Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: This is Talk Easy. I'm standing Forgoso.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show today.
Speaker 2: I'm joined by writer, journalist, and editor David Remnick. Remnick
Speaker 2: has been at the helm of The New Yorker since
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight and a staff writer since nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 2: Before then, he was a reporter at the Washington Post
Speaker 2: under the tutelage of the late Great Ben Bradley. His
Speaker 2: work as a foreign correspondent in Russia, chronicling the end
Speaker 2: of the Soviet Empire, would result in the Pollit surprise
Speaker 2: winning book Lenin's Tomb in nineteen ninety four. In the
Speaker 2: twenty five years since taking over The New Yorker, Remnik
Speaker 2: has continued to write. He's published books on Muhammad Ali,
Speaker 2: Barack Obama, and most recently, musicians with a certain kind
Speaker 2: of creative longevity. That book, titled Holding the Note, includes
Speaker 2: profiles of Paul McCartney, Patty Smith, and Leonard Cohen. We
Speaker 2: discuss his love of music, his early days in the newsroom,
Speaker 2: and most importantly, the state of journalism in Act two
Speaker 2: in three of this episode, but first in Act one,
Speaker 2: we start with his latest piece from the Middle East,
Speaker 2: a region he's reported on since the nineteen nineties. This
Speaker 2: new article in The New Yorker, titled in the Cities
Speaker 2: of Killing, begins with a pretty strong admission. The only
Speaker 2: way to tell this story, he writes, is to try
Speaker 2: to tell it truthfully and to know that you will fail.
Speaker 2: It's an admission that I'm going to make right here
Speaker 2: as well. Since the war began on October seventh, I've watched,
Speaker 2: as I suspect many of you, have a stream of
Speaker 2: reports chronicling an amount of suffering that's almost too much
Speaker 2: to bear. At the time of recording this, more than
Speaker 2: eighteen thousand Palestinians have been killed. The Palestinian Territory's Health
Speaker 2: Ministry reports that another forty six thousand have been wounded.
Speaker 2: US State officials project that nearly two thirds of the
Speaker 2: victims from Israeli bombings are women and children. Then there
Speaker 2: are the three hundred and thirty nine educational facilities, the
Speaker 2: twenty six hospitals, the fifty six health care facilities, the
Speaker 2: eighty eight mosques, and the three churches that have been decimated.
Speaker 2: By the time you hear this intro on Sunday morning
Speaker 2: or whenever you are listening to this, those numbers will
Speaker 2: no longer be accurate. I've seen reports from overcrowded hospitals,
Speaker 2: doctors that can't possibly keep apace with the brutality. Children
Speaker 2: screaming out for their parents who can't be found, parents
Speaker 2: screaming out for their children that cannot be found. I've
Speaker 2: seen scores of Palestinian journalists documenting the horrors in Gaza,
Speaker 2: many of whom have lost their lives doing so. I've
Speaker 2: also watched the brutal footage from the attack on the seventh,
Speaker 2: where twelve hundred Israelis and towns in the south along
Speaker 2: the breach perimeter of Gaza were murdered. Officials have called
Speaker 2: the assault the worst loss of Jewish lives in a
Speaker 2: single day since the Holocaust. And then you have the
Speaker 2: two hundred and forty men, women and children that were
Speaker 2: taken hostage, some of whom, as is now being reported,
Speaker 2: were beaten, abused, and sexually assaulted. I've seen the people
Speaker 2: beneath the Western Wall of Jerusalem holding candle light vigils
Speaker 2: for those being held hostage. Some have stood in protest
Speaker 2: of the failures of the IDF and Prime Minister Benjamin
Speaker 2: Nettan Yahoo. There are more stories on both sides of
Speaker 2: the Gaza strip that will be told in the coming
Speaker 2: months and years, stories of families Israeli and Palestinian alike
Speaker 2: that have endured an amount of pain that can never
Speaker 2: be ameliorated, irreparable damage that no amount of words or
Speaker 2: thoughts and prayers could possibly fix. To watch and witness
Speaker 2: all this is to have your heart broken daily, sometimes hourly,
Speaker 2: and yet to keep your eyes open from a distance
Speaker 2: is in and of itself a privilege. It's also a
Speaker 2: modest ask that is being made from those suffering at
Speaker 2: the hands of a war most did not seek out
Speaker 2: that many of whom were born into. As David reported,
Speaker 2: at the onset of the war, killing was the common condition,
Speaker 2: and as we enter day seventy of this madness, that
Speaker 2: condition remains. It's a condition that I personally believe should
Speaker 2: not be and whether that's controversial or political is not
Speaker 2: for me to say. I don't think it is. It's
Speaker 2: a condition that should not be. And so today on
Speaker 2: the show, we did our very best to talk to
Speaker 2: David about the state of play in the Middle East,
Speaker 2: what he witnessed, what he reported on, and how he
Speaker 2: imagines this all may resolve. I realize this is a
Speaker 2: thorny challenging subject to discuss on a podcast, to discuss
Speaker 2: at your dinner table, to discuss at the bar wherever
Speaker 2: you have been talking about it with your friends and family.
Speaker 2: For the sake of this episode, my questions were focused
Speaker 2: on his latest piece from October, but if you'd like
Speaker 2: to read any of the articles David has published from
Speaker 2: the region over the past thirty years, I've included those
Speaker 2: links on our website at talk easypod dot com. I
Speaker 2: would encourage you to read those in addition to listening
Speaker 2: to this episode, especially his damning profile of Prime Minister
Speaker 2: net and Yahoo from nineteen ninety eight. Wherever you stand
Speaker 2: in this moment, whatever your politics may be, for what
Speaker 2: it's worth, the aim of this episode was to be useful,
Speaker 2: and so with that, I hope you and yours are
Speaker 2: safe in this moment, and I hope you find some
Speaker 2: value in this conversation. I know I did. This is
Speaker 2: David Remnick. David Remnick, Hey, pleasure to meet good to
Speaker 2: meet you. I was sitting outside with my notes and
Speaker 2: the first thing you said to me was, oh God,
Speaker 2: you're prepared.
Speaker 1: You know, I said that there are all sorts of
Speaker 1: non preparing nightmares one of them is my understanding is
Speaker 1: Michael besch Lost, the historian, once showed up to be
Speaker 1: interviewed at a radio station and he had written a
Speaker 1: book about the U two incident. And he sits down
Speaker 1: with the host and the host says, no, you too,
Speaker 1: What was Bono really like? And then he says, well,
Speaker 1: I wrote a book about the U two incident, at
Speaker 1: which point the guy literally takes his index finger and
Speaker 1: shuts off the recorder with a big thunk, and that
Speaker 1: was the end of the interview.
Speaker 2: You know, I did see Adam Gopnik in the bathroom.
Speaker 2: What's it like to work with them?
Speaker 1: I haven't seen Adam Gotnik in the office, and I
Speaker 1: don't know how long. Therefore, I know you're lying.
Speaker 2: Someone who looks exactly like, yeah, really, it's an honor
Speaker 2: to be here and to do this with you.
Speaker 1: It's great to see you.
Speaker 2: I think it's to have to start with the latest
Speaker 2: piece that you published. It was called in the Cities
Speaker 2: of Killing. You wrote it in the aftermath of the
Speaker 2: attacks carried out by Hamas on October seventh, claiming twelve
Speaker 2: hundred Israeli lives. Since that date, Israel has countered with
Speaker 2: what you've called colossal force with countless airstrikes on Gaza,
Speaker 2: killing roughly sixteen thousand Palestinians at the time of recording. Now,
Speaker 2: you've reported in the Middle East in the past, but
Speaker 2: this latest trip to Israel was different. You said, quote,
Speaker 2: I've been to many places and seen many things, and
Speaker 2: yet I've never been anywhere where the grief suffering in
Speaker 2: the rage are more profound. So I want to start here.
Speaker 2: How are you holding that grief, that suffering in that rage,
Speaker 2: and how does it inform how you tell this story
Speaker 2: now two months removed from the horrendous assault on October seventh.
Speaker 1: Well, I'd have to admit to you something is that
Speaker 1: I don't know what degree the reporter or a journalist
Speaker 1: aspect of my being is integrated with the person part.
Speaker 1: I sometimes think they are disintegrated or apart, fractured, no different.
Speaker 1: I've been doing this for an awfully long time, and
Speaker 1: admittedly in the last couple of decades, most of it
Speaker 1: is in an office, being the editor of The New Yorker.
Speaker 1: But I do get out, and before that I certainly
Speaker 1: was out all the time. So when I see horrible things,
Speaker 1: I don't only it's a terrible admission to make. In
Speaker 1: some way, I don't only experience it the way that
Speaker 1: you would necessarily because I can't. I have a job
Speaker 1: to do, which is to remember things, to write things down,
Speaker 1: to think about them, to ask questions, to resist being
Speaker 1: lied to, to understand when that's happening, and even in
Speaker 1: some instances, to seduce information, to elicit information. These are
Speaker 1: not ordinary day to day human activities. They're journalistic ones.
Speaker 1: So your concentration is on that. But at the same
Speaker 1: time you're seeing something horrible, thinking something horrible, imagining something horrible,
Speaker 1: and so your humanity, your humanness, is also present in
Speaker 1: your brain. It's a very strange way to be. And
Speaker 1: so the experience of standing next to a mass grave
Speaker 1: in Chechnya, open mass grave, or as in this recent trip,
Speaker 1: being at a funeral of a family of five, every
Speaker 1: single member of the family was killed in a kibbutz
Speaker 1: on October seventh, you're experiencing it in at least two ways.
Speaker 1: One is as a journalist and one is as a
Speaker 1: human being. And how those are integrated or disintegrated or
Speaker 1: I couldn't begin to understand.
Speaker 2: Now that you've written the piece. In terms of the
Speaker 2: journalist side of the equation, how do you see the
Speaker 2: story in this moment?
Speaker 1: So I wrote this piece called The Cities of Killing,
Speaker 1: and I also wrote a couple of dispatches shorter dispatches
Speaker 1: online while I was there. I was trying to get
Speaker 1: at at various moments in the piece what I think
Speaker 1: is too rare in the public discourse here and elsewhere
Speaker 1: about what happened. In other words, what's very hard for
Speaker 1: human beings to do is accommodate numerous and conflicting realities
Speaker 1: and truths in their brain. So you have some people
Speaker 1: who say, look, you know, here's the thing that happened
Speaker 1: on October seventh. Here are the details of its horrors,
Speaker 1: and it leads to certain political conclusions. Then there are
Speaker 1: other people who say, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, October
Speaker 1: seventh happened, but there's a context for it, and it
Speaker 1: was more like an anti colonial jail break. And the
Speaker 1: real story here is both what preceded it and what followed,
Speaker 1: and both of those points of view presupposes very differing politics. Right.
Speaker 1: And you see it on campuses, you see it in petitions,
Speaker 1: you see it even in certain kinds of journalism and
Speaker 1: accounts and I was trying to do this other thing,
Speaker 1: which is to try to look away from nothing, when
Speaker 1: it's not a moral relativism but a kind of display
Speaker 1: of complexity. And the complexity includes, but is not limited to,
Speaker 1: a day October seventh, of not just escape from Gaza,
Speaker 1: but a binge of ecstatic, horrific killing, hostage taking, sexual violence,
Speaker 1: which only now is being accommodated to a sense of
Speaker 1: reality to a lot of people, the likes of which
Speaker 1: Israel has never known in its history in a single
Speaker 1: day and shattered an Israeli sense of security like no
Speaker 1: other event I can think of, including the Young Kipur
Speaker 1: war in October of nineteen seventy three. That is true,
Speaker 1: at the same time the war has killed now in Gaza.
Speaker 1: Will know the numbers when we know the numbers, but
Speaker 1: an estimated sixteen thousand people, at least half of whom,
Speaker 1: half of whom are children in adolescents, and the vast
Speaker 1: majority of whom are civilians, many of whom either resent, hate, despise,
Speaker 1: or are indifferent to Ramas. So those are two realities,
Speaker 1: and there's a million more, and their contradictory, and they're
Speaker 1: hard to reconcile and they're either historical or they have
Speaker 1: to do with this week or last week. I'm a
Speaker 1: believer in free speech, and at the same time, when
Speaker 1: I watch the testimony of three and I'm no fan
Speaker 1: of alistafunk, but when I watch three university presidents trip
Speaker 1: over themselves in their testimony. In Congress's to.
Speaker 3: Ms McGill at Penn, does calling for the genocide of
Speaker 3: Jews violate Pen's rules or code of conduct? Yes?
Speaker 1: Or no.
Speaker 4: If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment.
Speaker 3: Yes, I am asking specifically calling for the genocide of Jews.
Speaker 3: Does that constitute bullying harassment?
Speaker 4: If it is directed and severer pervasive, it is harassment.
Speaker 3: So the answer is yes.
Speaker 4: It is a context dependent decision, congresswoman.
Speaker 3: It's a context dependent decision. That's your testimony today, calling
Speaker 3: for the genocide of Jews is, depending upon the context,
Speaker 3: that is not bullying or harassment. This is the easiest
Speaker 3: question to answer. Yes, Miss McGill. So is your testimony
Speaker 3: that you will not answer Yes.
Speaker 4: If it is thees or no. If the speech becomes
Speaker 4: conduct it can be harassment.
Speaker 3: Yes, conduct meaning committing the act of genocide. The speech
Speaker 3: is not harassment. This is unacceptab miss Micguil. I'm going
Speaker 3: to give you one more opportunity for the world to
Speaker 3: see your answer. Does calling for the genocide of Jews
Speaker 3: violate pens Code of Conduct when it comes to bullying
Speaker 3: and harassment? Yes? Or no?
Speaker 4: It can be harassment.
Speaker 3: The answer is yes.
Speaker 1: What does it mean?
Speaker 2: What does a man deal? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I haven't done the reporting because I believe that's my
Speaker 1: function here, not to guess and to guess off.
Speaker 2: That's David the reporter. Yeah, that's who I am, David
Speaker 2: the human. Though I'm not a philosopher. You know what,
Speaker 2: I have limited skills. I've seen you do everything from
Speaker 2: reporting the Middle East to playing on stage with Patti Smith.
Speaker 2: I would say you have plenty of skills for the latter.
Speaker 1: You just needed a little nerve, a shot of Scotch
Speaker 1: in four chords.
Speaker 2: Exactly what I did right before I walked in here.
Speaker 2: Can we focus on one reality? Yeah? I want. I
Speaker 2: want to sort of narrow the focus here. In recent weeks,
Speaker 2: reports have come out about the clear security failures information
Speaker 2: that the Idea have had that they did not properly
Speaker 2: make sense of. It is a generous way, probably the
Speaker 2: most generous way I can describe it. But the attack
Speaker 2: obviously is by Hamas, and I want to sit with
Speaker 2: the story of a man you meant over there, mister Brodich.
Speaker 2: Is that how I say, Bradich, Abichai Brodich, what happened
Speaker 2: to him and his family on the seventh.
Speaker 1: Abigai Brotich is a man who's married and has three
Speaker 1: young children and lives in Kibotz called kar Asa Asa
Speaker 1: is a Hebrew from Gaza. In the Kibutz, like all
Speaker 1: the keybouods seem they were involved in, this was about
Speaker 1: as far from Gaza as we are right now from
Speaker 1: midtowm and end really really close. And one morning there
Speaker 1: was a lot of commotion. On the morning of the seventh,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of commotion at kfar Asa, and
Speaker 1: Avichaibrodych went out to see what was happening. He went
Speaker 1: out armed to see if he could if there was
Speaker 1: an emergency. Family was in the house. It's still early morning,
Speaker 1: and when he got back from the house, his family
Speaker 1: were gone, three kids, very young, and his wife were
Speaker 1: all gone. And it was not clear for a long
Speaker 1: time if they were dead, because there were corpses everywhere
Speaker 1: in the keyboutz. Other keyboots seem in villages and notoriously
Speaker 1: at this kind of ray of this music festival down
Speaker 1: down the road and places were torch. It was hellish.
Speaker 1: It was hellish. And then it became clear that Brodich's
Speaker 1: family had been taken hostage and almost certainly brought back
Speaker 1: to Gaza. Okay, the days pass no news from this family,
Speaker 1: and brought it. In his grief, in his desperation, in
Speaker 1: his not knowing what the hell to do and to
Speaker 1: whom to speak, took a full looked like a collapsible
Speaker 1: chair and his dog and sat down at about five
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning outside of what's called the Curia,
Speaker 1: the defense equivalent of the Pentagon in downtown Tel Aviv,
Speaker 1: by the way, the same place where the big demonstration
Speaker 1: has been going on week after week after week for
Speaker 1: the last practically a year in protest of this kind
Speaker 1: of judicial reform on the part of the right wing government.
Speaker 1: He sat down, and I don't know if he went
Speaker 1: on Twitter but or forgive me x, but he certainly
Speaker 1: put it on other social media feeds, and more and
Speaker 1: more people as a day passed came around and people
Speaker 1: carrying signs free the hostages, bring them home today. And
Speaker 1: I went down there, you know, staying with friends, just
Speaker 1: north of Tel Aviv, and got there by late morning
Speaker 1: and had a long conversation with Brodich, and he was very,
Speaker 1: very careful. This is a guy who's a farmer who
Speaker 1: are now studying to be a nurse. These are not settlers.
Speaker 1: This is not you know, machine gun toting hilltop settlers
Speaker 1: in the West Bank. I don't want to characterize everybody
Speaker 1: involved in this on the attack with the people of
Speaker 1: the left, peace nicks, people whose idealism drove them to
Speaker 1: live in these tiny keyboot scene which are kind of
Speaker 1: atavistic at this point. It's not a growing part of
Speaker 1: Israel and live this kind of slightly bucolic either agrarian
Speaker 1: or light industrial lives where you know everybody and the
Speaker 1: Kyboitz is maybe a thousand people or fifteen hundred people,
Speaker 1: and suddenly these are hell on earth, hell on Earth,
Speaker 1: ten percent, fifteen percent of it given Kybootz dead, dozens
Speaker 1: of people taken away and by armed from US people
Speaker 1: and brought to Ganza, and thankfully in that period that
Speaker 1: one week, true and prisoner exchange Avichreibrodisch's family was freed,
Speaker 1: but before.
Speaker 2: They were freed, he said to you quote it was
Speaker 2: overkilled by Hamas. I don't think they thought this would
Speaker 2: go that far. At least I want to believe that
Speaker 2: the religion is peaceful. We are going the wrong way.
Speaker 2: I assume in this case means nen Yahoo and cuts right.
Speaker 1: We should be.
Speaker 2: Sending humanitarian aid to women, children and the elderly. Hamas
Speaker 2: believes that women, children and the elderly should not be attacked.
Speaker 2: But something on their side went very wrong. That passage.
Speaker 2: You say he knew that he was going to be read,
Speaker 2: but it is astounding to me, either the compassion he
Speaker 2: genuinely felt or the compassion that perhaps was calculated knowing
Speaker 2: that it would be read. Do you believe him when
Speaker 2: he says I believe that he thinks the religion is peaceful.
Speaker 2: Do you believe that?
Speaker 1: I think I would agree with him in that religion
Speaker 1: is innately peaceful. Hamas is not. I also think he
Speaker 1: was frightened to death. Frightened to death, and why wouldn't.
Speaker 2: You be His children, the youngest one is the age
Speaker 2: of four.
Speaker 1: Correct, and and his wife are separated from him and
Speaker 1: being held hostage in a tunnel somewhere in Gaza by
Speaker 1: Hamas fighters. And I think what he said was very
Speaker 1: measured at the time. You'll notice he did not tell
Speaker 1: me that he went out he was part of the Kibwitz,
Speaker 1: you know, defense little guard and carried a gun because
Speaker 1: he didn't he didn't want Ramas to know that. I
Speaker 1: know that for a fact because his brother told me
Speaker 1: that that day and I left it out of the piece.
Speaker 1: Why to do that, because he asked me to, and
Speaker 1: I understood why. You know, when somebody says something is
Speaker 1: off the record, it's off the record. And his reason
Speaker 1: was damn good. He did not want Hamas to get
Speaker 1: it in its head that he was somehow a military
Speaker 1: figure and well, they might as well kill the family.
Speaker 1: He was terrified and it only became public knowledge after
Speaker 1: so I think he was speaking.
Speaker 2: As a father separated his three kids.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the news could have been totally other. And
Speaker 1: for people who still have family members and friends as hostages,
Speaker 1: of course, their first priority is that they're not military strategists.
Speaker 1: They want their sister back, they want their brother back,
Speaker 1: they want their child back, they want their wife or
Speaker 1: their husband back, and everything else is secondary. And at
Speaker 1: the same time, when I read Mosababuta, the Palestinian poet
Speaker 1: who I've been talking to endlessly, his priorities, the first
Speaker 1: thing on his mind, of course, are family members. He's
Speaker 1: seen people killed, he's seen just these are people in extremists,
Speaker 1: the likes of which you and I are privileged not
Speaker 1: to have to live day to day.
Speaker 2: And have the privilege to discuss in a way that
Speaker 2: is open and complicated and true and perfect. You spoke
Speaker 2: to one Islamic scholar who said, Homas is an idea
Speaker 2: embedded in the national tapestry. Quote. No matter what, we
Speaker 2: will end up where we started, with the Palestinians and
Speaker 2: the Israelis living here together and needing to find a
Speaker 2: proper formula given the entrenchment we've discussed on each side
Speaker 2: of that equation. Not to mention the twelve hundred Israelis
Speaker 2: and the sixteen thousand Palestinians dead, What do you see
Speaker 2: as actually being inside of a proper formula.
Speaker 1: Let me say something that's what I think is both
Speaker 1: true and banal, but completely insufficient.
Speaker 2: Quite a preface.
Speaker 1: Neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis are going anywhere period
Speaker 1: sooner or later, And this is a process that's been
Speaker 1: going on, not just for a little while, but for
Speaker 1: a century essentially, Sooner or later there has to be
Speaker 1: some kind of political arrangement that accommodates that fact and
Speaker 1: allows people to live decent, secure lives. And we know
Speaker 1: all the many, many formulas that have been proposed and
Speaker 1: that have failed and that have been rejected. We know
Speaker 1: the moments of optimism, and then we know the moments
Speaker 1: and that we're living through now of the complete opposite.
Speaker 1: But I don't see how that fact changes, because yes,
Speaker 1: the Israelis may at some point find a way to
Speaker 1: declare military victory over Hamas, sure, and Hamas will never
Speaker 1: declare it's surrendered, because what does that mean. Because if
Speaker 1: there's even if there are just twenty Hamas fighters left,
Speaker 1: they'll recruit more. We know this pattern. It's not unique
Speaker 1: to Hamas. And what has to happen is that psychologies
Speaker 1: have to change, politics have to change, because what's not
Speaker 1: going to change is geography. This is a very small
Speaker 1: patch of lands. It's very hard for people who's never
Speaker 1: been there to accommodate. You know, we live in this
Speaker 1: enormous country and it's in our borders or with Canada
Speaker 1: and Mexico. This is a geography. Sorry to be banal
Speaker 1: about this, but this is a geography at the scale
Speaker 1: of New Jersey in which the West Bank and East
Speaker 1: Jerusalem and Gaza are part of that geography, and then
Speaker 1: it's surrounded by the region. It's surrounded by Lebanon to
Speaker 1: the north, Syria, to the east, Egypt and so on
Speaker 1: and so forth. There has been progress over the years
Speaker 1: that shouldn't be forgotten. Israel has a peace treaty with however,
Speaker 1: it's a cold peace with Egypt, with Jordan. That's important.
Speaker 1: That wasn't always the case. And in our theme of
Speaker 1: holding contradictory truths in our mind that people who have
Speaker 1: made those peace treaties often end up debt like anwar.
Speaker 1: Sadat Andyskak Rabin and I think it's also a truth
Speaker 1: that Yasser Arafat was not uninfluenced by the fact that
Speaker 1: if he had accepted, however imperfect, hud Barack's offer of
Speaker 1: twenty three years ago, he might have ended up dead too.
Speaker 1: Because there are always radicals and extremists and rejectionists in
Speaker 1: all camps. Amas is in that camp, it'smar Ben Gvir
Speaker 1: and other extreme right wing tragically ministers as well as
Speaker 1: settlers are in that camp, and the influence of the
Speaker 1: settlers in recent years has been so profound that there
Speaker 1: are commentators who say that the settlers have annexed Israel
Speaker 1: in a political sense. But again, it may take five years,
Speaker 1: it may take twenty, it may take one hundred, and
Speaker 1: let it come sooner than later. But the essential fact
Speaker 1: is there are two peoples in this very small plot
Speaker 1: of land that's supercharged by history and religion and violence.
Speaker 2: When you say may come, what does that mean? May come?
Speaker 5: What? What?
Speaker 2: Because it hasn't yet right, but what would that look like?
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what I doubt it will look like,
Speaker 1: And that is a one state solution. I think, if anything,
Speaker 1: what's happened in the last six weeks tells us that
Speaker 1: these are not two peoples who are going to are
Speaker 1: able to live in peace and comedy. There are people
Speaker 1: in the debate, and they vary by the way, who
Speaker 1: think that the only just solution is a one state solution,
Speaker 1: in which the land that we now think of is
Speaker 1: the state of Israel and the occupied territories all together
Speaker 1: in Gaza would be one state and whoever wins elections
Speaker 1: wins elections, and this is just not going to happen.
Speaker 1: It would be, you know, Yugoslavia all over again. Two
Speaker 1: state solution, which now sounds rather sentimental and airy, and god,
Speaker 1: we tried that and at this point also seems hard
Speaker 1: to imagine. But you got a better idea. There's just
Speaker 1: a limit on now how that can be accomplished.
Speaker 2: You've apologized three times for being banal.
Speaker 1: It's early days. We'll get to more. I apologize because
Speaker 1: so for anybody who knows this subject, I could write
Speaker 1: about Russia, which is the other foreign thing that I've
Speaker 1: written about, ametic. I could write about Russia till the
Speaker 1: cows come home, and the reaction I get is very gratifying.
Speaker 1: People are in the main. There's obviously Russian experts who
Speaker 1: have all kinds of bones to pick, but.
Speaker 2: We don't know a lot about the subject. Yeah, thank
Speaker 2: you for informing it, or.
Speaker 1: Russians and they're far away and so on.
Speaker 2: So this is a very different subject. This is an
Speaker 2: intimate subject, right. My question is your apology actually a
Speaker 2: gesture to how challenging it is to talk about this,
Speaker 2: because whether it's in the press or on social media
Speaker 2: or across college campuses. As you alluded to, the division
Speaker 2: and rhetoric seems to escalate with each day. I have
Speaker 2: friends who've been to each other's wedding it won't talk
Speaker 2: to you, will not talk to each other anymore. And
Speaker 2: some of them are listening to.
Speaker 1: This, Yeah, and they won't talk to you, and were me, Well, they.
Speaker 2: Probably would like to talk to David Remnick, but that's
Speaker 2: the different story. But I keep thinking back on that
Speaker 2: line from Paul Newman and cool hand Luke. We have
Speaker 2: a failure to communicate. What we have here is a
Speaker 2: failure to communicating, not always. And part of communicating, as
Speaker 2: I understand it, as I'm trying to do now with you,
Speaker 2: is to sometimes fail, is to fall short trying to
Speaker 2: understand the person across from you, the ideas and beliefs
Speaker 2: they hold. Dear, and I'm wondering, given your experience on
Speaker 2: the matter, given the identities that you comme at this
Speaker 2: story with, as you said, a Jewish man, a reporter,
Speaker 2: an American, what about this issue in this specific moment
Speaker 2: in history makes communicating seem all but impossible to do.
Speaker 1: There are a number of things because people do bring
Speaker 1: their identities and either their learning or their ignorance or
Speaker 1: somewhere in between to the table.
Speaker 2: I like to bring all the ragons.
Speaker 1: YEA, exactly one thing you left out is age too.
Speaker 1: When I was nine or ten years old, we were
Speaker 1: just twenty years after the Holocaust. Israel was this, you know,
Speaker 1: state that had just won a war in six days,
Speaker 1: and it was filled with sense of self and victory
Speaker 1: that would translated to New Jersey Hebrew schools and just
Speaker 1: as all over the world, Israel had done a heroic thing.
Speaker 1: And of course the nineteen sixty seven victory would turn
Speaker 1: out to be in many ways of pyrrhic victory because
Speaker 1: the territories it seized or won that in that war
Speaker 1: would turn out to be, as we say in academia,
Speaker 1: deeply problematic. So if you're of my generation, you remember
Speaker 1: that distinctly, and that's part of your what's in your brain,
Speaker 1: and you're calculus about thinking about this, even though you've
Speaker 1: obviously taken on many other things. If you were my
Speaker 1: kid's age, were you know you're now thirty, I thought
Speaker 1: you were gonna put it on me. Yeah, you grew
Speaker 1: up with nothing, but nett niehu, you grew up with
Speaker 1: you know there are people that are your age, Jewish
Speaker 1: or non who find Israel simply an embarrassment. This fuels
Speaker 1: the gap of understanding and communication that you're talking about,
Speaker 1: and you see it on campus. So again, I don't
Speaker 1: want to make cartoons of anybody. But if you if
Speaker 1: you grew up in a world you went to an
Speaker 1: academia that you were, your frame of reference for this
Speaker 1: was you saw it as a part of simply as
Speaker 1: you know, postcolonialism, or you saw it in the same
Speaker 1: frame as France and Algeria. That's one way of looking
Speaker 1: at the world. And if you see it as if
Speaker 1: you were brought up in a very different way, you
Speaker 1: saw it as an absolutely necessary refuge for a despised
Speaker 1: people over thousands of years, who had been all but
Speaker 1: wiped out in the Second World War, that's a very
Speaker 1: different frame.
Speaker 2: But the president of Harvard, yeah, and the other folks
Speaker 2: you alluded to go in front of Congress, they're more
Speaker 2: of your generation than mine. Yes, yeah, I guess so yeah,
Speaker 2: So tell me about the fear, the fear and the competition.
Speaker 1: I don't think three.
Speaker 2: People have an anti Semitic bone in their body.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't.
Speaker 2: But the fear to talk about.
Speaker 1: But I think they they're trying to juggle. However, I'll
Speaker 1: advised a number of imperatives which have to do with
Speaker 1: First Amendment rights, academic freedom, the legality of stupid speech
Speaker 1: as well as intelligent speech, and then the moral imperative
Speaker 1: calling things what they are and in this case anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: I've often thought, I don't want to give away any
Speaker 1: editorial secrets, but I've had a nitrual meeting lately and
Speaker 1: I said, we should do a piece headline the worst
Speaker 1: job in the world, and it might be university president.
Speaker 1: So I have some sympathy for it. I think they
Speaker 1: handled themselves at best awkward, legalistic and the way that
Speaker 1: came off as weirdly amoral, and they were, and they're
Speaker 1: being questioned by somebody in dad faith. Yeah, at least Stephonic.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to sit here and excuse or write.
Speaker 1: At least Stepphonic in the way she was looking for
Speaker 1: exactly what she got, which was a kind of way
Speaker 1: that say she could bash the elitist college presidents from
Speaker 1: But it's a struggle. But you said, at best it
Speaker 1: is that, At worst it is what morally tone deaf
Speaker 1: that's even putting a nice gloss on it.
Speaker 2: In an article the website Ran called the Anguished Fallout
Speaker 2: from a pro Palestenian letter at Harvard. Just to button
Speaker 2: this up, there's a passage that reads, the backlash exemplified
Speaker 2: a tendency to conflate criticism of Israel with anti Semitism,
Speaker 2: an advocacy for Palestinian liberation with support for terror. Holding
Speaker 2: multiple truths, not making cartoons out of each other, I
Speaker 2: would say, is probably the main goal of doing this podcast.
Speaker 2: So I want to try to do that with you.
Speaker 2: We talked about all the identities that you have that
Speaker 2: you brought to this story. I'd like to go back
Speaker 2: to nineteen sixty four. You're six years old. There's a
Speaker 2: preschool you're supposed to go to, but they're not ready
Speaker 2: for you yet.
Speaker 1: Do you know this?
Speaker 2: And you find yourself in a van with some older
Speaker 2: Jewish boys heading to yeshiva, and it's from them in
Speaker 2: that van that you first learn about the Beatles and
Speaker 2: most importantly Bob Dylan. Two years later, you stumble upon
Speaker 2: the album The Best of sixty six. What happens? God,
Speaker 2: I don't know where you scraped this up, but it's
Speaker 2: pretty accurate when you're laughing about the boys in the
Speaker 2: van description.
Speaker 1: Just you know, here's the thing. You get old enough
Speaker 1: and your past feels like somebody else. It just feels
Speaker 1: like a story that you've told or told yourself or
Speaker 1: other people. And it may be accurate, or it's roughly accurate,
Speaker 1: or you have no idea anymore, and it's a story.
Speaker 2: Well, we're going to do our best to tell it together.
Speaker 1: I think it's roughly accurate. I'm of that generation who
Speaker 1: in you know, of kindergarten age or thereabouts. The bells
Speaker 1: were on ed Sullivan and it was incredibly exciting, and
Speaker 1: then something weird happened. So when I around the same time,
Speaker 1: my mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and in those
Speaker 1: days there wasn't any medicine to make you better or
Speaker 1: alleviate the symptoms. I have friends now who have MS
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't know, you know, they go, some of
Speaker 1: them in worse shape, but a lot of people you're okay.
Speaker 1: And I have to think that my mother, she'd been born,
Speaker 1: you know, a generation or two later, might have been okay.
Speaker 1: But she it was scary. It was really scary, and
Speaker 1: I think it scared that she shit out of my father.
Speaker 1: They were young people, you know, there you were your
Speaker 1: age and with the little kids, and I think she
Speaker 1: thought she was going to die pretty soon. She lived
Speaker 1: at be eighty five. You know, you make things happen
Speaker 1: in your life, everybody's lives. And I became a kid
Speaker 1: that became obsessed with radio and music and things that
Speaker 1: I could amuse myself with. And I remember distinctly the
Speaker 1: process of buying music. You had the radio, and I
Speaker 1: wasn't cool enough quite yet for FM radio, so I
Speaker 1: listening to you know, AM W ABC and Cousin Brucey
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. But once in a blue blue moon,
Speaker 1: my father would take me to a department store called EJ.
Speaker 1: Corvette's where I could buy an album. And I didn't
Speaker 1: know what to get. There were so many of them,
Speaker 1: and I wanted them all, so, like an idiot, I
Speaker 1: bought a compilation. So there'd be one song by Paul
Speaker 1: Revere and the Race, and there'd be one song by
Speaker 1: Chad and Jeremy, and there was one song by somebody
Speaker 1: that I heard about but I didn't know much about,
Speaker 1: called Bob Dylan. And on the album was a song
Speaker 1: called I Want You from the Blonde on Blonde album,
Speaker 1: and I Want You as this kind of phantasmagoric love
Speaker 1: song that I can barely make sense of now, and
Speaker 1: I certainly could make no sense of in any real
Speaker 1: way when I was eight years old. But it was transporting,
Speaker 1: and it was like something that you just entered another
Speaker 1: universe and you wanted more of it.
Speaker 5: Take a size, the lonesome, the brand of Drazz, the
Speaker 5: Silva saxophones, say ah, produce you, the cracked bills and
Speaker 5: washed out hans lit into my fats was gone.
Speaker 2: But it's not that way.
Speaker 4: I was going to use you. How are you?
Speaker 5: How are you?
Speaker 2: How are you?
Speaker 5: So?
Speaker 1: I want you? And because it was radio, it wasn't
Speaker 1: YouTube filled with interviews with so and so, and everything
Speaker 1: was immediately available on Spotify. It came to you in
Speaker 1: this different, commodified way. You'd have to buy it, or
Speaker 1: you'd have to be lucky enough to have the radio
Speaker 1: on at the absolute right time to hear visions of
Speaker 1: Johannah and even more, you know. And then I had
Speaker 1: to work backwards and hear the earlier albums and all
Speaker 1: the rest, and I became a fanatic about Bob Dylan.
Speaker 1: People know this about me. But the depths of the
Speaker 1: fanaticism are six miles past embarrassing, and yet it meant
Speaker 1: everything to me. It still means a lot to me,
Speaker 1: and it gave me nothing less than the greater cultural world.
Speaker 1: Because Bob Dylan would mention, you know, later when I
Speaker 1: was capable of Tsla ts Eliot, and I'd go buy
Speaker 1: the Wastelander or something. I didn't understand it, but owning
Speaker 1: it felt cool. Being confused by it felt important. I
Speaker 1: think that's the way most people enter complicated culture. They're
Speaker 1: confused by it and tantalized by it. It has an
Speaker 1: erotic pull, and it has a psychological and a pleasure pull.
Speaker 1: And Bob Dyla was rock and roll, so I had
Speaker 1: a pleasure pool too.
Speaker 2: Growing up in Hillsdale, New Jersey. You said quote, I
Speaker 2: was hungry for worlds that I faintly knew were out there, shimmering,
Speaker 2: faintly somewhere past the horizon of my seeing. That description
Speaker 2: sounds a lot like the kind of shimmering mirage and
Speaker 2: the great Gatspace looking across oz was across the river,
Speaker 2: That's right. Was there a sense of ambition in your
Speaker 2: house that was passed down from your parents?
Speaker 1: No, No, ambition was utterly conventional. My parents were the
Speaker 1: children of immigrants, my grandparents, well they were immigrants and
Speaker 1: not but you know that, you know the world. They
Speaker 1: came from Eastern European jewelry, the lucky ones.
Speaker 2: They didn't want you to aspire, Yeah.
Speaker 1: But in the most conventional way possible, doctor or a lawyer,
Speaker 1: because because it meant you were your own boss. That
Speaker 1: was very important. The world of business was not in
Speaker 1: our rorld, certainly the world of the arts. My mother
Speaker 1: was an art teacher, but she got sick very young
Speaker 1: and had to had to quit her job and be home,
Speaker 1: and that was a struggle. It was modest. My parents
Speaker 1: wanted me to do well and study hard and be
Speaker 1: a doctor and go, you know, further than them and
Speaker 1: be a good boy. And how can I possibly blame them?
Speaker 2: You mentioned your mother, she was diagnosed with MS when
Speaker 2: you were about five years old. When you go to Princeton,
Speaker 2: it's around that time that your father is diagnosed with Parkinson's.
Speaker 2: That came later that in his early fifties.
Speaker 1: It's unclear. My father's a dentist. He had a very
Speaker 1: small practice. We were what middle class the American sense.
Speaker 1: Parents bought their house for eleven thousand dollars and we
Speaker 1: went to decent public schools. Nothing great, but decent. And
Speaker 1: it became evident, maybe when I was in college, that
Speaker 1: my father was developing a tremor in his hands. And
Speaker 1: here's what you don't want as a dentist, with a
Speaker 1: big treffor in his hands. But he tried to conceal it.
Speaker 1: And in early Parkinson's if you take the proper medicine,
Speaker 1: it could.
Speaker 2: You called it? You said, it would have been a
Speaker 2: Buster Keaton film if it wasn't your own life.
Speaker 1: Right, you don't Buster Keaton as a Parkinsonian dentist. That's
Speaker 1: a dark joke, but there it is. And he wouldn't
Speaker 1: know what to do because like, what would we live on?
Speaker 1: What would he do? So he faked it for a while,
Speaker 1: but finally he couldn't anymore, obviously, and by the time
Speaker 1: I came home from Moscow, when I was about thirty
Speaker 1: one or two, they were both in bed shape.
Speaker 2: So that's what I want to ask you about, which
Speaker 2: is you're in college at Princeton, there are medical troubles
Speaker 2: at home. You had grand ambitions to be an artist.
Speaker 2: You went to Paris and bust on trains, that they
Speaker 2: paid you money to get away from them because he
Speaker 2: weren't great at it. That's not true, that's what you said.
Speaker 2: I just couldn't That's what I said.
Speaker 1: Went on the.
Speaker 2: Train to two pm. You made enough money to pay
Speaker 2: for the hotels. Yeah, the movie and the drinks that
Speaker 2: night easy. But eventually you come back and when you
Speaker 2: take John McPhee's class, I'm curious about settling in journalism.
Speaker 2: Did you feel a sense of obligation to pursue a
Speaker 2: career that at least had some clearer pathway to stability?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Was that because of your parents?
Speaker 1: Absolutely accurate? I thought, you know, you.
Speaker 2: Looked at me like, I don't know where you're going
Speaker 2: with this.
Speaker 1: You landed, You landed the plane. And when you're that age,
Speaker 1: to be a writer and an artist means only one thing.
Speaker 1: You're a novelist, or if you're really financially foolish, a poet.
Speaker 1: But I did have this intimation that I'd need to
Speaker 1: take care of my parents.
Speaker 2: I was the older son one of two. Was that daunting?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I was a nineteen year old kid.
Speaker 1: How do you make you make these decisions? You know,
Speaker 1: half in the dark anyway. So here was my grand ambition.
Speaker 1: I thought I would go and retain my coolness and
Speaker 1: become a writer for the Village Voice. I thought that
Speaker 1: would put me in great financial inspector.
Speaker 2: Seven eleven days exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just you know, I was an idiot
Speaker 1: when it was concerned this. But what happened was I
Speaker 1: got an internship at the Washington Post. Did okay, They
Speaker 1: said we can't hire you right away because the other
Speaker 1: paper in town is was folded at the Washington Star.
Speaker 1: So go away. I taught in Japan, bummed around Southeast
Speaker 1: Asia and India on you know, two dollars a day,
Speaker 1: came back to another internship, and landed at the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: That's the curve of things. But you know, still I
Speaker 1: was making eighteen thousand dollars a year. Everything was falling
Speaker 1: apart at home, and I look back on it with
Speaker 1: terrible guilt because I'm living in Washington and day to
Speaker 1: day I didn't think about it. You know, maybe i'd
Speaker 1: send as a small check.
Speaker 2: I just didn't think about what helping.
Speaker 1: Of course I helped, but I wish I had helped
Speaker 1: even more. And you know, I was raised to be
Speaker 1: a good son. Here's the thing I hear about people's
Speaker 1: parents and their travails. Yes, my parents were disabled, but
Speaker 1: I think if there's a key to anything with me,
Speaker 1: it almost sounds like bragging, because it almost sounds rare.
Speaker 1: I never doubted one minute of my parents' love for
Speaker 1: you and my brother. Yes, and they didn't understand what
Speaker 1: I wanted to do. They thought it was weird. Why
Speaker 1: were you majoring in comparative literature? What are you comparing?
Speaker 1: So there was that divide. But I never thought they
Speaker 1: were over and they were overbearing and needy, and.
Speaker 2: For good reason.
Speaker 1: They were falling apart. They were falling apart. So they
Speaker 1: were all kinds of crises until they were gone. But
Speaker 1: much later in life I could deal with them financially.
Speaker 1: I could, you know, install somebody to take care of them,
Speaker 1: and people to whom I'm everlastingly grateful and still talk
Speaker 1: to a lot.
Speaker 2: But then why the guilt?
Speaker 1: Because you can't make it better. You can't make the
Speaker 1: ms go away, you can't make the Parkinson's go away.
Speaker 1: You can't comfort them in the middle of the night
Speaker 1: when they have Parkinsonian hallucinations. You can't pick them off
Speaker 1: off the floor when they fall down. They are your children. Now,
Speaker 1: God knows, I'm not unique in that situation, but usually
Speaker 1: it only comes when people are very old. I have
Speaker 1: a child. I'm not closed about this. I have three kids,
Speaker 1: the youngest has profound autism, my daughter Natasha, And it's
Speaker 1: really hard. And the psychological difficulty there is that even
Speaker 1: though I'm sitting here with you today and I'm healthy
Speaker 1: and knock on wood, and my wife is healthy, but
Speaker 1: I've read in the newspaper that I'm not going to
Speaker 1: live forever. And my daughter is, you know, twenty five
Speaker 1: years old, she's going to live longer. So that arizon
Speaker 1: is a different psychological impingement. So you're coming to somebody
Speaker 1: who's had a lot of unbelievable luck in his life,
Speaker 1: professionally and maritally and otherwise. But then there's this other things.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's the human condition. If you're lucky, If
Speaker 1: you're lucky.
Speaker 2: It sounds like we're holding to competing truce yep.
Speaker 1: As a matter of day to day life. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: not competing. They're side by side. Yeah, how'd you get
Speaker 1: so wise?
Speaker 2: So? Yeah, reading you didn't hurt. Yeah, that's the last
Speaker 2: nice thing I'll say all.
Speaker 1: Right, that's a deal. That's a deal.
Speaker 2: We'll right back with our guest, David Rapnick. You've had
Speaker 2: many strokes of luck, that's true. Let's talk about the
Speaker 2: first time you are summoned into the office of Ben Bradley,
Speaker 2: the famous legendary editor of the Washington Post, presided over
Speaker 2: Watergate and all the rest. Like you said, you landed
Speaker 2: the job in the early eighties. You started on the
Speaker 2: night police beat, you moved to the style staff formerly
Speaker 2: in August of nineteen eighty four feature section. But I
Speaker 2: want to talk about the summer of eighty six when
Speaker 2: you're writing the profile of the late senator from New York.
Speaker 1: Daniel Patrick went in.
Speaker 2: Yes, this was the first story that got you brought
Speaker 2: into his office. Why did Bradley call you in?
Speaker 1: So if you've seen all the presidents, man, you begin
Speaker 1: to see how charismaic and sexy this was. Jason Robards
Speaker 1: did an unbelievable job of almost conquering it. Tom Hanks,
Speaker 1: God love him. In the paper plays a different person
Speaker 1: in a way. And Bradley had a glass just as
Speaker 1: I do here. And he's not walls, it's glass and
Speaker 1: you can see him. And by that time he's a legend,
Speaker 1: and he's like the great orco Whil in his tank.
Speaker 2: Is that how you describe herself.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a little porky fish. And you'd see
Speaker 1: him and his feet were on the desk, and he's
Speaker 1: wearing these fantastic Turnbull and Asser's shirts with the white
Speaker 1: collars and the broad stripes, and he's just the guy
Speaker 1: is exquisite and it's expired. It's inspiring. It's like Napoleon
Speaker 1: his back there or something like that, but taller. He
Speaker 1: doesn't have to fight anymore. And I'm right working on
Speaker 1: this profile. Daniel Patrick moynihan, who was a kind of
Speaker 1: intellectual senator from the state of New York, who had
Speaker 1: been a Harvard professor and quirky in ways that would
Speaker 1: be unbelievably unfamiliar now. He wrote a book a year.
Speaker 1: In additionally quite an effective senator in many ways. He
Speaker 1: also had the habit of enjoying liquid refreshments alcohol. Alcohol.
Speaker 1: I asked him, because why beat around the bush? I
Speaker 1: said to moynihan, what do you drink? Because you know
Speaker 1: people talk about it and how much? And he said
Speaker 1: the phone. I don't know if I'm getting this because Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: you have the books over there, not me. But Moynhan
Speaker 1: is not in there, I don't think. But moyn Ahan is.
Speaker 1: I recall enjoyed a drink or two at lunch, if
Speaker 1: not more. Then at dinner, he and his wife, as
Speaker 1: I recall, would split what he called a bottle or
Speaker 1: two of claret. I did not know what the word
Speaker 1: claret meant. And then it was either preceded by some
Speaker 1: whiskeys and certainly followed by cognac.
Speaker 2: After two to three cocktails, then the bottle of one
Speaker 2: as okay, I don't know about you, my friend, but
Speaker 2: I sticked at tequila only. Actually, this is my that's.
Speaker 1: The one thing I cannot drink. It is like killer hangover.
Speaker 1: I did it once and.
Speaker 2: No headache for me. Horrible, No sugar, It's horrible.
Speaker 1: I was much more a fan.
Speaker 2: Of the other kind of enjoyment weed job. So you're
Speaker 2: brought into the office because of his drinking.
Speaker 1: So I'm called into the office and Bradley's feet are
Speaker 1: up in the on the desk, and all I see
Speaker 1: are the soles of his shoes. And he said, I
Speaker 1: got this, I got this call from moyn a hand
Speaker 1: and he said, you're asking about his drinking, and I
Speaker 1: am fucking terrified. I've been summoned to Bradley's office and
Speaker 1: now I'm in trouble. And of course Bradley knows moini
Speaker 1: Han socially and blah blah blah. And I said, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm writing this full and fair profile, and it just
Speaker 1: seems to be part of his day to day bearing
Speaker 1: And not for one instance do I suggest that he's
Speaker 1: incapacitated or unable to do his work. In fact, he
Speaker 1: writes a book a year, and he's a very affected senator.
Speaker 1: But I do think it's Bertin and I certainly asked him,
Speaker 1: yes I did, and then I made a huge mistake.
Speaker 1: And then I said, so, don't worry. And his feet,
Speaker 1: the soles of his feet part like a v and
Speaker 1: through it I see this face, this rock hard, preposterously
Speaker 1: wasp handsome face with the hair slicked back in this
Speaker 1: beautiful salt and pepper, and he said, what the fuck me, worry,
Speaker 1: get the fuck out of here. And that was the
Speaker 1: end of the discussion. We allowed to curse on this show,
Speaker 1: I suppose we.
Speaker 2: Can absolutely this isn't the New York Radio.
Speaker 1: Hour exactly, and I'm sent off and I write my piece,
Speaker 1: and all that material is in there in one way
Speaker 1: I know that I can't remember, but it certainly was
Speaker 1: in the air.
Speaker 2: And I never.
Speaker 1: Heard word one from Bradley. And the lesson there was
Speaker 1: He's allowed to ask if I've got a good reason,
Speaker 1: that's the end of the discussion. And I'll never be
Speaker 1: able to imitate Ben Bradley in my bearing. I mean,
Speaker 1: look at me, You're six three, Yeah, well whatever, six ' two.
Speaker 1: But who's arguing By next year it'll least six foot.
Speaker 1: And I can't imitate my predecessor, Tina Brown or anybody.
Speaker 1: I can only be myself. But I can learn lessons.
Speaker 1: And one of the lessons was that if your person
Speaker 1: has done their reporting and there's irrationale and it's honest,
Speaker 1: then you go with it. Also, he was incredibly cool.
Speaker 2: Again, you played on stage with Patty Smith. That's not
Speaker 2: nothing the I think the.
Speaker 1: First time I did that, I was wearing gray what
Speaker 1: my mother would call slacks and.
Speaker 2: What most people would call slacks. Yeah, God bless her
Speaker 2: rest in peace exactly. Now. You mentioned Tina Brown and
Speaker 2: what you learned from Ben Bradley as an editor, I
Speaker 2: want to go to the moment you're hired as the
Speaker 2: editor of The New Yorker. It's officially July of ninety eighth,
Speaker 2: and in the first two months of running the magazine,
Speaker 2: it's my understanding that you lost about ten pounds. Is
Speaker 2: that right.
Speaker 1: I'm going to write a book called The Weight Loss
Speaker 1: Method of Getting a new stressful job. That you don't
Speaker 1: know what you're.
Speaker 2: Doing, and because you didn't know exactly what you were doing.
Speaker 1: Not exactly, I didn't know anything about what I was doing.
Speaker 2: You asked a deputy editor for Anna Wintor why she
Speaker 2: is so good at her job.
Speaker 1: And she said, she knows what she wants. And it
Speaker 1: was really interesting to me because I obviously we have
Speaker 1: different personalities, and she has both a reality and a
Speaker 1: persona and you lip in the corner. But nevertheless, that
Speaker 1: is a very important thing, because I can see sometimes
Speaker 1: if I'm.
Speaker 2: In the corner Zlob even that as a persona.
Speaker 1: By the way, that comes naturally, my friends. In the
Speaker 1: course of a day, you make a bunch of decisions,
Speaker 1: and some of them are can be painful, often having
Speaker 1: to do with people, or they can be consequential, or
Speaker 1: they're minor or inconsequential. But you need to make them.
Speaker 1: You can't let them indefinitely pile up and pile up
Speaker 1: and pile up A because that's bad management. And B.
Speaker 1: It confuses people. And you have to know that you're
Speaker 1: going to make some bad decisions too along the way.
Speaker 2: The quote was because she knows exactly what she wants.
Speaker 2: So when did you begin to understand what you wanted
Speaker 2: from the magazine? And what was that?
Speaker 1: Maybe this contradict what we just said, But I don't
Speaker 1: believe in the reality or the fiction of the Imperial Editor.
Speaker 1: Ben Bradley couldn't possibly read all of the Washington Post
Speaker 1: every day, much less make all the decisions that go
Speaker 1: into it. And there are subjects that I know something about,
Speaker 1: and there are subjects that I know nothing about, and
Speaker 1: then there's a lot of in between. And I'm good
Speaker 1: at some things and I'm crazily bad at others.
Speaker 2: And what are you bad at?
Speaker 1: I'm pretty good at getting things done. Take writing, for example.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty good at making my deadlines. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean I'm a better writer than people who have trouble
Speaker 1: with their deadlines, you know, aj Lebling. I'm not applying
Speaker 1: this to myself. But aj Lebling used to say that
Speaker 1: he was a better writer than anyone who wrote faster
Speaker 1: than him, and he was faster than anyone who wrote better. Yes,
Speaker 1: which is a nice, little neat formulation.
Speaker 2: But when you write, do you also maniacally laugh at
Speaker 2: your own jokes?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: With my shirt off. No, But I have not to
Speaker 1: deepen the impression. But I have what's called zitzfleish, the
Speaker 1: ability to keep your ass in the chair to sustain. Right.
Speaker 1: But look, I now run a business and it has
Speaker 1: to be a coherent, sustainable one. In order to do
Speaker 1: the things that I value the most, I have to
Speaker 1: be asking the right questions. Otherwise I'm going to get
Speaker 1: be steamrolled into doing things that I think are bad
Speaker 1: for the magazine.
Speaker 2: So when you took over the magazine in ninety eight,
Speaker 2: it was not making money.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: You brought it into the black.
Speaker 1: I would reject the vertical pronoun, but we brought it
Speaker 1: into the black.
Speaker 2: We bought it in the black. Thank you for the
Speaker 2: all gender bathrooms too, my pleasure. I'm cutting that line.
Speaker 1: I know you are because you're chicken.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm chicken. You're the one who didn't say what
Speaker 2: you were bad at this sunlight yellow it's chicken. Okay,
Speaker 2: you still haven't answer to what you're bad at which
Speaker 2: we're gonna We're gonna do lots of things, Yes, but
Speaker 2: tell me the things that you value. Do we have
Speaker 2: enough time? Yes, we have only till two thirty. David,
Speaker 2: you have only till two thirty. Now, that's not true.
Speaker 2: I would be here forever. You said the things that
Speaker 2: you value in the magazine. What are the things that
Speaker 2: you value? Tell me what that editorial vision look like
Speaker 2: in those days?
Speaker 1: And now? I value the values of this magazine, which
Speaker 1: are depth and consideration of being right or driven, of
Speaker 1: accuracy and care. It is inevitable that with change in
Speaker 1: over time that there are going to be perceptible and
Speaker 1: even imperceptible change. It shifts an emphasis. So Bob Gottlieb,
Speaker 1: who followed William Sean and preceded Tina Brown.
Speaker 2: Passed away this this past summer.
Speaker 1: That's right, great, great, great book editor and the editor
Speaker 1: of The New Yorker for six years and brought a
Speaker 1: lot to the desk. As I say, I don't think
Speaker 1: the thing he favored or had an affection for most
Speaker 1: in this world is journalism. I think He spent a
Speaker 1: lot of his time at The New Yorker on the fiction,
Speaker 1: on a certain kind of comical reporting, all kinds of
Speaker 1: other things.
Speaker 2: But it's funny when I ask you about values, you
Speaker 2: go to what another editor didn't value. Is that your
Speaker 2: way of saying that you value journalism?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I'm probably more journalistically in hard thought. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not hard news. Very few pieces would be considered traditional
Speaker 1: hard news. But I certainly value investigative reporting. I value
Speaker 1: foreign reporting. Not that Bob didn't publish it. He was.
Speaker 1: He published Almaghem Prieto from Latin America. He published all
Speaker 1: kinds of people. It's just a shift in emphasis, volume, view.
Speaker 1: And also the world has required different things of us
Speaker 1: at a given time. Let's talk about the Internet in
Speaker 1: a minute. I can only be who I am so
Speaker 1: for fiction, Deborah Treatman, who I made the fiction editor,
Speaker 1: who had been working under Bill Beauford. She and the
Speaker 1: fiction department Kressa. Elish and William Davidson and so on.
Speaker 1: They read all the stories, they choose the short stories.
Speaker 1: My only thing with them is send them to me
Speaker 1: what we've chosen, and I want to make sure I'm
Speaker 1: reading them. And a certain percentage ill maybe pass on.
Speaker 1: And I also want to make sure that even though
Speaker 1: I'm saying yes to things that I think will be interesting,
Speaker 1: and I'm putting a lot of faith in those editors
Speaker 1: and writers, that I'm not knowingly thinking this, God, this
Speaker 1: will be incredibly boring or wrong for us.
Speaker 2: But this is the first subject that you've been You.
Speaker 1: Think I'm being a vague, a little vague, a little
Speaker 1: dig in because I'm not going to I have no intention.
Speaker 2: Of being about what I guess. I want to understand
Speaker 2: how you view the function of the magazine and journalism
Speaker 2: at this moment, because you've said the best the first
Speaker 2: job of journalism is to put pressure on power, investigative pressure,
Speaker 2: reporting pressure, intellectual pressure on the ideas being put out
Speaker 2: by power. That's journalist's first role, not entertainment, not selling copies,
Speaker 2: not clicks. Pressure on power.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I also want to be publishing science. Reporting
Speaker 1: that's not about necessarily about climate change. That's just about
Speaker 1: you know how something works. You know. One of the
Speaker 1: great profiles the magazines published in the last fifty years
Speaker 1: is say Mark Singer. His profile of Ricky J. Ricky
Speaker 1: J was who he was a magician, So it's social
Speaker 1: consequences are modest.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite profiles a fantastic profile.
Speaker 1: Yeah, magas And I just think it is a primary
Speaker 1: function of journalism, real large, not just in but you know,
Speaker 1: any journalism worth its name is to put pressure on power.
Speaker 1: That's for damn sure.
Speaker 2: Since twenty sixteen, the circulation of The New Yorker has increased, No,
Speaker 2: it's decreased.
Speaker 1: It's been in recent years at one point two million.
Speaker 2: And twenty eighteen it was reported at one point two.
Speaker 2: Then there's some new survey that came out recently. It
Speaker 2: says one point two five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's more or less the same. If you're
Speaker 1: asking about the economics of the magazine.
Speaker 2: I'm asking about the economics and how you balance the
Speaker 2: economics while still applying pressure to the powers that be.
Speaker 1: I don't see any contradiction in it. I think the
Speaker 1: great gift of my job and the job that my
Speaker 1: colleagues jobs that my colleagues have is that our readers
Speaker 1: expect us to be the best forms of ourselves. In
Speaker 1: other words, what we want to be in our best days.
Speaker 1: That's what our readers want us to be. There's no
Speaker 1: like the readers secretly want us to be dumber or
Speaker 1: less rigorous, or were cotton candy. We all want cotton candy,
Speaker 1: by the way, as well as our You know that
Speaker 1: makes me say those well, you know, we're deserted in
Speaker 1: some kind. The magazine can all be hardcore investigative reporting
Speaker 1: or something like that. So that's a very happy coincidence
Speaker 1: of interest of readers and people who do the work.
Speaker 2: Why don't we talk about the existential issues in journalism
Speaker 2: right now? Because you recently sat with the New York
Speaker 2: Times publisher Aj Solzberger, perhaps in this room, and you
Speaker 2: said to him, public distrust of the New York or
Speaker 2: the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street
Speaker 2: Journal are at record levels. Our ratings are a misery.
Speaker 1: Well why the ratings are what's called the mainstream press
Speaker 1: or a misery?
Speaker 2: Why is that? Are technology of crossing your arms? At
Speaker 2: some point over.
Speaker 1: There no technology politics. So I came to the Washington
Speaker 1: Post Watergate, and the press was, in some people's eyes,
Speaker 1: had rescued the republic of a crook in office. Now
Speaker 1: we've had a crook in office for four years and
Speaker 1: as possibly coming back as recipient dictator. Just yesterday I
Speaker 1: interviewed right here, Lynn Cheney, a pardoned right wing conservative,
Speaker 1: arguing that we're sleepwalking to dictatorship. So what's different, Well,
Speaker 1: you all of a sudden have this figure who doesn't
Speaker 1: resign but in fact tries to overturn the election. And
Speaker 1: part of his strategy, which is diabolically effective, is to
Speaker 1: attack and make an enemy of the press, is to
Speaker 1: take advantage of technologies that did not exist in Nixon's time,
Speaker 1: to create an alternate universe, not only of the press,
Speaker 1: but of fact a non fact itself, and unfortunately, not
Speaker 1: just the United States but all over the world. The
Speaker 1: authoritarian temptation and the sceptibility to conspiracy theory and lies.
Speaker 1: We know what that is. We've seen it historically. And
Speaker 1: technology is only exacerbated and its manipulating abilities are unbelievable.
Speaker 1: I ask, putin ask Trump, ask and ask and ask.
Speaker 1: It's just plainly evident. So do I take it personally?
Speaker 1: The phrase that I might hate most of all in
Speaker 1: modern life is it is what it is because I
Speaker 1: don't want it to is. I want it to be otherwise.
Speaker 1: But that's just a fact of modern life. Because you're
Speaker 1: gonna ask me, I'm gonna tell you to be honest.
Speaker 1: Now you'll get people pissed off of me. I don't
Speaker 1: think the New York Times, for all its faults, and
Speaker 1: we all argue with it, and it's in a way
Speaker 1: the weather. I don't think it's ever been better. Some
Speaker 1: people will argue it's more ideological. It's more I've been
Speaker 1: hearing that all my life, which is now not short.
Speaker 1: You know, it's anti Israel, it's pro real, it's propelasy,
Speaker 1: it's antib You hear that. But their intentions are optimal.
Speaker 1: Same with us. We have good days, we have bad days.
Speaker 1: We have you know, successful pieces or transcendently successful pieces.
Speaker 1: We have the opposite. But life has changed, Technology has changed,
Speaker 1: politics have changed in such a way that it's taken
Speaker 1: a toll on what Sarah Palince so eloquently calls the
Speaker 1: lamestream media.
Speaker 2: When Trump was elected in twenty sixteen, the morning it
Speaker 2: became clear that he was going to become president, you
Speaker 2: published an article called an American Tragedy, And I have
Speaker 2: this vivid memory of being awake at three in the
Speaker 2: morning reading your piece. I must have just turned maybe
Speaker 2: twenty two, I think it was. I'd moved to Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: and I remember everyone around me from Chicago. I'm thinking
Speaker 2: in the time since then, the eight years, as we
Speaker 2: head into twenty twenty four, you know, we started this
Speaker 2: conversation talking about Israel Palestine, which is a story you've
Speaker 2: told with an and and not a butt, and that
Speaker 2: is perhaps the most useful way to talk about a
Speaker 2: country that elected Obama and a country that elected President Trump.
Speaker 1: And so as we.
Speaker 2: Head into twenty four, you often had interviews talk about
Speaker 2: this term presentism, that we should not be guilty of
Speaker 2: thinking the present moment will persist forever.
Speaker 1: Quote, despair is.
Speaker 2: An unforgivable sin in politics, public life, and in personal life.
Speaker 2: Despair is unforgivable. Too much depends on us not being despairing,
Speaker 2: whether it's the environment or countless other issues of public,
Speaker 2: American and international life.
Speaker 1: I'm not a religious guy, but that's what the Bible
Speaker 1: tells me, that despair is the unforgivable sin. And I
Speaker 1: think that's right. Look at my just where I'm slotted
Speaker 1: in politically. In my experience when I was your age,
Speaker 1: I was in Moscow, and what was happening in the
Speaker 1: world was that Eastern Europe was liberated, the Berlin Wall
Speaker 1: came down, Soviet totalitarianism was in shambles. There was a
Speaker 1: promise of democratic progress in the air. There had even
Speaker 1: been pro democracy demonstrations in Beijing. Latin America was showing
Speaker 1: signs of democratic development in life.
Speaker 2: When you left Moscow in ninety one, you said, quote,
Speaker 2: I was unreasonably optimistic.
Speaker 1: Totally, and South African apartheid was overcome, and a few
Speaker 1: years later the Oslo Accords were signed, And so there
Speaker 1: was a sense, however, unreasonable, that life was political life,
Speaker 1: public life, civic life was at the very least promising.
Speaker 1: And now we've talked about the middle least. We know
Speaker 1: what's going on in Ukraine, we know what's going on
Speaker 1: in power in Russia. China is no more delightful than
Speaker 1: it was, and the environment is maybe the biggest subject
Speaker 1: of all, but people find it boring to talk about.
Speaker 1: So when I hear about mental health, and when I
Speaker 1: hear about political dissatisfaction and anger for people of your generation,
Speaker 1: how could I think it could be otherwise? It's a
Speaker 1: really rough time, and I think we'd be idiots to
Speaker 1: say otherwise. But what do you do? Throw up your hands?
Speaker 1: But politically, as citizens, the idea of seeding the ground
Speaker 1: to dictatorship in this country now, no matter how fucked up,
Speaker 1: the country has proved to be time and time again,
Speaker 1: no matter how self deceiving we can be about America
Speaker 1: and American history or are so called exceptionalism, et cetera.
Speaker 1: I'm just not and you shouldn't be if you don't
Speaker 1: mind my saying, or any of us can afford to be.
Speaker 1: To give into despair, that's the enemy or one of
Speaker 1: those we.
Speaker 2: Should not be guilty of thinking the present moment will
Speaker 2: persist forever. Yeah, but I have to tell you, Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is where I add a butt. Okay, when you
Speaker 2: go into Twine twenty four and you ask people to
Speaker 2: choose between Trump and Biden, it doesn't feel like a present.
Speaker 2: It sounds like the past. Sounds like we've because of age.
Speaker 2: Not just that, but that it's the same two folks
Speaker 2: with their own set of problems. What are you doing
Speaker 2: about coming into twenty four and so now you no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: what are you doing?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 2: No, no, you can have me on your show, but
Speaker 2: but no, no, really, we each play our role to despair.
Speaker 2: The despair, how do you beat back against it?
Speaker 1: Because this is not unique. This is a country that
Speaker 1: had a civil war. This is country that had reconstruction
Speaker 1: and its betrayal. This is a country that's had Jim
Speaker 1: Crow people hanging from trees, ku Klux Klan marching down
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania Avenue in the twenties, political instability, political betrayal, lying
Speaker 1: in government. What's unique here is unique here You've got
Speaker 1: a black comic authority tarian on the brink of reelection. Okay,
Speaker 1: that is unique reelection to the presidency. I see my role,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, as an editor in this and
Speaker 1: the little writing I do. You mentioned that piece American tragy.
Speaker 1: The difficulty, of course, is I'm speaking to you and
Speaker 1: the kinds of people who listen to you, and the
Speaker 1: people who listen to the New Yorker Radio Hour read
Speaker 1: the New Yorker. That's not three hundred and thirty million people.
Speaker 1: That makes it very tough. But throwing up your hands,
Speaker 1: I think, is it's such as crazy. It's it's defeatist,
Speaker 1: it's immoral, it's understandable second by second, but ultimately to
Speaker 1: throw up your hands is just wrong.
Speaker 2: A week before you started YEA in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 2: in the June twenty second issue of The New Yorker,
Speaker 2: you wrote an article. It was about a critic, Alfred Kason.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, And I wanted to perhaps return to that
Speaker 2: in the first paragraph of it and see where it
Speaker 2: landed with you, and how it may be instructive for
Speaker 2: us in this moment, I should read it. They would
Speaker 2: rather hear you than me.
Speaker 1: The inexhaustible urge towards self expression makes it nearly a
Speaker 1: sure thing that there will always be writers around as
Speaker 1: long as there is us. The dicier question is whether
Speaker 1: there will be readers, not just readers of the sports
Speaker 1: pages and the jumble of self help best sellers and
Speaker 1: the consultants' confessions, no, but passionate readers who ignore the
Speaker 1: phone and the TV for a few hours to engage
Speaker 1: a book whose difficulty, in quotes is that it fails
Speaker 1: to soothe the ego or flatter a limited intelligence. The
Speaker 1: reader who honestly believes that the best and deepest of
Speaker 1: what we are is on the shelf, and that to
Speaker 1: reach across the shelf changes the self, changes you.
Speaker 2: When it ran in ninety eight, your friend mentor and
Speaker 2: now a staff writer for you, John McFee said in
Speaker 2: The Washington Post, that's a pretty good portrait of David
Speaker 2: himself and a pretty good forecast of how he'll run
Speaker 2: The New Yorker.
Speaker 1: He did. John McPhee man two, my teacher, my mentor,
Speaker 1: my colleague, and despite my best efforts, fishing buddy drags
Speaker 1: me out into the horrible outdoors twice a year to
Speaker 1: dip a hook into a river for some unknown reason.
Speaker 2: Please don't invite me.
Speaker 1: You have no idea. Look, I am not blind to
Speaker 1: the world of Netflix, TikTok, my phone which is sitting
Speaker 1: six inches away from me.
Speaker 2: Which you looked at four minutes ago.
Speaker 1: I looked at four minutes ago. But the fact of
Speaker 1: the matter is I know nothing in our cultural lives,
Speaker 1: our intellectual lives, and our civic lives that is effective
Speaker 1: and that reaches more deeply than the best of what
Speaker 1: is written. And I'm a huge movie watcher and junk
Speaker 1: television watcher and ballgame viewer, and but written expression that's
Speaker 1: what I ended up giving my life toward. And it's
Speaker 1: immensely enriching and gratifying, and I believe in it. I
Speaker 1: remember very distinctly interviewing Philip Roth about fifteen years before
Speaker 1: he died, when I first got to know him, and
Speaker 1: he was despairing about writing, and not the literary world,
Speaker 1: but just this piece of business. And I bet you
Speaker 1: I borrowed the language from him, which is that he
Speaker 1: despaired of the notion that enough people were turning off
Speaker 1: the TV, turning on the lamp, throwing the phone across
Speaker 1: the room, and devoting themselves for an hour or two
Speaker 1: or three to an enigmatic, difficult tech next of any kind,
Speaker 1: because it requires a lot of you. And I'm guilty
Speaker 1: enough of that too, even though my professional life demands it.
Speaker 1: But it's been It's the gift of a lifetime, and
Speaker 1: I know that I'm hardly alone.
Speaker 2: You've committed yourself to this, to this craft, to making
Speaker 2: this magazine. My last question for you. McPhee himself is
Speaker 2: a great example of creative longevity, which is at the
Speaker 2: heart of this new book of yours. Holding the note
Speaker 2: in which you profile a series of musicians who are
Speaker 2: all still working till the very end. You write for
Speaker 2: musicians late in their careers in the spirit of cestin
Speaker 2: nudo of sustain that state, writing, playing and performing keeps
Speaker 2: them in the game, helping to replenish what age has attenuated.
Speaker 2: And as we leave, I thought we watch some of
Speaker 2: this performance by Joni Mitchell at the Newport fire Fest
Speaker 2: of All last year. Yeah, can you set that up? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Johnny Mitchell, who was such a hugely important and wonderful
Speaker 1: singer and songwriter and musician and whose masterpiece is maybe
Speaker 1: one of the great albums of the era is Blue.
Speaker 1: In recent years she kind of went missing, you know,
Speaker 1: she wasn't performing, her health was bad, and then she's
Speaker 1: had in recent less year or two, she's kind of
Speaker 1: popped her head up again, re emerged here I am,
Speaker 1: and she's become kind of more welcoming to younger musicians
Speaker 1: who come and worship at her feet and also play
Speaker 1: with her. And she appeared at Newport and No, her
Speaker 1: voice is not this incredibly pure tone that we remember
Speaker 1: from the seventies and Blue and Ladies of the Canyon
Speaker 1: and Miles of Aisles and all kinds of things mingus.
Speaker 1: It's something new. It's deeper, it's rougher, but it's her
Speaker 1: and there's something beautiful about that. It is very rare
Speaker 1: in anything that anybody's doing their best work when they're
Speaker 1: very old. You know. I went to see Bob Dylan
Speaker 1: out in Brooklyn a month ago, and it was amazing.
Speaker 1: He's a rarity like that, you know, it's not like
Speaker 1: a rolling stone anymore. But he's fully engaged his audience.
Speaker 1: Is there. There's something beautiful about that. My own life. Look,
Speaker 1: I'm nowhere near the you know, not these remotely in
Speaker 1: these leagues. And if you're asking me slyly, and I
Speaker 1: think you are a little bit about what's down the road,
Speaker 1: I will not cling to this post forever because I
Speaker 1: think it's wrong. I think you need to make way
Speaker 1: for new talent, new points of view and new mistakes.
Speaker 1: Knew everything, and if you clog up the works for
Speaker 1: too long, it's not healthy. But when I do leave,
Speaker 1: and it won't be a million years from now, not
Speaker 1: next week or anytime very soon, but it'll happen, I
Speaker 1: hope to write again, more consistently, and it may come
Speaker 1: to nothing, and it may be of trivial importance, but
Speaker 1: I do love the activity of writing, which is very,
Speaker 1: very different from the activity of editing. Editing is also
Speaker 1: a social thing that you get right or you get wrong.
Speaker 1: We do both. It's an imaginative one and a deeply
Speaker 1: collaborative one. Writing you are out there on the digging board,
Speaker 1: all by your lonesome. I find that thrilling.
Speaker 2: This is both sides now by Johnny Mitchell.
Speaker 5: I've lived add life that way for interacting straight and
Speaker 5: they shave their heads and they tell me that I've changed.
Speaker 2: Well, some things last, but something's gained.
Speaker 1: Jump in living every day.
Speaker 2: I'm live in life from size from wind Lives and still.
Speaker 1: It's life solution.
Speaker 2: I recall, I really don't know life. I really don't know.
Speaker 3: Life at all.
Speaker 1: Amazing. I can't speak, you know, it's it's you, just time.
Speaker 1: You just listen to time and a musical mother and
Speaker 1: a daughter, and it's amazing to me.
Speaker 2: David, my last I have to ask you, because now
Speaker 2: we're both that line. Well, something's lost, but something's gained.
Speaker 1: But even more than that is to hear her, the
Speaker 1: difference in her voice, and because you're hearing in one
Speaker 1: ear her voice from sixty years ago, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: and the voice now and what it's giving to them.
Speaker 1: You know, if any artist can produce that sense of
Speaker 1: feeling that you and I I think obviously are experiencing
Speaker 1: simply by clicking on YouTube, well that artist has done
Speaker 1: a lot, and God bless her.
Speaker 2: I never quote YouTube comments on the podcast, but one
Speaker 2: person wrote about the Jonny Mitchell song. A twenty three
Speaker 2: year old wrote a song for her seventy eight year olds,
Speaker 2: sing That's where I want to leave us. Which is
Speaker 2: the creative longevity, the commitment you've made to yourself to
Speaker 2: the magazine to do this work. And that great piece
Speaker 2: we quoted from.
Speaker 1: Alfred Kasan, who I you know. I think the occasion
Speaker 1: for that piece is that he died.
Speaker 2: He died, but he, like you, believed that reaching across
Speaker 2: the shelf, picking something up, it changes you.
Speaker 1: It didn't change me. It doesn't change us. It makes
Speaker 1: us if you're lucky and if you partake of it.
Speaker 1: And I mean a lot of other things do too.
Speaker 1: We talked about some of them today. You know, your parents,
Speaker 1: your world, your environment, your mistakes after mistake after mistake.
Speaker 1: But there it is. The library is the gift to
Speaker 1: ignore it. Man, I just it's a sin.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to give you a compliment, but it's not
Speaker 2: going well. Well, I have to end on this. We
Speaker 2: gotta go. Which is that you and the writers you've
Speaker 2: presided over and made better have changed me. And I'm
Speaker 2: so grateful for it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thanks for having me. This was extraordinary I
Speaker 1: appreciate it. I really do.
Speaker 2: David Remnick a pleasure, take care of my friend, and
Speaker 2: that's our show. I want to give a special thanks
Speaker 2: to Noah Hoff and the team at Penguin Random House.
Speaker 2: I also want to thank the good people at The
Speaker 2: New Yorker for hosting us. And finally, I want to
Speaker 2: thank Kira Posey, Hilton Owls, Joshua Bierman, Nathan Heller, Nick Thorburn,
Speaker 2: Brian Samilson, Jacob Weisberg, and of course our guests today,
Speaker 2: David Rednick. To find the pieces discussed in this episode,
Speaker 2: or to order his new book, Holding Note, check out
Speaker 2: our website at talk easypod dot com. Once you're there,
Speaker 2: you can find other great conversations with Maria Russa, Gloria Steinem,
Speaker 2: Nom Chomsky, Satis, and Tom Hanks. To hear those and
Speaker 2: more Pushkin Podcasts listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever
Speaker 2: you like to listen. If you enjoy today's conversation with
Speaker 2: David and want to support the work we do here
Speaker 2: each and every Sunday, be sure to share the show
Speaker 2: on social media. Leave us a review on Apple, give
Speaker 2: us five stars on Spotify. All of this whatever you
Speaker 2: can do is really the best way for new listeners
Speaker 2: to find the program. As always, Talk Easy is produced
Speaker 2: by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Jeni Sa Bravo.
Speaker 2: Our associate producer is Kitlin Dryden. Today's talk was edited
Speaker 2: by Kitlyn Dryden and mixed by Andrew Bastola. Our music
Speaker 2: is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Christia Shanoy.
Speaker 2: Photographs today are by Kyle Manning. Video and graphics by
Speaker 2: Ian Chang, Derek gamberzak Ian Jones and Ethan Sinica. I
Speaker 2: also want to thank our team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond,
Speaker 2: Julie Barton, John Snars, Kerry Brody, Eric Sandler, Jordan McMillan,
Speaker 2: Kira Posey, Tara Machado, Jason Gambrell, Justine La Malcolm Gladwell,
Speaker 2: Greta Cone, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm San Fragoso. Thank you
Speaker 2: for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here
Speaker 2: next week with another episode. Until then, stay safe and
Speaker 2: so on.