Hi, I'm Isaac Dover and welcome to Off Message.

This week's guest, John Kasich, the Ohio governor, 2016 candidate, continuing Trump critic

and author of the new book, Two Paths, America Divided or United.

You know, when I went into the bookstore to buy this book, the person behind the counter gave me a look when I asked where the book was on the shelf.

And it's reasonable.

And nobody actually reads politicians' books, except for political reporters, basically.

I have read a bunch of books by politicians, and they are usually too boring to even get through a page without falling

sleep.

Kasek, true to form, is not boring in that same way in this book.

It's very conversational.

We talked a little bit at the beginning of the interview of how he did it, dictating it,

not sitting down on a computer to write it, and then working

on it through going through drafts, and then even as he was recording the audiobook, changing

parts of it to get it closer to what he wanted. It is a book that has a lot of Trump

criticism in it. It has a book that has a lot of let's give this guy some time, thoughts.

And it's a lot about the post-truth society and his thoughts about that. It's also a lot about

religion. And so the conversation that we had touched on that too and his view of what the

afterlife is and all these different things.

The moment when his parents were killed in this freak accident pulling out of a Burger King by a drunk driver when he was already 35 years old and how that started him down the path to religion in a very different way.

Kasich is not known for biting his tongue.

He's not known for being, oh, he's the warmest guy.

You hear some of that coming across in the interview, including at one point,

...