Thomas explores the historical rise and fall of nations and whether the United States will remain a superpower in the book americas expiration date. [inaudible conversations] hello everyone we are about to get started so if you can please take your seats. Thank you. Good evening and welcome to the bookstore, we are excited to host the event was charlotte alter presenting her book the ones weve beenk waiting for how the new leaders will transform america, she will talk with Jazmine Hughes with an excellent evening. Before i turn things over to them a housekeeping things, please silent your cell phones, books are for cell at the register and charlotte will sign after at the table right here, if you have not gotten your copy please do so at the end and will form a p p signing line going straight back from the stable to the back of the store, single file please. Upcoming events are available at the c register. Tonights event will be recorded by cspan so we will pass around handheld mics to the q a portion so wait at that time, will be around to handle mike out before questions happen. Our interviewer for this evening hughes, she is a story editor and writer for the New York Times magazine and has a 2020 recipient of the next awards for journalists under 30s. She will speak with her future author charlotte alter, she is a national correspondentho for tie covering thent 2016 2018 and 2020 elections, women in politics and the rise of the grassroots, her work has appeared and then york times, wall street journal and appeared on good morning america, morning joe, the last word in cnns reliable sources. Her new book, the ones weve been waiting for is a hopeful clips into a bright new generation of political leaders and what america might look like when they are in charge. The book is received praise byik multitude of writers, who says for anyone who has dismissed millennials or cares about our countrys future, the written a essential book in bringing to vivid life a young upstart to an ultimately inherited democracy, altar has given us another vital voice that will shape our political future. Ut hers. So you are in for Something Special tonight, jazmine will join charlotte and have a choice to answer your questions afterti that. Please welcome and joining charlotte and jazmine. [applause] thank you. Oh my god, i was looking down when i got up, thank you for coming out tonight and congratulations to charlotte because her book comes out today. [cheering] charlotte and i have been a friend i for a few years now, we both love gossip, if your gossip about anything we would love to hear at the end of this. Come right up right now. [laughter] can everybody here is okay by the way . So charlotte, you work at a magazine and i heard they still exist. Radio. And you win a lot of cover stories for magazines, and long features for magazines, how did you know this is not a long magazine story and it was going to be a book. Such a good question, mostly because i just started at a magazine story in some ways because it came out of a story i did in 2017 about millennial mayors because essentially the genesis ofay the book is thatth trump withdrew the climate agreement 2017 and i went temporarily insane and i just spent the whole day, i see my friend josh over there who was vesitting next to me do you remember that day . [laughter] anyway so that day i was googling about age and generation and i was thinking this guy is 71 years old, the1. Oldest firstterm president ever and was elected by older white voters and overwhelmingly people over 65, the senators who wrote to him encouraging him to drop on the agreement were mostly in their 70s and 80s and that day this was the first shot of generational battle, generational war in the morning thought about it, the more i realized so many of the things trump was doing from his actions that affected young immigrants togr banning people from the military which is something that young people carried way more about than older people to Climate Change 20 student debt forgiven, decisions being made by old people that were going to have a disproportionally impact on young people and i o was like im going to look more into that. Does my mike not questioning sorry. I was super loud voice. Does that make sense . That is way better. You also have a super loud voice. Anyway in my cutting off . No, i am done. As someone who does not know a lot about guys and 70s in their 80s, what do they hold dear and what do millennials hold dear. Whats the difference for. [laughter] thats a good question. I do not want to generalize about all boomers because not all boomers, not all that stuff. What this book examines is a tafundamental shift, away from e 20th century style politics that was much more that particular in the 80s and 90s in the reagan and clinton era was swing into the center right, reagan on the right and clinton in the middle and clinton was around what reagan wanted which was privatization and p tax cuts and all of the things that have led to a situation we are now in and where the universities areur underfunded, where big business has ran the economy and where the social safety net is eroded in a way that it was not for our grandparents. What the book is about is a swing towards the left which is not for chili or unfortunately going to go as some progressives and brooklyn want it to go, its not like theres a socialist utopia in ourst future and i can get into that later. But it is about the pendulum shift and how the events since 9 11 from 9 11 to the wars in afghanistan and the financial crisis through obamas election, black lives matter, occupied and then the rise of trump, all of those things have shaped the way they think about politics and how its fundamentally different from their parents because her an entirely different set of experiences that formed their worldview. Thats a way we defined generations. Its something youra go into and you fact that the first major global event that millennials experience was 9 11. How did that have an effect onth the politicians. Everybody remembers 9 11, this generation its like when jfk was assassinated. So Pete Buttigieg for example was lying in his College Dorm Room and then he found out from his roommate and went on a long meditative walk where he thought about his generational purpose which is a very Pete Buttigieg thing to do and aoc was a seventh grader in school did not get dismissed but a bunch of parents in her suburb came and got the kids from school so thef school emptied out and when she got home from school, her mom was not home yet and she turned on the tv and saw the towers and she thought is my mom going to be home before the apocalypse. So part of the purpose of that chapter is to get like who these people are, what their back rooms, families, what kind of situation they were growing up inn Elise Stefanik who is a republican, a couple republicans in there, she was a senior at a private school in upstate new york and one of her friends had a sister who worked inis the towers and when they found out aboutbo it this girl obviously t incredibly emotional and that for Elise Stefanik was a huge moment, watching her friend think that her sister was dead, it turns out the sister was on the tower that day and the friend was fine and it was all okay but everybody that i talked to had if not something that intense in terms of watching somebody think that their sister had died, it was a moment for them, it jolted them and made them realize america was not alone in the world then we go into these wars that further complicate and destabilize these characters opinions of what americas role in the world is and how much we should interfere in all of those attitudes inform how millennial think about politics. You are on television, how did 9 11 affect you, not with your political i was in seventh grade and we were taken a spanish quiz in the announcement came on the loudspeaker and he made us finish the quiz. Thats whatt i remember and also when i got home from school, i grew up in new jersey and there is a high point in montclair so we went up to the high point and watched and looked at the smoke because it was very clear even on the day that this was a major historical event that was going to be a significant break of a departure of the past, i think thats why i started the book because in some ways for people in the age group are tickly the people i was talking to there was before 9 11 and after 9 11 and millennials grew up in the era of after 9 11 so that is why its beginning of the book. Another thing you set up like before harry potter in life after, and i want you to tell everyone how the harry potters series affected everybody. I feel like weve gones through subsequently, this is why i did not want to do a reading because none of you guys need me too hear and recite. So the Second Chapter of the book is called harry potter and the spawn of the boomers and is mostly about all the ways that boomer parenting was fundamentally different from parenting of early generations, boomers in my generalize to come boomers, they stop at almost everything except raising kids, they were supposed to be super good at raising kids, boomers did not do well in terms of making our economy work and they did not address Climate Change when they had the chance, they did a really important activism in racial and social justice but actually their movement was not led by boomers. Gloria steinem was not a boomer. A lot of the things that they take credit for, yet people love that, they actually did not startha that, they just enjoyed it. [laughter] you are on cspan charlotte. [laughter] but one thing that boomers really threw themselves wholeheartedly into his raising your kids innt this intense and intentional way. That is why the word parenting did not become a thing until the late 80s and 90s. All of the ideas of enrichment in your kid has to have piano lessons and this number has words before their three and they have to be surrounded by a thousand books or theyll be illiterate, all of those things were part of the boomer preoccupation with parenting, if you look at the culture of that time, parenthood, three men in a baby, mrs. Doubtfire, the genes that they were were mom jeans, they were really into being parents. So they raised these kids is why people think of millennials as snowflakes because they raised a generation of frankly overprotected, unde under endand kids. This is also the periodal when people were worried about the kids getting kidnapped when they came home from school, you cannot ride your bike down the street because there might be a stranger and stranger danger and dont get in a car, all of that was new in the 80s and because of the new preoccupation with child safety. So in the context this book is written that is about an under parenting, over endangered magical powers. [laughter] and to say everybody no harry potter was a phenomenon but i dont think people understand it was literally unprecedented in human history. Thistok. Book. [laughter] there is an article written about jk rowling in 2003 and it says at first we saw basically it was time that wrote this in they said they were going to pair jk rawlings with Charles Dickens but shes more influential and harry potter is literally unprecedented. This was a book not only that every kid read this book once and got over it,ut every kid red it and then read it six more times over the course of their young adulthood because they read it when they were 11 and then 12 and then the thirder bok in 13 and harry potter aged alongside a lot of these people. Im being very rambling but the studies that show people who were fans of harry potter tend to have more progressive values partly because the themes of the book are about tolerance and bringing in social outsiders and rejecting authoritarianism in kids banding together against evil and i noticed when i was interviewing the parkland kids two years ago, they talk about harry potter a lot. Theyey were like hogwarts, he totally looks like him. And it was just something that tkept coming up in a minor way, people would do the throwaway references like soandso is like soandso. And maybe it may be think that this is something that informs the way people think about politics and power in morality. This was a cultural event that had never happened before, nothing has ever permeated childrens mind the way harry potter did, of course they remembered it. Did any of the politicians introduce, do they sort themselves were you . [laughter] and they did, aoc was really into it according to her brother and savant to margaret, some of the younger ones were much more into it than the older ones, p judy judgPete Buttigieg says ths before his time in dan crenshaw said no. Obviously there is some exceptions and i have to add the caveat, nothing im saying applies to every millennial, if youre millennial and say i did not read it, see, thats fine, were talking about millions of people, nothing will apply to literally everybody im talking about a broad trend that applies to most people. In the way that nine a lot oi found in my research that social scientists have shown the event that you experience between 18 and 26 give or take determine your politics for the rest of your life, they might move a m little bit, if you buy property or taking your kids to school, that might change your Politics Around the edges but its rare for someone to go from a hardcore leftwinger to a a hardcore rightwinger. What tends to happen, popular president s attract young people to the party and unpopular president s repel them. Thats one of the reasons right now Millennials Vote democrat 2 one because in their lifetime they saw an incredible unpopular president bush and incredibly popular president obama and then unpopular president and donald trump. So i kind of think that donald trump election will be a Pivotal Moment for jen these in the way that the seven impeccable pivotapivotal formillennials. They get bobby in 18 or 19 years old when President Trump was elected. Frankly who knows what theyre talking about, one of the other things i noticed, there was such a loss of faith in conventional wisdom after trump was elected because the conventional wisdom said it will be Hillary Clinton, do not worry she will win and all of the people who were supposed to know what they were talking aboutt were wrong, thats why you saw the millennials, the people in charge said that this would not happen and it did so they clearly are operating on old information and dont know what is going on so were going to take the will basically. I wonder w what people i wonder what people thought about the news, im sure a lot of them are getting their information from social media if they describe themselves as such, and your reading newspapers like the New York Times that are telling you that hillary is going to win 2016. What do they think about journalism. Integrate question. It is something that is challenging, people all the time who do not believe or understand journalism, dont believe journalism think it is fake and think things are made up and think that journalist routinely in the habit of making a quote which is ridiculous. It is one place where i think its going to be really challenging because you are right for a lot of millennials they get their news from social media and not only that they get the general attitude from social media so when they see a new story that challenges are general attitude, theyre much more likely to think that is bullshit, everybody i follow on twitter says this but the New York Times says is, the New York Times is full of shit. That is one area that concernsha me frankly because i think what happens when you surround yourself only with people who think like you and reflect back to what you already think is that your mind gets close off to things that might challenge that. There was social media good and can use a lot of social media stocking. Can you give us tips for those of us so you found facebook videos right . What did you find . If you can stock your exboyfriend, you can find politicians old facebook videos. One of the things i got really lucky with with this book was the exact period of time i was looking happens to be the period of time that facebook was encouraging people to do live video on their feeds which by the way stays there for ever. Unless you delete it which aoc did not. So now a journalist trying to do for this. Right now it would be a lot harder because a lot of the things that were put on Facebook Live in 2015 2016 are now put on Instagram Live and that does delete up to 24 hours. What i i found, i had an intervw with aoc and she talked about Standing Rock shaped your politics and rather than just getting her recollection of it was great, and learned so much, i found 12 hours of live video of her journey to Standing Rock withh her friends and that was something that allowed me to see deeper into her thought process from the time she was actually there and what she was thinking what she was doing and what snacks in music and all that was so helpful to paint the picture in that moment. Braxton winston who is a City Council Member in charlotte, North Carolina, i was looking for somebody this is a book about elective, so its not a book about activists. But black lives matter was such an important part of this generation social awakening throws looking for somebody her gun being a black lives matter activists to serving elected office and braxton in charlotte, North Carolina did that and also had recorded on facebook all of his time that he was in the streets protesting against keiths death, there were videos of his time running away from smoke bombs and videos of what he was saying, what he was doing, where he was going, who said what to him, it was there and frankly the hardest part was figuring out how to record those videos because i was like why does he not know i can see them, they will delete them. And then that would suck for me, but i did figure ite out. A great part of the book is charlottes comfort with millennials because she is one, i want you to everyone about Haley Stevens and the my question after words do you think a boomer couldve written this book . Thats a really good question, Haley Stevens is a congresswoman from michigan and one thing i got really lucky with is i was 2017 early 2018 every journalist was saint trump, trump and i could not do that, not only emotionally, i did not have any sources and i was i not in National Security d i was never going to get the big trump stories. So i was like okay theyre doing not all see if theres any interesting young people around who are running for office. And Haley Stevens is a good example to know what it means to get there early. I met haley when she had not won her primary and i called her up and she invited me over to her moms house and her mom has all these really weird paintingshe f skeletons, rat skeletons and snake skeletons, her mom is a painter and she is so nice, i went over and we ate a big bowl of grapes and we talked and she showed me all her rat skeletons and then haley came in and we talked for a long time and its amazing what people will do when you asked them so i was asking her about her use of technology and when she got her for cell phone and she said let me check i have it in my journal and she pulled out a big box of journals and i was like can i read some of them and she said sure. So then ies spent the rest of te day reading through her old journals and going through a big box of stuff from when she was working on joe bidens campaign in 2008 and that was a an exampe of the only reason i was able to do that because she was not yet taken seriously as a congressional candidate and she did not have a press person or a concert or any other people with her who would say you cannot let your reporter read your journals. It has been really interesting and shes fantastic and its been interesting to watch now, shes a member of congress and she takes extremely seriously and now when i talk to her when i say how do you feel about this she says well if its with good for the people of michigans 11 district its whats good for me. In some ways its an interesting revolution to watchch them go fm a normal person like me to be in some of his elective representative and watching what that does to the presentation in their personality and watching 70 become that was really interesting. The same thing happened with you and mayor pete essentially. Except mayor pete is always the same. I first met mayor pete in 2017 when i was doing a millennial mayor story and he was already working then because he was thinking about running for dnc chair and he was saying he just got a dog the dog was named truman and i said why did you name it truman and he said harry truman said if you want a friend in washington get a dog and i said but you live in south bend so whats that about whom he said will the dnc chair, definitely, for sure. So it was very clear from the first time i met him first of all that he has raw political talent. He is incredibly talented, second of all he had his ion something bigger and at first he andst everybody else thought it was a dnc chair but in late 2018 after he ran and lost, i swing by and visited him on a midterm return and we drove around the whole city and its really interesting, people think pete practiced he is objectively dorky but people have a lot of i dont how to put it except for people dont like whatever his personal aspect is a lot of the time remain find myself having to explain his aspect has to do with being in the closet for 33 years. Because he knew he was gay from a super young age and he knew he wanted a political career from a super young age and the time he was literally three years old people said hes exact same person as he is now, super controlled, never lost his temper, super selfpossessed, super discipline about his presentation and his approach to the world, never had a tantrum, never had a flameout, no loss of control of any kind and i was like okay, i spent a long time looking for people who hated him in high school, that was my goal for a couple of weeks, how do you not hate this kid. [laughter] and i could not find one, people in high school said you wouldve thought people wouldve made fun of him, you thought he wouldve been annoying or mr. Great grover rondos whatever but actually people really like him and did notot tease him and respected him and thought he was a nice guy, so he was a super dorky gay only child growing up in south bend, indiana and he was liked and respected by his peers. [laughter] you work really hard not to mix millennial with liberal. Can you tell us about them. And moderate to. One thing at the get happening in particular because Bernie Sanders does have a solid millennial base, people think all millennials are socialist. And in fact is a little bit more complicated than that. The actual registration for the socialist of america is way up from 2010, certainly increases a lot while Bernie Sanders has ran for office but if theres 35000 people that can fit inside fenway park. It is not true that every millennial is a socialist in fact, whether its true some of these ideas around socialism have lost their sting and so theres people who are more moderate who want a Green New Deal dont call himself a socialist, or they believe a medicare pro but theyre not in theth dsa, its a little bit moe diffuse than that but also i think its important for everyone toi realize that the young people in particular who flipped seats in 2018 were moderate. There were people like Kaylee Stevens or Lauren Underwood in illinois or max rose in staten island, just over here or katie hill who had the big millennial flameout with her news, the first but not last and those were the people who flipped a seat from a republican and those were people who were not actually in the Bernie Sanders swing of the party there more in the barack obama and t thats wt a lot of the focus is about, the tension between the obama stylei millennial in the bernie style millennials. In the last chapter and how they represent the two different anchors, the pendulum swing into the left, Pete Buttigieg is a center in aoc is a left, pete being the center is pretty far to the left. That means the moreo conservatie option of somebody who wants universal healthcare, if not necessarily medicare for all, and wants Climate Change in a huge amount of funding for college education, the idea that that is the amount of moderate and conservative position shows how far millennials have swung the pendulum to the left. You describe aoc progressive activism and petes pragmatism, its a diet that has coming forward, how do you think viewers will go. Left, right now jenna beers that i know are full on communist activists. , that is one of the things there is this book that i cite a little bit but im weary of getting too much in cold generations and what they say in this book is that theres sort of different but some generations are more civic minded than others and for examples the greatest generation are the ones who thought world war ii and millennials are typically oriented. It goes in a cycle i dont remember the exact order. Traditionalist, boomers basically what they do is go all the way back to john adams. I did not know they had generations back then. Thats why i say i skim the book. They go back and they see the generation from 1721 1758 believe this. And unlike this is not relevant i will move on. But what they found was some of these things going cycles, every for generation llama civic minded generation and every four generations yemen activist minded generation and between those you tend to have smaller generations like je more about e outside world and i only cited this a little bit. Gen xs are also young, how many people are running for office at 21 years old where tran twos are right now. They can turn activism and start running for office soon, right now it is a millennials who are stepping up in an electoral way but sunrise movements in march for our lives are absolutely changing the conversation and those are all gen xs im sorry gen zs. How much of this ideological values, how much of that is the generation and how much of thate is how old we are and will we get more conservative or change rather as we get older . I think it has to do with being a particular age at a particular time what happens is, again people taken all this information when theyre in their 20s and the like who am i, who am i in the world, once they figure that out there like cool, figured it out. People are not necessarily looking often for political awakening in their 50s or 60s. So that is why for example, actually young people in the early 1980s a lot voted for ronald reagan. They are saying people are the people who votedga for donald trump 30 40 years later. It is not really about being young and aging, its about what happened when you were young and what it did to your politics and how you keep that moving forward in your own life. We got away from one question i asked you earlier. Do boomers read this book . Yeah but i do not think they would. You think your subjects have been up forthcoming . Yeah, i think a a fundamental attitude that i have that maybe boomers do not necessarily have is that this stuff this stuff matters. People who are not necessarily already in power still matter in our political system in their story s still matter and someboy like Lauren Underwood who is a freshman member of congress who is gotten bureaus Laura Underwood had gotten real legislation because shes been a real advocate for black Maternal Health crisis legislation. But some of the freshman, freshman members of congress do not have attentive their beltents under especially when Mitch Mcconnell runs the senate. I think a lot of boomers have call me when they getal somethig done. Which is fair like this Still Matters because they are stepping up and representative of something bigger even if they dont necessarily have the payoff that one might expect yet. I think a lotne of boomers predt lee about politics and focus on the people already in power that they forget to look for the people in power yet and those are really interesting stories. My favorite part of your book is how you describe how old people are. Mitch mcconnell is older than Chocolate Chip Cookies. Chuck grassley. [laughter] what is your favorite part of your book . I like that part of my book, is jackie here . I want to shout out to jackie because she help me with research in the beginning of this whole process because at so many total meltdowns and freak out and jackie walked me through it and help me make this big spreadsheet where she had age, name the year, when people were worn, common household inventions. So we can see Mitch Mcconnell, older than the hula hoop. [laughter] and nancy pelosi, was nine when color television. This is off the top of my head, dont quote me on that one. That was really fun, im trying to think of what my favorite part is. I really liked the part about Alexander Ocasio cortes because it was one where i just got to focus on the videos and the dynamics between her and her friends and her evolution and what was going on with her and i did not have to bring in all the other data and research and that was the most that inviting braxton winstons videos were the most fun part of this whole thing because that is when i was like oh, i found a thing i need. Thats my favorite part. Also learning that Chuck Grassley was five years old with a Chocolate Chip Cookie was invented, literally for the first five years of l his life they would say chuck, do you want a cookie, no chocolate, i dont know what that is. [laughter] can you believe that this man is making policy. [laughter] this is my last question and then you guys will ask your questions. What is the juiciest piece in the book . I almost dont want to tell you because its on page 153. And youre only going to know it if p you buy. Everyone is going to buy the book. Okay okay, i need to calculus thisis carefully. Elise stefanik is a millennial republican congresswoman, who i was writing this book i did a little dance about being moderate around trump and criticizing him but also embracing him enduring impeachment she took a hard right s turn and did very much n the trump train. She and Pete Buttigieg were at harvard at the same time and they were both in theof institue of politics and there was a rumor that i heard from three people that they went on a dateo once. When i asked about it they said no, no, it was just a friendly coffee. So they both deny them. [laughter] but i think they sort of it was like a maybe date. Like a vibe check kind of date. When i asked pete about it i was like did you go on a date with Elise Stefanik and you shouldve seen his face. So maybe. [laughter] they did say they had a friendly coffee. So make that of what you will. Does anyone have questions for charlotte, we have a mic going around, keep in mind we are on cspan so say hi to my grandma. No questions . Im shocked by the fact that you brought up social movements the obvious had big impact on younger people, if theyre left winging, whether similar events on the right a inchon people like that saul or did they look at occupy and see something totally different . Question. Ood to answer your question, there was not a use movement on the right in this period. There was a tea party but there was a tea party that was very old. What i found interesting the occupy and black lives matter which im glad youre asking this because i wanted to make a point. They did something really, really fundamental that people do not understand at the time, when journalists were covering black lives matter in particular, there was a lot that said take me too your leader. And there was an idea that social movement, what exist the way they do in textbooks worth like the civil rights movement, leaders,il this person and actually the 21st century millennials in social movements were very leader for an everybody was a leader and nobody wasr. A leader and everybody was making decisions and nobody was making decisions. And that meant it had a lot of positives and negatives and that meant it was hard to the movementsve occupied to settle n specific goals that would be actionable and would move the ball in some tangible ways in it change the shape of what power lookok like. And it used to be that political power was a portrait, here is the person who is in charge of this. And these movements made it more like a pixilated image where all of the painting where all of these little dots were all part of it and he did not have just one person who represented the whole movement. , its really important to note that somebody like dan crenshaw, what is making some republicans and some Young Conservatives lean to the right and a lot has to do leftwing overreach particularly in College Campuses in particular around things like Political Correctness and micro aggression and things like that. There are a lot of moderate to conservative leaning young people who probably if you set them down and talk to them have pretty similar attitudes around the core issues like Climate Change or racial equality for gay marriage but are really turned off by some of the vibe of the confrontational pc police vibe, thats why you see on College Campuses the three speech movement. I think it would probably be the most encloses of what youre asking about, people should not shutdown what people disagree with them. And in some ways the sanctimonious left is the same thing driving young people to the right. You talk about this a little but i was looking through your book in your talking about the ages of politicians and alexandria ocasiocortez is the youngest one of the very old men in the president ial campaign, Bernie Sanders is the oldest and he has by far the strongest support from the age groups you are writing about and from the generation after that. I wonder what you find in Pete Buttigieg that has little support from people our age anda his support from boone boomers and gen x. Thats it your sin tr i get in the last chapter but its counterintuitive. So theres two things going on, one Pete Buttigieg in particular is an old persons idea of what a young person should be and so he appeals he has very good grandson vibe so a lot of peopln particular think hes a nice young man and that is very appealing, listen, underestimate him at your peril, its incredibly appealing to e many voters and from somebody to go to a noname mayor sout south b, indiana to winning the Iowa Caucuses by a tiny here is an unbelievable trajectory. , you are totally right that Bernie Sanders is his candidacy fortified by his popularity with young people in with millennials and gen z. If p comes out on top, its like hes the youngest nominee and if bernie does is because of his support with young people and one thing i found on the trail which is on the book is that older people and younger people think of age differently and its not the way you would expect. I kind of expected that younger people would think he is too old and actually its a people and their, maybe in their 60s or early 70s themselves who understand what age means and maybe themselves are slowing down and they think i am 65 and having trouble running after my grandkids, how can somebody who is 15 years older than me be president of the United States. Or im 67 and i have trouble remembering where my car keys are, should somebody a decade older than me those of the people who i think have more trouble with the idea of an old person being president because they understand what age does to your mental faculties and physical capacity. I think a lot of young people dont have the understanding. And they think to themselves while bernie agrees in the on the issues and a lot of my book is laying out why so many young people are with bernie on the issues, why they want medicare hyfor all, why they want a new deal, why equality is important to them, because they dont necessarily have an understanding of age and how it affects the ability to do the job, it does not bother them that much. Does that makes sense . I have a millennial question. You mentioned that 9 11 and harry potter, those are pretty big events, are there smaller or maybe less pronounced events or cultural phenomenons that make millennials unique from their counterparts . One little one that i get out in the book a tiny book that i think is interesting, zerotolerance policies for bullying in school is something i think you can draw a direct line people our age were the first people to grow up in an era where kid pushed another kid on the playground and said youre expelled. For our parents, thats kids being kids and everyone is going to get called names and everyone will get bullying and bullying is a chart childhood, what is the problem, millennial as part of the boomers super parenting. Bullying became a humongous problem and you have zerotolerance policies which had two effects, one or pernicious effect is that it unfairly targeted black andff brown kids in a way that push them into the criminal Justice System and exacerbated all kinds of existing racial inequalities which we all know about but which were not clear at the time. Black and brown kids were over discipline and punished for stupid Little Things for throwing a pencil somebody and pushing summary or calling to be a name and they would get kicked out of school and often end up in some kind of juvenile program that would set them on a totally different path so a tiny little thing that should not have that big of an impact on their lives. The broader effect about i think is that it created a social system where you could have radical punishment and ostracize issue for small crimes. The idea that somebody would be expelled for calling to be a name is not that different from canceling 70 for making a bad joke. I think you can draw a line from zerotolerance policy and School Discipline what we half jokingly call cancel culture now where theres this idea that one strike and youre out, the stakes there is no room for error or place for forgiveness and i dont necessarily this is a punishment and structure posed on millennials by their parents and school ministers. I think there is a connection between those two things but i have not quite permanent. Does that make sense . Anyway. Guest theres no more questions await this one on the back. You can shout, i can hear. [inaudible] guest you talked about the next g lack thereof. What do you see hell do you see the next generation getting media and also shaping the landscape . Thats a good question. I think the next generation is getting their media through social media. I do have to say the problem is more than those that see fake news on facebook and are like if you see Hillary Clinton is a pedophile, like mama deals are much more sophisticated interpreting online information knowing whats true and whatss not. There are a lot of bubbles that some of these total fake news conspiracy theories are kind of germinating more among the people that t are less digitally i would be really rich. [laughter] i wish i knew the answer to that question. I think print will definitely be part of the conversation forev forever, but i do think that its going to be mostly digital and mostly on social media and one of the big things news organizations are going to have to deal with is how to navigate the social media waters where its so easy for Bad Information to flourish and for good information to fight back. So i dont know. Thats for someone smarter than me to figure out. Do you feel like today they are held to Higher Standards because they grew up with social media and if you are speaking to the publications do you think of a few social media as a tool they can harness or popularity campaigning or more of a liability that they are always concerned about . Its interesting, that is a good question. There are some people for example probably now that they know that im digging around in facebook, but also one of the things that the mayor of ithaca said to me we grew up knowing everything is on the internet and would be found by somebody and in some ways and this is another thing that is unique and mamaybe not true of generation. Is the millennials grew u mongt of Digital Ecosystem where it was like he would put something on facebook and then it was there for years whereas now people are doing tiktok and Instagram Live and not live for some nosy journalists n to pick up. So i do think there is that awareness and i also think that it one of the reasons why somebody like pete they grew up in front of the camera having an experience of knowing how to talk to the camera or t the audience. Icyou need to talk to people, deliver t information. I think the earlier generations there was more of a learning curve in terms of developing a public space and for a lot of people our age, because of the social media, everybody has a public space. Its just some people are more public than others but theres nobody that doesnt have any kind of public space in persona unless you completely square off social media altogether, so i think that that has made it easier in some ways to get people to navigate fame because fame isnt just for famous people if that makes sense. I dont know. Thats a little weird. We have time for one more. What would you say one of the biggest ways to think in more ae millennials in Elective Office in teaching the way politics happens in the last decade . I love this question. Theres a couple things that will change. One is that there will be certain issues on which we will stop arguing about whether it is a problem and start arguing back to back ways to fix it and Climate Change is one of them. Young republicans believe its happening in notes created by humans. They just have different ideas on the right ways forward and tanted more marketbased solution and that would be the battle. Now people in the senate gem ans 83 and came to the floor of the senate with a snowball to prove Climate Change is a real, but tt isnt going to happen with millennials. Thats one thing. I also think that there is going to be i started the book thinking there was going to be a little bit more bipartisanship and now i actually think there might be a little less. I do think there is a lot of polarization and that is exacerbated by social media. But i think that was more millennials we will see more people like Daniel Crenshaw who sold them as celebrity figures and then it would be. More about the celebrity aspect to the way these people present and exist in the public eyeye and i thinke will be seeing more of that and more staged, i want more drama and a lot less backroom dealing, but i also think that there will be a couple particularly. The agenda is going to change. We are definitely going to get to a new place but right now for example, Climate Change is a back burner issue because we have a government that is dominated by the boomers and people older than them like silent generation people who dont think its that important. When millennial star in power its going to be a front burner issue. Income inequality will be more of a front burner issue. Education funding will be more of a front burner issue that im not trying to say that no one eagles are in power is goingt to be a new deal and instantly be free college because again, there are many conservative millennials and even more remoderate millennials. But im just saying that like these issues that are kind of on the back burner or going to be brought to the forefront i think. I think it is all fine behalf. [applause] [cheering] thank you so much for that awesome discussion. If you dont have your book yet, they are available at the register and we will go single file towards the back. Thank you allk for coming. [inaudible conversations] and already this year weve brought few primary election coverage, the president ial impeachment process and now federal response to the coronavirus. You can watch all of the cspan Public Affairs programming on television, online or listen on the free radio ad and be part of the National Conversation through cspan daily washington journal program, or through the social media. As a Public Service brought to you today by your television provider. Senate majority leader Mitch Mcconnell unveiled a third Coronavirus Relief bill surfacing on the economy. The plan is to phase three and here are some of the main details of the legislation. Direct Cash Payments to individuals, federal relief for small businesses, targeted lending to industries impacted by the pandemic, and funding for hospitals and health centers. Negotiations on the bill continue. Its uncertain when the senate will vote on the measure. When it does, you can watch live on cspan2. Now on booktv after words, syndicated columnist cal thomas explores the rise and fall of nations throughout history and also his thoughts on whether the United States will remain a superpower. He is interviewed by author and cnn contributor, amanda carpenter. After words is a Weekly Program with relevant guest hosts interviewing top nonfiction authors about their latest works. All after words programs are also available as podcasts. Host the book is americas expiration date, and you said based on the findings, soldiers, scoffers throwdown gloves that only last about 250 years. Which means americas time cld