The following podcast contains explicit language.

Welcome to Mom and Dad are Fighting, Slate's Parenting Podcast for Thursday, March 14th, the Free Lunch Edition.

I'm Isaac Butler, a journalist and podcaster in Brooklyn, New York, and father of Iris, age four.

I'm Rebecca Lavoie, a journalist and podcaster in New Hampshire, and I am mom to Henry, who is 17, Teddy who is 16, and my stepdaughter, Lily, who is 18.

Today, we'll be taking a listener question about placing your kids in a religious preschool you're not totally comfortable with, and speaking with the authors of the book

Pressure Cooker, why home cooking won't solve our problems and what we can do about it. Plus, as

usual, triumphs and fails and recommendations. And in Slate Plus today, we'll discuss the unfolding

college emission scandal that's engulfed everyone from Felicity Huffman to investment bankers

and even the Obama's former tennis instructor.

All that and more this week on Mom and Dad are Fighting.

All right. First up, we have triumphs and fails.

Rebecca, sock it to us. Do you have a triumph or a fail this week?

I have what I will cautiously admit to as a fail, even though it makes me really

uncomfortable to say it out loud. And it does relate to that unfolding college admission

scandal that we are all riveted by this week, me especially, of course, being in the

middle of this process, we're waiting to hear back from seven schools for my high school senior

son. And yesterday, when the story broke, I know I work in a newsroom.

We had the CNN on. We watched the FBI press conference. I kind of wandered over to my

favorite workwife's office and we were chatting about it. And she just said, so let's be real.

Between you and me, if you could pay $15,000 and get Henry into his first choice school, would you do it?

Be guaranteed.

And I had the same response, honestly, that I had when I was going through my horrible, like the worst part of my horrible divorce about a decade ago.

...