YouSaid · the spoken record

John Hendrickson

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36

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2023-03-16

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2023-03-16

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1. “Pouring their hearts out. And it was incredible. And I read everyone, I respond to everyone. But as these months passed, it made me think that there was more here and that there was a potential for a book. So I began thinking about a book. And my book is a reported memoir modeled after David Carr's memoir, the night of Go home. And so I went back and I interviewed people from my past, as I mentioned, but I also interviewed some of these people who had written to me. And I also tell their stories in this book.”

   2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Writing that article and then going on TV and going on NPR and going on some podcasts, it completely whelmed me and it sort of opened this floodgate of letters and emails and messages from people who stutter all over the world. They were coming in day after day, month after month, just coming, coming, coming, you know. And I continue to get them to this day. And they're total strangers. And a lot of them would begin. I never told anybody this, but. And then they would tell me their life story as a person who stuttered or they were the parent of someone who stuttered, et cetera. And it just kept coming, coming, coming, and people were just.”

   2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “And it's an ongoing process. It's a process. And so I don't blame him. I kind of understand him a little better now. I also think there's a big generational component here too. Biden grew up in mid-century America, again, where everything was pour yourself up by your bootstraps and beat it or bust. And so I think he, I think it's hard to unlearn those lessons and those certain characterizations when you're 80 as he is right now.”

   2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “To be fair, prior to writing that article and researching the topic, reporting on it, I Viewed this disorder in much the same way. And I never wanted to talk about it with anyone. And I didn't bring it to the surface of my identity. Prior to doing that reporting, I wasn't aware that duty was protected under the ADA that it could be qualified as a disability. Learning that Rakma world and kind of reoriented my whole sense of self. And it was only in the months and then years that followed the publication of that article that I began to tread and destigmatize it in my”

   2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Took me about a week to begin to get over that feeling. And I got back to New York and I was talking with my editor about the whole thing. My editor said, why doesn't he want to talk about it? And that kind of changed everything. That changed the whole story. That changed the framing of the story. It changed my feelings and approach. And then It became more of a question, an exploration of how can a person who has reached the highest levels of fame and power and achievement not want to talk about this one thing.”

   2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “Pivoting back to childhood, or he goes another place. And so it dawns on me as we're now at the 50 minute mark, and I think I had just an hour, like, he's not going to say it. This is not going to happen. And I left his office that day mad. I was mad at myself because I felt like I had failed as a journalist. I didn't get the story, didn't get the important quote. I felt like I was letting down everybody at the Atlantic. It entrusted me to go do this big interview. And there are tons of people at the Atlantic who are more qualified than me doing a view, the man who could be president. And I was mad at Biden because I felt like he wasn't being totally forthright with me. And it took me.”

   2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “When I reached out to his campaign in June 2019, I immediately told his press person, I'm a person who stutters and I'm interested in this aspect of his life and I'd like to interview him about it. And they kind of kept me at arm length all summer and then finally at the end of August they said, okay, we'll talk to you about it. And I walked into the vet interview and his DC campaign office thinking, okay, I'm going to get it. Use a journalistic phrase. But as our interview kept going on and you get past a 20 minute mark, 30 minute mark, 40 minute mark, and I keep asking him questions about his present day life as a person who studies, he keeps”

   2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “2018, where I was tapping for a job at Roe Stone covering politics and then a year later tapped for a job at the Atlantic doing politics. And when I got there to the Atlantic, my first week, our features editors, Denise, had asked me if I had any evergreen ideas tied to the 20 election. And I said, well, I've always been kind of curious about Joe Biden's life as a person who stutters because he talks about all these other aspects of his life and the American public is very aware of the killed his wife. But a lot of people are not aware of this. Other part of Bine's life. You obviously know him, David. You worked in the White House when he was there. Did you and him ever talk about this?”

   2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “And he made a bunch of changes. And he said, you're going to govern politics now. And that's that. And I was like, okay. And so that happened, let's say June 1st, 2015. And two weeks later, Donald Trump rolled an escalator down and then politics. I felt wonky person or I did not have this institutional knowledge of the hill the way a lot of other people did I could approach politics from a cultural perspective a pop culture perspective and Trump bridged that gap and Trump really changed politics obviously that summer so I just really threw myself into it through the whole 2016 election and then it got to the point is”

   2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Work a little better. So we're there on our first date and Liz tells me about the incision on her head where you can look and there's a little scar. She's like, yeah, I had brain surgery. So we just instantly understood each other in this profound way and had been dating ever since the night and were now married. That night, that first night we met, it was about 10 months before I interviewed Ben candidate Joe Biden about his journey as a person who stutters. And that was really the first time I ever wrote anything about this topic. And it set me on the path to writing this book.”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Family, romantic partners at all. And Liz, like Tweety, reacted with total neutrality and understanding. And Liz told me about her own neurological disorder called justonia, which is neuromuscular. And it can be cramps or basms, muscle issues. And it got to the point where it kept getting worse and worse for her. And it got to the point where Liz could barely walk when she was in college. And she ultimately had brain surgery. They put two electrodes in her head, connected to a wire going down through her chest and a battery. And that allowed her muscles to”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Yeah, it was really cosmic because I had had relationships and long-term ones, but I had never been on a dating app until four or five years ago. And I was reluctant, you know, and it took me a while to actually do it. And within a week of being on there, I match with Liz and the first night we met for whatever reason about 15 minutes into the conversation, I began opening up about being a person who stutters. And I began telling her about this part of my life. And that was just a thing that I had never, ever, ever done before with the friend.”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “He understood parts of our childhood kind of in a different way then. And part of this book is me talking to my family, my parents and my brother and sitting down and interviewing them and just sort of talking about the totality of our lives. Happy chapters. sad chapters and everything in between. And we try to kind of understand each other in a way that we never did before.”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “And what really jumps out at me about that night when I think about it is I was there with my girlfriend at the time and my brother and his wife. And my brother wanted to charge up there and protect me and go into big brother mode. And it was hard for him to watch this happen. broke his heart it's the last thing he wants for brother to be embarrassed and both of us are adults now we're grown men and we have a great relationship as adults we have great great brotherhood i was doing anything for him he would do anything for me but like a lot of brothers we didn't really get along as kids And I think it was hard for him because he was watching a person tease me. And I think he”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Years ago, and I didn't have any idea if the comedian would remember that night or remember me. But part of this book is me tracking down a lot of people from different chapters of my life and interviewing them about moments, interviewing and interviewing them about things we never talked about. So I was able to track down the comedian and we did have a pretty amazing conversation about it. And he said, I don't think anyone in the room was aware that you were a person who stuttered. And he said, I think if you had told me right off the bat when I called on you, I think that would have changed everything.”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “Yes. And it's one of those moments in which, okay, it's embarrassing for me to be called out in a crowd and have to talk at the comedy cellar in Greenwich Village. But I've been in that situation or situations analogous to that hundreds of times and I know how to live through those. It's harder for your friends and family and even total strangers in the room. It's harder for them because of that secondary awkwardness. And everyone's just kind of wants the moment to end. That happened several times.”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “I haven't found that at all. What I found is that people are too busy to care about too busy to judge you, for lack of a better word. And so I would go to this great B&H lunch counter dairy and it's loud and chaotic and fast and you got to kind of bark out your order. And I'd have a hard time doing that. Like I do it pretty much every restaurant. And the guys are just whipping eggs in the pan. They keep going and they're just, it's okay, you know. And there are so many tiny things like that that it really felt like moving here at the age of 24. It felt like I was. Coming home, even though I had never lived here before, and I've now been here 10 years.”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “New York to me has always just felt kind of like an old sweatshirt and kind of like a puzzle piece fit and to use one more completely unrelated metaphor here. Like the island of Misfit Toys, you know, everybody who's here is people who want to be here. going after something and they're creative and they work hard. And in a lot of cases, it's people that have come from other parts of the country or other parts of the world and left the limitation of their hometown behind or try to just be another. Freak in the city, yeah, and it's so counterintuitive because the perception of New York is everybody is in a hurry and everyone's a jerk, everyone's selfish.”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “30 minutes and he just reacted to my stutter with total neutrality and treating me like any other journalist. And we ended up having a great conversation with a lot of improvisation. And I tossed out some of my questions because I was just in the moment and it was just. And what I later discovered not long after that is I kept doing more and more interviews was that when people watch me stutter, heard me stutter or just realize something was for lack of a better word wrong with me, they let their guard dead and almost forgot that they were talking to a journalist. And then they would open up. And I was getting more interesting quotes and stories out of people.”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “Oh, yeah. So that interview, it was while I was an intern at the Denver Post, it was between my junior and senior year of college and the papers, music critic at the time, Ricardo Bacca. Was on tap to do that interview. It was in advance of a new Woko album. And Ricardo knew that I was a big fan of Woko and I was very knowledgeable about the band. And he walked up to my desk and said, You're going to do this interview and they're going to give you 15 minutes on the phone with him tomorrow. And I was, you know, not at all. Comfortable doing interviews over the phone and had largely avoided them altogether. And I didn't trust myself to get it. And I really wanted to back out of it. I really wanted to tell him I can't do this. No, no. But I ultimately just did it I think I ended up talking to 3D. One of”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Questions if you can't talk? How are you going to get a job? And it was hard to quiet that. Voice and battle that voice As I moved through college and I began taking a lot of writing classes and specifically like creative nonfiction narrative journalism classes reading classics by Hunter Thompson, Susan Orlene, these just great new journalism pieces. It was the only thing I wanted to And so I just kind of kept at it and I applied for. Internships and tried to this. Make it happen. And I got rejected from lots and lots and lots of places. But one of The editors who took a chance on me. Was this great journalist? Ray Rinaldi at the Denver Post and I moved out to Colorado for an internship. And that changed my life. And I got my. Get my teeth as a newspaper journalist.”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “Yeah, well, growing up, my family lived in DC and my dad worked at the Washington Post. And as a kid, he would sometimes take me on reporting trips with him. And so I got to watch how it was done, watch him go up and interview people. And then several days or a week later, the Washington Post would plopped out on our doorstep and you open it up and my dad's name's in there, the article's there. And to me, as a second grader, that was just the coolest thing in the world. Always loved magazines in particular. I subscribed to Rowing Stone and spin at a very young age. And I was a kid who saw the movie almost famous and just wanted that life. Part of me this whole time too was like how are You ever going to be a journalist? How are you ever going to ask people?”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “Yeah, I mean, anytime where you can prove yourself capable in one area, be it on the baseball field or writing or singing anything, it's like getting up there and saying like, no, this is me, not the kid who is red faced with pool of sweat who is blocking twitching who can who can't read a sentence out loud in class, that's not all I am. There is more to me. And it can really feel like that's all you are because those moments are so definitive and they're so different than how other people. When the class look or sound, but there is more there. Can I ask you about your daughter's experience with epilepsy? Were you or was she taught to self-identify as a person with epilepsy and to tell others?”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “That's also real brain chemistry. When we sing, we rely on the different neural pathway than we do for conversation. There are loads of musicians who either are or were people who stutter. Bill withers Presley Kendrick Lamar, Noel Gallagher Lasis, Carly Simon just goes on and on and on. There are also loads of actors and actresses who either were or people who stutter because recitation and memorization rely on a different neural pathway. James Earl Jones, Samuel L. Jackson, just goes on and on and on. And so I dig into some of that neuroscience in this book and try to understand it. But it's endlessly fascinating. And I love karaoke. I love to get up there. I'm not a good singer at all, but I love to just get up there and like belt out a song. And I never even worry about the prospect of stuttering.”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “Live music and playing music and just in two albums. And it's important to find those outlets as places where you feel connected to your truer self.”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “These aspects that make talking with a disability, with a disorder really hard. And so I kind of felt like I can never be one of those guys doing that during the day. But at night, when everyone would be on AIM, I felt like, okay, this is my chance to prove who I really am. And I type fluently, you know, I don't type out sentences that contain blocks or pauses or stutters. And just being a person who's always loved writing and reading and journalism English, I've always found typing sentences. Relatively easy. And it was such a balm, especially to be talking with girls at that age and being able to say or try to say, you know, witty or interesting things in that forum that I knew I could never do in person. And part of this book is about those balms and those escapes and oasis. Another one for me was music. I always love”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “You picture high school and a group of kids hanging around the lockers in a little circle, people telling jokes and yes and on a joke like improv. And it's a battle of wits. It's a little competition. It's how people are carving out identities and how they're saying this is me. And so much of that, be it jokes or just be it even normal conversation, it's all built around timing. It's all built around confidence. It's these.”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “And I have to tell myself, like, it's okay to dutter on the podcast. I don't have to judge myself on this perfect fluency or every time I have a block, every time I have a repetition that I'm failing, letting people down. It takes a lot of work to get to that mental space. And I think it's an active daily practice. It's not a light switch. You have to keep practicing that every single day.”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “various aspects of ourselves as purely aspects of ourselves. It could be the fact that I have brown hair, brown eyes. And this is how I talk. And it's hard to approach it neutrally like that. And matter of fact. It really takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of self-acceptance. And I'm optimistic that younger generations are growing up in a world in which certain differences are less stigmatized. But I think it takes time. And I think it takes just. This kind of reset in your mind of, okay, I'm going to come on your podcast. I'm going to talk with you. And it's such an honor to talk with you here.”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “Yes, I think practically every person who stutters or any person living with a disorder or disability encounters that during childhood or even past childhood. And a big part of that, I think, it comes from misunderstanding and it comes from this ongoing stigmatization of disability in our culture. Part of this newer movement toward normalization and representation in a disability community is all aimed at destigmatizing and trying to prevent the”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “Your life and all that you can do then is to try to learn to live with it, try to learn to manage it. But one of the ways most people, especially we're talking teens, college kids, adults who stutter, the most common way of living with it is avoidance and to make your life a little smaller. And that's just not a great way to live. And so the part of this The book is really me trying to figure out what it takes to make peace with this part of yourself that you're taught at such an early age to hate.”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “Yes. So nervousness and anxiety are not causes of stuctrine. This is a neurological disorder with a genetic component. And it's about neural pathways in the brain, neurotransmitters. It's brain chemistry. And for a percentage of kids who stutter, they can effectively go to therapy and do certain things to quote unquote rewire their brain, retrain themselves how to talk. But for another percentage of people, no amount of therapy is going to change anything and you're likely to stutter for the rest.”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “Therapist told families, he told parents, told everyone not to talk about it, like kind of ignore it, don't blah, blah, blah. Or they told them to remind your kids to take your time, take your time, use your techniques. Neither of those approaches are great if you're. It can feel like nobody's listening to what you have to say, but they're only listening to the way that you say it. And it can kind of feel like they're carrying around a little census clicker and like tracking every time you stutter. And then you really live with a lot of anxiety around that.”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “Well, I think that guilt shame aspect you touched on a minute ago is a good place to start. And just as it pertains to my family, my family loves me deeply, cares about me deeply. My mom shuttled me to all sorts of therapy appointments and just never gave up at any stage of my life. And like a lot of kids who stutter, particularly of the millennial generation and generations above that Gen X, gumers, et cetera, Most of us as kids didn't get the optimal form of therapy. Most of us got what is called fluency shaping therapy in which the only goal is to talk fluently or talk smoothly. And as years Go by if you keep blocking, pausing, having repetitions in your speech, all types of stuttering, then you kind of feel like a failure. And a lot of these.”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “Yeah, and so I was about 13 or 14 when. The Boston Globe blew the lid open on this. Systemic scandal, this issue had occurred for decades or centuries before that. But I think a lot of people naively believed it to be bad apples. And the Boston Globe team really revealed it to be this systemic problem among the Catholic Church. My dad had actually written a memoir about his experience called seminary. And that book came out in the 1980s around the time of this headline news in Boston Globe and elsewhere, my dad was asked to Right about his own experience. And so that became sort of the first time I learned the foolish story of why he never became a priest. Obviously, if he had become a priest, he would have never met my mom. He would have never had me. I wouldn't exist.”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “Yes. He and his older brother went down when they were barely teenagers. And they were in this seminary preparing to be priests for several years. And neither of them made it all the way through. Many of their classmates also left before becoming priests. And this was in mid-century America. This was decades before the Boston investigation, but one of the Reasons why. My dad left is because he and his classmates were dealing with inappropriate sexual behavior on account of the priests.”

    2023-03-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 526 — John Hendrickson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source