Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Daniel Scheffler. This is Everywhere, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. I have traveled to and fro South
Speaker 1: Africa my whole life. South Africa's special to me. It
Speaker 1: is my country of birth. The country is both my
Speaker 1: shield and my sword. It has protected me and it
Speaker 1: has also violated me. For my next interview, I'm with
Speaker 1: Richard Stengel, my best friend, Mary's husband and Ella's girlfriend,
Speaker 1: Tundy's father. He spent time in South Africa writing Nelson
Speaker 1: Mandela's book Long Walk to Freedom. He also happened to
Speaker 1: work for Time magazine as its managing editor for many
Speaker 1: years and the government as Under Secretary of State for
Speaker 1: Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, and has now written a
Speaker 1: timely book about disinformation, which he is going to tell
Speaker 1: us all about. I decided that for this week because
Speaker 1: my interview with Richard was so fascinating. You don't want
Speaker 1: to hear me. What you really want to hear is
Speaker 1: Richard Stingle discussing South Africa and his life on the road.
Speaker 1: So here we go. On another note, you remember my
Speaker 1: friend Sarah Scarborough on episode seven talking about tea and
Speaker 1: the history of tea across the world. Well, Sarah and
Speaker 1: I are planning a trip into the soul of Tea.
Speaker 1: We're going to China for ten days to UNESCO World
Speaker 1: Heritage sites, Tiger Leaping Gorge, and also Shanghai. You can
Speaker 1: book this trip with us at a classic tour dot
Speaker 1: com slash Soul of t or on my website Daniel
Speaker 1: Scheffler dot com, or on her website t Huntress dot com.
Speaker 1: Come spend some time with us. We're going everywhere. I'm
Speaker 1: with my friend's husband, Richard Stengel, and I've known Richard
Speaker 1: for a long time, and I feel like I know
Speaker 1: you better because my best friend is your wife, and
Speaker 1: I walk the dogs with her in Central Park every day.
Speaker 1: So you feel almost part of my life as someone
Speaker 1: who I have not spent that much time with. Well,
Speaker 1: you're spending time with me, Daniel, when you're spending time
Speaker 1: with my wife and my dog, the beloved Toundy. Well,
Speaker 1: as everybody knows Ella, Tandy is Ella's girlfriend and they
Speaker 1: have been in love for two years now, and they
Speaker 1: get to spend the funnest time together. And I have
Speaker 1: seen even you soften and become sweet with Tundy. Yes,
Speaker 1: she um, she definitely. I've never been a dog person
Speaker 1: before and I kind of didn't understand it, and I
Speaker 1: get it now and late in life, I'm finally becoming
Speaker 1: a dog person, or really a Tundy person. Well, I've
Speaker 1: seen you with her and it's very sweet, Richard. I
Speaker 1: love it. Even Michael has commented how like sweet you
Speaker 1: are with Tundy. And then if we watch you on
Speaker 1: MSNBC and you this like serious policy wonk, like intellectual,
Speaker 1: and then I'll see you with the dog and you're
Speaker 1: like soft and cuddly, and I love that. You know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting what dogs do with couples because you direct
Speaker 1: a lot of affection towards the dog and in some
Speaker 1: ways not so much towards each other, and that the
Speaker 1: dog becomes this kind of symbol of your connection in
Speaker 1: a in a strange way. Well, whenever I'm traveling, which
Speaker 1: is all the time, and a lot of the time
Speaker 1: Michael Kohn come with me, he'll say, Oh, ellis missing you.
Speaker 1: Ellis really missing you. Oh. He'll um. You know, he's
Speaker 1: not the first to have an emotion outwardly, and he'll
Speaker 1: say something like, Ella's very sad today because you're not here.
Speaker 1: And I hear it for what it is, but it is.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful part of the relationship that it's kind
Speaker 1: of made my travel life almost bearable because I'm always
Speaker 1: on the road. But I know that there's this dog
Speaker 1: at home that's loving Michael. That doesn't have the opposite
Speaker 1: effect and make you not want to leave. Yes, of course,
Speaker 1: we got back from Italy last night and both Michael
Speaker 1: and I we went to pick up Ella from Norna,
Speaker 1: and both of us were so like, we couldn't wait
Speaker 1: to get to the dog. And it was funny. When
Speaker 1: we got home, I was like, Oh, everything's back to normal,
Speaker 1: Like it felt like you ease into a normality when
Speaker 1: it's the three of us opposed to just us and
Speaker 1: we were together in Italy on a holiday. Well, the
Speaker 1: way I look at it is, as you know, I
Speaker 1: have two sons and a wife, and Tandy I feel
Speaker 1: as the one person in the household. It actually has
Speaker 1: genuine affection for me. So I can come home and
Speaker 1: bore boys are completely uninterested at this age that they're
Speaker 1: in now. So Tandi becomes my kind of heartfelt friend
Speaker 1: at home. That's very sweet. Richard. I know you have
Speaker 1: a book coming out. Tell me about the book. The
Speaker 1: book is called Information wars, how we lost the global
Speaker 1: battle against disinformation and what to do about it, And
Speaker 1: it's the story of my time at the State Department.
Speaker 1: I went to the State Department. I've been an editor
Speaker 1: of Time for seven years, and I became the Under
Speaker 1: Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, which
Speaker 1: is always thought of that's the chief marketing officer of
Speaker 1: Brand USA. But what I found when I was there
Speaker 1: because two events happened about the same time just as
Speaker 1: I came into the administration, the Russian annexation of Crimea
Speaker 1: and the first of the ISIS beheadings, and I suddenly
Speaker 1: saw this tsunami of disinformation coming from Russia about what
Speaker 1: was happening, and you Crane and Crimea, all of the
Speaker 1: propaganda coming from ISIS about the grievances of of Sunni Muslims,
Speaker 1: And this was a whole new world for me. And
Speaker 1: we started in both cases these two engines counter ISIS
Speaker 1: messaging and counter Russian propaganda. And it's the story of
Speaker 1: how we attempted to do that and mostly failed at
Speaker 1: it because it's a really hard thing to do, especially
Speaker 1: for government. Right, do you think that we'll ever be
Speaker 1: able to get over this disinformation issue. You know, one
Speaker 1: of the things I say in the book is that
Speaker 1: disinformation is as old as information. Right as soon as
Speaker 1: there was factual information, there were people lying about it.
Speaker 1: And you know, I joked that that began in the
Speaker 1: Garden of Eden when Satan said to Eve, you know,
Speaker 1: take a bite out of that apple, and nothing's going
Speaker 1: to happen to you. That was that was disinformation. So
Speaker 1: I think it's unrealistic and naive to think that you
Speaker 1: can do away with it. I'm not a purest about
Speaker 1: what truth is, um, but it's hard because us there
Speaker 1: will always be people who lie, and there will always
Speaker 1: be people who believe those laws. And part of that
Speaker 1: comes from confirmation bias, which is this idea that we
Speaker 1: tend to agree with the things that we already agree with.
Speaker 1: So if someone's telling I agree with you, you're such
Speaker 1: a smart young man. So the thing is, if someone
Speaker 1: is telling you an untruth, but it does adhere to
Speaker 1: what you already believe, you'll be much more likely to
Speaker 1: believe it. And in fact, there's a something called the opposite,
Speaker 1: which is the backfire effect, which is when you try
Speaker 1: to disabuse someone of what they believe, they double down
Speaker 1: and become even more confirmed in that belief. So so
Speaker 1: that's why it's a really hard thing to come back,
Speaker 1: because it's really about who we are as human beings. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: I spend some time with some trumpet support is recently,
Speaker 1: and I think at some point I realize that there's
Speaker 1: such a divide between what I believe, whatever it is
Speaker 1: gay rights. I'm kind of more we're all in this
Speaker 1: mess together, opposed to what this particular person believes, where
Speaker 1: it is a much more of a it's me, it's
Speaker 1: me alone, and I'm gonna work and do this myself.
Speaker 1: And instead of fighting with them and kind of avoiding
Speaker 1: that doubling down, as you say, I just listened and
Speaker 1: it was one of the most incredible things that's happened
Speaker 1: to me. I do a whole episode on this because
Speaker 1: I think it's important too to realize that we need
Speaker 1: to bridge gaps, all these gaps that are being created
Speaker 1: every day. But it's unbelievable what people want to believe.
Speaker 1: And I spend time in ushrooms in India, and the
Speaker 1: teachers said to me at the end, when you strip
Speaker 1: it all away, when you strip away everything you are,
Speaker 1: your religion, your bullshit, your sexuality, your gender. You will
Speaker 1: only be left with your belief system, and most people
Speaker 1: will never let go of that. Yes, there's a lot
Speaker 1: in there, Daniel Um. And the thing is one of
Speaker 1: the things that Trump did, and I talked about this
Speaker 1: in the book is There became this kind of unholy
Speaker 1: trinity between Trump and Putin? And isis because in some
Speaker 1: ways they were doing the same thing. What did isis do?
Speaker 1: They weaponized the grievance of Sunni Muslims who felt left
Speaker 1: out by the modern world. What did Putin do? He
Speaker 1: weaponized the grievance of Russians who bemoaned the fall of
Speaker 1: the Soviet Unit that they were not a global power anymore.
Speaker 1: And Trump weaponized the grievance of mostly older, white, not
Speaker 1: highly educated Americans who also felt left out by the
Speaker 1: modern world, felt left out by globalization, felt that they
Speaker 1: weren't having the attention paid to them with the credit
Speaker 1: they deserved, and it was going instead to people of
Speaker 1: color or LGBT people are all of these new ideas
Speaker 1: that they couldn't reckon with. And I don't want to be,
Speaker 1: you know, sound um paternalistic about that or or it's
Speaker 1: a real thing. And I think one of the things
Speaker 1: that we discounted is people who did the a left
Speaker 1: out by globalization, which is actually not about jobs being
Speaker 1: shipped overseas, but it's really about automation. Is that, you know,
Speaker 1: machines and robots are taking the place of workers. And
Speaker 1: we've never done a very good job of telling folks,
Speaker 1: you know what, that job and that tire making factory
Speaker 1: is going to go away because there's a machine that
Speaker 1: can do it automatically, who won't have sick days and
Speaker 1: do it for one tenth to cost. So I do
Speaker 1: think there's this group of people in the United States
Speaker 1: who feel that way, and we have and and and
Speaker 1: we that is Democrats and liberals, whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call it, haven't done a very good job of talking
Speaker 1: to them, and haven't done a very good job of
Speaker 1: explaining what the future is like. I mean, and I
Speaker 1: don't even know what to do about it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that there's a demographic solution in the US
Speaker 1: in the sense that the country is getting darker and
Speaker 1: it will be a majority non white country in twenty
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a different place than the world that
Speaker 1: so many of those Trump voters grew up in. And
Speaker 1: I think we all have to adapt to it, said it.
Speaker 1: So yesterday I get off the plane and we're driving
Speaker 1: back to the city in a cab and I see
Speaker 1: a Confederate flag with New Jersey plates and Michael and
Speaker 1: I started discussing this, and I said to him, have
Speaker 1: you ever seen that? Not in the South? And he
Speaker 1: said no, And he was like, but Daniel, what does
Speaker 1: it really mean? And my instinct was, it's a call
Speaker 1: for help. I need to help him. I need to
Speaker 1: not call him a fucking racist. I need to help
Speaker 1: this person. I need to show them that me, the
Speaker 1: gay white boy from Africa, is the same as him,
Speaker 1: that I have the same fears and the same loves
Speaker 1: and the same hopes and desires. And that's how I
Speaker 1: feel about Trump voters. That's how I feel about other
Speaker 1: They call me other, but to me, they are also other.
Speaker 1: Somehow I have to help them. Somehow, we have to
Speaker 1: help each other because otherwise we're fucked. I completely agree.
Speaker 1: And I mean, for years, I was a political correspondent.
Speaker 1: I covered three presidential campaigns. I traveled all around extensively
Speaker 1: in the South, covered Republican candidates, many of whom I adored.
Speaker 1: And you do see this divide, which is too simple
Speaker 1: a term for it, where where it all goes back
Speaker 1: to America's original sin, which was slavery. And even the
Speaker 1: Democratic candidates are now talking about reparations and things, But
Speaker 1: it's this original sin because it created a cleave in
Speaker 1: America between the South and the North, and the South
Speaker 1: and the West, and today the legacy of it is
Speaker 1: is a cultural thing. I'm not even I wouldn't in
Speaker 1: my heart. I don't necessarily call somebody a racist because
Speaker 1: I don't know what's in their heart. I do know
Speaker 1: there's a cultural divide and people in the South who
Speaker 1: feel that they've been left out, that the direction that
Speaker 1: America is going in is a different direction that they
Speaker 1: want to go in. And look, some of it I
Speaker 1: think is animated by distrust, animosity, fear of the other,
Speaker 1: which everybody has. And I do agree that that people
Speaker 1: like that need help. The problem is that it's very
Speaker 1: hard to have that conversation. For the reasons we were
Speaker 1: talking about already, that people double down and their belief
Speaker 1: beliefs even the definition of that term, and not necessarily
Speaker 1: based on facts. That's one reason it's so hard to
Speaker 1: dislodge them. So um again, I don't have an easy answer.
Speaker 1: I mean, because even even when you try to disabuse
Speaker 1: somebody of something, there are these things that sociologists called
Speaker 1: belief echo. So if you if you retweet a Trump
Speaker 1: tweet just to say that it's full of falsehoods, there's
Speaker 1: a belief echo that people get from seeing the original
Speaker 1: Trump tweet that never goes away, even if you say
Speaker 1: it's completely false. So it's a difficult problem. And I
Speaker 1: do think, you know, not not to get on my
Speaker 1: preachy soapbox, but you know, I grew up in the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, and I always believed what the you know,
Speaker 1: the motto on the which is the presidential seal e
Speaker 1: plurbus unum out of many one. And my family were
Speaker 1: all immigrants. I mean, both of my grandfather's never graduated
Speaker 1: from high school, neither of them were born here. And
Speaker 1: I always believe in this idea of out of many one,
Speaker 1: that that the values of America, the ideas of America,
Speaker 1: transcended religion or color or race, and that if you
Speaker 1: believed in that, that's what made you an American, and
Speaker 1: that's what made you not only equal with other people,
Speaker 1: but brothers and sisters with everyone. Else and and I
Speaker 1: feel that's been lost. And I feel that one of
Speaker 1: the things that Donald Trump has done is deliberately dividing people.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, when you run for president, you try
Speaker 1: to get votes. But every president, and that i've it's
Speaker 1: been in my lifetime, ultimately tries to speak to all
Speaker 1: Americans and it has this understanding that I'm president of
Speaker 1: all Americans. And Trump doesn't have that. He feels like
Speaker 1: I'm only the president for the people who voted for me,
Speaker 1: and even not necessarily all of them. So so again,
Speaker 1: it's a big problem, and I'm sorry, I'm I'm not
Speaker 1: offering any real solutions to it, but I do think
Speaker 1: it trying to understand what the person on the other
Speaker 1: side thinks is the first up in trying to come
Speaker 1: to some kind of harmonious relationship with people. Do you
Speaker 1: think that do you feel optimistic? Let me put it
Speaker 1: that way. You know, again, partly for this book, I've
Speaker 1: I've thought and written a fair amount about cognitive biases,
Speaker 1: and and the great Daniel Khneman said that optimism and pessimism,
Speaker 1: it's a biological thing, has nothing to do with the
Speaker 1: reality you could you know, you could be in the
Speaker 1: gates of hell and feel optimistic if that's your temperament.
Speaker 1: So I am, by nature an optimistic but I do
Speaker 1: think there are some causes for optimism in the sense
Speaker 1: that there is more transparency now than there was before.
Speaker 1: When when Republican candidates used to run, they just used
Speaker 1: dog whistles to appeal to some of these voters. Now
Speaker 1: we have a guy in the White House who talking
Speaker 1: to them directly, you know, who's using that direct language
Speaker 1: of division. And I feel, Okay, now we know it's
Speaker 1: out in the open, how do we figure out how
Speaker 1: to move forward from here? So I think, you know what,
Speaker 1: in the sense that it's it's open and transparent, I
Speaker 1: feel good about that, not about those sentiments, but about
Speaker 1: how we how we figure out how to move forward
Speaker 1: knowing that that this is really who folks are. Right,
Speaker 1: Let's take a breathe and we'll be right back with
Speaker 1: Everywhere after a word from our sponsors. Thanks for sticking around.
Speaker 1: Here's more of Everywhere with no further ado. Let's get
Speaker 1: back to Richard Stingle. Richard, So, what I would love
Speaker 1: to talk about is how travel has played into your life.
Speaker 1: It was such a big part of being the Undersecretary
Speaker 1: of State, and obviously as the Edited Time Magazine managing
Speaker 1: Edited Time Magazine, you were on a plane all the time,
Speaker 1: So share some stories. I know, the chance to flying
Speaker 1: coach when you were at the State Department, not always
Speaker 1: and them Mary and I have had many a laugh
Speaker 1: about that, imagining you shuttling across to the Middle East
Speaker 1: in a little seat. Well, you know, the thing that
Speaker 1: people didn't realize and I guess I didn't realize before
Speaker 1: going into government, is that government travel, at least State
Speaker 1: Department travel, is actually governed by congressional legislation which says
Speaker 1: you have to always your default carrier has to be
Speaker 1: an American carrier, that you sit in coach unless the
Speaker 1: flight is over fourteen hours. But one of the things
Speaker 1: that I loved about the Obama administration is that people
Speaker 1: took the rule seriously, and I would see the Secretary
Speaker 1: of the Treasury flying in coach between New York and Washington.
Speaker 1: You'd never see that in any other country in the world,
Speaker 1: and you probably don't see it in the Trump administration.
Speaker 1: So there was something very American, small are Republican about
Speaker 1: it that I liked, and because in many ways, part
Speaker 1: of the job was, as I said, to project Americans,
Speaker 1: the brand of America. And I remember, even when I
Speaker 1: was in office, when one of Barack Obama's first trips
Speaker 1: to China, he got off the plane and it was
Speaker 1: raining out and he was carrying his own umbrella. Well,
Speaker 1: it was on the front page of every Chinese newspaper.
Speaker 1: The President of the United States was carrying his own umbrella.
Speaker 1: Even the deputy mayor of the smallest city in China
Speaker 1: has three people carrying umbrellas for him when he gets
Speaker 1: off an airplane. And so there's something American about it.
Speaker 1: There's something small d democratic about it that I like
Speaker 1: much as I didn't always like, you know, sitting in
Speaker 1: a very cramped seat for thirteen and a half hours.
Speaker 1: And as you know Mary probably told you, in my
Speaker 1: State Department staff knows I'm a very cranky traveler, and
Speaker 1: people would be like, you know, only the guys who
Speaker 1: got the short straw would travel with me at the
Speaker 1: State Department because it's like, oh no, but by way,
Speaker 1: you have special assistance. That's what the job is called.
Speaker 1: You have four as an undersecretary. They're like your go
Speaker 1: to people for different reasons in the world. And they
Speaker 1: would always have of pieces of dark chocolate espresso beings
Speaker 1: covered in dark chocolate and express those for me. Whenever
Speaker 1: I was traveling, whenever I got really cranky, it was like,
Speaker 1: here's the chocolate and here's the caffeine. So that was
Speaker 1: their solution. I have the same with Michael. He gets
Speaker 1: so cranky. We flew to room last week and he
Speaker 1: was in the worst mood. At some point he said
Speaker 1: to me, just don't speak, just don't speak at all.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, he needs food. Yes. But
Speaker 1: the thing about State Department travel, and I have to
Speaker 1: say I have I have not done much travel since then.
Speaker 1: Is it kind of cures you have travel for a while,
Speaker 1: and part because it's not about sight seeing or feeling
Speaker 1: the culture. It's about flying all night, getting off an airplane,
Speaker 1: going into a series of meetings and not seeing anything.
Speaker 1: So I probably went to twenty five different countries during
Speaker 1: my three years maybe more in the State Department. And
Speaker 1: after the first year or so, I said, hey, you
Speaker 1: gotta put at least one sight seeing thing for me
Speaker 1: every day. I mean, I remember one of my first
Speaker 1: trips to was to burn it to me and mar
Speaker 1: I didn't get to see anything and it's like, that's
Speaker 1: just not right. And in fact, because part of my
Speaker 1: job was to kind of promote cultural connections, I needed
Speaker 1: to do things like that sea museums, you know, meet
Speaker 1: with young people, and that always was a bit of
Speaker 1: a refresher and u But because my kids were still
Speaker 1: at home, I tried to travel only between Monday and Friday,
Speaker 1: but sometimes I'd be on a trip to three different
Speaker 1: countries between Monday and Friday and spend three nights on
Speaker 1: an airplane. I mean it was you know, it's not
Speaker 1: fun gallivanting around the world. That's what I've been doing.
Speaker 1: So that is what you've been doing. Richard, tell me, um,
Speaker 1: tell me a story that was memorable or meaningful to
Speaker 1: you about the state upon and travel. Well, for me,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of something and more irreverent. But
Speaker 1: this is a little more serious because I got engaged
Speaker 1: in this countering Russian disinformation and was so upset, like
Speaker 1: so many people about what Russia did in Crimea, which
Speaker 1: was part of Ukraine, and then the soft invasion that
Speaker 1: they did in eastern Ukraine. I went to Ukraine three
Speaker 1: times and completely fell in love with it. I mean,
Speaker 1: it feels like a country that is at war, and
Speaker 1: they are at war, but it's this country where there's
Speaker 1: a lot of resilience and it's a you know, it's
Speaker 1: a Kieva is a beautiful city. The Ukrainians a beautiful people,
Speaker 1: and it felt like there was an aliveness there when
Speaker 1: I was there that that was very inspiring. And because
Speaker 1: they're under the gun and they know that, you know,
Speaker 1: they're big neighbor to the north, there's always you know,
Speaker 1: kind of threatening them. And I also went two or
Speaker 1: three times to the Baltics, you know, Riga, Latvia, Lithuania.
Speaker 1: Fell in love with the Baltics. Beautiful old world places, lovely,
Speaker 1: lovely people also who felt threatened for a thousand years
Speaker 1: by Russia, and over that course of the thousand years
Speaker 1: they were sometimes part of Russian sometimes not. And so
Speaker 1: for me being able to go to those play it
Speaker 1: says as an American and saying we're on your side
Speaker 1: was was powerful. So it was a different kind of
Speaker 1: travel and it made you aware of this sort of
Speaker 1: existential threat that different people around the world have. So
Speaker 1: it was beautiful and it was meaningful, and I felt
Speaker 1: like we were trying to do the right thing. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's a part of that that is open to all travelers.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it's not just going and enjoying the sites and
Speaker 1: being a part of the culture and eating the food,
Speaker 1: but also being aware of more of the political, socio
Speaker 1: political and as you call it, existential things that are happening.
Speaker 1: So go to Africa and be aware of all these
Speaker 1: nuances and extremisms that play in a beautiful, scary, incredibly
Speaker 1: feisty way in every moment that you're there. Yes, I mean,
Speaker 1: when I was a young journalist, the thing that I
Speaker 1: love more than anything else was to get an assignment
Speaker 1: that would put me on an airplane to go someplace
Speaker 1: I had never been before, either in the US or abroad,
Speaker 1: and I just felt like my whole world was expanding.
Speaker 1: That you know, your view is expanding, it it changes
Speaker 1: the court pustles in your body, I think. And in fact,
Speaker 1: one of those places was when I first went to
Speaker 1: South Africa, and I had been writing for Rolling Stone
Speaker 1: Magazine as a freelancer, and I did a couple of
Speaker 1: pieces and I was sitting in my editor's office there
Speaker 1: one day and she got a phone call from a
Speaker 1: famous British journalist who was saying he couldn't go to
Speaker 1: South Africa to cover the township riots and the and
Speaker 1: the kind of revolution going on there in the mid eighties.
Speaker 1: And she turned to me and said, I want to
Speaker 1: go to South Africa. Yes, ma'am. I'd never been to
Speaker 1: Africa before, and in a couple of weeks I was
Speaker 1: flying down there and they wanted me to do a
Speaker 1: story about young people and are there friendship across the
Speaker 1: color line? And I ended up doing a story in
Speaker 1: this little town of Brits in the Western Transport where
Speaker 1: there was a forced removal where the where the white
Speaker 1: authorities were trying to move the black township further away
Speaker 1: from the white town. And I did a story for
Speaker 1: them about a young black man and a and a
Speaker 1: young white boy living in the same town, which eventually
Speaker 1: became my first book called January Son, which was about
Speaker 1: three families, including an Indian family, and it was just
Speaker 1: so different and and you know, South Africa was an
Speaker 1: authoritarian state in those days, and it was a racist
Speaker 1: authoritarian state, and it just it just felt so different
Speaker 1: that you felt this kind of pressure on you at
Speaker 1: all times. But it's an incredibly beautiful place with wonderful,
Speaker 1: beautiful people, and it kind of opened my eyes and
Speaker 1: I and I remember, you know, I think you probably
Speaker 1: know that famous journalistic expression when you go through a
Speaker 1: new country. After the first three days, you can write
Speaker 1: a book. After the first three weeks, you can write
Speaker 1: an article. But after three months you don't know what
Speaker 1: to say. You feel there in that you have that
Speaker 1: kind of overconfidence about your sense of a situation when
Speaker 1: you're first there, of that first week or so. But
Speaker 1: I remember when I went back to work on the book,
Speaker 1: and I spent about six months living in this really
Speaker 1: godforsaken little town, African speaking town, and and I did
Speaker 1: do the book, but it just becomes much more complex.
Speaker 1: It's just you don't have these factile and easy things
Speaker 1: to say about any place when you've spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time there. And it's an interesting rule. And you know,
Speaker 1: most of us when we travel, we don't spend a
Speaker 1: long time in a particular place. And even though it
Speaker 1: expands your brain, you also have to realize you're not
Speaker 1: really completely understanding the place the way you would if
Speaker 1: you really spend a lot of time there. People go
Speaker 1: to Cape Town all the time, right, and they tell
Speaker 1: me the story, Oh, Cape Town is incredible, so beautiful,
Speaker 1: in the food and the wine and the blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: You know what they tell and then I go, yes,
Speaker 1: but one about everything else. And it's so easy to
Speaker 1: not see that. That's the thing about travel. You have
Speaker 1: to be open to the good in the band. Yes,
Speaker 1: and Cape Town is a particularly good example, because it's
Speaker 1: such a stunningly beautiful place. But you know, we're talking
Speaker 1: about first world white travelers, and they don't go to Kayla,
Speaker 1: to the township, or see how vast that is. I mean,
Speaker 1: and I guess people don't want to get cloud revision.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit depressing. And that's why South Africa
Speaker 1: is such a poignant and heartbreaking place, because there's so
Speaker 1: much beauty and wealth and then so much poverty and
Speaker 1: and despair, and it's hard to see all of that.
Speaker 1: And you know, you know, I worked with Nelson Mandela,
Speaker 1: and so of course when I was working with him,
Speaker 1: we were always going to places like Kayla and Soweto
Speaker 1: and and and it was also an eye opener for
Speaker 1: me and to go with him where he was beloved,
Speaker 1: and just to see the poverty that they lived in
Speaker 1: the and the fact that you know that the first
Speaker 1: world part of South Africa depended on the on the
Speaker 1: poverty of black South Africans, and you know that's a
Speaker 1: hard thing and and they're still, of course trying to
Speaker 1: evolve out of that. How was your time with Nelson Mandela.
Speaker 1: You wrote the book for him with him to Freedom,
Speaker 1: To Freedom. Um. I remember reading that as a child
Speaker 1: and I struggled through it. But it's something I remember.
Speaker 1: I remember my opinions of South Africa and feeling complicated
Speaker 1: about it, and being from there but not growing up there,
Speaker 1: but my parents not being from there but sort of
Speaker 1: from there, and what all of that meant to me.
Speaker 1: Travel has taken me out of all that and back
Speaker 1: in And that's the beauty that travel has given me.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if I would have had this
Speaker 1: perspective or this feeling in the world if I wasn't
Speaker 1: from South Africa. Well there's that saying from I think
Speaker 1: it was Emerson. What do Americans know? Who only America? No?
Speaker 1: And that's how I feel about South Africans. What do
Speaker 1: South Africans now? Who only South African knows? Because of
Speaker 1: course South Africans weren't allowed to travel anywhere else in
Speaker 1: the world, and there's a kind of narcissism that white
Speaker 1: South Africans have, but to see it through Nelson Mandela,
Speaker 1: whom I loved, was such a privilege. And you know
Speaker 1: he was a beautiful man, right, I mean he's six two, handsome, big, beaming, smile,
Speaker 1: broad's shoulders, had been a boxer as a young man.
Speaker 1: I remember Walter Susula, who was with him on Robin
Speaker 1: Island for all those years and really was his closest
Speaker 1: friend and advisor. One of the great privileges working on
Speaker 1: the book is I got to meet all of those
Speaker 1: people and interview them. And I remember Walter told me
Speaker 1: this story when Mandela first came to Johannesburg as eighteen
Speaker 1: years old from the Provinces, and Walter Ssuli was a
Speaker 1: real estate Asian in Soweto and was the head of
Speaker 1: the A n C Youth League, and he said, when
Speaker 1: Nelson Mandela walked through that door, I said to myself,
Speaker 1: we want to be a mass organization. That young man
Speaker 1: as a mass leader. For all the reasons I was said.
Speaker 1: He was tall, he was handsome, he's mild, which was
Speaker 1: an unusual thing in the nineteen fifties for a leader
Speaker 1: to smile. We were you all used to that now
Speaker 1: and and sort of see South Africa through his eyes
Speaker 1: and through all of the terrible prejudice that he was
Speaker 1: the victim of. I mean, it just unimaginable. Right, He's
Speaker 1: spent twenty seven years in prison, the prime of his life.
Speaker 1: He missed out on his family life and and all
Speaker 1: of that. And I was about to say, yet, he's
Speaker 1: not bitter, what people always say, I can't believe he's
Speaker 1: not bitter. He in fact, he was bitter, but part
Speaker 1: of his leadership was to hide that from people. He
Speaker 1: could not have reconciled the country and let people see
Speaker 1: him being bitter towards jailers. So what did he do.
Speaker 1: He spoke Afrikaans to his jailers, He had lunch with them,
Speaker 1: He went to see Mrs f Voote, who was the
Speaker 1: you know, the wife of the man who created apartheide
Speaker 1: because he needed people to believe that he wasn't bitter,
Speaker 1: that they could reconcile, that black and white could get
Speaker 1: along without feeling like this history of enmity was going
Speaker 1: to corrupt the present. Shouldn't we be applying that to
Speaker 1: this country right now? Shouldn't I be going for lunch
Speaker 1: or with tea with Mrs Trump. I need to do something.
Speaker 1: I have a small platform. I have this show that's
Speaker 1: about travel, and it's about opening your eyes, and it's
Speaker 1: about life and it's and it's about being open and
Speaker 1: and I want to use this to get people to vote.
Speaker 1: For instance, I don't care who the funk your vote for,
Speaker 1: just vote, exercise your democracy. Or I want to use
Speaker 1: this to just be like I'm just like you. You know,
Speaker 1: they are truck drivers that listen to my show. I
Speaker 1: know this because they've contacted me on Instagram. They travel
Speaker 1: a lot, they travel a lot, and they must have
Speaker 1: heard my ad on I Heart radio across the nation
Speaker 1: and they download my show. Like a white straight truck
Speaker 1: driver from Idaho sent me a message on Instagram and
Speaker 1: told me I love your show. That for me is
Speaker 1: crossing a divide which I'm almost overwhelmed by. And and
Speaker 1: that's encouraging. I mean, it's almost a bit of a
Speaker 1: dirty word. I mean to say, I'm an American exceptionalist.
Speaker 1: And but what I mean by American exceptionalism is this
Speaker 1: idea of out of many, one of e Plurbius un
Speaker 1: him that this is the country that is this great
Speaker 1: as the cliche goes melting pot where people come here
Speaker 1: and embrace the ideas and get past their prejudices and
Speaker 1: hatreds from the old world wherever they came from. I mean, again,
Speaker 1: that's a bit of a sentimentalization of the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But it hurts me that America is so divided that
Speaker 1: people aren't embracing the ideas that make us who we are.
Speaker 1: And I have again at a positive view of what
Speaker 1: American nous is and and it crushes me to see
Speaker 1: that that people are not embracing that, and that you
Speaker 1: have a president of the United States who doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to understand that. But Daniel, you know what, I think
Speaker 1: you'll solve the whole problem by having Milannia Trump on
Speaker 1: your show and that will bring the whole country togame. Well, Milannia, come,
Speaker 1: I'm waiting. This is a great moment for us to
Speaker 1: travel to advertising Land and we'll be right back with everywhere.
Speaker 1: Welcome once again to everywhere. Let's hop back to it.
Speaker 1: So with no further ado, let's get back to Richard
Speaker 1: and I. I remember last year there was a death
Speaker 1: threat with the male bomber towards you and your family.
Speaker 1: Was an MSNBC, and I remember feeling like, how shocking
Speaker 1: that was. Mary and I walked that day with the
Speaker 1: dogs and she's sub African and she was a war
Speaker 1: photographer and she's like chilled. But I remember feeling like, fuck,
Speaker 1: that's serious. But I think if you and that person
Speaker 1: happened to be in the same room, that person would
Speaker 1: see that you are no threat, that you don't need
Speaker 1: to be bombed, that you are only interested in this
Speaker 1: country and what's best for this country, and that you
Speaker 1: are just the same. Well, I I was sort of
Speaker 1: blaise about it, because these guys of knuckleheads, and they
Speaker 1: tend to not be able to do the thing that
Speaker 1: they say they want to do. And I and when
Speaker 1: I was at the State Department, I got many threats
Speaker 1: from from ISIS guys and their acolytes. And even when
Speaker 1: I was editor of Time, similar kinds of things. And
Speaker 1: I think when you're in the arena or in the
Speaker 1: public eye, that that is part of the job. And again,
Speaker 1: as you said about Mary, I mean she was a
Speaker 1: township war photographer. I remember when when I was an
Speaker 1: editor of Time, and we we did the protester as
Speaker 1: a Person of the Year, and we I was the
Speaker 1: entire square during the protests there during the Arab Spring,
Speaker 1: and I got tear gased back. The our foreign editor
Speaker 1: kind of grabbed me and rescued me from it, and
Speaker 1: like I proudly called her at night and she was like,
Speaker 1: I was tear guests fifty different times. Completely yeah, completely unimpressed.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, so I mean, get you get used
Speaker 1: to it. At the same time, I think there is
Speaker 1: a on a continuum. I think people in left and
Speaker 1: right do have more in common than they think they do.
Speaker 1: This idea that we're so polarized is in some ways exaggerated.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're not as polarized as we were during
Speaker 1: the Civil War, when one out of four American boys
Speaker 1: between eighteen and twenty four lost their lives and there
Speaker 1: was a civil war about an ideological disagreement. So we're very,
Speaker 1: very far from that. But I do think this, like
Speaker 1: this Caesar sayok Fellow and the and other sort of
Speaker 1: white supremacist terrorists. You know, we have to figure out
Speaker 1: how to tone down the language because it does obviously
Speaker 1: have an effect on them. And we see that all
Speaker 1: the time. And I've always thought it was naive when
Speaker 1: I'd hear Congress. People say, oh, so and so was
Speaker 1: created by the internet, or this terrorism is caused by
Speaker 1: the internet. That's silly. The internet doesn't cause anybody anything.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it does make people more extreme.
Speaker 1: They double down on their beliefs, and we have to
Speaker 1: figure out how to how to tone down the rhetoric
Speaker 1: and how to talk to each other in a more
Speaker 1: civil way. This leads me into thinking about something that
Speaker 1: you and I have definitely talked about, but I don't
Speaker 1: know if we've talked about this enough. I wonder how
Speaker 1: do we then combat the disinformation. So I speak to
Speaker 1: my neighbor and she's convinced that climate change is not real.
Speaker 1: I push her friend in Italy in a wheelchair around
Speaker 1: ma Tera and it's a hundred and four degrees and
Speaker 1: the guide who's with us keeps saying it's the hottest
Speaker 1: sum on record, glaciers are melting, it's it's never been
Speaker 1: this hot in Italy, and the woman goes, it's a hoax,
Speaker 1: don't believe it. How do I possibly show her that
Speaker 1: the information that she has is not correct. It's it's tough,
Speaker 1: as we've been saying. And one of the things I
Speaker 1: say in the book is that we don't have a
Speaker 1: fake news problem. We have a media literacy problem that
Speaker 1: people can't and haven't been taught how to distinguish between
Speaker 1: something that's fact and fiction what the provenance of that
Speaker 1: information is. And we're also scientifically illiterate that so much
Speaker 1: of the skepticism and doubt about climate change comes from
Speaker 1: people who are not scientifically literate, that are not reading
Speaker 1: scientific papers about the way the environment has changed and
Speaker 1: what how man has caused that to change. And again,
Speaker 1: I don't it's not an easy answer, because as we
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier, there's that backfire effect if someone
Speaker 1: is so persuaded that climate change is false, when you
Speaker 1: try to dissuade them of that or try to persuade
Speaker 1: them of something else, that often reconfirms the belief that
Speaker 1: they already have. And I do think, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the things that that is a problem of our
Speaker 1: time is that now this is going to sound really grandiose,
Speaker 1: which is that technology is evolving, but human beings are not.
Speaker 1: Technology is evolving at a rapid rate, and we still
Speaker 1: have the you know, reptilian brain that we had years ago.
Speaker 1: That's a problem. And I actually think that we can
Speaker 1: figure out how to use technology to evolve us and
Speaker 1: to make democracy work better. But right now we're so
Speaker 1: focused on how technology is undermining that, which it may be,
Speaker 1: but it also has the potential of making us more
Speaker 1: evolved and in an objective, scientific way, saying, look, here's
Speaker 1: the reality. Everybody's got to recognize that we may differ
Speaker 1: on what to do about it or what caused it,
Speaker 1: but this is the state of play that we can
Speaker 1: all acknowledge. And you know, when I was went into
Speaker 1: the State Department and was confirmed before Congress, one of
Speaker 1: the things I said in my opening remarks was this
Speaker 1: great line from from Daniel Patrick moynihan. It was the
Speaker 1: New York Senator when I was growing up here, and
Speaker 1: he said, Uh, people are entitled to their own opinions,
Speaker 1: they're not entitled to their own facts. But nowadays people
Speaker 1: feel like they're entitled to their own facts. That that
Speaker 1: I have a fact, it's not an opinion. Well, that's
Speaker 1: a very hard thing to disabuse people of. And I
Speaker 1: do think technology can help us come to a factual
Speaker 1: basis of different things that we can all agree on.
Speaker 1: That to me is the foundation for progress. Right to
Speaker 1: just agree that two plus two equals four. Then how
Speaker 1: do we move on from there? Right? I would talk
Speaker 1: to you all day. Let's some rap and tell me
Speaker 1: something like a funny story about Nelson Mandela, or like
Speaker 1: something funny or travel story that's funny. Um. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you know, but when I was working with Mandela,
Speaker 1: he knew Mary because Mary photographed him on the first
Speaker 1: day he came out of active verst air prison. And
Speaker 1: she's a beautiful, red haired photographer, pretty unforgettable. And when
Speaker 1: he saw that we were going out together, he would
Speaker 1: always say to me, you must marry that girl. It's
Speaker 1: hard to say no to Nelson Mandela and I did not.
Speaker 1: And when our first son was about to be born,
Speaker 1: we called him on New Year's Day. We used to
Speaker 1: call him or see him every New Year's Day, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to tell him that Mary was pregnant, which
Speaker 1: I did do. And I was talking to him on
Speaker 1: the phone and I said, if if it's a boy,
Speaker 1: we're going to call him Harley clock Law. As you know,
Speaker 1: that's Nelson Mandela's real first name. I caused the name
Speaker 1: that's unpronounceable and unspellable. Well, he has a pretty good
Speaker 1: sense of humor. And he was silent, and I thought,
Speaker 1: did I mispronounced it? Did he think it was presumptuous
Speaker 1: of this white American to name his son Holy Colock Law?
Speaker 1: So I said, would you like to say hello to Mary?
Speaker 1: And he said of course, And I passed the phone
Speaker 1: to her and she said hello, Medee. But what everybody
Speaker 1: called him? And then I was standing close so I
Speaker 1: could hear what he said. After that, he said, I
Speaker 1: cannot wait to see you and a little holly clack clock. Well,
Speaker 1: I love that it turned out to be Gabe and not.
Speaker 1: So what happened was, you know, cut to whatever it was.
Speaker 1: Five months later, we're in the hospital and the boy
Speaker 1: is born, and we thought, oh my god, can we
Speaker 1: we have to do something. But we can't call him
Speaker 1: Holly clockline his first name. So Gabriel Stengel's middle name
Speaker 1: is Curley clock Clock. I never knew that. Gaby, baby, yes,
Speaker 1: with the beautiful middle name. That's sweet. I could spend
Speaker 1: the rest of the day with you and talk everything.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to thank you for making time for me,
Speaker 1: and I can't wait for your book. That's some imminent.
Speaker 1: So congratulations on the book. Thank you so much. It's
Speaker 1: great to have it done, and it's been fantastic to
Speaker 1: be with you today. Than Richard, I guess I'll go
Speaker 1: back to may Verry now have her on the show.
Speaker 1: I'd love to have on the show. It has come
Speaker 1: to the end of our season one. I have had
Speaker 1: the most memorable and joyous time. I love creating and
Speaker 1: thinking about this. We've covered so much ground emotionally and
Speaker 1: of course physically, and it's left me hungry to travel more,
Speaker 1: hungry to think more. It has shown me how travel
Speaker 1: is a way that you can lose yourself to find yourself.
Speaker 1: I set out on this podcast Everywhere to remind people
Speaker 1: how if you're not filled with fear, you can go
Speaker 1: and find love in travel. I realize that a part
Speaker 1: of that has to do with not telling people want
Speaker 1: to do, but merely suggesting. So I will see you
Speaker 1: with some bonus episodes that we're going to scatter into
Speaker 1: the rest of the year as a surprise, and then
Speaker 1: I will see you early next year with season two.
Speaker 1: Of course, there's lots to look forward to, but I
Speaker 1: will tease that to you later. For the moment, think
Speaker 1: about how good boys go to heaven and bad boys
Speaker 1: go everywhere. Also think about some of the suggestions I've
Speaker 1: made over the last few months, being generous, leaving your smartphone,
Speaker 1: trying something new, embracing the stillness, universal values, things that
Speaker 1: I can do and you can do, and anyone can do.
Speaker 1: Of course, I couldn't have done this without my executive producers,
Speaker 1: Holly and Christopher the finest Chandler Maze, who's my lead producer.
Speaker 1: May this journey so much more collaborative and creative. Thank
Speaker 1: you Chandler, and then of course Tristan as co editor
Speaker 1: and creator of the soundtrack. So I bid you farewell.
Speaker 1: I will see you in disguise or some way random,
Speaker 1: and you will find me everywhere. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.