How did you decide to settle in Rio?

It was 2005, and two things happened: I’d gotten out of a really long-term relationship of eleven years, and I’d decided not to practice law anymore. I just wanted to come to Rio for seven weeks, because I wanted to figure out my life—and have fun. So I cleared my calendar, took my dog to a friend’s, rented a place. I got here, I went to bed, woke up, went to the beach right near my house, and that morning David was playing volleyball, and someone in his little volleyball thing hit a ball and almost knocked over my drink, or did knock over part of it. And he ran over to retrieve the ball and apologized, and we started talking and then from that point forward have been inseparable.

Are there moments, sitting here in Rio, when you think, How did I get here, in the middle of this firestorm?

Yeah, there’s a surreality to it, right? It’s been so global in scope. One of the things I used to love about being here was that I could just shut off the computer and all my work would disappear. None of my friends here know or care what I do. But because this story had such an important impact here and I’ve been on TV constantly, I lost all of that. Every time I make a choice to publish a story, it could disrupt diplomatic relations—I mean, it did disrupt diplomatic relations seriously between the U.S. and Brazil, the two largest countries in the hemisphere. And that’s happened in a lot of different places. There is a disconnect between sitting here on this veranda with my dogs, doing my work, and the implications in the world.

Right. You can hit "send" here in the jungle and set off your own nuclear weapon in whatever part of the world.

Right. And that part is difficult, because when everything you’re doing has such high stakes to it, there’s a lot of pressure. It’s why this book was so much harder to write than my prior ones, because I knew, with my prior ones, I was going to sell 30 to 40,000 copies and those books were mostly going to be read by my fans, people who were supportive of the work I was doing. The stakes weren’t high. Whereas this book is highly anticipated. People are going to be poring through it, looking for things to attack—and errors, right? It was just a lot more stressful.

Every journalist has stories where you have to make hard choices, things that you decide that can affect people one way or the other. Those are really stressful. But usually those are in isolation. You have one or two of those a year, right? I mean, I’ve had those every single day for ten months straight. And it isn’t just the countries you’re affecting and the governments you’re affecting, it’s the people with whom you’re working. It’s Snowden and his legal risk. It’s your own legal risks and your reputation, the media outlets who run your work in. I mean, there’s just a lot at stake in every single choice we’re making. And that does become a little bit of a burden.

Do you believe in God?

I mean, I grew up without organized religion. My parents tried to inculcate me a little bit into organized Judaism, but they weren’t particularly devoted to that, and my grandparents were, but it just never took hold. I wasn’t bar mitzvahed or anything. So I never had organized religion. I don’t really like aggressive atheists who are so convinced they know the answers to questions that they don’t actually know the answers to. Like, that level of hubris and certainty bothers me. They think they’re so scientific, and yet they’re asserting things that they don’t actually know without evidence. And I do believe in the spiritual and mystical part of the world. Like, obviously yoga is like a bridge into that, like a window into it. I think other things are as well. But my moral precepts aren’t informed in any way by religious doctrine or, like, organized religion or anything.

The dogs seem to play a huge role in your life.

One of the reasons I love dogs is because I think they perceive the world, things in the world, that we as humans don’t perceive. I think there’s something kind of just spiritual about it. They’re just completely in the experience. And so many times, we as human beings remove ourselves from the present by reliving the past or worrying about a future, neither of which we can control, and we destroy our present, and we lose all the power that we have, the ability to just be. That is really what I learn from dogs. That’s the thing that I would like to apprehend most about dogness.

Do you sometimes kick yourself and say, like, "Let’s get more ’dog’ right now"?

Yeah, I do. I do. I mean, I really do.

Michael Paterniti (@MikePaterniti) is a GQ correspondent. He is the author of The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World’s Greatest Piece of Cheese, which is out this month in paperback.