Time you come from and i come from a small little town in oregon and i just ponder how, and your traveling the world, youre living in a different environment completely but you have reported on World Affairs from all kinds of Different Directions in the worst tragedies on the planet but you chose to really focus on small town in oregon, wife . We were running around the world, covering crises and free would periodically go back to my beloved hope town on the family farm and we saw a humanitarian crisis unfolding there. A quarter of the kids who were on my school bus are now fallen from drugs and alcohol for suicide. I tried to process that, kids who got on the bus right after me, and for her sister, smart and talented kids. He died of drug and alcohol abuse, he died in house fire when he was drunk. In one blew himself cooking method regina died from hepatitis, injectable drug use. Once arrived because he survived his intricate for a while, we wondered, is there something about my bus, we realized this is a National Problem that we had destined to spare, Life Expectancy is falling or was probably three years in a row. In my old bus, across america. You saw this through the lens of returning, i think it could have been titled School Bus Number six. So many stories drawn from the friends you had growing up there. So if you grew up in manhattan, Upper West Side and thats a whole different world. In your relationship, you saw it unfolding over the last couple of decades, how did the lens through which you saw come from . It gets farther then. It really is in the middle of the urban world. When i first approached this, one of these people like . [laughter] i grew up on a farm. Basically right now, a tale of two american there is a party going on. On the bottom is where the home is having people trying to figure out what to do how to stay afloat. So i think manhattan in many ways, the people manhattan, many are in the party. No was going on in the lower deck and once i started meeting these people learning about their background realized they are very complicated human beings. The stories we learn about their household, about background, it was so alarming touching and heartbreaking that he couldnt help but say we have this world. The analogy of the upper deck lower deck and whats going on below, your book uses another analogy in the title, tight rope. In some of my features and in congress, i talked about paving a wide, solid path of families to thrive and a narrow path, but a tight rope. What are you conveying by that . Those of us who are in the upper middle class and above are very low educated, at least graduated from high school from college, we a fairly wide path ahead of us so if we fall, we can pick ourselves up. These people, especially people in the small towns around america and rural areas around america people are walking on a tight rope. They miss and fall, there is no safety net. They are falling into a chasm that you describe in this book as drugs, alcohol, domestic violence, suicide, it is a pretty bleak picture and theres a dynamic you wrestle with about, is this personally responsible . Do they just need to write walk the tightrope better . Personal responsibly versus collective responsibly. What have you concluded . Personal responsibly is absolutely real. Blaming the people who fell off the tight rope for the catastrophes thatfollow. At this point you can predict this in accuracy. The outcomes of a newborn infant and when you can do that its not because that infant is making bad choices or showingirresponsibility. So look, by all means lets have the personal responsibility conversation. If we do that but also have a conversation about our collective responsibility to help the people who are on my number six in so many ways we can help in ways that benefit them in society paul ryan you quote in the book that says in our country the conditions of your birth do not determine the outcome of your life. In the book you introduce this term or you share this term Adverse Childhood Experiences and what youre basically saying is if you have collected several Adverse Childhood Experiences , your odds of succeeding are dropped dramatically which you portray as the odds of being in poverty increase substantially. So explain this how these childhood adversities really impact your course in life. Its pretty well documented by scientists who have analyzed thesesituations so many of us have adverse childhood experience. Theres a divorce, a big move from one state to the next is traumatic for a child but when you start going up six, seven, eight, that could have a traumatic experience partly depending upon the age of the child specifically as the child goes to zero and five. That is when the brain is developing at its most rapid pace for the rest of that persons life. When our brain develops quickly. We think of children as really resilient and are not as resilient as we think and in fact when theres violence in the house, yelling and abuse in the house, that creates stress in the baby and that means the cortisol hormone is coursing through that brain. And as that brain is growing it now impacts the development of the brain architecture for this little baby so if this is not corrected, that babys brain is not going to develop properly so if we can address these issues early on and there are treatments, there are ways of using therapy, counseling, we can put that young child onto a better course so that we dont see them two decades later in poverty or in drugs or dropping out of college or High School Even its not just that, if not just psychological trauma and troubles, it also helped so in fact, able who have stacked up aces are much more likely later on in life unless there corrected to have heart disease. You have chronic diseases like diabetes. Thats a huge problem on society as well. When thinking about the personal responsibility narrative , one is we mentioned the success sequence that cheryl sometimes mentioned and its true that if somebody thats doing three things, they largely avoid poverty a graduate from high school, get a fulltime job and then they have kids on the after marrying and only two percent live in poverty. If they do not of those three things only five percent live in poverty so those involve an element of bad choices on personal responsibility but they also reflect what we as a society do. One reason that americans get the same rates as european kids, but they have babies as teenagers three times as often because we as a society dont make comprehensive sex educationavailable and dont make Birth Control available. Our High School Graduation rates are substantially lower than those in many other countries because we dont place the same premium on it. There are certainly ways we can shift it. If not becauseamerican kids are dumber than others or less diligent. So i think that this obsession as neglected the public side of theequation or the policy side of the equation. The odds are stacked against those who are raised with the various stressors in childhood and i wanted to go back for a moment to your conversation about how the brain is actually wired in what ways is that rewiring pumpdemise once success. A lot of it has to do with the development of the brain architecture so the cortisol is the stressor hormone most of us as adults it happens for a little bit and then it goes away. It grows right through us but because of the babys brainis developing so rapidly at that time and also some young, its much more fragile than we think. It really does impair the development. But does it make those children more susceptible to addiction, less able to have if you will a committed relationship or just multiple effects. Multiple effects and they show later on at all of the things that you talk about also more likely to graduate from high school. More likely to have supper some things like adhd. A number of illnesses that make it harder for the child going up to actually succeed. So thats why pediatricians are so focused on trying to address aces and certainly in california the new Surgeon General there thats the information. The senate from university of oregon that all this cortisol that one thing it does is it prepares children for a violence, turbulent dangerous environment and it puts them therefore on a hair trigger right or flight response. And one consequence is that it makes it harder to concentrate on the blackboard because they are being trained to look for potential threats e. And so that seems to be one pathway in which this cortisol impairs education and concentration. I believe that in the book you know that Warren Buffett referred to something, i think the ovarian lottery and ive heard lucy up about how hed been born under different circumstances, he wouldnt be a multibillionaire. Both because of the infrastructure that others established but also the circumstances of his birth. So its disturbing that in so many ways, the United States hall countries seem to be doing a horror job and other democracies, other republics that could have similar problems and you note that we are 39 in clean Drinking Water and 40th on Child Mortality and the birth on School Enrollment and that we suffer more stress than the average person in venezuela and that our Life Expectancy is dropping so heres the United States our Congress Working on these issues. Our state legislature, how is it that were having a horrific outcome . Because they dont tell it to america. Weve got all these Economic Statistics that are showing us gdp is doing well, market is rocket high thoughwe look at these measures. Inflation is low and we say were doing well but then if you actually heal line the statistics and look at other broader statistics you can see that that not the full picture so a lot of men for instance are just drop out of the workforce they wont even be counted and these men may be selfmedicating. Theyve been out of a job for a while, they dont have the confidence to jump back in and we interviewed a numberof them and so we know thats what is happening. Theyre not even looking as though they wouldnt be counted as looking but if you then look at the Life Expectancy statistics as nick mentioned, that is another broader measure i which you know its because of the depths of despair which are these types of depths of despair that arecharacterized by two economists at princeton. I guess ethan and and chase and they looked at the ansys data and they saw that depths of despair were isolated some, death related to Drug Overdose and death and suicide were at record high suicide rate since world war ii and yes, they dropped a little bit, the Drug Overdose deaths dropped a little bit in 2018 so thats a good sign but its still 7000, 68,000 people who died from Drug Overdose, thats not a small figure so that ways on the entire nation, average Life Expectancy so its pretty dramatic. We are seeing that dramatic failure to pay the good road youre in those outcomes. What is the United States not doing a better job in getting people off the tight rope . Getting people onto asolid, safe road . I think this is really a fiftyyear erroneous course that the us took. I think it has something to do with nixons seven strategy in 1968 and a tendency to stigmatize investments in Human Capital and in benefit programs on the basis that it would be African Americans who would disproportionately benefit. I think that letting part two and underinvestment in Human Capital and inbenefits across the us. I think it also relates to rep president reagans narrative where government can do no good and is invariably part of the problem. And a kind of glorification of business, taking of power from labor unions to corporations. Coupled with the war on drugs, mass incarceration. I think a few of these trends came together so until the 1970s the us was essentially in line with other countries. Our Life Expectancy was higher than oacd and the other oacd past this and i think the root cause is and underinvestment in american Human Capital and in american citizens. Oecd countries many developed countries to our own. And i cant let me throw out a little bit of a thought here because i see this the lens of trying to change policy and government. And what i am seeing is that our institutions have been changing ways that create power for the powerful and we talked on this in the book and you note later that we have high wealth divisions. The wealthy that have disproportionate political power which leads to rules that benefit the wealthy. Now, if we think about America Today and the inequality that were seeing between the rich and poor, we are at a very high ratio compared to these other countries. So is it possible that our inequality and wealth is influencing the political system in ways that is preventing us from investing the resources on the front on the mental that paved the path for success or ordinary families. I think thats another prism through which are looking, thats right that you create this inequality that then perpetuates through the mechanism of economic power turning into political power. I think its similar to what happened in the gilded age in american history. And i hope so because of course progressivism followed. But it took a Great Depression. It took a world war and so thats a little scary and it took that type of intervention to put us back on the path where really for the three decades after world war ii we had an investment in programs that really did lift up the middle class. Not everyone is relations are so rampant in some sectors and but we made some progress in that realm as well. Is there in order to implement the various policy proposals in your book that will get to in a moment , we need to change the structure of politicalpower . I do think that we need more enlightenment when it comes to this segment of society and i think that there being totally ignored partly because everybody can point to the eye gdp and theres no need to change anything but on average everything is going well but if jeff basil is walked into a room honored people on average everybody will have a higher level of wealth. He comes in your and hangs out. It doesnt make any difference in the people are not just visas so that the problem, its just recognizing that there is this need to lift up all americans and i think also its important for maybe it helps policymakers to recognize that if the us want to compete against the rest of the world other countries like china and india which 1 billion people power, we that people power, especially we have much less if we dont try and lift up all americans and have as Many Americans as possible, we can reach their full potential to be productive, innovative and to really bring americaback to number one. I know that my parents really talked about that sense of Community Coming out of world war ii. And they really how in their lifetime, theyve experienced this greatly bored, my mother came from an extraordinary level of poverty her mother with her three children loss of three children to the county in the middle of the Great Depression she lived in a boxcar. Who could imagine my grandmother realizing that a grandson, might serve in the u. S. Senate. Its an for gary change for both sides you describe in this book how the community of yamhill saw much of this impact of moving forward during those years and how in roughly the mid70s, started to stall out and then to decline so what happened in the mid70s that started to drive this reversal . First of all, i think many people probably in your hometown of myrtle creek would attribute their success to rugged individualism and theres certainly a lot of that. Frankly, historically, it was also a certain amount of brilliant government plans and that the reason people came to places like yamhill was the homestead programs. And electrification transformed places like anthill. The g. I. Bill of rights likewise so i think those investments in people and communities currently help. And then when things, i think when potentially the root cause of things going downhill was good jobs going away. Because local employers and the greater the annual area was a blood factory that closed down and there were some new jobs that camein but the people that work at the glove factory were not able to get those new jobs. Then in particular felt the loss of jobs not only in monetary sense but psychologically as well. They local institutions like churches were not able to handle the trauma of people selfmedicating. They got criminal records which made them less employable and less marriageable. Family Structure Collapse quite quickly and the social fabric attending very tightknit unraveled quickly. So you have a light manufacturing, you have gloves and you have their consequences. You mentioned the bill of rights, a big portion of that was a Mortgage Program or veterans returning, being able to buy health, equity, have savings and i think youre right about jobs being critical to the strength of the family. Because it does give proctor. It gives dignity. And it gives resources. And when you are unemployed, bad things start to happen we seen this in meltdowns across oregon for example a lumber town loses its sawmill, you see some people move right away. You see others who dwell in domestic violence, alcoholism, drug use increase so jobs are critical. I think in yamhill and probably a lot of what communities around the us in the 1990s there were a lot of generated comments made about africanamerican communities were struggling