leadership, look at the life of malcolm x with tamera payne, former german ambassador to the u.s. wolfgang thought on his challenges facing europe. and katherine flowers on her efforts to improve water and sanitation conditions in rural areas across america. find more schedule information online a booktv.org or consult your program guide. >> good afternoon everyone. i am robert door it is my great pleasure to welcome you to this afternoons conversation with john mackey. john is the cofounder and ceo of whole foods markets. and the coal founder of the nonprofit conscious capitalism breeds here today to talk about his new book conscious leadership, elevating humanity through business. donna can't think of a better guess to have on thanksgiving week then view. it is a pleasure to have you, will come to our discussion this afternoon basement thanks robert, thanks for having on the show.

>> you knows i read your book, love your book i recommend the book because i am now almost 18 months into my term as ceo as i've been a ceo in my previous businesses, it's always good to be reminded of what makes effective leadership work in any institution of any size. we have a lot of great lessons on how to be a great leader. one is having a purpose, one is lead with love, always with integrity. i went to ask you, for all of these lessons that are also important when you think is the most important? which you think you rely on as your go to attributes that made you so successful? >> with first chapter in the book is called put first. i guess i better put it first. when you the purpose part is

important. you seem to address, and i want to address for our listeners why you think it is true that even the for-profit firms that are out to make money and develop a profit and pay shareholders, they are most successful when they see a higher purpose. give us a sense of that. >> this is the single biggest misunderstanding about business and capitalism i think there is. and until we get this corrected, capitalism is always going to be disdained, criticized, attacked for it will be taxed for its motivations because the motivations are seen as somehow impure. of course business has to make money. business doesn't make money it will fail. but does not mean it's his purpose to make money. body has to produce red blood cells. without producing red blood

cells, i'm going to die. just because i have to make red blood cells is not mean the purpose of my life is to produce red blood cells. it is a necessary condition, but it does not define who i am. similarly, business has to make money or fails. but business is really about creating value for other people. that is why it exists for that's why it exists to create value for other people. if it does a good job creating good value in products and services that his customers once then business will flurry it will make money for its investors. i think because business gets put in this narrow box it's all about money, it's all about making money. that is so odd if you think about it. because if you ask what the purpose of a doctors, doctors make a lot of money in our society. i don't think they'd say hey i'm a doctor to make as much money as possible but 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 buildings, engineers construct things, everyone of these professions refers back to some type of value creation to what they're doing in the world to serve other people. and business is the greatest value created in the world, by far. and so we should be talking about it in terms of its value creation for its customers and the jobs it creates for its employees. in the residual effects that happen when trades with suppliers also trades for many reasons for they are benefiting, they are prospering as a result. and it creates value for investors in the larger communities. it creates value for all these constituents, all the stakeholders. so we don't do ourselves a service by something trying to explain business purpose it's making as much money as possible. i think we lose the argument

as soon as we say that, for most people. back in your business you started the market you had very straightforward purpose it was coming think to bring better quality, wholesome natural foods to people so they could purchase stuff. that is a great purpose. and you accomplish that. you feel as if you led to more people eating better, >> is not something to be proud of? select absolutely. our stated purpose today explain a couple of things. first when he started the business with my girlfriend and i was 24 and she was 20, we're just a couple of kids really. and yet we did not have a stated higher purpose. we're just passionate about natural organic food and selling healthier food to people part if you estimate the higher purpose of whole foods was in 1970 or i would've said higher purpose

yeah sure, we just want to sell healthy food to people and earn a living and have some fun doing it. guess what, those things all still existed whole foods. while the fun part in 2020 that's just general of who we are. our purpose is deepened in the last 42 years. our stated, official stated purpose now is to nourish people on the planet. that has a lot of different depth to that by how you define nourish and how you define people and how you define planet, they'll have different layers to them. i do think every business that you really admire the most has a higher purpose. and i know hundreds of entrepreneurism life, hundreds. there are very few start their business to get rich. : :

something they wanted to create. so excited in fact they just had to get going on it, and how to made a lot of money because the created value for other people. >> when you telling the story of purpose and get the message of the purpose of a can i or institution or organization down throughout to every member that you tell the story i had not -- never heard and i think of myself as a little bit of a historian but the kennedy administration, but what president kennedy was touring the space center, he ran into a custodian, mopping the floor and cleaning up and he said what are you doing? he said their he said i'm helping to get a man on the moon. and i wanted to ask you -- i struggled with this at aei. how do you get everyone in the building to be united behind one purpose? how you get that message out?

how do you mac -- you refer to your people who work in whole foods as team members. how do you do that? ,. >> that's a good question and it's not a easy. the first thing is the leadership has to embody the purpose themselves. people pay so much more attention to what you do and how you show up in the word and what you say, in fact. people are -- we have a very well attuned antennas for hick price, witness the governor's faux pas in california or nancyy pelosi's faux pas with the spa. people are looking to call me a hypocrite so always looking to see how -- it's very important i permanently and other leaders embody the higher purpose of whole foods. you have to walk the talk or it's just talk. that being said, we have 100,000 people now that work for the company and we're getting

turnover and continued growth, adding on 10 to 20,000 team members every year. how do you institutionalize the purpose? you have to -- has to be part of the orientation and has to be something that you talk about all the time, and it's important that the leaders reference what they're doing back to what the higher purpose of the organization is, and you show up at all the type. talk about it all the time. because you have new people coming in all the time you can never take it for grant. when you heal resilient, powerful culture the culture does a lot of the work for you. other people who are there and internalized the values and purpose of the organization, they will spread -- they act like an immune system toward an organization, and the organization has been around for a long time they have a culture based on values and purpose, and if it's a good, strong culture, then you can expect the

organization to do it work in getting people converted over. you don't have a good culture, one that is -- a lot of hypocrisy and people don't think you living up to, then won't be very effective. purpose is something that you -- i'll give you an analogy right now. i have no doubt that the out has a higher purpose, it has been, it's there in the declaration of independence, it's there in our bill of rights, and yet it's not being taught, it's been forgotten. a lot of the country no longer resonates with the founding purpose of america, and so we have done a very poor job of continuing to communicate the higher purpose of the united states. >> i completely agree with that. we at aei completely agree with that. we have a book called learning patriotism. you have to talk about them all the time to seem recognize the

source of our success as a country it and is in our founding documents and we have a whole unit at aei focused on that and we want to do more on college campuses and younger students. so community, -- communicate, communicate is true but it's a problem as a country. >> one reason i love aei and contribute to aei is that very thing. >> i want to ask you about leading with love. i love that, too, about your book, and you have a way in which you encourage a positive collaboration and positive feetback from one worker to another. can you tell -- you have a practice in meetings and you conclude by saying, tell us about that? >> sure. well, first i'll say that love is often times not associated with corporations, which in fact are genuinely seen as heartless

money grubbers. part of their image problem in the world. it's due to the metaphors we have about business is a being hypercompetitive. we use war metaphors to explain business, darwin union metaphors and hypercompetitive sports metaphors to explain business. when you're at war there's not much place for love so check that the door. we have the a thanksgiving, suppress some love or christmastime but check it at the door when you come to work because we are at war. we have to win. and that very unfortunate because love is a very, very -- it's not weak which is what many people associate it with. it's not just a feminine very tomb it's a masculine virtue as well. and love is the grew that holds an organization together. it's -- i say if you get two things to people, then they'll love your organization and they'll stay with is decade after decade after decade. whole foods has very low

turnover. one of the first things amazon noticed. you have a lot of people that worked there more than 20 years and democrat the reason why is you give people purpose, and you get people a sense their cared about, they're loved, then that's what people want. they want and you were they want love. if you can meet both of these desires and needs, then you'll have a great organization. so, appreciation is one way you can release love in an organization, and so this is something whole foods does and it's -- you have nothing else out of my talk today but remember this one thing. >> i agree. >> just end your meetings with appreciations you'll release love in the organization. so what whole foods does when we have a meeting we wrap up by doing voluntary appreciations. they're not mandatory, nobody has to do it. but what happens is you do an authentic appreciation of someone else you can't do an authentic appreciation without

opening your heart. you can -- people know the difference when somebody is just saying something and when they're actually feeling that and expressing it from their heard. when you do an awe then tick appreciation you open your heart and love will know from -- will flow from you. it's hard to stay? judgment of someone who has just given a thought of how then tick appreciation. if i taught tom was a jerk and tom is saying how much he appreciates the things i do, and he's doing it in an authentic way, not just sucking up to me i'll rethink who tom is, look at him with fresh eyes. so, i'll tell you some story at whole foods. appreciations have become a big deal at whole foods that with my leadership group, our senior leadership group, couple years ago we were spending so much time doing appreciations at the end of meetings we had to make

rules. we had to limit the number of appreciations, and first we went, look, you can't appreciate everybody on the team here. do it on your own time. we'll limit you to three appreciations and then that still too long. we said you have one appreciation, make it count. if you have other appreciations, good, but do them outside of this meeting. and so we could get our appreciations with one down to 30 minutes, which is probably a reasonable amount of time. but try it. it's very powerful, and i've had other people, other organizations, other entrepeneurs and say we started doing appreciations and everything changed after that. >> you imagine a couple -- you mentioned the fact you have merged with amazon and there's been this quite remarkable coming together of two iconic american companies, and i wanted you to tell us a little bit but that and how that is going and whether there have been tensions, and i also -- i also wanted to point out you have

another story in the book how jeff bezos -- i didn't know this either -- he -- when he had meetings he has an empty chair for the customer. so the customer is always represented. die have that right? and telephone us about the amazon whole foods market merger. >> 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. probably based on real time stuff stat happened. one way to think but a merger between two large companies and whole foods was a fortunate 200 company when amazon budget it. it's like a marriage, and i say that because you're coming together voluntarily through mutual gain and benefits and hopefully because you really admire the other person and you might -- i use the metaphor of a

whirlwind row maps and love at first sight if i told that star but the same time i won't re-tell the story, but when you get married, and most people know what i'm talking about. if you get married you're going to change that's inevitable because the other person will influence you and you will gradually become a -- move over to get to the sun off my face -- there we go. that's better. you will gradually change, and amazon has had a big ill pact on whole fooleds. we gradually changed but we have very rye -- resilient culture in a healy marriage that's a me, you, and us, and a all three have to be healthy. so we have to stay whole foods and have to follow our higher purpose, have to fulfill our core values, we have to be whole

foods and have a unique culture and amazon has largely respected that. our culture is evolving but not because amazon is cramming things down our throat but we're adopting certain amazon union processes. whole food -- previous to the merger we were more intuitive in decisionmaking and amazon is very, very data driven in theirs decision mosquitoing process. so -- decisionmaking process. so we would be talking to amazon and give our opinions and theories and they'd say, show us the data. and they have a practice there where you are going to write up a six-pager, submit your arguments with data supporting that. i if you do a good job then you'll get the decision that you want and if your don't do a good job you'll be sent back to drawing board or told no. so, whole foods has begun to think more that way, more data driven in our decisionmakingmakd

that's been a positive thing for us. still have intuition and our entrepeneural take on things but more data driven. so how is the merger going? it's going pretty well because whole foods i evolving, amazon thinks long term and we have had our fourth price reduction, something our company badly needed to do premerger, amazon data had a lot of cool technology, and i go through the book and talk to hough it's been a win for every stakeholder, for the customers through lower praise, win for team members, amazon soon after the merger increased starting pay to $15 an hour which basically -- you have increase everybody else's pay, have to level everybody up, that was very expensive. we counted the cost to amazon. this -- first year going to cost $250 million. are you sure? and they did.

and of course that was great for morale. team members loved it. that we had 90,000 people. 85,000 of them got a raise in pay, and they were pretty excited. so the win for team team members and suppliers started to sell to amazon and weren't selling to amazon before so that's a good thing for him. one for our investors. from the time we began talking to amazon to when the deal closed, they got a $4 billion increase in valuation so that was a win for them. i think a win for all the community aspects as well. whole foods philanthropy and the beings we do in our community amazon has supported that and not cramping and that add additional donations some cases. so win-win-win. >> do you worry generally not only about your situation but just generally about the negative -- potential negative impact of size? large size, make it harder to

lead the way you want to lead? >> i say the biggest challenge -- i mean, as a resident of this merger has been -- amazon is probably one or two or the -- one of the top the for sure companies in world that gets scrutinized. everything they do is up a microscope so whole foods, we were being but out in everything we do is under a microscope and that's pretty bizarre. and we have to think but anything we say or do, we don't want that to negatively impact amazon, and amazon doesn't want to -- but what is interesting is that i think -- i was talking to a guy i report to at amazon and he said -- he's using any metaphor as marriage help said when you married into this family, you got a bunch of analogs now and some people

don't like the in-laws too much and you have to live witness that because you're far of the family and that was a clever way of putting it. when people are mad at amazon they're mad at whole foods and vice versa. so that's different. being under the microscope so closely all the time. i have of be guard of the a little bit what i say in an interview like this because somebody will hear somewhere and the media could do a headline so i don't want any headlines showing up here. >> you speak freely with us. we're -- >> i understand. >> at the end of the book you have an appendix about what you call cultural intelligence and we'll come back to your company but i wanted to ask about this in an evident to get to what -- effort to get to your view of our country. you taken talk but the kinds of

cultural intelligence, there additional, modern and progressive and traditional is the old rule-based, very focused on faith and church. modern is the liberals, liberal america that is open society, believes in science and change, and then progressive is a kind of -- it's a little step further but also a mild authoritarian bent and then you talk but something post-progressive culture. could you tell us what that is? and because it looked to me a little bit like the divide -- something that gets us past the division that are plaguing mrs.. or maybe i'm wrong. >> you're right. this is a good framework and those interested in following up -- we have an apen desk at the on the book that goes in detail about this,. >> you looked like you were laying the seed for something

bigger later. >> we have a become called conscious america and that is diving into this deeper. but to understand in the out you think about in termed 60 world views and there are tree dominant world views in america. the first one is more extra traditional world view which is faith, family and country and traditional values but religion, about family, about harkens back to the constitution and the declaration of independence. >> very aei. we're comfortable in that world. >> and kind of heroes you might get in traditional world, would be like ronald reagan and winston churchill, and william buckley. phyllis schlafly. so the modernest world view -- traditional world view would have a lot more belief in sort

of truth being revealed through revelations, through faith. the modernist is much more scientific, more of the enlightenment of progress, through science, through reason, through capitalism, and it's -- if you think about -- we estimate that 30% of the population of the united states is traditional and that's where their anchored, and about 50% is anchored in modernism. so some of the examples of modernist would be thomas jefferson, ben franklin, madison, john f. kennedy, einstein,ed disson, i milton freedman, in some ways. and guys like bill gates. a strong federalist. the progressives which make up 20% of the population, we

estimate, that is -- each of thesecomes out and as the world view evolves they partly reject the world view that they -- that came before them. so modernism rejected faith. it rejected religion largely. so many modernists or athiests and believe in reason, they believe in science, don't believe in scripture or the old revelation or things like that. so part of them there's a rejection of what comes before. but until progressivism arose you had the alignment between traditionalists, ethics and modernist science that drove america for many, many decades, until -- and then the new world comes about because the flaws or failures in the previous world views, so modernism did not completely realize -- some things progressivism is

realizing the limitations of modernity and the environmental movement has come out of that because modernism is producing economic progress. there are externalities that come out of that can negatively impact the environment so thing that are progressive have strong environmental views. we know we have particularly this year we have -- the last two years we have had the anti-motorcycle which is verile progressive, the whole woke ideology is a progressive mindset, and basically arguing that america riz inconsistent with its founding value of equality of all and that we have not done enough -- good enough job in overcoming racism, having

inclusivity and diversity. has been the media a lot. i think we have made a lot of progress in america but we still have problems, so that helps motivate it. i'd say the progressive view is also pretty globalist in the sense it's very concerned about inequality, suffering, by any place in the world really, and so there's a strong antimodernist streak to progressivism as well. a distrust of science except when isit serve this ideology, and mistrust of progress because they -- >> they don't like capitalism much. >> they don't like capitalism. a rejection of capitalism ask there's an element of socialism. and antimodernist streak to it. so those are the three. we have 30% traditionalists, 50% modernists and 20%

progressivesful progressives because they dominate academia, hollywood, and the media, punch way above their weight class in terms of actual numbers. but that's the culture war. three world views struggling with each other. so, how are we going move past it? and the authors argue that we have to go post-progressive, and the essence of post-progressivism is to recognize that although of these world views have dignities and disasters. they're good things about them and bad things about it, and what we have to do is honor the good things in each of these world views. example, we have to recognize that a lot -- in progressive insights are important and shouldn't go away but we can't replace capitalism we socialism. socialism has been tried 42 times and 42 failures of doesn't

work. we have to keep capitalism. i argue we need conscious capital jim. 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. so, we need to take the best of all of these world views and make sure the very bad things that we can recognize bad things, so, bad things that might be the disasters that might be in a traditional world view are racism, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, that could be -- accusation, sometimes of traditional values. modernist we can recognize that sometimes can we capture bid special somes, be indifferent, elitist, it can be uncaring, so to speak --

>> purelyistic. >> overly materialistic, and antimodernism and reverse patriotic. the worst country if. >> self-righteous and insulting, telling everybody that criticizing them -- cancel knowledge people out with different views. we clear live see a lot of the disasters for progressivism right now. because they're on display. but they're also the beauties of progressivism that we need to integrate to go forward in a helpy way. so if america is going get next place we need to integrate the best of each of these three world views and minimize the world of these world views and we would call that post-progressivism or we call it the integral world view. >> i think it's fascinating and i'm encouraging you to keep that work going weapon see that divide all the time and i wanted

to ask you where you see it in your stores. if you look at the map of america with regard to this last election,ing this red-blue thing, rural-urban way to and elite versus the nonelites and you have stories in both kinds of america, and you have workers and customers in both kinds of america and i wonder from your perspective, after all the years being right in the middle of that, is that divide as pronounced and difficult and painful as it looks or do we exaggerate it because of the media attention it gets? >> i think there's a pretty big divide. 2020 has been a terrible year because of covid, and everybody being locked up and people getting lonely and getting angry and getting frustrated. people luting their jobs. people's businesses failing. people on inning.

-- edge. we saw the riots, number of whole foods stores damaged. we changed portland, a couple stores were damaged and that has happened 15 or 20 stores have suffered damage during the peaceful protests. and so we have our team members -- we had a big controversial -- controversy this summer but dress code because whole foods has had we don't want you to work -- we want you to wear -- we don't want you to promote whatever your political causes are, whether it be "black lives matter" or make america great again or whatever it is, check it at the door, we want you to be serving our customers and not bringing politics into the stores and that's been controversial. just had a big blowup last week because we didn't want our canadian team members to be wearing poppies and we actually had the congress or the

legislature of canada condemn whole foods market for telling people -- just wanted them to wear official company dress. and whole foods when you get the government threatening to shut you down you'll change your dress code, and we did for canada. and so it's -- i even wonder they've would have happened if amazon wasn't the owner of whole foods. i'm not sure it would happen. everything is mag any feud because of the amazon conversation. >> that's so unfortunate. news about the disturb substanceses at your stores. seems to me that are you eager to be more active in portland and get portland's -- i'm from new york, and we know protests and disturbances but we don't -- under the period of time i worked there, we did believe in a certain kind of order and

respect for property. is that lost? in that community? >> it's being lost -- it's being challenged to put it that way. we're we're grocerses. we just want to sell food to people. you have do that. our team members have to be safe. we have had stores broken into and we give quick instructions, chicago, and new york, and seattle, and portland, and oakland, and self other cities as well -- several other cities, disturbances health protocols in place. protect our team members. they're far more important than property. we have had team members run out the book door. people break into the stores with baseball bats and bang cash registers and going into the wine depth and slaughter -- hitting the wine bolt do-bolt

and just being destructive. we need peace. commerce is based on peace, and -- >> rule of law. >> rule of law. we need the rule of law and i think the rule of law has been challenged a little bit, is being challenged. so keir kind of in -- we're kind of in a rocky place in america and we're defunding the police in a lot of communities, and so it's harder to do business. we have to hire a lot more security guards now. >> speaking of harder to do bins want to ask you but the innovation and startup culture in americans do you think that you could do what you did all those years ago as easily or is the restrictions on our ability to start a business, grow a business, be free to establish a really successful enterprise? is -- you feel that's lost? >> it's a good question.

i don't really know because i have been doing this for 42 years, and pretty easy to start a business back in 1978. i just opened the doors for business one day, and the government bureaucrats came around and said where is your health department certificate any said do we need one of those? where is your building permit? they came around but didn't shut us down. just said you have to get. that had to pay a fee, and -- >> are you always focuses on your purpose. you tell a lot of story about business people who just kept focusing on what they wanted to achieve and when he ran goo road blocks they kept the eye on the bigger bowl government through that. >> business people have to constantly innovate around bureaucracy and student rules and figure -- stupid rules and figure out ways to stay in business. that's the reality. business is -- the whole history of business and one way is

dealing with -- you've need rules, you need regulations and laws so our stores are not broken into and looted all the time. you need police. on the other hand you can overly regulate business so it's hard to do business, and then the whole society becomes less wealthy and less prosperous. >> i want to go back to the back if real use like the book. it's great lessons for leaders, but one thing i love is you don't only tell it it through your story: you tell the story of hundred other business people who have started businesses and led with these values. i guess i wanted to ask what your sense is -- isn't your sense that these kind of leadership values are on the rise or they're more prevalent than you realize or do you think you're fighting uphill against a culture that needs to be

changedded dramatically in the business world? >> it's evolving and needs to evolve, otherwise the socialists will take over and that's how i see it. that's the path to poverty. they talk but trickle down wealth, but socialism is trick 'up poverty. just impoverishings everything and that's my fear that the marxist -- academic -- the academic community is generally hostile to business. always has been. this is not new. read mccloskey's work you'll see the minority groups that are business people have been persecuted. the juves in the west and chinese in the east are no twig examples. the aristocrats this intellectuals, the clergy have always despised business as sort of -- what tradesman do.

they're making a profit. they're terrible people. they have the wrong note vacations they're not gentlemen, they're not -- i mean, do you study european history that if you are a big business person you be called a jew even if you weren't jewish. that was an attack on a business culture in a way. so now the universities are -- i mean, you go through there and they're so progressive and they're so anticapitalist. when i speak at universities, for example, sometimes i get hecklers and sometimes they disinvite me, but more often i watch the students, particularly if eye speaking at a business school they love the message you can do well and you can be prosperous and you can fulfill a higher purpose. that is music to their ears but the professors are very

skeptical. arms crossed and 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 in medical schools? who are the teach centers doctors. who teaches in law schools? >> lawyers former lawyers. >> two teaches in business schools? >> well, not too many businessmen. >> not business people. intellectuals teach. intellectuals who have never actually been in business at all. it's very interesting. and who don't actually understand business, don't particularly understand entrepeneurship and can often times be hostile against the very thing tier teaching. that's a particular challenge. >> yet how many people do you employ? >> about 100,000 now. >> 100,000 people with jobs. that is valuable, live live

hood -- livelihoods, and that's a greater contribution to human flourishing than universities. i'm a former welfare administrator so i lived off people providing jobs. haven't couched on. when the economy was strong and retail and grocers that hired low skilled workers were hiring, that is the best thing we could have. >> so let me be clear. capitalism, or actually i prefer mccloskey's word, innovationism, innovationism is the greatest thing humanity has ever created. and if you go back 200 years ago when -- innovationism was beginning to pick up steam, 94% of everybody alive on the earth lived on less than two dollars a day. 6% made more than two dollars a day and athlete today's dollars.

today that under 10 publishes. the average live life span 200 years ago was 30, now it's 72.6 and advanced countries it's closer to 80. ill literals see rates crete the plant about 88% and now they're 12 pitch. i if you've reed steven pinker's become you'll see documentation after documentation about how much the wolf has progressed 68 it has been science and technology combined with innovationism also the entrepeneurs took the scientific discoveries and operationallized them to make our lives better. the greatest thing that humanity has ever done. business people are north the villains of the story. they're the heros of the story the entrepeneurs are the ones that create great progress, and now they're universally vilified for the most part. look at the studies and look at the polls, people don't trust business. they think business -- because their mow vacations are wrong.

business is greedy and exploit tatetive and only care about making money and can't be trusted. it corrupts the critical culture. fundamentally bad thing and we're seeing a move toward socialism because capitalism they've see is inherently corrupt. that's wrong. capitallively is the greatest thing we have if done. the enemies of capitalism put out a navetive that its wrong, inaccurate and doing tremendous damage to the minds of young people. we have to counter that, and conscious leadership is to counter it. >> and that -- i think you're right and i think we have to -- i also think we're -- the victim of our success. when thing goes bad, we have socialist policies take over and the mark -- unemployment goes down to where it's been in the past or people long-term unemployed. all of a sudden people will read

realize the benefit of a glowing and prosperous economy. >> what we have done the last 200 years has never happened before. humanity for the most part had very slow progress, and that's because business people were basically so regulated the jennie never got out of the bottle on the enlight 'ment so the intellectual went neutral on business and so maybe there's some good in this. and then we exploded and now they're trying to if the genie back in the bottle and we'll stagnate and begin to regress, and i'm not sharing the whole technologyical civilization will collapse but it will start to decline gradually. if we put in these green new deal policies, start to see us go backwards.

so that's -- >> you're really looking at the longer term trend, not caught up in this election or this crisis but you have mentioned covid a couple of times, and i just wanted to get your sense of where we are in the communities that you're stores serve and your sense as a large employer and business person in america. are we -- and your observation of the farm soviet union cal industry and -- pharmaceutical industry and others who have moved quickly to develop a vaccine. do you see the light at the end of the tunnel? and the other thing is i hate to ask you a sort of mundane business question but i was -- i thought that some people in the grocery business, there were some upticks during covid because people were eating at home more. does that not happen you your business. >> no. our sales are way up. don't -- the media reports

things wrong for two reasons about whole foods the first one is that our transaction count in the store is down. traffic counts or down but it's two reasons. whole foods does a lot of business in prepared foods. office workers coming in for lunch and with offices closed down we didn't get the traffic. so secondly our online business has tripled since covid. they've gone up 300 percent. so, actual sales are up -- they're way up and just inaccurately reported. so whole foods has done well during covid and i think all supermarket changes have done well because restaurants -- people have made a transition temporarily, i believe, to not eating out as much, eating a lot more at home and that's been good for supermarkets. all of the, whole foods,well, kroger, publix.

>> you have been able to adjust to covid restrictions and government interventions and what you're view on that? >> well, i mean, first of all whole foods has a duty and responsibility to keep our customers and team members safe. so actually very proud of the fact our company was out in front of this and i'll say partly because amazon pushed us hard to be in front of it. he wined up -- we have been recognized in a couple of different publics as the safest supermarket in america during covid. so most people have copied 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 terms of infolkses and the number of people that have died. they're relatively small. and -- you know, let's make no

mistake, it's been a very difficult year even with our sales up. everybody is wearing a mask. everybody is social distancing. whole foods is a very huggy culture. nobody is hugging. you do elbow order you kick feet and that's not the same. and people aren't socializing at much, so i say whole foots made a lot of cultural deposits for a number of years. in 2020 they've been making withdrawals on those deposits. >> two more questions. one is in your book you say that you like to hire -- promote from within but you deposit like to overdo that. there's a percentage you like. i think 80% or maybe 75% because you felt that bringing people from outside adds a bigger -- invigorates the culture. tell us about your hiring and choosing team members. >> so i mean, it's a balance

between -- if you only hire from within, that help -- if you only promote from within then that -- that really enhances the culture in the seasons that people know if they work hard they can rise up and get ahead, and because whole foods has been growing, it's been a great place of opportunity for people, since the founding of the company. so i've watched people start out and work up and it opportunity require a college education to make a lot of money at whole foods. you can rise through the ranks but if you only promote from within you'll stagnate. not deing enough new ideas, enough innovation from outside that is sort of helps ferment the innovation and creativity. on the other hand if you promote too many people from the outside then people begin to think, gee, you can't get ahead in this company. the way to get ahead is work somewhere else where you will be

more more greatly appreciated. so 25% are promoted from outside and 75% from within. that's been the right number but that can vary with other companies. >> i told you before i wanted to ask you a thanksgiving question related to the underlying pbs, and your market for healthy and wholesome food. we have had a tough year but we are going to have thanksgiving, and with may have gathering that are smaller than but still have gather little with family. what's the product or food you as a mainstay at your table? and that you would recommend to those putting together our menus for thursday. >> i may be a bad person to ask simply because i'm plant-based. i'm vegan. >> i know that. i wasn't thinking you would say turkey but that opportunity --

we all eat vegetables or -- what is your go-to dish? >> what's my go-to dish? generally is a bean stew with a ton of vegetables in it. that's my favorite -- >> that will be only the table at n95 mask your family. >> absolutely, with -- a lot of beans and then a ton of vegetables from sweet potatoes to broccoli could cauliflower, whatever veggies are in season. >> well, i hope you have a great thanksgiving and thank you for all that you have down, and thank you nor your book and your guidance and your leadership and for participating in this conversation this afternoon. >> thank you -- >> do you have any final words or anything else -- anything we milled you want to say? i always like to give people the chance to say if they feel there's a message they want to convey.

>> i want to convey message of hope, that we are -- america has gone through a difficult time, and we're not nearly how to it and not going to be through it anytime soon, but i'm a student of american history and we have faced bigger challenges than this one, and we stumbled our way through it but we have gotten through it and i thick we'll get through this one, too. maybe it's going to take a few years, maybe longer, but i do think america has a great capacity to renew itself and sometimes we're best whence our backs are against the wall, and we're forced to make changes. we're forced to mange reformations, and i -- there's a great underlying love of the country by americans if think we have seen it in this election cycle, and i'm very hopeful about the future. even if i'm not particularly

hopeful about the short-term future other than i think we'll get past covid. a year from enough we'll be past it and we'll -- a lot of our normal behaviors will return which is a good thing. stop being so scared. that's good thing. >> i think that's important. have to live, have to go forward, and we are going to get through covid and thanks very much for doing this. really appreciate it. >> you've bet, robert, thanks for all aei does, you're a great organization and i'm happy to sport you. >> thank you very much. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2. every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. booktv on c-span2. created by america's cape with company. today we're bright to you've by these television companies who provide booktv to viewers as a public service.

>> tonight. >> assisted in plans for the white house and just capitol build joe scarborough describes harry truman's efforts to prepare america for the cold war. mike gonzalez talks identity politics and our views at the modernization of the snottiest damaging american of the senate is damaging america, and the struggle between the u.s. and china in southeast asia. all starts tonight at 6:50 p.m. eastern. for mow information visit booktv.org or consult your program. guide. >> for thank you joining us. marc la mont hill is here to discuss this new