Category: 3-SometimeCommentary

Director Joshua Marston has done his share of shape-shifting. He’s spent time as a teacher abroad. He’s learned Albanian and made some stories for NPR. And he’s directed critically acclaimed movies like Maria Full of Grace. His newest, Complete Unknown, stars Rachel Weisz as a serial imposter who gets stuck at a dinner party with someone from her past. 

On The Spiel, the Clinton Foundation pay-for-play mega-scoop that never was.

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Why so many music phenoms from Iceland? On The Gist, Kaleo frontman JJ Julius Son says he comes from a “fearless” people. About that: Kaleo recently recorded in a volcano. Their latest album is called A/B. 

Plus, Slate’s very own Mallory Ortberg, writer of the Dear Prudence column, tells us how to be an entertaining advice-giver. Ortberg is the author of Texts From Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations With Your Favorite Literary Characters. In the Spiel, Russia’s Paralympics propaganda.

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What made the movies of the 1980s so special, especially as compared to movies being made now? On The Gist, the Guardian’s Hadley Freeman explains. She’s the author of Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned From Eighties Movies (and Why We Don’t Learn Them From Movies Anymore).

For the Spiel, Mike revisits the items that have escaped his searching, skeptical gaze. 

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On The Gist, the hosts of the podcast that has made the best use yet of the jazz drummer’s brush technique: Politically Re-Active with W. Kamau Bell and Hari Kondabolu. The show picks up where the comedians left off when they stopped working in the same TV writers room. Bell hosts CNN’s United Shades of America, and returning guest Kondabolu is on tour with a new comedy album, Mainstream American Comic. 

For the Spiel, grilling Jill Stein. 

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Are the nation’s most dangerous warheads secure if a rag-tag troika of peaceniks can break through the storage facility’s back door? On The Gist, Washington Post reporterDan Zak considers the good and not-so-good arguments for nuclear weapons. His book is Almighty: Courage, Resistance, and Existential Peril in the Nuclear Age. 

For the Spiel, Jill Stein’s unforgivable comments on debt forgiveness.

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On The Gist, Megan Abbott discusses her latest book, You Will Know Me, a psychological thriller set in the high-pressure world of elite women’s gymnastics.

In the Spiel, a send-off for John McLaughlin. 

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Things are bleak in Brazil. Prices are high, governments are broke, and gangs are tightening their control over the country’s slums. But on The Gist, Slate contributing editor Franklin Foer has hope for a national renewal. The reason? A prominent federal judge is dead set on rooting out political corruption, though it may rival soccer as the national pastime. 

For the Spiel, hands across the ages. 

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The Gist has been bedeviled by one question: Do the clothes really make the man? On today’s show, regular guest Maria Konnikova joins us to investigate the link between clothing and performance. Konnikova writes for the New Yorker and is the author of The Confidence Game.

For the Spiel, Trump, truth, and fact-checking. 

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On every great improv team there’s an undertow of angst. Who will get snatched up by a TV show? Who will toil in relative obscurity? Who will quit after the big break doesn’t come? On Ep. 560, comedian Mike Birbiglia and This American Life creator Ira Glass talk about their film Don’t Think Twice, an ode to improvisational comedy and recalibrating what it means to be a success. Find it in a theater near you. 

For the Spiel, our Lobstar of the Antentwig. 

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On The Gist, Republican “merchant of mud” Mike Murphy ponders Donald Trump’s effect on down-ballot GOP candidates. Murphy is known for putting the “!” in “Jeb!” as an adviser to Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign. His podcast is called Radio Free GOP.

For the Spiel, Mike tries to get to the bottom of an Olympian canard about the happiness of bronze medalists. 

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