Secret SCOTUS Memos Reveal the Truth About the Shadow Docket | Jodi Kantor

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]Adam Liptac and I put 16 pages of the justice's internal correspondence into the paper, allowing you and anybody else in the world to finally see the reasoning behind this decision, which the court never shared. The person in these papers comes across as a really different jurist. He's super duper in a rush. Inside the court, there's like ax slapping going on. Justice Kavanaaugh and Justice Gorsuch are telling the Chief Justice, "This is a brilliant opinion. This is amazing. It feels like they're egging him, you know, kind of um kind of pumping him up.

[00:00:34]>> Uh it's my pleasure today to welcome to the Oath in the Office Jod Caner. Jodie Caner is a reporter at the New York Times, and it goes without saying that her journalism has really been a shining light into the hidden functioning of the Supreme Court, an institution that we need to know more about and often don't know a lot about how it actually functions. uh and I'll mention in particular and we'll talk to her in depth today about her major work on the origins of the uh what's often called the shadow docket. She's a winner of the Puliter Prize and of course we'll ask her too and I need to mention uh her new uh book which is a New York Times bestseller. It's called How to Start Discovering Your Life's Work uh Guide for Recent Graduates, College Graduates and Others. Uh many people listen to this show are in that position. They're going to want to know uh how to start.

[00:01:23]So, I look forward to talking about that, too. Great. Uh, Jody, if you uh don't mind, we'll start uh by asking about a question that really is on all of our minds, listeners to the show, our guests. We've all been talking about the shadow docket. Um, I think our listeners know what it is, but we do have new listeners. And if you wouldn't mind just saying something about what the shadow docket is, but and also what your reporting revealed about the origin story of the shadow docket. Sometimes the court pretends that it's been doing uh whether it's the theory of originalism or whatever its uh uh work is that this has been going on since the 18th century or something. You of course tell a much more recent origin story. Uh so what is it and and what did you reveal in your reporting about its origin?

[00:02:12]>> Okay, great. So first of all, thank you so much for having me on. Pleasure to be with you. When we think of Supreme Court cases, we think of a slow speed. We think of deliberation. We think of being very very careful. Your classic Supreme Court case takes a really long time to play out. And there there are many many many many many steps that ensure careful consideration or supposed to um like uh rounds and brief of briefs like oral arguments that as you know can go on for quite a long time many hours in which the justices really hash out the legal issues with the attorneys and the public can listen in via audio.

[00:02:58]There are opinions that circulate within the Supreme Court before they become public in draft form and that's in part so that as a collective they can improve the opinions. They can really think about what they want to say. They can deliberate. They can change their minds.

[00:03:15]Another step in the process is that for merits cases or what we think of as classic Supreme Court cases, the justices meet in person to discuss them and vote. They have this meeting called the conference meeting that is a super confidential meeting. It happens in a special room at a special table and the point of all these steps is that uh they are meant to ensure thoroughess. So let's think of that as like kind of the ideal of Supreme Court decision-m. The shadow docket is an alternate track and it's existed for a long time, but until about 10 years ago, it was really used for true emergencies like death penalty cases or election cases that had to be decided immediately.

[00:04:05]In the last 10 years, what we've seen is that the shadow docket has swelled that the court is making more and more decisions on this emergency basis and just structurally it's not as in-depth or slow or careful and it's much more secretive. It is a rushed fasttrack process and the reason why so many people have criticized that is that there really two two worries. I mean first of all the court has awarded a tremendous amount of power to President Trump using the emergency docket. Since President Trump returned to office it's been over 20 cases and these cases as I said like move very very quickly. the the justices are skipping some of the time- tested steps of deliberation. They're also very secretive. Perhaps the most important step that they almost uh that they often skip is these cases don't really have opinions.

[00:05:08]>> They have orders. Some of these if you've never seen one to picture one of these orders, picture like a paragraph of legal boilerplate. We counted the one we wrote about it was 142 words and they don't have any reasoning like they say such and such you know the court is going to greenlight this or red light this but the essence of how a court gets authority and trust >> is an opinion a judge sits down and writes an opinion that is an act of humility and accountability saying, "Here's how I got to the result that I got to, and you may not like it.

[00:05:52]You may disagree. This decision may be bad for you personally, but I want you to know that I did it in good faith, and I really followed all the steps of the law." So, that is what the docket is.

[00:06:04]And and then I could then, if you want, I thought I should stop for a second. if you want I can tell you about the particular sort of scoop and reveal we had about how the shatter docket originated. Yeah, I was going to say also in transition that you know as you noted so much of the these recent decisions enabling President Trump have been document done in secret without any kind of reasoning and that reveals on the or one suspicion is that that reveals a kind of partisanship on the on the part of the justices the um conservative majority doing this and what I wanted to ask you about the origin story is it seems to further uh excite that worry because its origin seems to be about conservatives blocking a more liberal president. So yeah, tell us that origin story and maybe you could in the process tell me I mean am I right? Is it as as bad as it looks in in your reporting?

[00:06:59]>> So here's what we've read in the paper that felt momentous at least to us for a couple years now. Many many many observers of the court, people like yourself, scholars have been saying how did the court start doing this? Like why? Like especially given historically low trust ratings in the court and given the fact that the chief justice really has a reputation for being careful and you know very conservative but but but also very deliberate.

[00:07:36]Why would they kind of throw out the time-tested judicial playbook and adopt this rushed and secretive new way of doing cases? So, they didn't do it obviously all in one day, but there's one case that's like really a hinge case. It's a pivot point, and that is a 2016 case in which the court blocked Obama's climate change plan. It it was really a shocker at the time because the court stepped in front of the DC circuit to intervene which the court had never done anything like that before and there was this tiny little order that had no explanation. Um and so when we look back at like the origins of the modern shadow docket and the origins of the controversy over it, this is like the signal case. So usually Supreme Court papers are secret for a long time, like generations to come. So I am I think if people are listening to this particular podcast, they might know about this New York Times article already. But I'm just going to say for anyone who missed it that I am really happy to tell you that Adam Liptac and I put 16 pages of the justice's internal correspondence into the paper allowing you and anybody else in the world to finally see the reasoning behind this decision which the court never shared and to literally see the origins of the shadow docket. it with these papers, we can eavesdrop and witness the justices backing into this new way of doing things like like literally the moment of the decision where they're saying, "Yeah, we usually like we've always done it this way, but now we're going to do it now we're going to do it this way."

[00:09:24]So to your question about like does this reveal a totally partisan court?

[00:09:29]I think what I it definitely reveals a partisan divide in the case, right? I mean, the conservatives are rearing to go and the liberals are truly worried uh about what's happening.

[00:09:42]>> The figure who really leaps out is Chief Justice John Roberts because he's cultivated this reputation, as I said, for you know, being very deliberative, being very careful. He's talked about being a minimalist and only calling balls and strikes. And the the figure who um and he doesn't say much in public, right?

[00:10:08]This is like not a person who gives regular interviews. Um the person in these papers comes across as a really different jurist. He's super duper in a rush. Like he's moving. This whole thing is a flurry of five days of It's like five days that changes the Supreme Court. Uh they're moving very very fast.

[00:10:28]uh he from his very first memo he's like a bulldozer. He comes on very strong. He wants it the way he wants it and he doesn't there is some back and forth among the justices. But when the liberal justices raise like pretty common sense procedural objections. They're saying we've never done this before. We're uncomfortable.

[00:10:49]Why the rush? He's very dismissive. And it also turns out that he's in a power struggle with the Obama administration and particularly the EPA. He feels that that the court was sidelined in a previous EPA case. Uh and uh he doesn't want that to happen again.

[00:11:10]So it's it it's not like I want to be careful. People should look at it themselves and see what they think. It's not the kind of rank partisansship where you know the justice where like the conservative justices are saying like great we now get to you know like enact our anti-regulatory agenda. Um what I would say the standout is is that it's nobody's idea of like really first class no liberation.

[00:11:45]It's not legal thinking the way that the justices need to display when they're doing asking questions in oral argument or writing opinions. And yeah, that's something to dig into more is well, what what is it? What does it reveal? And one thing that you've told us which I think does jump out at you is that this balls and strikes neutrality that Roberts portrays, that's not what's going on behind the scenes. And uh it might be obvious we just >> one in one case like I just feel the need to say fairness. It's very very very rare to see these kinds of papers >> right >> like this is one example in years and years and years the chief justice's writings for all we know there is like >> there's a bad moment or something.

[00:12:31]>> Well there could there could be 5x or 10x the material in which he is that cautious figure. Let me ask you about what it portrays about him because it does strike me as such a a huge contrast from his public persona. What what when I was reading it, the sort of sympathy for the coal industry and for industry, the worry about cost, you know, those are not the way that conservative justices who focus on the text of the constitution or or um its original meaning or the meaning of statute. It's really seems to be not just a straightforward policy worry, but one worry about an administration doing regulation. I mean, am I reading it wrong? I mean, that's what jumps out.

[00:13:15]>> He he comes across as extremely skeptical of regulation. And it's interesting, you know, that so like >> not to get too technical, but the term irreparable harm comes up in these decisions because the standard for moving quickly is like, oh, is there going to be some irreparable harm that provides a rationale for moving quickly?

[00:13:39]Like meaning if we didn't do this thing, would there be some irreparable harm?

[00:13:42]and he talks about irreparable harm uh to the coal industry, to the states.

[00:13:52]Nobody, none of the justices mentions irreparable harm to the climate. Like basically what Obama was trying to do with and by the way again for fairness, >> there was a real legal question about whether the Obama administration was within the boundaries of the Clean Air Act. like were their actions lawful?

[00:14:13]True legal debate there. Like they were they were they were pushing it, right?

[00:14:18]And different justices felt things broke down along partisan lines basically about uh the merits um stage of the case. But what we what we see is a chief justice who is extremely concerned about what's going to be expensive for industry and states. In fact, like Justice Brier, who's a always been a close ally of the chief, uh says, "What's the rush? Like why would we do this?"

[00:14:51]And the chief's answer is we have to move quickly because this is the most the most expensive regulation that has ever been imposed uh on the >> I mean that is what leaps out at me. I mean, if it was a behind-the-scenes look at sort of the blunt way they talk about their own judicial philosophies, I could imagine Robert saying, "Wow, this is a blatant disregard of the text of the Clean Air Act." And this is an instance in which the EPA is assuring its authority and threatening constitutional governance because this is really the domain of the legislature and there's no delegation of power. Something like that. That's emphatic. Okay, that wouldn't have been as careful maybe as what you get in public. But instead, I guess what I'm reading is a kind of blunt libertarianism, which is that there is excessive regulation that's going to be high cost and not the kind of reasoning that you usually get from a justice who claims allegiance to, you know, textual interpretation. So, so that I guess is is why I was thinking not partisanship in the sense of, you know, for against one party, but a kind of partisan libertarianism. These are the politics that I care about. this is the policy views that I hold and that is something that some justices over time justice Holmes for instance said let's just do policy and sometimes you do hear that from justice Briar but the whole basis of modern conservatism is supposed to be this allegiance to the text and it's neutrality it's not about policy and I guess that's what really grabbed me in in your reporting and although you're being careful about it I guess I don't hear you dissuading me from that idea that Roberts really is not doing what we think of as law here but as a kind of policy but there might be more to it or a more sympathetic justification.

[00:16:40]>> Well well what I was going to say is that I think the biggest like a lot of people have asked the question >> have a lot of it there have been different readings of the papers I mean not surprisingly it's broken down along partisan lines. There are many many people who've had the exact same interpretation um as you did. There are other people who have focused on the fact that there was a real legal issue with like whether a clean air act authorized the Obama law. They the Obama administration was leaning pretty heavily on like a you know kind of obscure uh provision of the Clean Air Act. But what nobody I haven't heard a good explanation on the right for the rush or the lack of transparency >> like particularly the lack of transparency.

[00:17:39]I uh you know as you know Justice Kavanaaugh has defended the emergency the court's handling of the emergency docket to some degree but in the commentary I have not heard maybe I missed something but I have not personally heard anyone even on the right say yeah it's totally fine to be safe moves without issuing opinions.

[00:18:07]Um, that I think is I think that is a a major thing to focus on again because I mean, listen, Corey, I'm not a like I'm a law school dropout, right? I'm a I'm I'm a proxy. I'm I'm I'm not a law professor type. I'm a proxy for the everyday read who wants to ask common sense questions of the Supreme Court. And I think a powerful common sense question is courts issue opinions. That's how courts protect their authority. Even if your views are very conservative, like don't you want to win people over? Don't you want people to buy in to what you're saying?

[00:18:57]Don't you want to preserve your own authority? So what like here is where we get I think beyond our reporting and into like you know a realm of psychology that >> uh like is is very hard to touch as a reporter but we can ask the question even if we can't answer it which is like >> okay Chief Justice John Roberts given that the use of the shadow docket has so greatly expanded over the course of your tenure given that there are so many important decisions isions that the court hasn't explained.

[00:19:33]How do you justify that and what effect do you think is what effect do you think it is having on public trust?

[00:19:42]>> Right. Yeah. Uh I mean I should say you're being extremely modest. Of course you've you've done more to explain what's actually going on with this court than I think uh years and years of scholarship. the you know a common way to study the court is to praise the justices or to take their words at face value and I think what this reporting shows in a really deep way is that there there is of course a politics of the court that's going on we've known that but what it is we haven't known and now now we we do know it so I I mean that sincerely you have taught us a great deal way more than certainly uh most law professors or political scientists could teach us so so thank you for that I mean I do want to transition as a way of getting into your your question your your really deep deep question here uh about what happens when this court writes opinions as opposed to what they do uh in secret and one worry is there too that I'm not convinced about their genuiness and I know that in particular you and Adam Liptac uh did some amazing reporting on the immunity case which we've often focused on Trump versus the United states. And so I wanted to ask you about that case and and going at the same time go deeper into the uh the views or even psychology of Justice Roberts in particular because he does present himself as wanting unity, wanting to be neutral. And yet what stands out to me about this case and uh you know I I give my opinions bluntly and and freely so I I'll just say is that it really is crafted out of thin air. that there is a precedent that they rely heavily on um about Richard Nixon, firing of Richard Nixon and a civil immunity that he was given, the Fitzgerald case um uh for this firing.

[00:21:37]And yet, you know, it's a totally different question than January 6, the destruction of our democracy and a criminal case, by the way, not just any kind of crime, but the crime that is linked to the to a possible coup. And yet here Roberts is, you know, acting in public as though he's got this carefully crafted opinion. So what's going on? I mean, what is your your reporting about Roberts in the court generally when it I mean the the the dissenters the the liberals have been willing to say Trump is a threat to democracy? What is going on in in the understanding of John Roberts and Donald Trump? Is it I mean here again, you know, I just have to as I exclude other possibilities, I think, well, it looks like a kind of sympathy or partisanship and no, he's not really that bad or or so what to help me here.

[00:22:25]Help me when we when we look at particular Trump versus the United States.

[00:22:30]>> Well, thank you. And also, I'm glad you mentioned Adam. I meant to say his name about 10 times on the podcast. He's my he's my reporting partner and also my teacher when it comes to a lot of Supreme Court matters. Um, so yeah. So, okay. So, a couple weeks after the immunity decision came out, Adam and I published a story taking readers behind the scenes. Uh, and there were some really clear there were two clear questions to ask about that decision just to refresh the memory of anybody who's, you know, has like an understandable fog about all these different. This was actually before the presidential election. Uh, President Trump was going to be held criminally accountable. He was going to be tried uh for what he did on January six. There was a huge legal fight which we won't go into here about, you know, whether he could be tried uh or not. the like essentially he petitioned uh the court to um he appealed a decision made by the DC circuit that said you know of course uh he can be tried for these things. Uh it went up to the Supreme Court. The whole thing was super sensitive because it was like running up against a presidential election. So even relatively small procedural matters like well what's the timing of how this is all going to be decided like got very very hot and in the end the court awarded President Trump this is a few months before the presidential election way more immunity than most legal experts thought they would. So the two big questions about this decision were wa how did they end up giving him such broad immunity like kind of even more than his lawyers asked for?

[00:24:28]And and then second the decision as you say was scholars almost across the board thought this decision didn't really like work as a piece of legal reasoning that it was disjointed that it was messy that there were holes. it raised as many questions as it answered. There was a lot of worry about like, whoa, does this decision like legitimate bribery by a president?

[00:24:54]And especially since we know that the chief justice who wrote the decision has a reputation as a really solid judicial craftsman. That was question number two is like what like why is this not a more well- constructed uh decision even you know for people who disagree with it. Um so what we found and this was also like very sensitive reporting in which we were able to obtain some information internally from the Supreme Court. Um, it was a little bit similar to the shadow docket reporting we talked about where the chief justice like was holding the ball and he came out of the gate really strongly. Like he had he had very definite views about how this should all go down. And what he, I think, was trying to do was not deal so much with the Trumpness of it all, but write a decision for the ages, you know, like the opinion is like, >> you know, real like has all this like soaring rhetoric about like George Washington and a vigorous presidency and he was trying to like what we see in the opinion and in reporting is that he was attempting to kind of like glide over politics and write something very farreaching, but it the response of many people was like like you're not you're not really dealing with like the thing you described like like the grave crisis provoked by the January 6th insurrection like like this presidential this former president and presidential candidate tried to overturn an election and like if you're not accountable for that under the law like how do we go forward as a country? Um so you see the chief justice's reluctance to deal with that glaring issue and then what's also interesting is you see the other conservative justices like sort of egging him on. We we obtain >> we obtained some bits of their responses internally to the chief justice and like here there's he's the chief justice has written this decision that's about to be like massively criticized but inside the court there's like total backs slapping going on and uh justice kavanaaugh and justice Gorsuch are telling the chief justice this is a brilliant opinion this is amazing incredible it it it feels like they're egging him on or uh you know kind of um kind of pumping him up.

[00:27:51]>> Yeah. When I read those congratulatory notes you know in the midst of what I I would have assumed they would have understood how much this opinion was going to be criticized and you know he leaves exceptions there and it's immunity for outside the core areas of executive power. It's presumptive immunity. it can be overcome. when within the outer perimeter of official duty. And yet um yet, you know, the what you get from those memos is is the sense that you know this was an obvious decision, not because it's subtle, but because it defended our guy. Maybe maybe I'm going too far and you didn't read it that well.

[00:28:32]>> In my work in my work, I really try not to be in the justice's heads. I just >> report it out.

[00:28:39]>> Yeah. was just out of reporatorial restraint. We don't know. And then also remember that there was another concern at the same time which is that Trump was going to be elected and try to prosecute Biden. So what conservatives have said is like guys this is the court trying to protect Biden from being prosecuted inappropriately. So I don't I don't I don't know. Um >> I don't know. question about this.

[00:29:10]>> We only knew what I reported about what they thought.

[00:29:13]>> One last question about this and it does tie back to our great conversation about the shadow docket is about timing. uh you know here he had to know that intervening in the case although you know it never resolved the question of whether or not there is immunity for January 6th and maybe this isn't Trump is going to have to show it's somehow official duty and you know that that was what they were prepared to do but we didn't get a f it's not like the opinion says Trump is immune in in the end they give a set of standards they sent it back but they do for all intents and purposes clear the way for Trump to run for office and once he wins you know It's it's nothing is happening of course with that case with this Department of Justice. So I mean what about that kind of worry that that the sort of logic and I'll try to put it in as careful a way as I can but that they had to realize that they were intervening in a way that did clear the path for him to to run for and possibly win the presidency. And isn't that a kind of well nonawyerly non-judicial way of thinking? I mean, you are really getting at why we are stepping up our reporting on on the Supreme Court. You know, I'm not the only player at the times here. We now have a five person. So, like the past was these heroic, incredible reporters like Linda Greenhouse and Adam Liptac >> took kind of sole responsibility for covering the Supreme Court. Huge huge job. uh the service they performed which is essential is explaining the cases and arguments and decisions but we've recently built on that and we're going further and it's me it's Adam it's Ros helderman our editor it's Ann Marimo it's Abby Vanickle we each perform different functions but we really work together as a group and we're trying to ask some of the big questions about the Supreme Court so there are five of us working on this and we're trying to answer some of the big questions about the Supreme Court and you're alluding to a very important one which is is the public version of these cases the same as the private version.

[00:31:19]>> There is a story we hear in the oral arguments and in the opinions on some cases that's like the same thing that happened in private. There's there's no real interesting differential. On some cases, there's a gap between the public explanation of how the law was decided and what really happened. And the timing concerns that you're talking about, I think, are in that category of things that the justices consider privately but don't discuss publicly. I know that, for example, because Adam and I did a behind thescenes uh story about the Dobs case that overturned Row and uh the justices were heavily weighing time and considerations. You know, there was also a lot of speculation, if we want to actually do something current about the Voting Rights Act case, >> which launched, you know, a whole new round of redistricting wars. And so, you know, given that the justices are making this decision in the middle of this um chaos over redistricting and know that their timing is going to have a lot of influence relative to election day, how do they think through that? And you're right.

[00:32:37]And and and like you know, it's interesting because like how can they not like they're you know, citizens of planet Earth. Um but as you say it's an extrajudicial factor. It's it's it's not part of a strict legal calculation.

[00:32:54]>> Yeah. I mean isn't part of it too just looking at the history of these justices? They don't come you know to us fresh once they're nominated. They have long histories and commitments and uh many of them Roberts included associated with the Republican party and the Reagan administration in particular. So, is that part of it that um what we're seeing in these behind the scenes is a reveal of yeah, long-standing partisan uh they might say they're philosophical commitments, but >> it has changed. You know, one thing that was so educational about doing this 2016 story is that we spoke to people who were, you know, knowledge of the deliberations at the time and they really described this court as a different place in 2016.

[00:33:39]Even though I mean the composition was somewhat different, not entirely, but even though that court leaned conservative, >> the court felt very alive with debate that Justice Anthony Kennedy was a true swing vote that there was a genuine sense of suspense inside the building about which way cases would come out.

[00:34:01]>> Very interesting. And >> that and in in a decade that has that has really changed. will link to the story so that as you said people can read these amazing memos for themselves.

[00:34:11]And of course what a rare uh important moment actually for democracy to have them revealed to see these primary sources rather than guessing what's going on behind the scenes or worse just taking the opinions and the public presentation of justices as empires you know baseball umpires at face value. I'm anxious to ask you about your book. Of course there are listeners to this podcast who are recent uh graduates.

[00:34:38]I'll mention the name again. How to start discovering your life's work. Uh tell us about it. you know, uh I mean, I'll throw one thing in as a transition, which is I just know from students and I'm so inspired by so many of them that although they're worried about the future of the economy, you know, a lot of them are devoted to wanting to fight threats to democracy, to to seeing the rise of authoritarianism in the United States and doing something about it. So I mean tell us about the book and tell us you know what what can I I it's a very practical question for me like what can I tell people who really want to know like what can I do to to save democracy to make the world better and you know they mean it I think especially at that age >> absolutely >> and the worst thing would be to to not have a good answer so I'm looking to you for one >> well I'll tell you how the book started and then I'll tell you the most important thing and it so this was like really unexpected >> as we have established Cy, I am really busy with MY SUPREME COURT. I did not plan on like doing a whole other thing unearthing secret memos from the Supreme Court. Um, but what happened is that in February of 2025, uh, Colombia, my alma mater asked me to give the undergraduate commencement address. A huge honor, but your listeners will remember what was happening at Colombia at that time. It was like total meltdown and toxicity.

[00:36:02]So, it was kind of a bad offer. And my friends from college were very protective. They were like, "You're going to get booed. Don't go." Colin said, um, but something in me was like, "Give me those kids for 15 minutes." I was just so upset to see like how far down the place had slid and and wanted a a chance to say something to the graduating class. And then they asked me an incredible question. You know, like I love hard questions and this is one of the best ones I've ever heard. They said, "In this crazy environment, how do we find and start our life's work?" And their question gripped me cuz it I mean it's very similar to the question you just asked about your students. And also I've covered employment for most of my career. Like my partner Megan Tui and I broke the Harvey Weinstein story. I've reported for years. I've reported stories about the digital transformation of the workplace and what it's like to be managed by machines and the effect it has on relationships and the employer employee relationship. And so I really wanted to give them good something good. I saw the rising cynicism about the workplace, the dread, the fear. I saw that you know seeking work has become a very lonely endeavor. It was always anxiety producing, but it used to be more of a social process involving like coffees and handshakes and interesting encounters.

[00:37:32]>> Job applications have become very digital, very sterile, very lonely. Um, first round screening is taking place more and more by AI. So AI is performing interviews. And so in addition to it being a rough job market for entry-level workers, they like their first encounter with the workplace is so lonely and negative. They're seeing things to me like Jod, I applied for 150 jobs. Uh and I didn't meet anybody in the process and like this is a black box and I I can't even get any feedback, you know, or tell how I'm being received. So I wrote this book essentially as an argument to to fight for your ambitions and dreams and to still have belief in the workplace.

[00:38:19]Not like a blind optimistic belief, but at a time when we see so many parts of our political system failing or feel very stuck.

[00:38:29]I still believe that the workplace is our engine of progress. Like we can't afford to give up on the workplace.

[00:38:38]It's, >> you know, it's it's how we do new things. It's how we move forward. And so the mo so that goes to your second question, which is like what is the most important thing to tell people? The most important thing to tell people and I will read you the most important paragraph in this book is >> do not give up before you start. Um because I because like I'm talking to undergrads and recent grads who are writing off any possibility for achievement or happiness in the workplace too early before they're really in the game. And I I understand that it's tough out there. I'm a reporter, but I want them to try. Um so here is like the key here is the key paragraph. Um, do not give up before you even start.

[00:39:29]Frustration and disappointment are certain. Failure is possible. But if you abdicate the search for satisfaction now, you will put it further out of reach. Resist the urge to arm yourself with uninformed cynicism masking as oh so wise pragmatism that's really just good old fear of rejection. We do not yet know what the world will offer you.

[00:39:54]>> Oh, nice. I mean, we've talked about some worrying things, you know, insurrection and u sort of hiding the real reasoning. And so, we're always on this podcast trying to put hope in there, too, because, you know, we've faced threats to democracy before and have prevailed. And then you're bringing this down to a personal level is really helpful, too, that of course individuals who want to do the right thing, have meaningful lives and careers, especially as they're starting out, are facing a lot of their own crisis. And totally and problems are opportunities. They are like they like they they offer a chance to contribute and you can like they like I think what you really want is a craft that helps you contribute. You know, report like reporting is my way of coping with what's going on in the world. not on an ideological basis but just by saying like our information systems are not doing well and so I am just going to contribute the best information I can to our public debates and it brings me tremendous peace of mind in this like truly shattered world of ours because I get up in the morning I say I get what my role is on the playing field of democracy I'm going to play it as best I can and know that you know I made my contribution Well, on behalf of the listeners, Jody Caner, I want to thank you not just for joining us for this great conversation, but also for your amazing reporting, which as I keep saying really has taught us what's going on behind the scenes in a way that's been hidden from us deliberately. And I can't think of anything more important in this moment.

[00:41:37]If we're going to save democracy, we have to know what's actually going on in the halls of power. And that's what you're teaching us about. and thank you for this book as well and the inspiration that it'll provide especially to young listeners. Uh Jody Caner, thank you for joining us on the oath in the office. I'll give you one last chance to uh share a final thought if you want >> a final thought to all together.

[00:42:05]>> I I'll I'll say this like maybe maybe this um maybe this ties together everything we've talked about. I'll take a shot at it. Which is like truly thank you for having me on. And one of the reasons it's so significant to me is because I did drop out of law school to become a journalist. And so like it turns out many years later like I I I was very drawn towards the law but it turns out I wanted to report on it not uh practice it. But if you ever would have told me that I would be reporting on the Supreme Court, I never would have believed you. But the magic of journalism really is that if you learn these tools and you learn this craft, we can scrutinize people in power. This is a time-tested tool of democracy, right? Like a peaceful civil tool that involves words and involves truth. Um that uh I just think has like tremendous meaning and power.

[00:43:09]So, thank you so much for uh spending this time and for anyone who's listening, thank you. Thank you so much uh for um buying into the idea that newspapering can still be a contribution.

[00:43:26]>> Thanks so much, Jody Caner. What an amazing conversation.

[00:43:30]Take