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The journalist Michael Shear has a profile of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the Atlantic magazine. It's this

month's cover story. And in it, Shearer says Kennedy told him his staff believed speaking with him was

a mistake. As he points out in the piece, a lot of the favorable coverage of Kennedy had dried up

years ago when he began his crusade against vaccines. His staff was probably right to be wary.

But Shear had this idea that somewhere in Kennedy's story had be able to work out what it is

that's separating Americans these days. Kennedy was skeptical but sympathetic and he agreed to

participate. The two talked and texted through the fall, but they

kept returning to the same arguments. And Shear says he started to feel what he described as

a growing sense of dismay about being able to establish basic factual common ground. And then he told

us after Charlie Kirk was killed, Kennedy reached out and wanted to talk.

So at this point, I'd been working with him for a few months on this story.

I'd traveled with him to Chicago when Kirk was killed.

I'd traveled out to Colorado, actually, for another event where he'd attended.

I'd interviewed him a couple times in his office.

So we had a sort of rapport going at that point.

And, I mean, honestly, the shooting of Kurt was sort of like a shocking moment for both of us.

And it was something we experienced together.

And so he had asked to talk a couple days later about his thoughts about Kirk's killing.

At the end of that conversation, I had sort of gone back to where a lot of our conversations went,

to sort of challenging him on the science and what he was asking of me.

...