WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has held a series of "conversations" with figures in arts, letters and entertainment as the White House experiments with ways to reconnect Americans to the president before they say goodbye to him.
The sit-downs are leisurely paced, personal and nearly divorced from the daily news. And they offer a glimpse of the president's interests and thinking as he looks at that next chapter.
A conversation between Obama and writer Marilynne Robinson covered topics such as Christianity, fear and politics.
The White House invited David Simon, writer of "The Wire" and urban dramas, to discuss criminal justice.
British naturalist Sir David Attenborough and Obama discussed climate change, although the conversation veered into talk of a mutual love of coral reefs and a rare reference to Obama's Kenyan father.
