Hemingway once said, “I drink to make other people more interesting.”
He was far more interesting of a subject than I am, but I often joke that at my age and place in life, people may need to drink to find me interesting.
Fast forward to a bunch of quick-witted 20-somethings at Mashable sitting in a room with this journalist, trying to noodle around ideas for a video series in which I interviewed people who were a lot more interesting than, well, me.
We talked about candid conversations, fireside chats, my love for fly-fishing -- and then realized that the logistics of fly fishing while trying to interview someone like Hillary Clinton could get a little slippery. Then I told the group that, like Hemingway, I was a whisky drinker.
Eureka! That was it. “Drinking with Dan” was born.
You might ask why, at this point in my 83-year-old life as a hardcore journalist, I would want to start an entirely new dialogue with an entirely new generation of people. My answer: Why the hell not?