A (3:54)

One of the remarkable things about this book is that it tells the story of a version of American history through this single institution. Mother Emanuel is not just a place of worship. It's been a site of revolts and radicalism, of state surveillance, of political violence, of civil rights organizing, and, as you've said, most recently, an incident of mass killing. And just what does it mean to tell the story of American history through, like, a single place or an institution, you think?

C (4:24)

I think it concretizes and dramatizes one of the important lessons of history that I think in America we still haven't fully embraced. I mean, I continue to believe that in our country, we are burdened by this history of racial injustice, and that this history has been sustained by a narrative of racial difference that we have embraced. I don't think what undermined the evolution of democracy and liberty and justice in America was just political developments. I think there were narratives in this country. We never acknowledged the role of indigenous peoples before Europeans, and we created our Constitution to guarantee equality and liberty and justice. But we said, oh, no, those native people are savages. And we created this narrative of racial difference to justify their displacement and their abuse. We did the same thing to sustain and justify 246 years of slavery. And what I think Mother Emanuel allows is for us to examine what it means to be governed by this narrative of racial difference. And I think the history of the church in some ways, is the history of America, because in many ways, the great evil of slavery in America and the book begins with this effort by enslaved people to find a place of freedom to worship, to develop, to be seen as fully human. I think the defining aspect of slavery in America was the narrative we created to justify enslavement and sac. I think dramatizes this, because what he reveals is that even people in the church who were espousing Christianity, who were preaching redemption and grace and mercy, and all of these things were constrained by these narratives of racial difference that constrained and limited their ability to see black people as fully human. And that narrative of racial difference, it's kind of what survived slavery. I often argue that the north won the Civil War, but the south won the narrative war. And so it continues into the 20th century. And that's watching the evolution of Mother Emanuel over two centuries, I think, gives us a way of documenting what happens when you keep pushing this narrative of racial difference, this idea that black people aren't as good as white people or less human, less capable, less evolved, less cape. Less deserving of equality and justice. And to see it play out over two centuries is to see the challenge we still face in America to overcome this history which is so rooted in bigotry and violence.

A (7:28)

As I understand it, this book deals a lot with the question of forgiveness and contrition, the forgiveness that some offered the shooter, Dylann Roof, after the violence that he perpetrated, how some struggled to forgive him. Some people listening might remember Barack Obama singing Amazing Grace at the church's memorial following the incident.

D (7:50)

Amazing.

C (7:55)

Grace.

A (8:00)

But it's also true, right, that forgiveness can become weaponized, and so can things like hope. And I wonder how you think this book navigates complicated concepts like forgiveness and hope.

C (8:12)

Yeah, well, I think he's very honest about detailing the ways in which it's challenging to respond to heartache and abuse and oppression with a mindset that is first and foremost forgiving. And I think what I take from the book is that the complexity of overcoming oppression is rooted in the idea that while forgiveness is part of it, it's not the only part of it. And I think that's what I believe the book helps people understand. You know, after the Civil War, the 4 million black people were emancipated in the United States. They could have easily said, we want revenge and retribution against the people who enslaved us. We want the people who sold our children. We want the people who took our spouses and our parents and our siblings. We want them to suffer. And they made a difficult choice to choose citizenship, to say, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to build churches. We're going to build schools. Mother Manuel was built and developed on that idea, even while it was being attacked by those who did not want black people to have that kind of autonomy, that kind of power. But it was rooted in that hope that hatred isn't just something you can deploy to hurt someone else, but that it will also hurt you. This idea that true liberation, true freedom, true justice has to be disconnected from revenge and retribution and hating people back is, I think, a constant theme in the struggle at Mother Emanuel, but also, more broadly, the struggle for justice in this country. And the reason why I think it's important and the story of Mother Emanuel is powerful in that way. Our country in the America, and certainly the black experiences is not like other histories where transitional justice took place. In South Africa, a black majority took over after apartheid. There was a change in power in Germany, the Nazis lost the war, a change in power. And so we've seen efforts at memory and confronting the history of the Holocaust. In Rwanda, military intervention changed power. So you see memorialization and a reckoning with that harm. We've never had a change of power in the United States. Many of the people who benefited from enslavement continued to Prosper in the 20th century. The perpetrators of lynching violence were never held accountable. They remained in power. Even during the civil rights movement. The people who segregated and excluded and humiliated black people for decades never lost power. It was a political shift when black people could fully participate. But even that is now under attack. And so the question becomes, how do you respond to oppression, injustice, and violation of basic human rights when you don't have the political power, military power, or economic power to force a change? Well, it has to be rooted in something that goes beyond traditional conceptions of power. And that's where the moral idea, the power of grace and mercy and love. Dr. King talked about a beloved community being the answer to all of these dynamics. And we have seen that succeed. And that certainly is evident in the story of Mother Emanuel. The civil rights movement in this country was rooted not in money or violence or military. It was rooted in the kind of a moral integrity that says our decency, our humanity, our dignity is more powerful than your violence and your brutality and your. And your hatred. And so I think that's the story that. That SAC documents and details. And it becomes harder as we get into a modern era when people feel less, you know, vulnerable, because the more privileged you are, I think, the harder it is for you to kind of see how you shouldn't use your privilege and power to just get the things you want. And I just feel like in this moment, when we're dealing with so much hostility and anger and fear and violence, we're going to have to ask important questions about do we want to Be moral people. Do we want to actually value rights over what is kind of enriching to us in the moment? What kind of character do we want to hold up, lift up, embrace, celebrate? And I think those themes are very much at the heart of the black church, broadly, which has preached grace and mercy, has broadly argued against giving in to hatred and violence, not because it's not convenient or that it's not at times effective, but because it is corrosive. It takes away the important part of what living wholly and honestly and fully requires. And I just think this church is a powerful space to see that struggle play out across two centuries.

A (13:12)

And when you think about that historical arc, considering the moment that we're in today, how does it leave you feeling about the future?

C (13:23)

Well, I think it just reminds me that we have to remain committed to truth telling in the face of this moment when there's so much effort being placed on erasure. I mean, what pains me a little bit is when I think about the killing of those people in Mother Emanuel In 2015, it shocked our nation. And the South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, did something that had been considered impossible until then. She took down the Confederate flag from the state capitol. A lot of communities began reassessing their comfort level with Confederate ideology and these icons. We started stepping back from this embrace, this tolerance of racial bigotry. And a lot of things changed because we were so just heartbroken. Ten years later, I think we're in a very different political space. We now seem to be willing to. To look the other way when people engage in acts of racial hatred and animosity. We mock the victims of horrific crimes and violence. We demonize those who want us to think more broadly about what this history of racial injustice has done. We're putting the names of these Confederate white supremacists who fought against the United States to preserve slavery back on the military basis across our country. And I just think what it reveals is that if we're not honest about history, if we're not focused on the harm of history, we will replicate the same problems that are detailed in Mother Emanuel. We will become indifferent to the plight of people who are trafficked and enslaved. We will become indifferent to the victimization of people who are lynched and targeted with mob violence. We won't care about the humiliation and degradation of people who are being excluded just because of their color or their religion or their ethnicity, will tolerate things we wouldn't otherwise tolerate. We'll accept things we wouldn't otherwise accept. And that is the great, I think Warning that I take from this book is that if we give in to these narratives that have been with us for so long, we risk replicating a world that doesn't create a very hopeful future. And I just think the other part of the story for me, that I think is powerful is that so many have done so much to get us to a point where we can finally step forward. It details the work of Richard Allen and the creators of the AME Church that sacrificed so much to create this institution, and they had to do things that were so much harder than what we have to do. I often say, living in Montgomery, I live in a city where I stand on the shoulders of people who did so much more with so much less. And that, for me, means that we don't have the option to say, oh, that's too hard. And I think that's the power of history to kind of root us into something that gets us beyond just trying to see how many clicks we can get on social media by saying something hateful or angry or violent, tolerating things that we know are unacceptable, just looking the other way when horrific things are happening to people, where they're being pulled off the street just because of their ethnicity or their race, or where mocking horrific crimes because we don't like the politics of the person who's the victim of that crime. I think that's the. That's the kind of the takeaway I have from this book and this history is that, you know, I often say this. You can't claim to have been on the right side of slavery. Everybody wants to say they would have been an abolitionist during the time of slavery. Everybody says they would like to. They would have been against mob violence and lynching during the era of the first half of the 20th century. They would have been with Ida B. Wells when she was trying to end that horrific practice. Everybody wants to claim that they would be with Dr. King marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma in 1965. But you can't claim to be on the right side of history during the time of slavery or lynching or civil rights activism. If you are silent today, if you are not responding to horrific acts of violence and bigotry today, and the murder of those nine people at Mother Emanuel was a moment for this country to reflect on. Which side of history are we going to align ourselves with as we move forward? And it's both heartbreaking to me that we're in a less positive, less favorable place in responding to that question 10 years later. And also a kind of reminder to me that we have to kind of be rooted in understanding this history if we're going to create the kind of world that most of us want to live in.

A (18:06)

Okay, Brian, thank you so much for this. This was really excellent. Thank you.

C (18:12)

You're very welcome. Happy to do it.

A (18:23)

Okay. Next we'll be joined by Canadian journalist and author Paul Wells. You've heard him on the show pretty often for a conversation about the Gray Lady. New York Times. Paul. Hey, thanks so much for coming by.

D (18:35)

Hi. Thanks for having me.

A (18:37)

So the book that you chose is the Times by Adam Nagorny. It's a reported history of the New York Times. Why this book? Why now?

D (18:45)

Well, it's a book about my life. All of our lives, we work in media because it's about the transformation the news industry has gone through basically, since the since the rise of the Internet. At the beginning of the book, the Times is essentially omnipotent, not a perfectly happy place because the Times is plural. And there's internal fights about how to be the New York Times, but there's a sense of what that means to be the New York Times. And then it goes through the Titanic crisis that the arrival of the Internet, the collapse of traditional advertising caused for the whole industry, and it comes out the other side, and then the book ends. So it's a frustrating book because it ends with a family event at the Times about the time that Donald Trump was inaugurated as president, president in the beginning of 2016. And Negroni doesn't treat the last decade of the paper because he is a New York Times employee. And he essentially, I mean, I say this with all the love of my heart. He chickens out of telling the story of his contemporaries. But it sets up the current moment in a kind of a sweeping way that I found fascinating.

A (19:54)

Well, just tell me a little bit more about that, how you think it sets up this, the current moment.

D (20:00)

It starts with Abe Rosenthal, who was the Times editor in 1977, decided really to turn the New York Times from a New York City paper into a truly national institution that educated people had to. And people with a window into power and decision making had to get their hands on a physical copy of the New York Times wherever they were in the United States and to some extent, outside the United States by noon on the day it was published, because they had to feel like they were in the loop. And over time, Rosenthal's kind of starchy, white, male, straight idea of what a proper newspaper should be comes under assault from his own staff and women on the paper go to court to get into a fair role in the running, they actually sue the paper. Several women staffers at the Times and members of visible minorities fight their way in. And people who live downtown and don't have an Upper east side lifestyle in a thousand ways fight to make the Times their kind of paper, too. And just as it seems like the New York Times has been dragged kicking and screaming into the late 20th century, it is then dragged again into the 21st century. That story really begins on 9 11, as they realize that they can post news about the attacks on the World Trade center as they're reporting it on the website. And then, having gone through a social revolution, that this majestic American institution has to then go through an economic revolution, and that turns out to be even tougher.

A (21:45)

Yep. And just this idea that he kind of chickened out here and didn't cover his contemporaries. What were you hoping he would have done?

D (21:53)

There's essentially. Well, there's a paradigm shift in terms of the paper's place in American society. And then in terms of the paper's economic and business model, there's a story fairly early on in the paper that shows you how dominant the New York Times used to be. In 1987, Gary Hart drops out of the Democratic nomination race for president because of an alleged affair. And the Times decides it needs to know more about presidential candidates than it already did. And so they send a letter out to 13 presidential candidates demanding their military records, school transcripts, income tax returns, net worth statements, information on stock and real estate transactions, marriage and driver's license, and medical records. And then it says to 13 candidates for the presidency of the United States, we're going to have a reporter on our staff, Lawrence Altman, who's a medical doctor, examine your reports of your physicals so that we can decide whether you're physically fit for president. And 13 candidates for president pony out because the New York Times is asking. Twenty years later, that's gone. Twenty years later. There's no media institution that has that kind of clout. And the number of people who would berate the organization for having the gall to ask has multiplied. At the same time, there's a change in business model. Newspapers used to be paid for, essentially by advertising. I was taught as a cover porter at the Montreal Gazette that 80% of our revenue came from advertising and 20% came from circulation revenue, the cost of subscriptions. The subscription essentially covered the cost of getting the newspaper to your doorstep, but that everything else came from advertising. And a newspaper can keep advertisers at arm's length, it can let advertisers know about kind of a basic deal, which is, we're going to cover what we want, how we want, and you don't get to tell us how to cover things. And in return, we will show our readers your ads. But then at the end of the story, that's gone. Advertising revenue has collapsed, including for the New York Times. I mean, there still are ads, but it's not nearly enough to cover the cost of the product, and the reader is paying much more of the freight through their subscription paywall. Readers don't believe that they should be kept at arm's length. They believe that their subscription money gives them a vote in how the newspaper should cover the world. And, you know, during the upheavals of 2020, which is Black Lives Matter and Covid and the later stages of MeToo and during the presidency of Donald Trump, readers, especially affluent, educated readers of the New York Times, believe that they absolutely had a vote in how the New York Times was supposed to cover stuff. And they absolutely had the right to cancel or threaten to cancel their subscriptions if they didn't like what they read. And so suddenly, the paper is in a direct tug of war with the people it needs to survive. And I think the New York Times has a bit of a mixed record in how it dealt with those pressures. And the premise of this conversation, I'm supposed to talk about why I found the book interesting. The book is interesting because it doesn't touch any of that. So it's like a choose your own adventure in a way. I'm like, okay. And then what? And then what? And we'll have to wait for a sequel, which I assume Adam McGurney will not be the one to write.

A (25:16)

Um, it's funny. You're, like the only person who's come on to talk about a book that. Well, I'm not saying you didn't like it, but that, you know, raises. Raised more questions for you than gave you answers. And trying to understand this moment, I mean, I just. Some of what you're talking about there, like, how did you see some of the consequences of that play out this year? Business model consequences. Right, that kind of stuff.

D (25:38)

Absolutely. It's. It's huge in the context of presidential politics in many organizations, including in my little substack, but played out at operatic scale at the New York Times because it was the Times that didn't get along well with Joe Biden as president. Joe Kahn, the, To me, somewhat mysterious current executive editor of the Times, man someone should write a book about him. Complained that Biden hadn't given the Times an interview. And then they started to do very intensive reporting on the question of Biden's fitness for office, beginning before that amazing debate in the summer of 24 and ties. Readers were furious, furious at their paper for daring to question their champion against Donald Trump. And it continued through the question of whether Kamala Harris should face a primary round. And it continued through the brat summer when it seemed like Kamala Harris could do no wrong and then turned out she wasn't winning, you know, and it continues today. And Joe Kahn, the current executive editor, I think, sees himself as a useful corrective against the trend of giving the readers what they want and in favor of giving the readers what they need. But the thing is, the readers will never agree that they should get what they need instead of what they want. And the readers are paying Jo Khan's salary. So that's a fascinating dynamic.

A (27:06)

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the role you think the New York times played in 2025 in shaping opinion, specifically with some of their opinion coldness. I'm thinking about someone like Ezra Klein.

D (27:21)

Well, I think the main thing, the reason I stuck in that anecdote about 1987 when they said, you, appointment with Dr. Altman is next Tuesday, is that that level of authority, the New York Times matters less than it ever has. And it also has had to struggle in the rise of online journalism with the fact that some of its journalists have a bigger brand in some communities than the Times itself does. You know, 15 years ago, there were people on staff who thought that was kind of cool and wanted to elevate people like Mark Bittman. Their food writer was bigger in food circles than the damn New York Times was. And in recent years, they've tried to sort of tamp that down. And so the role of, well, someone like Barry Wiese, who was sort of an ordinary newspaper reporter and turned out to have a personality too big to be contained by newspapers and now is back running CBS News in an extraordinary turnaround. Or guys like Ezra Klein, who, you know, his podcast is normally sort of reported, but with an attitude and a perspective, but he's also turned into a champion of a certain brand of democratic politics. It's very uneasy for traditional newspaper managers to know what to do with people like that. I mean, I remember I launched a blog at McLean's in 2003, and they didn't know what the hell to do about this guy on the staff at a Rogers magazine who had a blog before Rogers had a blogging policy. Those are the kinds of dilemmas that open up when windows, when the reader's windows on a news organization start to multiply again. Nagorny does a hell of a job of showing us how we got to this point, but then he stops before we get to a consideration of what this point is and means.

A (29:12)

Paul, thank you.

D (29:13)

Thank you.

A (29:15)

We're taking a short break now, but coming up, what connects the war in Ukraine, 2025, and endangered snails? Bookend's Mattea Roach explains.

E (29:37)

There are two kinds of Canadians. Those who feel something when they hear this music, and those who've been missing out so far. I'm Chris Howden.

A (29:46)

And I'm Nil Kergzal. We are the co hosts of as It Happens. And every day we speak with people at the center of the day's most hard hitting, heartbreaking, and sometimes hilarious news stories.

E (29:55)

Also, we have puns here. Why, as It Happens is one of Canada's longest running and most beloved shows. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts.

A (30:05)

All right, now, Mattea Roach, who was a guest on our election night Live Stream, a mega winning Jeopardy champ and also co hosts CBC bookends. Mattea, hey, thanks so much for doing this.

F (30:16)

Hey, thanks for having me on.

A (30:17)

Always good to talk to you. So when people think about books that explain a year in news, they. They often probably are expecting nonfiction, right? History, politics, journalism. Why Endling a novel? Why did it feel like a better lens for 2025?

F (30:34)

Um, so I, I don't want to say that this is definitive, but I think for me, I was thinking back on what did I personally read. And because of the show that I host, Bookends is a show where I talk to authors about their work. We do get on sometimes memoirists and people that are working in nonfiction, but largely I'm reading a lot of literary fiction. And so that's the lens that I have available to me to kind of understand what's going on in the world. I mean, literary fiction often deals with very real political problems. And Endling specifically is a novel that is set in Ukraine. It starts before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but that event really breaks the whole novel open. And Ukraine is an like, that's a story that's been so in the news the entirety of 2025. And so I think just like that alone makes it very topical. But specifically why I think Endling explains 2025 for me is like there's a moment of rupture in the novel where we think we're getting one story, which is a story about romance, tour companies, kind of arranged marriages, a story about snail conservation. It's very like, interesting. There's a lot of weird stuff going on and then all of a sudden this event occurs that completely blows the whole narrative open. There's now a war on the go. The characters in the novel have to figure out how they are going to contend with this shift in their circumstances. But also like, the reason why that happens in the novel is that Maria Reva, the author, when she was writing this book, she was writing a book about Ukraine and then all of a sudden there was a war and she had to contend with. What does it mean to be a writer during a time of war as a Ukrainian Canadian. Do I have a responsibility to speak about this? How can I speak about events that are live and ongoing and so interesting? Yeah, for me, like, I don't know if you feel this way at all, Jamie. Working in news, I feel sometimes a bit at a loss of how to react to certain events that feel just so kind of extreme and like sometimes goofy, sometimes horrifying. I don't know what to say always. And I think sometimes like, you know, the, the responsibility to speak. What can I say? How do I even react to say something like, I don't know, the Charlie Kirk assassination. Do I laugh? Do I cry? Do I go on as I was before? Like, all of these kinds of questions I think kind of get addressed through the form of Endling as a novel. And that's why for me it really sums up 2025.

A (33:17)

Well, just tell me more about what it. Well, did it teach you something on how to navigate those things or just let you sit with those, those thoughts that you're having?

F (33:28)

I don't know that it's so much taught me anything. Like, I think when I hear the idea of like a novel teaching you something, it sounds very didactic, right. It's, it's almost like self help book. Like we expect that we maybe read something and we go away. We've learned a lesson. We have takeaways. Right. I don't know that I necessarily read to have takeaways. I read to have maybe new frameworks. I think I found it very validating in a way to read a book written by an author who so clearly was like contending with these questions of like, how do I write, how do I think in these very chaotic times. Right. I think from, for me, like what it really brought me back to was like thinking about when I was doing more news reporting when I was reporting on Palestine, when I was reporting on rising anti Semitism in Canada, for instance, like, but then also contending with like, things that were going on in my personal life. Like, how do those things kind of exist at the same time? Can I feel personal grief while there are also like, really big things going on in the world? I think it was just nice to read a novel that was engaged kind of in the same space of I'm a writer, I'm creating art, and I'm having to balance the fact that there are these stories that are going on that are personal to me, but also much bigger than me.

A (34:56)

My understanding. And I haven't read this book yet, but it is actually on my list of books to read over the holidays that the novel, like, just just as for like a concrete example here, uses humor or like absurdity to reflect the way war is processed and consumed and even anesthetized in 2025. And I just like, how does it do that?

F (35:19)

Yeah, so that's absolutely it. Right. I think, I mean, it uses humor. So if I can use an example from kind of the middle point of the book, right. The point at which the war breaks out. We see the novel take a bit of a metafictional approach where we see these kind of fake emails between the author, Maria Reva, and her publisher kind of saying, oh, but you know, can you write an article but maybe have it be sadder? Can you lean into the drama a little bit more? And it's, it's a sort of satirical take on this expectation maybe that we have of journalists writing about a specific thing to tell one particular narrative. I think just also the, the mere premise of the novel that again, this is a novel that's about war, but we're starting out from a place of. We're talking about arranged marriages and snail conservation and we have like a van that's driving through rural Ukraine and eventually goes into a war zone to save this, you know, last snail of its kind. It's inherently absurd. And so it's hard to pin down kind of one example. It's almost more that the confluence of these different plot elements in and of itself feels absurd.

A (36:35)

That makes sense. Mattea, you previously mentioned when we were going back and forth about this, that the book has sort of a meta fictional quality, that sense that it's aware of itself as a story being told. And just. Can you tell me more about that and like why you enjoyed that about it?

F (36:51)

Yeah, absolutely. So metafiction, generally speaking, I would say it's a. It's a story that kind of acknowledges that it's a story. It's. The theater term would be kind of the breaking of the fourth wall. Right. That there's an interaction a little bit between the text and the real world. You're not just reading a story as it exists on the page. The story is almost speaking back to you in a way. And I. What I find really appealing about that, particularly in 2025, is I think that really, it taps into, I think, how we're consuming news. Right. In 2025. Right. It. There's something that's very internety about metafiction to me. Like, even when the Internet is not actually a plot device, I often find myself feeling that I'm experiencing news events in a much more direct way that I was not present for, because I'm experiencing things in real time on my phone. I think a lot of people experience these days watching the news, a sense of like, both real presence, because social media allows us to get, like, live up to the minute updates as things are going on, but also dislocation. Like a sense of detachment. Yeah, detachment of. I can see images of like, buildings being bombed in Ukraine or in Gaza on my phone, and I'm just bombarded with this. And do I have a real human reaction to that anymore? I think that, like, these ways of engaging in storytelling that kind of break apart conventional linear storytelling for me, I find them very of the moment, if that makes sense.

A (38:33)

Yep. No, it does. Big time. Matea, this was fabulous. Thank you. Thank you for this.

F (38:40)

Thank you so much, Jamie.

E (38:44)

Foreign.

A (38:50)

Okay, that is all from us in 2025, but the feed is going to stay hot with some new episodes from other great CBC podcasts over the next few days. So please do stay tuned. Have a really great new year, everyone, and talk to you in 2026.

C (39:10)

Foreign.

B (39:16)

For more cbc podcasts, go to cbc ca podcasts.