Episode 56: Leonard Cohen’s Last Days and Donald Trump’s First Term

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: The New Yorker Radio Hour
Episode: Leonard Cohen’s Last Days and Donald Trump’s First Term (Episode 56)
Date: November 11, 2016
Host: David Remnick
Guests: George Packer, Amy Davidson (New Yorker staff writers); Leonard Cohen (songwriter, in archival and recent interview)

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Overview

This episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour is split into two deeply reflective conversations, both examining seismic moments of social and personal change. The first half tackles the shock and aftermath of Donald Trump’s presidential win, with analysis from journalists George Packer and Amy Davidson. The second half celebrates Leonard Cohen, the legendary songwriter who had just recently passed away, through excerpts of an intimate final interview with David Remnick.

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Segment 1: “Donald Trump’s First Term” – Post-Election Analysis

(00:28 - 25:37)

Main Theme

The panel discusses the profound societal divisions and political ramifications revealed by Donald Trump’s unexpected 2016 victory, dissecting both the motives of Trump voters and what the election signifies for American democracy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Understanding Trump Voters

• Complex Motivations:
  • “I think there’s no single Trump voter. I think there’s lots of different motives…”
    — George Packer (01:46)
• Resentment and Revenge Voting:
  • Economic dislocation and resentment at elites, often perceived as condescending or out of touch.
  • The vote for Trump often signified “a middle finger vote, more than a vote for a program or … hopeful idea.” — George Packer (02:26)

2. The Appeal of “Corruption” and Authenticity

• Trump’s Strategy:
  • Trump tapped into popular outrage at “corruption,” but redefined it as establishment self-dealing, not technical or legal malfeasance.
  • “He stipulated it to them. He said, I did this. I bought off politicians…now I can lead you through it…”
    — Amy Davidson (03:55)
• New Definition of Corruption:
  • “[People thought] the leveraging of influence and position has become a definition of corruption for a lot of people in America…” — Amy Davidson (04:45)

3. Political Correctness as a Rallying Cry

• Political Incorrectness as Authenticity:
  • Many voters supported Trump’s rejection of “political correctness,” seeing it as permission to express grievances about class, identity, or social taboos.
  • “That’s the most important thing about Trump: that he’s willing to be politically incorrect.” — George Packer (06:05)
  • For some, it was about “a refusal to talk about class as the actual source of privilege…” — Amy Davidson (07:57)

4. The Two Americas & Information Silos

• Deep Divides:
  • “There’s a line in John Dos Passos USA trilogy…We are Two Nations…What disturbs me profoundly is… the mental world in which Americans live.” — George Packer (08:44)
  • The country is divided along education, geography, and “mental worlds,” leading to imperviousness to “counterargument or counterfact.” (09:29)

5. The Road Ahead: The Trump Presidency

• Unpredictable Leadership:
  • Concerns raised about whether Trump would adapt to presidential norms or continue radical, improvisational behavior.
  • Uncertainty over Congress’ (Republican) ability or willingness to restrain presidential power (11:15–12:44).
• Possible Quiet Leadership by Pence:
  • Noting that Trump reportedly delegated foreign and domestic policy to his vice president: “Your job will be foreign and domestic policy.” — David Remnick (13:02)

6. The Republican Party and Policy Implications

• Real-World Impact:
  • Skepticism that Trump’s actual policy proposals would benefit the white working class or the “Rust Belt” voters who elected him (14:34–15:38).
• Potential for Disillusionment:
  • “How long will it take before those working class Rust belt voters … become disenchanted?” — George Packer (15:38)

7. Media Responsibility and Press Freedom

• Double Standards and Press Integrity:
  • “All the press can do is maintain its integrity… If we have a sense we’re holding back on either side, that just… strengthens people like Donald Trump’s.”
    — Amy Davidson (20:17)
• Role of Journalism:
  • “We have to do what we got into this business to do, which is to hold power accountable.” — George Packer (20:51)

8. Advice to Listeners – What Now?

• Personal Response:

  • “To be good neighbors… recognize the fears next door and the isolation that a neighbor … might feel…” — Amy Davidson (22:02)
  • Urged continued civic participation and respect for political engagement.

• Institutional Response:

  • Pressure on Supreme Court appointments and use of constitutional mechanisms: “Push on all the fronts where we can in civil society… this is not the moment to give up on them.” — Amy Davidson (23:39)

• Local Organizing:

  • “Democrats… forget that in between this tremendous amount of boring and unglamorous organizing that needs to be done…” — George Packer (24:19)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “This was a revenge vote. It was a middle finger vote…” — George Packer (02:26)
• “He conveyed an aura of authenticity.” — George Packer (06:05)
• “We are Two Nations.” — George Packer (08:44)
• “Our job… is to hold power accountable.” — George Packer (20:51)
• “Democracy pervades our society. We have so many small tools for democratic participation, and it’s just a matter of making use of them.” — Amy Davidson (25:13)

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Segment 2: “Leonard Cohen’s Last Days” – A Farewell Conversation

(25:37 – 54:26)

Main Theme

David Remnick shares recordings from an intimate final visit with Leonard Cohen, who reflects with humor and grace on mortality, Jewish spirituality, creativity, and the rituals that shaped his life and late work.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Facing Mortality with Humor and Clarity

• Physical Decline, Mental Clarity:
  • Cohen, suffering from cancer and back pain, is described as “in a bullion mood… for a man who knew where life was taking him” (27:30).
  • “Would you like a few slices of cheese and olives?” — Leonard Cohen (28:08), still the gracious host.
• Graciousness and Ritual:
  • Recounts the poignant story of his father’s funeral and his own childhood act of memorial. “I cut one of the wings of the bow tie off and I wrote something on it… and I buried it in the backyard.” — Leonard Cohen (29:21)

2. The Songwriting Craft: Relentless Revision & Spiritual Underpinnings

• Writing Process:
  • “If I write enough verses and keep discarding…something will emerge that represents [what I wanted]. …The reason my writing is so slow is that I have to finish the verse before I discard it.” (43:13)
  • Some songs had “as many as 60 or 70 … or 80 verses.” (44:00)
• Scriptural and Spiritual Roots:
  • Cohen acknowledges the deep imprint of Jewish thought, especially Kabbalah’s vision of repairing the world.
  • “Ring the bell that still can ring … there is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” — Leonard Cohen (song lyric, 42:45)
• Reluctance at Being a Spiritual Figure:
  • “I don’t like to be identified with Jewish thought in my mind, you know, I know I’m deeply conditioned by these.” (40:36)

3. The Performer’s Struggle and Reinvention

• Stage Fright and Insecurity:
  • “There was something about getting up on stage that he found almost false…he felt like a chained parrot…” — David Remnick (33:20)
• Transformation Through Adversity:
  • Stories of performing on acid, hearing the audience singing for him, hallucinating a “gigantic Jew” judging him—leading to greater humility and depth in his performances (34:00–36:41).
• Zen Monastery and Surviving Financial Ruin:
  • After his manager stole his savings, Cohen returned to performance at 70, showing in “funny, anime, light hearted” ways his spiritual resilience (45:35).

4. Facing the End: Reflection and Acceptance

• Mindfulness in Suffering:
  • “I have some training in, you could call it, mind control… this predicament is filled with many less distractions…enables me to work with a little more concentration.” — Leonard Cohen (48:50)
• Works as Legacy:
  • “Putting your house in order…one of the most comforting activities… The benefits of it are incalculable.” — Leonard Cohen (51:53)
• Evolving Sense of God’s Voice:
  • “It’s very compassionate… More than any time in my life, I don’t have that voice that says, you're up. That’s a tremendous blessing…” (50:28-51:34)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “I have tried in my way to be free.” — Leonard Cohen, “Bird on the Wire” (26:29)
• “Listen to the mind of God… don’t listen to me.” — Leonard Cohen (54:05)
• “I’m leaving the table, I’m out of the game.” — Leonard Cohen (54:22)
• On mortality: “Ready to die. I hope it isn’t uncomfortable… Spiritual things have fallen into place for which I am deeply grateful.” — Leonard Cohen (51:34)
• On creativity: “Putting your house in order is one of the most … comforting activities.” — Leonard Cohen (51:53)
• On the aging artist: “You start off irresistible, and then you become resistible. Then you become transparent. …And then… you become repulsive…After repulsive, you become acute. And that’s where I am.” — Leonard Cohen (46:19)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:28 – First mention of post-election shock and Trump’s appeal
• 02:47 – The “revenge vote” motivation explained
• 06:05 – “Political correctness” and authenticity in the campaign
• 08:44 – “We are Two Nations” and media silos
• 14:34 – GOP establishment and the limits of Trump's economic promises
• 20:51 – The role of the press going forward
• 22:02 – Advice on citizenship, solidarity, and activism
• 27:30 – Transition to Leonard Cohen’s interview, setting the scene
• 29:21 – Childhood story: Leonard Cohen burying a note for his father
• 42:45 – “Ring the bell that still can ring…” (Anthem, signature lyric)
• 46:19 – Leonard Cohen’s comedic but poignant reflections on aging
• 51:53 – The importance of “putting your house in order”
• 54:22 – “I’m leaving the table, I’m out of the game…” (closing lines)

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Tone & Language

• The first segment is reflective, analytical, and at times urgent or somber—a post-mortem on the political climate and the press’s responsibility.
• The second segment is meditative, deeply personal, suffused with wit, self-effacing humor, and existential acceptance.

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Concluding Thoughts

This episode captures two American moments: a national reckoning and an individual’s graceful leave-taking. Both halves dwell on how to move forward: as a people divided and as a person at the end of creative life. It’s a riveting pairing of political and artistic legacies, offering both practical advice for democracy and spiritual advice for mortality.

Transcript

[George Packer]

Floor 38.

[Leonard Cohen]

It's very exciting to be having a.

[David Remnick]

Competition with someone when they have that.

[Amy Davidson]

Revelation.

[David Remnick]

That maybe, looking at this case, could be an interesting process. Okay.

[George Packer]

From one World Trade center in Manhattan.

[Amy Davidson]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

[David Remnick]

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Well, here we are. And if you're like me, you were profoundly shocked by the results on Tuesday night, although maybe we shouldn't have been. Donald Trump clearly tapped into a range of currents. A struggling middle class with its sense of deep disconnection, the racial and ethnic divides in the country, and a collapsed media structure that has caused us to live in our own silos of reality. And if Donald Trump's presidency is anything like his campaign, with its sense of insult and wild improvisation, our country is in totally uncharted and dangerous waters. To get a sense of where we're headed, I sat down with George Packer and Amy Davidson, two staff writers at the New Yorker who have been writing about the campaign from the very start and the bombshell results. George, reporting for both the New Yorker and your book the Unwinding, you spent a lot of time in what we now think of as Trump country. In the south, in the deindustrialized Midwest, the press is often accused of not understanding the Trump voter, of being disconnected from the Trump voter. Please tell us what we missed.

[George Packer]

I think there's no single Trump voter. I think there's lots of different motives, almost a roll of the dice, like, let's just see how this guy does. It might be kind of interesting, even entertaining, an almost casual vote, but in general, I'd say a resentment, a feeling of having been left behind by this technological global economy that benefited some people, didn't benefit journalists all that much, but we're still part of the elite that they resent, along with bankers and government officials and people in power who don't seem to know much about them or care much about them, who condescend to them as they see it, who feel that they are to blame for their problems. They dropped out of school, they had every chance and blew it. And this was their revenge. This was a revenge vote. It was a middle finger vote, more than a vote for a program or, or for some hopeful idea.

[Amy Davidson]

Amy, I agree that there's not a single Trump voter. It's interesting to see how Trump himself, who may not have understood his electorate entirely, sought them out in a very old fashioned political way with these rallies after rallies, and he to give him credit as a technical politician, which he hasn't had much credit for, because his campaign, by a lot of definitions, was badly run, he did have a sense of what his crowds responded to and knew how to play that up. And what he found that they most responded to, if you watch rally after rally, is the charge of corruption. And I think that we in the media, who had a sort of more technical definition of corruption, never quite understood what that meant to his crowds and to his voters.

[David Remnick]

So the technical definition of corruption would be a businessman who rips off his contractors, his investors, who does all the kinds of things that have been portrayed in great detail, in fact, by one Donald Trump.

[Amy Davidson]

He stipulated it to them. He said, I did this. I bought off politicians, I took part in it, and now I can lead you through it because I know the.

[David Remnick]

System better than anybody.

[Amy Davidson]

But with the idea that Hillary Clinton always followed the rules, and yet she and her family had a relationship with other elites, there was the foundation, there was a sense of benefit. I don't think that we in the press entirely grasped how resonant that charge was, the crooked Hillary idea and what that meant to people. We were just like, well, she's not a thief. But the leveraging of influence and position has become a definition of corruption for a lot of people in America in a way that I don't think we entirely appreciated. Now, that said, was there misogyny? Certainly. Was there racism and raw bigotry and appeals to both of them? Absolutely. But there were also people who recognized that about Trump and put it aside, which is itself, you know, a problem when you put aside other people's racism because of their fixation with the idea of corruption.

[David Remnick]

Why is Donald Trump the vehicle for all of this? Here's a guy who is almost a parody of a rich person, but doesn't play the traditional role of a wealthy person in New York who's on the boards of charitable foundations, who knows that giving back is part of the, not necessarily just the moral behavior of somebody wealthy, but at least it's what's done to make your wealth acceptable. He bucked all of that.

[George Packer]

Yeah.

[David Remnick]

He didn't try to hide his bad behavior or his rude opinions. He flouted them.

[Amy Davidson]

A lot of people in New York think Donald Trump is tacky. What do we mean by that? We mean the idea of wealth that people outside of New York have, and that itself is an issue that.

[David Remnick]

But I'm talking in terms of moral behavior, in terms of generosity to the less advantaged, to the poor, to good works. None of that was, you know, I.

[George Packer]

Think, David, that the opposite of that for some people is selfishness and egoism and immorality for others is authenticity. And Trump conveyed and worked up an aura of authenticity. And the other key phrase, I agree with Amy, about corruption, but the other key phrase in his campaign was political corruption, correctness, which in polls, a lot of his supporters said that's the most important thing about Trump is that he's willing to be politically incorrect now.

[David Remnick]

And what did that phrase mean?

[George Packer]

I think to him it meant being willing to call Mexicans rapists. He used the fact that a lot of his supporters feel as if there's a lot they can't say and a lot about maybe their lives and their views that other people disapprove of and say, let it out. And that's where, in spite of being a plutocrat, if he's an authentic guy who talks about women and about them in authentic ways without mincing words, that appeals.

[David Remnick]

Amy, it's phenomenal to me that over 40%, almost half the white women in this country voted for Donald Trump, no matter what. No matter about Access Hollywood tapes or women who came forward claiming that they had been sexually harassed are much worse. Over 40% of white women voted for Donald Trump and not Hillary Clinton.

[Amy Davidson]

Before we give up on women and how much they calculate the treatment of women, maybe we need to think about how successful Trump's argument that the Clintons had their own past in this area was, it seems to Hillary Clinton's supporters dreadfully unfair that she should be held in account for things that her husband did. The Trump campaign spin on it was that she had enabled that she had attacked the women. That also seemed unfair. But, hey, you know, it doesn't seem to have been entirely without success. Let's also keep in mind something, you know, George was pointing out in the whole question of political correctness. I think that one thing that political correctness means to a lot of Trump voters is a refusal to talk about class as the actual source of privilege or lack of privilege. You know, they're told how privileged they are, and they don't always see it in their own lives. So political correctness seems to be a false analysis of privilege to them. They feel left out of the analysis.

[David Remnick]

George? Yeah.

[George Packer]

You know, there's a line in John Dos Passos USA trilogy, all right. We are Two Nations. He wrote it in the context of the Sacco and Vanzetti execution. But that's what I've been thinking about throughout this campaign and since the results came in. We're two nations in different ways. In terms of class, this election played out along lines of education, which is kind of how we define class now, along lines of geography. The thing that disturbs me profoundly is, yeah, there's always class division, there's always regional and even partisan and race and sex also in this campaign. But it's the mental world in which Americans live. How is it that people can see the world so fundamentally differently and be so impervious to any counterargument or counterfact that they're just going to move ahead in the same direction? And that in a way that's more of a threat to democracy than any of the other divisions that we've seen open up during this campaign.

[Amy Davidson]

I think, though, that it's crucial if we're going to be realistic about this, to recognize that that imperviousness is not all one sided. It's not that the Trump voters were impervious to facts and we absorbed them.

[David Remnick]

The same what facts does quote, unquote, our side refuse to absorb that some.

[Amy Davidson]

Of these economic developments are not good.

[David Remnick]

For everybody and that globalization, technology, and.

[Amy Davidson]

That the opportunity is limited in a way that we haven't appreciated, and that there is a critique of the role of money in politics that envelops the Democrats as well as the Republicans.

[David Remnick]

Now we come to the fact of a Trump presidency. We've discussed some of the factors here. One we've left out, by the way, is the, the fact that we're following the first African American president. I think that probably goes without saying as one of the factors here. But now Donald Trump is going to be president as of January 20th. Do you have any notion that he will somehow go about modifying his behavior in the way that he did for a very brief speech on the night of winning his election, and more seriously, modifying the notion of what he's going to be as a president? Or are we just going to find this kind of radical figure in all his glory, behaving the way we in our darkest imaginings think he might have?

[Amy Davidson]

That's going to depend a lot on the Republican Party that nominated him, that supported him throughout this and that never truly rejected him. You know, the morning after the election, Paul Ryan was out there saying, this is great, we can work with him. We're going to, you know, gung ho, full speed ahead. How the party reacts, how it tempers him, how it, you know, pushes through his agenda, how it sees him as its own vehicle. You know, we've heard a lot from Trump supporters about how we have all these checks and balances, you know, he's not going to be. One of those checks is Congress, which is in Republican hands right now. And they're going to have a lot of choices. A huge, huge issue is that the Supreme Court only has eight people on it right now. And how solemnly the courts take their responsibility to react to some of the measures that Trump has promised is a huge question. For the next four years, I wonder.

[George Packer]

If he'll have the attention span, the interest, the willingness to get the daily briefings and attend the NSC meetings and.

[David Remnick]

Plow through briefing books. Yeah.

[George Packer]

Meet the foreign ambassadors. All the crap that a president has to do that's just a drudgery, but is necessary and important. Will he be able to discipline himself to do that, or will he be essentially not a figurehead, but a bit checked out of the day to day running of an administration and a country?

[David Remnick]

My sense is that Mike Pence will be a gigantic figure now. After all, when Trump was casting around for vice president, he made the remark to one of his potential candidates that my job will be making America great again. Your job will be foreign and domestic policy.

[Amy Davidson]

I think that was one of Trump's sons who said that about the vice.

[George Packer]

President to John Kasich when he got.

[David Remnick]

But fair enough, but that's an amazing notion of how the presidency works.

[Amy Davidson]

Sure. But have you watched Mike Pence's speeches during this campaign at rallies?

[Leonard Cohen]

Sure.

[Amy Davidson]

He has set new standards for sycophancy. You know, a word that I don't know how to pronounce.

[George Packer]

Sounds right.

[David Remnick]

You nailed it.

[Amy Davidson]

You know he has. Mike Pence has been portrayed as establishment, institutional Republican compared to Donald Trump, but within what we've traditionally understood the Republican Party to be. He's an ideologue and at a pretty far end. One of his central issues is the whole idea that all the Democrats are corrupt. So there's not a lot of promise so far of collaboration, of restraint. I mean, his particular views on things like choice and LGBT rights are retrograde.

[George Packer]

Yeah. So I think in a way, Trump's administration might get away from him. He did represent a new disruptive force in the ideology of the Republican Party, one that appealed to its working class base much more than to business interests and the Wall Street Journal editorial page. But will he have the intellectual coherence, the discipline to carry that out, or will the traditional right wing in Congress and in his own administration start running the agenda in spite of Trump?

[Amy Davidson]

I think it's also crucially important to say that whatever his rhetoric. His actual proposals do not benefit the white working class or any working class in America. His tax policies don't. So the idea of whether he can deliver for them, he doesn't even want to deliver for them. In terms of his actual policies, what that's setting us up for is a few years in which when those benefits don't accrue to people, that Trump responds by saying, it's the enemies, it's the conspiracies, somebody is to blame.

[David Remnick]

Look, it's a horrible thing to say.

[Amy Davidson]

Angry.

[David Remnick]

Exactly. It's a horrible thing to say. But the promises, the banal promises that he made, I'm going to bring your jobs back from China. I'm going to bring back your jobs from China, Mexico, there's going to be more steel mills here in Pennsylvania. We're going to be making things again in Youngstown, Ohio. This is in large measure a fantasy.

[Amy Davidson]

On election night, the way he summed it up was Americans will never again have to settle for anything less than the best.

[George Packer]

And the question is, how long will it take before those working class Rust bell voters who made him president become disenchanted? Right now there's almost a direct line between him and them. At some point, I think you're right, they will find that nothing that he's doing is benefiting them and there's going to be a crash. But it could take quite a long time. Cuz they feel so invested in him right now. He is their.

[Amy Davidson]

Where do you turn after the demagogue?

[David Remnick]

Did the FBI director bear some responsibility for this loss?

[Amy Davidson]

Look, I may have an outlier view on that, but you know, Comey I think was in a tough spot. One that was set up, by the way. The Republican Party very methodically had brought him in for hearings, you know, set it up so that if there was a development, he almost, you know, it probably made some difference. But it's also the case, I think, that if one looks back at it, the Clinton campaign did not respond to that as productively as they could.

[David Remnick]

I think that's the, I think that's.

[Amy Davidson]

The understatement of the year by emphasizing like it's always been the practice not to bring these things up. It's been the tradition. What I think people heard was we've always been protected. Why aren't we protected now? The more the Clinton campaign told people what we're doing is how things have always been done, the more that fueled the impetus towards rejection.

[David Remnick]

You know, 2020 hindsight is a very, very low form of journalism. Almost as Bad as predictive journalism, as we've now discover again. But was maybe the most decisive day in this whole campaign, the day Joe Biden decided not to run for president.

[Amy Davidson]

You know, you can play it 10 different ways in your head. Yeah, I think Joe Biden would have beaten Donald Trump. You know, maybe not. We don't know. God knows Bernie Sanders might have beaten Donald Trump.

[George Packer]

Elizabeth Warren might have beaten Donald Trump.

[Amy Davidson]

But you know what? Hillary Clinton might have beaten Donald Trump. This was a close election, and she didn't. She went in with a lot of handicaps that, yes, Joe Biden didn't have. Bernie Sanders would have gone in with handicaps that Hillary Clinton didn't have the.

[David Remnick]

Word socialism being branded across his forehead.

[George Packer]

This was one of those elections that was both an earthquake. We suddenly heard from a whole large group of people who we had not really seen as a coherent voice before. And also a squeaker.

[David Remnick]

She won the popular vote.

[George Packer]

She won the popular vote. So it's hard to say. I don't think Comey is the reason. I think it's much bigger than these little tactical things that happen down the stretch. But I think the other thing we need to ask ourselves going forward is what checks will there be on his power? He has shown himself to be not just willing, but almost eager to abuse power, to use the office of the presidency to settle scores, to muzzle the press, to put people in jail. So what checks are there on that?

[David Remnick]

Do you think he's going to try to put Hillary Clinton in jail? Do you think he'll try to muzzle the likes of the institution we work for?

[Amy Davidson]

That's a great question with regard to what happens to this pursuit of Hillary Clinton and the foundation and all of that, does it become the convenient distraction of the Trump administration every time something goes wrong with them, they put out some new news about that. Maybe. But I think George is absolutely right. Every time Trump talked about his concept of what presidents get to do, it was troubling. I mean, he had a whole scenario that he would tell the crowds that the reason that Hillary Clinton spoke well of Barack Obama was because if not, he could put her in jail. As if, you know, any president can just kind of lock people.

[George Packer]

It's the Putinesque version of the presidency. And I think the real fear is the institutions that ordinarily would be able to apply some counter pressure. The press, the courts, Congress, public opinion, they just don't seem as strong as they used to be. I've been thinking about Watergate and how Nixon had tremendous power coming out of the 72 landslide election. But within six months, he was back on his heels because all those institutions were doing what they're supposed to do, and they still functioned in a kind of a healthy way.

[David Remnick]

Well, what's our job in the time ahead?

[Amy Davidson]

Well, I think just one thing that George said was really important. There's a lot of and there's going to be more criticism from the Hillary Clinton side that the press was too hard on her, that there was a double standard, that, you know, there's an argument also that it wasn't hard enough at the primary stage and some of these flaws weren't. But the truth is that all the press can do is, you know, maintain its integrity. If we have a sense that we're holding back on either side, that justyou know, that strengthens people like Donald Trump's.

[David Remnick]

Gasoline for the fire. Yeah.

[George Packer]

I mean, we have to do what we got into this business to do, which is to hold power accountable. And that means, to some degree, by criticism, but I think more importantly, by gathering facts and putting those facts into a compelling form. We don't know yet what the Trump presidency is going to look like, but I think it's going to give journalists a lot to do.

[David Remnick]

Amy and George, it's no secret to you, because you see it all around you, that there are a lot of people who are not in the press, who are not in government, who are confused. They don't know what to do. They feel bereft. There are people who are part of groups and ethnicities that have been radically insulted by the new president, and they feel powerless. They feel attack directly in some way that they would not have felt with Mitt Romney or John McCain or any number of other politicians had they won. What can people do? I know you're not the head of a social movement, but what can a citizen do? How do they go about viewing the future?

[Amy Davidson]

Well, I think there are two things. One is, and it's going to sound very, you know, but to be good neighbors, to be decent neighbors, to be, to recognize the fears next door and the isolation that a neighbor who maybe isn't the same member of the same group that you are might feel, and to stand up for your neighbors, that's a very abstract thing, maybe, but also very practical, small thing. And it's something like, you know, it happens on buses, it happens on subways. It just happens when you're walking down the street. The other thing is, one hopes that people will continue to see politics as a respectable profession and enter it and enter it and even if they don't enter it, to not despise it, the whole culture of distrust of anybody who touches politics is.

[David Remnick]

It'S not healthy, which is an entirely healthy answer. But I can almost hear the answer coming back to me is, well, it's fine if I'm a good neighbor and I'm nice to other people on the bus and across fences and whether it's metaphorical or real. But we're talking about the concern about somebody with the nuclear codes. We're talking about a person who is commander in chief of armed forces, who has the ability to war and sign bills and promote and appoint Supreme Court justice, who. There's a deep concern.

[Amy Davidson]

Well, there has to be enormous, enormous pressure to confirm another Supreme Court justice and a decent one. And, you know, the ACLU tweeted out the morning after Election Day, if, you know President Trump wants to implement his unconstitutional campaign promises, we'll see him in court. And to push on all the fronts where we can in civil society, push and not give up on those mechanisms, because we've got some pretty great constitutional mechanisms. We've developed them over 200 years. This is not the moment to give up on them.

[David Remnick]

And it's not Russia and it's not Turkey.

[George Packer]

George yeah, I think that disconsolate liberals should look at the history of the modern conservative movement. They came out of the 60s when they were a laughingstock, when Goldwater had been destroyed, when Phyllis Schlafly was the seemingly ridiculous voice of the heartland, Right. And within a dozen years, they'd elected a president after their own heart, but more importantly, created a grassroots structure that won local elections and school board elections and congressional elections. And sometimes, I think Democrats pay a lot of attention every four years and forget that in between this tremendous amount of boring and unglamorous organizing that needs to be done, local movements that are trying to reform corruption and other problems locally continue. No matter who's president.

[Amy Davidson]

Democracy pervades our society. We're not one of those societies that has this one or not yet. One strongman and one vote every four years. We have so many moments and so many, so many small tools for democratic participation, and it's just a matter of making use of them.

[David Remnick]

George Packer and Amy Davidson, staff writers at the New Yorker. You can find all of their writing on the [e-mail] and George's book, the Unwinding, is also a terrific look at how he became two Americas, and it won a National Ball Award. Just ahead, my conversation with one of the Greats of American songwriting, the late Leonard Cohen. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around.

[Leonard Cohen]

Foreign.

[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

[Leonard Cohen]

Like a bird on the wire Like a drunken in midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free.

[David Remnick]

At the end of the summer, I went to spend a couple of days with the great songwriter Leonard Cohen. I knew that Cohen was very, very sick, and he had made it clear he wasn't going to be with us for very much longer. He'd been avoiding interviews for the past four, five, six years. But once he agreed to talk to me, we talked for days. And I'm especially grateful that I had the chance to visit when I did, because this week we heard that Leonard Cohen has died at the age of 82. Cohen once wrote a song called the Tower of Song, in which he compared himself really unfavorably to Hank Williams, but along with other great masters, Bob Dylan, certainly, Joni Mitchell, Kanye west, everybody's got their own list. Leonard Cohen is way up there in the ranks of American song and songwriters. When I visited him in Los Angeles, he was suffering from cancer, although he was keeping that very private. He was in deep pain from compression fractures in his spine, and he had to sit in a big blue medical chair to ease that pain. He was very thin already, maybe 105, 110 pounds. But I've got to say that he was in a bullion mood for a man who knew where life was taking him. He knew exactly where he was going and he was headed there in a hurry. And at the same time, he was incredibly gracious. The most gracious host this side of my mother.

[Leonard Cohen]

Would you like a few slices of cheese and olives?

[David Remnick]

No, I'm good, thank you.

[Leonard Cohen]

You're cool.

[David Remnick]

Cone had just finished up a new album and it's out now, called you'd Want It Darker. He had recorded almost all of it sitting in that medical chair right there in the living room. A really modest space with just a couple of guitars, some recording equipment, a keyboard. And even as our talk, like the album itself, never really strayed far from the end of things, he knew where he was headed. His sense of humor and his vicious self mockery was always present.

[Leonard Cohen]

Sorry, darling. No worries. Could you bring my hearing aid?

[Amy Davidson]

Yes, of course.

[Leonard Cohen]

I can't hear a all.

[David Remnick]

Cohen grew up in Montreal in a prominent Jewish family, a well to do established family. There his family ran a clothing concern, and it was almost as an homage to his family business that Cohen, even in the 60s, always wore beautiful well cut suits, including a tailored dark blue number that he had on when I saw him. When Leonard was nine years old, his father died. And that event became a kind of origin story for his career as a writer and as someone who believed in writing as an almost sacramental act.

[Leonard Cohen]

My father's funeral was held in our house. We came down the stairs. The coffin was in the living room and it was open. It was winter, you know, and I was thinking, like, must be hard to dig. I went to the plot I saw my father buried and then, then I came back to the house and I went to his closet and I found a bow tie. I cut one of the wings of the bow tie off and I wrote something on it. I think it was some kind of farewell to my father. I don't remember what I wrote. And I buried it in the backyard. It was just some attraction to a ritual response to an impossible event. Mom leaving a table I'm out of the game I don't know the people in your picture frame if I ever loved you oh, no, no It's a crying shame if I ever loved.

[David Remnick]

You Want it darker the last album is saturated with thoughts of the end of death. But Cohen's subjects were always there from the first, the big things. Death, love, sex, God. And always undercut by that razor y wit. And as a young man, Cohen wanted to be a writer. Above all, a poet. And he was following less in the path of Hank Williams or Bob Dylan in those days than he was in in the path of Allen Ginsberg or Frank o'. Hara.

[Leonard Cohen]

His blood on my arm is warm as a bird his heart in my hand is heavy as lead his eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love O send out the raven ahead of.

[David Remnick]

The dove that's Cohen reading at the 92nd Street Y in New York 50 years ago. But around that time it came clear that he'd never make a real living as a writer. And surrounded in New York by talents and early friends like Lou Reed and Judy Collins and Patti Smith, he wrote the songs for his first record, which came out in 1967.

[Leonard Cohen]

Suzanne takes you down to her place.

[David Remnick]

Near the river like the best poets, he was writing directly from his inner life and from the life all around him. If you grew up with him in Montreal, you also knew the places and the people in songs like Suzanne. And no one else seemed to have quite the same precision, the same irony.

[Leonard Cohen]

And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China and just when you mean to tell her that you have no love to give her Then she gets you on her way wavelength and she lets the river answer that you've always been her lover and you want to travel with her and you want to travel blind and you know she will trust you for you've touched her perfect body with.

[David Remnick]

Your mind what Leonard Cohen found really difficult was performance the stage. There was something about getting up on stage that he found almost false. He said that he felt like a chained parrot up there sometimes. And the stage fright could be paralyzing.

[Leonard Cohen]

I'm scared enough as it is up here, and I think something's wrong every time you begin to applaud.

[David Remnick]

On one tour, he says he went through three bottles of wine a night before going on stage. Chateau Latour, in fact. It went so well with the music, he said. Still, the booze and the drugs didn't always really help with the anxiety.

[Leonard Cohen]

I hope you bear with me. These. These songs are kind of. They become meditations for me. And sometimes they just don't get high on it. And I feel that I. I'm cheating you. So I'll try it again, okay? And if it doesn't work, I'll stop.

[David Remnick]

And in Israel in 1972, he left the stage when he felt like the show just wasn't going well. He went back to the dressing room and he dropped some acid. And then he heard the audience singing to him. It was really singing to him.

[Leonard Cohen]

The audience had sensed that. I was disappointed. I mean, how sweet. How sweet can an audience possibly be?

[David Remnick]

It was singing back to you.

[Leonard Cohen]

They started singing Avenu Sholom Aleichem, you know. And I'm hearing this in the dressing room. They're singing it to me, and they mean to be singing it to me. So I go out and I start singing Solang Narayana.

[David Remnick]

That's one of his most famous, famous songs about an ex girlfriend. Meanwhile, the acid starts to kick in. He's hallucinating.

[Leonard Cohen]

Won't you come over to the window My little darling? I see Marianne it's right in front of me. I'd like to try and I start crying. I turn around and Band is crying too Some kind of gypsy boy Before I let you take me home Come on now so long, Marianne it's time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again. And then it turned into something quite comic. The entire audience turned into one Jew, which is enough for anyone. And this Jew was saying, what else can you show me, kid? I've seen a lot of things. And this don't move the Dial.

[David Remnick]

That.

[Leonard Cohen]

Entire skeptical side of our tradition manifested as an actual gigantic being judging me hardly begins to describe the operation. I mean, the sense of invalidation and irrelevance that I felt was authentic because those feelings. I'm not unique in this respect, but those feelings have always circulated around my psyche, you know, which is, where do you get to stand up and. And speak for what and who? And, you know, how deep is your experience? How significant is that a thing you have to say to anybody? I think it really, really invited me to deepen my practice, like, dig in deeper, whatever it was, you know, like, take this thing a little bit more seriously, you know?

[David Remnick]

The late Leonard Cohen, one of the greats of American song. Cohen released four 14 studio albums in his long career, along with another dozen odd books of poetry and two novels. My conversation with him continues in a moment. I'm David Remnick, and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

[Leonard Cohen]

Sam.

[David Remnick]

Sa welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Today, my conversation with the great songwriter Leonard Cohen. Cohen just released his last album youm Want It Darker. And we spoke back in the summer at his home in Los Angeles. Cohen was already quite ill, suffering from cancer and in great back pain, but he was somehow bearing up with amazing determination and really eager to talk. He finally died at the age of 82. Bob Dylan once said that Cohen's songs were like prayers. And in fact, many of them do lean heavily on scripture, on the psalms in particular, as much as they do on his heroes in country and folk music. Cohen was very reluctant, though, with me, to overanalyze the religious aspect of his work or performances. He didn't like the suggestion that he might try to give his work a spiritual purpose or heft, even if plenty of his fans had already come to see him as a kind of quasi religious figure.

[Leonard Cohen]

Because I don't like to be identified with Jewish thought in my own mind, you know, I know that I'm deeply conditioned by these. One of the great themes of Kabbalistic thought is the idea that the thrust of Jewish activity is the repair of God. God, in creating the world, dispersed itself. The creation is a catastrophe. There are pieces of him or her or it that are everywhere. And the specific task of the Jew is to repair the. The face of God. The prayers would remind God that it was once a harmonious unity. The birds, they sang at the break of day Start again I heard them say don't dwell on what has passed away or what is yet to be yeah, the war they Will be fought again the holy dove she will be cut again Bought and sold and bought again the dove is never free Ring the bell that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything that's how the light gets in.

[David Remnick]

Is is your view of performance, especially in these last X years, religious dimension that's self conscious?

[Leonard Cohen]

It's not self conscious, you know, I only know that if I write enough verses and keep discarding the slogans, even the hip ones, even the subtle ones, that something will emerge that represents. I've often said that the reason my writing is so slow is that I have to finish the verse before I discard it.

[David Remnick]

I understand. Also, for a lot of songs that have, say, three or four verses that are on the recording or published on the page, there are 60 or 70.

[Leonard Cohen]

Or 80 verses, some as many as that, but all with at least 10 or 20.

[David Remnick]

Like a lot of artists of his time, Cohen was a seeker. He dabbled in everything from Scientology to dancing with the Hare Krishnas. But he stuck with spiritual life in a way that few of his peers ever did. He was serious. It was never a hobby. In fact, he spent long stretches at a Zen Buddhist monastery in the mountains outside of Los Angeles with a teacher named Joshu Sasaki Roshi, whose students lived in the most ascetic way possible. When I brought up Cohen's reputation as a ladies man, he laughed, and he talked instead about the thousands of nights and days he spent on a mountain just shoveling snow, cleaning, cooking and meditating.

[Leonard Cohen]

I was deeply associated with Roshi for over 40 years. I don't really know too much about Buddhism or what formal Buddhist training is. I only know Roshi's system, which I understand is eccentric on its superficial level. It accomplishes what boot camp accomplishes, which is basically to get you to stop whining. It makes whining the least appropriate response to suffering.

[David Remnick]

Some years ago, Cohen came back from the Zen monastery only to discover that his accounts had been absolutely wiped out by his manager. He sued, but there was no getting around it. The money was gone. And there he was, well into his 60s, with nothing for his kids or for his retirement. So Cohen had no choice. He had to go back to work. He published a book of new poems for the first time in 20 years. And he went out on a tour that lasted more or less for four years. And there was a different feel to Cohen's work on stage after this monastic period. He was funnier. He was more animated, more light hearted, and maybe for the first time Seemed really happy to be on stage.

[Leonard Cohen]

I was talking with some of the guys. Some of the guys in this band are kind of, you know, over the hill. And they were talking about the various stages that a man goes through in relation to his allure to the opposite sex. You start off irresistible, and then you become resistible. Then you become transparent. Not exactly invisible, but as if you're seen through old plastic. And then you actually do become invisible. And then, and this is the most amazing transformation, you become repulsive. But that's not. That's not the end of the story. After repulsive, you become acute. And that's where I am.

[David Remnick]

I caught one of those concerts at Radio City Music hall and I've got to say it was one of the best things I have ever seen in my entire life. Here was this guy dressed in a suit and a fedora. Over and over again, he'd sing to his knees, almost in devotion to the audience and to the songs themselves. I'd always admired Cohn's songs, but I'd never been quite swept away. The studio recordings, especially, sometimes seemed a little, I don't know, rinky dink in their rendition. Too much synthesizer. Not quite worthy of the songs. But that tour was a triumph. Leonard Cohen had an astonishing band now and his voice was as deep as the ocean.

[Leonard Cohen]

I'm just paying my rent Every day In the tower of song.

[David Remnick]

When we finally met, Cohen was suffering from these terrible health problems. Cancer and excruciating back pain. And he was even allergic to most of the medicine that would alleviate the pain. All of those years spent meditating were coming in handy in an entirely new way.

[Leonard Cohen]

I've had to white knuckle this thing, you know. Fortunately, I have some training in, you could call it mind control as a blessing. The mental activity is working just fine. I got most of my marbles, maybe more than I've added other periods. In a certain sense, this particular predicament is filled with many less distractions than at other periods of my life and actually enables me to work with a little more concentration and continuity. The only thing that mitigates against full production is just the condition of my body because there are times I just have to lie down.

[David Remnick]

Leonard, you have to say when you need a rest.

[Leonard Cohen]

No, no, I'm fine. It's you guys. Would you like something to eat?

[David Remnick]

He was incredibly solicitous. Instead of taking a break or asking us to come back another time Leonard sent his assistant out to pick us all up some food at Fat Burger down the street.

[Amy Davidson]

I think I got your.

[David Remnick]

Did I get your onions or.

[Leonard Cohen]

That's you, I think we all have, by names.

[David Remnick]

Cohen told me he was still hearing the voice of God. And it was at that moment that somebody started up a leaf blower or some damn thing next door. But Cohen was saying that God sounded different now. Not that awful, incessant voice of judgment that he heard when he was younger.

[Leonard Cohen]

Sometimes it's just like, you're losing too much weight now, man. You're dying. But you don't have to cooperate so enthusiastically with the process, you know, like force yourself to have a sandwich or something. You know what I mean? You know, sometimes I hear it say, ignore me. Just get on with the things you have to do. It's very compassionate. It's this stage, you know, I mean, more than any time in my life, I don't have that voice that says, you're up. That's a tremendous blessing. Tremendous blessing, you know, really, you know, ready to die. I hope it isn't uncomfortable. Spiritual things. Baruch Hashem. Spiritual things have fallen into place for which I am deeply grateful.

[David Remnick]

To the very last. Leonard Cohen was working all the time, compulsively focusing on what he could get done at home. Writing, recording, collecting, finishing old poems. And to me, it seemed like almost a model of how to live your last days, if you can.

[Leonard Cohen]

I like to tie up the strings. It's a cliche, but it's underestimated as a. As an analgesic on all levels. Putting your house in order is one of the most. If you can do it, one of the most comforting activities. And the benefits of it are incalculable. There's a great deal of new material that I haven't sorted out. 50 or 60 unpublished poems. There are songs halfway through that are not bad. Listen to the hummingbird Whose wings you cannot see Listen to the hummingbird don't listen to me Listen to the butterfly whose days but number three Listen to the butterfly don't listen to me Listen to the mind of God which doesn't need to be. Listen to the mind of God don't listen to me so it's halfway. I don't think I'll be able to finish those songs. And maybe I'll get a second wind. I don't know. I don't need a reason for what I became I've got these excuses they're tired and lame I don't need a part no, no, no, no, no there's no one left to blame I'm leaving the table I'm out of the game. I'm leaving the table. I'm out of the.

[David Remnick]

The great Leonard Cohen. I talk with him in late summer and his latest album, his last album is yous Want It Darker. If you want to read the profile I published of Leonard Cohen in the magazine, go to newyorkerradio.org thanks so much for joining us today. I'm David Remnick for the New Yorker Radio Hour. See you next week.

[Amy Davidson]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed.

[David Remnick]

By Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards with.

[George Packer]

Additional music by Alexis Cuadrado.

[Amy Davidson]

This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Botin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Sarah Nix, Michael Rayfield, Maitha Lee Rao and Steven Valentino, with help from Emma Allen, Becky Cooper, Susan Morrison and Corey Schreppel. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.