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Hey, GabFest listeners, this is David Plotz. You're about to hear a chimera of a gab fest, a live

gab fest with a special studio section put on at the top.

So we taped this live Gab Fest in San Francisco on Tuesday night before the Republican presidential debate.

We came into the studio again on Thursday morning after the debate to record our responses, our thoughts on the debate.

So the first bit you're going to hear is live,

then we'll cut back to the studio for our post-debate discussion, then we'll go back to the

live show. We hope you enjoy it.

Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for September 18th, 2015, the live from San Francisco edition.

I'm David Plotz of Atlas Obscura.

I'm joined by Emily Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine.

And by John Dickerson of Face the Nation and Slate.

As you can hear, we are live. We're live at the Norse Theater in San Francisco in front of the largest crowd in GabFest history.

If this crowd were...

That's the greatest crowd ever. It's huge.

If this crowd... Yeah, if this crowd were a political candidate, it would be Donald Trump.

...