Chart of the Day: Student Loans Have Grown 511% Since 1999

The Hardest Job in the World

John Dickerson

What if the problem isn’t the president—it’s the presidency?

I. A Broken Office

Donald Trump often appears to be a president in rebellion against his office. A president, we have come to expect, hastens to the scene of a natural disaster to comfort the afflicted. After Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, President Trump arrived tardily and behaved unseriously, tossing rolls of paper towels at storm-battered residents as if he were trying to drain three-point shots.

We have come to expect that when the national fabric rends, the president will administer needle and thread, or at least reach for the sewing box of unity. After white supremacists marched through Charlottesville, Virginia, shouting “Jews will not replace us,” President Trump’s instinct was to emphasize that there were good people among the neo-Nazis.

Jeffrey Wright as Bernard in 'Westworld' Season 2 — HBO

Westworld: 'Everything Is Code'

David Sims, Spencer Kornhaber, and Sophie Gilbert

Three Atlantic staffers discuss “Journey Into Night,” the Season 2 premiere.

Every week for the second season of Westworld, three Atlantic staffers will discuss new episodes of HBO’s cerebral sci-fi drama.

A Cassandra Cry Against Pope Francis

Emma Green

Ross Douthat's views on the pope are intensely unpopular. But has he identified a fundamental tension in the Church?

Across every continent, in every country, Catholics “find themselves divided against one another,” writes the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat in his new book, To Change the Church. On one side stand the orthodox, who see doctrine and tradition as the best antidote to a changing world. On the other stand the liberals, who yearn for a Church that focuses on pastoring rather than enforcing rigid rules. This “widening theological and moral gulf,” Douthat argues, is potentially “wider than the chasm that separated Catholicism from Orthodoxy, and later from Lutheranism and Calvinism.”

That’s a bold claim to make. After all, the schisms of East and West, Catholic and Protestant, were world-shaking, often bloody events. But in today’s Church—and specifically in this pope—Douthat sees the possibility that the Roman Catholic Church will once again break apart.

When Beauty Is a Troll

Megan Garber

The peppy mixed messaging of I Feel Pretty is only the latest reminder: American culture doesn’t fully know what it’s talking about when it talks about attractiveness.

Every once in a while I’ll re-watch an old episode of Friends, because it’s familiar and soothing and there. The other day, Netflix served up one of those flashbacks the show would sometimes air to poke light fun at the friends and at the visual absurdities involved with being alive in the ’80s: Rachel in chintz, Ross and Chandler in tragicomic Flock of Seagulls bouffants, etc. Watching the meta-nostalgia, I was reminded of the existence of a minor character who nonetheless plays a major role in the show’s universe: Fat Monica.

Fat Monica is technically just a younger—and slightly larger—version of Standard-Issue Monica; what becomes wincingly clear, though, as the Friends flashbacks play out, is that Fat Monica differs from the other Monica not just in scale, but in kind. Padded by her former girth, Monica Geller—the person who categorizes her hand towels and designates committees for the planning of birthday parties and is, in general, in thorough control of her life and her Type-A-tastic self—undergoes a transformation: Her voice gets higher. Her movements become jerking and awkward. She giggles a lot, uncomfortably. Remember when, in those late-series episodes of Family Matters, Steve Urkel would go into that flashing box and emerge as the suave Stefan Urquelle? Fat Monica’s metamorphosis is a little like that, but in reverse: The transformation depletes her dignity rather than compounding it. She becomes bashful. Childish. Foolish. Watching the proceedings, you start to wonder whether Monica Geller, for the purposes of the flashback scenes, was given a fat suit or a lobotomy.

At Group Sex Parties, Strict Rules Make for Safe Spaces

Merissa Nathan Gerson

Gatherings emphasize consent and respect for boundaries as much as exploration.

Inside an unmarked warehouse in downtown San Francisco, a woman greets guests with a riding crop. She is not there to beat them, but to initiate them with a set of firm and binding rules. A chart posted on the wall reads:

State your boundaries.
Play safely and consensually.
Have sensible safe sex practices.
Respect our space and each other.
Don’t linger unaccompanied in play spaces.
Don’t cruise aggressively.
Don’t get too intoxicated.
Don’t take photographs.
Don’t use your cellphone.
Don’t gossip about what goes on here.

Using the riding crop as a pointer, she lays out the basics for guests entering Mission Control’s Kinky Salon, a monthly San Francisco sex party that dates back to 2003. “Kinky Salon is a global movement that promotes sexual liberation by hosting community gatherings where sex is integrated into the social fabric of the events,” reads the Kinky Salon manual, a guidebook to on how to safely construct a sexual play world where no one gets hurt. That means a strict set of boundaries.

Partial skeleton remains from an ancient burial site — Regis Duvignau / Reuters

Was There a Civilization On Earth Before Humans?

Adam Frank

A look at the available evidence

It only took five minutes for Gavin Schmidt to out-speculate me.

Schmidt is the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (a.k.a. GISS) a world-class climate-science facility. One day last year, I came to GISS with a far-out proposal. In my work as an astrophysicist, I’d begun researching global warming from an “astrobiological perspective.” That meant asking whether any industrial civilization that rises on any planet will, through their own activity, trigger their own version of a climate shift. I was visiting GISS that day hoping to gain some climate science insights and, perhaps, collaborators. That’s how I ended up in Gavin’s office.

Just as I was revving up my pitch, Gavin stopped me in my tracks.

The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library / Ricardo Thomas

Photos From State Dinners Past

Alan Taylor

As the Trumps prepare to host their first state dinner on Tuesday, a look back at state dinners held by past U.S. presidents, from Eisenhower to Obama.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump will host the first official state dinner of this administration at the White House, honoring visiting French President Emmanuel Macron. As Mrs. Trump’s team and White House staff work on the final details for the formal event, we present a look back at some state dinners held by past U.S. presidents, from Eisenhower to Obama.

The Vigilante of Clallam County

Lexi Pandell

Patrick Drum was tired of seeing sex offenders hurt children. So he decided to kill them.

On a morning last fall, Patrick Drum sat quietly in his black and white striped uniform and handcuffs as he awaited his fate. The sleeves of his top were short enough to reveal a tattoo reading “Win Some” on his right forearm and one reading “Lose Sum” on the left. From the court’s gallery where dozens of reporters and community members sat, he seemed barely to move as the families of the two men he had killed four months before came forward to speak.

“The only thing I’ll say is I don’t has no sympathy for the man who shot and killed my son,” said Jerry Ray’s father, Paul, his voice breaking. The wife of the other victim, Gary Blanton, said Drum’s followers were harassing her and her family—spitting at them, parking at night outside her home. “Tell your supporters to stop,” she said. “My children and I don’t deserve this… I think we’ve suffered enough.”

Students working on laptops — Steve Helber / AP

The Future of College Looks Like the Future of Retail

Jeffrey Selingo

Similar to e-commerce firms, online-degree programs are beginning to incorporate elements of an older-school, brick-and-mortar model.

Online learning has come a long way since the turn of the millennium. It certainly hasn’t displaced traditional colleges, as its biggest proponents said it had the potential to, but it has gained widespread popularity: The number of students in the U.S. enrolled in at least one online course rose from 1.6 million in 2002 to more than 6 million in 2016.

As online learning extends its reach, though, it is starting to run into a major obstacle: There are undeniable advantages, as traditional colleges have long known, to learning in a shared physical space. Recognizing this, some online programs are gradually incorporating elements of the old-school, brick-and-mortar model—just as online retailers such as Bonobos and Warby Parker use relatively small physical outlets to spark sales on their websites and increase customer loyalty. Perhaps the future of higher education sits somewhere between the physical and the digital.

An argyle-patterned cup in a center-console cupholder — David Aaron Troy / Getty

Cupholders Are Everywhere

Nancy A. Nichols

As people spent more and more time in cars, auto interiors transformed into living spaces, where food and drink became necessities. An Object Lesson.

The 2019 Subaru Ascent will have 19 of them. Not airbags, but cupholders. That’s more than any mass-market vehicle ever produced, amounting to almost two-and-a-half cupholders for each passenger. There’s room for a Starbucks skinny latte, an unnaturally colored Big Gulp, a Yeti Rambler, and juice boxes galore. So many cupholders, in fact, that The Wall Street Journal recently declared: “We are approaching peak cupholder.”

Although it might be hard to imagine now, eating and drinking in cars was once next to impossible. Beyond a quick swig from a flask, rough roads and a lack of power steering and advanced suspension systems made it difficult and unpleasant to eat or drink on the road.

Cupholders began as an afterthought, mere circular indents on the inside of the door of the glove compartment, but they have become an absolute necessity and a key feature that shoppers evaluate when purchasing a new car, even for a time supplanting fuel efficiency as a consumer’s most sought-after attribute.