Hey, it's Brian here. Before we start, I just want to let you know that you can watch this whole episode on YouTube. We videoed the whole thing. I've never done that before, but it's really great. Check it out on KCRW's YouTube channel. From Placement Theory in KCRW, this is Question Everything. I'm Brian Reid. A few months ago, I took four journalists. I put them in a room, gave them drinks, and started rolling tape. Their only instructions were to show up with questions for each other and be open to talking candidly about the challenges in their jobs. There is, I'm well aware, no shortage of opportunities in this world to hear journalists talk on television, on podcasts, on panels with self-serious titles like democracy on the Brink. Is the press up to the task? That's when I actually went to by the way. I'm a guilty participant in the panel industrial complex, so I know that these discussions with journalists can often feel stilted and accessible. I dragged my best friend, who's not a journalist, to a panel like this not long ago, and afterwards, he used the phrase word soup to describe what he had heard.

The goal of this show is to re examine journalism so we can try to make it better. So while we've been developing it, I wanted to see if I could get journalists to talk about their jobs as if no one else was around, about the things they wanted to discuss, the behind the scenes stories I know we talk about when we're hanging out after work.

I mean, I usually at some point, like something uncomfortable happens. Yeah, something's going to happen. Someone's going to yell at you and call you fake news. You'll be doing an interview and someone will be like, You married? You know what? You're like, Oh.

Today's episode, What Journalists Talk About When the Rest of Us Aren't Listening. We're calling it Drinks For Five. We're cribbing the name from a TV show from the early '80s that did something similar with actors and directors, Dinner for Five. We've got New York Times political reporter, Astead Herndon, Pulitzer-winning journalist and author Jonathan Eig, my former colleague, This American Life political reporter Zoe Chase, and host of This American Life, and my old boss, Ira Glass. Stick around. Are you stealing my question? Yeah, he's doing the interview.

It's never mind.

Guys, have a seat. Help yourselves. Can I get you guys a drink? Yeah. All right. What you're about to hear are excerpts from a conversation that took place on a Monday night in May, which I guess just keep that in mind since a lot has happened since May. My four guests and I met up at a wine store in Brooklyn that agreed to close early and let me serve drinks from a bar next to the cash register. Our executive producer Robin Simeon was there, too, producing this experiment, so you'll hear her voice now and again. The four guests sat on stools in front of me and I poured mint juleps.

Can we just pause and have a talk? Yeah.

That's Ira Glass, host of this American life where I used to work. My mentor and boss for more than a decade.

It's so sweet that this is your first show and that we are here in this moment before the thing gets launched. It's a perfect little thing that hasn't been marred and hasn't had a chance to grow.

It's just like, we haven't screwed it up for you.

It hasn't been criticized.

It hasn't been criticized. It's just like it exists in our imagination. It's all outside. It's a perfect future. It's like, I'm so excited for you and so glad to be here for your first show, and congratulations.

Thank you. Cheers.

It's an honor.

Thank you guys.

We'll bring it up. Before the fuck up. May it may it last long.

To purity. A moment of purity. All right, but wait, we got interrupted. We were asking you. Jonathan, John? John is good. This is Jonathan Ige, sitting at the bar next to Ira. Jonathan reported for Daily Newspapers for years and now writes books about Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali. Just a week or two before our get together, Jonathan won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Martin Luther King. And next to Jonathan is Zoe Chase. Zoe does some of my favorite political coverage for this American life. Okay. Oh, right.

About how you had the audacity. The audacity.

All right. How did you have the audacity to choose Martin Luther King Jr. To write a biography of, and to feel like you could say something new?

I feel like it's probably the same for all of us. Anybody who's in journalism, anybody who's telling stories, it starts with just a glimmer of an idea. You don't just wake up and go, I'm going to write a biography of Martin Luther King. No, but one day you're talking to somebody who knew Martin Luther King, and you go, That's so cool. He knew Martin Luther King.

Why not? Why were you doing that?

Wait, just back All right.

Where were you? That happened. Who were you talking to?

I was talking to Dick Gregory. This was in 2015 or something like that. I was interviewing him for my Muhammad Ali book. I'm talking to Dick Gregory, and he starts talking about Martin Luther King and about the time that Martin Luther King met Muhammad Ali. After I left the breakfast with him, I thought, Wait, that guy knew Martin Luther King. I should have asked him more about that. I blew it. Why didn't I just ask him a million questions about Martin You guys hung out. Then I began to think about it. I began to think, There's probably a lot of people alive still who knew Martin Luther King. Maybe I should just travel around the country and interview all the people who knew Martin Luther King. That was my first little glimmer.

Had you read the previous biographies at that point or anything?

No, I'd read some of them. Years ago, I'd read Taylor Branch's, some of Taylor Branch's trilogy. I hadn't read all of it. I read David Garro's book.

But once Taylor Branch has been there, how do you even think like, Oh, there's something else to do?

First of all, that book was old already, and it was really encyclopedic. I thought, these guys knew Martin Luther King. They knew what it was like to hang with him. They knew what it was like to drink with him and what it was like to tell jokes with him. That doesn't come through in the big encyclopedic book. Maybe there's a chance to do a more intimate a portrait. That was the thought process. Also, you think about what's happened since King became a national holiday in a thousand streets, and we lost sight of his humanity. So maybe a book that actually tells you what jokes he told. The person.

We lost sight of the person.

I would ask these guys, What did he smell like? I'd ask them these ridiculous questions that you guys do, too. You just have to forget for a minute that it's, Oh, this is Martin Luther, frigging King.

Did you get pushback? Who's the person you really wanted to talk to?

Three kids. They were only two alive now, but there were three when I started. They wouldn't talk to me, and Diane Nash wouldn't talk to me. That was about it. Almost everybody else agreed to talk.

Do you know why they wouldn't talk to you?

The kids or Diane Nash? The kids. The kids didn't want to talk to me because the book included details about his sex life, I think. I think that was the main reason. It's just really hard. I think it's traumatic for them to think about some of these things and to think about the fact that their dad cheated on their mom. I've gotten to know a lot of their friends and their cousins and nieces and nephews, and I think that they're convinced that King didn't cheat on Koretta. That's interesting. And they really believe it. Anything that approaches that subject is off limits for them, I think.

Wow.

I was going to ask about that.

This is Astead Herndon, by the way, our last guest, to my far right at the bar. Astead's a political reporter at the New York Times. You might also know him from CNN.

Did you think about how to wrestle with the reveal of personal life? Because in some ways, I totally see this narrative quality, but it's also less necessary, or could be less. Seeing this less necessary. So I'm just saying, how did you decide what illustrative versus what felt indulgent.

I think it's just a gut check in any story you write, any book you write, or any podcast you make, how much of this goes in and how much doesn't. You just have to trust your instincts. I knew that I didn't want to wallow in it. I didn't want this to be I didn't want that to be the point of the book or for people to take away, Wow, it's really salacious. But I also wanted to be honest and just come as close to the truth as I can. But I also felt like I had to have his sex life in there because that's what the FBI used more anything else to try to destroy him. So you got to put it in, and you got to also show how sad and lonely he was. That's why he's with these other women, partly. I just felt like- Because you do want to know what it feels like to be Martin Luther King, if possible. Yeah, right. If we can possibly imagine it, you got to know that he was lonely and he was sad. He was calling these women in the middle of the night saying, Yeah, I miss you, too.

That's just sad. It's also true. We know it because the FBI was recording the calls, which is just the craziest part of all. The people trying to destroy him actually gave us this intimate portrait, intimate view into his life.

But I read that you said that... I hope you don't mind me quoting you to you, but you said this thing that I found encouraging, which is you were like, Every biography is a failure because you can't know the full life, which I was like, I do feel like that as a reporter that it is an exercise in failure. You're not going to get to the-That is crazy talk. Deepest motivation of the person. That is crazy talk. But if you're on the one subject and you feel like you're never going to touch the sweet spot.

You're going to try to get-What's that link? I think you can touch the sweet spot, but you're never going to really know. I couldn't write a book and really know my mom or my dad, right? People I know best. I can't tell you why King cheated on his wife, and I can't tell you why he still didn't lose hope after discovering that his own government was trying to destroy him and why he kept believing that he could make change. I can't explain that. That's just something within him. Maybe it's faith in God in a way that I can't comprehend. I don't know. All I know is... But that doesn't mean I can't get close enough to give the reader a feel where they could maybe draw their own conclusions. Yeah. You disagree. Wait. All right, go.

I don't know.

If you just think about what we all do, which is so much smaller than writing a book about somebody.

I was a lot more positive than I am.

Yeah. We're going out in the world, you talk to people, you try to be like, Okay, here are the interesting things and the important things to understand about this person. They feel like, yes, it's not the complete person. But if you're saying that somebody who spends how many years on a book? Six. Six years on a book to understand one person, and you're exhaustively talking to everybody who'll talk to you, you're looking through all the papers. At the end of that, if you can't understand and say, Here are the important parts of who they are, if that's hopeless, then what we're doing is so hard. I'm outside of that. I'm not saying you can't get.

Right in the graph, we're so much farther from the center. Do you guys actually enjoy the Trump rallies? Or you just find that they're good stories?

Some are I would say seven out of 10 times it's like a SEC football game. So it can be enjoyable, but not. It's mostly like a show. I was like, three out of 10 times is the craziest thing I've ever said. I'm not enjoying myself at all. I would say the range really matters, but it's not clear.

An SEC football game is more fun if you're drunk.

Yeah, I'm saying there's some parts of it that feel festively. I don't know how you feel, but your head is too on a swivel to ever feel that comfortable.

Oh, yeah. I I usually at some point, something uncomfortable happens.

Yeah, something's going to happen.

Someone's going to yell at you and call you fake news.

Oh, to you, something's going to happen.

Something is going to go a little… Then I'm going to have that feeling there of… People don't want me here.

What's happened?

Well, I have the regular female reporter things. It's a very male room. There's just that where you'll be doing an interview and someone will be like, You married? You're like, Oh. But yeah. Then also people will say to me a lot, I can tell you're a liberal. It's the way you're asking the question, the way you're dressed, buy your hair. What are you doing here? You're here to get us. That for me, What do you say? I try to respond diplomatically, but a lot of times I get cut off, and I get a little flustered by that. Usually what I say is my job is to ask questions. I'm genuinely curious. You don't have to answer anything. I'm just here to ask. But by that time, I feel like people are suspicious of me that I'm there to make fun of them, to do something shady. That feels bad.

Yeah, certainly. Everything happens. I've gotten to go back to Africa's. They will always say, Well, how can I be racist? We're talking right now. Was there a time when you really were like, Let me explain how this... And you really just talked about how this could be possible? No. I literally have so It's a one-way conversation. They'll say it, I move on. I don't acknowledge it. I don't... I want to show you're not the first-term person I've talked to. I know enough conservative news that you'll think this is our real authentic conversation. They freak out about the New York Times. I say, If you think the Times won't represent or hear out people like you, here I am, asking the question. So try me. What do you think I'm going to play? I promise you. So I'm trying to say something like that.

Does that ever reassure them? Yeah, I like that. Does that ever work? Often.

I think we have a very good success rate of talking to Conservatives. It's an actual dare. You're like, Try me. I'm like, Usually, you can get away with that, but not actually in, I'm here. I didn't ask you the question. I'm seriously interested in your answers.

What are you interested in right now, though? If it's a lot of the same. That's what I've been curious about with the rallies.

Well, I would say we have tried to get away from rallies. We need to find spaces of people that are not Trump rallies.

But you're looking for spaces that are not Trump rallies. But are conservative.

But are Trump voters, I imagine. Because I actually think the more representative median voter is not at the Trump rally right now. Elections are fine. In New Hampshire, you can travel, you can knock to it, you can find people. But at the rallies, I think It has become a hardened set there, and it feels like that.

Do you guys ever think about how much of our work is just trying to strategize how to get people to talk to you? Just over the line of every email?

That's why I feel like emails should have their own separate academy award, and they should have their own separate. I feel like I do some of my best writing in emails. I love that.

Give me an example.

It's funny. Somebody reminded me the other day. There's a person who I met on a train, and she told me this story about getting bit by a shark when she was a teenager.

I have a memory about when you were trying to talk her-When I was talking to her- When I was talking to her.

When I was talking to her. When the story is really perfect, you remember it beat by beat, and you remember every emotion the person has. Because what happens is she gets bit by the shark, a doctor stitches her up, and he doesn't notice that basically the shark's bitten through her bow. She's going to be dead in 12 hours. Then she goes back to the camp, and she's just getting sicker and sicker. The doctor told the parents, Listen, she's going to feel bad. She got totally cut up. It's totally normal. If she can't, has trouble sleeping, it's totally normal. She's She's feeling worse and worse and worse. What's happening is she's dying. God is leaking up all through her body. She's being poisoned from the inside. It's sepsis and peritonitis. She tries to convince her parents, and they don't believe her. They're just like, Well, the doctor said you were going to feel bad. The story has a lot of beats that were totally memorable. And then I was just like, Do you ever want to talk to that and tell us story on the radio? And she's like, What do I get out of that?

And nobody ever asked me that question. It's like, Why would I do that? What do I get out of that? And she said, Look, I grew up in New Zealand, and I spent my whole life before I came to America as the girl who got bit by the shark. The very last thing I want is to now all these people I know in America for whom I'm passing as a normal adult to know I had this dramatic thing You know what I mean, that happened to me. And I don't want to be the girl who got bit by the shark for the rest of my life. That's totally reasonable. She's like, What do I possibly get out of that? And I really had to think about, What does she get out of this to tell this story on the radio? And the only thing I came up with was when people hear story that they can connect to, it gives you a feeling. This is so corny. Now I've had two cocktails and I'm a little drunk. For a Olympic form, though. No, but I'm saying it just gives you a feeling of like, Oh, my God, that could be me I see myself in you.

You just feel a sense of corny human connection. I said to her, This does nothing for you. You're giving a gift to all these people who are going to hear the story. That's it. That's all this is. You can do that or not do that.

Wait, no. What I remember, I remember talking about when you were trying. You did say all that, but then as part of that pitch, you either said, And it makes the world feel bigger or it makes the world feel smaller. I don't know which one's better. But do you remember which one you said?

I don't remember. I have to look back at that email. I mean, either way, it's saying the same feeling. It's saying it makes us feel like we're like each other. People wrote in after that story and were like, It It made me feel like I fainted while driving my car. That was actually the only thing we've ever broadcast where actually three people wrote to us and fainted during the story because it was so intense. I didn't realize that that was a thing that could happen.

Then the kicker was, and the fact checking process, a day before air, we discovered that it might not have been a shark, but some toothy seal. It wasn't a seal.

It was something else.

Maybe I'm thinking of a rest of development.

It wasn't-We couldn't know it was a shark. Well, because of the tooth pattern, when we showed the photograph, we had to confirm that it was a shark, and we showed him to an expert. We can't totally confirm it. It wasn't a seal. It was like a mackereau or something. It was some of their face.

Nobody fates over that.

No, it's a mackereau, this big. No, it totally.

She almost died.

Can I just say she did almost die?

No, of course.

I'm sorry. The important thing is she actually went for your email when you said you get nothing out of this. It's a gift, and she went for it.

I I don't necessarily think that's why she went for it. I'd have to ask her if that's why she said yes.

Brian here. We have to take a quick break for some sponsors. But also, while I have you, I want to encourage you to sign up for our Question Everything newsletter for behind-the-scene stuff from these episodes and more. We'll also link to the video version of this episode there, so you can actually see my bartending skills. You can subscribe at kCRW. Com/questioneverything. We're back to our experiment, Drinks for Five. We're invited four journalists to drink and talk shop. We have this American life host, Ira Glass, political reporters, Asted Herndon and Zoe Chase, and Pulitzer-winning author, Jonathan Eig. We pick back up with Jonathan.

Do you get to ask for money a lot for interviews? Yeah. All the time, right? Yeah.

Wait, you do?

That seems normal. You're asking people to give you an hour or two of your time.

That's understandable.

It doesn't serve them. It's all for you. It seems normal to me, but I just didn't know something that everyone was being asked all the time for.

Not all the time, but often.

But do you explain why you don't?

Yeah, but usually if they're asking that, then they're really distant from journalism as a process, largely. That's just a signal I'll take you through what we're going to try to do here.

What do you say when they ask, Am I going to get paid? No. But what do you say for the reason? What's the reason?

Well, I feel like we don't pay people.

Yeah, but that's not a That's not a reason. That's not a reason because it's not satisfying. I've tried that. You can't explain the ethics to them because they're not- I've tried the idealistic version where I said, Wait, what you say, No, there's an idea that if I'm paying you, you just say anything I want because I'm paying you, so that's why we don't pay you. But I think their ethical argument and response is actually stronger because what they say is, Well, is your story going to be better with me in it? And are you going to sell more copies of the book if the book's better because I'm in it? So you're going to make more money. If I'm in your book, why How did I get a slice of that? I said, Because I don't pay. Because I don't pay for interviews. They're like, No, there's no good answer with that response.

Because still, my experience has been, their feeling is you're going to have success. You're going to have monetary success. It's because of what I'm doing for you. It's true.

But they're right.

That's so true. They are right.

That's so true that a lot of times I'm just like, I'm so sorry. It just doesn't work that way. I'm just going to ask you it, but you don't have to answer. But when they say that in the Muhammad Ali book, because it's boxing and because Everybody got ripped off in the boxing world.

They all wanted to be paid. Almost every single person I interviewed wanted to be paid, and it was really hard. I didn't pay anybody, but I cut a few corners here and there, I suppose.

Which means what? You took them out to dinner?

Took them out to dinner or I bought Ali's brother's paintings. He had a room full of paintings. You want to buy one of my paintings? Yeah, I bought one of his paintings.

I guess I've never been that persuaded by, I'm paying you so you're going to say something untrue or embellish something. I guess that's maybe what underlies the worry, partly. I agree. It's complicated.

It's really complicated. We know it's transactional, and we know we're doing things to try to get people to talk to us. Sometimes telling them that the shark bite story is a gift to the world is enough, but oftentimes, you all have to buy them dinner or buy a painting off of their wall. It feels a little dirty. One of Ali's wives said to me, Well, the last guy who interviewed me gave me 6,000 bucks. That makes it harder.

I feel like it's hard when people think that there's going to be a change in the world. It's like, Oh, I'm going to get my cause out, and this is good for my cause. I think that maybe they're coming into it with an expectation that won't be met. I try to be clear because I'm here to do a story. My goal is mostly providing an insight, but also entertaining, because I feel like sometimes we enter into the interview and they don't totally... They still think it's It's going to be good for their cause.

I'm thinking about a time. One time I wrote this story about this guy in Saint Cloud, Minnesota, and this group of people who were advocating for their town to change the rules to bring in no more Somali immigrants.

No more refugee resettlement.

No more refugee resettlement. I hung out with this group that was the leading group of kick all the immigrants out of our town. I spent this two days with this guy. He would sit at Culver's every morning and basically draw up the plants and send out all these Islamophobic propaganda, blah, blah, blah, blah. He was saying really wild stuff. He was saying that they don't deserve to be in this country. It was stuff about how he was taking an active role. He was a leading organizer. And then this, he brought me to their weekly meeting where they talk about how much they hate immigrants and how they're going to try to kick them out. I remember the day before it came out, I had talked to the mayor for another thing, but I called the mayor back and I was like, I think that's going to be a thing, just for a heads up.

Oh, that's interesting.

I was just like, I don't want you to feel like... But I can tell from the openness of these people, this is going to hit hard. Just, warn it. I do this story that he agrees to sit down for that he has this picture of, runs on the front page. Of course, massive blowback. I got this letter from a family member, actually, after being like, Do you consider what this does to us? Did you consider what this impact would be on our family? And I remember saying and writing back, I understand that concern, but I walked him through this process. He told me all this stuff on record. I didn't characterize. I intentionally left it show, not tell. And I don't think that was a satisfying answer to her. I thought about it for a little bit, but I don't think that's our role.

It's not your role to think about the blowback on that person's family.

I don't really think, generally. I think I have to be more aware to tell you about the process because that blowback can be more intense these days. I think I take more of a proactive role in terms of calling people back, telling them what's going to be in, that type of thing. But standing in front of that blowback or writing in a way to make it not happen, I'm not sure that's my role. Well, I have theories as to why sometimes folks misunderestimate it, but I try to make sure from my perspective, I'm being proactive, and I'm trying to walk you through it, and I'm not trying to be overly used the worst parts and stories. The times is often pulling me back from, You've already made the point, you don't need this quote, too. I think that's a good instinct to be like, not every version of the thing that they said has to be.

It's so interesting. I don't think all reporters agree. I agree with you. But it reminds me of an experience I had with S-Town. I interviewed this guy who was a white supremacist who said a bunch of white supremacist stuff, racial epithets. We put some of them in the story. I remember we sent that episode with a few others to a few reviewers beforehand to listen. Some of the feedback we got from people at major publications was like, Aren't you worried about the blowback that guy is going to get for saying these things? Does he understand he's on the radio or going to be in a podcast? Concern for him, having shared that stuff, exactly what you're talking about. Anyway, the show came out. That guy's name was Buba. Facebook messaged me. He was like, Brian, call me. I was like, Okay, all right, here it is. I call him and he goes, I loved the fucking story. I listened to it twice. He was like, You captured my views perfectly. I get that experience, too.

Sometimes we infantilize folks about their own views. Look, he believes these things. He believes what he's saying. It's an earnest belief.

I think as long as you're not leading them into saying things that you know are going to be sensational, as long as you're accurately portraying. But we've all been in that boat where you know people are saying stuff where they're going to get in trouble for it, maybe they're going to get fired for it, and you're letting them go on, and you're going to put it on the air or put it in print. You know It's going to have some damage.

It's telling that it's the family member who reached out to you and not him. He stood by what he believed.

Yeah, as much as I know. In that same story, someone got fired because this woman said she was this anti-immigration. She said, It's not like they're coming from Sweden. That was the quote that got her suspended and later from her organization. I wasn't trying to be there to get you to say the most crass version, but I do want you to say the most clear version. And so oftentimes, I feel like in my experience, I think particularly because of blackness and a couple of other things, people will slight thread, and I have to not go there initially. I always let the first five versions of it go. I'm here for the clear one. And I have to your point, it's not like you're not itching for you to say a slur, but I don't want them overly sanitized because they're having their, I'm talking a black person thing. And so I usually have to wait till I feel like... That lady didn't say that initially. She basically said it in the third time of saying the same thing. I oftentimes ignore the first couple. So it's not a huge deal. I didn't freak out about the first time you mentioned race.

I didn't freak out about the first time you talked about immigrants or whatever. And I'll come back to it later. You'll probably get a little closer. But once she says the sweet and thing, I don't need to say, What do you mean? I know what you mean. So I'm like, Okay, thank you. We can move on.

I remember a really good story along these lines. When I was a brand new reporter, first job in New Orleans, I was assigned to the Gretna Bureau, and it was a public housing project in Gretna, the Fisher, public housing project. And there were these two white cops that were assigned to Patrol Fisher, and they'd been assigned to it for years. They were being reassigned, and Fisher wasn't going to have its own dedicated police officers anymore. And the department gave me permission to ride with these guys for the last week that they were actually on duty. They decided to show off for me how connected they were, how badass they were. They did all this really terrible stuff, just really harassing people. Really terrible. They knew there was a reporter and a photographer in the back seat of their police car while they were doing all this, right? And they just were really showing off. They arrested this one guy, a white guy who came in to buy drugs. And the guy says, Oh, please, before... My kid's Christmas presents are in the trunk. Would you please just lock up the car before you take me in?

And they go, Sure, we'll lock up your car. And they go back and they say, So your Christmas presents are all in the trunk? Okay, we're locking your car. And they drive them around the block and come back in two minutes in the cars, completely. It's actually up on cinder blocks. It's just a couple of minutes. It was just terrible, the stuff they did. All with a reporter and a photographer in the back seat of the car. The story ran the next Sunday, and they both got suspended. Then the following week, one of the cops was at the zoo with his kids, and another kid was the kid fell into the rhino pen, and this cop jumped in and rescued the kid from the rhino pen, and he got a medal, and he got reinstated.

The other cop threw that kid in the rhino pen.

Oh, my God. That's the perfect ending to the story. Oh, yeah. That was all true except for the part your part's better. See, that's the part. That's perfect. Wow.

That is amazing. Beautiful.

My friends, for the next few years, I couldn't get a ticket in Greatn. These guys, they still loved the story. Even though they got suspended, they loved the story.

Oh, they did?

They loved it. Oh, I like that. It was all true. And it made them look like cowboys.

When I think about where journalism is and where it fails, which I'm only thinking about because I know you have a podcast to make about this thing.

Which will solve the problem, right?

Wait, you really never think about it?

No, I do think about it. But I don't know, thinking about like, Oh, wait, we're going to talk about journalism. I feel like, Oh, everybody thinks about that more than I do. But when I think about where things are failing, I feel like there's nobody attempting to give fact-based information to the people who are watching Fox News, to the people I have relatives who are Fox News watchers, and people you meet in a mega crowd, and the people who I met at the Glenn Beck rally years ago. It's just totally just people who are just believing stuff that's not true. But I feel like that's such a profound problem is I feel like nobody in mainstream media is trying to create a product that will pierce through to the people who don't believe mainstream media. I think it's a really interesting project. When you think about who could do it, it's like you would want a Daily Show that's hosted by a right wing-ish comedian, like a Bill Burr. It's just a whole world of those right wing guys. Joe Rogan. If Joe Rogan were a little more close to the facts. You know what I mean?

You wanted somebody who's funny, who you feel like is talking straight in some way.

Do you think it's a personality? First question.

I think it's the only... I mean, as a producer, when I think about it, I think that would be the easiest way to cut through because you need somebody who defines categories so people don't see... You know what I mean? If you had a regular NPR person, a regular Times person, you can just smell it on them. You know what I mean? You need somebody who chemically feels right, and then you might have a chance. And I feel like what's happening is in the war of facts versus non-facts, facts are losing or they're not winning. They're losing ground. I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of people died because they didn't believe factual information about the COVID vaccine. I mean, I feel like, why aren't we always talking about that? There's a death count on this. Does What's going on? I'm just going on. It's just going on. I feel like, coinier.

Doesn't that mean journalism is failing?

Yeah.

What do you think about Ira's characterizing the problem? In terms of people not having access to facts?

In my experience, the massive step back from just fact-based conversation, some of that's been intentional. I think the people around me who aren't in media, they actually don't care if it's true or not anymore, or less.

Who doesn't care?

I'm saying if I think about my group chat for a moment, there was a point four years ago where I could be like, That's from a fake site, and that response will be heard because there was a desire for information. Now they're like, Who cares? Stop bringing down the vibes. I just think there's a bigger step back from even the desire for fact and truth. Even making the case of this being misinformation is now, I think, something that doesn't have the same weight against it. Partially because the institutions that were supposed to be the guardians of trust in media or whatever, I think a lot of people feel have blown that.

That's interesting. You think there's not... One of my favorite lines of writing ever is in one of your stories, Zoe, about Minnesota, where you're talking about the roadshow, the anti-Muslim That was going on in the US. I think that came in the same cloud. I think you say in there something to the effect, These people have a desire for information, and this feels like information, even though it's actually probably not. I've always held on to that, that that is an underlying truth about people that people do want to feel informed. There is a desire for information, but you're saying maybe that's changed?

I think it's an institutional trust deficit. Trump supporters are the clearest example. And to be honest, the left wing part is overrated, too. Yeah, right. What do you mean? The amount that if we put non-conservatives are all in this agreement on what facts are is not true either. I think we focus on Trump supporters. But the thing that taught me about trust was not Trump supporters, was crime reporting in Boston neighborhoods, where they actually never shown up before that murder, before that fire, all of those things. And I feel like the lack of trust in those communities has been really real, and it's part of this, too, too. My New York Times skepticism does not only come from Conservatives. Yeah. Increasingly now.

Ira, how do you feel about the change, how things have changed since you started?

In journalism? In what? Yeah.

You started at NPR in an idealistic time where it was this new thing trying to do something new. You then started something new in a very idealistic sense.

I don't know if my answer to this is so interesting. I came into journalism feeling like, Oh, if you lay out a case with information that's true, you could persuade people and that would change something. I feel like what I've seen is that's not true. I just want to believe that people can understand each other. You know what I mean? I think that if you make stories for a living, I don't know, part of the reason why you do it is because it's really interesting to go out in the world and talk to people, and it just makes everything seem bigger to discover stuff that you didn't know and connect to people that way.Or.

Smaller, either way.Or smaller.

Exactly. I see it. But they mean the same thing. But I'm getting to me like, part of it is that, and it's just interesting to be out in the world and then to try to say, Here's what it seems to be. That act is enjoyable.

But wait, do you think there's something to Ira's idea or not?

I think it runs up against the same barriers. I don't think the problem is that we're not making it. Maybe some people feel like that.

But it's the delivery. I feel like it's the delivery. I think you're talking about the delivery.

No, I feel like every day there's incredible reporting giving fact-based accounts of how to see the world. The problem isn't that that doesn't exist. The problem is that half the population has no interest in that at all, maybe more. And And we live in this country that's so divided, and what can you possibly do? And that's why I think about what could the product be? That's the way I think about a problem. It's like, how would I do it as a radio producer? And I feel like that's the one tiny opening that I see is you just need somebody with enough charisma that they would carry people over the line. And it wouldn't be a traditional journalist.

To me, this is smaller. I have trouble what you do, Ira, where you think about, what can we do? Because there's a problem. How could we fix it? I'm so focused on thinking about the ways that we've screwed up, the reasons that people don't trust rather than, is there a way back from it? Which means what for you? What would you like? One example would be COVID. I get really stuck on how completely just the response was. You know that schools were closed and kids were taken out of schools and people just felt not listened to, and there wasn't the right evidence to do that. And there was such a break because people kept their kids out of school, and now they're so mad. And I get caught up in just frustration with that, where I'm like, the trust was already so thin. And then we had this COVID experience, and there was no massive, I don't know what it would be, but reckoning.

Let's take an issue that's not political, like cell phones. This book, this new book, Anxiety Nation, I think it's called. I think people have really been discussing that, and I think it's been really informing people and really change the world. I don't know. Julie Jargon at the Wall Street Journal had a story last week about a teacher who quit his job at the age of 35 because he couldn't get his kids to put down their cell phones. It just drove him to the point where he couldn't... He lost his passion for his work anymore. This is a teacher who... It was just like a thousand-word article. This is the best newspaper that I love because she probably wrote this story in two days. This is a teacher who really tried. He took his kids on hikes and he offered them incentives on their grades if they put down their phones. He taught them about meditation. He gave it his best shot and he lost to the cell phone. He said it was like they were addicted to the bottle. They just couldn't... If he tried to take it out of their hands, they wouldn't let go of it.

That story, I think, is the thing that I think that we write because... That gives hope. Because those kinds of stories, we write those stories because we… I'm sure Julie Jorgan wrote that story because she thought it's one little blow that she can strike, just like this book is striking a bigger blow. Against something I think we all agree is a problem, our phone addictions, right?

Yeah, I mean, I think, and maybe this is a consequence of political reporting only in post-Trump, but I think that for me, Changing minds has never been a big priority. For me, it's been like, I want an honest accounting of this time. But I remember the night of the 2016 election, thinking as a local reporter covering crime at the globe, I felt like as a ingester of that election, I was not prepared to understand the country in that way. And I remember that being the thing that most upset me about media. It wasn't like My anger wasn't like a specific side or whatever. But I'm saying as a journalist, I felt like the people following that election or writing about that election were tasked with helping me understand the state of America via that election. That in the Democratic primary, the Republican primary, and the general election did not prepare me to do that. So I feel like that feeling has bottled up in me as a try to make sense of it for other people so that they don't feel like that. But it's not as if that means- Just actually reflect reality. Yeah.

Just actually let people know what is around them and what this is about and why. And I think that requires some accountability or whatever, but that's not mind-changing. No. And that's not like... So I don't feel like I'm failing if I don't change minds.

But I'm surprised. Were you that surprised in 2016?

It wasn't my job, to be honest. I only knew via what I was reading in political journalism. But if I was reading the things in front of me and trusting the people who I had trusted to talk through elections, they had let me down for a year and a half.

Yeah.

And so that feeling was really clear to me. And so I remember when the globe didn't have a plan, and I think that said this, but a lot of people didn't for Trump to win. And so I ended up getting moved that next morning as the young 22, three-year-old who had no life and kids to like, Oh, do you want to go in DC and help us out for a while? And I was like, Oh, I don't know. I feel really weird about journalism right now. I said this really millennial answer about like, I don't know if I want to I remember the globe editor saying, You have complained too much about how people do this to not try to do it. I really held on to that as like, Okay, maybe that's my goal for the next time, is not to change minds or impact in a traditional journalism way, but just stop more people from having the same feeling I felt, which is like, Wait, I thought, how was I not prepared for this?

Yeah, I know. I feel you talking about journalism's role being to reflect reality or just document that's the best we can do. I believe that for a long time, and I've been in this zone of just feeling like it doesn't feel like enough. That's the spirit of this. It's just like there's something... That felt like enough for so long and that that was our role and our purpose. There's something about it that I just hit a point where it feels insufficient.

But honestly, it's so hard to just do that. I'm not sure what the Even doing that well is just so hard. When you said that, the thing it made me think of is years ago, I had this conversation with this guy named John Madison, who was the lead political reporter that ran Daily Mail when Nelson Mandel was still in prison and Steve Biko and the whole Apartheid movement when it seemed hopeless. The Randaling Mail was one free newspaper, the one uncensored newspaper in South Africa, and even they would get fucked with by the government now and then. And he said that it was a little bit like working in a bunker where you were under siege, right? And they felt like, We're going to go out there and we're going to just document what's really happening. And he said the mentality in the newsroom and the thing that they said to each other was, We might get shut down. This may go nowhere. But someday, when people look back on this moment, we want to have captured it accurately so nobody can say, This didn't happen.

Yeah, 100 That's how I feel.

It's funny because when John said it, I thought, It's such a defensive position. It's all is lost. We're barely holding on by our fingernails. And so the one thing that's left is, Let's just please just write this down. Make a record of it. Make a record of it. I just want the truth to exist. It's simultaneously so purely idealistic. But it's also a bunch of monks in the last monastic scary, who know how to write being surrounded by people who are about to destroy them or something. I don't know. There's something about this.

I don't know if it's the fetus or idealistic. I think it's a little bit of both. But I also believe in journalism, and I didn't go work for a political organization or a candidate or whatever like that. And so I definitely think it's not fully defeated.

Asted Herndon. He hosts the podcast The Run-up from the New York Times. You could hear Ira Glass and Zoe Chase on this American life. And Jonathan Ike's latest book is called King: A Life. Thanks for listening to Question Everything. Again, you can check out this whole episode and every episode of this show on YouTube. You can also follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you do your listening. On our next episode, Two Thursdays from Now, I follow this thread that came up in this discussion over drinks of how journalists are dealing with the decimation of trust in our work. I visit one of the most accomplished investigative reporters of our time who decided just this year that the struggle to get people to hear and accept facts is too challenging right now, that just documenting what's happening, like monks, isn't going to cut it. And so he made the remarkable choice to quit journalism altogether.

He started feeling me like my job was not adequate to our times.

That's coming on September 26th. Question Everything is a production of Placement Theory and KCRW. Find us on Instagram at Placement Theory and at KCRW. I'm Brian H. Reid. Thanks to the wine store Bibber & Bell in Brooklyn, New York, our gracious hosts for the recording of today's episode. It was produced by our executive producer, Robin Simeon, and our production intern, Emily Maltère. The episode was edited by Lisa Pollack and me. Additional production helped by our show producer, Zack St. Louis. Sound design by Brenda Baker. Music by Matt McGinnly. Audio engineering by Gabe Kroga. Film production by Ambrose Ang and the team at Stone & Spade. Fact Checking by Kaylyn Lynch. Our partners at KCRW include Arnie Seiphol, Gina Delvack, Tajal Ajmera, and Jennifer Faro. Special thanks to Chris Olessevich, Chuck Salter, Kalina Yang, and Cassandra Ceto, and Matt Klein, and O'Melvany. Speaking of facts, obviously, drinking and talking off the cuff doesn't always result in the most precise utterances. There are a few things to clarify and correct after our fact checker went through this. In a stead story about the anti-immigrant group in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. The quote was, These people aren't coming from Norway, not Sweden.

The book John mentioned about adolescent cell phone addiction by Jonathan Hyte is called The Anxious Generation. We have some other clarifications in the show notes. We'll be back with a new episode of Question Everything on Thursday, the 26th.