What an amazing time to be alive. What an amazing time to be watching the news and having conversations about the news and consuming all kinds of bits and pieces and opinions from hither and thither.

Like a little bowerbird pecking around the internet and social media, trying to figure out what's true and what's not.

But also what an amazing time to be susceptible

and vulnerable to stridency, to misinformation, to what aboutism, to people trying to distract us

from what really matters, jangling keys in front of our face in order to get us to look over

here instead of remaining stable

and calm and even keeled about our own opinions, our own vision of the truth. Now is a moment

to reach across aisles, to set aside differences, to have faith in democracy, to have faith

in bigger ambitions and

bigger things to believe in than just the day-to-day. The only way we can do that is by

having conversations that resonate with all of us, conversations that make sense to all of us,

conversations that are difficult, conversations that are important, conversations that are, as always, a little bit uncomfortable.

Today on the show, one of the most popular podcasters in the United States of America.

He's the host of the longest running daily news analysis podcast.

It's called The Gist, a half hour a day.

Every day.

It's a lot of work.

A lot of work, I've got to tell you, I do this thing once a week, already feels like a lot.

He did the show.

He did 1,400 episodes for Slate of The Gist for seven years.

It's had about 100 million lifetime downloads, apparently.

20 million of those were in 2020.

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