You're listening to Conversations with John Anderson featuring Constantine Kissen.

My conversation today is with Constantine Kissen. I'm looking forward to it enormously. This will be the third time we've talked and I've come to regard him as a good friend and a very spirited and insightful man who grew up in Russia and is now in Britain. He's recently written a book, an immigrant's love letter to the West which I thoroughly recommend. It's a powerful reminder of why we should not take the good things we have for granted. He's also co-host of the very popular social commentary podcast, Trigonometry, which I know has many viewers in my own home country as well as here in Britain. So Constantine, thank

you so much for your time. It's great to see you again. It's good to see you, John.

Thanks for making it back over here. And since we last talked, you've become a dad. Nikolai.

Nikolai is

just after we were together last time. How has that experience affected your view of the world?

Well, first of all, it's awesome. It's just awesome. It's great. It's the best thing ever. It's hard as well. And it was ironic that even with all the jet lag and the traveling and all the rest of it, I haven't slept that well for 11 months now as I did on the trip. So not getting a lot of sleep, but I love it. Has it changed me? Yeah, I think it's softened me a little bit, actually. It's taken some of the edges off. It's made me aware that it's really, really important to try and communicate what I'm trying to communicate in a way that makes it easier for other people to hear. Because I think before I felt that, you know, the most important thing is to get my opinion out in a way that draws attention, let's say. Whereas now I really feel it's about persuading people. And part of it is when you see a baby, you kind of realize that all human beings were that thing once. And they've been shaped and morphed into different things by the experiences that they have. But they were all that pure innocence one. So it's made it easier for me to connect with people as human beings, I think.

Does he have a sense of

humor? Yes. He's learned to play peekaboo, so he sticks his face in the corner of the sofa and waits for him or for me or my wife to say, whereas Nikolai. And then he's like, you know, he does that. He's got a very cheeky sense of humor. Oh,

that's terrific.