Greenland War Averted
Political Gabfest
Slate Podcasts
4.6 • 242 Ratings
🗓️ 22 January 2026
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss whether Trump’s lust for Greenland will break the world (or indeed, whether it already has), what this week’s arguments at the Supreme Court suggest about the future of Fed independence, and how FBI sources say the Bureau is being turned into a weapon of the president.
For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, John, and David discuss a new memoir from Pennsylvania governor and likely presidential candidate Josh Shapiro, and what it tells us about his views on the presidency, his relationship with former VP Kamala Harris, and how he might approach a campaign.
In the latest Gabfest Reads, Emily Bazelon talks with author Curtis Sittenfeld about her short story collection, “Show Don't Tell.” They discuss the recurring themes of the book from troubled marriages and middle age to the passage of time, and characters who are navigating moments of racial privilege and prejudice.
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
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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. |
| 0:06.6 | January 22nd, 2026, the Greenland War Averted edition. |
| 0:20.8 | I'm David Plotz of Citycast here in Washington, D.C., from the New York Times Magazine and Yale University Law School, Emily, |
| 0:28.0 | Baselon in New Haven. |
| 0:29.3 | Hello, Emily. |
| 0:30.2 | Hey, David. |
| 0:31.1 | Hey, John. |
| 0:32.3 | And from New York City, where he was just named president of CBS, the Chuck Berry Society. |
| 0:40.0 | John Dickerson, hello, John. |
| 0:43.4 | That was, that was like even more of a dad joke than even I could conjure. |
| 0:50.2 | I like, I feel like we're going to have these for a while and I'm trying to look forward to them. |
| 0:53.7 | It's excellent. |
| 0:54.9 | Yeah. My girlfriend told me to stop it to leave John alone. No, I think, well, I don't know how John feels about it. Oh, John's. Oh, John's very loose. |
| 1:05.6 | It presents us all from taking ourselves too seriously. I think that's exactly. I'm cocooned in banks of snow around me, |
| 1:14.2 | so I feel, you're untouchable. You're for maybe frozen, maybe frozen, incapable of any response, |
| 1:21.7 | emotional or otherwise. This week on the Gab Fest, will Trump's lust for Greenland break the world? |
| 1:28.1 | Has it already broken the world, in fact? |
| 1:30.5 | Then the Supreme Court is poised seemingly to protect the independence of the Federal Reserve, |
| 1:35.5 | at least a little teeny bit. |
| 1:37.8 | And then Emily and her colleague Rachel Poser at the New York Times Magazine have an |
| 1:42.3 | incredible new article in the New York Times |
| 1:45.1 | magazine, a tour to force, a history of the FBI under Cash Patel, history of the FBI in 2025, |
... |
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