Category: 3-SometimeCommentary

Poland turns 100 this November. The country had existed for a thousand years but it was only in 1918 with the Treaty of Versailles that an independent Poland was created. Amol Rajan explores its turbulent history.

No nation's story has been so distorted as Poland's, says historian Adam Zamoyski. He looks back to the great medieval nation that was once a European heavyweight. But Russia, Prussia and Austria divided Poland up in 1797 and turned it into a backwater - before the Nazis and Soviet soldiers arrived to do more damage.

The decades since independence in 1918 have seen extraordinary twists in the tale. Composer Roxanna Panufnik combines Polish poetry with a Catholic mass in her new oratorio Faithful Journey - Mass for Poland. This huge work for choir and orchestra covers the bloodshed of two world wars, the relative prosperity and optimism of the 1930s, the censorship of communist rule and a new hope for the coming years.

In the 1950s Stalin offered the people of Warsaw a choice between two gifts: a metro system or a vast skyscraper. They asked for the metro. He built the Joseph Stalin Palace of Culture and Science instead. Today the Palace is one of Poland's most recognisable sights and has starred on the cover of Vogue. But Michal Muraswki explains that to Poles today the Palace represents their communist legacy - something that the ruling Law and Justice Party are keen to forget,

The reforms of the Law and Justice Party, including a move to ban all abortions, have been met with criticism at home and abroad. Award-winning journalist Witold Szablowski examines Poland's relationship with Europe, with its neighbours and with its past.

Producer: Hannah Sander

On The Gist, by any previous standard, we’d be saying that President Donald Trump lost the midterms, plain and simple.

In the interview, Tuesday’s midterms saw red states get redder and blue ones bluer. If results like those keep repeating themselves, Slate panelists—Dahlia Lithwick, Jamelle Bouie, and Jim Newell, hosted live in New York by Mike Pesca—say America could soon feel like two distinct legal worlds.

In the Spiel, Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker was a tight end at the University of Iowa! And uh, that tells us nothing about his character.

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On The Gist, the Democrats’ big win.

Bradley Tusk has been in the background everywhere. His hand guided the rise of big political and tech brands, from advising Rod Blagojevich not to extort Rahm Emanuel to facilitating Uber’s explosive growth. He joins us to discuss his political savvy saving campaigns and startups and why he’s so passionate about voting with your smartphone. Tusk’s new book is The Fixer: My Adventures Saving Startups From Death by Politics. 

In the Spiel, misunderstanding democracy and trying to correct someone else’s tweet.

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On The Gist, was last night a wave or not?

If congresswoman Jackie Speier still kept a gratitude journal (“I don’t have time to do it!”), it would include an entry about the Democratic Party reclaiming the House in Tuesday’s midterms. Instead she’s out with a new memoir—Undaunted: Surviving Jonestown, Summoning Courage, and Fighting Back—and brings details on how her party’s majority will put the squeeze on President Donald Trump.

In the Spiel, Donald Trump’s latest press conference.

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On The Gist, who gets to vote?

Mimi Sheraton, the first female food critic at the New York Times, has had a prolific career sharing her opinion on everything like ladyfinger sellers, hope chests and china patterns, and why we’re all eating kale wrong. She joins us today to talk her career as a food critic, why smelt isn’t a crowd pleaser, and the importance of eating as a family. She’s a delight on the Ask Mimi episodes of the Sporkful, and her most recent book is 1,000 Food to Eat Before You Die. 

In the Spiel, voting mistakes.

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On The Gist, live, from Slate, it’s a post-apocalyptic skit that just might come to pass if you don’t vote on Tuesday.

In the interview, for decades, there was no need to hope for (or fear) a blue wave; until 1994, the Democratic Party enjoyed a 40-year monopoly on the House of Representatives. Then came Newt Gingrich, who engineered the Republican sweep of the lower chamber, and who looms large in our guest Steve Kornacki’s latest book, The Red and the Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism.

In the Spiel, more about (what else) the midterms. Also: Go vote.

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Andrew Marr talks to the journalist Lindsey Hilsum about the extraordinary life of the war correspondent Marie Colvin. Throughout her career she travelled to the most dangerous places in the world, to bear witness to the suffering of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. She wrote: “it has always seemed to me that what I write about is humanity in extremis, pushed to the unendurable, and that it is important to tell people what really happens in wars.’ She was killed in Syria in 2012.

For most of her career Marie Colvin wrote for The Sunday Times newspaper. Eve Pollard knows only too well the added pressures of getting a scoop for the nation’s weekend papers, as she formerly edited both the Sunday Mirror and the Sunday Express. She’s now the UK Chair of Reporters Without Borders which this week will honour courage, impact and independence in journalism.

Anabel Hernandez is an investigative reporter who has fought to lay bare the terrible facts behind the disappearance of forty-three Mexican students in 2014. Her book, A Massacre in Mexico, details the systemic corruption and cover-up among state officials, from the local police to government ministers.

It is a hundred years since the poet Wilfred Owen died in battle, just a week before the end of WWI. The poet Gillian Clarke explores how Owen’s poetry brought to light the physical and mental trauma of combat, and how in her own work she’s reflected contemporary conflicts.

Producer: Katy Hickman

On Budget day, Andrew Marr discusses what is broken in our economic and social system, and how it could be mended - if only those in charge were bold enough.

Oxford’s Paul Collier is an economist known around the world for his work on inequality. His new book, The Future of Capitalism, focuses on the great rifts dividing Britain, with solutions on how to close them.

David Willetts, the former Conservative minister, is focused on generational fairness and the increasing tensions between the successful and the struggling in society. The Resolution Foundation, of which he is chair, suggests the state must do more to redistribute wealth and responsibility.

Baroness Helena Kennedy has been a campaigning lawyer and a feminist throughout her career. Her new book, Eve was Shamed, looks at how British justice has been failing women - and comes up with solutions.

And for those who think bad news for other people may be good for them, Tiffany Watt Smith explains that most British of Germanic concepts: schadenfreude.

Producer: Hannah Sander