Emily Bazelon is one of the hosts of Slate's Political Gabfest podcast, which has been out since 2005. She talks with Rehman Tungekar about how the Gabfest got started, how they prepare for an episode, and why it's so popular.
In the early days of the program, Bazelon says,"when we were trying to play the role of real people who knew what they were talking about, it was disastrous.” Bazelon's a seasoned investigative journalist, and now a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine. Still, it took time for the co-hosts to figure out that they needed to work from their natural, casual rapport.
The podcast has more than 75,000 subscribers on ITunes, and Bazelon says she thinks that rapport is part of what made the show a success, but “maybe we just snuck into this space before a lot of other people were podcasting.”