Earlier this year, on a brisk February night in New York—so many eons of media cycles ago—I found myself sitting down to dinner at Elio’s, the swell and storied Upper East Side red sauce refuge, with Brian Williams. By then, the well-kept newsman had been in the wilderness for more than two years: idling around his beach house in Bay Head, volunteering at the nearby fire station, traveling with Springsteen, and entertaining advances from friends and strangers who wanted to know when his familiar visage might grace their television screens again. That night, the entreaty came first from the bartender, then from a nearby couple. And, in truth, that’s why I was there, too. When Williams signed off from MSNBC’s 11th Hour, in late 2021, he’d promised “to pop up again somewhere.” Where, I wanted to know, and when?