Sabotage for Christmas

It's conundrum season! Pass along your most pressing conundrums here: www.slate.com/conundrum. Our annual Conundrum holiday show is coming soon. This week, Emily, David and John discuss the Trump Administration's efforts to hobble the Biden transition; ethical problems in vaccine distribution; and how to deal with the damage of the election fraud lie. Here are some notes and references from this week’s show: Alex Kalman for the Atlantic: “The Letters That Outgoing Presidents Wrote to Their Successors” John Dickerson for The Atlantic: “Why You Don’t Mess Around With Presidential Transitions” The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine: “A Framework for Equitable Allocation of Vaccine for the Novel Coronavirus” Kathryn Olivarius for The New York Times: “The Dangerous History of Immunoprivilege” Jeanna Smialek and Alan Rappeport for The New York Times: “Mnuchin Cites Principles in Clawing Back Fed Money. Democrats See Politics.” Kevin Roose, Mike Isaac, and Sheera Frenkel for The New York Times: “Roiled by Election, Facebook Struggles to Balance Civility and Growth” Colin Dickey for Medium: “How to Talk to a Conspiracy Theorist” To celebrate our 15th anniversary we'd love to know about your clever, politically themed, original cocktail! Please send us the details here: www.slate.com/cocktail Here are this week’s cocktail chatters:  John: W.E.B. Du Bois: Writings; The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry  David: Death, Sex & Money: “51 Years Loving A Man Named Sissy”; David’s twitter thread pitch for remaking Love Actually every year. Emily and listener Barbara Torrey Workman @thethirdbarbara: Twitter thread by United Farm Workers @UFWupdates featuring farm workers at work harvesting the ingredients in favorite Thanksgiving recipes.  Slate Plus members get a bonus segment on the Gabfest each week, and access to special bonus episodes throughout the year. Sign up now to listen and support our show. For this week’s Slate Plus bonus segment David, Emily, and John discuss the elements of pre-pandemic Thanksgiving that they won’t miss this year and don't plan to reinstate next year. You can tweet suggestions, links, and questions to @SlateGabfest. Tweet us your cocktail chatter using #cocktailchatter. (Messages may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)   The email address for the Political Gabfest is gabfest@slate.com. (Email may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.) Podcast production by Jocelyn Frank. Research and show notes by Bridgette Dunlap. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices