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Two things made this experiment possible: Your attention and your money. Everything we were able to redistribute is because of you giving us both of those things on a regular basis.

Without further ado, we picked 10 cases at random to share so you can see that your support played a role in helping:

1. a single mom with a teenager and several pets avoid eviction

2. countless Diabolical Pets with needed surgeries and care

3. a parent of a child with a chronic illness throw a party in the hospital for their child and the pediatric staff

4. a trans couple getting married to afford a dream wedding dress

5. a woman leave an abusive marriage

6. a father (who happens to be organizing his workplace) with his fresh start after the unthinkable loss of his 11-month-old son

7. a Liar Couple DIY-renovating their grandmother’s home to make it more comfortable for her

8. a person recovering from their eating disorder to afford their groceries this month

9. provide “grant money” to countless artists, musicians, and bookstores

10. a teacher whose classroom was vandalized

While sending people one-off payments won’t fix structural gaps, we hope this provides some breathing room, joy, or relief, and believe in the power of paying it forward.

(For the nerds who always read the citation footnotes)

The money: While we initially planned to use May and June’s funds, we decided to front July and August’s as well once we saw the volume of the submissions. (Our superstar international bestseller Caro also supplemented with Yesteryear funds because we came up short of our goal.)

Strategy: Our strategy was to create a range for every request based on the amount asked for, then:

1. We tried to approve every request for less than $500 in full,

2. And then use discretion with those who needed >$1,000 to make sure everyone got something to help them.

So if you requested $2,000 and only got $500, just know that it’s because the other $1,500 went to ~three other people who needed it.

We also decided to prioritize requests from listeners (or immediate family members and friends) over links to GoFundMes or other nonprofits, given the volume of submissions and intent of the experiment.

The grand total: All in all, we sent $117,998 in subscription revenue and Yesteryear funds to 242 Dirty Little Liars.

Thank you for making that possible and feel free to bask in the glory of your patronage today, comrades. You earned it.

The Democratic Party was facing an identity crisis when Donald Trump began his second term in January 2025. Just two months later, Democratic media Thinkboiz1 Ezra Klein2 and Derek Thompson3 published Abundance.4

Their theory of the case: We could “solve our problems with supply,” and that to do so, we needed to pursue “a liberalism that builds,” an idea that meant aspiring to “more than redistribution […], more than parceling out the present.” The text of Abundance focuses almost exclusively on examples of government proceduralism and self-defeating obstruction, while at times quoting books like Fully Automated Luxury Communism and even Karl Marx.

There’s just one difference between the productive capacity imagined in Fully Automated Luxury Communism and Abundance: only one of these books sees this vision as compatible with capitalism.

Over the months that followed its publication, an “intra-left” fight emerged between the “populist left” (represented by figures like Bernie Sanders and the DSA) and the “abundance left.” For a while, it looked like Abundance would set the vision for the future of the party. What happened?

Diabolical Lies investigates.

“The ever-expanding morass of complicated Federal regulation imposes massive costs on the lives of millions of Americans, creates a substantial restraint on our economic growth and ability to build and innovate, and hampers our global competitiveness.”

That’s not a quote from Abundance, though, it’s a quote from this executive order:

Anyway!

Media and relevant resources that informed sentiments included in the order mentioned:

“How ‘abundance’ lost the Democratic war of ideas” by Andrew Prokop for Vox (2026)

“New Documents Detail Nine-Figure, Silicon Valley–Funded Abundance Movement” by Dylan Gyauch-Lewis for The American Prospect (2026)

“A Simple Plan to Solve All of America’s Problems” by Derek Thompson for The Atlantic (2022)

“Ezra Klein Should Be Honest About the Abundance Movement” by JoeWrote, where the Lex Fridman clip has been pulled from (2025)

“What the ‘Abundance Agenda’ Leaves Out” by Matt Bruenig for Jacobin (2025)

Shot, from Abundance: “American liberalism has measured its successes in how near it could come to the social welfare system of Denmark.”

Chaser, from Hillary Clinton running against Bernie in 2015: “We are not Denmark.”

“The paucity of Abundance” by Luke Savage (2025)

Elon Musk’s Retweet of Ezra’s appearance on John Stewart:

“The Broadband Story Abundance Liberals Like Ezra Klein Got Wrong” by Paul Glastris and Kainoa Lowman for Washington Monthly (2025)

“The Battle for the Democratic Future” by Sam Adler-Bell for New York Magazine (2025)

“The Limits of Abundance” by Alex Bronzini-Vender for American Affairs Journal (2025)

“What’s the Matter with Abundance?” by Malcolm Harris for The Baffler (2025)

“What left-wing critics don’t get about abundance” by David Schleicher for the Niskanen Center (2025)

“The Abundance Debate is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It.” by Waleed Shahid for The Nation (2025)

“The Real Path to Abundance” by Sandeep Vaheesan for Boston Review (2025)

“Land-Use Reforms and Housing Costs: Does Allowing for Increased Density Lead to Greater Affordability?” by Christina Plerhoples Stacy, Christopher Davis, Yonah Freemark, Lydia Lo, Graham MacDonald, Vivian Zheng, Rolf Pendall (2023)

“Patience, please. Undoing damage from decades of anti-housing policy in California won’t happen overnight” from the LA Times Editorial Board (2023)

“Supply Constraints Do Not Explain House Price and Quantity Growth Across U.S. Cities” by Schuyler Louie, John A. Mondragon, and Johannes Wieland from the National Bureau of Economic Research Working Papers series (2025)

“Study finds US does not have housing shortage, but shortage of affordable housing” from Kirk McClure at the University of Kansas (2024), which finds this:

“Our nation’s affordability problems result more from low incomes confronting high housing prices rather than from housing shortages,” McClure said. “This condition suggests that we cannot build our way to housing affordability. We need to address price levels and income levels to help low-income households afford the housing that already exists, rather than increasing the supply in the hope that prices will subside.”

“What We Got Right — and Wrong — in ‘Abundance’” from The Ezra Klein Show (2026)

“An Abundance of Credulity” by Hannah Story Brown for The American Prospect (2025)

“Cross-Tabs: May 2026 Times/Siena National Poll Among Potential Democratic Supporters” from The New York Times (2026)

“Socialists Are Tearing Through the Democratic Party Establishment” by Miles Kampf-Lassin for In These Times (2026)

“DSA Machine Go BRRR” by JoeWrote (2026)

“How Socialism Could Really Work,” a primer on an idea called “market socialism” which I wanted to include in this episode but couldn’t after we hit 3 hours on the book itself lmao

“Political Aspects of Full Employment” by M. Kalecki (1943), an essay which describes how full employment (aka, something we ostensibly want and seek) is actually antithetical to capitalism, another good example of conflicting interests between the “mechanism” and the “goal”

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We were reflecting this month on where to send our May and June redistributions, but since our most recent summer episodes have been lighter in nature and I vetoed Caro’s editorially relevant suggestion of donating to Alix Earle1, there was no immediately obvious area to focus.

But with the ongoing immigration raids, the inflation/energy costs spike, and the continued consequences of significant cuts to necessary programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the Affordable Care Act, and Medicaid (MAKING AMERICA GREAT!!!!!!!), it felt like it made sense to look a little closer to home this round.

For the uninitiated, we’ve donated 33% of our Diabolical Lies subscriber revenue from the beginning.

• All of our Q1 redistributions went to a few organizations that pursue justice for American immigrants because ICE is a public jobs program for losers.

• In April, to celebrate Caro’s long-awaited How to Give Birth in America Pt. 2, we chose an organization that focuses on making high-quality, dignified birthing experiences accessible to everyone.

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Alex Cooper is one of the most successful podcast hosts in the country.

Alix Earle is one of the most popular TikTok stars in America.1

The women, who appear to be separated by a single vowel and little else, have become central to a slow-burning pop culture feud2 representing two distinct, radically divergent archetypes: the Mean Girl™ and the Girl’s Girl.™

Cooper’s storied past includes a messy, public split with her former Call Her Daddy cohost, Sofia Franklyn, which she parlayed into an enormous deal with Spotify and, later, SiriusXM. Earle’s background is simpler and cleaner, involving a seemingly overnight ascent on TikTok and a Teflon-like immunity to controversy.

Today’s episode is ultimately a story about the manipulation of discourse and how double standards don’t just exist between women and men, but between women who are, for all intents and purposes, functionally identical.

It’s a deep dive into the characters populating the latest girl-on-girl morality play,3 a spectacle uniquely suited to demonstrate the skill of those seated atop the modern attention capture content creation industry. Enjoy this valiant effort to extract a takeaway other than “wow, maybe the internet really is making all of us stupider.”

“Call Her Daddy’s Alexandra Cooper Made Her Name Talking About Sex. With Her Massive Spotify Deal, She’s Pushing Beyond That” by Eliana Dockterman for Time (2021)

“Daddy Issues: Trouble Behind the Scenes of Alex Cooper’s Unwell Media Empire” by Clara Molot for Vanity Fair (2026)

“Noticing Emily Ratajkowski’s New Essay, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Politics, and Alex Cooper’s Leadership Skills” from Good Noticings (2026)

“Inside Alex Cooper’s Unwell: Tears, Screaming and Employees Looking for the Exit” by Ashley Carman for Bloomberg (2026)

“Alex Cooper, Husband Skip Team Meeting After Behavior Complaints” by Ashley Carman for Bloomberg (2026)

“Alex Cooper Went From Raunchy Podcaster to Gen-Z’s Barbara Walters” by EJ Dickson for Rolling Stone

“The ‘Call Her Daddy’ Feud: What Happened?” by for The New York Times (2020)

Dave Portnoy’s obnoxious video to “Suitman” on the Call Her Daddy Instagram account during the negotiation breakdown

“The truth about Call Her Daddy” on Alex Cooper’s YouTube channel

“After Leaving ‘Call Her Daddy,’ Sofia Franklyn is Back with a New Podcast of Her Own” by Andy Meek for Forbes (2020)

“Dave Portnoy Hates The Way Alix Earle Has Handled The Alex Cooper Controversy,” also known as a 50-year-old man hosting his favorite series, “Tea by the Sea”

Brianna Chickenfry entering the chat4

“‘Call Her Daddy’ Host Alex Cooper Launches the Unwell Network, Inks Development Deals with Influencers Alix Earle and Madeline Argy” by Todd Spangler for Variety (2023)

“The Alix Earle Effect” by Véronique Hyland for Elle

“Alix Earle’s ‘Hot Mess’ Podcast Dropped by Alex Cooper’s Unwell Network (EXCLUSIVE)” by Tatiana Siegel for Variety (2025)

“The Art of the Alix Earle Deal” by Sara Ashley O’Brien for The Wall Street Journal (2025)

The first direct shot, fired by Alex Cooper

“Alix Earle is Bringing Your FYP to TV with New Netflix Reality Series” by Melanie Whyte for Tudum, the Netflix site (2026)

“The Conservative Star Who Wants to Host the ‘Call Her Daddy’ of the Right” by Ashley Carman for Bloomberg

You know we’re in some rich pop culture territory when the right-wing reactionary framing almost exactly matches the mainstream framing

“Alex Cooper’s Netflix Problem” by Natalie Korach for Status (2026)

2

ok I promise my next episode will be something more substantive because I realize this is giving

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RESTOCK ALERT: Just in time for your summer vacation, the Banned Books tote is back in stock.

Alt. title: Katie finally bites off more than she can chew and attempts a nuanced exploration of the Lean In, Girlboss cultural era.

13 years ago, Sheryl Sandberg published Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. The following year, Sophia Amoruso published #GIRLBOSS.

The broad understanding of this period was that—for a few solid years—we widely embraced the edicts of “corporate feminism” or “Lean In feminism” or “Girlboss feminism,” so named for a societal shift that saw a recognition and celebration of women’s career ambition as a decidedly positive thing worthy of support and encouragement or, at the very least, a collection of sassy poly-blend T-shirts.

We tried it, and it didn’t work.

…but did we?

Diabolical Lies investigates.

“From Girl Boss to No Boss” in The New York Times (2025)

“Why young and old men are leaving the workforce at record rates” in The Washington Post (2026)

Beyond the Gap 2026: Redefining career success & compensation for women from Glassdoor

“The motherhood penalty isn’t empowering” by Stefanie O’Connell for The Purse (2026)

“A Titan’s How-To on Breaking the Glass Ceiling” by Jodi Kantor for The New York Times (February 21)

“Maybe You Should Read the Book: The Sheryl Sandberg Backlash” by Anna Holmes for The New Yorker (March 4)

“Pompom Girl for Feminism” by Maureen Dowd for The New York Times (February 24)

“Lean In, Trickle Down: The False Promise of Sheryl Sandberg’s Theory of Change” by Bryce Covert for Forbes (February 25)

“Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In campaign holds little for most women” by Melissa Gira Grant for The Washington Post (February 25)

“Why Sheryl Sandberg is no Betty Friedan” by Michael Kazin for The New Republic (February 26)

“How to do outrage” by Irin Carmon for Salon (February 28)

“The Absurd Backlash Against Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘Lean In’” by Michelle Goldberg for Daily Beast (March 1)

“Sheryl Sandberg isn’t the perfect feminist, so what?” by Jessica Valenti for The Washington Post (March 1)

«IT’S AT THIS POINT THAT LEAN IN ACTUALLY COMES OUT, ON MARCH 11»

“Is Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘Lean In’ the next great feminist manifesto?” by Nisha Chittal for Ms. magazine (March 13)

“What Lean In misunderstands about gender differences” by Christina Hoff Summers for The Atlantic (March 19)

“Feminism’s Tipping Point: Who Wins from Leaning In?” by Kate Losse for Dissent (March 26)

“Facebook Feminism, Like It or Not” by Susan Faludi for The Baffler (August 2013)

“#GIRLBOSS by Sophia Amoruso Review” by Helen Lewis for The Guardian (2014)

» And a recent piece from Helen Lewis on the subject, “The Death of Millennial Feminism” by Helen Lewis for The Atlantic (2026)

“Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In philosophy doesn’t just ignore disadvantaged women, it hurts their cause” by Liz Bruenig in The New Republic (2015)

“What impact has Lean In had on women?” by Gianna Palmer for BBC (2015)

“Girlboss: A worrying caricature of women’s enterprise” by Karen Patel and Anne Graefer for The Sociological Review (2017)

A movie that came out around the same time, included here for no reason at all:

“Netflix’s First ‘Girlboss’ Trailer Looks Like a Female ‘Wolf of Wall Street’” by Sean Fitz-Gerald for Thrillist (April 3)

And the trailer for Girlboss, which debuted on April 21, 2017.

“TV Review: ‘Girlboss’ on Netflix” by Sonia Saraiya for Variety (April 17)

“Girlboss review: a tone-deaf rallying cry to millennial narcissists” by Julia Raeside for The Guardian (April 21)

“Girlboss is a feminist fraud” by Jennifer Wright in, um, the New York Post (April 22)

“What Does a Girlboss Look Like?” by Sophie Gilbert for The Atlantic (April 28)

“Take that, patriarchy! The horrific cack-handed ‘feminism’ of Netflix’s Girlboss” by Rachel Aroesti for The Guardian (May 10)

“How ‘Lean In’ Feminism Created Elizabeth Holmes and the Toxic Ladyboss” by EJ Dickson for Rolling Stone (2019)

“The Real Backlash Never Ended” by Molly Fischer for The New Yorker (2022)

“The fall of the girlboss is actually a good thing” for Business Insider

“Let 2020 be the year we get rid of girlboss culture for good” for Refinery29

“Slayed queens: the girlboss, dethroned” for The Spectator

“‘Girl boss’: When empowerment slogans backfire” for BBC

“The girlboss has left the building” for The Atlantic

Women in the Workplace 2025 from McKinsey & Company

The analysis of 2022 American Time Use Data that found that, for full-time workers, men get a month more per year of vacation compared to their women peers and that gender remains the primary predictor of this leisure gap discrepancy between full-time workers

The 2023 paper from The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas that found that if men were unable to marry, prime-age male work hours would fall by 7%

The Ambition Penalty by Stefanie O’Connell (2026)

Big Girls Don’t Cry by Rebecca Traister (2010)

The rise and fall of the girlboss: Gender, social expectations, and entrepreneurial hype (2025)

• “Sheryl Sandberg is more of a feminist crusader than people give her credit for” (The Guardian, 2013)

• “The corporate mystique” (The New Republic, 2013)

• “How Feminism Became Capitalism’s Handmaiden” (The Guardian, 2013)

• “Why corporate feminism is convenient for capitalism” (The Guardian, 2013)

• “Sheryl Sandberg never claimed she was writing a feminist manifesto” (The Guardian, 2013)

• “I wasn’t a fan of Sheryl Sandberg—until I couldn’t find a job” (The Atlantic, 2014)

• “Why Sheryl Sandberg’s brand of feminism isn’t for me” (Vogue, 2014)

• “How NastyGal’s Sophia Amoruso is Making Feminism Cool Again” (Business Insider, 2014)

• “Instead of leaning in, I leaned out: why women still need feminism” (The Guardian, 2014)

• “The failure of corner office feminism” (Time, 2015)

• “Sheryl Sandberg’s divisive pitch to #LeanInTogether” (The New Yorker, 2015)

• “Ivanka Trump Wants to See Women Shine at Work” (The Guardian, 2016)

• “Feminism is cool now. But actually being a feminist is still really hard” (Vox, 2016)

• “We’re Living in the Era of the Hypocritical ‘Feminist’ Boss” (Vice, 2017)

• “Lady Boss of Me” (Slate, 2018)

• “I spent a day in Girlboss’s millennial pink empowerment wasteland” (Jezebel, 2019)

• “The girlboss has evolved into an even more powerful form” (Vice, 2019)

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NEW SWAG ALERT 🚨 The Small Government line is back & better than ever. Get yours here.

Katie’s back on her metaphoric “What’s Charlie Kirk up to these days?” editorial grind1—checking in with one of the hottest new Gen Z Lady Voices taking the middle-aged men of the center-right by storm.

In this episode, we check in with a writer we haven’t discussed since one of our very first episodes:

Freya India, also known as three Jonathan Haidts in a very hot 26-year-old trenchcoat, just published her first book, Girls®—an excoriation of the modern world and its effects on The Youth (or, more specifically, the pathologies of liberal teen girls2, as she often puts it).

To hear India tell it, young girls have been Filtered, Diagnosed, Documented, Disconnected, Detached, and ‘Empowered,’ all thanks to the increasingly rapacious incentive structure of a pyramid-shaped economic system that necessitates a constantly growing consumer base wait, sorry, no. That’s not it. Actually, we’re not really sure why. You know what? It’s not important. Let’s move on.

What Girls® lacks in explanatory mechanisms, it makes up for in solutions: Regulation, redistribution, reform logging off, finding God, and starting a family.3

The ideological project underway here should be obvious to anyone whose brain hasn’t been marinated in a dutch oven full of expired bath salts, so why has this book been endorsed by a gaggle of high-profile, putatively left-wing men?

Diabolical Lies investigates.

“The Anxious Generation” from If Books Could Kill

“Freya India can’t save our girls” by Zuzanna Lachendro for The New Statesman (2026)

“The 26-year-old Brit who is the anti-woke voice of Gen Z women” by Harriet Walker for The Times (2026)

“What does Gen Z have against motherhood?” by Freya India for The Spectator (2022)

“History Says That Female Leaders Are More Likely to Wage War Than Men” by Freya India for Evie (2020)

“Toxic Femininity Creates Dangerous Men” by Freya India for Evie (2020)

“Can Women Learn Anything from Jordan Peterson?” by Freya India for Evie (2021)

“Are Girls Being Lied to About Marriage?” by Freya India for GIRLS (2023)

“I’m So Sick of the Gender Divide” by Freya India for GIRLS (2023)

“Why I’m Worried About the Rise of Liberal Young Women” by Freya India for GIRLS (2023)

“Teens Spend Average of 4.8 Hours on Social Media per Day” by Jonathan Rothwell for Gallup (2023)

The CDC’s National Vital Statistics Reports, Births: Final Data for 2023

“The Age of Abandonment” by Freya India for GIRLS (2024)

“The Age of Abandonment” by Freya India for GIRLS (2024)

“How Social Media Feminised Us All” by Freya India for GIRLS (2026)

“The Women Joining the New Right” by Freya India for First Things (2026)

“Being Damaged is Not a Personality Trait” from the Modern Wisdom Podcast with Chris Williamson

“Differentiating Among Internality, Powerful Others, and Chance” from RESEARCH WITH THE LOCUS OF CONTROL CONSTRUCT (Vol. 1) by Hanna Levenson (1981)

“New Report Finds Conservatives Demonstrate More Self-Control Than Liberals” from the University of Cincinnati (2015)

“Red State Families: Better Than We Knew” by Brad Wilcox and Nicholas Zill for Institute for Family Studies (2015)

“ARE BOTH PARENTS ALWAYS BETTER THAN ONE? PARENTAL CONFLICT AND YOUNG ADULT WELL-BEING,” a study from Kelly Musick and Ann Meier in Social Science Research (2010)

“Child Sexual Abuse Fact Sheet” from The National Child Traumatic Stress Network”

“8 facts about divorce in the United States” by Jake Hays for the Pew Research Center (2025)

“Change in American Families: Favoring Cohabitation Over Marriage” by Jagadeesh Gokhale for Penn’s Wharton School (2025)

“Key findings on marriage and cohabitation in the US” by Nikki Graf for Pew Research Center (2019)

“At war with Freya India” by Ella Dorn for Fairyland

Get yours now and support your local mentally ill woman (Caro on book tour finding out she’s a #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER).

Buy it now

The Dirty Little Liar exclusive addition to this collection is at the bottom of this email with the subscriber password. As always, 33% of net revenue will be redistributed to some yet-undecided cause.

Thanks to our dauntless designer Kristmar Muldrow and our incredible partners at Ambient Inks for making our merchandise dreams come true.

And now for a speed run of the new in-stock items…

The “Small Government” Tee is BACK (Dirty Little Liar edition)

XS–3X | $35 | Guaranteed trickle-down economics conversation starter and 100% cotton; no, it’s not cropped, I don’t know why it seems cropped in the picture but rest assured it’s Modest and Approved by God™️

The “Small Government” Dad Hat (original Retro colorway)

One Size | $30 | Perfect for demonstrating ironic nationalism patriotism this Fourth of July or as a gift for your hard-of-eyesight GOP grandpa

The “Small Government” Tote

One Size | $25 | Sized specifically to fit one (1) copy of Yesteryear and three (3) copies of Rich Girl Nation because Katie is trying to sell another book and unfortunately has something to prove now

The Limited Edition YESTERYEAR IS DIABOLICAL Poster (!) for the Natalie Heller Mills stans in the house (aka Katie)

(what can I say, you know pathological levels of competence makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside)

One Size | Three Color Options | $40 | For those of you who know Yesteryear is going to be considered both an all-time American classic and a Top #10 Banned Book on the Casey DeSantis Banned Book Bestseller List and would like to secure your contraband before the Florida state legislature gets involved and prices go up

The “Small Government” Dad Hat (Dark Brandon Mode)

One Size | $30 | If you want to signal to friends and enemies that you have both good taste and at least $8/month in disposable income

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Order Yesteryear if you like nice things, have good taste, or don’t want Katie to firebomb your house.1

What does it feel like to spend 10 years of your life pursuing an uncertain dream when the chances of breakthrough success are one in a million?

What does it feel like to—finally, at long last—be “the one”?2

Caro Claire Burke, one-half of your favorite podcast, is publishing her debut novel this Tuesday, April 7. Yesteryear is mouthy, thrilling, important, ambitious, and, as one of my favorite reviews said, “moves like a freight train.”

Sound like anyone else you know?3

Today, I finally get the opportunity to talk to about:

• whether publishing your debut novel is a dream come true or a nightmare

• who she was before she wrote Yesteryear

• her seemingly endless years writing clickbait for a paycheck in the content coal mines of various aggregators4

• how she felt when we met 🥰

• how I felt when we met 👹

• the psychological experience of feeling like everyone’s looking at you (Professionally™️) and knowing the precise dates and times when your life’s work will be dissected for sport in public lol

• to what extent it’s fair to infer someone’s politics from their fiction (a la this piece)

• her Official Stance on separating the art from the artist (compelling tbh)

• a spoiler-frenzied discussion of the Next Great American Novel

• and a very personal, very special update for Caro5

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (2026)

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (2026)

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (2026)

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (2026)

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (2026)

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (2026)

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (2026)

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (2026)

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (2026)

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (2026)

Rich Girl Nation by Katie Gatti Tassin (2025)6

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (2026)

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (2026)

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (2026)

Here’s a little knock-knock joke for you: What do you call a group of producers?

A manipulation!

Please enjoy this deeply unplanned and off-the-cuff conversation in which Katie and Caro share Feelings about the strange symbiotic world of reality television and their foaming fanbases.

A few links below on the reality-television-is-inherently-reactionary of it all, as well as the reality-television-is-inherently-racist of it all:

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Some quick housekeeping to start this lovely Sunday:

If you’ve already pre-ordered Caro’s debut novel Yesteryear, or wish to do so now, Knopf wants to thank you. They’re sending custom, limited edition bandanas to DL Substack subscribers — all you have to do is input proof of your order in this link here, and they’ll ship you the bandana, clean and simple. (This is only for US subscribers.) Thanks so much for the support, y’all!

Jeffrey Epstein got away with it because he was richer than God. No — he got away with it because he had a rolodex filled with the most influential and powerful people on the planet. No — he got away with it because of his wiliness, and his almost preternatural ability to charm people.

All of these claims have been discussed to death in both mainstream and alternative media, and continue to serve as the prevailing theories for why this man was able to abuse young women at a terrifying scale for decades without suffering legal repercussions for it.

Today, we discuss an alternative hypothesis.

”A Young Jeffrey Epstein Made An Impression On His High School Students,” by Cat Schuknecht for NPR

“Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons: The Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich,” by David Enrich, Steve Eder, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, and Matthew Goldstein for The New York Times

“The Talented Mr. Epstein,” a March 2003 profile by Vicky Ward for Vanity Fair

“Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery,” a 2002 profile by Landon Thomas Jr. for New York Magazine

Here’s one of the many, many early pieces of reporting I leaned on from The Palm Beach Post; not going to link all of them because it would fill Substack’s word count limit but highly encourage poring through their 2005/2006 archives

And here’s a pretty interesting FBI transcript of an interview with former Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter, conducted in 2020

And here’s the deposition interview between unproblematic king Brad Edwards and World-Renowned Fucking Loser Epstein:

Highly encourage anyone and everyone to read Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s memoir, Nobody’s Girl

Here is the deposition Katie and I role-played where a Very Smart Lawyer played Very Smart Gotcha with Giuffre about, checks notes, whether or not she was a bartender in 2007

Here’s where a federal judge decided that Giuffre’s testimony about Epstein’s sex trafficking ring was not relevant to a case about Epstein’s sex trafficking ring

Here is a timeline from the Miami Herald on all this gruesome shit; cc looking through their archives, too, as well as the archives for The Tampa Bay Times for any interested armchair sleuths

If you liked that timeline by reporter Julie K. Brown, consider reading her book, Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story

”How JPMorgan Enabled the Crimes of Jeffrey Epstein,” by David Enrich, Matthew Goldstein, and Jessica Silver-Greenberg for The New York Times

“Newly Unsealed Epstein Records Shed Light on Years of His Financial Transactions with Wall St. Figures,” by Kara Scannell for CNN

Here’s a link to the Epstein email dump, neatly organized in this little faux-inbox

Here’s the meta study elaborating on the justice gap, which highlights precisely how fucked survivors of sexual assault are in their efforts to seek justice

Read Jessica Knoll’s phenomenal book, Bright Young Women, if you want a highly entertaining and cathartic literary experience to exorcise the fury from your body

Thanks (and also sorry???) for listening!

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Does Usha Vance have free will? Do any of us? Are people really divided into camps of good and bad? What are the implications of a worldview that believes in such a binary?

These are some of (many) wandering quandaries we pose in today’s bonus episode, which (if you can believe it) was recorded without the aid of edibles.

Enjoy! And if Usha Vance is your Kristi Noem1, then maybe just skip this one! Up to you!

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Little bit of a heterosexual smackdown1 taking place today!

But first, some housekeeping:

As a reminder: Caro’s debut novel, YESTERYEAR, is coming out this spring (April 7th, to be exact), and she would love to see you all at the evening launch event in NYC. One can reasonably assume there will be laughter, tears, a book signing, and Caro on a stage looking incredibly sweaty while she talks about all things America, womanhood, tradwives, writing sex scenes in fiction, etc. She’ll be joined on stage by the famed pod duo Claire Parker and Ashley Hamilton as moderators for the evening, which essentially means we have finagled this book launch into a pseudo Good Noticings/Diabolical Lies crossover event. Ur welcome.

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Also, we’d be so grateful if you humored us with a little anthropological insight by letting us know how you found the pod. Quick survey here.

Now, onto the show notes.

The Usha-Verse

“What Is Usha Vance Thinking?,” by Irin Carmon for The Cut

“From Yale to Newsmax, Usha Vance Has Helped J.D. Vance Chart His Path,” by Joseph Bernstein and Katherine Rosman for The New York Times

“Usha Vance Tries to Defend her Husband’s ‘Childless Cat Ladies’ Comment,” by Eric McDaniel for NPR

“The One Thing You Need to Know to Understand Usha Vance,” by Susan Matthews for Slate

…and of course, If Books Could Kill’s Coverage of Hillbilly Elegy

The Rama-Verse

“The Artist in Gracie Mansion,” by Danya Issawi for The Cut

“Artist Spotlight of Rama Duwaji,” by Nasri Atallah for YUNG

“Mamdani Names an All-Woman Transition Team,” by Nandika Chatterjee for TIME

The Tragedy of Heterosexuality

Read the book

“The invention of ‘heterosexuality’,” by Brandon Ambrosino for the BBC

Caro here — AGAIN!

Kill me. Anyways here is the email for my book launch sign-up with an actual working button.

You may or may not know that my debut novel, YESTERYEAR, is coming out this spring (April 7th, to be exact), and I would love to see you all at the evening launch event in NYC. One can reasonably assume there will be laughs, tears, a book signing, and me on a stage probably looking incredibly sweaty while I talk about all things America, womanhood, tradwives, writing sex scenes in fiction, etc. I’m so grateful that I’lll be joined on stage by the famed pod duo Claire Parker and Ashley Hamilton as moderators for the evening, which essentially means we have finagled my book launch into a pseudo Good Noticings/Diabolical Lies crossover event. Ur welcome.

Here’s the link to pre-sale tickets, which we’re sharing with the DL/GN community prior to the general public. Just make sure to use the code SYMPHONY at checkout!

Get Tickets

Going to stop talking now before I scare anyone away! I’ll send another email when the full book tour is finalized. TYSM BYE