#479: The End of Reading?

Dear Loyal Readers,

Last week’s lead article, “Women Have Been Misled About Menopause,” prompted a deluge of kind words, emails, and phone calls. Thank you for reaching out and sharing that the piece connected with you.

This week, we’re focusing on a topic near and dear to my heart: the state of reading. It’s an understatement when I say I’m a fan of reading. After all, I publish this newsletter, lead a reading nonprofit, support teachers to promote literacy, and extol the virtues of reading to anyone who will listen.

The past few months, I’ve noticed an uptick in voices claiming that young people don’t or can’t read anymore. Much of this sentiment is not new. Every generation, when they’re no longer young, likes to complain about young people. (If you want an article to go viral, the best recipe is to blame teachers without providing evidence.)

Because there’s so much bad writing out there about the fall of reading, I want to share a few articles that might ground us in thoughtful, productive conversations.

Today’s lead article — “Is This The End of Reading?” — is also our February article of the month. It’s written by Beth McMurtrie, whom I selected Best Author of 2024. Ms. McMurtrie is a real reporter; she steers clear of the sensational. This won’t be a gossip column about Lucy Calkins or a hatchet job on the Science of Reading. I highly recommend it, especially if you are a parent, educator, or advocate of reading. If the piece resonates with you, I invite you to our discussion on Feb. 23. You can find out more information below.

If that article does not catch your interest, never fear. Choose between:

If you like what we’re doing here at Article Club, and want to support this venture with a paid subscription, I would be very grateful. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year.

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1️⃣ Is This The End Of Reading?

Some of this, we’ve heard before: Young people aren’t reading as much, and they’re not as skilled in reading, so they’re coming to class unprepared to read complex texts. Whether or not this is true, or a new phenomenon, it certainly doesn’t help to bemoan the state of reading without trying to do something about it.

That’s why I appreciated this article so much. Reporter Beth McMurtrie follows college professors as they grapple with how to teach their students in a post-print world. After all, as one professor says, “If you design a class based on the assumption that students will do the reading, you’ll get nowhere.”

After listing a litany of causes that explain the decline of reading — here we go: smartphones, the pandemic, poor reading instruction, testing culture, less homework in schools, less writing in schools, grade inflation, anxiety, isolation, that school is boring, that parents don’t read to their children, and more — Ms. McMurtrie focuses on the successes and failures of real teachers doing the real work. It’s not all happy and triumphant. “We all kind of feel lost these days,” one professor says.

➡️ In case you’re interested, here’s my hand-written annotated version.

By Beth McMurtrie • The Chronicle of Higher Education • 18 min • Gift Link

Read the article

2️⃣ Come join our discussion on February 23

I’m happy to announce that we will be discussing “Is This The End of Reading” on Sunday, Feb. 23, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT, on Zoom.

I warmly invite you to participate this month in our deep dive and to join the discussion. Everyone is welcome to sign up. This is how it’ll go:

  • We’ll sign up by clicking the button below

  • We’ll read and annotate the article together on this shared Google Doc

  • We’ll listen to an interview with author Beth McMurtrie (coming next week)

  • We’ll gather on Zoom to discuss the article in facilitated small groups

Are you interested? I hope so.

If this will be your first time (this is most of you!), rest assured: Like you, Article Club readers are kind and thoughtful. We love the best writing that’s out there, and we appreciate building connection and empathy across difference. If you have any questions, hit reply or email me at mark@articleclub.org.

Sign up for our discussion

Morris, who belongs to loyal reader Janine, would prefer having fewer dogs in this newsletter. Please nominate yours for publication: hltr.co/pets

3️⃣ When AI Does The Reading For Students

We know this to be true: ChatGPT is writing our kids’ essays. It doesn’t matter what we do. Pretty soon, unless we bring back Blue Books, generative AI will complete a larger percentage of writing assignments than our students themselves.

But what if the computers do the reading, too? It’s already happening. Google NotebookLM is like CliffsNotes on steroids. Young people won’t have to fake that they’ve done the reading. They’ll just say their digital companion has prepared for them a summary brief. After all, why suffer for hours, slogging through text, when technology will do the grunt work for you?

By Marc Watkins • The Chronicle of Higher Education • 6 min • Gift Link

Read the article

4️⃣ The Need To Read

Whenever I feel hopeless about the future of reading, I return to this piece, which loyal reader Lynn recommended in November 2016. Will Schwalbe reminds us why we read and why we should strive to continue to do so. Here’s one of my favorite passages:

Books remain one of the strongest bulwarks we have against tyranny — but only as long as people are free to read all different kinds of books, and only as long as they actually do so. The right to read whatever you want whenever you want is one of the fundamental rights that helps preserve all the other rights. It’s a right we need to guard with unwavering diligence. But it’s also a right we can guard with pleasure. Reading isn’t just a strike against narrowness, mind control and domination: It’s one of the world’s great joys.

Yes, this is an ode to reading, and a bit syrupy at times, but I feel like that’s what we need right now. Unless we state with conviction that reading is important, and what reading is for, I’m afraid we might lose it as part of our culture, entirely and forever.

By Will Schwalbe • The Wall Street Journal • 12 min • Gift Link

Read the article

✅ It’s time for a quick poll. I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks to paid subscribers, I’m able to provide gift links for anyone who hits a paywall. Do you use them?

POLL

Have you ever clicked on a gift link?

Yes

95%

Not yet

5%

POLL CLOSED

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

To our 15 new subscribers — including Joanna, Pamela, Modern Reproduction, Helena, Elaine, Gregory, Aisling, Lucinda, Manisha, Robyn, Samir, and Martha — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. Welcome to Article Club. Make yourself at home. 🏠

If you appreciate the articles, value our discussions, and in general have come to trust that Article Club will have better things for you to read than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end, please consider a paid subscription. I am very appreciative of Glenda, our latest paid reader. Thank you!

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If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. Recommend the newsletter to a friend, leave a comment, buy me a coffee, or send me an email. I’d love to hear from you.

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

#478: Misled About Menopause

Dear Readers,

I hope you are taking good care. This week, I scoured what seemed like the entire Internet for good articles to share with you. We’re talking about many hours here! (My gut says that the inauguration probably consumed the attention of many publications.)

The good news is, after sweat and tears, I was able to find three pieces that passed my high standards and thereby are worthy of bringing to you. In usual Article Club fashion, they explore various topics and emerge from various sources.

I highly recommend this week’s lead article, “Women Have Been Misled About Menopause,” by Susan Dominus. As someone who personally knows little about menopause, but who seeks to learn more, I found this piece extremely informative. It’s a good companion piece to Issue #457, “The Female Body.”

If that article isn’t for you (even though it won a National Magazine Award), scroll down past Mouse, this week’s pet, to find two more great selections about:

I hope you appreciate this week’s articles. Also, I’m looking forward to our two upcoming in-person gatherings: this Sunday’s discussion of “Someone Else’s Daughter” (sold out) and next Thursday’s reader event in Oakland (still room).

If you like what we’re doing here at Article Club, and want to support this venture with a paid subscription, I would be very grateful. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year.

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1️⃣ Women Have Been Misled About Menopause

Susan Dominus: “Imagine that some significant portion of the male population started regularly waking in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, a problem that endured for several years. Imagine that those men stumbled to work, exhausted, their morale low, frequently tearing off their jackets or hoodies during meetings and excusing themselves to gulp for air by a window. Imagine that many of them suddenly found sex to be painful, that they were newly prone to urinary-tract infections, with their penises becoming dry and irritable, even showing signs of what their doctors called ‘atrophy.’ Imagine that many of their doctors had received little to no training on how to manage these symptoms — and when the subject arose, sometimes reassured their patients that this process was natural, as if that should be consolation enough.”

By Susan Dominus • The New York Times Magazine • 30 min • Gift Link • Audio

Read the article

2️⃣ The Charango

Valerie Argentina Calvo: “I can see him. He stands proud, with his shoulders back; he’s short and stocky like a pitbull. His voice is just as proud as his posture, loud and deep, with a thick, warm, Andean accent. His wide jaw and square head make him look stern when his face is resting. But my dad is a performer, so his face is not often resting. Most of the time it is in a wide, amicable grin. He holds the neck of the charango in his left hand, and his right hand strokes it, smoothing down the hair, as though it were still living. His big hand covers almost its entire body.

“I remember the night my father choked me. I spoke back at him, and he grabbed my thin neck, pushed me up against a bookcase, and lifted me until my toes were reaching for the carpet. A vase fell off the bookcase and shattered; the next day at school my best friend would ask me about the cuts on my feet. I remember his eyes looked so hard, like black marbles, and his firm, calloused fingers closed off my air like pressing down on a fret. I wonder what strained, high-pitched cries he squeezed out of me.”

By Valerie Argentina Calvo • Longreads • 10 min • Gift Link

Read the article

Mouse, who belongs to loyal reader Corinne, enjoys road trips to Crescent City. Would you like your pet to appear here? hltr.co/pets

3️⃣ Go Where You’re Invited

Katherine Johnson Martinko: “There's nothing wrong with turning down an invitation clearly and politely when you receive it. I'm all for emptying the calendar of superfluous events, especially if you want to focus on other projects. But I take issue with not showing up for good friends, cancelling within a couple days, using a lame excuse, or leaving your RSVP status vague until the last minute.

“ ‘Self-care’ is often used as an excuse, and while it is important to attend to one's personal well-being, I am not a fan of self-care that marginalizes other well-meaning people. There's a time and place for spending a night on the couch in your PJs, but there's just as much a time and place to show up for the people who want to be your friends — assuming you want friends.”

By Katherine Johnson Martinko • The Analog Family • 6 min • Gift Link

Read the article

✅ It’s time for a quick poll. I’d love to hear from you.

POLL

What do you want more articles about?

Race

0%

Education

9%

Culture

22%

Mark, keep doing what you’re doing!

70%

POLL CLOSED

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

To our 16 new subscribers — including BN, Ming, SD, Grace, Phil, Nicole, Alexis, Laura, Bert, Erna, Aileen, Bonnie, Thomas, Julie, and Cardinal — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. Welcome to Article Club. Make yourself at home. 🏠

If you appreciate the articles, value our discussions, and in general have come to trust that Article Club will have better things for you to read than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end, please consider a paid subscription. I am very appreciative of Fern, our latest paid reader. Thank you!

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If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. Recommend the newsletter to a friend (thanks Vivian!), leave a comment, buy me a coffee (thank you, Anonymous Coffee Giver!), or send me an email. I’d love to hear from you.

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

#477: The Anti-Social Century

Last week’s issue prompted strong emotions. Thank you for reading it and reaching out with your reactions. Several of you said that the lead article made you cry. Many of you signed up for our online discussion on Jan. 26 and for our in-person gathering on Jan. 30. Your kind words and engagement reminded me of the power of reading in community and the joy of connecting with other thoughtful people.

Unfortunately, this kind of engagement is not happening in all corners of our country. Ever since the pandemic (and likely farther back), we’ve retreated significantly from social life. All of a sudden, everyone’s an introvert. (I blame Susan Cain.) We’re lonely. We’re disconnected. We’re cocooning.

That’s why I deeply appreciated today’s lead article, “The Anti-Social Century,” by Derek Thompson. It’s well-reported, well-researched, and well-written, and I encourage you to read it. If you prefer shorter pieces, feel free to scroll down, where you’ll find two additional articles and a mini-podcast related to this week’s theme. They’re about:

Hope you appreciate this week’s articles and mini-podcast. As always, if you appreciate an article, I’d love to hear from you (by email or in the comments below). Or if you prefer, show your support by becoming a paid subscriber (like Fern) or buying me a coffee (like Doug). I would be very grateful.

Subscribe

1️⃣ The Anti-Social Century

Nobody wants to do anything anymore. Loneliness is on the rise. Everyone’s an introvert all of a sudden. We care more about our phones than our friends. Pets are popular because they offer us one more excuse to avoid people.

For years now, you and I have bemoaned this decline in American social life. I know it’s been on your mind because last year’s most-read article in this newsletter was “The Friendship Problem,” by Rosie Spinks. And certainly it’s been on my mind, too — in the many conversations I‘ve had with my partner, and in the many articles I’ve read.

Up until this outstanding article, however, I hadn’t read a comprehensive look at this trend toward mass solitude. Journalist Derek Thompson certainly does his legwork here. There are many startling facts and disturbing graphs. There’s history. There are discussions of technology and phones and artificial intelligence. Most importantly, Mr. Thompson explores the negative impacts of solitude, but he also maintains that changes in our culture are not inevitable.

This piece is worth your time. It’s not comprehensive, of course, and you won’t agree with all of Mr. Thompson’s claims. But you’ll appreciate having read it, and you’ll have something to talk about with your friends when you finally decide to go outside.

By Derek Thompson • The Atlantic • 30 min • Gift Link

Read the article

2️⃣ The Homeschooling Option

About a year ago, I featured an article that criticized the social and educational benefits of homeschooling. Thoughtful readers reached out to encourage me to rethink my position. I appreciated our conversations. Since then, I’ve sought out various perspectives on homeschooling that might push my thinking.

This article by is one of those pieces. Writer Casey Kleczek first establishes that the homeschooling trend continues to skyrocket, especially among Black families, where the rate has increased five-fold since 2020. In other words, homeschooling is not a passing fad, and it’s not limited to white or hippie or Christian families.

What I liked most about this article is that it’s a wake-up call for traditional schools. Five years ago, as we suffered through the pandemic, educational visionaries promised that schools would transform once we got to the other side. But not much has changed. Ms. Kleczek writes that many Black and Brown parents never stopped wondering “why they were sending their children to a place for eight horus a day when they were still not doing well.” One parent said, “If nobody else can do this for my child, I can do this for my child.”

By Casey Kleczek • Plough • 11 min • Gift Link

Read the article

At long last: This year’s calendar is here! Moby, who belongs to loyal readers Caitlin and Jason, graces the cover. The Pets of Article Club calendar is a gift for paid subscribers.

3️⃣ The Loss of Public News Racks in San Francisco

Nobody is reading print newspapers anymore. It makes sense, then, that public news racks are disappearing as well. Like payphones, another extinct artifact from the analog age, news racks were never beautiful. Some found them to be an eyesore, a blight on the urban aesthetic. But the total removal of news racks — as the City of San Francisco will complete within 60 days — is a distinct and not-insignificant cultural loss. It means the end of randomly grabbing the neighborhood newspaper on your walk to work. It means that your elderly neighbor stops reading her beloved Chronicle after 60 years. It means the shuttering of more local publications and less accountability of local government. And it means the inexorable decline of physical manifestations of reading in the world. Pretty soon, if anyone is reading, we might not know it, and certainly our kids won’t know it, since any reading that we’re doing will be hidden away behind the privacy of our personal devices.

By Julia Gitis • Mission Local • 7 min • Gift Link

Read the article

4️⃣ Our First Thoughts: “Someone Else’s Daughter”

This month, we’re discussing “Someone Else’s Daughter,” a poignant story about two families whose lives turn upside down after finding out the babies they gave birth to aren’t actually their genetic children.

Already, we have 19 people who have signed up to join our discussion on January 26 at 2 pm PT. There are five slots left. This article is a deep and thought-provoking one, so if you are interested in talking about it with other kind, thoughtful people, I highly recommend that you take the plunge. It’d be great to see you there.

Sign up for the discussion

A couple days ago, Article Club co-host Melinda and I met up to discuss our first impressions of the article. It’s like the-discussion-before-the-discussion! We hope you take a listen. In addition to our usual banter, we have a little surprise feature for listeners — which I suppose is no longer a surprise.

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

To our 13 new subscribers — including Tim, Gomez, Gloria, Natalie, Shelby, Frances, Sydney, Susan, Fer, Astra, Molly, Rod, and Jason — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. Welcome to Article Club. Make yourself at home. 🏠

If you appreciate the articles, value our discussions, and in general have come to trust that Article Club will have better things for you to read than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end, please consider a paid subscription. I am very appreciative of Ernest, our latest paid reader. Thank you!

Subscribe

If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. Recommend the newsletter to a friend (thanks Tanisha!), leave a comment, buy me a coffee, or send me an email. I’d love to hear from you.

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

#476: Someone Else’s Daughter

Dear Loyal Readers,

I hope your new year has begun well. Mine is strong so far. My colleagues and our students have returned to school; my dog still enjoys fetching his ball with abandon; I am spending ample time resting and reading.

If you are a long-time subscriber, you know that two things make Article Club special: (1) the great articles, (2) the great people. That’s what this week’s issue is all about.

Today I’ll announce January’s article of the month. Then I’ll invite you to two upcoming gatherings, which I think you will find valuable.

Hope you appreciate this week’s article and invitations. As always, if you appreciate an article, I’d love to hear from you (by email or in the comments below). Or if you prefer, show your support by becoming a paid subscriber (like Sam) or buying me a coffee (like Devin). I would be very grateful.

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1️⃣ Someone Else’s Daughter

Daphna Cardinale was overjoyed when she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. The road had been a long one: She and her husband Alexander had tried for three years to get pregnant before turning to in vitro fertilization. They called their daughter May. Everything about her was a gift.

Except there was one problem: Their daughter didn’t look like them.

At first, Daphna and Alexander shrugged off their feelings of anxiety. Genes work in mysterious ways, they said. Who cares if their friends and family were asking pointed questions? But no matter what they did, their suspicions never subsided. So Daphna and Alexander ordered a DNA testing kit to calm their nerves.

The results shocked them. May wasn’t their genetic baby. Their I.V.F. clinic had made a huge mistake. Now what? they asked.

By Susan Dominus • The New York Times Magazine • 27 min • Gift Link

Read the article

2️⃣ Come join our discussion on January 26

I’m happy to announce that we will be discussing “Someone Else’s Daughter” on Sunday, Jan. 26, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT, on Zoom.

I warmly invite you to participate this month in our deep dive and to join the discussion. Everyone is welcome to sign up. This is how it’ll go:

  • We’ll sign up by clicking the button below

  • We’ll read and annotate the article together on this shared Google Doc

  • We’ll listen to an interview with author Susan Dominus (coming Jan. 23)

  • We’ll gather on Zoom to discuss the article in facilitated small groups

Are you interested? I hope so.

If this will be your first time (this is most of you!), rest assured: Like you, Article Club readers are kind and thoughtful. We love the best writing that’s out there, and we appreciate building connection and empathy across difference. If you have any questions, hit reply or email me at mark@articleclub.org.

Sign up for our discussion

Billy, who belongs to loyal reader Boris, enjoys letting his small dog friends win wrestling matches from time to time. Want your pet to appear here? hltr.co/pets

3️⃣ Can’t make January’s discussion? No problem.

One thing I like about Article Club is that we keep things friendly and informal. Remember, this isn’t graduate school. We don’t have to be fancy or feel like we need to perform, as if it’s graduate school or something. After all, we’re here for the articles and to connect with other thoughtful people.

One outgrowth of this vibe is that I have not typically planned out discussion dates and articles in advance. But I’ve heard from some of you that you’d like to mark your calendars and choose which discussion(s) to join.

That sounds like a great idea, so here are the 10 discussion dates for 2025.

I hope that having all the dates all in one place will encourage you to join a discussion when you feel available and inspired to do so.

Sign up for our discussion

4️⃣ Dislike Zoom? Connect with fellow readers in real life.

If you live near Oakland, I warmly invite you to attend our most popular gathering, affectionally called Highlighter Happy Hour, on Jan. 30. We’ll meet at Room 389 beginning at 5:30 pm. Yes, there will be prizes. Sign up by clicking the button below.

HHH always “sells out.” (Tickets are free.) It’s a great way to connect with fellow loyal readers and to share perspectives on the articles. Friends have been made at HHH!

Why is it called HHH? The acronym hearkens back to when this newsletter was named “The Highlighter,” circa 2015-2022. While I’ve rebranded most everything else Article Club-related, HHH remains strong.

Want to start a local chapter of HHH? I fully support this idea. Let’s chat.

Get your free ticket

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

To our 25 new subscribers — including Beth, Kelsey, Irene, Michael, Balboa, Joan, Gary, Jordie, Ini, Mythili, Christina, Becky, Kathryn, Ravi, Kim, Shrirex, Melissa, Briesan, Susan, Sam, and Rachel — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. Welcome to Article Club. Make yourself at home. 🏠

If you appreciate the articles, value our discussions, and in general have come to trust that Article Club will have better things for you to read than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end, please consider a paid subscription. I am very appreciative of Sam, our latest paid reader. Thank you!

Subscribe

If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. Recommend the newsletter to a friend (thanks Tracie!), leave a comment, buy me a coffee, or send me an email. I’d love to hear from you.

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

#475: Radicalized

Dear Loyal Readers and New Subscribers,

Happy New Year! Hope yours was a good one.

Did you make any resolutions? Honestly, they scare me, so I try to avoid them. Many of you will cheer me on when I tell you that I spent the last two weeks focusing on rest and generally not thinking too hard about this newsletter. But be assured: There are new ideas afoot here at Article Club. I’ll keep you posted.

As far as today’s issue, you get a classic one: Four great articles on a variety of topics from a variety of publications. If more (or more focused) reading is a goal of yours this year, why not start today with these selections?

Today’s lead article is “Radicalized,” a short story (yes, fiction again!) by Cory Doctorow. Originally published in 2019, the piece follows a man who becomes radicalized on the Internet after his wife falls ill and is denied treatment by her insurance provider. To say that the story is prescient would be an understatement.

If anything Luigi Mangione-related is not your cup of tea, here are three other articles that you may find intriguing. The first two in particular are very “new-yeary” in that they explore the big things in life. (The third one is a bit ridiculous.)

Hope you appreciate this week’s articles. As always, if you appreciate an article, I’d love to hear from you (by email or in the comments below). Or if you prefer, show your support by becoming a paid subscriber (like Diana) or buying me a coffee (like Carina). I would be very grateful.

Subscribe

✚ If you’re wondering what this month’s article of the month is going to be, I’ll announce that next week. We’ll meet on Zoom on Sunday, Jan. 26, 2 - 3:30 pm PT.

1️⃣ Radicalized

Don’t worry, Article Club is not going to rebrand as a Luigi Mangione fan newsletter. However, I do need to share two quick facts: (1) “Mangione” means “Big Eater,” (2) Luigi’s nose looks like my brother’s (haven’t told my brother yet).

Why am I talking about this? It’s because this short story by Cory Doctorow is eerie. The main character, Joe Gorman, is a regular guy with a wonderful wife. One day she calls him at work with horrific news: Stage 4 breast cancer. They find a treatment that offers hope, but their insurer denies their request.

Reeling, Joe goes online for comfort. He discovers a discussion forum of men facing similar challenges. He feels safe online; he feels a sense of community. Over time, Joe finds himself on his computer in the middle of the night, as men on the forum writhe in pain and discuss ways to achieve vengeance and justice. What will it take, they ask, in order for things to change?

By Cory Doctorow • The American Prospect • 65 min • Gift Link

Read the short story

➕ This piece is part of Mr. Doctorow’s 2019 book and was also recommended by The Lazy Reader, a weekly newsletter featuring the best longform journalism.

2️⃣ Confluences

Around the same time that Jennifer Sinor is bringing a new life into the world, her father and uncle are taking their last journey together. They’re up in Alaska, traveling once more down the Alatna River (wow, it’s beautiful), just like they did when they were younger. This time, however, Ms. Sinor’s uncle, who has prostate cancer and Parkinson’s, is struggling.

One night around the fire, as they discuss their children and hopes for the future, Ms. Sinor’s uncle wonders where Cynde is. Her father replies, “Cynde did not come on this trip.” Her uncle tries to save himself: “I know, I just forgot.” Over the next few days, things get worse.

Even though I’m not sure that Ms. Sinor needed to insert her own story into this braided essay, I was touched by the beauty of her writing, as well as the love that she has for her family.

By Jennifer Sinor • the American Scholar • 23 min • Gift Link

Read the article

Tucker, who belongs to loyal readers Tony and Ziba, is very jumpy and loves to cozy up under the covers and destroy ornaments. Want your pet to appear here? hltr.co/pets

3️⃣ Into The Wind

In her early-20s, Laura Killingbeck lived in Oakland, studied philosophy in college, danced for money to make ends meet, felt disgust at the men who groped her, started drinking and taking painkillers, worked as a mascot at an aquarium, and lived on a sailboat with a man she met at a bar. At some point, she lost herself.

“There was only one solution,” she writes, “and that was to leave everything behind: to undo myself completely, to free myself from my own motivations.” She said goodbye to everyone and everything and bought a one-way ticket to Alaska.

There, Ms. Killingbeck began a bike ride from Anchorage south through Canada. It is healing and transformative. She writes:

Every pedal stroke became part of the rhythm of breath and motion. Every thought and feeling became transient, like the sky. I cried a lot as I rode, often from gratitude, and these tears seemed to cleanse me from the inside out. It didn’t matter what I looked like out here or what anyone thought of me. I was free to fall apart, and inside that dissolution, for fleeting moments, I felt whole.

By Laura Killingbeck • Bicycling • 13 min • Gift Link

Read the article

4️⃣ The Parents Who Don’t Teach Sharing

Critics of this article say it’s clickbait, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. (Maybe that’s the goal of clickbait?) Apparently, some people who believe in gentle parenting teach their children not to share. Doing so, they argue, is developmentally inappropriate, especially for young children who may not understand the concept. Forcing a child to share therefore causes harm, mental health problems, and future people-pleasing. One psychologist says, “⁠Not sharing in childhood sets kids up to be able to prioritize their own needs and to have things in life that they want for themselves.”

Sounds pretty white middle class capitalist to me — and to Lucía Alcalá, professor of psychology at California State University. In Indigenous Mayan families, she says, children are expected to share from an early age. “We don’t see the terrible 2s in these communities. There’s no such thing.”

By Emi Nietfeld • The Cut • 7 min • Gift Link

Read the article

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

To our 34 new subscribers — including Bailey, Mythili, Kenneth, Clara, Megan, Holly, Miss, Tara, Avi, Ana, Ini, Salvador, Miguel, Rhoda, Ash, Ernst, Eunice, Mayte, Arminé, Laura, Vince, Campbell, Leah, Mii, Jenny, J E, Pat, Ashley, Maneet, and David — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. Welcome to Article Club. Make yourself at home. 🏠

If you appreciate the articles, value our discussions, and in general have come to trust that Article Club will have better things for you to read than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end, please consider a paid subscription. I am very appreciative of Diana, our latest paid reader. Thank you!

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If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. Recommend the newsletter to a friend (thanks Stacey!), leave a comment, buy me a coffee, or send me an email. I’d love to hear from you.

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

#474: The Best Articles of 2024

Dear Readers,

Thank you for another great year. I’m grateful for your readership.

Now it’s time — for the 10th time! — to reveal my favorite articles of the year. In case you’re interested in how I chose them, the process was as follows:

  1. I looked back through every article over the past 49 issues

  2. I made a semifinalist list (see below), then re-read each article

  3. Then some magic happened where I chose my favorites (usually using my gut)

My very unscientific (yet robust!) way to select this year’s best articles.

I think you’ll appreciate my picks. For the first time ever, all three are personal essays. I don’t know if that speaks to a decline in traditionally reported journalism, or if the quality of personal essays has improved. Maybe it’s that I’m not looking hard enough in enough publications. Or maybe it’s just a trend in my personal reading tastes. Whatever it is, I stand behind my selections and urge you to (re)read them.

In addition to my three favorites, in this issue you’ll get:

  • The pet of the year

  • Your favorite article of the year

  • My favorite interview of the year

  • The author of the year

  • The issue of the year

Hope you enjoy today’s issue. If you do, let me know by writing a short note in the comments. I’d love to hear from you!

Leave a comment

Last thing: I’ll be taking the next two weeks off, as usual. I’m wishing you all a restful holiday with plenty of space to rest and read. (If you read anything great, let me know!) See you back here the first Thursday of 2025. 🎉

1️⃣ Letter From Home

Kiese Laymon: “I do not want to disappoint God, Mississippi, or home with this letter, but I have to disappoint God, Mississippi, and home with this letter. I am currently succumbing to evil.

“I do not believe in guns. I do not believe in prisons. I do not believe in killing. But in that moment, I wanted to kill that police officer and his family in about 16 different ways. And I partially wanted to kill him because he had less money than me.

“While I do not believe in guns, prisons, or killing, I wholly believe in the power of words to build, blur, humiliate, and destroy.

“I refuse to believe that the height of human being, which is really the act and art of being human, in this nation, is our capacity to kill, to incarcerate, to systemically humiliate, to discipline or to own people most efficiently. I believe that the height of human being in Mississippi, in New York, in Gaza, in Israel, in Sudan, everywhere on Earth, can be our ability to atone, restore, share, and vigorously accept when we have succumbed to evil.”

By Kiese Laymon • Bitter Southerner • 6 min • Gift Link

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2️⃣ Masculinity: The Abstract Rage To Protect

“There is a difference between a man’s sense of protection and a man’s sense of violence,” a male friend once reassured me. But I never could tell the difference.

When Amanda E. Machado tells men that she was once sexually assaulted at a festival, with her ex-boyfriend nearby but lost in the crowd, they instantly become ashamed of him. “How could he let this happen?” they ask. “He was supposed to protect you.”

In this enlightening essay, Ms. Machado explores notions of masculinity, weaving personal experiences with the work of Phil Christman, a lecturer at the University of Michigan. Mr. Christman writes, “When I try to nail down what masculinity is — what imperative gives rise to all this pain seeking and stoicism, this showboating asceticism and loud silence — I come back to this: Masculinity is an abstract rage to protect.”

The biggest problem with this “abstract rage to protect,” Ms. Machado argues, is that there is a fine line between a desire to protect and a desire to inflict violence. “The aggression men learn to protect the women they love, becomes exactly how they hurt the women they love.”

By Amanda E. Machado • The Adroit Journal • 15 mins • Gift Link

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Moby, who belongs to loyal readers Caitlin and Jason, is the 2024 Pet of the Year. An adventurous and loyal 14-year-old, Cody enjoys howling with sirens and scoring stale bread on neighborhood walks. Want your pet to appear here? hltr.co/pets

3️⃣ Athens, Revised

When she was 26, Erin Wood was on the last leg of a trip to Greece. On the afternoon before her flight, a man approached her, offered her a free tour of the Acropolis, a recommendation to a quality hotel, a meal, and a drink. Early the next morning, Ms. Wood woke up in her hotel bedroom, naked from the waist down, her body heavy, her sheets wet. “What have I allowed to happen?” she asked.

In this article, Ms. Wood explores the answer to that question. At first, she considers two versions of what happened. She writes two narratives. They both don’t feel right. Then, after unhelpful couples therapy with her unhelpful husband, she realizes that she’s been asking herself the wrong question. One night, unable to sleep, Ms. Wood reads an essay online about a woman who survived a serial killer. “What if I am not alone?” she asks. This new, revised question — it’s the one.

By Erin Wood • The Sun Magazine • 23 mins • Gift Link

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4️⃣ Reader’s Choice: The Friendship Problem

Rosie Spinks is a millennial mom living in London. This means we’re in no way alike. But the way she writes about friendship — it resonated deeply with me. And I have a feeling her essay will do the same with many of you.

Ms. Spinks explores what’s changed with modern friendships and why she feels less interested in making plans. It’s tiring, she writes:

It seems normal now that plans are made far in advance — scheduled around myriad travel and wedding weekends and kids and work commitments — and then canceled right before. Someone doesn’t follow up, or cancels and then never proposes an alternative plan. Similarly, promising new adult friendships never seem to blossom into the kind of quotidian check-ins and week-to-week ephemera that the friendship of our younger years is based on. Life-long friends make new life choices, drift apart. The friendship fizzles into WhatsApp volleys back and forth, and then someone doesn’t answer the last message, and then it’s a year before you ever talk again.

Has any of this happened to you? (For me, all of it.)

But instead of blaming motherhood, or the pandemic, or inflation, Ms. Spinks explores the “matrix of factors” that figure into the friendship burnout she’s experiencing. For guidance, she turns to Esther Perel (maybe we all should?), who explains that hyperconnectivity is to blame. “People have easily 1,000 virtual friends,” Dr. Perel says, “but no one they can ask to feed their cat.”

What to do, then? It’s time to remember our childhoods, Ms. Spinks suggests, especially as late-stage capitalism atomizes us into our lonely fiefdoms. It’s time to “play freely on the street.”

By Rosie Spinks • What Do We Do Now That We’re Here • 13 min • Gift Link

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💬 Other Bests and Favorites

➡️ Best Author: Beth McMurtrie
You know you’re pretty good when you get three articles published in Article Club in the same year. Even though I wasn’t too happy with education writing overall, I was very pleased with Ms. McMurtrie’s reporting and clear writing. She knows what people are talking about in education and how not to oversimplify or sensationalize. Check out “Is This The End of Reading?” “Customers in the Classroom,” and “Cheating Has Become Normal.” They’re all solid pieces.

➡️ Favorite Interview: Mike Hixenbaugh
It’s a privilege to get to interview such kind and generous authors, month after month. Every single conversation is thought provoking. But some interviews just click. That was the case with Mike Hixenbaugh, author (along with Antonia Hylton) of Southlake. I appreciated Mr. Hixenbaugh’s energy, his honesty, and his no-nonsense reporting. If you haven’t read his book, They Came for the Schools, it’s a great one. If you missed my interview with Mr. Hixenbaugh, here it is.

➡️ Best Issue
There’s a big debate happening at Article Club (at least among a few of you!) about which is better: (1) classic issues, where there’s a wide selection of articles about different topics, or (2) themed issues, where all the articles center on a common topic. This year’s best issue (and most popular) ended up being a themed issue, which explored the origins and impacts of misinformation. Here it is.

#470: Home Is Where The Misinformation Is

Mark Isero

November 14, 2024

Read full story

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

To our 21 new subscribers — including Katarzyna, Dion, Dori, Richard, Aubrey, Adam, Dominick, Stacey, Avni, Melissa, Renda, Brittany, Erin, Sara, Barbara, Myrtle, Susanne, and Basheer — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. Welcome to Article Club. Make yourself at home.

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If you appreciate the articles, value our discussions, and in general have come to trust that Article Club will have better things for you to read than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end, please consider a paid subscription. I am very appreciative of Wanda, our latest paid subscriber. Thank you!

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If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. Recommend the newsletter to a friend (thanks Symone!), leave a comment, buy me a coffee, or send me an email. I’d love to hear from you.

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#473: Butter

Dear Loyal Readers,

It’s been a while since I’ve thanked those of you (300 this year!) who are new subscribers. So here I go: Thank you for discovering my newsletter and giving it a chance. I hope that you find some articles on race, education, and culture that are worthy of your time and attention. Always feel free to say hi.

I’m pleased with this week’s batch. As usual, I’ve chosen pieces from a variety of publications, many of which may not be in your normal rotation. (Paid subscribers make this possible, thank you!) Ever hear of Ecotone Magazine, for instance? It’s a good one.

Today’s lead article is “Butter,” a provocative essay by Mishele Maron that explores the inner workings of an eating disorder clinic. Rather than focusing on the physical and emotional therapy she received, Ms. Maron emphasizes the social dynamics among the patients, all young women. I think you’ll appreciate the piece’s tone as well.

If that topic is too heavy for you, I urge you to read one of the other three articles in this week’s issue. They are about:

Hope you appreciate this week’s articles. As always, if a piece resonates with you, let me know. I’d love to hear from you. Or if you prefer, show your support by becoming a paid subscriber (like Janice) or buying me a coffee (like Renée). I would be very grateful.

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✚ Big thanks to Elise, Lillian, Bonnie, Wayne, Laura, Debra, Camille, Alison, and Nicole for joining our discussion of “Athens, Revised,” by Erin Wood, last Sunday. It was a wonderful, thought-provoking conversation. We won’t have a discussion in December, but I’ll let you know about our January article first thing in 2025. My hope is that if you’re maybe interested, you’ll give Article Club a try.

1️⃣ Butter

Instead of completing her freshman year at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, Mishele Maron found herself one of eleven patients on the fifth floor of the Ballard Community Hospital’s eating disorder unit. Ms. Maron was there for bulimia; most of her peers were there for anorexia. In this well-written memoir, Ms. Maron recounts the relationships she experienced with her peers, particularly Beth, the leader of the girls, who mocked her for adding butter to her bread. “You’re going to eat that?” Beth asked increduously. Yes, in fact, despite the bullying, Ms. Maron was indeed going to eat the bread with butter. “I could not heal an eating disorder in five weeks,” Ms. Maron writes. “I could, however, eat the butter.”

By Mishele Maron • The Sun • 13 min • Gift Link

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2️⃣ My Father, The Cyborg

Even though I didn’t choose this piece as this week’s lead article, it’s still my favorite. Omer Rosen has an 89-year-old dad with the typical maladies of an 89-year-old dad. To keep his dad alive, and to protect him, and to alleviate his own anxiety and guilt, Mr. Rosen implements technology to monitor his father’s health. There are cameras to detect falls; there is a blood sugar monitor; there are wearables that gather all kinds of data. He likes that his dad is safe; however, with all this information, Mr. Rosen wonders if he’s being too controlling. Has he taken away his dad’s agency and his free will? Mr. Rosen writes: “The ability to make bad decisions is common to us all: it is only in the elderly that we perceive it as incompetence. In children, it is immaturity; in adults, it is recklessness; but in the elderly, it is a lack of capacity. When someone is under our care, we value their safety at the expense of their autonomy.”

By Omer Rosen • Boston Review • 17 min • Gift Link

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Here is Deery, who belongs to loyal readers Ben and Julie. Deery enjoys fall fashion. Want your pet to appear here? hltr.co/pets

3️⃣ The The The The

Brian Truong: “In third grade, I was trilingual but could not pronounce ‘the’ or ‘that’ properly. I found out when Mom came back from a parent-teacher conference and handed me Mrs. Johnson’s feedback slip from a language arts assessment.

“My gut twisted. It was not the first time someone assumed I was born outside of Texas. In the pecking order of my elementary school, ESL students were second-rate citizens. No one in my family had been through the American school system, but the message was clear: blend into the main group or be ostracized into the ‘other.’

“Without a semblance of opposition, our family converted to an English-only household.”

By Brian Truong • Ecotone Magazine • 3 min • Gift Link

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4️⃣ The Dark Future Of American Child Care

During and after the pandemic, child care in our country got better. That’s because our government invested in stricter requirements in licensing and safety training. A total of $24 billion in aid supported the rise of teacher salaries and ensured manageable child-to-caregiver ratios. Unfortunately a backlash followed, with conservatives slashing funding, believing that nuclear family members should take care of children, rather than the state. The result? Fewer rules and regulations, plus cost-cutting measures, like the employment of teenagers. Now teenagers as young as 14 are being employed by child care facilities — thereby reducing costs and resulting in more dangerous conditions. Preventing teenagers from caring for children, the argument goes, amounts to ageism. “You can’t say a 14-year-old is not going to be as good as a 65-year-old,” one state senator said.

By Jackie Mader • The Hechinger Report • 19 min • Gift Link

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💬 Your Turn: Say hi and share your perspective

Many of you are new to Article Club. Don’t be shy! Please feel free to introduce yourself, say hi, tell us why you subscribed to the newsletter, and share your perspective on one or more of the articles.

➡️ Which piece resonated with you and why?

In typical Article Club fashon, be sure to be kind and thoughtful. The idea here is always empathy and understanding.

Leave a comment

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

To our 7 new subscribers — Mina, Eric, Ashley, Stardust, Jennifer, Rom, and Bmd — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. Welcome to Article Club. Make yourself at home.

If you appreciate the articles, value our discussions, and in general have come to trust that Article Club will have better things for you to read than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end, please consider a paid subscription. I am very appreciative of Vanessa, our latest paid reader. Thank you!

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If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. Recommend the newsletter to a friend (thanks Reginald!), leave a comment, buy me a coffee, or send me an email. I’d love to hear from you.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe below. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT for our best-of-2024 issue.

#472: Writing With Compassion

Happy Thanksgiving, loyal readers.

I’m away on vacation, so today’s issue is going to be shorter than usual. I’m going to feature just one article and tell you why I liked it.

The piece is, “Teaching Lucy,” by Helen Lewis, published in The Atlantic.

If you’re an educator — and particularly, if you are a teacher of reading — you’ll recognize the subject of the article, Lucy Calkins. If you’re not familiar with Ms. Calkins, she used to be one of the most famous educators in the United States, with thousands of teachers using her methods of reading instruction. Then a few years ago, Ms. Calkins faced a backlash, spearheaded by a journalist named Emily Hanford (whom I interviewed in 2018), that challenged her approach, summarily canceling her and making her a pariah.

Typically I wouldn’t choose to share this type of article. After all, I’m not a big fan of the Reading Wars. I don’t enjoy following self-righteous educators, convinced that their way is the only way to teach all children, yelling at other educators and calling them dumb. In addition, I’m always nervous when The Atlantic publishes articles on education. They’re usually elitist in nature. And finally, most writing on education is not outstanding, so I tend to pass it up.

But writer Helen Lewis does a brilliant job here. She writes with compassion. I highly encourage you to read the piece, especially if you’re a parent or an educator.

How One Woman Became The Scapegoat For America’s Reading Crisis

For decades, Lucy Calkins was at the top of American education. She developed a reading curriculum, Units of Study, that believed that children learn best when taken seriously as meaning makers. Her approach — later called Balanced Literacy — combined direct phonics instruction with exposure to whole books that students chose based on their interests. Part of the point was to instill in young people a love of reading. For at least a generation, most children in the United States learned to read using Ms. Calkins’s method.

But over the last 10 years, a group of educators, cognitive scientists, and parents of children with dyslexia have blamed Ms. Calkins for what they call her irresponsible and unscientific approach to teaching reading. The reason our young people cannot read is that we’ve let Lucy teach them. They emphasize an approach called the Science of Reading, which focuses on direct phonics instruction. Children grow to love reading because they possess the skills to read proficiently. Leading this effort was Emily Hanford, a journalist who felt strongly that Ms. Calkins was doing a disservice to children. Her podcast, Sold a Story (featured here in 2022), galvanized the anti-Lucy movement, essentially canceling her and causing hundreds of school districts to abandon Units of Study.

In this well-written profile, Ms. Lewis examines this controversy, explains how Ms. Calkins fell from grace, and considers whether she can regain her good name.

By Helen Lewis • The Atlantic Monthly • 23 min • Gift Link

Read the article

From our hotel room in Seoul. It snowed!

💬 My Thoughts

First, my biases:

  • I’ve always worked with high school students. As much as I believe in the Science of Reading, I also know that direct phonics instruction cannot be the only approach with adolescents who struggle to read. By the time they’re teenagers, they’ve accumulated reading identities, based on their lived experiences, that are not easy to untangle.

  • Although on the one hand I appreciate the work of Emily Hanford to uncover the problems of Balanced Literacy, I always felt her reporting lacked nuance.

OK, with those caveats out of the way, it’s finally time for me to share why I appreciated this article so much. If you want an inside look, feel free to read my annotations as you follow along. Here are a few reasons:

1️⃣ Ms. Lewis recognizes and does not dismiss that the personal conflict between Ms. Calkins and Ms. Hanford was instrumental to this story
It is certainly true that there was a movement by thousands of educators to criticize Balanced Literacy and to uphold the Science of Reading as the best way to teach children to read. But Ms. Lewis accurately acknowledges that the attacks on Ms. Calkins were also personal, with Ms. Hanford leading the charge.

In Sold a Story, Ms. Hanford characterizes Ms. Calkins as out of touch. She is a privileged white woman, Ms. Hanford argues, whose beliefs stem from an esteemed New England childhood. Ms. Lewis expertly draws out this conflict, eliciting a defensive response from Ms. Calkins.

While making sure to note that Ms. Calkins did not indeed come from extravagant wealth, Ms. Lewis does not refrain from sharing details of her current lifestyle. Almost as important as the merits of the reading debate was Ms. Hanford’s depiction of Ms. Calkins as a snooty queen, aloof to criticism. In her writing, Ms. Lewis picks up on this populist trend in American education to vanquish an educational star. And the ultimate point was to win, by any means necessary — even if that meant publishing podcast after podcast that stated the same thing (there were many!).

2️⃣ However, Ms. Lewis broadens the scope of the reading controversy, making sure to explain the larger context
It would be easy for Ms. Lewis to focus exclusively on the conflict between Ms. Calkins and Ms. Hanford. Certainly, there is enough vitriol between the Balanced Literacy and the Science of Reading camps to fill many magazine pages. But instead of again fanning the flames, which would have been boring and annoying, Ms. Lewis takes a broader view, making sure we understand the recent Reading Wars in greater context.

In one passage, for example, Ms. Lewis zooms out, helping her reader realize that Americans have always wanted easy solutions to complex problems.

Later in the piece, Ms. Lewis spends significant space to explain another reason that the controversy became so heated — namely, that reading instruction became imbroiled in our post-pandemic culture wars. If you were a Lucy fan, you were a soft, out-of-touch progressive. If you were an advocate of the Science of Reading, you were an American patriot.

3️⃣ Most importantly, Ms. Lewis writes with compassion
Over the last 10 years of doing Article Club, perhaps the single most important thing I’ve looked for in writing is compassion. When I find a piece that includes nuance and humanity, I immediately gravitate toward it. This was one of those pieces.

In this article, Ms. Lewis does an extraordinary job helping the reader get to know Ms. Calkins. Not all of it is positive — like the references to the monogrammed towels, or this comparison of her cancellation to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001:

But then Ms. Lewis doesn’t give up on Ms. Calkins. There are stories from her childhood, for instance, as well as from the first decades of her career. There are also expressions of regret — and evidence that she is doing her best to listen to her critics and start anew. In short, Ms. Lewis offers us Ms. Calkins as a whole person, filled with faults as well as dreams. She’s stubborn, sure. But she’s also human, a regular person — and a bit scared. “I can’t retire,” she says, at 72 years old. “I don’t have any hobbies.”

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

To our 7 new subscribers — including Dan, Sam, Maura, and Preeti — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. Welcome to Article Club. Make yourself at home.

If you appreciate the articles, value our discussions, and in general have come to trust that Article Club will have better things for you to read than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end, please consider a paid subscription. I am very appreciative of Nancy, our latest paid subscriber. Thank you!

Subscribe

If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. Recommend the newsletter to a friend (thanks Olissa!), leave a comment, buy me a coffee, or send me an email. I’d love to hear from you.

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

#471: Screens Are Our Best Friends

Dear Loyal Readers,

Today’s issue is a sequel to last week’s newsletter. Last time, the articles explored the harms of misinformation among young people and our reticence to intervene. This time, I’ve selected four pieces about the impact of screens on our lives and how we complain about them — but how we ultimately have given up and given in.

You may think, “Mark, how is this a new topic? We all know that we’re addicted to our phones.” But this week’s collection goes beyond stating the obvious. It’s not just about the amount of time we spend on screens and our inability to change our habits. It’s about how screens have become our friends, our companions, our confidants. We’re merging with them. They’re an extension of ourselves. We’re becoming one. We’re creating a facsimile of reality, a matrix, perhaps a simultation. It’s possible that there’s no going back from The Singularity.

I hope you read one (or all four!) of these articles, then share your perspectives in the comments at the end of the newsletter. Here they are:

Hope you appreciate this week’s articles. As always, if a piece resonates with you, let me know. I’d love to hear from you. Or if you prefer, show your support by becoming a paid subscriber (like Isidore!). I would be very grateful.

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✚ Last chance to join our discussion of “Athens, Revised” on December 1, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT. Written by Erin Wood and published in The Sun, the article is equal parts devastating and uplifting. It’s raw and vulnerable. Throughout, it is brilliantly written. So far we have 11 people who have signed up, so there’s still room. You can find more info here and sign up here. Hope to see you there!

1️⃣ All The Little Data

Nicholas Carr: “I find myself in possession of a lot of information these days. I’m in the loop. I’m in many loops, all spinning simultaneously. It’s not just the minutiae of commerce — orders, shipments, deliveries—that are richly documented. When I’m driving, my car’s dashboard, linked to my iPhone through CarPlay, shows me exactly where I am, tells me the posted speed limit and the current traffic conditions, and lets me know both the distance I have to go before I reach my destination and the estimated time of my arrival. (There’s also a readout available on the town or city I’m visiting: population, elevation, square footage, GPS coordinates.) My phone’s weather app gives me a bespoke meteorological report of remarkable thoroughness. Right this second, the app tells me it’s eighty-four degrees and cloudy outside. A light rain will begin in seventeen minutes and will end forty-eight minutes after that, at which point it will become partly cloudy. The wind is blowing west-southwest at six miles per hour, the relative humidity is 58 percent, and the barometric pressure is 30.18 inHg. The UV index is six, which is High, and the air quality index is fifty-one, which is Moderate. The sun will set this evening at 8:11 p.m., and in four days the moon will be full. I’ve taken 4,325 steps today. My refrigerator’s water filter has only 10 percent of its useful life left. My credit rating just dropped eight points. I have 4,307 unread emails, two more than I had five minutes ago.”

By Nicholas Carr • The Hedgehog Review • 11 min • Gift Link

Read the article

2️⃣ The Therapist In The Machine

Jess McAllen: “The company Earkick provides an AI therapist in the form of a panda, and their mobile app offers a premium plan for $40 a year that lets you dress ‘Panda’ in accessories like a beret or fedora (the base option is free, for now). You can also choose your preferred personality for Panda.

“For the most part, the creators of AI therapeutic tools insist they are simply augmenting, not replacing, conventional mental health care. Stephan, from Earkick, frames AI as something that can be there when a real therapist is not. In fact, being always on call is integral to the Earkick ethos. Stephan explains, ‘I would have needed support when I was young, and in my dreams, [that support] was like a voice in my ear, that’s why it’s called Earkick: it’s a sidekick in the ear.’ ”

By Jess McAllen • The Baffler • 19 min • Gift Link

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MJ, who belongs to loyal readers Angelina and Clem, enjoys naps, treats, and sunbathing. Want your pet to appear here? hltr.co/pets

3️⃣ Schools vs. Screens

Luc Rinaldi: “This past September, on the first day of class, an Ontario high school teacher I’ll call Adam attended a school-wide meeting about the province’s new restrictions on students’ smartphones. He and his colleagues had heard lots of buzz about the new rules, which they felt were long overdue, but had little concrete information about how teachers on the frontlines would enforce them.

According to Adam, the previous school year had been a gong show. Students arrived every morning with phones out and AirPods in, bleary-eyed from late nights scrolling. They texted during the national anthem and played mobile games under their desks. They shared pictures and videos of each other, of teachers and of after-school fights. They coordinated mid-period vape breaks in group chats. One student went to the bathroom and returned with an Uber Eats delivery. Any time Adam wrote on the board, he’d turn back around to find students glued to their glowing screens. Engagement had plummeted, grades were declining and, because Adam was constantly policing students’ phone use, his bond with them was fraying. ‘These kids want to do well, but they’re so lost,’ says Adam.”

By Luc Rinaldi • Maclean’s • 18 min • Gift Link

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4️⃣ Cheating Has Become Normal

Beth McMurtrie: “It’s not AI that has a lot of professors worried. It’s what lies behind that willingness to cheat. While the reasons vary by student and situation, certain explanations surface frequently. Students are working long hours while taking full course loads.They doubt their ability to perform well. They arrive at college with weak reading and study skills. They don’t value the assignments they’re given. They feel like the only way they can succeed is to be perfect. They believe they will not be punished — or not punished harshly — if caught. And many, it seems, they don’t feel particularly guilty about it.

When it’s that widespread, it’s a culture. It’s not just an individual student. It is so many. And when I talk to some undergrads, they’re like, ‘Everybody does it.’

By Beth McMurtrie • The Chronicle of Higher Education • 14 min • Gift Link

Read the article

💬 Your Turn: What do you think?

➡️ Are you as doomsday about screens as these articles suggest we should be?
➡️ Which article scared you most (or maybe none of them)?
➡️ What can we do (for ourselves, for our families, for our friends, for our communities) in order to stem the tide?

Tip: Be sure to refer to at least one article in your response.

In typical Article Club fashon, be sure to be kind and thoughtful. The idea here is always empathy and understanding.

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

To our 7 new subscribers — including Angelina, Zoe, Ashok, Kieren, and Alison — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. Welcome to Article Club. Make yourself at home.

If you appreciate the articles, value our discussions, and in general have come to trust that Article Club will have better things for you to read than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end, please consider a paid subscription. I am very appreciative of Ulysses, our latest paid reader. Thank you!

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If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. Recommend the newsletter to a friend (thanks Quince!), leave a comment, buy me a coffee, or send me an email. I’d love to hear from you.

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

#470: Home Is Where The Misinformation Is

Dear Loyal Readers,

We blame Big Tech, social media, and their algorithms for many of our society’s problems. Case in point (according to Jonathan Haidt): The reason our kids are messed up is because of their phones. There’s misinformation and the attention economy and Andrew Tate and misogyny on TikTok. All of this might be true. But why aren’t we (we meaning parents and educators) doing anything about it?

Have we given up? Or even worse, Are we part of the problem?

Today’s issue includes four articles that explore the common theme of misinformation and its effects on young people. On purpose, I’m being provocative, suggesting that this misinformation not only exists “out there” but also from within. Too often, our own lack of critical thinking — as well as our inability to talk deeply with our teenagers about their lives online — has meant relegating our young people to fend for themselves against a big, unadulterated, confusing, toxic cyberworld.

My hope is that you’ll read one or more of the following articles, then share your perspectives with our kind, thoughtful reading community. Here they are:

Hope you appreciate this week’s articles. As always, if a piece resonates with you, let me know. I’d love to hear from you. Or if you prefer, show your support by becoming a paid subscriber (like Hank!). I would be very grateful.

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✚ You’re invited to join our discussion of “Athens, Revised” on December 1, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT. Written by Erin Wood and published in The Sun, the article is equal parts devastating and uplifting. It’s raw and vulnerable. Throughout, it is brilliantly written. So far we have 10 people who have signed up, so there’s still room. You can find more info here and sign up here. Hope to see you there!

1️⃣ Is Sleep Training Harmful?

The answer is no. But that’s if you believe in scientific research. Many of us, though, base our parenting decisions on Instagram profiles, Reddit subreddits, articles we read online, and books with snazzy titles. In this outstanding multimedia presentation, Tom Vaillant explains with visualizations how misinformation spreads because we tend to believe what we already believe, consuming sources easily available to us. After all, it’s easier to follow an Instagram influencer who says that sleep training will kill your baby’s brain cells than it is to read the literature reviews and the clinical studies, nearly 100% of which conclude otherwise.

By Tom Vaillant • The Pudding • 10 min • Gift Link

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2️⃣ Why Everyone Has Peanut Allergies

In 1999, 0.6 percent of American children had a peanut allergy. Their reactions were mostly mild. Then the numbers began to surge. Now the rate is almost 3 percent. And the effects are more often life threatening. What caused the rate and severity to shift?

The reason was an abundance of caution and a strongly worded recommendation by an authoritative organization published in a well-regarded medical journal. In 2000, the American Academy of Pediatrics told parents not to feed their children peanuts in any form until they turned 3. “Remember 1-2-3,” author Terry Murphy writes. “Age 1: start milk. Age 2: start eggs. Age 3: start peanuts.”

The problem was, there was no scientific basis for this guidance. For pediatricians (and therefore, parents) who followed the advice, it was better to be safe than sorry. After all, who wants to kill your kid just because peanut butter is delicious? Problem was, the recommendation created a vicious cycle. Ms. Murphy writes, “The more prevalent peanut allergies became, the more people avoided peanuts for young children. This, in turn, caused more peanut allergies. Tunnel-vision thinking had created a nightmare scenario for which the only possible solution seemed to be the total eradication of peanuts from the planet.”

By Terry Murphy • The Harvard Gazette • 10 min • Gift Link

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Wayne, who belongs to loyal reader Clare, is very scary in his Halloween costume. Want your pet to appear here? hltr.co/pets

3️⃣ Can AI Be Blamed For A Teen’s Suicide?

You may have heard about this sad, tragic story. In many ways, 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III was a typical teenager. He liked Formula 1 racing and playing Fortnite with his friends. Like many young people, he did his best to navigate the challenges of growing up. But instead of opening up to his family, or building new friendships with his classmates, Sewell fell in love with a chatbot on the app Character.AI. Then one night, Sewell killed himself after his make-belief girlfriend told him to come home, “my sweet king.”

This article made me feel sick. First of all, I cannot imagine what Megan L. Garcia, Sewell’s mother, is going through. (She is suing the company.) In addition, I can’t stand that these apps are being marketed to teenagers as a solution to their loneliness. (Thirteen-year-olds can join.) One founder said, “It’s going to be super, super helpful to a lot of people who are lonely or depressed.” The other said that he founded the company for “fun.”

By Kevin Roose • The New York Times • 13 min • Gift Link

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4️⃣ The New Wave of Right Wing Eco-Supremacists

I saved the best (and the most disturbing) article for last. Most of us think that climate change activism comes mostly from the progressive left, that conservatives have deemed the phenomenon a hoax fabricated by the government. No longer, argues Abrahm Lustgarten in this well-written, fascinating piece.

Over the past several years, there has been a trend among young men, radicalized to the far right by YouTube and social media, who believe in climate change acceleration and blame undocumented immigrants for its impact. The man who killed 23 people in El Paso in 2019 wrote, “If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.” The man who killed 10 people in Buffalo in 2022 did so in the pursuit of “green nationalism.” It’s a perverse but growing subset of the great replacement theory, once known only on 4chan’s message boards, but now amplified, largely unchecked, in mainstream media.

By Abrahm Lustgarten • ProPublica • 30 min • Gift Link

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💬 Your Turn: What do you think?

➡️ Can parents and educators fight against the authority of the algorithm? If so, how?

Tip: Be sure to refer to at least one article in your response.

In typical Article Club fashon, be sure to be kind and thoughtful. The idea here is always empathy and understanding.

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

To our 8 new subscribers — including Alison, Abba, Angela, Rachel, and Uzair — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. Welcome to Article Club. Make yourself at home.

If you appreciate the articles, value our discussions, and in general have come to trust that Article Club will have better things for you to read than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end, please consider a paid subscription. I am very appreciative of Sally, our latest paid reader. Thank you!

Subscribe

If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. Recommend the newsletter to a friend (thanks Oakley!), leave a comment, buy me a coffee, or send me an email. I’d love to hear from you.

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