Author: Slate Podcasts

When Senator Elizabeth Warren announced the end of her presidential campaign, she was asked about the role of sexism in the race. Warren didn’t venture an answer, promising she’d have more to say later. In the meantime, we have some thoughts. 

Guest: Rebecca Traister, writer for New York Magazine and author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger. 

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In the face of the coronavirus outbreak, U.S. political leaders are moving faster than they have in years. But it still might not be fast enough.

Guest: Jordan Weissmann, Slate’s senior business and economics correspondent. 

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Open or closed? Across the country, state governors and mayors are asking themselves that question: Are we safer staying open, or are we safer closing down? 

Over the weekend, more cities and states ordered shutdowns to temper the spread of COVID-19. But we’re dealing with a threat we haven’t seen before. How are we supposed to make decisions when we’re lacking basic information about how this coronavirus works? 

Guest: Jeremy Faust, an emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. 

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Last week, the superintendent of the Northshore school district near Seattle made a difficult decision. With the coronavirus spreading rapidly in the area, she closed all 34 schools in her district and moved all classes online. But for many schools, remote learning at this scale simply isn’t an option. 

With new cases appearing around the country, how will schools respond? And what happens when you send millions of students home for weeks on end?

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We talk about polls a lot on this podcast. State polls, national polls, polls that make you shrug and vote for the other guy. Today, we’re talking about one of the most unusual polls we’ve ever seen: Slate teamed up with The Marshall Project to conduct a survey of incarcerated people across the country. We received 8,000 responses about political awakenings, party affiliations, and the biggest problems facing the country. 

Guests: Nicole Lewis, a reporter at The Marshall Project, and Lawrence Bartley, director of “News Inside” for The Marshall Project.  

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Even though Kareem Shaheen left Syria a few years back, the reminders of his time there are everywhere. For nine years a brutal conflict has left millions seeking refuge with millions more still stuck in limbo. This past December, the Assad regime launched its latest attempt to seize back control of the largest rebel-held territory in Syria, Idlib. 

Today on the show, Kareem tells us about Idlib, its importance in the war, his experience covering the region, and what the world turning their backs on this conflict tells us about the international order today.

Guest: Kareem Shaheen, journalist and columnist covering Syria.

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On Monday morning, the Dow saw its biggest one day drop since 2008. This time, the cause was a combination of a volatile oil market and heightened fears of a pandemic. The usual economic tools may not be enough to reassure markets. 

Guest: Jordan Weissmann,Slate’s Senior Business and Economics Correspondent

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The Trump 2016 campaign had unprecedented success on Facebook. Ever since, Trump's reelection campaign has been pumping out ads and collecting data on a massive scale. Democrats are only just beginning to catch up. 

Guest: Andrew Marantz, staff writer at the New Yorker and author of Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation

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For pregnant women in the U.S., there are plenty of reasons to mistrust the medical establishment. Mortality rates are high compared to other western countries, and one-third of women in the U.S. give birth by C-section. It’s no wonder that many women turn to the internet for alternatives.

This week, the story of one woman who was drawn into a network of private Facebook groups dedicated to the idea of ‘freebirth,’ or unassisted birth. And what happens when the misinformation shared in these private groups has real-life consequences.

Guest: Brandy Zadrozny, reporter for NBC News. You can read her reporting on ‘freebirth’ here.

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