The Gist

Comedian Gilbert Gottfried is known for his notorious voice and jokes that toe the borderline between daring and tasteless. In the documentary Gilbert, we see his softer side: his wife, Dara, rubs schmutz off his robe, his kids hug him goodbye before padding off to school, he sweet-talks a hotel concierge into giving him free deodorant. Gottfried, Dara, and the film's director Neil Berkeley joined...

Elizebeth Smith got her start poring over Shakespearean verse for secret messages that were not there. But she soon used those skills to break codes used by America's enemies in both world wars. The FBI took credit for her decryptions of Nazi messages, and her husband's work received much greater attention from the wars' historians. Jason Fagone changes that with his latest book,­ The Woman Who Sm...

How can savvy activism topple decades of legal precedent? The ACLU's David Cole tells us about three issues in which like-minded citizens advanced their agenda: marriage equality, gun ownership, and checking George W. Bush's war on terror. Cole's book is Engines of Liberty : The Power of Citizen Activists to Make Constitutional Law . In the Spiel, Mike considers Brett Talley, President Trump's odd...

President Trump's top economics adviser is Kevin Hassett, a guy who has made some very bad calls—most notably, his assertion that the Bush tax cuts would make the U.S. economy recession-proof. New Yorker writer Adam Davidson takes us to economics school and parses some of Hassett's years old gobbledygook. In the Spiel, holding Bill Clinton's accusers to today's standards. Learn more about your ad...

As America's prison population surged in the '80s and '90s, private prisons were billed as the solution. They were supposed to bring innovations to incarceration and save tax dollars. But as criminal justice expert Lauren-Brooke Eisen tells us, private prisons are no more cost-effective, and the corporations behind them operate in secrecy. Eisen's book is Inside Private Prisons . In the Spiel, Mik...

Loudon Wainwright III has been plumbing his personal relationships and dysfunctions for decades in his music. His latest book continues on that theme as he examines the influence of his father. The book is Liner Notes: On Parents & Children, Exes & Excess, Death & Decay, & a Few of My Other Favorite Things . In the Spiel, Mike is not yet done talking about Roy Moore and Louis C.K. Learn more about...

As the Soviet Union crumbled, George H.W. Bush's strategy was simple: say nothing. Historian Jeffrey Engel tells us about Bush's plain oratory and his relationship with the USSR's last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. Engel says Bush Sr. and Trump scarcely look like they're from the same party—which, of course, they aren't. His book is When the World Seemed New . In the Spiel, reacting to the allegation...

Democrats are feeling triumphant after Tuesday's state and local elections. But it's not a referendum on the president until his name is on the ballot, so E.J. Dionne and Thomas Mann are here to explain remains unique about this moment in American history. Dionne, Mann, and Norman Ornstein are the authors of the book One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Despera...

Theodore Johnson caught our attention for his tweets about how the White House reacts to protest from black Americans. He brings an interesting perspective as a black man in the U.S. with two decades of military service under his belt—identities, he writes , that stand "toe to toe." Johnson is a fellow at New America and a former speechwriter for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the S...

How do you attempt to document an event as complex and inexplicable as the Vietnam War? Filmmaker Lynn Novick says it helped to prioritize Vietnamese voices as well as people with a flair for speaking. "There's a poetry in just how people express themselves that we look for," said Novick. She and Ken Burns co-directed The Vietnam War , airing now on PBS. In the Spiel, Mike tsk-tsks Donna Brazile's...

The #MeToo movement is flushing out clear-cut cases of sexual harassment and assault, but is it helping us judge cases that are far murkier? Erin Gloria Ryan , senior editor for the Daily Beast , wonders whether people will separate into two camps: those who think accusers should be listened to, regardless of consequences, and those who think the accused should be punished, regardless of evidence....

The tax plan is out, and New Yorker writer Adam Davidson joins us to play One Question, One Question Only: Is this tax reform? And the voluble Michael Rapaport unleashes his opinions about various "stickmen" (read: athletic Casanovas) and why he's embarrassed to be a Knicks fan. Rapaport's new book is This Book Has Balls: Sports Rants from the MVP of Talking Trash , and he hosts the podcast I Am R...

Birgitta Jónsdóttir has an unusual background for a politician: she's a poet and a free speech activist. Since 2013, she's been a member of the Icelandic parliament representing the anti-establishment Pirate Party. Jónsdóttir talks to Mike about what it's like to work within a fledgling political party and why she's disappointed with what Wikileaks has become. In the Spiel, how not to respond to a...

Was Dr. Seuss racist? Or did his books just not age well? And what is the appropriate response to a canonical work that seems to be littered with racially charged depictions? Philip Nel takes on all these questions and poses some more of his own in his latest book, Was the Cat in the Hat Black? In the Spiel, what if the office of the presidency were leveraged for the sake of constant distraction?...

Can you be scared to death? Can your hair go white from fear? This sounds like a job for "Is That Bullshit?" with Maria Konnikova , our favorite BS detector. Konnikova writes for the New Yorker and is the author of The Confidence Game . In the Spiel, the never-ending baseball game and a bothersome T-Mobile ad. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecas...

Democratic New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker has rolled out the kind of marijuana legalization bill progressives love to fawn over and libertarians love to ridicule . The plan would pressure states to legalize marijuana by withholding federal money. Booker cedes that the bill's passage doesn't seem imminent, but he likens marijuana legalization to gay marriage, another proposal that saw a rapid surge in...

Talking about sex makes some people squirm. For everyone else there's Guys We Fucked , a podcast hosted by Corinne Fisher and Krystyna Hutchinson that started off as a series of interviews with their old partners. Now it's more of a coffee klatsch between two raunchy feminists. Their new book is F*cked: Being Sexually Explorative and Self-Confident in a World That's Screwed . And in the Spiel, Ban...

Jacob Weisberg says the Clinton campaign's links to the Steele dossier matters, but not as much as the veracity of the oppo research itself. Weisberg is host of Trumpcast and editor in chief of the Slate Group. In the Spiel, the death of Fats Domino. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information ab...

Shareholder returns aren't the only barometer of CEO success anymore, or else Jeff Bezos would be on top. In recent years, sustainability and diversity have gained importance—and in those areas, European CEOs are lapping their American competitors. Adi Ignatius, editor in chief of the Harvard Business Review, joins us to discuss the metrics for CEO success and how businesses struggle to diversify....

Kathleen Horan writes obituaries for the living. Her Audible original series, Mortal City , is an anthology of lesser-known New York characters: Douglas the sanitation worker, Serge the barman, Rocky the ambulance commandant. "I just kept feeling like there were people that I was missing," says Horan. She prefers to talk to people who live and work on the city's margins: "They just can't help but...

Marc Maron says he "didn't know anything about anything" when he began working in radio. But producer Brendan McDonald can tell you the moment he knew Maron could be a radio star. It was during a morning show on the ill-fated Air America network, and then-host Maron was ranting about overcooked lentils. "The phones lit up," said McDonald. The two went on to create WTF With Marc Maron , the podcast...

Some national flags are created to unify nations, but others are simply based on myths. The Danes believe God threw theirs from heaven, and the Catalonians tell the story of a severed arm dragged across a shield. Vexilloligist and author Tim Marshall joins us to explain these myths and the complex politics of national flags. Marshall's new book is A Flag Worth Dying For . In the Spiel, a right-win...

If the roulette wheel keeps stopping on green, it's bound to stop on red soon, right? It must be time for another round of "Is That Bullshit?" Maria Konnikova returns to debunk our ideas about probability and gambling. Konnikova writes for the New Yorker and is the author of The Confidence Game . In the Spiel, the Russian connection. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adcho...

Thought-leaders build careers out of TED talks, inspirational quotes, and branded products. Dexter Guff is a big player in that space, teaching his listeners how to crush it every day. But Dexter Guff is not a real guy. His podcast, Dexter Guff Is Smarter Than You , is a satirical show starring actor Peter Oldring . Oldring explains the origins of the Dexter Guff character and the difficulties of...

You can't get away from Obamacare news, and with each repeal effort there are familiar, wild-eyed claims from the law's supporters and detractors. Will chipping away at the Affordable Care Act cause people to die? Did the health care law "bend" the cost curve? Did your taxes go up to pay for healthcare for the poor and the sick? Mike interrogates some of these pronouncements with Vox 's Sarah Klif...