hello everyone. welcome to the keto institute and welcome to those watching at home and on television on peter

goettler. it's my honor privilege to be the president and ceo of the cato institute. and i'm really pleased today to have bryan caplan megan mcardle with us for a book forum on the first graph novel. i'm even though it's graphic nonfiction. i'm told brian. it's still supposed to be called a graphic, but the first graphic novel that cato has ever published and the second graphic novel written by brian and this one is called build baby, build the science and ethics of housing regulation. i grew up in a lower middle class town, working class town, and we all pretty happy. we thought were fortunate and in fact when i hear politician always talking about how tough things are for the middle class, i kind of remember my child and remember that the american middle class in the history of the planet and, even in the context of the planet today, is one of the one of the most

fortunate demographics, but yet i've become more sympathetic some of the challenges faced by the middle class in particular. if think of the things that many people would consider elements of a good life, it would be to be healthy to see your kids educated and to be able to live in a home of your own and. i think it's ironic that in all three of these areas we seem to be the same policy mistakes. we restrict supply and then we subsidize demand. and predictably, that causes to go up. and the policy response to rising prices is to subsidize demand more. and i think we're in a situation now where you can see all three of these. you important components to our lives health care, higher education and housing are being priced out of the reach of many middle class people, at least in

the area of. housing, there seems to be a growing consensus across. the political spectrum that recognizes the impact that zoning and land regulations are having in restricting and therefore the the challenge is with the high and increasing cost of housing. and i'm really delighted that the first graphic novel, a graph of graphic nonfiction we're publishing, has been so masterfully designed and written by brian in order to address this issue impact that that government has on restricting the supply of housing and therefore increasing the cost faced by, you know, american and would be homeowners. you and i get together with young people, particularly some of the young people on staff here really drives home. i'm old and i've lived in the same house for a long time so i

haven't been on the market in the market for a home in a long time. but if you're a young person, even if you're doing well, it really is challenging to think about about buying buying your own home. so i'm really delighted at at this this book especially because brian in his first piece of graphic nonfiction borders the science and ethics of immigration. and now in this piece, i think it's really a remarkable vehicle for for delivering these ideas. this is a serious book, you know, a serious person, even someone knowledgeable about these issues. i think we get a lot out of this. and yet i think it would accessible to even a precocious middle schooler. so i think that maybe one of the things i'll save for the q&a, how brian feels the open both borders and in this volume effective in getting these ideas out to the broadest, broadest possible audience. but you didn't come here, hear

me talk, so i'm going to turn things over. brian. but first, i'd like to remind who he is. brian is an economics professor at george mason university. he's the new york times selling author of the aforementioned open borders, the myths and rational the science and ethics of immigration. he's author of the myth of the rational, selfish reasons to have more kids and the case against. this is the bio that brian wrote for himself. he says he's mindful of the stereotype of the boring professor, so he strives to make abstract ideas thrilling and he's openly nerdy man who loves graphic novels and roleplaying games. i also think it would be too strong to say that you're a provocateur. brian but, i did hear you once say that what you like to do is put an idea that seems crazy out there and get people thinking that, hey, perhaps this isn't so crazy after all.

and we're delighted to have as a discuss megan mcardle megan, i think most of you or, all of you know, as one of your original superstar our bloggers and also a i think it was david weigel who you made the transition from blogging to become an msn journalist. she's not tebowing as we used to say. janelle, a columnist for the for the washington post, where i'm sure many of you read her. she also worked for bloomberg, the economist the atlantic and newsweek and the daily beast and has been published all over the place. new york times, wall street journal, the guardian, reason, among other places. she's also the author of the book the upside of down why failing. well, is key to success and that megan and brian tend to be philosophic aligned. i'm going to be very curious where the points of disagreement will be on the book, although

david boaz once mentioned to me that he, he, david, both would score about 60 on brian kaplan's libertarian purity tests. so maybe there actually will be some points of points of disagreement, but without more delay. brian, take it away. all right thank you very much. it is wonderful to be back here at the cato institute. i was an intern here back in 1991. in the other building a really appreciate how peter's been supportive of this project. the dream is to have an entire library of libertarian nonfiction, graphic novels on a wide range of important issues. so we'll whether this one works out all all right so why a graphic novel on housing i get lunch with my friends almost every day, which is the best thing about my job. and there are two recurring questions that we our lunch guests. first of all, what are the biggest in your field? secondly, why aren't you working

on any of them? there seems to be a bit of a puzzle because people will generally say they don't work on the things that actually important right now. i will confess i too occasionally work a guilty pleasure issue that i recognize not very important. it just happens to be fun. but i do strive to on what i see as the biggest issues when i write a book. it's not just to entertain me, it's to take ideas that i think are very important on issues, that are under examined and bring them to a much wider audience. all right. now, how can you an issue as big? big by what? well, i say, look, in economic policy, the absolute metric, which is the the obvious metric, is this how much would moving the status quo to the free market actually change the economy? so you look at the world and say, here's where we are. if we move from there to a free market, how much would change? the reason why i decided write a book on housing regulation is because there have been decades

of research that at least convinced me that a radical free market approach would transform the economy and for the better. it's not hard to transform economies for the worse by transforming for the better. that's the real challenge right now. the problem when you actually go and the articles that i'm relying on, you can go into the section references, you can read them all say the problem is this while the implication portions of housing research are thrilling, you can sit there and imagine in this vastly better world. but the research itself is by now standards boring. right. as a professor, my standards are boring are different from most people's. and so i go and read a table numbers and say, wow, this quite amazing numbers, but nor emily, when i step back and imagine the things that i'm reading to someone who is curious about the world but is not an academic, i realize are going to be falling asleep, which then makes think

what is the best way to bring the science to life? to a broad audience without sacrificing intellectual integrity? the last part's hard. if you just turn on the tv, you can see sorts of ways where people are bringing ideas to, but with great sacrifice of integrity. so in the words of rod serling, i submitted for your approval. my bill, baby bill, the and ethics of housing regulation illustrate it by audie brand say who is in romania right now. but that's him there. if you can take a look. yes, that's one of my favorite characters. that is the super cute baby lion. that will grow up to be something extremely dangerous and down there, that's me giving high five to you, audie. all right. so what is wrong with the housing market over the last 50 years, u.s. housing prices have increased a lot more than inflation, and especially what we call the most desirable areas of the country, the trendy areas, the places where people say, oh, i really want to move

that place. i'm an economist. and even if you aren't, there's a really obvious story about what's going on in the housing markets. supply and demand. yes, of course it's supply and demand like demand is high supply is low. of course, prices are astronomical as usual. supply and demand wrong. it is correct to say the supply and demand gives us insight on what's going on in housing prices. but it's still in particular case, deeply misleading because normally when we say supply and demand, it very sounds like we're talking about natural. why are court side seats a basketball game so expensive. well there's naturally a great scarcity of courtside seats to basketball games. everyone can't be sitting in the courtside side. by definition. watch the research that i build this book on says is that it is not the case that natural scarcity is a big problem. instead, housing prices have

largely because regulation is artificially reducing supply and by a lot right? right. so what's wrong with the housing market? this is what's wrong with the housing market. one of the main issues in the book is is the best symbol for government right now outside of the us uncle sam isn't a symbol for government at all it's a symbol of the u.s. but since i was thinking, we largely use audience. i figure it uncle sam is about the best we have it is true and i totally on board with most of housing is actually state and local but there wasn't any good symbol for it. so i said, well, uncle sam is symbol of government in america. and i think is the best that we can do for communicating this idea in one image. all right. so let me give you a quick tour of top housing. almost every country that i've looked at has a lot of regulation, even places like india, where you might say, why would you go and stop construction in india when so

many people are sleeping in the streets. and the answer is, well we got our reasons. we're going to go and strangle housing even here. so what are some of the top housing regulations, ones that wind up making a big difference? so one is height restrictions. we have the technology to build very tall buildings in desirable locations. we've had technology for over 100 years. if you go and look at the skyline of, new york city, you'll see a bunch of buildings that are very tall and are ancient. no one alive or almost no one alive remembers them being built any longer. but getting permission build new ones is super hard. the ordeal to go through the number of layers of, bureaucracy, the number of rules you have to follow so much that very of them get built compared to the number that would be profitable. if it was just a matter i own the land i want to build this out of my way. something is particularly important to the united states is multiple in the restrictions. a large majority of residential land is set aside for single

family homes exclusively. you can't do anything else minimum lot size, even when are building a single family home. very to say you have to waste most of your land and i do mean waste because normally builders would realize that while people like having extra land, they don't like it enough to actually pay anything close to the market price in less. obviously, the government says you are not allowed to go and build on anything less than an acre. that's case they are stuck meeting minimum parking requirements also wind up mattering a lot. seems like a picky point, but when look at the numbers it's very common. say that builders have to build two or three parking spaces per resident which means or per unit, which means that you have to go and again, waste enormous amount of land just to go and build anything much more. but a start. how much does regulation actually raise prices? we've got data going back, but not 100 years. we're going to look at how housing prices used to work around most of the first world

and we can see is that historically, even rises in demand didn't produce long term rises in housing prices back when popular was growing much more rapidly than is now, we didn't see long run rises in. instead, when there was a shock demand, prices would go up and then as a result of this, prices would be above cost and then markets would do the normal thing that do when prices are above cost, which produce more to make piles money. this is how things worked once prices got above cost would lead to a lot more construction. the construction would continue until prices fell back to what we call the break even level the long run competitive level rough estimate of how high got now is that prices now at about double the break even level over the entire country. so for the entire country worried about double the cost of production the physical cost the actual physical cost of doing

it. how do we now write standard method here, which goes back to economists glaeser and gyourko is to take a look at very similar that have different amounts of land and then use the extra price of the house, the extra land measure. what is the value land that does not have the actual permission to build anything on go for what is that price right and. what they find is that the extra will pay to have 100 square feet of vacant unusable land for anything other than walking around or playing volleyball is real. well then you got this pure value of land. next step is go to a big manual of construction cost used by people who actually industry and figure out what is the physical construction cost to actually make the home right. then finally you sum the cost of the unimproved land with the cost of construction to price and that gap is the measure the effect of regulation which is

often somewhat confusingly called the zoning tax. sometimes perhaps some are knows about zoning says well, it isn't really a tax. yes, the researchers know this. they just want to have a name for what regulation is adding to the price. so earlier work on this found enormous zoning taxes in your most desirable area so bay area new york l.a. right places like a downtown downtown chicago right didn't find much elsewhere and then the ideas are severe problem some places but for most of the country it's not very important. but then later on got better data on vacant lots and rebuilt vacant lots at distances from downtown areas. and what they found is that actually in almost all major population centers in the u.s., there are large zoning. government regulation is adding a lot almost everywhere. a lot of people live like so if people are there, they probably are paying a lot extra because of government. now why write a whole book on housing in particular? doesn't government prices of

other stuff? sure. but here's the key thing. people spend way more on housing than they're doing on gasoline or chewing gum. so when you double this cost, it is a huge deal. you're doubling the cost of something that is a large share of the budget, which means there's a large effect on living standards. so a rough estimate that housing costs are about 20% of your budget. so we could have that cut cut to cut the cost of living by 10% and then raise standard of living across the whole u.s. by an average of 11%, which is a ton right now. this brings me to my very favorite chapter of the book, the panacea policy, who is heard of heard the word panacea before? yes. all right, good. i talked to few people said they never heard of it. and like, you know, this is a common word. all right. anyway, all of the evidence that i talked about points to a really straightforward braindead way, dramatically increase living standards, which is housing deregulation. we got regulation.

the problem, get rid of the regulation can go back to normal as. they used to be all right but what really motivated motivated me to write this book is when i realized there's a lot of other problems that seem unrelated but are in fact closely connected to housing regulation. many these problems, people think of them as they're so intractable what could possibly handle any one of them? and i was at the evidence saying that not only do i know i handle one of them, i know one policy it simultaneously a big dent in a long list of problems. right. so deregulation promises mitigate many other social ills, including inequality social mobility, poor prospects for working class males homelessness, environmental issues, low fertility, and also crime. all right. so let's see. all right. so let me just go through some of the main arguments here, inequality, this really easy, the share of people's budgets they spend on housing falls with income rich people spend a

smaller share their income on shelter than poor people. that means if you reduce the price across the board you are doing more to help poor people than rich people, that by definition reduces inequality. and so this is again is a large share of the budget. this makes a noticeable difference. similarly, it's also true that homeowners are higher incomes and renters on average are for landlords, as we're going to see rather for for homeowners, housing deregulation is a mixed bag there are a bunch of good things for homeowners, which definitely be pointed out. but at least for homeowners you can say. yeah, but also my primary asset is going to fall in value for tenants. it is a clear cut gain because. they don't own the property that is losing value and, so they just pay a lower price without a loss in asset value. social. there used to be a really clear cut way in the united states. very simple. were a person that was motivated could raise their standard of living just meant say a feels unless you live in the richest

highest wages parts of the country leave you are go to high wage area and pocket that extra race right in the past it was true the housing were a little bit higher in high wage areas, but it was a small difference. so that anyone who wanted to go and could just pack their bags, get their car, drive to a high wage area, pay a little bit more in housing costs, have a lot more income, and enjoy the difference. what is going to show up showed is that it is no longer true that this works in modern united states because now you move to the highest wage areas the country. housing costs are so much higher that the housing cost increase eats up more than 100% of the wage gain. on average. and therefore, what's going on is that people tending to leave high wage areas of the country, which is almost it's like i'm going to go to area. wages are lower. it's like, why would you ever do that? because the housing cost is so

much lower that i actually get again, when you go and read work, they have even more interesting details like high skilled workers can get a gain by going to high wage areas because for them the housing cost is a smaller share of the budget and the wage gains larger. but for a journal, for a for a janitor to go and move to new york city to pay mississippi as a way to get poor not richer, another big gain, poor prospects for working class males. you probably heard of the books decius bare by nobel prize winner angus deaton, my dissertation advisor and case. one of the main things they show is that non-college males have done very poorly by a lot of measures in recent years, and their favorite story is that non-college males have a lack of work that at least feels meaningful for them. right. and what kind of work feels meaning for them meaningful? well, the classic one is manufacturing jobs. and this is classic employment. this is one where, despite all sorts of efforts to go and revive manufacturing, it is

pretty much hopeless because for the simple reason that we are close to satiated on manufacturing, who here wants to go and own five televisions on the other hand, there is another classic of manly employment, which is construction, which is still high wage and we're still most people would like to get a lot more if the price were right. most people today would like have a much bigger place if if they could. if this price were reasonable, whereas they don't want to get a whole bunch of televisions. right. and again, what is this specifically do for working class males? well, the a majority of people work in construction are, first of all, non-college workers, second of all male. so not only are you making it affordable for them to have a home of their own, but also you are creating a lot of extra jobs, in particular. this is something where if we were to go and say double employment in construction, it makes a huge and transformative difference because it's a large industry now, if you were a double it from 10 million to 20 million, this would be a transformation of what it is

like to be a non-college male in america. homelessness. this is one that i was skeptical of when first started going and working on, but because i was thinking of homelessness as living on the street. but actual statistics are more like not having a permanent a permanent address. and for this it makes a of sense that if you go and make housing more affordable, people going to stop sleeping on their friends or brothers couch or stop couch surfing. and again, this is what the evidence says, is that a very predictor of actual measured homelessness rates is just the cost of a cheap place, right. our environmental issues, this is one where, again, ed glaeser together, matt kohn has done some very cool work showing that actually new construction has a lower carbon footprint than old because even though it's bigger, it's better insulated. furthermore, are the areas of the country that are nicest in terms of weather conditions? southern california most notably these are places at very low and

cooling costs, and yet perversely, they have regulated prices in that area. so high that people flee. and when they flee california, do they go? they go to places where they will have a larger environmental footprint, environmental footprint, low fertility. this one, it's a bit more controversial. but the papers that are on this are on my side. and again, common sense just one of the main reasons why you keep living in your parents basement is because housing is expensive as long as you're living in your parents basement, you are highly unlikely to get married and even less likely to start having kids. so i think when you put that together, it really is hard to believe anything else other than this going to make a dent in it and this crime. why don't we go talk about that in the q&a, but very cool experiment there. right. so why not? why haven't deregulated right? i've got a real simple story for my all of our policies exist. the policies that we have exist. most people think life would be

much worse without the policy. people housing regulation because when you tell about not having it, they get scared and say, my god, what could go wrong? there's a standard list of complaints that almost has when you bring this up. what's bad about building stuff? it's going to give us more traffic is going to give us more parking problems. bad for the environment. we got to protect the character of the neighborhood. and that, of course is a classic preventing uses. i don't want a pig farm next door. so let's make sure you can't do that now in the book i go over some key rebuttals. why these arguments just aren't that good, or why at least if they are true, they are still misleading. our first principle guarantee is not great. giving stuff for free is though super popular. a terrible idea, especially if it is a good subject to congestion. when you road driving free during rush, you don't mean this doesn't mean that everybody gets to enjoy a pleasant drive. it means that everyone is stuck

in traffic when you that we are going to make all parking cheap even on a very popular day park. it doesn't mean everyone gets free parking. it means that you have to drive around for half an hour to find parking. economists are talking about this for a long time, saying why, don't we go and charge a price greater zero for driving during peak time and for parking during peak times and solve a problem that way. right now, the standard thing is it's not fair. what about poor people? so instead go and double the price of housing. that's that's really fair for poor people. it's like it makes a lot more sense to go and raise the price of these narrow, specific goods that are some that are vaguely connected housing to housing that to raise the price, housing, which is a much larger hit. right. obviously, right now. i know that a lot of people still resist it. and my dad watching, he'd be saying, brian, people to drive, you can't charge them for this. it's like it's a lot better to

do this than to have a house cost $1,000,000. a second point, just like i was saying, glaeser and khan letting people live in temperate cities. is green if you were a real environmentalist, care about the planet, you would want to go and make it super to build a ton of housing right in california what's going on, right now is parochial environmentalism. like, i don't want the planet harmed right next. me it's like it's planet. so that doesn't make any sense. all right. and then just ripping off bernanke seagen, who i think kato published some of the stuff back in the seventies, he wrote the classic study of land use in houston. and here's what he said. while people get really about urban pig farms ruining, the neighborhood, that kind of thing, market forces lead to a natural separation of uses, even when it is legal to go and build things next to other things where people wouldn't want them. it rarely happens. there's a reason why most manufac turing is right next to

harbors and train stations. that's because you want to get low transportation. there's a reason why most commercial construction is on main roads because you want to get dry by traffic. there's a reason why when you build, when you have a nice you want to build another nice house to it, which that you get a bigger premium from someone who wants a nice house them or someone who wants a lower quality house. of course, this doesn't mean that you would have a guarantee, but a lot. what's gone wrong with regulation is this is this hunt for the guarantee? i wanted absolute assurance nothing bad will ever happen. well, the only way we can do that is to prevent of really good stuff from happening. that's what happens when you say i wanted guarantee because to get even somewhat absolute guarantees like, well, what if, there was a 1% chance of something go wrong then. no, because that's messing my absolute guarantee. all right. so really, why why do we actually housing? what is the real problem overcome and what is ultimately the goal of? this entire book, what a start.

i just want to go and argue with almost all felt. and say it's not primarily about protecting values. it's not. it is convenient. go and point fingers that people disagree. you say you're just a selfish jerk. that to protect your property values, it's not completely wrong. there are some people that want to protect their property values, but it's really overrated. how do we know? first of all, this story were true? existing property owners would not be saying absolutely not. no way, never, no matter what they be saying, let's make a deal. how much are you willing to pay for it? how much you're willing to pay to rip rip down 100 historic homes in san francisco and five skyscrapers and said that's what an actual salvage person when you make them an offer not no way. i don't care how much money you offer a salvage person. what kind of money are we talking? right. so if existing owners would happily development emily, how can you do it? well, one thing would be to say, how about we give a property discount?

property tax discount to all the existing owners and we pay and charge extra property taxes to the new developers. how about that? so let's make a deal. right now. another reason now to go back i was mentioning there are selfish for owners to want to go and protect their property values. but on the other hand, there are some selfish interests going the other way. like what if your new owner wants to upgrade? if you own an historic home in san francisco, wouldn't you like to be able to sell out a developer who will tear it down and, put a modern building? why to make piles of money, to make piles of money, right? or suppose you want to subdivide your land. suppose he wanted go and expand it. these are all areas regulation is in fact in the real often bad for owners. we tend to forget about the ways that regulation is harming the existing occupants, but it often does. furthermore, suppose you want your adult kids to live within 100 miles of you. that's important, right? you might say, well, i'm going to be really selfish here. i don't want any additional housing built. i want to keep prices high.

do you want your kid to be able to live near you? well, yeah, i want him to be able to live near me. well, how do you propose to make that happen? if prices are on the price of a house, a million bucks, i suppose i could go. and get a giant home equity loan against the inflated value. my home value, my house, give it to my kid. so can make the down payment. or we could have deregulation or housing just lower and we don't have to worry about right. furthermore, as i discussed in the book, there's actually a lot of evidence that renters support regulation. which fits with the idea that just think it's bad for society, rather that they are out for themselves is of course a renter in terms of basic economics, well, what do you care whether the price of housing comes down is actually good for you? so what are the good stories about why we have regulation? save the good stories are as follows. first of all, just status quo bias. things are true, are great. the way they are. they shouldn't change ever in the book i've got a picture of the old waldorf-astoria hotel

which is a gorgeous building, was torn down in 1929 to allow the construction of the state building, which is even better. why assume that people tear down old buildings? they're going to build something worse. but why? well, we've got a lot of psychological evidence. this is how people are and great news is if you just let people do what they want, change happens and then people get used to the change and then pretty soon they can't even believe that they ever thought otherwise. or they've just. so a lot of the problem is just status quo by just getting people to think about how beautiful the world could be but isn't yet and that's really the whole point of chapter five. bastiat buildings, where everyone knows great french economist frederick bastiat in the book, i resurrect him and we travel around the world and see world as it might be, but is not economic illiteracy right? this is one of my favorite root causes for a lot of bad government policies. i economists tend to think everybody knows that if we go

and deregulate will come down. but the problem is that hurt some people. well, we've actually done pretty good surveys, even experimental surveys, where we ask people, what do you think happen if we allow people to build a lot more housing and the rough breakdown of the public is a third of people think that would raise a third thinks no difference a third think it would bring them down. so roughly speaking, the public a random view on this issue we're almost all economists would agree. of course allowing more construction brings prices down. so if people are in two thirds, the public is in total denial. the main benefit of housing. it's not surprising that hardly anyone supports it. so what want to do in the book is change people's minds overcome the economic illiteracy. another problem sheer innumeracy. all right, so this everybody knows the approximate approximately equals mass sign. it's that squiggly one. it's not the straight bars. all right. so 1 trillion -1 billion approx simply equals not exactly approximately equals 1 trillion.

yes. but try using this argument in a debate i've been in a bunch of debates where i had $1 trillion argument that was completely solid. and the opponents. yeah, but what about these $10 billion complaints and what i want to say is look, even if all your complaints were true i'm still i still deserved to win because those are $10 billion complaints. and i got trillion dollar benefit. so the benefits vastly outweigh costs. and you're just being petty about this. but they beat me in the debates because. ten particular vivid, whiny complaints are a lot more persuasive than giant overwhelming. what? what overwhelming argument in favor. so i think this is a big part of the problem. i illustrated this in the debates, this debate between the bear and the mouse, where the mouse crushes bear. but the other bear much cheaper housing. that's the story. right. and last one, kind of inspired by my dad's paranoia. you mentioned building new things and many people's minds do go to worst possible case, which does happen once in a long

while. but the reasonable thing that you do when you're evaluating something is, well, what normally happens? what typically happens? i still remember what a major new development when i was in high school and i was just learning economics. my dad was very upset about. it he came down and complained about all the -- city councilman that approved this horrible thing. and i sat there trying to argue with him. no, no, no. this is actually really good if you don't know anything. all right. so 30 years later, he doesn't even remember he was ever against it. but i remember i remember him saying the sky would fall if it was built. nothing has happened. he hasn't even read. he's not even aware that this this development even exists anymore. but i think this is a major problem. it's worst case thinking and the weaponization of this in politics. all right. so yeah so to conclude, here's my two page audio book. i'll see the text is actually too small for me to read it. yes, i do remember to say if i turn around, i can see it. yes. as bentham put it.

and there i've got the auto icon of jeremy bentham. remember how bentham was actually was literally mummified all right. so but as a mummy he can speak in a graphic novel and yes so what he said is the request of industry to government is is modest is that of diogenes to alexander jr. get out of my light and that is my solution for america's housing problems and the world's thank you very much. i guess that means i'm up so as i read this book. i thought multiple times about dorothy famous review of a book. so is not a book that should be read and tossed lightly aside. should be with great force. and i want to take this book and i want to go to every state legislature and city council in the country. just start throwing it, just hopefully it will them in the

heads and knock some sense into them. so i, i already knew before i reading it that i was to agree with the book. i did. so it was a little bit of a struggle to be a respondent rather than just to like bring my pompoms and go. brian bright bill baby belt. so yes, exactly. no so i came up with, i came up with the questions that i had as i went through with the first of which are empirical right. some things, you know, for example, we are definitely seeing people out of high productivity cities towards lower productivity, places where it's easier to build. and i think that that is obviously being driven by housing prices. i don't know that all it's being driven by housing prices. i think there are other issues here in terms of quality of life, in terms of if so, if you think about an american city,

the cities they're leaving these these big coastal cities. right. which is where most of the problem is by no means all to be clear. you know, as brian talks, miami, dallas, there are lots of places where especially in the center city, there are still issues. but the big issues are along the coasts. those are where for a variety of reasons. it's become there's just a strangle hold on the ability to build in densest and most productive areas. but i tell the story of those cities, right? there's a bunch of technological that make the city what it is right. so those cities tend to be they were all architected around railroads basically. right now there have been many of them rebuilt and changed with highways and so forth that they are less oriented around center transit hub. but if you look at all of these cities, you're ultimately going to find the same pattern, which is they were originally built around one or many rail stations and the design of the city is is

around that there's transit links, there's roads and so forth. and then what happens in the fifties is, is that we enable people to live further rather than walking distance a railroad station. and that is transforming. and then we essentially open up a bunch of land to development that had not been feasible to develop as commuter housing before. you could work downtown while living in a single family, detached home farther from the rail station, you could walk and say half an hour. and that's just a major technological that allows people to live and work in different places, people who could previously before did it to have a house and they all move right. so i think that some of what you're seeing are people moving away from those cities is just that places there was another technologic air conditioning which has enabled places like phenix to just be a place that you would desire to live. and so by no means all of it is. i think obviously brian is correct about that, but i do

have questions about if we could massively upswing in new york and san francisco, how many people would want to move or would we still see some outmigration for other reasons, for other policy reasons as well? right. it's not all housing. it's it's other things, taxes and so forth. and second, again small empirical quibble because are nowhere near the limit, whatever it is. but high. can we really build? you know, i love brian talks about these giant skyscrapers on central park that take advantage of the view those actually turn out to not be very good buildings and they relate to a well-known problem building which is that elevators are actually huge constraint on how high you can build. so after about 30 floors, residential, this sheer amount of elevator that you need to get to people's their apartments, eating into the apartment value, you get less and less value out of each successive floor. which is why if you know some of the ultra tall buildings, the empire state building, not the empire state building build, world trade center building, they actually had staged

elevators where you take one elevator to, a mezzanine on like this. i think it a 78th floor and then you take another elevator. so these super tall buildings are only being built abroad because. they're not actually very practical office buildings. so there is some of that with residential as well. those tall buildings on central park are now one of those now mired in lawsuits because the residents don't like it. and we're only really feasible because there's one apartment per floor. if you had less than that, if you had more than if you tried to have a more normal building that tall, you wouldn't be able to get enough people and down to make it a practical place to live again. however, this is quibble. you know, if you look at some place, new york city, you could definitely make a lot of buildings than they are. third question i have i think is a bigger question. this goes back to that technological revolution of the fifties. also the technological revolution rail, which allowed streetcars which first for the first time allowed people to be more than walking from work. there's another technological change which is remote work. i think it's still an open question how much this is going to change american life.

and i think it's going to take a couple of decades, really work through it. but how when brian talks about the productivity that you can get by moving into cities. right. and this has been a steep all of this literature how is is that most of the data we have on that is still really pre-pandemic so is that productivity game is as big as it used to be and if if not what does that imply about economic benefits of deregulating housing? i then the last question would have i think the my biggest empirical it really is a question i am not a demographer. i don't know the answer, but lyman stone and some other people have been making what me is a credible argument that really dense living is. bad for fertility. for a couple of reasons. there may actually be some deep

evolutionary that we don't know about that just when the population gets dense, you just have less urge reproduce. we don't like, right? we see that. we see of this in nature rate that the reproduction rate slow down as the population gets more and definitely changed. but there's also look, i grew up in manhattan and my mom had two kids because i grew up in manhattan. she wanted for the grand we had like a pretty much ideal situation and for growing up in an apartment, aside from having like eight full time nannies or something, right we lived in a building where there was a playroom where there were four other little girls my age that i could run around the building with. we basically in the seventies it was like a little small town. my had no idea where i was on weekends like 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. i came home for dinner, i might be in an apartment but i might be at any one of other apartments. and she didn't know she would just call around if she needed me. we were a couple of blocks from riverside park, which had excellent playgrounds, but the

fact if you're raising a kid in an apartment and i can also say this as someone who has had a dog on the 15th floor and now then on the first floor and then in a house, it's just like the need to get another creature up and down in the elevators and oh, my gosh, i forgot the diaper bag back up it like that little it's it seems like a tiny transaction costs some minute, right maybe another minute of waiting for the elevator. but psychologically it's such a huge transaction cost and it makes it way more unpleasant. also makes more unpleasant that like you can't go to greenery unless you physically escort your child and stay there and watch, it just increases the intensity of parenting it when they get in the middle school, or at least it didn't. my era when they would not when your parents were not hovering you all the time and i was allowed to go around the city on the subway by myself. but that i think might be like, i think housing on obviously impact. but i sort of ask whether push

it whether if we build all these super dense buildings downtown at least whether we're actually the fertility boost from that i understand look there's filtering you know people move people without kids moving to the other people get their single family but do have questions. so then i have some policy questions and. one of them is does this densification of all levels, right? that was mostly about tall buildings, but density, densification, it isn't just tall buildings as brian ably out. right. it's also townhomes and it is putting single family homes on quarter acre lot instead of a full acre lot. it's all of those things, right. but in a lot of cases, both were tall buildings and with other kinds of development. this densification is going to require a bunch of complementary goods. right? it's going to require better sewer systems. it's going to require, at a

minimum, better roads. if we're talking about more dense kinds, living, especially if we're talking about doing something that brian recommends and which i endorse which is getting rid of minimum parking requirements. it might require public. and i have a couple of questions about that. one is that many of those things have the same veto points as housing right. it is harder to build infrastructure here than it used to be. we have given this community control, created environmental systems up to the building codes of the things that are making it harder to build housing. we have also are also making it harder to build infrastructure. los a bunch of interest group and special regulations ones that have made american infrastructure costs, some of the highest in the world. and so how does that figure in do can we densify if we fix that problem doesn't require other

extremely unpopular policies congestion pricing one that brian mentioned it's really like i love congestion pricing with passion seldom found. i love the market. i love free pricing of water. here is another question for building in the west. in california, arizona, in colorado. um, i love pricing fully pricing water. why are we giving this away for free? why are we giving parking spots away for free? i love all of these things. you know, who hates them like every other voter. so every time you pull these, they pull badly. and so a question i have is if we need to do these things to to make the densification without so congesting traffic, so creating externalities, pollution from congestion traffic how you know, like what do do about that problem? does it require political that are actually popular but which

are for a variety of reasons hard to do so things i think about when i think about densify and schools i don't want to call it having kids school to go down crime. it's not exactly true. urban areas have higher crime necessarily than rural areas, but the crime is stranger. crime is a lot likely in a city than in a rural area. domestic violence is not more likely, but stranger crime is. and that's a real cost that people really care about. and that will make your densification harder because for it to be, it needs to be economically integrated. how do you get affluent to move in if you don't have better crime control? how do we think about providing those goods and you know, are some restrictions enhancing? so examples one is people don't like to live next to tanneries. right. should we have some? no. you cannot build your super polluting next to my 100 year old daycare. but also, should we do think about things like one that i

think about a lot is that when you have a major thoroughfare and you build a building that doesn't have storefronts in it, it creates dead space on the street, that makes it really unpleasant, actually makes the neighborhood worse and less vibrant and actually less function as a again, this is more of a tall problem than lower density problem, but it is a problem that i think about because something that i've seen happen in my neighborhood where like just built a lot of dead space on the street because developers, again for somewhat, you know, because developers basically didn't want to deal with their bankers on retail leases, which are more complicated in some ways than retail and test, test, test, test, test, test, test, test, test, test,

test, test. don't the same kind of property. right. as a homeowner in those cities and therefore it seems a little weird that they are in favor of restrictions but a significant number of them and especially the older voters who are easiest to poll do have rent control conditions. and they basically and this is actually one reason that i really fight with the people who are like homeownership is bad we need mass renting and then rent control to solve the political problem. homeownership that does not solve the problem the renters will act just like homeowners because. you've given them a property right in their apartment and will then fight to protect it. and i you know, i think that the irrationality is broad. it's not just about property values, which is where this to focus people tend to be. although i think that is a huge problem, rightly or wrongly. and i think wrongly policy has created a situation where you

have a lot of people who have got a lot home equity and that's their biggest asset and they are going to quite rationally fight to protect that home equity. and i see this in my neighborhood, which is extremely progressive. then there's me, the libertarian and my husband the libertarian, and we get into hilarious discussions. we're like the libertarian is explaining why we should allow social services come in and build something that's going to serve more poor? to all of my super progressive neighbors because i'm a crazy ideologue. but most people are not crazy ideologues and they they think this is going to be bad for my property values, which is objectively true. it is going to be bad for property values. and that is something that you see over and over again late, right? yes, it is silly to to well, we can't ever build taller because it's going to wreck someone's life. but actually, having lived on a subterranean first floor apartment where i you know, sunlight was, something i had read about once, it's actually

when i finally got an apartment that had light, i could not believe how much how big a difference it made in my quality of life. so if i had apartment already, would i want someone to take my light away? absolutely not. i would be extremely upset. luckily, a crazy ideologue. unfortunately, most people are not. neighbors matter, right? i mean, it is not irrational to try to keep people who have problems out of your neighborhood. that's completely rational. and i you know, i'm brian. you live in a single family home in what i assume a nice, fairly crime free neighborhood. and you have to do that, right? and you would not be happy if someone opened, say, halfway house across the street from you. you would you might be like, yay, i am theoretic happy for america. i am not personally for me. and again we are crazy ideologues. most people are not so. so i think that all of these facts combined with the fact that as brian says, people are

economically. but i also think there's a kind of a death by a cuts problem, which is that, you know, we talk about zoning restrictions or building it's not or the building code or it's not one thing it's so many teeny, teeny, tiny things, all of which individually make very little difference and sound great. who could be against requiring that, you know, toilets have lost lots of clearance in case someone because someone once got stuck in a toilet? the actual situation i dealt with, with home where we were not allowed to make the walls, we wanted our bathroom to be smaller and we were not allowed to because someone might get stuck in the toilet. and my husband, you know, my husband and i are not going to get stuck in our toilet. we had plenty of space but someone could so no one was allowed to have this bathroom. but if you if you see rate some disability is going to say well if you do that, it makes it harder for me to buy that house. and that means that i have a restricted availability because of something that's beyond my control and that's fair.

and that is every single restriction they all alone all have good explanations, sound good, and you have to fight on a thousand fronts. and how is that? i would point out that like poor people and renters don't have necessarily this kind of clause property rent, right in a rent controlled apartment. they also have their they don't have a lot of financial, but often they have quite a bit of social capital embedded in a low density neighborhood that's hard to replicate in a high density neighborhood. right. so if you live in a neighborhood of townhomes up, you know, old rowhouses and you know all the people in that street and you know the person you know you can send your kid to if he you need to go out or whatever. if that's torn down, all of that capital just vanishes because as people move but also it's actually that kind of capital is much harder to build in a denser neighborhood because they just tend to be more. it's just kind of inherent in the form. and that suits the upper middle class, the middle class pretty

well can be a harder form factor for people who have less financial and more need to rely on social capital capital. and then you add in the fact that most people can't, won't, never will think through the second and third order effects. i think it's a big challenge. i, i would also say that the the let's make a deal thing which i love, i want to do, it's really hard to make a credible commitment, right? because your new residents are voters. so you start off by saying, okay you're worried about x, y and z here's what we're going to do. we're going to make their top property taxes high. you get to keep yours. we're going to deny them parking and you get to keep yours. problem is, now those people live there and they vote there and they resent it and eventually, if there's enough of them, they're going to say that that deal is undone and so i think that's a you know, again, these are political challenges, not intellectual challenges. and then the last thing i would say is on that whole subject of

a lot of the let's make a deal keyhole policy that brian calls them, how are they different from a slippery slope? aren't they just you talk about the dangers, the slippery slope where we allowed zoning and euclid v ohio is right or yeah we allow zoning and that just we're now on the the slope pedaling downwards towards our current situation but making those compromises to try to get something done is that just opening us up to the slippery slope. but look ultimately these are small questions relative to the big question, which is how do we solve a bunch of social problems while making us all richer? and i think brian obviously has the right answer to the big question, which is big build, maybe and a really really hope that this book will get into the hands of as many people as possible and make sure that as many people as possible know how right that answer is.

i think, brian, we're going to want lots of time for from the audience, but i see you writing battle against megan's criticisms and questions so why don't you spend some time responding? yeah. thank you very much megan and yeah, i mean if someone actually just like the book is a criticism with they have all right but. i'm just going through some of the highlights you're absolutely right that housing is not the only reason that people move, although it's important to remember that when you add in other factors, it could be amplifying effects rather than mitigating it. so for example, like what would be happening? relocation the population if california same housing prices everywhere else california actually has a bunch of non advantages in terms of weather and so when you see well like there might be some reasons yeah but it actually is compounding because that's an especially nice area and people still moving away from it and the same goes for a lot of the country

are some places where you say, well, people moving more to the south because of air conditioning. all right, fine. but there's other areas that are nicer than ever, especially when you remember that our country has gotten richer overall. and when you're and when people get richer, they put value on amenities like nice weather. right. so you would think that actually. the the south know saying that we're saying well you can move the south is fine because the air conditioning like well i want to move to place where i don't have air don't need air conditioning and that would be more like southern california. we'll see. on the question of how high on writing this book, i did go and read a bunch papers estimating the cost of construction is a function of the number of stories and realizing, wow, there's a lot of disagreement here about exactly what the key break points are, but a very view is that 40 stories is crucial and that value up to the like basically from like seven stories to 40, it's constant cost per floor and if you guys go and take a look at an aerial view of, either central park or san francisco, you'll see there's almost no buildings anywhere close to 40 stories. probably the only you're seeing

any super tall construction is because if you can get permission, do one, then it's worth super tall. but if you can get permission to do 100, then it's like, yeah we're not going to go and do it that high. but i did say it was a quibble. yes yes. so on telework. i mean, one thing that is great about free markets is that when there are large social changes, this opens up opportunities. take advantage of those large social changes. so one thing you can see with telework is, well, i no longer need to live in a place where i like the working. so then where should live? how about i should live in a place where i like to play environments and that is a lot of the problem with regulation is that rather than going and crashing one thing, it's crushing another thing, although it is worth pointing out that we do have some good evidence how important it is an email is what's the right way of putting it? there's some good evidence on how immigration restrictions go and reduce even when

>> we do have evidence t on how important duration good evidence on how immigration restrictions go and reduce productivity even when it seems like telework should be a fine solution. when i was writing open borders, for comparable indian programmers they are making to book the wage of the u.s. versus india. you may say what's the difference emailing you work assignments from india versus emailing them from the u.s. it seemed like the market considered to be important differences in being physically there. as to what they are, it may be team building or something like that. we do know that that's a stronger experiment. it does seem like telework even for programming which is the ideal case is not enough. on this density fertility thing. the correlation is undeniable. the question is the causation. here's the thing. we need to find a place where

it's -- very the very high. i think if you looked at those people would actually more likely see that the people large families have decamped for like palatial suburban, right. like in any case, we really do want to do this experiment. the obvious story is precisely that it's prices rather than density per say and. if you were to cut prices, people would then have lower have large amounts of living space in a dense area. >> it's prices rather than density. if you were to cut prices, people would have large living space in a dense area.

notice this complaint only hold specifically for high rises anyway. when talking about allowing people to go and build more homes on single-family lots and that kind of thing i would say the effect of fertility is totally clear. on the complementary goods, it's worth pointing out they do chart property taxes and use property taxes to build the staff. since it's at the local level, it usually pays for itself. there are some complications. congestion pricing i know is really unpopular. that's why i'm trying with everything i've got all the way down to getting remaining artist to change people's minds and make them realize they are being silly about this. it's a bizarre fetish to say that parking should be free, driving should be freight what it's causing so much harm. you may think the real problem is economic illiteracy. convincing people there's a connection between the price and congestion. hard to believe. i do have -- my favorite

argument is to take a five- minute walk from my place and there's a bridge with the lanes. count the cars and the six free lanes. are you convinced the total change the congestion. not convinced ? wrong. it's one where people are desperate to. go and find some connection between objective self-interest and voting on this. people said, well, it's just so obvious that your home price is to you financially. is it more obvious than that? you're the income is important. you financially. and yet, as we know people's income is a terrible predictor of which political party they support. clearly, right. there are so many high income democrat, so many low income

republicans. the causation is really clear of which party favors higher taxes and yet people seem to pay that much attention. it what's going on? i think that actually i'll say is that i think that most people are a lot more like me and megan than she says. i think almost everyone is a crazy ideologue. it's whether or not your ideology is especially insipid or i will say that i think most people are more like me and megan than she says. almost everyone is a crazy ideologue. it's whether or not your ideology is insipid or not. that's the real problem. almost everyone is forming the political views. not from any observation of the world or calculation of self interest. rather it's a philosophy. the philosophy is usually so half-baked, quarter big. your philosophy is that parking should be free. that's what philosophy says. yet that is the philosophy

people have. it's not fair to charge a nickel for parking. it goes against the laws of nature. why that ? why is that the thing that ought to be free rather than 1 million other stuff you pay for. barely any answer. the story with rent control that makes it or reduces a lot of the recent tenants to be supportive of building more housing, one of the papers is a national sample. most of america's does not have rent control but normal for tenants to be in favor of regulation for the same reason i say everyone favors almost everything in politics. they think it's good for the country. they have not put a lot of time into the assessment. they are not reasonable about it. hard to bargain with them. that's what i'm focusing on. getting a change in people's philosophy. you say that's hard, i know. i've been working on this stuff for 30 years. this book is my latest effort to persuade someone that doesn't already agree with me.

you're mentioning how even middle school kilts may appreciate it. i've had kids who are in elementary school and enjoy it. that's when my daughter was reading over my shoulder. i've got something here. i've got something describing economic research that a five- year-old is voluntarily reading. that is my best solution. get them while they are young. by the power of kato, we should. >> your children may not be representative sample. >> still she was five. >> we will go to questions and take questions from the audience at the institute and our work online audience. online audience can join the conversation and submit questions on the event webpage, facebook, youtube and on x . i'm going to take the first question from the online

audience. it relates to what you said. the question is how successful do you think first book and now this book will be reaching a broad audience compared to your other work ? >> the open borders wise a near -- new york times bestseller. better than any my other books. will make it the best sellers book ? that's for you people to decide. go by many copies. in terms of its likelihood of changing policy. here i'm going to be brutally realistic and say odds that one book has a big change. it's really rare. generally the books will have a big effect who have made the books worse. little red book. they were popular and change the world but made it worse. for a book to make things better, maybe capitals and

freedom. free to choose. maybe hikes to -- even that is speculative. we don't get to see the world without those books being written. what i will say i'm doing the best i can. my honest assessment is probably i get tens of thousands of readers and unfortunately many tens of millions of readers. that's life. i do the best i can. >> let's take a question. wait for the microphone so the rest of the folks in the auditorium and people online can hear you. please give your name and your affiliation. please a question. sir, back here. >> my name is tim houston. i'm very active with the nba's of northern virginia. for arguments to convince the

many people who believe that building more housing will increase prices. so many smart people don't think of supply and demand. i haven't read your book yet so perhaps you have. >> the main argument economist has made his housing filtering. even if i build new luxury apartments that no one with an income below the 99th percentile will be occupying it first, where'd you get those tenants ? you get them from people currently in other nice units. they move people there and move people up there in a giant chain reaction. most people likely to be persuaded by the research. the best argument here is to say take a look at the vintage of the homes that low-income people are living in now. how often do low income people live in the last three years ? almost never almost always living in older stuff.

what would have happened if 20 years ago we stopped them from building that thing which was nicer at higher and first built. the answer is the place being occupied by compete would not have been built 20s ago and where would they be. that point of reminding people. look at the housing that is currently housing people you care about. when was it built and what did it look like. it was built and nicer. you don't generally build something at first and sell it to low income occupants but filtering is not a theory. it's something you can go and check in the basic property tax records when you see when it was built and realize that's how people with low income get places. they get places that were not originally built for them and filter down to other people in this natural process. >> when i have this argument, there are two things. you have to acknowledge there are isolated cases where it

increases property prices in an immediate area. union market. i have been to live -- it was not developed at all when i moved in. it has increased my property values. now it's in a neighborhood washington, d.c. it increased my property value. there's these nice amenities. there were not there when moved on. citywide, the fact there are 1000 a bit more units built in and around union market has lowered the citywide cost of housing. if you tell people this never happens, they don't trust you. this can happen locally but our job is to preserve these five houses here. the prices here. our job is to make sure everyone in the city has houses. it's an elegy that brian uses.

i find musical chairs analogy helpful. that's something that cuts through. i think we often because so immersed in it. we find it hard to think how hard people think abstractly about these questions. they tend to think contextually and locally. they will say you will displace this tenant and do this. you have to say unless you build enough housing, it's a game of musical chairs. i did a talk on housing a few years ago. it was so hard to convince people there is no way to make housing affordable other than building more housing. i was like, look, there are some number of people you need to house. if you do not build enough housing, there's no other policies that solves the problem other than having enough housing. that's when they got it. stop taking about prices. and

start thinking there needs to be a unit for every family to live in. >> you can also start with the regulations where you have to twist your mind to see any other effect than it being good for low income buyers like get a minimum lot requirement. how can it be good for the poor to say every house has to have an acre. that's hard to say. that's a big regulation. get people on board with that one. you are already doing better than one could hope. >> second row ? >> my name is austin. i'm a first year economic student at george washington university. melissa with no relationship between the cost of living and fertility. it's been shown that women

report having less kids now than in the past. those finding in mind, if you think housing deregulation increase fertility ? my other question links together your two graphic novels. i agree that getting rid of immigration restriction would be positive. it seems the one downside is increase immigration increasing housing cost and with the zoning we have in place. those housing costs are not going down. giving the immense benefits of zoning liberalization and immigration liberalization, do you have a preference --

>> down in southern europe whether living with their moms until 40 there are hardly any kids. you move north where they are moving out and having independent lives and don't have fertility of three or two but it's higher than down in spain, greece or italy where you have your mom do your laundry your whole life. is it just culture ? it's not

just culture. they are squeezed in. they don't have privacy. it's so expensive to get your own place that a big part of what's going on. it seems clear to me. not just based upon the four papers but common sense and basic economics. in the question you should prioritize housing over immigration. i am in the school of take what you can get when you can get it. it's so hard to get any reach regulation if you go and say and in a favor this until i get everything i want. that's it. there never will be regulation. in the case of the effective immigration housing prices, it's clear it does raise housing prices when you get more people from an area. highly regulated area but by the magic of federalism, a lot what happens is that population growth happens in low regulation areas. even if the immigrants themselves went to the high

figuration areas, the end result is population does not in the areas immigrants went to. they grows in other places and immigrants cut out the middle stage and they immediately go to the place where places are low. that's what's going on in the u.s. someone says the whole country -- prices seem high but not high everywhere. i can go to texas and be able to afford a home working at dairy queen. not something you can do in new york or the bay area. do not prioritize. take what you can get the second you can get it. could that cost other problems ? that's the least of your concerns. the real concern is -- >> i think brian thinks more of an economist rather than a politician. building more housing undercuts one of the reasons to oppose immigration. where as having more immigrants come in and driving up the

price of housing may regulate as people panic about the influx and i would say publicly do housing first if you had to choose. politics has a lot of determined not just one. in a philosophy seminar probably housing first. in a real-world political world where there's different parts whichever comes the first. >> i think that people's understanding of their self interest is weak. their political concern is weak. it's true people complain about immigration went immigrants racing housing prices. it's better to think of this as which complaint immigrants will i make now ? it's not like otherwise they think it's great. normally getting partly based talking with my dad there is a conclusion and whatever complaints seems like it will

work the best. you kind of are in an ordeal however hard you try you will not change people's minds. except for the power of graphic novels. >> and great journalism. >> what's the best example of housing deregulation and how is it worked out ? >> the best examples are continuing low regulation which i think is a fair measure. best example low regulation. texas is one of the crown jewels of the u.s. they will start arguing. we've got terrible regulation. the price of a house -- 30 minutes of austin up to $3000. it's only got four bedrooms. do you realize how good that sounds to most people around the country. i'm not saying it's perfect but impressive how things are

working compared to how they are in the rest of the country. in terms of specific deregulation we start at high regulation and go down by a noticeable amount. in the last talk is one of the high metropolitan u.s. none became regulated between 2016 and 2018. these are places with hardly any people. this is a tough situation. it's true there has been some redundant -- deregulatory policies especially after single-family zoning in california, oregon, minnesota. i wish them well and hope it works out. at least for california. i read the fine print and very depressed. part of the fine print says you can take your single-family home and turn it into a quadro plex. but the owner is not allowed to sell to a new developer.

you must occupy your home while turned into four homes. this isl deregulation, because you go and make it a pain in the neck to go and actually more homes there figuring out that many people do it. so that's where we are. like, it's all it is a tough in like the main point that i make in the book is all we need to do is change people's minds about this being good for society and then it will happen. all the other complaints are not a big this one thing is hard that now course that's like saying if you just break through a ten foot brick wall with your head, that would be fine. that would solve the problem. all right. true as far as it goes. but still like we got to that's like saying you can break through a 10 foot brick wall with your head. that would be fine. that would solve the problem. still, we have to start

shipping away. they've been chipping away at 445 years. persistence wins the day. like a bulldog. hang on and no one else will have our attention span and we will do it. one day. >> never give up. >> think how crazy it would have seemed in 1965 to say we should deregulate tracking. we should regulate banking. we did it. it took a long time. the consensus has started to emerge the last 20 years and in part because the problem has becomes so bad in 20 years. >> when i got the book and look at the blurbs in the back, i was thinking you should have asked paul for a blurb and i saw he was in the book. he's written columns about this.

did you asking for a blurb ? >> i believe we did. i'm not 100 %. paul is a busy guy and great on housing. if you are watching this, thank you for being great on housing. i hope you like my representation. >> there is so much truth and the idea that economics is boring and wasting time on details and failed to get the big point across. probably most of you have seen young ben stein middle aged ben stein doing the economics teacher in ferris bueller's day off. if we can get a better argument

than people would change their minds. no. i think we got some good arguments. the problem is delivery. rather than trying to reinvent the book, i recommend we dust off our copy of how to win friends and is the latest people. this is a book how you actually win people over. you do it by being friendly. don't call them stupid or evil. win them over on a human level. step one is seem like a decent person. i say this because i'm not so great but because i know i need improvement and improved from where i was in high school. i was terrible back then. smiling. you get a lot out of that. have a sense of humor. a lot of this is why i do the graphic novels. in the graphic novel, i can be

the best version of me. in real life i'm not. the cartoon me is the friendliest, happiest meet with the correct emotional reaction to every situation down to the percentage. >> it is very friendly. >> tell the artist. make me 3 % salvor. that's what i'm going for. of got the right emotional pallet. you try -- it's more productive to have a sense of humor about yourself. i hope that comes true in the book. i have done standup comedy. i won't say i'm great. i don't get paid to do it. to put yourself in the frame of my that you could do it is a good thing for libertarians to do. what we don't need is the classic what you foolish moochers fail to see. that will work with five people. we've got those five people. think about another way to say the same thing.

>> we need to have a reality show instead of flipping a house you watch a developer attempt to get through environmental reviews and get sent back 90 times. we need -- it's sad to me that libertarians are so bad and making movies. this is mean. that movie was not good. this is a general problem with christian books. i'm a christian. they are not good. many of them. few of them are good. they are sermons with a cast. one reason this is hard is it's so easy for progressive hollywood to make movies where developers are the villain. how about -- why is the no conservative movie studio. just casually the villain is

the environmental group stopping them from building a beautiful 200 unit house that could house these people who are living in substandard apartments. that movie does not get made. >> you can't not help but sympathize. a poor performance from michael caine playing the most evil tenant ever lived. >> they should be more things like that where try to make a sermon with a cast. make a good story about places where these government constraints are wrecking people's lives. they do wreck people's lives. the hard thing is it's unseen. that's one reason you can see the house you are tearing down with the lady in it. what you can't see are the people living 50 minutes from work in and eight floor walk-up because they can't get a place closer to work because you did not build a building. even as i'm slamming conservative and libertarian

people who are trying to do this thing and one problem is donors tend to want to fund something more explicit. i will tell you what you should think. another problem is it dramatizing the unseen is difficult. one reason i like this is that bryan did a good job. >> if anyone in hollywood just normal hollywood people watching this, if you read this book, it's easier to win people making good movies then it is to turn someone who agrees this into a great hollywood producer which sounds like a stretch. i will take what i can get. we've got time for one more question and brief answer. >> front row. >> it seems to me that building codes would have a more impact

on the price of housing. do you know how much and if that's true, how do we scale them back ? >> great question. the shortest answer is researchers have barely looked at building codes. it's possible it's adding more but what we are doing is comparing the physical cost which includes everything the building code mix you do with the land cost where you don't have permission and we have a huge gap there. building codes may be adding on an additional amount. one economist who is insistent there's also a bunch of import regulations against prefabricated homes which he says do not confuse with trailers and that's important. he's the only person who thinks this. no one else was waiting and so didn't want to talk about it too much. he may be right. maybe i'm understating the severity of the regulation but

the key thing is the regulations imagine seemed to be doubling the cost and made be that building codes are amplifying more with little gain. >> i had the same thought. the science fiction writer wrote what it would cost to build a car with a hall -- haul-

>> the one thing that's clear is the financing of mobile homes which has gone on to manufactured housing is a problem. the way the fha and these government loan programs work make it difficult to finance these things. therefore, they appreciate more. they depreciate faster than normal housing and harder for people to buy. that's a big problem and should not happen. >> i want to thank everyone for coming. i want to thank the online audience and thank you for sending your questions. thanks for doing a great job finding things to criticize. >> i love the book, bryan. >> come here. >> hug it out. >> 1016, thanks for creating a great book. please join us in the wintergarden for a reception. i'm sorry our online audience can't go to your fridge and grab a beer or the liquor

cabinet and makes a drink. think of us and we will think of you. thank you.

>> charter communications along with these television companies support c-span two as a public service. >> in partnership with e library of congress, c-span brings you books that shaped america. in this program, mark twain's "adventures of huckleberry finn." written as a sequel, the book is often called the great american novel. in the book huckleberry finn -- >> huck k finn steals away from

civilizing influence of the widow and his alcoholic father. he joins up with jim and explains and they make their way down the mississippi river. along the way they encounter steamships, rival clans, swindlers and murder. told through the eyes of an adolescent hug. mark twain used dialects and expressions to illustrate life along the mississippi in the 1880s. employing satire to highlight the hypocrisy and racism of the time. since its publication in 1884, adventures of huckleberry finn has been controversial and relevant. both a bestseller and a band book. >> welcome to books that shaped america. our c-span series that looks how books throughout our history have influenced who we are today.

in partnership with the library of congress, the series has been exploring different eras, topics and viewpoints. we are glad you're joining us for this walk-through history. so far in the series, we've looked at america's foundations, its geographic expansion, slavery and our legal syem. tonight, we travel along the misssii river and explore a book called one of the great american novels, adventures of huckleberry finn by mark twain. published in 1884. it was controversial from the beginning but sold more than 10 20 minute copies worldwide and has a major impact on american literature. our guest this evening to help us explore why huck finn is a book that shaped america is andrew leavy. english professor at butler university in indianapolis and author of this book. huck finn's america. mark twain in the area that shaped his masterpiece. you talk about the book that

was published in 1884. what was america ? >> then is now a chaotic place. if you picked up a newspaper from november 1884, you would see and extraordinary number of stories about violence. lots of violence. they love covering it in the media as now. they had anxiety about immigration. you had people who felt america's best days were past it. you had arguments over the size of the government and the size of the national debt like now. there are two large narratives that possessed americans at the time which are relevant to our discussion. one is what i could crudely as a historian described as the transition from the reconstruction era to the jim crow era. that is promises of legal and political and social equality for african americans after the american civil war.

we are starting to run aground and an unequal society was walking into place. the other was a large national debate about children. it was the era where children are being defined as being something other than young adults. it was the first era where people talked about compulsory, public education, mandatory for everyone. where they thought about ideas like student centeredness in a way that's very contemporary. at the same time, there's a moral panic about children. believing they were becoming violent. they were becoming lawless and out-of-control. >> with those two points u made, both of those are reflected in huckleberry finn. >> very much. huckleberry finn is writing to its moment. it's ripped from today's headlines like a law and order episode would be. when people looked at

huckleberry finn like that nice picture on the screen, they saw a kid who was all over the newspapers who on one hand could raise himself. had his own wisdom, understood nature but at the same time they saw a a wind. they saw a smoker. they hated kids to smoke. that was drugs to us. tom sawyer was someone who talked about forming gangs. huckleberry finn was both the kid they wanted to reach, they kid they dreamed about having those new compulsory schools but also the villain of their narrative about children. >> when did you get hooked on huckleberry finn, how many teen years have you taught it ? >> i've had the book for a long time. it's special. it's incredible how mark twain -- the book is incredibly funny and tragic. it celebrates american

resources, american people, american voices. the landscapes of our country. the book contains so much. it's incredibly slippery. you keep coming back and thinking you've got it but you can't ever get it. i wrote this book trying to understand and finally say what's happening in the book. i didn't. i haven't even taught it in a decade. in part because i -- twain is a magnificent, elusive erican presence. >> ernest hemingway is quoted saying all modern american literature comes from one book by mark twain called huckleberry finn. all american writing comes from that. there was nothing before. there has been nothing as good since. we think about that ? >> let's give hemingway his props. he sang mark twain in this book

and you can see it from the start believed in the american voice. the way people really spoke. he believed the weight people spoke had literary value. you didn't have to get your literary theory materials from england will go into college. you had to listen to people. he was obsessed listening to people. his notebooks were filled with overheard conversations. he would pace back and forth trying to get a dialect right. he would torture himself over the words because he loved american voices that much. he invested in huckleberry finn. on that level, hemingway is spot on because mark twain was one who said look here for literary value. >> did hemingway have a could see ? >> after chapter 30 the book goes like this. just cheating. hemingway was not the first and not the last to believe that. there are people who feel the book got its moral point in

that last part. >> what was its impact in 1885 once he got published in the u.s. ? >> it was not a big hit. to be clear and it's interesting, it did well. it sold about 40,000 copies. that's what he wanted. from 1885 to 1895 one of the top 10 selling books. he wanted a big hit. the reviews were generally positive but mixed. they were focused on the idea this is a book about children. if we are having a conversation about race, no one mentioned it. there were a lot of african american newspapers. not one review the book went near it. no news for -- newspaper in the white south were not touching the book because of the negative portrayal of white society. >> throughout this program, we will look at those reviews.

our partner in this endeavor books that shaped america is the library of congress. in 2013, the library came up with a list of 100 books that they say shaped america. not necessarily bestsellers, not necessarily the best books et cetera but books that have had an impact on who we are. the library of congress which has an early edition of huckleberry finn says that mark twain pics in a satirical and humorous way huck and jim's encounters with hypocrisy, racism, violence and other evils of american society. his use and series literature of a lively, simple american language full of dialect and colloquial expressions pave the way for many later writers including hemingway and william faulkner. what is huck representing in a larger sense ? >> he is huck finn himself.

that young man there, one of the -- if we are talking about books that shaped america. what huck finn the book and boyd did was introduce the idea of a child's voice into american literature. first person taking over the narrative. a complicated boy. not an angel. not a villain with a deep psychological and the political court. he completely breaks open american literature in that sense. i don't think you have -- if you look at the young adult sector in literature which is a large sector, everything from home alone, spy kids, ferris bueller's day off but also harry potter, hunger games we have children as political agents. the ones who critique the larger culture. e e so i can make chain. huckleberry fi is the linchpin in this. >> you don't know about meat without you reading the book of

the adventures of tom sawyer. that ain't no matter. that's the first line in the book. bee -- >>. if you take that first line, you don't know about me. it's almost a sneer. you don't know about me but i want to take over the book and be the voice you hear from. without the grammatical error. in the paint. even those contractions were uncommon in american literature. it's a mind blowing opening sentence. >> what is jim represent ? >> he's a very complicated character. he's the best human being in the book for sure. he's also -- everyone in this

book is a game plier, everyone is a liar and everyone is trying to get by. society is a dangerous place and we are watching on the edge of our seats as we hope huck and jim get through it. jim is who you ask him to be. based upon who you are. for some, they see portrayal of an african american man whose buried under 200 plus racial slurs. whose buried under this thick dialect between to portray him. some people emphasize if this is a book about seeing through prejudiced and seeing the human being there's this complex person you can't miss. that is tony morris and writes the book is the argument it creates. a book about seeing through prejudiced to see through prejudiced. you can see jim but that surface is very dense and thick. it's not particularly clear if

it's a book filled for multi- soety. >> mark twain's notice to peons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted. persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished. persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. by order of the author per gg. the most analyze book in history starts with a word not to analyze it. not even a threat. i like the threat is not having a plot. it's a big endless book that goes in the wrong directn. it's saying i know. the thing about twain is you veto think how you think of a political comedian. there's a plausible deniability. he's afraid for this book. he wants to make sure the --

this is in 1884. i'm joking. if you think of doing something serious, i'm joking. we've seen comedians do that. >> why was it published in the uk and canada for the states ? >> a copyright thing. he had a previous book where he got a lot of money and so -- he had to travel to canada to get the copy right going. >> why have you quit teaching huck finn ? >> it's complicated. in part because i went to college and talk fewer courses. let's get the personal story out-of-the-way. at some point the surface is frankly overwhelming and if you look at my book, i think the book has strong antiracist messages and energy. it's not completely not racist.

i don't mean there's a surface you have to see through. it's a complicated, slippery book. i think in this day and age you should be considerate. in doing the book, i read too many testimonies who said and mostly african american readers who were trauma size by being the only black person in a room full of white people from racial sure -- racial slurs around claiming the book was the best book in the most american book that ever was. talk to students who felt similar. i had to stop. it does not mean i could not teach the book in the future. i think i will teach the book in the future but you have to set up some clear norms and boundaries and introduce the book in a specific way. i look forward to having those moments. i think the book is valuable but think the book whether it should be taught and where it should be taught.

>> here's whmark twain had to say about the of dialect. number of dialects ar to with that missouri dialect, the extreme form of the backwoods south-wedialect. the shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion or by guesswork but painstakingly and support of personal familiarity with those several forms of speech. >> you want to read that last line ? do you have it ? >> that's what i have. is there more ? >> he says i want tomake sure you know everyone is not trying to talk a light dish alike and succeeding. another great thing that huck finn does is it's not just one form of english. this formal -- forms of english. we are talking our own forms of a common language. that was twins pride.

twain was one of the founding members of the american fork load society. he really cared about dialects and voices. he rehearsed and practiced and took careful notes. he's proud and wants to make sure you know this. after he tells noah for a motive or a plot but this you should look for. look for the voice. >> good evening and welcome to books that shaped america. we appreciate you being with us. this is an interactive series. we will put the phone numbers on the screen seek it dial in and participate in our conversation. tonight about adventures of huckleberry finn. s the text number. 202-748-8003.

please include your firs >> here's the text number. 202748 8003 for you to text. include your first name and your city if you would. let's give you a snapshot of america in 1884 when huck finn was rspublished. the population was about 50 million. the economic panic of 1884. the creditshortage and depression happen. grover cleveland became the 22nd president in a contested election. the statue of liberty was delivered to new york and the washington monument finally was completed. that's what the country look like in 1884. mark twain's hometown is hannibal, missouri. we traveled there and want to show you some video from this town on the mississippi north of st. louis. how important was hannibal not

just for the book but for twain himself ? >> crucial. hannibal becomes st. petersburg which is a way of calling a place in heaven. he was extremely nostalgic about his childhood -- childhood. he had a great memory. a lot of things that happened to him in hannibal in the 1830s are in huck finn. some of the horrible things and better things. he's based on people he knew. jim is based on people he knew. it's very central. >> 200 times the and word is used in huck finn. what do you think ? >> i think it's hard to get around. and to be clear it's in huck's voice. that little statement you read. mark twain uses the then respectful name for african americans which is now somewhat

dated. you when he went on stage he used respectful and which until he was in huck finn's voice. there's a famous story in 1884 where he schools a white country boy for using the n word. hemakes them apologize and he goes up on stage and uses the word himself. he was trying to do something. i felt it was in huck's finn's voice and felt it was satirical. it's a lot. conceivably more than the artistic purposes required. you get lost in it. the best argument you can make if you making an argument for

it is to say you can't escape racism in this book. that word is the insignia of racism. the book is not trying to tell you we arover it for doing better. the book is trying to tell you it's an x capable and in this nice kid it's inescapable. that's the best reason for it. the other reasons are it's archaic. it's a mistake if mark twain alive today he would not publish it today. to ask work with it in mandatory classrooms is probably a mistake. >> we recently talked with david blight, a yellow historian. biographer of frederick douglass about the use of the n word and whether or not it should be taught. here's what he said. do you think huckleberry finn should still be taught in english classes or should be edited ? >> no it should not be edited. absolutely it should not be taught. huckleberry finn -- i'm a historian although i certainly play cultural history.

no. i don't think it should be edited for anyone to read it. for young readers, a teacher should help them understand the context. help them explain the uses of the n word. explain who mark twain was and the context of that book. it's a perfect way to help young people to get comfortable with the ideas like irony. ideas of racism. no, i would never advocate that book be censored for its use of language. certainly not for the stories. it's one of the greatest classics in american literature. no less then robb ellison. the great african american novelist of the 20 century who wrote invisible man said everything changed after huck finn. huckleberry finn was a pivot of

american literature. in terms of re-creating an american language. he said writer's block or white or otherwise had been responding in a way in the power and achievement of huckleberry finn ever since. >> andrew levy, what did you hear ? >> being respectful and i think as he suggests there's issues how you teach about, who you're teaching it too, is it mandatory, what are your norms in the classroom about spoken words. explanation. being able to let students read again dish with or against the grain. to play devils advocate, let's not talk about an american book. let's talk about a world book. there are 90 translations in china. it's taught in angola and taiwan. it was a huge hit in russia and

japan. there's persian versions. in all of these places, they don't have translations for american racial slurs but somehow the book manages to communicate to people all over the world. the movies which are quite interesting. racial epithets have been removed from them and their are amazing movies that could yet be made. i feelto say there must be this racial epithet in the book or the book must be regarded as worthless without it is a mistake with all apologies to the professor. >> it was in 1935 that norman rockwell did some paintings on the scenesthe book. this is a book publishein 1884. these are mr. rockwell's paintings. mark twain took eight years to write this book. where did he write it ? >> he wrote it in a little study in new york at a family

members house. i've sat in the ruins of it. it's a moving place to be. 1876 he knocked out the first teen 15 chapters. put it down and that he may burn the manuscript. picked it up to get more chapters and push right through in 1883 and that's when he was happiest writing it. including the part hemingway hated. it took him much longer to write it than any her book he ever wrote. >> thadntures of huckleberry finn published 1884 in canada and the uk. 1885 in the u.s. sold close to 60,000 copies in its first year. has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. first ban was in 1885 in concorde, massachusetts. it was banned right out of the bag.

>> because huck swears and he smokes. possibly because he is racial epithet considered impolite even in 1885. huck is not very friendly toward organized religion. at that time, this moral pregnant about children reading these novels which were violent and people thought they were making kids violent. it was like the social media video games of their time. twain was -- huck finn you don't know oume. he's not a board supposed to have control over a book. >> the concorde public library committee said about public library committee said about the book, the entire book is of a class that is more profitable for the slums that it is for respectable people, and it is trash of the veriest sort. much of what you just said. let's hear from our viewers, starting with nancy in

granville, ohio. good evening, nancy. >> hello. i am thrilled you are viewing the value of this book. i have been a teacher and rent it to fourth-graders for probably 15 years. and, i just -- children had a hard time understanding why huck was prejudiced . the stories help explain it. the one question i have, the part about the feud, huck and buck, were both boys who were taught not to hate but to go against another people, not for any reason other than the color or name, shepherdsons, i have

never heard a critique and that part, the similarity of the two boys, that they were both taught by adults. this was not something that was in them as children. >> nancy, we will have professor levy respond. is it appropriate for fourth- graders to read this book? >> i felt uncomfortable at times , honestly, i never said the n- word, i said slave, because i personally couldn't. but the value of the book, writing letters to pap as if they were huck, using the dialect which i never asked them to do. just the depth. always a student who was quiet,

shy, had issues in the family, maybe alcoholism -- >> i appreciate it, let's hear from professor levy and huck and buck. >> the book is very much about why are we teaching our children to hate indiscriminately, as much about race, buck hates the shepherdsons, he admires them and does not know why he is supposed to kill them, just that is it is supposed to happen. the huck and buck thing draws that, mark twain was good with patterns. in the end, when huck witnesses buck being killed and cannot tell us about it and has bad dreams to this day, it is a traumatic point for huck who watch this boy so much like him

die i love the letters to pap idea, it is not mentioned often enough, huck is very much abused, isolated child, being frequently and told he is nothing. that is forgotten in the movies and in this wonderful boyhood adventures, he is depressed much of the time and has suicidal ideation, terribly lonesome, looking for family surrogates, jim is the closest thing he has to a father. he is going through a vulnerable place that a lot of children are asked to go through. nancy, it is great you bring your children through that place, too, and invite them to express themselves >> we will read some of th reviews of huckleberry finn as we go to thprogram this is from the san francisc

chronicle in 1885, mark twain may be called the edison of our literature. there is no limit to his inventive genius, and the best proof of its range and originality is found in this book. next call from jim in sierra vista, arizona. >> great show tonight. many generations of kids have been raised on huckleberry finn and all that, because of the texture he brought to american literature. my question is, given today's tribalism, could such a book be written today, and if so, what would be the reaction? i will hang up and listen. >> thank you for the question . i think a book about, which respects a chd's voiceand gives a child a complicated

emotional life is -- are written today. one of the things i love t huckleberry finn , it portrays american democracy as a mess of partisanship with people are easily conned, looking for narratives that reinforces their prior assumptions. he portrays a very violent civilization with great promise. i would counter by saying the book is being written. in terms of the maximalist approach by mark twain to language, that is a tough or what and there is a lot of pressure in the publishing industry right now to not be maximalist about language and not take chances, not write about people who are not in your group. we will see where we go from there. but i do agree, there is

pressure right now. >> i want to read a review of my soutnewspaper, the atlanta constitu it is difficult to believe that the critics who have condemned the book as vulgar and in arstic can have read it, taken in connection with the prince the popper, it marks a clear and distinct advanced in his literary methods and present an almost meticuusly perfect picture of the life and character in the southwest. that is from atlanta in 1885. >> he had some friends down south but he did not send subscription agents below the mason dixon line. i do not think he went below louisville. to be clear, for all we talk about race and controversy with this book, mccarthy of the witchhunts in the 1940s and 1950s tried to have the book banned because it for trail of white southerners which he found offensive. >> chuck and detroit?

>> this is a great show. i wanted to express a question to the professor. this is from a former instructor of mine who had an interesting take on the book. her take was that this was mark twain's attempt to curtail children ages to go to the farm and go to the preindustrial cities of the united states. i thought that was an interesting perspective and what i had not heard before. i wonder if the author addressed the question, particularly in terms of the fact that, in the book, jim and huck , were always social outcasts. >> thank you, chuck. interesting question and i have never heard that before. the book is, i want to say, extraordinarily powerful in

celebrating nature and solitude . i do think, to some extent, rural life. it makes some of those small towns in arkansas and missouri look awfully bad, though. mark twain was conflicted about cities. but he was not conflicted about society. huck and jim can only be friends on the route. anytime they go back into society, they have to go back to their psychic heidi holes. the beautiful and warm and interesting and unusual relationship in the center of the book really cannot exist. >> we visited the huckleberry finn freedom center in missouri and go to a museum called jim's journey, that huckleberry finn freedom center . >> i am the founding director of

jim's journey, i am a hannibal native, fifth-generation missourian and we do a few things at jim's journey, we try to expose this residence to samuel clemens, the humanitarian, we talk about the african-american community here. most importantly, we finally, are the only place in the country, that uplift daniel quarrels, and adventures of huckleberry finn. he was a real man and we emancipated him, he lived and died here. samuel clemens met uncle daniel and the wife on his uncle's farm. in missouri for samuel clemens was born. he went back and

summers to play with his cousins. that is how we came to know daniel. he came to know him as uncle daniel. we know from the writings of samuel clemens, that is where they met. that is where they formed the relationship that bonded them and where he came to appreciate daniel as a man, a father, as a husband, a caretaker, and that is how we portrayed him in huckleberry finn . he was the first author to portray an enslaved person as a real person more than an object. samuel clemens describes him to one of the brightest hands longing to his uncle, he talks about daniel and identifies him as a prototype for jim. there is a quote in the autobiography that says uncle daniel, my prototype for jim. i

have that quote for people to read, people to learn from. we are all about teaching, our mission is to research, teach, and preserve the history that has not necessarily been fully shared in the history here. we not only show that history and the fact we contributed to the growth of the community and that we will -- were here from the beginning and daniel quarles was here. >> we thank faye dant of jim's journey . from cambridge, massachusetts, jocelyn chadwick , with the harvard graduate school of education and the national council of teachers of english and she is the author of this book, that jim dilemma, reading race in huckleberry finn . what is the focus of

your book, professor mike max >> the focus of my book is to look at the character of, not just jim, but of the state of america at the time, at the state of the freedmen, versus freeman, during the 19th century. to also try to help students and teachers, classroom teachers, understand just how important this particular text is, how pivotal it is, how important it is, and how complex jim's character is, and the character of huckleberry finn. it is a rhetorical deep dive into these characters are, what america was like at this time, and looking at, not just the characters in the story, but the concept of what was happening in society in the

american society at that time. >> professor, you taught english for many years at the high school level. did you teach huckleberry finn? >> absolutely . actually, it was my jr.'s. -- junior. my father read huckleberry finn to me on his knee when i was seven my juniors helped me understand i needed to go back to graduate school so i could truly understand the depth and the power, i needed to understand the writing strategy, i need to have more information about the period, i needed more information and my mother and that one class of juniors, they made me figure out i needed to go back to graduate school. in early texas, i still am a

learner. in our history. of these characters. that was my pivotal moment when i realized that, yes, i was teaching it, i enjoyed teaching it, but i was an african- american english teacher in a predominantly white school and the students were feeling sorry and a bit uncomfortable for me for reading it, i was excited for them to read it, and i had to unwrap all of that. >> i understand that you and andrew levy know each other , is there a group of twain scholars or know of each other i should say. >> i called them the twainiacs. a huge group of twain scholars who do not always agree but we listen and learn from each other. >> professor levy?

>> i love her book, love the opportunity to tell her so. if anyone has ever made the case in so many ways, huck's the voice of the book but jim may be the protagonist. you will see how often the action and the shape of the book is engineered by his presence and how complicated he is and how often he is doing something that, if you look at it for two seconds, you see how smart it is and how interesting it is. >> san diego, leif, you are on with andrew levy , jocelyn chadwick, and huckleberry finn . >> the pronunciation is leif. i am a long-time teacher for

almost 50 years and when reading huckleberry finn over and over, i am not certain, no matter how good i am at explanation, and texturing, i am not certain that most students, prior to the age of about 15, 10 understand -- can understand, no matter how good i am at explaining, understanding the complexity of the book. a fundamental question in today's society, with regard to the racial divide, is -- do you ever forget you are white, sounds like an absurd question unless you change the word. >> let's leave it there. jocelyn chadwick , if you want to start? >> i do. an earlier caller who says she

teaches huck to fourth graders, if she is still on, to that person, i would say, there is another story, a true story that , a wonderful elementary school in new york, in elmira, my husband and i worked with at school, the teacher and the principal, the way they present the story, and thquestions those -graders process and ask about race, about language, is very important. there are other works of mark twain's that this generation of students, generation z, different from the students i started teaching in irving high in texas. there is one entry with huckleberry finn , i agree,

huckleberry finn is a hard row to hoe, but a road that we have to hote because it is a challenging novel that reflects as to us more than when twain wrote it. a sense of two people coming together from two different spheres of the universe. we see a little bit about huck's beginning to think about people of color in a different way in the adventures of tom sawyer, one of my least favorite twain books, i had to re-read it, and i realize that, in a different space, tom sawyer is about e evolution of huckleberry finn into a person who sees other people, sees the other and will even break bread with the other.

the other being a slave. we have the full-fledged huckleberry finn in his own book . both of those characters, to me, three primary characters with everybody else, there is the free professor, where twain sets him up early and we see that not all african-americans are slaves and that time in the 19th century, there were freeman, born totally free. you had slaves. there is huck and the two of them have to be together in order for those changes to happen, not only to huck , but for jim to come through and assert, at the very end of the novel, a very powerful proclamation that, while he wants is freedom, he is more than willing to sacrifice that freedom and regaining his family in order to do the right

thing. we have this novel about voice and choice, and identity. in so many ways, the novel resonates more. i n tell you that we work with schools at this moment around the country from texas to virginia to new york to new jersey, part of it is that you have to help teachers understand how to teach the work. there are times, i am convinced that is why i ended up in so many high school classrooms, easier for myself to do that heavy lift or to answer those very hard questions, which i tell students, they are hard for me. it is not just twain, toni morrison, any number of writers the irony is, i am coming to

the end, the irony that bothers me most, with such a great literary text, we do not put rap music and other things at the same level. it is okay in the rap music and in other things. when we are looking at literature, it is not okay. it should be because, as i said recently at the boston book festival, that word has blood on it, students have to understand that. that is a part of our american tapestry, put in fiction. students can experience it from a distance, from a safe distance in a classroom. >> professor levy, we have been showing sketches in the original edition in the adventures of huckleberry finn , who is the artist? >> a young new york artist who got his big break doing the adventures of huckleberry finn, and he had a successful career

illustrating novels, including some african-american novels. this was hibig break. >> lucy calling in from new york. >> thank you for taking my call. my daughter was the only black student in an all-white class and they played it as an audiobook and it was so devastating for her because, when they said the n-word they would look at her and all she could do was put her head in her hand and she came home hysterical. i do not think it is appropriate. >> andrew levy? >> i disagree and i'm sorry she had to go through that . my university is a primarily white institution and i would choose not to isolate persons of color in that way. there is social science, the book teaches better and more

interracial environments. older students, i am so sorry for your daughter. if i can say anything, she is not the only person who has testified in that way over the last four or five decades. >> jocelyn chadwick ? >> i think part of the issue, teachers do not know how to approach these texts. they do not know what resources there are for them. they do not know how to address students. as i just said, i was the only african-american english teacher, a predominately white school, in many of my classes i was the only african-american english major. i get that. not saying the teacher was right, because i disagree with it, one of the issues, we are working on a new book now, how

do we help teachers understand how to teach critical texts, in this case, mark twain. for middle school, another text you can use, you don't have to use huckleberry finn, there are poems, essays that carry the same message but not in a way that huckleberry finn does. it would take, for adventures of huckleberry finn, more mature students, he said it was meant for kids but it is not meant for children, more mature teenagers who are thinking in complex ways. gen-z would be that way. as your daughter in that classroom, you made me think about a classroom in texas, i was one of a few african-

american students in the class, i remember, my teacher reading johnson's poem and talking about god bending down to the man, i went out to my parents and said, i cannot believe that was said. i am sure your daughter had you as a support and you are pushing back was very helpful. and supportive. i do think that teachers need more support from twain scholars, a hybrid, a scholar and having had classroom experience, to help navigate that path. >> our goal is to talk about huckleberry finn as a book that shaped america. if you want to learn more about the author, we have a companion podcast, a professor of american literature at mark twain studies at elmira college in new york and a scholar and resident at the center mark

twain studies. we spoke with him about mark twain on a more personal level. if you would like to get the podcast, you can see the qr code on the screen, get your phone that and shoot that to go to the podcost. 202-748-8920 in east and central time zones and want to talk about huckleberry finn , and to send a text message, 202- 748-8003. please include your first name and your city. karen in san francisco. >> thank you for taking my call i read a lot of literature but and not a sophisticated reader or analytical. i can tell you that huckleberry

finn , i read as a child and loved it as an adventure. i read it as an adult and loved it so much more. i find it to be such a celebration of the human spirit. a universality to it, it has special meaning in our country because of our terrible history. i think that, around the world, you mentioned earlier on the program, it has been translated very much. i think the character huckleberry finn is one of the most incredible characters ever created. my only question, just real quickly, when we say it shaped america, is there in a specific

way or just because it was such an in-depth, intense story about our country? >> thank you for that, great time to ask both of our guests, how has this book shaped america ? let's start with jocelyn chadwick in cambridge . >> prior to mark twain's adventures of huckleberry finn , no fiction, other than works in the south like from nelson page which praise slavery, no fiction existed that really tackled the horrors of slavery, the demeaning quality of slavery. as well as creating the humanness of these people who were slaves. as well as presenting three people who were never slaves

but they were people of color. we had not had a work like that. we had slave narratives, which were very popular in the 19th century, amazingly popular. when i teach this novel to high school students around the country or help with pre- service teachers before they enter the classroom, we always think about the slave narratives , frederick douglass or henry watch brown, some others, bu the novel itself comes out and it tsslavery and the running and the dangers and the encounters, the hypocrisy, i heard someone mentioned earlier about the religion, it is not just religion, it is the hypocrisy that goes with the religion. with colonel sherborn sherburn-

- shooting people, foreshadowing the , it puts a mirror to america in the 19th century and says, here is what we are, here is what we look like, and jump that into 2023 and, you look at that novel and say, here is a book that is still putting a mirror in front of us and showing us how we are behaving. in terms of racism, sexism, all of the isms. is this what we want to be or can we be better? >> andrew levy ? >> i think that was beautifully put as she covered aspects involving slavery so well, i think it has had a huge impact shaping our feelings about children, children's voices, schooling, parenting, vulnerable children, if you read histories of childhood or

books about childhood, huckleberry finn shows up quickly . he goes through things children go through today. twain said history does not repeat itself but it does rhyme. he recognized that patterns of american history. he knows where the rhymes are so much about about 1885 still hit in 2023. i read the book over the weekend, it hits hard still. >> edward and dover, delaware, go ahead with your question or comment about huckleberry finn . >> all the more ambiguity and hypocrisies in the book, a book about a 14-year-old white boy who discovers jim as a human being because -- huck says to jim, they are after us, isn't

that what the book is about? >> did you read this when you are in school? >> i was a college professor and i taught it. >> where did you teach? >> different historically black universities and white universities as well. >> thank you for calling in. andrew levy? >> that is an important scene, early moment in the book where huck and jim is wondering if someone is looking out for them, both running away from someone. huck -- jim from ms. watson and huck from an abusive father. huck puts on a dress and goes to the town and is asking around, a woman immediately sees through him and says, e sees through him because he does not do anything a girl does come he does not thread the needle correctly, he does not, if he tosses something --

if she tosses something at him, he acts like someone who wears pants, she teaches huck that being a woman or a man is just a social construct. he says, hurry up, jim, thereafter -- they are after us, but they are only after jim. the kind of subtle stuff all over the book. it is also a sign about how much the book is about how children learn and how they apply one lesson from one part of their life to another part of their life. it is a crucial moment and i am glad you called attention to it. >> we have mentioned about huckleberry finn in popular culture, a compilation of some of the movies that have been made about huckleberry finn. >> we see the blue waters of the old ohio. we will see the light. >> only about 12 houses.

>> we won't miss it because i will smell it, i will smell that freestate. i am going to be free. nobody is going to take jim back now, i ate a slave no more and i will not be a slave no more. >> they called him a troublemaker. they called him a liar. >> my mom ran off of the circus front. pa got run over by an elephant >> they called him every name in the book. >> mary. >> everything in his life would change when one man called him friend. >> best friend i ever had. >> we want to credit mgm and

disney and the warner brothers for those movie clips. >> we want to credit mgm and disney and warner bros. for those movie clips. the adventures of huckleberry finn translated into more than 50 languages , 15 film adaptations, starting in 1918. tv programs, cartoons, plays, all of those things, jocelyn chadwick, it is important huckleberry finn be in popular culture? >> i think it is important that huckleberry finn be in popular culture. i am torn because, reading that book is so -- in so many ways, its own version of popular culture as opposed to the films and the cartoons. there are some texts, to me,

that cannot be filmed. the color purple cannot be filmed. it was tried and it did not work. the works of toni morrison, some works you cannot bring that emotion and those words, talking about taking out the n- word out of huck finn, that has been done, the idea it is supposed to hurt, that is the whole intent, not supposed to be a happy word, not supposed to be a cool word, taking it out and saying, we will put "black" there, that does not have the same impact, it takes all the sting away, all of huck's, in the last third of the novel, when huck understands he is positively

heard jim and jim calls him trash, huck, from that point on, never uses the n-word again until he is pretending to be tom sawyer and trying to help jim get out of slavery. that is important. that means there is a change with him. students asked if it means huck is not racist anymore, that does not mean that, he is a product of his period and his exposure to jim and jim's exposure to huck helps both of them understand people are people and you accept them for who that person is as opposed to calling them something. if we turn it into -- i have seen some of those films, like the one with mickey rooney, so

different from the book, i'm not going to say it is a bad thing, i will say it does not take the place of the actual text. >> the poet t.s. eliot had somesay about huckleberry finn , it is huck who gives the book style the river gives the book its form, thus the river makes the book a great book, mark twain the blood oath and the duke's recitation of shake conspiracy. then i have a question, will you speak to the point in the book when huck realizes blacks feel the same about their families as whites. >> andrew levy? >> i love those part taos. the shakespeare is great. people think shakespeare is a kind of sacred literary icon but in the 18 40's and 18 50's, that is kind of how he was performed.

people would show up at the theater with their rubbish and throw it at the actors if they didn't like what they were seeing. so the second part of the question was -- >> when huck realizes blacks feel the same about their families as the whites do. >> what do you think about that scene yourself? >> it just really struck me. i was so moved his, you know, kind of getting -- i call it getting hit in the head with a brick. like huck just, dong! realizes what's going on. and when jim's talking about. >> we have to leave it there. professor levy? >> it's what jocelyn said the whole book is about. seeing the other. can you see the other? and there are moments where, from huck's point of view, he

sees jim as a person, the slave he's supposed to be see, the semihuman he's supposed to be see, he sees a human being just like him. those are powerful moments. what happens next is, i believe, where the booking becomes more complex. >> mark twain lived from 1835 to 1910. a little of his legacy today. there are 44 schools in the u.s. name for mark twain. there's the mark twain national forest in missouri. there's twain, california, in the northern part of the state. there's a school, a street, a library in germany named after mark twain. and of course there's the kennedy center mark twain prize for american humor. mark twain prize for american humor in washington. we want to thank jocelyn chadwick for joining us for a part of the program, she is with your harvard graduate school of education and the national council on teachers of english, thank you for being

with us. she spent time teaching -- talking about teaching mark twain, we have two more teachers from north shore high school in new york. the teaching mark twain as well and here is what they have to say. >> twain gives us a chance to see what we would never see in a history book, which is the interface, the engaging of a poor white boy, son of an abusive alcoholic father, from whom he runs, the impetus of the book, from the point of view of huck, and beats a runaway slave . the two, huck calls them a "us." we get a poor white boy, and this enslaved person with a family who is doing his level

best to get out of his horrible situation. they go down the river together. they talk about everything from slavery to religion, to the stars, taste of food, waking up from a dream and being lost. jim mentors huck on how to be a good man. huck eats it up, he has never seen an adult man show how to be a good man. none of the whites have show him how to be a good man, their repugnant, violent, and jim is kind and caring, thoughtful. it makes me think, we don't make room to see in the in-

between, probably because it scares us to imagine we may be in between. i wonder, when we look at huckleberry finn today , what is the biggest error we make? one of them? what are we doing wrong? we are not doing certain things right. >> one of the mistakes we make, we focus so much on the language. the language is jarring. when we look at the use of the n-word, it is jarring for many of us but only evidence of a larger structure. language is born out of reality. huckleberry finn is born out of a time, the language is not born out of itself but out of economic structure, born out of a culture.

i think that is the hard part for many of us to really understand. one of those things, talking about racism, structural racism, a history of racism, the history of slavery, those are very difficult things to teach. you have to reconstruct the time. you have to reconstruct what were the laws, you have to construct what were the economic structures, and the customs and attitudes. those are uncomfortable. in many respects, the language feels uncomfortable. because we have not quite mastered the history of the time. the language becomes an entry point for us to realize, this is difficult, but that is the tip of the iceberg. >> we want to thank north shore high school teachers for having that conversation. let's go back to your calls on huckleberry finn . carry in

north carolina. >> i wanted to respond to the callers, i wonder what jim's vocation would have been? i think that the teacher that said she was uncomfortable with saying that n-word, she did not have a problem with saying "slave." what would have been her response to the child she was teaching when asked, which one was the slave? we are missing some of the stuff. >> we will have to leave it there, i apologize. andrew levy ? >> huck and jim are escaping. escaping together. end of the book, they were both

free for quite some time, some feel mark twain was not just interested in freedom and slavery regarding to african- americans of the time, but issues of freedom and slavery for all people. what it would take to truly live freely. last page, you found out they have been free for 100 or 200 pages. >> julie in montana. >> hi. tuning in late, i apologize for my comment and question. i was an elementary teacher for many years. i believe 10 years ago the library association throughout the laura ingalls award because a character says she will not see anyone for miles around while living in

indian territory and the native americans did not like that and protested about her book because of the comment. with that in mind, i am a substitute teacher now, how do i address the n-word used over and over in huck finn? >> andrew levy , we have talked about this a couple time but what is your condensed answer and about the little house on the prairie series as well? >> i stopped teaching huckleberry finn and i am a professor in college and i have tenure. i stopped teaching it because i think it is inconsiderate to teach it in some circumstances. if i teach it next year, it

will be in historical context, it will be volunteering with our friends to students. this is college level stuff, i am not sure about elementary school teachers. >> is the conversation about the dialect, the use of language? >> most of the conversation is about voice, language. one of the things, absolute pipeline to the 19th century. the way people thought, the way people spoke. everyone thinks people had listened to stephen foster and went to church on sundays. it was chaotic. by our standards. huckleberry finn lets you see the chaos of our past.

the important thing is your students are trusted. leave the classroom if they want to >> andrew levy is the author of mark twain and the era that shape his masterpiece the original many script at the buffalo county public library new york's -- here is what it looks like, have you seen the original manuscript? >> i have seated on -- seen it on cd roms, never face-to-face. >> what is his scribbling and markout telling you? >> he fussed about it. until the very end. no word processor. 1000 changes in the manuscript like that, it was a lot back

then. you pick up patterns in his revisions which speak to his intent. he spent a lot of time putting words you think about contemporary context, slavery by another name. a prison building boom. he put in words like guard, patrol, satirical. he references dogs, may not seem like much, but dogs are like guards. stuff like that. turning up the volume on the satire. >> the adventures of huckleberry finn is one of the 100 books on the list put out by the library of congress for

books that shaped america. we want to know what you think is a book that shaped america. go to the website, at the top, it says viewer input, click on that, two steps, you can send in a video, we may use it on the air and we want to show you some of the respondents. >> the book i think changed america is by jamie raskin, it shed light on the insurrection of january 6th and provided america in a context in a broader perspective exactly what happened on january 6th and the great threat we have going on because of the trump administration. and the donald trump ongoing threat to democracy. >> a book, i think shaped american is the of tomography --

the story he told about his life , racism, and religion, how black americans see themselves and how they identified within the spaces we occupy today. it was raw, engaging and inspiring >> the book that shaped american is "beloved" by toni morrison. a classic that all high schoolers way, a great discussion about the history of race and slavery in america. >> i am from mansfield, massachusetts and the book that shaped american is "shattered sword. what a retelling of the battle of midway, we can question our history and analyze and learn more about overtime. >> tony from san diego, "the

jungle." a combination of a great summation of the immigrant story in america, and the beginning of the labor rights movement which is really important. it was pivotal in american history. a great book overall. >> send us your idea of a book that shaped america, go to our website, your input is at the top. bob, lookout mountain, tennessee, thank you for holding . we are talking about huckleberry finn . >> hi. i have read the book as an eighth grader because i was required to. retired, spent time on rivers, i live in chattanooga. down the ohio, up in the

mississippi, to the iowa line, i came down, we have dams now, it was a wild river. there was a certain piece on traveling, about three weeks, the river is a place of relaxation. what do you think? >> bob, when did you do that? >> a year and a half ago. >> wow. thanks. >> a travel writer got himself a raft, went down the mississippi and simulated the trip of jim and huck, he was terrified . in the 1840s, raft, maybe six by

six, the solitude, beauty, god- like status of the river is in the book, too. a good perspective and important to bring in. >> there were other books on the library of congress's books that shaped america that came from that mark twain huckleberry finn era published in 1884. there are other books on the list. >> jacob reese documented poor new york city living conditions with his book journalistic work, how the other half lives, published in 1890. the wizard of oz was published in 1900 in 1901, sarah brad bird's book about harriet tubman was published. jeff london, the call of the wild was released in 1903. "the souls of black folk"

published in 1903 here are more books from the list of 100 bucks that shaped america. an expose of john d rockefeller 's standard oil company in 1904 with "the history of standard oil. "the jungle" about the meatpacking industry in chicago published in 1906. the changes at the dawn of the 20th century with "the education of henry adams" published in 1907 william james philosophical work pragmatism was published in 1907. >> there is the website, you can see all 100 books the library says are books that shaped america. you can input your ideas to the library of congress, our partner in the series. as you watch that list, i have one for you, what book did you want to bring up? >> highly influential, after

the information about how to run the car, 200 pages of conspiracy theories, including a fair amount of anti-semitism. >> that did not make the library's list. go ahead. >> i want to make a comment about what the woman said when she said her daughter was in school and, when the n-word was said, everyone was looking at her, during that time, that was the narrative but the language that was spoken. move that language out of that book puts us back. we should say, look at how far we have come. >> thank you. we will have to leave it there. last word on that topic. >> the racial slur question has

salience still, all i can tell you, as a historian and a professor, i have heard too many people say it was devastating and traumatic to be in a room where it was read aloud. you have heard many people, including jocelyn chadwick , saying that he needs to hurt, but we can control how it hurts. and how we have the conversation about it. >> professor levy, we ask you to read one of your favorite passages of the adventures of huckleberry finn . >> i will read the last couple of sentences. tom sawyer has set up this elaborate romanticized escape plan for jim. which almost gets tom killed and jim in prison. tom knew jim was free.

jim tells huck he saw his father's corpse 200 pages earlier. urvetion k >> and when he hears rsit he sa nothing, says nothing. and then he closes out the book, there ain't nothing more to write about. and i ain't going to know more. i can't stand it, i have been there before. >> it the author of huck finn's america, we appreciate your time. >> and thank you to all of the viewers and to our other guests.

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book festivals, and more. book tv, every sunday on c-span 2 or online at c-span.org . weekends on c-span 2 are an intellectual feet, every saturday, american history tv documents american story. and on sunday, book tv brings you the latest on a nonfiction books and authors. where are you going? or maybe a better question is how far do you want to go and how fast you want to get there? no, we are getting somewhere. let's go. let's go faster. let's go further, let's go

beyond. well, it is my great ple well, it is my great pleasure to be part of this panel, although my role is mostly just as moderator so that we can talk about this important pass breaking and fantastic looking book i must say, books through bars, stories from the prison books movement an effort to bring books to incarcerated readers and to build communities both within our vastly oversized racialized prison system to build communities within and

without. i am the associate professor of history in the department of history obviously and also offering studies at stony brook university. and that is how i encounter matt marquis who put together this incredible book but, let me take a moment to introduce the three panelists. this is a really rare opportunity to bring together, not just teachers and prison education, scholars, activists, but also people who have experienced the degradations of incarceration itself and then risen above it through their activism and their writing. i want to begin by introducing

lorenzo irvin, he is an anarchist, a civil rights activist, and an author. he was a member of the student nonviolent coordinating community. in response to many credible threats to his life, he then fled to cuba and then czechoslovakia. later he was invited to the united states where he served time in the federal prison system. he remained politically active while inside as many incarcerated people do. for we know we not just create, politicized prisoners but we also have within our prisons, political persons.

through public support in the own legal challenges, as prisoners often represent themselves as writers or what we call jailhouse attorneys, lorenzo secured his own relief after 15 years and of course he remains politically active and i am very excited to learn about the chapter that he wrote in this book. i also want to introduce you to an associate professor, lauren has taught u.s. in women's history to incarcerated people for over eight years, a really monumental important tasks, one thing we know about prison education is that even though the states reduce it it is the number one issue that reduces people returning to prison.

she was a fulbright scholar at the university of rome and she is author of partners in gatekeeping, now italy shaped the u.s. immigration policy over 10 pivotal years, 1891 to 1901, she is also the editor and the contributor to managing migration in italy and the united states and her work has appeared in labor, studies in working-class history, perspective on history, world history contacted, let me also say that this panel is sponsored and we want to acknowledge the labor and working-class origins of this book. last and certainly not least, david, we all know is back, marquis. he is the co-editor and mac is

a lifelong activist as well as an academic. he has worked with concerned family and friends, earth first, the asheville global report, and innumerable organizations small and large, he has volunteered at several prison books programs out of which this book has risen and he helped establish the asheville prison books as well as -- prison books. mac has served as the book review editor for age labor, the studies association, the executive assistant for the labor and working-class history association and he is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the university of south carolina where he is working on a

graphic history and the brother workers, timber workers in the new orleans collection. we are going to ask a series of questions and then invite all of you to be in conversation with us about what this book published through the university press of georgia of 2024, and tell us about the effort to bring prison education and prison literacy to incarcerated people. i thought i would start with three quotes that have always sort of inspired me and i think might be a good way to get out the philosophy behind this project. the first is by george jackson who set about ridding and present that, quote, he met marx, lenin, angles when he entered prison and that they

redeemed him. and of course, malcolm x said something similar when he said i've often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has opened to me. i knew right there that reading had changed forever the course of my life. the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant crazing to be mentally alive. and then finally, mia who said that just because your body is in prison doesn't mean that your mind isn't free. even though there is some truth in it, we are our minds. in the deepest sense, we are our spirits. when you think of a person in your own body, are we not in a prison of time. that doesn't

mean we cannot overcome and we do that by the power of mind and spirit we reach beyond, it strikes me this is exactly what this book does, it reaches beyond. let me start the conversation by asking each of you to reflect on how you came to this project, your philosophy on this project and talk a little bit about the scope. >> there does need to be a moment and talk about what prison books programs are, i do want to take a second, you ga

press for making this happen, i want to say that this book would not have been possible without my coeditor and all of the people who contributed chapters and also to all of the people who volunteered over the years. when you crack open this book, i hope that you will be struck by the art and the stories. allowing the people who were affected by it to tell about the movement and why they think it matters. i do want to make it very clear that the people who are served by this movement are disproportionately poor and working-class people. i want to stress that the overwhelming majority of the people who volunteer are also working-class people. this is what we do when we are not working for hire, many of

us have other interests and for people to understand working- class fully you have to understand and acknowledge beyond our paid time and our paid service. onto, what are prison books programs this is a book about a movement, it is comprised of a group of people who sent free books, this movement has sent hundreds of thousands of free books inside, hundreds of thousands of letters from people inside asking for free books collectively these are the not-for-profit organizations that get reading material into the hands of

incarcerated people. there has been no work to introduce this as a public. this population is designed to remain invisible, designed to be forgotten, i'm talking to incarcerated people. the people in this movement refused to not see and refuse to forget our fellow citizens and this is particularly important because united states has the largest incarceration rate per capita in the world, we imprison our citizens at a higher rate than any other country and i think according to the prison institute in some

states, they have discrepancy rates of 12 to one. black and brown citizens are 12 times as likely to be incarcerated. let's shift back to a book. our authors talk about some of the needs for programs. those needs are not currently being met by the state. the sections written by vicki law and rebecca ginsberg, we discussed the experiences of teaching inside. we also talk about the origin stories of some of these

programs including asheville prison books i was one of the cofounders of the prison books program. we were the first prison books program in the entire south, we are quickly overwhelmed, he operated on a shoestring budget. we can talk about it later if you'd like. we also talk about some of the movement as a hole -- hole we talk about how to work with one another. we have interviews to some formally incarcerated people expressing the need for the inside, we give various insights. a wonderful comic step-by-step

instructions showing that you can do this, we want to make this clear there is a place for you in these movements. that is pretty much what we do a prison books programs that can get into the logistics of how they work we also do send other reading materials in addition materials that are important that allows incarcerated people to get contact names and addresses for people that, for things that we can help them with. and this really runs the gamut. them i get access to reading and writing programs about college classes while incarcerated, art programs, health programs, penpal organizations, legal organizations and so on.

these are important, we do send in re-entry guides, many people are not given adequate information about what to do upon release and how to access programs upon release directly to the rates in the united states, we do our best to fill those gaps, right? we do what we can where we can i want to say that in this book you will notice that we incorporate art and we try to tell a story and we make it something that is easily digestible to show that this is a part of life and this is something that we do because we love it and when you do this work in the social justice movements, you don't have to engage in the complex, you can actually try to make these things enjoyable and the joy actually brings in more volunteers and the incarcerated people that you are connecting

with, they will recognize that. we try to incorporate art and artists throughout the book. we do not separated, it is much like life, we allow the interaction to flow. without further ado i will turn it over to my fellow panelists. >> so i came to this work as a professor of history in new jersey and we were definitely the only college in new jersey and i think even rare within the nation to deliver it to liberal arts program, that meant that you could earn the degree completely inside, there were no course requirements in order to earn that degree.

students were taking courses in history which is how i encounter them in the role that i play, including things like studio art, fine art and other topics that were not typically taught inside for a variety of institutional and maternalistic reasons. the biggest thing for me was that, my students referred to it as a real college, that was their phrase, that they were going to real college class and they were very proud of that, it was an aspect of their day that was totally just for them and just between me as their professor and them, it was really in some ways, and maybe

in my sense was that i was like the only part of their day that wasn't heavily controlled and dictated in which they can make choices of their own within the setting so, i ended up teaching, i taught the u.s. history survey which is a core requirement i ended up making it a women's history course because i was primarily teaching -- if you are a woman it can be really anything from shoplifting to capital charges, you are sent to edna man. so, that is where i taught first i started at what they call max and in my experience in teaching initially was really one of incredible privilege having not been

inside a prison and having not known incarcerated people directly in my coming up or at least on being aware that maybe someone had been formally incarcerated so i walked in with a lot of stereotypes and i remember early on when i went to my first training i was at a roundtable where we had student leaders in the program and then we had other professors were going to be teaching in the classroom where i would later teach, it had glass on all sides recall that the fishbowl. is sitting within the fishbowl it was only the first time i realize, there is nothing to be afraid of in here, it is emotional because it is a place we are told to be afraid of and the people we are supposed to be afraid of but what i realized was that even though i

would, each time i entered i would come in and have a clear plastic bag for my stuff, i couldn't have a click pen, this wasn't allowed i couldn't have my cell phone or my computer or photocopies with certain, there were all of these roles i couldn't wear a bra with underwire if you are a person who wears brawls, i had to change all of these things about my daily routine but i would go through and i would sign in and go through the metal detectors and then i would go through the gate and then i would walk down a path and they would unlock the second locked door and then the third locked door and then i would see the officers within that facility and then i would go into my classroom and the thing that i realized was that all of those layers of security in all of the barbed wire and

all of those steps were really just a tool of power and control and they were not making anyone safer than i was interacting in any other way so it really humanize the people inside and the students that i encountered, they were so hungry for real college and they were the best students i ever had, this is like going to be recorded and broadcasted you know, but these to joke with me that i always needed tissue so there watching out there i hope some of them are from the outside that they recognize me and remember me for this so at least i can keep control of it a little bit better these days.

i will say that the emotional connection was one that really took me by surprise because i had been teaching these courses for a while but the way that i encountered it and the way they encountered particularly the history of slavery in the united states was so profound that it changed the way that i taught on the outside you know, the dynamics when we talk about the tools of mastery that people attempted to use, this was not a lesson i had to teach right, this was the lived reality of the people in the classroom and i will say that one thing that i never wanted to know why somebody was inside, i would get a sense they had been there for a while not necessarily

because of their age everybody looks a little bit older than they might be on paper because it takes a lot out of you but i would notice their badges that they had to wear in the photograph on the badge would just be of a younger person or would just be old, you could tell they had worn that badge every day for many years and in some cases decades so i never wanted to know why anybody was inside just like if you were in my class on campus i am not like what is your back story, why are you here that allowed me to have really deep relationships with students on the inside and to really see the fact that they are, the way they encountered the history of the united states in women's history in particular was so transformative to me as a practitioner and so i guess i will leave it there, i do want to talk a little bit about how our program came about and why

it was different. so much of prison education's vocational or is like collections of courses, take this, take that, have this experience, have that experience but this was really powerful and i saw how that worked and i will turn it over to lorenzo now. >> i want to go to lorenzo i do just have one question for you which is working with incarcerating people to publish their writing, i am always wondering what they teach me one question i have about prison education is if you could tell the audience quickly but maybe connecting to all the teaching you've done is what they taught you if there was one singular thing.

maybe it is don't expect, like, look for what you don't think you are going to see, be open to that, i don't know, i think the breaking open, that is such an irony because the breaking open happened in the place that was most physically restricted that i had experienced and every time i left i would drive out and be distinctly aware that i was able to leave so i think that it is maybe echoed in one of the quotes that you read, thinking about the freedom that we are capable of inside the most secluded, the

most oppressive places and that would be the lesson. >> thank you for reminding us of the humanity that goes into both the teaching and this book. that is what it is at its core. >> this question is on the philosophy behind the prison books program but importantly for you i think maybe thinking about telling us a little bit about your self and what motivates you to do this work and to be part of this project, how you came to the project. >> i was arrested in 1969 as a 19-year-old black civil rights organizer and eventually had run amok all of the world i had

been to, i hijacked a plane to cuba and after time in cuba, they threw me out you could say and i managed to find my way to czechoslovakia and i was on my way to africa and was captured by the fbi, not the fbi but the state department agents they arrested me and brought me back to the united states. i got to new york, they put me in detention and i met martin sophistry, i didn't know anything about him i had never heard about him but he was one of the prison organizers, he was in new york city because he was suing the state officials at the new york state system where he was located he was suing them for the rights to

receive literature, radical and controversial literature to actually practice unorthodox revisions to have a social and cultural society inside the prisons, all of which seemed to the prison officials and even everyone else, outlandish. with that impossible demand would certainly become the norm in the prison system. the fight to establish prison literature it is a fight that had to be done legal fight in a strategic fight and with other protests had to be done. coming into the prison system, i was like lauren in some

respects, i hadn't been to prison, but having come to prison at a historical moment the moment of the civil rights movement by power, all of these movements were around in the early 1970s and helping to build a national prisons organization or prisons movement prisons rights movement and that movement and the rights we want was initiated in the fight against censorship. the only thing you could have as the bible, no thank you, i will take my anarchist material

instead so, we had to file a lawsuit based on the case in new york which he won and all of the rights to new york state prisoners. we talk about the lawsuit method and into the federal system and i started along with other prisons in a number of federal prisons and eventually they took me out of the atlanta penitentiary and they took me to a place where you are supposed to get killed they called it the ku klux klan in jail in indiana and even in that prison the right to receive literature changed fundamentally the nature of the prison and everyone in it,

everyone in it. when i went to that prison the clan had murdered people there the guards and the prisoners it has been covered up for years and in 1970 there was an antique land rebellion and the interesting thing about all of this was the fact that we had managed to force the prison officials to give us the literature that had been kept covered in the ward's office, the court forced them to give it to us, as a result of the book, the book is a weapon a weapon, not just a tool of

education it is a weapon to change the world because people who have not had basic education people who were forced to live in , people who have suffered from gears of racial oppression in the south through the book, through political education was able to redeem themselves living, living through a circumstance where your life is in danger, just by reading a book you could be beaten to death by guards, you could be stabbed and killed by racist prisoners and you had to be willing to

accept it for the right to receive the book, the right to greed, the right to talk about what you have. this was the results of the case and all of the lawsuits filed after that and there were plenty that changed the judiciary, when we talk about the prison literature and the creation of the program first of all you had to receive the books you had to fight to receive the books and we understood this so it was our life, life-threatening situation for a book. a book, it is the book that you want to read, not that they want you to read. prison officials wanted to

break you inside by the lack of ideological stimulation. you had nothing to keep you going, they could break you and force you to accept the regime. i am not talking aboutgermany, i am not talking about the soviet union or north korea they created programs behavioral modification they called it where they actually had doctors and prison officials who would use this to break you to force you to accept what they were doing and they didn't have to beat you

and all of these things. when you look at it, i see a fight to get these books and we were able to fight, leave the nationwide legal campaign, we were able to force the officials to give us as i said the right to have free discussions and culture studies groups and educational programs, their educational programs were a joke. they only gave you what they felt like giving you as opposed to what you needed. you needed to know who you are, you needed to know that you are a human being, you needed to know that you can get out of prison and lead a prosperous life, you needed to know these things because they are trying to program you as a criminal.

the program away from criminal content. making you come back and making you stay in prison so the whole purpose of having the prison literature, there were subversives as they would say the whole purpose of that was to, so that you would have a different way of viewing the world so that you as jackson used to say would dispense of the criminal mentality for the cultural mentality. from that standpoint it was important to say that these prison books were just books. they were life-changing

instruments, that is why we were able to sacrifice and if necessary, was almost on the verge of death so people did die in prisons just for the right for people to have these books. they broke down the citizenship and almost broke down the walls. millions of people were able to see for the first time as a result, sometimes i had to say this but death is necessary, it is like a war, a war is necessary sometimes, i don't believe in war in that sense but i am just saying that you have to oppose unjust authority and you can't oppose unjust authority if you don't believe

or you are led to believe that you are the most despicable piece of humanity and that you have no right to resist and yes, the entire program we started out getting the books forcing the officials to give it to us, the prison library, these are our books, we had more books than they did in the prison library and we forced them to put our books on the shelves and we force them, force them to understand what i'm saying to allow us to take the prison books to give those books to prisoners who wanted them and

many of those prisoners started reading these books for the first time. and reading these books changed them that word, racist they helped us destroy the ku klux klan. i was given 45 additional years to my sentence because i planned the anti-clan rebellion i am not ashamed i am committed

thankful that i can play that role if i had not fought to get out of prison if i had not had help to get out of prison, i would be getting out of prison this year. two life sentences for my active resistance i learned early on within the prison structure and maintaining prisons as an institution.

they reinstated that one of my books have been banned it brought back to me what we have done and it made me understand myself after so many years have we defeated the government and defeated the prison officials driven out racist guards as a result of us getting the book into the book changed the world for us the prison movement was based on the civil rights movement. they had seen the protests, they understood that they had the power and transform their

own lives. we may never get out of prison but what we wanted to know the truth. we understood that the truth can set you free. you can go a lot of years of your life, i'm sorry, i usually never do this sort of thing, but you can go a lot of years of your life and you never discovered what you were meant to do. what happened to me in prison

made me a revolutionary for the rest of my life. we filed a lawsuit which i lead, which i did the research for for 90 years, black people never had any rights in that city. what i learned in prison is what i use in the streets to bring black people in chattanooga, tennessee. i am just an example, i am not a euro. i'm just an example of what can happen if you allow people education, if you allow people to be human beings.

if you allow people to have a voice, we have to transform this country. we should take the resources for the prison system and you -- use that resource for the community. we need to fight to get them outside so that they have a chance to have a life. i am more worried about officials and the government being killers than i am about these people in the prisons that i was in prison with. those people have no choice, in many respects they are led down the path to criminal activity and the government officials

are arranging for poverty. it is systematically created. communities to have the occupying army. when they go to prison, it is what they are expecting. there told it's all they are good for. we will not accept citizenship even in the spirit, we will not accept it, we will take the book and we are taking the book and we are reaching people and we are going to change their lives. if we look at this book, it is the first of its kind, it is exceptional, it is well- written, it it -- has a story that will change your perspective even on the government that allows these things to take place.

this is supposedly the democratic regime that we live under, can you explain to me why people are kept in solitary confinement for years on end? can you explain to me why people are being beaten and killed and hung by the neck? and this is a normal thing? we have a problem in this country with the prison system. you would not think that the tool for iteration would be a book i didn't believe it at first, i couldn't understand it, but then i remembered somebody told me that the pen is mightier than the sword. i thought it was ludicrous and insane until the struggle, the

the prison books movement started, then i understand it. it is it -- isn't just a question of that alone, prison officials in the state are not willing to spend the money for other reasons to give a basic education to people. this is why we have to have these books because, we want to give the education the legitimate education to them that they don't get from the state or from federal authorities. and so, it is really, really important to understand why we do this, we are doing this because we are trying to say

people. police terrorism is just another one and you think, the book, how can the book change all of this? a book of eyed -- ideas, how can it change the world? people read this book. they will go tell others. others will read the book and there will be discussions just like outside of the prison, about what all of this meant. we learned about what the prison officials have done to be -- people. and now we are in a position to

change it because we fear it doesn't matter who doesn't care, it is about who does care. this is how you change and build movements, when you think nothing can change, in an environment where it seems like it's just slavery. we proved our struggle, we proved it. we defeated the prison regime, we destroyed a censorship. she's got some because she has been doing all of that crying. >> lorenzo, what i really love about what you are bringing to everyone here is the idea of

transformation. books as transformation, individual transformation, community engagement and transfer -- transformation and finally transforming society. and that book and every one of those books that this program and mac and others have sent into the prison and then your education, they begin with that seed, the mind seed to reach beyond. it is very profound. i want to turn to mac in a moment. lorenzo, i am curious could you tell us when you are first encountering books during your incarceration, what, could you name a couple of books that were really transformative for you? something deeply influential? >> some of james baldwin's

books, books by cleaver who is a tremendous writer, he might've been a limit -- lunatic but he was a tremendous writer. there were others, most of the books that really affected me were books that i received from abroad, anarchists and books about a subject matter that i didn't even know existed. the anarchists, the 1936 spanish civil war which had a lot of blacks going to spain volland -- volunteering on behalf of spanish people by the fascists. all of these things i did -- didn't know anything about it. a variety of black literatures

because of the black power movement was being put out as well, the prisoners were not given access to, there back to claiming that again no. and so forth. so, when i got access to the books, what we used to do was i would get books, somebody else would get books, we would share books and pass them around, prison officials didn't like it. it was just too much of it. so, we get books and just pass them along we start talking about it and having discussions while we were eating and everything. at one point, prison is not

designed to mess with your thinking, it is designed to break your mind. the prison officials tried to go back to the silent treatment. and we defeated that by just ignoring it. and they threatened, if everybody opposed them, they couldn't take everybody. it is the thing, the civil rights demonstrations people would go and grab them and on arrest them and they pulled him back into the ranks of the people and this is a similar thing.

>> that all goes into the community that this program creates within and without, mac, i wanted to ask you as well thinking back to the origins of this project, could you tell us a little bit about what made you attracted to the idea of doing this, of bringing knowledge and books to incarcerated readers, what does it mean to you personally and intellectually to do this work and teaching as well? the third part of that is what does it mean for the community that you work with outside of the prison and what does it mean to the reader within those prison cells? what kind of

community does not create, what brought you to this project and how does it begin? >> great question and i want to make a quick point that the most requested book, there are dozens of prison books programs, hands-down the most commonly requested book is a dictionary, hands-down, not even close. many people are quite surprised by that, it says something about people's lack of understanding that and are working to make a change in this access to a dictionary is critical to that. the fact that we get to so many request nationwide shows the need for these programs and the lack of education that, and the funding and educational system kind of leading people down this path to incarceration.

it is approximately 60% of incarcerated people so, back to your question to the person that i started looking out to support and after a short period of time i began to realize that in a cyst -- system that is so unjust that all incarcerated people are prisoners of the political system a more general manner and helping them get the things that they are up -- asking for. in terms of community, there is a lot of community that prison books programs foster. there are multiple ways to look

at this. getting access to the books on the inside. ideas they receive in the books and there's chapters on that in the book where other formerly incarcerated peo people share books on the inside when possible and share the ideas they received in the books. there are chapters on that in the book were other formerly incarcerated people are talking about that experience. it is a fostering of a community on the inside and that is important. it is letting people on the inside no that they are not forgotten. that is an important aspect of community. for some people, this may be that letter that they get, introduction with receiving the book or the book that they get, maybe the first outside contact they have had in years. years.

letting them know they are not forgotten. that is community building. that is core. right? in terms of the community on the outside, there are multiple ways, one of the ways to look at that, this is fighting a system that seems so overbearing and so over powerful, so powerful that, coming together to do something , an action, you are able to take action in this way does foster a sense of community and you are fostering through the system. for many people involved in this movement, it is not everything that they do. they may be involved in other social movements and this is just one thing that they do. in this one thing, they can come together and there is a sense of community to the book packing parties they may have, to the meeting days where you were looking for books to package in these letters, when

you are reading the letters out loud and sharing the artwork you may receive from incarcerated people. also, the other side of it, you are trying to community building events that may be fundraisers, we talk about that in the book, trying to incorporate people into this project. maybe somebody is busy and they are an artist in a different way and what they can do is contribute a flyer. that is how they can contribute and be a part of the process. that is valuable and they are excited to do that and you are involving other people in the community and ways they can interact with the project. also, in terms of the families of incarcerated people, families of incarcerated people cannot send books to incarcerated loved ones personally. they need an intermediary. it has to come from a bookstore or an approved source. if they do

not have the resources to do that, or if they do not want toa purchase through one of the big conglomerates, prison books programs offers the ability to do that it also fosters a sense of community where they can come to a place where they may feel more understood and less isolated from the other people around them. because we are taught to consider it a shameful thing you may know someone who is incarcerated. this is a way to break down the barrier. there are many ways in which we foster community through these programs. >> i was trying to think and remember, how did i get to start to do this? my entry and my relationship to books and books through bars, was a bit different. than the majority of the

contributors in that i was working to get my textbooks inside, which i am sure we can all -- those of us in classrooms now or remember from our own expenses, sometimes the textbook is the last thing you may want to read. but i found -- i used the give me liberty, and i have to give a shout out to ww norton, they were responses by giving us donations that we needed. i started teaching, when i created a women's history class, in part inspired by my sort of subversive attempts to make women's history for women inside . this needs to be its own course in the curriculum as a required course. i had the textbook there. one of the issues we had, tracking and making sure that the people in the courses could have the books they needed which is another layer to the story. we have been talking about the

way in which the bureaucracy of prison is meant -- intended to break the humanity of the people inside and reinforce the fact they are lesser than, and one of the issues we had our books kept getting lost and of that was ome another way to either directly or indirectly go to the chaos machine to deny that access. i had an issue where half of my students had a book that ended halfway through the semester they had the volume 1 and we were teaching the full volume. i had to figure out how to deal with that. i felt awful for these students, they literally just would stop at chapter 8 and we were going to chapter 15 or whatever.

but we figured it out. at one point, the books were in somebody's car come in the truck , every semester i was tracking where they were. i knew how valuable they were and i was trying to get more donations. that is something i tried hard to facilitate because my students told me, at the library, the library does not have anything good in it for us, the textbooks brought the real college connection to an intellectual world in which they were a part. and, i think, you know, the other thing, too, i was thinking about what it meant to me on the outside. again, they picked me to give the address, we graduated these people and speaking to the economics of the audience, graduation is in some ways, for

the people graduating and it is special, when you do it every year it is a rigmarole. all the words you say out of ed graduation about all the things of the meaning, inside, graduation inside, was all true. all true. our valedictorian that year, because, she is out there somewhere, because, she was one of the most amazing students i have ever had. she sued the state of new jersey to overturn the law because she was sentenced as a 16-year-old to life. to overturn thatro sentencing, that minors can't be sentenced to life in prison. i just heardw through the grapevine she has been released as of two months ago.

i hope she can find me, i would really love to reconnect with her. some of the things that were meaningful,oi thinking about wh comes to mind, because, one of the things i did in changing my activism, i testified in front of the legislature of the city of new jersey because formerly incarcerated people were denied their constitutional right to vote after the release. that was on the books as of may be i think about 2019 that a bill came up to restore voting rights to formerly incarcerated people in new jersey and i testified in those proceedings in front of the legislature, which was very intimidating. as someone who does not normally feel intimidated by these spaces.

i reunited with a former student who i had taught and that was pretty special. i think, though, part, it was -- the experience transformed me into what we were talking about, a person who takes action and does it in ways that i hope are particularly made a difference. the other way that this changed me and changed my community, on the outside, in terms of some leadership without the program. i was very adamant that anybody who taught -- excuse me -- history inside did it -- there was no difference between inside and outside courses. in

particular, the skills and mindset of the instrument were essential and practiced in the course, and the students were taken seriously as a storage in the course and not dumb down in any way or simplified in any way, which had been experience as far as i am aware of, unfortunate hallmark of a lot inside education. that was super important to me. i did a lot of gatekeeping of who was teaching those courses and a lot of conversations with those instructions, a lot of observations, i observed a math class once, lordy, and i did take these as opportunities for the mentoring and the conversations around what it means to teach and what it means to teach within a setting where the dynamics of power are so different in how we can let go of our need to control that as

instructors. i will say that. i think that, in the leadership of the program, i also tried -- i am not actively teaching inside anymore, i started my career in a community college and i think in some ways, within one of my big missions for a long time, i am no longer there, but one of my big missions was to try to bring the community -- the experience of community college with all the students, to elevate that and help to diminish the prejudices and stereotypes that exist which in some ways are not totally dissimilar, there is a venn diagram overlapping with some of the prejudices around who may be incarcerated at had the class dynamics in those ideas. some of that, direct activism,

which resulted in policy changes in the labor and working-class history association, is one place where we are really trying to build access and inclusion for scholars, students , and other people who may be -- who may access the field through a community college. i will say that is one thing i am pretty proud of and is inspired in part by this work. i want to leave time. >> i do also want to leave time for the artist and i am mindful of the time. here is what i will do. i will package together the final three or so questions i had that i want to turn it over to the audience. maybe do not immediately respond to my questions unless it is a good intersection. because this is sponsored, i want to talk about the relationship between the book

and this books through bars programs and the labor movement and the working class struggle that is embodied within our prisons and in our jobs. the prisoner rights movement is also a labor movement, we have the first ever nationwide prison strike in 2016. again in 2018. if someone wants to talk about the relationship to this book and to this project, to labor and working-class life. a second, i want to talk about artistic creativity. this book is littered with -- we were talking earlier, it reads like -- it was pointed out in the introduction, and i also read the proposal for this book initially, it had a punk mentality behind it. if we could talk about what artistic creation by the incarcerated means, both within the book and

to those creating the art. i did also want to try and touch, because the book has a chapter, what this means to lgbtq communities within the prison, of which there are many. in fact, that is a growing population. as our public spaces are policed . the last question is, what challenges did you have, thinking particularly about the role of censorship? any of those four questions are my final four, but why do we turn it over to the audience and maybe there will be some conjunction or, if you wish to address any of those four, that sounds good to me. i will be coming to folks. we have a microphone, we all are on c-span, so i will hold up the microphone. let me turn it over to the audience.

>> i will go ahead and answer ou the last question you asked. we do have -- the book does contain an interview with zoe lawrence, a currently incarcerated person, it talks about her struggle to be identified in the manner of her choosing. also, the access to information and material that the struggle that she faced in gaining access to that material. this is a common and growing problem within the community. think about how this is happening on the outside, in the outside world, and think about how that becomes more concentrated and more difficult on the inside. i do not think i need to explain that much further than that. it makes a lot of sense. this is a common fight that we have, that many prison books programs are currently involved with in terms of -- there is a

long history, that asheville prison books, when, i don't remember the exact year, sometime around 2003 perhaps, when transmission books grew out of the asheville prison books program, their mission specifically provided queer folks on the inside materials of their choosing and they specialize in that material. there are programs that specialize in that in almost every prison books program makes an effort to make sure that queer people on the inside get what they want and censorship is another aspect of this project that the prison books programs are often fighting censorship on a regular basis. speaking in conjunction with abbott books in georgia, a bout a week or so, and they have a lawsuit fighting the censorship

of material that they have been trying to send inside. this is a growing problem. >> i will touch on your censorship point four just a second. it goes back to something mr. lorenzo said about his book being banned inside. it probably was not banned everywhere inside, probably banned in one or two places, maybe 20, my point is, what is banned is not uniform within the system? what is banned depends on largely where you're at, and the leadership, and sometimes, what is banned gets to change when new leadership comes in . it can be incredibly frustrating to navigate who lets what in when. have you advised programs, who

are trying to get books inside, how to navigate all the nuances that come with every individual facility? >> i will say something very short. i had a different role, were not responding to individual quest for books but we were trying to get materials not typically used, documentaries, that was da tou one. even having regular access to the correct textbooks and turn -- current textbooks. we had an education office in d.o.c. and the new jersey department of corrections with an education division sometimes i would experience that, depending on who was in that seat. there was lotteries or it could be smoother. i found a lot of strategies of finding where the water would flow. even against my nature of being

sweet and nice, all those nice n sweet things that i am usually not in trying to get that -- those books where they needed to go and find out where where the cracks i could get through. i was able, it took a little time, but the pressure and the legwork did yield some good results. although, not always in a situation where i thought i was doing something helpful to have a student screen a film and it ended up being a big problem for that student because of the paradigm mixture inside. stepping back sometimes and realizing that i could not make things happen the same way i could on the outside and i needed to respect people's roles and positions and the fact that they were inside and had to live within that regime. >> there are currently, i

think the latest assessments are about 6000 different prisons , jails, and whatnot throughout the united states. and multiple levels. you have the federal system and multiple tears in the federal system. each state has their own system . each county, so when and so forth, and even, holding cells in jails, and this is not including i.c.e., and so on there are a lot of systems of incarceration in the united states. the federal system may have certain guidelines, but that depends upon, is it a maximum institution, medical institution, so one and so forth? if you are able to navigate all of that, if you are successful in navigating all of that, it

does ultimately oftentimes come down to the person, how they are interpreting those guidelines. sometimes, i have had success in old-fashioned style, calling them up, figure it out, it is infuriatingly difficult to get someone on the telephone but i have had it work to where i have been able to actually get someone on the phone and question why a particular package, or why a particular book, was being kept. one time, our program was blacklisted by an institution because they said we are not a real bookstore. i said to check, and they were like, okay, i am looking at google maps and i see that it is a brick-and-mortar store and you will be accepted. those are the good stories where you can navigate through that. that is not always the case. sometimes you get a package

back and it just says "rejected" with no information about why it was rejected and you have to pay to get it back and you pay to send it back in and some programs do not have a lot of money and struggle with fundraising. you pay for the same package three times and are not certain it will get there the third time. you have to try to figure out and ascertain why something was banned . sometimes, we are aware that things, we don't know things get rejected, that is just when we happen to know. we check and we know people are getting packages because people write to us and say, "that was so great." i understand you don't have the books i requested and i was a little bummed when i did not get the books i requested but i love what you sent. these things happen, they do go through and make a difference.

it is very difficult to navigate that system. some states have banned book lists, some states do not, or at least do not have one they're willing to admit to. sometimes, you can work things out with a particular warden, other times you can try for years and it is never going to happen. it is infuriating. that is the power of the lawsuit. other people are engaging in lawsuits. t we have a piece in the book, law office challenging the right to send books on the inside. sometimes that is what it takes . not the actual lawsuit itself but the threat of a lawsuit. it is finding a lawyer or a legal representative who is willing to say, okay, we will write this letter, we will try to make sure -- we will force them to articulate the rationale for

banning this, and they will say, we made a mistake. but that is all extra work. that is all extra work. that is extra work for people doing this and every time, oftentimes not getting paid. they are already maxed out and all the other things they do and i tried to send the package in and it is just extra work. we do the best we can and try to challenge these things as we can with sometimes the assistance of other organizations who are able to rely on for legal help and advice. we communicate with one ar another. which we talk about in the text. we have a listserv where we say, currently, is everybody having trouble with this particular institution? how have you navigated that? what is helpful, what is not? what one person figures it out, everybody knows how to navigate it. it is maddening, in short. >> do we have a question for

lorenzo? we are nearing at time, i would like another question from the audience. well, lorenzo, maybe you should help us with the last word, the question about the connection of this book, and of this larger project. to the labor movement, working class movements, contemporary struggles, you have a long history of that. maybe, do you want to leave us with some closing thoughts about what books through bars really -- amazing, you are to be complement on this, it is important work, as lorenzo has attested. if you could leave us with thoughts about what this project means for the current

moment and the struggles in the selection, and moving forward the on the selection. and struggles in our prisons. >> well -- >> easy question. >> the historical moment i was talking about, in this moment, are similar but different. in this time now i'm repression has learned from our earliest struggles. they apply scissors it differently, they make a different argument. in my book, the book they s stopped of mind, they made the argument that it advocated racial superiority. black people being superior to whites. no way that is true,i but that is the argument used in the streets. that is, we are at a time, what

i tried to do in creating a movement, that opposes book banning, was to have people understand that the fight against banning books is the fight against fascism. because, as you said in this time, the right wing is using book banning to try to control what people think. on the outside, i speak about what they did on the inside now, they are doing it on the outside to try to control people's views, to try to silence people. yo to try to make you politically, i don't know the word, but to stop you, to make you think that the power of the government or the power of the authorities,

there should be no so-called black literature. there should be no, what do they call it, in this period, black thought, or black k -- wh is the program they have? they don't want you to look at black lives matterhi as an important movement, they don't want you to think there was a civil rights movement in this country. they want to make you think that all of this is outlawed by those in power. they want to get in power to do it. we are facing the prospect of the selection, producing a person who is a megalomaniac, but more portly, producing him with a program that the right- wing has drawn up that is

project 2025, that conservative groups have created so that, when their plan is enacted, over the course of time, they will come into power with an sh agenda already that will change the fundamental institutions of the government. it will change all of the institutions of the government that exist now. of course, censorship will be just one of those things they will have used to gain their power. that is what is happening right now. the election is important. i am not telling you to vote for this or that, i am an artist, -- i am an anarchist, but the point is, we are facing fascism . whatever we believe in. i think people should be protesting, fighting in the street, now, but the majority of the people do not know what is being planned for them.

the simple fact of losing the selection, we could lose people's lives and ability to survive in this country. people will be confronted with this repression that goes on in prison. they will turn the country into a prison. from that standpoint, it is extremely important to understand the things i'm talking about, books behind bars -- books through bars is the idea, the idea of what they're trying to repress. we are at the point where they want to change fundamentally all the institutions in the country, including widespread voter discrimination. we are looking at the very thing that we are fighting against that we have been talking about. we have to understand, it is a real, living threat to our lives and to our livelihood and everything else. >> thank you, that is very

powerful. mac, do you have a final thought? >> this could not have been done without you all, all the people who contributed chapters and all the people who have fought for the rights of incarcerated people and all the people who volunteered for the prison books program. this is an introduction, we hope, and we hope this book will spur people to help us uncover the rest of the history of these programs and show why they are important. this is indeed the first attempt to document the history of the social movement that has been in existence for over 50 years. >> i want to thank all of you, i want to thank c-span for taking the time to cover this, i think it is so valuable that we get this message beyond this room. thank you for being here.

thank you for staying the entirety of the time and let's think our panelists who really gave an incredible, personal, and powerful testament. thank you. [ applause ] sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen, to receive a schedule of upcoming programs , author discussions, book festivals, and more, booktv , every sunday on c-span2 or anytime online at booktv.org. television for serious readers. >> weekends on c-span2 are intellectual feast , every saturday american history tv

documents american story, and on sundays, booktv brings you the latest of nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span comes from these television companies and more, including mediacom. >> mediacom was founded on bringing underserved committees broadly, we connected 850,000 miles of fiber, our team broke speed varies, delivered great speed to every customer and lead the way in developing a 10 g platform and now offering the fastest and most reliable network on the go. mediacom, decades ahead. >> mediacom with these companies support c-span2 as a public service .i'm rich greenawalt, a member of the free library foundation's board of directors, and i'm delighted to

be here with you tonight. you know, it's been incredible to witness the growth of the free library's author event series over these past 30 years. what first started out as a small offering of lectures is now a robust lineup of events with acclaimed novelists, historians and public figures. and tonight is no exception, these discussions connect, inspire and challenge us addressing timely issues in the public, civic and humanities, through in personevents right here in this auditorium and online archives of podcasts and videos. the authors events program reaches millions of people worldwide. this makes this series the single largest provider of electronic content produced and distributed by the free library of philadelphia. i'd like to take the time to

especially thank all of you. our members who are with us tonight. as a member of the pepper society myself, i hope i can encourage many of you to continue to join us in supporting the free library. so many enriching programs including this award winning author series are made possible through your generous support, you can find more information about becoming a member and donating in tonight's program. now, before i introduce these amazing guests, a few housekeeping items, i ask you to please silence your cell phone and note that there is no flash photography permitted during the event. and following tonight's conversation, we invite you to join us upstairs for a book signing. and now it's my great honor to introduce our guests this evening, a journalist at the new york times for more than 25

years, frank bruni has been the paper's rome bureau chief, head restaurant critic, white house correspondent and staff writer for its sunday magazine. among other positions, his best selling books include ambling into history. the unlikely odyssey of george w bush. born round the secret history of a full time eater where you go is not who you'll be an antidote to the college admissions mania and the beauty of dusk. a memoir about adjusting to suddenly losing sight in his right eye. also currently a professor of public policy at duke university and the writer of a popular weekly times newsletter. bruni formerly worked as a pulitzer prize nominated writer for the detroit free press.

in the ageof grievance. bruni examines the ways in which the blame game has come to define american politics and culture. joining bruni on the stage this evening is karen heller heller is the former national features writer and current contributor to the washington post, was formerly a metro and features columnist for the philadelphia inquirer and was a finalist for the 2001 pulitzer prize and commentary. we're so pleased to have them both was with us this evening. so please join me in welcoming karen heller and frank bruni to the free library stage. [ applause ]

>> thank you, rich. thank you for that introduction. that's lovely. welcome everyone. uh thanks so much for joining us. uh we're all fellow frankophiles. [ laughter ] >> i never heard it like that before. >> you are the chief restaurant critic of the new york times. >> unit incoherent career. >> i think this is great and you are great at cocktail parties, you can speak about almost anything. >> i drink a lot. >> he contribute still quite frequently to the times at you are paid for your grievances. people have to read them.

he has a fabulous newsletter. if you do not subscribe, i encourage you to do so. it is justterrific. anyway, we live in a time of many riches, not only literal wealth but amazing advancements in health. technology, bread, coffee, beer , athleisure, footwear, daily comfort and ease. yet, how we complain. youwrite that we are experiencing the oppression olympics, the idea that my situation, even though we have great socks, my situation is so much worse than yours. i want to understand how you saw that we got to thispoint. you write that the united states is a nation born of grievance in the revolt of royal subjects and willing to accept a deal that our legal system, that grievance can be

good. but how did we get to this point? >> that is the questionthat the book tries to answer. i mean, there are many answers to that. i mean, we could talk about social media, we could talk about and we will tonight, i know we could talk about the country's turn from a sort of trademark optimism to a whole new american pessimism which i think is very concerning and new. there are a whole lot of ways, but what has happened to the word grievance because you brought up correctly that we're a nation born of grievance, grievances is a word that appears in the first amendment. if you go back to the late 1700s, early 1800s, when people spoke ofgrievances, it was a term that usually meant just causes ,urgent causes. now, if you left this auditorium tonight and you did a google search of grievance and where it has appeared in the last 24 hours of the last week, you would find it almost always is used as a pejorative in a negative context. and that's a tell. and what that says is that we have become so incessant in our

complaints. so indiscriminate in our complaints. we've jumbled the sorts of things we must complain about as a matter of fundamental justice with stuff that we needn't complain about. but that bespeaks a certain sort of spoiledness and narcissism. we've jumbled it all together in a way that i think makes constructive discourse almost impossible and completely paralyzes our political debates . >> youwrite that almost no cultural event. no bit of news. no topic of national conversation is roped off from grievance by which i mean, a complaint or concern that should or could be a modest point of dispute, negotiable with business like diction and business like decorum, but is blown up widely out of proportion. i want to say that i tweeted about this event and some, somebody was aggrieved and said not kind things about thetwo of us. and i don't think we have met.

>> welcome to my inbox. >> i do not know if it was a bot. tell me what -- when did you first notice this was fomenting? was it a slow burn? >> we have all been noticing it for mike better than a decade. when i put the language to it, i wish i could take credit for the phrase, the age of grievance, whether good or bad. after i wrote my last book, about a personal, medical ordeal , odyssey, i had a great experience with my editor at avid reader press. i'll give a shout out to avid reader press and we thought we should do another book together. and he's a regular reader of my newsletter and other things i write and he wrote, he sent me an email one day and he said, i think it was right after i had made fun of jinny thomas's text

messages to the white house about how this election was being stolen and it had a lot of capital letters. and wow, did it have a lot of exclamation points? right? and the theme of it was she, it was this what came through in her, in her text messages was how oppressed she felt, how cheated she felt. the free winnebago was not big enough? [ laughter ] >> after that, my editor wrote me an email, and said you should write a book called "the age of grievance. quote i wrote back and said, we need to be the same thing before we proceed. in that phrase, i started

thinking about it and i thought that really is a great distillation and summary of this sort of culture of complaint we live in of this culture that fetishize victimization and makes people want to come into the public square and say, i'm a victim. chris rock said something very brilliant in his most recent stand up selective outrage. he was talking about, he was listing the top ways in which people want to be noticed, right? and it was a mixture of jokes and serious things. and i think he said, you know, way number three by being a victim, you know, and then he said, and he said it very well, i would encourage people watching selective outrage. he said there are many real victims among us and they deserve our recognition and they deserve our empathy and they deserve our assistance and help. but he said there are so many people claiming victimization in situations where it is not warranted. he said we basically have an emergency room full of people with paper cuts. i quote him inthe book because frankly, that's the whole book.

and so now you've heard that phrase and we cannot go home. >> the editor had the idea, did you say, yes, was there a tipping point? was there a moment you said, yes, there is a book here? >> there was hesitation. even as i sithere with you whom i respect and thank for doing this in a friendly face. and even though i assume it's a mostly friendly audience, but i guess we'll find out as the evening goes on .my hesitation because i think there's something really difficult about having this conversation that i tried really hard in the book to get right. but i don't know if i did, which is, it's really important to recognize and talk about as i do in the book that this impulse to define yourself by how you've been wronged, to shout about how you've been wronged as loudly as possible with the idea that they who shout the loudest and use the

most hyperbolic language. win the day this impulse to name who's wronged you and chart a revenge against that person or those people. this exists across the political spectrum. and i felt it was very important not only to talk front and center about the maga movement and what happened on january 6th, which i refer to as the grievance prom. and i think that's, i think that's what it was, but it also, but it also exists on the left. and it's important to call that out too, my hesitation. and to me, the great challenge in having these conversations is, well, it is a pan partisan phenomenon that does not mean it's equivalent on the right and the left, i believe it poses a much greater danger on the right. right now. it is on the right that you see the preponderance of organized political violence. it is on the right that you see the pervasive and profound election denialism at a scale that you don't see on the left. so i mostly had hesitation because i wanted to be very

fair minded and to call this out in all the places that exist without doing a sort of facile, both sides is or implying any false equivalence. >> right. right. you know, you talk about how people have started to vote, not so much for a candidate but against one, you know, rather than having, you know, a real belief that this person can represent you and contain, you know, your values and whatever we're kind of negative voting. and i, i like you to read about this pessimism about america's promise. >> i have to put on my eyes. hopefully, i have the right page bookmarked. >> 77. >> page 77? >> yes. >> there it is.

american dream, american exceptionalism,land of opportunity, endless frontier, manifest destiny. those were the pretty phases, the pretty phrases that i grew up with words that appeared not only in political ads, but also in history lessons and elevated analyses of the americanpsyche. we welcomed newcomers or at least didn't tightly seal our borders because we weren't as worried as other countries might be about having enough to go around. we were always making more, we were always making better. we were inventors, expanders, explorers, putting the first man on the moon wasn't just a matter of bragging rights though. it was indeed that and we bragged plenty about it. it was also an act of self definition, an affirmation of american identity. we stretched the parameters of the navigable universe, the way we stretched the parameters of everything else. that perspective obviouslywas a

romanticized one achieved through a selective reading of the past. it discounted the experiences of many black americans. it minimized the degree to which they and other minorities were shut out from all this inventing all this expanding come all this exploring, it mingled, self, congratulatory fiction with fact. and it probably imprinted itself more strongly on me than on some of my peers because of my particular family history. my father's parents were uneducated immigrants who found in the united states, what they left southern italy for more material comfort, greater economic stability and a more expansive future for their children, including my father who got a scholarship to an ivy league school, went on to earn an mba and became a senior partner in one of the country's biggest accounting accounting firms. he put a heated in ground pool in the backyard. he put me and my three siblings in private schools. he put our mother in a mink and he pinched and he pinched himself all the while. it was nonetheless true that the idea of the united states

as an unrivaled engine of social mobility and generator of wealth held sway with many americans who expected their children to do better than they'd done and their children's children to do even better. that was the mythology. anyway, i don't detect that optimism around me anymore. i see a crisis of confidence. i see retrenchment. i see manifestations of and metaphors for our lost bravado that are so on the nose. they could be a playwrights, invention, take our fitful and beleaguered attempt to get back to the moon in the late summer and fall of 2022. although neil armstrong had madethat giant leap for mankind more than a half century earlier in 1969 nasa struggled to send an unmanned spacecraft to the moon, the orion will doubtless launch pad at the kennedy space centerin florida on august 17th, 2022.

but only after a series of delays caused by problems discovered during pre flight tests, people then gathered on august 29th to watch orion rocket into space. but nasa canceled the launch at the last minute due to a faulty engine temperature reading. onseptember 3rd, the launch was canceled yet again. this time, the culprit was a leak during fueling. not until november 16th would orion take off. it was as if we just couldn't defy gravity the way we used to. >> thank you. that was wonderful. so this pessimism, it's seeped in you sort of see it in your book. you talk a lot about, you see it in all these aspects and what do you think has fueled so much of this? >> part of it is a reaction to actual circumstances. i mean, in an age when we kind of invent a lot of problems and indulge a lot of false news or whatever you want to call it. you know, we have seen, we don't see, we don't, we don't

have the social nobility we're used to. we're living, we're living in a period. there are other periods in the past when it's been severe, but we are living in a particular period of exaggerated income, income inequality. that's part of it. part of it is also we're kind of a mature civilization. i don't want that makes it sound like we're grown ups. we're not acting like grown ups. i'm immature in a different sense. and i think at a certain point, the american promise, promise of better, more bigger. it, it kind of bumps up against the limits of, of the universe, so to speak. but i think the best illustration of just how much the american psychology has changed. for decades, ithink it goes back to the 1970s, the gallup organizationhas several times a year, three or four times a year taken a very particular poll that asks americans if they are generally satisfied with the country and with their lives in the country .up until

2004, that the answers that would go above 50% sometimes above 60% it would go below, it would go like this. it was constantly changing, but always returning at various times above 50% since 2004, never have more, have 50% or more americans answer that they are generally satisfied. for 20years running. we can't get to a majority of americans in that gallup survey saying that they're generally satisfied and more often than not, the number is below 40% or below 30%. right after january 6th, 2021 it was 11%. that's 20 years of sustained negative assessments of sustained negative thinking and that has taken a toll. >> right. well, i personally think we over poll, that's the other thing you react to the poll, you know, particularly in an election year and we are fixated on what's wrong. and i, and i want to talk a little

>> that includes the media. oh, yes, we'll get to that in a second. but anger is something we all have, right people. it's a natural emotion. you know, all you have to do is get behind a wheel in a car and you're running late, right? and you're mad at people. but i wonder why anger has become such a dominant force in the american dialogue and what contributed to all of this? because we were raised, most of us are raised in a certain way to be polite. you can go to places and you're slighted talking about the chris rock comment of paper cuts. but ultimately, we know life, it's pretty good. but now it's just this anger and this righteousness and the feeling of wronged. and you talk about the polling and feeling that the american experiment has gone kind of off the tracks. but why has anger become such a, it's so acceptable and most of us were not raised to, you know, raise our voices to, to, you know, well, we didn't have twitter, but to tell two people you don't know how horrible they are, what, what

contributed to all that? >> i do not know, maybe children arebeing raised differently now. i mean, it's interesting you said angry behind the wheel of the car. i mean, we're living in a moment where, so we've had road rage for a long time. right. we're now living with, we're now living with air rage, restaurant rage, retail rage. it's like gone way beyond what happens on a crowded, on a crowded freeway. i mean, there are a lot of reasons. i thinksocial media is a big part of it. people have seen on social media that the more furious, they are, the more negatively impassioned, they are the more viral their posts go, the more they're shared, etc and that becomes, that creates an incentive structure for anger and for its, you know, upsizing into rage, politicians have seen that they've exploited that and they've modeled that, right? you know, you sometimes when people were saying over recent weeks, you know, when they were looking at, i mean, the campus protests are a complicated

subject which we often don't treat that way, which bothers me. but looking at some of the protests that have clearly gone off the rails that have dipped into violence. and you know, i've seen commentators say, you know, where do these young people get the sense that confrontation of this sort is appropriate that these sort of provocations work. and i'm thinking, i don't no, u.s. congress? i am joking but it is serious. i remember, this made so much sense,but it made me so sad. i remember shortly after the supreme court overturned roe v wade. i was sitting with a prominent democratic politician whom i will not name because it was an off the record encounter. and i don't think i'm breaking that here. and this politician said, and this politician is known for his her or their measured tone and for being a conciliator. >> is not bernie sanders? >> no, and not elizabeth

warren. they said, donald trump and his allies do such a good job of makingpeople angry and whipping them into ever greater fury and getting to the polls. this could be really good for us. now, we can make our voters as angry. right? tactically, i thought it was a very start -- smartstatement, you know, and as someone who fervently advocates for reproductive rights, i was on his side. but it just made me really sad as a kind of reflection of the times that he was excited about the opportunity to sow and reap anger, that that was the smart move, was really disturbing. it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy at a self-feeding loop. >> we may as well get into it. you call donald trump cast himselfas both a martyr and a messiah. he was a grudge, made flesh grievance, became president. and you talk about us being in

the grievance olympics and he may be the gold medal winner in this. >> he is themichael phelps of the right. >> why does this play so well? i mean, tell me we have social media. why it's just when you stand back from you just, you know, if somebody showed, well, -- >> we are not standingback from it. i mean, you just said the crucial thing too few of us are standing back from it. too few of us are pausing and saying before we begin shouting or before we just kind of accept that everybody else is shouting too few of us say, what is this doing to us? where are we going? is there a different way? this iscosting us so very much. and the part of the book that's most important to me are the chapters and pages that look at that, you know, at how it's degraded our country. but, you know, i don't think, i don't think we're self reflective in the right way, but there are a lot of, there are a lot of streams that come to this confluence. we've become a much more self centric narcissistic people.

you know, we've gone from self actualization to self care to all of this attention on how do i make me better? and i don't hear the same amount of attention being given or passion being lavished on the collective good. i think social media divides us. i think media in general and the internet divides us. i mean, you go back to when you and i were growing up and if you wanted to watch tv, news, your choices were abc , in bc, cbs, or maybe there was a pbs channel, maybe half an hour and maybe one hour. and so they tried to do general interest stuff and they were bound from decades by the fairness doctrine on and on, compare that to the cable news universe of today where you get to tune in to exactly what you want to hear to the exclusion of all other viewpoints which of course, only ends up not just confirming what you believe, but ossifying it. i think it is so telling, so

scary and so important to go back, why did fox news top fox discovery it was shown that the top fox news anchor's and executives new and were talking with one another about the fact that they were putting these lies on the year about rigged voting machines and the corruption of the voting process. but they said if we do not air this, our audience will go over to oan or someone else that will air it and we have to give them what they're looking for, even if it's not the truth. that's the most extreme example, but versions of that happen throughout the tv universe because we have this ability to curate the facts we received, which are often not facts, the information we get, and each one of us is living in

a different version of reality from the person to the left and the person to the right. that is an enormous problem and a great wellspring of anger.>> i know people will say, all republicans are horrible people. and you really want to say that . we don't do this professionally. if you change that to somebody's skin color day she reminded me of one thing speaking of anger and grievance. there was a terrific story done at the new yorker years ago about how rupert murdoch bought the rights to the nfl because he was a straley in and didn't care, but he knew that anger in the attachment to watching sports they would already have this fevered dish i guess people can get riled up watching sports and he knew it

would be a secret. and it was one of the building blocks of fox news was owning the rights to nfl. i want to flip this and talk about -- which is fascinating as i'm looking around the room and you grew up with profiles in courage and the idea of being brave and you think of jfk or george h.w. bush and people who served in the war and the idea of being a victim was heresy. nor efron said never be the victim of your own story. and now we have someone like donald trump, but other people as well who grew up with everything and paint themselves as a victim. i still cannot wrap my head around how it became attractive politically. >> you bring up the right thing. victimhood is a kind of political currency like never

before, and you're right it's the cornerstone of this political identity. this is a sort of he's like the result of a mindset and he's the accelerant and multiplier of a mindset. but it worked for him because there were all these people in america who felt like victims he was basically saying, i am your symbol. you've identified your victimizers and those of the people who say i have no business doing this who look down on me, who speak of me in the most mocking and derogatory ways and by getting behind me, you get back at them. this was his political pitch on some level from the very beginning and he kind of distilled it perfectly about a year and a quarter ago when kicking off his current campaign he said i am your retribution. what it meant is your ultimate revenge against all of those elites who are pressing you is k

to saddle them with me again. >> it is extraordinary. if you go back, that was not something -- >> it's not the first time -- i mentioned that it went away for a while and it came back. if you look at the cultural conversation in the late 1980s and early 1990s, i documented this and it sounds like today just a different vocabulary. robert bork at the time was talking about radical egalitarianism. when you hear him to find it, he's talking about what we call woke is him. same tensions existed and now they are back even more. >> >> you talk about the u.s. about the have everything's and a whole channel and people who seem to have everything.

and we can blame social media, but it is an accelerant. there seems to be so many ways to be miserable and annoyed and angry and i would love if you would read about these microclimates of privilege. but something has happened in the service economy that the piece of the puzzle. when i was a teenager in the late 1970s, i'm 59, when i was a teenager and went to the big concerts to major performers, different sections of seating had different prices, but they fell into a few general categories. a proximity to the stage had less to do with her financial reserve that would've quickly and heroically she acted to get tickets. i once showed up at the box office of the hartford civic center at 3:00 a.m. in pitchdark to get tickets for

queen consort when tickets for a concert when on sale. my friends and i ended up in a throw where i caught pretty mercury's tambourine when he threw into the crowd at the conclusion of the final song. there was something egalitarian about it. but the seating maps for stops on taylor swift's concert revealed scores and scores of price tags. there's specificity to the desirability of the vantage point. the highest ones were thousands of dollars above the lowest once. a family of four or five posting photos of themselves among other people was in some cases announcing to the world their ability to drop $10,000 or more on one nights entertainment. while the price range for taylor swift exceeded the price range for a garden-variety superstar, the tearing of the

experience was a common phenomenon in the world of live music. when i was a teenager, school came in public or private. now private is a starting point with many add-ons. tutors for special subjects, another tutor for standardized exams, individual sports coaches, the college admissions consultant, who for a fee, does more pacifying than the counselors already on the school staff are able to. when i was a teenager you were posh if you belonged to jim versus the ymca. the brand of that jim and the level of your membership or not relevant. now, planet fitness and equinox are solar systems of pampering. at some of the equinoxes, different clients pay significantly different psalms for personal trainers in accordance with that expertise.

those clients can pay a surcharge for a better locker room, a surcharge for certain other things. none of that is unnoticed or unnoticeable to the other customers. it's noticeable is part of the point. aspiration and perspiration go together. the emphasis of the american economy may have changed over the years from manufacturing too services, but one product we make an abundance is distinction.ve >> that is terrific. people came over and votes boats -- >> kate winslet and leo were in different places. >> but we are made aware. the degradation or the privilege is the point. >> it's crazy. we've done this fine-grained

tearing of the economy. think about the airport. i imagine the johnsons and the judge is going to disney. the moment they get to the amusement park, every aspect of their experiences different. the joneses have paid it every juncture to glide through everything and the johnsons wait in line. if you go to amusement park today there are people who while you're sweating in the sun waiting hours for space mountain go to the front because they paid someone. there was no pass when i was growing up. and i think it's one of those existence of this and microclimates of privilege that are potent engines of and be that explains the anger we are talking about.>> everyone has a take. everybody has an opinion on everything. >> i never had an opinion.

>> i have read so many takes on taylor swift it's like we over analyze. but an exhausting array. before we get to questions, i wanted to have some hope. about some of the remedies for this that you mention in your book. >> i be glad to. but i also want to say taylor swift gives me hope. ok if you look at how at what a phenomenon or concert tour became and if you think about how many people you knew who were going, and if you think about how interested divers people were in being kind of fluent in taylor swift, she's a phenomenally talented human, but it was about more than her talent. what i saw was such a fierce desire to have a common conversation and have something we could talk about.

she was a sort of watercooler show that no longer exists. and i hear six-year-olds and six-year-olds talking about taylor swift. and in their desire to talk about her, part of what i hear is this yearning twin's again be reading from a common playbook and have a shared conversation. i think there is hope and that. how do we get to that? i think there are all kinds of things we can do across many fronts of life that we are not committing to. there are political reforms and do away with gerrymandering. d and think about the way that primaries are set up was a great story in the new york times in the last three weeks -- i can't remember the timing -- that looked at what happened in michigan over the last five years in terms of pushing back

against gerrymandering and making the state more representative and not a model for minority rule. ap all those things happened because of citizen movements and the persistence of voters themselves. that happens in more states and at the hopeful story. we need to do things, whether comes to how we spend government money or how we design cities, we need to incentivize people from diverse backgrounds rather than doing what is happening now which is being sorted evermore narrowly into enclaves that never interact with each other. we can incentivize those things. we are in a library. i write about libraries because they are one of the last bastions if you go to library, you run into people that don't look like you were not the same age don't make the same amount of money. it's tragic how few

environments exist like that but we can invest in public spaces. there is a great book -- i can't pronounce his name, but there was a great book called palaces for the people and it's about the power of investing in public spaces and that's s another thing we can do. the last thing i will say is any politician that talks about a national service program, people think it won't happen because if we made it compulsory, it won't happen. you can have one that's not compulsory but has such elegant incentives built in that you get people to do it. we need to think more about that than we have. >> one thing is about humility. can you talk a little bit about that. >> part of what we are experiences a crisis in humility. people believe they are right and everyone else is wrong and it is on humble.

people think the world, society, politics, should conform to their liking and it's not the way life works. i mentioned january 6th before. when you look at that day what we saw was violent and savage. above all it was on humble. those people were saying, if the country voted differently from us, then that is the wrong way and we will get the right result by any means necessary. many of them could not fathom that a majority people in the country would vote differently than they had and therefore it must be a lie and that is on humble. >> we will go to questions now. >> this is a little off-topic, but would you share one story

about your dog. >> thank you for that. not all of you know this, but i spend an inordinate amount of syllables in my newsletter about my dog. she's very photogenic, do you think? i don't think -- she has a wonderful habit that last about five minutes when she's excited when we play fetch with her favorite rope ring. she gets it and as she brings it out, she takes several pauses to throw in the air to resolve and catch it again, and then in her joy, she falls to the urged to the earth and the somersaults. neighbors thinks she's rolling

in garbage. she's like simone biles. >> next question. >> so first of all, a fantastic talk and i appreciate it. i was born in 1998. i am the younger generation that is here and i thought it was interesting about how since 2004fa people satisfaction with the country has been decreasing. i think something that me and my friends think about is our generation has not had a rallying event, whether it's a war or national experience, and you talked about taylor swift in this most recent phenomenon

that rallies a group of people. i was curious if you found what has rallied people most often are those types of national tragic events, whether it's an attack or a war or if there are other pieces of pop culture that you've seen that unites the country in a common conversation. >> i don't know that i have an answer to all of that, but i do have an observation that might be a partial answer. you go back to september 11th and you definitely saw the country rally after that and you saw a period of maybe a month where george w. bush whose approval raising ratings were above 85%. and there were fewer he was above 90%. ne i would bet a lot of money that in our lifetime we will never see an american president have a rating over 65% because we

become so much unyielding the tribalal. when the covid pandem came along, it was clear at the start that this was a global pandemic and the magnitude was immense and this was something that could threaten everyone as and do extraordinary damage that would be long-lasting. i waited for people not come together in quite the way they did after 9/11, but i waited for and expected to see that where can you see some echo of that national solidarity, and, in fact, it became a partisanship accelerant. it's a good indication of how much has changed. i'm not sure, given how politically tribal we have become, how ruthlessly sorted we have been and the example

that our politicians are setting , which are not good words, i'm not sure one of those events ha would do today what it has done historically and that makes me very sad. >> i thought january 6th had the potential because both republicans and democrats were trapped in it did not happen. >> that's an even better example. immediately, it became dueling narratives. >> there was somebody way in the back. right there. >> thank you for being here. a quick question that you mentioned about the media. i assume you try to get on fox to lease promote the book.

>> i have not gone on fox. they have not asked me. so i've not had that moral dilemma.>> if you were asked, would you go, and how do you think you would be treated on a right-wing media ecosystem? >> is a great question. if i was asked i would go. and what i like to sell more books got shore. but he's number 6 on the new york times best-seller list. >> i would like to sell more books because i have utility billss and i would go on fox fo the same reason that pete buttigieg goes on fox or that ro khanna goes. i don't think we are served by not speaking to the people who disagree with us. and when we avoid speaking with those who disagree with us, we ensure that they will continue

to cs in caricature and vilify us and assume that we want to have nothing to do with them and are not interested in a productive conversation, even if the odds are slim. i would say the same things that i said to you tonight. there are criticisms of the left and i would certainly say that r the right has more to answer for and feel free to bring up the dominion voting systems lawsuit. >> he will go talk to bill maher, who is getting more conservative. yes. the woman in the middle. right there. >> i'm crazy about you. i'm crazy about your dog.

>> she came to philadelphia for a vacation weekend and she's very good in the hotel and i beautiful pictures of her. >> now i forgot what i was going to say. i am a retired minister and if i was on the pulpit, you would be in my sermon next sunday on humility. that column was incredible and you were often in my sermons. i'm also an english major. i'm wondering what your next book will be. i see her last chapters, what are my thoughts. if you would write a whole book , you are teaching now and words are so important. the thing i love about your

newsletter is the sentences. and so the sentences of humility . how do we teach ourselves again to speak in a way that is invitational, that -- you are probably already writing your next book, but i like it to be on humility >> i have not committed to my next book. i do have a fairly developed idea. but about six months ago i said to my agent that the thing the you read was from the book and i said to my agent, the chapter that met the most to me was on humility and i wanted to stay with that longer. and i said the next book should

be on humility and she said no one would buy it. i was on team humility until i was turned down. i think some of the things that we don't teach adequately in school are vessels for humility. when you teach history in the proper way you teach people to be humble and you are reminding them that their moment in time exists in a much larger context and is informed by everything that came before. when you teach citizenship in a correct way, you teach humility. i would like to see us get back to some of those things which sounds like a fussy wish list, but their fundamental to specific health. >> i want to ask you about a

grievance that has gotten a lot of attention. the president is not happy with the new york times, and i wonder if you would talk about that. >> you're talking about dish the president is unhappy with it for a number of recent. so what exactly -- >> they were mad about access that he would not do an exclusive interview with them.>> i write regularly for them. i'm not on staff. and even when i was on staff, i was not at the meetings of the highest level. they were complaining -- i'm sure they wanted the interview but they were complaining more widely about the lack of beady interviews that joe biden has done period and that he's near

the bottom of recent presidents in terms of doing press conferences, in terms of doing interviews with independent, the moche the most venerable news organizations and i think they're right to bring it up and write to press him as a matter democracy and not of self-interest. if the president is unhappy with them because they say you are not being transparent, i would take the new york times side. i think it's a legitimate thing to bring up and it's important -- there has been a lot of debate since the beginning of the week and the question seemed to be, are you abetting a possible victory by donald trump and doing an unpaid patriotic thing by covering joe

biden critically. and he was saying no. and it's not because i'm worried about my job. we will have no credibility and no voice when we criticize a politician be it donald trump or any other if we openly sugarcoat and censor ourselves in the interest of a given outcome. i believe that when i weigh in on joe biden's age and say it's not ideal for him as a candidate right now and it's giving some people pause, people say, how dear you, do you want another four years of trump. i do not, but i'm not paid to work for either campaign my believes i have more credibility when i weigh it against something if i'm honest about the shortcomings as well as the purchase of the person i manned up voting for. i wish people would understand

that journalists are not campaign aides. and if they do start becoming that it's not going to lead anywhere good. >> thank you for your remarks. you done a great job describing the uniqueness of american politics and grievances in america today. has it metastasize to other countries? >> i'm can answer that in one word. throughout western democracies, we had an echo of january 6th in brazil. and we had something happen that was exactly the same. in many western european countries and central european countries you see the very same tensions that you see here between a maga style populism

and other forces. this goes beyond the u.s. i think we are the most intense laboratory. we are number one. but this is a country that makes grand promises. that's part of what a special but with it comes the possibility for disappointment. and that's part of what we are seeing. our aspirations and ideals become a problem when we fall short of them. it doesn't mean we should have them and keep striving but it's one of the explanations for why we are quick to feel so frustrated and quick to feel shortchanged because our country promises so much.

but this goes back to the question about a big event that should've brought us together. became to mind for me was the mortgage crisis where what happened was the country was on the brink and they bailed out the rich people, which needed to happen, but then did not help regular homeowners who are underwater and you could not refinance because you couldn't lower your mortgage. i feel like that generated a lot of anger and resentment that those people and everyone else was left behind. i'm wondering if you feel like

that contributed. that was the early days of the beginning of resentment.>> i agree entirely and i talk about 2008 in the book. and you described it perfectly. 2008 is what started the tea party and that began the maga movement. i say it in a way that there may be manifestations in the portion of the maga movement that drives many of his as bonkers a reprehensible. but if we try to understand how we got there, we need to er acknowledge what you just acknowledged. it did not emerge from just madness. there is the way the government responded to a crisis and real reasons why that ended up being. if we were better about understanding that, we might

have a more productive and constructive response to it that could lead us to help your moment.>> thank you. >> thank you for coming.

on about books we delve into the latest news about the publishing industry with interesting insider interviews with publishing industry experts. we'll also give you updates on current nonfiction authors and books. the latest book reviews, and we'll talk about the current nonfiction books featured on c-span book tv. and welcome to about books, a >> welcome to about books, a podcast produced by c-span book

tv. we look at the business of publishing and we talk with authors about their work as well. in a minute we will be joined by a columnist to talk about rereading classics. the first one to tell you that all programs are available online at book tv.org. in the wall street journal you wrote the column called revisiting the books of my youth. why are you doing that? >> i'm revisiting the books of my youth based on my rediscovery of my anthology of american literature that i used as a college student in 1982.

as you can see it's held together with duct tape. and in the course of cleaning up my house, i decided to take this and repair it and i reconnected with some of the wisdom minute. and wisdom that, to be frank, i was not well received i was too young to appreciate what writers like emily dickinson had to tell me. in reconnecting with that i

realized a lot of it resonates as you add more birthdays. and that ignited my desire to engage with them. >> you say that the trouble with education is we read everything we e too young to know what it means. and the trouble with life is that we are too busy to reread it later. >> that is true. when i was a college freshman and i was listening to henry david thoreau talk about the advantages of having very few possessions, it fell on deaf ears with me because i didn't have anything.

i was a poor college student and i had an old car that i used to get back and forth to class my aspirations at that time would require more stuff. like a lot of young people. so he struck me as an oddball. here was a guy who lived in the cabin in the woods did not have any obvious means of income. he didn't seem to have any kind of a romantic life and the other thing that struck me about him is he had strange hair and viewers might find this hard to believe, but in college when i had more here myself, i thought,

it would be great to have a hairstyle that would be attractive to members of the opposite sex and he kind of looked like a guy that just got out of bed. it's not a guy that i look to as a hero. fast forward a few decades, and now that i'm someone that has a mortgage and who is filled a shed with more tools than i can ever use and i have more books than i can ever read in a closet with more shirts than i will ever wear, now, what he was saying means so much more to me. and it's a fundamental irony of life that whenever we are introduced to these great works of literature in school, we are

too young to appreciate what these writers are trying to tell us. and it's been a blessing in my life to connect as an older person and grasp with these books had to tell me. >> so even though you don't necessarily write about this, what is the solution to that young problem reading old writers and their wisdom? how do we reconcile those things? >> i think one thing that's important is to create opportunities for these books to greet us throughout our lives even after we leave college. great way to do that is to curate these books in a bright and interesting way that even after we leave college we might

be tempted to reconnect with them. a powerful example with me is after i left my american literature class and a few years later i had a summer internship on capitol hill and as i was on my lunch hour and leaving the museum of natural history, something green cut corner of my eye and there was a brightly illustrated edition of walden on the shelf of the gift shop. and just seeing it curated and that interesting way kind of prompted me to revisit it again. i still was not fully receptive

to its message, but i do think it underscores the value of our popular culture continuing to reintroduce these things to us. i will give you a great example of this. i have a nice abridgment of henry david thoreau's journals that was published a few years ago a bright paperback and this is the kind of thing that a younger person might be tempted to pick up. i cannot say enough nice things about the library of america that curates the definitive editions of classic american literature that are also a great resource if you want to revisit them. this is an edition of emerson's

selected journals. i think in the journals you connect with the man who's more emotionally vulnerable than emerson in his essays. and they can kind of come across as pompous. is a great upcoming biography of the spring of ralph waldo emerson by james marcus. and he humorously says that ralph waldo emerson seemed to him like the uncle at holiday gatherings giving advice that you don't really want to hear and kind of boring. in his journals see a man who is struggling with grief and wonder

and struggling with the whole idea of religion how to best honor the cosmos, and this is a guy that he young person would be much more inclined to embrace than the emerson who is being taught in american lit classes. i think movie cultures a great way to reconnect with the classics. some great adaptations of jane austen novels are a good example. and just biographies. it gives us a new dimension of these figures. there's a recent biography of henry david thoreau who connects you with him as someone

who has a lot more dimensions than the guy hanging out by the pond trying to think great thoughts. there's a great anthology of him and a lot of great writers who talk about how he is deeply relevant to them in the modern lies that they lead and probably my favorite essay in here is by a writer and he talks about the fact that he enjoyed ice-skating and had a great time on the ice. and this is not the henry david thoreau that we think about. the guy who's out there having fun. so i think we can create as

many opportunities as possible for readers to happen upon these writers, the nuts also chore benefit.>> besides thoreau and emerson, what other authors are in your anthology? >> i want to point out elizabeth bishop. one of the complications that a teacher can tell you is you cannot get every writer into

this anthology. i was not exposed to elizabeth bishop through classroom instruction. i revisited her i was recovering from getting my wisdom teeth out. they were reciting a poem about the out the art of losing. and she says ironically the art of losing is not hard to master. and what she's really saying is losing and loss in life can be very hard to master.

i was just entranced by the quality of her language and it occurred to me the next morning that maybe i was charmed by bishop so i went and pulled my anthology off the shelf from college and revisited her work. and i found it every bit as magical as i had the day before. another great writer that is in the anthology that is more relevant than ever is james baldwin. the great expert he was a formative african american

writer, but i would caution people don't just connect with james baldwin because he speaks so eloquently about the african american experience. connect with james baldwin because he connects eloquently with universal human experiences. and that is what all great writers do. whenever he talks about -- a stranger in the village just about being in switzerland being the only person of color in the little village. on one level it's accomplished and the other level it's a compilation of when all of us had a loss of life. at some point we are outsiders and he connects with that experience so powerfully and with such dish he's just a

writer that everyone should read.>> the norton anthology has been expanded over the years to include newer writers. what you think about expansion? >> that is all good. literary canons are reconsidered with every generation. and i think it's great that it's done. again, i think that while it's great to include writers because perhaps they come from underrepresented communities, i think it's important for people to value

these writers because of their great writers, they speak to universal experiences. one example of that in british literature is virginia woolf. virginia woolf is widely celebrated, and rightly so, is a great feminist writer and as somebody who spoke very powerfully about the marginalization's of women and in this wonderful essay she wrote about a room of one's own cut she talked about the policies that excluded women from higher education. and anyone can get great instruction by reading that. at the same time, i don't read virginia woolf because i have

to. i don't read her from a sense of grudging civic duty. i read virginia woolf because her sentences are so beautiful. they are so perfectly balanced. there like a butterfly that lands on arose. and they are just gorgeous sentences. and right now i've been involved in reading her journals. that is high i've spent the past few weeks. reading her diary entries. that's where you get a very intimate look at her at ground level. there's a wonderful passage that i read yesterday where she scolding herself and saying i should've spent more time writing today, but instead

i baked a cake. and we can all relate to that. all of us get in a mood sometimes where we have work to do but instead of it we do other stuff. >> your calmness for the baton rouge advocate and that's one of the classics that i return to again and again is one that takes place in your neck of the woods is a confederacy of dunces. >> you know, i have a little quirk and even though i am a book reviewer, i occasionally write a few book reviews for the wall street journal and i'm constantly urging people to read this or read that. i tend to get my backup when somebody says, you really need to read this.

in my first encounter with that is when it was published when i was in high school. a friend of mine met me in the hall while we were on our way to class and she said you have absolutely got to read a confederacy of dunces, and i thought, i don't know if i want read that. but eventually just to placate my friend, i started reading and it had a subversive effect on me. it is so funny that i would think about it in biology class or while i was in physics class or while i was in english class and i would have this uncontrollable urge to laugh. and it's been one of my all- time favorite books ever since

then and the reason that i love it so much is the main character , like so many of us read the headlines every day, he's convinced that the rest of the world is populated by idiots. as you continue to read the book, which you come to understand while he condemns everyone about being fools, he's the biggest fool in the book. in the book is two things for me. it's kind of an observation from one he thinks people at a party art doll and he's exasperated that the world has not caught up to his ideas of how the world should be.

and it struck me so deeply in high school. but it's also a kind of an observation about her -- we think the other person is wrong and that they would come around to our line of thinking, the world would be better. and quite often we are flawed. and is there a better book to read right now with our country being so divided as it is with the book that's about the fact that we need to look at our own foibles? that is what makes it an internal classic and i'm glad that you brought up. >> where are you in the norton anthology right now? what are you reading? >> well, i've recently been

rereading emerson again.'s essays, the first time i read them, i was put off by what i considered to be a sense of dry certitude in his essays. he seems more like he's proclaiming the truth rather than actually proving a truth. he offers these observations and kind of makes you feel like they are settled. and reading his journals brought me to want to reread his essays. and i now have a greater appreciation of how hard earned

those truths were that he came across. how do we honor god when we feel that church life is emotionally distant for us. he struggled with grief. he lost a wife. very early in his first marriage. the ability to reconnect with these essays and read them knowing what i know now about him, has brought a new dimension to that experience. i wanted to share something

that i found in his journals. he says that good writing is a kind of skating that carries off the performer where he would not go. so here is a guy that's basically saying when you are writer, you have to give yourself permission to go to places that you to. and this is the emerson i like to hold as opposed to the guy that sounds like he's offering pronouncements.>> you're right about the obligaons of home and marriage. i reread passages from walden for instruction on how to savor small moments outside my door

step. i found emerson's quiet resolve after zone losses and inspiration. dickinson, whose poems are open to joy as the country careened toward the civil war offers me a model in seeking serenity of the social division. we appreciate your time. >> thank you. it's great to join you. i am grateful for the opportunity to connect today.>> thank you. and thank you for joining us for about books. a podcast produced by c-span book tv. all programs are available online.

if you're enjoying book tv, then sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on your screen to receive the schedule of upcoming programs, author discussions, book festivals, and more. book tv, every sunday on cspan2 or any time online on booktv.org. television for serious readers. weekends on c-span 2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday, american history tv documents america's story. on sundays, book tv brings you the latest in non-fiction books and authors. funding for c-span 2 comes from these television companies and more including wow!

hello everyone. welcome to the keto institute and welcome to those watching at home and on television on peter goettler. it's my honor privilege to be the president and hello everyone, welcome to the cato institute, and welcome to those watching at home and on television. i'm peter getler, it's my honor and privilege to be the ceo of the cato institute. a book forum on the first graphic novel. even though it's graphic non- fiction, i'm told, brian, it's still suppose to be called a graphic novel? but the first graphic novel cato has ever published, and the second public novel written by brian. this is called "build, baby,

build." and i grew up in a lower, middle class town, working class town, and we were all pretty happy. we thought we were fortunate. and in fact, when i hear politicians always talking about how tough things are for the middle class, i kind of remember my childhood and remember the american middle class in the history of the planet and even in the context of the planet today is one of the most fortunate demographics. but yet i've become more sympathetic to some of the challenges faced by the middle class. in particular if you think of the things that many people would consider elements of a good life, it would be to be healthy, to see your kids educated, and to be able to live in a home of your own. i think it's ironic that in all three of these areas, we seem

to be making the same policy mistakes. we restrict supply, and then we subsidize demand. predictably that causes prices to go up, and the policy response to rising prices is to subsidize demand more. and i think we're in a situation now, where you can see all three of these, you know, important components to our lives, health care, higher education, and housing are being priced out of the reach of many middle class people. at least in the area of housing, there seems to be a growing consensus across the political spectrum that recognizes the impact that zoning and land use regulations are having in restricting supply and therefore exacerbating the challenges with the high and increasing cost of housing. and i'm really delighted that the first graphic novel or piece of graphic non-fiction

we're publishing has been designed and written by brian in order to address this issue, the impact that government regulation has on restricting the supply of housing and therefore increasing the cost faced by, you know, american homeowners, would-be homeowners. when we get together with young people, particularly some of the young people on staff here, it really drives home. i'm old, and i've lived in the same house for a long time, so i haven't been on the market for a home in a long time. but if you're a young person, even if you're doing well, it really is challenging to think about buying your own home. so i'm really delighted at this book, especially because brian ask his first piece of graphic non-fiction open borders, the science and ethics of immigration, and now in this piece, i think it's really

remarkable vehicle for delivering these ideas. this is a serious book, you know, a serious person, even someone knowledgeable about these issues would get a lot out of this. and yet i think it would be accessible to even a middle schooler. so i think that might be one of the things that i'll save for the q&a, how brian feels about the open borders and this volume are effective in getting the ideas out to the broadst possible audience. but you didn't come here to hear me talk, so i'm going to turn things over to brian. brian is an economics professor at george mason university. he's the new york times best selling author of "open borders, the science and ethics of immigration." he's also author of "the myth of the rational voter," selfless reasons to have more kids, and the case against education. this is the bio brian wrote for

himself. he says he's mindful of the stereotype of the boring professor. so he strives to make abstract ideas thrilling. he's an openly nerdy man who loves graphic novels and role- playing games. i also think it will be too strong to say you're a provacator, but what you like today is put an idea that seems crazy out there and get people thinking that hey, perhaps this isn't so crazy after all. and we're delighted to have megan mccartle. megan, i think all of you know is one of the original super star bloggers, and also i think it was david weigle who said you made the transition from blogging to become an msm journalist. >> took the boeing is what we used to say. >> now a columnist for the washington post, where i'm sure many of you read her. she also previously worked for

bloomberg, the economist, the atlantic, and news week in the daily beast, and has been published all over the place. new york times, wall street journal, the guardian, time, reason among other places. she's also the author of the book, "the upside of down, why feeling well is the key to success." and knowing that megan and brian tend to be philosophically aligned, i'm going to be very curious where the points of disagreement will be on the book. although david boe's once mentioned to me, he would score about 60 on brian kaplan's libertarian purity test, so maybe there will be some points of disagreement. brian, take it away. >> i was an intern here at the cato institute in 1991. i'm appreciative of how he's supporting the project to have

an entire library of libertarian non-fiction graphic novels on a wide range of important issues. so we will see whether this one works out. why aren't you working on any of them? it seems to be a bit of a puzzle because people will generally say they don't work on things that are actually important. i too work on a guilty pleasure issue that i recognize is not very important, but it happens to be fun. i do strive on what i see that are the biggest issues. when i write a book, it's not to entertain me, but to take ideas i think are very important on issues that are

underexamed and to bring them to a wider audience. and when i say look, in economic policy, the absolute metric, which is this. how much would moving from the status quo to the free market actually change the economy? so you look at the world, here is where we are. if we move from there to free market, how much would change? and the reason why i decided to write a book on housing regulation is because there have been decades of research that at least convince me that a radical free market approach would transform the economy and for the better. it's not hard to transform the economies for the worst. but transforming for the better. that's the real challenge. all right, now the problem, when you actually go and read the articles that i'm relying on, you can go into the section references and read them all. see, the problem is this. while the implications of

housing research are thrilling, you can sit there and imagine this better world. but the research itself, it's by normal standards, boring. as the professor, my standards of boring are different from most people, so i may go and read the table numbers and say wow, these are quite amazing numbers. but normally when i step back and imagine handing the things i'm reading to someone that is curious about the world, but not an academic, i realize they will be falling asleep, which then makes me think. what is the best way to bring the science to life, to a broad audience without sacrificing the intellectual integrity. the last part is hard. if you just turn on the tv, you can see all sorts of ways where people are bringing ideas to life and with great sacrifice of intellectual integrity. so in the words of rob sterling, submitted to your approval, on my "build baby build," illustrated by those in romania right now. and that is him there.

you can take a look. yes, that's one of my fifth characters. that's the super cute baby lion that will grow up to be something extremely dangerous. then down there, thiazide me giving high five. all right, so what is wrong with the housing market? over the last 50 years, the u.s. housing crisis has increased a lot more than inflation. especially when we call the most desirable areas of the country, the trendy areas, the places where people will say oh, i really want to move to that place. i'm an economist, even if you aren't, there is an obvious story about what's going on in the housing market, supply, and demand. yes, of course, it's supply and demand. and demand is high. supply is low. of course, prices are astronomical. as usual, supply and demand is wrong. it is correct to say the supply and demand gives us insight on what's going on with the housing crisis. but it is still in this

particular case, deeply misleading because normally when we say supply and demand, it very much sounds like we're talking about natural scarcity. why are courtside seats at basketball games so expensive? well, there is naturally a great scarcity of those, and everyone cannot be sitting in the courtside by definition. what is the research that i built this book on, it's not the case that scarcity is a big problem. artificially reducing supply and by a lot. all right, so what's wrong with the housing market? this is what's wrong with the housing market. one of the main issues in the book is what's the best symbol for government? right now, outside the u.s., uncle sam is a symbol of the u.s. and i figured hey, uncle sam is the best that we would

have. it's true, and i'm on board with most that are state and local, but there wasn't any good symbol for it. so i would say uncle sam is the symbol of government in america, and it's the best that we could do for communicating this idea in one image. almost every country has a lot of regulations, and where you might say why would you go and stop construction in india when so many people are sleeping in the streets? and the answer is, well, we got our reasons. and so one is the high restrictions. we have the technology to build very tall buildings in desirable locations. and that you'll need to look at the skyline of new york city. you'll see a bunch of buildings that are tall.

and that they will remember them being built longer, but getting permission to build new ones, it's super hard. and the ordeal to go through the number of layers of bureaucracy. and the number of rules that you have to follow is so much that very few of them will get built compared to the numbers that will be profitable if it was just a matter of eye on the land, i want to build this, get out of the way. a large majority of residential land is set aside for the homes exclusively that you can't do anything else. even when you're building the single-family home, you'll need to waste most of your land. normally builders will realize while people like having extra land, that they don't like paying anything close to the price unless the government says you are not allowed to go to build on anything less than an acre. the minimum parking requirement

will wind up mattering a lot. seems like the picky point. it means per unit, which means you'll need to go and waste enormous amount of land. and to work around most of the first world, and you can see it historically. if they do not produce the long- term prices. back when they were growing rapidly than they are now. we did not see them rise in prices. instead, when there was a shock to the man, prices would go up, and then as a result of this, prices will be above cost and markets will do the normal thing that you do when prices

are above cost. this is how they work. once they get above cost, they will lead to construction, and the construction will continue, and until the prices fell back for the break even level. the long run competitive level. and rough estimates of how high prices got now is that they doubled the break even level, averaging the entire country. double the cost of production and the physical cost. and how do we know? all right, well the standard method here that goes back to those is to take a look at similar homes that have different amounts of land, and then use the extra price of the house of extra land to measure what is the value of land that does not have the actual permission to build anything on it? go for it. what they find is the extra value to pay to have the hundred square feet of vacant lapped for anything other than

walking around or playing volleyball is real low. pure value of land and the next step is to go to the big construction cost in the industry, and figure out what is the physical construction cost. and the cost of the unapproved land with the cost of construction compared to price. that gap is the measure, which is often called the zoning tax. and they will know about zoning, and what will they attack? they will know this and they just want to have a name for what regulations is adding to the price. the earlier work on this, so the bay area, new york, l.a., places like downtown chicago. but they did not find much elsewhere. then the ideas are all right, severe problem in some places, but for most of the country,

it's not very important. but then later on, researchers got better data on vacant lots, and different distances from the downtown areas. and what they found is actually in almost all major population centers in the u.s., there are large zoning costs, government regulation is adding a lot, almost anywhere that a lot of people live. all right, so if people are there, they probably are actually paying a lot extra because of government. and now why write a whole book on housing in particular? and here is the key thing. people spend way more on housing than they're doing on gasoline or chewing gum. so when you double this cost, it's a huge deal. you are doubling the cost of something that's a large share of the budget, which means it's a large affect on living standards. so rough estimate is that housing costs are about 20% of your budgets. so you could have that cut the cost of living by 10%, and then raise standard living across the whole u.s. by an average of 11%. it is a ton.

all right, now this brings me to my favorite chapter of the book. who here has heard the word panacea before? okay, good. i talked to a few people who said they never heard of it. what? this is a common word. all right. any way all the evidence that i have talked about points to a straightforward, brain dead way to dramatically increase living standards, which is housing deregulation. we got regulation, regulation is the problem, get rid of the regulation, things can go back to normal as they used to be. all right. but what really motivated me to write this book is when i realized there is a lot of other problems that seem unrelated, but are, in fact, closely connected to housing regulation. many of these problems people think of them as they are so intractable. what could possibly handle any one of them? and i was looking at the evidence saying not only do i know i handled one of them, i know one policy that simultaneously made a big dent in a long list of problems.

so deregulation promises to mitigate many other social ails including inequality, poor prospect for working class males, homelessness, environmental issues, low fertility, and also crime. all right, so let's see. all right, let me just go through some of the main arguments here. inequality. this one is really easy. the share of people's budgets that they spend on housing will fall with income. rich people spend a smaller share of their income on shelter than poor people do. and that means if you reduce the price across the board, you're doing more to help poor people than rich people. that will reduce inequality. and again, this is a large share of the budget that will make a noticeable difference. similarly it is also true that homeowners are higher income than renters on average. for landlords that we will see, for homeowners. housing regulation is a mixed bag. there are a bunch of good

things for homeowners that should be pointed out. but at least for homeowners, yeah, my primary asset will fall on value. for tenants, it's a clear cut game because they don't own the property that's losing value, so they just pay a lower price without a massive value. social mobility. there used to be a real clear cut way in the united states, very simple, where a person that was motivated could raise their standard of living. just meant unless you live in the richest highest parts of the country, leave where you are. go to the high-wage area, and pocket that extra raise. in the past, it was true wages were higher, but almost anyone who wanted to rise could pack their bags, get in the car, pay a little more in housing cost, have a lot more in income, and enjoy the difference. what they showed is that it is

no longer true that this works in the modern united states. because now when you move to the highest wage areas of the country, housing costs are so much higher that the housing cost increase eats up more than 100% of the wage gain on average. and therefore what's going on is people are tending to leave high-wage areas of the country, which is almost unprecedented. it's like i'm going to go to the area where wages are lower. it's like why would you ever do that? because the housing cost is so much lower that i actually get a gain. when you go and read the work, they have more interesting details like workers can go to high wage areas. for them, the housing cost is a smaller share of the budget, and the wage gains are larger. for a janitor to move to new york city today from mississippi is a way to get poorer, not richer. and another big gain. poor prospects for working class males. you've probably heard of the book by nobel prize winner and

my adviser. ann case. one of the main things they show is that non-college males have done very poorly by a lot of measures in recent years, and their favorite story is that non-clergy males have a lack of work that at least feels meaningful for them, right? what kind of work feels meaningful for them? well, the classic one is manufacturing jobs. this is classic manly employment. this is one where despite all sorts of efforts to revise the manufacturing, it's pretty much priceless. we are closely manufacturing on the goods. who here wants to go and own five televisions? on the other hand, there is another classic kind of manly employment, which is construction. it is still high waged, and most people would like to get a lot more if the price were right. most people today, they would like to have a much bigger place if the price were reasonable, where they don't want to get a whole bunch of televisions, right? again, what does this do for

working class males? people working construction, they are first of all, non- college workers, second of all, male. so not only are you making it affordable for them to have a home of their own, creating a lot of extra jobs. and in particular, this is something if we were to go to say double employment of construction, it will make a huge and transformative difference, it's a large industry now. if you were doubling it from roughly $so million, this will be a transformation of what it is like to be a non-college male in america. homelessness, this is one that i was skeptical of when i first started going and working on this, but because i was thinking of homelessness as living on the streets. but the actual statistics, they are more like not having a permanent address. and for this it will make a lot of sense. if you go and make housing more affordable, people will stop sleeping on their friends or brother's couch or stop couch surfing. again, this is what the evidence will say that a very

strong predictor of actual measured homelessness is just the cost of the cheap price. all right. our environmental issues, this is one where again together with matt kahn has done some very cool work. showing new construction has a lower carbon footprint than old. even though it's bigger, it's much better insulated. further more, the areas of the country that are nicest in terms of weather conditions, southern california most notably. these are places that have very low heating and cooling costs, yet preversely they have regulated prices in that area so high that people flee. when they flee california, where do they go? they go to places with a larger environmental impact, environmental footprint. low fertility is one that's a bit more controversial. the papers on this are on my side. housing is expensive. as long as you'riving in their basement, you're likely to get

married, and less likely to start having kids. when you put that together, it's really hard to believe anything else other than this is going to make a dent in it. last, the crime, why don't we go and talk about that in the q&a, but very cool experience there. so why not? i've got a real simple story. the policies that exist because most people think that life will be much worse than the policy. people want housing regulation because when you tell them about not having it, they will get scared and say oh my gosh, what could go wrong? there is a standard list of complaints. it's going to give us more traffic and more parking promise and bad for the environment. we need to protect the character of the neighborhood. then of course, it's the classic use that i don't want

that farm next door. in the book i go over why they are not just that good, or they are misleading. it's not great. giving people stuff for free is super popular, the terrible idea, especially if it's a good kick to congestion. when you make road, driving free during rush hour, this doesn't mean that everybody will get to enjoy the pleasant drive. it means everyone, they are stuck in traffic. when they say they will make them even on the popular day to park, it doesn't mean that everyone will get that nice cheap parking, but it means you'll need to drive half an hour around parking. the economists have been talking about this for a long time, saying why don't we go, driving during the peak times and for parking during the peak times and solve the problem that way. now the standard thing is it's not fair. what about poor people?

and so instead, let's go in and double the price of housing. that's really fair for poor people. it makes much more sense to raise the price of these narrow goods, which is a much larger hit, of coursely, right? and now i know a lot of people will still resist it. if they were watching, he would say brian, people need to drive, you can't charge them for this. and they say it is a lot better to do this than the house costing $1 million. the second point, just like i was saying, letting people live is green. if you were the real environmentalist, you would want to go and make it super easy to build a ton of housing, right in california. what's going on right now is the environmentalism. i don't want the planet harmed next to me. it's a planet. so that doesn't make any sense.

all right, finally, just ripping off who i think cato published some of the stuff in the 70s. writing about the land use in houston, and here is what he said. while people get really worried about urban pig farms, ruining the neighborhood, that kind of thing, market forces will lead to a natural separation of uses, even when it is legal to go and build things next to other things where people would want them. it rarely happens. there is a reason why most manufacturing is right next to harbors and train stations. that's because you want to get low transportation costs. there is a reason why most commercial constructions are on main roads because you want to get drive-by traffic. there is a reason why when you build, you have a nice neighborhood, and you want to build another nice house to it because you'll get a bigger premium from someone who wants a nice house verses someone who wants a more lower quality house. of course, this doesn't mean you will have a guarantee. a lot of with a has gone wrong with regulation is the hunt for

the guarantee. i want an absolute assurance that nothing bad will happen. the only way to do that is to prevent tons of really good stuff from happening. that's what happens when you say you want an absolute guarantee. even someone with an absolute guarantee, what if there's a 1% chance that something could go wrong? and so really why not? why do we actually regulate housing? what is the real problem to overcome? what's ultimately the goal of the entire book? well to start, i just want to go and argue with all fellow economists and say it's not primarily about protecting property values. it's no. it's convenient to go and point fingers at people who disagree and say you are just a selfish jerk that wants to protect your property values. it's not completely wrong, and there are some people who want to protect their property values. it's overrated. how do we know? existing property owners would not be saying absolutely not, no way, no matter what.

they would be saying let's make a deal. how much are you willing to pay for it to rip it down? and build five skyscrapers instead? that's what the actual person says when you make them an offer. not no way. i don't care how much money you offer. and the person will say what kind of money are we talking? all right, so if true, existing owners would happily allow development. how can you do it? one thing would be to say how about we give the property tax discount to all the existing owners and pay to the new developers? how about that? and so let's make a deal. all right. and now another reason now. just to go back. there are selfish reasons for owners to want to go and protect their values. on the other hand, there's some selfish vest going the other way. what if they want to upgrade? if you own the historic home in san francisco, wouldn't you be able to sell out to the developer who will tear it down and put that modern building? why, to make piles of money.

to make piles of money. and i suppose you want to subdivide your land, i suppose you want to go and expand it. these are all areas of the regulation that is, in fact, in the real world often bad for owners, that we will tend to forget about the ways that regulations are harming the existing occupant, but they often do. further more, suppose you want your adult kids to live within 100 miles of you. that's important, right? you might say well, i'll be selfish here. i don't want any additional housing build. i want to keep the prices high. do you want your kids to be able to live near you? well, how do you propose to make that happen if the price of the house is $1 million? i suppose i could go and get a giant home equity loan against the value of my house, give to my kids, to make the down payments. or we could have deregulation for the housing prices that lower, and we don't have to worry about that. all right, further more as i discussed in the book, there is a lot of evidence that will support the regulations too, which fits with the idea that

people just think it's bad for society rather than that they are out for themselves. of course, as a renter in terms of facing economics. what do you care whether the price of housing comes down is actually good for you? and so what are the good stories about why we have regulations? say the good stories are as follows. first of all, just status quo bias. things are great the way they are. they shouldn't change ever. all right, in the book i've got a picture of the old waldorf astoria hotel that was torn down in 1929 to allow the construction of the empire state building, which is even better. why assume when people tear down old buildings, they will build something worse? why? well, we've got a lot of psychological evidence that this is how people are. the great news if you just let people do what they want, change happens, then people get used to the change. then pretty soon, they cannot believe they thought otherwise or they have just forgotten. so you have a problem on

getting people to think about how beautiful the world could be, but isn't yet. and that's really the whole point of chapter five, where everyone knows great french economist. in the book, i resurrect him. then we travel around the world and see the world as it might be, but it is not. economic illiteracy, right? this is one of my favorite root causes for a lot of bad government policies. and the economist will tend to think everybody knows if we go and deregulate prices that will come down and they will hurt some people. well, we have actually done some pretty good surveys, even when we ask people, what do you think will happen when they allow people to build more housing. and the rough breakdown of the public is a third of people that will raise prices and they think no different, and a third thinks they will bring them down. roughly speaking, the public has a random view on the issue, where they will agree, bringing prices down. so we have people that are in

total denial of the main benefit of housing deregulation. it's not surprising that hardly anyone supports it. what i want to do in the book is change their minds, overcome the literacy. another problem, all right, so everybody knows the approximately equal mass had sign that it is not the straight bars. one trillion, minus one billion, approximately equals one trillion. yes. wu tray using this argument in a debate. i have been in a bunch of debates that was plately solid. yeah, yeah, yeah. but what about these $10 billion complaints? what i want to say is listen, even if they were all true, i still deserve to win because those are $10 billion complaints and i got $1 trillion benefits, so the benefits vastly outweigh the cost, and you're being petty about this. but they beat me in the debates

because ten complaints are a lot more persuasive than an overwhelmingly argued favorite. this is a big part of the problem. and i illustrate this with the mouse that crushes the bear. but the bear, much cheaper housing. that's the story. the last one is inspired by my dad as you mentioned building new things, and they do go to the worst possible case, which does happen once in a long while. but the reason why you do, what normally happens? what typically happens? i still remember when the major new development happened when i was learning economics and my dad was upset about it. he came down to complain about the corrupt city councilmen who approved this horrible thing. i sat down there to argue with him, and he said well, you don't know anything. all right, 30 years later, he doesn't even remember he was ever against it, but i remember.

i remember him saying the sky would fall if it were built. nothing has happened. he's not even aware this development exist anymore. it's the worst case thinking and the weaponization of politics. all right. to conclude, here is my two- page audio book. the text is actually too small for me to read it. but yes, i do remember, let's see, if i turn around, i can see it. yes. and as they put it. there i've got the icon of jeremy bentham who was literally mummified. but as a mummy, he can speak in a graphic novel. yes, what he said is the request of industry to government as modest of that to alexander. get out of my light. and that is my solution for meerkats housing problems and the world's. thank you very much. [ applause ]

>> i guess that means i'm up. as i read this book, i thought multiple times about dorothy parker's famous review of a book that said this is not a book that should be read and tossed lightly aside. it should be hurled with great force. i want to take this book and go to every state legislator in the country and start throwing it at the legislators. hopefully it will hit them in the heads and knock some sense into them. so look, i already knew before i started reading it that i was going to agree with the book. i did. and so it was a little bit of a struggle to be a respondent rather than bring my pom poms, bryan, bryan, build, baby, build. so i came up with the questions that i had as i went through it

with the first of which are empirical, right? so some things, you know, for example, we are definitely seeing people move out of high productivity cities towards lower productivity places where it is easier to build. and i think that is obviously being driven by housing prices. i don't know if all of it is being driven by housing crisis. so if you think about an american city, the cities they're leaving, these big coastal cities, right, which is where most of the problems are, but no means to be clear as bryan talks about. miami, dallas, there are a lot of places and there are still issues. but the big issues are along the coasts. those are where for a variety of reasons, it has become a strangle hold on the ability to build and most productive areas. but if i tell the story of the cities, there is a bunch of

technological enhancements that will make the city what it is, right? and so those cities will be all architected around the railroads, right? and there are many of them rebuilt and changed with the highways and so forth, so they are less oriented around that center transit hub. if you rook at all these cities, you're going to find the same pattern, which is they were originally built around one or many rail stations. the design of the city is around that. there is transit links, roads, so forth. what happens in the 50s, that we enable people to live further than walking distance from a railroad station. you can work downtown while living in the single detached home.

that is just the major improvement that will allow people to live and work in different places and to have a house and they all move, right? so some of what you're seeing from people moving away from the cities, that there is another revolution, air- conditioning, to just be a place that you would desire to live. but i do have questions about if we could upzone them, how many people would want to move there? it is not all housing, it's other things, taxes, so forth. and second, again, small empirical illinois because we are nowhere near that limit, but how high can we really build? brian talks about these giant skyscrapers that will take advantage of the view, and they

will turn out not to be very good buildings. to the well-known problem and building, which is elevators that are constrained on how high you can build. after about 30 floors, residential, the amount of elevator space that you'll need to get to people and their apartments, they will start eating into the apartment value, and you get less and less value of each floor, which is why if you know some of the ultra tall buildings, the world buildings, where you would take them on the 78th floor. so they're only being built abroad because they are not rare practical buildings. the ultra tall buildings, they are now one of those admired in the lawsuits, because they don't like it and there son-in- law one per floor. if you had more than that and a more normal building, you wouldn't be able to get that

going up and down. again, this is a illinois, you know, if you look at that place in new york city, you can make them taller than they are. the third question i have is a bigger question that will go back to the 50s, the revolution of rails, for the first time that would allow people to be out there to work. and that there is another technological change, which is remote work. it is still an open question of how much this will change american life. i think that it will take a couple of decades to work through it. but when brian talks about the productivity gains that you could get by moving people into the city that has been a staple of this literature. most of the data that we would have on that is pre-pandemic. what does that apply to the

benefits of the housing? the last question that i would have, the biggest question, that it is really a big question. and i don't know the answer. people have been making to me a credible argument, the dense living that is actually bad for fertility. you have less urge to reproduce, where they would slow down. >> you definitely need shades. >> but look, i grew up in manhattan. my mom wanted four. we had pretty much ideal situation for growing up in the

apartment, right? we would live in a building where there was a play room, where there were four other little girls my age, that i could run around the building with. it was like a small town. i came home for dinner. i might be at any one of those apartments and she would not know. she would call around if she needed me. we were a couple of blocks from the park, which excellent playgrounds. but the fact is if you're raising a kid in that apartment, and i could say this as someone who has had a dog on the 15th floor, and now on the first floor and the house, it is just like the need to get another creature up and down in the elevators. i forgot the diaper bag, back up. it seems like a tiny transaction cost, it's a minute, another minute of waiting for the elevator. but it is a huge transaction cost. and it will make it way more unpleasant and makes it way more unpleasant that you could

not go to greenery. it just increases the intensity of parenting. it decreases what we see in middle school or at least it didn't matter when your parents were not hovering over you all the time, and i was allowed to go on the city myself. i think that might be, look, i think housing cost on obviously impact fertility, but i sort of ask whether if we build all of these super dense buildings downtown at least, whether we are actually going to see the fertility boost from that. i understand, look, there's filtering, you know, people move, people without kids move into the city. other people get their single- family homes, but i do have questions. so then i have some policy questions. and one of them is does this denseification of all levels, right?

that is mostly about tall buildings. but densification is not just about tall buildings. it's all those things, right? and in a lot of cases, both with tall buildings and with other kinds of development, the densification is going to require a bunch of complimentary goods, right? it is going to require better sewer systems. it's going to require at a minimum better roads. if we're talking about more dense kinds of living, especially if we are talking about doing something that bryan recommends, which is getting rid of the parking requirements, that they might require the public transit. and i have a couple of questions about that. one, many of those things will have the same veto points as housing, right? it's harder to build infrastructure than what it used to be because we have

given all the community control, created environmental review systems, upped the building codes. all the things that are making it harder to build housing, we are also making it harder to build infrastructure. plus a bunch of interest group, special regulations that have made american infrastructure cost some of the highest in the world. and so how does that figure in? can we density if we don't fix that problem? does it require other unpopular things? and that look, i love congestion pricing with the passion that they found. i love the market. i love free pricing of water. another question for building in the west in california and in arizona, colorado. i love fully pricing water. why are we giving this away for free? why are we giving parking lots

away for free? you know who hates them? every other voter. and so a question that i who have is if we need to do these things to make the densification work without congesting traffic or creating the pollution from traffic, you know, what do we do about that problem? does it require political goods that are actually popular, which are for a variety of reasons, hard to do? and so the things i think about when we think about densitying the schools. i don't want school to go down. crime. it is not exactly a true urban area that have crimes necessarily than rural areas, but the crime is more stranger crime and a lot more likely in a city than in that rural area, domestic violence is not more likely, but stranger crime is, and that is a real cost that people will care about. and that will make your density

project harder. for it to be healthy, they need to be integrated. how do you get affluent people to move in if you don't have better crime control? how do we provide those goods? and then, you know, our restrictions are enhancing. should we have some? no, you cannot build, you're super polluting the factory next to my daycare. but do we think about things like one that i think about a rot is that when you have a major thoroughfare and you build a building that doesn't have storefronts in it, it creates dead space on the street that makes it unpleasant and actually makes the neighborhood worse and less function as a neighborhood. again, this is more of a tall building problem than a lower density problem. but it is a problem that i think about because it is something that i've seen happen in my neighborhood, where you built a lot of dead space on the street because the

developers, again, for somewhat, you know, because the developer basically didn't want to deal with their bankers on retail leases, which are more complicated in some ways than retail. and then i want to talk about the political constraints a little bit because i disagree with bryan somewhat of the rationality of the political restraint. i do think there is a selfish element to it that is quite strong. some of the data on renters will tend to be confounded on the fact that like cities that have a lot of renters are also tending to be cities that have a lot of rent control. and so look, if you survey renters in san francisco or new york, it is true they don't have the same kind of property right as a homeowner in those cities, and therefore it seems a little weird that they are in favor of restrictions. but a significant number of them, and especially the older voters who are easiest to poll, do have rent control conditions. and they basically, this is actually one reason that i really fight with the people who are like homeownership is

bad, we need mass renting, then rent control to solve the political problems of the homeownership. that does not solve the problem. the renters will act like homeowners because you have given them that right in their apartment, and they will then fight to protect it. and i think the rationality is broad. it is not just about property values, which is where this will tend to focus, right? and although i think that is a huge problem. and i think wrongly, policy has created a situation where you have a lot of people who have gotten a lot of home equity, and that is their big asset. and they are going to fight to protect that home equity. and i see this in my neighborhood, which is extremely progressive, and then there is me, the libertarian, and my husband, the libertarian. we get into hilarious discussions, where the libertarian is explaining why we should allow social services to come in and serve more poor

people. and that is something you see over and over again, light. yes, it is silly to say well, we can't ever build taller because they will wreck someone's life. and having lived on the subterranean first floor apartment, where, you know, sunlight is something that i read about once. and it is actually, when i finally got an apartment that light, i could not believe how big of a difference. would i want them to take my light away? absolutely not. i would be extremely upset. unfortunately most people are not. and the neighbors matter, right? to try to keep people who have problems out of your neighborhood. that's completely irrational. and that i assume is a nice

neighborhood and you have chosen to do that, right? you would not be happy if someone opened up, say the halfway house across the street from you. that you might be like yay, i am theoretically happy for america, but not for me. most people are not. so i think all of these facts, combined with the fact that as brian says, people are economically ill illiterate, which we talk about zoning restrictions or building restrictions. it's not -- or the building code -- it's not one thing. it's so many teeny tiny things, all that individually make the difference and sound great. who could be requiring them because someone once got stuck in that toilet? this is the actual situation that i dealt with in my home,

where we were not allowed to make the walls. we wanted our bathrooms to be smaller and we were not allowed to. we had plenty of space, but someone could, so no one was allowed to have this bathroom. but if you say this, some disability advocate is going to say well, if you do that, it will make it harder for me to buy that house, which means i have a restricted availability or something that's beyond my control and it's not fair. and that is every single restriction. and almost all, they will have good explanations that will sound good, and you have to fight them on a thousand fronts and how possible is that? i would also point out that poor people and renters don't just have necessarily this kind of property right in a rent controlled apartment. they also have, they don't have a lot of financial capital, and often they will have quite a bit embedded in the low density neighborhood that's hard to replicate in the high density

neighborhood. right? so if you live in a neighborhood of town homes, you know, old row houses, you know all the people on the street, and you know the person that you could send your kid e to if you need to go out or whatever. and if that is torn down, all of that capital, just vanishes, because as people move, but also it is actually that kind of capitalism is harder to build in a denser neighborhood because they just tend to be more anonymous. it is on the form. and that will suit them pretty well that can be a harder form factor for those with a need to rely on social capitalism. and then you add in the fact that they can't and won't through the second and third order of facts. and that it is a big challenge. so you would start off by saying okay, you're worried

about x, y, z. here somewhat we're going to do. we're going to make the top property taxes high, and you get to keep yours. we'll deny them parking and you get to keep yours. and the key hole policies that they call them and how are they different from the slippery slope? and and to try to get something done, is that not just opening

us up to the slippery slope? and look, ultimately these are small questions that are relative to the big question, which is how do we solve the bigger problem, and that brian, obviously they will have the right answer to that big question, which is build, baby build, and that i really hope this book will get into it as possible and know how write that answer is. >> we want a lot of questions from the audience, but i see you writing down against megan's criticism in question. and so why don't you spend some time responding? >> thank you very much, megan. and yeah, if someone likes the book, how many criticism would they have? and that you're absolutely right.