>> good evening. welcome back tonight. we are very excited to have an event that is being highly anticipated and also is being recorded for national broadcast so i will hold up the book for r you and the camera. this is shane bauer's american

prisons and much is set in louisiana. this started originally as an article that appeared in mother jones and got expanded into this fascinating book. without drawing this out, i'm going to introduce shane bauer who will tell you all about it. please give a warm welcome. [applause] >> thank you. i'm super excited to be here doing this. i've been in a few cities. i started in new york, but this is the stuff i was most excited about because my book is about louisiana. i'm going to talk about that. sorry my technology isn't working well. one second. i had a presentation and it's not working, but i still need it

for my note. at the end of 2014, i applied for a job as a prison guard. i'd been reportini've been repos for a few years and like anybody that reports on prisons i was constantly frustrated with how little access there are throughout the country. we have public record laws that helrecords laws thathelp us thic information about violence and data about the prison but even

getting the states to comply with them is difficult. they are private companies so public record laws often don't apply. this company in particular has been around since the 80s and we haven't had a goo good book f what life is like inside the prisons. it generally has about $4 million in here and history and holds about 8% of the prison population and about two thirds of detainees. i told my editor i was thinking about applying and they

basically said okay just don't apply in the application. and i think neither they nor i thought it was going to work. within a couple of weeks i was getting phone calls. several persons were wanting to do job interviews, so i spoke to them on the phone. i was surprised in the interviews they didn't ask me anything about my job history or anything about why i wanted to work in a prison. it was kind of like it could've been a wal-mart interview. how do you work with others and what do you do if your boss tells you to do something you don't want to do, that kind of stuff. it was almost like they were trying to convince me to take the job. it was a 9-dollar an hour job and they were trying to convince me to move from california to louisiana for $9 an hour.

i ended up having a few different options of prisons to go to around the country and i chose to come to louisiana. part of the reason is that louisiana at the time is the wae most incarcerated place in the country, also in the world as far as the rate of incarcerati incarceration. this prison in particular, the correctional center was the oldest medium security prison in the country. so i moved to winfield, a town of 5,000 people, average household income is $25,000 a year. the last sheriff before i was there was locked up for dealing meth. it's a pretty hard hit place. it's a prison of about 1508 and it was set in the middle of a

national forest. the contract guaranteed at the prison would be kept 96% full so the state was required to either send enough prisoners to keep it at that level or pay the rate as if it were 96% full. the way the company makes money states around the country pay a rate per prisoner per day so this prison was the company was getting $34 per inmate per day and some states it is $80 then it's also a trade on the new york stock exchange. so i went in and i started training in dissent for months in total.

i had a 35-dollar watch that had a little camera and a pen that records audio so i would leave the pen running all the time so i was able to capture dialog. the reason i did this is because i couldn't take a lot of notes. i could bore so during training because we were sitting and supposed tin asupposed right als the only one that did. in the prison i would sometimes run to the bathroo bathroom andt things down or something like that but i wanted to not have to rely on my memory. the dialogue is 95% of the dialogue is verbatim that's exactly what people said. in training we were in training from him and one of the things

we were told it's our job is to deliver value to our shareholders and a team that went alontheme thatwent along wo with liability that we were kind of meant to do what we were required but not too put ourselves in a situation that could cost the company more money so i'm going to read more but is related to this. i raised my hand. we were asked what he should do if we see to inmate stabbing each other. i would probably call somebody. i would holler stop, said the veteran guard. mr. tucker points at her. that's it. if they don't pay attention, there's nothing else you can do. stop fighting, he says to invisible prisoners. i said stop fighting.

nonchalant. backing out of the door and slamming it shut, lead yourself in there, he turns to face us. somebody is going to win and somebody is going to lose, but did you do your job, hell yes, the classroom erupted in laughter. we could break them up if we want to but he wouldn't recommend it. we are not going to pay that much. the next raise isn't going to be much more than the one you got last time. all that's important is that we go home at the end of the day. if they want to cut each other, happy cutting. so, this company was founded in the 1980s, but for most of american history prisons they were meant to turn a profit so after i did this, this undercover investigation i went

to work on this book and i realized that to tell the story it had to go way back further than the 80s. i went all the way back to the american revolution and so the way the book is laid out i told the story of my time undercover in the chapters with the history of american prisons by american for-profit prisons have changed the evolution from the very beginning of prison to the present and accounted throughout american history, prisons until the 1970s prisons especially in the south were turning a profit either for private companies or for the state. so here in louisiana, the prison was opened in the 1830s and louisiana was one of the first places to privatize its

beneficiary in 1845. it was in baton rouge was opened to but to give some context about the opening this is a time where there were none in the south, the idea was still new and it started in the northeast they were invented here in the united states and the south was recessed into the idea of penitentiary areas. partially because they were associated with abolitionists because slavery abolitionists tended to be deaf row and it was a reform, the idea was instead of executing somebody for theft, you sentence him to seven years in prison. the penitentiary was kind of a

threat to the white supremacist ideology of the south because the norm of the penitentiary areas that exist in the north is when somebody went to prison they were forced to labor from dawn to dusk and if the south had opened the penitentiary areas, the people who went to them would most likely be white because african-americans a afre time were mostly slaves and were punished on the plantations and white people would be forced to labor. what convinced louisiana to open a penitentiary is learning that those in the nort north were acy making money for the state. they were bringing a profit for their labor and they were contracted to private contractors and adding money to the states. so louisiana with a penitentiary and it was like all the time it

was a factory and louisiana and other states in the south saw it as a way to help industrialize the south and take kind of the northern monopoly on industry and bringing its south. after louisiana opened its penitentiary. there were articles written in newspapers and other states in the south praising the penitentiary and suggesting that slave owners kind of learn from the system. this kind of the frontier of a new type of forced labor in the south. it was industrial and they suggested slaveowners use women and children to work on cotton mills and stability in the fields where they may b maybe wt as productive. when i was going through all this research, i wondered if it had lasted longer would it have

shifted in the direction of the form in the penitentiary is wednesday at kind of industrialist more. a lot of people followed the lead in a few years after they opened the penitentiary if of the largest factory in the state commander was actually a larger supplier than mississippi. ..

. >> and like today one of the targets for the belt-tightening was the prison. the state privatize the prison. shortly after this happened conditions rapidly got worse i found a memoir of a prisoner who talked about very similar to what you hear today. any attempt of reforming inmates was dropped it was all

about profit. but this time the idea the penitentiary is new based on the notion that people would be rehabilitated through labor. but there is no evidence the penitentiary that existed for 30 years there is no evidence to support this there are still high crime rates but at this point by 1857 louisiana was making the modern day equivalent of one.2 million dollars in profits from this penitentiary $4000 per inmate per year. and with this mode of punishment because they were making money from it. when i was in training most of the people i was in training with were poor people from

town a lot of single moms people who needed health insurance. also kids out of high school there is one guy who is 18 years old and working at starbucks so i will read a scene that involves them. this is from my second week of training. people say a lot of negative things. they will hire anybody. it is it really true but if you come here and you have a valid drivers license and going to work there willing to hire you. she looked at a sternly you will realize you aren't getting paid enough for what you put up without their. nine dollars is not a lot of money. you can get that mcdonald's. all we really tracked as the responsibilities if i was a

rancher feeding my family and nine dollars an hour? she warned us that prison would remind us every day how little we make and open your eyes to it your mind opens up and then ask you to do things for them because they make more money than what you make and 81 --dash in a day and that stealing to a lot of people. this tells us we can watch the inmates graduate from their class. where they learn skills like trade skills. they go around the basketball court eating cupcakes and fruit punch. people are smiling and laughing. when you see an inmate with a smile like that it is worth something he said i feel surprisingly at ease wandering among the prisoners he said keep your head up always know

who you is. not talking about out of the suit but in the suit everything will be okay. he tells me his name is robert scott and has been there 12 years i was walking when i got here. i notice he was wearing fingerless gloves. they took my legs in january my fingers in june and gangrene don't play. i kept saying my feet hurt they said eight nothing wrong with you and i see nothing wrong with you. they did not believe me. now he's suing them from neglect because the company operates the prison are for profitable gain. prisoners continue to miller ground and then the order everyone onto the bleachers. there's only seven of us we can take all of those

motherfuckers over there. then attention will ratchet up. then there is a blood curdling scream. the others laugh the coach ordered to go in front of us. they go to the bathroom one by one i brace myself as they come toward us several gather around me some get up close to me and looked directly into the camera. one asked to buy the beanie and i refuse outright. you never know says collinsworth all of these fake ass signals you just want to get to know people i understand you are home but i'm at work right now. twelve hours a day. it's probably true eight no probably true if you're going to be up this bitch you will

be here 12 hours a day. so trying to impress me or the inmate collinsworth says he only writes of series one - - serious offensive like drugs but don't worry about the drugs. they ate tripping on that shit it is and that type of camp you cannot change things by yourself. go with the flow get the free ass and easy asked money. the job has benefits you will see. oh yeah i have benefits already says collinsworth like health insurance. >> i'm not talk about health insurance but more money. i'm just here to do my job and take care of my family. >> there is always a chance that i will. >> no chance i've never heard

nobody moving good and low-key getting caught. i know one doing six years. the inmate takes up the podium over his head and runs at that across the gym another montrose's graduation certificate into the trash i can breathe one shouts. do you see this chaos. there is no order here. the inmates run this bitch. . >> some in louisiana during the civil war the state took it back from the company and use it to manufacture for the war and use prisoners to manufacture for the war and as soon as the war ended men across the south were making

tons of money from slavery were scheming a way to keep slavery alive. here in louisiana one man the 1h amendment to abolish slavery except for punishment of crimes and james is very aware of this he also knew the state was keeping prisoners so the economy of louisiana was in ruins at the time and he proposed to the state that he lead them all for 30 years. and he did he also bought a plantation in a parish called angola and he moved there and brought inmates to the prison and made them work in the fields and made them serve him and his family in the house

but mostly he use the prisoners in labor camps around the state. like the railroad. the prisoners talk about one 20h of the cost and the law in louisiana did not allow him to use prison labor but it was supposed to be inside of the penton on - - penitentiary not outside the prison and when they tried to stop him he just ignored them and continued running labor camps. the state eventually relented he also was supposed to give the state a cut of the profits is was also the system in other states not only the businessmen making money but he didn't for six years he did not pay the state and a state

attorney went after him then they eventually relented essentially he was untouchable. the states were making tons of money from the system the us commissioner of labor reported that estate using releases was four times the cost of running a prison alabama at one point making 10 percent of the entire state budget from leasing so they are very invested in it. probably of all the historical research that i did what really shocked me the most was leasing was more deadly than slavery. it was as deadly as the soviet

gulags. the death rate throughout the south depending on the state between 16 and 25 percent per year. one out of four prisoners were dying every year. here in louisiana under james with the 30 years he had the lease at least 3000 prisoners died. during the time of slavery there were very few slaveowners that had more than 1000 enslaved people. there is no record of any of them of that number die. the reason behind this is that there is a quote of a southern man who told the national conference of charities and conferences that before the war we owned the negroes if you had a good negro they would take care of them if he was sick then get a doctor maybe even put gold plugs in

his teeth if one dies they get another. so essentially they were just leasing a number and in any state there is no regulation how long prisoners can be worked or what type and how hard they can be worked. torture was the norm and why businessmen like to use inmates rather than free labor because that could no longer we driven like the slaves had been. they would be hung by their thumbs or have other torture or a knife put down their throat and then see their stomach expand. prisoners were put to work in coal mines.

railroads. some of the worst jobs that the free laborers did not want to do. so i took this job as a way to get inside i wasn't necessarily motivated by that idea what it's like to be a guard but to be inside the prison day in and day out but i very quickly became consumed by this role. but originally to be very easy going and 1500 prisoners with

24 guards. and there is enormous pressure and there was one other guard and i saw people stab each other in front of me and i found myself quickly becoming more and more authoritarian and more of my energy was focused on reporting into be focused on the battles that i was having with various prisoners and i found myself becoming obsessed with paranoid people trying to do something to me or getting

outside of my control. and then i noticed more different they became outside the prison than inside. so this is from my first few weeks on the job and i recently and shouting at and with reconciliation that happened a couple of days before this my reconciliation encourage me every time we have a problem and then we tap knuckles to show respect but still the breakthrough is misleading i feel like the

glimmer of a possibility to appreciate the humanity but to make sure this is impossible we can chat and laugh but that deflects my authority will always be to denying those basic impulses day by day the number of inmates grow smaller and there are exceptions i know that he would also become an enemy. striving to treat everyone takes too much energy and then to prove i won't back down i am vigilant i come to work ready to run up on me and threatened to punch me in the face i showed neither fear nor come puncture sometimes they call me racist and it stings but i try as hard as i can not to flinch because that would show a pressure point or a button to be set nearly every

day we reach that crescendo of frustration because inmates are supposed to be going somewhere like the law library or ged classes or vocational training. but those programs are canceled or they are let out late. the door is open everybody is on the move here there is no schedule we wait for the call over the radio. you could eat at 1130 in the morning or 330 or maybe not. sometimes you inmates out to the small yard and often we don't law library hours are canceled regularly. guards go and tell us over the

frustrations and we are unable to change the management problems but they are locked in a battle whenever i open the drawer everybody has to show me their id and i use my body to stop the flood of people from pouring out some push through if you catch one get back in i'm writing you up if you don't get back in there do you hear me? they walk back in and stared me down. then i shut the door ignoring him. you better get the fuck out of here before i hurt you. then the inmate comes around and calls for me to stop i know him. with the dreadlocks i feel threatened whenever i see him in this way i say turning back to where he came from he tries

to walk fast and i lock eyes with him. this way i command he turns back and walk slowly away and i walk behind him and then shouts get the fuck off my trail. he walks in and stands i grabbed the door and slam it shut in his face. i turn the step back of the inmates around the floor motherfuckers are going to end up dead. he just stares and then i pause after i grab the radio where we taught what to do? i know how to push a button and speak into the radio but who do i call? i think of the officer sergeant can you come down i say to my shoulder? . >> and route when he arrives i find many dreads. because he is locked up looked him in the eyes.

i tell him the inmate threat into my life. what happened? i said nothing and then i walk away. i go back to chasing others what did you do that for? he was gonna go home and now he's not gonna go home now. that in the back of my mind there is a voice did you see him say anything your back was turned it doesn't matter really he wanted to would intimidate me they need to know i'm not weak. . >> so the end of the 18 hundreds the plantation that

were there living the life that was identical as a state rather than the private businessman the state still ran it and of course, today it is the prison but it is still a type of plantation. and louisiana is one of the earlier states throughout the twenties and thirties largely because they became jealous of the profits that companies were making at the time. us steel company which was the first billion-dollar company was using thousands in alabama

and tennessee and to lower the wages of workers but they realize they could cut out the middleman to buy plantations themselves so this system of state run plantation goes on for decades through the sixties and seventies. of course, there are still plantations but i'm looking at the system of forced labor where the plantations were run at a profit everybody was forced labor on them and to keep costs low then plantations would use prisoners for those who would be willing to shoot an inmate

who is trying to escape louisiana and mississippi and arkansas they all use this to grant the inmate guard who was shot and killed in the system with the overseas plantations and it was also for those that were making labor quotas there was a doctor in alabama seeing the plasma of prisoners to make money from it. so in this world that the

founder started his career. that the ease pictures is exactly how you would imagine. and then the head of the ramsey plantation prisoners picked cotton and lived on the plantation they would serve the family and from that time it echoed the fears that slaveowners had for example,

the wife was forbidden to converse with the house boys to be overly familiar they could do her laundry but not her underwear. they were not allowed to sit and talk with the family for fear it would lead to imprisonment and remember this is the year that the beatles all you need is love is the hit on the radio all of these people living these hidden replicas of slavery times. also with the job in texas was told he was breathing one - - brought on to run the entire system of two plantations and would start a rodeo there

where people could come from the public and watch prisoners do things like try to get a poker chip off of a bull's head for small cash prizes many prisoners were gored the only place in the country that i know still continues to have this kind of rodeo and they would run that plantation system at a profit to the state one of the only black person to do that at a profit. when he left in the mid- seventies, the prison population began to skyrocket in the unprecedented way that pete just a few years ago the prison population around the country four or five times what it had been in states

could not build prisons fast enough to hold all the prisoners. and he had a reputation was approached by two businessmen who suggested the idea that they start a company and to be the new mode or a way for profit from incarceration to build prisons and states that didn't have many would hire the companies to run them cheaper. it became very chaotic while i was there the state was threatening to close contracts the four-month period there

were some 200 weapons and it's one of the things that really surprised me that they were bonding over i had a guard that i worked with at one point said to me he wished an investigative reporter would come in i didn't say anything to him. but after i left, the company threatened to sue mother jones if i publish the story i left very suddenly and they found out who i was. so they knew i was a reporter and threatening so we published one year after i

left the obama and menstruation announced they would know longer use prisoners at the federal level the stock price and then they were forced to change their name it fell by half. and the industry was in a crisis and when donald trump was elected the day he was elected the stock price skyrocketed and went up more than any company on the stock market that day. after he became president jeff sessions reverse the obama decision so the companies is now even doing better than it was before the obama decision. so i will and here thank you for listening.

[applause] . >> this is the only prison i have been in. >> and the drugs. >> yes there are tons of drugs. >>. >> while you were talking about you personally all i could think about as a psychiatrist? . >> so did you look into that

when you saw what was happening to you? to make yes i got the book and i was reading the book i can say the same thing happens to every guard but certainly it was that way with me and generally the kind of idea that resonated with that, i don't know but it made me realize how much our situation determines who we are. and more than we realize i think if i was there for one year or two years or more, i am relieved with this inner core that we have is unchanging i just don't know if i believe that anymore.

. >> what were some of the surprises and how did that change once we were there quick. >> some surprises, i myself had been in prison for two years i did not mention .-dot this but i was arrested on the border and it quickly turned into a political situation between us and iran me and two friends were used as bargaining chips so i spent two years in prison so as a prisoner the guards were my enemy not that i hated every guard some helped me there was a huge range of course, but

even the friendliest guards i never consider them my friends. so i guess i was just learning the ways of the guards in this prison where also with this system that the level of that is frightening. and it really did make me think about them and that feeling that i had before. . >> any comments comparing the iranian system quick. >> it's really hard to compare because they are so different at some level that experience it brought a reality to it but to be with a political priso prison, there were a lot of protesters there if you were

leaving the cell you had to be blindfolded people were routinely tortured under interrogation. so it was highly controlled and then to be very chaotic and bare-bones it was brutal in a different way. . >> also the suicide watch? and i have always found that absolutely bizarre and draconian that they take someone who is in danger for whatever purpose. >> suicide watch was one may be one of the most brutal out there. part of the context is that the whole prison a 1500 inmates had one part-time

psychiatrist one full-time social worker which is less than public prisons which themselves are not great places by any means. but the situation is much more dire. so the option for people with serious mental health issues often times were on suicide watch they said he was suicidal prisoners tried to put him on suicide watch thinking he would be in the cell with no books no close just a suicide blanket that could not be torn and a guard was supposed to sit and watch him all day so my first day on the job i was put there.

normally the new people have to do it so i was there and every 15 minutes noting what they were doing or what the prisoner was doing. and there was one prisoner i was watching at one point was threatening to jump off the bed and break his neck. he also there are two others i was watching it another try to get me to leave and just stood there and masturbated for hours just staring at me. it was not a nice situation. the one trying to jump off the bed i recorded that they showed up six hours later to talk to him and also the people on suicide watch are given the worst food which is a suicide bag which is a brown bag lunch the value of that is

below usda standards so after i left the prison, i was contacted by her mom and it has come out that i was a reporter and she saw that and asked if i knew who he was and i told her yeah he was on suicide watch and he tried to commit suicide when he died he was 71 pounds. and something that i learned later about him i met his mom she was documenting what he had written he had done hunger strikes many times he was on suicide watch many times sometimes protesting food or

demanding better mental health care. eventually he hanged himself in his cell and when we were in training the company said we watch these videos in one of the things they claim is the rate of suicide is lower than public prisons. so i came down here and did my research and then requesting the records how many suicides occurred that year and they said zero. so what had happened was the warden was able to grant him i guess parole when he was unconscious in a coma so when he died he was in no longer of

the prison so that did not go on the books. >> it seems health care in general whether psychiatric is an area. >> right. i do write much more about him but i saw many examples of these medical situations and here in louisiana if the company sends a prisoner out to hospital they have to pay for it. so they are reluctant to do that. those that were begging to go for serious heart problems they just would not do that. >> so what are your thoughts?

that they even just talk about basic humanity? that when people at the border so how do we challenge the structures so how do we make this struggle of the prisoners. >> i don't have the answer but

i'm sure there are many in this room i'm good at showing how terrible things are but this demands are so reasonable. so this is very basic things but that it was so huge. and then to bring that conversation to the national level but even the demand to

and prison slavery a lot of people see that it isn't rhetorical the connection between slavery and prison and the way labor has evolved and what they are talking about that people are working for defense what does that mean? if you want to call home so where's the line to be forced are not being forced? or if you are in your cell never talking to your family? that is an important issue for

sure. >>. >> that we will not privatize. >> every state has her own criminal justice system and the federal government also the federal government uses private prisons so the obama administration when they are up for renewal. so that's what happens. . >> it is more prevalent in the south.

>> you were in the prison as a prison guard. so i know from the other side did have an effect on the inmates? talk about the effect on the men that the effects on the women never talk about that or where they are raped by the guards they get pregnant or

stds in the treatment for the women is so intense that your psychologically damaged if you never witness a female being stomped on the ground by the guards. just cannot imagine the effect your job has. >>. >> there were only then prisoners although there were female guards. but you are right with part of the job would always came up

about inmate manipulation and all of the examples that they gave that they are complementing their job and with human interaction you tried to get what you can but the effect of that is to prepare us from the prisoners and that you have to do that

and then you're locking people up every day. >> so you have incarceration all over the world how many d incarceration centers do you know, ? we don't have them and that lack of the deep incarceration could become a potential victim from the incarceration of a person and then the overall mental stability talking about mothers and

wives to humanize women we don't know how to do those basic common things and how the children would be affected to be a product for that penal system. so that d incarceration that is just one and it is a symptom that is a much larger problem. private prisons exist in crazy overinflated prison system. how do we deal with this?

that's incarceration like policing, prosecutorial powers, mandatory minimum sentences and things that we did not even get to. >> i am curious using the prison guards? so at the state level or local level to revoke the contract or malfeasance? or among the prison guards they were making nine dollars an hour but what about that

possibility? . >> i don't know. honestly i would say no but every person is different. these people are just there because they need a job and i never saw any discussion. but you see a lot of that stuff and they make tons of money but they try to prevent changes that don't have them in shackles.

maybe there is a way. but i didn't see any inkling. but i did hear a guard complain for criminalization with that wide range of abuse. >> you were there for four months? so what caused you to leave or what that situation was like? . >> actually i left because my colleague came to film at night and got arrested and he

was in jail overnight and looking through his stuff he had done an interview with me that day so they knew who i was. . >> can you talk about your choice and then to say on private prisons as a whole i have written about public prisons also. when i thought about this idea

to be outside even more so than public prisons. there is just so many aspects that our problematic i would never say the system is great or whole. it just leads to the federal prison system but looking at conditions for people living in prison, the differences of when you compare two similar prisons that there are many indicators of violence and health care tends to be worse

so to see the vast difference of what books you have to read or what little things, i know that these things and i also really don't think there is much danger of too much focus there is more attention being paid than before but i don't think we are at risk that we solve this problem so that it's over. so looking at what goes on so

those that exist in the prison system so everything that happens there is a profit motive. . >> so to see those prison guards a different treatment towards the inmate. . >> i guess in general women guards tend to be upper with the prisoners and they had a deal with a lot of sexual

harassment but it was very common that is the control room but they are in the middle then they just come up and masturbate. and also this prison administration trying to get swept under the rug and with those female guards and people that complain about being harassed by a staff member.

>>. >> but i don't know that's one way to look at it. . >> you talk about the prisoners contacting you after the book so what happened post writing the book? were there changes in the prison itself? or what has happened but the article came out a couple years ago but then a few weeks after i left the company gave up its contracts so now it's with another company and the state or the her diem rate

quite substantially maybe now $27 so my understanding is it is run more like a jail. it is still a prison but they called it lock and feed. i did get contacted by a lot of people or from those that work around the country and generally they would say yes.

. >> .. .. i am a military veteran and treating people that came back

[inaudible] thanks everyone. [applause] >> we are not done. we are going to do some book signings so we will form a line in the back. we have books at the front counter and i hope you will get a copy and bring it home and read it. thank you so much for.

gina loudon, fox news guest analyst and trump 2020 media advisor offers her analysis of the current political climate. she's interviewed by the republican congressman louie gohmert of texas. "after words" is a weekly interview program with relevant guest hosts interviewing top nonfiction authors about their latest -- works. >> host: i'm a legislator from texas and i am here with the great privilege of interviewing someone i've admired