My brother got on staff. I figured if my older brother could do it, i could do it. I got on staff. I called Football Games and basketball games. In college, i got paid 10 a game to the demand for high school and Football Games, i discover public radio at the same time. I was more of a news guy. I fell in love with npr in particular. I had a saturday morning shift in kentucky. I had to get up, go in, turn the radio on and put on National Programs on the air. I got to sit there and listen to scott simon, weekend edition, for two hours. He is a brilliant broadcaster. I got to hear twice how he would conduct an interview, how he would write, how he would put a picture in peoples heads. It was brilliant. I have read this in one of your articles or books that it mattered to you when somebody recognize your voice. Was it a young girl . That is right. I was on an airplane, on my way to karachi to do some of the research for this book. We were boarding the plane. I changed planes. Someone tapped my shoulder. It was a teenager there. She said, are you that guy from npr . I was. She introduced me to her mother, the one who really wanted to talk to me, who had sent her daughter over to get me. I sat for part of the time next to them on a flight. They had a lot to tell me. She was a woman, currently living in texas, and she had grown up in the city of karachi. I had done a series of radio stories from there. She remembered them. She was an npr fan and a person from karachi. She was listening intensely closely. She was still from there, in a way. She said, you did fine. You got the news. There was so much more to say. You needed to get more. I was happy to hear her say that. That is why we were going back. I reported from karachi several times over the years and i got more interested and wanted to learn more. There is so much happening. The paperback edition of your book is out. What was the origins of this book . When did you first start working on and why karachi . It grew out of the radio series i mentioned in 2008. I had first been to karachi in 2002. It was a way station on my way to cover the war in afghanistan. I was assigned to spend time there, the first story i covered there was the death of a wall street journal journalist. Daniel pearli heard some of the stories of the people who lived there. I became fascinated with how the city looked. There would be these pieces of british architecture from the victorian era. There would be massive neighborhoods of concrete block homes where millions of people lived. I was drawn into the story of the place. I had been covering cities of different kinds all my career as a journalist. I went to the university in kentucky, but also spent a year in new york. At hunter college. I was assigned to read a book, the power broker, about robert moses. This great builder of new york city. I was so fascinated about the city around me and the ways it grew and changed over the years. That has informed almost every kind of reporting i have done ever since. Many different stories i have done over the years are basically about cities. Even my reporting in afghanistan was about a city and how it was changing under extraordinary pressure. I wanted to take a city somewhere in the world that exemplified the way that a city grows and changes, the way our urban world is growing and changing, most of the worlds populations live in cities now. I wanted to pick one city i could look at as its own world. It is so large an absorbing an interesting that it is like a snow globe. It is a selfcontained world where people have these intense experiences in stories that involve each other that are about each other that i wanted to learn. You say hello to them in a place like karachi. An amazing and heart wrenching story comes out of them. I wanted to take one example of changing. Example. The more i learned about it, the more i felt it was a good one. Where do you live . In washington, d. C. I am the cohost of morning edition on npr. I get up about 2 45 in the morning. I get into work at 3 45. The show goes on the air at 5 00. How long are you there . It depends on the day. I might get out around noon. Sometimes, 2 00 p. M. Sometimes, it will be a long day. Sometimes there is a president ial debate in the need to be there during or after the debate and you were crazy hours and sleep on the couch. The compensation is i can slip away and go see my family or held my life with something or or help my wife put something or take time to write my book. It varies from day to day. It is a constant process of time management. When you work in jobs like this where you are paying attention to the whole world, really, your entire life becomes your work. You might be reading an article or hear something in conversation, you might watch a movie, anything might happen to you and you discover a story. Renee, who is in las angeles, is doing the same thing i am doing, only three hours sooner. Here . Why . Why is she there . That was a decision by npr i thought was very meaningful. We cover a lot of washington news. It is important for us to get that story right. We wanted to get a broader sense of the country. We have stations in every state, stations in every corner of every state. We feel we have done a better job than a lot of organizations of covering stories in indiana, or kentucky, were nebraska, but we wanted to do more. By shifting half of the program, one of the hosts, some of the staff, to los angeles to the other coast, were not in the middle of the country but it is a different perspective than washington, d. C. Our colleagues in california are on a screen at their own table 3,000 miles away talking. They have a different perspective on things. Things that seem important to us in washington seem irrelevant there. The reverse can be true. It is great to have a conversation back and forth. It adds to the fact that we have bureaus across the country with like chicago, we have full time people in new orleans for a couple of years after katrina, and having people in different places just really enriches the conversation and the range of stories you can do. One of your radio reports, so people can hear you, this is on the road. We will find out afterward. [video clip] this is morning edition. I am standing on the ruins of carthage. We are by the Mediterranean Sea which is almost sky blue. This city was the capital of an empire, destroyed by the romans more than 2000 years ago and rebuilt before it fell into ruin again. What we see are a couple of stone columns and the foundations of ancient buildings. We came here to begin a journey along the coast line through libya, egypt, and we are watching as nations rebuild themselves after the revolutions known as the arab spring. We are talking to the new president of indonesia. Of tunisia. Is it fair to say you face the job of building the government almost from the foundations . Yes, of course. Happens when you have a dictatorship, it destroys the social system, like the press. This will take a long time. That is the new president who works in the same palace where a dictator ruled this country for more than 20 years. Where were you . Tunisia. We went from there through libya to cairo over the course of two weeks. Try to follow up on the events of the arab spring. This is a story that compelled world and was a great interest to me. I had been in egypt before. I wanted to understand the next chapter of that story. The tv cameras were there in different places around the arab world. There was a story that was at least as important going on at that moment. Peoples lives. We had contact along the way. A great deal of that trip, by design, was improvisation. Who did we need and what did we see . How did you travel . By a series of cars. We had a driver in each country. You could drive overseas in a conflict zone or a troubled country, but you would not be wise to do that. A local driver who knows where he is going and talks with the armed men at checkpoints and says hello to them and smooth things out how many people with you . One producer, one photographer, a driver in each country, and an interpreter in each country. It is a carload or a van load. With that group of people, you keep going. Sometimes we go hundreds of miles a day. Sometimes we would spend several days in the same city. Each day, we were trying to build on what we learned about how democracy was evolving, if it would be appalled at all. There were Security Problems in all three countries. We were looking for the heartbeat of these places. What is the first thing you tell somebody they want to do that you did . I would say go ahead. Is it expensive . Of course. Especially if you want to do it quickly and securely. You need to look for a decent hotel to spend a night. And you need to hire people to take along. Security . Security. You do not take security. Guys. Some journalists and tv crews who have a lot of expensive equipment may well do that in certain situations. The thing you do is get into the vehicle, go where you are going, introduce yourself to people, and people take care of you. Even in a conflict zone, a war zone, in a country where the United States may be very unpopular, people will relate to you as a human being. There will be local cultures of hospitality that take over and effectively protect you. You rely on your fellow human beings to look after you. Often, as a foreigner, i am better taken care of by people in many places than if the same people i and interacting with were dealing with locals. As an american . It was ok. People are eager to meet an american, even when they are not happy to meet an american. They are polite. There was an occasion where i went to afghanistan to sit with a man who had been a notorious opium trafficker. There was little doubt. He did not want to talk or see me. But it is afghanistan. I am his guest. He has to offer me tea. They spent the whole time complaining about the United States. This was 2002. Even though they were very angry, they were going to give me tea. Fine. Way. Most people are friendlier than that. Most people invite you home and have a lot want to say. It is as if in many cases people had been thinking about the United States a lot. Probably a lot more than we think about other countries. Even though i am not an employee of the government, i am not an ambassador, it is as if i am the ambassador. They want the United States to know something. What their lives are like. They may have a specific message about a specific american policy, but they are very courteous and often are really energizing to meet. You said earlier you are from indiana and you went in to kentucky to college. What drew you to Morehead State . I heard about it through various ways. I have a scholarship. They are a university that was founded in the coal mining country in eastern kentucky. The daughters who were coal minors had gone there for generations. They wanted more outofstate students. A more diverse student body. They invited people from out of state. I had an opportunity to come and do that. It was very different from indianapolis where i had grown up. I was honored to have that experience. I ask that because here you are in tunisia and egypt and libya. Afghanistan . Iraq . That is right. Interest . I think i got it from books. I grew up reading a lot. My parents were both teachers, Public School teachers in indiana. My mom taught english. My dad was a coach and athletic director. My mom in the School System i grew up in and my dad in indianapolis, two really big School Systems. Athletically successful School Systems. The local folks are really proud of. And they were academically really successful. I grew up reading a lot. I would read about wars, pirates, and different parts of the world. The british empire. The old west. Because i love that and i grew up curious, i wanted to see more and more. I had done a fellowship and went to columbia in the 1990s for a little while. I had not really covered a war until after 9 11. They needed an extra person in afghanistan. They sent me in november 2001. It was terrifying. Each trip i have taken ever since was as terrifying to contemplate going to a place in the midst of conflict. When you get there, you are so busy working and so absorbed in what is happening that it is not scary for a while. They build up after a while, after you spend some time in difficult situations. It is energizing to get there and cover a story and feel like you are doing something important. You feel like every single fact you are able to get out to the world is really important. You mentioned the book on robert moses. Is there another book before we go to another clip that has a big impact on you . The best and the brightest by david halberstam. I read the book again and again, a detailed explanation of how the government works. The war in vietnam. All the president s men. And the final days,an amazing piece of reporting. This next clip is only one minute long. I want to mention the difference between radio and television. Show you doingt this. [video clip] liquor is a flashpoint as islamist gain more power in indonesia. In tunisia. We have heard stories of Liquor Stores forced to close. At our hotel, and still another town, the staff informed us they shut down the bar after a religious conservatives complain. Some barings remained open, like a dim bar. A political activist sipped a beer whilekilling me sofly played on the sound system. Friends are here with a tunisiamade beer. The bartender opens it one handed by knocking the ball against a table. The bar is near a place where protesters brought down the last ruler. Islamists are ruining his dream of a free tunisia. In his view. Why did they name the bar jfk . I do not know the answer to that. It suggests the cultural interaction there is. What is the difference between writing for radio and writing for television . We need to focus in radio. It is true of print, also, on putting pictures in peoples heads. What color was the beer bottle. How diem was it in there . What did the guy look like . You want to include just enough detail so people feel they are there. If you do it well, it can draw people in the way a novel draws you in. In your book, there is a subtext to everything you do on the revolutionary road trip. When was this . That was in may and june, 2012. Your book was written in 2008. It first came out 2011. The subject is about islam. You write about a guy. Your pronunciation of all of these things as a complement. How do you do it . Effort. I am glad it looks like it. You make an effort and sometimes you get it wrong. Sometimes it is basic words. Arabic is a varied language and there are so many dialects and different pronunciations. This is the page you talk about islam and the difference between jinnan and mawdudi. Jinnan was a lawyer in the time where pakistan was part of British India and part of the long fight for independence. He was a secular politicians. Word. He gave a famous speech in which he said to this country which was mostly muslim but had millions of hindus and many other kinds of people, that the state has business that is separate from religion. You were free to go to your temples, your mosques, but they are separate. We are not going to discriminate based on color, cast, or creed. It was an amazing the progressive speech in 1947. It would have been an amazingly progressive speech in the United States at the time. That was one vision of how to have a majority muslim country. The other vision is represented in my book and i believe in history by the founder of a muslim party, an islamist party, that remains in pakistan today. It is powerful and has spawned other parties over the years. You could call him a fundamentalist. I do not see that word used in this period, either. He believed people should follow the clear commands of islam, the basic commands, and not go beyond that. Let me read what you quote him as saying. 1939. That was part of his innovation. This is a guy in the mid20th century, where there are all these leftist revolutionary movements of the world, and he grabbed their language and techniques, and i believe, in the speech to which you refer, he goes on to say this is not a religion i am talking about. Let me read that and we will put it on the screen. He is no longer alive . No. How much of that is the way they are thinking . The rhetoric has changed. The ideas are still fundamentally there. You still have the conflict between someone like jinnan, who is thinking of muslims in india as an ethnic group, and thinking of creating a state that muslims will have political power over but the state is not supposed to tell them what to do. By necessity, because it was an extremely diverse place, he was opening the state would make he was hoping the state would make room for hindus, and various other groups that were very important to pakistan and remained important ever since. He was thinking in terms of statehood. Mawdudi was thinking in terms of global revolution. To what extent, we could argue that. Mawdudis party ended up contesting elections in pakistan ever since. They have made themselves part of the democratic process. They have not been violent extremists. At least the leadership of the group, in the way other people have been. They are thinking across national boundaries. They have rhetoric that goes across national boundaries. They demand that everyone within their reach behave a certain way. That is a very different way of thinking about the world. You jump ahead to page 158. You mention somebody we talked about a long time ago on this program. An egyptian scholar. Said gupta. He endorsed violent struggle to remove leaders, his writings would influence al qaeda and other groups. Trained somewhat or educated in yes. You jumped to muhammed. You been over there looking at the world in the middle east. Help us out on this. Are we creating this problem when people come in here . No. I do not think that is the case at all. When you look at specific instances, yes. Some people have gone and had negative reactions to the United States and come back. There is a kind of genealogy of radical thought which scholars have uncovered and which i write about here but cannot claim any credit for uncovering. Some radical thinkers all the way forward to osama bin laden, gradually getting more radical as you go. Part of that has been contact with the west. But radicals do not need to come to the United States in order to have negative opinions of the United States. Their propaganda is enough. Where are they getting it over there . People feel they are colonized, they are dominated by the United States, there is a media which will play on tho