If i could have everyones attention, we would like to get started. My name is 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 and coauthor with the esteemed psychologist roy in the fascinating and useful new book, the power bed. The negativity affects rules as in how we can roll it and it is unsettled by the way outside the room here. John has long been one of the nations leading voices on then intersection of science and Public Policy and make no mistake however calmly reasonably expressed, is a very contrarian voice. It was johns new york time the big city which ran from the mid 90s until 2002 i think, the first may be event of his work. There he took on any number of prevailing myths about cities from the efficacy of rent control, to the roof root causes to homelessness to environmental policy and one remarkable was born from johns irritation and Rosie Odonnells relentless public criticism. Brian this was a mayor Rudy Giuliani sees Law Enforcement to get the homeless off of new york city sidewalks back in the 90s. So how was it that his hometown come the wealthy new york city doing the similar problem john wondered so he let his beard grow for a few days and he did not shower and then dressed himself up in dirty clothes and a torn parka and headed out to my a he plunked himself down and felt himself down rightms in frt of odonnells pension. And within minutes of course the Security Guard was aggressively confronting him and asking him to move along directly threatening him. As in the cops had arrived anyone of being taken down to the station. The point proved about a certain kind of hypocrisy of what we say this is virtue signaling and another distant factor that i wrote for the times, nsa, recycling is garbage. This title captures the provocative argument, and the record in the most hate mail ever generated by New York Times article. [applause]. Johns journalism appears not just in the times but in the wall street journal the clinic new york esquire Washington Post and many other leading publications as adjoining civic journal john has continued to eliminate in the range writing about among other things the country productivity of anti bathing, Public Health measures how drugs developed and why the left is actually waging the real war on science and in our latest issue, almost guaranteed to drive everybody insane is my plastic bags are in fact better for the environment than all of the alternatives. [applause]. With this piece, like his other work, again shows his talent exploding widely accepted views as healthy. The broadcasting city journal video based on johns science, it has instantly had more than 2 million views since we released it. His new book, the power of bad and is 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 at airports which is really a sign that youve got itt made. This will be true soon the power of bad. The previous book explored the psychological aspects of new will. Nineveh, it is useful, studies with psychologist called negativity biased. The human propensity to focus disproportionately on unpleasant events and emotions and bad news. Its the reason that one word of criticism can see more powerful within the paragraph as john and roy argue in this book, this irrational side to human nature has its uses. We can also be crippling and lead to actions in life and in Public Policy. The good news is that can be mastered and the power of bad shows how plaintiff i give you john tierney. [applause]. John thank you very much. Thanks brian for this kind words read it is been so great working with you as an editor. I want to thank the manhattan organization for holdings lunch and Everything Else that is done. I started writing in the colon for the New York Times, i found that this was the one voice of sanity in the policy may always urgiving the Manhattan Institute the lion share of the credit for turning around new york city. I am so impressed withed them tt i think theyre going to save us even from the current mayor. [laughter]. So today i would like to suggest how to save the rest of the world and as you may have guessed, it involves buying my book. And it said that a fundamental fact of life that is just now becoming clear to scientists is that universal tendency of that eventrs and emotions to the efft that is more strongly than good ones. And in short, that is stronger than good. That was the title of a favorite paper from a social psychologist. And since he publishes, there have been hundreds of studies looking at the negativity of impacts about all parts of my life. And in the book, we wrote this book in order to show people, how do you deal with this. And how this negativity bias in our brains as such, a romantic relationships parenting, education religion, sports, business and 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. It is a problem that is really bothering me since i got my first inkling of it. One of my first jobs in journalism. I was an intern at the philadelphia bulletin. I is the low man on the totem pole, i get the dreaded assignment of one friday night to write the weather story. It was a heat wave in philadelphia that weekend and is not exactly an unprecedented dhenomenon in july but i had to find something new to say about it. There are a lot of philadelphians going to the beach so i called the Police Station down the jersey shore and i said i would like to have some news from the desk sergeant. And he said theres nothing really going on, heavy traffic that is all. In a civil is the traffic unusually heavy. [laughter]. Any as well, no no. Its always like this on fridays in july. And i was just a young new journalism student. Some primal instinct in me told me that this is not the right answer parties. [laughter]. Soy started calling police and stations on the jersey shore, asking them is this the worst traffic you have ever seen. [laughter]. They kept telling me know, it is a friday night in july and its always like this. But finally about after a half n dozen phone calls, i hit one, the one desk sergeant said to me, well yeah, i guess its the worst ive ever seen. [laughter]. For all i knew, is the guys first weekend in the job but that did not matter. I had my need and i had my in line. In the store got great plate in the paper so i considered it a great success. Clinical. Guilty. I knew how sleazy this was. Why did i fabric is and why did my editors reward me for it. If why do people want to read these kind of stories treated sick of wondering about these tquestions in a rhythmic risk ad i kept being assigned to write about supposed crises per the population crisis, energy prices, cancer epidemic prices, the recycling crisis, and whatever i looked into them, and just kept saying that these were basically grandeur versions of my beach traffic story. The reports would find some isolated problem and then will goom hunting for some alleged expert we declare this to be a global catastrophe. It did not matter how often these doomsayers have been wrong before, they kept getting footage and just kept wondering, when we journalists keep crying wolf and what if people keep listening to us. Soy never really get a satisfying answer until i read this paper. That is stronger than good. And he wrote this after previous researchers and notice and had reported the people cared more about financial losses in about financial games. The colleges have found that a bad First Impression is muchsi more impact than good First Impression. Sorry boy wonder what gives band is power in the situations and look for examples, further situations look good was stronger. And he scoured the research and all kinds of discipline pretty and two is to price, he cannot find any examples. It stumbled onto this major phenomenon that extended into so many fields and ugly and noticed they were all pattern pretty bad was relentlessly stronger than good. As brian said, a word of as such much more impact and praise. Penalties are much more effective in promoting people in prizes. Bad employee is much more impact than is good employee. Bad parenting can seriously hurt children to being really super great parent doesnt make much difference. [laughter]. Is the good news. Bo just be a good enough you dont have to be perfect. The success of marriages, depends mainly on how spouses, not on the things to do, and depends on how the spouses relates to the negativity. We pride ourselves on how many good things we do for a family and friends and going to be a mile for our customers and our clients. But what really matters is what we dont do. Avoiding that is much more important than good. D. We dont just get much for going beyond what you promise you but you pay a big price for what you do if you fall too short. How to harness the power bad when shes full and how to overcome it when its operated and here is a rule of four. It typically takes for good things to overcome one bad thing. Severely for one meaning, you know what to make up for it by being really nice time. If you say one bad thing to your partner, a better plan a lot more than one complement to make up for it. Theres an upside to there negativity effect which is this power to motivate and teach. You can see this clearly at schools in new york and other cities in venice fired by oregon educational perform the really started at the Manhattan Institute. In a day, advocated on alternative to everybody getss a trophy philosophy of the educational establishment, the kind that was causing schools and high schools and colleges in grade school to inflict grades lland to eliminate penalties for failure. The reformers of the start of the movement called no excuses. This is where both the student and the teachers pay price for work. The results have just been astonishing. The Charter Schools like success academy. The students come from the poorest neighborhoods in new york city and they outscore every School District in the state. And its really proof, various reasons but one of the main ones is that they are harnessing the negativity effect. Theyre using prizes instead of her penalties instead of prizes to motivate kids. Kids are learning faster and more. Now the downside of the negativity effect is its power to warp our perspective and skewer our decisions. Relates to what what i consider one of the most prevalent forms of addictions which is the addiction to safety. This is why football coaches make the same stupid decision week after week. When theyre faced with fourthdown and short, the analyst tell that they should go for it. But over and over, they refuse to go for it, because they are so afraid of failure and so braid of being blamed for failure. In the book we talk about one High School Coach in arkansas functional use, he took a rational look at the numbers and he made a a decision to never punch. Even if he is on his own 1 yard line and is fourth in the 30, he goes for it. [laughter]. And his team wins the state championship year after year. Hes pretty much an outlier but you may have noticed in the super bowl, the Kansas City Chiefs coach to go for it on the fourthdown and help to win the game. I feel confident they must have read her book. [laughter]. These coaches are following the basic strategies that we advise for everyone. Use your rational brain to overcome the irrational power of bad and you personalize your anprofessional life and also in how you look at the world. By any rational standard we are the luckiest people history. Every measure of Human Welfare has been dramatically improving except for one. Hope. We are lucky but we feel cursed. The healthier and wealthier we become, the gloomier our world use. International surveys, as people in the richest convert country fo send the most pessimistic. Poverty and hunger and disease, and violence have been plummeting for most people in the United States and in europe, think they have gotten worse. We are blinded to the progress going on because of the negativity bias because we are bombarded by bad news. By what i call the crisis crisis. It is never ending of series nereats telling the public needlessly frightened and i agree. Nearly half of americans worry that they are a Family Member will die in a terrorist attack in the actual odds are actually are worse than falling the method. Children cant walk to them School Progress by themselves because her parents have been so frightened about stories about stranger danger that the actualo risk is the lower than the risk of being struck by lightning. Apocalyptic predictions have become so common, there was one survey of preteen children in american harassment the world would be like when they grow up in what europe would be like nearly one out of three of the children centered that the earth would no longer exist. This was before anybody had heard of rittenberg. Now obviously, there are some real problems in the world. The coronavirus is a new threat the city journal pointed out in a rare piece that offered somes perspective the threat to americans isiv dismissible to te threat to the ordinary flu virus. It is really novel about viruses how quickly when responding to it. You should take decades to develop a vaccine. No talking about one in several months. We dont see the progress because of our negativity bias. We focus on the scare stories and on the worstcase scenarios and we keep sayingst in the new. And that is the crisis crisis. And it is promoted by journalists and by politicians and Health Academics and activists and other special interests. Theres a whole crisis industry. The merchants of bad as i call them and you find them on both left and right sides of the border of the spectrum. They start moral panics, the smoke hears about new technologies, foreign enemies, drugs, immigrants, environmental threats, whatever will instantly trigger the brains alarm circuit spring and promote class warfare and tribalism in the employee in politics in the elect demographics. Not call them that but i dont mean theyre all in it for the money. Many of them are genuinely unarmed. The most effective dume dave theres another one to actually believe their own prophecies pretty chicken little was truly convinced the sky was falling. It wasnt her sincerity but her interpretation of the state court has fallen on her head and her plans for dealing with it. And she and the other animals sought shelters for the sky crisis by going into the den of the fox who probably made a meal of them. And that is the cautionary lesson. And it applies to the crisis crisis. There are a lot of crisis that there. They know just what emmanuel meant when they said that you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And over and over, in order from a their own careers some of the from of the policy that helps special interests and the power of Public Officials while causing harm to the rest of us. A few examples of the Energy Crisis of the 1970s, then the fear about Nuclear Power that the Construction Forces the policies that could cost creation of much more coal power plants now weor have more Carbon Dioxide in the air. In iraq we are so afraid of imagine sir imaginary danger the pretty much a self prophecy of the spray devices. And the people of thinking, had absolutely nothing to do with nicotine secretly fueled by journalists negatives code caused such a panic and had so much badup information of most americans have come to believe that ecigarettes are worse than smoking. And the result is that millions of smokers have been dissuaded from making a decision that could save their lives. What is most damaging and i could go on giving examples like the plastic panic the money talked aboubriantalked about. Is this continual crisis mono drink at least two conditioning called demo store losses. He identified as the greatest obstacle to freedom and prosperity in democratic societies. It is the clogging of the economic arteries by the gradual accumulation of favors and subsidies and regulations and the benefits of special Interest Groups can slow down Everything Else. It is also said, his death by a thousand cuts. Here in new york city for instance, developers used to be able to build homes for the middle class and the poor but today i can afford to build only for the affluent just because so many different regulations and obstacles have built up over the years. The biggest ones are the rent control rules which are originally passed at the end of world war ii as a temporary measure in response to a housing emergency. But after the war ended, after the emergency ended, the regulations never went away and that is absolutely typical of what happens in the crisis chris parsons. An economist documented this in a book. What really drives government growth is an expense during a crisis and when the crisis is over, never shrinks back. Thats why see this is the greatest problem in politics. In Public Policy. Im not trying to exploit this by saying it is a brandnew threat to human survival. People have always been vulnerable to the crisis vulnerability. Within 24 7 on her screens. People have always been vulnerable. In 1918 long before the cable is in the west, lincoln described Public Discourse as a combat of crazies. Johe really truly diagnose a fundamental problem in politics. The whole aim of practical politics he said, is to keep the populace alarmed and clamorous to be led to safety by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. Now this is a tough problem that will always be with us. The negativity bias is wired into our brains and i certainly dont expect them might journalists and the other merchants are going to put themselves out of business voluntarily. There are ways to deal with it. We propose some policies that we will reduce some of the financial prophets of dume. We think that the rise of social media offers promising alternatives to contrary to what youve heard. Social media is actually less negative than social media. It is a way we can call a low bad diets. However you get your news, we advise looking at the news today, we keep three principles in mind that the crisis crisis. Number one, the world but always seem to be in crisis. Number two, crisis is never as bad as it sounds and number three, the solution could easily make things worse. I would be happy to go to more detail in q ae and i just want o make sure that i do not end on a negative note here myself. [laughter]. For all of the problems that the document on the negativity effect, we really are optimistic in the long term we expect the world to keep Getting Better and we dont think that the world or the earth is going to is just when kids grow up and we want more people to see that. They negativity effect is not going away for the i more we understand it, the more we learn about it and the more capable we become of dealing with it, bad it will always be stronger than good but we are confident that the good will ultimately prevail. As long as enough people buy this book. Th thank you. [laughter]. [applause]. Host you john, we have time for plenty of questions. When i start right here. Guest steves sabbath, retried. Is it possible that they negativity bias has origins such as an early man, its very important to be aware of all possible threats for certain bible. Could that be possible basis. Youre absolutely right. The ancestors who survived paid more attention to threats because of we say in the book, i passed win every day. Since much more important to Pay Attention to poisonous berries than it is to really enjoy the good ones and in the lookout for predators. And it still serves the purpose. Bad it doesnt teach you more, it motivates you more and is useful and lots of places. But the comparison we make is that it was adapted among the ancestral savannah to fatten up during lean times in order to survive but when youre surrounded build a bike fattening foods and foods, that is not so adaptive. John thats the problem today is were surrounded by these things and its a way to scare us manipulate us. But in the great uses the bad, the one thing that we talked about the book is that younger people are much more sensitive to the negativity bias because it is more important when youre learning. As people get older, they use the sort of natural defenses against that. We have a chapter called pollyanna principle that older people make better decisions because they do not focus so much on the bed and they learn to savor good moments and they use techniques like nostalgia. And enjoy life more a lot of things that people can do. Speech of fantastic john, thank you. How do you distinguish given the fact between a real crisis in the manufactured crisis because clearly, there have been some very real crises the last 200 years with her it was the rise or communist ideology, fascism, chinese cultural revolution or you wouldve been thought if anybody was exaggerating a threat. So possibly some of the things that we are worried about today, whether it is poisonous identity politics are manufactured or maybe they are civilization changing. How do you tell. John two answers to them. One in general when theres some hesort of, environmental probles example, health problems, important thing is that we are running out of energy. This thing is to try and look at the biggest picture you can. To look at thehe long term tren. And when you look at long term trend is, you follow them, they have improved and when people says in the 70s, like the economist julian simon who looked at longterm energy trends, videos were saying, that we will run out of oil by this year 2000 and julian said no oil will be cheaper. So that is one way to try to evaluate problems like that. Some of those problems that you talk about, and i would argue with things like the culture revolution and communism in general, karl marx talked with the crisis of capitalism and basically invented this crisis that income inequality and is this crippling problem we haveit to deal with. Initially the data about how much inequality there is that how people feel about it,ut you can see the average person under capitalism around the world is Getting Better. We dont need to reengineer society. We dont need these revolutions to do it. Revolutionaries are the ones who like to look at the crises and say we have to completely redo society to do that. I think politics, obviously with the culture revolution, politics can certainly stopke progress. We had a great enrichment the last two centuries. But it just stopped once they discovered the crisis of capitalism. So then we have to just throw it out. Guest as part us the negativity, all negatives, none are positive, and yet we still listen to it are going back to the population, it was one thing that is made the worst miscalculation in history, may still getting audiences. John the famines did not happen, they were predicted in the 80s that by 2020 today, billion people would be dead from Climate Change and during the nomination hearings, the advisor, he said it was still a possibility. Just shocking when you look back at what he was proposing then. They were advocating and saying the government has the right and duty and they talked about proposals like when young women y,reached puberty they should be implanted with a sterilizing capsule thath can be removed ony with official permission. Thats also one of the things about the crisis prices in these doomsday years, the rarely pay penalties for the mistakes. He was completely wrong about one issue after another throughout his career and he denied the fundamental human right. Theres a sort of coat dispensing between journalists and doomsayers theres kind of a affectional courtesy that we have extended. Another all wrong before but wey need their alarmist predictions to make stories. So we tolerate it. Guest kyle smith. John, you mentioned the incentive structure for journalists is one reason we mighty get pushed towards reporting bad news. Might there be another incentive at the other end. Let it be flag manic and pessimistic personalities of the journalists working on the newspaper read my push them to seek out and celebrate badness. John doesnt attract people to write about badness pretty well it also directs people, i mean, most journalists i know, i tend to be liberal. You tend to want to expand government and solve lots of problems. To do that, you want to say that there is a crisis so that is a manual said, you dont let a crisis go to waste. So his far as whether journalists are just more negative in general, im not sure about that. Invoice paper, they noted that psychologists had suffered from an extreme negativity bias in the First Century of psychology. That they publish twice as many papers and twice as much space and textbooks to analyze peoples problems other than looking in ways that people could become happier. They said is just because psychologists are sadists and they enjoy having problems. Theirro explanation was in the recent by the psychologist did this is because that is the much stronger than good. As much easier to measure bad events. So its easier to study them. And i would think the main reason that journalists do it is ultimately it is the easiest way to get attention. In this especially to the mass media. When youre trying to meet reach a mass audience, the easiest way to do that is just universal emotion. We all share the same kind of basic fears of dying, sickness, and violence. So it is easy to deal with that. And the reason i am more hopeful that i social media and i talked george about this in the 90s. He was really optimistic while everyone else will say no the new internet will be terrible. He was saying that people, the mass pace sims to be negative because everyone shares those but peoples taste for excellence in the things that are really in part cultural achievements in history and science, those kinds of interests can be appealed to. On facebook, you get into groups and on you to get all of these Different Things that can appeal to peoples positive interest in that desire to share knowledge. So you think theres some hope there. And the other thing that is interesting that social media gets such a bad rap for the victory is all there for the twitter wars. In the distant one w but it is t the norm. People in social media share more positive stories than they read negative stories and must media. They dont really its indifference photographs of School Ground massacres. And intend to sharesa positive stuff and the interesting studies have who gets follow us on twitter. Tweeting positively gives you more twit followers. There not as quickly but they tend to spread more widely. So i think in that sense, theres hope is we have less many mass media and more social media, there could be less negativity. Guest stanley, new york roundtable. The talk is so good the people of thinking about buying the book, they should. They need the whole story. I want you to pick up on heather miguels question about identifying early on the real crisis. In the world of investment, there is a clip group called longterm aryansiwonder how we f an analysis when there is a psychology effect and if everyone is overreacting and uses that, that is very valuable. John is an interesting question. Looking at longterm trends instead of feelings. There is research in australia where there are a couple of measures that are released their particular to us. A couple of indicators. Think about twice a month and some of them studied how the stock market reacted. They found the negativity effect. Basically when there is bad news is indicators, stocks are down and when the good news, they didnt always love the people still probably overreact to menus so therefore there is a gut feeling or about fear of doing this. So that is one example of how you could use in the other thing is the effect that the economist have studied about people hate to take losses so much so they hold on to talk way too long and take someone else to committed to say just take the pain. Take a loss. People hate to admit that. Guest my daughter says to me, he keeps saying all of these crisis went nowhere but Climate Change is different. Yes so many serious people really worried about this one. This one is different. John i agree that Climate Change is different than the Energy Crisis. The Energy Crisis is something to the markets will solve the price of oil goes up, people apart news sources. Climate change is a common problem for collective action problem. And it is a general one right. I think we should be doing more research on it and looking for ways to get more Carbon Energy. Low Carbon Energy. He is a great example of crisis crisis. Like the prediction that a billion people will be dead by 2020. Theyre the ones we have ten more years now before the earth is going to, you know well it is a genuine threat and im confident that in the long run, we will come up with new though Carbon Energy sources and we will adapt to what we have to and the less carbon we put into the atmosphere, the better but the other aspect of it is that the fox who are promoting this crisis, the policies there are promoting are awful. Theyre basically enriching the Energy Companies are not doing any good. The United States has withdrawn from they love to have conferences and sign treaties. It creates a lot of work for them. We dont see any impact of these treaties. The United States is actually reducing Carbon Emissions more than germanyllss is printed bece germany signed the treaty, they have all of the for green energy for their actually behind schedule and meeting the trees in the u. S. Is ahead. That reason is because we have not succumbed to the panic banning or starting to close Nuclear Power plants which germany is that is the main reason that while reproducing the emissions, unlike some of the socalled green countries is that weik have tracking and were switching the school plans to natural gas. I think make blood world last year and reducing Carbon Emissions. An analogous written about because it does not fit the narrative agreement. So we have to have more windmills. Windmills are fine to build but theyre not going to make any difference in the long run. We need to get new largescale sources of low energy and most of these, through policies that are being done are not going to do it. The only two practical ways to reduce his Nuclear Powered substituting natural gas people and much of the environmental establishment poses to both of them including the democraticca candidates which is insane. Just basically, the not doing anything. Chronic changes is basically an excuse for them to adopt other policies that they like to award the political correct companies and basically push an agenda that is not something the rest of us. C1 in light of that response, say a little bit more about the band of plastic bags. John goes back to the 70s, people the married commoner Barry Commoner and wanted to ban all these Plastic Products because the only it were running out of petroleum and therefore we had to conserve the Precious Petroleum cannot waste it on panic. And then there were new reasons that it was funny agreed to doing this and then, when Climate Change came along now the latest thing is been this plastic because of the plastic in the action. It is true, there is going Plastic Waste in the ocean is a serious problem but it is not because our throwaway society. In fact, new when you recycle plastic, you increase the chances that you are putting that plastic into the ocean because contrary to what people think theres absolutely no market for recycled plastic. An awful lot of it thankfully gets sent off to a landfill but some of it, they have been shipping it to asia and goes, went to china now to march in malaysia vietnam. These countries do a terrible job of managing their waste. They are the largest source of mismanaged voice that gets into the ocean. Like in the Great Pacific arbitrage, more than half of it comes fromme fishing boats. We should do a better job of stopping fishing boats from littering. Almost all the rest comes from asia and south america and africa. It is not coming from the United States and europe. The other aspect that is crazy, is when you ban prep Plastic Grocery bags were increasing Carbon Emissions. All of the substitutes, paper bags, the tote bags, they ultimately involve more Carbon Emissions. Theyre heavier, it takes more energy to transport them printed i know calculations, and San Francisco band Plastic Grocery bags, it mayag have doubled his greenhouse emissions. As a result of that. And it is just, and i talk about the one original contribution on this, i think the explanation for this if you have to go back to the laws in the middle ages ofn the nobles pass all these laws about who could wear white men who could use much. These loss werent fully effective. In the mystery among the historians as one of the key passing and never did any good. And he is or was it these people a great feeling of power and made the felt virtuous and then you could put the cobblers in the place. That is really the ultimate thing of this plasticen is that they are sort of this modern ability, the plastic packing and like to tell other people what to do with it. In the process, they are making life much more inconvenienthe fr everyone and there also purging the environments. Host we have time maybe for one or two more questions. Guest i fully bite your point the band is really powerful. But isnt there another force, we have a very strong urge to survive. And we want to make sure that we dont diet in most cases. If there really optimism there. Life ishi good, it is worth living. And therefore maybe sometimes we over emphasize the dangers of bit but it is for a very good reason actually. John that is a great point. There are some common tendencies pretty man the pollyanna principal. Though a lot more words for negative things like pain and t there are for pleasure. We use the positive words more often. I think we do that to boost our spirit. Also, this phenomenon called the optimism bias. In the way it works is when we look at the outside world, negativity set of rules, we overestimate things away walk into a room and we focus on the astile face rather than the . If we pay more attention to criticism the price. But we also have this opposite bias when we look inward. People really overestimate their own virtues. Theres this hilarious study with a survey people serving time in the penitentiary for assorted crimes and asked them to rate themselves on various things. On their moral standards and on their selfcontrol and their consideration for others they rated themselves above average in all of these convicted criminals, they rated themselves above average on every single train except one and that was the trait of being lawabiding. And on that they rated themselves only average. [laughter]. So we have that and that is that optimism bias that enables us to go forward att the people have the feeling that i know that most businesses fail who mine is going to work. That really does enable us to go forward. It we overestimate the dangers out there. The war in iraq and also we talk about world war one. They cited royce paper that the germans overestimated the threats. And we overestimated the threats from saddam that weat overestimated our own ability to reinstall a democratic government. Second this combination of hyping the threats and overestimating your own capacity to deal with it. So then it makes for a disaster. Host last question. Guest i cant help but to wonder if the addiction to a crisis mentality explains the halftime super bowl show. And by then the mean while i am naively expected to celebration of america and its freedom, maybe i think you to the military athletic, instead what we witness is really a semi pornographic to show up to the broth in his hajj a nation what the connection was to the super bowl and ico cant help to think that maybe your whole theory about the negativity and crime and despair is really what we are witnessing on a cultural level. John there certainly is a tendency for the cultural today to beat down the sort of deviancy. And the super bowl, that is another case of mass appeal, six pretty it is like negativity. People will respond to that. Things of it. Host thank you very much john tierney. Thank you all for coming. The book, the power of bad, and is outside and you will enjoy it. Ksthank you. [background sounds]. Here are some of the current bestselling nonfiction books according to publishers weekly, tapping the list is activist glenn memoir untamed. Then came the splendid in the vile, historian eric larson was a british Prime MinisterWinston Churchills leadership during the london blitz. After that is entertainer Jessica Simpsons memoir, open book followed by a be seen as chief Legal Correspondent dan abrams recounted john adams representation of the british soldiers involved in the boston massacre. And rubbing of our look at some of the bestselling nonfiction books according to publishers weekly, is talking to strangers. New yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell examination of how we misread strangers words and actions. Some of these authors have appeared a book tv and you can watch them online at booktv. Org. [background sounds]. Host good evening thank you for bearing the rain and the coronavirus. We really appreciate it. For those of you who have not yet met. My name is melissa. Before we get started in honor of our men and women in uniform, i could ask for you to please stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of america, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god indivisible and