Josh Levin

The U.S. Had a Crazy Strategy to Beat Canada for Men’s Hockey Gold. I Can’t Believe It Worked. Canada had the U.S. outgunned, so the Americans went to Milan with a bunch of machetes.

Bill Guerin is a complete caveman and this was a reckless, good ol' boys roster-building strategy and also he was right and those of us who doubted him are unfortunately losers slate.com/culture/2026...

Hey @rodger.bsky.social make sure the world knows that this dude is NOT in fact the tallest skier in the history of the world

Why a Floppy-Haired 27-Year-Old Olympic Skier Is Making Conservatives So Very, Very Angry “It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now, I think,” he said, fatefully.

Scott Hanson just said on Gold Zone that Hunter Hess (the free skier Trump called a loser) is 6-foot-9, "one of the tallest Olympians." U.S. Ski & Snowboard told me+@mollyolmstead.bsky.social that Hess is actually 6-foot flat. 6-foot-9 is a typo in his Team USA bio!!! slate.com/culture/2026...

As Rodger notes in his great newsletter, Shiffrin won the slalom by 0.53 seconds in 2014. Her two wins by a combined 2.03 seconds are bigger than the combined margins of the women's slalom winners in 2022, 2018, 2010, 2006, 2002, 1998, 1994, and 1992

sports.beehiiv.com/p/olympics-d...

Jesse Jackson Knew Better Than to Forget The civil rights icon always held America to account—and never stopped fighting to preserve what he knew could be taken away

Jesse Jackson died Tuesday at the age of 84. The civil rights icon always held America to account—and never stopped fighting to preserve what he knew could be taken away. I wrote about how he saw our future so well.

Friday Night With Steve Edwards: Jesse Jackson and David Duke - Media Burn Archive Friday Night with Steve Edwards TV show. Features a debate between civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and head of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke.

You can watch the whole debate here: mediaburn.org/videos/ku-kl...

And we got into how Jackson and Duke came to interact in episode 2 of Slow Burn season 4: slate.com/podcasts/slo...

RIP to Jesse Jackson, who in this debate w/David Duke in 1977 delivered (until the host cut him off) a message of unity and against "national isolationism" that's important to hear today. He also ended the show w/one of the sickest burns ever directed at Duke: "You're not even a legitimate Klansman"

It’s 10pm. Do you know where Brian Ferentz is coaching now?

The Olympic Hockey Tournament Is About to Get Very Trumpy In the 1980 Olympics, it was the U.S. vs. the USSR. Now, it’s the U.S. vs. Canada.

They're calling it the Reverse Miracle on Ice, where the American Olympic hockey team become ambassadors for a politics that the country isn't even a little bit interested in slate.com/culture/2026...

an image of Vigo the Carpathian, the villain from Ghostbusters 2

a photo of figure skater Ilia Malinin in his costume for the Olympics short program

I am loving Ilia Malinin's tribute to Vigo the Carpathian from Ghostbusters 2

"On the day the WaPo sports section died—was killed, in fact—we ought to resist nostalgia ... First, nostalgia does little to polish the circulating résumés of the Post sportswriters who lost their jobs. Second, nostalgia is liable to make you wistful. What happened today should make you angry."

Our Kickstarter is live‼️

A new season of Burn It All Down is coming and we need your help to make it happen. Your support keeps independent, feminist sports media alive!

Learn more and support the campaign here:
www.kickstarter.com/projects/bur...

It's been really lovely reading all the tributes to Dan. Many people have asked if they can contribute to support his wife and son. You can do so here: everloved.com/life-of/dan-...

If I'm running an NFL team, my first question during the interview process is whether this was AI generated. If you're not writing your own LinkedIn Taco Bell sponcon, then can we really trust you with the keys?

@redargyle.bsky.social hey Anthony, can you email me at josh.levin@slate.com? have a question for you about curling. thanks!

Dan McQuade, 1983–2026 | Defector Dan McQuade, our friend and colleague, died this week at the age of 43. He is survived by his wife and young son. At the end of 2024, Dan was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer. The news of his diag...

I think the key that unlocks Dan was his desire to share the things he loved with other people. Wouldn’t be the worst way to honor him if we make the effort to do that for the things we love, too. defector.com/dan-mcquade-...

Going with the __e spelling

for our latest HIMMW interview: @joshuablevin.bsky.social left a 20-year "forever job" at Slate to go independent. We break down the finances of the jump:

🎙️ The cost of self-funding narrative podcasts
📖 Negotiating unpaid sabbaticals to write books
💸 Adjusting to a "TBD" income

Don't Lose Sight Of The 'Unprecedented' Reason Trump Is Coming For Minnesota Outrage over welfare cheats used to prompt calls for reform, not paramilitary operations.

I talked to @joshuablevin.bsky.social about the evolution of "welfare queen" politics during Trump 2.

www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-...

5 History Podcasts That'll Blow Your Mind About the Past 🕰️ 5 cultural history podcasts that unravel hidden narratives, challenging preconceived notions and revealing surprising insights about the past through expert storytelling and deep investigative journal...

For @earbudspodcol.bsky.social, I collected my fave podcast cultural history/mysteries, including work by @99pi.org's Christopher Johnson, @leonneyfakh.bsky.social, @geedee215.bsky.social + @willa.bsky.social (& the pilot episode of Replay Booth naturally) newsletter.earbuds.audio/p/cultural-h...

How Somalis Became the New ‘Welfare Queens’ Trump has reinvented Reagan’s old attack, with one key twist.

You can get carried away with these historical analogies and I tried hard not to do that here

Reagan, obviously, was not Trump

But some similarities hard to miss — and they can help us understand what’s happening www.thebulwark.com/p/how-somali...

Been kind of a rough game for Chris Fowler but all is redeemed if he says "this is for all the VRBOs"

Joe Victor's Saloon - New Orleans Music Map Joe Victor’s Saloon is one of only three extant structures from Storyville, New Orleans’ fabled red-light district, which was integral to the development of jazz in the early 1900s. The business was l...

One of the three extant buildings from Storyville, the famous red-light district in New Orleans, is facing demolition. I found that it'd been a Black bar, making it the only link to the community of color that lived and worked on the backstreets of the district.

acloserwalknola.com/places/joe-v...

LFG

@joelanderson.bsky.social @davidshoemaker.bsky.social x.com/awfulannounc...

Donald Trump Just Brought a Long-Sought Policy Goal Closer Than Ever. It All Might Have Been Different Without One Night in 1977. A scandal followed—and, five decades later, no one agrees on what happened.

Just in time for the holidays, a feature story on the 1977 Xmas party that changed the marijuana legalization movement forever. There was a rock band, strobe lights, a juggler, silver trays full of joints, and an allegation that Jimmy Carter's drug czar did cocaine ...

slate.com/news-and-pol...

Is the Dictionary Done For? The print edition of Merriam-Webster was once a touchstone of authority and stability. Then the internet brought about a revolution.

Holy %$##*%^&. A @newyorker.com essay by Louis Menand about my book

Now that this story has been published, I grant permission to all NFL teams to pursue a 36-23 scoreline today.

is this your way of saying that you'd like to try some of the restaurants I've been suggesting?

Dave's Scorigami spreadsheet is incredible stuff docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

No NFL Game Has Ever Ended in a Score of 36–23 A scoreboard mystery

I wrote for @theatlantic.com about the NFL's baffling scoreboard mystery: Why has a game never ended 36-23? Join me (via gift link!) on this @nflscorigami.bsky.social quest w/help from @jonbois.bsky.social, Dave Mattingly, some Scorigami-loving academics, and more www.theatlantic.com/science/2025...