Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson

The Axe Files with David Axelrod

CNN

News

4.6 • 7.7K Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2023

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Since childhood, journalist John Hendrickson has lived with a stutter: wrestling with it, searching for escapes from it, and working to accept it. John, who rose to national prominence after interviewing then-presidential candidate Joe Biden about his own stutter in 2019, recently wrote a book about his experiences and the science behind stuttering. John joined David to talk about living with a stutter, his work as a journalist, interviewing Biden, and reexamining his own relationship with his stutter in his book “Life on Delay: Making Peace with a Stutter.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Axe Files,
0:12.5	with your host, David Axelrod.
0:18.9	John Hendrixson of The Atlantic is one of the most thoughtful and eloquent young political
0:23.2	journalists in our country.
0:24.9	He also has grappled for his entire life with a neurological disorder called stuttering.
0:30.6	In 2019, after interviewing Joe Biden about his battle with stuttering, Hendrixson wrote
0:35.8	a piece that was a sort of coming out of his own.
0:38.6	That piece went viral and led to his moving memoir Life on Delay, making peace with a stutter.
0:45.3	By writing this remarkable gripping book, Hendrixson has shed light on the struggles of
0:50.0	people with disabilities and given voice and hope to all who share them.
0:55.4	Here's our conversation.
1:05.2	John Hendrixson, it is great to see you.
1:09.4	You and I have been carrying on a conversation for some time on text, and especially since
1:15.6	you published this book Life on Delay, Making Peace with a Stutter, which I think is
1:20.8	an extraordinary, extraordinary book.
1:23.6	I am so eager to sort of talk about it, but I want to talk about the journey that informs
1:28.7	it first.
1:29.8	And let's start, just basically basic background on your family.
1:36.4	Your dad is a journalist and a professor and a nonfiction writing at the University of
1:43.9	Pennsylvania.
1:44.9	Your mom was a nurse, a pediatric nurse, is that right?
1:49.0	Yes, both those are correct.
	...

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