Read My Letter

Emily, John and David discuss impeachment, the pushback against Pete Buttigieg, and they offer a review of the most important stories of 2019.

Here are this week’s cocktail chatters:

• Emily: The, soon to be, end of an era with her warm and welcoming neighborhood grocery store Romeo and Cesare’s 
• John: Thomas Fuller and Josh Haner for the New York Times: “Portrait of an Oakland California Homeless Encampment.” and A 5700 year-old human genome and oral microbiome from chewed birch pitch in the journal Nature.
•  David: Anna Fifield for the Washington Post: “Taiwan’s tea party aims to burst Beijing’s one-China bubble.”
• Chatter from listener Ionic Tonic @ionictonic about a series of tweets from Surprised Eel Historian @greenleejw about the importance of eels in the economies of British medieval and renaissance times.

For this week’s Slate Plus bonus segment, Emily, David, and John recite some favorite passages of poetry and non-fiction.

• Emily: Blood History by Dwayne Betts
• John: Sorting it out by Philip Booth
• David: Lytton Strachey’s book Eminent Victorians writing about Florence Nightingale

You can tweet suggestions, links, and questions to @SlateGabfest. Tweet us your cocktail chatter using #cocktailchatter or post it to our Facebook page. (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 by Bridgette Dunlap.

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