On The Gist, Paul Ryan cared about just one thing: cutting taxes.
Word choice is not always the most stimulating place to start an interview with an author, but it works when you’re talking to Sloane Crosley. The essayist defends metaphors like “Holocaust bunk bed” and the related analogy, “as if the Brady Bunch were filmed in Nazi Germany.” Crosley’s latest book—a collection of essays—is Look Alive Out There.
In the Spiel, Congress failed to pin Mark Zuckerberg down.
On The Gist, beware the rise of the despot’s son-in-law.
In the interview, media scrutinizer Brooke Gladstone wrote a graphic novel about the “Influencing Machines” that we often blame modernity’s problems on. Facebook is the latest of these, but this time, it’s less scapegoat and more actual problem to be reckoned with. Brooke’s book, illustrated by Josh Neufeld, is The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media.
In the Spiel—attorney-client privilege, dead? No it taint!
On The Gist, president Trump just doesn’t have the ambition to tackle a problem like Syria.
It’s a critical week for Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has two dates with Congress, where he’ll be answering questions on the company’s loss of millions of its users’ data to Cambridge Analytica. Slate writer April Glaser tells us what to expect ahead of the hearings.
In the Spiel, the least the Trump circus can do is give us some decent TV.
Trump tries Twitter diplomacy with China and Syria, and Florida Democrats have a chance to help flip Congress. Then Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) joins Jon, Jon, Tommy, Dan, and Alyssa on stage in Orlando to talk about gun control, immigration, and the 2018 midterms.
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes makes a case for cash handouts to the poor. He tells Andrew Marr that having become exceptionally wealthy he is looking for the most efficient way to give something back to society, and a Universal Basic Income is among his ideas.
But the Oxford academic Ian Goldin argues that UBI is an intellectual sticking plaster. He suggests targeted benefits, better taxation and philanthropy may be the answers to today's growing inequality and the prospect of mass job losses due to automation.
Caroline Slocock was the first female Private Secretary at No.10, employed by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She looks back at the last years of Thatcher's time in office, and Thatcher's vision of a smaller state and individual responsibility.
Margaret Thatcher used the parable of the Good Samaritan to argue her case, suggesting that the voluntary actions of a wealthy Samaritan trumped the collective action of the state. Nick Spencer, Research Director at the public theology think tank Theos, explores how this parable has been hijacked for political ends from both the left and the right.
On today’s show, we don’t need a whole shadow Cabinet—we just need a shadow Trump.
Comedian Hari Kondabolu is back—and this time, he brought his brother. Hari came to comedy after working as a community activist, but his younger brother, Ashok, was a bit more wayward. On The Gist, Ashok recounts his life as a subway vagabond in New York City. Hari and Ashok’s new podcast is called Kondabolu Brothers.
In the Spiel, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s alarming lack of pun-sense.
Mueller’s writing a summer blockbuster, Fox and Friends is making immigration policy, and Scott Pruitt is late for dinner. Then the Rev. Demetrius Jifunza of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition joins Jon, Jon, Tommy, and Dan on stage in Clearwater, Florida to talk about voting rights and second chances.
Plus, what will we think of the Obama presidency in 50 years? Julian Zelizer set out to get really smart people to “take a first cut” at the Obama legacy on an array of issues. One person from his brain trust is Peniel Joseph, who surveys the Obama administration’s work on criminal justice. Their book is The Presidency of Barack Obama: A First Historical Assessment.
In the Spiel, why Mike rejects both tribes’ arguments on the Atlantic’s firing of conservative writer Kevin Williamson.
On Tuesday’s Gist, an ode to the end of March Madness.
Plus, Maria Konnikova returns to play our favorite game. Are parabens really bad for you? Konnikova is a contributing writer to the New Yorker and author of The Confidence Game.
