President Obama’s hour-long conversation with the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson, published in two parts in the New York Review of Books, inspired responses that were so hyperbolic and adoring, it felt like 2008 all over again.

According to Vox, it “is the most revealing interview of Obama’s presidency.” (As the president would say, “let me be clear”: This was a conversation, not an interview. An interview implies that Obama speaks less than Robinson.) It threatens Oprah’s “position as America’s most sought-after author interviewer,” says the Guardian.  Vogue calls it “riveting, and somehow more informative than the many interviews in which Obama is the one fielding the questions.” All that’s missing is a Chris Matthews leg-thrill. (The second part, published last Tuesday, hasn’t garnered nearly as much attention.)