unjust that really incarcerated people are prisoners of a political system. right. and so then that made me kind of look and move to a more general manner in assisting incarcerated people, helping them get the things that they are asking for, that they're articulating that they want and they need. and in terms of community there is a lot of community that prison books, programs foster and and there's multiple ways to look at this and can look at it in terms of the communities that the programs foster on the inside which lorenzo has kind of talked about a little. and and to think, you know, getting access to the books on the inside, people share, books on the inside, when and where possible. they also share the ideas they receive in the books and there's chapters on that in the book where other formerly incarcerated people rock, tornado and then in the gallon are kind of talking that experience.

quinn had a harris as well. so there's you know it's a fostering a community on the inside. right. and that's important. but it's also letting people on on the inside know that they're not forgotten. right. and that's an important aspect of community for some people. this may be that letter that they get in conjunction with receiving a book or the book that they get maybe the first outside contact they've had in years. years. right. and letting them know they are not forgotten that a set that is community building at its core. right. and then in terms of the community on the outside, there's multiple ways and that works right. and one of the one of the ways to look at that is this is fighting a system that seems so overbearing and so over powerful, so, so powerful that coming together to do something right and action that you're able to take action in this way really does foster a sense of

community in that you are functioning to work through this system and you know, for many people are involved in this movement, it isn't the be it isn't everything that they do. right. they're not they may be involved in other social movements. this is just one thing that they do. right. but in this in this one thing, they can come together. and there is a sense of community through the book packing parties that you might have or through, you know, the meeting days where looking for where you're, looking for books to package up these letters. when you're reading the letters, the letters loud, when you're sharing the artwork that you receive from incarcerated people. and also, you know, and then the other side of it, where you're trying to have community building events where you're that that may be fundraisers. right. we talk a little bit about about that as well. and in the book, you know, and you're trying to kind of incorporate people into this project or maybe some of these they're busy and they're an artist in a different way. and what they can do is they can they can contribute a flier, right? that's how they can contribute and be a part of that process

that's valuable. right. and they're excited to do that. and you're involving people in the community in the ways that they can interact with the. and then also in terms of the families of incarcerated people. families of incarcerated, they cannot send books to incarcerate loved ones personally. they need an intermediary. it has come from a bookstore and approved source. and if they don't have the resources to do that. or if they don't want to purchase through one of the big conglomerates, what have you, prison books, programs, offers the ability to do that. and then but it also fosters the sense of community where they're able to come to a place where they might feel more understood and thus isolated from the other people, them because we're to consider that shameful thing that you may know someone who's incarcerated, right. and so this is a way to break down that barrier. so there's many ways in which we we foster community through

these programs. um, thank you. yeah so i was actually kind of trying think and remember like, how did i get to start to do this and my entry and my you know relationship to and books and you know books bars is really a bit different than than than mac's in the you know of the contributors to the book in that i was i was working to get my textbooks inside which you know i'm sure we can all kind of you know, those of us that are in classrooms now or can remember from our own, you know, we sometimes the textbook just like is like the last thing you might to read. but i found so i use the eric foner is give me liberty and you know i got to give a shout out to w.w. norton. they were really responsive when i said we need for teaching these courses and they got us the donations that we needed. and then i started teaching when i actually created a women's

class, in part inspired by my sort of subversive attempts to make women's history for inside. and i thought, this is a, this needs to be its own separate course. the curriculum as a required course. and, and then i had the textbook there. but one of the issues that we actually had is tracking and sure that then the people in the courses have the books that they needed, which is another layer kind of to the story you know, and we've been talking a lot, i think about the way in which the bureaucracy of prison is meant is intended to break humanity of the people inside and to reinforce their they're lesser than their you know, in that hierarchy of power. so one of the issues that we had was that our books kept getting lost and, misplaced. and some of that was is i think, another way to either directly or indirectly right through the kind of chaos machine is of deny that access.

so i a semester where i taught women's history where half of my students had a book that ended halfway through the semester right they had like the volume one and when we were teaching the whole full volume. and so i had to figure out how to deal with that. and i, i felt awful, you know, for these, these students that like, they literally like to stop at eight. and we were going to chapter 15 or whatever and but we, you know, we figured it out. i mean, there's one point where the books were like in somebody's car, in the trunk and i was always every semester i was always tracking where are they? were they where are they? because i knew how valuable they were. and then i was always to get more donations. and that's something that i really tried hard to facilitate because the you know, my students used to tell me particular that the library, they were like the library isn't anything good in it for us. and but the what you know what the textbooks brought right again was like, i'll say that real you know, that real college

connection, that connection to an intellectual world which they were a part and, i think, you know, the other thing to i was just kind of thinking about what it meant to me on the outside. i didn't hear, you know, again, like i actually gave they picked me one year to give the address. we graduated people so we would these graduation ceremonies inside and again speaking to the academics in the room, in the audience, you know, graduation is in some ways, right? i mean, for the people graduating special. but like when you do, you do it each and there's it's a bit of a can be a bit of a rigmarole. well that all the words that you say at a graduation about all the things of its meaning that inside a graduation inside was it was all true you know it was all true. and actually our valedictorian that year want to shout out because so if she's out there somewhere brenda wiley because she was one of the most amazing students i ever had, she herself

sued the state of new jersey to overturn law because she was sentenced as a 16 year old to life and to overturn that sentencing. right. that um, that minors cannot be sentenced to life in prison. and i just heard through the grapevine that she has been released as of, i think, two months ago. and that's where she is. i hope maybe if she's out there, can come and find me. i would really love to to reconnect with her, but i want to say, you know, that some of the things that were meaningful, you know, thinking about really were, you know, someone like brenda comes to mind is because is one of the things that i, i ended up doing and changing my activism is like. so i went and testified in front of legislature of the city of new jersey when a because. 4 million cars rated people were denied their constitutional right to vote after their

release that was still you know on the books as of i'm not sure how many maybe i think it was around 2019 that a bill up to restore voting rights to formerly incarcerated people in new and i testified in that in those you know in front of the legislature which was very intimidating someone who doesn't normally feel intimidated by most cases and there i i reunited with a former student who who i had taught in max and that was that was pretty special. and i think though that, you know, in part like that it was you know, the experience transferred me into i think what kind what you know in some degree what mac was talking about as a person who takes action and does it know in ways that are i hope you know made a difference but you know the

other way that this you know changed me and changed maybe my community and the outside rate was in of, i'll say some leadership within the program i took i was very, very adamant that anybody who taught excuse me history inside did it with that that there was absolutely no difference between inside outside courses and in particular that the skills and of the historian were essential and that they were practiced in the course and that the students were taken seriously as historians in the course. and then it wasn't dumbed down in any way or simplified in any way, which again had been the experience. and as far as i'm aware, right, is really an unfortunate hallmark. a lot of inside education and that was super important me so i did a lot of gatekeeping of who was teaching those courses and a lot of conversations with those instructors a lot of

observations. i went inside and observed. i observed math class once already, you know, but i did take these as opportunities as well. i think the mentoring and the conversations around, what it means to teach and what it, you know, also to teach within a setting where. that again, the dynamics of power are so different and how we can let go of our need to kind of, you know, control that as as professors, as instructors. so i'll say that. and then, you know, think that in leadership of the program that i also try to while i'm not actively teaching inside anymore, you know, when i started my career to college and i think in some ways still, you know, within. one of my big missions a long time, i'm no longer there, but one of my big missions really was to try to bring the community, you know, the experience of community college 3000 students right to elevate

that and help to diminish the prejudices and the stereotypes that existed which in some ways not they're not totally dissimilar. maybe there's a bit of a venn diagram overlap with some of the prejudices around who attends or the prejudices who who might be incarcerated and have the class dynamics. and then, you know, in the in those ideas about who those students are, i'll say with eric. so some of that direct activism which has resulted in policy changes and it's in the labor and working class history association as one, one place, you know, where we're really to build access and inclusion for scholars, students and. and other people who might be, you know, who might access the field through a community college. so i'll you know, i'll say that is one thing that i'm pretty proud of and that i think is inspired in part by this work and and so that's what i want to

leave time i know for that. well i do also want to leave time for the audience and. i'm mindful of the time. so here's what i think i'm going to do. i'm just to package together the final or so questions i had. then i want to really turn it over to the audience and maybe, maybe don't immediately respond to my questions unless it's a good intersection. one, because this is sponsored by lockjaw. i want to talk about the relationship between the book and this book's through bars program and the labor movement and the working class struggle that is embodied within our prisons and our in our jobs. and of course, the prisoner rights movement is also a labor movement. we had the first ever nationwide prison strike in 2016 and then again in 2018. so if if someone wants to talk about relationship to this book and to this project to labor and working class life a second i

just want to talk about artists creativity. this book just littered with we were talking earlier it reads a zine and i think mack had pointed out in his introduction and i also read the proposal for this book initially that it had a kind of punk mentality behind it. so if we could talk a little bit about what artistic creation by the incarcerated means both within the book and to those creating that art. and then i also want to try and touch because the book as a chapter, what means for lgbtq communities within, the prison of which there are many, in fact, that's a growing. as our public spaces policed and then last question is what challenges did you have thinking particularly about the role of of censorship. so any of those four questions are my final four but why don't

we turn it over to the audience and maybe they'll be some conjunction or if you wish to address any of those for sounds good to me and i will coming to folks we have a there we are on so i'll be asking you to speak into this microphone directly so let me open it up to the then so while while people are ruminating on the questions, i'll go ahead and some of the last question that you asked. we do have the book does contain an interview instance with zoe laurence, a currently incarcerated person, and it talks about zoe's struggle to be identified in the manner of your choosing and. also, the to information and material that the struggle that zoe faced in gaining access to that material and this is a

common and growing problem within the right you think about how this is happening on the outside in the outside world and think about how that then becomes more concentrated and more difficult on inside. i don't i don't think i really need to explain that much further than that. it makes a lot of sense. and so this a common fight that we have that many prison books programs are currently involved with in terms of, you know, and there's there's a long history here. i know that asheville prison books when i think i don't remember the exact year is sometime around 23 perhaps when transmission books grew out of the asheville books program. and their their mission is to queer folks on the inside with the material of their right. and they specialize in that material. so there are there are programs who indeed specialize in that?

and almost every prison books program that i know makes an effort to make sure that queer folks on the get access to the information that they need. and indeed, there is a growing censorship. and censorship is another aspect of this project that prison books, programs, often fighting censorship a regular basis. i'll be, in fact, speaking at in conjunction with avid books in georgia in about a week or so. and avid books currently has a lawsuit fighting the censorship material that they have been trying us and inside. so this is a growing, growing problem we. back i'll touch on your censorship point for just a second and it goes back to something that mr. lorenzo said about, how his book was banned inside and and it probably wasn't banned everywhere.

inside, right. it was probably banned maybe in one or two places, maybe 20. but my point that what is is not uniform within the system, right? what's banned depends largely on where you're at and the leadership and sometimes what's banned gets to when new leadership comes in. and it can be incredibly frustrating to sort of navigate who lets what and when. so how do you advise programs who are trying to get books inside about how to navigate all the little nuances that come with every individual facility? yeah, that that's a great question. i'm going to say something very short because i'm sure mark has a lot more to say. so you know, i had a different role, right? we weren't responding to individual requests for, but we were often trying to get materials were not typically use documentary ese. i was a tough one even again having regular access to the right textbook and current textbooks you know, that weren't yanzhou out of date. so we had, you know, an

education office and dossier and new jersey department of corrections or has an education division. and so sometimes would experience that where like depending on who was in that seat there was, there was a lot of resistance or, you know, or it could be smoother. so i found a lot strategies of finding, you know, of just trying to find where the water would flow right? how who i could go to and how i could. and and even against my nature of being sweet and chirpy and nice and know all the all those nice, little sweet things that i'm usually not in, in trying to to get those books where they needed to go and find out again, where were the cracks that i could get through? and i was able and, you know, it took a long time but the pressure of and that and that kind of like legwork was did yield some good results although not always. and when i do write about a

situation where i thought i was doing something helpful to have a student screen a film and it actually ended being a big problem for student because of the power dynamics inside. so that also stepping back sometimes and realize that i couldn't make things happen. the way i could on the outside and i needed to respect people's roles and and the fact that they were inside and they had to live within that regime. so the carceral is huge. there's currently i think the latest estimates are about six thousands different prisons, jails and whatnot throughout the united states. and there's multiple levels. right. and so you have the federal system within there's multiple tiers in the federal system, sorry. and then each state has their own carceral system and then each county, so on and so forth online and then states, i mean not states and then even, you know, there's little holding cells in jails. and and this isn't even

including when i'm talking about ice, so on. so there's lots of systems incarceration in the united states and the system may have certain guidelines then that depends upon is it a institution, is it a medical institutions on and so forth. but then what really ultimately once you if you able to navigate all of that, okay, if you were successful navigating all that it does ultimately, oftentimes come down to the person in the mailroom how they are in terms fitting those guidelines and. sometimes i've had success in the old fashioned style, just calling the figuring out and it is in infuriatingly difficult to actually someone on the telephone but i've had it work to where i've been able to actually get on the phone and question why a particular package, why a particular book

was was being kept. one time our program had blacklisted by an institution and they said, well, you know, it's because you're not real. you're not a real bookstore. and i said, well, go ahead and check. you know, this is this is who are and and they were like okay. well, i'm looking at google maps now. and so now i see that it is a brick and mortar store. now, you will be accepted in, you know, and so and those the good stories, right, where you're able to navigate through. but that's not always the case. sometimes you just get a package back and it just says rejected. and there's no information about it was rejected and you have to pay to get that package back and then you pay to send that package back in. and these are programs that do not have a lot of money trouble in fundraising. so you for the same package three times and you're not even certain going to get there on the third time. all right. and so have to try and figure out and ascertain why something was banned. and sometimes we are aware things we don't even know that things get rejected. right. that's just when we happen.

know we do our best. sometimes we're able to check and see if people are getting things and we know that people are getting some packages because we get people writing letters saying, hey, listen that was so great. i, i understand you didn't have the books that i requested and i was a little bummed when didn't get the books i requested. but it turns out you made some great choices and really loved what i read, so thank you for sending. so we know that, you know, these things happen that they do get through and that they do make a difference. but it is very difficult to navigate that system. some states have banned books lists. some states do or at least do not have ones that they're willing to admit to. sometimes you're able to work things out with a particular warden. other times you can, you know, try for years and it's never going happen. it is infuriating. and that's the power of the lawsuit as lorenzo has talked about. and you know, which is also what avid books is engaging with now. and there's other people also

engaging in lawsuits. we have a piece in the book about he laughs, challenging the right to send books on the inside and sometimes that's what it takes is it's not the actual lawsuit itself. it's the threat of the lawsuit. it's finding a or a legal representative who's willing to stand, who's suing and say, okay, we'll write this letter, we'll try and make sure that they, you know, force them to articulate their rationale for banning this. and then all of a sudden, you get a letter, oops, we made a mistake. right. but but that's all extra work. that's all extra work. and that's actual work for people who are doing this in their free time. oftentimes getting paid. right. and they're already maxed out. and all the other things that they do and they've already tried to send this package in, it's just extra work. and we do the best we can and we try to challenge these things as we can. and we have the assistance sometimes other organizations who we're able to rely on for legal help and advice, and then

we communicate through with one another, which we talk about in the text. right? we have a listserv. we're able to say, okay, you know currently is everybody, you know, having trouble with this particular institution? how have you been able to navigate that? you know, what's helpful, what's not? and so once one person figures it out, now everybody how to navigate that. but it's maddening in short to we do we have maybe question from lorenzo where we're nearing at time but i'd like to get another question. the audience. they're free to i'll start well lorenzo maybe you should help us with the last word i did that question about the connection of this book and of this larger project to the labor movement, to working class movements, to contemporary struggles.

you've got a long history of that, maybe. do you want to leave us with some closing thoughts about. what books through bars again really just amazing mac you're and the press you're to complimented on this it's important work as i think lorenzo has attested but maybe if you could leave with some thoughts about what project means for the current moment and our struggles in this election and moving forward beyond this election and struggles in our prisons and without well easy question know, you know the moment that i was talking about in this moment are similar but different in this period now repression learned from our struggles and they apply censorship differently. they make a different for in my

book. well the book they stopped it man they they made the argument that it advocated racial superiority of people being superior to whites that no there's no way that's true but it's argument and that's the argument that's being used in the streets as well. that is we're at a time when i tried to do some time ago in creating a movement in a way that opposed book banning was to help people understand that the fight against banning books is the fight against fascism, because the, as you said, in this period, the the right wing is using book banning to try to control what people think on the outside.

they talked about what they what they on the inside. well, now they're doing it on the outside to try to control people's views, to try to silence people and to try to make you politically i question or whatever the word is. i'm looking for. but to stop you. they stop you to make you think that that the power of the government of the power of of of the authorities that there should be no so-called black literature. there should be no no no, you know what they call it this period, the black thought a black well, what is this program they've got. they want they don't you to look at black lives matter but they don't want you to look at black lives matter as an important movement. don't want you to think that black people had a history.

they don't want you to think that there was a civil rights in this country. even. they want to make you think that all of this is outlawed by those in and they want to get in power to be able to do it. we're facing now a prospect of this election producing a person who is a megalomaniac, but more importantly, producing him with with a program that the wing has drawn up. this project 2025, that conservative groups have created so that when their man is elected or woman, which, which advocates may be over the course of time, they'll come into power with an agenda that will change the fundamental institutions of government. it'll change all the institutions, the government that exist now and and, of course, censorship will. just be one of those things that they'll that will have used to gain their power to gain their power base. and that's what's happening now.

the election is is is important. i'm not telling you to vote for this group for that. i don't believe in that. i'm an anarchist. first of all, i don't i believe, you know, i have a whole different belief system. but the point is that we're facing fascism, whatever we believe in. and i think that people be fighting in the street, protesting whatever now, to be quite honest. but the majority people don't know what's being planned for them at simple fact of losing this election could lose people's lives, lose people's whole to survive in this country will be confronted with that kind of repression that goes on in a prison. they'll turn this country into prison, in other words. and from that standpoint, it's extremely important to understand the things that i'm talking about books and do bars is not materially the book is. the idea the idea is what they're trying to repress. and so they keep, you know, to

the point where they want to change fundamentally all the institutions of the country, including widespread voter discrimination and voter suppression. so we're looking at the very thing that we're fighting against, that we've talking about. and we now have to understand that as a real living to us, to our lives, to our lives and our livelihood and everything, so that we are. thank you, lorenzo. that's very powerful. mac, this is your incredible production. and as a book, do you have a final thought? and then we'll close. just to reiterate that it couldn't have been done without you. gay press nate holly my coeditor moira all the contributors who all the people who contributed chapters and all of the people who have fought for the rights of incarcerated people and all of the people who volunteered for prison books program. this is an introduction. we hope and we hope that this

book will spur people to help us uncover the rest of histories of these programs and show why important this indeed the first attempt to document the history of this social that's been in existence for over 50 years. well, i want to thank all of you. i want to thank for taking the time to cover this book. i think it's so valuable that we get this message beyond this room. so thank you for being thank you for saying the entirety of the time. and let's thank panelists who really stay incredible, personal and powerful testing it. thank you. yeah, barry, make sure we. said who is thisi'm richard grer

of the free libraries foundation's board of directors, and i'm delighted to be here with you tonight. you know, it's been an incredible witness. the growth of the free libraries 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 novel historians and public figures. and tonight is no exception. these discussions connect, inspire and challenge us addressing timely issues in the

public civic and human humanities through in person right here in this auditorium and online archives, a podcast and videos, the author's events program, millions of people worldwide. this makes this series the single largest provider of electronic content produced distributed by the free library philadelphia. i like to take the time to especially thank of you our members who are with us tonight as a member of the pepper society myself, i hope i can encourage 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. you can find more information about a member and donating in tonight's program.

now before i introduce these amazing, 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 event and following tonight 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 for more than 25 years, frank bruni has been the paper's rome bureau chief head restaurant. white house correspondent and staff writer for its magazine, among other. his bestselling books include ambling into history the unlikely odyssey of george w bush and. born round the secret history of a full time eater, where you go

is not who you'll be an in-joke 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 and the writer of, a popular weekly times newsletter. bruni formerly worked as a pulitzer prize nominated writer for the detroit free press in age of grievance, bruni examines the ways which the blame game has come to define american politics and culture. joining bruni on the stage evening is karen heller hagler is the former national feature 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. in commentary. we're so pleased to have them was with us this evening so please join me in welcoming karen heller and frank bruni to the free stage. thank you, rich. thank you for that introduction. that's. welcome. thanks so much for joining us. we're all fellow franco files as well, and i never heard it like that before. i coined that. that's you can i'm imagining the parisians in the audience may beg to differ. well, you can be a francophile to us anyway. we're so lucky to have you here. big fans of your all of you to

be here. you've had such a beautiful career being the chief restaurant critic of the new york times and rome bureau. think you mean incoherent career? that's awful. no, i think this is great. you're great. a cocktail parties probably can speak about almost anything. i drink lot. anyway, he's been an op ed columnist. he still contributes quite frequently to the times and what's nice about it is you get to be paid your grievances, right? and people to read them. and he has a fabulous if you don't subscribe, i really encourage you to do so. it's just terrific. 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, ease software, software. yeah. and yet how we we complain.

and you write, we are experiencing the oppression in olympics. the idea that my situation even we have great socks. my situation is so much worse than yours. i want to understand how you saw that we got to this point you write that the united states is a nation born of grievance in the revolt of royal subjects and willing accept a deal that our legal system. the grievance can be good, but did we get to this point? well, i mean, that's that's question that the book tries to answer. i mean there are many answers to that. i mean, we talk about social media. we could talk about and we will tonight. i know we talk about the country's turn from, a sort of trademark optimism, a whole new american pessimism, which i think very concerning and new. there are a whole lot of ways. but what has happened to 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 hundreds, when people spoke of grievances, it was a term that usually meant just causes urging 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, in the last week you would find it almost always is used in as a pejorative in a negative context. and that's a tell. and what that says is that we have become so incessant our complaints so into screaming it in our complaints, we've jump told the sorts of things we must complain about as a matter of fundamental with stuff that we needn't about. but that bespeaks a certain sort of spoiled ness and narcissism. we've jumbled it all together in a way that i think makes constructive, almost impossible and completely paralyzes our political. yeah. you write that almost no cultural event, no bit of news, no topic. national conversation is roped

from grievance. by which i mean a complaint or concern that should or could be a modest point of dispute but negotiable with business like diction and businesslike decorum. but it's blown up widely out of proportion. i want to say that i tweeted about this event and some somebody was aggrieved. yes and said some very unkind things about the two of us. and i don't think we've we've met you like. welcome to my inbox. right. you know, he was one of those guys like bob's 089. so you even know if it's a bot or whatever. well, tell me what the genesis of that you could create a whole wonderful book from this. what was there? it's when did you first notice that this was sort of fomenting? was it slow burn or was there a specific moment? i think we've all been noticing for, you know, better than a decade now. i mean, when i put the language to it. i actually wish i could take

credit for the phrase the age of grievance. whether it's a good one or a bad one. but after i wrote my last book, which was referred to the beauty of dusk which was about a kind of personal medical ordeal, odyssey, i had had a great experience with my avid reader. press i'll give a shout out to avid 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. ginni 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, didn't have a lot of exclamation points. right? and the theme of it was it was this what came through in her in her text messages was how oppressed she felt, how cheated she felt. and stop for a minute. ginni thomas, you know, just want to make sure we're talking. i mean, you know, the free winnebago wasn't big enough. know. i love this audience.

got that reference. thank thank you. this is the guy. yeah. and i think it was after that newsletter, my editor ben noonan, wrote me email and the sum of it was, think you should write a book called the age of grievance? and i wrote back and i said, i think we need to sure we hear the same thing before we proceed. but in that phrase, i started thinking about it. and i thought, that really is great distillation and of this sort of culture of complaint. we live in of this culture that fetishizes a victim position 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 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 our assistance and help. and he said but there are so many people claiming victimization in situations where it is not warranted. he said, we basically have an emergency room full people with paper cuts. brilliant. and i quote him in the book because frankly, that's the whole book. and so now you've heard that phrase, we're going to write. so i love that a nation of papercut. so did you have a moment of clarity or frustration? your editor had this idea. did you say, oh, yeah, yeah, i've got to. i mean, you've written columns on this, so was there a tipping point? was just a moment that you say, yes, there's a book here. there's i don't know what the tipping point was, but i will tell you, there was hesitation. and there's hesitation me, even as i sit here with you whom i respect and thank for doing this

in a friendly face. and even though i assume some 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 if i did, which is it's really important to recognize and talk as i do in the book, that this to define yourself by how you've been wronged, to shout about how you've been wronged as loudly as possible with 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, which i referred to as the grievance. 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 partizan phenomenon. that does not mean it's on the right. in 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 and profound election denialism at a scale that you don't see on the left. so i mostly had hesitation. i wanted to be very minded and to call this in all the places it exists without doing a sort of facile both sides or implying 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 having, you know, a real belief that this person represent you and contain, you know, your values and whatever we're kind of negative voting and i'd like

you to read about this specimen, about america's promise. all right. i have to put on my eyes and hopefully i have right page bookmarked. where does my copy? i hope it's 77. it's page 177. i thought, i oh, there it is. okay. okay. american dream. american exceptionalism. land of opportunity, endless frontier. manifest destiny. those were the pretty the pretty phrases that i grew with. words that appeared not only in political ads, but also in lessons and elevated analysis of the american psyche. 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 expands us explorers, putting first man on the moon wasn't just a matter of bragging rights, though it wasn't that and we bragged plenty about. it was also an act of self-definition an affirmation of american identity. we stretched the parameters of the navigable universe the way we stretch the parameters of everything. that perspective obviously was a romanticized one, achieved through selective reading of the past. it discounted the experiences of many americans. it minimized the degree to which they and other minorities were shut out from all this, inventing all this expanding, all this exploring. it mingled, self-congratulatory fiction with fact and it probably imprinted itself more strongly me than on some of my peers because of my particular family history. my father's parents were uneducated who found in the united states what they left southern italy for, more material comfort, greater

economic stability and an 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 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 expect their children to do better than they 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. a playwright's invention.

take our fitful and beleaguered attempt get back to the moon. in the late and fall of 2022. although neil, an american, had made that giant leap for mankind more than a half century earlier, in 1969, nasa's struggle to send an unmanned moonwalk vessel, the orion rolled, out to its launch pad at the kennedy space center in florida on august 17th, 2022. but only after a series of delays caused by problems discovered during preflight tests. people then gathered on august 29th to watch orion rocket into space. but nasa canceled the launch the last minute due to a faulty engine reading on september third. 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 be. thank you. that was wonderful.

so this. it's seeped in. you sort of see it in your pocket. you talk a lot about see it in these aspects and what do you think has fueled so many, so much of this? well, part it is, 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 a a we don't see we don't we don't have the social don't believe these two. 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 it. part of it is also we're kind a mature civilization. i don't want to that makes it sound like we're grownups. we're not acting like grown ups, some immature in the different sense. and i think at a certain the american promise, the promise better more bigger it kind of bumps up against the limits of the universe, so to speak.

but i think the best illustration of just how much the american psychology has changed for decades now, i think it goes back to the seventies. i pinpointed in the book. and the gallup organization has several times a year, three or four times a year taking a very particular poll that asks americans if they are generally satisfied with the country, with their lives in the country. up until 24 that the answer is that it would go above 50%, sometimes above 60%. it would go below it would go like this. it was constantly changing, always returning at various times above 50% since 2004. never have more at 50% or more americans answered, they're generally satisfied for 20 years 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 six 2021, it

was 11%. that's 20 years of sustained negative assessments of sustained negative thinking. and that has taken it. all right. well, i, i personally we weaver poll. that's the only thing you to the poll. you know particularly in an election year and we are on what's wrong and i and, i want to talk a little and we include the media. yeah. oh, yes. we'll get to that. and so but anger is we all have. right. people it's a natural emotion. you know, you have to do is get behind the wheel and 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 in the american dialog and what contributed all of this? because we were raised most of us were raised in a certain way to be polite. you can go to places and you're slighted, you know, talking about the chris rock comment of paper cuts, but ultimately we know life it's pretty good.

but now it's this anger and this and the feeling of wronged and you talk about the polling and feel that the american experiment has gone kind of the tracks but why is anger become such it's so except able and most of us were not raised you know raise our voices to to you know what we didn't have twitter to to tell to people you don't know how horrible they are what it what contributed. i don't know. maybe maybe children are being raised differently now and i mean, it's interesting. you said angry 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 with this. sure. yeah. 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 a lot of reasons. i think social 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. that creates an incentive structure for anger and for it's, you know, upsizing into rage. politicians have seen 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 bothers me. but looking at some of protests that have clearly gone off the rails, that have dipped into violence and you know, i've seen comments there say, you know, where do these young people, the sense that confrontation of this sort is appropriate, that these sort of provocations and i'm thinking, i don't know, u.s. congress. right. i mean, i'm joking, but it's but it's serious. i remember this made me this made so much sense, but it made me so sad. remember shortly after the

supreme court overturned roe v wade, i was sitting with a prominent democratic whom i will not name because it was an off the record. and i don't think i'm breaking that here. and this politician said, and this politician is known his her or their measured tone, and for being a conciliator. and this was a bernie sanders. it was not him. and it was not a it was not elizabeth warren. and this politicians said, you know, donald and and his allies do such a good job of making people 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. now, tactically, i thought it was a very smart statement. you and as someone who fervent advocates for reproductive rights, i was on his side, but it made me really sad as a kind of reflection of the times that he was excited about opportunity

to sow, reap, anger that that actually was that. that was the smart move was really disturbing. and of course it becomes it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and a self-feeding loop or whatever that right phrases wait so so we might as well get into it. you call trump cast himself as both a martyr and a messiah. he was a grudge flesh grievance became. and you talk about us being the grievance olympics and he may be the gold medal winner in this. yeah he's like the michael phelps of the greatest. right? right. why does this play so well? i mean, tell me. we have social media. why it's when you stand back, but you just you know, somebody showed. well, we're not know. we're not standing back from it. i mean, you just said the crucial thing. too few of us are standing back from much. too few of us are pausing and saying before we begin shouting or before we just kind of accept

everybody else is shouting. too few of us say, what is this doing to us? where are we going? is a different way. like this is costing us so very much in the part of the book that's most important to are the chapters and pages that look at that you know how it's degraded country but you know i don't think i don't think we're self-reflect 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 the same amount of attention being given or passion being lavished on the collective good. i think social media divides. i think media in general and the internet divides us. i mean you go back to when you and i growing up and if you wanted to watch tv, your choices were abc, nbc's yes or depending on where you lived.

there was a pbs channel that did that. that was it, right? and it was maybe half an hour, maybe one hour. and so they tried do general interest stuff and they were bound for many decades by the fairness doctrine on and on. compare that to the cable news universe. so today where you get to tune in to exactly what you want to hear to the exclusion, all other viewpoints, which of course ends up not just confirming what you believe, but pacifying it. i think it is so telling. so scary and so important to go back to. why did fox news settle with dominion voting systems for $787.5 million? right by far record. why did they do that? because things were going to go if it came to a trial. they did because in discovery it was shown that top fox news anchors, top fox news executive new and we're talking with one another about the fact that they were putting these lies on the air about rigged voting machines

a corruption of the voting process but. what they were saying to one another was if we don't air this our audience just go over to one american news or other station that will air it. we have to give them what they're looking, lest we disappoint, even if it's not the right now that is the most extreme example but version of that happened throughout the media universe because we have this whole new ability to curate the facts. we receive, which often aren't facts. the information get and we, each one of us is living in a different version of reality from the person to our left and the person to our right that isn't enormous problem. and great wellspring of anger right now. that's true. and i mean, i know, people will say like all republicans are horrible people and i'm going you really want to say that? you know, i, i we don't do this

professional. see, that's that's an absurdity. if you change that to somebody's skin color, right. yeah. think about that. and you just reminded me one thing speaking of anger and grievance, there was a terrific story. i think jane mayer did it in the new yorker years ago about how rupert murdoch bought the rights to nfl because. he was australian. he didn't care about american, but because he knew the and the attachment to watching sports, they would already have this sort of fever. you know how men can get. sorry for making a generalization. men can get i guess women can do but get riled up watching sports and he knew that that going to be a secret so you made me think about that that that was one of the building blocks of fox news was owning the right steve said i don't care what it costs because know we're going to have impassioned i want to just flip this little bit and talk about victimhood, which to me is so fascinating because i'm looking around the room and most of us are similar age and you grow up with profiles in courage and the

idea of being brave. and we think john f kennedy or george h.w. bush and people who served two wars and the idea of being a victim, you know, was just heresy i mean, nora ephron famously said never be the victim of your own story. and now we have somebody like donald trump, but other people as well who grew up with everything and yet paints himself as a and i still cannot wrap my head around how this became attractive politically. no but i mean you bring up the very thing victimhood has become a kind of political currency like never before and you're right i mean it's the cornerstone his entire political identity. it works. i mean, this is a sort of like he is both the result of a mindset and he is the accelerant. and the multiplier of a mindset. but it for him, because there were all of these people in america who felt like victims and he was basically saying, your symbol, you feel like

victims and you've identified your victimizers and guess what? those are the people who say hi as who say i have no business doing this, who look down on who speak of me in most mocking and derogatory ways. and so by getting behind me, you're getting back at them. this was his political pitch on some from the very beginning and he kind of distilled it perfectly about a year and a quarter ago when kicking off this current campaign. he said i am your retribution. what that meant was your ultimate revenge against all of those elites are pressing you is to saddle them with me again. you know, it's just extraordinary. again, if you went in the wayback machine really saying victimhood, you know, that was not. but this isn't the first time, though, as i mentioned in the book, what's interesting is it went away for a while and then it came back but if go back and you look at a lot of the cultural conversation now in the late eighties and the early nineties, and i document this at some length, it sounds so much

like today, it just has a different vocabulary. so robert bork at the time was against radical egalitarian ism. when you hear him define, you realize he's talking about what we now call wokeism, right? the same tensions existed then, but then they kind of broke for a while and now they're back. and even more intense, exacerbated form. so i wanted wonderful point i want to talk about something you write about the u.s. is an envy engine. it's sort of a nation of the have everything and we see that bravo a whole channel you know that's dedicated devoted to people who seem to have everything and the want everything's but can't. right and, you know, we can blame social media, obviously, but it again, an accelerant it wouldn't work if there was an audience anyway. there just seem to be so many ways to be miserable, annoyed and angered. i would love if you would read about sort of microclimates of privilege yeah, i think something has happened in our service economy that is a piece of this puzzle.

when i was a teenager in the late 1970s and early 1980s, okay, you can do the arithmetic i'm 59 when i was a teenager in the late 1970s and early 1980s and went to the big concerts of major different sections of seating had different prices but fell into a few general categories. a person's proximity to the stage often had less to do with her financial reserves than with how quickly and heroically. she'd acted to get her tickets. i once showed up at the box office of what was then called the hartford civic center at three in the morning in pitch to be in place when tickets for a queen concert went on sale several hours later. that was the path to the best seats. my friends and i ended up in the eighth row where i caught freddie tambourine when he threw it into the crowd at the conclusion of the band's song. and there was egalitarian about it. but the seating maps for various stops on taylor swift's 2023 tour revealed scores, and scores

of price tags tailored extreme specificity to the precise desirability of the vantage point the highest ones were many thousands of dollars above the lowest ones a family four or five posting photos of themselves, among other ecstatic as showtime neared was in some cases announcing to the world its ability to drop $10,000 or more on one night's entertain moment. but while the price range for swift exceeded the price range for a garden variety superstar, the exacting tearing of the experience was a common phenomenon in the world of live music. when i was a teenager school essentially came in two sizes public or private. now private is the starting point with many costly but broadly applied add ons. the tutors for subjects, the separate tutor for standardized exams, the sports coach, the independent college admissions

consultant for a hefty fee does more plotting and pacifying than the counselors already on the school are able to. when was a teenager you were posh? if you belonged to a private gym versus, say, the ymca the brand of that gym and the level your membership weren't relevant. now planet fitness and equinox are solar systems of pampering apart and at some of the equinoxes the galaxy different clients pay significantly different sums for personal trainers in accordance with that ab whisperers determined gradation expertise those clients also pay a surcharge for a better locker room, a surcharge for certain other sanctimony and none that is unnoticed by or unnoticeable to the other customers. it's noticeable ness is part of the point. aspiration iron and perspiration go together. the emphasis of the american economy may have changed over the years from manufacturing to

services, but one product we make in abundance is distinctions. that's terrific. yet i think we've always had these cases, obviously. i mean, there was actually people came over in both in steerage and people over in boats. and worse than that. but i think kate winslet and leo in different sides of the titanic. that's right and there was slavery but now we're also made aware and you see sort of the the degradation or the privilege is the point right. it's crazy mean we have done this sort of like fine grained tearing of the surface economy. think about the airport, you know, think i begin that chapter that that appears in imagining the jones is and the johnsons going to disney world and how from the moment they arrive at the airport to the moment they get to the amusement park, every aspect of their experiences the joneses have paid at every juncture to just glide through everything. and the johnsons are on long lines. i mean, if you go to an

amusement park today, there are these people who while you're sweating in the sun, waiting hours for space mountain, are zooming the front because they've paid for some i think it's called the jeanie pass right. there was no jeanie pass when i was growing. and i think it is it one of the existence of this sort of tearing these sort of microclimates of exclusive and privilege, i think are really potent engines of envy that explain of the anger we're talking about. yeah. and that another thing is that everyone has a take right. you everyone has an opinion on everything like the minute that taylor i've never an opinion never you get paid that's a great thing or you know i've read many takes on taylor swift or beyonce it's like we over analyze things to death but it's sort of a you know array of be an exhausting array of beefs but before we get to questions i want to have a little of hope. i'm sure some of these questions about some of the remedies for this that you mentioned in the pocket, if you could share with

i've be glad to thank you. but i also want say taylor swift gives me hope seriously if you look at how and what a phenomenon her concert tour became and if you if you think about how many people you knew who were going to it and if you think how interested diverse diverse people were in being kind of in taylor swift. she's a phenomenally talented human being, but that was about so much more than her talent. what i saw in that was such just such a fierce desire to have a common conversation, to something we could all talk about, she was our sort of she was a sort of cooler show that no longer exists. and i saw i mean i mean, i hear 60 year olds. i hear six year olds talking about taylor swift. and in their desire to talk about her and in the joy with which they talk about her part of what i hear is this real yearning to once again be kind of reading from a common playbook, to be having a shared

conversation. so i think there's a lot of hope in that. how do we get to that shared? i think there are all sorts of things we can do across many different fronts of of life that we're just not committing to. there are political reforms that would that would we we do a gerrymandering we need to think about the way our primaries are set up and how they reward how they reward extremist candidates. there was a great story in the new york times in the last three weeks. some of you will probably remember better than i do, and i can't remember the precise timing which looked at what has happened in michigan over the last five years in terms of in terms of pushing back against gerrymandering in terms of making the state more representative and not a model for minority rule. and all of those things happened because of citizen movements and because of the passion and persistence of voters themselves. that needs to happen in more states. that's really, really hopeful story. we need to do things in terms of the way when whether it comes to

how we spend government money, how we design cities. we need to incentivize people from diverse crossing paths rather than doing what's happening now, which is being sorted ever more narrowly into enclaves that, never interact with each other. we can those things with certain kinds of government actions, certain kinds of spending. we're a library, right? i write about in the book because i think they're one of the last bastions where. you actually, if you go to a library, you run into a lot of people who don't look exactly like you, who aren't the same age, who don't make the same amount of money. it is how few environments that exist. but we can in public buildings, public. there's a great book. i'm going to mispronounce his last name. there's a reason i write and don't do tv because. i can't pronounce anything but eric wrote a great book a couple of years ago called, palaces for the people, and it's all about the power of investing in spaces and public structures. that's another thing we could do. last thing i'll say many

politicians have talked about a national service program. people kind of think that's never going to happen because because if we made it compulsory would never happen. you can have a national service program that is not compulsory, but that has such elegant incentives built in that in fact you get a critical of people to do it. we need to we need to think more about that than we have. that's great. and one last thing, then we'll go to questions is about humility. you end with that. that's. so can you talk a little bit about that. yeah, i think part of what we're experiencing is a crisis of humility. the idea, too, people believe that they are right and everybody else is wrong. that is an humble too many people think world society, politics should conform precisely their liking. that is not the way life works and that's on humble. i mentioned january six before the grievance prom. when you look at that day what saw was was violent it was frenzied it was savage i think above it was un humble because those people were basically saying if the country voted

differently from us well, then that's the wrong way and we're going to and we're going to get the result is the right result by any means necessary. but as many of them couldn't, that a majority of people in the country would vote differently. they had, and therefore it must be lie, it must be rigged. that is profoundly un humble. one of the wonderful point i think we're going to go to questions now. over there. yeah. this is little off topic but would you sharing just one story about your. oh my gosh how to pick. thank you for that not of you know this but i spend an inordinate amount of syllables in my newsletter on my dog and she's very photogenic.

you think i? don't think i've ever written this, but she this wonderful habit which only lasts about minutes when she's very happy and when we play fetch with her favorite rope ring, she goes and she fetches it. and then she's bringing it out. she's bringing it back. she takes several pauses to throw it, in the air, to herself to catch it again. and then she's. and then. and then in her joy, she falls to the and she does sideways somersaults. and if there's a neighbor watching, they always say, oh, my gosh, that means she's rolling. --, you've got to stop her. but she's not. she's just joyously doing somersaults she's like simone biles, something. even me. do it next. i sit back there. yes. hi.

yeah. so the first time there was a fantastic talk. i really appreciate. i was born in 1998. m of the younger generation that's here and i thought that was interesting talking about how since i think 2000 for people satisfaction with the country has been steadily decreasing. i think something that me and my think about a lot is that our. hasn't really had like a rallying event whether that be a war or kind of like national experience and it was interesting you talking about taylor tour is this kind of like most recent phenomena that really rallies the group of people i was curious if you found in looking back that what has rally most often are those types of like national tragic events that be a war or attack or something that or if there are other pieces of pop culture that you've seen over time that really unites the country and this kind of a common conversation. thank you. i don't that i have an answer to

all of that but i have an observation that kind of fits into your question maybe is a partial answer. you know, go back to september to 911, right. and you definitely saw the country rally after that. and you saw a period several weeks, maybe even more than a month when george w bush was then president, when his approval ratings were above 85%. i think there was a poll or to rise above 90%. i would make i would bet a lot money that in our lifetimes we're going to see an american president have an approval, over 65%, maybe not even over 60, because we've become so much more unyielding, partizan and. when the covid pandemic came along in the beginning, we were calling it the coronavirus pandemic. it was at the start. and there's a lot that wasn't. but it was clear that this was, you know, a global that it was a pandemic, that it was global, that the magnitude was was

immense, and that this was something that threaten everyone and do do damage that would be long lasting. i waited for people not to come together in quite the way they did after 11, but i waited for and kind of expected to see, okay, we're going to we're going to see some at least echo of that sort of national solidaire ante. and, in fact, if it anything became like a partizanship and i it's a good indication of how much has changed. i'm not sure given how politically tribal we've become given how ruthlessly sorted we've been by the internet and social media, given example, the examples that our are setting, which are not good examples and i'm not sure one of those sorts of events you refer to would do today what it has done historically. and that makes me really sad. and i thought i thought january 6th had the potential because both republicans and democrats threatened mike pence was and it

didn't happen. that's that's that's an even better example. no. in fact, in immediately it became dueling narratives. right. my next question, there was somebody way in the back i'm sorry, was trying get. yes, right there. thank you. excuse me. thank you frank being here. just a quick question, which is you mentioned about ossified media. you said you're not tv guy, but i assume you're at least trying get on fox to at least promote the book. right. so what you say should go on fox? yeah, exactly. should i haven't gone on fox. yeah. well you, they haven't asked me so i haven't had that moral dilemma but in the but that that's what i was going to if you were asked you know would go and how do you think you'd be treated on on a right wing media ecosystem? that's a great question. if asked i would go and i will tell you why i would go mean would i like to sell more books? sure.

i'm a human being. i mean, interrupt to that. he's number six on the new york times bestseller or with. but yes i'd like to sell more books because i you know, i have utility bills. regan needs her gourmet kibble. right right. i would go on fox for the same reason i believe that people would. a judge goes on or that roxana goes on fox. i don't we're served by not speaking to people who disagree with us. in fact i think when we avoid speaking with the people disagree with us we just ensure that they will continue to see us and caricature and us and assume that we want to have nothing to do with them and are not interested in a potentially productive conversation. even if the odds of that are slim, how would i be treated? i don't know. but would i would say the same things i said here tonight? know, i would i would certainly say that i have criticisms of the left and their abundant in the book. but i would certainly say that i think the right right now has more to answer for.

and i would feel free to bring up the dominion voting system suit and that point, my guess is we go to commercial break in the segment he is going on bill who's getting more conservative by the week so you know. let me just see. yes in the middle there the woman in the middle there is right there. yeah. this is sort an unformed question. i i'm crazy about you. i'm crazy about regan. i should have brought regan. you know, you she came to philadelphia. philadelphia once for like just a kind of vacation weekend. she's very good in a hotel. and i beautiful pictures of her on the rocky steps. i do. i do now. i totally forgotten what i was going to say. that was that was the strategy that was my job. right. and she was praising you.

so i'm a retired presbyterian minister. and if i were still in the pulpit, you would be in my sermon next sunday on humility that that column in the new york times was incredible. and you were in my sermons when i was preaching, but i'm also an english. and so i'm wondering, your next book would be so i see your last chapter are okay, what are my solutions or my thoughts? but if you would write a whole book you're teaching now and words are so important and the thing love about your newsletter are sentences the sentences you have in the newsletters and so the sentences of humility like how do we teach ourselves again to speak in a way way that is invitational that you know, if you were like you're probably already your next book, but i'd like your next book to be like on humility and i'm just saying

it's well, it's, it's, it's. it's funny you say that. i have not committed to my next book. i do have a fairly developed idea but i will tell you that about six months ago i said my agent that the on humility you read in the times was from the book. it was words from the book. and i said to my agent, you know, as i wrote the book, chapter that meant the most to me was the final one on humility. and i really wanted kind of sit and stay with that longer. i think my next book should be on humility, she said. no one will buy it. next idea. that's so funny. so maybe i should go back to her. but was on team humility and so i was slapped down. but you know i think just to give you a slightly more serious answer and then move on. i think some of the things that don't teach adequately in school are in fact vessels for humility. i think when you when teach history in the proper way, you are teaching people to be

humble. are you are reminding them that their moment in time exists in a larger context and is informed by everything that came before, when you teach citizenship and civic duty a correct way. you're teaching humility. so i would like to see us get back to some of those things which sound like some curmudgeons kind of fussy wish list. but i think, they're really fundamental to civic health. yes right here. these have been such friendly questions. i want to ask you about a grievance that's gotten lot of attention recently. the president apparently real happy with the new york times. and i wonder if you talk a little bit about that. so you're you're talking. well, i mean, the president isn't happy with isn't unhappy with the new york times for a number of reasons so seriously. what exactly there was a widely reported story that the times was mad at.

they were mad that that access about access that he do an exclusive interview with times. well actually now i mean i'm not i should say here i write regularly for the times. i'm not on staff. and even when i was on staff. i'm not privy to the discussions and the details at the highest levels. and i don't speak for the news organization. my my my my understanding of what happened there is. they were complaining. i'm sure was out of self-interest. i'm sure they wanted the interview to be with the times, but they were complaining more widely about the lack of interviews biden has done period, about the fact that he ranks the bottom of recent presidents, if not at the bottom in terms of doing press conferences, in terms of doing interviews with independent, large you know, the most the most venerable organizations. and they're right about that and i think they are right bring that up and their right to press about that as a matter of democracy, as a matter of time, self-interest so if the unhappy

with the times because they're saying you're not being transparent interacting enough with the media i'm going to take the times aside there is it everything does it mean we should all go out and vote for donald trump? not my opinion. but i think it's a legitimate thing to bring up and i think it's important. i thought you were going to go else with this question. there's a lot of debate since the beginning of the week when joe klein, the executive editor of the times, an interview to semaphore. and the question seemed to be. like, are you abetting a possible by donald trump? and thus essentially doing an unpaid patriotic thing by covering biden critically and? he was saying no, and i'm on his side with that too. again, because i'm worried for my job or whatever we can't. we will have no credibility and no voice when we criticize a politician via trump or any other politician. if we openly sugarcoat and censor ourselves in interests of a given outcome. i believe in terms of things i

write, i believe that when i occasionally weigh in on joe biden's age and say that it is not ideal for him as a candidate right now, that it's hurting him and that it is giving some voters pause. i get readers emailing me saying, how dare you do you want another four years of trump? no, don't. but i'm also i'm not to work for either. and i believe i'll have more credibility when i weigh in against something. if i'm honest about the about the shortcomings as well as the virtues of the person i may end up voting for, i thought, that's where you're going to go. and i wish people would understand that journalists are not campaign aides and if they start becoming campaign aides, that is going to lead anywhere good. yes, sir. thank you very much for your remarks. she's done a great job of describing the uniqueness of politics and grievance in

america today, as grievance metastasized to other countries. i'm going to answer because know we're going to run out of time. i'm going to answer that in one word, brexit brexit. but yes, i mean, throughout western democracies. but, you know, i mean, we had an we had an echo january 6th in brazil. in fact, we had something happen that was exactly the same almost i mean, pretty much the same in in many western european countries and central countries. you see very same tensions you see here a maga style populism driven by grievance and and other forces. yeah, this is this goes beyond the united states. i think we are the most intense and fascinating laboratory for grievance. we're number one. yeah, number one. but no, i mean for reasons we should sort be proud of, this is a country that makes grand promises, right? that's part of what's so special about. it. but with grand promises comes,

the part the very real possibility disappointment. right. and i think that's part of what we're seeing here are very kind of aspirations and ideals become a problem when we fall short of them. it doesn't mean we shouldn't them and it certainly doesn't mean we shouldn't keep striving toward them. but it is one of the explanations for why i think we're so quick to feel frustrated and so quick to feel shortchanged because our country promises so much. i'm trying to a woman, there's nothing but men having grand. but we can't really we also can't see that well, we can't see that well but i can sort of see. okay, there's a sorry. okay, okay this. goes back to the question about was there some big event that should have brought us together and i what came to mind for me was the 2008 mortgage crisis

where what what happened was that you know, the country was not on the brink and they bailed out the rich people, you know, the bankers, which kind of needed to happen, but then didn't help the homeowners who were underwater. and, you know, you couldn't because you couldn't, you know, show that you, you know, you couldn't refinance to lower your mortgage rate. so i think i feel like that generated a lot of resentment and anger. that said aside, like, oh, those people and everybody else is left behind. so just wondering, yeah, if you feel like that's contributed to the that was early. early of the beginning of the resentment. agree. i agree entirely. and i talk about 28 in the book. you're absolutely right. and you describe it exactly perfectly. i mean, remember, thousand eight is what we got the tea. and in some sense the tea party is what begat the maga movement. and i say that in a way like we

may there may be aspects and certainly manifestations these days and portion of the maga movement that that strikes many of us is absolutely bonkers and reprehensible. but if we're trying to understand how it got there and the full movement we need to. acknowledge what you just acknowledged. it didn't emerge from just madden yes. there are economic there are socioeconomic. there are the way the government responded to a crisis reasons there real reasons why that ended up being. and if we were a little bit better about understanding and acknowledging, we might have a better response, a better and more productive, constructive to it that could lead us to a healthier moment. thank you. thank you. thank you. frank bruni. thank you all 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 program and podcast produced by c-span booktv. we look at the business of publishing and we talk with authors about their work as well. in just a minute, we're going to be joined by columnist danny heitman of the baton rouge advocate to talk about rereading the classics. but first, i want to let you know that all booktv programs are available online at booktv dot org.

danny heitman. in the wall street journal. you wrote a column entitled i'm revisiting the books of my youth. why are you doing that. well, peter, i'm revisiting the books of my youth, basically based on my rediscovery of my norton anthology of american literature. that i used as a college freshman college student in 1982. and as you can see, it's really born the year. it's now held together with some duct tape and basically, in the course of cleaning out my house and tidying things up, i decided i'm going to take this old book from the shelf and i'm going to repair it in the course of

repairing it. i reconnected with some of the wisdom that was and it wisdom that, to be frank, was not well received when i was a freshman college student because quite frankly, i was too young to really appreciate what writers like henry david thoreau or ralph waldo emerson or emily dickinson had to tell me. so in reconnecting with that as an older person, i realized that a lot of the literature really resonates. as you add more birthdays, as i have and as everybody adds, that's what really reignited my desire to to to really revisit these classics and to engage with them as a source of instruction in my daily life. and in your column, you quote margaret aire burns as saying

the trouble with education is that we always read everything thing when we are too young to know what it means. and the trouble with life is that we're always too busy to reread it later. that's true, isn't it? i mean, when i was a college freshman and i was listening to henry david thoreau talk about the advantages of having very few possessions. it really fell on deaf ears with me because i didn't have anything to speak of. i was a poor college student. i have a very old jalopy of a car that i used to get back and forth to class and my aspirations at that time were to acquire more stuff like a lot of young people. and so thoreau, quite frankly, struck me as as an oddball.

he here was a guy who lived at a cabin out by the woods, did not have any obvious means of he didn't seem to have any kind of romantic life, which is something that like a lot of college students, i also wanted. and the other thing that struck me about him is the pictures. i notice that he had a pretty strange hair and and viewers might find this hard to believe. but back in college, when i had a little bit more hair on my cell, i thought, hey, it'd be great, really never have a keen hairstyle that would be attractive to members of the opposite sex. and, you know, thoreau kind of looked like a guy with bedhead, so this was not a guy that i automatically looked to as a hero, as a college freshman. well, fast forward a few decades. you know, now that i'm a guy

who's had a mortgage, his filled backyard shed with more tools than i can ever use on shelves, with more books than i can ever read, and a closet with more shirts than i could ever wear. of course. now what thoreau was saying means just so much more to me and it's just kind of a fundamental irony of life that whenever we're introduced to these great works of literature or in school, we're just often just, frankly, just too young to really appreciate what these writers are trying to tell us. so it's been a real blessing thing in my life to be able to connect as an older person and really grasp more deeply what these books have to tell me. so, danny heitman, even though you don't necessarily write about this, what's the solution to that young problem reading

old writers and their wisdom? how do we how do we reconcile those things. i think one thing that is a florida is to create opportunities for these books to greet us throughout our lives, even after we leave college and a really great way to do that is to hear these books in a bright and interesting way that even after we leave college, we might be tempted to go and reconnect with them. a very powerful example with me is after i left car, after i'd left my american lit class and a couple of years later, i had a summer internship on capitol hill. and as i was on my lunch hour

and i was leaving the smithsonian museum of natural history, a little fleck of gray caught at the corner of my eye, pivoted. and there was a bright leigh illustrated edition of walden there on the shelf of the gift shop. and just seeing walden curated in that bright, interesting way, really kind of prompted me to revisit it again. now, i still was not fully receptive to its message, but i do think it underscores the value of just our popular culture continuing to reintroduce these works to us. i'm going to give you a great example of that. i have a i have a really nice abridgment of henry david thoreau's journals that was published a few years ago by new york review books.

really nice, bright paperback. and this is the kind of thing that a younger person might be tempted to pick up. the other thing i just cannot say enough good things about the library of america, which is a nonprofit, organized nation that curates really the definitive editions of classic american literature. they're also a great resource if you want to really revisit these great works of literature. this edition right here is an edition of emerson selected journals. and this book is really dear to me because i think in emerson's journals, you really connect with a man who's a lot more emotionally vulnerable than the ralph waldo emerson of his essays. and as essays, you can kind of come across, quite frankly, as a little bit pompous.

there's a great upcoming biography. it's going to be due out this spring of ralph waldo emerson by james marcus. glad to the brink of fear. and marcus very humorously says that ralph waldo emerson can seem to him kind of like that uncle at holiday gatherings is dispensing advice that you really don't want to hear. just a little bit of a bore in emerson's journals, you see a man whose really struggling he's struggling with grief. he's struggling with wonder. he's struggling with the whole idea of religion and how to best honor divinity and the cosmos. and this is the guy that a young person would be much more inclined to embrace than the emerson, who are sometimes taught an american lit class.

so i think moving culture is a great way to reconnect us with the classics. so many great adaptations of jane austen novels as an example. and also just biographies that kind of give us a new dimension of these figures. you know, like there's a wonderful recent biography of henry david thoreau by laura dussault walls. she connects you with thoreau as someone who has just got a lot more dimensions than the guy just hanging out. you know, by the pond, trying to think great thoughts. there's a great reason anthology about henry david thoreau. now comes good sailing. it's edited by andrew blotter a lot of great writers who talk about how thoreau is deeply

relevant to them and the modern lives that they lead, and probably my favorite essay in here is by george howe holds. there's just really a neat writer analysis. thoreau on ice and he talks about the fact that thoreau just really enjoyed ice skating and he just had a great time out on the ice. this is not a henry david thoreau that we typically think about a guy who's out there having fun. and so i, i just think if we can create as many opportunities as past rebel for readers to simply happen upon these writers again, then that's all to our benefit. danny heitman besides thoreau dickinson emerson who else? what other authors or contained in your edition of norton

anthology? well, one writer that i really want to point out is elizabeth bishop, who is just a fabulous american poet who just wrote with such absolute precision about her inner life and, you know, one of the complications is that a teacher can tell you of teaching a survey course as you just cannot get every writer in this anthology. so i was not exposed to elizabeth bishop, third classroom instruction. she is someone that i happened across cross again in this book and i revisited her while recuperating from getting my wisdom teeth out, and i was

heavily sedated. i was then allowed in my apartment and there was a public television documentary on about elizabeth bishop and they were reciting long one art, which is about the art of losing. and bishop says, ironically, the art of losing isn't hard to master. and what she's really saying is losing and lost alive can indeed 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 had been charmed by bush because also heavily sedated after dental surgery. so i went and pulled my norton

anthology off the shelf from college and revisit her work. our split, split more accurately. i visited her work for the first time in this anthology, and i found it every bit as magical as i had the day before. another great writer that is in the anthology ology that is just more relevant than ever is james baldwin. a great excerpt of the fire next time. james baldwin, of course, and the formative african-american writer. but i really would caution people don't just connect with james baldwin, because he speaks so eloquently about the african-american experience. ends connect with james baldwin because he connects eloquently with universal human experience. so that's what all great writers

do. and whenever he talks about in that great essay, she has a stranger in the village, he talks about being in switzerland and being the only person of color in this little village. you know, on one level, it's a commonplace sign of race. on another level, it's a contemplation of the degree to which all of us, whatever our walks of life at some point, we're outsiders. and he connects with that experience. so powerful and with such poetic sentences that he's just a writer, that everybody should read. danny heitman the norton anthology has been expanded over the years to include newer writers. i bet that's a fun debate at the norton company. when they decide who to include with that, what do you think about the expansions? well, that's all to the good.

i mean, cannon's literary cannons are reconsidered with every generation and i just think it's a great that that that's done. i you know, again, think that while it's great to include writers because perhaps they come from under represented communities. i also think it's important for people to really value these writers because if they're great writers, they speak to universal experiences. an example of that from british literature for me is virginia woolf. virginia woolf is widely celebrated and rightly so, as a great feminist writer and as someone who spoke very powerful

way about the marginalization of women. and this wonderful essay she wrote about a room called a room of one's own. she talked about the the wrong headed policies that excluded women from higher education. and i think, you know, anybody can get great instruction and injustice 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, gosh, her sentences are just so beautiful. they're so perfectly balanced. they're just like a butterfly that is land on a rose.

and they're just gorgeous sentences. and. i right now, i've i've been involved in reading her journals. that's that's how i've spent the past few weeks, you know, reading her her diary entries. that's where you kind of get a very intimate look of virginia woolf at ground level. there's a wonderful little passage that i read yesterday where she's scholarly herself and saying, you know, i really should have spent more time writing today. but instead, i beg to take, you know, and that's kind of a neat thing. and we can all relate to that because all of us are really getting moods sometimes where we have work today. but instead of doing the work that we should be doing, we do other stuff that seems more fun. danny heitman is a columnist for the baton rouge advocate public station. and i'll tell you that one of

the classics that i return to again and again is one that takes place in your neck of the woods, a confederacy of dunces by john kennedy toole. you know, i have a little quirk and even though a book reviewer occasionally write a few book reviews for the wall street journal and other places, and i'm someone who's constantly urging people to read this and read that, i tend to get my back whenever somebody says, you really need to read this at. my first encounter with a confederacy of dancers is when it was published, when i was in high school and a friend of mine met me in the hall while we were on our way to class and he said, you have absolute got to read confederacy of dunces. and i thought he i don't i don't know if i want to read that, but

eventually just just to placate my friend, i started reading it and it really had a subversive effect on me. it is so rich, but roaring like funny that i would think about it while i was in biology class or while in physics class or while i was on an english class and i would just have this uncontrollable urge to laugh. and it has been, you know, one of my all time favorite books ever since. the reason that i love it so much is the main character like so many of us who read the headlines every day, he is thoroughly convinced that the rest of the world is populated by idiots. and as you continue to read the book, which you watch, you slowly come to understand is our

hero, ignatius riley. while he's condemning everyone for being absolute fools. he is actually the biggest fool in the book and it's the book is really two things for me. it is kind of an observation of someone who is essentially an extended adolescence. he thinks people in authority are our dullards. he just is so exasperated at the world, hasn't quite caught up to his ideas of how the world should be. that is very much an adolescent sensibility, which is why it it just really struck me so deeply in high school. but the book is also a kind of a an observation about our own moral blindness. we always think the other person is absolutely wrong. and if they would just come around to our way of thinking, then the world would be better.

and quite often we're flawed, too. i mean, is is there a better book to read right now with our country being so divided as it is, as a book that's really about the fact that we need to look at our own foibles? i mean, that is really what makes confederacy of books just an eternal classic. and i'm really glad that you brought it up. danny heitman where are you in the norton anthology right now? what are you reading? well, i have recently been rereading emerson again. you you know, emerson's essays. the first time i read them, i was really. really put off by what i consider to be a kind of a sense of dry certitude. and his essays, he seems and his essay sometimes more as if he's

proclaiming a truth that actually may prove a truth. he simply offers these observations and kind of makes you feel like they're settled. settled and. reading as journals really brought me to want to reread the essays. and now that i'm reading them, i have a greater appreciation of how hard earned those those truths were that emerson came across. and because he was a guy who has struggled, first of all with organized religion and how do we best, you know, honor god, even when we feel that church life is

emotionally distant from us? he also struggled with grief. he lost a wife very early, and his first marriage. and the so, you know, the ability to reconnect with these essays and read them, you know, knowing what i know now about emerson has really brought a whole new dimension of that experience for me. i wanted to share something that i that i found in his journals that really kind of gives us a different emerson than the guy who kind of feels like he's had it all figured out. emerson says good writing is a kind of scathing, which carries off the performer where he would not go. you know, so here is a guy who is basically saying, when you're

a writer, you have to give yourself permission to go to places that you did not expect and and this is the emerson that i really like to hold to heart, as opposed to the guy who kind of sounds like he is poor, offering pronouncements from a pulpit. so in danny heitman writes in the wall street journal, as he obligations of marriage and parenthood kept me home more often, i reread passages from thoreau's walden for instruction and how to savor small moments outside my doorstep in the wake of family deaths. i found emerson's quiet resolve after his own losses and inspiration. dickinson, whose poems remained open to joy as the country. cory turned toward the civil war, offers me a model in seeking serenity amid social division danny heitman. we appreciate your time on book tv. thank you. it's great to join you from phi

kappa phi where i had it for a magazine and i really grateful for the opportunity to connect to that. thank you, sir, and thanks for joining us for about books, a program and podcast produced by c-span spoke tv all booktv programs are available online line to watch at booktv. the board.

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 then i want to talk about the political constraints a little bit, because i disagree with brands somewhat about the rationality of the political constraints. i do think that there's a selfish to it that's quite strong. and i think that some of the data on data on renters tends to be confounded by the fact that like cities have, a lot of renters are also tend 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 that they 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 it seems like telework should be totally fine solution. so when i was writing open borders, there like four comparable indian programmers, they were making triple the wage in the u.s. versus in india. you say, well like what's the difference? emailing your work assignments from india versus emailing them from the u.s.? but it did seem like the market consider there to be some very differences in being physically as to what they are. it might just be team building or something like that.

so hard to say. but what we do know is that that's a even stronger experiment and it does seem like telework is not even for which would seem like the ideal case is nowhere near enough on density fertility thing, the correlation is undeniable. question is the causation? yeah. all right. here's the thing. we need to go and find a place where you've got where it's really dense. but cheap that doesn't exist. that would be the real test in terms of the sense test. it's like, well, you sure i don't want to have a lot of kids if i'm living in a 200 square foot apartment. but what if you could live in new york city in a 5000 square foot apartment? what that how do you feel about having kids then? that's something where we could look at the the super rich right now. and they probably are actually having large families when they able to afford that large of a at the 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. now furthermore, notice that this complaint really only holds specifically for high rises anyway. and when you're about seeing about allowing people to go and build more homes on single family, lots kind of thing, that i'd say that the effect on fertility is totally clear. let's see. on the complimentary goods, you know, it is worth pointing. they do charge property taxes on this construction and they use this property taxes to go and build stuff since it's at local level, it does usually roughly pay for itself, but there are some somehow implications on congestion. i totally know. it's really and that's why i'm trying with everything i've got all the way down to getting a romanian artist to change minds

and make them realize that they're being very silly about this, it is a bizarre fetish to say that parking should be free driving, should be free when it is causing so harm. you know, i think the real problem is economic illiteracy, just convincing people there is some connection between the price and the congestion hard as it may be to believe. i do have my my my favorite argument actually is to take a five minute walk from my place and there is a bridge over route 66. and to show people count the cars and the for toll lanes count the cars and the six free lanes. do you notice the difference. are you convinced that the total change congestion not like events are this come back 20 more times until you're convinced because it's so clear how could deny it let's see on the question of the political motivations. my first book is the myth of rational voter, and i have done a lot of public opinion. i will say that i think that the

idea that people are voting their objective is so popular and yet so fundamentally 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 not. so that's the real problem almost everyone is forming their

political views not from any observation of the world not from calculation of self-interest but rather it's a philosophy. the philosophies are usually so half baked, quarter baked. it's like your philosophy is that pakis should be free. that's what philosophy says. and yet that is the kind of philosophy that a lot of people have. it's not fair to charge a nickel for parking. it goes against the laws of nature. it's like, why that? why is that the thing that ought to be free rather than a million other stuff that you pay for barely any answer either. you know the story that with rent control. it makes it especially at least it reduces a lot of the reason for tenants to be to be supportive of building more housing. i think at least one of the papers they have is a national sample. most cities in america do not have rent control, but it's very normal for tenants to be favor of regulation. for the same reason i say that almost everyone favors almost everything in politics. they think that it's good for the country. they haven't put a lot of time

into this. they are not reasonable. it it's hard to bargain with them, but that is the reason so that's really what i'm focusing on to get a change in people's philosophy. if you say that's really hard. brian, i know i've been working on this stuff for 30 years, really book is my latest efforts like to persuade someone that doesn't agree with me. you were mentioning how the young even middle school kids might might appreciate it. i've had kids are in elementary school. enjoy it. so and this is actually when my daughter was reading my first graphic novel over my shoulder. so i've got something here. i've got something describing academic research that five year old is voluntarily reading. so that is my best solution is get them all their young self. hopefully we can do it now thanks to by the power of cato, we shall not write. all right. i might suggest that your children are perhaps not representative sample, but they're still so. they she was still five.

yeah. we're going to go to questions and we're going to take questions both from the audience here at the institute and, our online audience, the online audience can join the conversation and submit questions directly on the event page, facebook, youtube and on x using the hashtag cato books. i'm actually going to take the first question from the online audience because it basically relates to what you just said right now. the question is, how successful do you think? first, the first book and then now this book will be reaching a very broad audience compared to your other work? hmm. well, let's see the open borders. my first graphic novel was a new york times bestseller, so that's better than any of my other books have. will i make the base bestseller list? that's out to you? people in media land to decide whether makes the list bye. bye bye bye. many copies see in terms of its likelihood actually changing policy. yeah like here i'm just going be

brutally realistic and say odds. one book has a big change. it's really rare, right? and generally the books that have had a really big effect have been bad books that have made the world worse. so communist manifesto, little book, they were really popular, changed the world, but they made it worse. so for a book to make things better. yeah, so maybe capitalism. milton friedman free to choose, maybe hikes road to serfdom may have pushed things a bit in the better direction and and even that is kind of speculative don't really get to see the world without those books written. i mean what i'll say is, i mean, i'm doing the best i can my honest assessment is probably only i get tens of thousands of readers. unfortunately i need tens of millions of readers. and that's life. i mean, i just do the best i can. let's a question here. we have microphones, please, for the microphone, so that the rest of the folks in the auditorium and the people online can hear you. and please give your name and your affiliation and please a

question not a speech or filibuster served back here. my name is tim houston. i am active. very active. the nimbys of northern virginia. thank you, jim. bless you for arguments to convince the many, many people who believe that building more housing will increase prices. because i know so many smart who actually don't think of supply demand so i'm read your book yet so perhaps you have ways to say that to convince people. yeah so main argument that economists are made is called housing filtering and it says even if i go build some new luxury apartments that no one with an income below the 99th percentile is going to be occupying first. still, where do you get those tenants? you get them from people that are currently in some other nice units. and what happens there? well, they move some people there, they meet some people there in a giant chain reaction.

so most people are unlikely to be persuaded by the actual research. i think probably the best argument here is just to go and say, look, take a look at the of the homes that low income people are living in now. how often low income people live in stuff that was built to last three years, almost ever. they're almost all they're almost always living in older stuff. and it's like, what would have happened if 20 years ago? we stopped them from going and that thing, which was nicer, higher end when it was first built, the answer is that the place that is now being occupied by low income people wouldn't have been built 20 years ago. and then where would be? so in that point of remaining people look where look at the housing that is currently housing the people you care about. when was it built and what did it look like? that and the answer is when it was built, it was nicer. it was you know, you don't generally something at first to go and sell it to low income occupants but filtering not a theory, it's just something that you can go and check in the

basic property tax records when you just see when was that thing built and realized that that's how people with low income get places that they get places that were not originally built for them and then they filter down to other people in. this very natural process i think when i have this argument and there are two things. one is i think you do have to acknowledge that there are isolated cases where it increases property prices in an immediate area. right. so lake union market i, i happen to live near. it was not there was nothing there was not developed at all. when i moved. and it is it has massively my property values for those who don't know. it's a neighborhood in washington, d.c., the northeast. and it it really increased my property values. now, there's all these nice amenities there weren't there when i moved in. now see wide the fact that there are now, i don't know a thousand maybe more units built in and around union market has lowered the citywide cost of housing

relative to but if you just tell people this never happens i think they don't trust you and so you say like look this can happen locally but our job is not just to preserve like these five houses here. the here our job is make sure that everyone in the city has houses and thing. i mean, it's an analogy that brian uses in his but i find the musical chairs analogy really helpful because that's that just cuts through like i think we often because we're so in it we find it hard to think how hard people find to think abstractly about these questions. right. they tend to think extremely contextual and locally and so they will they will say like, you're going to displace this tenant, you're going to do this. and you you have to say, look, it's unless you build housing, it's a game of musical chairs. you know, i did a talk on housing. it at chautauqua a few years ago, and it was so hard to convince people that there is no

way to make housing affordable other than building more housing. and finally, i was like, look, there are, you know, some of people you need to house if, you do not build enough housing for them. there is no other policies solution that solves that problem other than having housing for them to live in. and that was when they finally got it, was to stop thinking about prices actually, and to just start thinking about like there needs to be a unit for every family to live in. and one other quick point. you can also start with the regulations where you really have to twist your mind to see any other effect. then it being good for lower income buyers like get rid of minimum lot requirements. how could it possibly be good for the poor to? say every house has to have an acre. i think it's just really hard. say like, yeah, i don't say so. and that's a big regulation. so you just get people on board with that one. you're already doing a lot better than one could reasonably hope. the second row here, like.

hello, my name is off by about. hello, my name's austin, a first year economics student. george washington. i have two questions. my first question is about fertility. so melissa kearney at the brookings institute has said there's no relationship between the cost of living in an area and fertility. and it's also been that women report having less kids now than in the past. so those findings in mind, do you think that housing deregulation would really noticeably significantly increase fertility? and my other question links together, your two graphic novel novels, i agree that getting rid of immigration restrictions would be immensely positive, but it seems that downside is that increase immigration increase, housing costs and with the zoning have in place, those housing costs are going back down. so given the immense benefits of, both zoning liberalization and immigration liberalization, do you have a preference for

which we should do first? thank you. hmm. okay. same all right. so first of all, on the fertility point, i'm pretty convinced. here's the thing, right? so the total number of papers, the connection between housing prices, housing regulation and fertility, i think i able to find four papers ever written. so that's just truth in advertising. i'm not hiding papers. that said something else. i'm just saying that's all the papers that i can find right now. i would say just in terms of common sense, the point of one of the main reasons people keep leaving their parents is housing prices are high. i think that's just really clear. and i think you got to pretty crazy to say that's not an important reason why keep living with their families well into adulthood. the idea that living with their parents doesn't depress marriage, hard to believe the idea of leaving their parents doesn't depress your fertility while you're still living. also hard to believe. so i say in common sense. i think that it's really clear that i did a blog post called basement fertility where i just had a map of europe. and whether you're living with your parents and what fertility is and not a perfect correlation, but yeah, it's what you'd expect down in southern

europe. they keep living with their moms until they're 40. they have hardly any kids. and you move up north where moving out and having independent lives and they don't have fertility of three or even two. but it's a lot higher than down in spain or greece or italy where you just basically your mom do your laundry your whole life. so that and again, is it just culture? it's not just culture as they are squeezed in there. they don't have privacy. it's just so to go and get your own place there that it's at least a big part of what's going on. yeah, i'd say that it seems really clear to me i but again to be honest, not just based upon those for, but also common sense and basic. let's see on the question of should you prioritize housing over immigration the other one around like i am very much in the school of whatever you can get as soon as you can get it like it's so hard to get any deregulation if you start going well i'm not going to favor this until i get everything else that i want. wow, that's it. there's going to be any deregulation of anything on this

story. in the case of the effect of immigration, housing prices, i think it is clear that it does raise housing prices. when you get a lot more people from from an area they're in a highly regulated area. but by the magic of federalism, a lot of what happens in the united states is that is that population growth happens in the low regulation. and by and so even the immigrants themselves go to the high regulation areas. this is the end of the ultimate result is that population doesn't grow in the areas the immigrants went to. it grows in the other places. and obviously a lot of immigrants just cut out the middle stage and they immediately go to the place where prices low. so yeah, that's so much of what's going on in the u.s. is someone says, well, the whole country and like prices high, but they're not equally high everywhere. i could always go to texas and be able to afford a home while working at dairy queen. not something you're going to be able to do in new york, the bay area. so yeah, don't prioritize and take whatever you can get the second you can get it. could that possibly cause some problems? yeah, but that's the least

concerns. the real problem is ever, which is what normally i think brian thinks more like an economist and less like a politician. i might as a journalist have, i think, a little more like a politician. so what i would say this is that building more housing undercuts one of the reasons to oppose immigration, whereas having more immigrants come and driving up the price of housing actually make it harder to deregulate as. people panic about the about influx. and therefore, i would say probably try to do housing first. if you had to choose. but again, right, politics has a lot of determinants, not just one like in a, you know, philosophy seminar, housing first, but in a real world political world, there's a lot of moving parts. whichever one comes up first. yeah. and i think that people's understanding of their objective self-interest is so weak and they're political and their political concern. most of the politically effective on political views are so weak.

i it's true that people definitely complain immigration. where are immigrants raising housing prices? but i think it's better to think this as which complain about immigrants. am i going to make now rather this people have that it's not like otherwise i think they're great but they just said this one problem instead. normally getting partly based upon talking with my dad there is a four day in conclusion and then there's whatever seems like it's going to work right now. best is the one that i'm going to break up, but you kind of are in a sisyphean ordeal where, however you try, you're not going to change people's minds on that except with the power graphic novels course. but here's here's an author and great journalism and online we like empirical evidence. are there good examples or what's the best example of housing deregulation? how's it worked out? you know, honestly, i'd say the best examples are of just continuing low regulation, which i think a fair measure. so best examples, continuing low regulation. texas is one of the crown jewels of the when you actually go to

texas, start arguing, saying, no, we have terrible regulation. and the price of a house in 30 minutes outside of austin is up to $3,000 here, and it's only got four bedrooms and it's like. do you realize how good that sounds? most people around the country not it's perfect here, but it's really how how things are working here to how they are in the rest of the country in terms of explicit deregulation, where you start at high regulated and then you go down by a noticeable in the last rapture. i talk i talk about gibraltar facts. one depressing fact is that out of all the high regulation metropolitan areas in the us, none became noticeably deregulated between 2026 and 2018 zero. so their workplaces got less regulated. but these are places with hardly people. all right, so that's oh, man, this is a tough situation it's true that in recent years there have been some deregulatory policies, especially a child going after single family zoning in places like california,

minnesota. there's a bit i wish them well. i hope that it works out, at least for california. i did read the fine print and i was very depressed when i read the fine because part of the fine print says, yes, you can take your single family home and, turn it up into a quadruple x, up to four homes, but the owner is not allowed to sell. developer you must occupy your home while it gets turned into four homes, which california said. this is to make sure that you get payoff from the development only if you continue, stay there will you get the money. you've got to manage it yourself. this is like saying if oil someone finds oil on your land, you should have to drill the oil yourself to make sure you get the money out that you can't sell to someone who knows what they're doing. all right. so obviously, the real purpose of this is to gut the original 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 start chipping like the count of monte cristo, seven years or 70 years of chipping away. kate has been chipping away for now 45, 45 years, all there's like persistence wins the day, like a bulldog hang on and no one else will have our attention span and we will do it. yeah, for sure one day. never give up. well, just think how crazy it would seemed in 1965 to say like, we should deregulate trucking. we're you know, and we're going to we should deregulate which we did it it took a long time. and i think that the consensus

on this has only really started to emerge in the last 20 years, in part because the problem has only become so bad in the last 20 years. i actually want to ask you, when i when i got the book and, looked at the blurbs on the back, i was thinking to myself, oh, you should have asked paul krugman for a blurb. and then i saw he was in the book. yes. because i know he's you know, he's written columns about this. did you ask him for a blurb? i believe we did. i'm not 100%. i believe we did. obviously is a busy guy and he's great on housing. so if you're watching this paul thank you for being great on housing and i hope you like my representation of you in the book and if you want give a blurb now even better this is a question that's not really directly related to housing but you mentioned it as being a component of this problem. so brian, you've written a lot about economic. of course, starting with you daily paper. how do you think we should best deal with that issue? you write, economic illiteracy, the scourge of humanity, right? of course, we could all become

economics professors and but there is so truth in the idea that economics professors are boring and waste a lot of time on irrelevant details and failed to get big point across probably most you here have seen young ben stein or only middle aged ben stein doing the economics teacher in ferris bueller's off liberty and said to think that if we could just get a better argument, then people would have to change their minds immediately. like, no, we don't. i think we already got some really good arguments the problem delivery. so rather than going and trying to reinvent the econ textbook, i recommend we dust off our copy of dale carnegie's how to win friends and influence people. this is a book about how you actually win people over. how do you do it? by really friendly. don't call them stupid, don't call them evil. instead win them over on human level. step one is just seem like a decent person and i say all this not because i'm so great at it.

i say all this because i know that i improvement and i've improved from where i was in high school anyway because i was terrible back then. all right. so just smiling, right? you get a lot out of that. you have a sense of humor. i know you get a lot of this. this is why i do the graphic is because in the graphic novel, i can always be the best version of me in real life. i'm just not. but the cartoon of me always the friendliest, happiest me with the correct emotional reaction to every situation down, to the percentage. it is very friendly. yes, you will even say they'll tell the artist. make me 3% sadder here and i'll do it. so that's what i'm going for. i've got the right emotional palate. but yeah, like you could go and beating people over the head. i think it's just much more productive to have a sense of humor, a sense of humor about yourself. i hope that comes through in the book. it's my sense of humor. anyway, i have done standup comedy and that is, again, i'm i'm not going to say i'm great. i don't get paid to do it or

anything. but to put yourself the frame of mind where you could do it is, i think, a good thing for to do. i think what we really don't need is the the classic what you foolish moochers fail to see. it's like that'll work with like five people but we've already got those five people. so now think about something. another way to say the same thing. i think matt iglesias suggested that we need have a reality show which instead of flipping a house. it's like you just watch a developer attempt to get through environmental review. it gets sent back 90 times and i think, yeah, we need more. it is sad to me that conservatives and libertarians are so bad at making movies. i don't know if anyone has seen. i'm sorry this is mean, but like the atlas shrugged movie, it was not good and it was like this is a general problem with like christian books. i'm a christian. they're good, many of them, some of them are. a few of them are good. most of them are not good. they're sermons with a cast.

and like one reason that this is hard honestly is that it is so easy for progressive hollywood to make movies where developers are the villain. how about meek? why is there no conservative movie studio that's just going make a normal movie? no preaching, no other. it just like casually the villain is the environmental group that's stopping them from building a beautiful 200 unit house that could house all these people who are living in substandard right now. and that doesn't get made there because the syndicate is fair. yes, actually, that is that is true. i will say you cannot help but sympathize with the landlords. right. but there's performance from michael keaton playing the most tenant ever lived there. there should be more things like that where conservatives and libertarians, rather than trying to make a sermon with a cast. just make a story about places where these constraints are wrecking lives because they do wreck people's.

it's as the hard thing is that it's and i think that is one reason you can see the house tearing down and the little lady in it where you can't see is all of the people who are living, you know, 50 minutes from work in a floor walk up because they can't get a place closer to work because you didn't the building and that is i think actually so i should say that even as i am slamming conservative and libertarian people are trying to do this kind of thing and i think one problem is that donors to want to fund something that's explicit that's more like i'm going to tell you exactly what you should think. but another problem is that actually dramatizing the unseen is really difficult. and one reason i really like this is that brian's a good job of showing something. and also i might point out if there's anyone in hollywood just normal, regular hollywood people watching this, if you read this book that has a great i think it's actually a lot easier to win over people who are already making good movies. fair enough to. the cause of housing, that is to go and turn someone who agrees with this into a into a great

housing or a great hollywood producer, which sounds like a stretch, although, like, again, i'll always take what i can get. we have time for one more quick question and brief answer front. front row. so. quickly, mark lerner, it seems to me that building codes would have a much more bit more impact. the house price of housing. and if do you know how much and if that's true, how do we scale them back? yeah, so that's a great question. similar answer as short. his answer is the researchers have barely looked at building codes. so possible that's adding a lot more but what we're doing now essentially is just comparing the physical cost, which includes everything the building code makes you do with the land cost you where you don't information and comparing that to price and we've got a huge gap there building codes may very well be adding an additional amount there's what

economists name escapes me who is insistent that? there's also a bunch of very potent regulations against prefabricated homes, which he says do not confuse trailers. and that that's really important. he's the only person who thinks this. and i couldn't find anyone else who is weighing in. so i didn't want to talk about it too much. but the guy may be right. actually. so it may be that i am understating the severity of the regulation, but the key thing is the regulations that i mentioned seem to be doubling the cost. and it may well be that building codes are actually amplifying even with very little gain. yeah, i had, i had the same thought it was that robert heinlein, a science fiction writer, wrote in the fifties that if you thought about what it would cost to build a car, the way we build houses where, they haul all of the materials, the site, and then physically construct a car. the car would cost $200,000 and be terrible. and why were still building housing that way and there are some for example, you know, want to contour a house to the landscape and to oriented towards light and so forth and

the weather in a way that you don't with cars, but that said, we should be just building a lot more prefab modular housing should be using industrial production techniques and we're just not and it is so are some regulations that are relevant. what wasn't what at least wasn't convinced of that they were so binding that they were crushing the industry in the way that these other regulations, i am convinced they are crushing the summit. i think the one thing that is clear is that the financing of homes which has gone on to manufactured housing really is a problem, that the way the fha loans, i think it's fha, but the way that some of these government loan programs work make it very, very difficult to finance these these things and therefore, they appreciate more. they depreciate it faster than normal housing and they harder for people to buy. and that's a big and shouldn't happen. i want to thank everyone for coming. i want to thank the online audience and thank you for sending questions. and megan, thanks for doing a great job finding things to criticize. love the the bryant i don't know what i thought i was being critical and ryan thanks for

all. hug it out but bryant thanks for creating a great book. we're really proud to have published it and now please join us in the winter garden for a reception. i'm sorry. our online audience can't but go to your fridge, a beer or the liquor liquor cabinet, mix a drink and.

♪ >> in partnership with the 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 --

he escapes down the mississippi river. along the way they encounter steamships. mark twain used a number of dialects and colloquial expressions to go straight light along the mississippi, satire, hypocrisy and racism. since the publication, huckleberry finn has been controversial and relevant. >> welcome to books that shaped america, a series that looks at how books have influenced we are today. in partnership with the library of congress, the series is

exploring different viewpoints and we are glad you are joining us. so far, we looked at foundations of expansion, slavery and the legal system. tonight, we travel along the mississippi river and explore a book called one of the great american novels. published in 1884, it was controversial from the beginning but sold more than 23 million copies worldwide and has had a major impact on american literature. our guest is an english professor. professor leavy, in 1884, what

was america? >> it was a chaotic place. you could see an extraordinary number of violence, they loved covering it. norma's anxiety about immigration. the size of the government and national debt. promises of legal and social

equality after the american civil war, we are starting to run aground separate from society. the other was a large national debate over children, people talked about compulsory public education where they thought about ideas like student centeredness, that they were becoming violent, lawless and out of control. huckleberry finn is ripped from today's headlines, when people looked at huckleberry finn, they

saw a kid who was all over the newspapers who had his own wisdom, understood nature, sawyer, forming gangs. at the same time he was the villain of the narrative. >> when did you get hooked? >> mark twain voice is special, it's incredible, the book is incredibly funny and tragic, it celebrates american resources and people, landscapes that are

scathing, it's incredibly slippery, you are you have got it you can't ever get it. it took 20 years the book and understand what was happening, but i did not. i have not taught it in a decade. mark twain is magnificent. >> all-american writing comes from that. nothing before, nothing as good sense. what you think about that quote? >> the way people really spoke.

he believed people had literary value. he was obsessed with listening to people. they would pace back and forth. he would torture himself and on that level, he was spot on. hemingway was not the verse, he won't be the last.

>> what was the impact in 1885? >> to be clear, it's interesting, it did well. from 1885 to 1895, it was a top 10 selling book. the reviews were positive but mixed. if we are having a conversation about race, there were a lot of african-american newspapers they were not touching the book. quotes we will look at some reviews.

the partner with endeavor is the library of congress. had an impact with who we are. the library of congress on huckleberry finn says the encounters with hypocrisy and other evils full of dialogue and colloquial expressions paved the way for many writers including hemingway and william faulkner. what does it represent in a larger sense?

>> one of the books that shaped america must introduce my first person to take over the narrative and a complicated core. i don't think you have a young adult sector, everything from home alone, spy kids, harry potter. the ones who can make change. huckleberry finn is the linchpin.

>> you have read a book by the name -- >> that is the first line. how often do you grab someone by the lapels? you know about me that i am the voice you hear from. even those contractions were uncommon. it's mind blowing. gem is a complicated character.

everyone is a game player, a liar. they're watching from the edge of our seats. he is who u.s. him to be based on who you are. he was buried under racial slurs , stereotypes, a racist dialects. some people emphasize if it's about seeing through prejudice that there is a complex person you can't miss. it is a book about seeing through prejudice. the surface is dense and thick.

>> mark twain, attempting to find the narrative. persons attempting to find a plot will be shot by order of the offer by the chief of ordinance. lots to unpack there. >> it is the most analyzed book in american history. it goes in the wrong direction. the thing about twain's you have to think of him with plausible deniability.

he wants to make sure you know he is joking. >> copyright. >> he had a previous book where he lost a lot of money. you have the copyright going. it's complicated, i could cite in part because i taught some courses. if you look in my book, the book has strong antiracist messages.

this day and age you should be considerate. they claimed it was the best book. i've talked to students i think i will teach the book in the future. i look forward to having those moments. it's a legitimate question. >> number of dialects used.

the shadings have not been done in a haphazard manner. >> do you want to make -- read the last line? >> it's an important line because there are multiple forms of english. it's a beautiful metaphor.

twain was the founding member of the folklore society. he cared about dialects and rehearsed, practiced, he is proud. don't look for a motive. >> good evening. we appreciate your being with us. this is an interactive series. dilantin participate. if you can't get through on the phone line, here's the text

number. 202-748-8003. please include your first name and your city if you would. let's give you a snapshot of america in 1884. the population was about 50 million. the economic panic of the credit shortage, grover cleveland became the president. in mark twain's hometown, hannibal, missouri. we want to show you some video of this town north of st. louis. how important was he for the book? >> crucial.

he was nostalgic about his childhood. a lot of the things that happened to him including them horrible thing and better things. it's based on people he knew. it is at >> 200 times the n-word is used in hulk finn. >> i think it is hard to get around. mark twain uses a then respectful name for

african-americans, when he went up on stage he used respectful language until he was in huckleberry finn's voice. there is a famous story in 1884 where he scolds a white country boy for using the n-word. he was trying to do something, he felt it was in his voice and there were lots of satirical uses for it. it's a lot. the best argument you can make for it is to say you can't escape racism.

the book is not trying to tell you we are overt or doing better. that is the best reason for it. it's archaic, a mistake. >> here's what he has to say. >> do you think huckleberry finn should still be taught in english classes or edited? >> no, it should not be edited and should not be taught. i am a historian though -- no.

i don't think it should be edited for anyone to read it. for young readers, a teacher should help them understand who mark twain was in the context of that book, it's a perfect way to help young people get comfortable with ideas like ironing. ideas like racism. no. i would never advocate that the book be censored for the use of language, and certainly not for the stories. it is a great classic in american literature.

huckleberry finn was a pivotal american literature and in terms of creating it, that writers black or white or otherwise had been responding to the power ever since. >> what did you hear? >> first of all, i think i see suggests there are issues of how you teach a book. is it mandatory. mean able -- the book has tremendous riches and value and i agree with that. to play devil's advocate, let's not talk about an american book, a world book. there are translations.

all of those places don't have translations but somehow, the book manages to communicate profoundly all over the world. of course initial epithets have been removed as well and there were movies that could be made. to say that the book must be regarded as a mistake, with all apologies. >> norman rockwell did some paintings on the scenes of the book. he took eight years to write this book. where did he write it? >> he wrote it at a family

member's house. he wrote tom sawyer, prince and the pauper. put it down to get a couple more chapters and he pushed right through it in 1883, including the parts he hated writing. >> the adventures of huckleberry finn, published in 1884 in canada and the u.k.. it's all close to 60,000 copies and 23 million copies worldwide in the first band was in 1885 in concorde, massachusetts. >> huck swears, smokes.

uses a racial epithet. it's not a very friendly book towards organized religion. the dimestore novels were incredibly violent, it was like the social media or video games of their time. twain, he was not a boy supposed to have control over the book. >> the concorde public library committee said the whole book is of a class that is more profitable for the slums or respectable people. let's hear from some of your

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

i've never really heard a critique and they were taught by adults. >> we will have the professor respond in two seconds, but i want to ask you, is it appropriate for fourth-graders to read this book? >> i felt uncomfortable at times, honestly. i never said the n-word, i always said slaves because i personally could not. the value of the book. he wrote letters using the dialects. just the death -- death who wish

quiet, shy and hit issues in the family. >> thank you, let's hear about it. >> that was fantastic. the book is about why we are teaching children to hate and huck's experience with race as well as buck who hates the shepherdson's, and he admires them and does not know why he is supposed to kill them and he expects to diet he does. it draws that together very closely, mark twain was very good with patterns and even at the end when huck witnesses buck being killed, he says he has bad dreams about it to this day. clearly a traumatic point.

i love that idea because something that is not mentioned often enough is huck's abuse, isolated, he's eaten frequently, he is told he is nothing and it's forgotten with the wonderful boy had stuff he is terribly lonesome, he is looking for family surrogates, jim is the closest thing he has to a father. he is going through a monumentally vulnerable place that a lot of children have to go through. it is great that you bring your children to that place and invite them to express themselves. >> as i mentioned at the beginning, we are going to review -- for -- for -- review

some reviews. mark twain might be called the edison of our literature, there is no limit to his inventive genius. the best proof of its range and originality is found in this book. the next call for our guest comes from jim in sierra vista, arizona. jim: great show tonight. many generations of kids have, you know, been raised on huckleberry finn and all of that, and because of the texture that he brought to the -- american literature, my question is, given today's tribalism and its polarity, could such a book be written today, and what would be the reaction? >> thank you sir. >> thank you for the question. i think that a book which respects the children's voice, a child's voice, and gives the

child a complicated emotional life is being written today. one of the thingthat i love about huckleberry finn is that iteally portrays american democracy as just a mess of partisanship, of people who are, toe honest, easily conned, looking for a narrative that reinforces their prior assumption of in groups and out groups, he betrays it as a violent civilization. with great promise. i would counter by saying that books are being written. in terms of his maximalist approach to language, that is a tougher one. there is a lot of pressure in the publishing industry right now to not be maximalist about language, to not take chances or write about people who are not in your group. see where you go from there. i do agree that there is

pressure right now. >> i want to reread -- read a review from the southern atlantic constitution, newspaper. it is difficult to believe that the critics who have criticized it have read it, taken in connection with the prince and the popper, and marks a clear and advanced -- clear advanced in the progression of twain's literary message and portrays life and character in the southwest. that's from atlanta in 1885. >> he sense of scription agents out with his book, below the mason dixon line, but he did not go below louisville. for all we talk about race and controversy with this book, but joseph mccarthy tried to have the book banned because of its portrayal of white southerners, which he found offensive.

>> chuck, detroit, go ahead. >> good evening. this is a great show, i just wanted to express a question to the professor, which comes from an instructor of mine who had an interesting take. her take was that this was mark twain's attempt to curtail children who were anxious to leave the farm and go into preindustrial cities of the united states. and i thought that was a very interesting perspective, and one i had not heard before. i wonder if the author could address the question, particularly in terms of that in the book, jim and huck, no matter where they went, were always outcasts. >> thank you, chuck, that's an interesting question, i have never heard that before. the bookcase -- book is, i want

to say, extraordinarily powerful in celebrating nation hurt and solitude. -- in and solitude. it does make some of those small towns in arkansas and missouri look awfully bad, however. twain himself was conflicted about cities. i think that he was not conflicted about society. huck and jim can only be friends on the raft. any time they go back into society, they have to go back into their psychic hiding holes. and you take the beautiful and warm and interesting relationship at the center of the book, it really can't exist with a lot of people. >> we recently visited the huckleberry finn freedom center in hannibal, missouri, and went to a museum called jim's journey, here's a look at that. >> i am the founding director

here at jim's journey, at the huck finn freedom center. i am a hannibal native, fifth-generation missourian, and we have a few things here at jim's journey. first of all, we tried to expose residents to samuel clemens as a humanitarian, and then we talk about the african-american here -- community here. and finally, we are the only place in the country that uplifts daniel quarrels, a protector jim. -- prototype for jim in the adventures of huckleberry finn. he actually lived and died here in hannibal. samuel clemens met uncle daniel and aunt hannah on the local farm in florida, missouri, where

he was born, and was back there in summers to play and visit with his cousins, and that's how he came to know daniel. he knew him as old daniel. we know from his own writings that that is where they met, and they formed that relationship which bonded, and they came to appreciate daniel as a man, as a father, as a husband, as a caretaker and that is how we -- he was betrayed in huckleberry finn. he was the first white author to portray an enslaved person as a real person, more than an object. samuel clemens describes him as one of the brightest hands belonging to his uncle. he talks about daniel and identifies him as a prototype for jim. there is a quote in the autobiography that says that uncle daniel, my prototype for

jim. i want people to see and learn from that. here at jim's journey, we are about teaching. we want to research, teach and preserve. this history that has not necessarily been fully shared. in the history of hannibal. here, we not only show that history in the fact that we contributed to the growth of the community, but that we were here from the beginning and the emancipated daniel was here. >> we thank the museum for allowing us in. now joining us from cambridge, massachusetts is jocelyn chadwick. she is with the hard work -- harvard graduate school of education and then national counselors of teachers of english, the author of this book. the jim dynamo: reading race in huckleberry finn.

-- die lemma, reading race in huckleberry finn. tell us about your book. >> the focus of my book is to look at the character of not just jim, but the state of america at the time and the state of the freedmen versus the freemen versus the 19th century. -- during the 19th century. and trying to help student and classroom teaching -- students and classroom teachers understand just how important this particular text is, how pivotal and important it is, and how complex jim's character is, as well as huckleberry finn's. it's a rhetorical deep dive into who these characters are, what america was like at this time, and looking not just at the characters in the story, but also the concept of what was

happening in society at that time. >> professor chadwick, you taught english for many years at high school level. did you teach huck finn? >> absolutely. it was my juniors. and to be honest, my father, who first read it to me when i was seven, he read it to meet allowed on his knee -- out loud on his knee, and it was my juniors that helped me to understand that i needed to go back to graduate school so that i could truly understand the depth and the power, i needed to understand the writing strategy and have more information about the. -- time, and i think that one class of juniors and my mother -- thank that one class of juniors and my mother for sending me back to graduate school.

at that point in irving texas i had been a learner in our history and of these characters. that moment, that was my pivotal moment when i realized that yes, i was teaching it, i enjoyed teaching it, i wanted an african american -- was an african-american teacher in a predominantly white school, and the students felt sorry and uncomfortable three for reading it. i was excited for them to read it. i had to unwrap all of that. >> i understand that you and andrew leaving know each other, is there a group of mark twain's that know each other? -- scholars that know each other? >> there is, there is a huge group of twain scholars. and we do not always agree. but we do listen and learn from each other. >> professor leavy.

>> i love jocelyn's book, i am happy that she's here, the jim die lemma was a profound development in my understanding of the book. huck is the voice, but maybe should not be the protagonist. and she goes back to the book to see how the shape of the book is engineered by his presence, how often you do something that if you just look at it for two seconds you see how smart it is, how interesting it is. >> let's hear from our caller in san diego. you are on with andrew leavy, jocelyn chadwick, and huck aware finn. please go ahead. >> i am a longtime teacher as well, almost 50 years.

one of the things i discovered in reading huck finn over and over is that i am not absolute sure no matter how good i am at expedition and texturing, i'm not absolutely sure that most students, let's say, prior to the age of about 15, can understand, no matter how good i am at explaining, can understand the psychological complexity of that book. a fundamental question in today's society with regard to the racial divide is relative to white people, do you ever forget that you are white? which sounds like a perfectly absurd question, unless you change the words. >> let's leave it there. jocelyn chadwick, if you want to start, that would be fine. >> i do.

there was an earlier caller who says that she teaches huck finn to fourth graders. and to that person, if she is still on, i would say there is another story, a true story told word for word, and i heard it, and a wonderful elementary in new york in al meyer uses -- we work at that school, and the teacher and the principal present that story as a question that those fourth graders ask about race and language. it's very important. and i think that there are other works of twain that this particular generation should -- jen z is very different from the children i started teaching. they are processing and carrying quite a load. there is one entry with huck

finn, i agree, huck finn is a hard road to daschle road to hope, -- bro to -- road to hoe, but it reflects to us more today than when twain wrote it. publishing in 18 -- published in 1885. that sense of two people coming together from two different spheres of the universe. and we feel huckleberry finn beginning to think about people of color in a different way in the adventures of tom sawyer, again the day one of my least favorite twain books. and i had to reread it and i came out it -- of the -- it, and i realized it's about the evolution of huckleberry finn into a person who sees other people, sees the other, and will

break bread with the other. the other being a slave. we have the full-fledged huck finn in his own book there are three primary characters, along with everybody else. the professor, where twain sets him up very early so that we see not all african-americans are slaves at that time in the 19th century, their work freemen, born free, and then you had slaves. and there is huckleberry finn. the two of them have to be together in order for those changes to occur, not only for that but to come through and assert at the very end of this novel, a very powerful proclamation that while he wants is for him he is more than willing to sacrifice that freedom to regain his family in

order to do the right thing. we have this novel about voice and choice and identity, and the novel resonates more, and i can tell you that i work with schools at this very moment from texas to virginia to new york and new jersey, and part of it is that you have to help teachers understand how to teach the work. there are times why thought -- it ends up in high school classrooms, it's easy for someone like myself to do that heavy lift or answer those very hard questions, which i tell students. to say the n-word is very hard for me. i have to do a mental thing in my head, it's not just twain, it's toni morrison, and a number of writers. the irony here, and i'm coming to an end, the irony that

bothers me most is why we come up with such a great literary text, do not put rap music and other things at the same level. it's ok in rap music and other things. but when we look at literature it is not. it should be, because as i said, just recently at the boston book festival, that word has blood on it. and students have to understand that. that is a part of our american tapestry put in fiction. so that students can experience it from a different -- safe distance in a classroom. >> this program, we have been showing sketches that are in the original edition of the adventures of huckleberry finn. ew campbell. who was that? >> it was a young new york artist who got his big break during the adventures of huckleberry finn.

he went on to have a pretty successful career. illustrating novels, including african american novels by paul dunbar for instance. this was his big break. >> lucy is calling in from new york, good evening two. >> thank you for taking my call. my daughter was the oy black student in an all-white class, and they played it as an audiobook, and he was so devastating to her because every time they set the n-word, everybody would look at her. and she said all she could do was put her head in her hands. and she came home hysterical. i just don't think it is appropriate for middle school. >> andrew leavy. >> i disagree, i'm sorry your daughter had to go through that. my expense, they don't want me to say this, but mike university is primarily white, -- by university is primarily white, and i would not choose to isolate persons of color in that way.

the book teaches better in more interracial environments, older students. i am so sorry for your daughter, and if i can say anything, it is that she is not the only person who has testified in that way. >> justin chadwick. -- jocelyn chadwick. >> part of the issue is that teachers don't know how to approach these texts. they don't know what resources there are for them. they don't know how to address students. i was the only african-american english teacher, and it was predominantly white, i was often the only african-american english major. i get that, and i'm not saying that the teacher was right, because i disagree with that, what are the issues, and we are working on a new book about that

now, is how do we help teachers understand how to teach critical text, in this case mark twain? and how can we say in middle school there is another text you can use, you don't have to use huckleberry finn, there are poems and essays and other texts that say and carry the same message, but not in the way that huck finn does. it would take more mature students. it's not meant for kids. it is meant for more mature teenagers who are taking and complex ways. and gen z would be that way. thank daughter, who is sitting in that classroom, -- i think your daughter, who is sitting in the classroom, i was one of a

few african-american students in a class in texas and i remember my teacher reading a poem talking about god bending down, and i thought oh my goodness, and i told my parents i could not believe what i heard. i am sure your daughter having you as a support, and you pushing back was very helpful. i do think that teachers do need more support from scholars and folks such as myself, having had classroom experience and being a scholar, to navigate that text. >> our goal tonight 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. matt is a professor of american literature and mark twain studies at l virus college in

new york, and a scholar in residence at the center's remarks to -- mark twain studies. if you would like to get that podcast, we -- you can scan the qr code and that will take you there. due to is the area code for all of us. if you live in the eastern central time zone and you want to talk about huckleberry finn, and if you want to send a text message we take those as well, at the number on your screen. please include your first name and your city if you would. let's hear from karen out of san francisco. >> hi, thank you for taking my call. i read a lot of literature, but i am not a sophisticated reader, not really analytical.

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

specific way or just because we have such an in depth and intense story? >> this is a good time to ask both of our guests how has this book shaped america, let's start with jocelyn chadwick up in cambridge? >> prior to mark twain and huck finn, no fiction other than works like thomas nelson page, which -- praise slavery, no real fiction existed about -- that really tackled the horrors of slavery. the demeaning quality of state slavery. as well as creating the humanness of these people who were slaves, and presenting free

people who were never slaves, but people of color. we have not had a word like that. we had slave narratives, which were very popular in the 19th century, amazingly popular. and when i teach this novel to juniors or seniors around the country, or try to help with free service teachers before they enter the classroom, we always think about the slave narratives like frederick douglass or henry barton brown and others. the novel itself comes out, and it puts slavery in the running -- and in the running and the dangers and the encounters and the hypocrisy, somebody mentioned religion earlier, but it's not just religion. it's the hypocrisy that goes with religion. and the brutality of saying i'm going to shoot all of you if you

don't leave because you people, in the dark of the night, he is foreshadowing the kkk. this is a book that puts a mirror to america of the 19th century and says here is what we are. this is what we look like. and you 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? >> beautifully put. i will just add, as jocelyn covered race and slavery so well, it had a huge impact shipping our feelings about children's, children's voices, schooling, parenting, vulnerable children, if you read histories

of childhood or books about childhood or articles, the name huck finn turns up quickly. it has a universality with what children go through today. and twain was the one who said that history does not repeat but it rhymes. he recognizes the patterns of american history, and nowhere -- knows where the rhymes are. so much of what he wrote still hits in 2023. it hit heart -- hits hard still. >> please go ahead, edward, with your question about huck finn. >> with all the moral ambiguities and hypocrisies in the book, is this not about a 14-year-old white boy who discovers jim as a human being because slave traders are after them and huck says to jim, huck, jim, they are after us.

is that not what the book was about? >> ever, did you read this in school? >> i was because professor, i toted a couple times. >> waited you teach? >> historically black universities and white universities as well. >> we appreciate it. and leaving. >> that is an important scene in the book. there is another moment in the book where huck and jim wonder if someone is looking out for them. they are hiding on jackson island and both running away from someone. huck has a father who about to kill him, and jim running from watson, who wants to sell him downriver. huck puts on a and goes over to the town and tries to ask around, and this woman immediately cease their him and says, because he does not do anything a girl does, that he does not threaten people write or -- a needle right, or if she

tosses something at him, he asked like so many o does not wear a skirt. he teaches huck at that he goes back to jim and says, they're after us. they're only after jim. but he learned from the william, if jender is a social construct, so too is race. it's the kind of subtle stuff that's all over that book. it's also a sign about how much the book is about how children learn, thousand they apply one lesson from one part of their life to another part of their life. it's a crucial moment. i'm glad you called attention to it, edward. >> we mentioned several times about huk finn in popular -- huk finn in popular -- huck finn in popular culture. here's a compilation of some old movies about it. >> we're sure to see it in ohio.

>> there'sst there's only about 12 houses there. >> i won't misit. i'll smell that free state. i want to be free. nobody going to take jim back now. i ain't a slave no more. i ain't want to be a slave no m. >> they called him a troublemaker. >> come on, sis! >> they called him a liar. >> cyive set it up, pa get run over by an elephant. >> they called him every name in the book. >> the duke. >> but everything in his life was changed. 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. the adventures of huckleberry finn translated into more than 50 languages. 15 film adaptations starting in 1918. tv programs, cartoons, play, all of those things. jocelyn chadwick is it important that huck finn be in popular culture? >> i think it's important that huck finn be in popular culture. i'm sort of torn because reading that book is so -- in so many ways is its own version of popular culture as opposed to the films and the cartoons. there's just some texts to me,

just to me that cannot be filmed. "the color purple" can't be filmed. it was tried. it didn't work. and the -- the works of toni morrison, for example. there are some works that you can't bring all of that emotion and those actual words, i mean, here we are. we are talking about taking out the word nigger out of huck finn, that's been done, but the idea is, it's supposed to hurt. that's the whole intent. it's not supposed to be a happy word. it's not supposed to be a cool word. and just taking ited on and saying we're just going to put black there, it's not the same impact or import. it takes all the sting away. it takes all of huck's -- at one point in the last thirder of the novel when huck finally understands he has absolutely,

positively hurt jim, and jim called him trash, and huck from that point on, huck never uses the word nigger again until he's pretending to be tom czar and trying to help jim get out of slavery. and that's important. because that means there's a change with him. and i've had students who say ok, does this mean that huck isn't racist anymore? that doesn't mean he isn't racist anymore. we haven't actually established that he's racist. he's a product of his period. and his exposure to jim and jim's exposure to huck helps both of them understand that people are people. and you accept them for who that person is. as opposed to calling them something. i've seen some of those film, like the one with mickey rooney,

and it's so different from the book. i'm not going to say that's a bad thing, i'm just going to say it doesn't take the place of the actual text. >> the poet t.s. elliot had something to say about huck finn. it is huck who gives the book style. the river gives the book its form. the river makes the book a great book. mark twain is a native and the river god is his god. next call, terry, in kansas city, missouri. go ahead. >> hi. i had a quick comment, the parts that made me laugh the most was 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. here in washington. we want to thank jocelyn chadwick for joining us for part

of this program. she's with the harvard graduate school of education and the national council on teachers of english. thank you professor chadwick for being with us. she spent quite a bit of time talking abteaching mark twain. we have two more teachers from north shore high school in glenhead, new york who teach mark twain as well. here's what they had to say. >> twain gives us a chance to see what we would never see in history books. which is the interfacing, engaging of a poor white boy, son of an abusive, alcoholic, father, from whom he runs. it's the impetus of the book from huck's point of view. then he meets a runaway slave. and the two of them meet a commiseration of that. huck calls them us and we, it's

a revolutionary moment. we have this poor white boy and an enslaved person who has a family who is doing his level best to get out of his hor cial situation. and they meet and they go down the river together and they talk about everything from slavery, religion, to the stars. to the taste of food. to what it's like to wake up from a dream and be lost. jim actually has a moment where he mentors huck on how to be a good man. and huck eats it up. because he's never seen an adult man show how to be a good man. none of the whites, the white men he's supposed to celebrate have shown him how to be a good man. they're all uniformly repugnant. they're violent, abusive. jim is kind, caringering and thoughtful and pays attention to

him. it makes me say when you say, we don't make room to see the in between. i think it's probably because it scares us to imagine we might be in the in between right now. and i wonder, when we look at huck finn today, what's the biggest error we make? what are we doing wrong when we talk about this? clearly we're not doing certain things right. >> i mean one of the mistwaiks make is we focus so much on the language. and the language is jarring. when we look at, for example, the use of the n-word, it's jarring for many of us. but it's only symptomatic, it's only evidence of a larger structure. language is born out of a reality. huc -- huck finn is brn out of a

time. the language isn't born out of itself. it's born out of laws, economic structure, it's born out of a culture. that's he the hard part for many of us to really understand. it's one of those thing, we're talking about racism, structural racism, the history of racism, even the history of slavery, those are very difficult things to teach. because we have to reconstruct the time. you have to reconstruct what are the laws? you have to construct what were the economic structures? what are the customs and attitudes. those were uncomfortable. so in many respect, the language feels uncomfortable because we've not quite mastered the history of the times. and the language becomes an entry point to realize, this is difficult. but that's just the tip of the iceberg. >> we want to thank north shore high school teachers, emanuel

blanchard jr. and mike dlever for having that conversation for us. let's go back to your calls. carrie in north ridge, california. >> good evening. i wanted to respond to some of the callers. i wonder what jim's vocation would have been since in florida they said the slaves had vocation training, you know. i just think the teacher that said she was uncomfortable with saying the n-word she didn't have a problem with saying slave. i'm just wondering what her response would have been if the child that she was teaching would have asked, which one is the slave? we're kind of missing some other stuff here. >> we're going to have to leave it there. andrew levy, your response to her?

>> both huck and jim are escaping, they're escaping together. at the end of the book it turns out they were both free for quite some time. and some people feel that mark twain was in the just interested in issues of freedom and slavery related to african-americans of the time period but that he was interested in issues of freedom and slavery for all people. and what it would take to truly live freely. but it's kind of extraordinary. the last page we find out they've been free for over 100 pages. >> julie from montana. >> hi. i'm kind of tuning in late so i apologize for my question. i have a comment and a question. for many year i was an elementary teacher. i had the laura ingall's looks in my classroom. around 10 years ago or so the

library association threw out the laura ingalls' award said she -- one of the characters said she didn't see anyone for miles around while living in indian territory and native americans didn't like that and protested her books. with that in mind, i'm a substitute teacher now in the local school hours, do i address the n-word that's use red peteedly over and over and over in the huck finn book? >> we've talked about this a couple of time but what's your condensed answer, with the laure prairie series as well. >> my condensed answer would be i stopped teaching huckleberry finn and i'm a professor at a college and i have tenure and i -- i stopped teaching because i think it's inconsiderate for me to teach it in certain circumstances. i go back to -- should i go back

to teaching it, there would be norms in the classroom in terms of what, nothing said aloud which i've had in the classroom. there'd be intense historical context work. there'd be offramps for students. that's at college level. i'm not sure for elementary students. >> when you teach it, is it about the dialect, the use of language, slavery? >> the bulk of the conversation is absolutely about voice, language, you know, there's so many positives about this book but one of the things it is, it is a pipeline to the 19th century. the way people thought. the way people actually spoke. the -- everyone thinks everyone listened to stephen foster and had parasols and went to church on sunday. it was chaotic by our standards. and huck finn lets you see the

chaos of our past like few booksdo. i think the important thing is that your students are trusted and are able to speak their minds and liberated to not be in the classroom in the first place if they don't want to be and to leave the classroom if they want to. >> andrew levy is also the author of "huck finn's america: mark twain and the era that shapes his masterpiece." the original manuscript is at the buffalo, erie county library in new york. have you seen the original manuscript? >> i've seen it on cd r.o.m., on the internet, but never eye-to-eye. face-to-face. >> when you look at it what does his scribblings and markups tell

you? >> you can tell, no word processor. so 1,000 changes in a manuscript like that might not look like much to us but it was a lot back then. you can pick up pattern in his revision that speak to his intent. what he's thinking about. i noted during my work he spent a lot of time, especially in the last part of the book, putting in words that lead you to think about contemporary context like the conviction release system, which was slavery by another name. it was a prison building boom and 90% of the people in prisons were african-americans and they were put to work or leased out for nothing. the made references to dogs. he added them in. may not have seemed like much but degrees were the guards and everyone knew that. he did stuff like that at the end which you just saw him turning up the volume on the satire and the links to the

contemporary day. >> "the advench -- "the adventures of huckleberry finn" is one of 100 books on the list put out by the library of congress as books that shaped america. we want to know what imreuks think shaped america. go to the website, c-span.org/booksthatshapedameric a. there's a link at the top, click on that. send us a video. we might use it on the air we want to show you some of the responses we got to the question, what is a book that shaped america in your view? >> the book i think changed america is "unthinkable" by representative jamie raskin. i believe it changed america because it shed light on the insurrection of january 6 and provided americans a context and broader perspective for just exactly what happened on january 6 and the great threat we have going on because of the trump administration, donald trump,

and the ongoing threat to our democracy. >> my name is marsha, i'm from indianapolis, indiana. a book that i think changed america is the autobiography of malcolm x. it told about his life, racism and religion, really shifted how black americans see themselves and how they identify within the spaces we occupy today. it was inspiring. >> i think the book that shaped america is "beloved" by toni morrison. because it's a classic that all high schoolers read. i think it's accessible. it's a great way into a discussion of the history of race and slavery in america. >> my name is greg from mansfield, massachusetts. i think a book that shaped america is "shat ertd sword," it's an amazing retelling of the

battle of midway and it shows we can question our history, analyze and learn more about it over time. >> i'm tony from san diego a book that i think shaped america is "the jungle," also my favorite book. i think it's a combination of a great kind of summation of immigrant story in america as well as the beginning of the labor rights movement which is also really important. i think it occurred at a a time that was pivotal in american history. just a great book overall. >> send us your idea of a book that shaped america. go to c-span.org/booksthatshapedameric a. viewer input sup at the top. bob, lookout mountain, tennessee. thanks for holding. we're talking about huckleberry finn. >> i read the book as an eighth grader because i was required

to, and then when i retired i took my boat down the tennessee river, up the mississippi, to about the iowa line and came down and tried to float and of course we have dams now and locks they didn't have. but it was a wild river. i'm just curious, there was a certain piece to me on traveling that, i did about three weeks. i'm curious, i find the river is a place of relaxation. i want to know what y'all thought. >> thank you, sir we appreciate that. when did you do that? >> year and a half ago. >> wow. ok. thanks. >> there's a travel writer,than rabon who got himself a raft, couldn't even get a proper raft, it was more like a small boat he decided to go down the mississippi, simulating huck and jim's trip, he was terrified

most of the time to go down that river in 18 40's, in a raft, occasionally a canoe. the peril as well as the sense of confidence, the sense of beauty, the god-like status of the river. that was in the book too. thank you, good perspective. important one to bring in. >> there were other books on the library of congress' list of books that shaped america that came from the twain, huckleberry finn every remark published in 1884. here are some of those other books on the list. >> jacob rhys dumonted poor new york city living conditions with his work "how the other half lives" in 1890 "the wizard of oz" was published in 1900. in 1909, sarah bradford's book

"harriet: the moses of her people" about harriet tubman. w.e.b. dubois authored "the souls of blackfolk" in 1903. here are more books from the lie brir of congress' lists of -- list of 100 books that shaped america. ida toreville wrote about john d. rockefeller's standard oil company. upton sinclair's tri-kri teak of the meatpacking industry was published in 1906. "the education of henry adams" was published in 1907. and william james' work "pragmatism" was also published in 1907. >> there's the website if you go, you can see all 100 books that the library says are books that shaped america. you can also input your ideas to the library of congress. our partner in this series. professor, you, as you watched

that list said i've got one for you. what book did you want to bring up? >> it's an awful one but highly influential. owner's manual for model trveg's that henry ford wrote. after how to run your car was then 200 pages of conspiracy theory, including anti-semitism. it went out with millions of cars. not on any list. >> did not make the library's list. >> i wanted to make a comment on what the woman said, ta her daughter was in school and when the n-word was said everybody looked at her. unfortunately, during that time, that was the narrative. that was the language that was spoken. i think by trying to remove that language out of these books, puts us back. we should look at it and go oh my gosh. look how far we've come. >> thank you, ma'am.

we have to leave it there. last word on that topic? >> i think that -- the racial slur has continued to have salience. all i can tell you is the historian, professor, has heard too many people say it was devastating and traumatic to be in a room where it was read aloud. i think you've heard many people including jocelyn chadwick say that it needs to hurt. but we can control how it hurts. and how we have the conversation about it. >> professor levy we asked you to reed one of your favorite passages from the book. what are you going to read? >> the very last couple of sentences. what's happened at the end of the book is that tom czar has set up the lab rat romanticized

escape plan for jim which almost gets tom killed. almost gets jim reimprisoned. turns out tom knew the whole time jim was free. huck is outraged by this. huck doesn't think he can go back because his father is still alive and out for him. jim tells huck that he's seen his father's corpse 200 pages earlier. everyone is free. hen h krurvetion k hears his father is dead, nothing. says nothing. tom's most well known for the next lines. there ain't nothing more to write about. i'm not glad of it. if i'd known what trouble it was to make a book i wouldn't have tackled it. i ain't going to no more. aunt sally is going to adopt me and civilize me, i can't stand it. i've been there before. yours truly, huck finn. >> andrew levy, author of "huck finn's america.

the era that shaped twain's masterpiece." thank you to the viewers and to our other guest jocelyn chadwick of harvard. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2023] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] well, it is myo

be part of this panel. although role is mostly just as so that we can talk about this important pathbreaking 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 is both within our vastly overseas sized racialised prison system to

build communities within and without. my name is robert chase. i associate professor history in the department in the department of history. obviously and also africana studies at stony brook university, new york. and i've written a book on the prisoners rights movement in texas called we are not slaves, and that is how i encountered mac markie, who put together this incredible book. but let me take a moment to introduce the three panelists and. this is a really rare opportunity to bring together not just teachers in prison education scholars and, activists, but also people who have experienced the degradations of incarceration. itself. and then risen above it. through their activism and their

writings. so i want to begin by introducing lorenzo cumbo ervin. lorenzo is an anarchist, a civil rights activist and an author. he was a member of the nonviolent coordinating committee, the black panther party and concerned citizen for justice. and in response to many credible threats to his life stemming from his political activity, ervin then fled to cuba and then czechoslovakia. he was later extradited to the united states, where he served time in the federal prison system. but this did not deter ervin. he remained politically active while inside as many incarcerated do. for we know, we not just create politicized prisoners. but we also, within our prisons,

political prisoners themselves. through public support, his own legal challenges as prisoners often themselves as, writers or what we call jailhouse attorneys, urban lorenzo secured his own release after 15 years. and course, he remains politically active. and i'm very excited to learn about the chapter that he wrote this book and his activity. i also want to introduce you to lauren braun, strom fils, an associate professor at cedar crest college. lauren has taught us and women's history to incarcerate rated people for over eight years. a really monu mental important task. one thing we know about prison education is that even though as the states reduce it, it is the number one reason to number one issue that reduces recidivism

and people to prison. she was a fulbright scholar at the university of rome, and she is the author of partners in gatekeeping how italy shaped the u.s. immigration policy over ten pivotal years. 1891 to 1901. she is also the editor and contributor to managing migration in italy and the united states. and her work has appeared in labor studies and working class history perspectives on history, world history connected and most recently, the journal of american ethnic history. and let me also say this panel is sponsored by lotsa an we want to acknowledge the labor and working class origins of this book. and last but certainly not least is david, although we all know him as mac markie, who is the

coeditor of books through bars story, he's from the prison books movement. and mac is a lifelong activist as well as an academic. he has worked with concerned family and friends. mumia abu-jamal. earth first, the ashmore bill global report. and in memorable other organizations, small and large. he has volunteered at several prison programs, out of which this book has arisen, and he helped establish the ashville prison books as well as he sample sucks file prison books. mac has served as the book review editor for h. labor was a board member of the southern labor studies. the executive assistant for the labor and working class history association, and he is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the

university of south carolina now where he is working on a graphic history of the brotherhood of timber workers in production with the historic new orleans collection. so we're 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 2024. can tell us about the effort to bring prison education and prison literacy to incarcerate it people. and i. i would start with three quotes that have always sort of inspired me and i think might be a good way to get at the philosophy of behind this project. the first is by george jackson who said about reading in prison that quote, he met marx lenin,

trotsky engels and mao when he entered prison and they redeemed him. the idea of reading and education as redemption. and of malcolm x said something similar when he said i've often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has opened to me. i right there in prison that reading had changed forever. the course of my life as see it today the ability to read a walk inside made me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. and then finally, mumia abu-jamal, who said that just because your body is in prison, doesn't mean that your mind isn't free. and even though this thought might be trite, there is some truth in it because we are our minds in the deepest sense. we are spirits. when you think a person or of

your own body is not this a prison in sense? are we not in a prison of time? we age, we lose our facility ease. but that doesn't mean we cannot overcome and do that by the power of mind and spirit. we reach beyond. and it strikes me that this exactly what this book does, it reaches beyond. so let me start this conversation by asking each you to reflect on how you came to this project, the philosophy behind work in this project. and to talk a little bit about the scope of the book itself. great. i can i can start here and i think there does need to be a moment where we talk about what books, programs are, right? so we can kind of get to the heart of the text and i do want to take a second and thank the

uah, thank the labor working class history association, uga press and nathaniel holley for making this happen. i also want to that this book would not have been possible without my coeditor moira and all of the people who contributed chapters, including my fellow panelists. right, lorenzo and lauren and also to the people who volunteered for prison books programs over the years. and, of course, to all of the people have fought for the rights of incarcerated people, including incarcerated people themselves. and when you crack open this book, i hope that you'll be struck by the art and stories. it's an attempt to the people who have been involved, this movement or are affected by to tell the story of the movement and why they think it matters. i do want to make it very clear that the people whose who are served by this movement are disproportion only poor and working class people. and i also want to stress that the overwhelming majority of the people who volunteer for these programs are also poor and working class.

in short, this is who we do. this is what we do when we're not working for hire right? many of us have other interests. and in order to understand poor and working class people more fully, you have to be able to acknowledge and look beyond our paid time and our paid service, as it were, so on to what are prison books, programs like give that general framing and then i'll kind of hand it off to lorenzo and lauren. so this is a book about a social that in many ways has flown under the radar for 50 years. the prison movement is comprised of a disparate group of people who send free books to incarcerated. and over the last several decades, this movement has sent hundreds of thousands of free inside hundreds of thousands of letters from people inside answered hundreds of thousands letters from people inside, asking for free books collectively. these programs are the single largest secular, not for

organizations that endeavor to get reading material into the hands of incarcerated people. and to the best of our knowledge, there's been no work that has attempted to document this movement and to introduce this movement as a whole, to the general public. so one of the reasons why this movement has probably fallen under the radar is because of the population that we serve right. this population is designed to remain invisible, designed to be forgotten by the public. and of course, i'm talking about incarcerated people. but the people in this movement to not see and refuse to forget our fellow citizens and this is particularly important because the united states has the largest incarceration rate per capita in the world. in other words, we imprison our citizens at a higher rate than any other country. and i just think, even though i'm sure many you are aware of this, it bears repeating, according to the prison policy

institute, there's currently 1.9 million people incarcerated in the united states. and black and brown people disproportionately incarcerated. and some states like new jersey, have discrepancy rates as high as 12 to 1, meaning black. brown citizens are 12 times as likely to be incarcerated in those states as white citizens. well, let's shift back to the book. the first part of the book. our author is talk about some of the needs for prison books, programs clarifying that these programs are indeed and serve the needs of the people on the inside, and that those needs are not currently being met by the state or through private enterprise. in other parts of the book, we discussed censorship and some obstacles to teaching and learning. inside their sections. written by vickie law, giving a general overview and michelle delong and rebecca ginsburg and others on censorship. we discuss the experience of teaching inside as well as the perspective of formerly incarcerated. speaking about the obstacles to and the relationship between the

student and the teacher while inside, we also talk about the origins stories of some of these programs, including asheville prison books and appalachian prison books project. i was one of the co-founders of the asheville prison books program, and we were the first prison program, prison books program in the entire south. we naively tried to serve the entire southeast and were quickly overwhelmed. we operated on a shoestring budget and we didn't give up. actual prison books is still books to incarcerated people. 25 years later. in fact, there are now multiple programs operating in the south and several of those can connect their origin story directly back to asheville prison, which we can talk about, if you like. we talk about some of the efforts of the movement as a whole that we've made to cooperate one another and work with one another, learn from one another. and, of course, we have interviews with some formerly incarcerated people expressing the need for the importance

books on the inside. we give various insights into the ways in which people can start their own prison books program, including a wonderful comic that gives step by step instructions right showing that you can do this. we want to make this clear that that there's exceptional about us that makes this happen. you can do this and there's a place you in these movements. so that's pretty much what we do at prison books programs. i can get into the logistics of how they work, but i don't want to take away time from my fellow panelists at the moment. we do send other reading materials in addition to books. we send materials that are important about. we be the national prisoners resource list that allows incarcerated people to get contact names and addresses for people that may for things that we can't help them with, requests that they may have, that we can't help them with. and this really runs the gamut. they might get access to reading and writing programs about college classes while incarcerated, art programs, health programs such as aids and

hiv support. pen pal organizations like organizations and so on. these are important. there's also we do send in reentry guides. many people are not given adequate information about what to do upon release and how to access programs upon release rate. and this also leads directly to the high recidivism rates in the united states. so we do our best to fill that gap, right? we do what we where we can, but also, i want to say that in this book, i think you'll notice that we incorporate and we try to tell the story and we make this something that's easily digestible. and to show that this is a part of life. and yes, you know, this is that we do because we love it and we don't have to be you know, when you do this work in these social justice movements, you don't have to engage in the martyrdom complex. right? you can actually try to make these things enjoyable. and that joy actually brings in more volunteers and the

incarcerated that you are connecting with. they will recognize that. and so we try to incorporate art and artists throughout the book. we do not separate it into a different section. right. it's much like life. we allow that interaction to flow in the book. so without to, i will turn it over to my fellow panelists. all right. okay. so i came to this work as a professor of history at ryerson valley community college in jersey and we were the we were definitely the only college in new jersey. and i and i think, you know, even rare within the nation to deliver a liberal arts degree program entirely, students who are incarcerated. so that meant that you could earn the degree completely inside. there was there no course requirements or anything that you had to fulfill in order to

earn that degree and that the degree itself was also a liberal arts degree, which was meant that students were taking courses in history, which is how i encountered them. and the role that i played. but but in a broad swath of of the liberal arts including things like studio art art and other topics that were not typically taught inside made for a variety of of institutional, i think it paternalistic reasons. so that was really the the you know the biggest thing for me was that i'll use a phrase so my students referred to it as real college was their phrase, you know, that they were, they were going to a real college class and they were very proud of that. and it was a it was a an aspect of their day that was like totally just for them and just

between me as their professor and and them it was it was really, i think in some ways and, you know, maybe my sense was that it was like the only of their day that wasn't heavily controlled and dictated in which they could make choices of their own within the setting right of the classroom environment. so i ended up teaching, i taught the u.s. history survey, which was a core requirement. i ended kind of making it a women's history course. i was primarily teaching at a man correctional facility for women which, if you are incarcerated, the state of new jersey and you're a woman and. so it can be really, you know, anything from shoplifting to to capital charges. you're you are sent to ed and a man and and every person who is sent there initially begins their sentence in the maximum security section of the prison. so that was where i taught. i started in what they call max and in my experience in in max

initially was really one of incredible privilege of having not been inside a prison and having not known incarcerated people directly in my coming up or, at least not being aware that maybe somebody might been formerly incarcerated, perhaps when i encountered them on the outside. so i walked in with a lot of stereotypes. and i also, you know, i remember early on, you know, when i went to my first training, which took place in max, was at a roundtable where we student leaders the program and then we had, you know, other professors who are going to be teaching in the program all sitting around within the classroom where i would later teach, which we called the fishbowl because it had glass on all sides. and sitting within the fishbowl, you know, was really the first time i realized, like, there's nothing to be afraid of in here. you know, it's emotional because it's a place for a tool to be afraid of. right.

and the people we're supposed to be afraid of that. but what i realized was that even though i would each time i entered max, you know, i would come in, i had to have a clear plastic bag for my i couldn't have a click pen. this wasn't allowed. i couldn't have a cell phone. i couldn't have a computer. i couldn't have photocopies with, you know, certain like staples that i had. there were all these little rules. i couldn't wear a bra with underwire. and so if you're, you know, a person who wears bras like know i had i had to change all these things about kind of my daily routine. but when would go inside i would go through a guard booth and i would sign in and i'd go through the metal detector and then i would wait for them to unlock the first locked door. and then i would go through the and then i would walk down the path and then the second door and then the third locked door. and then i would see the officers in the kind of panopticon style booth and, and within that facility. and then i would go into my classroom and thing that at

first i realized was like that all those layers, you know, those layers of security and all the barbed wire and all and all of those stops really were just a tool of power and control. and they. they were no, you know, they were not making me. and he said i was safer. honestly, in that room with those students than i was interacting, you know, in any other way. and so it really humanized, i would say deeply, the people and then the students that i encountered especially that first semester, they so hungry, so hungry for real. and they were the best students i've ever had. this is like chris going to be recorded broadcasts and you know but this is they used to joke with me that i always needed tissues actually. so if they're watching out there, i hope some of them are from the outside that i know they they recognize me. i remember for this, they

usually can keep control of it a little bit better days. but i'll say, you know, that the emotional connection was one that just really took me by surprise. um, because i had been teaching these courses a while, but the way that i encountered the students and inside the way they encounter it, particularly the history of slavery in the united states, was so profound that it changed the way i taught on the outside and, you know, the dynamics when we talk about, you know, the tools of mastery. right. that that people in the antebellum south attempted to use. this was not a lesson had to teach. right this was the lived reality of the people in my classroom. and i will say also that one thing you know is that i never wanted to know, like, why

somebody was inside. i would a sense they had been there for a while, not necessarily because of their age. everybody honestly, probably a bit older really than they might be on paper inside because it's it's takes a lot out of you but they're i would notice their badges that they had to wear and the photograph on the badge would just be a of a younger person or would be old like, you know, you could tell they had worn that badge every day for many many, many years, in some cases decades. so i never to know why anybody was inside. like if you were in my classroom on campus, i wasn't like, what's your backstory? why are you here? you know? and that i found allowed me to have really, really deep relationships with students on the inside and to really see the fact that there again, there, the way they encountered the history of the united states and women's history in particular was so transformative to me as a practitioner and and so i guess

i'll leave it there. you know, i do want to talk a little bit about how our program came about and why it was different. again, i started off talking how it was a liberal arts degree program, and that was really profound because so much of prison education is vocational or is, you know, is like collections of courses like take this, take that, have experience, have that experience. but this, this was really powerful. and i saw how that worked. and i will turn it over to lorenzo now, and i'll come back to some of these. i want to go to lorenzo, but i do just have one question for you, which is in all my work, whether or it's doing oral histories or working with incarcerated people to publish their writing, i i'm always wondering what they teach. and so one, one question i have about prison education is if you could tell the audience quickly, but maybe, you know, connecting to all the teaching you've done, what it was that they've taught

you? if there one singular thing. maybe it's don't expect that my expert you know like like that it's. looking for what you don't think you're going to see be open to the i don't know i think you know that sort of like breaking open and that's such an irony because again like, you know, the breaking open happened in the place that was the most physically restricted that i have experienced on a regular basis. and every time i left, you know, i would drive out and i would be distinctly aware that i was able to leave. so i think it's maybe echoed in one of the quotes that you read, you know, in abu-jamal's quote,

thinking about the freedom that we are capable of inside the most. the most secluded, the most oppressive places. and that would be the lesson. thank you and thank you for reminding us of the humanity that goes into both teaching and this book, because i think that it is what it is and poor lorenzo, this question was on sort of the philosophy behind and the prison books program, but important for you, i think maybe thinking, telling us a little bit about yourself and what motivates you to do this work and to be of this project, how you came the project right. well, that's an interesting perspective i was arrested in. 1969 as a 19 year old. a lot of black civil rights organizer. and i eventually i had run amok

all over the world. if you the fbi, tell a story had been to had hijacked a plane to cuba and then after time in cuba, they threw me out. you say. and and i managed to find my way to czechoslovakia and i was on my way to africa. but was captured by the the fbi was not the fbi. the state department's agents, the state department's arrested me and brought me back to united states in september 1969. i got to. new york. they put me in a federal house, a detention, and at the federal house, a detention met martin sastry, who i know anything about. martin sastry i'd never about him, but he was one of the foremost prison organizers for prisoners rights in the united states. and he was in new york city because he was suing the state

officials at the new york state system, where he was located. and he was suing them for the rights for prisoners to receive literature radical and controversial literature receive to actually unorthodox relations to have a social and cultural society inside the prisons and so forth, all of which seemed to the prison officials and even most of the prisoners as outlandish as just impossible to me in. but that impossible would certainly become the inside the prison system. so i'm talking about is the fight the fight to establish prison literature and it was a fight that had to be done, first of all, a legal fight and a you know, strategic fight in terms of strikes, whatever else, protests that had to be done. but out of that process and that of me coming into the prison

system, i didn't know anything about prison. i've been in prison my life. i was like, lauren, in some respects, i'd never been in prison, didn't have a tough upbringing, but having come prison and having come to prison at a historical moment, the moment of the civil rights movement, black power, the the new left and all of these movements that were around in 1960s and early 1970s and seeing being in the presence of and to build a national prison is organization of prisons, movement prisons, rights movement and that movement and the rights won was initiated. first of all, in the fight against censorship. because when i came to prison, only thing you could have is the bible they'd give you. they'd be happy to furnish you a bible and send you to church. no, thank you.

i'll take my my anarchist material and instead that you're keeping in seclusion. so we had to fight, file a lawsuit based on martin sophocles case in new york, which he and gave all these rights to the new york state prisoners and so we talked about the sastry the lawsuit method. and i went into the federal system and became a jailhouse lawyer. and i started, along with other prisoners. we filed a class lawsuit in a number of federal prisons and eventually, though, they took me out, the atlanta federal penitentiary, and they sent me to a place where you're supposed to get killed. they called it the ku klux klan jail is the federal and terre haute, indiana. and even in that prison, the right to receive literature

changed fundamentally the nature of the prison and of everyone in it. everyone in it. when i went to that prison, the klan had murdered people there, both the guards and, the prisoners. and it had been covered up for years. and in. 70, 1970, there an anti klan rebellion. and the interesting thing about all of this preceding all of this was the fact that we had managed to force the prison officials to give us the revolutionary and other literature that people had ordered for years and they'd been kept, you know, covered in the in the warden's office. they we forced them the court forced them to give to us, forced them to allow us to create a cultural studies program. as a result of the book, the book is a is a weapon.

a weapon, not just a tool of education. it's a weapon to change the world because people who have not had basic education, people who have been forced to live in ghettos. people who have suffered from of racial oppression in the south. through the book, through political education, was able to redeem themselves. live the sorry, through living a circumstance where your life is in danger just for reading a book, you can go to solitary confinement years. you could be beaten to death by guards. you could be stabbed and killed by racist prisoners.

and you had to be willing accept it for the book. the right to receive the book. the right to read the right to talk about what you have, what you have read. this was the result of martin scorsese's case and all the lawsuits that found after that. and there were plenty the changed, the even change the federal judiciary. so when we talk about the prison and the creation of the program well, first of all, you had to receive the books you had to fight to receive books. and we understood this going in so it was a life threatening situation situation or a book a

but it's the book that you want to read, not that they want you to read. prison officials wanted to break inside by the of ideological stimulation that's what i use solitary confinement to such a degree. you had nothing to keep you going. you they could break you. they saw if they could break you and they could force you to accept the regime. yeah, i'm not talking about. nazi germany. i'm not talking about the soviet union or, you know, north korea. i'm talking about the united states. they created progress camps, behavior modification. they called it well, they actually had doctors and prison officials, many times as one of the same who would solitary confinement to break you to to force you to accept whatever they were doing. and they didn't always didn't

have to beat they could force drug you and all these things. so when you look at it i a fight to get this done to get these books what we to the books however and we were able to fight lead a nationwide legal we were able to forced officials to give us as i said the right to have free discussions and cultural studies groups and educational programs they 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 were a human being. you needed to know that can get out of prison and lead a prosperous life, could get out of prison and and raise a family. you needed to know things

because they were trying to program you as a criminal in these oh well we're trump run program program i'm away from criminal content we try to deter them know what they're trying to do is to make you come back. they make you stay in prison. they make you become institutionalized. so the whole purpose of having prison literature that was so controversial, that was where it was even subversive, as they would say, the whole purpose of that. was that so that you would have a different way of viewing the world so that you, as george jackson used to say, would dispense of the criminal mentality before the revolutionary and cultural mentality. and from that standpoint, you know, it was important to say, you know, that these prison books they weren't just books,

they were life changing instruments. that's the way we saw it. that's why we were able to sacrifice and and if necessary. and times came that was it was almost on the verge of death some people did die in prisons just for the right for people to have these books because these books broke down the regime. they broke down the censorship. it almost broke down the walls. and in some respect, it did because millions of people were able to see for the first time as a result of the attica rebellion with so much death. and sometimes i have to say. but death is necessary. it's like a war. a war is necessary sometimes. i don't believe in war. i'm you know, in that sense. but i understand that you have to oppose unjust authority and

you can't oppose unjust authority, if you will, if you don't believe or you're led to believe that you're the most despicable piece of humanity and you have no right to resist. so from this standpoint, we can say, you know, that, that, yes, the entire program where we started out getting the books, forcing the officials, first of all to give it to us, to give us a prison library piece of the prison library. these all of our books, but we we had more books than they did in the prison library and we forced them to put our books on the shelves and allow prisoners to check out our books. and we forced them forced. you understand what i'm saying to allow us to take the prison books to go to solitary

confinement and give those books to prisoners who wanted them and many of those prisoners started reading books were white for the first time. and reading these books. changed them. those that were. helped us destroy ku klux klan in tyrone. i was given 45 additional years to my sentence. because i planned to the klan rebellion into your.

i'm not ashamed. hey, i'm committed, thankful that i could 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. i to spend the remainder of my life two life sentences plus 45 years for my of resistance so i learned early on within the prison structure that the books censorship had a role in sustaining and maintaining prisons as an institution as an unjust institution institution. and i would do it again if i had

the opportunity. i think that even today and they reinstated prison censorship, that one of my books had been banned. and the state of a book i wrote in anarchism and the black revolution has been banned, but it brought back to me what we have done and made me understand after so many years, how we had defeated government and defeated the prison officials, driven out racist guards, and all of these things started to happen as a result of us getting the book and the book changed the world for us and and for this country and then it respects at that time the prison movement was based on the civil rights movement. they had seen it for years. it seen they seen the protests. and so on. they understood that they had the power to transform the

conditions they lived under and transform their own lives. some of them would never get out of prison. i could have been one of them. be quite honest. but some of we knew we we may never get out of prison, but we wanted to know the truth because we understood the truth can set you free. you go. a lot of years in your life. i'm sorry. that you didn't ever do this sort of, but you can go a lot of years in your life. and you never discover what you. were meant to do.

hi. what happened to me in prison? the struggling made me a revolution period for the rest of my life and activists. i came out of prison and started organizing police brutality, started organizing against racism. we filed a lawsuit, which i led, which i did the research for. we sued the government of the city of chattanooga because for 90 years, black people never had any rights. in. that city. what i learned in prison is what i used in the streets to bring justice to black people in chattanooga, tennessee tennessee, i'm just an example. i'm not a evil. i'm just an example of what can happen if you allow people

education and if you allow people to be human beings, if you allow people to have a voice. we've got to transform this country and we got to destroy prisons as an institution. we take the resources that for the prison system and use that resource for the community from the communities that those prisoners from, which is based on poverty poverty. we need to educate prisoners inside, yes, but we need to fight, get them outside so that they have the chance to have a life. i'm more worried. the officials in government is being killers than i am about these people in the prisons that i was in prison with with. those people have no choice in many respects they are led down the path to do criminal

activity. but the governor, government officials arrange for poverty. it's it's systematically created it. they arrange for police terrorism, police brutality to have that kind of presence, an occupying army. and so when they go to prison, it's what they expect. they're told that this all they're good for. we have to say that we will take the book, will not accept censorship even in this period, we will not accept it we will take the book and we are taking the book and we are reaching people and we going to change their lives. and we are to fight the officials every step of the way. that's the lesson, to fight every step of the way. so if we look at this book, it's the first of its kind. it's exceptionally well written. it has a story that would your perspective on the prison system, on the police and even

on the government that allows these things to take place this is supposedly a democratic regime we live under. then how can you explain to me why people are being kept in solitary confinement for years on end when? the united nations is this it's in violation of international law? can you explain to me why people are being beaten in key or hung by the neck neck and the prison guards are let go? is it happens is a normal thing. we've got a problem in this country with the prison system. you would not think that the to the tool for the liberation would be a book i didn't believe in at first i couldn't understand it how this could possibly so but then i remember somebody told me that the pen is mightier than the sword. i thought that was i thought it

was insane until the struggle the prison books movement started inside the prisons. then i understood it. then i understood it. sometimes this is what's necessary. so it isn't just a question of prison education alone. and although i'm going to tell you, the prison officials in the states are not willing to spend the money for political expediency and for other reasons to even give a basic education to people. and so this is why we have to help these books to pass, because we to give the education, the legitimate education to that they don't get from the state or from federal authorities. so from that standpoint, it's really, really important understand why we're doing this. we're doing this because we're

trying to save people. we're trying to change people. we're trying to give communities and people a chance we're trying to challenge the authorities that continually justice upon communities. police terrorism is just another that we're seeing. but it's always been. and you think the book how can the book all of this a book of ideas, how can it change the world? people read this book. they will be changed. they'll go and tell others. they'll tell others. others will read the book and they'll be discussions. just like in the prisons. outside the prisons, there were discussions about what all of this meant. we've learned about what the prison officials have to people we've learned about what are

like. and now we are in a position to change to change it because we care. it matter. who doesn't care about who does care? and this is how change societies, how you build movements and is the fundamental order of things where you think nothing can change in an environment where it seems like it's just slavery. we proved from our struggle in the 1970s, we proved it. we defeated, the prison regime, we destroyed censorship, we created social and culture programs. can i get some wipes or something? tissues, tissue? yeah. she's got some because she's been doing all that crying. thank you you. know, lorenzo, what i really

love about what you're bringing everyone here is, the idea of transformation books as transformation and individual transformation and community engagement and transformation and finally transforming society. and in that way, that book each and every one of those that this program and mac and others have sent into the prison and in your education, they're all an abolitionist act. but they began with seed. right. that mind, as mumia said to reach beyond so it's very profound. i want to turn to mac in a moment. lorenzo, i'm curious. you tell us when you were first encountering books during your incarceration, what could you name a couple of books that were really transformative for you something deeply influential, of

course, the prison the prison letters of george jackson, but also some of james baldwin's book, books by by even eldridge cleaver, who was a tremendous writer, he might have been a lunatic, but he's a tremendous writer. and and i don't know there were others. there were. but most of the books that really affected me were books i received from abroad anarchists in and other books about subject that i didn't even know anything about it ever existed the the russian war, the anarchists. the anarchists role of the russian civil war, the the the 19th 86 spanish civil war and all these other things which had lot of blacks going to spain volunteering on behalf of the the the spanish people who were being confronted with terrorism by the fascists. you know, franco and the

fascists, all these things. i didn't know anything about it. i didn't receive that education. and of course, a variety of black literature, which is in abundance during that period because of the black power was was put out as well, you know, that prisoners were not given access to, as they claim, this subversive, you know, you back to claiming that again. now that it was subversive literature a threat to states to say institutional security and forth when. i got access to the books what we used to was i would get books somebody else would get books, we'd share the books, we'd pass them around. and prison officials didn't like that, but they couldn't necessarily stop it is they didn't know it was just too much of it. they didn't have to always be following around. so we'd get and just pass along each other and start talking about it and having secret discussions, you know, we were eating and everything at one point the others saying is not

designed to for mitch, you're thinking, it's designed to break your mind and at one point, the prison tried to go back to the silent treatment, which meant that it against the rules to even speak to anybody and we defeated that by, just ignoring it. and, you know, they threatened to take you in solitary confinement as a form. but if everybody opposed them, they take anybody. that's the thing. it's like the whole thing of when somebody is being arrested in civil rights demonstrations, people would go and grab them and arrest them, pull them away from the racist police and the sheriff and so forth. and they them back into the ranks of the people and this was a similar kind of thing just by not going along with an unjust

you threw the officials into frenzy you threw them into situations they didn't know what to do. thank you, lorenzo. i mean, that all goes into the that this program creates both within and without. i'm thinking about a book, not as a product, a process. mac, i wanted to ask you and lauren, you as well. i thinking back to the orange ends of this project, could you tell us a little bit about what made you what made you attracted to the idea of doing this and bringing knowledge and books to incarcerated readers? what does it mean to you personally and intellectually to do this and teaching as well and then the third part of that is that what is it? what does it mean to the community you work with outside of the prison? and what does it mean to the reader within those prison

cells? what kind of community does that create? what brought you to this project and how did it so great questions and i do want to make a quick point that the most requested book from that, there's dozens of prison books, programs throughout the united states and hands down the most commonly requested book is a dictionary hands down. it's not even right. and many people are quite surprised by that. and says something about people's lack of understanding that, you know, many people in who are incarcerated are working to understand the material that they get and are working to kind of make a change in their lives. right. and this access to a dictionary is critical to that. and the fact that we get many requests for dictionaries nationwide shows the need for for these programs and. and, you know, in the lack of education on that and the

funding in the educational system, i kind of lead people down this path to incarcerate nation right now. i think the latest statistics are approximately 60% of incarcerated people are functionally illiterate. right. so but back to your back, your question. what drew me personally to the movement think that i started out, uh, looking to do support work for political prisoners and then after a short period of time i kind of began to realize that in a system that is so unjust that really incarcerated people are prisoners of a political system. right. and so then that made me kind of look and move to a more general manner in assisting incarcerated people, helping them get the things that they are asking for, that they're articulating that they want and they need. and in terms of community there is a lot of community that prison books, programs foster

and and there's multiple ways to look at this and can look at it in terms of the communities that the programs foster on the inside which lorenzo has kind of talked about a little. and and to think, you know, getting access to the books on the inside, people share, books on the inside, when and where possible. they also share the ideas they receive in the books and there's chapters on that in the book where other formerly incarcerated people rock, tornado and then in the gallon are kind of talking that experience. quinn had a harris as well. so there's you know it's a fostering a community on the inside. right. and that's important. but it's also letting people on on the inside know that they're not forgotten. right. and that's an important aspect of community for some people. this may be that letter that they get in conjunction with receiving a book or the book that they get maybe the first outside contact they've had in years.

years. right. and letting them know they are not forgotten that a set that is community building at its core. right. and then in terms of the community on the outside, there's multiple ways and that works right. and one of the one of the ways to look at that is this is fighting a system that seems so overbearing and so over powerful, so, so powerful that coming together to do something right and action that you're able to take action in this way really does foster a sense of community in that you are functioning to work through this system and you know, for many people are involved in this movement, it isn't the be it isn't everything that they do. right. they're not they may be involved in other social movements. this is just one thing that they do. right. but in this in this one thing, they can come together. and there is a sense of community through the book packing parties that you might have or through, you know, the meeting days where looking for where you're, looking for books to package up these letters.

when you're reading the letters, the letters loud, when you're sharing the artwork that you receive from incarcerated people. and also, you know, and then the other side of it, where you're trying to have community building events where you're that that may be fundraisers. right. we talk a little bit about about that as well. and in the book, you know, and you're trying to kind of incorporate people into this project or maybe some of these they're busy and they're an artist in a different way. and what they can do is they can they can contribute a flier, right? that's how they can contribute and be a part of that process that's valuable. right. and they're excited to do that. and you're involving people in the community in the ways that they can interact with the. and then also in terms of the families of incarcerated people. families of incarcerated, they cannot send books to incarcerate loved ones personally. they need an intermediary. it has come from a bookstore and approved source. and if they don't have the

resources to do that. or if they don't want to purchase through one of the big conglomerates, what have you, prison books, programs, offers the ability to do that. and then but it also fosters the sense of community where they're able to come to a place where they might feel more understood and thus isolated from the other people, them because we're to consider that shameful thing that you may know someone who's incarcerated, right. and so this is a way to break down that barrier. so there's many ways in which we we foster community through these programs. um, thank you. yeah so i was actually kind of trying think and remember like, how did i get to start to do this and my entry and my you know relationship to and books and you know books bars is really a bit different than than than mac's in the you know of the contributors to the book in that i was i was working to get

my textbooks inside which you know i'm sure we can all kind of you know, those of us that are in classrooms now or can remember from our own, you know, we sometimes the textbook just like is like the last thing you might to read. but i found so i use the eric foner is give me liberty and you know i got to give a shout out to w.w. norton. they were really responsive when i said we need for teaching these courses and they got us the donations that we needed. and then i started teaching when i actually created a women's class, in part inspired by my sort of subversive attempts to make women's history for inside. and i thought, this is a, this needs to be its own separate course. the curriculum as a required course. and, and then i had the textbook there. but one of the issues that we actually had is tracking and sure that then the people in the courses have the books that they needed, which is another layer kind of to the story you know, and we've been talking a lot, i think about the way in which the

bureaucracy of prison is meant is intended to break humanity of the people inside and to reinforce their they're lesser than their you know, in that hierarchy of power. so one of the issues that we had was that our books kept getting lost and, misplaced. and some of that was is i think, another way to either directly or indirectly right through the kind of chaos machine is of deny that access. so i a semester where i taught women's history where half of my students had a book that ended halfway through the semester right they had like the volume one and when we were teaching the whole full volume. and so i had to figure out how to deal with that. and i, i felt awful, you know, for these, these students that like, they literally like to stop at eight. and we were going to chapter 15 or whatever and but we, you

know, we figured it out. i mean, there's one point where the books were like in somebody's car, in the trunk and i was always every semester i was always tracking where are they? were they where are they? because i knew how valuable they were. and then i was always to get more donations. and that's something that i really tried hard to facilitate because the you know, my students used to tell me particular that the library, they were like the library isn't anything good in it for us. and but the what you know what the textbooks brought right again was like, i'll say that real you know, that real college connection, that connection to an intellectual world which they were a part and, i think, you know, the other thing to i was just kind of thinking about what it meant to me on the outside. i didn't hear, you know, again, like i actually gave they picked me one year to give the address. we graduated people so we would these graduation ceremonies inside and again speaking to the academics in the room, in the audience, you know, graduation is in some ways, right? i mean, for the people

graduating special. but like when you do, you do it each and there's it's a bit of a can be a bit of a rigmarole. well that all the words that you say at a graduation about all the things of its meaning that inside a graduation inside was it was all true you know it was all true. and actually our valedictorian that year want to shout out because so if she's out there somewhere brenda wiley because she was one of the most amazing students i ever had, she herself sued the state of new jersey to overturn law because she was sentenced as a 16 year old to life and to overturn that sentencing. right. that um, that minors cannot be sentenced to life in prison. and i just heard through the grapevine that she has been released as of, i think, two months ago. and that's where she is. i hope maybe if she's out there,

can come and find me. i would really love to to reconnect with her, but i want to say, you know, that some of the things that were meaningful, you know, thinking about really were, you know, someone like brenda comes to mind is because is one of the things that i, i ended up doing and changing my activism is like. so i went and testified in front of legislature of the city of new jersey when a because. 4 million cars rated people were denied their constitutional right to vote after their release that was still you know on the books as of i'm not sure how many maybe i think it was around 2019 that a bill up to restore voting rights to formerly incarcerated people in new and i testified in that in those you know in front of the legislature which was very intimidating someone who doesn't normally feel intimidated by most cases and there i i

reunited with a former student who who i had taught in max and that was that was pretty special. and i think though that, you know, in part like that it was you know, the experience transferred me into i think what kind what you know in some degree what mac was talking about as a person who takes action and does it know in ways that are i hope you know made a difference but you know the other way that this you know changed me and changed maybe my community and the outside rate was in of, i'll say some leadership within the program i took i was very, very adamant that anybody who taught excuse me history inside did it with that that there was absolutely no difference between inside outside courses and in particular that the skills and

of the historian were essential and that they were practiced in the course and that the students were taken seriously as historians in the course. and then it wasn't dumbed down in any way or simplified in any way, which again had been the experience. and as far as i'm aware, right, is really an unfortunate hallmark. a lot of inside education and that was super important me so i did a lot of gatekeeping of who was teaching those courses and a lot of conversations with those instructors a lot of observations. i went inside and observed. i observed math class once already, you know, but i did take these as opportunities as well. i think the mentoring and the conversations around, what it means to teach and what it, you know, also to teach within a setting where. that again, the dynamics of power are so different and how we can let go of our need to kind of, you know, control that as as professors, as

instructors. so i'll say that. and then, you know, think that in leadership of the program that i also try to while i'm not actively teaching inside anymore, you know, when i started my career to college and i think in some ways still, you know, within. one of my big missions a long time, i'm no longer there, but one of my big missions really was to try to bring the community, you know, the experience of community college 3000 students right to elevate that and help to diminish the prejudices and the stereotypes that existed which in some ways not they're not totally dissimilar. maybe there's a bit of a venn diagram overlap with some of the prejudices around who attends or the prejudices who who might be incarcerated and have the class dynamics. and then, you know, in the in those ideas about who those students are, i'll say with eric. so some of that direct activism which has resulted in policy

changes and it's in the labor and working class history association as one, one place, you know, where we're really to build access and inclusion for scholars, students and. and other people who might be, you know, who might access the field through a community college. so i'll you know, i'll say that is one thing that i'm pretty proud of and that i think is inspired in part by this work and and so that's what i want to leave time i know for that. well i do also want to leave time for the audience and. i'm mindful of the time. so here's what i think i'm going to do. i'm just to package together the final or so questions i had. then i want to really turn it over to the audience and maybe, maybe don't immediately respond to my questions unless it's a good intersection. one, because this is sponsored by lockjaw. i want to talk about the relationship between the book

and this book's through bars program and the labor movement and the working class struggle that is embodied within our prisons and our in our jobs. and of course, the prisoner rights movement is also a labor movement. we had the first ever nationwide prison strike in 2016 and then again in 2018. so if if someone wants to talk about relationship to this book and to this project to labor and working class life a second i just want to talk about artists creativity. this book just littered with we were talking earlier it reads a zine and i think mack had pointed out in his introduction and i also read the proposal for this book initially that it had a kind of punk mentality behind it. so if we could talk a little bit about what artistic creation by the incarcerated means both within the book and to those

creating that art. and then i also want to try and touch because the book as a chapter, what means for lgbtq communities within, the prison of which there are many, in fact, that's a growing. as our public spaces policed and then last question is what challenges did you have thinking particularly about the role of of censorship. so any of those four questions are my final four but why don't we turn it over to the audience and maybe they'll be some conjunction or if you wish to address any of those for sounds good to me and i will coming to folks we have a there we are on so i'll be asking you to speak into this microphone directly so let me open it up to the then so while while people are ruminating on the questions,

i'll go ahead and some of the last question that you asked. we do have the book does contain an interview instance with zoe laurence, a currently incarcerated person, and it talks about zoe's struggle to be identified in the manner of your choosing and. also, the to information and material that the struggle that zoe faced in gaining access to that material and this is a common and growing problem within the right you think about how this is happening on the outside in the outside world and think about how that then becomes more concentrated and more difficult on inside. i don't i don't think i really need to explain that much further than that. it makes a lot of sense. and so this a common fight that we have that many prison books programs are currently involved with in terms of, you know, and

there's there's a long history here. i know that asheville prison books when i think i don't remember the exact year is sometime around 23 perhaps when transmission books grew out of the asheville books program. and their their mission is to queer folks on the inside with the material of their right. and they specialize in that material. so there are there are programs who indeed specialize in that? and almost every prison books program that i know makes an effort to make sure that queer folks on the get access to the information that they need. and indeed, there is a growing censorship. and censorship is another aspect of this project that prison books, programs, often fighting censorship a regular basis. i'll be, in fact, speaking at in conjunction with avid books in georgia in about a week or so. and avid books currently has a lawsuit fighting the censorship

material that they have been trying us and inside. so this is a growing, growing problem we. back i'll touch on your censorship point for just a second and it goes back to something that mr. lorenzo said about, how his book was banned inside and and it probably wasn't banned everywhere. inside, right. it was probably banned maybe in one or two places, maybe 20. but my point that what is is not uniform within the system, right? what's banned depends largely on where you're at and the leadership and sometimes what's banned gets to when new leadership comes in. and it can be incredibly frustrating to sort of navigate who lets what and when. so how do you advise programs

who are trying to get books inside about how to navigate all the little nuances that come with every individual facility? yeah, that that's a great question. i'm going to say something very short because i'm sure mark has a lot more to say. so you know, i had a different role, right? we weren't responding to individual requests for, but we were often trying to get materials were not typically use documentary ese. i was a tough one even again having regular access to the right textbook and current textbooks you know, that weren't yanzhou out of date. so we had, you know, an education office and dossier and new jersey department of corrections or has an education division. and so sometimes would experience that where like depending on who was in that seat there was, there was a lot of resistance or, you know, or it could be smoother. so i found a lot strategies of finding, you know, of just trying to find where the water would flow right? how who i could go to and how i could. and and even against my nature

of being sweet and chirpy and nice and know all the all those nice, little sweet things that i'm usually not in, in trying to to get those books where they needed to go and find out again, where were the cracks that i could get through? and i was able and, you know, it took a long time but the pressure of and that and that kind of like legwork was did yield some good results although not always. and when i do write about a situation where i thought i was doing something helpful to have a student screen a film and it actually ended being a big problem for student because of the power dynamics inside. so that also stepping back sometimes and realize that i couldn't make things happen. the way i could on the outside and i needed to respect people's roles and and the fact that they were inside and they had to live within that regime. so the carceral is huge.

there's currently i think the latest estimates are about six thousands different prisons, jails and whatnot throughout the united states. and there's multiple levels. right. and so you have the federal system within there's multiple tiers in the federal system, sorry. and then each state has their own carceral system and then each county, so on and so forth online and then states, i mean not states and then even, you know, there's little holding cells in jails. and and this isn't even including when i'm talking about ice, so on. so there's lots of systems incarceration in the united states and the system may have certain guidelines then that depends upon is it a institution, is it a medical institutions on and so forth. but then what really ultimately once you if you able to navigate all of that, okay, if you were successful navigating all that it does ultimately, oftentimes

come down to the person in the mailroom how they are in terms fitting those guidelines and. sometimes i've had success in the old fashioned style, just calling the figuring out and it is in infuriatingly difficult to actually someone on the telephone but i've had it work to where i've been able to actually get on the phone and question why a particular package, why a particular book was was being kept. one time our program had blacklisted by an institution and they said, well, you know, it's because you're not real. you're not a real bookstore. and i said, well, go ahead and check. you know, this is this is who are and and they were like okay. well, i'm looking at google maps now. and so now i see that it is a brick and mortar store. now, you will be accepted in, you know, and so and those the good stories, right, where you're able to navigate through. but that's not always the case.

sometimes you just get a package back and it just says rejected. and there's no information about it was rejected and you have to pay to get that package back and then you pay to send that package back in. and these are programs that do not have a lot of money trouble in fundraising. so you for the same package three times and you're not even certain going to get there on the third time. all right. and so have to try and figure out and ascertain why something was banned. and sometimes we are aware things we don't even know that things get rejected. right. that's just when we happen. know we do our best. sometimes we're able to check and see if people are getting things and we know that people are getting some packages because we get people writing letters saying, hey, listen that was so great. i, i understand you didn't have the books that i requested and i was a little bummed when didn't get the books i requested. but it turns out you made some great choices and really loved what i read, so thank you for sending. so we know that, you know, these things happen that they do get through and that they do make a difference. but it is very difficult to

navigate that system. some states have banned books lists. some states do or at least do not have ones that they're willing to admit to. sometimes you're able to work things out with a particular warden. other times you can, you know, try for years and it's never going happen. it is infuriating. and that's the power of the lawsuit as lorenzo has talked about. and you know, which is also what avid books is engaging with now. and there's other people also engaging in lawsuits. we have a piece in the book about he laughs, challenging the right to send books on the inside and sometimes that's what it takes is it's not the actual lawsuit itself. it's the threat of the lawsuit. it's finding a or a legal representative who's willing to stand, who's suing and say, okay, we'll write this letter, we'll try and make sure that they, you know, force them to articulate their rationale for

banning this. and then all of a sudden, you get a letter, oops, we made a mistake. right. but but that's all extra work. that's all extra work. and that's actual work for people who are doing this in their free time. oftentimes getting paid. right. and they're already maxed out. and all the other things that they do and they've already tried to send this package in, it's just extra work. and we do the best we can and we try to challenge these things as we can. and we have the assistance sometimes other organizations who we're able to rely on for legal help and advice, and then we communicate through with one another, which we talk about in the text. right? we have a listserv. we're able to say, okay, you know currently is everybody, you know, having trouble with this particular institution? how have you been able to navigate that? you know, what's helpful, what's not? and so once one person figures it out, now everybody how to navigate that. but it's maddening in short to we do we have maybe question from lorenzo where we're nearing

at time but i'd like to get another question. the audience. they're free to i'll start well lorenzo maybe you should help us with the last word i did that question about the connection of this book and of this larger project to the labor movement, to working class movements, to contemporary struggles. you've got a long history of that, maybe. do you want to leave us with some closing thoughts about. what books through bars again really just amazing mac you're and the press you're to complimented on this it's important work as i think lorenzo has attested but maybe if you could leave with some thoughts about what project means for the current moment and our struggles in this election and moving forward beyond this

election and struggles in our prisons and without well easy question know, you know the moment that i was talking about in this moment are similar but different in this period now repression learned from our struggles and they apply censorship differently. they make a different for in my book. well the book they stopped it man they they made the argument that it advocated racial superiority of people being superior to whites that no there's no way that's true but it's argument and that's the argument that's being used in the streets as well. that is we're at a time when i tried to do some time ago in

creating a movement in a way that opposed book banning was to help people understand that the fight against banning books is the fight against fascism, because the, as you said, in this period, the the right wing is using book banning to try to control what people think on the outside. they talked about what they what they on the inside. well, now they're doing it on the outside to try to control people's views, to try to silence people and to try to make you politically i question or whatever the word is. i'm looking for. but to stop you. they stop you to make you think that that the power of the government of the power of of of the authorities that there

should be no so-called black literature. there should be no no no, you know what they call it this period, the black thought a black well, what is this program they've got. they want they don't you to look at black lives matter but they don't want you to look at black lives matter as an important movement. don't want you to think that black people had a history. they don't want you to think that there was a civil rights in this country. even. they want to make you think that all of this is outlawed by those in and they want to get in power to be able to do it. we're facing now a prospect of this election producing a person who is a megalomaniac, but more importantly, producing him with with a program that the wing has drawn up. this project 2025, that

conservative groups have created so that when their man is elected or woman, which, which advocates may be over the course of time, they'll come into power with an agenda that will change the fundamental institutions of government. it'll change all the institutions, the government that exist now and and, of course, censorship will. just be one of those things that they'll that will have used to gain their power to gain their power base. and that's what's happening now. the election is is is important. i'm not telling you to vote for this group for that. i don't believe in that. i'm an anarchist. first of all, i don't i believe, you know, i have a whole different belief system. but the point is that we're facing fascism, whatever we believe in. and i think that people be fighting in the street, protesting whatever now, to be quite honest. but the majority people don't know what's being planned for

them at simple fact of losing this election could lose people's lives, lose people's whole to survive in this country will be confronted with that kind of repression that goes on in a prison. they'll turn this country into prison, in other words. and from that standpoint, it's extremely important to understand the things that i'm talking about books and do bars is not materially the book is. the idea the idea is what they're trying to repress. and so they keep, you know, to the point where they want to change fundamentally all the institutions of the country, including widespread voter discrimination and voter suppression. so we're looking at the very thing that we're fighting against, that we've talking about. and we now have to understand that as a real living to us, to our lives, to our lives and our livelihood and everything, so that we are.

thank you, lorenzo. that's very powerful. mac, this is your incredible production. and as a book, do you have a final thought? and then we'll close. just to reiterate that it couldn't have been done without you. gay press nate holly my coeditor moira all the contributors who all the people who contributed chapters and all of the people who have fought for the rights of incarcerated people and all of the people who volunteered for prison books program. this is an introduction. we hope and we hope that this book will spur people to help us uncover the rest of histories of these programs and show why important this indeed the first attempt to document the history of this social that's been in existence for over 50 years. well, i want to thank all of you. i want to thank for taking the time to cover this book. i think it's so valuable that we get this message beyond this room. so thank you for being thank you

for saying the entirety of the time. and let's thank panelists who really stay incredible, personal and powerful testing it. thank you. yeah, barry, make sure we. said who is thisi'm richard grer

of the free libraries foundation's board of directors, and i'm delighted to be here with you tonight.

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philadelphia. i like to take the time to especially thank of you our members who are with us tonight as a member of the pepper society myself, i hope i can encourage 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. you can find more information about a member and donating in tonight's program. now before i introduce these amazing, 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 event and following tonight 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 for more than 25 years, frank bruni has been the paper's rome bureau chief head restaurant. white house correspondent and staff writer for its magazine, among other. his bestselling books include ambling into history the unlikely odyssey of george w bush and. born round the secret history of a full time eater, where you go is not who you'll be an in-joke 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 and the writer of, a popular weekly times newsletter. bruni formerly worked as a pulitzer prize nominated writer

for the detroit free press in age of grievance, bruni examines the ways which the blame game has come to define american politics and culture. joining bruni on the stage evening is karen heller hagler is the former national feature 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. in commentary. we're so pleased to have them was with us this evening so please join me in welcoming karen heller and frank bruni to the free stage.

thank you, rich. thank you for that introduction. that's. welcome. thanks so much for joining us. we're all fellow franco files as well, and i never heard it like that before. i coined that. that's you can i'm imagining the parisians in the audience may beg to differ. well, you can be a francophile to us anyway. we're so lucky to have you here. big fans of your all of you to be here. you've had such a beautiful career being the chief restaurant critic of the new york times and rome bureau. think you mean incoherent career? that's awful. no, i think this is great. you're great. a cocktail parties probably can speak about almost anything. i drink lot. anyway, he's been an op ed columnist. he still contributes quite frequently to the times and what's nice about it is you get to be paid your grievances, right? and people to read them.

and he has a fabulous if you don't subscribe, i really encourage you to do so. it's just terrific. 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, ease software, software. yeah. and yet how we we complain. and you write, we are experiencing the oppression in olympics. the idea that my situation even we have great socks. my situation is so much worse than yours. i want to understand how you saw that we got to this point you write that the united states is a nation born of grievance in the revolt of royal subjects and willing accept a deal that our legal system. the grievance can be good, but

did we get to this point? well, i mean, that's that's question that the book tries to answer. i mean there are many answers to that. i mean, we talk about social media. we could talk about and we will tonight. i know we talk about the country's turn from, a sort of trademark optimism, a whole new american pessimism, which i think very concerning and new. there are a whole lot of ways. but what has happened to 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 hundreds, when people spoke of grievances, it was a term that usually meant just causes urging 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, in the last week you would find it almost always is used in as a pejorative in a negative context. and that's a tell. and what that says is that we have become so incessant our

complaints so into screaming it in our complaints, we've jump told the sorts of things we must complain about as a matter of fundamental with stuff that we needn't about. but that bespeaks a certain sort of spoiled ness and narcissism. we've jumbled it all together in a way that i think makes constructive, almost impossible and completely paralyzes our political. yeah. you write that almost no cultural event, no bit of news, no topic. national conversation is roped from grievance. by which i mean a complaint or concern that should or could be a modest point of dispute but negotiable with business like diction and businesslike decorum. but it's blown up widely out of proportion. i want to say that i tweeted about this event and some somebody was aggrieved. yes and said some very unkind things about the two of us. and i don't think we've we've met you like.

welcome to my inbox. right. you know, he was one of those guys like bob's 089. so you even know if it's a bot or whatever. well, tell me what the genesis of that you could create a whole wonderful book from this. what was there? it's when did you first notice that this was sort of fomenting? was it slow burn or was there a specific moment? i think we've all been noticing for, you know, better than a decade now. i mean, when i put the language to it. i actually wish i could take credit for the phrase the age of grievance. whether it's a good one or a bad one. but after i wrote my last book, which was referred to the beauty of dusk which was about a kind of personal medical ordeal, odyssey, i had had a great experience with my avid reader. press i'll give a shout out to avid 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.

ginni 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, didn't have a lot of exclamation points. right? and the theme of it was it was this what came through in her in her text messages was how oppressed she felt, how cheated she felt. and stop for a minute. ginni thomas, you know, just want to make sure we're talking. i mean, you know, the free winnebago wasn't big enough. know. i love this audience. got that reference. thank thank you. this is the guy. yeah. and i think it was after that newsletter, my editor ben noonan, wrote me email and the sum of it was, think you should write a book called the age of grievance? and i wrote back and i said, i think we need to sure we hear the same thing before we proceed. but in that phrase, i started thinking about it. and i thought, that really is great distillation and of this

sort of culture of complaint. we live in of this culture that fetishizes a victim position 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 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 our assistance and help. and he said but there are so many people claiming victimization in situations where it is not warranted. he said, we basically have an emergency room full people with paper cuts. brilliant. and i quote him in the book because frankly, that's the whole book. and so now you've heard that

phrase, we're going to write. so i love that a nation of papercut. so did you have a moment of clarity or frustration? your editor had this idea. did you say, oh, yeah, yeah, i've got to. i mean, you've written columns on this, so was there a tipping point? was just a moment that you say, yes, there's a book here. there's i don't know what the tipping point was, but i will tell you, there was hesitation. and there's hesitation me, even as i sit here with you whom i respect and thank for doing this in a friendly face. and even though i assume some 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 if i did, which is it's really important to recognize and talk as i do in the book, that this to define yourself by how you've been wronged, to shout about how you've been wronged as loudly as possible with 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, which i referred to as the grievance. 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 partizan phenomenon. that does not mean it's on the right. in 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 and profound election denialism at a scale that you don't see on the left. so i mostly had hesitation. i wanted to be very minded and

to call this in all the places it exists without doing a sort of facile both sides or implying 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 having, you know, a real belief that this person represent you and contain, you know, your values and whatever we're kind of negative voting and i'd like you to read about this specimen, about america's promise. all right. i have to put on my eyes and hopefully i have right page bookmarked. where does my copy? i hope it's 77. it's page 177. i thought, i oh, there it is. okay. okay. american dream.

american exceptionalism. land of opportunity, endless frontier. manifest destiny. those were the pretty the pretty phrases that i grew with. words that appeared not only in political ads, but also in lessons and elevated analysis of the american psyche. 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 expands us explorers, putting first man on the moon wasn't just a matter of bragging rights, though it wasn't that and we bragged plenty about. it was also an act of self-definition an affirmation of american identity. we stretched the parameters of the navigable universe the way we stretch the parameters of everything. that perspective obviously was a romanticized one, achieved

through selective reading of the past. it discounted the experiences of many americans. it minimized the degree to which they and other minorities were shut out from all this, inventing all this expanding, all this exploring. it mingled, self-congratulatory fiction with fact and it probably imprinted itself more strongly me than on some of my peers because of my particular family history. my father's parents were uneducated who found in the united states what they left southern italy for, more material comfort, greater economic stability and an 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 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 expect their children to do better than they 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. a playwright's invention. take our fitful and beleaguered attempt get back to the moon. in the late and fall of 2022. although neil, an american, had made that giant leap for mankind more than a half century earlier, in 1969, nasa's struggle to send an unmanned moonwalk vessel, the orion rolled, out to its launch pad at the kennedy space center in florida on august 17th, 2022. but only after a series of

delays caused by problems discovered during preflight tests. people then gathered on august 29th to watch orion rocket into space. but nasa canceled the launch the last minute due to a faulty engine reading on september third. 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 be. thank you. that was wonderful. so this. it's seeped in. you sort of see it in your pocket. you talk a lot about see it in these aspects and what do you think has fueled so many, so much of this? well, part it is, 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 a a we don't see we don't we don't have

the social don't believe these two. 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 it. part of it is also we're kind a mature civilization. i don't want to that makes it sound like we're grownups. we're not acting like grown ups, some immature in the different sense. and i think at a certain the american promise, the promise better more bigger it kind of bumps up against the limits of the universe, so to speak. but i think the best illustration of just how much the american psychology has changed for decades now, i think it goes back to the seventies. i pinpointed in the book. and the gallup organization has several times a year, three or four times a year taking a very particular poll that asks americans if they are generally satisfied with the country, with their lives in the country. up until 24 that the answer is that it would go above 50%,

sometimes above 60%. it would go below it would go like this. it was constantly changing, always returning at various times above 50% since 2004. never have more at 50% or more americans answered, they're generally satisfied for 20 years 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 six 2021, it was 11%. that's 20 years of sustained negative assessments of sustained negative thinking. and that has taken it. all right. well, i, i personally we weaver poll. that's the only thing you to the poll. you know particularly in an election year and we are on what's wrong and i and, i want to talk a little and we include the media. yeah. oh, yes. we'll get to that. and so but anger is we all have. right. people it's a natural emotion.

you know, you have to do is get behind the wheel and 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 in the american dialog and what contributed all of this? because we were raised most of us were raised in a certain way to be polite. you can go to places and you're slighted, you know, talking about the chris rock comment of paper cuts, but ultimately we know life it's pretty good. but now it's this anger and this and the feeling of wronged and you talk about the polling and feel that the american experiment has gone kind of the tracks but why is anger become such it's so except able and most of us were not raised you know raise our voices to to you know what we didn't have twitter to to tell to people you don't know how horrible they are what

it what contributed. i don't know. maybe maybe children are being raised differently now and i mean, it's interesting. you said angry 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 with this. sure. yeah. 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 a lot of reasons. i think social 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. that creates an incentive structure for anger and for it's, you know, upsizing into rage. politicians have seen 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 bothers me. but looking at some of protests that have clearly gone off the rails, that have dipped into violence and you know, i've seen comments there say, you know, where do these young people, the sense that confrontation of this sort is appropriate, that these sort of provocations and i'm thinking, i don't know, u.s. congress. right. i mean, i'm joking, but it's but it's serious. i remember this made me this made so much sense, but it made me so sad. remember shortly after the supreme court overturned roe v wade, i was sitting with a prominent democratic whom i will not name because it was an off the record. and i don't think i'm breaking that here. and this politician said, and this politician is known his her or their measured tone, and for being a conciliator. and this was a bernie sanders. it was not him. and it was not a it was not elizabeth warren. and this politicians said, you

know, donald and and his allies do such a good job of making people 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. now, tactically, i thought it was a very smart statement. you and as someone who fervent advocates for reproductive rights, i was on his side, but it made me really sad as a kind of reflection of the times that he was excited about opportunity to sow, reap, anger that that actually was that. that was the smart move was really disturbing. and of course it becomes it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and a self-feeding loop or whatever that right phrases wait so so we might as well get into it. you call trump cast himself as both a martyr and a messiah. he was a grudge flesh grievance became. and you talk about us being the

grievance olympics and he may be the gold medal winner in this. yeah he's like the michael phelps of the greatest. right? right. why does this play so well? i mean, tell me. we have social media. why it's when you stand back, but you just you know, somebody showed. well, we're not know. we're not standing back from it. i mean, you just said the crucial thing. too few of us are standing back from much. too few of us are pausing and saying before we begin shouting or before we just kind of accept everybody else is shouting. too few of us say, what is this doing to us? where are we going? is a different way. like this is costing us so very much in the part of the book that's most important to are the chapters and pages that look at that you know how it's degraded country but you know i don't think i don't think we're self-reflect 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