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immigration and global warming. first on this, veterans day, author craig nelson discusses his book veers for victory, about the american homefront. during world war two. and.

more. where. good morning, everyone. i'm tim herman. and i'm pleased to moderate this hour's presenter nation with

craig nelson. george black, who wrote the long reckoning. aye, aye, aye. exhaustive treatment of vietnam and its aftermath. couldn't be here. so for which we're very sorry, but i'll get to george's book after we have a visit with greg nelson, who i'm very pleased to present. thank you. it is. it is such a thrill to be here. in 1973, i moved from houston to start at university of texas. so it's my 50th anniversary right now, which is very confusing because in my mind and i think like 42. so i'm not quite i don't i don't know if you know that. but anyway, i really love so. this morning i had a waffle in the shape of texas inside a mockingbird. so i'm really at home. thank you so much for your warm

welcome. craig is a an accomplice author. some of his books include pearl harbor, the subject of which is obvious. the age of radiance, which is the history of of nuclear. your activity and right up through fukushima and chernobyl. the first he wrote about jimmy jimmy doolittle and his raids on tokyo and rocket man which which received tremendous acclaim. the account of apollo 11, the first mission to the moon to show what a renaissance man craig is, though he's written the sort of the definitive biography of thomas paine. for all you free thinkers in the in the crowd, i would recommend

you pick that up. he is a as he said, a utah grad. he spent 20 years as a publishing executive and and has been a prolific author since his has a great deal of military experience and and knowledge. so that's enough, i guess, introduction. craig but, craig, why don't you. in you know give us your elevator pitch about what v for victory is about. what's the message of v for victory? so i had finished pearl harbor, which was a huge deadline book. there were i sat in off. many years later i was floundering about what to do and i was talking to a military analyst and he said, you know, on the battlefield, logistics

eat strategy for lunch. and i said, jesus, mary and joseph on a raft. what are we historians writing about in the military except strategy? you know, the admiral said this and the general said that. and the servicemen did this. that's all we write about. so it was an existential crisis. and after i heard this, i learned that joseph stalin, a man who needs no introduction, gave a toast to the factories of detroit as being the secret weapon that one world war two. and it turned out that he's not alone in thinking that this sort of common historical thinking is that what's often referred to sideways as the miracle of american manufacturing? one world war two. but i want i wanted to do a book that was more than that. so i said to myself, i've never done a 150 hours of lectures and interviews on this one book, a book about a war that 80 years ago. and i thought, why is this still such a big thing in our mind? and i tracked down that this miracle of production actually

started in 1938, that the entire way we defeated hitler was an outgrowth of roosevelt's new deal. and i realized that this story had to start in 1933, when our nation was at its worst moment. and i know people will say, oh, civil war, oh, valley forge. no, the great depression was the worst moment in this nation's history. let me just tell two brief stories to explain a woman would go through the junk pile, the dump in detroit, looking for meat. she would leave her glasses at home so she wouldn't be confronted with the quality of the meat. another stories of a little girl, a 12 year old girl is at school and she starts sobbing and her teacher says, what's wrong, honey? and she says, i'm so hungry i can't even pay attention here. i just can't do it. and the teacher said, it's okay. i'll give you a slap. you can go home and eat. and she said, i can't. it's my sister's turn to eat.

so in 1933, this nation was at isolated, depressed, at each other's throats, completely without hope. and 11 years later, we defeated the greatest evil in human history. and that's the story of v is for victory. tell us a little bit more about how the depression and the various programs engineered by fdr morphed into a industrial giant for the second world war. so i like to say that fdr was the greatest politician of all time, and i made that in every sense of the word. very often, he would get put through benefits for society by explaining to capitol hill how everyone was going to make money. and he did this repeatedly and such things. he got through them to for the

federal government to build include the hoover and bonneville dams, the golden gate bridge, the highway that connects miami to the florida keys, the tunnel that connects new york city to new jersey. i mean, the list of things just goes on and on and on. hundreds of thousands of schools and hospitals and roads were built under the new deal, and we needed all that basic infrastructure to be able to fight hitler. if we didn't have decent roads and we didn't have the power of hydroelectric dams, we could not have done it. so very fundamentally, the infrastructure from the new deal help, but also his idea of management. what he liked to do was unite government and industry to work together, and in this case he had to unite government industry and the military. and it all started in 1938 when france and england gave territory to hitler to appease him at munich and not try and

conquer more of europe. they gave him part of czechoslovakia and roosevelt was outraged by this. so he decided that we needed a big new program to dramatically expand air power, even though he was a navy man. this way he wanted planes and the military said, we can't do 300 planes. what are you talking about? so he got the treasury secretary to start a new deal program to create a huge avalanche of planes, boats for ourselves and for our allies. and that was the start of the arsenal of democracy that won world war two. three years before pearl harbor, he thought to do this. well, that's what i was going to ask you. the what was the size of the military establishment relative to other world powers in 1938 when this program started. so we've spent so many years having our military is number one. we can't imagine it was ever any other way. but in 1935, our military was 14th in size in the world.

we were behind portugal, but bigger than bulgaria. we had the army was when with the rise of hitler, the army was planning to defend the western hemisphere. they. had 135,000 troops and 300 airplanes to defend in nazi attack on the western hemisphere. when. from 19 eight, day to day, the remote, the united states had produced 13 tanks. so if you were in a tank brigade, if you were training to be in attack, you and your fellow tank members would barge in formation pretending to be an attack. and sometimes you got to use used good humor, ice cream trucks to pretend to be your tank. snipers were taught to state with rifles, with broomsticks and the air. the air force or army air corps. at the time was didn't have enough money to pay for actual bombs to target bombing

practice. so they used bags of flour. and these were so popular that they became known as betty crocker. bombs. so our military was just it was also had pretty budgets, lower state. oh, it was so bad that norfolk, virginia, now the site of the biggest naval installation in the world, had signs in the parks. no dogs and no sailors. so while they after recovering, are in the process of recovery from the depression, how was fdr able to persuade the us being three years short of a war? how was he able to persuade industry to move from making plowshares to swords so many things in this book have so many mirrors in our time. it's amazing. the guy who first ran the arsenal of democracy was had

worked at ford and gm when they were the state of the art and technical technical production. and just like apple is today, the man who replaced him ran ceos. roebuck who was the amazon of the era, but one of the most chilling aspects of all their story is something they called the great debate that we've completely forgotten in our time. and it began when charles lindbergh, after being the great american hero, had his baby kidnaping killed, and he sort of turned against the united states and went to live in europe, where he became infatuated with the quality of the army and an air force of hitler. and he came back to the united states and started promoting, we can't fight hitler. just give up. just turn yourself in and just forget about it. and so he and roosevelt would alternate appearing on the radio, which was just like the internet of that time. and americans could sit at home and listen to them argue about what the future of the country should be and whether or not we should support france, england,

the ussr, and all of this. this went on for two years before pearl harbor. everybody thought we should be in the war out. there will be more pearl harbor. there was this great debate. it took place in public. people talked about it at the beauty shop, in the grocery store, in their offices, because everyone had radios and you could actually walk down the street. and roosevelt was the biggest radio star in the world. you could walk down the street and there would be no one at all on the street. and as you would walk by, you would hear coming out of houses and applied stores and radios, the voice of roosevelt and people would listen to him transfixed. well, you have a i mean, one of the principal messages, i guess, is what a unifier. rosa velt was. i mean, we live in a very polarized society now and and as of 1939, as we were embarking on this industrial revolution for

the world war two, there was similar, similar polarization between the so-called isolationists and those who who recognized the threat of hitler. so can you draw any parallels between the polarization then and now? well, arthur schlesinger jr. one of our nation's great historians, said not the cuban missile crisis, not the cold war. this era was the time when americans were at each other's throats the worst. there's there's one story i tell where the isolationists were having a political convention in one part of manhattan, and the interventionists were having their convention in another part of manhattan. in both cases, the opposition was waving on the streets outside of the venue, and they turned into a crazy mob that had to be broken up by cops on sticks. so i thought, well, at least we are there yet now. but there's no public riots.

i don't know. we're having public riots yet. i don't think so. but soon anyway. but. but. but i do have to say that writing this book, when things were much worse than now for a nation that was really so victorious in every single way in the forties and fifties, was very hope, gave me hope. it really did. we may need another existential crisis, but it gave me hope. and and part of the thing that was so interesting was seeing how american popular opinion would switch very gradually from being completely. we don't want anything to do with those potheads in europe to saying, okay, we have to do something. and you could actually watch the needle fall over a course of a couple of years. it was a beautiful thing to see. well, the the memories were fresh from world war one, even in the late thirties. now, your book, focus is has so much of a focus on fdr and on

what an extraordinary, not only extraordinary person, but an extraordinary leader. he was. you have an anecdote in there about when orson welles, probably the greatest american actor, comes to visit fdr in the white house to tell him about that. so fdr whispers in his ear, you know, wars and you and i are the greatest actors in america. and that is the quote opened up an entire inquiry for me into figuring this out. and so what i learned was that fdr was a single child to a mother who had married a very rich man. and she was completely smothering. she was just on him like white on rice, a nonstop to the point where she would announce to the press unfortunate. the president roosevelt would not be able to go to church today because he's falling so far behind in his

correspondence. i mean, he's president and she still adlibbed like that. so i think he developed this incredible acting ability to make it look like he was getting along with her and doing what she wanted and then live an entirely different life then. and people commented on it over and over and over again. that he would do this thing. and you may know, people like this. he would be like the regular guy next door and maybe not the brightest bulb on the tree and and and he would love to gossip. he'd love to immediately come up with something he had in common with you and people thought he was a dimwit. i mean, when the british came over for the first meeting, they were just horrified at what a dumbo. the president of the united states was. and in this they would meet their peril because he loved having people underestimate him. he it. when lindbergh first came to visit him before they started fighting, he brought up how his daughter and lindbergh's wife had gone to the same school and all these things they had in common. and then even offered him to be the head of a new cabinet

secretary. the head of the air force. if he would stop being. so this is roosevelt, the politician in every direction. well, it in that regard, again, drawing parallels, if there are any or at least contrast between then and now, what was happening. tell us about the makeup of roosevelt's war cabinet and his use of bipartisanship, if you will, to actually forward his own policies. so as the republicans were preparing to go to their convention in roosevelt, announced that he had hired two republicans, one knox to be head of the navy and one stimson to be head of war. and it sort of undid them. knox had been the vice president running on the ticket against him for years earlier. so so this deal that he did by trying to reach out and embrace he met his his head of labor was the first female cabinet

secretary in history. he had he had -- and catholics. he had people from every quadrant of american society was on that cabinet, even had something called the black cabinet, which was not official but but served to tell him what was going on in the african-american community. and he reached out. but it was pretty it was generous and conniving at the same time because a number of people couldn't really argue it. stimson because he had served in every republican administration, but he was alive. so so it was very brilliant to sort of sort of it was sort of like almost a sports strategy where you knock out all your defense on the way to making the touchdown. well, they he is recruitment of the captains of industry that head of the heads of ford and general motors and sears and roebuck and alcoa and reynolds. and so forth. how was he able to do that? all those guys were virtually all republicans as well, but are

largely responsible for for the the build up and the industrial revolution that resulted in us being ready to go. he would call them on the phone. and here's the most he and lindbergh were probably the two most famous americans in the world. and you pick up the phone and it was the president asking for your help and giving you this huge, powerful job to oversee the american economy and to take part in and to make a lot of money and to take part in this defense of the democracies of america. and i couldn't say no. so i made, i think, a lot of people would be very excited to get that call, said bill knutson. was president of gm and alfred sloan, his boss was very, very angry that knutson was going to washington, said, i'm not going to continue to pay your salary, which is what normally happened and is and newton's own daughter said, why are you doing this? and knutson said, the country's been good to me and i have to pay it back. that's a is quite a quite

lesson. the the you mentioned the fact that we had in our free arsenal of democracy, say, 13 tanks, dulles story about chrysler and and that the tanks that were all ultimately produced by chrysler. so none of you are going to believe this story. but i swear it's true. before world war two of the united states had produced 35 tanks total. it was making three a month and and the british and the french and the ussr, they all wanted tanks and we wanted tanks. and knutson realized he had to do something. so a pr man came in to see him to talk about how to work with his agency and and said, do you know how to make tanks? and the men said no. and he said, well, i won't be seeing much of you. they kicked him out of his office. and then putin called the head of chrysler a guy named katie keller to katie, i need you to make tanks.

and katie said, oh, sure, bill, i'd be glad to. what is a tank? and i swear to you, this is true. and the and the issue is that basically the arsenal making tanks for the united states basically made them like japan, homemade pinocchio, where they have pieces of things and they would like ratchet them together and. in detroit, they made things with parts that were 100th of an inch in precision, exactly the same. and they had mass production. and what happened that was a problem politically was it takes long time to get going in manufacturing. an entirely new thing because you have to build things called machine tools. and if you if any of you have seen america's best tv show, how it's made you get to see the machine tools making things. so the machine tools, they're like in size from a jewelry box to a house and they bend steel and they bore wood, and they do all these things to make products. well, it took the number of months and people got fed up

with newts and waiting, so they got rid of here and and brought in the sears guy and the sears guy did a great idea. he told a detroit that they were going to get any aluminum or steel or rubber or glass unless they started producing for the war effort. and that made them change their minds all the. you talk about. you don't we talked about the tanks but there's a little known guy named andrew higgins that, probably d-day would not have happened but for him tell these good old louisiana boy tell us about that. okay. so so this is a little bit of a navy story, but mostly a coast guard story. so andrew jackson higgins, was this incredible all-american character. the reason the national world war two museum is in new orleans is because dwight eisenhower said higgins won the war for us. and this is part of the isoroku higgins being in louisiana and

the bayou made a shallow draft boats and he first got quite a bit of money making them from the coast guard, who was using them to catch rum, right? rum running liquor importers. but also i british are the liquor importers were also buying these boats anyway so he started working with the marine corps and these boats were the whole reason we were able to do land ings at normandy and and across the pacific. they became the fundamental every time you saving private ryan, every time you see that boat going towards those are based on higgins designs. and he did an incredible job and it so it's sort of a great all-american story that this guy became a billionaire making these boats for everybody. you know what surprised me when i when when i read the book was i'd always assumed that the british war machine was manufactured by the brits, that the russian war machine was

created by the russians. what, just give is a rough percentage of the material. well, that was u2 ized in world war two. that was purdue in detroit, basically. so america out produced every other country. we produced two thirds of the materials used by the allies to win the war. we made the 13 tanks that we made in 20 years were from the four years of world war two. we made 88,000 tanks. we made the colors. chrysler tank. i still made more tanks than all of nazi germany. and you look at these and they're just astounding because you go to read about normandy. if you see pictures of the normandy invasion taking from the shoreline, you cannot even see the horizon because it's a giant black line of ships. and this guy is filled with aircraft in dirigibles and the crowd is filled with things afloat in tanks. it's just astonishing. and eisenhower knew we were going to win the war at

normandy, and he was very depressive, pessimistic person, as you know. but he knew we were going to win the war when he saw all the stuff that americans could just abandon because they had so much other stuff coming and they just left all this stuff on the beaches. it just kept going because soon another bunch of ships is going to go by to bring even more things. so that's when he realized that's what he first had hope. he spent all of d-day with a speech in his pocket. explain why we'd lost so well. the the you've talked about the tanks and the steel and bolts and rivets, but they these guys, they loved chocolate. so he hid in. just give us that little anecdote about how they were able to eat chocolate and when the temperature oh, don't give away the punchline. tell god you there's a shape of

an anecdote. anyway anyway. anyway, so. so forget about what he was talking about. we don't need to talk about that anyway. so. so three of the things that you own in your house, right now we're in at least three were invented in world war two. the first was a guy who became very upset over the amount of bauxite that germany was producing because bauxite is the key ingredient of aluminum. and at that point, aluminum production in america was controlled by one company, alcoa. and he kept trying to tell people, what about this bauxite? they go, oh, they're just using that to make doorknobs? well, no, they're using it to make stuka bombers. and by the time the americans realized what was going on, we didn't have enough aluminum to make zippers for uniforms. so reynolds jumped in there and he created something called aluminum foil, a reynolds wrap and accompanying the reynolds trip overseas was a sheet of film that protect it. all of our stuff on the boats from the salty water to get it to europe in the pacific. this is called saran wrap.

but the best part was an air to the mars bar. his fortune went to europe and he saw people eating chocolate inside of little candy shells. and he thought, this is how we can sell chocolate in the summertime, because normally people didn't like chocolate in the summer because it came out half melted or covered in whites, blacks or others, other stuff. so he came up with this idea and he aligned himself with another child, another nepo kid from hershey, and they made these chocolates and they were only for servicemen. if you were in combat, you could get these fancy chocolates and then after the war, anyone could buy and they named the chocolates after themselves. eminem's. well, the, you know, you mentioned eisenhower and of course, in his farewell speech, he warned america against, the establishment and and maintenance of an end store

military industrial complex and obviously we've got to the defense budget of $800 billion. how can you can you can't connect what happened to in the preparation for world war two with what we now clearly have a military industrial complex. right. so the new deal fixed every one of the nation's great depression problems and completely solved that horrible situation. except in one way. and that was double digit unemployment. and so when the new deal turned into the ice of democracy, we had like 0.3% unemployed it and people couldn't figure out a way to give that up. when the war ended, first it transformed into the g.i. bill, then it transformed into the marshall plan to resuscitate europe. and by the way, when you hear about foreign when we give things to foreigners in our

budget, it's all american products that are being given. so there's there's a little of a flip up for the economy in those foreign affairs benefits such as to ukraine and but anyway, so the politicians just couldn't give it up. and both fdr and texas own lyndon johnson spread manufacturing for a defense across the country. so almost every state in almost every condition or district has a reason to want to keep going with our military budget. we now have over 800,000 foreign bases. you know, and the one thing i do have to say is that for people who think we should no longer be the policeman of the world, the one issue about it is that it's a jobs program. it's a place for people to go who have nowhere else to go. if you do choose a career in the military, it's a great thing. it is a great career to have. but finally, if we don't want to be policeman of the world, we're not going to be happy with who else wants to be policeman of the world. so just keep that in mind.

all along. you know, in that connection, you know, there's a bit among some corners. there's a big dispute about funding the ukrainians presently. and while you're an author, i know you have opinions, so why don't you tell us what it if you think this ukrainian funding is a good investment and why? well, my friends in the military say that fighting russia through ukraine is greatest bargain in history. and they say that because we don't have american lives on the line, we don't have it. we're not paying in afghan. we're not fighting them in afghanistan like we used to. we fighting them in the space race like we used to. we have them in vietnam, like we used to. it's really just helping people who are close to becoming part of nato's. and really the first line of defense against the soviets and the russians invading the rest of europe.

and it sort of ties the russian down. they don't have quite as much manpower to interfere in our elections. there are or do all these other things that they're fighting the ukraine. so that's their opinion and i understand it. well, craig, we as as you know, george black couldn't be here. i want to just i want to just give you a little bit of a summary of george black book called the long reckoning. it's a book about vietnam, but principally the after effects of the war in vietnam, not just on american gis, but on the people of both. well, vietnam only now, not just north and south, but he focuses on a couple of things. agent orange in particular, and

the incidence of birth defects and subsequent generations, you know, deformities and defects as a result of agent orange and the efforts of people in america through the war legacies project and other things to fund remediation and treatment for agent orange and unexploded ordnance, for example, 40,000 vietnamese have died from unexploded american ordnance since the end of the war. george focuses on redemption and reconciliation, and craig and i were talking yesterday. i've had the privilege of being at the war remnants museum in, saigon or ho chi minh city. now, and it is in one of georges points is is that while there's been a great deal of wreckage

affiliation, there has never been any reconciling ation between the north vietnamese and the south vietnamese military. so the south vietnamese military did and and veterans are demonized as traitors to to the cause. and so the the plight of returning vietnam vets, it has been dealt with a extensively. and i thought george i mean, craig, you might have some thoughts on what the life of a returning wwii to vet was versus the experience has been for the vietnam that in my opinion, excuse me, in my opinion, the military now has its focus on career military who have a really great life and and they

take really good care of their people, but it doesn't so much focus on the volunteer who comes in at 18 or excuse me, does does a tour or two and then goes home. there is it a really good program for reentry using those people to reenter into civilian life? they are really getting the training they need and they aren't getting the help they need. physical wounds, yes, they get taken care of, but they and we know that getting the psychological need because in america, one third of the homeless are military veterans. and we now have, in fact, two really good cures for ptsd. they have like 77, 80% success rates. but not enough people are getting that. and so they're trying to self-medicate. and it's a real problem that i hope the military or the federal government does something to fix things. well, we have just a few minutes left. if anyone has question for greg

about the subject of world war two or any of the other issues. if you'd go to the microphone, would you mind or yell real loud? it's just hard for c-span to pick it up unless you're on the microphone. yes, sir. i just yell your. vice president, be a -- on the show. fdr was forced to truman by a group of democratic behind the scenes powerbrokers at the democratic convention. he didn't care much for truman. truman. no relationship with him whatsoever.

and when fdr died, truman told eleanor, please tell me if there's anything i can do. and she said, oh, no, it's you who are in trouble now. so know. and frankly, i mean, as far as i'm concerned, harry truman is one of the worst presidents in history. but following roosevelt would be tough on anybody. right? yes. thank you both. mr. nelson, can you talk a little bit about when president roosevelt and general marshall's lives started to merge and kind of combine private sector public sector into creating the war machine? right. so this is a fantastic story because all of us now know general, as a great, great hero, a really integral part to any world two. but he wasn't always that great. so when he and roosevelt first started working, marshall was very much in the isolationist camp and didn't want to send any troops to europe and was going to wait until they came over here. and then he changed his mind

when it looked like they were going to come over here. but but but the marshall tried to. fdr tried to get into marshall's heart by calling him george. and that did not go over well. but and fdr was such a navy guy, he would regularly refer to the navy as us and the army as them until marshall made him cut it out. yes, sir. do you have any story about how fdr ever used storytelling or other anecdotes to get people or to get voters to get the population to do things they didn't want to do or couldn't imagine that they could do about politically? the really incredible thing about fdr, one story is that there is a man standing in front of the capitol building when fdr died and he was sobbing and sobbing and it was so uncontrollable that someone came over and said, are you okay? did you know the president? and he said, no, i didn't, but he knew me. think of having a politician.

you feel that strongly with that you feel they really know what you're going through. we just don't have that anymore. and but the major thing fdr did was he ennobled the american people every time he set forth something he wanted to do with them, he would say when when we were losing constantly in 42, he reminded people of valley forge and how americans were valiant and courageous then and now. they can be again. he was constantly lifting people up with the projects he wanted to do with the four freedoms and and all the different kinds of freedoms he wanted to attain by winning the war. everyone felt like they were on the right side. and guess what? we were. yes. you raised the issue or somebody did about the ukraine war. so i'm wondering about your opinion about an individual outside of the government having such a dramatic impact. you know, here, of course, i'm talking about elon musk about in on that war, you know, and the

success or failure of it. i'm wondering what your thoughts are on that. well, i'm not a big a fan. has many texans are elated. i think. but anyway, i sort of think he is like this permanent 13 year old. and to have him running important pieces of communications equipment, i think some federal investigation will be happening. so. yes. i was wondering. how strong your opinion is are of how our politicians do need to be men of letters. and do you think that like like a former military education, like k through 12 can help this nation or. well, one of the things that i really tried to do in this book that we didn't get a chance to talk about today is show in detail how all of this happened. so you could actually be inspired or if you want to go into politics. there's almost like a cookbook in this book for how to get

things done and how to make things happen. and i hope that happens today for us. winston churchill once said that the marshall plan was the greatest act of altruism in world history. can you comment on the marshall plan and its impact on yourself? so europe was in such terrible state at the end of the war that americans realized we needed to do something for the entire global economy was going to collapse. what we did was basically gave rebuilding of europe and japan. which was it called the marshall plan in japan. but it was pretty much the same thing where we would send them american products and american oil and america ingenuity to help rebuild after the war. and it worked was so successful that, you know, we haven't really had any great depression type thing. and he's ever since. and that's really the idea of many things going on that you see with the editors or monetary fund and all these other things is those people still remember the great depression and they're trying to make sure it doesn't

happen again. let me ask you in, texas circles particularly fdr, is remembered as some kind of socialist maniac. but how did corporations make out with under fdr versus a president since the the biggest corporate profits ever made were made under socialist fdr? so please, let's have more socialist presidents so we could all make money. we had. you need to tell them talking about fdr, his political skills, tell him the following story. the fdr had a well, you tell him. i'd rather i'd rather tell you the greatest secret i learned in this book, which is that eleanor roosevelt never needed secret service protection because she always had a gun in her purse. so i know that's a little bit surprising, but i always thought of eleanor as being this kindly old grandmother. and instead she was like a

ninja. i mean, she was just unbelievable. so her son ran for governor and didn't get it. she found out that there was one state senator in charge named carmine desafio. she learned she started a clean up albany campaign and drove and disappeared out of politics. i mean, she was just amazing, but but there was a so in the middle of a war tour, fdr went on a big tour of all the war planes in the united states while the republicans were trying to run someone for president. he was out showing all these great things he'd accomplished in the eyes of democracy. and it was supposed to be a big secret because someone could bomb the train or something, but it couldn't be that much of a secret because every day a little black dog had to be walked outside the train. and this little black dog was the most famous dog in the world. fowler and bella was so famous that mgm made a movie starring fowler after fdr was dead and so everyone's du who saw their father went, oh, the president's here.

they went when they were on a ship outside alaska, i guess in the aleutian straits, something that the republicans started, a story that the that they had to turn the ship around to go back and pick up vallow who had been left there in it wasn't true. but fdr speech, you need to tell them about this speech. oh, this is so great. so so fdr was accused of spending tens of millions of dollars to fight the last battle in the aleutians when he went to meet with marshall and with the pacific theater leaders. and this was it was a made up scandal. so so he it's she's appearing before the teamsters in washington, d.c., broadcast across the country. and he says, you know, me and my family, we used to assault by the republicans against our good name, but valor is not used to it. he has not been the same dog since. and i think the one thing i could ask is for the enemies to leave my dog alone.

and alex roosevelt. laura is crazy because it said so. now the entire campaign was now about a little the little man that groom on the wedding cake, meaning the republican nominee and fowler and fowler, one tom. yeah. alice roosevelt. longworth referred to tom dewey, you know, had a little mustache. she he referred to him as the little man on the wedding cake. right. well, thank you. thank you so much, craig, for. greg will be signing books in the book signing tent. and i can't i couldn't recommend a book any more. highly. this book is so exhaustively researched, and it's it's really the read. thank you, jim. you've been a great moderator and thank you all for coming. i'm so touched. thank you.

all. so. we'll have more live coverage of the 2023 texas book festival

after a short break. voters as mad scientists is the name of the book essays on political irrational ality. the author is george mason university professor brian kaplan. professor kaplan, what are you trying to accomplish with this book? really, i'm just trying to share 17 years worth of essays on political rationality. i think at this point have started to finally accept that there is a lot of political rationality in their opponents, at least a lot. what i'm trying to say is you're you're right. both sides are correct. the other side is pretty crazy. but get a little more self-awareness and realize that the craziness actually is pretty universal. give an example of a voter who's irrational now. let's see. i mean, the first one that comes to mind is someone who voted for hitler because national socialism means he's actual nazi

slogan. in 1933, which i would just say would be pretty crazy. i mean, honestly, though, the main thing about irrationality as social scientists think about it is that it's hard to know for one person. it's much easier to have an idea about a general group as a rational because for one person, one person to just make an honest mistake, they could just happen to have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed or whatever. but when you see that there's a general pattern towards, for example overestimating certain kinds of crime or underestimating certain kinds of crime, this is where you say it seems like in general the standard possession is way off. as to how that happened is a little unclear. but i mean, i would tend to say that whenever a person has a view that is just wildly at odds with reality, that's at least reasonable. i think probably they didn't come to that view accidentally. it wasn't just like, woops, i just read the wrong number. it's probably more like they were not exercise ing normal intellectual self-discipline when they formed the belief. why do you refer to voters as mad scientists? great question. so a lot of people look at

politics and they say the problem is self-interest. the problem is everyone just voting to get good stuff for themselves. as someone who studies public opinion, a lot of i say that really just doesn't fit the facts at all. it is not very easy at all to predict what policy someone will support based upon their objective self-interest. rather, what we see is almost everybody supports the policies that they do because they think they're best for society. the key catch, though, is that the way they form their beliefs about what is best for society is really negligent at best, where you just sort of hear some slogans, repeat whatever it is that sounds good to you. this analogy came from saying, look what we all like. imagine you wake up on an operating table and there's some guy there says, i've got a great surgical procedure, i'm going to perform on you. it's going to make you it's going to be so wonderful. you're gonna live forever. that'll be $1,000,000. and you say, ah, no, thanks. well, you don't want to pay. fine. get out of here. all right. that's a lot better than you. when you wake up on the table and the guy says, i don't want your money, i am just here to go

and help you deal. and there's, like, no, no, i don't want it. of course you would save that. naturally, you're not perfect. so you don't understand the wonder of what i'm doing, do you? that's what i say we're dealing with, with people that do want to help. but they have thoughts so little about what would be helpful that you would actually be better off if they were, in fact, just stereotypical greedy jerks. what is the importance or the significance of convenience for voters? nice. one thing that you will never hear in politics, at least i have never heard. it is someone who gives the speech, give me convenience or give me death. normally in politics, instead it's like safety first, health first. the main thing to know about all these things that politicians do talk about is and we saw this very clearly during covid, is that they come at a very high price. they come at the price of you can't live your life. you at least you can't go and live your life in an enjoyable, convenient way. when you're spending your own money, convenience matters a

lot. if someone says, hey, there's going to be this great vacation, all you have to do is go to a four hour timeshare seminar first. like, no, i don't want to do that. that sounds like a pain in the neck. i don't feel like it. so this is where when people are spending their own money, they care a lot about convenience. there's a standard in the business. don't antagonize customers when they're standing in line to pay. give you their money. speed them along. make them happy. but in politics, on the other hand, it's very common to say, here's a policy we're doing this. it's the best thing to do. even though it's actually a giant pain in the neck. think about tsa. all right. well, if it saves one life. standard political slogan. well, saves one life. almost everything that anybody on earth enjoys kills people. and yet when people are spending their own time, their own money, they take these chances so they can actually live a rich, full life. political decisions, on the other hand, normally there is almost no weight put on the convenience of people. it's just whatever is safe, whatever is healthy has got to be done. convenience be -- or often don't

even mention convenience because who could care about such a trivial thing as convenience? what do you teach at gmu? i teach economics. and what portion of economics? we'll see while i do a wide of topics, actually. so i teach the microeconomics class. i just did a new public policy class, which is a lot of fun. i do labor economics, i do economics of immigration, economics of education, economics and politics. i've done macroeconomics. i've done intro. i mean, really like you like i'll say a lot of professors do not like teaching. you might not figure that out from what they say. probably you can, but like i love teaching. i love getting in a classroom, getting to talk to people, just to see the reactions. and i love trying to figure out a way to take something in my head and make it make sense to someone that's never heard anything like that before. it's easy to talk to people that also have the same ph.d. as you. talking to somebody that never heard any of this stuff and having it make sense to them. that's the challenge. that's what's fun. what do you refer to when you're

talking about the social desirability bias? oh, excellent question. social desirability bias is the most important idea in psychology that hardly anyone has heard of. it's a fancy name for an obvious idea, namely when the truth sounds bad, people lie. often the lies become so ubiquitous that people stop even being conscious of the lie to really mundane example is fat. you don't have to move the camera down and see, but there's only one socially acceptable answer to that, of course, right? or like, should we save lives or worry about convenience? again, there's only one socially acceptable answer to that. it doesn't matter how much convenience or losing or how few lives are being saved, there's still only one acceptable answer in psychology. there's a lot of examples that are very familiar with things like people overstate church attendance. more people claim they went to church than really did. people overstate voting more people claim to have voted than really did. we also know things like people overstate how nice they are. we'll notice that if you ask people like, are you in the top half of niceness with 90% of

people saying their top half of niceness? right. all this, you might say, is pretty. but once you this idea, it's like, is there any sphere of life or social desirability bias? pretty much just takes over? and is everything that you hear? and i say, that's politics. you just listen to politicians and just go through their sentences one by one. is it literally true? my claim is it's 90% of the time what they're saying each sentence is just literally false. i encourage people to do this with politicians. they like. it's easy to go and call the ones you don't like. a bunch of liars find someone that you like and just honestly go through any speech and say, is that sentence literally true? is literally true. we will do anything that it takes to save ukraine like we spend $1,000,000,000,000. we have world war three. no, in that case, it's literally false to say that you will do whatever it takes or do anything that it takes. anytime says cost doesn't matter. the cost always matters. of course, when it's your money, once you get into politics, then you hear a lot of talk like cost doesn't make any difference, doesn't matter i give it to

them? it helps one person. then justified to go and spend billions of dollars like, are you crazy? that's like if you literally follow that through, you have left for everything. after the first thing that you brought up in the day. so that is social desirability bias and it does form a very part of the way that i think especially about politics, to realize it is a realm not just coincidentally there's a lot of lies going on, you know, the kinds of things that politifact points out. i'm like all right, you can say that. but there's the deeper point of almost everything they're saying is actually just literally false to say it's hyperbole. and yet a lot of the reason why politicians are doing it is, because a lot of people hear it and they do actually kind of believe it. what does that social desirability bias play in to irrational views on economics immigration drug policy? oh, yeah, of course. i mean, really, when are forming beliefs about politics almost the last thing they want to do is calm to look at facts and

status, like what will sound good, what will make me sound like a good person, what makes me sound like a patriot, what makes me sound compassionate. you one of the main things that i see i'm teaching a class on policy is how often i will agree with someone's conclusion. yet their arguments will just be stupid. so i've long been in of drug legalization. when someone says, well, drug laws don't work because they're still use, i just want to say ridiculous argument. you just say legalize murder because they're still murderers. it's one where people are really just trying to find some argument that gives a warm glow. it's like you get a you get bathed in some positive emotion, whereas a lot of what i'm trying to do in this book is to say look it's nice to be bathed in positive emotions, but can we just pause that and try to really look at the world as it is? how do you define libertarian ism and are you a libertarian? i'd say a libertarian is the view that there's a strong presumption favor of letting human beings do what they want

and in particular for government to not go and be able to pass laws to tell people what they want to do with their own person or their own stuff. i'm definitely libertarian by that standard. again, like, i think this is the definition that is closest to actual use because there's a lot of libertarians who favor all kinds of government programs, but still, when you talk to one side, what's the starting? the starting point is government shouldn't this leave people alone? and then maybe you can talk me into this as an exception. so that's generally, the way that i think about it, it's one where you can totally disagree with me on this and still like the rest of the book. but i do think that there is some connection between what i'm saying and the libertarianism. if you just were if every politician could only say things that were literally true, it would just longer be very fun to support government if you had to actually say, all right, well, we're going to go and start a war in this country, 50% chance that makes things better, or 30% chance, no difference.

20% chance to make things makes things worse. that's an honest case for government action. it's not an appealing one and a quote from bryan caplan. libertarians are notorious for gratuitously alienating everyone who doesn't agree with them. hopefully i haven't done that right on this very interview, but like i know i know a lot of libertarians and we can all improve, but a lot of my friends need to improve more than a lot of other people. this is part of why these ideas are so is just needlessly antagonizing other people. i you know, i'm guilty, so i'm not going to say hold myself up as being a model of affection when i was in high school, i was one of the first big mouths i knew. over time, i think that have improved. i've at least reinvented the wheel of dale carnegie's to win friends and influence people. and i am happy to go and share what i've learned with other people to try to become more persuasive to others. and that's a little bit from

bryan caplan, author of voters as mad scientists essays on political irrationality. all right, thank you very much. this is great fun fun. our live coverage of the texas book festival continues now. book book.

hello and welcome to the 28th annual texas book fest. my name's samir sultan. i'm the associate director of literary programing and the world festival at pen america. today with us, we have gay and

luis alberto urrea and a few housekeeping notes before begin our conversation. one if your phones are on, please silence them. and then two books are for sale throughout festival weekend courtesy of book people so you can help support our authors. the texas book festival and the largest independent bookstore in texas by purchasing books by our incredible festival authors in the book. people sales tend and a portion of every book help support the texas books festival's mission, which includes expanding literacy initiatives and access to literature across the state. and so, to date, please feel free to call call. to today's discussion is on threats to free expression, particularly looking at book banning and so to sort of the

conversation i just want to share a bit of data first and then we'll leap into our actual conversation and so national data on book bans from pen america's new report banned in the usa, the mounting pressure to censor shows an escalation of book bans and censorship in classroom and school libraries across the united states. this year, we saw a 33% increase in individual book bans from the 2122 school year from july 20, 22 through june 20, 23. there were over 3000 instances of individual being banned, affecting almost hundred unique titles and almost 1500 different authors illustrate and translators and within texas itself, the total number of book bans currently stands at 625 across 12 districts and before we get into book banning proper,

i'd love to sort of set the conversation session and why youtube, right? if i could here sort of about how your work responds to the world around you, what you think writing does in the world. and why don't we begin with luis for that question and then we'll go over to roxanne roxanne. well, yeah, i was born in tijuana and, you know, all you have to do is be from tijuana to learn with the human is like from people, not from. and you i my motivation i didn't even realize it was to bear witness from beginning that the people that i knew and grew up with and ultimately represented were, i thought, the most fabulous interesting, real people in the world. and then we left tijuana and settled in san diego. and i found out suddenly tijuana

was filthy dirty prostitute dope. i thought, what? what happened? and, you know, so it became really important me not only to bear witness, to be the witness, you know, everybody had everybody had depth. everybody had feelings. and the majority of the people that i was with in my boyhood didn't write, didn't tell stories, except amongst themselves, didn't have access to an audience or a public. and, you know, i don't i don't know how roxanne felt, but i of course, when you're a poor and you're arty, you want to be a star, right? you want to make some money, man. but that drive transformed more and more to bearing witness and the more resistance i got, the more truculent i got. and i'll just throw this out as a mexican. this. but my my dad's nickname for me

was the mule i always said is more like ron, because every time they tried to force me to do something, i would just dig in. i didn't. why? maybe it was this that, you know, there was a calling somewhere. i'm from omaha, nebraska, and i'm a first generation american. my parents are from port au prince, haiti. and growing up. there weren't really stories about people like me. and when i went high school and college people were always astounded to learn that black people live in nebraska and and indeed they do. and not only that, there were like five haitian families growing up in nebraska, and we all knew each other, of course, because we all know each other and. i wanted to write stories about people like me. but then, of course, like luis, it evolved and i recognized that

i could articulate my understanding of the world as much as anyone else. and a lot of times people would say. why you? and my rejoinder was why not me? i think that we're all entitled to share our understanding of the world, to bear witness and to bring attention to the issues that matter to us. and i've had the very fortunate privilege of being able to do so for the past. 25 years or so. and every day i wake up and i realize i get to do my thing all day if i want, and i never do it all day, but i still get to do it. and that drives to tell other people's stories. to tell my stories is still there. fortunately, it has not gone away. oh, i think off of both your answers. there's this interesting note of both reflecting your own stories to different audiences and also

sharing and bearing witness to those stories around you. and in this current era book banning, we're seeing a focus on silencing narratives from marginalized voices. voices that deal with sort of america's history with race, america's history broadly with sexual assault, with lgbtq. i a identity and both of those are topics you both about or appear or all of those. some of those topics are topics that appear across your books, and i'd be curious to hear what it means when talk about this act of reflecting your own life. to hear those stories are being banned and maybe why don't we start off with roxane, then we'll do this next. well, i was pretty surprised. i learned that some of my books well, all of my books are banned

in one place or another because like one of them is a graphic novel. that's a fantasy story about a man that flies an air machine into the sun. and so i'm not sure. what sun lovers really were like. that book has to banned in eight states, but it's disheartening of course, book banning is not new. first book was banned in 1637 and the first book burning was in 1650. and so this is something that humans have doing for a very long time because knowledge is power. and i don't mean in a cheesy way, i do mean that the more you learn and the greater your understanding the world, the more power you have. even if you don't necessarily have ways of using power. and so when you write about sexuality, when write about race, inequality, any form of bigotry, it makes a lot people uncomfortable because they have to hold themselves accountable for the ways in which they support systemic bigotries and

to know that my work is being banned it's not something that i wear as a badge of pride because books should not be banned. but i think i'm doing something right when people are threatened. and what's really important is that have to remember that local elections running for your local boards and school boards boards, it's not glamorous at all, but we should not be what other people read. it's not our business and we should not be afraid of knowledge. we should not try to elide history from books and from our students, our children, because then they're going to go to college and be because they don't know, for example, that the holocaust happened. bravo.

it's it's strange experience to go through these kind of things. i just want to tell you to things, and maybe it'll put it in perspective for you. one is that i a i wrote a book called the devil's highway, and it came out and i was at the tucson festival of books walking toward my event and the tv crew stopped me and they said, can we talk to you a second? and i said, sure, i'm trying to get to a gig. no, no, just take second. i said, okay. and they put the mic in my face and said, how do you feel about your book being banned in arizona? and i said, excuse me, what? it's been banned in arizona. i said, do you know why? yes. they said that it's got a satanic title. the devil's highway. and secondly, anti-american bias. and i remember thinking, you

know, certainly reason will win here. i said, it's the name of a place every arizona map. are you going to edit the maps to get the devil out of them? and the second thing i said was they teach it at the border patrol academy. if it's american enough for the border patrol, you know, you could probably read it and i thought, this is ridiculous. and i went on, and that was what began the massive arizona a book banning -- you're you're you're texan the trafficante is they got together in response to what happened in arizona and if you don't know them they're here they're going to be doing events here. they decided instead of being narco traffic and like everybody thinks we are, let's be book smugglers and got all the banned books and they drive them into the places they're banned and pass them out.

you know action creative action i think is a brilliant response to it. and the other thing i just want to mention to you is that i had another book and i it was it was a novel it's called into the beautiful north and i wanted to honor people that i knew or people that i respected, including who were trying to walk to make the world better and get somewhere else. and then send it back home. so it got some resistance. but it was picked as an all region read in western, uh, oregon and. the school districts banned it and my wife and i naively went to talk to the the big man, the head principal and the principals, and we went into his office and he was all, you know, pleasant. yeah, hi. lewis. and i said and i said, so, you

know, we wanted to talk about why is the book banned? and he said, well, it's got a homosexual hero. and i said, yeah, i bet you have gay students. so what's wrong? he said, well, we gay bashing here and they they got rid of the book. and what were in my heart was the parents parents took it over sort of as an independent study and made sure their kids could read it and talk outside of school. but the argument that we have gay bashing here, i understand what he was saying honestly, that you're going your your books are going to cause more gay bashing. i don't know why. um, and so once again, parents took a step to circumvent that. and i think the answer always is a creative and smarter response because the people who are doing this are are sly and, they're

sneaky, but they eat smart. and so you can, you can them and if you should publish something that gets you bad stuff, i'm sure we both get really weird communiques. since when the devil said, oh, when the devil's highway came out, then the white supremacists started in on me and they would write to me. and i swear to you, tell me that they had to do me the favor of exterminate my children to stop the and my wife smartly would get up in the morning and delete my emails because she knew i couldn't keep quiet. but when i got one, here's what you do. anybody who gets one correct there english. so. that's actually my favorite pastime, isn't it? the best. it's amazing how terrible at grammar spelling racists are.

i love that for them. yeah. always give them a c minus and put your comments on it and send it back to them. and i swear to you, they will write back maybe once what won't get you so bad man, that was it. and they disappear disappear. oh, well. so while we're here, i'm curious. how do you think about this response in terms of how it affects writing? so when the who say your books are dangerous rich, how does that change how you write? and more broadly? i how do you think it affects younger authors, too? like in this environment where they know there's this wide sort of movement they have get published, it. oh hi.

it doesn't affect my writing at all, frankly. it makes me lean into it. yeah. and do it more and. i mean, when you tell me not to do something, all of a sudden i have a burning desire to do it and i hope that it's not deterring young people from telling the truth for recognizing reality, articulating what it means to be queer or trans or black or mexican or middle eastern, anything. because when we start to, deny ourselves the right to tell our stories, we lose parts of ourselves. and i think we lose something incredibly vibrant in. our culture when we strive for some kind of christian ethno state where everyone looks the same, thinks the same acts the same. first of all, you guys like tacos too much. you can't do that. i'm just saying i'm and so it's just important to continue to remind people that diversity is not just a word, it's a way of

being. and it's a practice and it's a remind that we share this world with other people. we i got nothing after that. yeah, well, so then let's move it a bit away from sort you as writers and i'd be curious to hear about the responses gotten from students and readers who haven't been able to access your books and what have you heard. what is that made you think? and why don't we begin with louis for this one and then roxane it's it's it's overwhelming and it's why you do this. i mean, you know, of course, our incredible fame and fortune is very. but no, it's it's, you know, i don't know about you, but, you know, i was the kid in the terrible tenement bedroom and

the floor listening to leonard cohen writing in a notebook. i didn't know this would happen. and at the time when i got started, there weren't a whole lot of me's out in publishing. and i was told the first thing from the publisher in new york that i was trying get into. i was working as a missionary, i'll admit it, but as a as not a preaching missionary, but feeding poor for years in mexico. and i wrote a book about it, my first book and the first publisher i submitted it to said nobody cares about starving mexicans. and i was all self-righteous. yes, this is why i have written it, which wasn't necessarily a good, you know, commercial move. but driven by those things that burn inside. and i'm telling you, you ask about, that's the most astonishing and rewarding thing of all of is meeting young who saw themselves in your book or felt that, you know, we could understand them or listen to

them or they could come out to us and you come out and so many ways. you know, i have a lot of because my family has a history of certain gang relations. i get gang members who come to me and they're very ashamed and they're like, i want to write something, man, but i can't. why not i'm gang related. and i said, so is my family what, you know, come on, tell me your story. that's a miracle. and the book that got banned for the gay bashing. was in the rio grande valley, talking about it. most of the students couldn't give a darn about it, but this young person came and sat next to me in and the gay the gay characters named tojo. and there's a whole story about torture. he was a real person. that name in a little town in.

i first met him in 1970. it was the first person who was out that i'd seen or heard of in a place. it was very dangerous for him and he made himself this incredible mainstay of his hometown so that everybody, instead of, you know pointing him out, is there he is there's the queer guy. he was our torture. it was a work of political genius. and i made him a hero. the book, under his own name. and i just want to say that my cousin's took him the book when it came out. and ever since then he tells i told you i was special and he keeps it with him. but this student came and sat next to me and was very reticent and leaned and said, can i ask you a question? and i said, of course. and the person said it is torture. single or. oh man. i said, you know, touch is real

and touch is still single. probably a little old for you. but, you know those things that it's about the humanity. that's what that that's what moves me. and i feel impossible. and i tell this to my students every semester. one of my main rules is because people always ask me, what are your books? funny if they're about such terrible things. i say, because we're funny. we're funny. it's one of the sacred things that us and if you can sit, down with the other and have a good laugh, not an evil laugh, a mocking laugh, laugh together eye to eye. how do you get up from that table and say, well, those people are all pigs. you can't you can't. so i think, you know all the things that i try to do to please myself. esthetically, i'm also conscious, i think, of trying to do at least a little bit of either healing or reconciliation between readers because it's

turned out weirdly. i have a really wide array of readers. i thought i would get a very small niche, but it turns out that people read it and they often forgive me for my liberal ways. i tend to meet a lot of readers and it's always gratifying to encounter them. and when i hear that my books have been taken away from them and banned, i'm happy to just send them my books. yeah. and make sure that at least that person has access to something that they wanted. but i also recognize that that's not actually to solve this problem when you do it one on one, you can do it, but it doesn't make. people stop banning books. and so i try to listen to whatever readers want to share about how they connect with my writing. i try to talk about the importance of that. like luis, i thought i was writing for a very niche audience of the four black girls from omaha, but it turns out

that people from all walks of life have connected to my work in one way or another, and that has been very humbling. one of the biggest surprises of my career. and so when someone connects and can say, i know what that feels like, know what it feels like to be in a human body, know what it feels like to be vulnerable to be hurt, and then someone wants to take that away from them. it just infuriates me and it makes me want to write even more and make sure that more people read my work. not because of vanity, but because so many people just need to know that they are not alone and that they are not the only people who have experienced trauma or have experienced isolation or any of the other things we tend to write about in our work. and it just is fuel more than anything. i now that that's such a good way to approach it to, use it as an inspiration point to think

about those people who you wouldn't expect to connect with your books. but the of your audience. and so a bit off of that. i'm curious, what were the first books you read where you saw yourself and like, what did it to see yourself in a book? i don't know that i saw myself, but the first book where i felt like, oh, i wish that she was my was little house on the prairie. yeah. and i know that the books are flawed, but, you know, in 1978, 1979, those books were everything to me because it was a story about an ordinary girl from the plains whose life was rendered extraordinary by laura ingalls wilder. and i mean, i still reread those books to this day because. they are really good. and i just i can matter. i can just be an ordinary girl and have an interesting story. and then the book i really saw

myself was not it's not that i saw, it's that i felt a kinship. and that was beloved by toni morrison. oh yeah, that's amazing. so a little a little bit of background here. my mom was the only american in my family, but the mexicans were the blue eyed ones. go figure, make. my grandmother's name was guadalupe. it mcmurry. so so. and so there was a very strong and relentless mexican presence, obviously. and i spoke spanish first and all that. and my mother was to get america into the mix and she decided to do it through literature. and she she she read me dickens, which i thought, what's what's going on, man? i don't get what's he talking about, you know? and she'd get a british accent, you know, the alfa dodger of it. i was curious when i was like.

so she gave that up and switched to mark twain. and i got to say, tom sawyer blew my mind. and it was kind of a science fiction book to me. giant river, what's we don't have those in tijuana, san diego, all of that stuff in his presence, his voice, american voice made me crazy. and i do confess this every time i talk about it and becky thatcher. hmm. yeah. my my first literary girlfriend, i was like, wow, wow, dude, are you kidding me? and i have to say that later it was rudolfo aeneas. bless me, ultima and i thought, oh, my god. and i understood that we can be we can be a weave. we're all weaves in this country. and so that instead of a kind of a liability felt like to me, i always felt a little alien. i started thinking, yeah, this

is it. this is what being american, if you want to know what, being an american looks like i am this version. you're that version, you're that and we're all basically the same. if we'd pay attention to it with our with our fabulous, delicious flavors flavors. and in a couple of minutes be moving over to the q&a. so if you could start thinking of your question and you can line up in the center aisle where you see the microphone, you and then so as a fine old question before we move on to the audience q&a, i think we've discussed book being specific only, but i'd be curious to hear what you think. are other threats to free expression currently happening today that we should all think of and be of? well, i think state legislatures, overriding the will of the people and creating

laws to circumvent what the voters is a huge problem i think conservative legislatures trying to impose their will on curricula is a huge problem for. because it's not just that they want to ban books, it's that they want to ban certain forms of education as well. and the minute you start doing that, you create a populist that is so ignorant that they are to be willing to go along with anything. that of course is the end goal. and i sound like a conspiracy theorist, but look at florida it's right there and it's going to happen in many. they're dismantling the humanities. almost every state in, west virginia, they're getting rid of foreign languages at the university city of west virginia, or maybe one of the two. and they're they have suggested using duolingo to take the place of foreign language instruction.

and so that is frankly even more terrifying than banning books because when you start to remove knowledge from people in such a system manner, you have to wonder how far they'll go. and it seems there is nothing they won't try to in order to control what we know and how we learn. and so that's what i find particularly weird and problematic. yeah, it's exactly where i was going as well because, you know, we we have well, not anymore, but we, we three rounds of high school kids in our children and you know, when you go to the high schools in the libraries are gone. yeah it's all like stuff or look it up on your phone or or that's shocking to me that there's no book and we art our son started telling us, well, it's a post literary world, you know. and i thought, in fact, i asked him, you what what got the house

you're living in right? that terrifies me. and whatever. whatever our agenda any administration or any school, they're like they've become little fiefdoms, i think. and one of the things that you see is is control of flow and being a of creative writing. it's really shocking to me to meet so many people who come in to the program thinking, you know, i'm going to be a writer. it's probably easy, it's going to make me famous, which i want a lot of money. we could we are infrastructure, but we we could give them a little workshop. and i do but but to to meet over and over who don't read haven't read, don't know who anybody is is so shocking to me toni morrison they're like, hmm. who.

and it's so bad that it's even culturally seeped in. there's a kind of myopia, culturally to the day prince i went into class and they're like, how you doing? professor said, i'm sad. my we haven't heard. no prince died. prince who? oh i said, prince. they're like, prince of what? and i'm stupidly up there like parents with, you know, rudy vallee me. i said, prince, purple rain. they're like i said, oh, my god, it's over. it's. it's over. automatic f i shouldn't have. you're so right. but i just. i think there is some i don't want to be paranoid or whatever, but there is an insidious power at play that is making us forget things that us connections and

depth and alternative thought and just ask questions. there's nothing wrong with asking questions, you know, and i'm trying to learn as a a dad, our youngest daughter is an anthropologist and she's trying on everything for a while. you know, she was follower of odin and then she thought to hell with odin, freya. so a feminist viking for a while. and, you know, and she's but she's studying ancient cultures and realized all these things that i think are threads that have always united us as people. you know, we're trying to deal with the same question. it's the same power play is the same familial things. and that's interesting to me. so i don't know what the answer is except more books, many more books.

and i think we have our first audience question. sir, if you'd like to step up to the microphone. thank you. there's some sort of interesting irony on about the discussion here on freedom of expression at the texas book festival. six years ago, i here at the book festival and asked ben blum, author of patriot games. the question as to why his family did not try and discourage his brother from going off to a rather pointless and objective loss war. i was cut off. my book, peoples manager. store manager at the microphone who scratched politics, politics and then i managed ask the question and ben blum had a fairly lame answer, but later, when i was at the c-span. tent for another event. another question.

she pointed me out to the dps security guards and had me removed from the question line that when was going to ask ken starr a question about his presidency at it. baylor universe city and. i wrote letters to every single member of the block festival's board of directors, as well as two big people as well as to the dps and i didn't get a single response because clearly there are more hot button issues out there that matter more than book bans in elementary schools. we've got 20 something years of pointless subjective lists, evil wars of aggression going on. will be discussed in any form or fashion by the literary crew of this town. well, it was there. i think maybe a question we pull out. okay, so is there.

i think i have it. i think there's a question here about what the discussion of war looks like. as author and what's our what's your if you sense one, a politic goal responsibility if one exists to discuss events like war in your work i mean writers talk about war all the time. and it is a very robust subject in many literary circles because we live in a world where we seem to be constantly at war. now, not everyone wants to talk about war, and i think that's an entirely valid choice because war is unpleasant. we are currently witnessing at least two wars, both of which are having horrific consequences for innocent civilians and i think a lot of us don't even have the words necessarily. how do you talk about atrocity on this kind of scale and how do you begin to address it when the

political winds tell us that we're going to continue to fund endless wars as long as it allows us to access to oil, for example or to have a position in certain global area. so i would say literary communities are talking about war, but they are difficult conversations and not every venue is going to want to have that conversation. no, no. and then if we could have the next person. so we've talked lot about today about, you know, parents fighting back and organizations fighting back. pan america fights back. what do you think the role is of publishers in combating this latest wave of censorship. are we look at other well, my publishers awesome.

you know best people i've ever met. yes no no. but you it's it's incumbent upon a publisher they take their their job very seriously, i think. and, you know, they know that there's stewards of something very important and central to the united states. and you know, publishers also are kind of now dividing out on on party and political lines. and so there's some that publish that kind of book. and some of the post that kind of book. but i think, you know, i think as long as is there's print, there will be an opportunity for for hope and i don't see our our publishers anyway. trying to silence argument. it may be difficult for people from whatever branch that your

publisher doesn't feel aligned with maybe to get a book in unless they're guaranteed to sell a million copies because ultimately it's a business, right? so i think freedom of speech is is is very important to every editor and publisher. i've known. i don't know. what do you think? i think publishers have a responsibility to push back and the big five publishers are owned by multibillion dollar conglomerates. and so they do have the legal and financial power to back and also to donate banned books to those communities. the books are burned by a banned. and so i hope more publishers step up and start doing that. and also that they don't start compromise their editorial vision by thinking that they should avoid certain topics and certain books. that's that's i, i agree with you. i mean, some of the new york publishers donated books to literary countries to make sure

that they got to people so they could read them. and that was not a financial gain in it, but a cultural warrior ship. hello. okay. sorry. i can, in your opinion, as the authors of your books have been banned. do you think that any topics of any topics or any anything or opinions that, even promoting hatred or chaos in the world should be able to be published as well? i don't have an opinion. this is always a juggling and juggling in my head. i but as an author's as authors, that has been banned. what do you think of freedom of speech? is freedom of speech. and so either you support it or you don't.

and. i will also say, though freedom of speech does not mean you have a right to have your terrible ideas. and so you can espouse them you can write a book, you can print it up on your little printer, you can photocopy it and distribute it. but does it mean that you're guaranteed book contract and royalties and things like that? absolutely not. and i think publishers to hold a certain line and it doesn't mean of course don't publish the books of you know people you disagree with or that you don't care for even though don't do it. but it does mean don't publish nazis, don't publish islamophobes, don't publish people who are espousing anti semitism. you can't do it because it just spreads those ideas. but do they have the right to exist? 100%. thank you. hello. i am a professor at austin community college and i'm not sure if you all are aware, but

today i lead a popular diversity and inclusion training and our funding was slashed because we can't say the word inclusion and so for me, it is becoming more and more tricky to commit to the work. and so as professors how do you all stop yourself from giving despair? like how do you wake up every day, continue to do the work? because it's exhausting to me. wow wow. that's that's amazing. we should we should we should take some sneaky action know talk to talk to a bunch of us and, you know, bring in support from the sides. but it depends on where you are. depends on the legislature. that's the thing drives me crazy, because education differs where you get it or how you get

it or know what the agenda is and i'm i'm i'm in chicago university of illinois. so, you know, they themselves as super liberal bastions of liberality, a liberal city, liberal world liberal, cool but we had a faculty member who was quite well known as a very hard left philosopher, and they canned it. so it's a little too much liberty there. you know, i just think i just think it's it's it's so hard to, to understand this flow of this ocean right. because you think, well, we have a unity of vision. we have a unity of of in but we i don't think we do it's it's it's institutional institution so i feel super lucky that i'm in this school that basically lets me come out and hang out with roxane and do stuff like

this because it's important to them. and i think that at the end of the day, as much as i love the university system, it on some level of business and, you know, the, the, the field work i do is valuable to. the farm, i don't know what to do. and if, if you know day comes because there have been times when creative writing has not been particularly honored. but then they were stuck because i keep getting on c-span or, you know, books. so i've been of use to the administration. it's such a weird game. and i again, i think it boils down to politics and how one plays the political game. and i just don't know how. so i just keep doing what i do and thank goodness it's it's been good for them. but that that that makes me really sad. and i hope you drop me a line or something. we're going to get a conspiracy

of hope going on. okay. we'll do. inclusion is not political, right? we all agree. yeah. okay. and unfortunately, this is to have to be our last question. the panel. so i'm so happy the last question from my colleague at a community college age and up until last year, i was a full professor at one of the two major research here in texas. and i did research on diversity, on inclusion, on critical. and it did get too much. so i retired early. now i have free time. so how do we take our universities back? how do we return them to a place where we have these discussions, where it is really where free and free speech and, free passage of knowledge takes place? i know that's a small task for

you guys to answer, but but i'm of stuck. where do we go from here? i think that's a good question that we have to find answers for, because right now there aren't good answers. a lot of people are like, leave texas, which. means that women should. but. you can't abandon. a state with this many people and so many people have roots here for generations. this home. and are we really going to cede our homes to who want to destroy them? and so that answer is absolutely not. but it really has to start at the voting booth where enough people have to. we do not want this. we do not want to limit our educational horizons simply because some bigots are afraid of what will happen when we breach those horizons.

and you have to protest because protest does matter. it does help people have to know that this is not okay and you have to make a lot of noise and get rowdy and change is never polite. it's never dainty and so you have to be willing to get a little messy as well. and unfortunately, that's all we have time for. so please join me, in giving roxane and louise around the quad. thank.

book tv's live coverage of the texas book festival in austin continues after this break. on about books, we delve into the latest news about the publishing industry with interest in insider interviews with publishing industry experts. we'll also give you updates on current nonfiction authors and books. the latest book reviews. and we'll talk about the current nonfiction books featured on c-span spoke tv. and now joining us on about

books is tiffany justice. she's with a group called moms for liberty. first off, mrs. justice, what is your group? we are a nonprofit, grassroots organization of parents across the country. and our mission is to unify, educate and empower parents to defend parental rights at all levels of government. and when you say all levels of government that include checking and monitoring what books are in school libraries. sure. because we have government schools. have you ever recommend ended a book being removed from library? i personally recommended a book be removed from the library, but if i was still sitting on board, which i did here in florida from 2016 to 2020, i'm a mom of four children who attend public school ages 17 through ten. if had been aware of the books that were in these and i wasn't, but i would have been actually asked for many of these books to

be removed because i do not believe that they are appropriate for the age groups in which they're being presented. and is this more of an age group thing for you than it is a political ideology? yeah, i don't really think belong in this conversation at all. what we're seeing is some very sexually explicit, graphic material that has made its way into our classrooms and our campuses and our school libraries. and i think parents would like to know a couple of things, including how those books get there and what processes and procedures are there to stop that from happening again. there must be accountability here for what children are being taught and exposed to in school. and does that begin with electing the school board? yeah, absolutely. i mean, i love local control and i love on school board. it was a wonderful opportunity. i think it's important that every community have conversation about what's being taught in schools and how people feel about it in the community. and every voice can be heard. you know, there are situation where moms may have a concern, a

book, and maybe that concern, as it is kind of reasoned out, it doesn't hold water. but the truth of the matter, that parents have the ability and the right to ask questions about their education. it's the fundamental of parents to direct the upbringing their children. well, one of the witnesses, mrs. justice, at the recent congressional hearing on book banning was mindy freeman. she's a philadelphia area. and she was talking her trans daughter. i want to get your response to what she had to say. lily also happens to be a female of trans experience. she is proud to be trans and we are proud of her being able to be visible for others and seeing herself in the books she reads is so very important. i to be clear, if there is one soundbite to arise from my appearance here today, let be this one. no book made my child become transgender any more than a book

could have turned her from brown to blue. let me tell you a little bit about lily's journey. lily will tell you that as soon as she could recognize herself. the mirror, the person looking back at her was not the person she was. the male presenting person back at her did not align correctly with her being as lily growing up during her younger years, she presented in what would be considered a more feminine as someone that had known a transgender person. while this out of gender norm behavior made my spouse and i question what was going on with lily. we did not discourage her from doing the things she loved. in early elementary school, lily the words insight and confidence to describe what she was feeling as school activities began to separate boys from. this only frustrated her in fourth grade, when boys and girls were separated to learn about what was going on in their bodies during puberty. lily began to panic after. sharing her feelings with my older two daughters.

she came to my spouse and me. we did not have the knowledge of everything lgbtq, especially trans related. but what we did know is that we loved our child and that we would support her no matter what. and this is when our learning journey began. we shared with lily's fifth grade teacher what lily was going through and her teacher brought to our attention alex gino's book, george now, melissa, an award winning children's novel about a trans fourth grader, and said that lily had the option to read it. we appreciated the visibility that this provided to lily, as well as the support not only by the teacher but by the school for having age appropriate books accessible on the shelves. mrs. justice, your response to what mindy friedman had to say about her trans daughter? yeah, i think there's a lot to unpack there, to be honest with you. i'm glad that the parent and the teacher had a good line of communication that the teacher was able to work with. the parent as the parent was

directing the upbringing of their child that they have the right to do, to find resources, to be able to help support that child. and should that book that was read in that video be, allowed to be in the school library. as far as well, it sounds like a book that's covering a lot of sensitive content, including the sexuality and the gender identity or the sexual orientation perhaps, of a child. and so, you know, i will be honest and tell you that we have a contagion going on in this country, something rapid onset gender dysphoria, where we are seeing a huge spike in children that are identifying as transgender. it's extremely concerning to me as mother and as a woman. the idea that we're somehow telling boys or girls there's a right way to be a boy or a girl, it feels regressive, in fact. and so there's a lot to talk about in that comment what those mother in the comments that mom made. but there's no doubt to me that that mom loves her child and

wants to give that child everything that they need. now should that book be on a public school library, be accessible to every child? and i there are many parents across this country that would tell you the answer to that is no. in it should not be available to every child. does that mean that the book is being banned? no, sir, it does not mean that it is being banned. it can be. and public. it can be in public libraries. it can be in bookstores. there are lots of different places where parents access that type of a book or community resources can be provided. however, we're talking about public schools and talking about all of our children together. there's a bit of an understanding that we've had about the roles of and home and those boundaries. and so what i think you're seeing parents across the saying is i raise my children the government doesn't we don't co-parent with the government and there are certain sensitive subjects we would like to be able to be directing conversation around for our children. this is one of those things parents are very concerned about this idea about gender identity

that was never discussed in any of our public schools. now taking a front row seat in our children's education and affecting everything they do, including for many of our girls, how safe they feel in the bathrooms at their school. so public schools made accommodations for children for a very long time. and i think in this situation, there need to be accommodation made for this child. so this child feels safe and valued, that the mother is still directing the upbringing of the child, but that the other children and parents that that school also have the opportunity to broach these type of sensitive subjects that really, we still believe belong at home. tiffany justice was there an incident or, a moment that chris dated that made you co-found moms for liberty? you know, as i said, i'm a mom of four kids. i unpack a lot of backpacks. and then i ran for school board my own community. but during covid have to tell you that the normal procedures of a parent coming in expressing

concerns about their child at that local level was broken at that time during covid. and what i saw was a system, a school system that was very intent, would do anything they could to protect the system and the children were left to shoulder the burdens, adult selfishness and fear oftentimes. and as a mom and as a school board member, what i saw was districts ignoring parents, ignoring their concerns about virtual learning. and we are now dealing with a nation of children who are grappling with years of lockdowns in this pandemic that have affected their lives in ways i think many adults cannot even. parents voices need to be louder than any other stakes holder in conversation about education. parents need to be part of these committees, decide what's appropriate for children to be learning in schools and local control and school boards are one of the best ways to be able to do to get elected. so, you know, tina and i co-founders just felt like parents, a voice, and we could help them to find that voice.

tiffany justice, co-founder of moms for liberty, thank you for. being on about books. we're currently in a break between events at this year's texas book festival. we'll be back shortly with more live coverage. whenever they have it all. i just brought nick here. to want to introduce you now on book tv to art carden, who is a professor at samford samford university in birmingham, alabama. professor carden, what do you teach down there? i teach at stanford university. so macroeconomics, intermediate macroeconomics economic history and philosophy, politics, econ. do you have a philosophy about economics? i have a philosophy about economics. so i'm a believer that there's only one kind of economics. there's good economics.

and my hope is that i practice good economics. it is what the social universe is made out of. so if the physical universe is made out of mass, then the social is made out of economics. it's people responding to incentives in response to their constraints all the way down. it is essential, i think, to understanding the world works. it's something that you write. your newest book, strangers with candy observations from the ordinary business of life nostalgia for the good old days puzzles me because they were horrible. yeah, the good old days were terrible. life for our ancestors to borrow from thomas hobbes used to be solitary poor, nasty, brutish and short. now it is the opposite of all of these things used to be solitary in that maybe you met the people in your tribe or your family. and that was it. today, we're connected with people around the world. it used to be poor per capita income in modern dollars was roughly 3 to $5 a day for almost all of history. now it's 10 to 100 times that. life used to be nasty, and now

life is is much, much, much cleaner. if you've ever bathed, in fact, then you you've done something that a lot of our ancestors never really got a chance to do. life used to be poor with solitary, poor, nasty, brutish. my apologies. it's all nasty, brutish life. life used to be brutish in that the likelihood you're going to have your head caved in by someone with a rock from that other tribe over was very, very high. and life used to short life expectancy in england and france at the beginning of the 19th century was about 40. now it's 80. in most countries, in the in the rich world. so one of the ways i think about this is, that it's extremely unlikely i'm gonna have to bury one of my children and watching your wife die in childbirth is now, by orders of magnitude much frequent today than it used to be. so the good old days are nice to think about and nice to visit by reading about them. but nobody in the world i think, would actually want to live there. well, professor carden, in your view, how did we get from brutish to bullish?

we got we got there not because of science, not which is great, by the way, or not because of schooling or because of slavery or anything like that. these are all things. science and schooling are really nice to have, is unambiguously bad, but we got here because we adopted what deirdre mccloskey and i have called the boudoir deal in another book. basically, we let people alone to innovate to try new things, to start businesses and boom, they made us rich. and over the last two and a half centuries or so, we've seen a huge increase in number of people who live in the world and a huge decrease in the fraction of the population living in extreme poverty. indeed, over my lifetime, the raw number of people living in extreme poverty is in fact fallen and fallen pretty dramatically. and that's truly that's that's sometimes we refer to that as the greatest story. never told that the the raw number of people living in extreme poverty today is lower than it's ever. name one of those innovators. one of those innovators, sam

walton. so sam walton, who is responsible for wal-mart, it's appropriate, perhaps, that we're in memphis because there are a lot of these innovators that were did important work in memphis. sam walton took a lot of ideas that people had, and he them work in a context that a lot of other thought was crazy. so when he was recruiting in the 1960s or 1950s and 1960s, he would he would identify somebody who worked as an executive at a discount chain or something like that. and say, hey, do you wanna come work for me? and then they would go to their boss at whatever discount they worked for and said, hey, i'm going to go work for this walton guy. and they say, fine, ruin your life. he's crazy. he thinks that discount retailer is going to work in the middle of nowhere, arkansas, etc. and then lo and behold now here we are. wal-mart is regularly at the top of the fortune 500, and they have to coin a phrase, a lot of people to more and live better. what's the harm that wal-mart has caused in your view, on that? there isn't any.

i everybody can tell a horror story about an experience you've had at wal-mart or about being mistreated by somebody at wal-mart. but wal-mart employs over 2 million people. so if. .00 1% of them are absolute scoundrels, that means you've got a story every couple of days about some horrible thing that's happened at wal-mart. so i think that on net, wal-mart has been a serious positive for the world. in some research that my coauthor courtemanche and i did, we estimated wal-mart, the diffusion of wal-mart, supercenters since the late 1980s actually explains a good fraction of the increase in obesity over roughly two decades. but the the additional the additional improvement in standard people's standards of living from lower prices exceeds the additional costs for modest obesity. health concerns by by a factor of 20. so yeah. so wal-mart, i think has been has been a more less unalloyed good for the world. now go back what was that term

you used that you and deirdre mccloskey of, the university of illinois at chicago, called the nouveau. we called the bourgeois bourgeois, yes. yeah. so this is actually professor mccloskey's term? yeah. basically, the idea is let people innovate, allow other people to enter and, compete with them, which is that's where it becomes a little bit unstable. and then at the end of the day, everybody in the world gets rich. so one of the interesting facts is, again you take the sam walton's and the jeff bezos of the world, only about 2% or so of the value that have created actually goes to them. so almost about 97 or 98% of the value by innovation and innovators accrues to the rest of us in the form of consumer surplus. so jeff bezos, elon musk, the waltons are worth tens or hundreds of billions of dollars. but this is a very, very small fraction of the value that they've created for the rest of us. so if we let people innovate without doing things like our ancestors did, which would be

like to throw them off of cliffs and stuff, and then we allow people to come in and enter the market, if they think they can do it better, which is what we let sam walton do, which what, which would love jeff do. then at end of the day, they make a lot of money but they make us much, much, much better off. so markets work, in your view? absolutely. government played a positive role in any way, shape or form. do it through licensing or minimum wage or safety and regulation. licensing. no minimum wage safety regulations? absolutely not. because first of all, there are excellent mechanized by which markets take care of all of all these issues with respect to licensing licensing or licensing consist of a series of barriers to entry. it creates higher incomes for the people in the licensed professions, but the gains them are exceeded by the losses imposed the rest of society in the form of higher prices and

lower output. in the case of minimum wages, the evidence, i think, is pretty clear that minimum wages have dis employment effects. there might be some positive consequences, but what we do with what we do with minimum wages and like that is we make the least of these among us unemployable. and i think that's not only is it economically inefficient, i think it's it's as a christian i think it is it's just morally problematic and then when we think about safety regulations and things like that, a lot of people have a very positive of the fda. but one could argue that the fda is a killing machine in that the the delays associated with getting fda for new drugs cost and lots and lots and lots of lives. so while it's true that we have safer as a result of fda, we have far fewer drugs, which makes us a less healthy and makes us a lot more likely to die. so i would argue that governments are probably inevitable, but they are not

necessary economic growth and the they do the better. now art carden you mentioned that you're a christian. i want to quote from your book, strangers candy. i don't think there's a contradiction between being a libertarian and economist and a christian. why did you feel that necessary to include that line? well, because a lot of people have. so, first of all, they have a dim view of libertarian ism. they think it's we say something like, leave me and i'll make you rich. so they think they think that we're just bunch of kind of your anti-social jerks who want this atomistic society and don't think that families are necessary or what have you. that's not true with respect to the fact of being an economist it's a particular way of looking at the world again that i think is essential if you're going to understand social reality with respect to the intersection between economics, libertarianism, christianity i think that we we need to take very seriously the idea that people are created in the image of god and. the people are created in the image of god that puts a very, very strong limits on what we

can do to them. how can treat them even for quote unquote, good ends. think we're not respecting people, people's creation, the creation, the image of god when we tax them, regulate them, etc. moreover, one of the things that i think is especially interesting because, you know, i want to help the world. students want to help the world. know, we see and things like that. and it breaks our hearts. but one of the things that economics helps us to see is how in an extended social order, like a free market almost all of the good we do for the world is without actually intending to do so. so adam smith wrote about how it is not from the benevolence, it's not by appealing to the benevolence of the butcher, the baker or the brewer that we get them to provide our dinner, but we appeal to their own interests. and this is not an apologetic for sort of untrammeled selfishness the way that, again, we try to teach our children, our kids not to behave. rather, it's recognition of the fact that the butcher, baker and the brewer do not exist for us.

they have their own families. they have their own issues. they have their own problems. and it is the height of presumption for me to walk into the butcher shop and sort of stamp my feet and say, i'm hungry. i expect you to feed me. well, again, the butcher has got his own family, he's got his own children. he's got his own problems to solve. and if i want him to take care of me and to take care of my family and to advance the kinds causes that i think are important, i have to do something for him. and when we do that, when we do that, we've created a world that is very very wealthy once again, where instead of being solitary poor, nasty, brutish and short, it's the opposite of all of this. you have a section in your book called that, which is seen that which is not right? yes. this is a takeoff on frederick bastiat's classic. invisible hand. invisible hand. crikey. broken window fallacy, i think is step ahead of myself. so i mentioned my kids. and one of the things that one of the things that being a parent and an economist has done is, is creating multiple

examples of stuff getting broken and like actual physical examples of the broken windows. it's easy sometimes to focus on the very, very on the very, very easy to see benefits of a policy while ignoring the harder to see. so let's take tariffs, for example, or regulations on, say, avocado imports. so one of the exercises i give to my students is i show them a picture of an avocado farmer in california. yeah. and i say, okay, this guy, you he's he's better off because we have regulations that prevent of avocados from mexico. are we as a society better off? and it's really easy to see the benefits for this guy and his family. it's a lot harder to see what we could have had had. we paid less for avocados and had we in fact, actually had more avocados, which be the case if we were to get rid of avocado import the broken window fallacy has a very, very specific for me because we have in fact actually

broken lots of windows in our house. one one morning we were getting ready to go to church and our boys were out in the front yard and they were throwing rocks because that's what they do. and i heard popping sound and i walked outside and the passenger side window of my car shattered and i thought about what sort conversation will we will we have if my older son had said, you know, dad will actually this is going to create income for the glassmaker and he's going to then spend that money on, a new suit and that's going to create income for all these other and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. if you tried that i probably would have been matter because not only would he have in fact broken our window, he would have then invoked a logical fallacy or a serious economic to make it look like he was actually making the world a better place when in fact he wasn't. so why why doesn't that broken window help other people? because you are supporting manufacturing, etc. etc., etc.? well, i forget exactly much it cost to fix the window. let's assume. let's assume was 200 bucks because could have taken that $200 and we could have kept it

the bank where it could have helped to finance someone's new business or someone's new home purchase. we would have had the car window and the new business and the new home purchase. and instead all we have is a car window. so we could have used those resources, produce new stuff instead of replacing stuff that we broken and that would have made us better off. that would've made us even better off then than we would have been in the world with a broken window. what's the meaning of your title. with candy. so actually came from being at a kid's party. and i was thinking about you might kind of two things. one, when you're growing up, your parents say don't get in a car with strangers and everyone says, don't take candy from strangers. and i'm at this birthday party looking at all this candy and thinking, we don't know any of the people who made this. we don't know any of the people who sold it to. this is literally, literally candy from strangers. yet we're eating it because we trust the brand name. we get it, we get a lift, an uber, because we have a very, very solid system helping us to

understand that we can, in fact, get in a car with a stranger and not worry about being murdered or being being sort of taken somewhere and and poorly treated when when you look at a snickers bar again, you know, no one probably who had anything to do with getting snickers bar to you. and yet by virtue of by virtue the power of the brand name, you're able and willing and then in the case of a lot of kids enthusiast about taking candy from strangers is because they know if they if they don't provide a high product, you're not going to buy again you might they might you might even sue them and they have a very, very strong incentive in a market economy to take care people. they don't actually know and to care for people may not actually care specifically about. and i find that remarkable. so somebody somebody who works in marketing for.

examiner yeah, i mean, and mars think they make snickers bars, someone who in the marketing department wakes up every morning, they drink their coffee and they're not thinking, you know, there's an economist in birmingham, alabama, got kids. and, you know, they want to have candy at a birthday party. so i'm going to go for that. i'm going to go and do for them. i know they've got their own family they've got their own kids. they've got their own mortgage to their own everything. they're willing to take care of us because we're willing to take care of them. and i find that remarkable. and i find it, frankly, kind of beautiful. and you call that in your book in the impersonal, unknowing burden bearing. yes. yes. yeah. so so the bible exhorts us to bear one another's burdens. and this is one of the ways that we're able to bear other burdens without actually even knowing those people, without even even in a very articulated sense, bearing burdens. so if you've ever bought insurance, for example, what is that that people coming together to bear one another's burdens, aren't cards. professor at sanford.

sanford is associated with so it is a it is a baptist university or typically has traditionally been a baptist university. long we are no longer formally affiliated with the alabama baptist convention, but it is a very serious christian university that is a very serious spiritual and a very serious intellectual. and this is his book strangers with candy and as he writes in it, quote, i don't think there is a contradiction between. being a libertarian and economist and a christian, thanks for being on book tv. thank you so much for having me. book tv's live coverage of the texas festival continues now.

i really welcome. thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. my name is maurice sharma. i'm a journalist here in austin. i work for publication called the marshall project. and at one point, our founder said, you've heard of the innocence. we're going to be the guilty project's. and i always take that with me

and it will be, i think it'll make sense in this conversation today. why i say that? so we have two wonderful authors here whose work i have followed for years. the first has been austin, whose book is called correction parole prison and the possibility of change. he's a long time journalist for harper's magazine for many years. and justin brooks, who has representing people wrongfully convicted and innocent in prison in california for a long time. and his book is about those experiences and those cases. and it called you might go to prison, even though you're innocent. quite a title. these two books really tackle different elements. the criminal justice system. what they share, however, is a deep understanding of just how broken that system is and how it came to be. as broken as it is, justin's book is more in a kind of legal realm bends as takes. you sort of into the process and

and world parole and the in which people who are already in prison make their case essentially to get out to often unsympathetic ears. and so the goal of this conversation is really put two books in conversation with one another. a bit of housekeeping we really get into it is that first silence, your cell phones. and after this conversation, the two of them will be signing books at the people, signing tents at and congress. and are for sale throughout the weekend through people. so honestly, i think it would help set the table for each of you to talk a bit about the genesis of your books the way in which work that you had done as journalists lawyer led you to the point of thinking sort of i have a book in me on this particular topic and and this is the slice of the criminal justice system i need to tackle. yeah, thank you, maurice, and

fantastic here. and thank you all for coming. thanks for the volunteer. i, i lived here in the nineties and high school. some of my former colleagues and students are here. i got a lot of mr. austin in austin all the time. so i started at my last was about a public housing complex in chicago, cabrini-green. i'm going to just interrupt and say if you could bring your mic a little closer, i'm getting a few and i wrote about a crime that occurred there in 70, a really horrendous crime. police officers were assassinated. somebody shot from a high rise tower and killed these two police officers. and i wrote about the crime because it transformed the neighborhood. it was one of these sensational crimes that really even shook all of chicago. and one of the people convicted for it was, this guy, johnny veal. i wrote about that moment in time and when the book came out in 2018, somebody reached out to me and said, hey, you know, that 17 year old that was convicted in 1970, he's still in prison,

he's innocent, and he's coming up for parole. and all three of those things kind of shook me as a journalist and a human being. i didn't really imagine the 17 year old still sitting in a cage a cell 50 years later. like it just even crossed my mind that i could go visit him and talk to him. and the other thing is, i was intrigued by parole. this idea second chances and what happens at these hearings. and so i went down i live in chicago and i went out to springfield, the capital, see some of these hearings and blew me away. it was all it was like, who could tell a better story and and a story of a crime was always way out in the lead. but there was a chance that you might tell a story of remorse or rehabilitate one or even of innocence, which is a really big, long shot. and we'll talk about that more. and as a storyteller myself, i was like, i was in and that's how the book got underway.

one of the two men that i write about this book is johnny beal, about his process over 50 years of coming up for parole. well, 30 years ago, i was teaching law school in michigan and the genesis for my book also started in the city of chicago because i about a young woman on death row in illinois and article said she was sentenced to death, a plea bargain. so i want to let that sink in for a second. i this similar response thinking you journalists often get things wrong in, terms of legal technicalities. and how could someone be sentenced to death on a plea bargain. but i set up to meet with her and i went out and i found this 23 year old woman who was very confused as to how she ended up there on death row. and then she told me an amazing thing. she said, i'm innocent. said, you're innocent. and you pled out and now you're scheduled be executed?

yes. so i went back to the law school i was teaching and i told my students exact story. i had a hundred first year criminal law students. i said, this woman says she's innocent. who wants to help me out? and four brave souls raised their hands. and i said, come over to my house tonight. we're going to work on this case. so we started going through all the paperwork and then that weekend i got him in my jeep and drove to chicago and went to humboldt park where this shooting happened and found out that the only eyewitness was lying because her apartment was more than 400 feet away. and there was no way she could see the shooting occur. when i finally tracked her down, she was the girlfriend of the victim. so the one person in the city of chicago saw the shooting also was coincidentally, the girlfriend of the victim. and of course, that wasn't in any police reports. and as we dug through this case, i found out she was, in fact, factually innocent and doing that work with law students, going to the crime scenes with them, working on the case together, inspired me to start

the california innocence project 25 years ago. at that point, a few of us around the had started doing this work. and at that time, you know, it was all about are there innocent people in prison? and since then, we've documented more than 2300 cases of innocent people in prison. and now that's not the question anymore. the question now is why and what are we going to do about it? so that's what my book is about. in fact, the first title of my book was top ten reasons you might go to prison, even though you're. but the publisher thought was too clickbait. i think is good, but evidently they disagreed. so instead it's called you might go to prison even though you're innocent because. that's the truth. and i go, the cases, the 40 people i've now been in freeing from prison and the reasons they ended there. and i think it will scare a lot of you, because there's some things that you could do very little about that might land you in prison.

and to put in context how difficult this work is, i started that case 30 years ago when i was 29 years old. i finally got to stand on the steps of the courthouse, her fully exonerated last year i worked on that case. yeah, i appreciate that. but it's a horribly sad statement that it took that long to. get her off death row and get her fully exonerated. and the only reason she was exonerated is the detective in her case has now been linked to more than 30 exonerations. so this today, i hope, is little bit of a call to action because a lot of work to do. both of. you make these really big choices in your books about sort of who the main characters are to be and in pen your book, the main characters are. these two fellows, johnny veale and michael henderson, who were sentenced to long terms of prison but what what are called indeterminate sentences, which means that at some point they

start going up for the parole board and being tasked with telling the stories of their lives and their rehabilitation in order to try to get out. and weave their individual against the history of mass incarceration more broadly. and parole system more specifically. just in your i was thinking about this question relation to your book, and it's like the main character is the reader in a sense, because the book is called you might go to prison even though you're innocent. and then each chapter is, as you say, one of these, like almost like letterman. top ten reasons. and of those chapters is like, you live in the city you live in the country. you had a bad lawyer. you have living in poverty. there's all these different reasons. so we're actually curious for both of you to describe why you decided to kind organize your books in the way that you did around these sort of conceits of who the characters were. and if i can like, sort of throw an extra question, which is obviously not good journalism

practice, if i can throw an extra question on top of it. in ben's case, like why did they agree to to be your main characters? yeah. yeah. the first yeah. so justin, a practitioner as well as a writer, i'm a journalist. i mean, it's different and so justin has his whole career to write about the actual work he does in people often say write, you know. and in journalism, it's like, write what you don't know. like write other people. and it's a it's a kind of a journey, empathy. and in many ways. and so, uh, how to write about what happens in the prison system, how to write about what it means to come up for parole, how to write about even the parole board members. it involves animating lives in many ways, you know, to feel something that experience we were talking before willie horton, you know, if you guys remember this case, if you're a

little bit older, if you or if you've studied it in 1988, there's a presidential debate between george h.w. bush and michael is a governor of massachusetts and they bring up a who got out on furlough in massachusetts, went on to commit another crime. and it really transforms our understanding of criminal justice. this guy was black and they started showing his face all over and pretty much. you know, you always press that button in america to scare people, be afraid of crime, be afraid, you know, especially of black criminals like this idea of the convict. and you can shape national policy in that way. and so in some ways my book is telling about two people who are the antithesis of willie, you know, like people who are in prison and they're trying to make meaning out of their and also when they get out, they're they're contributing to society. these are the vast majority of

people. it's much harder to tell those stories because they're not sensational, because it's not, you know, sexy in that same way. it doesn't tap into our our deep fears. and your second question, why did they agree. johnny beal wanted to get out of prison and he had been in prison for 48 years at the time i met him and had all his times coming up for parole, had never got a single vote for parole. so he was willing to try anything. and the idea of humanizing oneself, somebody even digging into your back story. and i told him immediately, like, listen, if i do this reporting and i go, you know, my own contacts where, you come from cabrini-green. if i learned that that people are saying you were involved have to report that. but he felt confident that telling story would help him and he also talked about wanting a legacy that if he was going to die in prison, which seemed very likely, you know, he had already

grown old in prison, that there was some some bit of his life that would even if it's a writing inside pages in a book that his life had meaning in that way. and i think michael similarly, you spent 46 years in prison and you want to you want to change it. you want to change the system. and so he thought this was also a vehicle and, you know, part of the work and morris is talking about this, too, of a journalist. you have to win win people's trust and i, i think in at least in this case i did that yeah well i love that question because i did spend a lot of time thinking about that and in fact, i even said to the publishers, let's make you really big, because that's what i want people to get out of this book. i guess in some ways want to use the politics of fear as well because the politics of fear have been used to build the largest prison system in the world, a really dysfunctional criminal legal system. and in a way, i wanted people to think of that can happen to you that all these problems with the system can happen to you.

and that's why the ten chapters in this book, top ten reasons you might go to prison are things that are written in such a way that the average person can understand it. you know, you hired the wrong lawyer. you live in the country or the city to look at all the problems with rural policing and urban policing. how many of you live with someone in a relationship with raise your hand. okay. i'm not telling you to move out, but you've increased your chances of being wrongfully convicted. as i explained in chapter three, you're in a relationship and live with someone who was murdered. chapter four you kind of look like people in the world. the problems of misidentify locations. chapter five you get confused when you are tired and hungry and people yell at. the problems with false confession. you have a chair or care a sick child. we've seen a whole wave of these bad shaken baby cases around the country. you got a jury that was blinded by science in quotation marks because. there's so many problems with the science been using for years.

you work with children or let them in your house. we've got a lot of those cases that have gone wrong. chapter nine someone lies about you just simple lies that have led people to prison and chapter ten, which was probably the hardest to write because i've never been able walk into a courtroom and say, my client convicted because they're black. my client was convicted because they killed a white person. my client was convicted because their poor because those aren't legal claims that allow people to be freed, even though we know it permeates the entire system. so chapter ten is you are poor and or a person of color and that's what i've seen for my 30 years doing this work that all these things can lead someone into. and some are things you could maybe to mitigate, like move to the suburbs. but the other ones are pretty hard to do anything about. and then there's all those wrongful convictions in the suburbs, right? that's the that's the minimum. right, right, right, right it's about risk mitigation as well.

i mean, on the last chapter you know, there's a tension, i think, in your book, because you could be anyone. but if you are black, you are probably more likely to face some of these problems in the in legal system. and that's because of a range of both explicit bias in the sense of like we have examples of judges using the n-word of of of jurors admitting to various kinds of racial bias. prosecutors admitting to it. and then there's a ton of implicit bias. and and i think from my understanding of the parole system. this shows up in parole a lot. you know that there was one point that really stuck with me in ben's book where a member of a parole board says, well, like, why? what do you think? should we let this guy out? and somebody says, i'm not feeling it. right? so like, you want people to make thoughtful choices with and use their full selves to make those choices. but but that also invites an incredible amount of implicit

bias. so i'm just wondering if both of you could talk about the ways the almost well, the ways, i guess the bias shapes what you were reporting on and ways that that maybe even surprised because a lot of it's unsurprising. but i think some of it it's like ratios everywhere and i think that surprises a lot of people. yeah it shows up everywhere mean anyone who believes the criminal legal is not racist just believe society is not racist because all it is is a microcosm of people going into buildings every day and making decisions. so we bring with us all our frailties, all our biases we don't suddenly change once we go through that, you know, metal detector into people who no longer have bias. and implicit bias is a much more difficult challenge for our society than explicit bias. explicit means we could look at laws and this on its face is racist and that's a lot easier to identify. implicit bias is much more difficult. and some of the things i talk about in my book are some really interesting studies out where they use virtual reality and

have people watching trials and all they do is change the race of the defendant and the race of the victim and it completely changes the outcomes. and this is i think we, need to just recognize that the human nature, empathy and how that works and that's why as trial lawyer when i'm in court, i am constantly trying to signal to jury that this is not a monster next to me. i'm putting my hands on, their shoulders, i'm talking to them i'm trying to create some kind connection because i know without that empathy without that connection, they're not going to care about that person. and when you look across the courtroom, somebody looks like your father, your brother, sister, your mother. you have a different reaction to that. the way as if you wake up in the morning and you hear this, an earthquake in india, you have no connection to india. it's very different than if it's in your hometown. that's human nature. and what we really see it up is

actually not as much the race of defendants, but in of victims. that's where we end up having people going to the chamber, the statistics on executions when the victims are white people are shockingly high. and the disproportionate between that when the victims are people of color are shockingly and i think this next their big challenge is to at least get people to start it so you can check some of it. but the idea that we can get rid of our own personal biases is just unrealistic. even when you turn a doorknob bias is involved, all prior experience turning doorknobs tells you how much pressure to put on it, how to turn it. it's learned experience. but when we become aware of it. then we can mitigate some of that when it becomes prejudice. thank you. i mean, maybe just add to that, justin, that we had a victims

rights movement in the united states that really gets underway in the 1980s. you asked maurice about something that surprised me and it begins a little bit earlier as really a women's rights movement of women who had been victimized by partners are actually in rape crisis centers and people who felt victimized a second time by the criminal justice system. they weren't believed or they were shamed. they went to court. and so they didn't want to to be feel victimized twice. and it develops time into grassroots groups that really go national things like mothers, drunk drivers, people who had experi angst, horrific crimes, terrible things happen to them. and they wanted action. they wanted they were it's and it's powerful organizing and this in many ways gets becomes a a tool and i use that carefully of conservatives to change the legal system because like the supreme court decision that that

that gave more rights to victims and about searches and sort of push back against laws that felt they were too liberal. the victims rights movement really imagines victims as being white. unfortunately, every single law that we have in this country that's named for a crime victim like megan's law and so on, every of them is a white victim and disproportionately the people who are victims of crimes, as we have, you know, it's interracial crime is really what happens we don't actually conceive of, of, you know, other people, others, you know, black people, brown people, asian people as having sort this kind of victimhood in the same sense. that's what i would add to what. you're saying that that it's it's a failure of our imagination and, you know, deeply embedded and in a kind of. yeah and in a sense of your who we are ourselves. yeah. and if i could just follow with

that too. and to understand that actually impacts the system. for instance, when a white woman missing, it's a news story. if she is found dead, it's a bigger news story now will a prosecutor will step into the limelight, that news story now they're seeking the death penalty. now that trial will be closely covered and will make sure the maximum sentence occurs in it. and in california, exactly what happens afterwards. they'll be a legislator will get up and create law named after that white woman. and we have many in california. that's how practical sense this plays out. in fact. i once asked a washington post reporter, i said, why is it i started practicing in d.c. in the nineties when d.c. was the murder capital of the world and every single day a young black man was killed in d.c. and every day it was in the metro section. and whenever a white person was killed in d.c. it was on the front page, or at least the front section. and i said, why that? and he said, because that's news. now, if you think about that for

a second, the impact that that ultimately has even if he's making a position of. well that's what our readers will be more interested. and if that's what journalism about that truly ultimately impacts the system because the reacts to what we care about and the system is political are elected. we're one of the few countries in the planet that elects judges. i had a student who graduated law school, immediately ran for a judge, and because she had an irish last name and ran in an irish area, she became judge immediately because nobody knows who the judges are. they go the voting booth, they borrow. o'hara okay, sounds good. and she's the judge because it's so politicized, ized, this stuff has a powerful impact on the system. we have a judge in texas named scott walker who just happened to run the same year that a much more famous scott walker was running. and i always think like, in what ways did he benefit? right. i think so. there's politics at the level of

prosecutors. i'm curious, ben, i don't know if many people understand the how politics shapes, parole decisions and even at a more basic level who is on a parole board, what what is a parole? we always hear about parole officers, but they're not necessarily the choices. right. it's members of a parole. so can you talk through that a little bit? yeah. so parole boards are just a group of, you know, 12, 15 people often who are sitting in a room making these immense decisions, who stays in prison and who who gets out. it varies state to state. usually they're they're nominated by a governor, say, and then approved the state ledge. the state legislature. and you know, it could be they could have a connection, but they could be anybody. in a lot of ways, they're pretty ordinary citizens. and sitting in these hearings is. remarkable, because it's like taking 12 of us and making those decisions and, it's also really

difficult. i'll add, because, you know, if you put yourself in their shoes, which i do in the writing, and also thinking people who are coming up for for release in many ways will say anything to get out. and as a you know. and so they think like, you know am i hearing truth or am i hearing something that that is untrue? there are ways to sort of guard against that, like know often when you talk about politics the thing that weighs most heavily parole boards is they think about their original crime and what they end up is repeating the same work of a trial judge, right? a judge and a jury. their job are to say, like, you know, you committed this crime, you're convicted, we're going to sentence you in theory, a parole board. their job is to say what's happened since that crime? what is everything? who are you now? how have you changed? are you ready to return to free society? and that is so much shaped by.

so, you know, if it's a sensational crime, you know, the sense of backlash that you would get in illinois, where i was reporting this out a guy who i was writing about gets out the entire parole board is essentially kicked off the board. they all lose their jobs. and, you know, it's all in the news and sort of again, a kind of willie horton version of this person who i'm spending with down in is anything but a monster. yeah. so the thing i'd say about about decisions, the history of parole is also a history. our sentencing laws in this country and, what we have tended to do over the last years, mass incarceration turns this year is take power from judges and away from boards because we don't trust them to. be tough enough. and really, these sentencing fall in the hands of politicians they're the ones who are deciding on the length of sentences on how long somebody has supervised when they get out and there's always going to be pressure on them to be tough on crime.

always. you know, there's just not a lot of like to saying going to i'm going to be lenient and merciful and there's always this intense risk of of letting somebody out and just like doing what justice is supposed be that somebody is held accountable. and they're they're they're they're now ready to get out. you know, you know, also to give you a sense of the kind of power, these parole board members have in california, 25 years ago. well, first of all, in my office, the youngest lawyers get punished by doing parole hearings because they are so because when we have a client who's innocent and you we're representing him, we're trying to get him out of prison by any means necessary. so we'll to the parole hearings and try to get him paroled while we're litigating their innocence claim. but the process is so frustrating. they never want to hear about innocence at those, even though they do want to talk about the original crime. but as soon as we start saying, yeah, but they're innocent, that they always shut us down. but to give you a sense of the

kind of power they have, five years ago when i started doing them the parole board would do set offs of a year, meaning they'd say, okay, we're denying parole, but keep working the ten steps and do this, do that, and come back and see us in a year. they now do set off some ten years, 12 years before you get to come. so they're basically being given the power of judges and they're reset, saying people the more time. and what's so philosophically fundamental wrong about that is a judge sentences you to a minimum sentence. this person served what the judge thought was the minimum for that crime. and this new board that are non-lawyers, non judges, political appointments say. now, we're going to keep you in prison for another ten years. and they have total power to do that. can i add something? yeah, of course. i mean, this is, you know, one of the reasons i wanted to write about parole as an entry point. and there are many entry points into looking at our society and criminal justice. and, you know, justin has a different one about innocence and conviction, you know, but

parole boards are really, in theory, asking question, why do we punish. what's the point of prison like? what do we actually want out of a prison sentence? we do something in this country more anyone else in the world, we lock up one in four prisoners in the entire world, in this country. so? so why what we what do we want a prison sentence to do? and if it's about the crime, if like somebody an awful crime and we just want to warehouse people forever, like a different thing that a death sentence. well, like, we could be honest about that, right and we can say, like, no, people are going to be, you commit a crime, you're done forever. you're removed. if we believe in rehabilitate, you know, these these prisons we have, they're actually called correctional facilities. and the people who work in them, the are called correctional officers, you know, so in theory, that's what they're in the business of corrections and rehabilitation. if that's the case, then we can sort of look at that. so, yeah, this this sense thing, we actually don't know why we do it. and this both the parole board members are both aware of this, and they're illustrating it in

powerful ways that we're just we don't know. well, i mean, before we go to questions from the audience, i mean, i think a lot of this conversation has to reaffirm the idea that it goes to politics, that we're electing the prosecutors the judges, the parole board members are being frequently appointed by the governors who are voting in. and like we've said often, not a lot of incent to give to make it easier for innocent people to their cases, because then there's this risk that, you know, the guilty get out on technicalities of, the kind of language you hear from from in our politics. and then there's also not a lot politically to be gained from mercy leniency. i'm curious what you see as the given that these politicians and elected are, in theory at least to the public, to all us? what are you think are sort of top things average citizens can do to try to push against some of these problems? i mean, which again, going back

to the politics of fear and god, i watched the republican debate this week and i was certainly thinking about it during that. i mean this politics of fear is played out over and over again. it's tired of scaring people into voting, to building more prisons, putting more police on the street, increasing sentences, even though we know over and over again all the studies show that this isn't working. if this was working, why do we as ben said, why do we have the largest prison system the world? why does the richest country in the world incarcerate the highest percentage, its population? if there's a connection between poverty and crime like are the questions we're not asking to figure out how to improve the system. why? how? if we let in california the prison officers union become one of the most powerful unions, the state, so they lobby to increase so they get more overtime pay? i mean, there's so many questions to ask, so many reforms to do that. what i hoped with this book was to create better voters, better

informed voters, better jurors to start asking legitimate questions. politicians are selling us three words slogans like build a wall, build more prisons, more police. these kind of simplistic that we know have failed in past, but i don't see that going in a great direction. i think we are somewhat right with willie horton in the late eighties, where this of fear is so powerful, it's so intoxicating that. politicians embrace it. yeah, you know, justin's book is about innocence and about wrongful conviction. and there's a lawyer in my book who says if innocence and what means is, one, if we're going to change mass incarceration, this thing, that's a total aberration, both in our own history and globally. we actually have to think about people who are who are rightfully convicted in the sense that they committed a crime and they're in prison when what do we want out of them as they do their time? how do we return them to society

and. in the second sense, innocence and wrongful conviction. sometimes limits our empathy. it puts a limit on our on who we identify with. oh, they're wrongfully convicted. they're innocent. okay. i can i can mess with that person. i can sort of feel something about that. but we actually have to expand our thoughts to think about a greater population. we have hundreds of thousands people serving extremely long sentences. well, what do we want from that? and the question isn't in a way, but what did they do. the question might be, well, who are they today? and that's a that's a start. and the second thing i'd say about that is i think repeating over and again that what we do is not that what we're doing in the united states and has built up in the last 50 years is abnormal. so important to repeat as we sort of get into the small politics of, you know, certain reforms and then like tough on crime blowback that we need

something much bigger like we had 200,000 people in prison in 1973. and we have 1.2 million today. we have 200,000 people who have life sentences or virtually life sentences today. the same number as the entire prison population. 50 years ago. that doesn't sense. that's not normal. and it's worthwhile to just constantly say that because. then it leads us to think bigger and to think more broadly. yeah, while i was working on my book, i interviewed a texas, a very conservative in the 1970s, and they were debating the death penalty. and i said, well, back then, did you consider life without parole? and he said, oh, no. we thought that would be far too cruel. and this is a conservative legislator in the seventies. so which wasn't really that long ago. so it's worth also keeping in mind the that it's it's an aberration. it's not normal. and it's actually in the span of human history, somewhat recent and. so in that sense, there's there's sort of a chance of reversal. thank you both. i want to open it up to questions. you have ten, 15 minutes for

that. there's a microphone right in the middle. if fox could head back there and i encourage you to consider keeping your questions on the short side just so as folks as possible have an opportunity to ask one. ready? yeah. okay. i've been a criminal defense attorney in for over 30 years. thank you. thank you so much for. i can a lot of horror stories, but thank you for your books and for bringing this public attention. i have quick questions that maybe can talk about. one is the fact that most appellate judges and most federal judges come from a civil law background. i know nothing they've had no experience in criminal law. so anything you take up on appeal gets squashed completely. so any way to educate the public elect more judges who have experi ance with the criminal

system? that's the first part. the second part is speak to privatization of prisons. it's ridiculous. at least they're state run. there is some oversight. private prisons are just warehousing people and no oversight whatsoever. and they try to cut money every way possible. it's just horrifying if you've got anything to say about either of those two things. thank you, detective. i can answer real quick on the first part. the path to being a judge is not being a criminal defense attorney in texas for years. so we're just starting to see, in fact, a lawyer in my office got a judgeship, and i went through a whole lot with the governor's office trying to say, look, she's been an innocence, but she is unbiased. she will be a great judge. but it was it's not an easy sell to sell someone been a defense attorney as being a judge. and so, first of all, yeah, you have people that know much about criminal law and those who do know about criminal law are mostly in terms of private

prisons. this is something i often say all prisons are private, right? so i think do need to focus on the purely prisons. but prison is an industry in its totality, even if it's a state run prison, they're still spending billions of dollars. and with private to build those prisons run those prisons staff those prisons. so it's a giant industry and giant industries need to fed and those giant industries get involved in legislation. and we need be smarter about that. we need to look at who's behind legislation to sentences. who's benefiting from things because all prisons every time a prison is built, a lot of people make a lot of money in the private sector. nicely put put. yeah. okay. i'm kind of picking and the for profit prisons which i is is this one side of the same coin

and i'm trying to figure out, um, how we can disentangle how a how, how do we get rid them? but you've, you're very tough. but how do we disentangle all the the, uh, the owners ship, the share ownership of some of those prisons by politicians? hmm. and, uh, because that's feeding the beast as well, and they're making, they're making money on their own because they have, they have an interest. yeah. a financial interest in these prisons. how do you. how you stop that and. did in your research. have you seen, um did you see an

effect like happen when there started this rise of for profit prisons in the justice system. did you like. ah this is the point where they started to come in and. this is what happened. so justin's framework about how they're all private is a really one and thank you thankful for that. um. i don't remember the exact, but fully private prisons are actually pretty small percentage like less than 10%. less than 10%. so it captures our anger because of the the the incentive the disincentive to release people. but it's a it's a really small like that's misconception in some ways except for the sense that justin put that there are these massive contracts within these prisons regardless. um, so yeah, i mean i guess in response to that, i would think both about privatization, but in a way that sometimes distracts from, from the, the, the purposelessness of, of this

whole industry. what is it we want from it. mm hmm. and by the way, the new industry if you pay attention, because in california, we've been able to drop our prison population significantly. you guys in texas are now number one. thank you for taking that title away from us. we're number two. so what's the new industry? immigration detention in facilities. that's what they're building. that's where the whole political conversation is going because that's where the money is. if you follow the money that's where the money is is in building those facilities. and that's where the politicians are ramping up the rhetoric on that and guarantee you people are making lot of money off those facilities. yeah i guess i'd add to that you made me think of prison health care. you know, our prisons have become facilities because of aging population. what could a worse, you know, spending of our our public resources than keeping people incarcerated beyond the time when they then they pose any risk and just tending for them inside a la cage where the health problems without much

greater. yeah thank you. first of all, i could just say now that a mom was jumping out of my skin for joy at hearing somebody this humongous social problem. my name is robert lilly. i'm formerly incarcerated. i just was paroled months ago. i'm 51 years of age. i'm 51 years of age. and i will be on parole in the year 2049, four for a third degree felony evading arrest in a motor vehicle where i was sentenced to 30 years. now, i don't say to ask for your sympathy. i say that because i believe we need to when these gentlemen leave, we got to have a community conversation that's. just one thing i wanted to say. the second thing i wanted to say was, you know, in texas, we don't even know how to get out of prison. they got parole. but there's no pathway to broke. you guessing at it. one guy would say, don't get any cases. another guy said, don't get me major cases. another guy said, well, i think i get seven major cases and he made it home parole. another guy said, get some

certificates. we don't even know how to get out of prison. so so my question to you is, in all the research that you've done, one of the things that i came up with was, the difference between indeterminate and determinism answers, but beyond that which, which state, if we were going to have a discussion, we were going to put forth some some policy recommend nations. which states would you point us the direction of to to begin to really closely look at and who would do you see around the country making some traction on parole reform? thank you. thank you so much for that question. and pointed out a couple of things which are just baffling, you know, mind boggling. one is that we have a parole system, but we're not actually informing people within it of how it. like, what do i need to do from day one to get out of here? like, isn't that what we want? like, here is the pathway. and so texas, a state where like many where you just got to figure it out on your own and what you end up doing is relying on other people who went through

the process. the other thing. mr. lilly right the other thing he said was, you know, he's held accountable and a barrel a board released him. right. so like he's been doubly approved and he is still on supervision. what year? 24. come on. i mean, what are we doing like that? that is crazy. uh, you know, like somebody, has been held accountable and then vetted a parole board. and we are setting them up to fail still, like, you know, the sense of releasing people, of having a when you're out on parole, everything we do in this country is to make it that much harder to be successful. that's just as a rational. and, you know, weirdly, there was a a survey of all states of of of how they do pro wyoming came out kind of like pretty good it's a tiny population but because they told people from day one you know this is what you need to do but really where you need to look is to other

countries in northern europe and other where from from really from day one, 2 minutes of everything is about returning to a free society like everything is set up. yeah, we have 2 minutes for a hard cut. so because this is tv. so if you could ask a quick question, i think we have for one moment my question somewhat overlaps. the previous one is how should a parole board legitimately whether somebody is eligible for parole, should be paroled? how what how can they evaluate this person? well, for the most important thing, we got to think about is they shouldn't be talking the original crime because person has already been sentenced and done time on that. they should be talking about today. who is this person front of them and what is their future? because they've gone through that whole process like we're going through a process again with a less competent group of people to make the decision and just makes no sense at all. and want to agree with the final

thing that ben said, we shouldn't necessarily be looking at other states for answers. we not only have the largest prison system in the world we have one of the highest recidivism rates in the world. so we're not doing a great job. so let's look around the world for other solutions. beautiful. anything that. well, thank you all so much for coming. thank you both. wonderful authors, justin brooks and ben austin. ben austin. i'll just say the names of their books. correction. and you might go to prison. even though you're innocent, the books are for sale. and both of them will be signing shortly at 11th. and congress in the tent. so thanks for joining us and come say hello hello. to.