I don't know how to hold all the

feelings, even all the thoughts I should

have in a day right now. The emergency

is here and the kids need help with

their homework. I have friends who have

fallen terribly ill and others who have

just seen their test results come back

clear. I spend days covering efforts to

rip health care from people and torch

the global economy. And then I'm

supposed to go to a birthday party. I

look down at my phone at smoldering

ruins in Ukraine and Gaza and Sudan. And

then I look up into a spring

day. I know on some level something like

this is always true. And we are just

more or less alive to it at different

times. I guess I'm feeling more alive to

it right now, more overwhelmed by it

right now. More curious about how to

keep myself open to it all right now.

And then I ran into this unusually

beautiful book that's all about this

experience. It's called Lost and Found.

It's by Katherine Schultz, a writer at

The New Yorker. And it's structured

around a loss that of her

father, around a finding, that of

finding and falling in love with her

partner. And then it's this really

moving meditation on the way it's all

connected. The way that we quote live

with both at once, with many things at

once, everything connected to its

opposite. Everything connected to

everything. It seemed worth a

conversation.

Catherine Schultz, welcome to the show.

I'm delighted to be here. Thanks so

much. I want to start by having you tell

me a bit about your father. Where did he

come from?

What a wonderful question to begin with

because it has these kind of two

veillances. The practical matter of

where he came from and the kind of

mystifying question of where any human

being and all their wonderful

specificity comes from. Um, in the case

of my father, both answers are a little

complicated. Um, his mother had uh fled

the the stettle in Poland when it was

clear that the shadow of the Second

World War was kind of creeping ever

further across Poland. She came from a

family of 12. They had the resources to

get one of them to safety and they chose

their youngest daughter who was my

grandmother. Uh, and indeed her parents

and most of her siblings subsequently

perished in Awitz. So she gets herself

to Tel Aviv. My father is born. Uh and

then at a very young age he was sent

away from his mother. He was he was sent

to live on a kabutz and spent a few

years alone there. Uh and then his

father vanishes or dies. We don't know.

My grandmother remaries. And uh after

the war uh their family in a truly

unusual trajectory uh when when half of

global jewelry uh in its terrible

decimated and and refugee status is is

trying to get to the Holy Land. Um my

father and his family flee Tel Aviv and

go of all places in the world to

Germany. So my father left Tel Aviv at

about 7 uh spent from 7 to 12 in Germany

and then uh finally the family obtained

uh refugee visas and wound up in Detroit

which is uh where he then spent his

teenage years. You have a a beautiful

passage about your father being on the

boat coming to

America and trying to conceive of how

much turmoil and loss he had already

experienced.

Just tell me a bit about how much

dislocation he'd seen before the age of

12. Just just shocking amounts really. I

mean, my father was born in 1941, so all

around him what should have been whole

vast branches of family trees are are

just being heuned off viciously and and

whole communities are being leveled and

destroyed. So there was this kind of

background dislocation attendant upon

every Jew born in in in that era. Um but

then quite specifically, you know, he

was born essentially a stranger in a

strange land in 1948 when my father's

family left Israel or I should say left

Palestine. It was still Palestine. Um it

was effectively a war zone and uh indeed

an uncle who was traveling with them in

the caravan uh to Hifa to to leave at

the port there uh was shot and killed in

the car with my father in the car in the

backseat when it happened. Uh there

there was a kind of

omnipresent violence and insecurity that

characterized his young life that uh is

is just shocking for me to contemplate

in part because he then dedicated his

adult life to providing for his children

the stability he just

absolutely did not have growing up. I I

read stories like this and I've been

reading Melting Point, which is a a

different sort of very interesting

kaleidoscopic history of uh this era for

for Jewish people. But I was also

reading Wolf Hall where everybody's

endlessly dying of

tuberculosis. I think of the modesty of

the things I try to protect my children

from now, right? The the things that

upset me if it happens to them. And then

what you know every generation of

humanity including many people alive

today right the the the extremism of the

experience. Mhm.

And it's hard to it's hard to imagine

how you go through

that and just keep going and yet people

did and

do. So this is a person who I mean he's

watched his uncle get murdered in the

car next to him. What kind of person

does he become? My father became the

kind of person who you would never guess

the quantity of tragedy that lay in his

past. Uh you would never guess that that

his whole family had been decimated by

the Holocaust that he had all of this

grief and loss and violence at at every

stage of his life. Um my father was

brilliant. He was joyful. He was

incredibly

uh witty. He was shockingly brilliant.

and my dad spoke uh I think eight

languages. Um but basically English was

the last of his many languages. And um I

I like to think I'm a reasonably

articulate person and my father could

talk me under the table. I mean he just

was beautifully gifted with languages

and I I guess fundamentally generous of

spirit. You know, his response to the

privations of his life uh were to live

as generous a life as he could, both

with material means but also with his

joy, with his intellect, with his

energy, uh his his happiness lay in

sharing it with the world. Do you

understand his temperament as an act of

denial or an act of acceptance?

What an interesting question. I've never

been asked it before.

Uh, I suppose I understand his

temperament mostly as a great gift. Um,

and I I'm not trying to deny my father

credit he deserves. I I know my father

made a great many decisions about the

kind of life he wanted to live and the

kind of man he wanted to be, including

in ways that changed over the course of

my life. I saw him actively become a

more patient man. Uh, patience did not

naturally run strong in him, nor in me

for that matter. But but I think in some

fundamental way I don't think my father

was ever in denial about the experiences

that shaped him. He didn't speak about

them in great detail until I was myself

an adult. Um but he certainly

never pretended away the past.

Uh and he didn't conversely speak of

himself as you know who he was because

he had been forged in the flames of

disaster or whatever. I don't think he

valorized suffering as as the thing that

made him who he was. Now, I certainly

think that um he had a very acute sense

of what it had meant to be

uh a Jew in the world in the middle of

last century. An acute sense of what it

meant to be a refugee in this country. I

mean, look, my father had two brothers

and um one of them was just a year

younger than him and in for all intents

and purposes shaped by identical forces

and could not have been a more different

human being. So there there is something

underlying uh something way deep down

below the choices we make or our act of

will in the world that is inextricable

from who we become.

I always wonder when I think about what

my grandparents did not complain much

about and what I do complain about and

what the generations younger than me

seem to complain about and and

our cultural attitude towards trauma and

self-revelation and

selfwork and I'm more of that culture

than of the opposite but I don't look

around and think we're happier. I think

that's absolutely right and it makes me

wonder are we doing the right

thing in our more

excavatory culture or was there wisdom

we have lost in the not that people

should live in denial but the balance

of how how much we go in and how much we

simply move forward. Sure. and and what

is resolving versus what is dwelling

upon and what aspects of our life we

choose to emphasize versus downplay. You

know, there was this sort of

um greatest generation stoicism, right?

And and this valorization of of never

speaking about suffering. And I don't

know that um that was a perfect

solution, right? I mean, my father

wasn't a brilliant character, but his

mother, my grandmother,

was a a deeply,

deeply bitter, unhappy, volatile woman.

And heaven knows she came by those

qualities honestly, right? I mean, her

life had been

unrelentingly traumatic and tragic in

ways I cannot fathom

surviving. She refused to talk about it.

I tried at various occasions. So did

many other people close to her. And I

don't know that

Her life was improved by never

confronting the vast sources of pain

within it. At least never in any way

visible to any of the rest of us. Right?

Life is full of suffering. It's unevenly

distributed in tragic ways. I would

never dispute that. But even the best

and luckiest and most privileged life

has a unfortunate share of suffering in

it.

And there are choices to be made about

how much do we focus on it, how much do

we dwell on it, how much do we speak of

it, how do we speak of it, and and how

much do we pay attention to our own

suffering versus the suffering of of

others. I think you're you're driving at

something a little deeper than everyday

complaining, which is a fundamental

question about do we regard ourselves

as strong and this is such an overused

word right now, but resilient

and able

to overcome?

Or do we and and do we dwell on what is

going well or on what we hope to do on

our aspirations on our motives um on our

goals or or do we um get excessively

mired in what has been done to us or

ways that we've been wronged. And I I

don't pretend to know the answer and I'm

not suggesting we shouldn't speak about

uh trauma and upset. I think it was a

great revolution in our culture that

that people have permission to do so.

But um I share the sense that something

was slightly lost in these generations

that yeah I mean my father spent decades

not really saying altogether that much

about a both a fascinating and and also

unquestionably disruptive and upsetting

and traumatic childhood. I guess I'm

also driving at something else. What

moved me quite deeply in your

book is its attention to suffering and

loss. And there's something about that I

think is pretty

subtle that there's something

about being open to it versus pushing it

away that feels very deep. Neither of

those are denial. And you spend a lot of

time in the book on the time you spent

with uh your father in the hospital as

he was passing away. You have this line

about hospitals where you say, and I'm

truncating your quote a bit, but I I I

like this part. In an ICU, you are aware

of the brevity of life and the great

looming precipice of

eternity. Yet at the same time, you're

basically stuck in an airport. And there

there's this sort of coexistence of the

benol and the the profound. What were

those days like for you? This will sound

at odds with the wrenching experience of

grief, but um honestly, they were deadly

dull. I mean, when when nothing is

happening, which is a lot of the time

when you have someone in an ICU with a

kind of mysterious set of failing bodily

systems. Much of your time is spent

doing absolutely nothing. Much of your

time is spent waiting for someone who

has the faintest idea what's going on to

come and talk to you, which inevitably

happens in the 10 minutes you decide

you're finally going to go get a cup of

coffee. Um, so, you know, they felt they

felt long. They felt repetitive. Uh they

of course had this kind of spectre of

fear always on the edges of them because

it's not like I knew my father was dying

the whole time. At some point that

became clear but for a lot of the time

it wasn't clear at all. Um I will say it

also felt and this is so much of what

this book is about. Um you know

sometimes they felt a little bit like a

a gift. It was this bit of time carved

out from the daily grind of I'm at work.

I'm on deadlines, you know, I'm doing

all these predictable things. It was

like, well, no, I am here in this

hospital. Here we are as a family, like

my family of origin together in a room.

And how wonderful, you know, uh and and

so it had moments of

um sweetness. There was a kind of bleak

tedium to it and yet it was always

punctuated by the gift of family. Um and

then of course you know gratitude for

the medical professionals who are trying

to help us and

um outside and around and infusing all

of it this this fear uh which proved

accurate that these were my final days

with my dad.

I visited a friend in in a hospital

recently

and on one level this felt like the

smallest possible reaction but also felt

very true. I just found myself thinking

cuz she'd been there a while like I wish

you could be somewhere more beautiful

for this

um this terrible thing you're going

through that I wish it didn't as you

were hurting and and as you were you

know in this experience that it didn't

have to be here that that feels like a

that feels like its own level of

cruelty.

I think that's often true and I think

many people experience it that way. You

know, this longing people have still

today to die at home, right? And the

resistance to entering various kinds of

care settings. It's not, I don't think,

just stubbornness or or even fear about,

you know, being warehoused in an

institution or no one will come visit

you or this kind of thing. It it is a

real sense that much of what makes life

meaningful is absent from these places.

And there is a kind of cruelty at the

end of life of all times to not be

confronting beauty. I mean, I will never

forget, I don't know how much of it he

could take in, but I'll never forget

turning on Beethoven's ninth symphony in

my father's hospital room because we

felt like he loved music and uh he loved

classical music and um the the urge to

fill this incredibly sterile space with

something awe inspiring and overwhelming

in its beauty was overwhelming within us

in that moment. And you know, we've

recited in poetry for the same reason.

And it's it's true. You on the one hand,

look, I want to be incredibly clear. I'm

profoundly grateful to the medical team

who took care of my father at that

moment and many others. Uh, and I don't

mean to suggest there's not a reason

these places are the way they are. And

and that acts of incredible courage and

grace and beauty don't happen there.

They do every single day. But when you

are there every single day for a long

period of time, you also feel their kind

of

um emotional thinness. you know, the the

the life is so abundant. We'll talk

about abundance, I hope, at some point

here, but life is is so so rich and

wonderful and varied and not abundant as

we mean it on my podcast, to be honest.

Well, sure, but so much of that is is

forcibly kept at bay in a hospital. And

you're right, one wants one wants more

for the sick and the dying.

I'd like to ask you to read a passage.

It's one of my favorite in your book. Um

it's on page six.

Sure. For a while after my father died,

I could not stop seeing the world as it

really is, marked everywhere by the

evidence of past losses and the

imminence of future ones. This was not

because his death was a tragedy. My

father died peacefully at 74, tended

throughout his final weeks by those he

loved most. It was because his death was

not a tragedy. What shocked me was that

something so sad could be the normal,

necessary way of things. In its

aftermath, each individual life seemed

to contain too much heartbreak for its

fleeting

duration. History, which I had always

loved, even in its silences and

mysteries, suddenly seemed like little

more than a record of loss on an epic

scale, especially where it could offer

no record at all. The world itself

seemed ephemeral. Glaciers and species

and ecosystems vanishing. The pace of

change as swift as in a time lapse. As

if those of us alive today had been been

permitted to see it from the harrowing

perspective of

eternity. Everything felt fragile.

Everything felt vulnerable. The idea of

loss pressed in all around me like a

hidden order to existence that emerged

only in the presence of grief. I think

it's the lines that begin and end that

that you could not stop seeing the world

as it really is. That there is this

hidden order to existence that emerges

only in the presence of grief which

stopped me a bit short which feel true

which get a bit to our conversation

earlier about denial. Tell me about that

sense of this is a a a more honest

perspective of the world.

It's so funny. Is it a more honest

perspective of the world? Um it is

certainly accurate by many lights. I

mean loss is omnipresent. Uh we will

die. The people we love will die. The

things we build uh in the grand scheme

of things even in the medium scheme of

things are are relatively transient and

fleeting.

And there are times in life when the

omnipresence and the scale of this loss

do become profoundly visible to us, at

least to me. I think a lot about scale,

right? And and if you dwell on the scale

of the world, let alone the scale of the

cosmos. Our lives are stunningly short.

Uh they seem or can seem stunningly

insignificant. and and this sense that

everything around us is terrifyingly

fragile uh is is accurate, right? I

mean, it's it's you can't look at the

grand sweep of things and not uh and not

realize how tenuous our our foothold in

this world is and and how quickly we

will be not merely lost but forgotten.

You know, I I had this arresting moment

when I realized, you know, I can barely

tell you my greatgrandparents names. I

mean, that is three generations, right?

That is the blink of an eye. Uh but but

so it goes, right? And and um everything

we love, everyone we love. We are going

to have to confront just the devastating

loss of literally all of them. That's

the that's the bleak version, you know,

and it's real. I don't think it's the

whole story. there are ways to try to

hold the bif focal vision of of that

kind of loss and why our lives are

nonetheless not insignificant or at

least not meaningless. Uh but but

certainly you know in hard moments and I

I think for people who struggle with

depression or or who have a truly unfair

burden of grief in their lives um it it

can seem like the only truth about

existence. you you call it bleak and

there's a dimension of it where it is

very bleak and very

frightening and then also that the

people I know

who abide in

it often I don't want to say they don't

find it bleak but that they they they

also describe a certain beauty that

comes from the noticing of it. Um a

friend of mine who lost his mother not

long

ago always tells me with some real

sadness that time doesn't heal wounds.

it makes just everything

fade. And that um I've sort of watched

him grieve the diminishment of his

grief and that there was a sort of a

beauty in seeing things as they more

really were. The the sort of

interconnection of life, the fragility

of

it. I think one reason we turn away from

these things is it feels uh annihilating

to look at them. But then the people I

know who are looking at them, there's a

a kind of connection to something very

profound that seems to abide there as

well. Oh, no question about it. I mean,

grief is is just an amazing lens. I

mean, its capacity for sharp focus is

incredible. And uh it is true that there

were moments in the depths of grieving

or preparing to grieve my father that

the world had never seemed so beautiful

to me or or so much like a gift. And you

know there there's a reason we honor

death so much and and why so many

generations of philosophers have

regarded studying death as as the key to

figuring out how to live a good life.

The the incredible thing about death is

it forces you to recognize that you are

alive, right? And and that that is um

not a permanent condition, right? We we

have we have this moment and no other

known or given moments uh to to relish

that fact and to savor it and to be

grateful for it. And it is true. I write

a lot towards the end of this book about

attention and the gift of attention. And

I do think um you know some kinds of of

grief can turn us inward and away from

the world and and obliterate attention

in in troubling ways. But I think very

often grief and the awareness of of the

inevitability of death uh truly does

heighten our sense of attention and our

capacity to look at the world with

gratitude and look at it with

admiration. And um I don't know what

other force could do that. I mean that's

tragic. I I wish there were some

something else. I mean, maybe some, you

know, uh uh illegal drugs I haven't

tried, but otherwise I I I don't know

what else can make us so profoundly in

awe of and grateful for life. It it's a

question about attention that brought me

to this book because my experience of

the last couple of years for me um it's

been particularly acute the last couple

of months and this has been both a

personal and at times a very political

experience.

Is this feeling that to try

to hold the extremes to to give the

thing to give

everything its attention at the same

time the loss and the

horror like the beauty and the elation

also just the normaly you know I'll sit

here for a day and I'll cover

deportations to El Salvador and torture

prisons and then I'll go home you just

have to make

dinner and read books

And I'm sure somebody has the

attentional capacity to hold it, but I

don't feel like I do. Like I I have

never quite felt this sort of like

overwhelm of the the

system and it felt to me something you

were exploring in in this book cuz you

also meet your partner in in a a similar

time.

the it feels like you should be able to

settle on an emotional interpretation of

a

moment that the affect of the story

should be more or less one thing which

of course is not ever true. We're just

sort of more or less alert to it.

Yeah. I mean absolutely to be honest

it's actually the reason I wrote this

book. Um, the moment that I started

thinking seriously about what it was

like to have experienced uh those two um

quite momentous life experiences in

extremely short successions, short

enough that I was still falling in love

while my father was dying. Uh and and

was found myself kind of grappling with

these extraordinarily different emotions

at the same time. Uh that's when I

speaking of attention that's what got my

attention. I thought well this is

interesting right? This actually is the

fundamental nature of life, right? We

are actually always dealing with more

than one thing at once. And um sometimes

they are profoundly contradictory.

Sometimes they're just deeply unrelated

and yet somehow we have to spread our

attention among them. And um we then

sort of just got swept headlong into the

pandemic which was I think for many of

us an experience of living inside a lot

of entirely irreconcilable realities.

simultaneously. You know, it was

like suddenly you were working from home

and that was amazing because you didn't

have a two-hour commute any day every

day and and you got to be around your

kids all the time, but also like oh my

gosh, you were around your kids all the

time and you couldn't get any work done

and it was so amazing to watch them grow

and to have time around them, but also

they made you crazy. And I mean, I just

think everyone or or you know, more

tragically, you know, people around you

were getting sick and and suffering and

in this weird way, your family system

was thriving. It it just everyone I

think was dealing with these profoundly

contradictory experiences. And of course

that was not actually about the

pandemic, right? The pandemic brought

into focus a fundamental feature of

existence which is we are always

inundated by profoundly clashing

realities. And some of the question is

how much attention do we pay to them?

You know, you are in a position right

now where you have to pay attention to

it, right? you're you're covering these

deportations and going home to your

family and you have to live in both of

those realities. But, you know, even in

the most peaceable of

times, the extent to which we are

confronting the world beyond our own

immediate reality is is just a choice,

right? I mean, there's always boundless

suffering. There's always boundless

beauty. And it really is a matter of

where do we look? Um, and it's tough,

right? You you um you both have to do

both at once. and can't do both at once.

And uh the question of what kind of

balance you strike is infinitely

interesting to me. I I read this book

and I wondered about the quality of your

actual

attention. You write and not just here

in your journalism too as if you're able

to tune your attention to to very deep

levels of experiences, but also somehow

to the cosmic and

geological context in which those

experiences are are taking place. You

sort of zoom between time scales very

smoothly. There's a passage you have on

on finding and various forms it takes

that I think is quite beautiful. Do you

mind reading it? I'd be happy to.

Finding like losing is an enormous

category bursting with seemingly

unrelated contents from gold deloons to

God. We can find things like pencils and

couch cushions and things like new

planets and distant solar systems and

things that aren't things at all. Inner

peace, old elementary school classmates,

the solution to a problem.

We can find things that we're never

missing except from our own lives as

when we find a new job or

hole-in-the-wall barbecue joint. And we

can find things so deeply hidden that

almost no one else thought to look for

them as when we find gal cells or

quirks. Do you really experience the

world this way or is that a thing that

happens as a matter of craft and writing

and reflection? I love it when people

ask me questions I've not been asked.

Um, and and that one actually does feel

kind of core to who I am in this

interesting way. I think I experience

the world that way. I mean I I I love

the bigness of the world. I'm profoundly

drawn to questions of scale. I mean

we are we human beings have a very

unique situation which is that we are

finite creatures to the best of my

knowledge finite creatures in an

infinite universe. And and that's kind

of a troubling position to be in and I'm

I'm endlessly interested in it. It has

all kinds of implications in our

day-to-day reality and our in our whole

existence as a species. That is that is

our context. And I think some part of my

brain for whatever reason is always

looking kind of upward and outward. I I

am um I think it's kind of native to my

brain. I don't know how helpful it is in

a dayto-day way for these kinds of

balancing acts you're talking about,

which are endlessly hard. But um for for

good or I I do think that's just kind of

how I look at the world. My most

profoundly peaceful and interested place

is up on top of a mountain where I can

see really far. And that's not just cuz

I happen to love mountains, right?

Although I do. It's I am I am soothed

and intrigued by the experience of the

the longest possible view. Is there an

experience that comes to mind for you

recently where you were looking at

something small and you saw something

big in it or big and you saw something

small in it? Sure. I mean, I'm going to

tell a story that sounds like it can't

possibly be true and I swear it is. Um,

and what you need to know by way of

context for this story is that uh a year

or so ago, my partner and I bought the

house across the street from the farm

where she was born and raised uh and and

where her parents still live. and we've

been gradually renovating it ever since

then and incredibly excited to move in

and to be near family and frankly near

more ch child care. And so we finally

move in and I'm just reveling in this

beautiful new home as we settle into it

and

um then this is only a week ago. My

daughter who's now three and a half, we

have these beautiful fields outside of

our house and she wanders off into the

field and she returns with a stock of

wheat. Says, "Look, mama." And so I'm

thinking, "Oh, she found a stock of

wheat." Fun. You know, children pick up

everything, right? Clovers, coins, you

know, anything muddy, tarantulas,

whatever they can find. So, she hands me

the stock of wheat and I'm just

thinking, "Oh, how sweet. She gets to

live in this beautiful setting where the

outdoors is full of so many wonderful

little things for her to study." And and

she looks at me very seriously and she

says,

"Mama, we should use this wheat to make

bread for people who don't have

any." And you know, it's just one of

those moments as a parent where on the

one hand, you're just so in love with

your child. You think, I mean, who made

this remarkable mind? Like the last

thing I'm sitting there thinking like,

oh, it's it's, you know, it's like she

found a pretty flower or something. and

and there she is apparently thinking

about like the the poor and and

privation and need. So right away my

kind of sense of the scale of what we

were talking about just wildly shifted.

But also to be honest, it's just I I

felt right alongside feeling

overwhelming kind of awe for her. I I

felt so morally indicted. I mean, I am

literally in the middle of, you know,

reveling in my pretty new kitchen and

and then suddenly I'm confronted with um

real hunger in the world, and I'm

thinking, why do I have this beautiful

backsplash? Like, what have I done here?

Right? My my my three-year-old has more

more moral clarity than I do about about

how we should spend our money and our

time and what actually matters in life.

So, yeah, I mean, in a in a wonderful

way.

Um, it I feel like my world is full of

discoveries that seem small and and

blossom out into the enormous or or seem

enormous and then have some kind of

bearing on small practical things like

how to be a family and and how to raise

children and it's often incredibly

humbling and sometimes it's very funny

and sometimes it's very moving and in

that case it was all the above. There's

this way of thinking about these

questions where it really feels like the

goal is to

live in full

awareness of the fragility of life, the

horrors, the happiness. And then it also

feels that if you really did that, how

would you ever get anything done if you

were really fully present in the beauty

of each moment? the ephemererality of,

you know, I go and I play soccer with my

three and my six-year-old most nights

right

now. And on the one hand, I know I am

not enjoying it the way I want to be.

Like, I I know this moment is more

beautiful than the way my tired self is

experiencing it, who's also thinking

about bedtime and, you know, are we

going to be late for dinner? And and so

I want to be more of the the sort of

monk. And then

uh you know you you probably understand

the way that the constant

compartmentalization and filtration of

life is adaptive to moving through it.

Absolutely. I mean I I I think look I

mean even even the monks are not that

monkish right I mean there's there's a

wonderful body of literature about

distraction in you know in um these

spaces that are supposed to be

sanctuaries from from all the pressures

of the outside world and focus the mind

and you know you're meant to just think

purely about God and um if it were easy

we would all be monks and the monks

would be better at being monks. It's

incredibly difficult and

they don't have kids and they don't have

kids, right? Which are appropriately um

I would never say a distraction. They're

they are the essence. They are they are

the thing we are meant to be paying the

most attention to and sometimes that

attention is

um profound and existential and

sometimes it's like you know sweetheart

go put your underwear on. Like that's

just like a lot of parenting is is just

pragmatics, right? Um, I don't know that

we should aspire or I suppose we should

aspire to be in touch with the the the

beauty and and wonderful givenness of

every moment. Um, aspiration does not

actually have to be reality. Like I

think aspiring probably is why 3 and 12%

of the time we have the transcendent

experience of like here I am like curled

up in bed with my daughter reading her a

bedtime story and nothing will ever be

so profoundly sweet as this and and you

you you feel it deep deep inside you and

and you know you will always retain it.

Um and the other 97% of the time you

won't and

that's probably okay. You know, the the

amazing thing about these moments of awe

at the universe, at life, at what we

have is they are so potent, you don't

actually need that many of them. Uh, so

I don't think you can give up the goal

of trying to have more of them or

recognize them. Um, but I don't think we

need that many of them to kind of

sustain our souls. So, since finishing

the writing of the book, you've had two

children. That's right.

Um, so much of the book is about being

found. What have you found? Oh my gosh.

I mean, um, everything in the most

wonderful ways. Uh, and I found a

particular hair tie that's got yellow

daisies on it that my daughter loves

that vanished for a month and she's

thrilled to, you know, come across it

again. And I have found resources of

meaning and patience I had no idea

existed prior to this. I mean it it it

is the whole scale of discovery. Um I

think one thing I've found um well first

of all just as like a basic reflection

on parenting um I've never been so

grateful for anything in my life. I was

a little bit older when our first

daughter was born and to be honest I had

kind of given up

on I I don't want to say given up. I had

resigned myself to the possibility that

I might never have children of my own

and had sort of made a deep piece of the

world is full of children who need love

and who are a delight to me and I'm

related to some of them and and um that

is its own beauty and it can be

sufficient if it has to be sufficient

and and that I did have children of my

own and um so much is written about all

the things that are difficult about

parenthood and I am not going to sit

here and diminish those things but my

overwhelming experience of parenting.

It's just delight. Like true and

absolute delight. I'll never forget when

when my first daughter was born, my

partner and I had this moment. We were

like getting ready to leave the hospital

and we both were like, "So, we can just

take her home." Like that's you gave us

a human being, right? That's incredible.

Uh and and um I mean to be clear, like

we you know, my partner grew that human

being for nine months. We weren't

kidnapping. They they didn't give her to

you, but but it kind of has that feeling

of like, wow. I mean, we just go home

and raise these children and they are

their own creatures and and um having

new minds to interact with feels

incredible to me. Um I think I've also

found and I feel based on our earlier

conversation about kind of what's been

lost from past generations that perhaps

you'll appreciate it. I have found a

tremendous satisfaction in duty.

Uh, I can't say that duty is something I

thought about much before this. I'm not

of a generation where duty, like thrift,

was a obvious value. I didn't join an

institution like the military where duty

is an obvious value. But I'll tell you,

no matter how tired you are at 7:30 in

the morning, when your kid wakes up,

like, you go in and you help her get

dressed and you make sure she has a good

breakfast. And your kid wakes up at 7:30

in the morning. Oh, God bless her. Yeah,

she does. she has for every day since

she was like three and a half months

old. Um the littleer one if you're but

um oh I just you know it's it's

so it's not always what you want to be

doing. I mean whom I was my my number

one fear about parenthood is I am so

deeply not a morning person. I mean my

favorite hours to write are 10 p.m. to 4

in the morning. So on some fundamental

level, I everything I had been doing for

my entire adult life was deeply at odds

with the task of parenting, which is

frankly being up at the crack of dawn

many days in a row. And yet I it's it's

a deep kind of satisfaction to feel like

this is what you do. You do it for

yourself. You do it for your children.

You do it for your partner. And you do

it because you have to. And and that's a

kind of liberation and a kind of

wonderfulness and a whole category of

existence I found because I had children

that I had never appreciated, let alone

kind of valorized before. You said

something really interesting in an email

to me when we were talking about doing

the show and you wrote to me and you're

talking about parenting that where

you're looking matters so much and it is

so hard to look both near and far at the

same time. Can you say more about that?

Oh yeah, for sure. I think that actually

a real imperative of parenting is that

and a and a real imperative of being

human is you are present for those

around you who need you most and you

provide stability and security and you

find hope because actually it's crucial

to foster hope for the next generation

and so yes of course I mean it's very

tricky you know there are children the

age of my children whose parents

vanished overnight

And that's horrifying to me. We are

living in trying times, let us say. Um

that said, you know, again, depending on

where you look, all times are trying

times. There's never been a shortage of

suffering in the world. But I am

troubled by the

by forms of suffering that are happening

all around us now. And I feel complicit

in some of them. And I want to be giving

them my undivided attention and and um

not ignoring them. Um even when I even

when it's not obvious to me how I might

positively intervene on them, I

certainly don't want to just pretend

they don't exist. And yet I still have

to be joyful for my kids and goofy for

my kids. And those are hard emotions to

hold together all at once. Um and yet I

find that to be a necessary and

productive friction not least because as

I said earlier it reminds us that

actually we should always live that way.

You know if we if like you and me we are

among the fortunate and are we have the

resources uh and and and the lives to

even have the possibility of ignoring

the suffering in the world. We should be

grateful for everything that reminds us

not to and reminds us like we we should

experience this kind of friction in our

lives all the time. One of my most

inconvenient beliefs about the world is

that we now know too much about it

and that the human mind is not meant to

be stretched

over this

much threat and danger and tragedy at

all times. I work in the news. My show

is part of this dynamic I'm about to

describe. But the news can sometimes be

an

engine for finding and bringing you

whatever is going to most upset you that

is happening literally anywhere on Earth

at that exact moment. And it's not that

it's not on some level good to know

about it. I don't want to go to the

point where we never knew about it. But

I I often think that probably the

healthy median, the healthy medium was

to be able to pick up a newspaper once a

day and find out about terrible things

happening elsewhere and important things

happening elsewhere and sometimes

wonderful things, but less often

wonderful things happening elsewhere.

as opposed

to be with your kids in the park and

your phone

buzzes and it's just something terrible

that you cannot affect. Mhm. It's not

even happened to anybody. You know, you

definitely don't have power over

it, but somebody somewhere thought it

would grab you to know about it. Mhm.

And it's strange. It most it both makes

you aware of suffering but also I think

it has some kind of other quality some

numbing and exhausting quality that is

not uh healthy. I think that's almost

certainly true. I mean, it's so

interesting. You said you were reading

Melting Point and there's a an arresting

moment in there when um one of the one

of the sources in the book who we're

hearing from just talks about how you

used to read one newspaper and you'd get

20 minutes of news in the evening or

maybe you'd get 10 minutes of news reels

before a movie and that was it. And I

put down the book when I read that and I

thought about it for a long time because

I mean there was not a shortage of news

in the world. This is in the middle of

the Second World War, right? And and she

goes on to say something I found equally

arresting and highly related, which is

the world seemed much bigger and more

mysterious then. So I think you're

right, although I also think it's a

little bit more complicated than that

because in this kind of tragic way, I

feel like we simultaneously

know more about the world and less about

our own communities in a certain sense.

It's like we are we are we have

traded bits of news from all over um for

much of it tragic some of it just

inflammatory

uh for a deep and connected knowledge of

our own immediate communities and and

that does feel tragic and upsetting to

me and and this kind of absolute

flattening of distinctions. So I want to

make a hard turn here. I want to ask you

about

happiness and I'd like to to do that by

asking you to read a a short passage

from your book which is on page 174.

Sure. Happiness routinely gets not only

less attention but also more criticism

than its opposite number. Contemporary

thinkers sometimes dismiss it as a

shallow fixation of modern life. But to

condemn it on those grounds is to

mistake it for approximate but different

phenomena. either superficial forms of

itself like amusement and pleasure or

superficial means of trying to achieve

it from substance abuse to so-called

retail therapy. I like this idea that

happiness does not get enough attention

or or theorizing. So if it's not these

proximate forms, amusement and pleasure

to you, what is it? I think that

happiness I can't believe you're asking

me to define happiness on the fly in

your podcast as required what I think

happiness is. I didn't write the book. I

didn't write the question. Well, you

know, you know it when you feel it. I

mean, I think that um happiness is a

state of profound appreciation for what

you have in that exact moment. I I guess

if I were going to generate a

spontaneous definition, uh that's what

it would be. Um and yeah, I mean, I was

moved to write about because I was I was

lucky enough to find myself extremely

happy. And you know, I knew I was going

to be telling at least two kinds of

stories in this book. And one was about

grief and one was about love. And when

you go and you survey the landscape of

love

stories, the vast majority of them are

covert

tragedies, like there are love stories

that get told because they either end in

divorce or premature death um or or or

some kind of they they they darken

drastically over the course of telling

them. And as a result, most of what we

read and hear and watch of love stories

um is either the beginning or the

ending. You know, we we get the how did

you meet and and the the kind of falling

in love and all of the shiny exciting

romance and passion at the beginning. Um

and either it just ends there, right? It

ends with marriage, it ends with getting

together or having kids or you know,

there's just the kind of implicit or

explicit happily ever after. or we then

kind of leap ahead to the the

destruction and dissolution of this much

longed for state whether through

separation or death. And I found this

curious because of course that leaves

off the vast majority of most or at

least many relationships, right? Like

when you are happily together with

someone actually what matters to you is

the middle and actually what you want to

have go on and on and on is the middle.

But nobody writes about the middle,

right? Like there's there's there's very

little about just the kind of dayto-day

happiness uh and um and just texture of

a happy life which isn't just happy

right I mean a lot of this book is about

the the kind of

um endless overlap and and contradiction

and friction in different emotions and a

lot of happiness is infused with

annoyance or frustration or bad days or

whatever it may be but but still somehow

fundamentally feels for us that that the

deep and essential name you would give

to it as happiness. And that was

interesting to me and I wanted to write

about it. Well, I wonder if that's

because we

expect happiness to be uh simpler and

pure. I I think sometimes there were

periods in my life that I am certain I

will look back on them as virtually

perfect. That the problems were

small. Nobody I loved was sick in that

moment.

I was you know surrounded by family and

friends. My work was satisfying even as

my experience of that period is often

exhausted,

overstretched, overscheduled,

anxious and this sort of question of I

mean maybe one reason people don't write

about those middles is that the middle

is always more of everything. You know,

your description of your first kiss with

your partner, which is functionally

cosmic in its language, is probably

going to be different than your the way

you experience uh Tuesday when

everybody's on deadline and dinner needs

to be on the table, even if you'll

probably look back on that is a

beautiful period. I I think we think the

the feeling of it should be simpler

maybe than it than it ends up being. I

think that's absolutely true, but I

don't think that's just true of

happiness. I mean, yes, happiness is

more than just happiness, but everything

is more than just everything. I mean,

there's this wonderful um CS Lewis line

about how, you know, you never encounter

just cancer or just war or just

happiness or just unhappiness. They are

always incredibly um variable in in the

lived experience of them. There are good

moments and hard times. There are hard

moments and good times. And we want to

act like that's the anomaly, but it's

not, right? It's like the actual texture

of life. And in fact, I think we would

probably all be happier if we recognize

that happiness is not a pure experience.

Love is not a pure experience. Grief is

not a pure experience. It is always all

of them are always amalgamated with

their opposite. Right. And um it's it's

so sweet actually your awareness that

like someday this shall seem wonderful

and easy and it you know it's sure of

course my life and my partner's life

with two children and 17 book deadlines

and whatever all else may be going on is

um not the the bliss of a first kiss

when the world suddenly seems to be

opening up and and this entire new path

is shining before you. But I'll tell you

the path is beautiful and and part of

what we don't I think pay enough

attention to is the beauty of that path

of any path. And it it's what I said

earlier about duty. You know, on some

level, a beautiful thing about hard

moments in marriage or in anything is

like, well, you're doing this because

you're committed to it, even in the

moments that aren't just bliss and joy,

right? And like, do I want to take the

compost out in the pouring rain as I did

first thing this morning? Absolutely

not. But do I want my partner to have to

do it? Nope. Like, why shouldn't I,

right? Like, isn't the better thing to

do in this moment is to man up, as we

used to say, and and and just go do the

thing. and and there's a kind of beauty

in that and a kind of happiness in it

and a kind of fulfillment in it. And

it's not the shiny glossy kind, but it's

what a lot of life is made of, right?

And and I I do find it possible to

regard it

as I don't want to say fun, you know,

but but um purposeful and meaningful.

What is different about the relationship

between happiness and duty from

happiness and fun?

Well, probably happiness and duty is

more sustainable. You know, um, one can

always be beautiful, right? There are

always jobs to be done, work to be done,

needs to be met in this world. And, and

if you derive happiness from a sense of

duty, uh, I actually think that is an

infinitely sustainable source. And it it

kind of comports with my broad theory of

happiness, which is um I think in our

absolute worst moments, the thing that

can sustain us is serving others. I

really do. And it's really powerful to

remember that there are other needs in

the world that other people have needs

and that actually you can help meet them

and ameliate them in whatever small

ways. There's no community on earth that

does not need your help. And um it is

good to get outside of your head and

outside of your own misery. So if if

duty is part of your sense of happiness,

uh you will never have to look far to uh

replenish it. Fun. I love fun. Do not

get me wrong. Fun is wonderful. Fun is

amazing. Uh you know, I'm my family and

I were going to the beach this weekend

and I honestly can't wait. You know, we

um in a kind of narrowly defined sense

of it. Like we don't have a lot of like

self-evident fun right now just because

right we have a three and a half month

old, we have a three-year-old. like

there's a kind of um we used to just

jump in a car at the whiff of an

interesting story or a fun thing to do

and gallivant through the night and that

was really fun, right? And um do I miss

it sometimes? Of course I miss it. Uh

and and in that kind of narrowly defined

way, there's less fun in my life. On the

other hand, children are infinite fun. I

mean, children are hilarious, right?

Other than perhaps my father. Um I've

never had such a consistent source of

hilarity in my life as young children.

They say hilarious things. They think

hilarious thoughts. They do funny

things. Um, they live with a kind of

glee and and humor that is contagious

and interesting. Um, so I I'm certainly

not here to diminish the value of fun. I

actually think the laughing is um just

profoundly good for the mind and body

and heart and my kids make me do it all

the time. One thing that that I really

enjoyed about the book is the emphasis

on the the connectivity of all of these

things. that part of just the human

experience is you don't get any of them

all at once and you couldn't have any of

them in a way without the others. You

have an interesting section on how the

philosopher William

James thought about our thoughts and

particularly I guess the connectivity

between them the the sort of shadowy

uh substructure of our thoughts. Can you

talk a bit about that? I can. So I went

to William James because my annoying

experience of life is that any

interesting thought you have ever had

William James had long before you did

and said something really brilliant

about it. And sure enough William James

had many interesting things about the

idea of and um so William James was the

guy who gave us this idea of the stream

of consciousness you know this um this

sense that or this awareness that your

mind is always full of thoughts many of

them unrelated to the task at hand or

whatever you're looking at. It's just um

it's just teeming with uh ideas and

instincts and impulses and impressions

from the world around you all the time.

This constant flow of thoughts in our

mind. Uh sometimes we're paying

attention to it, sometimes we're not.

But as we all know from how difficult it

is to meditate or focus or fall asleep

at night, there's just always noise in

our minds, you know, generating all

these things. Um, so William James

writes about the stream of consciousness

and in the middle of doing so he in this

kind of odd way sort of um shifts

metaphors and and starts talking about

the thoughts in our minds as birds

flying around and um sometimes they're

flying and sometimes they like perch

somewhere. And he says, you know, we

only ever really pay attention to the

places they perch, which is in his mind

is like, you know, the nouns and the

verbs and the adjectives, like the

really obvious things like Ezra Klein,

you're a noun. you're hear a bird

perched somewhere. We could talk about

our decline or, you know, we can talk

about um a rainstorm uh or or a word

like red. It feels like it has content

for us. So there's all this stuff that

happens when the birds are flying

around, which is the and and the if and

the ore. These kind of subtle um but

absolutely crucial elements of our

thought that we don't pay attention to

um and and yet profoundly shape what

we're able to think and um what we think

about and the way that we think. He

says, you know, we should there should

be a feel of and just as much as we have

a sense of a feel for blue or cold or

Ezra Klein. Uh, and that was incredibly

helpful to me because I thought, oh

yeah, that's kind of what I'm here to

do. I'm here to try to figure out what's

the feeling of and like what is this

idea, what is this word doing for us and

and what's the role that it plays in

language, which is a different way of

saying what's the role that it plays in

how we think. Did you feel like you came

to an answer to that? What is the feel

of and so a little bit in distinction

from every other conjunction that the

English language has? you know, but if

or all of those actually describe a kind

of necessary relationship. Um, if this,

then that. That's a causal relationship.

Uh, it actually tells us something about

the two halves of the sentence we're

creating. The beautiful thing about and

is you can stick any two things together

with it. They can have absolutely no

relationship to each other. I give you

apples and oranges, right? Or they can

have every relationship to each other.

Romeo and Juliet or none on earth. you

know, crab apples

and tuxedos. And this morning, what

we're dealing with is like we have 30

minutes to get dressed and get to the

library to do a podcast with a Klein.

And our nephew, who's at our house,

who's 2 and a half, just vomited in the

crib, which means there's nowhere for

him to sleep. And also, whoops, I'm

ignoring a note from my editor, and I

need to go to the grocery store. I mean,

this is life, right? There is just this

and that's before we get to like oh man

and like you open the New York Times and

Joe Biden has cancer and uh you know

people are being deported. I mean the

the the number of linked thoughts,

experiences, demands in our days is is

infinite. So part of this feeling of and

is the sense that everything is

connected to everything else. Um which I

want to say can be a really beautiful

thing. I mean the sense that everything

is connected to everything else is also

the sense that we can make a difference

right like if indeed we are all

connected then our actions matter. They

matter to each other. They matter to

people far away. They matter to people

we will never meet cuz they're not even

born yet. Um so it's overwhelming but I

think also um kind of hopeful kind of

exciting. Um but there's this other

feeling that an has um which is the

feeling that something is about to

happen right? Like if you're telling me

a story and you stop talking, what I'm

going to say to you is and meaning like

what happens next, right? Like it's

almost a feeling of suspense. Um and is

this kind of little word that propels us

into the future? And in that sense, it's

a kind of um it gestures towards this

kind of temporal abundance too, right?

Like that's the William James feeling

like well there's always something else

that we

can reach beyond and connect to. there's

always something more kind of coming

down the line towards us. So I think it

is a feeling of connection. It's a

feeling of continuation. It is a feeling

of abundance. Uh and all of those to me

are fundamentally and ultimately quite

hopeful feelings. I'm struck how much

you're talking about the feeling in a

way of the word and the way it connects

things, the way it implies procession. I

guess I'm interested in the feeling of

the experience. I mean, so much of the

book is about holding these two extremes

of experience at the same time. The loss

of of of your father, the the finding of

your of your partner and that love. And

I think that's been what what I've been

interested in. I feel in my own

attention a desire to constantly be

choosing a lane of sensation or feeling.

I should feel badly about things right

now. I should feel good about them. as

if I'm running some calculation in my

head that ends with like where on the

sentiment scale I'm supposed to net out.

And that also some part of me realizes

that's wrong. That what I'd like to be

able to do is feel different things at

the same

time. I find that very hard to do. I'm

I'm curious if writing this book or

going through that experience or

reflecting on this way you have has made

that that that easier, made your sense

of feeling more capacious.

I don't know if it's made it easier.

It's certainly made me more aware of it.

And I guess that is a kind of ease,

right? Is is um to feel peaceful about

both the necess the necessity and

sometimes the impossibility of feeling

all the things at the same time. It has

given me a sense

of well this is life, right? And it's

actually

okay to

have mixed feelings, mixed experiences.

You know, I adore my partner and I think

she's brilliant and she fills my days

with wisdom and humor and surprise and

stability and also we've been married

for seven years and together for 10 and

we have two kids and sometimes we drive

each other crazy or we're frustrated or

we fight and actually I have a lot of

peace around that which I think is

helpful. Like I just I'm like, well

that's that's not not love, you know?

That's just part of the deal here,

right? And um and we feel a lot of

things at once and we should. And um

sometimes it still stops me up short,

you know, in good ways. And I said

earlier, I think it's important to be

um open to the surprising feeling

because I think it's um it can trouble

us morally and and that's probably a

good thing. I'm a word nerd, of course.

I think about how and works and I I

actually do think it's interesting and I

think it's philosophically interesting

and and profoundly related to the

question of how we feel in these

moments. But of course I feel it, right?

I I feel these tensions all the time.

It's impossible to be alive and

fortunate in the world today and not

feel like which of these things am I

actually supposed. It's not which of

these things am I supposed to be

feeling? We feel them all. I think the

real problem is which of these feelings

should I act on?

Well, then let's end on a point of word

nery. I I learned something from your

book that I didn't know, which is that

the English alphabet used to end with

the symbol for and. I was really

surprised to learn that. I was really

surprised to learn that, too. I know.

And I mean, talk about, you know, scale,

right? And space and time. This was true

until quite recently, like all the way

up to the end of the 19th century when

children learned the alphabet. The

procession started with ABC and ended X

Y Z and that's literally how they were

taught the alphabet. It's incredible to

me that that piece of knowledge

instilled in generation upon generation

of school children could degrade in the

course of you know less than a century

when I was coming up through school to

the point that we had no idea that that

had once been part of the alphabet but

indeed it was. Um which of course I

found both fascinating just because how

funny that people used to learn that and

now we don't. But why why why was it

part of the alphabet? We don't spell

words with the and sign. I think you

know the only answer I can reasonably

provide is it actually did feel that

crucial to the kinds of we learn we

learn to write the alphabet so we can

learn to write words and we learn to

write words so we can learn to write

sentences. And actually the word and is

the third most common word in the

English language. And the only ones we

use more often are the, you know, the

article the and uh various conjugations

of the verb to be. But it is I agree

it's very interesting. It suggests a

kind of importance to the ability to

make an and right to um incorporate that

into how we write down our experience of

the world. as a metaphor for what you're

worked with in your book and what a lot

of us are working with in our lives. It

it it struck me as quite moving. I know

what a beautiful idea actually that um

anything should end in and right that um

something that seems like an ending is

is actually an

explicit reminder that there's always

more that something else can be

connected that something else can happen

next. I find it very beautiful.

And always our final question, what are

three books you'd recommend to the

audience? I Oh my gosh, I almost forgot

over the course of all this. Um, first

of all, I have to say thank you so much

for always asking this question. Um,

both because I delight in learning what

people read about and because oh, it's

just nice to know that literary culture,

uh, however embattled it might be, is is

still, um, shaping our lives and our

thoughts in all of these wonderful and

enduring ways. Um, okay, my three. Um,

number one, it's so funny you mentioned

that you're reading Wolf Hall. Uh, I

would like to encourage you and your

listeners at some point to go read A

Place of Greater Safety, which is the

book Hillary Mantel wrote before turning

to Thomas Cromwell and his compatriots.

Um, it is about the French Revolution.

It is 800 pages long, incredibly

undisiplined, uh, absolutely unruly and

wildly great to read. Um, I also

recommend it because it is fundamentally

the story of three people who are trying

in full sincerity to make a better

nation and instead just absolutely

destroying it and destroying themselves

in the process. Uh, and I don't mean to

suggest we're on the eve of a French

Revolution style catastrophe. I I

certainly hope not. Um, but it is

nonetheless extraordinarily interesting

reading material right now. Um, so

that's number one. Uh, number two is a

book that just is out uh this week, I

believe, uh, which is this wonderful

graphic novel spent by Allison Bechal,

uh, with beautiful color artwork by her

partner, Holly Ray Taylor. It's about

the experience of growing up in a

relatively harsh scrabble family and

living this kind of marginal artistic

existence and then suddenly finding

yourself reasonably well off. uh and and

um it's very adjacent to these questions

we've been discussing of

well how do you enjoy your life and your

money and also live your values and um

interact with your community and uh it's

it's very smart on the questions of what

we do with our money and our money and

our morals and it's also just riotously

funny uh as all of her work is. So

that's number two. Uh, and number three,

um, is a book I think I've heard you

talk about as well, uh, also a

relatively new book. Um, and I'm partly

shouting out my partner here because she

was involved in the Michael Lewis

Project, Who is Government, uh, which is

this collection of essays by these

wildly different writers

um, about government bureaucrats. Um,

which at the time that I first heard

about it, I was like, I don't really

know how well a book about an anthology

of essays about government bureaucrats

is going to do. And, um, tragically, it

met the moment. Uh, and I can't think of

a better thing for people to be reading

right now than these I found just

incredibly moving stories about what

these alleged agents of the deep state

are actually doing with their time and

doing on behalf of the American people.

So, um, those are my three

recommendations for you, Katherine

Schultz. Thank you very much.

Absolutely. My pleasure. Thanks so much

for having me.

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