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Slate Voice

A daily selection of Slate’s best writing, read out loud. Learn more about this members-only feature at slate.com/voice

All Episodes

3:49

Trump Could Put Lives at Risk and Gain Nothing By...

Slate Voice ·

2017/12/01

Axios reports today that President Trump plans to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in a speech on Wednesday. It’s not clear yet if this also means he’s ordering the U.S. embassy to be moved to the city, though the Israeli media has reported that he’s planning to do so, and Vice President Mike Pence said this week that he’s “actively considering” doing so. According to the Wall Street Journal, “U.S.

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3:02

Senate Republicans Have the Votes to Pass Their Tax Bill

Slate Voice ·

2017/12/01

Senate Republicans have the votes to pass their tax bill, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters late Friday morning after meeting with his caucus. The GOP senators were all smiles on the Senate floor afterwards—except for Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, who appears to have gotten rolled. Johnson announced his support for the bill earlier in the day. The deduction for pass-through businesses, which the original bill pinned at 17.4 percent, will now be 23 percent.

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5:44

Marco Rubio and Mike Lee Are Trying to Save the GOP....

Slate Voice ·

2017/12/01

Not too long ago, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Utah Sen. Mike Lee were conservative darlings. Both of them first ran for the Senate as Tea Party upstarts against Republican insiders, and both distinguished themselves as creative conservative policymakers who were eager to modernize the Reaganite agenda. This week, however, Rubio and Lee have been branded apostates by an alphabet soup of conservative organizations.

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6:31

Do Not Let Tom Cotton Anywhere Near the CIA

Slate Voice ·

2017/12/01

And so the Trump administration’s long-awaited national security shuffle begins. Rex Tillerson is soon to be ousted as secretary of state—no surprise, given that he was once quoted as calling Trump “a fucking moron” (then didn’t deny doing so when given the chance) and that Trump had publicly undermined one of the secretary’s only diplomatic ventures.

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9:56

One Company Has Cornered the Digital Market on Death

Slate Voice ·

2017/12/01

Like the rest of us, Lois Heppell and many other older adults use technology to keep up with their friends. But news of hookups and job promotions is not what they’re expecting. “The first thing my mother does every morning is get up, turn on her computer, and go to the bathroom,” says Heppell’s son, Robin Heppell, a funeral marketing consultant.

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8:29

Can I Be a Screen-Free Parent Without Being Horrible...

Slate Voice ·

2017/12/01

I grew up without a TV at a time when it was still possible for parents to raise kids screen-free without acting like insufferable prigs about it. Although Jerry Mander published his sweeping anti-TV polemic Four Arguments For the Elimination of Television the same year I was born, my parents don’t remember their decision to raise us without TV as being much of a political one.

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10:24

Sting of Truth

Slate Voice ·

2017/12/01

Roy Moore has a theory. He says the Washington Post, which has been investigating his foundation and his conduct with teenage girls, isn’t interested in truth. The Post, he argues, is just trying to take down his campaign. This is the kind of thing politicians often say, figuring it’s a matter of irrefutable opinion. They don’t imagine that a charge of political motivation could be factually debunked. But it can. And that is what has happened to Moore’s theory.

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1:50

Need Some News That Won’t Make You Puke? Here’s the...

Slate Voice ·

2017/12/01

After a miserable day like Wednesday, we could all use a news story—just one!—that isn’t part of the torrent of garbage that’s been raining down for the last year. So here’s that story: Aardman Animations, the beloved studio behind Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep, has a new movie coming out. It’s called Early Man, it’s directed by Nick Park, and here’s its trailer.

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12:42

150 Years of BS, From Barnum to Trump

Slate Voice ·

2017/11/30

Just after Kevin Young handed in the manuscript of his magnum opus on American hucksterism, Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News, his publisher had to send it back to him. Young—a noted poet, the newly appointed poetry editor of the New Yorker, and director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library—has a theory that most hoaxes have a racial subtext (that is, when race isn’t the overt text).

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6:51

Good News, Fellow Men! Our Terrible Behavior Isn’t...

Slate Voice ·

2017/11/30

While bent over locking up my bike in Chicago a few years ago, I heard the all-too-familiar sound of a wolf whistle. I turned around to get a look at the jerks accosting some woman on the street, only to realize I was the one who was being cat called. A man passing by from behind had seen my long curly hair and tight jeans and mistaken me for a woman. When I turned around to face him, he was shocked and started apologizing profusely.

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6:04

How Larry Nassar Got Away With It

Slate Voice ·

2017/11/30

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, disgraced gymnastics doctor and convicted child sex abuser Larry Nassar stood in front of a judge in Lansing, Michigan. He had just pleaded guilty to seven counts of sexual assault—a small fraction of the crimes he’s been accused of committing. As Slate’s Jeremy Stahl wrote, Nassar’s plea deal will allow all 125 victims who reported their assaults to the Michigan State Police to read statements at his sentencing in January.

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6:07

Why Even the Most Rigorously Educated Women Put Their...

Slate Voice ·

2017/11/30

Sarah Stevens married a fellow grad student right as she was finishing a Ph.D. in Chinese. Together, they decided they would go wherever one person found a good job. Her husband got an offer first. “I feel like it’s always the way it turns out—the guy getting the job,” she said.

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7:51

What Happens When People Die, but Their Profiles Live...

Slate Voice ·

2017/11/30

In the internet age, it often seems that what is digital may never die. Even when our loved ones slip their mortal coil, their social media profiles soldier on. Though Facebook, Google, and other companies have developed protocols for shutting down the accounts of the dead, many if not most of us are still caught off guard. When my grandfather died, for example, “he” continued to contact me through his LinkedIn profile.

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7:10

The Votes for Tax Reform Are Falling Into Place

Slate Voice ·

2017/11/30

This post has been updated with new information since it was originally published. As members of the Senate Budget Committee were arriving for a key vote on the Republican tax reform bill on Tuesday, they were greeted by a familiar passel of protesters, chanting, “Shame!” and “Kill the bill, don’t kill us!” The protesters went so far as to talk directly into several of the senators’ ears as they tried to do hallway television interviews.

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1:55

It Looks Like Project Veritas Tried to Sting Full...

Slate Voice ·

2017/11/30

There hasn’t been a better feel good story in a long time than Project Veritas’ hilariously inept attempt to trick the Washington Post into publishing a false story about Roy Moore, even if, as Slate’s Osita Nwanevu argues, conservative buffoon James O’Keefe won’t face any real consequences. I mean, have you ever seen anything more satisfying than watching Veritas operative Jamie T.

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8:11

Can I Be a Screen-Free Parent Without Being Horrible...

Slate Voice ·

2017/11/30

I grew up without a TV at a time when it was still possible for parents to raise kids screen-free without acting like insufferable prigs about it. Although Jerry Mander published his sweeping anti-TV polemic Four Arguments For the Elimination of Television the same year I was born, my parents don’t remember their decision to raise us without TV as being much of a political one.

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7:00

Rex Tillerson Is Making a Great Case for Himself as...

Slate Voice ·

2017/11/29

The occasion took place Tuesday at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., where he delivered a speech bubbling over with boilerplate, interesting only for his warnings of Russian aggression and his touting of America’s allies as our most vital strength—both sentiments at odds with those of his president, a sign of his scant influence within the administration.

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6:06

The Gadgets That Made It Big This Year

Slate Voice ·

2017/11/29

As we reach the commercial holiday known as Cyber Monday, we can’t help but remember the gadgets and gear that won’t be flying off digital shelves this year—the inventions and technologies that fell by the wayside in 2017. Surely, as you peruse the day’s sale offerings, you’ll barely see a 3D TV in the mix. After a years-long push, consumers made it clear that this living room trend was a big fat no.

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7:43

What’s Next for the Republican Tax Bill

Slate Voice ·

2017/11/29

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s plan is for the Senate to begin floor consideration of the Republican tax reform bill on Tuesday, pretend to have an open and sincere amendment process, and pass it by the end of the week. It may well work. For a proposal that’s only marginally more popular than Republicans’ universally despised health care reform efforts, their tax reform plans have met surprisingly soft resistance moving through Congress.

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6:54

Pixar’s Coco, Reviewed by Someone Who Watched Day of...

Slate Voice ·

2017/11/29

Pixar has always been known for making children’s movies adults can love too, occasionally to the point of giving their youngest viewers more than they are ready to handle. The tear-jerking opening montage of Up is the classic example—a four-minute lesson in the cruelty of time and mortality that is way beyond the emotional reach of many children—but let’s not forget the resigned embrace of death in Toy Story 3’s furnace scene, Mr. and Mrs.

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