Can you identify the trait that unites many of Donald Trump’s nominees for the Cabinet in his second administration? Yes, beside that one. The Associated Press has an answer you might not have thought of: Many of the Trump’s picks thus far have extensive television experience. Cracked one Democratic lawmaker on social media: “We are becoming the world’s first nuclear-armed reality television show.”

What’s that? That’s not a joke? Oh.

Trump, as you likely have heard, reached into Oregon this week to find his choice to lead the Labor Department: He nominated U.S. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who narrowly lost her reelection bid in Oregon’s Fifth Congressional District. Chavez-DeRemer has unusually close ties to labor unions for a Republican, and won a bit of a reputation in Congress for bipartisanship. Oregon Democrats called her nomination “interesting.” And it is that.

I’m giving up the last of my monthly free links to New York Times stories so that you can read this Mike Baker story from Boise, where the county elections supervisor (a Republican) has come up with a unique strategy to boost confidence in elections: He’s planning to post all 271,186 ballots from Ada County on an interactive website (precautions will be taken to ensure that the ballots cannot be linked to individual voters). Ideally, the plan will allow anyone to do their own election audits — and, in the end, increase public confidence in the integrity of our voting system. It’s a shame that we have to do this to try to defuse unfounded claims about voter fraud (even some Democrats, to their shame, were voicing concerns about so-called “missing” ballots), but it could be a bold stroke to increase the transparency of our elections.

Here’s one of this week’s long reads: It’s an Atlantic story about a data-fabrication scandal among the nation’s business schools that just seems to keep growing — and also has ensnared the professor at Berkeley who was among the first whistleblowers. The scandal mostly involves those faculty members who study psychology and come up with studies on topics such how procrastination makes you more creative and how you can buy happiness by giving things away — you know, studies that often generate lots of press from reporters grateful that they don’t need to explain hard science.

Here’s another long read from The Atlantic that you might have heard something about: It’s David Brooks’ lengthy essay titled “How the Ivy League Broke America.” It’s not all about the Ivy League, of course — but those schools are convenient villains (and certainly deserve a measure of the blame) for the story of how American meritocracy has stumbled so badly that millions of Americans voted for Donald Trump in part to stick it to the elites.

Acclaimed author Margaret Atwood was scheduled to speak to a sold-out house of 1,200 people this week at Oregon State University. Instead, “anonymous threats of violence” forced OSU to move the event entirely online. At the livestream, Atwood read a statement that she had sent to graduate students at the university who are on strike for higher wages and a shorter contract. The Oregonian/OregonLive story about the incident reprinted Atwood’s statement; as you read the statement, you will be reminded of the reasons why Atwood is an acclaimed author.

That’s a lot of heavy reads for this week. Let’s move to the back of the book, as we say, for some lighter features:

Perhaps you are among those people who already have purchased tickets to see “Wicked,” the film adaptation of the popular Broadway musical. Here’s a fun read for you from writer Allegra Rosenberg that makes the case why “Wicked” — which started life as a novel by Gregory Maguire — is the “Wizard of Oz” spinoff that is closest in spirit to L. Frank Baum’s original. “Wicked,” by the way, now is the second highest-grossing musical of all time. (Can you guess the highest-grossing musical? I bet you can. The answer is at the bottom of this edition.)

Are you traveling this weekend? Here’s a useful AP article offering tips on how to reduce that inevitable holiday stress. And If you’re driving, remember that blind allegiance to the suggestions from your cellphone’s map app could lead to some sketchy blind alleys.

Salmon are returning to spawn in the Klamath River and its tributaries, not quite two months after the last of four dams on the river was removed.

Finally this week, if you’re a frequent reader of the Weekend Reader, you know that I’m a sucker for cosmological stories, but one such story actually took my breath away this week. You need a little background, and let me try to summarize, thanks to a story from the AP: Astronomers know that the universe is being pushed apart at an accelerating rate and have tried to figure out why. The leading theory is that a powerful, constant and unseen force they call “dark energy” is at work. This dark energy is thought to make up some 70% of the universe. But new findings suggest that the force pushing or pulling galaxies around does not seem to be constant — leading scientists to question whether dark energy is what they thought or whether something else is going on. The AP’s Adithi Ramakrishnan does an excellent job explaining all of this, and the stakes couldn’t be higher, cosmologically speaking: “If dark energy is constant, the universe will continue to expand, forever getting colder and emptier. If it’s growing in strength, the universe will expand so speedily that it’ll destroy itself in what astronomers call the Big Rip.”

“The Big Rip.” If you’re thankful for nothing else this Thanksgiving, be thankful that you won’t be around to see that.

But you will be here next weekend, so let’s gather then for the Thanksgiving edition of Your Weekend Reader.

Oh, and here’s your answer: “The Lion King” has racked up more than $2 billion in revenue thus far. But you knew that.