YouSaid · the spoken record

Richard Stengel

lines on the record: 70
first: 2019-12-16
most recent: 2019-12-16
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 yes, David, he was a great tactician and hardheaded about politics, but he was also this incredibly sunny person. I mean, it's sort of what you want in politics, a happy warrior. His company was just such a pleasure. And”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“South Africa. Yeah. So South Africa. So I actually didn't go there for time. I went there for Rolling Stone magazine in I guess it was in 86 or 87, it was the beginning of the township riots and mass protests against apartheid. And it was really almost an accident that I went there, but I fell in love with the place and I ended up writing a little book called January Sun about a forced removal in a town in the western Transvaal and about the Afrikaans family, a black family and an Indian family. That started my whole life involvement with South Africa. Yeah.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Before you write that helped me with the speech, I'll take you back to Crystal City, Missouri, where I grew up. And we went back there for like a weekend. He showed me around. He showed me the house he grew up in. It really was an incredibly special thing because that was also a different kind of upbringing. It was called Crystal City because there was a gigantic glass factory there. And if you look at the phone book there are Polish names and Ukrainian names. It wasn't a farming community. It was like a mini-industrial place in the heart of the Middle West. It was really a lovely experience. Yeah.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, by the way, we'll geek out about Bill Bradley for a second. So, I did, I went work for him later on. When you went after the president as a speechwriter, and one of the things he did for me was, speaking of his dad, he said,”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and in fact, the Nicks sort of adapted. They started doing some backdoors. Actually, the amazing fact. David, that you'll be members. Remember, they called Bill Dollar Bill because he signed this incredible contract. You know what that contract was? $400,000.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it's a lovely line, and McPhee took the title with that. And I think in many ways, Bill was also a brilliant passer and did no look passes before it was kind of popular. And that was you had Spain. I have to tell you.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bill Bradley. Bill Bradley. Beautiful book. And I thought, well, that's who I want to be. And so when I was at Princeton, McPhee started teaching this course called The Literature of Fact. And I think that when I was a sophomore, it was only for sophomores, 10 kids. And it was transformational for me. It made me realize, well, I could actually do this. I could be a writer. And I mean, my father was in the furniture business. I'd never met a writer before. And McPhee was the best teacher I've ever had at anything, an incredibly generous guy, and also someone who made you think, well, you can do this. He treated you like an adult, like a professional when you're 19 or 20. And so that was what made me want to be a writer and be a journalist.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“John McPhee Of the greatest non fiction writers ever, and part of the reason I went to Princeton was that I read when I was in high school a sense of where you are.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, actually, it has a Princeton nexus of that because the person that changed my life was a teacher at Princeton named John McPhee.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. So really, he was not accepted at Princeton. Accepted at Harvard. Wow, that's, I'm sure somebody at Princeton regrets that now.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. I mean, yeah, so I think these great players like Craig and people who went on to have careers in basketball, I think they learned a tremendous amount from him. And Pete was also, he loved being at Princeton. He loved talking about literature and poetry. I remember once after a big game that we won against a much bigger and better opponent, he recited the poem to an athlete dying young instead of like congratulating us.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. On you. No, I mean, Pete used to throw basketballs at us, chairs. But that was in our generation, I mean, now it wouldn't be acceptable, but it was just the matter of course, right? That's what coaches did. And it was really the exception rather than the rule of somebody was a more kind of humane”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's funny to even talk about it, yes, and he was a great player, but it's coming out of our discussion of the military in a way, this bond that happens in adversity among a group of small group of young men who are thrust together from all different places, not that dissimilar. I mean, it's very powerful. And I've kept those friendships. And it's also an education and leadership, right? In mutual sacrifice and one for all, all for one.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was fun to watch, and he was a great defensive coach. And I can't even tell you here on podcast all the names he called me and all of us. He was rough. But you could find the love underneath it. I actually saw one of my teammates. I've been on book tour and we went to Los Angeles, Armand Hill was the star team. And he's a coach on the Clipper. So we went to a game with my sons the other night and saw him.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Although when different NBA teams started playing it and realized that doing a backdoor play with a guy who can dunk it from an Alleyop is a lot better than a slow white guy doing a layup. But yeah, Pete was a kind of genius and the offense was kind of a beautiful thing. It was really cool.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By the way, that is a good thing in part because one of the things I learned in government, which you surely knew, is the military does a very good job of teaching leadership. So these young women and men who are leading platoons or bigger groups, I mean, they know how to lead. Well, think about.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean, he was a kid from Brooklyn, an immigrant son, and he went into the Army Air Force where he met kids from all across the country. I mean, it's a great, great bonding experience. One of the reasons I got interested when I was at time in, the case for national service is just I saw what an enormous difference that made, not only to him, but to the country as a whole. And granted, you don't want to have to have a world war in order to kind of get e pluribus out of many one. But it did have that effect having serving like that. And he was a kid from Brooklyn who... Was stationed in South Carolina and Hawaii and made friends from all across that he never would have met otherwise. And that was a bonding experience.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so my father's family emigrated to Pittsburgh and started a furniture, a little furniture company. And my father's father then moved to Brooklyn and brought it here, and it was sort of a family business. And my father wanted me to go into it, but I wasn't that interested. And plus it kind of went out of business when I was in grad school. So I missed that.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I had none of my, neither of my grandparents graduated from high school. They both came here as small boys, one from Hungary, one from Russia, other parts of my family from Germany and Austria. So it was, yeah, I'm really, I guess, would be second generation, I guess.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Yes, I was born on the Upper East Side. My family actually, my mother and father were the first in their respective families to make the move from Brooklyn into Manhattan.”
2019-12-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 360 – Richard Stengel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source