John Dickerson

Creativity comes from building something entirely new, but also from combining two previous things in a new way. We know this from Emerson, West Side Story and, of course, Hamilton. Emerson: June 18, 1838: “The art of writing consists in putting two things together that are unlike and that belong together, like a horse and […]

With an assist from Pantz: I spent years driving my son to baseball and hurrying him out the door. Now I find him in the kitchen making bacon and eggs better than I do before. He makes his own way there.

Has this ever happened to you? You read something and it really moves you. When you search for the sparking passage again, though, it eludes you. Emerson writes about this frustration: “I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could […]

“You get into a sort of nest. You get really comfortable, and then you’re away.”         My hut today 2/9/2019:  

Here I am on my favorite topic (which I’ve written about here and here) with Noma Dumezweni and Jamie Parker from “Harry Potter an the Cursed Child.”   JD: Noma tell me then– both of you weigh in on this. Where does a play take place? Is it you all creating this moment of revelation […]

“The value of a thing sometimes lies not in what one attains with it, but in what one pays for it – what it costs us.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche From The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene:

From the Republic: “the last thing anyone will accept is being deceived in his soul about how things really are. To have been deceived, and be ignorant, with the falsehood lodged there in the soul, is when people hate it the most.”

Here’s a meditation on where the joy comes from in music: The original piece that aired can be found here.

Khrushchev to Kennedy, 1961:  

Thomas the Train videocassette: Narrated by Alec Baldwin Him, age 3: Did you hear him say Aled Baldwin? Me: That’s Alec Baldwin Him: Is he good or no? Me: He’s a fine narrator Him: Will he eat someone and chew their bones? Me: No, I don’t think so. Him: I wouldn’t like him if he […]

Dave Matthews flashes impish in this great picture taken by CBS This Morning Senior Producer Adam Verdugo. It’s just one of the emotions in the stew-pot we stirred when we talked to Matthews in Charlottesville at the end of his last tour. We talked about that city– where I went to school and first saw him […]

I like this line from Emerson about friendship: “There is a power in love to divine another’s destiny better than that other can, and, by heroic encouragements, hold him to his task.” It’s from the essay “Uses of Great Men.” I’ve always liked the idea that friends are there to remind us of ourselves– to […]

….and women, obviously. I’ve been on a bit of an Emerson jag recently. (It’s all Walt Whitman’s fault.) It sent me back to my Emerson reader. In it I found my notes from Emerson’s essay “Uses of Great Men.” It is a meditation on the role those we admire play in our personal and national life. […]

Emerson wrote Walt Whitman a letter about Leaves of Grass when the young poet was feeling glum. In it, the established writer worries that “too much handiwork, or too much lymph in the temperament, were making our Western wits fat and mean.” I think I’m going to embrace the idea that we have “too much […]

We interviewed explorer Louis Rudd on the show yesterday. He dragged himself and a sled across the snow, wind, despair, and oh-come-on-why-are-you-doing-this of Antarctica. When Rudd wanted to stop at the end of long days– including days when he had to walk backwards to find his supplies that had become hidden in the driving snow– […]

Peter Hamby’s analysis after the 2012 campaign is worth re-reading as people think about how to cover campaigns. I spoke to Peter at length and feel the same way about Twitter now as I did back then. Certainly more so:

Faulkner said it was the writer’s job to help man “endure by lifting his heart.” This is from his speech to the Nobel dinner in 1950: