Transcripts For CSPAN2 Washington Journal 20160501

Kinds of things go, because fear makes you act rashly and what happened was that the fear was played upon, and prison was presented, and mass incarceration was presented as the opt way to deal with crime, and we know that there is no correlation between the drop in crime rates and the rise in mass incarceration. Study after study has shown this. We know there are other routes. It did not have to be this route towards mass incarceration. Host were in california, the home of the strikes and your out. That has been effective in any way . Guest hardly. Californias tree strikes and your another, we have the rock fell are drug laws in new york, a whole host of other tough sentencing laws that have landed, again, millions of people in jails and prisons and under correctional supervision, draining our resources and draining us of the value of these human beings, who could be contributing to society in all kinds of ways. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. A History News Networkl founder, the author of this recent book political animals how our own ainge bridge gets in the way of smart politics. Do shark attacks effect elections . Guest well, thats the story i begin the book with. H. 100 years ago in 1916, the worst series of shark attacks in American History struck southern new jersey. The movie jaws that everybody. Has seen, it was based on the story of what happened back then in the twoweek period, fourur people were killed in shark attacks. What has that got to do with politics . I wrote a book on politics. Well, four months later woodroww will son was up for reelection, and he won the state of new jersey, but in those small beach towns which had been devastated by the shark attacks, you can imagine what happened. People heard sharks and the hotels emptied and everybodypm went home and it was a devastating Economic Development fork that area. As soon as they held the vote, what happened . The people in those towns voted against Woodrow Wilson in overwhelming numbers, in the same proportion that those people volted against Herbert Hoover at the height of the Great Depression . Why . Woodrow will son could not have done anything to help thoseth people solve their shark problems. That was beyond the power of the president of the United States, but people are irrational when. They vote, and particularly mitt cal scientist have found when bad things happen to them they take out their angst on theot. Incumbent party is whether that incumbent is responsible or not. The book is about how our brain works, 40 years ago when i was in college we didnt know how the brian works. Today we do mostly as a result of neuroscience but also the insights of evolutionary psychologists, political psychologist, anthropologists and all this science over the last 15, 20 years has changed our understanding how our brain operates iwhat do you mean by ostone aged thinking. The stone age lasted for two and a half million years, and it was during this period the human brain wag evolving it evolved to help huntergarters address the problem the faced at huntergatherers. Didnt evolve to help news the 21st century address the problems were facing. And our problems are far different. When youre living in a Small Community of no more than 100 to 150 people you know everybody. You work with everybody. You know your leaders because youre living withthem, and in many cases theyre kin folk. Today, the modern world, theres millions, billions of people,ing and we dont get to meet our leaders. All we do is get to see them on tv and we often read them wrongp we dont understand when theyre lying to us and manipulating usu and the book is all about how you have to protect yourself against your own brain, because youre brain will trick you to thinking youre in a small cooperate and you know these people, and actually you dont. Host rick in the production to your book, you write that im going to tell you the stories of people who have been paid in ways that zoom absurd. Your focus on behavior associated with being disengaged from politics and apathetic and not correctly sizing up our leads, punishing politicians who tell us hard truths, and failing to show empathy in circumstancec that clearly cry out for it. That said, is there a general impression that you can give of what voters are like in America Today . Guest i dont know what to do with that question. Give me something a little more. Host are voters curious . Guest good. Voters are curious about what is happening in their immediate circumstances. Thats what the human brain is designed to do, to be curious about what is happening about things you can see. Half of the human brain isis devoted to visual tasks. We are very responsive to what we can see, and particularly because of our nervous system, to what we can feel. So when youre in a group of people you can size them up, you can read their body language, you can get a good sense of kind of who they are, at least a certain ability to have an assess. Of who they are and what theyre like. You cant do it in the modern world. In the political world were living in because most of the time you see your politicians only on tv. Your nervous system isnt coming into play. That means youre not really focused, and if you cant see somebodys eyes and how theyre really looking at you, its very hard to read them. And in any case, our brain is, again, playing a trick on us. Back in the stone age, when were reading peoples emotions lets say you were going out on a hunt and wanted to look toward the leader of the hunt, you could tell whether in a particular moment is he feeling courageous or frozen by fear . You had a deeper understanding of the person because you lived with them. You worked with them all the time. In the modern world, we dont have that kind of personal intimate experience with our b leaders, and yet our brian still makes us think we do know them. So, heres the question. Are we curious . Huntergatherers, never been an example of huntergatherers who arent curious about who is leading them. Theyre curious because what do human beings do all day long . They gossip. Thats what human beings do. We gossip about people. What does gossipping do . Gossip helps us understand who is up, who is down, whether somebody made a mistake, speculating about their motives. That means were automatically engaged as human beings in our local politics. M but in the multicultural world were living in, with millions of people, we dont have that kind of natural nerve obvious system reaction to people who live far airplane from thus. Is it the problem hoff washington, dc. Youre in washington, dc. Mores of the American People live hundreds if not thousands of miles away. Live in seattle, washington. Seattle is far away fromom washington, dc. So when things are happening there, its very hard for me, living in seattle, to try to get really sited about what is going on in d. C. If i see two candidates duking it out in a political debate, okay, i can get excited about that momentarily, but that feeling quickly evaporates. Me, i happen to be a political junkie so im paying attention, but most americans are living their lives, not payingdi attention to politics so they seem to display if difference, a lack of curiosity about politics. Thats because of the way the human brain works. Its an indictment of human beings, our brain wasnt devisep for television politics. It was devised for small, intimate groups. Were really good at that kind of politics. Not so good at politics where w talk about things happening a long, way away from us. I hope that answers you question. To host should we trust our instincts when it comes to politics . Guest no thats the main point of the book. Basically in our daily lives, we trust our instincts because theyre constantly provingng theyre pretty good. If youre walking on the sidewalk, and you hear tires screeching, your instinct is to look up quickly, look around, and pull back and make sure youre not about to get run over by a bus or truck going by. Thats the same if you were a huntergathererrers 10 0 00, 100,000 years ago and you heard a tying fer the wood tiger in the woods, you would have a fight or flight response in our personal lives our instincts work inch politics, i argue, you can almost never unquestioningli go with your instinct becaused your instincts are generally not suited for the kinds of problemy we face in the modern world. Host you look at the work of psychologists drew weston, and you write about some of his work. Here is westns explanation. What goes on in our brain when we turn a blind eye toward information we fiend objectionable. Quote. C when confronted with potentially troubling political information, a network of neurons becomes active that produces distress, the brain registers the conflict between data and desire, and begins to search for ways to turn off the spigot of unpleasant emotion, notice what we dont do. We dont expend Cognitive Energy to digest the information. Instead we immediately try to reconcile it with our partisan prefer reins. Can you give us an preferences can you give us an example. Guest back in 2004, johnhn kerry versus george w. Bush. He put kerry voters inside an mri machine and then he told them some information about john kerry that wasnt flattering, something that made him look like he was a hypocrite. And what happened inside their brain . Well, they very briefly registered a reaction, of course it was disfavor with what they were hearing, and then immediately their brains shutnt off the flow of information and those neurons went quiet. They went inactive. The same thing happened when he put bush votes in the mri machine. When they heard unpleasantt information they had an initial reaction and then they went quiet. Their neurons went quiet. Ia what is that . That is what other social scientists refer to as our psychological immune system at work. We dont like dissidence. We dont like to find out that a belief we hold about somebodyy that we like, and then it turns out that, well, heres some contrary information to what we believe about that person, that creates dissidence. We dont like dissidence. The human brain doesnt like that feeling. Makes us feel anxious and bad. So quickly tries to figure out a way to get rid of the information and does it by basically closing the door on the information so those neurons go quiet. And then our psychological immune system improves, we restore our feeling of wellbeing. So, when youre, for instance, talking about trump voters, so donald trump has been called out by politico and opolitical fact changing organizations for telling one lie after another after another. Like for instance when he debuted his campaign and started talking about how thousands of muslims were dancing on theft rooftops of apartment buildings in new jersey as the watched the twin towers fall down and they were cheering. That just wasnt true. What did trump voters make of that . Their brains, just like for other voter its not just about trump voters. Its true of all of us. We dont want to hear that Bad Information about a candidate who were inclined to support so they basically ignored it and theyre not bothered by i it. Their brain shuts off the information. This is how the human brain works theft what drew westons research so ably shows us. Host rink shenkman is our guest. The numberers on the screen. 202 is the area code, republicans, 7488001. Democrats 7488000, and independents, 748, 8002. You can dial in. Well begin taking your calls in just a minute. You can also participate via social media, chance wj is our twitter handle. Heat bin with robert in worcester, massachusetts, on our democrats line. Go ahead. Is caller i dont know what this guy is talking about, but the average person really does not know politicians know that the average person is almost ignorant. Would you have a commercial on tv . You see a tide commercial, and the tide commercial says, it would take the ring off your husbands neck, the next day, that same woman will go down and buy that tide because of that powerful commercial. Pe and the main problem is that people are not voting with theyre heart. Theyre voting with their heads and you got to put them both together you have to have head and a heart, and when you let the politicians and in trick, that is a sin. Never should you let a politician walk in your chair and speak on the pulpit and that is all you black people fromet down south host last, let get a response. What did you hear . Guest well, the caller is absolutely right that the American People dont know a lot of facts about the way our government functions. So, a majority of the American People dont know that we have 100 u. S. Senators, even though thats a nice round snub easy to remember. Ch a majority tv the American People dont know we have the branches of the government. A majority of people believe on the eve of the iraq war that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9 11 attacks and that the reason we were going to invade iraq was to take revenge for him having destroyed the World Trade Center and attacked the pentagon. So, when you are what is called a lowinformation voter, which is unfortunately true of a majority of the American People, lowinformation voters are mose easily manipulated by politicians so they dont know enough so 0 politician can stand up and if he is are articulate and enthusiastic and can make a case and connect with you as one person to another person, look through a tv camera, as im doing right now, if im really exciting and youre impressed with my passion and enthusiasm and what im saying makes sense you dont have the independent basis upon which to evaluate my arguments or my information. N. So youre just going with kind of your gut and a hunch, and that is what im, aing in my become is a mistake. Host jedwin tweets into you, mr. Shenkman, i respectfully disagree with you. Cant read politicians from watching them on tv. Body language is all telling. Guest body language is important. How quickly do we make evaluations on politicians . We make up minds and basically anybody that we encounter in 167 milliseconds. Thats faster than it takes to blink your eye, and if you give people more time to make an evaluation, they just double down on what their initial impression is, and the problema with that it your brain is playing a trick on you. Back in the stone age, when we were making these super fast evaluations, of course it was very, very important because if you encountered a stranger in the forest or jungle you had to quickly be able to size them up, and most of the time that meant this was a person who was hostile and a threat to your life, so you probably either should run or you have to kill the guy. But for the hunter gatherers when they were sizing people up it wasnt just on the basis of body language, or facial expression. It was on the basis of deep knowledge of in this person pause you were living with this person and working with them. Ve so if you have an overreliance on body language and you think that you can tell whether somebody is lying to you or telling the truth, based on their body language, you are deceiving yourself. Let the go one step even further. When somebody, a politician, is telling you something, and they believe it to be true, then your psychological system, your detention system doesnt work. Our system only works if theho person telling us a lie thinks theyre lying. E politicians, though, are really good. Theyre like used car salesmen. Theyre really good at tellingng you something that at that moment they can convince themselves they actually believe. That is why you cant rely on your ability to read somebody and their body language, because if theyre sincere and politicians are always sincere then your detection system doesnt work. Host lets hear from barbara, a democrat, in marthas vineyard, massachusetts. Youre on. Caller hi, peter. Thank you much. Richard, this is the best, best, best news every. The first day of the new era which i am christening in case you havent come up with a phrase, paleopolitical. This is our brain on the drugs of politics that we dont understand how our brain works so, pete,i have a homework assignment for your staff. Assemble the experts that richard will lead you to on evolutionary biology and psychology and get them together with richard and three hours nobody in depth or however the hell you can do it or rich you assemble them in a become fair. This is the story, folks. Now, i want another thing to. Do i want you produce tower look bat an email i just sent. It has no text it in. Its only visual. I want to prove richards point. The subject line is just vote blue. So this is my message for how the democrats have to unify. A visual pun in it and i want to see if richard can figure it out. This man is walking the walk and talking the talk, and richard, last night, keep on using the emphasis youre using in your speech, just like aam deliberately using it now. Theres a penetrative quality to assertion. We are asserting thises the truth. Were not hypothesizing. This is the dawn of the new age host bart. Barbara, thank you. Rick schenk men, any response for barbara. Guest she was very complimentary so im not going to disagree with her. Lets talk about another aspect of how our brain works. Basically from neuroscience we have learn in the last 20, 30 years, that we have two ways of digesting information. One is called system one and the other is called system two. With system one basically youre not thinking, youre just taking in information, matching it with other information you have in your brain and if theres a close enough match, your brain doesnt think hard about it, you assume the new information isan just like the old information and you treat it the same way. System two is higher order cognitive thinking, and guess what we want to do in politics . Almost always politicians dont want you to use system two. They dont want you to use higher order cognitive thinking. So theyll use red meat words that get your system one juices progress so youre not really thinking, youre just reacting. For a republican audience theyll Say Something like,mu scary muslim terrorists and that activists certain neurons in your brain and youre acting fearful or angry and youre not thinking, youre just reacting, and the democrat does the same thing. They tell some a substory prr about somebody to get you to feel empathetic and then go along with their programs. Youre not really thinking about it. Youre just kind of reacting. And what im arguing in the book is that the only way to safeguard yourself against manipulation by politicians is to always secondguess your automatic reaction. You have to secondguess your automatic reaction. Dont trust yourself in politics. That goes against all of the stuff that we learned in the 1960s, where it was trust yourself, trust yourself. In personal life, trust yourself. In politics, dont. Its a difficult message. Im hoping that people take it to heart. Host brenda is in niantak connecticut on the democratic line. Whats the name of your town . Caller identity niantic, connecticut. Host thank you. Caller no problem. Ay wanted to call and say that i did watch the debate, and i dont think that there should be anymore debates. I really hate to see things deter yourate to the level of the g. O. P. Side. I was very proud of her performance, i think senator sanders did well as well. I hate to see them hurt each other in the primary piece. And i do i disappointed in i nator sanders, and i do think that him running as a democrat is if he continues to criticize hillary to the extent, that it could definitely hurt news the long run in the general election. Host all right, bren dark lets leave it there. And Rick Shenkman, given thatow there was a debate last night. I dont know if you watched that one. How would your book fit into some of these debates . Guest well, let me tell you what i recommend in the book, which is when youre sitting watching a political debate, basically you are in the sameoa role as somebody who goes and attends a broadway show and what you wind up doing is evaluating the performance of the candidates who are arguing with each other. I dent think thats terribly i dont think thats terribly helpful. What is helpful. Even if youre not a plate junkie. You do other things so youreti not following politics all that closely. You can still game tremendous real insights into what is going on in these candidates campaigns by monitoring your own emotional reaction. So, pull out a pen and paper when you are about to sit down to juan one of these debates, and every time you feel a strong emotion of some kind, fear, anger, enthusiasm, patriotism, whatever youre feeling, jot it down next to the candidates name. At the end of the debate, instead of ewaiting their performances, look how you emotionally reacted to what theyre saying and you will have a road map to these candidates campaigns. You understand how theyre trying to manipulate you by the emotional buttons they were trying to push during the debate. Its no accident when they take a certain line in the debate. They have a lot of advisers telling them, if you say this the voters will have this reaction. If you say this, voter wells have this reaction. So just study yourself and youll have a very keen understanding of what the politicians campaigns are about. And that is much more helpful than just sitting welcome like youre at a broadway show and saying, gee, this person did well, this person didnt. I know we all play the game, anf i play that game as well, but its not very helpful thiss approach im outlining is more helpful. Host anne, spring hill florida, republican line, please go ahead with your question or comment. Caller okay. Have a comment concerning a statement that your guest made about donald trump lying about the muslims dancing in the street and 9 11. He is not lying. I seen this with my own eyes. Host mr. Shenkman. Guest all right. You did see it with your own eyes and because in the middle east people were dancing, and theres videotapes that we all saw after 9 11 of muslims in the middle east, and in other parts of the world, people who were happy to see the United States, a big, bad super power, as its viewed in some parts of the world, getting knocked down a little bit. So people were dancing in the streets but it wasnt muslims in america. It wasnt american muslims who were doing this, but our brain confuses the visual information that its taking in. At that time, you were seeing this, it registered powerfully on your brian. Think one of the big shocks of 9 11, assad from the attacks themselves, the other big shock, the other big shock, was that people hate us to the point where theyre actually happy to see us killed by the thousands. Streetat left a powerful impression on your mind but you didnt see american muslims dancing in the street. That didnt happen. Host next call for Rick Shenkman, author of political animals from suzanne in kent, washington, independent line go ahead, suzanne. J caller what you just said about the politicians advisers telling them how to go ahead and say what theyre supposed to say instead of really answering the question. That sort of remains me not really in the stone age. Everybody is in the reality tv age. So, what the advisers are telling them to do is how to get the very best response out of the viewers, and instead of really thinking about what the politicians are saying on all these different programs, were being taken into the reality tv world where everybody kind of floats along and we all care about real we dont care about real stuff. We just care about what we think is happening. So, i dont think stone age is here. I think we have progressed a lot from stone age because were at the stage where we can sit there with a completely empty mind and host all right, suzanne, lets gate response from mserveman. Guest well, were not living in the stone age thats the problem. But we have a stone age brain on our shoulders and it is not really very good at helping us understands the problems we are facing. For instance, almost daily the one of the political problems well face involves the fate of millions of people, whether were talking about tax policy or whether we should go to war against terrorism or whatever the issue, its always a policy involving millions of people. The human brain wasnt designed to address the problems of millions of people. It was designed to address the problems of a small number of people. Thats why we have a difficulty when we hear that, for instance, were going to drop bombs in syria on a bunch of towns. We have a very great difficulty imagining the human beings who may be at the other end of the bomb sites, who maybe are innocent, could be innocent civilians who are going to get killed. We see them as an extractions because the human brain is only capable of seeing people as hums when theyre standing in front of us. Then we get them as human beings. W and the thought of, wow, this mother walking with a child is going to be blown up by a bomb, well, we find that horrifying as human beings. But if were talking about bombing people who dress differently than us, who look differently than us, who live in a part of the world that we can even find on the map, then theyre not human beings at all at that point. Say l theyre abstractions, and its easier to say, like ted cruz, just carpet bomb. Thats being careless with other peoples lives. Its not being sensitive to the fact that some human beings there who are innocent might get killed. But our brian doesnt work that way. We dont think that way and thats the problem. Host wild and wonderful tweets into you, mr. Shenkman so basically youre saying were all just pavlovs dogs. Ring the bell and we salivate. Guest no, im not saying that at all. D we while there are studies i cite in the book where if somebody al says, we have stimulus x, youll get a y response, but we are human beings, after all, we higher order cognitive thinking. So, heres the story that i tell when i go on the road and i give talks. As i did this past week a couple of occasions. I tell the story of Jesse Washington. 100 years ago, in 1916, the same year as the shark attacks we started out the program talking about in 1916, Jesse Washington was a black man accused of a crime in waco, texas. The authorities put him in jail. A mob then came, broke him out of jail, they hung him up on a tree, they castrated him, they cut off his fingers and set him on fire and killed him. Now, we have all heard about lynchings. This one took place before a crowd not of ten or 15 people, but 15,000 people, and there are pictures of this crowd, and theyre not horrified by what theyre seeing. Theyre either cheering or theyre pleased with what theyre seeing. Wow. 100 years later, we find this horrific. Our instant revulsion indicates we find thats hard to conceive. What is going on here . This is because our culture has changed. Were not pavlovian dogs. We respond. We can think. But in politics most of the time, were not thinking. We are simply reacting. But we have the capacity to think. And this is the wonderful thing about human beings. We are not slaves to our instincts. We can actually think our way through our problems if we think to take the act of actually thinking. Host back to your book political animalsty youite in main stream politics anger undermines democracy, people who are angry cannot see others points of view. Angry people dont compromise. Guest this is the big problem facing the United States right now. So, when a small group of people want to create change in america, often theyre people who are very, very angry, and they want to see some change happen. So, this was true, for instance, of the civil rights marchers in the 1950s and the 1960s, when bull connor in alabama let loose these dogs on crowds of civil rights protesters. You can be sure those civil rights protesters were really in a piping hot angry mood, and small groups need anger toesion achieve Group Cohesion and to get anything done, because the forces against them are so powerful they need anger to kind of keep them going, to get up every day and fight the good fight. But when a whole country, when a majority of the American People, turn angry, democracy stops. Anger is like grit in gears of democracy, the gears cant grind proper live if people are ang properly if people are angry, and we know this from science. My book is about learning about what science is telling us about our brians. What happens when we are angry . The insula in the activated. And we dont compromise and we become closeminded and not open to fresh viewpoints. When the amygdala is activated in the human brain thats correct the seat of emotionall power, we can get anxious, and while we dont like to feel anxious, anxious people have an open mind and are more likely to compromise. But angry people dont, and were in a situation today where a majority of the people are angry. This is very bad for our democracy. We have to get the anger out of our politics. Host allen in temple hills, maryland, democrat. You have been very patient go ahead with your question or comment. Caller thank you, for taking my call. I want to ask the gentleman, your guest, two questions. The first one is, you mentioned that during the kerry and the mri scan, you told them false information, that certain part of the brain fired off signals and then shut down, like when they heard that. I think one question is, how what would you recommend for those individuals that hear that false information and they its a shocker and then shuts done, you dont what recommendation do you have for them to get through that . And a second one is, the belief in our current elections, people are angry, and they dont want to believe theyre angry, yet they are angry, and they want to say that this is how we this is our world, too. What is your solution toward that anger . Because you said we can its hard to shut down an angry mob, but i really would like your comment on that solution. Host thank you, sir. Rick schenckman. Guest i struggle with this, just like everybody does. Were human beings so were going to have our instant reactions. So, ive got a partisan brain just like everybody, and when i hear favorable things about the candidates that i like, i really listen closely, and because of confirmation bias, i think, yeah, thats a really good point. When i hear Bad Information about somebody that i like, i think, thats not true. Ss that cant possibly be right. And i dismiss it. So how do you get around that . Make an end run around our own brain . If you become aware of how your brain can undermine your search for truth thats what i argue in the book, that were not really after the truth. Were after the truth as Steven Pinker at harvard talks about, we are after the truth that reinforces our version of reality. N how can you get around that . Well, theres no magic formula. You just have to be aware at that time this is how your brain works, so you have to question everything. You constantly have to subject your own opinions to really just a real sober, honest assessment of why you believe what you believe. Now, the caller also was asking about anger. How do you get around anger . Well, when youre in an angry mood, if youre married, every once in a while youll get angry at your spouse and at that moment you cant think straight. So you have to wait until you calm down and then you can reflect. Thats how spouses decide to make up. You have to have that same approach in politics. Dont keep listening to the same sources that just keep you revved up and in a angry mood because youll never have the enemy when you can sit back and calm down. So if youre watching a tv show or listening to some person on the radio who has you revved , tune them out. Take a break from it. Take a week or two weeks off. Calm counsel to the point where now you can think a little bit more clearly. No because when youre in the grip of anger, you cannot think straight. That is just the way human beings are built. Understanding how our brain is built is what the book is all about. Host in february, on this program, we got a call fromm somebody named keno in lakeland, florida, who suggested that we have Rick Shenkman on the program, and i believe this is keno in lakeland, florida, calling in how. Hi. Caller good morning. Praise be for cspan. Yes, i read mr. Shenkmans book, and let me make him aware they have the Bipartisan Working Group in congress. I have recommended they take your book and have a book report for all of congress to be aware of your book. The other thing where you talk about if we dwell on anxiety that can bring about cooperation. I recommended that this Bipartisan Working Group come up with the ten most Serious Problems facing the United States, the congress and the president , before they try to seek solutions, they define what the problems are that need to be addressed. I want you to be aware that i am being a citizen advocate for that group and using your book as one of my main thrusts, and i also i want the president ial candidates to come up with a ten most Serious Problems they think are facing this country, and i want the president ial candidateo to go on the booktv and recommend books that people can read for a more intellectualal approach rather than the emotional approach. So, yes, i thank cspan for what it does for our nation and im so glad they had you on today, but be aware that ive asked the bipartisan Congressional Working Group to do book report and come up with a definition of ten most Serious Problems facing this nation. So what might be your reaction . Guest well, first of all,rs thank you for telling cspan viewers they ought to read my book, an author always wants to hear that. Im delighted cspan listened to you and thats why im sitting here today. Thats great. Can we talk about anxiety for a moment . S a lot of what i say sounds so negative. Its kind of, gee, our brain turns us into unthinking partisans. We get angry. We cant evaluate our politicians who. Were subject to manipulation easily. Want to talk about something that is positive and what they caller just mentioned, anxiety, is one of the positive things. When you are anxious, as a human being, its a very unpleasant feeling, isnt it . Something we dont want to feel anxious. But anxiety is a wonderful reeva thing. Its your brain telling you, you need to reevaluate your impression of something. So if you have a view of the world ask the way the world works and you now have some evidence before you that, gee, the worldsen working the way i think it works, for instance, i have a belief about a particular candidate, and now i just gotll evidence that candidate actuallt is behaving in a way that is contrary to what i thought about that candidate, i thought i understood them but maybe i didnt really understand. The. When we get that anxious feeling, we reevaluate our opinions. Most of the time we dont bothet to reevaluate our opinions and the prone for that is that takes effort. That literally takes brain energy. Your brain consumes 20 of your bodys energy every single day, and what that means is your brain is constantly hooking for ways to not overwork because in requires more energy, and back in the stone age it was hard to get protein and get a lot of so the brain evolved to be extremely prudent at looking for shortcuts all the time. Thats why we depth do hard, higher order, cognitive thinking in politics most of the time. Our brain doesnt want us to thinkhard because more knew republics are firing and that going to consume more energy so rather than think hard, it goes into default position and we just go with the flow and go with our normal reaction. With anxiety, our brain is telling us, stop. You cant just go with the flow. Youve got to really think hard. Youve got use higher order cognitive thinking of thats your brain telling you, oh, time to actually engage and think hard. En so, when you sense youre watching a political debate and you feel a little anxious, Pay Attention it to. Thats your brain telling youu theres a mismatch between belief and what the facts are. Time to reevaluate. Host guest as for the callerth seeing he is backing this Bipartisan Group in congress, thats wonderful. Thats what is needed if were going to ever get anything done. Its a democracy and only works when people in both parties are at the very minimal talking to each other. S if they put up walls between them, and they only talk to their own supporters, democracy wont work. Host and clyde is in our vern, new york, he is anca independent go ahead, clyde, were listening. Ed to ge caller what youre saying is faction. You need to get together is fantastic. You need to get together with tim weiss and go on a tour. Here it is. I studied yellow journalism because i was broadcast student and minored in psychology, and here it is. When i id like to use a different word than what you use in your book. Call troglodytes. Amazing its almost the same thing. But its amazing because here it is interject systemic racism, its amazing. M thats wife i say you need to good to be a tour together host clyde, who is tim weiss . Caller i think you had him on last sunday no, no. It was free speech tv. So wrote a book, and he speaks about white privilege, systemic racism, soing for and so on, and with these guys both working together, they can do a lot of constructive stuff in this country. Host thank you, sir. Rick shenkman, any reaction . Guest well, somebody wants to pay to send me around the country and talk to audiences, im all in favor of it. I do have a day job. I run the History News Network web site where historians aree putting the news into Historical Perspective but i can take some time out to go on the road. Hellen, win trop, maine, go ahead with your question or comment. Caller good morning. Was struck by a comment that author Michelle Goldberg made the other day on chris hayes s show about pawer seeks and generally speaking population are adverse to people who are blatantly pawer seekers and this is tremendously magnified when the candidate or the person or the power seeker is a woman, and she used this really to explain some of the tried to explain some of the antipathy people have towards candidate clinton. Im wondering if your book addresses the whole issue of gender and how this plays into the current political field and the roll of religion where we know that many religions are subjugation of women has been part and parcel of our history, and hoping you could care to address those. Thank you. Host go ahead, Rick Shenkman. Guest those are great points. I chose not to focus on gender. My feeling was a lot of books have been written about the importance of gender in politics, and i didnt want to throw another book on that pile. I wanted to draw attention to the four problems i identify in the book, which is the problems with curiosity, the problem with truth and our biases, the problem with empathy and soing for, and so i dont really focus on that, but i do agree withic everything you said. All very, very good points. Host Rick Shenkman you quote Thomas Bailey eave Foreign Policy crisis in u. S. History has shaped decisive live by Public Opinion. Guest Thomas Bailey was a stanford historyianphone 40 years, the author of textbooks that and i millions others using in high school, the american pageanten and also wrote a become called Public Opinion or the man the street and Public Opinion. The gist of the back was if you look at almost every Foreign Policy crisis in our history, you will find that politicians, congress, the president , were always designing our Foreign Policy around Public Opinion, to accommodate Public Opinion, which makes sense. Were a republic or democracy, whatever you want to believe, a big raging debate on the internet on that. But public offend is key. Woodrow will son says if you have the public behind you, you can accomplish anything. So the problem if the public doesnt know that much but thehe politics are letting Public Opinion guide their Foreign Policy, then we wind up making blunders. So, the iraq war is just a classic example. Here a president was able to gin up support for this war by playing on peoples fears about 9 11, and he was able then to turn around and launch this war without even a congressional declaration of war, get did get a resolution of support but not a fullblown declaration 0 of war. Thats a problem and almost any Foreign Policy cries youll see thats a problem. Ha sometimes, of course, like in world war ii, okay, pearl harbor is attacked. The public says we have to take revenge. We have to do something. That was the right policy. But most of the time the public doesnt have an independent basis grounded in fact upon which theyre making their opinion, but the politicians, whether its based in fact or not, are usually following Public Opinion. They are usually slaves to Public Opinion. That is a problem. Host renee in houston, texas, we have 15 seconds. Caller okay, thank you very much. Nt i wanted to address spirituality. Dont think i heard you mention anything about that. And what a person believes in their mind is right and youre speaking so much about Public Opinion and what is right and what is wrong, and a lot of what people feel is right in their policies are based on their spirituality. Host thank you, maam, Rick Shenkman, a 15 seconds to answer the question. Guest so, i believe alongn with social scientist, jonathan height at the university of virginia, that our moral values are innate and we believe what we believe about it, and thats fine, theres nothing wrong with that. R just subject your moral findings to rational higher order cognitive thinking. Host Rick Shenkman, author, political animalsing are how ouh stone age brain get tuesday the way of smart politics and the found e. Of the History News Network. Thanks for being on washington journal. Guest thank you very much and people can go to stone age brain. Com to find out more about in the research. Heres a look at current best selling books according to the conservative book club. Topping the list is killing reagan, in which fox news host bill oreilly, looks at how the attempted assassination of president Ronald Reagan shaped his political core. Former Deputy Assistant to reagan made the list with true reagan. His biography of the president. Donald j. Trump has two books own the list. His latest, crippled america look with trump, the art of the deal first released in 1987. Up next, 13 hours to which is about the Security Team in benghazi. Former navy seals talk about how their training and combat experiences can be applied to leadership in any organization in extreme ownership. Fox news political analysts, Juan Williams has made the conservative book clubs list with we the people. A collection profiles of people he thinks have the carried on the traditions of the founding fathers, including president Ronald Reagan, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood marshall and Martin Luther king, bryan killmeade, a cohost of fox and friends is next with George Washingtons secret six about a spy ring in the american revolution. Taya kyle shares her dealing with doing be military wife, and theyre of military theory at the marine corps university, a look at radical islamic terrorism and how to fight until defeating jihad. You can hatch the authors on our web site, booktv. Org. This is primarily a love story. A love story of mine towards my late husband, and the difficulty that one has when one makes that commitment at time of marriage, in sickness and in health. Vowing to support another life. Another being. Another person with whom you have lived for, as it turn out, i lived with john for 53 years. We were married for 54. John had parkinsons disease and as it became more and more apparent, that his parkinsons was taking him downhill, he decided to end his life. He did it in a way that still makes me so sad because there was no and is no law in maryland which allows doctors to assist individuals who have been deemed within six months of death, as john was. There is no law that allows doctors to help those patients. John chose to stop drinking water, stop eating food, stop taking medication. Now, as im sure many of you know, would you forgive me if i stood up and walked . I think so. I think we can forgive you. [applause] im just so much more comfortable this way. It strikes me as being a little difficult but i hear a little echo and if we can get that down, that would be great. As im sure most of you know, you can go without food for days upon days upon days, but not without water. Within about ten days, to two weeks, the organs begin to break down without water, and john chose to end his life that way, and i had chosen to write a book that i began writing on the night he was dying. I was sleeping, trying to sleep, on two chairs by his bed, with my little dog, maxie, on my stomach, and that didnt work. So i just got up at about 2 00 a. M. , and i had my ipad with me, and i began writing. I cannot tell you that there was any plan in mind at that time to continue to write, and somehow to create a book of essays or thoughts or anything of the sort, but all i know is that that night, i needed to put on paper what i w f