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>> about the collection of stories so chris is the first guy i've had on stage with a phd in civics and then went to science and then with his jobs during the day is walk scott longer and longer than ended up at hunt's point and exposed to the back row of america go this is drug addicts and drug dealers and prostitutes and

convinced him he had to figure out what was going on in the back row across the country so to bakersfield california and maine he traveled the country and talk to people for go he wasn't going around the country trips but to the drug addicts and drug dealers the formally homeless and the veterans those who hated immigrants and all of that but that recently if you follow twitter you know he visited the most deplorable group of all, the conservatives he went far lower visiting the tax cutters. [laughter] but i do recommend this book but i want to start with what hit me most in your discussion was the intersection into the mindset now here we are at aei

almost all of the scholars have advanced degrees here we are in washington dc the wealthiest region in the country and the most dedicated so i'm a catholic the homilies that i like the other ones that are directed at the audience for you talk about the denigration of the front row of "forms of noncredentialed meaning for go people that find meaning outside of their degrees or jobs or income in his house. so talk about what you found around the country in that regard. >> thank you for having me. tim also wrote a book by the way and you should read that. [laughter]

so what i say out there is the back row is the people you will see on the screens and people i took pictures of. people who live in the bron bronx, north side of milwaukee. it's not defined by geography or income although it pretty much is or race but it's people who don't go to college or if they go they go to trade school or community college the contrast of that my phd in physics and they spent 20 years as a bond trader and those who look very different and come from all over the world and all over the us and share a common theme and then

to be to the same institutions of harvard and princeton and yale and postgraduate degrees in internships only certain neighborhoods in new york city or dc. and then we run the world. the front row sets the rules and make the rules. we run the politics, banking, law firms. and we run the academies and universities. and we have defined the world very narrowly in the optimistic way that is only looking at material things and in particular how much cultural capital that you get. it is a credentialed economy

so the things i found in my journeys that find meaning in more traditional ways. the value of living in the same neighborhood or the friendships that you form. and what i was visiting people i would interview them. i remember telling somebody that they were born 20 miles down the road and said you live in this town all your life quick c said no. i was raised 20 miles down the road. [laughter] like you wanted me to get it right.

and he lived in an african-american town in missouri i said you're from cairo and he said no i met 1 mile outside of cairo. so place matters to people. they have a lot of value. and another thing that matters is religious faith and third is race and racial identity. and effectively things that give you meaning and value that we cannot quantify that we could measure but also we could weave over time that they don't have values we cannot measure that so to tell people just move go from a to

b. what is the cost of that cracks it is immense. so the way we think about the world is in a very narrow framework and that thing that matters is a resume and education how much money you make. >> it is immeasurable. from community bonds. that is something i have seen admitted. one economist said and none of her friends liked it because they emphasized things that were so vague and airy like community bonds and looking for other ways to measure success. but also it strikes a lot of people to say you would see an

article on the washington post and people talk about the accident of where you are born perky could say it's unfortunate that can determine your outcome but it doesn't seem like an accident like changing the color of your hair it's things that actually matter. and it seems unwise and inefficient. >> so that's why we devalue them because we cannot measure bed again as a quantitative function that's how we think about policy. and that i don't like free trade. but the way we think about it

is that it's a trade-off there will be winners and losers and gave over we will do it. but we don't know the losses because we cannot measure them. so on a spreadsheet the losses look like a factory gone in milwaukee but in real life it destroys communities which destroys kids born out of wedlock. bit more than that it takes away people's meaning. that is the center of the universe. and you can measure it. and the rising drug measure is the way to measure the effects free trade that has not been distributed evenly across the country but very uneven and it has not experienced a slight

increase in the equilibrium rage on - - wage. but then a lot more happens from the money flowing in. >> exactly the iteration was moved. so the whole u-haul thing which was so offensive not only is it pragmatic people don't necessarily have the money to move and then to sell their assets. >> and talk about alienated america is should these people move and you spent more time talking to people as you look around and to see a move to places we have the best job opportunities from new york to dc but it's hard to say if you care about this person there

is no jobs and drugs are running rampant then why would you tell them to move quick. >> what i would say i never told them not to move but who i am speaking to isn't them that the policy people who also assumed moving has no cost i reference this all the time of a mexican american woman i met in the mcdonald's at east l.a. to go to the local community college to bypass the opportunity because she was staying there to be her mom's translator. her mom was first-generation she does documents for her mother. so why should we think that's the right decision in my mind. so why should we expect people

to tear family bonds and sell their assets at low prices? and also getting back to that those have value to people it is elitist because it doesn't require money those are gifted at birth and essentially is extraordinarily elitist. >> if i am here and people recognize that and i have had jobs and that helps you get these credentials if you are still in your hometown you are known for having been around for 20 years maybe for whatever it is but to talk about what is valued one of the words that is very valued

is tribalism is become a negative word but that just means what side you are on your not thinking of yourself but i read a column of how try ballistic the fisherman out in sussex were to leave and care about them and then how much they would lose from brexit because his friends were all constantly traveling and enjoying the food from europe and he describes it a shared experience all of the same worldview we were dedicated to knowledge. our community was global so the front row is a tribe that thinks it is above tribalism

and that it is necessary is my argument that people need to be a member larger than themselves whether a church group or a law firm. people need to be a valued member. and the front row we are the cool kids and as such nobody likes to see them self that way. so i think the piece of my book is dignity because when

you take these things away from people the place of make people feel like they are in iraq traced to build a resume that is humiliating and they are looking for dignity and dignity is a double edge sword the search could be positive you could find dignity to create are ten members of the community or raising a family but also the way we'd rather not they find dignity and part of that goes to race which you could find dignity or tribalism. >> so i think people when they are humiliated search for a way to find the dignity and

the negative consequences of that some of that you see politically these days that there is a tribe with a non- resume so come join the election thing and let's have fun. >> so the argument to make in my book is a big part of the trump phenomenon is people seeking to belong but the framework that i use is belonging to something and my argument is in the suffering parts of america is robert putnam so i look at these places that were suffering i saw the swimming pool that is closed down in the church that is close down in the factory

and yes you get food stamps for the disability and unemployment and whatever that adds up to is not even close to belonging to the labor union that shut down but what that leads to largely his people looking for other things to belong to sometimes it's white nationalism or just wearing the red mogg a hat - - mag a hat but with the political left those political writers that have written this i thought when we were a more secular country we got along better but if people belong to

a church the most single institution then more people will belong to things that in one way or another will cause more strife or not lead them towards happiness and the good life. >> there are variations on the theme that i think both of our books talk about this and me less explicitly but the loss of the jobs is what cascaded everything so in that sense i'm very much on the left in the sense that with all these other forms of meaning it was also the loss of the factory that gave people stability and all the things that were there to join were dissipated. >> i'm less comfortable talking about cultural issues

because it's not my strong point door where i come from but the right does have i am comfortable to say somebody as an agnostic the loss of faith is absolutely huge if you talk about salt lake city the one place that was contrary to my thesis was utah. it does and how the levels of despair the other places have it does have them but the reason being is the church is there and it provides people a very central role that both regulates and provides a sense of place. so i say the solution to what we have going on in my mind is

the fall of the church has been a big loss in many cases to hold capitalism in check it's a tug-of-war you don't go too far screwing your neighbor back capitalism without religion is a disaster. >> and the man who said he always felt dumb and didn't have meaning and this is not the way a catholic whatever put it but i was saved at 50 and never felt worthy i was too dumb. now i understand i am worthy of the lord. so to me that is the most

noncredentialed form of meaning literally for just being human you become worthy in the modern culture and economy does not grant that. if you cannot read or you have the wrong views it's hard. but i want to move on i will come back to make it uncomfortable in a little bit but i want to pick on the left. we had the same experience we were ignored by the left and specifically you use the phrase people who were left behind there was an interview on fox.com and are one - - a professor was arguing something similar and the interviewer interjects to say these people have not been left behind they have chosen not to keep up.

which would have been shocking for somebody to say before donald trump. so i think something about the white working-class voting for donald trump has created a situation where a lot of people who would otherwise look at people who are suffering especially losing their jobs and have sympathy but now people say you are responsible for your own suffering which by the way is what you hear about urban blacks. >> the way i frame it i believe i'm from the left and one very important way that when i see people suffering social ills i will always blame the political structure they operate similarly for most people i won't call them dumb or racist.

i think you have to look at the political structures we operate in to understand the decisions at the individual level and a group level. the left has always done that about neighborhoods when the right says welfare queens just get a job you're addicted to having kids, violence, crime or the situation they find themselves in of neighborhoods facing obstacles because of racism in secondary everything but hold off here calling people subhuman effectively. so i would think the left would do the same to working-class white people and then in many cases they don't

if they look at the problems are the choices made in white working-class neighborhoods it's no these people have privilege they couldn't possibly but my book i started that project in 2011 and only became political because of these towns during the election. i remember being in one west virginia trailer park where a lot of things were going wrong. with the family who had done a lot of wrong in their lives. and i said something about privilege even as i

working-class guy and said you have a lot of privilege but he looks at me and said really cracks are you fucking with me? [laughter] and worth the working-class yes perhaps it was privilege but he is not told that he is told that by a sociology student from cornell on twitter and it's just mind-boggling that this is where i will criticize the left that i think there is a belief of a misunderstanding of how much privilege and i think that is slightly uncomfortable because it makes people in my party feel a little bit like they have more

privilege than they want to admit. >> i will go further than that because when you say education one of the things that means is connection. in college i read homer and greek and things that i love but you met some of my older brothers one of them went to a much better college than i did maybe he learned calculus or computer programming but when he dropped out of philosophy school he got a job. and education isn't just who you meet but learning code and you talk about how to interact and do not get a neck tattoo that is not explicitly taught to you but you absorb them through the education that's

what you learn in the classroom to pass on a standardized test but a code of behavior and that is the nature of our privilege and accepting that is uncomfortable. >> we set the rules culturally and economically and with that with any club comes any one - - many memberships. >> to me the bigger issue and there are two of them talk about the connection there is an african-american in cleveland in the projects who had gotten a full scholarship at vanderbilt in the seventies he literally says my mom was a welfare queen. and 30 years later looking back he says i wish someone

had told me going to college wasn't studying but making connections i spent so much time that he didn't have that cultural capital so when he got there he studied and he had a gap because he had a lesser education so he spent all his time hitting the books while everybody else was forming friendships they came out with a rolodex and i came out with bees one --dash the b grade. so what is frustrating where an education divides people is it we use it away to silence the voice of the working-class they don't know the right language to speak some of it is political correctness that sam is the whole idea that's

contrary to a lot of people on the right a evaluation of expertise you can't speak of something unless you have a resume that allows you to speak and then from the left you can't speak omission of the proper words to use. but they can't speak and it's frustrating because a lot of the issues are particularly topical right now that are language sensitive her race and gender. the working-class to assume they are pretty understanding

of where the left wants to go. they don't have languages to express that. and then call them uneducated call them racist and sexist but it's very frustrating because education provides with the language so part of that project was to let people speak and then to let them speak without me jumping in to correct them. >> and i enjoy that part of the book but the part that i wish you had drilled down on more is it seemed like a contradiction between your book in the alienated america but i wrote about the real

affection one - - affliction lack of places and i don't mean connections to the powerful but to the neighbor and a sense of belonging. a lot was writing how in the rubble people were finding these connections whether a bingo night and a bible study at mcdonald's. if you show up that's something to belong to. just because i didn't look in the right places. >> so i go to mcdonald's all

the time. when i started this project the same reason and i started to hang out because free wi-fi and the bathrooms but then most importantly you can hang out. then i saw friendships form. and they have groups and people that go there before the wedding. and very devastated towns like gary indiana it is the town center. is one of the few places open

and operating and that's it like the town square. people playing dominoes they are reading and doing everything. i meet people at mcdonald's i couldn't believe i would see so much community to the point i was but then mcdonald's is the story. it is formed for entirely transactional that is the evidence of two things so with

the franchise they will find meaning in community i don't see this different that if we went to different places sometimes there was no place but mcdonald's and it was the last thing standing. but belonging that mcdonald's is evidence of that. people have romantic relationships with mcdonald's. >> part of my argument is the suffering is a lack of trust of one's neighbors if you go

into a town in west virginia and they talk about the outsiders whether immigrants or the political class or china destroying their town but then i also think there is less social trust and a lot of these places there are still going to be poor places but you are talking about guys protecting their street corners with guns and getting shot. they're not getting shot by outsiders for washington lobbyists even in selma the problem isn't the main threat is that the police mom - - the police as dogs but the fact that the social fabric is broken down so much what they

are engaging and for commerce is going to be warfare and drugs. >> i have a very different view on this. i spent a lot of time in drug houses. and i saw a lot of bad things go down but i also spent 20 years on wall street and also saw a lot of bad things go down. [laughter] so to me it's the legal system. if you screw me over on wall street i will lawyer up and see you and it will be pleasant and you screw me over on a trade but they don't have that option that's their legal system and they can't trust the cops because they can't be trusted and they are working

in the black economy because the legal economy is not available to them. i spend a lot of time around drug dealers.eurial. looking it as a functional system because the outside system is not functional for them. what i find fascinating is the opposite because even in the

most destitute situations because people for rules and order and there's rules. so i find it fascinating that people self organize. >> and aei writing the quest for community sometimes it would be drugs. >> but then owning the stigma if you are accused of being a dirty drug dealer then you say that's me. >> that's what addicts do they own the addiction. or that you are exaggerating

the addiction for the deplorable so owning the stigma. so something close to race , you are allowed the one privilege the african-american has that you are allowed to have ethnic racial identity to find meaning in that and i wonder if the white identity comes from a loss of ethnic identity we didn't walk around thinking of ourselves as white we were irish americans to say we had more in common than the italian or korean kids was laughable what did we have in common with them? so if you look at places where if you're african-american ethnicity to say i am american or native american or not by

nationality but what is your ethnicity? they say no i'm just american. mostly white people who are scots irish and that's where you will find a high correlation of opioids with high trump support in the early primaries that a lack of ethnicity and religion people seeking another form of identity which could be white. >> i don't think i'm a good person to answer that question. but what i would say how i saw that flipped on its head in a negative way was why are blacks allowed to be part of

the race and i'm not? people specifically said that to me. if you're sitting at a bar in applebee's at 2:00 a.m. and somebody says that you after eight beers then you can start talking about privilege and cultural capital or you can simply say it's the right thing to do. >> and my answer would be if you identify as polish nobody would hold that against you. and we still have difficulties because the air irish kids beat up the polish and the jewish kids but i do think that whiteness is replacing other identities, specific religion. with the french-canadian americans they are the most

likely to be trump voters. but what i will say to this point going back to faith and place and race you have to choose one of the 41 of those will be chosen by people because people with nothing will choose something like one in the room you try to push one down racial identity is the most dangerous for people to start seeking meaning because all of the obvious reasons but my warning has always been to the left if we stop and you keep the value in place and up the ante with the rat race to build universities

then you will get a backlash and it will happen very quickly so what frustrates me sometimes racism is malleable and can add and flow williston is a town in maine 30000 people lost the textile mills to mexico and others 99 percent white downtown emptied with the french-canadian americans and in some all the americans came to replace said 98 so i spent some time there. talking to the professor of anthropology who said racism one of the things you will see is when someone is visually

different they jump the line that's when you get the upswing of racism by the majority of that night so they have this members only club that was organized around the mills and i went to the snowshoe club organized around monthly snowshoe races. but all the mills would go empty they didn't race snowshoes anymore and the membership i did join was one dollar. [laughter] and for those who think it was there to keep african-americans out there were no members in the snowshoe club but i'm talking to the guy next to me who has had a rough life in his mind he's a vietnam vet alcoholism and a section eight housing in

and out of homelessness stealing my cigarettes and going off on a tirade really nasty. and the bartender actually stops him was a trump supporter and says no that's great or i will throw you out but this guy and then some all the americans jumping the queue for free food. and he literally saw these people in his mind who were newcomers and now for free

food distributions. you have to understand why he might have gotten there. so if we want that not to happe happen, we need to provide someone like him with the scapegoats. >> and then quickly identify yourself with the name. >> so what do you see your endgame that you're not a

journalist you've done this for eight years so what is your end goal? just curious why your mind is that and second where his people's anger directed at is that the local senate town council my wife would like me to answer that as well. but honestly it was haphazardly done and it was motivated by political anger.

and those that are disparaged in the press of the stereotypes to be worthless hookers or what have you and then to be worthy as a bond trader. and what was the second questio question? >> the anger is diffuse sometimes it's anger at the pothole that will not be fixed. there is a tendency to want to punch the more frustrated you are the more masculine you are the more you want to punch.

i think there is a degree of anger at the elite stub broad sense that you are being patronized all the time i told you are dumb are not worthy for being laughed at there is a real sense they know and they are convinced people make fun of them like the new york times or the washington post would rather not spend time with them but sometimes they don't know where to punch because it's hard for me to know who to punch. >> so let me ask a quick question i was surprised at how easy it was to get people to talk to me.

would say i'm a political reporter from washington dc so i thought i should share with them to tell them what i'm doing and there was also reluctance i don't like the word politics and i would say what do you like around here then they would tell me about their mothers time in rehab. >> that you have to get them to stop talking. i have been in applebee's at 2:00 a.m. hearing for the fourth time about the wrongs that cause them. people want to talk. >> even if they just trust the guy from brooklyn in the abstract. >> where i think the narrative, i hate that word but the general dominant story

out there is wrong is the idea that the poor hates the rich. they don't hate the rich. they are frustrated they are not there. they view it as aspirational. i think in particular it is understandable i don't like how trout made his money and i can write articles how he is a business failure but he puts big buildings in the air and people understand that that is what money is. what did i do? i did this silly thing i get the financial times and it comes with how to spend it a monthly supplement. [laughter] and i would be in these drug dens and i forget my how to spend is in my car or in my

van and people are shooting up over the how to spend it. so i eventually said i did this project and say what do you think about this as they look at it and they loved it there wasn't a left-wing twitter this is outrageous this 50000-dollar rolex watch they say i would love to have that. it's pretty. 's the people get it wrong i don't like the wealthy but it's more like i wish i could do tha that. >>. >> coming from a finance background there seems to be a gap in your awareness if you're working in finance you should be aware that industry is consolidating there's not

as many brokers are bond trading jobs but you are in the situation and more educated in a different bracket but you don't seem to be aware of that so for example people who are working in the coal industry in west virginia they have long-term jobs as a bond trader you have three bear markets you are out they will milk you for everything you are worth you don't sue the bank for that so you can't just lawyer up like you say because you are the same person. >> i'm not saying there's not problems in the banking industry the way they treat employees is awful but are you in the front office for the back office? >> yes it's a very different industry in the back office than the front office.

and they treat the back office like crap. it's not a nice industry. >> i am a journalist but i think the main privileges connection and belonging and if i got laid off and there are no jobs in journalism there are people with money and other things i could turn to at least try to land on my feet. that's a lot harder when everybody knows in that town and they all lost a job. my big experience was at the very top with an elite group and a very nasty group.

>> what most surprise you with your interactions with the people that you talked within your experience most surprised you about them? >> honestly don't do what i did necessarily because but i spent most of my time in african-american neighborhoods. nobody tried to rob me or harm me. and i was walking around with a 5000-dollar camera. a little scruffier in this. and a drug houses at two in the morning i walked in abandoned buildings at 3:00 o'clock in the morning just on a work because somebody said i should go there and nothing bad happened. i do remember once very

different for females it's a very different world out there. but in terms of the safety issue and the trust, there was a woman by the name of millie who i met at this on the street at two in the morning a sex worker. and people will tell you i asked her story and i wrote it down three years later she passed away i located her body if you die in new york without papers you are put into heart island it's one of the worst things in the world. you should go read about it a lot of irish are there 1 million people are buried

there to spend the poppers island since 1865. they put you in a trench and bury you. so she died over six months i located it be 66. the 66 death in bronx at the times through the whole process to get her exhumed improperly buried, i learned a lot about her past. i a journalist i don't get into their past but three years later everything she told me at 2:00 o'clock in the morning was right when i fact checked it it was spot on. the whole story she had told me. she didn't lie or exaggerate. and again it's just the honesty of telling a stranger.

it wasn't a good life for things to be proud of. on an individual level people are very decent on the aggregate certainly. but the us paradox it is an aggregate friendly and the south in the aggregate not. [laughter] >> are you still traveling to interview people? may second question is have you ever found the one from a community who found the way out and followed them with their life? i'm curious what you said about not having the right language.

>> and those who play the long odds. but on the streets i wrote a piece that said the lesson learned that nobody got help there was no happy endings. nobody died. shelley is in jail but maybe not i just got a text message. shelley and ramon are still living in a van somewhere. so at the lowest of the low i did not find that.