Weekly Updates
All the things your algorithm may not be showing you
Happy Monday, Subs!
I am finally off the road for the summer, which means I FINALLY have time to talk to all of you more. I’ll be spending the next 8 weeks prepping for our wedding ceremony out in California (yes, we’ve been married over a year and are just now getting around to the official wedding lol) and catching my breath after a crazy legislative session.
For free subscribers, I plan to use the email capacity via Substack to make sure you see new free content as it comes out each week. I’m working hard on video content that the algorithms sometimes don’t like due to its political nature, so this is the best way to ensure you actually see what I’m producing.
This week, that’s a long-form video on the Karen Read trial - available on my YouTube channel here. Guys, if you aren’t familiar with this case buckle up. I’ve covered criminal justice issues for over a decade and I’ve never seen anything like it. After an immense amount of research into the case (my husband is so sick of hearing about it), I can confidently say I think this woman is not only innocent, but that she was indeed framed by local law enforcement for her cop boyfriend’s death. In this episode I not only recap the case and the evidence, I dig into the socioeconomic and gender issues at play in the case.
I titled it: “The modern day witch trial of Karen Read: classism, sexism, and ego.”
This is of course also available on audio podcast platforms like Spotify or Apple. But just so you know those platforms don’t pay creators for their work, so aside from occasional sponsors I make no money off audio streams whereas YouTube pays us fairly for views. So if you could prioritize watching/listening to the Hannah Cox Show episodes on YouTube it would help a lot!
For my paid Substack content this week, I wrote a piece on the socioeconomic factors that influence food tastes, and how a certain personality trait can not only determine your palate but also your social class.
I saw this silly online quiz that matches one’s food tastes to their class. It made me think about my own use of food as a status seeker and striver and how taste preferences are as much determined by your taste buds as they are your surroundings and desire to be perceived as belonging to certain in-groups. So I dug into the matter and found my hunch was correct, there is a common trait that can predict your openness to trying new foods as well as your income. In this piece I explore my own social climb and relation to food, and then I dig into the broader data.
Remember you can becomes a PAID Substack subscriber to access paywalled content like this and support my work more broadly in the process! I’ll also be unrolling some special Q&A chats for subscribers soon.
Aside from this content, I spent most of June on the road introducing a new topic I’m developing a book around. The speech is called “Nobody Wants To Be the Mommy” and it explores the dropping birth rate, factors that influence it, and the failure of central planning attempts to coerce it up or down. I argue that the declining birth rate is not as catastrophic as many are painting it to be, and that those harping on it the most have ulterior motivations that spell trouble for women’s rights. I premiered the talk at the Atlas Society’s Galt’s Gulch event earlier this month in Austin, and then took it up north to PorcFest in New Hampshire a little over a week ago. If either event provides video footage of the speech I’ll likely share some snippets privately here, and I plan to workshop the book with my paid subscribers as well to get feedback as I go. It will be part memoir and explore my own journey of not wanting kids to becoming a stepmom, while weaving in broader political and social discussions in the process.
In the meantime, I also joined the Kim Iverson show this week to discuss these same topics.
Lastly, for those who don’t know I’ve been busy building a digital activists network under my company Athens Media. Content is not just entertainment, it’s where culture is being made - and everyone knows politics flows downstream from that. Moreover, with the digital square now functioning as the townsquare, traditional political operations like grassroots education, coalition development, organizing, and even direct lobbying now take place online as much as they do off.
That’s an exciting opportunity for those of us who rely on persuasion vs paycheck donations to advance causes we care about - we have the opportunity to influence more people than ever before with just a fraction of the resources. But in the liberty space we’ve fallen drastically behind the left and the right on this front. Enter Athens. We’re partnering with organizations on the ground to help them advance their issues via a network of dedicated content creators who know how to use social media to move the needle. So far this year, we’ve been instrumental in passing universal school choice in Tennessee, the REINS Act in numerous states, stopping a corrupt Right of First Refusal push in Wisconsin, and expanding privacy protections for donors in Nevada.
We’ve had an impressive 2025 and are gearing up for the 2026 legislative season now. If you’d like to learn more or work with us you can head to my website here.
As always, thanks for your support Fam! Hope you have a great week.
xo, H