Greatest Hits

January 1, 2026·56 min·5 clips

Emily Bazelon shocks her co-hosts by admitting she instructs her kids to avoid the police at all costs.

David Plotz hosts a 20th anniversary greatest hits episode of the Slate Political Gabfest with co-hosts Emily Bazelon and John Dickerson, drawing on listener nominations of the segments that had the most impact over the show's two decades. The first segment, from July 2014 -- a few weeks before Ferguson put police-community relations at the center of national discourse -- debates the arrest of Deborah Harrell, a Black single mother in South Carolina who left her nine-year-old daughter at a playground while she worked a McDonald's shift. A neighbor called the police and the daughter was placed in foster care. Emily argues forcefully that calling the police is almost never the right intervention and that she tells her own children never to speak to police if they can avoid it, treating police involvement as a risk rather than a resource. David pushes back with the scenario of watching a child at a park all day without apparent supervision, and Emily holds the line: the remedy is speaking to the child and parent, not calling police. David acknowledges over the years that Emily's position thoroughly changed how he thinks about the question. The second segment, from June 2018, covers Bill Clinton's disastrous book tour for The President is Missing, co-authored with James Patterson, which turned into a sustained embarrassment as Clinton repeatedly failed to give a coherent or sincere response to questions about Monica Lewinsky in the post-MeToo moment. John Dickerson extempore scripts the apology Clinton should have given: starting with I was wrong, period -- not mentioning the editing, not mentioning his own suffering, acknowledging that the wrong lasts longer than the moment it happened in, and expressing genuine learning. The hosts discuss why Clinton, uniquely effective at political framing, was unable to meet this particular moment: Emily attributes it to a long-standing defensive brittleness, the same quality that made him insist he was the one being persecuted. The third segment, from October 2021, presents data collected by listener Lindsay Lee, who listened to 55 Gabfest episodes between June 2016 and June 2017 and manually coded every interruption. Her findings: Emily is responsible for 49% of all interruptions (roughly 13 per episode), David for 32% (roughly 9 per episode), and John for 18% (roughly 6 per episode). Emily is also interrupted the least, while David is interrupted the most. Emily contextualizes her pattern as additive, enthusiastic, engagement-driven interruption rather than floor-stealing -- connecting it to a specific speech pattern common among Eastern European Jewish families -- while David expresses satisfaction at being cleared of a years-long accusation. The episode is warm, self-aware, and structured around the Gabfest's characteristic combination of personal candor and political analysis.

As heard by us

A smart anniversary sampler, strongest when it revisits Bill Clinton, accountability, and liberal discomfort with old loyalties.

Political Gabfest turns its 20th anniversary into a greatest-hits holiday episode, built from listener-nominated segments that delighted, moved, or annoyed them over the years.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play when you want 20th-anniversary nostalgia with a sharp return to the Gabfest's argument about Bill Clinton's public reckoning.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Political Gabfest