Category: 3-SometimeCommentary

Today on The Gist, criminologist and homicide researcher Adam Lankford explains why some mass shooters seem so drawn to extreme ideologies. Then we speak with 11-year-old author Audrey Hinsdale about how her debut novel The Trigger is a metaphor for growing up. For the Spiel, Mike weighs the cultural impact of driverless cars.

Get The Gist by email as soon as it’s available: slate.com/GistEmail

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/slate…id873667927?mt=2

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on The Gist, reporter and former Afghan Taliban captive David Rohde shares his insights into the Bowe Bergdahl transfer. Then Mike and author Colson Whitehead discuss how to find Zen and excellent jerky at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. He represents the “Republic of Anhedonia” in his new book The Noble Hustle. For the Spiel, Mike’s dispatch from the barbecue queue.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tom Sutcliffe discusses whether Western states have anything to learn from countries like China and Singapore. Adrian Wooldridge argues that many governments have become bloated and there's a global race to reinvent the state. In the past Britain was at the forefront of exporting ideas on how to run a country, as the Labour MP Tristram Hunt explains in his book on the legacy of empire. Charu Lata Hogg from Chatham House looks at the challenges to democracy in Thailand where the country is in political turmoil, and the journalist Anjan Sundaram spent a year in The Congo during the violent 2006 elections, and looks at day-to-day life in a failing state. Producer: Katy Hickman.

Tom Sutcliffe discusses whether Western states have anything to learn from countries like China and Singapore. Adrian Wooldridge argues that many governments have become bloated and there's a global race to reinvent the state. In the past Britain was at the forefront of exporting ideas on how to run a country, as the Labour MP Tristram Hunt explains in his book on the legacy of empire. Charu Lata Hogg from Chatham House looks at the challenges to democracy in Thailand where the country is in political turmoil, and the journalist Anjan Sundaram spent a year in The Congo during the violent 2006 elections, and looks at day-to-day life in a failing state. Producer: Katy Hickman.

Today on the Gist, Politico magazine editor Susan Glasser talks with Mike about “politicization,” and why politicians, of all people, like to demonize it. Mike also asks Stephen Dubner about the secret sauce that helped the Freakonomics empire take hold in book and podcast form. For the Spiel, let’s partake of national doughnut day.

Get The Gist by email as soon as it’s available: slate.com/GistEmail

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/slate…id873667927?mt=2

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

May’s unemployment numbers aren’t out until Friday, but today’s Gist explores what these monthly numbers actually tell us with Adam Davidson of Planet Money. Then Emily Yoffe of Slate’s Dear Prudence column joins us for a post-Prudie impact statement with a conflicted mother weighing the price of sending her son to his dream school vs. a good, cheaper state school. In today’s Spiel, Mike discusses eulogies and his new state of being uncle-less.

Get The Gist by email as soon as it’s available: slate.com/GistEmail

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/slate…id873667927?mt=2

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on the show, a look at a Tea Party resurgence in Mississippi’s GOP Senate primary with Slate’s David Weigel. Then, in our regular segment “Is This BS?,” Maria Konnikova explains why psychologist Walter Mischel’s famous marshmallow study has come to loom so large in child-rearing theories, and what its limitations might be. In the Spiel, Mike asks you to guess which words are used more by Democrats, and which by Republicans.

Get The Gist by email as soon as it’s available: slate.com/GistEmail

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/slate…id873667927?mt=2

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

President Obama’s speech to West Point graduates drew criticism for its restrained foreign policy prescriptions and less-than-lofty oratory. Today on the Gist, a look at Obama’s turn toward more restrained rhetoric with former Carter speechwriter and New Yorker staff writer Hendrik Hertzberg. Then, Joe McGinty from The Loser’s Lounge explains how his band performs tributes to our guiltiest of guilty musical pleasures. In the Spiel, we sniff through Mike’s browser cookies until we uncover a truffle. 

Get The Gist by email as soon as it’s available: slate.com/GistEmail

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/slate…id873667927?mt=2

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on the Gist, a look at the release over the weekend of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. Jonah Blank of the RAND Corporation explains whether the circumstances of Bergdahl’s capture matter. Then Mitchell Reiss, author of Negotiating with Evil, suggests that the question is not whether to negotiate with terrorists, but how to get the best deal. For the Spiel, Mike brings you news from places you might not have known existed.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tom Sutcliffe talks to the commentator Rod Liddle about his assertion that modern Western society has become politically and socially stagnant. In his polemic, Selfish Whining Monkeys, Liddle argues that his generation are self-obsessed, deluded and spoilt. Neil Jameson from Citizens UK dismisses this description of society and says his growing number of members are organised, socially active and community-minded. The Chinese writer and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo contrasts East and West in her latest tragic love story, and the Artistic Director Ramin Gray talks about the play The Events, which has a community choir at its heart and explores the aftermath of a violent event. Producer: Katy Hickman.