This episode of the Gab Fest contains explicit language.

Hello and welcome to this late political gab fest for August 1st, 2019, The Dark Psychic Force Edition.

I am David Plotz of Atlas Obscura. I'm here in Washington, D.C., and once again with me, now a sort of semi-permanent resident, perhaps, of the nation's capital, is John Dickerson at CBS 60 Minutes. Hello, John. Hello, David. Don't confuse people. I'm just, I'm just here working on the book. John's worried someone's going to make him do something. John is not a semi-permanent resident.

He's a Gothamite now.

That other voice, of course, is Emily Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine and Yale University Law School. Hello, Emily. Hello, hello. And you're not a new year. In Maine. No, I'm in Maine. The lovely place in Maine. That's so nice. I am jealous. Emily is joining us via Skype, so we will see how that connection goes. On today's GabFest, who won the second Democratic debates? Why did they win them? Maybe no one won. Let's just talk about the second Democratic debates.

Then Trump nominates a partisan hack, a sinister partisan hack as his director of national intelligence.

What could possibly go wrong there? And then the heat waves that have been causing misery in Europe and across the U.S., how they affect human life on this planet, what they

portend for the future, what they portend for politics, and more.

Plus, we will, of course, have cocktail chatter.

And a reminder, listeners, that we have a live show coming up in the Twin Cities in

St. Paul, Minnesota, Wednesday, September 18th at the Fitzgerald Theater.

We are going to do a live show, our first one in the Twin Cities. You can get tickets and more

information at slate.com slash live. We would love to see you there. We're really looking forward

to that show, and it's going to be great. So go to slate.com slash live, join us September 18th in St. Paul.

So we had our second round of Democratic debates.

Again, a two-night affair randomly sorted.

We had a first night, which had Warren and Sanders and Delaney and Hickenlooper, a second night that had Biden and Harris

and Booker and Yang and Gabbard and Michael Bennett was on one night or the other. I can't

remember which one. He was on Wednesday night. That's the second night. That was the second night.

So, John, there was a, there were long, the debates were long.

There's so many people on stage.

It's kind of hard to keep track of it, hard to moderate them, hard to sort of pay attention.

...