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The Political Landscape is a weekly conversation with Atlantic Media writers, editor and outside experts on the news of the day. Americans like to think of the Senate as the greatest deliberative body in the world. Thomas Jefferson supposedly once asked George Washington, "Why did you pour that coffee into your saucer?" to which Washington responded, "To cool it." Then Washington went further. "We pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it." Senators have been "cooling" legislation for over 200 years with a variety of measures we call filibusters. And for nearly all of those years, people have argued that filibusters are, in fact, freezing legislation. But it's not hard to find people — politicians, academics, historians — to vociferously defend the filibuster.On this week's podcast, how the filibuster both ruined the Senate and made it the greatest deliberative body in the world. Next week, the Senate will vote on a variety of filibuster reforms. Will we finally see a change in the rules?  We stopped by the office of current Senate Historian Donald Ritchie. He's written multiple books on Senate history, edited the transcripts of Senator Joseph McCarthy's closed hearings during the Red Scare, and done extensive oral histories of the senate. And he seemed genuinely excited to sit down and talk filibuster with me for 35 minutes. He knows more about Senate rules than anyone.Except maybe Robert Dove, who spent 35 years in the Senate Parliamentarian's office, twice serving as Senate Parliamentarian. As Parliamentarian, senators went to Dove for all Senate rules clarifications. He loves senate rules. Dove's lived by the same motto since 1966: "The rules of the Senate are perfect, and if they changed them all tomorrow, they would still be perfect." He shared some stories from his decades on the Senate floor, including the blow-by-blow of the time Senate Republicans, unhappy with his interpretation of the rules, fired him from his position in 2001.We also talk to Sarah Binder, a George Washington political science professor, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, and author of a history on the filibuster, Politics or Principle: Filibustering in the United States.Finally, we talk to David Graham, an associate editor at The Atlantic. Graham has written about current filibuster reform efforts and will explain what's on the table right now.So stick with us through the podcast to learn how an overlooked 1807 rule change allowed for

The Political Landscape is a weekly podcast where we discuss the news of the day with leading experts. Reddit. Trolling. Net Neutrality. These are obscure words to many people. On this week’s podcast, the rising political power of the first term, Reddit, an online community of tens of thousands of message forums. The dark, lurid practice that might undermine this power, trolling, the second term. And the issue the Reddit community is increasingly pushing for in Washington, Net Neutrality, the third term. We’ll talk to the writer, Adrian Chen of Gawker, who uncovered and confronted Reddit’s most infamous troll, Violentacrez. Violentacrez is responsible for the most abhorrent message forums, or Subreddits, on Reddit. These include subreddits such as rape jokes and jailbait (pictures of underage girls in their underwear), among many others. We'll hear from Violentacrez himself in an interview he did on CNN a few days after Chen's piece was published. We’ll also talk to John Herrman of Buzzfeed. Herrman recently followed Reddit’s co-founder, Alexis Ohanian around on an 8-day bus tour called “Internet Freedom 2012.” Ohanian gained public prominence when he played an instrumental part in galvanizing the Reddit community to protest the passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act — SOPA — which was eventually pulled from Congress. Now, Ohanian has leveraged his exposure gained from the experience to promote net neutrality, or the idea that the government should regulate internet providers to ensure that Internet consumers' access to various sites is not restricted. Also joining us is Rebecca Rosen, an associate editor at The Atlantic. Rosen frequently contributes to the publication's technology section and often writes about these issues.  Our podcast this week in three parts. In part one, we find out what Reddit and the Reddit community is all about. In part two, we confront the darker side of Reddit and understand why federal laws allow it. And in part three, we talk about the potential political power of Reddit. What, if any legislative impact could it have? But first, the basics on Reddit. In August, the site went over 3.4 billion page views. That puts it in the realm the country’s biggest media compnay’s and on par with Hulu, NFL.com, and ahead of the Drudge Report and the Washington Post. Check out last week's episode on how