Good friend nick kristof and just one minute. Following that, we will have an interview with the ambassador of china. Missile, nbcdrea is our corporate strategic partner. Be5 30, our last event will beinterview who will interviewed by margaret rendon. A word about my friend nicholas kristof. Thee we can bring him up on screen. Hes a longtime friend and a member of the aspen strategy group. He writes a very important twiceweekly college for the column for the New York Times. When i read your column and read it avidly, you put people first. You dont put government first. He put human rights and dignity first. Because of his extraordinary repair extra ordinary career, hes won two pulitzer prizes, one for reporting on china and one for darfur. Hes just wrote a book with his wife which we will talk about. I think it has deep meaning for him personally. He has had an extra neri journalistic life full top he has lived on for continents. He has traveled to 160 countries and his biography says he has survived unpleasant encounters with mobs, malaria, and an african airplane crash. Before we get into our topic of hope and your recent book, im curious, ive known you for a long time but have never asked you, what got you interested in journalism as a young man . Journalism career was born and im here on the family farm in indian hill. There was an organizational meeting to organize a school newspaper. I hadnt really thought of journalism. I didnt go to the meeting, but a bunch of people did and they all wanted to be on the school paper, but none of them wanted to wanted the burden of editing yet. My journalism career was born and i loved it. In high school, i began working for the local community newspaper, and i loved the aesthetic leisure of writing and the sense of this is an outlet to bring about change. This was after woodward and bernstein and watergate. And when you are 16, theres no other way to impress other 16yearold girls and to be writing for the local newspaper. I came to really love journalism. Host the true motive comes out. You and i have a very good mutual friend. David sanger. Did you meet on the harvard crimson staff . Nicholas we met at the beginning of fall, freshman year. There was an organizational meeting to get on the crimson and there we were. We have been good friends ever since. He was best man at my wedding. Gentlemen, nick and i decided we wanted to have this session about hope. I was so intrigued when i read his july 19 column in the New York Times about hope. I think both of us leave in this radical notion that despite all the problems we are facing, the pandemic, the economic crisis, the political crisis, the leadership crisis, there are hopeful global trend lines. Multinationale classes, usually 16 to 20 different nationalities in one class of 50 or 60 students. I always pull the students at the end of the course and the course is about the u. S. China rivalry, nuclear weapons, were in the middle east. What are you hopeful about . What are the analytical trendlines that would lead us to believe we could actually improve the human condition. My millennial students never failed to give me inspiration that they believe they can cure cancer. They believe they can create a carbon free world. They say by 2050. You wrote this marvelous column in the New York Times. I will just read we interrupt this gloom to offer hope. What led you to that column . It was a couple of things. Sense a deep frustration that the u. S. For the last 50 years has taken a wrong path. We talk about american exceptionalism, but actually until the 1970s, the u. S. In many ways was fairly similar to europe and canada, our life expectancy, or Health Metrics high school, the Graduation Rate was best in the world. It was really since the 1970s that we began to underperform in health care, in education, inequality in equality. This has weighed on me because the town i come from in oregon has been indicative of that. Its a working class, farming community. A quarter of the kids on my Old School Bus are gone from these deaths of despair drugs, alcohol, and suicide. If they hadhought grown up in canada or somewhere in europe, they might well be alive today. Frustrated by the fact that we have, it seems to me, taken a wrong path. Yet just in the last year, ive begun to think that actually now there is hope of choosing a new and better path. Has made itd19 very apparent to people that when you dont have universal health care, there are real costs to everybody. In times of chronic disease, only the disease sufferers pay the toll. In a time of infectious disease, we all suffer. Country in the advanced world that doesnt have paid sick leave. In a time of infectious disease, the burdens are more apparent to everybody. Pulling on black lives matter and how much it has changed, the fact that a majority of white citizens say they agree with the aims of black lives matter than in the past. Struck thaten history moves in cycles. Arthurs lessons are talked about the cycles of history. I wonder if that cycle is not already in the process of shifting. When kansas voters rebel at tax cuts and kansas republicans said tax cuts more so we can invest in education, i cant help but wonder if thats not a turning point in that long cycle. I think we have a chance the way we did in the way we did in 1932 election. It may not quite be a new deal, but something in that direction that begins to address a lot of these inadequacies in our society. Host the book that you and cheryl wrote, you obviously had planned well before the pandemic, coincides with the pandemic stop if i could just ask you what a terrible thing for you and everybody associated with your unity that so many of your contemporaries have not lived because the social safety net did not catch them or because the conditions of life in the United States. We have seen in the pandemic the gross income inequality in our country, that health care vanishes if attached to your job, not your person. And the pandemic have in a way overlapped and integrated. If you talk about the book, youve got reallife examples today of whats happening to americans. Nicholas thats right. And in many ways, the pandemic has magnified those inequities one ofnified the toll the families we write about was a family that grew up they got on the bus stop right after i did. The oldest was my year. Away before passed we wrote the book. Survivedsurvivor because he spent 13 years in the oregon state penitentiary. Died of ad began, he heroin overdose. Alive atmom is still 80 and all five kids are gone. He lost his job, he was certainly socially isolated as many people are, there are some indications drug abuse has been increasing. I think there may well be some connection between covid and i havess and so while some hope that we have a chance for correcting this, certainly in the short term, this is devastating in some any communities across the country and particularly ever stating to people of color and those at the bottom of the socioeconomic spectrum. Have in your column, you this interesting notion of comparing our time now in 2020 21930 2, 33, the failure of herbert hoover, the triumph of franklin d roosevelt. Nobody really could have predicted roosevelt would become, in a way, for his time, a radical reformer. You quote to people about what could be possible in our time. She says trump is the perfect opposition to have. Ours,al friend of professor at harvard. It is possible, she said that the best thing that could have happened is the crass, self interested, ineffective policies of donald trump. If the president is to be repudiated, and we dont know that yet, on november 3, is there a possibility of a new progressive era pending on what happens in the congressional era . Could President Biden lead us forward to really Pay Attention to some of these major fault lines in American Society . I think it is possible. I would be reluctant to predict it. You and i both know vice President Biden. Hes not instinctively a revolutionary figure at all, but neither was roosevelt. At the end of the day, what happened in 1932 was that hoover had been such a disaster, he discredited his party, he the entire wing of the country. Because of that, the democrats in 1932 flips the senate and not only did fdr win, but they flips roosevelt,and then faced with this enormous governingapproached not in an ideological way, but in a practical, weve got to solve this crisis kind of way. He tried all kinds of things and some worked and some didnt work. In the end, economically, he was helped by the mobilization that came with world war ii. But vice President Biden has been saying things to the fact that he understands this may be a historic turning point. Some of at polling on these progressive economic issues, health care, childcare, bandwidth for all, raising the federal minimum wage, and there is a norma support for some of these there is enormous support for these measures. More than 80 of the public believes taxes should rise on the wealthy to fund more social programs stop 80 of americans dont agree on anything. They dont agree the world is round. So to get that kind of consensus on these kinds of things makes me think there is a fighting chance that we can correct this wrong turn of the last 50 years. Host speaking historically, after america us first gilded age and the robber baron capitalism of the gilded age, you have the muckrakers, journalists like you exposing social inequalities stop you had a great reformer in theodore roosevelt. With theow wilson income tax of 1913. You have the failure of hoover and the policies of the 1920s, the advent of the second aogressive era, are we as journalist, are we at such an Inflection Point that it calls for a time of extraordinary possibility for the upper limit of American Society, the extremely wealthy, but not for the middle class, certainly not for the low income americans. Are we at such a point . Nicholas i think that we may be in a sense that so much of the path we have been on has been completely discredited in the way that hoovers policies were discredited at the time. There is a poll that i quoted in that onlyn that noted 16 of americans said they felt in a countryu. S. Where patriotism and pride has always been something that has been central to this countrys ideology. In 2016, you saw both on the left and right, this support for Bernie Sanders and support for trump, this sense that the system is not working, that we have to do new things. Think a lot of the country recognizes something is profoundly wrong. That we have to try new policies. Boy, i hope we take advantage of this moment. I think its entirely possible if the senate doesnt go democratic then we will have paralysis stop there are all kinds of things that can go wrong, but do we have a chance as the u. S. Had in 1932, 33 . It, i think we just may and may be a better chance than weve had in recent years stop what do you think . Host i think you are right. You quote vice President Biden who said recently that i do think weve reached a point, real inflection in american history. I think a lot of us are trying to think back to earlier times when the American People rose up in a way and said we want a stronger and better and more inclusive government. We want social security. In the 1930s, we want civil rights, the Voting Rights act and the civil rights act. We want health insurance. That lead you to barack obama and obama care. I do think there is something there. A lot of people and my next question, a lot of people say we are so divided red, blue, north, south, urban, rural how can we possibly get anything done . But you Say Something that Condoleezza Rice echoed this morning. We may have been much more divided in the 1960s. You and i were young boys, grammar schoolboys, Elementary School boys. Artan luther king killed. Robert kennedy killed. The vietnam war. The race riots. The incredible violence. The weatherman from the left. Was that a more difficult time for us . In 1968, i turned nine years old, so im not a great commentator. But certainly, in talking to the cohort thats just a little bit older than us, im struck by how toxic relations were between the boomers and their parents and how money boomers thought their murderersre vicious who were supporting massacres in vietnam and completely immoral. Meanwhile, the parents generation thought that their kids were utterly immoral and going to destroy the United States. Those divisions at the dinner table were toxic in a way that is not true now. 33, if you go back to 1932, i dont know that we fully appreciate how much hostility there was to roosevelt, both from the left, from the hue belongs of the world and from the right, the father coghlans of the world. The supreme court, the degree to which it blocked him early on. That was also a time of polarization. A lot of people thought roosevelt was a communist, etc. Spite that, we got an awful lot done. Host he certainly didnt i think most historians would say roosevelt is right up there with lincoln and washington, probably is our greatest resident because of what he did to help our parents generation through the Great Depression and the second world war. There has been this narrative it seems to me one of the big problems in the u. S. Is not that we dont have the tools, that we dont have the resources stop in many ways, it has been a narrative that government cant do anything right. Its been a narrative that its all about personal responsibility. That is fundamentally what determines outcomes. In a rural area that has been hurt so badly over the last few decades, im struck that it was transformed by progressive government policies. The whole reason people came here on the oregon trail was because of a program for the disadvantaged, the homestead act. It was a way of turning landless americans into middleclass families. The Rural Electrification completely transformed areas like this. The g. I. Bill of rights. Was programs like that that invested in the Human Capital of america to create a middle that had enormous returns. Yet now we seem to have forgotten the role of those programs and focus on personal responsibility in a way that to me seems myopic. To say to theant many people who are watching this, we are going to get to your questions. I already see three people, for people lining up to ask questions. Im got two more questions for you and then we will go to our i pull myp when students. Ive been doing this for five or six years these are students from all over the world, a majority american, but lots of different nationalities. They are remarkably consistent in what they tell me they are hopeful about. These are analytical trendlines. In the last poll in may, they say we have lifted more than a billion people out of poverty in the last 40 years, why cant we double that in the next four years . They say despite the pandemic, the extraordinary progress on polio. Its going to be eradicated. Bill gates says he thinks malaria can be eradicated in our lifetime. Half a Million People in africa died of malaria. Third, my students, men and women are passionate about the rise of women to gender equality , to being able to compete in anyway possible without the kind of restrictions their mothers and grandmothers had. And finally, my students are passionate about tech, broadly defined. Whether ai, biotech, quantum computing or the information revolution, they say it can really change lives for the better. I want to get you to react to that. I know youve looked at this for many years in your columns. Nicholas your students are exactly right. They are better students than the public as a whole. In polls come up to 90 of americans say Global Property is global poverty is either stuck or getting worse. World has been transformed. Born, a and i were majority of human beings had always been in extreme poverty, andalways been illiterate, about a quarter of kids died before age five. Now, we are down to fewer than 10 of People Living in extreme poverty. 4 of kids die by age five. Toward 90 ing literacy. Every day over the last couple of decades, another 325,000 people have gotten electricity for the first time. People eating electricity for the. For the first time. Another 600,000 people have gone online for the first time. Which goes to the tech transformation you mentioned. More people worldwide have mobile phones and have toilets. Mobile phones are important not just as comedic asians devices, but as a Banking System in many places. Its hard to get bank account, but you can store money on your phone. The only other alternative is to buy chickens and thats how you store money. Its a much more convenient to store money on a mobile phone. Suggest, covid is going to challenge these gains. We are going to go backward for a little bit. This dont think that fundamental narrative of progress is going to be reversed by long by covid19 or climate change, which will be another factor that will test it. Likewise, the rise of women. The host and you have written about that with your wife. Nicholas thats right. We wrote a book called half the sky. Rolls education in particular was something very secondary and nothing is more transformative than educating girls. Now, and Elementary Schools worldwide, there is virtually no gender gap in primary education. There still is in secondary and tertiary education, but in primary education, there isnt. Education,get an their influence on society, their capacity to earn money, their ability to look after vastlyhildren, is increased. Me ays frustrates extremists get this. Why does the taliban shoot malala in the head . Why does the Afghan Taliban throw acid in girls faces . What is boko haram kidnap schoolgirls . They understand the biggest threat to extremism is an educated girl. I wish we understood that as well and were willing to invest in Girls Education around the world precisely to help reap those benefits not just for those countries, but the world as a whole. Host its interest