Why Isn’t It a Bigger Deal That Trump Is Being Advised by Sadistic Pervert Roger Ailes?

For Monday’s edition of the Hang Up and Listen Slate Plus bonus segment, hosts Stefan Fatsis and Josh Levin are joined by ESPN the Magazine’s Mina Kimes to discuss theoutcome of the Ryan Lochte scandal. Were their original predictions about what really happened in Rio de Janeiro right? Which brands have discontinued their sponsorship of the swimmer, and how do the hosts feel about it? And what should we make of the one surprising brand that has recently begun to sponsor Lochte in light of the scandal?

Lifeboats for Republicans

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

In Search of the Stars

This video is a gorgeous record of an experiment: How far do you have to travel from California’s inhabited places for a view of the universe unimpeded by light pollution? In a way,Sriram Murali’s video is a journey from one twinkling galaxy to another, as city lights are slowly left behind for the celestial variety.

About That Mass Incident of Reindeer Death …

There’s a cliche newsroom expression about how violent stories draw reader interest: “If it bleeds, it leads.” There’s a similar mantra for wildlife reporting: “Only cuteness or corpses will attract readership enormous.”

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:

Trending Bad

It seems Facebook’s human news editors weren’t quite as expendable as the company thought.

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Merrick Garland

As of this morning, it has been 167 days since President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to fill Antonin Scalia’s vacant Supreme Court seat. This of course far surpasses Louis Brandeis’ wait for a Supreme Court Senate hearing in 1916, but because Judge Garland has spent his summer waiting patiently for a hearing—as opposed to, say, sexting women or urinating on public structures—you may not have seen his name in the news as much as you should have.

Should Antarctica Play Host to Artists?

Next March, amid the ongoing gentrification in other parts of the planet, a group of artists, journalists, and entrepreneurs will board a ship, the Akademik Ioffe, and sail together to Antarctica. When the 100 or so participants get there (the full list will be announced in December), they will spend several days crafting artwork on the frozen continent.

How I Learned to Love Liver

Chopped liver was a holiday staple in my house growing up, a beloved spread enjoyed on occasions both religious and secular. I alone in my family found it utterly repulsive. The drab beige color highlighted by a repellant pink, the granular texture, and its metallic tang of putrefied iron had revolted me since early childhood. It simply was not something I ate. And then I went to medical school.

A Jock Spring

Forty-eight years ago, in the stands at the Mexico City Olympics, I felt a twinge of disappointment when Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised black-gloved fists on the medal podium as “The Star-Spangled Banner” played over the stadium PA. Is that all there is, I thought? It seemed such a mild gesture in a year of riot and murder.

What Black People Hear When Donald Trump Asks for Their Vote

To the extent that Donald Trump is reaching out to black Americans, his pitch relies on a bleak vision of black life in the United States and an attack on Democratic Party leadership in those same cities. “Inner-city crime is reaching record levels. African-Americans will vote for Trump because they know I will stop the slaughter going on,” tweeted Trump on Monday. “Now that African-Americans are seeing what a bad job Hillary-type policy and management has done to the inner-cities, they want TRUMP!”

We Can’t Forget the Digital Divide

This piece was originally published in New America’s digital magazine, the New America Weekly.

Name Blame

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].)

Let It Burn?

WEST YELLOWSTONE, Mont.—The town of West Yellowstone should have spent last week focusing on the influx of tourists in town to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the founding of the National Park Service, the culminating huzzah of the much-publicized park centennial that’s been taking place all year.

Why Airports Can’t Stop False Alarms

Back in May, I was waiting for a taxi outside Mexico City International Airport when I heard a series of explosions—a pattern of deep blasts with sharp edges like rifle shots, coming from across the roadway. It took me several minutes to see what was happening: Hidden behind the concrete stanchions of a monorail station, a parade was inching down the access road, brandishing flags and firecrackers.

Help! My Fiancé’s Family Wants Me to Take His Last Name.

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

Obi-Wan’s Last Days in the Desert

With the success of The Force Awakens, and Rogue One on the horizon, the next evolution of the Star Wars saga is out in full force (pun intended). To that end, here’s a fan-made trailer digging into Obi-Wan Kenobi’s past: Kenobi—A Star Wars Story. It’s totally made up, of course, but it’s hard to argue that an exploration of the Jedi’s early days on Tatooine wouldn’t be worth watching.

“The Nature of His Injury Was Not Alarming”

On this week’s edition of Slate’s sports podcast Hang Up and Listen, Stefan Fatsis discusses the Dallas Cowboys’ long history of minimizing quarterback Tony Romo’s injuries. An adapted transcript of the audio recording is below, and you can listen to Fatsis’ essay by clicking on the player below and fast-forwarding to the 62:52 mark.

Hang Up and Listen: The O’er the Land of the Free Edition

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

Anthony Weiner’s Penis Is Not a Campaign Issue

As it does roughly every other year, former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner’s penis has returned to fill a summer news vacuum. Weiner is married—though only in the technical sense,now—to Hillary Clinton’s long-time aide, Huma Abedin. Clinton is running for president, against Donald Trump. So it was inevitable that Trump would try to find a way to translate Weiner’s latest indiscretions against his wife into some sort of criticism against Clinton:

The Angle: Give Me a Smile Edition

Michelle Goldberg sees very little but tragedy in the fall of Anthony Weiner, whose wife, Huma Abedin, announced Monday that she will be separating from him in the wake of the former congressman’s latest sexting leak. “We’re watching a lonely man undone by his inability to resist the furtive gratifications he finds on the internet, even as people on the internet laugh and laugh,” Goldberg writes.

Welcome to the Fourth Grade

This video cheerfully welcomes new fourth-graders to Mr. Reed’s class in Chicago. Dwayne Reed, that is, a new teacher who wants his students as excited about the coming year as he is. “Welcome to the 4th Grade,” was directed by Ty Gotham.

Mother of All Tantrums

O Fortuna is Getting Old

From Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries in Apocalypse Now, to Beethoven’s 7^th Symphony in The King’s Speech, the use of classical repertoire in film and television can create a powerful audio-visual effect. In fact, in many cases, it is the musical backing, specifically, that elevates some of Hollywood’s most memorable scenes to their iconic statuses.

Welcome to Whoopee Land

Each week, Roads & Kingdoms and Slate publish a new dispatch from around the globe. For more foreign correspondence mixed with food, war, travel, and photography, visit their online magazine or follow @roadskingdoms on Twitter.

Can Trump Win Without a Ground Game?

In his 2012 book The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns, and in a Slate column by the same name, Sasha Issenberg set out to explain how advances in the collection and utilization of data were revolutionizing American elections. Several months after the book was published, the data-driven campaign of Barack Obama went on to defeat Mitt Romney, seeming to confirm that Democrats had become more adept at the art of winning votes than their Republican rivals.

Sad Face

In the spring of 2013, a 63-year-old social psychologist in Wurzburg, Germany, made a bold suggestion in a private email chain. For months, several dozen of his colleagues had been squabbling over how to double-check the scientific literature on “social priming,” the idea that even very subtle cues—the height of a chair, the temperature of a cup of coffee, the color of a printed word—can influence someone’s behavior or judgment.

Enter the Punderdome

If you were not yet aware that BattleBots is a thing again, then there are two things you should know: 1) it is, and 2) a guy named Faruq Tauheed is the reason you should be tuning in. As the ring announcer on latest incarnation of the homemade robot showdown, Tauheed somehow manages to upstage all the metal-crushing, flame-throwing action with his pun-heavy commentary. It’s pretty amazing. Each introduction is as cleverly crafted as the battling bots themselves, tailor-made to squeeze every ounce of humor out of the names and origins of the robo-competitors.

The Worse Than Marxism Edition

Listen to Episode No. 120 of Slate Money:

Why Is the Trumpish Right Inept at Hardball Politics?

We’ve only a few days to go until the Arizona Republican Senate primary, and death is on the mind of Dr. Kelli Ward. The former state senator is trailing, significantly, in her bid to oust Sen. John McCain. But it’s not her campaign’s impending death that consumes Ward. It’s John McCain’s.

“Blog, You Idiots”

Hi-diddly-ho, Plusserinos!

Olympians Don’t Need a Tax Break

The Rio Olympics are over, and the Paralympics are less than two weeks away. Nonetheless, America’s athletic finest face one adversary at home: the taxman. As has been widely reported, the U.S. Olympic Committee awards $25,000 to gold medal winners, $15,000 for silver medalists, and $10,000 for bronze medalists. Under current law, they must pay taxes not only on those awards but also on the value of the medals themselves. Sen. Chuck Schumer, the presumptive majority leader should the Democrats win back the U.S. Senate, wants to change that, and the Republicans couldn’t be happier about it.

The Angle: Death’s Door Edition

Hillary Clinton’s Thursday speech on Donald Trump and the so-called alt-right movement tossed a number of life preservers to Republicans who might want to disassociate themselves from Trumpism, Will Saletan writes. “The speech was Clinton’s clearest signal yet as to how she plans to govern the country,” Saletan argues. “She’s not using Trump to try to take down the whole Republican Party. She’s not going to tie him around the necks of House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and the rest of the congressional GOP. She plans to work with these men.”

The Year Nirvana Lost Out to Bryan Adams

Listen to Episode 570 of Slate’s The Gist:

Hacking Mr. Robot, Week 7

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.

The Detailed Lines of Rembrandt’s Etchings

When Rembrandt van Rijn made his etchings, he was able to execute a whole new level of detail that wouldn’t be possible with just pen and paper.