Hamas hostages, Trump and autocracy, and the strangely quiet shutdown — we tackle all three. Why Trump’s blunt style played in the Middle East, whether “competitive authoritarianism” really fits his second-term instincts and enablers, and who’s taking the fall for Obamacare-premium brinkmanship. Plus: goat-grinders (po

Doctorow lays out his "enshittification" playbook—how tech platforms lure users, trap businesses, then extract value from both—tying it to interoperability, right-to-repair, and DMCA lock-ins, with Facebook as Exhibit A. He explains why incremental state laws can break Big Tech's coalitions better than sweeping federal

Steven Pinker joins to discuss his new book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life, exploring how shared awareness coordinates everything from markets to manners. He traces spirals of silence, costly signals, and why a single public moment can fli

Critic and author Kat Rosenfield joins The Gist for a full-show interview, diving into the smear campaign and campaign waged between Blake Lively her director, and the recent sexual abuse allegations against Neil Gaiman. Plus: Analysis of the surprisingly undiplomatic public exchange between Presidents Trump and Zelens

Jamil Zaki is a Stanford researcher and the author of the new book, Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness. He brings us a rare positive view of how our society has evolved, what it's evolved into, and he explains the flawed idea of "homo economicus." What does that mean? Listen. Also on the show, ha

The 2024 Democratic National Convention is in full swing, leading Jonah to summon Mike Pesca of The Gist to provide ye loyal listeners with an insider look into the galactic gnostic council of podcasting elders. Mike and Jonah debate the existence of structural antisemitism and the weaponization of the term “genocide,”