novelist, tony morrison. in other news pan american has announced finalists for their annual literary awards. this year's nonfiction nominees are andrea elliot invisible child tya miles all that. she carried reuben miller halfway home sarah shulman let the record show and clint smith how the word is passed. the winner will be announced at an award ceremony on february 28th. and christy mclane executive director and industry analyst for npd book scam predicts that print book sales will fall this year after two years of growth. she cites the potential rise in the price of books supply chain issues and a change in consumer behavior as reasons for the slide book sales were up 9% last year with over 800 million print books sold. book tv will continue to bring you new programs and publishing news and you can also watch all of our past programs anytime at booktv.org. good morning. my name is sam abrams.

i'm a senior fellow here at the american enterprise institute and a professor of politics and social science at sarah lawrence college here in new york. i'd like to welcome you to the american enterprise institute and another edward and helen hints book forum event. simply put american journalism today is under attack in this age of intense polarization many major news outlets face pressure to push so called politically correct narratives under the guise of objective unbiased reporting. so the question for today is has the so-called fourth estate the institution that's largely responsible for checking the government providing information to the citizenry and so on fallen prey to a rising pressure from the woke or the pressure to be woke. today bacha angar sargon the deputy opinion editor at newsweek says, yes, she has a fourth coming book. it's a great cover. i know we're not supposed to judge books by their covers, but this is a great cover called bad

news awok media is undermining democracy dr. angar sargon chronicles the radical shifts in american journalism over the last few years and what it means for democracy as a whole. i'm looking forward to exploring this with everyone today and to help me do that a number of guests first. bhaja unger sargon is the deputy editor of newsweek before that. she was the opinion editor of the ford the largest jewish media outlet in america, and she's written extensively for places like the new york times the washington post foreign policy today in a few. she also holds a phd from the university of california at berkeley and when her book comes out in about a week go get it. it's fantastic. we are also joined by virginia heffernan who is currently contr. are at wired she's the author of magic and loss the internet is art. she's been around the tech world for years. i look forward to talking to her offline more at tech. i was around during web 1.0 and

2.0 at palo alto amazing times and so much still to be written about that before joining the staff at wired. she worked for the new york times and is currently not been columnist for the la times. she also like batches a phd and this phd is from harvard. she likes to say that she stumbled onto the internet in 1979 when it was in the back office thing now it's pervasive and i can't wait to hear her views on this. and finally thomas chatterton williams who's also a fellow with me at the american enterprise institute a columnist for harper's magazine and a contributing writer for the new york times magazine. he has influenced quite a bit of my thinking and my students thinking his memoirs health portrait and black and white. i'm learning race created. i would say at least three two-hour seminar. he did sets of exchanges with my students and i thank you for that. it was just such a provocative

wonderful piece of work. his essays can be found all over the place and including the best american essays anthology, mr. williams has his ma in cultural reporting and criticism from nyu and his being philosophy from georgetown. and i just want to step back and say for a minute. thank you about you for joining us here at ai. i've noticed a lot of chatter of late and in social media about ai and universities or we do we care about viewpoint diversity or we're bringing in people we disagree with is there really enough diversity of thought and i want to say that i am consider vacha friend. we've known each other for a number of years now and i think and that's what we're in your mouth, but i've heard you refer to yourself as a lefty and a socialist many times. and i'm none of those things. i'm much more conservative than that. i think we're both probably jewish but socialists. no way. i think the wrong you can talk about it not today. but whether i agree with you or not your book and your ideas are so important. your insights are so important

and at ai and just like i think what university should be and just like thomas is wonderful letter that you helped spearhead for a harpers which unfortunately was slammed. i will talk more about that later. this is what you know discourse is about this is about bringing people together have different views different ways of seeing the world and great we disagree, but i still respect that. i admire her consider her a friend and want to have you know you at a table when it's safe, you know to hear your views and we can respect and admire each other and disagree with each other. this is something that's being lost in the academy. i talked about this all the time in my own writing and something that i i've seen ai be accused of recently and i would say that's just the opposite at ai we value ideas and opinions. we want more speech more opinions more debate more dialogue and thank you about you for being a socialist and for joining us and being willing to join us at an institution where our focus is on the enterprise

and market as elevating the world. so it's just kind of amusing but i think this is exactly where i think tanks hire at and and you know, basically what we should be doing and with public discourse and then i think this is a virtue that being said i'm not 100% today little under the weather. so let me do a brief introduction and throw it to our our really thoughtful and interesting guests. so butch's book makes the argument that quotes today's left has by and large abandoned the working class to fight a culture war around issues of identity instead of building an agenda around the needs of actual working-class americans have all races which tend to be more conservative. the left today is pushing a highly rich issues rooted ivy league universities. i was there watching that like wolfness and cancel culture and anti-zionism an open borders things that are really alien to most working class americans americans no matter who they vote for. and budgeting in this book says there's an institution known as the media and they have taken on

the following view quote. it is the belief that america is an unrepentant white supremacist state that can first power and privilege on white people. which is systematic, excuse me, which it's systematically denies to people of color those who hold this view believe in interconnected network of racist institutions infects every level of society culture and politics imprisoning us all in a power binary. i hate binaries personally based on race regardless of our economic circumstances and the solution according to those who hold this view is not to reform institutions that still struggle with racism but to transform the consciousness of everyday americans until we prioritize race over everything else. if you look what i've written i obviously think this is a flawed view but body it takes this view on is saying this is what's dominating newsrooms today, and we've shifted from a world of blue collar tradesmen if you will or trades people to now an elite profession where these

individuals maintain this view and that is why we see a woke news system that we have today. so i'd like to have pause and ask baja. um, how'd you get there? why did you write this book now and walk us through if you don't mind how this book came together and this view came you put this view together. so first of all, thank you so much to aei for having me. thank you be for organizing this event and sam. thank you so much for your thought leadership and your commitment to intellectual diversity. i'm so honored to be here. i also really really have to thank virginia and thomas, you know, my book is at times scathing, but i tried very hard to maintain a sort of generous reading of people are pushing the woke narrative because i think a lot of people do this from a place of really really wanting to see a better world. and virginia is often my model for that. i picture virginia because it is impossible to picture her doing anything for any reason except the best reason and and thomas

you aside from the intellectual leadership. you show you have brought a moral leadership to a very very difficult time and difficult space every day you show up on twitter, which is the most horrible place and you are kind to the people who are the most cruel to you. and so i feel so deeply honored to be in both of your company right now and to be here talking about my books. so thank you both so so much. how come my book exists so i would say that they're sort of three primal scenes at the heart of this book. the first is when i found out about a 2018 yale study. and the study found that there was a difference between how white liberals and white conservatives spoke to people of color and it found that white liberals dumbed down their vocabulary when talking to black and latino people and that conservatives do not and i remember thinking to myself

there is a sickness in the worldview that produces that behavior and again that behavior clearly comes from a misguided place of you know wanting to help right wanting to be good wanting not to embarrass somebody by using you know, like, you know, six syllable words or whatever, but it's sick. it's a sickness and i remember having this moment of clarity that you know, it didn't like blossom into my full-blown worldview yet, but it was definitely a moment for me of like, what are we doing here that that has happened to us and then we are calling the conservatives racist when they're the ones who don't do this. so that was sort of the first primal scene. i would say the second was learning about the the deaths of despair and the of mobility among the working the working class in america particularly the working class that's being lost by democrats and lost by the liberals the idea that people feel so hopeless that they are literally killing themselves with alcoholism with drug opioid overdoses and with

suicides and that those are the people again who are being shown the most contempt by the liberals these people who clearly are losing out of the american dream and yet who somehow our side my side the lefty side has become okay with that because of what their political views are and i would say the third primal scene is one that sam you are actually there for which was i tried to write a different book actually and i put in sell it and that book was about american unity. the polling has shown say is make change on the right around a host of issues that are really at the beating heart of the liberal worldview issues, like sexism and racism and lg. who writes we just are not divided along those issues anymore the left really won a lot of those cultural battles and yet nobody knows it and nobody talks about it. and so i wanted to write a book called a more perfect union about how united we are as americans around the most important issues at stake in american life the values this

nation was founded on finally where united around those issues and i couldn't sell that book. nobody would buy it editors kept saying to me who is the audience for this and finally a very kind editor sat me down and she said look, you know, nobody's gonna buy a book telling them something that seems so implausible if we're so united. why do we think we're so divided right that book and and i think that's sort of the the book that i did, right. hmm so so virginia if you want to jump in on that, i mean by all means please or i can start with some problems. whatever right? first off. i i well, but it is my constant interlocutor. we have to tip our hand on that. so i've refined lots of my thinking conversation with her heartily agree and i think before you wrote this book we agreed about this hypothesis of yours that we have a more perfect union. i'll give you just one example

in spite of the you know books bestseller book bestselling books called polarized. i don't know if you are following anyone is following the vaccination rates in this country, but for 65 and over it is 96% have had at least one shot. so we've talked a lot in the in the so called media about anti-vaxxers and people willing to die for would be libertarian politics that seems if we define anti-vaxxers as people who wouldn't have a one shot of the vaccine that is that represents 4% and shrinking among people over 65. so look we're all getting the vaccine. we've discovered in spite of some tussling over these new bills that people were willing to vote for income all our representatives willing to vote for an enormous, you know, bailout bill during ent and

social services social programs built in the form of the two relief bills during you know things that richard border used to say some of these things are decided under our feet so you can have a huge debate about you know, something like racism writ large or you can have a huge debate about the welfare state, but the debate goes on and then the and then and then the the tectonics plates move without us even thinking about it. i will say that the on the subject of racism and who really knows exactly, you know what that designates now, but but i was listening to clarence thomas now what now 30 years ago almost 30 years ago 25 years ago his his heart his defensive himself against the charges leveled by anita hill and they were you know, we we remember that he said high tech lynching, but he worked out that metaphor so powerfully using rope as an

analogy analogously to the cameras that he felt he under the pressure of and and at that time even people like jeff sessions were really taking pains to guard themselves against charges of racism. incidentally. no one criticized clarence thomas for using this idiom to talk about what was very much not a lynching ending in the death of a black man, but it was very powerful and i think his defense partly worked because there was a shared idea that that racism had been, you know had destroyed especially especially virulent exterminationist racism like like we saw during jim crow and slavery was a touchdown for pain and it touched on for pain that we all could agree was pain, and and i think that is slipped away some way it's a certain amount of doubt that is crept in around

even certifications of like 20th century suffering that we used to all agree on i mean the holocaust is a great example was the touchstone of meaning for for most of us interested in the history of europe for in the 20th century and and somehow of all things instead of sort of being in different to the suffering. there's been an element of doubt about the suffering and you know, i'm i'm reminded of this great line from a landscary that i can't and i can't get i kind of can't get out of my head. i hope i hope you'll spend a minute thinking about this. she has in the body and pain her book the body and pain she has lays out an epistemology around pain and suffering and her argument is to have pain is to have certainty to hear about pain is to have doubt. that even in a small way if someone says i have a headache

there's a little bit of skepticism that creeps in where if you yourself have a migraine you yourself have lime disease syndrome, you yourself encounter, you know, have a have a fearsome allostatic load as as jason johnson calls it because of the racism you've suffered that seems plain as day to you, but the pain of other people including those with -- life syndrome or with or with you know, we're suffering from diseases of despair or addiction as i suffered from for a long time. you are absolutely sure that your pain is not only you know, beyond unimpeachably true, but that it takes precedence over the pain of others and and i think that there is, you know, a willingness when both both sam and bhatia talk to say that a certain kind of pain. let's say let's say religious

discrimination and bigotry is real or classism is real. those are that that's a kind of suffering that feels palpable to you where other kinds of suffering say this alistatic load that lots of you know what you might call would the two of you might call wokes like jason johnson say they suffer from is somewhat less somehow less real or the suffering of the people the followers of jordan peterson, you know, the the sort of right-wing folklore expert who's become a her. to young men. you know, he he has and i think some people on the right who you quote in your book including connor. is it sorry freeders? so remind me of his last name bhatia we do stuff, but i don't think he identifies as on the right. well, i think identifies is a liberal. yeah, right. all right central left. i think he's libertarian. okay. well, yeah, well, who knows what these names mean anymore, but but who's certainly objects to

some kinds of identity politics? maybe he calls himself my direct least favorite thing a classical liberal. that's my least favorite. i think i i prefer the romantic or jazz liberals, but in any case he he has said very interesting thing about about jordan peterson. who also i think a signatory to the harper's letter at least a sympathize with the harpers letter. no, okay. um, he that jordan peterson instantly also a pill addict says that possibly the followers of men like him feel that they're suffering lies in their fear of of death their fear of, you know, not needing their reproductive potential these kind of existential fears that that belong to white men, you know, if hamlet or if if winston churchill or something is our paradigm. he's suffering is real, you know, his suffering is real and

the rest of our suffering deserves a little bit of skepticism. well the jordan peterson followers see themselves as plenty troubled plenty upset and dislike that the suffering of black people are say women or or you know, other marginalized groups -- is less important is somehow less important or less real than that suffering so i get that the suffering that class suffering is real. i mean i class race and gender were the three ways, you know, you slice stick slice and dice experience when i at least was when i was in graduate school with the constant conversation about which one came first and it is just a tedious conversation and i think grounded in this epistemology that a landscary points out. sometimes people refer to it as the oppression olympics. has it worse, right and what i what i might come down to is it might come down to is that i

think that the media and i still am confused about what counts as the woke media. i think i'm the only one here is worked in a newsroom and it was very hard to see evidence of that somehow are the work of you know getting the story about a hurricane and in houston with somehow inflected with you know, something like okayness, which still again, i have a hard time getting a definition on but i i mean, i really didn't know how people voted at the new york times when i was there. but sorry, it's lost my way a little bit, but the you know, i guess the point is that we're supposed to accept that possibly by sam someone with sam's politics a kind of pro capitalist pro free markets person that's suffering comes in the way that the hero of the fountainhead suffers that they're too many critics who've

restrained his awesome freedoms, and you know, something like peter thiel another critic of the whoopes who says, you know that there are certain kinds of imaginations that are inhibited by this kind of we idea of we and and yet sam you're reference. you know, i think is jermaine your reference to that you and bhatia share religious commitments religious commitments that i also have is, you know, another way of saying that it's not an entirely individualist project. for you or an entirely individual's project project for for really any of us and yet we have individual suffering so that nobody takes seriously, you know, i mean or at least nobody fully accepts as powerful as there as they're suffering, so i guess i what i resist in bhatia's argument. and some idea that the complaints of the road the wokes and as i say this aloe alice

static load is one of them that you know the idea that racism causes some wear and tear on the body that you know, your regularly confronted with racism and that, you know actually hurts your body and you can certainly say that victims of me too incidents sexual assault and so forth have actual suffering in their body. you don't have to imagine it if they've been heard or bruised and and you know, now we're being asked to imagine that the suffering like let's take let's take the the argument that the newspapers or the the media is anti-zionist that the suffering of -- in europe that gave rise in part to the to the jewish state is somehow more important than needs more more inks build on it than the suffering. of indigenous people in the us or indigenous people in in israel. you know, i don't or whether or

not they are indigenous. i mean, i don't want to get into in the into the weeds, but i think this is conversation about suffering. i wish for frankly that the new york times still had its neediest cases division part because we do need some touchstone to imagine what a kind of group suffering looks like and i think you know currently if it's a sentence to imagine that the allostatic load enforced on people from systemic racism or during a jody camper's reporting on the meet on the harvey weinstein thing that there's some kind of unique suffering because of gender bias and and assault gender-based assault in the workplace. these are we go through periods like this and i think that the kind of certainty of our politics lies in the certainty of what we see as pain and being asked to imagine religious religion-based suffering and it is more important somehow our class based suffering. is more important than other

kinds of suffering is just another way of slicing and dicing the polity and and i'm not sure represents, you know, more or less progress or even a very robust critique. thomas and he thoughts and response that was a lot to take on sure. well first i want to say thank you for such a wonderful introduction and thank you, but also and i'm just gonna i guess i tip my hand too. i identify as a liberal, but i i have a very strong interest in kind of dialogue and exchange and mutual understanding and the attempt to forge new alliances with people from other camps who share similar values or are trying to achieve a similar world even if you don't agree on everything and i should also just say that i just really thought by this book is really persuasive and and was really thrilled to blurb it.

but you know, i i i think what i'm hearing is some of what virginia was saying, i i disagree with just because i think i start. from a very different premise as a descendant of slaves of american slaves whose father is old enough to be a grandfather and who grew up in the segregated south under jim crow. i don't actually think that my suffering is most real i have always profoundly been aware that actually in contrast direct contrast to my father's life. my suffering isn't so significant. and actually i think that there's a lot of what i tend to hear among i guess i would call my elite peers at top tier media platforms and really nice universities that you'll pay off for decades if someone doesn't pay for you what i hear from them. is a kind of complaint and a kind of catastrophization that

seems unreal to me because i compare it to something that i think of as being much more real than what i find myself or those i encounter in my meal. yeah dealing with so i just want to flip that and i think that what about you really? is getting at in her book and it takes a lot of courage to write a book called bad news and to kind of go against that kind of feeling of triumphant moralism. that is everywhere found at top-tier media platforms now, i mean, i wish you could write a book called good news because i actually think that that would be true or to what we're experiencing, but we're not allowed to admit. so that's that's kind of i guess the how i would just start off and would love to bring back it back in. yeah. well, i think to me the thing that came up for me while you were speaking, virginia. and again, thank you so much. both of you. this is just thrilling is that i don't know that my book is about

suffering i think to me the problem with today is i really think that the rubric of using something emotional or personal like suffering. to measure what should be political? is a huge part of the problem and to me is very much part of this kind of like meritocratic elite. um, you know used to be called bourgeois right like the idea that the things that happen in a person's heart are more important than what happens outside in the real world in the political realm. we have personalized and privatized politics. and and i think that that is one of the major problems and and it's not a reason i think we should move to a class based model. i think the reason to move to a class based model is because so many working class people are people of color and they are being ignored by both parties, and i think that the woke

language is it sort of it? it's a masquerade of social justice that makes affluent people feel like they're doing something when they're actually not doing something. so to me the idea of a class based politics a socialist politics that you know prioritizes the needs of labor and the working class really is about combating, you know, the vestiges of racism and the ways in which we have income gaps from a place. that would actually be more real and more political. so to me the focus on who is suffering. i take your point. obviously, we all feel you know, our own stuff or you know, adam smith made that point in the theory of moral sentiments right when you see someone about to hit somebody you go right but the minute they hit the person and the person doubt you go. mmm, doesn't he crying a little bit too much, right? yes human nature. it's a really good point, but i think to me the problem is is the focus on suffering as opposed to the focus on solidarity and coalition building as thomas said and and the idea that there is a

political realm a public realm beyond our personal, you know private striving that matters more than what is in each individual person's heart. and that is the thing. i think we've lost in america. we've lost a sense of the public a sense of that. there is a place beyond our individual needs and beyond our individual scope that matters that's worth like not insulting someone on twitter because what if you know, you could find something in common with them and actually create a larger coalition that is actually multiracial and and just i think thomas has really opened our eyes to the what the polling shows which is that a lot of the woke ideology is very foreign to working class people of all races including the majority of black americans and latino americans who continue to vote for democrats for historical reasons a lot of them justified, but i guess the point of my book is in a way, you know, the that the liberals have stopped doing

anything for them in return so it's kind of a response to thomas frank's book. what's the matter with kansas? in fact when i wrote the proposal for this book, i was calling it. what's the matter with liberals? and so i think we do share a lot of commitments to what you know about questions as well. what are the biggest problems facing america? it's just a question of how do we achieve those those goals? but yeah, i want to hear more from both of you and if i could just chime in for one second, you know it it's i actually agree with you budget completely on this that if you go to a college classroom and an elite school today, it's all about identity and it's what i call the victimization olympics when you meet people they're going to tell you. most of factors about themselves that usually intends to transmit some sense of harm. i'm this therefore. i've been hurt this way. i'm that so i've been hurt that way and when i introduce what i first meet students, i reject that immediately and say that's fine. i don't care about your gender your race your ethnicity any of

that. let's try to find something that we can all agree on you know, who are we as a class? what are we here to do collectively as a community, but you know, i i, you know troubled by the idea that the the entire woke framework demands taking on this this sort of mantle of victimization and in doing so makes it harder to find unity makes it harder to move anything sort of for makes it harder for us to to recognize our potential and i say elite schools because like with your book and you know what i liked about it is it does show this transformation from sort of the working beats from the small local newspapers right to to sort of these much more prestigious jobs, and if you take a look at who's getting them nowadays, they're people who come from elite judge, you know journalism backgrounds or have to do sub stacks or whatever without having to worry too much about money at this point. i'm research shows over and over and over again that and this is work we do at ai that that those students from more lead backgrounds are fixated on identity politics fixated on race ethnicity culture and that

victimization and when you go to less prestigious schools with students of lower socioeconomic backgrounds about just point they don't care they don't want to talk about it. they're there to learn they're there to get the skills and they're there to move on and this is sort of this big cleavage. we're beginning to see and and i agree that the the democrats don't know how to play it and they're pushing harder and harder on this identity politic thing the republicans have some ground to gain here if they would talk about the bigger macro picture of unity, of course, they're struggling with that a little bit as well. but i think to botch's point we're seeing this play out not just in newsrooms, but we're seeing it happen on our jesus gen z, excuse me undergrads and you know just basic population around the country now and it started millennials and it's certainly as prominent with the gen zers today. i don't know who we're talking about when we talk about the elite just as i don't know quite who we're talking about when we talk about the loke. i mean the elite. i just reviewed a very good

biography of peter thiel and peter thiel designated as elite, you know, obviously like like all of us he he was from the elite he was at stanford, but so someone that might be identified as elite by, you know, any joe i mean any relative of mine it usually the person using the word elite to criticize to criticize other people. i think the working class in general calls elite the ridge and and but okay, so i'm reminded of a when i was first writing about the internet and you know, just to put all cards on the table, you know, i think it's not wokeness or even any trend. and in the media with one exception or even the rise of donald trump that have changed everything, you know, if i were gonna if i were going to point to one, i think there's like a

matt groening column about an old academic old academics and what they're like and the one that he zeros in on is the one that says he who controls magnesium controls the earth. so if i if i were gonna say what is my sort of one thing i would say it's digitization that is enacted a kind of insult to brains. and and so and we're still still grappling with what's been done fragment a fragmented our languages and and thrown a lot of things up in the air for good now, but okay once again, i'm letting my way this is so immensely interesting. oh, yes, so when you know some of the few the few times i was brought in for real breaking news at the new york times was one of them was when saddam hussein was was executed in in iraq and the new york times had reported that his last words were death to the zionists and death to america this great

enemy of the west and and look at that. he was mad at exactly the same things. we thought you would be mad at this is what iraqi officials told the new york times. well, i don't know if you remember this but a video snuck out probably by you know, a an iraqi onlooker who had had brought a camera and should have should have had a pull-up surprise for this kind of reporting and managed, you know to smuggle it out and it was the first time first time i ever saw gallows, you know, and at the time i was carefully monitoring some very unsavory sites on the web live was the one formerly called ugrish that had like very disturbing video from iraq and and this thing leaked to it and i what i called bill keller than the editor to say, this is not what happened. his last words were not a death to zion to the zionists and death to america.

they were mustafa mustafa mustafa, right? what? why was that the last thing on his mind? it was the last thing on his mind because mustafa was his enemy integrit where he grew up. i think you might see where i'm going with this, but just we're in the elites where we wish that we were at war with with another class. but but in fact we're just at war with each other. we're just sorry but like someone in our, you know class at harvard, you know started to complain more about or at sarah lawrence complained more about fact that she's been date r then about you know structures in the free market or other things that we think should be determining her life. i mean, you know, i don't know when undergraduates. we're not completely self-obsessed with drawing a connection between the ways they grew up and the things they had endured and great social trends. they just don't have much to call on right and and you know,

i just finished. i'm also just finished rereading god and man at yale the william buckley one of the first anti-woke treatises in 1951 and buckley. and it has two major plants now. this is an all white all male. student body so he's not complaining about anything. we might call political practice. he's complaining the second one. you're gonna like sam. the first one is nobody's christian enough that even the you know, many colored members of the clergy who are his professors are allowing for a little agnosticism in the classroom and not just that they're not religious or they're they're not open to students, you know, jewish students or other other historically marginalized jewish populations that they had professing that jesus christ was the son of god on a regular basis in economics classes. so wow, that's a big thing and the second thing he thinks is if

they've if they've shunted god to the side they've made a god if someone else he objects to sam ready for this remainder pains maynard cains, right? that's his other main objection. i mean, i'm not sure that anyone even in the elite no matter how we define them remembers exactly who maynard keynes is except that we're always being told where kenzie is now and are we keynesians and kids may have something to do with collectives. i'm not sure. he's an enemy of your samurai. i'm imagining you. know no good. we agree on way too much then but that we you know, we've always are classrooms you know that people. derivative are too liberal in our classrooms, and then try to make the stuff a cause out of that, you know, he likes saddam hussein still fighting his little like sharks and jets battle with someone from to crete. i know i'm doing it. yeah, you know, i know i'm constantly thinking that people i just like must be to the right of me and must be, you know,

noxious end of the world and it's important always to design my ideology so that it has certain people in its sites, you know, and certain sentimental people, you know a sentiment vision of the people that i that i you know, i don't know thomas if you imagine. a relatives of yours who suffered under segregation the way that i imagine my appalachian relatives, but i definitely will take some time to tell you that it's west virginia that's been left out of everything and that all our resources should go to senator joe mention because those are my people and i have like something that you know, some sentimental attachment to them more than sentimental some actual attachments. so i think the maybe we can talk about what the definition of elite is. i mean, it's laughable how the four of us, you know meet the criteria for the professional class and for you know in our education and i think we're turning on you know, some of our peers that rub us the wrong way

and passing them off as political arguments. i completely agree with bhatia that these things turn into like little skirmishes instead of you know, especially enlightened conversations about what we might do with politics, but no the rosebud idea of you know, what about that sled from citizen kings his moments in our childhood whether it's in college high school or even yes, absolutely still define us. i'm so we're getting a ton of questions coming in. so before we do that, i want to just ask thomas a question if you don't mind it relates to a comment that bacha road and you had written about yeah, i like this you write journalists who descent from this worldview ie, they sort of work worldview have learned to keep their mouths shot for face massive public century and humiliation. those jobs and those jobs are few and far between i think that certainly the case in higher education in my own world. i kept my mouth shut for years until i had tenure and and shortly after tenure. i said something to the new york times and boom, you know, i had death threats a couple days

later and my office was vandalized and song. so what are we to make of this? how are people to speak out and thomas? i am so impressed by your willingness to speak the way you've done it and it seems and i i hope i'm right about this that you're you're writing continues to flourish even though you may not be you know in line with these newsrooms and some of these outlets, so please keep writing, but you know, how do you see this in batches comments on people who, you know sort of differ deviate from the norms, so well that you know, i it's a complicated question because you know, i think that you have to if you're going to be a writer or if you're going to want to think publicly then you really can only do that because you believe that there are things that are correct or there are ways of describing the world that are truer than other ways and you would you would

need to do that and need to say that regardless of you can't position you can't make your positions fit what you think the the industry wants to reward? otherwise, it's not worth doing it. i think i think it would be an unbearable job and it wouldn't be the most remuner from unit remunerative work. you should go do something in silicon valley with peter taylor something and know this touches on what both about your and virginia were talking about what is an elite? yes, peter thiel is certainly one sort of elite, but there are multiple elites in the in a complex society like america and culturally and oftentimes they're very angry and probably internally seething because they're more refined. they have more more culture. they have more education and they're so less well compensated than a kind of uncouth vlogger

elite and oftentimes these you know these two types of elites self-sort and our binary political system and you know, you know, it's true that there's a cultural capital that writers and media people participate in but it's it's a legit oh should we lose it? i'm sure i'll be back. okay, i'm sure he'll jump back on. so while he jumps back on let me just ask one final question to the two of you. you're better so i don't i'm not elite enough to have a stable internet connection. i don't know why maybe well that's a structural solution. but yeah, it doesn't have the same level of tech yet, or is it the socialist government in france that limits exams keep indicator here, but i have

health care and and daycare. but you know like to your questions sam. i don't want to give that short shift because i think that i probably have been penalized in certain ways that matter, but i can't prove it. but how can you ever talk about the fellowships that you didn't get the you know, the the opportunity? we're about to get it at princeton or somewhere that then for some reason didn't happen. even though someone told you it was coming your way these things happen all the time, but they also happen for reasons that don't have anything conspiratorial behind them. so you just don't know i mean one point david remnick said to me that how can cancel culture really be that important because you know, you see you wrote for me and you've been for other places and it's like that's true, but first of all, there's no guarantee that tomorrow i will continue to and also, you know, i think that i'm really honest i have an identity that gives me some amount of cover.

it's just enough, but i don't but and i mean that i'm actually not right. i trace my ancestry to one of the primary oppressed groups. so i'm allowed. begrudgingly a little bit of latitude in what i'm able to say in some of these venues that that i don't think i would be able to say if i didn't have that kind of i a standpoint authority. in the way that the the way the conversation works today. i do just want to point out that virginia also knows that she lost many opportunities for writing a piece about her belief in god from the right and so it's just so interesting always talking to virginia because you have had that experience that i think a lot of people experiencing now, but from the other side of the political aisle. yeah, actually that that was from the left. that was oh that's right. that's right. you're a scientism. yeah what i what i saw a

scientism and and did amount to me going to income zero and job retraining and marketing. i had to leave journalism, so i don't know about the i don't know. i mean, right you can't calculate the opportunities you've missed but but in this case, you know, i was at yahoo news marissa mayer explicitly said, you know, she felt humiliated by this piece that had been, you know warmly welcomed by readers of yahoo news. in fact, i was given a lifetime family past to the creationism museum, but yeah, but the left labeled me hashtag worse than isis at least that was one of the criticisms and and this was in the heyday of the, you know, especially robust atheists, including you know, sam harris and and the awesome's crowd and and that was bruising on the other hand and sam. that's terrible that you're you know, these threats going kinetic that your office was

vandalized. i haven't actually had threats go kinetic, although the ones inspired by tucker carlson, you know the endless stream of death threats that i still get that are just so terrifying that you know, i mean terrifying sounding so cord is all producing that i i have called the police and the fbi about those but nothing is ever turned into actual bodily or harm to property so that's terrible to hear that. but yeah, i mean i i the far right and and i think thomas and i have this in common. i don't have a great deal of sympathy for for you know, the the crime family of the trumps and you know just not elected by the majority never a majority president never speaking to you know, it was hard to see who he was talking to. i mean, there's there's no american who doesn't think that

who there's no american who believes that when they're relative and in mississippi one in something like one in eight people is has had covid that really can maintain a belief for very long this thing was that the virus was a hoax. it's very hard to imagine that he was really talking to his constituency when he refused to get on and put the country on a so called warfooting and treat covid and so if mississippians who voted for trump were served by him they weren't so well served that he protected them from getting sick. and and that's that i think has been very. sad state of affairs as for trump ice themselves. i'm not sure they seem to be misrepresented in a million ways. but bhatia, i'll agree all i'll completely agree with you. you know, i gave you the statistic about 65 and over have had one shot of the one shot of you know of the of the vaccine

and they we might say well they know that they're like in a special threat group, or maybe they've managed to work around disinformation or something else. the short answer is they are all they all have medicare. these are the only group on the list who are actually used to having social services and in my efforts to persuade hand to persuade people to get the vaccine two of them said no one has ever showed concern about me before right, you know if you're used to getting help from your government thomas lives with free health and national health insurance bhatia and i agitate for it if you're used to that it doesn't matter if you're a trumpite or you believe it's a hoax all those things come out of being abandoned by your government that you start to find weird solutions, and and i think the solutions if we're if we're going back to politics and

away from personal experience. the solutions are the obvious ones and certainly some of them are are social programs that veered toward the socialist in my view. so, let me just ask one final quick question tobacca, and then we do have to open up since we have quite a few guests and that is i think a lot about undergrads. they don't always have the greatest attention spans. they mean certainly well if so much you know, and and i always encourage, you know people to read as many sources as possible on you know the way out we get to a newspapers delivered my three year old said, why do we have two newspapers? and for the first time? yeah. i said we have a liberal one and a conservative one and and he just said okay and went on his way, but you know if botch is narrative is correct, and i think there's a awful lot of truth to it. what are we supposed to do with our younger americans, you know, they're not necessarily going to take the time to read a hard copy newspaper.

there's certainly not necessarily going to do the work to read various blogs follow all the tweets necessarily, you know compare and try to find a clear. threat. so how do we move forward from this and then i'd love to open it up to some of the audience. um, so i think to me a large part of the problem is the class chasm in america that's opened up this sort of the meritocratic squeezed squeeze that has pushed, you know, meritocratic elites to the top 10% which is virginia how i would identify the elite and then pushed a lot of people sort of to the bottom and that college divide being both one of culture and one of economics, although those don't map perfectly to each other as thomas playing out. and i would say that i think that the problem one of the major problems and and again i want to take this away from who's suffering and more towards the threat to democracy. is that a tiny elite in america now has all of the politicians

speaking to them and all of the media created for them and there's nobody speaking to or for the bottom 90% to me. the problem is that we have put such a premium on a college education and robbed people who don't have it of dignity and that we we the educated the over-educated like everybody on this call like frequently show our contempt for those without a college degree while winning everything all of the political representation all of the media representation. so i would say the first thing we should we need to do is focus. that's why my book is so much about the dignity of the working class is it's really about balancing again about creating a countervailing force to the massive power of the elites today the highly educated elites on the left and the you know economic elites on the right and so like one of the things we can do is think about you know, what does it mean to start to respect people again who don't have that education and how can we institutionalize that respect these people don't want more welfare what they want our jobs that give them dignity that

allow them to play an active role in building up this nation, you know, they don't want to universal basic income. you know, they don't want to live at the beneficence of the elites. they want to be playing an active role in building up this nation by by working through the dignity of work. so i'd say the first thing we should do is like tell our kids when they're going to college like by the way, you're not all that for having this education like it's a different pathway for you. maybe this is where your gifts are are shunting you, but there is everybody deserves dignity, right? everybody needs to play an active role in building of this nation. and i would say the second thing is people have been asked me like where can i get good information? where can i get good news? and i think another problem we have is like it's like why do you have to know everything like why is it so important to know everything to know every minute of you know, like let's look at what's going on with the democrats right now like all of this finagling over the infrastructure bill, right and reconciliation bill like something's gonna come out of that. you know, it will have taken two months of like bitter infighting

and then they're gonna create like two really great bills and they're gonna pass them both. why do we have to be up on every single moment about that's culture war issues? you know that you need to know is such a culture war thing and it's just like just why do we have to know everything like, you know what i mean if something important is gonna happen, you'll find out about it and the moment when you are called upon to exercise your exercise your civic duty and play an active roam building up this nation going to vote whatever it is. up the day before i think that this premium on knowing and knowing the truth knowing the right thing is a lot of where we've sort of ended up. course is tied into that sort of college chasm. and budget. thank you for selling australian project on the dignity of work. the human dignity project is one of our major initiatives and thank you despite being socialist. you laid out a amazingly clear articulate case for exactly what we're trying to do. actually the excellent thing is dignity and jobs are also big words from our centrist

president. so it seems yes what we've pointed out once again that with central left president that we are all in agreement on everything that a more perfect union is is bhatia's real subtitle here, i think. and you know and we should point out that the you know, the current the current president who woke media seemed to favor was you know has support from the industrial midwest where there are a lot of working class people who, you know were not interested in hillary clinton who i know comes in for a special, you know special vtuberation in your book. and and i've come around to think that you know, neoliberalism was no longer serving this country, but the you know, we are in this moment where like trump has been defeated. we can't continue to talk as though you know, it's two years ago and and defeated by a president that you know, even sam has some views in common with absolutely. oh, no.

i have quite a few views in common with biden. that's that's certainly not a problem. so i i think it's mixed everything is mixed. which puts me in some troubles sometimes but it is also a great virtue which is you know, it's complicated to use the old facebook status update. yeah relationship status, but i did love this point. i mean, i i've never heard someone make that why do you need to know everything about it? that's a great point. i mean, i i tend to refer people to fiction if they're looking for i mean netflix or novels if you want to address culture drink from upstream where culture calls itself culture brilliant. yeah, really, nobody. i think you're absolutely right about that. and i know we have to turn to some audience questions. we just received one for everybody which is how do we define wokeness many ideas that were commonplace in the late 20th century are now universally considered racist or sexists by the political left and right

could walk ideology really just be ideology that is before it's time. i would love to answer that first and then hear how both of you answer that. i think it's such an important question when i say woke i don't mean agitating for police reform like police reform is one of my number one issues. i don't mean fighting against mass incarceration. these are extremely important issues. i don't mean the wealth gap what i mean by woke is the sort of candy view that you are either race anti-racist or racist meaning in every moment. you have a choice to be actively talking about race and fighting it quote unquote or to be complicit in it to me. that is a moral panic because it demands that it be there all the time that it be prioritized meaning that we put a person's race before their humanity. and and when i i'm specifically talking about what happens to this when educated white liberals get their hands on it

because then it really gets divorced from a class based analysis that could actually help people it gets divorced from things like police reform and it turns into slogans like defund the police that actually are very much in. interests of the highly educated liberal elite and so it's really about that sort of divorcing. fighting racism from the actual work the actual policy on the ground that working-class americans of color would like to see and putting it into the hands of a very highly mobile meritocratic liberal elite in a way that benefits them as and and really deep platforms the views of those working class americans. so again, it's really not about fighting racism for me. that's not what i mean when i say the media has gotten woke i mean that it is perpetuating a moral panic a racial binary. that is a power binary that gives all the power to the quote

unquote white supremacist white americans and takes all the power away from people of color, which is not how people of color see them and i think is dehumanizing and dangerous and dangerous for democracy. great. now, i really want to hear how both of you define it because this is something you could jump in first on that sure so i don't really like this term and i don't use it. i'm working on a new book. that's trying to grapple with some of the same questions, but i find that the term. uh for whatever reason is no longer used by any of the people that describes and it's only used in a kind of pejorative sense. and so like virginia said several times we're working with different definitions. you have to always state what you mean if you use the term because it might be misunderstood. so i it a really unfortunate because perfect word. it's it's the way it started. it really describes something. that people didn't see as pejorative.

it described not being fooled is the same thing that people on the right use red pill to connote in some ways. not sleepwalking through life but i think when i talk about some of the things that budget is talking about i try to use the actual too. so i i think you have to get more specific. it's a constellation of things that are often lumped together. like what is called anti-racism which would not be what previous generations of people would have thought anti-- the word anti-racism means but this kind of thing that candy sells which is a binary view of all policies all ideas and all actions. it would also have to encompass a certain kind of mainstreaming of very niche ways of thinking about gender, you know, they're coming out of judith butler and other other scholars. that is a part of what we put under the umbrella of wokeness. so are some political i mean some economic views that you know, people term woke socialism

and things like that even like a kind of rejuvenation of marxism and communism even so these things are all they're not all the same. thing but they oftentimes our clustered together under a kind of i don't know what's called an umbrella or something. it's it's not everybody subscribes to the prefix menu though. some people are welcome some ways and are not working others. so i think we really what this a long way thing. i think we need much more specific language if we want to actually get a conversation that gets to the root of what's kind of us all crazy. yeah. virginia oh, i love other questions that we can turn to. yeah, let's let's move to the questions. sure, an incidentally, you know from a professorial perspective. i just thomas couldn't agree more if it's doing use of the word woke i'd say that's not good enough. what does it mean? yeah, say what you actually exactly. i mean and that that is a

problem and i think you know batches done a pretty good job trying to define it but not defining terms from a social science specific perspective. i can't measure it and i have no idea how i would engage with it. and you know, i agree things are very very sloppy and and the binary approach the world is far too complicated have just a simple binary approach to any of this and in my view, so no, i i completely agree another question we have which i think i think we've all dealt with is the hysteria overwokeness and speech policing and the question is will it ever dissipate? when will we exhaust ourselves over this or really you one piece of data incidentally that because i am a dad a person that we've seen. is that the idea of cancellation is much more prominent among millennials than gen ziers the slightly younger crowd, basically 24 and under right now is lot less interested in cancel culture then they're slightly older millennial generation. that's a little bit of optimism. i have toward it where i think slightly younger americans

realize that cancellation is not necessarily a good thing about china has published a couple of pieces that i've written about that. i'm so curious to know what everyone thinks. about that question but i'm i've been working on a project with someone who is canceled and me too and he is interested in what kind of rehabilitation there might be and do i think that you know, he's the his like, you know, i won't say systemic, but you know there were maybe 10 women who were abused by him at a pretty small shop seems demonstrably true that they you know were were there were some quid pro quo just to keep it in political terms. there was some eeoc violations again to keep it in political terms not about individual suffering but things hostile work environment and he was said you have created so are you know, i'm interested in forgiveness and redemption as a religious person but enough

quite sure he sees himself as having been canceled that we want a world where that kind of cancellation is is somehow no longer allowed and and frankly, you know, i lost my contract at yahoo news because i published something that they that marissa mayer found embarrassing at parties that said announced myself as a christian and you know, she was the boss there. i mean people and and i had no kind of tenure it didn't violate anything. she could renew my contract or not, and and i'm not sure that cancellation was with something that we've wanna see disappear disappear even though it was my own. so, you know people canceled for i don't know anti asian slurs on twitter's several years ago, maybe if it creates see if it's decided that it creates a hostile work environment or there's a massive hemorrhaging of people who can't work for

this person because of her old tweets. i don't know that seems like the usual firing thing. it's the usual i can't work with someone. i'm uncomfortable with you know, i worked for michael eisner at disney for a long time, and he happened not to like working with black people and women in high positions of power. he just was uncomfortable around them and so he didn't hire them or he fired them if they were someone he inherited on the board and i don't know do we want to stop that kind of cancellation. that seems like very free market you work with the people you're comfortable with and people are no longer comfortable with people who have anti-asian slurs in there in their twitter. i mean, it's a cold hard world in the public sphere and and also there are some laws that govern the stuff. i mean i don't think any of you would like to see a world where someone who had sexually abused is sexually assaulted 10 people who work for him. wouldn't be canceled right defrost priests.

are they imprisoned priests being canceled? no, that's not that's another term that we have to define because i don't know a sexual assaulted 10 people is being canceled. that's just violating all types of laws, right and people that's not cancellation exactly. i mean, this is the person this i that's why i said he considers himself having been canceled than me too. and you know, there's certain people at the fringes who feel like they flirted aggressively with someone one night and they shouldn't be held responsible for that. so that's very different than an assault. but you know, right i think that's the slippers you right? it's in an example of what does it mean to be canceled and what is too much or versus too little, you know, i am not assaulted anyone on the other hand because i questioned identity politics people attempted cancellation, which is a totally different sort of narrative. you know, there was no does it mean they attend attempted cancellation was that an ai or sarah lawrence sarah lawrence? i still have my tenure they couldn't they wanted to get rid of it, but 10 years ago. i wrote an article based on data, but they didn't like that. i questioned certain things.

i gotta say. there was some there was you know. six seventies my father was an apna colleague of his had cancer and used this as an explanation for why she couldn't publish and it was publisher parish days then and it just seemed unfair to her that she, you know had to publish this book because she was sick and then to others it seemed unsympathetic of the chair to not you know, let her like not give her three more years to work on the book. these are just these are that's not conditionals. okay, but cancel culture are these limit cases where everyone can decide if the person was kind of well-intentioned or maybe they're not really difficulture actually describes something real that's really exacerbated by technological change. i think that cancel culture isn't just like losing out an opportunity or facing consequences being held accountable oftentimes. is that somebody advertently or oftentimes inadvertently

transgresses some as yet to be established norm, so i'm rapidly shifting norm is called out publicly in the new digital around that exists that we all have to navigate without rules or guidelines is called out made an example of an oftentimes their place of employment is targeted and that that institution then has feels a barrage and is unable to in the heat of the moment gauge how long it will last have serious is going to be in once the headache to go away and often doesn't do due diligence to find out what the proper response should be or if there should be no response as often, that would be the case and ends up just terminating the person or turning them into a kind of pariah in which they're they're pursuit of their livelihood is no longer viable. and then oftentimes just as often is not even more often than not it comes out that the person didn't even do the thing very accused of and yet. that story can never travel around the world as fast as the lie in the beginning did and that person is left with their

life in tatters. there are so many examples so when i went to incomes zero and had to retrain and marketing after the after, you know scientists. i think that that's what said about upset i thought we were not. supposed to talk about our experiences. i mean i think i'm not talking about their emotional experiences, but i think that sounds like something happened to you. that sounds quite unfair to me and i don't think that social media should be in the hr departments and on the mastheads. of the institutions one of the smartest proposals i have encountered recently was biology syrian avisan from coinbase said that people should put in their contracts there's a 90-day cooling off period that has to happen for their company can terminate them if there's a social media? tempest in the teapot, they just cannot react that they will violate the conduct of their react to quickly. i think that that would solve an

idea if i got coinbase the truth coming from coinbase the crypto platform i trade on. no, i love this idea. i want i want this in my contract now. i know i'm gonna like what the clothing off period that's fantastic. yes, things feel that especially hot. i think there's there's definitely like a thermal idiom there. i also i i mean for other another time, i would love to talk about awake and asleep as two different ways as thomas says woke and and not and also that strange participle that's akin to shook but i think comes out of black english. does anyone say ebonics but it is i yeah, i do. i got i got that was i had somehow i was being told by woke white blue checks on twitter that i was using an inappropriate language when i described myself as having growing up speaking ebonics. so i was i was educated my kind

of elite white liberal. you got it if you lived truth and they'll back down using that language and yeah. so before we run out of time, i wanted to kick it back to bacha just because it's directly related to your book and i know everyone has to go in a little bit. i can have quite a bit more time if we needed but i like this question because it's actually similar question to what i kept puzzling which is with news outlets being more selective if they can and cannot write and this is where editors are surprisingly powerful. i've pitched a number of things and and you know, if it doesn't fit the what the editor wants even if i'm very proud of the piece if the piece is something i've spent years working on in terms of the data behind it. it doesn't really always matter the question is to what extent are we going to end up with basically duality or a polarization of only right and left outlets can there be a middle? is there really an objective news anymore? you know, i when i visit the uk or used to visit the uk pre-covid what i loved about it was was that when i would check into a hotel if we're a nice hotel, they'd ask me what newspaper i'd like in the

morning and say all of them you move them all and i loved it sadly. my friend is not good enough to do that when have visited france, but you know, i like that they're not purely objective. they say here's our point of view and we're going to go with it. you know, we talked about the new york times as being paper of record, but it you know, as i think you've said in the book it's hard to be that if it's clearly has a particular bend an ideology to it. has there really ever been a middle. is there a demand for middle? will there be a nonpartisan or actually appropriate balanced news organization, you know, is there one left can we have one or we just gonna see this sort of of schism and this cleavage again? so, thank you so much for that question because it allows me to go back to the book a lot of what i talk about in the book is how what looks to us like a partisan divide is actually a class divide. and so if you look at the difference between you know, so i met i'm an editor so i have you know on one screen cnn and on the other screen fox news all

day and the real difference between them is pretty much aesthetic. it really comes down to whether they're picturing a working class viewer or viewer with a college degree. the data back this up, of course. everybody's following analytics about who's watching who's reading? i think a lot of what we think of as partisan ship or political divide is actually about class and that's kind of how i see the divide in our media. i think partisanship is not a problem. so long as everybody is represented so long as there's someone who's part is in for every group and the problem is is that what we have now is a conservative media landscape that has abandoned the working class economically and we have a liberal media landscape that has also now abandoned the working class economically, but they also smear at their values, right? you know fox news is really catering to the audience. but all they have to do is not snare at their values to have a captive audience, right? they don't even have to talk about their economic incentives, which i really wish that they would i start the book by looking at the sort of heroes of

19th century american journalism who were populists. they really believed that the point of the media the point of newspapers was to wage a crusade on behalf of or in the working class and of course they were also newspapers for the elites. it just didn't matter that every paper was partisan because every subgroup had its paper and you had the situation in the 1920s where there were so many communist newspapers in new york city that you would have people who had literally four communist newspapers that they would never dream of reading and these were communists right because they had the communist newspaper that they read and everyone else was so you know off base even though they were all coming this right and that's obviously a plethora of riches right the problem is that because of the pressures of digital media and i really go into this exactly my book all of the mainstream outlets apart from the object, you know, obviously conservative ones are going for the same that same highly educated liberal elites, you know that there and they can because they can track how much money you make and where you live and what you do for a living they can track all this

through data. they know exactly what to publish in order to get those eyeballs and that attention and i think that's the real problem is that it's not that as part isn't it's that all of the media is part as an on behalf of either the conservative elite or the liberal highly educated elite. that's the real problem here and you know, the only way that i think people can fix that like, you know you readers like, you know people who need, you know want to get the news you're not gonna be able to change the new york times like the only thing you can change is is your heart rightly. the only thing you can change is how you respond to this news and i think that a point i make repeatedly and i'll just end with this is that if you're reading something on the internet and you feel that surge of adrenaline of rage you feel like enraged someone is making money. someone is making a lot of money when you feel that feeling and you i would just urge people do not let your heart become the place where somebody else's buck is being produced by making you hate your fellow american you

have complete control over what happens in here and and i would urge you to take that back that control. where so the fight let me just do the final question then and i love this one. so where can they go for genuine lee nonpartisan journalism. where can people go to not have that rage to seek out news whether it's a lot of news or a little news, you know, just something and then go, you know find their your non-political space as you like to talk about to sort of get a break from this sort of stuff. you know a democracy is built on having intolerance right on having a muscle within you that joys in encountering the views of people you disagree with so, i mean that i mean, that's really the key is like you have to exercise that muscle in a great way to do it is to read outlets that you disagree with. of course, you have the ones that are catering to your views, but if you can find ones just like you do sam that are catering to other people's views. read viewpoints from people you disagree with even better go to synagogue go to church go volunteer meet people in real

life who you can disagree with because we're losing that muscle and and without it we're finished right where we will no longer be a democracy. got it, like really quickly. i would just say, you know, which publications i think harper's does a very good job of being genuinely heterodox and publishing. um views and and stories that can align across a good amount of the political spectrum and upset people on either side. i think the atlantic does that too actually the atlantic has quite a lot of writers who disagree with each other and doesn't tow a line the way that some of the other prestigious publications tend to those are two magazines that i think you can you can get them. and newsweek, of course. i thought you were asking about news if you're asking about op-eds definitely come to newsweek. there are two editors who are

liberals on the left and two are conservative on the right and every day you will find viewpoints that will make you very angry. please come and read them, but keep your heart here. and what and you know, look at the ai page, i mean the fact that we have this going on at ai should shock people and i'm thrilled we're doing it. we really do try to keep things balanced. it may not be a news outlet or research and policy. but but still there there are places that are trying to do this. we occasionally fail, but we're absolutely trying and and i appreciate what newsweek has been doing since it's reincarnated version, right? let me just put in a word for for i'm not sure that harpers and where i once worked and the atlantic which i am currently writing the buckley piece for really represent news sources if you're interested writing for the la times and living in in brooklyn i've learned. a lot that you don't pitch a story on woke media or or even the infrastructure bill before checking whether the how the fires are because that's going

to be the front page of a california-based newspaper. so if you're interested in in the fires that are disproportionately i mean that hit the hit the west coast, i think the la times is a great source there there you can i'm a fan of newsletters not the sub stack kind but the kind that news gathering organizations put out. choose it on your on the things you need to know, so it's not about i don't think we need differing views on the california fires. you really need to know if you you know what the air quality is what i'm especially i also love the vaccine newsletter from the new york times just to talk about vaccine rates in the country because they're so heartening and and you know rather than reading. i mean the atlantic just had a story on why are we still wearing cloth masks now, i guess that doesn't description of woke but for hexake like it starts out by saying, you know, someone's at writing about fashion that you know, we used to get our seersucker things in

the beginning of the vaccine and madras or whatever, but now we should know that we need n95. i mean, what are we talking about? right like i just don't need an essay on that that is meant to make me worry and buy a 95, you know and 95 you okay, right. well, so okay if this is that maybe it's a woke thing. i don't know but i think that 95 are you kidding? i'm worried about you out there. okay. well, i don't have my seersucker either. i mean i do have n95s. actually i was inspired to go to go to amazon and buy a 95 out of that. i think health reporting is generally terrible and tells you you know, mostly it's about how to be thin or how to like work magic on people to like sell them things make us too thin and too rich seem be the goal of lots of writing about habits and soft journalism. i hate that stuff, but you know if you wanted wanted to know about the larry nassar affair

the fate of olympic gymnastics the michigan newspaper, i do one that's now turned into michigan live, which is a which is a website that you can get news from. i mean choose the things you actually want to be informed about and if you if you want to sit around with people, you know that make you feel part of something and we all do, you know, watch a panel show on watch fox and friends or watch rachel maddow's show, but if you don't just want that warm feeling that you have friends that you know, are are joanne reed if you will just need to know some numbers about hurricanes or about where you know, in this case in new york. they're like bike lanes being built and my partners very interested in banning cars and bikes so he usually looks to see where the bike lands are. these are i would go for newsletter letters on this and stay away from the places with like a big feeling tone because it's bhatia says if you're if you're if you're being hit with

cortisol, this is more assault than the free press. this is like meant to get into your bloodstream and and that either feels good or it doesn't but i turn to netflix for that. so let's stop there and i want to say thank you to everyone who tuned in and joined us around the world. thank you to thomas for joining us from france. thank you for virginia bacha for joining us here in new york and the book comes out next week again anything great cover and we're not supposed to judge them by covers, but i have you love this and on the other side of the i really do like it's amazingly we all have a mutual friend who designed help design the cover right? but yeah, this was the brilliance of alana newhouse idea. yeah, so i needed a great job and i rarely say that about cover but this is a great company. thank you so much. thank you all so much for this. what a pleasure. thanks mike. it's such a good book and can

yeah. congratulations on it. everyone listening really do buy it because the storytelling which we didn't get into about the 19th century, press i think especially is really compelling and great. thank you father and feel free to follow all of us on twitter. but of course log off and go outside and spend some time away from it with too much cortisol. so i thank you appreciate it. and thank you all for joining us. thank you. thank you. just as stephen breyer recently announced his plans to retire from the supreme court appointed by president clinton in 1994. his departure will provide president biden with his first supreme court nomination last october justice breyer discussed his latest book the authority of the court and the peril of politics. here's his response to protesters asking him to retire. how do you respond to people who normally would say it more gently than bringing a sign to

one of your speeches, but how do you what do you say to people who? argue that you should retire as soon as possible while the democrats have the senate majority. that's the basic issue that those those that's their point of view. i've said pretty much what i have to say. there are a lot of considerations and i don't want to add to what i've had to say tonight because i notice every time that i had something it becomes a big story and so the less i add the better and it's i think i'm not from pluto. i think i knew it was gentleman thought and i think i have most of the considerations in mind and i simply have to weigh them and think about them and decide when the proper time is i've also said that i don't i hope i don't die on the supreme court and there we are. to watch the full program search stephen breyer at booktv.org. i'm marcia