I am Brian Anderson on the editor of city journal and i want to welcome you here today on behalf of the Manhattan Institute. It is with great pleasure that i get to introduce joh john tierney and coauthor with an esteemed useful new book the power of bad how the negativity effect rules us and how we can rule it it. It is on sale, by the way outside the room here. John has long been one of the leading voices on the intersection of science and Public Policy. And make no mistake, however calmly, reasonably expressed, his is a very contrary invoice. It was johns New York Times column, the big city, which ran from the mid 90s until 2002, that first made me a fan of his work. There, he took on any number of prevailing myths about cities. From the efficacy of rent control to the root causes of homelessness to environmental policy. One remarkable column was his irritation at Rosie Odonnells relentless public criticism of mayer Rudy Giulianis use of Law Enforcement to get the homeless off of new york city sidewalks back in the 90s. So how would odonnells, hometown deal with a similar problem john wondered . So he let his beard grow for a few days, he did not shower, then he dressed himself up in dirty clothes in a torn parka and headed up where he plopped himself down on the sidewalk right in front of odonnells manchin. [laughter] well within minutes of course, a Security Guard was confronting him and asking them actually threatening him to move along. Soon the cops arrived and he was then taken down to the station. Point proved about a certain kind of elite hypocrisy which these days recall virtual signaling. Another piece he wrote for the times, an essay, recycling is garbage. His titles capture the provocative argument holds the record for the most hate mail ever generated by a New York Times article. [laughter] [applause] now johns journalism has appeared not just in the times where he remains an occasional contributor, but in the wall street journal, atlantic, esquire, washington post, many other leading publications. Since joining city journal, john, has continued to illuminate an enraged writing about other things that counter productivity of anti vaping, Public Health measures, how drugs get developed in price, why the left is actually raging the real war on science. And the latest issue, a piece that is almost guaranteed to drive everyone insane, white plastic bags are in fact better for the environment than all of the alternatives. [applause] but this piece, like his other work, really again shows his talent for exploding widely accepted views as fallacies. The john stossel broadcasting city journal based on johns work science essay has incidentally had more than 2 million views since we released it. His new book, the power of bad how the negativity effect rules us and how we can rule it which was also coauthored was sold an impressive 350,000 copies since its release a couple of years ago. It is so popular, as i was telling john, you can find it airports, which is really a sign youve got it made. Has established true of or will be true soon, of the power of bad, the previous book explores the biological and psychological aspects of human will. The new book, i mentioned it is useful, studies what psychologists say negativity bias. The human propensity to focus disproportionately on unpleasant events and emotions, bad news. Its the reason that one word of criticism can seem more powerful to us in the paragraph of praise. As john and roy argue in this book, this is an irrational side to human nature, but it can also be crippling and lead to inimitable actions in life and a Public Policy. The good news is it can be mastered and the power of bad shows how. But i do not want to anticipate john stott, so without more for me, i give you john tierney. Thank you. [applause] guest thanks very much, thank you very much brian for those kind words it has been great working with you as an editor. I want to thank the Manhattan Institute for holding this lunch and also for Everything Else theyve done. When i started writing the big city column for the New York Times, i found this was the one voice of sanity on urban policy. I have always given city journal and the Manhattan Institute the lions share of credit for turning around new york city. And i am so impressed with them, that i think theyre going to save us even from. [inaudible] [laughter] today i would like to suggest how to save the rest of the world. Missions as you may have guessed, that you all need to buy my book. The power of bad is about the fact of life thats just now becoming clear to sciences. The universal tendency of bad events and bad emotions to affect us more strongly. In short, bad is stronger than good. That was a titled a famous paper of my coauthor, since he published it, there have been hundreds of studies looking at the negativities impact on just about all parts of our life. In the book we wrote this book in order to show people how to deal with that and how does negativity bias in our brains affect our romantic relationships, parenting, religion, sports, business, you know mass media, social media, and just about Everything Else. We argue that the negativity effect underlies the most important problem in politics and Public Policy. Its a problem that has really bothered me since i got my first inkling of it and want to my first jobs in journalism when i was a summer intern at the philadelphia bulletin. Now his low man on the totem pole i got the dread assignment one friday night to write the weather story there is a heat wave in philadelphia that weekend, which is not exactly, an unprecedented phenomenon in july. But i had to find something new to say about it. So, there were a lot of philadelphians going to the beach so i called the Police Station down at the jersey sure and i begged for some news from the desk sergeant he said really nothing going on, we have heavy traffic, thats all. I said was the traffic and usually heavy . [laughter] and he goes zero no no, its always like this on fridays. In july. Now as i said, i was a young reporter very inexpensive that point. Some primal journalistic instinct told me that this was not the right answer. [laughter] so i started calling Police Stations up and down the jersey shore asking them is this the worst traffic youve ever seen . [laughter] and they kept till me know, its a friday night in july its always like this. So finally about a half dozen phone calls, i hit pater. The one desk sergeant said to me well, i guess it is the worst ive ever seen. [laughter] now for all i knew it was the guys first week on the job. [laughter] but that did not matter. I had my lead, and i had my headline. In the story got great play in the paper so i considered it really a great success. But i also felt guilty. I know how sleazy this was. I wondered why did i fabricate this beach traffic crisis, you know . Why did my editor reward me for . Why did people want to read this kind of story . So i kept wondering about these questions and the rest of my career. I kept being assigned to write about suppose and crises. The population crisis the Energy Crisis the kansas epidemic crisis the recycling crisis, whenever i looked into them, i just kept saying that these are basically grand diversions of my beach story. The reporters were trying some isolated problem and then they would go hunting for some alleged expert that would declare this the omen of a global catastrophe. You know, it didnt matter how often these doomsday airs have been wrong before. They kept getting quoted. I just kept wondering, why dont we, journalist, keep crying wolf . Why do people keep listening to us . So i never could get a satisfied answer and till i read Roy Baumeister paper, bad is stronger than good. After previous researchers had noticed and reported that you people cared more about financial losses than financial gains, the colleges had found that a bad First Impression has much more impact than a good First Impression. And so roy wondered, what gives vat its power in those situations. He looks for counterexamples for other situations were good was strong. And he scoured the research and just all kinds of disciplines, and to his surprise, he could not find any counterexamples. But come by accident almost he stumbled onto this major phenomenon that extended into so many fields, that nobody had noticed the overall pattern. Bad was relentlessly stronger than good. As brian said, word of criticism has so much more impact than praise. Penalties are much more effective in motivating people than prizes. A bad employee has much more impact than good employee. Bad parenting can seriously hurt children, but being a really super great parent doesnt make much difference. [laughter] thats good news. In the book we talk about being a good enough parent you dont have to be perfect. And the success of marriages, depends mainly on how spouses assign the good things to do it depends mainly on how spouses deal with negativity and that holds through another relationships. We pride ourselves on many good things we do for our family and friends and going the extra mile for our customers and for our clients but what really matters is that we do not do. Avoiding the bad is much more important than doing good. You dont get much extra credit all for going have promised that you pay a big price for falling short. John in the book we explain how to harness the power of bad when its useful and how to overcome it when it is not. We offer guidelines like the rule of four which is as rough guideline but is pretty useful and typically takes four good things to go overcome one bad thing. So if youre late for one meeting, you will make up for it but being early the next f time. If they won her full thing to your partner, you better plan on more than one complement. Negativity effect, as its power to warp our perspective and skew our decisions. It leads to it roy and i consider the most prevalent form of addiction which is in addiction to safety. This is why football coaches make the same stupid decision week after week. They are faced with forethought in short, the analyst tells them they should go for. But over and over they refuse to go for, they punch because they are so afraid of failure and so afraid of being blamed for failure. Now in the book we talk about one High School Coach in arkansas, who actually use it took a rational look at the numbers and he made a decision never to punt. Even if hes on his own 1 yard line, he goes for it. [laughter]. And his team wins a state championship. Year after year. Now he is still pretty much know where they may have noticed in the super bowl that the kansas city chiefs, how she did go for it in the fourth down and itel helped him win again. I feel confident. Now these coaches are following the basic strategies that we involved or invite for everyone. That use your rational brain to overcome the irrational power of that when you personal life and your part of it for personal life. And also how you look at the world. I any rational standards, we are the luckiest people in history. Every measure of Human Welfare has been dramatically improving except for one. Hope. We are lucky that we feel cursed. The healthier and wealthier we become gloomier art world view. An International World survey is the people who are in the poverty and hunger and p diseas, and violence has been plummeting most people in United States and europe things have gotten worse. We are blinded to the progress going on because of the negativity bias and because were just bombarded by bad news but what i call the crisis crisis. Never ending series of heightened threats that leave the public needlessly frightened and angry. And nearly half of americans, they worry that they or a family member, will die in a terrorist attack. You might say for rather than to climb into your bathtub. The children can walk to themselves by themselves for school or to playgrounds by them selves, because it stranger danger. The actual risk is lower than the risk of being struck by lightning. Apocalyptic predictions, have become so common. There was one survey of preteens, children in america who were asked what the world would be like when they grow up. Nearly one out of three of the children said they feared that the earth with no longer exist. This was before anyone had heard of greta. Now obviously, there are some real problems in thesl world. The coronavirus for instance is a new threat. But the city journal just pointed out the new rare piece that offered some perspective, it is just minuscule to the threats of the ordinary flu virus. Was really noble about this is hihow quickly we are respondingo it. It used to take decades to develop a vaccine. Now theyre talking about one in several months. But we dont see that part because our brains have a negativity bias. If you focus on this scarcity in the were scarce scenarios that we keep seeing in the news. That is a crisis crisis. It is promoted by journalists, by politicians. How help of activists and other special s interests. Theres a whole crisis industry. Merchants of bad is what i call them. And you find month of the left and right of the political spectrum. They start moral panics and the stoke fears about new technologies, foreign enemies and drunks and immigrants environmental threats, what ever will trigger the brains alarm circuits. Tribalism, the poison politics. I dont mean theyre all bad. Many of them are genuinely unharmed. Most of active o doomsayers actually believe their own prophecies. Chicken little was truly convinced the sky was falling. The issue is not her sincerity in her interpretation of the state court this falling on her head. And plans for dealing with it. She and theit other animals that felt sought shelter by going into the den of the fox to promptly made a meal of them. That is the lesson from their table that is also applies to the crisis crisis. There are a lot of hungry foxes out there and they know just what emmanuel meant when he said you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Over and over, the hype the threats read they do this throughout their own careers and tromote policies that help the special interests and largely in part of the Public Officials while causing general harm to the rest of us. The Energy Crisis of the 1970s, and the Nuclear Power fear led to the policies that caused a creation of was more coal power plants. The result now is that we have more carbon denied site in the air. Massive destruction fear now that we fought the chaos to lot of real dangers that is happening. Last summer, muchpublicized depths of people from aging, actually nothing to do with nicotine ecigarette like joule but journalists and activists caused such a panic and put up so much information that most of americans believe that ecigarettes are worse than smoking. In the result is that many of smokers have been dissuaded from making this to save lives. But what is most damaging, and i can give you more examples. Like the plastic panic. But what is really most damaging about the crisis crisis is not one thing. Is the accumulative impact. This continual crisis monitoring leads to the condition. The brilliant economist identified as the greatest obstacle of freedom and prosperity in the democratic society. But it is is that clogging of the economic arteries by the gradual accumulation of favors and subsidies and regulations, the benefits of special Interest Groups have slowed down everything b else. And as olson said in the death by a thousand cuts. The developers used to be able to build homes from middle class and poor. Today they can afford because the many different regulations and obstacles built up over the years. In the biggest obstacles are the rent control rules which have originally passed at the end of role world war ii hasnt every measure in response to a housing. But after the war ended, after athe emergency ended, the regulations never wentnd away. Thats absolutely typical of what happens in the crisis crisis. The economist robert higgs, the documented this in hisst book called crisis, and he shows what really drives government growth as it expands during the crisis. And when the crisis is over, and never strengthens back to its former size. Now that is why i see the crisis crisis is really the greatest problem in Public Policy and politics. Although, i am not trying to exploit the negativity effect by telling you it is a friend new threats to human survival. And people have always been vulnerable to the crisis monitoring. It is especially intense. We just 824 seven under screens. The people have always been vulnerable. Long before cable news in the west, journalists described Public Discourse is a come at a crisis. He really diagnosed fundamental problems. The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populist alarmed and hence led to be safety by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins and most of them imaginary. And this is a tough fall. This will always be with g us. The negativity bias, wired into our brains and i certainly dont expect the my public journalists and the other merchants are going to put themselves out of the business voluntarily. But there are ways to deal with it. We propose that some policies that will reduce some of the financial prophets of dume. We think that the rise of social media is very promising alternatives contrary contrary to what youve heard. S social media is actually less negative the mass media. I think we canas use that to gon what i call and no bad diet. [laughter]. And however you get your news, we advise looking at the news today and keep three principles in mind if its a crisis crisis. Number one, the world will always seem to be t in crisis. Number two, the crisis is never as bad as it sounds. Number three the solution could easily make things worse. Now be happy to go into more detail and i just want to make sure that ils do not end on a negative note here myself. [laughter]. For all of the problems that we have, we really are optimistic in the long term. If we expect the world to keep it getting better. We dont thinktt the world, we want more people to see that the world will be here. The more we understand it the more we learn about it and the more capable we become of dealing with integrated nativity part. Bad will always be some of the good but we are confident that the good will ultimately prevail. As long as enough people buy this book. [laughter]. Hankey of. [applause]. Thank you john. We have time for plenty of questions and wondering why start right here. Just identify yourself before you speak up. Is it possible that the negativity bias has evolutiona evolutionary, in early man it was very important to be aware of all possible threats and so on for mere survival. W possible basis. John theres a very good adaptive reason as white the negative to be biased involved. They survived because they paid more attention to threats. Life has to win every day. It definitely has to win. Its much more important to Pay Attention to the poisonous barriers than it is thehe good ones. And in the lookout for predators. Then this teacher mark. It motivates you more and it is useful in crisis the comparison that we make as we fatten up in lean times. But when youre surrounded all day by fattening foods and junk foods, thenni its not so adaptive. Thats the situation were in today. To be a very good ways to scare us all of the time and how to manipulate all of us. But there are still in great uses are bad. One thing that we talk about in the book is that younger people are much more sensitive if to monegative bias printed is more important to learn when youre younger. And as people get older, they use the sort of natural defenses against that. We have it chapter called the pollyanna principal. Older people make better decisions because they dont focus on the bad and m they lean to savor good moments. They use techniques like nostalgia and basically to be more positive about life into to enjoy more. There a lot of things that people can do. Heather fantastic talk john thank you. Honey distinguish before the fact between a real crisis in the manufactured crisis because clearly in the last 200 years at the release there have been some very real crisis whether its the rise of any chrism or communist ideology fascism, the chinese cultural revolution, the time one might have thought that anybody is raising with that is exaggerating the threats and this would all go away. Possibly some of the things we are worried about today, whether it is divisive or identity politics, maybe there manufactured or maybe their civilization is changing. How do you tell printed john one is that in general when this some sort of crisis or health problem, and the important thins that we are running out of energy and the best thing to do is to try to look at the biggest picture you can. To live the longest term trend. So when you look at longterm trends for most of these human beings, and you follow them, theyve improved. And people in the 70s, the economist julian simon, who look to the longterm energy trend, everybody else e would say thate would run out of oil by the rear of 2000 and she looked at it said no, it will be cheaper. That it is today. So that is one way to try to evaluate problems like that. Other problems, and i would argue with things like the culture revolution and things like communism in general, karl marx talked about the crisis of capitalism. He basically created this crisis. And today we see it as income inequality is his crippling problem we have to deal with. And you actually look at the data about how much inequality there is now about how people feel about it. People inn general is saying tht mike is getting much better. We dont need to reengineer society in order to get this revolution to do it. I think revolutionaries are the one who loved to look at crises and say that we have completely reduce society to do that. I do think, and obviously the cultural revolution, politics can certainly stop progress. Its just stops when people when they discover the crisis of capitalism that we have to just throw it out. When we go to the back of the room there. Ellen as part of the negativity for the political ads, none are positive, and yet we still listen to it going back to the population, there was one thing that you made one of the worst miscalculations insi history. I understand youre still getting audiences to what he is saying. How does that happen. John in the book, we talk about these guys who predicted s famines in the 1980s that food shortages. By 2020, a billion people would be dead from Climate Change. So when during the nominations scientists advisor, peace and still a possibility. It is shocking when you look back, they were advocating that there was that the government and duty to limit family size. They talked about proposals like that when young women reach puberty that they should be implanted with a sterilizing capsule that could be removed only with official permission. Shocking that they would do that to get this also some of the things that affect this crisis in these dim stairs rarely pay penalties for the mistakes. He was completely wrong for his whole career. He advocates that deny of fundamental human right and we just look over it. There is this sort of codependency between generalists and dooms stairs. Theres kind of a professional courtesy. They were all wrong before but we need their alarmist predictions to make stories. So we tolerated. Kyle john, you mentioned that in the attempt for structure with journalists, is one reason they might be pushed towards reporting bad news. Might there be another incentive at the other end. By the be phlegmatic and maybe the personalities of the journalists working at the newspaper. My push them to seek out and celebrate. Is it psychological. John does it attract people like to write about that newsprint is think it is possible. I think it also directs people, i mean, most journalists who ive known tend to be liberal. I think liberal tend to want to expand the government have lots of problemsolving to do that you wanted say there is a crisis so he said you dont want to let it crisis go to waste pretty so i think there is that incentive. There just more negative in general. Im not sure about that. Invoice paper, they said that psychologists and suffered from an extreme negativity bias for the First Century of psychology that they have pro published twice asf many papers and twice as much space in textbooks to analyze peoples problems rather than looking at the ways people can become happier. They said it because psychologists are masochists. In the enjoy it. Their explanation was the reason psychologists did this was because that is it so much stronger than good. Ms. Much easier to measure bad events and much more visible. And so its easier to study them. I would think the reason journalists do it is we know it is the easiest way to get attention. This is especially true in the mass media. When trying to mee reach a audi, this universal emotion. We all share the same kind of basic fears of dying, sickness, and violence. So its easy to appeal to that. The reason that i am more hopeful about social media is that an attempt to george about this in the 90s. Book. Him in the he said internet will be so trivial and terrible. He was saying that people, the mass paste tends to be negative the peoples taste for excellence in the things that really are in for a cultural achievement in history and science, those kind of interesting to be more ems. Interest. So you cannot to appeal to them the mass audience. You know on facebook, you get these groups on youtube you have all these Different Things that can appeal to peoples positive interest. Their desire to share knowledge. The other thing that is interesting is that social media has such a bad rap for the victory news there for that trip twitchell wars. It has long been something on. Social media care positive stories much more than they read negative stories of mass media. They dont really send their friends photographs of school grandmasters. They tend to sharere positive stuff there been interesting studies about who is following on twitter. That tweeting positively get you more followers in actually positive tweets, and get retweeted as quickly as the negative ones. But they tended to spread more widely. Something that sense, there is hope. As we have less mass media and more social media, that there could be less negativity. Stanley new York Hedge Fund roundtable. Your talk was so good, people should buy it. They got the whole story. John . I left most of the good part out. Stanley the real crisis early on, the Investment Group called contrarians. Everyone is selling tobacco stocks. And they do pretty well. I wonder how we use your analysis to find out when there is psychology affect and everyone is overreacting and to defend that and its very valuable. John looking at longterm trends, theres tremendous Route Research whether looking at Financial Markets are pretty a couple of measures that are particular to australia. A couple of economic indicators. How the stock market reacted. And if in the negativity effect the basically when there is bad news in the indicators that went down. And when there was good as they went up. People still overreact to bad news and therefore theres that gut feeling, they got fear of doing it. So that is one example of how you can use it. In the other thing is the effect of the economist study about people hate to take losses so much so they hold onto a stock way too long. Really take someone else to come into site just take the pain the loss. People hate to admit that. That is another obvious. Jordan my daughter says to me, you keep saying all of these crisis went nowhere but Climate Change is different. You have so many serious people really worried about this one. This one is different. John i believe that it is different from things like the Energy Crisis. And that the Energy Crisis is something the markets can solve. At the price of oil goes up, people look for newop sources pretty Climate Change is common spot. It is collective action. Its a genuine a threat. I think wehr should be doing moe research on it and looking for ways to get more low Carbon Energy but i also think its a great example of the crisis crisis because theres just been ridiculously high prices with a billion people will be by 2020. And here we have ten more years now. It is a genuine threat think and i am confident in the long run we will come with new though Carbon Energy sources and we will adapt to what we have to in the list, and we put into the atmosphere, the better but the other aspect of it is, that the people who are promoting this process and the policies that they are promoting are awful. Theyre basically enriching, sustainable energy, companies are not doing any good. The United States is what is drawn, they love to have conferences and sign treaties. He creates a lot of work for them. They dont see anything or any pay impact these treaties. In the United States is actually reducing these Carbon Emissions for the journey is. In germany has all the subsidies forbu green energy but theyre actually behind schedule and meeting the treaties. In the u. S. Is ahead in the reason is is because we have not some come to the panic of banning are starting to close Nuclear Power plants which germany is done and also the main reason that we are reducing emissions unlike some of these other green countries is that we have tracking. In work switching the call plans to naturali gas. I think we led the world last year in reducing Carbon Emissions. They never get through runabout because it does not fit the narrative of green. So we have to have mark went. Windmills are fine to build their not going tooi make any difference in the long run. We need to get new largescale sources of low Carbon Energy and most of these, these policies are being promoted are just not going to do that. The only two practical ways or Nuclear Power and substituting natural gasar recall. Much of the environment meant estep establishments opposes both of them including the Democratic Candidates which isab insane. Climate change is basically an excuse for them to adopt other policies to award politically correct companies basically push an agenda that is not helping the rest of us. In light of that response, when that the plastic bag issue. It isla fascinating. They are banning plastic. Oh goodness we are all safe now. [applause]. It goes back to the 70s when people like Barry Commoner who wanted to ban all of these seprep Plastic Products because pthey were running out of petroleum and therefore we had to conserve our Precious Petroleum and we cannot waste in a plastic and then when that panic eased, there were new reasons, we were clogging drains doing this. And in the Climate Change came along. Now play the same is that there this plastic in the ocean. It is true there is growing Plastic Waste in the ocean and is a serious problem. Its not because of our ythrowaway society. In fact, when you recycle plastic, you increase the chances that you are putting that plastic in the ocean because there contrary to what people think of theres no market for recycled plastic. An awful lot of it thankfully just gets in to our plan failed. Some of that, is went in china, and then now to malaysia vietnam. These countries do a terrible job managing their waste. They have the largest source of mismanaged waste and it goes into the ocean. Select the great pacific, more thanan half of it comes from fishing boats. We should do a better job of stopping the fishing was from littering. Almost all the rest comes from asia and south america and africa. It is not coming from the United States. And the other aspect that is crazy about the plastic fan is that you failed to pass a quick survey Carbon Emissions and all the substitutes, paperbased the domain, they ultimately involve more Carbon Emissions. Take so much more energy to transport them and to ship them. I know calculation since San Francisco band the plastic bags, they may have doubled their greenhouse emissions as a resulr of that. And i talk about, one original contribution on this, people written some of this before is that i think that the explanation for this if you have to go back to the laws in the middle ages when in the nobles past all of these laws that who can wear one and use what. The mystery it among the historians is why they keep tssing these laws that never did any good. The answer was that he gave these people a great feeling of power, made them feel virtuous and kept the commoners in their place. Ep and i think thats really the ultimate think of this plastic is that theres sort of this modern ability, and they like telling other people what to do with it. And in the process, the making life a lot more inconvenient for everyone and also hurting the environment. I see your point and that is very powerful is there a stronger force we have a very strong urge to survive. And really make sure that we got in most cases. Theres a lot of optimism there. Right. White life is worth living. Therefore maybe we over emphasize the danger of it. But its for a very good positive reason actually. To be optimistic. John the pollyanna pencil. There is a lot more words for negative things like pain there are for t pleasure. We use the positive words more often. I think wee use this because it boosts our spirit. And we also have the optimism bias. When we look at the outside world, we overestimate dangers we focus on the hostile face rather than a smiling face. We pay more to do criticism and praise. We also have the opposite bias when we look inward. People really overestimate their own virtues. Theirs is hilarious study they terminated peoplehi serving time in the penitentiary for assorted crimes and asked them to rate themselves on various things. On their moral standards in their selfcontrol no consideration for others. And they rated themselves above average. All of these convicted criminals. On everything will change except one. That was the trait of being lawabiding. They upgraded themselves onlyy average. [laughter]. So we have that. And it enables us to go forward. I know the most businesses fail but my will work. We overestimate the dangers out there. The war o in iraq we also talk about world war i as an example. You overestimated the threat from russia. But at the same time we overestimate in our own ability to install a democratic government so you get this combination of typing the threat and overestimating the capacity to deal with it. Addiction to crisis mentality, does this explain the halftime super bowl show and by that i mean, while i naively expected the celebration of american is freedom, maybe a thank you to the military, instead what we witnessed was really a semi pornographic show of misogyny nation and i didnt even know what the connection was to the super bowl. And again helped to think but cheerful theory about the negativity and the decline in despair is really what we are witnessing on the cultural level you want to comment on that. John there is a tendency, culturally today to be down in western civilization and to celebrate deviancy in that sense. Then, with the shots at the super bowl, thats another basic mass appeal like. People will respond to that. Thank you very much john pretty thank you all for coming. [applause]. The book the power of bad is available outside. You will enjoy it. Thank you. Weeknights this week was available every weekend on cspan2 and tonight, book on the middle east, first Michael Rubin and brian talk about the instability in the middle east. And where u. S. Actions against iran may lead. Then him, talks about the decades long rivalry between iran and saudi arabia. After that, cory retired Career Foreign Service officer who served in the middle east 25 years talks about u. S. Policy in the region and the recent confrontation between the u. S. And iran. What tv this weekend every weekend on cspan2. Our mission continues, to provide an unfiltered view of government. Already this year we brought you primary election coverage. President ial impeachment process, and help the federal response to the coronavirus. You can watch all of cspans Public Affairs programs on television, online, artisan on our free radio app. And be part of the National Conversation cspans daily Washington Journal Program or through our social media team, cspan created by private industry. Americans People Television company is a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Good evening. I am andrew, the