good afternoon everyone. i am robert doar the american enterprise as it is my great pleasure to welcome this afternoon a conversation with john mackey. john is the co-founder and ceo of whole foods market and the co-founder of the nonprofit conscious of capitalism and easier to talk about his new book "conscious leadership" elevating humanity through business. i can't think of a better guest to have on thanksgiving weekend you and it's a pleasure to have

you. welcome to our discussion this afternoon. >> thanks robert. thanks for having me on the show. >> i love your book and i recommend the book. i am now almost 18 months and my term as ceo of the aei and while i've been a ceo in my previous businesses it's always good to be reminded what makes effective leadership work and in end the institution of any size. you have a lot of great lessons about how to be a good leader and having a purpose and having to do with the lead with love and the other with innovation and integrity. all these lessons being so important what he think is the most important and what you rely on for those attributes that made you so successful? >> the first chapter of the book is called put purpose for so i guess i had better put it first.

>> the purpose part is important because he seemed to dress and i want you to address this why you think it's true that even the for-profit firms that are out to make money and developer profit and pay shareholders they are the most successful when they see a higher purpose. give us a sense that. >> this is the single biggest misunderstanding about business and capitalism i think there is an intelligent is correct capitalism is always going to be sustained and criticized and attacked and attacked ford's motivations because it's motivations are seen as impure. of course business has to make money. business doesn't make money it will fail but it doesn't mean that's its purpose to make money. a good way to explain it is my

body has to produce red blood cells and if i stop producing red blood cells and going to die. just because i have to make red blood cells doesn't mean the purpose of my life is to produce red blood cells. it's a necessary condition but it doesn't define who i am. similarly businesses have to make money or they fail but business is really about creating value for other people. that's why it exists to create value for other people and if it does a good job creating good values products and services that its customers want than the business will flourish and it will make money for its investors. i think because business gets put into this narrow box it's all about money. it's all about making money and it's so odd if you think about it because if you ask what the purpose of the doctor is, doctors make a lot of money in our society.

even if that's true that's not the ethics that stand behind medicine. the ethics behind medicine are to heal people. teachers educate. architects design roads and engineers construct things. every one of these professions have some type of value creation. they are serving other people and businesses the greatest value creator in the world by far. we should be talking about in terms of its value creation for its customers and the jobs it creates and the residual or tangential effects that happen when you trade with suppliers. they are benefiting and prospering as a result. and investors in the larger community. all of these constituencies and stakeholders. we don't do ourselves a disservice by trying to explain

business purposes making as much money as possible. i think we lose the argument as soon as we say that. >> in your business when you started whole foods market you have a straightforward purpose to bring better quality and natural foods to people. that's a great purpose and you accomplish that. you feel as if it led to more people eating better more helpfully and are you proud of those achievements? >> absolute so. their stated purpose and let me explain a couple of things. when i started the business my girlfriend and i -- i was 24 and she was 20. we were just a couple of kids really and we didn't have stated purpose. we are just passionate about natural organic foods and selling healthy food to people.

if you asked me what this purpose of whole foods back in 1978 i just set higher purpose yeah sure. earning a living and having some fun doing it. those things also exists at whole foods. there was a tough go with 2020 but that's who we are are. her their purpose is deep in the last 43 years. our official stated purpose now is to nurse people with the planet and it has a lot of depth to that by how you define nourish and how you define people and how you defined planet. they all have different layers. i do think every business that you admire has a higher purpose. i've met hundreds of entrepreneurs in my life and very few of them start a business to get rich.

they like to get rich but they are also compassionate about something. people like steve jobs, bill gates, elon musk just days as. these guys were passionate about something, something they wanted to create. so excited they had to keep going on it and they made a lot of money because they. a lot of value for other people. >> you are telling the story of purpose and getting the message of purpose to every member. you tell a story and i've never heard it and i -- it was the story about the administration. he was a custodian mopping the floor and cleaning up the place a somebody doing? he said i'm helping to get a man on the moon and i want to ask you i struggled with this edit

avi, how do you get everyone to be united behind one person and how do you get that message out? you referred to the people who work as team members. how do you do that? >> a good question robert and it's not easy. i think the first thing is the leadership has to embody the this themselves. people pay so much more attention to what you do and how you show up in the world than what you say. in fact we haven't very well tuned antenna for hypocrisy. witness the governor's faux pas in california or nancy pelosi's faux pas at the spot. when we say hypocrisy people are as looking to see. it's very important type firstly embody the higher purpose. you have to walk the talk. that being said at a company

like coal foods we have 100,000 people who work at the company so we are getting the turnover in continued growth and we are adding on 10 or 20,000 new members every year so how do you keep the purpose? how do you institutionalize and the only way he can do it is to have to talk about -- it has to be an orientation something you talk about all the time. it's important that the leaders reference what they are doing back to what the higher purpose of the organization is. you talk about it all the time and because you have new people coming in all the time you never take it for granted. when you have a very resilient powerful culture to culture does a lot of the work for you. people have already internalized the values of the purpose of the organization. they act like an immune system toward organization.

if the organization as been around for long time to have have a culture based on the values of the purpose and if it's a good and strong culture you can expect the organization to do its work and getting people converted over. if you don't have a good culture or if there's a lot of hypocrisy and people don't think you are living up to it he won't be very successful. purpose is something -- i needed analogy right now. the higher focuses their in the declaration of independence and it's there in our bill of rights and yes it's not being taught in spain forgotten. a lot of the country no longer resonates with what the purpose of america is. we have done a very poor job of continuing to mitigate the higher purpose of the united states. >> i completely agree with that and we had a e. i agree with it.

you have to talk about it all the time so people understand the source and it is in our founding document. we want to do more of that to so communicate, communicate, communicate. it's worked for me and it is a problem as the country. >> that's one reason i contribute to aei. >> you have a way in which encourage a positive collaboration and impact on the workers. i think you have meetings where we conclude by saying tell us about that. >> first i will say that love is

oftentimes not associate with corporations which are generally seen as sort of heartless money grabs or their image problem they have in the world. duda metaphors that we have about business as being hypercompetitive. we use more metaphors to explain business and darwinian metaphors to explain business and sports metaphors to explain business. there's not much place for love. they check that at the door. we have thanksgiving and there is love there and maybe around christmastime to check in at the door when you come to work. we have to win and that's very unfortunate because love is not weak which is what many people associate it with then it's not just feminine virtue but it's also a masculine virtue. love is the glue that holds an organization together. if you get two things to people

they will love your organization and stay with the decade after decade after decade. it's one of the first things amazon notice. you have a lot of people that i've worked here for more than 20 years. and the reason why i think it's giving people purpose and you give people a sense that they are loved and that's what people want to they want or prison i want love. you are going to have a great organization. so appreciated is one way you can release love in an organization. this is something whole foods does and if you get nothing else out of my talk today remember this one thing. just and your meetings with appreciation you will release love in your organization. every time we have a meeting we rap it up by doing voluntary appreciations. they are not mandatory and nobody has to do it but what

happens is if you do an authentic appreciation of someone else you can't do an authentic appreciation without opening your heart. and people know the difference when somebody's just saying something and when they are actually expressing it from their heart. when you have an authentic appreciation love will flow from you and others will pick up on it. in addition it's hard to stay in judgment of someone who has just given authentic appreciation to you. if tom if i think tom is kind of a jerk and thomas fehr saying how much he appreciates things i do and he's doing it in an authentic way and not just up to me that i'm probably going to rethink the tom izzo i'm going to look at him with fresh eyes. i will tell you some stories of whole foods. appreciation is a big deal. a couple of years ago we were

spending so much time doing appreciations advance of meetings that we had to limit the number of appreciations. look you can appreciated everybody. we'll do three appreciations. that still took too long so i said you know what we have one appreciation. make account and make your appreciations good but do them outside of this meeting. we can get our appreciations of one down to 30 minutes. but try it. it's very powerful and i've had other organization since organizations and ceos say we started doing appreciations and everything changed. >> you mentioned several times in her other conversations the fact that you've merged with amazon it's remarkable coming

together to honor to american companies but i want you to tell us about that and how it's going and what i also want to point out is how jeff bezos and i didn't know this either he always has an empty chair for customers. customers always are represented. do i have that right and tell us about the amazon whole foods market version. >> the empty chair is part of the amazon story. whether they still actively do that or not i'm not sure but it's part of the amazon mythology. it's based on real-time stuff that happened. when you think about a big merger between two big companies. it's a little bit like a marriage and i say that because

coming together voluntarily for mutual gain and benefits and hopefully because you admire the other person. i they use the metaphor of a whirlwind romance. i told that story and at the same time i won't retell the story but when you get married and most people know what i'm talking about if you are going to get married you are going to change. that's inevitable because the other person is going to influence you and you will gradually become, i'm going to move over to get this done off of my face. there we go. you will gradually change and amazon has had a big impact on whole foods. on the other hand we have a culture. i was saying a healthy marriage there is in me, there's a u.n. then there's us. they all three have to be healthy.

whole foods has to stay whole foods and we have to follow our higher purpose and fulfill our core values. we have unique special culture and amazon it has to have respect for that. whole foods is evolving as we are adopting certain amazonian processes. i will give you one example. previously the merger i would say we were more intuitive than our decision-making. amazon is very very dated driven in their decision-making process. a lot of times we'll be giving our opinions and our theories and they'd say show us the data. we aren't going to make the decision unless you show us the data and vapor process called a six pager. you submit your arguments with data supporting it. so you do a good job of that you are going to get the decision that you want. if you don't do a good job you

will be sent back to the drawing board. so think more that way more data-driven in our decision-making. we still have our intuition and their entrepreneurial take on things but we are more data-driven. so how is the merger going? it's going pretty well because whole foods is evolving in amazon -- amazon thinks long-term. we are working on our fourth price reduction something we badly needed to do. amazon has a lot of cool technology and in the book i talk about everyone is -- a win for stakeholders a win for team members and we increase the starting pay to $15 an hour. it raises everybody else's pay because you have to level everybody out.

i was very expensive. we counted the cost amazon. the first-year cost $250 million. of course i was great for morale at that time we had about 90,000 people. 85,000 of them got a raise and they were happy about that. a lot of our suppliers weren't selling to amazon before so that's been a great thing for them, greater distribution. from the time we began talking to amazon until toga deal close they got a 4 billion-dollar increase in evaluations which was a win for them. a win from the committee aspects of it as well with philanthropy and things we are doing in the community and amazon has supported that as an added additional donation in some cases. so win, win, win. very good. >> you were generally about the

negative potential negative impact of the large-size? >> i'd say the biggest challenge as a result of this merger has been amazon is probably one, two or three, three for sure top companies in the world that gets scrutinized. everything you do is under microscope so whole foods we were big but everything we do is under the microscope and that's pretty bizarre. we also have to think about anything we say or do we don't want that to negatively impact amazon and of course amazon doesn't. what's interesting is i think, is talking to the guy reported amazon one time and he said my metaphor is like a marriage. when you marry into the family

you have a bunch of in-laws now and some of them don't like the in-laws too much and you'll have to live with that because you are part of the family now. it's a very clever way of putting it that when people are mad at amazon they are mad at whole foods and vice versa. so that's different being under the microscope so i have to be guarded a little bit like what i say in an interview like this because somebody will hear it somewhere and the media -- i don't want any headline showing up here. >> you speak with us. >> i understand. >> in the book you have an appendix called cultural intelligence. we are going to come back to the company the leadership of the company but i just want to ask in an effort to get to what is your view of where we are as a

country. you talk about three kinds of cultural intelligence, the traditional, the modern and traditional is focused on church and the liberal america that is an open society that believes in science and change. the rest of it takes a little step further and then you talk about the -- culturing can you tell us about what that is? it's a little bit like something that gets us past the divisions that are plaguing america. >> this is a good framework and those that are interested in following up. we have an appendix at the end of the book that goes into some detail about this and chances

are the authors might like this book. stick it seemed as though you were laying the seeds for something bigger. >> we have a book called conscious america and that dives into deeper. to understand united states if you think about in terms of moral views and their predominant worldviews in america but first one is the more traditional worldview which is based on faith, family and the country and it's got traditional values about religion, about family, about, hearkens back to the constitution and the declaration of independence. >> darree aei. >> we are comfortable in that world. >> the traditional is world would be like ronald reagan and winston churchill and william buckley phyllis scheffler and

people like that for the modernist worldview, and so are traditional worldview would have a lot more belief in revelation and through faith where is the modernist is much more scientific. it's more the enlightenment of progress, through science, through reason and capitalism and if you think about we would estimate 30% of the population of the united states is traditional and that is where they are anchored and 50% is anchored in the modern view. an example of the modernist would be thomas jefferson, benjamin franklin in madison, john f. kennedy, einstein, edison, and guys like will gates

another strong modernist. now progressives which make up about 20% of the population right now we estimate, so each of these comes out as the world evolves they partly reject the worldview that came before them. modernism rejected faith. it rejected religion largely. many modernists are atheist. they believe in -- they don't believe in scripture or revelation are things like that. there is a rejection of what comes before. until then you have this line between traditionalists, ethics and modernist science that drove america are many many decades. and then it comes about because

their flaws are failures in the previous worldviews so modernism did not completely realized some of the things that progresses and -- progressivism are the limitations of modernity. the environmental movement has come out of that access modernism produces economic process. there are externalities that come out of that they can negatively impact the environment so people tend to have strong environmental views. we know we have reticulated any this year but the last few years we have had the antiracist movement which is very progressive very the hole woke ideology is a progressive mindset. it basically argues that america is inconsistent with the founding values of equality of all that we have not done a good

enough job in overcoming racism and having inclusivity and diversity. that's been talked about in the media lot and of course i see we have made a lot of progress in america but we still have some problems. i would say the progressive view is globalists in the sense that it's very concerned about inequality, suffering by anyplace in the world really. there is a strong anti-modernist streak to progressivism as well. science except when it serves their ideology and mistrust of progress because -- >> they are don't like capitalism. >> that's right they don't like capitalism. it's a rejection of capitalism so there's an element of

socialism. >> and anti-modernists streak to it. >> we have 30% traditional 50% modernist and 20% progressive or progressives because they dominate academia, hollywood and the media. that is the culture war. we have these external views that are struggling with each other so how are you going to move past it? the authors argue that we have to go post progressive and the essence of post-progresses -- post-progressivism is to recognize that all of these previews have dignities and disasters. they are good things in their bad things about the imprint will we have to do is honor the good things in each of these worldviews. for example we have to recognize a lot of the progressive insights are important and they shouldn't go way but we can't draw capitalism and replace the

worth socialism. it would be a disaster but socialism has been tried 42 times in the last 100 years and there were 42 failures. doesn't work. we have to keep capitalism. we need conscious leadership which is capitalism but done in a much more conscious way taking into account higher purpose, stakeholders human flourishing and done in a very conscious way. we need to take the best of all of these worldviews and make sure the very bad things that we recognize bad things so bad things might the a disaster like racism and bigotry. that can be an accusation sometimes if values. ..

criticizing and canceling people out. we see a lot of the disaster by now. there are some of the beauties that we need to integrate to go forward in a healthy way. if america gets to the next point, we need to integrate the best of these views and minimize the worst of these world views.

we call it the intra- girl worldview. >> i am really encouraged to keep that work going. we see that divide all the time. i want to ask you about where you see it in your store. the recognition of this divide. also, the elite versus the non-elite. you have both kinds of america. you have workers and customers in both types of america. from your perspective, after all of these years of being right in the middle of that, is that divide as difficult and painful as it looks or do we exaggerate it? >> i think that there is a pretty big divide. 2020 has been a terrible year because of covid.

people are on edge. you saw the riots. a number of stores have been damaged. they were damage just a couple nights ago in portland. a couple of our stores were damaged. fifteen or 20 of our stores have suffered damage during the peaceful protests. we have our team members, the controversial, the controversy this summer about dress code. we don't want you to -- we want you to, we don't want you to promote whatever your political causes are. whether it be black lives matter or make america great again. whatever it is, check it out the door. that is been controversial. we just had a blowup last week

because we did not want our canadian team members -- we actually had the congress or the legislature candidate condemn the market. they just wanted them to wear unofficial dress. whole foods, when you have the government threatening to shut you down, you will change your dress code and we did for canada. i don't think that would've happened if amazon was vulnerable. i don't think it would have. everything was amplified because of the amazon connection. >> that is so unfortunate. it seems to me that, are you eager to be more active in portland? i am from new york.

we know protests and disturbances. you know, under the time that i worked there, we did believe in a certain kind of order and respect. >> it is being challenged. let's put it that way. here's the thing, we are grocers. we just want to sell food to people. our team members have to be safe. we have stores broken into. we give quick instructions. in new york, in seattle, in portland, in oregon, several other cities as well. we have disturbances. we have protocols in place. protect our team members. we have team members round out the back door. they come in with baseball bats and they just start banging at cash registers.

hitting wine bottles and just being destructive. commerce is based on peace. we need the rule of law. i think that is been challenged a bit. it is harder to do business. >> i did want to ask you about the innovation and start up culture america. you think that you could do what you did all those years ago as easily?

to be free to establish a really successful enterprise. i have been doing this for 42 years. pretty easy to start a business back in 1978. i just open the doors for business one day. where is your health department certificate? where is your building permit? they came around, but they did not shut us down. they just said, you have to get that. we had to pay a fee. >> you've saw a lot of stories about business people who just kept focusing on what they wanted to achieve. they kept that eye on that goal. it ultimately got through that. >> business people have to constantly innovate around

stupid rules and figure out ways so they can stay in business. the whole history of business in one way is dealing with -- you need rules, you need regulation, you need law. on the other hand, you can overly regulate business, it is hard to do business. the whole society becomes -- >> i want to go back to the book again. i do really like the book. it is great lessons for leaders. one of the things that i love about it is you do not only tell us your story, 100 other business people who start businesses with these values. isn't your sense that these kinds of values are on the rise.

they are more prevalent than they realize. fighting against a culture that really needs to change dramatically. >> it is evolving. that is how i see it. they talk about trickling down well. that is my fear. that is my fear that the academic community is generally hostile to business. this is not new. all of the minority goods that are business community that have been persecuted, the two best examples. the aristocrats, the

intellectuals, the clarity, they have always despised business as , they are making a profit. they are terrible people. a business person be called a jew even if you were not jewish. that was an attack on a business culture. so, now, the universities are, i mean, you go through there and they are so progressive and so anticapitalist. when i speak at universities, for example, sometimes i get hecklers and sometimes they just invite me. more often, i watched the students, particularly speaking at a business school, they love the message.

you can do well and you can do prosperous. that is music to their ears. the professors are very skeptical. they want to argue with me about it. one of the interesting things to me about business schools, if you think about it, robert, who teaches the medical schools? who teaches in law schools? >> lawyers. former lawyers. >> who teaches in business schools? not business people. intellectuals teach. who have never actually been in business at all. it is very interesting. don't actually understand business. don't understand entrepreneurship. that is a particular challenge.

[inaudible] >> about 100,000 now. >> 100,000 people with jobs. that is valuable. those are livelihoods. those are the well-being. that is a greater contribution to human flourishing than universities and some ways. it is tremendous. welfare administrators. i lived off people providing jobs. that is what i counted on. when the economy was strong. hiring most skilled workers. that is the best thing that we could have. >> so why don't we be coy about it. capitalism, working for innovation is impaired it is the greatest thing humanity has ever created. if you go back to hundred years ago when innovation was really beginning to pick up steam, 94%

less than $2 a day. that is in today's dollars. under 10%. the average lifespan was 30. now it is 72.6. literacy rates were 88%. down to 12%. enlightenment now, you will just see documentation after documentation after documentation about how much the work has progressed. it has been science and technology combined with innovation is taking the scientific discovery and operationalize them to make our lives better. it is the greatest thing humanity has ever done. they are the heroes of the story. the entrepreneurs are the ones that create great progress. if you look at the studies, if

you look at the polls, people don't trust business. their motivations are wrong. businesses greedy and selfish. it cannot be trusted. it corrupts the political culture. it is fundamentally a bad thing. that is why we are seeing us move toward socialism. capitalism they see us corrupt. the greatest thing humanity has ever done. we told the bad narrative. the enemies of capitalism put out a narrative about us that is wrong, inaccurate and it is doing tremendous damage to the minds of young people. we have to counter that. >> the cost of leadership is to counter it. >> i think you are right. i also think that we are a victim of our success. the socialist policies take

over. unemployment goes down. where it has been in the past. people are long-term unemployed in them people will realize the benefit of us growing in a prosperous economy. >> the reality is what we have done has never happened before. humanity, for the most part, had very forward progress. that is because business people were basically so regulated the genie never got out of the bottle until the enlightenment. until for brief period of time the intellectuals at least went neutral on business. maybe there is some good in this. and then we exploded and now there is time to set the genie back in the bottle. we will stagnate, we will begin to regress. i'm not saying the whole technological civilization will collapse, but it will not progress. it will begin to stagnant.

we put in some of these green new deal policies. starting to go backwards. >> you are really looking at the longer term. you are not caught up in this election or this crisis. you have mentioned covid a couple of times. i just wanted to get your sense of where we are. where your stores serve. a large employer in the business person in america. and your observation of the pharmaceutical industry and others that it moved so quickly. do you see the light at the end of the tunnel here? will things get better? i hate to ask you a mundane business question, but i thought that some people in the grocery business, there were some upticks during covid. people were eating at home more.

does that not happen in your business? >> no. our sales are way up. the media reports things wrong. for two reasons. the first one is our transaction count in stores is down. workers coming in. with offices closed down during covid we did not get that traffic in. secondly, our online business has tripled since covid. 300%. actual sales are way up. just inaccurately reported. doing well during covid. i think restaurants, you know, people manage transitions temporarily to not eating out as much, eating a lot more at home. that is been good for

supermarkets. whole foods, walmart, kroger, publix. >> you have been able to adjust to whatever covid restrictions have been put in place? what is your view on that? >> well, i mean, first of all, whole foods has a duty and responsibility to keep our customers and team members safe. i am proud that our company was out in front of a lot of this. amazon pushed us real hard to be out in front on it. we have been recognized in a couple different publications as a safest supermarkets in america during covid. most people have copied a lot of what whole foods went out first doing from masks to disinfecting to cleaning to temperature testing, things like that. so, i mean, i think we have been very successful in that. the number of people that have

died. relatively small. if i told you how much, it would be headlines, but pretty low. pretty low. let's make no mistake about it. it is been a very difficult year even with our sales. everybody is wearing a mask, everybody is social distancing. you do elbows or you kick feet with each other. that is not quite the same, is it. people are not socializing as much. i say whole foods never won cultural deposits for number of years. in 2020, withdrawing on post deposits. >> two more questions. you say you like to promote within, but you don't like to over do that. there is a percentage that you like. 80% or maybe 75%. it invigorates the culture. tell us a little bit about your

hiring from choosing team members? >> i mean, it is a balance really. only hire from within. only promote from within. that really enhances the culture in the sense that people know if they work hard, they can rise up and get ahead. because whole foods has been growing, it's a great place of opportunity for people since the founding of the company. i have watched people start out and work their way all the way up. it doesn't require a college education to make a lot of money at whole foods. you can rise through the ranks, so to speak. if you only promote from within you will stagnant. you are not getting enough new ideas. not getting enough new women ovation from outside it further helps the innovation and creativity. on the other hand, if you

promote from outside -- grade early appreciated. about 25% get promoted from outside the company. about 75% promoted from within. it could vary with other companies, i think. >> i told you before. i wanted to ask you a thanksgiving question related to the underlying business. your passion for healthy and wholesome food. we are going to have thanksgiving. we may have gatherings that are smaller than usual, but we will still have gatherings, with family. what is a main stay at your table that you would recommend to those of us putting together our menus?

>> i may be a bad person to ask. >> i know that. i wasn't thinking you are going to say turkey. we all eat vegetables. what is your go to dish? >> what is my go to dish? generally a being steel with a ton of vegetables in it. that is my favorite. >> that will be on the table on thanksgiving with your family? >> absolutely. a lot of beef, but then a ton of vegetables. sweet potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, okra, whatever veggie. >> i hope you have a great thanksgiving. thank you for all you've done. thank you for your book and your guidance and for participating in this conversation. >> thank you. >> do you have any final words

or anything we missed that you would like to say? i always like to give people that chance. >> i just want to convey a message of hope that we are, america has gone through a difficult time. we are not nearly through it. we will not be threw at any time soon but, you know, student of american history. we face bigger challenges than this one. we have stumbled our way through it, but we have gotten through it. i think we will get through this one, too. maybe it will take a few years, maybe longer. america has a great capacity to renew itself. sometimes our backs are against the wall. we are forced to make changes. we are forced to make reformations. there is a great underlying love of the country by americans.

i think we seen it in this election cycle. i am very hopeful about the future. even if i'm not particularly hopeful about the short-term future. i think we will get past covid. i think a year from now we will get past it in a lot of our normal behaviors will be returning and it will be a good thing. stop being so scared. >> we will get through covid. thank you very much for doing this. we really appreciate it. >> thank you very much. >> here's a look at some books being published this week. adam gentle sin, former deputy chief of staff to harry reid argues that a white male minority in the senate has prevented the passage of popular legislation. american conservative senior editor takes a critical look at six baby boomers and their

impact on society and boomers. you can see ms. andrews this weekend on c-span's program. saving justice, former fbi director offers his thoughts on how the american justice system should work. also being published this week, investigative journalist andy jacobson describes the use of biometrics and warfare in first platoon. a journalist looking at the life of the vice president elect. and the hudson institute india initiative director weighs in on how india can become a global power in making india great. find these titles this coming week wherever books are sold and watch for many of the authors in the near future on book tv on c-span2. >> during the virtual event hosted by newsday lives offer series, offering free speech and censorship.

here are some of the discussion. >> i really believe you have a right to say whatever. >> i, you know, i think the basis of that argument in the book is if you are going to talk about the holocaust or, you know, whatever, kids in cages, racism, whatever it is, it has to be funny. you can tackle that issue, but you better craft a beautiful joke around it. gratuitously, just shock value humor with no joke attached to it, that is not what we do. laughing at the same time.

i wrote about, you know, i am a lesbian and i came out in the mid- 90s, but i came out on stage as a gay parent. i finally had our first son and i was like every comic talks about their family. i had so much material. i never talked about my partner because it was boring, frankly. you know, then we have this kid. this is amazing. there is so much here. >> no pun intended. >> it was just, it was hilarious i am doing this material and after a few minutes, some parents in the audience who were straight would be laughing because it's the same stuff. the same stuff you're going through.

at one point i used to do it, but in the late 90s early to thousands because, you know, it is interesting how far lgbtq community has come. whatever. okay. we have come so far. and yet you have children and it was the early 2000's. why can't you get married? it really was ridiculous. i used to do it about all the people that are allowed to get married and i can't get married. >> right. menendez killed the parent sanded in jail. the woman that married her 12-year-old student. it is infuriating. i wrote about it. i was in houston and a military guy came up to me after the show

was like -- [inaudible] i understand it. the power of comedy is so amazing. so many stigmas. it is disarming. >> to watch the rest of this program visit our website. booktv.org. yes, i can say that. using the box at the top of the page. ♪ you are watching book tv on c-span2. every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. book tv on c-span2. created by america's cable television company. providing book tv to viewers as a public service. ♪ up next on book tv afterwards

catherine flowers found her for the center of rural enterprise and environmental justice reflects on her improvement on water and sanitation conditions in rural and central america. she is interviewed. afterwards is a weekly interview program with relevant guest hosts interviewing top nonfiction authors about their latest work. all afterwards programs are also available as podcasts. >> catherine flowers. first thing i would like to say is huge congratulations on your macarthur grab announced pretty recently. >> thank you. >> yes. an amazing accomplishment. coming out around the same time of this book which we will discuss today. just curious, you have been working in around county