Slate News

Contract negotiations between the Teamsters and UPS broke down last week and now a strike looms. With time running out, can both sides reach a deal? 

Guest: Noam Scheiber, labor reporter for the New York Times.

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This week, John Dickerson and David Plotz are joined by Vox’s Marin Cogan @marincogan to discuss the extreme weather, heat, and floods that are wreaking havoc across the United States and around the world; the social media phenomenon of Threads; and the American love-hate relationship with cars. 

Here are some notes and references from this week’s show:

Cara Buckley for The New York Times: “To Help Cool a Hot Planet, the Whitest of White Coats”

Jonathan Erdman for The Weather Channel: “America’s Top Weather Killer Is Not Tornadoes, Flooding, Lightning Or Hurricanes – It’s Heat”

Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World by Henry Grabar 

Antonio Pequeño IV for Forbes: “Zuckerberg Vs. Musk: Everything We Know About The Possible Cage Fight” 

These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore 

Insider Intelligence: “US Social Network Ad Revenue Growth, 2021-2023” 

Marin Cogan for Vox: “The impossible paradox of car ownership”; “The deadliest road in America”; and “Cars transformed America. They also made people more vulnerable to the police.” 

Tracy Chapman: “Fast Car”; Luke Combs: “Fast Car”; and Emily Yahr for The Washington Post: “Tracy Chapman, Luke Combs and the complicated response to ‘Fast Car’” 

Henry Grabar for Slate: “Why More Americans Are Using Fake License Plates and Getting Away With It”

Gersh Kuntzman for Streetsblog NYC: “Paris Mayor Enters Fray Between E-Bikes and Pedestrians – By Fighting Drivers”

Here are this week’s chatters:

John: Hannah Hartig, Andrew Daniller, Scott Keeter, and Ted Van Green for Pew Research Center: “Republican Gains in 2022 Midterms Driven Mostly by Turnout Advantage” 

Marin and David: Tour de France on NBC Sports; Tour de France: Unchained on Netflix 

Listener chatter from Dan Kirkwood: Claire Stremple for The Alaska Beacon: “Angoon students name, launch first dugout canoe since 1882 Bombardment” 

For this week’s Slate Plus bonus segment, David, John, and Marin discuss traffic enforcement, the need for it, and the harms it causes. 

In the latest edition of Gabfest Reads, Emily talks with Monica Potts @MonicaBPotts about her book, The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America. 

Email your chatters, questions, and comments to [email protected] or Tweet us @SlateGabfest. (Messages may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

Podcast production by Cheyna Roth

Research by Julie Huygen

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Beat it, Barbie; outta the way, Oppenheimer—this summer’s biggest box office surprise is “The Sound of Freedom,” a low-budget search-and-rescue thriller that Hollywood doesn’t want you to see—or so the implication goes.

Guests:

Sam Adams, Slate senior editor

Will Sommer, media reporter at the Washington Post and author of Trust the Plan The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America. 

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Despite holding only twelve percent of Americans, the state of California is home to nearly one-third of the nation’s people experiencing homelessness. A landmark study from UCSF—the California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness— produced an intimate look at who is living on the streets and in their cars in California, how they got there, and what actual aid would look like. 

Guests:

Claudine Sipili, co-leader of UCSF’s Lived Expertise Advisory Board for the California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness.

Ethan Ward, founder of HEATDRAWN Media, and the host of Reputation, a podcast which challenges preconceived notions about the homelessness crisis.

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On today’s episode of Hear Me Out… royal pains.

The British Royals are far from the imperial power they once were. Whether you love the institution, hate it, or simply don’t care, it’s hard to deny that it feels like an artifact of another time.

Which is perhaps why Meghan Markle’s arrival on the scene – and subsequent departure, with Prince Harry at her side – threw so many people for a loop. Meghan continues to receive racist, sexist, and downright fabricated harassment from the public, and particularly the tabloids… and so do the people who defend her. 

Kristen Meinzer, culture critic and host of The Daily Fail, joins us again to explain why we need to care about Meghan — and defend her.

If you have thoughts you want to share, or an idea for a topic we should tackle, you can email the show: [email protected]

Podcast production by Maura Currie

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The 4th of July was the hottest day yet—not just of the summer but of recorded human history. Between waves of Canadian wildfire smoke, malaria reappearing in the United States, and deaths from heat, this might be the year that we’re forced to reckon with what life will be like on our newly hotter planet.

Guest: Jeff Goodell, contributing writer at Rolling Stone and the author of the upcoming book The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet.

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Moms for Liberty call themselves a “parent’s rights group,” but the Southern Poverty Law Center calls them an “anti-government extremist” group. Even if they don’t all have kids, these “moms” do have goals for the future of education in America—and quite a bit of clout.

Guest: Kiera Butler, senior editor at Mother Jones reporting on how purveyors of disinformation target online communities of women. 

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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Madeline Ducharme, Anna Phillips, Paige Osburn, and Rob Gunther.

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Andrew Tate’s gross mix of self-help, toxic masculinity and misogyny captured the minds of young boys on the internet. It also led to indictments in Romania on human trafficking and rape charges.  

Guest: Lisa Miller, contributing editor at New York magazine.

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It can take years for a water crisis in a predominantly Black city or town to make national news. But the harms of contaminated water often harm communities for generations. Beyond the ongoing health threats, dirty water can stifle business and economic development, driving down educational achievement, property values and investment. On today’s episode of A Word, Jason Johnson is joined by journalist Adam Mahoney who has reported extensively on how undrinkable water in hurting Black communities across the rural south. 

Guest: Reporter Adam Mahoney of Capital B News

Podcast production by Ahyiana Angel

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This episode is a part of Opinionpalooza. Slate’s coverage of Supreme Court decisions. If you would like to help us continue to cover the courts aggressively, please consider joining Slate Plus. 

In our final Opinionpalooza episode of 2023, Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern host the Amicus annual “breakfast table” round-up at the end of the Supreme Court term, and they’re joined by:  

Jamelle Bouie, former chief political correspondent at Slate and current New York Times Opinion columnist and political analyst for CBS News. 

Sherrilyn Ifill, former President and Director Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and newly appointed head of Howard University’s inaugural Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Esq. Endowed Chair in Civil Rights. 

Professor Stephen Vladeck, the Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts at the University of Texas School of Law, author of the New York Times bestselling book, "The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic."

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In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Dahlia and Mark loosen their ties, pour a snifter of brandy and hit the cigar bar of jurisprudence for a final discussion of the term that was; why progressives are still struggling to find an answer to the court’s torque to the right, and resisting the media’s urge to put a moderate bow on each extreme term.

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