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Investigates Investigates Money Diaries The Journal TV Climate Crisis Cost of Living Road Safety Newsletters Temperature Check Inside the Newsroom The Journal Investigates Daft.ie Property Allianz Home The 42 Sport TG4 Entertainment The Explainer A deep dive into one big news story Sport meets news, current affairs, society & pop culture have your say Or create a free account to join the discussion Advertisement More Stories 7 deadly reads Sitdown Sunday: She gave birth to her 13th child at 62 - but she wanted more Settle down in a comfy chair with some of the week’s best longreads. 9.01am, 9 Nov 2025 Share options IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair. We’ve hand-picked some of the week’s best reads for you to savour. 1. The woman who wouldn’t stop having children Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo MaryBeth Lewis gave birth to her 13th child at the age of 62. But she wasn’t done. This is the extraordinary story of how she tricked an IVF clinic, a judge and even her husband to get what she wanted, and the felony charges and the custody battle that followed. (The New York Times, approx 35 mins reading time) MaryBeth says Bob initially went along with the surrogacy plan. (He denies this.) Whatever Bob knew, he soon staked out a definite position: 13 kids were enough. His fellow retired FedEx pilots were on fishing boats in Florida; Bob still packed school lunches. He had a familiarity with cartoons like “Bluey” and “Cocomelon” better suited to a father half his age. The Lewises’ garage was a thicket of car seats, swim floaties and strollers. A party sign hung above the mess, mocking Bob: “HAPPY RETIREMENT.” Grandchildren were now arriving, and their third daughter, Liz, was considering having a child on her own. Bob and MaryBeth had promised to shower her with support if she did. In their kitchen one evening, MaryBeth again brought up the embryos. Bob lost it. He screamed at MaryBeth, just inches from her face. “Destroy them!” he cried. “I don’t want to do anything with them!” Bob stormed off. “That’s when I got a little bonko,” she says. 2. Barcelona A fascinating deep dive into the finances of the football club after their highly-publicised money problems, and how one of the richest clubs in world football got into so much debt. (The Athletic, approx 28 mins reading time) Neymar’s move seemed to further underscore the strength of his former side’s finances. When departing Catalonia, he left a club who had posted six straight years of profits, where wages were less than 60 per cent of revenue and where those revenues were growing healthily — up €164m and 34 per cent in three seasons. At €648million, Barca’s revenue was football’s third-highest, less than €30m behind Real Madrid and Manchester United. No other club topped €600m. Now, on top of all that, they had the largest transfer fee in history to add to the pile. Yet what followed the Neymar sale was not years of booming business, but the opposite. Barcelona made a profit again in 2017-18, but its size, considering it included that world-record fee, was miserly. The club booked a €20.1million pre-tax surplus but only after more than €200m in player profits. Operating performance collapsed, from a €10.5m profit in 2016-17 to a €176.8m loss (as seen below). They would not book an operating profit again until last season. Advertisement 3. The AI bubble Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo Companies are continuing to pour money into the AI industry, even while they’re not making it back. Is this the next dot-com bubble? Matteo Wong and Charlie Warzel’s analysis of America’s economic dependency on AI is worth a read. (The Atlantic, approx 10 mins reading time) Large-scale data-center build-outs may already be reshaping America’s energy systems. OpenAI has announced that it intends to build at least 30 gigawatts’ worth of data centers—more power than all of New England requires on even the hottest day—and CEO Sam Altman has said he’d eventually like to build a gigawatt of AI infrastructure every week. Other major tech firms have similar ambitions. Listen to the AI crowd talk enough, and you’ll get a sense that we may be on the cusp of an infrastructure boom. And yet, something strange is happening to the economy. Even as tech stocks have skyrocketed since 2022, the companies’ share of net profits from S&P 500 companies has hardly budged. Job openings have fallen despite a roaring stock market, 22 states are in or near a recession, and despite data centers propping up the construction industry, U.S. manufacturing is in decline. It’s clear that AI is both drowning out and obscuring other stories about the wobbling American economy. That’s a concern. But even worse: What if AI’s promise for American business proves to be a mirage? What happens then? 4. Paying for it Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral race on promises to make things better – and cheaper – for working class people. This insightful, sobering piece (written before Mamdani’s victory) outlines what will stand in his way: the municipal bond market. (The Baffler, approx 14 mins reading time) With straps consisting of credit ratings and debt limits, relatively autonomous borrowing authorities and bondholder supremacy, this straitjacket is a national arrangement impacting every municipality that wants to build something or offer public provisions, socialist or otherwise. If Mamdani is elected mayor, the administration will have to put on the jacket, as every mayor before him had to, and as any socialist taking up the executive branch on a local level will have to. To do anything, they need to sell, repay using tax money, and refinance bonds through a shadow government of unelected technocrats, manipulating a market so complex that barely anyone understands it (the most advanced research on the subject calls the situation “opaque”) for the benefit not of the public but those holding the bonds. Shutterstock Shutterstock It seems like every product you pick up at the supermarket nowadays is claiming to be high in protein. Why is everyone suddenly obsessed with it? As always with these trends, it’s because of the internet. (SELF, approx 10 mins reading time) Even if your algorithm is more tailored to movie bloopers or thrift hauls than protein-maxxing, you’re probably aware of protein’s biggest advocates, like Andrew Huberman, PhD, a neuroscientist and associated professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and Peter Attia, MD, a Stanford- and Johns Hopkins–trained doctor. Both podcasters have been “strong proponents of a high protein intake and, also, of red meat,” Dr. Amati says. “And I think because their profiles are so big and they are both in the medical science space, it gave [those claims] credibility.” (Capitalizing on his success, Dr. Attia has even come out with his own line of protein products, David, which claims to offer the “most protein-dense” bar in existence (at 75% calories from protein.) Besides heavyweights like Dr. Attia and Dr. Huberman, plenty of smaller players have done their own part in tipping the algorithm towards protein. Fitness influencers’ “What I Eat in a Day” videos, which often specify the amount of protein in meals and snacks, “certainly don’t help,” Dada says; neither do the high-protein recipes constantly making the rounds on TikTok. In many cases, these involve odd combinations of ingredients, like Greek yogurt and sugar-free Jell-O mix (for fluffy yogurt) or Diet Coke and a vanilla protein shake (for protein Diet Coke). For any food that exists, there is probably a way to make it “high-protein” that someone has filmed and published online. Related Reads Sitdown Sunday: A murder that haunted an Oregon town was almost solved - then came a twist Sitdown Sunday: What spending three days in total darkness can do to the mind Sitdown Sunday: 'This generation was bred for addiction': The toxic mix of technology and gambling 6. The Traitors Ed Campbell writes about how he took part in a workplace version of the hit show at his job and nearly lost his mind in the process. (The Guardian, approx 6 mins reading time) We called the group “Nan’s birthday” so that it could be open on our work laptops without attracting suspicion. To make it seem more authentic, I made the group photo an actual photo of my nanna at her 90th birthday. Only when I’d saved my fellow Traitors’ numbers under fake names was I happy that the digital level of OpSec was high enough. In person, it was a different story. We were subjected to a 24/7, cross-platform interrogation. WhatsApps, pitch meetings, client lunches – all became accusatory terrain. Lying became second nature. I lied to colleagues as I warmed up my lunch in the microwave, I lied at work drinks, I even lied to my manager who worked in a different office, and wasn’t even playing the game. I spoke about almost nothing else. I’d wake my girlfriend up, boring her stupid about what Faithfuls had which theories, and who had nearly been caught, and who we were going to murder next. I dreamed about it. There was a farcical moment where I discussed the game with some colleagues on my PoliticsJOE podcast. Through gritted teeth, I claimed to be a Faithful. Now I wasn’t just lying to people I knew. I felt like Richard Nixon. …AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES… John Wayne Gacy's mugshot in 1978.Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo A new series, Devil in Disguise, focuses on the notorious American serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who murdered 33 boys in the 1970s. This chilling piece by Alec Wilkinson is from 1994, when he interviewed Gacy while he was on death row awaiting execution. (The New Yorker, approx 67 mins reading time) When Gacy says that he knows nothing about the murders, it’s impossible to tell if he really has no memory of them or is just saying that he doesn’t. He says that twelve people—a cleaning woman, some friends, a bookkeeper, and some carpenters who worked for the small contracting company he owned—had keys to his house and could have buried bodies in the crawl space while he was travelling on business. All the murders took place in his house, nearly all between three and six in the morning. A neighbor said that now and then she heard screams from the house in the middle of the night; she called the police, but whenever they knocked on Gacy’s door he told them that nothing was wrong. They never heard anyone screaming. Note: The Journal generally selects stories that are not paywalled, but some might not be accessible if you have exceeded your free article limit on the site in question. Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation. Support The Journal Viewcomments Send Tip or Correction Embed this post To embed this post, copy the code below on your site Email “Sitdown Sunday: She gave birth to her 13th child at 62 - but she wanted more”. 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