i think we're done. thank you. [applause] >> you're watching book tv on c-span2, for complete list, look at book book tv.org. [inaudible conversations]

s. >> hey, there, i'm patricia limp, i'm executive director and also executive producer of literary series, i'm happy that you are with us tonight, today we present michael patrick lynch with new book the know it all society. michael patrick grinch is a frequent contributor to the new york times among other publications, also professor of philosophy at the university of connecticut. michael has written numerous books including the internet of us and jewel lapur with ground breaking history book has called him the philosopher of truth. now, let's review how tonight is going to work, okay, first, you should all pretty much have a

copy of the book. okay. it comes with the purchase of your ticket and you should also have a drink, that's good too. so michael will replace me here to talk about the book for a bit before sitting down and chatting with dan aldric, they all talk for a bit, i thought i'd clarify that and then we will turn to you for questions and answers, our event concludes in about an hour and you're going exit the way you came in. michael anne and i will go out the big blue door and we will meet you in the lobby where michael will personalized your book if you'd like, the line conveniently forms around the bar, oh, and yes, you are wondering michael patrick lynch is my brother, before we get

started a few words of thanks. first, thank you for being here. [laughter] >> it's great to see people come to life of the mind events and so important these days. i want to thank our lead sponsor, b2w software, and i also want to thank our contributing partner and our media partner new hampshire public radio and the series sponsors atlantic orthopedic and sports medicine and savings bank, let's give them all a hand, shall we? i want to acknowledge that c-span is here tonight with book tv. i think david murray will be taking photographs, all good fun in that and looking past tonight we've got other really fabulous

writer events happening all fall and your tickets and you can buy that to any event that looks good to you including annie at the musical.org or through the musicals b2w box office, would you please join me in welcoming michael patrick lynch. [applause] >> well, thank you, patty, thanks so much for coming out tonight to talk about the know it all society. i will sit down and have a few remarks and have a chat with anne and then a chat with you, if you spent even more than 5 minutes on social media these days you'll get distinct impression that americans on either side of the political

spectrum just don't like each other very much. and we may feel more polarized though than we actually are, recent study showed that on a wide-range of issues americans actually agree as much as they disagree, but the same study show that increasingly we regard the people in the other party with suspicion and see them as uninformed, dishonest, immoral and we know that they look at us in the same way and we resent them for it. the right calls the left a bench of ignorant know alls and the lefts calls that's who you elected as the president of the united states. maybe both side have a point. maybe in some sense we are all

know it alls and that's part of the problem. you know, i don't think americans have ever been afraid of confidence and deserving of special recognition because of that fact. but i think if you wanted to pick out the attitude that's really dominating our political interactions right now with each other in this country it wouldn't be confidence, it would be arrogance, the arrogance of self-certainty, the arrogance in our own belief, the arrogance that our side has it all figured all and we don't have to listen to anyone else. now, the idea that this sort of arrogance is a problem personally or politically is not new, of course, michelle, 16th

century french philosopher and the person who invented the writing, he said that does wonders for hatred but never brought anybody to goodness, i think montane what he was talking about because he lived through civil religious wars, wars that left france littered with corpses from end to end. and his response to that was to try to check out a political life, he facility himself an ivory tower, you can go visit. it's not ivory anymore, you can visit, filled it with books and cast himself in the arms of learned addvergance. for another in a democracy which we are still aspiring to live

in, we need to be engaged, unengaged electorate is no electorate at all but the warning that montane gave us, the warning about the arrogance of man which he also referred to as the plague on human kind, mankind, that warning is a warning that we need to heed at this political moment. so i think there are a couple of different factors that i think play into the rise of what i'm calling the know it all society and i talk about these in the book and what i do right now is chat a little bit about some of them, of course, leaving enough for anne and i to dig into and for you to talk to me about. so the first factor has to do with psychology and more to do with how we form and maintain our political convictions. condition is not a deeply held

belief, i deeply believe that, i don't know, 2 plus 2 equals 4 but i wouldn't call that a conviction of mine, a conviction is a commitment of something that matters to you. it's commitment to value that reflects your self-identity, self-image, the kind of person that you aspire to be, the kind of tribe that you aspire to be part of. to say about conviction, convictions have a history, what he meant by that is that,

convictions to start out as identity centered values, they start out as passing an opinion like what people have that which mate change is not a real thing. that sort of opinion can become under the right circumstances hardened into conviction. something that becomes reflective of that person's identity and the tribe identity that they want to be part of and once it becomes part of your identity that way, it becomes hard to change it, to change your mind about that, is to change your mind about yourself. people will with regard to convictions like the one i just mentioned, they will go to great lengths, evidence and even logic

to defend themselves on what they see as a threat. so i think this idea of conviction, this idea that convictions are morphing out of our opinions is particularly important to focus on when you think about another ingredient in the know it all society and that's technology. first thing that i talked about is the condition but something that we all know has been changing and that has to do with how we form our convictions. what happened when we are now able to share a convictions so easily, so quickly, we carry around devices in our pockets that are designed in part to do just that. a lot of our political convictions at least for many people are increasingly shared and formed online and policed online. police in a way that we can keep

track on where people are towing the party line. the other thing to focus about technology of the sort that is we are using, i'm talking about information technology, much of what you read online, great majority is personalized, the internet is personalized, everything from the ads that come across the wall street journal page, "the new york times" to the news that comes down your facebook feed is to fit your unique preferences, fit preexisting conditions. and that's great when you're shopping for, you know, a movie to watch on, you know, at night or books or shoes or something like that, when you're shopping for those things, it's great, not so great when you're shopping for facts because when you're just getting the facts but fit your preexisting conditions that's a recipe not for bursting your bubble but inflating it.

i think the lesson to draw from this is that social media has become something of a conviction machine, it's speeding up the process for human minds to take opinions and move them into with into convictions and this in turn, of course, is reinforced by the internet's personalization which ends up rewarding us with constant validation that our opinions are right, if you're doubtful, google it, you will find verification for almost everything. that brings me to the third factor which contributing factors are contributing or mixed with politics of arrogance, arrogance is attractive, it can especially

when you don't notice that it's arrogance, it can give you the feeling of power without any real power, it can give you the feeling of knowledge without feeding real knowledge, and it can often be easy to mix up or confuse with confidence especially when you're feeling threatened, you're feeling insecure and insecurity is an attitude that authoritarian leaders have been keen to stoke in the minds of their followers throughout history. this is a point that philosopher hannah made almost 70 years ago and her book origins of totalitarianism, what aaron noticed, when readers are wanting to get their followers,

a lot of things of human psychology, the same thing she said, to make them feel under attack but at the same time and justify priority and historical narrative who chose the leader to tell us how it is and articulate in the face of the enemy. so this point that she's putting her finger on that the followers or the mass leader can be made to feel both insecure and superior, also conducive of the

defining characteristic of americans, both in prepeople and public and that is confusion, confusion of ego. aaron noted that this is a defined characteristic of authoritarian leaders which she noted, she put it have unending sense of their own infallibility. they cannot she said ever admit that they're wrong and, of course, does that sound familiar? [laughter] >> just -- she said that, of course, they can, to admit that you're wrong is to admit that there's something more powerful than you and that a mass leader can't, do she said, than speaking across the decades to us, she says before the leader can get so much power to reality of their will, their propaganda

is marked she said by extreme content for the facts because she said, they view the facts to be whatever they say they are, that the truth is whatever they say it is. that is the confusion, the replacement of truth with ego. >> okay, happy, happy stuff that we are talking about, food news -- good news book all the way around. i talked about 3 ingredients in know it all society, i talked about psychology, i talked about technology and ideology or politics. in order to solve the problems we will have to do pretty heavy lifting, no surprise, we will have to redesign our digital platforms and reengage with civic institutions.

but what i want to actually focus on tonight, i want to leave you with this, is that these problems really increasingly thinking about it this way, i was talking to it earlier with some people, these problems, these problems are not just technical problems, they are not just technological problems and their are human problems, if we want to solve them we have to examine our own human attitudes, our own individual attitude. so let's end to think of something socerties said, the greatest philosopher and oracle allegedly and infamously and the

one thing i know is that i don't know anything. now that's a paradox in itself but it's not the -- he's not saying i can't know anything. he's saying i still have something to learn, i still have more to know. don't confuse ego with truth. he was taking a beating recently, you might have noticed that. rudy giuliani last year said truth isn't truth thereby in one sentence, the concept that's eat get away at the foundation of our democracy.

it goes back even before to famous quote was man is the measure of all things. man is the measure of all things which is tempting perhaps until you realize that man is the measure of all things inevitable becomes the man of all things and becomes slowly over time the philosophy of thinking that truth is whatever the power they say it is and once you accept that, critical decent becomes not just unlikely but impossible because you can't speak truth to power when the power streaks truth by definition. but truth actually, you know, is not hard of concept to understand, two simple ideas to wrap it up, one is that believing doesn't make it so and

the other to paraphrase hamlet's phrase, there's more in heaven in earth than powerpoint presentation. there's always more to know. that's what gives us the truth, that's also what gives us the essence of what we might call intellectual humility which is the opposite attitude from what i've been talking about and despite is to strive to see your world view as open to improvement from the evidence, from the experience that is you might have had and other people have and that they're bringing to the table. capable of learning, it's to remember your inner socerties,

thank you, let's have a chat with ian. >> that was great, we have work ahead of us, don't we? >> we do. >> you and i especially but these people too, you know, we will try to keep you -- i want to start with something that broke today, what do you think it means with what you're talking about? >> well, i think that it means that first of all we may have reached a tipping point, a tipping point particularly in regard to norms, one of the things that we talk about in the book that we are living in unsettled time, a time in which not just, you know, sort of rules and regulations and laws

and so forth seemed to be broken or not broken but norms are unsettled, we are not -- norms are different than laws, laws are written down, recorded, there's a process, formal process, a norm is a social custom, it's a way we have of doing things and norms are the sorts of things that back up our laws and right now we are in a -- we are having to make a choice, pelosi was -- they suspect like a lot of us thinking, well, is this the point in which we got the realize that we don't call out certain norm violations, certain ways of behaving that we might now just be shifting our norms because that's the thing about norms. that's the thing. their social customs, if you stop following them, they cease

to exist. so that's what we are thinking about. >> is this a chance for us to maybe heal a little bit and correct the last couple of years or last couple of decades actually? >> i hope so, i mean, i think one of the worries, yes, i do. i'm hopeful and i say, you know, captain but i actually am reasonably optimist nick the book and i think that i'm optimistic now and i think it is a point in which we still have time, the norms aren't, they're still, one which i think a lot of us would have thought just like respecting truth, our mom

taught us that and that's not something that will be challenged, people aren't going to go around and say, help myself to alternative facts and truth isn't truth, nobody will say that seriously? well, we are there now. a little like we have been standing outside in the rain with somebody and that person has been telling us that it's not raining and it is raining and then they say, well, as you say it's raining, hey, buddy it's raining and they say, oh, no, well, if it was raining i wouldn't be getting wet, well, you are getting wet and they say that it's not raining, if it was raining i wouldn't be get wet, this is a sort of weird conversation, imagine being in conversation like that, what would you say to that person, you think they are joking or

crazy. >> probably walk away. >> might want to walk away, one of the problems that we are in right now there's a tendency of people to want to walk away to be like montane, that's why i begin the book with him, after particularly trying thanksgiving dinner, screw this, where's my tower with my books. [laughter] >> where is my dollar? so that's not helpful, so what i'm hopeful for is that people are going to not walk away but, you know, this is what maybe we are seeing today is not walking away, but actually deciding that we need to remember the norms, we need to remember what our mom told us. >> have you ever felt like escaping to the tower, you have been writing about this stuff for more than 20 years, you sort of sounded the alarm a little bit louder, are you surprised of where we are now? >> well, yeah, i mean, i -- i

think like all of us or many of us i think we -- you do look around and you say, like how did we get to a point where every day something is said and done in the news cycle that would have just destroyed careers every day? and that the divisiveness has gotten to the point where -- i've been privileged enough to talk to representatives and senators and one of the things that are serving them and many of you i'm sure have read about this or had the same privilege, you know, is that people don't -- aren't spending time with one another, there isn't like going to the bar, or let alone getting their kid together, people don't bring their kids to live in washington, d.c., there's no really change, writing about

truth and technology, i've been writing about that for a long time, the norm-breaking has gotten to a point where we really do need to stand up and take note of it, yeah, in the old days i think i was sort of sound ago alarms but it was not really a maybe we should pay attention to the fact -- excuse me, could you pay attention? excuse me? now it's gotten to the point where we need to be very clear that not just the norm of truth but norms having to do with basic respect for government institutions and democracy, one of the things that really scares me is recent evidence from pew, a couple of years ago, they too

asked a lot of people questions for decades and so they are particularly useful because you can track changes in people's opinions about all sorts of things and one of the things they asked people about is like, you know, do you think democracy is a good thing which for a long time you'll be like that's a dumb -- of course, they are going to say it's a good thing, even if they don't, of course, they are going to say it's a good thing. now increasingly younger people are saying not a majority but an interesting significant people are young that is pretty much everybody under the mean will say that democracy is not that great, maybe we need another form of government, wow, wow. if you think about it basic things like respect for scientific practice, respect for fact-finding, respect for

inquiries, wasn't that becomes something that doesn't really hold traction or people feel that things have broken down so much that they can't trust anything, that there's no such thing of investigating the facts, at that point, yeah. how does democracy hold on? you know, you have to. i'm hopeful but surprised. >> you know, your book has interesting art for the reader, you feel, oh, my god, i know so many people that would benefit from the book and halfway through, wait, i'm one of those people. [laughter] and so i think you've got me, you've probably got most of the people here but how do you reach the rachel maddows and sean hannitys of the world? >> well, that's interesting, i

was on the young turks, the show, i don't know if you that, they are pretty strongly left and it is interesting, that show cenk we wanted to start i have a bone to pick with you and i used to do a show that i know it all and we should be nice to nazis, i'm not saying that by the way, just because i'm saying to listen to other people's opinions and i think we should, that doesn't mean that, you know, i think that you should really try to find the good in naziism. just to be clear about that in case some of you were wondering. but i think in order to reach people like that you've got to try, i don't know successful in that case, you can be the judge.

try to remind all of us that listening and trying to understand what where other people are coming from can teach you a lot about yourself. i think if you think about the conversation that are increasingly rare now and i'm sure all of you have had a moment where somebody was a relative, maybe somebody in an airport, maybe it started out uncomfortably and probably nobody was convinced by anybody else, maybe you didn't talk about politics, you skirted around the edge and those sorts of conversations are conversations that frankly one of the things about socerties, he went to talk to people, yeah, we sort of like he was a as a matter of fact ass about it but he talked to people and i think

it's in this time where we are all obsessed with the black mirrors of the phone, staring into that, it might be helpful to remember even we do an ancient greek dead guy to remind us to look up from the black mirrors and maybe see something other than ourselves. >> how did you emerge from the book? did you move through the world differently after writing this? >> yeah, great question. i mean, look, i am a white middle-aged man, liberal college professor, so if you look at know it all in the dictionary -- [laughter] >> you're going see my face. [laughter] >> okay. and that was sort of a -- that was not --

>> you have a killer haircut, though. >> thank you, you too. [laughter] >> it's -- you can't -- writing a book like this can't help but change you because it does force you to have your own biases, not surprisingly many people will not be happy with it both on the left and the right is the book on the arrogance because that was my, it it was very difficulo write and the art that i took in my own start thinking by writing that chapter was really interesting, profound, i tell a story about being in a barbecue with a scientist, session on polarization, we were season expert on it and lots of experts but we are talking at his house

and he says, you know, i'm all down with that, but -- i just think screw him and he didn't say screw him, he said it different. colorful term. he meant like there's a limit, nazis. i was really sort of torn and i suspect many of you whatever your political persuasion can feel being torn, you want to be like, yeah, yeah, on the other hand i sort of felt like polarization together and like you i was thinking about myself, the fact that i was like yeah, that sort of thing, let's go, professor, that sort of thing.

like the movement of realizing, wait a second, are you going to walk the walk while talking the talk and i think it is very difficult. i do think that looking for those moments of conversation as it sounds we are at a point in our republic where that is an act of civic engagement. >> what's been the reaction from some of your liberal friends and liberal colleagues? >> you know, mixed, i think a lot of people, you want us to be nice, that's even for my friends, you want us to be nice to nazis, question, that's why i bring that up now first. and, you know, i think there's been a mixed reaction, i think

some people want to -- the common thing to sort of be like politely, yes, this is a good idea. and i think that is -- that's the leap too far. i think that -- i think it would be helpful if we refrain from making broad generalizations about people as much as we can, i mean, in politics there's a point in which politicians have to do that and i understand that, i mean, politics is about often making policies and policies are inherently generalizations, but in those moments of conversation of real moments i think it would be helpful to try to not do that. >> there's a pretty so westerning stat in the middle of your book that 60% of all shared news stories are not read by the

people who shared them. i've been guilty of that. i isn't a -- >> not the people here, they read every single thing. >> i applaud you all, what do you think that says about us? what we are doing on social media is not often what we think we are doing especially when we share content what we think we are doing is that we think that we are just passing on information that people think, if i share a story, i'm just like this is a good story and you should pay attention to it and, of course, that's what i would do, but -- or "the new york times" or the wall street

journal but often what we are doing is -- is not that, what we are doing is actually expressing our emotions and in particularly with political content what we are doing expressing strong moral emotions like outrage and the evidence for that is, a, most people don't read what they share according to studies and, b, the things that are shared most -- the thing that will predict is the best predictor of whether your post will be shared, is whether it has motive content. that's what will get -- and so that could include things like having pictures of kittens or kids obviously because that's emotional but if it involves strong words, there's been studies on this, it's in the book, words that have conveyed strong moral emotion, those

words will -- we think we are playing by the rule of reason and really we are playing a game, we are playing a different game, we are playing a game where the rules are more like the rules of the water cooler and the playground and the thing is that for people who want to manipulate us, i mean, the best way, the best con is always when the person who is the con artist knows what's really happening and you don't. >> yeah. >> and so, you know, if a lot of people don't know that what they're doing online is really expressing their emotion, then people do know that, it's going to be a lot easier to manipulate the people who don't. i think that's -- we will add one footnote to that which is --

i was at a national press club and there was a vp from facebook, i can't tell you who it is, there's a lot of vp's and he said, you should care this but i won't ever admit it publicly, i can't verify this, you know, take it for what you will with a grain of salt, but what he said was that their internal data shows that it's actually closer to 90% of people don't read what they share. >> wow. >> and he said we are never going let that data come out because it undermines our business model, but it really doesn't actually i now realized, the risk model is not to allow us to convey information to each other, the business model is based on the idea of convincing us that that's what we are doing, the business model just what they say connect each other emotionally, right, how are we suppose today react to posts on facebooks, well, you have choices, we have, you know,

happy face. this is how we are supposed to react, anyway. >> well, social media is fueling a lot of this, what do you think should be doing about this, talked about regulating, do you think that's a good course of action? >> well, i would say that my own view and it's like all the views, this is a complicated issue but my own view that breaking up facebook would be a good thing. i'm one of the people that thinks that, we are facing a monopoly. people well say i use instagram, that's facebook. [laughter] >> so there is, you know, do i think it's -- it's permissible sometimes to intervene when capitalism start, you know, an enterprise, successful business, start to monopolize a segment of the industry and i think that

might be happening. i agree it's not, it's not legally, it's not politically easy to do that, it may be impossible really with this political climate but i think that's something that we should do and something that we need to rethink our digital platforms, although that's difficult to do and ted, i was luckily enough to have some drinks with some heads of big, you know, digital giants big 5 and i at the time, this does not particularly look really smart, by any way, i was like, i was like really, a couple of years ago, oh, boy, i have my big moment to tell them what to do and so i did and this is what i said, i said imagine.

okay. imagine that we had instead of like, you know, the emojis that we now use on facebook, imagine if we had 3 buttons, one that said, you know, for things content, like news story content, right. justified by the evidence, we can pick that, we can pick not justified by the evidence and we could pick need more information, right, like what do you think? [laughter] oh, they laughed and laughed. oh, they laughed, they laughed to heart. [laughter] >> it was seriously, say it again, say it again, the one guy came in, i haven't gone to the bathroom, say it again, say it again, tell them. i thought that was hilarious and i now thralls they were sort of right because if we did have that, what would happen, the buttons were morphed yea this, boo this, who cares.

so i think this is why i'm emphasizing at the end because a lot of really does -- we can't just rest on fixing a few buttons. they knew -- they are playing on how we react as individuals. it's a lot of it, social change does require individual change. in some cases more recently than that shows us that there can be actual rational social change and does require both

intervention at the institutional level, at the legal level, right, and the political level, it does require that but also requires changing our norms back to that again changing our norms and how do you change norms, how do we change norm of social justice, norms about racism and norms about marriage, well, how do you do that? you change attitudes, not just beliefs but how they regard their beliefs and those beliefs of other people and i think that one of the things that does is give us hope that we can do that, it's not -- i'm old enough to think, you know, i remember a time where, you know, you could be despaired, that's not going change, my people are not going to change about that.

that's too much to hope but a lot of people. >> so should i feel hopeful? >> you should, you should. >> deep fakes coming, climate change institute more certainty. >> yeah, you're right, we should be really depressed. [laughter] >> what was i saying. [laughter] >> no, we should be -- we should be hopeful and i think that we should think of the fact that rational change takes time, it takes an effort on all of us and i think we can be helpful by looking particularly in climate change right now, we are all, i hope, well not all of us apparently, some people as we know from twitter are not inspired by greta's leadership, a teenager could be speaking the voice of reason, right, and also notice what she's doing, she's telling us we have to change our

attitude we have to think differently. nor did it change, some people think i'm concerned about civility, i love it, be civil to me afterwards but -- [laughter] civility is just behavior. in order to change action and behavior you have to change what's inside the head and if you listened to her speech yesterday to the un is that we have to change our minds. >> yeah, well, this is great, let's open it up for audience for some questions.

i don't know how to be open minded, i don't know how, i grew up the same way, they pick and choose things out of the bible to apply to their truth and they think that i'm -- >> doing the same thing probably? >> yeah, how do you -- deal with

that? that's a great question and, of course; it's difficult to give really precise advice in this case, the sort of question that i do get and i ask myself too, i mean, i don't have your life history but it's -- it's a much more dramatic improvement than a lot of us sort of face when we do have these sorts of conversations, first of all, i want to say i can tell you're struggling to get to a point to have conversations over the issues, first thing i would say and i think you know this already, is that it's okay to just continue these moments of trust. of course, with family you want to keep that and hopefully it's going to be there. you can start to have

conversations about politics first get it's okay to realize well maybe that's not going to happen this time, what has to happen we need to talk about something that's side of that, right, about our concern for our kids if you have kids. and i -- that i think is worth reflecting, there's a -- another writer bob who has been talking a lot about how one bad way of responding to dilemma in thanksgiving and so forth and go all in as she puts it overdue democracy, we will settle this now before the gravy comes out, we are going to settle this. the person who is hosting thanks giving that year is not going to be happy and so there's a real point about that, on the other end i do talk more politics, first of all, so in the book i have a chapter on this puzzle

about evangelicals because i think a lot of us follow the public sphere have been puzzled about how evangelicals could see trump of all people, trump as the -- as really being picked by god, but you're completely right, my research in talking to people in the evangelical movement that's very much, you know, not a universal thing in any way but certainly a number of people do believe that, very many people believe that. but, of course, that itself does explain some things, the fact that you are listening enough to realize that, of course, your life history helps and, you know, is to think, well, okay, if people think that, right, then that -- that's something that now you need to start to

track and maybe the discussion is, well, is that on its own grounds a reasonable view to have, one thing that i talked about with people and i got this advice actually from evangelical pastor who is a not a voter for trump who suggested that one of the things that i like to point out is that, well, he's not the best representative, so that's an interesting tactic, right, which is rather than try to take them on with quotes from -- you quote "the new york times", i quote the bible or the sean hannity show but is to actually talk about those shared values and whether this person is really the best representative of it because that's an open question, i think, i hope that was helpful. >> yeah. >> more questions? >> sure. [laughter] >> i'm in the legislature here.

>> great. >> and there's a lot of -- >> thank you for coming. >> a lot of of colleagues we primarily disagree on women's issues, we disagreed on the essence of all, you and i should get together and have lunch and find stuff that we agree on and we did that, the thing that we agreed on that food was important there, you go. >> it's a start. >> but at the end of the conversation i know a lot about him, where he went to school, wife, kids, service career, his job career, where he goes on vacation, he doesn't know anything about me, i would say where did you go to school and he would tell me, but he didn't reciprocate, well, where did you go to school? so there was no conversation, it was like i was interviewing him, where would going with this, how am i supposed to work with this person, what do i do, do i make points and say, hi, how are you when we are in session and i get a cryptic smile and maybe a grunt, so what do i do, a number of legislators, we talked about this, we are going to reach out, we will try to do this but it's

got to be two ways, how far do i go and when do i say basically what you said before, screw them. >> i feel you. in this case it's not hard to read gender politics, my gender is particularly is great at talking right, man are great at talking about themselves without not asking -- not all men, of course. [laughter] >> but so -- there's that. and, you know, i think would be interesting. i have no way of knowing and i'm not saying that it would, it would be interesting if it was not a he but a she. and i do think that there is. there's data on this. i was talking about intellectual humility and mark at duke has been doing interesting studies

about intellectual humility, psychological attitude and one of the things that i know this will shock all of you that men particularly think that in controlled studies, men are much more likely to relate themselves as super intellectually humbled and their partners generally don't rate them as highly. [laughter] >> where the women are more prone to say, yeah, i can be arrogant sometimes. all right, that's not universal, of course, it's not universal. nothing is. but i do think that may explain some of what's going on there. i also think that it didn't work out with this person, we try again and then, of course, at certain point, politics does play a role and maybe, you know, we turn our attention not to converting the person who is our political opponent but trying to

convert that person who might be on the edge and right now you know more about this than i do and politics, that's a rare beast nowadays, we are very much at least effectively polarized which as i mentioned at the beginning, but also the case that there are people that -- you know better than i too and you can correct me if you think i'm wrong, a lot of people that just don't pay attention that much to politics. i mean, those of us who do it for a living, pay attention all of time, well, did you see the news in the last 5 minutes, but a lot of people are not like that, they have, you know, they do things -- i don't know what people do, but people do things. [laughter] >> you know, part of what i'm trying to do is to reach, not in a way that you would but as

politician to reach people who might be susceptible to hearing about change in attitude. again, grow back to gay marriage, it's been done. right, we know that attitudes were hardened about that, people of a certain age wouldn't have thought about that, well, of course, that's wrong, right. that's changed. >> well, this has been a great conversation, thanks so much. >> thank you. thanks so much for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> welcome to austin, texas, you

will hear several authors, un ambassador samantha power on life and career, julie davis and michael sheer on the trump administration's immigration policy and former undersecretary of state richard on the impact on disinformation just to name a few, for a complete schedule check your program guide or visit booktv.org. now we kick off our first day of live coverage from the texas state capital with a discussion on immigration. [inaudible conversations]