Of outsiders, hothouse kids and branded she is the executive director of the nonprofit the Economic Hardship reporting project. Shes also the author of two books of poetry, thoughts and prayers monetized. She has written for many, including the Washington Post, the New York Times and time. Her honors include an emmy and esp award and a nieman fellowship. Joining alissa in conversation Zephyr TeachoutZephyr Teachout, a law professor and globally renowned a. K. A option expert. She teaches at fordham school. She is the author of three books and has written extensively on inequality, corruption and power. The New York Times. Her the godmother of the modern progressive in new york. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming alyssa and zephyr to the stage. Good evening. Hello, everybody. Well, we are in for a treat. I am so delighted to be able to talk to you this wonderful book you have been a roll recently. I feel like youre everywhere. The New York Times, ams and the atlantic and the Washington Post and npr and i think it really reflects this incredible hunger that people have for understanding the that we understand ourselves. So before we get to the into some of the wonderful storytelling examples in history in the book can you talk a little bit about the moment were in now that you see . Well, i think part of this is i dont want us to lose the lessons that we learned which are like, you, moments of social generosity, Community People talking openly about their, you know, anxiety, depression, which now at record, right for kids, especially also mutual aids cuts, certain kinds of new political alignments, understand being low wage workers. Thats essential. There are so many things about the pandemic. Im not going to say it was positive, but there were sort of steps forward, if you will. And my my worry is were going to lose that. Were already losing it. The end of the eviction moratorium, the narrowing of again, the recertification with snap and welfare rolls, you know, there was there was a moment where things looked like there was a sort of mutual sympathy as darwin say, of people for each right as as embodied subjects. And i want to keep that alive i guess. So thats part of what i think people are responding to. Theyre like, how do we make sense of what weve been through and how do we retain the best knowledges that came from it . You know well, well, youre also poet and believe and have shown your talent in that area. Also your belief that work and images and symbols really central to thriving. So what i hear you talk about in here and in the book is a kind of nice set of new possibilities but the draw of old archetypes. So lets spend a few minutes with these archetypes Horatio Alger story pulling up by your bootstraps the selfmade man. What are a few that know this is great and whats great about the book is youre like, okay, were going to talk about bootstraps lets talk about boots like action boots. This seems to with what is it the workers broadside in 1834 making fun of nimrods id so do i have this right nimrod murphy so we have we have nimrod murphy to blame for this archetypal can you tell us the story of nimrod and the, the kind of joke that started this it was a joke is also used in a a philosopher used it as an example of mental teeth. It was kind of like almost like a pre theory mind kind of thing. Like can you imagine yourself up by your bootstraps . What a ridiculous idea . So it started as an absurdity and i think its one of the things about this country that over time, every absurdity seems to become things that people not only take very seriously but are destructively with. Right . I mean, okay, so in the 19th century, there were all boots. Men had boots. They needed them to work, working, working needed them especially they had to pull them on with these little tabs on the side and if you were really rich, you had someone who could help you put put your boots on and if you were. I. I dont know. I dont know if youre somewhere along that gradient, you might have machine. They had boot machines to help you put on your machines. And then ultimately, if youre working, man, you were struggling to pull on your boots and so that from that came this sentiment of not only pulling them on, but pulling yourself up. I actually tried once i wanted to see it. Yeah. You really cant. Yeah so to that the selfmade man, obviously, i always say that if you think youre selfmade, call your mother. My mother is right there. And then, you know, the Horatio Alger story and that that kind comes to be in the 19 century, early 20th reich really sediments and Horatio Alger if you read his novels its not actually a Horatio Alger story i mean i could i could elaborate if you want. Please. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like so, he wrote like 128 novels and they were they were dreadful theyre theyre like totally out of print. Theyre like, i had to find them in an essay library. I put the top. They have titles like ragged , tony the tramp, paul the peddler, and theyre all these like, you know, wide shouldered men, you know, like not even young men, basically teenagers. And they meet older gentlemen, inevitably and that becomes their the secret, their success. So they actually are kind of its like a marriage. Theyre like its theyre kind of kept boys in a way from these older men and that it also mirrored things in horatio odgers own life he had he was found to have committed pedophilic acts. He had been a minister who was chased out of his ministry in brewster, massachusetts. And you he became a novelist, is like a kind of a like as a way to cover kind of cover up some of these these actual. I think so the Horatio Alger story is the of a lie it at its base his lie but then its also really the story about you know, the the way that older male power intersects with young people is the oldest story in the world. Its not rags to riches. So but over time its rags to riches, but through a very different mechanism than its come to be known right now. Like the little princess, if you those of you who remember that was very popular the seventies. I think its a its a benefactor. The the which is also was a real character in victorian novels. Right the benefactor comes out of, you know, just appears and but this is a little creepier, right, because this is we look at his biography and he had actually adopted these two boys from the bowery and there was a terrible terrible at that time in history, terrible Child Poverty and a lot of homeless kids. He he adopted them. So who knows what would that involved also . But it went to become this story. The Horatio Alger story, and then it became a prize. And its like a prize. Its one that was won by reagan and it was won by a lot of people. And the piece in the atlantic that about this by book, the young woman and i dont know if she here tonight so somebody said she was coming but that it was a its a really good because she was writing about how she won this prize and she came from profound poverty. She had made something of herself in there. In there, you know, genealogy. And so it was like, you know, now this is really fascinating because as your excuse aiding this story and you start with the the joke on the one hand and the first joke from the working mans was making fun of nimrod for inventing patents, saying it, seems like mr. Murphy will now be able to hand himself over the cumberland by the straps of his boots. This is the sort of first bootstrap joke. So theres a joke on the one hand, and then a lie on the other. Its not about its actually a story of the wealthy coming to lift someone up. But theres a third story, which i think you struggle with more because youre more drawn to it its the amherst and thoreau and those who represented and dissent along with severe individualism. Right. So right and so. Yeah. So so can you talk a little bit how you see the role of of emerson and thoreau in particular in building this . Well, you know, so emersons famous book was selfbuilt science through, wrote walden right on walden and i kind of have a lot of fun at their biographies because when he was writing walden even writes about this, he had seats for company like this is i writing this book during the pandemic i was like through the entertaining lately i think this is not right and then and would over to his mothers house to get his laundry done exactly and what with Emerson Emerson is like a more kind of conventional intellectual figure but he got money from his deceased wifes estate to pay for the he depended on services of his wife, second wife lydian, who clean the house top to bottom. And the day she gave birth. And so its a part what i was trying to show in this is that there is dependance at the center and a lot of its around gender too in race, right at the center of a lot of the kind of people who are proclaiming selfreliance in american literature. Letters. Right. And i, i almost i was trying to i some other thing i was saying is i almost felt like i had like a meta literary moment with some of these texts because i was like, god, this is really i cant read this stuff anymore. I used to love emerson, and now im like this is just not not the right message for at least for this moment, you know . Yeah. Yeah, i, i mean, i actually could feel i felt like when i was reading, i could hear struggling through that. And thats what i meant is, you know, theyre drawn to the literary value and the poetic and also, honestly, part of emersons project. He was a you know, it was against conformity and against the traditions of the church and. Right. And it was like a literal free selfreliance, right . Like a literary lack of dependance. I mean, there were different ways of i was reading richardson and all these other on emerson and they theres debates, right. What did emerson actually by selfreliance so but i mean if i was doing a close readings and some of these were quite i mean, i probably need to write that would take time to find the actual passages. Theres shockingly theyre shockingly in different to other people, other peoples condition, like shocking. So so this is the beginning of this this these myths, right . Yeah. And where i mean these are fascinating welltold stories and where do you see that now . Well, silicon valley. Yeah. So you know, you know, one of my friends just made a joke about that. Its like these are tech pros who are now saying, you know hands off my medicare. You know . Right. I mean, you can so theyre its the opposite. Theyre they were claiming complete autonomy or maybe not quite the opposite, claiming autonomy. And yet, obviously dependent on, you know, a bailout. Well, what you end getting to in the book pretty quickly, which seems to you know, you also start with these stories of hearing from people who a lot of selfblame and you are get really in trying to understand the moral system that comes from these stories and so can you describe a little bit and youre not speaking for all people but what you the moral system that these different threads have built that is harmful. Yeah i think its its stigma. Right . Its stigma. Selfblame and. I mean, part it. So i wrote a book called squeeze my previous book squeeze why our families cant afford america. And a lot of these people, i call them the middle precariat, which i meant by that the precarious middle class. Right. The perlmutter crossroads precarity of is middle and thats brain work became gig right thats part of something thats something that has happened increasingly for the academia its a law to be i know accounting to even school schoolteachers right so so i wrote about that and i thought, wow, you know, the thing i keep hearing is people themselves that i have i should have done better. I mean, so ashamed. I, i what what have i done wrong . I thought i did everything right and i to kind of trace that part of why i wanted to trace some of the early texts that created these myths to understand where the where the laceration is coming from for individuals. You know so who is Stephen Lerner not bill white Melvin Lerner. Stephen lerner is a friend of mine. So maybe hes here tonight. Hi, stephen who is stephen. Who is Melvin Lerner . What is the just world of islam . Okay, so the just world theory was a i looked at my friend over there whos obsessed with this particular idea of the just world theory that he coined in the 1960s after he did this experiment, some of the sixties of the milgram set, they were obsessed with electrocution, a bit like giving shocks behind glass. Glass walls and having, you know, whatever that people they were evaluating, responding. So this was a woman, an actor who was being given shocks and they kept increasing the shocks and increasing the shocks but, you know, fictitious like they was just for and the students who were, you know, they were being by Melvin Lerner and his colleagues kept saying, oh, she must have done something wrong. And they sort of thought she must have deserved it and she must have deserved it more and more. The higher the shocks went. And out of that and he did other tests along those lines, he up with this thing called the just world theory is part of how we explain to ourselves why things go well for us and why they go badly. That theres some inherent, deserving this if things go well or or were successful, wealthy, renowned and, there are some inherent you know you know flaw if were not. Yeah so but im trying to understand whether the just world theory is particularly american its particular really connected to these archetypes or is this is this a human bell in Melvin Lerners and in your own understanding theories . Oh, is it . I think there is something human about it. But i also think its enhanced by. So like social conditions and by National Identity and i mean, if you hear the phrase dream, which by the way, is another thing. 1931, is much more community in the it was coined in that time and it was not necessarily describing this like siloed narrative with the family by where the individual by itself toiling for you great riches and success and so that too quite match but now i got off on a tangent which was what i going to come back to this so the just world why is yeah i think theres something natural about it maybe theres something a little natural but then theres something very conditioned about it as well. Yeah. So were going to, were going to come back the today but were going to go to the future for a second because. So if its, if its natural, this sort of just world model, in your view, what are the kinds of types and visions of justice that counteract that and that you want to build up well, so i end with towards the new American Dream. And so and some of these things are i mean, you might think theyre little smaller, bespoke, but some of them are. And and a lot of them are about our mindset about ourselves and the kind of politicians we should be electing. So the new American Dream is a return to this older one. And thats thats a thread i pulling a lot that some of theres some fantastic ideas that were advanced in the past homestead act biggest land giveaway in 1862 the gi bill you know there are plenty of examples and you probably have some like like more regulatory things that the sbb wouldnt have happened if we had maintained them right and so we have to kind of go back to the past to get to the future and part of that is reclaiming this older American Dream more communal . I report on visual aids. I report on workers coops. I report on a budget justice. One of my friends here is a specialist in that which is participatory democracy, participatory budgeting, which sounds but its actually really cool. I even talk about something i call therapy, which is kind of peer to peer therapy, that its social class oriented, which recognizes that a lot of trauma intersects with poverty and kind of adverse societal forces. You know, you know, you cant like they always say in therapy, do the work. Its like, you know, you also have to have you to work. So you have to be able to have a job and then you can do the work. So to way but theres theres a kind of individualist thrust to a lot of traditional therapy. And theres also its obviously hard to access and its incredibly expensive and its not covered by medicaid often a lot of i see someone here who knows about that a lot of my contributors at eat your pr contributors have experiences. So like some this i talked about the other day that new deal for therapy yeah yeah so so i, i was going to ask you about it later but lets do it. The new deal for therapy. What is. Well, i mean, it would be things like this, peer to peer counseling, but it also be Training Programs for, therapists to work especially to work with kids because the constant articles about anxiety and depression, about kids, ive experienced it in my own family. You probably all you know the pandemic was really really hard for kids and i just that that would be a great way to get to establish a kind of cadre of you know put people to work doing something actually substantial and interesting. Thats not a job, you know folk group. Yeah. So mean i, i, i warned you i might ask about this, but throughout the book theres a kind of, im interested in the shadow of the church or of churches, and its a shadow. Its not necessarily engaged directly. At one point you interview two, somebody who works at coop and what happens to me, my hometown hometown and the he says, its like my church, you know, one of several times. And then later you talk about secular faith. And when youre talking sort of collective therapy, certainly a lot of echoes of kind of organized religion and when youre talking about values or a moral system that is less about measuring depending on which organized religion and dogmatic youre talking about is less focus is a way from success and goodness somehow or being connected so did you think about that at all in this is that i i mean im i probably on some unconscious level and i mean the part of me thats interested in religion im in things like you know, communal luxury, which is this idea of by this theory Christian Ross about the amplitude thats possible with through collective experience or leading single who talks about radical happiness. And this