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details. That's bluenile.com. I'm

1:08

Alan Alda, and this is Clear

1:10

and Vivid, conversations about

1:12

connecting and communicating. On

1:19

September 15th, 2019, I

1:21

wrote down what the world looked like to me

1:23

that day. Comments and

1:25

questions and things flooded in, and I thought, well,

1:28

I'm not going to write the

1:30

next night because that's just going to crowd the zone

1:32

and nobody wants to hear from me every night. So

1:35

I didn't write on the 16th of September, but

1:38

I felt by the 17th like I needed to

1:40

answer people's questions, so I wrote again on the

1:42

17th, and I've written every night since.

1:45

People always talk about reaching their audiences, and

1:47

for me, it was the opposite. My audience

1:49

came to me and said, can you please

1:51

explain what's going on? It

1:53

happens that I'm very well trained

1:56

at explaining politics and the political

1:58

system and American history. In

6:00

the area where I live and I thought,

6:02

well I better so I can't get in

6:04

a car. I was alone. I can't really

6:07

get in a car. I better sit down

6:09

and secure out how bad my reaction is

6:11

gonna be an arm. So I sat down.

6:13

I thought, well I guess I'd I might

6:16

as well. Right on an essay to my

6:18

followers who are worried because I've been written

6:20

as so long. So I wrote down on

6:22

September fifteenth, two thousand and nineteen. I wrote

6:25

down what the world looks like to me

6:27

that day. And. Comments and

6:29

questions as and slotted in and I saw

6:31

one not gonna rights the next night because

6:34

it's just gonna crowd the zone and nobody

6:36

wants to hear from me every night. And

6:38

so I didn't read. On the sixteenth of

6:41

September. But. I felt by the

6:43

seventeenth like I needed to answer people's

6:45

questions. So I wrote again on the

6:47

seventeenth and I've written every night since

6:49

because the the comments and the questions

6:51

and the followers just went off the

6:53

charts that people were trying to get

6:55

their seat under them during the Trump

6:57

Administration and beyond and so I think

7:00

it was really just a natural growth.

7:02

People always talk about reaching their audiences

7:04

and for me it was the opposite.

7:06

My audience came to me and said

7:08

can you please explain what's going on

7:10

and it happened said. I'm very well

7:12

trained at explaining politics and the

7:15

political system and American history. So

7:17

yeah. good. At which point in

7:19

his prices did you go to Subs deck. It

7:22

was remarkably early because again, I never

7:24

intended to do this. I was teaching

7:26

full time. I had another book that

7:28

I was finishing up. I was a

7:30

moving house so I was incredibly busy

7:32

on and I. that the

7:34

numbers went off the charts really quickly

7:36

on facebook and stuff substance was just

7:38

starting out and they called me and

7:41

they had one crucial piece that nobody

7:43

else did could people had been asking

7:45

me to send out a newsletter but

7:47

even by than my numbers were so

7:49

high all of the other places that

7:51

if the time could do it had

7:53

very small increments in which you will

7:55

you could send out batches of emails

7:58

and subset was the only one that

8:00

could handle huge numbers all at once.

8:02

And that's why I started to go

8:04

to Substack and why I've stayed there.

8:06

And they send out well over a

8:08

million emails for me every night in

8:10

under a minute. And that's just a

8:13

technology that nobody else at the time had. In

8:16

my memory, all of it is kind of like a,

8:19

I sort of see it as a train

8:21

coming down the hallways of my building with

8:23

me being like, uh-oh, I have to learn

8:26

to use new technologies and

8:28

write every night and manage my teaching and

8:30

manage all this. And it was really a

8:34

community forming. And I like to say now

8:36

I'm the coffee pot that a community has

8:38

formed around. It's not that I'm doing very

8:40

much unusual. It's that people

8:43

are asking questions and

8:45

asking for clarifications and criticizing

8:48

and making comments. And I'm learning along with everybody

8:51

else. It's very much like being, honestly, it's very

8:53

much like being a teacher in a college classroom.

8:56

So what kind of a reaction do you get? Have

8:59

you learned something from the subscribers? Oh,

9:02

every day. Every day. I

9:05

learn about their perspectives. I

9:07

learn about new topics that

9:09

I would never have covered otherwise. But the

9:12

other thing that has really jumped out to

9:14

me is how

9:16

much people care about American democracy and

9:19

how much they care about each other. And

9:22

on top of that, how

9:24

incredibly decent, smart, and

9:27

creative millions of Americans

9:29

are. And I don't know

9:31

if it was COVID that made people really

9:33

become creative and start to turn back to

9:35

the arts and to music. I don't know

9:38

if it's the tensions that are inherent right

9:40

now in our democracy. I don't

9:42

know if it's always been there and I just didn't

9:44

see it before. But it really

9:46

does feel like there is a

9:48

big community in this country that

9:50

maybe doesn't get noticed so much

9:52

by traditional media, but that very

9:54

much is stepping up to the

9:56

plate in this moment to redefine

9:58

what we stand for. One

10:05

of the things I wonder about nowadays is

10:08

that when you make any kind of a statement that

10:10

you intend to be truthful, it's

10:12

often regarded as just political. How

10:15

do you avoid that? Do

10:18

you consider your letters political? No,

10:21

I don't. I am accused of being

10:23

a shill for the Republicans often and

10:25

a shill for the Democrats often. I

10:27

always say I am a shill for

10:30

American democracy because I really

10:32

look at the world from a very

10:34

historic lens that doesn't really

10:36

fit very naturally in modern day

10:38

politics. But this is one of

10:40

the reasons I use sources. Again,

10:42

the idea is to be demonstrating

10:44

that we can have a reality-based

10:46

community. Now there are areas in

10:48

which people are simply not able

10:50

to accept that. If you

10:53

cite sources, they simply say, well, those

10:55

sources are wrong because that's not my

10:57

perspective on this. And that's

10:59

just, you know, all I can say

11:01

on that front is, you know, we'll

11:03

see where we end up in 20

11:06

years, 50 years, 100 years, which one

11:08

of us is going to have been

11:10

right. But so often people

11:12

who are making judgments

11:15

based in emotion, based in what

11:17

they want to be true, those

11:20

things turn out not to be true pretty

11:22

quickly. They rarely come

11:24

back to apologize. But for example, I

11:26

got a piece of, a very strongly

11:28

worded piece of mail

11:30

this summer in which somebody assured

11:33

me that all of our banks were going

11:35

to collapse. And I forget the date, but

11:37

it was in July of 2023. And

11:41

that everything would be worthless. And that person sure

11:43

would like to have a conversation with me the

11:45

day after when we were all ruined. And I

11:47

thought, great, I'm here for it. But

11:50

I never heard from that person again. So

11:53

I think all you can do is

11:55

take the long trend and figure out

11:57

the long historical perspective and figure that.

12:00

But with luck, if you're

12:02

using reputable sources, your

12:04

work will stand the test of time.

12:08

And we will all screw up, but at least

12:10

if we screw up, let's hope we're doing it

12:12

in good faith. Well,

12:14

one of the things I don't understand is you're

12:17

having taken on the responsibility to do a letter

12:19

at the end of the day, every

12:21

day. How did

12:23

you also write your latest book, Democracy

12:26

Awakening? Honestly, that was

12:28

the stupidest thing I've ever done. And that's

12:30

saying something, let me tell you. How did you do it? So

12:34

what I did to write that book was interesting,

12:36

and I think the book has taken on a

12:38

life of its own because of that. I

12:41

began and I would write the book during the

12:43

day. So that's all I would

12:45

focus on during the day. And then I would try, as

12:47

I say, to look at the news, get some... I

12:49

start the day by looking at the news. Then I would write the

12:51

book. Then I would look at the news again. Then I would try

12:53

and get some exercise. And then I would write at night. I would

12:56

write the essays at night because they're a

12:58

very different kettle of fish, those essays than writing

13:00

a book is. But what that

13:02

meant was that the book, the first draft of

13:04

the book, which was intended to be a series

13:06

of essays answering the questions that people ask me

13:09

every day. How did the party switch sides? What

13:11

was the Southern strategy? How

13:13

does the electoral college work? And

13:15

crucially, how did

13:17

we get here? Where are we and

13:19

how do we get out? Those

13:22

original series of essays, 30 short essays.

13:24

I wrote very quickly and I refused

13:26

to look backward because

13:29

I figured that I would never move forward. I would end

13:31

up rewriting all the time. So I wrote them and

13:33

I threw them aside, finished all

13:35

30 of them, and then took a break of

13:37

about three months

13:40

to get my life in order

13:42

and do a number of things, including getting married. And

13:44

when I went back to that manuscript,

13:48

what emerged was something entirely different

13:50

than what I had intended to

13:52

write. In the way that

13:54

a classroom often turns out differently than

13:56

the material you bring to it, if

13:58

you trust your students enough to

14:01

make the material their own. And what emerged

14:04

from the rereading of that book was

14:06

the picture of how democracies crumble

14:08

at the hands of an authoritarian

14:10

and crucially how they can get

14:12

them back. So I ended

14:15

up rewriting the manuscript then by about 80% of

14:17

it ended up getting rewritten. But that was very

14:19

quick because I knew then exactly what I was

14:21

going to write. And what

14:23

emerged then was a manuscript that

14:26

felt in many ways like it was not

14:28

my own, that it really belonged to my

14:30

readers who are ultimately the people to whom

14:32

I dedicated it. And it

14:34

became something very different

14:37

than me and my work in a funny

14:39

way, which still went on every night. So

14:42

it was a huge

14:45

physical commitment, really more than a

14:48

mental commitment, although it was that

14:50

too, simply churning out that many

14:52

words in that way. But

14:55

it ended up not being the same

14:57

thing as the letters which are, you

15:00

know, really me and

15:02

my readers on a nightly basis. The

15:05

book ended up sort of feeling like I was

15:07

simply speaking for a lot of other people. So

15:09

it turned out in the end to be possible,

15:11

I think, because of that. But I

15:14

won't be writing another one with that speed

15:16

anytime soon, let me tell you.

15:20

And in the middle of all of that, you

15:22

got married. Yeah. Great.

15:24

Congratulations. Thank you. One

15:26

of the things that I love about the book and

15:29

the letters too, in many ways, is that

15:31

you track the pendulum that swings back

15:33

and forth in our history between two

15:35

great documents, the Declaration of

15:38

Independence and the Constitution, and

15:41

the values that are expressed in the Declaration

15:43

of all people being equal, in

15:46

those days, all men being equal. And

15:49

the values expressed strongly in the

15:51

Constitution on private property. The

15:54

importance of private property. Those

15:56

seem to be the goalposts that we go back and

15:58

forth from one to the other. as

16:01

history goes on? Well,

16:03

I think that's true. I

16:05

think it's important in the larger scheme

16:07

to recognize the old truism

16:10

in American history, that if you have

16:12

rights, you stand on the Constitution, and

16:14

if you want rights, you stand on

16:16

the Declaration. And because,

16:18

of course, the Declaration of Independence is a

16:21

series of principles. It was never part of

16:23

our fundamental law. It's a series of principles

16:25

to which Abraham Lincoln looked during the American

16:27

Civil War, in which he rededicated the nation

16:30

to a new birth of freedom, in which

16:32

everybody would be treated equally before the law.

16:34

And that concept, those principles that are embedded in

16:42

the Declaration of Independence, at the end

16:44

of the day, I think, are what

16:46

has preserved American democracy and crucially expanded

16:49

it. Because what we

16:51

have found since the beginning of

16:54

first the Declaration in the Constitution is that people

16:56

who are not included in that polity,

16:58

people who have been marginalized and excluded

17:01

from it, have constantly been able to

17:03

hold up the Declaration of Independence and

17:05

say, wait a minute, these principles sound

17:08

great. Why aren't I included in

17:10

them? And that, I think, is

17:12

the beauty of those ideas, that once you have

17:14

established them as a principle, they

17:16

are expandable. They were not automatically expandable,

17:19

but the people who believed in their

17:21

expansion had the ability to use those

17:23

ideas to say, as I said, you

17:25

know, what about me? You know,

17:28

one of the things that jumps

17:30

out with the establishment of the

17:32

Declaration of Independence is people like

17:34

Black poet Phyllis Wheatley writing to

17:36

an indigenous minister saying, hey, you

17:38

know, those principles sound pretty good.

17:41

How come they're not including us in them? And

17:44

that idea of human

17:46

equality, I think, is infinitely

17:48

expandable. And I don't think

17:51

in any way that the founders recognized that

17:53

it was expandable that way. They probably, some

17:55

of them would have been horrified by

17:57

it. But that doesn't... their

18:01

own human limitations do not

18:03

necessarily detract from the brilliance

18:05

of that proposition. And

18:08

one of the things that that

18:10

I try and do is constantly

18:12

reiterate those principles and to suggest

18:14

that we are perhaps now at

18:16

a time when we can both

18:18

recognize them again and also expand

18:20

them yet again as we have

18:22

so frequently in our past. It's

18:24

kind of an exciting time to be alive.

18:33

When we come back from our break, Heather

18:35

Cox Richardson tells me why she's optimistic about

18:37

our future because as she puts it,

18:40

a strong majority of us

18:42

prefers democracy to authoritarianism and

18:45

it's worth fighting for. Just

18:51

a reminder that Clear and Vivid is

18:53

nonprofit with everything after expenses

18:55

going to the Center for Communicating

18:57

Science at Stony Brook University. Both

19:00

the show and the Center are dedicated to

19:02

improving the way we connect with each other

19:05

and all the ways that influence our lives.

19:08

You can help by becoming a patron

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phone or a slightly snarky

19:28

one where I explain you have no interest

19:30

in talking with anyone at the moment. I'm

19:34

happy to report that the snarky one is

19:36

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19:40

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19:42

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19:51

and thank you. Ready

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a team committed to creating innovative

20:01

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code WELCOME. This

20:58

is clear and vivid and now back to

21:01

my conversation with Heather Cox Richardson. As

21:05

you said, your writing attempts to show us where

21:07

we are, how we got here

21:10

and how we can get out. Now

21:12

remember, as I read your book, Democracy Awakening,

21:14

that around 1850 or so and for the

21:18

next 10 years, there was

21:20

one of those times when we went toward

21:22

one document, toward the Constitution and then went

21:24

back toward the Declaration. Exactly.

21:27

Because what had happened is in the 1850s, elite

21:30

Southern enslavers had insisted that

21:33

the Constitution protected their right to

21:35

property. And this is what this,

21:37

I'm sorry, I was going to say wonderful speech, but

21:39

it's wonderful to a historian. What

21:41

it embraces is not necessarily a

21:43

wonderful principle, but in 1858, South

21:45

Carolina and a

21:49

slave named James Henry Hammond gives a

21:51

speech in the Senate in which

21:54

he talks about the way he sees the world. And

21:56

people know it as the Cotton is King speech because

21:58

what he's doing is he's doing it. saying is

22:00

that we can do anything we want because we

22:02

in this region of the country grow the cotton

22:04

for the world and that makes us the most

22:07

powerful people in the world. So people think of

22:09

it as the cotton is king's beech. But

22:11

he also talks about how the

22:14

society is set up in such a way, human society

22:16

is set up in such a way that most

22:19

people are, you know, lazy and

22:21

they're not very smart, they're

22:23

very loyal and they're strong, but they're

22:25

essentially the mud sills of society. They're

22:28

the pieces of a building that get

22:30

driven into the mud to support the

22:33

beautiful homes above that. And those beautiful

22:36

homes, he says, are people like him,

22:38

the elites, the people who get good

22:40

educations and understand how the world works.

22:42

And it's their right and their duty

22:45

to direct those mud sills labor in

22:47

such a way that they amass the

22:49

value of that labor and are able

22:51

to move society forward through, you know,

22:54

great educations and putting famous paintings on

22:56

the walls and even having things like

22:58

olive oil, which in America is extraordinarily

23:00

rare, right, and very expensive to import

23:03

in its glass bottles in

23:05

the 1850s. And he says, you know, really,

23:07

the founders

23:09

very deliberately or the framers very deliberately

23:11

set up a society in which people

23:13

like us should rule because

23:15

they were afraid of democracy and what

23:17

they really were trying to do was

23:19

concentrate power among a very small group

23:22

of us. And even if 99% of

23:25

the American people want the government to

23:27

do something like in that case, create

23:30

public universities or build

23:33

a road across the Cumberland Gap, even

23:36

if 99% of the American

23:38

people want that to happen, it

23:40

can't because the Constitution is extraordinarily

23:42

limited, extraordinarily limited, and all the

23:44

government can do is it

23:46

can protect property. And Abraham

23:48

Lincoln listens to that. This is 1858. He listens

23:51

to that speech, very famous speech, and

23:53

he says, Wait a minute here. That's

23:56

not what government is supposed to be about. And

23:58

in 1859, And he

24:00

explicitly gives a rejoinder to that speech

24:02

in which he says, we

24:04

in our country don't believe that

24:07

most people are mudsills, that most

24:09

people are meant to work for

24:11

other people. We

24:13

believe that this country should be

24:16

based on the idea that every

24:18

man can work for himself, that

24:20

free labor is the centerpiece of

24:23

our world and our society, and

24:25

that the government really should be

24:27

focusing on those individual people starting

24:30

out who are working hard, who

24:32

are producing value, and who are

24:34

producing enough that they will eventually

24:36

support shoemakers and shopkeepers and people

24:38

in the next tier of society

24:40

who will eventually encourage people at

24:42

the very top of society to

24:45

have factories and a very few

24:47

large enterprises that will in turn

24:49

hire people at the bottom. And

24:51

we are truly the centerpiece of

24:54

American society and that we are

24:56

the ones who are guaranteed a

24:59

say in our government by the Declaration of

25:01

Independence. And he begins really to push by

25:03

about 1858, 1859, the idea that the Constitution

25:05

really was

25:10

never designed to set up a world in

25:13

which a very few slave owners could run

25:15

everything, that it was designed to put in

25:17

place a world established by the Declaration of

25:19

Independence. And so when he gives the Gettysburg

25:21

Address in November of 1863, he begins it

25:23

with those famous

25:26

lines, four score and seven

25:28

years ago. And when he

25:31

does that, he is not pointing back to the

25:33

year of the creation of the Constitution, he's pointing

25:35

to the year of the Declaration of Independence, 1776,

25:37

and saying that is when

25:41

our fathers created

25:44

a new nation conceived in liberty and

25:46

dedicated to the proposition that all men

25:48

are created equal. And with

25:50

that, he really recenters the

25:52

idea of the Declaration

25:55

of Independence as the place where we can

25:57

have both a government of the people by

25:59

the people and for the people. the people,

26:01

but also the place where we're going to

26:03

have a new birth of freedom. And it's

26:06

a crucially important moment because from there we're

26:08

going to get, of course, the 13th Amendment

26:10

to the Constitution outlawing systemic slavery except as

26:12

punishment for a crime. And in

26:15

1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution

26:17

in which the federal government is going

26:19

to protect equal rights within the states.

26:22

So what about the third element? How

26:25

do we get out? Is democracy awakening?

26:27

Do you see that happening? Are

26:29

you wishing it would happen? Are you hoping? Where

26:31

are we in your mind? Well,

26:34

I'm all of those things, but I do see it

26:36

happening. So the

26:39

larger argument that jumped out

26:41

to me in that rereading

26:43

of the manuscript that became

26:45

the book, Democracy Awakening, was

26:47

that the way that people

26:49

tend to give up on

26:51

democracies is when people

26:54

who are trying to garner power

26:56

misuse language and they misuse

26:59

our history. And

27:01

the way they misuse language is

27:04

very simple. And you can see it in the

27:06

1850s, you can see it in the 1890s, to

27:08

some degree you can see it in the 1920s

27:10

and you can very much see it in the

27:12

present. And that is they

27:14

begin to say that ways

27:17

in which the government has been

27:19

trying to hold the playing field

27:22

equal are in fact privileging minorities.

27:24

And when that happens, they begin to

27:26

focus on the concentration of wealth, on

27:29

saying we don't need to have a

27:31

government hold the playing field level. We need

27:33

in fact to turn the markets

27:36

loose to make sure that people can get as

27:38

much as they want however they want it. What's

27:40

happened is that as money is slowed to

27:42

the very top, it's created a very hollowed

27:44

out middle class which is able to be

27:47

mobilized to support a strong man who promises

27:49

to return that person to power by saying

27:52

listen, we can go back to a perfect

27:54

past and mind you there's never been a

27:56

perfect past. If only you listen

27:58

to me. And we follow

28:00

a series of rules or

28:03

laws that are divinely inspired

28:05

or inspired by our traditions

28:07

that will enable you to be powerful again, people

28:10

like you to be powerful again. And

28:12

once they've done that, once they have

28:14

got that following, it's not a

28:16

huge step to turn it into

28:19

a movement by making it begin

28:21

to act aggressively and cruelly toward

28:23

somebody they define as an other

28:25

because that cements a population behind

28:27

a strong man psychologically. Once you

28:29

have hurt somebody else, you need

28:31

to believe that person deserved to

28:34

be hurt in order to

28:36

justify your own participation in that. So

28:38

crucially, how do you then get, turn

28:41

that around? You turn it around, I think the

28:43

way that we are doing it nowadays. That

28:46

is we reclaim our language of inclusion

28:48

of a multicultural society of the Declaration

28:50

of Independence. And you say, wait a

28:52

minute, we don't believe in a society

28:54

in which a very few people should

28:56

rule over the rest of us. We

28:58

believe in a society in which all

29:01

of us should be treated equally before the law and have

29:03

a right to a say in our government. And

29:05

crucially, that also means recognizing our real

29:08

history for what it is, not that

29:10

our country sprang fully formed out of

29:12

the brow of George Washington or John

29:15

Adams, but rather that democracy has always

29:17

been about putting skin in the game.

29:20

And it's always been about saying, wait

29:22

a minute, we're not living up to

29:24

our potential. Wait a minute, we're not

29:26

treating everybody equally. Wait a minute, our

29:28

government is not simply holding a level

29:30

playing field. It's privileging one group over

29:32

another. And when we recognize that

29:35

and we recognize that we all have a

29:37

role to play in this democracy, it's

29:39

those moments that really truly

29:42

wonderful expansions of our liberal

29:44

democracy happen. And so I

29:47

think that we are doing it. I think we're doing

29:49

it not only with people

29:51

like you and me talking, but with

29:53

the movements we see going on around

29:55

us right now to expand workers' rights,

29:57

to expand women's rights, to expand minority

30:00

rights and to push back on the idea that

30:02

a very few of us

30:04

should rule the others. That being

30:06

said, I worry. I worry in states

30:09

where a small minority has managed to

30:11

take over the mechanics of government and,

30:14

for example, kick people off the voting

30:16

rolls. Or gerrymander states in such a

30:18

way that a 50-50 state like North

30:20

Carolina is now gerrymandered to the point

30:23

that it's virtually impossible for a Democrat

30:25

to, or for Democrats to ever win

30:27

control of the state delegation of North

30:30

Carolina. So I don't think the deal

30:32

is done, but I think people

30:34

have woken up to the fact that they need

30:36

to put skin in the game, and when they

30:38

do, they will recognize that

30:40

a strong majority of us prefers

30:42

democracy to authoritarianism, and it's worth

30:44

fighting for. It's

30:53

interesting to me how often you note that the

30:55

rise of a strong man depends to a large

30:58

extent on looking back to

31:00

a mythical past that was somehow perfect.

31:03

Everybody has an Eden in their culture that they imagined

31:05

we ought to go back to. I always

31:07

love that. I always say to people, when

31:10

was it like, was it 2.30 on

31:12

February 13th in 1923? Because

31:18

the truth is we have always had

31:20

struggles. We have always lived through terrible

31:22

times, or we've always endured terrible times.

31:25

All of us always haven't lived through them. But

31:29

the idea of a perfect past serves an

31:31

authoritarian by suggesting that

31:33

there is a series of

31:35

rules that if

31:37

that strong man imposes, we can get back

31:40

to that perfect past. Whereas

31:42

recognizing that democracy is never perfect,

31:44

it is never finished. It

31:46

is by definition always

31:48

striving and always contesting

31:50

the ways in which

31:53

we create a society that serves the

31:55

most people in the best possible way.

31:58

That's Give Us All Agency. And

32:00

it makes democracy come alive in a

32:03

way a perfect past doesn't. It's

32:05

also a much more accurate representation of where we have

32:07

been in the past. Do

32:10

you see people being aware more of the

32:12

true past of the swings that we've gone

32:14

through and what is possible to accomplish if

32:16

we do exercise our efforts to communicate about

32:19

the things we're talking about now? Do

32:22

you see that happening? Absolutely.

32:24

Absolutely. I mean, just the

32:26

very virtue of the fact so many people are interested in

32:28

our history now in a way that they haven't been for

32:30

a long time. But in addition to

32:32

that, what really has jumped

32:34

out to me as somebody who's been in

32:37

the classroom since 1987 is

32:39

the degree to which now young

32:41

people, but also people who are

32:44

long out of college are really

32:46

interested in the mechanics of democracy.

32:49

That is, you know, it's one thing to say, hey,

32:51

I want everybody to have rights. It's

32:54

another thing to say, when

32:56

are the deadlines for

32:58

filing papers to run for

33:00

school committee? You know,

33:02

the mechanics of saying this isn't a question of

33:04

having my heart in the right place. We

33:07

actually have to make the levers move. And

33:09

that has really jumped out at me in

33:11

the last, I would say, 10 to 15

33:14

years among young people.

33:17

And I would associate that to some

33:19

degree with the literature young people have

33:22

been reading in that era, which focuses

33:24

on young people pushing back against establishment

33:26

governments that did not work for them,

33:28

say, for example, in the Harry Potter

33:31

books or in the Hunger

33:33

Games series. But I

33:35

would also say that it has been

33:38

picked up more recently within the last

33:40

six years, probably, or six to eight

33:42

years by older Americans as well. Well,

33:45

that's an encouraging note to bring our conversation

33:47

to a close on for the time being

33:49

anyway. I wish we had more time now,

33:52

because there's so many other things I wanted to ask you about.

33:55

But we always end our show with seven quick

33:57

questions. First question. things

34:00

that there are to understand. What

34:02

do you wish you really understood? Oh,

34:06

what a great question. I wish I spoke

34:08

more languages because I don't

34:11

think you can really, I mean, no, it's

34:13

not only that I think you can't understand

34:15

other countries. I wish I spoke the languages

34:17

that other Americans spoke. That's interesting. That's a

34:19

good one. Okay, next one.

34:22

How do you tell someone they have their

34:24

facts wrong? This

34:27

is a secret, but I'm going to tell it here.

34:29

I always say, well,

34:32

I look at it a different way. Do

34:34

you know about, I don't say you're

34:36

an idiot, I say, have you

34:39

thought about it this way? And here's some

34:41

things that suggest that, you know, I won't say that

34:43

suggests that I'm right, but I always start with,

34:46

well, that's not really how I look at it

34:48

as opposed to saying you're an idiot. That

34:50

sounds like you're on the right track there.

34:54

What's the strangest question anyone's ever

34:56

asked you? Oh,

34:58

you're killing me here. I

35:02

get a lot of strange questions. I

35:05

think that one of

35:07

the stranger questions I've

35:09

gotten was when somebody

35:11

asked me to explain

35:13

how the Illuminati had taken

35:16

over both American political parties.

35:20

I mean, where do you start? Right? Okay,

35:26

next. How do you deal

35:28

with a compulsive talker? I

35:30

sit back and listen. You do, you have the

35:32

patience. Or I exit the situation.

35:34

But if it's a situation I can't

35:36

exit, I just listen. I

35:39

feel a little steamrolled. But you know,

35:42

what can you do? It's not a good place to

35:44

expend energy. Okay, let's say

35:46

you're sitting at a dinner table next to someone

35:48

you've never met before. How

35:50

do you begin a genuine conversation?

35:54

It depends on the circumstances, because

35:56

if you really don't know anybody

35:58

and you don't know anybody, at the

36:00

table, the best conversation I have

36:03

ever had with strangers was when

36:05

a man across the table, we

36:07

were at a friend's 90th birthday

36:09

party, and the man across the table

36:11

said, listen, we're all never going to see each other

36:13

again. We all are here because we love the same

36:15

man. So let's talk

36:17

about one of the most

36:19

important things we have ever done that

36:22

helps define who we are. And

36:25

it was, I still remember the

36:27

entire conversation and what people, how people

36:29

thought that they had contributed to the

36:31

world, and it was absolutely fascinating.

36:33

Obviously, you're not going to do that

36:36

with your brother-in-laws, room mate, right?

36:38

And in that case, I usually just

36:40

try and get people talking about themselves

36:43

and see what makes their eyes light

36:45

up. And if you can get people

36:47

talking about that, it does not matter

36:49

what it is, whether it's a love

36:51

of bugs, or, you know,

36:54

a love of literature,

36:56

or a love of pickling

36:59

cucumbers, it's going to be

37:01

an interesting conversation. What

37:03

gives you confidence? In

37:06

myself, I have none, essentially. I know

37:10

what I love to do. What gives

37:12

me confidence in humanity is it

37:14

has been my experience in my 61 years that most

37:18

people are decent people. A

37:20

few of them are not. But

37:23

I feel like if we all of us

37:25

recognize the decent people among us and work

37:27

together, we will come out with a good

37:29

outcome. Great. Last question.

37:33

What book changed your life?

37:36

That's a hard one because there are so

37:38

very many. And so I'm

37:40

going to give you a different

37:43

answer than I've ever given anybody else.

37:47

And that is, when I was a kid, we

37:50

live in a very rural

37:52

area. We did

37:54

not really have access to television. There

37:57

was a television and it got

37:59

three chances. but they were in a perpetual

38:01

snowstorm, which made it hardly worth

38:03

watching. But what we did have

38:06

was a barn full of books

38:09

that had come down from the

38:11

owners before us, and

38:14

also from my grandmother. And my grandmother was

38:16

a flapper in the 1920s, and

38:19

she really admired that lifestyle. I

38:21

did not know her or my

38:23

grandfather, but she had a whole bunch

38:25

of novels from the 1920s. And

38:29

there was one of them

38:31

that was the sort of novel

38:34

that a 1920s flapper would read, and

38:38

it was called All That Glitters.

38:42

I'm sure nobody's ever heard of it,

38:44

and I'm sure it doesn't exist any longer, except

38:48

maybe in our barn. But

38:51

I read that book,

38:55

and it opened to me the

38:58

understanding that people

39:00

in other times were

39:02

just people, and that

39:06

the world that my grandmother, as I say, did

39:08

not know, admired,

39:11

was full of terms I didn't know, and

39:14

people I didn't know, and places I didn't

39:16

know, and understandings about the

39:18

world I didn't know, because it was, believe

39:20

me, the world of a flapper in the

39:22

1920s was very different than

39:24

a girl growing up in rural Maine in

39:26

the 1960s. But

39:30

it made me think that

39:32

if I could just understand

39:35

those different worlds of

39:37

people in the past, I could

39:39

probably understand the worlds of people in the

39:41

present as well. So it's

39:43

one of those funny things where it's

39:45

a completely unimportant book. I'm sure it

39:47

was a potboiler in

39:50

the 1920s, but it opened

39:52

up a whole new world to me in the

39:54

barn in the 1960s on

39:56

the coast of Maine, and became,

39:59

I think, one of those

40:01

turning points. Another wonderful story.

40:03

You've got a million of them. Thank

40:05

you for a really fun conversation. I've

40:08

enjoyed this so much. Thank

40:10

you for having me. It's been a real pleasure. This

40:19

has been Clear and Vivid. At least I hope

40:21

so. My thanks to

40:23

the sponsor of this podcast and to all

40:25

of you who support our show on Patreon.

40:28

You keep Clear and Vivid up and running. And

40:31

after we pay expenses, whatever is left over goes

40:34

to the All the Center for Communicating Science at

40:36

Stony Brook University. So your

40:39

support is contributing to the better communication

40:41

of science. We're very grateful.

40:45

Heather Cox Richardson is a professor

40:47

at Boston College where she teaches

40:49

19th century American history. Her

40:52

many books include To Make Men Free,

40:54

A History of the Republican Party and

40:57

How the South Won the Civil War, Oligarchy,

41:00

Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for

41:02

the Soul of America. Her

41:05

new book is Democracy Awakening, Notes

41:08

on the State of America. You

41:10

can receive your own letter from an American by

41:12

subscribing for free at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

41:20

This episode was edited and produced

41:22

by our executive producer, Graham Chedd

41:25

with help from our associate producer, Jean

41:27

Chumet. Our publicist

41:29

is Sarah Hill. Our

41:32

researcher is Elizabeth Oheni and

41:34

the sound engineer is Erica Hwang. The

41:37

music is courtesy of the Stefan Koenig

41:39

Trio. Next

41:50

in our series of conversations, I talk

41:52

with Dr. Peter Hotez. In

41:55

his white coat and bow tie, he became

41:57

a familiar figure on TV during the

41:59

COVID pandemic. laying out

42:01

the scientific case for the safety and

42:03

efficacy of COVID vaccines. He

42:06

also became the target of far-right opponents, whose

42:09

false arguments against vaccinations put him

42:11

at physical risk. In his new

42:13

book, The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science,

42:15

The Scientist's Warning, he

42:18

spells out how anti-science has become a

42:21

major societal force, and a

42:23

lethal one. This was not

42:25

a fun book to write, because it talks

42:27

about a very dark chapter in American history.

42:29

I mean, when I got my MD and

42:31

PhD in New York a long, long time

42:33

ago, you know, being a

42:36

scientist or developing vaccines was seen

42:38

as something almost heroic. You know,

42:40

back then, I never imagined that

42:42

I'd have to defend vaccines, or

42:46

that people who make vaccines would be

42:48

seen as pariahs. And

42:51

so the book really talks about

42:53

my decades going up

42:55

against anti-vaccine groups, and I

42:57

have to talk about the fact that 200,000 Americans, 200,000, Alan, needlessly

43:02

died because they refused

43:04

a COVID vaccine. It's almost unbelievable, you

43:06

know, when you think about that. Peter

43:09

Hotez and the rising threat of

43:11

anti-science. Next time on

43:13

Clear and Vivid. For

43:16

more details about Clear and Vivid and to sign

43:18

up for my newsletter, please

43:21

visit alanalda.com. And

43:23

you can also find us on Facebook

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and Instagram at Clear and Vivid. Thanks

43:28

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