Front Page: Most Popular Stories from Slate Magazine

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Unbound for Glory

MILWAUKEE—Ted Cruz’s victory in Wisconsin was the crown jewel of what has otherwise been a spotty group effort to deny Donald Trump his delegates. Cruz leveraged a coalition of evangelicals, well-educated conservative suburbanites, local talk-radio personalities, and the Wisconsin Republican Party apparatus to his advantage in a dominant victory that, once the final numbers are tallied, will give him the vast majority of the state’s 42 delegates. It also didn’t help Trump to be retweeting things about how Cruz’s wife was butt-ugly.

The GOP Needs Ted Cruz (to Lose the Presidency)

Last fall, Rep. Paul Ryan brought peace to the House of Representatives when he agreed to replace John Boehner as speaker and leader of the House Republican caucus. Now, GOP elites want him to perform the same feat for the presidential race. If Donald Trump falls short of the delegates he needs to win the nomination outright, then some Republicans hope Ryan can step to the stage and unite a divided party. “He’s the most conservative, least establishment member of the establishment,” said an unnamed Republican source toPolitico. “That’s what you need to be.”

What Twitter Pundits Are Saying About the Wisconsin Primary

Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary may spell bad news for GOP front-runner Donald Trump as the three remaining Republican presidential hopefuls compete for the state’s 42 delegates. Trump has a comfortable lead in total delegates, but a defeat in Wisconsin, where the most recent polling has him 4 points behind Ted Cruz, will make it harder for him to collect the 1,237 delegates he needs to prevent a contested convention and clinch the Republican nomination. On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders polls 3 points ahead of Hillary Clinton, but whether he’ll win enough of Wisconsin’s 86 delegates to put a meaningful dent in Clinton’s sizeable lead in total delegates remains to be seen.

Keeping Merrick Garland Out of the Supreme Court

We’re posting transcripts of Amicus, our legal affairs podcast, exclusively for Slate Plus members. What follows is the transcript for Episode 41.

Dear Prudence Live Chat

Need help getting along with partners, relatives, co-workers, and people in general? Ask Dear Prudence! Mallory Ortberg takes your questions on manners, morals, and more. Please keep your questions succinct (recommended max. length is around 150 words). Submit yours ahead of time below:

The Angle: Pretentious Is as Pretentious Does Edition

Michelle Goldberg writes about a sexual harassment lawsuit being brought against perennial Manhattan favorite Jivamukti Yoga. Reporting on her interview with the plaintiff, a former teacher-in-training at the studio, Goldberg observes: “The case hinges not just on what [one teacher] did but on what sort of place Jivamukti is. Is it a business, an ashram, a cult, or some hybrid of the three?”

Russia’s Long History of Corruption

Revelations from the Panama Papers, one of the great financial scandals of our time, have focused mainly on the law firm that carved the offshore shell firms, the major banks that turned an eye, and of course the politicians—143 of them, including 12 former or current leaders—who dodged taxes by exploiting the arrangement.

Getting In Episode 7A: Tips for Navigating Notification Season

Listen to Episode 7A of Getting In:

Is Modern Hypnotic Suggestion Effective?

Listen to Episode 469 of Slate’s The Gist:

What’s With the White Working Class?

To listen to this episode of Trumpcast, use the player below:

Matt Harvey’s Medical Scare Ends in Comic Relief

On this week’s Hang Up and Listen Slate Plus bonus segment, hosts Stefan Fatsis, Josh Levin, and Mike Pesca chat about the proliferation of puns that the New York Post printed about the Mets pitcher Matt Harvey’s medical scare, and they take a swing at cracking some of their own. Find out which Post headlines our hosts think hit a home pun—and which jokes are just a swing-and-a-piss!

Trade Barbs

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin—Donald Trump’s pitch to Wisconsin voters is more or less an elaborate neg. “I went through your numbers,” he said at a Saturday rally in Racine, “and you’re not doing that well. You’re right in the middle of the pack. You’re not doing anything outstanding, believe me.”

Downhill Longboard

This video answers a question you probably never asked yourself: What would happen if you went down a bobsled track on a longboard outfitted with ice blades?

It’s All About Miitomo

On Sunday, a new co-worker wearing a pair of cat ears dropped by to say hello. I would have liked to offer her a drink, but I had nothing on-hand. And though I wanted to introduce her to my cat, he was nowhere in sight. In any case, she stayed for only a few minutes chatting amiably about the latest installment in the Fire Emblem series and Galaxy Quest. Before I could respond in kind, she turned and walked out the door.

“Permission for the Imagination”

On several occasions while reading Dan Fox’s book Pretentiousness: Why It Matters, my mind drifted to the memory of a woman in a black cocktail dress and six-inch ruby-red heels performing an Indonesian ceremonial dance on a platform made from blocks of butter. This was a thing I witnessed once, as a college student, when I worked for a weekend at a festival of performance art curated by Marina Abramovic. I knew nothing about performance art, and had then never heard of Marina Abramovic. I was there at the behest of my older sister who worked at the museum, as a volunteer doing low-level grunt work. I helped, for instance, to clean up the butter.

The Pro-Life Case for Murder

The Republican Party, its presidential candidates, and all major pro-life organizations claim to believe two things about abortion. First, “unborn children” deserve the same legal protection as born children. Second, a woman who hires someone to kill her unborn child should not be punished. From these two principles, a third proposition logically follows: A woman who hires someone to kill her born child shouldn’t be punished, either.

Why Is It So Expensive to Read Academic Research?

The aphorism “information wants to be free,” coined by entrepreneur Stewart Brand in 1984 at the inaugural Hackers Conference, has come to serve as a shorthand justification for an ideology that would remove all unjust barriers to information access. And information has rarely been more accessible than it is on the controversial website Sci-Hub, which offers completely free access to pretty much any academic journal article ever published. The site does this through what is commonly termed “content piracy” and has been in the news lately because academic publishers are trying very hard to shut the website down.

Workers of the Hardwood, Unite!

In early March, Louisiana State University announced that Ben Simmons, a 6-foot-10-inch Australian freshman who’d led the Tigers in points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks, was academically ineligible for the Wooden Award, college basketball’s most prestigious individual honor. Failing to meet the award’s minimum GPA of 2.0 is an impressive display of scholarly indifference, but Simmons shrugged off his disqualification, telling a reporter: “They talk about playing so much then they bring other stuff into it. It is what it is. I’m not fazed by it.”

A Power Beyond Beauty

This article is part of A Year of Great Books, a Slate Academy. To learn more, read Laura Miller’s introduction to the series, or visit Slate.com/GreatBooks.

A Hamilton Skeptic on Why the Show Isn’t As Revolutionary As It Seems

For a long time, a stray tweet from writer Jay Caspian Kang seemed to be the only hairline crack in the monolith of positive public opinion about Hamilton. Before it had even arrived on Broadway, the musical had been called one of the greatest artworks of the 21^st century. In September, the show’s composer, lyricist, and star, Lin-Manuel Miranda, won a MacArthur “genius” grant. In the fall, sales of its cast recording and advance tickets for shows began to break records. And a sweep at the 2016 Tony Awards is all but a foregone conclusion.

A Workplace, an Ashram, or a Cult?

Aspiring teachers at Jivamukti, the downtown Manhattan yoga studio famous for its sweaty, ecstatic classes and celebrity clientele, quickly get used to kissing the feet of founders David Life and Sharon Gannon. “They walk in the room and you learn to get on your hands and knees,” one former Jivamukti teacher tells me. “Everyone’s doing it, a hundred people around you, from the very first day of teacher training,” guru devotion is woven into the studio’s culture. Its teacher training manual lists ways to “keep a teacher precious in your life.” Among them: “Become an extension of your teachers—teach what they teach,” and “Do what they say.”

Which Team’s Player?

Mallory Ortberg, aka Dear Prudence, is online weekly to chat live with readers. An edited transcript of the chat is below. (Sign up below to get Dear Prudence delivered to your inbox each week. Read Prudie’s Slate columns here. Send questions to Prudence at [email protected].)

Jon Ronson, Imam of Shame

Listen to Episode 468 of Slate’s The Gist:

Hang Up and Listen: The Absolute Travesty Edition

Listen to Hang Up and Listen with Stefan Fatsis, Josh Levin, and Mike Pesca by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:

Swipe Wrong

Is Ted Cruz Still the Anti-Establishment Candidate?

MADISON, Wis.—Ted Cruz has some disappointing news for establishment Republicans, who he still believes perceive him as the ultimate enemy. “This fevered pipe dream of Washington, that at the convention they will parachute in some white knight who will save the Washington establishment: It is nothing less than a pipe dream,” the senator said Monday. “It ain’t gonna happen. If it did, the people would quite rightly revolt.”

The Angle: Down to the Bat-Cave Edition

How will virtual assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Cortana change the way that we interact with the Web? Will Oremus looks at their short history, and speculates on how their evolution might proceed. “Conversational interfaces don’t lend themselves to the sort of open flow of information we’ve become accustomed to in the Google era,” Oremus writes. “By necessity they limit our choices—because their function is to make choices on our behalf.”

The “How Does a Landscape Designer Work?” Edition

Listen to this episode of Working with guest Tom Noll:

Why America’s Public Transportation Is Crumbling

This post originally appeared on the Conversation.

How “She Just Wants Attention” Became America’s Hottest Sexist Insult

Last month, Donald Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski tweeted that Michelle Fields, the reporter whom he was caught on tape grabbing and forcibly moving away from Trump, was simply “an attention-seeker.” Last week, Chris Brown called fellow R&B singer Kehlani’s suicide attempt a fake, telling her to “stop flexing for the [Insta]gram.” Commenters on Twitter fell in line, calling Fields “an attention seeking liar” and Kehlani “your average attention-seeking female.”

Help! I Feel Like a ’50s Housewife. How Can I Get My Husband to Do His Share of the Chores?

Every week, Mallory Ortberg answers additional questions from readers, just for Slate Plus members.

Amicus: The Case Against the Case Against Confirmation

Listen to Episode 41 of Slate’s Amicus:

Is Sh-t Show a German Calque? The OED Needs Your Help!

Listen to Lexicon Valley Episode No. 82:

Three Weeks in Japan by Train

In the video above, filmmaker Vincent Urban presents a dazzling view of Japan. Filmed over the course of a three-week visit in 2015, Urban presents the island nation as it looked while traveling throughout the country on its Shinkansen high-speed railway lines. It’s an appropriately high tech way to see a nation that so vibrantly blends the past and the future.

White Dread

Adapted from Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles by Bert Ashe, out now from Agate Bolden.

Is Addiction a Learning Disorder?

The narrative of addiction is familiar. A pleasure-seeking “addictive personality” spirals out of control, “enabled” by friends and family, and eventually hits “rock bottom” in the form of arrest, divorce, or homelessness. She may then succeed in a 12-step program, where she’ll embrace a “higher power,” receive “tough love,” and accept total “abstinence” from substances including antidepressants and drugs that ease withdrawal symptoms. Even if she gets clean, she’ll be an addict forever, and is more likely than not to relapse.

Birth Is Not Performance Art

Amy Tuteur, author of the new book Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting, is the natural childbirth movement’s most vocal critic. For the past decade, the Harvard-trained OB-GYN has blogged at the Skeptical OB about home birth, medication-free birth, attachment parenting, and the pressure to breast-feed. Her angle is consistent and direct: that the alternative birth scene is largely based on self-serving myths, not science, and creates unnecessary guilt in women who don’t abide by its standards.

What Wearable Manufacturers Think Women Want

If you’re looking to get away from athletics-inspired wearables, there are more options than ever, especially for women. You can preorder a reusable menstrual cup that requires a Bluetooth antenna to extend outside of the vagina at all times. (Just don’t wear it through an airport security screening.) A nearly $500 MICA smart bracelet, plated in snakeskin and gold and set with semiprecious stones, will let you keep up on email and text messages (provided you pay the annual data fees). You can hang a jeweled security charm fromStiletto on your favorite necklace—the charm promises a safe lifestyle by sharing your location information, indoor or out, with others. Or you can insert a speaker into your vagina to play music for an embryo or fetus.

Dummies for Dummies

There’s something distinctly democratic about the how-to guide, whose schtick is selling confidence to the amateur. You don’t need to be an expert, or spend years apprenticing under one, the genre promises. Just read these instructions, and voila, you too can make a quilt or write a screenplay or repair a Honda Civic.

A Brief History of Dick

Freely adapted from The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture by Glen Weldon, out now from Simon and Schuster.

Terrifyingly Convenient

It was a weeknight, after dinner, and the baby was in bed. My wife and I were alone—we thought—discussing the sorts of things you might discuss with your spouse and no one else. (Specifically, we were critiquing a friend’s taste in romantic partners.) I was midsentence when, without warning, another woman’s voice piped in from the next room. We froze.

“An Odd Mix of Vindication and Depression”

Ross Douthat, the New York Times op-ed columnist, probably didn’t imagine that he would spend much of the past six months writing about Donald Trump. For a brief moment in 2012 and early 2013, it seemed possible that Republicans, chastened by Barack Obama’s re-election, would regroup and recalibrate, and perhaps pursue what Douthat and Reihan Salam (a Slate contributor and fellow “reform conservative”) had called for in their 2008 book, Grand New Party: an economic agenda focused on the middle class and policies friendly to an increasingly diverse America. Alas, the one 2016 candidate who has really bucked Republican orthodoxy, at least rhetorically, has been Trump, who Douthat views as a dangerous demagogue.

The UConn Women’s Basketball Dynasty Is Over

The University of Connecticut women’s basketball team is the most dominant American sports team that’s popular enough to be televised regularly. (Alas, there is not yet a cable channel devoted to the Carmel High School girls’ swim team.) Barring the biggest upset in the history of women’s college basketball, this Tuesday UConn will win its fourth straight national title, sixth in eight years, and 10^th in 17 years. To put its feats in perspective, consider that the legendary University of Tennessee women have lost fewer than two games in a season just once. Under coach Geno Auriemma, UConn has now done that 10 times.

NASA’s Inflatable Space House Heads to the ISS

NASA is hoping a new expandable habitat might one day give astronauts a little more alone time. The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, will be ferried to the ISS later this spring for a series of tests expected to last several years. Once attached, it will be expanded and pressurized so the crew can install sensors to monitor BEAM’s performance in space.

The experiments will help determine the viability of expandable habitats, which weigh less and occupy less space on a rocket, as laboratories and living quarters for future deep-space missions.

Watch a Fish That Can Walk Up Waterfalls

A walking cavefish just gave scientists a glimpse 400 million years into the past. Discovered in Thailand, these blind fish have now been closely documented walking and climbing waterfalls in complete darkness using a gait similar to four-limbed vertebrates like salamanders.

The cavefish use a mechanism akin to using limbs and may be part of the evolutionary foundation for land mammals’ transition from water to land. Researchers next plan to study the role the fish’s muscles play in this weird, wonderful locomotion.

The Time’s Up Edition

Listen to Episode No. 99 of Slate Money:

When Sports Gossip Becomes Sports News

Last week, celebrity gossip website Fameolous posted a video that it said showed Los Angeles Laker Nick Young admitting to cheating on his fiancée, pop star Iggy Azalea. It further claimed that the video was recorded by Young’s teammate, D’Angelo Russell.

The Angle: Sadly Humorless Edition

Two presidential candidates, two approaches to foreign policy: Donald Trump has confidently asserted that he trusts himself above any foreign policy advisers, because “I have a very good brain.” But Ted Cruz has hired a foreign policy team with members that are, Fred Kaplan writes, hawkish, paranoid, and conspiratorial. Cruz’s ideas about foreign policy, Kaplan argues, are “nearly as bad [as Trump’s], and perhaps more dangerous because they’re more coherent.” Great!

The Hamilton Rule

Listen to Episode 467 of Slate’s The Gist:

100 Percent True: What to Read on April Fools’ Day

Happy April Fools’ Day! Because we don’t think it’s cool to lie to people just because there’s a special designated “lying day,” there is no mendacious April Fools’ content in this newsletter or indeed anywhere on Slate today—only this thoughtful and truthful assessment of two online April Fools’ pranks. I recognize that that’s the kind of assertion that might lead you to expect the link will take you to some kind of dumb hoax, which is a sign of precisely the trust-corrosion that makes me hate all this April Fools’ crap.

When Self-Help Becomes a Group Activity

Shanghai, CHINA—I found my self-help group through an Uber driver. In China, the car service’s drivers are often part-timers who have other occupations—hotel managers, entrepreneurs, housewives—each with his or her own reason for driving, but with the common desire of “going out and learning.” It’s an expression you hear often in cities or small towns across the country; in Chinese, the term “going out” can refer to traveling abroad, or simply going outside the home or family and into the real, tougher world.

The Political Gabfest Designs Mount Rushmore Part 2

On the most recent Political Gabfest Slate Plus bonus segment, hosts John Dickerson, Emily Bazelon, and David Plotz debate which political icons from recent American history should be included in a remake of Mount Rushmore. With only four spots to fill, can they come to agree on which big heads they want to see in stone? Tune in to find out.

Jedi Mind Trick

The feature above begins at the end—of The Force Awakens, that is. Specifically, the part when (spoiler!) Rey hands back Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber to its rightful owner, in what would appear to be a very meaningful moment for the Force. Of course, we don’t yet know what that meaning might be, but still, it’s a return home for a weapon that’s been around the galaxy.

Whose Foreign Policy Is Scarier: Cruz’s or Trump’s?

If you want to watch foreign-policy mavens gulp in horror, ask them which team of Republican advisers they’d prefer to see in the White House next year: Ted Cruz’s brain trust or Donald Trump’s brain?

The Auto Industry Gets It

When it comes to fuel efficiency, America seems to have taken a few steps backward. As prices at the pump have fallen, consumers have stopped prioritizing vehicles that use less gas. So far this year, sales of light-duty trucks like pick-ups and SUVs are up 9.8 percent from 2015, while sales of cars are down 4.1 percent. Sales of hybrids have fallen sharply. In February, the typical new car sold in the U.S. got 25.2 miles per gallon, a noticeable regression from the 2014 peak. Even though Tesla started taking reservations on its Model 3 this week, the true mainstreaming of the electric vehicle seems to be years away.

Body Language

Peggy Orenstein’s latest book, Girls & Sex: Navigating The Complicated New Landscape, is a deeply reported, passionately argued critique of the commercialization of sexuality and contemporary dating culture. Orenstein, a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, set out to talk to a number of young women about their sex lives, and to figure out why female sexuality is still approached in such a radically different way than male sexuality.

Grief and Falconry

Listen to Helen Macdonald discuss H Is for Hawk and take questions from the audience. Recorded March 21, 2016.

This Podcast Isn’t Neutral

To listen to this episode of Trumpcast, use the player below:

Shutting Down Subway Lines Is What Grown-Up Systems Do

On the face of it, everything about Washington, D.C.’s Metro shutting down entire subway lines for months at a time stinks.

Quicker Than the Eye

This video may have you not believing your own eyes. From filmmaker Sebastian Mlynarski, “Magic Man” follows a street magician going by “Justin Sight.” And here’s the catch: Sight is legally blind, and his clever tricks have become his main avenue for connecting with people.

Your Artificial Intelligence Cheat Sheet

Pieter Abbeel: Abbeel is a robotics and artificial intelligence researcher at UC–Berkeley, where his lab is teaching a robot to think by allowing it to play in much the same manner as a human child.

What’s the Deal With Artificial Intelligence Killing Humans?

This seems like a rough time to be human: Artificial intelligences are beating us at Go, getting better at driving cars, and doing all sorts of other stuff. How much longer until they just rise up and kill us?

The Apple Graveyard

Update, April 1, 2016: Today is Apple’s 40-year anniversary. Commemorate your favorite products from its history by leaving flowers at their graves in the virtual graveyard below.

Corrections

In a March 30 Brow Beat, Katy Waldman midentified the American Bird Conservancy as the American Bird Conservatory.

Slate News Quiz

Welcome back to Slate’s weekly news quiz. I’m your host, 74-time Jeopardy! winner Ken Jennings.

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

Last week on the Today show, Matt Lauer told millions of Americans about “a new warning for anyone who’s trying to have a baby.” He described a study recently published by researchers at the National Institutes of Health that, according to Lauer, showed that “consuming caffeinated drinks, even before pregnancy, can raise the risk of miscarriage by 74 percent.”

Sanders and Trump Have One Thing in Common

LOS ANGELES—Rosario Dawson, the actress, was introducing Bernie Sanders to a packed crowd of supporters at Los Angeles’ Wiltern Theatre last week when her speech rounded into familiar themes, and suddenly she began to sound like AM radio. “I think we see what’s going on in the corporate media of late,” Dawson said, drawing sustained and instant boos at the words corporate and media. “The media has given Trump”—more boos—“almost $1.9 billion worth of free media.” More boos still. “They’ve given Bernie Sanders 16 percent of that.” A lot more boos. “And mostly to say that he should just give up”—lots of boos—“how the entire country shouldn’t even bother voting.” Additional boos. “Considering what people had to do in this country for our right to vote, I find that reprehensible.” Wild applause.

Abolitionist Heroes Lost to History

Listen to Episode 466 of Slate’s The Gist:

Sketches of Pain

For all the movie soundtracks that jazz has enlivened over the decades, there are almost no good movies about jazz. Maybe the only near-great one is Chico & Rita, an Oscar-nominated animated film with a sizzling score about a Cuban pianist’s long affair with a singer, etched against the streets and nightclubs of Havana and New York City, from the late 1940s to early ’60s. The vibe, culture, and characters (some of them real musicians) are marvelously rendered: at once harsh, warm, deeply romantic, yet unsentimental. Another good jazz film is Round Midnight, which (before it turns mawkish toward the end) captures the indigo loneliness of the jazz exile and the obsession of the jazz fan—and also features a moving performance by tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon, who was sick at the time and acted better than he played.

The NFL Is Not Big Tobacco

In the fall of 2007, Rep. Linda Sánchez of California really gave it to the National Football League. “The NFL sort of has this blanket denial or minimizing of the fact that there may be this link,” she told league Commissioner Roger Goodell, referring to the risk of long-term damage from head injuries. “And it sort of reminds me of the tobacco companies pre-’90s when they kept saying, ‘Oh, there’s no link between smoking and damage to your health.’ ”

You Can’t Build a Wall High Enough

It’s hard to anticipate which new technologies will change the world. Consider the humble shipping container, which allows importers and exporters to transport standardized loads from trucks and railcars onto mammoth ocean-going vessels. In The Box, Marc Levinson describes how this seemingly unremarkable innovation made global economic integration possible. But at the dawn of containerized shipping, in the mid-1950s, people were a lot more excited about Sputnik, and the tantalizing prospect of human colonies on the moon. No one gave much thought to the possibility that a bunch of boxes would drive a massive, decades-long economic boom in East Asia, or would hasten the decline of manufacturing employment in the United States.

How the Little Sisters of the Poor Are Preventing You From Getting the Pill

We’re posting transcripts of Amicus, our legal affairs podcast, exclusively for Slate Plus members. What follows is the transcript for Episode 40, in which Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick discusses Zubik v. Burwell.

The Angle: More Punishment for All! Edition

Isaac Chotiner interviewed Barney Frank, and it’s … fiery. Barney Frank on Bernie Sanders: “Bernie Sanders has been in Congress for 25 years with little to show for it in terms of his accomplishments.” On Mitt Romney: “He was a pretend governor.” On The Big Short, which he hasn’t seen but has heard represents Dodd-Frank as ineffectual: “Why would I want to see it?” Chotiner: “Well, it’s got good acting and things like that.” Frank: “I’m not a drama critic.”

How to Make It Across the Country With a Toddler in Tow

On this week’s Mom and Dad Are Fighting Slate Plus bonus segment, Slate’s new director of technology, Greg Lavallee, joins hosts Allison Benedikt and Dan Kois to share a parenting triumph. Greg has to tackle a trip across the country alone with his 3-½-year-old daughter Nina while his wife stays home with their 10-month-old son, Hugo. Can Greg find his groove while traveling cross-country with his toddler? Tune in to hear Greg spill the secrets to a seamless flight.

The “Corey’s Gory Story” Edition

To listen to the discussion, use the player below:

To Pee, or Not to Pee

When New York Mets fans found out Monday that their star pitcher, Matt Harvey, was suffering from an “unspecified ailment,” they quickly assumed the worst. Was he out of practice indefinitely? Was his arm permanently damaged in some way? Would he have to be replaced at this Sunday’s season opener? Fortunately, the problem fixed itself quickly. At a press conference on Tuesday, Harvey announced it had been nothing serious: He’d just been holding his pee too long … which led to a bladder infection … which led to a blood clot in his bladder. NBD!

The Path

Hulu’s effort to establish itself as a big-time purveyor of original content kicked off in earnest earlier this year with the release of 11.22.63, a just-OK alt-history miniseries connected to various splashy names: James Franco, Stephen King, JFK. Starting Wednesday, Hulu debuted The Path, a much better drama also linked to various splashy names, including the splashiest of all: Scientology. The Path, produced by Friday Night Lights’ Jason Katims, co-stars Aaron Paul, Michelle Monaghan, and Hugh Dancy as three senior members of the Meyerist Movement, a religious cult that is not exactly Scientology but is close enough to provide Scientology-adjacent frisson.

The GOP’s Top Trump Buster

To listen to this episode of Trumpcast, use the player below:

Saving a Vulnerable Baby Sea Turtle Is a Tough, Delicate Process

Meet the adorably named BB, star of the above video from the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. BB is a baby Hawksbill sea turtle recently taken in by the aquarium. And BB is adorable.

Everybody Wants Some!!

Who wants to watch a bro movie in 2016? This is the age of the VIDA count, the battle for representation in media, the foregrounding of previously marginalized voices. Culturally, we’re in the era of the waning of the bro, a development that all who are not bros (and even some of us who are) can appreciate. Bros, we got a couple millennia of stories about our lives—great run, bro! Time for some other stories, right?

Stanford’s Alarming New "Mosquito" Robot Can Fly, Land Vertically, and Climb Walls

In the video above, we meet SCAMP, a new robot from the Biomimetics and Dextrous Manipulation Lab at Stanford University. SCAMP stands for Stanford Climbing and Aerial Maneuvering Platform, and its appearance and behavior make it resemble a mosquito—albeit minus the biting and itching.

The Defending Easter Edition 

Listen to Mom and Dad Are Fighting by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:

24 Hours in New York City 

What is the best way to spend 24 hours in New York City? This week, Culture Gabfest hosts Stephen Metcalf, Julia Turner, and Dana Stevens, are joined by fellow New Yorker and Gabfest producer Ann Hepperman, to reveal their insider picks on this Slate Plus bonus segment. From urban vistas over the Brooklyn Bridge to the most authentic pizzerias—the Culture Gabfest’s recommendations are scenic, tasty, and most importantly, quintessentially New York. Keep listening to find out where you should be heading next!

Between Upstairs and Downstairs

To “retire from all the pleasures of life, of rational intercourse, equal society, peace and hope, to penance and mortification for ever” is how Jane Austen described it. Mary Wollstonecraft, upon entering into it, said she felt as “if I was going into the Bastille.” The profession of governess in the 1800s was widely considered a dismal fate, and paintings from the period depict it as humiliating and even tragic, a kind of living death. Yet in the middle of the century—in 1847, to be precise—the governess became an iconic figure in the English novel. Becky Sharp, the conniving social climber in William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, starts out as a governess, but it was another best-seller published that year, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, that made a heroine out of a young woman occupying the lowliest rung in the British middle class.

Academia’s Daddy Issues

For many scholars, the hallowed halls of academe are a wondrous utopia—somebody pays them to read and learn! (And, occasionally, pontificate and then get very drunk at conferences.) For others, however—such as this Australian academic who says the pressure drove her to heroin—the life of the mind is a minefield: underappreciated work, little pay, poor social skills, posturing, back-stabbing. Which kind of experience you have often hinges on a single person: the doctoral dissertation adviser. A good adviser can make a Ph.D. candidate’s career; a bad one can sabotage even the most promising. (But no pressure, beginning grad students!)

Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex and Zika (but Were Afraid to Ask)

So, Zika is sexy now?

Webcams Are for the Birds

There are three main topics of conversation you can have with my grandfather: 1) college sports, 2) Iowa weather, and 3) the Decorah Eagles.

Tell Us What You Think About Cyberwar

Over the past month, we’ve published a host of articles about cyberwar as part of our third installment of Futurography—a new project from Future Tense in which we explore a different technological issue each month. We’ve seen experts discuss the weapons of cyberconflict, explore the fuzzy rules of engagement, interrogate the “attribution problem,” and much more.

How Much Do You Know About Cyberwar?

This March, Future Tense has been exploring cyberwar as part of our ongoing project Futurography, which introduces readers to a new technological or scientific topic each month. Now’s your chance to show how much you’ve learned.

The Art of the New Deal

Membership in a political party that had prevailed in only two presidential races out of the last nine and was divided on matters both trivial and ideologically significant. Party rules that required a large majority of delegates to gain nomination. A reputation as a lightweight flip-flopper who went back on his word. Despite all of these obstacles, in 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the last candidate to emerge from a brokered convention and win the presidency. How did he do it?

The Winter Blues

Listen to Episode 465 of Slate’s The Gist:

How the GOP Loyalty Pledge Boosted Donald Trump

In September, the Republican National Committee bound itself to Donald Trump in a transparently desperate effort to keep the real estate mogul from bolting the GOP to make an independent run for president. “I [name] affirm that if I do not win the 2016 Republican nomination for president of the United States I will endorse the 2016 Republican presidential nominee regardless of who it is,” read the RNC’s loyalty pledge, circulated to all the candidates in the race. “I further pledge that I will not seek to run as an independent or write-in candidate nor will I seek or accept the nomination for president of any other party.”

Classic Movies and Their Remakes

Regardless of how you feel about remakes, it’s impossible not to compare them to the original. With that in mind, filmmaker Jaume R. Lloret has put together the above supercutcomparing shots from the new versions side-by-side with their original counterparts. There are 25 pairs in all.

Poor Whites Trashed

“If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas,” writes Kevin Williamson for National Review, “and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy. … The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die.” His colleague David French echoed the assessment. “Simply put, Americans are killing themselves and destroying their families at an alarming rate. No one is making them do it. The economy isn’t putting a bottle in their hand.”

Trump Is Collapsing in Wisconsin 

The April 5 Republican primary in Wisconsin is looking less like a toss-up between Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz and more like a probable win for Cruz. This would be a fairly grave problem for Trump in his effort to reach 1,237 delegates ahead of the convention. Further, a new Wisconsin poll from a well-respected outfit shows horrific favorability ratings for Trump in the state among all voters, mirroring his recent national downturn. If he can’t reach enough delegates ahead of the convention, and his support shows signs of erosion in the final contests—all while his overall favorability rating dives from pretty terrible to comically toxic—it’s going to be that much harder for him to convince delegates to stick with him in Cleveland.

The Angle: Just Sit Down Edition

Dahlia Lithwick has a modest proposal for Merrick Garland: If you want to become a Supreme Court justice, you’re going to need to take drastic action. “After a suitable period of time—let’s say by the end of September of 2016—Judge Garland should simply suit up and take the vacant seat at the court,” says Lithwick, who is only partially kidding. “This would entail walking into the Supreme Court on the first Monday in October, donning an extra black robe, seating himself at the bench, sipping from the mighty silver milkshake cup before him, and looking like he belongs there, in the manner of George Costanza.”

Barney Frank Is Not Impressed by Bernie Sanders

Barney Frank, the former Massachusetts Congressman who retired from the House of Representatives in 2013, is perhaps best known for a bill that carries his name: the Dodd-Frank Act, which aimed to reform Wall Street after the financial crash. Frank is also known for his acerbic personality and willingness to speak freely.

Watch a Giant Submarine Break Through the Arctic Ice

Thought scraping ice off your windshield was bad? Try shoveling it off the top of your submarine.

Can You Tell When This Vintage Home Movie Was Filmed?

The Prelinger Archives is a trove of more than 60,000 “ephemeral films.” There are ads, industrial demonstrations, educational tapes—and about 12,000 home movies, some made as early as the 1920s. About 1,000 of those are available online at the Internet Archive. For this installment of our weekly quiz, we’re sharing a few of our favorites with you and asking you to guess when they were made. You’ll be able to tell by the fashions, the film quality, and, in some cases, the unfolding of major historical events on tape. These clips are sweet and saddening, both a memento mori and a reminder of shared humanity across 10 decades. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Jürgen Klinsmann Is Delusional

Deep breaths, everyone. Manager Jürgen Klinsmann and the U.S. men’s national soccer team averted the team’s quadrennial World Cup qualifying crisis with an authoritative 4–0 victory over Guatemala on Tuesday night, four days after losing 2–0 in Guatemala City.