It was yet another week of outrageous and consequential stories piling on top of one another at a head-spinning pace. A failed attempt to discredit the Washington Post. A bombshell plea from a former Trump official. A secret button. Poison in the Hague. A computer glitch that could ruin Christmas. And the FCC’s upcoming vote on “net neutrality,” a bureaucratic thicket with potentially catastrophic consequences. All of this, plus radical transparency in journalism, bots bringing down public comment and the history of America’s love of hoaxes. 

1. Brooke leads us through a week that was, as she says, a “ceaseless and accelerating volume of crazy”—coming both from the news at large and the Oval Office. 

2. Margaret Sullivan [@Sulliview], columnist for the Washington Post, on how her colleagues’ adroit response to the failed Project Veritas “sting” could help rehabilitate the public’s faith in news organizations. 

3. Tom Wheeler [@tewheels], former Chairman of the FCC, and Nick Gillespie [@nickgillespie], Editor-in-Chief of Reason.com, debate the FCC’s upcoming vote on whether to repeal Obama-era regulations for internet service providers known as net neutrality.

4. Issie Lapowsky [@issielapowsky], Senior Writer for Wired, on how networks of bots and bad actors have thrown the federal government’s public comment process into jeopardy.

5. Kevin Young [@Deardarkness], director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and author of Bunk, on American hoaxes have long played on deep divisions in our society.