John Dickerson

John Dickerson is co-anchor of "CBS Evening News" and anchor of "CBS Evening News Plus." He is also a Contributing Writer to The Atlantic and is co-host of the Slate Political Gabfest.

  • 03/15/2023: Faith and Hope

    At the end of 2020 I wrote about that pandemic year so I wouldn’t forget what it was like.

    I wrote about hope and Thomas Merton:

    “By hope…the abstract and impersonal become …intimate conviction,” wrote the Trappist monk Thomas Merton. “What I believe in faith, I possess and make my own by hope.” Hope in the unseen. Hope in a better future. Hope in heaven. This is worship. If you hope that hope will carry you through, it will. (You can also write that sentence a different way: If you hope, that hope will carry you through. It will. The first is an instruction and the second one is a promise. They are saying the same thing but also something slightly different which contributes to the liquid boundaries of hope.)

    The reading this past Sunday was one of, if not the passage, that Merton seemed to be relying on for that view:

    Reading II

    Rom 5:1-2, 5-8

    Brothers and sisters:
    Since we have been justified by faith,
    we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
    through whom we have gained access by faith
    to this grace in which we stand,
    and we boast in hope of the glory of God.

    And hope does not disappoint,
    because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts
    through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
    For Christ, while we were still helpless,
    died at the appointed time for the ungodly.
    Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person,
    though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die.
    But God proves his love for us
    in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

    • More Notions

  • 03/01/2023: New words from Dictionary.com that I like

    rage farming noun. Informal. the tactic of intentionally provoking political opponents, typically by posting inflammatory content on social media, in order to elicit angry responses and thus high engagement or widespread exposure for the original poster. 📝 This term was coined in 2022 (in the form rage farmed) by investigative reporter John Scott-Railton. Read about some other terms for […]

  • 02/27/2023: How to solve the work week.

    From Business Insider: “I do ‘Bare Minimum Mondays’ at work.” The TikTok creator and startup founder Marisa Jo Mayes says it helps her beat the “Sunday scaries” and avoid burnout — and it has completely changed her life. Find out more. If enough TikTok influencers can work really hard to brand not working at all […]

  • 02/25/2023: We Still Smoke the Water Pipe

    I found a quote in one of my notebooks from the second year of the Iraq war (3/20/2005). “Life goes on,” Hayawi says. “We are in the middle of a war, and we still smoke the water pipe.” This feels like a universal message to me. After some work in the shop with the search […]

  • 02/25/2023: A Conversation with Tim Frye on what's changed since the invasion of Ukraine

    I talked to Timothy Frye, the Marshall D. Shulman professor of post-Soviet foreign policy at Columbia University, for “CBS News Prime Time” about how Russia’s war in Ukraine has changed global energy, the economy and politics.    

  • 01/08/2023: House GOP Learned How to Govern

  • 12/14/2022: Did someone have inside information?

    60 seconds before CPI number came out there was significant trading activity: Bloomberg thinks someone got the news!

  • 12/14/2022: Reality and columnists are two different things.

    “The world is much worse than it would have been had the virus not emerged, and that’s not the fault of columnists you disagree with.” Matt Yglesias.

  • 12/13/2022: Spies Just like us.

    The Ruskies next door. Our story on it on CBS News Prime Time can be found here.

  • 12/13/2022: Sam Bankman Fried not instilling confidence.

    “Like I, like, kind of vaguely knew, kind of, sort of maybe, um, on a qualitative level what was going on.” — Sam Bankman Fried on Unusual Whales podcast on movement of customer funds from FTX to Alameda without permission. via Dealbook

  • 01/01/1970: Meetings can be a black hole that sucks your soul from your body. Priya Parker describes how to make them more intentional.

    I have long been obsessed with intention in even the mundane tasks in life. Priya Parker has put intention into gatherings and meetings. I talked to her about her book and her ideas on Prime Time 3/16/23 as a part of our shifting workplace special. We wanted to talk to her because if the workplace […]