The Hidden-Pregnancy Experiment

Jia Tolentino on trading our privacy for a sense of security. Plus: Hope Hicks’s teary testimony at Trump’s trial, and the plight of the English apple. View in browser | Update your preferences Saturday, May 4, 2024 In today’s newsletter, The Weekend Essay, and then: • Hope Hicks’s teary testimony at Trump’s trial • The plight of the English apple • “The Contestant,” reviewed The Hidden-Pregnancy Experiment We are increasingly trading our privacy for a sense of security. Becoming a parent showed me how tempting, and how dangerous, that exchange can be. By Jia Tolentino Illustration by Ard Su Shortly after I became pregnant with my second child, in the fall of 2022, I decided to try a modest experiment. I wanted to see whether I could hide my pregnancy from my phone. After spending my twenties eagerly surveilling and sharing the details of my life online, I had already begun trying to erect some walls of technological privacy: I’d deleted most apps on my phone and turned off camera, location, and microphone access for nearly all of the ones that I did have; I had disabled Siri—I just found it annoying—and I didn’t have any smart devices. For the experiment, I would abide by some additional restrictions. I wouldn’t Google anything about pregnancy nor shop for baby stuff either online or using a credit card, and neither would my husband, because our I.P. addresses—and thus the vast, matrixed fatbergs of personal data assembled by unseen corporations to pinpoint our consumer and political identities—were linked. I wouldn’t look at pregnancy accounts on Instagram or pregnancy forums on Reddit. I wouldn’t update my period tracker or use a pregnancy app. Keep reading From the News Desk Our Local Correspondents What Is Hope Hicks Crying About? During Donald Trump’s criminal trial, the inscrutable former White House aide was equally inscrutable on the witness stand, despite breaking out into tears while testifying. By Eric Lach The Political Scene Podcast Who Should Be More Worried about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—Biden or Trump? “He’s not a serious threat in terms of being able to win,” Jane Mayer says, “but he is potentially a serious threat in being able to spoil this election for one side or the other.” Editor’s Pick Annals of Gastronomy The English Apple Is Disappearing As the country loses its local cultivars, an orchard owner and a group of biologists are working to record and map every variety of apple tree they can find in the West of England. By Sam Knight Books We Recommend This Week Reviews of notable new fiction and nonfiction. Knife, by Salman Rushdie (Random House). In August, 2022, more than thirty years after the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering the killing of Salman Rushdie, an assassin came running at him. The man stabbed Rushdie as he was addressing an audience in Chautauqua, New York, and kept on doing so for nearly half a minute. Rushdie’s first thought was “So it’s you.” His second thought was “Why now?” Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages, by Anthony Bale (Norton). The late-medieval traveller, it was said, always needed two bags: one full of money, one of patience. Such wisdom fills the pages of this immensely entertaining history, which is constructed around medieval guidebooks and travelogues, and highlights dazzling destinations like Constantinople and Rhodes under the Knights Hospitaller. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Neighbors and Other Stories, by Diane Oliver (Grove). In 1966, Oliver, an M.F.A. student at the University of Iowa, was killed in a motorcycle accident. This book, the first collection of her work, exhibits a unique delicacy in chronicling Black life in the nineteen-fifties and sixties—especially in the South amid the civil-rights movement. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Butter, by Asako Yuzuki, translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton (Ecco). In this thriller inspired by true events, a journalist, Rika, becomes obsessed by the case of Manako Kajii, a sometime sex worker convicted of killing several men. Kajii reportedly seduced the men with her cooking—much to the confusion and chagrin of Japanese society, which tends to view Kajii’s “huge” body as an abomination. Rika interviews the wily Kajii in charged jailhouse meetings, and the two engage in an increasingly fraught game of cat and mouse. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. The best books of 2024 so far What are you reading this week? Reply to let us know. Culture Dept. On Television “The Contestant” Is More Than a Cautionary Tale The new Hulu documentary charts the rise of one of the earliest reality-TV stars and the ethically queasy production choices that cemented his fame—but it’s elevated by its interest in what came afterward. By Inkoo Kang Fiction “Pulse” He felt a pure, infantile fear. The smell of pencils. The cold metal smell of the ladder. There was a static crackle above him. And it froze his blood. By Cynan Jones This Week in Fiction Cynan Jones on Nature and Nonlinear Love The author discusses his story “Pulse.” By Cressida Leyshon P.S. “He thought maybe she was joking when she proposed to him, on a cold bright day on the beach at Port Stanley,” Alice Munro writes, in this moving short story, from 1999, about a pair of lovers. “Sand was stinging their faces and the waves delivered crashing loads of gravel at their feet.” We encounter the couple again in old age, when the wife has begun to forget. What’s never lost is their commitment to caring for each other. What did you think of today’s newsletter? Let us know. If you like the daily newsletter, browse more New Yorker newsletters. You’re receiving this e-mail because you signed up for the daily newsletter from The New Yorker. Manage your preferences | View our Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe Copyright © Condé Nast 2024. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.