Washington National Cathedral

Sam Lloyd: Welcome everyone as we continue these ongoing conversations connecting faith and public life. We have today with us a very special guest. In fact, my hunch would be that this is something like the Diane Rehm fan club gathered out here today. I thought so.

Diane is in her 29th season of the Diane Rehm show at National Public Radio, the author of two fascinating books I want touch on a fair amount if we can: one called Finding My Voice and the other called Towards Commitment, A Dialogue about Marriage. For of course the city, but across the country as well, people can count on two hours of probing, reflective, helpful conversation every day of the week, and that is a huge gift she gives our nation, so thank you for that.

I have to say that I am a little nervous. We are in the presence of one of the world’s great interviewers, and I’m the one who supposed to ask questions. I called her up this week and got some coaching on how to do a good job, so if something goes wrong, you can blame it on Diane. Diane.

Diane Rehm: Sam.

Lloyd: Every day of the week you enter into these thoughtful, reflective conversations that probe the heart of the issues of the day, and often probe human beings, and what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. Just from one host to another, a little advice, what’s the secret to your amazing success? Now obviously, people who watch you would say one set of things, but what has guided you in this extraordinary work for these last nearly thirty years?

Rehm: I am thrilled to be here in this glorious place, and I have to say that right up front. And Sam, I am so delighted to sit here with you and talk about these things.

If there is a secret, it is that I listen. People think of talk show hosts as concentrating on talk and what they are going to say. My focus is on listening and watching and interpreting, being led by how the conversation goes, being led by callers, being led by the spirit in the room, being led by the body language of that individual, and learning to listen to each and every aspect of that. If there is a secret, I think that’s it, and someday, someday I hope to write a book on what it is to listen.

Lloyd: We actually had… we had actually called this conversation something on the art of listening because you do seem to be so remarkable in that. Listening is really about hospitality, isn’t it? It’s creating a space into which someone else steps, but then we as listeners count on you to respond to that. We don’t just turn over the microphone. You ask them to offer something. You as the listener take it in, but then you go back, either probingly or a little troubled or a little excited about what you’re hearing. It feels like an alive movement of the spirit going on. You sense that when you’re doing it?

Rehm: I do, and I’d be remiss if I did not talk about all the notes I have in front of me. The notes which guide me into the subject, into the individual, just as you, Sam Lloyd, have notes in front of you.

There is that art behind the scenes. The producers’ work, their contributions to the conversation, and what they do is lay it out for me; but then, as soon as I get into that studio, I have to let go. I have to be there with that person or those persons in order to let that spirit guide me, and without that informed background, I would not be able to do that.

Lloyd: You didn’t start out as a radio host.

Rehm: Hardly.

Lloyd: In your remarkable two memoirs, one especially, you talk about a whole first adult life as a homemaker, that then led to working at WAMU and eventually to where you are now. Tell us a little bit about how that unfolded, one step to the next.

Rehm: I was at home raising two absolutely gorgeous kids who are now 44 and 48, no longer kids. But when they were about 13 and eleven, I began to realize that there was going to be another part to my life which I had never planned for, never anticipated. I had done a fair amount of volunteer work, I had done some fashion modeling. I didn’t know where I was going to go.

But then, as God would have it, I took a course at George Washington University called New Horizons for Women. It has since been changed to allow men to come in as well, who were searching. Searching for what’s beyond, what can be a possibility. And I cannot to this day tell you why this happened, but those with Ph.D.’s were on the top floor, those with masters were on the next floor, those with liberal arts degrees were on the next floor; and we, without any college education, were in the basement. That has since changed.

And those who were with me, I don’t understand why, encouraged me to go into broadcasting. And I said, well, that’s that silliest thing I ever heard. I mean, I had no background, I had no wherewithal to get into broadcasting. But within two weeks of the end of that semester, a friend with whom I was volunteering told me that she had begun volunteering at this tiny little station nobody had ever heard of, on this program called the Home Show nobody had ever heard of. And I said, well do you suppose I could volunteer?

I mean, a little light bulb went on in my head. And the next week I went in and talked to the host of the program. And she said, certainly, I’d be delighted to have you as a volunteer to help plan programs, to outline conversations, to find guests. And I thought, gosh, this is wonderful.

First day, I get there, and the manager is at the front door, and she says, unfortunately the host is out sick. At first, my heart dropped. I thought, well, I guess that means I’m going to have to turn around and go home. And then she said the magic words: so, Diane, I understand you’re the new volunteer; but since I, Susan Harmon, the manager, am going to have to fill in for the host, I’d like you to come in the studio with me. Moi?! Went in there, sat at the microphones for ninety minutes, talked with a representative of the Dairy Council, and that’s how it all began.

Lloyd: How it began. You clearly were brilliant at it.

Rehm: I knew what children should be eating and not eating.

Lloyd: Your memoir’s entitled Finding My Voice, and you describe this moment as a moment of opportunity opening up. But anyone who follows your story closely knows that it’s a story of a lot of personal struggle, trying to find out who you are, and what you’re becoming, and what you’re meant to be. Struggles being a child of an immigrant family here in Washington, D.C. Not going to college. Entering into first one marriage and then another, and struggling to find your voice and your place, eventually finding your professional place. How did you get the courage to keep at it every step of the way?

Rehm: It’s… courage is not something I necessarily attribute to myself, but I do, at the end of writing Finding My Voice, having talked a great deal during that book about the difficulties I had as a child especially in regard to my mother, who spoke very little English, who… with whom I somehow became her problem. And I think she anticipated and told me that I would never amount to anything.

So at the end of writing my book, having spilled this story of my mother, I came to realize that she came here to this country without anyone. She was engaged to someone else when my father plucked her out of Alexandria, Egypt. She came here with no one: my dad came here with his whole family and she was the outsider. It… I mean, you talk about courage. It took that and perhaps the difficulties that we had had came from that very experience of hers. So at the end I began to realize that maybe her endurance is what came through to me, and that I was blessed with having gone through that with her.

You asked about listening. One of the ways I learned to listen: I was punished a great deal. And my bedroom was upstairs above the living room. We had constant visitors, because my dad’s family was always here, and when I was by myself up in my room, I would get down on the floor and put my ear to the floor, so I could hear everything. I knew exactly what was going on in that room, and I think that was part of learning to listen.

Lloyd: Another striking theme in your story, for those of us who have simply heard you at your brilliant and self-confident best on the air, is a theme of genuine self-doubt: obviously some of it must go back to those roots, but something you’ve wrestled with just about all your life. And that took me completely by surprise. Is that something that you feel that you work through over a period? Is it something you carry with you? What… how did you find your way through all of what you describe as negative voices, saying that you really don’t have a significant role to play?

Rehm: I think that the most important help I received in dealing with that self-doubt was from my husband of nearly 49 years, John Rehm. He urged me to understand that that self-doubt, though it might always be with me, could be part of what made me strong. That I could incorporate that self-doubt instead of fearing it. That I could make it a part of my strength and realize that it was going to be there, and to accept it as part of my strength and part of my ability to continue to work.

I went through so many years of almost crippling self-doubt until I would get on the air, and then I’d move and I’d get off the air, and it would return. And I would say to myself, what an awful interview. What a terrible hour. And then get out there and do it again the next day. And I’d go home to John, and I would seek therapy. I mean, I was in therapy for 25 years. I mean, really. And John and I had therapy together.

But I think all of that helped, Sam, and I think that I have finally in my life reached a point where I do understand that that self-doubt is part of who I am, part of my life, part of how I have been able to move ahead, because I’ve incorporated it into my being.

Lloyd: And faith has been a part of your life, and prayer has been a part of your life all along as well. Say a little bit about how… what role that has played in the growth and emergence of Diane Rehm the public figure.

Rehm: I think I’ve had a very confused faith life. My mother and father, Syrian Orthodox, so I was baptized in the Syrian Orthodox Church, which takes the baby through the bath water, not just sprinkling on them. Then I attended a Methodist church for about five years, and then began to attend the Syrian Orthodox Church as a young woman.

Married when I was 19 to an Arab. My mother was dying at the time, and she very much wanted me to marry. We married with her lying on the sofa in the living room, married by an Orthodox priest, and she died two months later.

My father died eleven months later of a broken heart. And I was an orphan.

And one of the first things I did was to get a divorce. (laughter) I did not feel part of that church. I did not feel the obligation to that church, though, as a divorced woman, I could no longer receive communion, I could no longer be a part of that church.

Three years later, John Rehm and I married, and when our first child was born, I said to him, I need to find a church. John Rehm was totally nonreligious. But my faith began to grow and grow and grow because of the relationships, the human relationships within the Episcopal Church. I found people who have become my dearest lifelong friends and through them, the presence of God became stronger and stronger and stronger.

When I had the crisis with my voice, when my voice began to fail me, Bishop Jane Dixon called me one day. And she said, Bishop Haines wonders whether you would like to have a laying on of hands. And I said, absolutely. And Bishop Dixon and Bishop Haines took me into the small dear chapel that was erected in memory of a child who had died, and I cannot tell you how beautiful those moments were.

Yesterday in this Cathedral, Jane Dixon preached at Bishop Haines’s funeral. And with his passing I shall always, always remember that day. My faith is in my God, who has always been there for me since I was a little girl and found a bracelet that I had thought I had lost. Until this very day when, recognizing that my husband has Parkinson’s disease, I pray for him and I pray for us and I pray for all every single day.

Lloyd: I think we should say something about your public role every morning on the radio, and then we’re going to turn this over to some questions from the audience. Tell me a little bit about who you’re looking for for an interview. Do you set out reading the newspaper and coming up with ideas? Do you decide you want to work certain topics and put people to work to find them? What are you trying to accomplish in that two-hour block of time five days a week?

Rehm: Every morning, when I come to the studio, the five producers and I meet to discuss what might be the next day’s topic. The next day’s topic might come from a magazine article, the front page of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, or USA Today, or all of the above.

There has to be a consensus among the producers and I as to what we will do. And sometimes it is I who makes the final decision, but for the most part it is a consensus. The first hour is primarily news oriented, and we are there to try to enlarge what that topic might mean. This whole question of the food shortage and what’s behind it. Is it simply bio-fuels, is it that investors are soaking up corn futures, wheat futures, buying grains out of proportion so that there is now a shortage of food in Haiti, in parts of Africa, in parts of the world and at Sam’s Club of heaven’s sake? Those are the kinds of topics that we would deal with, and by the way, we did a program on the food shortage a few weeks ago.

In the second hour, we receive about 150 books a week. From those 150, I choose three, and it has to be a fairly rapid process. It depends on the author, depends on the publisher, it depends on the topic. Now Barbara Walters is coming on early in May. I truly look forward to talking with her. Hers is the first book she has ever written about herself. And as someone who has admired Barbara Walters for many years, that would be a book I would immediately choose. But that’s generally how it goes.

Lloyd: Are there certain particular interviews that you hold onto as unforgettable ones, ones that seem like markers of something significant happening, or something very moving happening for you?

Rehm: There are so many, but the most recent I think would be the interview I did with Mr. Rogers, who was in Pittsburgh in his own studio at the time we did the interview. He was playing the piano during it, he was voicing the voices of all the characters that we all know and love. When my children were young, I would save my ironing until the end of the day and then sit them down in front of the television, turn on Mr. Rogers, do my ironing, and they had to keep quiet.

Lloyd: It was for you.

Rehm: It was for me. It was for me. During that interview, I said, I don’t know why, but something… I said, “Mr. Rogers, what do you do when you are sad?” And there was pause and he said, “Well, I play the piano a lot.” And then he said, “And I think I’m going to be playing the piano a lot today.” And I said, “Mr. Rogers, why are you sad?” And he said, “because my stomach hurts.”

Lloyd: My stomach hurts?

Rehm: My stomach hurts. And I did not have the courage to follow up with that. Mr. Rogers was dead three months later and I had the last interview with him. But what so moved me was his tone, his beauty, his love.

He sent me, the next day, in the mail a tiny book which has a little mirror on the front of it, titled You are Special. And inside he had written, Diane, you really are special. Love, Fred Rogers. I had that book on my night stand.

Lloyd: For him, it was always a beautiful neighborhood.

Rehm: Exactly.

Lloyd: Let’s go for questions from the audience.

Davis: If you’d like to, we invite you to come forward to one of our two microphones please. Do you have a question?

Question 1: Hi. First, I confess I’m addicted to Diane Rehm, Charlie Rose, and Ted Koppel, and other such interviewers. And for those watching in St. Louis that are fans of Diane Rehm… In casual conversations, interruptions are often considered rude or even disruptive. But I notice the three of you interviewers use interruptive reflective questions, or reflective listening, to advance the conversation you’re having with the guest or the dignitary. And I’m wondering if you could expand on what are productive, helpful to the conversation, and mutual understanding interruptions, and where listener and speaker can understand there’s a dividing line…?

Rehm: Thank you for that question. One of the things that I say to guests when they come into the studio, is please feel free to talk with each other, but do not step on each other. Radio listeners hate that. I don’t like it either, and I think this goes back to childhood frankly, to parents saying to me, “You will not interrupt,” and I think that, you know, it’s part of who I am. I think that the idea of trying to advance the conversation is always in my mind. That we cannot stay where we are but have to move forward because, as I said to you the other day, talk takes time. Talk takes time.

Lloyd: I was taking notes as she was saying all of this…

Rehm: So that we need to be brief, we need to use a breath to slide in and yet allow that individual to complete the thought. And I think that that’s what makes for good conversation. Thank you for the question.

Question 1: Thank you, and I’d like to order your book.

Rehm: Good, you’ll have it in the back.

Lloyd: Yes.

Question 2: Every day you get to talk to some of the best minds in the world about fascinating topics. And I just wondered how that has impacted your thoughts about the world? Do you feel things are clearer to you now, or are things grayer the more knowledge and information you get?

Rehm: What a wonderful question. Seated here in this gorgeous structure and looking at that immense and breathtaking window, it’s hard to be discouraged, and yet I am. The more I hear—and how can any of us not hear what is happening in our election campaign—the charges, the negativity, the concentration on stupidity, the concentration on one word or one thought or one slip. A word like bitter, for heaven’s sake, makes me bitter. That we are not being led to clarification.

I have to tell you I was horrified to read in the newspaper, and yet I shouldn’t have been; I should have been smarter. I was horrified to read that the military had selected and coached individuals to go out and appear on programs like mine, to present the military’s point of view in detail. You can bet from here on out, we will be doing a lot more careful vetting of the people who come onto our program. I am discouraged about the world in many ways, but when I sit here with you and with these wonderful people who, I know, want the world to move forward, want us to have clarification on issues like health care, issues like social security, issues like the poor, and how this country is going to deal with social justice, I know we can do it. I know we can, but we need to work harder. That’s where I am. Thank you.

Question 3: Hello, I used to enjoy your show quite a bit when my work schedule was different but it’s changed, and so I haven’t been able to listen to you for awhile.

Rehm: You can hear it online.

Question 3: Okay.

Rehm: You can hear it… you can download, you can hear it in Podcasts. You can hear it anywhere you want.

Question 3: I will take that up and check into that. I was wondering: your story about how you got started in broadcasting was kind of interesting and… but as we all know, the why things used to get started many years ago is kind of a little different today for a lot of different reasons. What would you… Do you have any advice or any guidance of a young person wanted to get started doing, you know, talk show journalism like yourself, what would they do today?

Rehm: As I said earlier when I had the opportunity to begin, you had never heard of WAMU, you had barely heard of National Public Radio. National Public Radio now has the largest listening audience in the morning, larger than any broadcast network. We’re up to about 35 million listeners in this country now, and that doesn’t count for what’s around the world.

What I would say to you is that, if you have had a broad-range college education, I would urge you not to pursue a degree in broadcast journalism, but rather get the best education you possibly can. And then find a small station, a small budding station around the country, and go in there and volunteer and learn the trade.

I was, in effect, an apprentice for ten months as a volunteer before I was hired as a part-time producer, which I did for two years, and then went off to do other broadcasting, and then came back when I was hired for this job. It’s a long road, and the road is more difficult now because there are so many people involved. A pyramid at that top and, like any other good work, you have to work very hard and be willing to work without pay to get there. I hope that helps.

Question 4: Hi. I was interested in your discussion of how you made your self-doubt like as a strength for you. I didn’t really totally understand that. I wonder if you could expound on that a little.

Rehm: I don’t understand it either. Except that John kept saying, your fears are part of who you are. Turn that into your strength. Acknowledge that they are a part of who you are instead of trying to push them away. My therapist said the same thing. You have to incorporate that fear and acknowledge that that fear is within you, instead of fearing the fear. If the fear is part of who I am, it drives me, it drives me to be better and better and better every single day. Does that help?

Lloyd: I think you’re saying it’s part of you, but it’s not you.

Rehm: It’s part of me.

Lloyd: And the self-doubt is part of you that you can engage and come to terms with but there’s a bigger you that you’re integrating that into… something like that.

Rehm: Exactly, thank you for that clarification.

Lloyd: I was trying to build on that last comment as best I could. I want to step back into the public realm for a minute. That was a very moving and somewhat troubling testimony you made to us about the state of the world, and what it feels like to you, day by day, as you’re doing the work you’re doing and thinking about things.

You’ve got a pretty motivated group of people gathered here together. Would you just say two or three things off the top of your head about what people like us could/should be doing in one particular area, or in addressing the state of the world in general? Any thoughts about what we should be going out and doing tomorrow and the next day?

Rehm: The first thing I am asking every single person within listening to do is to vote. No matter how you feel about this election. Vote.

Second thing is to become involved in an issue about which you care. If it’s child health, volunteer. If it’s women’s causes, volunteer.

We’re doing a piece tomorrow that is so troubling to me. It is all about rape as an act of war in the Congo. I watched a film yesterday that took my breath away. If rape is an issue that you feel is affecting this world, do something about it. If the poor is what you are concerned about, do something about it. Don’t just talk about it. Get involved.

The other issue that is so troubling to me, and I’ve had a long conversation with a woman online who said to me on the air that, if Hilary Clinton is not the candidate, she will not vote. She and her eighty-year-old mother, she said, feel exactly the same way. She sent me an email because, after she said that on the air, I said, look, your vote is the most precious thing you own in this democracy. Do not forgo it simply because you are unhappy with who the candidate, who the nominee is. She wrote me a long email. I sent her a long email. Those are my feelings, Sam.

Vote. Get out there and work for the issue you care about. Talk about the issue. Find an issue. Contribute to that issue. Do not be a silent soldier.

Lloyd: Thank you.

Question 5: Hi, Diane. Thank you for your show. Since we are talking about the art of listening today, I would like ask you, do you apply the art of listening in your marriage? And also, what lessons have you learned in your long marriage of what makes a good marriage, stable, long lasting, a partnership?

Rehm: Stable. Long lasting. Rich relationship. If two people come from extraordinarily different backgrounds, as John and I do. John, an only child, whose doting mother concentrated totally on him. And I come from a huge family where people talk all the time. And John and I run into a situation where I talk and he doesn’t, and the silence becomes greater and greater. I end up feeling as though I have married my mother, because her silence was so great.

John and I have not had an easy marriage. We have had an extraordinarily rich relationship. The ups and downs have served us both well. They have educated us both. They have made us better human beings. Early in our marriage, we did not listen to each other. It has only been in the last twenty years that we have managed to do that. I thank God that we hung in there with lots of therapy.

Lloyd: At one point, you all even drew up a contract.

Rehm: Absolutely.

Lloyd: Why would one work out a contract with one’s spouse?

Rehm: We drew up a contract because we were very close to divorce, and we came up with the idea of a contract. The first line of which… and the contract is in our book… the first line of which is, we will not criticize each other.

It was the hardest thing I have ever done. I am a critical person, and it was very difficult for me not to criticize. I spent hours here in the Bishop’s Garden, sitting quietly by myself, trying to understand the import and the impact of what this contract meant. And it has ten points to it, but it got us through, and I can only tell you that without John Rehm, I would never have had my career, because he worked as an attorney for all those years I was at home. He encouraged me as no one else did in my venture, and yet he was the most critical person in my life.

So a marriage is like that, a marriage is rich and filled with joy. A marriage is miserable and filled with strife. But that’s what marriage is for some people, as it was for us.

Lloyd: One more question from the back.

Question 6: Good morning, Diane. I would like to hear your thoughts on today’s television role in reporting. What used to be reporting seems to be more controlling now. And I’d like to know if you feel that there is an influence in today’s TV journalism influencing rather than reporting?

Rehm: I do believe that some networks have been created—and here I’m speaking most particularly of Fox News network—have been created to ensure that there is an influence which they believe, which Roger Ailes believes, counters what he feels has been a liberal bias in the ABC, NBC, CBS networks. I also believe that we, as consumers of radio, television, newspapers, must become far more discerning in how we absorb these informational sources, and do more research on our own to find and seek a fuller picture. I… notice I did not use the word “truth.” I think it’s very difficult these days to look to any one source for truth, and that we must search more broadly, more widely, to understand how our world is moving.

Lloyd: A final very brief question and then we have to stop.

Question 7: Thank you for taking my question. In today’s world, we see that science and religion are at odds, often portrayed that way in the media, but it’s very gratifying to see that, on the climate change or environmental stewardship issue, the secular world and the religious world seems to be drawn together. I wondered if, in your perception, there are other important public issues that you see them being drawing together as well?

Rehm: The question of the morality of starvation, the question of the morality of war, the question of the morality of unbalanced resources and their use, seems to me to bring all of us together in ways that perhaps we have not seen before.

My hope is that the religious community in all its forms will continue to strengthen in places of worship such as this. I am so glad you have all come together this morning. I am thrilled to see you and know that you have strengthened me by being here today, you have helped me to understand the importance of the religious world and the scientific world. In this life, we are all apart of God’s world. Thank you. (applause)

Lloyd: I afraid we have to stop at this point. Please join us next week, when one of the finest preachers in the country, Peter Gomes from Harvard University, will be with us for this Forum.

There is coffee available in the back of the church and over to the left. I am happy to say that Diane Rehm will come back and greet people and sign some books back where the coffee is being served.

Our service begins here at 11:15. We’d love to have you for that. Thank you, Diane Rehm, for a wonderful conversation. (applause)