I’ve been going through a whole bunch of new-to-me podcasts in recent months and one of my surprise favorites was one named Slow Burn: A Podcast About Watergate. It was a miniseries of episodes featuring stories behind the story of Watergate—things related to the main story that were the lesser-known stories. I found it strangely fascinating.
Mind you, I was about 7 when Watergate actually happened, so my main reaction to it was “But I’m tired of watching the news, Dad!” I do always say, though, that by “cutting my political eye-teeth on Watergate,” I have a deeply embedded cyncism about politics. I was a little too young to see “All the President’s Men” in the movie theaters when it actually came out but I vaguely remember seeing it somewhere in my older teen or college years and finding it fairly boring and very confusing. I mostly just spent the movie appreciating Robert Redford.
After listening to Slow Burn, though, I decided I really wanted to read the book All the President’s Men so I had a better handle on the history. Honestly, I didn’t expect to be able to finish it. I thought I’d be bored silly, skim to get the gist of things, and probably end up abandoning it before the end. Instead, I was hooked. It’s not a political book so much as a journalistic who-dunnit. I loved following Woodward and Bernstein’s trains of thought, following threads, hitting dead-ends, making mistakes, and making critical discoveries sometimes almost by accident.
Fascinating.
The book honestly had me almost on the edge of my seat, even though I knew the story.
Once I finished the book, of course, I treated myself to some Redford and Hoffman. The movie wasn’t as confusing this time around. And it’s Redford and Hoffman. So there’s that.
All in all, I’m glad I just learned more about something that so totally shaped my attitudes towards politics from such a young age. It’s impossible not to see how much history repeats itself. But Redford and Hoffman. Hmm.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately—fun reading. It’s so good not to have to worry about citations and notes and just plain ol’ enjoy reading. I’ll do another blog post sometime soon about what I’ve been reading because I’ve got some recommendations!