Who is Peggy Wehmeyer?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Today's guest is Peggy Waymire, the first full time religion correspondent for any major news outlet in the United States. She worked for many years alongside Peter Jennings with ABC News. Today you're going to hear about her crazy upbringing of having been kidnapped as a child, as well as her interview with President Bill Clinton, Muhammad Ali, George W. Bush and many other fascinating people. I know you're going to enjoy the conversation. Peggy Wehmeyer, it is so great to be with you again. You too, Todd, in your lovely home in Dallas. [00:00:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:00:34] Speaker A: So I think when our listeners hear this, they're gonna envision Waymire at the top of a book cover because your life is so extraordinary. It's going to be a book and we'll talk about that, but let's just kind of back it up. [00:00:52] Speaker B: Okay. [00:00:53] Speaker A: And your father was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, would even have called Hitler a hero, and yet he marries this beautiful Jewish woman, your mother. Yep, let's talk about that a little bit. So your mother was in Geneva and your father, very handsome man. He's traveling like a six week trip throughout Europe and he lays eyes on your mother. Pick it up from there. [00:01:22] Speaker B: Okay. Yes. My mother was working for the United nations in Geneva, Switzerland, and she was a young German woman. My father was an oil man who was working for Gulf oil in Venezuela and had taken this six week time off to gallivant, I always use that word, gallivanting around Europe. And they met in a Swiss train station and it was one of those very romantic. They went around Italy and France and they fell in love. And it's hard to explain. I'm assuming he knew she was Jewish, but she was from the kind of Jewish family which most German Jewish families were, that they played that down. She was more German than she was Jewish, even though her family had barely survived the Holocaust. So that my father was a genius at rewriting stories so he would recreate truth. So she was just a beautiful European German woman. He put her on the Queen Mary, brought her to the United States and married her. And we lived in a beautiful little village in Granville, Ohio. And he had two children, myself and my older sister Nancy. And I thought we had the most idyllic life. [00:02:38] Speaker A: And. And so with her parents, they owned the largest, your grandparents on your mother's side, Jews, German Jews. They had the largest publishing house in all of Europe. And of course, at this time when they had met and you find this out later, the Nazis had taken over the business, Correct? [00:02:57] Speaker B: Yes. It was like my great grandfather and the generations after they Were they'd be like the Rupert Murdoch's of our day. Newspapers, publishing houses all over the world. They weren't ultra conservative like Murdoch, but they were the Rupert Murdochs of the European day. So they owned this large publishing house based in Berlin. My grandfather was an attorney for them and that there were many, you know, tons of them who lived in Berlin. And it was the heyday. It was a wonderful time to live in Europe before the rise of the Third Reich. And. And then the Nazis came to power and ran them all out. Took over their houses, their art, their business. There were 10,000 employees. They took over the publishing house, all the newspapers, some family members. I mean I remember stories. My family didn't talk about it much when I learned older, when I was older that it happened. But I did find out from my aunt in London that they kids would go to bed at night and they could hear the parents and aunts and uncles in the living room all whispering in German. What are we going to do? Could this really get this bad? Could he really do this? No, we're going to stay. Well, we're going to leave. We're sending our daughter to a kibbutz in Israel. They were all trying to decide how much worse could this get. My grandfather had had his law license stripped from him. The children were no longer able to go to schools with my mother had to wear a Star of David on her coat and attend Hitler Youth rallies. Really it was that bad. And they still hadn't left because they thought it can't get worse. And then my grandfather was one of the lucky ones and smart ones who said it is getting worse. And he smuggled money out of the country to England. But they got out with about a skin of their teeth. My mother's brother wasn't allowed. A lot of countries wouldn't take Jewish refugees. My mother's brother, my uncle wasn't allowed into England. They got on a ship to England because they wouldn't take 21 year old Germans. They were fighting with the Germans. So he had to get on a ship to Australia. My grandfather was put in an internment camp because he was a German. My aunt was forced to work in a chicken farm for people as a. I don't the things that happened to this family. And they were a very prominent, wealthy German family. Yeah, so it was pretty bad. But they all my immediate family survived. [00:05:35] Speaker A: The Holocaust and so they. So your mother, they basically fled to Geneva and so she's there. [00:05:40] Speaker B: No, they fled to London. They fled to London but your mother resettled in London. [00:05:44] Speaker C: Okay. [00:05:45] Speaker B: Well, the extended family went everywhere. I mean, some went to South America, some got into America. It depends on where you could get in. My uncle, as I mentioned, went to Australia, but my grandmother and grandfather and mother and her three siblings all went to London. And then when the bombing of London happened, my mother, who spoke German, she was 12. They were all sent out to the country. Can you imagine being a little girl? Out to Cambridge, and they were sent out to the country while the parents stayed in London, which was being bombed. [00:06:16] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:06:17] Speaker A: So I know Oxford and Cambridge were both safe havens for some of the kids. [00:06:21] Speaker B: Yes. So my mother and her siblings were there. [00:06:23] Speaker A: Okay. [00:06:23] Speaker B: And I found some letters, which I can't find anymore, that my mother had written back to her parents in London, talking about school in the country and stuff she was playing with and doing. But they all had to, you know, they were Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. [00:06:39] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:06:40] Speaker B: And my grandfather kind of rebuilt the business as a cpa. [00:06:42] Speaker A: Had to start over. [00:06:43] Speaker B: He did start over, and he did very well. [00:06:45] Speaker A: Wow. And so your mom, when she's in Geneva, how old is she at this point? [00:06:49] Speaker B: When she met your dad, she was in her 20s. [00:06:51] Speaker A: Okay. [00:06:52] Speaker B: She went to the London School of Economics and graduated. She spoke a few different languages. They were very Renaissance people. You know, they were very. I'm not. They're much smarter. They were very cultural, like a lot of my family. After I found out about them later, they were Nobel Prize winners. They were professors at universities. They were. Yeah. So my mother, who spoke several languages, went to work in Geneva, Switzerland, which is the headquarters for the United Nations. And that's where she met my father in a Swiss train station when he was this American traveling through Europe. And he saw. Spotted this woman and decided, I like her. [00:07:32] Speaker A: And her parents, your grandparents, they did not really favor him. In fact, they. You had mentioned that they had spies to even check him out and find out more because something didn't seem right. They did not really want your mother to marry your father. [00:07:46] Speaker B: Well, it was happening so quickly. [00:07:48] Speaker A: Yes. [00:07:48] Speaker B: Can you imagine if your daughter meets a foreigner from another country and he kind of takes her all around Europe and then puts her on a ship to take her to America to marry her? My grandfather freaked out. He was a very German patriarchal. The family had already been through a lot of. So, yes, he hired detectives to do research on him in his work with Gulf oil in Venezuela. And I have some of those letters, or I had them. I got them at my grandmother's. And the stories were not good. They wisely they were very formal letters from these attorneys and detectives saying, we would strongly advise you to get your daughter away from this man. [00:08:30] Speaker C: Wow. [00:08:31] Speaker A: But it was too late. [00:08:32] Speaker B: Too late. So they come and she wouldn't listen. She thought he was wonderful. [00:08:35] Speaker A: So they come to America. You were born in Oklahoma. [00:08:38] Speaker B: Oklahoma City, where he was in the. [00:08:40] Speaker A: Oil business and it didn't really work out with them. And then at age you were seven, something really bizarre happened. Talk about that. [00:08:49] Speaker B: Okay. We went from Oklahoma to Ohio. He was supposedly. The story was. I grew up with many stories which I don't know if they were true. He discovered gas in the Ohio Valley, gas reserves in the Ohio Valley. We were doing pretty well. And he had a 23 year old secretary named Patsy who he started having an affair with. And he. We lived in Granville, Ohio. And in the middle of one night, he kidnapped my 10 year old sister and me. I was 7. And took us to Mexico where Patsy, disguised in a wig and a new identity with her five year old daughter who she kidnapped, met us on the other side of the border and we went to Meta, drove in a convertible to Mexico City and they got what they called a Mexican divorce. We all went dancing. My dad lined us up the next morning and said, you are never to speak of your mother again. And whoever doesn't call Patsy mommy is going to get spanked. This is your new mommy. So we redesigned reality and life. [00:09:56] Speaker A: Wow. [00:09:57] Speaker B: And we lived in Puerto Vallarta until we moved to Barbados where we lived on this beautiful island when it was still a British controlled by the Brits. We went to English boarding schools and started a new life. [00:10:14] Speaker A: And so your mom. So how long was it before you reconnected with your mom? [00:10:20] Speaker B: You know, I was only. It was. I was almost in fifth grade, so we were only gone for like three and a half years. And my dad somehow. I don't know how this worked out, Todd, but he got her to sign over custody papers to quit fighting for us in order for him to move back to the United States. And then we were only allowed to see her like two weeks out of the year. And by then I had been so brainwashed. I don't know if you know the Patty Hearst story, but it was like Stockholm syndrome. I was so brainwashed against my mother that I would fly to New York where she worked at the un. She'd pick me up at the airport and she'd have this thick German accent and I'd be like, how could this be my mother? Yeah, I hardly. I'd been disconnected right wow. It was like serious brainwashing. [00:11:04] Speaker A: That is unbelievable. And so. And we'll come back to your mother. But so at this point, you know, the years go by, you're obviously very bright and great communicator. And so you end up at the University of Texas in Austin, where you were, which is my alma mater, I'll never forget. And I want you to elaborate on this, but for me, coming from more of a rural America, small town, I end up in Austin. It's like, wow, look at this place. And you know, at the time, the joke was, you know, Austin is weird. Let's keep Austin weird. [00:11:35] Speaker B: That's right. [00:11:35] Speaker A: It's now the official, I guess, mantra. [00:11:37] Speaker B: Bumper stickers, keep Austin Wade. [00:11:39] Speaker A: That's right. But, you know, you're exposed to all these different worldviews. People from all over the world. It's one of the top universe, you know, public schools out there. And I remember, you know, daily I would walk by the famous tower, and they're etched in stone. John 8:32, you shall know the truth, the truth shall set you free. You also would walk past that and elaborate on that a little bit, because at this time, you're not really a person of faith. You've got this Jewish background, but yet you're not a Christian. So talk about that a little bit. [00:12:11] Speaker B: Well, my dad raised me with no religion. He was kind of an off and on again Christian Scientist. I didn't know my mother well, and she hid her Jewishness because that's a whole other story. But Jews who went through the Holocaust often changed their names. They were more German. They wanted to be known as German, not Jewish, because of what the Jews had been through. So I didn't identify with being Jewish at all. I was really nothing. [00:12:36] Speaker A: If my memory serves correctly, your dad said, you need to be a homemaker. Yeah, pick it up from there. [00:12:42] Speaker B: Go major in home economics, join a sorority and marry a rich man. And I thought, all right. But that's not what I wanted. I wanted to find out what the truth was about reality and life. And I loved getting out of home and to college, like many young people do. So my freshman year, I experimented in all kinds of courses. I tried home EC and thought science requirements are too hard. Then I went to PE because I love the outdoors, thought, no, I'm not going to do pe. Then I stumbled into a journalism class with a famous professor, who I didn't even know was famous, named Red Gibson. And all the lights came on. I'm like, I could have a career and get paid to tell the truth. This is all about truth telling and reporting and storytelling. So I took course after course, and I knew that I wanted to major in journalism. I had no idea at the time what I would do with it, but I majored in journalism. And it was about that same time that a group of students on campus, in a group that's now called CRU but was called Campus Crusade for Christ, came to my sorority house. I wasn't a sorority. And the leader's wife, Vonette Bright, I was down in the study hall, and she was speaking up in the living room. And a bunch of girls tried to pull me up. I'm like, no, I don't want to hear a religious speaker. But. But for some reason, my one friend, Mary Jane said, come. Just come for a little bit. And I came. And this woman, Bonnette Bright, you knew who Bill Bright was? [00:14:10] Speaker A: Of course. [00:14:11] Speaker B: She told her story. She was from Oklahoma. I'd been born in Oklahoma. About the gospel and what it meant to be a Christian. And I thought, whoa, that's interesting. And it was a big crowd of girls in the living room. And after it was over, she made a beeline to me. I remember I was wearing an ou. My boyfriend at the time played football at ou. I was wearing an OU football jersey. I had long hair and braids. It's funny the things you remember. And I was sitting on the floor with my legs crossed, and she came straight for me, and it made me very nervous. And she said, I noticed you were listening very intently. She said, are you a Christian? And I just stopped. I said, I don't really know. She said, do you want to know? I said, well, maybe. So she introduced me to this woman who was on staff, Emily Light. I'm remembering all these names. And the next morning, I started a Bible study. And Crusade Crew has the most wonderful way of. They disciple you. You have small groups. So this. I started for six weeks in a Bible study where I started studying the Bible. So at the same time, Todd, that I was becoming a truth teller through my career and telling stories. Stories. And reporting for the school newspaper, I was learning about the ultimate truth teller. And as you said, walking by every day, the tower that said, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. And I needed desperately to be set free. [00:15:39] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:15:40] Speaker B: So with my journalism career, a journalism degree, and I became a new Christian. I was so alive and born again. Born again in every sense of the word. [00:15:53] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:15:53] Speaker A: New creation. [00:15:54] Speaker B: I was a new creation. I changed my identity. I was no longer the daughter of Carl Waymire. I was. I was. But my identity was no longer centered on being in a seriously dysfunctional family where lies were woven in and out of reality in a way that you feel like you're in a house of mirrors where the mirrors are kind of bent and distorted and you can't really find your way out. So all through college, I was finding the straight path. And that's what I've been doing ever since. Writing, telling stories, being a journalist, which has been the most incredible career. [00:16:36] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:16:36] Speaker B: And getting to know Jesus more and more. [00:16:42] Speaker A: And you have been. Many people have labeled you as a truth teller. And you don't hold back, and yet you're bold, but yet also winsome. And I think about the passage of Scripture where if, you know, you're asked for the reason, for the hope that's within you, you can give a defense for your faith, but you do so with gentleness and respect. [00:17:01] Speaker B: I hope so. [00:17:02] Speaker A: And I feel like you've really done that. And I want to kind of segue into just with the journalism because, you know, having grown up in Dallas, I remember WFAA in the news, and I do. I remember seeing you on the news reporting, you know, a story. [00:17:15] Speaker B: You must have been in diapers then, Todd. [00:17:16] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe. [00:17:17] Speaker B: That was a long time ago. [00:17:18] Speaker A: We're not that. We're not too far apart, but I just remember how popular you were and still are. But people would just like, they'd perk up. It's like, here's Peggy Waymire. And with all these stories and obviously many people noticed, including one famous Peter Jennings with ABC News in New York City. They notice you after, I guess, seven or eight years. You know, word travels nationally and you get a phone call one day. So talk about that. [00:17:45] Speaker B: Yes. I actually had been at. I was the first religion reporter in local tv. In America. [00:17:52] Speaker A: In America. [00:17:53] Speaker B: Yeah. So it wasn't because I was so special that I got all this notoriety. It was because nobody was covering religion and secular media as a beat. We had beats. We had education beat, we had the crime beat, we had city hall beat, but there was no religion beat. And this was a very city filled with faith and churches everywhere. [00:18:11] Speaker A: So it would make sense, I guess you're kind of the buckle of the Bible belt here in Dallas, so it makes sense. But to think you're the first. I was the first and only full time religion correspondent in the entire country. [00:18:22] Speaker B: Yeah. So the world was my oyster. So I would do these stories and the Christian community, the response was overwhelming. And basically I would Sum it up like this, Todd. The response was, finally, somebody in television news sees me. Somebody understands our story. Someone knows why we believe what we believe, or someone knows why we're fighting this issue. Someone knows why we're pro life. So I would. It wasn't that I was doing one point of view, but all you really had to do back then was tell that point of view. You could still tell the opposite point of view, sure, but just to let the truth come to light. So I like to think as a journalist, it wasn't my job to manipulate or propagandize or tell people what they should believe, ever. My job was to lay out the truth. The best I could tell it. Every journalist, every one of us has unconscious bias, but no conscious bias to where this is what these people are saying. These are what these people are saying. And you trust God with the viewer's heart and mind. That was my calling, to tell the truth and let the pieces fall where they may. If people were seeking the truth, God would work in their hearts and they would find it. So that's what I did. And there was a lot of attention. Yes, I was on the COVID of all these magazines because, oh, there's a religion reporter. It was a little overwhelming actually, because I was just doing my job, right. But I was the only one doing it, which made me special. And that's what brought. After 13 years, Peter Jennings was looking because none of the networks in New York had religion reporters. And he had been covering all the wars and things in the Middle East. And every time he'd interviewed people, they'd talk about their faith, whether they're Muslim, Jewish, Christian. And the networks would explain it away. And he would say, why are we not letting these people talk about what they believe? So he went out looking for a religion and called me one day. I had a two year old at home, I think had a five year old. I remember one of them was riding their big wheels across the living room floor when I got the call. And it was like, hello, with that Canadian accent. This is Peter Jennings. May I speak to Peggy Waymar? And I wanted to go, yeah, right, and I'm Barbara Walters. This is really Peter Jennings. Because I was cutting back at work to be a mom. I was working part time. I couldn't believe it was Peter Jennings because he was my hero. I'd watched him all through college and he was my journalist hero. And he asked me to come to New York to talk to him. And I did not thinking I would ever go to work there. But we Ended up they wanted me to do what I was doing in local TV and I wanted to stay home with my children. So, long story short, I felt like God was calling me to be a mom first, a reporter second. And we worked out, negotiated how I could have an office in Dallas and at home. So I would jump on planes and fly to wherever the stories were. And listen, Dallas is more Central Airport and location to where the news is happening than New York. [00:21:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. [00:21:29] Speaker B: So I convinced them. Why don't you let your producers fly in from New York? I'll fly in from Dallas. I'll come to New York sometimes. So I did that for about seven and a half years. [00:21:38] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:21:39] Speaker A: Wow. [00:21:39] Speaker B: And I was the only religion reporter on network tv. And that was a lot of fun. Well, fun. It was a lot of fun. Again, I got to tell stories nobody was telling. And it was difficult because, yes, there was resistance from some inside the network, but Peter was the 600 pound gorilla who was my gateway into getting on the air. [00:22:02] Speaker A: And so you're able to give voice to people, people of faith, all different religions, and tell that in an objective, truthful way. And I've heard people say this about you, that, yeah, she's right, she represented us well. And I know you're not only a truth teller, but your convictions based on your faith have shaped the way with integrity in which you have reported. Have there been times where certain story, maybe you're checking it out, you're called to this new assignment and what you're going to get into or what's being uncovered really goes against your personal religious. [00:22:43] Speaker B: Oh, yes, all the time. [00:22:45] Speaker A: So what advice would you give to someone in that situation? So, I mean, especially if it's just really going against to a journalist. Yes. [00:22:53] Speaker B: Let me give you an example. Maybe this isn't what you mean. I mean, there are plenty. I covered anything. I wanted to cover where religion intersected with American life, whether it was the military or education, religion and health. I covered the Iowa septuplets, why they didn't abort science and abortion. I covered the military. They allowed witchcraft to be an official religion. So I was covering the first. I went down to Fort Hood and I remember going to a nighttime witchcraft ritual from Fort Hood. People out in the. It was very scary. [00:23:32] Speaker A: Oh, bad. [00:23:32] Speaker B: I mean, so that was something where I'm like, oh my gosh. And I was spending a couple days with all these witches. Now I'm not a witch again, I want to. I can't tell you how important it is for me to explain as A journalist. My calling was to be the best journalist I could be. Being a good journalist means you tell the story as clearly and accurately as you can and trust God with the results. So I really did want to hear what these witches believe. The fact that I didn't like it, I didn't agree with them, or that they scared me. I had to put totally aside until after the story. And I think I was very fair to them as to why I did it. And then I also went and interviewed Baptist ministers in town and all the other people that thought I was horrible, horrible that the military was doing witchcraft. So I had. As long as you have both sides of the story, it's not. It would be very grandiose for me, and I would even say it would be sin for me as a journalist to squash one side and only elevate the side I believe in. Then I'm king. No journalist should do that, unless you're an opinion writer, which I am now. I've gone from 30 years of being a reporter where I stand, stand back in a detached way and tell the story, to now I get to write opinion columns where it's clearly, here's my opinion on things. I crossed a line. It took me years. I didn't want to do it, but I got asked by the publisher of the Dallas Morning News, would you write columns? I'm like, no, that goes against all my training. But I did feel God was calling me to saying, it's okay now. You're older, you're wiser. It's opinion. You're not saying you're a reporter, you're saying you're a columnist. So now I write columns, and. And I'm really enjoying it. But it took me a long time to feel okay about saying my opinion. I never did it in my news stories. [00:25:23] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that's why people respected you as a journalist so much, because there's been some with major networks, I won't mention names that have come out and said, it's our job not to just report the facts or the truth, which you did so eloquently for so many years. But they've said, no, we're the ones who decide what that is, and then tell people, well, it's changed. [00:25:41] Speaker B: I'm so glad that I'm not in that business. [00:25:44] Speaker A: It'd be hard, wouldn't it, today? [00:25:45] Speaker B: Yes, it was. It wasn't. I would say it was a little hard sometimes in that I grew up in the old school journalism, where you really do what you said. You tell the facts, and you don't spin it, but at the secular big networks, there was unconscious bias, but it was mostly because of ideological lack of diversity. There would be all this talk about diversity, diversity, diversity of gender, diversity of race, diversity, which is fine, but there was no diversity of ideology. And I would joke with these people because I loved them. They weren't my enemies. [00:26:24] Speaker A: Sure. [00:26:25] Speaker B: But they would laugh about. They'd say, oh, my gosh, how did we get a Southern born again evangelical Christian in the newsroom? And I'd say, you guys, 42% of Americans call themselves born again Christians. And one slips into your newsroom and you're all freaking out. And we'd laugh. You know, there wasn't diversity in that way. And we could get off on that. [00:26:48] Speaker A: Sure. [00:26:48] Speaker B: I mean, I think the mainstream media, I totally disagree with the current administration that says all the mainstream media is the enemy of the people. Absolutely not. There's bias, but you have to be wise to know where the biases are. There were bias. I think there was bias. There is bias around issues like, like LGBTQ and abortion. So you know that, you know what their spin is. And they definitely need different perspectives, but in lots of every other areas, no. So you have to know how to read. And mainstream media still does a really good job, I would say much better than the media out there, the spun off, non journalistic media. And even there's only one network that's been fined $800 million for lying to their viewers. I'm sorry. Yeah, only one. [00:27:42] Speaker A: Right. [00:27:43] Speaker B: And that's the extreme bias on the other side. So sadly. And I did a stint with Fox News, I did some freelance work for Fox. I would say to my more liberal media friends who didn't like the right wing views Fox took, I'm like, you are responsible for Fox. You did. You had the corner on the media. You got to do your way. Of course this was going to happen. And now they've swung the other way. [00:28:11] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:28:12] Speaker B: So, citizens, this is something. If I could go speak anywhere, what I would talk about in this country is, sadly, Americans don't want to do hard work. We want to turn on the TV and be told what to believe. And we've trusted, you know, we used to trust the networks. Now half the country trusts folks, or you trust this or that. But we have to do harder work to be citizens. A good citizen now you need to really read and study different perspectives. And you have to turn off cable tv. Sorry. Cable TV is about fear and outrage and exaggerations. You need to find A few good, reputable sources read them, look at the opposite points of view, and I can tell you how I do it. I read the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Murdoch, who owns Fox News. I read their editorial page, which is very conservative. I do read Fox headlines online. I don't watch, I don't watch cnn. I read the New York Times, which is a fantastic paper. And yes, they have some biases. I read the Washington Post. I read the Dallas paper. I read a lot. And I don't spend maybe 30, 45 minutes a day. But people, it's the work of a citizen not to be a lazy news consumer. We now have to be careful about the news we consume. [00:29:31] Speaker A: No, I agree. [00:29:32] Speaker B: And when I get in debates with people or people talk about what's happening in the world when it's twisted and not honest or something, I always ask one question to my friends. What's your source? [00:29:43] Speaker A: Yeah, what are you reading now? [00:29:44] Speaker B: What's your source for that information? You just said what? Where did you get that? And it's always from an extremist, dishonest media outlet. And I will gently say, have you thought about looking at the other side? The problem today is now for even many evangelicals who watch Fox or Breitbart or Newsmax or whatever, all other media is an enemy of the people. And so they won't look at any of it. So you're only getting one slice of reality. And some of it is good and true, I know that. But there's a lot that's missing and we have to find it. It's work. We're required to do more work than we used to have to do. [00:30:34] Speaker A: I agree and I'm so glad you're saying this. You know, and I read a number of papers too. Different perspectives. I think it's very healthy. There's one paper in particular, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, owned by Walter Husman. He's a friend and he's big on ethical journalism. And there is this statement at the front of every single paper that just basically says, we're gonna do this in the most non biased, bipartisan way possible. And he'll have a column from one perspective in an article and then they'll have the other side by side. And then you let the viewer or the reader try to. And I think it's beautiful. And I think our. [00:31:10] Speaker B: That's the way it should be done. There's a magazine I used to take and they still have it up the week. The week does that. So it's a weekly Magaz where they have, here's what the New York Times says, here's what Fox says, here's what they say, here's what they say. And then you can think it through yourself. Because we have agency to discern truth. If we are Christians, we have the Holy Spirit to help us discern truth. There's also one I didn't mention which I used to read all the time and I need to get back on. It's Axios A X I O s and it's free. It's daily news feed. They're very non emotional, non outrage, non extremist and they give you the facts and sometimes also the BBC. Yeah, it's pretty good. [00:31:50] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:31:50] Speaker A: Peggy, you have been all over the world with ABC News and everything else you've done. You're very respected as a journalist and opinion writer these days. Let's talk about. I know you had interviewed President Bush as well as President Clinton. Just maybe just a couple of highlights from each interview or what you just learned about each of those gentlemen that impressed you the most. And I know you could probably talk a lot about that. [00:32:18] Speaker B: I have to remember, you know, I went into the interview with Clinton, we had an exclusive two night I got it was a two part long interview for ABC World News Tonight on Clinton and his faith. This was at a time when everybody was very Christians in the world, very skeptical and really hated Bill Clinton because he had an affair. Monica Linsky, in fact, I had to cover or got to cover what church leaders were saying that any president who has had an affair or been unfaithful to their wife or had any sexual whatever should be impeached. Think about that. [00:32:57] Speaker A: Yeah, especially in today's context. Right? [00:32:59] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Think about that. Everybody wanted him impeached. All the Christians wanted him impeached because he had had enough fair, which was horrible. I agree. It's very confusing to me. I feel like I'm back in that house of mirrors now that nobody seems to be concerned about this with Donald Trump. I don't want to get political here, but it was very different then. So Clinton was the enemy. He was bad. He was a Democrat and he had had an affair. So I went into it knowing people in my tribe of my Christian tribe didn't like him, to be honest. What surprised me was how, and I know he could be kind of a chameleon, but how easy it was to talk to, how open, how well he knew his Bible more than all these other, more than Reagan, more than all these other presidents. He could quote Bible. [00:33:46] Speaker A: I mean, you know, I've heard that, yeah. [00:33:48] Speaker B: He knew scripture, he knew the Lord. He talked about forgiveness and God's mercies being new every day. Did I fall in love with Bill Clinton? No, not necessarily. I was a reporter. I was detached. It was a fun interview. He was brilliant. He loved talking about religion and faith and the issues he believed in. And I enjoyed doing the interview. [00:34:10] Speaker A: That's awesome. [00:34:11] Speaker B: It was an incredible privilege. And I asked him tough questions. [00:34:14] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:34:16] Speaker B: So anyway, that's what I remember about Bill Clinton. [00:34:18] Speaker A: All right. [00:34:19] Speaker B: George Bush. Oh, he was great. I got to interview him when he was governor of Texas and then when he became president. What I remember most about George Bush and I still sometimes have communicated with him. He's here in Dallas. He is like the guy who lives next door. He's very humble and down to earth and warm. I mean, similar. Not to Bill Clinton. Clinton is very. You can't become president, I don't think, and not be able to connect with people. [00:34:46] Speaker A: Oh, no, right. [00:34:48] Speaker B: George Bush to me had a very genuine faith. Talked about his prayer life and reading of the Bible seemed really believable and trustworthy. I liked George Bush and I enjoyed my interview with him. And what's interesting is after I became a columnist and he was in Dallas, I got a letter from his chief of staff asking, saying he wanted to talk to me about my column. And I went and got to have coffee with him. This was post president and we had a 45 minute conversation about life, parents, daughters, faith, marriage. He's the most normal guy, man. I have a lot of respect. And of course, you know, what he did with Pepfar and his. What I like best politically about George Bush, even though obviously there were huge problems with the Iraq war. I like his Pepfar, his compassionate conservatism. I wish that's where we were today. Conservative values with deep compassion. Instead of the harshness and what feels to me somewhat cruel some of the ways things are executed now. [00:35:59] Speaker A: Okay. [00:36:00] Speaker B: Yeah. That's what I liked about George Bush. [00:36:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. [00:36:03] Speaker B: And I interviewed Al Gore. And my most famous interview, which I didn't even realize how famous it was until all my photographers and sound people got their cameras out to take pictures. That's when I knew, well, this is a really big interview. Was Muhammad Ali really? [00:36:20] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. [00:36:21] Speaker B: See, every guy knows that. [00:36:22] Speaker A: I didn't know you had interviewed Ali. [00:36:24] Speaker B: I got to interview so many. I met Billy Graham a couple times. I interviewed Mohammad Ali over a story we were doing about something in Florida where the state wasn't paying tax dollars to send kids on school. School buses to go hear him talk about Islamic or Muslim something. It was church and state. A church and state issue. [00:36:44] Speaker A: Okay. [00:36:45] Speaker B: And he agreed to talk to the network, and I got to do the interview. And that was pretty cool. [00:36:49] Speaker A: That is very cool. [00:36:50] Speaker B: I don't know why I did that. He's not like Bush or he's not a president. But he was famous. [00:36:53] Speaker A: Another influential person. [00:36:54] Speaker B: But the people that. When people ask me, who are your greatest interviews? You know, honestly, it's the people who weren't famous. It was the people who were so. The people whose stories were so amazing, who were courageous and honest and brave and in the middle of news events when you think, that's a real hero. He wasn't. This person didn't have worldly power or money or whatever, but they did the most courageous, you know, people like that. [00:37:24] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:37:24] Speaker A: Does one stand out? [00:37:26] Speaker B: I wish I'd prepared for this. I. I've done so many stories. I have to go back and look at my list. After how many years? Let's see, 13 years at Channel 8, seven and a half at ABC, and then another eight at World Vision, where we launched a radio broadcast and I was the host. So we'd interview people all over the world about justice and poverty. So I would interview rap stars in Haiti, for example, doing work there, or government leaders in developing countries. Just so many interesting people. Yeah, I've been so privileged. You really have to be able to tell these stories. [00:38:03] Speaker A: And now you're writing. I mean, it seems like monthly. I'll see something in the New York Times or certainly the Dallas Morning News. [00:38:10] Speaker B: Now I'm more the Dallas Morning News because I live here and I have a community. It's a smaller paper. Local papers are having a hard time surviving. This paper has gotten much smaller. But it's been fun to write for people and be in the grocery store line with my grandchildren. And people say, are you Peggy Wehmeyer? I'm like, yes. Do you remember me from abc? No. I read your last column and I think, oh, people read the local paper. Some people read it. And so now I write mostly. I have done some for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. And yeah, I have done that, but I'm writing mostly for the Dallas Morning News. [00:38:49] Speaker A: So let's say, hypothetically, you go back in time and you were a current journalist with abc, as you were. [00:38:55] Speaker B: If I was now. [00:38:56] Speaker A: If you were right now, today, as you were, maybe even the role you. [00:38:59] Speaker B: Were in, I would love it. [00:39:00] Speaker A: What would that look like for you? I mean, what would you say? [00:39:03] Speaker B: Oh, I'd be covering all these stories. I'd be covering my tribe. Evangelical Christians are the most active. Big. Most of my stories were about my people because we were the ones involved in controversies or resisting the government or doing those kinds of things. So I covered that. I would be doing that again, but it would be very different now because now the evangelicals are in power with the Trump administration. So I would probably be doing stories about what that looks like and what, you know, whatever stories are happening. I'm trying to think of what I would cover right now. Obviously, big thing is this whole movement of dominion theology. That's a big, big movement. I'm fascinated with that. I did do a column on it on Christians. The secular world calls it Christian nationalism, too, on Christians getting in power and wanting to Christianize everything. Christianize, but, you know, take dominion over every area of society. Of course, we want to permeate every area of society, but there's some controversy around how do you dominate an area. Anyway, I'd be covering that because that's a very important story. I'd be covering all kinds of things. [00:40:25] Speaker A: You know, I remember you saying one time someone asked you, let's say you're on assignment, you had a story, and you could not report it in a way that you felt like. You could not be biased. I mean, I know you've been objective and you've given both sides or whatever, but for that person today, maybe they're an aspiring journalist who's gonna watch this or listen to this, and they just simply can't do it. Would you say, then pass it on to someone who can. [00:40:51] Speaker B: Do you mean, Todd, they can't do it because they can't handle the topic, or they can't do it because they're getting pressured by managers or producers to spin it. [00:41:00] Speaker A: Exactly. That's what I mean. [00:41:02] Speaker B: I would say to any young journalist who's at a good place, the times when I felt, which over my 30 years were not that many, where I felt like I was being pressured a little bit to spin something a certain way. I always had to remember, why was I doing this job? Who called me to do it? Was I going to compromise? When are you crossing the line of compromise? For example? I'll give you a story back when Promise Keepers was a big thing. When I was at ABC and the Promise Keepers were doing the Million Man March on Washington. And I pitched it, you know, I always would say, we need to cover this. So they said, great, we want you to go talk to the National Organization of Women and the. I'm trying to remember whatever the groups were that hated Promise Keepers, and we want you to go interview them. I'm like, why? I mean, I would always fight with my producers. Well, because this is a horrible group. And. No, no, not actually. It's not a horrible group. These people aren't trying to overthrow women and be against. They're not just anti women, anti lgbtq. But we would argue. I would fight. You have to be a fighter for your position. And then I agreed. I'll go do interviews with them. But I also was doing the huge thing of the rally and the leaders of the prom housekeepers. Then it comes down to putting the story together. So it's all very. And by the way, this also is happening at Fox News. Happens everywhere. And they're saying, well, we need to hear from these people first. And so you sit there and you pray and you think, how can I do this? In a way that satisfies the fears of my producers who truly think Promise Keepers is dangerous and is true to the real story of what I see happening with Promise Keepers, that they are not about oppressing women and homosexuals. And then if you submit a script, which I would always do the way I thought God was calling me to do it, almost always it went. And I'd have fights with producers on the hard ones, but if there were a couple times when they said, no, we don't like it like this. A couple times where I said, then I refuse to do this story. [00:43:17] Speaker C: Wow. [00:43:17] Speaker B: And they would say, well, you could lose your job, and I'd like. And one time someone said to me, if you don't do that, the fifth floor is going to be really mad. And they write your check. The fifth floor is all the executives. And I remember it was one of my best moments. I looked at my friend, the producer and said, that's the difference between you and me. [00:43:41] Speaker C: Wow. [00:43:41] Speaker B: I don't work for a paycheck now. Of course I work for a paycheck. But I worked. Mostly I wouldn't do. I refused. So I would call home sometimes and tell my husband on these kinds of stories, which, again, didn't happen that frequently. Honestly, they didn't. But when it did, when I was pressured to maybe be heavier on this point or that or change a sound bite, I would call my husband and go, honey, I think this is the day I quit. You always have to be willing to quit if you're compromised to the point where you are violating your conscience and I never had to. Never had to. [00:44:19] Speaker C: Wow. [00:44:20] Speaker A: But you were willing to. And I think that's the difference between. [00:44:23] Speaker B: You and so many others to be willing to. Which I gotta tell you, I hate to get political, but I'm looking at the world right now and the silence everybody is having. And I look at Congress like, where are people with courage? Why is everyone so afraid of losing their jobs? There are some things that should be said no to. We don't break laws, we don't violate the Constitution. We go ahead and do these things that need to be done, but do it with justice and mercy and law abiding. And nobody will speak up because everybody's holding on to their position. Position. And as a Christian, we cannot do that. We have an audience of one. Always. That doesn't mean we don't make some compromises. But God tells us when the compromise is too much. [00:45:13] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:45:13] Speaker A: And you've got to be willing to walk away. Correct. [00:45:16] Speaker B: You always have to be willing to walk away. And look at the New Testament, the suffering of Christians. Look at the world where Christians have suffered. You know, we've had it so good. We are. So I include myself into comfort and no suffering. We got to be willing to suffer. And I anticipate that's on the horizon. [00:45:41] Speaker A: You know, a theme of your life just in conversations we've had has been, you're one that has just. You've risen from the ashes. [00:45:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Like cat with nine lives. I don't like that. I wish that wasn't my theme. I resisted that theme for so long. I would always say to God, I don't want to talk about that. I don't want to do that. And finally I'm like, okay, if this is the life you've given me, whatever he gives us or allows some suffering we cause ourselves, but some suffering happens to us. And that suffering we have very little control over other than how we respond. And we have to stay rooted in the fruits of the Spirit. And that's what I would say to evangelicals today are the people you're following and yielding to, exemplifying love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self control. This is the evidence of the Holy Spirit. And I have to do that when I suffer, when I'm angry, when I want to resist something. You know, which is why I never wrote a book slamming the liberal media for the ways they were biased. [00:46:55] Speaker A: Right. [00:46:56] Speaker B: They weren't the enemy. They aren't the enemy. Satan is the enemy. We have to be very careful about who we name our enemies. [00:47:05] Speaker A: Yeah, that's Very true. [00:47:07] Speaker B: And enemies are being targeted all over. [00:47:11] Speaker A: Well, and back to the. If it's just one perspective and that's all you're getting, whether you're on the left, the right, whatever. If that's all it is to me, it would be more easily. You're more easily deceived. Correct. [00:47:23] Speaker B: Totally easily deceived. We're not called as believers to make whole swaths of people like all of the federal workers or all of the secular media. The enemy that is so dangerous. [00:47:40] Speaker A: Oh, for sure. [00:47:41] Speaker B: That is not our enemy. [00:47:42] Speaker A: Right. [00:47:43] Speaker B: And this is not how Jesus fought wars. These aren't the weapons he used to. Somebody said to me recently, somebody who is very supportive of everything that's happening right now. The new administration said, well, I pointed out some things. I said, but what about this? [00:48:00] Speaker A: This? [00:48:00] Speaker B: He said, well, I guess I wish they'd use a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer. I said, that's a very good way to put it. There are ways to make all these necessary changes with a scalpel. It'll still hurt. It's still surgery. We need change. We need change to illegal immigration. We need change to woke dei. We need change to the whole trans U. I agree. I'm on board with all that. But there's a way to do it where you're not using a sledgehammer and Jesus. I thought about that this morning before this interview, and I was praying the whole sledgehammer scalpel idea. And here's what came to me. There's only one time Jesus is going to use a sledgehammer, and it's when he returns. And when he returns, the sledgehammer is going to be used against people of the lie. [00:48:51] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:48:52] Speaker B: Jesus talked about truth and lies, truth and lies, truth and lies. And I wouldn't want to be on the side of the lies when Jesus returns. And I think we all have to be very careful to be planted in reality, because that's the only place where God exists. [00:49:12] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:49:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And as it gets what appears to be spiritually darker, Jesus says to be light. Well, where's light most evident? But in darkness? And so to live as you have as a journalist, as a mom, as a. I mean, you've been a truth teller, but you've also shined very brightly. And I think as you move forward with your writing, potentially this book, maybe even a movie, I'm excited just to see where it goes and how brightly your story is going to shine. [00:49:43] Speaker B: I want to say something. I'm very flattered, honored, humbled that you would say I'm a truth teller. I try to be a truth teller. But all of us are wounded and broken and see through a mirror dimly. I am aware that I don't get the truth perfectly either, and that knowing standing in what's real and knowing what is true and real is an ongoing work in progress where we have to stay so rooted in Christ and his ways to see truth. So I don't always see it right. And I get very upset sometimes about things that are happening, which is why I have made myself. I've asked some of my friends, would you read other media? I think it's so important, would you read other media? And so I've decided I have to read the media I don't like. So I am reading some media that I consider very hostile and biased. And I'm reading it so that with humility I can ask God, where's the truth in this that I'm missing? If I'm asking other people to read the New York Times and the Washington Post, I want to do the same thing I'm asking them to do and trust, not be afraid of it, not be afraid of it, but to ask God, show me what I'm missing. So we all, as Christians, have to approach truth with hunger, diligence. We're supposed to be alert, unswerving at our post, awake, not sleepwalking through this, but with true humility. [00:51:16] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:51:17] Speaker A: And I've watched you over the years demonstrate it, and I'm grateful. And one of the ways in which you've done it, which can probably be the most difficult, is when you don't share the same ideologies as maybe even family members or even children. And you listen well to your children, to your girls. Talk about the importance of that for a minute. Maybe you even got a couple of examples of things you've learned from them or how you've learned from each other. [00:51:45] Speaker B: I love my daughters. I have two daughters who are wise and smart and committed to the Lord. Yeah, I used to be, you know, as a mom. And those of you with adult children know I was the hub of the wheel. I was the shaper. The kids kind of said, mom, stop being a shaper. I was the one who taught them. And this is the way we go. And my husband and I. And then as they grew up and graduated from college and did their own careers, they started having ideas of their own. And I had to learn. Well, they don't necessarily want to be shaped by me all the time. I knew I was letting them go, that I was raising them to let go. But letting go is hard, especially if they have ideas I don't have. So I think I did write a column about that. As my children started developing ideas that weren't exactly like mine, I started by trying to correct them. No, no, no, that's not what the Bible says. Oh, one funny one I just thought of. So my daughter went to law school. My oldest. And became a federal public defender and spends all her time in prison with felons. And I sat down with her foolishly and said in the beginning, now, wait a minute. Don't you think if Jesus were here today, he'd be a prosecutor? She was like, mom, are you kidding me? And she started quoting verses to me about Jesus being in the prisons and the poor and the vulnerable. She goes, don't you realize that some of my clients, they're poor, they're minorities, they have no defense, and they will have the exact same crime. Maybe they get caught with a bag of marijuana as a white boy in that rich neighborhood, that gets off in an instant. And my guy gets 20 years in prison. I'm not saying they're not guilty. I'm just trying to be Jesus to give him a fair shake at justice. Like, instead of 20 years, could he get five? And I had to really get my head wrapped around that, because I grew up in a home where the bad guys are the bad guys, good guys are the good guys. And I've come, I've made myself go to court and watch her defend some of these felons. And one day I watch, and this guy came out. He just looked awful. He was in the orange jumpsuit. He was shackled, his feet and his ankles. He. He had done something bad. He had smuggled guns or illegal drugs or whatever. And I heard her tell the judge his story, how he was sexually abused, how his mother had thrown a refrigerator on his head from a third story building, how his father. I mean, horrible ways he had grown up and the abuse that had happened to him. And could they just. Could the judge and the jury just understand some of what he had gone through? And could he be put in a program, maybe like this Christian program for rehab with AA and whatever I'm kind of listening to, but he's a bad guy. And I watch her while she's talking in her suit and high heels and this guy. And unconsciously, I see her move her hand over on the prisoner's shoulder, rubbing his back as tears are coming down his face. And she's continuing to talk to the judge. And then she's wiping a tear from his eye while she's talking. And I thought, she's Jesus with skin onto this man right now. [00:55:01] Speaker C: Wow. [00:55:02] Speaker B: And she has led some of these prisoners to Christ. So that's an example. I've read their letters to her saying, no one has ever seen me like you see me. No one has ever listened to. And I thought, okay, I get it. You're not trying to get them off. You're not trying to say they're not guilty. [00:55:23] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. [00:55:25] Speaker B: You're being Jesus in the darkest places where nobody likes these people, but Jesus does. [00:55:32] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:55:32] Speaker A: Amen. [00:55:33] Speaker B: So my children have changed me like that. I've had. I love them so much. We all love our children. I listen to them and I've had to hold back my way of seeing. Sometimes it's still hard for me. [00:55:45] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:55:46] Speaker B: It's still hard when I think they need to be doing something differently. [00:55:49] Speaker C: Right. [00:55:50] Speaker B: But I'm learning. [00:55:51] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:55:51] Speaker B: You mentioned. I thought the verse you were going to quote is, we have to speak the truth in love. [00:55:57] Speaker C: Yes. [00:55:59] Speaker B: I think most of us fall somewhere on that continuum. We're better at the truth or we're better at love. [00:56:05] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:56:05] Speaker B: I have to confess, and this is kind of vulnerable for me. I've been so rabid about truth telling that I've been weaker on love. Sometimes it shows up in marriage. Like I would confront my husband, no, that's not true. Whatever. And I'm realizing you don't have to speak the truth all the time. Sometimes we steward our holding of the truth in the name of love. We don't tell the truth right away when someone needs love. So I think as I get older and older, I hope what God's been teaching me is, yes, speak the truth, but major in love. And that means you might have to hold your tongue on the truth for a while. That's very hard for me, but it's my challenge. And what I hope I'm growing in. [00:56:56] Speaker A: And the fact that you're willing to do it. That's what I'm just. I'm so amazed by is the evolution, the process, what you've learned along the way, and how your upbringing shaped you and continues to shape you as you learn more. [00:57:16] Speaker B: But it's what every Christian is called to do. We're supposed to keep growing into the image of Christ until we see him face to face. And we're so far from there. I'm so far from there. But if I'm not continually growing and learning and facing. I don't even want to say the Word sin. You know, call it my sin or the burdened, broken parts of me. We have parts of us that are burdened or broken or messed up. If I'm not willing to let God shine a light on them and say to God, ah, thank you that you love me enough to allow me to see the areas in my life that need work so that I can be more like you. Because it's the truth that sets us free. [00:58:01] Speaker A: Right. [00:58:02] Speaker B: That if I grow, I'm freer and freer and freer. If we believe that we will lean into growth. And the discomfort of it. It is uncomfortable. [00:58:10] Speaker C: Yeah, it is. [00:58:12] Speaker A: And I think it's one of the ways in which God does shape and mold us. I think about in Malachi, chapter three, there's this image of God as the silversmith. And you think of the silversmith, and they have this metal, the precious metal, and God allows it to be heated up to burn away the impurities. And that's probably a painful process in terms of if you were a piece of metal, in a sense. And the way. So as God is watching as the silversmith, watching this precious metal, each one of us, the way in which the silversmith knows when the image, you know, when the. Let me back that up. The way in which God, as the silversmith knows when the masterpiece is finished, when it's complete, is when he sees his reflection in it. I love that, you know, and isn't that just a beautiful testimony of. And, you know, you think about the wounds you've experienced. Without them, where would you be? [00:59:08] Speaker B: Well, you know what's helped me? You just triggered a thought. There's a part of me that hates my wounds, that sometimes is angry that I have them, that there were so many wounds inflicted on me as a child that I still have to work through. But I've come to a place where I imagined Jesus when he came back and appeared after the resurrection to the disciples. He still had his wounds. [00:59:37] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:59:38] Speaker B: If Jesus didn't expect us to have wounds. [00:59:41] Speaker A: Right. [00:59:41] Speaker B: He would have been totally healed. Jesus came back with his wounds intact. For me, that means, okay, Lord, I'm not going to hide my wounds. I'm not going to be somebody who wastes my pain. We're all wounded and broken. [00:59:59] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:59:59] Speaker B: So if for whatever mysterious reason, you've allowed me to have all these wounds, I have a husband who died. I've been through a lot of difficult stuff in my childhood. If for some reason you've allowed this in your plan, which I'm not going to navel gaze to Try to figure out why. Let me use them for your glory. Every single thing in my life, I wouldn't have chosen it this way. And I don't even want to say I'm into the sovereignty of God, but I don't like when people say God made all that happen. I'm uncomfortable with that. I'm like, God did allow all those things to happen, and he was still there. And I won't know till I see him face to face why he didn't intervene more often. I could have lost my faith several times because I'm like, where were you? But so do the psalmists say that. And so did Jesus on the cross. Where were you? Why have you forsaken me? So, yeah, I wouldn't have chosen it, but it's what is. And I want to be like Jesus, and I want to be free. And he's the only way to be free. [01:01:07] Speaker A: And he has set you free. And without his wounds, where would any of us be, really, ultimately? [01:01:13] Speaker B: Thank you for that. [01:01:14] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:01:15] Speaker B: Yes. I was reading Hebrews this morning. His wounds. We are his brothers and sisters. His wounds set us free. He identifies with all our wounds. He suffers with us. I love that. [01:01:28] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. [01:01:30] Speaker A: Well, I know a lot of our viewers, a lot of listeners, they're captivated, I'm sure, as I started this, to say, yeah, we need that book way Meyer Rising from the ashes. Any parting advice as you think about your own journey? Each of us has this eulogy, I think, that's being written. How do you want to be remembered? [01:01:55] Speaker B: Well, my daughters are real truth tellers. They were raised by me, and sometimes it really stings when they tell me the truth. So I would say if I asked my daughters, they would tell me the truth. And they've said before, I think. I think what my daughters and close friends would say is, I fought for truth. I was a fighter. If all of us are somewhere on the continuum of fight or flight in response to tragedy and stuff, I'm a fighter. I'd like to say that I am not. One of my bosses at ABC once called me a pit bulldog. Like, you're like a pit bulldog. You just persist. I think I'm. Whether I like it or not, I'm kind of known for persisting at truth telling and digging to find the truth. [01:02:50] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:02:50] Speaker B: I will say this one last thing. Once, when I was in a big conflict at ABC over the things you were talking about, like, they weren't letting me do a story I wanted to do that I thought was important, and I thought I Should quit. And I was very upset. And I went out in my backyard and I cried and I prayed to God. I said, that's it. You called me to do this job. I'm blocked every which way from telling some of the stories I want to tell. And I don't want to do this anymore. This is too hard. I feel like I'm just banging my head against the wall. And as I was praying, I got. Never had visions. I don't do visions and things. But I had this picture in my head that I believed by faith was from God. And he said, oh, Peggy, you've got it wrong. This is who you are, who you're to be. And I had a vision of a teenage girl in a trench coat. It was me with a flashlight. And he said, I called you to walk into this castle of rooms with doors closed, Dark rooms with door closed. And your job is simply to open the door and turn on the flashlight. That's your story. You tell the story. Just tell a story. Open the door. But what you're doing is you're going to doors that are locked and you're jiggling the door. You're kicking it down. You're fighting it. And there's darkness behind some of those doors that I haven't opened for you. And you're demanding they be opened. Just open the doors that open and turn on the flashlight. Let me do the rest. It changed my whole view of being a reporter. [01:04:29] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:04:30] Speaker A: So don't force it. Let it organically unfold. [01:04:33] Speaker B: But that came to me because I'm one of those fighters. And that's making yourself godlike. [01:04:42] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:04:43] Speaker A: Don't try to be God, because you're right. [01:04:44] Speaker B: Don't try to be God. But sometimes when things are really bad, my way of dealing with it is, I will overcome this. I'm an overcomer. And there's an upside to that. If you're an overcomer, like, I will not let this get me down. And there's a downside when we don't know when to stop fighting and to allow ourselves to suffer. So I had to grieve. Grief is not something I like. But we're called to grieve sometimes. [01:05:12] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:05:12] Speaker B: And to know when God is the one opening and closing doors, that would be. I didn't answer your question. I think on my tombstone I would want. She told the truth. She told the truth. And nowadays, unfortunately, that's not a given that people are going to tell the truth. [01:05:32] Speaker A: It's not. Well, hopefully, as a result of this conversation, more people out there will realize that not only will the truth set you free. Free, but we really do owe it to ourselves and the rest of humanity to speak truth and do so in love as Jesus did. [01:05:47] Speaker B: Right. [01:05:48] Speaker A: And you've done that. And I'm so grateful for your friendship and just the opportunity to sit down with you. So thank you, Peggy. [01:05:54] Speaker B: Thank you, Todd. It's been really fun to talk to you again. [01:05:57] Speaker A: You as well. Take care.