L-Shaped Recovery
Political Gabfest
Slate Podcasts
4.4 • 8.5K Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2020
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Emily, John and David discuss the state of the pandemic; insider trading allegations in the Senate; and Trump’s firing of the watchdog investigating Mike Pompeo.
For this week’s Slate Plus bonus segment David, Emily, and John discuss the online videos that have educated and entertained them during social isolation. 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.
You can tweet suggestions, links, and questions to @SlateGabfest. Tweet us your cocktail chatter using #cocktailchatter or post it to our Facebook page. (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.
Episode Notes
Here are some notes and references from this week’s show:
Ed Yong for the Atlantic: “America’s Patchwork Pandemic Is Fraying Even Further”
Ryan Grim for the Intercept: “David Perdue Got Sweetheart Deal That Grew North of $6 Million After Election to The Senate”
Here are this week’s cocktail chatters:
John: These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore;
Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World by Tim Ferriss
The Hardest Job in the World, by John Dickerson
Emily: Meredith Blake for the Los Angeles Times: “The Woman Behind ‘Roe vs. Wade’ Didn’t Change Her Mind on Abortion. She was Paid”
David: Normal People by Sally Rooney ; “Abhushan Gautam for the Nepali Times: When The Air is Clean:
Photographs of Kathmandu Valley With Air Pollution Removed by the Coronavirus Lockdown”
Listener chatter from Valerie Minor: LavaMae‘s design for a DIY handwashing station you can build for the use of people experiencing homelessness.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest from May 21st, 2020, the L-shaped Recovery Edition. |
| 0:14.7 | I am David Plotz of Business Insider. I'm in Washington, D.C., in the closet, in the Heidi hole, in the V-shaped closet that I have. |
| 0:27.3 | John Dickerson, he of CBS's 60 Minutes, is in Manhattan. Hello, John Dickerson. |
| 0:32.9 | Hello, David. Glad that you've made it out of the tent. The Scott expedition has been rescued, |
| 0:38.5 | retrieved from the polar depths, and you're now safe in a house. Although I noticed that |
| 0:45.8 | I'm sorry to our listeners who can't see this, but I realize that the ladder I was using |
| 0:50.5 | to hold up the drapery to create the tent is still here, and it's unsightly. |
| 0:55.2 | So I'm going to move that while you introduce our next contestant. |
| 0:58.6 | And our next contestant from New Haven, Connecticut, first time on the Price is Right. |
| 1:04.9 | Come on down, Emily Bazelon of Yale University and mostly the New York Times Magazine. |
| 1:10.7 | Hello, Emily. |
| 1:11.1 | I am wearing not a t-shirt for the second day in a row. |
| 1:13.9 | I don't know why exactly. |
| 1:14.8 | I too. |
| 1:15.5 | I'm wearing a collared shirt. |
| 1:17.5 | And yet, oddly, I am not. |
| 1:20.1 | It's looking like hell. |
| 1:21.6 | Yeah. |
| 1:22.0 | Not true. |
| 1:23.6 | On today's Gab Fest, we'll have a pandemic roundup. the World Health Organization, Bruhaha, the pandemic patchwork across America, the fact that our president is taking an unproven medicine for malaria to forestall getting COVID-19, the huge racial disparity in COVID deaths, and more. |
| 1:45.9 | Then we'll talk about the insider trading allegations against senators Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler and others. And then we'll talk about |
| 1:53.0 | how Mike Pompeo's inspector general at the State Department got polled. Is Pompeo corrupt? |
... |
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