There’s a story I often tell people about the first time I met Tucker Carlson. I was interviewing for a job at The Daily Caller, in 2012, fresh out of college, and we were exchanging normal pleasantries—How was your trip here? Where did you go to college?, etcetera. Carlson paused when I said I’d grown up in Boston, and he subsequently asked where I had gone to high school. I told him that I went to Milton Academy, one of those centuries-old New England prep schools that I’d somehow gotten into despite my refugee kid background, and his eyebrows shot up. 

I went to high school with one of your teachers, he told me, alarmed. Then, without pausing for a beat, he continued: I hate him. Tucker then launched into a juicy story: back when they were both teenagers, this rival had tried to flirt with Tucker’s girlfriend, a slight that he—now a fully-grown adult—could not move past. I hate that fucker, he repeated, eyes burning.

I was 22, straight out of Claremont McKenna. And though I barely knew this teacher, I found this whole bit hilarious. So wait, I asked between cackles, who won? Another beat: I did, he responded. I married her.