: There are minor spoilers.

1.5×

0:00

-18:57

Also exciting, as with all Article Club monthly selections, the author will be participating in the festivities, recording a podcast episode for your listening pleasure. Ms. Zhang is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers health and science. Before joining the magazine in 2016, she was a staff writer at WIRED, and her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, Nature, and Discover, among other publications. Ms. Zhang is the recipient of an American Association for the Advancement of Science Kavli Science Journalism Award and was a finalist for the Livingston Awards. She studied neurobiology at Harvard University.

So what do you think? Interested in reading the article and joining our discussion this month? If you’re still a maybe, here are a few questions for you. If you’re a yes to one or more of them, you‘re a great candidate.

  • Do you find yourself showing pictures of your pet to your coworkers?

  • Do you judge your coworkers when they show you pictures of their pet?

  • Do you consider your pet part of your family?

  • Does it bother you when your friend considers their pet part of their family?

  • Would you find joy meeting Fizzy (below) at our discussion on June 25?

Sign up for the discussion on June 25

Fizzy, who belongs to VIP Melinda, is a seven-year old fluff ball whose passions include napping in kitchen cabinets, stealing bathrobe belts to claim as new toys, and birdwatching (so much so this activity has been deemed her personal Netflix). Want your cat to appear this month in the newsletter? hltr.co/pets

Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀

To our 7 new subscribers – including Veronica, Lorena, Jenna, Melissa, and Mark — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. To our long-time subscribers (Harry! Henry! Hanya!), you’re pretty great, too. Loyal reader Michelle, thank you for sharing the newsletter and getting the word out.

If you like The Highlighter Article Club, please help it grow. I really appreciate your support. Here are two ways you can help out:

📬 Invite your friends to subscribe. Know someone who’s kind, thoughtful, and loves to read? I’d love it if you encouraged them to subscribe. Word of mouth is by far the best way to strengthen our reading community. Thank you for spreading the word.

Share The Highlighter Article Club

❤️ Become a paid subscriber, like Lorena (thank you!). You’ll join an esteemed group of readers who value the mission of The Highlighter Article Club. Plus you’ll receive surprise perks and prizes. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT (and see you tonight at HHH)!

#395: Scared of School

Articles on school avoidance, LGBTQ+ discrimination, and cow milk

Happy Thursday, Loyal Readers. Thank you for being here.

This week’s issue features three articles about education. Which got me thinking: Many of you are educators, and so am I, and when this newsletter launched nearly eight years ago, the majority of articles I highlighted were education-related. Now the reverse is true: I’m focusing much more on race and culture, rather than education. I could get into a big explanation as to why this is, but I’m much more interested in what you have to say about this subject. What do you think?

And now, on to this week’s selections. The lead article explores the causes and impact of school avoidance, which has skyrocketed since the pandemic. The second piece reports on the increase of anti-LGBTQ verbal harassment, challenging the assumption that progressive states are providing a safer environment than “Don’t Say Gay” states. Rounding out this week’s newsletter is a story about a young woman who is battling her school administration’s policy on cow milk and fighting for her right to free speech. Even though all three articles discuss tough topics, they’re not all doom and gloom. You’ll find glimmers of hope and good people striving to make a difference. Hope you like the articles — let me know if you do!

💬 HIGHLIGHTER HAPPY HOUR: You’re invited to HHH #20 at Room 389 in Oakland next Thursday, June 1, beginning at 5:30 pm. There are two free tickets left. HHH is a joyous informal gathering of kind, thoughtful members of our reading community. You’re one of them, so it’d be great to see you there. Don’t worry: There isn’t a quiz about whether you’ve read all the articles. Plus there are prizes galore.

Get your ticket to HHH!

1️⃣ The Rise of School Avoidance

Jayne Demsky didn’t know what was going on with her son. No matter what she did, he didn’t want to go to school. The anxiety was too much. At first it was one day here and there. But then the days became more frequent. Pretty soon it was weeks, then months. “I would describe it as hell,” she said.

If you’re an educator, you know what I’m talking about. Ever since the pandemic, more and more students are experiencing school avoidance. “It’s scary because it’s not voluntary at all. It’s just kind of happening to you,” one student said. I’ll sit in the car and tell myself to go in, but my body won’t carry me inside.”

Journalist Adrianna Rodriguez does a good job highlighting the complexities of school avoidance. For instance, it’s not easily diagnosed, it’s not the same thing as anxiety, each kid’s experience is different, and schools are still learning to deal with it. I appreciated learning that anxiety may not necessarily be the cause but rather the effect of school avoidance, and the most important time to intervene is right at the beginning, before the problem festers and deepens.

➡️ Read the article | USA Today | 11 minutes

Susu, who belongs to VIP Camille, loves to sneak up on her brother Zenny and take naps in sunny places. She also believes all boxes are worth exploring. Want your pet to appear in the newsletter? hltr.co/pets

2️⃣ Scared of School

It’s easy to blame Ron DeSantis for making things hard for LGBTQ kids in schools. But the problem is nationwide, according to this detailed report by GLSEN and The Trevor Project, which shows that anti-gay and anti-trans harassment and bullying are not limited to the “Don’t Say Gay” states. “There is no state in the nation,” survey data concluded, “where fewer than 93% of LGBTQ students reported hearing homophobic and transphobic slurs in school.” The greatest increase in slurs come from adults: for example, up 400% in California and 600% in Massachusetts from 2019 to 2021. Why is this happening? The hundreds of state bills stripping protections from LGBTQ youth certainly do not help. But the authors also suggest that while American adults are becoming more accepting of queerness in general, they want to make sure their kids stay pure and straight.

➡️ Read the article | The 74 | 9 minutes

3️⃣ Milk Shake-Up

Marielle Williamson goes to high school in Los Angeles and thinks cow milk is gross. She and her friends prefer plant-based milk. So does Generation Z as a whole; they drink 20 percent less liquid milk than the national average. So do more Americans in general; 42 percent of households bought plant-based milk in 2021. Two powerful groups, though, are not getting the memo: Big Dairy and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Schools must offer cow milk in cafeterias to get federal funding, so when Marianne asked to distribute literature to promote the health benefits of plant-based milk, school administrators said sure, but only if she also shared pro-dairy messages. Marianne said no way, and now she’s suing. (I think she’s going to win.)

➡️ Read the article | Washington Post | 10 minutes

+ The Highlighter has been following controversial beverages for years. We declared that juice is bad for you in 2017. Same thing with smoothies, sorry, in 2016.

Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀

To our 5 new subscribers – including Charlotte, Elainea, and Gerald — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. To our long-time subscribers (Gary! Gene! Gena!), you’re pretty great, too. Loyal reader Lorraine, thank you for sharing the newsletter and getting the word out.

If you like The Highlighter Article Club, please help it grow. I really appreciate your support. Here are two ways you can help out:

📬 Invite your friends to subscribe. Know someone who’s kind, thoughtful, and loves to read? I’d love it if you encouraged them to subscribe. Word of mouth is by far the best way to strengthen our reading community. Thank you for spreading the word.

Share The Highlighter Article Club

❤️ Become a paid subscriber, like Jake (thank you!). You’ll join an esteemed group of readers who value the mission of The Highlighter Article Club. Plus you’ll receive surprise perks and prizes. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT!

#394: Amor Eterno

Also: Come join us at Highlighter Happy Hour in Oakland on June 1

I still remember the school shooting in 1989 at an elementary school in Stockton. It is because my Aunt Bernice was a teacher there. She survived, but five of her students did not. It was one of the first school shootings in our country.

I also remember the Columbine shooting in 1999. I was in my second year of teaching. My students wanted to talk about it, to make sense of the horror. I don’t remember saying anything too helpful. But I do remember thinking the tragedy was an anomaly.

Now there are so many mass shootings happening so often, one after another, that we have to rely on Internet databases to keep track of them. Certainly we don’t have the brain or heart space to process them all. It’s easier to avoid them and go about our day. It’s easier to stay numb and desensitized. This certainly has happened to me.

But every once in a while, there’s an article about gun violence that sticks out and demands my attention. “Amor Eterno,” which leads this week’s issue, is one such article. It’s about Kimberly Mata-Rubio, who lost her 10-year-old daughter Lexi last year in Uvalde. It won’t be easy to read. It won’t be easy to finish. But I hope you’ll read it. If you’re moved, I hope you’ll share it.

💬 HIGHLIGHTER HAPPY HOUR: You’re invited to HHH #20 at Room 389 in Oakland on Thursday, June 1, beginning at 5:30 pm. There are five free tickets left. HHH is a joyous informal gathering of kind, thoughtful members of our reading community. You’re one of them, so it’d be great to see you there. Don’t worry: There isn’t a quiz about whether you’ve read all the articles. Plus there are prizes galore.

Get your ticket to HHH!

1️⃣ Amor Eterno

Before her daughter Lexi was killed last year in Uvalde, Kimberly Mata-Rubio was a shy, soft-spoken woman who took history classes at the local university and worked part-time at the local newspaper. She preferred staying in the background.

No more. Not after the massacre. Not after Texas lawmakers offered thoughts and prayers, but no laws. Not after Senator Ted Cruz said guns weren’t the issue. No, Ms. Mata-Rubio will not rest until there is a ban on all assault rifles and high-capacity magazines. “I’ll fight until I have nothing left to give,” she says.

This is not an easy story to read. And I’m sure it wasn’t an easy story to write. But in the hands of award-winning feature writer Skip Hollandsworth, not a stranger to writing about tragedy, it’s a story that breaks through our wish to stay distant.

“When 19 children and 2 teachers are killed in a town of 15,000,” he writes, “the math works like this: You either loved one of the victims or you know someone who loved one of the victims — you know an aunt, a cousin, a close family friend. You know someone who tucked them into bed the night before, who argued with them about brushing their teeth, who told them to keep it down, who read them a story or maybe a poem and said goodnight, and then good morning, and then goodbye.”

➡️ Read the article | Texas Monthly | 29 minutes

Zenny, who is one-eyed and beautiful, belongs to VIP Camille and loves to eat, nap, receive warm cuddles, and wake up early. Want your pet to appear here? hltr.co/pets

2️⃣ American Terror: Remembering Tulsa

Did you learn about the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 in school? I certainly didn’t — not in my AP U.S. History class when I was a junior in high school, and not even at UC Berkeley, where I majored in history. The first time I heard about it, in 2004, I was preparing to teach American history to my students in San Francisco. It’s unconscionable, but it’s also no surprise. In this well-written account, Tim Madigan clearly and unflinchingly recounts what happened the morning of June 1, 1921, when white terrorists destroyed the the Greenwood district of Tulsa, known then as the “Negro Wall Street of America.” The white mob killed 300 Black people and left another 10,000 Black people homeless. It burned 1,100 homes and flattened 35 square blocks of restaurants, drugstores, grocery stores, churches, the hospital, the public library, and the school. Especially powerful are Mr. Madigan’s interviews with survivors of the massacre, like Eldoris McCondichie, who was 9 years old.

➡️ Read the article | Smithsonian Magazine | 31 minutes

3️⃣ Not All Native Americans Are Leftist Political Activists

Author of the best-selling novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie is now trying to reconstruct his career after apologizing for sexually harassing women in 2018. Now his work is diminished, but his writing is still provocative to read. In this essay, Mr. Alexie takes issue with the term BIPOC, arguing that progressives (who likely aren’t Native Americans) have unwittingly homogenized the diversity of American Indians in an effort to combat white supremacy.

I understand that the “I” in BIPOC is meant to convey pride and solidarity. And I agree with that mission. That mission is essential. But I think that “indigenous,” as politically employed, has instead become a word that restricts the meaning of what it is to be an Indian. I think it has created a national and international illusion that that only proper way to be an Indian, or to be an Indian at all, is to be an Indian who is a leftist political activist.

➡️ Read the article | Sherman Alexie: A Literary Newsletter | 10 minutes

Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀

To our 6 new subscribers – Osa, Tim, Garik, Jacob, Isabelle, and Roland — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. To our long-time subscribers (Fern! Fred! Freida!), you’re pretty great, too. Loyal reader Kim, thank you for sharing the newsletter and getting the word out.

If you like The Highlighter Article Club, please help it grow. I really appreciate your support. Here are two ways you can help out:

📬 Invite your friends to subscribe. Know someone who’s kind, thoughtful, and loves to read? I’d love it if you encouraged them to subscribe. Word of mouth is by far the best way to strengthen our reading community. Thank you for spreading the word.

Share The Highlighter Article Club

❤️ Become a paid subscriber, like Leah (thank you!). You’ll join an esteemed group of readers who value the mission of The Highlighter Article Club. Plus you’ll receive surprise perks and prizes. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT!

#393: An interview with Emily Bazelon, author of “Why is Affirmative Action in Peril?”

Please join our discussion on Sunday, May 21, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT

Dear Loyal Readers,

Thank you for being here! I have four things for you this week, so let’s get right to it.

1️⃣ Article Club

This month we’ve been focusing on “Why is Affirmative Action in Peril?” by Emily Bazelon. It’s a piece I highly recommend that you read. Here’s why:

  • The Supreme Court will likely strike down affirmative action next month

  • This article expertly explains why

  • Ms. Bazelon — staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, senior research fellow at Yale Law School, and co-host of Slate’s Political Gabfest — knows how to write and knows what she’s talking about

Instead of focusing on the current politics of the Court, Ms. Bazelon takes us back in time, helping us understand the history of affirmative action through a close study of the Bakke decision and the legal strategy of attorney Archibald Cox — which won the case but ultimately left affirmative action vulnerable.

Sign up for the discussion!

I hope you’ll sign up to discuss the article on Sunday, May 21, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT on Zoom. Article Clubbers are kind and thoughtful and welcoming. Our conversations are always in small, intimate, facilitated groups. Reach out if you have questions or if you want to participate in the conversation but are secretly shy or nervous.

2️⃣ My interview with Ms. Bazelon

I can’t stop thinking about how much fun it was to chat with Ms. Bazelon. She was a total pro: generous, thoughtful, and deeply knowledgeable. (My friends have told me to stop gushing.) We talked about a number of topics, including:

  • how Mr. Cox cobbled together a victory by wooing a segregationist justice

  • how the justices have wildly different interpretations of the 14th Amendment

  • how white people have a very short amount of patience for thinking about the harms of race discrimination

There is a fundamental American tension between prizing individual achievement and promoting the collective spirit of the nation’s egalitarian promise, between the call to be colorblind and the call not to be blind to racism.

I hope you take a listen! (You can click the player at the top or subscribe to The Highlighter Article Club on your favorite podcast player.)

3️⃣ Article Club author Eli Saslow wins another Pulitzer Prize

When I spoke with Eli Saslow last November about “An American Education,” I asked him how it felt to win a Pulitzer Prize. He shared his complex feelings: both that he was “hugely gratified” for the acknowledgment but also “a little conflicted” given that he writes about people’s worst moments and our country’s deepest problems.

I appreciated the thoughtfulness of that answer, and I have continued recommending Mr. Saslow’s work to my colleagues. For those reasons and more, I was delighted to hear that he won yet another Pulitzer Prize this week. Here’s a clip:

Congratulations, Mr. Saslow! You are further evidence proving my bold claim — that writers who participate in Article Club go on to win Pulitzers. My other evidence? Mitchell S. Jackson. (Sadly, I can’t take credit for Kathryn Schulz or Stephanie McCrummen; they won their Pulitzers beforehand.)

Read "An American Education"

Henry, who belongs to VIP Marna, likes snoozing. Want your pet to appear here? hltr.co/pets

4️⃣ Meet other thoughtful readers at HHH on June 1

Highlighter Happy Hour has been one of the most joyful ways for us to gather, connect, and celebrate our reading community. We’re heading into the 20th HHH! Can you believe it?

We’ll be meeting up at Room 389 in Oakland on June 1 beginning at 5:30.

If you live or work not too far from Oakland, it’d be great to see you there. If you get a free ticket, you’ll get a prize at the door. And just in case you’re nervous: Yes, we do chat about the articles — but only sometimes, and usually just tangentially.

Get your free ticket

Thank you for reading this week’s issue and for listening to the interview. Hope you liked it. 😀

If you like The Highlighter Article Club, please help it grow. I really appreciate your support. Here are two ways you can help out:

📬 Invite your friends to subscribe. Know someone who’s kind, thoughtful, and loves to read? I’d love it if you encouraged them to subscribe. Word of mouth is by far the best way to strengthen our reading community. Thank you for spreading the word.

Share The Highlighter Article Club

❤️ Become a paid subscriber, like Brad (thank you!). You’ll join an esteemed group of readers who value the mission of The Highlighter Article Club. Plus you’ll receive surprise perks and prizes. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT!