The Incrementalist RBG
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 22 December 2018
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Before news of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s lung surgery broke, Dahlia Lithwick sat down for a revealing conversation with the screenwriter Daniel Stiepelman about the RBG biopic he penned, On The Basis of Sex. Stiepelman also happens to be Justice Ginsburg’s nephew, and this episode offers an insider’s view of the most well-known, but not always fully understood, justice on the court.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What did you say your name was? |
| 0:08.6 | Ruth Bader Ginsburg. |
| 0:19.0 | It's not just about making the legal arguments, which I think she was always good at. |
| 0:23.0 | It's about making legal arguments is only half the battle. |
| 0:26.1 | You also have to make the legal arguments in a way that are going to convince, |
| 0:29.7 | especially in those days, men in authority who don't think you necessarily belong |
| 0:34.3 | and what they think of as their sphere to agree with you. |
| 0:51.3 | Yeah. think you necessary belong in what they think of as their sphere to agree with you. Hi and welcome back to Amicus Slate's podcast about the Supreme Court and the courts and the law. |
| 0:57.2 | I'm Dahlia Lithwick, and I cover those things for Slate. |
| 1:00.0 | And this week may indeed have been one of the most overwhelming we've seen in a year of overwhelming news. |
| 1:07.1 | With the shuttering of the Trump Foundation as a result of a New York lawsuit, |
| 1:11.8 | Michael Flynn popping up in federal court, Jim Mattis, quitting his job, |
| 1:16.9 | and talk of the Christmas week shut down looming overall, not least of which, |
| 1:21.7 | a couple of hours after we taped the show you're just about to hear, |
| 1:24.8 | the Supreme Court released a statement saying that Justice |
| 1:27.6 | Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who's 85, had just undergone a pulmonary lobectomy at Memorial Sloan |
| 1:34.6 | Kettering in New York City after two nodules in the left lung were discovered incidentally |
| 1:40.3 | during tests for her recent rib fractures. According to the thoracic surgeon, there was no evidence of any remaining disease. |
| 1:48.9 | Our thoughts are with Justice Ginsburg and her family at this time. |
| 1:54.0 | Now, in some sense that makes today's conversation, which was taped before the news, |
| 1:58.8 | with her nephew, Daniel Steepleman, all the sweeter. |
| 2:02.5 | The conversation is about the new RBG biopic on the basis of sex, which opens in theaters |
... |
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