You're listening ad-free on Amazon Music.

The following podcast contains explicit language.

Welcome to the double-ex scab fest for Thursday, May 4th, the Under His Eye edition.

I'm Hannah Rosen, a host of NPR's Invisibilia.

And in the New York studios today, we have June Thomas, a managing producer of Slate podcasts. Hi, June. Hey, Hannah. It's nice to hear you after seeing you on HBO a little while ago.

Ugh, the Bill Mars show. That was fun. That was fun. It's a reminder of how television is king because you are a queen of all media, but it's your TV appearances that people text me and like, Hannah's on the TV.

Well, it's more like your mom's friends. That's the category of people who like make you feel warm and fuzzy. It's like your mom's friend who you haven't heard from in 15 years who sees you on TV. So you're like, yeah, I'm on TV.

Hi, Noreen. We forgot about you, Noreen of New York Magazine. Hi. Hi, Hannah. So before we get going, I just want to say one thing. I tweeted a request for sports biographies. And I would say the winner is Andre Agassi's biographies. So I'm definitely going to read it. Everyone said it's amazing. Madeline

Cummings, thank you on Twitter, but many, many people recommended that to me. So that's going to be my reading for next week after I finish finishing the Handmaid's Tale, which we're going to talk about today. Okay, so our topics. The first is The Handmaid's Tale, the book by Margaret Atwood, which is now miniseries on Hulu. We discuss its cultural relevance.

Second is Brand Ivanka. I feel like we could talk about that any week, really? But it's just she's

made great leaps forward this week. Now, that might happen every week. But, you know, she's got a book

coming out, prominent roles on the international stage, big profile in the New York Times. So we are going to talk about her this week. And finally, a couple of prominent Democratic men, Bernie Sanders and Tom Perez, said some things, implying that reproductive rights were not necessarily integral to progressive politics. And lots of people got upset. We are going to talk about that. And June, do you want to tell us about our Slate Plus topic? Yes. In Slate Plus this week, we'll be asking, is the reaction and the coverage of the relationship between possible next French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his wife, Brigitte Trunier, is the coverage of it sexist? And if you want to hear those Slate Plus segments, you can go to slate.com slash XX Plus.

And also, we have an exciting announcement. We are having a live show. We haven't had one in a while. And so we are so excited to finally be doing one. It's on Thursday, June 22nd at the Bell House in Brooklyn.

You can buy your tickets at slate.com slash live.

That's Thursday, June 22nd.

Go to slate.com slash live and buy your tickets for the live double X gap fest.

Yay.

We will have a very special guest to be announced very soon.

All right. A first topic, The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Outwood's 1985 novel, The Handmaid's Tale. It's been turned into a TV series now streaming on Hulu and starring Elizabeth Moss. In this dystopian religious republic, women are kept as a kind of sacred, fetishized cattle to breed for the increasingly barren wives of upper class men.

So it seems culturally relevant.

It seems very culturally relevant.

And in the New Yorker profile of Margaret Atwood, she has spoken of it as such.

...