You're going to be. Oh, Hi, this is Isaac Dauver, the Atlantic's political correspondent, and this is the first episode of The

Ticket, Politics from the Atlantic. If you're new to the show,

welcome. And if you've been subscribed to Radio Atlantic, welcome back. It's 2020, so it's

election time. It's maybe the most important presidential election of any of our lifetimes.

The results and repercussions will shape the future of the country and the planet.

And so we're going all in on politics. But I'm trying to go at the selection in a

different way. I'm going to dig into what matters and what's happening beyond the

cable news chatter and I want to bring you along for the ride. For the last year and a half, I've been traveling all around the country,

to all the early states and the swing states and back to DC.

And I'm going to keep racking up those frequent flyer miles

as the year goes on. And this week, I'm where

it's all going down on Monday night. Iowa. And actually for the start of this episode, I wanted to bring in the person who's been making this show since Radio Atlantic began over two years ago

You've heard his name in the credits each week

producer Kevin Townsend. Hi Kevin. Hey Isaac.

So I was in a few days, you're about to fly there.

What number of flight is this to Iowa for you this past year?

It is hard to keep count.

I have gone a lot. And so this week you interviewed someone who's

running for Congress in Iowa but before we get to that conversation I thought

maybe it would be helpful to do some setup.

So for people that don't go to Iowa like every week, like you do, why does Iowa vote first?

It votes first because ahead of the 1976 election, there were people in Iowa and some Democratic

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