Find Something New
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 16 July 2020
⏱️ 77 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Emily, David and guest host James Forman Jr. discuss the pandemic catastrophe, the racial justice movement, and “cancel culture.”
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 James, David, and Emily discuss the program James has started at Yale Law School to help individuals from the New Haven area to get law degrees, who wouldn’t otherwise be able to.
Here are some notes and references from this week’s show:
Neil Gross for the New York Times: “Want to Abolish the Police? Consider Becoming an Officer Instead”
Paul Butler for the New York Times: “The System Must Counteract Prosecutors’ Natural Sympathies for Cops”
Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy
Unpacking the Boston Police Budget, ACLU Massachusetts
Harper’s Magazine: “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate”
Ross Douthat for The New York Times: “10 Theses About Cancel Culture”
David Plotz for Business Insider: “Government Data Is Getting Worse.”
Here are this week’s cocktail chatters:
James: Vertellis card game
Emily: Pam Fessler and Elena Moore for NPR’s Morning Edition: “Signed, Sealed, Undelivered: Thousands Of Mail-In Ballots Rejected For Tardiness”
David: Kerry Allen for the BBC: “US-China: Pompeo Dog Photo Has Netizens Asking If US Is Toying With China”
Listener chatter from James Edward Dillard @jamesdillard: ChinaTalk podcast: “How Corruption Works in China”
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 July 16th, 2020, the Find Something New Edition. |
| 0:15.0 | I'm David Plotz of Business Insider. I'm in Vermont, in my airy attic in Vermont, thank goodness, not my, not my, not my |
| 0:23.4 | dank fuggy closet in Washington, D.C. I'm joined from New Haven, from her airy office in New Haven |
| 0:32.0 | by Emily Bazelon. I didn't even say your name right, Emily. Emily Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine and Yale |
| 0:40.9 | University Law School. Hello. How are you? Good morning. I'm good. John Dickerson is on vacation this |
| 0:49.1 | week, hard-earned, long-earned vacation, hopefully rereading his book, recognizing how good his book as being smugly, satisfyingly, rereading his book on a beach somewhere. John is never smug. Yeah, he wouldn't. He wouldn't. He wouldn't be. I'm not saying it's actually happening. I'm just painting an imaginary picture. Come on. In any case, sitting in for John, joining us. I don't know if you're making |
| 1:13.2 | your Gab Fest debut or not, James Foreman. You may have sat in for me at some point, but you're making |
| 1:17.1 | your plots gap fest debut, certainly is James Foreman Jr., professor of law at Yale, author of the Pulitzer |
| 1:22.3 | Prize winning, locking up our own crime and punishment in Black America. Hello, joining us also from New Haven. |
| 1:28.9 | Nice to meet you. Yeah, nice to meet you. I did this once before some years ago, but I see, |
| 1:34.4 | yes, I think you were not there. I remember it because it was in New Haven and it was shortly |
| 1:39.4 | after the shooting of Michael Brown. Yeah. I'm so glad that you and I get to be on the show together this time. |
| 1:46.6 | On today's Gab Fest, the pandemic worsens. |
| 1:49.4 | Is there any chance kids are going to get back to school? |
| 1:51.9 | Should we hope that they are even going to get back to school at this point? |
| 1:54.6 | Then the state of Black Lives Matter and the George Floyd protests, what's going on with police reform, with criminal |
| 2:02.2 | justice reform, with the movement itself. And then cancel culture. What is it? Is it real? How to |
| 2:09.4 | understand it? This is a segment I'm looking forward to because I am completely befuddled and |
| 2:15.0 | I'm looking forward to James and Emily explaining it to me because I don't understand anything that's happening. Plus, of course, we will have cocktail chatter. On Tuesday, the Trump White House launched its new ad campaign to help the unemployed Ivanka Trump help roll out their great new slogan, which is find something new. How can any of us find something new? Everything is collapsed. We're desperate. We're clinging on with our fingertips. There are not new jobs for the people who have been laid off. There's not a new world for all of us who wish there to be a new world. We are just stuck, stuck, stuck with the world that we have. |
| 2:53.1 | Everything is terrible with this pandemic. Case loads are rising in 41 states, and they're |
| 2:58.2 | rising at shocking rates. Deaths are also starting to rise. Mask wearing is increasing, but community |
| 3:05.2 | spread is rampant. There's little contact tracing, quarantining, |
... |
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