Messing with the census, undermining the election, and guest Juliette Kayyem on competent crisis response.

Here are some notes and references from this week’s show:

Alex Thompson for Politico: “Trump’s Campaign Knocks on a Million Doors a Week. Biden’s Knocks on Zero.”

Ben Smith for the New York Times: “How the Media Could Get the Election Story Wrong”

Franklin Foer for the Atlantic: “Putin Is Well on His Way to Stealing the Next Election”

Alice Miranda Ollstein for Politico: “Lawmakers Demand Explanation for Cutting Federal Funding to States for National Guard Deployments”

Juliette Kayyem for The Atlantic: “Reopening Schools Was Just an Afterthought”

Here are this week’s cocktail chatters:

John: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson 

Emily: Deep Cover: The Drug Wars

David: This Week in Virology, “Episode 640: Test Often, Fast Turnaround, with Michael Mina”; Elian Peltier for The New York Times: “3 Men Marooned in the Pacific Are Rescued After Writing SOS in the Sand”

Listener Carol Palmer, @AgnetaAnderso: Larry Kanter for Medium “Inside the Company Trying to Solve the Global Bicycle Shortage”

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For this week’s Slate Plus bonus segment Emily, David, and John talk about missing their work friends.

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Podcast production by Jocelyn Frank.

Research and show notes by Bridgette Dunlap

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