the book when they coined the term romantic writing come in the 1837 essay. he coins the term creative writing, he is already thinking. he is posing this up as an alternative to the pros of the time creative writing that they had step from pro-creative writing windproof describes literature as an incitement it is a tiny had step from an excitement. when will embark writes a lover's discourse he's talking about letting both and that is of course a small hitch step from a lover's. the metaphor is everywhere we look and i guess i wanted to

find a way to talk about something that might seem dry otherwise, which is that i think we are thinking better when we are reading than at any other time in our lives that we are more intelligent while we are in the act of reading, we are triggered. we are made better by the act of reading. it kicks us out of the torpor of a nonreading existence and we make associations. we trot imagery in our minds in a way that we don't when we are not reading. we are roused as we read and of course that is a step from arousal, simply recognizing that kind of a process to some and i think we've kind of forgotten. you hear a lot of people joke

about it occasionally, but i wanted to take the metaphor as far as it could be taken and i do in the book and i would tell you more about that but literature is the place where you talk about the things you cannot or will not taken any other precinct of human discourse including light ratings on television. -- live readings on television. yes, sir. >> so because you haven't read nicholson baker you could go back and choose anyone, would you change or would you say was nicholson baker. where would you star who would you pick quiet >> no, i think he turned out to be the perfect choice.

the experience of the book you know paul once wrote in a literary relationship essay about his relationships with joseph conrad, he wrote that we read to discover what we already know. his thought is not really done there but i had that as an amped up when he was writing the book. the truth is i found so much of myself in baker. everywhere i looked. every time i turned around, there is some new connection between him and me and i felt indicted by him. i thought included within. so he was the perfect writer for me. which is not to say he would necessarily be the perfect writer for you or anyone else. i say towards the end of the book that the purpose is not to

find and to suggest that you read nicholson baker about the writer that will be nicholson baker for you. that is the point of departure. you read to find out what you already know. we read to explore the streams of arab cause. we sail up the headwaters of arab thought to find that lake, my reservoir that makes us who we are. that is not the whole story. you have to go the other way, too. you have to go beyond what you're doing now and explore the author on their own terms for them is that they have to give you. baker certainly had that for me and he was the perfect writer for me to go on that journey. >> thank you all very much. >> thank you everybody.

[applause] >> the very nature of our economy has rapidly transformed. for example 25 years ago if you are willing to work hard there would always be a job available in america that allowed you to achieve happiness. maybe not a job that made you rich or a job that made you famous, but a job that allowed you to do the things we talk about. buy a home, raise your family, leave them better off. today people find more and more what they get paid doesn't keep up with the cost of living which continues to grow. the reason is not because the temporary cyclical downturn or the economy is going through a tough time to look at better again. the reason is our economy is

undergoing deep rapid permanent structural changes in the very outline of the economy. globalization is real. globalization has changed the nature of our economy. we are now competing with more nations than ever before for jobs investment, creativity, innovation. we have to beware globally competitive than we've ever been. the nature of work has changed as well. if my parents came here in 2006 at 71956 it would've been difficult for them to achieve what they achieved working as a bartender and made because those jobs don't pay anymore compared to what the cost of living has become. there are jobs in the 21st century the pay more but they require a higher level of skill than ever before the problems we have are twofold. one is our policies have been adjusted to the new century and increasingly we are led by people at every level of government that don't understand

we are living through the fastest most rapidly evolving economic times in human history. we basically have the equivalent of the industrial revolution every three to five years. so what are the answers to the problem and that is what we outlined in the book as we describe stories of real people in a single moms struggling to raise her two daughters on making $9 or $10 an hour. not one but two college student who graduated with degrees and now can't find jobs in what is worth a whole bunch of money in it alone. a small business in central florida run by a couple that is struggling to stay ahead and compete and increasingly complicated environment are big companies to hire laborers or lobbyist to regulations that mall businesses struggle to do that. about a young lady named india that we met through a great program called take stock in children who overcame extraordinary obstacles in her

life to achieve truly extort anything. we also talk about poverty, tens of millions of americans in poverty of my programs to do with poverty don't work because our programs to do with poverty today alleviate the pain but they do nothing to curate and the ultimate cure for poverty, the real gear is a good paying job in too many programs don't address that.

>> well now joining 11 is politics professor at princeton melissa lane. she has written a new book published by princeton called "the birth of politics: eight greek and roman political idea and why they matter." professor lane where the greeks and romans successful politician? >> guest: they were. the greeks managed in different city state to develop the

world's first democracy in athens. they produce works of art literature architecture and political institutions voting, for example which remains fundamental to our politics today and the romans of course ruled the republic for 500 years and went on in an empire for another 500 years. depending on your measure of success, they both have a lot to offer. >> host: what were some of the similarities between the two? >> guest: that's an interesting question. those of them emphasized the role of election and a fundamental role for the people in studying the terms of legitimacy. that is true of greek democracy and true of the roman republic. her example is the roman

republic, no law could be passed without it being passed by a popular assembly. if you think about the influence of the elite in rome in the senate for example that was significant. the senate can pass laws. they could make decrees. they could manage business. they could manage the budget, but if they want to pass a law they have to go to the people. it is interesting under the empire the idea that the people fundamentally i was optimal for studying terms of legitimacy continues so that the romans thought the people acclaimed each new emperor ended from that public acclamation that they are legitimacy derived and that idea in medieval and modern political science become an important underpinning for popular sovereignty. >> host: who are some of the leaders in the great development of politics? >> guest: for example, everything about athens about

athens, the interesting thing is the athenian democracy emerges in stages. one of the most important figures in his prehistory or proto- beginnings as the lawgivers. solon, who was one of the first people who helped him start athens on what would become a democratic cast lived around 594 since the beginning of the sixth century b.c. at that. he really established the principles of justice between the rich and poor, but after that there was a period where a family of oligarchs got the upper hand and became what the greeks called tyrants. at first they were necessarily in a bad sense. they might be good to the ordinary people, but by the end they did become quite corrupt and about 510 they are

overthrown and at that point acids in 508 starts to take its real turn towards becoming a democracy and later in the next century under others. >> host: melissa lane who had more authority, was at the greek people roman people? >> guest: let's see. in many ways, the athenian people in the sense of the popular ordinary poor people have the greatest authority in athens more than the poor did in rome. they played key roles for example, in the court system. on the chorus are assessed by huge popular juries come as many as 500 people and there were no professional judges. they didn't have the division we have between the law in the facts, the group of 500 or

whatever number indicates that people would just decide what they thought the log required. so that was an incredibly important for us to power. i mentioned earlier they are responsible for lawmaking also in athens and they stabbed a lot of what we think are the civil servants. a lot of art very bureaucratic functions, and establishing the ways to measure those things were staffed by ordinary people who are put into conditions by lottery. one of the things i argue is sometimes modern political. exaggerate that bill too far. sometimes people say they read everything by lottery and there's no division between rich and poor. that is an overstatement. the athenians have certain political roles either by law or custom were reserved for the

rich, but the poor could still hold the rich accountable and it was that fundamental ability to control the rich and hold them accountable that really account for the great powers of the athenian people. >> host: one of the things you talk about professor lane, in your book and some of the things that modern politics has derived from growth the greeks and the romans. one of those things is virtue. what do you mean by that? >> so, virtue is the idea -- in greek it is the word for excellence. it is being good at what you do. it can have a nonmoral meeting. we have a virtue of what it is to be a knife. one of the things they debated is that they had political virtues, even virtues of the way of life of a human being are there certain things that as

human beings we need to do well just as a knife to cut well to be a good knife. those are the terms in which they thought about politics. and away, there there is a kind of long and in greek agreement going back to the poetry of homer as a great pragmatist also of what some of those virtues were. things like wisdom courage piety, just as, moderation. in the grave. the classical age in a century when we have plato aristotle writing the big debate within particular what about the virtue of injustice, is that really a virtue or is that a kind of allusion? is it something good for us as humans, good for us and our lives as individuals or is that simply some thing we have been

suckered into doing by accounting political rulers. a lot of the philosophers that i write about in the book are really debating that question. >> what do you teach at princeton? >> i teach political theory. i am also an associated faculty in philosophy. i teach courses on h. and many legal theory. cap choruses on political models. i've also taught on knowledge and politics and even on science and he which takes me a little fire from the greek but one of the interesting things is that they were some of the people who really insisted that knowledge and expertise should be central to politics. i followed that into also thinking about aspects of modern society. >> host: when you talk about the greeks and their political growth. in the romans in their political

growth. exactly what ages are we talking about? >> guest: so in athens and 510 b.c. at the end of the sixth century goes the other way when you are going backwards. plato and aristotle are writing an three hundreds. see the democracy more or less come to an end after alexander the great fight the battle. there's a few skirmishes but essentially they are. i read about the hellenistic period, under alexander's general and meanwhile at almost the same time you have the rise of rome, the roman republic also arguably established and gradually again become a new institutions being formed the emergence of this and other new roman and the two sins until

essentially it is again extinguished with the bottled axioms about 20 25 years before the birth of christ. have a little bit about the roman empire after the birth of christ. >> host: another one of the ideas why the ideas by midnight today according to melissa lane is cosmopolitanism. >> guest: this is very interesting because for the greeks politics is something that took place in the city state bounded by the city's wall and the city's laws. what happens partly what the breakdown is greek city state and the rise of alexander the great and the empires they start to get empires based in egypt based in macedonia and other parts of the larger mediterranean is people start to

think about politics. maybe politics could in principle, not just in conquest expand beyond a particular city. so this becomes the idea since i am a citizen of the cosmos are the cosmos as opposed to being a citizen of athens as citizens of sparta. that developed into a kind of ethical ideal that maybe one can of according to a set in universal value and law that are bounded geographically. that is the origin of our idea of cosmopolitan ethics in politics today. >> host: that was a daring idea back then. >> guest: absolutely. the purse purse who does that he meant it in a kind of in-your-face reject them away.

he actually was seen as rejecting not just the city's boundaries, but all kinds of human convention. he lived in a barrel. he often defecated in public and didn't abide by any of the conventions of closing our money that ordinary people would follow. according to them this was according to nature and political boundaries or another set of the norms of conventions to take out the idea and gradually they make at more seemly where it doesn't have to do with rejecting a preexisting boundaries that is pushing our allegiances out to wider and wider circles. now we might say i start out with an allegiance to my own iv myself, to my family, to my town, to my faith.

why not go further and have an allegiance to a rational being the name into the cosmos. >> host: what plato and socrates think about our current democracy quite >> guest: they would raise the critical challenges. it is hard to imagine a democracy that can take scientific expertise our scientific knowledge seriously enough. in a democracy the problem is people think they are equal and that means they think their opinion is as good as everybody else about anything. so that makes it hard to respect what we would call scientific knowledge, scientific authority. this is something tocqueville saw an american democracy in 19 century. the jury is out and it is really a question whether democracy can manage to take significant account of scientific

challenges, scientific understanding respond adequately enough. we need to take stock and kind of reflect other racers is democracy has to meet it. >> host: what about socrates clerics just go socrates is quite a teacher. we know about his ideas through plato and others, but was socrates did is he raised a similar challenge, but really to the individual. in his society, most people were concerned with pursuing power and wealth. and socrates challenged individuals to say what is the real value. don't power and wealth end up undoing themselves. you always want more power, there must be some good, which is the ad to which wealth is the

means. so he really challenged people to see that virtue might e. logically the more fundamental things they needed to value and they needed to care about the day mathematical life more fundamentally than pursuing power and wealth. >> host: that is a taste of trading fours tree and three -- melissa lane's "the birth of politics: eight greek and roman political idea and why they matter." you have been watching booktv on someone from princeton university.

>> we don't talk as much about the grass fed versus the grain fed him here because we do advocate when you do eat at, that everything your body

doesn't always tell the difference. you know there are added toxins from the research we have done meat is not that great for you. and then everything else factory farms today we call additive used to it. it also comes in terms of sustainability. ..

now that we are approaching a time where our water sources are actually in crisis, we are going to have to reach a point where we're going to have to look at how our food is being produced. and i do think that it's a better source. you know when we talk to people about steps they can do, we do tell them if you can't cut out things cold turkey, you can look towards better sources. but in general we advocate people to really start to cut down beat in their diet. >> you can watch this and other programs on line at booktv.org. >> booktv continues