To save the world from eventual destruction, you have to live and work in one of two locations that you cannot leave for three years: one on the ocean floor, the other on the moon. Which do you choose and why?

What pre-1900 social custom (especially one related to how people interact with each other in public) that has fallen out of fashion should be revived in 2021 and beyond?

Would you rather have read War and Peace but not be able to talk about it, or to have read Atlas Shrugged and have to talk about it?

A pair of 80s style magical leg warmers must be visibly worn all day to activate superhuman cheetah speed. Do you wear them?

For the rest of quarantine, you must share your home with a fictional character. Who is your new roommate?

You can have your portrait painted by any artist from any period of history, or your biography written by any author. Whom would you pick?

If you could banish any widely accepted canard from people’s minds, what would it be?

If you, and only you, could see one statistic hovering over every person’s head, what would you want it to be?

Slate Plus members get a bonus segment on the Gabfest each week, and access to special bonus episodes throughout the year. Sign up now to listen and support our show. For this week’s Slate Plus bonus segment David, Emily, John, and Alexandra explore some bonus conundrums.

You can tweet suggestions, links, and questions to @SlateGabfest. Tweet us your cocktail chatter using #cocktailchatter. (Messages may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

The email address for the Political Gabfest is gabfest@slate.com. (Email may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

Podcast production by Jocelyn Frank.

Research and show notes by Bridgette Dunlap.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for December 24th, 2020, the Conundrum Edition.
0:13.7	I am David Plotz of CityCast in Washington, D.C.C. I am joined, of course, by Emily Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine and Yale University Law School.
0:23.0	Hello, Emily in New Haven.
0:25.1	Hey, David.
0:26.0	And from Manhattan, CBS is 60 Minutes, John Dickerson.
0:32.1	Hello, John.
0:33.1	Hello, David.
0:34.8	Oh, what an awful year this has been for the world in all respects,
0:38.8	and yet it is nice to know that even in these uncertain times,
0:44.0	the capacity of Gap Fest listeners to think deeply about the most important questions of the day remains unchecked.
0:51.3	It's Christmas Eve.
0:52.6	You have given us a gift.
0:54.0	You have given us a gift of some of the
0:55.5	most ridiculous and delightful and difficult conundrums we'd ever had to tackle, such as,
1:01.6	should a three-day weekend include Monday or Friday? Or for the rest of your life, you have to go
1:07.4	by a one-word name like Sting. What name do you pick? It is going to be a
1:12.4	glorious, glorious period of time. Can't guess how long. We could go on for hours and hours.
1:18.3	These conundrums are so good. Probably won't. Probably just be like an hour. But it'll be a glorious
1:21.8	hour of digging into conundrums and we have a special guest coming at you soon. So let's get right into it,
1:29.3	my friends. I will start with one from Phil Goldstein, the great Phil Goldstein, one of the great
1:35.3	conundrum writers of our time. What pre-1900 social custom, especially one related to how
1:40.7	people interact with each other in public that has fallen out of fashion should be revived in 2021 and beyond. Okay, so I had a very clear thought about this, curtseying and
	...

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