Political Gabfest - Greatest Hits
Political Gabfest
Slate Podcasts
4.4 • 8.5K Ratings
🗓️ 1 January 2026
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz revisit several favorite segments from Gabfests past to celebrate their 20th anniversary: the consequential and eye-opening “don’t call the police” debate, the segment in which John shows Bill Clinton how to apologize with his characteristic eloquence and grace, and that time a data scientist definitively answered the important question: which host interrupts the others the most?
For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, John, and David revisit one more favorite segment from 20 years of the Political Gabfest: that time in 2008 they fought about the John Edwards love affair scandal.
In the latest Gabfest Reads, David Plotz talks with Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales about his new book The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last. They discuss how Wikipedia’s culture of assuming good faith and shared purpose became a model for building trustworthy digital communities — and what lessons that holds for companies, social media, and politics today.
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
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.
Follow
@SlateGabfest on X / https://twitter.com/SlateGabfestSlate Political Gabfest on Facebook / https://www.facebook.com/Gabfest/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Cab Fest. |
| 0:07.0 | January 1st, 2026, the Greatest |
| 0:19.0 | Hits Edition. |
| 0:20.0 | Oh, look at that. |
| 0:22.6 | If it has greatest, it should have that in it, right? |
| 0:26.6 | Okay. John Dickerson, coming in hot as ever. |
| 0:30.6 | I'm David Plotz of CityCast. |
| 0:32.6 | It's not January 1st. We're pretending with January 1st. |
| 0:35.6 | John Dickerson from New York City with no title, |
| 0:40.3 | no job title, contributor to the Atlantic, Gab Fest co-host. Hello, John Dickerson. Man about |
| 0:49.3 | town. Yeah, that's good. Liner. Liner. |
| 0:52.3 | Exactly. |
| 0:56.0 | Mumbler into his soup. |
| 0:58.5 | Soup. |
| 0:59.7 | Soup. I'm a soup mumbler. |
| 1:01.4 | I'm looking forward to. |
| 1:02.5 | Maybe that could be our schick is like what your job is. |
| 1:05.0 | Yeah. |
| 1:05.3 | Every week we'll have a different one. |
| 1:08.4 | Yeah. |
| 1:09.4 | Jordan Morris, his sign on is always boy Detective, which I would like to be. |
| 1:14.3 | I aspire to that. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

