Hello and welcome to this day in Esletaire political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

For those of you listening in the podcast feed here is part two of our look at

the history of how political debates have been run in this country from format to

the role of the moderators and the role of the crowd,

a reminder that we recorded full video of this episode

so you can go check that out on YouTube.

But anyway, let's pick up the audio of the conversation

here with me and Nicky and Kelly.

Here's me kicking off a conversation about the role of the crowd.

Take a listen.

Let's talk a little bit about how the audience participates.

So the big question here obviously is crowd or no crowd.

And for a long time, well going way back to the Lincoln-Douglas debates,

the crowd was a big part of it, right?

And the crowd would give feedback and egg people along and react and so forth.

And then for a while, especially in the first televised debates, it went more towards like the

sound studio, very sort of ascetic, sometimes they weren't even in the same room debates.

And then this question started to get introduced with this town hall format of do you have a crowd or do you not.

And you know, Trump, this is a big point in contention between Trump and Biden for this year's event. Trump obviously wants a crowd there because he,

Trump supporters are very loud.

Yes.

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