Breaking Up Facebook
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2020
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Emily, John and David talk about the coup attempt, Facebook’s legal troubles, and which presidential norms to restore or discard, with guest Tim Wu.
It's conundrum season! Pass along your most pressing conundrums here: www.slate.com/conundrum. Our annual Conundrum show is coming soon.
Here are some notes and references from this week’s show:
Tim Wu for the New York Times: “What Really Saved the Republic From Trump?”
Zeynep Tufekci for the Atlantic: “ ‘This Must Be Your First’ ”
Here are this week’s cocktail chatters:
John: Dalya Alberge for the Guardian: “ ‘Sistine Chapel of the Ancients' Rock Art Discovered in Remote Amazon Forest”
David: Armando Iannucci’s The Personal History of David Copperfield
Emily: Esmé E. Deprez for Bloomberg Businessweek: “How Medela Lost Moms”
Listener chatter from Charlotte Hope, @charlottehope: Elizabeth Yuko for Architectural Digest: “How Previous Epidemics Impacted Home Design”
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 consider a question from listener Daniela Koontz about ideal road trips.
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 this late political gap test for December 10th, 2020, the Breaking Up Facebook edition. |
| 0:13.7 | I am David Plotz, Citycast from Washington, D.C. I'm joined from New Orleans, where she is on a week-long trip to discover the origins of jazz and blues by Emily Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine in Yale University Law School. |
| 0:28.1 | Hello, Emily. |
| 0:29.7 | You're going to put panic into the hearts of everyone who knows me and works for the New York Times, the idea that I would get such assignment. |
| 0:37.4 | That's not what I'm doing in New Orleans. But I really like that idea. I wish I was that person. |
| 0:42.4 | Bazelon sings the blues. And then from New York City, John Dickerson of CBS's 60 Minutes. Hello, John. |
| 0:52.7 | Hello, David. Hello, Emily. I feel like I've been talking to you guys. |
| 0:56.5 | I know. This is our, this is like our fourth hour together in the last 36 hours, and there's more to come. |
| 1:03.1 | We had the Colbert. We had our live show last night. There's been a lot of singing our body's electric. |
| 1:09.9 | Yet, I am not yet sick of you. |
| 1:11.7 | I'm not yet sick of you. |
| 1:12.9 | I can't seem to quit you guys. |
| 1:15.5 | On today's Gab Fest, is this a coup? |
| 1:20.0 | It may not be succeeding and it may be ridiculous, but is it actually an attempt to overthrow |
| 1:24.2 | what, how American government works and what is protecting us. |
| 1:28.3 | We're going to be joined by Tim Wu Scholar, who has a brilliant op-ed in the New York Times |
| 1:33.3 | today about what is protecting us from a dissolution, a collapse of the American system. |
| 1:40.9 | Then Tim is also going to join us because he's an antitrust expert par excellence to talk about |
| 1:46.1 | whether Facebook should be broken up. The FTC and 46 state attorneys general say it should be. |
| 1:51.2 | Are they right? And then we have an amazing topic. John Flansberg, who is a significant chunk |
| 1:59.3 | of they might be giants, the wonderful band, has written us a |
| 2:03.0 | question, a really good question in the form of a song. So we're going to hear the song and |
... |
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