so it's kind of kind of checking in and collaborating with each to do that kind of continue work. now. it's a long way. of also piggybacking of what they said and so you were saying how these were regular college students they had other things, their mind and things like that and admire the fact that yes they were balancing all that. but at the same, they were in college before technology really took off. so they're doing their homework literally in the library, like this is costume as we got information at our fingertips in seconds and got to really know computers so like to actually plan on that and have a life and being library for hours is it is really inspiring but also did you say with sit in when they were arresting people they took us to a polio hospital in the mid 1960s. yeah. is that the jail was too full or. well this is before like mass incarceration so a lot of in these places where these jail ends or kind of people wanting to get arrested. right they didn't have the space. right. so sometimes you had the bus to other locations, right. because there's not this mass in

and so it is this kind of vision and we're kind of left wondering how to kind of regain our coordinates at the present moment. i'm going to ask one more question and then i'm going to open up to the audience. so please start thinking about questions that you have for michael. and i guess i want to ask about not only the origins, but also, you know, this kind of reluctance, this hesitation in some cases, you know, aggressive pursuit of addressing the that all of them are rooted in personalities and at you know, you do describe how, you know, fluctuations in leadership new people coming in, others going out contributed to the outcome and so i'm wondering if can talk about how changes in leadership shaped how this war unfolded not only in ukraine also on the european side. well i think we should start and just if you don't mind that, i'll invert your question just for a moment and start with the one area or one place where leadership has not changed, which is, of course, which is, of course, russia. and so it matters enormously that the figure who is there in 2000 is able over time to buil

they try to kind of build the up their kind of credibility, kind of like community by community basically they don't go big and have major because there's a larger tendency for them to get kind of batted down. we talked weeks ago about how presidents generally speaking or trying to keep it local because it's where they're getting better, more favorable coverage, the same is true here. it's just of a different. the other thing we know is that when presidents give speeches, especially state of the union speeches, which they have to give. right. they can't not give one because there's a scandal so they have to give the state of the union speech. so it's actually a perfect opportunity for us. see? okay. what are they talk about in a state of the union after a scandal well, here's what they do and it's totally predictable. they actually talk more. and so they have bigger speeches, longer speeches. so this is the reg drawing of the number of sentences. so you see more than 75 additional sentences. the other is that they are spending more time talking about economics, education and welfare issue

kind of ability to make changes. so i think people knew that he was someone that they could share ideas with. and if they communicated with them about a challenge that they were facing or a question that they had something that they thought they needed support or a change in that he would be a who would be a really strong advocate them, even though he didn't necessarily have the authority to make a decision himself, did a heck of a spot to be in this role, that responsibility. but not that much accompanying authority that's. right and then to get blamed by history later for everything that goes wrong. it was extremely frustrating. it's really thankless in that sense. so just in case for anyone who doesn't know, like the basic structure of the army during the war and you have a really interesting slide about like the staff and all that, the army is basically the army air forces might have one foot out the door for independence. of course and hap arnold runs that basically as a peer of george marshall and ernie king yo

they have kind of a a a very kind of simple patriotism that leads them to kind of be repelled by trump, you know, picking with gold star families, for instance, or denigrate of fallen soldiers. there's also an interesting immigration plays an interesting role here in to 16 there was some survey data that came out that showed that mormons were as likely as white evangelicals to say that america should welcome immigrants. and a lot of that has to do with mormon missionary experiences. a huge majority of of practicing young mormon men served missions, many of them outside of the country for two years. and become you know that obviously an effect on how they view the immigration but also mormons see in their history a story of religious refugees people who basically were driven out of the country and had to find their own, their own place. and so when, for example, donald called for a man on a ban on muslim refugees, it was one of the only times church, the institutional church in, salt lake city, released a statement on on politics and explicitly condemned call for a ban on muslim refugee

so that is kind of about as much into detail as i will kind of go pending any questions. but that is kind of our first big ticket item as far as the proposed reg changes go here. i had one quick question on that. sure. you said getting rid of the e signature requirement, but then separately everything will be filed signed under penalty of perjury. anyways, so am i understanding that right. there's no kind of pre signature verification form. folks are going to submit things that are signed. so that one is kind of a yes and no. so what we are basically doing in lieu of having this kind of physical form that they need to sign, either in the presence of one of our staff members, we are basically folding it into an existing form that we have to expand the information collected to closely mirror the oakland ethics commission. i believe it's their form 300 that is kind of the same idea. it's a committee registration form where we are still collecting a signature, but instead of doing okay, we get a hard copy that we're going to have on file. this electronic one comes with a seri

what kind of human being do you aspire to be? what kind of human being are you? and so i think this is a second lost cause, and we're seeing it at the level of knowledge production and we're seeing at the level of our politics more broadly. yeah, absolutely. so on one hand, if this is a second loss, cause i also want to say that the attack on learning, the freedom to learn, to read, to speak, to study and ultimately the broader attack on the humanities also means that that we are destroying the infrastructure that makes possible a certain kind of knowledge which is required for the kind of betterment of the social good, of the public good, of the commitment that we are all in this together. and just to put a finer point on this, you know, we're constantly reading in the newspaper that the humanities are a waste of time and money. people ought to focus on on job ready skills. but if you extend the argument that you make to this point, it essentially the concentrated power or the monopoly power, the kind of power that produced the occupy movement, the kind of power

kind of thing. but yeah, speaking bad men or that sort of spooky there's again you're away something for the book but i love the you end it sort of running towards away from something or towards something in the end of the book. yeah yeah yeah because. my family's groves these ones that i write about are hardly anymore. they've been bulldozed and family rents out the land for strawberry growing now. but see this place i go look at it after. i hadn't seen it for a while. and it's bright's and the groves were always cool and full of shadows, magical. and it's just to me bloodedly. i could see the clothes line with the clothes like, you know, the distance, and you could never see that. and as much as i didn't want to be from that place, i was really sad to not those orange groves. it was really killing that they weren't there because. it implied i wouldn't be there or my family wouldn't be there or our memories or my memories would cease to exist someday. any more questions? the audience? yes. good. wh

do you like the dog man in ohio was kind of a kind of a similar related group.did but but but generally it's pretty much the same the same animal. is woman back there. hello hi. i'm sorry, but i haven't read your book, but that's okay. fascinate by your integrity and the sentiment in, your research style. do you intend to study other cryptids and of zoology? at the moment, yeah. as i said earlier, i'm working on another book. it's related to this and i have to kind of wait and see. i sort of feel like at the moment i've said what what i wanted to say about bigfoot. yeah, i had a great sort of good fortune to interview late in his life. the writer barry lopez, who i was a big fan of. and he, you know, barry wrote like a couple of dozen books, both fiction and non. and it was an immensely sort of gifted writer. and one of his books was called wolves and men and he did, i think, about three decades ago. he went to the arctic, hung out with the wolf. researchers and wrote a really, um, he won the national book for i think it's a remarkable book. but he always lament

you know, the kind of messaging that we receive from media, pop culture and all these kinds of things. i think those could play a role in cultivating and promoting family structures and shifting i mean, there's there's just so much like like right now, it's really at least among the sort of the elite and the chattering class. this preoccupation with polyamory and open marriages and i think those things can be fun. pastime for you if you're, you know, if you're well-resourced and upper middle class and you know you're a kind of cognitively atypical person. but for most people with children to family is the way to go. if you want to maximize the statistic odds of that kid succeeding, at least not catastrophically failing. and so i think, yeah, a lot of a lot of cultural messaging plays a role as well here here. you if if you're if you're a person in upper middle class neighborhood and your parents are married and all of your neighbors are married and your friends their parents are married. that's the kind of water that you're swimming in. but any turn on the tv or you open a magazine or

well thanks it's kind of a long story and a story involves the most important kind of person in the project. and that's henry louis gates jr. apparently, he reading an earlier book that i wrote called the anatomy of blackness that mentioned this debate or this contest which took place at the bordeaux academy of sciences. and i'll get back to that second and at the same time, he was already thinking about doing a project this, and he just gave me a phone call out of the blue is an amazing day where he said, listen, i'm going to do a book and i'm going to call who's black and why about this contest? that took place at the bordeaux academy of sciences in 1741, and we worked on it very closely for two years, and it just came out in paperback, by the way. oh, exciting. that's fantastic. didn't know that. wonderful. well, listen, so what i'd love to know is if you can give us a bit of background information on, the historical circumstances surrounding ending this essay, bring us back to france in the 1740s. what is happening in how can we understand the broader circumstances? how big is france? h

damien. kind of annoyed.shoe theory. they've of our horseshoe theory. they've got that realise got so rich that they realise that actually, really that actually, you don't really need any money. and they became monks their so monks just like their kids. so they're were monks just like their kids. so they'of were monks just like their kids. so they'of monk were monks just like their kids. so they'of monk pilled were monks just like their kids. so they'of monk pilled by'e kind of like monk pilled by their their children. and kind of like monk pilled by their they eir children. and kind of like monk pilled by their they decided ren. and kind of like monk pilled by their they decided to . and kind of like monk pilled by their they decided to literally they, they decided to literally catapult most catapult some of their most pnzed catapult some of their most prized possessions into their community. think that was community. and i think that was how they gave them away. >> they chucked stuff over a bndge >> they ch

so kind of start there. just like what was their vision coming into the administration given this and how did everything kind of get turned upside down with what they wanted to do? well, first, thank you to people's book for hosting. thank to you for doing this and for your coming out on national hangover day. i really appreciate it. i wore green on purpose. it gets a day late. so to your question, look, the team was you don't get biden's foreign policy without the loss of trump. it is born out of the trauma of that in jake sullivan, as you mentioned, was right next to hillary clinton when she and as she's conceding to him and this guy. right. he's. he's a rhodes scholar, went to yale law school. but he grew up with five siblings in minnesota. and he felt like he got out populist, did by a new york real estate magnate, billionaire. so what he and the democratic establishment miss and he worked at this he founded and helped worked at this organization called national security action and their whole reason for

and this is the kind of heart of the heart of the kind of where i kick off the story. he goes back. right. and he goes back and he says, look, i need ships. i need more soldiers, i need more priests. and then he asks for something else. he asks for a moral for what he's about to do. and where does he get it? he gets it from the head of the western european church pope. and there's a whole of documents they get issued in the late 15th century to justify the entire colonial project, and they essentially prop it up on two things. the superiority of european civilization on and the superiority christianity and these are the things that get kind of launched into americas as the justification the entire transit atlantic slave trade the, genocide and removal of indigenous people in this country it is all sort of wrapped up in this idea america as a news iron for european christians and that's still again, we're still struggling i think with with those things today could say a little more about that. but that's the heart of the book. so. barbara mcquade her book is attacked from within how

kind of a monitor.t's back to the question level. i closely work with the local group who has been monitoring so swe closely pretty much like a small group. this group kind of like extended society. kind of like a labor union. this is on a daily basis that message we receive is someone got arrested from any of these and they want to print to be taken down they want to secure the facebook page. even if they -- basically this is kind of you know, like a message on a daily basis we receive it. they got arrested they are allowed to ask. that was like kind of like an axis was like a different. those obviously are kind of i would say not necessarily kind of mitigate the risk. kind of like it took steps after some got arrested we got more defiant. ourdi their situation has been secure. a so those are kind of like immediate steps we have to take, right? the other one basically kind of like our organization. and also others. we walkth around on the mitigatn plan. let us also be engage with these kind of f like b

but instead, i beg to take, you know, and that's kind of a neat thing. and we can all relate to that because all of us are really getting moods sometimes where we have work today. but instead of doing the work that we should be doing, we do other stuff that seems more fun. danny heitman is a columnist for the baton rouge advocate public station. and i'll tell you that one of the classics that i return to again and again is one that takes place in your neck of the woods, a confederacy of dunces by john kennedy toole. you know, i have a little quirk and even though a book reviewer occasionally write a few book reviews for the wall street journal and other places, and i'm someone who's constantly urging people to read this and read that, i tend to get my back whenever somebody says, you really need to read this at. my first encounter with a confederacy of dancers is when it was published, when i was in high school and a friend of mine met me in the hall while we were on our way to class and he said, you have absolute got to read confederacy of dunces. and i

should you feel like he's all kind of vacation and even though research kind of never requested advocation the a few months in itself is i seem to have sort of this the 1st month is kind of in the area and that makes it really difficult flying this is not the walk we talk. all right. the parts are really striking about is there is a landscape is always spectacular. lights look over just to receive views of you know, sometimes it's the cloud to sample wasn't home and also so on the side of it. and it's like really just visually stimulated issues like the mountain wants to reward you. the caves a valuable a cell size for body weight. you will also find needs. and also with a young boss, i say yes, i could says a good number i was the see was not want to be around to on save all those pieces. the trying to various case and know the title in this case is on hold on. it's more efficient to navigate a song if location. so that's what this is able to pick up on this slide, the image song and some of the song and the light. and i want to know what i'm just sitting in front of them. the kind of of

and so i kind of jokingly kind of not jokingly say we need like a pink slip counterrevolution.e need to have like the pink paper printers at maximum because ultimately these these victories can only be made real and made meaningful if we have a return almost to a spoils style system when we win control of the government, of the political system, we were in control of the institutions and they advance our principles. that to me is the harder fight. and i think we're slowly trying figure that out, but it's far from over. you know, your remarks brought up a curious paradox, which is that we have many states where, as you said, we perhaps even have a hyper majority of conservative legislators, legislators who consider themselves conservative, who are republicans and we see that the institutions of education and the institutions of character formation, many cases are dominated still by the left. i also think i'm a few years older than you, and i back to the america that i grew up in, which was a much more conservative america we have today. and yet somehow some complacency or some w

but i was kind of i was like younger. i was kind of worried. i was like, all right, well, i'll i'll go out for the drink. and i met the guy and he was like, you know, you did a pretty good job with that story. and like, let me tell you about this shady hedge fund and like how they took money from and like secretly invested it payday lending without telling harvard. i was like, wow, this is like a really great tip. thank you guy that i just wrote me and things about and like felt like i was off and running. did you develop any kind of over the course of these stories did you develop any kind of unified theory of scammers and fraudsters who. one thing i noticed is that they are always that creative, like these guys all watch like the wolf of wall street, like boiler room, like they're there's one guy i wrote about had even he'd studied oh, he'd study these films to try and figure out he should act as like a so this can be a little bit frustrating because when i'm writing like a feature story, i don't want to like totally fall into these tropes of

of those kinds of links. and in that frame the promise of the current paper of the paper that we're discussing today lies very clearly in the possibility of using dna to further identify links between historical populations in the americas and contemporary genetic populations in africa that identify with particular linguistic identities or ethnic identities. without, of course, losing sight, as i think the paper is very good at reminding us of the complicated relationship that current genetic populations, even ones that express specific linguistic and ethnic identities, may have to historical populations and social formations that would be relevant to the to the historical questions we're interested in. right. so the present day identity doesn't necessarily map genetic identity, does something map on the historical identity. that would be interesting, but it is new information and interesting. so this would help not only in trying to identify the origins of key individuals in the americas, but also in conside

also, that kind of approach. and so the whole thought was if we can make that kind of building more tactile and commercially viable potentially for people, it be less prone to election cycle, which is what it sounds like you're kind of worried about. this. hi, my name is michael orrick. i'm a professor at university school of law and school of public. and i your previous work, i'm excited to read the book so. i'm sorry if this is already covered in your book, the police, but i love to say as i say in the book. right. yeah but i want to suggest that you know, part of the issue is not of the limitation of public health, but sort of a how we think of public right and what qualifies and what it really is. i mean, i on a lot of people's work as well, but, you know, i go to these conferences and it's like, okay, it's great that this particular law will have a 15% reduction and whatever. but for and like, does that matter the second amendment right if this thing is struck down sorry about your work doesn't matter. right

and we kind of abdicated that. and so now i don't know this is long story, but i feel like we're not convincing when we talk about crime, when we try to answer that would like people who follow the rules, do background checks, stuff like that. please do come up and ask jonathan your question ends. by what we've become. it's a gorgeous book that a lot of policy spinach among a phenomenally sweet narrative that just is worth i love spinach too i'm trying to say it's a multilayered book that is just gorgeously written phenomena, little storytelling and profound ideas. what we need to do, not just for our gun debate, but for the future of our democracy. so thank you somy name is sally. i'm a senior fellow here at aei. and i have a feeling that many of you are already fans of. rob henderson and and i know the trajectory of his life. but if you going to go through the broad outlines and then he and my colleague naomi schaefer riley who's a child welfare expert here aei will fill in fill in the wisdom of that outline, alt

so the kinds of people working in factories are not the same kind of skilled craftsmen, not from the old days, where like there's no shortcut to getting a good blacksmith, right? if you're going to have good horseshoes, you need to have someone who knows the really difficult, fine skills that come with crafting a a horseshoe. it's not really true anymore. if you get a little bit of training and then get put to work in a textile mill, you can make the machines run. so the workers become fungible. if someone quits, someone else can be put on that machine soon thereafter, after a little bit of training and they can take up that job. the other problem with the industrial revolution is there there there are still some small businesses, but you're seeing the rise for the first time of really large corporations. and let's face it, you know, it's one thing if you go to if you know your boss personally, you can go in and try and negotiate for a better wage and fairer hours and that sort of thing. but if your bosses, andrew carnegie, he's not going to remember your name, nor will he care. righ

kind of like reflection as well. also, at the same time, there -- the different platforms have like, they are kind of like investigations and etc. and then these kinds of, it exchanges information with the cso's, what they see on the ground and what the platforms see. etc. these kinds of chain of information, i see about it, a regular visit the chain of information, especially for the cso's who are working on the protection, the security and physical security and etc. at least they can foresee what is going on on that platform, who are the bad actors? sometimes these bad actors are not necessarily within their own country or territory. they have links to russia or china or links to other territories. or other countries. these platforms have this information, right? cso's, local organizations who are working on the ground, having this knowledge, having this information, is why kind of, i see it very helpful. in their consideration and they are like -- educating, you know, they are public, etc. i would say about it, we

i when i kind of think about the war on drugs, i think about those kind of like harm reduction community responses to, helping drug users. are there any like other than like a top down u.s. approach to like solving or fixing the war on drugs? are there any like international grass roots movements that are want kind of international legislation or a kind of like international of harm reduction? right. like, is there only top down stuff? so do have do you want to speak to that or you have another question? i mean, there certainly grassroots organizations. yeah. yeah. but it's very dependent on the local laws and state by state, who's allowed to do that is very different. so we have some it in philadelphia because we hold up these that are in other place is portugal, san francisco. portugal has a really innovative and successful very successful program on harm reduction and decriminalization of what philadelphia is trying. but they put a lot more effort into it, a lot more money into it, and then it's at the national level. so i mean, i'm sympathetic to your desire for local movements, and

this was one of the most precious collections of kind of my, to the solution of to kind of looks like it's very different how sleep very different looks like kind of books by the time right in. because if morning about, about africa itself as an geographically and about africa ends. very influenced, obviously the collection itself, by the time. so it would be very unpopular you calling nature the kind of like list of the, the off it comes in the biology and they're eating habits and all of this things. so it was due to the african as an object. some of the more disturbing materials that we found includes like a legend of money that was paid to former slave owners. i think in west africa was it gone now was gone. and so the, the collection itself reflected the sort of ideology of the time it would be very inspired by the british empire and the thoughts around civilizing the natives. mm hm. yeah. and i think we definitely want to, to maintain this mysterious, of this room so, so in the future, mcmillan, this will definitely be where we house on us to kind of collection is probably going