The Gist - A Kamikaze Mission to Jupiter

On The Gist, why it’s better to crash our spacecrafts than to litter the solar system with our earthly microbes. Summer Ash explains everything you didn’t know you wanted to know about the Juno space probe orbiting Jupiter. Ash is the Director of Outreach for Columbia University’s Department of Astronomy

For the Spiel, discord will always be with us. 

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The Gist - The Life and Death of Aaron Swartz

On The Gist, Slate correspondentJustin Peters on the life and death of free-culture crusader Aaron Swartz and the history of copyright in the United States. Peters wrote The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet. In the Spiel, reflecting on recent shootings of black men by police and of police by a black man. 

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The Gist - It Was the Best of Timesheets, It Was the Worst of Timesheets

On The Gist, a case for the modern office as a subject of high literature. J. Bradford Hipps discusses finding more than mockery in the anonymous office park where he set his novel, The Adventurist

For the Spiel, an economical five minutes on the five hours the FBI director spent testifying at a congressional hearing.   

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The Gist - Mister Postman, Lower Your Price Points for Me

On The Gist, Devin Leonard returns with the last installment of our postcard series to discuss the evolving economics of the U.S. Postal Service. Leonard’s book is Neither Snow nor Rain: A History of the United States Postal Service. Plus, Bruce Shapiro ponders the best way to cover mass shootings if the goal is to limit future massacres. Shapiro is executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia Journalism School. 

For the first-ever, midshow Spiel: Twinkies. For the traditional closing Spiel: dying in vain. 

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