january 2000

It’s hard to turn on cable news or scroll through Twitter these days without catching the name “Giuliani.” Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, is a central character in the House’s impeachment inquiry. Meanwhile, Rudy’s third wife, Judith Giuliani, has commanded her own headlines as she’s aired details of the couple’s contentious, ongoing divorce proceedings. Scarcely mentioned, however, is Andrew Giuliani—the former New York mayor’s 31-year-old son—who works in the White House.

Rudy Giuliani told me his son’s hire “wasn’t the usual ‘hire my kid’ situation.” “He’s known the president since he was a baby,” Rudy said. “Now, did he know him in the first place because he was the mayor’s son? Sure, but they also had a relationship independent of me.”

The dead girl had perfect teeth.

That’s what so many of the strangers who obsessed over her case online noticed, and one of the few things that could even be noticed. Her body was burned so badly as to be unrecognizable when she was found in the early hours of October 29, 2006, near Longview, Texas.

The two men who saw her thought, at first, that they had stumbled across a mannequin set on fire, perhaps as an early Halloween prank. It was the smell that alerted them to something more sinister in the woods—a smell like charred hot dogs. When they stepped closer, they realized the awful and obvious truth. A human being had been killed, then doused in gasoline and set on fire, and probably only minutes before: Her body was still ablaze.

Prince Andrew has, clearly, made many poor decisions in life: traveling to royal engagements in Britain in a helicopter, rather than taking the train; criticizing the government’s attempts to combat corruption over lunch with British businessmen in Kyrgyzstan; captaining a team in a medieval-themed game show broadcast on national television.

Yet his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein—which continued after the latter’s conviction for solicitation of prostitution involving a minor—is disturbing on another level. The prince’s decision this weekend to give an interview to the BBC about that friendship, which entirely lacked empathy or remorse, compounds the offense.

From the start, it was apparent that the queen’s second son dwells not on Earth, but on Planet Aristocracy. It is a land governed by rules and codes that are unfathomable to the rest of us. When the BBC’s Emily Maitlis asked whether he had invited Epstein to a party, Andrew quickly corrected her: “It was a shooting weekend … a straightforward shooting weekend.” The distinction—between an evening event and staying with friends to fire guns in muddy fields—is meaningless to anyone who grew up outside the English upper classes. Throughout, he seemed to adhere to an honor code where ghosting a friend is unconscionably discourteous, but exploiting underage girls is merely a “manner unbecoming.” It is essentially a two-tier view of the world, where people are divided into equals and human chaff.

A few years ago, Jason Rentfrow, a psychologist at the University of Cambridge, dug into a question that has captivated him for decades: Do different places have different personalities? Do people in Los Angeles, for instance, have measurably different temperaments from the residents of Augusta, Georgia? If so, what does that mean for both places? Rentfrow decided to test these questions on a phenomenon that has captivated all of America lately: the rise of Donald Trump.

Together with his co-authors, Rentfrow analyzed a set of surveys that had been conducted from 2003 to 2015 in 2,082 U.S. counties—about two-thirds of all the counties in the country. The surveys asked 3 million people 44 questions about their habits and dispositions. Rentfrow and his co-authors focused on neuroticism, a tendency to feel depressed or anxious and to respond more severely to stress. Neuroticism is one of the “big five” traits that psychologists often use to measure personality. The study authors compared each county’s level of neuroticism with whether those counties later voted for Trump in the 2016 election, and whether they had historically voted for Republicans.

Dear Therapist,

I’m in my late 20s, and my parents recently divorced after several decades of marriage. The divorce process was initiated about a year ago, and finalized about six months ago. I genuinely feel relieved that my mom and dad got divorced, and I think it is the best thing for both of them. My dad quickly got a new girlfriend, which I expected, and she moved in with him. I’ve met her once, at a large gathering, and she seems fine. My sibling has been living abroad temporarily, so has not yet met her.

For the upcoming holidays, my sibling and I will likely spend half of Thanksgiving Day at my dad’s house and the other half at my mom's house. When discussing Thanksgiving, my dad indicated that he is expecting us to spend time with his girlfriend (who will be doing the cooking) and her family (her adult children, their spouses, and her grandchildren, none of whom I’ve met).