Hudible conversations] hello. I am so happy to be here with Courtney Martin and you can be here with us. One of the cofounders of the project is very sad he cannot be here, he is sick today. Courtney cent and email yesterday we were not looking at the calendar to say what is happening this weekend chief meld yesterdays and said it should redo this . Should be have a book launche to talk about the new better off in the week that it is momentous and the unsettling landscape . And i said absolutely because of what happened andd how unsettled puerto rico it is important we sit together in a room and talk about what matters to us. So i will not do the big introduction you can read her credentials and i love the presence that she brings to our media space on her blog that is eliminating for everybody reading it. Per rigour as a journalist and a thought leader and also a human being. Somehow i want to introduce courtney is i love her. Y. [laughter] she is a journalist, but she is a new journalist. She is one of the people who is modeling and incubatingor new forms of journalism for the 21st century. The old forms are failing us but here we are. S true o this true right now in the early the 21st century of the things that made sense even 10 years ago just dont make sense anymore. With madison and present it is true with religion and it is what we get this week. How we do that . Not clear but you are one of those people who is figuring this out close to thean ground. And today with some of the best journalists are the hysterical apocalyptic analysis of what will happen in the next four years and the end of civilization . E what w and these are people who did not see what was right in front of them last 18 months. That kind of hysteria is not helpful. L. Be of so how can and journalism me of service to common life . Ment e mrs. It is where humility is called for. One of the of things and what i find helpful and to think about this century from now what will they say is really important that is happening right now . Ow say and to say this shapes of world maybe the election of donald trump. Maybe. That it is 70 degrees and sunny in november in minnesota. Maybe millions of human beings right now im as we speak making their wayns across europe with the refugees. How will that shape the world . Of all the world to be loved and inspired, imagine a sixth century rome. Whenever that time was it did not ever carry a headline that says benedict because there was the crazy guy over here who in his lifetime had 12 communitiesco of 12 people one tried to poison him it is not a successful venture. Nobody noticed his startupsno nobody wrote a headline. But what this person with the viet vision of Community Set in motion to shave civilization that kept western literature alive. We dont know what is happening right now that feeds those invisible feeds to set that in motion. However i suspect that and the people that she writes about. [booing] that she writes about, and that we have to continuee are do with what we are doing with passion and shine a light on everything else. That is what we are here to do. T11 i want to read of a little bit of the new better off to give you a flavor want should be cancelled tonight because of what has happened in the world . Resoundingly no. This is from the firstro chapter of the introduction. What you will find i hope is being richer does not mean being numb. To be sure living in america of this moment can break your heart but it doesnt have to break your spirit to. Living in america is so interesting, fertile and up for grabs it is also a disintegrating and reconstituting in three calibrating and up to us to make a life that we can be proud of in communities and systems and policies and to reject tired narratives about success instead of offering new ones in more about creative communities it is up to was to reclaimof the best of a previous generations did that made the country so unique and beautiful as well as to own up to the destructive legacies to expose them to the light and figure how to fix them it is up to us toto be humble and brave and be accountable to our own dreams, no one else to be iconoclastic and to stay awake. Is this a wonderful book. Is an important book. And one thing i have been admiring as you launched it it, you are not just promoting the book but the book is a conversation piece t a conversation starter it take into companies to build a movement or contributing to the movement that wants to form. This seems so gratifying. In many ways i feel that they just try to language of what i am observing so that feels like the role to give language to the yearnings that people have also the things better in the world and to see that power to acknowledge that you are all doing similar stuff so there is something greater than to create more priority in your life that is what will save us all to the earlier points that you are making. It is less than so gratifying that this book plays some role to acknowledge invisible deeply important work which from may gender perspective is womens work and also poor peoples work i am very clear about creating community those have less money so this turns the tables on who really knows how to do things to create happiness sorry efficiency. Had you have explain that connection . Wealth makes us dumb about how vulnerable we are because we think we can buy our way out of the Trump Presidency or for this moment when you find out donald trump is the president doesnt matter how much money is in your bankis account you could fly to the Cayman Islands the radically but if you care of that care about america and doesnt matter of just like every a other person. So i think welfare will fool us wealth will fool us. So how does that create the condition where you get better at community . That is like you have to look to the people around you to get by then it turns out to solve your problemsn to make shoe happier and healthier and there is a real freedom and mental will the sand for the ability. So eveh from folder ability like those that needed to clean house this so they created their own makeshift coopt we one would take care of the kids will take to keep the kids to get there and do it faster was small and invisible that low incomeis people do out of necessity but it turns out now what makes them response of all human being. So wind of the core idea is the you are pursuing and tried to trace the icon locations is the atm of vocation and calling. And i think the 20th century in this country, we have the completed vocation whiff job and title. But it is not bad all about what you do but who you are and how you do it. But it is plural and we have many collings at once. So how would you Start Talking of the ecosystem of the applications . And his start to change the way . What does that mean to you how we define that . I guess 11 start whiff tracing my own relationship of indication that i grew up thinking my dad had the important job because he was a lawyer but came to realize cao everything now is a mirror of what my mom did and she was 10 Different Things nowdi matter which made sense on paper all of us headed deeper influences the kennedy round of social worker, the mom with the condoms in the closet laugh laugh she was this on to produce our before i even knew that was the word but it was a Community Organizer so i grew up thinking i should have a path like my dad to be important person in go to law school and it turns out that my way of being important in the world is exactly what my mom did. Try a writer so that is magnified and a much larger scale than it was for her but liggett the way the work is happening to much looks like many of our mothers who we thought did not have real jobs. And also for men. This isnt just about to win in. And as work becomes decentralize eric is of risk of that social safety net but there is a lot more room for flexibility as parents and workers six cetera so it isnt like you get to one vocation and maybe people are completely singleminded but that is not anybody that i know. If you have a vocation as a worker, parent common neighbor, citizen to say what is our calling as the citizen . It is not like to put it aside. Exactly and the roles are blending which is a good thing. If you like it is important to keep reiterating the system questions that it is up privilege to be every lancer and afford Health Insurance or the bottom will not drop out if you dont get one paycheck so this is well into our capacity to imagine with the new social safety net but having said that, the blending of those worlds and paid work, that is a fairy new way of living. That y and your friends would be totally separate. Even the phrase Work Life Balance makes absolutely no sense to me. Me. Battlefield weird about working with my friends. He was my mentor, friend, i also like your website and your project that does not feel weird to be a sea of other generations there was a separation the issue collaborate professionally and your friends but that is breaking down. Is. And it is messy and challenging. Traditional organizations so what are the boundaries . To talk about that complexity. But for me we can make the work all the of Richard Richard i know as a real textured way but the capacity to rest on the knowing that i need to call her out or support during certain way that it makes it harder but more excellent. Thinking about black lives matter or social movements, often end it is friends. And black lives matterr itself came from three women thw communicating with one another. It shows theres so much being born and professionally have of friendship it is really shifting. There are things of above to read about but i feel that my favorite People Better soso masterful at friendship iti is almost like a new realm of skill. Not new obviously does something about the way people think about friends and work with friends thatti it is a bit different. Something to cultivate. I love that. Thinking about your daughter recent College Graduate dont worry about your resonate. Worry about your friends you have amazing interesting friends you will be okay. I dont just mean after hours but your work will be better because you have amazing friends and you will have more opportunities you dont have to zero network with the intimidating older person. You should do that also laugh laugh but not how to ride the friend that but they grow up to become those people but then you have a relationship with them that 20 then that is in your living room. At all like to generalize bed i dont think he feel that new generation is doing that better . That bet the ecs new generations quick. Certainly experience thatta and i feel amazed the younger people live and in touch with in their early 20s support one another and the way that they think of course, people have their jealousies but it is very generous help people love their friends. Ir like young women burying their friends on facebook they are not in a romantic relationship but if one is getting a tattoo. Of how much they are committed. But something that you do across generational friendship i think i told you one of the pieces of the crisis have been grateful for fillets had friends in my 70s and 80s and one of those older friends said to me i always have had young girlfriends. Ounger buffer some reason i was growing up, icu and you talk about this with the robust web of mentors and especially women of other generations. And like the old mann friend this der mentor of mine from college that a lot of baird dudes in their eighties and women friends of all ages and a love mike older women friends i have learned so much from the mentor that is 10 years older there is something about to see yourself in the near future that is so important to me especially as a new mother with a six yearold that has been so important for me. You said the language of Work Life Balance makes less sense in a the way these generations are navigating life and they think they point out the challenge that they just landed in the middle of their lives andn your own background to describe that to people of your generation to figure that out to make that humane there is us chapter on attention when i think about something that could not have been written before how we create the good life. It was not even on their horizon. T even o but now essential to your capacity to create Robust Health elation ships is hollowed you relate or think about when you are online . Of funny thing when it younger people probably havede figured this out so i will do this counter intuitive thing to interview teenagersrs talking to maine neighbors so tell me when you have an important conversation with a friend she said wed never dont let debtor fawns even with those conversations. [laughter] that just ruined my counterintuitive bought copper co that is so frightening to be. I am really worried about that in general. Just like my kids it is the guinea pig generation. Want your daughter told me she was not on facebook. Many people are not. Ac plenty of kids do that. Dicey them working with thisis but they are not the quipped at those ages they are not about self control or self discipline. And we are not. But what worries me is most of the of models that we are wrestling with is about abstinence. So every 24 hours we will look into each others eyes the other six days we are good. I think were still trying to understand the nuances that we treated like alcohol or a drug. It works addictive things end our brain. If you are 21 years old she says you know, you just gotu a jolt of dopamine laugh laugh i want to read that paragraph from the new better off explain what the boredom brilliant challenges a radio show that basically challenged people every day delete your favorite app off of your phone, dont use facebooky for a day suss through these habitual challenges to be somewhere and be bored to let their mind wander. So take your own board and brilliant challenge take a walk without looking at yourself on notice the weird little shit. Love people the way they deserve to be loved without a soul found obstructing your admiration ultimately your attention is spent as one choice at the time that they be flecked your grand ambition as you experience the world. I will ask one more question then be will open up to see what is on your mind. The stuff lafferty equation . Another new balancing act this ecovation is smiling which that i came up with. Please to not let me plagiarize anyone but we have time to understand that consumer is them has a major cost with our e Emotional Energy the more stuff we have the more we have to organize and repair and get new staff and the old stuff b is out of fashion is an endless cycle. S cyc so long with the way that changes faster and faster the way we used to buy stuff to symbolize to be word is changing and all of us, a lot of us think about stuff in a different way to get rid of it and not consume as much in the first place and i profiled an interesting organization to make it that you give away your old stuff to get dollars to buy other peoples stuff. The location was saved the worlds right so i think ive done a lot of sort of work in my life we scaling my expectations. Not only about my own impact on the world but about where i want to spend my energy and my time, that i am more interested in having an incredible local network of community and friends and being famous or even recalibrating all that to think about it in a different way and thats intention of enough stuff and its all finite which is something i think leslie, once you have kids is hard not to realize because your own mortality and their mortality is so inyourface. I feel like having children made me wake up and go. Com its all going to end so this is all ive got and ive got to just do the best i can with every moment that i think before i hadkids it was especially hard to wrap my head around. Class its not really a word we cultivate a relationship with culturally. I think we need to say lower expectations, then its like a fat which is what i wanted to write about in the book. This is the first generation of kids are not thought to be better off than their parents and theres a sadness and that, you are going to be able to afford what you have . Youre not going to be able to afford the fancy job . And i said im not sure thats making people happy. You can be sad for this next generation and where you can look for more ways that they are realizingthe big stuff , the fancy jobs didnt create a lot of wealth anyway and maybe its not so sad to have a smaller life, however we defined small. Its not so sad to spend a lot of time investing in a Smaller Community of people. Maybe thats the root of wellbeing and we have to return to that someday. I think that for many years, ive heard a lot of even before we use the term millennial, ive heard a lot of younger people, one of the worst reviews is ive looked at what they see in their parents generation and people who are running the world now is a loneliness that they dont want for themselves. Would you talk about you and john made a decision to move into a Cohousing Community and was your first daughter born there . So now youve had two children born into this and this is also, you said old model. But we are reinventing it. Right, so with the new model. There is other language you have about, what is it, the lost art ofneighborliness. What have you gotten out of this and what are you learning about the lost art of neighborliness . I dont even know where to start about what ive gotten out of living in cohousing. Theres cohousing, for people who are not familiar, we are a group of 25 people who all have our own homes and everything a typical home would have but we also share an industrial size eating area, kitchen, garden, kids playroom, bike shed, toolshed and we eat together thursday through sunday. And then beyond that have this sort of informal commitments to what we call radical hospitality. The sense that we are there for people in oakland in that neighborhood but also for each other. And im just, i mean, as ive lived there for about four years and it gets more complex as these relationships deepen but it continues to just move me to know and what it means to live and in particular getting back to my earlier point, and intergenerational community. Last night, when i was morning and grieving and trying to figure out about the election, i found an email saying okay, should we gather people . What should we do . So myself, my threeyearold daughter maia and my 78yearold neighbor luis and i ended up walking to the park to join this vigil and we were just walking down the sidewalk and louise and i are talking about the carrots they planted in the garden and how excited they are about how the flowers are growing and louise has her walking sticks in the middle of the urban oak