Election Day Special: Reporting The Results w/ Jad Abumrad
This Day in Esoteric Political History
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.6 • 982 Ratings
🗓️ 8 November 2022
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s election day here in the United States. We hope you’ve already voted, or maybe are reading this while you’re standing in line. Today, we bring you an episode we originally did on election day in 2020 — a look at the history of how election results get conveyed, and the tension between speed and accuracy. Our guest is Jad Abumrad, former host of Radiolab. Enjoy, and happy voting!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone welcome to this day in esoteric political history from |
| 0:04.3 | Radiotopia my name is Jody Abergan and today is election day here in the US a big |
| 0:10.0 | midterm election I do hope you voted if you live in this country and maybe the |
| 0:15.1 | episodes we've done over the last couple weeks have given you some context for |
| 0:18.9 | how midterms play out or at least something to think about and And today's episode, a bit of a special episode, is something to listen to as you stand |
| 0:27.1 | in line to vote, or maybe as you're doing some last minute campaign work, or awaiting |
| 0:32.0 | the results, which can take a while. |
| 0:34.6 | And that is kind of what this whole episode is about. |
| 0:37.2 | This is a conversation we originally did for Election Day two years ago in 2020, a brief history of all the ways in which we convey election results. |
| 0:47.6 | Because this is the whole tree falling in the woods thing, but does an election really exist |
| 0:52.3 | if no one is there to announce the results? |
| 0:55.2 | Think about it folks think about it. |
| 0:57.2 | Anyway this is a very fun conversation and of course something that is very much in the air |
| 1:01.2 | right now how do we count votes how do we |
| 1:03.4 | talk about the results how long does it take to get the results it's going to be a bit I |
| 1:08.2 | think for a real picture to emerge in this year's election and a lot of the |
| 1:11.9 | conversation that you're about to hear is about that tension between this year is |
| 1:13.5 | is about that tension between speed, the push for instantaneous |
| 1:17.9 | information and maybe that not being the healthiest thing for our |
| 1:21.6 | democracy. |
| 1:22.6 | Anyway, our guest for this episode |
| 1:24.6 | is Jad Abumrod, former host of Radio Lab. |
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