Alex Lauer

Need an antidote to a crap summer? Try some cheesy escapism.

This is part of InsideHook’s list of The 100 Best American-Made Products, a celebration of the gear, clothes and goods that make up our lives, and that are the life’s work of our fellow Americans. Twenty years ago, you didn’t have much choice when shopping for a cast iron skillet. The legendary makers of old, like Griswold and Wagner, had ceased production of their legendary pans, and the companies still churning them out had introduced new production techniques that led to heavier, rougher a…

CEO Ross Widmoyer on how the mill makes the country's finest wool blankets

Welcome to the InsideHook Guide to Summer, a collection of recommendations on everything worth doing, drinking, eating, watching and otherwise enjoying between now and Labor Day. Don’t forget the sunscreen. We live in an odd era of adventure. Not only does it feel like Google Maps has plotted out every corner of the globe and there is a social-media travel influencer ready to tell you about the best local spots in every town you’ve never heard of, but even the most extreme pursuits seem passé…

During the month of April, we’re publishing a series of interviews, essays, advice columns and reported features about the male friendship crisis in the U.S., a particularly troubling slice of the country’s larger loneliness epidemic. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, so we’re breaking it down from all angles in The Male Friendship Equation. This is part two of Friends in a Polarized Nation: interviews with men who are reaching across some of the country’s biggest divides. In an era that…

When you buy a fleece jacket from Patagonia, you know you’re buying from a company that cares about the planet. But these days, customers of the outdoor gear brand may also get a more novel sensation: that you might actually be helping the environment by expanding your wardrobe. Browsing the web page for one of the brand’s most popular products, the Men’s Better Sweater 1/4-Zip Fleece, the environmental and humanitarian bonafides outshine the details people normally look for when buying a jacket…

Coffee can be a supremely personal experience. Whether you heat water to a specific temperature in a gooseneck kettle then delicately swirl it on top of single-origin coffee beans that have been ground to a particular size, or heave scoops from a Costco-sized jug of Folgers into a 12-cup brewer, I’m not here to judge. On the other hand, I am here, steaming mug of joe in hand, to highly recommend you interrupt your caffeine routine this month in order to try my absolute favorite beans from Peace…

During the month of April, we’re publishing a series of interviews, essays, advice columns and reported features about the male friendship crisis in the U.S., a particularly troubling slice of the country’s larger loneliness epidemic. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, so we’re breaking it down from all angles in The Male Friendship Equation. This is part one of Friends in a Polarized Nation: interviews with men who are reaching across some of the country’s biggest divides.It’s impossible to…

If you can’t own your dream car, at least you can live vicariously through Alex Hirschi. The Australian automotive influencer, better known as Supercar Blondie, has built an online empire of 110 million followers by getting behind the wheel of some of the rarest vehicles on the planet and bringing people along for the ride on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. When she posted a video piloting the Hyperion XP-1, a one-of-one hydrogen supercar prototype, in 2022, a commenter wrote, “I wo…

For all of our chest-thumping about rugged individualism, here in America, we’d be hopelessly lost without our friends. A Pew survey last year found that 61% of adults in this country believe that having close friends is extremely or very important to a fulfilling life. That may not immediately seem like an incredible number, until you consider that only 26% said the same about having children, and only 23% about being married. Even when we’re not hanging out with our friends, we spend coun…