was there something off about our understanding of what sex even was was there something off about our cultural understandings of what surrounded sex so i kept writing columns about this. i started writing longer pieces. and then finally there was just enough to write a book on and that's where this began. i feel like you just touched on all the different topics that i want to ask you more about, but i do want to you you mentioned that a whole list of possibilities about what what is off with what's going on with sex especially among young people and i'm wondering is there something that really rises to the top for you about what is off? well, one of the threads that runs through thinking rethinking sex the most is this question of consent. i feel that we have arrived at a moment in time, you know again post sexual revolution post-feminist movement even post sort of college education plans that talk about how you have to respect that. no means no and only yes means. yes that that you have to get consent. we've almost established consent as sort of the dividing line between good sex and

say we disagree about issues about taxes or abortion or about immigration, but we agree we should have a fair election system. we're all eligible voters and only eligible voters should be able to cast a ballot that should be fairly and accurately counted. we agree that people shouldn't lie about elections being stolen. we agree that voters should be able to have access to information to make informed decisions and we agree that. science is a process. it's not just there is a truth but the very active communicating helps us to figure out what the truth is. and so we need to have an open robust democracy where people can discuss issues. we also have to recognize that in this this new information environment we face. big challenges about how to assure that voters continue to get that information. so we need to come together support those intermediaries that help us to tell the truth. we have just a few minutes left and i wanted to leave them for you to deliver your thesis to the audience or if there's anything i didn't ask you about that. you most want to say about the book what concludin

about. right, it's simple. so you say that to a liberal you have them read that you know, they might be like oh, so the goal is really baby steps. stop read this stop giving them money. we work on the rest later. and then the other piece is the 1619 project. and this really bothers me. so again, you know the crt movement and i talk about the only thing i say in the book about crt is why i didn't write about crt. and the reason was mostly that the conversation surrounding that was really starting when i wrote the book, but it still doesn't matter because and i'm not against that fight chris rupaul writes a blurb on the back. so it's not that i say don't have that argument. there's different ways to attack a problem. but the issue is if you notice you watch the news, what do you hear you hear crt is terrible for our children? we're not teaching to crt. yes. you are. you don't even know what crt is. we just want to teach black history and then you go nowhere. right, they can't do that with the

it's about characters. it's a really gripping narrative and it shows us a discipline called behavioral threat assessment. that is that aims to prevent mass shootings and given, you know, and sort of comes out of the fact that we have a horrifying epidemic of mass shootings in america and that the debate about the role that the prevalence of guns in our society plays is pretty much. paralyzed and stuck and so behavioral threat assessment comes at the problem from a different end of the of the challenge that that we confront in solving this. and so to start us out i wanted to go back. to the very beginning which we both happened to be present for we were both working as we are now at mother jones, which is a nonprofit reader supported investigative newsroom. and as journalists do we were in our morning news meeting processing the big stories of the day and trying to figure out how journalism might bring some context and perspective that wasn't fully understood. and this meeting was on july 20th, 2012. so almo

talk about a bit about that and how they worked in the private sector and how you think about issues that affect the private sector. >> my dad wanted me to be the ceo of ibm. if i get to take my savings and send you across the ocean you better be a doctor, lawyer or an engineer. this is the three acceptable. politicians was not one of them. when i went to college i got a degree in economics but somewhere along the way i decided i wanted to be in english lit major and i called my dad with the one phone call i had to tell him i was good to be an english major and he screamed at me and said i did not send you to the united states to learn how to speak english you already know how to speak english. i promised him i would get the same job with an english degree that it would got with an economics degree. this is the mid-19 '80s like milking busking, wall street was the play she wanted to work. if you were smart competitive that was the thing that you tried to go do. that's what i did i worked for king weber and investment banking. i did a lot of things that the 20-year-old should ever hav

about politics, then i want to talk about pop culture and think about the way the 90s talked about the future and thought about the president even in terms of, like, everything is great or everything is terrible. either the future will be great or the future is going to be awful. adding here that i as with all of my lectures i'm not going to comprehensive coverage. but especially asking people to think about change overtime in there like how does ideology, how does youth culture, how does systems of power change overtime. so there's going to be, i think, asking you all to think about how the 90s were actually quite different then today. and i've got some examples that i think will be interesting. oops! in terms of looking forward, looking back, a reminder how we are combining psychology and history. it's an interdisciplinary program so i'm not going to be talking much about psychology, that's my co teacher's job, but i'm thinking about how the disciplines have different orientations. and i've really been thinking a lot, and we are going to talk about this in the afternoon, we kind of s

i love that you went for the nuance right you talk about dignity. i talk about humanity right?s really important. i'm gonna come back to that story about manual. around because i think that's such an important story the deportation story, but let's back it out a little bit and sort of tease it apart for the audience. so the i imagine or not even i imagine i know from you know, perfect experience and from your book that much of this complication that you're talking about in the pursuit of justice arises out of the meaning and the relevance of race in the criminal legal system. and so here's the thing right both of us have practiced represented clients or represented victims in the nation's capital what most people do not realize is that how profound and how stark the racial disparities are in our court right? virtually everyone who's written a book about the criminal legal system in washington dc says exactly what you say in your book i can count the number of white defendants on my hand. right right. i can tell you that in 26 years of practice. i have had are white clients peri

about. so if any of you read spite novels or read anything about world war ii, you will know their world capitals have been on the of espionage, right? berlin, vienna, paris, casablanca eval seen that movie, right? we know espionage is part and parcel of the way government conduct policy and sometimes win wars. baghdad is one of the capitals that definitely deserves to be within that. unfortunately it is very far away. it is hard to get too. it is very dangerous for very long time. i've been in and out of baghdad and the time and place as murder capitol of the world. for going on multiple times a day. very, very violent and indiscriminate ways. i've a very good iraqi friend whose mother left for work in the morning, and sheer never cae home. the family never got her body because she was caught up in a bomb blast. that takes a toll on people. it takes a toll on families. we do not hear enough of the stories as americans. in 2014, we thought we won the war on iraq and al qaeda was eradicated a

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it was about a year after the murder of george floyd when this country is talking a great deal aboutstice. here we are in 2022 and i think a lot of people want to note did we have it? i don't want to start with you. did we have a reckoning at any real sense? >> it was interesting. thanks a much everyone for being here. one of the centerpieces of my book actually focus on historically black colleges and universities the role they played in educating a population majority of american did not want to see educated for the lion's share of the country's history. the institutions are really kind of going to this renaissance of attention at this moment. through that reckoning is on increase in philanthropic donations going to universitiess you saw that money coming in from the federal government. but you are also still seeing the piecemeal motions toward making it real effective for the institution. i think the reckoning has not yet manifested in terms of transformational he changing the situation for a lion's share of people. i think that is the point if there is a true reckoning that is th

perhaps that's what this book is all about. >> about your faith is all about. >> i say all the time faitheans so much, not just in the black church but it means so much in the american way. that's what democracy is all about having faith in each other is dependent upon each other. making it better than what we found it and makes it so important. and what we should be doing for children and c grandchildren. >> if i would asked you to tell us in political terms. i know what the future holds what would you advise young people today about the future. some of whom are wondering whether there is good to be anything for them, what would you say to a youngster. >> dreaming about whether or not they will be able to go off to higher education. and i say that because they goo beyond college. i think it's very important for electricians. >> and community college. >> what would you say. >> there is a great graduate named howard thurman. a great thinker and howard thurman said ask not what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive. i would encourage a young person who has seen your story, heard my

cared about. so the rules are not any different than how i've lived my life. it just happens to be that my husband has a different job and we live in the white house and for four more years. that's what we'll be doing. i think what has been most curious to me is how people are very concerned about this position and on the one hand people want a wife of a president to be concerned and caring about the issues confronting the country and to work on something of public interest on the other hand. they don't want her to do it in a public way on a policy level. they don't want you know when i worked on healthcare a lot of people thought that i shouldn't be making recommendations about legislation or that i shouldn't be involved in working on behalf of what my husband asked me to work on which was one of his primary objectives because they thought that that was somehow inappropriate that if you exercise influence do it behind the scenes where nobody can see you i find that curious i mean to me i'd like t

a day beyond institutions about what we choose to preserve, and value, about who's knowledge and expertise is celebrated or he raised, and about who has access to the knowledge and education represented by cultural institutions. these questions continue to resonate in discussions about these institutions today, and my hope is that understanding the longer history of these issues, can help us think creatively about how to interpret objects that were collected during this time, and also can inform how we think about making cultural institutions more interdisciplinary, inclusive, and community oriented spaces today. so with some of these larger issues in mind, i just want to come back to you the idea of how museums were redefining the purpose of conscience. i mentioned peels museum at the beginning, and i want to put that museum in conversation with another extremely nearby collection, which was the cabinet of the american philosophical society. so the ap s was founded in the mid 18th century by benjamin franklin with the goal of preserving and promoting useful knowledge. much like other lear

forget about what they did about whites, can you give me something good about blacks ? lastly like crt, my blm are no solutions, this is bad so what should we do? you have 14 essays and attorneys who argued cases at the supreme court. the editor of the new york times magazine, all these people write these wonderful essays and nobody even offered a solution, not one western mark nobody talks about how many blacks are in elected office and what they could do to help this supposed racist system? nothing? and we think we should be teaching this to kids? this is the problem with the progressive racism movement and what i tried to approach in the book. it's to say that things aren't as bad as your painting them and if theyare, you're not doing anything to make them better . so i think it's a great tool to give to your liberal friends because i'm sure those of you who have stronger hands and moved away you get in these debates, don't debate. in fact, if you think they're really on the cost and they won't listen, do this but don't hog them for you. don't even reach out to rebut

so i'm thinking about writing about the book about that, but i'm also thinking about writing a book about about bojangles and i got that idea actually bill robinson my father when he was a little boy used to go to new york city for the saint patrick's day parade and bill robinson would tap dance down fifth avenue leading the parade and that always kind of gave me goosebumps. and of course he was in all those shirley temple movies and all that and i thought you know, this is and then the the song you know got me by the nitty gritty dirt band really, you know his i've had in the back of my mind for a long time to do because nobody's ever done a book about bill robinson. so that's in the back of my mind. so and i'm gonna write more reagan books. i'm working on two right now one. i'm editing and one. i'm actually and then i'm going to write about a book about about donald trump. so my dance card is pretty full. i'm lucky to remember to brush my teeth. i don't know. back again to the january chapter just because it's kind of strike struck me interestingly. you're going through each day and you

passionate about.t did you learn? what from that book could you tell or share with writers. >> write down your foot notes and your sources when you are putting them down. don't think i will go back and find out later. i am sort of kidding about that. so many things that i would write down a quote for and i would know where it is and then i would keep writing, finishing up the chapter which led to a lot of long nights when i was finishing trying to go back and find that article or where that quote was in the book. .... .... they coherent argument, stated the issue, made the case, here's what we do about it. to build that arc of a story that good story writers have was harder to do that i thought. the other thing was, the flipside is it was a great experience for me personally to sit down and say this is something i feel strongly about. the need to actually put in paper the argument that i wanted to make, to put that on paper it was really, really helpful to me in terms of wrapping my arm around the own

something that he's thinking about and like to get your opinion about it. they were seated and they were b real comfortable and whatever i wanted to ask them about. i wouldld tell them for the stae of nebraska to serve us well. if we were to break out of the crowd of names right now, what we should be doing is looking at things in the oil industry as so, epsilon, let's do something different than the traditional name. what do you think about quinn tron or zen mark. their faces and sometimes dropped open. one woman crossed her arms like that and said have you lost your mind and i said not yet but that could still happen there is plenty of time.em when i tell them smile young candid camera it was a fun deal like i like to do. i've given diana a break on her practical jokes on the way she would've left me by now i'm lethal. >> some point later in the program we may come back. the name of our state that quinn tron i was away at college and i had some friends reach out saying we are not going to get new teachers that say quinn tron. >> let's say for another minu

>> about half a dozen. my favorite book, my most recent book is about my father. hardcover is called dear father, dear son. it is the same book. >> tell us about your parents? >> my mother was born on a farm in huntsville, alabama, my father was born in athens, georgia. my father does not know who his father is. my mother came from a prosperous family. during the great depression, they never felt it. they sold chickens and vegetables to their neighbors. they got married in chattanooga and my dad is not biological father is -- does not know who his biological father is. i disliked my father growing up intensely. he was ill tempered, he spanked us too readily in my opinion and i do not understand why he was so irritable all of the time. unfortunately, my dad started at cafe and i had to work for him. i do not like working for him either. everybody could hear everything and see everything and my dad would yell at me if i do something wrong. i told myself the next time i i would work out. -- walkout. the waitress had called in sick so my dad was there during rush hour

you've about them.they feel important all their friends that like went to business school of really terrible jobs. it seems like the ones that popular in high school and like they they're the ones who have important stories that were in the room where it happened. so there's there's some of the leveled out that's harmless. but but that can also become a pathology, right? where it's like i become so embittered at. all of the people that have been mean to me in life and like now this is my moment and i get to jump on top of the table and say, like, now i am the king right? i we i am the cool person. and, and, and i think that there were a lot of people that decided to go in for reason. they're like, look, now, i mean, this was sean spicer category. now i get to be the white house press secretary. they called me sean sphincter in college. it's kind of mean work out. and sean has like, yeah, but it did, though. i mean, he got to be on dancing with the stars. that's what i'm saying. very cool. that is cool.

and that have led to right think about what we know about adolescents who are fair. fanatics right. so you approach a child who who knows that they're being signaled at singled out right and the encounter between an officer and a child goes from zero to a hundred and become something something much more serious than just that sagging pants violation, right? so understanding that and then the hoodie the hoodie is not outlawed but to be clear a black child in a hoodie is perceived to be a threat and a danger right? and so absolutely clothing has been one of the central ways in which black children for have been stopped and criminalized for normal adolescent behavior, and i do want to say one just thing is that when i talk about the criminalization of black youth i'm not just talking about police officers in a blue uniform. but again, i also talk about policing as proxy all of us as civilians who are inclined right to pick up the phone and call the police when we are afraid and we have to ask ourselves. we talked about implicit rachel bias. why? frayed right yeah. i lov

we talk about excessive force. we talk about no knock warrants. we talk about stop and frisk. we talk about driving wild black. each of these problems are fourth amendment problems, but you wouldn't know that from the way in which these issues are discussed in the press. so i did a little bit of data. diving before this talk literally yesterday and i looked in a media archive to kind of see how many stories do you see if you looked at for example deadly force. four thousand how many of those stories about deadly force also reference the fourth amendment? 26 i looked at traffic stops and driving while black how many stories you think you see something like 6,000. how many of those stories reference forth amendment? 5 no knock warrants. how many stories do you see something like 10,000 how many of those reference the fourth amendment? 35 so we can the fourth amendment place a critical role with respect to all of these pieces of policing. and we're not talking about it. there isn't an understanding of the ways in which this body of law constitutionalized the very forms of policin

actually about class. that is kind of how i see the divide in our media. i think partisanship is not a problem so long as everybody is represented. as long as there's partisan for every group. we have now is a conservative immediate landscape that has a band of the working class economically. we have a liberal media landscape this also abandoned economically.ass fox news is really catering to an audience all they have to do luis not smear their values to have a captive audience. they don't even have to talk of other economics incentives which i really wish they. would. looking at the heroes of 19th century american journalism who were populist, they really believe the point of the media, the point of newspapers to wage a crusade on behalf of the working class. there also newspapers for the elite. it did not matter that every paper it was partisan because every subgroup had its paper you had a situation in the so many communist newspapers in accident you would people have literally four communist newspapers

people talk about angela davis or they talk about derek bell but they will not talk about barbara smith. they will not talk about danny helen burroughs. they might talk about anna julia cooper. it is bigger than that. the burden on us -- the responsibility is you engage in that real life. you read all these other people in that tradition and you know it will never be enough. you have this aspiration and responsibility where you are constantly reading. i should have read that book 20 years ago, or i'm meeting daphne brooks's book about black feminism and the musical archives, for the book about the archives. it is mind blowing how big it is. sometimes younger people are so confident in their abilities, and some of their abilities are dazzling. they say no, i've got it. i'm good. , you are like no. we are never good. even after the book awards, new york times bestseller, we are never good. that's what makes toni morrison so special. she never stopped reading. she never, ever stopped reading and engaging. she had been an editor at random house. all she did was read. she edited, but she did

talk about it. no one thought immigration would be the number one issue in 2016. donald trump made it the number one issue. democrats look at polls and say what are people thinking about now, and then we just talk about that, whether it is good or bad for us. in this case, there's a whole lot with january 6, there is abortion, a right wing war on freedom in this country where they want to ban contraception, they want to decide who you love, what looks you can read. i imagine an argument would be very powerful. just because he wants to talk about it doesn't mean we have to fall for that. >> i want to know your thoughts on reconciling campaign rhetoric and campaign promises with managing expectations. in your campaign, you hear a lot of candidates talking about issues and saying what democratic voters want to hear, but i feel like younger voters are sort of becoming disillusioned by that. just wanted your thoughts on that. >> that is the old, famous line from governor mario cuomo that you campaign on

i'm right about that. yes this year and so the jury what did you think as a juror who has somebody who had some? say in the guilder-lehrman lincoln prize this year what made ends of war specialty you yeah ends of war is a beautifully written book. i i recommend it to everyone. it's it's a fantastic book and what carrie does is look at what those moments looked like after appomattox. i think we all sort of have in our mind the war came to an end and the soldiers went home and that was the end of it. and when you read her book what she does is she slows down the story and so instead of you know, lee surrenders to grant and the guys go home and then reconstruction gets underway. she slows it down and she traces the stories of these individual soldiers of the army of northern virginia who are having to make decisions about where to go how to get home. do i try to keep fighting do i surrender? do i get a parole? do i go somewhere other than home and the beauty of the book is we all know the end of the story, bu

before talk about the book i want to talk about how i and the pier. i like many of you was just a regular guy going about my life seeing what was happening but not so concerned with it. as stephanie mentioned i wrote three books that i started off with a collection of notes. barack obama had won and my friends were talking about it and they hadn't done that before. it was like a history book, this didn't make sense so i wrote the book to' tell the truth about in the republican party. it wasn't until the endorsement of the republican party i was the propaganda at the time and that i was and i'm not again. but i said if you are a liberal where you have liberal ideals and you want democrats to the line with your beliefs you should do that but i didn't understandvi the this bogeyman view of republicans like they are out to get you. i want to debunkw some myths but they were sharing amongst themselves. then i went back to my life and didn't do anything else and then i noticed the culture were shifting in a dramatic fashion. no one is really talking about t

now takes about 35%.value to unfunded mandates government takes almost half of the with the american people produce. i get a phone call from affect check organization. as our source for your assertion government all three levels of took less than 10%? i gave a source was our source for your assertion now government takes about 35% i gave him a source. is there source for assertion if you put a value to unfunded mandates, public to come as half of the american people can produce? i gave them several sources.s, they wrote a piece, older hack right. they had a meter indicated right in the center. is it elder was right government at all three levels in 1900 less than 10%. elder it was right right nowt, government takes about 32% but what elder says you put a value on unfunded mandates, it's almost happy because that is subjective. of course it subjective. economist like leo haney from ucla does elder understated the amount of their foundations but the number also 50%. the reason it is subjective assume you're

i think we really have to be ductile about it. -- tactile about it. >> that's fair. what, as an individual can we do to help build resiliency in our communities? >> i think, again, you can do which you can to set an example whether it's what you drive or how much you drive. what you do with your waste, you know, your food waste or whatever. i think all of that is good for setting an example. but mobilizing action i guess it starts with that. each individual can set an example for the neighbors, maybe you get an electric car or you carpool. change personal habits, but again i think to me, really talking to people even strangers and people you don't really agree with about this is important. one thing i observed is that the biggest problem for the united states right now is not any particular policy issue it is the division in the country. house divided against itself will not stand. we are weakened by this division and i would invite everyone to heal that up. to listen. and again, to be fact-based. >> not agree more. we have time for i think one more question. this co

that is the answer to his question about why, when we talk about drugs, we talk about black people. because the way the drug policies are enforced are disproportionately made the burden of elect people. we will sites is to sticks about -- disproportionately made the burden of black people. we will cite statistics about crime. when you look at the conviction you end up seeing black people are convicted at lower rates than white people because white people are not arrested for most of the crimes they commit. and most of the crimes they commit that we talk about our police generated. when you stop people on the highway for speeding, those people are not criminals until they are stopped. we arrest people for drugs. those people are not criminals or in the criminal justice system until they are arrested. so, how police enforce the law, how the criminal justice system is enforced is what shapes our perception of crime. we do not know how many people in this city you are in are using drugs right now. all we know is how many people the police arrest or the police see who are using drugs. an

i know we have lots to talk about a lot of really really interesting things to talk about and we're gonna be talking about your book majority minority. in fact, i wonder if we could first talk a little bit about um why you decided to do this book and with such a title something. that's kind of been a little bit of a buzzword in washington in the last 10 years or so. so what drove you to do the book, you know, mark. thanks so much. our, you know interviewing me so many pieces of my earlier work feels like they came together with this work on you know here to four. i've studied muslim politics the politics of a lot of minority out groups the politics of white working-class people and nativism and backlash to diversity and minorities and nativism and i studied immigration policies both here in the united states and abroad across 30 different countries, and i think that overshadowing all of these different topics overshadowing our politics public opinion and our policy has been the specter. of the majority minority milestone the moment when minority groups become become the majority group, th

it is worth thinking about. that these ufo conspiracy theories are widely treated as something laughable. in fact, serious discussion of them is really an effective cultural taboo. we talked about the labeling of something as conspiracy as a distancing measure. alien conspiracy theories are possibly one of the most evident examples of the distancing of conspiracy believes from acceptable discourse. and yet, at the same time, even as they are treated as laughable, they are some of the most widely believed conspiracy theories. if we go back to the 1960's, gallup polls find 96% of americans had heard of ufos. 46% believed they were real. 1973, 57% believed that ufos are real. by the 1990's, 71% believe the government is, at least, hiding information about ufos. they may or may not be real but there is definitely more going on there then the government is letting us know. and those numbers remained relatively stable. 2015, poll shows that 56% believed that ufos are real. 45% believed that aliens have actually landed

so, and we audiocassetted about this last night -- talked about last night. we've got a long way to go to get to 2022. maybe -- have you started working on the next installment? >> first of all, to get to 1987 is a huge story. 40 years in which there's a complete narrative. ultimately, success is the goal, so it's very much a horatio alger story in there because there's so much failure in will and h heartbreak. you really feel the the heartbreak, i hope, as a writer. you see, platoon was this enormous success worldwide. it came out, very little money was spent on it, $6 million. orion was the distributer, he were not particularly strong, and they put it out in six theaters at christmas time. six theaters in new york, l.a., toronto. six theaters. and it took off like a, like a comet can. that's to say at 0 is a.m -- 10 a.m. that morning vietnam veterans were lining up around the block in all these locations. it wasg stunning, a stunning turn-around, cinderella story. and the film kept boeing for two, three, four months, and every single country in the world it

that is the answer to his question about why, when we talk about drugs, we talk about black people.ause the way the drug policies are enforced are disproportionately made the burden of elect people. we will sites is to sticks about -- disproportionately made the burden of black people. we will cite statistics about crime. when you look at the conviction you end up seeing black people are convicted at lower rates than white people because white people are not arrested for most of the crimes they commit. and most of the crimes they commit that we talk about our police generated. when you stop people on the highway for speeding, those people are not criminals until they are stopped. we arrest people for drugs. those people are not criminals or in the criminal justice system until they are arrested. so, how police enforce the law, how the criminal justice system is enforced is what shapes our perception of crime. we do not know how many people in this city you are in are using drugs right now. all we know is how many people the police arrest or the police see who are using drugs. and an

the debate over critical race theory and what to talk about and where to talk about it.a lot of the stuff, i am of a generation that if they didn't change it trillion church i didn't learn it. there's such richness here but i really think this idea of the old school don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, how do we drill down on that, i thought about some parts, when you talked about meredith it sounded like all lives matter but you were saying, we can't get caught up on some of that because we can't erase the impact. >> there are things i disagree with -- that doesn't erase the fact this man went to university of mississippi and broke down the wall of segregation with what he did. he is not perfect and neither are you and neither am i. the story we told so we can have an appreciation. i remember after trey von martin, i was at the center of that case with the parents who came to me and i went to a rally, and a girl had a t-shirt saying this is not grandma's movement and a lot of the civil rights guys said what is this? and i asked why do you wear that? we shall ove

about clean energy than about a scenic viewpoint. what my students said was that, or at least summed it, but this really caught on. you know, what we can see what people were saying when they don't want to see winter binds from the trail. one is natural, the other's energy producing. but they said, to us, nature -- the natural world and the world we find ourselves in nowadays, the clean energy from the wind turned binds goes hand in hand with the appreciation of nature and walking on the trail. some students were saying, well, i could imagine enjoying the trail more knowing that it not only was a place for me to escape and see the woods and trees, but to also see a different, brighter future of clean energy. i think that, and just in the past couple years, my students, in the way that they think about and talk about the building of environment, it is shifting so much from even a few years ago. light years from the kind of distinctions and black and white either overs i think you and i grew up with. a very different worldview and pers

but aside from that, it's not just about telling people about how bad he is, it's about giving peopleething to vote for not just against. it's about this agenda that is about everything and everyone. >> yeah, between him and rick scott who is tweeting from a yacht about people not deserving to have student loan relief, last thing i'll put up for our audience. this is a chart i want to show you. if you would be in that top little small chart where there is almost no people. why do you think it's important for young people to do what you're doing and get involved in politics? >> well, it's important that we have government and congress that looks like a country with different experience ands different ages. you know, my generation is just going through some different challenges than older folks did when they were younger. and that's okay. right? we need a congress that has older people, younger people, everybody. so when we come to the table to talk about student debt relief, guess what? there is a younger voice there who understands the challenges now, the crushing debt that happens to

this reminds me of something you talked about in the book about about gratitude and while it's very important, of course, we all agree to always be pushing for improvement and progress and living more closely to the ideals and the principles of this country that there really is also a danger in going too far the other way and and not having gratitude for the opportunities and the freedoms that we have in the us and you talk a little bit about that in your book and that there really is that their risk posed by that. do you want to unpack that a little bit? sure. there's a huge risk posed by that because as i just said we all know that in america in 22, we really have it so good. there are no laws that discriminate against everybody. it doesn't mean we all have the same amount of stuff. we don't we don't some people are born rich. some people are born poor. some people are born to abusive parents. some people have great physical skills, and some people do not some people are have great mental capabilities some people do not that's all what the the tapestry of life is all about. some people have

i would love to hear about if you can tell us about him and what it was about him that made you feelke he would be the one to lock in on for the story. >> there were many things going on. i had a person to hang the story on for it to move and not to be just a historical account. i am a fiction writer so i wanted it to move like a novel. and luckily he lived from 1812 to 1892 so i had a very long life to work with. he was also present in so many things at a time -- he had a school and he had taught someone on the side. then he became part of the reconstruction government. he was the grand marshall of emancipation day celebration, it was also covered by the new york times so they didn't mention him but they mentioned the celebration. he was instrumental, so full of poetry. 's friends were poet so he had this beautiful handwriting. everyone's in a while the minutes would say that he gave a spontaneous poem. how can you resist if you are a writer somebody at a men's meeting who gives a poem. that is wonderful. he was politically active and he named his children after writers. he had one

about it _ but there needs to be some thought about it it— but there needs to be some thought about — about it. it hasn't exactly come out of the blue. people have been warning — of the blue. people have been warning about this. meanwhile, we see the _ warning about this. meanwhile, we see the energy companies and companies like bp making astronomical profits. and there will be people _ astronomical profits. and there will be people thinking tax cuts, maybe there _ be people thinking tax cuts, maybe there should be increased tax on those _ there should be increased tax on those very— there should be increased tax on those very high profitable companies and get _ those very high profitable companies and get some of that to plough back into the _ and get some of that to plough back into the economy to help other people — into the economy to help other --eole. ~ . into the economy to help other eo le, ~ ., ., people. meanwhile, a reminder. on the sunday times, there are other problems the new prime minister will have to deal with, and it's almost a year since we pulled out of afghanist

this is not about this is about power. but i try to tell by putting it out there you don't have to be a victim forever you can get some power you can stand up. maybe it takes 20 years. but you can do this. >> affiliate also illustrates how the incident that happened may not ever be the end of it. there can be like a lingering aftereffect. even that person was never going to still reminder it could, i could. that continues to be abused quite frankly. speech i think you're exactly right on that point annie. nicely the points i'm trying to make in the book about persistence that you laugh and say it should mitch mcconnell get royalty because he is the one put the word audit. he's the one that put the word audit but it's something we've been doing for a long time, persisting. it is something i talk about in the book, about the persistence that long predated my time in the senate. and to have that persistence over time shapes who we are. but also shapes the power that we have to make change. you are right, this book is differen

i do wonder about what people think about institutions. one thing that struck me that i was not expecting to find is that this outsider mentality is applied to parties. distrust people have toward parties is informed by the impression that they are run by moneyed elites. i only know literature in my own field, maybe in sociology, has indicated that, so maybe it is there. >> mccarty and rosenthal -- i have a phd in history -- they wrote a book all about rising inequality and polarization at the same time. i have never quite grasped the argument. >> no. ok. i don't know what i want to say since this is going out on the air, but -- >> go ahead, on national television. >> do not talk crap about your colleagues, but whatever. >> one thing i found really compelling, to my surprise, it was a deep ethnography of four different cities in iowa that the author made up names for them. it was all about -- making the argument, basically, the kind of neoliberal turn of the economy in the 1970's had this profound effect on the embeddedness of political an