welcome to steeped!

a bit more about why i decided to launch another parallel - but this time, in the culture & news terrains.

if you’re here reading this right now, you might already know the feeling:

you want to be informed. you want to be the person in the room who actually knows what’s happening in the world — not just the headlines, but the why behind them. you want to have opinions that are grounded in something real. you want to understand what’s going on in washington, in tehran, in the creator economy, in culture — all of it.

but you’re also busy, and the news is a lot.

it’s overwhelming, it’s contradictory, and half of it is written to make you feel something (or have a full on panic attack) before it ever makes you think something.

that’s exactly why i built steeped.

here’s how it works.

twice a week — every tuesday and friday — a roundup lands in your inbox covering stories that actually matter across global news, domestic politics, power, culture, and a little moment from history that puts it all in context (I am the creator of badass women in history, after all 😉😜).

the goal is always fast, cited, and consumable before your coffee gets cold (or before all the ice has melted in your drink, for all my iced coffee girlies).

and here’s the thing that makes steeped different from the other news sources in your feed — you will always know when something is my opinion. any editorial take is clearly labeled — (italicized, in parentheses, like this) — so you can always tell the difference between what happened and what i think about it.

who am i?

if you’re wondering about the person behind the publication — hi, my name is emma hughes — founder of baw collective and the voice behind badass women in history, a historically researched publication with readers in all 50 states and over 170 countries. for context, my undergrad degrees are in classical history and english creative writing, so i’ve spent years learning how to find primary sources, interrogate secondary ones, and write about complicated things in a way that doesn’t make your eyes glaze over (well, for the most part 😵‍💫)

steeped is that same rigor, applied to right now.

what this is — and what it isn’t.

this is not a niche newsletter — steeped doesn’t cover just politics, or just culture, or just marketing. it covers all of it, because you care about all of it. the throughline isn’t a topic — it’s a holistic lens.

so, yeah. this is not a doom scroll — and the goal is never to send you spiraling. the goal is to keep you informed 💌.

this is also not fake news in a trench coat. everything is cited. you can always go deeper if you want to — and i thoroughly encourage it!

lastly: you’re early.

steeped just launched, which means you’re one of the first people here — and that matters to me a LOT. i genuinely want to know what you think, what you want more of, and what questions you have about the world that nobody’s answering yet. reply to this newsletter or send me a DM — i read everything :)

issue 001 drops tomorrow morning. see you then!

---

— xoxo, emma
founder of baw collective 💌 emma@bawcollective.com