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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> i'm a librarian at thear library of congress. all day here at the library of congress national book festival, we are recognizing andportan

celebrating the importance of reading and authors and books. it makes it seem easy to visit every year, but the truth is that national book festival is a huge undertaking, and hugege a financial undertaking. it has been made possible by generous support from our sponsors. you can see who they are in our program and on the monitor around the convention center. we can take for granted event will continue to exist beard continue making a contribution making yourself on. you can send a text to make a one-time guest that would be added to your local bill. the details are on the screen and on the back of your program and as soon as you finish making a contribution, please silence your cell phone. and now onto the main event, i would like to introduce the cochair of the national book festival, david rubenstein.

[applause] e' >> we are very honored today to have one of the best-selling authors in the country with us today. he wrote his first book and is already in "the new york times" bestsellers. how many people are going to read the book? how many people are going to buy the book today? our special guest is jd vance. i will ask him to come up now. [applause] so, thank you area much for coming. that may give people who may not know your background a littleio- introduction.[ae] jd is a native of middletown, ohio. and a graduate of the middletowh high school. he then went into the marines for four years, served in iraq.

and came back, went to ohio state and finished in two years. and then went to yale law w school, graduated there, clerked for a federal judge for a year. he is now in the investment world in based in part in washington d.c. he is married to a former classmate from yale law schoolol who is here somewhere bringing his two -month-old son.a so, if you see a two -month-old son somewhere, that is his son. [laughter] so, let's start. surely when you started to writl this book come in your wildest imagination, you could have not thought to read a "new york times" bestseller and your book or did you? >> i certainly didn't think i would. >> where did the idea for the>> book come from?

>> it actually started in law school and really the genesis is very interested in the concepts and ideas that i wrote about it in most specifically the united states. he only had to write this thesis by the end of our third year in order to graduate. i really wanted to write about the legal policy implications of social ability in the unitedni states or the lack thereof. the more that i started to talk through the idea in the people that were advising me, the more that especially my primary advisor herself a successful author, she's the author of the tiger mother.. she encouraged me more and more to bring my personal experience to bear because she thought that i could write something that is both intellectually interestings but also personally andd.. emotionally powerful and as i continue to write the book, i

had a little resistance to that of person i didn't like the idea of open them up my personal life, but the more i wrote, the more i realized to the degree i had a unique contribution,, i understood these things from the inside as opposed to an academic. >> you've had the idea of writing the book. how long did it take you to write the book? >> i was always working on a part-time. it was had another job while writing this book and is probably about two and a half years. i started writing it in the middle of 2013 and a finish towards the end of 2015. >> t. write longhand or in a computer? >> my handwriting is absolutelyy terrible. >> as you are writing it, did you have any publisher lined up or did you say all read it and then get a publisher.s the mike in some ways exemplifies something i write in the book the social capital and how they have these important

benefits. because of amy, when i started to think about making this into a book project, she said let me introduce these people i know in the publishing world. one of the people she introduced me to is this woman who eventually became my agent and when you have an idea of someone like tina advocating for it, th publishing publisher is relatively easy. that is sort of what happened with me. the hard part was for me was getting into the publishing world in one family therapist is so hard to find a publisher. >> sometimes first-time authors say this shouldn't be that hardp to write a book and halfway through they say how can i get out of this project. would you ever want to abandon it? >> i definitely would did want to abandon it. you can tell how miserable i was about to 50% way through the writing process. for me, what was so tough as

once i got through a halfway through the book, i couldn't stop writing it. it seems so imposing and i realized then what i didn't realize going into the project is i probably had a 10 to one ratio of words typed in words that made it in to the final manuscript. i just didn't realize what itat would be until i was about halfway through it. i definitely thought to myself,, would it be possible to gett myself out of this. >> your publisher had some confidence. initially was 10,000. 10,000 end up a point when the book came out to people say there aren't enough copies outgh and i will print more. >> yes, so this happened relatively quickly after the book came out.t. i want to say in two or three weeks maybe there was an

interview i did with the magazine the american conservative that went viral and a lot of people are sharing it on twitter increase look and so forth. i went to check the amazon ranking, which those of you read the book will know your amazon ranking is the way it's checked in real time how your book is selling. there's a point in my life while i'm checking it this way, every seven or eight seconds. i go to check the amazon ranking and it says the book is out of stock, and we don't have enough books out there. so that's when they really started to turn on the prices. >> i don't know how many total are in print. i know the hard copies we've sold just under a million and it's a little over a million if you have digital copies andie audio copies and all that stuff. [applause]

>> the title, very often authors come up with a title all the way. is that your idea for the title are where did it come from? >> akin through conversation with my agent. i really wanted the word hillbilly to be in the book title in the reason why i wanted that in the title is because i thought it captured both the particular cultural subsegment that i was trying to write about, but i also thought it captured the sort of interesting insider outsider dynamic in my family where my grandma with say we are hillbillies. we are allowed to college othere hillbillies but if anyone else does you have to punch them in the nose. it was this sort of interesting word that always had a really textured meaning as they grew up. i wanted that were to be in the title, but lng is something that had to take a while before i was making it and i think that was

tina's idea and there were a couple reasons for that. >> so now is the focus becomes so well known, you are reasonably well known and you go to a restaurant without people asking for autographs or self user that hasn't become a problem yet? >> it depends on where and not. i did notice a pretty fair amount.us i g notice sometimes back in eastern kentucky for southwestern ohio. i go to nashville a week, week in a half ago and i didn't get noticed once they are. >> you have to make a record there. >> many of the family secret they don't want revealed about themselves. you reveal every family secret. what was the reaction of your family to this? >> i didn't reveal every families agree. i have keep writing the book.

you know, it is interesting. i am talking to my family about revealing some of the secret. i think i've noticed there's been a slight shift from when i started to write the book to where it is now. the people are much more open about fulfilling the family history on the pages of the book that no one asked that did anybody to read. i think now that we are at the number of copies we sold and people talk about the book, maybe a little more sensitivity. some people definitely say we shouldn't air the family's dirty laundry.hes some people appreciate it was an important and worthwhile story to tell.>> any >> do any of them say he's from this. >> i haven't got that yet. maybe i will now especiallye since this is on c-span. >> let's talk about the books itself. i have read it and i enjoyed it a great deal.

i would say the success would do this thing. one is the writing style was very crisp, very clear, not a lot of excess verbiage. stacking, your personal story is extraordinary and it's almost like a novel. hard to believe it was true. third, the relationship between what's going on in the country, the opioid crisis of unemployment, let's go through each of these first. were you a gifted writer and college and law school, whereng did you get this chris, clear writing style? >> definitely law school helped a lot in that regard. one of the things they teach you in law school is to try and be clear, concise, direct, but also engaging. thinking about how to write as a lawyer to get out some of the excess words is definitely helpful.

you know, if you asked if i was an intelligent writer, always. i don't necessarily think i'm a talented writer, but it's funny because there was this eighth-grade biography that i had to write in my family still has this biography and it's interesting because it's got to be very similar. they will pass it around and go jd is such a great writer, even when he was 14 years old. when my wife pics at the same thing, she will go your familyt has not been honest with you. you're 14 years old. so i don't know. i do think that law school helps.in there's the story i tell of the book were the first big writing i handed it in, i was pretty proud of it in the law school professor handed it back that this was masquerading in a paragraph. if the asset is a talented writer, he would say no.if >> today, having had the first s

book that's very successful, normally publishers will go and say you are ernest hemingway, let's have another book. the sooner you get it out, the better..book surely they want you to write another book. are you thinking about writing one right now? >> i think i eventually will. my view on this as it's not something i'm trying to undertake tomorrow. if i write another book, will you edited or changed a little r bit? >> i think it will go out to the same way. i would like to add a chapter to contextualize the political salience a lot of people have attributed. when i started writing this in 2013, i had no idea it would be attached and frankly to me, a pretty bizarre way.

so i think i would like to read a little bit about that. but otherwise, -- before the paper comes out, they're supposed to be a movie, ron howard is producing the movie or maybe direct a new movie. >> i don't know. the thing about this since i wanted to be somebody who's good looking, but not so good-looking that people are disappointed when they actually meet me. [laughter] but yeah, this is a question that i have real trouble meeting because who really fit into that not too warm, not too cold category. >> i'm sure you can findalled somebody. let's go to your life story. for those who may not have read the book, i don't want to give away everything and it, but a fair bit. where were you born? >> i was born in middletown ohio, southwestern ohio.

>> your mother and father were married at the time. >> a word. did they divorced shortly after? >> or shortly after. before memory certainly. >> her biological mother was raising it further early years. and then you had a very close relationship with your maternal grand other and maternal grandmother, right? what was her name? >> man mock empath off. >> is that a hillbilly type word or just your family? >> at definitely pretty, and in the broader culture.at it's not i've learned to hillbilly culture, but it's excu definitely the region of the country. >> people who might live in the east coast say what is hillbilly about ohio. that the center of the united. dates. you might describe that your family's roots were really from kentucky.

describe how you came to ohio. >> they were part of this massive migration from eastern kentucky, east tennessee, western virginia to the industrial midwest. when they moved, they also brought their culturala attributes but then. again, even though my family lived in southwestern ohio, we traveled back to eastern kentucky a lot because i spent so much time with my grandparents. i spent a lot of my years in eastern kentucky in our thought that was the real homeland. it's interesting that the pretty common attitude. there were country music songs about this, a lot of stories similar to mind for people who grew up in the midwest and michigan, indiana, ohio to like their homes in western they spent so much of their lives in the way says and that's where their family was from. the mac so you are growing up in you have a stepsister or a full sister?? different dad, say mom.

both of you being raised by a single mother. how did she support herself? >> yeah, so mom i remember became a nurse sometime afterbe coming in now, maybe i was eight or nine. for a couple years she was a nurse and i would write about the book those are pretty good times economically. we were struggling economically during our lives. before then, i don't know.. i think she worked odd jobs at my grandparents helped out a little bit. one of the stories in the book is after mom was still nursing, things were pretty tough for a family economically and more important they were a lot of issues. >> so your mother in your book was married or had male relationships because people were living her four, five, six different times. was in that kind of disconcerting to you to see a

different man at the house all the time? >> as common from the perspective of people coming in and out of our lives and i think i didn't realize until i was older what effect i was having on me. i didn't like it when i was a kid. i didn't like that i'd be friends with discography like this guy was starting to become a bit of a father figure and then he was out of our lives. i knew that was coming. a lot of my friends were going through the same thing and none of them -- i didn't quite appreciate the effect that was having on me until i was older and started to look back on these things.t eith >> at some point we redevelop her relationship with her point biological father and you went to match a look at them for aa while but that was not as a pleasant experience as he thought it would be. >> it was present in the sense that he had his life together. he was living with my stepmom and they had a happy home life and some ways i was looking back, searching her that family ability in eighth grade or so

would not have been. i also realized i had becomein e incredibly attached because even when i was living with mom as kids, we spent a ton of time with their grandparents and his mom sort of struggled with the problem to spend more and more time with their grandparents. so there was this really weird moment where i was living with my dad and i recognize he had da sort of a mobile home as people understood it. but it just felt so desperate to get back to my grandmas house in love with her and that'st essentially what i did. i didn't realize until that moment that in my own mind we had sort of become the chief caretaker. >> you lived with your biological father for a while. he then moved in with your maternal grandmother and grandfather. >> e.'s passed away now. >> let's talk about that. he was close to you. the shock of his passing away,

how did that affect you? >> it affected me in all the ways that it affects a young kid. top five because of the situation growing up, because of the revolving door father figure, so forth, pat ball was the closest thing i had to adapt during the formative years. he was the person who took care of things. he was the person who made sure we had all the things we needed was just an emotional support for me and my sister and my grandmother. i always had the sense that apple was around things to be taken care of and he was always the person who called us and family drama was happening, the person who never lost his temper, never flew off the handle.. even mammal had a temper and pop i didn't. i think it affected me in a number of different and negative ways. the way it affected me most of all was really what came after it. i understood very instinctively

that he was the glue that held the family together and i realized in a non-thing to way when he wasn't there, just what would happen. >> so you look at your mother for a while. at one point she was violent with you in very difficult to deal with and she had a drugffil rubble and bash problem. he recounted next. where the police came and saved you from your mother. is that fair? >> yeah, i think about this story a lot because i wonder i was 12 or 13 when this happened. i always wonder if maybe it wasn't quite as dangerous as i remember. i think in part that's just because i'm a lot closer to mom now and i think in some ways people try to remember things in a way that reflects fondly on people that they love and i certainly love my mom and we are

doing pretty well in our relationship now. i was terrified. i mean, i thought that we were going to die and i felt that mon was going to try to kill us. the car was traveling very fast and she was certain we didn't seem especially stable and so i got out of the car at grand and eventually found this woman who called the police and the police came and arrested mom and she was charged with domestic violence. that was obviously a pretty dramatic moment. there's no other way to cut it. >> did you then go live with your grandmother or did you go back and visit her mother after that and then? >> for a time i lived with my grandmother. again, i was always living for weeks or at a time, even when things were going really well.it it wasn't that different. it wasn't that much of a departure for normal routine. but i eventually went back with

mom is sort of the way things went with us. >> when you were growing up, when i was growing up i didn't have the experience you did, but i would totally recall what happened when i was 12 or 10 or nine. how do you recall that? how did she know these incidents so well? >> this is where being able to rely in your family really helps. a lot of the stuff i tried to cross reference as much as possible with my sister or my mom, my dad. what happened here is sort of peers to draft the manuscript of this story. what am i leaving out, missing,s what do i remember directly? it's going back to the family react to the book. i tried to make them part of the writing process as well as from my memory onto the page.o i really tried to make it a family memoir.

but as i said in the introduction, i am sure that things are perfect, but they ar certainly how i remember them and they think they are pretty well documented as much as he can with what is primarily a memoir. >> as you go through in the book. we living with her at that time? >> i was in the marine corps at the time. this was a few months before i left for iraq in 2005. >> you are living with her and getting ready to be recognized? >> olympic air for almost all ol high school and left for the marines from her house. >> so you are filling out applications you write in your book for college. and then you thought you couldn't afford the college where you were sure you are ready for it. >> it was both. definitely i didn't feel ready for it.

i had a least enough maturity at the time to recognize this is maybe my one real opportunity to have anything in the way of a good job or a good career. if i screw this college thing up, that would be my one chance. because of that i wanted to take it for granted and i felt i was in this position is a person worth it went to college i felt like i would've taken advantage of it. the cost part of it was definitely a significant issue as well. it wasn't just the cost had obviously i knew i had to take out all of these loans and we sort of knew the iraqis held grants and things like that i would be able to take advantage of that. even without we know to be a significant amount of debt to occur. but it was more actually the logistical side that made college seems so imposing. spilling out financial aid paperwork, what does your dad's annual income? what is your dad's address? at that time i hadn't spoken to my legal father in six or seven

years, only finding the information was a required amount of detective work. there were these pages to sign off on his massive loans and my grandma then graduated from high school and it just seemed really imposing and in some ways a little terrifying to go through this entire administrative process that no one in my family had gone through and they didn't feel comfortable doing it myself. >> you just had a walk down the street and go to the marine recruiter. is that what happened? >> that's a similar version as to what happened. at that point there were six kids in my generation of grandchildren. my two older cousins, my sister and two younger cousins and of the six of us, two of us were the marine corps and both of the older cousins passed. so i encourage purdue strongly by my cousin rachel who is in the marine corps, she said you know, if you are worried about how you're going to pay for school and more importantlyou whether you are ready for

college, you should just go join the marine corps. that will be great for you. you will get out of town out of town for misuse and stuff, make some financial independent and you should really go and think about doing that. >> so you signed up for the marine corps. teacher family tell you that was a good idea? >> well, you know, it definitely a patriotic community and a patriotic family, so people were cooud of me, but they were not especially happy. remember, i guess they had 2003. we had just invaded iraq. there was really some real apprehension justifiably soo about what join the marine corps meant, what i was getting myself into. in mamaw reacted very negatively. some ways she framed my decision to go to the marine corps and that of college almost as a betrayal that you are going off in leaving me. you are the venue to take carere of myself. you could get hurt. that was obviously very hard.

>> so you went to basic training. what was that like? you couldn't get through basic training? >> i was never afraid that i couldn't get through. maybe in high school i was a little bit afraid of the physical demands and so forth. what a drill instructor told me actually as if you think they are going to be mean, they'll be nothing like a grandma of yours. [laughter] i really thought that the longest i could physically be in the psychological part was fine and i'd be able to make it. and i was true. the marine corps is definitely challenging, but it's also in a weird way kind of fun.f kind of stockholm syndrome.to i know a lot of green to enjoy their boot camp experience. >> your grandmother on the account of the book has colorful language. does that rub off on you? she never was embarrassed to use those words around you?

>> well, i think my son is too young to show evidence of how foul my language is. you know, i definitely try to cut back on language relative to my grandma just because she really loved dramatic and well-placed word. [laughter] you go from mamaw's house to the u.s. marine corps, the phrase curse like a sailor doesn't come from nowhere and the marine corps navy. i think that i definitely had to scale back my language. but it's like ingrained in me and i definitely don't always succeed. >> are the marine corps, anded after basic training and then you go to iraq. were you afraid you would come back in one piece or you weren't sure you would survive? >> i think anybody when they are about to deploy to iraq is worried about whether they will come back in one piece. the thing to remember is i had

an alaskan military occupation specialty, where we have awesome people in my analyst of combat deaths in combat injuries, but it wasn't -- i wasn't taking quite as much about the danger is maybe it would have been if i was working in the infantry, for example. so i was worried about it, but they also try to talk myself up and recognize it will be dangerous to mr. thing more dangerous than driving down the street, but i'll probably end up okay. >> for four years you're in the military. then you decide you want to go to college. but then you were four yearsor u older than any of your contemporaries. >> is not that it's a great place to go. >> you know, i think it is

possible to make these decisions toem more rational than they were. the reason i wanted to go to ohio state is because i grew up rooting and loving ohio state and a lot of my friends had gone there. i was not nearly as thoughtful about my psychologist decision as i have been. i do critics. they're not really glad i went there, but it was basically luck i found myself in. i wasn't thinking as smartly about it as they should have been. connect normally people go to college for four years and you seem to get to ohio state in two years. how do you get to ohio state in two years? >> you take a lot of classes, go during the summer transfer credit that you gained during the marine corps over to ohio state. those three things were enough to enable me to cut a couple years off. >> on to support yourself? where did the money come from ohio state? was that enough to supplement you?

>> is you know, a little bit of savings, a little bit of debt that i incurred in some of the subsidized loans had some telegrams at osu, and the g.i. bill, which i was trying to say for law school, but i use some of it during college. and then i worked jobs during college, so it's sort of does different sources of income were enough to get me through. >> so you graduated two years and decide you want to go to law school. but as you point out in your book, there aren't as manyde people going to yale or harvard from ohio state. obviously there are son. how did you go to your law school which is a great law schoolate or >> this is another thing i wasn't thinking super strategically about it. you know, i applied to the law schools, got into them and so

did was thinking about just going to those schools and one of my best friends in my wedding actually who himself is a lawyer said this is 2009, right after the great recession.u he's like i've got friends from law school who are struggling to find work. so you should get into the best school you can because that will be your best insurance policy against unemployment. i ended up taking off a little bit of time and reapplying and that is when i applied to heal.o >> in college you did much better. how did you go from mediocre toe great student? .. school -- in high school. i was a more mature person, back to me being ready for college in a psychological way, this

opportunity as opposed to responsibility if someone foisted upon me. i try harder. paying for it and seeing the data bill go up and up gave me a sense of the fact that i was lucky to go there. i also thought a lot about my grandma when i was in college, the woman who left school when she was 14 years old to come north to ohio, she had not had many educational opportunities, she was supersmart. i thought to myself, to sacrifice all those things to get i should actually try harder. >> so you go to yale law school. yale law school is about the hardest law school to get into the united states. very small law school. many people to there from harvard, yale, princeton, similar kind of colleges. did you feel out of place from yale law school? there weren't that many people as i recall from your school at ohio state?

>> my year i graduated, i wassgd only ohio state student at yale. i realized there were high schools, preparatory schools, that there were more students from that preparatory school than my university. i thought that was a little weird. it was more after culture shock than any place i had ever been. it was more of a shock than the marine corps and ohio state. it was shocking some backgrounds from some of my classmates relative that where i came from. >> another person went to yale law school, bill clinton. he went to arkansas. he used to take a lot of prideme from arkansas. did you say i'm hillbilly from kentucky and ohio? how did you fit in. >> i don't know that i ever introduced i'm a hillbilly from ohio and how are you?t

i think that came through the way i conducted myself. i was a strong ohio partisan in undergrad. pa everyone knew where i was from. but yeah, i don't know if i used that precise phrase. f >> how did you do it? how did you do at yale law school? were you academically at top, the middle, at the bottom? where were you? >> i think i did okay. i was in the middle. my wife was at the top which is why she is clerking for the chief justice. the weird thing about yale, traditional law schools don't give traditional grades. hard to know where you rank relative to your peers. my sense i was doing fine. i was not at the bottom of the pack. i certainly wasn't at the top either.do i was comfortable with that. >> you wrote your way on to the yale law journal. that is one of most prestigious things you can do at yale law school. you decided to practice law or clerk what did you decide to do? >> my wife and i decide to go to the eastern district of

kentucky. >> you met your wife? is she here now? where is she? the wife here, somewhere. i thought she was here. i thought she was coming. there she is. okay.co [applause] okay. >> sorry. >> all right so you met her, in the same class? >> we were in the same class. we had the opportunity to clerk on eastern district of kentucky, both of our judges, we worked for separate judges, inn covington, over the river from cincinnati. this was opportunity to clerk for a federal judge, be at home and work on things interesting to us. >> you spent most of your life trying to escape kentucky. then you went back to kentucky. >> i don't think i was trying to escape kentucky but chaotic home i grew up in. i loved places i came from. always wanted to go back t definitely was a really exciting and really good year..

we both worked for really good people. sometimes people get stuck with bad judges. we both worked for great people and had a great year. >> as i said at the beginning there were three reasons why i think the book is very successful, at least in my view. one, it is very well-written and precise and very good read. secondly, the life story is almost like a novel. so it's great, interesting, but the third i think one of the reasons the book has become so popular because as you point out yourself, the world has change ad fair bit since you conceived writing the book. >> sure. >> now what you wrote about is seen as one of the props with our country, which we have a lot of drug abuse, opioid abuse, unemployment, particularly in the midwest, a lot of kind of people thaw come from, the roots where you come from have these problems. let's talk about that for a while. >> sure. >> talk about the opioid problem, you growing up, you point out in your book, drug abuse was a problem in your area

and it has gotten worse and why do you think it is so bad?em >> it was definitely a problem i saw growing up. i remember addiction hit our family. our mom was addicted to prescription pain pills as we call back then. i didn't understand why anybody would be addicted to pain pills. it was not especially common. it was in the mid 90s. the problem had not gone mainstream as it is now. in 2017 we sit here talk about the opioid epidemic which is now really a nationwide crisis. i feel in some ways i got early insight what would become a significant crisis. why has it gotten worse? there are a ton of different reasons and ton of different explanations, right? one i think to be honest, a lot of these drugs were marketed ast non-addictive and they were addictive and people got hooked on them t caused a lot of problems. i think you have a really

overprescription problem in some areas where, i was in southeastern ohio couple months ago talking with folks dealing with this and they tell me, when high schoolkids used to hang out to get in their liquor's cabinet and parent's beer and now they get into grandma's medicine cabinet to pass around drugs. that is a different kind of a problem. it is a consequence of some really negative social problems that exist in these communities. if you have domestic violence, if you have a lot of family instability, if you have a lot of unemployment, people eventually find some way to deal with it. maybe 50 years ago they dealt with it with alcohol and now they deal with it with substance that is much more addictive. >> you largely seemed to avoid the opioid problem, you write as i recall, use of marijuana but not anything that is addictive. how did you avoid that in the environment which you grew up? >> mam-maw was cognizant of the

problems of addiction and was really restrictive about this stuff. s if she found out we were smoking a cigarette or had anything toe drink, ma'am-maw would fly off the handle. this had a role in our family this ruined her life for first 30 years of her marriage, alcoholism. it was ruining life of one of her kids. i was on always on guard.se i am one of the people that doesn't like to take eye ibupron because i see addiction trap as lot of people. i was really sick at ohio state with mono.o. they gave me dill laud did. i had to take medicine. i had dilaud.

i know why mamaw didn't like us to take this stuff because it is fantastic [laughter]. >> what about alcohol? you avoided alcohol? >> no, i haven't avoided alcohol. i certainly never felt i have been addicted to alcohol. when they ask you at the doctor, i'm one of these once or twice a week type people. i never felt especially addicted to anything except for chocolate chip cookies and ice cream. >> let's talk about unemployment. as you point out in the book many people left kentucky and places like that to go north for jobs but those jobs have been hollowed out. so you see a lot of unememployment. can you describe whether it is getting better, worse, or what can be done about it? >> it is certainly getting better the past couple years because the economy picked up a little bit but i don't think, i don't think it has i am purchased significantly over

where it was 30 or 40 years ago. what i mean the number of people that the coal industry or the steel mill industry employed let's say the 1950s or '60s. it hasn't returned. it is not as bad as it was but you're seeing a really long-term economic shift in some of these areas. it is something honestly i think policymakers were a little blind to. everybody just thought the economy would adjust. folks would get different jobs. they would skill up to move into different professions but actually what happened, a lot of communities get significantly decimated. that is one of the undercurrents of the book. what is there to do about it. there are i think a lot of different things we could do about it. the first is that i think we have a pretty significant problem with the fact that you're effectively given aav choice when you graduate from high school between going and working in a fast-food job or

getting a four-year college education.ou and i think we should provide more pathways than that. that is not surprising that are the only two pathways, people going in those two directions. [applause] but i also think, i also think we have a think a little bit more constructively about regional economic development. the way this has gone last 10 or 20 years. i'm a local municipality, i offer a tax credit to set up a restaurant in my hometown. that is great. new restaurants are fantastic,c, that is not long-term economic redevelopment has to happen in these areas. something basically all levels of policy-makers have to think differently than they are right now. >> somebody writes a book as successful as yours and subjects you deal with, at some point somebody from the democratic national committee or republican national committee or some political entity will say, you are a great candidate to be a member of congress, governor, senator, and maybe something even higher.

so have you ever thought about and have you been i am pour tuno to run for something? >> i think we're out of time, right? thankthank you, appreciate that. [laughter]. >> so you would say, you wouldn't preclude anything from happening? >> no. certainly not. you know, certainly when, that progress is exactly right. when you have a book as successful people from various political parties come to you and ask you if you would be interested in these things. >> have you talked to any people that have these jobs who actually like these jobs though? >> i actually don't think that i have.. i have talked to a couple of members of congress, not about me running but certainly about, in this environment, do you actually enjoy what you do? and they say, yeah, i really like working on policy. the problem is we don't do any of that. so, no. >> leaving aside whether youou would run for something, because the platform you now have is so great you can be a spokesman

about alcoholism, unemployment, opioid addiction, and are you going to kind of make it part of your career talking about these issues? or do you want to be not seen as a spokesman for these eschews? >> i don't know that i want to be seen as a spokesman for these issues. now that i have the platform i might as well do something productive other than just talk about the book. there are other issues that are worth talking about. so you know, i've tried to be a constructive participant in some of these policy debates during the health care reform debate of a few months ago. i went on to capitol hill and i tried to talk to folks this is how it might affect opioid crisis and how it affects some people back at home. we live especially in a non-constructive time. you have to be careful and you have to be smart and you have to recognize that sometimes even

when you try to be careful and smart you're not actually being careful and smart. >> when you talk with congress or congressional staff people, do they want a picture of you or autograph of the book, or whatph do they say? >> depends on some of the staff members but i found generally speaking, you know, i have become maybe more cynical about our political process at largene since the book came out from talking to folks and spending some time in these areas. i do feel more optimistic about individual members and their staff. i think that by and large people want to make a difference and care about the policy and care about what effect it is going to have, but we happen to live in political period and a political time it is hard to translate interest in policy to constructive accomplishment. >> people who might be called, not pejoratively or might call themselves hill bill is or

hillbilly culture, are they prud of your book exposing some of the challenges they have or opposed to exposings some of the challenges they have? >> there are people out there who think i am a traitor and hate my guts.itor an m there are people who think i have shed a light on really important issues and they appreciate it. the thing i hear most from people back home when i talk about the book, i hear people when they run into me on the street. they appreciate the book has talked about these problems in a way they feel like wasn't talke about before. nobody really wrote the story from the inside. nobody talked about what is it like to grow up in a household with a lot of instability, a lot of addiction. what it is like to grow up inside of a household where you worry you can pay for college or more fundamental things. that is the part most gratifying to me.

it is really large and diverse, as diverse than any large population? >> what is the most frequent question we have?is you speaking circuit, and contributor on cnn. what is the question we have most frequently about the audience or your book or background? >> the question i get most frequently asked, it is probably how my reacted to the book. that is something people are definitely curious about. i think i ask how my mom is doing. >> how is she doing? >> she is doing well? not married now? living in ohio? >> she is living back home. she is doing well. she has been clean a very long time. in some ways while mom may not be ready to play this role, so i'm not going to foist it on her, she is really good example what can happen even after five six times you get knocked off

the horse of addiction and relapse, it is possible to climb back out, to find the right supports and make another to at it. that is something i really admire about mom. she is incredibly tenacious. [applause] >> does she have a business card that says j.d. vance's mother? doesn't have that on the business card? >> she does not. >> what about your biological father? g do you have context with him. >> yeah. i got a text message from her. dad and i are still close, still talk quite a bit. he is doing pretty well. he, you know, he's a great guy. i think that, you know, he and i most often talk about his grandson and that is what he is most interested in. that is true of a lot of grandparents.at he's >> you talk about in the group, you grew up largely with your sister. what is she doing now? >> yeah.

my sister has three kids back home in middleton. has been married 20 years or so, and is doing well. what lindsey and i wanted to really accomplish, what we thought of as success in our lives, being able to give your kids the stability and comfort and sense of security that we didn't have as kid. if she is successfully done that for almost 20 years. her oldest kid is 18. i have done that for three months. i'm hopeful i get there too. >> and today, if you find that your friend from high school, they laugh at your jokes more than they did before? do they treat you differently? how do the people you grew up with treat you now that you're so famous, and wealthy? a lot of people ask you for money? >> yeah, sometimes people ask me for money. but that is not a common occurrence. there are definitely some people who laugh louder at my jokes but my real friend do not laugh louder..

one of the really good things about having a successful book, or what a successful book can do, you definitely realize that people who are loyal to you, no matter what, don't let you get too big for your britches as we say back home, those are the people i really latch on to. >> leaving aside your political career. rite now you're not practicing law. you're in the highest quality i call of land, private equity.an you're in venture capital, narrow niche of private equity, venture capital. why are you doing that? doing it here in a firm based here and ohio? >> that is right. what i find so interesting about what i'm doing right now, if it is done well, it can actually help create amazing new products and amazing new companies an amazing new jobs that didn't exist before, right?

so one of the things i realized in law school, i think i came into this with a sort of veil behind my eyes lifted is that, you know, what, the people who i think really, frankly call the shots in our economic system, are those who are figuring out, you know where capital goes. and i think that when i realized that. i thought to myself, i would like to be a guy who is trying a to figure out how to get capital to go into good places. where it will do a lot of good, create value for not just investors but people on the receiving end too. >> [applause] >> some people that write first books, some people write a book, margaret mitchell, ralph ellison, their first book is so successful they have a heard time writing a second book. they get writers block because they think nothing can be as good as the first book. a you don't worry about that problem? >> i don't know. i didn't think my first book was

that good. i don't know any follow-up will be measured well or poorly compared to it. it was certainly successful. i would be an idiot to decide another book would be as successful. >> what would you like, role model for people that came outto of the background you came out of, rightly or wrongly whether you like it or not, you're a bit of a road model for people that came out of your background. as a role model, do you feel responsibility to live your life a certain way? do you feel you have to give back to your community a certain way?wa how has your life changed as a result of this book? >> i definitely feel a certain responsibility when i go on tv not make my entire community seem like an idiot because one of the things i have not appreciated but i just accepted as reality, a lot of people seey me as sort of a spokesperson for the white working class. i'm asked to say on tv what does the trump voter feel about this or that issue.

i think that is unfair. i don't think that one person could speak for some people or the at writ the trump voter at large. but i recognize some people see me as that representative. i try to sound like not a total buffoon when i go on tv. that is the way i think things have changed. it is crazy. a year-and-a-half ago i was not sitting here in an auditorium in front of hundreds of people. it is kind of impossible to describe how my life has changed. it changed in the way that any person's life changes when they go from sitting at home, eating pints of ice cream, watching netflix to sitting in front of hundreds of people. >> people of the president of the united states called you, i read your book and typify the kind of voter i appeal to, you haven't heard any type of reaction like that? >> i never heard from president trump. i heard from people who work at the white house saying something similar to that, but, no i have never gotten a phone call from president trump.ai still waiting.

>> today you would say you're a very happy person. you have a child, a wife, your mother and father are doing well. so you're a very happy person today and experience of the book made your life even better? >> things are going great. the book changed my life in weird way, but definitely a positive way.ar >> i read the book as i said. i thought it was a great book. i highly recommend to those who haven't read it yet. those read it once, read it again. i think it is very instructive and well-written. thanks for a very interesting conversation. >> thanks, david. [applause]