This is on Beings Unheard Cut. I'm Chris to tip it. You're listening to my unedited conversation with Stephen Waldman.

He's a journalist and author of the book Founding Faith. I spoke with him on February 21st, 2008.

Download the MP3 of our produced show with Stephen Waldman at onbearing.org.

Okay, I just got the thumbs up. So we can start talking.

And I actually, I want to start the conversation. I don't think I did this with you when I interviewed you

a few years ago, but this is really, I mean, I usually start with a little bit of

background into your personal story, like whoever I'm talking to. And I mean, you and I have

talked about this, but I'd really like to hear it again. So just a little bit of why of the story,

why you started belief net, you know, and your, the, your spiritual background, what, or what,

what brought you to want to cover this as a journalist or to turn your career towards this subject.

Okay. So you can start anytime. Okay.

And you know, we edit. So it doesn't have to be word perfect. Just free from.

It was really a combination of some personal, professional, and entrepreneurial things all

happening at once. This is about 1998. And professionally, what was going on was I was

national editor of US News and World Report at the time of the Clinton impeachment. And we were

just spending an awful lot of time on topics that I felt weren't actually of that much interest

to most of our readers. And felt like just on a personal level, there must be something better I

could do with my life that would be a little bit more relevant. And religion was exhibit A.

The mainstream media really was not doing a very good job of covering religion, mostly covered

it as controversy, which was not really the way most people experienced faith in their lives.

And around the same time I was just noticing that every time we put religion on the cover of

the news magazines, I'd worked at Newsweek also. The sales would go up. And this is in fact,

...