Article Club

Mark Isero
  • 4.9 (24)
  • SOCIETY & CULTURE
  • UPDATED SEMIMONTHLY

Book clubs are stressful. Join Article Club, a community of kind readers. We discuss one great article every month on race, education, or culture. articleclub.substack.com

  1. 10/16/2025

    #516: What would you do if your kid stopped eating?

    Hi Loyal Readers. Thank you for opening this week’s issue of Article Club. Today’s issue is dedicated to a great conversation I had with Caitlin Moscatello, author of this month’s featured article, “The Monster at the Dinner Table.” In case you hit a paywall, here’s a gift link. About the article This is an article about a newish and very scary disorder that is affecting kids. It’s called ARFID, which is short for Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. Kids with ARFID lose their interest in eating. Sometimes it’s mild — maybe your kid eats only one type of food, like chicken nuggets. But in some cases, it’s extreme — as in, your kid doesn’t eat at all. About the author Ms. Moscatello is a features contributor to New York Magazine, and has also written for the New York Times, Vanity Fair, TIME, and Harper’s Bazaar, among other outlets. She’s a National Magazine Award finalist, and also the recipient of a Front Page Award. Her book SEE JANE WIN: The Inspiring Story of the Women Changing American Politics (Dutton) is a New York Times Editor’s Choice selection, and has been called “a profoundly inspiring work of journalism” by Apple Books. Caitlin is co-executive producer of the three-part HBO docuseries “An Update on Our Family,” which premiered at the 2024 Tribeca Film festival. The series is inspired by her 2020 New York Magazine feature Un-Adopted. About the interview I deeply appreciated speaking with Ms. Moscatello. We talked about a number of topics, including: * how this piece originated * how being a parent affected her reporting * how she built trust with her sources * how she balanced demonstrating compassion for the parents, while also making sure to be accurate about how ARFID manifests In addition, Ms. Moscatello shared how she approaches the writing process, including how she organizes her longform articles. For example, she knew that this piece couldn’t begin with a medical examination of ARFID’s causes and impact on families. That would be too much dense information too soon. That’s why Ms. Moscatello decided to introduce Laura, Mark, and Amelia first. (Very effective, I thought.) I also liked hearing that Ms. Moscatello is a “top-to-bottom writer,” meaning she begins at the beginning and ends at the end, rather than writing different sections out of order. You can listen to her elaborate on that idea here:  The way my brain works, I need to start at the top and go in in order. So it’s really, I spend so much time on an opening paragraph. It is not abnormal for me to spend four days or five days on an opening paragraph. And the first part of a piece is always the densest and most difficult for me to get going. I hope you enjoy the interview. Once again, huge appreciation to Ms. Moscatello for generously saying yes to Article Club. An invitation to our discussion on October 26 I warmly invite you to participate in our discussion on Sunday, October 26, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT. We’ll meet on Zoom. You can sign up below, it’s free. Thank you for reading and listening to this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀 To our 12 new subscribers — including Sam, Matt, Mila, Dominique, Yasmine, Serda, Ali, Rory, and Promit — 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 have come to trust that reading Article Club is better for your mind and soul than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end (or avoiding reading altogether, hoping the world will vanish), please consider a paid subscription. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year. Big thanks to Kenyanna, our latest paid subscriber — huge appreciation! If you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe below. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit articleclub.substack.com

    25 min

  2. 10/02/2025

    #514: Too Afraid To Eat

    Dear Article Clubbers, We had a great discussion last Sunday. Thank you to everyone who made it so! At Article Club, we do two main things: * Every week, we read great articles on race, education, and culture. * Every month, we do a deep dive on one article.This means reading and annotating the article, interviewing the author, and gathering together for a discussion on Zoom on the last Sunday of the month. This week’s issue has both components. Let’s dive in. First, I’m pleased to announce October’s article of the month. It is “The Monster at the Dinner Table,” by Caitlin Moscatello. New York Magazine’s cover story in July, the piece explores ARFID, or avoidant / restrictive food intake disorder. A relatively new phenomenon, the condition is affecting young children, shutting off their instinct to eat. And it’s incredibly shocking and scary. We’re not talking picky eating here, or when your kid goes through a only-chicken-nugget phase. This is something altogether different. You’ll find more info below. If you’re already intrigued, feel free to sign up for our discussion on October 26. Second, I’m including an article about fruitarians, whose diet relies entirely on eating fruit. If you’ve been a longtime subscriber, you know I’ve included tongue-in-cheek articles that warn about the health hazards of consuming fruit smoothies and fruit juice. Well, this piece is decidedly not funny. But it’s a wake-up call for anyone seeking the promise of “clean eating” or finding the essence of truth via an Internet influencer in Bali. I hope you’ll consider reading it. 1️⃣ The Monster At The Dinner Table Caitlin Moscatello, on ARFID, yet another reason to freak out about raising children: Previously, Amelia ate a wide-ranging diet, but after the chicken-nugget incident, she began to refuse solid foods. Within a week, she would consume only yogurt and liquids. “We would buy every drink that she could possibly want — chocolate milk, juice. We were desperate,” said Laura. “And it got worse every single day.” Amelia cut out the yogurt, convinced she would choke on it. A couple of weeks later, she rejected liquids, too. She began spitting into a napkin, unable to swallow her own saliva. It felt like something was stuck in her throat, Amelia said. She believed if she did try to swallow, she would choke, suffocate, and die. Dinner turned into a nightly standoff: Amelia on one side of the table, growing thinner and frailer, Mark and Laura on the other, their panic mounting. Sometimes, they tried coaxing her. Other times, they couldn’t help but yell. “We didn’t know how to deal with it. Like, ‘Why can’t you eat?’” said Laura. It felt like a failure. They tried to quiet their terror by leaning on what one may believe to be a biological fact — that humans are wired for survival and, eventually, a child will get hungry and want food. “I kept thinking, Mother Nature’s going to kick in here,” said Mark. Instead, Amelia’s hunger response seemed to have shut off. If they tried to feed her, she would spit out the food. By Caitlin Moscatello • New York Magazine • 26 min • Gift Link ➕ We’re discussing this article on Zoom on Sunday, October 26, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT. It’s free and easy to sign up. All you need to do is click the button below. 2️⃣ The Woman Who Ate Only Fruit Ej Dickson, on people who believe that eating fruit is the pathway toward nirvana: Fruitarians make up a smaller, even more fringe part of the raw-vegan community and subsist almost exclusively on uncooked fruit. Many followers believe that fruit is nutritionally complete and contains the most prana, the Sanskrit word for “life force,” of any food on the planet. As Karolina wasted away, her loyal followers cheered her on. “I truly believe that you have the right answers. You know what’s good for you even if right now seems like chaos,” one wrote on a selfie she posted in 2023. “Nice neck and collarbones,” a fan wrote on a photo she posted where her clavicle juts out of her skin. “It is so nice to see you so happy,” another posted on a video of an Instagram Live she did last September. She would be dead less than three months later. By Ej Dickson • The Cut • 10 min • Gift Link Thank you for reading and listening to this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀 To our 18 new subscribers — including Rob, Sujan, Julia, Lily, Charul, Sean, Ben, Lakshita, Russell, Gail, JR, and Jeferson — 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 have come to trust that reading Article Club is better for your mind and soul than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end (or avoiding reading altogether, hoping the world will vanish), please consider a paid subscription. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year. If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. Share the newsletter with a friend or buy me a coffee for $3 (so I can read more articles). 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. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit articleclub.substack.com

    20 min

  3. 09/18/2025

    #512: “We’re moving on from using it as a crutch and more so as a wheelchair.”

    Hi Loyal Readers. Thank you for opening this week’s issue of Article Club. Today’s issue is dedicated to a great conversation I had with Piers Gelly, author of this month’s featured article, “What Happened When I Tried to Replace Myself with ChatGPT in My English Classroom.” The conversation was triply great because Prof. Gelly, who teaches at the University of Virginia, invited two of his students featured in the essay — Camille Villalobos and Max Goldberg — to join us. The result is a thought-provoking discussion about college students’ perspectives on artificial intelligence, particularly when a curious professor engages them genuinely (rather than complaining, banning the use of AI, sticking their head in the sand, and secretly wishing we could turn back time to the Golden Age of Bluebooks). I hope that you’ll read the article, listen to the interview, and join our discussion on Sunday, Sept. 28, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT. We’ll meet on Zoom, say hi, and then dive deep into the article. You can sign up below; it’d be great to have you there. I don’t want to give too much away, because I want you to listen to the conversation, but I must share what I appreciated most. It was how thoughtfully Cam and Max talked about their experiences taking Prof. Gelly’s class, as well as how their points of view on artificial intelligence changed along the way. Not only are Cam and Max brilliant, but what’s also abundantly clear is that Prof. Gelly cares deeply about his students. They’re at the center of his essay. You’ll get a similar sense when you listen to the interview. Rather than making grandiose philosophical conclusions about the state of artificial intelligence in education, Prof. Gelly is curious, vulnerable, and dedicated to listening to his students’ views, as well as pushing them. When you engage your students — as Prof. Gelly does — you gain nuance. For example, at the beginning of the class, Cam had been a liberal user of ChatGPT. By the end, she maligned AI as a “crutch” and vowed never to use it again. And her thinking has shifted even more, as you’ll hear in the interview. On the other hand, Max did not leave the class with the same perspective as Cam. He sees valid uses for ChatGPT. But his experience shifted his sentiments as well. Here he shares what worries him:  I would say the thing that concerns me most is people who use [AI] for everything. And I don’t just mean like coursework, but things like planning their schedules and asking it questions and having it do, like, basic, basic problems. I think that people need to be able to do some of that on their own. I hope you enjoy the interview. Once again, huge appreciation to Prof. Gelly, Cam, and Max for generously saying yes to Article Club. An invitation to our discussion on September 28 I warmly invite you to participate in our discussion on Sunday, September 28, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT. We’ll meet on Zoom. You can sign up below, it’s free. Thank you for reading and listening to this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀 To our 24 new subscribers — including Ikechukwu, Amelia, Linda, Abigail, Matalyn, Anna, Inna, JB, Barry, Mohammed, Obaxbila, Damon, Janet, David, Shelly, Raj, Anna, Erfan, Belle, Samuel, and Sarah — 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 have come to trust that reading Article Club is better for your mind and soul than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end (or avoiding reading altogether, hoping the world will vanish), please consider a paid subscription. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year. Big thanks to Janet, our latest paid subscriber — huge appreciation! If you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe below. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit articleclub.substack.com

    42 min

  4. 09/04/2025

    #510: What Happened When I Tried to Replace Myself with ChatGPT in My English Classroom

    Dear Article Clubbers, We had a great discussion last Sunday. Thank you to everyone who made it so! It’s September, which means two things: * The real school year has begun * I get to announce our article of the month I cannot adequately express how honored I am to share with you September’s article of the month. We are going to be reading and discussing “What Happened When I Tried to Replace Myself with ChatGPT in My English Classroom,” by Piers Gelly. If you’ve been following my article selections over the past year, you know that I’m fascinated with how artificial intelligence has transformed education — mostly for the worse — and how educators don’t know what to do about this sudden shift. (Besides complain a lot, and wishing we could go back in time, to the golden age of bluebooks, which is what many educators are doing.) These woe-is-me pieces by educators have gotten so ubiquitous, I’ve begun to skip them. I’ve been looking for something fresh. That’s why I was immediately hooked when I came upon Prof. Gelly’s piece. In his essay, published in July in Literary Hub, Prof. Gelly does not lament the rise of technology. Rather, in his English class, he engages his University of Virginia students in an authentic exploration of artificial intelligence and its effects. He’s curious. He is unafraid to experiment with his students. He remains vulnerable to the possibility that his role as professor may be in danger. Most importantly, Prof. Gelly takes us into his classroom, introduces us to his students, and tells us a story filled with humanity. My hope is that you will consider reading Prof. Gelly’s essay. I also hope that you will make space to reflect on his words. If you are moved — as I predict many of you will be — I encourage you to join our discussion so that we can all connect and have a conversation in community. ➡️ Inside today’s issue, you’ll find: * My conversation with Article Club co-host Melinda, in which we share our first impressions of the article (alongside our banter) * A quick blurb about the article, plus my handwritten annotations * A short biography of the author * More information about our discussion on September 28, plus an invite One more thing: My gut says, if you’re a high school or college educator, your students would appreciate reading this piece. What Happened When I Tried to Replace Myself with ChatGPT in My English Classroom The more I read this essay, the more I appreciate it. Part of the reason is that I am an educator, too, grappling with the same issues surrounding artificial intelligence that so many of us are — whether we are teachers or parents or students or generally concerned citizens who don’t want humanity to be vanquished. But most of the reason I love this piece is that Piers Gelly is an outstanding teacher. He begins his article with students, and his students are at the center throughout. You’ll meet Cam and Max and other students who take on Prof. Gelly’s writing assignments and in-class activities. You’ll read how they make meaning of artificial intelligence and its impact on education, how their views shift over the course of the semester. Is ChatGPT a “calculator for words,” as Sam Altman suggests? What’s the point of the painful process of writing when a computer can make things easier? You’ll gain insights on these and other important questions. But what delights me most about this piece is that we get to peer inside Prof. Gelly’s classroom. He doesn’t talk in generalities. He tells us exactly what he did and how his students reacted. Teaching, after all, is about what we do, day after day, with the people in the classroom. It’s about the relationships that are built, the learning community that emerges, and the collective understanding that develops over time. In this essay about artificial intelligence, Prof. Gelly reminds us of the humanity that is at the core of the endeavor of education. By Piers Gelly • Literary Hub • 23 min • Gift Link ➕ Bonus: Here’s the essay with my handwritten highlights and annotations. About the author Piers Gelly lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he teaches at the University of Virginia. His writing has been featured by such publications as n+1, The Dublin Review, The Point, and 99% Invisible. About the discussion My hope is that you’ll read “What Happened When I Tried to Replace Myself with ChatGPT in My English Classroom” and want to talk about it. We’ll be meeting up on Zoom on Sunday, September 28, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT. We’ll spend the first few minutes saying hi and doing short introductions. Then after I frame the piece and share our community agreements, we’ll break out into small, facilitated discussion groups. The small groups usually include 5-8 people, so there’s plenty of time to share your perspectives and listen to others. That’s where we’ll spend the bulk of our time. Toward the end, we’ll return to the full group, sharing our reflections and appreciations of fellow participants. If this sounds interesting to you, sign up by clicking on the button below. If you’re unsure, I get it. If you don’t know me, it might feel strange to sign up for an online discussion with total strangers. But I am confident that you’ll find yourself at home with other kind people who like to read deeply and explore ideas in community. We’ve done this 60 times, and by now, it’s not a surprise that we’re able to create an intimate space, almost like we’re in the same physical room together. I hope that you read the piece. If it resonates with you, I encourage you to take the plunge and join us on September 28! Thank you for reading and listening to this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀 To our 16 new subscribers — including Ernest, Kasey, Alish, Meg, Elliott, Steve, Philip, Alakin, Drake, Enite, Amatullah, Joanie, and Linda — 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 have come to trust that reading Article Club is better for your mind and soul than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end (or avoiding reading altogether, hoping the world will vanish), please consider a paid subscription. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year. If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. Share the newsletter with a friend or buy me a coffee for $3 (so I can read more articles). 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. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit articleclub.substack.com

    24 min

  5. 08/14/2025

    #507: ”Dreamwork is something that we can do“

    Hi Loyal Readers. Thank you for opening this week’s issue of Article Club. Today’s issue is dedicated to a beautiful conversation with Saint Trey W, author of this month’s featured article, “They Burn Books to Burn Us Too.” He shares space with Sarai Bordeaux, Article Club contributor and Poet Laureate of Eureka, California. If you haven’t yet, I hope you read the article. Then if you appreciate it, which I predict you will, I invite you to listen to the conversation, then join our discussion next Sunday, August 24. Kind, thoughtful people (like you!) will engage deeply with Saint Trey’s piece on Zoom, beginning at 2:00 pm PT and ending at 3:30 pm PT. If you’re interested, you can learn more and sign up by clicking the button below. When I first read “They Burn Books to Burn Us Too,” I was deeply moved. I was moved by the power of Saint Trey W’s message. But I was equally moved by the beauty of his writing. Saint Trey is a poet. This essay is lyrical. “When a government begins to fear its own history,” Saint Trey writes, “it has already declared war on the people who survived it.” Yes, this is an essay about book banning. It is about erasure, the war on memory, and our government’s attempt to dominate and destroy Black people. But the piece is also about dreaming. No matter the government’s violence, Black people will not be silenced. They will not be unwritten. Saint Trey writes: What they do not know is that we were never written in the first place. We were sung. We were carved into tree trunks and kitchen counters and braided into our mother’s hair. We are older than their archives. And our stories do not end with silence. When I finished the piece, I had three immediate thoughts: * I must share this essay with Sarai right now * Hopefully they appreciate it as much as I do * Wouldn’t it be perfect if Sarai and Saint Trey got to talk to each other? If you’re newish to Article Club, you may not have met Sarai yet, so here are a few words of (re)introduction: Sarai is one of the most astute readers I have ever met. Whenever we talk, they make me smarter. More importantly, Sarai helps me connect the dots and act with more compassion. So it was an obvious next step — given my three thoughts above — that I should reach out to Sarai and gather their perspective. The rest is history. Sarai loved the essay, I contacted Saint Trey, he generously said yes to doing the interview, and they met up on Zoom to talk about his beautiful piece. The result is this wholehearted conversation. Sarai and Saint Trey cover a wide range of topics. I won’t try to list them all here. It was clear to me, as I listened to Sarai and Saint Trey — two poets thinking together and sharing their perspectives about a powerful essay — that I was struck by the mutual care they shared with one another. In their discussion of Saint Trey’s piece, they centered on imagination and possibility, as well as the power of language and lineage. Here’s an excerpt from the conversation that I especially appreciated. About ancestors, language, Blackness, libraries, and God, Saint Trey says: Our ancestors are not just bloodlines, right? They're also our bookshelves. People like Toni Morrison, you know — she taught me that language can be a spell. It can be a sword, but it also can be a sanctuary. Reading Beloved and The Bluest Eye — it was the first time I understood the sacredness of Blackness in a way, especially in its unspoken parts — her reminding us that, if you are free, then you must free somebody else. I think libraries are a portal to that. James Baldwin, giving permission to tell the truth, especially when it burns. This sort of clarity — this heat, this refusal to perform respectability — and his teaching that moral authority doesn't require approval. Audre Lorde, reminding us that silence is not going to protect us. She made queerness feel like gospel. So the reason I mentioned libraries is because they're all-encompassing of these stories. They’re in a sense, I would say, akin to church, right, to those who are believers, right? For me, the way I have reimagined faith in God is in language, it is in words that, you know, are passed through vessels — the artists, the writers, the griots. All have showed me that craft and conviction can dance, right? — that words don't have to be soft to be sacred. And I think libraries, they feed us when the world try has tried to starve us. Seriously: I could listen to that passage over and over again. The clarity of Saint Trey’s words — both spoken here in this conversation, as well as in “They Burn Books to Burn Us Too” — is a gift. I hope you take a listen to the conversation. A little disclaimer: The quality of the audio is a bit patchy at times, particularly at the beginning. The Internet was not behaving. It tried to be a nuisance. But it was unsuccessful, for two reasons: First, the audio smooths out after the first few minutes. Second, the quality of Sarai and Saint Trey’s words will make you listen more closely and tune out the distractions. One more time, I’d like to thank Saint Trey for bringing us this piece. It’s an essay I believe that everyone should read and reflect on. I appreciate your words and your generosity of spirit. And Sarai, I am grateful to you as well, not only for this conversation but also for your contribution to our reading community. An invitation to our discussion on August 24 I warmly invite you to participate in our discussion on Sunday, August 24, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT. We’ll meet on Zoom. You can sign up below, it’s free. Thank you for reading and listening to this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀 To our 20 new subscribers — including Sarah, Sharat, Susan, Ophelia, Emily, Jagadish, Sadiya, Alicia, Jada, Nikki, Vaibhav, Todd, Chana, Nina, and Hannah — 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 have come to trust that reading Article Club is better for your mind and soul than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end (or avoiding reading altogether, hoping the world will vanish), please consider a paid subscription. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year. If you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe below. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit articleclub.substack.com

    33 min

  6. 08/07/2025

    #506: Transitional Period

    Hi there, Loyal Readers. Before launching into today’s issue, I’ve got three updates: * A big welcome to all the new subscribers from The Electric Typewriter. Thank you for trying out Article Club! I’ve been following TEW for 10+ years. It’s a great curated resource of outstanding articles. * This week on the podcast, Melinda and I chat about her foster puppy, Melinda’s Grief Corner, and our first impressions of this month’s article of the month, “They Burn Books to Burn Us Too,” by Saint Trey W. Hope you take a listen. * Speaking of our article of the month, here’s more information about it. I warmly invite you to join our discussion on Sunday, August 24, at 2:00 pm PT. All you need to do is click the button below to sign up. All right, let’s get to today’s issue. One reason I do Article Club is to read and share articles that push my empathy. This week’s lead article, “Transitional Period,” did exactly that. Written by Kai Cheng Thom, the piece is about parents who say hateful things about their trans kids. As a trans person, Kai can’t accept their hostility. As a therapist, however, she responds with compassion, understanding that their sentiments, though hurtful and wrongheaded, are an expression of grief. “Their anger and bitterness are often a disguise for a deep wellspring of fear and shame around the parental terror of having failed your child,” she writes. If you feel safe to read the article, I encourage you to. I’d love to hear your thoughts about it. If reading about parents of trans kids is too much or doesn’t interest you, never fear. I have three other pieces ready for your attention. They are articles about: * a woman who works four jobs and still can’t make ends meet * a program that pays young people $50 a week, no strings attached * a policy that forever bans anyone 25 years old and under from buying vapes Hope you enjoy this week’s issue. As always, thank you for your readership and your support of Article Club. If you appreciate the newsletter, I’d be honored if you shared it with a friend or colleague. Have a great weekend ahead! 1️⃣ Transitional Period Kai Cheng Thom writes with a generosity of spirit in this thought-provoking piece. Between the ages of sixteen and thirty-one, I worked in the overlapping fields of grassroots queer community-building, social work and clinical child and family therapy. During that time, I worked with queer and trans youth and their families in a drop-in centre, a psychiatry department, a sexuality clinic, and a community-based therapy program. A core theme I encountered across all those contexts was the grief that many parents of trans youth experience. These parents could not find a way to love their kids as they were, instead mourning who they had thought their children would be. This grief was often paired with anger toward the LGBTQ2S+ community, which some parents framed as having “stolen their kids.” Like many millennial queer activists, I had been trained by my peers to react to such sentiments by dismissing them outright as wrongheaded and problematic. Contemporary psychological theory and research findings assert that parental expressions of grief and anger over children coming out and transitioning can be significantly harmful to queer and trans youth. Yet in the role of a practitioner, sitting across from adults caught in a sea of rage, pain, fear and sadness, it was clear that it would be neither kind, nor effective in supporting the wellness of trans youth, to tell these parents to just get over themselves. As I listened to them talk and looked into their eyes, I knew that their fears came from somewhere deep within. Those fears would not be assuaged through academic debate — they needed to be met with compassion in order to be transformed. By Kai Cheng Thom • Maisonneuve • 13 min • Gift Link 2️⃣ Confessions of the Working Poor Jeni Gunn works four jobs (security consulting, emergency management, private investigating, freelance writing) and still can barely pay the rent on her 500-square-foot basement apartment in British Columbia, Canada. It doesn’t help that she’s got $6.58 left in her checking account. In this unvarnished, straight-ahead account of her daily life, Ms. Gunn, who is 51 years old, illuminates the struggles that many people face to make ends meet. She acknowledges that dropping out of college, pursuing daycare as a profession, having a kid, and getting a divorce certainly did not help her chances at economic stability. But she wonders, Shouldn’t there be more pathways for the working poor to meet their material needs? By Jeni Gunn • Macleans • 17 min • Gift Link 3️⃣ How To Improve Kids’ Lives? Give Them $50 A Week My students used to ask me, “Why do you get paid and we don’t?” It was a fair question, and my answer never satisfied them. Too bad they were born too early, because now, several schools across the country are experimenting with giving students cash, $50 a week. The program, called The $50 Study, began at Rooted School in New Orleans five years ago. So far, the results are mixed. On the one hand, grades and attendance have not improved too much. But on the other hand, students have learned financial literacy skills, saving on average 15 percent of their income — a much higher rate than most American adults. What I find refreshing about The $50 Study is that the money comes unconditionally, no-strings-attached. “I don’t think what we’re doing is so radical. I believe this just works,” says Talia Livneh, Rooted’s senior director of programs. “They deserve deep, deep trust that students and people know what’s best for them.” By Neal Morton • The Hechinger Report • 8 min • Gift Link 4️⃣ How To Get Kids To Stop Vaping? Ban It Forever. Want to get young people to change their behavior? One approach (the article above) is to give them what they want and offer them choice. Another approach (this article) is to take away what they want and offer them no choice. If you happen to want to buy cigarettes or vapes in Brookline, Massachusetts, and your identification says you were born on or after Jan. 1, 2000, you’re out of luck. Sorry, no vapes for you, for the rest of your life. Sure, you can bop over to Boston, 10 minutes away, and get your fill, but still, Brookline’s bold stance has elicited praise from health professionals and other cities. But in her reporting, writer Makena Gera is not so sure. Isn’t this taking away young people’s agency? How do we teach kids how to choose if we don’t get them choices? By Makena Gera • Boston Magazine • 10 min • Gift Link Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀 To our 24 new subscribers — including Rukiya, Aalok, David, Aiman, Harper, Les, Vishnu, Laura, Zlatan, Kaie, Prakhar, Jonah, Islam, Omneya, and Joanne — 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 have come to trust that reading Article Club is better for your mind and soul than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end (or avoiding reading altogether, hoping the world will vanish), please consider a paid subscription. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year. If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. Share the newsletter with a friend or buy me a coffee (so I can read more articles). Thank you Julie and Gillian for the copious coffee (was tons)! 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. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit articleclub.substack.com

    19 min

  7. 07/31/2025

    #505: They Burn Books to Burn Us Too

    Dear Article Clubbers, We had a great discussion last Sunday. Thank you to everyone who made it so! It’s almost August, which means two things: * It’s my birthday soon * I get to announce our article of the month I cannot adequately express how honored I am to share with you August’s article of the month. We are going to be reading and discussing “They Burn Books to Burn Us Too,” by Saint Trey W. Published in April in Notes From The Undrowned, the essay explores how regimes, most notably the United States government, have banned books in an attempt to dominate Black bodies and to erase Black memory. The goal, Saint Trey writes, is “not only control, but the elimination of imagination.” But no matter the government’s violence, Black people will not be silenced. They will not be unwritten. Saint Trey writes: What they do not know is that we were never written in the first place. We were sung. We were carved into tree trunks and kitchen counters and braided into our mother’s hair. We are older than their archives. And our stories do not end with silence. They begin in fire. My hope is that you will consider reading Saint Trey’s essay. I also hope that you will make space to reflect on his words. If you are moved — as I predict many of you will be — I encourage you to join our discussion so that we can all connect and have a conversation in community. ➡️ Inside today’s issue, you’ll find: * My conversation with Sarai Bordeaux, Poet Laureate of Eureka and Article Club correspondent, on what she appreciated about the essay and how it felt to interview the author * A few more excerpts from the article, plus my handwritten annotations * A short biography of the author * More information about our discussion on August 24, plus an invite One more thing: My gut says, if you’re a high school teacher (e.g., Ethnic Studies, World History, U.S. History), your students would appreciate reading this piece. They Burn Books to Burn Us Too I could quote the entire essay because Saint Trey’s writing is so beautiful. But here are a few excerpts that I’m still thinking about. On reading The Bluest Eye for the first time: I remember reading that first chapter and feeling the air change — like God had walked into the room, barefoot and breathless. I didn’t know then that some people wanted to bury what I had just touched. I didn’t know that entire states would one day strike Morrison from the classroom like a curse. I didn’t know that the truth could be illegal. On the government’s campaign to ban books: They said they wanted to protect the children. But it was only certain children they meant. Not mine. Not me. Not the children who walk into classrooms carrying the weight of a lineage they’re not allowed to name. What I know now is this: when a government begins to fear its own history, it has already declared war on the people who survived it. On resistance and the power of memory through human connection: Long before we were permitted to read, we were remembering. In hush harbors and under moonlight, memory traveled not through paper but through people. The griot, the elder, the preacher, the mama at the stove — all became librarians of the unwritten. The story didn’t need a school board’s approval to be gospel. It needed only breath. And breath, for us, has always been sacred. By Saint Trey W. • Notes From The Undrowned • 13 min • Gift Link ➕ Bonus: Here’s the essay with my handwritten highlights and annotations. About the author Saint Trey W. is a Black queer poet, essayist, and organizer from Brooklyn, New York. His voice carries the salt of survival, the smoke of protest, and the sacred ache of becoming. He writes from the ruins and the rivers, from pews and dancefloors, from the edge of the altar and the underside of America. His Substack publication, Notes from the Undrowned, is not simply a newsletter. It is also a vessel, it is a prayer, and a political reckoning. It is a place to tell the truth when the world demands our silence. About the discussion My hope is that you’ll read “They Burn Books to Burn Us Too” and want to talk about it. We’ll be meeting up on Zoom on Sunday, August 24, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT. We’ll spend the first few minutes saying hi and doing short introductions. Then after I frame the piece and share our community agreements, we’ll break out into small, facilitated discussion groups. The small groups usually include 5-8 people, so there’s plenty of time to share your perspectives and listen to others. That’s where we’ll spend the bulk of our time. Toward the end, we’ll return to the full group, sharing our reflections and appreciations of fellow participants. If this sounds interesting to you, sign up by clicking on the button below. If you’re unsure, I get it. If you don’t know me, it might feel strange to sign up for an online discussion with total strangers. But I am confident that you’ll find yourself at home with other kind people who like to read deeply and explore ideas in community. We’ve done this 58 times, and by now, it’s not a surprise that we’re able to create an intimate space, almost like we’re in the same physical room together. I hope that you read the piece. If it resonates with you, I encourage you to take the plunge and join us on August 24! Thank you for reading and listening to this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀 To our 6 new subscribers — including Isaac, Adrif, Serendipity, Kaila, Brooke, and Nic — 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 have come to trust that reading Article Club is better for your mind and soul than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end (or avoiding reading altogether, hoping the world will vanish), please consider a paid subscription. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year. If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. Share the newsletter with a friend or buy me a coffee for $3 (so I can read more articles). 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. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit articleclub.substack.com

    17 min

  8. 07/17/2025

    #503: ”This is really too important to be turned into a culture war issue“

    Hi Loyal Readers. Thank you for opening this week’s issue of Article Club. Today’s issue is dedicated to my interview with Gideon Lewis-Kraus, author of this month’s featured article, “The End of Children.” I hope you read the article and take a listen to the interview. Yes: This article is about the imminent worldwide population implosion — in other words, how by the end of this century, we’re going to start losing people, and fast, and how the human race might inevitably go extinct sooner rather than later. And yes: I was surprised when I found myself interested in this topic. After all, before reading this piece, I would have said two things: (1) Um, isn’t climate change what we should be worrying about? and (2) Doesn’t this inexorably lead to “childless cat ladies” and The Handmaid’s Tale? But let me tell you: The magic of Mr. Lewis-Kraus’s writing and reporting, alongside the spirit of Article Club — which encourages us to build our empathy — got me to rethink my perspective on the plummeting human fertility rate. And this was all before getting to talk to the author himself. As you know, one of my favorite things about Article Club is that writers generously say yes to talking with us. The same was true with Mr. Lewis-Kraus. Here’s a photo of him, so you know what he looks like, and then I’ll write a bit about what I appreciated about our interview. It was wonderful to meet Mr. Lewis-Kraus. More than what’s typical in these Article Club interviews, we talked about writing and craft. A significant part of our conversation was about how he structured and organized the piece. His thoughtfulness was apparent right from the beginning of our conversation. I loved learning how he decided to write the story in the first place and why he chose South Korea as his case study of population collapse. Some people told Mr. Lewis-Kraus that South Korea and its 0.7 fertility rate was “played out” and “a cliché,” but nobody from a major magazine had spent time in the country, he said. I was personally grateful that Mr. Lewis-Kraus took significant space in his article reporting from South Korea. If you want to gain a better appreciation of how serious the problem is there, I encourage you to watch this 15-minute video, recommended by loyal reader Peter. I was also impressed with Mr. Lewis-Kraus’s awareness of his readers as he drafted the piece. He understood, for example, that his audience (aka subscribers of The New Yorker) are astute readers who mostly lean progressive and who may believe that population decline is a problem only in some countries, like Italy and Japan. Rather than skirting this issue, Mr. Lewis-Kraus decided to tackle it head on: What I realized was, Everyone is going to feel like they’ve read this story before — like, everyone is going to feel like they’ve heard this. And so the major thing that I need to do upfront is say to people, essentially directly address the reader, and say, like, You sophisticated reader might think that you know what’s going on here, but you don’t know what’s going on here. Later in our conversation, I asked Mr. Lewis-Kraus how he makes sure not to get ahead of his readers — on the one hand respecting their knowledge, but on the other hand acknowledging that they haven’t spent hundreds of hours reporting and thinking about this issue, as he has. I found his answer to be humble.  Part of what, what doing this job is, is it’s starting knowing nothing about something and then very quickly learning as much as you can — without forgetting what it felt like to know nothing about it. More than anything else, I left this conversation with deep respect of Mr. Lewis-Kraus and his process as a writer. As I’ve said many times over the years, while I can recognize the highest-quality writing when I read it, I still don’t understand how writers are able to pull it off. That’s maybe one reason I keep doing this newsletter — so that I can continue to explore this question and share my findings with you. Thank you very much for joining me on this journey. An invitation to our discussion on July 27 I warmly invite you to participate in our discussion on Sunday, July 27, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT. We’ll meet on Zoom. You can sign up below, it’s free. Thank you for reading and listening to this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀 To our 8 new subscribers — including Juliana, Chris, Imran, Isaac, DJTL, Anish, Asha, and Celi — 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 have come to trust that reading Article Club is better for your mind and soul than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end (or avoiding reading altogether, hoping the world will vanish), please consider a paid subscription. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year. If you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe below. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit articleclub.substack.com

    30 min
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4.9
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About

Book clubs are stressful. Join Article Club, a community of kind readers. We discuss one great article every month on race, education, or culture. articleclub.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Mark Isero
  • Years Active
    2017 - 2025
  • Episodes
    142
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Mark Isero
  • Show Website
    Article Club