The Weird History Of U.S. Debates (Part 1)
This Day
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.6 • 982 Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2024
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ahead of this week's very weird debate, we take a look at the weird history of how political debates have been structured in the U.S. -- from format, to audience, to the role of the moderators.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia. |
| 0:06.4 | My name is Jody Avergan. |
| 0:08.6 | Right off the bat, let me tell you that there are a few things different about this |
| 0:15.3 | episode one is that we are recording this as a full video episode so some of |
| 0:20.4 | you are listening to the audio on the regular podcast feed, but some of you might be watching this on our newish YouTube channel. |
| 0:27.0 | We are playing a little bit with more video here and there, especially when it comes to episodes that feel a little news year or speak to this election year a little bit more. |
| 0:36.1 | And that is the other thing that is different about this episode. |
| 0:38.8 | We are doing a kind of pre-debate special. |
| 0:41.8 | We're going to take a quick esoteric tour through some of the weirder and more experimental |
| 0:46.7 | ways in which US political debates have been structured throughout history, and that is because |
| 0:52.1 | we are on the eve of a very weird |
| 0:55.0 | first debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. It's one of only two debates |
| 0:59.2 | this year. It's taking place before they're officially technically the |
| 1:02.4 | nominees of the |
| 1:03.2 | parties right the conventions haven't even happened it's early summer rather than |
| 1:07.0 | late fall like we usually remember with debates it's one of only two again so a |
| 1:11.8 | weird debate for a weird election year, but not the first time that |
| 1:15.7 | debate formats have gotten weird or been played with or been controversial. So let's talk |
| 1:20.6 | about it here, as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Nice to see you and hear you. |
| 1:28.0 | Hi. Yeah, nice to see you. Hello Jody. I know hey there guys. |
| 1:32.0 | So I was thinking we could format this because we're talking about |
| 1:36.3 | debate formats right so let's format our conversation a little bit here and I was |
... |
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