we hope to see you at our next

our. are they russell? russell, hush child is the author of the groundbreaking books the second shift the manage heart, the time bind and of course, strangers in their own land, which became an instant bestseller and was a finalist for a national book award. her latest book, as you know, is stolen pride lost shame and the rise of the right. her child is professor of sociology at the university of california, berkeley. she lives in berkeley with her husband, the writer adam haas child, and matthew desmond, who'll be leading the conversation tonight as a macarthur and the author of the new york times bestseller and 2014 2017 pulitzer prize winner evicted poverty and private profit in the american city and 2023 poverty by.

jasmine princeton's morris bee during professor sociology and the founder and principal investigator of the eviction lab at princeton in 2018, published the first ever national database of evictions in america going back to 2000. he is a new york times magazine contributing writer, and his writing has appeared in the washington post. the new the chicago tribune, among others. it is really our honor to host you at the center for brooklyn history. please help me welcome arlie russell, hofstra old and matthew desmond. good evening, arlie.

the last time you and i were in this room, it was memorialize the late, great barbara wright. and it feels very honoring and sacred to be back here with you in this space and with all of you. so just nice memory to think about barbara at this time. yeah it's kind of changes the feeling of the space and the company. yeah she's with us. it's an honor to be with you early. i've learned so much from your throughout my career and this book is an incredibly deep, deep meditation on on american life and politics and poverty. and one of the things you model for us, this book is this this deep, unrelenting curiosity about folks maybe aren't like you, you know, and maybe are, you know, in some and are like me and are like me. and, you know, it's an election

year. tempers are running high. right. we're stressed. but i think modeling after you, maybe we should just try tonight and turn to that spirit of curiosity and not judgment and just see where that takes us tonight. that's my suggestion for your last book, strangers in their own land. you went to louisiana, bayou country and. you tried to kind of chart and connect a kind of psyche of conservatism in, the deep south. this time you went to kentucky, so why don't you tell us why we're probably kentucky and what you did? yeah, well, first. thanks. it's wonderful to be here with you and with my wonderful publisher and editor, ellen adler. the new press new for us in the house. she spoke extraordinary work.

so. strangers in their own land left me with some questions and so this book is, as it started out, was animated by a desire to really understand more the role of emotion in politics. mean we could just say those words emotion and politics. but how do they actually fit together? are we are we you know lingual in when we really need to be vital lingual? we need to be listening. each speech that occurs about a leader who has captured the republican party is making and are we getting the communication system or is there communique going on or tuned out to. i happen to think that that's

been true for us and we have some catching up to do. you hold it closer to your mouth. oh, okay. is that better. yes. okay. have you as it been blurry what i just said. no, you've got it. but it wasn't quite. okay. it's like an ice cream. i know. it's. it's neither. yeah, it's like you're like a rock or something. yeah. so we need to pay more attention to. to trump what he's saying. kind of connect to the ethos, maybe. yes, that's right. and what makes this book different is that, of course, it isn't a different. but it's a region in the switch from left to right has been fastest. so it's it's seemed really

important and interesting for me and it's focused on a different issue. it's not just the array of left right issues abortion rights but democracy itself is now what's at stake. and i got very interested in focusing on that. so the issue was different, the perspective different, region different. this time around. so you go in your talking to a lot of folks in kentucky, pikeville, kentucky. right. so it's the fifth district of kentucky, poor, very white area of, the country. and you're talking to a lot of it, right? and so now early on in your career, you focus a lot on on women. and, you know, you're incredibly now classic book, the second shift, you know, was about this the the the lives many women in america. so why do we meet mostly men in this book? yes.

because they're the ones who more wrap most have been turning to the right wing and are the core of maga. that is really why. and once once i got that focus and got curious about their lives in, as you say, this widest and second poorest congressional district kentucky five in the country are i found men high proportion of whom are outside labor force. they're not either working or looking for work. a lot of them are in poor health. these are and have succumbed to diseases of despair. one of the main characters, i think almost a star of the show is this young man who.

i overdosed of of her from heroin and, fentanyl four times. and when i first met him, he was homeless and just beginning his recovery. and i followed him for seven, seven years. he's doing now. and no, i won't. well, no spoilers, but. so men, i think, are in a crisis and, especially in a district like pike county. and here we have i think is a local that tells a larger national story for. men. they've taken a hit. they've lost many their jobs. lost a value in what they're

good at and no a lot about sort of a devaluing of of them. the coal miner was a heroic proud person and even the dirt on his face, that was a matter of pride. and you knew, the inside of that mine. and you know, i how to get there and what to do how to avoid accidents. and you're kind of seen as like a military hero, you know, and all of that wiped away, really, because cheaper natural gas, not because of obama, oh, a climate policy is although the word is that was war on coal. the big government government.

so they've taken a hit and they're not doing well. and i guess i am always interested that people who are at the and not doing well there, we know these statistics are far less likely to graduate from a high school from college to get advanced and so how does the world look to them. became extremely interesting for me in you develop this concept a deep story which you describe as a story that's not necessarily articulate but felt something that is just like is in the ether and helps you understand and in strangers the deep story was this metaphor you wrote about. you're standing in line. you're you're taking your time you're playing your turn. and then people are cutting in front of you. and sometimes folks that are cutting in front of you are

women are. and this is the cycle. anyways, this is a truthful story necessarily. it's a deep story. you say, you know, and that helped you understand louisiana a little bit. and the story you brought of there, the deep story. the deep story in this is about the pride paradox. so. or maybe that's how i read it. yeah. okay, so what's the pride paradox, right? and can i just go back to the deep story and take it a slightly different direction first and then come back. one on a guy, the mayor of small town called coal coal run said, you know, read your previous book and you talk about this deep story. and that's that's okay as far as it goes. but you don't really have a right because you're people are

waiting in line for the american dream. but there's a bully in the white, a bad bully that's making it hard for people to get ahead. and then there's a second good bully and the good bully has he's not a nice guy. we know that a done a lot wrong things cheats don't always tell the truth but he's our bully so that's the. on the story. yeah. so what was the second we're going to talk about the good and bad bully? a little bit, but what is the pride paradox? how would you explain to us? well, the more i looked at things not only was i looking at a a lot of loss, a sinking economy and coal jobs out,

opiates coming in. neo-nazi march on the way was like a kind of a downward pull and a lot of the best and brightest young, educated people were having to leave. but i heard from a lot of people not that easy to leave for industrial job and cincinnati. you know, you need you need contacts and you may not get that job. so a lot of people feel like they're unhappy stayers and they're kind of shamed, both by all these losses and the of shame to be a stay or and so that was the economic situation. but i came to realize that there a special culture of pride that went with it that they they took that bad news through a highly

individualist like if i succeed and that i'm doing well i've got a new car i can feel pride because did it but if i laid off if i'm poor five can't feed the that's on me that's my shame and why it seemed paradox is that in blue states with more prosperity higher wages more opportunity were looking better. there, a more circumstantial culture of pride. you don't say, oh, if i succeeded it's all on me. no, you know something about my gender. raise my class background if count for that and if i fail, that's not on me. you know what? some of it is, of course, these are different versions of the

american. ideologies of success. but there's more circumstance to. it is less self blame. so i was looking at people both couldn't to the american dream and we're blaming. it's so interesting. so it's like it's this you say there's a material economy in a symbolic pride economy and the folks are in some of the most depressed economic areas of the country are also those who most have a story about that depression being something about their own deficiency. yes and i wonder why you think republicans buy into that narrative a bit more than democrats do. so you have a statistic you say 71% of republicans, only 22% of democrats think people are rich because they work hard. and so this is such a dorky sociological. but where's your where's your causal arrow here? professor hochschild, like, you

know, our, you know, our folks are republican because they're more individualistic or is something about their party affinity, drive them to this way or? or is there a whole other explanation? okay. i think the republican party is a. low taxes, low party that if blame to go around, it should be on the individual kind of fits a worldview of that people don't need help or they really is gumption. look at, j.d. vance, you know, look, i just myself a made it, you know, good for me. look, follow my don't do anything about the circumstances that traumatized me as a kid.

leave those the way they are. but yeah i think it's a very. it's of a piece with no public dollars or very few in the republican worldview worldview, as you wouldn't need them. you just need gumption. yeah. yeah. so it's a more of a messaging. it's a political messaging that's worked its way out in the world and it's been accepted by some and resisted more by others. and the folks that have accepted a bit deeper are the folks who often are living in places where economy is really, really crumbled. that's right. i think the hard of maga tends to be in not in industrial centers or urban places but in outside them and to be the elite

of the left behind in other words, that the most ardent maga people i came to know were small business people. they actually pretty well given circumstances. but in a declining region and others who were poorer than, them followed and found in this worldview a kind of anti-depressant. you talk about three kinds of loss. the you notice in eastern kentucky there's a loss of coal, the loss of the economic base fell out. there's the loss of rural life where a lot of folks are leaving in the quality of life in many parts of rural is declining. but you talk about this other kind of loss, which you devaluation or even called devaluation of heritage, which you talk about is the most painful and hidden of loss.

can you just talk a little bit more about that? it seems like you were getting it like the loss of a story or, you know, something that grew your identity and and actually people say a loss of a story. one man who is a leader of the east kentucky patriots group is the most active group. they had a 35 mile vehicle. and 2024 for trump. and he was the guy led it off very proudly they wrote about it and he took me out to the holler she said you know if you have you been out to the hollers you know, and some of the hollers you know they have to know you for you to be welcome out. come with me. so we spent the day in the hollers and.

we we visited a lot of grave yards and this man knew his ancestry back 1776, you know, and his eighth on his father's side. his eighth grandfather, he in numbers 10th, eighth, fifth, and where they graveyard. his father had been an undertaker before he became a teacher and a preacher. and i just his interest in this and then we stopped by a church at the door was open small white called original baptist and many different kinds of baptist and we sat down pew and he said do

you notice something. i said i don't see any hymnals yes that's we were illiterate. and so preacher would sing the first verse of his song and then would be response reading preacher again next verse and people respond and i pride in you know he wasn't so look i'm sorry we were uneducated that's terrible. we don't even hymnals. it wasn't an apology. it was. and we we did it anyway. there was an anyway to to their poverty to how you coped and this man has written for appalachian news express, which is local paper talking about the

devastation of drugs in the area and how how how hard it is. and a high proportion of kids in foster and it was wrenching and then he i could feel the pain of this for him and he said my wife and i will stay here. i think so. no loss if you ever do, you know, move to wyoming where there's coal and where the coal actually companies have offshore in a way from kentucky to wyoming and having. decapitated 300 mountains in

kentucky they're doing that now in wyoming. he i got a sense of loss of his value. yeah things that you might not see you'd think well here to feel loss about that's what i want to talk about whiteness. one of the through lines in the book is a planned and enacted white supremacy march that that comes to the town and you use it as a as a narrative device even kind of a rorschach test for a lot of the folks. and it's a kind of it comes and goes throughout the book and the leader of one of the leaders of that march was was a man named matthew heimbach. heimbach and you write that he thought that, quote, were the victims and liberals were the victimizers. now he's he's out there. he's got a swastika tattoo.

he's really out there. but a lot of the folks that you talked to felt something like that. you know, david thought that the news was all about race and not really about poverty. and alex, there was a moment where alex is talking about black matter and he's he's sympathetic to the movement, but he says, you know people in eastern kentucky want to stand up and say, we've been forgotten, too. and he somehow thinks they're not allowed to. so what do you make of all that? like, do you make sense of the story of whiteness, all this in your story? it's death, a big deal. it's not the only deal. and i used this march particular way. i followed matthew heimbach, who is a neo-nazi and a creates violence wherever it goes. this i this isn't too much

tipping telling of a spoiler. he was to go on and lead the march in charlottesville. so and to be actually arrested for the violence that ensued there. so i'm following and he in the course of some 20 interviews i did with him kind of changed his mind and you know well i really shouldn't said what i said about whites and blacks it shouldn't just be for white. it's for all all working class. so he. okay. but i was following another march too. it was this march for. trump and so while nobody really in this little village went for a high mark, they say he's too

extreme. grandfathers fought and world war two against the kinds of ideas buried. so while that march failed, the march for, trump picked up steam and trump ended up inviting neo-nazis tomorrow long ago and increasingly embracing a violence. so the two figures in the book kind of crossed in a way. and so what became fascinating for is why. one rhetoric turned them off. but another in the hands of another charismatic leader. more charisma leader p people could be brought to produce similar conclusion and i think

that had to do with donald trump's exploitation of the structural shame of such red state regions because think he's been the shame president. i think his personal kind of ashamed guy. i don't know if he reads that harsh father own personal story, but what that sensitized him to is the feeling of shame in a in a whole sector by. study 42% of americans are and are without a b.a. and downwardly mobile and a high proportion of them are republican. so i am interested intercepting in developing a way of hearing

how is being said when. most of us in the left would say oh, he's wandered in. he's lost his point. he's losing it. but we're not listening with speaking this language of emotion in which his i think he has been a conducting us through anti shame ritual and. i think it's kind of hidden in plain sight and it's got for moments and i think there are this. first trump will say provocative that all migrants are rapists and criminals. so he's provocative moment to the pundits shames donald trump

for saying the provocative thing. you say all immigrants are, look, you're president. we're immigrant society. that's terrible. so that's moment to shaming and movement. three donald trump becomes the victim of the shame. oh, look what they're doing. me, i mean, so. well, i'm really for you, but look how they're me. you know how, it is to be hurt, right now. well they're hurting me, and i'm taking it for you. so that's moment. moment for. your is donald trump rails against the shamers and in some way expletives thread and who the target shifts and it's gotten broader could the

democratic party could be all of us in this room are department of education has broadened his enemy list. i think that people on the left and liberals and democrats are looking at one and two that and then the people on the right are looking at three and four they one man said oh donald trump he's yeah lord sent. donald trump and his lightning in a jar. and i asked anna wolfe what's the lightning? that's that's. i want hear. i want to be able to know that we all be able to know that if we're going to really down and talk to them in a way that they

can hear so that. yeah that's i think ongoing he's still doing it and this i think that's the lightning it's not all of it i think there's fear i think there's depression or many other feelings that he speaks to but that's a big one i heard a political consultant compared to scientists and trump too has seen it mad men where there's a climber there's a guy who's working really hard but he never scores the big cases like don draper draper all these course big cases and he finally goes his boss and he's like, what? i can't what am i doing wrong? and his boss says, look, you meet all needs, but don them feel like they have no needs, but they have no needs.

and it was idea that trump is connecting at pretty deep level with this psychological feeling that you've identified in your book and you're kind of identifying kind of deep connection or symbiosis between schein that's been created by the of status, a loss of a story, loss of an economic base, a loss of white masculine and a political figure. and then you kind of go in for this killshot early at the end where, you connect this to the idea of a stop, the steal and believe and i think make a pretty convincing that this language is something being stolen has this deeper residence that maybe we recognize. so could you speak about that? yes. how how does loss move to and shame to blame? i think it comes from very fascinating and i think he's

been. from loss to shame. one man said this i'll tell you how it happens. he said first a man gets laid from the mines and he blames the supervisor and is he's mad then after a while he hasn't got a new job and his wife said, well, you know we need to fix the car and feed the kids and it's okay. i'll, i'll try and get a job. but the other jobs in the area are dollars 950. you can work over time and they're called girly jobs.

sometimes, you know, they're served as jobs. and so you're ashamed to take it, but you're shamed not take it. and then you may leave. get on route 23, go to cincinnati. but maybe those have closed down, too, which they did. it is nineties and so you come back handed and then you're shamed again. so long turns into shame and, he said. so along the and you might find that man turns to drugs and then he's said, take it from me. he's shamed shamed and so that's how loss can gets to shame. and that's where donald trump finds brilliant. lee sykes out of a way of

exploiting his is kind of like a coal miner. he's for you know. anthracite kind of precious and in in the realm of feeling and what he then does is introduce blame it's not you it's them it's those immigrants. and by the way, there are no immigrants in this area. it's losing people to industry centers and people are leaving not coming in. it's of the the mexico low of the national economic system it sends. and takes back blame in the whole. so anyway it is. so his his good at that's what

he can do he can tolerate no shame. and that's exactly how matthew heimbach talks i will not be shamed for my german heritage you know just angry refusal and so that has great appeal to give you an donald trump is full of blame angry blame and himself the victim the he he positions himself a way that people can really relate to him and they they feel his in condition of shame he's invincible. i they do feel he's powerful and it's he's dishonest. that's okay because he needs

power to lift them out. they feel helpless and they do feel unheard by us first. they shame themselves, then they feel shamed by people on on the democratic side. oh, they're the deplorables. they're a, you know, stupid hillbillies and you when you quote one gentleman by saying, when trump told us he was going bring back coal, i knew he was lying, but i felt like he saw who i was, which i felt was such a telling and stirring quote. yeah. so in the last two presidential elections, 60% of folks living in of of nonvoters, 60% of folks who didn't vote live in households making below $50,000. but most people in the income category did vote went for

clinton in 2016 and went for biden in 2020. and so when we're talking about this kind of connection between kind of a pull to the right and economic dislocation, that variable or that that's necessary but not sufficient, right it's not just that right? it's that plus rurality plus whiteness plus right. that's what. yeah. perfect at. that's exactly right actually. between 2006 and 20, when trump was present don't number one coal, he did not bring back coal. number two, he not bring in better new jobs to replace good jobs. that coal better jobs coal provided and his tax cuts for the rich. these people are not rich. so they were paying taxes, didn't help them pay for

groceries. so he really economically in the material economy he offered nothing. so the question that i'm engaging is why 80% of them voted again for trump. and i do think this emotional appeal is ignored which is there sit situation and their culture in a way that the democratic party to say has completely failed to do. okay. all right. i'm going ask two more questions. so please get, your questions teed up this book pairs really well. another book that just came out called white poverty by reverend william barber, who runs the poor people's campaign. and reverend barber makes, an argument in my poverty that poor whites are the new swing voters and that we they be mobilized in a kind of multiracial racial

coalition to get to bring about new kind of renewed democracy. he and i, you know, i, i, it was interesting, barbour's book and yours at the same time, because i didn't really that power in this book. i felt i felt like there was a lot of guys who were really political lead exhausted or maybe confused, knew where they fit in. and i'm just wondering what you think of that argument. and, you know, if you see a new renewed kind of democracy in eastern kentucky around another set of ethics or values first of all, i love reverend work and all that done and feel very in sync with it. and i haven't completed i'm in the middle of reading, but i love it.

here's this he's is seriously looking at white poverty and. i think the dilemma is summed up by one of the people i came to know who told me this. he said i'm trailer trash. okay. he said i, i grew up poor my uncle was dealing meth in the back of our trailer wasn't supposed to open the door at all. i was always scared and and he said i don't see any difference between my life and the life. a black guy in louisville, i mean, we're poor. he's poor. we're have drugs. they have he has drugs.

we're. in jail a lot. and so so is he. what's the difference? he said, between the hustler and hood and and he said this. but i can't say this or i would be racist. he said. so i thought, wait a minute i you know, what was that in addition and. so i had that interview and then i went to talk to somebody else and said, you know, i was just talking to this guy who made this comparison across races and when they're poor, common a could be a base of of, you know, alliance and he said, oh well

they're they're haven't you ever heard oh and one thing that this man, first man said is the only thing that's different between the races is the music. we're all we've got twang, heat, music, and they've got rap so i'm going to number two talking about it. what do you think that comment and he said oh you haven't heard about hillbilly. so it's as if even the culture kind of knows that there's a common commonality there, but that the politics kind of caught with what the culture knows. and what about sara lee? what do you want us to take away from your book? you know, we're in brooklyn. not exactly a conservative stronghold. and you know what what lessons

or maybe could ask him more personally. how did it change you? you know, and what what lessons would you how this work affect you and maybe what what lessons can you pass on to us? yeah, well, i feel that this book is an invitation to become bilingual to to be able listen and to languages and to realize that we been listening. what a large sector of the population has been going through for a while now. so we have some catch up work to do. i guess i want to say to people there are really two projects. one is between now and the election get yourself to one of the seven crossover states and register voters. i mean is the urgency should

channeled in way but there is a longer term kind of eye opening that i think those of us on the left need to develop and this is an invitation to to do that. professor arlie hochschild. okay. we've got a few micrornas around. so if have a question, i think just raise your hand. we'll find you. we have a question here. all right. i'm going to say thank you so much for a wonderful talk. and i really appreciate the metaphor of bilingualism as who grew up in the reddest of red, in the smallest of small towns. i also deeply appreciate your

effort to understand the distress and rage of those communities on their own terms. and i think you're absolutely right. it's undeniable the point that you make in your book that those folks, my friends from school, got the story wrong about the origins, their distress. but that you get the story wrong, doesn't you weren't wronged. and i think collective the new interpreters of the rural white working class leave an important part of the story and that is the extent to which the democratic party at turns has been indifferent or hostile to the interests the interests of those places and where we keep talking about them as having gotten their story wrong we can ignore them and we are unwilling here, you know smug urban in brooklyn to acknowledge our complicity in the ways in which the democratic and the

progressive left more broadly has abandoned huge swaths of america and is a danger in disguise. how wrong these folks are about the origins of their distress. but it was a lovely book. that's interesting. yes. you know, it's very paradoxical that a lot of people on the left are kind of pointing to the right side of their denial look. they're their denier is i mean, it's perfectly true that. biden won their they're denying reality. but of course, on the left is a denial of the fact that nearly half of the country sees the world differently. for reasons we should be curious to understand. so. i. i think we do need to still be

pointing to structural forces. we when there blaming their distress on obama. i think we to confront that. but with a whole grappling of the general situation and in a way what that means is us lifting away the veil our own eyes stop their reality. is is okay. it's your choice. yeah. you didn't you hadn't talked at all about unions. that's big deal that they're not or the unions gave voice to a lot of these people it's yeah and also schools i mean people need mental health they need

schools i don't know maybe look at the book and see those are like two very critical factors that enter into, you know, people feeling human beings. i think biden really record did recognize a lot of that and i think he tried to speak to a lot of these issues within restructure the child tax he was stymied. so i think he should be given credit for that. i wonder and andy beshear is the governor, so there is aspect, but i wonder if you think that tim walz is a big antidote can be sort of rigid to, you know, speak to this in a as a male against some of this derangement. yes. yes i what you have just said is

hugely important. unions and schools. and, you know, it's very strange in all the interviewing i've done, i get a sense that when there is a union, even if the union left because the company you know, the mine is or if person said, well, you know, my uncle in the union or my dad was in the union. they're more likely to be progressive. it's just even if it's not they themselves. but an or a father, grandfather, even a. so i do feel that in the seventies when many industries offshored and are really undercut unions and unions fell it's now about 9% i guess at the private sector are unionized.

it took away a major middleman between the working class in the democratic party. i think unions have played role and we figured out a subset to toot or a way to revive unions of sufficient level to do that. no, but so first of all, thank so much for all of your work has been so helpful over so many years. but i wonder, given all that you learned through your incredible curiosity, what would you advise kamala harris to say tonight, to say to communicate i hear you. i i get it. what could she say? you know i think she has made no mistakes so far.

i actually have been hugely impressed, especially her choice of v.p. brilliant. and she's already doing the right thing, which is to stay away from, oh, i am the first black woman or the first. i mean, the people i've talked to have an allergy to that and feel. all the democrats care about are identity. she's already doing that beyond beyond what she's? focusing on she's saying the middle class matters. i am of the middle class. i care about the middle class. ah, i would add to the mantra that i see.

i know it's been hard time since for some americans i get that you know it's it's really been hard there have been some industries hard hit and i'm for all americans you know and that i'm i'm speaking to that pain i would add that. hi my name is rosie i'm a sociology and law student and a huge fan of both of your work. studied conceptions of, whiteness and formation of white identity. and can you hear me okay yeah. it's a little blurry. oh, it's a little blurry. how is that okay, great. my question, what would it look like to restore what you were

talking about this. we did it anyway. sense of pride of place without feeding, anger and, violence that is restoring pride without feeding blame for this kind of like how to how to restore pride, especially given this idea of, like we we overcame this, you know, how do we restore pride, areas like this here? you're lucky without bleeding into anger and racism. yeah, that's right. that's right. yeah. wonderful question. you know, one of the early definitions of pride is. in being of use. being use for being a. that's what a lot of people that i talk to defined pride as there was one man who was a severe

alcoholic this is one of these diseases of despair and his same kind of downward story and in his recovery he said i didn't really to get better and i went out and i sat on a chair a plastic chair and just looked between my legs at the ground and saw a line of. ants. each ant was carrying a little tidbit of dirt or a little piece leaf. but i saw one ant was carry reading another at a dead ant and. i thought to myself, if i have been that dead and i want to

beat carrier ant and he actually has become that carrier and he's now counseling other addicts in a recovery clinic. and i've some of the people that feel restored by him actually right. so i think pride in it's there are good forms of pride a lot of it is restoring communi ity so that are some recognition of what giving to others in this quite daily an essential way and another thing that maybe campbell i could talk about you know, the restoration of recognition of caring acts.

hi. hi charlie. that story is extraordinary. thank you so much for capturing it and for writing this book. i can't wait to read it. i'm curious if you had the opportune to interview young people in the book and if you found any generational differences. i remember in strangers in their own land, some of the children of some of the folks you profiled were quite different in. their politics. i remember one who wanted to go to berkeley and was a sanders supporter. and i'm wondering what, if any, generational differences found in your were there generational differences that young people. young people. yeah you know i actually didn't into i think that would be a great project. you know i love love it very important so please give us that that that that knowledge i

don't. hi. just wondering what role any does right wing media play in influencing these folks? what do they listen to what where do they get their and at the same time know i've come to the conclusion i can't watch msnbc anymore because it's 24 hours a day of anti-trump with glee about everything that he says. so i'm just curious about the sense of the influence of right wing media, who to me seem good at what they're doing and at the same time, you know, a network like msnbc, see, that's 24 hours a day of mocking this, where that plays into into this. yes. that's an point. you know, there is a moment. barbara kingsolver s latest novel, damian copper archer's,

absolutely extraordinary. i about this region and in it she says. we're like in a public bathroom we're the door and we can hear everything you say. so in a way that has been the experi of being exposed to media where it's you know one left person who's their left bubble talking to another left person in their left bubble. and we are more bubble lives than. they are, by the way, they and we're less good at reaching than they are actually. some studies have shown so yeah,

they, they feel like they're eavesdropping on people who are prejudiced against people like them them. for. just one more question and and then ari will sign books in the front. and i a lot of people have a place to go. so i'm going to ask folks to be as efficient as possible and try to keep the chatting so that everyone can get their books signed. but one final question now. hi, can you hear me? okay? hi. thank you both so much. i found the piece of information really interesting that you shared about the tendency to, like, assume individual responsibility for your circumstances and like many of the people that you interviewed. so you are like down on your luck, out of work, the tendency to like blame oneself and be like, this is my fault.

rather than like the community or like a structural issue. and you also mentioned that you spoke with men for this book, but i know that hasn't been the case for all of your work. can't hear them. i'm a i'll shorten. i'm if you think the tendency like be more individualistic and blame oneself could potentially be like a gendered of thinking or if you see differences in the way women think about these things. i think the question in short is are men more individualistic than than women faster. you know, that's a great hunch. i don't know the to that. but maybe, again, we need to learn work in this field. yeah. style and pride is on sale right

behind you. i highly recommend to leave you with a lot to think about, especially not only in the months to come, but afterwards as well. harley, thank you so much for this book and thank you all for your questions. thank you. thank you. representative watts, thanks for thanks for joining us here today to talk about your book, hard truths, which is out on october 22nd, just before the presidential and c