Monkey Business (1987) w/ Matt Bai

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s September 9th. This day in 1987, former Colorado Senator Gary Hart gave an interview on Nightline where he, finally, admitted that he’d been unfaithful to his wife. But it was too little, too late.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie are joined by Matt Bai, author of “The Frontrunner,” to discuss the infidelity scandal that brought down Hart’s campaign, and changed political journalism forever.

Matt’s book was also turned into the movie “The Frontrunner” starring Hugh Jackman.

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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Julie Shapiro, Executive Producer at Radiotopia

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Avergan.
0:10.0	This day, September 8,, 1987, Gary Hart, former senator from Colorado, former front runner for the Democratic
0:18.1	nomination for president, gives an interview on Nightline with Ted Koppel in which he discusses the state of his marriage and his history of infidelity.
0:27.0	Now, I said former front runner for the Democratic nomination.
0:31.0	He was former by like just a few months earlier that spring.
0:33.8	Just earlier in 1987 Hart's campaign had suffered a stunning collapse after he was
0:38.9	caught with a mistress leaving his DC apartment. Rumors started swirling. The campaign was caught somewhat
0:44.3	flat-footed and you know we'll get into it but in many ways the modern political media
0:49.5	environment was born. So here to discuss Gary Hart, the personal and the political
0:54.8	tablet journalism, lots more are as always Nicole Hember of Columbia and
0:58.7	Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. Hello Jody. Hey there. And our special guest for this episode is
1:05.6	Matt by longtime political journalists with the New York Times Yahoo now with the
1:09.5	Washington Post author of a number of books including all the truth is out the weak politics went
1:15.4	tabloid which is about the collapse of the heart campaign. Matt welcome to the
1:20.5	show. Thank you. Prayed to be here. And we should point out that the book was
1:24.3	turned into a movie starring Hugh Jackman and also a really amazing ensemble cast.
1:29.2	You're just like, oh that person's in it, that person's, it's really wonderful. But the movie is called The Front Runner and then
1:34.3	Matt has re-released the book under that title, The Front Runner.
1:37.4	And I wrote the movie so I'm basically like, I'm basically this is a whole
1:42.0	franchise enterprise.
1:43.2	And unlike Gary Hart, you were able to rebrand successfully, right?
	...

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