component with carl ashman. they thought she he was a straight shooter and respected him for that. >> you mentioned the name jeno, he's my italian mom and both my ukle passed away in june and he attended funeral. who are these girls? and my mom, she's slipping a little bit but she recognized four faces just like that jeno was happy because he's still active and just keeping aliquippa the place that it always has been. >> he really is a walking history book and knows more

about it and, you know, specially for the older generations he knows stuff that will disappear and i hope i got some of it in. he was really helpful to me on the book. >> we've got someone over there for a while. [inaudible] >> that was going to be my next question. who is actually from aliquippa? and who has an aliquippa connection in your family? all the hands up. >> so actually i have a question. i mean, i think of aliquippa as a special place and i will tell you that i do get arguments from other people, from western pa. yeah, it's special but, you know, my town -- so does everybody from aliquippa believes there's something unique and special about it. just put up your hands. [laughter]

>> and i agree with you. right. [inaudible] >> and by the way that was a home game because they did play there and for some reason -- so you were at the game? [laughter] >> i didn't hear that, what did she say? >> your boyfriend, is that what you said? [laughter] >> so did you have mr. blany. >> my boyfriend was chuck blaney. >> chuck blaney ran over and -- a pitcher only completed three passes in that game and chuck was the hero and i believe his father taught at aliquippa high.

[inaudible] >> thank you. >> el, i think i speak for everyone that we owe a a debt of gratitude. [applause] >> thank you all for coming. it really is a special place and for good and bad. it's not a fantasy world and it's not perfect but it is absolutely human and it's absolutely vital and completely american. so thank you. >> let's give it up for aliquippa. [applause] >> let's go quip. okay. quick note about the signing line. scott is going to sit here. we are going to form the line

going this way and the easiest way to do that is to go out the door you came in and stay left. you need to buy books, good folks would be happy to sell you one, two or five. they make great gifts. >> we want to hear from you. tweet us, twitter.com/book tv or post a comment on our facebook page. facebook.com/booktv. [inaudible conversations] >> hello, everyone. welcome.

i'm so happy to be here with courtney and that you can can all be here with us. i do want to say is one of the cofounders of the project and courtney's editor on the block. he's sick today and i just want to bring his name in here and -- >> yeah. >> there's something. >> that's right. >> so courtney sent an e-mail yesterday, i guess, when we planned this he weren't looking at the calendar and saying, what's happening that week. and courtney e-mailed yesterday and said, should we do this, should we have a book launch in the sal oan to talk about the new better off in a week with this momentous and unsettling election or unsettled political landscape and i said absolutely

because of what happened this week and how unsettling it's important that we sit together in rooms and talks about things that matter to us and so i -- i was thinking this morning, i was sitting down of introducing courtney. i am not going to do introduction and the blog where i love the present she brings to our media where she really, i think, walks that line that is so life-giving and illuminating of her rigorous journalist and also out of human being she brings that every week. i wrote down and -- how i am going to introduce courtney. i love her. >> i love you. and she is a journalist, but

she's a new journalist. she's -- she's one of the people whose modeling and innovating and incubating new forms of journalism for the 21st century. the old forms are failing us, they've failed us through this election and, you know, we are -- sorry, here we are in this week. >> it's true of all of our institutions right now in this early 21st century that things that made sense and that seemed like they were even ten years ago just don't make sense anymore and it's true of schools and medicine and prisons and it's true of religion and journalism and i think we have to remake it. that's one of the things we get this week, how we do that and

not clear but you are one of those people who is figuring this out kind of close to the ground and that's exciting for me. and one of the things i'm discouraged about today was some of the best journalists, people that i read is hysterical apocalyptic analysis of what's going to happen in the next four years and what is it going to mean for the end of civilization and these are people who didn't see what was right in front of them for the last 18 months and that kind of hysteria is not helpful. so my question and i know your question is how can journalism be of service to common life and that kind of journalism is not just of service to common life. this is a moment where some humility is called for. so one of the things i want to do by, you know, to framing this space we are in tonight,

pullback to a long lens, which i find helpful and meaningful in moments like this. i like to sometimes think about if people were looking at moment in time a century from thousand, what are they going to say is really important that was happening right now, what is happening right now that in fact, is going to be the thing that people years from now say this shaped the world. we inhabited maybe. the election of donald trump, it might be. it might be the fact that it's 70-degrees and sunny in november, in minnesota, all of the things that that implies. it may be these millions of human beings, right now as we speak in this warm room making their way across europe, millions of refugees. you know, how is that going to

shape the world that emerges? i love, in all the years of doing the show, i have loved and been inspired by this story that the benedict tells -- >> i love her. >> yeah. so she says, imagine sixth century rome, whatever "the new york times" of sixth century rome it never carried a headline, benedict's rights rule because there's this crazy guy over here who actually, i think, in his lifetime form ten communities of 12 people. one of the early communities try to place in him. this is not a successful venture. nobody noticed. nobody wrote a headline and a thousand years later what this

person with a vision of community set in motion actually these were the communities that saved civilization that literally kept western literature alive and we don't know what's happening right now in our world that is planting those invisible seeds that are setting that in motion, however, i suspect that the kinds of people courtney writes about in her book that courtney and her ecosystem and probably everybody here are part of spinning sole judge of those we said and i find it, i take hope and delight in the fact that even with all my resources as a journalist, i don't know what's happening right now that's going to save us and that means we have to continue with what we are doing and with vigor and passion and we have to shine a light on everybody else's good work and so that's what we are here tonight to do.

[laughter] >> all right. so the new better off and i want to read a little bit to start to just give you a flavor of why i said to the question should we cancel tonight because of what's happening in the world resoundingly no. so this is from the first chapter, the introduction. what i'm finding, what you'll find, i hope, is that being mature doesn't mean being numb. to be sure living in america on this unequal messy moment can break your heart but it doesn't have to break your spirit, living in america is so interesting, so fertile, so up for grabs and it's also recon sitting -- reconstituting and

policies that cradle those lives. it's up to us to reject narratives about success instead offering new ones that are less about exceptional heros and more about creative communities. it's up to us to reclaim the benefit of what previous generations did that made this country so unique and so beautiful as well as to own up to the destructive legacies that we are part of to expose them to the light and it's up to us to be humbled and to be accountable to our own dreams no one else, it's up to us to be iconic to be together to stay away. it's a wonderful book. it's an important book and i think one thing i've been so admiring of as you've launched

it, you're not just promoting the book. of course, all of us want to sell books, but you're really -- the book is a conversation piece. it's a conversation starter, you're taking into communities and companies and, you know, building something like a movement or contributing to kind of the movement that's wanting to form anyway. what's that been like to be out there with it in this moment? >> it's been so gratifying. i mean, in many ways i feel like i'm just trying to language some of what i'm observing and that feels like the role of giving language to both things people have and things that are actually creating in the world that they may underestimate the power of and sort of seeing the power and acknowledging it. ..

>> from a gender perspective i think that's often also poor people's work. those who were the best have less money, those something that turns the table on who we think in this country knows how to do things to have happiness or efficiency. >> and have you, how do you explain that connection of not having been as much money and being better at creating community? >> i think wealth makes it to see how vulnerable we are because we can buy our way out of a trump presidency or to

speak of this moment is like when you find out that donald trump is president of the united states it doesn't matter how much money is in your bank account. you can fly to the cayman island someone there theoretically. if you care you care about america doesn't care about what your bank account is your vulnerable to this government. so i think wealth fools us into thinking that we can buy our way out of suffering. >> but what is it that not having money or not having too much money, how does that create a condition where you get better at community that's what i'm wondering. >> necessity is the mother of invention. you have to look to people around you to get by. and then it turns out akin to people around you rather than think you can solve your problems makes you happier and healthier and there's a real freedom and mental wellness and

vulnerability. so everything from what i'm thinking of, these immigrant women that my friend was told me about who needed to clean houses to make money but they all had kids so they created their own little makeshift co-op where one would take care of the kids while they could it really fast and keep the kids get together, it was small, invisible stuff that low-income people have to do out of necessity very often. it turns out now those kids have onset love them. >> obviously core idea that you're pursuing and trying to trace all the connotations of it having is the idea of vocation, of calling.

i think the 20th century, at least in this country we kind of conflated vocation with job and with title. but it is really, as you're pointing out that is not at all just about what you do, but who who you are and how you do it. also it's a plural thing, we all have many callings at once. so how would you start talking about how this word and its ecosystem have implications? to start to change the way that we change our careers in our lives. what does that mean to you, how do do we define that and how we work with that. >> i was start to try to talk about that kind of tracing my on

relationship to calling which is that in vacation that i grew up thinking that my dad had the important job because he was a lawyer and came to realize that everything i do now is basically in mirror what my mom did, she was ten different things, none of which made sense on paper and all of which had a deep influence on community around us. she started a phone festival, she was a social worker, she was the mom with the condoms in the closet and never knew they could go there so they didn't have unplanned pregnancies. shoes like this entrepreneur before i even knew that was the word. it was like a community organizer. so i grabbed thinking i should have a path like my dad if i want to be an important person in the world i should go to law school. and it turns out, my way of being important in the world is to do exactly what my mom did. i happen to be a writer so that gets magnified on a larger scale than it did for her.

when we look at the way the future work is happening so much of it to me that looks many of our mothers who we thought to not have real jobs. it's interesting reclaiming and this is for a lot of men to a think wanting to have jobs more like their mothers. it's not just about women. as work becomes decentralized there's a big risk which we have to reinvent the social safety net and these deep systemic questions to answer. on a one-on-one basis there's a lot of more room for flexibility and people to show poll as parents and workers. >> to me that points to the fact that it's not like you get one vocation, maybe there are people who are completely single-minded but that's not really anybody i know, you have a vocation as a

worker and as a parent and as a neighbor and as a citizen. i think a lot of us this week think what is our calling as a citizen. it's not like you put all these others to one side to do any of these and i think all of those worlds are blending much more which from my perspective is a good thing and i feel like it's important to keep reiterating that their big systemic questions around all of this. it is a privilege to be a freelance and to be able to afford health insurance or know that the bottom is not going to drop off if you're not can get one paycheck. this is all relative to our capacity to imagine a new social system and a new social safety net. having said that, i think the blending of those worlds doing my best work in paid work is often with friends and collaborators. i think that is a very new way of living. there's a sense sense that you have the colleagues, your boss and your friends would be totally separate and even the

phrase worklife balance makes no sense to me. i don't think or feel weird about working with my friends. even with our relationship, you're my mentor, my friend, my friend, i also write for your website project, under that feels weird to me. i can see for older generations there's a bit more separation between the people you collaborate with professionally and your friends. and i see that all breaking down. >> it's messy too, it's challenging traditional organizations and hierarchies, so then what are the boundaries you're figuring this out on the fly. >> -work with my partner, talk loving up boundaries boundaries and the complexity. for me that makes the work all the richer. whether it's my husband john and i collaborate with with her one of my dearest friends anna, i know her in such

a real textured way that our capacity to create excellent work rests on that knowing in the complexity that i need to call her outer supporter in certain ways. it makes it harder but more excellent if that makes sense. >> i'm thinking about how black lives matters social movements and social partners, it is often these days clusters of friends. >> yes. totally. and black lives matters the # itself came from three women. communicating with one another and look what it's brought.

there so much these days born entrepreneur early out of friendship. i think friendship is shifting. there's things i didn't read about in the book that i would love to read about and i feel like my favorite people these days are people who seem like so masterful at friendship. it's him is like a new wellness skill, not that it's new but there's something about the way people are thinking about friends and creating a community of friends. i think it is a bit different. >> yes. friendship is is something to cultivate. i love that. >> i'm thinking about your daughter, i just want to tell recent college graduates not to worry about your resume. worry about your friends. do you do you have amazing, interesting friends then you'll be okay. and i don't mean you're just can be okay after hours, i mean your work will be better because you have amazing friends and you'll have more opportunities because you have amazing friends your age. you don't even have to network with the intimidating older person. you should do that to kids that

helps but it's not about finding the most elite person in my field and how do i befriend them. it's your friends grab and become those people and many have genuine relationships with them when you're 20 and eating pizza in your living room. >> i like to generalize about groups of people, but but i also kind of feel like the new generation coming up organically are doing that better can do like what you're saying that friendship is changing and he said it differently. >> i certainly experienced the and i feel amazed that the younger people that i'm in touch with in their early 20s and what their thinking and how they're supporting one another and their psychology and abundance of things of course people have their jealousies and competition but there does seem to be a very generous around how much people love their friend even these young women during their friends on facebook, and

they're not queer or in a romantic relationship they want to say like this is my dearest friend and it's like how much people are committed to being friends. >> something that you do is across generational friendship, think i told you one of the most one of the pieces of advice that i've been grateful for my life is that i've always had friends in their 70s and 80s even when eyes in my 20s and one of those older friends said to me, i've always had younger friends and for some reason when i was growing up that was not a concept, icu and you talk about this and i see you in a robust web of mentors and women,

especially women but probably not just women of other generations. >> you have this dear mentor of mine from college, i have a lot of people in their '80s friends and women friends of all ages. i love my other women friends, but i have really learned so much my women friends were ten years older. think there's something about being able to see yourself in the near future that is also important to me. especially as a a mother and a new mother, enable see my friends who have six and seven your. that has been so important to me. >> you said that the language of work, life balance makes less sense in the way new generations are navigating lie.

i see that too. but i think you point to the challenge for your generation, new challenge which is the life, technology balance. we are all in uncharted territory with this. these devices and their beautiful and terrifying just landed in the middle of our lives. and you are really on that ground and describing that ground so many people of your generation are walking about securing that and making it humane. >> that's part, there's a chapter on attention in the book and that's because i felt when i was thinking about what is generally surely could not be have written 1020 or 50 years ago about how were creating a good life and that feels so central. >> it was not even on anybody's horizon. >> and now i think it's central to your capacity to create

robust healthy relationships, not only your own individual mental health. how do you relate to your device, how do you think about when you're online and off-line. i don't think there are easy answers. a funny answers. a funny thing, because i thought will younger people probably have figured this out more because they've grown up with it. somebody somebody do this counterintuitive thing and interview teenagers. was talking to my neighbor who i love and said so tell me by phone usage when you have an important deep conversation with a friend what presence of the phone. >> well we never don't look at our phones even if we are having those conversations. >> will that just ruined my counterintuitive thing but it's frightening to me. so i am really worried about that in general. >> like my kids any generation can. >> i thought about this because your daughter tell me she wasn't

on facebook. >> there is a lot of kids who are doing that, i do see these kids working with this but they're not equipped at those ages, they're not about self-control and self-discipline >> and we are not, adults are like a mess. >> i think that worries me is that most of the models a think at this moment were wrestling with as we get out of the adolescent face is about abstinence and it's like okay will have to text thing so every 24 hours will look into each other's eyes and in the other six days will talk to each other like this. i think were trying to understand the nuances it's almost like were treating it like alcohol or drug, white either do it or we can. >> well it does have addictive

things in our brain. >> like your kids like a 21-year-old, she says you know you just have to just got a dose of dopamine so i want to read a paragraph from this i was not not looking you in the ice. so explain to me what a board and brilliant challenges. >> this is a radio show that basically challenge people, they have new challenges every day delete your favorite app off your phone. , don't use facebook for a day, etc. so through these challenges reconstitute people's capacity to be somewhere be bored and just let their minds wander into that not distributive thinking. >> so it take your own board and brilliant challenge. take a walk without looking at your cell phone. notice weird little stuff, how

random thoughts witness, loose track of time. love people the way they deserve to be loved as if to say without a cell phone obstructing your adoration. ultimately our attention which is finite is spent one small seemingly mundane choice at a time. ensure that your tiny choices reflect your grand ambitions for how people experiencing and how you experience the world. it's all you really got. i'm going to just ask one more question that we can open up and see what's on your mind and that will back at the end. the stuff in the equation, talk about that. that. that's another new balance that. >> so the step effort equation

is my language i came up with. please let me not be plagiarized in india. its idea that we've come to understand that consumerism has a major cost, not just environmentally but in terms of our psychic and emotional energy. more stuff we have the more we have to organize it and repair it and get new stuff when we think the old stuff is out of fashion. .-ellipsis endless cycle. so along with the ways in which identity is changing faster and faster that may be the way we use to buy stuff to symbolize who we are is changing and that all of us are thinking about stuff in a different way in terms of wanting to get rid of it cannot consume as much in the first place and share it. i profiled this interested organization that it's trying to

make it so that you give away your old stuff and get dollars which allow you to buy other people stuff. so it's this generative cycle. as cycle. as part of a family of things happening like people are saying don't buy new stuff which is like, that is a deep shifting capitalism. one view is that they're supposed to sell more coats in some way but i think they're genuinely interested what is it mean to be a company that doesn't make new stuff that makes the systems. how does that humanize and make our lives better. i'm interested in that. >> the word enough, you reflect on that. >> is a very important word to me on many different levels. it's important to me in the sense that i felt growing up and i think this is typical of a lot people in a generation, was born in 79; eldest millennial.

>> millennial elder. >> exactly. i felt like i was raised with the sense of bigness that i was very important and what was i going to do in the world and this is also about being raised white and privilege. >> it's also like the 20th century is like save the world speemac's i think think i've done a lot of spiritual work in my life rescheduling my expectations, not only about my own impact on the world, but about where i want to spend my energy and time, that i'm i'm much more interested in having an incredible local network of community and friends and recalibrating that to think about enough in a different way, enough attention, not for not for stuff. and just admitting that it's all finite which is something that once you have kids is hard not to realize because your own mortality in their mode

mortality is in your face. a file calving children maybe wake up wake up and say.. it's all going to end. so this is all i've got. and i have to do the best i can with every moment. before i had kids is held hard to wrap my head around that. >> it's not really a word that we cultivate a relationship with. >> i think think it's okay with like lower expectations and it's sad. but this is the first generation of kids who are not going to be better off than their parents and there's a sadness. you not going to be able to afford the big house and have the fancy job. and i want him to say, i'm not sure all of that is making people happy. so you can be sad for the next generation we can look at ways in which there realizing that the big stuff, the big house and fancy job didn't create a lot of well-being anyway.

and maybe it's not so sad to have a smaller life however we despise not. maybe it's not so's sad to spend time investing in a smaller community of people. maybe that's the root of well-being and we have to return to that to some degree. >> i think over the years i've heard a lot of even before we use the term millennial i've heard a lot of younger people one of the words they used his they look at what they see in their parent's generation of people who are running the world though is a loneliness that they do not want for themselves. would you talk a little bit that you and john made a decision to move into a cohousing community. and was your first daughter born

and so now you've had two children born into this and that is also, on the one hand it's an old model but were reinventing it so it's a new model again. >> either some of the language that you have about the lost art of neighborliness? so what if you gotten out of this and what are you learning about the lost art of neighborliness? >> i don't even know where to start about what i've gotten out of living with cohousing. for people who are not familiar that is we are group of about 25 people in people and 12 units who have our own homes but we also share industrial area, kitchen, garden, sheds, and we eat together thursday nights and sunday nights. and then beyond that we have this informal commitment to

recall radical hospitality in the sense that we are there for people in oakland, in in that neighborhood but for each other. and so i've lived there about four years now, and it gets more complex as these relationships deepen but it continues to move me to no end what it means to live in a particular getting back to in intergenerational community. last night when i was morning and grieving and trying to figure out about the election, i sent out an e-mail saying okay should we gather, what should we do and so myself, my 3-year-old daughter, and my 78-year-old neighbor, luis and i ended up walking to the park to join a vigil. were just walking down the sidewalk and louise and my are

talking about the carrots they had planted in the garden earlier and how excited my is about how their growing and my is about to trip her every ten steps good she's an erratic toddler and i'm just thinking this is what matters, the fact fact that i get to live with these incredible human beings, that teaches me about the vastness of all this, louise is constantly reminded me that life is long and vast. she has been through so much and she is devastated to but in a way that can hold that devastation in the light of such vastness. she's reminded me of that when she's being enriched by 3-year-old that has energy and its overwhelming but invigorating. that is what it has been for me, this constant thing of being in generational friendship and service to each other.

and in particular having kids in the community. i was was just mentioning having friends who are ten years older. have to mothers one who lives next on one across the street who i don't have any control group to compare to but i'm positive they have made my journey in motherhood just so much easier because i can run into the court yard is a systemic risk in kill my baby both say now, and it's that simple. they have teenagers so like all you want to do is get around your kids, all i want is for my kids to come talk to me. so i can look at that and say okay, take a okay, take a deep breath and enjoy this moment just gives me that perspective. >> you say that depending on the nuclear family to meet all of your needs is unhealthy and i

grew thick, i don't think we have really done the critique of the nuclear family that we will, it's kind of unraveling. advisor from people who have lived in -- it just you not held by anything larger and you have no one to work out on accept these few people who you love so much. i've lived and heard from people who lived in cohousing arrangements that their people in the community who they work out their issues with like like they have the guy who drives them crazy and they are not as driven crazy by their husband. because you have different people to transferring your

pathology onto. >> i love that. i'm now doing the and analysis of all the people in cohousing in his give them hip better marriage. [laughter] i think that's very true. in postelection i'm thinking a lot about who are we in conversation and who were not in conversation with. i live in this community which was founded as a christian community which is a port to me. i grew up in colorado springs, colorado which gave me a bad taste of christianity. very hateful, narrow sense of who was an acceptable person. my high school newspaper when i was a teenager almost got shut down because we wrote about what it was like to be a queer questioning kid and published a suicide hotline. so that's what i experienced in his business deeply redemptive thing to live with christians were so loving. we do disagree about some things. and that's important practice for me beyond the nuclear family

piece, i am forced to do the work and i've had conversations with people i've disagreed with. i'm grateful to be force. because we can live in such bubbles but i think there are people to work out these but it's hard to be one persons rock all of the time. and so to have other people that my husband can bump into and express his grief over the election or express frustration that i'm not fully responsible to be the midwife of his emotional life. that's really important and vice versa and, we know know this often happens more for women in service of men's emotional life. that i think is important. i don't don't have a control group so i only know what i'm experiencing. but i feel and having grown up

not in a cohousing community, have a sense that this is healthier and so many ways. the other interesting thing is set the first first generation of kids who did grow up in cohousing is about a 25 year movement, they're now 25, is interesting five, is interesting to talk to those kids. >> did you talk to them for the book? >> no but i did a piece for the new york times where i talk to some of them. it was fascinating the way they talked. they were realistic and they said parts of the sucked, but their capacity to understand what it's like to have conflict and work through it, their way of relating to adults in particular, i think it's really professionally advantaged a lot of them. they know they know how to have conversations with adults or not their parents. and they relies rely on aunts and uncles.

i think it's really good for kids. >> i'm going to read a passage and then open it up. do you mind if i read this? i think it's amazing to have someone else read your words. >> when i was in crisis about the election yesterday my sister-in-law who is maybe here may be keeping her baby quite, she texted me a sentence of my own book and i didn't even recognize it and i set all that's really good as you wrote this. and i said a aloud, so honored that i wrote this and he said it to me. so i'm getting a lot of solace in thinking like i have said something that might be useful at the moment. >> this is about what makes a house a home and of course a key feature of this completely unrealistic american dream that

came out of the g.i. bill in this very unusual moment in history where for a few generations if you are the right color in the right class things to get better and better. the laws of physics were defeated for some for little while. noise went up and up. and part of that is owning a home. and the white picket fence, and then of course homeownership has been at the center of the trauma of the century and a lot of the pain and the devastation that fueled a lot of the surprising things about the selection. anyway, this is what you said, a

d doesn't make the house a home, the people that gather thereto. the best homes i know are not owner occupied, they are joy occupied. their places know for a comfortable engaging dinner parties where people linger so long at the table that they never let all the remaining food and refill their wine glasses without asking. places where you feel safe to be vulnerable and where you can heal from physical and a motional emilys. places that inspire their inhabitants to express their history and personalities, perhaps with the close line of chapbooks thrown across the living room, shelf lined with beautiful old photographs, a painstakingly arranged train set, the closet door painted with favorite rap lyrics. these are the things that make these are the things that make a house a home, that make an existence alike. it is the size of our psyches, not a storage space that determines the amount of accumulation that is healthy us. what matters is the amount of time we have to appreciate what we possess, time that is inherently limited when we have to work so hard to earn the money to acquire those possessions. we are wise to have less and give away more.

to pursue experiences over objects and memories over status symbols. we are wise to let go of the century old mythology that would have us believe that we have not made it until we have bought it. whether it is a designer bag or suburban home. the new better off mindset is vested in pursuing the most permanent pleasures which strangely turned out to be the fleeting experiences we have in the intangible stories we tell about them. so let's open this up for a few minutes to anybody who wants to be in conversation with courtney >> i have a question. >> i'm jane she is like the most

generous comments. >> i think -- it is an honor to meet you finally my question is, i come from the people who elected donald trump i'm like the black sheep of the family, my my husband is the black sheep of the family. we moved away for five years, we came back, coming back has been brutal. so much so that were in the process of moving back at west where we were. so much so that my husband's family is now completely divided and we are on the out. to the point that my mother-in-law and father-in-law had a 60th anniversary and we did not get invited. so that's how far the gap is and i thought if i just studied enough if i just read enough, if

i read courtney's and parkers columns enough columns enough i would just look at myself and said yes you were this hard core evangelical was right one, black and white, but if you learn this you can change this. i started to watch my religion become republican. and i grew up a republican. but i did not ever think god was on. so my question if it is a question, is, how do you get what you know and what you have taught me because courtney is taught me a ton. how do we get this message of compassion and community to a populace that really doesn't want to hear it? i don't know, i'm just, i have been just broken in a million pieces over the selection.

because do the men now have permission to call me names when i walked down the street? do they have permission to grab me without asking? not that i'm as hot as -- whatever, they're probably not going to be grabbing me, i get that, sumac don't under estimate your hot. >> to hear that money? [laughter] but they were parents were all dressed in red white and blue and were voting for their future, they have more money than they will ever need and five lifetimes, and her grandmas like i went by the grand canyon i sought for ten minutes and was like wow i did that and i'm like you did that, who does that, who just drives by the grand canyon. it's like this total

unconsciousness. so i'm just like, may be your next book will be how do we do that, i don't know, because we have to figure it out. we don't have an option. because they just told us they don't care about us, they really don't. and when your own family is willing to let you go because you are one of those liberal people that steal all their money, i don't know know what to do. i'm even know how to be right now. so that's a lot, sorry. >> i don't want to give you any trite responses because that's a pretty deeply, it's a it's a personal deep suffering that you're experiencing in your family. i will say you are very good company if you are black sheep. i know other amazing black sheep

in this room and all over who similarly feel alone and their families. think of all the black sheep is one big heard a brave people. i would offer you one thing and i tried to write a column on it tomorrow, so i have to produce something and this is a hard moment to do that, but i've been thinking about belonging. and i was reading toddler discipline books which i read in july of a total tantrum and i'll flip to the book and say what's the answer which is not the way to read these books. but i did recent and called positive discipline is set at the root of all tantrums is a quest for belonging and significance, only those two things. belonging and significance. so i've been thinking about that weirdly as i've been trying to process the selection about what is it about the way we vote, whether he voted, whoever we

voted for that is about our own relationship to that parents offer you that because i think is alienated as you feel from your family, something about how they relate to their own belonging feels like at the root of why they're making the choices they're making and rejecting you in a way that feels personal but it's really about their relationship to that. >> i think that's a great analogy, because the way we structure our political dialogue , political speech, political format and media echoes those things when that's what's being covered. and it's infantile. it's like it actually appeals to our most primitive brain, no one sits adolescence but it's infantile, it draws forth our

worst instincts and that is part of why then we get polarize. it creates these conditions for that. so i think that's a great analogy. it's a question we are all living. >> you wrote yesterday and twitter about progressives organizing but not being poisonous. >> not be and what? >> poisonous. >> patronizing is that what you're thinking of. >> patronizing to come and i've been thinking about all of the

things that i've been trying to be right and at times that's been poisonous and patronizing and it distances from the belonging in connection and i just wanted to hear more about that. >> thank you. i might off into my own little blackhole. so one of the things i tweeted yesterday was that i feel like in these days and weeks after the election that it is on progressives to check their own patronizing intellectualism. i was speaking in a large part to myself and my peers. i just feel like part of what has happened in this country is that those of us who say that we value social justice have intellectualized it in this way that makes it very alienating for people, the language we use,

just our posture rounded is this elite command i'm not saying anything others haven't said but i'm feeling it viscerally these days, this elite distancing, know it all snobbery. so no wonder a lot of people are not hearing our message in a way that we think they should be hearing it. on the other hand i actually took a walk with my brother and sister-in-law today around the beautiful lakes were talking about this paradox of how do we hold that we can't, where talk about whiteness especially, so how so how do we hold that we don't want to be these intellectual, patronizing people and/or sort of these sassy, compassionate like anything is good, if you voted for trump i can understand that's where

you're coming from, how do we hold that we need to be thinking about it but also call white people other stuff. we need to there's basic ways in which, we cannot have the president of the united states and someone who says the things this menace at about muslim people come about black people, but women, it's just wrong. so there has to be some ground we can stand on, holding our humility and not going into this intellectual place but where we can have this righteousness of deeply held values, and especially white people calling other white people out on the in some effective way. i haven't figured that out that's what we are all out today as we're marching around the lake. but i am hungry to learn how to do that better. mentor me live, no pressure.

>> again, we have to find new ways to approach each other and so if there's this culture of what we talk about and how we talk about it that by its very nature pits us against each other. it actually welcomes what is inflammatory and how we distinguish ourselves against others. it actually is very cerebral people untran. people who don't think there cerebral it's all about positions and it's about abstractions. the other is such an abstraction in all of this, and whoever the other is that were talking about whether it's wes belts workers,

or lgbt, or immigrants, african-americans, it's all people in inner cities it's all objectified and abstract. i actually think if we really want to engage in a different subject we have to completely pull back from what we have been talking about and just create a new, let's just meet each other. ruby sales set right here and said. >> thank you so much for that. that interview, if you have not listened to that and we have to listen to it. it meant so much to me and every person i talked to who listen to it feels like it was a spiritual moment for them. >> which all of your shows have that to some degree or or another but i think that show particular was a huge gift.

>> and she, one of the things she said talking to about white people to my people is it more fashionable. what are you white people doing for these white people in pain. is it more fashionable to care about black people than white people? but focusing on the pain, the questions that she learned to ask in civil rights as it opens up new possibilities and she can get up into a space where we don't have trustworthy spaces for this but where does it hurt, you obviously cannot start there because have to establish trust and expect an honest answer. how do we just find new ways to walk towards each other? it is a process. this is now our work, it's a

long-term process if we really care about relieving our common life. >> it's a long-term project and yet, i feel very impatience about, white people have had a long time to think about our own history of enslavement and discrimination in we haven't thought about it as much as we need to and there's something about really reimagining whiteness itself, what is it mean to be a white person with a deep social justice heart but not spend all my time try to be the good white person in the room which is like the first step. there's all of these versions of why what we need to do and all of them are very anemic. so some grappling with what is a way to feel the depth and spiritual

drive, like a dorothy day whose birthday was like a couple of days ago, while a dorothy day say about whiteness and maybe she did say something that that i haven't read, but i'm really craving that. i think a lot of people out of the election are craving more of what ruby sales was calling us to figure. >> i just interviewed last week who wrote this great piece and it will be on the air some point, it's very uncomfortable. she actually actually sat in the middle of this is mortifying,. >> and it is, but it's also, there's a show coming up next week with isabel -- and i mean

she really does something that feels important to me that we take seriously what were learning about her brains and bodies, there was a, she says the heart is the last frontier, we have changed a lot of laws with good intention, we have thought about it. but because we didn't actually understand that we walk around, all of us with all of these, those who our minds are difference seeking machines. because we have not been aware of that even though we have thought about it and had intentions, we have an actually created the structures that go along with the intentions. >> we have knowledge now work differently with ourselves. >> i'm getting back to friendship again, as stupid as i have black friends, friendship

for me has been the place where interracial tension, interfaith friendship is were talked about earlier has been the place for this feel most alive. i feel closest closest to what i'm trying to talk about. i have a dear friend who is an incredible -- is working on a complicating idea about family. but she and i can have real conversations will say i don't want to be in a room with white people proving their the good white people and she's like that's your job courtney, i need you in those rooms talk into those white people, even if you hated. and that hate it. and that friendship is worse like i can wrestle with it, so i do think there is something in the power of friendship in this moment. and the ways in which maybe our families are going to be divided

in alienating but what about our friendships? >> families actually the hardest place to make progress right. >> and those intimate spaces are probably the last that we can break open. i love that about friendship. so we should close this down and then you're going to sign some books. >> i wonder how you think about your, how would you and understanding that vocation and you're defining it as something that's constantly going to be evolving in the life, right now your vocation in your calling her callings at this moment. >> i want to say thank you are an example of what were talking about with vocation, your journal is that you have created this thing that some people don't even recognize as journalism even though it is, so for me you are a model of that. it feels like you have search

for this core understanding of what your gift is and then you plight to the world over and over again and creating these spaces so i'm very grateful for your model. i think, i know i'm obsessed with storytelling and solutions. i just keep gravitating toward those two things. i'm also very interested in the limitations of storytelling which is another book or conversation. but i think my gift is this pattern keeping and emotional, intellectual coupling, like how i see the world, don't know how to be articulate about this but as i walk around a very interested in connecting dots and trying to say something about broader patterns and

trends in trends not like in the super surface see down way that media talks about it but the deeper rumblings which is like this election it's what is success to people and what do we actually want from one another from our leaders. so i think that's my gift, this pattern keeping,.connecting and then.connecting and then i can use words pretty well because i have excessively read and written my life. so that's how gets out into the world. so i guess -- >> when what are other parts of your vocation? how do you talk about how that fits together with the other things? also as a human and as a person

in relationships. >> my life is the material in which i am using to connect those dots which is limited because of my life. but it's also really rich. so. so the fact that i'm a mother, that's -- that's what i'm experiencing all the time and that's where some of my deepest challenges and, i hope useful epiphanies are coming through so i'm writing about mothering a lot. so it's anywhere that i can be the person in the room whose pattern keeping, who's listening, and whose seen people and trying to do that again from this emotional, intellectual place. which i feel really committed to in part because of the early conversation where having about patronizing and it's so easy to

write that way especially if you're writing an op-ed, to just go into your head and spit stuff out. i really tried to pause, especially kids i want to honor the space that i'm in. an act of the easy places intellectually, and and really try to bring my confusion and my vulnerability in my spiritual quest to that as opposed always sounded like someone who has the perfect thing to say and i feel safe to say. i'm constantly creating community to bring it back to my moms, i have this women's group in oakland that meets once a month and then potlucks and drinks and it's everywhere i go i accidentally create these communities which i understood this was a skill this is

actually something i may be most proud of. >> which you read from the end of the book, is thinking maybe come i can't read my writing. i know maybe just up here, it's regular because but it's pretty long.

>> in truth, the village is not defined by architecture, but by mentality. if you want to live life with other people you need not move somewhere special, you need only be intentional about asking them to embrace interdependence with you then ritualized that. we fantasize about the village around a spontaneously is a frequent reciprocity will magically appear in the cracks of our overscheduled lives. when we move so fast we don't see one another well enough to know where the needs are and when. we struggle to ask for help, rather than wishing for intentional community we have to doggedly pursue, make it concrete, make a shared google calendar, just make it real even if you feel in earnest and vulnerable. creating communities like these, creating community at all requires share space and time, genuine commitment to following creating community at all requires share space and time, genuine commitment to following down and listening to those around you and to yourself that's where our rediscovery of the local comes in, we might -- are encounters to others on the go only as up to someone just. are encounters of those who are nearest can be deeply satisfied.

it may not earnest frequent-flier miles it is always complicated. finally when the blurb lights is clarified by life-changing transition, new partnership, birth, death, were learning how to pause and express moment together in a way that feels intertwined as generations past and authentic to the one we are experiencing. rick realizing that because some of the institutions or historically does dated ritual have been flawed only. for gold witnessing these moments. see see honoring not the authority that matters. this requires a tremendous amount of creativity and fortitude, self-examination examination. it's it's all we have, this one chance to live lives that give us pleasure make us proud. that connect us to on-time question that humans ask of themselves and each other when they're muddling through. what are my four? why are we here? what matters? what matters? >> thank you courtney.

[applause] >> . . [applause] >> here is a look at some of powell's picks. the findings of two israeli psychologists whose work shows humans are predisposed to rationality. britain special air force service in war heros. reports on a liberal arts education and why it's necessary.