Did you know David Axelrod has a podcast? President Obama's former senior advisor's podcast has a groan-worthy name—The Axe Files—but the guests are good and the interviews are substantive. The most recent guest was Frank Bruni, the national columnist for the New York Times, a smart, sensitive writer and thinker with a calm voice.

I wish I could hire Frank Bruni to come to my house and explain the day's news to me in that rational, richly informed way he has. It'd be so much better than my usual nightly way of consuming news—look at Twitter, have a panic attack, watch a Trump rally on C-Span, have another panic attack...

In this conversation, Axelrod asks Bruni about Trump, the Bushes, the way father and son dynamics play out in politics, being a war correspondent, being a food critic, the scary side of social media, the swiftness with which gay marriage happened, and more.