Pat McDowell (pictured) grew up in Northern California. I worked with him at the Fairfield newspaper 40 years ago before his career took him all over the world, working for the Associated Press, Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. The experience helped shape his views on journalism, on how well Americans know the rest of the world, and how the United States has changed. We talk about this, plus one of his harrowing field reporting assignments in Iraq, on today’s Davisville.

Compared to the 1980s, McDowell says, “I feel like [in the United States] we don’t talk to each other as much, easily, now. There’s a little more default hostility, like in political discussions.”

Also, things don’t work as well. "Our relationship with the corporate world and the service world has changed,” he says. “I am amazed at the level of service that people accept as OK here. You can’t get anybody over the phone, everything is a chatbot, things don’t work …. I just find it appalling that we’ve sort of let ourselves be put through what I think is the meat grinder of the MBA system where no money is allowed to be left on the table.”