Political Gabfest - Tragedy of Afghanistan
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 19 August 2021
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Emily, David and Alexandra Petri discuss the Afghanistan withdrawal, with guest Annie Pforzheimer; California’s recall election; and personal pandemic ethics.
Here are some notes and references from this week’s show:
Annie Pforzheimer for the Washington Post, “Leaving Afghanistan Will Lead to Yet Another Civil War There”
Annie Pforzheimer for the Washington Post, “In Afghanistan, a Summer of Pain Awaits”
Annie Pforzheimer for the New York Times, “The Long Road Out of Afghanistan”
Rachel Feintzeig for the Wall Street Journal: “These People Who Work From Home Have a Secret: They Have Two Jobs”
Daniel Lavery’s Substack newsletter: The Chatner
Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why, by Alexandra Petri
A Field Guide to Awkward Silences, by Alexandra Petri
The Best of Wodehouse: An Anthology
Clouds, by Aristophanes
Raymond Chandler: Collected Stories
Three Men In A Boat: (To Say Nothing of the Dog), by Jerome K. Jerome
Solutions and Other Problems, by Allie Brosh
Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened, by Allie Brosh
New Teeth, by Simon Rich
Ant Farm: And Other Desperate Situations, by Simon Rich
Simon Rich for the New Yorker: “Sell Out”
Simon Rich for the New Yorker: “The Big Nap”
Simon Rich for the New Yorker: “Raised by Wolves”
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
My Life and Hard Times, by James Thurber
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
Here’s this week’s chatter:
Emily: Meira Levinson, Alan C. Geller, and Joseph G. Allen for The Lancet: “Health Equity, Schooling Hesitancy, and the Social Determinants of Learning”
Alexandra: Never a Dull Moment: The Memoirs of Countess Marguerite Cassini
David: Dahlia Lithwick for Slate: “The Fierce Legal Battle at the Heart of the Fight Over Reclining Airline Seats”
Listener chatter from Lesley Gild: Bored Panda: “People Are Sharing ‘Alternate Angles’ of Iconic Events and Places in History, Here Are 30 of the Best”
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 Danny Lavery's show Big Mood, Little Mood and you’ll be supporting the Political Gabfest. Sign up now at slate.com/gabfestplus to help support our work.
For this week’s Slate Plus bonus segment, Alexandra, Emily, and David discuss their favorite funny books.
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 Jocelyn Frank.
Research and show notes by Bridgette Dunlap and Shayna Elliot.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for August 18, 2021. |
| 0:11.3 | The Tragedy of Afghanistan edition. |
| 0:13.4 | I'm David Claus, the city cast man here in Washington, D.C. |
| 0:17.9 | I'm joined, thankfully, by Emily Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine and Yale University Law School from her home in Connecticut. |
| 0:24.6 | Hello, Emily. |
| 0:25.8 | Hey, David. |
| 0:26.5 | And John Dickerson is still away on vacation. So we have a wonderful, a wonderful substitute for John, even more brilliant than John, possibly Alexander Petri, |
| 0:40.0 | who's the columnist for The Washington Post, and joined us for our conundrum show this year, right, |
| 0:44.2 | Alexander? |
| 0:44.9 | Yes, I did. |
| 0:45.6 | Welcome back. |
| 0:46.2 | Hello. |
| 0:47.0 | I like how David makes everything comparative. |
| 0:49.6 | He can never just praise. |
| 0:50.9 | It always has to be at someone else's expense. |
| 0:54.2 | That is kind of true. It's all relative in some way. Yeah. It is kind of true. |
| 0:57.8 | It is true. Exactly. I'm a cultural relativist. This week, we will talk about the tragedy in |
| 1:04.6 | Afghanistan. Could it have been prevented? What should we do now? We're going to talk to |
| 1:08.8 | Annie Forsheimer, a diplomat who helped shape Afghanistan policy for much of the past decade. Then the attempted recall of California Governor Gavin Newsom, could it succeed? What does it tell us about the state of American politics? And then a funny topic. We're going to do pandemic ethics. We are going to tackle a string of late pandemic conundrums, like should you see your |
| 1:32.0 | unvaxed friends, for example. |
| 1:34.5 | Plus, we're going to have cocktail chatter. |
| 1:37.3 | To help us make sense of the tragedy in Afghanistan, we are joined by Annie Forsheimer, |
... |
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