Available as podcasts. I am so excited to interview kevin. I am thrilled talk talk to you about your book. Can you talk about how you came up with this . The name is from a couple physical kentucky, i spent some time in the county, a lot of journalists visiting because every ten years, this comes out and it turns out this is where they get. The pain in the butt media people come and its funny the people i talked to, i know these people from your time. They come down and talk about so what i came to believe is spread out, overwhelmingly wide, poor places in rural america, or in many ways, socially and canonically politically similar similar for urban immunities although there were important differences like crime so it is a way of life that we dont write about as much because it is not concentrated and visible and it is not a way of life lived the places where major newspapers and companies and things like that are based tends to fly under the radar. How much time did you spend there . You get in, get out . Spent time in the area, maybe talk a bit about how connected people you are writing about . You and i do some of those things in life, get in the car and go to a place and walk around and talk to people. I stayed there until i heard everything i need to hear. This magical process called journalism we go to a place in look and see whats going on and ask questions and write down what they say so that particular story came from a pretty long trip from dallas to southern virginia and back, so not just about kentucky. There are places i wrote about along the way, some is in tennessee, West Virginia although most are in the community in Eastern Kentucky. Explain a little bit about the grid, who are very good about crossing the bridge and connecting the bridge not just writing a story, not just reporting the story but also incorporating three telling into your report and maybe talk about talking to these people and listening to these people, how much storytelling with them is still very alive as part of the culture. To interview people who are not professionally in the business of being interviewed. At first, there always hesitant, it is a little like a trip to the principals office. He done something wrong, coming to my town and asking questions that i dont want to talk about but what i find, the dirty little secret of journalism is its kind of easy in a way, people like to talk about it a lot they like to talk about what is going on and their history and perspective on things. Generally if you let them talk and listen to them and not try to force them into a particularly line of narrative, they structure the questions and interviews in a way that has a preconceived notion of what the story is but one thing i tend to like to view is to some of my research after the fact. They just said what you get this text that you get from him with no vowels in it. [laughter] he said Eastern Kentucky story, what do you think . So i got in the car and went and that is the appalachia story. Something like that. People like that and its fun for me to show Something Like that. I dont really go into it saying this is the story and reduce right and this is what im going to do, i just want to have people in mind. Ive done it in a number of different pieces, there are some similar pieces out. Opiate and heroin addiction in which i spent a lot of time talking to people. People who sell drugs, i let them talk about their lives. Thats another story, it is not a world i went into knowing a lot about. Probably no more about addictions and things that go along with it more than most people do, certainly more than i want to. You dont really know what it is like to run that in new orleans unless you have done it. Often ill go into these interviews with a bag notion in a couple of open questions about what i want to talk about. Have you found a sense of connection with people you listen to write about even if you think about in the, how will i be connected to this person because of their lives . Is there any part of you thats connected to the story . No, i try to avoid it. That is one way that you and i are very different from another writer, i try to avoid these kinds of connections. Write a lot about pathology things not working well with people and an oncologist writing about cancer so i think we suffer from excess to the mentality and journalism already there is too much of an effort to be made to be generally real journalists currently with big outlets are much more conscious of their own image and presentation of themselves than they are the story. Today and the writing is extravagantly sentimental things, how much they feel about these people and yada yada. I think what is useful to go find out what is actually happening in a situation and then try to document it as well as you can try to be entertaining. I dont have much effort to be sympathetic. And i dont know that your pathetic but i do think you bring people to life vividly. I think that is important in journalism and storytelling because we dont understand whats going on, we dont understand this person, how do we do about solutions if there are several with what we are reporting on so what are some good things that you want people to get from this work . Im going to backtrack for a second. When you went through this book, you just talk about you dont have an editor telling you this story, you go out and find the stories. Is that how you approach this book maybe you can talk to the listeners a little bit about that approach and what are some of the things you have discovered that kept you on track to where you got the book was going. Every now and then, they just hand you a good character and sometimes it is easier than it seems but in the intervening 11 or 12 person most people dont. Remember in a kentucky piece, i spent some time with the chief of police down there and he is chief of police in this weird isolated backwater kentucky, he grew up in an island hes got this new york thing going on and he married a woman from the he likes being outdoors so that is what you can write a movie abo about. But it happens to be the real guy and i was enough to have some time to talk to him about his perspective. So ill have a front i want to write, or a place that i want to fight about so i have a couple big pieces on the Energy Industry in western pennsylvania and partially in west texas and they are different in the different places because pennsylvania and texas, i lived in both states. There culturally very different places but most people when they write about industries, the end of writing. I found feldman not in this part of the story but there are a lot of people at the to tell that story. When i was pennsylvania going about this, there was some cool stuff. Giant 90foot tall with robotic of having to tear down and rebuild, just kind of walk across and that is nuts. Most people dont know about this kind of stuff. The history of this is pretty interesting in the way it changed. 1960s midland, about 60000 people had dealerships, there was so much money coming out of the ground and it was like a wild cowboy culture, people think 1 million overnight spending the next night and that has changed a lot. Its been interesting to watch this, this reputation of being wild cowboys and such is very nerdy, its run by engineers and finance guys and it has become, it is fascinating hightech, sophisticated business and they drill holes in the ground and drink whiskey at 7 00 a. M. Its an interesting place to think about and talk about for a while. Weird Little Things you spent time in a particular place like the height of the oil and gas and midland, the jobs in the industry just so good and readily available the people who dont have skills or education, it is hard to hire men, particularly for any job in to town. Every job i saw, every restaurant, every person store was a woman because the men were pretty much all working in the oil and gas industry and i think that affects how its understood culturally grew up not too far from the but its a very different place because its not in oil and gas town. It is a whole different sort of society. I plan to spend time in a place before you notice those Little Things. An upside down hotel market, hotel rooms are 60 on the weekend but 400 on a weeknight because they have no housing for people coming from other places he places to stay to the hotels weird face and i enjoyed writing about it. Absolutely. Have a lot going on in western pennsylvania, the workers who come in to work on the land and they have these little mom and pop hotels, all of a sudden theyre able to do that. Lets talk a little bit about the poverty. I want to get the book away, it is amazing what maybe you could talk to a little bit about this property radical and what you learned about that in particular cases. We manifest in different ways in different communities, most of the book is about the downscale although there are a couple big, one in philadelphia and one in chicago in one of the first things you learn about, poverty manifest itself in differently in big cities versus the countryside. Appalachia has enormous poverty, respect, Something Like 100 with the crime rate is a bit slower than the national avera average. Half the national average. Part of it is because its hard to get away with anything in the small communities. You would hear someone and have a pretty good idea of where you need to go. Place with the usual stuff is real thing. There is at least one criminal genius down there, a car robbery where cars were brought, they were robbing them sunday mornings while people were in charge which is one time you can get away with crimes of the its a small and very fourthplace, somebody had 20000 in cash so i want to know where that came from, that might be an interesting thing to listen to. Poverty manifest itself in different communities in a way we tend to think about these stories ourselves. All of the social dysfunction we see, some places are quite functional. A lot of people in the pathologies whether addiction or poverty, when i was writing about heroin addiction, there were four young men in alabama who were in the early stages of Recovery Program they were from affluent families, they have educated the problem was that they were poor, they didnt know how to live and what to do with their lives. They never learned how to do that. I think those conditions seem to be worse, for people in the communities and something i should mention, is an enormous difference between for individuals and communities. A poor person in a place that isnt necessarily for i think is a lot easier than being more present for community. I grew up in a poor household myself but we grew up in a college town where her parents were College Professors there was social Capital Management in each of everyone you know if youre thinking about going to college, it would give you basic knowledge and what this looks like. The financial paperwork and that sort of thing, the places i have been writing about our poor people in the poor minorities rather than poor people and affluent places. It could be just a very different story. When you discuss similariti similarities, one of the things that i think is culturally similar is trust the government for institutions, whatever way you want on can you talk about this some of the similarities. That is dysfunction in the is authenticity on the conservatives in the 90s talking about in various criminal enterprises and social dysfunction but i have never heard a country song about sitting at mit. Celebrating. Things that we think of as being unwise choices people make. Institutional trust i think is learned very early in life. I was writing about a situation where there is an economic product in the south bronx where i was living at the time and it didnt happen because they had projects and they just walked away from it. In neighborhood but there is not a lot of employment, i was talking to a guy up there about my age at the time, just under 40 so he is probably 3839 and he just never had a job. As far as i can tell, you never knew a man who had a job. His mother had a job, so the other ladies in his life worked but he didnt know a man with a job. Even at the age of 40, very real expectations about what you might end up doing, being selfsufficient in some way. I remember saying he had no idea the club or about liquor licenses. Similar things on the u. S. About a homeless camp in austin, texas that interviewed a young woman there, living out of a car in front of a car out of cinderblocks and stuff her plan was to do an Entrepreneurship Program and become some sort of business person which is maybe not true but longterm, shortterm goal is not to live out of the back of the class. She had a daughter, a teen daughter, didnt live with her fulltime but she was convinced what she needed was an online degree in entrepreneurship to make her life different, to get a lot of people and situations i think just dont know how to go about improving the lives and is also that is inviting, the Jobs Available to a lot of people in these situations are jobs held in low regard socially, i think there unproductive national attitude, i think we sneer at people who dont require College Degrees and people, jobs that are necessary, we all need, the counters at gas stations working the overnight shift 711 myself sometimes but we tend to people and those jobs are treated badly socially where is a better attitude toward work, the first was selfsufficiency. In many cases, there are people who work in a gas station, which is is and stuff like that to make enough of a living to get by on. We talked a lot in the last four years about the situation, but the working class is in bad shape. Been a great time to be working. For some reason you will connect with employment in its not something better. That is a hard one, they should take jobs pay very much, the first step toward making life better. With that notion, do you believe i always categories th this, are they good examples of doing this . Hasnt been someone not necessarily vengeful someone that is a brother sister for plastic class make. Classmate. Do you find them stuck because the door has been open to many people in the community . I think lack of imagination, which is a lack of knowledge, for a lot of people in those situations cant think how to get where they are to a better situation and opportunities possibly some are open to them they dont know about that they can think about. One of my favorite stories i have written is this guy named joel, a Company Called cut brooklyn, these guys did creative writing summer and they discovered writing is no fun. Lock yourself up in a room and it can get boring so he decided he wouldnt do that. They were always interested in making knives, he tried wasnt very good but he went on youtube and got videos in order books and it turns out he can do that. He has a company that sells highend kitchen knives for like 2900 a night extraordinarily expensive things. When i was writing about him, door was open to days a week, four hours if he had anything left, he would send out a tweet it would sell in minutes. I havent checked on him in a while. Theres no one telling you when youre 15 or 16 years old and have a rewarding life making things like that and selling them. He had an education came from the background where he could afford to experiment a little bit and understood the value of that to a lot of people, i think, it was never occurs to them to try Something Like that try to start the business along those lines. This is one of the great ages of entrepreneurship, ever easier to learn the business. Never easier to fill the very Narrow Economic future. Im not a huge fan of modern mitigation technology, maybe music but the one thing it has been people with specialized interest in specialized interests. If you are somebody who wants a 2000 kitchen knife, then there is a guy who does that. That is true with a lot of different areas of business and areas of interest in one thing we could change education would be to give people more resources and ideas during post because i think there is something even if it doesnt pay attention, having your own business and operation, doing the things youre interested in and it provides beyond just a paycheck and there is a lot more to just a paycheck, status that is very tied up in their employment. That is one of the reasons i think black people shy away from these low status jobs because they dont want to confirm that is the kind of person they are. To the solution, the problem with the working class, where does the problem is it cultural, geography, failure in education . Is all three . Is something is magically transformed in the stagnant community vicious is supported by the evidence which tend to make the Employment Opportunity better but the idea that we are going to change and then to make angry noises at the chinese it is simply wishful thinking. A lot of this is hereditary people tend to inherit their parents problems in the ways of looking at the world and it is difficult to interrupt that there isnt a good policy for that but better schools would certainly do some good on that front but the case for me where dumb luck i happen to have good Public Schools and some teachers who could tell me what to read if you dont have that it will not be created by some government policy. With the National EconomicOpportunity Agency and how stuff works my political views are Pretty Simple what people need from their government is basically civility and rule of law and protectable arrangements and the usual Government Services delivered in a way that is reasonably effective and not unreasonably expensive. A lot of places we dont have that. We spent a good amount of time driving around every bankruptcy in california. I was in San Bernardino for the City Council Meeting as they went into bankruptcy and just listening to the people that were interested with the power of governing the city , was fear inducing. Republicans and independents were the dumbest and most selfrighteous group of human beings that i could ever remember having the displeasure of having to write about. Where the decay is visible at the giant Shopping Mall the middle of the city that has 400 storefronts and only two were occupied one was a nail salon and the front door city hall literally falling off the hinges and it had a sign on the front that said out of order. You cannot make that up writing fiction it can be true. But with the middleclass working community and its a good example of how hard to make the transition. San bernardino is unlike Eastern Kentucky didnt have an economic crisis. Says the rest of the world had gotten but had more no space jobs but they were not able to find a way to get to another place to make Something Else happen. Theres only so much city governments can do on that front but they can do their job reasonably well which they were doing but there was a prostitution on the streets with decay and disorder and lawlessness. The idea that would be a Blueribbon Commission i think that is. Driving through town called ford heights in cook county in the Southern Suburbs of chicago. And the majority black population i came around the bend every business even in the projects and i just remember thinking how did this go from up the prosperous town, they had a ford plant to their with the middleclass black town to just everything being gone . And that really the Something Like the movie when you just go up and see these places that is how it has fallen into such despair. And you see in places like los angeles the book and kennedy for mayor out there drive around parts of the city but then also new york city is underdeveloped with very little commercial activity and this is not a market failure it is a policy failure. Absolutely so how do you go pick the stories for the book to leave at about that quick. Theres always some that you issue included afterwards so yes, the work out of and twice as long im not sure that suited everyone else but wouldnt want that to be so closely tied to politics dont my very much about campaigns my every four years act of contrition and reconciliation i do write about president ial elections but thats not what interest me or where i think i provide a useful service so i didnt want to write Something Like what is the trump phenomenon mean while the talk if it is true or not true. That is in the book inevitably because i write about politics but with the campaign. The retrospective account of what has been going on the last four years ago i try to things that i thought would be of interest in 20 years from now. Its not todays headlines about bigger stories and bigger issues that will be around for a while. So i went to the words of las vegas the actors of progress we and what is going on as a business as a social phenomenon. I think that is an interesting story ten years from now. There is a long section about casino gambling how that affects our society and another policy failure. I am a libertarian if you want to gamble then go gamble but that is not freemarket at all. Now you have the government acting as an and partner in these operation that create new value not very bright people and separate them from their money. Casinos are some of the most disgusting places in america. And the one in pennsylvania have you been there . But mostly from Atlantic City because this is a good example of the policy makers to say it worked really well for us vegas the most of the Economic Analysis of the city is that the region has suffered a net Economic Loss once your account for the cost imposed by it. But is not an essay so much of the sociology of gambling but what actually goes on . What does the casino look at 2 00 oclock on a wednesday afternoon . That was fine but it was right around the time although it never opened but just as i was falling apart, i had one good decision. There is a dedicated Greyhound Bus service from the product that will be the Port Authority terminal they call it the greyhound lucky streak. Rather than writing that down there from Atlantic City back to new york on a sunday morning and wrote about who was on the bus what was going on. One guy did not have any pants. Women have grandmotherly age turning tricks in the parking lot. The Port Authority is pretty despair on a good day but it look like utopia compared to where i was coming from. You made an excellent point about state governments and casinos getting those built blows my mind that has happened in our culture. And lotteries with the tax essentially and although true in most states there is dishonor us to one this honest rhetoric of people that are sympathetic but it is nonsense there is a general account and one big budget the money is fungible. And particularly it is calling the way casinos are built looks like a 711 will have machines in them. Is not the Las Vegas Strip it is used as adult daycare facilities were elderly people to gamble away their Social Security checks and typically happens in very poor areas not the wealthy areas. It is an abuse. You look at the highway from pennsylvania into that little strip and to West Virginia little tiny cafes. And they are inside beauty salons and barbershops and Convenience Stores and this tiny little casinos. It is almost always elderly people sitting there going there are many away. I never understood the gameplaying culture at all. I work really hard. I have been poor i cannot imagine after working hard throwing my money away. It is another story where they tell details that stand out for me like at the atm casinos in Atlantic City you can take out money without putting in a code so they make it as easy as possible to do that. You put on the card and take out money i guess you can take out more money than you have in the bank they treated like a credit card transaction against the casino and it is bill. If you have enough to drink you dont remember your code you can still get money out and that doesnt say anything about those operations. Lets talk a little bit about you you are and incredible writer and your attention to detail but also paying the scab off when we want to see that is amazing american writing. Maybe its not important at all but do you think about living in new york . And then in new york seven years and i lived in dc 11 months. I like dc and i like new york okay. It is funny because the split in america is more that cultured and geographic. The rich white part in houston look like the rich white parts of Southern California similar people with similar jobs and similar taste the rural parts of west texas where i am from look like Eastern Kentucky i like living where i live here in texas because i travel a lot for work before the plague but its a lot easier to get places from here with any major metro in a couple hours going from the east coast to the west coast with a bit more production. But also i like to drive. I went cars i usually dont take my own. And i dont mind trashy hotels. Is not my first choice. [laughter] but you do what you do when you work in journalism and the Rose Convention in charlotte a few years ago and i cover that for National Review and the convention themselves handle journalist assignments so go to the Democratic Convention with the democratic review you get the worst hotel imaginable with workers and workers workers and then to say there is a hooker and roger stone said i would. [laughter] you left a social media by the way thank you for your advice on that. It has made me a better reporter and a better person can you explain what you left quick. It was a time suck. I never used it until in my middle thirties and went to work for an Advocacy Organization that required everybody to have a facebook page. Thats the first time i used social media and then i started to use twitter and i thought it would be good as a Marketing Tool to connect people with your stories. For me and never was. May be other people get more value out of it than i do. National review has a ton of traffic if i put a post on the corner i can count on a couple thousand people seeing that which is more than my reach on twitter i dont need more good ways to procrastinate so at 2 00 oclock in the morning trying to explain a University Student that is mad about something maybe thats not the best use of your time. And it never really brought out the best in me and some people are very good at it. And with those word processors that doesnt have an Internet Connection and not have 10000 ways to distract myself. And its very useful i hate to admit and taking the opportunity is very useful i find in the older i get then i waste more time than possible. It has been great talking to you about your book i really wish you Great Success with your book. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. The book created a risk for the all my god can you anecdote and the arms race and all those to follow have been meaningful in trying to get that it is a disservice sometimes the best stuff oh my gosh trump said this in a meeting were trump stumbled and was reading the words of the constitution because he didnt know what they meant. Those are memorable. The book a very stable genius which was a huge bestseller and that ended up to overpower