Before news of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s lung surgery broke, Dahlia Lithwick sat down for a revealing conversation with the screenwriter Daniel Stiepelman about the RBG biopic he penned, On The Basis of Sex. Stiepelman also happens to be Justice Ginsburg’s nephew, and this episode offers an insider’s view of the most well-known, but not always fully understood, justice on the court.
Please let us know what you think of Amicus. Join the discussion of this episode on Facebook. Our email is amicus@slate.com.
On today’s show, hosts April Glaser and Will Oremus will talk about how Taylor Swift used face recognition to surveil the crowd at a recent concert, and whether that’s smart, scary, or both.
Then they’ll welcome Renée DiResta, an expert on cybersecurity and online misinformation. DiResta is the lead author of a new report to the Senate Intelligence Committee on exactly how Russian operatives weaponized social media in the 2016 election, and why it may be just the beginning of a new era of global information warfare.
6:45 - Interview with Renée DiResta26:09 - Don’t Close My Tabs
You can get updates about what’s coming up next by following us on Twitter @ifthenpod. You can follow Will @WillOremus and April @Aprilaser. If you have a question or comment, you can email us at ifthen@slate.com.
On today’s show, hosts April Glaser and Will Oremus discuss the latest round of “Tech CEO Goes to Washington.” On Tuesday morning, that CEO was Google’s Sundar Pichai, who appeared before the House Judiciary Committee and was asked about data privacy, location tracking, Google’s plans in China, and of course, Republicans’ favorite tech topic: conservative bias. We’ll talk about what we learned from this hearing as well as what we wish Congress might’ve asked the Google CEO.
Then April speaks with two people who have been working to organize workers in Amazon fulfilment centers in Minneapolis, Minnesota. One is a founder with Awood, Nimo Omar. She’s been organizing with the primarily East African communities that work in the Amazon warehouses on a campaign to collectively advocate for better working conditions.
We’ll also be joined by a worker at one of those Amazon fulfillment centers in the Minneapolis area, WIlliam Stolz. We’ll ask him about his job at the warehouse and why he’s joining his fellow workers in organizing for change for change at the fulfillment centers.
You can get updates about what’s coming up next by following us on Twitter @ifthenpod. You can follow Will @WillOremus and April @Aprilaser. If you have a question or comment, you can email us at ifthen@slate.com.
*This week's show was recorded before Friday's filings concerning Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, but the merits of the discussion stand. Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, now a Criminal Justice Fellow at Pace Law School draws out the themes of the Mueller investigation. Plus Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Riyaz Kanji, an attorney for the Creek Nation, to explore the fascinating questions and disgraceful history involved in Carpenter v Murphy, a case argued by Kanji before the Supreme Court last week. The case started with a murder and now involves questions of sovereignty over 3 million acres in Oklahoma.
*This week's show was recorded before Friday's filings concerning Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, but the merits of the discussion stand. Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, now a Criminal Justice Fellow at Pace Law School draws out the themes of the Mueller investigation. Plus Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Riyaz Kanji, an attorney for the Creek Nation, to explore the fascinating questions and disgraceful history involved in Carpenter v Murphy, a case argued by Kanji before the Supreme Court last week. The case started with a murder and now involves questions of sovereignty over 3 million acres in Oklahoma.
On today’s show, hosts April Glaser and Will Oremus discuss the news that Tumblr will soon be banning all adult content on its site -- this in response to some instances of child pornography that got it suspended from Apple’s App Store. Hundreds of thousands of Tumblr users are upset, and the plan appears to be backfiring.
Then we’re excited to bring you a pair of interviews today, with two people who have emerged as leading critics of Facebook—one from the outside, and one from within, right before he left the company. We’ll talk first with former Facebook employee Mark S. Luckie about what he calls Facebook’s “black people problem.” Those words came from a memo that he wrote shortly before leaving the company last month, and which he published to the world after he left.
Then we’ll talk with someone who’s been thinking through problems at Facebook for many years--and recently discovered that his organization was also a target of the company’s controversial “opposition research” PR campaign. Rashad Robinson is the president of Color of Change, a progressive civil rights group that was among several nonprofits Facebook tried to discredit by highlighting their ties to the liberal financier George Soros. In the wake of that story, Robinson met last week with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.
You can get updates about what’s coming up next by following us on Twitter @ifthenpod. You can follow Will @WillOremus and April @Aprilaser. If you have a question or comment, you can email us at ifthen@slate.com.
On today’s show, hosts April Glaser and Will Oremus discuss the ongoing fallout at Facebook over the company’s decision to hire a conservative PR firm to surface opposition research in order to attack Facebook’s nonprofit critics by highlighting their funding ties to the liberal financier George Soros, playing into an untrue and anti-Semitic popular right wing trope. As internal and external turmoil continues to rile major American technology companies, their employee are organizing for serious change. Hosts dig into what that’s accomplished so far and what continued employee pressure and mounting labor actions means down the line.
Then, an interview with Antonio Regalado, a senior editor at the MIT Technology Review, on a story he broke Sunday night: the very first gene-edited babies were born this month in China. The trio discuss the history of gene-editing technology and the debate about using it on humans. To some, gene-editing is a form of medicine, like a vaccination. To others, it’s a form of enhancement. How easy is this to do? And will we have a future where the health of tomorrow’s children, or those whose parents can afford it, will be determined before their children are even born?
14:13 - Interview with Antonio Regalado32:02 - Don’t Close My Tabs
You can get updates about what’s coming up next by following us on Twitter @ifthenpod. You can follow Will @WillOremus and April @Aprilaser. If you have a question or comment, you can email us at ifthen@slate.com.
Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Ted Boutrous, who represented CNN and Jim Acosta in their case against the White House. Jim Acosta’s “hard pass” or permanent press pass, was revoked by the Trump administration after Acosta clashed with the President at a November 7th news conference. Dahlia Lithwick and Ted Boutros examine questions of due process and free speech thrown up by the case.
Please let us know what you think of Amicus. Join the discussion of this episode on Facebook. Our email is amicus@slate.com.
