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Hello and welcome to the waves for Thursday, February 13th, the Is George Washington

canceled edition. I'm Christina Cotterucci,

a staff writer at Slate and host of the

Slate Podcast Outward. I'm Marcia

Chalellan, a professor of history at Georgetown

University. Hi, I'm Nicole Perkins, writer and co-host of

Thirst Aid Kit, and I'm June Thomas, senior

managing producer of Slate Podcasts.

Happy early Valentine's Day, you guys.

Happy Galentine's Day.

Totally a real thing.

We have a great episode planned for this week.

But before we get into it, I want to let our listeners know. Everyone listen up. Our next episode, we are going to be talking about portraitist and street artist Tatiana Fazlal-Lazade's new book, Stop Telling Women to Smile. So if you want to check that out to get prepared for our discussion with a little pre-reading, you've been warned.

As for this week, we are going to start off with a review of Alexis Coe's new book, You Never Forget Your First, what some have been calling a feminist biography of George Washington, some being Marsha Chetland.

Then we'll discuss Taylor Swift, Jessica Simpson, and the ways women in the spotlight are trying to correct and take control of their own stories.

And finally, we're going to talk about women and alcohol, why alcohol-related deaths among women are rising in the U.S. and why some women say Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't work for them.

And Nicole, what is our Slate Plus bonus segment this week?

So in Slate Plus, we are going to ask the question, is ghosting sexist, the habits of disappearing from all communications with someone that you're dating. Is that a

sexist act? That one came from a listener. Here's a snippet of that conversation.

I mean, the fact that she asked the question, I think she has some, I think she, I think

what's happened is that she's recognized that feeling of like, why did I think that? So I guess she has that

...