Prologue

Host Ira Glass explains why some old answering machine messages from a decade ago have such power for him: there's a special power to recordings of phone conversations. The phone is intimate — more intimate than a photograph. Even when the person on the phone is a public figure like Lyndon Johnson. He plays some tapes from the Simon & Schuster audiobook of Johnson phone tapes, Taking Charge, The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964, by Michael Beschloss, to demonstrate. (7 minutes)