Airplane Travel is a Nightmare
Political Gabfest
Slate Podcasts
4.4 • 8.5K Ratings
🗓️ 26 March 2026
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss why politicians keep failing to solve the escalating crisis of American air travel as massive lines and ICE agents disrupt airport operations, what could happen to the 2026 elections when the Supreme Court decides the fate of a state law on mail-in ballot deadlines, and how two jury verdicts provide new legal hooks to hold social media companies liable for harms to children.
For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, John, and David discuss the new book This Land is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History with author and historian Beverly Gage. They talk about the value of exploring U.S. historical sites in all their complexity as the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence approaches this summer.
In the latest Gabfest Reads, David Plotz talks with journalist Gabriel Sherman about his new book Bonfire of the Murdochs: How the Epic Fight to Control the Last Great Media Dynasty Broke a Family—and the World. Sherman, who also wrote the bestselling biography of Fox News chief Roger Ailes, spent 15 years reporting on the Murdoch empire. In this book he turns his lens on the family itself — the rivalries, the wounds, and the secret Nevada courtroom battle that finally forced Rupert’s hand.
Email your chatters, questions, and comments to gabfest@slate.com. (Messages may be referenced by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)
Podcast production by Nina Porzucki
Research by Emily Ditto
You can find the full Political Gabfest show pages here.
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Find out more about David Plotz's monthly tours of Ft. DeRussy, the secret Civil War fort hidden in Rock Creek Park.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest. |
| 0:10.4 | March 26th, |
| 0:17.5 | airplane travel is a nightmare edition. I'm David Pots of CityCast in Washington, D.C., |
| 0:24.0 | from the New York Times Magazine and Yale University Law School. Finally, not in Puerto Rico. |
| 0:28.6 | Emily Bassel. |
| 0:30.2 | Though in New York, still migrating. Yeah, you're in some kind of new venue. You're in some sort of |
| 0:36.9 | corporate housing. |
| 0:38.5 | Precisely. |
| 0:39.3 | Yeah, there's a, there's a pillow on the floor behind you. |
| 0:41.7 | That is John Dickerson, that other voice, John Dickerson, where, from New York City, where as part of Mayor Mom Donnie's plan to bring agriculture back to the city, John has just planted his early spring crops. |
| 0:55.3 | John has been given 12 acres in Central Park. He's doing onions, peas, lettuce, and all the brassicas. |
| 1:02.3 | Congratulations, John. I hope you are watering well. And that is a lot of Central Park. |
| 1:07.6 | Well, thank you. But the problem is the fertilizer prices are so high because of the |
| 1:13.0 | issue in the Strait of Hormuz. So I'm unable to take it full advantage of this wonderful new |
| 1:19.7 | program. But I'm actually not even in New York. I am just blocks away from the David Plotz Memorial |
| 1:25.7 | plaque here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, |
| 1:28.8 | which by which young college students stop and pause and reflect every day as they go to class. |
| 1:37.6 | And it's quite a plaque. |
| 1:38.7 | It's a great plaque. |
| 1:41.3 | This week on the Gab Fest, the cascading series of problems in American air travel, what is causing them with a side dish of Iran war in that topic. Then will the Supreme Court bar late arriving mail-in ballots not allow them to be counted? And then META lost a couple of big civil cases. is the landscape for social media going to change |
| 2:04.7 | for children in the wake of these big losses and these juries finding that meta and |
| 2:10.2 | YouTube have misbehaved towards our children. Plus, we'll have cocktail chatter. |
... |
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