Mike Pesca talks with Leon Neyfakh, host of the Slate podcast Slow Burn, about season two of the hit show. Subscribe to Slow Burn here.
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The Gist - Venturing Into Obscurity
On The Gist, “the so-called chairman of the Intelligence Committee,” Devin Nunes.
Superheroes and comic books may seem ripe for parody nowadays with the constant onslaught of nerd media, but The Venture Bros. has been doing it for years. Part Jonny Quest parody, part exercise in the esoteric, this show really leans into its own quirks. Jackson Publick, one of the show’s creators, helps us understand the wonderful absurdity of The Venture Bros., with its seventh season currently airing on Adult Swim.
In the Spiel, Omarosa.
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The Gist - On Bended Knee
On The Gist, Trump’s lack of income disclosures.
Colin Kaepernick took a stand in 2016 by taking a knee during the national anthem at a football game, sparking a debate about racial injustice that continues to roil. But he’s just the latest in a long line of black activist athletes that have used their status to raise awareness and protest. Howard Bryant uncovers the history of these athletes in his book The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism.
In the Spiel, the “unfreakingbelievable” New York Times.
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The Gist - Regulate Me
On The Gist, Jay Sekulow and Rudy Giuliani.
The financial crisis of 2008 wasn’t just an American phenomenon. It was felt all across the globe, with other Western countries suffering the same pain, but enough hasn’t been done about our banks to ensure long-term stability. Will we ever be able to recover fully without a complete overhaul of the current system? Adam Tooze explores this in his new book, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World.
In the Spiel, Ohio’s special election.
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The Gist - The Egyptian Seesaw
On The Gist, Trump’s lies and steel mills.
The Arab Spring caused a major shift in Egypt in 2011, and the politics only got murkier during the military coup in 2013. But are autocrats really the best allies for the United States, or just for our current president? David Kirkpatrick explores what happened to Egypt during the Arab Spring and the military coup in his new book, Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East.
In the Spiel, who Trump calls stupid.
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The Gist - The Smart Drug
On The Gist, Turkey and Trump.
We’ve got another round of Is That Bullshit? Drugs treating cognitive malfunctions like narcolepsy, ADHD, and Alzheimer’s disease, are useful for people with those conditions—but what about the rest of us? Can ADHD medication make us smarter? Can narcolepsy drugs really keep us awake longer? Resident debunker Maria Konnikova explains.
In the Spiel, Jay Sekulow and lawyers on television.
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The Gist - Where Is Space?
On The Gist, guest host Jeffrey Lewis fills in for Mike and talks about trying to solve big problems.
Regulating space is tough because it surrounds the whole world, and people can’t even agree where the Earth’s atmosphere stops and space begins. Jonathan McDowell, astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, thinks he has the definitive answer to where that line is. McDowell recently published “The Edge of Space: Revisiting the Karman Line” in Acta Astronautica.
In the Spiel, North Korea and nuclear weapons.
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The Gist - My Life as a Sitcom
On The Gist, QAnon and sound design.
Comedian Guy Branum is a hilarious intellect with an intimidating amount of pop culture knowledge. In his new book, My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir Through (Un)Popular Culture, Branum explores things like his love of civics, his Northern California childhood, and his experiences writing jokes for other people.
In the Spiel, we’ve got another Lobstar of the Antentwig.
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The Gist - Quarter for Carter
On The Gist, who makes the CNN Sucks onesie?
Jimmy Carter’s reputation is that of an ineffective president. But his chief domestic policy adviser, Stuart Eizenstat, argues that Carter fought for America’s energy independence, doubled the size of the national park system, and appointed “more minorities and women to judgeships and senior positions than all 38 presidents before him put together.” Eizenstat’s book is President Carter: The White House Years.
In the Spiel, the local radio scandal of Joe Benigno.
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The Gist - Courting Politics
On The Gist, let’s face it: A.I. and robots are going to take jobs from us humans.
Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination has restarted the debate on how we vet candidates and whether the Supreme Court is too easy to game. Lori Ringhand, a professor of law at the University of Georgia and an expert on the Supreme Court, explains how much the court has actually changed, or not, in our lifetime.
In the Spiel, three theories on how this whole Mueller investigation thing is going to end.
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