Thanks, everybody. This been an amazing few days. This is our last big battle, and im taking the prerogative of introducing it because people i admire more than almost anybody ive had the pleasure to spend a career with, but before i do, dont worry im not going to give thank you to all the sponsors, im going to tell you youve got to go outside right after this at 4 00. We have music and whole lot of things, but in particular we have charlie gabriel. Mitch will tell you how amazing is. The 89yearold come when of the originals. You can be there with the presentation hall jazz band. So unlike most book festival we with our party afterwards. So come hear the band, come, come dance, whatever the one of the things i teach it to link is a transmission that happened in media and the great transformation that is happening now is how books have survived but also they survived as audiobooks and podcasts. The three people on stage along with Michael Lewis whose podcast, billy podcast i think ive done, but have been at the forefront of the world of creating audiobooks, podcasts, and helping not just poor desha poor old white in this debacle but to create some new medium. Jacob weisberg, i i knew backn used at the new republic in the 1920s or 30s, right . [laughing] you hired marty back in. But anyway, Jacob Weisberg is been in many different incarnations of media including helping to found slate, and now worked with pushkin industries, thats the other two on stage for creating this new form of media. Michael lynton, together we go way back but from the days of penguin press, aol, you made it through a whole lot of mediate incarnation. Sony and now youre part of this. Everybody of course knows Malcolm Gladwell. Perhaps [applause] but Malcolm Gladwell, if you want to know what this new world is like, read obama mafia. The bomber mafia. Let me introduce Jake WeisbergMichael Litten and Malcolm Gladwell and ill see you out there afterwards. Thank you. About 15 years ago steve jobs fgave us this and seven years ago apple gave us this and we now have the dawn of what everybodys describing as the golden age of audio. The question i have is with hymy amazon prime podcast . Why are there so manyprime podcast . You go first. Thanks malcolm. I think in any new medium things that are familiar, genres get a foothold and crime novels in terms of paperback novels and inexpensive literature a lot of them are mystery,crime, thrillers. Its a genre that has key aspects of storytelling, the cliffhanger endings, the suspense, obviously violence. There are subjects thatpeople are inherently fascinated with. We dont just turn up our nose even though were sometimes known as a highbrow podcast. We dont turn up our nose and things that are entertaining trying to figure out how to do things with real value. The e thing that worries me about True Crime Podcast genre and just as a side note if any of you watch only murders in the building the steve martin show is fantastic satire of True Crime Podcasts but their true stories they have to be journalism. They have to follow thebasic rules of journalism. They have to follow the e procedures around information a gathering and just having a sick integrity and theres a been a real problem with alot of these shows in that they dont. Like some of them have been plagiarized and people think if i got this story on the internet i can retell it, its just audio and one of the things were trying to do a lot of things with pushpins but one of the things were trying to do is bring some kind of common standard to the storytelling so weve done a couple of podcasts i have been great. We had one call will still which is been two seasons about murder stories in malibu taking down the locations of this done by new yorker writer Dana Goodyear has been show for years, really good true crime storytelling butit has literary value. So malcolm, how many books on revisionist history have you done . Where now on season seven. So barely existed and the whole podcast, the idea of podcasts barely existed. What attracted you in the first place. Jacob told me it wouldbe really easy. Which was a lie. And he told me i would make a lot of money. So no, i was deceived. So you just kept going for seven years until you saw the light . It turned out to be really fun. It is more lucrative now than it was in the beginning but its just the longer i do it the more i realize its different kinds of storytelling. I thought it was just another version of book writing and then i realized its like ive got a completely different career. That was what exhilarated ome is i was in need of additional storytelling. How tostorytelling different from what youre doing . In a certain sense the stakes are higher so if i have off on conversation with someone, if both parties are enjoying themselves and if theres something funny or unusual or weird about the way things are expressed, as a listener your game, youre all their. A fun conversation represented in print, why would you read that . In that sense the bar is lower because audio evokes emotion so you can get much morepolitical stuff. But i think it pushes you in a different direction but theres an episode of it now for season seven which is all about i become obsessed with magic wand experiments. Its an experiment youcould do if i gave you a magic wand , you could wave laway all practical ethical financial laws of nature. Zoology is i call up a bunch of people and said what do you want and it turns out every person and its just a series of me avhaving these increasingly preposterous conversations with people about the things they coulddo if they could wave a magic wwand. So i call this woman who studies child psychology and i want to take any boys, cut off their. [bleep] and tax them to 1000 newborn babygirls and i want to have the kids , the boys without a. [bleep] everyone thinks its a girl so the parents raise it as a girl and the boys think its asheet for the first five years. We will settle once and for all whether parents have any impact whatsoever onthe gender identity of the child. [laughter] great idea, put that way. Its weird on the page. Its a little weird as you say. But i feel like it works. Its more that missingone. But then it got even more ridiculous. If you have other ,magic ones, shes just one offive. Because then you get then you get in and what i call next . I called one of the worlds leading experts on twins. Everyone does the twins study but then whats the twins study you could do if you could wave a magic want . So i call up this woman whos one of the worlds greatest, dont tell me the twins study youve done, tell me the one i could you would do if igave you a magic wand and her answer is cool. So i had to go through with her for different iterations of weird twin studies and you know when people talk you quickly get lost because you cant use it on audio because youre talking about forceps and fraternal twins and forceps of identical twins. So finally i got a study which was like she got interested in mixed race parents who have fraternal twins. One of whom is white and one of whom is black and she would have been in her class and by accident she would talk to them and she realized they have different lives. Theres a case where you have same parents, same environments, sameupbringing. Near skin color and theyve already got divergent problems but we havent kept gene standard, have we so her magic one is identical twins where one is white and one is black. L but then they wouldnt be identical. Identical except for skin color. Thats a magic wand. Shes like, that is amazing. Thats an experiment t. This is an example of something where if we had 1 million twins. I know where youregoing with this. We can stand up and say is racism over, if not so the Supreme Court for example thinks its over. This is widely throughout the voting alrights act. Lots of people Walking Around think its over, a lot of think its people think its a not over, is it over i have no idea. I know its less that was 20 years ago but how much, we have no idea. If we have 1 million twins in this condition may be the way to america when everything is income, we can have success fighting. That works, it works because women the one talking to, shessuper serious and im like what . She thought about this. On the page but yes, they captured the spirit of it. It just hit me when you are talking about this america amazing audience. No one uses hand gestures in modern storytelling more than you do. You cover your eyes, you cant hear that much on the podcast. But the thing, i think a lot about what makes a good podcast, what makes a Good Television documentary, what makes a good book and one of the things thats fundamentally different but easy to miss about tv versus podcasts tis the role of the imagination. When you watch film and entertainment of any kind, someones imagination has already determined how every scene looks and if you were talking about a magic wand experiment theres only one way to visualize it. Maybe you would dramatize it and you do some errands. If you would receive that as someone else maybe brilliant idea, maybe not so brilliant idea but when youre just listening your own imagination personalizing the story visually inside your head and every time on the album show if hes any of these episodes. Youre driving a car around the track. You are you know, running around a golf club taking the steps of a couple of favorite episodes of your show. Everyone listening see that picture and creates that picture in their heads a little differently. And i think that the way podcasts and audiobooks sas we try to make them imactivate and trigger the llimagination. Its really a key to why there having a moment right now. The thing you did with god that is inside your head is really a big difference. Even a small difference, whats the difference, your listening through headphones when youre listening with headphones, your isolated in a certain way. And youre not listening with other people, its not like having the radio on. Youre intensely engaged, imaginatively even if youre doing Something Else at the same time which most people are the thing i like about the audio renaissance for the moment is it is curbing video overreach. So video overreach would be any medium once it gets fat and happy and super profitable tends to expand beyond the legitimate borders of its creative brief. So youre doing film starts with telling really amazing stories. In movies you bring the wild west to life. But then they start creeping and they start like colonizing whole areas of storytellingwhere we dont need the image. Like, half of, dont get me started on documentaries but half of all documentaries dont need to be documentaries. Youve nothing to show me. One still picture. This is london, 1938. Do i need the image . Tell me the story about london 1938. If youre not going to show, bring it to life than youre wasting my time. Youve just spent 10million doing the video portion of something im really only listening to. What audio is, what were doing is reframing the r stories that are truly test told through the ear. And im asking this question. So for both of you, you in particular jacob. Before you even do that youve been podcasting forhow long . We started at slate in 2004 so the right at the beginning and as with a lot of Newer Technology the initial wave of enthusiasm which there was about podcasting in 2003 2004 little trivia quiz item ill give you, twitter was founded as a podcast. It was supposed to be a podcast directory. Podcasts they thought would be so big that they were going to need something, we still kind of needed to sort out what podcasts were good and like a lot of the things bill gates released some version of this and people overestimate the amount of change that happens in two or threeyears but underestimate the amount of change for 10 years. Podcasts didnt take off in a lot of ways, 10 years later they came roaring back rent a lot of people tied to serious but at slate weve been making them the whole time because they were fun, we werent making for the most part of revisionist history type podcasts that you know, are a narrative and do a lot of sonically rich parts, we were doing more conversational stuff which was still a huge part of podcasting but i felt it was a medium because whatyou could use creatively, what you could do emotionally , you kind of relationships had with listeners which is very different than what wyou have in journalism and for one think its a lot more positive but anyway, just to you my friends involved its a wealth of audio to. In malcolms story is a slightexaggeration but its basically true. Its not that hard but of course it is if you take it seriously and do itwell it is our. But i went to the writers i most admire including Michael Lewis and a few others, some ofwhom come to mind. And i think my thing was pretty much all of them are fast that this new medium m challenged them, challenged the writers, opens up opportunities, let them do something thats different from what they as masters of their craft as writers have been doing in print. Maybe getting it back overto malcolm. I wonder if you would say a few words on how your writing this change and how writing for the year is different from writing for the page. It is different. It encourages you to think a lot more about character and things that audio does well. It makes you look in different places for stories. Its kind of gotten the reporter, what happens over the life of our recorder i think or this place, if you met me in 2020 five talked to tons of people more than i needed to and i talked, i got more into this issue and then with podcasts you have to talk to people. You cant just read a book and then say whats in the book, youve igot to call a person and go to a lot of trouble and it reminds you about how much fun recording is and how you learn all of this like, the thing in i wish Michael Lewis was here, he is here up here, but the thing ive always liked is the hardest thing as a writer is you know that you want to find out about gaps so you know what the minimum number you need to do to find out. And you know what the maximum number that you need to do is. As any person who is confused could that lets say its 20 so the question is if its between ads arrange 3 yoto 20 how far you go. As you get or adapt as a writer you tend to minimize the number of, you stop three. Because you think i can make it work. And podcasts you cant do that so in podcasts your fourth and youre telling audio stories, you find yourself doing 10 and what you learn is i forgotten how much amazing stuff there was between three. So to give you an example, i got down things that are to come and get it to go into. And the tv show. Is an audience i want to talk to, a creator, the actors, but i really wanted to talk to the nbc guys Warren Littlefield. So i tracked down Warren Littlefield and again i was writing about it but never would have called Warren Littlefield what and that voice he seemed to be interesting and i called him up im talking about halfway through the interview he starts to tell this fantastic story about they, backup. They all hes done all my or so the guy who was a lot in dc was a guy named donald meyer who was inthe ojs best friend. The two guys are talking about the early days and one of the staff, donald meyer and he just starts talking again. Te he really hated don. Who cares about don question then they came to me and said i love the idea but i knew god, problem. I tried to get this idea in the show about a gay man on television in america in 1997 , living with a straight woman and don is having none of it. He spends like a year trying to strategize this path to don and start by lying to don. Don doesnt really catch on but finally the pilot finishes and the air the pilot and don thinks thats his moment to kill it and he makes don downplay it but all these executives are in the room and theyre going to watch the pilot episode of will and grace and bob wright is the head of the whole Company Comes down from new york city to watch the pilot. Don, the big chief looks nervous. Play the first episode, dead silence. And don oldmeyer was like. And with a serious face he says thats the finest piece oftelevision ive seen in my life. Like, mthats what you get when you go to the tent. That just reminded me. So the whole industry now is 15, 18 years old, whatever it is. Are we in second inning, fourth inning, is it silent movies, black oand white, technicolor, where does this go and are our audiobooks art of that trajectory or is it a whole separate thing and where do you think the podcasting industry format will go creatively and how does audiobooks fit into that . Those are interesting questions that we think about all the time. Its constantly the development of the medium. I remember we got michael to kind of help us when we restarting the Country Company iswith Book Publishing and film and music and is like a deeper range of experiences in the media and you started listening to a lot of podcasts. And i remember you saying i cant find anything else good wto listen to. You were like ive been through everything and ive out of stuff. Thats surprised me because the story people kept doing the story there now 750,000 podcasts, now 1 million podcasts but in a way i think it was right, there were a large number of podcasts. There were a lot of folks at esthe library of congress but it doesnt mean theres something you want to immerse yourself in. There is a lot of high quality Audio Content being created and distributed by podcast for which to me just means its supported by advertising so sold for key but i think were still relatively early. There hasnt been a kind of standardization in industries. There have been a standardization around the number of whats the season. There will be more than one genre and more than one way to work but part of whats wonderful about the movement in the industry now is it is where listening a little bit and things can be quirky or weird or really different from however they work and there are nobles that yet. Thats the most fun. To work in any medium abefore the rules get set and at the same time i think we crave the rules because it will make the industry more mature and more viableand i think thats coming but id say creatively , were still in the relatively early phase. With audiobooks, were not even in the, the pictures are still warming up because theres all this, there are all these techniques that have been developed around podcasting and how we develop an ntimmersive rich story and the different elements now become completely obsessed with audio archives which is true a treasure trove and completely underexplored and underutilized. Chand a hallmark of a lot of the things were creating is trying to find some true audio material. You ehear the interviews, the way your music, just the way you bring the sound elements together to tell the story is so natural to the length of the book and the immersive experience of a book that i have to think audiobooks, audiobooks are growing. There probably part of the Publishing Industry thats t going fastest but there still made basically for the most part the way they were made 30 years ago, 40 years ago when the library of congress disputed them for sight impaired people. Theyre an actor or an author reading the text. Part of what were saying is limited, podcasts and you love losing yourself and this story and this style of storytelling why dont you want to do that with books so we made malcolms books this way. Just made like his first book which have done another form. We made not the whole lawrence, we didnt want to mess with it but were making audiobooks as if they were podcasts and i have to say from the listener if you completely works once we figure out the business of it i think its going to becomemuch more familiar. What got you, why did you fall in love with it . At what point did the switch flipped . Maybe its because im a little less lifted by either when i was working at the Washington Post in the early 90s and i was ahead of the Washington Post thhave me join this committee of reporters. We all met and said the reason ive put you altogether is where trying to deal with the fact that people dont read newspapers anymore and i was like i think its time. I left. And thank you for the heads up. Became a magazine writer and then that happened and i said its time to go. I would be on the subway and i would see people when i got to new york on the subway people were reading books and magazines and itwas a point where they were all listening to something on their phones. Why isnt that the business i want to be in but i do think you have to, you have to follow your audience. You cant be, you cant be selling newspapers to people who are want to tell stories. So where were you when you are writing or playing these books and you thought to yourself geewhiz, i wish i could insert a witticism or whatever it was. That neveroccurred to you at the time. It was more about all of that wasnt occurring to anyone . We didnt even have a concept of the idea that you could tell a compelling story, that people would want to buy ari compelling story in audio. You still fall in love with this picture of yourself as someone who is committed to the page. You dont have to be committed to the page. But theres certain things where you just want to hear them. And that includes obviously music but comedy, sports, and its now at the point where when i read prose, on a page about music you feel, it feels like a slightly unnatural act and then you talk about a little bit about this audiobook we did, when paul simon, is a category question and people listen to it and say i love it, what is it . Is it a podcast, its an audiobook but what is it . I dont know. I met with about two years ago i had lunch with nicole and because i had gotten the number of somebody and i said i think we should do something together. And she miraculously said why not, what would you like to do. Im like can you harmonize . E . I said can i come, can we come and hang out with you and of course he said ill be in hawaii. Is that discouraging me . And so we went to hawaii and every day he drove himself. Hes the most on rockstar of all rock stars. We can get the studio we wanted. It was way up over the hill. If you no matter we, do you mind if i name drop . Just by saying do you know malley . Im so going far beyond malley. Malley the island is like this and the hotel is this massive mountaineer, we were in the studio at the top of the mountains and to get there you had togo around the island so it was an hour and 20 minutes. Every morning we pick up paul and drive. Except for the time when we drove like halfway there and paul would be like i have to go back. I have to go pick up my wife. The name dropping story is i cant do it. Goahead. Its really a great story. Your among friends. Michael lewis told us about princess diana. Im talking to oprah and i told her the story and she goes you know that my house in maui is just up the hill. And i have a private road down the hotel and i dont know if he told me i could as n a private road opposed to an hour. Its like what . Should have thought of that. It brings you back. What the height of oprah. We sit with them in the beginning and he talks. For a while and then we say we decided we should place in the beginning you we asked him to play all his songs that he listened to when he was a kid because he had this perfect memory and he would comment on them and after a while we realize the minute he has a guitar in his hand, he becomes transformed. So at every opportunity we tried to get him to pick sup his guitar and to jacob you realize you dont want to read about that. Like, this magic moment when hes describing some crazy story of showing you something thats full of this miracle and wondered about that moment show him something on the guitar that this is where this came from or this is what i did to that and youre hearing it and you feel like youre in the studio with paul simon ouyourself. Youre having the exact same experience i had when i was sitting across from him in hawaii. And then it went on because he came back and he would visit me in connecticut and it was so much fun. The one thing i couldnt get him to do, he was married to a musician and he started talking about how he said yeah, the most interesting and complicated requests are with ed my wife and we did this one thing where we were just practicing last night. Where is she right now . Shes just in the house. 50 feet away and i was like, it wouldnt. He wouldnt invite her in. All the way back there to kiss her and he will do aduet . If you listen to this thing its like not with being with paul simon for five hours. Hes got his guitar, talking about his past but then there are all these other elements. One of the first chapters is malcolm the arising about paul simon. Of course he has a theory about paul simon, its all about the high school and queens where carly simon went to and why did it produce all this music and how did it come out of doowop so you have this malcolms idea and paul simon telling you memories of all this stuff and paul simon playing his guitar. Then we talk toother musicians about paulsimon , Herbie Hancock. The thin one is still my favorite. We asked paul the list of people we should call who had interesting things to say. One of the most, im having a zoom with sting. Staying, paul thinks is not a rock star in thesense that he is a rock star but he doesnt behave like one. He behaves like if you met paul simon and he told you he was actually your accountant , you would be like oh yeah. Its so down to earth. Staying is not your accountant. Im on a zoom with sting and first of all, in close proximity impossibly handsome and secondly where are you . Im in a french chcteau on the french countryside. Is that a renoir over your shoulder and he gives me like a knowing sting like look eland he proceeds to tell a perfect, a story so perfect and then im so, i never get intimidated. I was completely intimidated. I was so intimidated i ended the interviewprematurely because i couldnt possibly think of a thing to say. Heres the thing that touched my heart when he was doing it. Hes telling the story eland he looked me in the eye with the renoir right there telling me the same story about traveling across country in the early days of the police and how they were listening to america. The theme song on this journey and paul simon was his hero. The story is exquisite and then as hes talking to me i notice every now and then he glances to the side and i realize hes prepared. Its so magnificent. Thats why hes staying. The Herbie Hancock one was great because Herbie Hancock is famously the smartest musician. Hes so up here and down here and everybody who works with Herbie Hancock reaches the point where herbie wants to do something and i cant follow him and they all folder cards and go home and then paul simon collapse collaborates with Herbie Hancock and then at that point i realized paul simon is on a whole other level. So every one of these different musicians that we talked to had their own really beautiful perspective on paul simon and you hear all their voices. Will open it up to the audience. I understand how this works when each of you are talking to or listening or even better fishing with each other for music but how does it work when you have no one to talk to, for example with the project youre working on you want to talk about one of those for a bit . The one im working on now is this book about tom bradley the former mayor of la, most interesting politician of the 20th century and controversial person. And hes long dead so there are a combination of, many people who are still alive who can speak and theres a wonderful phrase which was in jacobs brothers most recent book where hes talking about jacobs father and joe that i know him better now than when he was alive which sas as someone who recently lost her grandfather, one of the most incredibly moving things and i realize theres a great truth in that when people you have an die opportunity to reflect on who they are and with the passage of time your reflections grow more and more in some cases profound so theres a group of people who are still alive who remembered tom bradley and whos reflections are as a result incredibly valuable. Hes gone for 20 years so theres that, that circle and then you have tom bradley himself and all these tapes. There are i dont know, 20, 30 hours of oral history which i swear no one has listened to accept me to this point or people connected with our project. Because we were the first to digitize ltapes which if someones listen to them its justfsitting there. Tom bradley were still alive im not even sure what i would ask him theres so much out there so someone from that era, 60s, 70s, 80s is still very accessible. Earlier is harder but the other thing thats great is theres a sweet spot and all reporters know this which is theres a point in your life when they stopped caring about the consequences ofwhat they say. Its not that they are unaware of the consequences, theyre aware of them but its like it doesnt matter now so there are all these people who are at that stage like, whats to lose. But when we get pitched an idea for an audiobook or podcast , first question is is it before 1930 . If its before the age of recorded sound youre not t going to find things, youre not going to have that archival page, youre not going to be able to hear it so you could do an audiobook of a biography with all these bells and whistles but there wont be wanything there unless we somehow do a dramatization. That documentary malcolm was describinglyearlier. Yits not that you can do anything but theres no Real Advantage to doing audio and the second question is wheres the motion . Ive learned this from our producers. When i would interview somebody i was up with a great quote and what was the thing they said and when you pull it out it epitomizes what youre trying to get at. They listen for where someones voice chokes up and it usually is not about the most important thing they y said. Its sometimes a little clue, you hear the crackling of the voice and its that emotion the producers know will resonate with listeners. So after 1930 emotional content, good audio. I have a question i use for the threeway cry. In an audio interview theres you, the subject and then our producer or whoevers listening in, its a triad. The one way cry is typically the subject crying. 2 way cry is where the interviewer chokes up. The three way cry is where your engineer whos not even there said i had a threeway cry and it was like im in tears, i look up and i hear the person on the zoom solving and then like the producer are you okay . Im okay. Unlike threeway cry, oh my god. Where a very weedy company. I wouldnt have thought that, i wouldnt have thought that would be like the thing we would be striving for and its not that youre not trying to manipulate people e that youre looking for genuine emotion and when you have those moments its exactly right. And its a sefour way cry, you know youre going to get a reaction. Should betaken another question from the audience . This for mister gladwell, you mentioned when you were moderating mister lewis that you dont have any interest in reading your ownwork so first whats it like for you reading an audiobook, i believe you read your own. I read them usually right after ive read them so its all very familiar and its not painful. If you ask me to read you the audiobook of Tipping Point right now i think i would rather shoot myself. For malcolm itll be easy and youll make a lot ofmoney. Mister gladwell, im a big fan. I have like a throwback question. Every since outliers ive read it a decade ago i have a question for you, what you 10,000 hour , im dying to know, how did you become who you are and what your 10,000 hour . I have a variety of different answers to that question but the one im favoring at the moment is that i come from a family of people who are almost all uniformly storytellers. So my father was so terrible that my mothers earliest memories of my father were quoting as they would say. Is that he would stand up these dinners that they would have to tell a story and then get halfway through and loses way. He was mortified, he would routinely launch, tell jokes growing up and then he couldnt even get to the punchline meand would somehow forget. His voice would trail off. It was just like and then my brother although he could do anything he couldnt explain anything. So i think i try and learn things from him and couldnt. He just didnt know how to organize, it was maddening so my entire life im surrounded by growing up people who just were botching it in my eyes. From the earliest time i was first just in my own head a kid i just retelling the story know, daddy, the story goes this way the punchline has to go here. So all of these things, these lessons are being hammered into me darting around probably four or five. And right up until two weeks ago i was home and was forced to deal with it. So i take that there. Youre the best storyteller ever so i love you. Last question. Last question, no pressure. I first want to Say Something about i just cant get over how much content writing, audio and otherwise is represented in this room at this moment. Its kind of phenomenal. Im a native son so i dont think ive ever been a room in new heorleans where theres this many storytellers in print oraudio or otherwise. Its incredible to be up here. [applause] and something on a much lighter, recently my daughter was a student for a day at an elite private school and when she came home she told them i went to their cafeteria and it was like being in a restaurant. Getting all the food from all these different restaurants and immediately, i said i have a podcast for you. Because i actually feel like we cant really prove that the schools we pay for our in fact better than Public Schools and in fact in new orleans if you go by writing which is not you doing a good job ofquestioning rankings as well. The schools here that are regularly produced students who go totop schools are actually not private schools or are not only the private schools. So this question that were having this dialogue that were having is something your taking issue with inmate ways and bear with me. Like you have this ask to grind with harvard, they only let somebody people in to have a milliondollar endowments. You bring up, you did the whole thing on another local institution. And rankings and how basically my question is is any of this pursuit of a more fair equitable anddemocratic society , what can we, is it better to take your kids to schools twho have the best top tuition or that are in the schools that we want to reproduce that structure, that way of doing things and ive been dying to know what your answers are, what can we do or how should we approach that because youve done so many different angles or even like the kid from east la or from la but you know what im talking about. What do you do, is it better to send kids to, is it better to go to private schools and our private School Better than Public Schools, all of them and to when can we as society society, we need to come up with a way that we educate our population that actually produces democracy. [applause] the first thing id say is even before you ask the question of whether its better or worse its more important to ask the question is it easy or harder . The point about private school is that its easy so its easy if i limit my student population to the children of the privileged and i charge a lot of money which gives me an honest resources to deal l with every eventuality and if i quote unquote and selective that i can keep out anyone thats going to cost me a headache and my job is easy. If youre in a Public School where you can do none ofthose things , obviously its hard. There are places in the world where we consider it honorable if youre in the education business not to shrink from difficulty but to embrace it. We consider that for the job s of the School System is and those who are a writer would be treated with less respect in this country reflect that so we decided to make as educational heroes we decided to spend an enormous amount of time and portion of the educational system if i called up ferraro, a middle for all your contributions to creating automobiles, affordable transit transportation, number you sell cars for 2 million, its not that hard. You can guarantee me 2 million for the car i could make this car for 2 million. You know whats hard is making up boats left for 35 million maybe we should just start by ending this kind of endless adulation of those who occupy that 96, 97, 98, 99th percentile of hierarchy. That would help. My, i dont have infinite time here but my longstanding quick fix to this is it works for college and it can work for high school too. You can go wherever you want but it should be illegal to ever disclose the name of the institution you attended. That would solve all the problems. You want to like she awakened to usc i dontcare. Fine, but once youre out of there you can never tell another soul that you went to unc. Thank you jacob and malcolm. [applause] sign up for our newsletter to receive the schedule of upcoming programs, author discussions, festivals and more. Book tv every sunday on cspan2 or anytime online at booktv. Org. Be uptodate in the latest in publishing with book tvs podcast about books with current Nonfiction Book releases plus bestseller lists as well as Industry News and trends through insider interviews. Find about books on cspan now, our free mobile app or wherever you get yourpodcast. 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