I remember driving, maybe 23 or 24, and stumbling onto NPR while turning the

I remember driving, maybe 23 or 24, and stumbling onto NPR while turning the dial out of boredom. I expected news. I found ideas.

Writers talking about the creative process. Historians explaining the logic of empire. Philosophers speaking calmly about questions I didn’t know people were allowed to ask.

I felt something unlock in my head. A widening. A de-centering. A realization that the world was full of people who had spent their whole lives thinking, making, questioning.

It was intoxicating.

I didn’t know people had conversations like this. Not in my world. Not in the evangelical bubble. Not in the factory breakroom.

NPR felt like a secret passageway.

A doorway I could walk through and never return from.