Twilight of Democracy
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 30 July 2020
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
David, John and Ruth Marcus discuss Biden’s campaign, Big Tech, and author Anne Applebaum joins to discuss her new book Twilight of Democracy.
Here are some notes and references from this week’s show:
John Dickerson for the Washington Post: “The Ultimate Test of Presidential Character Is Restraint”
Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum
Anne Applebaum for the Atlantic: “History Will Judge Trump’s Enablers Harshly”
Here are this week’s cocktail chatters:
John: The Underground Railroad and The Nickleboys by Colson Whitehead; Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton
Ruth: Sophie Haigney for The New Yorker: “An Elegy for the Landline in Literature”
Anne: MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman by Ben Hubbard
David: Meredith Cash for Business Insider: “Take a Peek at Alabama Football's Stunning New Locker Room That Was Part of a $16 Million Renovation”
Listener chatter from Mark Allender @markwallender for ProPublica: Jodi S. Cohen for ProPublica: “A Teenager Didn’t Do Her Online Schoolwork. So a Judge Sent Her to Juvenile Detention.”
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For this week’s Slate Plus bonus segment Ruth, David, and John discuss David’s dilemma concerning the best interests of his cats.
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Podcast production by Jocelyn Frank.
Research and show notes by Bridgette Dunlap.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome with the Slate Political Gab Fest for July 30th, 2020, the Twilight of Democracy |
| 0:13.8 | Edition. I'm David Plotz of Business Insider. I'm back in Washington, D.C. in my new |
| 0:19.2 | apartment, my glorious new apartment, back from |
| 0:23.2 | restful pastoral New England into the sweatbox of Washington. I am joined back from somewhere |
| 0:31.9 | by John Dickerson of CBS at 60 Minutes. Hello, John. Hello, David. It's good to be back. |
| 0:38.1 | Were you away or were you just in Connecticut or what were you doing? |
| 0:41.8 | Yeah, we took a, we left a city for the first time since, I guess, the first week of March |
| 0:49.8 | and took a little vacation in which basically the kids didn't hang out with us, |
| 0:56.5 | but it was lovely. |
| 0:57.4 | That sounds idyllic. |
| 0:58.9 | I wish my kids didn't hang out with us. |
| 1:00.5 | No, if my kids are listening, I didn't say that. |
| 1:02.9 | And that brief gasp of horror you heard from Wyoming is that of Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post. |
| 1:11.6 | Gapestalwart who joins us, Emily's away. |
| 1:15.1 | So Ruth is here. |
| 1:17.0 | Hello, Ruth. |
| 1:17.9 | It's great to see you. |
| 1:19.3 | Hi, everybody. |
| 1:21.0 | How's Wyoming? |
| 1:22.4 | Wyoming is glorious. |
| 1:24.4 | I'm not going to rub in the weather to anybody on the East Coast or sweltering elsewhere, |
| 1:30.8 | but it's beautiful, and we've seen moose, and we've seen bison, and we've seen antelope, |
... |
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