Journey To The Edge Of Something Good
Featuring A Wavemaker Conversation with Yale historian Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century (and a cameo from Ambassador Samantha Power)
Timothy Snyder has spent many years “trying to write about some of the most atrocious things in world history.”
So it encouraged me when I saw the tagline of his newsletter: “Greetings from the edge of something good.” I met him at the edge for a Wavemaker Conversation.
Tim Snyder’s bestselling book, On Tyranny, is a palm-sized North Star for democracy.
On Tyranny provides twenty lessons for how each of us can resist authoritarianism — and each one feels doable.
The lesson that struck me the most was #12: Make eye contact and small talk.
Snyder writes:
This is not just polite. It is part of being a citizen and a responsible member of society. It is also a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down social barriers, and understand whom you should trust and should not trust.
Making eye contact and small talk seems like such a small gesture. Of a mere twenty lessons from the twentieth century, why did that make the cut?
Here’s what Snyder told me:
It's not about a glamorous form of resistance. … It's not something which is going to make the first cut … in a Hollywood movie about what totalitarianism is. But it is about totalitarianism.
He explains why in our conversation. First, more actionable intelligence.
Lesson #4: Take responsibility for the face of the world.
The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. Notice the swastikas and other signs of hate. Do not look away, and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself, and set an example for others to do so.
Why is that so important? Snyder writes:
Life is political, not because the world cares how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do. The minor choices we make are themselves a kind of vote, making it more or less likely that free and fair elections will be held in the future. In the politics of the everyday, our words and gestures, or their absence, count very much.
One more example, before we get to our conversation.
Lesson #9: Be kind to our language.
Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.
Why?
Politicians in our times feed their cliches to television, where even those who wish to disagree repeat them. … Each story on televised news is “breaking” until it is displaced by the next one. So we are hit by wave after wave but never see the ocean.
Which leads us to our Wavemaker Conversation.
I spent 17 years as a Senior Executive Producer at CNN — an organization whose DNA is dominated by breaking news. We could have used a Tim Snyder in our morning editorial meetings as we assessed what stories to pursue and why they were important.
When Snyder and I spoke recently on Zoom, it was 10pm in Austria, where he is a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences. We began with an exercise.
I screen-shared the CNN home page - live - to see which of the many waves - the breaking news stories - he considered significant.
What registered on Timothy Snyder’s Tyranny Radar?
You can listen to his reaction, and read along with the subtitles, by clicking the Vimeo link below.
We covered a lot more ground in our wide-ranging conversation, including:
The importance of rebuilding a robust local news infrastructure as a bulwark against tyranny.
The stories and books he shares with his children to impart values and teach them about the range of possibilities, good and bad, that they may face one day.
What Hank Aaron and historians have in common.
The Big Lie and how it “works on the surface” of a more foundational lie.
We also spoke about his battle to stay alive last year, in a New Haven hospital, barely able to think or move his limbs, after repeatedly being misdiagnosed.
“I was raging,” he tells me. “I was raging against dying.”
Tim Snyder has survived to reach the edge of something good.
If you feel this Wavemaker newsletter has taken you from the edge of something good— right into the heart of good territory, I hope you’ll take a moment to click subscribe now and enter your email so you can receive future newsletters automatically in your inbox.
Bonus: Samantha Power Shrinks The Change
Tim Snyder’s work identifying small tasks we can do to help shape history, reminded me of a concept I learned recently from Samantha Power, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for her book on genocide called A Problem From Hell.
When she worked in the White House, there was a time she felt she was “not making a dent.” Then she learned about “shrinking the change” — a process to “identify something small that can make a meaningful difference.
Here’s a powerful example of how that can work, from our conversation at The Nantucket Book Festival’s online series, At Home With Authors.
To buy Tim Snyder’s On Tyranny or explore his books about Stalin, and Hitler, and The Holocaust, and more, click here.
To subscribe to his newsletter, click here.
To buy Samantha Power’s memoir, The Education of an Idealist, click here.
To follow the Nantucket Book Festival, click here.
To watch the entertaining 25 minute video reel of my 25+ years in network news, click here.