The Gist

Franz Nicolay made his bones playing with big bands, in size and in popularity (The Dresden Dolls, Against Me, the Hold Steady). But Nicolay longed to strike out on his own and master the "practical craft of the old vaudevillian." So he packed his banjo (and accordion and guitar) for a string of tours across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Nicolay's consequent book is The Humorless Ladies of Bord...

This week, Democrats are agonizing over how or whether to oppose Donald Trump's first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch. Emily Bazelon notes that Gorsuch has been very clear in his opposition to doctor-assisted suicide, but his position on abortion rights is less knowable. Bazelon is a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine , and a co-host of the Slate Political Gabfest . For the Spiel, Tr...

Steve Fishman is one of the few journalists to received access to notorious scam artist Bernie Madoff. His interviews form the backbone of the new Audible series Ponzi Supernova , which goes deep inside the biggest pyramid scheme in American history. Fishman talks about his new series and how Madoff outran federal investigators for decades. For the Spiel, the folly of adding Iran to Trump's travel...

Beth Newell and Sarah Pappalardo are founding editors of the satirical online women's magazine Reductress , publisher of such headlines as "8 Sex Positions That Will Blow His Mind and Destroy His Penis." On The Gist, Newell and Pappalardo discuss their site's blend of feminism and millennialism. Their new book is called How to Win at Feminism: The Definitive Guide to Having It All—and Then Some! F...

The Trump administration's executive order restricting travel to the U.S. set off at least four legal challenges, an international contagion of protests, and the harshest Republican rebukes yet to a Trump White House action. But it's not yet clear how many people have been affected by the ban or exactly what it requires. Ben Johnson , head of the American Immigration Lawyers Association , calls th...

In one tweet, George W. Bush appointee Eliot Cohen became the face for anti-Trump conservatives: " After exchange with Trump transition team, changed my recommendation: stay away. They're angry, arrogant, screaming 'you LOST!' Will be ugly. " With the news this week that senior State Department officials have resigned en masse, Cohen says there are reasons to be very worried about America's role o...

Americans are skeptical of regulation, no matter how much they hate hair in their hot dogs. Why are Republicans winning this argument? Jacob Hacker is director of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University and author of the new book American Amnesia . For the Spiel, an ethics scandal hits South Dakota. Yes, South Dakota! Today's sponsor: Dunkin' Donuts. Upgrade your day with...

The Dow hitting 20,000 might sounds like great news to you, but to anthropologist Arthur Demarest , it's an ominous echo of what he's seen befall the Maya, the Aztecs, and the Inca: a spectacular apogee followed by collapse. Demarest studies the decline of civilizations. He says his research has shown that societies that avoid total disintegration undergo some other kind of major political or econ...

The Southern Poverty Law Center rushed to track the surge in reported hate incidents after the election—a surge that appears to have died down. Heidi Beirich explains the SPLC's plans to weed any hoaxes out of its data and why it's a bad idea to minimize incidents of hate just because they don't rise to the level of a crime. For the Spiel, getting acquainted with Canada's Trump(s). Today's sponsor...

New Yorker staff writer Maria Konnikova returns to play "Is That Bullshit?" This week, the persistent nutritional myth about vitamin C. The actual vitamin, not the singer. Maria's most recent book is The Confidence Game . Plus, one of Barack Obama's dreams has finally been realized: a plain white t-shirt store is open in Hawaii. Sponsors: ZipRecruiter. Post your job listing to all the top job site...

President Donald J. Trump was voted into office by an impatient electorate that had no ability to measure his rhetoric against a political record. Slate political writer Will Saletan predicts that national impatience will not be kind to Mr. Trump. Saletan is the author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War . U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier , D-Calif., joined dozens of his colleagues b...

Nick Thune took the long way to stand-up comedy, performing Enrique Iglesias cover songs and making a stop in rehab before graduating from high school. On The Gist, he explains why he's not scared of silence on stage and what made him ditch his guitar. His new special, Nick Thune: Good Guy , is streaming now on Seeso . In the Spiel, asking much of Steven Mnuchin and parrying with Rick Perry. Learn...

You didn't have to agree with William F. Buckley to marvel at his intellect, his swiftness, and his wit. Starting in 1966, Buckley got to show off his skills every week on Firing Line, his pioneering television show devoted to debate. Heather Hendershot watched nearly 1,500 episodes of the show, and though she still doesn't agree with Buckley, she admires how he created a place for high-minded arg...

On every major piece of legislation in the Obama era, congressional Republicans have thrown up roadblocks and been reluctant to compromise. Can Democrats do the same in the age of Trump? Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and The Atlantic looks at the options facing the Congressional opposition and the future of everyone's favorite obstructionist tool, the filibuster. In the Spiel,...

So, who is Donald Trump's most troubling Cabinet pick? Is it Jeff Sessions, who received an 11 percent score on civil rights issues from the NAACP? Or Rex Tillerson , who was unprepared for questions about Vladimir Putin's regime? Or Ben Carson, who didn't seem to know anything about the mandate of Housing and Urban D evelopment? Slate 's chief political correspondent weighs in on the first week o...

This week, race was front and center at the confirmation hearing for Trump's attorney general nominee, Jeff Sessions. Cory Booker and the head of the NAACP testified that Sessions' history of alleged racist comments and his voting record suggested he could not fairly uphold the rights of all Americans. The Alabama senator fired back that he was not a racist and had fought to honor historical figur...

Between the shady unverified intelligence dossier , Trump's strange press conference , and the Rex Tillerson hearings, this has been a head-spinning 24 hours. We called up Slate 's War Stories correspondent Fred Kaplan to make sense of it all. Kaplan is most recently the author of Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War . In the Spiel, an analysis of President Obama's farewell and the mean...

If you've been reading the Onion the past eight years, you know that Vice President Joe Biden is a hair metal–loving party machine. He's set up a fog machine at the State of the Union address. He's regaled crowds with stories from his historic summer of '87 . And he's been busted many, many times for his shady side hustles. Chad Nackers, head writer at the Onion , talks about how his site created...

Are millennials really less money-focused than their forebears were? Do the kings of finance obsess over money because society doesn't give them another way to measure their success? How can we make ditch-digging meaningful work? On The Gist, behavioral economist and Wall Street Journal columnist Dan Ariely weighs in; think of him as the Dear Abby for the smartphone set. Ariely is the author of Pa...

The National Institutes of Health used to have blanket advice for parents: Don't give peanuts or peanut products to children under the age of 4. The result? Between 2003 and 2014, it seems likely more Americas were killed by bad advice about peanuts than by acts of terrorism. Why did it take so long to change these guidelines? Marion Nestle says we know very little about the science of food allerg...

New Yorker writer Maria Konnikova returns for another round of everyone's favorite game, "Is That Bulls--t?" Konnikova takes on a long-held theory about hair growth: The more often you shave, the faster it grows back. Konnikova's most recent book is The Confidence Game . In the Spiel, the Megyn Kelly backlash begins. Sponsors: ZipRecruiter. Post your job listing to all the top job sites with a sin...

Mara Wilson became iconic in the 1990s, but she hasn't appeared in a film since the year 2000. In her memoir Where Am I Now? Wilson explores the joys and difficulties of her life after child stardom. Mara's book was recently named one of the best of 2016 by NPR. Sponsors: Betterment, the largest automated investing service. Get up to six months of investing FREE when you go to Betterment.com/gist...

Ralph Nader's second work of fiction, Animal Envy , imagines a world where animals can talk to people and start demanding rights. Nader says the fable is meant to prompt deeper thinking about our relationship with nature. "We need to talk about what-if, because if we don't, we can't kick in our idealism and imagine real possibilities," says the 82-year-old author and advocate. Nader also weighs in...

Bob Boilen , creator and host of NPR's All Songs Considered and Tiny Desk Concerts , built his book around something he learned in his nearly 30 years of covering music: Artists are tired of talking about their own work, but ask them about what inspires them, and they'll light up. Boilen's book of interviews is the epically titled Your Song Changed My Life: From Jimmy Page to St. Vincent, Smokey R...

When comedian Laurie Kilmartin found out her father had advanced lung cancer, she processed it the best way she could: by tweeting jokes about her father's decline. The real-time mourning gave rise to Kilmartin's stand-up special, "45 Jokes About My Dead Dad," available on Seeso . Kilmartin is a writer for Conan on TBS and author of Sh*tty Mom: The Parenting Guide for the Rest of Us . In the Spiel...