บทถอดความฉบับเต็มของ Tilting Towards Sunlight with John Dickerson

than my older brother. I never would have said that I wanted to be a performer. I think that I probably would have said, I want to be, you know, a computer programmer. which is what I spent a lot of intensive time doing between ages twelve and fifteen. And it was a brand new frontier and it was a way to keep or sort of exercise competence in in the world at an early age. I mean, you know, computers were just kind of coming into to the world. So I think the actual answer would have been, I would have said at the time, I would have said, I want to be a computer programmer. I think the answer I didn't even know to myself was that I wanted to have sort of a stage of some sort because of the way I behaved. So, how different are they now? I've thought a lot about the writing and argumentation that I engage in for the work that I do on Substack and in in the Atlantic and in my books. And a lot of it is is like a computer programming, like a program I would have written in BASIC or Pascal in the mid nineteen eighties. you know, it has to have a speaker-1 (07:46.934) a linear progression. If if one line of code is no good, the thing doesn't run. You have subroutines that represent blocks that can be either ported from one piece to the other or that that operate in chunks in the in the overall program so that it's not just a single long thing, but it's a series of boxes connected in a logical way. So I can see some of that there. And then also the performance piece, I never went on to I was never in a play and I have only played the guitar for the public maybe f like four times in my life. So that doesn't really none of that really counts. But obviously the television career that I had is somewhere in there with performance. so so I guess the the gap is maybe not that big if you define it that way. but if you If you wanna be strict about it, the gap is pretty big between those two things. I got it. Can I ask who who was your north star when it came to performance? I think the first one would have been Steve Martin. My I have three older sisters. they're half sisters, which is important only because it explains why they're so much older than me. the youngest of the three sisters was was fifteen years older than me. She she passed away six months ago, and she bought me Let's Get Small, which I believe is the first. speaker-1 (09:22.74) Steve Martin album, comedy album. and I don't know how old I was. I might have been under ten or around ten. And I listened to that c constantly. I mean, so Steve Martin was the first and I think she bought it for me because I wa because of the sort of clowny role that I played. so Steve Martin and then basically from there I think the performers would have been, you know, Saturday Night Live, Monty Python, and then David Letterman i is interesting. I think because all of Saturday Night Live Monty Python and Steve Martin and David Letterman are about more about words than performance. Yes. Well y you were a young man

of tremendous tastes, I have to say. I totally identify with your tastes. Just going back for a second, so I opened up with these two questions that you have asked in the past. You're known for being someone who asks the right questions in the right order at the right time. It's it's something of a gift. you've really inspired me to be a a more clear questioner. And I I wonder what you know about the craft. of asking questions now that you didn't know ten or twenty years ago. Yeah. I love that. well, it's funny. I but it's there are things that I don't know and things that I'm rediscovering. Well, I was really lucky that my first job in journalism started at Time magazine before the internet existed, because a weekly news magazine required that you think more contextually about the events that were taking place. Because you couldn't or you didn't want to have a piece in the magazine a week later. speaker-1 (11:09.528) That just recapitulated events. You always had to think, okay, this has happened. What does it mean? and and and what's going on? So it's not just what's happened, but what's happening. And so immediately that job made made all of us think about the context and and larger themes and how to tell a story. And so when you're thinking in that that way. your questions are broader and and they have to have a little more weight to them, because who, what, where, when, and why has already kind of been taken care of by the daily newspapers. And so I worked there for by my it was 12 I worked there for longer, but for 12 years since my first byline. And at the end of that, I was the White House correspondent from 2000 to 2005. And when you're the White House correspondent and there's a press conference, all the the wires go first and then the newspapers And then the TV correspondence. So by the time it gets to the news magazines, a lot of the materi a lot of the terrain has been pawed over. But often it's the terrain of what's happening in the nanosecond. And so I always had to think about okay, what question will be still relevant by the time the president gets around to me. And I think those were two really important things that I'm rediscovering because after a career in television. Some of it was spent, you know, doing interviews on Face the Nation where you could spend a little more time or on sixty minutes where you could spend more time, but a lot of it was done in short order and particularly because politicians have learned to say less and less. That was a kind of unsatisfying kind of questioning. So I feel like I'm rediscovering some of what I would have thought about at the beginning of my career. I think what I've learned in the span between when I worked for time and when I when I am here today, I think probably more about ordering questions in a way that that tries to get you somewhere and that thinks of questions as a as a conversation. And a lot of times questions should be broken up. I I mean one of the first things that I was taught when I guest hosted on Face the Nation long before I was anchor speaker-1 (13:27.938) Was you never ask a question with two parts to it? A, because the person you're interviewing will just pick the one that's easiest for them, but also because it just loads too much information in there. Yeah. So I I think more about connectivity of thought and and what you're trying to do with the person you're interviewing, because sometimes you can ask a question that introduces a notion that will block their ability to answer well on other things. And that's why that question, how did you start, is tricky because If you just say how do you start and give them no other information, it people can get confused and you don't want to be so vague. On the other hand, if you set the context for the question too much, you rob them and you rob the interview of the opportunity to discover something new. So being conscious of that is is has really been on my mind recently. Yeah, I feel you. And particularly I feel you acutely in the classroom. I mean, I'll tell you, like, I do a lot of different things, but the only thing I feel like I'm actually like really competent at is asking questions. Yeah. it's not helping me with my retirement at all. but it brings a lot of joy to my life. and you've always been someone I've looked to. Like like I'll l listen to you on on the Gabfest or in other contexts and And when you ask a question, like I literally sometimes like just I'll pump my fist in the air. It's like really watching something special. So that's who you are to me, but I wonder who these people are to you. Do you have sort of like a mount rushmore of questioners? You had mentioned James Fallows. Who are the people that really inspire you to hone your craft as someone who asks questions? Huh, that's a qu it's a bit of a patchwork. some of my very early bosses, Michael Duffy was my bureau chief at at time for a long period of time when I worked in the Washington Bureau, but also Sam Gwynn and Jonathan Beatty, who were the two investigative reporters I started, I started out with. speaker-1 (15:35.992) Nancy Gibbs, who was the managing editor later of Time, who I wrote a couple of stories with, which is which sounds more impressive than it is. Nan Nancy was an is an amazing writer and I sort of had a co-by-line, but I basically just followed along, which was great. It taught me how to think about questions in the context of writing as opposed to just in the context of interviewing. Right. I think Stephen Colbert is a is a great question ask in not just the quality of the questions, but what he knows about staying out of the way, what he knows about creating a really intimate space with the person he's talking about. And he also has a has a very deep soul and that, you know, that tends to lead to pretty good questions. My colleagues Emily and David, when I came to Slate from Time, I learned a whole different set and way of asking and thinking

about questions. And the the culture was one of curiosity that was just very different than at time. And they all the time are still in my head when I think about questions and and also when they are on the on the Gabfest, the way in which they ask questions is is really impressive. And then Jim Lair on the McNeil Lair News Hour had a very clean and clear method for asking questions about news that just felt in in a live context extremely linear. It just went from A to B to C to D to E to F. Bob Schiefer always knew the question to ask that was super simple, but that was disarming and really important. so when I was at face the nation, I would always sort of think what what question would Bob ask? and there are there are lots more, but those are the first ones that come to mind. Right? speaker-0 (17:21.674) Yeah. speaker-0 (17:31.894) Yeah, no. Thank you so much for that. I would probably put plots on my Mount Rushmore also, but I can't do what he does, like the level of confidence that he has perhaps just generally, but certainly as someone asking questions is something I couldn't possibly emulate. But it's it's nice to hear you sing his bona fides. And it's also nice to hear you reference all these great influences that you've had. I actually wanted to talk about another influence in your life. Because I've heard you reference Thomas Merton many times over the years, and I know he's had a profound influence on your thinking. I also have this sense that Thomas Merton opened up something in you that you've opened up in me. And if you can tell me what Thomas Merton opened up in you, I'll tell you whether I'm right or wrong. that's very clever. Many people would have just said what they thought the you know, would have just offered the thesis. Huh. Well, gee, he's opened up a lot. I think some of the things that he has opened up, the primacy of humility is really important with him and sort of has always been with me, but in terms of my faith, the central role that that plays. And the grounding role that that plays, I find has been sharpened by him, the role of contemplation and personal quiet prayer and reflection about God and where you see God and the questions that will always be there. I think also his his view that basically there will always be doubt, and that doubt is part of the package, and you will never come to metaphysical certainty. this was something that was said to me by someone else, but I associate it also with his his view of contemplation, which is essentially putting yourself in the presence of grace. I think that. speaker-1 (19:38.85) Both in listening and re listening to him and reading him, it's a lot of times just being in the neighborhood of the way he thinks and the way he expresses his faith and just sort of being in that neighborhood is is not necessarily even if it it even if there's no intellectual connection, it kind of orients me towards the sunlight in in a way. I think that's some of it. And he also I think because I listened to these recordings that he made for the novices at the Abbey of Gethsemane, because I've listened to them often when I'm on the road and going to sleep, i I've listened to him for like the last it's either been fourteen years or twelve years anyway, but that there's also a an auditory relationship I have with him, which is just he's it's he it's good company to be hearing him. And that again is not something that's easy to put into words, but is does feel real. I think I have a similar relationship with Alan Watts. And it would be interesting to hear the two of them in conversation. And I will tell you, since I promised you that I would, that I was pretty right. I was pretty right about the influence that Merton had on you, which you have perhaps in turn had on me. since you brought up Grace, you have so much grace in your voice. And I would say Stephen Colbert is similar in this way. it's so deeply embedded in your tone, but also your actions, like the mere fact that you're here with me on a Sunday in conversation with this bald buffoon is evidence of your generosity of spirit. can you talk a little bit about the role that grace plays in your life? speaker-1 (21:33.314) Well, sure. I mean, I can try. I get I there there are three things that come to mind. The first was the former journalist David Gregory, who worked at NBC, was host of of Meet the Press for a little while, and he wrote a book about his faith and his growing connection with Judaism, and we were talking about working in a in this Soup kitchen that we had both in Washington had a relationship with at different times in our life. And he talked about being in the presence of grace, just being around people who are an example of whether they're religious or not, an example of the humility and gratitude and holiness and love that is at the center of all great religions. and that was the first time I thought about the idea of just being. around people l who were demonstrating that. and that very much in very much in opposition to the kind of public Christianity we see in some of American politics. the you know, it goes back to the old expression, you know, teach the gospels and sometimes use words. So that was the first time I was associated with that. And then when Gwen Eiffel died, which was about almost 10 years ago, They asked me to deliver well, to speak at her funeral. and when I thought about Gwen, I think that's the first time I had to think about and write about Grace in a way that felt very real in the world that I had had lived in. You know, it Grace is a is a kind of a strange or not strange, it's just hard to define sometimes. And so I had to define it for that. for those remarks and define it with respect to the way I felt about Gwen's relationship to me, to the other people who were on her program, and just to the way she moved in the world. And the writing process forced me to to think about it and the role it plays and how both it

affects us and then how also we can be conveyances for grace in in in other people's lives. speaker-1 (23:57.334) And then recently I was reading Gravity and Grace by Simone and it's either Vale or While. I hear I yeah, I think I W E I L, yeah, I know. I just think I learned that I've been mispronouncing it for ten years because I was it actually Well see the smart people I was with this last weekend say it's Vale. Not while but I've been saying while my whole life. So and her her idea of grace, I really like, which is essentially grace is like sunlight for plants that basically All the while. speaker-1 (24:36.472) Plants turn themselves and orient themselves towards the sunlight so that they can be in the position to receive sunlight. That doesn't mean it's gonna be a sunny day every day. Yeah. but it means that they take actions which are imprecise and not linear, but that put them in the condition to receive this thing. And I and then her argument is that's the way grace works. And only by grace can you Can you be rescued from the baseness of gravity, which in this case is our human ego and desires and just general flawed selves? And her argument is the only way you can get rescued from that natural gravity is through an act of grace, which comes from outside of the system. And the only way you can access grace is to kind of do what you can to put yourself in a position to receive it. And I really like I like that formulation. I like that. way of thinking. And it matches kind of Merton's view of I was reading this morning. He's basically in his small little pamphlet book on meditation, he's warning anybody, like, don't when you engage in contemplation or or or meditation or prayer, like don't be waiting, don't be looking for the great illumination, the great fireworks display of all of this Sometimes though you may have the opposite of that. you may feel, as he says, dry and cold and n and nothing's going on. And that may in fact be the time when grace is is working, you just don't know it. so the point being that it's not linear, it's not direct, and sometimes requires behavior that is full of doubt and mystery and like, but you do it anyway, and that's what puts you in the position To receive it. speaker-0 (26:33.44) Yeah. I have to tell you just a quick story. I show this PBS News Hour video that's probably a decade old already. Gwen Eiffel is the host. It's a part of a series they did called Nigeria Pain and Promise. And Nigeria is one of the case studies in the comparative politics class I teach. And for the last couple of years, just press and play on the video and watching, I find myself getting teary eyed in the class 'cause I think Gwen Eiffel was just such a treasure. And this year one of my students kinda caught me, you know, with you know, a tear run down my eye and after class she's like she's like, I think it was really s sweet how, you know, 'cause it's the video is like showing a lot of like Nigerian children and horrible circumstances. And I'm like, I hate to tell ya, it's not that part of the video that got me. It's then ten years ago Gwen Eiffel passed away and I I still feel that kind of loss. She was special. Yeah. She was real special. I just wanted to connect with you about her. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she really she really was. So thinking about Gwen Eiffel and Simone Weill and and Merton, they've all had an influence on your voice, as you can probably hear, you know, I'm in a bit of a battle for my voice, literally, but also for my voice as a songwriter and and and and a sub stacker and a a bit of a poet and a teacher and a parent. I've long admired your voice. And speaker-0 (28:06.382) I kinda wonder how you feel about your voice as it's evolved over the years. Not your literal voice, but your authorial voice, your conversational voice. Yes, it turns out that I don't. My voice is it was always a a challenge on television because because it's quite scratchy. And and I think also in the performance context, it would get even scratchier. So, but the in terms of my voice voice, I think that again, I was I benefited from being trained at time where the objective was not to match what the newspapers were doing in the way they wrote about things. It was essentially to go do as much as re much reporting as you could and do it as fairly as you could. In other words, talk to all sides. But when you wrote, you know, you were you were to use the evidence to support an argument, not a polemic, but a but this is the way things appear to be based on all of this reporting. Not to use the reporting and and in some weird formulation present it all as if it were equivalent or as if the balance of evidence wasn't pointing towards a something that was knowable, or at least knowable as well as, you know, we can know anything in this world. So that was helpful in terms of because what it does is it forces you to say, okay, I've done this reporting, what do I think? What does this add up to? And does what this what I think this ad adds up to, does that make any sense? Does it does does it line up? So it just forces you to be a little bit more critical in in the information you receive. I think Slate obviously pushed me to write with more voice, more than I wanted to. really Yeah I mean, well, in some instances, one of my gr one of the things I'm the most regretful, except for all lessons are useful, I guess, in the end. But I wrote a piece about speaker-0 (30:01.998) Really? Yeah. speaker-1 (30:15.554) Barack Obama and his second term. And it was essentially that that if you took as given that Barack Obama wants to be a historic president, and you took as given that he believed at the beginning of his second term that the Republicans were not acting in good faith, and and you tried to draw what you assumed would be the l logical conclusion of those two positions, almost as if it were a math formula, then it would Then the only way he could achieve greatness,

if he didn't have a n a negotiating partner with whom he could work, which was the premise of his first four years in office, was that he would have to go after the cracks in the Republican Party and exploit them and build a new governing majority out of the destruction of the old one. And this was based on a theory by a Yale political scientist that the seeds of each new political age are k are born out of the destruction of the last one. So Reagan is born out of the the collapse of Carter and the New Deal coalition. And that that gets you Reagan. It also gets you Bill Clinton, who's running, you know, consciously against the image of Carter and Mondale. Yeah. So I wrote that piece, which was a thought exercise. And I basically wrote a paragraph that said, now, to be clear, I'm not advocating that Barack Obama do this. I'm saying here's the way the math works out if you if you take him at his word on these two principles. And the editor, who is a great, perfectly fine editor, was like, anybody who thinks that this is an actual piece of advice you're giving Barack Obama is just doing it in bad faith and you don't owe them your to be sure paragraph. And it gets in the way of your of the point you're trying to make. So we're taking it out. And I kind of I would was that I did not want that to happen. But he essentially in the end convinced me that it was a sharper argument that would get more of a hearing if it didn't lose speed while I was warning everybody not to take it the wrong way. That is not a crazy thing for an editor to argue. I wish I'd kept the paragraph in because it was then published and the conservatives and Republicans went nuts because they thought I was basically arguing for Barack Obama to do this. speaker-1 (32:35.68) And they weren't totally wrong to think that. I don't think they were acting in bad faith. It would have been easy. They were always taking my to be sure paragraphs out and I was always putting them back in. Okay. I and I think that's really important. The funny thing is that the to be sure is less necessary in the age of Donald Trump because he does things that are so clearly beyond the norms and laws that that you don't have to write a paragraph to say, to be sure it's it's It's happened before that presidents have lied consistently. Although actually on the question of lying, I mean obviously Lyndon Johnson was not a truth teller. but he didn't the lying that Trump does doesn't have a modern analog, so you you don't have to do as much to be shoring with him. Yeah, that's true. You know, I I promised myself that I would endeavor to keep politics off the table in this conversation, but since you've brought it up, I there's this thing, you know, like when I hear you talk, and I d I've just been wondering about this lately and listening to you, I wonder if you delight in discussing politics. And if it's not delight I detect. Like what is that what is that hint of glee in your voice when you're talking about

politics? Do you delight in talking politics and do you delight in it less now that the political discourse has become what it's become? I I delight in the following things. To hear the people who really care about ideas in Washington talk about those ideas and how you make them happen and where the pitfalls are and so forth and so on is really enjoyable because it's like listening to somebody explain how they make a guitar or, you know, do some other complicated piece of of craft. People who are enthusiastic about what they believe in. speaker-1 (34:30.066) And the way in which they talk about it comes from their love of the topic is in is entertaining and and engaging and fun. And so to the extent that you can participate in that, and you're not just a viewer, I enjoy that. And I also enjoy the power of ideas. And you were talking about your reaction to Gwen Eiffel. You know, I think there it is possible on the public stage to say things. on behalf of others in a way that moves and changes lives and for the better. And that even if it doesn't directly affect specific lives, it makes people feel better about the country they live in, the world they live in, and that that has an infectious effect on the way they go about their days. And that's really magical. And and and when it's done right, it's such a wonderful and powerful thing. and also since the country is fixated on politics, doing something to rescue it from being sour, keeping it about ideas, keeping it about people, you know, is just wonderful. it's just been totally curdled over the last ten years. Yeah. And that has nothing to do with policy. There are many policy ends that that you might be in agreement with, with with conservatives that are being mangled or distorted. And obviously a president whose arguably central project is undermining the idea of verifiable knowledge is a is poison to somebody who spends their time trying to figure things out. so that's made it unpleasant to talk about politics, but it also raises the stakes for staying engaged and trying to rescue politics from the corrosion of the recent. Yeah. It seems to me that that's a substantial part of your project. And I would be remiss in not saying how grateful I am for your willingness to stay in the fight and keep talking about it. And I'm glad you still delight in it because I still delight in listening to you and reading you on politics. but you don't you don't just write about politics, you don't just think about politics like well beyond politics and history. You've explored a lot of themes. speaker-0 (36:55.168) And I'm really curious about like how you decide what projects you want to devote your attention to. Like when you look out into the night sky, how do you choose what stars to focus your attention on? It's a constant str struggle. and I think it and and part of it's where I am in my career, wherever that that is. The mostly I would like the work that I do to be as closely associated with the things that I'm interested in as possible. and so that i in a the broadest sense is restoring and embodying a kind of slowness and attention and contextualization of things that are happening at the pace required by the subject. So some some some subjects can be full of hot takes, you if we were watching a football game, but other subjects require a little more thought and and that doesn't just and that and figuring out what the right speed is for everything and trying to apply that to whether I'm writing about my personal notebooks or whether I'm thinking about the day's events and how to order them and and how to bring my talents to bear in a way that h actually helps people. So for example, a long list of all the important things you think are happening in the world with lots of contextualization may be fine, but not if people are even if people even people who are really want that kind of thing are, you know, don't have an hour and a half to wade through it. So I may be doing something useful, but I may not be doing it in the in the way that's most useful to people of good faith. So that's the meta thing and then and then in in micro, how to balance between the things that are happening in politics that are not just ephemeral, but that matter for a longer, you know, for the longer health of speaker-1 (39:05.752) the republic and to spend my time thinking about that, not get distracted by the foolishness of the moment, but also not miss when the foolishness of the moment illustrates something that's more important over a longer period of time. And and and then also like what other I mean, what other things should I be talking to people about and thinking about that have nothing to do with politics? Yeah. And so, you know, so I'm bouncing around a fair amount. I And I suspect at some point I'll have to choose what or, you know, maybe not. Maybe I'll just keep writing about a variety of different things. and it just depends if there are people out there who want to read or watch that. Yeah. I mean I'll I'll listen to you recite the phone book, buddy. So, you know, do do do what works for you. Well, you've earned it. You've earned it, man. I mean, you've you've you've accomplished so much professionally and personally. It may come to that. speaker-0 (40:03.992) I'm really happy for you, you know. Thank you. I guess I kinda wonder like w what what part of your life feels really unfinished right now? I feel like the The more mainstream the work you do in journalism is, the more you have to accommodate the particularities of those organizations. And so you get a bigger platform, but the platform is is of a certain shape. And Matt's really great and I've been really lucky. And but I th obviously that has limitations. The limitations of being out in the world on your own is that you can be, you know. shouting into a tin can or or murmuring into a tin can and nobody notices. Yes, exactly. And and so how to match I mean, I think that I have

I feel most connected with my work when I th when I think how that I'm doing it to a ch to achieve some understanding of a true thing as I as I see it. It doesn't mean it's metaphysically true. It might be wrong, but speaker-0 (40:58.572) You can be navel gazing. speaker-1 (41:24.216) True in the sense that I think I can look at the material, do the reporting and and convey it in a way that allows people to either s get a deeper understanding of something, or form their own opinion that is the total opposite, which is a perfectly fine outcome. but that engages people in things that they want to be engaged about in a way that at the end of it they feel like they've gained greater control over some ta tiny corner of their world. Yeah. I think that has been people's response to some of the work that I've done, whether it's in news or navel gazing. Being able to keep doing that is what I would like to do. And that feels like it's important i since I have had some feedback that suggests I've been able to do that previously, I wouldn't want to squander the chance to do that. Yeah. I just don't know exactly how that happens, but that seems to me to be something that I couldn't just say, yeah, it'd be nice to do that, but like I wanna go like do this other thing. So that feels undone. and and it I don't know how that ha I find some way to keep doing that somehow. Yeah. I'll be watching. You know, I love this, right? Like this is how I know you, right? You're the dude who works assiduously to help people understand the world. You know, you give context, you give content, you do it slowly, methodically, patiently. You think you work really fast, but like there's there's a method and there's a patience to it, maybe a patience learned through quality time with Thomas Merton. I I kinda wonder like speaker-0 (43:04.822) You spent so much time trying to help people understand the world. You spent so much of your life trying to understand the world. You you do so primarily by ordering the world with words. Has all of that understanding made the world easier for you to live in? Totally no. Okay. No. I was writing this morning I was thinking, I w what did I write? at breakfast, my wife is off in Ireland. So it's just me. I was I come back to this thought a lot, which is that you know, what if people who have no conscience are actually totally fine and happy with that? And in other words, they're not haunted when they do awful things. Yeah. They do awful things because they're not haunted and that like actually they sleep just fine at night. Yeah. And you know, obsessing over what's the best way to do a thing or have things happen or feeling the weight of all of the inequality of attention and inequality of opportunity in the world, it just doesn't bother people and they're just ha living a happy life. So I you know, I don't know what the answer to that is, but Whatever it is for them, it's n it's not that for me. So yeah, no, I don't I mean, it's not yeah, it's a it's a there's a a constant sense of or feeling of of some kind of obligation and an uncertainty of how to pull it off on things that I think have s high stakes. So it makes it hard to get through a breakfast at at the bar at a local restaurant without so yeah no I I don't have speaker-0 (44:58.733) Yeah. speaker-0 (45:03.03) Yeah, I feel you. I was recently re watching the movie Being There with Peter Sellers and the the you know, the the main character Chauncey Gardner or Chance the Gardner and his sort of like total lack of consciousness and how easy it seemed for him and I didn't know whether to pity or ad admire him and I think that's the the conceit of the film. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's it looms large in my imagination. so I think one thing that you and I share, and part because you inspire it in me, is is hope. You know, I'm not an optimist per se, but I am a bit of a hope junkie. I write about this a lot, I talk about a lot. I I feel like you're a hope junkie too. I I know this or I assume this because John Lewis means the world to both of us. and so you know that more than just a thing with feathers, hope is an action verb. It requires real courage, right? And especially in in daunting times, it requires real courage. And yeah, my friend, these are some daunting times. So I'm kind of curious how you navigate your relationship with hope these days. speaker-1 (46:25.79) Well, as you say, the image of John Lewis on the Edmund Pettus Bridge or just off the Edmund Pettus Bridge is actually behind me on the wall here. And to me that that moment when he still had a sense of hope when he was staring down the dogs and the billy clubs of the officers, that's D durable hope in an instance where you had absolutely no reason to have it, which is Chesterton's definition of hope. in other words, it you really hope only is really necessary or really achieved in its true form when it everything looks hopeless. So it it's always going to be hard to get a hold of. I think History helps a little bit. In other words, John Lewis had hope and at the end of his life he was able to watch an African American president inaugurated, and then watch the creation of the African American Museum on the Mall i in Washington where he had protested with Martin Luther King. So his hope paid off. And then the other lesson of history is there were a lot of times when it didn't pay off. And, you know, friends of his were were killed and He was obviously abused and beaten and hospitalized. And in other words, setbacks, you know, setbacks are the are the necessary way. If you're ever in a moment where you really need hope, you're going to be getting some setbacks. you might be in the middle of one. But I I think the other I think the other thing that gives me hope is watching and I've been doing some reporting with sort of real people more recently than just politicians, which has been w wonderful. and when you hear people talk about their lives and how they help people in the world or just do what they do in the world, the animating power in people's lives, there are lots of good people quietly doing good works in the world, even if speaker-1 (48:44.46) They're just running a liquor store. I mean, well, liquor store is maybe isn't a good example. But even if they're not doing in other words, they're not all social workers. They're just people living in the world. and people can live in the world and do and do good. And that part of my job is to stay pickled in the public conversation. And that can make you think, gosh, everybody's like this. They're not, actually. There are lots of lots and lots of of people doing good things in the world. And so being out and among that is helpful and gives me and gives me hope. and also the beauty of art and words and literature and the power that they have over me and have had over other people, as long as that is still in the world, there are all these lifelines floating out in the air that are available to people, all of us, that we can grab a hold of to feel like we're not you know, sinking into the quicksand. Yeah. Thank you so much for that. I have so many questions for you, but I respect you so much that the least I could do is respect your time. And I suppose it's a perfect conclusion to to wrap this up with that meditation on hope. John, you've spent so much of your life asking questions, telling stories and trying to make sense of the world. but what I dig most about you, isn't simply your Curiosity or your or your your considerable intellect. it's the humanity that you bring to it all, the humility, the generosity of spirit, that willingness to keep questioning. For many, many years you've been one of my best reminders that curiosity, decency, and hope aren't just qualities that that we possess, right? Like they're things that we practice, yeah. Things that we have to choose again and again and again. speaker-0 (50:45.162) And you chose to be here, and I literally could not be more grateful. Talking w with you has brought me tremendous joy. So thank you, John, for everything you do. thank you for being here with me today and giving me the chance to turn the tables on one of my favorite interviewers. I'll I'll cherish this forever. Thank you so much. Thank you, Daniel. That's really sweet and wonderful. And and you know, the this work means nothing if it if there aren't people of good will and good hearts out there who engage with it. And so it's incredibly flattering and I'm incredibly grateful for what you've said and your and your wonderful questions and that you asked. So so it's been a real pleasure for me and and thank you.