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

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, October 27, 1964, Ronald Reagan burst onto the scene with what is commonly known as his

a time for choosing speech.

The speech solidified his standing as a Republican star

even though he had been a Democrat as recently as 1962, but it all started to

come together for Reagan after that speech. A year later he announced he was running for

governor of California and of course after serving as governor he would go on to

serve as president probably nicky can correct me on this probably the most

important figure in conservative politics in the last 60 years or so here to discuss that turning point speech is

Nicole Hemmer of Columbia. Hello, Nicky. Hello Jody. Yes, I think most important conservative figure in 60 years I'll give him that yeah I think he's got that and I of course you know wrote this intro and said he burst onto the scene.

That isn't exactly right and that's kind of actually where I want to start because, well first off,

he was an actor so when you say burst onto the scene he kind of like walked onto the scene

and stole the spotlight.

But also, I think Reagan's political awakening was something that sort of developed

over the course of seemingly decades and this speech seems in many ways to really both be a capstone but also

really represent that kind of long awakening so you know what is in this speech and

what does it tell us about Reagan's move from actor to political figure?

Yeah, I mean we often use that phrase political evolution, but I think in the case of Reagan

political evolution is the right word because it really is like tectonic plates shifting

over the course of more than a decade because he had been a kind of New Deal Democrat.

He had been asked by Democrats to run in 1946 and 1952 for Congress.

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