18th conversation

My old boss, a new book, bombshells, and 7 other... yeah, I think "things worth your time." For now, anyway.

Think of some of your closest friends and family — at least, the ones you don’t live with.

How many times have you talked with them this year? A half dozen? A dozen? And how long each time?

My old boss Bob Woodward has a new book out next week. It’s called Rage, and it’s about President Trump.

Excerpts, scoops big and small, and audio tapes are all over the media. And one line leapt off the screen at me from The Washington Post’s article about his book.

Among Woodward’s sources, apparently, were “18 on-the-record interviews” with President Trump.

That is an insanely large number of interviews. Let’s assume they’re half an hour long on average. Nine hours of interview transcript, in my experience, would come to about 100,000 words.

To compare, The Grapes of Wrath runs 169,481 words. The Great Gatsby runs 47,094.

Having done hundreds of interviews like this, one very interesting takeway is how hard it is to remember what was said afterward. That’s why I like to record, and why I like getting…