Before & After with Lester Holt

"I've reported on people whose lives were changed forever in a single moment," Lester Holt says in the opening of this new Dateline podcast. "We know the headlines, but what I've always been curious about is what happens after. That's when the rest of the story begins."

That question — what happens after a life-altering event — is the organizing idea behind Before & After, a podcast that promises conversations with people who have survived something catastrophic and then had to figure out how to keep living. The trailer features brief audio from several upcoming guests: actor Jeremy Renner, who was nearly killed in a snowplow accident in January 2023 ("Everything collapsed in my lungs, and I had like no way to get air"); former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who became a cultural flashpoint after kneeling during the national anthem ("It was just, hey, I'm gonna get mine. I would never protest it. I would never take a D"); and former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head at a constituent event in 2011 ("The bullet went through your head. Yes").

The central question: What does it take to move on?