The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for October 25th, 2018, and now we have

pipe bombs edition of the Gab Fest. I'm David Plotz of Atlas, I'm in Washington, D.C.

I'm in Washington, D.C. Emily Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine is in New Haven. Hello, Emily.

Hello, David. And John Dickerson of CBS this morning is in New York. Hello, John. Hello, David.

On this week's show, pipe bomb sent to the Obama's, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Maxine Waters, George Soros, Robert De Niro, is American politics at an extraordinarily dangerous moment.

Then the state of the midterm elections two weeks out are Democrats headed for disappointment

after a summer of enthusiasm. And then the outrage over the Jamal Khashoggi murder has not diminished,

but will it actually change the world's relationship to Saudi Arabia. Plus, we will have cocktail chatter.

And do not forget, dear ones, we have a conundrum live show coming up on December 12th at NYU

Skirbel Center in Manhattan. There are tickets, still a few tickets available at slate.com

slash live. It's going to be a wonderful show. We're going to discuss things such as if you

could take back one thing you did before the age of 18, what would it be and why? Or what is the

best, best scent to fill your home and what's the worst scent to fill your home with? And we need

more conundrums like these or even better ones than these. So if you have an idea for a conundrum that you'd like us to talk about on the Conundrum

live show, please email us at gabfest at slate.com or tweet at us at at SlateGabFest and hashtag

at Conundrum with your great conundrum idea.

This show works because you all have such complexity, such

wonderful, interesting questions, such difficult things that you contemplate. And we need you to

submit your wonderful ideas so we can chew them over and reach grand conclusions that it is,

in fact, better to be a fish than a tree. Or actually, no, it was better to be a tree than a fish, but whatever. So please come to the show, slate.com slash live for tickets on December 12th. And then Gabfest at slate.com or at SlateGabfest on Twitter to tell us your conundrums. Oh, and listeners, if you hear something that sounds like thunder, it is not because I'm recording outside in a storm.

It is because there seems to be some jack hammering next to the Slate studio here in Washington, D.C. It's just because what you're talking about is so exciting.

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