S6E8: The Courage to Be Seen with John Tessitore

In this deeply reflective conversation, Norah sits down with John Tessitore — writer, editor, poet, podcaster, and advocate for the humanities — to explore the relationship between language, creativity, fear, and identity.

What begins as a discussion about writing quickly unfolds into a larger conversation about vulnerability and the courage it takes to let others truly see us. John shares how writing became the way he understands his own thoughts, why words matter in shaping public conversations, and how fear quietly influenced much of his creative life for decades.

Together, Norah and John reflect on communication across differences, the role of literature in helping people understand one another, and the ways language can either limit or liberate us. At the center of the episode is a powerful realization: sometimes the very thing we fear exposing is the thing that most deeply connects us to others.

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Transcript

00:00:00,100 --> 00:00:06,540 [Norah Jones]

[upbeat music] In six years of sharing this podcast, from the very beginning, the key item has been not so much actually the language that connects us between human beings, but actually the identity of language within ourselves. 

And that sense of who are we expressed in our language inside ourselves is actually where all communication has to start. 

This conversation with my friend and colleague, John Tessitore, a polymath of writer, poet, editor, advocate for languages and humanities, takes us on that journey of honestly looking at ourselves and thinking, how do we understand ourselves through the language we speak to ourselves? Where are our fears, our vulnerabilities? Where are we strong and creative? 

00:01:15,660 --> 00:01:37,460 [Norah Jones]

How do we understand ourselves so that we can understand others? [upbeat music] This is a wonderfully humane conversation with an amazing humane man. I know you'll enjoy this conversation with my guest, John Tessitore, and I hope that it will help you to reflect on the language that you use to reflect on yourself. John, I'm just so excited that you're my guest today. 

00:01:44,640 --> 00:01:46,620 [John Tessitore]

Oh, no, thank you. Yeah. 

00:01:46,620 --> 00:01:48,100 [Norah Jones]

This is very, very cool. 

00:01:48,100 --> 00:01:50,460 [John Tessitore]

I hope to be, I hope to be useful. [laughs] So. 

00:01:50,460 --> 00:01:54,980 [Norah Jones]

I-- you are useful just by, by breathing and being here today. And- 

00:01:54,980 --> 00:01:55,110 [John Tessitore]

Yeah 

00:01:55,110 --> 00:02:06,120 [Norah Jones]

... I'm especially excited, John, about the very things that make you, at least in your communication before we get started, kind of like, "I hope that I'm an okay guest." And the, the fact is- 

00:02:06,120 --> 00:02:06,130 [John Tessitore]

Right 

00:02:06,130 --> 00:02:22,380 [Norah Jones]

... I'm thrilled about your being the guest because you come with this depth, these multiplicities of experiences, actions, and skill sets that just, I just love even looking at your biography, which will-- is on my website- 

00:02:22,380 --> 00:02:22,390 [John Tessitore]

[laughs] 

00:02:22,390 --> 00:02:28,150 [Norah Jones]

... and with the things that you've gotten into. So if you said, "Okay, I'm John, and I wanna-" 

00:02:28,150 --> 00:02:28,150 [John Tessitore]

Right 

00:02:28,150 --> 00:02:35,160 [Norah Jones]

... introduce myself to people and let them know what I do and why I do it," what would you say about yourself? 

00:02:35,160 --> 00:02:55,940 [John Tessitore]

Yeah. I, you know, it's, [sighs] it's a funny thing because the other day, I had to send a bio to someone, a one, one-line bio, and in addition to being the executive director of NFLTA right now, which isn't actually the natural, natural progression of my career i-if you kind of look at the trajectory of it. I said that I was a writer, editor, and liberal arts advocate. 

00:02:55,940 --> 00:02:56,060 [Norah Jones]

Mm-hmm. 

00:02:56,060 --> 00:03:25,980 [John Tessitore]

And the reason why I said liberal arts advocate, which is a term I think I made up, if there is another one out there, I'd love to meet him or her, but I made it up because I was trying to make some sense of this very strange career I've had where I, I always thought that I would be a sort of paid writer. That's kind of what the training had been through college. Right out of college, I was, uh, writing for newspapers and magazines. Took a detour that was great and a little misadvised into graduate school. I thought I was gonna be a better writer. I didn't realize I was going to be a professor. Like- 

00:03:25,980 --> 00:03:25,990 [Norah Jones]

Uh-huh 

00:03:25,990 --> 00:03:28,920 [John Tessitore]

... it was, it was a different career path than I assumed it would be. 

00:03:28,920 --> 00:03:29,440 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. 

00:03:29,440 --> 00:04:07,100 [John Tessitore]

Just my own ignorance. And then for a variety of reasons, wound up in education policy outside of my own scholarship. So the trajectory is very strange, but the definition of how I see myself has always been writer first because all of those steps, that's where the focus had been, my academic scholarship. When I went into policy work, I was writing commission reports for, you know, 50-person blue ribbon commissions, the sort of consensus reports of these organizations, and then I wound up here at NFLTA, which is one part of what I do, and the rest of what I do is the editing and the writing and the advocacy work. So the writing is the through line, and everything else sort of comes out of it. 

00:04:07,100 --> 00:04:13,460 [Norah Jones]

What is it about writing that attracted your heart and attention when you got started, and where you still- 

00:04:13,460 --> 00:04:13,470 [John Tessitore]

Yeah 

00:04:13,470 --> 00:04:14,660 [Norah Jones]

... use it as a through line? 

00:04:14,660 --> 00:04:26,120 [John Tessitore]

It, I, I started seeing myself that way in private and secretly, you know, in my teens, like, you know, 14, 13, notebooks under my bed, that kind of stuff. And I think, 

00:04:27,600 --> 00:05:11,060 [John Tessitore]

I think I grew up in a big family that used to th- sort of bury me in their stories 'cause I was interested, so that was one thing, right? I was sort of trained as a young kid to be the recipient of the family stories. But the other thing is, um, and I've read several people say this, and I forget who I heard the first time, but I don't know what I think until I write it. It's just the way I conceive of the world. I literally don't understand anything until I work it out on a piece of paper. So I'm always writing. I mean, it makes it, it makes me a crazy person to watch on a 24-hour basis because there's paper everywhere coming out of everything. Even in 2026, there's paper and pencils and erasers. Uh, so those two things I think together sort of built this weird person with all the paper coming out of his pockets. 

00:05:11,060 --> 00:05:20,430 [Norah Jones]

There, those two directions are so rich in themselves, but I think I'll start with your, with your second one. "I don't know what I think until I write it." 

00:05:20,430 --> 00:05:20,460 [John Tessitore]

Yeah. 

00:05:20,460 --> 00:05:33,460 [Norah Jones]

What have you discovered about what you think, and how has the act of writing indeed allowed you to understand that? What is it about that very act that brings about that understanding? 

00:05:33,460 --> 00:06:13,615 [John Tessitore]

I don't know that anyone's ever asked me that, but as you ask, as you're asking me, I'm thinking about, I'm thinking about the word, not the Word with a capital W, but word choice, one word leading to another. That's not the right one. That's closer. That's the right one. Okay. Now I... All right, we'll build from there. You know, I'm just, uh, I'm thinking about the process of how it is to think on a page, and for me, it's... I have a-- Again, I'm, I'm a creature of a different century, I think. I have a thesaurus next to me. You know, it's, it's, it's the second version of, of this th-So I tore through the first one. So I think it's, there's a kind of... You can hear it. I speak too quickly. I move too fast. I have too many, too many thoughts at once. But I think the writing slows me down enough to make some sense of everything. 

00:06:13,616 --> 00:06:13,856 [Norah Jones]

Mm. 

00:06:13,856 --> 00:06:14,236 [John Tessitore]

Yeah. 

00:06:14,236 --> 00:06:14,466 [Norah Jones]

Slowing you down. 

00:06:14,466 --> 00:06:18,035 [John Tessitore]

Which you can hear, right? [chuckles] I'm going a mile a minute, so I need something to slow me down. 

00:06:18,036 --> 00:06:23,696 [Norah Jones]

That's interesting. And do you, you do it with a pencil and paper, pen and paper versus, say, typing it? 

00:06:23,696 --> 00:06:36,816 [John Tessitore]

Yeah. I... So it depends. Uh, I, I, I still start with a, with literally a pencil and paper. I know, I mean, there's nobody on the planet that buys pencils, but I buy pencils. But sometimes I'm, my brain's going too fast for the pencil, and then the keyboard's back. 

00:06:36,816 --> 00:06:36,956 [Norah Jones]

Mm. 

00:06:36,956 --> 00:06:39,616 [John Tessitore]

Ultimately, it all, it all winds up on a keyboard, but sometimes I'll start. 

00:06:39,616 --> 00:06:39,926 [Norah Jones]

Mm-hmm. 

00:06:39,926 --> 00:06:45,456 [John Tessitore]

Again, maybe just to slow it down, maybe just to slow this whole process down a little bit. Yeah, yeah. 

00:06:45,456 --> 00:06:45,866 [Norah Jones]

Now, you were talking about- 

00:06:45,866 --> 00:06:46,716 [John Tessitore]

So I think- 

00:06:46,716 --> 00:06:48,156 [Norah Jones]

Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, go ahead. 

00:06:48,156 --> 00:07:01,056 [John Tessitore]

No, no, no, no, no, not at all. No, I, so I think at the end, I didn't-- Like I said, I've never, nobody's ever really asked me that before, but I, as I'm thinking about it, the kind of jittery energy that could be a detriment is the thing I think I fight by writing. 

00:07:01,056 --> 00:07:11,476 [Norah Jones]

Hmm. What is the strength of jittery action in your life historically? And what is potentially the drawback that you are working with when you slow yourself down? 

00:07:11,476 --> 00:07:23,756 [John Tessitore]

I, well, I think I get a lot done in a day. [chuckles] I don't think I slow down. You know, in a, in a day with NFMLTA, I'll-- I'm a one-man show there, um, in that work. Um, 

00:07:25,316 --> 00:07:41,906 [John Tessitore]

that means that I'm the social media guy, the budget guy, the, you know, the, the writer of all the checks, the manager of all the committees, and I'll do all of that in one, you know, in a couple of hours. So I have a pretty big capacity for work and pretty good work ethic, but I can overload very quickly in the sense of, like- 

00:07:41,906 --> 00:07:41,906 [Norah Jones]

Mm 

00:07:41,906 --> 00:07:43,736 [John Tessitore]

... running past myself. 

00:07:43,736 --> 00:07:43,796 [Norah Jones]

Ah. 

00:07:43,796 --> 00:07:55,136 [John Tessitore]

I can get a lot done, but not with any thought sometimes. And so I, I do think, as I'm thinking about this with you right now, which I actually appreciate quite a bit, I do think that might be why I rely so heavily on my notebooks. 

00:07:56,916 --> 00:07:59,666 [Norah Jones]

Very interesting. Thanks for the reflection in front of us. 

00:07:59,666 --> 00:07:59,666 [John Tessitore]

Sure. 

00:07:59,666 --> 00:08:37,446 [Norah Jones]

Uh, and, and, and interiorly. When you work with words, you have this thesaurus that is right next to you as we talk. You have therefore a sense of the searching for the exact word. In your work as a journalist, as a poet, as a person that's been doing a variety of kind of writings and still does, including these kinds of organizational works, what is it like to be a, a man of words and language in that way in a world where potentially people are not necessarily valuing the individual word that they say? 

00:08:37,446 --> 00:08:37,476 [John Tessitore]

Yeah. 

00:08:37,476 --> 00:08:39,276 [Norah Jones]

Or am I overstating it? 

00:08:39,276 --> 00:09:25,786 [John Tessitore]

No. And I don't, I also don't wanna overstate it 'cause th- that puts me in, in this position of having some kind of wisdom, which I do not have. But I do think that we rely on the same... I, I do think I notice that we rely on the same words quite often, the same phrases, and sometimes the same explanations, the same thought patterns. I do think that's something I kind of pick up. I don't necessarily escape it, but I, I do pick it up, and it's one of the things that sort of I, I, I'm thinking about a lot right now, um, in terms of the advocacy work, right? So I said liberal arts advocate. It's a term I made up. But part of what I think I'm noticing, having done it for 20 years in this field in some way, is that we kind of allow the conversation to define us rather than to define the conversation, which is a weird position for people who- 

00:09:25,786 --> 00:09:25,786 [Norah Jones]

Mm 

00:09:25,786 --> 00:09:46,696 [John Tessitore]

... work with words all day to, to allow themselves to be in. But so i- it's fu- it's a funny question that you ask because I've been thinking a lot about this, how we're kind of on our heels at the mercy of the conversation as we find it, rather than on our toes finding the conversation for ourselves. That's been something that I've been very frustrated with in this particular field of work for a long time. So maybe that's the, 

00:09:47,876 --> 00:09:50,096 [John Tessitore]

maybe that's the place where I see it most clearly. Yeah. 

00:09:50,096 --> 00:10:11,396 [Norah Jones]

That's interesting. That's such a rich answer, and I'm delighted to hear it. And one of the images I get from what you've just said is standing still while there's this swirling around us, or maybe sometimes a wave that wants to wash over us and wash us away almost. That may be an image that you want to repair with your skill set. 

00:10:11,396 --> 00:10:11,666 [John Tessitore]

Yeah. 

00:10:11,666 --> 00:10:22,436 [Norah Jones]

The idea of how words can help you, you or all, and all of us, to get that conversation wrangled a little bit. Again, you re- 

00:10:22,436 --> 00:10:22,476 [John Tessitore]

Yeah 

00:10:22,476 --> 00:10:25,216 [Norah Jones]

... you repair what I'm asking you as you desire, okay? 

00:10:25,216 --> 00:10:47,896 [John Tessitore]

Yeah, no, I, I, I understand what you're saying. I mean, I think... So, you know, maybe I'm moving the conversation to a topic we don't necessarily want to go to, but in this, in this way of thinking about the liberal arts in 2026, for example, or a broad education or humanism in 2026, I find that the conversation has been, I don't wanna say co-opted, it's been directed by people other than the people doing the work, right? 

00:10:47,896 --> 00:10:48,396 [Norah Jones]

Hmm. 

00:10:48,396 --> 00:11:18,036 [John Tessitore]

So the people doing the work, the teachers of the disciplines of the liberal arts and the humanities, for example, are not defining the conversation they're, they're in right now. And we have all kinds of statistics about how much trouble we're having with this notion of a broad education and how, you know, small colleges are closing and universities are cutting programs, and we know all of those sort of practical things on the ground that happen. And we're living in a definition of education created externally by business- 

00:11:18,036 --> 00:11:18,046 [Norah Jones]

Ah 

00:11:18,046 --> 00:12:10,156 [John Tessitore]

... by financial concerns of the university, by parents who are afraid that their students won't have a, a great first job, let alone the fifth job or the sixth job. It's become a conversation that we're responding to, and that's something that to me is a language conversation in a lot of ways. It's our, as a field, as a discipline, as a, as a, as a culture, our inability to take the skills that we're supposed to be teaching, right, communication skills, and failing to use them [chuckles] for ourselves. And so as a person who's thinking about words all day, I keep... You get on LinkedIn, and you see these conversations going on about what are the skills that, that employer is looking for in 2026, and that's the conversation that everybody has. College presidents, professors have to have it, students have, everybody has to have that conversation. Instead of coming the other way, which is, "Here's what we really do." We all know what we really do. We don't, we don't necessarily do all of that. We do this other thing, right? 

00:12:10,156 --> 00:12:10,356 [Norah Jones]

Yeah.

00:12:11,060 --> 00:12:18,350 [John Tessitore]

And I don't want to-- I don't want... Maybe too soon in this conversation to start telling us what we do, but, but you can-- you know what I'm trying to get at here. It's, it's like- 

00:12:18,350 --> 00:12:18,600 [Norah Jones]

Mm-hmm 

00:12:18,600 --> 00:12:21,600 [John Tessitore]

... we'll play that game. Well, who's playing our game, right? 

00:12:21,600 --> 00:12:21,950 [Norah Jones]

Yes. 

00:12:21,950 --> 00:12:37,620 [John Tessitore]

And when I-- So when I, when I, when I go back to the language, I'm always bothered that the language isn't mine. It's not ours. It's somebody else's that I have to adopt. So I think that's the, that's the struggle I have culturally. I'm trying to clear a path through somebody else's refuse. 

00:12:37,620 --> 00:12:53,140 [Norah Jones]

That sense of being reactive. Response is one thing, reaction is another, and this reactive defensive position that often seems to take place. But no, really, we're, we're good for the planet, uh, somewhere. We're good for- 

00:12:53,140 --> 00:12:53,320 [John Tessitore]

Right 

00:12:53,320 --> 00:13:06,600 [Norah Jones]

... we're good for society. So what is the stand that you stand in, John? What is our conversation? What is our word? What is our language about what it is we really do? 

00:13:06,600 --> 00:13:44,340 [John Tessitore]

Yeah. So, and there's the trouble, right? Because now you-- I already said I have no particular wisdom, but the thing that I, I, I, I, the thing that I keep in my head and that I've been frustrated that we've been unable to say, [clears throat] excuse me, unable to say very clearly, in, again, my experience is, uh, 20 years of trying to, to do this work is really simple, right? It's very simple. It gets down to, like, really basic things, like we have a duty to understand each other and communicate across our differences, right? That's basic. We have a duty to understand each other, communicate across the differences. So that seems a foundation for education that's pretty strong and that lasts a lifetime, right? 

00:13:44,340 --> 00:13:44,600 [Norah Jones]

Mm-hmm. 

00:13:44,600 --> 00:14:18,200 [John Tessitore]

It's not so much here's the skill that, you know, in 20 years, you probably won't need that skill, and this one's gonna be a... AI just wiped out all the computer programmers, so that's gone. But we've forgotten that sort of really basic part. You read books to understand the past or the present or the future. And they don't necessarily have to be in paper. Mine usually are, but that's 'cause I'm a man of a different century. But, but that conversation seems very quiet right now to me, that, that we're basically trying to understand each other and communicate across differences. This is why the language field is so crucial- 

00:14:18,200 --> 00:14:18,320 [Norah Jones]

Yeah 

00:14:18,320 --> 00:14:28,160 [John Tessitore]

... um, and why it's so very difficult to replace, however much we might try. So that's-- it's-- So again, my whole buildup gets to a very basic kind of solution, which isn't... 

00:14:29,280 --> 00:14:46,660 [John Tessitore]

But it, it, it's a conversation that's missing, and it's very strange that it's missing. I was the head staffer of a major national humanities commission, the last big com-- humanities commission, requested bipartisan, uh, a bipartisan request from Congress, which- 

00:14:46,660 --> 00:14:46,790 [Norah Jones]

Wow 

00:14:46,790 --> 00:14:56,829 [John Tessitore]

... today would seem absurd. But this was only in two... We got the call in, I guess, oof, 2012 or 2013. It's not that long ago- 

00:14:56,829 --> 00:14:56,829 [Norah Jones]

No 

00:14:56,829 --> 00:15:22,560 [John Tessitore]

... where we got the letters requesting this commission to think about the humanities and social sciences for the future of America. And we put together, uh, this is, this is when I was working at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and we put together a commission. It had to be 54 people, but very prominent, lots of household names. George Lucas was an active member of the commission, and Yo-Yo Ma was in and out, and Ken Burns would do a couple of things for us, and John Lithgow was a spokesperson for us quite often. 

00:15:22,600 --> 00:15:22,609 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. 

00:15:22,609 --> 00:15:58,980 [John Tessitore]

But also scholars and university presidents and college presidents and scientists and the CEO of Boeing. And so you put all of those people together in a room, and we-- they really did come. They really did sit in a room. And you sort of have to give everybody a little bit of a say in the report, right? So everybody gets a, a piece. So they're good for business, and they're good for these skills and soft skills and international and soft power. All of that sort of winds up in there because you have these people, and everybody needs to have their voice heard. And it was very, very hard to come to, like, a, like, the sentence I just said, which is we just need to communicate and understand each other. 

00:15:58,980 --> 00:15:59,300 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. 

00:15:59,300 --> 00:16:45,020 [John Tessitore]

Like, it was very hard to get there because everybody had fears and concerns. Everybody had their own issues they wanted to deal with. President of an Ivy League college walked, university walked in on the first day and said, "I need to tell parents who wanna know when their kids are studying the humanities what they're getting." This is a president of an Ivy League university. So it was a very odd place. It was the people who create opinion. It was all the thought makers sitting there not understanding how to talk about the very basic thing that we all did as on a daily basis. And so ever since that experience, I've been trying to find the simpler version, the simpler version that didn't, didn't require a war to explain, for example. It didn't require the fact that Boeing wanted to build more planes. The simpler version of the story. We forgot that part. [chuckles] 

00:16:45,020 --> 00:16:45,240 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. 

00:16:46,360 --> 00:17:14,040 [Norah Jones]

Well, simplicity has such, such vast explosive, frankly, power. I don't mean destructive. I mean that it's an important thing to keep in mind, but sometimes folks run away from it. Well, I'm going to actually go back to that amazing word that you used, duty, a duty to understand each other. I would love for you to hear more from you about the thoughts that are around that particular phrase, how that-- 

00:17:16,040 --> 00:17:36,390 [Norah Jones]

how the language, even of that group of people that came from those different talents, they had their own kind of language, depending on, on their career and what brought them to that career. But how it is that we, if we have a duty to understand each other, how that unfolds in a world that we have. 

00:17:36,390 --> 00:18:18,862 [John Tessitore]

I think it, that word, and I, I've been using that word, so it's, it's the right one to poke at, but I think it comes from... When I-- Well, my own experience as a, as a teacher and a person who used to be in a classroom in a college, right? And I loved it. I didn't leave academia for, for, for lack of passion. I think that word was how I justified standing in front of these people every day. They were young. Not, not much young, [chuckles] not young, much younger than I was at the time. And justifying to myself why it was important, for example, that everybody was reading, I don't know, Thoreau in my class, right? Thoreau's dead 100 years. Even in his lifetime, very few people read him.It's kind of a crank. Like, what's the point, right? 

00:18:18,862 --> 00:18:18,912 [Norah Jones]

Mm-hmm. 

00:18:18,912 --> 00:19:11,212 [John Tessitore]

And, and, and I, I know, I knew sort of in my bones that there was something there to, to pull out, right? There was something there that we could all use. And so, um, I think that where I, I, I, I used to look around the classroom and think, "Well, what I'm doing here is helping them think through things for themselves." And that's important for education, obviously. That's what we all try to do for education. Things f- we help them think through things for themselves. But that the end goal has to be something. They think through th- they, they think through things for themselves for what purpose, right? And I don't... I was never comfortable teaching Thoreau because it was good for business, right? [chuckles] I, I was never comfortable teaching Thoreau because there was a specific skill that you were gonna come out at the end of and you were gonna have this thing that I had helped you find. That wasn't gonna be... There had to be something else, right? Had to be, it had to be something other than... They used to call it the instrumental. Even something as basic as a skill, forget instrumental. Even something- 

00:19:11,212 --> 00:19:11,632 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. 

00:19:11,632 --> 00:20:02,442 [John Tessitore]

I couldn't tell you what that was. But I could tell you that you might see things a little differently, right? You might understand something a little differently. You might, you might understand, for example, you might see a protest on the street one day and not be disgusted because you know that civil disobedience has a purpose and what it is and why you do it. F- just for, as an example. So it's the, the duty is the understanding. The duty we have to each other here in the classroom, but also when we go back in the world is, is, is to get past the fast judgment and get to the, get to the understanding. Um, so I think that's where it came from. I think the word, when I, when I say that, I think that word comes from my sense of what we were doing in the classroom when I was still teaching and why that was important. We have a duty to understand each other. Now, we live in an age of manipulation. That's very clear. And so I feel that duty even more strongly now, although I don't know that I have the right. I don't have the, the platform the way I did. [chuckles] 

00:20:02,442 --> 00:20:02,692 [Norah Jones]

Mm, mm, mm. 

00:20:02,692 --> 00:20:14,792 [John Tessitore]

I don't have classrooms full of kids. But I still try to hold onto a little bit. I, you know, if you've seen some of the writing I do publicly and stuff, I mean, I still try to hold onto that a little bit. Not so much that I'm telling anybody what to think, but to help people think through- 

00:20:14,792 --> 00:20:14,952 [Norah Jones]

Mm-hmm 

00:20:14,952 --> 00:20:19,492 [John Tessitore]

... and not be manipulated. [chuckles] To think through for themselves, so. I don't know if I've answered that question well or not. 

00:20:19,492 --> 00:21:21,732 [Norah Jones]

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And not to be manipulated. Okay, so here's a, here's a little etymological moment. When we talk about relationship, that relatio, the coming next to, coming beside, being with, in a culture where people are, in a way that you described very visually just a few minutes ago, that sense of this, this, this sea around us or this volatility around us that's very much oriented towards the individual discovering themselves, the individual discovering the, doing their skill set, the individual promoting themselves. Not that we've not done that before, but that sense of overwhelmingly so. And when you talk about the duty we have to each other or building relationships or the ways that we communicate that bring us side by side with others, we have a language there that's very different. And from the way you did your introduction even about the idea of we trying to have the conversation to be able to say, "This is of value, 

00:21:22,952 --> 00:21:27,872 [Norah Jones]

and here's why." There's, there's a, a bunch of ideas I just [chuckles] threw out there, Jon, that maybe- 

00:21:27,872 --> 00:21:28,012 [John Tessitore]

Yeah 

00:21:28,012 --> 00:21:34,752 [Norah Jones]

... you want to wrangle that together in a sense that the language that we use presupposes some value 

00:21:36,152 --> 00:21:39,332 [Norah Jones]

of the connections. How do we make sure- 

00:21:39,332 --> 00:21:39,342 [John Tessitore]

Yeah 

00:21:39,342 --> 00:21:45,342 [Norah Jones]

... that our language that we use helps people to understand that without feeling bad about the kinds of things that they're engaged in? 

00:21:45,342 --> 00:21:45,392 [John Tessitore]

Right. 

00:21:45,392 --> 00:21:46,352 [Norah Jones]

Or if n- 

00:21:46,352 --> 00:21:46,572 [John Tessitore]

Right. Right, right 

00:21:46,572 --> 00:21:55,572 [Norah Jones]

... maybe that emotional thing is not what I'm looking for here, understanding why it is we would stand in a slightly different place or to talk to them about value. 

00:21:55,572 --> 00:21:57,872 [John Tessitore]

Yeah. It's a dan- So that's the danger of, 

00:21:59,612 --> 00:22:13,972 [John Tessitore]

that's the danger of being a writer or poet. The danger is that, again, we, uh, the position assumes a kind of wisdom. It's not a, it's not a, it's not a democratic position to stand in, right? 

00:22:13,972 --> 00:22:14,052 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. 

00:22:14,052 --> 00:22:50,642 [John Tessitore]

It's, it's a... It's, it's not as bad as being a comedian who stands in front of the, you know, 500 people and says, "Listen to me and only me." But it's n- it's not exactly a, a... But, you know, when, when I was doing my research, my research was about Walt Whitman. I talked about Thoreau, but my research was actually about Walt Whitman. Um, and something I'm writing about, but I always write about it, so it's just a constant in my life. His poem, "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," is probably my favorite poem. And the reason why I bring it up is because he ha- there's, there's, uh, several lines throughout the poem where he, he says it once, but there are a bunch of things he does throughout the poem. He says, "I see you face to face." Right? "I see you face to face." And he's talking about 

00:22:52,192 --> 00:23:13,302 [John Tessitore]

the commute from Brooklyn to Manhattan in 1856, which was on a ferry. It was before the Brooklyn Bridge. It's a commute that my family took every day when I was a kid. So he was imagining future commuters. That was the, the whole... "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" is about imagining people who, who've done this in the past are gonna do it in the future. And he says I... And he says, "I see you face to face." He says it to the reader. 

00:23:13,302 --> 00:23:13,422 [Norah Jones]

Oh. 

00:23:13,422 --> 00:23:40,472 [John Tessitore]

"I see you face to face." He's l- so he's literally, like, including you in this act, right? And it's this extraordinary gesture of sympathy, empathy. I've never, I'm never quite sure which one. I think this one is sympathy. But of understanding that not only are you and I, an isola- not only as you're going across the East River into Manhattan from Brooklyn, but you're not an isolated visual, uh, individual through time. [chuckles] It's like this very strange cosmic moment. 

00:23:40,472 --> 00:23:40,952 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. 

00:23:40,952 --> 00:24:34,720 [John Tessitore]

And so when you ask about words and language sort of knitting together community, I went straight to that, "I see you face to face." Mostly because I write about it all the time. I quote it constantly. I'm writing about it now. But that's, that's the understanding. It's not so much the seeing face to-- It's the understanding. The understanding is you probably need some cash, so you have to leave home and go to New York and make some, come home. That means you probably got a house. You probably got a family. You might have some bills to pay, maybe some debts. You're gonna have to do this tomorrow, which sucks, and you probably don't wanna do that. But I'm sorry, you have to wake up in the morning and do it again. Like, that's enough right there [chuckles] for a writer to have ever accomplished, right? To be able to see that we're all in that part of it together. The trick isYou know, you're always in the position of manipulating at some point, right? [chuckles] We're, we're all going to have to do a little bit of advertising and cajoling, and there's a little bit of a sleight of hand. But those kinds of gestures are where I think-- 

00:24:35,740 --> 00:24:42,240 [John Tessitore]

that's how I see literature doing the work of community, right? Stuff like that. It's those kinds of moments. 

00:24:42,240 --> 00:24:47,700 [Norah Jones]

That's very powerful. What about your own writing? How do you then incorporate- 

00:24:47,700 --> 00:24:47,710 [John Tessitore]

Yeah 

00:24:47,710 --> 00:24:50,780 [Norah Jones]

... this into what you write, including your poetry? 

00:24:50,780 --> 00:25:00,420 [John Tessitore]

Yeah. So I told you I, I hid most of my writing until I, I was 14 or 13 or whatever. I hid it forever. I hid it until my mid-40s. 

00:25:00,420 --> 00:25:01,000 [Norah Jones]

Wow. 

00:25:01,000 --> 00:25:27,919 [John Tessitore]

Which is very embarrassing to admit now, 'cause I don't know what kept me. I mean, I, I had been public with the creative writing off and on in spurts, but never sort of had a website and said, "This is my stuff. Everybody can find it," you know? Never did that before. And it took me a minute to get my bearings as a person who was suddenly at this late date sort of exposed. But what-- the weird thing was, I th- I don't know what I was hiding. I'm gonna get to your-- I'm gonna get to an answer to the question. I promise. 

00:25:27,920 --> 00:25:29,620 [Norah Jones]

No, you're, you're on it. You're on it. 

00:25:29,620 --> 00:25:43,400 [John Tessitore]

I'm gonna get to... I, I don't know what I was hiding, but I got out, and it was suddenly available, and don't you know, family members found it. Like, I didn't tell them. I didn't go around, but they found it. And I didn't know that anybody knew I was- 

00:25:43,460 --> 00:25:43,470 [Norah Jones]

Mm 

00:25:43,470 --> 00:25:56,100 [John Tessitore]

... doing such things on the side. And an older cousin said to me one day, "Oh, there he is, the poet," right? I walked into a room. And I thought, "Oh, boy. Here we go. This is my big fear. 47 years of fear, here it comes." And he goes, "It was about time." 

00:25:57,160 --> 00:25:57,680 [Norah Jones]

Wow. 

00:25:57,680 --> 00:26:36,320 [John Tessitore]

The next thing he said was, "It was about time." And I was just-- I was dumbfounded by it. And I realized that at least in the, the poem world, in the poetry world, the openness was okay. It was acceptable to be sort of open and to... In fact, it was the good part. The good part was the part that people wanted to see and feel and associate with, or at least commiserate with. Maybe it's just misery loves company. Who the hell knows? But, but it's, it's-- it was okay. And, and being that kind of a writer was okay. And even if it went in a direction that I, uh, you know, I being my family, for example, even if it went in a direction I'm uncomfortable with, I understand that's the process. That's the game you play. It's okay. Like, people understood that, which I- 

00:26:36,320 --> 00:26:36,640 [Norah Jones]

Wow 

00:26:36,640 --> 00:27:33,200 [John Tessitore]

... had no way of predicting. So there's, there's that part, and then that opened up the rest of what I was doing. And it is actually when I combined the two, when I allowed my professional life and the creative life to sort of come together, which I still kept separate even after I'd started. When I allowed those two things to come together, then it was really okay because now it seemed to help on both ends, right? It seemed to help that my professional associates knew that I was a creative writer and the creative people knew I wasn't just a beatnik bum, you know? Um, and it, [chuckles] and it was okay to be those things. And they actually self-- they were reinforcing. But it was hard. And so to get back to the, to get back to the question, I, I think what happened was I realized the kind of exposure was the part that was the useful part. That was the useful part. And nobody cares about my theories about life and the world or my philosophy of linguistics or whatever. They cared about the exposure, which was frightening and still is sometimes, but it seems to be stronger. It seems like a stronger foundation than if I hadn't. 

00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:40,600 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. That's-- and you see, and it's that relationship. And it's interesting, it was through poetry first, yeah? Do you think that- 

00:27:40,600 --> 00:27:41,290 [John Tessitore]

Yeah 

00:27:41,290 --> 00:27:51,860 [Norah Jones]

... the nature of poetry is such that, as you actually mentioned it, the exposure through poetry has a different feel about it from the sound of what you just expressed. 

00:27:51,860 --> 00:28:37,440 [John Tessitore]

Yeah, it did 'cause I, I, I was writing, I was-- Out of college, I was writing fiction. At one point, I had a fiction agent in New York. The story of that manuscript, it, it'll take another podcast, but that was when I was, I was younger, and I had an agent for fiction. And nobody blinked. It wasn't even-- It was fiction, you know? But there's something about the, the, the poem, the, this weird thing that very few people read, but our assumption is that it's gonna be personal even when it's also fiction. There's something about the genre that seems revealing in a way that's different. Even if you wrote an autobiographical novel, you write a weird poem, people go, "Ooh," you know. "He's revealing something," you know? So yeah, I think there is definitely something there that's a different-- that has to do with genre. But it, it may be just more, more the way people receive it. It doesn't necessarily mean that the writing is any different, but the- 

00:28:37,440 --> 00:28:37,489 [Norah Jones]

No, but- 

00:28:37,489 --> 00:28:38,780 [John Tessitore]

... the reception's different 

00:28:38,780 --> 00:28:50,430 [Norah Jones]

... but the way they receive it is there's sort of a, if perhaps I'm overstating it here, but a kind of a, an expectation that one will receive poetry in a different way from, say, nonfiction or even fiction- 

00:28:51,820 --> 00:28:51,950 [John Tessitore]

Yeah 

00:28:51,950 --> 00:28:55,040 [Norah Jones]

... or an editorial column in the, in the paper. 

00:28:56,480 --> 00:28:56,780 [John Tessitore]

Yeah. 

00:28:56,780 --> 00:28:56,940 [Norah Jones]

Is- 

00:28:56,940 --> 00:28:58,880 [John Tessitore]

Memoir. Even memoir. 

00:28:58,880 --> 00:28:59,980 [Norah Jones]

Memoir. Interesting. Okay. 

00:28:59,980 --> 00:29:29,759 [John Tessitore]

I have a Substack account where I write little thing, you know, I write some little articles on the Substack account because it reinforces the poems, which reinforce the pod. It was all, it all grew. It all ballooned. But a memoir-y piece on Substack doesn't feel like anything for some reason. I can say, you know, "My dad said this, and my mother said this, and here's my sisters," and it doesn't feel... But you write that same thing in a poem, and people respond a little differently, and that's a very strange feeling. But the idea that it happened first, that I was more public that way first- 

00:29:29,760 --> 00:29:29,900 [Norah Jones]

Mm-hmm 

00:29:29,900 --> 00:29:31,540 [John Tessitore]

... made everything else much easier. 

00:29:31,540 --> 00:29:47,300 [Norah Jones]

Uh, it's sort of toughened you up there, realizing that. That was a, that was a huge moment, clearly. You can hear it in your voice that here was this opportunity. Suddenly, there's this exposure, and it turned out to be about, it's about time. 

00:29:47,300 --> 00:30:08,060 [John Tessitore]

Yeah. And it was a big deal for me to get over a fear that I don't-- I couldn't even name for decades. But, you know, the, the second leap, and it's not that long. It's, it really is, it's not that long ago. The second leap where I allowed all these things to cross, where, where I allowed, not so much that I want my professional life to be about my poems. That's not what I'm meaning. 

00:30:08,060 --> 00:30:08,300 [Norah Jones]

Mm-hmm. 

00:30:08,300 --> 00:30:21,780 [John Tessitore]

But I didn't hide it. Like, when I stopped hiding it and allowed the energy of one kind of creativity to, to branch over into the other kind of creativity, I noticed something happened that was different in my work and in my, in my creative life. And that was- 

00:30:21,780 --> 00:30:21,790 [Norah Jones]

You have- 

00:30:21,790 --> 00:30:23,715 [John Tessitore]

... that was really somethingYeah. 

00:30:23,716 --> 00:30:26,356 [Norah Jones]

I would like you to do two things. One is I'd like you to- 

00:30:26,356 --> 00:30:26,636 [John Tessitore]

Mm-hmm 

00:30:26,636 --> 00:30:39,816 [Norah Jones]

... riff a little bit more on that sentence that you just finished up, and that was, that was really important. That was really meaningful. And how that might be a recommendation of some kind, an insight of some kind- 

00:30:39,816 --> 00:30:39,826 [John Tessitore]

Yeah 

00:30:39,826 --> 00:30:51,456 [Norah Jones]

... to those that are listening. What is it that your experiences there, what you just said, can help people to understand maybe some freedom through language that they might not- 

00:30:51,456 --> 00:30:51,586 [John Tessitore]

Yes 

00:30:51,586 --> 00:30:51,596 [Norah Jones]

... have yet experienced? 

00:30:51,596 --> 00:31:04,336 [John Tessitore]

I think that's right. Sorry. Sorry about that. I think that's right. I think, I think... I'm sorry. Let me just see if I can s- you go to edit, so let me see if I can stop this from happening. No texts please. This is my daughter. 

00:31:04,336 --> 00:31:04,856 [Norah Jones]

Mm-hmm. 

00:31:04,856 --> 00:31:24,206 [John Tessitore]

Okay. So I think, think that what happened was I-- I think freedom is the important part of what you said. It was a freedom that I suddenly had access to that I didn't have before, and it's because I got found out, right? People find just, uh... Ultimately, people are gonna find you 'cause it's 2026, and you can't hide it forever. You can't hide anything forever, right? [chuckles] 

00:31:24,206 --> 00:31:24,746 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. 

00:31:24,746 --> 00:31:55,566 [John Tessitore]

And I got found out, and again, like my cousin, it was okay. It wasn't, it wasn't a, "How, uh, how do you do these things?" or, "Why would you..." It wasn't that. I was afraid of that reaction coming into my work life, and so I kept them very separate. And then, uh, it didn't happen that way. It was more like, "Hey, that was pretty interesting. What do you think of this other topic?" Right? It started a conversation on the other end. When it started a conversation, I thought, "Well, now I'm depriving myself of this conversation that I could be having, that I'm not having 'cause I'm keeping everything so siloed." 

00:31:55,566 --> 00:31:55,575 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. 

00:31:55,576 --> 00:32:08,556 [John Tessitore]

I'm not actually having these conversations because I've locked them down, all of them, and I, I, I can't, I can't function that way anymore. Literally, I'm running out of road, right? In both things, in my creative life and my professional life, I'm running out of road 'cause I'm, 

00:32:09,776 --> 00:32:51,536 [John Tessitore]

I'm, I'm separating them apart. So when I can bring them together, it was a, it was a freedom, but it was a confidence thing. It was o- it was okay to think a little differently now, a little bit. It was okay to use art in my professional life or, or bring an essay that I had written as a conference presentation into the creative world and go, "Hey, you guys who like books, here's a thing that I just did with this other thing. You might like this, too." Now you're starting to become a sort of person rather than [chuckles] what I had been for so long, which is a kind of persona over here and a sort of persona over here. Now I'm a person in a way that I hadn't been, and that's not... Nora, that's not that long. That's a very recent... I'm a 51-year-old man. That's a very recent achievement- 

00:32:51,536 --> 00:32:52,416 [Norah Jones]

Interesting 

00:32:52,416 --> 00:33:01,926 [John Tessitore]

... where, [chuckles] you know, where, where I wasn't blocking these things off. I mean, r- here we are. You're a language scholar. I'm running a language organization. We haven't even talked about languages. 

00:33:01,926 --> 00:33:02,436 [Norah Jones]

[laughs] 

00:33:02,436 --> 00:33:06,636 [John Tessitore]

Right? I mean, that, that's brand new in my life, right? [chuckles] 

00:33:06,636 --> 00:33:06,996 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. 

00:33:08,816 --> 00:33:19,726 [John Tessitore]

So yeah, there's a lesson there for sure. Now, it also makes me different from other people I know. Other people have other things that make them different from other people they know. This is the thing that makes me slightly different from other people I know. There's a, 

00:33:20,936 --> 00:33:42,156 [John Tessitore]

there's a, there's a poem in this journal that nobody reads, and I read it on a podcast that I do that, you know, very few people listen to, so I'm available to all of this stu- you know, I'm available out in the public and, and I have a Substack account that very few people subscribe to and, and they can read the essay based on the poem, based on the podcast, and all of a sudden, i- it's not a big audience, but it's a full experience. 

00:33:42,156 --> 00:33:42,606 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. 

00:33:42,606 --> 00:33:45,176 [John Tessitore]

And that's new. That's, like, very new. [chuckles] 

00:33:45,176 --> 00:33:45,676 [Norah Jones]

And, and isn't it- 

00:33:45,676 --> 00:33:50,016 [John Tessitore]

And it's embarrassing to be 51 and have been struggling for so long to find it, 

00:33:51,296 --> 00:34:01,556 [John Tessitore]

and now you're s- almost starting at ground zero because only at 50, 51, only at 50 or 51, at f- 49 did I even have access to that world. 

00:34:01,556 --> 00:34:08,116 [Norah Jones]

But you have a freedom and a joy that is, in its own way, 

00:34:10,056 --> 00:34:23,876 [Norah Jones]

that we're sharing here, um, and I, and I know through the, through the various productions that you provide, that is a real guidepost for people that may not yet have discovered their freedom at no matter what age they are, so that works. 

00:34:23,876 --> 00:34:24,496 [John Tessitore]

Yeah. 

00:34:24,496 --> 00:34:25,096 [Norah Jones]

That works. 

00:34:25,096 --> 00:34:47,036 [John Tessitore]

Yeah. Yeah. Again, I, you know, and I-- it wasn't for lack of aspiration to have a more well-rounded experience, but fear is a big deal. Fear is a, fear is hard to get over, especially when you can't really even name it, and you can't even tell, "What, what exactly am I afraid here?" I, I couldn't even tell you what that would be. It was just, there's something unseemly about this. I don't know what it is. I'm, 

00:34:48,056 --> 00:35:04,096 [John Tessitore]

I- I'm just gonna block it off, right? And, uh, and again, wh- when [chuckles] my cousin walked into that room, it was a big deal because he... This is an older cousin, a guy you look up to, and I thought, "Oh, he's gonna, he's gonna hammer me. Oh, this is gonna get, this is gonna get nasty." And instead he goes, "Yeah, it's about time." 

00:35:04,096 --> 00:35:04,396 [Norah Jones]

That's something. 

00:35:04,396 --> 00:35:25,156 [John Tessitore]

And I thought, "Oh, they all know. Everybody knows." On some level, everybody knows I have other stuff going on. I didn't know that they knew that, [chuckles] and that was a really a big, that's really a big deal. And it is a l- I do think it's a lesson. I just don't-- We're not, we're not seeing the end of it. We're just seeing it in the early days, really. But, but there is something there. I mean, I've passed it on to others. I can tell you that. [chuckles] 

00:35:25,156 --> 00:35:36,256 [Norah Jones]

Well, I'm, I'm gonna con- go- keep going back to the fact that through, uh, through the types of ways that you have been, you are using language, there was a fear 

00:35:37,716 --> 00:35:39,396 [Norah Jones]

of exposure- 

00:35:39,396 --> 00:35:39,406 [John Tessitore]

Mm-hmm 

00:35:39,406 --> 00:35:59,416 [Norah Jones]

... and then a tremendous, uh, freedom opening, again, through that sense of I was been able to express myself in various ways, and that's okay. And there's a huge message for people that are not necessarily interested in being poets or writers or- 

00:35:59,416 --> 00:35:59,496 [John Tessitore]

Right 

00:35:59,496 --> 00:36:04,256 [Norah Jones]

... or anything else, but just there's a lot of fear-based stuff going on in the world. 

00:36:04,256 --> 00:36:04,266 [John Tessitore]

Yeah. 

00:36:04,266 --> 00:36:14,356 [Norah Jones]

And that discovery and that comfort, that freedom comfort that you're expressing here today, that's a huge, huge prize for any human being. 

00:36:14,356 --> 00:37:03,224 [John Tessitore]

You know, you're gonna laugh because I, I was thinking about this before we got on. This is-- You do a, obviously a, a lot of language education stuff on this podcast, and I was thinking about my own language education, and junior high and high school French, one year of college, so I'm an odd person in this field, as you know. It's not, it's not where I started. And I was thinking, "Why am I not better at French? Why am I not better?" And it's, it's back to fear, and I know it. I, and I knew it in college, too, the dif- the exposure of making those sounds, right? Making those different sounds in front of those people. We're doing way too much psychoanal- analysis here for me, but getting over that fear would've helped me there, too.Right? It would have helped me there too. I didn't, I didn't. So now I, I go through phases where I'll read a novel in French and muddle through just to maintain the muscle. I've done that for years. But, but, um, 

00:37:04,984 --> 00:37:09,024 [John Tessitore]

but you probably won't catch me speaking it very often. I mean, it's the same kind of thing. It's the same- 

00:37:09,024 --> 00:37:10,584 [Norah Jones]

Human face-to-face- 

00:37:11,724 --> 00:37:11,884 [John Tessitore]

Yeah 

00:37:11,884 --> 00:37:13,123 [Norah Jones]

... thing. Yeah. 

00:37:13,124 --> 00:37:23,444 [John Tessitore]

I know I'm speaking French with an Italian-- with a, an Italian American Brooklyn, Long Island accent, and it-- and I, I was very self-conscious about that, and it's been a fear of mine all along, right? So- 

00:37:23,444 --> 00:37:33,004 [Norah Jones]

And there, there's someone out there that was-- would have been so tickled to hear a f- man speaking French with a Brooklyn Italian American accent. [chuckles] 

00:37:33,004 --> 00:37:44,824 [John Tessitore]

So I have the Long Island accent, but my family's from Brooklyn, and I could hear it in my French. So I was afraid, right? I'm at, I'm at a university, and I'm going, "Oh, you don't want to hear this. This is not gonna be pretty," you know? But getting over that would have been, 

00:37:46,124 --> 00:38:18,624 [John Tessitore]

would have been useful even in that part of my life, of course. I mean, you see that all the time in classrooms. But it's the same lesson. At the end of the day, there's no reason. At the end of the day, there's no reason. The people I was afraid of when they found my creative work were not surprised and weren't really even thinking about me that way anyway, right? Everybody-- And the same in the classroom. Nobody was going, "John's got a Brooklyn accent." Like, nobody was doing that, you know. But in-- Y-you sort of, you build this thing up about yourself, right? About-- You build it up. Breaking that down is really important if you can do it. Breaking that down is the key to a lot of education. 

00:38:18,624 --> 00:38:33,804 [Norah Jones]

Absolutely, and I do think that part of it, I'm speaking from my own personal history now as well as listening to yours, is that part of it at least is that we are afraid of how little it will matter to people to find out who we are. 

00:38:33,804 --> 00:38:34,044 [John Tessitore]

Right. 

00:38:34,044 --> 00:38:52,034 [Norah Jones]

That they'll be perfectly content, and they've already, as you say, pretty much have understood us because they've been observing us, and it's not a big deal. And our sense of it's a really big-- I don't want to admit it, but I'm thinking it's a big deal. No, and it's not. So they're like, "No, it's, it's fine." 

00:38:52,034 --> 00:39:06,624 [John Tessitore]

You know, I'll give you another one that because we're doing this, I must feel comfortable. I said to my mother, not that long ago, this is my mom. I said to her, "Ma, I, I'm a little weird," 'cause I was writing and I was producing creative work. I said, "I'm a little weird." She goes, "Oh, I've always known that." 

00:39:06,624 --> 00:39:07,124 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. 

00:39:07,124 --> 00:39:20,984 [John Tessitore]

I said, "You did?" She goes, "Oh yeah, I've alway..." I-- She goes, "I've worried about it, too." I'm like, [chuckles] "Why didn't you tell me? I was the only one who didn't know." You know. So there's both nobody's thinking of you that way, and also what they're thinking, they knew anyway. It's not- 

00:39:20,984 --> 00:39:21,843 [Norah Jones]

They knew anyway. 

00:39:21,844 --> 00:39:29,984 [John Tessitore]

You're not gonna... They knew anyway, you know? Yeah. And that's in the classroom, too. In the classroom, that's your mom, that's you, it's whatever. 

00:39:29,984 --> 00:39:31,313 [Norah Jones]

Yes. Yes. Well- 

00:39:31,313 --> 00:39:37,084 [John Tessitore]

They're not thinking of you that way, and the way they're thinking of you, they have been thinking for a long time anyway. You're fine. Go ahead and do it. 

00:39:37,084 --> 00:39:55,504 [Norah Jones]

Well, you, you were-- when you were i-i-in the collegiate teaching profession there, you know, that, that exposure to understanding of literature, people are hiding behind their reactions or what they think the professor wants to know or what they think they should be knowing or saying a lot, right? You don't- 

00:39:55,504 --> 00:39:55,714 [John Tessitore]

Yeah 

00:39:55,714 --> 00:40:35,104 [Norah Jones]

... necessarily see a lot of freedom in that. I was fortunate in my collegiate experience to have the kinds of interesting professors that had fascinating approaches to things such that they just broke through all the walls that made us worry about what we were doing and who we were with each other, which was pretty cool for people that were 18, 19, 20. But that sense of exposure comes in all kinds of classes, but especially in language class because you define yourself as you have done here, John, with my accent, where, where it exposes that I'm from, my sense that I can't communicate as clearly in this other language as I can do in my native tongue. 

00:40:37,024 --> 00:40:37,044 [John Tessitore]

Yeah. 

00:40:37,044 --> 00:40:38,644 [Norah Jones]

There's a lot of fear out there. 

00:40:38,644 --> 00:41:37,064 [John Tessitore]

Yeah. Yeah, and, and, and, you know, as you, you said at the beginning of our conversation here, I mean, because I'm an unusual person in that world, in the language world, I mean, I, I'm executive director of a language organization, probably the only person I talk to in the course of a day who's not an applied linguist, right? Or some, or, or, or, or a practitioner teacher in a classroom. I was nervous to come here to, to this conversation because we can take a right-hand turn right now, and I'll be lost. You'll, we'll start talking L1, L2, and I'll be like, "No, this is your world now." And I'll write the check from NNFMLTA and fund your research, but, you know. Yeah, so, so I still deal with that in my professional life because, uh, I, I mean, I was hired to build a small organization and do some communications work to build it, grow its grant programs, give it a voice publicly, and I leave the technical evaluations of the grants to people who know the technical evaluations of those grants. 

00:41:37,064 --> 00:41:37,224 [Norah Jones]

Mm-hmm. 

00:41:37,224 --> 00:41:50,304 [John Tessitore]

The exposure is sitting here with you, right? That's the exposure. The exposure is, "Okay, I can't re-- I don't have my committee now. So now, you know, so now we have to make sure we don't say anything silly." Yeah, it's the same, it's the same thing. It's the same thing in professional life, too. 

00:41:50,304 --> 00:41:50,544 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. 

00:41:50,544 --> 00:41:51,664 [John Tessitore]

It's the same issue. 

00:41:51,664 --> 00:41:54,654 [Norah Jones]

We are vulnerable human beings, and, um- 

00:41:54,654 --> 00:41:54,654 [John Tessitore]

Yeah 

00:41:54,654 --> 00:42:01,464 [Norah Jones]

... and our way of expressing ourselves to each other is especially the area of vulnerability. I would like to ask you 

00:42:03,184 --> 00:42:06,264 [Norah Jones]

about your podcast. What- 

00:42:06,264 --> 00:42:06,384 [John Tessitore]

Yeah 

00:42:06,384 --> 00:42:08,584 [Norah Jones]

... which is called "Be True." 

00:42:09,764 --> 00:42:09,804 [John Tessitore]

"Be True." 

00:42:09,804 --> 00:42:16,324 [Norah Jones]

And so why did you call it "Be True"? What does your podcast focus, and why? 

00:42:16,324 --> 00:42:53,684 [John Tessitore]

This is a very f-- I'm gonna come, I'm gonna do the second one first because the, the answer to the first one is slightly more embarrassing than the answer to the second one. So what-- So when I did get my work out, the creative work out into the world, and this was a COVID thing a lot, too. This was a very much a COVID period for me. I was starting to get published in little journals, but little journals are not seen by very many people, although they're prestigious to, and you appreciate the publication rights, very small circulations. I mean, I came from... My original, my first job out of, out of college was the number one men's magazine in the country. So I was used to big circulations and big numbers and stuff. 

00:42:53,684 --> 00:42:53,703 [Norah Jones]

Mm-hmm. 

00:42:53,704 --> 00:43:00,936 [John Tessitore]

You know, 27 people were reading my poem in these tiny little things. AndI felt like I had, I had to catch up. I was behind. 

00:43:00,936 --> 00:43:01,225 [Norah Jones]

Interesting. 

00:43:01,225 --> 00:43:18,686 [John Tessitore]

I was an older person getting out in the world. And I was thinking, "How is anybody gonna find my work?" And I was a podcast listener since, like, 2006 or something. I think I-- when I finished my dissertation, got a, I got the first iPod or something, and so I knew about podcasts all the way back then. 

00:43:19,796 --> 00:43:52,736 [John Tessitore]

I-- they're searchable. You can type a name in in Google and, or on Apple Podcasts or, and you can find that work. They're searchable in a way that the poems individually weren't searchable. Nobody couldn't find them. You couldn't type anything in and they'd come up. So my marketing brain said, "All right, we'll try this, try this thing." And, and, and, and, and Substack has a podcasting software attached to it. So I, I just did it. But I had no plan except how to get the work out into the world. I didn't even have a theme. I just, I started talking one day and recorded it and put it out just to see what happened. And 

00:43:54,356 --> 00:44:19,816 [John Tessitore]

I don't even-- I mean, I'm still finding it. It's 120 something podcasts. It started as my work. It was literally just an experiment to see if I could get my work out. But over time, I realized you miss the classroom, you miss the, you miss other writers. The world's gotten crazy. You have something to say sometimes about it. So it became this thing, what I say at the beginning is, "Welcome to 'Be True,' the podcast about the writing I love and the writing I do," which is- 

00:44:19,816 --> 00:44:20,096 [Norah Jones]

Mm. 

00:44:20,096 --> 00:44:31,196 [John Tessitore]

Which was a ad lib that rhymed. It came outta my mouth on the first time I recorded it, and I kept it ever since because it rhymed. And for a while I used to say, "I promise I won't rhyme the whole time," as a joke- 

00:44:31,196 --> 00:44:31,266 [Norah Jones]

[chuckles] 

00:44:31,266 --> 00:45:24,116 [John Tessitore]

... 'cause I couldn't believe I was doing this stupid thing anyway. And so it's evolved into a thing about writing and literature, sometimes mine, sometimes somebody else's. I've even started to do books I've edited. So as a professional editor, I edited a book about nuclear politics. I don't have any expertise in it, but as an editor and somebody who, who can, you know, can be a quick study for long enough to edit a book, I've done that a few times. Did this, I did a whole podcast about a book I edited because I thought, given the war and some other things, that it was an important thing to, to consider. So it's literally become about the writing I love and the writing I do, and that's what it's so... And "Be True," the reason why that's it, I just liked the title, and I had, I had, um, I had experimented with a blog about 15 years ago, something like that, and I called it Be True, and this is why it's embarrassing. Nobody in the world knows this. This is an exclusive, Nora. Um, 

00:45:25,516 --> 00:45:26,256 [John Tessitore]

uh, [chuckles]- 

00:45:26,256 --> 00:45:26,406 [Norah Jones]

You heard it here 

00:45:26,406 --> 00:45:33,376 [John Tessitore]

... it's named after a Bruce Springsteen song that nobody knows. It's a, it's a B-side Bruce Springsteen song from the late '70s. It's called "Be True." I just like the title. 

00:45:33,376 --> 00:45:33,806 [Norah Jones]

That's so cool. 

00:45:33,806 --> 00:45:34,736 [John Tessitore]

So there you have it. 

00:45:34,736 --> 00:45:35,496 [Norah Jones]

There you have it. 

00:45:35,496 --> 00:45:35,556 [John Tessitore]

Yeah. Yeah. 

00:45:35,556 --> 00:45:36,436 [Norah Jones]

An exclusive. 

00:45:36,436 --> 00:45:42,266 [John Tessitore]

It's about, it's about, it's a, it's a Springsteen, it's a realistic love song by Bruce Springsteen called "Be True." Yeah. 

00:45:42,266 --> 00:45:42,276 [Norah Jones]

Interesting. 

00:45:42,276 --> 00:45:44,696 [John Tessitore]

But it's, like I said, it's a B-side. Nobody even knew that. 

00:45:44,696 --> 00:45:45,056 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. 

00:45:45,056 --> 00:45:57,716 [John Tessitore]

And I don't think Bruce is gonna sue me, so. Yeah. So that-- But so the podcast is great because it, it scratches that teaching itch a little bit. Not that I need a-- I don't really need a podium, but I get to engage with ideas a little bit, make them presentable- 

00:45:57,716 --> 00:45:57,776 [Norah Jones]

Mm 

00:45:57,776 --> 00:46:06,626 [John Tessitore]

... and, and, and I keep it within basically under 12 minutes. I've said to some, I've said to people before, "It's long enough for your drive to the grocery store." You know what I mean? 

00:46:06,626 --> 00:46:06,636 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. 

00:46:06,636 --> 00:46:07,376 [John Tessitore]

Like, it's- 

00:46:07,376 --> 00:46:07,516 [Norah Jones]

Yeah 

00:46:07,516 --> 00:46:17,376 [John Tessitore]

... it's a quick weekly hit of some literary thing. Sometimes it's me. Again, sometimes it's me, sometimes it's Shakespeare. It could be, it's been Whitman, it's been, you know. Yeah. So. 

00:46:17,376 --> 00:46:23,586 [Norah Jones]

And it's, as you say, you can walk the dog, let them, let them do their thing, bring it on back, and you get a chance- 

00:46:23,586 --> 00:46:23,616 [John Tessitore]

Yep 

00:46:23,616 --> 00:46:31,736 [Norah Jones]

... to have that hit. That's so cool. How does, uh, doing a podcast differ from your writing? What are the strengths and weaknesses of both with your experience? 

00:46:31,736 --> 00:46:36,826 [John Tessitore]

So because of the kind of podcast it is, I actually do write it out pretty much. 

00:46:36,826 --> 00:46:36,856 [Norah Jones]

Mm. 

00:46:36,856 --> 00:46:47,925 [John Tessitore]

I pretty much map it out because I didn't wanna-- I wanted to keep it tight, and I haven't earned... It's small. It's a small thing. I have-- I don't feel like I've earned the right to do a lot of hemming and hawing. [chuckles] 

00:46:47,925 --> 00:46:47,936 [Norah Jones]

Mm. 

00:46:47,936 --> 00:47:02,796 [John Tessitore]

You know what I mean? Like, I don't wanna be on my own podcast stuttering. I want to-- So out of respect for anybody who's listening, I, I do map it out a bit. But it, um, it is a different kind of writing. It's definitely, it's a different voice than if I had to write an essay. 

00:47:02,796 --> 00:47:03,196 [Norah Jones]

Mm. 

00:47:03,196 --> 00:47:20,236 [John Tessitore]

Um, it's, I find it more conversational, but I also, because of what it is, like, actually this week I read a little piece of fiction that's my own, but started with this three minutes, a little long actually, three-minute discourse about the difference between reading fiction on a podcast and reading a book. 

00:47:20,236 --> 00:47:21,266 [Norah Jones]

Oh, interesting. 

00:47:21,266 --> 00:47:42,556 [John Tessitore]

The art of the excerpt. It's an excerpt. It's not the book. It's gonna be misleading no matter what I do. So what I've-- This is the podcast. What I've chosen to do this week is pull an excerpt that can stand on its own, that speaks to some other topic, and we'll talk about that topic a little bit, and here's the, here's the thing. And, but that's different than writing the book, right? That's different than writing the fiction, and it's also different than writing an essay. It's really sort of framing- 

00:47:42,556 --> 00:47:43,056 [Norah Jones]

Yeah 

00:47:43,056 --> 00:47:48,936 [John Tessitore]

... this piece of fiction around an idea. In this case, this week it was Earth Day. It was Earth Day last week, so it's an environmental- 

00:47:48,936 --> 00:47:49,095 [Norah Jones]

Yeah 

00:47:49,095 --> 00:48:05,915 [John Tessitore]

... idea around a little piece of fiction that I had written that's out of a much larger piece. So it's very misleading about what the larger piece is. So that's the difference. It's very, um, still coming to terms with podcast versus the fiction versus the poem versus the essay versus the speech versus, I'm still coming to terms with how the podcast fits, but yeah. 

00:48:05,916 --> 00:48:47,716 [Norah Jones]

No, I think it's, it's wonderful because you have a variety of things that are all incorporated in it, and that is also part of the unique individualistic stamp that you would bring to it. John, if you know that there are people that are listening, wait a minute, let me try that again. Let's, let's start that thing again. When you look out, you know that people are listening to this that love language. Some of them are learning it, some of them are listening because they just know how language is part of the human condition. With all of the background, biographer and journalist and poet and podcaster and professor and leader of these organizations, what is it that you want to be sure that you say- 

00:48:48,976 --> 00:48:49,336 [John Tessitore]

Hmm 

00:48:49,336 --> 00:48:57,236 [Norah Jones]

... that they hear from you? Because you've just learned it, doggone it, and you want them to, to know it or exhort them in some way. 

00:48:57,236 --> 00:49:19,256 [John Tessitore]

Well, you've helped me see the first thing, and that is this. And I don't wanna make it sound, like, self-helpy. I don't trust necessarily all the self-helpy kinds of language. But sometimes the strength in the writing is the totality, the way you just said it, of what you bring to it.Right? It's sometimes the, the biggest strength in writing is, and I'm gonna say a s- stupid word, but everything. 

00:49:19,256 --> 00:49:19,435 [Norah Jones]

Mm. 

00:49:19,436 --> 00:49:25,066 [John Tessitore]

And what I mean by everything is it's the s- it's the random stuff that makes you, you, right? 

00:49:25,066 --> 00:49:25,076 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. 

00:49:25,076 --> 00:49:34,716 [John Tessitore]

It's the random little b- it's the Bruce Springsteen title for a podcast about Walt Whitman and, you know, whatever. That's a Tessitore stew, right? 

00:49:34,716 --> 00:49:34,736 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. 

00:49:34,736 --> 00:50:48,116 [John Tessitore]

In fact, I'm working on a thing right now that has all of those elements and more, and I looked at it one day and I thought, "This is literally 51 years of Tessitore on, in this project." There's no, like, I'm tired of myself, but not everybody knows me, so it's fine. I, I know where it's all coming from, but nobody else knows that, so I get to present it for the first time. So that's the first thing, I think, the totality part is, is important for people who are creating anything. It's anything. The strongest part is the thing that only you're going to do, right? Um, the second part of it is maybe your early question. I don't think we're paying enough attention to what we're saying as a culture. I don't think we're paying enough attention to discourse and argument and the trading of ideas. This is not a new thought, but it comes back to what you raised earlier. I mean, I, I think, for example, the conversation about education is not a full-breath conversation about the state of American education. It's very much directed by two or three simple concerns that we've been kicking around for a little while. It's not about root causes, what's the best idea, what are we losing? It's very, very specific. It's, you know, what's that first job, right? And I don't know that that's unusual right now. I think I, I don't know that it's unusual, for example, on social media. 

00:50:48,116 --> 00:50:48,276 [Norah Jones]

Mm-hmm. 

00:50:48,276 --> 00:50:59,456 [John Tessitore]

I think that, I think we get driven into these little pockets, so everybody has to talk about AI this week. There's no other topic in the world. If you go on LinkedIn, it's an AI world right now, and who knows why. 

00:50:59,456 --> 00:50:59,466 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. 

00:50:59,466 --> 00:51:20,956 [John Tessitore]

You know? But that's where everybody kinda follows that train. That's very worrisome to me, just as a person who, as you said, who works with words all day and is constantly writing and stuff, to, to sort of go one after another, after another of the same thing, and the same thing, and the same thing. In the humanities, we've been saying, "Us too," or, "We're good for jobs also," for at least 30 years. 

00:51:20,956 --> 00:51:22,076 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. 

00:51:22,076 --> 00:51:22,895 [John Tessitore]

Right? 

00:51:22,896 --> 00:51:23,156 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. 

00:51:23,156 --> 00:51:56,836 [John Tessitore]

Um, I used to work at the A- as I said earlier, I used to work at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. I was the program director in the humanities. We had the humanities indicators, which is the data, national data, and then we had social media, and every day we were posting, "Us too. Us too, us too, us too, us too, us too." And I knew why we were doing that, but that's not a strong position to be in, and that has to do with the discourse and the rhetoric that we're using and the words that we're choosing. Think, I just think we've lost a sense of argumentation a little bit, without sounding too much like an old man. That worries me in that I think I would encourage everyone to engage in a little bit more. 

00:51:56,836 --> 00:52:07,656 [Norah Jones]

Yeah. Thank you, John. It's, it's interesting we go back, I think, in what you just said, too, to the idea of facing the fear of exposure, which is actually the strengthening moment. 

00:52:07,656 --> 00:52:14,736 [John Tessitore]

Yeah. And I'm only going through it now. It's hard. I don't have an answer. I don't have like, "And here's where it ended." I don't have the happy ending now. I just have- 

00:52:14,736 --> 00:52:15,096 [Norah Jones]

Uh-huh. 

00:52:15,096 --> 00:52:22,476 [John Tessitore]

I just started it in the last year or two, really, in, in bridging these worlds that, in a way that I hadn't before. 

00:52:23,516 --> 00:52:30,336 [John Tessitore]

And it's a late blooming thing, so I don't... There's no, it's not a clear end, but I'm more, I feel stronger as a result. 

00:52:30,336 --> 00:52:41,056 [Norah Jones]

That's powerfully said, too. John, thank you so much. I appreciate everything you've shared today. You've been extremely patient, uh, with this, uh, l- long conversation, but I've enjoyed every minute of it. 

00:52:41,056 --> 00:52:46,016 [John Tessitore]

Oh, thank you, Nora. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you so much, and I'm sorry I brought you through my psychoanalysis, but it's been very helpful. 

00:52:46,016 --> 00:52:50,936 [Norah Jones]

I love it. I love it. It's, uh, that's... What else do we have to offer, my friend? 

00:52:50,936 --> 00:52:51,616 [John Tessitore]

That's right. 

00:52:51,616 --> 00:53:03,376 [Norah Jones]

But what it is, and to watch you as well as to hear you talk about this last couple of years, and there's no... I'm glad it's not finished. Why would it be, right? 

00:53:03,376 --> 00:53:03,496 [John Tessitore]

Yeah. 

00:53:03,496 --> 00:53:15,136 [Norah Jones]

You're discovering brand new things, and it's a powerful, and it takes time to figure out what that is that's just been opened and how best to share it. So thanks for doing that with us. 

00:53:15,136 --> 00:53:16,166 [John Tessitore]

Thank you. 

00:53:16,166 --> 00:53:35,936 [Norah Jones]

[upbeat music] I hope you enjoyed this conversation with my guest, John Tessitore, and I hope that as you listened, you thought about how you communicate about yourself inside, your voice, your place in the world, and how that authenticity within yourself leads to connection with humans around the world. 

00:53:37,116 --> 00:54:01,136 [Norah Jones]

Speaking of connection, take a look at my website, fluency.consulting, to learn more about John and to take a look at his links and reflections. I hope that as you continue your journey in language inside and outside, that you'll be able to be encouraged, engaged, and empowered through language. Thanks for listening.