The Gist

Bob Saget has long been known as the cuddly, sitcom dad with a surprisingly raunchy side. The comedian talks about the two shows that launched his career and the very first jokes he wrote as a teenager. Bob Saget’s comedy special is Zero to Sixty. In the Spiel, Mike pays an overdue visit to mail from listeners, and awards a Lobstar. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There hadn’t been an English-language novel about ethnic Koreans living in Japan until this year’s Pachinko. Author Min Jin Lee chalks it up to the complicated history of the Korean Japanese. They were colonized by Japan, they were forced or compelled to migrate, and they were targets of anti-Korean discrimination. But Lee was surprised to find that many Korean Japanese don’t see themselves as victims of racism. “They would actually see it as, culturally, their norm,” says Lee. “I think it’s very hurtful to think that you’re hated all the time, so you have to think of the story that you can live with.”  In the Spiel, are President Trump’s tweets worse than President Nixon’s paranoia? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were very different guys representing opposing political parties. Jefferson was a wildly popular aristocrat from Virginia; Adams was a middling, dyspeptic lawyer from Massachusetts. But they were fast friends, and their relationship ultimately survived a presidential election in which they faced off as candidates. Historian Gordon S. Wood explains why their friendship should give us hope. Wood’s book is Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. In lieu of a Spiel today, we’re sharing a piece of The Gist’s Washington live show. Mike talked to FiveThirtyEight senior writer Perry Bacon Jr. about the Alabama Senate race and the growing momentum behind the Republican tax bill.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Can you move toward greater income equality without asking America’s richest to give something up? In a word, no. On The Gist, Richard Reeves argues that the upper echelons of the U.S. are bogarting wealth that would otherwise go to the middle class. His latest book is Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It. And today, Mike pulls a Spiel from the archives: What President Trump means when he says everybody. Or anybody. Or nobody. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Elliott Abrams narrowly missed out on the State Department’s No. 2 job under President Trump, and it wasn’t just because of his sharp criticism of Trump, the candidate. In his book, Realism and Democracy, he argues that the U.S. should stay involved ­in the Arab world, going against the Trump administration’s “America First” doctrine. Abrams also sounds off on Trump’s use of the presidential pardon. In the Spiel, Mike weighs the New York Times’ coverage of your run-of-the-mill American Nazi. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Standup comic and writer Dana Gould talks to Mike about growing up in a family of manly hunters and writing a character inspired by his dad. Gould is the creator of IFC’s Stan Against Evil, a show about a small-town New Hampshire sheriff who fights demons.   In the Spiel, how to get a rise out of your uncle over the holidays. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The anti-war movement of 1968 looks inevitable today, but at the time, it felt “freaking bananas.” MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell explains the charisma of Bobby Kennedy, the fervor of Eugene McCarthy, and the crushing blow they dealt to sitting President Lyndon B. Johnson, who withdrew from the campaign after a narrow win in the New Hampshire primary. O’Donnell wrote about the race in his latest book, Playing With Fire.  In the Spiel, Mike skewers president Trump’s double standards when it comes to sexual assault. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In his 37 years as president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe has learned how to play hardball. While his past methods have invited sanctions for human rights violations, the 93-year-old is staying within the confines of the law to fend off the coup at his doorstep. Chipo Dendere, a visiting assistant professor of political science at Amherst College, tells us more.  In the Spiel, Mike considers Charles Manson and why serial killers don’t get attention like they used to. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Comedian Gilbert Gottfried is known for his notorious voice and jokes that toe the borderline between daring and tasteless. In the documentary Gilbert, we see his softer side: his wife, Dara, rubs schmutz off his robe, his kids hug him goodbye before padding off to school, he sweet-talks a hotel concierge into giving him free deodorant. Gottfried, Dara, and the film’s director Neil Berkeley joined Mike to talk about what makes Gilbert special.   In the Spiel, are you running for office? A sitting senator? A first-term president? Mike Pesca is here to give you advice on surviving your sexual misconduct scandals.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Elizebeth Smith got her start poring over Shakespearean verse for secret messages that were not there. But she soon used those skills to break codes used by America’s enemies in both world wars. The FBI took credit for her decryptions of Nazi messages, and her husband’s work received much greater attention from the wars’ historians. Jason Fagone changes that with his latest book,­ The Woman Who Smashed Codes, and joins Mike to talk about it.   In the Spiel, Mike surveys podcasting comedians’ reactions to Louis C.K.’s admitted sexual misconduct. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How can savvy activism topple decades of legal precedent? The ACLU’s David Cole tells us about three issues in which like-minded citizens advanced their agenda: marriage equality, gun ownership, and checking George W. Bush’s war on terror. Cole’s book is Engines of Liberty: The Power of Citizen Activists to Make Constitutional Law.   In the Spiel, Mike considers Brett Talley, President Trump’s odd pick for federal district judge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

President Trump’s top economics adviser is Kevin Hassett, a guy who has made some very bad calls—most notably, his assertion that the Bush tax cuts would make the U.S. economy recession-proof. New Yorker writer Adam Davidson takes us to economics school and parses some of Hassett’s years old gobbledygook.  In the Spiel, holding Bill Clinton’s accusers to today’s standards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As America’s prison population surged in the ’80s and ’90s, private prisons were billed as the solution. They were supposed to bring innovations to incarceration and save tax dollars. But as criminal justice expert Lauren-Brooke Eisen tells us, private prisons are no more cost-effective, and the corporations behind them operate in secrecy. Eisen’s book is Inside Private Prisons.  In the Spiel, Mike skewers the Republican tax plan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Loudon Wainwright III has been plumbing his personal relationships and dysfunctions for decades in his music. His latest book continues on that theme as he examines the influence of his father. The book is Liner Notes: On Parents & Children, Exes & Excess, Death & Decay, & a Few of My Other Favorite Things. In the Spiel, Mike is not yet done talking about Roy Moore and Louis C.K.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As the Soviet Union crumbled, George H.W. Bush’s strategy was simple: say nothing. Historian Jeffrey Engel tells us about Bush’s plain oratory and his relationship with the USSR’s last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. Engel says Bush Sr. and Trump scarcely look like they’re from the same party—which, of course, they aren’t. His book is When the World Seemed New. In the Spiel, reacting to the allegations against Roy Moore and Louis C.K. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Democrats are feeling triumphant after Tuesday’s state and local elections. But it’s not a referendum on the president until his name is on the ballot, so E.J. Dionne and Thomas Mann are here to explain remains unique about this moment in American history. Dionne, Mann, and Norman Ornstein are the authors of the book One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported.  In the Spiel, hating on the latest iOS update. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Theodore Johnson caught our attention for his tweets about how the White House reacts to protest from black Americans. He brings an interesting perspective as a black man in the U.S. with two decades of military service under his belt—identities, he writes, that stand “toe to toe.” Johnson is a fellow at New America and a former speechwriter for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  In the Spiel, what Harvey Weinstein’s network of spies tells us about the power of legacy media.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How do you attempt to document an event as complex and inexplicable as the Vietnam War? Filmmaker Lynn Novick says it helped to prioritize Vietnamese voices as well as people with a flair for speaking. “There’s a poetry in just how people express themselves that we look for,” said Novick. She and Ken Burns co-directed The Vietnam War, airing now on PBS.  In the Spiel, Mike tsk-tsks Donna Brazile’s tell-all.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The #MeToo movement is flushing out clear-cut cases of sexual harassment and assault, but is it helping us judge cases that are far murkier? Erin Gloria Ryan, senior editor for the Daily Beast, wonders whether people will separate into two camps: those who think accusers should be listened to, regardless of consequences, and those who think the accused should be punished, regardless of evidence. In the Spiel, is this really the lowest point in U.S. history? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The tax plan is out, and New Yorker writer Adam Davidson joins us to play One Question, One Question Only: Is this tax reform? And the voluble Michael Rapaport unleashes his opinions about various “stickmen” (read: athletic Casanovas) and why he’s embarrassed to be a Knicks fan. Rapaport’s new book is This Book Has Balls: Sports Rants from the MVP of Talking Trash, and he hosts the podcast I Am Rapaport.  And in the Spiel, what went wrong in protecting Americans from armies of Russian trolls.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices