Maybe It Is Infrastructure Week
Political Gabfest
Slate Podcasts
4.4 • 8.5K Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2020
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Emily, John and David discuss the security of U.S. elections, are joined by guest economics professor Jason Furman to help estimate by when we can anticipate a financial recovery, and the hosts talk with novelist Geraldine Brooks to learn more about living through a plague.
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, and John discuss their best social distancing hacks.
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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 April 2nd, 2020, the Maybe It Is Infrastructure Week edition. |
| 0:14.4 | I am David Plotz. I'm in today. I'm in my basement, joining me from somewhere in their houses, Emily Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine and Yale University Law School. |
| 0:27.1 | Hello, Emily. How are you? |
| 0:28.8 | I'm fine. I'm a little worried about the streak on your basement ceiling. Let's discuss that later. |
| 0:33.9 | Yes, you know what it is? It's the dishwasher leaking and causing some water damage there. I'm 99% |
| 0:40.3 | sure. Excellent. But thank you for noting that. You're welcome. Water damage makes me incredibly |
| 0:45.9 | anxious. I'm not an anxious person, but that's what makes me anxious is water damage. So thanks for |
| 0:50.3 | stressing me out. Well, if I can just chime in, remember our conversation about how you so accurately, |
| 0:57.0 | poignantly, and unforgettably referred to water leakage as like having a spy in your house that you don't know about. |
| 1:04.0 | It's always struck me as the most apt metaphor for water leakage and damage, which I have a similar feeling about. |
| 1:11.0 | And also have lots of water leakage from our dishwasher. |
| 1:14.5 | That is John Dickerson of CBS at 60 Minutes, joining from Manhattan. |
| 1:19.4 | Hello, John. How are you guys doing? Are you both? |
| 1:21.6 | Oh, David. |
| 1:22.5 | Yes, okay. |
| 1:23.4 | We're doing, we're doing all right. We're into our third week now of, because we had people who tested positive at 60 minutes. So we've been, we've been social distancing and shutting ourselves off for about three weeks. So it's, we're into our third week and we're all, everybody's kind of hanging in. Emily? How are you guys? Similarly. |
| 1:44.9 | Yes. |
| 1:45.7 | All right. |
| 1:51.2 | On today's GabFest, what is the best way to shorten and minimize the economic catastrophe that COVID-19 is causing? |
| 1:54.4 | We will talk to Jason Furman, who ran President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors about |
| 1:58.8 | the best ways to do that. |
| 2:00.4 | Then can we have an election |
... |
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