1. David Fahrenthold Tells the Behind-the-Scenes Story of His Year Covering Trump
The winner of the Post’s first Ben Bradlee Prize for coverage of the 2016 election pens an essay on his experience covering Trump. “I thought I’d be through with the story in a day or two. I was wrong. I didn’t understand — and I don’t think Trump understood, either — where that one check, and that one question, would lead.”
2. 2016: The Best Year for Black Musicians Since ‘Purple Rain’
If you noticed that a staggering amount of the music you loved from the past 12 months was made by black artists, there's data to back that up.
3. The Internet Law That Explains Why 2016 Was So Terrible
Spend most of 2016 feeling crazy? That’s thanks to Poe’s law, which “stipulates that online, sincere expressions of extremism are often indistinguishable from satirical expressions of extremism.”
4. No Longer ‘Mayberry’: A Small Ohio City Fights an Epidemic of Self-Destruction
Death rates are rising for whites in midlife, particularly women. The Washington Post’s series exploring this trend focuses on Chillicothe, Ohio, and a disturbing rise in opioid addiction.
5. ‘Silence’ Is Beautiful, Unsettling, and One of the Finest Religious Movies Ever Made
“The struggle for faith in a world marked by suffering and God’s silence is present in every frame of Silence. The answers in Scorsese’s film, as in Endō’s novel, are found in not in words, but in the spaces between them.”
6. Democrats Have a Religion Problem
The Atlantic’s Emma Green interviews former Obama White House staffer Michael Wear about how the Democratic Party is and isn’t reaching people of faith — and what that will mean for its future.
7. Americans — Especially But Not Exclusively Trump Voters — Believe Crazy, Wrong Things
So says a new survey. It also finds that willingness to believe a given conspiracy theory is strongly related to whether that conspiracy theory supports one’s political preferences.
Alternately titled, “The Year the Feminist Bubble Burst,” journalist Michelle Goldberg looks at the president-elect’s cabinet appointments and what this means for women. “In America, men have always ruled, and right now I wonder if they always will.”
9. Houses of Worship Poised to Serve as Trump-Era Immigrant Sanctuaries
450 houses of worship in the United States have offered to provide sanctuary or other assistance to undocumented immigrants — a “rapid rebuttal” to Trump’s promise to deport two million to three million unauthorized immigrants.
10. The Religious Liberty Showdowns Coming in 2017
No matter what happens, it seems clear that the conflict over religious liberty and discrimination will be the basis of some of the biggest fights and policy shifts over the next two years.
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