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What Really Happened Inside the ‘Patriot Pod’

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For various reasons, January 6 rioters have been held together in a segregated wing of the D.C. jail that they came to call the “Patriot Pod.” They developed their own rituals and inside jokes, and reinforced one another’s narratives. Over time, the expected happened: They became further radicalized. And through connections with right-wing media, they have attempted to recast themselves with terms such as political prisoner and hostage, which the presidential candidate Donald Trump has now adopted as his own.

In this episode, we follow a young rioter from the Patriot Pod who went into jail a mischievous goofball and emerged willing to die for the MAGA cause. We tell, for the first time, an inside story of exactly what happened within the pod, how it spread out to the world, and what this tight-knit group is planning for the future.

This is the fifth episode of We Live Here Now, a six-part series about what happened when we found out that our new neighbors were supporting January 6 insurrectionists.

The following is a transcript of the episode:

Hanna Rosin: In May of 2024, a new person was hanging around our neighbors’ house—a young guy, fresh out of prison, who was spending nights at the “Eagle’s Nest.” Around us, Micki referred to him as “the little boy.” His real name is Brandon Fellows.

[Music]

Rosin: Brandon had come to the Capitol on January 6 armed with a fake orange beard that looked like it was made from his mom’s leftover yarn and a weird knitted hat. He was having fun until someone in front of him started smashing a window with a cane, which prompted a cop to swing his baton, and then Brandon freaked out.

Brandon Fellows: I’m like, Oh my god. Holy shit. Holy shit. I said it, like, five times, and I’m just like, Yeah. They clearly don’t want us in there. That’s what I said in my mind. I’m not going in there. I’m not getting hit. I like my face. I’m not going to get hit. I’m not doing that.

Rosin: So Brandon just hung around for a while, did some people watching. Eventually, he wandered over to the other side of the building, where, according to him, he saw cops just kind of passively letting rioters inside. So he climbed through a window and ended up in Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley’s office with his feet up on the desk, smoking a joint.

I had this idea of Brandon as, like, the Seth Rogan of insurrectionists: goofball, high by noon, not exactly militia material.

Rosin: Are you Brandon?

Fellows: Yes.

Rosin: I’m Hanna. Hi.

Fellows: Nice to meet you.

Rosin: But the Brandon I met three years later looked different: totally beardless, conspicuously fit. He showed up at this Memorial Day march that Micki organized about a week after he was released from prison.

Lauren Ober: Hey, Micki. How far are you going?

Micki Witthoeft: To the jail.

Rosin: The counterprotesters were already trailing with megaphones, so Micki was strict. Stay on the sidewalks. Don’t cause trouble.

Witthoeft: I’m not interested in any kind of conflict.

Ober: But newly released Brandon was having too much fun to obey. A D.C. resident told him to get off his property. Brandon yelled back, “I was at the Capitol on January 6!” A group of guys in MAGA hats saluted him, “Political prisoner. Thanks for sticking it out!” Marchers cheered him on as he walked by, took selfies, asked questions.

Marcher: Did you feel like you were going to get your ass kicked from time to time, being in a D.C. jail? I mean, I would think that if you’re a white boy in D.C. jail, you’d be getting your ass kicked.

Fellows: It’s total culture shock. It’s crazy. But I survived. I only got into one fight.

Rosin: I was interested in Brandon because he was one of the only released J6ers who came straight back to D.C., a one-man experiment I could follow for what was coming for us on January 6, 2025, the day the next election is scheduled to be certified—especially if Trump loses.

And I could tell, even just from that march, that some new kind of energy was blooming in Brandon. No more weed. No more disguises. Postprison, his defiance had a different tone, which I picked up when I was following him at the march and I overheard him mention death a couple of times.

Fellows: Yeah. If it’s my time to die, it’s my time to die. I prefer not to, but life is beautiful.

Rosin: I’m eavesdropping, by the way. I got here at the time when you were like, I can die. There was something about death, and I was like, Huh?

Rosin: I sound awkwardly confused because I was confused. Why does a 30-year-old think it might be his time to die? Die for what? And why so dramatic?

I’m Hanna Rosin.

Ober: And I’m Lauren Ober. And from the Atlantic, this is We Live Here Now.

Rosin: Okay, to understand how Brandon went from “I’m not doing that,” on January 6, 2021, to “I’m ready to die,” in 2024—a little bit about Brandon: He’s now 30. He grew up in Schenectady, New York, born into a line of military men going back before the Civil War. He told me his grandfather was the main inventor of a gun that shoots 3,000 bullets per minute. His dad was an Army sniper. But Brandon was different.

Fellows: I kind of went through this emo phase. I had longer hair. I dyed it black, wore black clothes, like rock-band clothes.

Rosin: When he was 13, Brandon started wearing eyeliner, trying to impress the emo girls he was hanging out with. Usually, he would wipe it off before he got to his dad’s house, but one day he forgot.

Fellows: And he’s like, Is that eyeliner on your face? And I was like, No. Clearly it was. I didn’t wipe it off. And he’s like, Don’t lie to me. He hates lies. And I was like, All right. Yes. It is. And he’s like, Brandon—this is the actual language he said. He’s like, I cannot have fags in my house.

Rosin: He said what now?

Fellows: He said, I cannot have fags in my house.

Rosin: After this and a couple of minor domestic disputes, Brandon’s dad said he couldn’t stay with him anymore—like, ever—although they did make up three years later. We couldn’t reach his dad for comment, although his mom confirmed the events. He spent the rest of his teenage years living only at his mom’s house, until he didn’t want to do that anymore, and he found his own way to live.

Fellows: So I have two tiny houses almost at all times.

Rosin: Wait. You were a tiny houser?

Fellows: Yes. I’ve been a tiny houser since 2016.

Rosin: Okay.

Fellows: I have a veggie-oil-powered bus. It’s almost—it’s 85 percent carbon-neutral. Very cool.

Rosin: From his tiny houses and his veggie bus, Brandon ran a tree-trimming business and a chimney-cleaning business. He’d never been to a Trump rally, or any rally, but decided to go that day. It’s kind of unclear why. Just all these things he’d been annoyed about—COVID restrictions, small-business restrictions—it seemed more fun to be annoyed in a crowd.

The following morning, January 7, Brandon does what people do after a big event: brunch, at a campground with other January 6 tiny housers. Apparently, he’s not alone in the January 6–tiny houser Venn diagram overlap.

Anyway, it was at this brunch where he learned that a woman had been killed at the Capitol: Micki’s daughter, Ashli. Someone showed him a video, and he cried.

Which for Brandon, is something. He doesn’t express emotions in any easily readable way and almost never in public. You can hear that in the way he speaks. But that video of Ashli—it got to him.

Fellows: And that’s a reason why I showed back up on the eighth, to D.C. I came back. But nobody was there.

Rosin: Nobody was at the Capitol—just a vast field littered with empty water bottles and pepper-spray cans—so he went home. All the other people at the Capitol on January 6—they went home too.

And then the FBI began the largest manhunt in American history. Agents combed through thousands of hours of video and sourced leads from an anonymous group of online sleuths called the Sedition Hunters.

At home, in New York, Brandon noticed a new type of visitor to his LinkedIn profile: so-and-so from the FBI Albany field office, the D.C. field office. And then a cop showed up at his mom’s house, and Brandon began his journey back to D.C.

Fellows: It’s July 2, 2021, is when I reached the D.C. jail. So I walk through the center doors, and—I kid you not—within 15 seconds, I hear on the speakers, Something, something, something, medical staff, medical staff, stabbing victim.

Rosin: About a week later, he’s moved to a temporary cell and more of the same.

Fellows: I start heading over to this basketball court, interior basketball court. So the first probably, like, two minutes, I see this dude come up to this dude, and he says, Where’s my honey bun? And he, all of a sudden, starts stabbing a guy.

Rosin: Wait. You’re watching someone—

Fellows: Yep.

Rosin: With what?

Fellows: I couldn’t make out what it was, but I saw him stabbing him, and I saw some blood. And I watched that just with my jaw dropped, and I’m looking to my right, and I’m seeing these four payphones. And everybody’s just talking. They’re still talking to the person they’re on the phone with, like this happens all—like this is nothing. I was like, I gotta get out of here.

Rosin: Were you genuinely freaked out?

Fellows: I went to go do pull-ups immediately.

Rosin: For a lot of J6ers I’ve interviewed, intake at the D.C. jail is seared into their brains. Most of them had never been to jail before, much less the D.C. jail, which is notorious for its violence. I’ve heard of J6ers who cried in the transport van when they realized where they were going.

But intake is not where they stayed. The population of the D.C. jail is about 90 percent Black, and judges were importing a bunch of guys whose collective reputation was “white supremacist,” so they ended up housed in a segregated unit. The consequences of this were huge and sometimes absurd.

What resulted would eventually become known as the “Patriot Pod,” the place where groups of J6ers were imprisoned together, 20 to 30 at a time over three years. These are the people that Micki and Nicole held their vigil for every night over those two years.

By the time Brandon arrived in D.C., about six months after January 6, he already knew about the Patriot Pod.

Fellows: So we’re walking in, and I’m just imagining in my head. I’m like, Oh I’m gonna walk in to cheers. Like, oh another person like, Hey. We’re sorry this is happening to you. But hey—you know, you made it.

Rosin: There were no cheers, but there was plenty of goodwill. Plus, for Brandon, this was a who’s who of J6—people he’d read about or seen on YouTube during the endless hours he’d spent on house arrest.

Fellows: People started coming up to my cell and talking to me. One standout was Julian Khater, because he said, Hey. I’m the guy that they accused of killing Officer Sicknick. I’m like, No way!

Rosin: This was the crowd that Brandon was walking into: Khater, who pleaded guilty to assaulting officers with a dangerous weapon, and Guy Reffitt, Nicole’s husband, who came to the Capitol with a gun, and a guy named Nate DeGrave, who bragged about punching a cop.

Fellows: Tons of people started coming over, and they’re like, Hey. We’ve got commissary for you. We’ve got commissary. And I’m like, Oh. Okay. So that made up for the not cheering.

Rosin: Fellow J6ers came by Brandon’s cell and asked, Hey. You need a radio? Pen and paper? Need some extra clothes? They dropped off beef jerky, ramen, mac and cheese. Dozens came by just to introduce themselves and talk to the new guy. By the end of the day, Brandon had a stack of items outside his cell and a lot of new friends.

Rosin: They’re just giving you stuff?

Fellows: Yeah.

Rosin: I mean, this is like—this sounds like summer camp.

Fellows: I want to be careful to say that it’s summer camp because, you know, we’re not getting sunlight. We’re getting terrible food. We’re getting—yeah, okay, cool—getting camp food.

But it seemed like at that moment, despite all the terrible stuff going on, we had a good sense of community. At least that’s what I was feeling at first. And like, we were taking care of each other.

Rosin: And why do you think it was like that?

Fellows: We’re the same—like, we all are there for the one event. This isn’t like, you know, in the other wings, where it’s like, Oh, what are you in for? We all know the event we’re in for. We just, like, have different stories of what happened at that event.

[Music]

Rosin: Because most J6ers had no criminal records, the jail-ness of jail came as a shock to them. Their families were mostly far away. They couldn’t shave. Their cells stank. And this is all happening in the winters of 2021 and 2022, when COVID variants were running rampant, especially in jails. Sometimes they had to endure long stretches of solitary confinement. People told me that by day three of being confined, they could hear real disturbing moans coming from some of the cells.

During one nine-day stretch of COVID-induced solitary, Brandon kind of lost it. A fellow J6er, a guy named Kash Kelly, was on detail, which meant he could roam from cell to cell, and he came to Brandon’s rescue.

Fellows: Kash comes up to me, and he’s like, You okay, man? I’m like, Yeah. (Sighs.) And then he’s like, No. No. Are you really okay? And I start tearing up and bawling, because I was, like—I didn’t expect to. I just started bawling. And I, like, turned away from him. And he’s like, Oh, bro. Bro, you alright?

Rosin: The J6ers were going through hell, but the difference between them and the average person in D.C. jail—or, really, any American jail—is that they were going through hell together,so they could soothe each other with a reach out, some commissary, a well-timed joke.

Sometimes, they even found a way to have fun. When the COVID era died down and the men could spend more time out of their cells, they came up with one for the ages, one they’ll remember at a million reunions down the road. They called it The Hopium Den.

On these nights, the men of the Patriot Podgathered their chairs into a semicircle, their cozy amphitheater the site for the show. The emcee was a U.S. Special Forces vet accused of beating a police officer on January 6 with a flagpole. In jail, his fake mic was a mop.

The Hopium Den was a place where the J6ers turned the drudgery of jail into theater. For example, one guy took moldy bologna and rubbed it on another guy’s head and called it a hair-growth commercial. Another guy lifted his shirt up and ate coleslaw like a slob—apparently, he really loved the gloopy prison coleslaw. This was a roast. They rapped diss tracks, wrote mushy poetry to pretend they were gay.

I’ve heard about so many Hopium Den skits, sometimes the guys are snorting with laughter when they recount them to me. And I never understand why they are funny. But that only tells me that, as much as they were stressed and got fed up with each other sometimes, they still had a million inside jokes.

Nate DeGrave: Dear fellow Americans, I never thought I’d write a letter like this.

Rosin: It’s not easy to mark exactly when these individual J6ers became the Patriot Pod—became a unit—and when that unit became an important symbol to MAGA out in the world. One important early moment came in October 2021, when a guy named Nate DeGrave wrote a letter to a right-wing media site.

DeGrave: This is my cry for help. My name is Nathan DeGrave, and as a nonviolent participant at the January 6 rally, I spent the last nine months detained as a political prisoner in pod C2B at the D.C. D.O.C., otherwise known as D.C.’s Gitmo.

Rosin: In his letter, Nate described the conditions as “inhumane.” He said the J6ers were depressed and anxious from the “mental abuse we endure.” He complained about the guards. And then came the important part: He used the phrases “political prisoner” and “D.C.’s Gitmo”—phrases that would shortly be everywhere.

Nate sent the letter to a friend he knew at Gateway Pundit, a right-wing media site. And immediately, it caught fire. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted about it. Greg Kelly called. Tucker Carlson mentioned it.

DeGrave: It started to catch a lot of attention, and more andmore people were adopting the same phrases and words that we were using to describe ourselves.

Rosin: Nate DeGrave was on the phone with his attorney right after his letter got published, and the attorney was watching the GiveSendGo, which is a Christian crowdfunding site. Lots of people in the J6 pod use the site to raise funds for legal fees.

DeGrave: I mean, it went from zero to, like, $20,000, $30,000 in a 10-, 15-minute period.

Rosin: What?

DeGrave: And then I just continued to climb from there. And I think at the end of the first day, I was at probably just north of $70,000.

Rosin: In one day.

DeGrave: In one day. It was amazing. I almost forgot for a moment that I was still in jail.

Rosin: The immediate virality confirmed something for them: Even though their surroundings—iron bars, broken toilet, curfew—told them one story, You are temporarily banished from decent society, that story, they were starting to believe, was not true. They were the decent society. It was the outside that was wrong. And maybe the key thing that confirmed this new truth for them was what happened with the song.

[J6 Prison Choir featuring Donald Trump, “Justice for All”]

Rosin: How did the singing start? Like, how did that tradition start?

Scott Fairlamb: It was right, I think, when I had come in that it started to take off. I’m not sure exactly who started it. It kind of just snowballed, you know?

Rosin: This is Scott Fairlamb, who pleaded guilty to assaulting a police officer. Scott arrived in the Patriot Pod in March 2021.

Rosin: So it happened at a certain time every night?

Fairlamb: Every night at 9 o’clock, we would get everybody and make everybody aware at three minutes out.

Rosin: How?

Fairlamb: I would yell through the door, “Three minutes!” And everyone else could echo it: “Three minutes.” “Three minutes.” “Three minutes.” So everybody would be ready.

Rosin: Scott said at first, the singing started out hesitant, kind of quiet. They weren’t exactly choir types, plus you never knew if the CO on duty that night could get pissed about the singing. But night after night, they did it. And at first, in these early months of the Patriot Pod, it wasn’t for anyone. There was no audience. It was just for themselves.

Fairlamb: And then mid-song, you know, “And our flag was—” and then everybody would yell, “—still there!” You could feel the building shake.

Rosin: Why “still there”? Why those words?

Fairlamb: Because we were “still there.” It was a reminder.

Rosin: That what?

Fairlamb: That we stood up for what we believe in and that we were still patriots, no matter who wanted to deem us as less than that, and it was something that really kept my morale and my love of country intact.

Rosin: Like The Hopium Den, this singing had an element of theater. Unlike The Hopium Den, this particular ritual spread far and wide, from their little jailhouse community theater out to the political equivalent of Broadway.

If someone made the inspirational musical, here is how it would roll out: A group of men believe they’ve been betrayed by their country, and they start to taste despair. Without their love of America, who even are they? Then one day, one of them opens his mouth and warbles a patriotic tune.

[J6 Prison Choir featuring Donald Trump, “Justice for All”]

Rosin: One of the men—that’s Guy Reffitt—tells his wife about it—that’s Nicole. And one day, she meets a new friend, Micki, and they, too, join the singing.

Person on speaker: It’s 8:59. Let me say the one-minute warning—

Rosin: Pretty soon, they recruit a small, amateur choir. That’s the nightly vigil. They start livestreaming the singing every night, and someone hears it and has an idea: Take this song plus Trump’s voice, and you have magic.

[J6 Prison Choir featuring Donald Trump, “Justice for All”]

Rosin: Trump starts to use this recording as his campaign walkout song, the same song we heard at CPAC. It goes to No. 1 on iTunes.

At his first big official campaign event, in Waco, Texas, in March 2023, Trump goes big and theatrical with it.

[J6 Prison Choir featuring Donald Trump, “Justice for All”]

Rosin: Huge screens play dramatic scenes from January 6 as he speaks.

Donald Trump: Thank you very much, everybody.

Rosin: And curtain.

Ober: In all this singing and fraternizing, there was one person who was on the fringes. Some guys would bully him, get on his case because his cell was filthy. In the Patriot Pod, Brandon stood out for the wrong reasons, so he set out to fix that. That’s after the break.

[Break]

Rosin: As Brandon spent more time fraternizing with these guys, he started to think more about one way he was not like them.

The way Brandon saw it, there was a bright line in the pod. On one side were him and a couple of other guys—the nonviolent guys, he calls them, who, when they saw trouble, ducked. And on the other, heroes: people like Nicole’s husband, Guy Reffitt, who’d brought an actual gun to the Capitol. Eight months into jail for Brandon, he wanted to be on the other side of that line.

Fellows: These guys are the real people, the real heroes. I’m not a hero. I’m just some idiot that took selfies inside and smoked somebody’s joint that was passed around. I was there to take selfies, and I just happened to get caught up in this crap. But these people were actually, it seemed, willing, though they didn’t use guns. And then I just started—my eyes started opening up.

[Music]

Rosin: Here was his clever idea: Some of the detainees had been given these iPad-like devices. The evidence being used against them consisted of videos, so they needed to watch them to prepare a defense. And Brandon noticed that on his device, the camera hadn’t been turned off.

Fellows: Bro, a cockroach just came out of that. Hold on.

Rosin: So he started to film.

Fellows: Do you see him moving around in there?

Rosin: He leaked those videos to Gateway Pundit, and on May 25, 2022, they published a story: “Exclusive Footage: Secret Video Recordings [Leaked] From Inside ‘The Hole’ of DC Gitmo.” It wasn’t “the hole,” just a regular cell, but whatever. It’s a better headline that way. Quote, “First footage ever released of cockroach and mold infested cell of J6 political prisoner.”

His fellow detainees were, for once, calling Brandon Fellows “brave.”

Fellows: I told them, Hey, guys. Here’s how we’re gonna sneak out future videos. Here’s how we’re gonna do this. I feel like I earned my respect, because, remember, some of them didn’t—some of them used to say, You’re not even a January 6er. Some of them used to say that because, you know, I didn’t do anything violent.

Rosin: Brandon couldn’t undo how he’d acted on January 6, 2021. But what he could do was pitch himself as the strategist of a future operation, whatever that operation might be.

By the time I met up with him, outside the jail, the clock was ticking. The upcoming election was close. And Brandon was strategizing. This time, some things were different: For one, he’s a mini celebrity. People from all over the world have offered him a place to stay if he needs it. He’s had job offers, one from one of the many J6ers who have run or are planning to run for public office. All the sudden, he seems to be everywhere.

In June, he popped up in my Twitter feed, going viral for making funny faces behind Dr. Anthony Fauci at a public hearing. And in July, this came up on our neighborhood text chain: D.C. Community Safety Alert. J6er Brandon Fellows in a MAGA group house called the Eagle’s Nest—yes, like Hitler—is bragging on Twitter about punching women at local bars.

Punching women at local bars? I’d known Brandon enough by now to think this was a little out of character. Or maybe I didn’t know Brandon. So first thing I did, of course, was watch the videos.

[Overlapping shouting, swearing]

Rosin: Best I can tell, here is what happened: The bar—which, by the way, happens to be a few minutes from my office—is packed for July 4. A woman sitting with her boyfriend says something about Brandon’s MAGA hat, which is hanging from his backpack. Brandon is there with another woman—I know her from the vigil—and she starts filming and taunting the woman and her boyfriend.

Woman: Oh my god!

[Shouting]

Rosin: Then it all breaks: The woman throws a punch, which lands on Brandon. He punches back. And then the boyfriend gets involved, and by the end, Brandon is pinning him down.

I can say this: Brandon didn’t start it. But I can also say this: The trolling escalated pretty quickly into a real fight. And so I suddenly felt more urgency to figure out what Brandon actually meant at that Ashli rally when he said he was “willing to die,” because in this bar incident, there was a very thin line between words and actual violence, which is, obviously, relevant to current events.

Rosin: Like, how long are you going to stay in D.C.? Like is this—do you have a plan here?

Fellows: Yeah. I plan to stay ’til, like, January 7. (Laughs.)

Rosin: Wow.

Fellows: Yeah. That was my plan.

Rosin: That feels vaguely threatening.

Fellows: I could see why you would say that, especially considering, you know, my feelings.

Rosin: About violence?

Fellows: Well, about how, man, I wish, after seeing all the chaos that’s happened in the world and to the country, how I wish people did more on January 6—instead of, like me, taking selfies and just smiling. I think it would have been better off if people actually would have actually been there for—like, more people would have actually been there for an insurrection.

Rosin: Best as I can tell, here was the evolution of young Brandon: When he arrived at the Patriot Pod a nonviolent J6er, he was a little starstruck. The violent offenders were, to him, hardcore. But when he left, they were more like exalted, not just hardcore but righteous— more like Founding Fathers.

Fellows:Who was it, Thomas Jefferson? He said something along the lines of—I think it was Thomas Jefferson—every 250 years or so, the tree of liberty will have to be—What is it? Like, we’ll have to have the blood of the tyrants and the patriots. Like, they’ll have to cleanse it. It’ll have to be cleansed with the blood of the patriots and the tyrants.

And that is such a scary thought. I don’t want that to happen. I think more people, as I continually point out, I think more people would have suffered if we didn’t have the Civil War and the Union didn’t win.

That’s how I kind of, like, view it. Like, All right, are we there? Do we need something like that in order to, like, save more lives? That’s how I view it. I know people disagree, but that’s what I look to.

Rosin: So what he’s saying is that sometimes blood has to be shed in the short-term to restore America to its original purpose in the long-term, or some illogical logic like that.

Fellows: This is all make believe, by the way. This is—

Rosin: I can’t tell with you what is make believe.

Fellows:No. No. No. I’m not making it up. I’m saying, though, I hope that it doesn’t come to this. You know, I’d be nice if Trump just got in, and if he just does what he did before, that’ll be a nice Band-Aid. We need something a little bit more intense, and I’m hoping it goes a little bit more intense.

Rosin: But there’s just a possibility that he will legitimately lose this election, like, at the ballot box.

Fellows: Yeah. I think at that point, you know, people might have to do something.

[Music]

Rosin: Donald Trump has been saying that he’ll only lose if Democrats cheat like hell. Brandon is taking that one step further: He’s saying it doesn’t matter if Trump loses legitimately or illegitimately. Either way, people might have to do something. So I guess now I had my answer—this is what Brandon meant when he said at the Ashli Memorial Day march, “It’s my time to die.”

Maybe the Brandons of the world just like to talk. Maybe the FBI will be better prepared. I don’t know. But I can tell you that a lot has changed since Brandon first showed up at the Capitol. The energy of these J6ers—it’s not shocked and naive, like it was four years ago. It’s more calculated and steely. This whole “cleansing with the blood of the patriots” thing that he’s talking about is not thinking of it as an accident that happened one day, when things got out of control. It’s more like a plan.

Ober: Soon after that incident at the bar where Brandon punched a woman, Micki and Brandon “had words” about his antics, mostly because she doesn’t like drawing that kind of negative attention to her house or her cause.

But these amped-up young patriots and the women of the Eagle’s Nest—they may be moving in different directions. That’s in our next and final episode of We Live Here Now.

[Music]

Ober: We Live Here Now is a production of The Atlantic. The show was reported, written, and executive produced by me, Lauren Ober. Hanna Rosin reported, wrote, and edited the series. Our senior producer is Rider Alsop. Our producer is Ethan Brooks. Original scoring, sound design, and mix engineering by Brendan Baker.

This series was edited by Scott Stossel and Claudine Ebeid. Fact-checking by Michelle Ciarrocca. Art direction by Colin Hunter. Project management by Nancy DeVille.

Rosin: Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of Atlantic audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. The Atlantic’s executive editor is Adrienne LaFrance. Jeffrey Goldberg is The Atlantic’s editor in chief.


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Robert Roberson of Texas is scheduled to die by lethal injection despite doubts over shaken baby syndrome, the scientific theory used to convict him in the death of his daughter.
washingtonpost.com
PrizePicks Promo Code POSTMAX: Earn $50 Bonus for Dodgers-Mets with $5 entry on Wednesday
Sign up with PrizePicks promo code POSTMAX for Wednesday's action and get $50 instantly when you create a $5 entry.
nypost.com
Liberty know the ‘little details’ that will decide WNBA Finals
In a WNBA Finals tied 1-1, the Liberty have had trouble holding that lead late in both games. They hope to improve that in Game 3 Wednesday night.
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Code 11.59 by Audemars Piguet adds 7 new pink-gold watches
The iconic model continues its evolution this year, expanding with seven new 18-karat pink-gold offerings.
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Trump says Josh Allen was going to be No 1 pick in 2018 NFL Draft before social media posts surfaced
Former President Donald Trump said Josh Allen would have been the No. 1 overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft if it were for offensive comments that surfaced.
foxnews.com
Meet the woman who teamed with Rolex to photograph the world
The Mexico native has spent over three decades traveling to more than 130 countries.
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Aaron Judge makes the Yankees collapse-proof
The soon-to-be two-time MVP may have changed the trajectory of his playoff legacy with one swing.
nypost.com
Delta is giving its cabin interiors a new look. Here's a peek inside.
Delta says new seating materials and other cabin design enhancements "elevate the travel experience."
cbsnews.com
Fox News Host Faces MAGA Pile On for Harris Interview That Hasn’t Even Happened Yet
Dustin Franz/ AFP via Getty ImagesFox News anchor Bret Baier is fending off pre-emptive fire from Donald Trump's fans as he attempts to convince the MAGA-verse that his upcoming interview with Vice President Kamala Harris won’t be rigged.Following their familiar playbook, users on X claimed—without evidence, and this time before even seeing the interview—that the Special Report host planned to edit Wednesday’s interview tape to make the Democratic presidential candidate look better.Baier spent several hours Tuesday assuring MAGA users he hadn’t made any concession to Harris to land the interview and wouldn’t be giving her the questions in advance, but his explanations didn’t seem to get through.Read more at The Daily Beast.
thedailybeast.com
Details of iconic shipwreck revealed in never-before-seen footage
"Endurance" features thousands of 3D scans shot by a 4K camera deployed to a depth of nearly 10,000 feet.
cbsnews.com
Diddy Lawyers’ New Demand: His Accusers Must Be Named
Jerritt Clark/Getty for Epic RecordsFaced with a growing mountain of sex-abuse lawsuits, lawyers for Sean “Diddy” Combs would very much like to know who’s been saying what. The disgraced mogul’s team argues in a new court filing that, because of the “unique” aspects of the case—namely Diddy’s “celebrity status” and “wealth,” as well as the sheer volume of allegations—they should get to know the names of his accusers, The Guardian reports.His attorneys say the “torrent” of claims “by unidentified complainants, spanning from false to outright absurd,” has created a “pervasive ripple effect.” They reportedly gesture toward recent efforts by Texas lawyer Tony Buzbee to sign up alleged victims: Buzbee says at least 120 people have come to him with complaints about the rapper, and on Monday, his clients filed six anonymous sexual assault complaints. Diddy’s team wrote that “swirling allegations have created a hysterical media circus that, if left unchecked, will irreparably deprive Mr. Combs of a fair trial, if they haven’t already.”Read more at The Daily Beast.
thedailybeast.com
NFL's top brass agree finger-gun celebrations send 'the wrong messages'
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and league executive Troy Vincent agreed on Tuesday that there was "no place" for finger-gun celebrations in the sport.
foxnews.com
Travis Kelce had ‘mixed feelings’ while cuddling up with Taylor Swift at Yankees playoff game
Travis Kelce was torn during his Yankee Stadium outing with Taylor Swift.
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Afghan national accused in terror plot was not vetted for SIV status, despite past Biden admin claims
The Biden-Harris administration has backtracked and now admits that an Afghan national accused of an Election Day terror plot did not undergo certain vetting they previously claimed he passed.
foxnews.com
Former Vegas Democrat politician convicted of killing reporter faces at least 20 years at sentencing hearing
Robert Telles, a former Las Vegas-area Democratic politician convicted of killing a journalist, could face up to 28 years in prison before he becomes eligible for parole.
foxnews.com
Rapper Lord Jamar says Kamala Harris isn’t qualified enough to run ‘Dunkin Donuts or a 7-11’
Lord Jamar suggested Kamala Harris "is not qualified to run, you know, a Dunkin Donuts or a 7-11, let alone the corporation that we call the United States of America."
nypost.com
Patek Philippe’s new royal purple Twenty~4 watch is fit for a queen
To celebrate its 25th anniversary, Patek Philippe has introduced a new rose-gold version with a (fittingly) royal-purple dial.
nypost.com
The Trump Loyalist Democrats Have a Chance to Defeat
Thanks to a bluer district and a formidable opponent, Pennsylvania Representative Scott Perry is now the nation’s most vulnerable MAGA Republican.
theatlantic.com
All in the family: Hart High has 10 sets of brothers playing football
Happening at Hart High is a sports anomaly: Ten sets of brothers are playing on the varsity and junior varsity football teams.
latimes.com
Melania Trump to release 'Collector's Edition' of memoir featuring images photographed by former first lady
EXCLUSIVE: Former First Lady Melania Trump is releasing a special collector’s edition of her new memoir containing exclusive images she photographed at the White House and around the world.
foxnews.com
The Sports Report: Can Shohei Ohtani fix his swing before Game 3?
Starting with an 0-for-4 performance in Game 5 against the Padres, Shohei Ohtani hasn’t looked like himself.
latimes.com
Is every car dealer trying to rip me off?
A Vox reader writes: “Why are car dealers so shady? How do consumers avoid them? Is it frustrating for everyone?” Americans have long hated the car-buying experience. It’s not uncommon to spend hours (or even the whole day) at a dealership, finally reaching a deal and still walking away feeling vaguely hoodwinked. “It’s a process that generally stinks, and it’s designed that way,” says Tom McParland, founder of Automatch Consulting, a service that helps car buyers find the best price on the vehicle they want. A lot of the distaste comes down to the uncertainty of what you’ll end up paying. In an age when you can buy almost anything online without interacting with another human being, where you can easily shop around for the best deal, cars remain one of the few purchases where your personal negotiation skills — as well as, sometimes, your race, gender, and income — can determine the price.  Sign up for the Explain It to Me newsletter The newsletter is part of Vox’s Explain It to Me. Each week, we tackle a question from our audience and deliver a digestible explainer from one of our journalists. Have a question you want us to answer? Ask us here. Sometimes, the tactics car salespeople use go beyond just the hard sell to the downright deceptive. One common trap is bait and switch prices, where a car is initially advertised as one price (usually achieved by piling on discounts that you may not qualify for). When you run to the dealership to snag the deal, you’re told the vehicle has already been sold but there’s a similar one that’s more expensive. Or take yo-yo sales, in which you drive your new car home only to be told a few days later that the financing fell through so you’ll have to accept a higher interest rate or make a bigger down payment. A dealer might also try to sneak unneeded add-ons — like extended warranties or protective coatings — onto the total price of the car. Last year, the Federal Trade Commission received more than 184,000 auto-related consumer complaints, making it the third most common category after complaints about credit bureaus, as well as banks and lenders. While there are some fair dealers, the car marketplace has “a lot of sharp and unethical business practices, and consumers are hurt by it,” says Chuck Bell, programs director of advocacy at Consumer Reports. “By the time that the consumer gets out the door, they feel like they’ve been doing battle.” Why is shopping for cars done this way? The first hint that you’re on unequal footing with a car salesperson comes when they’re cagey about giving a price quote even over the phone, let alone in writing. McParland says that the dealers he calls around to for clients often tell him that he has to come to the dealership for a price. “They’re basically just telling us to go pound sand,” he says. Dealers want you to come in because it’s much easier to upsell you that way. You’ve invested some effort into the process, and the salesperson can get a better read on how impatient you are to buy a car, how inexperienced you are with car shopping, and plenty of other factors to wield to their advantage. On the other hand, if they offer you an out-the-door price — which includes all extras and fees — before you ever meet in person, you could easily take the price to a competing dealer and ask if they can do better. While online used car dealers like CarMax and Carvana did make “no haggle” car prices more popular, they often come at a premium, according to McParland. Some traditional car dealers now offer fixed prices too, but it’s probably to your benefit to try to negotiate down. How did the system get to be like this? The general practice of negotiating car prices instead of paying a fixed price may actually stem from horse trading, in which sellers and buyers also haggled and buyers would even trade in their old horse to offset the price of the new one, much as we do with cars today.  The model has endured for so long, though, in part thanks to state franchise laws that ensure these middlemen car dealerships can’t be easily cut out. Most states ban carmakers from selling directly to consumers. Tesla is the rare exception of a car company that sells directly, and it has battled with car dealers for the right to do so. Car dealer trade groups have considerable political power, and they’re organized enough and deep-pocketed enough to lobby against reforms that would threaten the status quo, such as changing franchise laws that give them exclusive rights to sell a certain car brand in a particular territory. The National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), for its part, argues that franchise laws in fact increase competitiveness and benefit the consumer, all the while creating local jobs. “They’re an enormously powerful lobby,” says Bell. Just look at how the industry pushed back against enforcement curtailing auto lending discrimination. Car dealers often arrange financing for customers, but they add a mark-up to the interest rate offered by banks because they can pocket that extra money for themselves. How much of a mark-up is applied is at the dealer’s discretion, and unlike mortgage lenders, they’re not required to collect data on the race of their customers, making it much harder to see if they’re complying with fair lending laws. Research shows that car dealers often charge higher interest rates to people of color. When the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau started cracking down on this practice in 2013, the industry fought back and won. Is there any hope for making the car-buying process better? Still, there’s reason to be optimistic about the future of shopping for cars. Late last year, the FTC announced new regulation that takes aim at the most rampant deceptive practices used by car dealers. It would, for one, require dealers to disclose the full, out-the-door price of a car, including all add-ons, before a customer visits the dealership. The price and other terms related to purchase of the car also have to be expressed in simple language. Dealers also wouldn’t be allowed to charge customers for useless add-ons. The FTC estimates the rule will save customers $3.4 billion and cut down the time spent shopping for cars by 72 million hours. The rule was supposed to go into effect this summer but was delayed after two car dealer trade groups, including NADA, filed a challenge. The association told Vox that the rule would make the car-buying experience worse. “Consumers will have to spend an additional 60-80 minutes at the dealership, complete up to five new, untested forms, and will lose at least $1.3 billion a year in time as a result of this rule,” a spokesperson wrote in an email. But Bell is confident that the rule will ultimately go into effect, and if you’re looking for a car, you should behave as though these protections already apply. McParland advises asking dealers to provide, over email, an “itemized out-the-door price” on the vehicle you’re interested in. If they refuse, “that’s usually a red flag, so move on to somebody else,” he says. This story was featured in the Explain It to Me newsletter. Sign up here. For more from Explain It to Me, check out the podcast. New episodes drop every Wednesday.
vox.com
Bryan Danielson’s jarring end to full-time career was change AEW needed
The jarring end to Bryan Danielson’s full-time career shows how much he cares. As the American Dragon was stretchered out of the Tacoma Dome in his home state of Washington to end AEW’s WrestleDream pay-per-view on Saturday, he had just completed one of the most giving ends to a career as we have seen in...
nypost.com
Fanatics Sportsbook Promo: Begin 10-day $1,000 bet match offer on Dodgers-Mets in NLCS, any sport
Sign up with the Fanatics Sportsbook promo to bet on the Los Angeles Dodgers vs. the New York Mets on Wednesday. Once you register, you can start claiming a $100 bet match for 10 straight days.
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Zelensky Pitches ‘Victory Plan’ in Ukraine’s Parliament
The proposal would rely heavily on increased Western assistance. So far, it has drawn a lukewarm response from Ukraine’s allies.
nytimes.com
Fuel tanker truck explosion kills at least 94 in Nigeria
Dozens of people in northern Nigeria were killed in a massive explosion as they tried to scoop up fuel from a crashed tanker truck.
cbsnews.com
London Jewelers hosts annual Watch Fair extravaganza, showcasing rare timepieces from top brands
This year’s crop of luxury watches takes inspiration from decades past.
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Young migrants tied to 'shocking' increase in gang-led crime in NYC's Times Square, says NYPD
Twenty gang members have been arrested in connection to 50 separate crimes in New York City as officials warn of a lack of consequences.
foxnews.com
‘This Is Us’ alum Justin Hartley dishes on new season of ‘Tracker,’ his watch collection and parenthood
Star Justin Hartley became the king of prime time playing a guy who finds those people — often, for a hefty reward fee.
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Sean "Diddy" Combs seeking release of names of his accusers
Lawyers for Sean 'Diddy' Combs have asked a New York judge to force prosecutors to disclose the names of his accusers in his sex trafficking case.
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cbsnews.com
High school senior shot, killed in apparent murder-suicide on the way to homecoming dance: cops
A high school senior was shot and killed in an apparent murder-suicide by her older DJ boyfriend while they were on the way to her homecoming dance in Louisiana, officials said.
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Harris and Trump make separate pitches to voters on FOX News and more top headlines
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox.
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How TIME Chose Its Fall 2024 Class of Next Generation Leaders
For nearly a decade, through our Next Generation Leaders franchise, we've been sharing the stories of trailblazers shaping our future.
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time.com
Connecticut dad dies from rare mosquito-borne virus he caught in his own backyard – and cases are on the rise
"I'm not joking when I say your life can change in the blink of an eye, because that was what happened to us," his grieving daughter said.
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AOC fires back at Fetterman, accuses him of 'bleak dunk attempt'
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fired back, accusing Sen. John Fetterman of a 'bleak dunk attempt' after he shared a screenshot of a headline mentioning her.
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foxnews.com
From mobsters to mulch: Inside Queens’ only certified public ‘tree museum’ and its gangster past
This Queens park has been totally spruced up.
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How pre-election rhetoric could fuel post-presidential election pandemonium
As much as I want this presidential election to be over, I'm afraid of what comes next.
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latimes.com
'Our opponents are going to need oxygen': UCLA reveals depth, pressure in scrimmage
These Bruins are deeper, more talented and feistier than the freshman-heavy bunch that finished with a losing record last season.
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latimes.com
The crusade against overhead lighting
Mariah Carey issued the latest salvo against the “hideous” lighting from the big light. But there is a way to do overhead lighting right.
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washingtonpost.com
The Only Way to Start a Magazine
A lover of magazines may find a few good reasons to pay attention to AFM, a new publication about sex and relationships. It’s visually fun and full of excellent writing. It’s also the latest in a long line of magazines to exist only because of the largesse of a tech company.AFM stands for both “A Fucking Magazine” and “A Feeld Magazine”—that second one a reference to the dating app that is funding the enterprise. Feeld started its life in 2014 specifically to facilitate threesomes. It was originally called 3nder, pronounced “Thrinder,” which quickly led the company to receive a trademark-infringement complaint from Tinder. (Rebranding might have been a good idea anyway, as some initially perceived both the name and the app itself to be corny and embarrassing.) Feeld got a chic makeover last year, then worked through some major technical glitches and is now known as an all-purpose dating app with a uniquely broad range of options for identifying one’s sexual and relationship preferences. It remains especially popular with those seeking nonmonogamous connections.[Read: The woman who made online dating into a “science”]To expand its cultural cachet, the app is now joining many other tech companies and VC-funded start-ups that have spun up media outlets in recent years. Previously, these publications have tended not to have protracted lifespans. The buzzy, VC-funded luggage start-up Away had a magazine, Here, that quietly stopped publishing in 2020. The direct-to-consumer mattress brand Casper launched Woolly (after folding another online publication, Van Winkle’s); it did not last. Dollar Shave Club funded the popular website MEL until 2021 and then just stopped; Snapchat funded the popular website Real Life until 2022 and then just stopped. There were magazines by Airbnb and Uber and Bumble and now there are not. Tech gets into magazines for a good time, not a long time.Still, for journalists who are staring down a crumbling media business—one that teeters on the edge of “extinction” because of anemic traffic, a poor ad market, and burned-out readers, as Clare Malone argued in The New Yorker earlier this year—this arrangement is better than nothing.AFM is co-edited by Maria Dimitrova, a long-time Feeld employee who previously created the company’s U.K.-based literary journal, Mal, which ran for five issues, and by Haley Mlotek, who has held many jobs in media, including as the editor of The Hairpin, a feminist website that folded in 2018, and as an editor at The Village Voice, the legendary alt weekly that collapsed in 2017 but recently has been resurrected as a mostly online property. Mlotek applied for a copywriting job at Feeld in the fall of 2022 to supplement her freelance-writing income and the company emailed her back to ask her to edit a magazine instead.“I have a lot of experience working for really wonderful, beloved, in my opinion excellent publications that just no longer exist,” she told me. AFM is two things at once: a magazine and an advertising campaign for Feeld. Mlotek said she’s hopeful that this model is at least as sustainable as anything else. She gestured at a history of publications being funded by single businesses or brands, citing European department stores that produced their own magazines beginning in the late 1800s. AFM’s title is also a direct reference to the frustrating state of the media industry, Mlotek explained. Obviously it’s about sex, but it is also a reference to how wild starting a magazine, of all things, is right now: It reflects “the frustrations and the risks and the thrill of trying to produce a print publication at this moment in time,” she said. “It’s a joke, but it’s so serious.”[Read: The “dating market” is getting worse]Feeld has no plans for AFM to make any of its own money. The only ads in the first issue are in-kind ads for other magazines, including n+1 and The Drift. The idea is more that it will “bring back a bit of romance to dating,” Dimitrova told me, which might naturally help Feeld’s business. This is a task that a lot of dating apps are struggling with: The experience of using a smartphone to look for sex and love has started to feel numbing and hopeless to many people. The dating app Hinge also recently debuted an online zine that is more explicitly a marketing campaign—love stories written by cool writers including R. O. Kwon and Brontez Purnell—accessible via QR code on the subway, presumably with the same goal. In so much as AFM can be a successful ad for Feeld, it will suggest to its readers that Feeld is the app for creative people who are deeply thoughtful, imaginative, funny, and smart—that using the app will not make a person feel like every potential match might be a bot, an idiot, or a freak.The first issue of AFM has contributions from a number of prominent writers, including Tony Tulathimutte, Hanif Abdurraqib, and Allison P. Davis. Many of the contributors, the editors said, are Feeld users themselves; some of the poetry in the issue, including “Self Portrait as the Tree of Knowledge (aka Trans Poetica)” by Delilah McCrea, was selected from open submissions solicited directly in the app. A reported feature on masculinity and bisexuality, written by the novelist Fan Wu, sourced interview subjects from Feeld. It’s a healthy combination of sexy stuff, sweet stuff, and serious stuff—one photo essay of people in their homes getting ready for dates and one accompanying a guide to making your own latex.A funny piece of fiction by the writer Ashani Lewis is made up of several distinct “breakup fantasies,” including one about ending a relationship with someone by tossing a sex toy they gifted you into a body of water and watching it drift away. An essay by the 96-year-old filmmaker James Ivory, about coming of age in Palm Springs and later spending an evening hanging out around Truman Capote, is both gossipy and moving. The stand-out piece is a dead-eyed essay by the writer Merritt Tierce, recounting her years of attempts to get a TV show made about abortion. (“The executive vice president of television said, Well, ‘abortion anthology’ is not one but two words no studio wants to hear.”)The first AFM cover star is the artist and musician Juliana Huxtable, who will DJ at a launch party in Brooklyn this week. The magazine will be distributed in the U.S. and the U.K. in the same places where you can buy any other highbrow cultural or literary magazine, and it will also be available for purchase online. Asked whether people could subscribe to it, Dimitrova said no.She and Mlotek already have plans to start working on issue two. Yet, though she didn’t state as much, Dimitrova seemed aware that you never can tell how long the money will keep coming. Things often change. “You know,” she said, “each issue is its own miracle.”
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theatlantic.com
How to prepare for growing older if you don’t have kids
My husband and I have been married for five years. During that time, a battalion of well-meaning relatives — starting with my parents and extending all the way to aunts and uncles — have tried to convince us to have children. Despite these persistent pleas, we aren’t convinced. The world just feels too chaotic and we’re unsure if we want to subject a child to it.  Increasingly, other American adults are making a similar choice. As of 2018, 16.5 percent of adults 55 and over in the US didn’t have children. According to a Pew Research Center survey released in July, the number of US adults younger than 50 who don’t have children and say they are unlikely ever to have them rose from 37 percent in 2018 to 47 percent in 2023. The top reason cited by this group is that they just don’t want to.  Chances are, well-meaning folks (like my parents) have asked child-free adults at some stage: “You may be carefree now, but what happens when you get old?”  Does having no children place us at a disadvantage? The Pew survey also found that one in four adults aged 50 and older without children frequently worry about who will care for them as they age, and one in three worry about having enough money.  Certainly, children can offer peace of mind, a person to lean on as you face the realities of aging. But the truth is, “even when people have children, those children don’t always become the safety net that one might think,” says Kate Granigan, chief executive officer of LifeCare Advocates and president of the Aging Life Care Association Board.  Seniors can live flourishing lives without kids, experts say, but they need to be prepared to lean on other people, financially plan for the future, and make use of support services. Presently, the majority of older adults without involved partners or children are not adequately prepared for their future care and end of life, according to the AARP. This needs to change. “Being able to have some foresight … and [knowing] how to prepare in the best way possible can really help people thrive and age well,” says Granigan.  Ensure you have people who will watch out for you Many adult children tend to be the ones who keep an eye on their parents and coordinate necessary help. You want to find people to fill this role, says Beth Eagen, a Seattle-based geriatric social worker. Befriend people in the communities you’re in and invest in the relationships in your life, advises Stacy Reger, a geropsychologist in Los Angeles, California.  These people may not be doing all your care, but they can watch your back. “You may have a friend or colleague or someone that you’re close with that is also in your same position … and you can create a group that checks in on each other,” says Granigan.  Not only are these relationships fulfilling, they mean you have someone to call for ad hoc assistance, like a ride back from the supermarket if you have a particularly heavy shop or a lift to the emergency room.  As you form new connections, be open to multi-generational friendships. If everyone in your life is your age and people start getting ill at similar times, it will be harder for them to help when you need it, Eagen explains. When planning where you will retire, Eagen and Granigan also encourage choosing an area with a “village” and signing up for it. Villages are not-for-profit associations around the country that connect seniors with others in the neighborhood to create a community that looks out for one another. If you need a car ride, help with household tasks, or want to participate in social activities, the village will coordinate. Annual membership fees can be up to $1,000, but increasing numbers of villages are introducing a “pay as you can” model and subsidizing fees for those who can’t afford it. Get your finances in order to pay for support  Jay Zigmont, a certified financial planner for child-free adults, advises clients in their mid-40s to purchase long-term care insurance. In general, long-term care insurance covers the nonmedical support you may need to perform activities of daily living, like eating, bathing, walking, and taking medication. It pays for the costs of at-home caregivers, adult day care, transportation, and senior living arrangements, like nursing homes and assisted living facilities. More than half of US adults turning 65 are expected to require some sort of long-term services and support as they age, and many people are unaware that Medicare, the government health program for seniors, does not cover these supports. The earlier you buy a long-term care policy, the better the price, and the smaller the likelihood of having a condition that disqualifies you from coverage, Zigmont says. Paying for it upfront is expensive, but the price is locked in, he says. Alternatively, you can pay for it annually. If you miss a payment, the policy gets canceled, and you will not get a comparable policy again. If you don’t purchase insurance, you will likely be paying for long-term care out of pocket, says Zigmont, author of the upcoming book The Childfree Guide to Life and Money. Medicaid, a government health program for low-income people, only covers care once you’ve burned through your assets.  If you’re paying out of pocket, bear in mind that long-term care costs can quickly add up: A private room in a nursing home, for instance, can cost around $115,000 a year and goes up by about 5 percent every year, says Zigmont. Do what you need to do to start saving and investing your money now so that “it grows at least 5 percent per year in order to cover your long-term care costs” plus any impending taxes, says Zigmont. Get excited about your senior years Remind yourself that your senior years can absolutely be fulfilling, says Anna Chodos, a geriatrician in the UCSF Department of Medicine. So, start dreaming. Build a mental image of your future self, advises Chodos and Aja Evans, a financial therapist in New York City and author of Feel-Good Finance. “Who and where do you want older you to be? What do you want your lifestyle to be? What’s really important to older you?” are some of the questions Evans poses to her clients. She finds this practice can make saving money for the future feel more imperative and purposeful. As you inch closer to your senior years, brainstorm what you enjoy doing that also gives you purpose — “something meaningful that gives you a reason for getting up every day,” says Chodos. Learn an instrument, write stories, volunteer as a museum guide. Add activities that involve meeting people on a regular basis, like a dinner party club, board games night, or walking group, to foster friendships. Be intentional about where you will retire When you’re a senior without kids, you will either live in your own place or in one of the many types of senior living arrangements. In assisted living or nursing homes, you are often getting most of the support you need for your daily living. When you live in your own place or in an independent-living community, you can engage support services to help with meal prepping, bathing, medication management, home modifications (if the accommodation allows it), and more, says Eagen. Long-term care insurance can cover the cost of these services, depending on the policy.  Granigan says it’s essential to find out how accessible these support services are in the area you wish to retire, and their associated costs. To get this information, consult the local Area Agency on Aging (use this Eldercare Locator database to find one), a local aging life care professional, or local “villages.” Also consider the opportunities for social connections that will be available to you and how easy it will be to participate in fun, meaningful activities. Are these easily accessible on foot if you can no longer drive? What about public transit, supermarkets, banks, gyms, parks, libraries, faith-based communities, malls, senior centers, and eateries? Prioritize your health  For adults without children heading into their golden years, it’s especially important to mind your physical and mental health, as well as pay attention to keeping your cognitive abilities sharp, so you can remain independent for as long as possible.  Stay on top of exercising, and do your best to maintain your bone health, balance, muscle mass, strength, and mobility, advises Chodos and Granigan. Control risk factors like diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, watch your alcohol intake, and keep up with medical visits. If you’re otherwise healthy, see your primary care physician annually to screen for chronic conditions once you turn 60, says Chodos.  You might also consider entrusting your medical care to providers who are younger than you, says Reger, as they are more likely to be able to see your care through to the end.  As for exercising the mind, crossword puzzles and Sudoku are all fine and good, but they aren’t the most effective in helping to preserve your brain function, says Reger. Instead, she says to focus on “engag[ing] in activities that keep you interested and thinking … something where you’re still using the parts of your brain that are active in problem solving and thinking creatively.” “It’s really good if whatever you’re doing involves a social aspect because socializing with other people naturally stimulates our brain,” she emphasizes. “We have to be engaged, processing, and mentally flexible to have even a simple conversation … Speaking to new people, doing outreach, explaining ideas, any of that kind of mental activity is good for our brain.” “Hearing loss is a very strong risk factor for cognitive decline,” Chodos adds, so any changes to your hearing need to be corrected, stat.  Gather a team to help you navigate the aging journey Eagen and Granigan say another option is assembling a team of professionals who can guide you through most of the processes outlined above, from financial management to engaging support services. The team may include an elder law attorney, aging life care professional, geriatric social worker, primary care doctor and/or geriatrician, and a financial planner who specializes in the child-free population. These professionals are all experienced at anticipating and steering you away from common pitfalls. Set up advance directives With an elder law attorney, spell out what you envision for your assets, medical care, and end of life in legal documents like advance directives and a will. As part of this, you will need to nominate people who’ll make decisions on your behalf if you become incapacitated.  Your senior years can and should be an exciting new phase of your life, whether or not you have children. With a little foresight and thoughtful planning, they can be every bit as fulfilling as you’ve always hoped.  
1 h
vox.com
Many Americans are car poor from their auto loans. Here’s why.
Nearly 1 in 4 consumers owe more on such loans than the vehicle is worth, pushing the national average for upside-down balances to a record high north of $6,400.
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washingtonpost.com
Georgia Judge Blocks Trump Allies’ Ballot Hand-Counting Rule
Dustin Chambers/ ReutersA Georgia judge on Tuesday paused a last-minute rule adopted by Donald Trump’s allies on the State Election Board requiring ballots to be counted by hand. The judge wrote that introducing an unknown and untested rule at the “11th-and-one-half hour” affecting more than 7,500 poll workers was guaranteed to introduce “administrative chaos” that was “entirely inconsistent with the obligations of our boards of elections (and the State Election Board) to ensure that our elections are fair, legal and orderly.”The September 20 rule requires that after the polls close on Election Day, three poll officers must unseal and open each scanner ballot box and remove the paper ballots and sort them into stacks of 50 ballots to make sure the ballots match the figures recorded on the precinct poll pads, ballot marking devices, and scanner recap forms. Read more at The Daily Beast.
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thedailybeast.com