Transcripts For CSPAN2 Tara Burton Strange Rites 20240712

Policy to the director of the office of management and budget during the Obama Administration discusses his book which country has the worlds best healthcare . Watch booktv on cspan2 this weekend. Good evening everybody and welcome to. Stretching from union square, from an original 48 stores until after over 93 years the sole survivor. Now ran by third generation. We want to thank all of you for your support, authors, book lovers and friends, without you, we would not be here today. We are excited to have a woman celebrating the release of her new book. Tara is a contributing editor, the columnist and former staff religion reporter at fox. Com. She has written on religion through national geographic, the washington post, the New York Times and more. She holds a doctorate in theology from oxford. Also a novel social creature. Joining tara to discuss her new book is ross. Ross is a columnist for the New York Times oped page. The author to change a church and a privilege. Coauthor of brand new party. He was a Senior Editor for the atlantic. The film critic for National Review and cohosts the New York Times weekly oped podcast. He lives in new haven with his wife and three children. Without further ado, please help me in welcoming tara and ross. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us here. An exciting virtual experience. Talking about a book that may be appropriate to the subject matter. Tara, thank you for letting me interrogate you. A typical thursday night. Thank you so much for being here. Just another thursday night in america. I want to make two comments before we start. In our era of covid, i have done enough events to know that sometimes people are more hesitant to ask questions when they are typing in questions than they would be at a real event when they stand up and tell the author about everything she has wrong about in the world you just have to ask me as questions for the entire hour. That is the first point. This is a challenging time for everybody. Authors are among the least challenged in many ways. Putting out a book at a moment like this is a difficult thing. I was lucky enough to squeeze in a couple weeks of promotion before all the bookstores closed. I just want to encourage you, if you are listening, watching, enjoying this, dont just buy the book. Encourage your friends to buy the book and make it the best that it deserves to be. Without further ado, lets start in with the being dumb question. This is a book about new religions. It is our really godless and if not or if so, what religions are filling that void . A spoiler alert. No, we do not live in a godless world. That is the argument i make. Sort of when we talk about a second age like we often want to deal or a World Without religion , what are we really talking about . Some background statistics, some say they are religiously unaffiliated and often preferred deal. 36 of people born in america after 1985 identify as religious none. Huge increase. All of these unaffiliated, 72 say they believe in some sort of a higher power. 20 say they actually believe in the god of the bible. We are not necessarily talking about people who are atheists, although about 60 , they tend to under selfreport, we are talking about people, for whatever reason, are alienated by institutional religion, organized religion who may who believe in the traditional judeochristian god actually still have some form of faith. Unwilling to identify with or anticipate it as a religion in and of itself. Talking about the spirit of nonreligious. In my book i called the religious remix. Not just virtual, but not religious also people that do identify take the box as it were. Whose personal practice believe it is more a quest deck. The things i like to bring up here is that 30 of self identified christians believe in reincarnation. Which is not, shall we say, something that you would associate with christian orthodoxy. I would argue where religious life, the components of religious life, meaning ritual, relating to them in a different way. Mixing in matching, a term, there is a sense where the interplay of this is we are all making our own religions. Not just elements of the traditional religion, but things like wellness culture, political activism, a vast array of modernism, which craft among the Fastest Growing in america. So long and so forth. I think one sort of initial response to a description of your thesis, but someone wellversed in American History is how new is all of this . Certainly nothing more american than being entrepreneurial and setting up a church of one. Every kid in high school, at least back when i was in high school, you get a certain kind of, a certain kind of individualized religion there. The larger history of spirituality is what you and the book called intuitional precision. Can you talk about what is the same and what is different . What do we have in common with 19th Century America and what has changed in the last 30 or 40 years . Sure. A catchall term for religious practices and focusing inward. The got, individual, feeling versus institutionalism. Your church, your dogma, your external. We have seen quite a history back and forth in american religious life and these outcroppings of intuitional approaches to face the great awakening spared your revival, but also movements which were acute from the 1860s onward. The secret selfhelp movement where basically if you think about it hard enough it will happen which became hugely influential and led to a whole Publishing Industry of health bugs. Spiritual is a and contacting the dead and ouija boards. There is also, i would argue, evangelical revival where the narrative was often something like, christianity, nobody really believes anymore. People just go through the motion. People go to church and it really does not matter. You need to look for personal relationship with god. We need to look for something more intense, more intimate. It is absolutely not neal. A pendulum swing back and forth. Where i think something new about this great awakening is the internet. We are trying to gather in this way at this time. I would like to say that the Printing Press was the promise to reformation, the creation of a model of consuming information that was intimate and inward. Sort of internalize in such a way. One may well draw that connection to the protestant overall. We are kind of seeing these new religions of the internet age. We are all not just consumers of content, not just readers, but also inclined to culturally think about ourselves as people who have or want to have ownership over stories. With the added sort of dissenting embodiments of the internet itself. Theres hunger to create, to be involved, to have ownership in our stories have made up all the more resistant to orthodox ways of experiencing, receiving doctrine. I think our particular moment in the era of personal branding made us cognizant of the model of our identity based on our choices. What music we listen to, what musics we watch. They all create this odd publicprivate sense of identity within that culture, there is an odd strain of what app am i using to meditate . Am i going to a soul cycle class, i think wellness culture is the biggest most obvious example this. I think it is the way in which the consumption is seen to a defined us in the age of the algorithm. It is getting narrower and narrower to contribute to the modernization. I want to press you a little bit on the point that you made at the end. One of the interesting things about the book, at the core, you are talking about practices and experiments that fit some kind of definition of religious or spiritual right. It is a revival of a cultus practice in various forms in american life. Your generation of this spreads out some. Consumer culture, and aspect of consumer culture. Everything holistic and personalized. Convince me as someone may be a little inclined to skepticism that it makes sense to fit the world of brands and that type of self cultivation under the umbrella of religion or religious practice. I would argue there is an implicit theology shared by this very Consumer Base. That is sort of the implicit theology of what i will call best self exam. A moral, spiritual demand to be your best self, improve in a certain way that i would argue its rather solid to stick. The collapse between the effort, the purity that you get from having the right green juice with the minimum amount of toxins. The way that your skin looks after your 10 step beauty routine. The way that these things are sold and it talks about is so loaded with this selfcare not the word coming from a much more political placement. There is a sense in which if we are not taking care of ourselves, if we are not putting in the effort to be the best in this certain way, happen to make it prettier or sensibly prettier and sensibly more fit and extensively have twoweek complexion, or what have you, there is kind of a purity that we are reaching in so doing. There are elements of that that are taken. There are elements taken from the gospel tradition. It is kind of adjacent to that aired i think that the idea that more broadly, your job as a human being on this earth is to be your truest self, your best self, your most authentic self to release yourself from repression, from ways that society has acted upon you and kinda figure out who you really are. I would argue as coded as a moral and spiritual good. The language of energy is really popular in wellness circles, certainly in various, in these circles, there are versions that are much more political and much more outward looking and focus in solidarity. A capitalistic version of it does tend to equate to personal fulfillment with the kind of vibration on the right frequency of the right energy in a way that i find incredibly interesting and quite revealing. Yes. I would say so. I think that this is a brand for which we buy things and it does not have the community aspect. I do all of my shopping there. Well. And it shows. Sorry. Go on. Just that i think that soul cycle is an even better example because it combines a lot of the anesthetic and sense of purpose with a community and a ritual that let you experience that in the moment. I remember i went through a few soul cycle classes. I wish i could say they were all for research, but they were not. We are a community, a tribe, a path. We are a cult, it says it right there. Your energy affects your neighbors energy. Please do not do this, that or the other thing in a way that using this kind of nebulous spiritualized language to talk about or to lend what could just be an uncomfortable fitness class to burn some calories into something with an aura of spiritual attainment. Good for you. Good for the universe and your role in it. One thing that has struck me that i think fits in your argument about the difference between the early 21st century and the 19th century is just an absence of institutionalization. You know, the United States has a lot of the same kind of spiritual entrepreneurs and would be gurus that we had in the Victorian Era or the early 19th century. They do not seem as likely to found things that we call churches. Maryann williams, she is a preinternet figure. She rises to prominence in the 1980s. Updated new thought kind of figure. I feel like in the 19th century there would be a Church Founded by her. It would not be huge, but it would have to hundred thousand people and, you know, there would be chapels around the country. And, that does not seem to happen, especially over the last couple of generations. You have a little stuff in the 70s and 80s, but especially lately. How much of that is the internet . How much of that is in ambient skepticism . Why doesnt Gwyneth Paltrow have, i guess, kanye west has sunday services, wives in Paris Sunday Service for this . I am not sure it would not be successful, at least initially. I think the label of church or the label of making something a church is, as you say, met with a degree of suspicion. I think the fact that there is such a willingness to mixandmatch, weed, millennial s, at the broader here, me, personally, are so much, so much of contemporary is the precise individualization. In the end, we cannot get away from the endpoint being we are all the high priest of our own church that we dont have, i think this is true much more broadly, our religious institutions, our civic ones and our journalistic and media institutions as well, unfortunately, or fortunately, i dont know. I think that that suspicion does just blended self to such a focus on the self. I want to be careful here. I think that there is an easy narrative that we could go to. Kids these days with their selfies. They are so narcissistic. All being priests in their own religion. I actually think that what we are seeing is not necessarily a story of narcissism, but institutional failure. I think it is perfectly reasonable and understandable that if youre institutions have failed you, if you dont think you can trust the media, the scientific establishment, the political system, the academic system, so on and so forth, it makes perfect sense to turn inward, to rely on yourself and your own gut instinct and desires and feelings as authoritative. At least you know you are not wrong. You may be lying to yourself, but you may have slightly more trust that you are aware of yourself and other people. So, i guess to push on that point a tiny bit, is it sustainable . A book about our whole culture. It is focused on, i guess you could say people younger than me. I just turned 40. These are people conducting experiments in religion at a time there conducting experiments, you know, and relationships and professional experiments and so on. I think you can tell a plausible story where these are the children of baby boomers hill had their own rebellion and often sort of hung onto an institutional affiliation. You talk a little bit about this a generational turnover where they took one step out of the door their institution, but cap 1 foot in the door and their kids taking the other step. Their kids have not come up for the part, gone through though, you know, 5060 years of life that await after your 20s. Not necessarily the dogma or doctrine of religion, but the communal forms of religion. The solidarity of a religious institution that is even soul cycle providing. The role that a bar mitzvah or first communion plays and so on. Obviously, this is more the prophecy line. What does this look like in 25 years for the people conducting these experiments now . I think you are absolutely right. The more, lets say, inward looking, the minority some of soul cycle, those are the things that i think are unsustainable. I think that we will see a hunger for, a hunger for solidarity that the kind of pure selfinterested version of these new things cannot offer. I think that what we will see, for example, social justice as a movement because what it does offers an ideology of community, solidarity. There is a real hunger for it. I am interested more broadly and i talk about this on a chapter on polyamory and kind of the free love as a continuation of ideas of human perfectionism in the 19th century, but ways in which the term that has long been used, chosen family. And where people who are marginalized by or experience marginalization from traditional religious institutions, people who for whatever reason are alienated from traditional religious institutions whose family of origin may not be in touch within the same way might be able to find one another. I think there is a hopefulness in the idea that as a result of the tribal lives nation that we find on the internet where people can find likeminded people or people can find communities, they are our options for solidarity for coming together from the creation of ritual in a way that may not look like organized religion as perhaps traditionally practiced, but nevertheless offer that kind of sense of community. I would remember there was a woman i interviewed before starting my book who lost her husband unexpectedly quite young and wanted his friends to celebrate and commemorate his life in a way that was specific to him. The friends got together and they played music from his favorite videogame. A service that was designed not around religious lines or traditional religious lines or along who this person was, what his life was like. He wanted to play a videogame they played together. She kind of wished people she met online play this game in his memory. She reported it was hugely important to her. I think that is such a good example of how our desire for these bonds can survive that sort of reshaping, even as i think that perhaps the pure selfishness, i am being really mean about soul cycle on this call, the inwardness of the culture, shall we say. Then lets drill down then on the question of belief. We are talking about community, but, you know, the core of what we think of as religion has always been belief. A lot of sociological debate about how important our actual statements adult people really take their religious identity from community rather than creeds. I think there is truth to that, but also the major World Religions have been structured around claims of the universe. One question, we have had these conversations before and i always asked these questions, but i will ask it again. I think it sort of radiates through the more supernaturally oriented experiments which you are writing about. How much do people really believe in what they are doing. Specifically when youre talking about neopaganism, people who are sort of reaching back or reinventing prechristian or nonchristian traditions. They are revoking gods, they are revoking demons, they are doing which craft. Some of it seems like play, some of it seems like experiment, some of it seems to have real belief. How do you see the question a belief playing out there . I think it is very difficult to quantify. Very difficult to disentangle from any of these other practices. As you say, as i argue in the book, many definitions of religion, certainly definitions that would say does not matter at all. Definitions that say are they claimed, yes or no. I think that the truth is something a little bit more complicated. If you have found something to be true and you act as if it were true or if you act in accordance with the values that you create, you kind of reaffirm the truth of that within a community such that there is a social reality that is something a little bit more complex than i would argue inward than a model where everyone is doing something and no one believes it, but they are pretending to get along which i think is the strawman version of what a community would look like. Practice the acts of faith and the faith will come. I think that that Ritual Community can indeed be a precursor to faith or a spiritual awareness, rather than simply being an either or or saying belief has to perceive community. So, i mean, to sort of take that, there is also then the way that these things sort of feedback into political life. I think one of the more interesting aspects of the sort of neopagan theme that has happened in American Culture as it has leftwing and white wing manifestations. You have chapters that sort of follow what we may call pagan threads two very different political and cultural destinations. Would you like to talk a little bit about that . Sure. The most prominent example, conceived of broadly, the terms are a bit there is the religion of wicca itself. They may identify but not belong to a covenant. A wealth umbrella of progressive witchcraft or progressive which culture is a significant phenomenon. Already in 2014, riches of america, identified about a million self identified which is in the country and said at the time the Fastest Growing religious tradition. That was before 2016. I would argue that is when it all changed. So, i think in the wake of donald trump selection and the wake of the womens march in particular and the sort of movement around that, there was a real interest on the part of progressives. Young progressives, young women also clear people who found within the imagery of witchcraft and conscious transgressions of a nasty woman. The sort of difficult woman. The woman who is sexually in charge of her own sexuality found these images liberating in part because they were so coated in opposition the way evangelical trump alliance. You would have which is texting trump for texting kavanaugh as these symbolic or spiritually real outpourings with anger, grief. When i say spiritually real, i think it would be fair to say a simple that people were able to use to process their anger, but their hope for a different world rather than just being a convenient symbol. As you say going completely across the political spectrum, there is also the rise of atavism which is a reactionary desire, fans of Jordan Peterson on one hand, member of mens rights groups. The altright, generally this neo water down meet jeanette some of lets return to the good old days when the hybrid of ancient greece as seen through hercules journeys and the 1950s, the good old days when men and women we all had our place. This kind of obsession with physical strength with more deal truth of the blood and that sort of implicit blood and soil that i will just let hang. I think that this reactionary which is a response to the desiccated modern world and the civilization in which feminism and culture was destroyed. A kind of desire to reclaim a past. A very strong interest in slightly dubious site. What nature says goes. I would kind of call it a kind of nature worship. A very different form of paganism that takes very Different Things from our pagan past. And, so, do you, just in listening to you describe it and the things that you reference, it seems to me that in part you can see that as kind of a sex and gender polarization in religion. Obviously, there are male which is and male pagans on the left and there are, you know, alt white, neopagan women. There does seem to be a sense in which the larger polarization of the sexism in our culture seems to play out a little bit in this religious landscape. You could sort of come closer to the center and say, well, Oprah Winfrey and joel alstyne are the yin and yang of the American Religious Center and the Religious Center of the extremes are, you know, which is texting kavanaugh and supporting donald trump or something. This emphasis in certain ways reflecting this religious failure in the sense that you would expect a successful religious community to sort of socialized men and women together in certain ways which may be is not happening. I would say it is a much broader failure rather than just religion. When i look at the wide range of these groups, i do not think they are they are exactly comparable. I have quite a lot more for the atavism than i do that in the which is. With that said, i think that what we are seeing and what i find so fascinating, so many of the subjects of one another are the same. Certain newspapers, for example, horrible pc, feminist of the horrible age or are they sort of these premises, patriarchal papers, i am not naming names that should be struck down because they failed them that way. These are often charges that are leveled against institutions more broadly. I think that whatever else they want to say, civic institutions have failed us more broadly. Speaking more broadly, i think that there is a sense in which, not the center, but the institutions that make up our lives have lost our trust. However we may understand or give voice to those failings, i would argue Something Interesting to me in how widespread the distrust is of institutional targets. So, i would like to thank everyone who has followed my instructions and actually ask some questions. We have 15 or 20 minutes now. I will take some questions out of the queue. Maybe adapt them slightly. We will start with a question. Cite the classic losses for the author of a secular age. The largest book that you could possibly by and may be possibly read. He says, you know, taylor suggests that some version of what you are describing is inevitable if we have the last 500 years right since religion decoupled from north Atlantic Society is human still on a quest to find fullness and meaning that can only be understood on religious terms. It is kind of a nova respect. He defends this against charges that it is too individualistic or too narcissistic and so on. And, so, that, i think that duck tales they obvious point some of what youve been saying. I want to take it, we briefly mentioned the social Justice Movements and this protest politics that are sort of dominating discussion right now. One thing that struck me about those protests is it seems like there is, the nova affect and the desire for individualism, there is also a desire for a religious unity. It is sort of striking to see, in the corporate bowl, we want to live in a society where every institution high and low, corporate and environmental is on board with this cause. Pushing against the nova affected the idea it will all be individualism. There is some desire to have a sort of unified church of social justice. Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. One of the reasons, speaking somewhat productively, i think it works so well and it is so powerful and effective, it is in part because on the one hand, you know, insofar its current version is a version of our times. It is rooted in the degree of inwardness, but it also offers that vision of solidarity, of unity and a common good that can be shared of a better world. There is a hunger for something vital that i see more broadly, which is a sense that our, our institutions should be in this sort of functional way. They should be for something. For something good. It is often the case, social justice culture as a religion, a version of that that is basically using it, it is a cult or so on and so forth. I think a better way is, yes, it works because it is a religion. It harnesses a real sense of meaning, of purpose, of community and ritual that actually point beyond. It gives us an eschatology that sort of other iterations of purely institutionalist intuitional lists, that is hard to say, and self focused religious phenomena dont. I do want to draw a distinction between the social Justice Movement as an organic phenomenon and it sort of culprit type patient as pretty much everyone could sort of think of assumed by corporation to sell product. I think that i am, a movement in and of itself. There are certain brands that will have to say the right thing at the right time. The kendall jenner, black lives matter add in 2017. Isnt that sort of how a religion wins . You go back to the fourth century roman world, you have the zealous of christianity and then you had the roman aristocrats, sort of the equivalent of brands, i guess, today, who did not really care one way or another about the doctrine of trinity. I am going to sort of endow a church over here. I will sort of act the christian part. It seems to me that is kind of the corporate virtue of signaling itself inseparable from the triumphs of a new world. That is certainly fair. One path, let say to victory is through this kind of corporatization. I cannot help but wonder whether another path may be through politics. I come out like many others was rather excited about the Bernie Sanders campaign. Probably something i may have wondered about with slightly more help a few months ago than now. I do wonder, whether, these religious nuns and these progressive nuns, they do vote. Twenty states i want to say the single biggest religious demographic. White evangelicals that turned out for trump with 81 . A statistic now. Thirteen, 14 of the population, they vote outside. Their turnout is great. That population is declining. Talking about the religious nuns there is a lot of crossover. Talking about 23 of americans. 36 of young americans. I do wonder if one way in which this may dashes through the ballot box. We might at some point be a political experiment that takes these values and sees how they work. Would certainly be curiou. This is one of our questions from young javier. How do you think that these will affect our current two parties. The sort of darker scenario. To the extent that one of our political coalitions becomes defined by and dominated by some version of these new religions. Dominating by whatever remains of institutional christianity. That creates a much bigger divide than america has had in the past. Even our civil war was essentially an inter christian the illogical conflict with people having huge arguments that they were still interpretae same bible. The vision that you just set up does seem to set up a version of the culture war that would certainly be more profound and divisive than the one we have had for the last 30 or 40 years as christianity is slowly retreated. I think that that is right. Another way to look at it is we are sort of in a vacuum moment. Something that you brought up earlier, i just want to reiterate it, it is the tail end of a multi generational phenomenon. We talked about 1 foot out the door in terms of a dissolution with, in this case, religious, organized religion in a more broadly way of doing things. Just a sidebar here, i think that most people who leave religious traditions actually do so, one of the biggest predictors and indicators is how much it is in the home. You do have your nuns who are leaving the faith, they are doing so, in part, kind of having witnessed a certain apathy in their own parents. Yes, i think that there is a sort of bleakness or potential bleakness to this coming that i would also argue it has been a long time coming. We have a question for maxine that drills down what you are just talking about. Did you find that there was any specific patterns in the religious background of people that were involved in these new movements beyond just their religion in the home tended to be more attenuated, where they catholics, evangelicals, mainline, so on. So, the mainline, in terms of churches empty faster than evangelical churches, typically white evangelical churches. Polling data which is looked at differently which is why making that distinction. So, at the same time, at this point, the nuns come from everywhere at this point. They are relatively reflective of the United States as a whole. A little whiter, but not by much only one very big predictor and that is that 46 rather than 24 of the National Average are religiously affiliated. That is kind of the only big notable, perhaps accepted marginalized in traditional lysed institutions. That is kind of the big one. Is there any big gender breakdown . Slightly more women are unaffiliated over all. Slightly more men are likely to say they are full on atheist or agnostic. They wear fedoras. [laughter] all right. We have about six minutes left. Let me squeeze in a couple more questions. One question someone brings up, i mentioned upcoming age ceremonies. The idea is that colleges and graduations sort of fill that role. We talked about the harry potter phenomenon. Maybe this would be a chance to talk about the peculiar role that the school claims in a certain type of quasi religious event. The idea of, yeah, anyway, talk about three minutes. I think it is true that it is reminiscent that there are several institutions that we would still have a cultural caee especially over the past week as jk rowlings has quite a big percentage of the fan base. It is so fascinating that harry potter has been a canary in the coal mine. 1997, internet, at Home Internet in america increase from 19 million to 100 million. More than 500 increase. That sort of, that version of fandom and the way in which fan culture developed around it dovetails so completely that rises that are very particular internet culture. Whether it is fanfiction or creation or memes or the idea that you could have ownership of your text. You could have ownership of the things that you love. This was not a model where someone came down from the highr fandom. Having the final word on what a property was. You can certainly see that. The shows that are of fan service, designed for the fans being a much bigger backandforth between Consumer Base information, creators of information. I think that reaches the idea that jk rowling is, you know, excels from her creation. It is seen as everyone. Often the response has not been lets never read harry potter again. Hogwarts is bigger than she is. We can still write fiction. We can still love these characters. They belong to us. That tendency can tell us so much about the wider questions of into elation, inwardness and individualization that we are seeing in large in the book. The last question. Lets do a post covid world question. One person says, do you think in a post covid world where people will be looking to find meaning and purpose in communities and the newer stranger face will be fast tracked and do you think that there is a sense in which they should be more likely to form actual communities or even cults which is aware that we have not used that much. One way to put it is a 1968 politics right now. The 1970s were sort of the high tide of communal experiments, strange religious cults. What do you foresee after covid and maybe after donald trump . Well, i think, the combination of our increased ability to an awareness of the ability to gather remotely with kind of an increased awareness of our reliance on one another for our need for social bonds, the loneliness of pure itemization. Simultaneously both. We are in our own houses. Privilege enough to be able to be. That kind of loneliness in itself, i think, may lead to an increased hunger. Absolutely, i think we will see people gathering digitally. And perhaps i think that people will be much more interested in forming Intentional Community, especially if we get to the point of thinking our faith chosen family. I wonder if that tendency will sort of lend itself out towards an Intentional Community and maybe even a disembodied community. Do you think it is also possible that there could be, i mean, love, this has been fantastic, but it is really not the same as doing a panel in the flesh. That goes double and triple, i think, for a lot of religious practices. Could there be an antiinternet religion backlash that manifests itself in a desire for an flesh communities or communes with large vegetable gardens in weird polyamorous living arrangements. Some of those things we have found really tempting. I think that it is certainly possible. However, i think that it may be even if these communities do come about openly, we may use the internet to get there. We will find a way. 40 of us find our partner online. It doesnt mean they will never in real life. I think that the Digital Space and the promise of that will be a sort of launching pad for people to find, seek out and find communities that may manifest themselves. All right. It is 8 00 oclock. I want to apologize to everyone that asked questions that we did not get to. You are terrific and there are many more wonderful questions further down the queue. Thank you all for joining us. Again, to repeat what i said at the onset, i hope if you found this illuminating and interesting experience that you will buy terrace books, support your local bookstore. And as my final word since i did not say anything in my capacity as a practitioner of one of the ancient institutional faiths, as a roman catholic, while you are dabbling in the strange new rights that tara describes, be safe out there. With that, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. You are watching book tv on cspan2. Here are some programs to watch out for today and tomorrow. Formidable commentator as our guest on afterwards to discuss the new face of socialism. Doctor Ezekiel Emanuel talks about which countries have the best healthcare. Settle in to watch several hours or programs of the late author and founder of the political magazine National Review. For a full schedule for this weekend visit booktv. Org or check your program guide. During a virtual author program, lindsay, historian at the White House Historical Association Discusses George Washingtons president ial cabinet. Heres a portion of our talk. Washington does not get enough credit for being politically savvy, for having good leadership skills, being very actively involved in the president ial process. As i sort of mentioned, he was dealing with some really big personalities. They were loud, sometimes arrogant, they have their own ambitions, their own ideas on how to do things. Including charles lee feel like to bring in his pack of hounds. I am a dog lover personally, i think its great, anyone who knows hounds know they can be quite loud and nonconducive to a meeting environment. Dealing with a really colorful voice stress environment. He had to manage all of those personalities. When washington was president , he certainly had fewer people he had to manage in a small space. Anyone who has seen hamilton knows that hamilton and jefferson really, really did not like each other and really did not get along. That management was crucial. The other reason it was so important was because washington was studying precedent in every single action he was taking. Everything from how to correspond with the secretaries or how to interact with congressmen, how to respond to an average person on the street what sort of social events take place. Someone who is capable of managing these details and managing the people beneath him was crucial when you are talking about a governing structure that is not in the constitution and is not passed in legislation. That day to day management becomes a central. To watch the rest of this program, visit our website and search lindsay. Heres a look at some books being published this week. Cofounder thomas frank provides a history of populism in the people know. In red november, editor at large examines a 2020 democratic primaries. Describing time and a Nasa Mars Mission simulation and once upon a time i lived on mars. Also being published this week, looking back at his career as nasas longestserving flight director. Biographer explores the life of american outlaw butch cassidy. Former National Editor for usa today and century and Ministry Founder jim examined the work that century does to overturn wrongful convictions and when truth is all you have. Covid19, science journalist Deborah Mackenzie looks at how the covid19 outbreak in china became a global pandemic. Find these titles this coming week wherever books are sold and watch for many of the authors in the near future on both tv on cspan2. Appeared nearly 40 times over the next five hours we will share some of those programs with you. First in 1983, mr. Buckley sat down to discuss say collection of his essays from his book happy days were here again. Here he is on cspan Interview Program 8093 book notes. On the cover of your new book perception of a libertarian journalist. Of course you know that was encouraged by National Review during the late fifties to put it out to the straight libertarians how much they had in common