The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for Thursday, April 6th, the Crossing Many Lines Edition.

I'm Emily Bazelon, staff writer at The New York Times Magazine, and today I am taking over from David Plots because we are having a big week of switchroo in which David went over to the Slate Culture Gab Fest, and we are very happy to welcome Dana Stevens Slate's film critic from the Slate Culture Gap Fest.

Hey, Dana.

Hey, can I just say that this switcheroo was initially my idea or at least some version of it? I just because the news has gotten so political and cultural mixed together and that we're all talking about politics all the time, I had suggested, oh, why don't we do some kind of swap? That would be great. And now here I am having to be put in some of the felt covered table and asked about politics.

Now here you are, our beloved guinea pig. And we are also here with John Dickerson, host of Face the Nation, who is in D.C., Dana and I are in Brooklyn. Hey, John. Hi. And I want to tell you about a bunch of live podcast shows that Slate and Panoply have put together for the summer.

If you're in D.C. or New York, and actually, if you're out west this summer, too.

The Culture Fest has a show or two. We have a couple of shows in D.C. and also in Denver,

double X, the Trump cast, and represent. So go to slate.com slash live and a full schedule will unfurl before you.

And we would love to see you at one or two or three or four or five shows this summer.

Okay.

On this week's show, we have three topics.

We're going to start with the appointment of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and the end of the filibuster for SCOTUS appointments.

That is all unrolling before our eyes today on Thursday, and I guess we'll keep going into tomorrow.

And then we want to discuss Trump's approach to human rights.

His response to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's apparent

terrible nerve gas attack against his own citizens in Syria. Trump has also been courting

President Sisi of Egypt, despite his authoritarian crackdown on dissidents. And there are other signs

that a more transactional foreign policy era is dawning.

And last, the many tentacled octopus of business ties and potential conflicts among the president's people.

We're especially interested in digging into Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, who we learned this week,

will continue to reap the benefits of at least $740 million worth of real estate and investment business ventures that would appear to be affected by decisions they could influence in government.

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