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 Reed. 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 and 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 kind of 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, 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 aughts 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, similar with actors and directors. Dinner for five. We've got New York Times political reporter

Astead Herndon, Pulitzer-winning journalist and author Jonathan Aig, 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 or anything? question yeah he's doing the interview

guys have a seat

...