Michael D’Antonio, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and a biographer of Donald J. Trump, shares hours of audio interviews he conducted with Mr. Trump, three of his children and his first wife. We interview Mr. D’Antonio and draw on those tapes in Part I of our two-part psychological portrait of Mr. Trump.…

Who won? What surprised us? How much will it change the race? We recruited Amy Chozick and Nicholas Confessore, political reporters for The New York Times, for a bleary-eyed post-debate discussion fueled by cheap rosé.

We talk numbers with Nate Cohn, a reporter for The Upshot and our most trusted translator of polls. We also check in with seasoned pollsters from each party — Geoff Garin, a Democrat, and Whit Ayres, a Republican — about Mr. Trump’s chances. Finally, we speak to a longtime researcher of polling psychology, Kyle Dropp, about a phenomenon that co ...…

A woman in Manhattan is watching the second presidential debate and hears Donald J. Trump say that, no, he has never kissed or groped a woman without her permission. She goes to bed deeply upset. The next morning she writes an email to The New York Times to say, yes, in fact, he has. It happened to her, she says. Mr. Trump denies her account. M ...…

Michael Barbaro hands the host chair to his editor, Carolyn Ryan, who runs campaign coverage for The New York Times, to discuss the tape of Donald J. Trump talking unguardedly about women and his behavior toward them and why it has blown open a discourse on gender, politics and culture. She speaks with Maggie Haberman, who has covered both Hill ...…

The vice presidency has been the butt of jokes for generations. But politicians beg for the job, and with the right chemistry and personal dynamic, it can be a powerful position. We talk with the former chief White House reporter for The New York Times, Peter Baker, who has written a book about Vice President Dick Cheney’s relationship with Pre ...…

David Barstow and Susanne Craig, reporters for The New York Times, explain how they cracked open the biggest story of the campaign, overcoming nagging doubts to nail down Donald J. Trump’s tax returns. We also talk to Stuart Stevens, the chief strategist for Mitt Romney, about why the 2012 Republican nominee was so reluctant to release his tax ...…

Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are full-blown stars in their own right, and have spawned and inspired television characters and shows. We talk to the chief television critic at The New York Times, James Poniewozik, about how television and film characters past and present inform our views of both candidates. We also chat with Susan Domin ...…

Instead of leaving the office, we pour a round of drinks and dissect the spectacle we just witnessed. Michael Barbaro is joined by Mark Leibovich, chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, and Carolyn Ryan, senior editor for politics at The Times. Michael Grynbaum, a Times media reporter, parses the performance of Lester Hol ...…

Debate night is coming. Tony Schwartz, the man who channeled Donald Trump to write “The Art of the Deal” and has lived to regret it, explains why he is turning his intimate knowledge of how Mr. Trump thinks and behaves into advice for how Hillary Clinton should conduct herself in Monday night’s highly anticipated presidential debate. We also ta ...…

Is deliberate dishonesty an official campaign strategy for Donald J. Trump? We posed that question to two top presidential campaign strategists from both parties: Mike Murphy, who advised Jeb Bush this year and John McCain in 2000, and Paul Begala, a political strategist for Bill Clinton in 1992. We’re also joined by Maggie Haberman, who has co ...…

Long before Hillary Clinton’s pneumonia or Donald J. Trump’s bizarre doctor’s note, there was a history of voters demanding candidates’ medical records. We get some perspective from John Dickerson, a history buff, columnist at Slate and moderator of Moderator of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” and Lawrence K. Altman, a former reporter at The New York ...…

“Basket of deplorables.” A public roasting at the White House Correspondents Dinner. The Khan family. So many gaffes and stumbles in a presidential race can feel at the time like major turning points. But it often takes months of hindsight to know at which point the whole campaign actually turned. We speak with six Times campaign reporters abou ...…

What just-right combination of factors is required for a country to embrace a woman as its leader for the first time, and was it inevitable that Hillary Clinton, or someone like her, would be the first in America to make it this far? We explore with Claire McCaskill, the senior United States Senator from Missouri, and Gail Collins, a New York T ...…

Whose ads are breaking through this year, and why? We dissect this season’s campaign ads with Wesley Morris, the chief culture critic for The New York Times, and Russ Schriefer, a longtime Republican ad maker who has created some of the most memorable campaign commercials of the past decade.

Donald J. Trump and Anthony D. Weiner have ridden impulsiveness and narcissism to dizzying political highs but have also found that they take a toll, raising doubts about their judgment and fitness for public office. We discuss with Frank Bruni, a columnist and former political reporter at The Times, and Maggie Haberman, a national political re ...…

Does Hillary Clinton deserve 91 percent of the black vote? Is Donald J. Trump even trying with black voters? We discuss with two New York Times journalists who have been covering this election and its racial dynamics: Charles Blow and Yamiche Alcindor. We also hear from Tara Wall, a campaign operative who helped President George W. Bush and Mit ...…

She is a quiet but devoted Methodist. He subscribes to a theology of positive thinking. The two leading presidential candidates have been molded by religion — even if they don’t often talk about it. We hear from Gwenda Blair, the author of “The Trumps”; Burns Strider, Mrs. Clinton’s religious adviser during her first presidential campaign; and ...…

Has the media lost its position as an arbiter of truth in this campaign? We discuss this possibility with two people who occupy very different places in the media world: Charlie Sykes, an influential conservative radio show host; and Sarah Ellison, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Jim Rutenberg, The Times’s media columnist, explains how it ...…

Four of 10 voters are still squarely in Donald J. Trump’s camp. To understand who they are we turn to J.D. Vance, the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” which has been described as the best explanation of Mr. Trump’s political rise. We’re also joined by the New York Times reporters Nicholas Confessore and Nate Cohn.…

How did Hillary Clinton lose Americans’ trust? Stanley Greenberg, a top Democratic campaign strategist, describes how he addressed the trust issue for another Clinton: Bill. We also speak with Lissa CQ Muscatine, a longtime adviser for Hillary Clinton, and Mark Landler, a White House correspondent for The Times.…

Sometimes the most powerful Trumpisms are throwaway lines like “I don’t know.” Michael Barbaro talks with Thomas Friedman, Patrick Healy and Barbara Res, Trump’s former construction manager, about how Trump uses language.

We explore whether Hillary Clinton, the most distrusted Democratic presidential nominee in a generation, could be heading for an old-fashioned, legitimate landslide. Our guests: Newt Gingrich, Amy Chozick and Nate Cohn.