We put a sunny, smiling face forward to the world, and to each other. That's the way it is across North America, and it's the way most people like it most of the time---or at least the way we prefer to see and think of ourselves and each other.

Every once in a while, though, you meet someone who makes you confront and acknowledge your darker side.

Introducing Eric Bogosian.

Eric and I have talked on several occasions, and he's a favorite guest, not just because he's a compelling stage and film performer or a powerful playwright (although he is all those things). It's because he's one man who has mastered one of the biggest paradoxes of our life here in North America today--the pervassive darkness and shadow that lurks beneath our collective sunny, smiling face. He taps it well--remember 'Talk Radio'? (I'll let you in on a little secret in our business; there's a little of Barry Champlain's anger in all of us.) And he taps into a dark pessimism about human nature and the possibility of redemption. He admits it, though he also retains some hope for us. "I'm a pessimistic optimist," he likes to say--finding the worst impulses in people and at the same time, finding potential for hope and redemption. "Not every one of us has that potential," he told me, "but enough of us do, enough of the time, to keep it all going."

Eric Bogosian's first novel, "Mall," which he hopes will soon become a film, is about a suburban shopping mall where a whole band of people find themselves randomly converging , and a spree killer will end up changing (or ending) their lives in a single night. But even in the destruction, some people were jolted into breaking their destructive patterns and going forward with their lives in a more hopeful (or at least less dead-ended) direction. That's something he sees in America too, eight months on from a disaster some were saying would change, if not devastate, everything. We move on, changed, minus some of our illusions, but just maybe, some of us grow. Enough of us, at least, "to keep it all going."

I think Eric Bogosian's got that right.

Soon, you'll meet the man who admits he was part of what Senator Hillary Clinton once called a "vast right wing conspiracy." Once you meet him, you decide.