We’ll get to the important news, but first— a Make Me Smile for the ages. In a series of tweets about the spiritual significance of each finger, Pope Francis said the middle finger means honesty. Of course, Twitter ran away with it. In other news, the United States will now have more access to bases in the Philippines, another sign of high tensions in the South China Sea. Plus, we’ll discuss the story of Marie Van Brittan Brown, the largely unknown Black woman behind a familiar invention. And, Harvard University is discontinuing a high-profile project dedicated to studying online misinformation.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

Join us tomorrow for Economics on Tap. The YouTube livestream starts at 3:30 p.m. Pacific time/6:30 p.m. Eastern. We’ll have news, drinks, a game and more.