Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, a home for plucky misfits and problem solvers.

I'm your host, Andrew Heaton.

Freshly back in Austin, Texas, run my trip to Milwaukee, Wisconsin,

where last week I catapulted myself at the Republican National Convention

and spent a surprisingly large amount of my time trying to corner Rudy Giuliani and ask him to give me cigar advice on Mike.

That didn't work out, but I did successfully grab Matt Taibi, the journalist.

A journalist I've been trying to interview for years.

I was able to corner him there at the Republican National Convention.

I pretty much just

sauntered up to the guy and went, hey I'm a podcaster or something, you don't

know who I am but can I talk to you? And somehow it worked. To his great credit, me the random dude that interrupted his lunch to try to interview him, he agreed to do it.

Then I had to scramble because I didn't actually have, know a booth or a recording office or anything like that so I

literally borrowed my pillow guy's couch you know my pillow guy's couch you with a mustache, he had a booth and he had a couch and I just sort of

commandered the couch and interviewed Matt Taibee therein. So if you hear extraneous noise or at one point somebody seems irritated that I

may or may not have been using their couch that's what's going on. Let me tell you

about Matt Taibi for a moment before we meet him. He is the recipient of the National magazine

award, which is the Pulitzer Prize equivalent for long-form features and magazines. It is

a award of import within journalistic circles and he has had a fascinating career arc.

He was a proper gonzo journalist in Russia. I've heard some weird stories about him. You can Google him,

Gonzo journalist Russia, you'll find some stuff, but he came to prominence in America

working at Rolling Stones, where he covered the 2008 financial crisis and was a leading voice of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

For example, he once described Goldman Sachs as,

...