Hello, I'm Brendan.

And I'm Rico.

Surprise.

We're here a little early this week.

And if you listen regularly to the dinner party download, you know that on every episode,

we try to help you win your dinner party by arming you with insights into the arts and culture of the week.

Today, we're going to help you win your debate party.

That's right. It's our first ever dinner party download extra special Instapod.

Is that what we're calling it now?

I mean, it is unless you want to edit out me calling it that just now.

I don't. So cool.

All right, so we're going to call that. Basically, earlier today in

our studios, we spoke to Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. Yes. And you're going to hear

the full interview on this Friday's episode where she answers your etiquette questions. But she also

happens to be the author of a new book entitled The Year of Voting Dangerously, which is a collection

of her columns about Hillary Clinton and Donald

Trump, both of whom she's been covering for years. That's right. So we took the opportunity to

ask Maureen about her thoughts on the presidential debate tonight. And we discuss some stuff

worth keeping in mind, perhaps, as you head to your debate watching parties this evening. So we're

getting that part of our conversation out to you right now.

Instapod. There you go. That's why we call it that, I guess. We first asked her how she thought the debates would go, basically what the two candidate strategies might be.

I think what's going to happen is they're saying that gracious Trump will show up, but he's so thin-skinned.

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