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I almost never interview politicians.

Not because I think they're all evil, but because we don't really reward or allow our politicians good or bad to be searching, to own their questions, or to change their minds and grow, to admit their human frailty.

I'm intrigued by language Cory Booker uses about politics as work of manifesting love.

And on the surface, his life arc is as impressive as they come.

Stanford graduate, Rhodes Scholar, Mayor, United States Senator.

So it's surprising to hear him say that the best thing that ever happened to him was being broken time and time again, especially in his formative years, witnessing segregation and abandonment in New Jersey's Harrington Park and Newark.

Learning from people like Miss Virginia Jones, a tenant organizer in the building in which Cory Booker lived while a law student, and in which her son had been murdered.

What we say about other people says more about who we are than who they are.

And it was that moment when I first started on Martin Luther King Boulevard with Miss Jones, where she checked me hard.

And she said, you know, describe the neighbor and I described it like I did to you, the drug dealing, the projects, the abandoned building.

And she just said to me in a very curable way, boy, you need to understand that the world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside of you.

You're one of those people only see darkness to spare. That's all there's ever going to be. But if you see hope, opportunity, if you're stubborn enough to every time you open your eyes, see love and the face of God, then you can be a change agent here. Then you can make a difference.

It was this monumental sort of moment for me at the beginning of my life that you have choices.

I'm Christa Tippett and this is on being Cory Booker is a United States Senator for New Jersey.

I am curious about how you would begin to talk about the religious or spiritual background of your childhood. However, how do you think of that?

Well, I'm happy that I had a traditional grounding in my in a small black church in northern New Jersey and a very sort of traditional framing.

But you know, James Baldwin has the saying that children are never good at listening to their elders, but they never fail to imitate them.

And I think so much of my philosophy grew out not for my parents words, but how they encountered life.

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