Why More Americans Are Seeking Religion

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“It's your answer to "What should I watch?" It's your money to save.”

It's your song to analyze line by line. It's your 10 ways to find a little calm. It's your world to understand. From New York Times, I'm Michael Babaro. This is The Daily. Across the country and here in South Central Pennsylvania,

Church leaders say they're seeing a noticeable shift. Gen Z is returning to faith, but in ways you might not expect. We're seeing the largest number of converts in recent history. Young New Yorkers have a new hot spot Sunday pass.

We're learning that for the first time in decades.

Faith in this country appears to be growing. After decades of declining church attendance, and a profound rise in seconds. I was like, "Can I maybe go to a church service?" Just to see what it's like.

Religion is having a moment in America.

“I think we do start to question like, "Why is this happening?"”

It's today. Producer Osta Chothervady talks to our colleague, Lauren Jackson, about why more and more Americans are now choosing to believe. It's Tuesday, May 12th. Hey Lauren.

Hi. How are you? I'm good.

And I see you in this video.

Let's see how far it is. I'm so thankful. It feels like so much of the conversation about religion in the last few years, and even the daily coverage of religion, has been about how politicized it has become,

especially on the rise, true.

“There was a recent face-off between the Pope and the president,”

but I'm also thinking about the overturning of Rovey Wade, battles at the Southern Baptist Convention, over female pastors, and IVF, some of these episodes I've produced for the daily. But you haven't been reporting on religion from that angle. Instead, you've been reporting on faith itself,

and how and why people in America believe. And I want to understand how all of this started for you, and why you decided to begin reporting on this now. Yeah, there have been so many stories in the last few years of the ascendancy, of a very muscular conservative Christianity,

and the ways in which that is expressing itself in politics. I'm interested in all of them, but I was really interested in how most people in America wrestle with these really big questions of religion and spirituality, and how they appear in their lives, their families and communities.

And as I started to look into that, something really dramatic emerged in my reporting, which was there is something hugely significant happening in sociologically and demographically, within America when it comes to American spirituality and religiosity. And that is that we know people across the political spectrum, young and old, are expressing a renewed interest in spirituality,

and in religiosity. We've seen for the first time since Pew Research has been gathering data on religion, that people have stopped leaving churches. In essence, secularization is paused. So it's not an uptick in church going, but kind of a flattening out.

Yeah, and that sounds like it's insignificant, it's just a pause, but it's a really big moment for people's personal relationships, to religion and spirituality. We know that in the early 90s, 90% of American adults identify this Christian according to Pew. That number dropped basically over my lifetime to be only about 2/3 of Americans.

It was called the Great De Churching. It was the largest and fastest shift in American religiosity on record,

and some people estimate that 40 million people left American churches.

So what demographers and sociologists had said for years was going to be the definitive decline of religiosity in America. That has stopped, it has paused over the past five years. And we actually got some new data in the last few weeks and months that really made this picture even more interesting.

Also, we had expected that every cohort coming up, so every new group of young adults would be less religious than their parents or their grandparents.

so 18 to 23 year olds, their signs that that group is even more likely,

and it's slight, but it's more likely to attend religious services at least once a month than those just older than them. And then separately, we got a new survey from Gallup, that found a sharp rise in the share of men under 30, who say that religion is "very important" to them.

It went from 28% in 2023 to 42% in 2025. That's a huge jump. It is, and it was surprising as well, because historically we've seen that young women tend to be more religious than young men, that's changing.

“So a lot of numbers pointing in a similar direction, how should we be looking at them in aggregate?”

How are you seeing this moment?

It's a really good question, and it's one that has sparked a lot of debate,

both in the pages of the New York Times and also in the people I'm speaking to on the religion beat. You know, plenty of people have declared this a revival. That's a strong word, and plenty of other people have said that is very premature and potentially erroneous, but what we do know is that this trend continues. So in 2025, the non-religious share of the American population declined yet again,

and the number of atheists and agnostics is back done to the levels we saw in 2014. That's close to 15 years ago. We do have signs that this shift is happening more on the right, particularly among young men, but we're also seeing this across the political spectrum. And if you take this step back, this is not just about Christianity,

it's about all other major religions as well. So the main takeaway is that the story of faith and religion and belief in this country is really at an inflection point.

“And as I said, you've been examining what's been driving all of this.”

You've been talking to people about what they believe and why they believe it. I can imagine that these conversations are quite intimate. I often say I feel like I'm part reporter, part therapist because it takes a lot of attention and a lot of time to attend to these stories. They're so intimate, they're so personal.

And it's also personal for me. My life in a way mirrors the shifts we've been seeing in Americans attitudes toward religion and also their religious practices over the past three decades. Could you tell me a little bit about your journey? I was raised in a very, very conservative and very religious place.

I was raised in L Iraq, Arkansas. I was raised to develop Mormon or member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And my family was really practicing. When I was a little girl, I used to write and send articles to the Church magazines

“because my dream job was to work as a writer for the Church magazines.”

In high school, I had a 6am Bible study that I attended every day before school. That's early. I was always late. I was always late. I mean, it's astonishing that I didn't crash on the freeway every day.

When I was just co-reening down the highway to get there on time. Because if I didn't graduate from this seminary class, I couldn't attend the big church university called Brigham Young University. So I had to make it. I was expected to attend.

And I expected myself from my whole life to attend. Find someone to marry. Have children and raise them in the church. So it was an extraordinary shift when I decided to attend a secular university. Was that a big deal in your family?

It was a huge deal.

I had a guidance counselor who nudged me and nudged me and finally,

I relented and decided to apply for a scholarship. And when I got it, I was really surprised by how moved I was by the environment, how much I thought I wanted to learn in that space. And so ultimately I decided to go. But I was terrified.

And that was a really, really hard transition for me. It was extraordinarily difficult for me to not only lead that community, but begin to challenge a faith and an ideology that was really comprehensive. What did that look like? The first week I was there, I fell in love with someone who was not a member of my faith.

And it's a very common refresher for a lot of people who then have to be in the question, what it is they believe in and how they can negotiate the boundaries of that. Because the way you were raised, it was like, yeah, you were meant to be with someone from the same faith. Absolutely. I also encountered ideas, you know, I, in a political science class,

Red Isaiah Berlin, on pluralism, the idea that many truths and realities are equally valid and worthy of consideration and examination.

The idea that concept that there was not one truth, church, there could be many possible truths. And for me personally, that, you know, was the beginning of a huge reckoning. One that continued as I attended graduate school abroad. And at the age of 25, I ultimately formally left the church.

“How does that affect your relationship with your family given how you were raised?”

I mean, of course, if a parent truly and deeply believes that a religion is true and is the best path to follow. And they desperately love their child, they're going to want their child to follow it. So it was an, you know, an exercise in empathy and trying to understand and really accept my parent's perspective while also holding my own. I need you to know that I am grateful for the many positive things in many ways that the woman has brought me. I'm no longer choosing to be women.

Okay, that sounds good to you. But what you're pushing back is this flow of happiness joy. You know, these were tough conversations, but I knew even then that these were really important moments in my life. And that I wanted to remember them accurately. So I recorded them. I'm telling you right now, it's not a healthy institution for me and many, many, many people. I do not want to participate, and that is the healthiest choice for me for many reasons.

I'm asking you to honor that as my mom. I was desperately wanting my parents to not only understand, but also to approve of the life choices that I've made and leave in my face.

Okay, I'm just asking if we could, I never got any chance to talk to you about it.

It's not, it's not a, it's not comfort to be, it's not comfort. Instead, it's not going to be, I guess the thing is it. And frankly, that's not something I parents were willing to offer, because they deeply believe in the world view and the faith that they believe in and that they were raised in and that they live every day.

“I think if you put that over here and you had ever experienced feeling the Holy Spirit, then you would get what I'm talking about.”

But if you don't have, like, room in your heart to just try and listen, then. And so, they want me to participate in that. I love you. Love to you looks like the exceptionally perspective. They felt like my rejection of that faith was a rejection of them.

And that led to a green one of conflict. I don't know, I guess if there's a sunset, sometimes you say to somebody, come see the sunset because you get excited. And that's all, you know, you can make it sound. So demeaning, but it's like a sunset to me. It's like, wait a second.

“Let's not go look at the bush, let's look at the sunset.”

Okay, I've got a different view of the sunset. I've got my own sunset. It's a great. So you were on a different path, a part of this great detourching. What did faith look like to you at that point? I mean, yeah, yeah, I stopped going to church, but I didn't stop searching for answers to the big life questions that plague us all.

And that made me like most Americans almost everyone believes in something, whether that's religious or not. The most recent piece survey said that 92% of Americans say that they believe in a God, spirits, souls, or an afterlife. But only 30% of Americans actually attend a house of worship weekly. So like most Americans, I found meaning outside of religion. Mm-hmm.

Through myself and to work, I did what I'd always wanted to do, which was be a journalist.

I was really motivated by the mission of the New York Times. I worked all the time, all the time. I also worked out as much as possible in my off time. I hiked, I went to work out classes, soul cycle, crossfit. These expensive workout classes that promise not just to healthier body, but also a better life.

I never got into astrology, but I understood why so many people, especially young women, had downloaded co-star, the astrology app. I've had so many conversations over the years, about astrology, and about mercury.

Yeah, mercury seems to always be in retrograde.

It promises that there's some sort of cosmic alchemy to the chaos, and who doesn't want that.

And the more I spoke to people, the more I traveled, I couldn't shake a really ingrained worldview that I had, which was one in which I saw belief and spirituality. I saw it everywhere. The people in power are obviously scared of the truth. Yet no matter how hard they try, they kind of escape from it. Standing at the climate rally with Greta Tuneberg on stage at COP in Glasgow, there was a reverence in the crowd.

This is what leadership looks like.

A desire for deliverance in the crowd that felt distinctly religious to me.

I saw it in the intensity of how people gravitated to social justice and campus activism movements were like you had a sense of it was right and wrong. I felt it at the era's tour.

“What are people feeling if not an extraordinary, ecstatic form of communal gathering?”

Ratherian rarely found outside of religious spaces. So while we had all this data, that millions of people had laughed American religion, it was still so clear to me that people were looking for an outlet for their beliefs. And then came the view report. And that data seemed to show that some people were reconsidering religion or houses of worship as a place they could turn to explore those beliefs. And so I started to talk to them to try to figure out why. We'll be right back.

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And let us know if you agree with our picks. I bet you won't. Even though I did attend Catholic School, all through elementary and middle school, I felt like I was going through emotions. I didn't really have a strong faith in my own.

“My parents, they were just like, religion is dumb. Like, why would you believe that?”

Like, I remember I was really little and I was like, oh, look what happens after you die and they were like nothing. You die. So Lauren, what did people tell you about what they were looking for and why it led them to religion or back to religion? Everyone has their own story and it's tough to make generalizations. But as I talked to hundreds of people across the country, a few themes did start to emerge.

So I started college in my freshman years when the pandemic happened and suddenly we were like inside all the time. And like I wasn't interacting with that many people and I just like became very depressed, which was like a big change for me.

Like that was never something.

I think the biggest one that came up again and again is that the pandemic was a moment of extraordinary rupture in American life. When we look at the pew data, the moment that we start to see secularization level off or pause is just about the exact same moment that the pandemic started.

“I'm looking at this and I'm like life is full of so much uncertainty and I wish I had like some way like mentally to like deal with that.”

People were forced to contend with their own mortality and look hard at the questions that they had about how they were living and if it was working for them. And a lot of people decided that it wasn't working for them.

Like I think my parents' generation had a much stronger belief that like work is good and like by working you are making the world a better place.

But like my generation like a lot of us do not feel that way. A lot of us see our jobs is just a job. We don't see it as an outlet for it. Like I'm making a meaning.

“The community piece I think is the piece that still aches, you know.”

They think many people have realized especially in the last few years. But they really don't have the depth of community that they long for in their lives. We all live in these separate, you clear home with our community at least.

And you think this is like the pinnacle of personal country success.

But the huge cause of that is our isolated. I've been like where's community? All my old undergrad friends have left or like they're all just like in their own little buckets. You know what I mean? Everyone's separate. Even though I left the church, I feel a pain I don't really know how to describe. I've had this like really strong desire to like host barbecues like in my apartment complex.

I've like felt like I could will a community into existence. You know what I mean? Just like through sheer personality. I could just like invite a ton of people and host like a big party. But I just like it's been eight months now.

And I haven't made a move. You know what I mean?

When things go wrong when they get sick and something really hard happens. Many people I talk to are looking for connection and community that they're just not finding in comments online. They want a meal train. They want to give and receive really tactile, meaningful care. And they're looking for spaces that can offer that. In coming back to religion, realizing that the high-horror offers a good structure for thinking about the way I live my life,

especially in relationship. And in particular, there's no hallmark card for I'm sorry day and you'll keep her offered back then. And I and I can many people feel lost without having to be accountable to something.

“I mean, I think, you know, the guilt gets a bad rat, but I feel guilty if I don't do that process.”

That's very good. And many people have said they're reassessing the value of religion with all of its built-in community, ritual, and set of existential and spiritual answers to the meaning and purpose of life. They're revisiting that whole package in the process, even if that comes with the baggage of what are sometimes deeply flawed institutions. I've been to my church four times since being home, and I was like seven months, and every time, pretty cathartic.

And I go, these are my values. Like right in front of me, I'm like, this is who I am, and I miss it, and I don't want it, and I'm like, I don't know like, I really want it to be needed stepping into it, and that's just a big leap. I would love to find a way to have what I had then without compromising who I feel I am. I couldn't do it then, and I don't, I don't know where to do it now. Like I still want more, like I still want something to believe in.

So in addition to the pandemic, and this widespread sense of dissatisfaction, there's another theme that is really stuck out to me, and it comes back to our politics. We all know that Trumpism has injected a renewed energy and even sense of ascendancy into conservative Christianity over the past decade. But what surprised me was I started talking to and hearing from more and more people on the left, who said that this political moment had also sparked a renewed interest in their own faith.

Hey, how are you? Hey, I'm doing well, it's not still a good time. Yeah. And there's one person I spoke to who really stood out to me, and his name was Nick Walmart Dieter.

“We attended math regularly, but I think they were going more because that's just what.”

Upperly mobile suburban professionals did in all eight, eighties, early nineties, right? He's 46 years old, he's from North Carolina, and for much of his childhood was a Catholic. But his family wasn't particularly devout. At that period of time in the church, like the kind of cases of children was particularly just bad. Around the time he entered high school, the Catholic Church's sexity scandal was really at the height of its visibility in public life.

And so, by ninth grade, I was done with it, and I'm like,

I don't believe in God, there's all bullshit.

He fought with his parents, and he'd kind of pitched this personal crusade against it.

“And I became so insufferable, I think, to my parents, like, we've lost this battle, and we stopped on the church.”

Yeah, okay. So as an undergrad, you would, I was as big left-wing student activists, and, you know, turn to schools to his workplace, to a meaningful job as a public defender for a sense of purpose in his life. And just by happenstance, I ended up marrying a woman who was much more devout than I was, more as a left-wing Catholic. But through the process of our courtship, I convinced her that she should leave.

And so, I would say it's actively hostile to it for decades. Yeah. Then something shifted for him when Trump was elected in 2016.

You know, I handed, like, kind of come back and be like, like, what the hell happened?

And kind of understand, like, who are these people who voted for? And now he did a lot of things. And I'm like, kind of self-reflection on why half America hates Democrats and people with me. What shifted? What changed for him?

Then he didn't see the election results coming. And it really upended some key assumptions for him about where he thought the country was headed. He'd been in and everything. You know, so I started to read some of these guys who are right-wing kind of influence or people like, just go to some Twitter accounts and everything.

And I guess what I realized is it's like, that kind of a really nasty kind of god list. Yeah, I think some of those guys are just so profoundly evil to me. They've got, you know, what they call race realism stuff. And it's like-- He also found himself disturbed by the tenor of the discussion and the discourse around politics,

social and cultural issues online.

“And it's like, you know, basically you need to have solidarity with people who are like you.”

And of course that just happens to be way people or whatever. And it's geared to shit out of me. Rust out that had some blog post-wantsaries like if you hated the religious right, you're really going to hate the your religious right. And he thinks really deeply about the best way to counter what he sees as a kind of toxicity.

And it kind of made me realize that without having a transcendent ideology that's universalistic and grounded in some common for all of humanity, we inevitably fall into this kind of us against the world. And that just seems very poisonous to me. So the alternative to that is, you know, a universalistic religion where we're all,

you know, equal world created in the image of God. And so that's what I felt like I needed. So to answer the despair that Nick has been feeling about American politics, he's starting to turn to face this thing that he's been openly hostile to for so long. What does that look like?

Well, he takes steps slowly at first in the middle of the night in secret. And because he was too embarrassed to admit he was going down these rabbit holes, he found himself watching religious videos online alone.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Smith and this is essential presents.

So a little while back.

“I think I remember reading from the time.”

It was like an interview with a priest named Mike Schmidt's from Minneapolis. He's got all these popular Catholic podcasts and he makes YouTube videos every week. One of the things I hate. One of the things you probably hate is like when we find weakness in ourselves, or when we just find ourselves like powerless to do what we want to do, you know?

And so I started watching some of the videos and I was just he watching them. Really now it's as helpful to saying, right? And one of the things that God wants for us and with us more than anything else is he wants to be in relationship with us. And he wants us to be in relationship with other people. I'd watch him and I'm like, okay, let me see anything.

It's terrible. Nothing we can do can fully break any kind of relationship with God. I've spoken to quite a few people who point to Father Schmidt's as someone very accessible for them in re-examining the merits of a religious life. And so he was kind of like like gateway into it. You have freedom.

You have power. You can start living that freedom and start living that power today. And it was like my seat and my dirty secret, right? Like like leftist political commitments which included like a heavy dose of atheism.

Yeah. Finally he comes to the sense that he wants to reconnect in some way to a faith community. Eventually, last April, Easter came in a while. And I just, we didn't do anything. It didn't all get this weird person. I just felt really bad like that we had and we're just hanging out, right?

The other lack of spiritual significance of this. It just felt geeky to me. And so I was sitting in my office. I've been thinking about emailing the diocese and being like, "What do I do?"

But I always just put it off.

And then I just went, I snapped email that when I said, "I want to do a general confession." So it actually contacts the church and he's talking to a priest and he says, "Hey, I'm open to coming back." But I have a block. I'm having a real hard time just getting to the believing in God. And the block is, I don't believe in God.

And that feels like a pretty significant problem when it comes to living a religious life or living a Catholic life. And he said, "Well, here's what you do. Just start reading the gospel." And I said, "Well, I've read all those, right?" And he's like, "No."

“He's like, "You know, you have to read them."”

Like with an open heart, as if this is giving you some sort of spiritual insight.

And it's not an academic exercise.

It's okay. All right. I mean, it's like, then I need to start coming to math. You just have to do it. Just dive in.

So what did he do? He did what the priest said and he continued to try. So I go on Amazon. We're a Catholic Bible. It's still told.

And there's nobody about this at all. He took me a week and a half. And I had to tell my wife, I was like, "Guess what I did last Friday." And she goes, "Why?" So that's weird.

And so that was a more calm recession. He buys a Bible and he starts going to church. But he does all of this very quietly.

“And how do you account for his impulse to keep it all a secret?”

It's just as simple as not wanting to come off as a hypocrite to his family? I think potentially, in part, he said as much. When that is much. When that's going to be going to math, he was kind of a weird thing. Because it's hard.

It's hard to admit that I just screwed up. You know, like you just feel like you go from being so stride in about one thing and then doing a 180, and it's a little bit. These feel a bit silly. You know, it's been much of his life making an intellectual argument against the church.

That there was no value in prayer or church attendance on Sunday. But what really mattered instead were political commitments to progressive causes that he felt would reform society. Two years ago, it's a, well, what we need to do is change the structure, right? So what we really need to do is, you know, take over the state, you know, and create a safety.

Whatever. You know, like we need to have state powers so that we can fix these problems. It's not your job as an individual in effective way. And here he was. We evaluate in all of that.

But to ignore the individual component in your individual ethical responsibility is really wrong. I think, and so Christianity also gives you kind of a broader vision, but it's, you know, again, it's a very personal thing too. I mean, you know, as flawed as Nick thought the church is, and as much as he'd rebelled against it, he started to see Christianity as something that he thought could make the world just a little bit better. Like, you know what, like, this works really well for a long period of time.

And we're in this moment after, say, it's post-war era where you've handled these great innovations. And I think we're starting to realize that it doesn't seem very durable anymore. Yeah.

“You know, Marxism doesn't tell you a whole lot about what you should do with your life.”

Christianity does. Yeah. And this reconciliation of his past world view with a new one, it wasn't easy, but he did keep trying. I just, you know, I like the smells and bells and the aesthetics of it. You know, it's the religion of half my ancestors.

And in the process, he found something that was really meaningful to him. By going through emotions and kind of absorbing and reading sacred scripture and who with a different attitude. I feel like I have a face, a genuine face in God now.

Lauren, next conversion seems very powerful.

it doesn't necessarily guarantee that they'll suddenly rush to church or to the mosque or to the synagogue or temple.

We are now only seeing the numbers level off.

“And while that's significant, as you've said, it's not definitive or predictive, right?”

There's no guarantee that we're going to see a great rebound in people returning to some established religion. Of course. And I want to be very clear. We are not seeing a revival of religiosity. What I am hearing about is a renewed interest or a renewed curiosity in religion.

For example, even chaplains at Harvard tell me that in the last 25 years they haven't seen this much interest in religion on campus. We're also seeing religious references appear more frequently throughout American life. And I think that's most visible at the very top of the Trump administration. You think about J.D. Vance, who's been very public about his conversion to Catholicism in recent years. He's publishing a book on the subject soon. Think about Pete Heggseth, Secretary of War, who is in Vokin, Christianity, in speaking publicly about the war on Iran.

So it's a big part of the Trump administration, but it's become a bigger part of our politics in general. There are 11 days remaining until election day. I will be a Muslim man in New York City, each of those 11 days. And every day that follows after that. In New York, for example, Mary Zorin Mamdani is being very frontal and open.

And he has been throughout his campaign. About his Islamic faith. He's the prophet Muhammad. So de Allah alayhi wa selam. Was a stranger too, who fled Meccaan was welcomed in Medina.

He's now in office hosting iftar is during Ramadan and he's praying in public. Many think of this month solely as a time where we fast from sun up to sundown. And yet for me and by no for so many of you, it is a month where we also get to reflect on who we are.

“That's new, you know, for a long time, I think since 2001, really, that would have been seen as a liability.”

Religion is not just about other people who lived a long time ago. Religion is about us in the here and now. And then, you know, if you look to the south, look at Texas State Representative James Talarico, who obviously has been in the news a lot. He'd won the Democratic primary for a Texas Senate seat. Christian nationalist walk around with a mouthful of scripture and a heartful of hate.

He's been talking about the Christian gospel as a way to combat the rise of what he derides as Christian nationalism. And he's really encouraging voters to see Christianity as the foundation for a more compassionate form of economic populism. What would Jesus do about a tax system that benefits the rich over the poor? He's a seminarian. He really knows the Bible and he's really quoting it in a way that we haven't seen it a long time from a candidate in the Democratic Party. Right? It was so interesting to see Talarico.

Alright, James, you too. Well, are you kind of school? Joe Rogan, a few months ago about Christianity.

“It's always an interesting to see a person who is a Christian, who is not four of the 10 commandments in schools.”

Yeah. In all of Jesus' teachings, he's always focused on the outsider, the outcast, the person who's left out or the person who's different.

And in general, to see all these young political leaders pushed to counter the dominance around conversations that we've seen so long on the political right. Yeah, exactly. And beyond politics, the Pope is dead. The throne is vacant. We're also seeing this in Hollywood. Do you notice a rabbi here? No, shit.

Yeah. Where? He's a beard and he was definitely judging me. Sounds like rabbi. And in pop music, I'm thinking especially of Justin Bieber and of Rosalia.

Who was a new album, "Out called Lux", which was released to high critical claim.

It's all about faith, hers and others. And on it, she even says in one of the songs that she's hot for God. Well, if that doesn't make God cool, then I don't know what does. I'm sorry, I was very cool. But what about you, Lauren?

I'm curious if any of this has led to you rethinking your position on faith and established religion. That's a big question. The short answer is, I'm not religious. I do not attend a house of worship. I have not gone back to the faith of my family and my childhood.

You know, I still pray, I don't know what or whom I'm praying to. But then the fact that my job explores these issues has given me the chance to really examine and to think deeply about the ideas that I grew up with.

I think we need to talk about some of the articles more because... Each week I write a newsletter called Believing, and every Sunday, whatever I write, becomes something for us to talk about.

You know, the documenting is a job, but your heart and your soul are always precious to me.

And while we still don't see eye to eye,

“I think I've heard from you a dad saying, "You see this is part of my interview mission on this earth," which is flattering because I know that comes from a really meaningful place for you.”

I think I see it differently. I'm a journalist. We have found a way to connect again about something that for a long time really drove us apart. I love you. I love you.

I'm getting better. Thanks, Mom. Bye.

Lauren, thank you so much.

Thank you so much. I've had so much fun in this conversation. We'll be right back.

“Here's what else you need to know today.”

On Monday, President Trump mocked Iran's response to his latest piece proposal as "Unserious," and said it had "imparalled the ceasefire between the two countries."

For the time being, the ceasefire remains.

No, it's unbelievable, Week. I would say I would call it the Weekest right now. After reading that piece of conversation, I didn't even feel free. Iran called his response, quote, "generous and responsible." A description that Trump flatly rejected.

“I would say the ceasefire is on massive life support”

where the doctor walks in and says, "Sir, you're left one as approximately a 1% chance of living." Yeah. And Democrats in Virginia are appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court to save a new congressional map approved by voters that was thrown out last week by a state court. It's a last-ditch attempt to preserve a redistricting plan that created

four new Democratic-Leaning House districts before the midterm elections. In its surprise decision, the state court ruled that the redistricting process violated Virginia's constitution, because the case revolves around state law. It's unclear if the Supreme Court will agree to hear the appeal. Today's episode was produced by us the chopper weight.

It was edited by Michael Benoit, and contains original music by Mary Elizana, Dan Powell, and Alicia Baitu. Our theme music is by Wannulay. This episode was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Special thanks to Rachel Kruster, Nick Pittman, Chris Wood, Kyle Grandjiller, and so

feel them. That's it for today. I'm Michael Mobile. See you tomorrow.