Serial tackles one story over the course of many installments–roughly as many as encompass a season of an HBO drama such as True Detective, the show to which Serial is often compared because the first serial Koenig has tackled is the story of Adnan Syed, a high school student convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend. Did he do it? Or has he been wrongly jailed for a crime he didn’t commit? Each episode is an installment in an ongoing attempt to figure that out.

The producers themselves don’t know how their story ends: They approach the subject as intensely curious storytellers, not crusaders for the accused or the deceased.

The new episode of Serial is out this morning, and it’s not too late to catch up. It is, I agree, “So Good You Want to Binge-Listen.” But don’t hold off until it’s over to do that: The waiting, week-to-week, is enriching in a way that’s totally obvious and yet still somehow surprising, and really sort of damning for all the new season-release binge TV, much of which has been great but none of which I can remember in any episodic way at all — time amplifies everything on Serial, including the show’s flaws. Talking about Transparent with friends has been depressing: Everyone watched it all at once and nobody remembers anything specific, so it’s all “the acting was good” and “what great ideas for characters.” We are addled and dazed by the things we do to relax! We are weak. We demand structure.

★★★★ Leaves on the trees still dappled the long west-thrusting rays of sun under the scaffolding. Spotlights raised vignettes of gleam and color all around. Even one Trump tower looked OK, for a moment. Textured brick on a townhouse looked like a nubby wool blanket; wide bars of light fell through the narrow slats of fire escapes. A woman walking and talking on a cell phone in the open keened with joy that sounded close to grief, echoing back news about someone’s pregnancy tests. By downtown there was a little scattering haze, but a passing airplane was still a sharply snipped white-paper form overhead. A starling, rich motor-oil brown, less flew down than fell from a tree, landing on its feet and starting to jog up the street. Clouds spread over the afternoon. Breezes sloshed around easefully. The smells on the evening air were pleasant ones.

by Susan Harlan

October 8: Up betimes and to the office to do business. After copying and writing some documents, so to luncheon, where I desired fricassee of rabbit and a leg of mutton boiled and three carps in a dish, but instead ate a sandwich. Then back to the office to discourse with students regarding the preparation of their documents, and I took pains to find out what amongst the students was wanted and fitting to be done. So by Subaru home, and by and by to Whole Foods, where I purchased pasta, which pleased me much. The saleslady did request if I would like to contribute to a charity, and I declined, having not the inclination. There was a great shower in the streets, so an employee walked me to my car with an umbrella, and I had cause to reflect on this practice as not enjoyable for the employee and uncomfortable for myself. And so home to dine in my chamber, where I ate heartily and lustily, and then to bed and the weather very chilly and requiring another blanket.

October 9: Woke late and to the office, where I prepared my affairs and papers. Having an old dress new furbished, I was pretty neat in clothes today — and my mongrel dog very clean and proper, having received an unwelcome bath after rolling in something deceased. Walked the streets a half an hour with the mongrel dog and then to the market for a roasted chicken and potatoes, where people discoursed in the aisles about problems concerning airline miles. Then home to sit in my commodious room and to pay bills and copy documents, which pleased me much, and I had a pretty dinner of the chicken. Having put things in order, a desire for good cheer and discourse prompted a telephone call to my sister in California, who is great with child and fatigued. Drank a Manhattan and good Malago wine. Persistent sniffles suggest a malady is coming on, and I am plagued by a cold sore, which lends the appearance of a diseased French prostitute. And so up and to bed.

October 10: Continued to discourse with students about the taking of their exams. Stress regarding preparation for this event, and the posing of desperate questions to myself by electronic mail, gave rise to a need of taking of spirits and a roasted lamb and oysters with caviar, but was not able to acquire these items, so settled for a beef burrito and chicken tacos from El Rancho Taqueria, which was boisterous with young children about. And then home from the restaurant by Subaru to watch House Hunters International. Took spirits in the form of a Manhattan and then to the walking of the mongrel dog and to the sorting of my papers and affairs. Contemplated the laundering of sheets and clothing to order the house, but decided that such labor was foolery. Very nearly fuddled. And then to the telephone to discourse with friends, both handsome people, about the acquisition of twin children born of their loins, and the progress thereof. Fatigued but merry. Then did the day end, with joy everywhere. And so at night to bed.

October 11: Sluggish from the eating of two full dinners of tacos and a burrito last evening. Ordered documents during the day and took tea, and then in the evening to dine with friends in the neighboring quarter, having been invited thither. Had pleasant and stimulating discourse concerning their recent acquisition of a domicile, which was most commodious and welcoming. Also had discourse concerning their voyage to IKEA to acquire necessary objects and bags of goods for the decoration of their rooms. And although we did not drink to the King’s health, we had much merriment and wine, and I was glad of their company. Very merry before, at, and after dinner, and the more for that our dinner was a great and most neatly dressed salmon on the Grill Master with Tandoori spices, and served on a plate correctly chosen by the hostess. And so home late, and to walk the mongrel dog and then to mix a Manhattan and to watch films from long ago. And so to bed without prayers, and slept pretty well, and the loud songbirds outside my window not too intrusive.

October 12: Waked in the morning with my head in sad taking through with last night’s drink, which I am very sorry for. Perused magazines on my verandah in the fresh air for several hours, and took tea and discoursed with parents on the telephone to acquire news. Had a great deal of pleasure watching people walk up and down the street, and I myself wore a shirt with short sleeves, it being very hot weather. Prepared secular sermons for the coming week, including one on the subject of a knight with a burning pestle. Desired to dine on hot pie made of swan, its flesh sold in market and excellent sweet meet, but could not acquire this, so prepared pasta with red sauce that was not as satisfying, but fine. So I to bed.

October 13: Up and to prepare my papers and accounts and to draft documents, and in the evening to watch pleasing murder mysteries about Oxford containing a lusty gentleman. For dinner, more Mexican food, taken in solitude and reflection, and then to Barnes and Noble to purchase a periodical, and the cashier friendly and smiling. Enquiry as to whether I possessed an account was met by a no, but I was assured this was not a problem. Then to Home Depot Road and Target Road in the center of the city, where sundry necessary items were purchased. Walked through the park with the mongrel dog, who ate something unpleasant and then vomited it up later. My mind in good temper of satisfaction and desiring pigeon for dinner, but instead dined on a piece of fish in my chamber and ate heartily, having taken no food since lunch at Five Guys, a most pleasant tavern with cheeseburgers. And so up to my chamber to read of a gentleman who commits a murder on a beach but feels no remorse, and then to bed.

October 14: And so up and to the office to have meetings about several pressing affairs and to submit sundry forms regarding expenses for business voyages. Ordered my affairs with respect to an upcoming conference event. Then to administer a midterm, and back to the office for the afternoon, where I sorted my papers and had good discourse with colleagues. Felt warm, having chosen to wear a sweater that was recently cleaned and had a high collar. After my labors, so to the market to purchase a chicken and broccoli and saw lusty and pretty-humored gentlemen about but did not have kisses of any of them. Then home to dinner, the roasted bird not so well dressed as I might have liked, but acceptable. And to sit on the couch with the mongrel dog and to rest myself and order my accounts and to watch Turner Classic Movies. And so upstairs to bed to conclude the book about the unrepentant murderer, and then to begin a new book on the subject of voyages.

October 15: I rose today without any pain. Feeling an overall sense of health and vitality, exacerbated by the taking of several cups of coffee and walking of the mongrel dog in the morning. Had a brief exchange with my gentleman neighbor in order to ascertain his thoughts on the changing of the season, it having hitherto been summer weather, as well as a discussion with other lady neighbor about the progress of marking student papers, which were reasonably pleasing, and the possibility of an excursion to the mountains. Desired for dinner a great dish of four lobsters, three tarts, a Lampry pie, a dish of anchovies, and good old wine with the labels on the bottles, but could not procure these things, so dined on pasta with red sauce and undertook a lengthy and pleasurable telephone conversation with a friend in New York to learn of news. Late in the evening, I took occasion to be concerned with the sluttery of my house and tidied things. And then up to my chamber, my mind in good temper of satisfaction. And so to bed.

Susan Harlan is an English professor who professes Shakespeare at Wake Forest University.

Photo via Wiki Commons

Last Thursday night, the governor of New York State and the mayor of New York City announced that the first case of Ebola had been diagnosed at Bellevue Hospital. The man — a doctor who had recently returned from treating Ebola patients in West Africa — had fallen ill that morning, after a night of bowling in Williamsburg, they said. I live in Greenpoint, less than a mile away from the bowling alley he had been in just twenty-four hours earlier.

Hearing this struck fear in my heart. Not because I thought there was any real risk of me getting Ebola: I trusted the information the CDC reported, that Ebola can only be contracted from a person with active symptoms, and even in cases of a very sick person coming in casual contact with me, it would be relatively hard to contract Ebola. I am a fairly pragmatic person, capable of talking myself through the logical ends of various what-if scenarios. I have faith in modern medicine.

The fear wasn’t about me, though: It was for my nine-month-old daughter. The what-if scenarios, though only momentary, were extreme. For just one second, it seemed absolutely certain to me that she would somehow, devastatingly skirt the odds and come down with Ebola.

A thing I have learned about myself-as-parent: When my child is involved, it takes some extra arguing with my brain for rationality to prevail.

As I said, I believe in the wonders of modern medicine. I get flu shots every year; I get yearly physicals; I go to the dentist twice a year; I floss daily. I found doctors whom I trust, so I follow their advice dutifully. But there is a slight recklessness in all of this: I know that I could get cancer and die. I could walk into the street and get hit by a car. Ebola? Very unlikely, I know, so why bother worrying about it? I reason these things out. Throughout my pregnancy I was cautious where I was told to be, I watched what I ate and drank, and I listened carefully to everything my doctor told me. But I also knew that many things were out of my control, and my obstetrician told me as much. Don’t worry too much, he said, much of this is out of your hands. So I didn’t, and carried along throughout those ten months mostly happy and unbothered.

She arrived, quite healthy, and we were sent home.

Then the fits of worrying, which were so very unlike me, started. They were always fleeting, overruled by my mind or a call to the pediatrician. First, I feared her stuffy nose, which made her breathe so loudly. Googling only made it worse: Newborns can’t breathe through their mouths! We learned to use the Nose Frieda to suck the snot out of her nose when it was especially bad, but most of the time, she took care of herself. Then it was jaundice. Sure, all babies have a little bit of jaundice, but if it progresses it can be fatal! Of course it almost never is, but I was sure, for an instant, that we were the one in a million plagued by a serious case of jaundice. I examined her skin and the whites of her eyes hourly. We weren’t one in a million; her skin became pink on its own a few days after birth. Then I feared she wasn’t gaining weight fast enough. She would suffer from a dreaded “failure to thrive” diagnosis. She wasn’t nursing enough! She was starving! I called in a lactation consultant and weighed her. I began pumping the milk so that I could see, in ounces, that she was eating enough. She gained weight on schedule, and then magically blew the charts away, becoming chubbier day by day. In the earliest days, too, of course, SIDs was a massive concern. We put her to sleep on her back. We monitored her, checked to see if she was breathing hourly. We worried over the temperature of the room: too hot? too cold? I read the facts: SIDs is quite rare. It is also often inexplicable. As the months passed, the worries lessened. I checked less often to see if she was still alive, because, predictably, she always was.

Successfully avoiding such crises daily conditioned me quickly. I became, faster than I thought I would, more laid back. I worried less about things which are either unlikely or out of our control. But I also learned that having a baby, a person whose well-being depends wholly upon you, is unlike caring for myself. Sometimes, reason doesn’t kick in. Sometimes, I worry just because.

The odds of Zelda getting Ebola are currently, and, for the foreseeable future, incredibly low. The odds of her getting polio, pertussis (whooping cough), pneumococcal disease, hepatitis B, rotavirus, and probably some other things I don’t know about are also terrifically low, because we have vaccinated her against them, and some of these viruses and diseases have been, in the US, largely eradicated.

There has been a movement in the past decade or so, partly fueled by one lousy and discredited medical paper which linked vaccines to autism, against vaccinating babies and children. Though most states require vaccinations for children to attend school, there are “personal belief” exemptions, and, for instance, in California, the numbers in certain counties have grown exponentially in the past few years. In 2010, the worst outbreak of whooping cough in sixty years afflicted nine thousand people and killed ten infants. It’s not an accident that Marin County, California, which has the highest non-medical vaccination exemption rate in the country, also has the second highest rate of whooping cough in the country. There have been nearly six hundred cases of measles this year — a disease which was declared “eliminated” in the US in 2010 — which the CDC has attributed to… people not getting their children vaccinated.

I’m not very interested in arguing with people who don’t believe in vaccinating their children, because I know that they believe this despite all scientific evidence, despite the fact that risks to babies and children who are vaccinated are terrifically low, despite the fact that it exposes their children to possibly deadly viruses and diseases. But I am, now, as a parent, sometimes forced, living as I do in New York City, where some private school vaccination rates hover at less than fifty percent, to fear irrational things. To fear an outbreak of measles. Or whooping cough. Because the unvaccinated don’t simply risk themselves, of course: They risk everyone else, failing to bolster the “herd immunity” which eradicates such diseases.

As a parent, I have learned to deal with daily bouts of fear: of the unknown, of a fall, a bump on the head, or a cold. We face the falls, the bumps, the colds, and we weather these tiny little storms, and I look back on them and laugh at myself for being so silly despite what I know are the odds. I’m learning the way I learned with myself — that there are things I can control, and things which I can’t.

I’m also learning to accept something else about myself. I don’t judge other parents’ parenting. I don’t care if people sleep train their babies or not, or if they breastfeed them or let them chug down formula. I don’t care if they’re vegetarians or not. We as parents, are all just trying to do what is best for our babies, overcoming the fear and enjoying their little moments of brilliance. But I do have this one, closely held religious belief, which I would now gladly argue because it’s a “personal” decision which affects everyone. I believe that you are a fucking asshole if you do not vaccinate your children.

In the weeks and months since Ebola has been a news topic, there is that familiar push and pull in the media. On the one hand, we have the irrational panic: WHAT IF THERE IS AN EBOLA OUTBREAK IN NEW YORK CITY OR (insert your city). And on the other, we have the well-positioned, well-meaning, and well-informed “scoffers,” who tell us the statistics: the flu, heart disease, AIDS, (you can insert literally almost any affliction that is NOT Ebola here) kill so many more people than Ebola. Don’t worry, it’s incredibly unlikely!

And that’s true. I am made less anxious by its truth. I trust the statistics. But part of me, the worst part, the part that wakes in the dead of the night to remember an embarrassing thing I said in 1995, sometimes whispers lies in the face of the facts.

I don’t fear Ebola. I fear the flu spreading like a fire in a dry forest. I fear the return of Polio, or an outbreak of the measles. I fear stupidity and lies. I fear Jenny McCarthy, and Kristin Cavallari, celebrities with platforms, who are not doctors, spreading not just lies about vaccines but actual diseases with their unprotected children.

I fear, sometimes, in spite of myself. And in spite of my beautiful, fully vaccinated baby.

THE PARENT RAP is an endearing new column about the fucked up and cruel world of parenting.

Laura June is a writer and a very cool mom. She is also the author of “The Vampire Diaries.”

Photo by NIH

It’s funny when people make distinctions about whether it’s darker in the morning or the evening, as if it isn’t the most obvious truth of our time that it’s all darkness, and it’s not going to get any better, ever. That said, the clocks go back this Sunday, so the inherent sense of gloom and futility you feel of an afternoon — the crushing knowledge that there’s no point to any of it and no one is less useful than you and the sorrowful certainty that the things you spend your sad little days worrying about are just additions to the list of wasted time and chances missed — will be settling in an hour earlier starting next week. Enjoy.

“McDonald’s Corp. is hoping a new marketing campaign can add some much-needed flavor to its business. Facing sagging profits, the fast food giant plans to launch a new advertising campaign starting early next year with the slogan “Lovin’ Beats Hatin’” — which aims to spread happiness in the face of Internet hate, said people familiar with the matter.”

A gentle instrumental opening theme for your morning; a six-minute postponement before whatever is going to happen today just loses its patience and happens already. Also worth a listen: “Ode to Studio.” (Studio was Dan Lissvik’s previous project.)

When One World Trade Center formally opens next week, it will not have a fancy restaurant at the very top of the building, like Windows on the World in the North Tower of the World Trade Center before it, even though the building’s owner, the Port Authority, originally planned for one. Instead, the Port Authority realized, its top three floors would be more valuable as functionally empty space — it will be an observation area for an expected three-and-a-half million people a year.

According to the Wall Street Journal, The revenue produced by this massive observation space — which the Port Authority hopes will approach some fifty-three million dollars annually by 2019, or around one quarter of the building’s revenues — will help it fill in the gap caused by site’s nearly four-billion-dollar construction costs. (If, by 2019, the building pulls in the hundred and forty-four million dollars a year it is expecting, it will only be generating the kind of income that a three-billion-dollar building is currently expected to make.)

Further uptown, at the luxury condo building One57, a thirteen-and-a-half-thousand-square-foot penthouse known as the Winter Garden, which was purchased for ninety million dollars, making it the most most expensive single apartment in Manhattan’s history, sits empty. It will continue to do so, but “for the occasional party,” because its owner, William Ackman, the activist investor and founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, has no plans whatsoever to relocate his family from their current Upper West Side residence. Rather, “myself and a couple of very good friends bought into this idea that someday, someone will really want it and they’ll let me know.”

This is not so uncommon in Mr. Ackman’s new not-neighborhood, the Times notes:

In a three-block stretch of Midtown, from East 56th Street to East 59th Street, between Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue, 57 percent, or 285 of 496 apartments, including co-ops and condos, are vacant at least 10 months a year. From East 59th Street to East 63rd Street, 628 of 1,261 homes, or almost 50 percent, are vacant the majority of the time, according to data from the Census Bureau’s 2012 American Community Survey.

Further:

Take the Trump Tower at 721 Fifth Avenue, between East 56th Street and East 57th Street. The building has 237 units, with some priced at more than $25 million. As of last year, 211 apartments claimed the tax abatement, but this year, as a result of the rule change, the city decided that only 108 apartments were eligible, according to figures from the Independent Budget Office, a nonpartisan city agency. That is a drop of nearly 50 percent and means that fewer than half of the apartments in the building are primary residences. At the Plaza, of 163 condominiums, only 58, or about one-third of them, now receive the abatement for full-time residents.

So many apartments, so few people. The bizarre proportions of residences to residents will only contort further as the rest of the new Midtown erupts, skinny, shiny spikes sticking into the sky, barely occupied by the billionaires and less-fortunate multi-millionaires who’ve purchased their own distinctive piece of the new New York City skyline so few have asked for.

The people who pass through the observation decks as tourists at One World Trade Center will pay a little more than thirty dollars to spend twenty minutes or so staring out over New York City. The people who pass through some of these condos as transient owners have spent twenty or thirty million, or maybe a little more, to spend twenty or thirty hours or so, staring out over New York City. There’s probably something practical to be said about the structure of real estate taxes and the absurd way they allow properties to be valued, for tax purposes, at a fraction of their worth, or how they allow largely out-of-town buyers to use ultra-lux condos as “stash pads” with minimal tax burdens. But, really, this is just the triumph of possibility over utility, of space over people.

★★★★ A golden dawn led into a brilliant morning, almost dazzling enough to hide the dogshit on the sidewalk. A sweater was the right choice aboveground, but the subway was too hot for it. The blue of the sky suffused the stairs back up to the street; a streak of blue reflected in a passerby’s shiny oxblood boots. The office was hotter than the subway had been. Outside was the kind of coolness identified with cleanliness. Cirrus wisps feathered back and forth on the sky. Now the light on the buildings was generous. Sunset was pink and blushing, and the day lingered as best it could under the circumstances.