I used a hunting rifle for the first time in my life.

I took a shot, hit me in the face, ended up in the emergency room.

Oh my God.

It was incredibly embarrassing.

The congressman laughed at me and gave me whiskey even though it was only seven in the

morning.

Great times.

This is Ben Terrace.

He writes about national politics for the post-style section.

And over the years, he's gotten himself into some pretty wild situations.

There was a speech writer for Senator Rob Portman named Brett Talley, who in addition to being

a speech writer was also a horror novelist in an amateur ghost hunter.

And so I went ghost hunting with him in a cemetery near Georgetown.

Ben is known for taking a really unique approach to writing about politics.

He has spent years covering the people he calls the side show characters.

Embedding with the Washington insiders who aren't always household names, but are crucial

to understanding how politics works.

And then a reality TV star became president.

One of the things that I found is that if you have an experience covering oddballs, when

Donald Trump became president, you kind of were an expert in a way that most people in

Washington were not.

So when all the weird characters became the most important people in Washington, I actually

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