victory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan. discussion about the social changes occurring and small cities and towns. after that, the 10th circuit court hears oral arguments concerning the utah law banning same-sex marriage. >> for over 35 years, c-span brings public affair offense from washington directly to you for putting you in the room of congressional hearings, white house events, briefings, and conferences, and offering free complete gavel coverage of the u.s. house as a complete service of that industry. c-span, created by the cable tv industry and brought to as a public service by a local cable or satellite providers. watch us in hd, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter.

>> james fallows and his wife deborah fallows sit down to talk about their observations of social changes taking place across the country. discussion is in our. -- this discussion is an hour. >> thank you for hosting us. thank you for joining us here in this wonderful place. i would like to say quick word about -- what he had before you is one of the most remarkable, if not most remarkable productive partnerships in american journalism. it is a partnership that, over the years, has taken them and millions of readers from austin to washington to seattle, tokyo, shanghai, beijing. now it has them hopscotching across america in a single engine airplane. it has shown this partnership in

its most clearest light. we see their complementary interest at work. they write about the compelling or quirky characters they meet in the adventures they have along the way. jim writes more about factories, and deborah writes about schools. deborah writes about language in the way people talk. jim writes about beer. [laughter] >> right. >> but they are both driven by the same great curiosity. and excitement about learning, and adventure that took them to china, and has not taken them back to rediscover parts of america that don't get a lot of coverage in national publications.

i think that is what we might as well start. why you chose to do this. how you went about thinking about where to go in the first place. jim, do you want to set the table? >> thank you for reading our magazine, and leading us to this adventure. i guess this started when deb and i got married. it was a bleak time in england. we ended up, after we got married, in oxford, england, we went to a work camp in ghana for our honeymoon. [laughter] >> that set the table. >> fair warning on both sides. the serious point would be that we just got back from three years living in china where we traveled around by bus and

train, and airplane him and car. over the years we have flown across the country a number of times in our small plane. we thought, why don't we apply the china models and get a set of d.c. for a while. >> to give their credit to our older son, he is the one who suggested it to us. he said we were getting antsy after being back in d.c. for a few years and said what you do what you do best. getting your plane and see what you can find. >> what was the process of figuring out where you could go? >> that is an ongoing process. we were looking for interesting, smaller places. small is a flexible definition. aspen doesn't have many people who live there. that would not count.

sioux falls, a sizable town, was in our category of small because it seems like it is on the fringe somewhere. we are looking for places that are not in the first year of national media attention. not the east coast where most of these, or if they gotten the news it would be for a natural disaster or some oddity, or somebody was going to illustrate a theme piece. we wanted to go to these places and tell more about people once we have the general deposition. >> he put something in a blog post that said tell us about your town. she would visit your town. it was an amazing response. in a couple of days we had a thousand people ride in with why their town was interesting. why their town was changing and developing. so, we actually started out choosing a few that we knew a little bit more about. sioux falls, south dakota.

it was the first one. the text was could we remember it was sioux falls and not sioux city. once we learned that, that was a mistake that we had made. [laughter] we needed to set the record straight. >> how many people are clear on the difference between sioux falls and sioux city? we can tell you if you want to know. so, sioux falls is the largest city in south dakota and the capital of the planes. an interesting place. if you have a credit card payment it probably goes to sioux falls. it is a great, diverse city that has immigrants and refugees from around the world. sioux city, in iowa, was 80 years ago the superior of sioux falls.

sioux falls thinks sioux city has gone down. each city has a town that looked aspirationally. -- >> there is the cartoon image that america is largely emptying out into a few big metropolises, and the rest of the country is being marginalized. where there are people, they are clustering in a handful of walmart and applebees. that is not what you're finding it all. sioux falls turned out to have a diverse local economy. >> to brag on it for a second, it is a huge agricultural

center. downtown sioux falls, who has been? it is very beautiful since they repaired the falls. they were derelict long ago. the sites are the falls, the state penitentiary, because the story is 100 years ago when they were setting up a state university, do you want the anniversary of the prison, they decided on the prison because it was steadier. for local talent. [laughter] this enormous slaughterhouse, where thousands of pigs meet their fate. apparently the pig laws are laxer. they come across to sioux falls, meet their maker, and then they go to china.

the companies owned by a chinese firm. they have agriculture. they have high tech. they make the macy's balloon. they have finance. it is the first of many places. we thought this would be an interesting place to live. >> as far as the human aspect of sioux falls that was something that surprised us. we thought we had seen mostly ethnic, scandinavian types. it is been a center for refugee resettlement in the u.s. since the 1970's. it started with vietnam, largely with the lutheran services in sioux falls. sioux falls became so good at this, so good at taking refugees, umbrella organizations decided to send wave after wave of refugees to sioux falls.

that has happened since the 1970's. right now in the school system they have 10% of the school population are refugee and immigrant kids. there are 30 different languages spoken in the schools. if you have have english language programs you get extra money to help those kids in their immersion programs to learn english. it is a work well in sioux falls because the programs are designed that all of the non-english speaking kids will be speaking the same foreign language. there are 30% of kids who speak spanish, and the other 70% is this longtail of 27 different languages.

swahili, arabic, all kinds of languages. you have not only this incredible barrage of refugees, commitment to medic situations where they have been a camps for five years or two years, one of the women i met, when she was six years old she and her family had to flee darfur. they finally get to sioux falls. here she is. this beautiful young woman. 16 years old, in high school. she was acclimated by this point in wanting to join rotc, which she did. she just wanted to challenge. she was still wearing her muslim one of the hardest things for her was on dress-up day at the school, when you wear your

formal uniform they would let her wear her muslim headscarf with the formal uniform. she was allowed to do it. -- wasn't allowed to do it. by chance, when i was there, it started a ball rolling. the people who were her commander at the school was helped trying to solve the problem. he went up the ranks. this year that word that she was allowed to wear it. it is touching. >> this is something you found in burlington. schools wrestling with an immigrant population.

>> definitely. one of the elementary schools had its own kind of drama. it was a regular public school in a rough part of town. and a lot of the kids were living in this school as well. it was a failing school. they were either going to close the school down or bus the kids out. some of the activists, and they are very active in burlington, said this will not be. we have a third way. they decided they would make the school into a real example of the successful focused school. you can guess that the word in burlington is sustainability. they were making in the charter school around sustainability. they created such -- such a magnet and such a successful

school that now it is one of the best elementary schools in the town that has about 60%, 40% around the town, and 60% from that neighborhood. they lean on everyone as a community to contribute building the gardens, making being lunches. two touching things from the principal, they go around the rules of things. they have to meet the standards of the schools. but, the important thing is they decided that each kid upon leaving six. needed to know how to ride a bike and to swim. they got by extended to the school and they taught the kids how to ride bikes.

they got a few teachers for swimming and march them down to the lake when the weather gets warm and teaches them how to swim. this kind of engagement and dedication, we're just going to make it our way, that you see improvements on all kinds in the small towns. >> lamy talk about the native -- let me ask about the native populations. the city or town, what is it that keeps people there? or bring them back? people return. >> one theme. i want to say something on what deb was talking about.

it is natural if you are involved in national level politics over the last generation to think bleak thoughts about the fabric of american life because there are rewards for things not happen. the payoff for blocking things were scoring points is so much what what we invite or swim in all the time. the absence of that in regional level activities is so dramatic. what is interesting people don't even comment on it. they aren't saying here we are doing the business. they don't even bother saying that. the school is solving its problems. a couple of weeks ago, if you are wanting to have a non-corny sense of the functionality of american public life, you would see it in one of these places

where people are paying attention. the local patriotism, we have these thousand plus nominations of people saying come to our town. people cared about their city and why it was special. why even the things failing about it more difficult. there is a high representation of people, you grew up here, people who have come to the metropolis and think if you want to achieve you have to come from the metropolis. it is interesting to see people whose loyalty is so local. the town where i grew up, redwoods, california. it is viewed by people in los angeles as the boondocks. joan gideon wrote a piece, one long mockery of my homeland apart from other things. there are people there, including a man who is a real tech entrepreneur, who has built this company in this little town

because he cares about its future and the conditions. we ask what the story of the town is. there is this local attachment and patriotism that is quite impressive. >> for example, in holland, michigan. >> holland, michigan. we went there after somewhere we knew in college was from holland. he went back, it is a small town on the eastern shore of lake michigan. economically it is distinctive for having a high manufacturing proportion of gdp. anthropologically it is about 51% dutch, calvinist, conservative.

half of one percent are jewish, including our friend who is there, part of a long scrap business. we no longer go he was saying i'm going to go back to holland. we saw him. he has built a culture there with his wife that they have made a life that matters. they have all kinds of philanthropy. >> it is interesting to listen to the way people talk about their hometowns. you usually hear, in sioux falls, i love sioux falls. in other towns, like eastport, population 1300, as cold as it can possibly be, the answer is how could i not live here.

>> a test case, we haven't been to -- there was a chart of the 10 most -- sorry to interrupt. i can do that once every ten years. [laughter] there was a chart of the 10 most polluted cities in china. china was like a thousand times more polluted than the u.s.. these are the top 10 cities. one that we went to was fresno, which is a hard-pressed place. even their there are people who care about trying to have the spark of fresno. this guy was having a downtown place. they care about it. >> winters, california is a notch down from napa. soft, rough and ready.

charming. >> still forming. >> there were a number of young couples, young families. the husband or the wife was usually from winters. to a person, each one said when they met their future spouse, the agreement from the beginning was you have to understand we are going to winters. if you buy into this, this is where we are going to live. this is a pretty small town. the commitment to the town, you can say those in words, but will -- what we saw the people do was try to figure out how to make their town be sustainable and built for a future where they could create a family life that usually meant small town life where you know

your neighbors and everyone is watching out for one another. that was a definite aspect of it. and use the assets of the town, take advantage of them and build them up in a modern way. in maine it was all about being a town that wasn't really living up to its ability. there are going to make that into a world-class port. >> they are the main depot for shipping pregnant cow from texas to turkey. it is a long story. [laughter] >> go ahead. >> eastport has 1300 people. every one of whom looms in our imagination. the first night, they are doing this production of the glassman

manager. the guy selling tickets was the editor of a local newspaper, which is thriving. >> the stage manager was the barista at the coffee shop. >> the people who urges making it happen. one of them is the port manager who got the call of some person in texas who runs a company to have an account and make sure all of the embryo cal's are female. -- cows are female. the guy from texas said how would you like to send pregnant cows to turkey? and he said oh sure we would love to do that. if we say no, someone else will say yes. they have the deepest port in the continental united states. the farthest extreme of the north american continent.

you now have these wrapups. tens of thousands of cows have come up by truck from texas and other parts of the u.s. with supplies. they load them into the shipping containers. little portholes. during the journey the cowboys shovel and more straw to keep it filled up. when they get off istanbul they go through a cow carwash. this is to replenish european herds after mad cow disease. this is one of several big businesses. tidal energy, america's tidal energy center. on the bright side, when the canadian arctic melts they'll be the closest a plaintiff coast port to china. [laughter] the glasses 1-10 full. -- one-tenth full.

>> my wife start looking for property there. [laughter] >> for $100,000 you can get a nice house with a view of the ocean on all sides. >> there are some tensions. you have these people working hard to make this town work. even they admit now they are taking a lot of risks. they are going on faith that these things will work out. not all of them are native t -- to east port. this is a point of tension within the town. we heard the town person from away more than once. people who were native born, this doesn't mean you happen to

be born and you come to eastport. you have to be born in eastport. the people from away, and the people not from away. they don't always see eye to eye on things. our town is doing fine without these changes and big fancy ideas coming in. the big fancy ideas are what is moving the town. the even in the town of 1300, always not happy. >> big ideas coming from people come from the outside? >> not really. i think they start from the people who are inside or want to be there. >> they both worked outside for a while. this guy, a different person, he grew up there growing oranges. his grandfather had been an orange grower.

the last thing he wanted to do was grow these oranges. it is farming work. he became a financier. he is now back trying to preserve and make a viable business of the historic orange groves. and to head off the main threat, the citrus pest making its way from florida to california. >> i think that south carolina is a good example of people from away and people from their deciding to come back. do you want to tell the story question my >> greenville is a phenomenal turnaround story. story?ou want to the

>> greenville is a phenomenal turnaround story. it was a big textile area. now it is where bmw, it has the most impressively redone downtown we have seen. the mayor says that whenever they are trying to get businesses, international ones to come, the reaction is are you kidding? they come there, and then they are talking to real estate agents and getting a house. it is a beautiful place. it illustrates the community, the good and the bad. the more effective, the more exclusive. places including holland and greenville, where there is this tight community, i published a note from a woman who was a visiting professor in greenville who said i hated greenville with

the heat of a thousand, million suns. i couldn't wait to get away. it is part of the american trade-off. >> you have, we ran into so many young people who are in their 20's have gone away for college and come back visiting their parents at home. this incredulity. this is my hometown. everything is change. they are doing the tech startups. there is this silicon valley in greenville that is becoming known around the country is a good incubator situation where you can learn to be a coder or get support for your startup.

it is kids from greenville and kids from all over the place returning to this town. and, reshaping it. >> let's talk about what it is like me on the road 50% of your time. i'm curious about the process of arriving at a new place. do you usually have a friend that serves as a local guide? what is it like bouncing around? >> i'll take that. [laughter] usually when we arrive, i hope this works. we have committed to this for the next series of time. the answer is no, nobody meets us. we hope the rental car works. we hope there is a motel at the place we have booked. just kind of go. the next morning, set the trap lines for the usual suspects. there is always a great group of people where you can knock on the door and they will talk to you.

the newspaper editors, the mayor, the schools. the school principals, the librarians. >> people starting a business. people here are, and journalists know this, there is this forgettable exponential curve of when you go someplace and you get contacts. you spin the first half of the time trying to find able to talk to. suddenly there is a million people to talk to and not enough time. we spend the first days -- suddenly there are visits. >> what is the strangest place you've stayed so far? >> yeah. [laughter] >> if we don't say what city it was then. there is a personal friend we don't want to inconvenience.

>> i know. [laughter] >> one of the places we have stayed was not literally a shipping container, but it wasn't always a shipping container with no windows. it was over something which i will describe is part of america prison industrial complex. a 24/7 activity center for prison businesses. >> it was nice. it was very comfortable. was it quiet? >> very quiet. and a surprising difference in your sleeping pattern that no light can enter the room where you are. it is easier to sleep in. >> yeah. that was one of the stranger ones for sure. actually, the places were like

traveling businessmen are. the places that work best, jim does air control. i do ground maneuvers. part of the ground maneuvering is discovering places -- anything with sweets in the name -- with "suites" in the name works well. you get extra space. you get wi-fi. there is a pool. i highly endorse, give it a name sweets. -- "suites." those work very well. [laughter] >> we stayed in a historic hotel that was not so great. we moved to an interesting one ran by some indian immigrants. >> third-generation indian via the congo, belgium, canada,

england, and that a place in texas. his family had been in the hotel business. he was in the process of figuring out how to build a certified hotel, which is a very detailed set of standards you have to follow. we stumbled upon it serendipitously. he took me on a tour. the carpet is made of grass, sugar, rubber. anything natural. everything has to be certified to be ecologically sound. he was taking it to the next step.

perfectly compatible, to make it local. he sourced all of the furniture making within five miles of grand rapids. the special lights, the special hardware that he designed himself, the special tile. the special furniture. it was actually the most perfect hotel. adobe eco hotel. >> buffalo paintings on the walls. >> i'm wide open it up to you guys. i want to ask another question. please line up at the two mics that are in the aisles. this is a washington audience. i have to ask. my wife's reaction was why live in washington? i wonder, how do you answer that question? now, do you see any prospect? you have written along the way of the effectiveness of local governance, and this tremendous ambition at the local level to build things like title energy generators and spaceports, and places you wouldn't expect to find spaceports.

do you see any mechanism that could be brought here? >> i will answer, earnestly why we live in washington question. i was away so i should live in california. the center of my businesses in the east coast, the atlantic is based here. for 40 years we have lived half in d.c. and half in other places. i don't know that anything we have seen makes me feel any more hopeful about -- one cynical thing. we have lived overseas a lot. it is fine to be a journalist living overseas.

i was a washington editor. if you live off the east coast, but within the u.s., you become seen as a regional player. it is harder to be a national figure in journalism if you're not in the east coast. i wish it were different. i don't know if i feel -- that i see any things you can apply and national politics because the feedback loop of cooperating in having results, it is there within a community or a state. the payout is the party line as opposed actually doing things. >> i have a different version of the why we live here.

something i have learned from this experience, looking back and realizing much of the way we have lived our life in this town, which is a big town, has been to try to make it smaller. our neighborhood, our sense of community, where the kids go to school. it has become smaller and has a lot of the same characteristics of these small towns where it is important to know the people on the street, or no the people in the neighborhood. thenow people in the neighborhood. i think everybody does that. it is interesting to recognize that you do that in your life. you make a neighborhood a small town. this town, you could rattle off 12 different neighborhoods and people know. >> most of our lifelong best friends are in the audience now in washington. this is where our lives are. our kids were born here we still grieve with the redskins. >> if anyone has a question come

to the mike. -- the mic. tell me about getting on the plane. do you like air travel? >> oh, yes. jim is a passionate pilot. i'm a good shotgun seat. i know how to do things in the plane. it is the only place i can nap. it is incredibly beautiful to fly and get this norman rockwell view of america beneath you. the best altitude. you can see the yellow school buses and white fences. the word for america in chinese means beautiful country. when you are flying over the country at that altitude, it is

chills up your spine of how beautiful it is. >> deb is a wonderful write c person and the plane. -- right seat person on the plane. the air traffic controllers are always nicer. you know how to pull. >> we had one hard fast rule when we started this. we would never fly, no matter what it meant, if conditions were not safe. jim is a conservative pilot. i'm a conservative passenger. we have a conservative rule. >> the number of stops, a couple of places have come to meet us. one was eastport, maine.

they had to get back. the weather was terrible. it was 800 foot ceiling. i told them, i'm not going to take you back. it would have been a 5 hour drive for them through the rain instead of a 40 minute flight. fortunately, he understood. our other partner here has been writing, you follow are series. you?ere are >> a double question. the first part is easy. could you tell us what aircraft you fly? i'm comparing hearing you tonight with when i heard you the first time back in the late

1980's. you give a talk about your time in asia and certain characteristics of culture and economy that made them tough economic competitors to the united states. when i asked the last question, did you ever see a time when certain characters would be the winning combination, that moment the moderator said that is all the time we have. [laughter] what i got from this was a certain kind of individuality and grit across america. maybe if you could touch on that. if there is anything about that, a winning formula for the united states?

>> it is a 2006 model. it is a great plane. i wrote a book when this plane came on the market. after we got back from japan i read a book called more like us. the ingredients of american culture success, which for reinvention, mobility, possibility, that was the key to american success. it was important not to copy the japanese way but to make sure the u.s. doesn't become class ridden in stagnant. i am, after living in china, we had a wonderful time in china, but i think the united states has tremendous assets, cultural. china is a great place that has serious problems.

the main thing the u.s. could do is create -- keep the fluidity that has made a distinctive over the years. >> i am one of the neighbors. [laughter] for those of you who do not know, they are the best neighbors you could ever imagine. they have walked the talk. >> because they are never there. [laughter] >> i didn't think about that. my husband and i are from small town areas. he used to say that in a small town you watch a haircut for fun. i would love to hear you talk about the place. the fun that people are having, and the food they are enjoying. >> there is so much fun. we are always there on the weekends. we always tend to keep in shape

and do some kind of exercise. i'm here to report that every single town has a newly redone riverwalk. even if it doesn't have a river. there is a riverwalk. you can rent bikes and go around everywhere. there is a beautiful one in sioux falls. i have made a practice to go to the local ymca, which is great for a couple of reasons. they are so nice. you can get a day pass and swim in their pool. it has taught me about what strong institutions these are round the towns. you get a slice of life and picture of life. which one was that? it was in greensville.

greensville has so many ymca's you can hardly choose. you have the aqua aerobics in one corner. people like me doing laps in another corner. the kids pool. you just get a sense of the community that way. we do a lot of recreational stuff. holland, michigan was wonderful because sunday was family day. that meant that nobody was doing anything but going out to the beach or riding bikes around. >> it has been impressive that, i would have thought that downtown revitalization was a brooklyn or san francisco type thing.

but it is amazing. every place you go, there is reviving the downtown, having a combination of retail and residential, and food as an ingredient. everyone is trying to do that. there are pubs every place. the idea of america that we get, we have the strip across america for the atlantic a decade ago, it was talking about the bad food. things have changed since then. >> it is not only local ethnic restaurants. it is everybody. a lot of young people. this is their passion. to open restaurants. it is fabulous.

we have been lucky to eat everywhere. >> good evening. i follow your writing for a while. the china writing has been of a lot of interest. my business is involved in china. i have been there several times. the greenville pieces what struck me and provoked a lot of thought. i spent 10 years growing up in greenville in the jim crow days. i had a lot of before photographs to compare to your after photographs. i wanted -- i wondered if you reflected, on the racism, and on what people don't realize is, although it reared its head again, the connection with the anti-unionism with racism. i will mention in passing, you may become aware when you were there, to its credit greenville

held the first lynching trial ever in south carolina. 1948. everyone was acquitted. then, jessica west brought a long piece about it. she was there for the trial. i had known about it. your writing prompted me to dig it out and read it. you may me think a lot about greenville and change my attitude. i'd be interested to hear your observations. like thank you very much. much.thank you very as you can imagine there is a vein of things we have been thinking about related to this. a general proposition is we're

we used to say we to each other it is always more interesting than horrible. that is the way we had to have a positive outlook on china. the things we have in looking for, there are tensions that go on in these places. in holland, we won't even get into the gay-rights initiative. the story in the south is dealing with america's major story, race relations. when we asked people in greenville about how they have coped with this part of their heritage, their argument was number one, that was part of their historical burden. they felt that things had changed. the black people we talked to said it changed. white people were forceful saying it had change. i mentioned in my article greenville county was the last

one to recognize martin luther king's birthday. the mayor wrote back saying you should be clear, the city of greenville approved it long ago. the county is much more right wing. anti-unionism is a big thing. it is a big factory. st. mary's has had a interesting race relations story because most of the african-american families there were union members of the paper mill. they were better paid. most of the diversity is from the navy. there is a more select. >> we can take the last questions. >> hello. i have worked for a company, and one of the things, many of our

sellers are living in these communities where jobs have left. a major employer has left. they are so committed to these communities. one of many, building resilience in an effort to stay in these places they love. i would love to hear give examples of people or examples of folks turning inward and building their own businesses and coming up with their own ways to build that resilience to stay in the community. >> i think we saw that in every place we went. eastport, maine is a great example of where people are making it up as they go along and doing, and being creative. doing whatever they do best. there is one woman i met in

maine who, she and her husband basically built salvaged everything in their house in their own greenhouse. in the greenhouse, she wanted to preserve everything that they grew there. the lettuce and things weren't keeping well in her fridge. over a year, she created this thing called a veggie bag. it was made out of recycled hospital sheets. then a special fabric that she salvaged. now she has an online business called veggie bags. it is a fabulous product. she sells them online. not only did she have a tiny living herself out of that, but she employs five other young women in the town that she calls the stitch sisters.

they get together and stitch these bags together. curiously, you might think she wants to make it big in get out of eastport. actually, she said she just like starting things like this preaches want to get that big. she just wants to be able to do something that is important to her and the environment, and helps other people, and stays there. we saw a lot of that. people creating something out of nothing so they can stay where they were. >> to balance, as you know, over the 20th century, most small towns shrank or disappeared. south dakota, every county except to have lost populations every decade of the last century as they go towards. there are historic trends. >> a lot of being local

community vegetable co-ops, where people band together and buy and sell to each other, and have better product for it, and better lifestyle when everybody is putting in a little peace and sharing it. yeah. >> thank you. no doubt you had conversations with hundreds of american people. winston churchill said something like, the greatest argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the common man. was he being overly cynical?

how do you come out? >> i am trying very hard both for appearances and sincerely not to be sappy about any of this. when we were in vermont we saw a huge heroin epidemic. every place we have been there are problems. st. mary's has a history downtown they are trying to build but the outside looks like sprawl hill. i'm not trying to sound sappy. it has generally made me feel heartened about the american texture and culture to see how people are trying, and how we keep absorbing people from all over the world. that is, to my mind, the strategic asset the u.s. has always had over any culture. i know if winston churchill, i don't know if winston churchill would be impress pre-ibm press. >> we can be pretty cynical in our everyday life.

i think one of the things we have been most surprised at is when you think about the american spirit, that high near spirit, to do it ourselves spirit. we have been surprised at how strong that sensibility remains, how hard people are working to just do whatever it is they want to do to have a better life. >> it sounds like saps. it is a different impression than what you get from cable news. not in the sense of these are wholesome americans. it is a different orientation. >> he made it clear people aren't any nicer. [laughter] >> thank you for coming out tonight. i'm a senior undergraduate student, born and raised in the east coast. no familiarity with small town

america. as i enter the job market, how do young people like myself, no familiarity with the rest of the country, how do we break into these small towns and contribute to these economies? my peers, the only places look for jobs are in new york, washington, d.c., seattle. how do we move to a place like eastport and contribute in a meaningful way? >> that is an interesting question. we should be in touch offline. i guess, as you say, the impression is the big cities are where the talent goes. to see these tech startups in greenville, and sioux falls, it is a matter of figuring out someplace that have some plausible appeal or connection to you. you have to like the winters in sioux falls and holland and eastport.

you recognize you are in the south. >> and all that goes with that. you have to recognize if you go to redlands, it can be 120 in the summer. there are these people who are the barometer of people in their 20's, and early 30's, who want to start their life and think i can do it here. that is what we see amongst these places. >> one other thing. we thought when we were in china there were a lot of american kids going to china. they didn't know what they were going to do when they arrived. i think it is the same thing here. showing up is 80% of the battle. show up, and if you make a educated or good choice, stuff starts to happen. if that doesn't work, try a different town.

[laughter] >> that is a hopeful way to end on. thank you very much. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] withxt, a conversation justice scalia and in berg three utah oral arguments on the law banning same-sex marriage. >> on the next washington journal, a roundtable discussion on creating public and private sector jobs. eisenbrey.