b'When time becomes history, different dynamics come into focus than the ones that are at any moment screaming for attention. The title of Gal Beckerman\\u2019s book intrigues and compels: The Quiet Before. He\\u2019s a journalist with a special interest in history and words and ideas \\u2014 how ideas are passed and debated and become defining in generational time; how conversation becomes culture-shifting relationship. He attends to dynamics we don\\u2019t often take seriously enough: that every idea and discovery that changes the world begins with seeds planted over long stretches, and that this is always marked by passages that look like abject failure. Gal\\u2019s conversation with Krista offers fantastically useful insights into how our generation\\u2019s media that can scale things more rapidly than ever before can also inhibit the very ingredients that make for lasting transformation. At the same time, this lens on our world refreshes with its perspective on the way change happens, as opposed to mere disruption \\u2014 the reality that our lives and actions below the radar hold the possibility of being more generative than we can measure.'