After facing an increasing amount of pressure, President Obama has ordered a full review of Russia's interference in America's elections. While many Democratic leaders have been pushing for such a review, it's important to note that this is a bipartisan issue. From John McCain: "The problem with hacking is that if they're able to disrupt elections, then it's a national security issue." Donald Trump is not among those accusing Russia: "I don't believe they interfered. It could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey." (Haven't we picked on Chris Christie enough?)

+ Former NSA Director Michael Hayden's has some interesting takes on the matter, including which parts of the hacking were fair game and which were not, and his view that the Russian goal was to erode America's confidence in our political process (not to pick a winner).

+ "Putin has embraced an opportunistic but sophisticated campaign to sabotage democracy." Larry Diamond in The Atlantic: How Vladimir Putin is making the world safe for autocracy.

+ NYT: "He insisted that he was the victim of a new and particularly noxious form of an old K.G.B. dirty trick known as kompromat, the fabrication and planting of compromising or illegal material." It's not just what can be removed from your computer, it's what can be put into it.

"This is not about who is right, or who is wrong. Who is winning, who is losing. This is about people: flesh and blood, human beings. Bleeding, dying, being made orphans, every day." The Syrian war has many sides and many international participants with a variety of interests. Sometimes the complex strategic story is told at the expense of the human side; the people who's only goal in this war is their survival. They are losing. From the BBC: Red Cross doctor's heart-breaking letter from Aleppo.

What to Binge: I've been hooked on Fauda, a series in which an Israeli agent comes out of retirement to hunt for a Palestinian militant he thought he'd killed. The riveting story is told from both sides of the checkpoints. The show will take about five minutes to hook you, and not much longer to depict the hopelessness of the never-ending hate and fighting. It's now available on Netflix.

+ What to Conference: Few people put on a conference as well as John Battelle of NewCo. I'll be attending a very timely Executive Conference on Capitalism at a Crossroads in San Francisco in February. There will be a killer lineup of speakers from big and small organizations. Several of them are my friends -- Tyler Florence, Julie Hanna, Daniel Lurie, Kara Goldin -- and I guarantee they'll all be great (no pressure). Come to think of it, why the hell aren't I speaking there? I'll work on that, in the meantime, if you're interested, NextDraft readers can save a grand by signing up here.

+ What to Watch: Mark Knopfler is one of the greatest guitar players ever. In this short documentary, he shares the stories of his six favorite six-stringed instruments. If you like guitars, you will love this.

+ What to Gift: My wife has put together a gift list over that The What: 12 Gifts for Perennials, a curious people. (Our kids' Hanukkah list is not nearly as interesting, but it is considerably longer)

"The lethal injection followed a deadlocked U.S. Supreme Court decision not to step in, but with four of the eight justices saying they would have stayed the execution, one shy of the number needed to halt the process." There are many key political and human elements rolled into this single story: After divided Supreme Court allows Alabama execution, inmate heaves and coughs during lethal injection

What exactly is the American dream? Does it still exist? Did it ever exist? The NYT's David Leonhardt quantifies the American dream, with the help of some excellent (if a little depressing) charts. Here's an overview: In the past, "thanks to rapid, widely shared economic growth, nearly all children grew up to achieve the most basic definition of a better life -- earning more money and enjoying higher living standards than their parents had." That is far from the case today.

+ Vox: Did declining social mobility cause Trump's rise? In a word, no.

"Nine small puddles will evaporate far more quickly than one big puddle, and so it is with life." With their home fragmented (and worse) by human activity, Giraffes are edging closer to extinction. The Atlantic with an elegy for one of evolution's marvels.

"Only the willfully blind can ignore that the history of human existence is simultaneously the history of pain: of brutality, murder, mass extinction, every form of venality and cyclical horror. No land is free of it; no people are without their bloodstain; no tribe entirely innocent. But there is still this redeeming matter of incremental progress. It might look small to those with apocalyptic perspectives, but to she who not so long ago could not vote, or drink from the same water fountain as her fellow citizens, or marry the person she chose, or live in a certain neighborhood, such incremental change feels enormous." I'll leave it to that excerpt to convince you that you want to read Zadie Smith on Optimism and Despair.

"A group of deaf people were in the audience at one of her husband's speeches. Afterward, Annie Glenn went over to them and soon was learning sign language. As the press crowded around Glenn, he looked over at his wife, who was signing 'I Love You' to the deaf. 'That's what you should be covering,' he told the reporters." On a week when we lost John Glenn, here's a moving story of his relationship with his wife Annie: "I don't know if I would have had the courage to do all the things that Annie did so well."

We're bombarded by surveys, but the Awareness of Election Results section of Pew's look at election 2016 caught my eye. Get this: "58% of the public correctly responds to all three questions and can name the candidate who won the Electoral College, the popular vote and their home state." OK, so maybe we can't expect everyone to know the answers to all three of those complex questions. But only 78% of those surveyed could "correctly identify Trump as the candidate who received the most Electoral College votes." One in five Americans doesn't even know who won. Can this be right? If so, what's the point? And what's on second?

+ ReCode: Nearly 50 percent of Trump voters think the Pizzagate theory is either true or could be true.

"He expects their inhabitants to include not only bacteria and fungi but also more unusual creatures like amoebae, algae, and protists. 'You may have worms ... There's even some evidence in the Netherlands of little crustaceans.'" While I cancel my trip to the Netherlands, you can read more about what's lurking in your showerhead.

+ "I'm Spartacus." "I'm Spartacus." "No, I'm Spartacus." You can all sit down. Everyone knows that Kirk Douglas is Spartacus. Even now, at the age of 100.

+ Which is better for the planet? Real Christmas Trees, or fake ones. I don't want to throw the first stone, but they're both a hell of lot worse for the environment than Latkes.

+ GQ: YouTube's top 10 viral videos of 2016, reviewed.