Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gap Fest for May 3rd, 2018, the Live and St. Louis

edition.

We are on stage at a jam-packed Sheldon concert hall in downtown St. Louis along the

banks of the Mississippi River.

We are here to bridge East and West to knit the country back together.

I am David Plots of Atlas Obscura, too.

My immediate left is Emily Bazlon of the New York Times magazine.

And to her left is John Dickerson of CBS this morning.

And before we start, I just want to say I've never been to St. Louis.

So today was the first chance.

But St. Louis is oddly a cradle of plots, which is that my grandmother Helen Abrams grew

up here.

She went to University City High School.

And she sat next to, she sat next to in home room, Tennessee Williams, was her home

room seatmate.

Then known as Tom Williams.

Tom Williams, who is very quiet.

David called his mom and found all this stuff or re-equainted himself with it today.

And my great-great grandfather was the chief rabbi of St. Louis.

And there's a photo in my parents' have of his funeral where there are thousands of

your ancestors flocking the streets, which are probably around, I don't know, in the teens,

the 19 teens.

...