What Next - Bonus: The Surge | 45 Days from Election Day
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 20 September 2024
⏱️ 4 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s just 45 days until election day—and the polls are telling us…a little bit of everything. In our first Slate Plus exclusive crossover, Mary sits down with one of the nation’s foremost experts on political nonsense.
Guest: Jim Newell, Slate’s senior politics writer, who writes the weekly newsletter The Surge.
This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock exclusive episodes of The Surge but you’ll also access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen.
Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme and Rob Gunther.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Happy Friday everyone. If you are listening to me right now, |
| 0:05.0 | congratulations. You are listening to the very first installment of the surge, |
| 0:09.0 | our weekly pre-election hangout with Slates Jim Newell. Hey Jim. I'm married. Okay some of you |
| 0:15.4 | probably already know about the search because it is the funniest newsletter |
| 0:18.8 | about politics you will have the pleasure of reading. It's basically like |
| 0:21.6 | having a leisurely but hilarious |
| 0:23.8 | brunch with Jim who sends it out every Saturday morning, which made me think like |
| 0:28.4 | why can't we approximate this on the show and then Jim was like oh we can so here we are Jim just the surge the original tagline was the most important political nonsense of the week which is a way of getting |
| 0:47.1 | it the tone of the newsletter what we do is we rank the the seven most important people in politics that week? |
| 0:54.4 | Whether in Congress... |
| 0:55.4 | Seven? |
| 0:56.4 | Seven? |
| 0:57.4 | I don't know. |
| 0:58.4 | I think that had to do with the original design template from five years ago or something. It's all about whatever's available, you know? |
| 1:05.4 | It's a Google Doc thing. Or maybe eight would have been too many to write, but so we just I |
| 1:11.7 | just kind of rank what's going on. It's usually spread across Congress, |
| 1:16.0 | election, state government, anyone who's making noise. Obviously now since we have |
| 1:20.8 | what about six weeks until the election, it's going to be a lot more election |
| 1:24.5 | focused. Yeah and there's so much noise right now how do you even figure out who is |
| 1:30.1 | surging like who's surging is? well I kind of just as the week goes along I make |
| 1:36.8 | notes because if something happens on Monday chances are by Wednesday I've forgotten it |
| 1:40.8 | already unless I've written it down. A very scientific process. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.