Your Mid-Week Experiment
Welcome to your always free, reader-supported edition of The Experiment where we share great things to read, cook, listen to, and watch. As always, this bugga free.
Let’s get right to it:
Comms people, read this: “…the JD Vance couch rumor is a compelling case study in how an extremely online rumor turns into a meme.” (Reneé Diresta)
Storytellers, read this: “what I think we’re really seeing is Trump trying to squeeze the ascent of Kamala Harris through his own predictive systems. His beleaguered brain does not have a mechanism to allow for a potential majority of Americans preferring a Black woman over him, so he’s using the only system he has: this must be affirmative action fraud, and the victim is me because I shouldn’t have to face off against a Black woman.” (Frank Spring)
This memoir excerpt about being adopted in middle-age by Nora Ephron moved me close to tears, but I was smiling too big to cry. (Deborah Copaken)
The New York Times needed three tries to get a headline right. Here’s what that reveals about the newspaper. (Margaret Sullivan)
Brilliant take on why geeks are killing it at the Olympics. (Sally Jenkins)
A war criminal says we wrote Forget the Alamo because we hate men? (Allen West)
SO EXCITED.
We set up a merch table in the back where you can get T-shirts, coffee mugs, and even tote bags now. Show the world that you’re part of The Experiment.
We’ve also got a tip jar, and I promise to waste every cent you give me on having fun, because writing this newsletter for you is how I have fun.
Buy the book Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick banned from the Bullock Texas History Museum: Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of the American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and myself is out from Penguin Random House.