The “Gain of Function” Edition

Political Gabfest

Slate Podcasts

Politics, Government, News

4.5 • 8.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2021

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Here are some notes and references from this week’s show: David Leonhardt for The New York Times: “The Lab-Leak Theory” Nicholson Baker for New York Magazine: “The Lab-Leak Hypothesis” Nicholas Wade for The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: “The Origin of COVID: Did People or Nature Open Pandora’s Box at Wuhan?” Anne Applebaum for The Atlantic: “Other Regimes Will Hijack Planes Too” The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking, by Brendan I. Koerner Eric Levitz for New York Magazine: “David Shor on Why Trump Was Good for the GOP and How Dems Can Win in 2022” Eric Levitz for New York Magazine: “David Shor’s Unified Theory of American Politics” Here’s this week’s chatter: John: Mark Mortensen and Heidi K. Gardner for Harvard Business Review: “WFH Is Corroding Our Trust in Each Other” Emily: Patrick Smith for WBEZ: “Mayor Lori Lightfoot Blamed Gun Violence On Judges, But Emails Show Her Staff Knew It Wasn’t True” David: Apple Photos “Memories” feature Listener chatter from Jen Overbeck: Alan Burdick for The New York Times: “So You Want to End the Conversation?” For this week’s Slate Plus bonus segment, Emily, John, and David talk about the difficulties of ending a conversation that has run its course. 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 Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the Political Gabfest. Sign up now at slate.com/gabfestplus to help support our work. Tweet us your questions and chatters @SlateGabfest or email us at [email protected]. (Messages may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.) Podcast production by Margaret Kelley. Research and show notes by Bridgette Dunlap. Hosts Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, David Plotz Follow @SlateGabfest on Twitter / https://twitter.com/SlateGabfest Slate Gabfest on Facebook / https://www.facebook.com/Gabfest/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode of The Gap Fest contains explicit language.
0:11.2	Hello and welcome to this late political Gap Fest for May 27, 2021, the gain of the function
0:16.4	edition. I am David Plott, so citycast, I'm here in Washington, DC, in my special bio lab here in
0:24.4	Washington, DC, Emily Baszlan of the New York Times Magazine and Yale University Law School
0:28.9	is in a biohazard suit in New Haven. Hello, Emily. Hi, I just have to say I'm so excited about
0:37.0	the title of the Gap Fest today because I literally said gain a function to myself like 10 times
0:43.0	last night in hopes that what it means would stick in my head, which is still unlikely. John Dickerson
0:49.2	of CBS's 60 Minutes is isolated, he's in an isolation chamber, also fully kidded out with a bubble
0:57.3	around his head protecting his air supply. Hello, John Dickerson of Face the Nation and 60 Minutes
1:03.6	and everything else. I always live in a bubble. On today's Gap Fest, we will talk about whether
1:11.2	the virus that causes COVID originated in a Wuhan China lab, will we ever know, does it matter?
1:19.3	Then how serious is the Belarus crisis and does it herald a new era of authoritarian
1:24.6	bringsmanship? Then we'll talk to David Schor about the crisis of polling and whether polls will
1:32.8	ever be useful again and what the crisis of polling means for democratic strategy, plus we will
1:38.0	have cocktail chatter. Father's Day is coming up. I found an amazing gift for my dad. It's called
1:43.2	the Black Robe. I found it at former Justice Breyer's Etsy shop. He's making really high end
1:49.7	bath robes. They're superplushy. They're all in black. He designed them so they look like actual
1:54.5	judicial robes. Breyer says he got the idea for it after his retirement when he took a bath,
2:00.5	forgot a towel, and one of his old Supreme Court robes was the only thing handy. He dried himself
2:05.1	with that and he thought there might be a market for them if they were actually plush and absorbent.
2:08.9	So he's made them. Get the black robe from Justice Breyer, former Justice Breyer at Etsy.
2:13.9	So I have a point to make, which is that if Justice Breyer was going to retire this summer, it
	...

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