Sjanna and Peter Leighton explain how their biggest regret came to be their greatest source of joy. Then Max talks to Dan Rather about his career as the anchor of the CBS Evening News, learning to live with his mistakes, and finding his own voice as a journalist in his 80s.
Know someone who should be on 70 Over 70? We’re looking for all types of stories and people to feature at the top of the show. To nominate yourself or someone else, email 70over70@pineapple.fm or call 302-659-7070 and tell us your name, age, where you’re from and what you want to talk about.
transcription
[PRE-ROLL]
[OPENING MONTAGE]
Madeleine Albright: I know this program is 70 Over 70, but I really wish I were younger. I wish I was 70…but, I am ready!
[THEME MUSIC STARTS]
William: I’m 72 years old.
Paula: I’m 75, miraculously enough.
Sandy: I am 83 years old.
Betty: I am 88 years old.
James: You know, I’m here at 92.
Lucia: I’ll be 94 in May.
Donalda: I’m 101 years old.
Peter Leighton: My name is Peter Leighton, I live in Lampasas, Texas and I'm 72 yearsold.
[THEME MUSIC FADES OUT]
Peter: I think. [laugh]
Sjanna Leighton: He never knows his age. [laughs]
Peter: Always have to double check with Sjanna. [both laugh]
Sjanna: My name is Sjanna Leighton. I live in Lampasas, Texas. I turn 70 this summer.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Sjanna: It was the fall of 1972.
Peter: Keeping in mind this was really for both of us the height of “summer of love” and-and “anything is possible,” and when Sjanna and I met, the world shifted for me. I realized that this was the woman who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.
Sjanna: I mean, I hadn't thought about wanting to get married or anything, but it just seemed like that was the next step for us.
Peter: It's a punctuation mark. You know, it's a --
Sjanna: Well it vala--it validated what we felt we had.
Peter: Exactly, so that is where the rest of the story begins.
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
Sjanna: Well, in the beginning, it was perfect. But then the realities of life fall into your-your perfect little love nest. And, uh, we started having some difficulties, primarily financially.
Peter: We were...emotionally we were both still kids.
Sjanna: And we didn’t communicate. We could talk late into the night about so many things, but we couldn’t share our struggles.
Peter: And I reached a point where I couldn’t handle it anymore.
Sjanna: Anyway, I came home from work one day and Peter was gone. And I knew that he wasn't going to come back.
Peter: What was it, Sjanna? Probably 30, 35 years we lost sight of one another.
Sjanna: We totally lost touch.
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
Peter: So 30 plus years later, I went through a divorce, and at the same time, I had gotten back into photography, and one of the images I posted was an image that I had taken of Sjanna on our honeymoon back in the 1970s. That was...it was an image I'd always loved and I called it "The Muse". And so I went in and checked one day and someone had commented about it and said their name was Sjanna.
Sjanna: It took me a couple of weeks to work up the courage, but I was just really curious.
Peter: And we decided to have coffee just to catch up.
Sjanna: When I was sitting there, just sort of impetuously I said to Peter, “You know what happened to us?"
Peter: I just didn’t have any problem telling her how I felt. I... just told her the truth for the first time, uh, really.
Sjanna: And he said, "I don't know. You were the love of my life.” And I’m like, “what are you kidding? You know, I was heartbroken when you left,” Life knocked off all the rough-rough edges on us. And I think both of us just knew we were gonna get married again.
Peter: And here we are.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Sjanna: You know, we can’t have all those years back at all.
Peter: But I’m ambivalent about it because I’ve had to live the life that I lived in order to get to the place that I'm in right now, where I really feel comfortable with who I am and what I have to give. And I don't spend much time looking at woulda, coulda, shoulda. Because there's there's so much now to appreciate and to –
Sjanna: And you’ve got to because when you reach our age, you have to be open to life and realize that so much stuff is just temporary. It’s not permanent. Both of us had been at a point where we thought, you know, our lives are pretty set and yet we got this great reward. [laughs]
[THEME SONG STARTS]
Sjanna: Undeserved. But, you know, we're making the most of it.
Max Linsky: That was Sjanna and Peter Leighton, and from Pineapple Street Studios, this is 70 Over 70. A show about making the most of the time we have left. I’m Max Linsky.
[THEME SONG CONTINUES]
Max: My guest this week is Dan Rather, who you probably know as the longtime anchor of the CBS Evening News.
[THEME MUSIC FADES OUT]
Max: Dan was in that chair for 25 years and we talked about what it meant to do that job, the toll it takes to engage that way with disaster and tragedy on a near daily basis. And what it does to your sense of self, to your ego, to sit alone at a desk five nights a week and speak to millions of people.
But we also talked about what happens when that camera turns off because for Dan, that moment meant leaving New York, going back to Texas, and continuing to be a reporter, just in a very different way.
And that’s why I was excited to talk to him. I wanted to know what that anchor job had felt like – for sure. Whether he had gotten used to the power it gave him. Whether it ever felt lonely.
But more than that, I wanted to understand what it had been like to leave, to lose that spotlight.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Max: Dan went from being the face of this iconic news organization to being a journalist mostly working on his own. And in the process he had to find a different kind of voice. One that wasn’t for everyone, but for himself.
Dan Rather is 89 years old.
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
INTERVIEW
Max: Dan Rather, this is crazy that I'm interviewing you, I've listened to, like, hundreds and hundreds of interviews you've done. This is exciting for me!
Dan Rather: I'm honored to be on with you and thank you.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Max: I really like to, um, talk to you about your life right now and about the work you're doing right now, ‘cause I'm fascinated by it, but I was wondering if we could start by going back. There's a time in your professional life where it seems like you were almost plucked from obscurity and put in this really prominent national spotlight as a reporter and as a news anchor. It seems like it happened really quickly. Did it feel that way to you or, uh, or do I have the story wrong?
Dan: Well, the short answer is yes. It did appear that way to me at the time. I had always dreamed of being a reporter, and I consider myself very lucky that I was indeed able to get jobs as a journalist, you know, coming out of college. You know, I was the anchor, uh, at a television station in Houston, KHOU, which was a CBS affiliate, which was by far the best job I'd had. I flunked out of being a newspaper man, to tell you the truth. I was a very bad speller. [Max laughs] By the time 1961 came around, I was, uh, the Director of News and Community Affairs. Basically, I was a director of myself, but at any rate, a great hurricane came, a hurricane that is still, I think, on record the largest hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico.
Max: Carla, right?
Dan: Hurricane Carla, September 1961. Because I grew up in hurricane country, on the Texas coast, I knew about hurricanes and I had covered hurricanes before. It turned out to be I was the right person in the right time doing some of the right things. And we were able to do live coverage, which was, at the time, unheard of. [Mhmm] And CBS National picked up some of our coverage.
Max: And that had a real impact on people, right? I mean, it was the first time that people sitting at home could see where the hurricane was in relation to their house geographically and it got people out of there, right?
Dan: Well, exactly. This is where, keep in mind that, nobody on television was using radar for weather. Nobody. And radar was only beginning to be used even by the National Weather Service, but they had a radar installation in Galveston, one of the few in the country. So what happened was a breakthrough on television, although I didn't realize it at the time. We superimposed a map of the Texas coast over the radar picture of the hurricane, which showed people dramatically, in a way that had never been done before, just how big the hurricane was and what a great danger it was. And that resulted in a mass evacuation from the Texas coast, which at the time was the largest peacetime evacuation in the history of the country. Uh, you use the word plucked me from obscurity, but I think that's a fair description. They offered me a job with the network as a result of that hurricane coverage. It was my big break. Let's face it.
Max: What did that big break feel like for you?
Dan: It felt absolutely wonderful. [Max laughs] It was a dream come true. Uh, you know, ‘This is CBS News in New York and we want to talk to you about coming to work here,' You what? [Max laughs] But you know, that quickly, uh, led to, uh, a very heavy dose of, first of all, gratitude and secondly, for humility. Because when I got to New York, you know, I had been a journalist for more than 10 years and without any conceit, I thought I was pretty good. I could report, I could write, I could handle myself on the air. But when I got to New York, let's face it, I walked the halls with legends. Sevareid. Collingwood. Ed Murrow had just left and was still around. Those names don't mean much now, but in my time, they were the absolute superstars of not just television news but television. I don't like to use a cliche, but, minor league baseball players who are moved up to the major leagues sometimes marvel at how much better the pitching is. Curveballs break sharper, fastballs are faster. That was very much my sense of it when I got to New York and walked the halls of CBS was 'boy, oh, boy, this is a fast track,'
Max: [laughs] To extend your metaphor for a second, did you feel like you could hit that pitching? Did you have confidence that you would get there or did you show up and feel like... I'm not in the right place?
Dan: No, I-I-I had a sense that I definitely was in the right place. Frankly, and I hope this won't be seen as arrogant in any way but I have to say, once up there, I felt it was my destiny. Keep in mind that when I was bedridden with rheumatic fever as a child, I heard these voices of CBS News on the radio by my bedside.
Max: Right.
Dan: I had dreamed of it. Now about can I hit the big league pitching? I always had confidence. I never had overconfidence, maybe sometimes later in my career, but certainly then it was a sense, you know, I can do this, but I really got to focus and I've got to be all in was my feeling. I remember after the first day I was in New York and I met Sevareid, Collingwood, Murrow that my reaction was I'm a long way from being anywhere near their equal in ability and talent, but I can do it. But I had to hurry. New York is not a place where you get second chances.
Max: No one was going to wait for you to figure it out.
Dan: Well, it didn't take long for me to figure it out.
Max: And how long was it before you ended up in the chair?
Dan: Well, let's see I came to work at CBS News early in 1962. I took the chair as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News from the iconic Walter Cronkite, March 9th, 1981. So it was basically 20 years.
Max: And almost exactly 40 years ago.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Dan: That's right.
Max: Does it feel like 40 years ago?
Dan: You know, some days it seems like 400 years ago [Max laughs] and other days it feels like-- just like yesterday.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
[BREAK/MIDROLL]
Max: Can you remember that first night, March 9th? Can you remember what it felt like?
Dan: Sure, sure. Of course, I remember it. I remember it very well. It was in the old CBS Evening News Studios at 524 West 57 Street. I was a little nervous, but the two things I kept saying to myself, and I do remember saying these things to myself. One was a version of I can do it and I've spent nearly my whole adult life preparing to do this. And the other was, don't take yourself seriously, take your work seriously. I already knew that being named to succeed Walter Cronkite would put me in a position of, frankly, inhaling every day, a kind of NASA-grade rocket fuel for the ego. [Max laughs] Uh, and that could be dangerous.
Max: Yeah, it sounds pretty dangerous. It also sounds like a little bit lonely.
Dan: You know, they say it's lonely at the top. I want to keep this in perspective, that I've never considered myself a lonely person. I don't suffer from great loneliness and I didn't then. But there certainly is a sense that you're it. It wasn't a dual anchor.
Max: Mm hmm.
Dan: It was one person and it was always the great weight--I couldn't complain about it because I knew going in--but just stop and think, you know, trying to succeed Walter Cronkite. I mean, close friends of mine urged me not to take the job because they said, ‘listen, nobody can succeed a Walter Cronkite. The first person who tries to do it is bound to fail. It'll be the second person that comes along. That's just the way life is, Dan,’ And there was this sense I had a lot of help. I had a lot of friends. I thought I was generally well thought of at CBS, but in the end, when the red light goes on it's just you. In the end, you're by yourself.
Max: You're by yourself, but also you've got to be so many things to so many people in that moment. Was it hard to, like, hold on to yourself in that job?
Dan: Frankly and candidly, the answer is yes. And the longer you're in that role, the more difficult it is to stay true to yourself. And to remember who you are and who you want to be, particularly as opposed to who a lot of other people want you to be. One of the many legitimate criticisms that can be made of me. Is that I try to be a pleaser. That I suffer what Scott Fitzgerald once called the American disease, which is you want everybody to love you.
Max: Hmm.
Dan: And particularly when you're on television five nights a week, the question of "who am I", you should ask it more often, but what you wind up asking much more often is, uh, 'what do they think'. I did feel from that first night in 1981, for a good time after that, I did say a version to myself, ‘well, you've always said yourself you want to be a pressure player,’
Max: Mhmm.
Dan: Here it is, here's the pressure. So meet the pressure.
Max: I kind of wonder if--if you feel like both those things can be true at the same time, like you can both wonder what people are thinking and want to please and also be present and in the moment and rising to the pressure? Like, can those two things exist at the same time?
Dan: Yes, and I'm here to bear witness that they can, because it did with me. It won't always be successful, you know, sometimes that the undertow of trying to please puts at risk your ability to beat the pressure, but in other times you're able to say to yourself, frankly, I don't give a damn what they think. I know what's right or I know what we need to do.
Max: Mm hmm.
Dan: Uh, and you move to it. But...you know, Max, a lifetime in journalism has taught me that many people don't understand about journalism as a whole. And that is that journalism is not an exact science. Journalism is more a crude art.
Max: Hmm.
Dan: Nobody can do it perfectly, no matter how hard you try, no matter how good you are, no matter how great you are. And the Murrows and Cronkites of the world will tell you the same thing. That even on its best days, that you're likely to make some mistakes. And part of being a complete professional at the level we're talking, you learn to accept that on most days, I'm tempted to say almost everyday, you fall short of doing it perfectly.
Max: Yeah, you know, I'm-I’m in a way, I'm not surprised to hear you say that and-and I think that that's true, but I also think that that idea is in, like, direct tension with the experience of the CBS Evening News, while you were anchoring that show. And really like what you were expected to do, which was to be, if not perfect, then definitive.
Dan: That's true, I would agree with that.
Max: And-and that idea, the thing you're talking about, the journalism's a crude art, that it can't be perfected, that it’s not a science, and yet everything from the aesthetics of that show to the tone, to the way that you delivered the news, at least my impression is that it was designed to feel that way.
Dan: It was and is designed to feel that way.
Max: But did that make you feel totally insane?
Dan: Not totally.
Max: Just a little bit? [both laugh]
Dan: Maybe, a little bit.
Max: It seems really hard to me.
Dan: Well, it is hard, but I'll tell you what was a--for me and the time I worked at CBS News, which was a total of 44 years. What kept you from losing your balance in this area in the context of what we're now talking about, was this: at CBS News, one was always very aware of the history and heritage. And the sense of it was that it was a calling. I know some people will laugh at that. It created this feeling for those of us who were inside that CBS News was a magical, mystical kingdom in which every correspondent was expected to be a knight. That in our dreams, we had knelt and the blade had been placed on the shoulder. You're a CBS News correspondent and don't forget, that's the world of Murrow, Sevareid, Cronkite, long history. So the magical, mystical kingdom was populated by knights who every day in every way tried to do and report on truth, justice and the American way, and that every man and woman at CBS News from the person who cleaned up the dishes in the cafeteria right up through the ranks was part of that. Now, it wasn't true. It may sound strange to anybody on the outside, but for those of us on the inside, it was a great part of what kept us going.
Max: No, it doesn't-it doesn't sound strange, I think I think lots of people have been connected to one institution or another that's able to define that mystique for itself, but it's jarring when you realize that, you know, Santa Claus isn't real. [Dan laughs] What was that like for you? When did you realize that that mystique? Because I can hear it in your voice, even that there was value in the mystique and that it meant something to you and it still does. But when did you realize that it wasn't true?
Dan: Well to be perfectly truthful with you, which I try to be, I believed it to the end. In many ways, I still believe it. I don't want to overstate this, but, you know I probably foul this up in some ways, but some, I think, Irish poet said something along the lines about the church. Says, give me a child until the child is six or seven years old and if you give me the child for that period, then there'll always be a string to his heart that can be plucked. And that was the way it was with CBS News, with me, it was the day that I walked out of there and it has been, as I say, in some ways, ever since. The closest I came to what you're talking about, that is a realization that, well, the mystique is one thing, but the reality is another is after the company had been sold and resold, things began to change, and the pressure had become so great to produce ever increasing ratings for ever increasing profits. But, uh, you can fault me if you must or choose to, and I wouldn't blame you. I never stopped believing and I repeat for emphasis, I was a believer ‘til the day I walked out. I didn't believe until the last second I was actually going to leave. To put it bluntly, I was forced to leave. [laughs]
Max: And did that change the mystique being forced to leave?
Dan: Well, it knocked a dent in it.
Max: Yeah.
Dan: But-- and I'm not trying to be cute here because I know myself that the mystique was so deeply ingrained in me. I-I just thought to the end, something will happen. I'll be at CBS News, I obviously will be in a considerably reduced position, but I want to stay. But when you know finally when I'm told, 'get yourself out of the office, get yourself out of here,' uh, I had to take a deep breath and say, 'well, you know, I still believe in the heritage, the history and the mystique, but maybe not quite as forcefully as I once did.
Max: The way you're describing it is...it's almost like a kind of faith.
Dan: I think that's fair. That's fair. It was a kind of faith. It had an inner spirit for so many years, there were all kinds of sort of codes inside of codes. For example, for years if you were a correspondent and sent to relieve another correspondent, you had the touch of the hand rule For example, when I went to cover the India-Pakistan war of 1965, I was sent to relieve another legendary CBS News correspondent, Winston Burdette, and I was to relieve him on the western part of India where the war with Pakistan was going on. He couldn't leave the battlefield until I arrived and literally touched his hand. Then that was a signal. OK, it's mine from here on in and just small rituals like that were deeply ingrained.
Max: The connection that you had to the place, what it meant to you, despite knowing on some level that it couldn't all be true and despite it taking its various dents, do you think that it-it's connected in some way to optimism? To believing the best possible version of things is possible? Does that--does that sound right to you that-that--
Dan: Yes, it does sound right to me and frankly, I think that's a very perceptive question. I know enough about myself that I'm an optimist by nature and by experience. I like to think that the longer I've gone in life, that I’ve-I've become more of an optimistic realist, but I'm an optimist. It's just within me. I know that about myself and I also know that you can love a thing too much. Something like a job, something like an organization of CBS News, because if you love it too much, you get blinded to its shortcomings and also you fail to see the flaws. And I-I think it's a legitimate criticism of me that in terms of CBS News, that-that I came to-to love it too much. I wasn't realistic about some things, including myself, in my own role. I made my mistakes. I didn't always handle them well. Don't misunderstand me, I want to emphasize that over the years I made mistakes, some of those mistakes were born of of arrogance. But with CBS News? As the saying goes, I didn't leave anything on the table. [Yeah] I gave it--I gave it everything. I gave it the best I had. Now, in the end, well, if my best was not good enough, there you are.
Max: The mistakes of arrogance, the mistakes that come from, uh, what was the thing you said, like a jet fuel hose of ego?
Dan: Yeah, I said, uh, NASA-grade.
Max: Right right. NASA grade. Do you think about those moments? Do you regret them now?
Dan: Not very often to tell you the truth.But about that I'm at peace with myself. But from time to time, I do. Mostly in-in the larger context of saying how lucky I am to have lived this long and I've had my health, to live this long and that I've had time to learn from my mistakes and correct some of mistakes. And I don't like admitting this and my wife reminds me sometimes, 'Dan, just because you know it's true, you don't always have to publicly admit it -- you know [Max laughs] you just begin to think that if not the whole world, a lot of the world just revolves around you. And looking back on it, you find yourself talking about yourself much more than you should. Of thinking about yourself, thinking about yourself first, and you kind of convince yourself that your press clippings and you ratings are true. And I went through a period in which my wife, Jean --I'm sorry, you don't know Jean. We've been married 63 years now. She's not given to this kind of language and she would be embarrassed, but several times just took me aside and said, 'Dan, you are becoming a version of the sun powered, perpetual motion, all American bullshit machine [Max laughs], and you don't even realize it,'. When your wife takes you aside and does you the favor of saying something along those lines to you, then you know you need to reassess.
Max: Yeah. On some level, that's all we can ask of our partners, though, you know, to tell us if, uh, we're turning into an asshole.
Dan: Yeah, exactly.
Max: It's funny, though, you know, it's... that thing you said about thinking that the world revolves around you and talking too much about yourself and thinking too much about yourself, I think almost everyone...falls prey to that pretty often, actually. At least like in your defense, you had a camera pointed at you five nights a week, you know. You actually were the star of your own movie.
Dan: Well, that's true to a degree. But in that role, what's called for is gratitude and humility and appreciation. Uh, not egocentricity.
Max: I think that wasn't what I expected you to say, but it makes sense to me.
Dan: Well, if it makes sense to me, it's probably one of the few sensible things I've said during this hour.
Max: Oh, unfortunately, that's not the case. [Dan laughs] I hate to break it to you, but you said a lot of things that make a lot of sense to me and a lot of things that are surprising. There's another surprising part of your life, Dan, that I feel like we should talk about, which is where you are now in public life. And my sense from the outside, just watching Twitter and Facebook, is that your voice has changed since you left CBS. And I don't know whether it's more political or fuller or more you, but it feels different to me than the person I grew up watching on the evening news. Does it feel different to you?
Dan: Yes, it does feel that way to me, and I say that with a smile, we're on radio so you can't see the smile. I'm saying that with a smile. I don't have a responsibility to that history and mystique of CBS News we talked about, nor do I have any loyalty to any corporation or any other person. I've just been on my own. What I've been through in these most recent years and up to and including this time I felt as good about it as I have about anything I've done in my career. I know there'll be voices say, well, that's not much. That's damning with faint praise, but nonetheless [both laugh] that I really do think I've done some of the best work of my career since leaving CBS and I feel very good about that. The biggest difference is being on-on one's own. No one to answer to except yourself and to the audience. And I've always wanted to have courage. I've never considered myself a particularly courageous person. I've always wanted to have courage, and it may be, I hope it's true, and I actually think it is true, I may be closer to having courage now. I may be closer to having some guts, if you will, now than I ever was when I was at CBS.
Max: What do you mean by that, Dan?
Dan: Well, it stands on its own. An example would be if some politician consistently lies, then one should call that a lie. Now, I don't say I was the first, but I was among the first that four or five years ago, when it became obvious that certain candidates, one in particular was telling a lie after lie after lie--no question about it being a lie-- I was among those who said we should call it a lie, let's call it what it is. And more recently, in referring to efforts to limit how people vote, opportunities, chances for people to vote limited, I suggest that we should call it what it is, which is Jim Crow. It's designed to limit the voting voice primarily of minority groups. So in that sort of thing, I wouldn't classify it as courage or even guts but it comes closer.
Max: Courage is also about taking risks, right? Like did saying those things feel risky in a way that felt new for you?
Dan: Now, there's no net. This is another mixed metaphor, but when you work in a place like CBS News, there are all kinds of safety nets. There are other people you work with, there are editors, their bosses. When you're doing what I do now, you're aware that you're working without a net. You can say I'm an experienced high wire walker and I have confidence that I can do it. Look, I've always said the mission of the journalist is to get to the truth or as close to the truth as is humanly possible. And I have a sense that I'm closer to doing that on a daily basis now. I'm at least as close as I've ever been in my career.
Max: Do you think that that's something that you can just have that's attainable, or is that just, um, a thing that comes and goes?
Dan: Well, if you're lucky, it comes and goes, but for some people, it never-- it never comes! [both laugh]
Max: Never arrives, right.
Dan: For some people, it never comes. No, it's an aspiration. Sometimes you can mount courage or as close to courage as you're capable of doing. And other times you don't do it. Afterwards, you say to yourself, I know that I flinched, I blinked, I walked away. But if you're lucky and have God's grace, you live another day and somewhere along the line you'll be tested again.
Max: And are you able to have Grace with yourself in those moments?
Dan: Well, as close as that one is likely to have yes. But it hasn't always been true. I'm a better person now than I was. I'm a better pro now than I was. But I don't say that in the sense that I look back and say to myself, ‘oh, why didn't I do this when I was 25 or 35 or 50?’ It's just the arc of life. I can be dumb as a fence post about a lot of things, but I'm at least smart enough to know that now I'm on the backside of the mountain. And I've come to think, you know, I better spend most of my energy and time as I can of seeing every day as a gift, rather worrying about things I didn't do or should have done or could have done when I was on the up side of the mountain rather than here on the shadowy side.
Max: That seems like a good way to be.
Dan: It feels that way too.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
CREDITS
Max: 70 Over 70 is a production of Pineapple Street Studios, and it’s produced by Jess Hackel.
Our associate producer is Janelle Anderson. Our editors are Maddy Sprung-Keyser and Joel Lovell. Research and additional reporting by Charley Locke.
Our mixers are Raj Makhija and Elliott Adler. And Jenna Weiss-Berman and I are the executive producers.
Our theme song is Like a Dream by Francis and the Lights and the music you’re listening to right now is by Mavis Staples, who’s 81. Original music by Terence Bernardo. Additional music by Noble Kids, and music licensing by Dan Knishkowy.
Our cover art is by Maira Kalman, who’s 72. And our episode art is by Lynn Staley. She’s 73 and she’s also my mom.
Thank you, Sjanna and Peter Leighton. And thank you, Dan Rather.
I'm Max Linsky. Thanks for listening.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]