A Sympathetic Serial Imposter

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A Sympathetic Serial Imposter

Listen to Episode 568 of Slate’s The Gist:

“Undercover” Voters May Exist, but They Won’t Save Donald Trump

The Republican presidential candidate is trailing in just about every national or battleground state poll. To certain minds, this can mean only one thing, and it’s not that the Republican presidential candidate is losing the election. It’s that the polls are skewed.

Searching for a Straight Shot to a Zika Vaccine

Zika is coming to Maryland.

Academics Take on The Apprentice

Many people—including not a few members of his own party—are dreaming of the day when they can point at the Republican presidential candidate and say, in their best imitation of his voice, “You’re fired!” But be careful: Donald Trump has attempted to trademark his catchphrase and the thumb-and-forefinger movement that accompanied it across 14 seasons of The Apprentice.

How to Defeat Calhoun

Earlier this summer, a black man who worked in the dining hall at Yale University’s Calhoun residential college shattered one of the building’s stained glass windows, a portrait of two slaves. Corey Menafee, who’d worked at the school for nine years, resigned after the act, for which he was charged with criminal mischief and misdemeanor reckless endangerment. (The charges were later dropped.) The incident put a human face on ongoing concerns about the impact of racist signage and imagery at universities. “When I walked into this job, I wasn’t aware of none of that,” Menafee said of the existence of the window. “It’s 2016, I shouldn’t have to come to work and see things like that.”

There Is No Horse Race

To anyone not following the ins and outs of the election, the contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton has all the trappings of a close-fought, competitive election. Both candidates dominate the news media; both have held massive rallies and events; both are on the airwaves with ads on television and radio; and both are maneuvering on the ground in an effort to reach broad and diverse constituencies. Turn to CNN or MSNBC, and you’ll see breathless coverage of each development in the race, reinforcing the sense that this a tight contest between two formidable campaigns—one horse hitting the quarter pole half a length ahead of the other.

The Angle: Shameless Gouging Edition

Donald Trump’s supposed outreach effort to black voters is actually a dog whistle for white racists, Jamelle Bouie writes. In a Monday speech invoking inner-city communities, “Trump didn’t describe life for black Americans as much as he described a white supremacist fantasy in which blacks live miserable, brutish, and nearly subhuman lives in cities dominated by feckless Democrats,” Bouie argues.

Smother Mother

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Whistlestop: Live Book Tour Mashup

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The Culture Gabfest “And Now It’s Dead” Edition

Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 414 with Dan Kois, Dana Stevens, and Jessica Winter with the audio player below.

Should I Make My 25-Year-Old Daughter Get a Credit Card?

Welcome to Ask the Bills, where every two weeks Helaine Olen answers readers’ questions about their most nagging personal finance and financial etiquette dilemmas. Seeking advice on a money issue? Email [email protected].

Why Artisanal Cider-Makers Hate the Fizzy Stuff Sold in Six-Packs

On a warm spring afternoon earlier this year, I hiked around Autumn Stoschek’s orchards, which are perched on the steep slopes surrounding her cidery in the Finger Lakes region of New York. The region’s cool climate is ideal for growing cider apples, and dozens of different microclimates, elevations, and soil types produce a huge number of variations in flavor and fruit quality.

After the Hack

It’s a sequence of events so familiar it can almost seem choreographed. First, there’s a prominent hack, with thousands or sometimes millions of accounts containing vital personal information breached. Think Sony Pictures, in which hackers (alleged by U.S. intelligence officials to be connected to North Korea) released everything from employees’ Social Security numbers to their passwords and medical information. Or last year, at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, where hackers are thought to even have accessedconfidential federal employee background checks.

Dear Prudence: The “Little Red Hen” Edition

A woman dropped family, friends, and job to move across the country for a relationship that didn’t work out—and things got worse from there. Is she doomed to make poor decisions for the rest of her life?

You’ll Never Guess This One Crazy Thing Governs Online Speech

Early last week, Twitter announced that it would be using new tools to curb hate speech and harassment on its site. The news came on the heels of a tell-all report on BuzzFeedthat chronicled how 10 years of dogmatic commitment to “free speech” combined with persistent mismanagement led to the popular social media app becoming “a honeypot for assholes.” Twitter’s former head of news, Vivian Schiller, told BuzzFeed, “The whole ‘free speech wing of the free speech party’ thing — that’s not a slogan, that’s deeply, deeply embedded in the DNA of the company.” That ethos made it all the more difficult to regulate abuse on the site.

There’s a Viking on the Delta

Listen to Episode 567 of Slate’s The Gist:

The Angle: Great New Policy Edition

Donald Trump’s recent stab at articulating his immigration policy is just ridiculous, Jim Newell writes.“Trump is not familiar with immigration policy, because he’s not familiar with any policy,” Newell sighs. “Building ‘the wall’ is not a policy. It is a project. The wall is a wall. There are people who have written white papers for him. If he has read them, then I’m the Brookings Institution.”

Trump’s Vision of Black America Is a White Supremacist Fantasy

It’s clear that Donald Trump’s “black outreach” isn’t actual outreach to black communities. A Trump who wanted to reach black voters would speak to black churches, black colleges, and organizations like the NAACP or the Urban League. The actual Trump, instead, has made his pitch to lily-white audiences in towns and neighborhoods with few black residents. And for good reason. Trump is never going to win more than a token percentage of black voters. If he wants the White House, he’ll need to persuade as many white voters as possible, and a visible commitment to diversity is one way to win over a certain class of right-leaning, suburban whites.

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:

Michael Chiklis on The Shield, Performing, and Influence

Listen to this episode of The Moment with guest Michael Chiklis:

Donald Trump Doesn’t Have an Immigration Policy. He Has Adjectives and Adverbs.

It is more than a little funny to watch the political world try to suss out Donald Trump’s allegedly new immigration policy, as though there is, was, or ever will be such a thing. Trump is not familiar with immigration policy, because he’s not familiar with any policy. Building “the wall” is not a policy. It is a project. The wall is a wall. There are people who have written white papers for him. If he has read them, then I’m the Brookings Institution.

Leavenworth’s Spygate

Last week the Department of Justice announced some seismic changes around the federal prison system. Obama’s DOJ said it would stop contracting with private prisons, a decision that will reduce and eventually phase out the federal government’s reliance on these facilities.

The Self-Actualization of Sean Hannity

The nonrevelation in Monday’s New York Times that the Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity has been advising Donald Trump as well as fawning all over him was met with predictable handwringing. Dana Milbank, in the Washington Post, pointed out that Hannity—who’d told the Times’ Jim Rutenberg in the piece that he was not a journalist—had previously called himself a “journalist.” Rutenberg himself took Hannity to task for his lack of honesty, and called the entire network’s behavior into question. (Roger Ailes, the former head of Fox News, is also reportedly advising his fellow feminist Trump.) Whether or not Hannity is a journalist, he should certainly be honest with viewers, which he has not been. But the mini-scandal seemed to be fueled by a wish for Hannity to comport himself according to the abstemious norms of Serious Journalism. Why? Hannity is self-actualizing before our very eyes. He’s a hack in full now, and everyone knows it.

Trollope’s Worthless Young Men

This article is part of a Year of Great Books, a Slate Academy. To learn more, visit Slate.com/GreatBooks.

Hello Goodbye

I Kissed Dating Goodbye opens with an unforgettable scene. A bride is walking down the aisle toward her beloved on their wedding day. Stained glass, string quartet: Everything is perfect. As the couple begins to say their vows, a woman in the congregation stands up and walks toward the front of the church, silently taking the groom’s hand. Then another joins them, and another, and another, forming an ominous chain at the altar.

Word Sex

Listen to Lexicon Valley Episode No. 92:

A Landscape of Unforgiving Iron

A silver deer snaps to attention in a desolate forest. No, this isn’t some strange new breed—the deer is made of iron fillings. This short film, titled “FERRO,” manipulates magnetic iron filings to create Scandinavian landscape.

How I Won the Minnesota Twins’ Mascot Race

My high school cross country coach was a big believer in visualization. The day before an important meet, he’d have the entire team lie down on the grass or the gym floor, and he’d tell each of us to picture how the race would unfold. Two weeks ago, lying in my friends’ basement the night before the most significant race of my adult life, I remembered what my coach told me. That night, I imagined myself in a bright-green fish costume, waddling to glory.

Doggone Rules

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].)

Computers and Robots Don’t Count

Copyright has a weird relationship with computers. Sometimes it completely freaks out about them; sometimes it pretends it can’t see them at all. The contrast tells us a lot about copyright—and even more about how we relate to new technologies.

Full House

Why is the rent so high in America? It’s not so complicated: In many of the cities where people most want to live, there aren’t enough homes. The share of Americans who rent is at a 50-year high, and the housing stock hasn’t kept up. More than 21 million Americans are “rent-burdened,” paying more than 30 percent of their income in rent. The long-term solution, as most tenants have come to realize, is building more, bigger buildings—as well as correcting policy bias toward homeownership and enforcing stronger protections for tenants. But in the short term, there’s an easy way to ease some of the pain: revising the patchwork of laws that dictate who may inhabit existing buildings, and how.

We’ve Heated Up the Planet. Can We Cool It Back Down?

Exactly two centuries ago this summer, it was winter.

Help Him Help You

The Senate Republican majority is in trouble. On Monday, the Huffington Post reported that its model gave the Democrats a 78 percent chance of winning at least 50 seats in the upcoming election—which would give them the majority in the likely event of a Hillary Clinton presidency. The woes of some of these GOP senators can be summed up in two words: Donald Trump. The flailing, failing Republican presidential nominee is seriously damaging these purple-state Republicans, tainting their own re-election bids with the stench of Trump’s foul temperament and racist nativism. Moderates locked in tight re-election battles could soon be searching for ways to disavow their party’s standard-bearer without abandoning their party altogether. And those eyeing elections down the road may finally begin to understand that an association with the Trump catastrophe could sully them for life.

The Angle: Too Many Medals? Edition

Obamacare needs help, Jim Newell writes, and Democrats appear unready to give it. “The Affordable Care Act, for all its advances, is due for the sort of legislative maintenance that most major laws require after implementation,” Newell argues. But, in this case, “the legislators who are supposed to do the redressing seem less than eager to return to the front where not long ago they’d declared victory.”

Hang Up and Listen: The Let the Games Be Gone Edition

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

Frank Ocean and the Wave of Anti-Pop

As the season slowly downshifts into late summer, it seems that we can define 2016 in music not only as a year of loss and mourning (of Prince, David Bowie, Merle Haggard, andmany more), but as the year of never quite giving the people what they want.

The ’80s Really Were the Best

Listen to Episode 566 of Slate’s The Gist:

Help! My Boyfriend’s Ex-Wife Taught Her Son to Hate Me. How Can I Be a Good Co-Parent?

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

Seed Money

Why Does Donald Trump Refuse to Release His Tax Returns?

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

Trump’s Outreach to Black Voters Isn’t About Black Voters

The tail end of August finds Donald Trump making yet another pivot. He’s fired one campaign manager and hired another; he’s gestured toward contrition for his behavior and muddied his language on immigration, pledging a “fair” process for mass deportation. And he’s begun to court black voters using an unconventional message.

Mr. Brexit & Corey: A Love Story (a Second City Special)

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

The Product Edition

Listen to Episode No. 119 of Slate Money:

The “Racism Is Solved” Edition

Listen to Represent:

To Boringly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before

It’s hard to conceive of the vastness of space. The numbers bandied about are so large, they are comprehensible only in the abstract: We talk about the size of the universe in terms of billions of light years; we try to make sense of what that means with images that scale up so quickly and exponentially that they boggle the mind. It can inspire awe but also a terrifying sort of existential agoraphobia, where the sheer immensity diminishes you to a point so small that you feel like you could disappear.

Yes, You Eated Gogurt for Bekfast!

Earlier this week, I took a video of my 2-year-old asking me for a chicken nugget. It’s prize-worthy, that three-second shot, and not just because she spouts out bits of half-chewed poultry as she says it. If you’re a parent, you know: The more ridiculous a toddler’s pronunciation, the cuter it is. I want to preserve that chicken nunnet in Tupperware forever.

Do Americans Still Care About the Olympics?

The Rio Games are over, and we have learned a lot. We’ve learned that being a horse is the best job at the Olympics, that a butt-baring Irish bureaucrat is the biggest jerk at the Olympics, and that removing your clothes and dumping them on the scorers’ table is no way to lodge a complaint about a wrestling match. We’ve learned that Michael Phelps is the greatest Olympian and that Ryan Lochte is the drunkest. But mostly we’ve confirmed something we already knew: The United States of America is really, really, really good at the Olympics.

How the Democrats Are Failing Obamacare

On May 20, about a month after UnitedHealthcare, one of the country’s major health insurers, announced that it would pull out of Arizona’s exchanges, Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick wrote a letter asking for help. It was addressed to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, and in her note Kirkpatrick, who had lost her seat in the Tea Party putsch of 2010 in no small part because of her vote in favor of health care reform, related her concern about the wobblier parts of Obamacare.

Why Isn’t Obamacare Working the Way It Should?

Why are we here?

The Angle: Offensive Stagnation Edition

Hi! I’m Katy, I’ll be Angling today in Rebecca Onion’s absence. Proper Onion Angling will return next week.

Should We Feel Bad for Ryan Lochte?

Resolved: We should feel bad for Ryan Lochte.

Should We Abandon Louisiana?

In Louisiana, we’ve got chips on our shoulders against the rest of America. The recent flooding in Baton Rouge is just the latest reminder why it’s warranted.

W. Kamau Bell and Hari Kondabolu Want Equal Time

Listen to Episode 565 of Slate’s The Gist:

Money Shouldn’t Bring Down the Media

For the Thursday edition of the Political Gabfest Slate Plus bonus segment, Emily Bazelon and David Plotz discuss how billionaire tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker. Thiel, who is the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, was outed as gay in 2007 by Valleywag, Gawker’s Silicon Valley gossip site—and since then has been fighting a public battle against the media company. So when Gawker released a portion of a sex tape featuring Hogan in 2014, Thiel volunteered to finance Hogan’s successful lawsuit.

Hang Up and Listen Olympics Extra: The Stars of Field Edition

Listen to this Hang Up and Listen Olympics Extra with Josh Levin by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:

How Old Is Too Old for Olympians?

This story was co-published with ProPublica.

The Best of Slate Podcasts

In this edition of our members-only podcast digest, listen to the best segments of the week:

Automated Greeting Cards and Poultry Pragmatism

Hello again, my Slate Plus friends,

America Doesn’t Have War or Peace

Listen to Episode No. 111 of Live at Politics and Prose:

Impressionist New York

In the video above, New York City appears like you’ve never seen it before. It’s real footage of the city, sure, but it’s been processed by Danil Krivoruchko using “neural-style” algorithms—all as a part of the Deep Slow Flow project. The open-source code was written by Manuel Ruder, Alexey Dosovitskiy and Thomas Brox, and the music is “Candles” byJon Hopkins.

What’s It Like to Be President Obama’s Legislative Right Hand?

For Monday’s episode of Working, Slate’s Jacob Brogan talks with Amy Rosenbaum, assistant to the president and director of legislative affairs. As the president’s “chief negotiator,” her job is to help develop strategies to push legislation on the president’s priority list. In this episode, she goes into detail about how her office puts the president’s goals into focus.

An Act of Courage on the Soviet Internet

This essay is adapted from The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries, by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, published by PublicAffairs.

A Cinematic Flood of Pleasure

I started watching the reality TV show Intervention nearly a decade ago when I was in my early 20s, living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with a view of the watermelon-colored mountains. I had a job at a diner serving green chile cheeseburgers to out-of-towners. My boyfriend Jason and I were from out of town, too—we’d moved from Chicago to Albuquerque to “have an adventure,” or so we told anybody who asked. Mostly our adventures consisted of doing ordinary things under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Getting stoned and observing Venus’ flytraps in the home-and-garden section of Walmart. Taking pain pills and watching Quentin Tarantino movies. Drinking gin and shooting a BB gun at Sprite cans along the desolate frontage road outside our apartment.

Hacking Mr. Robot, Week 6

Slate and Future Tense are discussing Mr. Robot and the technological world it portrays throughout the show’s second season. You can follow this conversation on Future Tense, and Slate Plus members can also listen to Hacking Mr. Robot, a members-only podcast series featuring Lily Newman and Fred Kaplan.

A Basketball Coalition of the Willing

On Wednesday, the U.S. men’s basketball team finally did what we’d long expected them to do: play like they’re the best team in the world. After routing Argentina 105–78 in the Olympic quarterfinals, extending its winning streak to 51 international contests, Team USA is now two wins away from its third consecutive gold medal. In Wednesday’s game, Kevin Durant—unusually subdued during group play—exploded for 27 points (including an NBA Jam–ish seven-for-nine from 3), while sixth man Paul George added 17 points, eight rebounds, three blocks, and three steals. At long last, it appears the Silver Cloud might be righted.

The “Slightly Gay” Edition

Listen to Represent:

Is It Smart to Plan a Wedding With Your Mom?

In Thursday’s edition of the Mom And Dad Are Fighting bonus segment, Slate senior editor Laura Bennett joins hosts Allison Benedikt and Jessica Winter to chat about what it’s like to plan a wedding with your mother. How is planning a wedding much like co-running a small tedious corporation? Is it a bad idea to plan a wedding completely over the phone? And what do you do when you’re getting texts of biblical proportions—about limos?

Morris From America

“We’re the only two brothers in Heidelberg, man,” Curtis Gentry (Craig Robinson) reminds his 13-year-old son Morris (Markees Christmas) in writer-director Chad Hartigan’s Morris From America. “We’ve gotta stick together, you know what I’m saying?” Morris From America is a foul-mouthed, but gentle-souled, coming-of-age comedy that follows the Gentrys’ struggle to stick together as father and son—even as they adjust to their strange new lives as conspicuously black American expatriates in a provincial German town where the prevailing skin tone is not just white but marzipan-pig pink.

Corrections

Due to editing errors, an Aug. 16 Five-Ring Circus blog post misstated Allyson Felix’s age. She’s 30, not 29. It also misidentified the International Association of Athletics Federation as the International Association of Athletic Federation.

Slate News Quiz

Welcome to Slate’s weekly news quiz. It’s Friday, which means it’s time to test your knowledge on the week’s news events. Your host, Ray Hamel, has concocted questions on news topics ranging from politics to business, from culture to sports to science.

Why We’ve Never Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Listen to Episode 564 of Slate’s The Gist:

Andrew Jackson: The Dangerous Candidate

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Dust Bunnies Are Alive

This inventive animated short film imagines a world in which dust bunnies are alive. In the film, by Beth Tomashek and Sam Wade, these fuzzy little balls of dust and debris take the shape of their zoological namesake—and they’re pretty adorable. They hop, they float, they squeak, and they love to eat crackers.

A Tribute to Sprinters’ Jowls at the Rio Olympics

I don’t watch sprints at the Olympics to find out who’s going to win or what records they’ll set. I’m there for the instant replays, to see the world’s fastest cheeks flapping in slow motion. Gravity, wind resistance, and Newton’s second law of motion all act at once on extremely talented people’s faces to create a perfect visual storm. While NBC gives precious little airtime to the phenomenon, limiting us to brief post-race glimpses, I’ve compiled Rio de Janeiro’s floppiest jowls into a non-stop, minute-long flop-fest: all jowls, all the time. Watch above.

The Angle: USA Slay All Day Edition

It’s me, copy editor Heather Schwedel, back again for another Angle. On to today’s stories!

The “Should You Believe Juanita Broaddrick?” Edition

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Zika Is Spreading, but It Won’t Go Far

The news about Zika seems particularly bad as of late. An infant born in Texas died last week due to complications from microcephaly, the first death in Texas to have resulted from Zika. Local transmission continues in Florida: The state will offer free testing to pregnant women, a critically important step, but federal funding is still missing. A recent Guardianpiece speculated that an outbreak could be “bigger than we know,” because we aren’t doing extensive testing in other places where the disease may occur.

Save the Chicken

One day soon, nearly every egg you eat will be “cage-free.” A long campaign by animal-welfare groups to improve the lives of factory-farmed chickens has ended in a rout. McDonald’s announced last September that it plans to get all of its eggs for restaurants in the U.S. and Canada from cage-free hens within the next decade. (The change will affect 8 million hens per year.) In the months since then, hundreds of other fast-food chains, food-service companies, and supermarkets, including each of the nation’s top 25 grocery companies, have made similar commitments. According to a recent front-page story in the Washington Post by Karin Brulliard, egg-industry representatives now concede that the eventual and utter abandonment of battery-cage production methods is “a fait accompli.”

Mom and Dad Are Fighting: Doping for Kids Edition

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

The Apprentice: Trump’s Campaign Edition

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Hang Up and Listen Olympics Extra: The What Did Lochte Do? Edition

Listen to Hang Up and Listen Olympics Extra with Josh Levin by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:

Stop Tweeting Your #Firstsevenjobs

August is the dullest month. Offices across the land sit half empty. It’s too hot to do anything outside. There’s nothing good on TV. (Even the Olympics, which ostensibly rescue us from indoor boredom every four Augusts, are largely boring. Dressage?) And so we denizens of the internet attempt to entertain ourselves the only way we know how: by playing stupid hashtag games on Twitter.

Hang Up and Listen Olympics Extra: The Not-Quite Olympian Edition

Listen to Hang Up and Listen Olympics Extra with Josh Levin by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:

Why Isn’t Gabby Douglas Smiling?

Gabby Douglas is the saddest gold medalist in Rio de Janeiro. At first, it seems difficult to understand why. The 2012 all-around winner arrived at the Rio Games not as an individual favorite (it is, after all, the Year of Biles), but was an integral part of the indomitable, world-destroying, medal-hoovering Team USA. In addition to winning gold in the team competition, she exceeded expectations in the qualifying meet, finishing third, beaten only by her teammates Simone Biles and Aly Raisman.

Women’s Gymnastics Gets the Hard-Boiled Treatment

Listen to Episode 563 of Slate’s The Gist:

NBC’s Olympics Reporters Are Biased and Sexist. Here’s Why.

For the Aug. 11 Slate Plus bonus segment of DoubleX Gabfest, hosts Noreen Malone, Willa Paskin, and June Thomas ask whether NBC’s coverage of the Rio Olympics is sexist. It’s a known fact that more women are watching the Olympics than men are. But is NBC wrong to package each Olympics event as a human interest story to cater to their female audience? Are women really watching the games just for the stories? And why aren’t we hearing the same human interest features on male Olympians?

What Exactly Are the NSA Hackers Trying to Accomplish?

It’s old news by now that all of our most secret data is vulnerable, no matter how hard we try to protect it. If you’re surprised that the Russian government was apparently able tosteal code developed by the National Security Agency, then you haven’t been paying attention to how consistently every level of computer security, in pretty much every sector of the government and in the private world, has been breached over and over again.

The Lonely End of the Rink

Should you ever need to endear yourself to a Canadian, say how sad you were to hear about Gord. Canada has fixated on Gord Downie this summer as he makes his final journey across the country, an incurable tumor growing rapidly inside his left temporal lobe. When the tour wraps up this weekend, we’ll all return to our daily lives nervously watching Trump. But for Canadians anywhere in the world, Saturday night is the Gehrig speech. It’s the O.J. verdict and the M.A.S.H. finale. It’s every second of sudden-death overtime we’ve ever played against Russia.

Stephen’s Hudson Valley Crash Course

In the Aug. 17 bonus segment of Culture Gabfest, host Stephen Metcalf gives Dana Stevens and Julia Turner a tour of his old stomping grounds in Hudson, New York, the small town where he lives. After Stephen takes Dana and Julia down the main road, he takes them on a hike—where a surprise awaits them on top. What does Stephen have to say about one of his favorite places in the world? What do Dana and Julia learn about local Hudson folklore?

Mistress Auntie

As a member of Slate Plus, you’re reading this Slate story before anyone else can! This story is exclusive to Slate Plus members until Thursday morning.

The Angle: Mythical Pivot Edition

Rebecca Onion is on vacation. Your substitute Angle writer today is L.V. Anderson.

Meet the Virtual Guidance Counselor

Last December, when Amal Abdi found out she’d gotten into Yale University early with a full scholarship, the first thing she did was call her parents, who had fled war-torn Somalia in the 1990s to start a new life in Columbus, Ohio. The next thing she did was text Chloe Collins, a young woman in Minnesota whom she’d never met—but who had been her guidance counselor, confidante, and occasional nudge throughout the college application process.

The Culture Gabfest “Live From Steve’s Porch” Edition

Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 413 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner with the audio player below.

Has Donald Trump Ruined Journalism?

In “The Summer of the Shill,” a piece published in Rolling Stone this week, the journalist and author Matt Taibbi argues that most news outlet are now outwardly partisan in one manner or another, which “basically means we have no credible news media left.” And he blames this problem, in part, on the ways many in the media have reacted to Donald Trump: “He is considered so dangerous that many journalists are beginning to be concerned that admitting the truth of negative reports of any kind about the Democrats might make them complicit in the election of the American Hitler.”

Creating the Monster That Is @RealDonaldTrump

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

Should Minority Students Choose to Live With Other Minorities?

This article originally appeared in Inside Higher Ed.

What’s It Like to Be an Audiobook Narrator?

This article is part of a Year of Great Books, a Slate Academy. To learn more, visit Slate.com/GreatBooks.

The “Read the Room” Edition

This week, Prudence flies solo and argues with—or against—her better angels. She anoints the Worst Commercial of the Year and advises a woman wondering if she has to let a family member with money trouble live in her empty investment apartment.

How The Get Down Botches Hip-Hop History

Netflix’s The Get Down, which dropped Part 1 of its oddly bifurcated first season on Friday, is many things: garish, cacophonous, tonally bonkers, frequently ridiculous, and occasionally thrilling. It is, in fewer words, a Baz Luhrmann production. What it is not is “a mythic saga that chronicles the rise of hip-hop and the last days of disco,” as its press materials claim, unless mythic is meant in the way that, say, unicorns or Jedis are mythic: a cool idea uncorroborated by reality. The Get Down often succeeds as fantasy but mostly fails as history, at least the history it purports to tell. There are worse crimes than this, but the show’s slapdash flailing at authenticity might alienate what should have been its most enthusiastic audience: viewers who care about hip-hop, which in 2016 is quite a lot of people.

Dear Prudence Live Chat