WEBVTT

00:00:05.769 --> 00:00:08.690
I want to tell you about my search
for purpose as a journalist

00:00:08.714 --> 00:00:12.134
and how Dolly Parton
helped me figure it out.

NOTE Paragraph

00:00:12.158 --> 00:00:14.769
So I've been telling audio stories
for about 20 years,

00:00:14.793 --> 00:00:16.714
first on the radio and then in podcasts.

00:00:16.738 --> 00:00:19.952
When I started the radio show
Radiolab in 2002,

00:00:19.976 --> 00:00:22.713
here was the quintessential
story move we would do.

00:00:22.737 --> 00:00:24.270
We'd bring on somebody --

NOTE Paragraph

00:00:25.323 --> 00:00:27.837
(Audio) Steve Strogatz:
It's one of the most hypnotic

00:00:27.861 --> 00:00:30.305
and spellbinding spectacles in nature,

00:00:30.329 --> 00:00:33.109
because, you have to keep in mind,
it is absolutely silent.

NOTE Paragraph

00:00:33.133 --> 00:00:35.248
Like this guy, mathematician,
Steve Strogatz,

00:00:35.272 --> 00:00:36.665
and he would paint a picture.

NOTE Paragraph

00:00:36.689 --> 00:00:37.879
(Audio) SS: Picture it.

00:00:37.903 --> 00:00:41.014
There's a riverbank in Thailand
in the remote part of the jungle,

00:00:41.038 --> 00:00:43.641
you're in a canoe,
slipping down the river.

00:00:43.665 --> 00:00:45.086
There's no sound of anything,

00:00:45.110 --> 00:00:48.403
maybe the occasional, you know,
exotic jungle bird or something.

NOTE Paragraph

00:00:48.427 --> 00:00:50.752
JA: So you're in this imaginary
canoe with Steve,

00:00:50.776 --> 00:00:54.307
and in the air all around you
are millions of fireflies.

00:00:54.331 --> 00:00:58.426
And what you see is sort of
a randomized starry-night effect.

00:00:58.736 --> 00:01:01.696
Because all the fireflies
are blinking at different rates.

00:01:01.720 --> 00:01:03.221
Which is what you would expect.

00:01:03.617 --> 00:01:06.308
But according to Steve, in this one place,

00:01:06.332 --> 00:01:09.014
for reasons no scientist
can fully explain --

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:09.038 --> 00:01:10.188
SS: Whoop.

00:01:11.157 --> 00:01:12.307
Whoop.

00:01:13.093 --> 00:01:14.251
Whoop.

00:01:14.275 --> 00:01:17.179
With thousands of lights on
and then off, all in sync.

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:24.477 --> 00:01:25.913
JA: Now it's around this time

00:01:25.937 --> 00:01:29.128
that I would generally bring in
the beautiful music, as I just did,

00:01:29.152 --> 00:01:31.160
and you'd start to get that warm feeling.

00:01:31.184 --> 00:01:32.966
A feeling, that we know from science,

00:01:32.990 --> 00:01:34.910
kind of localizes in your head and chest

00:01:34.934 --> 00:01:36.387
and spreads through your body.

00:01:36.411 --> 00:01:38.029
It's that feeling of wonder.

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:38.053 --> 00:01:41.293
From 2002 to 2010,
I did hundreds of these stories.

00:01:42.843 --> 00:01:46.288
Sciency, neurosciency,
very heady, brainy stories,

00:01:46.312 --> 00:01:49.010
that would always resolve
into that feeling of wonder.

00:01:49.930 --> 00:01:51.569
And I began to see that as my job,

00:01:51.593 --> 00:01:53.967
to lead people to moments of wonder.

00:01:54.419 --> 00:01:55.903
What that sounded like was:

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:55.927 --> 00:01:58.124
(Various voices) "Huh!" "Wow!"

00:01:58.585 --> 00:01:59.735
"Wow!"

00:02:00.244 --> 00:02:01.409
"That's amazing."

00:02:01.433 --> 00:02:03.466
"Whoa!" "Wow!"

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:03.490 --> 00:02:06.521
JA: But I began to get
kind of tired of these stories.

00:02:06.870 --> 00:02:08.823
I mean, partially, it was the repetition,

00:02:08.847 --> 00:02:11.537
I remember there was a day
I was sitting at the computer,

00:02:11.561 --> 00:02:12.957
making the sound of a neuron.

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:12.981 --> 00:02:14.132
(Crackling sound)

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:14.156 --> 00:02:17.475
You know, take some white noise,
chop it up, very easy sound to make.

00:02:17.499 --> 00:02:19.085
I remember thinking

00:02:19.109 --> 00:02:21.364
"I have made this sound 25 times."

00:02:21.388 --> 00:02:23.402
But it was more than that,

00:02:23.426 --> 00:02:25.593
there was a familiar path
to these stories.

00:02:25.617 --> 00:02:28.109
You walk the path of truth,
which is made of science,

00:02:28.133 --> 00:02:29.283
and you get to wonder.

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:29.307 --> 00:02:31.335
Now I love science, don't get me wrong.

00:02:31.359 --> 00:02:33.482
My parents emigrated
from a war-torn country,

00:02:33.506 --> 00:02:34.728
came to America,

00:02:34.752 --> 00:02:39.577
and science for them was, like,
more their identity than anything else,

00:02:39.601 --> 00:02:41.668
and I inherited that from them.

00:02:42.418 --> 00:02:44.887
But there was something
about that simple movement

00:02:44.911 --> 00:02:46.197
from science to wonder

00:02:46.221 --> 00:02:48.059
that just started to feel wrong to me.

00:02:48.083 --> 00:02:50.201
Like, is that the only path
a story can take?

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:50.225 --> 00:02:51.879
Around 2012,

00:02:51.903 --> 00:02:53.855
I ran into a bunch of different stories

00:02:53.879 --> 00:02:56.156
that made me think, "No."

00:02:56.546 --> 00:02:57.712
One story in particular,

00:02:57.736 --> 00:03:00.896
where we interviewed a guy who described

00:03:00.920 --> 00:03:04.405
chemical weapons being used
against him and his fellow villagers

00:03:04.429 --> 00:03:05.667
in the mountains of Laos.

00:03:05.691 --> 00:03:07.627
Western scientists went there,

00:03:07.651 --> 00:03:10.220
measured for chemical weapons,
didn't find any.

00:03:10.244 --> 00:03:11.871
We interviewed the man about this,

00:03:11.895 --> 00:03:13.529
he said the scientists were wrong.

00:03:13.553 --> 00:03:14.958
We said, "But they tested."

00:03:14.982 --> 00:03:17.442
He said, "I don't care,
I know what happened to me."

00:03:17.466 --> 00:03:19.617
And we went back and forth
and back and forth,

00:03:19.641 --> 00:03:21.529
and make a long story short,

00:03:21.553 --> 00:03:23.247
the interview ended in tears.

00:03:24.061 --> 00:03:25.211
I felt ...

00:03:25.831 --> 00:03:26.981
I felt horrible.

00:03:28.116 --> 00:03:31.329
Like, hammering at a scientific truth,
when someone has suffered.

00:03:32.125 --> 00:03:34.077
That wasn't going to heal anything.

00:03:34.101 --> 00:03:38.669
And maybe I was relying
too much on science to find the truth.

00:03:39.006 --> 00:03:40.856
And it really did feel at that moment

00:03:40.880 --> 00:03:42.959
that there were a lot
of truths in the room,

00:03:42.983 --> 00:03:44.918
and we were only looking at one of them.

00:03:44.942 --> 00:03:47.125
So I thought, I've got
to get better at this.

NOTE Paragraph

00:03:47.149 --> 00:03:48.728
And so for the next eight years,

00:03:48.752 --> 00:03:50.426
I committed myself to doing stories

00:03:50.450 --> 00:03:52.310
where you heard truths collide.

00:03:52.334 --> 00:03:54.474
We did stories about
the politics of consent,

00:03:54.498 --> 00:03:57.379
where you heard the perspective
of survivors and perpetrators

00:03:57.403 --> 00:03:58.610
whose narratives clashed.

00:03:58.634 --> 00:03:59.887
We did stories about race,

00:03:59.911 --> 00:04:02.537
how black men are systematically
eliminated from juries,

00:04:02.561 --> 00:04:05.385
and yet, the rules that try
and prevent that from happening,

00:04:05.409 --> 00:04:06.609
only make things worse.

00:04:06.633 --> 00:04:09.173
Stories about counter terrorism,
Guantanamo detainees,

00:04:09.197 --> 00:04:10.973
stories where everything is disputed,

00:04:10.997 --> 00:04:13.338
all you can do is struggle
to try and make sense.

00:04:13.362 --> 00:04:15.827
And this struggle
kind of became the point.

00:04:16.141 --> 00:04:18.537
I began to think, "Maybe that's my job."

00:04:18.561 --> 00:04:20.554
To lead people to moments of struggle.

00:04:21.125 --> 00:04:22.593
Here's what that sounded like:

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:22.617 --> 00:04:24.704
(Various voices)
"But I see ... I, like ..."

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:24.728 --> 00:04:26.029
"Uh, I ..." (Sigh)

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:26.053 --> 00:04:28.045
"Well, so, like, huh ..."

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:28.069 --> 00:04:29.489
"That, I mean, I ..."

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:29.513 --> 00:04:32.862
"You know ... golly ... I ... (Sigh)"

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:33.680 --> 00:04:36.465
JA: And that sigh right there,

00:04:36.489 --> 00:04:39.229
I wanted to hear that sound
in every single story,

00:04:39.253 --> 00:04:42.286
because that sound is kind of
our current moment, right?

00:04:42.310 --> 00:04:46.676
We live in a world where truth
is no longer just a set of facts

00:04:46.700 --> 00:04:47.861
to be captured.

00:04:47.885 --> 00:04:49.052
It's become a process.

00:04:49.076 --> 00:04:51.422
It's gone from being a noun
to being a verb.

00:04:51.446 --> 00:04:53.529
But how do you end that story?

00:04:53.553 --> 00:04:57.410
Like, what literally kept happening
is we'd be, you know, telling a story,

00:04:57.434 --> 00:04:59.617
cruising along,
two viewpoints in conflict,

00:04:59.641 --> 00:05:02.339
you get to the end and it's just like --

00:05:02.363 --> 00:05:03.514
No, let me see.

00:05:03.538 --> 00:05:04.831
What do I say at the end?

00:05:04.855 --> 00:05:06.006
Oh, my God.

00:05:06.030 --> 00:05:08.061
What do you, how do you end that story?

00:05:08.085 --> 00:05:09.855
You can't just happily-ever-after it,

00:05:09.879 --> 00:05:11.387
because that doesn't feel real.

00:05:11.411 --> 00:05:12.561
At the same time,

00:05:12.585 --> 00:05:14.974
if you just leave people
in that stuck place,

00:05:14.998 --> 00:05:16.839
like, "why did I just listen to that?"

00:05:16.863 --> 00:05:19.419
Like, it felt like there had to be
another move there.

00:05:19.443 --> 00:05:22.053
Had to be a way beyond the struggle.

NOTE Paragraph

00:05:22.077 --> 00:05:25.882
And this is what brings me to Dolly.

00:05:26.364 --> 00:05:28.887
Or, Saint Dolly, as we like
to call her in the South.

00:05:28.911 --> 00:05:32.555
I want to tell you about one little
glimmer of an epiphany that I had

00:05:32.579 --> 00:05:35.641
doing a nine-part series
called Dolly Parton's America last year.

00:05:35.665 --> 00:05:37.346
It was a bit of a departure for me,

00:05:37.370 --> 00:05:40.649
but I just had this intuition
that Dolly could help me

00:05:40.673 --> 00:05:42.426
figure out this ending problem.

00:05:42.450 --> 00:05:44.204
And here was the basic intuition:

00:05:44.228 --> 00:05:45.506
You go to a Dolly concert,

00:05:45.530 --> 00:05:48.228
you see men in trucker hats
standing next to men in drag,

00:05:48.252 --> 00:05:50.141
Democrats standing next to Republicans,

00:05:50.165 --> 00:05:51.316
women holding hands,

00:05:51.340 --> 00:05:53.593
every different kind of person
smashed together.

00:05:53.617 --> 00:05:56.482
All of these people that we are told
should hate each other,

00:05:56.506 --> 00:05:58.236
are there singing together.

00:05:58.260 --> 00:06:01.680
She somehow carved out
this unique space in America,

00:06:01.704 --> 00:06:04.093
and I wanted to know, how did she do that?

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:04.117 --> 00:06:08.815
So I interviewed Dolly 12 times,
two separate continents.

00:06:08.839 --> 00:06:10.610
She started every interview this way:

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:10.634 --> 00:06:12.974
(Audio) Dolly Parton: Ask me
whatever you ask me,

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:12.998 --> 00:06:15.197
and I'm going to tell you
what I want to hear."

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:15.221 --> 00:06:16.221
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:16.253 --> 00:06:18.910
She is undeniably a force of nature.

00:06:18.934 --> 00:06:21.212
But the problem that I ran into

00:06:21.236 --> 00:06:25.727
is that I had chosen
a conceit for this series

00:06:25.751 --> 00:06:28.164
that my soul had trouble with.

00:06:28.188 --> 00:06:30.124
Dolly sings a lot about the South.

00:06:30.148 --> 00:06:31.783
If you go through her discography,

00:06:31.807 --> 00:06:34.077
you will hear song after song
about Tennessee.

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:34.101 --> 00:06:36.989
(Music) DP (Singing, various songs):
Tennessee, Tennessee...

00:06:37.013 --> 00:06:38.479
Tennessee homesick ...

00:06:39.260 --> 00:06:43.727
"I've got those Tennessee homesick blues
running' through my head."

00:06:44.792 --> 00:06:45.966
Tennessee.

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:45.990 --> 00:06:48.768
"Tennessee Mountain Home,"
"Tennessee Mountain Memories."

00:06:48.792 --> 00:06:50.529
Now I grew up in Tennessee,

00:06:50.553 --> 00:06:52.569
and I felt no nostalgia for that place.

00:06:52.593 --> 00:06:55.588
I was the scrawny Arab kid

00:06:55.612 --> 00:06:58.894
who came from the place
that invented suicide bombing.

00:06:58.918 --> 00:07:01.179
I spent a lot of time in my room.

00:07:01.203 --> 00:07:02.799
When I left Nashville,

00:07:02.823 --> 00:07:04.958
I left.

NOTE Paragraph

00:07:04.982 --> 00:07:06.434
I remember being at Dollywood,

00:07:06.458 --> 00:07:10.259
standing in front of a replica,
replica of her Tennessee Mountain Home.

00:07:10.283 --> 00:07:12.022
People all around me were crying.

00:07:12.046 --> 00:07:14.419
This is a set.

00:07:14.815 --> 00:07:15.982
Why are you crying?

00:07:16.006 --> 00:07:18.295
I couldn't understand
why they were so emotional,

00:07:18.319 --> 00:07:20.869
especially given
my relationship to the South.

00:07:21.466 --> 00:07:24.101
And I started to honestly have
panic attacks about this.

00:07:24.125 --> 00:07:26.264
Am I not the right person
for this project?

NOTE Paragraph

00:07:27.601 --> 00:07:30.168
But then, twist of fate.

00:07:30.473 --> 00:07:32.411
We meet this guy, Bryan Seaver,

00:07:32.435 --> 00:07:34.672
Dolly's nephew and bodyguard.

00:07:34.696 --> 00:07:38.069
And on a whim, he drives
producer Shima Oliaee and I

00:07:38.093 --> 00:07:39.371
out of Dollywood,

00:07:39.395 --> 00:07:41.379
round the back side of the mountains,

00:07:41.403 --> 00:07:42.807
up the mountains 20 minutes,

00:07:42.831 --> 00:07:44.260
down a narrow dirt road,

00:07:44.284 --> 00:07:47.476
through giant wooden gates
that look right out of "Game of Thrones,"

00:07:47.500 --> 00:07:51.031
and into the actual
Tennessee mountain home.

00:07:53.158 --> 00:07:54.507
But the real place.

00:07:54.531 --> 00:07:55.685
Valhalla.

00:07:55.709 --> 00:07:57.286
The real Tennessee mountain home.

NOTE Paragraph

00:07:57.310 --> 00:07:59.466
And I'm going to score
this part with Wagner,

00:07:59.490 --> 00:08:01.117
because you've got to understand,

00:08:01.141 --> 00:08:02.307
in Tennessee lore,

00:08:02.331 --> 00:08:05.117
this is like hallowed ground,
the Tennessee mountain home.

NOTE Paragraph

00:08:05.141 --> 00:08:06.587
So I remember standing there,

00:08:06.611 --> 00:08:07.895
on the grass,

00:08:07.919 --> 00:08:09.760
next to the Pigeon River,

00:08:09.784 --> 00:08:12.154
butterflies doing loopty loops in the air,

00:08:12.178 --> 00:08:14.444
and I had my own moment of wonder.

00:08:15.122 --> 00:08:17.868
Dolly's Tennessee mountain home

00:08:17.892 --> 00:08:21.655
looks exactly like my dad's home
in the mountains of Lebanon.

00:08:22.133 --> 00:08:25.815
Her house looks just
like the place that he left.

NOTE Paragraph

00:08:26.386 --> 00:08:29.685
And that simple bit of layering
led me to have a conversation with him

00:08:29.709 --> 00:08:30.867
that I never had before,

00:08:30.891 --> 00:08:33.101
about the pain he felt leaving his home.

00:08:33.125 --> 00:08:35.168
And how he hears that in Dolly's music.

00:08:35.192 --> 00:08:39.010
Then I had a conversation with Dolly
where she described her songs

00:08:39.034 --> 00:08:40.296
as migration music.

00:08:40.320 --> 00:08:42.208
Even that classic song,

00:08:42.232 --> 00:08:44.779
"Tennessee Mountain Home,"
if you listen to it --

NOTE Paragraph

00:08:45.720 --> 00:08:47.681
(Dolly Parton "Tennessee Mountain Home")

NOTE Paragraph

00:08:47.705 --> 00:08:51.926
"Sittin' on the front porch
on a summer afternoon

00:08:52.680 --> 00:08:56.434
In a straightback chair on two legs,

00:08:56.458 --> 00:08:59.998
leaned against the wall."

NOTE Paragraph

00:09:01.466 --> 00:09:05.847
It's about trying to capture a moment
that you know is already gone.

00:09:05.871 --> 00:09:08.617
But if you can paint it, vividly,

00:09:08.641 --> 00:09:12.260
maybe you can freeze it in place,
almost like in resin,

00:09:12.284 --> 00:09:14.484
trapped between past and present.

00:09:15.149 --> 00:09:17.349
That is the immigrant experience.

00:09:17.911 --> 00:09:21.062
And that simple thought led me
to a million conversations.

NOTE Paragraph

00:09:21.086 --> 00:09:25.038
I started talking to musicologists
about country music as a whole.

00:09:25.062 --> 00:09:27.475
This genre that I've always felt so

00:09:27.499 --> 00:09:29.570
having nothing to do
with where I came from,

00:09:29.594 --> 00:09:32.442
is actually made up of instruments
and musical styles

00:09:32.466 --> 00:09:34.395
that came directly from the Middle East.

00:09:34.419 --> 00:09:38.196
In fact, there were trade routes
that ran from what is now Lebanon

00:09:38.220 --> 00:09:40.644
right up into the mountains
of East Tennessee.

NOTE Paragraph

00:09:41.117 --> 00:09:44.926
I can honestly say, standing there,
looking at her home,

00:09:44.950 --> 00:09:48.077
was the first time I felt
like I'm a Tennessean.

00:09:49.067 --> 00:09:50.534
That is honestly true.

NOTE Paragraph

00:09:50.995 --> 00:09:52.599
And this wasn't a one-time thing,

00:09:52.623 --> 00:09:53.987
I mean, over and over again,

00:09:54.011 --> 00:09:57.940
she would force me
beyond the simple categories

00:09:57.964 --> 00:09:59.490
I had constructed for the world.

00:09:59.514 --> 00:10:02.335
I remember talking with her
about her seven-year partnership

00:10:02.359 --> 00:10:03.537
with Porter Wagoner.

00:10:03.561 --> 00:10:07.768
1967, she joins his band,
he is the biggest thing in country music,

00:10:07.792 --> 00:10:10.229
she is a backup singer, a nobody.

00:10:10.253 --> 00:10:12.712
Within a short time, she gets huge,

00:10:12.736 --> 00:10:13.895
he gets jealous,

00:10:13.919 --> 00:10:16.712
he then sues her for three million dollars

00:10:16.736 --> 00:10:17.950
when she tries to leave.

00:10:17.974 --> 00:10:20.895
Now it would be really easy
to see Porter Wagoner

00:10:20.919 --> 00:10:24.180
as, like, a type: classic,
patriarchal jackass,

00:10:24.204 --> 00:10:25.516
trying to hold her back.

00:10:25.540 --> 00:10:27.474
But anytime I would suggest that to her,

00:10:27.498 --> 00:10:28.655
like, come on.

NOTE Paragraph

00:10:28.679 --> 00:10:31.605
(Audio) This is a guy, I mean,
you see it in the videos, too,

00:10:31.629 --> 00:10:33.493
he's got his arm around you.

00:10:33.517 --> 00:10:37.453
There's a power thing happening, for sure.

NOTE Paragraph

00:10:37.477 --> 00:10:40.014
DP: Well, it's more complicated than that.

00:10:40.038 --> 00:10:41.799
I mean, just think about it.

00:10:41.823 --> 00:10:43.411
He had had this show for years,

00:10:43.435 --> 00:10:46.561
he didn't need me to have his hit show.

00:10:46.585 --> 00:10:50.119
He wasn't expecting me
to be all that I was, either.

00:10:50.458 --> 00:10:53.422
I was a serious entertainer,
he didn't know that.

00:10:53.446 --> 00:10:56.696
He didn't know how many dreams I had.

NOTE Paragraph

00:10:56.720 --> 00:10:58.395
JA: In effect, she kept telling me,

00:10:58.419 --> 00:11:01.442
"Don't bring your stupid way
of seeing the world into my story,

00:11:01.466 --> 00:11:02.966
because that's not what it was.

00:11:02.990 --> 00:11:05.934
Yeah, there was power,
but that's not all there was.

00:11:05.958 --> 00:11:07.692
You can't summarize this."

NOTE Paragraph

00:11:09.611 --> 00:11:11.127
Alright, just to zoom out.

00:11:11.151 --> 00:11:12.428
What do I make of this?

00:11:12.452 --> 00:11:14.317
Well, I think there's something in here

00:11:14.341 --> 00:11:16.643
that's a clue, a way forward.

00:11:16.667 --> 00:11:18.373
As journalists, we love difference.

00:11:18.397 --> 00:11:19.998
We love to fetishize difference.

00:11:20.022 --> 00:11:22.458
But increasingly, in this confusing world,

00:11:22.482 --> 00:11:25.323
we need to be the bridge
between those differences.

00:11:25.347 --> 00:11:26.880
But how do you do that?

NOTE Paragraph

00:11:27.371 --> 00:11:30.180
I think for me now, the answer is simple.

00:11:30.204 --> 00:11:32.553
You interrogate those differences,

00:11:32.577 --> 00:11:35.101
you hold them for as long as you can,

00:11:35.125 --> 00:11:38.299
until, like up on that mountain,

00:11:38.323 --> 00:11:39.524
something happens,

00:11:39.548 --> 00:11:41.215
something reveals itself.

00:11:41.910 --> 00:11:43.815
Story cannot end in difference.

00:11:43.839 --> 00:11:45.654
It's got to end in revelation.

NOTE Paragraph

00:11:46.387 --> 00:11:49.109
And coming back
from that trip on the mountain,

00:11:49.133 --> 00:11:52.545
a friend of mine gave a book
that gave this whole idea a name.

00:11:52.966 --> 00:11:55.560
In psychotherapy,
there's this idea called the third,

00:11:55.584 --> 00:11:57.174
which essentially goes like this.

00:11:57.516 --> 00:12:00.777
Typically, we think of ourselves
as these autonomous units.

00:12:00.801 --> 00:12:02.114
I do something to you,

00:12:02.138 --> 00:12:03.466
you do something to me.

00:12:03.490 --> 00:12:06.307
But according to this theory,
when two people come together,

00:12:06.331 --> 00:12:08.879
and really commit to seeing each other,

00:12:08.903 --> 00:12:11.537
in that mutual act of recognition,

00:12:11.561 --> 00:12:13.649
they actually make something new.

00:12:13.673 --> 00:12:16.339
A new entity that is their relationship.

00:12:17.116 --> 00:12:18.729
You can think of Dolly's concerts

00:12:18.753 --> 00:12:21.205
as sort of a cultural third space.

00:12:21.229 --> 00:12:23.935
The way she sees all the different
parts of her audience,

00:12:23.959 --> 00:12:25.149
the way they see her,

00:12:25.173 --> 00:12:28.037
creates the spiritual
architecture of that space.

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:29.403 --> 00:12:31.736
And I think now that is my calling.

00:12:32.347 --> 00:12:33.926
That as a journalist,

00:12:33.950 --> 00:12:35.839
as a storyteller,

00:12:35.863 --> 00:12:37.791
as just an American,

00:12:37.815 --> 00:12:41.204
living in a country struggling to hold,

00:12:41.228 --> 00:12:44.204
that every story I tell
has got to find the third.

00:12:45.111 --> 00:12:48.452
That place, where the things
we hold as different

00:12:48.476 --> 00:12:50.614
resolve themselves into something new.

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:51.902 --> 00:12:53.052
Thank you.