Political Gabfest - The “Gain of Function” Edition
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 27 May 2021
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Here are some notes and references from this week’s show:
David Leonhardt for The New York Times: “The Lab-Leak Theory”
Nicholson Baker for New York Magazine: “The Lab-Leak Hypothesis”
Nicholas Wade for The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: “The Origin of COVID: Did People or Nature Open Pandora’s Box at Wuhan?”
Anne Applebaum for The Atlantic: “Other Regimes Will Hijack Planes Too”
The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking, by Brendan I. Koerner
Eric Levitz for New York Magazine: “David Shor on Why Trump Was Good for the GOP and How Dems Can Win in 2022”
Eric Levitz for New York Magazine: “David Shor’s Unified Theory of American Politics”
Here’s this week’s chatter:
John: Mark Mortensen and Heidi K. Gardner for Harvard Business Review: “WFH Is Corroding Our Trust in Each Other”
Emily: Patrick Smith for WBEZ: “Mayor Lori Lightfoot Blamed Gun Violence On Judges, But Emails Show Her Staff Knew It Wasn’t True”
David: Apple Photos “Memories” feature
Listener chatter from Jen Overbeck: Alan Burdick for The New York Times: “So You Want to End the Conversation?”
For this week’s Slate Plus bonus segment, Emily, John, and David talk about the difficulties of ending a conversation that has run its course.
If you enjoy the show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the Political Gabfest. Sign up now at slate.com/gabfestplus to help support our work.
Tweet us your questions and chatters @SlateGabfest or email us at gabfest@slate.com. (Messages may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)
Podcast production by Margaret Kelley.
Research and show notes by Bridgette Dunlap.
Hosts
Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, David Plotz
Follow
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode of the Gab Fest contains explicit language. |
| 0:10.9 | Hello and welcome to this late political Gab Fest for May 27th, 2021, the gain of function edition. |
| 0:17.2 | I am David Plotz of Citicast. I'm here in Washington, D.C., and my special bio lab here in |
| 0:24.6 | Washington, D.C. Emily Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine and Yale University Law School is in a |
| 0:31.1 | biohazard suit in New Haven. Hello, Emily. Hi, I just have to say I'm so excited about the title of the Gab Fest today because I literally said gain a function to myself like 10 times last night in hopes that what it means would stick in my head, which is still unlikely. |
| 0:48.4 | John Dickerson of CBS's 60 Minutes is isolated. |
| 0:52.9 | He's in an isolation chamber. Also fully kidded out with a bubble around |
| 0:57.7 | his head, protecting his air supply. Hello, John Dickerson of Face the Nation and 60 Minutes and |
| 1:03.8 | everything else. I always live in a bubble. On today's Gab Fest, we will talk about whether the virus that causes COVID originated in a |
| 1:15.2 | Wuhan-China lab, will we ever know, does it matter? |
| 1:19.3 | Then how serious is the Belarus crisis and does it herald a new era of authoritarian |
| 1:24.6 | brinksmanship? |
| 1:26.9 | And then we'll talk to David Shore about the crisis of polling and whether polls will |
| 1:32.8 | ever be useful again and what the crisis of polling means for democratic strategy. |
| 1:37.8 | Plus, we'll have cocktail chatter. |
| 1:39.5 | Father's Day is coming up. |
| 1:40.7 | I found an amazing gift for my dad. |
| 1:42.7 | It's called The Black Robe. I found it at former |
| 1:46.3 | Justice Breyer's Etsy shop. He's making really high-end bathrobes. They're super plushy. They're all in |
| 1:51.8 | black. And he designed them so they look like actual judicial robes. Breyer says he got the idea |
| 1:57.8 | for it after his retirement when he took a bath, forgot a towel, and one of his old Supreme Court robes was the only thing handy. So he dried himself with that. And he thought there might be a market for them if they were actually plush and absorbment. So he's made them. So get the black robe from Justice Breyer, former Justice Breyer at Etsy. So I have a point to make, which is that if Justice Breyer was going to retire this summer, |
| 2:19.3 | it would probably be in the beginning of July, which might be a bearable amount of time between now |
... |
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