The Gist

On The Gist, rhetoric scholar Jennifer Mercieca says that when you dig into his speeches, Donald Trump's kind of an evil genius when it comes to rhetoric. Whether it's his use of paralipsis ("I'm not saying, but I'm saying") or reification (treating people like objects), Trump is an expert at using rhetoric to get under people's skin. Mercieca is authoring a book on political rhetoric in the 2016...

In 2014, Amber Ruffin became the first black woman to write for a late-night network comedy when she joined NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers . On The Gist, Ruffin explains the banality of being a trailblazer: "We're just dicking around in a different room." For the Spiel, the dogged defenders of Donald Trump. Panoply survey We want you to tell us about the podcasts you enjoy and how often you lis...

On The Gist, Jennifer Lawless details the reasons more women don't run for elected office in the United States. Her research documents a decline in media bias against women running for House seats. Despite that, Congress is still overwhelmingly male . Lawless authored a book with Danny Hayes called Women on the Run: Gender, Media, and Political Campaigns in a Polarized Era . For the Spiel, Bob Dyl...

If you had to engineer the perfect wait time for a meal, how would you do it? On The Gist, Dan Pashman explains the art of anticipation as applied to food. Pashman is the host of WNYC's The Sporkful . Check out his show's new series on food, race, and culture: " Who Is This Restaurant For? " In the Spiel, what should we call Trump's former defectors? Undefectors? Reflectors? Panoply Survey: We wan...

The implosion of Donald Trump's campaign shows a party that's divided on everything from criminal justice reform to immigration. On The Gist, National Review executive editor and Slate columnist Reihan Salam considers the future of the GOP and conservative thinking. For the Spiel, why did the Republican Party fall for a demagogue? Is it because conservatives still kowtow to right-wing media outlet...

We have seen the limits of debate prep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Just one question on the leaked "Access Hollywood" tape of Donald Trump with Billy Bush: Are we watching a Greek tragedy or a Saturday morning cartoon? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Phoebe Robinson recounts the tributes and trolling her book has prompted with its title, You Can't Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain. On The Gist, Robinson wonders whether dreadlocks have really entered the mainstream (and are they ever acceptable on white guys?), and gives Mike a lesson in cultural sensitivity. Robinson is the goofball complement to her co-host Jessica Willi...

On The Gist, we look at the proliferation of fact-checking in the 2016 campaign. One empirical analysis found that Donald Trump is telling a falsehood every five minutes during his speeches. But why isn't the aggressive fact-checking of the Republican making a difference? We called up Brendan Nyhan, a professor in the department of government at Dartmouth College and the former editor of Spinsanit...

On The Gist, dig into body mass index with our resident bulls--t debunker Maria Konnikova. Does a healthy BMI actually mean anything? The question came up after Donald Trump's recent appearance on The Dr. Oz Show , in which his weight and height were revealed—if his numbers are to be believed, his BMI is 30.3, which qualifies as obese. But does BMI actually tell us anything meaningful about health...

Mike weighs in on the one and only debate between Mike Pence and Tim Kaine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In The Gist, Arun Venugopal looks at a place that could stand in for America as a whole during this election: Long Island, New York, home to high levels of taxation, opioid addiction, and support for Donald Trump. Venugopal walks us through some of the stories that help explain the psychology of this year's campaign. For the Spiel, Mike takes a look at the closest Senate races. Panoply survey We w...

In The Gist, what can we really find out from the Donald Trump tax leak? As Philip Hackney argues, not a lot. Hackney is a professor of tax law at Louisiana State University and formerly worked as counsel at the Internal Revenue Service. He says that Trump's returns don't indicate any wrongdoing per se. But there's lots of ways he might have used the tax system to his advantage to save money. For...

On The Gist, Simon Doonan ponders the rise and fall of pretentiousness in the past 20 years. Doonan writes for Slate and is creative ambassador for Barneys New York. For the Spiel, it's the Lobstar of the Antentwig. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of perso...

Malcolm Gladwell's career has been all about ideas—but what he really specializes in is their packaging and delivery. On The Gist, Gladwell tells the story behind his earliest obsessions and explains what he's learned trafficking in unconventional theories. He is working on the second season of his hit Panoply podcast, Revisionist History . For the Spiel, a contrarian take on Donald Trump's commen...

Storyteller Matthew Dicks has one rule for getting better at telling stories: At the end of every day, scribble down the moment that makes the most promising tale. Today on The Gist, we hear from a listener who followed that advice. For the Spiel, a bungled marriage proposal at the New York Yankees game. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an...

In The Gist, PBS NewsHour correspondent Lisa Desjardins surveys the presidential campaigns' get-out-the-vote efforts: "The first caveat is a lot of the rules don't apply to this campaign." In the Spiel, are presidential debates like the NFL Scouting Combine? They're not enough to show if a player will be good on the field, but they're enough to show a player has no business being there in the firs...

Hillary shimmied, Donald interrupted and Lester Holt tried to keep it all together. The Gist team was at Hofstra University for the first presidential debate, and spoke to everyone from campaign managers to senators to a ribald former general. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our...

The Gist is awaiting the first presidential debate and preparing a rapid response for early Tuesday morning. In the meantime, we hear from Jeremy Epstein : Four years ago, he was a 20-year-old Hofstra University student facing uncertain job prospects. But after he asked Barack Obama and Mitt Romney about the economy during the first debate, he became briefly famous. He was even impersonated by Fre...

The world is not flat, Google hasn't yet mapped everything, and there are yet places in the world that don't take your AmEx card. Atlas Obscura: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders is the immense catalog of the world's curiosities, from the rainbow river of South America to the medical device museum in Minnesota. On The Gist, editors Dylan Thuras and Ella Morton of Atlas Obscura expl...

Do you have great aspirations of being the best president the United States has ever known? On The Gist, journalist Robert Strauss says you'd be better off trying to learn from the mistakes of America's duds. That's why Strauss wrote Worst. President. Ever. about James Buchanan, who has the distinct dishonor of setting the national stage for the Civil War. In the Spiel, Mike takes on the myth of t...

For their second movie, Matt Johnson and Matthew Miller gave themselves a challenge: Make a period mockumentary about the faking of the moon landing, on a total shoestring budget. Johnson says the finished product, Operation Avalanche , wouldn't have been possible without the (unwitting) support of NASA, who let the filmmakers shoot inside the unaltered mission control from 1969. The film opens ac...

Maureen Dowd has covered every president since the early '90s. The second President Bush even gave her a nickname: "The Cobra." In her new book, Dowd examines what it takes to lead the country and what the press is missing about the current Republican nominee. On the Spiel, Mike laments a bygone age of TV advertising. Today's sponsors: The Gist is brought to you by Betterment, the largest automate...

In 2012, Republicans won a solid majority in the House of Representatives, but only 48 percent of the vote. How did it happen? The Hill 's national correspondent, Reid Wilson, talks about the unusual forces influencing down-ballot races this year. There's more money from outside forces, like the Koch brothers, but also hyperlocal issues that get lost in coverage of the presidential race. On the Sp...

The political upheaval of 1968 was ferocious, but the Billboard charts still reflected a calm, placid sensibility. Our guest Chris Molanphy looks at the year in radio hits, from Herb Alpert's debut as a singer to the novelty tracks competing for air time with the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel. Molanphy writes Slate 's Why Is This Song No. 1? column. For the Spiel, a debate with Politico Magazine...