Elon Musk’s Fork in the Road

Political Gabfest

Slate Podcasts

Politics, Government, News

4.5 • 8.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2025

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss the chaos and coming fight around impoundment of federal grants; the surprise market shakeup around AI and DeepSeek; and talk with Jonathan Rauch about his new book out next week entitled Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy. For this week’s Slate Plus Episode, Emily, John, and David discuss new data from the 2024 NAEP Reading and Mathematics Assessments and the collapse of student test scores in the US. In the latest Gabfest Reads, Emily talks with Yael van der Wouden about her novel, The Safekeep. Email your chatters, questions, and comments to [email protected]. (Messages may be referenced by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.) Research by Emily Ditto Want more Political Gabfest? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Political Gabfest show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or visit slate.com/gabfestplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest.
0:08.1	The president ran on the notion that the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional.
0:13.5	I agree with that.
0:15.9	January 30th, 2025, The Fork in the Road edition.
0:23.4	I'm David Plotz of Citycast in Washington, D.C., where there's just a pall over the city after this horrific plane crash last night.
0:30.3	From the New York Times Magazine and Yale University Law School, Emily Bazelon. How are you doing, Emily?
0:37.2	I'm okay. Good to see you guys. And from New York
0:40.9	City, John Dickerson co-anchor of the CBS Evening News, just finishing up his first week in that job.
0:47.9	Congratulations, John. Thank you. It's good to see you guys. Can you want to tell listeners, like
0:52.5	10 seconds on how it's going? It's going well. It's going well see you guys. Do you want to tell listeners, like 10 seconds on how it's going?
0:54.5	It's going well.
0:55.4	I mean, it's going well.
0:56.6	People are getting what we're trying to do with the show.
1:00.2	Not everyone.
1:00.8	Some people want something else, which is fine for them.
1:04.4	But it's going well.
1:05.8	And it's great to work with a great group of people who are working super hard.
1:10.2	I will say, as somebody who doesn't regularly watch Eve News,
1:12.8	and I obviously watched some of John this week.
1:15.2	And this has got a lot of substance.
1:18.5	If you like John Dickerson, if you like the kind of the meat on the bone of John Dickerson,
1:23.8	you'll enjoy this because this is not quick and not quick and trashy this is like there's real
	...

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