John Dickerson: Navel Gazing Podcast

Navel Gazing Episode Index

John Dickerson — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 18:08:12 GMT

Navel Gazing is a podcast based on the notebooks that I’ve carried in my pocket since the summer of 1990. Here are the episodes and transcripts in listening order: nine from season one, followed by the first five from season two. I’m still writing Season two.

Season One

Episode 1 — An Exploration of Inklings

Episode 2 — Sending our Son to College

Episode 3 — Remembering George and Defending the Morning

Episode 4 — The Power of Four Numbers

Episode 5 — Remembering Early 1990s New York

Episode 6 — The Sneaky Pitfalls of the To-Do List

Episode 7 — Moving in New York Twenty Years After September 11th.

Episode 8 — Time Travel Via an Assortment of Journal Entries

Episode 9 — The Meaning Behind All This Navel Gazing

Season Two

Episode 1 — A trip to the coffee shop

Episode 2 — It was all Mom’s Idea

Episode 3 — Why? Why? Why?

Episode 4 — What will you leave behind?

Episode 5 — Morning reading is a dunk of fluffy focaccia in olive oil.

Season One, Episode One

John Dickerson — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 15:30:11 GMT

Notebook 75, page 6. September 5, 2021:

“Oh my God we dropped our son at college and our dog is dead.” -- Anne.

Anne is my wife. You’d like her.

She said this one Sunday in 2021 while we were reading in the living room.

There are at least two kinds of living room declarations. The first -- of which this is not an example-- punctuates a tense domestic exchan…

Season One, Episode two

John Dickerson — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 15:25:53 GMT

Not a transcript exactly, but a script (warts and all):

Welcome to Navel Gazing.

I’m John Dickerson

We start this second episode of Season one as we have every episode in its long history, with a written notebook entry:

Notebook 75. Page 6, September 2021:

“They chose you.”

This entry greeted me when I opened my Field Notes notebook on the living room Sunday …

Season One, Episode Three

John Dickerson — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 15:24:13 GMT

Welcome to Navel Gazing. Season One, Episode Three. I’m John Dickerson

We’re two episodes in an I’m grateful for all of the feedback from those of you out there in the Navel Gazing corps. We’ll rummage in the mail bag at the end of this episode, but for now, let’s follow what the notebook has to tell us for this period of time that we’ve got under the mi…

Season One, Episode Four

John Dickerson — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 15:22:01 GMT

[Sound of page turning]

Hello everyone. Welcome to Episode four of Navel Gazing. Season One

I’m John Dickerson

The entry that starts today’s episode is:

1016

It’s from Notebook 75, p. 8, September 2021

That’s it: 1016.

And we thank you for listening. On our next episode, four random letters read aloud…

I kid.

This entry is found in the tight terrain of just a fe…

Season Two, Episode Five

John Dickerson — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:54:29 GMT

Welcome to Navel Gazing, Season Two, Episode 5.

“The day does not have to begin with a head dunk in the bilge pump. 8:40 and I still have not looked at Twitter.”

—Notebook 35, April 17, 2017

Hello again. We’re back on the terrain of attention where Season Two of Navel Gazing started. Those of you who listened to Episode One will recognize this notebook entry as an early attempt to preserve the start of the day. Defending the morning. Nine years ago, that meant trying to resist Twitter. The bilge pump.

Those of you who are of a seafaring nature are no doubt doubled over on the poop deck because you understand that a bilge pump is the mechanism that pumps water out of the bilge; you don’t and can’t dunk your head in the pump. You dunk your head into the bilge or into bilge water. We apologize for the offense this caused.

Season Two, Episode Four

John Dickerson — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 19:40:32 GMT

Hello and welcome to Navel Gazing, Season Two Episode 4.

The birds sang in the wet trees and I listened to them

it was a hundred years from now And I was dead and someone else was listening to them.

But I was glad I had recorded for him the melancholy.

Wet evening in April.

Patrick Kavanagh

-Notebook 1 page 29, 30. Summer 1990

It’s 2026 and I am staring at pro…

The Morning Ballet

John Dickerson — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 14:53:27 GMT

On my walk back from the coffee shop this morning the ballet from Season 2 Episode 1 was taking place:

Season Two, Episode Three

John Dickerson — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 13:30:49 GMT

Hello and welcome to Navel Gazing, Season Two Episode 3.

Notebook 1, page 1:

“Satellite dishes.” June 6, 1990

This is the second notebook entry in that first notebook from The First Age.

You might think it difficult to come up with a notebook entry that is less nourishing than the inaugural “$6 drinks on plane,” but as I landed in London the summer of my ju…

Season Two, Episode Two

John Dickerson — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 13:03:33 GMT

Hello and welcome to Navel Gazing, Season Two Episode 2.

Season Two, Episode One

John Dickerson — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 13:03:28 GMT

Hello friends. Welcome to Season Two of Navel Gazing.

I am happy to be saying that.

…It has been a few years since Season One, when we sat on the orange carpet up in my garret and looked through the collection of these notebooks I’ve carried since I was 19.

Season One was about looking back through these old notebooks. I assumed Season Two would simply con…

Season Two of Navel Gazing Returns!

John Dickerson — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 13:03:06 GMT

It’s been a long road to get here, as you’ll learn from the first episode, but we have arrived. The first two episodes of Season Two of Navel Gazing is now posted for paid subscribers.

If you already are a paid subscriber, first, thank you very much. You’ve played a key role in getting this thing off the ground.

If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, I hope…

Coming Up...

John Dickerson — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 20:17:10 GMT

Hello friends. If you’re receiving this you are a Navel Gazing subscriber. This will also gain you access to the first episode and those that follow. I’m not sure how many episodes I’ll have in Season Two. We’re all just lucky that S2;E1 exists.

A CEOs Routine

John Dickerson — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 11:41:32 GMT

After reading a somewhat interesting Bloomberg profile this morning about the idiosyncratic routines of a successful investor, I wondered what it would sound like if you applied the same tone to a profile of a guy who just wasn’t on the beam:

Every morning, Melvin Baker wakes at 10 a.m. and spends forty-five minutes selecting a fedora from a rotating c…

R…

George Saunders

John Dickerson — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 14:55:53 GMT

The Colbert Book Club interviewed George Saunders. I am a huge fan of his work, his famous commencement address and of his advice on writing. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain nourished me and continues to— as a writer, reader, human. It really taught me— so many years after majoring in English— why literature works or doesn’t work and more broadly, how a cr…

The Pomodoros are Accumulating

John Dickerson — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 02:28:33 GMT

Greetings to the Navel Gazing community. Are we a community? I sure feel like we are. I talked to some of you before our live Gabfest in Washington. I swooned at hearing how meaningful people found the podcast. It continues to inspire me.

The Meaning Behind all this Navel Gazing

John Dickerson — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 12:52:03 GMT

Season One, Episode Eight

John Dickerson — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 22:44:55 GMT

Season One, Episode Seven

John Dickerson — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 21:54:24 GMT

Another Sunday in the Week

John Dickerson — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 16:06:17 GMT

Well, it’s a Sunday. What have I accomplished today?

Yesterday fished around like a garden hose. No one minded. But Sunday — as I discussed in Season One, Episode One— invites making an accounting.1

I have chopped wood. I have straightened out the bedroom. I have counted church bells and retrieved 834 things from our foster dog’s mouth. It’s early in the …