The Gist

In this installment of Best Of The Gist, we explore a few catchy political slogans that turned out to be deceptive, confusing, or just kind of dumb. First we listen to Tuesday's spiel about the expression "From the river to the sea," and then we listen back to Mike's June 5, 2020 spiel about the slogan "Defund the police." Produced by Joel Patterson and Corey Wara Email us at thegist@mikepesca.com...

Eliot Cohen, Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies and former Counselor to the Secretary Of State has always thought Shakespeare had great insights about great leaders. His book is The Hollow Crown: Shakespeare on How Leaders Rise, Rule, and Fall. Plus, George Santos gets bounced, and Ron DeSantis has a crap map. See Mike Live on December 6th Produced by Joel Patterson and Core...

Elon Musk's intemperate but tempestuous remarks show us a man whose not hard to understand but difficult nonetheless. Plus, we're visited by Kliph Nesteroff, author of Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars . And Malawi get into the Israel act. See Mike Live on December 6th Produced by Joel Patterson and Corey Wara Email us at thegist@mikepesca.com To advertise on the show, visit: h...

In Bradley Tusk's new novel Obvious In Hindsight, a flying car company attempts to get government approval, even though the politics are dicey, the lobbyists are dirty, and the cars just might not ... uh, what's the word? Fly. Plus, after seventeen days, workers freed thanks to rat tunnels. And the very leftist Youtube channels going beyond even Hamas' obfuscations to flat out allege that Israel t...

When a slogan of war suddenly becomes a call to peace. Also on the show, we pick back up where we left off with the New York Times' David Leonhardt. His new book is Ours Was The Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream . Plus, the refused-to-be-addressed crisis at the border. Produced by Joel Patterson and Corey Wara Email us at thegist@mikepesca.com To advertise on the show, visit: https:/...

Pulitzer Prize winning NY Times writer David Leonhardt is here to discuss Ours Was The Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream . The hostage exchange between Israel and Hamas is working and showing us that countries are right to care about their own citizens. Plus, a few furry friends become entrees, and a Fertile Turtle is at the center of the ordeal. Produced by Joel Patterson and Corey...

In this installment of Best Of The Gist, as Israel and Hamas agree to a cease fire, we listen back to Mike's 2014 interview with Mitchell Reiss, author of Negotiating with Evil , who suggests that the question is not whether to negotiate with terrorists, but how to get the best deal. Then we listen back to Mike's Tuesday Spiel in which he envisions where the war in Gaza goes from here. Produced by...

Mike spent the majority of last week reporting from Israel. On his trip, he met and interviewed many people living through the current crisis, and this special Thanksgiving weekend episode is a collection of said reportage, in which he tells the stories of those people who's lives were forever changed by the events of October 7, 2023. Produced by Joel Patterson and Corey Wara Email us at thegist@m...

Des Fitzgerald, Professor of Medical Humanities and Social Sciences at University College Cork in Ireland, is out with a new book The Living City: Why Cities Don't Need to Be Green to Be Great . The European title gets at things more straightforwardly: The City of Today is a Dying Thing: In Search of the Cities of Tomorrow. We'll discuss the need for two titles. Plus, on the day Israel and Hamas a...

NBA veteran Carlos Boozer is here to talk about his upbringing, his career, and his new book, Every Shot Counts: A Memoir of Resilience . Plus, what if the city issued all citizens a False Testimony Tax? And Mike lays out where he sees the war in Gaza going from here. Produced by Joel Patterson and Corey Wara Email us at thegist@mikepesca.com To advertise on the show, visit: https://advertisecast....

Lee McIntyre author of "On Disinformation" discusses and debates with Mike, how to conceptualize disinformation, and how not combat it consistently no matter who is getting dissed. Plus, new evidence about Hamas operations under hospitals. And…PANDAS! Produced by Joel Patterson and Corey Wara Email us at thegist@mikepesca.com To advertise on the show, visit: https://advertisecast.com/TheGist Subsc...

In this installment of Best Of The Gist, something a little different. If you've been listening to The Gist this past week, you've heard Mike reporting from Israel. He's home safe now, but he spent several days traveling around and recording the stories of Israelis as they come to terms with a recent tragedy and face an unknown future. So today we wanted to share an episode of an Israeli podcast c...

As Israeli Defense Forces explore and document what was found in and under Al-Shifa hospital, verification is hard, and doubt is free and easy to sew. Plus, Robert Pape wonders, "What makes a terrorist ... international vs. domestic?" Pape is a professor and the Director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats. Also on the show, American decadence versus Israeli seriousness. Produced by Joe...

Mike visits Kibbutz Be'eri, which saw carnage on October 7th, and he's told the story of what happened there. Also on the show, Roma Agrawal is a structural engineer who spent six years working on the tallest building in Western Europe—The Shard in London. She is out with a new book, Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World in a Big Way , in which she talks about how the simpl...

On Mike's second day in Israel, he attends the meeting of people trying to bring their family members kidnapped by Hamas home from captivity. Also on the show, Patrick T. Brown, a Ph. D. climate scientist and Co-Director of the Climate and Energy Team at The Breakthrough Institute, joins us to talk about his recent piece in The Free Press titled " I Left Out the Full Truth to Get My Climate Change...

Gigi Levy-Weiss is a former Apache helicopter pilot in the Israeli Air Force, a tech entrepreneur, and a member of Brothers In Arms, reservists who refused to support Netanyahu's government as it tried to reshape the country's highest court. Mike sat down with Levy-Weiss to discuss his role in a new organization called Brothers and Sisters of Israel , which is tasked with supporting soldiers, civi...

Gus Perna was a four-star general a month out from retirement from the Army, when the Trump Administration tapped him to help lead the logistics of Operation Warp Speed, the public-private partnership to get Americans a COVID vaccine that was effective and safe, and to do so quickly. Perna joins us to discuss the challenges of vaccinating America and getting the country back to business as usual....

In this installment of Best Of The Gist, first we rewind to the summer of 2014, when Israel and Palestine were again locked in armed conflict. To understand the Palestinian perspective, Mike interviewed Canadian human rights worker Diana Buttu who was then in Nazareth. Then we listen back to the Spiel from the Tuesday, November 7, 2023 show about the meaning imparted in the misreported presence of...

History is the product of remembering our past, so it involves the mind, though we have underused neuroscience in understanding how we know what we think we know. Abby Smith Rumsey chairs the board of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and she is out with a new book Memory, Edited: Taking Liberties with History , in which she looks to science to help h...

China recalls its pandas, and Americans bid them a tearful adieu. If only we could form such a tight bond with the Uyghurs. We are also joined by Dr. Jonathan Howard, author of We Want Them Infected: How the failed quest for herd immunity led doctors to embrace the anti-vaccine movement and blinded Americans to the threat of COVID , to discuss the concept of herd immunity. Then we turn to yesterda...

Aquilino Gonell was a Capitol Hill Police Officer who, on January 6th, was beset upon by an angry mob then all but abandoned by officialdom in the aftermath. He's out with his story in a new book, American Shield: The Immigrant Sergeant Who Defended Democracy . Plus, election day shows the U.S. wants their rights, but not a revolution. And Donald Trump actually is doing much better than predicted...

John Judis and Ruy Teixiera drop by to answer the question posed in the title of their new book Where Have All the Democrats Gone? Their warning is that the more Dems tack left, the more likely the only constituency left will be "the left." Plus, the guilty plea of a mass shooter's father. And the meaning imparted in the misreported presence of beheaded babies in Israel. Produced by Joel Patterson...

Soyeon Lee fled North Korea, was caught, was jailed, was beaten, then fled again. We will talk to her, and the documentarian Madeleine Gavin, about the new film Beyond Utopia, which includes surreptitiously recorded video of dangerous escape attempts. Plus, Joe Biden trails Trump everywhere that counts. Is the "people will figure out Trump is worse" strategy the best strategy? And protesters attac...

A new Netflix film, Pain Hustlers , starring Emily Blunt and Chris Evans, is getting a lot of buzz, so we dug into the archives to unearth an interview with Evan Hughes from February 2022. Hughes is author of Hard Sell: Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup , about his coverage of an out-of-control drug maker that destroyed lives and paid a price for doing so, which was the inspiration for the...

Walt Hickey is a Pulitzer Prize-winning data journalist and also a real pop-culture-impersonated peruser. His new book is You Are What You Watch, How Movies and TV Affect Everything , and he makes a good case. Plus, when it comes to cease fires, casualties, and rules of engagement in Gaza, meanings are fluid. Produced by Joel Patterson and Corey Wara Email us at thegist@mikepesca.com To advertise...