The Gist

On The Gist, President Donald Trump has finally made a nomination for ambassador to South Africa. And it is a terrible one. It's hard to make comedy when your story, like Ben Stiller's latest direction, is based on a state inspector general's report. Escape at Dannemora is drama through and through, based on the prison break of two men, aided by a female employee (and lover), from New York's Clint...

On The Gist, Nancy Pelosi and new House leadership. Then, the self-help organization known as NXIVM had thousands of paying customers, but only some were involved in the cultish operations that, once exposed, brought it crashing down. In Uncover: Escaping NXIVM , host Josh Bloch follows one of the company's unknowing recruiters, who disavowed the group and became central to the ongoing FBI charges...

On The Gist, who's running in 2020? Should we even speculate yet? Time for another segment of Mike debates Slate. Staff writer Henry Grabar is here to discuss Amazon's choice of New York City, why people seem to keep misunderstanding what subsidies are, and how the benefits of Amazon moving to Long Island City outweigh the costs to the city. In the Spiel, Jim Acosta's White House press credentials...

On The Gist, when will everyone stop walking and chewing gum at the same time? In the interview, it may have been a political stunt ahead of the midterms, but president Trump's deployment of U.S. service members to the border continues. What are they even up to? Veteran and writer Jack Murphy fills in the details, including how the mission is being received in the military community at large. Murp...

On The Gist, what kind of sped-up sports replays is Kellyanne Conway watching? The simplicity of basketball is also its genius, allowing players to exercise skill, heart, genius and passion in endlessly creative ways. Dan Klores embraces just that in his ESPN documentary Basketball: A Love Story and talks about specific players, the NBA's leaders, and why short players deserve more credit. In the...

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...

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...

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 th...

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 o...

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 i...

On The Gist, the Republican tax bill and insurance premiums. In the interview: a third-century monk, Paul Revere's horse, and Death himself … all are characters in humorist Simon Rich's latest book, Hits and Misses: Stories —and none are in on the joke. "I always related to the characters like Homer Simpson that knew less than they should," Rich says. "As a child those are the ones that I found mo...

On The Gist, Pew's analysis of European opinion surveys is out. Let's look at Greece! In the interview, the American electorate has come to sort itself not just on political issues, but by worldview. Life is either a gauntlet of hazards (say Republicans) or an array of sights to see (as the Dems think). In their latest book, Prius or Pickup? , political scientists Marc Hetherington and Jonathan We...

On The Gist, Trump's xenophobic campaign, with a Spooktacular twist! In the interview, hate is hard to measure, but the Southern Poverty Law Center paints a picture of growing prejudice in America. Heidi Beirich and the organization's Intelligence Project go beyond FBI and Department of Justice statistics to include press reports and even tips from the public. In the Spiel, swing, baby, swing (we'...

On The Gist, Mike's bottom five causes. In the interview, we rewind to the story of the mail bomber, which was quickly eclipsed by a massacre in Pittsburgh and one loud president. Steve Johnson, who directs Cranfield University's Forensic Explosive and Explosion Investigation program in the U.K., provides details about Cesar Sayoc's homemade devices. In the Spiel, Trump's desire to end birthright...

On The Gist, surprise surprise, right-wing commentators aren't apologizing for getting the mail bomber story totally wrong. In the interview, brands don't make it big by mistake. Behind the success of Starbucks' pumpkin spice latte and Jell-O are stories worth hearing. Dan Bobkoff's podcast for Business Insider, Household Name , explores the odd origins of TGI Fridays, the reason there's a Mattres...

On The Gist, the man in the van is a sad man indeed. Harry Enten is a senior writer and analyst for CNN Politics and steeped in the polling data for the election. Will Beto O'Rourke beat Ted Cruz? Is the blue wave cresting early? And why do Democrats care about Hamilton ? Enten joins us to discuss, and his more detailed forecast can be found online here . In the Spiel, time for another antentwig....

On The Gist, Georgia's exact match law is an extra hurdle for those with hyphenated last names, which, let us speculate, may be more common among black Americans. In the interview, CNBC contributor Ron Insana on Dow drops, market swings, and the uncertain rise of the job-stealing robots. In the Spiel, Megyn Kelly's reportedly been fired for her latest faux pas. What did NBC expect when they hired...

On The Gist, Megyn Kelly's take on blackface was obviously wrong … and wrong for NBC's messaging. Sleep isn't for the weak; it's for those who want their brains flushed of misfolded proteins and fatigue-inducing adenosine. If that sounds like mumbo-jumbo, Maria Konnikova is here to explain it all and answer one question: Is the prescription for precisely eight hours of sleep bullshit? In the Spiel...

On The Gist, first we've got misleading statistics. In 2016, Art Cullen wrote a series of editorials for the Storm Lake Times, a small newspaper in Iowa, uncovering the murky depths of a fight between local and state governments about water pollution. They followed the money, and discovered a fight funded by agricultural corporations, and ended up winning the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing....

On The Gist, 'tis the season (elections!) for baseless political analysis, courtesy of big network news. Americans spend countless hours watching football, but what do they know about the owners of their favorite teams? In Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times , Mark Leibovich covers the exclusive billionaire boys' club and the "very unimpressive group of inherited misfits" that fills its ranks. In...

On The Gist, Europeans are fighting over daylight saving time, which is way better than having a World War. Mother Jones reporter Shane Bauer has been on both sides of a prison's bars. After spending two years as a political prisoner in Iran, he returned to the U.S. and got a job as a private prison guard. His real aim, of course, was to report on why the American prison system—private and public—...

On The Gist, Democrats might actually be winning. Supporters of open immigration policy—and immigrants themselves—often have a rosy view of what awaits them in the United States. National Review executive editor (and Slate alumnus ) Reihan Salam says high costs of living can put immigrants in debt rather than on a path to the middle class. "When we're totally sentimental about this, we miss some o...

On The Gist, bone saws and Jamal Khashoggi. When Joe Hagan began working on the story of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone, Wenner was on board. But as Wenner slowly realized Hagan was writing the true story rather than Wenner's story, things got a bit rough. Hagan joins us to discuss Wenner, reactions since publication, and the tricks of writing about a narcissist. Hagan's book is Sticky Fingers: The...

On The Gist, Saudi Arabia, Trump, and Jamal Khashoggi. Comedy Cellar owner Noam Dworman has had a post-scandal Louis C.K. take to his stage six times now. Why does he welcome him, and if he doesn't draw the line at Louis, is it somewhere else? In the Spiel, the death of Nevada Republican candidate Dennis Hof. This episode is brought to you by Merrill Lynch. Get started today at ML.com/you. Learn m...

On The Gist, unpacking CNN's list of top Democratic challengers ahead of 2020. Katmai National Park and Preserve's publicity stunt worked: For one week (that's Fat Bear Week), the internet delighted in the tournament bracket that would crown the plumpest predator of them all. Carnivore ecologist Rae Wynn-Grant tells us about the brown bear's diet, the unknown mechanics of hibernation, and why fatt...