156 episodes

A feed with the best history coverage from Slate’s wide range of podcasts. From narrative shows like Slow Burn, One Year, and Decoder Ring, to timely analysis from ICYMI and What Next, you’ll get the fascinating stories and vital context you need to understand where we came from and where we're going. 

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    • History
    • 3.8 • 436 Ratings

A feed with the best history coverage from Slate’s wide range of podcasts. From narrative shows like Slow Burn, One Year, and Decoder Ring, to timely analysis from ICYMI and What Next, you’ll get the fascinating stories and vital context you need to understand where we came from and where we're going. 

    John Dickerson’s Navel Gazing: The Sneaky Pitfalls of the To-Do List

    John Dickerson’s Navel Gazing: The Sneaky Pitfalls of the To-Do List

    In this week’s essay, John discusses the Pomodoro Routine (among other productivity routines), why he especially needs a meditation pillow, and how a particular teacher captured his heart. 
     
    Notebook Entries:
    Notebook 75, pages 8 and 9. September 2021
    OReinstating the Pomodoro Routine…
    Starting Marshall again…
    Write Brice…
    Send Laura the larger project list…
    Work on budget to get accounts in order
    Meditation pillow upstairs.

    Notebook 18. December 6, 2009
    Instapaper
    Alpha Smart
    Richard Hugo on poetry
    Degrees of Gray In Philipsburg.

    Notebook 18, page 105. June 4, 2011
    Visit to Mr. Mead. He was playing piano as we entered. [During our conversation, he asked]: do you find your work fulfilling? Do you have a close circle of friends? Questions about life and living it well…


    References:
    Getting Things Done - David Allen
    The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey 
    The Questions That Will Get Me Through the Pandemic - John Dickerson
    43 Folders - Merlin Mann 
    The Hardest Job in the World - John Dickerson
    Essays of E.B. White
    “Merlin Mann” - Tina Essmaker for The Great Disconnect
    More about Ernest “Boots” Mead
    “Because Buying New Running Shoes is More Fun Than Actually Running” - Merlin Mann for 43 Folders
    Atomic Habits - James Clear
    The Creative Habit - Twyla Tharp
    Free Agent Nation - Daniel Pink
    “Sharon Salzberg On: Openness, Not Believing the Stories You Tell Yourself, and Why the Most Powerful Tools Often Seem Stupid at First” - Ten Percent Happier

    Want to listen to Navel Gazing uninterrupted? Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately unlock ad-free listening to Navel Gazing and all your other favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/navelgazingplus to get access wherever you listen.
     
    Podcast production by Cheyna Roth.
    Email us at navelgazingpodcast@gmail.com
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    • 38 min
    Amicus: How Originalism Ate The Law: The Trap

    Amicus: How Originalism Ate The Law: The Trap

    Get your tickets for Amicus Live in Washington DC here. 
    In the second part of our series on Amicus and at Slate.com, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern are back on the originalism beat. This week they’re trying to understand the mechanisms of what Professor Saul Cornell calls “the originalism industrial complex” and how those mechanisms plug into the highest court in the land. They’re also asking how and why liberals failed to find an effective answer to originalism, even as the various “originalist” ways of deciding who’s history counts, what constitutional law counts, which people count, were supercharged by Trump’s SCOTUS picks. Madiba Dennie, author of The Originalism Trap, highlights how the Supreme Court turned to originalism to gut voting rights. In 2022, the US Supreme Court’s originalism binge ran roughshod over precedent and unleashed Dobbs and Bruen on the American people - Mark and Dahlia talk to a state Supreme Court justice about what it’s like trying to apply the law amid these constitutional earthquakes. 
    In today’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Dahlia talks to AJ Jacobs about his year of living constitutionally, and she confesses to an attempt to smuggle contraband into One, First Street. 
    Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show. 
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    • 52 min
    A Word: Between the World and Us

    A Word: Between the World and Us

    Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates is arguably the strongest voice of his generation on the role of race and identity in American politics and culture. He’s the author of several books, including “Between the World and Me,” “We Were Eight Years in Power,” and “The Beautiful Struggle,” and the recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant and a National Book Award. For this week’s episode, we feature a conversation between Coates and host Jason Johnson, recorded live at the recent Cascade PBS Ideas Festival. They discuss everything from the diss track battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, to the campus protests over the Middle East, to the limits –and necessity– of participating in electoral politics. 

    Guest: Award-winning writer Ta-Nehisi Coates

    Podcast production by Kristie Taiwo-Makanjuola

    Want more A Word? Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/awordplus to get access wherever you listen.
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    • 45 min
    Bryan talks to the creator of Queering the Map, a digital archive of queer stories from around the globe

    Bryan talks to the creator of Queering the Map, a digital archive of queer stories from around the globe

    This week Bryan talks to Lucas LaRochelle, the creator of the online platform Queering the Map. Queering the Map is a community-generated digital archive and map of LGBTQ2IA+ experiences around the globe. They dig into the map’s beginnings, stories from the platform, and how this archive has been able to share queer joy, sorrow, and possibility across continents and in 23 languages. 

    Podcast production by Palace Shaw. 
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    • 27 min
    John Dickerson’s Navel Gazing: Remembering Early 1990s New York

    John Dickerson’s Navel Gazing: Remembering Early 1990s New York

    In this week’s essay, John discusses an onboarding memo for his assistant Laura, and recounts his early days living and working in New York City. 
     
     
    Notebook Entries:
    Notebook 75
    Onboard memo for Laura

    Notebook 3, page 44. May 1991
    June 17 start job. Good stuff

    Notebook 3, page 46. May 1991
    Tips on buying renting in NYC
    Ask about broker
    20s and 30s East side. Murry Hill
    Live on no major avenue
    Interest bearing account for security deposit
    Medeco locks

    Notebook 4, page 15
    Scared standing on 34th and Broadway
    $6 cab fare

    Notebook 4, page 42
    Getting lost in the village

    References:
    The Little Brown Book of Anecdotes by Clifton Fadiman 
    Medeco Locks
    “Here is New York” by E.B. White
    “Silly Job Interview” - Monty Python 
    John Cleese on Creativity in Management
    Herbie Hancock: Miles Davis’ Essential Lesson On Mistakes

    Want to listen to Navel Gazing uninterrupted? Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately unlock ad-free listening to Navel Gazing and all your other favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/navelgazingplus to get access wherever you listen.
     
    Podcast production by Cheyna Roth.
    Email us at navelgazingpodcast@gmail.com
     
    Host
    John Dickerson
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    • 41 min
    Amicus: How Originalism Ate the Law: The Trick

    Amicus: How Originalism Ate the Law: The Trick

    In this, the first part of a special series on Amicus and at Slate.com, we are lifting the lid on an old-timey sounding method of constitutional interpretation that has unleashed a revolution in our courts, and an assault on our rights. But originalism’s origins are much more recent than you suppose, and its effects much more widespread than the constitutional earthquakes of overturning settled precedent like Roe v Wade or supercharging gun rights as in Heller and Bruen. Originalism’s aftershocks are being felt throughout the courts, the law, politics and our lives, and we haven’t talked about it enough. On this week’s show, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern explore the history of originalism. They talk to Professor Jack Balkin about its religious valence, and Saul Cornell about originalism’s first major constitutional triumph in Heller. And they’ll tell you how originalism’s first big public outing fell flat, thanks in part to Senator Ted Kennedy’s ability to envision the future, as well as the past.
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    • 47 min

Customer Reviews

3.8 out of 5
436 Ratings

436 Ratings

Himnish Jindal ,

Good but random laughing

It is a good show but I am confused why they are randomly laughing when discussing such a serious topic

Joe's View ,

Too many commercials

Feels like cable news in terms of the interruptions for ads. At least none of them seem to be for prescription drugs!

John G. Adam ,

Lousy content

Slate is now a right wing race-fixated media. Slate downplays slavery and its harm and repercussions today. Slate ignores the plight of transkids.

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