Taped on Tuesday 12/17/13 as part of the IPR Insight Series, this is a special edition of River to River with NPR’s Don Gonyea, recorded before a live audience in Des Moines. Host Ben Kieffer asks Gonyea about the 2013 political year, his career, and his connection to Iowa. IPR also tests Gonyea’s Iowa knowledge with a bit of trivia.
Top five moments and quotes from the night:
1. A toast between Don Gonyea, Ben Kieffer, and 150+ audience members, as they raise their glasses in anticipation of a night full of politics, beer, trivia, and public radio. Don and Ben toast with a local Iowa brew from Knoxville, Peace Tree Brewery’s Blonde Fatale. 2.“It’s not my job to offer reassurances here, but I think I can do just that. As long as Iowa’s first in the nation status… is working for at least one party, that party will be an advocate for doing it again next time.” - Don Gonyea on the Iowa caucus 3.“One of the great, great, great things about Iowa is you come to this state, you walk into the diner, and you tell them you’re a reporter… they tell you to have a seat, they tell you to order breakfast, sometimes they offer to buy you breakfast, and you have a great conversation about politics.” - Don Gonyea 4. Don Gonyea shares that during RAGBRAI he and the NPR team (including Scott Horsley and Brian Naylor) each ate about 20 pieces of pie over the week. His favorite piece was peach pie a la mode. 5. Donyea clears “Iowa-wannabe” status in the trivia game we call, “What does Don Gonyea know about Ioway, anyway?” (You’ll have to listen to the broadcast to find out if he becomes an honorary Iowa citizen. Be prepared to laugh out loud!)
Credit Amanda Acton
At the end of the show, we invited the night's guests to participate in a Q & A session with Don Gonyea. Hear listener questions and Gonyea's responses below:
121913_audienceQandA.mp3
Audience Q & A
If you are interested in hearing the live, unedited event as it happened Tuesday, 12/17/13, you can listen here:
121913_fullshow.mp3
Unedited broadcast of the live event "Politics and a Pint" - (minus audience Q & A)
Special thanks to IPR listeners who submitted questions and answers for the trivia portion of the event: Larry Keig, Dave Perkins, Eve Vanden Broek, Devin Mogler, Jennifer Nieland, Ned Peterson, Maeve Clark, Leo Landis, Tom Wickersham
