The Gist - You’re Getting Very Sleepy

On The Gist, a top Armenian comic joins us to discuss if Azubaijan is even a country. Then, Mike asks Maria Konnikova of the New Yorker about the health benefits of hypnosis for a game we call “Is That Bulls--t?” She’s the author of The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It ... Every Time. For the Spiel, can we talk about chalk at Emory

University?  Today’s sponsors: Squarespace.com. Get a free trial and 10 percent off your first purchase when you visit Squarespace.com and enter offer code GIST.  Betterment, the largest automated investing service—managing billions of dollars for people just like you. Get up to six months of investing free when you go to Betterment.com/gist.  Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up

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SCOTUScast - CRST Van Expedited, Inc. v. EEOC – Post-Argument SCOTUScast

On February 22, 2016, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in CRST Van Expedited, Inc. v. EEOC. In 2007, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a sexual harassment suit against CRST Van Expedited (CRST) on behalf of approximately 270 female employees. When a number failed to appear for depositions, however, the district court barred the EEOC from pursuing their claims as a discovery sanction. The remaining claims were dismissed on various other grounds, including 67 claims that the district court dismissed for failure of the EEOC to separately investigate, find reasonable cause for, or attempt to conciliate them. In addition, the court awarded CRST some $4.46 million in attorney’s fees and expenses, on the basis that the claims were frivolous, unreasonable, or without foundation. On appeal the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of all but two claims, vacated the award of fees and costs, and remanded the case. On remand, one of the remaining claims was withdrawn and the other settled. CRST renewed its petition for fees, costs, and expenses, and the district court again awarded it approximately $4.6 million. -- On a second appeal the Eighth Circuit again reversed the award, finding that claims which had been dismissed for the EEOC’s failure to meet presuit obligations could not serve as grounds for an award, and remanding for an individualized determination as to whether other claims were frivolous, unreasonable, or without foundation. -- The Supreme Court granted CRST’s subsequent petition for certiorari on the following question: whether a dismissal of a Title VII case, based on the EEOC’s total failure to satisfy its pre-suit investigation, reasonable cause, and conciliation obligations, can form the basis of an attorney’s fee award to the defendant under 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(k). -- To discuss the case, we have Kenton J. Skarin, who is an Associate at Jones Day.

More or Less: Behind the Stats - WS More or Less: The Great EU Cabbage Myth

Could there really be 26,911 words of European Union regulation dedicated to the sale of cabbage? This figure is often used by those arguing there is too much bureaucracy in the EU. But we trace its origins back to 1940s America. It wasn?t true then, and it isn?t true today. So how did this cabbage myth grow and spread? And what is the real number of words relating to the sale of cabbages in the EU? Tim Harford presents.

The Gist - Jon Ronson, Imam of Shame

On The Gist, we explore an abuse of power taking place on social media. Journalist Jon Ronson shares why

he was compelled to tell the stories behind the public shaming of Jonah Lehrer and Justine Sacco. He’s the author of So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, now out in paperback. For the Spiel, meet Wisconsin’s Jimmy Boy.   Today’s sponsor: Squarespace.com. Get a free trial and 10 percent off your first purchase when you visit Squarespace.com and enter offer code GIST.  Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial

today at slate.com/gistplus

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Social Science Bites - Michael Burawoy on Sociology and the Workplace

Michael Burawoy is a practitioner of what we might call 'extreme ethnography.' Since earning his first degree -- in mathematics -- from Cambridge University in 1968, his CV has been studded with academic postings but also jobs in manufacturing, often with a blue collar cast, around the world. Copper mining in Zambia. Running a machine on the factory floor in South Chicago - and in northern Hungary. Making rubber in Yeltsin-era Russia.  All with an eye -- a pragmatic Marxist sociologist's eye -- on the attitudes and behaviors of workers and the foibles and victories of different ideologies and resented as extended case studies. Decades later he's still at it, albeit the shop floor is changed: "No longer able to work in factories," reads his webpage at the University of California, Berkeley, "he turned to the study of his own workplace – the university – to consider the way sociology itself is produced and then disseminated to diverse publics."

In this Social Science Bites podcast, Burawoy tells interviewer Dave Edmonds about his various factory experiences, and some of the specific lessons he learned and the broader points -- often unexpected -- that emerged from the synthesis of his experiences. "I am definitely going with a Marxist perspective and it definitely affects what I look for," he says. "But it doesn't necessarily affect what I actually see."

He also goes in as a "sociological chauvinist" who nonetheless draws from whatever discipline necessary to get the job done. "I was trained as an anthropologist as well as a sociologist, [and] I've always been committed to the ethnographic approach to doing research. Studying other people in their space and their time, I am quite open to drawing on different disciplines. I do this regularly whether it be anthropology, whether it's human geography, whether it's economics."

Burawoy has been on the faculty at Cal since 1988, twice serving as sociology department chair over the years. He was president of the American Sociological Association in 2004 (where he made an explicit push "For Public Sociology" in his presidential address), and of the International Sociological Association from 2010-2014. He's written a number of books and articles on issues ranging from methodology to Marxism, with some of his stand-out volumes 1972's The Colour of Class on the Copper Mines: From African Advancement to Zambianization, 1979's Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism, and 1985's The Politics of Production: Factory Regimes Under Capitalism and Socialism.

Social Science Bites is made in association with SAGE Publishing.

Start the Week - Greece and the Eurozone with Yanis Varoufakis

On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses the state of the Eurozone and the politics of austerity with the economist and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, the Director of the Institute of Global Affairs Erik Berglof and the Mayor of London's Chief Economic Advisor, Gerard Lyons. Yanis Varoufakis tracks the problems of the Eurozone to its woeful design and its continued reliance on debt and austerity, rather than reform. The classicist Paul Cartledge explores the history of democracy back to its birthplace in Athens and traces the long slow degradation of the original Greek concept. Since the crisis in 2008 Greece has been in economic and political turmoil but there has also been a cultural renaissance. The academic Karen Van Dyck has brought together the best of contemporary Greek poetry by multi-ethnic poets in a new anthology.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Presenter: Andrew Marr.

Start the Week - Greece and the Eurozone with Yanis Varoufakis

On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses the state of the Eurozone and the politics of austerity with the economist and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, the Director of the Institute of Global Affairs Erik Berglof and the Mayor of London's Chief Economic Advisor, Gerard Lyons. Yanis Varoufakis tracks the problems of the Eurozone to its woeful design and its continued reliance on debt and austerity, rather than reform. The classicist Paul Cartledge explores the history of democracy back to its birthplace in Athens and traces the long slow degradation of the original Greek concept. Since the crisis in 2008 Greece has been in economic and political turmoil but there has also been a cultural renaissance. The academic Karen Van Dyck has brought together the best of contemporary Greek poetry by multi-ethnic poets in a new anthology.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Presenter: Andrew Marr.