Jim Axelrod: From the White House to War Zones—And Finding His Why

What if the moment that nearly ended your life became the one that finally made sense of it? Veteran CBS reporter Jim Axelrod joins us for a raw, free-flowing conversation that moves from Iraq’s war zones to quiet moments with Bruce Springsteen. He reflects on how growing up in New Jersey—and summers working the Shore—taught him the art of connection. This one’s about resilience, reflection, and the question that keeps him grounded: Why are you doing what you’re doing?

In the Long Run, A Father, a Son, and Unintentional Lessons in Happiness by Jim Axelrod

Harvey Cedars Shellfish Company

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Transcript

Hellos, Bus Stop Roots, Jersey Pride

SPEAKER_03 0:04

We'll go ahead and start and by welcoming you, Jim. Thank you so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Thank you for having me. It's wonderful to chat.

SPEAKER_03 0:10

I know you from the neighborhood. From the bus stop. From the bus stop. Years ago. I remember meeting you and Christina years ago at the bus stop, and I just adored both of you. And I remember my husband came home one day and he was like, You really see the skill of a reporter. Like he just pulled it all out of me in like two minutes at the bus stop. I was like telling him all my life story.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

You know what that always does? That prevents me from having to share mine. It's much easier to ask other people. It's a arm's length defense mechanism.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

My therapist friends have the same mechanism. You ask them how they're doing, and somehow you realize an hour later you've just told them everything about how you're doing. And you're like, wait, they didn't answer the question.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Yeah. I've actually had people say to me, like, we're not going to be able to have uh mutuality in terms of relationship unless you stop asking questions and start answering some. Although what happens if you're just really interested in people? Like that's that's the other thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

I agree. We're very interested in people, so we end up doing that too. I'm wanting to hear everything.

SPEAKER_03 1:14

I bumped into you recently and asked you to come on because you told me you were from Jersey. And we want to hear your backstory. Everybody knows you because you've been on television, you've been a reporter for I don't I don't know how many years now, but how long have you been at CBS News?

SPEAKER_00 1:28

I am in my 30th year at CBS News, right? So like you didn't think they were hiring five-year-olds, did you? I didn't.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

That's right. But I'm so glad you were the first. We'd like to know your prodigy story. Tell us about when you started reporting at five.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

So actually, I am in my 30th year, but I was 32 when they hired me. So it's been a wonderful, wonderful way to make a living for any number of years. It's funny, the Jersey thing, and this is why I was like, I mean, let's be honest. You didn't ask me, I begged you. I please beyond. Because I I mean uh I could talk about New Jersey all day long. It's it's sort of formative and it's I feel like you get some stuff in life, you don't get others, right? We all have this sort of this asset liability balance sheet we all walk around with in our heads. And for me, being born, raised, and now living most of my life in New Jersey is a huge check mark in the asset column. I just love everything

New Jersey as Foundation and Filter

SPEAKER_00 2:25

about this state and the state of mind that is required for people who live here. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 2:30

Well, what do you think, having grown up here, what is the state of mind that you think that you cultivated here? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

You know, it's funny. I think everything that I've run into in life, both personally and professionally, obviously I ran into first in New Jersey. I mean, in terms of the kinds of people I grew up in a small town, Highland Park, which is right next to New Brunswick, the Rutgers campus, 15,000 people, um, broad range of socioeconomic backgrounds, race, religion. It was the ultimate mini melting pot. It was a fabulous place to grow up. It was a great time, late 70s, early 80s, but it allowed me to develop a foundation of how to go out in the world. There wasn't anyone I wasn't going to be able to talk to. This was a town of 15,000, as I say, but you know, a Nobel Prize winner, Arnold Penzius, was in Hyla Park. I went to school with his kids. There were people who remember Willie Garson from Sex in the City, um who sadly died a few years ago, was a good friend of mine growing up. There were, even in this small town, you began to understand if you want to go out and achieve in the world. I mean, in my small town of 141, we're in my graduating class, and I think we had uh Harvard and Yale and a couple to Princeton, and you begin to understand what it require what is required. I waited tables for 10 summers at the Harvey Cedar Shellfish Company on Long Beach Island. There's a picture somewhere on the wall there with this big jufro. But I learned more skills talking to people on the Jersey Shore, getting them lobster and crab cakes that I use every day as a journalist than I learned anywhere else. Certainly better than I learned either as an undergraduate or a graduate student. So New Jersey to me allows you to have the most solid foundation, understanding the rest of the world. If you can grow up, thrive, and love the people you meet here, this broad range of people from every walk of life, then like you're gonna kind of be set up pretty well to go out into the world.

SPEAKER_03 4:34

Yeah, I agree. So I want to ask you, I know I I read some of your book, and it's a lot about your father and about your career. By the way, it's brilliantly written and it's immediately you're engaged. I mean, it's like I feel like I know you uh a more in just 25 pages. You talk about your father running marathons at 46 years old, who subsequently passed uh at 63. He was a go-getter.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Yeah, and he was a New Jersey. Sometimes if you're driving around New Jersey and you see the Levinson Axlod signs

Family, Father, and Formative Loss

SPEAKER_00 5:05

there. I always joke. My dad's law firm, it feels like if you don't mow the lawn in certain places, one will pop up and an office will pop up. So there's their Levinson Axlot is all around the state, and he was a wonderful personal injury litigator who people would have their one day in court to plead the case of being sort of run into some kind of injury or or injustice or malpractice or something, and he was the guy you wanted making your case for you. He was a Jersey guy. Like there are these things, you know, it it it's an interesting point. You were I didn't realize you were from Texas, Jennifer. Where where, by the way, where in Texas?

SPEAKER_03 5:39

Uh Lubbock, Texas is where I grew up.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Let me just say this. I grew up in Highland Park, New Jersey. I then went to Ithaca, New York. I then went to New Orleans, Louisiana. I then went to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I then went to Providence, Rhode Island. I then went to Bangor, Maine. I then went to Utica, New York. I then went to Syracuse, New York. I then went to Raleigh, North Carolina, I then went to Miami, Florida. I then went to Dallas, Texas. All of it was designed to get back to New Jersey. All of it was designed. And when we had to leave here for three years and go to Washington when I was covering the last three years of the Bush White House, I couldn't wait to get back. Like, by the way, there are people who feel about I remember when I was covering the Bush White House, it was full of Texans. And there were people there who couldn't wait to get back to Texas. I get it. We are all a product of our home state. Yeah, sometimes you're running from it, and sometimes you're running to it. I just consider it a blessing that I wanted to run back to it.

SPEAKER_03 6:38

Yeah. So when did the

Career Path: Teaching to CBS News

SPEAKER_03 6:40

transition or the actually start to become a reporter part happen in your life?

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Aaron Powell I made more money as a 15-year-old on the Jersey Shore. I don't think I made as much until I was 29. Like we were making a lot of cash and we weren't paying any taxes.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

I was a waitress in Long Island too, and I know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:01

No. And then you get out in the world, you're like, well, first of all, with a degree?

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

So I I I graduated college. Uh I'd gone to Cornell. I was 22 chronologically. I was about 15 and a half developmentally. Aaron Powell That's fine.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

We've heard that about boys.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Yeah. Oh. I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I just thought it would be a sort of a somewhat productive way to let the dust settle to teach. Um I went to New Orleans and taught school there for a couple of years at a great independent school, Country Day School in in Metary. And then I went to um uh Philadelphia, did the same thing, Chestnut Hill Academy, for a year. Then I went to grad school. I thought I was going to be a history professor. So I went to Brown, I was in a PhD history program, and I was awful. Like I was a terrible grad student. I just thought it was one thing. I thought you would like read interesting books for a living, and it wasn't. But thank God I went there because I met my wife, Christina, who actually did have the requisite brain power and intellectual capability to do that kind of work. So she hung around and I took off and started this broadcasting thing. And eventually, you know, we ended up sort of realizing that if we were going to start a family and make it all happen, we had to be in the same place. She came to Syracuse where where I was working at that point. In the old days, I'm gonna sound like a 97-year-old man howling at the moment. Back in the day. Back in the old days, you used to have to sort of, it was like playing minor league baseball to get to a network news operation. And you would work through these series of local television stations, which I did and learned a lot and met some wonderful people. And then CBS hired me uh in 1996.

SPEAKER_03 8:44

So in New York City.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

I started in Miami. They uh also had a lot bigger footprint. Back then they had bureaus. I went to the Miami and then I went to Dallas, came to New York, started to do some overseas coverage, went to the White House. I was in Afghanistan, Iraq, various places while I was sort of sort of gaining my experience and learning how to do this business. And it was just an amazing, fantastic, wonderful run.

SPEAKER_03 9:09

Well, can we ask you a cut to tell a couple of stories, some little moments? Like one that we all know

War Reporting and the Bridge Moment

SPEAKER_03 9:15

of is that you were there when the Iraq war broke out.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:20

Can you tell us you were embedded with the U.S.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

Marines, right? Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

I was with the with the uh 1st Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division of the United States Army.

SPEAKER_02 9:28

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

And it was you know, I grew up in a time New Jersey in the 70s. It's not like we had a lot of parents running off to do reserve duty. I didn't know anything about the military, and watching the men and women of the uh 3rd Infantry prosecute the war was just an eye-opener, incredibly impressive. I've often said if I was starting a business like find me a bunch of veterans, they were it was just an unbelievable experience to live through. I also, though, don't come from a long line of brave people. And it was petrifying as well. I write about this in in that book. In the long run, I had a very, very close call on uh the bridge over the Euphrates River. And it took me years to come to grips with all of the emotional fallout of having trauma. My my wife. Yeah, I guess I haven't completely gotten through it, and which is okay. Like I think it's important in life to have experiences that you feel deeply for years after. But you know, my wife was seven months pregnant with my little guy who's now 22. And um uh I, you know, I could have left them alone and I think about that, and that created tremendous guilt for me on the other side of like, what are you doing? And sort of launched a little bit of understanding, needing to understand why you're doing what you're doing, which I think is a critically important and often overlooked life skill. Like, why are you doing what you're doing? Every time I've run into either my own issue or have tried to listen to friends and family and people I love help them through something, it's amazing to me how often people cannot explain why they're doing what they're doing. For me, the seminal moment of of that understanding was almost dying on this bridge.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

I'm grateful for you to talk about it. And it is so important for us to hear that as humans and also to ask, remind our kids as well. You know, they watch us and they watch us get stressed about work and stressed about all the things and why are you stressed? And to be able to hear you put it so succinctly is pretty eye-opening. I want to talk to the kids about, you know, just make sure you reassess on a frequent basis.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Always. Always. And, you know, you you forget, right? Like it's such an odd thing to start looking at you realize you're at a point in life where, say, I'm 62 years old. That was my grandparents, right? Like I'm thinking a lot and really starting to wonder if there's not something to dive into here about what you have left.

SPEAKER_03 11:52

Aaron Powell It depends on what your purpose, what you feel your purpose is to do in that time, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:58

But that requires, Jeanette, that requires clarity. Yeah. That is you must do the work to have clarity of thought

Guilt, Purpose, and Asking Why

SPEAKER_00 12:05

so that you understand for you and for your family, and for your family what is important, what's worth getting on that bridge for. That's that's the metaphor for me. There's that quote, I think it's Kierkegaard who said, you live your life going forward, you understand it looking backward.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Backward.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Somehow you can't wait to look backward to understand things. You have to do the work as you are heading forward so that you can, for instance, Rachel, as you said, you can counsel your kids, you know, to the extent that they're listening.

SPEAKER_02 12:31

I mean, right. I I should have put that in. They might not listen at this moment. You can edit that and then later they can think about it.

SPEAKER_03 12:38

Yeah. Well, well, you know, you write, and I know that you've been open about you've had a lot of ambition and a lot of drive, and you've also reflected and regretted, you write about it in your book about Christina, and you're, you know, looking back and feeling that you might have not been there during as you even mentioned in that particular instance, but throughout your whole career.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:58

And trying to understand, and you even put, and I thought was so great as one of your um your quotes that you had put in from a fortune cookie, which I love because my husband's obsessed with fortune cookies and I'm not. Is it all men should try to learn before they die what they are running from and to and why? Yes. I feel that you have come to a place that you have reflected and figured out what would made you go under that bridge and why you return. Because you have.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

That's a wonderful question. And I think it's an important thing to talk about. So what's your ambition? Ambition's great, but what's it in service to? That becomes what sets the trajectory of your life, right? Like, what is the ambition in service to? Is it becoming the best partner or parent or friend, son? What are you putting all of that desire in service to achieving? Very important question. I don't think any of this gets done without doing a lot of work, right? Like you very uncomfortable. I just was doing an interview actually last Sunday with Ben Stiller, who's got this great documentary coming out about his parents.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Not his parents, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

But about a lot more. It's about him and it's about his failures as a father along the way. And so we were having this really great conversation about what you are their ambition by itself is fine. You'll see if you watch this documentary uh on Apple, which drops, I think, in a week or so. Like the mirror is a very uncomfortable place to stand, especially when your children are holding it up, right? Like that's just, you know, but but that's the only way you're gonna get to where you want in any relationship with your kids. Like, you gotta go to the mirror. I don't know any other way around it. Like, you got to spend some time and not looking to see like if your tie knot's

Ambition, Mirrors, and Parenting

SPEAKER_00 14:45

done correctly.

SPEAKER_02 14:45

Like, you gotta spend some time in the mirror and do the assessment is also has to be, you have to reassess all the time because your ambition and the why is gonna change through each life phase. So before you're married, your ambition has a specific goal. Then you are in a relationship, it changes. Then you have kids, it changes. So I think that if we could understand more as people that it's fluid and you're not stuck to the one dream you or ambition you had when you were expecting a few years.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

In fact, maybe the best ambition you have is to be flexible and to evolve. I have these Jersey buddies from fifth grade, like best pals in the world, love these guys. We've been friends now, in some cases, for more than 50 years, and we still get together. And one of the amazing things about it is everything's rooted in, you know, 10-year-old boy humors, you know, but there's also these 62-year-old men and and able to compare notes on the journeys everybody has taken.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

That uh that's the richest part, right? Is that everyone's taken a journey and we've all been there sort of for each other through parts and chapters of those journeys. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 16:00

Some of the chapters in your life I find interesting is that I know as we're talking about ambition and your drive, one of the things is crafting your craft. I feel like that's part of your ambition and your and your purpose is to get really good at what you do and for others to recognize it, which we all know probably has some parent complex going on there that we're trying to please our parents in some way. We got that. And of course, your dad, you wrote a book about your dad, for God's sakes, being, you know, I'm assuming. She hasn't written that book yet because it's coming. But so we know that there's an ambitious drive for you. But what I really uh fascinated about you is your um candidness about your struggle in in the industry itself, working and not being recognized, or even the one line that you craft so hard to just say one line perfectly and hoping that everyone, you know, is like, hey, wow. That was but it's really turns out to be your own self.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Yeah, I know. But the person that the other the person in the living room watching probably got up to get a coke at that moment. But that this again is evolutionary.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

But that's a good life lesson.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

And and why you're writing and who you're writing for and what your purpose is. Again, like if you are simply trying

Craft vs Validation in a Click Economy

SPEAKER_00 17:15

to get good at what you do so that it somehow translates to some kind of external validation, you're done. Like you're you're running down the wrong road. If you're trying to get better at a skill because somehow it increases your capacity to connect to people and elevate the quality of your life, all right, now we can talk, right? Now but we live in a time that is so money obsessed and so reward obsessed.

SPEAKER_02 17:41

And I just it's all about external validation. Ooh, the whole thing. Either with money or likes or clicks or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

This thing this phone that we all like are connected to because the validation is literally it's the craziest word in the world, likes.

SPEAKER_02 17:57

You're looking to be the head of a your own cult of you. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 18:02

And no, also, here's I'm gonna be the advocate. The devil made the contrary. No, no, not necessarily contrarian. I'm just saying that it's our new economy. Yeah, you know, there's not a lot. That is the shift in how we're making our livings now, a living now. And if you can't monetize these skills, you really can't pay the rent anymore. I mean, because there's not another job out there. This is where the this is advertising now, this is where people are getting their health information out, this is where it's all coming through this now. And it's strange to say that the likes are are are the monetary. The currency.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

The currency. Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_03 18:43

And so it's I want to get good at what I do so that somebody will hire me so I can make money, so I can, you know, put money in my coll my kids' college fund, put money, you know.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Let me throw out a Jersey pushback to what you're saying. And I can't believe I get to drop Springsteen into this, but I do. So people ask me all the time, what's the who's the best interview you've ever done, or what's the coolest experience you've ever had? And there's a lot, and they're not all Jersey based, but I must say I had this amazing conversation with Bruce Springsteen uh a couple years ago. I saw it. And it was about despair and it was about depression, and it was about the lowest moment of his life and what that helped him create, which is, I think he feels the highest form. It's it's the basis of the Warren Zayn's book, and it's the basis of this movie that's that's coming out now. And by the way, not for nothing, but we only got there into a space where he was able to go there because it really was two Jersey guys sitting down talking about like before the camera turned on. I was asking him about the Ford factory on Route One in Edison where his dad worked, and you know, Delicious Orchards and Colt's neck. There was some Jersey credibility established. And then he wanted to talk about despair. This

Springsteen, Despair, and Real Connection

SPEAKER_00 20:00

had nothing to do with likes, with clicks, with follows. I'm sure it had, I don't know the answers. I have no idea how many. Sometimes someone will send me a TikTok and an excerpt from that interview is on TikTok and woo yeah. The value, the beauty of that moment was something that is as old as as people in caves and campfires. It was the connection between two people and the admission of the struggle involved in life. And so among the many things I I don't like about our world, and I constantly am saying to my kids, I'm sorry that this is what we're leaving you, is this artifice of what connection is. This stuff where people connect from their isolation and blob, you know, something that passes for real connection. The reason was not that I was sitting with with him, but I was hearing the most honest articulation of the valley that all of us walk through at some part in our life. And because someone may have been on the other end of a television screen or a phone on TikTok, they were hearing there was something about hearing somebody of that stature say, Yeah, no, most human thing available and possible is struggle. That I feel like now that is a craft worth pursuing, that you can bring that story to a critical mass of people who may be sitting there in their own pain and say, Okay, I'm not alone.

SPEAKER_03 21:25

Well, I would say, Rachel, we can say that that's our been our mission plan as well.

SPEAKER_02 21:29

Exactly. That has been our mission for Lost in Jersey, and we're doing such a great job that we aren't making any money. I mean, I'm we have nailed what you want.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

It will happen. You guys, you guys really it's fine.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

It's fine. It doesn't bother us. It's really fine.

SPEAKER_03 21:45

Yeah, but just to the point, this is true, is that we, I mean, and I think it's also part of, you know, been my my career history as well, is that we don't really want to get into the money part of it because we get to say whatever we want to say, we get to tell and also whoever we want to talk to. We talk to tell people that when you're our age, you've gone through some shit. You know?

SPEAKER_02 22:09

A question about the whole change in atmosphere with not just news but also social media and what's getting money behind it and clicks. I can't not ask. But you know, the Barry Weiss, free press, CBS News, are you allowed to express your opinion on what you think that means?

SPEAKER_00 22:27

I I think change is good. And one thing

The Changing News Landscape

SPEAKER_00 22:30

that I think is indisputable is, you know, clearly she has a mastery of presenting news that is consequential, that newsmakers read. I mean, she's done this amazing thing with the with this media outlet. And so it there's an energy, a freshness, an understanding of maybe uh the new way to be able to communicate the reporting that's done. So I have no issue. Now we're talking here early days, and let's see what unfolds. But from my perspective, I've been watching the erosion of the network news business steadily for 30 years. Let me just make sure everybody understands something. Walter Cronkite in 1967-68, the country was 200 million people, much smaller. He had 18 million people watching every night. And Huntley and Brinkley, the NBC Nightly News, had another 17 million. 35 million Americans out of 200 million were watching the evening news broadcasts every night. Now, I don't know, you don't have the three adding up to just what Walter had, not even close, right? And it's a a business that has been in decline, not because anybody was doing anything wrong, although we could have another conversation about that. But again, just because of this, everybody's reading the news all day. And so it's a different environment, a different reality, a different revenue structure. And here comes somebody who's had a lot of success and understands it and now wants to apply what it is she knows to this place.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

Aaron Powell What do you think the evening news or the network news is supposed to be? Like what is it for?

SPEAKER_00 24:04

Aaron Ross Powell I think it's a a digest of what has happened, but in many cases what hasn't been figured out yet is what if somebody has an understanding already because they've been checking their phone 12 times? Nobody's coming in when I say nobody. Far fewer people are sitting down at 6 30. What is the evening news in my view? It's supposed to tell us a little bit. I mean, I'm I sort of oversee this part of the evening news every night called I in America, which is supposed to tell us about us. Who are we? What are the trends shaping our culture? What are the problems? What are the solutions? This sense of who are we? Like, I love that as part of the evening news. I do think there should be a digest. What are the most important things? If you haven't, like have any if you haven't checked your phone, what's happened today? Okay, it's like a beautiful little constellation and distillation. But because you can also say at say the end of the first block, hey, a lot more happened than we have time for. Go to cbsnews.com. We have it all there for you. I think there needs to be a bit more better job of integration between what we're

What Evening News Should Do Now

SPEAKER_00 25:05

putting on the television at 6 30 and then as an entree into some other platform where you can then get the rest of the stuff and more in-depth and all of those things. So to me, it's just a question of matching the work that a lot of very talented people do at CBS and other places and making sure that that's delivered and presented in an accessible way on a number of platforms where people actually are. I I think people want a sense of balance. There's a wide range of media outlets where you can go. So if you want to just sort of reaffirm what it is you believe, then you there's plenty of places for you to go, whatever part of the political spectrum wherever you're located. I happen not to think politics and the political lens and the political spectrum is the only place and only way people perceive the world. I'll give you a perfect example. I was in North Korea. North Korea, about the the most most incredibly different culture you could possibly be in. And I was sitting there and the place is like bizarro land in so many different ways. But I watched all of a sudden a mother and her son walk down the street and the kid was holding an ice cream cone, licking the ice cream cone and holding the mother's hand. And I could have been in Highland Park, New Jersey. And I thought to myself, now that is a universal. If I was sitting in Milwaukee and I was in a park and I saw the mother and the son walking down the street, and the son had an ice cream cone and was holding the mother's hand, do you think I'd say, geez, I wonder if she's conservative? I wonder if she's a liberal. I wonder if she voted for Hillary. Did she vote for Trump? No. I would marvel in the same thing happening in Milwaukee that was happening in Pyongyang and how beautiful that is as human beings, that we have those universals. So I happen not to believe that everybody's constantly perceiving the world

Universals Beyond Politics

SPEAKER_00 27:00

through the lens of who did you vote for? Or what do you think of this or that or the other policy? So you're an optimist. I I have a glass, as my daughter once said when I was lecturing her, that we as Axelrods have glasses that are half full. And she said, What if your glass is half full of a liquid you don't like? She was seven. So yes, I'm an optimist. But I also you we're I'm I'm throwing this out in terms of what is our news. I think we have an obligation as journalists. Yes, you must note what is happening and you must have some historical context where you can place that and you need to be able to tell people what it is. You know, it's it's kind of a basic like first-year journalism school idea. But if if somebody says it's raining, your job isn't to then say, Joe said it's raining, Susie said it's not. Your job is to open up the window, stick your head out, and see if you get wet. That's your job as a journalist.

SPEAKER_02 27:59

And I feel that that's I mean, I think a lot of people feel that that's what's missing in a lot of what we're reading and seeing. So I mean, I do think there's an opportunity for CBS News for sure.

SPEAKER_03 28:10

I mean, I think that you bring up a good uh example about putting your head out the window and raining, but the I think I would like to talk a little bit about the truth of the reporting because things are edited down and you know, and then also the amount of making sure that the story is true. Like, yes, it's raining outside, but yes, there's a guy with a water hose that actually was pouring the water. So have you had a situation where you believed in a story and then you found out that it was actually not correct? You know, and then you may have had like an existential crisis about what is the truth in reporting, for example.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

I mean, I've definitely had stories where I engaged in sort of the underlying principles of journalism and found out that it was something other than I had been told it might be. And if you're doing your job correctly and properly,

Truth Testing and Nuance in Reporting

SPEAKER_00 29:00

that's like the point of it, is to to vet, to get more than one source, to run it by experts. Like I happen to believe whatever moment we're in, the one thing that we need more than anything else is experienced, credible people saying, look, this is what I saw and heard. If you don't want to believe it, there's nothing I can do about that. But I'll give you a perfect example. You know, when there was an IRS agent named Gary Shapley who said that the Justice Department was going easy on Hunter Biden, okay, you can imagine how this thing neatly divided politically. I did the interview, the first interview with Gary Shapley. You know what? Entirely credible guy. You know what the CBS Evening News did? We put on a three minute interview with Gary Shapley. Now, I laugh sometimes when people are like, oh, Liberal News Network. Like nobody told me how to handle that interview, and I was able to do that. So I only throw that out to say there is real reporting still. Being done and everything breaks into are you on the Mets or the Yankees? Do you drink Coke or Pepsi? And life is gray. It's there's nuance. It's literally in the middle. And I don't believe there's a moment in, you know, things evolve in history. So I'm not sure the pendulum, I don't know where it is. I don't know when's it swinging back.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:21

I'll I'll be honest with you guys. Aaron Powell Having been on all parts of this, it's easier to interview Ben Stiller and Bruce Springsteen about issues of the soul and the heart. It's not just safer, but it's like to me, it coheres and aligns with these other issues that we're talking about, which is like life and walks through valleys and evolution of souls. And at the end of all of it, when we all get to our ends, do you really think like in that montage of images we all have about our life at the end is going to be some argument you had with some cousin at Thanksgiving about politics? It's not. It's going to be holding

Choosing Soul Work over Beltway Scoops

SPEAKER_00 31:00

holding your kid's hand at the bus stop. That's what it's about. And so the journalism I can do at this point in my life, at this point in my career, that is about those things, that's where I want to spend my time.

SPEAKER_03 31:11

And you do it very eloquently. That's your why. Yeah. That's the why. The journey that you've been going on, it does seem like you did do all of those other things. You know, you did, you covered it. There's no like looking back, like, what if I would have, what if I also I also wasn't a I wasn't a great White House reporter.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

I wasn't. I wasn't.

SPEAKER_03 31:31

Why do you say that?

SPEAKER_00 31:32

Because I just I know what good reporting is. I know when I've done stuff where I'm like, that's what I'm supposed to do. Like, what were you supposed to do?

SPEAKER_03 31:39

What was that? What is that?

SPEAKER_00 31:40

That there is there are brilliant political reporters. Brilliant. They have a capacity to understand policy, understand politics, they're deeply sourced, well connected. We need those people. But I'd rather I'd rather connect with somebody over the walk through the valley. Like whether it's Springsteen or whether it's someone you've never heard of. I would rather compare notes about that. We all have our natural intentions and our natural affinities. And I'd rather do that work because I'm better at that. This I love this last hour. And thank you so much for this. You guys are terrific. But we're also talking about meaningful, deep, meaningful stuff.

SPEAKER_03 32:19

Yes. But that's it too, you know, with Rachel and I, because I think that we having done this, it has been such a soul-searching adventure for us as well. Because you do start to see other people's formats and other people's, you know, maybe getting bigger or getting more likes because they're more, they're more splashy. They're more, they're more something. But it you have to you have to go through that fire of like admitting that that is not my thing. It's hard to face that and you you have self-doubt and self-criticism. I think that's also what I love about what I've read in your book is that you are, you, you really are transparent about that. You have gone through those.

Marathon Lessons and Redefining Success

SPEAKER_00 33:00

I mean what uses. What use is it if for other people unless you're gonna be honest, right? Yeah, like what and we all, everyone, that this is the other part of what you were saying about the world in which we live. People are trying to establish themselves as brands. Like what a load of horseshit. Like brands, like again, the meaningful stuff that'll be with us at the end of our lives, it was not about connecting with a brand. It was about some conversation you had with your best friend of 60 years about, you know, s some some travail one of you or both of you were having.

SPEAKER_03 33:35

Oh my gosh, it's so true. I mean, with Rachel and I, I think that we had we went to have lunch with uh Michael Euslin after our interview. You know, he's the executive producer of all the Batman films, right? And we went to have lunch with him. He just invited us out. We both got in the car and we were like, that that just you know That was worth it. That made it everything.

SPEAKER_02 33:54

We just had pizza with him at a great little pizza place. And we're in Cedar Grove.

SPEAKER_03 33:59

Where were we? We were at Cedar Grove Cedar Grove, a pizzeria. What's that one?

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Is that Lombardi's?

SPEAKER_03 34:04

Is that where you're we were we sat in Lombardi's? It's really good pizza.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

Got the great sign, best signal.

SPEAKER_03 34:10

We should all we should go. Let's this should be our new thing, Lombardi's lunch.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

Let's go. Listen, I will I will say to you guys, like what you just described and the feeling you had in the car after that. Yeah. Like, that's why anybody should do anything in life. Yeah. That chase that. Use your ambition for that. And everything else, in my mind, will take care of itself.

SPEAKER_02 34:32

You've had so many incredible life experiences. It's great that you were also able to write a memoir to share your own self-doubts and then your own self-reassessment. And it's just refreshing to hear from people who are so successful. Regrets, guilt, but also a way to turn things around and have what you really want in life. And then you get to treasure that. I didn't get to it yet. Did you break the 330?

SPEAKER_00 34:58

Did you Oh my God, I didn't come close. Are you kidding me? I was like an hour behind. Which, by the way, was like also part of the takeaway. Do you think? And you'll get to the end of the book.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:16

And I crossed the line and I'm having a conversation with my father, you know, in my first of all, I'm delirious. So it was made it easier to have the conversation. But the quality of what

Kindness, Partnership, and Non‑Negotiables

SPEAKER_00 35:30

I took away from the whole process from beginning to end of being sort of grossly overweight and and like having to run and get to the finish line of the New York City Marathon, where my friend with ALS was, to the value of that. And that will be, by the way, in my montage at the end of my life. No part of the value of that experience was degraded by the fact that I finished an hour slower than my father. In fact, of course I did.

SPEAKER_02 36:04

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 36:05

Dad was a great runner, right? I was not.

SPEAKER_02 36:07

But it wasn't your thing, yeah. Who cares? Who cares?

SPEAKER_00 36:11

Gives a shit.

SPEAKER_03 36:12

So you know what? That's a better, you know, ending, honestly. I think it has so much more impact. And it's so it's such an emblem of your your life, too. Like you said, I wasn't the greatest white uh White House correspondent. You know, you've done it all. You know, you've done it. You did it as you did the marathon as well. Yeah, and I'm not I'm not carrying around any less and you and you have, even though you may have stumbled a few times with Christina, I adore that woman. I don't know her that well, but every she knows it too, because every time, every time I see her, I'm like, I stop everything. I'm like, Christina, hey, how are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 36:49

No, you know what it is? I'll tell you. I'll answer the question before we go. Because I tell my kids this all the time about as they're starting to partner with people. Like everything else is sort of up for grabs. There's one non-negotiable. Find someone kind. Find kindness. There's no kinder human being walking around Claire than my wife.

SPEAKER_03 37:09

I believe you. And I would be choking up too if she was a significant other. But thank you so much for joining us on Lost Turn Jersey. I know we didn't hit do our hard-hitting reporting like you do. And we have one really hard reporting question to ask you at the very end that we ask everyone.

SPEAKER_00 37:25

Go.

SPEAKER_03 37:25

Okay, Rachel, you want to do the honors?

SPEAKER_02 37:27

Well, it's gonna be hard for you, but you're gonna have to just give us one thing, your favorite thing that you love about New Jersey. It's gonna be tough. What?

SPEAKER_03 37:36

Also, you if there's a restaurant that you really, really feel at home at, there's only there's one place, the Harvey Cedar Shellfish Company.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

Okay. Harvey Cedars, New Jersey.

SPEAKER_03 37:46

Yeah, and the Michigan.

SPEAKER_00 37:47

On Long Beach Island, where where in 1978 you could get a one-pound lobster,

Favorite Jersey Spot and Closing Thanks

SPEAKER_00 37:55

mussels, and an ear of corn for $4.95.

SPEAKER_02 37:59

Whoa.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

And and the Garafolo brothers have owned that place now. Uh I think they just had their 50th anniversary celebration last summer. You wait in line. There was uh there's a list, no reservations. I'll put a link to it. It's the best, and look on the wall, and you'll find the guy with the enormous afro. And it's just uh the best, best seafood in New Jersey. Can I just say one thing before we go?

SPEAKER_02 38:27

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 38:28

Thank you. This was so lovely, and I so appreciate conversations of depth and meaning and authenticity and intentional intentionality. So I love what you guys are doing, but I'm honored that you would think I would have something to say to you. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 38:47

Thank you so much at you.

SPEAKER_03 38:48

Yes, we're honored that you came on, and we're honored that you are honored. Thanks, Jim.

SPEAKER_02 38:56

This podcast was produced by Rachel Martens and Jeanette Afsharian. You can find us on Spotify, iTunes, and Buzz Sprout. Thanks for listening. See you next week.