The Lighthearted Leanings of Leadership | The 21st Century
Whistlestop: Presidential History and Trivia
Slate Podcasts
4.8 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 19 April 2018
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode of Whistlestop travels back to April 30, 2011 when President Obama stepped up to the podium at the White House Correspondents' Dinner to deliver a dig and dig for a laugh.
Whistlestop is Slate’s podcast about presidential campaign history. Hosted by our political correspondent and Political Gabfest panelist John Dickerson, each installment will revisit a memorable (or even a forgotten) moment from America's quadrennial carnival.
Join Slate Plus for full, ad-free access to Whistlestop and your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Whistlestop show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/whistlestopplus to get access wherever you listen.
Podcast production and edit by Jocelyn Frank. Research by Brian Rosenwald.
Email: whistlestop@slate.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Whistle Stop, a podcast of the presidency. |
| 0:05.0 | The favorite quotations about age comes from Thomas Jefferson. He said that we should never |
| 0:10.3 | judge a president by his age, only by his work. And ever since he told me that, I've stopped |
| 0:16.8 | lower it. That was just one joke from President Ronald Reagan who had a saddlebag full of them. |
| 0:23.9 | Good old-fashioned setpiece jokes about dogs and Catholic priests and the probation of the Soviet Union. |
| 0:30.5 | The potatoes will be piled tie to God, said a Soviet farmer. |
| 0:34.7 | Comrade said the Russian official. |
| 0:36.3 | This is the Soviet Union. |
| 0:37.4 | We don't believe in God. Yes, said the farmer. And this is the Soviet farmer. Comrade, said the Russian official. This is the Soviet Union. We don't believe in God. |
| 0:39.0 | Yes, said the farmer, and this is the Soviet Union. |
| 0:41.9 | There are no potatoes. |
| 0:43.6 | Reagan loved a good joke. |
| 0:44.8 | Hollywood had taught him how to tell them, but the real secret sauce was that Reagan's |
| 0:49.0 | jokes were often self-deprecating. |
| 0:51.9 | Why? |
| 0:52.5 | Why was that the secret sauce? |
| 0:55.6 | Well, that's what we're going to delve into into this episode of whistlestop and why the capacity for humor may be the most |
| 1:02.6 | important presidential quality of all. Surely you can't be serious. I am serious. And don't |
| 1:08.9 | call me Shirley. Our whistle stop today is April 30th, 2011, and we are at the windowless spaceship embedded in the middle of the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C. |
| 1:18.2 | We're at the White House Correspondence dinner, and we're also in the historical present again, which we'll see if we can sustain. |
| 1:26.6 | It's the dinner where the president and members of the |
| 1:29.0 | press have come for an evening of jokes. We're tucked into one of the hundreds of tables, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.