It's the NPR Politics Podcast here with a special episode to talk about the news this weekend

that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died.

He was 79 years old.

And his sudden death has massive ramifications for politics and policy this election year.

I'm Tamara Keith Whitehouse correspondent for NPR.

I'm Carrie Johnson, NPR's Justice Correspondent.

I'm Ron Elving, Editor-in-Corespondent.

And on the line with us is Nina Totenberg in PR's Legal Affairs Correspondent.

Nina, we're so glad you could dial in for this.

Me too.

Nina, you know Antonin Scalia, you know Justice Scalia.

You have reported on him since he started in the court in 1986.

You know his colleagues.

What's your reaction to his death?

Duplification.

I mean, he was very well and hearty as far as anybody could see both physically and mentally.

And while there was a lot of jabber jabber in the press corps about should Justice Ginsburg,

whose three years older retire, nobody thought for a minute that he was retiring, much less

just going to vanish from the earth.

And he is such an enormous presence as a human being as well as a justice, that the idea

of having a Supreme Court without Nina Scalia, something that you imagined intellectually

would happen someday, but it's really hard to get your arms around.

...