Andrew Revkin

It's another form of path dependency, the term I used before.

But breaking narrative capture to me, for me, has come mostly from stepping back and reminding myself of the basic principles of journalism.

Journalism's basic principles are useful for anybody, right?

Confronting a big, enormous, dynamic, complex thing is who, what, where, when, why.

Just be really rigorous about not assuming because there's a fire in Boulder County or a flood in Fort Myers that climate, which is in your head because you're part of the climate team at the New York Times or whatever, is the foreground part of this problem.

Oh, I was.

Well, you've certainly been.

I mean, there are other things happening at the same time, right?

I'm now 35 years into, almost 40 years into my journalism career.

So I have some independence.

I'm free from the obligations of...

I don't really need my next paycheck.

I live in Maine now in a house I love.

I own it outright.

It's a great privilege and honor.

And as a result of a lot of hard work.

And so I'm freer to think freely.

And I know my colleagues in newsrooms.

When I was at the New York Times, in the newsroom, you become captive to a narrative, just as you do out in the world.

The New York Times had a narrative about Saddam Hussein.