Transcripts For CSPAN2 The New Better Off 20161211

Army Intelligence Officer that willner who recalls her personal and professional connection to east germany. That all happens tonight on cspan2s booktv. [inaudible conversations] hello, everyone. Welcome to [inaudible] im so happy to be here with courtney and that you can all be here with us. I do want to say trent gillis, who is just really one of the cofounders of our project, is courtneys editor on the blog. Hes really, really sad he cant be here. Hes sick today, so i kind of i just want to bring his name in here. Get well, trent. I know. [laughter] thats right. So courtney sent an email yesterday. I guess when we planned this, we didnt we werent looking at the calendar and saying whats happening that week. And courtney emailed yesterday and said should we, should we do this . Should we have a book launch in a salon to talk about the new better off in a week with this momentous and really unsettling election, a really unsettled political landscape. And i said, absolutely, because of what happened this week and how unsettled we are. Its really important that we sit together in rooms and we talk about things that matter to us. So i, i was thinking this morning, i was sitting down to think about introducing courtney, and im not going to do a big introduction. You can read all her credentials, journalism network, the on being blog where i love the presence she brings to our media space where she really, i think, walks that line that is so lifegiving and illuminating for everybody reading, you know, her rigors as a journalist and as a thought leader but also in a human being. Shes there in fullness, and she brings that every week. So i write down when i was thinking this morning, im so happy shes here because i love her. [laughter] thank you. I love to you. [laughter] and she is a journalist. Shes a new journalist. Shes a, shes one of the people whos modeling and innovating and incubating new forms of journalism for the 21st century. The old forms are failing us. Theyve failed us through this election. And, you know, were sorry. I feel like im speechifying, but here we are in this week. You know what . I need it. [laughter] okay. Its true of all of our, all of our institutions right now in this early 21st century that things that make sense and that seemed like they worked even ten years ago just dont make sense anymore. Its true of schools and medicine and prisons, and its true of religion, and its true of journalism. And we are going to have to remake it. And i think that is one of the things we all kind of get this week, how we do that is not clear. But you are one of those people who is figuring this out kind of close to the ground. So thats exciting for me. And one of the things im discouraged about today was some of our best journalists, people i read, are these hysterical, apocalyptic, you know, analyses of whats going to happen in the next four years, and what its going to mean for the end of civilization. And these are people who didnt see what was right in front of them for the last 18 months. And that kind of hysteria is not helpful. So my question, and i know your question, is how can journalism be of service to common life. And that kind of journalism is not just a service to common life, this is a moment where some humility is called for. So one of the things i want to do both by, you know, framing this space for tonight is to pull back to a long lens which i find helpful and meaningful in moments like this. I like to sometimes think about if people were looking at our moment in time a century from now, what are they going to say is really important that was happening right now, right . What is happening right now that, in fact, is going to be the thing that people a hundred years from now say this shaped the world. We inhabited the election of donald trump, maybe, it might be. It might be the fact that its 70 degrees and sunny in november in minnesota, and all the things that that implies, right . It may be these millions of human beings right now as we speak in this warm room making their way across europe, millions of refugees. I, you know, what how is that going to shape the world that emerges. I love, in all the years of doing this show, i have loved and been inspired by this story that the men benedictine nun jo [inaudible] tells. I love her. You love her, yeah. So she says imagine sixth century rome. Whatever the New York Times of sixth century rome was, it did not ever carry a headline that says benedict writes rule [laughter] because there was this crazy guy over here who actually, i think, in his lifetime [inaudible] one of his early communities tried to poison him. Successful venture. [laughter] it was not a successful startup. Nobody noticed, nobody wrote a headline, and yet a thousand years later what this person with a vision of Community Set in motion, actually, these were the communities that saved civilization, right . That literally kept western literature alive. And we dont know whats happening right now in our world that is planting those invisible seeds that are setting that in motion. However, i suspect that the kinds of people courtney writes about in her book that courtney and her ecosystem and probably everybody here are part of spinning some of those webs. And i find it, i take hope and delight in the fact that even with all of my resources as a journalist, i dont know whats happening in our midst right now thats going to save us. And that means we have to shine, we have to continue with what we are doing and what we feel called to with vigor and with passion, and we have to shine a light on everybody elses good work. And so thats what were here tonight to do. [laughter] all right. So the new better off, and i want to read a little bit to start to just give you a flavor of why i said to the question should we cancel tonight because of whats happened in the world, resoundingly no. So this is from the first chapter, the introduction. What im finding, what youll find, i hope, is that being mature doesnt mean being numb. To be sure, living in america at this unequal, messy moment can break your heart. But it doesnt have to break your spirit. Living in america is so interesting, so fertile, so up for grabs. Its also disintegrating and reconstituting and recalibrating. Its up to us to make life that we can be proud of and to make communities and systems and policies to cradle oaz lives. Those lives. Its up to reject tired narratives about success; instead, offering new ones that are less about exceptional heroes and more about creative communities. Its up to us to reclaim the best of what previous generations did that made this country so unique and so beautiful. As well as to own up to the destructive legacies that were part of, to expose them to the light and to figure out how to fix them. Its up to us to be humble, to be brave, to be accountable to our own dreams. No one else. Its up to us to be akon dallasic iconoclastic, to be together, to stay awake. Its a wonderful book, its an important book thank you. And i think one thing ive been so admiring of as youve launched it is youre not just promoting the book. I mean, of course, all of us that write books want to sell books, but youre really the book is a conversation piece, its a conversation starter. Youre taking it into communities and into companies and, you know, building Something Like a movement or contributing to kind of the movement thats wanting to form anyway. Whats that been like, to be out there in this moment . Its been so gratifying. I mean, in many ways i feel like im just trying to language some of what im observing, and so that feels like the role of kind of giving language to both yearnings people have, but also things theyre actually creating in the world that they may underestimate the power of. Yeah. And sort of seeing that power, acknowledging it and languaging it like, hey, you guys are all doing similar stuff, so theres something greater here than just, you know, youre prioritizing, creating community in the small way that you think is insignificant. Its actually whats going to save us all, you know, to the earlier points you were making. So thats been so gratifying, to feel like im the book is acknowledging invisible, deeply beautiful, important work which from a gender perspective is often womens work of creating community and all these things. Also poor peoples work. One of the things im very clear about is those that are the best at creating community often have less money. And so this is something that kind of turns the tables on who we think in this country really knows how to do things to create happiness or efficiency or whatever. And how do you, how do you explain that . That connect of not having as much money, being better at creating communities . Well, i think, you know, wealth makes us dumb about how vulnerable we really are, because we think we can buy our way out of a Trump Presidency or a, you know, like to speak of this moment, its like, you know, when youre when you find out that donald trump is the president of the united states, it doesnt matter how much money is in your bank account. I mean, you could, you know, fly to the Cayman Islands and live there, i guess, theoretically. If you care about america, it doesnt matter what your bank account is. You are vulnerable to this government just like every other person in every other socioeconomic bracket. Wealth fools us into thinking we can buy our way out of suffering. Uhhuh. But what is it that not having money or not having too much money, how does that create a condition where you get better at community . Thats what im wondering besides necessity is the mother of invention thing, right . That you have to look to people around you okay. To get by. And then it turns out looking to people around you rather than thinking you can solve to your own problems makes you happier and healthier and that theres a real freedom and, like, Mental Wellness in vulnerability, right . And so, you know, everything from like im thinking of these immigrant women that my friend was telling me about who needed to clean houses in order to make money, but they all had kids. So they created their one little makeshift coop so one would take care of the kids and the others could clean house, its that small, invisible stuff that low income people have to do out of necessity very often, but now it turns out that those kids have aunties. View occasion, oofer of calling. Which i think the 20th century with but its really as youre pointing out, its not at all just about what you do, but about who you are and how you do it and its a plural thing. We have many callings at once. How would you Start Talking about how this word and ecosystem of implications can start to change the way we create our careers in our life. How does that mean, how we define that and work with that . Well, i guess i would start to tackle by by tracing my own relationship calling and vocation that i grew up thinking that my job had the important job because he was a lawyer and came too realize that everything i do to that is in mirror of what my mom did and she was kind of ten Different Things and not a lot made a lot of sense on paper and all had deep influence in the Community Around us, she was a Film Festival and social worker and mom with the condoms in the closet, they could go there to make sure they didnt have unplanned pregnancies. Entrepreneur before i even knew that was a worried but it was like a community entrepreneur, community organizer, et cetera. It turns out that my way of being quote, unquote, important is to be what my did. I happened to be a writer. I think that a loot of when you look at the way the future work is happening, so much of it to me look like many of our mothers who we thought didnt have quote, unquote, real jobs. Interesting reclaiming and this is for a lot of men too wanting to have jobs like their mothers. This is not just about women. As work becomes decentralize theres a big risk and theres all of the deep systematic questions that we have to answer but on a one by one basis, theres a lot more room for flexibility and for people to show up as parents and workers, et cetera. Yeah, so to be that point of the fact its not like you get one vocation and maybe there are people who are completely singleminded but thats really not anybody i know, right, you have a vocation as a worker and as a parent and as a neighbor and as a citizen, you know, i think a lot of us are thinking, what is our calling now as a citizen. Its not like you put others on one side to do any of these. Exactly. All the worlds are blending much more which from my sper effective is a good thing and, you know, theres i feel like its important to keep reiterating that its a privilege to be able to be a freelancer and afford insurance and know the bottom is not going to drop out if you dont get a paycheck. Having said that, i think that the blending of those worlds, i mean, my best work and paid work is often with friends, collaborators, thats a very new way of living, sort of the sense that you had colleagues and boss and kind of. Friends would be totally separate. Whooshing life balance makes no absolutely no sense to me and i dont feel weird about working with my friends. Even like our relationship, youre my mentor, my friend, i also write for your website and your project. Its like none of that feels weird to me. I can see that theres a bit more of a separation between the people you collaborate with professionally and your friends and i just see that all breaking down. It is breaking down. Its messy too. Its challenging, its challenging traditional organizations and hierarchies and so then what are the boundaries workplace boundaries. Well, i even work with my partner, talk about boundaries and complexity of, you know, that for me that makes the work all the richer because whether its, you know, my husband john who i collaborate or my dearest friends anna, i knee know her in such a real textured way and i know the complexity from what i need to call her out oar support her in certain ways. It makes it harder but more excellent if that makes sense. Im thinking about how it feels like i was thinking about black lives matter. Clusters of friends. The itself came from three women. Money caiting with one another and look what its brought. Theres so much these days born entrepreneurially. I do feel like my favorite people these days are people who just seem like so masterful at friendship and its almost like a new realm of skill. Not that its knew, obviously, its not knew but its something about the way people are thinking about friends and working with friends but i feel like its a bit different. Yeah. Friendship is something to cultivate. I love that. And im thinking about your daughter, i just want to tell recent college graduates, dont worry about your resume, worry about your friends. You have amazing interesting friends, then youre going to be okay. I dont just mean youre going to be okay after hours, i mean, like your work would be better because you have amazing friends and you will have more opportunities because you have amazing friends. You dont even have to network with intimidating older person. You should do that too because that helps. Its not about finding out who is the most elite person in my field and how do i befriend them. Your friends grow up and become those people and eating pizza in your living room. And i guess, its really i dont like to generalize groups of people but i feel like the new generation is coming up organically and doing that better an friendship is changing and you see new generations valuing it differently. I certainly experienced that and i feel just amazed that, you know, the younger people that im in touch with are in early 20s and what theyre thinking about and they are kind of psychology about you know, of course, jealousies and competition and whatever but there does seem to be a very kind of generous about how much people love their friends. I always see the young women marrying their friends on facebook and theyre not queer and theyre not in a romantic relationship but they want to say, this is my dearest friend. And friends getting tattoos and theres [laughter] how much people are committed to being, mastering friendship. Something that you do and you and i have talked about it crossgenerational friendship i think that i told you one of the pieces of advice, ive always had friends when i in the 70s and 80s. She said ive always had younger friends and for some reason that wasnt a concept, i see you and you talk about this and you write and i see you in a robust web of mentors and women, specially women but probably not just women of other generations. Old man friends. [laughter] yeah. This dear mentor of mine from college. But i also learned really about my women friends why are 10 years older, theres something about being able to see yourself in a near future that is so important to me specially as a mother and a new mother, being able to see my friends that have 6yearolds and 7yearolds, that has been just so important for me. You said that the language of work, life, balance makes less sense in the way new generations are navigating life and i see that too but i think you point at the challenge for your generation. A new challenge for your generation which is the Life Technology balance. Right. And that we are all on unchartered territory in devices and have beautiful and terrifying and landed in the middle of our lives and youre really on the ground and describing on the ground and so many people of your generation are walking about figuring that out, making it humane. Yeah. I feel like thats i mean, thats part of the chapter on attention and it was because i felt when i was thinking about what had whats something that generationally couldnt be written about how were creating the good life, that feels to central. That was not on anybodys horizon. Right. Now its just central to your capacity to create robust healthy relationships, not to mention your own individual Mental Health is how do you relate to your device, how do you think about when youre online and offline and i dont think theyre any easy answers and if anything i thought, younger people probably had figured this out more because they have grown up with it and theres a counter intuitive thing and i was talking to next door neighbor and said, so tell me about your phone, when youre having a deep conversation with a friend, how do you, what presence, we never dont look at our phones even if we are having a conversation. No. [laughter] not only does this ruin my counterintuitive and that was frightening to me and i am really worried about that in general like well, its our kids and my kids. Its a genny pig generation. Sorry facebook. There are plenty of kids, people who are doing that. I do see kids working with this. Yeah. But theyre not they quit to be theyre not all about selfcontrol and selfdiscipline. What worries me also is models at this very moment we are wrestling with as we get out of adolescent phase, we will have and every 24 hours we will look into each others eyes. We are still trying to understand the nuances, you know, its almost like we are treating like alcohol or we do it or we didnt it has addictive work, works addictive things in our brain. Like youre 21yearold. The beat goes. [laughter] i want to read a photograph from the new better off. [laughter] so okay, so explain what a board and brilliant challenge is. So this is a radio show that basically challenges people, they had new challenges every day, delete your favorite app on your phone and basically trying to the challenges reconstitute peoples capacity to be somewhere and be board and let their mind wander and do that sort of nondistributing thinking. Take your own board and brilliant challenge, take a walk without looking at your cell phone. Notice weird little shit, have random thoughts, witness, lose track of time, love people the way they deserve to be loved which is to say without a cell phone obstructing, ultimately our attention which is remembered finite is spent one monday and ensure that your tinny choices reflects your grand am bigses for how people experience you and how you experience the world. Its all youve really got. The stuff effort equation. Talk about that. The stuff effort equation was, i think, my language that i came up and please let me not be plaguerizing and consumers have a major cost not just environmentally but psychic and emotional energy. The mideast stuff we have the mideast we have to recognize and repair it. Get new stuff when we think the old stuff is out of fashion and its like sort of endless cycle and so along with the ways in which identities are changing faster and faster and maybe the way we use today buy stuff to sort of symbolize who we were is changing and that all of us are just, well, we hope, a lot of us are thinking about stuff in a different way in terms of wanting to get rid of it and not consume as much in the first place and share it and i profiled this intersectioning Organization Called the yurdle that give away the old stuff and get dollars which then alou ewe to buy them stuff so this cycling and its part of the things happening. Thats a deep shift in capitalism. How does that human sides and make our lives better . Im very interesting in that. The word enough. You reflect on that. Its a very important word to me on many different levels. Its important in the sense to me that i felt like this is typical of a lot of people in our generation. I was born last day of 79. Im one of the last elder millennials. I felt like i was raised with this sense of kind of bigness that i was very important and what was i going to do in the world and also about being raised white and privileged. The 20th century and the vocation was save the world. Yeah, i think ive done a lot of sort spiritual work in my life, rescaling my expectations, not only about my own impact on the world but about where i want to spend my energy and time that i actually am more interested in having an incredible lookal community of friends and being famous or you know, ce calibrating that to think about that in a different way and enough attention and enough stuff and just admitting that its all finite which is something something when you have kids its suddenly still in your face that i feel like having children sort of medma wake up and made me feel like duh, its going to end. This is all ive got and i have to just do the best i can with every moment but i think before i had kids it felt specially hard to wrap my head around. Its part of what i wanted to write in the book. First generation that they didnt think better than my friends. You arent going to be able to afford the big house and have the fancy jobs and i wanted to say, you know what, you can be sad for the next generation or you could look at ways in which there maybe realizing that the big stuff, big house and the fancy jobs didnt create a lot of wellbeing anyway. And maybe its not so sad to have a smaller life if, you know, however we define small. Its not so sad to spend a lot of time investing in a Smaller Community of people. Maybe thats the root of wellbeing and we have to actually return to that to some degree. Yeah, and i think that over the years ive heard a lot about even before we use the term millennial, i heard a lot about younger people, one of the words theyve used is they looked at what they see and their parents generation and people who are running the world now so a loneliness that they deent want for themselves. Would you talk about you and john made a decision to move into a cohousing community. Was your first daughter born in the cohousing and you now had two children. Its an old model, right . Right. Yeah. Theres some other language you have about the lost art of labor laborness. I dont know what identify gotten out of cohousing. We share garden, kids play room, tool shed. We eat together thursday nights and sunday nights. Beyond that has informal commitment to radical hospitality. We are there for people in oakland that live in oakland. In that neighborhood also for each other. And i am just so i have lived there for about four years now and they are complex and it continues to move me to know and what it means to live and particularly getting back to my points in generational community. Last night when i was mourning and grieving trying to figure out about the election, i sent out an email, okay, should we gather people like what should we do and so myself and my 3yearold daughter and my 78yearold neighbor louis and i ended up walking to the park to join the vigil and we are walking down the sidewalk and louis are talking about the plants they planted in the garden and how excited they are about those growing and as has her hiking sticks in the middle of oakland and about to trip her ten steps because shes a erratic toddler and im thinking, this is what matters, the fact that i get to live with the incredible human beings along the generational scale that teaches me about the vastness of all of this. Louis is constantly reminding me of the life is long and vast and shes been through so much and, you know, and shes devastated too but in a way that can hold that devastation in the light of such vastness and so shes reminding me of that and she being enriched by the 3yearold that got energy that, you know, is overwhelming but invigorating so thats what its been for me, this constant thing of like being in generational friendship and service too each re and i was just mentioning having friends who are ten years eelder and i have two mothers. One who lives next door and one who lives across the street. I dont have any control group to compare it to but im positive has made my journey of motherhood just so much easier because i can run into the courtyard and say is this going to kill my baby. No. All i want is for my kids to come talk too me. And it gives me that perspective. You say that it is something i think that depending on the Nuclear Family to meet all of your needs is unhealthy and i agree with that. I dont think weve really done the critic of the Nuclear Family that we will. Its kind of unraveling. Ive always heard from people who lived in because it turns everything youre not held by anything larger and you have no one to work out except the few people who you love so much. Ive always heard from people who was in cohousing arrangements that there are people in the community who they work issues with and they have the guy who drives them crazy. Right. They are not as driven crazy by their husband. Could you have all the different people to transfer. I love that. Im doing a fast analysis of all the people in cohousing and who is giving me a better marriage. No, i think thats very true and just, you know, post election im thinking a lot about who are we in conversation with and who are we not in conversation with. I live in the Interfaith Community which was founded as a Christian Community has really important to me which gave me a very bad taste of christianity, a very hateful narrow sense of who is an acceptable person, you know, at my High School Newspaper when i was a teenager and got shut down on what it was like to be a queer and published a suicide hotline and so that was, you know, what i experienced of christianity and its been this deeply redemptive thing to live with christians that are so loving and we do disagree about some things and so thats an important practice for me beyond just the Nuclear Family piece, like im forced to do the work of having conversations with people that i disagree otherwise we can live in such bubbles specially if youre on the coast about this election. But, yeah, i think theres just there are people to work out its hard to be one person throughout all of the time, you know, and to have other people that my husband can bump into and express his grief over the election or, you know, express frustration that im not fully responsible to like the midwife of his emotional life like so many wives are. Thats really important and vis versa, we know this happens more for women in service of men, i think, that, i think, is really important. Again, i dont have a control group and i know only what im experiencing but i feel and you know given my having grown up not in a cohousing community, i have this sense that this is a lot healthier in so many ways. The other interesting thing on that point is the first generation of kids who did grow up in cohousing, its been about a 25yearold movement in america. Did you talk to some of them for the book . Not for the book, unfortunately, but i did end up talking to some of them after the book. It was fascinating the way they talked about it was realistically. They werent being but their capacity to understand what it is to have conflict and work through it and their way of relating to adults in particular i think its really professional advantage to a lot of them because they know they have conversations with adult that is are not their parents and they rely on aunties and uncles and rely on who they would relate to and talk to generationally and they are fluid and so i think its really good for kids. So im going to read another passage. Do you mind if i read this. Its amazing to have somebody else totally. I was in crisis about the election yesterday. My sisterinlaw who is maybe here and keeping her baby quiet, quote, she texted me a sentence of my own book and i didnt even recognize thats really good. [laughter] you wrote this. Honored that i wrote this. Im actually getting a lot of i have said something that might be useful at this moment. And this is about what makes a hughes a home and, of course, a key feature of this completely unrealistic American Dream that came out of, you know, the gi bill and this very unusual moment in history where actually for a few generations, if you were the right color and the right class, things did get better and better and the laws of physicist were defeated for some for ui little while. Part of that is owning a home. And as you said, the white picked pence and then, of course, Home Ownership has been at the center of the trauma of this century and a lot of the pain, i think, in the devastation that fueled a lot of the surprising things about this election but anyway, this is what you said. The people who gather there do. The best homes i know are not owner occupied, they are joy occupied. These are the sort of things that make a house a home, that make an existence a life. It is the size of our psyches, not our Storage Space that determines the amount of accumulation that is healthiest. What matters is the amount of time we have to appreciate what we possess, time that is inherently limited when we have to work so hard to earn the money to acquire those possessions. We are wise to have less and give away more, to pursue experiences over objects and memories over status symbols. We are wise to let go of the century old methodology, century old mythology that would have us believe we havent made it until we bought it, whether it is it, is a designer bag or suburban home. The new better off mindset is beset in pursuing most permanent pleasures which strangely turn out to be the fleeting experiences we have and intangible stories we tell about them. Lets open this up for a few minutes. Anybody wants to be in conversation with courtney . Is it on . Well, i have a question are you you jane . Im jane. Jane is one of my loveliest readers. We have never met. Most generous comment. I think courtney is a young mystic, honestly. I mean really. Oh, thanks. Anyway, it is an honor to meet you finally. My question is, i come from the people who elected donald trump, okay . Im like the black sheep of the family. My husband is the black sheep of the family. We moved away for five years. We came back, coming back has been brutal. So much so that were in the process of moving back out west where we were. So much so that my husbands family is now completely divided and we are on the out, to the point that my motherinlaw had, fatherinlaw had a 60th anniversary and the two of us didnt get invited. So that is how far the gap is. And i thought, if i just studied enough, if i just read enough, if i read courtneys column, parkers columns, if i just looked at myself, said, okay, yes, you were this hardcore, evangelical, it was right, wrong, black, right, but if you learn this you can change this. You can change this. I started to watch my religion become republican. And i grew up a republican. And but it didnt ever think god was one. So i guess my question, if it is a question, is, how do you get what you guys know and what you have taught me, because courtneys taught me a ton. Kris tin you taught me a lot as well. How do we this message and community to a populace that really doesnt want to hear it . I dont know, im just, i have been to ba reock and a million peoples over the possession. Do men have permission to call me names when i walk down the street . Do they have permission to grab me without asking . Not that im as hot as whatever. They probably arent going to be grabbing me, i get that. But my daughter dont underestimate your hotness, jane . Okay. Thank you. Hear that, honey. But she is eight. Her parents were all dressed in red, white, and blue, voting for our kids future. They live in this huge mansion. They have more money they will ever need in five lifetimes. And, her grandma is like, i went by the grand can i dont cani thought for five minutes and i did that. You did that . Who just drives bit grand canyon. There is this total unconsciousness. Im just like, maybe the next book will be how do we do that . I dont know. Because we have to figure it out. We dont have an option. Because they just told us, they dont give a about us. If your own family is about to let you go, because youre one of those liberal, people that steal all their money, i dont know what to do. I dont know, i dont know how to be really right now. That is a long, sorry, but. Well i dont, and im, i doubt kristin doesnt wasnt to give you a any trite responses, it is pretty deeply, personal deep suffering that youre experiencing in your families. That is no i will say youre in very good company if youre a black sheep. I know some other amazing black sheeps in this room and all over who are, similarly feel alone in their families but, you know, think of all the black sheep as one big herd of brave people. I would offer you, something ive been thinking about a lot, i tried to write a column for it tomorrow. Im a friday column it, so i have to produce something and this is a hard time to do it but i think about belonging. I was reading toddler discipline books, which i read in books. John will dealwer, im flipping through the book, what is the answer, not the way to read these books. But i did read something in a book called positive discipline, at the root of all tantrums are is a quest for belonging and significance. Only those two things, belonging and significance. So ive been thinking about that weirdly as i try to process this election, what is it about the way we vote, whether we voted for whoever we voted for our own relationship to that. I offer that as alienated as you feel from your family, something about how they relate to their own belonging and significance feels like it is at the root why theyre both making coasts theyre making and rejecting you in a way feels personal but their relationship it feels to that. If it makes any sense. Here is why why i that is a great analogy because the way we structure our political dialogue, like political speech, political formats, and media echoes, those things, when that is what, what has been covered, is infantile. I mean it is like, it actually appeals to our most primitive brains. Like as im going to say adolescent but actually it is infantile. It actually draws for the our kind of worst instincts. That is part of why then we get polarized. It creates these conditions for that. So i think that is a great analogy and, yeah, its a question were all living. It is a phenomenon were living with. Anybody else . You wrote yesterday on twitter about progressives organizing but not being poisonous in doing so. Not being what . Poisonous. Oh, yeah. Patronizing, is that what you were thinking of . Patronizing too. And ive been thinking a lot how i have advocated for things that i believed to be right, justice, equity, and how at times that has been poisonous and patronizing and condescending and distances from the belonging and connection and i just wanted to hear more about that. Thank you. I have to remember actually read twitter. Im tweeting off into my whole little black hole. One of the things i tweeted yesterday was that i feel like in these days and weeks after the election its on progressives to check their own patronizing intellects wallism. I intellectualism. I was speaking to myself and my peers also. Part of what happened in this country is that, you know, those of us who say that we value social justice, have intellectualized it, that makes it very alienating for people. The language we use, just our whole posture around this, it is this elite, and im not saying other people just said, but im feeling it viscerally these days, this elite distancing, no no know it all snobbery. No wonder a lot of people arent hearing our message in the way they think we should be hearing it, right . On the other hand i took a walk with my brother and sisterinlaw today around the beautiful lakes here, we were talking about the paradox of how do we hold we cant talking about the whiteness, especially. How do we hold that we dont want to be these kind of intellectual patronizing people, and or sort of these like sappy, compassionate, like anything is good, it is all just right. If you voted for trump i can understand that. That is where youre coming from. How do we hold that like like we need to be think about that. But we also need to call white people on their, we need to say there are basic ways we can not have the president of the united states, someone who says the thing this man has said about muslim people, about black people, about women. Like it is just wrong. So that there has to this to some ground we can stand on and have a righteousness, more about deep, deeplyheld values that we, especially white people calling other white people out on that in that many effective way. I havent figured that out. That is what we were all hashing out today, as we were marching around the lake. But im hungry to learn how to do that better. I dont know if you have thoughts about that, christa. Men tell me lies, krista. No pleasure. Again, we have to find new ways to approach each other and, so, if the there is this, there is this culture of what we talk about and how we talk about it that, by its very nature pits us against each other. It is, it actually welcomes what is inflammatory and how we distinguish ourselves over against others and it, it actually is very cerebral. Even people who may not think theyre cerebral right. It is about positions and abstractions. The other is such an abstraction of all this and whoever the other is that were talking about, whether its you know, rust belt workers or lgbt or immigrants or africanamericans, its people in inner cities it is all objectified and abstract and i think, if we really want to engage in a different kind of decision, completely pull back from what we have been talking about and gus create a whole new, like, okay, lets just meet each other, right . Uhhuh. Ruby sales sat right here thank you so much for that interview. I cant tell you, that interview, everyone if you have not listened to it, you have to listen to it, meant so much to me and every person i talked to who listened to it, feels like it was a spiritual moment for them. Which of course all of your shows have that to some degree or another for different people depending where theyre at. That show was such a huge gift. She is a builder in our midst and one of the things she said talking about white people with other white people, is it more fashionable for white people, what are you doing about these white people in pain . What are you white people doing for these white people in pain . Is it more faxable to carry about black people than white people if theyre the wrong kind of white people . Right. Focusing on pain, the questions she learned to ask in the Civil Rights Movement opened up Civil Rights Movement, she can get creepy spaces, but we dont have trustworthy spaces where does it hurt . It also is right there. You cant start there. You have to establish a little bit of trust to ask somebody that to get an honest answer. How do we find ways to talk toward each other. It is a process, right . This is now our work. This is a long term project if we really care about reweaving our common life. Its a long term project, yet like i feel very impatient at the same time about white people have had a long time to think about our own history of enslavement and discrimination and like, and we havent, we havent thought about it as much as we need to. And, there is something aboutreally reimagining whiteness itself. What does it mean to be a white person with a deep social justice heart but not spend all my time trying to be the good white person in the room . That is the first step. There is all these sort of versions what i think we need to do weve been trying to do and all of them are very fall blink and very fumbling and very a peoplic. Im grappling with what is, what is a way to feel like the kind of depth spiritual driver like dorothy day, whose birthday was a couple days ago. What would dorothy day say about whiteness . Maybe she did Say Something i havent read. I am really craving that. A lot of people out out of this election are craving more of what ruby sales was calling to us figure out. That we dont know how to do it. I just interviewed last week ula abyss, wrote a great piece on white debt. It will be on the air at some point. Very uncomfortable. She said in in the middle of ths is mortifying and it is, it is going to be. Yeah this, is all so, also, well there is a show coming up next week with isabelle wilkerson. Why did i, she wrote, the the warmth of others sins. She takes seriously about our brains and our bodies. There was a color line in our heads. She says the heart is the last frontier. We have changed a lot of laws with good intention. We have thought about it. Right. We havent, but because we didnt actually understand that we walk around, all of us with all of these, you know, what whether he created biology of different analysis and our minds are thinking machines and we havent been aware of that and even though we thought about it and had intentions we havent actually created structures to go along with those intentions. Right. We have knowledge now, to work differently with ourselves. It also is, im getting back to friendship again, because you know, it is stupid as they all like, i have black friends, that like we make fun of people that do that but friendship for me has been the place where interracial friendships and interfaith friendships talking about earlier has been the place where this feels most alive. I feel closest to what i am trying to talk about. I have this dear friend in oakland, mia birdsong, incredible poverty activist, she is working on idea of complicating our families. I can have these very real conversations. I dont want to in a room with white people proving theyre the good white people. That is your job, courtney. I need you in the rooms talking to the white people, even though you hate it. That friendship where i wrestle with it. There is something in the power of friendship in this moment and ways in which maybe our families are going to sometimes be divided and alienating but what about our friendships . Is that where hope in this moment is. Family is actually the hardest place to make progress. That is an irony. In those intimate spaces are probably the last place that we can break open. I love that about friendship. So, we should, we should close this down and then youre going to sign some books, is that right . Sure. I wonder how you would think about your, how would you, understanding that vocation is your defining it is something that is constantly going to be evolving, in a life, but, right now, your vocation, your calling or your callings, at this moment . I do want to say, i think you are such an interesting example of what we were talking about with vocation. You are a journalist yet you created this thing some people dont even recognize as journalism. Even though it is. For me youre such a model of that, it feels like you have searched for this kind of core understanding of what your gift is and then you apply it to the world over and over again in creating these spaces. So im just so grateful for your model. I think, lets see. What am i thinking these days . I know im obsessed with story telling and solutions. I often say that i keep gravitating towards those two things. Im also in limitations of story telling lately which is whole another book or conversation but, story telling solutions, but i think my exist is this kind of patternkeeping, and motion aol intellectual coupling, it is like how i see the world. I dont know how to be fully articulate about this but as i walk around im very interesting in connecting dots and trying to Say Something about broader patterns and trends and moments, trends not like real surface sy it makes a trend like the way the media talks about, but like deeper rumblings. Like this election. I felt the conversation underneath the election i was trying to right about this book, what is success from people and what do we want from one another and from our leaders . So i think, i think that is my gift. Sort of this patternkeeping, dotconnecting and i can use words pretty well because i obsessively read and written my whole life. That is usually you how it gets out into the world. So i guess i will just keep doing that. What are the other parts of your vocation, the other how do you talk about how that fits together with the other things, you as a, you wow. Pretty dramatic. You as a person in relationships . I mean my life is the material the material im using to connect those dots which is inherently limited. It is my life. I have all the blind pods. It is also really rich. So the fact that im a mother. Like, that is making it into the column all the time. Because that is what im experiencing all the time. That is where some of my deepest challenges and kind of my useful epiphanies coming through. Im writing a lot. It is anywhere i can be the person in the room who is pattern keeping and who is listening and really seeing people and trying to do that again, from this like emotional intellectual place. Which i feel really committed to, not serving this progressive intellectualizing pate troh noising. I want to pause because im trying to honor the space i am being in and not go easy places intellectually and try to bring my confusion and my vulnerability and, my, sort of spiritual quests to that as opposed to always sounding like someone who has the perfect, pithy thing to say, that is safe to say because it is very intellectual. I guess im doing all this im constantly creating community, which to bring it back to my mom was her legacy. I have this womans group in oakland that meets once a month and hangs out and has pot luck and drinks, talks about a theme. Everywhere i go i like accidentally create these awesome communities which i understood through the research of writing in this book was a skill. Before i thought, this is what people do. This is something i may be most proud of is that and i want to honor that. Would you read, as we finish, i marked marked this passage. This is from the end of the book. I was thinking maybe, i would say, i cant read my writing. Oh. So i was thinking. Starting there. And maybe, i dont know, just see, maybe stop here. Okay. Its very good. You can keep going but it is pretty long. In truth the village is not defined by architecture but by mentality. If you want to live like this with other people you need not move somewhere special. You need only be intentional about asking them to embrace interdependence with you and ritualize that commitment. We often fantasize about the village growing up around us spontaneous i if frequent reciprocity will magically appear in the cracks of our over scheduled lives. When we move so fast we dont see one another to know where our needs or when. We struggle to ask for help. Instead of intentional community. Make a shared google calendar. Make it real if you feel ernest and vulnerable. Creating Community Like these, creating community at all require as shared space and time. Slowing down to listening to those around you and listening to yourself even. That is where rediscovery of the local comes in. We might feel fancy jetsetting but encan count is with other people on the go and only add up to so much. Whereas encounters with people near as you and our investments in them can be deeply he had filing. May not earn frequent flyer miles but earns struggling to be from a place of a place, even when it is complicated and it is always complicated. Finally when the pleur of lights is clarified by a big lifechanging transition a new partnership a big birthday, a birth, death, we are learning how to pause and experience the moment together in a way that feels intertwined with generations passed and authentic to the ones were experiencing. Were realizing some of the institutions are doctrines historically related ritual have been flawed, only fools would go before the final meeting of witnesses at these moments. It honoring not the authority that matters this requires a tremendous amount of creativity and fortitude. Selfexamination and coordination. It is worth it all we really have. Lives that give us pleasure make us proud and enddying questions that humans ask of themselves and each other when theyre muddling through, what am i for . Why are here . What matters . Thank you. [applause] so bethany or lily what happens next . What happens next . [inaudible] yes. Books to sell and courtney to sign for her [inaudible] there are plenty of lines of food. Great. Have fun. Thank you. [applause] assist sift comes to a close, many publications are offering their picks for best books of the year. Here are some of the books that the New York Times book review has selected. In american heiress, cnn legal analyst and new yorker staff writer Jeffrey Toobin recalls the kidnapping of patty hearst from the sim byian knees Liberation Army in 1974. Carol anderson argues that throughout history the advancement of africanamericans has been followed by a legal and legislative backlash, in white rage. In eleanor roosevelt, the war years, and after, blanch cook concludes the threevolume biography of the first ladys life. New york times notable book reviews of 2016 also includes atlantic magazine Science Writer ed youngs examination of the microbes in our body, in, i contain multitudes. And historian Heather Ann Thompson recalls the attic capris son uprising of 1971 in her National Book awardnominated title, blood in the water. 1971, attica like so many prisons in new york, but not just in new york, really the nation were bursting at the seams there was real intensification of policing in inner cities across the nation but particularly in new york city. Buffalo, rochester and attica was filled with 2400 men, overwhelmingly black and puerto rican but also white men and the conditions were horrendous. They were, you know, one roll of toilet paper to last a month. Two quarts of water to do everything in. Wash, clean your cell, drink. Medical care so bad that prisoners were not only dying in attica but were permanently disfigured from lack of care. And this is the context that the men in the yard Start Talking about civil rights in the prison, human rights in the prison. And of course many of these guys had also come from the streets that had been very active, particularly rebellions in philly in 64 and harlem in 64. Rochester in 64 and, and they began to ask for help. Initially through the system, writing letters to their state senators and, and begging the commissioner of corrections to do something. But, nothing was really done. In fact what was done was a great deal more repression. Anyone who was caught having the letter asking for help would be thrown into keep lock. Which meant you were thrown into your cell for indefinite periods of time, you couldnt get out it was in that context people Start Talking across political lines, Start Talking across racial lines. That is a look at some of this years notable books according to the New York Times book review. Booktv has covered many of these authors. You can watch the full programs on our website, booktv. Org. Host helps dale College President , larry arnn, what was your goal, churchills trial, Winston Churchill and the salvation of free government