The Gist

The nation has weathered another major natural disaster, and the Army Corps of Engineers once again finds itself under scrutiny. NPR’s national desk correspondent Wade Goodwyn says the corps made a choice to open the floodgates of two major reservoirs in southeast Texas, flooding certain neighborhoods and sparing others.  Mike Pesca is back to take his rightful place as spieler in chief. Tuesday’s topic: Jeff Sessions finally gets to stick it to the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals program.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hosting today’s Gist is Robert Smith from NPR’s Planet Money. On the show, he’ll talk to Lina Khan, whose research encouraging tighter regulations on Amazon caught some heat from the company’s general counsel. Khan works at the Open Markets Program, formerly housed under the New America Foundation.  And in the Spiel, Robert Smith observes a new trend in broadcast news: reporters becoming heroes on live television. What could possibly go wrong? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's guest host is Dan Savage, from the Savage Lovecast. Dan is the internationally syndicated columnist of “Savage Love” and the author of several books. With his husband Terry Miller, he cofounded the It Gets Better project and edited the It Gets Better collection. On The Gist, Dan talks to author Peggy Orenstein about the lack of sexual education for young women and how book tours can change the writing process. Orenstein is the author of Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape. In the Spiel: the clueless conservatism of the Nashville Statement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Question: What’s the best way to take a vacation in a Communist society? Answer: With utmost utilitarian seriousness, and possibly without your family. On this last week before Labor Day, guest host and Slate writer Leon Neyfakh talks to historian Diane Koenker about how the Soviet Union came to embrace personal holidays and reconcile them with the Communist doctrine. Koenker is the author of Club Red: Vacation Travel and the Soviet Dream.  In the Spiel, the cautionary tale of Taylor Swift’s latest single. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Slate’s Henry Grabar explains how rampant building in the Houston suburbs have made the area worse for wear during Tropical Storm Harvey. And in the Spiel, guest-host Osita Nwanevu breaks his self-imposed moratorium against criticizing columnist David Brooks.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Al Letson was just trying to cover a demonstration – an anti-hate rally in Berkeley. When he saw a group of balaclava-clad men descend on an apparent right-wing agitator, he jumped into the fray, using his body to defend the man from kicks and punches. Letson is the host of Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX.  And for the Spiel, is “#whaboom” the worst of our culture today? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The hype surrounding the Saturday night fight between boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. and MMA fighter Conor McGregor is overtly racially charged. Why? Because people are eating it up, says Wesley Morris, critic-at-large for the New York Times. Morris and Mike talk about the role of race in the NFL’s treatment of Colin Kaepernick, Dana Schutz’s Open Casket painting of Emmett Till, the closing of the Broadway show The Great Comet, and more. Morris is the co-host of the Still Processing podcast.  In the Spiel: We live in interesting times.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Understanding sexual consent is complicated. Colleges are working to clarify this issue while also policing sexual assault. But when does this cross over into legislating feelings versus facts? Vanessa Grigoriadis helps us understand the current iteration of the sexual consent debate happening on campuses today. Grigoriadis is the author of Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus. In the Spiel: Should we tear down statues? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The antifa movement is resurging. It started in 1920s Europe to fight Hitler and Mussolini and has returned to oppose the current wave of xenophobia in the United States. Author Mark Bray walks us through the history of the antifa movement. Bray is the author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook. In the Spiel: Trump’s campaign speech in Phoenix. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Filmmaker Bryan Fogel had a simple hypothesis: The worldwide anti-doping system is a joke. To test his theory, Fogel wanted to dope himself and evade detection. A Russian anti-doping lab director agreed to help. Months later, Fogel’s personal doping coach was blowing the whistle on Russia’s piss-swapping scam to get around anti-doping rules. Fogel’s documentary, Icarus, is available on Netflix.  In the Spiel: The Instagram drama of Louise Linton, wife of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Malcolm Gladwell’s hit podcast Revisionist History spits out neat, distilled theories in every episode. Some of them are careful, others are reductive. But Gladwell says his theories aren’t all meant to be airtight: They just help him organize his stories, or merely spruce them up. “In some of them I’m trying to make a very, very serious, moral point. Sometimes I’m just—I’m making intellectual mischief.”  In the Spiel: the parallels between the Obama administration and the Trump administration on race relations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1982, MTV started guiding Billboard’s taste in music. The year was filled with elaborate videos and cheesy ballads. Chris Molanphy takes us through all the hand claps and synth vibes of that year’s Billboard hits. Molanphy writes Slate’s Why Is This Song No. 1 column and hosts the podcast Hit Parade.  In the Spiel: The last time anything good happened to Donald Trump.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did Steve Bannon really misunderstand the meaning of off the record during his now-infamous “interview” with the American Prospect? “Yup,” says Joshua Green, author of Devil’s Bargain, a book about Bannon’s influence on the Trump presidency. Green addresses the latest rumors of Bannon’s political demise, and tries to sort out why, exactly, Trump’s chief strategist always wears three shirts at once.  In the Spiel, a nuclear war with North Korea no longer feels inevitable. So what now?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Political scientist Moshe Maor says Donald Trump’s policy ideas are very, very over-the-top. But that’s exactly the point. On issues like immigration and transgender service members, bold overreactions are the only kind of policies that speak to cynical voters. “People want immediate action,” says Maor. “Morality aside, Trump is playing his cards right.” Maor is a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In the Spiel, is Donal Trump a smart racist or a stupid racist? Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at Slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Guest host Leon Neyfakh speaks with retired Boston cop Tom Nolan about the politics of police unions. While unions in other industries put on a progressive face to the world, police unions tend to be defensive of everything from disrespecting the mayor of New York to rough treatment of prisoners. But Nolan says he’s encouraged by their recent condemnation of President Trump’s comments about police violence. “I think they know the speaker of those words does not know what the hell he was talking about,” says Nolan, who now teaches at Merrimack College.  In the Spiel, Google is a massive company. It’s also an increasingly bad search engine. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at Slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Typically Congress has an order to follow when creating bills and passing them into law. There’s committee writing, revisions, and a bipartisan back-and-forth. In recent years that order has broken down and caused major divides inside both parties. Georgetown senior fellow Joshua Huder details this process and how it went wrong. Huder’s writing can be found on the blog Rule 22. In the Spiel, Mike heads to the Bobby Fischer museum in Iceland and explores the tricky balance of memorializing the controversial star. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at Slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Brandt Tobler has had a crazy life. His stand-up comedy is the sum of his stories as a small-town wayward kid busting out of Wyoming. He was the don of a criminal syndicate he called the “mallfia,” he ran the Las Vegas strip placing bets for gambling titans, and he plotted to kill his estranged father. He’s also kind of a sweetheart. Tobler’s book is Free Roll. In the Spiel, how cynicism breeds fake news. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google’s reputation for openness took a tumble when its CEO fired James Damore, the author of a memo questioning the company’s efforts to achieve gender parity. Amy Webb, founder of the Future Today Institute, blames the internet. She says easy access to data is allowing us to make dumb arguments. In the Spiel, Mike has more thoughts on the Google memo. Guess what? He dislikes it.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Muhammad Ali was one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century, but he didn’t spend his entire life in the ring. During the Vietnam War, he spent his time trying to avoid the draft as a conscientious objector. Journalist Leigh Montville says the struggle changed Ali’s life—and the country. Montville’s new book is Sting Like a Bee.  In the Spiel, a closer look at the CV of the most important soil-health civil servant in the news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Over the last few years, the meaningful fault line between political camps has separated people rooted to certain places and people rooted to certain ideas. David Goodhart says the anywheres have become too dominant, and the somewhere have rightly felt excluded. How can we bridge the divide? Goodhart’s book is The Road to Somewhere.  In the Spiel, speak loudly domestically and you might hurt your credibility. Speak loudly internationally and you might end civilization.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices