Postponed new in depth programs. We are showing highlights from past programs. First from november of 2018, author imani perry, author of several books including a history of the black National Anthem and breeze which is written as a letter to her son. Heres a portion of that program. People here when you see i wonder if people are irredeemable they hear all white people and they hear white people as individuals as opposed to whiteness as an identity so that when i go into the second paragraph, what if we took this identity apart, those people would not have a different history or body, but it would be a different relationship to identity that i think would potentially have as a consequence a more humane relationship to each other. When i went into later in the first paragraph saying a person, an individual can be a heaven, certainly both as someone who was raised by a white man or as someone who thinks of so many figures like, take for example john brown or bob zellner, some of the most precious people in the world it is important to me to not have a formulation that removes them from my sense of the struggle that im engaged in. That is what i was thinking. One more question before i move on to other books, mothering black boys in america is a special call. A sentence my mother said to me and i think about it in a number of different ways. One is, a are all the risks, people talk incessantly, in some ways that are difficult and maybe not necessarily helpful about the challenges that black boys face in this world whether it is mass incarceration are inequality and schooling or High School Graduation rates of College Attendance rates for employment of those things. I think about it differently. I think about it, the simultaneity of wanting to raise my children who are identified as black boys that in a way that doesnt limit their imagination or sense of possibility, that allows them to understand the facts of racial inequality, keeps them from thinking they are superior to people because they are relatively privileged, not just black people but other people generally and also that keeps them away from seeking patriarchy or dominance in this society that values those things highly so that even though those things are more elusive for black men to obtain, for society that values that, part of the task is raising them to not values that but to value their character and sensitivity and complexity, other people around them a respectable of what walk of life they come from so that is a special calling because the lessons of what it means to be a man are across the board, often times entailed in things that are not so good and the essence of what black is is often times not so good unless you counter both of those things with a story that i think is more accurate but also more loving and gives a much better capacity to be fully human. In the last 19 minutes, all the things we talked about are they things you teach or at least in part in princeton . Guest in some ways this is a departure from the in the spirit with which i teach. Certainly a teach the work of Tommy Morrison and Richard Wright but i tend to teach much more fact driven as opposed to the kind of emotional register but i think of teaching itself as a kind of calling. It is important to bring to that values inhumanity and justice and love to the students even though we are supposed to be dispassionate. How does one get a phd and jd from harvard at the same time . Unwisely. It is not when i was graduated from college at 21 years old, i was completely in love with life and mind and ideas and didnt want to choose and i wanted to do everything and i will go to graduate school and law school and i did two years of graduate school, it was sort of a frenzied time but it was beautiful, amazing for me. I loved it. I learned so much and every day i was being nurtured by all these generations of people who came before me and helped me understand the world. We want to play a little music, a little video from 1999. Lift every voice and saying until heaven rings, ring with the heart on the knees of liberty rejoicing jesse norman singing at the rosa parks congressional Gold Medal Ceremony in 1999. What is that song . That song is lift every voice and sing, the song that was known, as the black national and that after the 1970s and it is a song i describe as black americas most precious song, gosh, and just that clip of rosa parks as an alabama woman and jesse norman is incredibly moving. You have written a biography of the song may we forever stand is the name of the book. James Weldon Johnson and John Rosemont johnson. The author and the composer, they were brothers who were born in jacksonville, florida, renaissance men and back in the day they were called race men. People who saw every achievement they had as being in service, johnson became the first secretarygeneral of the naacp, the first black man admitted to the bar in florida, really extraordinary but one of the signature accomplishments of their lives is the composition of this song. They were firstgeneration friedman born in the 1870s. Yes. There mothers family had been enslaved in virginia but of that generation that emerged from the slavery with all these hopes and dreams and aspirations that were so quickly dashed at the end of reconstruction. What was the reception in 1900 when the song was written . Guest what was extraordinary was the song caught on like wildfire. It was almost immediately embraced as an and some of black america. The United States did not have a National Anthem at this moment. Even so early on people were referring to it as an and some, the johnson brothers were educators at the time of the composition and they left florida and moved to new york to work on as songwriters because there had been a terrible fire in the city. They werent there when the song caught on and it caught on, black club women circulated it and reprinted it, it was reprinted in the back of hymnals and so it was sort of an and some of the communitys making. They did not describe it as an and the man didnt intend it as an and some. But it was an anthem. Host if we had continued playing the video we would have seen then president clinton singing. Guest he may be the only us president who knew all the firsts. From your book may we forever stand, hiphop uttered its farewell to the black panthers National Anthem. One of the things, i talk about this in my first book, there is something that happens in the 70s and 80s which is the transformation both of some norms, in black social and political life that have to do with the kind of Civic Engagement and associational life connected to deindustrialization and theres a piece or i quote the reverend Joseph Lowery on this where he said may he rest in peace, black people are the moral conscience of the nation, hiphop is a refusal of that position so it is bold, not formal, it is profane and not unwilling to perform a particular kind of politics. A reveling in out law which is commonplace in American Culture but is a different kind of public presence for africanamericans so that departure was significant but what i also talk about in the book is the song keeps coming back. Thereve been various moments, seemed to was going to peter out completely, keeps coming back even though the kind of institutions, the kind of communities in which it was sung on a weekly or even daily basis dont exist in the same way in black communities. Host can you draw a direct line from Langston Hughes to bigi. E. Small . Absolutely. Both of them took the beauty of vernacular language and crafted it and made decisions to tell stories that were appointed, that often had content and resonated deeply, were pleasurable to listen to, to engage with, they are different kinds of political subjects, Langston Hughes is very overtly an activist and organizer but their relationship to black language both in the us and throughout the diaspora and the desire to understand that as a foundation for the production of art, absolutely directly connected. Pr oph ips. Guest absolutely. What i talk about in the book is the process by which it became the most popular form of music in the country and had an audience that expanded beyond its initial core audience and produced the wealth that has been produced to hiphop but something i talked about that is prophetic about it because there was from the beginning and exposition and elucidation of what postindustrial life in urban centers in the United States was like and in all of its complexity. It is not just it is an exposition, and exploration of it. You used the term mc. What does that mean . The word for a wrapper that is a little more organic to hiphop. It initially it comes from master of ceremonies which is pretty common place but others spell is he in the ce e to make it somatic but this idea that there is a relationship between the wrapper and the dj and subsequently a producer was really important. It is a title. It is absolutely a title. Mcs our rappers, kind of internal to hiphop, a way of describing that role. I was interested really in what made in mc good, not just the reflection of a moment in history or conditions in certain communities but what was consistent . The mc became important because i was doing a literary analysis of it. From your book profits of the hood the historic construction of blackness and opposition to whiteness in which blackness is demonized has become part of the artforms consciousness. Right, so this, there is i should say before i go into this hiphop has changed since 2004 though there are aspects i still describe at present but there is a very overt play with the imagery of black people as thugs, embracing the idea of thug life, criminalization of black people, the sense of the very long history of americans stereotyping black people as prone to criminality and access and gangsterism and violence that hiphop has engaged that satirically, critically, played into it, has really played with that social reality. Lets hear from our viewers as we continue to talk about your books, charlie is in roslyn heights, new york, you are on booktv. I have been citing races my whole life and im very proud of that but i have seen the world is a very complex place. I dont support black nationalism because thats is that his wife nationalism and it is feeding trumps base, you know, theres good and bad in all groups, black people are just black people, they are not inferior, they are not superior, black nationalism is as wrong as White Nationalism and i cant understand why this area supporting black nationalism. I am not a black nationalist. I am far left, nationalism takes on many different faces, there are certainly conservative brands of black nationalism that politically are quite aligned in many ways to political conservatism. The nation of islam is politically conservative so advocates black nationalism and theres the version of black nationalism you would see an organization like the black Panther Party or the coordinating committee which are revolutionary socialism, third world politics, anticolonialism that identify and ally with colonized people across the world. The single term doesnt mean much without the larger concept. I will say they dont think, i disagree with the call that they are equivalent. People trying to find a way of developing a sense of control and autonomy over communities they live in after a long history of enslavement and domination is not the same as celebrating the history of colonialism and enslavement and domination but thats not a designation i would subscribe to. Host you say you are far left, what does that mean . Guest i believe in democracy. I am a socialist because i am against economic exploitation. I believe everybody should have access to safe environment, clean water, good schools, living wage, healthcare. I believe in this extraordinarily wealthy country we shouldnt have children who are poor, we shouldnt have People Living on the street, i dont think the narrative that the consequences of economic vulnerability are the consequences and we should be okay with them. That is not a decent way to organize society. I dont think people are poor because they are deficient overwhelmingly. They are poor because they are exploited or have black of opportunity. That is what i believe and the question in as much as i write and think about race it is never separate from the larger question of the distribution of suffering in our society. It is an example of how society has been organized, a way to distribute suffering and opportunity and wealth unjustly but i dont my objective is not for black people to become those who dominate. The idea is to become free of systems of domination, to have a real robust thorough democracy which is only possible if you have a decent quality of life for all people in society. This is booktv on cspan2 showing highlights from our in depth series. In 2018, booktv featured bestselling novelist jody jodi picoult who has sold 15 million copies of her books and she joined us in november to talk about them. Host you suggest that Brett Kavanaugh should read your newest book a spark of life. Why is that . It is one of the most balanced looks at abortion rights and reproductive rights i have found. I worked really hard to make it balanced and i think it would allow him to see other peoples point of view with compassion and empathy and perhaps protect roe versus wade a little longer. Host you say all points of view are represented. How so . The book is about a shooting in a productive rights clinic, some states have only one clinic left because over 280 laws at the state level have chipped away at reproductive rights since 2012 and in my book a gunman comes in with a grudge, starts shooting, kills the patients and hostages and some employees and take the rest hostage and one of the people he takes hostage is a 15yearold daughter of the Hostage Negotiator on the outside of the people in the clinic are a wide range of people who all believe very Different Things about reproductive rights, you will see individuals who are prochoice, individuals are prolife and all a points of view are evenly and accurately represented. Host how do you storyboard a complex story like that . There are all sorts of connections and things going on . That is a particularly ripe question. Theres a twist in this book that makes a difference from my others. It is told in reverse so the first thing you see is the standoff between the gunman in the Hostage Negotiator. Every chapter goes back in our in time until at the end of the book what you learn is what brought all these Diverse People to the clinic at that particular moment. That was much harder than i anticipated it being. I wound up writing a 48 page outline because i had to write it chronologically in reverse but also had to follow the storylines of 10 diverse characters. I have never written an outline, most are 3 pages long, a little synopsis. I know my characters, the plot, the twists because i want to leave a paper trail for the reader but in this case there was so much going on and it was so complex that i needed to map it out in the real magic to me was not in the outline but in the editing when i edited the book, i took little post it flags i made my husband get and marked the whole book by character and then edited in reversed we 10 times following each character spread to make sure every story was coherent and then i edited entirely going forward. Host how much time did you spend in mississippi . Guest a week between jackson and alabama working in particular with an amazing man named doctor willie parker. And africanamerican Abortion Provider who identifies as a devout christian and says he performs abortions not in spite of his religion but because of it. He heard a sermon one day in church about the Good Samaritan and thought whos going to provide for these women if not be. Went back and got trained and now he goes all over the United States to the most underserved areas performing abortions for women who needed the most and invited me to shadow him. Host are you a big enough seller with your bestselling books that you could determine whether title of your book is at what the cover looks like . They usually show me a cover and i will tell them if i like it or dont. It was not the original cover. The original one looked like small great things and i loved the cover a small great things but didnt want people confusing the two. Garrett director came back with that and that caught my eye and i loved it. Speaking of small great things that the next book we are going to talk about. What does that cover represent . I think of the color chips that artists use and if you look at the cover there are spots where color is missing, something not quite right about the color and it is about racism in america and metaphorically to me that was such a beautiful illustration of what i was trying to talk about. Host are you kennedy . Any white person is kennedy. That book actually looks, it is based off of a reallife incident that happened in flint, michigan. And African American nurses 25 Years Experience in a labor and delivery ward helped deliver a baby and in the aftermath the babys father said he didnt want her or anyone who looks like her to touch his kids, pushed up his sleeve to reveal a swastika tattoo. In their incident in this hospital a postit note in the babys file said no africanamerican is allowed to touch this baby. A bunch of personnel banded together and sued. I hope she got a great payout but made me wonder what if that nurse is the only one alone with the baby when something went wrong and as a result she wound up being brought on charges of murder and what if she was defended by a white public defender, like me, like many of my friends, never considered herself to be a racist and to tell the story in her voice, the voice of a white supremacist and the voice of the white public defender as they unpack their own feelings about race . To me small great things is for white people. It is meant to say open your eyes a little wider. It is easy for white people to point to a white supremacist and say that is a racist. It is harder for white people to point to themselves and say the same thing and yet race is about prejudice plus power and if you are white in america you hold all the power and although it is easier for us to see the headwinds of racism and to know that if you are a person of color your life might be harder. It is difficult for white people to acknowledge the tailwind of racism and the fact there are unearned benefits that come to us because we are born white and that is something that is on white people to learn and fix. Ultimately that is why i wrote the book, the audience i was hoping for. 26 books, every one of them bestsellers . Guest not by any means. I was a slow growth girl. I didnt have that overnight oprah moment or anything. I started very humbly. My first book had 3500 copies printed. Host the humpback whale. Guest people who read my books told their friends you should read this and they told friends and it grew organically and it wasnt really until, i think it was after my sisters keeper, the Second Glance that first got onto the bestseller list by itself. Host how quickly was my sisters keeper optioned for a movie . Guest it took a while and it was not a pleasant experience. Host why not . Is a movie guest you havent seen the movie . Dont. It is not. When that book was optioned i had said the only thing that was important to me was they keep the ending. It has a monstrous twist at the end and ultimately i know that full the book, people said cant tell you what happens, that was how the producer who optioned the book had gotten it. They asked me if i could talk to him and he said yes and i told him the ending is really important to me and he read the book and said not going to change the ending. If anyone does i will tell you why and tell you myself and i thought okay and then i worked with him for year and a half, he would call me up and ask questions about character. I saw a script that looked like the book and then one day i got an email from someone who worked at a casting agency and she said that you know they changed the end of the movie . I called nick at home and he wouldnt take my call, i went to the movie set and they threw me off the set, i went to newlines and mentor you will lose money on this, i heavier fans who are rock stars and they are not going to want to see this movie, he said we know what we are doing and sure enough my fans were very upset and ultimately the great irony is money speaks in hollywood and i was able to say you will lose money and they did and now as a result of that experience i have more Creative Control on future projects. Host did you have any Creative Control once you optioned it . Guest now. I dont think fans realize this but most writers do not. If you do have Creative Control that is the anomaly because usually hollywood would say you want Creative Control, we dont need that, thank you, we will go to another author who is willing to take the money and run. It is a little like giving a baby up for adoption, you try to make an educated choice and hope you do the best you can but you cant call every day and say get your feet or breakfast. Small great things was an option. How much Creative Control of the you have . I hope to have a little more. We will see. It is early days yet. What we know is ambling entertainment, spielbergs company optioned it, Julia Roberts is attached, cant think of better casting so im delighted so far. When i read Ruth Jefferson i see my own she is an incredibly talented actress. Before we get into the other books, we will talk about other books that you have written. Before we get into the first call have your books gotten more topical over the years . Ive tried to look at the trajectory of my career and it sort of spans where my brain is at any given time. If you look at the beginning of my career my first book was about mothers and daughters but i was closer in age to the daughter than to the mother. Then i had a baby. I got married and had a baby right after right before my first book was published i had my first child and my second book was about motherhood and how incredibly difficult it is. It really shocked me how hard that was and i got into marriage and relationships and whether they are over 50 and then i had all my kids and had a wide span of years when all my books were about all the terrifying things that can happen to your kids from sexual abuse to kidnapping to suicide, all these things and then my kids grew up and got to the point they were pretty selfsufficient and i began to take a step back and look at bigger issues that make me set up at night and worry, things like the nature of good and evil in the storytellers, things like racism in small great things, what it means to grieve and lose someone in leaving time, reproductive rights in spark of life. In my sisters keeper you preface it with as the mother of a child who had surgery. My sisters keeper grew out of two different places. I had done. I had written Second Glance and Second Glance was about the eugenics project in america which very few people know about. In several states we modeled the program hitler used for his final solution and one of the things i learned, one of the crazy throwaway facts was that the original American Eugenic Society was in cold spring harbor, new york and when they folded, the group that took over was the human genome project and that seemed almost too close for comfort and i happened to read when i was researching eugenics, a story of what they call the modern eugenics which was the story of the nash family in colorado, the first family to create a donor sibling to help their daughter molly who at the time had a disease, she was supposed to die by age two, she was hanging on by a thread at age 3, they wound up designing a sibling for her who could survive a stem cell transplant from the local cords and she went into remission and always safe and that was a whole different topic. I started to think a lot about that. I was thinking in particular, molly and her brother when i met them were 5 and 8 and they were little kids. What would happen to a donor sibling in the teenage years, when it is all about who am i. Am i here just because of sister, do i have any worth on my own . I wanted to explore that and that grew into my sisters keeper but at the same time i had been the parent of a child with multiple surgeries, my middle son jake had a benign tumor that grows inside your ear towards your brain and if it hits your brain it will kill you. The traditional way to remove it is to take down the ear canal wall and leave the child deaths in that year. My husband and i chose a different approach that would require more surgeries overall but might preserve the hearing, turned out he had it in both years, less than 9 kids in america have that and we made the right choice because at the end of all this he had marginal hearing in his right ear and was profoundly deaf in his left ear and went on to become a very talented singer, attended tons of musical theater, the best Success Story but i remember very well what it was like during all of those surgeries, 10 surgeries and reconstruction, how hard it was to keep the family balanced because one child clearly had to take precedence at that moment and we as parents like to say we love all her children equally but the truth is sometimes circumstances arise that make you have to direct your attention towards one of your children and what we really mean is we hope we are able to be there for all our children when they need us the most and that is why i wrote a point of view for sarah in my sisters keeper. Quote from my sisters keeper, we have all our script down pat. I am the lost cause, we had the peacemaker. A lot of familial relationships in your books. It makes sense because i was watching my own kids grow up and forge a family. I find my sisters keeper fascinating on many levels. It is hot in ethics courses in medical school and Nursing School and it really is something to consider because we tend to think parents can make the best decisions for their children medically but what if you have children with competing medical interests and when it comes to medical ethics we know that a patient and what is happening to a patient may wind up convening in Ethics Committee at a hospital. A donor is not considered a patient, they would not necessarily convene an Ethics Committee and finally it can be a weird and slippery slope. Choosing an embryo that has six matching hla proteins to help cure cancer is very different than choosing a child that has brown hair or a child that is female. You begin to wonder how can we monitor that and keep it from spiraling out of control, it is one of these examples where science is almost outstripped morality and ethics and sometimes we get to the point that happens. Another author featured on in depth was Science Fiction author corey doctorow. He joined us in august of 2018 to discuss his books and activism. Host how do you describe your work to other people . I write Science Fiction, what kind of Science Fiction . Summit is very far future but mostly it deals with contemporary information, surveillance, censorship and the question of whether technology is going to enable us to be more for your take away those freedoms. Is it hard to translate that into a sciencefiction format . I dont think so. The next question everyone asks is how can you write Science Fiction in this era of rapid change . Are you worried you will be left behind by the march of history and in the 21st interview dont have 7 or 8 Science Fiction novels say youre not trying. Host you said all Science Fiction writers whether they admitted on on a writing metaphorically about the present, to extrapolate the future is to comment on the now. At its best sciencefiction reaches into the world and does this diagnostic. When you go to the doctor and have a sore throat she will swab the back of your throat and put it on a petri ditch and go have a look and tell you what is going on in your body and shes not able to do that because she made an exact replica of your body, she made this incredibly unfaithful replica of your body where only one fact about your body was most important fact and Science Fiction writers reach into the world and grab the technology and builder kind of toy world where the Technology Takes on importance and it is a way of surfacing the latent properties of it especially the Emotional Properties of it, before 1948 and we didnt have a way to talk about what mass surveillance might look like in George Orwell gives this is incredibly useful narrative framework for talking about the emotional impact of living of the conditions of mass surveillance, now we have a versatile word orwellian when someone says i have a great idea, we will spy on everything everyone does, then we will find all the bad people, like the sermon on the mount and you can explain why that is creepy without abstractions, you can talk about this concrete thing and that is at worst sometimes sciencefiction writer santa themselves oracles and think they are doing this future casting where theyve looked at all the variables and put them together, asimov was a big one for this, robert timelines, like any fortuneteller the predictions were so vague and metaphorical that you could interpret them in any way you wanted but dante when he talked about what fortunetellers would have happened to him stripped him naked, turned their heads around 180 days, into the cracks of their buttocks and put them in molten feces up to midthigh and had to wait a moment species wellbeing fraudulently by demons. He kind of gave them an easy break because the message of the fortuneteller is the future is coming no matter what you do and that is a council of despair. Of the future is coming to matter what you do while we even here. I like to think the future happens because of what we do and as sciencefiction right is one of the things we can do is intervene in the future which is so much more interesting than predicting. How do you use your characters to do that intervention . What role do they play . Often the stuff im thinking about in terms of attacking policy are very abstract but they have the super concrete consequences and by writing stories that pivot on abstract ideas like generalpurpose computing or strong cryptography, you can take these things that are literally masks, knowing abstract mathematics and make them into these emotional stories where the consequences of them become undeniable. How many books of the written . Thats another question and i dont know the number. It is in the 20s only because there are is a collections and short story collections and a picture book for kids the 25. When you talk about privacy and things like this, you revisit those concepts. Writers, anyone who is trying to communicate has this platonic irreducible thing in their head and they want to put it into your head and they try to reproduce it and access telepathy through some medium so i write an essay or give a talk and try to make it happen and i get feedback, what people heard when i said it and from that feedback i get a more refined idea of how i might put it into other peoples head and i try again and you see in the work of writers they circled the idea through their whole career, like maybe a goner walking mortar fire towards their target, you take aside and get some feedback and change your elevation and take another shot. In some ways it is all the same story, all the same this is how i see the world, what worries me and what i have hope for trying to be reduced into something that will transmit more perfectly to you. I read somewhere that you one of your novels grew out of a series of blog posts you are constructing at the time. In some ways they all do. I never write blog posts and turn them into a novel but everything crosses my trends and that seems like it is significant in part of something bigger i try to write out for public consumption. If you write something about what a stranger i can never figure out what i meant. Writing notes for someone i never met i have to be more rigorous and that creates a surgical database, decades of blogging but also it creates kind of mnemonic soup of these fragmentary story ideas that are just rattling around in supersaturated solution and a couple of these ideas go on and crystallize into novels and essays and short stories. Some peoples method is they have an it and research it. My method as i Research Everything until it is an idea. Your latest book walk away, tell us about those ideas and eventually sparked the book. It is an optimistic disaster novel, a book in which in a time of great economic and Environmental Crisis a majority of people pull together to help each other and the enemy isnt as in many crisis novels isnt the bad people who have been waiting for the breakdown of law and order to go eat their neighbors, the enemy are the people who are convinced that in time of crisis the bad people are coming, the racialized people, poor people coming for them who are preemptively policing them to kind of keep them from tearing down their wall compounds. It is an idea that came from a lot of sources but particularly paradise built in hell. Shes a wonderful historian and researched the history of disasters and how people behaved in them. And how we thought we behaved in them, the new york Power Outages or Hurricane Katrina or the Haiti Earthquake and each time you have people at a distance and wealthy people on the spot who are convinced there must be a total breakdown of order and when you read the contemporaneous accounts, the journals and newspapers on the ground what you find is this incredible moment when the refrigerator background had a pedigree that stops and is ringing silent people realize they have more in common with their neighbors then they had separating them in solidarity became the order of the day, people who find solidarity in the badlands of environmentally despoiled territory who use automated mechanisms to build what some people call fully on united luxury resorts that babysit themselves where anyone can take what they want and do what they want and whenever a rich weirdo says that is my to spoil dirt and garbage you are using, theres plenty more where that came from and walk away and it is a book that has had a really good response, people read it and say this feels like it is nailing an intuition i had in my heart that i couldnt give a word to and you are crystallizing it for me. Briefly introduce the protagonist and antagonist and how they are related to each other. It is a multigenerational story but it is a group of three young people who are walking away from default society. One is a guy named hubert etc. Hubert has 21st names. His parents were a member of an Anonymous Party when the Anonymous Party adopts a real name policy like facebook where you have to use your real name they become so infuriated they give him the top 20 names from the 1890 census so he cant fit in the database. His best friend is a young man named seth and they meet a trump fund heiress who has become disenchanted and the three of them walk away and take new names and become part of the collective and they meet a host of characters, a Brazilian National who has become a leader in a Leaderless Movement who struggles with the fact that people look up to her. There is a computational mathematician who is part of a project to build practical immortality by allowing people to simulate their consciousness in computers and realized if she sticks around and does this the super rich she will be complicit in helping humanitys pc 8 so she decides to do this promethean act to walk away and release the knowledge is open source and things get really hairy because when the superrich realize these smelly bohemians are not just a distraction but are alongside them for the rest of eternity that is when the hellfire missiles come out and then these different antagonists, the state which is looming surveillance presence as we have now that runs on rails, is composed of people doing the best they can or even think they are doing good, but that creates a totalitarian moment. There is the father of the young heiress who is superrich, very charming fellow but is also good at kidding himself if he wasnt doing it someone else what and why not him because he is such a nice guy and then people are meritohcraps who are saying why shouldnt we find the best among us and make us leaders, continually assume they will be counted as the best among them. That is what walkaway is, walking on society, acknowledging problems to be solved, not citizens, can you expand on that . People talked about this idea of unnecessary neoclassical economics always if you have a set number of people who are unemployed it is probably not good because it suppresses wages so we count jobseekers, not overall numbers of Unemployed People but at a certain point if you think automation is going to remove the need for a lot of labor and dont assume we will do something redistributive, people who own roberts are not the only people who do what the robots are building or by the things robots are building then you have so many people hanging around that it is more than you need to suppress wages and becomes a source of instability and so there are problems to be solved, not people. How do we buy these people off or neutralize them so that we dont have to get rid of them . There is a saying in economics, equilibrium, where is the balance point . We always had an equilibrium between what you might call guard labor, surveillance and costs, soldiers, jail workers and so on, between guard labor and redistribution. At a certain point if wealth accumulates to a small number of hands the amount of money those people need to spend to keep everyone else from building guillotines exceeds the amount of money they could spend building hospitals and roads that would diffuse the energy that might lead to kia teens being built on their lawn. One of the things mass surveillance makes so much cheaper to separate the sheep from the goats, to figure out who it is that might start the guillotine building, it seems to have moved to the equilibrium about where you support welfare and start redistribute in, where the guard labor is cheaper than redistribution. If we move that so far along we are storing up all of this resentment debt, all these people who dont feel they have a stake in society. I was speaking at a conference and people kept talking about how natural it feels in dystopian stories that when the system starts to break down, people overrun civic infrastructure, set fire to everything. Why would they do that . When you see that in prison riot movies that make sense. Why would a prisoner burn down a prison . Because the prison exists in an adversarial relationship to them. It is where they sleep and eat but it is because that is how they are controlled. They have no stake in the prison and the fact we can totally understand and feels completely credible that the minute the lights go out so many of our neighbors will want to burn down the city they are living in, to me tells us we started to think of our society not as a machine for delivering dignity and the essentials would go into it although shelter and food and selfactualization but instead as a kind of cage and as soon as you think about that it is like of course it makes perfect sense that as soon as guards turn their back we burn it all down. Look at past in depth programs continues with libertarian economist deirdre mccloskey, Professor Emeritus at the university of illinois chicago and author of over 30 books on economics and Public Policy. Heres a portion of her appearance from this past february. How do you define your economic philosophy . I am a liberal in the root sense of the word. It comes from latin which means a free person, this is in the mind of the romans when they use the word, contrasted with a slave. One very simple way of describing true liberalism is to say that everyone has the right to say no. The right to say no. That means you dont if you are a woman you dont have to agree to be raped so to speak. If you are an employee and dont like it you can leave. Whereas i am reading a wonderful book by grossman, a novel about the soviet union and the big thing is people couldnt say no. They were being lost around by someone not voluntarily. You are an employee, i was an employee, we did what our bosses said we do but we could always walk. That is really fundamental to a free society. The other way of talking about true liberalism is the theory of an Adult Society and economy whereas many of the other options, modern populism, left or right, fascism, communism, even the social democracy of the welfare state want people to be children. We shouldnt be children. It is good for us to be adult. That doesnt mean we shouldnt help people. I call myself a christian liberal. Back to why liberalism works, quote, i can understand the progressive point of view. I can remember its attraction, as one peruses the pages of the nation or gnome chomskys latest it feels like one is doing good. Isnt that great. Just listening to gnome i actually debated him last summer. I was in a festival in england. We had gnome on a big screen like a large tv screen and three of us argued with him. I think people who feel they want to do something for the portion do something for the poor instead of just feeling good about reading the New York Times and thinking yes, i am a good person, i care about the poor. For example, they should help the homeless as i have in a small way by having them come live with them. I had some Homeless People with me for 4 and a half years in my house. That doesnt make me a saint, just makes me a person who wants to put her money where her mouth is, but the key point is to let the poor people free so that they can work, travel, live. You told me before you started that you have two acres of lawn. That is probably because in your town you cant build a house without a large lot. It is in the rules. That is to keep poor people out. That is what it is for. It is true in many many places in the United States. People have a 2 acre lots, sitting there reading the nation magazine. I dont know. I accuse. Host i am out in the country, no rules, no restrictions, no rules but i want to go back to why liberalism works, this is a quote from Stephen Landsberg and tell us who he is in a minute, you say Public Policy should not be designed to advance moral instincts we all reject every day of our lives. That is right. Moral instincts about not having to put your money where your mouth is, not pushing people around. I never liked being a boss myself but some people are better at administration than i am and if in a free labor market, of course a person can leave if they dont like your management techniques or style but in any case people shouldnt like being nasty. If you treated your customers with respect and then on buses in chicago where the bus driver welcomes people onto his bus and he goes through the snow and slush and is proud to get there in time. Thats how we ought to live. We ought to live the way our mom told us to live. See mac are you still teaching at the university of illinois at chicago. I taught there from 2000 to 2015 i had been in the blessed state of retirement. I retired in order to work more. I finish this book that came out in the fall on why liberalism works. I have a new book coming up from the university of chicago president in the fall which is kind of a pop version of all of these. Its called leave me alone and i will make you rich. This is the boudoir trilogy the most recent bourgeois technique. It is the french word for towns person. The leader of the town. The merchants it was in fact a common term for that english. About 1800. Before the basic idea was there were priests and the nobility and then everyone else. The third estate. And its only in the last couple of centuries that we started to make distinctions among the various people. And my point is really to argue against my friends on both the left in the right who are contentious a business like my grandfather he wasnt contemptuous he was an electrical contractor. That is an honorable thing to do. If youre not cheating. You are doing your wiring of airports and been paid for it what is odd about it it makes it for a Sweet Society there is this marxism you see especially in the history of the soviet union. Anyone that makes money is evil. On the contrary. You make money by doing things that people like. What exactly is the problem here. To go to boudoir virtues they attack while. By the standards of the rest of the worlds religious cannon. It is not surprising therefore in the 19th century in fact socialism is a secularized version of christianity. The apocalypse of the resolution. Its very similar to the Second Coming of christ. Among soviet communist. They were sent to the prison camp they thought it was okay. Because it must be that the party knows and there is a very similar attitude in some versions of christianity. It is quite strange. The most successful economically. Now it spread to the world. They have this ideology of anti wealth thinking i just reread a new translation by a theologian named heart on the new testament. Its not that long. Its a short book. There is a socialist element to it were christianity was abandoned. In the work assignments and so forth. It was very sensible but it does it make sense and a Large Society. It never has. One is tried in a Large Society it doesnt work. When its about friends or family it works. You identify as a longtime agnostic. And now youre a christian liberal. What happened. I changed gender as your audience might want to know in 1995 i was once donald now im deidra. In the news after that i thought there was something more i needed to look into it went to the opposite which was the unitarians who pray to whom it may concern. And then i found a pick up his cappelli in. We could not go cannot go on calling at that. It suited me very well. Right from the beginning even henry the eighth but even after him the angle attends the church of englands built themselves built themselves as the middle road. With roman catholicism and puritanism. What is it about it that suits you. Its very good lets talk about that. Its the whole spirit of the angular did church that i like. In virginia especially the upper class. And in new york for that matter the upper class was episcopalian its not because the frozen chosen that i like it. In their joking way it claims that as a episcopalian you dont really need to believe anything. But you do the ceremonies you come to church you do the mass. The smells in the bowels. My particular congregation is all low church. Once here we a year we reduce smells and bells. It is a very flexible framework for searching. Its the journey you dont have to believe in the virgin birth to be a practicing nonchristian. It is the practice that matters. I think thats true of economic performance. You dont need to be a theorist of the economy to be an electrical contractor. You just do your job you might learn from it after a while. There is mutual advantage here. As i get older i keep trying to unify my thinking to see what crossfertilization there is. There is theological free will which as you know is a very deep and puzzling subject. And free markets. I think they are connected. I think you dont have to be a socialist to be a christian. Lets go back to your boudoir trilogy. And this is the boudoir virtues. They have the education that will be financed from the center. But Maternity Care and early childcare should be expanded and state finance. The taxes should be steep. Corporate welfare should be eliminated. They should be cut to a tiny fraction. A modest minimum income should be given to every american that tax laws should encourage both men and women combined pay to work with the family and Community Work is there a butt button in there somewhere . She was annoyed i called her a marxist. She is of the left and i am not. I was a socialist. I dreamt i saw joe hill last night. But i am a christian liberal which means that i acknowledge the responsibility that we have towards the poor. We can just take a Country Club View and those are losers. This again would be donald trump. I have my cadillac all is well in the world. On a lot of policy proposals i agree. I might not agree with the scale that she wants to do them on we agree that we should help poor people in pregnant women and so forth that there should be not a fist in peoples face but an open hand of help that is perfectly consistent with what we call capitalism when you think about it the ordinary catalyst i do not like the word. We buy a cup of coffee and for one thing it is the sheer act of buying a cup of coffee that is advantageous. In both both people are happy about it. But furthermore you will notice in your own life that if you make a habit of going to the coffee shop eventually become friends. Commerce creates friendship the same way that church creates friendship. Or a High School Class or whatever. People get together they are not hurting each other they are not forcing each other to do things theyre allowed to say no. They call it sweet commerce. The coalition is necessary for most activities of the state. And thats the nasty stuff. You have to pay your taxes. The threats from the irs and having a non legal dispute with the irs right now. You dont like the word or the capitalism. Its the word i dont like. The world word capitalist was used and modified not just a rich investor. To mean this whole group of people who are the bosses and then after marks. Capitalism became the characterization of our commercial society. Its a terrible word. Academically and scientifically. Its a terrible word. Whether conservative or left or whatever. It is the spring of the commercial economy. You need investment in some light. It comes from the spring and the spring and modern life and indeed an old life also. This is a view of economics that i am coming to take but the kind of economics that i have done it for many years it is misleading because it looks at the capital we call it k we want the c for other things. I thought capital was motivational and it did things. I said to them maybe what they dont like. What you do is very good. You choose among the creators that you are not the creator. You say okay this is a good idea. I will make a loan to that. Its appropriate in important and necessary. But its not the idea. The idea comes from humans. Thats why freeing people under liberalism and slowly women and immigrants. Whatever. Write down the remarkable freedom of transgender people all of that works to encourage think of what the word means. It has have this amazing effect. The real ability to myself and go to the university and so on. Its increased by a factor of 13. Not 100 or 200 but 3,000 percent. That is the release of a debate about capitalism versus socialism in this country. This is not the first time theyve have this debate. Its been going on since the middle of the 19th century. The kids who say lets try socialism i dont hate bernie i mean who can hate burning. He was a freshman at the university of chicago in 1960 i was a freshman at harvard college. We did not know each other at the time. At the time we have more or less the same opinion about this capitalism. Its a much more accurate word. We both wanted to overthrow capitalism he was more systematic than i was. I have read half of the comments manifesto. It was a hero of mine when i was 16. We have the same opinion. He has the same opinion he head in 1960. People say its consistent. Hes consistently wrong. We had tried socialism and as i said it works in a family. It works among a small group of friends. I paid for this pizza im in it at all. Thats not what friends do. But in a big society they are making everything into a family. It doesnt mean that you dont have charity and you dont want to help each other. Thats not how capitalists are which i think i established in my first book of these three. In the second volume. And its not the future and the cut pass of our society. Which ive argued in the third book. Also appearing on third Sebastian Gorka. The war for americans soul. The second half of what was missing not the idea the policy platform that ideology is irrelevant. Remember, the beginning of the Obama Administration. I think they would become the president s cia director. Terrorism is an result of up stream factors. Half of india would be terrorist half of china would be terrorists and theyre not. As a result of that analysis when you find the really bad guys we just kill them and they will win. It is whack a mole. Just the idea the president of the United States have a secure tablet on the locations of individual terrorist mastermind. They would decide which terrorists we should kill today. Could you imagine eisenhower actually choosing which commander to kill. That is not the job of the president. We had 420 obama holdovers. Do you know how many people worked in the National Security council under eisenhower. Twentyfive. And nobody nobody can tell me that eisenhower was less complicated than our globe today. Under Ronald Reagan. It was only 75 individuals. They had replicated governments. What shouldve been strategic at tactical function. They missed the ideology. They dont become suicide bombers on 911 these are people with an ace. The Obama Administration said ideology islam is irrelevant. If you want to understand where we are going read the president s speech. Read his incredible speech in rural warsaw where he talks about an enemy being evil. It is an evil ideology. It is about poor people its about those who subscribe and believe the only way for humans to live is under a global caliphate. When you look at the newspapers and hear the broadcast about what happened there is a prediction that this could lead to world war iii. Hashtag world war iii was trending on social media what world do these people live in. When someone comes up with criticism of an action the best place to start is to take politics out of it whoever you vote for what is the individual critic they are saying we shouldnt had killed soleimani . A man whose hands are drenched in the blood of at least 600 u. S. Military women. The maiming of thousands of others this man who we know according to explicit intelligence was on the cusp of initiating operations in three Different Countries but wouldve killed hundreds of u. S. Citizens let alone our arab allies. Leaving that man to do his business is better and what to wear. Anybody that is not cheering for when obama killed Osama Bin Laden when they took out a daddy. As is it cheering when a evil individual like solo money like soleimani. I dont care what god you pray to i dont care who you go to bed with. I dont care what your skin tumbler is. If you think that person did not deserve to become a pile of ashes. How did you get to know president trump. I thought i was at the pinnacle of my career i was teaching marines. Ive special regard for our devil dogs. I was in my third year teaching the war college i was preparing for a class. I did not know from a hole in the grounds. I was a Campaign Manager for president trump. And he said mister trump is preparing for the full gop debate on National Security. What i consider meeting with candidate trap and help prepare him for that debate. I flew to new york. I went to then candidate trumps office. Closer than we are at his desk we have this incredible blue sky discussion on Security Issues from the civil war right up to isis and nuclear weapons. He stopped the discussion look to at him in the corner and i said like this guy. Lets hire him. He asked me to become a consultant to the trump organization. And then eventually became part of that. And then i became part of the official. I became part of the official president ial Transition Team and finally was offered the job of Deputy Assistant to the i started at 1201 and january 20. Why do seven months. He would have to ask steve the internet. I was on vacation in new england when my friend texted me and said have you seen the news. Im cut off from the world. I would like not to be plugged in. I went to an area where i could check the internet and i saw that Steve Bennett had resigned. There was only one between me and met the president. Steve was the chief strategist. Without telling me. Steve said im leaving. In the two months prior to that have become clear to me the new National Security advisor was not a fan of mine. I was always present for key meetings. I was being left off the invitations. I knew i was been boxed out. Then my top cover resigns. And i have a very tough decision. What do i do. Do we stay in the white house to be consistently boxed out by someone that has issues with me. Do i support that make America Great again as i wrote in with my letter to the president. I said right now the anti mega forces are there in the white house with a chart be there i would like to serve you on the outside. And i figure i can better do so. The president actually agreed. Now i have a National Radio show. More than a million followers on social media. My decision was shaped by the police that where i sit is not important is the agenda its making America Great again and bringing us back to the place where they saw the signing studio on the hill. I can best do that on the outside. Its worked out in the last two years. His most recent book is the war for american soul. Its one of the reasons i wrote because i experienced an event that really shook me to my morrow. I have to ask my daughters permission. My daughter graduated from Trinity College last may i had been a tough four years for her. She was involved in the accident that made the National News just before the term began there were children in a College Building and they were on the deck of the building. And my daughter stepped out onto that deck. All three decks disconnected. Very serious injuries. Despite that she persevered. She was the cocaptain of her crew team. Me being a Research Assistant and then she was invited to join a new institute and trinity. With a handful of remaining concerns. Trinity has gone very hardcore left. They wanted to celebrate to propagate the values of the judeochristian civilization. That was the last straw i guess the social justice warriors in two weeks before the graduation they took my daughters photograph and on social media and posted it around the campus. This is the face of white supremacy. Why, because she was she was my daughter despite the fact that this girl had help ethnic women and minority women when she was doing Research Projects on those who have been abused financially by their partners and their husbands so when it came to graduation i was very trepidations. I did not want to cause a scene. When i arrived i did not sit with my family i sat under an oak tree so that there wouldnt be any distractions from what shouldve been my daughters celebration. It was all fine until after the ceremony my daughter received her diploma. The caps were thrown in the air. In the throng i was separated from everyone and then a little girl walked up to me this is the opening of the war for americas soul. Maybe 85 pounds dripping wet and she looked me in the eye and she said are you Sebastian Gorka are you the one who worked for donald trump in the white house. I smiled and extended my hand and said yes thats me. Here i have to edit things. In that case, asked you, ufe nazi. I had been through the mill in the white house but i have never have somebody who is living in the most successful powerful freest nation in the world once i found my composure i said im not to let this lie. I followed this girl back to her family her mother i think. And i looked her in a safe ace and i said and i said who the hell do you think you are. My parents as children suffered under nazi occupation in central europe. After that my father was arrested and tortured and imprisoned hoodie think you are to call me a nazi. The girls mother was clearly shocked her jot drop and said did you really say this to this man . The little girl living in the freest nation in the world with a grin from the joker in batman and said yes i did. Its frightening. Its frightening that according to the victims of communism 72 percent of America Millenials would like to live in a communist or socialist country this after the fact that they read the black book of communism. They are exterminated in the name of karl marx. I spent more than 20 years and the National Security domain i specialized in nonstate art actors. And now the last three years had been a moment for me. The scales had fallen from my eyes. The greatest threat that we face is the history and indoctrination of a whole generation of americans. Radicals appear rule number one live by the rule of personal destruction. And they had used it very effectively. The most influential theres a lot that nobody talks about. That she wrote it is the only fight i had doubts. The most felis medic president recognizes jerusalem after broken promises who has the closest relationship with the Prime Minister of israel. To call that man and empty semite. The same person who has affected prison reform. That is the tactics. It is the triangulation that we were taught the path. We didnt target children. We didnt go off of the first ladies because they were wearing the wrong shoes as they got on the helicopter. Thats why when would people talk about the derangement syndrome there is some substance to that. With a level of a demeaning the other person. Its very unhealthy. Thats disturbing. You see that in totalitarian regimes. If you look at soviet russia if you look at the 30s in germany. When you start to dehumanize things that way leads the road to the labor council. Sadly it has been taken over by extremist. How is it that you have a valid anti semite saying israel is evil. It tweeted two days ago. The fallen government official. Sula money was a mass murderer. With the Foreign Government official. We are living in dark times but as Ronald Reagan taught us on the right and i consider myself to be a reagan order we are happy worried. We are fueled by love of country love of liberty. What i see on the left. As a movement that has become defined in fueled by hatred and perhaps hatred of the self. The hatred of what they think america is which is not some imperialist colonial force but the freest nation that has helped others in their freedom. Whenever the democrat party. When they had tried to manufacture charges against the president with regard to russian collusion or its extortion and by bribery in the uk. Every single time it has gone back onto them. As my good friend chris blanc says its reminiscent of that final scene. They launch those torpedoes what happens, the torpedoes circle back and sink their own vessel. The fact that Hillary Clinton paid a former secret agent to gin up a dossier of russia propaganda to use to spy on us in the Trump Campaign and then the Trump White House and then they come after us to head connections to russia. Its the most delicious of ironies. They have that mel thesis with the campaign. There was nothing when Hunter Bidens son was taken home 50 to 80,000 per month with a corrupt company. They fired the prosecutor before they gave them a billion dollars. All of these things circle back like a boomerang. Crowd strike is perhaps the one thing that the democrats and the dnc its what they dont wish you to talk about. It was working in the ukraines and connected to the dnc we need to get to the bottom of that. If you believe in justice i have good news for you. They are unstoppable. How much of an influence is the book on more part parts of your own philosophy. This is one of my three favorite books. I break it down a great deal in my second book. Why we fight. If you really are interested in National Security and strategy there are two classic offers you must be familiar with. You must be familiar with the chinese strategist. They complement each other. It was never meant to be published. It is the most influential text on how the west does National Security. How the west thinks about National Security. And thats why its important. The concept of friction and the center of gravity they are eternally applicable. It breaks you out of your way of thinking and illustrates how other ways of thinking with the ways of National Security and the strategy in sun tzu is essential reading if you wish to understand what iran and russia are doing. Because it is the foundation of irregular warfare. How you take down a more powerful enemy than yourselves. You are on with the author. A real honor sir. If that democrats wouldve coalesced around the president and started attacking him all of the stuff that we had been going through it may have never occurred. But he knew how stupid these people are and he played them like a fiddle. There was a phrase from the cold war useful idiots. It really is the case. When you have the most egregious example when you have a former cia director john brennan on national television. Use the word treasonous Vladimir Putin is laughing into his cheerios. Whether or not brennan is being paid by the kremlin is irrelevant. He is doing the bidding. The idea that a president like donald trump who has targeted a man who instead of setting those kits. They set the inside take missiles. The toughest section regimes. That person is treasonous Vladimir Putin they had returned a massive return on their investment even when they did not pay these individuals. It said a party that was so in the tank to the left. They have negotiations with the kremlin tried to elicit their assistance to undermine the reelection. That Democratic Party that was always on the side of the left on the side of useful idiots. Now they are accusing donald trump and conservatives to truly be on the pale. They do not share americas interest. It may face its own threats. It does not mean it is or can be our friend. That is a look at some of the authors that have been featured on book tv and depth. Or any other episode of indepth. As a coronavirus continues to impact the country here is what the Publishing Industry is doing to address the ongoing pandemic. James patterson announced he will donate 500,000 to aid independent bookstores across the country. He has partnered with actress reese witherspoon. To provide grants to independent booksellers. Virtual offer author events. Pals books recently announced the rehiring of your staff members. To assist in the rise in online sales. They partnered together to provide a series of author events. Also according to the bookscan. Books sales dipped 13 the last week of march. They continue to make changes to their publication schedules and many have announced layoffs in the closing of their distribution centers. With book fairs in san antonio and annapolis. Opted not to reschedule. The American Library association also announced the cancellation of the festival of books originally set to take place in april has decided to hold their 25th annual festival in october. Tb will continue to bring new programs and publishing news. You can also watch all of our archive programs anytime at book tv. Org. Next on book tv journalist kate aronoff offers her thoughts on what the journalist might look like. And later Natural Resource governors. What follows oral price