So every ten years to get people in the media to come because those who say the been down here and talk about it so spread out overwhelmingly white and poor persons and will bear a child or socially and economically tos communities. So dispersed its not concentrated or visible or a way of life with newspapers and Media Companies so it tends to fly under the radar a bit. To get in and get out . Or how you connect with people. Yes. We do have those similar things that i get in the car and i talk to people. Is a magical process called journalism and harass people questions and you write down what they say. So that particular story came from a long trip from dallas to southern virginia and back was places along the way that we would about and tennessee and West Virginia and tennessee and West Virginia and to be very good at crossing the bridge not just writing the story or recording it but with the storytelling to talk to these people in these communities how much storytelling for them is alive and part of their culture . Interviewing people that are not professionally in the business of being interviewed if they are like if i have done something wrong but where i find the dirty little secret of journalism is that people like to talk about their lives and what is going on and their history of their perspective on things. Generally let them talk and listen to not try to force them into a particular line of conversation or a narrative when of the things i like to do is my research. The editor of National Review said which text you get from him with no vowels in it. If there is a for the appellation story or Something Like that. And its fun for me without those preconceived notions but without saying here is the story i will weigh in here is my view. I dont have a place where people in mind. I have done that in a number of different pieces talking about the and heroin addiction into Treatment Facilities and people who sell drugs and let them talk about their lives. Its not one that i know a lot about especially now i know more than i want to but you dont really know what its like unless you have done it. So often i go into these interviews with the vague notion of the opening question of whether want to talk about. Have you found the sense of connection even if you didnt lose there any part of you that is connected to the story . No idea of where that. Thats a weird different writers i am not a sympathetic writer. In fact i try to avoid those connections. I wait about pathology whats not working well in society. Like an oncologist writing about cancer. So we suffer and access about social dysfunction particularly in journalism with poverty there is too much of an effort to be made that to be genuinely sympathetic or empathetic you appear that way and those from the big outlets are much more conscious of their own image then they are the story. The suffering that makes for a particularly interesting journalism for what is useful is what is actually happening and then to be sympathetic. I dont know that you are sympathetic but thats important in journalism and storytelling because we dont understand this person and think about the solutions if there are at all of what we are reporting on. So what are some of the things you want people to get from this work . Let me backtrack. When he wanted to do this book, you talked about you dont have an editor calling you to tell the story by the story. That how you approach the book . May be tell the listeners about that approach and some of the things you discovered that took you off track than what you thought the book was going. Every now and then the pages just hand you a good character. But then you interview 11 or 12 people for every person that you write about because most people are not that interesting. So with the kentucky piece is prison time with the chief of police down there and he is in this weird isolated area in kentucky and grew up in Staten Island he married a woman from their and he likes to be outdoors but but it happens he is a real guy and i was lucky enough with that subject i want to write about. Imparted washington pennsylvania and partially us texas. And culturally its very different places bet most people when they write about the Energy Industry and with Economic Development and thats all a good part of the story but when i was in western pennsylvania are writing about this there was cool stuff like the drilling rigs that have robotic feet attached to them instead of tearing them down they just walk across. Most people dont know about this stuff for the history of the industry in texas and midland texas in the sixties it had 60000 people at that point and hads voice dealership. Because there was so much money coming out of the ground. That is people making 1 million overnight day and spending it the next night. And it has changed a lot. And it is very dirty for this business that is run by engineers and finance guys and it is fascinating business also to drill holes in the ground. Its an interesting place to sit in and talk about. So i can midland the jobs in the industry are so good and so readily available including those who dont have skills or education it is hard to hire for any other job in town. So every the job that i saw was a woman. Because the men were pretty much all working in the oil and gas field. And thats how it understands itself culturally. I grew up in lubbock texas its a very different place because it is a college town so as a whole different kind of culture and a different society. You notice those little things. And the upside down hotel market where a hotel room is 60 bucks on the weekend but hundred dollars on the weeknight because there is no housing and people need this is to stay and they take up the hotel. Its a strange place and i enjoyed writing about it. That is in western pennsylvania with the workers that come in. The mom and pop hotels went from living on a thread to all of a sudden being able to strive and do whatever. Lets talk about poverty thats very central maybe you can talk about the threat of one that for the poverty and in the places like appellation . It manifests away in different communities but most of the book is about the downscale although those a cap little babies is a wonderful adelphia one on chicago so poverty manifests itself differently in big cities and on the country side. So the kentucky products have enormous power of on poverty under 70 percent of people that is a big number but the crime rate is lower than the National Average the Violent Crime rate is half because in small communities its hard to get away with anything if you are someone describe a crime and what happened have a pretty good idea where you need to go. So there is a criminal genius a big slate of car robberies they were robbing them on sunday mornings when people are in church. There was a very small important place 40 cars were missing in and someone had 20000 in cash that were taken in the thought that maybe something to look into. That is interesting. Is not in the way we can think of all of the despair and social dysfunction and a lot of people that we associate with poverty. And with this heroin addiction for young men in alabama who all in early stages of a recovery program. To be fairly affluent families. Educated parents who had gone to college, that sort of thing in the problem in life wasnt that they were poor but they didnt know what to do with their lives and they didnt have ambitions beyond the next five minutes and didnt learn how to do that. s and then there is an enormous difference between individuals and communities. Its a lot easier than being a poor person. So growing up and Eastern Kentucky and then thinking about going to college and never met anyone who went to college. And those that were continually befuddled like i was. So the places i have been writing about in the people in those communities and then that and to being a very different story. And discuss those similarities between urban poor and rural poor the word it is culturally similar is a lack of trust and big government. But there is a great tendency on it as well. And those that are very similar . Yes i think there is a great deal of distrust and institutions. With the dysfunction in the communities with the badge of authenticity. And rap music and glorification of the social dysfunction. I never heard a country song talking about studying at mit. And the institutional distrust is to learn very early in life and that new york city unions because it seems like there was a divide of employment. But when i was just under the age of 40 writing that. And just never had a job and as far as i can tell he never knew a man who had a job. But he didnt really know he had a job. The one he wanted to the club or a bar is a criminal and could not get a Liquor License but that did not occur to him. So its been some time in and a homeless camp in austin texas and i interviewed a young woman there who was moving out of the car and cooking over a fire but she felt out of cinderblocks. And her up on one her plan was to get into the Online Entrepreneurship Program and become some sort of business person. The shortterm goal maybe get a job and get a place to live so youre not living in the car. And she had a teenage daughter when she was convinced that she needed was the online degree in entrepreneurship to make her life different. A lot of people that situation just dont know how to go about improving their lives. Also status anxiety the jobs that are available to a lot of people are jobs that are held in very little regard socially. With that National Attitude about work those at work the counters at the gas stations. And then the name or a functioning society was at work as gas station clerks or waitresses and to get by on. So with the White Working Class so that is into believe bad shape they are working. The problem is the on working class. With gainful employment and to have some selfsufficiency. That is a hard that to crack but then to be held in the social regard. And with that notion i categorize this is that they are stuck not necessarily a mentor or a brother or sister or a classmate and then you find yourself in the kennedy people that are stuck because the door hasnt been opened too many people in that community. Yes. The lack of imagination which is a lack of knowledge. People difficult situations cannot think of how to get from where they are to a better situation. And in those possibilities that are open to them. With the stories i have written was at about a man who has a company and he went got them to say that he will be a novelist and as would be writers discover it is no fun. But it could be boring he was always interested in making knives. He tried it was a very good but he went on youtube and got videos and ordered books the terms that he was a really good knife maker so he has a company in brooklyn that sells high and kitchen knives 2500 a knife. They are extraordinarily expensive. When i was writing about him he cannot keep it in stock the store was open two days a week hours and he would sell out had anything left he would put out a tweet with the picture and the price and it would sell it in minutes. I havent checked in on him in a while i hope you still doing well. Nobody is telling you a 15 or 16 years old that you can have a nice and rewarding life making things like that and selling it. He came at the background of social capital that he cant afford to experiment a little bit but there are a lot of people that were never to occur to them to even try Something Like that are try to start a business along those lines. This is the great golden age of entrepreneurship. To for the very Narrow Economic need. Im not a and the modern communication technology. So if you wanted to thousand dollar kitchen knife and he is the guy that does that. And that is with those different areas and one of the things that we could change would be to give people more resources. Because there is something even if it doesnt pay a ten to have your own business and operation. Theres a lot more to modern working life and a paycheck. s s s. What does your book rut to approach where this problem is headed . Its more of a book of stories than it is of arguments, so there isnt that kind of hypothetical analysis, and its good for different people, there are people whose main problem is they live in a place that is economically destitute and doesnt have a lot of capital or opportunities and so the solution for that is very simple i think that if you want a job people on the right have complained they are either get people to places they can work and be independent or maintain them and did some sort of indefinitely. You cant manage some other way to do that and the idea that you can through some Public Policy or by putting the university there to magically transform economically every stagnant community in the country isnt supported by the evidence. And it tends to make the wages better and Employment Opportunities better and there are things we can do along those fronts but the idea that we are going to change the Economic Outlook of kentucky or ohio or michigan with aluminum tariffs or by making angry noise is at the chinese or Something Like that. Its just Wishful Thinking a lot of the stuff is hereditary. People tend to inherit their parents problems and ways of looking at the world and prejudices and biases and habits. Its difficult to interrupt that even when they should be interrupted. Again there isnt a good policy for that. Although, better schools would do good on that front. I think that was the case for me where i happen to good a place where i had extraordinarily good Public Schools and some teachers that were able to point me in the right direction and tell me what to read and give me some ideas about if you dont have that its not going to be created by a government policy. The republican thing theres not enough economic opportunity, so lets create a National Economic opportunity agencies that will explore the opportunities and my political views are simple what people need from their governments are basically stability, rule of law, simple arrangements and the usual Government Services delivered in a way thats reasonably effective and not unreasonably expensive. A lot of places we dont have that. I spent a good amount of time driving around every bankrupt city in california and i was in San Bernardino for the Council Meeting that officially went into bankruptcy and decided they were going to reorganize the finances. Just listening to the people and trusted was republicans, democrats, independents they were just the dumbest most selfrighteous intellectually lazy group of human beings i could remember the displeasure of having to write about and in the city where it is so visible that it has 400 storefronts of something that were occupied and one was a tax office and one was a nail salon or Something Like that where the front door of the city hall could be literally falling off its hinges and they had a sign out front that said out of order, which i thought again was another one of those things you shouldnt make up if you are writing fiction it would have to be true. It was once a working community and it is a good example of how not to make the transition. Its unlike Eastern Kentucky in that it didnt have some economic crisis. Its just always been poor and then the poverty seems more extreme. San bernardino on the other hand is a big place that had a lot of those jobs and it didnt last there for various reasons and they were not able to find a way to get to another place. To make Something Else happen. I think theres only so much that the city governments can do on that front but they can do their job recently well and then theres the dk and disorder and lawlessness. The idea that theres going to be some sort of a Blueribbon Commission composed of these idiots is going to turn these places around i think. I remember driving through a town called ford Heights South of the suburbs of chicago and majority black population and i came around the bend and saw that everything was shut, every business, the projects, and i just remember they had a ford plant and to just everything being gone. Theres like a George Romero movie where you pull up and see these places that have fallen into such disarray spare. You got places like los angeles. Kevin james, not the actor but the republican candidate from years ago how would you go about picking the book and did you leave some behind that you felt bad about now having them in theres always one that you would include. The book could have been twice as long i didnt want it to be closely tied with it going on n politics. I dont write very much on the campaign. Part of my every four years is i do spend time writing about the president president ial elections going on but its not where i think i provide very useful service, so i didnt want to write something that i thought was what does the trump phenomenon mean and all this talk about the working class and is it true or not true. There is some of that in the book but i didnt want to write about a Campaign Book or a retrospectivretrospective accous been going on over the last four years, so i tried to pick things that i thought were i wanted it to be of interest 20 years from now still. A lot of it in todays headlines is bigger stories about bigger issues that are going to be around for a while, so i went to the awards in las vegas which is the oscars of pornography as they call it and i wrote a big thing about whats going on as a social phenomenon. And i think that was an interesting story. There is a long section about casino gambling and another great big policy failure if you want to gamble, gamble but whats going on with gambling essentially is free capitalism where youve got the government acting as a partner in these operations that create value and i say this is someone that used to live in las vegas because i went to the one in pennsylvania and mostly it was in Atlantic City because this is a good example of the kind of Wishful Thinking that says if they worked well for las vegas lets do the same thing in Atlantic City and we will create all these jobs and tax revenues and things like that and in most of the Economic Analysis they suggest that the region is actually suffered a net Economic Loss to account for the extra Law Enforcement and social services. But again its not an essay so much about the sociology of gambling as a political economy and gambling but what actually goes on here. What does it look like at 2 00 in the afternoon and that ended up being pretty fun. It was kind of falling apart and it was a particularly interesting time. There was a dedicated Greyhound Bus and they called it the greyhound lucky streak and rather, i wrote it from Atlantic City back to new york on a sunday morning and he was waiting for the bus and what was going on and no one felt lucky. No one felt. He didnt seem to be very clear on where his pants had gone. There were women of grandmotherly age that sort of thing. It looked like utopia. A. In the state governments becoming partners and getting casinos built it just blows my mind that that is in our culture. In texas where i lived there is always a dishonest rhetoric and we all have good feelings about it but its a general account and you can pretend like its earmarked but money is fungible and its just nonsensical to see because mostly they are little places that look like a 711. Its not the las vegas ship and just used as an adult day care e facilities for elderly people who gamble away their Social Security checks and it happens in poor areas, not very wealthy areas and its a grotesque abuse. You can take the highway to that little strip across the state line there are these little cafes in the beauty salons and barbershops and Convenience Stores and you are right it is almost always elderly people throwing their money away. I never understood the gambling culture at all. I worked really hard and cant imagine after working hard to hand my money away. A. Is another one of thosestori. Like at the atms at the casinos in Atlantic City, a lot of them you can take out money without putting in a code so they wanted to make it as easy as possible for you to do that, put in your card and you can also take out more than you have in the bank where it treats it like a credit card transaction and it gets put onto your bill so if youve had enough to drink that you no longer remember your code you can still get money out and that doesnt say anything good about those operations. Lets talk a little bit about you before we wrap this up. You are an incredible writer. There isnt a piece of yours that i havent read. Your attention to detail and bringing situations to light. Amazing american writing. How do you think it is and maybe it isnt important at all, but how important do you think it is that you do not live in dc or new york . I lived in new york for seven years i guess and 11 months maybe. Its more class and culture than it is geographics. You know the rich white parts of dallas and houston look and feel a lot like those of Southern California or in connecticut. Similar people, similar jobs, similar tastes. The poor rural parts where im from i like living where i live here in texas but its a lot easier to get places so you can get pretty much anywhere and a couple of hours going from the east coast to the west coast or the other way around is a bit more of a reduction. Its not my first choice but you do what you do when you work in journalism. The Democratic Convention was in charlotte the conventions themselves actually handled journalists assignments the worst hotel imaginable and the crack piles someone said at that hotel i wouldnt bring a hooker here, to which roger stone replied i would. [laughter] not unexpected. You left social media. Thank you for your advice on that. Its made me a better reporter and person. Can you explain why you left . I never used it at all until my mid30s i went to work for an Advocacy Organization and they required everyone to have a facebook page. Thats the only time to connect people with your stories it got a lot of traffic and if i put up a post on the corner i can count on a couple hundred thousand also that never brought out the best in me. I tend to write opening sentences that are 210 words long. Some people are good at it and some create more value frankly i bought myself one of those word processors that doesnt have an internet connection, email or anything like that wa ways to distract and its very useful its very useful i find and the older i get the more invaluable. The Great American writer of my lifetime its been great talking to you about your book and i wish you great success. This program is available as a podcast. All programs can be viewed on the website at booktv. Org presented her research on the economy. Here is a portion. One of the things to recognize is they are different than the conventional businesses. They generally operate with open access what that means is almost anybody can join the platforms. Theres a few qualifications around background checks and so forth. But the most part is these are really easy to get on and earn on. The one thing it does is gives chronic excess supply particularly when there is a bad labor market and that is what we are seeing right now in the postcobit environment which is tons of people streaming on these apps getting harder and harder for people to make so when the money market is doing bad, more people go on and you can see that on the data as the general Unemployment Rate moves you can see there is a loft on the course of the year, very flexible and you can see it in the rising number of workers on the lower. The openness for whom that flexibility is essential there may be other people that have response abilities. We have people that we interview to had to leave fulltime jobs because one woman got a divorce and had to take care of her children what its going to be like today or hour to hour and the apps that allow that so thats one thing thats really positive that flexibility they obviate or sort of eliminate a lot of management functions. So hr, quality control, matching consumers with earners with algorithms and so they didnt hire many people at their Corporate Headquarters and they are very lien in that way. They are now automated. They are done through algorithmic management and that means that workers dont really need that much managerial supervision. They dont need managers as much as they did. And this becomes an argument for why the cooperative structure is so much more efficient than the in these kinds of platforms. They also scale rapidly if you get the right technology you can build out a coop it turns out to be a really efficient way to organize platforms as the cooperative case in which the photographers owned and governed the platform they got the money back from the photographs they sold and the whole enterprise, so i think that is one possible future it does take advantage of what the technology has to offer. Will. For a murder the guardian cause a painful indictment