Lifestyle
At the Earlybirds Club, you can dance, sweat and be in bed by 11 p.m.
About a year ago, longtime friends Laura Baginski and Susie Lee reconnected at their 30-year high school reunion. As the two women caught up with each other about their careers, motherhood and everything in between. They vented about how they missed going out and had been struggling to find a spot that played music they liked and didn’t start late at night.
That lengthy conversation is what inspired the duo to start Earlybirds Club, a joyous dance party for “middle aged-ish” women, nonbinary and trans people who want to go out, and also be in bed by 11 p.m. because they “have sh—t to do in the morning,” as their tagline states. The (mostly) bimonthly event launched in Chicago in February and expanded to New York. Next month, it’s coming to L.A.
“It’s just women supporting women, creating a safe space to be absolutely ridiculous and dancing like maybe you haven’t danced in a very long time,” says Laura Baginski.
(Meagan Shuptar)
As the name suggests, the nighttime function starts and ends early — beginning at 6 p.m. and finishing up at 10 p.m.
“I just can’t stay up late anymore,” said Baginski, 49, a former nonprofit marketing director and mother of two young children. “There’s nothing out there that speaks to that kind of need for women our age. You can go out to dinner, you can take a yoga class, but if you want to go out dancing, the clubs don’t open until like 10 p.m. So that is out of the question for us.”
She adds, “You don’t get to dance much anymore with groups except at weddings or bar mitzvahs, and that shouldn’t be the only place where you can dance at this age.”
For Lee, who is experiencing stage 4 breast cancer, Earlybirds Club has given her something to focus on outside of her own struggles. “The diagnosis, chemo and the surgeries stopped my life entirely,” says Lee, 49, who’s been a makeup artist for more than 20 years. She’s battled cancer five times.
“I was totally depressed,” Lee says. “Then we started Earlybirds Club on a whim and I switched my focus to creating joy and fun for others.”
Baginski and Lee threw their first party in February at a dive bar in Chicago called the Burlington on the night of a blinding snowstorm. Despite the weather, more than 100 people showed up — many of whom they didn’t know — ready to dance and sing with their girlfriends in a sweaty room. Lee’s cousin who goes by DJ hbom (Helean Lee) handled the soundtrack for the night, playing ‘80s new wave (Baginski and Lee’s favorite genre), nostalgic pop records and female empowerment songs. Some party favorites include “Poison” by Bell Biv Devoe, “Like a Prayer” by Madonna, “Turn Down for What” by DJ Snake and Lil Jon, “Fantasy” by Mariah Carey and anything by Britney Spears.
Word about the party spread quickly, so they upgraded to a venue with a larger capacity for their next party. They still had a wait-list of more than 600 people, so they threw another event shortly after to accommodate the demand.
After receiving several requests from their followers on social media, Baginski and Lee decided to begin taking the party on the road. They hosted two events in New York in November, which both sold out.
Although the event was created explicitly for middle-aged women, trans and nonbinary folks, people ages 21 and up are welcome to attend — just as long as they don’t identify as a man.
An attendee turns up and dances to the music at an Earlybirds Club party in May.
(Julie Dietz)
“There’s enough spaces for men,” Lee says. “Women need safe spaces where no one is being creepy, hitting on them or making them feel uncomfortable. At several parties, some attendees have even brought their daughters with them. They’ve hosted 11 parties in Chicago this year.
When Baginski and Lee reflect on the seemingly quick success of Earlybirds Club, they say people are connecting to it because it allows them to take a break from their responsibilities — running the household, raising kids, caring for elderly parents and more — and let it all out on the dance floor.
“This is an age group that’s not catered to,” says Lee. “We are invisible in the media and in marketing, which is stupid because we are the ones who [often] control the money in our households.”
She adds, “[During the] pandemic, mothers had to take care of basically everything and there was so much stress. So coming out of it, this is something geared strictly toward middle-aged women. For the first time, people feel seen and heard. It’s like, ‘Oh, wow. Here is my community of women who get me.’”
On the Saturday following the presidential election, Baginski and Lee were worried that no one would show up to their party. But when hundreds of people came, it made them realize how much it was needed.
“In this current climate, a space like this feels even more essential and almost political, which we never meant for it to be,” Baginski says. “Now it feels that way as an act of resistance.”
Earlybirds Club will host its first L.A. parties on Jan. 10 at the Sardine in San Pedro and on Jan. 11 at the Virgil near Silver Lake. Admission is $40. Ten percent of all proceeds will go to two L.A.-based nonprofits, Rainbow Services and the Los Angeles LGBT Center (specifically its Trans Wellness Center).
“This is not a scene,” says Baginski, adding that the event is “come as you are.” Attendees wear everything from full sequined looks to pajama sets with Ugg slippers. The only thing that the duo doesn’t recommend people to wear are heels “because you are going to be in pain,” Baginski jokes.
“It is pure joy, fun and great energy,” she adds. “It’s just women supporting women, creating a safe space to be absolutely ridiculous and dancing like maybe you haven’t danced in a very long time.”
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
Ben Margot/AP
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
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