Madcap

When a cryptic op-ed appeared in The New York Times, it set off a frenzy in US politics. The writer, an anonymous senior official in the White House, criticized the President for whom they served as amoral. With his interest piqued, co-host Dan Bloom decided to do a little online sleuthing. Although the writer's identity remains unknown, there was one key clue that led to Dan's guess. Vice President Mike Pence happens to use an unusual word conspicuously often that also appears in the op-ed: "LODESTAR," defined as “a star that is used to guide the course of a ship.” Just two days later, while basking in the viral notoriety of his hypothesis, Dan was surprised to find his own vocational lodestar suddenly go dark when he was laid off. Luckily, a new, and exciting project quickly materialized, which in turn led to an invitation to the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism conference (ARIJ18) in Jordan. When David Ross left a steady office job to find his own lodestar in more creative work, he could never h