I think i just got an f from you, actually. This is overheard. Kelly mcevers, welcome. Thanks for having me. Nice to have you, now im going to violate the no high fives on pbs rule. kelly laughs what . And give you a high five over what a wonderful time this is to be in the News Business. Is this not the greatest moment to be doing what we do . This is a great time to be in the News Business every day, something you couldnt have ever believed. Thats true, right. Youre talking about the election i would imagine. Oh, and not only that, but even within the same day, its like, you get up in the morning, heres this big story and then five minutes later. Theres a guy climbing up a building, and youre like yeah, what . And thats like the ninth most important thing in the world. I remember when the Melania Trump nude pictures ran in the new york post, nobody even talked about it, because like 50 more important things happened on that day. There were so many more. Wouldnt that have been a top story most years . Right, and its great because those nine things were things that were actually about issues and were actually interesting, that didnt involve nudity. Yay for us, right, here we go. So its a time when theres crazy developments happening every day, but at the same time therere developments that for the most part, are getting us to talk about policy and who we are, and whats going on and who lives in this country, and what do they not have, and what is what they not have, how is that influencing how they are gonna vote. You know, its a fascinating time to be in the News Business. And then, thats the sort of day to day election coverage, but then, we also live in this time where we know that people like to listen to really Good Journalism, not just on the radio, but in this thing called podcasts. Right, amazing. Were like getting millions and millions of people downloading things where we go out and do really good gumshoe reporting. The kind of stuff that we thought there wasnt a market for at one point. And in fact for a while went away, largely because there wasnt a market, and technology among other things, that great disruptor, has helped us connect with audiences. Isnt that wonderful . Created a market again. Its all good news, the news is good, the tech is good, we should just get up and leave. Goodnight, thank you i dont want to ruin it. Im not gonna say the news is good. I mean, this is the interesting thing, right . A candidate like donald trump obviously for so long, you know he used to boast about this, that he didnt pay for advertising. He didnt need to, because he was such a surprising candidate. The king of free media. That people would just cover him. Cable channels would just put him on, and run it, and go. And now you see the ratings skyrocketing on these outlets, and charging 20 times more than they used to for adbuys. And so, it makes you think, and our ratings are up too. So you think maybe not so good. It makes you all think, like hmm, okay. Is this a time when. Are people paying attention for the right reasons . And im not saying they are or they arent. Im not saying i have an answer to that question, but im saying thats a question we should always, as journalists, be asking ourselves. I wonder, so thats a wonderful part of this, and i think another part of it that i also think is sort of maybe good, maybe not good, is that a lot of the news that were talking about, celebrating, high fiving over, is actually news that is not really great. Like, yeah this election is great news, but also, this election sucks. No, right. The substance of it, the content of it, and where it takes us next. And so, i wonder if theres a version for you, in your case, bad for the country, good for npr, right . Do you ever feel conflicted, that on the one hand were surfing off of this news that in the end this question for us, right, yeah. Our rating are going up, the cable news channels are going up. I mean the thing that we know about what we do, is that we are different than that, right . We are taking a time that i think feels crazy to a lot of people, and were trying to say were gonna help you slow it down just a minute here. Were gonna try to explain it. Weve got an enormous Political Team of people who are every day, factchecking, and combing through documents and data, and who are just trying to say, yeah thats what the screaming people are saying, we wanna just slow it down. We dont yell on npr. No you dont. Theres no yelling, you know . It has sort of a narcoleptic, kelly and audience laugh narcotic quality, right . Hopefully less so, i mean we talk, we laugh, we have emotions, but theres less yelling, and i feel like if we can hit the sweet spot, we can say, yes, this is a time with disturbing news, how can we were not gonna comfort you, necessarily, and tell you like, oh, its okay, everythings actually gonna be okay, but were gonna try to tell you the why. And youre explaining complicated things. How did we get here. Theres all these assumptions we have, like, this is the trump supporter. You know, a lot of times we look at the data thats not what you think, and heres what we know about that, and heres the five people weve talked to in this county who think this way. One of the things that i would love to do is to go spend some time, real time, not just at a rally, not just for the soundbytes, but for my podcast, embedded, we go and we kind of live with people, over long periods of time. I would love to go to some of these places that were overwhelmingly supportive of trump in the primary, and first see if they still will in the general, but also just get to know them and what their stories. Who are they . More than just at the surface level. And how did you get here . Im interested in what you said earlier about technology because, in fact, all of this amazing work would be a pyrrhic victory of sorts if nobody was consuming it. But the reality is, because of technology now, we have more people consuming our content than ever. The digital side of nprs audience is extraordinarily robust. In fact, by some measures, you have maybe more people, on a monthly basis, consuming nprs content through digital platforms than by turning on the boring old radio, right . Its amazing, i mean we have, still our biggest audience is on the radio, but millions and millions of people are downloading our podcasts, and more and more every week, every month, and it depends on what kind of podcast. Weve got the quick, every week, sometimes four times a week politics podcast, and then we have these sort of more curated ones that take longer, invisibilia, my podcast. People want to put a thing in their ear, and hear somebody talk to them and tell them something interesting, while theyre on the bus, and washing dishes. Thats it, its the convenience. Yeah. So, im even thinking not necessarily about the content that youre creating offline from the npr programming, but actually the fact that all of us can access npr programming effectively on demand. Right, if im not up in the morning in time to listen to morning edition, or i happen not to be in the car or on the bus to listen to all Things Considered, i can go back at my choosing, and listen to it. Thats right. And thats something that until the last number of years, did not happen and did not exist, and by definition expands your reach. Isnt that great . Yeah, and one of the interesting conversations were having at npr is how, if at all, does that change the way we do things . Great question. When theres that show that you turn on when your alarm clock goes off, and its morning edition, its that person youve heard for a number of years telling you the same thing in the same format every day, and there are sort of expectations you have about what that should be and what that should sound like. Thats a thing. But then when you are going to choose something, when youre like, im gonna mow the lawn, im gonna ride my bike, im gonna do the dishes, i wanna choose something, i think youre looking for something different, you know . Youre not in the car, listening to the alarm clock, or in the shower, if you have a waterproof radio. Youre saying, i want somebody im gonna put right here, next to my brain, and i know ive got 20 minutes. You know what i mean . And i actually think that changes the way we would tell a story in that format. I think its way more intimate. I think its more personal. I think youre more transparent. But now what were starting to see happen, is, because people like that, they like the more personal, they like the more intimate on podcasts, were starting to see that then influence the news programs. The news, right. Yeah, and were starting to be, i dont know, at least i am, were starting to be ourselves a little bit more than we might have in the past. Its probably long overdue, you know . The personalities of the hosts of these big magazine programs, or the tent pole personalities on the cable channels. In some ways they were told by fiat, you must limit the degree to which we peer behind the curtain. Thats right. Anderson cooper was one of the early ones of those on the cable channels. Rachel maddow is almost compulsive in her use of the first person. Use of the first person. And i think its actually made us all, as consumers of the media, think very differently in a largely positive way, about how that goes. I mean theres a fine line, right, i mean, you can go too far, you can be like, well when i was in iraq, when youre interviewing some general or something, or like, well, the time i crossed that river, i mean its a little too much you, right . And so, were in this wonderful period where, again, i think podcasts like serial and some of the other really Good Journalism podcasts have shown us that people want you to be a person, they want you to say your name, they want you to have feelings, they want you to use the firstperson, i, me. But we still have to ask these questions about when and how much, and i think some people can go too far, and i think some people can still. So its a question that you have to be asking yourself everyday. And then theres, of course, the question of whether you really want people in that position to not only show you who they are but what they think about the issues theyre covering. And this campaign, to come back to this campaign particularly, there has been, in fact, Jim Rutenberg in the New York Times not long ago did a story or a column about this, in which he talked about the fact that were beginning to see from some of these tent pole hosts more of their own political views. And is that a good thing or a bad thing, right . And, you know, big discussions about that. I think there are some people who say, look, in an era of trump, people have to take a stand, and im gonna say what i am. And thats fine, then just call yourself and analyst or a columnist. But dont call yourself an independent journalist. I realize that for a lot of people its a little bit of a whatd you do during the war, daddy . Moment, they dont wanna look back on this in years future and say i had the opportunity to do something what did you not say . And factchecking is all well and good, its just this idea that somehow the delivery of the news is going to be corrupted by the person hosting corrupting it. Right, so its one thing to be interviewing someone who is a doctor whos just gotten out of syria, and during the interview you both show emotions, because you cant help yourself, because its unbelievably moving, and everybody ends up crying on the radio. I cry all the time on the radio. Youre a crier. I cry all the time on the radio. But im not gonna be like, i cant imagine Hillary Clinton being president. You know what i mean . Theres a line between feelings, and again you use them very sparingly, and opinions. Well we accept the fact that nonpartisan doesnt mean nonthinking, but it does mean something, right . So npr is, as it describes itself and as people generally understand it to be a nonpartisan News Organization, right . So why do so many people think youre a bunch of communists . kelly and audience laugh thats such a great question. But you understand, i dont believe youre communists, but you know theres a perception. And look, pbs owns this as well. We all suffer from this, that theres a perception that the public broadcasting stations, npr stations and pbs stations, are all a bunch of pinkos. I would love to know why. I would love to know where that comes from. My hunch is that we live in a time when youre either one or the other. Youve gotta fall in one. Paper or plastic, you gotta pick. Its super easy for nancy pelosi radio to be considered the commie radio. Ive never heard that. Thats a good one. Can i use that . Ill credit you, nancy pelosi radio. Nancy pelosi radio, yeah, a friends grandfather used that one on me, and i was like, wow, never thought of that, no, but if she wants to donate, fine. But you acknowledge that that is a perception that in some places exists. In some places . In a lot of places. I report in places that are not your usual big city, big east coast city, and i hear it all the time. Like, oh, youre from npr, well youre just gonna blah. And im like, well, heres what i know. I was in the middle east for five years. A, thats not liberal or conservative, we just did our job. So i dont know what that really means. Thats where i got my start for npr. And b, im here to tell your story youre not the kind of person that you would expect to hear on npr, right . And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesnt, but i would love for somebody to do a study. What is the genesis of this . Yeah, right. Were based in washington, d. C. , were on the east coast. Theres a lot of welleducated, liberal type people who work for the news. Thats a thing. And you have an elite audience, and in this case, although i dont mean it to be, others mean elite to be a pejorative. Your upperincome, uppereducated, you know its the sort of wineswilling, cheeseeating, surrender monkeys. Limousine liberals. So many french fries. Yeah, its crazy. kelly laughs but again, leaving aside the pejorative aspect of that, the reality is, you do know who your audience is. And i wonder if when you think about constructing all Things Considered, or developing material for the podcast, if the audience member, typical audience member of an npr station, upperincome, uppereducated, more urban than not, and all that, is part of the calculation you make. We sit down every day for a meeting at 9 30 in the morning, east coast time, which is 6 30 for me, west coast time, just saying. Up and at em. But every single day were actually trying to challenge that listener. Were almost erring on the side of surprising that listener. Instead of preaching to the choir, were bringing them something that we hope will surprise them, and challenge them, and make them go, oh, i never thought of it that way. So were always looking to writers, thinkers, people on the right, people who will just counter the prevailing view. Thats a great thing about an afternoon show, right . Youve kind of gone through your day, youve read three thinkpieces on where washcloths come from, or whatever, and we have the luxury of being like, but no, were gonna find the guy who really can say the smart thing about washcloths that no ones ever heard before. And weve got a few hours to do that. But seriously, whether its a political debate or a cultural debate, our idea is to not just get somebody on and have them just sayhi would already believe to be true. I also have to say, cause i run a Public Media Organization that believes in its mission as its north star, you are a Public Media Organization. The p in npr does not stand for pelosi, it stands for public. [kelly] thats right. And you have a Public Service mission baked into nprs whole, kind of, this is what we do, our orientation is entirely to serve the public. So that Public Service mission, as you define it, translates into what . As you were saying that i thought of the week of orlando. I couldnt help but think of that. Im a reporter, im the kind of person who goes out into the world. Thats when im most satisfied and when im doing my best work, but im also a host now, and so, there are times when i have to be in the studio, and that was a week when my colleague ari shapiro was out in the field doing beautiful reporting after that horrible shooting. And, to me, the Public Mission that week was to provide a kind of comfort through ideas. I was by myself, cause he was out, and all the other hosts were somewhere else, and i was surrounded by dozens of smart people who just came with all these ideas, heres what we can say, heres what we say about guns, heres what we can say about gay culture, heres what we can say about nightclubs, heres what we can do in this week of weeks. And remember, that was month of months too, there were just attacks happening everywhere. I mean i think there was a point this summer where people were really feeling like things were pulling apart, right . We just saw so much news off attacks, and the campaign was getting nuts. And to me, sitting in that studio, providing knowledge. Sorry, providing comfort through knowledge was what felt like a great thing to do. Every day i walked out of that studio and i was like, this is the best job in the world. And thats the mission. Yeah. Ultimately, thats what your mission is. You mentioned that you like to be a reporter. You were in fact, as you alluded to earlier today, a reporter for many years. You were in beirut, and you were in syria, you were in iraq, you were in some very dangerous parts of the world. You like being a host as much as you like being a reporter . Oh, were on the record pick pick pick i cant answer that kelly and audience laugh or is there host brain and reporter brain . Totally. And theres a fusion of those brains . Therere so many brains. Talk about the difference. Theres so many different subbrains of the reporter brain, and subbrains of the host brain, yeah, theres different brains. Its interesting, you know . When youre an anchor and you have someone in the studio and youre interviewing them, your questions are on tape, right . And thats different when youre a reporter and youre interviewing somebody and you record it for two hours and youre gonna sort of put together, its almost like youre a student and youre writing a term paper. Youve interviewed all the experts, and then you get it all together and you sort of parse it out and then you write your term paper. Its a solitary thing. As a host, youre sitting there with someone, and youre the standin for the listener. Youre asking the questions that you think the listener is asking, or, youre trying to imagine what the listeners thinking and youre trying to challenge that thinking and ask a question that may come out and,