I've been listening to John Dickerson's Whistlestop podcast. It's the best new thing I've found. Each episode is 40 minutes, covering one moment in Presidential politics. A convention, a campaign, a meltdown, a big gaffe.

What's so great about it for me is that I was alive when many of these things happened but had no idea what was going on behind the scenes. Dickerson is a great story-teller, you can tell he loves this stuff, and the stories are riveting.

The last two episodes I listened to were about Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, in 1980 and 1976 (the order I listened to them). I won't spoil the story, but it is quite good. The closing speech of the 1976 convention was from Ronald Reagan, who had lost his challenge of then-President Ford. But people came out of the convention thinking they had nominated the wrong man. I just watched a recording of the speech. It wasn't perfect, he goes deep into the threat of nuclear armageddon, the equivalent of today's terrorism (and still terrifying though we don't talk about it much). But the closing had me in tears. He was a fantastic speaker. And of course he went on to win in 1980.