The Gist

When All the Jobs Are Gone

Author Amy Goldstein went to Janesville, Wisconsin, to see how people coped when their local economy vanished. In short: It’s really hard.

A fence surrounds the shuttered GM assembly plant on May 4, 2009, in Janesville, Wisconsin.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Listen to Episode 919 of Slate’s The Gist:

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On The Gist, the pomposity and circumstantial evidence of the State of the Union.

Janesville, Wisconsin, had the oldest operating GM assembly plant in the country until 2008. The factory’s closure left thousands of employees in the lurch. Amy Goldstein’s book Janesville: An American Story describes the choices facing three families as they pick up the pieces of a busted local economy.

In the Spiel, the right things to say when you’re being nuked and the right way to say them.

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