For five and a half years, this show has been about someone else — pulling a thread from a guest I find fascinating and following it wherever it leads. This week, for the first time, I turned the camera on myself.

After a recent conversation with my business coach, I realized I had never articulated — through my lens — what connects every single person who’s ever sat across from me on this show. Journalists. Communicators. Photographers. Lobbyists. To an outsider, the connection may not be altogether clear, so I chose today to fix that.

I was surprised to realize how far back the real answer goes — past the podcast, past the public affairs career, back to a small legislative district in New Jersey where I learned that making someone feel seen gave me my own purpose. That idea became the thread of this episode.

I’m also using today’s episode to signal a short break from this show — the first real break I’ve taken in five and a half years — and ahead to an exciting August takeover with Cook Political Report.

My favorite line of the episode: the moment you actually see someone — really see them — it gets a lot harder to hold onto anger at them. Connection isn’t just nice to have. It’s what makes compassion possible.

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I’ve spent years learning how to prep for interviews, testimony, TV hits — the words, the pacing, the message. What I hadn’t spent much time thinking about is the split second before any of that: the photo someone sees before they ever hear you speak.

That’s exactly the space my guest this week lives in. Mira Adwell is a photographer who spent years shooting fashion editorial in Charleston before relocating back to DC, where she now works almost exclusively in portraits and personal branding — CEOs, senators, first-time founders, all trying to figure out how to show up.

What struck me most is how much of her job is actually psychology. She watches for the signs most people think they’re hiding — shallow breathing, a dry mouth, fidgeting hands — and instead of pushing through a shoot, she puts the camera down and just talks. By the time she picks the camera back up, the nerves are gone.

She also relayed something Kevin O’Leary told her directly — blunt, but it’s the whole argument for why this matters.

My favorite line of the conversation was about this city specifically. Mira sees it constantly in her DC clients — the low-grade performance anxiety of a town where perception never fully switches off.

When you live in Washington, D.C., it’s easy to think the whole city runs on politics. But spend any time here — especially in the fall, when the Capitals and the Commanders and half a dozen other teams are all playing at once — and you realize pretty quickly that sports is what actually brings people together.

That’s where my conversation with Jeff Dooley starts this week. Jeff is an editor at NOTUS, where he’s building a local news operation from scratch — covering DC sports, food, news, and arts and culture. He grew up in Falls Church, Virginia, where reading the Washington Post sports section gave him his first love of journalism. And now he’s helping build the kind of coverage he grew up with, for a city that is hungry for exactly that.

We talked about the Nationals this season — a team where fans, after years of a pretty aimless rebuild, finally have a reason to care again. We talked about the Commanders, the RFK site, and a new ownership group that’s making real investments that players and fans are actually noticing. And we talked about the bigger thing underneath all of it: the way local sports coverage is part of what holds a community together.

“To understand sports is to understand life and to understand human nature and decision making,” Jeff told me. I’ve been turning that line over ever since we recorded.

Jeff also gave listeners a preview of something I’m genuinely excited about: NOTUS is launching a free local newsletter at the end of July — delivered to your inbox every morning, covering DC news, sports, food, and more. You can sign up now on any article page at notus.org, and I’ve included the link in the show notes.

This is the final episode of our month-long NOTUS takeover of The Friday Reporter — and it’s been one of my favorite months of conversations in a long time. From Kadia and Paul to Deirdre to Jeff, every guest reminded me of what great journalism looks like when people actually care about the community they’re covering.

I’m so grateful to everyone at NOTUS for making this happen. And I’m grateful, as always, to you for listening.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube.

— Lisa