The Gist
For thirty minutes each day, Pesca challenges himself and his audience, in a responsibly provocative style, and gets beyond the rigidity and dogma. The Gist is surprising, reasonable, and willing to critique the left, the right, either party, or any idea.
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We test whether a hair in your hummus is truly hazardous, compare bacterial counts on hair shafts vs. feathers, and trace America's hairnet obsession back to Edward Bernays' spin. We play: Is That BS? Hair/Feather Edition. Also: Seattle mayoral race updates, and in the Spiel: the Philadelphia Art Museum's chunky griffi
Woodard maps America's clashing "nations," from American Nations to Nations Apart, arguing that our deepest divides are regional and newly combustible. He makes the case that post–Cold War policy, social media, and a fraying social contract turned long-standing cultural seams into political fracture zones. We press whe
The veteran media strategist reflects on Chuck Schumer's once-golden Sunday pressers and how his "price-of-milk politics" model needs updating for 2025. He discusses New York Democrats' strategic silence in the Mamdani race, Hillary Clinton's 2000 outreach to Hasidic women, and why he can praise Trump's Middle East dip
Hiltzik, founder of Hiltzik Strategies, explains how his background in law, politics, and media shaped his methodical, fact-based approach to strategic communications. He describes the importance of understanding audiences and using social and digital tools with "precision," rather than relying on broad or emotional ap
Mike joins Nancy Rommelmann and Sarah Hepola for a rowdy, caffeine-fueled dive into the NBA betting scandal—where marked decks, mobsters, and million-dollar contracts collide. They unpack how legalized sports gambling reopened old mafia doors, what drives athletes to risk it all, and why men chase competition even from
Iowa's rivers run brown, its cancer rates climb, and its politics tilt redder. Pulitzer Prize-winning editor Art Cullen joins to discuss his new book Dear Marty: We Crapped in Our Nest — Notes from the Edge of the World, Iowa, which serves as both lament and call to arms for a farm state choking on its own abundance. C
