Political Gabfest - 2025 Conundrums!
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 26 December 2025
⏱️ 77 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, David Plotz, and special guest Stephen Colbert answer listeners’ conundrums of all kinds: the meaningful, the trivial, and the delightfully absurd.
Thanks to all Conundrums contributors: Karl, Elodie, Mitchell, Brian, Phil, Eric, Christian, Kyle, Matthew, Katie, Jesse, John, Bjorn, David, Colin, Alan, Emily, Marie, and Liam!
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 with live show support from Katie Rayford and the team at the New York Society for Ethical Culture
Research by Emily Ditto
You can find the full Political Gabfest show pages here.
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.
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 | Okay, you guys ready? |
| 0:01.3 | Yeah. |
| 0:01.9 | Is your mic on? |
| 0:02.7 | Atson. |
| 0:04.1 | Woo! |
| 0:04.6 | All right, mics are on, right? |
| 0:05.9 | Yeah. |
| 0:06.5 | I believe my mic is on. |
| 0:08.0 | Yes. |
| 0:10.6 | Nina hit it. |
| 0:17.0 | Hello, and welcome to the Slate Political Gap Fest, December 25th, 2025, the 2025 Penundrums Edition. We are live at the Society for Ethical Culture in Manhattan, |
| 0:45.2 | where a packed house of beautifully dressed yet morally perplexed New Yorkers. |
| 0:53.8 | They don't know whether an octopus has arms or legs. |
| 0:58.2 | Whether if you were a pastry, what pastry you would be. |
| 1:02.1 | Whether in the New World Order, you would be ruled by banks or AI or cats. |
| 1:09.2 | But don't worry, my dear Gotham friends, by the end of the evening, you will have pure |
| 1:15.1 | moral clarity. |
| 1:17.5 | I am David Plotz, host of Citicast, and joining me on the command room stage are my two |
| 1:21.5 | Gapvest co-hosts on my far left. |
| 1:28.1 | He's the same age. |
| 1:29.6 | I bet you didn't know this. |
| 1:30.7 | The same age that George Washington was when he became president. |
... |
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