tavis: good evening from los angeles. tonight, conversations with a couple of best-selling authors. first, robert putnam has a unique take on the look of religion in society called " american graves." and that a conversation with nassim taleb. it is a look at what caused the global financial crisis. his book is called "the bed of procrustes." coming out right now. >> all i know is his name is james, and he needs extra help with his reading. >> i am james. >> yes. >> to everyone making a difference -- >> thank you. >> you help us all live better.

>> nationwide insurance supports tavis smiley. with every question and every answer, nationwide insurance is proud to join tavis in working to improve financial literacy and remove obstacles to economic empowerment, one conversation at a time. >> nationwide is on your side >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [captioning made possible by kcet public television] captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- tavis: robert putnam is the professor of public policy at harvard and he is also a best- selling author with books like "bowling alone." his latest is called "american grace." >> good to be with you.

tavis: when you say american grace, you mean -- >> they are very religious people. the average american is more religious going to church and believing in god. we are also highly diverse. most places in the world that have high -- people that are very devout and very diverse also have a lot of mayhem. like bosnia, beirut, baghdad, or bombay. we take our religion seriously, we are very diverse, and we respect one another across the faith lines. tavis: you said a couple of things that i want to go back and get. are we as religious as we once

were? as far as the trend goes? >> we are probably about as religious or a little less religious than 50 years ago. we try to have an in-depth survey of religion in american life. one thing that has happened is that we become more polarized. some of these are less religious than we used to be. we have moved either to the pool of very religious or not religious at all. tavis: this is my term, not yours. i'm not so sure that our of religiosity makes it -- makes us as tolerant as we think we are. muslims come to mind. our tolerance seems to be decreasing. >> you have to have the right

historical perspective here. 100 years ago, there were anti- catholic riots. by now, catholics are probably the most popular religious group in america. muslims are a special case. they seemed to be tied up with the whole war on terror, but there were three groups that are less popular among americans. one is mormons, one is muslims, and one is buddhists. i've never heard of a buddhist terrorists running around. we don't know them. most americans don't know a muslim, more men, or a buddhist. in the african-american community, most of the religious views -- african-americans are

substantially more favorable. there are more muslims and more folks in the african-american community that are asking that question. tavis: black people know what it means to be disenfranchised indeed the -- and be the "other" in america. i digress on that point. it is a dense attacked. i am fascinated by this title. grace is a merited favor? an unmerited favor? i am trying to juxtapose the grace with our increasing arrogance and our increasing elitism.

how can we favor this grace, and around the world, they see us as arrogant, elitist, pompous, and increasingly nationalistic. >> if i were writing a book on international affairs, i would agree with you. obama as the leader of the country has had some affect on that, i agree that in terms of foreign policy, we might seem like a bully. we're looking at a different aspect of americans, how they're able to manage strong, divergent faiths. we think that americans are surprisingly tolerant. most americans are very religious. most secular americans say there is a lot of good that comes out of religion for american

democracy. we are not as divided as we might think we are. tavis: religion divides and your nights. how does our religion and divide us -- divide us? >> a series of shocks and aftershocks have caused americans to become more polarized. at least outside of the african- american community, the degree of power ... you are is much more correlated with your politics. there were plenty of white progressives and there were plenty of un-churched conservatives. more and more white folks are conservative and now sitting in the pews.

they are tightly bound up with one another. the african-american community is, as you know, the most religious of all racial and ethnic groups and the more solidly democratic. the rest of the country has become much more polarized into a very religious or conservative pole. tavis: religion, to the contrary, unites us in what ways? >> the culture wars, the notion that americans are deeply divided and hate each other along religious lines is a vast exaggeration. we think that as a function of a fun house mirror that we get from the media, the talk radio shows and so on the suggest that

we are in a couple of cans that both liberal or progressive people hate religious people, and if you talk to people, that is not true. there are more personal ties. one half of all marriages are injured-faith marriages. -- interfaith marriages. it was not at all normal 50 years ago. the people that we want to go to if you discover you have cancer horror your marriage is falling apart, the have friends and are in some other faith. at the private level, americans are much more knit together by

personal relations. aunt susan is catholic, you're baptist, and you know your faith teaches you she will not make it to heaven because she is training at the wrong altered. but you know and susan. -- aunt susan. we are caught between what our theology says a and and susan -- says and aunt susan. aunt susan mostly wins. tavis: blurbs on the back of th e book. back to something you said a moment ago, is it just my read, or do we see progressives -- let me be careful about this. if not running away from their

faith, and not embracing it or maybe not even proselytizing in the way that the right is? >> many of your viewers think there is something natural or normal about being this the relationship between conservatism and religion, but that is very unusual. the whole sweep of american history, very often, progressive movements in the nineteenth century have deep religious roots. women's suffrage had deeper roots. the civil rights movement was all about churches and their role on the side of progressive causes. we are in the middle or toward the end of one religion seems to be honing the monopoly of the

right politically and not the left. that is not likely to continue, actually. tavis: you have said uniquely different, the african americans. it's -- the african-american experience in this country. >> it is not only among african americans, there is a close relationship between ethnic or racial identity and religious identity. that is true in the white community. historically, there is a very close connection with the germans and being lutheran, italians and being catholic, and d.c. that connection in the white community -- can you see that connection in the white community. it ties to the race or ethnicity.

he african-american who is the striking example of that. the black church has played a crucial role in american history. that shows up at all of these statistics. african-americans are two or three times likely to say grace over meals that white folks. they are more likely to go to church -- use of guns get people that are not about religious ha, but in the black community, you get well-educated people that are very religious. tavis: it is a deep and dense texture. because there is so much data in this book, what is the home front for you and mr. campbell that americans will take away?

>> we try to provide a description -- tavis: you did a very good job of that, by the way. >> we hope to have not a distorting mirror, but an actual mirror. we are all americans and we are much more tolerant of what each other -- of one another is that we might think. tavis: if your of all fascinated by religion in this country, it is called "american grace the " good have you on this program. up next, nassim taleb. tavis: nassim taleb is a

professional engineer at nyu. "the black swan" was an international best-seller. his latest is called "the bed of procrustes the " good to have you back on the program. -- procrustes." good to have you back on the program. you talked about this diet from the media. tell me about that diet. >> i stopped reading the papers and watching t.v. about 20 years ago and my life improved a lot. but then, people and let me go on television and i realized it was influencing the way i

behave. i was afraid of not being invited back. it only shows up bungee, or what i am invited back. the book shows are a little different. last time i was on tv was for the previous edition of my book. tavis: what does one game from avoiding the media? >> avoiding being on the media, it forces -- when i write my book, i just say things the way

i see them. on the media, it is different. there are a lot of constraints. i am afraid of promoting the book too much, because i feel guilty about not working on my next bahut. -- book. i am an author, not an actor. tavis: i m really fascinated by it. i wonder whether of not you think there are things to be gained, if the average american would experience something if they back away from media in just a bit? >> had personally have not watched tv in over 20 years, and i feel that connect with the world. it makes me a lot more social. i spent time alone. i try to eat my meals with

people. if they don't discuss the topic during the meal, it is not worth knowing. i have -- spend a year reading the previous week close the newspaper --'s newspaper. tavis: you never feel out of touch or ignorant of what is going on in the world? >> understand a little better. the crisis of 2008, i could not understand why people were saying the same thing. i talk a lot about subtraction, removing exactly -- when you sculpt, you remove elements from the sculpture. likewise, you remove the information to your life to

understand what is going on in. tavis: this new book, as i mentioned, it is called "the bed of procrustes." unpack that title. >> procrustes has an inn not far from athens. he would abduct or invite travelers, depending on the legend. he would feed people and excellent meal and then he would try to get them into bed. others that were too tall, he would cut their legs. he had a 100% fitting bed. the idea came to me and i'll try to get a tailor-made suits.

if the killer was an economist or social science, he would be doing surgery on me and i would have a perfectly fitting suits. tavis: you mentioned that the book is a wonderful collection of aphorisms as. they come from where? >> from me. i wrote them all during a certain time, and they are mostly about changing the customers and make them fit the bed. we try to change the brains of children, chemically, to make them that the curriculum. or try to change humans. it is a one-size-fits-all applied to everything. it is a diatribe against

modernism in favor of old, classical, ancient mediterranean values of courage and elegance. as compared to modern values of cynicism -- tavis: i love asterisms. i am curious why the message you wanted to deliver would be the best delivered via aphorisms. >> i could not stop them. it is the opposite of a sound bite to. -- sound bite. you're compressing information and losing a lot of it. tavis: i want to give some examples of these in just a second.

when you say these aphorisms started coming at you and you just could not stop, that is not how you wrote your other text. is this a time in your life where they just started coming for some reason? >> think this way. i discovered that people that take showers discover there is an element condemn -- in them. you want your brain to do whatever it one ear -- wants. your brain is free, it decides what it once and where it wants to go. i decided to live my life in that mode. tried to do nothing and not force anything on my brain. what ever occurred spontaneously, go with it. and they came in.

in for five months, i have 500 aphorism is. -- aphorisms, 400 are in the book. tavis: talking to geniuses like you, you want -- the last thing you want is to have a poet explain poetry. put something on the screen that i found of interest reading the text. an idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking into a slum to go -- it to its logical conclusion. what i learned on my own, i still remember. my biggest problem with modernity is the separation between ethical and illegal.

it takes a lot of confidence to except that what makes sense doesn't really make sense. they would hate me even more. explain the last one. i love the last one. >> thanks. [laughter] tavis: "the bed of procrustes," he is the author of the international bets seller - - bes- best seller "the black swan." >> thank you for inviting me. tavis: keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org

>> join me next time as patti smith won the national book award. we will see you then. >> all i know is his name is james, and he needs extra help with his reading. >> i am james. >> yes. >> to everyone making a difference -- >> thank you. >> you help us all live better. >> nationwide insurance supports tavis smiley. with every question and every answer, nationwide insurance is proud to join tavis in working to improve financial literacy and remove obstacles to economic empowerment, one conversation at a time. a nationwide is on your side. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

>> be more. pbs.