Author: Slate Podcasts

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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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Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence. Sign up now to listen and support our work.

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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Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence. Sign up now to listen and support our work.

Super Tuesday gave Joe Biden a blowout, in part because of a surge from black voters. While white voters tended to split their votes more evenly between Biden and Bernie Sanders, black voters overwhelmingly chose the former Vice President. So, what does Biden’s base see in him as a candidate? And what would they expect from him as president? 

Guest: Errin Haines, editor-at-large for The 19th, a news outlet launching this summer.

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The coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, started in China as a bat virus that eventually made contact with humans. Researchers say this leap between species was highly predictable – so why were communities and governments caught flat-footed? And what does the virus’s transmission from animals to humans say about how we interact with the greater ecosystem?

Guest: Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance.

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The Democratic primary field has been dramatically re-shuffled since Saturday. After Joe Biden swept up votes and delegates in South Carolina, moderate candidates dropped out to strengthen his challenge against front-runner Bernie Sanders. So, with over a thousand delegates on the table across a slew of states, are Democrats inevitably headed for a contested convention? 

Guest: Jim Newell, Slate’s senior politics reporter

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Lower courts have consistently ruled against the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies. But at the Supreme Court, the conservative majority almost always reverses lower court opinions, even in the most shocking cases. Last week, justices ruled that a Customs and Border Protection agent cannot be sued for shooting and killing a Mexican teenager in 2010, presenting the grim prospect that federal agents are free to act with impunity. 

Guest: Mark Joseph Stern covers the courts and the law for Slate.

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