Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is David Robinson. I am the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs Magazine.

Returning to the program, today we have the excellent Cat Abugazale. She is a correspondent for Mother Jones and for Zateo News, the new venture by friend of the

Current Affairs podcast, Mehdi Hassan. Kat, welcome back to current affairs.

Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be back.

Well, you're back because you've just had a very interesting experience. You have been at

the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and I really wanted to ask you all about this. Because...

Please ask me everything.

I have to ask you everything, Kat, because I trust you, first of all, to give it to me straight, to tell us how it really is. And I want to know how it really is, because I've never been to a political convention,

one of these, I don't know what these things are.

I've written about politics for a dozen years now,

and I've never gone to one of these.

What are they, actually?

They're basically big parties for that political party.

So it's like a huge festival, essentially,

except you have to have credentials that are vetted by Secret Service to get in.

Except for like one part at the DNC, you had, you know, two big centers.

You had the McCormick Place, and then you had the United Center, which is where all the big stuff happened.

But the caucus meetings were at McCormick Place, and you also had like an expo, which was open to the public. It had, you know, tables for different

causes. There was one that was like talking about being an atheist voter. You get tons of pins,

stickers, stuff like that. But that's the only thing that's open to the general public. And then you

have the actual United Center, which is where all those big

speeches happen, and you need credentials to get into there. And those are also, you know,

...