Robert Wright’s Princeton library has seen many remote visitors. The veteran journalist and author — formerly at outlets including The New Republic, Time and The Atlantic, with five books published and a sixth out this June — has been holding court in front of his packed bookshelves for decades.
A writer liberated by the blogging revolution, he founded the video-interview platform Bloggingheads.tv years before podcasts became the new daytime television, and he has also gone his own way for decades. This editor was a devoted watcher, decades ago, when a young who’s who of literary types Skyped in to talk with Bob, from Ezra Klein to Ta-Nehisi Coates and Megan McArdle. So it was a touch surreal to see those familiar bookshelves and hear that familiar voice corresponding with Fortune. When I told him as much, he responded with his familiar self-deprecation: “Well, your ship has come in.”