incredible amounts, it is not a sustainable path. thinking longer term, and start to raise the question, on one hand, we make sure the people get fed. the challenge of living with hunger is incredibly challenging. how do we do so we have had a wonderful upper charity -- opportunity to learn. i want to give a warm thank you for this discussion. [applause]

>> this is book tv live coverage of the 2022 library of congress national book festival. we are about halfway through the day. several more author discussions ahead. check book tv.org for the full schedule of events today. we are welcoming back the librarian of congress carla hayden to take some calls and talk about with the day has been like so far. we only have a short time with her. if you have a question for the burying of congress, here's your chance.

have you been followed around by this crowd all day long? >> know, but i have seen so many people all ages, it's just the excitement is building. we are halfway through and you can see it building and people are coming in and politics and prose, the independent bookstore is really buzzing. even the non-book items are going and people are buying and the excitement is palatable. plus, people are seeing their authors walking around the convention center. is that also. >> what have you been able to do so far? who have you seen? >> nick offerman and he was being interviewed by a young lady who is very big the national park service. she was able to interview him

about his new book and it was a good interchange. then, i was able to introduce janelle monae with her book the memory library and. talk about making librarians cool. it's science fiction and everything, however she was not the rock star she was a reader and someone who loves octavia butler the science fiction writer. she related to the people in the audience, but all of us. she is part of our reading group. >> you have a book in your lap. what is this? >> i mentioned politics and prose is here and they made it through the pandemic. i saw a young lady. she was dressed so creatively and beautifully. >> is it that young lady?

>> yes and i asked her -- she said i'm an author and i said what's your book and she said black girls sew. this is going to be the perfect gift for my little grand friend who just got her first. jeans. she likes to make things and craft. she is 12 years old. this is going to be so cool and i'm going to get an autographed. that's the beauty of the book festival, you get to meet the authors, you get to think about books that are unique. first time authors, authors who have been around a long time. you can get books for the special people in your life. it's on the way. >> the authors are right here. >> yes then i saw her friend and

i said eroded together. they have been friends for years. imagine your friends, you are cool, and it has the instructions and everything. then it has hidden figures of fashion. african-americans who have been in fashion. they give you a little history, a little medicine. you get your history. then you get affirmations like my style can be unique. >> even though you are partial to the national book festival, you have been at the mississippi book festival. we covered you a few years ago in an interview and the place was crowded, it was quite an event. >> gregg harper republican and devoted book person.

really wanted to have me down and when you think about the things that are going on in jackson now and you were there when they brought it back and they had about 12,000 people in jackson, mississippi all they are the state capital and it is such a wonderful event. i met a wonderful group of young girls at that time and they came to visit to washington, d.c. and we hosted them at the library of congress. i just got a chance to meet some middle schoolers from hampton middle school in woodbridge, virginia. we took pictures and they talked about they wanted to see and i just passed by quan the alexander one of the superstars they wanted to see. >> before we get to calls, what is going on with the jefferson building at the library of congress? >> what we're doing, we have a

plan to engage more people in the library of congress. especially in our buildings to make them feel welcome. we will have an orientation center, learning center for young people. ways to invite everyone in to have the same type of spirit, not one time but to make sure that everyone feels welcome. it is part of that plan. i'm glad people are interested in what we are doing and we will be giving more information and we will have drawings and eggs like that. it's a good opportunity. >> can all of the people watching right now, can they go get a library card from the library of congress or is it restricted? >> right now, you can get readers card when you're 16 years old. i mentioned the youth center. we're developing a deputy research card at seven that you

can do cool things with qr codes. we want to make sure that more people of all ages as much as we can can access a lot of the things the library has. a lot of things are digitized. being able to have that information and downloaded is invaluable. we want to introduce people to the resources we have. photographs that are not copyright restricted that you can download and blow up and put on your wall. migrant mother, american gothic, all of those types of things are free online. >> given the current political environment and the discussions we are having about history, in your view should the jefferson

and madison buildings be renamed? >> that's an interesting point when you think about history. i have discussed it with my colleagues that are in the library world and also the museum world for instance the smithsonian. history, you want to be able to put it in context. it's a journey. if you remove things or erase them, you're not providing an opportunity to talk about them. you can put this is why that happened, this is what that meant. those discussions go on a lot. one thing that helps is to give the full story. you might have something and say this was a complicated situation, this was a complicated time in history and explain it. explain, explain the history. >> carla hayden is a native of

baltimore, she spent many years as the head of a library there. our first call comes from art in baltimore. -- bart in baltimore. >> it is such a pleasure to be seeing you. i live in baltimore and i live several blocks from the central branch of the library in baltimore and i am a big fan of another baltimore resident senator mikulski. i know how close and how fondly she thought of you as well. >> she is a national treasure. i don't know if you know, she is an author. she co-authored two mystery books. she is a mystery both. she is so supportive of the

pratt library. it meant so much to her growing up and full disclosure and correction, people who are born and bred in baltimore, i make -- they make that discussion. -- distinction. i didn't go to high school there, but i have been in baltimore for 30 years. my mom is there now with me. baltimore's motto was the city that reads. the room that is dedicated to hurt mean so much. you might want to look this up, the library was the first public library system in the united states started by mr. pratt. >> that's on me, call her, i

apologize for calling her native. >> they are very particular about that. >> the next caller comes from chicago and it is martin. go ahead. >> am i on? have you with the library experienced any pressure from outside groups in terms of excluding books or banning books? >> the library of congress is the national library. lots of the concern is right now at the local level. school districts, public library colleagues. the american library association just met in washington, d.c. at the end of june and that was a discussion among thousands of librarians about how they could

make sure that everyone has the right to read and that is not restricted for anyone. people can decide that their children want to read and things like that, but it's really a community issue. it is something that librarians are very concerned about, because we want to be that place that people get information or can read what they want. >> if people want to contact you, are they able to contact you through the library system? >> yes. my email is pretty straightforward. library and -- li brarian@llc.gov. the library of congress as experts in every field.

science, history, literature, art, music. talk of free. everything -- photography. everything. then you have experts in preservation and conservation. we have people who can take a book that has had water damage, 200 years old and they can carefully restore it. it is just like being in school almost every day. >> what was it like to throw out the first pitch? >> that was a challenge, however i had help from sean doolittle who is the picture of the washington nationals and a big reader. he participated with the surrounding counties of washington, d.c.. arlington which had the most books read. d.c. public and prince georges county were part. and even library of congress.

he loves to read. when he is on the road and going to different cities, he says one way that he can learn about a city is to go find the independent bookstore and he can rattle off you say tacoma, washington he will tell you. all over wherever the team goes. he was there talking about his love of books. and he helped me. he gave me pitching tips. >> here from deborah in snellville, georgia. >> thank you so much. this is just a delight, i am such a big fan ever since you became the librarian of congress. could you talk to us about your personal book collection? how many volumes you have and other than history, what is your next favorite category to read and collect? secondly, do you think you will

ever write a memoir? >> those are great questions. >> i am smiling because i love books and reading so i have books in just about every place in my apartment. except the bathrooms. that's one thing, don't do that. i have african-american history, i have been collecting that for years and years. mysteries. i love mysteries. i started out with josephine -- my aunt gave me one. i love mysteries that take place in bookstores and libraries. there is one of the authors here today who just wrote a cool book called bookish people.

you also wanted to know, remind me because you got me going. >> memoir. >> there are two things that i always dream about or thought about and a lot of library and see either owning bookstore or being a book editor. i'm not that talented with being able to write or anything. i will think about at least getting some of the experiences down because i have met so many wonderful people during my career. >> last night at the opening celebration, we want to play a quick video clip and you will know what it is. this is from last nights opening celebration for the national book fair. >> i have been devoting my working life to the american story for over 50 years.

i am ever grateful that i somehow had the good fortune to wonder into this way of life contribute in what i can to the betterment of our country. i have done this on paper, and classrooms, on television and on the stage. in every way i can to convey that history is not about boring statistics and quotations and memorizing dates. it isn't about just politics and the military. history is human. it's about people. when in the course of human events are declaration begins. >> carla hayden. >> isn't it wonderful to hear his voice? he was such a friend of the library of congress and this

book festival. he participated and that's what we had attribute to him last night. from the very beginning, he was the one who suggested having a gay love the night before with authors. he was such a wonderful and supportive person. candace bullard gave a wonderful tribute to him last night as well and what he did. hearing his voice and remembering that you can be human and famous and also touch others through your writing. he is the personification of that. thank you for highlighting that. >> book tb covered the opening celebration live last night. you can watch live anytime and any of our programs at book tb.org. -- book tv.org. >> thank you for being our sponsor and having us. this is really cool.

>> book tv coverage of the national book festival continues. you're going to hear from our previous guest elizabeth williamson talking about her book sandy hook and others as well. >> good afternoon. on the collections officer of the library of congress and it is a pleasure to welcome you to the 22nd annual library of congress national book festival. [applause] thank you for being here. this is a place where books bring us together as you can see. at this time, we ask you to turn off or silence your cell phones. if you need to leave the room, please use the door on the left.

we also want to notify you that this event will be recorded and your entry and presence at this program constitutes your consent to be filmed or otherwise recorded. i will turn the microphone over to the moderator of this session. thank you and i hope you enjoy the program. >> good afternoon. i'm the chief communications officer for the library of congress. on behalf of my wonderful colleagues, welcome to the 2022 national book festival. it's great to see this huge crowd. if you missed any of the authors today, please go to the website and you can catch up with our marvelous authors who have been part of the festival so far.

almost as old as this nation is, there have been conspiracies wrapped around. today, we are here to discuss the struggles that have been dealt to our nation. joining us today is the professor of history at boston university and the author of the book the brethren a story of faith and conspiracy in revolutionary america. [applause] joining him is new york times writer and the author of the new book sandy hook an american tragedy elizabeth williamson. [applause] welcome to both of you.

a couple of weeks ago, the verdict for alex jones came down. have you spoken to the families and how are they reacting? >> i did almost immediately and throughout the trial which i was covering for the new york times, they were weighing in. they were particularly gratified by the confrontation in the courtroom that scarlett lewis whose son jesse lewis died at sandy hook had with alex jones. for 90 minutes, she was on the stand and she addressed her responses to every question to him personally and she held him to account. that was something that cheered them >>. >>how are they coping? how are they feeling moving forward? >> i hesitate to characterize or ascribe any feeling to any of the group or even to speak for them, but they are absolutely determined to hold alex jones

and the other conspiracy theorist who supplied his content and harassed their families to account. [applause] >> when i started, i said conspiracies have been part of the country for more than 200 years. you write conspiracy rumors can be a collective response to psychological threats which is defined as an attack by outsider on a group's identity, values, or politics. those items seem to be the common denominator room 200 years ago to today. what started it then? >> conspiracy theory runs back to the reign of elizabeth the first and even before that. you have a kind of belief that

somehow that people believe that their rights or liberties are being infringed on, their group is being threatened. there are different context in which that occurred it is something that is deeply ingrained in -- that somehow liberty or personal autonomy or group identity is always in threat by someone in power. >> does it seem like the common denominator of fear and everything else is what's being weaponized to move these theories forward? whether it is fear or religion or misinformation? >> brandon has a lot to say about this in his book. >> it is often in cases where

people feel that something is threatened. i am unsurprised in the sense of what elizabeth has written about that that second amount -- second amendment issue -- that fear runs again. his fear of an overreaching government, they are going to infringe your rights or personal autonomy and that has run back deeply in the society and it was a major issue in the revolutionary generation and it also leads to the second amendment. >> one of the big's you talked about elizabeth is the second amendment and freedom of speech which tends to be the defense. where is the line? when is it freedom of speech and when is it that you are inciting a rumor or a bad conspiracy theory? >> during the trial, the lawyers

for the sandy hook families had a great phrase that i think should be put on a t-shirt. it said speech is free but lies pay for. when you are spreading lies that harm vulnerable people or any people and are patently false and have been debunked countless times, there is a penalty for that in our law. speech does not protect that although conspiracy theorists generally tend to claim that it does. attacks on people knowing that they are false is prohibited. the first amendment does not protect that. >> how did they deal with at 200 years ago? >> in a sense, the revolution mobilized on the belief that a conspiracy had corrupted the british monarchy and government and the revolution was mobilized on that.

once the revolutionary regime began to take shape, there were people who believed that had been corrupted. it works in a sense both ways. the regime and the regimes that people come to oppose the regime both argue what we would consider conspiratorial language because they believed the dispensation of power was controlled by groups of individuals i wanted to gather as much of that power to themselves. there is that fear that the second amendment will be abridged that you are going to lose that part. >> so much has changed obviously since the revolutionary war. one of the things is the factor of media when it comes to reporting what is happening. you wrote about this very well, elizabeth. how does bad reporting

contribute to bad theories? >> what happens in the chaos after a major event or mass tragedy is of course in the rush to report to americans what happened, mistakes are made. i saw after a recent mass shooting, this idea of there is rarely a second shooter but that is something that often crops up. there is this balance to be struck between getting the information to people quickly and making sure that it is accurate. what conspiracy theorists after these events tend to do is point to anomalies in the reporting and say that these are proof of the fact that it didn't happen that way, the official narrative is false or wrong or willfully being misrepresented.

that is where you have to pitch a perfect game when you are reporting on these tragedies although that is not really possible in many cases because you are getting information from authorities who themselves are trying to piece it together. >> as a reporter, during breaking like this in a competitive media market, people tend to report whatever is told to them. have things changed in newsrooms to make sure misinformation doesn't go out the can be weaponized later? >> ic hopeful developments after these mass tragedies. i want to give a shout out to my colleague from the texas tribune who is here in the audience. his staff reported after the shooting and you could see his dedication to make sure the details are correct, questioning and that was important because

the police narrative was false and self protective. that is still being unpacked by the media. you also have to be respectful to the families doing things like not repetitively naming the gunman, not focusing on the gunmen to the exclusion of the victims and their families. putting them first and foremost in your reporting and being respectful in doing so. >> aside from the mainstream media, one medium that is being used is social media. how did these entities make things worse for the families of sandy hook? >> in reporting on the event or the conspiracy theories? >> both. >> again, you have people who sees on the initial reporting to say this detail was wrong so

therefore this part of the narrative or the entire narrative is incorrect or is being manufactured or concocted by the federal government in particular social media in general is what gives a megaphone to people who question these events and these official reports. conspiracy theorists were often isolated or in earlier times, they had to rely on word-of-mouth or print. social media allows ally -- a lie to gain adherents not just by the handful but in the millions and that happens within minutes. >> obviously, there was no twitter during the revolutionary war. >> thank goodness.

[laughter] >> how do people get together to form a group? >> it's interesting. the revolutionary generation was living through the expansion of communication. newspapers, pamphlets, broad bills, speeches, sermons. information got out particularly as the revolution mobilized, the opportunities to spread information increased geometrically. that's how you get an uncontrolled situation in some respects about the way information is passing. what amounts to a struggle about what is and is not accurate. one of the things i have thought about is we are engaged in a radical experiment in the democratization of information and it is hard for people to sort that information and come

to an understanding of basic things. you have the legacy media and social media, there is a tremendous amplification of what's available and not a decline in the ability to make sense of what's real and what's not. that went on with the revolutionary generation as well. one of the big fears was the fear that protestantism is somehow being undermined by hidden catholics in the upper end of the british government including the king himself. it takes hold even though it is completely false. the belief that there was no catholic conspiracy, but they believed there was that the catholics were trying to seize control of the british empire. >> nowadays, social media amplifies things. back then, maybe the lack of information allow things to percolate? >> in many respects happens is a lack of control of information.

what happened in the revolutionary generation was that two new bodies appear. committees of safety and correspondence. they have an agenda in their behavior and they communicate in certain ways and a lot of people were left out of that or they have an incomplete sense of what's going on. they are left to sort things out themselves. that's not that different from people trying to sort through which website is valid and which is being produced by someone who doesn't know anything about the situation. >> one thing i didn't know, some of the families of sandy hook they triggered a domino effect of how social media work regulating the information being put out there. >> when we speak about the dramatic uptake in social media, in the book i talked to woman

named lori whose daughter was injured in the virginia tech shooting. i asked her, in the aftermath of that lori became active in the gun-control movement. she was out there a lot. she was demonstrating, speaking before legislatures, pushing for new gun legislation. she is very alleged -- visible. i asked her did anyone contact you on social media and call you a liar or a crisis actor or someone who was part of a government plot? she went through her facebook page and she said no, i don't see anything. that was 2007. sandy hook occurred in 2012. in those five years in 2007, there were maybe 5 million tweets sent out her day. in 2012, there were 5 million

every second. on facebook when lori was not finding anything into thousand seven, there were 20 million facebook users around the world. five years later when sandy hook happened, there were one billion. you can see the speed and the morale of the that happens -- virality of what happens when that is put out. the possibility of vetting which of these facebook accounts is accurate, which is based on facts, which is just malicious. >> one of the parents, the father who really took action to making sure that these internet trolls were held accountable, what method did he use to make sure that twitter, facebook, and youtube did the right thing?

>> lenny who is the father of noah the youngest sandy hook victim had a technology background. he could see that sandy hook was not just one off theory or even something built on gun-control and out of the realistic expectation that gun legislation would result from this tragedy. what he knew was that this was a foundational story for how misinformation and false narratives have spread in our society. he began by trying to appeal as you would to the social media companies. there are thousands of these videos out here calling us liars and crisis actors and saying is false.

facebook, can you take some of this down? twitter, less so because it was a smaller platform. he ascribes it to shouting at a locked door. he never got anything relating to a response. he got auto messages. he started to use his power as a grieving father to call attention to what was going on. he did op-ed in the newspaper. he got powerful interviews on the radio through abc -- abc and he called out these companies and shamed them. he also called out the individual names of conspiracy theorists who were generating so much mistruths that his family was being threatened and harassed and being forced to move because people kept publishing their home address online.

he started to talk about the secondary trauma that was being inflicted on them and the danger they were in because of these lies and if there is anything the social media companies respond to its public shaming and that's what he was doing. he began doing that and he continues to do that. he is the true hero of the story. the final thing that he has done, now they do pay attention to him. they go to him first and he reports this material on behalf of not just sandy hook families but an array of people who are being tormented online. >> the numbers you were sharing earlier about how social media has progressed since virginia tech has been staggering. from the revolutionary war to even just virginia tech or september 11, conspiracy theorists always felt like they were on the french. -- on the fringe now they have

become more mainstream. why do you think it was better controlled 200 years ago? >> it wasn't always better controlled. when the society is in crisis, when there is a sense of disorder, these things can move to the center of discussion when the society has more stability, there is less chance for that movement to occur. you have a vast change in the velocity and scale of information. this happened in the revolutionary generation as well. the american revolution doesn't fully stabilize until the second party system emerges in the 1820's which is when you have an explosion in print culture. it is a test to see how we can

have a stable society with this much information moving this quickly and people struggling to make sense of that information. >> what's scary is it bills like history repeats itself. the parallels with what happened in your book to the governor of michigan. >> it's a strong parallel and that you have a group of people who feel like their governor is a threat and involved -- against their traditional religion and practices. ultimately, they move into a position where they think you're going to kill the governor and

the governing elite. same thing with the governor of michigan in the sense that you have a group. the parallel is that the people who were hostile or wanted to kidnap governor of michigan and the people who had the assassination plot in 1777, they were extreme manifestations of broader belief systems that have been carried out to their extreme and irrational -- the fears they had in north carolina was that their governor did not share their religious leafs which was true. nonetheless, they carried it out to the degree that we are going to kill the governing elite of north carolina and start a slave uprising to get it done. the idea that somehow kidnapping the governor of michigan, where does that go? it is a strange solution to the problem of i don't like the governor, maybe i will vote for the other candidate instead. it's a strange response.

i can vote for someone else, i don't have to kidnap the governor. [laughter] >> we will be taking questions shortly. if you have questions,, but for we go there we will keep talking. reading your book, both your research and your reporting are outstanding. it leaves you feeling a little hopeless. i want to read one passage. i mean that with a complement, by the way. you write you not only do false flag claims around sandy hook persist but they have metastasized to every mass shooting ever since. it feels like since sandy hook which was 10 years ago and how more mass shootings have progressed in the next 10 years after that.

the rumor bill and aries got worse. >> yes. >> how do you think we could get a hold of all this? >> it is true that now 1/5 of americans after every high-profile mass shooting espouse the belief that the shooting was faked or staged. that is a shocking statistic. it doesn't point to -- i really think it's important to say this, it doesn't want to politics or ideology as much as psychology. people find a sense of social belonging in adhering to these conspiracy theories. they find a community online. they are often lonely. the ones i interviewed for the book often have trauma and their backgrounds. they are looking for something and they are looking in the wrong places.

it is the reason that once you try to get someone to disavow these conspiracy theories, they are extremely resistant. they have often reinvented themselves. one tells me don't say they have developed an entirely new identity. someone i interviewed a woman in the book who had a business in oklahoma. being one of the most pernicious conspiracy theorists around sandy hook allowed her to reinvent herself as an author, researcher, investigative journalist. this is important for people. there's been a lot of research and trying to get people to be suspicious of these theories, use that national -- natural suspiciousness and apply it to when they see this material online. there has been a lot of hopeful success and breakthroughs in that area. the other hopeful thing i think is that i am so gratified at the

number of people here. it's as people recognizing the message that sandy hook families have sent by talking with me and through these lawsuits that this is a problem. we are being steeped in a world of lies. it is affecting us as individuals but our democracy as well. that is huge. [applause] that is hopeful. people are paying attention. people who are in a position to do something about this other it is the social media companies tightening up on their policies, congress looking at new forms of legislation and this is a bipartisan effort and if it's the big thinkers out there looking at the psychology behind this trying to figure it out,

those are all hopeful signs. >> what can we learn from history to move forward? >> going back to what elizabeth said, it is the ability as we become -- people come to an understanding of how do i sort information that seems rational to me from does not? that's where we are, but it takes time. these social media things are new. from 2012, 10 years seems like a long time but it's not that long given the nature and the way that they have insinuated themselves. how many in our audience have sat in bed looking at social media, tweets, facebook? they hit insinuated themselves into every corner of our existence. it will take a long time but if you look at, earlier societies who went through a similar less

dramatic less rapid things, they do go forward and they find a path forward in the sense of creating more stable order in their society. that is the hopeful thing. it's also an issue of acacia. if you understand that people are not going to fake shooting a second -- a seven-year-old child. it's hard for me to think that anyone could believe that but it is a question of education and looking at society. >> we have a lot of people lined up for questions. >> i have a question about sandy hook in general and alex jones. to what extent do you think he has main and obscene amount of money on his website selling meal prep kits and supplements and what have you. to what extent you think he sincerely believes what he talks about versus how much do you think he is weaponizing the act of riling people up so he can

make any? -- make money. >> as one of the individuals who i interviewed for the book who used to work for info wars, it doesn't matter if he believes it. by the way, he knows it happened. it's that people in his audience of tens of millions many of them believe the lie that he is spreading about it. his business model is ingenious. he sells products to people who distrust traditional medicine, established science, the federal government, and many of our institutions. doomsday propers purchasing dried food and things for their shelters. they are buying diet supplements which is an enormous business for him. he has definitely built an empire around these lies. you could see and i trace this

in the book that traffic to his website surges when he spoke about sandy hook. it resonates with people and that leads to sales. it is cynical and ingenious business model that he has pursued and it is not based on any genuine suspicion around the event itself. >> misinformation and conspiracy can affect everyone. we often feel they can be a distance problem that does not impact us particularly when we see the confined realm of social media. when this misinformation takes root, we can often be caught off guard. how would you recommend we navigate a conversation that addresses the dangers of misinformation without damaging our interpersonal relationships with others? >> i don't know if i have a

recommendation for that. ultimately, one of the challenges we are facing is that it is ultimately up to each individual to weigh what they are doing, to weigh their exposure to social media and technology. the consumption of information. i think it's important that when you're thinking of something as tragic and important as something like sandy hook, you come to a view that i need to have the understanding of the history and background to what happened before you go off and say the person who tweeted that must be right. they have the inside information. clearly anyone can mount almost anything on the internet. there is very little check right now and you have to have the ability. that calls on the citizen to develop their own sense of citizenship, knowledge of their society, knowledge of the things around them. it means reading the newspapers,

broadening your understanding to see what you are finding on the internet, how it can be measured and understood. >> i don't think that solves the problem. >> i had a general question. in a world where there is more awareness and mediate reporting on these events around conspiracy theories and tragedies, do youave any thoughts on how a journalist in taking in all of this information can handle these concepts in the aftermath of the reporting without bringing further harm or attention to the conspiracy? >> this is something that i have struggled with with a book and every day in the media, how do

you debunk these theories without drawing more adherence to them? i try to focus on and i do this in the book religiously on the victims of those theories rather than the substance of them. i sometimes see coverage that you can tell the conspiracy theorists like it because a claim arises what they're doing and saying. i try to focus on the impact. we didn't really talk about that here, but it is like people who have had to move a dozen times in the 10 years since the shooting because their address was being put online and people were coming to their homes. people looking in the family members windows, digging through their trash, threatening their lives, calling their phone, defacing memorials to the dead.

i try to focus on these things because that stirs up good people who will do things to try to push for solution. >> do you know of any other families of mass shootings if they have been treated the same way the families sandy hook? have other families moved 10 times so they will be treated the same way? >> a number of moves that this family has had to go through is a special case and away because the sheer number because they took a forward roll so they were instantly identifiable. they were targeted specifically for that. yes, unfortunately the survivors of a mass shootings, after the las vegas shooting still in their hospital beds were logging onto facebook to post themselves

as safe and seeing people call them liars and crisis act while they were still being hospitalized. it still does happen. the sandy hook families were kind of the first. >> earlier you talked about conspiracy theories as having a long tradition. having spent quite a bit of time in the middle east, i know that the arab world can spin a conspiracy yarn as big as anybody and it is a human condition in a place with a sense secrets are being kept from them just like it exists in other governments and other places. the real origin of these conspiracies is when someone perceives either rightly or wrongly that some kind effect is being hidden from them. that is the sewer that conmen

like alex jones live in because he preys on their erroneous beliefs. i hear this a lot, that we shouldn't talk about the shooter's name or anything like that. doesn't that feed into the idea that somebody somewhere out there is hiding affect from me so i need to go somewhere else to an alternate sphere to find the real truth then these hucksters come sweep up that information? >> my understanding is from people who have lived in the arab world, that conspiracy theory is very common there. at the heart of all of that is in my view it's the belief that whatever's happening, somebody is benefiting from that and it is a discernible movement of a hidden group of people who are going to benefit from this. they want to abolish the second amendment, to do whatever it is. whenever you have that, what you

have is the belief that everything you are seeing is a result of the conscious actions of certain actors who think they're going to benefit from this or get something they want from it. when you have that belief, you can read into everything. it becomes common and hard to dissuade people that sandy hook happened or holocaust deniers, that that happened. if you want to believe that, it's hard to dissuade people but it's the belief that somehow somebody is benefiting and they are in control of events in a way that you are not in control and it's being hidden from you. >> i had a quick question about the ethics of journalism. as a journalist, you are an employee of a company and you have the responsibility toward your shareholders and the

beneficiaries of the company which might include publishing something that would generate a lot of internet traffic like conspiracy or something that could contribute to a conspiracy theory. how do you reconcile that as being an employee with also being a journalist and having that responsibility toward resenting the truth to society? >> the earlier question spoke to a similar issue. how do you draw attention to this climate of disinformation without glamorizing it or laura find the bad actors? -- glorifying the bad actors. we try not to do that. when you talk about generating traffic when i write about for the new york times, i find that describing this battle for truth is really the way i do it. that gains 20 of readers on its own. will recognizepeople realize ths

extant and continuing and the right way to cover it is to talk about its impact on people. thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you for the excellent talk. it seems clear that changes in communications technology, especially with the internet and social media are driving a similar revolution in conspiratorial thought similar to the rise in print media. looking back at the past, eventually people figure out how to deal with the rise of new forms of media. sometimes it can be a very rough roads with things like world of religion or world war ii. where we are today, can we see how rocky of a road is ahead of us as we figure out how to deal with new forms of media? or, are these changes so greater in scope and magnitude than what

has happened in the past that we have no idea where this will go? >> historical context. >> how rocky road? boulders. boulders are ahead. it will not be easy. because, we want free and open society. in that society one of the risks is we will have some issues that people carla in this case, freedom of information that is unprecedented and we will have to learn how to come to terms with that. i see a road ahead where we struggle to come to terms with this and i don't think we are anywhere near the end of that road now. >> >> one saying that it's important to note, and brandon's book puts this well, in reading

his book i was reassured that we have these spasms in our history and this is not wholly unprecedented. the parallel of the plot to assassinate and kidnap the leadership of north carolina versus gretchen whitmer in michigan, that tells you something. that in itself is a little hopeful. you can see this is a feature of our society, our country, our development and these spasms can be gotten over. >> thank you for coming today. do you feel that harmful conspiracy series will lessen or continue to grow after the alex jones trials? >> i think the absolute victory that the families have a cheesed that have achieved in -- the

families have achieved in bringing the lawsuits and confronting him in court and there are two more trials for damages against alex jones ahead including a big one in a couple weeks in connecticut brought by the families of eight sandy hook victims is highlighting these phenomenons showing the human impact of it, the devastating effects it can have on people already traumatized. i think it makes other would be conspiracy purveyors think twice about what they will do. not everybody has the resources alex jones has to absorb these judgments and verdicts. that's my hope. >> now i feel like alex jones has been put aside. is there another alex jones type on the horizon that could reformulate the formula heated? >> -- the formula he did.

>> yes, there are many. this is partly because it is in our national character to question official narratives. >> to question official narratives, to be suspicious of authority. we are at the end of this long and terrible epidemic. there is a lot of a political division. we are now in the shadow of two long, contentious, and unsuccessful wars. so, this depends on what the course of events is going forward. if there is a longer period of relative stability, i think the opportunity for this hard-core alex jones type conspiracy theorist to spread something will diminish. it will not go away. it's never going away, but it will diminish if the society remains at the level of dislocation, turmoil, and atomization we are at now because of these various challenges. this oil remains very fertile. i think that's a fair way to

think about it historically. it looks like we have time for one more quick question. >> thank you all for coming. i was wondering if you had any recommendations for the audience of how we can more critically evaluate is the information we see on social media. what tips can we verify that information? and really check its veracity. >> that's a good way to end today. >> yeah, that's a really great question. i mean, it's with a longer answer than we have time for. but, trustworthy sources of information have not changed. i'm not saying one should not question my employer or other mainstream media accounts. but i think one of the keys is for people to get out of the mode in which we have so much media out there, so many choices, that people tend to choose the one that closely

corresponds with their political beliefs and that may not -- that's not necessarily feeding them falsehoods, but it's definitely coloring the world in a way that makes them comfortable. i think if we consume an array of media, there is information out there. we know that the info wars of the world are not trustworthy sources of news. but if we graze a little more widely, i think that's one step. it's important to know what people outside of your media bubble are thinking. in questioning. in order to more efficiently argue with them. >> the groupthink of the algorithm. >> yeah. >> i think one thing that's important is to look at the sources of your information. books, old media, new-media, visual, television, other things. going across platforms. going across the type of

information you get helps you get a better grip of how to weigh what you are hearing and come to a rational conclusion about it. it's important that it's not just one source. that you are going across platforms to look for different kinds of information about different problems, different people i'm a given issues, given events. that's important. >> thank you to the two of you. we appreciate both brendan and elizabeth. both of them will be signing their books downstairs shortly. thank you for coming. we will see you soon. >> you are watching book tv on c-span two on my of the 2022 library of congress national

book festival at the convention center in washington. it is the first time in three years it's back in person. book tv is pleased to be here bringing you live coverage. we have a couple hours coming above author discussions and call ends. -- call in's. joining us now is jack davis. his most recent book is this. "the bald eagle: the improbable journey of america's bird." jack davis, how did the bald eagle become our national symbol? jack: it's our national symbol, but not our national bird. the u.s. has no national bird. congress has never designated a national bird as it has a national mammal, the bison, and a national tree at a national flower. the bald eagle has been an emblem of the country since 1782 when we put it on the front of

the great seal of the united states. and a very popular one. peter: why a national symbol but not a national bird? jack: congress has never designated a national bird. tomorrow congress could technically designate the sidewalk pigeon as the national bird. let's hope they don't do that. but, i am part of a group that is going to launch a campaign to have the bald eagle officially named by congress as the national bird. stay tuned. peter: there is a story we have all heard for years about benjamin franklin and the turkey and wanting that to be a national bird or the national symbol. jack: that story is somewhat apocryphal. then franklin did compare the moral values of the bald eagle with that of the wild turkey intending that the wild turkey

was honest and hard-working and the bald eagle was a craven coward that stole fish from osprey and other birds. but he never said he wanted the turkey has a national bird or on the great seal of the u.s.. peter: why do you call this an improbable journey talking about the boat eagle? jack: because in some ways it's paradoxical. when the congress put the great -- the bald eagle on the great seal of the united states, americans loved the image and they have always loved the image of the bald eagle. throughout the 19th century americans regarded the bald eagle as a predator like the wolf, the coyote, or the mountain lion. that was a threat to livestock for farmers. a bald eagle was a living -- a living boat eagle was a bald eagle to be shot and americans taught hundreds of thousands of them and pushed the bald eagle in the lower 48 states to the

brink of extinction by the turn-of-the-century. peter: how low that number? jack: we don't know because nobody was conducting an official census, but the bald eagle had disappeared from many of the eastern seaboard states. they had become a rare sight by the early 20th century. states where they were at once time very prolific. peter: how many today exist? jack: it is a really wonderful story. the population has come back dramatically. it quadrupled in the 20 tens. now, the estimated population across north america, and, the bald eagle lives only in the wild in north america, truly an all-american bird, today the population is approximately 500,000. all 48. that is north america. canada, alaska, the lower 48 states, and northern mexico.

peter: there is a bald eagle in all jack: those jack: 48? yes. probably in the lower 40 83 hundred 20,000 or 340,000. -- in the lower 48 320,000 or 340,000. congress had been trying to come up with a great seal of the united states since july 4, 1776. on that day franklin, adams, and jefferson were appointed as the committee to devised the great seal and they failed miserably. two other committees were formed and failed as well. thompson held up his hands and said, we need a seal. he decided on the bald eagle. he insisted the eagle be an identifiable american bald eagle. peter: our guest is jack davis,

a university of florida history professor, a historian who specializes in environment of history and conservation, the author of a couple other books "an everglades providence: marjory stoneman douglas and the american environmental century." and he won the pulitzer prize for " th gulf: the making of an american se closea. -- the gulf: the making of an american sea." what prompted you to write about the bald eagle? we are seeing the bald eagle today in numbers and frequency we did not to know 15 years ago. i am a baby boomer and i grew up never seeing a bald eagle because dbt devastated the

population after world war ii. -- ddt devastated their population after world war ii. but the u.s. conservation service and state and local officials launched conservation programs beginning in the 1970's and have had tremendous success restoring the bald eagle populations. people see bald eagles today and get very excited. you jab the guy in the ribs next to you when you see a bald eagle. i thought readers would like to know a little bit about the bird and a historical relationship with the american people. over my house i see big birds flying and i can't tell if they are whole -- hawks, golden eagle, bald eagles. how do you tell a bald eagle? jack: if it is an adult bald eagle it's easier than a juvenile. adult bald eagles have a white head and a white tail, both males and females. if you can make out the whitehead and the white tail you will know it is a bald eagle.

the juveniles are mostly dark. so, it's easy to confuse a soaring juvenile bald eagle, and they are large, with, say, a vulture. they are larger than hawks, though. so sometimes it is even hard for me to tell a difference between a vulture soaring and a bald eagle soaring. some people have described, a great mid 20th century fiction writer who knew bald eagles quite well used to say that "the bald eagles wing beat is more muscular than the borchers -- the vultures." peter: you teach at the university of florida. it had a special role in preserving or re-introducing the bald eagle? jack: yeah. by the 1970's most of the southern states had no nesting bald eagles. florida had a fairly healthy

bald eagle population. so, what wildlife officials began doing in the university of florida began doing in the 1980's was relocating eggs from a bald eagle nests in florida. i did not know about any of this until i started writing the book. it was a fantastic story all happening under the backyard where i live. they began relocating eggs, hatching them in oklahoma at the sutton avian center. then moving them to the southern states without testing bald eagles. so today, if you see a nesting bald eagle in mississippi or alabama, more than likely, it is the descendant of a florida eagle. peter: what are the laws regarding a balding coke? can you collect their feathers? and you shoot them -- of a bald eagle? can you collect their feathers? can you shoot them if they are predators? jack: you cannot shoot or hunt a

bald eagle in any way at risk of being penalized for violating federal law. you could go to prison. you could pay a heavy fine. if you find a bald eagle injured or dead or even a bald eagle feather, by law you are supposed to turn it into the authorities. then the carcass or the feathers are sent to the national eagle center in denver where they are processed. then the body parts, the feathers, are distributed to native peoples. peter: our native peoples allowed to use feathers? jack: yes. anybody part -- any body part. peter: are these laws unique to the bald eagle? jack: free much so. in 1940 the bald eagle -- pretty much so. in 1940 the bald eagle was protected under the bald eagle protection act, the only species with its own law protecting it.

the penalty of harming the bald eagle probably exceeds any other penalty for harming other wildlife. peter: let's take a call and hear from robert in philadelphia. please go ahead with your question or comment for geoff davis. robert: -- jack davis. robert: you pre-much answered my question. i was going to ask about the relation between the bald eagle and native americans and how do they feel about the united states appropriating their bird? if there is a relation. jack: thank you sir. that's a good question. native groups have a long history of with bald eagles dating back thousands of years perhaps. the bald eagle for many native groups is regarded as a spirit bird. not all native groups, but many. native peoples have long used

their feathers and body parts in religious ceremonies, in rituals. the bald eagle protection act technically criminalized that traditional behavior. but, in recent decades the u.s. fish and wildlife service has been working closely with a number of native groups to help them restore those traditional relationships. so, some native peoples, some native groups are allowed to take bald eagles out of the wild and there are at least seven native american aviaries around the country where injured eagles are rehabilitated or those that are rendered flight list remain for their lives and their feathers are collected for ceremonies. peter: you say ben franklin thought the turkey was more industrious, honest, and hard-working compared to the

eagle. what are some characteristics of the bald eagle and how is it different than the golden eagle? jack: the differences are size. the golden eagle is slightly smaller. the bald eagle is a fishing raptor. it eats primarily fish. it will also eat land animals and birds. the golden eagle only eat land animals and birds. it does not eat fish edit mostly lives in the west. -- and it mostly lives in the west. the bald eagle is a fishing bird , but it does steal. ben franklin was right. it does a steel fish from osprey. bald eagles steel fish from other bald eagles. they are also scavengers. they will get down and dirty with vultures. when there is carrion about. that is one thing we have to be careful about today. now that there are more bald

eagles around and there is roadkill, it's not unusual to see a bald eagle on the side of the road feasting on roadkill. you have to be careful not to hit them with your car. peter: john davis is also the author of "the gulf: the making of an american sea" that won the 2018 pulitzer prize in history. that was after the big oil spill in the gulf. what was the effect of that? jack: we still don't know the full effect of the bp oil spill of 2010. in the median area of louisiana and texas, it was devastating to many environments. it showed up as far west as at the shores of the florida coast. but, one thing i have to point out. when we think about offshore oil drilling, we typically focus on the oil derricks over water.

where the greatest damage comes from is the infrastructure on shore. all of the oil has to be taken from the gulf of mexico and moved on shore to the refineries. that's where you see the majority of the spells, the classics bills -- the spills, the classics bills, the runoff and pollution associated with any industrial site. peter: your subtitle the making of an american sea. what was the point of that? jack: the u.s. shares gulf coastline with both mexico and cuba. almost through the exact mile. the u.s. coastline is 50% of the total gulf coastline. we really dominate the sea, politically, but also,

economically, industrially. i chose that subtitle because the gulf of mexico rarely appears in history textbooks. if it doesn't. , it's just -- if it does appear it is just mentioned in passing and i want readers to know that this sea has played an important role in american history. so, i also understood my audience would probably be american. peter: what is the health of the everglades? jack: that's a sad story. the health of the everglades is not great. of course, congress adopted the comprehensive everglades restoration project in 2000. billions of dollars have been spent. not much has been accomplished, to be honest with you. probably the greatest success so

far in restoring the everglades has been the restoration of the kissimmee river. that feeds into lake okeechobee. that is the watershed for the everglades. lake okeechobee is still a mess. we are still dumping what i refer to as the cow tide and sugar tide down the rivers. it is devastating very valuable ecologically esturine environments at the end of those rivers. >> it is stunning you fly into miami. all of the lights of miami end abruptly at the everglades. jack: a lot of people don't realize that the everglades recharge the biscayne aquifer, the soul freshwater drinking

source for the south florida population. as we continue to deprive the everglades of a proper level of water we are depriving that aquifer of its proper level and that allows saltwater intrusion that will become more common with the rise of sea levels. peter: jack davis. his most recent book is "the bald eagle: the improbable journey of america's bird dog" we -- america's bird." next, an author conversation on climate change. julie byrd rule and edith witter will be discussing their books. live coverage on c-span. >> good afternoon. i am the collections officer of the library of congress and it's a pleasure to welcome you to the 22nd annual library of congress

national book festival, a place where books bring us together like today. at this time, we ask that you turn off or silence all cell phones. also, if you need to leave the room, please use the doors on the left. we want to notify you that this event will be recorded. your entry and presence at this program constitutes your consent to be filmed or otherwise recorded. i will turn the microphone to liz neely who will be moderating the session. thank you for being here. enjoy the program. [applause] liz: hello everyone. i'm liz neely. i am absolutely delighted to be moderating today's session. this is "underwater: climate change and me."

if you are not interested in hearing about oceans and coral reefs, first, i'm sorry for you, second, you can go out of the room. we will be diving into 45 minutes of conversation about our oceans. we will start at a sundrenched, shallow waters with coral reef, then make our way down into darker, more mysterious steps --depths. i am excited to be joined by two incredible marine scientists and authors. joining us today we have the author of "life on the rocks: building a future for coral reefs" dr. julie [applause] as well as an intrepid explorer, research scientist and author of "below the edge of darkness: a memoir of exploring life and light in the deep sea." dr.

edith witter. we want to thank the national endowment for the arts for sponsoring the stage. our plan today is to explore both of the books that explore ocean science as well as personal stories. julie and edith both take us on personal journeys whether navigating medical mission -- mysteries or struggling before pushing forward. my own career path started in ocean conservation so it is a personal joy to explore these things. i am so excited to get into this together. my plan is i will ask each of them to make a provocative statement or ask a question to get you all thinking. in the final 15 minutes of the session today we will take questions. i will hand the floor to juliet

he does in turn to talk about their books and then we will talk for about 15 minutes before we dive in. at the end of the talk today you will be able to get books signed by our two authors. so, provocative statements or questions. julie, let's start with you. julie: the story of coral reefs is one of struggle. i think we all know that. currently, predictions are that by 2050, 99% of the coral reefs will be lost on our planet. if that is the case, what can we as terrestrial people, terrestrial beings, people who live appear on land do to make what is beneath the waves less invisible to us? edith: in 2011 or 2012 we got

the first video of a giant squid in the deep sea. that was the first time we were able to record this creature in its own environment. i maintained the reason it took so long to do that is that we were doing it wrong. we were scaring them away. if it took that long to record an animal over four stories tall , how many other creatures are there in the deep sea that we don't even know about? the giants would have -- giant squid have been float when they die so we have some specimens. we knew they existed. what about stuff that doesn't float? liz: on that note, let's talk a little bit about your books and takeaways people need to understand as they approach these questions. juli: this is a coral reef.

coral reefs take up less than 1% of the ocean. they are quite small in terms of space. but they have a disproportionate effect on marine life. it's estimated that 25% of all marine species depend on call reefs at some point in their life. coral reefs are these incredibly vibrant, abundant places rich in marine life. but coral have a problem. they are bumping up against climate change. the reason why coral are first of all animals. they are like little cn enemies that live in -- see an enemies --sea anemonies that live in colonies. about the size of a pencil eraser. you can see in their tissue, the little green dots. those are algae that photosynthesize and feed 90% of

the sugar they make to the coral. that is the energy coral used to make the limestone skeletons they live inside of that creates the architecture of our reef. when temperatures rise, and we don't know exactly who starts it, but either the coral kicks out the algae or the algae abandons the coral and it takes with it its color and also its sugar. so suddenly the coral is on starvation rations. it is bleached at that point. if the temperature does not fall -- if the temperature falls, the symbiosis can be reestablished. if it does not, the coral die. a bleached reef looks like skeleton, bones, a graveyard. that's ultimate what it is. this is a true reality for coral reefs around the world.

already 50% of the reefs of bleached. -- have bleached. ejections for 2050 are really bad. -- projections for 2050 are really bad, but the book is not an obituary. people around the world are bolstering the health of coral reefs so as they come and do this period of stress as we warm our oceans and our planet, there are things we can do. i wanted to tell some of those stories. this is a reef in indonesia. you can see the rubble beneath those bars. that's a dead reef. those structures are called brief stars. -- reef stars. they are made out of rebar and they are networked together into a galaxy. what happens is the race has resiliency and after about 18 months, -- the reef has resiliency and after about 18

months of the coral has grown and after three years you have a reef that is completely restored. so there is a lot of work being done to protect the coral reefs and all the life they support. it's also a precarious time. edith: it was coral reefs that got me hooked on marine biology. i was smitten. when i saw my first coral reef i was 11. i decided i wanted to be a marine biologist. instead of becoming a coral reef biologist i became a deep-sea biologist. my first deep-sea expedition was in 1982 on a little ship where we went out and hauled that's behind the ship. and this was the primary way we knew about life in the depot -- the deep ocean, we dragged that's behind ships.

we kept the animals alive in a container that kept them cold. when we dumped them out everything glowed. it was incredible. there were pulsating plankton, growing crip -- glowing krill, flashes from bangle jellyfish. i plunged my arm into the bucket. icy cold water. i pulled out a red shrimp the size of a hamster. it had nozzles on either side of his mouth that were spewing sapphire blue light that pooled in the palm of my hand, dripped between my fingers, drop back into the bucket and went on glowing. everything lit up. these animals had photo force. they had lures. they had all kinds of contraptions for being able to make light, to find food, to attract mates, to defend against predators. i wanted to know what that world look like -- looked like.

i got the opportunity in 1984 when i got to meet with a group of scientist testing a new tool for exploring what was then and still is the largest least explored habit had on our planet, the mid water. it was a diving suit called wasp. it's not an acronym, someone thought it looked like the inset -- insects. yellow body, bulbous head, michelin man arms with pictures on the end of it. it was developed for diving to oil rigs down to 2000 feet. my first open ocean die was in the santa barbara channel. -- dive was in the santa barbara channel. they put us in one after the other and drop us to 800 feet to make sure we would not have a cost of phobic meltdown. i did not. i was so intrigued by what i was seeing that i saved that for the next dive. i went down 800 feet and i turned out the lights. i was blown away by what i saw.

at the time there were no cameras that could record this. but this is what it looks like. it looked like a fireworks display. later when i was interviewed by our local newspaper, they asked me what is it like down there? i blurted out, it's like the fourth of july. they used that as a headline and i took a tremendous ribbing from my colleagues for such a nonscientific statement. i have lost track of the number of times over the years i have taken people down for their first drive and have them describe it like a fourth of july. it was incredible. i saw jellyfish that just blew my mind. i included these for juli. for her love of the spineless. this is a chain on the left in the light and on the right by its own bioluminescence.

it was longer than this room. i brushed up against it with the wasp and it lit up, propagated down, and everything in the suit lit up. i could read all of the dials and gauges in the suit without a flashlight, just by the bioluminescence. this is a colony, sort of like a coral. it is a really bizarre creature. what an astonishing amount of light. some of these jellyfish produce different displays depending on how they were stimulated. the comb jelly on the left, you see the rainbow color because it is being illuminated. that's not bioluminescence. the bioluminescence, the cold, living light this creature makes, it can make it intrinsically as you see in the middle image or extrinsically where it releases it as a cloud of particles like an octopus or squid could release an ink loud in the face of a predator.

a tremendous number of these animals can release their bioluminescent chemicals in the face of a predator temporarily blinding them in order to make an escape. the jellyfish intrigued me the most. they don't have eyes. who were these displays directed at? why were there different displays in the same jellyfish? i developed an electronic jellyfish that imitated certain displays. it turned out, this was enormously attractive to squid. this is what led to the giants would hunt. -- the giant squid hunt. liz: i would like to turn to the audience. raise your hand if you have ever been in the ocean. keep them raised. do we have scuba divers in the room? we have a lot of people who have been in the ocean. in these books we are traveling from locations near here, in the florida keys, for example, to

the opposite side of the planet. we cover time from early in your career all the way up to the beginning of the pandemic. that is quite a sweep. i know writing books that combine science and memoir is an incredible intellectual and emotional challenge. since this is a book festival, let's start with the process of writing a book. i am curious about tapping into your memories and what motivated you to write these books. both of you. edith: i never intended in my life to write a memoir. i was contacted by a literary agent who saw an article about my research in the new york times and he asked me if i had ever thought of writing a memoir. i said no, go away. then, we got the first video of a giant squid using the electronic jellyfish.

that also got written up in a lot of places. he contacted me again. this time he had a whole speech prepared about how i had seen things nobody had ever seen and i had -- i should be willing to share them with the world. i said, i don't know how. i'm a scientist. we don't write in the first person. i counted. from that time there were 40 emails from him. they weren't pushy, but he just kept sending them. have you read this memoir? have you thought about this? finally i decided, ok, i will give it a shot. one christmas i just took some time and started trying to write in the first person. i had kept first-person diaries, especially of my expeditions, what i saw on each dive, for example. actually, i ended up having fun writing the book. it was so freeing compared to writing science papers. i had a blast.

i was very much benefited from the pandemic. i run a not-for-profit that takes a lot of time. with the pandemic i got a little extra time for the rewrite of the book. anyway, it was unexpected in every possible way. liz: i'm glad you're agent was persistent. in the footnotes you can feel the fun being had. your sense of humor comes across. juli: i was a little more intentional in my decision to write in the first person. well, i was a scientist. then i fell off the scientist path and started writing textbooks. then i was actually -- i got a little bit of a gig writing short articles for national geographic. that was really cool.

a photographer i liked what i was writing and asked me to write the text for one of his books. i am a huge reader. i read everything. i think the idea that i could actually be an author was something i had not dared to imagine before this photographer asked me the right the text for his photography book. the first chapter was about coral. i rode my heart out. then, i did not hear back from him. i called the editor of the bug like, what happened? -- of the book like, what happened. he was like, i'm sorry, he is not going with you. but it was in that moment i realized i wanted to be an author. but i cannot not do it for someone else. i had to do it for myself and find my own voice. i started reading a ton of popular science. i would finish reading those

books come put them on my nightstand and be like, i could never write a book like that. one day i put the book on my nightstand like i could never write a book like that because i did only write a book in my own voice. as i could only write a book in my own voice. that's what i realized i could only write a science book if i combined memoir with science and that is the way i have been writing ever since. in terms of memories it's interesting. i have some very vibrant memories, but i did not keep journals of all my dives. so i just have to rely on my memories. now that i'm intentional about going out, traveling, and telling the stories about what i am doing, i keep journals like crazy.

i do journal after every dive, after every day, after every interview. that's really helpful. liz: we have already touched briefly on the fact that the way we write in science for publication is very formulaic and technical. you remove your personality and sense of humor. what you have done in these books is quite different. another hard thing is that science is perpetually building on a body of knowledge and when you write a book like this you have to stop reading, stop researching, and publish at some point. juli, for you, is there anything new you have learned a the publication of your book around the status of coral reefs or the ocean that you want to update us on? juli: what is amazing is call reese are still being discovered. that blows my mind because coral have to live shallow in order to

provide the algae in their tissue with enough light for them to photosynthesize. as we know, the deep ocean is too dark for that to happen so coral have to live in to of water near the surface that they can have the photosynthesis that gives them all of their energy. yet, since the book was published, i have learned of three coral reefs we did not know of, a deepwater one near tahiti. one found at the mouth of the amazon river. that has long been considered too sentimenty for coral to be there. then there is one in honduras at the mouth of where all of these banana plantations were built. the fertilizer has been running in the water therefore essentially -- for a century

and people thought there was too much fertilizer and sediment therefore -- there for coral to survive and these are really healthy reefs. the question is, what will the reefs of the future look like and are these forbearance to future reefs? these are questions we don't know the answer to now. liz: i have a follow-up question. you showed us what bleaching looks like. you mentioned how dire the circumstances are. it feels to me in your book you are doing an important balancing act between confronting the brutal reality of the threats to coral reefs and damage they have already undergone while maintaining hope in the future, specifically looking for data, evidence, case studies that give us a foundation for that hope rather than just closing our eyes to it. can you talk about your own feelings about the future of coral reefs are zero this book?

juli: the book starts as this -- at this meeting i went to in florida called reef futures in to temper -- in december 2018. i went to the meeting expecting just a bunch of really depressed scientists, people reporting on mass bleaching's around the world that are happening. but what i discovered her all of these people doing the kind of restoration i showed you in the slides. and also, looking at the in credit -- incredible genetic flexibility of coral. coral are incredible at hybridizing. the idea of species for coral is very fluent. there was just a paper published last week that coral seemed to be able to integrate mutations from their somatic cells, the cells in their body, not in

their reproductive line. they can take mutations from their body and put them into their genetic line and pass them onto their offspring. that's crazy. it should not happen in animals. there are people making spur banks of corals. making embryo banks of corals. freezing them. freezing embryos. doing all kinds of amazing projects to boost coral reproduction, to boost coral survival. it's definitely not game over. what is amazing is oceans are warming, warming at an alarming rate. 93% of the heat that carbon the oxide in our atmosphere holds has gone into the ocean.

coral only have one to two degrees of above buffer before they start bleaching. dutch of a buffer before they start bleaching. but they seem to be trying to use this incredible genetic flexibility they have. people around the world are trying to bolster that. i did try to walk this line. i am glad it came off that way. the story is not over on this. it's really an active story. liz: in reading these books, there is an incredible broadening. as a reader you have to stretch your mind to think about what is happening on a global scale. we were talking about genetic adaptation, hero week efforts to create genetic material. i want to switch to you, edith. one of the things is it's hard for us to imagine the true expanse of some of these

ecosystems we are talking about. you mentioned briefly in passing that the mid water is one of the largest ecosystems on the planet. can you help us really understand what that means? edith: so, the most incredible thing to me is how little of the ocean we have actually explored. the number you hear sometimes is we have only explored 5%. that's not right. that was based on mapping from a remote sensing device at the surface of the ocean, not actually visiting the place. we are of two closer to 30% now and that. but if you are talking about actually visiting, just the bottom of the ocean, not even the huge volume above it, only .05%. our usual protocol as humans is to explore a place and then exploit it. in the ocean we have reversed that.

we are exploiting it before we have explored it. just decimating the fish population, dragging nets across the bottom that turn unbelievable gardens of eden into a place that won't sustain life for hundreds of years. all of this is going on out of sight and out of mind. we are introducing our toxins and pollutants into the environment as we are taking out every last fish and form of marine life that there is. as i said, we do not know how this system works. we are an ocean planet. when we look for life on other planets, we look for oceans. yet, we don't know how our ocean word -- world works. did the artemis go off? it was supposed to go off today.

it didn't. anyway, $40 billion we have spent so far and they still have not got it off the ground. it will be $90 billion. we are not spending anything like that on our own planet. it does not make any sense. [applause] liz: you are one of the relatively small number of people who have done some of this exploring of our ocean in dives. can you talk about what it feels like? what do you see? how long does it take? just paint a picture for us as you drop into the depths. edith: every time i dive in a submersible i have the opportunity to see something, possibly a species i have not seen before. certainly a behavior or something somebody has never seen before. that excitement of discovery is so incredible. i think it has to be baked into our dna.

it is how we have learned to survive on this planet. we are all explorers. stories about exploration excited from childhood -- excite us from childhood. a secret garden. going down a whole into a wonderland. finding an ancient cave. liz: a mysterious forest. edith: all these things excite us. we are explorers. i think we really need to be tapping into that right now because that is how we have learned to survive on the planet. exploring it. figuring out what is safe, what is not, what to do to survive. that's what we need to be doing right now. liz: one of the parts that really struck me, actually, it's reflected in the title of the book, the edge of darkness. as you are dropping through the water column you talk about how it is spectacularly blue and

then strangely both bright and dark at the same time. then, that zone, that shadow zone shifts over the course of the day as the sun is high in the sky and as the sun starts to set and that sets off incredible biological phenomenon. edith: the edge of darkness is a really important shifting place in the ocean. because, there are so many animals out there that are using vision and they are paying attention to where the edge of darkness is. so, during the day, they do -- go down and hide below the edge of darkness because there are no hiding places. there are no trees or bushes for animals hide behind so they hide in the dark during the day then they come up and feed in the food rich surface waters where photosynthesis occurs under cover of darkness. that is the most massive animal migration pattern on the planet and it happens every single day in the ocean. but different animals handle it

in different ways. there is a lot of activity. i watched this traffic of animals going up at night to feed. it is all being driven by light. so many of these animals that are living at the edge of darkness, below the edge of darkness, sometimes, never seen sunlight at all, they have eyes. because of bioluminescence. because approximately 75% of the animals in the open ocean environment make light. so it could be claimed that it may be the most common form of communication on the planet. that means we probably ought to know a little more about it. liz: yeah, you. one of the things i really enjoyed about your book and talking about the scientific process, you opened your slides by saying, we did not use to

have camera sensitive enough to detect the light he were seeing. i love the stories are not creating the manual when you win when you need. you have a favorite story -- do you have a favorite story? about a piece of equipment that is near and dear to your heart? and dear to your heart?

hobbyists and research scientists are operating in parallel with incredible amounts of knowledge that are parallel to each other but not collaborating. juli: yes, there is a huge coral world on land. coral hobbyists raise coral in the garages, basements, and living rooms. they have developed a lot of tools that are being shifted to coral restoration. one of the things that these people have discovered is that if you cut a coral, if you saw it and create another and, it grows as much as five times faster than regular coral. you can grow coral a lot faster and as they are starting to pharma, this is an important technique. they have known this for decades

that this is what they do to create new pieces of coral that they sell or give to other people who are hobbyists. now, the scientists are taking these techniques and using them to propagate coral which they can then replant in the oceans. the equipment, the racks, they all came from the aquarium hobby. yet the hobbyists have their own names for coral that are not scientific names and the scientists have their scientific names. they haven't spoken to each other that much except for you're right that it's changing there's a horrible disease going through the caribbean right now called stony coral tissue loss disease. it infects about 22 species of

coral and the tissue melts off. the scientists are going out in front of the infection front and collecting healthy coral than they are putting them in aquaria on land. so the zoos and aquaria who have been hard -- part of this hobby not just hobbyists but affectional's who do this, they are holding coral in safety appear on land while this terrible disease sweeps through the caribbean. >> i would like to welcome those of you in the audience you have questions to come to the front and stand in front of the microphones so we can take your questions for the final 10 minutes of the session. in terms of teamwork, collaboration, exciting projects you are watching right now, do you want to mention any of them?

>> i have been involved in a couple recently that are exciting. i had to sign a nondisclosure agreement so you will have to watch national geographic next year. it's the best bioluminescence ever filmed anywhere. the new camera systems are amazing. i'm also working with a colleague on newer types of cameras that are smaller, cheaper, easier to deploy. i want to get as many of them out there as i can because the opportunities for observation, the more discoveries we will make. >> i can see we have a lot of people and not a lot of time so please keep your questions concise. >> i would like to thank you for coming. the sign language interpreters as well. my question is about negation and getting the word about climate change out there.

i was a biologist in undergrad then i moved toward the policy realm. how do you communicate the dangers of oceans and climate change in the modern era? is it a story about what we have to lose or gain? >>'s i have been trying to emphasize what we have to gain. we emphasize what we have to lose, too many people shut down. it has been said that martin luther king not mobilize the civil rights movement by preaching i had a nightmare but that's why nobody wants to listen. >> i agree. it's about what we have to treasure on this planet which is so much and it's more than we even know. it's >> i used to live in papua new guinea. there is a mine on land but it

has been disposing of the tailings in the deep sea by piping way out. do you know of any studies on how bad is this owing to be? second question is how much danger are we in from people who want to start doing mining on the ocean floor? >> i am horrified by the mining on the ocean floor. we have been seeing trawling, but they are talking about mining in bed sites, these incredible hotbeds of biodiversity and they want to scrape them. it's going to be horrific and once again out of sight out of mind. the dumping on the bottom, nobody is looking at that. we're putting the artemis in the

air for $40 billion, we can't spend any money to go look at what this dumping has done at the bottom of the ocean. >> it feels like this goes together with the previous question as well. a lot of people think that the bottom of the ocean is empty and lifeless with mud. what we know is everywhere we look we find incredible richness and life. >> is part of the problem that these are international waters? is there something that international agreements that have to be made by everyone? >> they have been trying to make agreements and failing three years. this is a big and complicated question and i think to be continued. >> thank you again for speaking. as a student in my last year of college, i am getting a degree related to environment a policy, but i have spent so much time

overwhelmed by the amount of change that needs to happen and feeling hopeless about the future. what advice would you give to someone who was to contribute and make a change but feels like individual contributions can never outweigh the effects of insurmountable climate change? >> i feel like we have a disconnect in the natural world that is really problematic. in my own backyard, i have seen real change with citizen science. we have a citizen science team at our organization and we train rigorously. they are doing real science that is expanding our understanding of our local environment and it creates environmental stewards, it enhances understanding of science. it creates a sense of community all of which has been missing.

i am a big advocate for high-quality citizen science. >> my question is for juli. you showed pictures of the bleached then restored coral reef. you mentioned the reef stars that were used. if it takes one degree or two degrees of temperature change to bleach the coral, how much more does it take to restore it? i am interested in how that restored in that same area. >> the bleached reef, the reef that was restored was bombed out. there a thing called blast fishing which is common around coral reefs unfortunately.

unless they put those stars in place, that rubble would roll around and reef could not reestablish itself there. that reef had been bombed 30 years ago. you see the sort of similar crumbling in a bleached reef. i should be clear that they were not the same places. what was the question? sorry. how could you restore a bleached reef? that reef star project has been only used on 10 hectares that was the largest restoration that exists right now. the question is, will that work and other places around the world? that is still to be seen. they have just done some installations in australia on the great barrier reef and also

in mexico. it has not been long enough to see if they will come back in those places yet. >> we only have time for one final question. >> what advice do you have for those of us who are not scientists, but would love to contribute to conservation? how can we become part of these teams? how can we help impact? >> one way is to call your congresspeople all the time and tell them that you care. that we need to be worried about climate change in a way that is more serious man the way we have been. that's one thing you can do. put it on your reminder every month to call your congresspeople. i also have a sense that art and communication matter. as we bring art and science

closer together, we have more impact. people tend to work on, have action when they feel something. we can know something in our brain, but we don't always take action based on it. when we feel something, that's what we act. connecting science and art is really important. >> we have had a special dispensation for one final -- >> what can my school community do to help the ocean? >> you can write to politicians. [applause] >> thank you. >> you would be surprised how much they listen. >> thank you to everyone who cares enough to ask that question what can we do. the answer is more than you would think and there is reason for hope in a whole vast ocean

to care for it in our own particular ways. thank you so much. [applause] you can find us in the book signing downstairs starting soon. >> now we are joined by author and actor nick offerman. this is your fifth book. is there a threat that connects all five? >> for my second book which is called gumption among other people, you interviewed michael

pollan for a feature i was writing about him and he said your second book is your hardest. everybody has one book in them. eventually, if you write two or three or more, you learn the questions that will plague you for the rest of your life. he said of his own work, and he said you can see the through line in my books which are both inspired in our writing somewhat by wendell berry who is a great kentucky agrarian writer. the questions of how do we relate to our food and nature through who produces our food and how they treat the land and the produce and so forth -- our awareness of that relationship i think is prevalent in all of my

books. my fourth book was sort of a memoir of my marriage with megan mullally. there is some crossover where i think things that happen in our house get a little agricultural from time to time. that's maybe not appropriate for this channel. >> is your recent book and owed to the national parks? >> it is examining the way that we in society in the view of conservation through thinking of national parks come the big ones like yosemite, the grand canyon, versus the way we think about nature right where we are in our locality. it is espousing the grandeur of our parks and experiencing them

but also saying what do we have in our backyards and how do we need to pay more attention to that part of nature? >> why did you choose glacier national park? >> it was quite simple. my friend jeff suggested that we go somewhere pretty. we have three weight bromance between jeff, george saunders and myself. he said let's go and have some conversations and you can use them for your book. when a brilliant poet says that to you, i said ok that sounds good. i researched which park seemed like it would be the most conducive to gorgeous hiking and it turned out to be glacier national park. >> the national parks are the

nations family jewels? >> i think crown jewels is the phrase they would prefer. [laughter] teddy roosevelt may have been approving of the family jewels. yes, i think that is a roosevelt quote that he called them the crown jewels. luminaries like him and john muller -- john muir were essential in establishing park service and not selling those lands to any developers. asked how far removed early to the development of our food right now? >> that's what inspired my writing. the work of a farmer in kentucky and that's all he writes about

is how we have lost touch with where our food is produced and by whom and how. when i read that, i thought day in and day out, i can't tell you where any of my food is sourced so i can't tell you how it's grown, if the farmers or fishermen and fisher women are treating the animals with decency or if it is explicated. when you hear terms like the meat industry or meatpacking plants and you think about that for a second, i realized i don't ever want my meet to be involved with anything called an industry and i don't want to go through a plant either.

i began to pay attention to where my food is coming from. would begin to giveaway the agency for who makes our food, we also disregard our small farmers who are the people who are stewards for the health of our land. that is one of the main reasons that the health of our land has become so poor is because we are taking care of it. we are leaving the small farmers aside and allowing corporate interests to use the soil to make a profit more than healthy environment. >> at the same time, doesn't that corporate farming allow for lower prices and more supply? >> yes which we are led to believe is a benefit. that's how we got into this mess is the powers that be said we can make food much cheaper and it turns out there is a cost, it

just comes much later. it is a bill we did not expect the end of the meal that says now your dirt is in terrible shape, your communities are in terrible shape, and on and on. it is much more complicated equation that i want to engender that conversation and say our food system is not working. if you take writers like wendell and others, they all have wonderful road signs that say we used to get along with mother nature and we have left that far in the dust. >> how did you connect with wendell berry? >> i read his stories in my 20's

and i immediately wrote him a letter and said can i adapt your work? he wrote me back which was great and he said no. he said he is not interested in seeing any interpretations of his work. i kept bugging him, writing him letters and he would write me back. finally after 15 years or so, i got hooked up with a filmmaker named laura done who was making a documentary about him and i was able to help and that's when he found out i was a woodworker. wow was -- when i was an actor, he didn't have any time for me. but his son said hey that guys

in my woodworking magazine. so i got to know the family and i became an ally. one of my favorite things to do is introduce as many people as i can to his writing. i have done audiobooks of a couple of his books of essays and i'm getting ready to do a new book that is coming out of his that is very exciting. he is an incredibly prolific artist and i am glad i am able to pitch in and be part of their crew, but i try to stay out of their hair is much as i can because he has better things to do. >> nick offerman, what is your writing style? where do you do it? when? >> writing style, printing. i print. my style is bucolic perhaps

don't be like voice. i am self-effacing. i tried to laced some humor into it. i enjoy the writing of mark twain and bill bryson and some of the other writers i have mentioned. i am always a mage -- amazed by great writers, how economical their sentences are. i am never more aware of that than when i am writing a book and i run on and on. aspirational is my writing style. >> do you sit outside or do you have a desk? >> i travel a lot for my work as an actor and maturing -- touring. i have the ability to write in a cabin overlooking a lake in minnesota with a breeze.

that's probably 3% of my writing has been there. usually, i am in an airplane on my way to south africa or in a hotel room. anywhere. i'm glad that i'm able to write on the road because i'm usually on the road. >> you played the character ron swanson on parks and recreation for several years create weedeater, woodworker, libertarian. how much of that is in you? >> the base values are strongly similar. we both don't suffer food -- full glad. -- we don't suffer fools gladly. ron is an ideal libertarian.

people who attempt libertarianism in this country soon learned that on paper, it sounds great. if we try to engage that system, it would end in anarchy pretty quickly. ron was an ideal libertarian. he respected everyone the same. he was a wonderful feminist. he was a wonderful ally to everyone who is decent and if you are indecent especially if you crossed one of his friends, that he was quick to take up arms against you. >> you and your wife got to play characters or on programs that have multiple political viewpoints. that's a rarity in media. >> it is and it's something i'm grateful for.

especially as we sit here in a partisan time, it's very medicinal to be able to laugh together and say you like peanut butter, i like chocolate. i've heard they can be combined to some great effect if we can get close enough to shake hands. >> where the deer and antelope play, obviously a line from home on the range. why did you pick that? >> when i was in college, one of my roommates was a musical theater performer and he was learning on the guitar home on the range. a lot of these classic americana songs have versus, more than what people are familiar with. there was one that i heard him singing around the appointment -- apartment, the red man was pressed from his home in the west, it is unlikely he will ever return to the banks of red river where seldom if ever is

flickering campfires burn. i said come again? that was home on the range? it was an awakening for me all of the nuance in stories like our treatment of the indigenous peoples of america for example. how they are addressed then they fade then they come back up. how so many of our human stories in our country need to continue to be part of the conversation. that was something that stuck with me until now. i was going to write a book about my perspective on our relationship with nature. i said that reminds me of back in kansas when that was written, their relationship with the local tribes that once were

there leading healthy lives in an agrarian way getting along with mother nature. then the europeans came in and said we would like to do a less good job with your topsoil. until we eventually were able to get that right, i think we have to keep having that conversation. >> where the deer and the antelope play is the book. it is nick offerman's fifth. thank you for being on book to be with us. -- book tv with us. that was nick offerman. we are back live. another author panel coming up plus two: opportunities. you heard nick offerman talk

about an author named wendell berry. this evening our guest the owner of square books in oxford, mississippi also talked about wendell berry. you can watch that on book tv on c-span2 at 7:30. coming up, two call-in programs. then we will conclude our day with david rubenstein. his recent book is about investing and he is cochair of the national book festival. we will talk with him and you will have the opportunity to call in and talk with him as well. before we get to the next panel, we want to show you a little bit of last nights opening celebration. it was a tribute to the late

historian david mccullough. >> i have been voting my working life to the american story for over 50 years. i am ever grateful that i somehow had the good fortune to wander into this way of life contributing what i can to the betterment of our country. i have done this on paper, and classrooms, on television. and on the stage. in every way i can to convey that history is not about boring statistics and quotations and memorizing dates. it isn't about politics and the military. history is human. it is about people. when in the course of human

events, our declaration begins. >> that entire opening celebration which was last night friday night can be watched online well, here is another author discussion, the role of the essay during short talks and social media, so here are authors talking about their writing and the important of the written word. >> festival, where books bring us together. we ask you turn off or silence your cell phones. if you need to leave the room, use the doors on the left. we want to notify you that this event will be recorded, and your presence here at this program constitutes your consent to be

filmed or otherwise recorded. i am going to pass the microphone to the person moderating this session, and i thank you for being here and enjoy the program. [applause] >> thank you so much to the library of having us, and thank you to politics and prose. we are very grateful for everything you do. i am celeste marcus, the managing editor of liberties, a publication dedicated to culture and politics. i am here today with the professor writing at the new school, and the author of a difficult death, a literary biography. his essay was a takedown of the literary biography, which i hope we will get to talk about later.

our other guest as a writer for new york magazine, and he wrote a piece growing up inside a city ravaged by the opioid crisis. another guest is a literary critic and contributing editor at the point, and in the process of finishing her first book, a collection of essays you can buy in one year. liberties was started two years ago and is dedicated to a particular conception of the essay. our essays are long. they are not pegged to anything, so they're not occasioned by an event or the release of the book or movie. we don't really do reviews, but we concede that not all essays are like this, so this first question is for two that year. if you can talk a little bit about your relationship with the

form of the essay, i would be grateful to you. >> i don't feel that i have a relationship with the form of the essay. i feel like i have a relationship to each individual essay, so i tend to think that writing by genre is not the way to write about a thing. that's not an answer, because i don't have general thoughts about the essay. celeste: it is case-by-case? becca: yes, sometimes a review is a better occasion for nsa. celeste: fine. sorry. >> for me, the essay that liberties publishes, which tends to be longer, more expensive than the average straight book review is my preferred form, because for me, essay writing

especially is always about the discovery, so i rarely know what i think about a subject before i sit down and write about it. all that comes out in the writing itself, so having the space to explore that and cover that is important. celeste: can i ask you about the essay that she wrote for us celeste:? ? it was a takedown of literary biographies, but you also wrote literary biographies, so did you know there would be tension between her identity is the author of the essay and the other? morten: i saw it as a defense of literary biography, slightly doomed genre. it was slightly more of a takedown of a certain kind of biography, but a defense of writing biographies, and a lot of criticism, it is self-serving

in the sense the kind of biography i was advocating for is what i aspire to write. celeste:celeste: you don't write you don't write essays, but you did write one for us. one of the big differences is essays treat ideas, and journalism is relaying information. your work does do that. you are communicating information, but with the style. you took new york city by storm when you move there one year ago, in part because your writing confers glamour. i would rather live in the description of the party than the party itself, so was that consciously conceived. were you trying to resuscitate a certain style of writing? >> thank you. that is very sweet.

before i started my job at new york magazine, i inhaled a lot of journalism of the new york observer, vanity fair, when magazines were as thick as a doorstop. there's not that much writing like that anymore, but that is what made me want to move to new york and do other stuff. i think it is in my coffee. my job for what i do is to understand who the readers are of new york magazine, and it is a sophisticated person who knows the city like the back of their hand and knows who the power players are, and they want to know who is up, down, and where they fit into the power matrix. you have to give the inside dope, tell what's happening the room, who is interacting, and parties can be a funny venue to see those creatures in the wild and go up to them and ask annoying questions and bring the

reader along with you. celeste: did you discover that on-the-job? was it a surprise for you that you could get at this underbelly through these parties? shawn: no, because i lived in washington during the trump years and worked at the new york times. my first couple of pieces were party reports for the style section. it sounds frivolous, but i learned going out at night and writing about the way people are interacting is a good way of showing how the organism that washington was rejecting the president and the people around him, and you could see was at the party, who did not get invited, you know, who went to the party that we. it sort of mattered. everything that happens here is a political statement, and social life too, so it was a fun way to write about politics. celeste: ok. you said you were interested,

excited by a magazine-style writing that is a throwback. weathered specific writers you are trying to emulate. are there writers that you hope to channel?is there anybody you would rather die than imitate? morten: in shawn: my mentor is maureen dowd. everything i learned, i learned from her. she is a singular voice and she had a huge influence on me. also, the old vanity fair, a magazine writer whose pieces were so good, sharp, and funny, and that made me want to do that for living. all the greats. tom wolf. christopher hitchens. you flip through those magazines and it's such good writing on every page. celeste: is that how you learn

to write, by reading them? shawn: i guess. becca: i don't think you should try to imitate anyone. that is a mistake. you should try to develop your own voice, but you should try to learn things from people. there are people eyes, before i sit down and write. tons of novelists who are beautiful prose stylists, and there are lots of people i rather die than imitate, but my principle is i never say anything mean by name unless i am able to substantiate my attack with lots of bad prose. >> ruto. morten: similar to what sean

says about admiring an older kind of journalism, i think we both admire or romanticize the new york intellectuals, that heyday, which i think liberties carries the torch on, fairly small readerships, but generalist essays, nonspecialist , the dilettante connoisseur. droid mcdonald is a lodestar. he and his wife published his journal politics from their tiny apartment in new york during the second world war. another one for me is james wood . when i first moved here, as an undergraduate, when i first started reading his essays, it was a true revelation. i did not know you could write that way about books, that a book review could be a work of art in itself.

becca: james wood is a great one. christian lawrenson is another writer is alive. he is one i like and try to emulate. celeste: you mentioned readership. you mentioned you are writing for a particular kind of reader, so what are you trying to do for your readers when you are writing, excite them, persuade them, do you want them to feel pleasure, pressure, or change their minds? becca: the first thing that occurred to me is how little i think about this. when i sit down to write, it's like getting up to dance. i don't devote a lot of thought and attention to imagining my readership because maybe i would be too terrified to write another word or something, but in part because i don't feel it

is my place to prescribed how my readership responds. celeste: you said it's possible the reader you are writing for should not exist, and if it that is true, you should write as if they did. he said that as if that something you thought yourself before. becca: if an educated reading public does not exist, we must invent one. i think an educated reading public exists, and i have had conversations with them, and my friends are among them, but you can't know who will read your work or if it will be interpreted charitably. i have written things that have been interpreted uncharitably, so the best thing you can do is to imagine you're writing for a person who is smarter than you, in order to avoid being condescending to readership, which is the worst thing to do, so if you imagine specific people, you might be condescending to the particular specific people. >> there was a great tv

interview with philip roth many years ago where he is ask what you want to do for us, the reader. i want to say like philip roth, i can't worry about the reader. if the two readers i have -- but, i mean, i think she is right, virginia woolf's idea of the common reader, intelligent, educated, but you want to reach in theory anyone who is interested in ideas in books, but -- and books, but i always try to write something i would want to read myself. you are writing because you want to fill a gap or a void of some kind. that is true of books, but also essays. you want to be saying something you feel has not been said. >> you said you discover a subject are writing about it.

>> i am also writing for myself, because it's the only way i have a processing what i, and finding out what i think about something. it is about articulating that to myself. shawn: i disagree when you say you can think about the reader. i do the opposite. i don't thank about what the subject is going to think about it. it is this weird thing where you spend time with people. i'm working with this very powerful ceo. i have spent a lot of time with this person. i called everybody in their life. i go to the subject, but you can think about how they will react to the piece because of how they feel about it. first of all, it is impossible to predict. it is sort of irrelevant because the only one that matters in the relationship is the reader. that is why you're spending all the time with the person, doing all the reporting. my loyalty is to the reader of the magazine, so i have to tell them what the deal is here.

i can't sugarcoat it or ignore things because the reader has the right to know it. i think about the person paying the money to read the magazine. i don't think about what the subject is going to think about it. i think about what the reader will think. celeste: have you ever gone into an assignment thinking you would go one way and then been completely surprised by what the reality was? shawn: all the time. you go into it with a conception of the subject, and you think they are either a villain or some great, awesome person when you finish the piece, and you have to concentrate remind yourself of this, because as the whole point of reporting. you want to learn as you can. you have to be open to going a different direction. becca: that's true. i think you should go and not knowing what you will write. i only figure out what i think was a great. so i don't know if i think

anything right now. i would have to write to figure it out, but you should surprise yourself. you should allow the arguments to take you if that's where they take you. it's only fun to read an essay when there is a narrative drama in addition to an argumentative drama about how the essay will conclude. you can tell when a writer sits down and write something and thinks they know something about it. there is a kinetic energy missing from the work. i've seen nothing at liberties has ever been like that. -- obviously nothing at liberties has ever been like that. celeste: you are surprised by the directions your essays have taken, but have you ever been surprise come disappointed, or it could be a good surprised by how people have interpreted something that you have written? becca: yes. i am always surprised by the

ability to extract from your essay that absolute opposite of what the words on the page say. that has happened to me, which is one reason i try to keep the ideal reader foremost in my mind. i think of my husband. a smart and terrible man with whom i can speak about the things i am writing. yeah, i have had experiences where that has happened and it deals uniquely horrible, but also that is a liability of writing. everybody who has ever written has been misunderstood. celeste: i have not had the pleasure of being dragged on twitter yet. morten: i will answer that question in the future. i did write a short piece for the wall street journal a few years ago about how much i love flying and airports, all the things that normal people hate about traveling, and for weeks afterwards, i kept getting emails for people telling me that they grew up next to this and that airport. their father was a private.

i ended up being invited on some obscure travel show to talk about this essay. that was my only viral experience. becca: i read an essay about how much i hate talking and i have about how writers should not be invited to talk. it's a joke. i'm kidding. i like talking. shawn: i have been ripped apart on twitter before. celeste: that is not the question, guys. shawn: i think it is exhilarating. celeste: cool. shawn: it's like being tickled. morten: we should paraphrase saying that a mean tweet should ruin breakfast, but not lunch. celeste: that's good. you have had lovely experiences with readers who have surprise you by how much they loved your writing. i'm talking about one expansive particular. it is a story you should tell. you got all these incredible books from this reader who decided to send you -- tell the

story. morten: sure. i'm working on a book, and i've written a couple of pieces on the person, and a gentleman reached out to me, very generously offering me his family's first editions of the novels in german that had traveled with his grandfather from frankfurt to zürich in the 1930's, then to america in exile during the second world war, and the day after i had accepted this gracious offer, they arrived to my apartment, and one of the books, he did not mention this in the mail, was signed. so, yeah kind that is a really unique and wonderful experience. celeste: that is really cool. this is my next question. we now come off writers, unfortunate can have numerical

data about how our peace is doing. we can tell how many people have read it. it's not whether or not were being dragged, but you get a certain kind of reinforcement when you write the kind of peace that whoever the creatures are on social media, they are the ones who want to read this thing. they are not all the readers, but they are the ones that we can have the most accessible data about, so it is tempting to qualify success based on how well a pieces doing on social media. do you do that? are there other ways you qualify success that are more lasting and important to you? i hope so. what are they? becca: you can't tell actually how many people are reading your piece. this happened when i wrote my piece for liberties, which i thought was print only because the journal was print only, so i will let loose. no one will know. it won't go viral. it was the first piece on the

website. it went viral. people on twitter were really mad about it. he would've thought everybody hated it, but i got tons people who liked it, tons of pieces were based on that piece, so it was good for my career, so twitter is misleading. it is an answer. important. shawn: you shouldn't think about it, but we do. because we are very narcissistic and thin-skinned, and we obviously want to be read. morten: i don't think you should care about whether things get retweeted and so on. what matters is a comment from a writer you admire or you respect and admire. if somebody comes up to you and says you wrote that piece come that is much more gratifying than anything numerical.

becca: i think you know when you have written a good piece. that is the boring answer. sometimes i'm like, this was really worked. good. that is success to me. shawn: when you work on staff at a newspaper magazine, you have access to all these wretched tools they give you the exact analytics of the piece, so you know how he clicks it has gotten. most depressingly, there is always a staff that tells you the average reader time, so they state on the piece for two minutes, but it takes eight minutes to read this piece. it's really depressing. i don't look at that stuff. it can screw you up. it is nice when a piece hits big on twitter. you feel like you're being struck by lightning. you have to remember that only crazy people tweet, and the ones you want to reach are not tweeting every little thought that enters their head, but there's still reading your stuff. celeste: your piece for us was an unusual thing to write. what was the response to that but you got?

specifically i'm thinking about people from your hometown? shawn: it was gratifying. it was a first-person piece about a lot of dark stuff that happened in a town ravaged by the opioid crisis and friends i have lost along the way. i don't relate right first-person come so the feedback was really nice. it's probably the last time i'll ever do something like that. celeste: it was in our first issue. it was important and special. we have already covered this, but i'm in ask you anyway, how afraid are you are being hated on social media? how much does it affect what you decide to write about? becca: i am terrified. there are little angry tweeters in my head every tom i write a sentence. it was really during the pandemic because the person i lived with was the internet, i became totally paranoid, but i

thick i was cured, because i saw that even if people are mean about your piece on twitter in a limited way, nothing actually happens to you, as long as you're able to keep writing what can they really do to you? that's what i came out of it thinking, enough. has fortified me, so now i care less about twitter. morten: we will find out if there legions of angry fans on twitter, but i somehow doubt it. but, you know, of course it affects you, and of course, i don't think, you know, nobody would honestly say they don't care, but i also think when you are writing, all that falls away into the background. i put my phone away. i know you do too. becca: my computer has no internet. i have removed the wi-fi card

for my computer. morten: there is a shallow and superficial way you think about it, but once you do the writing itself, that takes over. when you are in that space, that comes after, when you publish the piece or whatever. becca: you have to remind yourself not to think about it, because if you do, why write it all? the point of writing is to write the truth, and when you prevent that from happening, there is no point because you're not making lots of money if you're writing essays, so if you can't tell the truth, why are you doing it? if you morten: tailor your writing to your audiences expectations, then i think you're doing yourself an enormous disservice. shawn: oh yeah, agreed. celeste: ok, so you're not writing for your readership, social media. how do you decide what to write about? how do you decide what to pitch?

becca: what you think you can endure spending tons of time with. i write mostly literary criticism, some writing about books. if i'm writing about an author, i will probably read everything the author has written, so i do it on the basis of passion. i am so excited to spend time with those authors, authors i love. it is well worth reading everything they have written. you do periodically write essays about books you don't like. i think there is a hate crush eared i'm developing this idea. you can want to spend time with something because you hated so much. this is how i feel about alastair mcintyre. if you're watching, i am coming for you. you want to figure out why it irritates you so much. what is wrong with it? it is passion that makes you write about anything. anything you're driven to write about is because you want to

spend time with it for one reason or another in my opinion. that's why i write about things. shawn: my story ideas fall into two categories, stuff where you get fired up and you call your editor, do you believe this? we should, somebody should write about this. or it's the thing you want to tell your friends at the bar at the end of the week. you're having a beer and light, the craziest thing happened, this is so interesting. it is just the thing that motivates you basically. becca:, kafka. shawn: that's not what we're talking about at my bar. becca: i will call people your bar about kafka. morten: i preferred to be commissioned to do something, and editor to suggest a topic or book, because left to my own devices, i picked 19th-century century danish novelist nobody has heard of. becca: we love that. morten: i did a piece for gawker earlier this year. they sent me a really horrible book by the guy who created

parks and recreation. he wrote a work of moral philosophy, if you can believe it. i, never a book i would have thought to write about myself, but i really enjoyed writing about it, not reading it, but writing about it, but i like editors to challenge me to try something else. becca: sometimes an editor can find an author you love too. i discovered one author because i was assigned to write about her. it was a perfect match of subject and writer. i love her forever. thank you. shawn: these two are scary. i do not want you to read my book whenever i write it. celeste: your book will be great. one more question and we will open it up to question and answer. what are books you looking forward to coming out? you can say non-contemporary writers or contemporary writers. what are you reading now?

or what is coming out that you're looking forward to? this is a way of plugging writers you admire. becca: bernard williams, an amazing philosopher that everyone should read. i highly recommend. i also recommend a recent novel, one of the smartest treatments of sex in recent years. it fits well with a more philosophical discussion about sex it's ongoing. there's a book later this year by brian dillon. he is wonderful. it will be fabulous. his other books are also fabulous. yeah. morten: i am still in my, man phase. i'm reading german history, stuff related to him. there is a book coming about about his relationship with elizabeth hardwick. i forget the title of it. come see me in september or something?

i might be writing about it, and i'm very excited to read that. next year, classics is publishing a danish novel, a great 20th-century danish novel i'm excited to see in english. becca: they are publishing some new translations as well. celeste: do you know who the translator is? becca: i don't, but i will send. shawn: i have to read so many newspapers and magazines for work. i don't get to read philosophy books. usually when i read books, it's usually because i have to write about the person. i just finished reading a memoir that comes out next week, which is really good, and a fun read, and before that, i profiled liz smith who has written a memoir of her political life. it is fun and funny.

that is what i recommend. becca: i am reading a book by an author that just came out two weeks ago, and it's like a murder mystery of the holocaust, but also a philosophical meditation on our relationship with memory and justice. you can buy that at politics and prose. becca: you can buy all these at politics and prose. it's a good institution. celeste: i think the way the q& a's operating is you go to either microphone. >> i wanted to ask you to clarify something you said, but i missed it, and it scrolled by before i could get it. you mentioned a book that was a novel and you talked about it being an interesting philosophical exploration of sex. i did not catch the name of the author of the book. becca: lillian fishman.

it is really good. >> my question has to do with the process. what kind of things do you do before you start an essay? how do you come up with the ideas, and how do you put the ideas together? becca:,. read.,\ i'm usually writing about an author or work of literatu when i'm done with that, i transcribe my annotations, then organize those into an outline, then put the outline of my computer without internet and then i write that. morten: i wish you had not just told me that. >> thank. becca: are you not going to answer the? morten: not after that, no. becca: that is normal. shawn: i don't write essays, so i don't know. celeste: how do you write a

piece? shawn: first, you have to find every single thing written about them, then i printed out, circle things, then you have to call everyone who knows them and find out what the pressure points are in with the dirt is, the tension , figure out who they are, then get them in a room and ask them all the questions. becca: that's exactly what i plan to do with kafka. celeste: i think when i write something, usually what happens first is i will have an idea comes something other people are writing about, but i feel like they're missing some essential part of it. that is usually how i decide what i want to write about. there is a subject that is being discussed wrongly, and so i am frustrated with the way it is being discussed with some element that is being left out. i sit with that like annoying

contempt for a while and read everything around it and continue to be frustrated by the things that i'm reading, and sometimes i read some things that seem to answer the question entirely and if you like that's what i want to write about, so i found this book which is the subject of the essay i just wrote for liberties, which i felt treated feminist anxiety that people were talking about, so that is how i decided. do you want to go? morten: it is similar, but messier, lazier. i tend to start writing as i do research and i am reading and putting things into a document and readily, hopefully something emerges, some kind of narrative or glimmer of a structure, then i start to follow that thread

and sometimes it goes wrong. sometimes it doesn't work in the ideas are not coming together, but most of the time they do. becca: usually i begin with a question. i decide what topic to choose that i don't understand or there is an authorized love or hate. those of the three possibilities. >> i was curious, you have already answered this a little bit, but when you're trying to organize your thoughts for an essay or article, do you have any software you like to use that helped you out, that is not just a microsoft product, analog products. becca: the best software is a notebook. my favorite software is my friend. shawn: i just dump everything into a google doc. becca: i use microsoft word. shawn: but if you lose your computer, it's all gone.

i dumped a glass of wine in my last week. don't tell i.t.. >> we live in an age where everybody has an opinion about everything, and a lot of those opinions are bad, and that leaves it to chief pot takes out there, so i wonder if you compare and contrast essay or longform journalism of the work that you do with these really other takes out there? what is the difference in how can we as discerning reader sort through and find the thought and essay that are worth engaging with? morten: a journal like liberties is great because it is created to avoid a hot take, because the essays are very long, so they take a long time to write. they take a fairly long time to read, but so much more thought and effort goes into him, so a journal like that is rare, but deeply necessary because of all

these bad opinions and hot takes. becca: the best way is to select by publication, so there are certain publications, you know the process is anathema to quit thinking, so liberties is one. the new york review of books. harper's. shawn: new york magazine. becca: of course. top of the list. celeste: i think that all you said is true, especially about new york magazine. i also think editors are really important. i understand the sub stack is a great phenomenon and works for a lot of people and best of luck to all of them. obviously i am partial because i am an editor, but between twitter, sub stack, and all these other platforms forgetting getting your views out immediately, and i think there is a lot of good in that. the ways shawn uses twitter is admirable in the right way to do it.

there are other writers who use twitter admirably, but typically because you get a lot of positive feedback for the least amount of effort, and it is detrimental for a writer to decide, and easy to decide that they will advance far more professionally not by writing essays or books, but by living on social media. it is true that they can become a much bigger name that way. so having editors you admire who are going to be tough on you and make you rethink things and rewrite things, that is how you become a better writer, and i think that is the secret that we have known all along. morten: i completely agree. editors are everything. becca: if somebody says they don't like to be edited, that is a red flag. don't read their writing. don't date them.

>> if we like the writing that happens in liberties and similar journals, and as folks who have written essays in a number of publications come do you find factors in common across the ones where you do really good writing? is it primary personnel, something structural about the journals? and if we want to see more of that writing, are there lessons that can be applied more broadly from the outlets that are allowing writers to do these kinds of good essays? celeste: that is a great question. becca: courage is the most important factor. i think it is the secret ingredient. celeste: i don't think it's not scalable, so you have to be, you have to have access to the kinds of editors and publishers who are willing to take risks and invest in writers doing things that are unusual, and i hope

that there are more of these new publications. i am conscious of several, and their leadership is willing to take risks. i hope the bigger names will see that that is paying off. i am not hopeful that will happen, and so i hope people will tell everyone they know about these small journals because they big -- need bigger subscriber basis. morten: you also have to believe there is this kind of audience out there. in some ways, popular culture is teaching us this does not exist, but it's not true. there is an audience for intelligent, rigorous, beautiful writing, so you have to accept that. becca: i think the editing process is different at the range of magazines i think is

good. at liberties, the editing is often a hands-off editing process. there is discussion about the big ideas, but at the point, recently, there was a ton of comments and she was like, what is this? do you hate it? no, no, this is how the editing processes. it's a different. where having arguments in the comment section. no aristotle was wrong about that. we should leave it in. whatever. i think you have to find someone willing to let you take risks, but also committed to treating their audience as intellectual equals and not dumbing step down, but that can take lots of forms. >> hi, i was really struck by what you guys said about how the rings, the topics you choose to write about are things that make you angry or make you feel passionate about something. as someone who just graduated college, i think myself and my peers are interested in

exploring and putting out our ideas and something more than just a tweet, or out on social media, so do you have any advice for people like me who are interested in writing and interested in putting out our opinions? shawn: be careful. don't put out your opinions everywhere. nobody will hire you. editors look at the twitter feed. you are young. you don't have opinions yet. you are supposed to just really dinner little bit, because people think as long as you have some kind of crazy thing going viral, you just have to be really careful in the beginning, because it can come back to bite you. i cringe about some of the stuff i posted. you have to wait until you find the thing that is worth publishing, because everything makes me angry, but not everything's worth writing about. becca: another thing is at the beginning, unfortunate, you have to be willing sometimes to write

for free or not enough money. the real answer this question but how we can have more magazines like this is that there should be money for them, more public arts funding, people should pour money into magazines like this. they don't. that is the sad reality. some of the big pieces i wrote, i was compensated, but several of the others, i was basically not compensated, but it was worth it because i got to write what i wanted at the length i wanted. the editing was good. the people sought to do have clips that i am proud of. one thing to do is write longer essays for those that pay less, nuts how you get your name out there. shawn: the beginning is really hard. morten: avoid the rush to publication. there are things i wrote in my early to mid 20's that i wish i had written and that are online. back in the day, they used to be on some obscure journal gathering dust somewhere good now because of the internet, it's readily searchable.

there is a line somewhere that a literary critic as someone who conducts their education in public, and that is a very painful truth in the age of the internet, because everyone can see how little you know a lot of the time. celeste: find a writer for you really admire, read all their stuff, and when you have accrued authority, right to them and ask them for help. first established you have done the work here, because i think all of us have done this. it is hard to do it. the most important thing for a young writer is to get feedback. the best way to do that is to find a writer you really admire and work hard, you don't need them tell you you're good. you need them to tell you why you're not good yet. ask them for help. if they are a nice person, and not all are, but someone will be. they will help you out.

michael? >> i have a question for all four panelists about the essay form. i want to offer a generalization and get your opinion of it. i think essays are almost all by definition autobiographical, and i haven't even mind those that are not especially autobiographical. i wonder how you would evaluate the generalization. becca: i agree. morten: i agree. celeste: many instances of the personal essay are bad. becca: what you're doing as a critic or essayist is interposing style between yourself and the world, and that's why people, you, so in some way that is personal. morten: similar to what i said before, you are showing everyone what you know and don't know. you are showing your thinking. it's actually a very intimate thing. celeste: i have to wrap it up.

i only have to say lived experience is not the only kind of authority. thank you for coming. thank you for this wonderful conversation. morten: thank you. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2022] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> book tv's live coverage of the national book festival sponsored by the library of congress continues. everything you see today, you can watch online at booktv.org. joining us at the washington convention center is will bunch. here is his book, after the ivory tower falls, how college broke the american dream.

that is a lot of subtitle. >> i wrote it myself. you can blame me. >> before we get into your book, who should go to college and who should not? any review. -- in your view. >> i frame it more as higher education, because i think everybody needs to continue with education after 18. it does not always have to be what we call college in the traditional sense. some people want to develop certain skills. i think there is a need for free trade schools, internships. i talked in the book about the idea of a gap year for 18-year-olds of national service, but the idea is we should not throw our young people to the world at age 18. i feel like we made things very hard for our young people. the people who are inclined to go to college have to make such

difficult decisions at age 18 about whether they are going to the right school, the pressure to pick the right field of study at such a young age, and then how are they going to pay for it? is it worth it? if the only way they can get a diploma is to borrow $30,000 or $40,000, is that worth it? you don't always know that at age 18 right away. the people her saying maybe i should not go to college, but they are terrified they will be looked down on for not having a diploma by society, because there is to some degree that stigma as we establish a meritocracy that if you did not go to college, your lacking merit somehow. so it is a difficult decision, but we have to ask the right questions. should people continue to learn and grow and develop their critical thinking skills and other talents after 18. absolutely, yes. >> let me try that again and

rephrase it in a different way. is the college experience as we now know it in america worth it, the liberal arts, the universities, the four-year degree, 18 to 22, do we need to rethink that? >> that is a great question. i think the expense of what people get from a college education is absently worth it. for all the problems we have in higher education in america, we still have a great system of colleges and universities, which is why people from all over the world from china to india send their children here, because we do offer great education. that's not the problem. the problem is the cost and the access. who gets an opportunity to get this education? and just the absorbent -- exorbitant cost, because we have basically privatize higher education america since the late

1970's, 1980's, 1990's, and put the burden so heavily on the individuals and taken that responsibility away from society, so i think those are really the key issues. >> go back to privatization. what do you mean by that? >> after world war ii, you have this amazing thing that happened at the end of world war ii was the g.i. bill. it was the government decided to offer returning veterans from world war ii this amazing opportunity to go to college for free. when i say free, i mean living stipends, books, everything. they were not sure how many people from the working class, middle class were college material, and it turned out the demand was huge. there was a huge demand in the american middle class from knowledge, education. these returning veterans were for the most part amazing students.

they impress their professors with how dedicated they were. as college grew in the 1940's, 1950's, 1960's, we viewed college is more or less a public good. what i mean by that is the state legislature used to fund the public universities and gave them ample funding to grow, and you saw these campuses grow and expand with high-rise dorms and new facilities in that era. what they did is they kept tuition low. tuition was often a couple hundred dollars a semester to go to a public university. in california or the city university of new york, tuition was free in those days. todd started to change in the 1970's and 1980's. tuition started to skyrocket, and the government put the onus for paying for it more and more on loans, the grants people get from the government, primarily pell grants, diminishing buying power, and the only way to fill

the void between rising tuition was for people to take out more loans, and now you saw this $1.7 trillion debt that president biden tried to whittle down last week. >> we will get into those topics. will bunch is the author of this book, after the ivory tower falls. your chance to talk with mr. bunch about his book and about his ideas. the numbers are on your screen. we will begin taking those calls in a minute. what president biden did for giving $10,000, $20,000 in student debt, do you agree with that decision? >> i do. i don't think it was far enough. i'm kind of hoping it is the first step. i feel that young people in this

country, millennials, generation z, i think they were sold a bill of goods in a couple of ways. they did not get the benefits that the baby printer -- boomer and got in terms of lower calls college. they had to pay the price for this privatize situation. many of them were preyed upon. one important aspect of college for the last 20 years or 30 years has been the rise of for-profit colleges. take advantage of the need young people have to get the credential of a college diploma, which they need to stay in the middle class. and you know, young people were told, we can give you these degrees at the schools. they used boiler room tactics to recruit students. whatever they can get from the college loans is what the tuition is set at, and they get minimal education in return that doesn't often result in a job

where they can pay back these loans, and that's a big sliver of the debt. i think president biden took the right step. real reform in this country will also involve the cost of college going forward, because otherwise, the debt would just build back up again. we also need to take action to make college more of a public good, so the tuition is not so exorbitant going forward. >> why does it cost $60,000 to go to stanford, harvard, or the other schools? >> basically kind of a space race of tuition started in the 1970's. harvard was the innovator on this. they created a model called the high tuition, high aid model. while there were a lot of families willing to pay the full freight for the prestige of going to harvard, date could use the proceeds, they could use the proceeds to offer discounts on

financial aid to lower income students. the problem is as schools competed for students come schools without the wherewithal also had to offer luxury amenities and perks to attract kids. but without the endowments or other ways to offer the same levels of financial aid, so you have seen the fastest percentage of tuition increases has been in-state tuition for college students, which is the sweet spot of how we want to educate the middle class, to give him a chance for public education. that is where tuition has risen the fast is and where so much of this loan crisis has accumulated. >> will bunch, going back your own college experience into that of her two kids, what did you learn in college, and what do still bring with you today skill wise or knowledge wise, and the same with her two kids.

>> i was lucky. i went to brown university. i graduated in 1981. i studied political silence. i worked for 40 years as a political journalist. that was a case where think having that background and critical theory and critical ideas has really informed my writing in my work, so i think i was fortunate to have that opportunity. in today's market, often you need to get a masters degree. that's what happened with my two kids. i was talking before about the pressure to make a career choice and pick a master, neither of my kids were ready for that at 18. they actually had to turn the ship around a little bit and really develop their career focus in graduate school, which meant extra education, extra tuition to get their degrees, and i'm lucky that both of my kids are bright and wonderful kids and both have masters degrees.

one is a therapist and one is a journalist. they are doing ok, but they're in their late 20's. it has taken them this long to get through the educational system and start their careers, and that is what the environment is like. it is a much more challenging environment these days. >> with everything that is online today, could you have learned what you learned in college online today? without the four-year degree? >> here is the thing, it depends what you mean by learning right? i have learned political theory online. yes, i think so, but you have to remember, i think the college experience is so much more than just what you get in those 40 minutes in class. the people who benefit a lot from college benefit from the entire experience of being a part of the whole community, which we saw was lost during the pandemic.

one of the biggest arguments for a college education, and i think to be brutally honest, one of the reasons why conservatives sometimes are fearful of the college experience is because that experience of community, of meeting people from other parts of the country and often other parts of the world in this day and age, opens you up to other ideas of cultures, gives you more tolerance. by and large, and this is been studied by academics, the people who have the college experience have more tolerance, have a greater appreciation of diversity. i write in my book about the george floyd protests in 2020. that was a movement of college-educated people who supported black lives matter's. 80% of the people who participated in some of the major black lives marches according to sociologists who studied it were people with college degrees, so when you talk about learning, i think we have to be careful, not just to

focus on learning and what you get from the professor during those 45 minutes. >> after the ivory tower falls is his new book. he is also an opinion: is for the philadelphia require. rochester, new york, state your question. >> thank you very much. i am intrigued by your book. i'm going to pick it up and read it. i was in higher education for 45 years, and most of that was at a community college. this is one of the things i'm hoping is in your book. community colleges are rarely talked about in these discussions with regards to what they can do for students, and it is really the last bastion of formalized education that the students can get relatively inexpensively, even though the tuition has gone up

substantially at community colleges also. but if a student is to access a more affordable education, community colleges offer that in a variety of ways in terms of what you're talking about, small credentials, you know, two associates degree programs and they can be designed to transfer to four year campuses without loss of credit, and i would just like to get your opinion in terms of how you feel going forward with the things you feel are important? many of the things you have mentioned are tremendously important and a community college it's into that. >> chris, thank you very much. >> that is a great point and i talk about that in the book. community colleges are a building block. we have been talking about this literally for 75 years.

after the g.i. bill was a success harry truman in 1946 put together a blue-ribbon commission, the truman commission, that looked at a higher education and that commission recommended a year later that community college should be free for all americans, and here it is in 2022 and we are still debating whether community college should be free, president biden and his wife is a community college professor. joe manchin, the senator from west virginia, which is a state where people could incredibly benefit from a free community college system blocked that proposal in 2021. and absolutely, to give people an option of free or low-cost those first two years, and for many students it could be a stepping stone and they can complete their degree at a four year college.

and also community services are plugged into the needs of the community in terms of what are the job needs in a local community, the local industries and what do they need. so absolutely, and i would agree. it frustrates me that it is not a bigger part of the conversation. >> matthew, portland, oregon, please go ahead with your question or comment. >> hello, mr. bunch. i am enjoying the conversation. i am college educated and in debt. i would like your thoughts -- i studied this in school at portland university about the effect of u.s. world and news report when they start doing their annual ranking of universities, and somehow that scar the race for prestige adversities, portland state does that, and another thing, all of the fees they throw on you.

all of the amenities, and that makes it very expensive to go to school. you have all of these fees for things that most students do not use. thank you, bye. >> again, a great question, and i do actually do a little risk on the u.s. and global rankings in the book. it is very problematic. as you know there have been a number of scandals including one at temple university in philadelphia where schools in some cases manipulated numbers, they changed class sizes, did all kinds of crazy things to change their rank. it gets to this issue, the competitiveness of schools for students, and i think one of the biggest problems, which i explore in the book is schools and found that to get students that did a better job of competing on prestige, which is

what you were talking about the fees, services. we talk about rockclimbing walls that have lazy rivers where kids float autographs through campus with the beer cooler and these high-rise dorms that have flat screen tv's and other luxury amenities. they found that is a business model for them and there has been no emphasis on cutting the cost. it has been offering perks and marketing them to wealthy kids paying out-of-state tuition or international students willing to pay. it has worked the system, and the people who lost out our middle class kids just trying to get an education in their home state. >> let's put this on the students a little bit. are they choosing degrees in the wrong topics that do not pay or are not marketable?

>> well, there needs to be a mix. obviously one of the best arguments for college is it is an incredible economic engine. and i have something i think we want to make sure that we are graduating people for the economy that we have in the economy that we need. on the other hand, maybe i am old-fashioned and a romantic in this area, but i think we need people who study renaissance poetry. i think we need the english literature major and people to study social sciences like i did for people who study sociology or people who study philosophy, because i think it is a part of being well-rounded. i think the humanities and social sciences help as much as stem or business in terms of people developing their critical thinking. our ability to think is so important in this age. america has so much more climate

change denial than other countries, and america as such a problem right now with our politics being overrun by conspiracy theories, whether it is the big lie about election fraud or qanon or things like that. i am not seeing everybody going to college is the answer to qanon but we need to get back to a framework where, how do we make people better thinkers and that are engaged as citizens? it is another problem related to college but also k-12 about a lack of civic education these days, and we have -- after several decades of basically cutting civics education in this country here we are talking about the country being on the brink of some kind of civil war, and i wonder if that is some kind of coincidence. >> will bunch is the author, the book is called after the ivory

tower falls. thank you for your time on book tv. >> thanks for having me back. >> we have one more segment coming up, we will be joined by the cochair of the national book festival david rubinstein. last night mr. rubinstein spoke at the opening celebration for the national book festival, and he talked about the history. here is a little bit of mr. rubinstein. >> how many people have not been to the national book festival? anyone here? how many people have not been to the library of congress building ? how many people have not been to the college -- ghoulish auditorium before? coolidge auditorium before? everyone who has been here just think about something else remitted. the congress of the united states and its wisdom decided it would be good if they had a library.

that was an idea proposed when they have the articles of confederation and proposed by james madison. typical of congress, they moved slowly. 12 years later or so they finally got around to doing it. it was legislation signed when john adams was president. they allocated $5,000 to purchase a few hundred books, 300 books and four maps. and that was the entire library of congress. it grew a little bit and as the congress moved on your the library of congress within the building of congress, and that is where it was. when the british came in 1814 to sac washington d.c. they burned the library of congress. the books were gone. that is when thomas jefferson said i will so you my library. which he did. he needed the money and the deal

was done. he sold it for roughly only $4000, -- $24,000. that became the library of congress and those books were burned. ultimately the library of congress grew and grew and grew, so it is now good to have its own building. this building was built in 1897 for $10 million under budget and on schedule. it was redone around 2000 for one to $50 million. i think the library of congress has two of the most beautiful rooms, the main hall and main reading room. the library of congress --

librarian of congress is appointed by the president of united states. there has only been one woman who has served as librarian of congress and one african-american who has served of the library of congress -- librarian of congress. [applause] and for more than 50 years there was not anybody who is actually a librarian. in carla hidden from my hometown of baltimore we have the first african-american, first woman and first actual librarian in 50 years, and she has done a fantastic job. she will shortly finish her sixth year, it can be renewed. there will be a great outcry if it is not renewed. she has done this -- done a fantastic job.

the national book festival for those who do not know about it, it was not james madison who thought it was a great idea. he did not put it in the constitution. and thomas jefferson did not think of it in the constitution -- the declaration either. no one thought about it at the time when they were creating the country. when george w. bush was elected president of the united states during inaugural ceremonies, the predecessor to carla who served were 28 years, he was at a reception right before the inauguration and laura bush said to jim billington, we have a book festival in texas. do you have one in washington? and he said very quickly on his feet we will. [laughter] that began the national book festival.

does anyone remember at the national book festival in the mall? it was something, you had to worry about the weather and it rained from time to time and there was a lot of dust and people from the national park service saying we are ruining the lawns and so forth. eventually they said maybe you are running the lawn permanently and we do not want weather to interfere so ultimately we were able to get the washington, d.c. government to use the convention center. if you have not been to the book festival, is one of the things that is amazing in terms of its size, so tomorrow we will have between 150,000 and 200,000 at this book festival. it is an incredible number of people, and they come from all over the united states. the last time we had an in person in 2019 people were camping out at 4:00 a.m. in the morning to get in.

someone featured was ruth bader ginsburg. she was interviewed by nina totenberg. at that time there were roughly 10,000 people that came to that interview. it is incredible to see that many people who care about reading and books that much. it is incredible to me as carla said, i came from modest circumstances and in my family we did not have enough money to go buy books. i would depend upon the public library. if you were six years old and you had your public library card you could take out 10 -- it began of my love of reading and i often thought what could be more pleasurable than sitting down and just reading a book? reading is great, but reading a book is even better because you have to concentrate your mind, you have to focus your mind, and

it does so much to make people better enjoy humanity. what separates all of us as members of the human species from all of the other species on the face of the earth? we know other species can communicate but they cannot produce anything in written form that is where somebody else to read. it is one of the things that separates us from all of the other species on the face of the earth. we know how to write and we know how to read. sadly many of our fellow americans do not read as much as they should or because they cannot be that much. the latest department of education statistics say 54% of people between the ages of 16 and 71 cannot read past the six grade level. and it also turns out more than 25% of americans have not written a book in the last year or been to a bookstore in the last year. all of us are groupies no doubt,

sadly many americans do not read much anymore and if they read anything it is a tweet and not a book. would william shakespeare have been able to write those place if he had to deal with responding to tweets? whether tweets are good or not, it is incredible when you think about the level of intellect that it takes to write a book and the level of intellect it now takes to read some books, and sadly many of our fellow americans do not read books much anymore. >> and we are back live at the washington convention center for the national book festival. and we are joined by the men gestured speaking there, david rubenstein is the cochair of the national book festival. at what point did you decide to become involved with the library of congress and national book festival? >> a number of years ago when

jim billington was still the librarian of congress, i made a modest contribution and he asked me to get involved. i got involved as the cochair and eventually the chair of the medicine counsel which is the support arm of the library of congress. it does not have enough money to get everything that it once from congress so they try to get philanthropic support. the medicine counsel is that arm and i have charted for the last several years. >> you have the money to donate because you are an investor. your recent focus how to invest: masters on the craft. when did you start investing? >> i started a large private equity and firm -- private equity firm. i would not say i am a great investor but people in the firm are great investors. this people is designed to give insights into what make people great investors.

>>: did you talk to? >> i dedicated the book to warren buffett whom i previously talk to. michael morris who helped to build sequoia, one of the best venture firms, another great investor, one of the great overall macro investors, joe simons who helped invent quantitative investing, larry fink who built blackrock. a number of people. >> we will put the numbers on the screen if you have a question or comment for david rubenstein. a lot of topics he can talk about, he has also written history and leadership books. the numbers are up on the screen. go ahead and dial in. what is the goal of investing? it is the highest return on money invested, correct? >> not necessarily. there are some people who care

about other things. there are people who care about esg, environmental, social, and government factors. they will not invest in oil and gas because they do not think that is good for the global climate situation. generally investors are trying to get a good return on their money and do it in a legal and ethical way. >> someone who owns a venture capital firm, are you an esg investor? >> carlisle as one of the best esg programs. we do look at esg standards, but it is not the only thing we look at. if something looks good in esg but it is a bad investment will not do it. >> do you agree with the esg phhy? >> the esg philosophy means different things to different people. some people would say like david

whom i interviewed that you should focus principally on esg and you will get better rates of returns. other people think now esg is being overemphasized and some people think there is a wave of bad feelings towards esg investment. that is not my view but some people feel esg as gotten much attention. >> there was a young man standing over here who is very excited to have you sign his book and meet you. what is your advice to the teenager? >> do well in school, read as you can, learn how to be a good speaker. you cannot be too much, learn how to write well, get a good education, make sure you listen to your parents, but generally if you are interested in an investor -- in being an investor a good education helps. investors are people who are well read, they have added a bit of -- they have an ability to

pick up information. if you dropped out of high school you are not likely to be a great investor. investing requires a good education, a field for numbers and other skills. >> when you say a feel for numbers, do you need math skills? >> good arithmetic skills, you need to have a facility for numbers and not be afraid of numbers as some people are. >> if i like a certain pair of shoes and i think that company makes a good pair of shoes, what should i be looking for. >> there was a general view, peter lynch said if you like a product look at the company, and maybe it is a good investment. you might look at the company and see with the company is doing and whether the company has characteristics that might make it a good investment. >> let's hear from eleanor coming in from bethesda,

maryland. you are on with david rubenstein. >> i need to talk mr. rubenstein what a delight is program is on sunday evening and what example of a beautiful way to use resources that are great to build up american treasures and add to them. it is a wonderful, wonderful project. i loved everything about the program on sunday, friday nights when he gets his tie straightened and he starts to talk to some interesting individuals about how they made success. very interesting, so thank you very much, mr. rubenstein. >> thank you for your kind words. >> what was eleanor referring to on friday night and sunday night? >> i have a program where i

interview people at the new york historical society and it is put on pbs. i have a program on bloomberg tv that is put on pbs as well. >> and the new art historical society program? >> is people who are great writers typically history but not only history. it is about a half-hour interview and a full-length interview. it is a long interview for a history book. >> people who are just meeting you for the first time tonight, she also referred to civic investments that u.s.-made. not to give the whole list but just some of the things you have done? >> i call it patriotic philanthropy. when the washington monument and earthquake damage i put money up. recently iwo jima, monticello, mount vernon as well. i try to fix buildings that are

historic but do not have enough money from the government to make it as good as it should be. >> are you willing to tell us a successful investment that you may personally and one that was not successful? >> i do not have enough time to talk about all of the ones that were not successful. the ones i regret are the ones that i did not do. i did not invest in facebook. we were an early investor in amazon but we sold our stock too soon. carlisle has made thousands of investments over the years. we have been around for 35 years. if you do not have bad deals you are not doing good investing, because not everything works out even forewarn buffet. >> the governor of virginia, glenn youngkin. >> he was at our firm for about

25 years. it did a very good job for us. >> frank, daytona beach, florida. >> i am calling it because i went to ask you if you think that nonfiction or fiction literature is more important to society, and as a follow-up, what is your favorite fictional book? >> i tend to read more nonfiction than fiction to be honest, but i cannot say that fiction is insignificant. fiction books have had more impact on society than many other nonfiction books. uncle tom's cabin had an enormous impact on society. i think gone with the wind had an important impact on society as well. fiction books have done incredible things to change the attitudes of society. nonfiction books have a big impact as well. >> how to invest, how to lead, two books in her series.

>> i am thinking i should do out to interview, the skill of interviewing? you should write a book about it. >> investing, can it hinge on luck? >> everything in life hinges on luck but you make your own luck. if you were waiting for something lucky it to happen it probably will not happen. you make your luck by contacts, adding to know people. luck is an important part of life and investing is an important part of life. >> is there an emotional aspect would investing? >> yes, i think you have to enjoy it and that is an emotion. if you get too emotional you might make a mistake. obviously if you do very well and make a lot of money you can give that money away and be satisfied with the money you have given away. that could be emotional. >> david rubenstein, is newest

book is called out to invest: masters on the craft. he has written about leadership, cochair of the carlyle group and chairman of the board for the jfk center for performing arts and national gallery of art. thank you for your time on book tv. >> thank you for covering the national book festival. >> that wraps up our coverage of the national book festival. we are so pleased to be back in person after a two year hiatus. everything you have seen today will we are this evening on book tv on c-span 2 and watch all of the segments online on book tv.org. book tv now continues. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2022] programs, you know? several years ago i was watching

a helen mirren movie eye in the sky, and it's about decision making process for a drone strike. and so when i saw joe book is remote warfare moral, it just seemed like the kind of topic that really needs to be discussed. and this would be a good place to to discuss it. joseph shapiro is lieutenant colonel in the us air force. he's got a ph.d. in philosophy from the university of oxford. his areas of expertise are everything from war theory military ethics especially the ethics of remote and autonomous weapons. he's a senior pilot with more than 1400 pilot and instructor pilot hours and many flown in of major u.s. combat humanitarian operations. he currently serves on the air force staff, so staffs, artificial intelligence, cross