Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

Today we continue our series of special episodes for this election year.

We've been looking at some of the usual rhythms of an election cycle and some of the

most interesting and forgotten history around them. So we've talked about conventions, we've talked about debates,

we've talked about vice presidential picks, the beep stakes, and today we're

going to talk about October surprises. So we'll try and define exactly what we mean in this episode and then we will go through some of the more interesting examples but basically these are stories that upend or reshape an election right up at the last moment of the election cycle. So welcome to

October surprise week and here as always are Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and

Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. Hello Jody. Hey there.

And also here, not as always, perhaps those of you listening at home can tell we have a live audience we are

taping this in Boston at W B u r's city space our friends at radiotopia helped us put

this show on and is really nice to be gathered together for this.

So hello Boston, thank you for joining us to see.

And since it is Boston,

we knew we had to get a special guest joining us here on stage is the one and only Josh

Gondelman. Boston native, repeat guest on the show was a writer for Deesus and Merrill last week tonight.

His book is called Nice Try and you hear him a lot on wait wait don't tell me these days welcome Josh

Thank you so much for having me everybody. Oh it's what a pleasure to be here

So yeah this is this episode is about October surprises these events that

Sh we shape upend kind of provide a big twist into an election cycle and I was thinking about the last couple

election cycles which I felt very upendy and twisty and so I actually wanted

to just start by showing you in the audience here a list of

...