The Gist

What would you expect from a video game inspired by Henry David Thoreau's sojourn in the woods? In Walden, a game , players can contemplate the forest, go boating with Ralph Waldo Emerson, and practice civil disobedience. The game was developed by the Game Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California. Lab Director Tracy Fullerton explains why she thinks Thoreau might have liked the game...

Psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett is the grand inquisitor of human emotions. Her book, How Emotions Are Made , inspired a big chunk of the latest season of NPR's Invisibilia . Barrett says scientific research shows that emotions are highly variable and utter creations of our minds. Some of her resulting conclusions may surprise you. In the Spiel, Mike goes there: white privilege...

A few years ago, an unassuming young woman named Kelly Sun teamed up with Phil Ivey, the world's most famous poker player. Using some questionable strategies, the two managed to win millions of dollars from casinos across the world. Now the casinos are saying what they did is cheating, and they're trying to get their money back in court. Reporter Rose Eveleth tells Sun and Ivey's story in a new au...

Alan Alda's new book is called If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? The title comes from his own bad experiences talking to doctors and other science professionals, including one that screwed up his smile for years. "We need to get people talking like people…it's all about empathy," says the actor, who also founded the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook Un...

Tom Jennings dug through hours of archival media footage to tell the story of Son of Sam, the serial killer who terrorized New York City in 1976 and 1977. The resulting documentary is part of the Smithsonian Channel's Lost Tapes series. The Lost Tapes: Son of Sam airs Sunday on the Smithsonian Channel. Also, a breakdown of the Boy Scouts' apology for Donald Trump's jamboree speech. Join Slate Plus...

According to Joan C. Williams , about a third of the country feels talked down to. These are the white working class folks, the people who went for Trump, the people who feel that terms like disruption just mean more hassle and pain. "We can't expect people to have elite values if we don't give them elite lives," says Williams. She's the author of the book White Working Class . For the Spiel, why...

After the G-20 Summit, Ian Bremmer broke the news to Americans about Trump's secret second meeting with Vladimir Putin. He says he did it because so many American allies were commenting on the rendezvous in private. "The people in the room, they found it disconcerting that the person Trump was more comfortable with is their adversary," says Bremmer. He joins us to discuss Russia, Rex Tillerson's f...

When Kevin McDonald moved to New York, his sketch troupe, Kids in the Hall, had a deal with Lorne Michaels to make a new comedy show. But these were during some lean years for Michaels. "We were in a closet," says McDonald, "and he was being audited, so it was us and a bunch of auditors. Once in a while, if we said something really funny, we could hear the auditors giggling on the other side of th...

If things had gone well, America would still be in the Paris Agreement on climate change, green energy would be spreading across the country and Al Gore wouldn't have needed to make a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth . But it didn't work out that way. With his new movie hitting theaters next week, Gore remains hopeful during these depressing times. "If somebody told me five years ago, marriage equa...

Mike Sacks is not just a comedian; he's also a comedy historian. This summer, he's unearthed a rare artifact, the cult classic, Dixie-fried action movie Stinker Lets Loose . "Some famous people have cited this movie as a big influence on them," says Sacks, citing Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. "You can hear it in some of his lyrics, for sure." A 40th-anniversary novelization of Stinker is available...

Maria Konnikova returns to look at a tool prosecutors have used for decades: handwriting analysis, or graphology. Older versions of the practice have used handwriting to predict everything from a person's mental state to their capacity for murder. "People have been convicted based on it," says Konnikova. "We're not talking about phrenology. Graphology is still something that exists in the United S...

Economist Tyler Cowen is disdainful of social media, heartened by recent immigrants, and wary of pot. He thinks that, in our collective desire for comfort, we are postponing big and necessary changes that will sow instability in the years ahead. "Right now Americans are failing to regenerate sources of future progress," Cowen writes, "and thus they are borrowing against the future rather than payi...

Our friend Dan Pashman from the Sporkful podcast returns to explain the new field of study known as gastrophysics and why our brains have a big influence over how we taste food. For example, research shows we like the taste of food served with heavy cutlery and ice cream presented with brighter colors. "It could be something evolutionary," says Pashman. "With brighter colors, ice cream tastes swee...

Director David Lowery has made one of the most remarkable films of 2017 so far, and he's built it around a ridiculous image: a white sheet with two eye-holes cut out. So what makes " A Ghost Story " feel so epic? And what's with that 10-minute pie scene? Spoilers abound. For the Spiel: so, who was in the room with Don Jr. and the Russians? Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive mem...

Retired Admiral James Stavridis wants to remind us: Despite headlines about the rise of ISIS, there are bigger existential threats to America. "Terrorism is not apocalyptic, it's a tool," says Stavridis. He warns that conflicts with Russia and China are much more worrisome and likely to include a maritime component. "Again and again when there's a crisis, the first question from the president is,...

It's not that things are so terribly bad right now, it's that circumstances have failed to keep up with expectations. So says Edward Luce , chief U.S. columnist for the Financial Times , whose new book surveys the ensuing crisis of confidence in liberal democracies. Luce's book is The Retreat of Western Liberalism . In the Spiel, Bridgegate winds down. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments,...

Lawfare's Benjamin Wittes on the latest #ENSH (errant national security horses---) and the brewing scandal surrounding Donald Trump Jr.'s emails. In the Spiel, we're going back to the event that set all this in motion: the Miss Universe pageant of 2013. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information...

The jobs report has been good, the U.S. isn't in a shooting war, and the economy is booming. So why is Trump still in the high 30s in terms of popularity? Political scientist Seth Masket says it's because of Trump's abrasive presence on Twitter. Masket recently made the case for why it's in everyone's best interest for the president and the social media giant to part ways in the Pacific Standard ....

Daniel Okrent did not have a lot of fun as the first public editor for the New York Times . "I was like internal affairs in a police department," said Okrent. "Nobody liked to see me coming." That said, Okrent defends the role ombudsmen play at news organizations, and he thinks the Times messed up earlier this year when it axed the public editor position. In the Spiel, there was no Labrador at the...

Conservative Philip Klein doesn't think the presence of moderate senators means we'll get better health care policy. "Centrists always get credit and adoration by many elements of the media for talking to the other side and not being ideologically rigid," he says. "But I think that's another way of saying they can be bought off easily." Klein writes about health policy for the Washington Examiner...

Gov. Chris Christie's time in the national spotlight has been full of bloopers. But no goof appears as consequential as his call to cancel the ARC project, halting construction of an additional train tunnel between New Jersey and New York City. WNYC's Matt Katz explains why Christie killed ARC. In the Spiel, Chris Christie and the fat-man theory of optics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit p...

Eddie Izzard once thought about playing piano for a living. He's done one professional show. It was in front of tens of thousands of people. That's because fans will watch the comedian do pretty much anything, from running marathons, to telling jokes in German. His new book is Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death and Jazz Chickens . Also, we celebrate an unheralded date in history: July 3rd. Learn...

NPR's Hanna Rosin and Alix Spiegel explain what they learned about feelings from their third season of Invisibilia . Society has come around to the idea that emotions are a force to be reckoned with – is that a good thing? In the Spiel, it's time to name another Lobstar. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.c...

Crime writer Don Winslow says writing a novel about cops and cartels involves some pretty serious research. "In researching these books," says Winslow, "I meet people. I've been to the funerals, talked to the cops. I've made the sympathy calls!" His newest book, about the NYPD, is The Force . In the Spiel, Trump's worst tweet yet! Oh boy. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive memb...

Reporter Marc Fisher explains why he called out a classic game of D.C. deceit in the pages of the Washington Post . And Michelle LaRue , the official Gist penguin expert, returns to explain some news about those troublesome birds. In the Spiel, how would a normal president handle our world affairs? Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a...