Each Friday, the Emdashes summer interns bring us the news from the ultimate Rossosphere: the blogs and podcasts at newyorker.com. Here’s this week’s report.

Sarah Arkebauer:

This week’s Book Bench features a conversation with the new United States Poet Laureate, Kay Ryan, in which she shares her thoughts on clichés—listing some malapropisms that would impress even Honey Bunch Morton. Jenna Krajeski’s post in that same blog has given me a fascinating new way to spend time online—reading up on old issues of Poetry magazine.

I began following the Cartoon Lounge this week, and it’s all sorts of amusing. Its variation—thanks to multiple contributors—keeps it smart and fresh. In particular, Zachary Kanin contributed several humorous posts, including a laugh-out-loud set of instructions for what to do when hiring him. Also excellent is the blog’s recurring Crazy Caption Contest, the wackiness of which is all one could desire.

Alex Ross, of The Rest Is Noise fame, went on hiatus yesterday, but posted a playlist that looks promising. Congratulations are also in order for Mr. Ross: his blog was nominated for the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize.

Although Andrea Thompson’s post in Goings On about scientific manipulations to decrease the fattiness of beef left me skeptical and more than a little worried, I got a kick out of her inclusion of a 1966 Talk of the Town article discussing the possibilities of other such modifications.

I enjoyed the July 9th New Yorker Fiction Podcast, in which Aleksandar Hemon read Bernard Malamud’s short story “A Summer’s Reading.” Hemon’s comments were interesting and insightful—he pointed out that the protagonist’s surname indicates he’s Slavic, not Jewish—but I was particularly haunted by Malamud’s description of Mr. Cattanzara, who reads the entire New York Times every night by the light from a shoe store.

Taylor House:

Steve Brodner has his say about the Obama cover controversy by encouraging his readers to want more. Controversy is healthy, he says, and a pile of angry letters on the editor’s desk shouldn’t scare him into toning it down. Click through and help Brodner support strong graphics in media.

The Campaign Trail podcast poses the question: is Obama’s apolitical image just a front? How much of his campaign is manufactured, and how much is sincere? Can a presidential candidate be a successful politician and remain true to himself? (Yes, all, none, no. But it makes for a lively debate.)

Dana Goodyear of Postcard from Los Angeles looks for an iPhone in all the wrong places. But she does find Rick Caruso, a bigtime LA developer with an eye on the mayor’s seat.

Adam Shoemaker:

This week, George Packer writes in Interesting Times about an Iraqi friend’s ordeal in customs at J.F.K. airport, and wonders about the effects of Homeland Security’s senseless indifference to America’s visitors. He contrasts the beauty of one scene, the disembarkation of the world’s “gorgeous mosaic” into the capital of immigration, with the bitterness of another, those held behind for hours for no apparent reason. “This is the Iraqi style,” protests his friend. “Not the American style.” It is one thing, concludes Packer, to balance immigration protocols against the threat of terrorism. It is another, quite indefensible thing to breed animosity among our guests for no better reason than the uncaring incompetence of a few D.H.S. officers.

Sasha Frere-Jones relates the story of a rare interview with Tupac from the early nineties. The rapper’s instinct for performance and his attempt to reconcile fame and authenticity were both on display in the interview, which also included a sober prediction of his own death. Trish Deitch ends the account with a potent example of the complications of Tupac’s self-definition as it was set against rising stardom. Earlier in the week Frere-Jones also reported on the recent sale of Death Row Records and the rights to Shakur’s unreleased material—the mining of which is hardly unprecedented.

The Borowitz Report lends some much-needed aid to America’s comedians by reporting that Barack Obama has released an approved list of jokes about himself. As might be expected, these revolve around foreign oil, foreclosure, and health insurance. Sadly, the kangaroo and horse do little to save them. Then satire it is, I suppose.

On the New Yorker Out Loud podcast, Matt Dellinger speaks with Jill Lepore about her piece on E.B. White’s decidedly unmousy classic Stuart Little. Roger Angell, E.B. White’s stepson, also joins in the conversation. Lepore talks about her fascination with the piece—and the lengths to which that drove her research. The real story, says the author, is not the battle between E.B. White and the celebrated librarian Ann Carroll Moore, but rather the sometimes noble, sometimes cosseted vision of children’s literature the Victorian Moore tried—ultimately, unsuccessfully—to impose on America’s young readers.

Previously: the July 11 report.