Randall Woodfin, mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, is leading a city experiencing promising growth in wealth and education while also grappling with a troubling surge in homicides that defies national trends. Woodfin discusses his new book, Son of Birmingham, and the challenges of governing a city at a crossroads. Plus, a CNN stalwart has asked his last confrontational question to a combative president, and the current administration makes some highly questionable claims about condoms and Gaza.

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Most North Dakotans may be skeptical about global warming, but they’re fully committed to making their state a leader in the carbon capture industry. Journalist Adam Willis, who covered the heated debate over carbon capture in North Dakota for Bloomberg, joins us to discuss. Also on the show: the renaming of Forts Benning and Bragg, the surprising presence of anti-vaxxers in the Pentagon, the exclusion of transgender service members, and a look back at the Great Colombian Tariff Tiff of 2025.

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Each weekend on Best Of The Gist, we listen back to an archival Gist segment from the past, then we replay something from the past week. This weekend, we listen back to Mike’s 2022 interview with Kate Shaw, ABC Legal Analyst and co-host of the Strict Scrutiny podcast. It’s an extended interview about the Equal Rights Amendment, which, many of its backers claim, actually passed and should be the law of the land. Then we listen back to Mike’s Tuesday Spiel about the pardoned January 6th attackers. 

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Meghan Daum, writer and host of The Unspeakable podcast on Substack, joins us for an extended interview about the #MeToo movement, female agency, the efficacy of social movements, and evolving gender dynamics in society. She and Mike discuss women’s progress, exploring the intersection of cancel culture and empowerment within media and publishing. Also on the show, Harvard redefines “antisemitism” to include discrimination against Zionists.

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Today on The Gist, Mike is joined by Michael A. Cohen of the Truth and Consequences Substack and MSNBC, along with Matt Welch, Editor-at-Large of Reason magazine, for another installment of Not Even Mad. The trio discusses Trump’s inauguration, executive actions, refugee policy, DEI, and the eventful first few days of his second term as POTUS.

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Donald Trump has issued over 50 executive orders—not including a single order that repealed more than 50 of Biden’s executive orders. We delve into the posturing and the potent. Plus, Nate DiMeo, host of the long-running The Memory Palace podcast, drops by to discuss what makes a good podcast episode, what translates well to the page, and why a massive 18th-century painting was chopped up to fit inside a specific room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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On Donald Trump’s first day in office, cop-beaters are pardoned, and biology is affirmed. Plus, anthropologist Carrie M. Lane, author of More Than Pretty Boxes: How the Rise of Professional Organizing Shows Us the Way We Work Isn’t Working, reports that professional organizers don’t want to force people to throw things out. Marie Kondo might have something to say about that.

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Each weekend on Best of The Gist, we revisit an archival segment from the past and replay something from the past week. 

This weekend, two selections from the near vault, inspired by the devastating fires in and around Los Angeles over the last week or more. First, Mike’s June 12, 2023, Spiel about the Canadian wildfires that many thought would change minds on climate change—even if we’re not certain they were entirely the result of climate change. 

Then, we revisit the intro to our Aug. 18, 2023, episode, in which Mike discusses Herman Andaya, Maui’s emergency chief, who decided not to sound sirens before the fires scorched Lahaina. It seems like an obvious mistake, but all the officials agreed that doing so would have contradicted policy—and perhaps even posed a danger. 

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Should L.A. communities rebuild so close together? Is there a better way to prevent fires from starting in the first place? Would a full reservoir have saved homes in the Pacific Palisades? Does L.A.‘s fire chief deserve credit or blame? What’s it like to fight a fire in the face of 100 mph winds? These questions and more are answered by Clare Frank, a 30-year veteran of the California Fire Service and the author of Burnt: A Memoir of Fighting Fire. Plus, as TikTok goes splat, other media companies that are allowed to operate as platforms for free speech are instead voluntarily choosing to cut themselves off at the knees.

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Partisanship is often portrayed as a societal ill—usually by those jerks in the other party. But as Julian Zelizer, Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University, argues: partisanship can be beneficial. In fact, things become rather inefficient without it. Meanwhile, the Hamas-Israel hostage deal remains on the precipice of implementation, and Joe Biden issues a warning about oligarchs. He likely has one specific billionaire in mind, though there is significant political diversity even among the hundred-billionaire class.

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