YouSaid · the spoken record

David Leonhardt

lines on the record: 80
first: 2019-01-28
most recent: 2019-01-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And it worked both ways, right? People in the baseball world, I think, were pretty skeptical of pointy headed Ivy League school kids.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. I mean, now huge numbers of kids at colleges like Yale and Chicago want to go into sports, but a lot of them, Theo was sort of the Trailblazer, right? And so people thought it was kind of a tiny idea.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pasablanca. Yeah, just amazing. Yeah, so there was one night at our college newspaper where a group of us were sitting around as college students do, taking ourselves way too seriously. And we were trying to think about who is the best writer, just sort of prose stylist in each class. And I still remember this. In the class of 1993, we decided it was Ellen Barry, who's now a celebrated foreign correspondent and a colleague of mine. In the class of 1994, which is my year, we decided it was Matt Kaminsky, and that made us all mad because Matt's first language was Polish, not English. But he was still a better writer than any of us. He now is an executive at Politico. And in the class of 1995, it was the sports writer Theo Epstein. And I still remember him writing these letters off to try to get an internship, I think. I think with the Baltimore Oriental. Which he did.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, he was. He was a hugely talented journalist. As you know, he has this great literary history, right? Yes. His sister is a screenwriter. His father teaches his grandfather.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is a world unto itself. And although the specifics of my experience were different, actually, they were broadly similar, which is I began writing for my high school paper at Horace Mann, first sports, of course. And then I realized something, oh my goodness, when we write something in the paper, the teachers and the administrators take it way more seriously than when we just tell them. So if we tell them a criticism, they'll nod politely and probably ignore it. If we write down a criticism, they'll get kind of angry about it, but they also won't ignore it. Right. And that's a pretty exciting feeling when you're 14 or 15 years old that, and so that experience, we complained about really silly stuff like the cancellation of the talent show. And we actually complained about real stuff, like about racism at the school. And I'm sure if I went back now and read the pieces, I'd be embarrassed by them. But it was a phenomenal experience. And so for me writing was this way to engage with the world that actually”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a funny way, I feel like math was the thing that I found on my own and writing was the thing that I inherited from my mom and my dad. My mom was a copy editor for a while. I was just recently going through some photos of my childhood. And if you look, you just see pictures of my mom sitting around reading a newspaper”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's probably not how I would say it, but I don't know. I remember this feeling in high school, of being over this kind of early word processor, right? It was a combination typewriter. And thinking to myself, I really like this. If only I weren't so bad at writing, I would want to be a writer. And I think to some extent for people who write, I'm sure there are exceptions, but it's hard, even for those of us who, it's just so hard, right? The process of writing. And so to me, it's one of these things that you just keep practicing and practicing and practicing and you get better at it.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it means so much to me, and it also just gives you a sense of how important this work is. So, Mrs. Sandler, my second grade teacher, I wrote my college essay about her, and she really, even as a second grader, I had this sense from her that we're not doing math as some little test or some game. Math is a language to describe the world, and I just have never lost my love for numbers.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and he died almost three years ago now. And obviously he was in his 70s, so he was too young, but he was obviously a lot older than your dad was when you lost him. Then my own dad's dad was. So I recognize that in many ways I was extremely lucky. But around his death, one of the things that my mom and my sister and I heard a huge amount of was we heard from his former students. It still happens to me. I'll go give a talk somewhere and someone will come up to me afterwards and they'll say, your dad was my teacher.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I agree. The flip side of it, I mean, we need to value them more, right? There's no doubt about that. I think the flip side, we're surrounded here by young people, right, trying to figure out what to do with their lives. And the thing that I would remind young people is it is work that has enormous meaning and in that way value.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, I feel to praise a rival, I feel very fortunate to live in Washington where the Washington Post Sports section is still really the print sports section is still really excellent. So I just don't even entirely know why, but I like numbers from the very beginning. To me, it was this language that described the world, which at first was just sports because that's all I cared about. And then I had this great second grade teacher, Mrs. Sandler, who really. We all can name it.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. So I basically, so those years in Boston loved baseball. My favorite thing every morning was to get the Boston Globe sports page and open it to that page known as the Scoreboard. Yeah, we all did that, right? Actually, it's funny, even with the rise of digital media, which I'm a big advocate for, I still don't think digital media has replaced that one page summary of box scores, which is just the papers.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it wasn't just peculiar, it was miserable, right? Growing up as a Red Sox fan in New York through the 80s when they lost that horrible World Series to the Mets, even all the way up to 2003 with the Aaron Boone home run. So yes, as you said, we lived in New York and then my dad really remained quite active in these kind of leftist movements even after the Vietnam War. And so we went up to Boston to be part of the movement basically protecting the anti-racist movement to protect the African American kids who were getting bus to white communities, which was enormously controversial, right? And not conducted that well by the government, right? It's a hugely complicated issue. So we moved up to Boston in 75 and lived there for six years. But that was from when I was two to when I was eight. And that's sort of where I fell in love with Facebook.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Great World Series. Of course, the Red Sox lost as they always did until the last 15 years. And then that woman had a friend over who was my mom. And so to some extent, I owe the Red Sox thanks for my existence.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. So my parents met. They were both involved in the anti Vietnam War movement. And actually, they met in 1967 because a friend of my dad, my dad said to a friend of his, we've got to find some place to watch the World Series. This was before everyone had TVs. And my dad's friend said to him, well, you know, I know a woman who has a TV, we can pretend we're just stopping by to say hi and watch Game One of the World Series, which was Red Sox Cardins. Right, yeah. Famous World.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“David's and my offices are next to each other, but I think he grew up in New Jersey or Long Island. He did not go to school in New York.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So they didn't see me using this little kind of mark of financial aid. For the most part, it was a fantastic experience, the quality of the education there was phenomenal. I'm still close to some of my teachers. And by the time I kind of outgrew my adolescent insecurity, it was hugely fun to be at school with my dad. I mean, when I was 13, I wouldn't go do it. But when I was 16 and 17, I had a free period. I'd go hang out with my dad.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it was so complicated for a few reasons. One, I was sort of an insecure 13 year old, right? And being around your parents at that time was an easiest. To Horace Bansa School with a lot of really affluent kids. And I was not impoverished at all, right? I was a middle class kid. But I was marked as not one of them because I was the son of a teacher and people knew teachers didn't make a lot of money. And actually it informs those experiences, inform some of the work I've done advocating for more economic diversity at colleges because I remember the experience of being, we had this little card to get discount lunches as financial aid kids. I still remember the colors of the cards. They were these pastels for each month. And I remember the amount. We would get a $2.35 discount each day. And I would sneak into the cafeteria before most kids were there or after most kids were there.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. And so, two things. Clearly, there are some kids who benefit enormously from medication and need it. And also just as clearly we're massively over-medicating our children. So anyway, my dad got laid off from his job as public school teacher at the same time that I was having these problems. And my parents, my mom and dad essentially turned these two bad things into a good thing, which is my dad got a job at a local private school. Private schools, as you probably know, pay substantially less than public schools. So they kind of had to figure out how to make the finances work. And they said to each other, well, we don't exactly know how to make the finances work, but it solves this other problem, which is we can take our wayward son. And I wasn't that wayward, but basically we can transfer him to this private school. And so I went to a private school in New York called Horace Mann, where my dad taught. And it was, it's a complicated place, but it was the best for you. It was complicated.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And look, that's another form of privilege, right? Like my parents knew how to kind of move the system and they didn't start putting me on a lot of medications. You can imagine very easily African American boys essentially with those same behaviors getting arrested.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or do you think we're talking about serious problems? And the teacher said, I think we're talking about serious problems. And my dad said, that's when I stopped listening to him.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, it was really silly forms of rebellion, right? I mean, it was a friend of mine and I hiding behind trees and taking slapshots with tennis balls at passing cars, which is like a terrible thing to do, right? I mean, let me encourage the youth of America never to send any projectiles at passing cars. But it was nothing like I had an enormously happy childhood. It was nothing fundamentally wrong. I was aboard adolescent kid, right? And my parents, to their enormous credit, realized that's what it was. I was not a truant. I was not like going down some terrible road. And so the school called them one day and they said, we're describing my sort of antics, my modest behavior problems, my antics. And my dad said, my dad obviously was a teacher as well. He said to the teacher, do you think we're talking about normal adolescent stuff here?”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Outside of it as a really little kid, I was born in Manhattan. I'm a third generation born in New York City, but then mostly grew up out in the suburbs. And yeah, my dad was a teacher first as a public school teacher out in the suburbs. And actually there was a, in the 80s, we had this thing that happened in which it was two bad things made a good thing, which is I was really struggling in the middle school where I went outside of New York City, a public school in a town called Hastings on Hudson. And, you know, I was doing really silly stuff, like pulling the projector out of the wall and being forced to stay after school and write. I will not do this again.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Back to No, I'm a mutt. So my dad is a New York Jew. My mom is a Philadelphia wasp. Her parents, whom I was very close to, they lived long lives. They were the classic sort of children of the Depression in Philadelphia and then went on to have very prosperous lives as middle class and upper middle class Americans who got to ride that great up escalator. And I grew up in New York”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you think about which societies manage to overcome incredible trauma, it's ones in which the victims have some capacity for forgiveness, right? It can't just be forgiveness. There needs to be punishment as well. But without that capacity of forgiveness, it's this terrible cycle of war and retribution.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, my smaller version of that is I was at the state dinner for Germany. I assume you were there as well in 2011 with Angela Merkel. And I had the same feeling of, my goodness, I'm going to meet the leader of Germany tonight at the White House. And this is the country that sent my family fleeing to this country. And we may end up talking about this later. I think it's worth reflecting on the fact that that same gratitude that you and I feel and that so many Americans feel, there's a flip side to that and that if you don't feel like your family is making progress despite working really hard to”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It would be he was in, so by then he had moved to Paris. He grew up in Berlin. By then he had moved to Paris in the 30s. And I've actually thought about trying to go and do some archival research. I don't know how I'd do it, but.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But of course, when he came to this country, he had to make money, right? And so I assume that's why he started this commercial photography business. And as I've thought more about it, it's just given me this sense of tremendous gratitude, right? That he fled Nazi Germany, comes here, sets up a little business, meets my grandmother, who is an amazing woman who raised my dad alone after my grandfather died very young. And so he essentially had to leave behind what he liked doing, being a journalist. And now I get to be a journalist working for a newspaper in the same square where he worked, Times Square.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Time listener. I am indeed now. Yeah, so during our session last night, I talked about my dad's dad, whom I never met. His name was Renee Leonhart. And in family lore, we always thought of him as a commercial photographer. He owned a tiny little photography business in Times Square in New York, took photos of babies for pamp for diapers ads and things like that. But like a lot of people, I went through my family's immigration records several years ago. And on the ship's manifest as he's arriving in New York, escaping Nazi Germany, he's listed as a journalist. And I mean, it was this incredible feeling of, oh my goodness, he did the same thing I did. And as I looked more into it, he was a photojournalist, a photographer.”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Yeah. It's great to be here. I'm a longtime listener of the podcast as callers to talk radio listener. You just had”
2019-01-28 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 303 - David Leonhardt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source