Degenerate Gambler

This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss how policies of anger and dominance structure President Trump’s approach to adversaries, allies, and the independent press alike, how the dangers of the online sports-betting industry are outrunning limited guardrails with guest McKay Coppins , and how a federal judge just handed RFK Jr.’s war on vaccines its biggest setback yet. For this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode, Emily, John, and David discuss what the conventional postmortems of USAID are missing and where global development might go from here with guest Tim Hirschel-Burns . In the latest Gabfest Reads , John Dickerson talks with Father James Martin about his new book, Work in Progress: Confessions of a Busboy, Dishwasher, Caddy, Usher, Factory Worker, Bank Teller, Corporate Tool, and Priest . They discuss the spiritual lessons learned through eight different jobs, Martin’s controversial LGBTQ ministry that made him a target of criticism within the Catholic Church, and what the Gospels demand about welcoming strangers and caring for the marginalized. Email your chatters, questions, and comments to gabfest@slate.com. (Messages may be referenced by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.) Podcast production by Nina Porzucki Research by Emily Ditto You can find the full Political Gabfest show pages here . Want more Political Gabfest? Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can

You can listen to Degenerate Gambler online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Degenerate Gambler is an episode from Political Gabfest by Slate Podcasts.

This episode is 1:04:57 long.

This episode was published on Mar 19, 2026.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Political Gabfest when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.