Your Favorite Stories of 2023
 December 29, 2023 Happy almost New Year, Meteor readers, We hope you enjoyed your Festivus/Christmas/winter solstice/full moon in Cancer—or just a general weekend in December if none of these resonates with you. Before we roll into 2024, we wanted to take a look back at some of your (and our) favorite stories of the year.  As part of our United States of Abortion series, journalist Neda Semnani spent four months investigating the story of Lauren Smith, a South Carolina woman facing a 10-year prison sentence for smoking marijuana while pregnant. Smith’s story—and the legal obstacles before her—illustrated the nefarious nature of fetal personhood laws in the post-Dobbs era.  A year after the death of Mahsa Amini, a revolution in Iran was still taking shape. Filmmaker Geraleh Kiazand spoke to women fighting for their lives and the lives of all Iranians. “People want stability,” one teen told Kiazand. “They want a good economic situation. A few nights ago, one of my friends told me to go to the embassy for immigration. I said that the future is here; we just have to build it.”  Before influencing became a six-figure industry, we had Ree Drummond and her humble coffee cake recipes. But it’s been 15 years since then, and the “mamasphere” has changed. What does that tell us about motherhood? Kathryn Jezer-Morton had the answers.  It’s hard to cast our memories back this far but there was a World Cup this year, and in the blink of an eye, it turned into a globally televised course in sexual harassment 101. We dug into the history and cultural significance of the Spanish Women’s National Team battle with their federation’s president.  We know what the Netflix algorithm wants you to watch.  This final one’s not a story, but it IS a podcast, and in this episode, hosts Susie Banikarim and Jessica Bennett explore the uniquely American genre that is Hallmark holiday movies. Small town boys, big city girls, mistletoe, weirdly retrograde plots? They’ll explain it all. Enjoy. As always, we are so grateful that you chose to spend part of your 2023 with us, and we can’t wait to see what calamities, gifs, wild stories and, yes, joy 2024 brings. Let’s make it a good one. See you in January, The Meteor Team  FOLLOW THE METEOR    Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays.
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