Political Gabfest host Emily Bazelon talks with Jonathan Mahler about his new book, The Gods of New York. They discuss the unraveling of Mayor Ed Koch’s New York City; how the city’s current mayoral race is mirroring the past; and more.
Tweet us your questions @SlateGabfest or email us at gabfest@slate.com. (Messages could be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)
Law firms, universities, and businesses are bending the knee to the Trump administration at the slightest threat. Amid this shocking cowardice, blue states have been a bastion of defiance against the president’s escalating power grabs—with attorneys general leading the way. Mark Joseph Stern talks with New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, who has been on the frontlines of this battle since Day One.
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A patron and perhaps foremost practitioner of “anti-woke comedy,” Tony Hinchcliffe sits atop his own thriving comedy kingdom in Austin. And when you’re on top, you’ve got nowhere to punch but down.
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, Ethan Oberman, and Rob Gunther.
Jensen Huang, cofounder of NVIDIA, finds himself president of a $4 trillion company, at the forefront of A.I. technology, and, consequently, something of an international diplomat, as he charms President Trump and negotiates to sell his powerful chips to China.
Guest: Amrith Ramkumar, reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Washington covering tech and crypto policy.
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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Ethan Oberman, Patrick Fort, and Elena Schwartz.
On Sunday, Al-Jazeera’s entire team in Gaza City were killed by an airstrike. Almost immediately, Israel said it targeted one of them on purpose – Anas al-Sharif. The strike fits a pattern, growing both in Israel and across the world, of targeting journalists—and holding no one accountable afterwards.
Guest: Jodie Ginsberg, head of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit organization promoting press freedom worldwide.
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Podcast production by Ethan Oberman, Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
Jimmy Carter sent his daughter to its public schools; pictures of Obama still grace businesses’ walls; and now Trump has taken an interest in Washington, D.C…by deploying the National Guard, reassigning FBI agents, vowing to evict the city’s homeless population.
Guest: Jenny Gathright, reporter at the Washington Post covering the D.C. region.
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Podcast production by Ethan Oberman, Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
After using a Trump-stand-in during his first administration, South Park has come back from hiatus as vulgar and confrontational as ever, with its aiming firmly fixed on MAGA. Contrary to government sources, the show’s enjoying a renewed cultural relevance in its 27th season.
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Podcast production by Ethan Oberman, Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
From the Statue of Liberty to the Golden Gate Bridge, and places in between like Yellowstone and the site of the Battle of Gettysburg, the National Park Service has been a point of American pride since its inception. And with a small budget and actually generating revenue, even fiscal hawks had no reason to complain.
So why is the Trump administration cutting their budget?
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Podcast production by Ethan Oberman, Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
It’s hard to make money in the music industry. But if you could flood every streamer with hundreds of “original” songs without having to, you know, write or produce it yourself, there’s money there—and less for everyone else.
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The official history of America’s founding is often told as a whites-only story, a heroic tale of wealthy white men forging a new nation—with no mention of the people they excluded, displaced, or oppressed. But who getsleft outof the story that “originalists” like to tell about the law? This week Mark Joseph Stern talks with Maggie Blackhawk, professor at NYU School of Law, and Gregory Ablavsky, a professor at Stanford Law School, about Native nations at the time of the founding, some of which were very much on the scene as the Constitution was being debated and ratified. What did they think about it? And does asking that question obscure a much more complicated—but more accurate—examination of the founding?
Want more Amicus? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes with exclusive legal analysis. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Amicus show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/amicusplus to get access wherever you listen.