The Tradwives Are Getting Divorced, and They Can't Afford To (The Five for 07/10/26)
Plus 551 movies about to disappear, FDR was closer to a Soviet than an American, and yeah, John Travolta is hosting a Ramones tribute...
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With that being said, let’s dive into Culture & Commentary.
[one]
The “trad vs feminism” debate rages pretty much daily over on Twitter, making it one of the most talked about cultural debates in this decade.
But what both (opposing) camps often have in common…financial instability.
From the New York Post:
“Divorce” was analogous to a curse word in Enitza Templeton’s hyper-traditional, faith-centered home.
With her husband hailed king of the castle — almost rivaling the Holy Trinity between God the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit — Templeton, who married at age 26, eagerly abandoned her dreams of pursuing a career in art to, instead, satisfy her man’s every command.
From growing the family’s produce in her private garden to gussying up in sexy outfits and cosmetics before he came home from work, the brunette’s routine became that of an extreme 1950s homemaker: obeying, baking and baby-making.
But by 36, the mother of four found herself feeling like “a prisoner” in her marriage — which ultimately ended in the once-taboo “D” word.
And Templeton shared that her biggest challenge post-divorce was navigating life without a solid education, professional résumé or real-world experiences.
The New Jersey native is just one in the rising army of former tradwives who, after saying “I Do” to a life of submissive servitude in their late teens or early 20s, are now virally warning women about the not-so-Instagrammable dark side.
It’s a regimen that most traditional, or “trad,” wives follow based on religious principles.Unlike housewives, women who manage their households and raise kids as equals to their working spouses, tradwives often become subservient subordinates whose sole purpose is to please their partner.
And Templeton shared that her biggest challenge post-divorce was navigating life without a solid education, professional résumé or real-world experiences.
“There aren’t a lot of tradwives over 35 or 40 because they’ve either got divorced and moved away from the lifestyle after learning how toxic it can be,” Templeton, now 43, a women’s advocate, currently based in Denver, Colorado, told The Post.
Observations:
A). There are basically people who need really rigid systems to make their lives work. A blank page terrifies them…so they look for someone else to write on the page…in the case of the trad world, it’s loud people online who have no credibility beyond their own volume and frequency of posting.
B). As a rule of thumb…yeah, if you’re an adult, you should have a plan to make money, even if you aren’t currently working. A high school friend lost her dad as an elementary student, and they didn’t have enough life insurance to keep the family afloat for long…it threw them into poverty, and her mom struggled to get through nursing school while keeping the most basic food on the table and (used) clothes on their back.
C). Going back to the rigidity…the problem is “trad” households in general is that they don’t tend to be people who have any creativity. Rachel Wilson, is mostly known for being on the YouTube live show Whatever, the 2026 version of Jerry Springer that runs the same tired feminism vs. trad debate with different cast.
I once got into a debate with Rachel on Twitter, when she claimed that a man either needed to choose money or his family. I rebutted that as I increased how much money I could make per hour, I was making more money while choosing time with my family.
She legitimately couldn’t wrap her head around that, and kept arguing with me. Some of my friends make $500+ per hour consulting, and simply work 15-20 hours per week. They have lots of both—family time and money.
One of the issues with the trad lifestyle is that it’s so rigid, there’s no room for economic growth.
People who are super trad are screwed when they get divorced (women more so than men, but both parties are financially wrecked). But they’re also in bad shape when they stay married, because a 1950’s mindset doesn’t translate to 2020’s wealth building.
D). You might be tempted to call me a hypocrite because my wife stays home and we homeschool. However, I’m interested in living in the decade we actually are in…and constantly looking for new opportunities for growth, financially and otherwise.
BUT…I'm not trad because I build things...I'm not locked into life 70 years ago.
E).The woman in the article is now a feminist online influencer, which is a pretty unreliable way to drag yourself out of a paycheck-to-paycheck existence.
I started out with a credit score of 400 after being left on an unpaid card on my dad’s account, flat broke at 19, working up to five jobs at a time. It’s unbelievably difficult...but it’s a more secure financial future to give it your all in something that can make money than to chase influencer status. That’s the career equivalent of a craps table...somebody is going to win big. But probably not you.
She just flipped the script of one set of rigid values for another.
She just flipped the script of one set of rigid values for another.
Man or woman, married or single…go blaze your own path.
Scripts are for losers.
[two]
A viral debate broke out on Twitter about President Franklin D. Roosevelt…and it’s worth digging into.
FDR is the most overrated president in American history and it is not close.
People treat him like a saint. The reality is he inherited a recession and turned it into the longest depression in the history of the developed world. Every other major economy on earth recovered faster than the United States did under FDR. Sit with that. We had the most resources, the most industry, the most capacity, and we recovered slower than countries that got bombed.If
Why? Because his policies were economically illiterate. The NIRA cartelized entire industries and made it illegal to lower prices during a deflationary collapse. He paid farmers to slaughter livestock and plow under crops while people stood in bread lines. He launched a war on business so aggressive that investment dried up because nobody knew what insane rule was coming next. Even his own Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, admitted in 1939 that they had spent enormous sums and “it does not work” and that unemployment was as high as when they started.
Then in 1937 his policies triggered a second brutal crash so embarrassing the textbooks gave it its own polite little nickname, the “Roosevelt Recession,” so they would not have to attach his name to the failure in the obvious way.
A UCLA study in 2004 concluded the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression by roughly seven years. Seven years of extra suffering sold to you as heroism.
[NOTE: The original text doesn’t link the story, but here it is: FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate].
Historians rank Franklin Roosevelt the third greatest president in American history. They do it on a ten-part scorecard that grades, among other things, economic management and equal justice for all. Those are the two boxes where his record is worst. That is the whole problem with the ranking.
To look at both sides of the issue…FDR took office during a banking collapse and stopped the run inside his first week. The FDIC, signed on his watch in 1933, ended bank panics and is still standing. So is the SEC. So is Social Security (well, it’s set to be 20% short of making payments in 2034, but hey…checks are rolling this week I guess ). GDP grew fast from 1933 to 1937. Unemployment, however you count it, fell hard off its 1933 peak. He held an isolationist country together, spoke plainly about why the war mattered, and assembled the alliance that won it. He did it against a Supreme Court that kept striking him down, and a Congress that turned on him once the second term soured.
Saying he helped lead the alliance that brought down Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan is not too grand a claim. And I appreciate that I don’t have to speak German or Japanese, and my 1/2 Jewish wife and 1/4 Jewish daughters will not be thrown into ovens by an occupying German force. I like singing The Star Spangled Banner at high school basketball games a lot more than being forced to pledge allegiance to the Fuhrer so SS officers won’t beat me with batons.
But…how much do we credit Roosevelt for causing an indeterminable amount of misery, malnourishment, unemployment…and uncountable deaths from suicide and poor quality of life?
This is a tough one for me…but despite the victories in Europe and Japan, a man who destroyed food while his own country starved…is spiritually more Soviet than American.
And a greatest American President…that does not make.
[three]
Well, the first “AI actress” is in a “movie,” allegedly…which has caused a stir online.
But, this is just a classic case of trying to make fetch happen. (If for some reason, that reference didn’t land, stop reading this and go watch Mean Girls).
From Deadline:
Controversial AI “actor” Tilly Norwood will “star” in Misaligned, marking the first time she has lead a feature film.
Eline van den Velden’s Particle 6, which created Norwood, is in development on the pic. The London-based firm claims to have “retrained and upskilled” more than 30 TV and film creatives, filmmakers, actors and technologists since its launch, and is now applying the approach to the movie’s production.
Particle 6 claims Misaligned‘s production will see traditional professionals such as directors, writers and editors working alongside AI specialists.Misaligned is billed as “a comedy-drama telling a coming-of-age story infused with existential AI chaos.” Set inside the “Tillyverse,” a “surreal digital world located somewhere up in the cloud,” it follows Tilly, an AI being with no real body, no childhood and no lived experience of her own, but access to everyone else’s.
Yeah, the company that’s out there burning through capital dollars, couldn’t sell their little AI robot fake actor to anybody, so they’re making a “movie.”
Call me crazy, but I don’t see people turning out to your local theater to drop $20 to see…whatever this is.
Without an audience, it’s not a movie. It’s a tech demo.
Lame. Moving on…
One thing before the next one.
That last story is what happens when somebody builds the thing before they figure out why anyone should care.
Most organizations don’t have a marketing problem. They have a story problem. They know exactly what they do. They cannot say why it matters in a sentence a stranger would repeat.
That’s the work. Positioning, messaging, the words on the page, the thing that makes somebody stop scrolling. Same instinct I use here, pointed at your organization instead of mine.
I’ve done it for universities, nonprofits, churches, tech startups, and financial institutions. One person, not an agency. No deck before I’ve earned it.
Email me: sethtowerhurd@gmail.com. Subject line “help me now.”
Back to it.
[four]
Well, a reminder that a world without physical media…means you don’t own anything.
Sony is removing PURCHASED movies and TV shows. No refunds…they’re just deleting them from customer accounts.
From ARS Technica:
Sony recently informed its PlayStation customers in the United Kingdom that they will no longer be able to watch previously purchased movies and shows from production and distribution company StudioCanal. As of September 1, affected customers will no longer be able to stream 551 titles from the PlayStation Store.
In a legal notice first spotted by gaming news outlet PlayStation LifeStyle, Sony said that affected customers will lose the ability to stream titles including Outrage: Way of the Yakuza, Paddington, Paddington 2, Pan’s Labyrinth, Rambo 3, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas “due to our content licensing agreements.” As of September, Sony will remove any affected titles that UK users bought from their PlayStation library, per the notice.
The incident is a reminder that we don’t own the stuff we purchase digitally. Instead, digital rentals and purchases are merely long-term licenses that are only valid for as long as the streaming service has the right to distribute said content. Often, that’s a finite amount of time.
This news follows the controversy that Sony will stop making physical games for the Playstation in 2028, which is just another sign that tech companies are trying to push consumers to permanent “rental” status, where all media is on a subscription basis…and you never own anything.
I certainly don’t want to publicly advocate for illegal downloads…but this sentiment ahs
"If buying is not owning, piracy is not theft.”
[five]
As always, let’s head into the weekend with a pop culture roundup:
[movies] Supergirl is reportedly headed to premium video on demand around July 28, roughly a month after it landed in theaters. I’m hesitant to have TOO strong of an opinion on a movie I haven’t seen, but it’s based on a comic book inspired by True Grit, which is my favorite American novel…and , and even the negative ones praised Milly Alcock (House of the Dragon, Superman). Plus, I’ve rarely regretted watching something with Jason Momoa (Game of Thrones, Aquaman) The critics score is 57% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of this writing, but the audience gives it a 75%…so it looks like the online freak out here may have been a result of outrage culture rather than it being genuinely that bad. It’s probably not amazing, but I’m on enough flights these days to give it a chance…
Meanwhile, Angel Studios' Young Washington opened over the Fourth to roughly $19.4 million on a reported $20 million budget, third for the weekend, without a single premium large-format screen. Critics landed at 61% on Rotten Tomatoes, but audiences handed it an A CinemaScore and director Jon Erwin (Jesus Revolution, American Underdog) announced a sequel before opening weekend was even over. Supergirl cost $170 million and has grossed about $58 million domestic... one of these studios knows who its audience is.
[shows] Netflix reboots Little House on the Prairie on July 9, more than 40 years after the Michael Landon series signed off. This one skips the old show and goes back to Laura Ingalls Wilder's books, with 10-year-old Alice Halsey (Lessons in Chemistry) as Laura and Luke Bracey (Elvis, Hacksaw Ridge) as Pa. The story follows the family from the Wisconsin woods to homestead on the Kansas prairie, land the Osage already call home. The show gives the Osage a storyline of their own, with a cultural consultant on set. Netflix renewed it for a second season back in March... before a single episode had aired. But hey, it’s Netflix, so don’t underestimate their power to wait three years for a second season and the audience totally forgets…
[music] Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day), Tim Armstrong (Rancid), and Travis Barker (Blink-182) are joining former Ramones bassist CJ Ramone in a new supergroup called Cretin Family. The occasion: The Official Ramones 50th Anniversary Tribute, marking half a century since the band's self-titled debut. One show, August 30, at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in LA (hopefully it shows up on YouTube), hosted by John Travolta (uhhh…why?), proceeds going to cancer research (cool). Three bands the Ramones made possible... and one guy who was actually in them. Hey ho, let's go.
Like the first two entries into the series, the third DUNE movie looks visually stunning, well acted…and set in an immersive world.
That being said…I’m still moderately creeped out that the books are based on Islamic witchcraft and hallucinogens.
But hey, it’s going to be a spectacle. Get tix early if you wanna see it opening weekend. Out 12/17.
Do we need another Muhammed Ali movie when Will Smith has played the character (albeit more than 2 decades ago). Based on this trailer…absolutely. Going straight to streaming, on Prime Video 11/04.
Oh look, they made the same Jason Statham movie again. I’m cool with it. But yeah, same plot. Same actor who is going to shoot/punch/run people over with cars on his way to justice. 08/17.
Rental for me, but probably a theater trip if I was in my early twenties…but you could do worse if you’re looking for two hours of escapism.
I’m not a reality show person, but a reality competitions show based on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Debuting 09/23.
[new music]
My only experience listening to Olivia Rodrigo was to skim through a couple of singles when her debut was blowing up (I like to know what’s popular, to analyze why). It didn’t stick…but I found two songs on her new album that are absolute bangers, and possibly two of the best songs in any genre so far this year.
You never know how much an artist this big is real vs. made by a group of producers and consultants…but her collab with The Cure front man Robert Smith slots in well alongside the Brit-Goth-Pop outfit’s best singles, and “less” channels Lana Del Rey, and reaches back to Billie Holiday and Nina Simone…this song could fit just as well as a live performance in a 1936 detective noir film as on a 2026 playlist.
The vibe shift continues...when The Strokes hit in 2001, they embodied “New York sleaze,” their own grimy take on garage rock. All “eat and drink today, for tomorrow we die.”
The Lower East Side five piece are still as musically innovative as their 2001 debut. But the cover of the new album, Reality Awaits, is a Richard Prince cowboy lifted from a Marlboro ad. And Julian Casablancas hasn’t abandoned the indie stylings. He’s just singing about much heavier stuff now than the drinking, partying, and casual encounters the band ran on back in the leather-jacket days.
The cover is a copy of a copy of a myth...a cigarette ad re-shot to ask how real that whole American tough-guy pose ever was. Funny choice for a band of private-school kids who had fame and fortune young…are now looking for more meaning.
Oh, and Rick Rubin (Jay-Z, Linkin Park, Johnny Cash) is producing. Dope.
[read & learn]
Jack Carr is best known for the Prime Video series The Terminal List (and prequel, Dark Wolf) staring Chris Pratt and Taylor Kitsch, respectively.
His new series, The Fourth Option, sticks to the same ex-Navy-Seal-hunted-by-bad-guys formula, but a very different spin on the character. For fiction, this quotes a LOT of classic philosophy. Highly recommended.
Most celebs…are bad at podcasting. Amy Poehler (SNL, Parks & Rec) is an exception. This convo with Matt Damon on the eve of the release of The Odyssey is worth a listen.
Until the next one,
-sth