Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for Friday, December 9th, 2011.

This is the Go Pioneer edition. I'm David Plotz, the editor of Slate. I'm here on the stage with

John Dickerson, Slate's chief political correspondent and the political director for CBS News and Emily Bazelon,

Slate's senior editor for a special live edition of the Gab Fest here at the Harris Center

on the campus of Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. We are four weeks out.

That was proof for people listening that we are doing, we are all here.

We're not just alone in the hotel room.

Exactly.

Again.

We did do that once, and that worked out okay.

We did a show alone in a hotel room?

Remember, we were in New Hampshire? Oh, in New Hampshire. We did a show. Emily and I were together in a hotel room in New Hampshire. Yeah. With a candlestick. Really? No. Do your spouses know about that? They do, yes. And Mr. Mustard was dead on the floor. Yeah, that was right. That was in 2008. Yeah. We'd just flown from Iowa to New Hampshire.

It was very exciting.

On Hillary Clinton's point?

John was really sick.

Wow.

This is all really interesting stuff.

Actually not.

We're a guest of the Rosenfield program here at Grinnell, and we are thrilled to be here on campus at Grinnell, the home

of the pioneers. And I learned some interesting facts about Grinnell today from the Huffington Post

and the Daily Beast, which is that Grinnell is the number one most hipster college in America.

It is the numbers. Wait, how does that...

...