180 men who left in this ship -- this is getting intense out here. is it something i am saying? m w some people have heard of the bounty he becomes you know he's this incredible ability as a navigator, but he is also an insufferable personality. even on this voyage, some people have heard of the bounty. he's got this incredible ability as a navigator, but also an insufferable personality. even on this voyage. you begin to see the seeds of his mutiny coming many years later. people cannot stand him. they just cannot stand him. very, very talented. the guy on the right also becomes a great explorer some years later. young officer, midshipmen

aboard. the guy in the lower right is john ledyard, and american. according to one of the book. an american who went to dartmouth, it was after? voyage. he explores eurasia, the extent of russia on foot. important guy, as well. a lot of voices, a lot of journals, different characters i'm trying to bring into the story. a little bit stodgy, a little bit -- has to be very careful what he says. everything he is writing, he is running for the admiralty. bringing in some of these other voices makes the story a lot more interesting. after leaving plymouth, they go around to cape town briefly and then go to a place called the

kerguelen islands. i showed this to a group of people at the explorers club. it's one of the most remote places on earth and it was the first place he had to stop, way down there in the southern indian ocean, halfway to antarctica. the reason he had to go there as it was rumored the french had gone to this place. the british had to do it. go check it out and see if there was anything there. after weeks and weeks of incredible terrible weather, fog, they find it. here is what they find. it is very remote, uninhabited, except by penguins. there is a really great emperor penguin way upstairs by the way. got to check that out. on christmas day, he decides, you know what, leave it to the french. and it is to this day french possession. then move on to tasmania.

again, kind of rumored that there is a great anchorage there. he goes to this place which is just an incredibly beautiful part of the world. he has his first on this voyage at least. his first encounter experience. in this case, the native palawa people of tasmania. the expedition artists go to work and paint these beautiful paintings which become engravings. everything goes according to plan. this is one of the rare times where everything goes well. they have peaceful exchanges in both directions. there is no sexual encounters. there is no spreading of venereal disease. a little over a week, he replaces his ships and writes eloquently about these people, the palawa, whom he admires. what is interesting, and i show

this, because almost exactly one century after? arrival, took mine to a stop at coney island. the palawa people are virtually extinct in this photograph was taken of the very last full- blooded person believed it to be a woman named trudy in any was photographed. she died almost a century after. the reason why coke is so resented all over the pacific, not so much for what? did for what he saw, what he himself brought into their cultures. the entire imperial thing ensued . the occupiers and the pathogens, the alcohol, the missionaries. the british hunted these people

for sport. it's unbelievable that an entire people had been there for millennia were nearly extinct within a century. there is that story. moving on to new zealand, the next stop on his voyage, i won't go into it. i don't really have time. it involves cannibalism. i will just leave it at that. had to do some difficult research along the way. hardship. research. i sent this to my editor when i was down there. he was like, what's going on down there? there was a lot of research on this voyage on this research trip. also a decent amount of research. beautiful places that he anchored. this is the place called ship cove in new zealand where we spent a while, my wife and i and hiked all over the place. one of the few monuments that has not been splattered with

red paint. then what we call the cook islands. the tonga island group. finally moving towards tahiti. another absolutely gorgeous place. famous among the sellers of england and all over europe for being a beautiful place. beautiful women. great food. a great place to get some r and r. half the sailors on board the ship signed on to go to this incredible spot in tahiti. this is from my iphone. this is, of course, where he anchored. he was not just there from r and r. not just for fun. she was there with a particular mission from the admiralty.

they had to do with this guy, a very interesting polynesian young man named mai, a major character in the book. a guy who had come to england on cook's second voyage and become the first polynesian to set foot on british soil. in england, he had an amazing experience. learned english, to be an aristocrat, to hunt, play backgammon and chest. vaccinated for smallpox. all the intellectuals held up as this sort of a paragon of the noble savage. in england, a big part of the book is telling of his exploits.

after two years, he is homesick. he really wants to get back to tahiti and king george says we will get you back. king george says captain cook is the guy who's going to get you back. that becomes the first big errand of the voyage, to return mai to tahiti with his belongings. he has accumulated all sorts of weird belongings like a full suit of armor. a jack-in-the-box. and electrocuting machine. a little grinding thing kind of based on benjamin franklin's experiments. all kinds of other things including a bible and horses. lots of horses. they have to bring the horses back to tahiti, as well. so this is mai, as studied by the great artist sir joshua reynolds. the finest portrait painter in england at the time. these are studies that led to this painting which was painted

in 1776. it is considered his masterpiece. his favorite painting of all of his paintings. a painting that was recently sold to the getty museum in los angeles for $62 million. so mai is famous even to this day. you can see him in l.a. pretty soon. right now it is at the national portrait gallery in london. so mai , that's another part of the story. it is a long story, but the real reason he went to england was that he wanted guns so he could fight against the people of bora bora who had stolen his land and killed his father. he had this sort of scheme behind the whole voyage. the reason he wanted to get those guns igger island

change island chain, the hawaiian archipelago. he has a very interesting experience there. everything is basically well. another kind of first encounter experience he realizes this is not on any of the maps. this is a major discovery rediscovery. of course, the polynesians had already discovered the place, but you get, you get you get the idea. this is also herb kind of a a a native hawaiian painter who's trying to describe this kind of first encounter experience. it's really amazing in both directions, the british can't believe it and the hawaiians can't believe it. it's you know, there's all sorts of thoughts that they may have maybe thought they were gods, perhaps that they were creatures from space or from the ocean depths. a lot of oral history about. what what was going on here in

maybe thought they were gods. perhaps that they were creatures from outer space or from the ocean depths. a lot of oral history about what was going on here at this moment of first contact. but what captain cook is realizing by the time he gets two hawaii is that there has been this enormous spread of polynesian civilization all over the pacific ocean, the polynesian diaspora. he's been to easter island. he's been to new zealand. she's been to tonga and the cook islands. he has been to tahiti. now he is all the way up in hawaii and they are speaking more or less the same language. they have the same culture. they are the same people and he is beginning to wonder, how did they do it? what was their technology? ships that had no metal, they did not have nails, rivets,

anything like european ships. they somehow managed these incredible migrations all across many thousands of miles of pacific. he is really one of the first european explorers to begin to understand that and question their ship architecture and like how do they accomplish this amazing feat? he reaches the pacific northwest at a place here called cape foul weather, named by him. one of the great things is that he did not name anything after himself. there are plenty of things named after him but he did not come up with those names himself. it was usually the admiralty that did that. really literal in naming things. just said the weather was foul today, so cape foul weather. i was flattered by the coast

here. i thought this was a port or if it was not. so this is cape flattery, washington state. all places that you can go to. working his way up the coast of the northwest of america. she is now beginning to look at every possible inlet. every bay, every river to see if this could be the northwest passage. is this it? on vancouver island, where i went with some of my family, i met the last living villager, the first nations elder. got some good stories. working my way up alaska, it goes past mount saint elias, the second largest mountain in north america, which he describes vividly. keeps going. prince william sound.

the kenai peninsula. many of you have been to alaska and know these names. me and my wife and the peninsula area going up to cook and land, which again, not named by cook, but by the admiralty. a place that has the second largest title differential in the world. basically mud flats much of the time. they decide this is not the northwest passage. they poke through the aleutian islands into the bering sea all the way up to the coast of alaska, charting the coast the hallway. encountering ice, hitting the bering strait up into the area we would call basically barrel, alaska. way, way at the top of alaska where he encounters ice and an

impenetrable wall of ice. encounters polar bears, walrus. i think most people think of captain cook as being a south seas guy. polynesia, warm weather year he spent so much time in the arctic and antarctic. this shows that they are hunting polar bear, hunting walrus. and they are trying to hunt them to eat them, but they are terrible eating. terrible. they kill them, they toe them overboard for two days. they bring them ashore, boil them for three days, they fry them in greece and it's still just not edible. but anyway, so that's the arctic experience that captain cook has. he realizes he cannot pass over

canada to the atlantic. he realized that there is no northwest passage, at least not this season. this is the unusual thing about captain cook. he decides instead of going home, why don't we wait an entire year and come back next summer, do it all over again, maybe the ice will be different next summer, so that's what he decides to do. so i show this before and after photo of his art experience. this is the map showing the -- this is the map that captain cook had to work with on his voyage up there. he sort of came out of bearings expeditions. it's very, very wrong. cartoonishly wrong. it shows alaska up there as a little island in the upper

right corner. i don't know where to begin to say it is just wrong and captain cook discovers or realizes that a bad map is worse than no map at all. to the right of alaska island, there's a waterway and that's with the admiralty really wanted him to check out more than anything, but maybe that is the northwest passage. well, it was not obviously. it was not at all, but this is what he was given and this is what is expedition produced. this is a german publication of his english map. he began to get the contours of alaska. how he did this, and the fog, in the heavy seas, never, not sure. you must never, in short, doing it from his ships. some sense of what it really looks like.

and this is probably, i would say, his greatest quality, his ability to produce these maps on the fly while moving fast over the coastline. so he decides all right, we are going to come back and do it all over again next summer but let's warm up for the winter, go back to that amazing place that we stumbled upon, the hawaiian island chain. so he does. he comes to hawaii. he circumnavigated the island, and comes ashore at this extraordinary place. have any of you been there? no? not that many? best snorkeling in all of hawaii. and this is the sea. this is more or less what it looks like because he happened to arrive during this festival to celebrate the god lono. this has been debated endlessly by anthropologists . apparently, they thought he was

the god lono. he happened to arrive during the festival from the right direction with big ships with big sales , and there was unbelievable energy and rapture around captain cook's arrival. they bow down to him, they called him lono, brought him into the temple and worshiped him , it seemed like. that is the story that happens for the first couple of weeks. his expedition artists come ashore and do these amazing pieces of art, everyone is happy, having a great time. this is what it looks like today. right at the place where things go badly for captain cook. then three weeks later, we get this and this is how i and the story. i want you to read the book. i want you to buy the book. i don't want to tell you how we get to the spot. but the question is how did

such a discipline, this most disciplined of explorers end up dead on the lava flats of the big island of hawaii? this guy who really i think legitimately prided himself on his understanding of polynesian culture and polynesian behavior and polynesian ways. how did he demonstrate such bad judgment that he ended up in this situation? a story that has been documented, become part of the iconography of exploration. hawaiian artists, english artists have all tried to capture this moment. it is the last sort of 50 pages or so of the bucket, trying to tell you how that all happened. what sort of miscues and miscommunications escalated to create this result, which is an incredibly graphic, violent story, where first contact kind of goes awry, and why does it

go awry? what were the reasons for that? so with all that in mind, how are we doing on time? do we have time for some questions? thank you. i would love to stay for questions, so maybe if we do about 10 minutes of weston's if that's all right eric >> okay, okay. >> hi, thank you for the talk. with all the material that's out there on captain cook, what drew you to the story, the third voyage in particular? >> well, i realized that captain cook's third voyage was by far the most dramatic, the longest of his voyages in terms of the duration and nautical

miles, but it was also the most american. with an american publisher, american writer, trying to figure out what is an american have to say about this quintessentially british story and realizing they left in july of 1776 with all these americans on board. the officer who ends up bringing the ship tom to england in 1780 is from virginia. and he has to decide as he arrives in england and my american or in my english? and they finally get the news of what has been happening with the revolution. so that's out of it. also it's just one of those classic stories that needs to be revisited every so often by different generations of writers because i'm really interested in the reckoning that we've been seeing going on across the world in terms of getting the indigenous point of view across. in every place in this book, i

tried to bring in the oral history, anthropology, archaeology. so we begin to get a little, at least to the best of my ability, a sense of the kind of indigenous polynesian point of view and indigenous alaskan point of view of the story. which has been underserved throughout the literature of cook. it is a voluminous body of literature. it's both a blessing and a disguise. i developed an aneurysm trying to absorb all this stuff. but other than that, what's my contribution to the literature? thank you. >> yes, thank you for your

great presentation and revelations about this great adventure, but it's still contemporary. we welcome all the new visitors to our club. this is a place where ideas are exchanged and often surprised. studying cook's logs quite a bit, it may confirm or know more than before he left portsmouth on his third voyage, he complained about the royal navy shortchanging the ships expeditionary supplies, rigging, tarp h-line, getting sailors to go deal with those rebels in the americans. some have surmised that had he been properly equipped, he would not have to go back to be reread and go through the whole terrible ending of his life and he would have lived on to be a governor and leader of society and made better of the consequences. in a way, is is the mind that due to us yankees causing so

much trouble? >> it's our fault, it's our fault. >> went to hear that. >> the dockyards were overwhelmed with every rigging and outfitting and repairing ships that were destitute. but down the revolt in boston. that is true. so the resolution, cook's ship got short thrift. but the attention it deserves. the masts were rotten. the focus was somewhere else. this is wonderful that captain cook is going on his third voyage, they said but we are really preoccupied with this other thing that was going on. he barely got out in time. if you waited a couple more weeks or a couple more months, he might have said don't go at all because we need to focus on what is happening in boston.

i think there is something true about what you just said. just blame the americans. it's our fault. benjamin franklin put out this thing to all the captains of all the american ships, whalers and merchant ships, that if you encounter captain cook anywhere, let him go. don't arrest him, even though we are at war with england because his voyage is so important and scientifically so important to humanity. let him go. so we had a passport, a free pass all over american waters. kind of interesting. maybe one or two more and then we will sign some books out here and one more shout out for the bar apparently. this brand-new bar is really all i have to say. yeah. >> to questions. by the way,

thank you very much. great story, great book. one of the questions i had was these are very long voyages, right? they last for months and months and months. what was the reaction of the crew going through so many reveals? i don't mean what they got there but while they were doing the voyages. as the captain, it must be quite hard to keep everybody in line. based on what you were saying about maybe you already answered the questions about how hated captain cook is today. obviously, he left a great legacy. he helped a lot of people understand that the world is wide open. people just did not know that. what was their first reaction? if you look back at history, what imprints has he left without the other stuff that's going on today, the last 10 years or whatever.

the local population, how do they see through history instead of through today's feelings of what they think happened? >> those are some big questions there. yeah, these voyages were very long. there was a lot of misbehavior. captain cook was famous for being quite fair but very stern. by the third voyage, showing some cruelty. something was wrong on the third voyage. one thing we did not even talk about was what was it? the sciatica? did he have some sort of parasite that was causing him to have some mental illness? some people said he had polar -- you might describe it as bipolar disorder. he did go to the arctic and the antarctic. so by definition, he is bipolar. sorry, sorry.

but the captain was quicker to dispense the sort of typical justice that you had back in the navy. a tyrant. famous for not being tyrannical. the other part of your question seems much more expensive. sounds like you are asking when you take away the current criticism that we are seeing of cooked around polynesia and around the world, what were his true contributions, what was his legacy? i guess i will just say this. we are in a room in the explorers club, a place devoted to expiration, to the idea of travel and the idea that it good for us, hopefully that

it's good for the people that we visited. i have always believed in that. we can probably all agree in this room at least. part of our dna to explore. what's over the next hill? what's over the horizon? and i think captain cook believed in that. i think the polynesians believe than that. they, of all people, where the great voyagers who populated the entire pacific. so i think you can ask the question legitimately. captain cook came in some terrible things happened after the touching of the islands but it was going to happen one way or another. one thing that you have with captain cook is the messenger of modernity. the guy had a brought them to

the modern world for better places or worse. much less humane and understanding of those cultures. it happened to be this guy, captain cook. i understand where the protest are coming from but we have to rethink the imperial mindset. i think in some ways, they got the wrong guy. it's easier to pin it on one dude then that is to pin it on an entire system, a whole paradigm. so i don't know. i end up defending captain cook from at least his biggest detractors. he was an extraordinary human being. and thank her. if we want to understand the

modern world, how it got the way it is, we have to understand these explorers. this is the golden age of exploration. you could argue that captain cook was the greatest of them all. on that note, we will sign some books. i hope to meet you. thank you. >> so in conclusion, really quick, before you rush out to sign books, i just want to thank you, all of you, for coming here tonight. as he mentioned, bringing this history to life is part of -- it is important that we re- examine this stuff in each generation. when you look around the room, i love tell you were talking about polynesia. that's the con tiki flag that accompanied us. that's the flag there in the corner. these are all great artifact. they only have meaning if we are here to do it. thank you for bringing history to life.

on behalf of the club, thank you, too. >> if you're enjoying but tv, sign up for a newsletter using the qr code on the screen for programs, discussions, author book festivals and more. every sunday on c-span 2 or c- span.org . television for serious readers. friday night, watch c-span's 2024 campaign trail. a weekly discussion on how the campaigns have progressed in the past week. two reporters join each week to talk about the issues, messages and events driving the week's political news and look at though weak ahead. friday nights at 7:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, c-span.org

or download as a podcast on c- span now, our free mobile app. wherever you get your podcast. your unfiltered view of politics. c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies. today we take you to congress and other public policy events in washington, d.c. and around the country. c-span, powered by cable. >> jessica is an accomplished writer, journalist, speaker and community leader. this is india as national academy of letters young authors award. i would like to also share to you that this event will be monitored by our friend.

studying language and literature at northwestern university. celebrating history month and we want to celebrate it on the auspicious day of the anniversary. this book literally changed my life. i was part and parcel of this and came here. that book changed my life and helped me rebuild myself once again. so this is the book. himself as a journalist and editor. on display, i would recommend

you go to these books. just amazing. we are looking forward to start reading something inside of chicago. all of these great leaders who talked about human liberation and human emancipation in a fundamentally radically new way. without further ado, i would like to welcome you, thank you for coming here. and, then we'e going to open that up, right? so this is the sort of flow of our the next >> so she will read to us first and then i have a couple of questions. sort of flow the next two hours that we will spend together.

i can follow this up with questions. >> i am so excited to be here. it is a charged time. the fact that all of you took time out of your monday to listen to me means a lot. thank you to each and everyone of you. for a long time, you've learned about anti-class politics, learned about resistance. you think about how solidarity's are interconnected. so going to read from this latest edition. this is not the hardcover. this is just what i had. this is a new edition that was published only in the united states. he published the book in 2019 in india. it took me five years to get

this book here. looking at these stories to find a home on a global stage and the united states. so prominent. i will read a little bit from this first. hopefully sets the stage. the prologue talks about what it feels like to live with a hidden identity. and it was written by a 26-year- old phd scholar forced to take his own life because he was calling out institutions and his university. they really pointed conversation. i will start with the prologue and go a little bit into the new chapters that have been specifically added for the u.s. edition.

these two extra chapters focus on cast in the united states. so without further delay -- prologue. writing one aspect of your identity is like leading a double life. you don't feel like you belong anywhere. you create masks to wear in each of your lives and switch artfully between the two. eventually, the two blurred together and you no longer remember who you were. pretending to be from a cast that's not valid is something like that. there are so many of us who are living this life. we avoid talking about caste. hoping to somehow find a place

in the world of upper classes that has been forbidden to us. we create upper caste identities. stolen matches that help us gain entry to a space that will reject us the moment it finds out who we really are. we flashed these ids anytime we are grilled about origins. those who fail to exhibit satisfactory signs of upper caste and those who refuse to our finest . for being where they don't belong. humiliation, oppression are penalties for not being upper caste . it is imprinted onto us through the burned bodies. students. rapes of young girls and women.

a succession of scavenging's . honor killings of lovers. these are so routine that they are not considered worthy of shock and outrage. newspapers, editors skip the stories or stick them in the back pages between the sports and city sections. hipster bars don't flinch before announcing a music group, showing little remorse after being informed about its grossly offensive undertones. this next spot is from chapter 14, which is called the reckoning of caste in tech . the history of caste in the united states is written in two parts.

before cisco and after cisco case. starting from the 1700s, immigrants from the indian subcontinent first come to this country until 2020. as it existed among south asians, escorted is an ancient relic from a remote country sometimes in headlines, often dismissed as a micro dynamic, not especially relevant to everyday americans. however, a single case of work is discrimination changed that when california's department of fair employment and housing sued silicon valley giant and $51.6 billion company cisco systems for failing to prevent discrimination. dominant caste and managers. this was different from earlier cases of discrimination of lower caste individuals by the perpetrators. the stomach churning case of

being arrested in 2000 for sexual slavery and human trafficking of girls as young as 9 years old from india. one of berkeley's richest landlords who owned close to 1000 properties in the city is known for his extensive philanthropy. exploited and enslaved young girls after bringing him over from his home state in india on false pretenses of employment. force them into sexual servitude into cleaning and maintenance of his restaurants and rental properties. the case broke november 1999 when a 17-year-old girl died from carbon monoxide poisoning at one of his apartments.

this led directly to california's first law, setting higher criminal penalties for human trafficking and grabbed national headlines for months as american reporters descended into the native village to cover the story. however, lost in his conversation with the brutal dynamics of caste that not only allowed the abuse to continue for close to 14 years between 1986 and the year 2000 , but also led to the inhabitants defending them even after the abuse was discovered. >> thank you so much. i feel like there will be brief insights from parts of the book. there's so much in each of them, historically to dwell on. personally for you to sort of share and open the space with. i want to begin this by asking what brought you to writing and

specifically writing this book? >> what brought me to writing? i think what brought me to writing was the fact that i wanted to be able to write in english. english is called the colonizers language in india, but that statement carries a tremendous amount of hypocrisy, because the entire elite structure takes place in english. while there are people who belong to dominant castes who want to have this language as something that people from lower class backgrounds should not engage with, they want to keep it over that. to be able to write in english was a form of resistance. to be able to write in the language that carries an immense amount of respect,

regardless of which background you come from. i come from north india where if you just go and speak english in a place, for a moment, people forget what caste you are from. i will not forget your gender but they will forget your caste and you get a glimpse into the kind of respect that the dominant caste people receive everywhere they go. for me, writing in english came naturally because i remember growing up and my parents saying you have to sit down with a dictionary and copy every word onto the page and this is something that a lot of the families share because whether they speak english or not, they make them sit with a newspaper, sit with a dictionary and copy this article and learn how the language flows, how the sentence structure is created. for me, that's all i wanted to write in english because i made myself be good at it. i practiced hard to make sure i could mask myself as a dominant

caste person and writing in english was just a natural segue into the knowledge that i had gained since childhood. >> yeah. i think that is very interesting because you are saying that you wanted to intervene in some kind of anglophone media space but also you did not choose to write a novel, you did not choose to write short stories, you chose to write a memoir. there's a historical reason for that uk historical trajectory to the little biographies. what is so promising about the form and genre of the memoir for you? >> i don't think i had a choice. as a journalist who had only spent two years in the u.s. at that time, i was just beginning to write about caste. i was eager to get the word out . some of you might know that i had launched this tumblr which

is no longer functional called documents of discrimination. left this powerful testimony behind with this letter that i hope each and everyone of you have read. i would encourage you to read the letter left behind. my opinion, one of the most significant pieces written because it changes how we talk about caste on a global level. when i read that letter for the first time, i never realized the impact it would have on me. so i decided to create a space where we could have open conversations about what it meant to be a valid person. in this traumatic system of caste that we are forced to

live in. as a result, i realized i needed to come out of myself because i could not ask people to share their testimonies about caste if i'm not being honest. so i came out as dalit. i started writing a ton of stories because the note that i wrote on facebook in order to come out as dalit went viral. a lot of indian media outlets since i was a journalist were interested in having me write more stories. again soon i had a book deal. but we know that dalits are not considered experts until we show our trauma and show how much we can bleed. we have to be able to show our wounds to be able to have them on display for people to believe us. which is why dalit people end up running out of biographies and memoirs because who else would consider us as an expert otherwise? so the form that came to me, a proposal, a lot of conversations, folks will be interested and ask how did you

end up writing this book? i did not set out to. it came to me. i was proposed as a memoir. the story of my life is not to be dramatic, carries a lot of sadness, carries a lot of things. i realized if i needed to get my story out there, that was the only way to do it. >> i think that's very interesting. before it was a book, it was a blog. after that, a facebook post. how do you think your narrative has moved through these different mediums that have very different constraints in terms of formal constraints or word limit but also very different ways of interact in. in the first story, the first form that it took, document discrimination was family stories. this is a memoir that you've written. several other stories in it.

those are your family. people who have sort of influenced you, come into your own consciousness. should we call it translation or adaptation? >> the facebook post happened naturally. a lot of -- facebook does not carry a lot of gravity in the u.s.. in india, people live and breathe in a very organic way. thank you if i were to solicit ndstories about caste from those people . it was also where i was aware that i discovered i had received a friend request just a couple of days before he was forced to take his own life. it seemed like the natural medium for me at the time, seeing his profile, looking at the profile photo, making the connection i had seen in some

way before. we are from the subcontinent. we believe in these many lives and it felt like there was a connection being made and it was almost -- i would not call it a calling but it was not really on me. i had to do something about this collection that was out there and that is how i ended up writing the post on facebook. tumbler, i thought was a great cheap freeway to solicit these stories to have controls, because i was also one of the online editors when i was in new delhi. he saw how people reacted to stories about caste. all stories about caste would be filled with comments about denial, affirmation, about telling people that dalit people are making up their trauma, lying about their lives. i wanted to create a safe space.

tumbler was an effective way to do that. until then, the longest piece of running -- writing was 50,000 words, my thesis at grad school. i had to think about how you write the book. went to barnes & noble at union square and picked up how to read a book for dummies. i had no formal training. i wanted to make it the kind of book that would not be easily dismissed. when you talk about the different forms my book has taken. it's memoir but also the story of my family and the stories of so many people. i wanted to make this into the kind of book that could not be cast aside because people won't believe it. which is why i decided to infuse it with journalism. with the kind of reporting where i just got a lot of training and had spent many years in india. so i collect stories, yes, but i can also show why those

stories existed. i could show that when i was going through an event for a caste related atrocity or trauma that it did not occur in isolation, that it was a universal horse that exist in india when dalit people have similar experiences across the country. that is how i attempted to link it with facts, figures, analysis . i did not want people to dismiss it. i wanted to write the book in english, the language that people respect and i wanted to make it ironclad, make it so strong. i read this book and i still don't believe that caste exists. you have to believe caste exist in india, in these societies once you read the book. >> i think the beauty of this is that in a way, you are clear

that journalism in the book is not solely a experiencing caste issues . but you have things like fashion and other issues that are considered lightweight. lifestyle journalism, narrative journalism, lifestyle journalism and then you formalize that in one way and this becomes this book that we have with us. this is also to give a broad overview of the different points in which you have trained yourself as a writer is pretty remarkable through this journey. and that brings me to this other question. a lot of the discussion in this book is actually around education and educational and the tuitions. there is an entire chapter devoted to window, which is one of the most thorough chapters that i've seen on the debates in a long time. it's hard to do that. it's a relatively recent

subject. some think that we do not take account of. i think you consider what it means to use the tools and weapons that institutions can give you, right? how is that taught within education in institutions? how is that important for you? what's your little more about that. >> that's a really interesting question because we are at a current time in the world where institutions are being challenged. rightly so. the power, the autocracy is being challenged. but as a dalit person, coming from the background that i come from, growing up in a small town, having access to these institutions when i was a child meant everything. for my mother, she is a central

character, she is the central character in this book. she always told me you have to go to the best college. only when you go to the best college, you will be taken half as seriously as someone who has gone much of that college or college that does not rank as high. so i have to go to saint stephens, one of the elite colleges in india. not because i wanted to specifically be in an elite face. of course, that, too. but if course, what it would mean for the potential discrimination that i would inevitably face. so once i was at the lens, it would go further and kind of in some way, negate my dalit-ness. coming to columbia meant the same thing . i've never had the opportunity to come here like to the united states. being here for me is a fluke, as well. i wrote in the book i did not have the money to buy the ticket to come to the u.s. i was helped out by an editor. finances were a dire issue.

nobody in my family imagined somebody from us could go study in america. so it meant a great deal to come to columbia, to be here, to be part of what is known inarguably or arguably as one of the best, most well-known journalism schools across the world, so it meant something to my mother that i was among the best of the best. but somehow, in her mind, despite being from this community, a mandal scavenging caste community, and this was something that mattered to all of us. >> did you know that when you are applying? >> no, i did not. i found out much later. and that speaks to have removed it is from so many of us. some of us who are growing up in these communities in places like this town where this discourse did not exist until very recently, we had no way to

access who he was, who his writing was. his writing changed me, changed my life completely. >> yeah. i mean, that is an amazing work there to follow. in a recently, you also commented on the special relationship that a place like columbia has for the dalit community and how heartbreaking it is to be in this time and see the kind of plantains we are witnessing to these movements. one of the subterranean histories here is the history of student movements. students mobilizing and institutions that is really sort of pivotal to how we are thinking about history. so i want to now focus a little on the title of the book. it's a very charged title. it has so many different valences. it speaks differently. it has queer residence biz.

it has racial and caste resonance. it is also seated in english in a very specific way. how did you come to that? before you answer that, i want to say this has a longer history in dalit autobiographies. i have one of the first autobiographies coming out. i will just read one sort of small section out of it from the prologue. so you all can probably see. how, sort of, yashica is also intervening in a literary way. i am a literary so i am going to refer to six other text the way i talk, that is the bane of my existence. so, yeah. so one of the things he writes is that not give me one second.

so, he is talking to his shadow in this part of the memoir, right? he is talking to a figurative shadow of himself and he says, i cannot tell you if you will meet this me in the story, the reflection of a man in the mirror does not know the whole story of a man it is reflecting. consider this. my real name is, you have forgotten that, right? so have i. that that is the name you will see in the school register. no one in the city knows me as, who knows whether my wife angela another same pics of my childhood i have hated this name. shakespeare may say, what is in a name, but tell me? why should this name fall to my lot. it is a smack lot on which a cloud was born. look at our name, which conjures up dust. if by some chance someone would have named his child got them, it would be -- it requires our

names reflect societies names for ourselves. the names signified learning this. can be named after the goddess of wealth. did or you unconsciously did but there was this i beg your pardon. that was the order of kings for centuries. so i just thought it was very interesting that there was this , like, i don't know if you consciously did that or unconsciously did but there was this whole range of equipment to come out with this almost intersexual conversation you are participating in. but how do you come to this timeframe? >> thank you for that reading and that is such a powerful testimony of half universal experiences of caste are. but our names mean to us because they carry this immense charge. for those of us gone -- to the

conversation one of the ways we can find out some of caste is to their last name. the way i was able to pass as a dominant caspersen for a long time is because my family dropped the caste marker from our last name. and adopted these obscure names. my grandfather and my dad had completely different last names because they had just chosen them for themselves so the power in charge that names carry in the dalit kennedy is immense and i was thinking about it in those terms because what is the language for experiences of hiding our names? where was this represented in the media, and indian culture? even around us, where were receiving stories of dalit people who change their identities and who are living as interlopers minnesota caste spaces? what were their experience is

like? that was my experience. and i wanted to identify that, i wanted to give a name to it. i was thinking about what caste means. to me at that time i am also a queer person, cast looks like a closet. the closet of caste was very close to the closet of sexuality. this is 2016. in 2015, supreme court of the united states had passed the marriage law making it federally legal in the entire country so the discourse around sexuality whether it was academic, whether it was in journalism, was actually prominent. we were getting all these ideas about the spectrum of gender and sexuality means and obviously being here in the united states, having the freedom for the first time to be able to objectively think about my cast made me wonder these questions as well and i thought of caste as a closet. i also wanted to evolve or push

back on the idea of language. in india, we just don't have the right words for so many things. the concept of passing which is so understudied and mainstream here in the united states, we don't necessarily have that language back home in india and i don't mean just in academic circles but of course everybody knows what it is. but outside of that, people are engaging in this practice without knowing that there are others like them. so i wanted to name it, give it a name and also identify it so others will see it, notice there is somebody like them out there. so that is why i thought, how do i make this idea of me revealing my cast into a momentous thing? because it was filled with so much gravity, it was filled with so much seriousness. it was almost ceremonial as far

as i was concerned. i was revealing the secret that i had carried with me my entire life to that facebook post that i mentioned. i was telling you, telling the world that i was hiding my cast by living among you as one of you but i am not. i have dined with you, you have dined with a cast person, you have invited one of us to your home and you don't know about it. i wanted to also think of it in terms of a victory. in terms of an f you, look at you, you hate us so much but here i am, you thought i was one of you but i am not. and how do you how do you understand or or communicate the importance of this moment? by giving it a name. for me that name was coming out as dalit , which is why i

titled my note, today i am coming out as dalit pick >> i actually did not know that was the name of the note but i think that actually gets me to think that , are there ways in which you think and saytalk and anti-tran21 practices in general has potential in that there is something anti-tran21 about queerness itself? >> i think that is a great idea and i complete we agree. the way we understand queerness is not just who you have with , but how you are in relation to this world. how do you have the creative space for yourself and your constantly in opposition to the mainstream idea of what it means to be a person? in the terms of the indian subcontinent, what it means to be a person is to be an upper caste, dominant caste indian man. in terms of sexuality, whether in terms of caste, that is a model of what exists. and of course there are brown and upper caste women who are

the model for women. when you are a dalit person you are inherently your existence, especially if you live your life in opposition to what is deemed as accessible. so i definitely agree that being anti-caste is a queer idea in that sense but i also want to mention that this is not an isolated conversation. in terms of dalit art, dalit literature, that has been inherently queer because we have been oppositional to the modes of literature and art that is acceptable in india. look at dalit dance, dalit literature. it has always been touted as being too profane, too filled with abuses and now that conversation is finally happening. there is a brilliant episode i would encourage you to watch on the podcast, literally came out a week ago, sacred versus the

profane and what constitutes art. so when you look at those examples of dalit art they inherently present themselves as queer but if you take this conversation and you put it on twitter, for example, x, or you put it on a social media platform and you say to be anti- -tran21 is to be queer, you will be getting so much backlash because there is also, and sadly enough, latent homophobia within our communities. so the word queer carries some amount of disgust even within us. so if i tell a straight dalit man that being anti-tran21 is queer, can one imagine what the reaction would be? it could be a great reaction but it could also not be because when i was out as queer, first to admit the fact that i am queer without my consent, a lot of the feedback that i got from some older men

was, the government should figure out who is queer or not. you should not be able to have the decision to announce yourself as queer. so that also exists within our society is where we can save being anti-caste is inherently a kind of queerness but how far will that idea go within our communities is also a question we need to think about. >> i feel like perhaps inversely, sort of what might be the cast politics of queer says reality is what we are taking about. >> i want to rant back to this edition particularly because this is two new chapters that haven't previously existed before and they are majoring for us. you are making an expansion in two ways. first you are talking about caste in the diaspora and secondly you are making some

kinds of comparative gestures toward black radical history of the us and how you have sort of found and cited that in various entrances. i want to first ask you, what do you make up comparison which is prominent in our times? i want to ask you first about this comparison. and then how did sort of influence of your take on how to look at caste in the diaspora? >> we have to admit as dalit people that there are incredible solidarity that exist between caste disconnection and racial dissemination. both are systems of dissemination that have existed, both have been denied. there is so much between one and the other to learn from each other. terms like passing. for me, that clicked that there was already a precedent for this kind of behavior after i

learned about the experiences of black people. and there is so much that we have gleaned and learned from black scholars because they truly have paved the way about, how do we think about this oppression in this society that we live in? and because of the position holiday of the united states as the country that it is, which has been first of all, for a very long time, versus india which is still struggling with its third world status, there is a lot for us to look at. however, i would also be wary of saying caste and race are the same. because that flattens the nuances of both. caste is invisible. race is not. caste has a very difficult way of being detected. you have to really be a part of the community to know that cass dissemination is happening. there can be conversations around food habits that can happen based on month caste.

in the case of the dalit engineer going back to the cisco case, one of the ways that his managers found out he was her caste was by packing on his back to see if he had the sacred thread. this is a very common practice within text spaces within the united states. they will have good parties so you can see if men are brown or not. it sounds reckless but it is true and is kind of nuances might or might not exist in the racial context which is why we have to position each as individual systems of oppression and see how we can learn from each other instead of saying caste is race and vice versa. we can build solidarity in a powerful way without putting one on top of the other. >> i think that is also very important because you do significant work in calling out the anti-blackness of the south

asian american diaspora as well, you're saying as feeding into some of these custis habits, right? and that is an important, introspective gesture here as well for us. but just broadly, what -- how was writing these two chapters different from reading the entire book and was this a strategic move? or was it something you saw both of your time here they also thought needed to be written in the way the rest of the book needed to be written? >> let's be honest. if i didn't have the new chapters this book might not have had -- which is not to say that there wasn't an anti-caste movement that had been brewing. we have seen in the past four years the radical changes that have happened. the cisco case happened in july, 2020.

is a fellow person's book caste, which put the word caste on the mainstream map was in september, 2020. since then, dozens of universities across the country have included caste as a protective category. the city of seattle included caste as a protected category just last year, february. fresno did it in california right after. the state of california, could have been the first state in the country to have caste protections added. so there is a lot of movement and development that is happening around caste and i felt that a book about caste that is releasing in the u.s. needed to address those issues, obviously. but i also wanted to bring in a sense of journalism to that aspect. to really look into not just, a lot of journalism around caste and it is very well- meaning but it happens around, let's find five dalit people and ask them what their experiences of caste are about. and wanted to find five caste

people and observe their experiences of caste. and that could only be done for me in a book in terms of new chapters. and also i am a different person. when i wrote this book between 2016 and 2018, i was a different person. now since i wrote this -- the three chapters in 2022 and 2023, i am a different person completely. so i think i needed to register that as well. if you notice in these chapters, a lot of the memoir aspect is not present as much which i am saving for the next book because i have to write a new book soon. beacon press has commissioned me two books to right so i have to start working on the next book soon but i wanted to just put this out there because books take a long time and i wanted this text to exist in the world. >> this is a good segue into my next question which is, what do you think is the future of the anti-caste movement in the

u.s.? and i want to push it a little further here and say, is there a horizon for us representation we are striving for and what my that look like? >> i think the future of the anti-caste movement lies with people on the margins of the anti-caste movement. the trip anyone movement is not new. in india it has existed for hundreds of years but it has been dominated by men. if you look at the anti-caste theorists , many of them happen to be men. there are spaces that have a lot of men which are important places, but i think we need to reduce the number of men and have more representations. this is just about representation at this point because when it comes to the anti-caste movement that is where we are. we are at the stage where we have to first fight for representation. we need more dalit women, in

those spaces and we need to look inwards. a lot of the movement in my opinion, my humble opinion, because i am not born in the movement, i come to it in my late 20s, i think we need to be able to look toward younger folks and see where their ideas are going, where our ideas are going, instead of just be attached to an idea that has been developed in the past 34 years. i think we have to be able to move forward. the future of the anti-caste movement lies with building solidarity is across movements. it lies with building solidarity's before the palestinian movement percolates with building with black movement, with native movements, because they can't exist in isolation. this is a different world than existed in 1990. we are in 2024, the solidarity's matter. so i think if we just focus on, there is an idea within some

people's mines, we just have to concern ourselves with caste and we don't have to focus on anything else, that is not going to work anymore because a silence will not protect us. you know, none of us are free until all of us are free and that is not just to say it truly rings true because why should anybody care about the anti-caste movement if you don't care about other marginalized people and their struggles? speaking about representation, i think we have to obviously go further than that but we also have to be mindful that we are at this nascent stage of the movement butting in the rest of the world. so we have to start with first saying, how we can get our voices there and then we can look at further dismantling the structures. i am not saying that has to happen one after the other. the representation that comes from trans folks, from non-

binary people, from women, is looking at dismantling structures already and that goes hand in hand. >> yeah, i feel like that is such an excellent sort of close to this moderated q&a with me. we would like to open this up for questions. how much time do we have? >> we have a half an hour. >> it, we have so much time for questions. please use the microphone when you do so and try to make them questions, not comments. you know? yeah. just throw them away. >> this must have been an excellent conversation, there are no questions. clear >> thank you so much. also i wanted to shout at before the end, to think the global

studies of chicago and community books for hosting this event. my question was about your time in journalism and if you could share a little bit about what in the newsrooms were like, in your time in journalism and how did you find your voice or struggle to find your voice with the limitations you faced or even the friendships and solidarity's you found in journalism? and also another living part of your book with the theme of friendship and kind of -- i would be very curious to hear about friendship as an anti- caste practice as well. those two questions. >> wonderful questions, thank you for that. first of all, it wasn't that long ago. i think in the newsrooms, they have evolved a little bit since i was in india working as a journalist. the way i survived in journalism was to stick to

subjects that would not give away my caste identity. by that i mean, being in lifestyle journalism. lifestyle journalism is often ignored in india, it is often considered a woman's territory, women cover fashion, women cover lifestyle, women cover beauty, makeup, all of those, you know, subjects, but also homes. our culture. even though subjects are covered by women. and also those spaces, especially fashion, happen to be overwhelmingly dominant caste. there is no question that in fashion if a person is either covering the subject or is a designer or working in the spaces, they will be dominant caste people. that is not something to even talk about. that was a good way for me to hide. that was a good way for me to be concealed within the spaces and of course i stood out. for a while, i was covering

nightlife and it was really eye- opening to be in these extremely wealthy parties where people would spend the kind of money that one could only dream of in one night on just entertaining their friends and of course that would be covered in the lifestyle section and that really built me who i am in those spaces and obviously standing out because if you are a lower caste person and you come from a lower income background, you can piece an outfit together with thrift store clothes but your identity in india will always be a giveaway. so i think the way i survived was by trying to put my head in the sand and pretend like no one is looking at me and just keep moving. and of course i was fortunate that i worked with editors who saw the fact that i could do a good job at covering something and i had to, like to 13 people

often do, had to work twice as hard to do that. i was successful in terms of staying away from politics, staying away from serious conversations, staying away from election coverage. those are the juicy beads that come to people who are almost always dominant caste. so that is how i was able to hide well-being in journalism and then newsrooms have always been inherently either caste blind or castest spaces. the newsroom i was in, the section of the newsroom was caste blind. we just never talked about caste. if you talked about caste it was about the behaviors of dominant caste people in terms of how certain castes are good at making food. what to the food recipes look like? certain castes are, what is their experience and history with books? so those are the kind of stories we were covering.

in the second question you ask which is an incredible question about friendship as a mode of being in the anti-caste space, i think my friendships have survived me completely because i have been able to find friends who are queer. a lot of my friends , we have all come out as queer in our 30s now and we have just been friends for a very, very long time. and i think the overlap between queerness and being an anti-caste ally i think can be very powerful. it is not always the case in india . the queer movement in india has been fully co-opted by dominic caste severna's who do not want to entertain dalit people's presence but in my life my friendships have been actually powerful in not just being a mirror to my struggles but also being spaces of nonjudgment. where i could be who i was,

talk about caste and not necessarily feel the burden of being marginalized. that was because i chose good friends. i have been very selective about who i was choosing to let be close to me and keep out of my inner circle. i hope that answers. >> one more question. >> yeah. >> hi, can you hear me? thank you. i have -- i was invited here, i haven't read your book but i am so struck by your quote from bell hooks and actually about six or so months ago at a paper and one of the things i was

distilling reading both of their primary works is how they call out oppression within oppressed communities. in such direct ways. and something i hadn't considered really within his writings, because he doesn't type into it so directly but of course bell hooks does within black radicalism and black feminism, is how dalit communities oppressed within communities. i wonder if you could just say more, i am so intrigued, i started taking notes on my phone. it is really the first time i am hearing this particular conversation and the way you are surfacing or privileging trans identity, women's voices, younger voices, if you could go into some of your observations, your own experiences, a little bit deeper, i am going to take more notes. i would be grateful. >> well, do i have a story for you guys. yes. i think first of all, oppression within oppressed communities

exist because, especially with caste, the doctor calls it a descending order of contempt. the lower we go on the scale of caste, the higher the contempt for the people who live there. my caste which is from the community as we have talked about earlier lies at the bottom of that. inherently, the identity of -- the name of my caste is a slur. it's called a b word in india now these days, it is a constitutional little slur which means if you called someone that you can face jail time, you can face charges. you can pay a penalty, you can be taken to court. it is a legal offense. that becomes the identity of the people who inhabit it. it also comes with a great deal of shame, it comes with a great deal of being in other spaces.

so in terms of the story than i have for you last year in august, a show on amazon prime called made in heaven took my story, my likeness, and presented it on screen without my permission, and also without any credit. and the show is about weddings. one of the brides happened to be a dalit woman later -- writer who is giving a talk at columbia, has written a book that talks about coming out in the context of being dalit. and is speaking the same things i have spoken in many of my interviews, that is where the similarity ends. she goes on to get married, she

is marrying a dominant caste man, how her family reacts, i am not married so that is not my story, but the likeness belongs -- was mine. and i was informed of that because friends of mine saw the show and started texting me and my dm sister getting filled with, do you know there is a show based on you? when they told me the name of the show i knew it was based on weddings and i was like, what are you talking about? i am not even married? but when i saw the show and i realized this was my life and i searched for credits and i found that there were none, that was pretty heartbreaking. it was heartbreaking because the episode was directed by a dalit person. it was directed by a dalit director. of course the production house is owned by two dominant caste women, one of them happens to be a muslim woman that they come from pretty influential dollywood families and they epitomize what powerful people

represent right now. i had broken because i was expecting my name to be there if nothing else in the end credits. and when i asked for that, the first response i received was an instagram post where they listed out a list of references about that episode could have been based on. and then my name. and i just decided that wasn't enough because it took me a lot to put my story out there. one of the interviews that i give was where i talked about how my grandmother used to be, and the shame that comes with admitting that on a public stage is immense. it took me a lot of therapy and a lot of courage to be able to sit among people and admit something, a secret that my mother had tried so hard to protect her entire life. and for that to be taken from me felt -- it was a wound.

it was deeply hurtful. and as a response to my demand for credit, the people in the show decided to launch a hate campaign. when you were talking about the dimensions of the words coming out as dalit i was told those words have nothing to do with me because they arty existed in text before and then hollywood directors went on media outlets, six, seven of them, give notable interviews calling me back is cystic and a liar and opportunistic because i couldn't think for the whole community. this is supposed to be a moment for the entire community and not me, therefore i should forget that my story has been stolen from me and just be content. and that was a very pivotal moment that maybe understand that even within our kennedys, those who lie at the absolute margins may be a dalit woman . i will not be looked in the same way as someone else who

belongs to a different community and happens to be a man and that is what is instrumental and instructive and me thinking about how oppression exists within our own. that response cannot hate campaign that lasted 7 to 8 weeks, one of the articles i covered that whole piece, it is seven weeks of and very dramatic action. it talked about why i had been punished so severely. i had been punished because i literally was not thinking about the collective good and i should have been okay with having my story stolen, having, as writers, we make no money and our life stories and life's work is all we have. i should have been okay with having not taken for me because it was good, it is representation. this is where we see the limits

of representation. the descending scale of contempt really was true. it rang true for me but then -- within those weeks and months that unfortunately was coming from some other dalit people because they felt that this was against the collective good. me saying this is my story, everyone can see it, can you please add my name there, was against collective good. so i hope that kind of answers the question. >> i think we have time for, i would say, 15 minutes more, so probably two more questions? >> thank you. such a wonderful exchange of ideas. i want to ask this question before coming to the u.s., i was working with the community,

specifically the rbcs, and what i have found is there is absolute in the civilization of obesity women when it comes to speaking history, cultural association. they are for the people who are not from the indian context. they are the other backward questions, there one of the largest operations of india. out of every two indians, one is obc. approximately 10% of the population is ldcs. imagine 50% of the roundabout mathematics, 50% and then five, 6% of the global preparation are the obc women and what i found so staggeringly abhorrent, that is not even recognizing the caste atrocities which are happening on obc women but also nomadic tribes women, denoted by tribe women who has a stigma of, called by criminal tribes in colonial area and also face and cause

discrimination and they don't have any degradation national primary, we have zero data on that. we have now caste census data on obc including men and women. it conducts the success of animals including pigs, cows and buffaloes. what i have seen is ever women, obc women, do not have that kind of language so far to speak up about their thing. what i found interesting is that our progressive friends, female friends, who are from the dominant caste and you wonderful dalit friends of ours who happened to be girls or coming from different margins, they can talk about that. they are getting that language. from this larger section of obc women are so deprived of that. so what we can do as scholars, policymakers, as an artist,

what we can do to open up that pandora's box and when i say obc's, it is also the caste community and some women of the communities were also a part and parcel of land owning cats. they are also snatched away from their agency within their households and communities. could you just share -- shed light about what you think about that and how we can be kind of a catalytic engine to open up the discussion as well within obc communities and obc women as well specifically? >> thank you for that question. accurately pointed out i can. a huge section of women who don't have access to not just the language but even the awareness and that deep sense about, how do -- to counter this caste patriarchy they experience and caste misogyny they experience in their everyday lives? i think what we can do is keep telling sherry pretty much.

there are some dalit women we are seeing now and dominant caste women who have had access to language but more than language i think language, the one that we talk about is english. english is not accessible to a large truck of the women you mentioned, the nomadic tribes. where i come from around this town there is a huge list of nomadic tribes that exist that could be obc, that could be dalit, that have no access to education. that have no way of having access to these ideas that we can speak about in academic circles. i think to start there we have to think about, how do we reach people like that and come out of our sort of bubbles we live in, you know? we can talk about which are but if you speak to somebody who comes from the community who dances for money, you know, entertains for money, these are local tribal entertainers, they

will have no specific context for what we are seeing. there is the queen of india, she was from a dalit community. when she talks about how her sexual assault and how she experience did and that story got a lot of attention. for those of us who don't know, she was a female bandit who was phenomenal and who captured the imagination of the entire world at that time in the late 80s and early 90s and then finally she surrendered to the indian police on her own terms and went into politics. and she faced an intense amount of sexual assault in her lifetime because of the caste that she came from. so when she was getting a lot of media attention, she was getting attention from dominant caste reporters, from delhi and mumbai reporters from the u.s., and they would ask her to describe her sexual

assault and she told them, what you think of sexual assault is what is life for me. we don't think about assault and in the terms that other coming up, western educated society think of. it is just a way of being. so we have to include voices from the communities and be in community with them and to ask them, how do we make sense of their lives? we have to give them the leadership. we can't speak for people -- folks that have lived close, we don't have those experiences. i don't have that experience. i will never be somebody who can say that i speak for them. if i have the opportunity to work in those spaces, i would rather listen to them and elevate their voices. i think what we can do is elevate their voices instead of saying, how did we give you access to language? how about we break the language

so that they are able to communicate and how their reality shapes their lives? they are able to tell us that in their own words. if that makes sense. >> i will take one last question. you can take two. >> two? okay. >> thank you so much for being here. my question has to do with, this is something i spend some time thinking about being an international student here is -- and especially given that you are bringing our book to the u.s., i feel like sometimes some kind of pressure as to thinking about how you want to present your culture or represent your culture and what you should be talking about and what people expect to hear, imagine that is even, that cause much deeper for you given the nuances of your situation and so the question really is, how have you sort of sought to

protect yourself from that and bringing the book here, how do you protect yourself from maybe some sort of sensationalized of your story that might be happening and really bringing out the true essence of what you are trying to see well at the same time you feel any pressure to conform to expectations of what a western audience thinks your experience should be? >> that is a terrific question. i think -- like i spoke about earlier, a trauma has to be seen to be believed and especially in western societies, maya angelo has talked about it, toni morrison has talked about it, how white supremacist cultures need to feel superior and they need to feel that they are saving us in order for us to feel any benefit. so i think the trap always exists but at the same time, i see a lot of south asian people who are immigrants or people who have been raised here,

trying to imagine what the culture is for a western consumption or western audience. so we see a lot of information, tiktok reels and instagram reels about yoga, about defending their culture, defending hinduism in terms of that has nothing to do with caste in that is trying to negate anti-cast ideas in order to instill a sense of pride in the culture, one goes so far that you become castest. and this is something we are seeing more and more, whether it is with holistic spirituality, whether it is with, a lot of people have no -- and fairly so, we see a lot of white women posing as yogis. so why shouldn't indian girls do that? and i think that is fair and that is a valid argument and critique there but i think when there is such a blind spot that exists around caste , it can very easily go into the

territory of denying caste altogether. so the way i avoid that trap is to just have an authentic story. in terms of sensationalizing, this is the reason my book took so long to be able to publish here because the books that i was seeing at that time had something to do with the imagination of what an indian person was like. mango orchards, cooking, bollywood, and marigolds. those were the trips and my book had nothing to do with it. and i think it takes time but it is, in the end, worth sticking to your guns and portraying yourself as the authentic person you are. >> yeah, we do, yeah. >> can you take some questions? >> simultaneously? okay. you can ask your question. let's take questions perhaps and then you can respond to them together, would that work?

>> let's take two questions together and respond to them back to back. >> okay, high. thank you so much for sharing your story and you mentioned that there is this expectation that you rehearse your trauma when you write is no more than so on but when i see her instagram first or your social media presence here today, you exude this kind of joy as well so when we think about anti- caste politics, aesthetics, and especially in terms of queer love, what kind of love , queer anti-cast love do you imagine for yourself and for everyone here both romantic and platonic? >> wonderful question. >> wonderful talk. my question is more about from all we have discussed right now. as your book talks about from your introduction, intemperate times for entities other than

dalit committees also started appropriating , they're taking the flags in their hand. so considering all this, how do you look at contemporary when it was introduced to you until now? >> thank you. >> two in critical questions and i will try to answer both of them. your question was about -- and thank you for mentioning my instagram and recognizing that i try and suffuse it with joy because it is important to me. i feel that while our existence is political, it can't be just simply constructed around trauma. it can't simply be constructed around missouri's. especially in the communities they talk about, we are whole people. we live, we breathe, we celebrate, we don't just, you know, we are not just facing

brutality, we are not just facing violence. i think the same goes for dalit communities as well. what does anti-caste love look like? and i will mention again, therapy has been very, very important and crucial to me in recognizing who i am and being able to live that in a complete and authentic way. one of the ways that i think i feel joy is by feeling no shame. because a lot of my life, a lot of my existence has been infused with shame. it has been marked with feeling terrible about who you are, knowing that you don't have any worth and always trying to be someone else so you can consider yourself worthy. so now i truly live my life in this body, which is not skinny, which is brown, which is, you know, in opposition to the norm in so many ways, by not feeling

shame. and i think that is very important for me to show up authentically as i am but also understand that not everyone is going to like you. when you are hiding your identity and your trying to pass as a dalit person, you are very interested in having people accept you but also like you. and i am done with having people like me. if they do, it is great. if they don't, that is on them. so that really works for me. and your question about intersection audi and appropriation, i think that is really important because now after the 13 communities across the country, they have kept it alive. they have kept his legacy lives with her printing presses and publishing his works, distributing them for free, there are people we know of from dalit committees who will

not eat but publish his works and they have done that for decades. the mainstream assessment in india completely ignore that. but now when we are at this moment where dalit voices are pending recognition, there are people who feel there is an opportunity for them to have a stake in this conversation. and i think that is important. i think everybody should be able to speak about but we also need to be able to understand and recognize the privilege of those communities. some dominant caste people can call him a messiah, like you mentioned, and see how incredible he was and face the consequences. whereas dalit people will be killed for having a ring tone that has a makers name on it. they will be shunned from mumbai pride parade for having a slide that has his name. so those consequences of dalit people associating themselves have to be talked about. we see a therapy, his life has

become an industry. there have been six to seven books that have been published in the last two or three years about his life. i saw that insulin with that but we also have to understand that everybody has access to him. i did not have access to them, not just because i didn't know about him but because if i celebrated him, that would give away my secret. that would give away the fact that i was hiding my guest identity. because now we are called the slayer that people use against us. so here is identity when it is used by dalit people but when it is used by dominic has people it is limited. it is very similar to a ave how we see it in the united states, unlike people engage or speak in avionics or black language, black vernacular,

there celebrated. but when black people do it, they are shunned. they have to go and switch. so it is very similar. i think what we're seeing right now is this renaissance, but we have to make sure that we don't need people who kept his image behind in that. >> okay, we have time. >> thank you so much for coming. i just want to pitch that yashica's books are here so please purchase one. certifying these books also helps staff be here and they are doing very important work in organizing for palestine and giving space for organizers with houston, also going to encourage you all to go to the incomes that are there and support our communities right now, especially students. and, yeah, thank you for coming and free palestine. >> [ inaudible ]

>> absolutely. >> thank you so much. there are a few copies left here. you can also preorder. >> amazing. [ applause ] if you are enjoying book tv then sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive the schedule of upcoming programs, other discussions, book festivals and more. book tv, every sunday on c-span two or anytime online at booktv.org. television for serious readers. be up-to-date in the latest in publishing with book tv's podcast about books, with current nonfiction book releases plus bestseller lists as well as industry news and trends through insider interviews. you can find about books on c- span now, our free mobile app or wherever you get your podcast.

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congratulation from the book, i really enjoyed reading it. >> thank you so much, i am excited to talk about it. >> i wanted to start with a quote from the start of the book ich i thought really kind of sets of the conversation and what the book is about. you wrote, i recommend you public schools since their very creation have become ground zero for this country's most divisive battles over politics and civil rights from the fights over evolution and segregation to those over ed and school prayer. i want to start with, why is that? why do americans fight so much over education? >> first of all, i am excited to be having this conversation with you, a big fan of your work and great goal to have this platform to talk about the reporting. i guess it makes sense. i came into this reporting mostly looking at the ways that very divisive national politics was kind of being imposed into

local politics at the local level all the way down to my hoas in suburban houston. in the summer of 2020, we were seeing, you know, this vitriolic backlash to the pandemic and to the protest of racial justice and so i came to this reporting just looking at the ways in which these really divisive national fights were playing out of the local level and i ended up -- sara story led me to schools because that is where these fights ended up. and it makes sense because as you mentioned, the schools are where we -- where society imparts knowledge to the next generation. it is where we wrestle with, what is the story of this country? what is true and what is false? what are the important details from our history that are worth emphasizing and memorizing and

which ones do we forget? so the schools repeatedly throughout our history, and especially right now, end up becoming sort of a proxy and a bigger fight and the fight is over, what is america? what do we stand for? what are we proud of, who are we? and that is what we are seeing right now in school districts and state legislatures all over the country. >> i wanted to ask, a colleague of mine told me that you are not an education reporter when you started this work. so if that is true, i am just wondering how did you find this story in southlake and why did you think it was important? he spent four years on it, i think. >> i still consider myself an education reporter even though i have so much respect for education supporters. because like i said, i was looking at cultural fissures in america.

i was looking at how divisive, ugly politics has affected real people in tangible ways, kind of moving beyond the headlines over whatever trump said that they were looking at how those kinds of comments and politics and policies were affecting regular people. it just so happened that at this moment in our country's history once again as we have seen it repeated throughout history, those fights led me to classrooms, to schools, to school board meetings. and the way i got started on it is again, in the summer of 2020 , i think if any of us there to remember that year, there was a lot going on in the country. things were really tense and in my neighborhood, 20 miles northwest of houston, this was, like, a suburban little neighborhood where there's not

a lot of controversy or conflict and yet on my neighborhood facebook page, i was seeing posts from neighbors that summer warning that, they thought they saw antifa at a nearby sporting goods store and that maybe in the midst of all the racial justice protest antifa was planning an attack on timberlake estates, which when i read it was like, what are they talking about? it wasn't just one neighbor, there were people, are playing saying, yeah, maybe they are planning it for the fourth of july to mask the shooting under the sound of fireworks? and that was just one example of this really intense fear that was emanating in these communities. there was no tension in the streets in my neighborhood, we didn't have sidewalks. and so i set out to kind of tell that story, how the suburbs, which, you know through your reporting on

school privatization, suburbs really exists or were created in some instances to create an outlet for white parents who wanted to send their kids to schools that aren't desegregated. and so there is a whole history of zoning policies that helped create the situation. that we have seen in the last 30 years is the suburbs have gotten much more diverse. and so the reporting i set out to do is really to look at how those changes in demographics combined with this kind of ugly national politics, was turning suburbs into the front line of our ugliest political divides. in the midst of reporting that story is when i got on the phone with texas gop chairman allen west and again in 2020, i was asking him at that time, donald trump is going around the country saying that if joe

biden is elected, he is going to abolish the suburbs and he's going to let antifa run wild and destroy your communities. i was asking ellen, what you make of that kind of thing which? do you think that is, you know, safe to be telling people? what do you think the impact of that could be? and do you think people actually believe this? and he said, let me tell you about this town called salt lake. and that was really my introduction to this affluent suburban community in north texas outside of fort worth where it turned out that parents there had begun revolting against attempts to address complaint address complaints of racism in the school district. i scribbled a note like eight posted note to say look at what's happening in southlake and set it aside for a few months. that was the beginning of me spending four years becoming an

education reporter, apparently. >> i love the post-it note because so many stories start that way and i can relate to that. >> one thing i want to relate who is why you thought what was going on the southlake was important to you could view it as one small community and not see it as representing a larger fight. it was interesting that you saw that, or at least i think you saw that early on and this was something that spoke to a larger issue going on across the country. i wonder if you could talk about that a little bit. >> i think it ties back to what i was experiencing in my own community and my family. i think some of the best journalism comes from when we feel and experience something in our own life and ask questions about it it in the midst of what i was describing as a accra know me in my neighborhood, things were kind

of ugly on the social media page and politics was visible everywhere with competing yard signs. in the midst of that, my wife, who is a biracial black woman put out a black lives matter shine in our yard in suburban houston and at the time, in 2020, black lives matter was like a brief window it was universally accepted as repudiation of systemic racism or racism in america. it was a small kind of gesture to say that we live hereto or for her i live here too. that resulted in weeks of targeted attacks in my yard where someone was coming with their four wheeler and doing donuts and digging up divots in the yard. that felt so personal.

hearing that rumble of that engine. weekend after weekend in the middle of the night while the kids were sleeping. it felt threatening. i did not realize at the time, it made my wife, who has had a different experience than me, feel like they don't want me here. i do not feel safe in my neighborhood that is a very distressing feeling. when i started reporting initially on the story in southlake and talking to parents of black students there and students themselves about what they were experiencing, they were saying some of the same things about feeling unwelcome, feeling unsafe. as i had those conversations both for work and for home i realized this is something bigger and my

hunch was what was going on in southlake was representative of something much bigger and what was happening at my house is something representing much bigger. i do not think i knew that for sure when i started reporting it. at most i knew i had a compelling story about a local fight parade those are worth telling. it was not after we published the initial story about the blowback and the political battles in southlake that mike colleague and i, who made a companion piece for nbc nightly news, in the aftermath of publishing this we realize it is much bigger. then we were hearing from people in communities all over the country saying this fight over diversity equity and inclusion in the southlake school district, that is the story of my town in the suburbs of philadelphia, or that is the story of my town outside of

columbus ohio. or that is what is happening down here in florida. we got dozens of those messages when we published that story early 2021. at that time most people probably still had not heard of this idea of critical race theory and had not clued in these fights were coming. our inboxes were previewing what was about to happen across the country. then it became like, we need to keep going. >> that is a good sign when you start getting emails from all over saying this is my town's story. one thing i want to do before we go too far is to define critical race theory and also how that term has been used by conservatives in the last few years and i think that is important context. >> maybe some folks who are watching have forgotten about critical race theory because it has since been replaced in the dialogue, the national

conversation on the right. you are more hearing about diversity ethnicity and inclusion, dei. in 2021 all you could hear about on the news is critical race theory was being imposed on kids across the country. critical race theory really is somewhat complex, legal and philosophical framework for understanding how systemic racism persists in america or in society, even in spite of laws that prohibit discrimination. it really ties back to the school of thought that emerged out of harvard in the 1980s. it was really looking at the post-civil rights era, why are we still seeing huge disparities? why do racist outcomes persist, even though explicit racism is

no longer in the law, it has been prohibited through the civil rights act and other legislation. a great example is what a critical race theorist might look at, one of the things that i found in reporting in southlake and other suburbs, again, in the era after brown v board of education required schools to integrate. after laws were passed inhibiting schools and communities from explicitly discriminating on the basis of race, communities like southlake past policies through their zoning code that had the effect of walling black families and other minority families out of the community by requiring homes to be built on one acre of land and not allowing for multifamily housing. basically ensuring only wealthy people could live there. in

america wealth is often a proxy for race. southlake for most of its history was almost all white. critical race theory means looking at that an understanding how these race neutral policies might lead to racist outcomes. that is critical race theory. what happened in 2020 2021 is an activist named chris rufo seized on that framework which most people were not familiar with. he defined it it and rebranded it as a way of describing things that make conservative white people feel uncomfortable if a school district was working on diversity equity inclusion plan like southlake, that was branded as critical race theory. that came to mean that they are going to teach white kids that they are oppressors and black kids that they are victims that is the kind of language you heard over and over this is what critical race theory is.

donald trump described it as a toxic ideology that says that race is the most important thing about any individual and these kind of victim, oppressor categories are default based on your skin color. critical race theory does not say that. it is not about individual races it is about at a systemic level. as we saw in 2021, that phrase took off like wild. you could not turn into nightly news without seeing a report from a school district somewhere where parents were upset that somebody in the district was trying to bring in this scary sounding thing, critical race theory to basically indoctrinate kids if they are white to hate themselves and to hate america. >> it is really interesting how quickly that took off and how

successful it was. i had not hed of it before chris rufo made it into what it was and what it became. one thing i thought was striking in the reporting that you did in the book is when conservatives talk about diversity and inclusion programs and the talk about critical race theory. they are always saying this is indoctrination by the left. teachers training trying to indoctrinate kids. in southlake and some of the communities that you wrote about, the efforts to create diversity and inclusion programs often follow real complaints by students and families about racism and bullying. in other words, it did not come out of nowhere. these programs were a response to an actual problem faced by real students. i wonder if you could talk about that because it does feel sort of jarring when you look back at some of the reporting that you did and you see really awful things that students are

being told or were hearing and experiencing. >> if you just tuned into the news in 2021 and watched school board meetings, you got the message that conservatives felt like while they were not paying attention, extremely far left people had suddenly come up with a plan to indoctrinate kids with these ideas. that is how it was framed in southlake. conservatives were not paying attention and the leftist came in and suddenly started doing this. i wanted to go back to the beginning and see the origin, the plan to impose or create diversity inclusion plan is southlake and what prompted it. it really followed a national pattern that i found copied all over the country in the trump era. after president trump was elected in 2016, in a campaign that featured a lot of language

about immigrants and helped usher this kind of resurgence or more open embrace of white nationalism and we saw what happened in charlottesville. that rhetoric was trickling down into classrooms and schools all over the country. if you did a google news search in 2016, 2017, 2018 you will find dozens of articles about kids chanting build the wall at hispanic classmates or someone carving the capitol and word and meghan on school walls. all of these school districts were dealing with that in the era before the critical race theory. what happened in carol in

southlake the students filmed themselves chanting the n-word in 2018. the video itself was not the impetus for action. what followed the video was dozens of parents of black students, parents of lgbtq kids, parents of hispanic students coming forward and saying my kids have been experiencing these slurs and having this kind of racist jokes throwing their way at carol schools forever and you all need to address this. that is what led the district in 2018 and 2019 to put together a committee. the whole goal was to try to address these widespread reports that they were getting from kids. i talked with many of them. they did not make it up. in 2020 when they released what they called the cultural

competence action plan into this very patriotic period politically and the pandemic what happened was conservative parents who had not paid close attention to the racial -- reports of racism and that effort, they just saw the outcome. they saw this action plan and they saw it in the context of protest after george floyd's murder and black lives matter and they conflated the two and just said where did this come from? that was happening, that same dynamic played out in school districts all over the country, and loudoun county, virginia, in dc some of the same kind of dynamic where there were incidents that prompted the districts to start working on creating a more inclusive culture in 2017. it did not just bring up out of nowhere in

the summer of 2020. that was important for me to try to put all of that in context for people reading. >> i was really struck by it. i think if you just had turned on the news a couple of years ago you would not have had some of that context. instead it sounds like people were not paying attention and suddenly this devious thing is occurring. one thing that i thought was interesting in southlake, there was initially support for the plan, it seems. with the backlash it wasn't just we don't agree with this, it was the people on the school board must be marxist. they must be far left activists. a lot of them were actually conservatives from southlake. this idea that you cannot disagree about the plan but that this person that presumably a lot of people know on the school board is actually

your enemy or is trying to do something, this secret plot. i thought that was really striking in the book with that dynamic. one thing that i was struck by as someone who has covered school boards for a long time, they used to be rather dull places, unless there was a sex ed policy, these were not the most interesting meetings. sometimes the report is one of two or three people in the audience. when this idea of taking over school boards became a rallying cry on the right, it was almost jarring. in the book you say allen west said the most important elected position in the united states of america is school board and steve bannon, the trump advisor made a similar comment. why school boards? >> that took off, in steve

bannon's case because they were seeing the news reports and they saw an opportunity. i think, you mentioned this idea of the school board initially had support in southlake for some of these changes. that was the case. when they initially announced the plans to try to put together a committee to address these things in 2018 and in 2019 there were communitywide gatherings hosted by the mayor and the school board president was there for these and city council members were saying, yes we will address racism, conservative, republicans across the board. it was kind of a unified response but i think what followed is telling. i think about this story of michelle moore who was the school board president who was

a lifelong republican and she heard all of the student complaints and helped lead the effort to address these things and had support from the mayor and city council and business leaders. in the aftermath, after allen west declared the school board's most important elected position in the united states of america and all of the backlash to the action plan was building, people who had supported michelle moore turned on her. accused her of pushing, forcing this down onto conservative families. again, she is a lifelong republican. i don't know if she voted for trump, but she is conservative. she was being described in the media come in local media and conservatives as a progressive, this left person pushing this

policy from the left. she was called a marxist and all these things, there is this economy being presented in the coverage of the school board conflicts where conservatives are fighting against liberals for control of school boards. the candidates who are being targeted by moms for liberty type groups often are themselves republicans or conservatives who have a different perspective on what school should do to address discrimination or how school should address the history of racism in the curriculum. the groups that are rising up to oppose moms for liberty and others are often politically diverse there are moderate conservatives along with very liberal people who are opposing this kind of far right

incursion into their school boards. it is a little more nuanced and complicated than what we often read. >> one important point that you make too is the education wars are not new. i wonder if you could talk about the education wars of the 70s and 80s when there was another sort of buzzword that became this thing that everyone was afraid was infecting the schools and that was secular humanism. defined that please. >> this is a gap in my education when i came into reporting. we hear the battles of evolution in the schools in the 19 20s and 30s and the fights over integration and the civil rights movement. we know schools are often the place where big fights play out. i was born in the early 80s so

i was not clued into this early chapter. when i discovered it, i was blown away if you go back and read clips from the 1970s and 80s about the kind of pushed by the christian conservative right to defeat what we call secular humanism inside public schools, you could, in many cases, swap out the words secular humanism and paste in critical race theory into these articles and you would not necessarily know they were from the 1970s and 80s. what happened is, in the aftermath of the civil rights movement and the era of changing cultural norms around gender and the fight for women's rights and all these things, there was a backlash on the christian right against more inclusive curriculum in schools and a backlash of what they saw

as the removal of god school, rulings prohibiting school prayer and prohibiting compulsory bible readings in classrooms, there was a backlash. much like today, they honed in this idea of secular humanism, which is a philosophical framework that rejects religion as the sole basis for morality and instead prioritizes relying on science and fighting injustice of any kind and relying on logic to fight injustice. much like today, the term secular humanism became kind of a catch all to describe any lesson that might offend a conservative christian worldview. you will see complaints and language architect books that include black writers as

secular humanists or if a book depicts a woman not in a traditional homemaker gender role that is secular humanism. they went so far as to argue secular humanism itself was a religion and should be hard from schools on first amendment grounds, or balance with explicitly christian lessons. some of the same language and some of the same communities across the country played out across the 1970s and 80s. there was even, briefly, a federal ban adopted by the u.s. senate and congress introduced by orrin hatch in the senate that banned any federal funds to schools that teach secular humanism. just like the wave of anti-

critical race theory laws today it was not really defined. as a result it sort of left educators guessing at what might count as secular humanism and it resulted in many cases of teachers self censoring out of fear. there are so many parallels to today. this was happening on a smaller scale than what we are seeing today in terms of backlash to critical race theory and transgender acceptance and lgbtq library books. it really previewed what we are seeing and offered lessons. >> there was a paragraph in one of the chapters about that. it listed some of the names of books that had been challenged. i thought you could replace the year with any of the last few years and it would read by current events. i thought that was really striking. >> one of the things that has

come out of the current backlash, we have seen really a wave of republican back bills to limit how teachers can talk about race and racism and lgbtq history and sexuality. we have also seen this wave of challenges. what have been some of the effects of those laws that you hinted at? >> in most republican- controlled red states there are laws in the books limiting how teachers talk about racism or the history of racism, kind of mandating a patriotic interpretation of the nation's origin. in some cases such as florida and texas and elsewhere prohibiting discussion or limiting discussion of people of different gender identities or same-sex relationships as certain grade levels in some places that is the law so

library books are flying off the shelves. in florida and elsewhere to try to comply with those laws. even in places where those laws have been passed, there is a culture of fear among many educators. there was a recent rand survey that was released earlier this year that showed two thirds of teachers reported censoring how they talk about divisive political issues including issues around race and lgbtq inclusion. that finding was still the case and included teachers who teach in school districts where there are no restrictions no state laws and no local prohibitions. certainly those teachers reported that they were worried that if they pulled out a picture book in their

elementary school classroom that depicted two dads holding hands that the school district might not be able to protect them if parents get really upset. there has been a lot of reporting recently showing the idea that these school culture wars will be a silver bullet for republicans to take the suburbs which is steve bennett's whole pitch but it is not really panning out, mom's for liberty and other groups are losing a lot of places. they are not winning new suburban voters, they are taking these national issues and superimposing them onto local school boards. if your community lions republican or trump like southlake does you'll get a bunch of anti-school board members and if you are [ indiscernible ] the progressives will win out.

>> they are losing a lot of those races, mom's for liberty, but it is having an impact because of the laws and the pressure campaign. what teacher wants to be accused of trying to harm kids or indoctrinate them? i think we are seeing a lot in this current moment fear and censorship. >> teachers putting away their classroom libraries which is really sad to think about. or taking out the book so that maybe the district made an effort to put in to make it more welcoming environment. one of the crazy anecdotes in the book, i think in southlake, involves teacher training after one of these laws passed where an administrator tells teachers that they basically had to teach both sides of the holocaust.

i think i remember the stories on that when it happened because it was so insane. i wonder if this is one of the consequences of trying to tell teachers to teach history without upsetting anyone. or saying we have to be neutral. i think one of the teachers that you quoted said how can you be neutral about the holocaust or racism? i wonder, is that something you talk to teachers about? this idea of how can you be neutral when you teach certain types of history. >> this strikes at the heart of what we talked about in the beginning which is how do we talk about our history about the american story and who we are. that incident that you talked about in southlake, texas passed its version of anti-crt law even though the law did not mention critical race theory, it was promoted that way.

it included this line that has been repeated across the country that says, if a teacher is going to discuss or present a currently controversial subject, they need to present both sides or opposing viewpoints on that subject. what is open for interpretation is what is currently controversial? in southlake, the administrator gave that instruction, if you have a book on the holocaust, make sure you have one that shows an opposing perspective of course, i had a recording of this moment when it happened, the teachers were like, what? what is the opposing perspective? am i supposed to add a book to my classroom library from a holocaust denier or from the perspective of why the did what they did justifying it.

how does that apply to slavery? should i have content in my classroom kind of making the case for why slavery was for america. what was or stood out to me in that story and it flew under the radar in the initial backlash and outrage that spread throughout the country is in the audio you can hear the administrator respond to one of the teachers who said what do you mean present both sides of the holocaust? the administrator said believe me mama that's come up. that stands out to me. what is happening in a lot of these cases, these are not widely held beliefs in society. it does not represent this idea of maybe the holocaust was fake. that is not a majority opinion. if one or a couple vocal parents

make it a problem for you, it is a problem for you. these laws combined with the kind of growing visibility in our culture, these anti-somatic views and white nationalist abuse, christian nationalist abuse it gives that minority vote, even that very loan parent a veto power. it might offend that parents so we cannot tell any of the kids. we have to -- it will affect how all the kids learn about these events. i think that is part of what we have seen in these cases. with the library book challenge, one parent who is really upset because of some of the policy changes has the power to affect what thousands of other kids at that school read.

>> i live in new york and a couple years ago i had one of my kids teachers send messages to ask all the parents if they were countable having the kids watch a movie about ruby bridges. i wonder if this is. there is so much less of that happening in new york and i just wondered if it was something that she always did, or if it was something that was an awareness that maybe it would be best to ask on the front end. i did not ask her why i just said of course i'm fine with it. it was just interesting to me just knowing what was going on in the country. one of the things that i thought was heartbreaking in the book i don't want to give away names or anything, some of the teachers that objected or raised concerns about the issues really had horrible

things happen to them and they had their livelihood threatened if they were going to continue to teach and work. i don't want to give away names, but can you talk about the issue of teachers facing threats. >> i guess this is the national natural consequence of the narrative that was pushed from the right for years and years that schools are working to indoctrinate your kids. they want to teach white children to hate themselves and kind of evolving out of that was this idea that teachers are trying to groom your kids into lgbtq lifestyles. they want to push transgender identity onto your kids and get them to change genders. these are not just some people making these allegations this is out of the mouth of governor

ron desantis in florida and greg abbott in texas. it only makes sense if that message is the only one being projected in the world that people will believe it and they are going to look for who is doing this. excuse me. in the book, i tell the story of some teachers, a couple in particular, and a librarian, who became the target of those allegations. baseless, but real in terms of how they affect you that you have books in your classroom that depict lgbtq relationships even though it is a kids book and there's no sex it show that and that is evidence you're trying to groom my kid into this lifestyle, you are a prator. you are a rumor.

i include in the book, you really start to understand some of these things when it happens to you i include in the book during the midst of reporting on the stories a couple of years ago when one of those allegations was leveled at me. i did a story about library books, lgbtq library books coming off the shelves in the suburban houston school district. for that story i spoke to a17- year-old high school senior who wanted me to know that because her parents are not accepting of lgbtq people and identities she is not out to them. her school library is this one spot where she feels safe to read and see herself reflected in what she is reading . now that is under a threat. i was showing the stakes of what is happening. the day after the story ran my

phone started exploding with phone calls and text messages from numbers i did not recognize. one of them finally texted can you get on the phone, i just sent my email address. this mom followed up, who was not connected to the student in any way preachy email to say we saw your story, we saw that you spoke with a 17-year-old without her parents knowledge about her sexuality. she said this is one of the first steps towards grooming and we feel this is grounds to file a police report with katy police for soliciting a minor, basically being a child -- we get messages sometime and it's really mean. after two decades of doing this

you let it roll off. when the criticism is in good faith you respond but in the most part you get thick skin doing this. this hurt me. this allegation, even though i knew it was nonsense and i knew there was no legal basis for their threat and this would just go away, it knocked the wind out of me. i remember going down, my wife was home and i went downstairs and i felt really emotional and i just needed to sit down and tell her what happened. i felt sick and i felt like, why am i in this business? it was not a lasting thought but i thought why am i doing this? i can do something other than this then being accused of being a child predator. then, later after i overcame those thoughts it hit me like imagine how librarians are

feeling. some school library and who is not used to hate mail, is not a public figure, does not put her name on top of articles, just stocks shelves and tries to hand kids books that they would like to read. how to those allegations affect those people. it must be devastating to them and have a huge impact on their ability to do their job and it probably makes a lot of them think i should not do this anymore maybe i do not want to be a librarian maybe i do not want to be in the classroom. that is a loss for everyone. >> it is scary. you do not know whom i show up at your house or seek you out at work. it is a terrifying threat. you can understand why someone might back array away from a

job and say i should do something else. you mentioned something that i want to get back to which is this idea of what started as a lot of conservative claims about crt morphed overtime to being focused on lgbtq rights and very specifically transgender rights and chris rufo who tends to be rather candid in his comments about political strategy. he said the sexuality issues were more exclusive politically than race issues how is that a strategy that is a call back to the past? something we have seen before? >> while researching the book i re-familiarized myself with a chapter in history that i was vaguely familiar with in the late 1970s. in florida there was a push by anita bryant who

was famous at that point for being a spokesperson for florida orange juice, i think. she is a christian conservative . she waged a all-out campaign in miami-dade county to oppose a local ordinance that would have required private employers to not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. the fear was, from her perspective that homosexuals are going to be and my kids classroom. she and her allies waged a vicious ugly campaign that spread across the country. a wanted to save our children, it is language we hear today and they falsely depicted allpeople as child predators who were out to recruit kids to their lifestyle and she got a lot of

support in the end, in the ensuing decades, we have all grown up in the world now, if you are my age, that conversation shifted. we saw those types of ordinances preventing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation spread across the country. we saw same-sex marriage legalized in 2015 and i think a lot of people got lulled into the idea this is why we have beliefs. i think a lot of people maybe thought it was settled. what we have seen in this moment is it is not. it is not the backlash against transgender people or

transgender identities, it is reacting to more recent changes in the way young people view gender and how we talk about it. there has been a change in the last 10 years. the backlash in schools on what books are on shelves and what teachers talk about is not just about gender, it is also about anti-gay commentary to this idea that how dare you have a book inside the school that shows two male penguins raising a chick together, it's a true story, that will teach my kid that it's okay to be gay. those books are coming off shelves, those harmless books that show the reality of life in america that some of your classmates do have two moms and we do not make fun of them for

that, that's nothing wrong with that. these are just standard kindness things. the backlash is clearly against that. there is a significant segment of our population that is not on board. we are never on board with these changes and they see this as an attempt to take their kids to change their kids, to push the lgbtq agenda onto their children that's why they label it parents rights, parents have a right to decide what their kids should learn or know about . it ends up being stripping the rights away from parents who absolutely want their kids to learn those things. >> that is one of the things that struck me when i was reading is this idea parental

freedom, parental rights and educational freedom. if that was really for everyone , then conservatives who favor school choice and parental freedom would have to also support schools that affirm lgbtq families alongside religious schools because that would be the idea of every family actually choosing for themselves. it seems like that is not what it really is about. this idea of freedom is really freedom if you agree with these views, these views over here that are very clear that we are yelling about at the school board. it is not actually choice and freedom for everyone great i thought that was a theme. >> i don't want to paint with a two-pronged brush because there probably are parents identify with the parents rights movement who mean it and just want to opt out policies.

i can see, we can see not everyone who says they are fighting for parents rights are actually committed to it. you can see that in the policies. we have seen this proliferated in school districts and state legislation that says teachers can refer to transgender children by their birth name and the sex they were assigned at birth even in cases when parents have signed forms saying they do not want them to do that. basically giving the teachers the right to ignore the wishes of the parents based on the teachers religious or moral views. that is not a parents right. the parents as this is who my kid is and i wanted to refer to them in the school system but you don't have to, as journalist words mean something and we

need to note when the language does not match reality and that is the case where you cannot call that parent rights. that is false. >> that is one of the things i think about who is it freedom for? who is it choice for? there are a lot of people who support school choice for a variety of reasons. in the arguments about it and the language where it sounds like a simple concept, it is not when you start digging beneath the surface. one thing i wanted to ask, this is not a easy thing to spend years of your life reporting and we talked about some of the attacks on you as a journalist. now that you're finished with the book, what is the take away and what are you hoping readers get from it? >> i think the biggest thing that i wanted from the beginning was to take some of

the temperature down in terms of the allegations and the narrative and to complicate that with the stories of students and teachers and parents who are real people who mean well who are not bad people and to just show where they are coming from and to show how all of this toxic rhetoric and in some cases false allegations is harming real people and communities and needlessly tearing apart communities. that is a bigger lesson, not just about school politics but politics generally this tribal situation we are in where the other side, i don't just disagree that they are evil and in some cases we hear you are being guided by satan some of the allegations we hear, this

is dangerous. it has real impacts even if it is just words it has impacts on people and it makes people feel unsafe and unwelcome in their communities. i do not think the majority of americans want that. i hope that if i can just share these stories in depth, people may disagree on it and there should be disagreement on what are the policy solutions and what is a way to address these if we can agree on basic facts and show some of the people have been accused of wanting to harm kids and teach them horrible things, you may disagree with them on their politics or their approach, this idea that they are out to harm kids i want to challenge that and show stories of what is happening

>> i want to thank you for doing that for your work. also, i hope that despite some of the nasty things that have occurred that you continue writing about education and working with education. welcome to the fold of education reporters, we will never let you go. thank you so much for the conversation. >> thank you for such thoughtful questions. >> if you are enjoying book tv sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive the schedule of upcoming programs, author discussions, festivals and more. book tv every sunday on c-span2 or online at book tv.org television for serious readers. >> with one of the tightest

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the policy is debated and decided all with the support of america's cable companies. c-span, 45 years and counting , powered by cable. i bet each one of you came here today already knowing who tammy bruce is. you do, that's why you're here create you watch her on fox news, you read her articles in usa today, "new york times" and host of other national publications. she has been published just about everywhere. most of us in this room are lifelong staunch republicans. we are conservative. we are used to hearing at these meetings almost every month a conservative speaker. a republican speaker. today we will have a slightly different perspective. are speaker today has a slightly different background historically than some of us here in the room. she started

out as a staunch and avid democrat. she worked on campaigns of two of the most liberal senators in the history of california boxer and feinstein. we forgive you read we forgive you. she worked on the campaign of bill clinton, you remember that guy? back when democrats actually had people that were just left of center and not so far left that we could not see it anymore . she was a registered dem. in 2008 she said no more. she became unaffiliated. here's the thing, even as a registered democrat, she voted for ronald reagan twice. she has voted for every republican candidate since george w. bush in 2000. may be registered as

unaffiliated, but she voted her heart, she voted her conservative values and then she became a proponent and a great champion for the conservative movement. as of last year she is now a registered republican. welcome to the club, tammy. tammy is a best-selling auth i think you have seen some of her books, the new thought police was at first, the death of right and wrong and her latest fear itself, exposing the left mind killing agenda. she is a los angeles native, she majored in political science at the university of southern california. i know we cringe when we hear california, that was back then, now she is going for a phd, soon she will be dr. bruce. at this point in time i would like to give a warm carolina

welcome to tammy bruce. >> [ applause ] >> thank you. thank you. i am sorry about all of that other stuff. i am sorry about all that other stuff. thank you very much. i am a republican now. because of the indoctrination that occurs, it makes me nervous. i think we have about 30, 40 minutes here and it takes me that long to say hello. i am talking and i cannot shut up, so i learned how to make a living at that. i appreciate being here. certainly, carol, thank you very much, and the republican

women of greater charlotte, i have never been here before, it is beautiful. you all have been so lovely. i know there were different when there were rocking chairs in the airport. i thought i am not leaving. one of my scottish ancestors landed in the 1600s in south carolina, john cooper. there are many troublemakers in my life. it is a pleasure and an honor. primarily, new book, first one in 17 years. i know also, not that anything happened last night, and i don't want to take too much time addressing the debate, also, of course, as we pay tribute to, as carol so beautifully did, september 11th. it is a reminder, especially this anniversary, everything can change in a moment. we cannot live that way, we

have to presume. we look towards each day regardless of what we face being these mortal creatures. the fact is, we are blessed with being americans. we are americans first whether we are in the south, midwest, north, west, california is a beautiful state, but there has been a home invasion robbery of the entire state. we have worked to do. i think my being here and what america has provided someone like myself having been a cart pusher for the left and still informed by the same ideals, the same values at that time, which i have to say was quite some time ago, suddenly that happened and i don't know how. it was 40 years ago. that's a long time. yet, my values, i think all of our values and a conservative framework is about personal

freedom pre-. being able to live lives that best suit us that requires us to be middle- class and not have the government dictate to our businesses or our personal lives what we can and cannot do, but that also requires a foundational basis of values where we can be trusted. how we approach life can be trusted. that, of course keeps government out of thinking that they can interfere with the choices that we make. that is an american sensibility. it used to be, as we see with bobby kennedy junior, it used to be a democrat value. then that was hijacked as we know. things change. it is a matter being nimble and understanding that. i think there are probably a few of you here who were democrats and are now republicans. is that the case? let me start,

my timeline, just a reminder, c- span is here they report straight across , there will be a chance for questions and again, our timeline is short and we will just get direct questions from you and him as you can tell, i still have not gotten to my point yet, i will do my best to be as concise as possible. i enjoy being here. i love my work at fox, i have been there 20 years now. i have learned how to say things in about three minutes. this gives me -- i very much enjoy this and i appreciate being invited and being here. briefly on the debate. you will see a lot of different points of views. from my experience working on both the left and the right, my experience working with candidates, my experience in communications to some degree

crisis communication and being in media which began in 1993 and radio, my expense with the bates is never, with the exception of the joe biden debacle some people will have done a little bit better than the other person what matters off is the impression that we all have ideas about, last night could have been an inflection moment. >> what i am seeing is it is not going to move the needle terribly but emotions drive the betting markets. i can tell you already the six are now going to vote or from or are leaning towards trump. three for harris, one still

undecided. so when we think about these conversations and we saw this in the panels afterwards. they have several undecided people in various places in the voter panels immediately after the debate. without exception, what was noticed was that she did not answer the details of the questions. there was a lot of words, a lot of stuff going on, but the very first question, what have you done to help americans be better off in the last four years, are they better off? immediately, shana canned answer. she didn't at all into the quest and. that's the question on everyone's minds. it's not partisan. it crosses the partisan line and she did not answer it. and i knew what the natural follow-up would have been, madam vice president, thank you, but you didn't answer the question. when that did not happen, i knew what the trajectory would be, and what i would hope for,

and i believe now is that it was so obvious that it was a distillation of what's already been happening. lots of words, other people something for her. flip-flops, distractions, confusions. in the new york times asiana pull from just a few days ago, a majority of people said we need some details. we need details on these issues and i thought this is going to put up the cut and paste of the biden what on policy and policy pages, meaning that they noticed that and then you but it still was meaningless. there was no detail. she talks about her plans with no details. my feeling is that we are seeing it unfold now, that they are trying to move independence and the some undecideds that exist and when we think about pennsylvania, is what happened last night, or taylor swift

endorsement -- i don't think the minors or the oil workers or the fractures are waiting for taylor's opinion. all of us have an opinion and that's fine. bottom line is while we all would have done something differently, there's all kinds of opinions. the bottom line is you know trump -- what i've always said on the air and on the few occasions i've been able to speak to him directly. is that his greatest strength is himself. the thing that separates them out from everyone else is the fact that he is himself. you know exactly what you're getting. last night was frankly classic trump. he talks about all kinds of things. he is a nice guy. he is betrayed is not being, he is. he is doing all of this because he cares about the country. he knows what's at stake and i

think the emotional reaction is now we get to my book, the emotional reaction is based in what is at stake. on we know that our lives are at stake in this election, freedom of speech, the nature of what this country stands for is at stake. elon musk says we are already in the bankruptcy process, that it's unsustainable and we are hearing from the harris camp no plan about -- she is part of what has driven us to this point. there are many things you've seen that have been discussed and will continue to be discussed. when people sit down still today, nothing has changed when it comes to average americans not knowing if they are going to be able to get to work because of gas. not knowing what dinner will be. we are very fortunate. many americans are, thank god, because of this nation, but still, too many families, wondering what will the protein be tonight, kids are going back to school, what can i send with my kid for lunch?

having to decide. a new poll saying americans have been skipping meals. it's the 21st century. the greatest country in human history. american citizens are getting meals. unacceptable. of course, we know trump has a history. the greatest economy in human history, energy dependence, et cetera. one american sit down tonight and as independents are attending -- people say trump lost the debate. i think we need to wait and see how this washes out. we need to wait and see. i don't looks much at the betting market because like all bedding, they go up and down. let me move to my book. i believe people win. that has not changed. the issues have not changed and they will not change.

her style will not change. last night was a distillation of what they've done. try to busy you up with noise and distractions, pretend to be something they are not, while trying to make you afraid of what republicans and conservatives stand for. that's what the technique is. that's why i wrote this book. first book in 17 years. on the issue of your being used to control society. no matter what happens even in the election, when we look back and as we look forward, the one thing that's consistent around the world is using emotion to control the population. and not happiness, right? not the fake joy, but then coasting up trump is going to be a dictator on day one. it's successful. it's an ancient technique, hundreds of years. it has of course been used all around the world by people who,

you know, have nothing else to control you. when you're involved, and you move through the fear framework, your brand stops using logic and reason, because you move into fight or flight mode, and then you react emotionally exclusively. you don't stop to think about repercussions. what's the next day going to bring you? you stay in the moment and you're not thinking about what else might be possible. so that has been the left strategy everywhere. in our case, we saw that many people were aware of the power of that during covid. is there a bottle of water? can i get water or a glass of water? that would be great to get started -- i think the americans were educated about the nature of how -- and we saw how quickly -- thank you very much. thank you, sir. hmmm -- americans, we were

told, immediately, we needed to stay six feet away from each other, we needed to wear masks. this was -- you cannot visit loved ones who are hospitalized. you cannot see your family and friends if they are in a nursing home. people died alone. women gave birth alone. all of these strange decisions that we made, and where we were willing to go in the midst of that, because the government said this is the way to do it. now earlier this year, they admitted that the six feet away from each other, which we knew was a third, admitted that he did not know where it came from. i think it was delivered by leprechauns. it's hard to say. he says yeah, i think the phrase was just sort of showed up. and i don't know, is that a new scientific theorem? the showed up the room. and of course with the masks. he admitted that maybe about

10% efficacy if worn properly. the and 95's or whatever those are called. but putting a bandanna around your face in other words meant nothing. it was not just about covering your face. what is important here is that there was no real scientific decision-making or drive to that. it was fear. and i think that it manifested in this framework of realizing what was possible and what can we get done. what strange rule would people follow if they were afraid enough, and so that's where many of these kinds of issues began to manifest. canada as an example. the book doesn't talk about covid. there's elements in there. it's about global warming. the other giant boogie man. amorphous, like covid. undefinable. it can be whatever it is you

describe. canada though during this period of time -- a whistleblower, i guess. the military decided to see what rural canadians would do if there was a wild pack of wolves on the list because let's see what they would do if they were afraid. an actual program. they sent flyers out to residents saying watch out for the crazy wolves. then they set up speakers of wolves howling. the government. and it was this division of the military that was determined to see what -- how could people be pushed under a framework of fear like this? in england, during covid, and a whistleblower leaked messages online between government officials involved in the covid response, saying that they

would hold back news about a new variant in order to make sure it had the biggest impact possible, and that they needed to scare the pants off of people because the british were not responding properly. there's open conversations about using fear, withholding news, releasing it at certain times and now many groups there are acknowledging what they did was unconscionable. manipulating the british people over covid. that happened everywhere. everywhere, governments got excited about how to manipulate people. on the issue of fear, though, this is the conundrum. fear itself, fear per se is not the problem. fear is a gift. a friend of mine, gavin, he wrote a seminal book called the gift of fear. i met him during the o.j.

simpson killings and trials. he is a security expert. his point is that fear is a useful thing, but it is meant to be transitory. if you're in your car and you see a train coming and you're too close to the tracks, you get afraid and you backup. if you see that your door is slightly ajar and you've been out, you know to not going, you backup. and you take action. if you notice something, your daughter is having problems and she is not talking to you or physically she has changed or lost too much weight or something is going on. fear is the initial reaction but then you act. it spurs you to take moves that you normally would not take, right. there's a man walking on the street, it's a quiet street. the only other person walking on the street. he crosses the street. ladies, i think we've all experienced the situation where

our sense, the instinct of fear , it also tells us in the moment when we need to make a change. we need to cross the street ourselves. we need to not presume. the one time i was mobbed was in los angeles. when i was much younger. i was on the left and there were two young men on the street. and i was determined not to be afraid. and to give them the benefit of the doubt, even though my instinct was to get out of your car. i got out of my car. and it was a mistake. and i was slugged, knocked unconscious, fell, thank goodness on the lawn of a neighbor's home. there was coming to, he had been over me and was reaching for -- at the time i carry a bag. was grasping my bag, but the light came on on the house in which the lawn on which i fell, which means i must have made a

noise. eventually, i got my bag back. it was a couple of neighborhood kids who were trying out for the gang. my instinct -- and with the left wants you to do is ignore your instincts. they want you to question your values. they want you to ignore the problems we are facing. they want you to think if you're concerned about children or what is transparent to your bigot. or you can't be trusted or something is wrong with you or you live in the past. i would love to live in the past when we had the strongest economy in the world. i would love to live in the past when we don't have world wars breaking out. that's part of it, as well. the fear. there's chapters on this, as well about the issue of language. the fear of being called a name. the new woke framework is also meant for you to be afraid of being shunned, canceled, losing your job. that's all become normalized. being publicly shamed, and

that's all to keep you quiet. it's a new censorship through fear. by the way, poverty is also a powerful sensor. if you can affect an economy where people cannot come support their favorite groups or candidates, if you cannot afford to travel to go to an event, if you can't afford to live in the neighborhood you want to live in or school whatever, you're trapped. you are trapped. that is the ultimate censor . you can't be heard or support people you want to support. you cannot move, you cannot leave the. that is what the left works for. all of these things rely on the fear. today the fear is -- this is why people think it's a failed economy. it's not a failed economy. if your intention is to keep people trapped, make them unable to, you know, move out of a certain state.

make people unable to speak up because they will lose the two jobs that they now have to have in order to pay the rent. fear of not being able to pay that rent if something happens is what more and more americans, the majority are living paycheck to paycheck. that is not normal in our society. a society of entrepreneurs and the free market and capitalism. every 20 years, there seems to be a problem that puts us on our heels economically. funny enough. every generation kind of gets me capped a little bit, and we are at that inflection point again, with the direction that no one talks about when it comes to the economy for next year. and that, the bad economy raises fear. for the left, you saw this in the debate. you see this with the rhetoric. the issue is if you're hearing rhetoric about -- as an

example, the border, that's worth being afraid of. we have terrorists on the watch list coming through. we have people being imported into the country that don't embrace the values. that are in small towns attacking park wildlife and eating it. things that are so shocking that it's worth fear, but what you're being asked to do and being told on these things is not to be afraid and retreat. it's about all right. on the transitory position, what do we do? the gauge becomes as the left tells you, and this will be my last point, because i know we are out of time. as the left tells you about global warming, there's no real -- there's no real solution. banning plastic straws. i'm sorry. or turning off -- don't use the air conditioner. be uncomfortable. supper. don't use cars.

fossil fuels. electric vehicles. of course, where does electricity come from? they don't like to discuss that so much. but it's all about the fear that makes you choose strange options or pushes you into a dynamic that makes no sense whatsoever, and cost money and more government, but there is never an end point. every 10 or 15 years, there is a new scary thing that the world is going to end in 10 or 15 years. i detail it. every 20 years, there is some new thing. the thing was in 12 years the world is going to and. it's usually 20 years. that's to have you stop thinking critically. we are going to save the planet. you have to not use straws or drive. and you think okay, whatever i can do. what is never addressed is china. china being the contributor. it's eight rivers in china. two in indonesia that provide

all the pollution into the world's oceans. banning plastic straws in the united states is not a solution. but of course, it makes you think you've done something and then you retreat from an issue. we all of the environment but it makes you think you have done your part when none of us have done our part. that is the issue. and it continues. it will never be solved. fear -- and this is about killing your mind. on every issue. it is meant to stop your critical thinking. if you do think critically, there's punishments for the criticism. then you made your self comply. they want you to come by because the punishments if you don't comply her to severe and it has to be on issues where you don't want to talk details. there are no details. i can't tell you how that solves the problem, or the economy or anything else, so i

think that this unfortunately is an evergreen book. it can be applied everywhere. i go through what happened to cavanaugh in the confirmation hearing. what happened to trump, j.k. rowling on the issue of gender reassignment surgeries and children. that all of those are meant as messages to the rest of you that if we can do it to them, we can do it to you. that's my message. that's a pretty obvious message. if we can do it to them, no one is safe, and that is their point. on issues -- they are trying to find out. i hope they are wrong. we will take some questions but on issues like can we get them to say that these agents of the state and schools are better for their children and they are? can we get parents to abandon their children? can we get adults to look away when children become objects of sexual politics? that's what it is. sexual politics. sexualization of children.

the most innocent time. irreversible situations. can they frighten you into accepting it or fear of criticism or punishment? that is all of our positions right now, and it's a weak house. but it can be defeated. i think we are seeing a play out in the election right now, that you're going to be thinking about for the left, abortion and fear and if there is a fear-based message with there is no solution, that's the mind killing aspect. there's a genuine thing to be afraid of where there is a solution like with the border policies, dealing with mexico, building a wall, acting on the solutions, that's a different framework. it's the webinars and have an important aspect that leads our

lives. they want you to retreat and be too afraid to engage. all of you here are not in that position. you are in this room. this organization is not in that position. it is an honor and pleasure to be here. every day, we have to talk about these things. so thank you very much and i will take some questions now. >> tammy that was -- all right. i'm going to make sure this one is on. you can probably hear me, right? >> for the c-span -- >> we have another microphone out there. >> there's a different microphone? great. >> we surprised you. we started a little bit early so we could have extra time with tammy for questions. we have a little bit more time than we promised her. here's the caveat. you've all been to the comfortable room where the question becomes a speech so we will ask that you ask questions and you know, safe comments. just ask your question.

with that, it would like to ask the first question? yes, thank you. >> do we have a microphone in the field? i think it is that one, yeah. i think it's that one. all right. yes, and then of course, my issue is my answer is 20 minutes long, so i'm going to follow that rule, as well. so we can get as many of you here as possible. it's a national audience. i think people generally don't hear from north carolinians. they don't hear from you. it's an important time and i think they deserve to hear from you. yes, sir. >> i want to say welcome to the old north state where cornwallis met the hornets nest. >> there we go. >> my question is what other news media sources away from our beloved fox news do you consider reliable and dependable and where you listen

for other information? >> that's a good question. all of the legacy media is a problem. we certainly saw that last night. i think that's going to be the legacy of that debate. people will remember that kind of behavior of the moderators in the meantime. but i think that right now, it really is -- i have gotten a lot more active on twitter, which is now x. we would not be hearing about anything that now is valuable. i'm very active on there. there's so many other different layers about articles and reporting. of course, you have to be able to sort through things and control the feed. i'm on twitter. there's videos now, longform videos. i put one up before i came

here. subscriptions that helps creators make a little bit of money. they're going to be starting up tv. is not going to stop. it's going to be remarkable. so i'm thinking here. my column is a group, the conservative alternative to the aarp. they also have articles and material. i'm proud of being associated with them. unless there is a major change, where you want people tended to fox. i read about them a little bit in the book. they have more liberals and democrats listening to fox than cnn or msnbc. because everyone knows they need information. the correct variety of information to decide what you're going to do for your family and for yourselves. i have to say i don't have it.

i'm thinking about my browser online. where i might go. my channel is on fox or it's on hallmark. in the magnolia channel. main cabin masters. true crime. and of course, fox nation. the top 10 of the downloaded apps. fox nation, the streaming service. so i had to tell you until we see more and things settle down, i think right now, it's limited, and its social media. >> this could not have been a more perfect day to talk about fear. i met with a group of students last week at appellation state university. that was their main subject. it was fear about taxes, fear that they would never be able to buy a home, fear that they would never be able to start a family. these are there real fears.

what do you suggest we would say to them, number one, to have them vote right? but number two, to alleviate their fears so that they are comfortable? >> that's a great question. we all have fear of what is happening. that is what then provokes -- the thing is you are afraid you can't get a house, so here she is with money from the government for you to buy house. california. gavin newsom vetoed it but they passed a bill for like $150,000 for illegal aliens only to buy a house. the moment they create enough fear for the price controls. which we know have destroyed every country that is ever implemented them. but the left has to because their policies make prices impossible as we are now experiencing. eggs. things are double digits. 10%, 50%, 80% in some cases. what is the government's answer? we are going to price control those greedy freshers who are making 1.6% profit.

if you're a price gouge her, you're a very bad one. at least couch 10%. but it is the excuse to say you can't live on your own. the government has to save you. the answer to those young people is first of all, to talk about it with their friends. you know that this is not normal. the fear dynamic in this situation, not having a child because of global warming as an example. maybe it's your child will solve the problems that we've all been experiencing. but it's being able to talk with people to recognize this is not organic, it's not normal and it's unsustainable. we don't want it to collapse where we have to remake the country. we want to stop it before it continues to do damage. and that young people in the

perfect position to recognize that they are afraid and then to decide. it's the power of the decision. i talk about this at the end of the book. the decision to not be governed by fear, to reengage your critical mind and make decisions accordingly and presume that what you are hearing that's making you so afraid can be changed and that it should not stop you from living your life. it is a decision each day. yes? >> first of all, welcome to the tar heel state. congratulations on your new book. fantastic. it's a must read. as we get into the critical stage of the election, all of us are going to have an opportunity to speak to an independent undecided. if you were to have what i would call an elevator speech moment -- >> that's not my specialty, though, as you can tell. i have the two hour flight moments. >> but an opportunity to share briefly with someone who has listened to both candidates, not political. not following it closely.

but you're a republican or you're going to vote republican ticket, why? what am i missing? >> i would say don't think that you are voting a certain party's ticket. that you are voting for the people who have behaved in a certain way, delivered on the issues. who has delivered what on the issues? forget the parties. kamala harris in the last four years of the destruction of the economy, wars, israel being obliterated by terrorists on october 7th. we are coming up to a year on that attacking israel. russia and ukraine, the debacle of afghanistan which is the key to making the bad guys think they can do what they wanted. a story about china and taiwan. the decision is clear, if you like the last four years, -- if you the last four years, vote for kamala harris and you will get it on steroids. if you -- thank goodness's

success is recent enough where you can point to his success. strongest economy in human history. energy dependence. we were an exporter. that's important because when there's more oil on the market, the price of oil goes down. russia and iran rely on their income. the gdp is oil money. they can do things when oil is high, when the price of oil goes down, they are certainly not relying on tourism like france. so france can rely on tourism. iran can't. it means that's why you have less adventurism, because there is no money for the bad guys unless of course you send them pallets of billions of dollars as obama did with iran. and shut them out. the elevator speeches, it's not about parties. this is about who has done what.

you're making a choice about who to go out with for a night on the town. you choose the person who just got out of jail and did a home invasion robbery, and has general life problems and does not tell you the truth and is always lying to you, or do you choose the person who's got a history that proves that they are reliable? it's that simple. the left has made you nervous about voting for republicans because hitler. hitler. that's the lie. if you want more of this insanity, none of this is normal. it was created on a dime by, by biden and the green new deal spending disguised as the inflation reduction act. biden admitted it a week or so ago, saying we should have called it what it was. that is the inflation. the billions in spending, billions for electric vehicle chargers across the country. i think it was 40 or 50 billion. they built eight chargers.

eight. so that was obviously too elevator rides. i hope that worked. yes, sir. >> hi, tammy. welcome to charlotte. i'm charlie dunn. my question is this, the great fear that i have is that the outcome of this election could be dependent primarily on one issue, and that's abortion. am i justified in my fear? >> well, you know, the big issue still, number one, is the economy. and this is what i've said to republicans, because people got upset when trump took the phrase reproductive rights. to cast abortion is some kind of freedom is, is a lie.

70% of women we know have an abortion, if they had the money to keep the child, they would. seven out of 10. abortions are either because they are financially, they believe they are financially incapable, working two jobs, going to school, or there is pressure from the outside. someone else is saying that to them and pushing them, and they don't have the financial stability or the personal life stability to be able to resist the outside pressure. usually, it would be a man or parents saying we can't afford this, don't do this. so having to choose an abortion because you don't have enough money in the united states of america to have a child, how is that a choice? it's not. i was the product of an affair. my mother was 40, unemployed. not a great decision maker at

the time. having an affair with a married man. and she got pregnant. pre-birth control pills. and he loved her. he was involved allegedly with the mob. and he left her and after -- i think maybe two months, a man came up to the door with an envelope with about $10,000. this is in 1962, which was a lot of money. when you had to go to mexico or pay a doctor enough to do it. they said here you go. we need to get rid of this. and she said okay, and then she kept the money and she kept the baby. i'm grateful. but, but that was a choice. she had the money. that was a choice.

don't have the left -- i'm sick and tired of it. having the left cast women who are living in an economy that doesn't allow them to be able to address an emergency, a health emergency, a pregnancy, a child emergency, because they don't have the money, because they don't have the right jobs and they lost all their savings and their house is underwater and birth control failed, which it does sometimes. sometimes you're not thinking and things happen. seven out of 10 of those women, though, would say i want an economy where women can say -- this is why abortions went down during trump's presidency more than anything else. women could say wait a minute, i can do this. i want women to say that on every single issue. when you want to have a franchise. wait a minute, i can do this. you want to move into a house and get out of that apartment in the urban area. wait a minute, i can do this. you're not going to be a millionaire. you're going to just be living somewhere else. you can pay for the move.

everyone is fighting. they don't want school vouchers because the left wants you in the indoctrination center. you can say wait a minute, i can do this, i can pay for that school. with abortion, the same situation, when you are there. my mother telling me the story was she got the cash, and it was like oh, that's what you're supposed to do, she was a little bit afraid of the group. she had her sister with her and my mother said exactly that phrase. you know, i can do this. and here i am. how many are not here because they did not have a choice? don't believe this pro-choice garbage. reproductive rights is a conservative issue because it is an economic issue and more women will have more freedom to make that choice. to your point, oh my god, everything is so awful but they're going to give me abortion. the good abortion, even though i can't pay my rent and there's drugs on the street and my cats

been stolen. what am i going to do? where are we going to live next week? have to join the military so we have some money and then you will be sent off to fight the middle eastern war. what life is that? but hey, ladies, it's okay, you can have an abortion. that is certainly not feminist. now the truth of that has to be called out for what it is because women don't want the government telling them what they can do with her body which would include forced vaccinations in order to keep your job. you want choices. vaccinations are good. we know the history of vaccinations, but we want information, we want trials, we want to know what the results are. we want to know what's going to happen to our baby with the vaccinations for children. choices involve information and not government coercion, which is what abortion is now in this country with seven out of 10.

that's government coercion like china, which is simply more obvious about it. our government and the left and the democrats are saying this is empowering. no woman i know who has had an abortion or miscarried has ever forgotten that child. sometimes -- yeah. would have been 12 this year, or i wonder what that did what have been doing. it never leaves you. i've never had, thank god, to go through that but i've had many friends you have had both experiences and it changes them, and the left is lying because they say don't worry, you have to live in the city and you don't have any money but we can get you that abortion. how do they cast this has some empowerment. see what happens when you ask me a question? because i thought on that issue on the basis that i don't think

the government should be telling us how to live our lives. that informs my conservative ideal to this day about independence and freedom from the overarching government that uses all of these other reasons to try to really nice. so that was my answer. i'm sorry. i think that's it. but it will be the economy. it is the economy that drives this election for all the right reasons. women understand being able to get an abortion means nothing. if i'm living on the street, that's the issue. all right, thank you, everyone. thank you very much. appreciate it. we have somebody who's not following the rules. >> sorry, we're out of time for questions. sorry about that. tammy, thank you so much. that was great, really fantastic. come on, a big round of applause for tammy bruce.

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profound impact on the country. in this program, milton and rose friedman's free to choose, a personal statement published in 1980 as a companion to their 10 part pbs series. milton and rose friedman's free to choose advocated free-market capitalism. both milton and rosa studied at the university of chicago where milton later served as faculty in the economics department for almost 30 years. they cowrote several books together and their relationship was described as extremely close intellectual fellowship. in 1976, milton friedman won the nobel prize in economics and in 1988, was awarded the presidential medal of freedom. he served as advisor to both president reagan and british prime minister margaret thatcher. free to choose argued for a constitutional restraint on the power of government to interfere with free markets and criticize what they saw as wasteful government spending on welfare and other social safety net programs.

the book was one of the best- selling nonfiction books of 1980. >> welcome to books that shaped america. our c-span series that looks at how books throughout our history have influenced who we are today. this 10 week series has been exploring different eras, different topics and different viewpoints, and we are glad you are with us for this walk- through. tonight, it's a look at the economy, the role of government, how we teach children and her policy issues. it's all through the eyes of milton and rose friedman. in 1980, theydeveloped a series for public tv called free to choose, turning it into a best-selling book. many of the friedman's ideas were controversial and spark heated debate but the book has influence political figures and others for decades. our guest tonight, to help us understand the impact of free to choose is one even stein,

continuing lecturer in the economics department at uc santa barbara. he is also the author of this book, milton friedman, a biography. let's start with some facts d figures about 1980. the population was about 226 million. about 100 million less than it is today. the president was jimmy carter. of course, he lost to ronald reagan earlier that year. the inflation rate, compared to about 6.9% today. the unemployment rate was at 7.5%. today, about 3%. a 30 year fixed your mortgage, 13.7% and climbing. there was a recession in 1980, and another one was to come. and the economy feel like the people in 1980? >> i think that the economy was

the number one issue in the 1980 campaign between jimmy carter and ronald reagan. and there's no question that ronald reagan was very significantly influenced by milton friedman and his policies and his program. and he ran on the economy before bill clinton put forward it's the economy, stupid. ronald reagan was asking, what you think about inflation? what do you think about unemployment? and inflation was really the issue of the day. the united states had not experienced double-digit inflation in peacetime. maybe ever, virtually. maybe very shortly, controlling prices after world war ii. to have in a general peacetime economy double-digit inflation and declining economic growth. the air and oil embargo with a

loss of the war in vietnam. troubling times for the united states. i think many people felt america's greatest days were behind it. there was inevitably going to be a larger role for government and society, economic growth would diminish and free -- friedman from an intellectual perspective and tried to go into a different direction. that's where the freedom to chsecomes in. >> what would eyadvocate in free to choose? >> essentially, they were advocating a rollback of the role of government that emerged first in the great depression and then even more during the great society programs of the johnson administration. their opposition was to the expansion of government. they define freedom is the most limited amounts of government possible. they recognize government has an essential role to play in

establishing a free society and establishing a free market order. but they wanted to have as little government as possible. they were in favor of government, what was provided to be a local or state level, rather than the federal level. they found voluntary associations should be the primary provider of social welfare functions, and that families and individuals should be strengthened so at society can operate in thmost harmonious and productive manner. >> did have an impact on the reagan campaign? >> no question. as far as free to choose was published first in hardback with the series on public broadcasting. in, which was the year of the campaign. and then in 1981, it was the

paperback edition, which is the addition that i have. reagan is the first one word endorsement on the paperback edition after he became president. one word, superb. they first met when reagan was governor of california. they campaigned on a number of issues together. friedman was an early endorser of reagan for president. 1976, then in 1980. so these ideas of friedman in particular, you've got to control the inflation rate. as an economist, as distinct from a public intellectual, friedman emphasized monetary policy and theory above all else and his view was that if you have inflationary circumstances in an economy that in the long run, that will lead to less growth. during the inflation of the

1970s, when no one seemed to know what to do about inflation, it seems often to be the case that people did not know what to do about inflation. friedman would not agree with the current approach of the federal reserve trying to control inflation with interest rates. he would say what you want is the epitaph on his gravestone? without batting an eye, he said inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. the reason why there was inflation in friedman's intellectual perspective was that too much money was being produced and printed by the federal government for currency, being injected into the economy via the federal reserve and that that was the problem. it was not a function of interest rates being too high or too low. it was not a function of excess business profits.

it was not a function of unions having excessive demands. it was a function of the supply of money. that was the line that he took. that was the line reagan adopted. it became adopted around the world for the next several decades. inflation greatly diminished, not just in the 1980s, but the 1990s and early 2000's. i think friedman would argue that a large source of the economic prosperity of those decades. >> so saying that, this is called books that shaped america. does free to choose in your view belong on that list? >> no question. their influence in putting forward ideas. friedman considered himself to be a libertarian in philosophy but a republican in politics. that's how he characterized himself. he was a leading advisor to barry goldwater in the 1964 the economic advisor when he wathrepublican presidential nominee.

he was an advisor to richard nixon in 1968 and 1972. he was the leading advocate of a volunteer army implemented during nixon's administration. and then he was a leading endorser and supporter of reagan when reagan was selected in 1984. his ideas have had tremendous influence, lasting influence on public discussion and dialogue, and not everyone agrees with it. i want to be clear about that. as far as i'm trying to present friedman's views as to what weidman would say. many people argue that his views on government were not the right approach. >> looking at free to choose, this is one of his conclusions at the end of the book. we are as a people still free to choose which way we should go. whether to continue along the road we have been following to ever bigger government, or to call a halt and change direction. i think that friedman's primary initiative in all of his work

as a publicintellectual, particularly in the last 30 years of his life, after he retired from the university of chicago. in 1976. he really wanted to see less government. in terms of money supply, he thought that was one of the ways that government affects the society the most, the economy the most, is that there is inflation in a society, it's going to be detrimental to an economy, therefore, the first thing the government has to do is maintain a stable money supply. the second thing an economy needs to do, the government needs to work with an economy to do is ensure that there are relationships and contracts that are adhered to among individuals. that there is a system of law and order. the justice system. there should be a police function. that the government had an important role to play in

defense. he supported some social services, but his basic approach, and i think that it may surprise viewers to know that he had the idea of a negative income tax in the 1960s, which is very similar to the idea of a universal basic income now. where we will not have a whole canopy of social programs or government employment. rather, we will give people funds directly to spend. he thought that would be a more effective way of running the welfare system than the current programs. in the education, he thought vouchers which would permit parents to choose their children's education, which schools they would attend and what type of programs they want, that would be a way to increase competition in education. these are all policy issues that we are talking about today, aren't they? they remain topical. the all volunteer army. he was for drug legalization.

many policies. international exchange rates, low tariffs, indexation of tax rates. there are so many policy reforms that can be traced in part to milton friedman and russ friedman. >> let's go back to free to choose. economic freedom is an essential prerequisite for political freedom. >> that was one of the friedman's core ideas. that there is a strong connection between economic freedom and political freedom. they are not distinct. you can't say that you can be politically free if the government is running all of the economy. they pointed to 1976 being the 200th anniversary of both the declaration of independence and adam smith's the wealth of nations. both of the declaration of independence came forward in 1776 and smith's wealth of nations was published in 1776, and they emphasize that we need to have the economics of adam

smith. the idea of the free economy, and join that to the political ideas of the declaration of independence, that guarantee all individuals are created equal, and that everyone has a right to, an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. they thought politics and economics are connected, and that there can't be a political freedom unless there's also economic freedom, and therefore, a free market system is essential, not merely to an economic system, but also a politistem. >> uc santa barbara, another idea that we are still talking abouy is the quality in freedom. this again is from free to choose. a society that uality, and a sense of equality of ome ahead of freedom will end up with neither uali, nor freedom. the use of force to achieve the

quality will destroy freedom, and the force introduced for good purposes will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests. >> friedman was not someone who thought that equality of result should be sought as an explicit and of government. he thought that individuals are different. they have different tastes, different abilities, different experience, different desires, education, different degrees of risks and susceptibility. for that reason, in a just society, it is not going to be a perfectly egalitarian society. at the same time, this is also important. he felt that by not making the quality a directly sought after goal, but one that just emerges through a free market, that in fact, a free-market capitalist system is more likely to have

more equal outcomes than other economic systems. by allowing freedom that people will have the incentive to be productive and that it will benefit everyone and that, in fact, it's not a choice between freedom and equality, but in fact if you value freedom, you will also have a good deal of equality. >> we have mentioned that free to choice, the book, came after a pbs tv series, free to choice. here is a portion of it, talking about free markets. >> look at this lead pencil. there is not a single person in the world who could make this pencil. remarkable statement? not at all. the wood from which it is made, for all i know, comes from a tree that was cut down in the state of washington. to cut down that tree it took a saw. to make the saw, it took steel. to make this deal, it took iron

ore. this black center, we call it lead, but it is really graphite. compressed graphite. i'm not sure where it comes from, but i think it comes from some mines in south america. this red top up here, the eraser, a bit of rubber. probably comes from a layer, where the rubber tree is not even native. it was imported from south america by some businessmen with the help of the british government. i haven't the slightest idea where it came from, or the yellow paint, or the paint that made the black lines. where the glue that holds it together. literally thousands of people cooperated to make this pencil. religions. you are trading a few minutes of your time for a few seconds of the time of all those thousands of people. what brought them together to

cooperate to make this? sending out an order from the central office it was the magic of the price. of the impersonal operation of the prizes that brought them together and got them to cooperate so that you could have it for some. that is why the obligation of the free market is so essential not only to promote effective efficiency, but even more, to foster harmony and peace among the people of the world. >> that is a classic milton friedman story. >> he is a great teacher and uc it to their. a great human being and as someone that had the opportunity to interview him on occasion, i was truly impressed by him and his wisdom, the warmth of his personality and the genius of

his mind. he's able to explain things so clearly and succinctly and persuasively and when we talk about the importance of the market, what he is saying is that prices are you central to a properly operating market and what the prizes do is register supply and demand. if you only have government control it's going to be inefficient. von mises in an earlier 20th century economist that talked about calculation and socialist economies, how is a government planner going to know if they want to build houses.

if you don't have a way to compare the relative value of different goods, then you don't have rational economy so that is what leads to the production is the ability to fluctuate. that is a very different idea that most have taken through history. the view has been in the period preceding adam smith that milton friedman criticized as far as adam smith did even more so. what it's going to be produced and how. the argument of friedman and other capitalist oriented economists.

their primary argument is for the government to make these sort of decisions and efficient manners. it is to say that in general productivity, maximum productivity at the large free-market economy and on that argument i think that friedman and his friend have won the argument. >> host: as i mentioned at the beginning, in the series books that shaped america is in partnership with the library of congress and about ten years ago the library of congress came up with 100 books that shaped america and milton friedman's free to choose was on that list. there are all books that have had an impact on our society. with that said about this book, this is what the library of

congress wrote in their description of free to choose. economist milton and rose friedman published this boo in conjunction with their pbs series that a spse to the virtues of capitalism rs other economic approaches. some of those other economic approaches of course communism and some others, but there's there isalso john kenneth galbrr john maynard keynes. what were their approaches and how are they different than milton friedman? >> to look at the systems the communists or social systems and other types of systems, i think fast it's that friedman's real opposition was to communism and socialism in the form of government production of the means of economic production. and he said the classic examples of this are germany and korea. before the end of world war ii,

both germany and korea had been united countries and if anything, the more industrial and at the developed part of germany was at the eastern part of germany and the more developed part. you had a sort of controlled experiment which is difficult to do and they had won a sort of system in the other part of the country and there is no question that west germany was far more productive economically and had a higher standard and that south korea had a higher standard of living at was more productive than north korea so i thought

those were the classic examples, so his great opposition was to very significant government control of an economy. when it comes to john kenneth lbith or john maynard keynes, he didn't consider them to be merely as negative as a full-fledged socialist or communist system in this sense in the means of economic production. in the case of keynes, friedman's opposition was mostly to the idea that in an advanced capitalist economy there tended to be over saving. the marginal propensity became economically more advanced and therefore you could have an

economic equilibrium and less than full production and employment and therefore the government had to borrow excess funds from the private sector engaged in deficit spending in order to maintain full economic activity. there are vast sources of excess saving. together it doesn't borrow money from the private sector. it's going to have to spend that money so the keynesian economic theory in the activity and in general so he was opposed to

that. galbraith was pbay the most well-known economist popularly. friedman by no means thought that he was a socialist or communist. maybe they hedged a little bit of direction of socialism but his main concern was they didn't recognize the inherent inefficiency of much government activity a continuing lecturer at the university of california santa barbara. he's been there since about 2005 and is the author of a couple of books, milton friedman a biography and chicago economics which we will talk about in a minute. he's helping us understand the

impact of milton and rose dman's free to choose. the (202)748-8902 if you live in east and central time zones, 748-8921 if you live in the mountain and pacific time zones and if you can't get through and still would like to make a comment, try the text number (202)748-8903. that's for text messages only. please include your first name and a city if you would with your questions or comments. also want to let you know that we have a companion website to the series. er are teacher lesson plans and viewer" tab, related videos, the library of congress is 100 books that shaped america e all contained in that website. c-span.org/books that shaped america is the website.

just a little bit about milton and rose frima he was born in new york city and went to rutgers the universy of chicago and received his phd from columbia. th treasury department from 41 to 4 during fdr's presidency. and he taught at t university of chicago fm 1946 t 1977. rose friedman lived from 1910 to 2009 and was born in ukraine. she attended reed college in oregon, the university of chicago where sheidhd work that did not do her dissertation. she collaborated onre to choose, the tv series and the book. she cowrote other economic books and memoirs all including capitalism and freedom that came out in 1962 and cofounded the

choice with milton friedman's promoting school vouchers. i want to show the original copy of the book that came out in 1980. here is the front cover. but you can see they are both listed on it. but when you flip it around, there is where you get rose friedman on the back. >> i think that rose was from a family of economists. her brother was a leading member of the chicago school of economics in the post-world war ii period at the university of chicago. she herself was an economic stent at chicago when they would also be graduate student there. eyere students of frank knight at the who was a ee market oriented economist, and i think that her role wasn't

significant i milton friedman's work and technical economics. she was more involved in the later work in public policy and books such as you mentioned free to choose, capitalism and freedom and other works later after he retired. >> let's hear from some of the viewers before we continue looking at free to choose. this is tim and pearl city hawaii. you are on c-span. great discussion. did milton freeman have any thoughts about the constitutional amendment or how did he think about deficit spending during wartime or national crises. did he have any thoughts on that? his thinking in this area might surprise you.

during wartime i would say who therules that might generally ay should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, so i wouldn't say that he would oppose deficit spending. however even during peacetime, his view was that the deficits were to be preferred to more government spending. he would rather see the government spend a trillion dollars and have a 500 billion-dollar deficit of them government to spend $2 trillion and have them in a deficit at all. so his focus was the amount of spending rather than the deficits and he is really the one that introduced the notion that deficits don't matter. they don't matter economically.

you have an increased money supply. it isn't a keynesian idea. it supported a balanced budget amendments but only if it was in the context of the reduction government spending. not on deficits and as it happens i think that that is also a legacy of his that some may criticize the reagan administration of non-focus on deficits being an important factor of government policy and something that is continued to the present even during the last years of the clinton

administration. >> host: please go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. looking at the philosophy i think time has proven and it was a complete failure. in the american dream -- >> host: thank you very much. talk about the issues that alan mentioned. one that prevents friedman's position and as opposed to offer critique of it and what i guess my view is the strength and his fault and also great weakness.

i think that with respect to monetary policy, he was accurate with of the importance of low but not necessarily no inflation. the lack of focus on deficits would not be helpful to our society. with respect to did reagan economics lead to the decline of the american economy, i think that we were talking earlier about the late 1970s were a period of high inflation in the united states, high unemployment in the united states, high interest rates in the united states and that at the time it was considered a relative boom in the economy in 1890s as deflation decelerated. i think that you have to take a balanced approach to friedman's record and as i say, i think that the idea of less government

and government inefficiency is a very important idea that i think those who don't recognize government inefficiency, they are making a mistake. >> host: along with the companion website, we have a companion podcast looking at the lives of milton and rose friedman a little more in-depth. a little bit more from this podcast that as an economist and offering to the founder of the libertarian freedom vest. >> friedman would always advocate less government then more government because it meant it wasn't that it was a negative approach but it was a positive approach because he would say listen, this means that you have your own responsibility in making your decisions rather

than someone else telling you what to do and that is essentially an american perspective. we don't like people telling us what to do whether it's during a pandemic, whether it's in a war. we want to make those decisions ourselves so i think that is the ultimate legacy that milton friedman had. >> you can see on your screen the little qr code. get your phone out and snap a picture of that and then you will get to the entire podcast. the guest talking about milton and rose friedman. claire is in santa barbara. please go ahead. >> caller: hello professor ebenstein, me and my fellow students are cheering you on from santa barbara. my question to you is the young economists that you are teaching, what advice do you have for us or what do you think

friedman would have for us in today's current economic state and what do you think policymakers could suggest? >> host: are you a student at uc santa barbara? >> caller: yes i'm professor ebenstein's student. >> host: and what do you think of milton friedman into the different economic theories, give us a sense of what you think. >> caller: i think that he would be more free market. you might think the gover should have less say in economic affairs and i'mot sure if you would agree with how the government is treating inflation and the housing crisis into the homeless crisis. i'm not sure. that's why i met asking. >> guest: thank you for calling in. i really appreciate it.

i think your questions are really good. i think that friedman's approach was basically a monetary approach and one thing we talked about earlier in the program is the late 1970s were and the era of challenge for a number of reasons and although it seems hard to believe now, the soviet union at that point in time seemed to be ascended into the world and the idea of a much larger government role in sociy advocated by many economists as the inevitable direction and friedman's perspective on that was that was the wrong approach and that as we discussed earlier, the problem with more economic control by government is that it will also erode political freedom. you can't have political freedom without economic freedom or an

effective economy without a significant degree of economic freedom. i think friedman would advocate really considering the advantages of a market economy in trying to evaluate the appropriate societies. that's a question that deserves a lot of discussn and friedman recognedeasonable people of goodwill can draw the line on the appropriate level of government differently and it might be different in different places into different times. in his years as a public intellectual after he retired from the university of chicago he tended to become relatively more doctrinaire in he is no government approach. and from my standpoint, his work

as a technical and practical economist where he discusses the disadvantages of government involvement in monetary policy and other areas is something that is the stronger aspect of his work. i don't think that the underlining philosophy as an economist where he thought he made the greatest contribution was necessarily quite as one-sided as his career as a public intellectual, so as an economist i tried to emphasize his thought during his career which he valued more highly. >> host: as we mention free to choose the best selling book came out of free to choose, the highly rated pbs series. let's return and hear a little bit more from milton friedman.

>> the fact is most people enjoy the early stages. in the swinging 60s, there was plenty of money around. business was brisk, jobs were plentiful. everybody seemed happy at first. but by the early 70s as the good times roll around it started more rapidly. as soon as some of these people were going to lose their jobs. ♪♪ the party was coming to an end. ♪♪ the story is much the same in the united states only the process started a little later. we've had one inflationary party after another, yet we still

can't seem to avoid it. to make us think that we are getting a tax break they are able to do it while at the same time actually raising our taxes because of a bit of magic. that magic is inflation they reduce the tax rates but the taxes they pay have to go up because they are automatically shoved into higher brackets by the effect. a neat trick taxation without representation. the reason we have inflation in the united states or for that matter anywhere in the world is because the accompanying with their counterparts in other nations by growing more rapidly. the truth is inflation is made in one place in one place only

here in washington. this is the only place there are places like these. this is the place the power resides to determine how rapidly the amount of money. what happened to all that noise that's what would happen to inflation if we stop setting the amount of money so rapidly. >> host: we want to thank free to choose media providing the media tonight from the series. we've seen cases in argentina and brazil and some other places

where inflation is at 202000% because money is being presented. do we have that issue as bad as milton friedman made it sound? >> guest: sure and i remember that segment from free to choose very well, this year he is i myself was an undergraduate at that time taking courses in economics. the whole idea of why is there inflation. is it a result of changes in the interest rates? again is it to high profits, too much union demand? in terms of friedman's answer, it was clear and unequivocal. at that segment that shows the printing of dollar bills by the treasury department really makes the point from his perspective which is inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. he would argue that the reason why we've had inflation in the united states in recent years is not because interest rates were

too low at some point in time. he wouldn't say it's because during the coronavirus recession perhaps for appropriate reasons as a result of the extreme exigencies of that circumstance. again, he was not dogmatic with respect to an emergency circumstance for the measures whether they are right or wrong is a different issue but the point is that is not the main point with respect to the inflation we are experiencing now, he would say that when the federal reserve didn't borrow for the trillions of dollars sent to american individuals and businesses and when the federal reserve didn't, congress didn't tax for those dollars but simply the federal reserve increased the supply of money engaged in quantitative easing to the tune trillions of dollars, that' the reason we have the inflation now. the reason that inflation has

decelerated the past year is because friedman thought that there was a lag time between the increase in the money supply and the degree of inflation and likewise there is a lag time between when the money supply stops increasing as a deceleration of inflation. we've now basically gone through that cycle. it's not surprising that inflation has dropped from eight or 9% to three to 4% and that it will probably continue to drop to two or 3% in the next number of months irrespective of the federal reserve interest rate policy. friedman would have condemned the curtain federal reserve policy of raising interest rates in order to control inflation. he thought that that was a myth, didn't have anything to do with the rate of aggregate prices. his focus was undoubtedly quantity of money. that's the reason there was

inflation. if you want less inflation you stop the printing presses and stop increasing the supply of money. it's not a function of interest rates primarily. >> host: gym in new york city you are on books that shaped america talking about free to choose, please go ahead. >> caller: thank you very much. i appreciate the conversation. my question is on monopolies and oligopolies. first of all what was milton friedman's attitude towards that, and are they created by the government themselves and i will wait for your answer. >> guest: that is a really good question. and friedman's thinking on the issue of the monopolies and oligopolies evolved over the course of his career when he was a young economist in the 1930s and 40s, he basically endorsed the prevailing economic models, which soul a significant amount of monopolistic activities in

the economy and this required large role for the government because the theory ofree market and its efficiency is that no one is a price setter, everyone is a price taker and that doesn't exist in the oligopoly or the monopoly, but the period after world war ii together with the others at the university chicago as i mentioned, the director, also george stiegler and others, they examined the american economy closely and they came to the view that there doesn't appear to be much monopolistic activity and the american economy, the view that also tended to become more generally accepted in the economic profession and public policy. that really undercuts the argument for much government activity. so from friedman's perspective, were not in a keynesian system where we have to have governmen borrowing and the big role in at way we are not a

monopolistic situation where you have to have the government regulation for those reasons either. so he later became not overtly concerned about monopoly into the private sector. he did think the government is very wasteful. it's the monopoly we have to worry about in its inefficiency in the problem. >> host: text message from michael in hastings nebraska. please compare and contrast the philosophy of milton and rose friedman and ayn rand. you have about 30 seconds for that complex question. >> guest: i would say that the friedman's were much more of the view that there is an appropriate but limited role to play in society whereas ayn rand thought there was no role for government to play in the society. i think that the friedman's fault that there was human diversity and didn't think that there is a basic human equality that individuals have spiritually. i think that the view very much

emphasizes great human inequality and i don't believe that was the friedman perspective. >> host: milton and rose friedman in 20000 were on the booktv program. here's a portion of that program. >> the guest here on our program from san francisco on booktv, doctor milton friedman and his wife who is also here on the cover of free to choose which i guess is your most successful. what do you remember about working together on this particular book? >> it was very easy. we already have the television program notes, and the book is written really from that. so, we each started with one chapter and then handed it to the other person to go over the chapter. we went back and forth that way.

in the end we really don't know who wrote which words which is true about all the books we've written. >> guest:. we wanted it to be available in the program was shown, so we started on it in march of 1799 and we got a publisher they got it published by january when the tv program started. >> host: when you are working on these projects what does she do that you don't and what does he do that you don't? >> guest: we both tired. we use the computer now. >> we talked about aging, both of you 88-years-old. are you surprised at how well you do for those that can't to see these two people, they move

around as well as anybody -- >> anybody says when you're bouncing around, i don't feel like bouncing around frankly. many things i can't do today that i use to be able to do. i don't have the energy i use to have. getting old is no fun. >> is there any advice that you have if they live to be 88 that he would do differently? if you knew you were going to live this long is there anything you would do differently? >> i think we would have lived more extravagantly. we were always saving our pennies. my brother used to say we were saving them for a rainy day that never came. i was saving. i saved my pennies. >> he would say you're saving them for a rainy day living in a perpetual -- [laughter] >> host: just wanted to give a sense of rose friedman as well as milton friedman. edward in dover delaware, please go ahead.

>> caller: i want to mention the book capitalism and slavery. thomas soul, i'm reading his book now called social justice policies and he seems to imply people are poor because it's their fault. and i wanted to ask why are so many poor people in the united states and why are there poor nations as far as capitalism is concerned? what is the relationship between capitalism and slavery? >> host: what you say eric williams and tom soul have the same philosophy? >> guest: that's an excellent question because i'm an anti-thomas soul person because i am an african-american. he's very conservative and i'm relatively little. >> host: what are you getting out of the book that you are reading?

>> caller: when he said poor people, it's their fault, i sort of i can't go along with that. >> host: thank you for calling in. >> guest: i'm not familiar with the williams book but thomas soul i'm very familiar with. he was a student of milton friedman at the university of chicago and he tells the story that when he went to the university of chicago, that is thomas soul, he was a marxist but after being around milton friedman and others in chicago for several years, he shifted to a more free-market view. i don't believe that it's the case that either thomas soul were milton friedman or rose friedman would say that the problem of poverty resides in poor people. i think what they would say is the problem resides in the system and that if you have a system that's more effective, then people experience less poverty, which they certainly

supported. with respect to slavery, slavery is the exact antithesis of the free-market system because the free market system because the free market system in ten that every individual has freedom to exchange as they wish. it's the exchange and function, the ability to exchange as you wish. adam smith's idea the magic of the market and the idea for prizes to direct production in an effective manner that leads to greater economic prosperity for all. i think that they would argue that the period of the capitalist economy, the 1800s, the 1900s to the present are a time of increasing commiseration, the greatest period of prosperity in all history for all people into andstandards of living have been greatly increased. so, i think that they would

argue that their goal is the same as yours. they want a higher standard of living for everyone. how you get there again is a question that reasonable people of goodwill can differ. with other works by friedman and others in his school is that the idea that the government can run an economy which was prevalent around the world before free to choose, that lady that is utterly discredited at this point in time even people that think that there should be more government than milton friedman at this point in time or not advocating complete government control of the economy. bernie sanders is no socialist as socialists were in the 1930s, 40s and 50s were advocating the government should own and run all the aspects of the economy. i think those are some comments. i think you raised some very good concerns and as i say i think the issue of poverty is

something that friedman and soul is best accommodated through the free-market economy. >> host: the shock doctrine came out in 2008. naomi klein, canadian author, activist. here's a little of her criticism of milton friedman. >> who's the most angry? >> milton friedman is pretty angry with the shock doctrine because the book is pretty tough on milton friedman. i would say i think there's probably still the people that are most annoyed with certainly my book. >> host: why did you pick on milton friedman? >> the shock doctrine tells an alternative history of how we ended up with the kind of market economies that we have that's been globalized around the world, and it's a pretty fundamentalist version of the market economics that pretty

much everything should be privatized you to the media for the regulation. we have seen on wall street. so the shock doctrine tells the story of how we got here and milton friedman played a pretty important role in the story mainly because he was the movement prime popularizer not because his ideas were so original. he was certainly part of the chicago school tradition but he took that to the masses. he was the one with the column that did the ten part series. he had that incredible talent from writing economics and bringing it to a popular audience. so he played a very important role. he was a political advisor. but the focus of the book is much less on him personally than on the university of chicago and the particular role the

university of chicago played internationally because the university of chicago had a very aggressive program of attracting students particularly from latin america and this had nothing to do with milton friedman. it wasn't his idea. it was actually a decision that came out of the state department where there was a lot of concern in the 1950s that latin america was moving to the last and moved further and further. the idea was picked up in the head of the program for what became the usaid that they would bring sponsored groups of students to study at the university of chicago economics department precisely because it was so conservative and in fact in this time it was seen as very out outside of the mainstream because the united states was in the grips of keynesianism, all

the ivy leagues. the university of chicago was different and they had of this program to bring eventually hundreds of latin american students to study under friedman and his colleagues and that had a tremendous impact on the politics of latin america because when there was the series of military coups in the 70s, there was a, there were teams of economists that were ready to work with those governments who didn't have any expertise and economics, so they formed a kind of alliance or partnership with the military and these university of chicago economists. >> host: naomi klein, part of her critique was about the chicago school of economics. you've written a book called chicago economics. what are we going to get from that book? >> guest: sure. i don't want to appear to be one of the people that is a milton friedman fan that's upset her for that reason. i just thin it's possible to take a different intellectual view, and i will briefly try to make that argument.

.. and china is a far freer country than it was during the communist regime. again underscoring the relationship between economic freedom and political freedom. so i think the criticism economic freedom does not lead to political freedom is contradicted by the facts. >>os a theory of the consumptiofution came out 1957 capitalism and freedom in 1962 monetary history of the u.s. in 1963 it w cowritten with ana swartz tierney and the stu quo came out in 1984.

again cowritten with rose freedman. carlos and arlington virginia please go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: hi thank you very much for taking my call, during the show. human speaking about government and inefficiency that can exist to the point of things got better but what about business or corporate inefficiency? will be freeman's perspective on that? are the american film industry. there is a philosophy of corporations too big to fail we have to build about. stuart carlos thank you for the question. >> guest: really good question. public policy is imperfect.

but in general if the business is failing at a subnational level i would go out of business or redirect its activity. it rewards efficiency that is the virtue of it. there may not be that tendency to go out of business from freedman's perspective the private sector was more efficient than the private sector. that mean the private sector is always efficient? nope it is that the public sector is it efficient? no. you should bright try to privatize government function is very much in favor of greater privatization of government activity but. >> host: you side free to choose a pbs series talked about washington and economic power

could certainly come to washington i'm impressed all overgrowth how much power is concentrated in the city. but we must understand the character of that power but it's not monolithic power in a few hands the way it is in countries like the soviet union or read it china. it is fragmented into lots of little bits and pieces. with every special group around the country trying to get its hands on whatever bits and pieces it can. the result is there is hardly an issue in which you won't find government on both sides. for example in one of these massive buildings scattered all through this town bursting with government employees some are sitting around trying to figure how to spend our money to discourage us from smoking cigarettes. in another of the massive buildings may be far away from the first sub of their employees

equally dedicated equally hard-working or sitting on figuring out how to spend our money. to subsidize farmers to grow up more tobacco. and one building their figure out how to hold down prices. in another building they got schemes for raising prices import prices or keeping out cheap foreign goods. we set up enormous department of energy with 20000 employees. to encourage us to save energy we set up an enormous department of environmental protection to figure out ways to get cleaner air and using more energy. now many of these effects cancel out. that does not mean these programs do not do a great deal of harm and there ought not very bad things about one thing you can be sure of the cost do not cancel out the ads together. each of these programs and spend spendsmoney. taken from our pockets that we could be using to buy goods and

services to meet our separate needs. >> host: lanning, milton freedman worked in the fdr administration and the treasury department of world war ii did that influences later views? what's is ironically work for the treasury department during world war ii he was actually on the team that developed withholding its source on the income tax that would have happened without his involvement but he wasn't early engineer of that expansion of the tax code. but i think freedman's views when he was a young economist were basically set by the higher ups in the department and he took the line he was working for them. that was an early phase of his development but not one that endured. sue went a little bit about his legacy won the nobel prize in 1776 the psidential medal of

freedom in 1988. he was an advisor to president reagan and prime minister thatcher break or recognition by the economist mazine as the most influential economists of the second half of the 20th century possibly all of it. jasmine santa barbara, california you are on books that shapes america. >> hello. i was wondering how can inflation be good for the economy especially how it's measured in the 50s and 60s and 70s to until now and how technology is changes so significantly? exit jasmine leo student uc santa barbara to? >> i am a student yes. >> thank you for calling and she one of your students? it's absolutely. [laughter] while you are watching. freedman's thought was inflation has a temporary stimulative effect to economy.

that's why his perspective it was if you are in a depressed economy you want to increase the money supply. but, in the long run if you continue increase in the money supply then inflation will begin to have a negative effect on economic growth. so he's out the best policy was have a low inflation rate at all times and a stable two -- 5% increase in the money supply every year on a year in year out basis. he did not favor changes in policy raising and lowering interest rates he thought that s disruptive to the economy it was thought helpful first truck price stability. dan is in bridgewater new jersey hope all the students are getting a strict credit for watching, go ahead dan. >> led the tremendous pleasure of knowing i don't to comment on the economics because to me economic system or written

political science and cosmology. but what i would like to point out is they really care about the people on the short end of the stick. it's a vaccine probably talk about extensively. it's perceived by many people as a right wing person who did not care about others. they had the jewish ethic especially during the cil rights era. stuartan how should the freedman's? >> i was a barkley and got all involved in that and i met him after that. >> are right thank you for calling in. there were other people who knew

the freedman's, respected the freedman's this is from the c-span archives here are some well-known politicians talk about milton and rose freedman. >> a winner of the nobel prize milton freedman's technical mastership his profession is unchallenged. more central to his work is its moral component. an idea of human freedom in which man's economic rights are as vital to civil and human rights. >> we are entering the information age at a time of sweeping change. in the economic and political sphere the decline of communism economic philosophy and the tide of democratic government that is changing the face of the world. all based on the right of the individual to be in milton freedman's resounding phrase free to choose. >> is a great statement by milton freedman he said nobody spends somebody else's money as

wisely as their own projects prs milton and rose freedman. chris. >> i read gary fackler and spiegel are in freedman and all those guys. >> milton freedman the economist back in the lady said there's only one obligation of corporation has. that is to the shareholders. to the community they live in, the place they support. >> it's an honor for me too be here to pay tribute to a hero of freedom. milton freedman. he has used a brilliant mind to advance a moral vision. the vision of a society where men and women are free. free to choose. but work government is not as free to override their decisions. >> host: besides president biden

that was quite complementary of milton freedman. where would he fit in today's gop in your view? >> guest: that's a very good question. freedman had a very unusual constellation of views. he was not a social conservative he thought abortion should be legal. he was for gate rates he was for drug legalization. those are not typically positions one would associate with the republican party today. on the other hand he very much thought government could be an efficient and it was important for government to spend less and to do less. so, i think those positions are less common in the republican party today. it is hard to know where exactly he would stand on the spectrum at this point in time. but i would say i very much agree with the caller who said one that can disagree with freedman's view and he himself changed his views over his lifetime. he emphasized importance of

discussion and debates. but i don't think you can question where he was coming from in the sense he really was trying to increase human freedom. capitalism and freedom, free to choose. writers are talk about freedom of the title of their books it's really important to them. maybe he didn't get it right entirely but that was his goal. >> lenny eban site is a continuing a lecture at uc santa barbara we have heard from a couple of his students this evening. and throughout the series we been checking out teachers to see how they teach the books that we have been talking about. here is patricia cunningham nazareth area high school where she teaches ap courses in economics, government, and politics. >> in free to choose he really takes a chapter by chapter approach breaking down some difficult concepts making them very palatable for students to know and to understand and to see how they are important to

their daily lives. the first chapter he's tackling the role of markets and voluntary exchange rate adam smith, the invisible hand, all those concepts can be difficult and uninteresting. he takes seven makes them fascinating by applying a real-world examples and real world scenarios that make them easy to understand for it even though there are some things i would say are easy to understand who they are also some challenges when it comes to some of the data included in the text. obviously this is written in 1980 so we are looking at 40 plus years ago. some of the data sets are outdated. what i liked with my students is have them update the data themselves. but on their economist hat and to say okay, here's what freedman had to say about the relationship between unemployment and inflation. what is the current rate data set about that we will pop out to the bureau of labor statistics and look at the consumer price index. we will look at the unemployment

rates we will compare it to some of the data sets he had in the text from that period in which he has his writing. that allows them to say these theories are not there for a moment in time but they are there over time. so even as it's a struggle at first for students that empowers them to use the tools we have available today to actually apply the economics and to use current data. what i really love about this piece is that it is going to allow students not to just know and understand the economy, but to know and understand their the within it. how do they see the operations of their workplace? how do they see getting the degree are not getting that degree and how that affects her productive capacity. a lot of what we see the text complied directly to students make it on my favorite pieces to teach in the classroom projects want to thank patricia cunningham of nazareth high school and nazareth pa for

sharing some of her teaching methods for free to choose. if you go to the website c-span.org/books that shaped america up at the top teacher resources. this additional videos for each of the 10 books in this series i recommend getting on our site website especially if you are a teacher. jon and toms river, new jersey please quote your question or comment. >> i was wondering what would you think mr. freedman would say about how china is now? our supplier for steel industry, would industry all industries including food. you see places like bethlehem, pennsylvania where a casinos with a steel mill it used to be. that's hardly any steel coming out of pennsylvania paid all the raw materials will would have done about that?

see what job he got the idea. >> guest: great he made out a great freedman's perspective but one area is influential in he was a free trader. his view truly was if china is going to be able to make goods more effectively than in the united states it's beneficial to allow chinese to make those goods more effectively than in the united states and the united states should not have high tariffs on goods. going to have a more peaceful world people are trading with one another and you have specialization in different areas. his theory was that his nation specialize in the areas they are most productive in and all nations will collectively have the lowest production but i appreciate that to something like that is the case in western pennsylvania. when areas are unemployed. in the long run his view was the advance of technology is the

driving force of economic progress and free trade is the best possible policy. so he is not in favor of terrorists not at all. see what let's follow that up with denise from california text message would you comment on how you think milton freedman see how the internet has affected society economically. >> he lived long enough we can see the start of the internet revolution and the early 2000's. the growth of knowledge is something exceedingly valuable to economic activity, whatever encourages people's ability to exchange is good for the economy for the internet allows us to send information instantaneously anywhere for nothing. it's a great boon to economic activity. he was totally in favor of it. spew at library of congress in 2013 or so come up with a list of 100 books that shaped

america. again not necessarily all bestsellers not the best well-known books but books that had an impact that's what our series has been about these past nine weeks and again next week. go to the website books that shaped america is the website. if you go there as a viewer input button two steps you can send us the book that you think shaped america or had an impact on our society. here are some of the submissions we have received. >> my name i am from northern virginia. the book i think it shaped america is a letter from birmingham jail bite martin luther king jr. but not only is it truly defined are a distinct racial equality boat speaks to the millions of americans was that right. thank you. >> my suggestion for book that shaped america it's a great

philosophical work that describes the nature they aren't removed and some civilians from. eggs deemed the real or substantive nature of the world. it certainly a book. >> hi my name i am from ukraine. [inaudible] what shaped america for me white fang. of native america. >> hi my name is michelle i am from hollywood reason for

picking this book is everyone knows the case i think she did an incredible job talking about the perspective we don't normally see. i'm talk what the tribulation she went through. >> i'm johnny from denmark the book that shaped america and the reason is thomas has a nail on his finger if it gets in the waterbecomes in touch with alie. and i'm from denmark. thank you. [inaudible] might reason. [inaudible]

say what if you go to c-span.org books thathaped america use the viewer input right up the at the top. two quick steps you can send us a book you think shaped america we may use it on this program. william and florida please go to your question or comment about free to choose. lanny even signed as our guest for. >> hi thank you very much for taking my call. freedman used to say who was not a conservative. >> he considered himself a libertarian in his philosophy but a republican or conservative at the time in his political registration. we went next call is caches in stone mountain georgia. we are listening.

>> i have a two-part question. the first is what in your opinion will be mr. freedman's perspective on where our economy is right now and what would you say would be his remedy to reducing the money supply? thank you sir progressive milton freedman were to give advice right now it would be to stop raising interest rates don't cut inflation by lowering interest rates. you certain sibley hammer the economy he would say we should focus on money supply rather than interest rates on the monetary policy. the federal government should try to reduce its spending to the greatest extent possible. those of the two courses i think he would favor. see went eric in wisconsin since in this text or the wonderful aspects of the free to choose a pbs program are the debates in the second half of each episode.

some of the luminaries in both debates, it milton freedman personally choose a gas did he know them all personally questioned. what's he did choose the guest. whether he knew them all personally well, that i cannot answer. but a number of the guests hit interact with over the years. he had a wide ideology hit jon kenneth was a guest he did not have nearly conservative or libertarian speak he tried get another leading liberal at the time. he tried to have a wide range of views. he thought following jon stuart knowledge and truth are furthered he recognized people are imperfect to make the best decisions you can. >> spew atlantic what we are

interactions with milton and rose freedman like? >> i will tell you i really benefited with my interactions with melted and rose freedman paid the first time i went to freedman i knocked on the door i set up an appointment one is writing a book i would been a colleague of his at the university of chicago for i asked him if i could interview him he said sure, come on out. the first thing i ask freedman was do you mind if i take the conversation and he said to me and i remember to this day, i've ate single rule what i says to one person i say to everyone. i never say anything off the record but that is the principle if you can live that is a moral principle. i said that greatly influenced me. had an incredibly warm person it was the agreed with him disagreed with him had a great sense of humor. huge energy, creative, extraordinarily fast and his

intellect. great memory. he was someone across the political spectrum he was the most popular professor that more students were into their phd's than any other teacher there. rose was no slouch either. she gave me some papers she had on frank at night she missed student of frank nights at the university of chicago to use for my work. they were a wonderful couple and they did their best to make our country a better country. see what he attended and graduated from the london school of economics but let's end where we began. what is the impact of free to choose and why should it be included on a book that shapes america lists? >> free to choose is in important book. while it really important books in american history but at signal the move away from

government as a solution to our problems to we need to reform government. that is he let billlion with anger in the 1990s. this is not necessarily a partisan issue. theeneral trend toward relying on the mark for a time a focus on inflation the quantity of bunnies most important aspect of inflation. who is thought a very highly by dissidents the former communist country of the soviet union and eastern europe. he is someone who inspired many people to seek a more free society for it again his bottom line was you can't have political freedom without economic freedom and that's part of the argument for economic freedom. uc santa barbara we appreciate being on books that shaped america and push it your input

at home will see you next week. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪our club is home to legendary

explorers and it's a physical of the stories of. those who have expanded the margins of knowledge. tonight, we're privileged to welcome a first rate chronicler of such stories and such explorers a historian, author and journalist including editor at large for outside magazine hampton sides specializes in tales, incredible feats under perilous circumstance from the world war two. survivors of the bataan death march to the in his book, ghost soldiers to the marines at chosun in during the korean war, and his book on, desperate ground the explorer carson and his book, blood and thunder. it was powerful work on the assassination. martin luther king hellhound on his trail. he's previously lectured here in the explorers club, the uss jeannette. in his book under the kingdom of ice. he's here tonight with his wife and a journalist and editor note. and we are so grateful to

welcome to tonight's monday night lecture the historian and author and journalist hampton sides. hello. hello so so wonderful to be here tonight in new york city. i think the only place that captain cook didn't go to, but if he did go here, he would have come to this place, i'm pretty sure, and hung out in this amazing institution. he wasn't a pith helmet guy. he was more of a tricorn, you know, the tricorn hat. but this would have been his hangout, i'm sure. so thank you. it's great to be back here. i was here i think it was nine years ago, and apparently i didn't offend too many people because. i've been re invited and it's a i can't think of a better place to about one of the greatest explorers of all time captain

james cook, then the explorers club of of of new york. i was hearing about the bar and we actually got to experience the bar. you have to go down there if for no other reason than that instead of like nuts or pretzels, what they have is like crunchy protein. yeah that's good stuff. the only the explorers club. so, so, so great to be here. i mean, that was nothing like the kind of food that they ate. and captain cook's voyages. so a little bit about this photo that as you were wandering there in that photo, this piece of. so this is this is depicting the moment when captain cook arrived in hawaii was greeted by the king. hawaii colony, upu. and these two cultures met for

the time in a pretty profound, two thriving cultures. that exciting moment of first contact when everything possible before there's before there's miscues and miscues and miscommunications. there is this electric moment when cultures collide or have at least a possibility of truly understanding each other. and this is a painting painted by a native hawaiian, an amazing man named herb carney, who does a whole series of of historical paintings. so just really kind of gets to the heart of what this book is about. it's a nautical tale, has all the kind of the attributes of, a nautical tale of woe, but also has this electric moment of. first contact when anything is possible and there's a splendor and there's a majesty, there's

anything, you know, it's just like any any kind thing could happen. and that's really the the moment repeatedly throughout the book that i try to capture. so let's talk a little bit about, captain cook. how many of you know a lot about captain cook? it's an explorer's club. come on. you like? not a lot. okay, well, here's the captain. captain james cook, who i'm to argue tonight and have argued while i've been on the book tour, who was truly one of the great explorers of all time, possibly you could argue, i think, quite, quite convincingly the greatest in terms of the quality of his observations in terms of the number of nautical that he traveled, in terms of the wealth knowledge that his

voyages produced around the world, in terms of the beautiful and engraved things and the knowledge of and animals that were circulated the world and also in terms of the first encounters that his produced with native people had never never seen before. he certainly in the pantheon with magellan and i don't know alexander von humboldt and who else marco polo and he is in you have the time i think many americans many americans don't really know much about captain talk a little bit about that a little bit about that. but first i want to talk about this painting, a painting by william hodges, who traveled around the world with captain cook on his second voyage and. it captures i think, more than

any other visual, the intensity of captain cook, his nature. this was a first and foremost, a great a, very, very intense dude, very methodical, very intense. you know, not the kind of guy you really want to have a beer with, but someone who and is capturing, i think his you know so many of the other paintings about cook are official portraits where you there's clearly a pose going on and it's you know it's kind of fake artificial you see you see this is a guy who is somewhat lonely somewhat i think trying to work out a problem. he a problem solver, a puzzle solver. what's interesting this painting is that it was painted in 1776, just before the american revolution, and then it was promptly lost to history for two

centuries was found the 1980s and somewhere in ireland. and it really it really captures, i feel like by far better than any of the other pictures of cooke captain. cook is mixed up with a lot of other real animals. chinnery and i just very go through this, captain kidd. captain kidd, a not a very good looking guy and of course, captain kirk. and captain hook and i, i can't tell you how many people have told me while i've been researching this book, like, how is book coming along on the pirate guy, you know, with a parrot on his shoulder, not, you know, not captain hook and of course, the greatest captain, i think of all i think we all can agree as a bunch of explorers as

we can agree, the greatest, greatest captain of all, captain crunch. all right. somebody likes. do you remember captain crunch, this thing called crunch berries and they tore the roof of your mouth open in the stairs. terrible. all right, back to you now. no more laughing. it serious now. very serious. captain cook, this is the official. it really shows his, you know, all the accouterments of explorer and also in 1776, as he's getting ready for this third voyage, which is subject of my book. you know, i think that captain cook is someone who really belongs in the pantheon is very in the pantheon of the great explorers, but he's very controversial today. he's controversial for a lot reasons, but mainly because of this. where didn't captain go? okay, these are his three

voyages and the blue voyage is the blue dot dotted line is this is is my third. the third voyage, the subject of the book. he went everywhere from the nearly to antarctica to the arctic from realm of of penguins to, the realm of polar bears and everywhere between and. because he went everywhere and because he was such an amazing mapmaker, such a meticulous mapmaker, he put these places, many of them very places, on the on the atlas of the globe for the first time and really, in a sense, broadcast at the location of these places to the world. and so they are very resentful because that accelerate the process of colonize nation in an unbelievably fast way. so today captain cook is quite

controversial all his monuments have been splattered and vandalized and hacked from their plinths. yeah you know he's considered you know very much symbol of colonialism. melbourne and victoria, british columbia, a lot of other places. and, you know, people ask me my position on that. i, i feel like in many i mean, i certainly understand where it's from because colonialism, imperialism, the whole behind these voyages was was complicated and erratic, these very fragile island. but in some ways, cook just the messenger of modernity. you know, he was just the guy who the first one to arrive, he was the explorer, he was the mapmaker. he was not someone who left anyone behind. he was not a colonizer and he, in fact, incredibly for his

time, quite sympathetic to the cultures that encountered and wrote about them brilliantly in his books, in his journals. but anyway, it's a complicated subject we'll i'm sure we'll talk about it a little bit in question and answer but he is statues are coming down he's been all across the pacific and an interesting development which kind of lean into in the book i try to sort of understand where it's coming from and and try to i mean, i think it makes it more interesting that this guy, 250 years old, the stodgy old british explorer, is kind of, you know, controversial and he he animates people, he agitate people. i think that's makes him more interesting. this is the place where he was killed hawaii and spoil spoiler alert he dies. okay. and he dies in a very graphic and i think very violent way that i think americans, if they

know anything about captain cook and not captain hook, captain cook, it's it is this that he died in in this very way. and this is the place where he was killed. and when i was visiting, this is what saw. so you see, he's a lightning rod for some very large, many larger forces going in the in the world culture. so. okay, so why do we about captain cook, what's important about him? what's his you know, about his voyages very i'm going to run through some of his first things that he observed or his voyages encountered first, starting with this thing. so his voyages were the very first to make use of amazing navigational tool called the chronometer, which had was many decades the making. i know there's a lot of explorers club geeks in here probably know all about the history of this thing. it is a an amazing tool which

allowed the chronometer, allowed explorers to know where they were in the world precisely, particularly when it came to the question of longitude, a that had been debated and studied and puzzled over a long, long time. i won't go into the science, but basically this sea going clock is essentially just a clock, but one that's manufactured to withstand that. all the thanks and bruises and and the vicissitudes of the sea. it would tell you what time it was in greenwich, a reference point greenwich. and of course, we have greenwich mean time. so now we know where we are in the world and that makes huge difference because earlier, like anson excuse tasman from from the netherlands, he had been to new zealand but he couldn't tell you where it was he saying you sail about four weeks this way and maybe three weeks that way

and you might find it now. they knew exactly where it was, cook. cook had returned to it the next time, so he had the chronometer on second and third voyage. it is is this the chronometer i showed you is called the k1. it was invented by a guy named harrison barrett, a guy named kendall figure a way to make it cheaper and do it better. it's here at the national museum in greenwich. an amazing place. how many of you been there. a lot of people answer, i'm going to see, well, not as many as i would have thought. extraordinary. the best maritime museum in the world by far. other firsts. so captain cook was believed to be the first explorer to cross the antarctic circle and. he did so on his first and second voyages in order to find perhaps not find a mythic supercontinent that was widely believed to exist by all the leading scientists of the time.

this image shows it. it's you see, at the very bottom of the world, there's this massive, you know, just a huge place that was so widely believed that they put it on maps and they said it was populated by millions of people and. it had to be there because if it wasn't, there the preponderance of land masses, the northern hemisphere would cause the planet to spin out of control into. outer space. don't laugh. but i mean, i, i, yes, we have to laugh because. it's such a silly science. but that's what the, the, the view was at the time captain cook went down there and decided, you know what, it's not there. it's a myth. there's no such continent. yes. antarctica which he came very close to discovering is big. yes, australia is a big continent, but nothing like that. so he became what they call a hero of negative discovery,

meaning he didn't discover a thing that was widely presumed to be there and. so. okay, moving on to other first, it's a nautical tale. okay, we have to have some scurvy talk. this this expedition, though, i'm i regret to tell you those of you have read the book, there is no scurvy at all. captain cook all three of his voyages. there was never a single case of and this is another reason why he was hailed in his as being a great explorer that he they thought he had conquered scurvy. he, of course, did not understand that scurvy caused, you know was caused by a lack of vitamin. but he did understand in his regimen of food that he made his sailors eat that you had to have fresh fruit eat, fresh vegetables, fresh meat, this

sort pork and hardtack diet was just not going to cut it. he knew instinctively that it was unhealthy and he forced this food down down their throats practically. they just would not want to eat it. but scurvy, of course, was a horrible, horrible malady. it caused all these weird on your body. it caused your body essentially to disintegrate from from within. it caused your gums to become spongy and pull back from your teeth. it was it a malady that caused the death of million of people, sailors over the years and was almost considered occupational hazard of, a long distance voyaging at that time now with with scurvy based conquered the crown realized hey we can do more long distance voyages. we can go all the way around the world, we can conquer the world and to beat spanish and beat the

you know, beat the dutch and beat the portuguese. at this game of imperialism. so that's one of the reasons captain cook was so after his first and second voyages. so captain cook, during his third voyage, snapped this wonderful photograph of surfing. obviously not that true, but his voyages, particularly his third voyage, they we get our first description of the sport surfing. and you cannot believe how in just amazed his are who write about this thing they first of all most english back then most in the navy did not know how to swim, which is amazing in and of itself that they weren't required know how to swim, let alone surf, and they just try to break it the biomechanics down like they oh, you wouldn't believe they get on this, you know, longboard and they, they stand up and they glide across

the waves for, you know, miles across the ocean. it's like it's just unbelievable what what what they're seeing. they they can't believe it. and they don't believe that the english back home will believe it. we get it. first description of the whole concept of taboo. and you know, to the temples of tahiti. what what's allowed what's not allowed all the weird kind rules and regulations, a kind of quasi religious and also legal kind of system of laws like such things as like, you know, if if the shadow if your shadow were to fall upon the king, you could be killed or, you know, women aren't supposed to eat certain species, fish or all kinds of very, extremely delineated specific. but anyway, this concept taboo very quickly enters lexicon of of english society with within a few short years of his voyages.

and we talk, oh, that's taboo. you can't do that. you know whatever whatever the taboo might be. so we get that. so massage is another thing that we get from his voyages. lomi, lomi tahitian massage is something that all of his nearly of his explorers, all of his sailors sailors. experience at some point like captain cook himself was suffering mightily from a condition called sciatic ca, which is, you know, incredibly debilitating thing. and he was, you know, he didn't want to be touched, know he is british. but he he he he undergoes this treatment a. whole army of misuses descend upon him and work on him three days in a series of and his sciatica is completely cured and this very skeptical captain

writes in his journal all about how wonderful this was and. this takes off, you know after these things are published in england. so what else we get? our first description of a human sacrifice which had been rumored to a thing all over polynesia, but in in tahiti, in the third voyage, cook his officers encounter. and then, of course, tattooing tattooing is a big thing i'll, of course, of course. oliver polynesia and cook's men immediately want to have have themselves tattooed. it seems like a cool thing to do of course when they get home to everyone wants a tattoo it goes viral and it becomes this almost trigger thing. if you're a nautical guy, if you're a sailor, you have to have a tattoo. so these are just a few of the firsts that kind of emerge from cook's three voyages. so doing these books is in

respects a kind of lonely enterprise. you know, you're just staring at a lot of monographs and manuscripts and going to archives and sitting in a room for years. but one of the joys of doing them is to the scholars, the people who have devoted their lives, in some cases, to the age of exploration, to to you understanding these various characters, to understanding the anthropology, archeology of these places is and i was, i will just say i could not have done this book without some of these folks who i met along the way. just a quick shout out to some of them. first thing i had to do is get a get this thing right here. very important. i am card carrying member of the captain society which publishes a monthly log called the captain's log and they're called

cookies and and i bring this up partly because they really were just hugely, hugely beneficial to my research. also, just to illustrate the fact that there is this enormous body of literature and there's this enormous body of knowledge that the cook's voyages produce, that it's almost like people who know all about the civil war are all about the revolutions or war, or you name the topic. but captain cook's three voyages and his biog wifi and that all the stories, all the officers who served him it's expansive body of knowledge and it can take you know a person the rest of their life to master all that information and without these guys and here are some them i couldn't have it. they have excellent facial hair. i think you have to recognize two past presidents of society. the guy on the right, a huge

shout out. this is a guy named cliff thornton, president of the of the society and, someone who the last probably well-known american writer who's written captain cook was was tony horwitz, who an amazing book called blue latitudes. and if you have read it maybe a few and cliff thornton crops in that book and he's still at it all these years later an amazing amazing guy who helped me through a lot misconceptions and kept me on the straight and narrow for sure. but they're all over the place and know some of them are you know, they're mostly guys, but there's women, there's polynesians, there's of course, you know, there's anthropologists, maritime historians, all sorts of people who are members of this amazing society. so that's where some of the research comes from, for sure. they're also the collectors,

captain cook's voyages produced all kinds relics and artifacts, which somehow ended up in museums in england or, australia, new zealand. many of these artifacts, maybe some of you saw the news recently. a bunch of spears were recently returned to to the aborigines of. australia. but there's all these artifacts, this this is a spear from cook's third voyage that i believe it's true is a very reputable in honolulu who says that this barb spears, he's on all the provenance on it and it's apparently true i've got to got to hold that just to just think that this is an artifact that captain cook himself held at one point. it's kind of kind of a cool kind of a cool part of the research. and the last thing is you meet a lot of book collectors, manuscript, rare book and manuscript collectors, including this a guy named lou weinstein, who lives on maui and has this

amazing collection of captain cook arcane, you know, and original and all kinds of stuff. and just to hold them in your hand, the quality of the of the printing of those the beauty of the art and the engravings, the maps these are folio sized are huge, huge books. and you just realize you know, it's a direct connection to history is pretty cool to and to enjoy. so going back a little bit just so you a little bit about who captain cook was his early life. so he was from yorkshire, he came from poverty, he came from nothing. his father was a farmer. one of the things i love about captain cook is that the royal navy of that time, most who got to that level were people with connections with money, people who knew the right people?

captain cook did it by sheer work ethic, by by an skill for astronomy and mapmaking. he worked his up from from, you know, from literally. this is ayton, the town where he grew up in the it's kind of the the moors, the the moors of yorkshire and he lived in this beautiful but you know, he was out of his mind. he was a young kid. he was about seven years old. and he at least so goes the the legend that he climbed this place called rosebery. and he climbed to the top of this small mountain, a very high hill, which i did with my wife and and oh, by the and is here shout out to and my wonderful wife wife.

we got to the top of it and reason i show this is because at least according to the story, captain cook at seven years old, first saw the ocean. 12 miles away. and he said, you know, what's that like? want to go there? apparently from very beginning, he just like i got to get out of here. i got you know, he saw a very circumscribed life for as a farmer and he's like i get i get to go over there and he does and he very quickly goes to this town place called whitby in the us, you know, just just on the on the north sea. and he apprentices to some quicker shipping interests there and learns shipping trade he learns how to navigate the of very complicated coastline of england bringing coal from newcastle down to to london. he goes all over the baltic all over the north sea. he masters this trade and he

does in these ships. this is an early, early photograph of one of the whitby cats. they're called, and they are you know, they're sleek, they're not beautiful. they're not fast. but they are stout and solid and, nearly bombproof. and they can carry huge amounts of stuff. they have a square, you a square stern. they these the ships that you learn to navigate. and these are the ships, the whitby cats that he used all three of his voyages around the world. so that's why i showed that photograph. but okay. okay. so the voyage itself was designed to find something the british had been obsessed with centuries, finding the northwest passage, a shortcut over canada from the atlantic to, the pacific, in order to facilitate trade with the east indies.

as with, you know, with india, with china. and also while they're at it, avoid the spanish and so the northwest passage was something that i think, you know, i'm sure most of you in the room know a little bit about things did not ever go well for the british they got stuck the ice pretty soon they're starving and scurvy you know there's their their boots so but they had always it from the east you know from the atlantic side and and nothing had gone well. so the idea for this voyage was to reverse the whole thing and go around alaska a a part of the world. this is a modern map, obviously, showing the possibilities, but the idea was to go around alaska, go up through the bering strait, a part of the world that was not very well understood all and try to find northwest passage from there for the pacific side they never seem to

talk about. well, aren't things just going to go horribly from that side, just like did from the other side? but that's a whole another story. so captain cook's voyages, and particularly this third one, which is the subject of the book, it's important for you to understand that these were not sort of like captain cook had an idea. think i'll just go on a voyage. kind of like dora the explorer, you know, like who do you he had the might and the money and the brainpower of the entire british empire behind him. and i want to talk a little about who some of those prime movers were starting with starting at the king. george king. george the third, the king of england was really into captain cook, into his voyages. big supporter. he is, of course, famously mad king george, right. king george. but he's not mad. he's not mad yet except that he's starting to go a little bit

because of certain things that are starting to happen in boston at this time of 1776. but his other thing was he was into animals. he loved farm animals, and he had this idea of bringing to tahiti a bunch of i don't know, bulls, cows and goats and and peacocks and all kinds of things. so they could create a proper english farm. he thought it was sad that the haitians only ate seafood and, you know, they needed to have a prop proper english farm. so so consequently this voyage in addition to being a voyage of exploration is also a noah's ark kind of experiment full just absolutely chock full animals that cook has to somehow deliver to tahiti. so we get that farmer george they called him the other, you know, another behind all this thing is the royal society,

which was a, you know, the preeminent intellectual fraternity, you know, going to sir isaac newton, philosophers and doctors, all kinds of gentleman scientists were behind this voyage, all of cook's voyages and put up some money for it. and put up their expertise and including and especially this guy, a very famous botanist named, joseph banks, who anyone knows anything about botany, anything who's been to kew gardens in england, will know about him not to be confused with the the guy, whoever the guy was, it came of the cheap that you can get at the mall. that's joseph bank. this is joseph banks, a very, very amazing writer who actually went around the world on cook's first voyage with the endeavor. and he plays a big role in the book. so joseph banks and then last but not least, guy, the most

probably the most powerful man in england besides king george himself. this is the first lord of the admiralty, john montagu, the earl of sandwich. very powerful guy, someone who loved cook was quite a good friend of cook and a big promoter of his voyages. this is his north of england, a north of london. excuse me, and had a great time kind of getting to know lord sandwich. he's an important character in the book as well. he's famous for many things, but probably most famous for the inventor of the sandwich. he's a busy, by the way, this kind of this story actually kind of checks out when he was busy, was kind of a workaholic. he was also a at night he was in a hurry. so got the idea of sticking a piece of roast beef between two slices of bread and, eating it on the on the fly.

and so he thus became known as the inventor of the sandwich. it's really i think it's actually okay. so the voyage itself, something's going on out here. i think a big protest happening. about. so the voyage. this gives you a sense of just this is his third voyage the voyage the subject of the book and you know, again, the ambition of it, the sheer scope of it, the crazy kind of contours of it all, the things that were going on is almost impossible to, for me, succinctly to tell you about what was going on here and what they were trying to do, but we will try. they leave from plymouth in on july 12th, 1776, july 12th,

1776, you know, they didn't have cable or any kind of telephones or so. they didn't know that this was happening in philadelphia. and they was interesting as they leave and they are in perfect ignorance of all of these developments for the rest, the voyage all four years and yet a constant theme on the other side of the continent where they're exploring you know, they're exploring alaska and the northwest of north america and. all these things are happening. but 5000, 4000 miles away are important. just briefly to say that, you know, is not by any means a biography of captain cook. it is an ensemble story about, you know, 180 men who left in these two ships in july of 1776. and i'm just to pluck out three of them who are wow, this is getting intense out here. i don't know what's happening. is it something i'm saying.