then in the sum of us, former heather mcghee examines the cost of racism for all americans. and wrapping up our look at some of the best-selling books, according to indy bound is how to avoid a climate disaster. microsoft cofounder bill gates thoughts on climate change and his approach to possible solutions. some of these authors have appeared on book tv and you can watch their programs any time at booktv.org. ♪ ♪ >> common wealth club of california. i'm john zipperer the club's vice president of media and editorial and cohost for today's program. hope you are staying safe wherever you are and hope to see you in person at the common wealth headquarters in san francisco. until that happens, we are doing all of our programming online. this is the latest in more than 360 online programs the club has

produced during the pandemic. you can find all of our upcoming programs as well as podcast and video from our past events at commonwealthclub.org. if you're watching live on youtube, use the chat box to submit questions for our speaker today and we will work some of them into our conversation. now, we want to introduce michelle meow, producer and host of michelle meow show. good to see you again, michelle. >> great to see you john, and thank you for joining us and thanks for the club for bringing the incredible thought leaders today. our guest today is a new york city day's writer, screen writing career began abc in 2018, previously he worked at google in the youtube and people's operation division and as a tech entrepreneur. he has since written and cowritten tv series and featured films with collaborators spike lee, morgan freeman and will packer and pieces appeared in

new york times and teen vogue and here to talk about the latest project black magic. his book, let's welcome chad sanders to the program. chad, thanks so much for being with us. >> yeah, thanks for having me, i'm grateful. >> so i'm just going to go ahead and take a page out of your book and ask you to run through the geographic thoughts from your childhood and what the focus was for each and every one of the thoughts. >> oh, wow. there's been many stops. i was born in alexandria virginia. the first place i lived was silver spring, maryland where i was raised by my parents and i had an older sister who was 3 year's older than me. we moved from part of the city that was closer to washington, d.c. when i was 6 out a little butt further in the suburbs to very sort of americana cul-de-sac, you know,

single-family home neighborhood and that's where i lived until i was 18. i went to college in at will nota, georgia. i'm sorry, the purpose of each of the stops, in alexandria the purpose was to make it out of the hospital alive. in silver spring the purpose was to, man, as a kid, i don't know what the -- -- felt like every day, every moment had a different purpose. i had very regimented and structured parents in terms of the way they parented us and so there was sort of an urgency of each hour of each day it seems sometimes. sometimes it would be practicing the piano, sometimes practicing basketball and sometimes cub scouts and studying for school, reading, we were generally given about 30 minutes of tv at night which sometimes would, you know, we would get to extend to an hour if we were lucky, but the

purpose of my childhood in many ways was it seems like my parents wanted to expose me to anything that i might have an affinity for or a gift for and teach me how to attack that, you know, if -- if it were something that i was inclined towards. when i got to high school, i think it's when i really started to reconcile with or reckoned with my race and my racial identity. i certainly was aware of it well before that but it -- it felt like something i couldn't necessarily -- like i didn't have any choice over how i brought myself to it. in high school is when i really started to become a little bit resistant to the whiteness of arts, suburban upbringing. college i went to school in atlanta georgia, i went to hbcu

called moorehouse college and the purpose was there to have fun and grand jury wait. i think in that order is probably how i -- ohio ostomiest myself to it and the school and the neighboring school in the university were also hbcu's and they, all three of them were very intentional about teaching us as young black people that we were full people and that we mattered and we got to sort of choose who and what we wanted to be. and then i got my first job coming out of moorehouse at google and so i moved from atlanta to oakland is where i lived in lake merit and, you know, i took those funky google buses up and down, i guess, that was the 101, i can't even remember now, but down to san

josé and silicon valley every day to mountain view headquarters and my purpose there became to be whatever google wanted me to be and i was the culture of silicon valley companies like google is so -- all encompassing and sort of enveloped my entire life at that time as a 22-year-old so far away from home and friends that my purpose was really just to be a part of the club however i could. every company has a club and it's the people who seem like they are on the right track who feel like they set the social dynamics who feel like they get promoted, who seem to understand how things move around and so i was such a fish out of water in a cultural way that my purpose just became how can i -- how can

i get in the club and how can i stay there and that was painful but i'm sure we will come back to that. i moved within the company, i moved geographically from silicon valley to new york where i worked out of the chelsea office and i moved to london as a part of the people operations and youtube teams there in london and then back to new york and i left google in 2014. i went and worked at a tech start-up that was based in wall street actually and -- and then i moved to berlin for -- for half a year to -- to launch an initiative for that company and then i came back to new york and i've been in new york for basically the last 9, 10 years since then. >> talk a bit more if you would about your father and your mother but in particular in your book you tell the stories about how protective he was of you and

how very important it was that he pas onto you certain things about how to survive. could you talk a bit about that? >> yeah. i was grateful or i should say i'm grateful now but i was fortunate to have both parents in my home. my parents have been married for over -- i want to say over 35 years now which is -- is unusual in some regards and also tremendous blessing. i think as a kid it can be -- it can make some things tough because it's hard to get away with stuff. it's hard to hide stuff and it's hard to fake certain tasks or emotions or whatever it is because you got two sets of eyes who really understand you and really know you keeping a watch on you and in my case i had an older sister who, you know, now she's my best friend but at the time we kind of went back and forth between being allies and nemesis in some regard, so my

dad was -- he came from such a different background than i did. he was from detroit city. he grew up in the city, i'm from is suburbing, he guy up the 50's and 60's and i grew up in the 90's. his father was in the military, his mother was a nurse and they -- they were four children in the house, he slept in the kitchen with his brother in a roll-up bed. i think resources were pretty spare but they -- they were regimented also, because they had this military influence and they had, you know, they were making it work in the city as a black family in that time and i think, i'm guessing, when we moved to the suburbs, a little bit more whiter, my dad had it in his head to keep a close eye

on how i was growing up on where i was and who else had their eyes on me. he as you'll learn in the book, he would follow the school bus to school some days to make sure that they got actually there. he would watch my basketball practices from outside the windows sometimes. he was very kurt at some of the neighbors, white friends in the neighbor who want today come and get me out of the house to come play and go into their houses and there were specific rules how i was to engage with our neighbors and kids in our towns and one of the rules i wasn't supposed to go in white kids' houses without his supervision or my mom there or someone. another one i wasn't supposed to wear hats in the car when i was driving my on own and radio over a certain decimal level and trained me when the police pull you over, be polite, yes or no, sir, be respectful, just angle

your entire disposition and your spirit in that moment into getting to the next moment, like getting out of that circumstance. and never give -- just do what you have to do to avoid giving the police control over you more or less, meaning don't get arrested. and those are some of the, you know, the thing i should say about it is he never delivered these messages with melodramatic intonations but there was frankness about them. my father he's not a big talker, he's not a small talker, he's pretty direct and clear and trying to make sure that i could survive living in the suburbs which i think is an irony which i don't think white people understand. we believed that the suburbs are a safe place to grow up and they

were in a lot of ways for me. they were -- it was a joyful childhood in a lot of ways but i also came to understand early what eventually i would understand in a much darker and more serious way which is that white environments can be very dangerous for black kids. yeah. >> speaking of your dad and just kind of there's a different set of rules or different sets of recommendations in how to survive the white world, there is a quote i wanted to read and ask you about in which he asks of you, what do you think happens to black boys who grew up having opportunities in this world and you mentioned the question, well, when you were a kid my question is, kind of how is that change as far as your answer as a kid. maybe you're more curious how to answer that, like what do you mean and now as an adult, as a

black man i'm sure that you have many answers to that question. >> yes, so one of the ways that my dad and i really connected was he was a division 1 basketball player and he was my basketball coach for most of my life until high school and even when i had a new coach in high school, he was still a very present figure in the sport for me and he would always dissect my games, watch videos and talk about every decision i made on the court and so the context of what he was telling me was, he, i guess, he saw me being passive in a game and i was being overly differential to the other players or whatever and some of that is just my nature of how to play the game. like i -- i am a team player offensively, right, but in that moment he saw i was open and i didn't take the shot and the truth is in some points in my life as a young, you know, athlete, i -- i got -- what's

the word? the -- the yips, i would be afraid to sake tern shots and some of that because my eyes were bad at 13 and i couldn't see the rim that clearly anyway. it was true, what he saw in me and, again, this is sort of the gift of having hyperaware and hyperpresent parent. he noticed what happened in me. like i was -- something scared me and so i didn't add boldly and if i fast-forward throughout my life after he gave me the feedback, i really stopped letting fear control my decisions about whether or not to act boldly especially in a career sense. all of, you know, everything that is happening -- like this is scary right now. putting my first book out and talking about it to strangers and, you know, standing behind it as to say this is the

representation of my life and my story that i believe is true and that i want you to see. it's all very scary and i think all of us can probably relate to the fear we feel constantly when we are stepping into a new part of our lives, a new part of our careers and i think what my dad want med to understand at that time and what i now i understand as an adult, those opportunities are not infinite especially for black people, especially for most minorities. so i did not have, you know, i couldn't defer and pass on big opportunities the way somebody else with different privileges might be able to and that was the lesson, that's what i took out of it. >> a lot of teenagers go through rebellious years and consciously try to step away from their parents and reject some of their values and such, was that different from you understanding

that, what he was teaching you was both survival and success, things that he cared very deeply about? >> no. it doesn't different for me at all. it was worst for me. i mean, i was -- i am a -- i don't even really love this term. i can't be a defiant person. i have -- i have -- i have authority issues, i guess, is the way to describe it. i question and pick at authority and other people making decisions for me. and i don't know if that is how i was born, i don't know if that's genetics or if that is a response to having hyperaware type a, you know, present participants. i don't know which one of those is true but, even though i knew and understood that my dad loved me and my mom also and that's

why they were so influential and so present, it didn't stop me from also wanting to carve that space to make my own decisions and and i think, you know, frankly even now in my early 30's, that's something that -- it's a part of every decision that i make especially with people who are older and wiser, is that i want to experience the adventure of making my own decisions and getting them wrong. like i think that's where the art and creativity is. it's in some of those wrong decisions that you make and the ways that they ruffle, this clean little path that you have, but wise people who care about me always want to help me make, quote, unquote, better decisions and so it's a -- it's still a struggle. i think that one thing i learned from the industry, from silicon

valley, it is there have been many great companies that have had tremendous success that started off as some bad idea that didn't work and if the founders of the companies and entrepreneurs of the companies had listened to someone who said, that's a terrible idea, it's never going to work, they might have been dead in their tracks and we might not have the googles and ciscos and linkedins and ubers of the world. and the same is true as a writer and as an artist. if at any point i let somebody tell me that's not the way to go and i just listen to it and it kills my idea, then i can't make anything and the reason why i even bring that up is because it can feel sometimes as a black person that the walk you have to -- the tight-rope that you have to walk is so rigid there's no space for those types of mistakes that you learn from that stimulate creativity and build amazing things.

>> you talk about racial duelty with each of your interview subjects, the black leaders featured in the book and in my mind, i had experience similar experiences of racial duality but i didn't know that that's what it's called. what is racial duality? but in my mind, it's -- it's everything let's say as -- as surface level as my inclinations, the way that i talk, the way i pronounce certain words, the way that i dress, the way that i make eye contact and the way that i give a handshake. any time i change those things

to make someone and specifically often to make white people more comfortable or more connected to me, that is a form of creating a duality in myself. it's presenting to them or performing a different version of myself and then when i, you know, different group of people. not even necessarily black people. but let's just say, you know, latinx people or asian people or whomever, and i bring a different version of myself, then now i started to create -- there's this duality in who i am and how i'm presenting myself and i think, you know, the gift of that is it's built on an exercise of observation and empathy which is to see someone, create some understanding of where they come from and how they see the world and sort of give them what they might be asking for and what they might want out of that and that's an important skill set to have in

product development and sales and marketing. the danger of it is you can lose a ahold of who you actually are when there is no audience, when there is nobody on the other side looking at you and telling you who they want you to be by the way their posture or talking to you or listening to you or not listening to you. so that's what racial duality is to me. >> you mentioned little while ago, discussing your life and the lessons that you learned is kind of difficult. in the beginning of the talk you also talk -- you talk more than -- somewhere in the book you mentioned you talked more than 200 people in this book from all walks of life, some of them are big games and most celebrities aren't willing to take such risks. why do you think black celebrities wouldn't want to -- is it the fear that it would

make them look bad in the eyes of their supporters or of, you know, white culture, scrutinizing them and what is your thinking? >> well, i think it can be bad for your bank account to upset white people. i think it can be -- if you're a public figure and you are also often available to people's criticism through social media or just by walking on the street, you can -- you can incite unpleasant interactions. i don't fault the famous people who don't want to unnecessarily create those reactions, i blame -- i blame a society that isn't ready to listen to the truth about what people have experienced or what people have gone through racially in their

lives. i think on the other side of things, i really admire and celebrate the people in this book who are also leaders across industries, tech, finance, religion, science, academia, activism, media who these people also have, you know, they have white clients, they have white colleagues and have white subordinates and wide audiences to keep in mind and yet still i was blown away by the blow torch that people came with to share these experiences, everything from suicide attempts to because of how terrible it felt to be black in certain places to being called by close friends at get-together to quitting and leaving industries altogether as

i did because you felt like who you are doesn't fit, so i think in that regard the celebrities could learn something from people who have real jobs. >> firing of ai ethnic researcher and that culture was like. i'm going the read a quote here from one of the interview subjects. i didn't feel comfortable enough being black which is one of the main reasons why a lot of blacks are successful in tech companies especially google and amazon because they don't feel accepted into the culture. the culture is not made for

them. it's made for the masses of the white majority. yeah. let's talk about that and what that means. i think for many people you think about google as a global huge company, they represent everybody. i admire people that do long tweets and talk about experiences because that's scary to do. what i will say is that while my experience at google did make me -- i did feel that way. i did feel like this is a club that feels like ivy league fraternity in some regards, i -- in doing the research for this book and in getting to know

other companies and frankly in moving into another industry that operates very similarly, this is not a google-specific problem although google is in some ways a shining star that other companies want to emulate. i don't think google created white guy nepotism. if we look at the tops of these companies, we know only 1% of fortune 500 ceo's are black and we know many of these big companies like google, facebook, jp morgan they do diversity reports every year and generously less than 6, 7% of their employees are black. there's a problem. there's an issue. and every time i go and do like a corporate talk or every time i go and talk to a company about

my experience as a black person working in corporate america, i try to go do research beforehand. especially if they're a public company where i can find all of their information publicly. i go look at the ceo, cfo, cpo, whoever, i go look up the majority shareholders and i go look up the founders and it's usually a group of 5 to 15 white guys, maybe with a white woman thrown in that runs hr or a black person thrown in who works on the legal team or whatever. and these are generally companies that have the issue that think bring to every conversation where they say we go and we hire black people and we just can't figure out how to keep them, how to help them move up the company, how to perform highly, it just doesn't work. and it feels clear to me that the issue is that the people at the top don't look like the people at the bottom and so

there's no real energy to try to move them up and further and further into that prestigious clubhouse. so the -- the irony or i guess the conflict that i always feel when i talk about google is that i learned -- i learned how to work at google. like, i was able to take what i learned there and apply it to this other industry which is supposed to be so hard and so challenging and so like tough to get in and the systems and the way the thinking and the ways of being creative and the ways of disruption that i learned from that company google really have been a tremendous help for me, but i still -- i must be honest, i still am resentful that i felt like i was always an outsider trying to be a part of the boys club and it just was never going

to happen. >> you mentioned the statistics of low-levels of big tech companies as well. there was a moment where silicon valley seemed to have a come to jesus moment, low-diversity level and they are making all the giant promises a few years ago and then the next year the stats came out and they were little if at all changed. your book -- and you even have part of the book saying who is this book for and it's not written to the ceo of -- of google and amazon and such but what , you say you talk to the companies, what do you say to the c suite people, you don't look like the people that you're trying to attract, what other things so another young you come to the company would have had a better experience? >> in my opinion, the only thing that's going to make sustainable changes is to change what their

board rooms look like, to, you know, the most provocative thing i would say is step down and name a successor that looks different from you. of course, nobody is going to do that as they say in sports, you don't fire the owner but my -- my point of view is that's -- i don't know -- i don't understand. like is it human nature, is it inurtia and people that look different to that, i don't know the answer to that but i know at this point feel like it's true. that that is the case. so my message to them would probably fall on deaf ears because it would be to say, get rid of one of your friends and replace them with somebody that

looks different from you. my message to people who have a toxic environment or toxic relationship with their employer, the same that i would give them if they have a toxic relationship with a spouse or -- or a substance abuse problem. it would be get out of there figure something be and this book is meant to be written in such a way that i'm offering what the tools and tactics they already have are that are going to help them if they do decide to get out or if they want to stay and try to navigate and the short answer to your question and it's unfortunate is i don't think the people want to hear what i have to say. >> we do. [laughter] >> no, staying on the topic, last summer after the death of george floyd a lot of people were waking up to the racial injustice and all of a sudden

you had large corporations or organization that is were announcing that they were hiring or they were promoting an african-american person or that they were donating large sums of money to racial justice. i'm not sure what that actually means or what that entails so i would love to hear your perspective on -- on -- on, you know, what happened, what transpired with all of the companies now who seem to be, i guess, the word is woke and if you feel this is all -- is this progress? is this, you know, finally they are going to do something about this? >> progress. i have such a confusing relationship with that word right now. it sometimes feel like the opposite of completion. it feels so incremental. i'm a millennial. we do not like incrementalism.

we like -- we like this idea that something can just be done, like we want to be the ceo of something, we would go start something. referencing the report that you just mentioned, we all now -- no one can deny this this is a problem, that this is a representation problem in these corporations but awareness is not the same as change and it's certainly not the same as progress. in some ways it's a little bit more humiliating to know that we are all aware now that this is an issue and yet -- and i don't -- i got to take a a little of the honest of all the managers of top of netflix and who works

at the bottom. i'm not going to pay attention for to the them in a second. the leaders, the people who own the company, the majority shareholders, the board, the executives, that's the company. everybody else is a practitioner, everyone else is a steward of their desires, so if they wanted this thing -- if they wanted it fixed, they would fix it. that's it. >> one of our audience asked, so you worked in silicon valley and europe and you were working there differences in culture between the two? >> i love -- working in google london was one of the most enjoyable. it was like the most fun i've ever had. some of it. when i worked in berlin i was there by myself. we didn't have an officer. it was small start-up. it was me wandering around

berlin and that was awesome too. at london, in london, i -- there was something -- i did find a few strength behind my voice, there was something to being a black american in another country where they certainly had preconceptions of who and what i was, probably formed mostly by a couple of people that they had met that their lifetimes and tv and movies and music. it felt like they liked me more. it felt like i got to sort of define for them who i was and it felt like there was more of an open-minded curiosity about that than a let's see if this guy is going to confirm what we already know about this type of people. there was freedom.

i felt -- i should say i felt freedom and i understand that there's racism in every country where there's race and i don't mean to say that that's the experience for everyone that lives in the uk that looks like me but my experience was i felt -- and maybe it wasn't even truly treatment or weightlessness but i felt like the first weightlessness that i felt since being at moorehouse and i started becoming myself and that changed me, that made me -- i keep saying this word but it made me bolder. it made me come back to the united states with a different energy about how i was going to do the things that i cared about and the -- the truth is i ended up leaving the company because i came back with that boldness but i was not met with particular

receptiveness to that boldness and then i realized maybe this corporate thing isn't -- isn't for me. >> i want to follow up on that. you grew up around the washington, d.c. area. do you think that you would have either felt differently working in virginia, an area that you grew up. do you think you would have been more yourself from the start had you gone where you had friends around you and even if it was going after work and seeing your friends to talk about this horrible workplace or, in other words, how much you were restricting yourself because you

were in a completely new part of the country and away from your friends? >> the separation was definitely a factor and not even the separation. i had the time of my life in london but silicon valley has such a crafted and in many ways sterile and monocrome texture. god, i feel bad saying these things to you guys, but like it is -- it felt like at times -- at times it felt like a frat house and felt like one big craft beer and so it wasn't so much as just the separation from people who i cared about as much as it was also i did not know i should say how to access

anything outside of that silicon valley culture there. it didn't feel like i could reach it. i would wake up in the morning at 7:00 a.m. i would get on a google bus at 8:00 a.m. i would travel down to mountain view and i was at the office eating all day because there's free food there so i never left the campus until i left at 6:30, got back on the same bus to oakland, got off the bus at 7:30. it was nighttime and i would go home and, you know, hang out for a couple hours and go to sleep. so in a way it was -- it became my life. it became my world and my value was whatever i felt like it had been at work that day. that was it. >> you asked some of your

subjects in the book what they would say to another young person stepped into leadership or actually any young black person, you know, watching or listening to you and reading your book and you talking about finally not giving a crap and being bold and being yourself and all of that lead to breaking free and becoming very successful, leaving silicon valley and then to, you know, getting a book deal, a movie, t series, lots of young people would say, i want to do that. i want to be just like you, what would wow say to the young black folks who are saying that to themselves right now? >> i would say the most important thing is to be just like you which is to say, leaving -- i don't -- i don't recommend everybody to just quit

their job and try to do whatever they think is cool. i think -- first of all, it's important for me to mention also, i had -- i had a couple very scary years after i left corporate america where my income was sparse. i was living with not very much. i missed birthdays and baby showers and weddings and i lost friends because of that, because i was making decisions to invest everything in this journey to being a writer. that would have been stupid if i wasn't good at writing. that's what i'm trying to say here, be honest with yourself about what your gifts are. i have been writing since i was 3 year's old since my sister

taught me how to do it. it wasn't like i quit and tried to be a professional trombonist. you can do something if you're great at it and if you're willing to sacrifice and invest in it and the sacrifices are real. like i said, they are in some cases friendships, they are time, they are some some embarrassment, they with living with very little, they are dating while having very little. so if you are willing to do all of that stuff and if you have a gift which i'm sure you do and if that gift lends to what you're trying to accomplish, then i would recommend it because it is a cool and fun way to live but it might take a couple of or longer.

>> one of your father's rules that you relate in the book is, quote, don't get your sense of self-worth from depictions of black people in the news, popular music or popular television and they will destroy you. i assume he was referring to the negative and depictions of black people and so much of popular culture, what about positive depictions? the importance of that and representation on the screen and politics and movies and such like that? >> well, the irony is that i write screen plays for a living but i wasn't really allowed to watch much tv and i think the lesson there, you know, i still don't watch very much t all of the time for my time, have you watched this, have you watched that. i'm a snob about it. i watch the stuff that feels to be like the consensus best stuff. i watch the sopranos and i watch

game of thrones and i watch wire and whatever is worth those hours and i don't put that much of my attention into other things until lately just obviously for promotion i haven't spent a lot of time on social media. i don't mean that to be holier than now but my parents trained my eyeballs not to be fixated on screens. i don't think you should let anybody else's creation define who you are. positive, negative, however you want -- however you want to evaluate. i don't think we should lean on other people's crafted images and writing to craft our own identities. i'm trying to think what are the positive depictions of black people in the media.

i mean, in my opinion, honestly, most of it comes from supports specifically the nba which i think has a very positive -- positive image at this point in time. but i -- i see the way that stuff gets made now, now that i'm kind of under the hood. i see who makes the decision on what gets made. i see how often those decisions are made based on dilution and lowest common denominator and how can we reach the most audiences and i think it's very dangerous for anyone to watch tv or instagram or tiktok or facebook and think that what they're looking at has much of anything to do with who they actually are. >> on that note, i loved what you wrote, your article in time

magazine in talking about, you know, black being trendy, black content. >> here it is, you're a good person, you're not racist, you're watching all of the films. it feels like i'm cheating in a way. but, yeah, i would love to hear you just talk again about what you meant in your -- in your article, all this content may come at a cost and kind of what we should be mindful of that while it's great, it's great that the studios and the companies are now wanting the continent and undoing racial injustice. >> yeah, they want to content because it's hot and they want

it because it's -- it's pop culture right now. they want it because people are clicking. and these people are middle managers, they make very, very unsophisticated decisions. so my warning to myself and others is i would avoid being siloed as a creator of quote, unquote, black content. while that is lucrative right now and while i would advice grabbing the money while it's there for me personally i think it's important to use that as a foundation to a much more diverse portfolio of media creation than to get siloed as this person makes black stuff.

i think if i could use an analogy, i think about diversity and inclusion departments at big companies which are primarily seen as call centers by the people at the top of the companies and when budgets get tight and when things -- when winds blow and sort of the company has to make decisions about where the budget cuts happen, where people are getting fired, a lot of times the finger points to those dni departments that are not serving the bottom line and if you're completely reliant on somebody good will and wanting to do, you know, wanting to do charity for your paycheck, that's really dangerous and so i see the same thing being true about what feels like this new fervent, you know, passionate investment in black content in media. that's real and that's happening

and people are getting paid from doing it. i just -- i wouldn't anchor my entire ship on that and that's why i personally -- i also don't -- it came up in a conversation yesterday. i wanted to be clear, like i'm a writer, i make -- i make tv, i make movies. i make media. i'm not an activist. now, if my art serves activism, that's great. but i think we have to be intentional and specific about these things because what is valuable to somebody today, tomorrow can be a nuisance to them and they will dismiss you if you don't serve the bottom line anymore. >> let's talk a little bit about the book. now it was released 2 days ago officially, right? >> that's correct, yeah. >> so talk a bit about -- you said you've been writing for

pretty much your whole life. what was it like and when did you make the decision to not only write a book but to write this book and how did it come together when you were reaching out to talk with and easier than you thought it would be or harder, what, tell us about it? >> so i had the vision for the book. i was 26 maybe. i was working at the tech start-up on wall street. the name, you know, the double of it all kind of hit me out of nowhere and it's one of those things that when you have a vision, i could see the whole thing and i had no idea how to make it actually happen. i didn't know how the publishing industry worked. i didn't know about getting a book agent and all these other things. all the other parts of the sequencing but when i wrote my tv pilot, i -- i got signed by

wme, the agency, and you go in to a big room that has a big wooden table and i sat down and like all of the executives came in and one of them was a book agent and i -- then it was like, oh, okay. this is one plus one equal twos and now i have the other faculty not just for writing screen plays but if i want to do a book, if i want to make a documentary i have professionals that know how to do this and my book agent, i pitched the book over my phone and she jumped on it and you kind of just know by someone's reaction if it's something, you know, and her reaction was like, yeah, this is something. so i -- starting in 2017 i set sail over the next 2 and a half years after we signed the deal with simon and shoester really interviewing anybody who i thought had an interesting or admirable job or career path

that i wanted to learn from and i reached out to a zillion people through all different faculties, people i knew, people who i didn't know. friends of friends, family, whoever, and i got around 200 conversations out of it and the 15 -- i honestly would say just like the 15 best went in the become and that's to say the 15 that felt the most honest, the 15 that spanned the most emotions in the storytelling and the 15 that i thought i could take clear and specific identifiable lessons and tactics from, those are the one that is i put in the book. what i was looking for, i again, i started when i was still trying to be the ceo of a big company and that vision has changed in the means that i want to approach it but not necessarily in the goal.

but i was asking questions that i needed answers to myself. i didn't want a book like the secret, i didn't want to write the four agreements and something that was spiritually satisfying but not executable in the same way. i wanted to write something in the four-hour workweek to be honest. i think that combination of applicable identifiable specific and traumatic happy, sad, scary, funny is what i ended up with. >> which is the title, black magic. you know, one of the things that i loved about the book besides getting to know you is that it validated the lived experiences of black people in the workplace and so as we are winding down on

time, i think that we have to talk a whole lot more about these things. it really shouldn't be swept under the rug or -- or, you know, even people who are not black in the workplace. it's happening, you're witnessing it. shouldn't talk about it but that corporate world is pretty scary and you're scared of losing your job. so if you wouldn't mind just talking about the importance of being able to speak about your experiences, to validate what you're going through and kind of how you navigate the workplace going forward as a black person. >> i think as any person, it is enlightening and stems creative thoughts when you see that other people are going through what you're going through and you see how they navigated. you might not take the same exact steps, maybe 1 through 3 and 7 through 8 can be the same.

i had a conversation with a 65-year-old white guy whose family lost their 17-year-old daughter to cancer a year ago who said i read your book, i'm not black, obviously, but damn, if i have an experience of trauma and it's helping my wife and i think about not how we are going to get through this because, i don't know, but how you get through it, how you can look at what you went through, the pain, the suffering and the heartache and take what's going to be helpful to us and valuable moving forward. that's what this book is about. it's the opposite of consumerism. it is how do i use what i already have and if you're black which you already have is like liam and taking a particular skills an tactics from navigating craziness and urgency and death around you and fear and this boogie man that you're

not allowed to be happy and be self-activated and if you have gotten through all of that just to a cubicle or a pitch meeting or college a job, whatever you're doing is powerful to get there and you need to know what it is that you've done so you can use it for your own devices. >> i love it, john. >> this is not the question but just kind of along those lines, do you at this point in your life, do you feel your success? do you feel you're being able to do whether you're succeeding at a specific project or not, do you feel that you're doing what you're meant to do and you're doing it in a fulfilling way. those are two different questions. i think i'm doing what i meant to do because i've been doing this my whole life.

ray lewis used to say about football, you -- you pay me for saturday through -- you pay me for monday through saturday, sundays you get for free. i was getting paid for, you know, going and working at hr at google but like what i would spend my free time doing was this, writing, creating, trying to do this other stuff. now that this is my job, quote, unquote. this is like breathing. i've been doing this since i was a little kid so it feels natural. it feels like a fish swimming. so i don't have to question whether or not i'm meant to do this, i know that much. now am i a success? i'm probably getting a b plus today, i got an a plus yesterday. every day the question is

different. did i do what god asked of me is basically the question i ask myself sometimes and the answer varies, but i -- i think -- i think i am a success today, yeah, i think i'm doing the right thing today. >> i think you're a success and i love the book. i think everybody should grab a copy so do it today black magic by chad sanders. chad, thank you so much for being here with us at the common wealth of california. >> thank you, this was great. these are stimulating questions. thanks y'all. >> so john, you have the last words. >> ly take the honor of thanking chad sanders for his book. the book black magic like we said just went on sale. if you actually have books in bookstore in your neighborhood, i'm sure they have it as well. check it out and you can find

out more about our upcoming program at common wealth club at commonnualclub/.org. >> thank you. >> book tv on c-span2 every weekend with latest nonfiction books and authors. funding for book tv comes from the television companies who support c-span2 as a public service. ♪ ♪ >> book tv on c-span2 has top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. tonight at 9:00 eastern, beginners guide to america for the immigrant and the curious. journalist roya reflects on her experience as a refugee from iran. and then on sunday at noon eastern on in-depth, two-hour conversation with science writer

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