resolutions walking u.s. arms sales to saudi arabia. in c-span's three presidential leadership surveys taken between 2000 and 2017, grover cleveland drops from 17th to 20 third place area grant makes the most dramatic rise of all the presidents going from the 33rd to the 22nd spot. where does your favorite presidents rank? learn about the lives and leadership skills of the chief in the book the presidents. it is our spotlight on magazines segment here. up early joining us from los angeles's senior staff writer with "the rolling stone," stephen rodrick, an extensive piece in the magazine "all-american despair: a suicide epidemic fueled by guns, poverty, and isolation. thank you for being here this morning and tell us why what prompted you to investigate and write the story. thank you for being hers

morning and tell us why what prompted you to investigate and write the story. guest: thank you for having me. that thered it was is a suicide epidemic across all graphics. that was something -- all demographics. that was something my editor and i talked about and the more we dug into it, the worst of it was among middle-aged men. as someone who is a member of the demographic, i became intrigued and fascinated about why this was and just kind of started to investigate it from there. host: let's give our viewers and listeners a snapshot from your extensive piece, men in the united states average 22 suicides for 100,000 people. 45 to 64, uped

to 30.1% in 2017. the states with the highest rates are montana with 28.9% per 100,000. alaska, 27%. .9% which is all doubled the national rate. new mexico, idaho, and utah round out the top six states. what do you think is causing the geographic centrality of the state and these high suicide rates. guest: all of the states and even alaska which he really did not get into, but shares the same characteristics is that, these are states where men, speaking into the little bit of , these are kind of cowboy men states, so you have that. you have the isolation which middle-aged men tend to fall

into the older they get and it is worse in rural areas, you have the accessibility to guns that many of the states, they are in the top five or six, particularly in the mountain west that have the highest gun ownership rates of anywhere in the country, so as i kind of if you put in the story, take pills or you hang yourself, something can go wrong, but if you put a gun to your head, the chances of success are much higher. the other factor i would add is whether it is mental health or distance from rapid care, if you harm yourself, that is tremendous. in a state like wyoming, there 70 or 80 psychiatrist in the entire state registered to there is athat state dearth of services of people that are in trouble.

on top of that, it is still where you see in other parts of the country where it is more open and people are more open to talking about mental health issues, i still think to some degree in the mountain west and the rural areas, it is taboo. host: and you covered this story by traveling 2000 miles across the mountain west and elsewhere. have you ever driven that distance before for any reason much less to cover a story? guest: i have driven through many of the states and i'm kind of a navy brat so i do a lot of traveling, and across the country eight or nine times. the best way to approach this and get a sense of these communities was to drive through them rather than try to fly in and pop in for a day or two. host: one of the men featured in your piece is toby, who committed suicide in williston, north dakota last year. how is he typical of the men

that you further reported on in the piece? guest: he has a lot of the characteristics. to traumatic childhood, his mother died fairly early, abusive father who also died and it was a bit of a loner. what often happens with men in these situations, he isolated himself and in this case, he was literally living in a warehouse in a trailer, so from friday at 6:00 to a when people rolled around on monday morning, he was in his giant warehouse living in a trailer by himself, and the final step was he had a fascination which does not necessarily lead to these kinds of demise, but he had a

fascination with guns, so he had bought a couple of guns for sports shooting. darknessind of hit the , he had the means in front of him. mentalmbination of illness or depression, isolation, and access to firearms. host: we're talking about the rise in suicide rates in the u.s. in particular, this story rick from thed rolling stone. the) 748-8000 if you are in eastern and central time zones. for those of you and the mountain pacific time zones, (202) 748-8001. i was struck by your inclusion of ernest hemingway in your piece, and i want to read a bit. you write that ernest hemingway suffers from many of the trademark maladies of middle-aged women. he endured mental illness, possibly bipolar disorder, and

his family tree was wracked with suicides that continued all the way to his granddaughter. what really killed hemingway was one of the things that are killing men today. a man whontasy of needs no one but himself. and used the term cowboy up. what do you interpret that as? motto inwboy up is a the midwest of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. no matter what life throws at man,you are an autonomous you can handle anything and you do not ask for help. obviously, that can lead some men to great peoplelty when there are like toby, he had friends who would help him, but he isolated himself and felt embarrassed about the problems he was having that he did not reach out to anyone. i think that really is a problem in the mountain west and other regions of the country.

host: i was surprised to read that i did not know the ernest hemingway, you reported he died alone in suicide by shotgun, but he was 61 when he killed himself. guest: yeah. i think he lives with depression and had been hospitalized at the mayo clinic just a few months before he shot himself. he had been dealing with this for a long time. one of the misconceptions about suicide is the coward's way out. for most people, i do not let this a most people, but for a lot of people commit suicide, it is just to end the pain. i think someone like ernest hemingway just reached his limit that he could not take the pain anymore. host: was his age typical of what we are seeing in male suicides today? guest: yeah. i was looking mostly at 45 to 65 and he falls in that range, the area where depending on where you are in your life, your kids may be growing up or your career

has stagnated, or you have doched -- someone at 52, you reach this now what stage of your life. many studies will save you can now what-- through the stage, the rest of your life is much happier but it is a tough stage. host: without giving away the full story of your reporting, you said you are 52. you write about yourself and your struggles. how are things going today? guest: i am doing good. i have a five-year-old and i think that anytime i find myself in that kind of dark hole, i go spend a few minutes with him and it kind of inspires me to keep pushing on. piece is title of the "all-american despair." it is in "the rolling stone." our guest is the author of the piece stephen rodrick joining us from l.a.. will he go to gary -- we will go to gary and indiana.

caller: i am glad to hear you are doing a lot better for one thing. he was talking about the guy that was living in the warehouse and what a downer life he was living. by contrast, let's look at mr. elton john. stone,"g "the rolling you are aware of his story. he took pot when he was at the peak of his career. he told his family he would die and two hours, jumped into the pool, and the paramedics came and got him and two days later, he was playing for 100,000 people. so it also happens to very famous people as well as no neighbors. namers. anybody that is out there on the cusp of killing themselves, i guarantee you if you wake up on the others, you will be sorry. you will be going out of the frying pan and into the fire.

isre is no way out and there no solution, it is a dead end trap. there are voices in your head that say kill yourself and it will take away your problems. it is not that simple. -- please listen to me because i am speaking from god himself when i say this area host: gary, indiana. any thoughts? did a story on elton john a couple of years ago and we talked a little bit about that. and i at a different age talk about anthony bourdain and , it is notiams exclusively limited to people who are suffering economically or nowhere points in their job. one of the point that suicide awareness advocates we are always telling you is do not try to convince someone saying it could be a combination of

things. elton john was facing the overwhelming fame that he was dealing with at 24, 20 five and probably inherent depression. both robin williams and anthony thedain, they had what on outside looked like great lives, but they are both struggling with inner demons. it really can hit anybody. host: here is trent from munro, louisiana. i am just here shellshocked because the subject is so massive in my life and others around me. i am 61. it has hit me all my life. end seem toric keep changing. can you go deep and not shallow on what you found is people who

find hope in the spiritual and , because at the end of the day, do you have some goodness,mercy and and again, i am struggling. when you live in a secular, materialistic society, when the predispositions of all of the media is secular and materialistic, at the end of the there is no hope being given to us, so the world tends to close in on you. and what i really, here is my real question -- all of the media needs to be more open theologically and intellectually to discuss where our real hope is coming. k, a: stephen rodric

similar feeling echoed on twitter, what role if any has the decline of religion played? guest: it is one of the things, and i will be the first to admit that i have a lot of great feedback on the story and one of the criticism i got was that i did not spend a lot of time on the issue of faith. what i would say is faith is it is the aspect of building a community. you can build a community through your church, through philosophy, or through your friends or serving in your son's boy scout true. it is the loss of community which is one of the things that is driving this epidemic. if you can get that community from church, then god bless. if you get from somewhere else, and that is great too. that is what i find and as a writer, one of my problems is it

is a very solitary profession. you can easily isolate yourself. the more you isolate yourself and if you have a proclivity towards depression or one of these things, then you really can find yourself in a deep hole. piece reports on the proliferation of gun ownership in many of the states but also, the absence of gun loss and gun stores, the resistance from gun stores to carry gun loss -- gun locks. why is there resistance to using the gun locks are making them available? guest: to put it bluntly, if you own a gun store, the last thing you want to do the last thing you want to do is if you want to boost sales is put a box of gun locks suggesting oh, things go badly. this pistol i am buying for shooting or the shotgun that i am buying to go out and hunt rabbits, i may turn on myself, and i just do not think from a

cost-benefit business point of view that the gun shop owners are thinking, i really do not want that to be the association sitting there on the counter when i'm trying to make a sale. host: sharon is up next calling from cleveland. though ahead -- go ahead. caller: good morning. i want to piggyback on what some of the early callers said about the country seems to be becoming more secular. i am 57 and i recently had some health issues and i am also very close to my church members. i have not felt one moment of my church because of family really embracing me in addition to friends from work and family, of course. i just wanted to piggyback on what some of the other callers said. i think it is important to have

some type of community. host: we will hear from mike in arizona. you are on. caller: hello. 67 years old. jobs ind the loss of this country going back starting in from the 1970's and moving up. i am from southern california. it started with the mexican invasion in southern california and that gradually got worse and worse and worse. we lost our jobs in the late 1970's to the mexican invasion, and then, we lost our jobs to china. held almost helpless without having decent jobs, the kind of jobs that we used it to have previously. what do you think that men are going to do? without jobs, jobs are what they live for. host: go ahead.

not get into the immigration issue because -- but i think there is an important point to be made there. one of the things you see in the mountain west is that some of the jobs have gone away. the other thing to realize is that some of the jobs being done up there whether it is working for the railroad are working for ranch hands or rustling cattle, it takes a tremendous, tremendous beating on your body. by the time you are 45 or 50, your body, you may be on workers comp or you may have arthritis, or you may no longer be able to do the things that you did in or working on a ranch that you could do in your 20's or 30's. and then when you hit that limitation of what you can do, then the walls can come crashing in. not just financially but also, what am i going to do for the rest of my life now that i cannot do what i love because my

body cannot take it anymore. host: the piece is "all-american despair." the writer of the piece joining us from los angeles. about 10 more minutes for your calls, for those of you in the eastern and central time zones (202) 748-8000, mountain pacific time zones, (202) 748-8001. you write in the piece about resources to fight suicide saying that wyoming, the suicide rate has risen for the past 55 years. the resources are often underfunded. 2018, naomi had the opportunity to increase its tax on cigarettes by the dollar. those funds could have been used for the mental health resources. according to wyoming's tribune eagle, it was not brought to the vote because the legislature check out early because the house speaker wanted to attend a football game. guest: it is a couple of things

at work here. traditionally, rural and western lowat -- loathe to increase taxes, but when you make that choice, and you look at the revenue that could have been made by taking that $.60 cigarette tax to $1.50. it is hiring more psychiatric nurses, it is funding hotlines, you are making a choice not to help take care of people, and it gets back to -- circle back to the cowboy up thing, there are people in the states at her like your problems are your problems, and there is no role for the state of play, and i personally think that is a big mistake. host: how much of the rise in suicides, particularly among men is due to affects of the terry

service, ptsd? guest: there is a lot of that net could be its own 10,000 word story. it is one of those things that a couple of the people i talked to who had served and came back, one person who made it in the story but we really did not talk about this part of it. he lives in cheyenne. is skype beingth to a rotating -- skype two rotating psychologists. not telling your back story over and over again is really key. it is a tremendous, tremendous issue, and as a of these veterans in this group of 40 and 50-year-old men, i think it will become a bigger problem. host: here is brady next up in detroit. good morning. caller: thank you for the

subject. my heart goes out to these people who are suffering from this and the epidemic as well as andopiates -- on opiates, people suffering from depression. my son hung himself in the garage when he was 16, about 18 years ago, so i know without a doubt that when someone tells you that i want to kill myself, how they are feeling and they really need to be listened to and that is a problem that we do not have enough support or enough hotlines, or congress. congress beingf elected and not doing the things they need to do. both democrats and republicans, i just thought it was supposed to be congress and doing what they need for the people because there is definitely an epidemic is reallyion and it

getting rough and tough here for people. especially men, just like the jobs. i am 63 years old and it is hard to get back into the work field. it is like you are lost. thoughts? guest: first of all, brady. i am so sorry for your loss. i sat in on some counseling women who lostnd children and it is just unfathomable tragedy. that this seems to theory, iy, or in will put the gun issue and gun availability aside, in theory, in terms of funding hotlines and public service announcements and stuff like this, this seemingly should be a no-brainer that does

not have a republican or democratic component, it should have been something that we do to help people that need it. you'veou mentioned that have covered other stories for rolling stone. could you have anticipated this, the reaction to this story we have people like the caller and other people after reading the story on the street or elsewhere to start telling you their own story in terms of suicide family? have been magazine writing for 20 to 25 years and this is the story that i got the most feedback on. people have tracked me down through email or twitter or whatever to tell me their stories, and it is heartbreaking. morekes you realize even than when i was writing the story what a tremendous problem this is. you are never going to completely eradicate suicide as a mental health issue.

there is so much more we could be doing. ont: let's go first to stan staten island in new york. caller: i just want to agree with what he said about the community. communityf years ago, and families live together, and everybody was in close proximity, and then there was a book about how everybody is moving away. without question, the point about community is extremely important because we have lost the notion of community. it does play a role because if you do not have a strong community where everybody is in close proximity to basically be there to help each other, it does exacerbate the problem. host: is there anything more you would like to say about that? guest: i would just agree getting back to my own situation. of community i have, a lot

it is through parents and men and women that i meet there my son's school. that was not the intention why we had a child, but it does provide you community and whether it is that, or a church group, or you are volunteering to do something like meals on wheels. i have a friend in this area was feeling lonely and she started groupng, just a kayaking and joined a kayaking group down in the pacific ocean and she met a community with that. the community can literally be anything but it is really important to have one. host: let's hear from cindy and st. joseph, minnesota. caller: good morning. groups can help, but only if you basically look at the the good works that they do. acts. relies on our own i believe very much that when man seems to think that he can take care of himself and he does

not need god, we basically start to falter. god is goodness. , somethingfrom sin that a lot of us do and it is so easy to do today. we need to repent. people come from satan. in the slumps, give theirtually lives away they ask our lord to forgive their offenses. but also, that they have faith that they know the power of god to restore you back to where he wants you to be. this is something that the world, the church is today, nobody is doing this. that is cindy in minnesota. -- >> that is cindy and minnesota. what is the suicide rate among women in that area? why isn't it as high as men? what is the difference you found? --the rate is significantly

significantly but nowhere near the men partial rate. i hate to harp on this, and i realize it probably angers a significant amount of your viewership, is that men have more access to guns. think gun for sports and hunting is totally fine, but the access to guns, and many of these states don't have any limitation if someone has a mental health problem. you can still go and get a gun. with women, not that there are not a lot of women who don't love to shoot, but it is not as prevalent in the culture as it is with men. from losis joining us angeles this morning. -- our guest is joining us from los angeles this morning. poverty, and isolation has

swept across the u.s. with middle-age men dying in record numbers. it is up at amazon.com. c-span's washington journal, live everyday with policy issues that impact you. rachel deannday, wilson with the alliance for securing democracy discuss the report on state election security. watch washington journal live at seven eastern sunday morning. join the discussion. >> now, u.s. census bureau director stephen billingham testa -- testifies on planning for the 2020's ss -- 2020 census. the justice department had said tuesday that it would move forward with printing a version of the census that does not

include a citizenship question. wasy later as the hearing going on, a federal judge in new york signed an order permanently blocking the trump administration from adding a citizenship question to the census. here is the 90 minute house oversight subcommittee hearing. this is about an hour and a half. good afternoon, welcome, thank you for is coming today. i want to start by welcoming a new member to the subcommittee as well as a new member to the oversight fred keller who comes from pennsylvania 12. welcome. also, without objection i want to want