James Bennet:
"set out to create a look that was as original and fresh as our best writing, but also to connect it to the deepest traditions of the magazine, to its very origins."
"editorially, the connection to the founding of the magazine was unbroken"
the magazine has been at its best when it's been bold in its thinking, proposed contrarian arguments across a range of fields
Michael Beirut of Pentagram --
"a lot of constructive disagreement"
design we wanted was one that would show off our best ideas and showcase the richness of our content from technology to food and drink to travel, business, popular culture
we wanted a design that was capable of expressing our sense of humor and crucially we wanted a design that would give dramatic display to the core of what we do, to our big feature stories
we needed a design that worked on the web as well as it did in print
very soon we're gonna be bringing online content in verticals like technology and food as well as business and politics
there are a lot of people out there who are hungry for new ideas, and we wanted a design that served them btter, taht captured the intensity with which we're pursuing the questions that are on their minds

perfect bound from now on

cover geometry -- pentagram
think through a cover design that would allow us to shine a spotlight on the cover story with one strong image but would also allow us to promote several other stories in the magazine, to do a better job of showing the richness of each issue, and that's the idea behind this black bar. we also love the way they related the black bar to the A, it's created a kind of signature image for us.

matrix of questions drawn from the pages of the issue as a sign that we're recommitting ourselves to the essential core idea of the magazine

Jeff Goldberg author of new monthly advice column on back page

Jeff Goldberg and David Brooks

Brooks on fMRI scan -- "turns out I like Ahmadinejad very much"

brain science and the election
"the first thing to know about politicians is they understand something brain science does teach, which is that we're primiarly social and emotional creatures. if you hang around politicans long enough, you know they're all emotional freaks. they tend to have a terror of being alone - john mccain especially. they tend to need other people. they will violate your personal space. tehy will grab you by the shoulders. i sat next to a senator at the republican convention, a very conserative uy, who had his hand on my inner thigh the whole dinner -- JG: you should spend less time with larry craig! --

Dan Quayle and Ted Kennedy: "they met on the floor, they gave each other big hugs, their faces were like thisfar apart, and they were sort of caressing each other, talking, and laughing, and i was up in the senate balcony thinking: get a room!

they also have what i call logorrhea dementia, which is they talk so much they drive themselves insane.

they are a different breed of person, and none of them would do this if they were normal because the costs are so high. i say that in a bad way because i think they're all so emotionally needy, but in a good way too. because my experience with politicians is that 80% of them have an earnest core. that earnest core is they really wanna do good for the country. and you think of the life barack obama and john mccain have led for the last two years. saying the same thing, probably 8 times a day, never alone, not controlling time, away from family, friends, kids. you wouldn't do that unless you loved the country. and i happent o think these are the two best candidates we've had in a long long time. i actually admire them more than most of my colleagues and most voters.

JG: do you think the two VP nominees are the best we've had?
DB: lets start with joe biden. i love joe biden -- i mentioned logorrhea dementia earlier, but biden is the opposite. biden drives himself sane by talking. it's his own way of keeping in touch with reality, of saying the honest thing.

PSEUDO OTR STORY ABOUT GET RID OF RUMSFELD, GET RID OF CHENEY

the great virtue of joe biden is that he can't not say what he thinks. there's no internal monitor, and for barack obama that's tremendously important to ahve a vice president who will be that way. our current president doesn't have anybody like that.

the other thing about joe biden is, if you covered his campaign in iowa, half of scranton, his whole faimly, would arrive with him. and that kept him normal.
the good thing about him is he does have a base, good core.

Brooks: Now onto the other one...
Goldberg: You betcha!
Brooks: Jeff and I were going to do this whole dialogue in Palinese
Goldberg: But doggone it we forgot!

Brooks: i'll say the good and the bad about palin. the good is, very few people risk their careers in their lives. quitting this regulatory board in alaska, taking on the establishment of her own party, she did that. and i give her tremendous credit. her family life seems good to me, i thought the performances she gave in her speech and the debate were good performances. and i thought analytically she's got tremendous political talent, that's a natural talent that 99.99% of americans do not have.

do i think she's ready to be president or vice president? no. not even close. the more i follow politicans the more i think experience matters, the ability to have a template of things in your mind that you can refer to on the spot because believe me, once in office there's no time to think or make decisions.

and the final thing, and i'm more republican than not -- she represents a fatal cancer to the republican party. when i first started in journalism, i worked at the national review for bill buckley. and buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the boston phone book than by the harvard faculty. but he didn't think those were the only two options. he thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. and his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the reagan era. reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. but there has been a counter, more-populist traidiotn, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. and i'm afraid that sarah palin has those prejudices. i think president bush has those prejudices.

JG: why did he pick her? he seems ot have difficult lying. how could he convince himself that she could be president?

DB: he wanted to pick lieberman... if you know mccain, there is no plan b. he met this woman, saw in her himself. saw the maverick, saw the taking on the rich republican establishment, and said, gut decision.

JG: is all obama's thinking up here? it's very rare that we have people who are so dispositionally different.
DB: i admire them both, but they hate each other. mccain and hillary clinton really admired one another. if they had run against each other it would've been very different. these two men just hate each other, i think for that reason [mccain's thinking is all in the gut and obama's thinking is all in the head]. but obama has the great intellect. i was interviewing obama a couple years ago, and i'm getting nowhere with the interview, it's late in the night, he's on the phone, walking off the senate floor, he's cranky. out of the blue i say, ever read a guy named Reinhold Niebuhr? and he says, yeah. so i say, what did Reinhold Niebuhr mean to you? for the next 20 minutes, he gave me a perfect description of Reinhold Niebuhr's thought, which is a very subtle thought process based on the idea that you have to use power while it corrupts you. and i was dazzled, i felt the tingle up my knee as chris matthews would say.

and the other thing that does separate obama from just a pure intellectual: he has tremendous powers of social perception. and this is why he's a politican, not an academic. a couple of years ago, i was writing columns attacking the Republican congress for spending too much money. and i throw in a few sentences attacking the democrats to make myself feel better. and one morning i get an email from obama saying, "david, if you wanna attack us, fine, but you're only throwing in those sentences to make yourself feel better." and it was a perfect description of what was going through my mind. and everybody who knows obama all have these stories to tell about his capacity for social perception.

JG: this guy is too thoughtful? it's fine for me to sit in my office and mull questions for days and days and days, but is this man going to be paralyzed by his thought process?
DB: he was a very mediocre senator. senators measure each other by tough votes and by hard work on substantive issues, and he wasn't there long enough but h really didnt put the effort in. nonetheless, the one thing that i'm really struck by obama in the last 6 months...is the cult of personality about obama. but when you actually get to know the people around Obama, they are by far the most impressive people in the Democratic party. i would say his economic advisors, austan goolsbee and jason furman, the people he surrounded himself with after the wall street crisis, robert rubin, warren buffett, paul goldberg. foreign policy, guys like dennis ross and james steinberg. these are the young, smartest people. he's phenomenally good at surrounding himself with a team. i disagree with them on most issues, but i am given a lot of comfort by the fact that the people he's chosen are exactly the people i think most of us would want to choose if we were in his shoes. so again, i have doubts about him just because he was such a mediocre senator, but his capacity to predict staff is impressive.

obama's gonna win by 9. i've got a running bet with...somebody in the obama campaign. i've always said 9. this person always said it can't be more than 6. it's not that huge, 54-45. you look at the way the polls ahve turned recently, you look at the fundamentals, you look at everything...