Marshall here. Welcome back to the realignment. Long time, realignment listeners will know by now

that the start and end of any of the show's seasons is pretty random. Specialist as my

editorial and booking strategy usually comes down to, here's who I want to talk to this week.

Today's finale is different. The past year and a half or so since the 2024 election has really been a season

itself focused on exploration and pulling on different threads, even though I often have

ended up in dead ends or without enough coherence to help a casual listener understand exactly

what's going on. Some people do their thinking by writing. Others like me do it

through podcasting by talking to other people about the topics that are at the top of our minds.

So during this period, the questions doubled in length, the rants got rantier and the tangents

went ever outwards. At the same time, I started to get signs that I was onto something.

Before I get into today's conversation then with Danielle Lee Thompson, I wanted to share what I've

concluded in a coherent and understandable form because the episode you're going to hear is basically a brain

dump where Danielle offered to sort of talk through some of these things with me.

Number one, best ways to start is with my identity in a way that relates to the show.

So during the year and a half, I went through a lot of personal and career changes that

really reshaped our relationship to the podcast. My son Theo is almost a year and a half old. I left

conservative think take world and went back to my center left roots, joined the Scanan Center full

time, where most of my work honestly has nothing to do of podcasting, and I found my real passion,

which is

producing events that draw on the themes I cover on the show. Best way to understand me then

is as a convener and think-take leader who also runs a podcast, rather than as a content creator

who does side gigs at various nonprofits.

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