Hundreds of devotees of the Slate podcast “Political Gabfest” watched a live taping at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue on Monday.

Not that it’s a surprise that an event in D.C. was well attended this week, but the folks over at Slate had to be pretty thrilled at the turnout for their first ever live recording of one of its podcasts. More than 650 people braved the crowds in the District to get to the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue for the taping on Monday—no easy task given the traffic conditions in the surrounding Chinatown neighborhood. (D.C. Metro police had just begun the massive amount of street closures for the inauguration when the taping was getting started.)

A few latecomers and stragglers due to traffic aside, the event went off very well. The “Political Gabfest” is a weekly podcast in which Slate.com editor David Plotz, political writer John Dickerson and contributor Emily Bazelon discuss the politics of the moment. It was born out of the three of them wondering what the pundits and politicos talk about after the cameras are switched off—at the bar after the official taping—and furthermore, if Slate readers/listeners might be interested in such a candid conversation. Hence the copious amount of overtalking and swearing that tend to be part of “Political Gabfest”— although Bazelon explained yesterday that after a brief debate, the three had decided to rein in the usual “nouns interjecting a string of expletives” for the day, as they decided it wasn’t appropriate to swear in a synagogue. The three journalists squirmed a bit as they adjusted to the live audience—”we don’t usually think about you,” Bazelon quipped—but soon enough fell into their routine of quick, interruption-filled topical discussion interspersed with personal barbs and digs.